AUG 11, 1995		Tape 08



 Mureed's Training/Retreat August 1995 Tape 8 

One needs to set up a schedule and keep a regular pace in one's meditation, and build up one's schedule so that one proceeds from one step to the next in a systematic way. We have been doing some ground work during the last days and now we want to build on what we have been doing. I would suggest Sufi breathing practice. As you exhale feel that your breath of the divine breath whereby God descends from the solitude of oneness in which the principles of everything that will unfold in the physical world are already present eternally. But as he she exhales, these principles which are really potentialities, virtualities are manifested, actuated, unfurled. And it is God Him/Herself who projects an aspect of Him/Herself as us. And the emotional drive behind that is Ishq Allah which is nostalgia. It's of course very difficult to find the words. Nostalgia that the splendor behind the Universe may concretize itself as beauty, or as majesty. That the oneness may be infinitely multiplied so that each potential fraction of the totality is able to avail itself of the wealth, the bounty of the totality, the kind of ultimate the generosity Rachman . 

 And even I wish that for example the father's wish for his son or daughter to be better than him or the mother. God becoming dynamic instead of remaining static and becoming dynamic as us not through us, as us. There is a word of Ibn Arabi He is not only the seer but that through which he sees. And so if our being is an extension of that outbreath, then we may feel as we do this the same nostalgia that powered the initial drive towards manifestation. And therefore it is a desire to translate the splendor behind it all into something concrete. And therefore the need to build a beautiful world with beautiful people. And there is in Sufism a validation for all our efforts to build this wonderful civilizations with all the defects they may have, but still all the wonderful things that result from our endeavor which is really an extension of the divine impulse. It's just that if we alienate ourselves from that impulse and then just do things on our own without taking into consideration the overall impulse,then of course that's where selfishness, and greed and conflict arises. Then as we, so this is interest of course as Pir o Murshid calls it. Now as we inhale, we feel the opposite. We feel the act whereby God extracts the quintessence of the know-how that is gained by experience, so it's the knowledge that accrues to the initial knowledge that God has of Him/Herself. The principles of being. The knowledge that results from the interfacing of the fragments of the one being. And the gift of freedom for each individual. 

And so obviously for this know-how not to get lost, I mean to have a positive contribution, it needs to be resorbed in the let's say divine mind. And then in order to be resorbed it needs to be quintessentiated, just like the perfume of flowers. And that does of course does require that one should let go of a lot of dross of the support system. Just like if you try to extract perfume from the flowers. This is where the opposite to Ishq Allah comes in. It's detachment the wazifa isWehedo, detachment, indifference, aloofness, independence. 

The attitude is the way of the ascetic. And so as we do this we discover the very deep need of our soul for freedom. So on the one hand we have involvement with all it involves as fulfilment, as joy, as pain, as enrichment, maturity. And on the other hand you have the discovery that somehow through our involvement we have suffered some constraint in our freedom, I don's say just in the circumstances but in our thinking, and in our emotion, and in our interpretation of events, and in our self image. And when we realize the degree to which we are conditioned and get sclerosed and therefore have lost our freedom, and when that need for freedom becomes imperative, almost obsessive, then we have what it takes to life our consciousness beyond earthly conditions, and awaken into perspectives which we might call backstage of the Universe. We're beginning to say that it is like the software instead of the hardware. We're beginning to discover the meaningfulness which we couldn't understand, couldn't grasp with our ordinary minds. And ultimately we discover that our thinking gets closer and closer to the thinking of the Universe, in fact the divine thinking. One says coextensive of homologous, that is of the same nature to the divine thinking. 

One's thinking is the divine thinking but funneled down, limited to our limited sense of ourselves. And as soon as we shift our identity from the limited pole of our being to the cosmic or transcendental one, that is our sense of identity has shifted, then our thinking shifts also. And we discover that our thinking is let us say at least similar or of the same nature as the divine thinking. We are not saying that we discover the divine thinking in our thinking. I am saying that our thinking is of the same nature as the divine thinking because it is the divine thinking. So this is a very basic breathing practice. And as I say what the Sufis are doing is, the Sufis have adopted a lot of the Yogi practices but have added thought rather than just doing the breathing practice. Depends of that also. They call it the mind rides the wind. So your breath is the wind. It's the energy, the ebb and flow of energy. 

Then you ride your consciousness or awareness or thinking rides the tide of, well actually rides the steed of your breath and consequently alternates with your breath, inhaling exhaling. And do you see that this practice embodies the basic principles of Sufism, namely everything is always seen from the divine point of view. So your desire is an expression of the divine desire. Your need for freedom is an expression of the divine need for freedom. So at first you may have the impression that you're being pulled in two directions that seem contradictory, involvement - detachment, until you reach a point where you see a kind of synthesis between the two. You see a way of finding freedom in involvement. And so let us not misconstrue what we are learning when Pir o Murshid talks about loosening the ties. Certainly not talking about loosening the ties in a couples relationship. It's the detachment from one's ego, the impact of one's ego on the partner, which is always very painful and even disastrous in the relationship. So when that ego possessiveness, tendency to dominate is overcome by one's detachment from one's ego, or that in one's ego that is restrictive, then the relationship becomes one of mutual respect. 

And the consequence is that one is growing in each other's neighborhood in a way that cannot happen if there is a continual battle of one trying to dominate the other or reciprocally. So this thought of loosening of the ties is going to help us to lift our consciousness into the higher spheres, because there is no doubt about it that if we are very heavily tethered by our personal wishes or satisfaction to earthly conditions and therefore dependent on let's say the infrastructure in our lives, support system, then there is no way in which we can awaken, let's say extricate ourselves from that kind of prison. So let us say that the key to lifting our consciousness, you can't lift your consciousness into the higher spheres either by your will or even by trying to explore higher levels of consciousness, but by dealing with very deep emotional drives and seeing very clearly into them . And it all starts what is called Muhasibi which is self examination. What are my values that I, of course there is not way of translating it into our language, but it's like a deeper sense of values. 

And so then you don't grasp it with your mind but you touch upon it. And so you, what one calls one's ideal, and that ideal is again a notion, a projection. It's not a reality. But it's pointing towards a reality. And that's why Pir o Murshid said Break your ideal on the rock of truth. But still it's good to, sometimes it is good to clarify it in one's mind and say, Well you see I am as Rabia de ( L'ile) says, "I'm eating the bread of this world and doing the work of that world". So let's say that I have a job and I have family responsibilities. I do enjoy beautiful music and therefore I do like to have enough money to buy a good hi fi. And I need a car because even for my job, if I don't have a good car, I don't get promoted in my firm, things like that. There's that sort of observance of let's say giving to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. But that is rather perfunctory. What is much deeper is that is that love for those beings in that family and not just responsibility. And what is more a sense of beauty, even a beautiful car is a beautiful thing. It's not just a tool but somehow an expression of one's need to be surrounded by beauty and to create beauty being surrounded by it. And so one is validating that as an expression of the divine Ishq alla, the divine Ishq. 

But still there are things that I value just in a paramount way. But then they're much more difficult to define. Like for example, I'm deeply touched by the high attunement of this mystic. Although I don't understand what he says or she says, still there's a value there which I don't know how to describe with my mind as compared with my need to have a good car or a nice house. But something there, maybe is that a priority for me? I'd like to have both of course, but is that a priority, or is that just something which is wonderful but I can't always afford to pursue that value because life is very demanding. You see that sort of thing of trying to sort out in your mind what you really want. And of course people really make choices and who really leave the world and pursue that value which you can't define. Then in many cases there is a compromise. Then my question is whether one can't introduce this ideal into real life situations instead of considering it as unreachable, rather utopian objective. That is really what we are trying to do. So that for example in the personal relationship with a person there is always that divine quality. As I say, God is always present, makes a relationship golden. However we would like make this ideal realization much more than just a projection, a notion that we make. And consequently we would like to adopt or to avail ourselves of the skills of those who have attained this ideal, sometimes a terrible cost for themselves. 

And so the history of the world is full of these beings and their sayings. Perhaps there presence is still there. So what we going to do now is to try and cull from different sources clues that will help us in raising our consciousness beyond the earthly, let's say commonplace level. So one thing we have already studied, I don't want to come back on it, but I think we need to just remind ourselves, that instead of keeping on trying to interpret the input from the outside with our inadequate minds, we place a kind of buffer between us and the environment. Buffer, that means it's not a barrier totally. But still we do not allow ourselves to be so totally caught up by the impressions by the outside world so that we are unable to reach within. And if we do that, that's the first step. The next one is of course( ) one. That is to turn our attention towards what is emerging from within, the new birthing. Those are things we've already done. Now you'll find that this new birthing involves all the levels of our being. 

Therefore it makes all the difference if for example when a high state of attunement as we turn within, then the rebirthing will include more of the higher levels of our being than if we just turn within. And therefore we need, I think it's good, these are clues of course, meditation. And it's good to know that, as I've already said, and I'll repeat this because it's really an axiom. For every mode of identity there is a mode of thinking. So if you turn within, your mode of thinking is different from the ordinary commonplace mode of thinking. Now for example you see the reconciliation of the irreconcilables, complementarity, everything in its context instead of in it's context instead of a granulated world, the implicate state, all these things that we've already said. So your thinking for example, you are much more aware of what you imply behind what you explain. 

Now then so that is a clue as to how one turns within. Now we want to start moving upwards, if one may say that, it's not geographical of course. And that which will lure you upwards in the first step on the ladder let's say, is a different mode of thinking again, perhaps one could say thinking in terms of metaphor for example instead of exemplars. I didn't say archetype, but that's let's say the archetype, I don't want to complicate things too much. The archetype to be exemplified as a exemplar, the archetype passes through a state which one might call a metaphor. I mean the bridge is what one might call a metaphor. So now this is the clue now. 

Well I've already mentioned, someone says isn't it wonderful to see this peaceful person in the room? And the Sufi says isn't it wonderful to see peace coming through that person? You see the archetype is peace and the exemplar is that person. The exemplar is the way that that person is able to manifest peace. So that will lift your thinking one degree above the usual perfunctory thinking. And therefore the wazifa, wasiaf are of course a clue, constitute a skill actually because one is beginning to grasp notions that are archetypal like compassion, or mastery, or peacefulness, or truthfulness instead of dwelling with the personal self. Say " My psyche has been damaged by that person who abused me and therefore I am psychologically ill and therefore I need therapy". That dwelling upon the personal self one doesn't see this impersonal dimension of one's being that is going to make all the difference in one's approach because if one doesn't see that of course, one is encapsulated in the very limited constraint of one's personal purview. That's the first step. And it is, call it the world of metaphor. 

It is a kind of transit between the personal and the impersonal, between sheer realization and form, or one could say inspiration and configuration. So it's a link, it's a bridge. obviously you understand what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity. To be creative one needs to make this link between the nitty gritty, like you know the clay of the artist or the sculptor, or different colors of paint of the artist, or the rhythms and tones and so on of the musician or even instruments or timbres. Then that much more difficult, that level of reality which is much more difficult to define, which comes through in a kind of can I say a thrill of the soul. At some level of one's being, I say the soul. At some level of one's being one is deeply moved. We have these words, the soul, heart and so on. Let's say it's not as personal as we call the heart. Something impersonal about it in one's being. So it is really recognizing something impersonal in one's being. Let's say an impersonal dimension of one's being that is endowed with a certain insight and a certain attunement. 

So if you identify with it, then you get into that attunement, whereas if you identify with the body or your psyche, then of course you do not. This would be the clue. And therefore somehow I think that metaphysical assumptions may stand in the way of our spiritual awakening, or then may preclude our awakening, and also distort what is really happening. And therefore we have to be very careful about our belief systems, all our metaphysical assumptions. Basically we need to be very clear about two things. One is that, and as I've already said but I need to say it again, that is that we are like a pendulum, so that at one end we are moving in time and space. So that's what we call our individual dimension, not our individuality our individual dimension of our being. 

And there is that end of the point where the pendulum is suspended. And that is a very good illustration of the impersonal, eternal, universal, dimension of our being. And we're emphasizing those two poles but we're really everything between those two, all those grades between those two ends. And if you think that way, and you realize that what we're doing now is we're making some kind of connection between those two poles, like a bridge. The world of metaphor. And one of the practical ways of doing it and therefore it's a a practice I recommend, is to represent to your self what one calls landscapes of the sole. That is like a landscape, like a lake, or mountain,or forest or whatever or desert, or the sunrise, or stars or whatever. But these are what I've been talking, sighted here are scenes of nature that you could photograph. But then as you know, the artist is able to see in that substantial material scene something other than what most people see, a kind of like transfigured reality, like Van Gogh's painting of the church. It's not, it's all lopsided and so on. It's not the kind of thing you would have in a photograph but it conveys like what it means to the person instead of what it is objectively. So that one is really discovering one's person thanks to the transfiguration of the object. And therefore you may start with scenes that are concrete, tangible like as I say the lake and so on. But as you, and if you do this of course you're activating you imagination at the level of one's ordinary state of consciousness. 

If we want to lift our consciousness, we need to shift the focus of our consciousness, let's say off set it from the commonplace scene of the senses. And the clue to this is what one call a state of revere. So it's not exactly sleeping, somewhere between the two. So the beauty here is that the images projected upon the screen of one's mind are not subjected to rational, existential, experiential mode. But project themselves not withstanding our personal will, because our will is off guard. And consequently it's telling us something about ourselves and about our Universe that our senses cannot tell us, and certainly our interpretation of what we experience through our senses. So if you can maintain yourself in the threshold condition between earthly conditions and let's call it sleep and deep sleep. We'll go into that later. 

Then you'll find yourself in a transfigured world. So the lake will be eerie and rather different from the lake you would experience if you were walking there in your ordinary state of consciousness. But having done this in your meditation, you might go to the the lake and find yourself in a transfigured state. One can do that. And St. Francis used to do that in the woods. You're walking in a perfectly clear scenery that everybody would think they knew and you find yourself seeing something in it that most people would not see or something you yourself did not see before. What is the second step is that you are instead of stumping around you are kind of floating. I mean your being is part of the scene. So at first it would be like if you were in your ordinary consciousness you would imagine your body walking along the lake. But as soon as you shift your consciousness then your body seems like gossamer. And your pace is very light. It's as if your were floating. Now you have shifted your sense of identity from identifying your self with your gross physical body and identifying yourself with what one calls the etheric body. The Sufis call it Arwah. And you see this is where creativity has an impact upon matter or material conditions. It's like an intermediary step whereby one communicates through a language of the senses a reality that passes through that support system, let's say the senses, passes through. 

I remember a remark of well it was a musicologist, talking about what happens in the forth, I think it was the forth piano concerto,(tape turns) conveying his ecstasy given some kind of tangible expression so one has a bridge. So you may consider this to be awakening beyond life, or offsetting your consciousness from the ordinary setting of consciousness, or let's say the ordinary perspective. As I've already said, maybe it's helpful for us to entertain this theory and this metaphysical imago mundi, I mean this picture of the world. And that is that we are, our consciousness is focused in such a way that it is ordinarily only able to grasp a cross section of reality. Like a multidimensional world and we only conceive a three dimensional cross section of it. But one can offset one's consciousness from that focus and then one has the feeling of awakening from a perspective. That's what happens with people with drugs. Under the effect of drugs, people are then caught in a perspective that is other than the ordinary physical perspective, but it is still a prison. Whereas in meditation we are free to monitor our consciousness without being forced into a perspective. So it is the ultimate affirmation about freedom. So that's a step. So it is not of course a scene, a transfigured world. Maybe the most important aspect of it is discovering dimensions of one's identity that one was not aware of, like for example floating. Or in mountain climbing it would be again another aspect of ourselves. So it's a process of self discovery. And the consequence is that having had a whiff of that dimension of oneself that one was not aware of, it remains somewhere in one's unconscious although one is not any more in that perspective. But still having discovered it, it enriches one's being. And somehow one does incorporate it into one's personality. 

You know that the Tibetans concentrate on a statue and then start walking about as though they were that statue. Well that's very stereotype because the statue is given. But here you have the freedom to discover a landscape and to discover yourself in that landscape. But I would say that it's good to have some guidelines here. And therefore I suggest that you do these in conjunction with a wazifa. What I suggest therefore is the opposite of what we've been doing. For example you earmark the wazifa Ya Salam. And then somehow you let your creative imagination free lancing, free wheeling so that it projects in your state of revere, it projects a picture which could be the lake, it could be anything as long as it does concretize that feeling of peacefulness, or illustrates it. And then you take another wazifa, Ya Wali, for example. It could be a scenario instead of a scene. That's the thing that Jung talks about it. So a scene of nature, the lake is a scene, but you're walking in it so that's a scenario. But then for example Y Wali, well conducting an orchestra or a choir, there you have a beautiful illustration of mastery, control. So you choose, you find that the wazifa is much more effective now. Instead of just repeating a word and trying to understand what it means, your seeing how it corresponds to a certain identity in you, a certain facet of your being that was always there but is now projected in a concrete manner as a picture. 

Imagination means projecting in a form something that originally doesn't have a form. Building a bridge. So that's what the Sufis call Methal, the world of metaphor. I don't quite know but it seems like it's very reminiscent of the word myth. So I don't know whether there's any etymological connection with the word mythal or myth. And Sufis say, Ibn Arabi says, It is an intermediary world between the physical world and the world of abstract thoughts. And there isn't any reason to believe that this world is any less real than the physical world. In fact it's probably more real. It's probably the template. And the physical world is probably the formation within this template. And maybe, I say maybe, that's the world in which we'll find ourselves after death. We'll discover ourselves as inspired artists, creative beings. We don't have to put up with the limitation of the nitty gritty of the physical plane. God bless you now.

AUG 11, 1995		Tape 09



Mureed's Retreat/Training August 95 Tape 9

...few hours still at our disposal to do some very intensive work. My objective is of course to try and explore the steps to awakening beyond life and then in life. But as I often say these are often just words. So we want explore together precisely what the steps are. I think of a word of Gandhi. There was a saying, The end justifies the mean. And he was saying, No it's the means that justify the end. So it seems like we limit ourselves if we set a goal and we try to imagine what that goal is, it stands in the way. So it's being built up as we move along. We need to learn from those who have been practicing this path. We have a tremendous background to help us. 

The Mandukya Upanishad which is you know the kind of conclusions that the pupils of a great rishi came to, a kind of summary of his teaching, described awakening, or rather compared awakening beyond life into what is called samadhi, ( ) samadhi, compared it with awakening from day consciousness into sleep consciousness and then into deep sleep. Then even the next stage which would be awakening in life. So this could give us a clue. At least we know that when we go to sleep we do change our perspective. That's what we mean by awakening. But we think that we are more confused than in our day consciousness because what happens is that the digestive process in the psyche becomes conscious instead of happening in the unconscious. And therefore it seems totally incongruous. We don't have a sense of awakening, arriving at a greater clarity. It's the other way around. 

Thoughts are jumbled and seem to be rather confusing. It's only if we are able to irradicate, to eliminate all that surface layer of the mind that obscures what's happening in the depth, that masks what's happening in the depth, that we can grasp something very meaningful in our sleep. But normally one is not conscious when one is sleeping. And only a few of those, that insight that one gains is then shunted over the threshold into our day consciousness when we wake up. And it is distorted so that it may be understandable in our minds or by our minds, by our thinking. So there is a technique called Nita Yoga or Yoga Nita which consists in maintaining the continuity of consciousness passing the threshold between day consciousness and sleep. So that you don't lose all the realization that you gained in your sleep. It's a very difficult technique and I don't think that I can propose it here as a viable practice for most people because one has to live in very special circumstances to be able to do this. But it is true that there are some Yogis who never really sleep because there is always some connection between day consciousness and sleep consciousness. I'm sure that some of you have this. Perhaps you know this state when you're sleeping and you're aware of the sounds of the cars in the street and even of your body to some extent, the furniture in the room and so on. But you're not mustering your thoughts. 

Thoughts tend to flow in a random way and particularly images. So that's a state of revere. And it's true that we often when we meditate we find ourselves in that state. And we don't like it because we find that we can't control our thoughts and we're not getting anywhere. The technique consists in awakening in that state so that one is able to watch one's consciousness dreaming instead of being the dreamer. And of course we're very precarious so that one could easily fall to sleep in that state. And if one shifts the balance the other way around, on the other side then one gets back into ordinary consciousness again. So you're very delicately balanced between day consciousness and sleep. So if you can maintain that point there, we'll then you can monitor those dreams. That's the great art. But you can't by your will or your decision. So it's a very fine art. I would say that preparatory stage would be to auto suggest to yourself a dream before going to sleep. And you'll find that your unconscious has been catalyzed by that autosuggestion but does not simply tow the line, does not simply do what your consciousness mind wanted because it has it's own way of thinking. And consequently your dreaming will have some kind of orientation instead of being overwhelmed by the randomness, being blurred by the randomness of thoughts. And then curious enough little by little you will, if you're very observant, you will notice that it's not completely true that in day consciousness that you can control your thoughts and in a state of revere you can't, or your images, not completely true that sometimes in our day consciousness we can control our thoughts and you find in your sleep condition you can't control your thoughts but you can give them some kind of orientation, but you can't do that with your will. You can do that your attunement. 

That's why I suggest repeating the wazifa before going to sleep because then the attunement of the wazifa remains. The thought of the wazifa of course fades away as you start going to sleep, but the attunement is going to give a certain orientation to the formations of mental constructs and images that strike your, let's say the screen of your mind. And it will reveal to you meanings that you cannot cull in your ordinary consciousness. They're telling you something. One has to be very careful about the tendency to interpret this when one gets back into ordinary consciousness again. That's why it's so much better if one can keep that door open so one doesn't have to awaken until one gets back into one's ordinary consciousness. But one is already on that bridge between the two states. I hope you can understand what I'm saying. Now you know the only way that we can ever go to sleep is because we let go of the impressions form the outside and of our wishes and all that. So there is no doubt about it that it is detachment that cues off this switch over. 

You'll have noticed that if in your dream you do have some sense of your bodineses, it is like gossamer as I say. It is like subtle matter. We don't know exactly what it means but we try to interpret it. It is like steam. It is like volatile instead of substantial. So that is a clue. You can't quite do it with your will but still while you're meditating you consider your physical body, in as much as you're aware of it, you consider it as the formation within that template which is your etheric body. We call it Ruh and the plural for that is Arwah. Now if you do shift your identity into this etheric body, then well there is a kind of buoyancy about it as compared with the physical body. Perhaps you can feel that while I'm talking. Like as soon as you, you know your body seems relatively stable. There's some kind of jerk, pulsing of the blood. But then your etheric body, perhaps you can feel that, something more subtle, but interspersed with the body. You can feel that it moves much more, it floats a little bit. The more you identify with it the more energy you give it. And so it can start really, even lifting itself above the physical body. That's what one calls astral travel or astral projection. If you do this, if you really made that split between the body and the astral, it could be damaging. 

For example you could have an accident if it happens while you're driving a car. But it could have an adverse effect because then you've made a loose connection there and when you try to get into high state of meditation, then you make that split at that level, then you may have an astral flight. So that's not a very good method. So the way to avoid that is thinking that there is an up and a down because you really feel a buoyancy you see. It really means that you're less pulled, you're less subjected to the gravity pull of the earth. But I would avoid that notion of space. If you're lifting yourself up, then somehow it has to do with what we understand as space. So what I do to avoid astral travel, although I have done astral travel, is to simply think that space is only meaningful where there is matter and maybe also for this finer mater which we call the etheric body, but beyond that space does not have any meaning. 

So consequently you can just, it's a way of thinking you see, it affects your sense of identity because not only one identifies oneself with one's body being located in space, or occupying a certain location, then the astral you're floating, so there is still a sense of location but a little more in motion. Now you have to just overcome this idea of location or even moving in space. And that's where you make that leap into a further step towards samadhi. Yogis call this tan matra. Tan matra means the subtle energy or subtle body. Now for those of you who want to have something concrete, I would suggest using wasifas as a way of having clear, a clear sense instead of being too amorphous. For example we talked about the etheric body. But you see if you think of the etheric body or the astral body as an entity with a frontier, a boundary, then of course that has a limiting effect. So think of it as, there are two things, one is the way that energy converges from the environment into our etheric body. And the other is the way that energy emerges from the root, let's say of one's being. And even how energy emerges from within and energy descends from above. So you have four dimensions. And the beauty of the wazifa is that you have a word for each of those dimensions. 

So the energy that crowds in from outside, and that you can also boomerang back from outside, is Hayy. The energy that you feel is emerging from the earth, and one calls it telluric energy, the energy of the earth, earth energy. We're beginning to feel now in our time the value of this energy, this earth energy. You feel in the soles of your feet if you're walking. And if you're sitting cross legged you feel it in the base of your spine. And by imagining that it moves upward in your spine will enhance it's emergence in you, as you inhale for example. That word is Mu'id (spells it). It is a power that balances the tendency to fall apart. It is a kind of cohesion. I've often illustrated it by the branches of a tree that you've moved and the then they go back into place. I've even said the rain forest, if you don't all those astral roads, they'll all disappear if you don't use them then the rain forest will grow again. So it's a kind of restorative faculty. And then if you turn within, and we've already done this, you come across this, you remember we learned how breath in from, instead of drawing energy from the outside as we breath in we are breathing energy from inside. 

So you come across a form of energy that is rather different from the two that we've just been describing. It's called Muhyi, and one could call it a regenerative energy. And so it's rather wonderful to feel the difference between the energy, all that sometimes rather gross energy that you take in. For example you go in a self service, help yourself self service place, there is all that energy flying about. Of course one does imbibe that energy. But it can be difficult to digest, too much of it. And it's all rather unrelated, random. Then you feel the energy that gives you a kind of resilience to all the disturbance. But of course it's true that that energy does counterbalance progress. But at least it keeps you on the straight path instead of running amok. That's Mu'id. 

And then you can feel Muhyi as a kind of power in you to regenerate. So it's not just a repair process, therapy which is a repair, return to the place you were before you were ill. But it is turning the tables on illness in order to be better after the illness than you were before. And that's Muhyi. Then you have another word which is Quddus. And you feel, mystics have always described it as the descent of the holy spirit. It's very fine energy contrasting with Hayy which is a little bit grosser. So it acts a catalyst. So if you think of those four energies one by one. And then somehow you identify yourself with being an energy field rather than an etheric body, an energy field. There's all different types of frequencies of energy. Then this kind of thinking that I'm talking about that comes in your dreams will begin to manifest itself to you. I don't know whether you've noticed that you have a very different, you have dream personality. 

You're dream personality is very different from your day personality. It's another identity. And one doesn't believe it because we're so caught up in our every day existence. But now when you're meditating, you realize the validity of your dream personality and even if you, if it's vague, ambiguous, nebulous. If you gain some clarity about that dream personality, you'll find that it's more real than the personality that you assume in your every day consciousness. It will give you a kind of ascendancy, maybe that's not the correct word. But when you're entering into a room or in a situation, you do not simply carry your day personality, your external personality, your more obvious personality. But somehow you maintain yourself in your sense of your dream identity let's call it, and it will give you a great power. I think of a dancer for example, a ballet dancer coming on the stage and bring her attunement so she's not just there as a body, although she has a lot of control of the body. But somehow if she just identifies with the body, her dancing will not be very inspiring. But if she comes on the stage carrying something of her dream personality, then her movements are going to express something of that, one would say, higher personality than one's ordinary personality. So that would be a clue to meditating, the way you identify. 

Now just feel that where ever you go you're carrying that being with you. It is masked by your outer personality, but you don't have to identify yourself with your outer personality. It's just a mask. Now I'll try to illustrate what I'm going to say by a more concrete picture. For example you imagine a scene, like a landscape, like the lake for example. And then you find that there may be some kind of alternation between the picture when it comes out very clearly, and then another condition in which it's a little bit jumbled and amorphous. Imagine for example, a landscape, the clouds are covering the sky, covering the sun. And so the landscape is a little bit nebulous. But now all of a sudden the clouds have disappeared, and the sun shines upon the landscape with all all its power and now everything becomes much more distinct. For example now you see the contours of the leaves of the trees and before you just had the blur of green amalgamated with some brow, but it wasn't detailed, you see. 

So that's another clue to awakening in your, consider your consciousness like a sun, and sometimes its effect is obscured. While you dream you're projecting a picture like a lake for example. So the lake is nebulous, and yourself kind of nebulous. And all of a sudden you awaken. And it's as if the sun suddenly shines on the landscape and everything is clear. So you notice the contours of the leaves of the trees and the trunks and all the details. So what we're talking about is the impact of consciousness upon the unconscious. That doesn't mean descending into the unconscious. It means seeing how your conscious mind brings to like things that are still nebulous in your unconscious. OK so now this is a stage leading to samadhi. So what I was saying is that emotional attunement is going to make all the difference. So that's why I think of the wasifas as attunements rather than concepts of the mind. And I, of course there are some wasifas that seem to stand for ecstasy for example, Ya Azim for example, or Ya Ali. But every wazifa has an emotional content or emotional charge. So there comes a time in your meditation that you highlight the emotional attunement of a wazifa for example instead of the thinking that goes with it. The Hindus call this Ananda Samadhi. The samadhi of emotion. Then you discover a whole, like you're floating in a universe of emotion. It's all emotion. 

Matter is like crystallized emotion. I think it's crystallized thought. But behind the thought is emotion. And if you think of a master, then you think of not the picture of the face of the master, or not even the thinking, but the emotion of the master. Christ washing the feet of his disciples. And Buddha lost in the ecstasy of the Universe of galaxies. Muhammad in ecstasy by his intimacy with God, discovers the divine intention working in society, in his society. So if you do that, then you're making one further step now. One could say that you're meditating on the symphony of emotions. And the physical world is not just made of objects that materialize forms, but this is beyond form. That's why Ibn Arabi says that in order to make this quantum leap you have to give up any idea about form. Perhaps, do you think in forms? Some people are aware that they think in forms. But them sometimes you don't think in forms, you think with forms. Now you'll really have to, in the dream state there are forms, thoughts assume forms so that they may be known to us and what is more these forms may materialize into concrete objects and so on, that's creativity. But at this stage that we're talking about, you give up any sense of forms what so ever, and your thoughts never try to materialize as forms. So in order to avoid losing yourself at this point because it's much more difficult to be concentrated at this level, I would suggest that you choose wasifas. Because then you have a definite orientation of your emotion. Instead of just being spaced out, being very high in a state of ecstasy, one says dervish. More specific. 

What is the emotion that you feel when you're controlling a situation that does require control? For example you're riding a horse. What's the emotional feeling? There is ecstasy in that emotion. So you start with, that's the image of course, you're riding a horse. You've that image. And now it's a certain effort that one makes in one's mind. That's a stepping stone, what I felt when I was riding a horse, or skiing, or hang gliding, whatever. I call it mastery. It doesn't matter what one calls it. But there is a certain emotion there. Now see if you can feel that emotion without attaching to it a particular scenario or a particular image. Like for example when Pir o Mushid said, You discover in yourself the very power that moves the Universe. So you're not thinking of the Universe but you're thinking of the power behind it. And you find it in yourself. And you know that having highlighted this emotion, you'll be able to return to the nitty gritty of life and you'll have much more power in your handling situations. Love for example, Wadud, love. One thinks maybe even of the face of the person one loves. One thinks of factual circumstances. If one is interfacing with this person, hugging or whatever. So this is, here you have a support system at the existential level. Then you could, as I say, just imagine the face of that person. 

So there you have an image but you're not pinned right down to circumstances. And now the interesting thing is to be able to just liberate from the image of a person. That's why Machnoon says to Layla, I find it easier to love you when you're not there. So it's a high level of love which does not depend upon any kind of support. It's like Bellerphon has freed himself from Pegasus. There's no support any more. You could even translate it by being in love with love which is perhaps a more concrete way of what we mean by loving God. Because again if you think of loving God, you have an object, some projection in your mind of what you imagine God to be. Isn't that wonderful to be able to be in love with love? You don't have to limit your love to one person. It can be very intense. And there is the emotion regarding, I mean relative to understanding the breakthrough of realization is going to manifest as very strong emotion. Especially, just think of the words of Murshid, the reason of reasons. Our  mind sees reasons sometimes, causality, this happened because that happened and so on, the consequence, determinism. But then so you have some kind of factual basis, foundation for your realization. But then there is one further step or further dimension, and that is Murshid calls it reason of reason. Well let's not try to describe it intellectually. One could of course understand (tape turns) ourselves from the underpinning upon which we depended. It's the clue. They're all clues to samadhi. Now Buddha described it very well when he said, Conscious needs a combustible. In our ordinary consciousness we are experiencing things, the physical world through our senses. We close our eyes. We are picking up thoughts and so on. So our consciousness always has some kind of object. And what we're doing in order to wake up in samadhi, is to free ourselves more and more of the object. 

So first of all the object is like physical thought. And then if you remember the object was our own creativity rather than something that comes to us from outside. So it's a much more subtle object that the Tibetans call the illusory body. It's emergent. It emerges. It is not something that is there. It emerges. Vedanta describes that very well. I don't know whether it was, I think it was Chankara Chariya, or was it Mandukya Upanishad, or (Gurapada). I'm not sure but it doesn't really matter. I think it's the Mandukya Upanishad that says this. He says at the first level is where you're experiencing other than yourself. So you are the spectator. But the second mode you are the spectator and at the same time the creator of what you are experiencing. That's the second mode. That's what you're doing in sleep with dreams. And the third mode is that you are the spectator but you do not need an object. How can you be a spectator? Well, Murshid answers that. And what he is saying is that consciousness, intelligence becomes consciousness when it is faced with an object. And that is a combustible, let's say. And when consciousness has been bereft of an object of support, it returns to it's ground which is intelligence. This is the key to samadhi. 

So actually we are making a further step from ananda samadhi which is, the only support is emotion but without images or without circumstances, or without reasoning. And not we are getting to a further step which the Hindus call (aspeta) samadhi, and that is where you discount any wisdom that you might have acquired or are acquiring at the existential level, that is in the world, or even in your reflections about the world so that this other form of knowledge which is the knowledge of your intelligence rather than your consciousness is being revealed to you. So that's that step. That step from malakut which is the angelic sphere, which is the level of pure emotion, or even the emotion of emotion, the emotion behind emotion, behind human emotion let's say. Human emotion depends upon circumstances but this does not depend upon circumstances. The angelic level. Can you feel that angelic level in your being? So I think it would be rather misleading to talk about our angelic counterpart. I did it the other day I know because that's the kind of language we've learned. But it's not a counterpart. It's not a body. It's a certain level, well we call it level. It's very difficult to say, like it's not a sphere, like where is it in Mars, Pluto, Venus. It's not that. It's an attunement. And now thanks to having freed oneself form the need of an object to understand, and therefore by passing through this level of pure emotional attunement, we arrive at a further mode of understanding which is absolutely not based upon experience. That's what we call Jabarut. 

So what Ibn Arabi says is drop your memory of the circumstantial world and drop your images. Well he says it a little bit differently. He says God leads you from the world of circumstances, the world of objects, the world of imagination to, in a world which one could only describe, although there is no way of describing it, as the world of abstract thoughts. Well it's not what we think, what we imagine as abstract thoughts. But what he means is thoughts that are not formulated either in languages or in images. So I think it would be better to say a level of pure realization. Maybe that's what Pir o Murshid means by the reason of reasons. But still the reason of reasons would be like it would be resting on reason and reason would be resting on experience. Whereas absolutely not at all, absolutely regardless of support for one's understanding. Could you do that? That is where this theory of Maya is very helpful because I think , well all that I know from experience is really not, not only not reliable, but it's not very important. It's inadequate. It's, one discounts it. It's passing through what is called the dark night of the mind. So you see we're getting into Samadhi. We're awakening beyond the perspective of the physical world, or even that of the software behind the physical world, the images, and even the emotions. 

The Mandukya Upasnishad, and Chankura ( ), Goda pada describe this as you were just a spectator. You remember you were the spectator and the world was the object. And then you were the spectator and you were projecting the object of your cognizance. And now you are just the spectator. But perhaps spectator is not the right word any more. In fact it's not the right word because that means consciousness,whereas you are the Sufis use Shahid which means the witness. And it doesn't mean the witness of the world. It means the witness of the divine intention. Of course there is an imagery here. But that's secondary. Sufis describe it as being invited to the palace of the king and being even drawn into the intimacy, like when Pir o Murshid says And when thou drawist me close to thy breast.. That's reminiscent of an image of St. John with his head against the heart of Christ. That kind of intimacy. So it's not just the divine intention. The strategy is not the intention. The strategy is the result of the intention. But it's far deeper than that. One would like to think of it as the divine emotion behind the divine thinking, but we're limiting God by our projections. 

But you see that there has been a shift from our sense of our being the spectator to what is behind the spectacle, intention. In other words in our notion of ourselves a shift from a sense of being a spectator so that we discover, actually it's a way of discovering God not through the ayat. That means the signs, like the signs of God in the physical world or the signs of God in one's own personality, the pug marks as I say. You remember that word of word of Ibn Arabi, I know myself through the knowledge that God has of himself through me. And always reach, there is a further point, and that's the point that we're reaching now. In which he said, You'll know God not by His manifestation of Himself but by Himself. So you are a manifestation of Him, but you know him now as He is Himself. But there is some flaw in this because you don't know God. It is God who knows himself. And you're invited in that self contemplation of God. He/She is not knowing Him/Herself through you but you can, at this level, you can be privy of this self contemplation by God of Himself. There is a word of Al Hallaj which says it as well as one can say it. There is no way of saying it of course. He says, In his pre-eternity, that's a term, I want to spare you going too much into detail about I would have liked to say transeternity or whatever, transiency, whatever. Pre eternity doesn't seem at first to make sense. But later of course you understand it. But let's forget that. What he is saying that in pre eternity, that is prior to, and don't think of it in terms of time. Like there was a time before this Universe, God was planning things. No. It is simultaneous with this Universe. It's timeless so it doesn't change with time. 

God was contemplating himself in his being, that is not in his becoming but in his being. You know we have these words to be and to exist for example, or in French etre and exister, in German (zian) and (basin). When one says ( zain), one is not talking about (basin). (Basin) means the qualities. What kind of being is that, you're talking about the qualities. Where as (zian) is like the presence. There's no reference to any qualities. So this is the level which we're talking about. So God was contemplating his being, auto contemplating his being. And then, and he uses this, in the solitude, and solitude means there was no diversity, in the solitude of unity. And then rose love, Ishq in the solitude. And the word means solitude not in the sense of aloneness, but of oneness. So love arising in the oneness. And consequently the need for other to mirror that aspect of love that is the lover so that love may now be known by the lover and beloved. So that knowing can arise out of love. It's a very extraordinary thing. You find in the hadith of the Prophet . 'ften it's translated as, I was a hidden treasure and desired to be known. A desire would be Ishq, but the word used is Hub which is I love to be known. You know it's, we're talking about a whole different dimension here. That love enlisted the need for knowing. Knowing resulted out of love. It was to know, it was out of love that God descended from the solitude of unknowing. 

The word of Jelaluddin Rumi, If it wasn't for the love of the flowers, wherefore would the gardener want to know something about the flowers? So you have at this level, you have the impinging of love without the concreteness of a person as the object. But still the embodiment of, the prospect the embodiment of love having polarized itself into the lover and the beloved, but right at the beginning, at the top of the whole hierarchy of being. And then he said, Al Hallaj said, Every time that God contemplated in this, how can I say in this context, say in this attunement of love in the solitude, every time he contemplated one and another potential attribute within himself,that's what we mean by the wasifas, actually we call it the sifat, the qualities, they were projected into a form. And we humans are those forms. God projected His qualities. 'ut of love arose the need to know himself, or to know what these qualities would turn out to be when they became beings. So when we are repeating wasifas, we are responding to that descent by ascending, by getting into that initial state in which God was discovering Himself. So in our meditation, God is discovering Himself through the way that his attributes are exemplified in our nature. A kind of mirroring is taking place. That's why Ibn Arabi says by contemplating God, we are contemplating ourselves and by contemplating ourselves, we contemplate God. He says We know ourselves by the knowledge that God has of himself through us. And then Al Hallaj goes on to say things, well they don't fit into our ordinary way of thinking. And he says, And God saluted those beings who arose out of Himself. There's a kind of separation that takes place. That recognition. God recognizing the human instead of the human glorifying God, and the human responding to this recognition by glorifying God. It's not samadi of course. 

This is very high level meditation because the trouble with samadhi is that one can just lose, one can find oneself in the void. If you see it from that point of view, then of course you can't be caught up in your random thought anymore. It's a whole different level of realization. So if you see the world, now of course what we're doing in now is awakening in life. If you see the world as continuation of this process, this descent, then you're always looking at it from this vantage point, now it makes sense. If you try to look at it from the opposite or try to reach up from down, it doesn't work you see. And then he even says, And God complemented humans for their good looks, which is more than we can say for ourselves. In other words there is a rejoicing at the appearance of form, form as that which is achieved by existence. It wasn't there before. Which we are experiencing as we listening to beautiful music, or look at a beautiful cathedral, we are congratulating actually the human being for having been able to manifest the divine glory in form. And then he goes on to say, And then he converses with this being. That's very remarkable because that's not samadhi you see, that's awakening in life. A sense of a dialogue. And even though it is an uneven dialogue, rather like Socrates, like master and pupil, still there is a dialectics there that arises out of the way that the divine mind is now incorporating the diversity of human minds, and therefore being enriched. Human minds being an aspect of the divine mind, but let's say, the divine mind gets diversified, infinitely diversified. 

You know as an amateur physicist I see the parallel , for example the way that inorganic matter is a little bit like wall paper, repetition, repetitiveness of a form, structure. Then all of a sudden a quantum leap into the organic. Then all of a sudden there is diversity, the different say building blocks. Each assume a function a cooperating together instead of being the same. And this facilitates the emergence of intelligence in the evolutionary process. So you can say the same thing, that diversity emerges out of the unity and gives birth to an enhanced intelligence. It's the divine intelligence emerging in the dialogue between people which is the way in which God is dialoguing with people. I remember that rishi, people were asking him very stupid questions. He was in samadhi, he was in a very high state. And he was trying to understand how people think. And I think that that added something to his understanding. That's why awakening in life adds something to one's realization in the samadhi state. That also explains why the Muslim prayers are a dialogue. They are a dialogue. God answers back. The person who is praying is evoking, almost asking for approval and glorifying. There is an exchange. So that unity, one has descended somehow from the solitude of unity into the richness of diversity, and if one can, while doing this, not lose sight of the unity behind the diversity, then one is awakening in life. One could even imagine a kind of pyramid of thinking, like the Kabbalah is really a pyramid. And the Sefirotic tree is really a pyramid. 

And so, well this is a little bit difficult to understand. I don't know whether it's too intellectual. I think it's a word of Jami, if I remember, when he said, It's as though the thinking at the bottom, let's say of the pyramid, is integrated by the thinking at the top, like an umbrella. He said that's one way of looking at things. 'n the other hand the thinking at the bottom is like the effect is already present with the cause. I don't know whether you understand that but the all inclusiveness of the divine thinking and then the grades in that divine thinking. That's why I'm saying that meditation is, as you meditate, as you change your sense of identity, your mode of thinking changes. And we have examined some of those modes of thinking. If you know that, then you have guidelines when you're meditating. You'll avoid the pitfalls. For example you're meditating and you fall back into the ordinary way of thinking. Now you don't know how it happened. You don't know exactly what determines that way of thinking. But now you know. So now for example, you're meditating in a very high state and all of a suddden a random thought comes in. And instead of slipping back into your ordinary thinking. You remember, yes that way of thinking corresponds to my identifying myself with my body. In fact that is a condition of me, but it's not really me, but it carries the impact of me. So right away you, by shifting your identity or reminding yourself of the different levels of identity you'll change your thinking. If you try to change your thinking it won't happen. At a certain level it's beyond what we call thinking of course and emotions. You can't separate emotion and thinking. (long pause) So it would be good if you would perhaps go and sit in nature for a few minutes. And we'll met again at 11 o'clock.

AUG 11, 1995		Tape 10

Tape 10

So, the methods I am using now, absolutely vary from those that I used to do, because when I felt bad, I used to try and feel good, and try to rely on meditation to fix it.

So, now, I can tell you when I start meditating, I don't know if it works for you, I can only say that this works for me. Well, I'm pondering upon the meaning of my life, and then, having a metaphysical mind, I think of the meaning of life in general. And, pondering upon the meaning of my life, then of course, I get in touch with my emotions, instead of trying to control them, or to discount them. And then, I think of all the terrible tragedies in my life. I think of Noor, for example, been beaten to death after having been kicked the night before, been bleeding overnight, lying on the cement floor, wanting to be with her family, her mother, me. And, thinking of that moment when a psychic, Taj and myself went to a psychic, and she said, "God gives, God takes away." I thought, how is that possible. 

I am thinking of the accident with my fiancée. I am thinking of the incredible injustice of the powers that be in the Sufi movement, the dishonesty, the politics, and so on, I'm getting (...?) (laughter) I am thinking of my mother, having suffered so much. I don't know whether, well, I suppose, then I think of all the suffering of people in Bosnia, and everywhere in the world. And that is how I start meditating. (laughter)

So, because I am very wary of not allowing meditation to be like an ostrich putting their head in the sand, and discounting something that is really there. And then, I think to myself, Well, how can I fix it? It is too much. There is no way in which I could. And yet, somehow there is a suspicion. First of all, I think, well, I'm delving in the past, and the past is past. So, why, my sister is not there anymore, and all those situations, you know. So, secondly I think, well, I don't know this, I don't understand this, but I remember these words, "defeat can aver itself to be a victory." Maybe there is some, something positive about this, and then I try to think, yes it is true, if I had been in the Sufi movement, I wouldn't have had the freedom that I have now. And, if it hadn't been for what happened between me and Taj, well then, Taj wouldn't have been the person that she has become, and so on and so forth. So, I like to think sort of, think well, it was for the best. If my sister had lived an ordinary life, she wouldn't have been the hero that she is, and she wouldn't have become the angel, the being that she has become now, and so on. And so, that is a way of using ones, well, ones just tending to try and make good of disturbing thoughts. But, I do find that it is a palliative which is not good enough. It doesn't fix it, let's say.

Then, what I do is try and..., well, I mustn't use the word try. That is, there are two words that one should never use. And that is SHOULD and TRY. (laughter) 

So, I try, I mean (laughter) I think. Yes, well, I was at one of (people I had seen last once,?) and he was teaching us to expand our consciousness. So, I try to do that. So then, I think of, ya, I think of the words of Jelaluddin Rumi, the galaxies, and also some of the knowledge that I have of physics, and then I think, ya, just imagine, my body is made out of the stardust of Universe. Imagine that I carry somehow the Universe in me. Somehow, the memory of the Universe, the condition of the Universe is present within me, and I am experiencing it in my own personal life. And then on the fraction, I realize that, while the Ancients used to think that the Universe was orderly, now we realize that it is chaotic. That there are terrible collisions of galaxies, tremendous turbulence in the Universe, and somehow my scientific mind sees that if things were in a state of harmony, there would not be any progress. And, so I see that there has to be a breakdown. And, it makes me understand more our own tribulations, because it is sharing me what is happening in the Universe.

Then I see that even that the, that turbulence that is absolutely endemic in the whole Universe is present within each one of us, and causes disfunction of this disequilibrium, let's say, in any case, a disturbance in our psyche, and it is true that the Universe is righting itself out of the chaos, and an ordinance seems to be forming within this chaos. In science it is called, "order/disorder principle." And so, then I think of a pendulum that has been shaken in some way, so it is being disturbed in its harmonious movement, and I think to myself, well, how, what would you do if there was a pendulum, and you found that it was moving chaotically? Well, then you try to bring it to a state of rest, and then start getting into motion again. So, then I do a practise with it, quite unconventionally, it's kind of, it's based on, all that we are doing here is based on teachings of those Sufis. But, there is a whole other way of looking at it.

So, I do the Dhikr, but, not the conventional dhkir. A motion of the whole body, starting very fast, that chaotically, and then slower, (pause) slower. And then, concentrate on the solar plexis. Now one musn't slow it down forcibly, but somehow, I say, the Universe has a way of righting itself, so that one just finds a natural way that slows down by itself. Because, even just by the sheer exhaustion of the motion, and then, it seems to turn inside. So, one's body has stopped turning, but the chakras are turning maybe, or what it is, I don't know exactly what it is, a subtle body as though one were whirling one's, one's subtle body where whirling. As Zuleika was doing at the end of the dance last night. There was no effort in it. You try it and you'd be exhausted in no time. That kind of very peaceful motion, but in a state of peace at the same time.

Now then, of course, behind the meditation, I always, let's say, thoughts that are concerned with, that are connected with the waziif, for example, when, even while it's turning very internally, there is a kind of stillness in the center. And so, and a sense of new life emerging within the stillness. And so, that is where the word, Mu'id comes in. Kind of the ability of the Universe to right itself from within, even though there is turbulence outside. And then, I see that there is turbulence in the mind, that is as though there, just exactly as there is turbulence in the Universe, but there is a place in the mind, where the mind is able to see that everything is OK. But, it is not obvious. and the only way to see it is to become very peaceful in oneself. And then, it begins to, it is a contradiction, it defies our ordinary way of thinking, but then I, fortunately I don't attach much value to our ordinary way of thinking. And so, that is the only way in which one can accept the total, the incongruity of the unconscious. 

And then, I think of, well of course I've got always very present in my mind, is two matrices of the samaric and the celestial, and so I see that my thoughts would simply become tautological, and psychic. And so with my nature, being if I were to simply wallow in the emotions that I am some way tied up with my personal reaction to situations outside. And so, the consequence is that I am beginning to not just provide a rational logical meaning to situations, like, as I say, thinking, well, what we would be. It's just as well that I wasn't involved in the Sufi Movement, for example. That is a kind of a palliative that the mind offers. But, as I say, is not all together satisfactory. 

Then, I get into the consciousness of the people who did it. And then I see how they thought. And, I see that they think like my freedom, because they were thinking conservatively. So, I don't blame them anymore. So, you see how one starts, by reacting to the impact of a situation outside with personal emotions, and then it is only when one has found, not just only an inner peace, but one has found the way that the Universe organizes itself, self organizes itself. But then, your mode of thinking changes, and you see then you can really get in, reach outside, because you have, you're reaching outside from inside. Whereas, if you try to expand your consciousness without penetrating inside, then you get kind of disintegrated instead of reaching beings from inside. And I say, you are participating in the chaos of the Universe. But if you look at how the Universe is righting itself from inside, if you start from inside, then you can see how it works. Let's say, how your conciseness infiltrates into, well I am saying the Universe, but actually, into your problem.

And then, I see that this is still reactive. It's a more advanced way of reacting, but I am still thinking of all those situations in my life. Then I realize that my concerns are not just dealing with my problems or doing better, but being a better person. So, one thinks that if one improves with ones dealing with a person, with situations, one becomes a better person. Like, for example, a manager develops fantastic organizational faculties by organizing his or her enterprise. But, I'm thinking of the other way around. I'm very, I've said this many times of course, there is a balance between the degree to which we adapt to the environment, and the degree to which we adapt the environment to our own sense of purpose. And so, I think, well, just for the moment downplay your concern about being better able to do what you are doing in your life, and just think that whatever happens, depends upon how you are. And therefor, it's, well, I just downplay it, I don't discount it altogether, I mean, the situations are there, but it is very much like, when I said when I am meditating, that the random thoughts, I don't reject or try to counter the random thoughts, but they are there circulating at the periphery, rather remote, but they are there. But now, I am highlighting something else, which will eventually reflect upon the outer situation. 

So then, I think, what do I mean by Muhi?. So at first I think, well, for the moment, I'm not thinking of consciousness, I am thinking of energy. Now, I think the cells of my body are dividing, and they follow a pattern that, yes, let's say, they absorb light, all those things that we know. Energy from the environment and so on. And then, I think, yes, but you can see there is an impact of mind over body. And so, there is another matrix than the one that keeps on recycling. And then I see that the cells of my body would gradually deteriorate into the point of no return, death, unless I would invite them to participate in my ecstasy. Unless I recognize the impact of my attunement, and my realization upon, not just the cells of my body, but the whole endocrine structure, all of those things that we know. The transmission of the nerves, of impulses in the nerves, and so on. The circuits in the brain, and the holographic way that the brain functions, all of these things, somehow are related.

And then, I think of that sentence which is like a real motto for me. It is a rendering of states of consciousness corporeal. So that just getting into higher states of consciousness won't do it. And so, that I ask myself well, if I allow myself to remember the celestial conditions, and I can remember them, I remember them by thinking of recalling situations in which something of the heavenly nature transpires, becomes known to me for example, as I say, looking into the eyes of a baby, or the cathedral, or the dawn in the high mountains. A lot of wonderful things. Music of course. So, all of those things that are, that shatter me in my emotions by their beauty and majesty. I feel that they are building something in me that is a bastion against the tribulation from outside. Against, maybe that isn't the right word, but that gives me a power within my vulnerability. Because, otherwise you just feel vulnerable you see. But, discover power within that vulnerability, so it's a very strange kind of thing. And, I can see, that, that power comes by the discovery of a deeper meaningfulness, and greater values than those that are experienced in one's commonplace interface with the world. 

So, I understand the words of many mystics who say one rises above the conditions of the earth. And, I see that, that is the way of plugging into this source of meaningfulness and beauty which will eventually transform one's being, and consequently, and right down into, as I say, right down into the cells of the body. 

And then, I think of some of the techniques that I have learned from the Tibetans, particularly the Tibetans, that is, first of all, recognizing different bodies, for example the emanation body, that is the etheric body, and then the body of bliss which is Ananda Marakosha, that is the, that is one's celestial counterpart, and so on, and the truth body. Well, it doesn't matter, we don't have to go into a system which is to say that one can recognize in oneself aspects of oneself that are not limited by, for example, aspects of one's bodiness that are not limited by one's concept of one's body. And, it includes, for example, electromagnetic field. So, that is a little more, it's a little more difficult to fashion the electromagnetic field, it does have some kind of a configuration, but I find it easier to fashion my aura, the body of lights, so I do all the practises that we have been doing with light. Just as a preparation, as a preliminary. And then, you know all the colors, and all those things that we did. And now, concentrate on being like an artist who is configuring this body of light. And now I notice that if I try to, like an artist would do with clay for example, to change the shape, it doesn't change.

So, but I know for having studied composition, musical composition, that the only way to change your, for example within variations on a theme for example, the only way to create new variations is to start by an attunement and, or realization, and then eventually one finds the right music. Maybe it's easier in the case of a sculptor. Maybe one could say that the hands of a sculptor follow the particular attunement instead of deciding what form they want to give to the statue. 

So, now then I use some techniques, I have mentioned some of them for example, working with all those qualities that are labelled by what you call the wazifa or waziif. 

Now, if I were to try to, I see that the, Let's say the countenance of this body of light, is not static, it changes all the time. And, if it reflects the outer world, then it's going to be rather chaotic and disturbing, and it won't really represent my real being somehow....tape dies

I'm simply applying all the things that I have been teaching so far. I think to myself well, if I discount the outer circumstances, then I'm isolating myself in my own unfurling, but the unfurling of my being is related with the drama of the world. I mean, if I isolate myself, it will be a world of fantasies, it won't be real.

So, I am trying to carry in practice what I tried to say yesterday, which is very difficult to say it, and that is that buffer that Beethoven plays between the challenge of the world and himself is not, let's say that the influence of the world, the impact of the world, problems, is processed in the unconscious, and then emerges as one's being. So I said, acts as a trigger, but to be a little more precise, it goes through a process. The world, let's say, goes through a process, and then, perhaps the word recycled is not the right world, and something out of this new dispensation arises which is not simply boomeranging back what accrued from outside. 

So then, I think of my own teaching, I think well, I have been talking about the void in the center of the vortex, but that applies to the physical world such as we consider it, matter. But, at the level of the psyche, well let's say the emotions that have been triggered off by the circumstances outside, and that those emotions are in the psyche at present. And somehow, they get, they involve our self esteem, our self image, our ego, a lot of personal data, and I can see that if one does not take into account the celestial level of one's being, one is going to react in violence. As I can see that those impressions that are now inside, they are not from outside, they are inside the psyche.

There is a process whereby they get purified in that immaculate center of one's being. So, instead of saying they get evacuated in the vacuum, I say they get purified. It's like the microbes that are purifying the poo in the toilet here. (laughter)

So, you know, we talk about purification, you see, I am very afraid of words now, very cautious about words, like, you go through a purification process where, what does it mean? Well, then you see that if you just allowed your samsaric nature to take over, or give it vent, let's say, then you would be reacting in a reactionary way, and therefor you would hate people who have harmed you. And so, I see that there is no way in which I can make my fashion in the body of light so that it is beautiful if I allow myself to have hatred. Now, I can't control it, you can't control it. You know that psychopaths regret what they did, but they can't control it you know. So, it's a kind of, almost a kind of basic instinct. It's a survival for example, in some cases.

Now, so, it's all the, some people enjoy hunting for example, hunting animals. There is a kind of base instinct which was a survival system in the ? of races. And, we still have it. 

So, we still have that in us, so you can't control it, no, what you can do is, I think it is only because I am so deeply moved by the sublime nature of the heavenly nature that I see in, not only in the light in a baby, and so on, but in people. It is so meaningful to me, that, as I say, now this is that other matrix as I said, rather than the samsaric one which affects the, which adumbrates, let's say, the samsaric one. And so, the purification even takes place by the fact of gaining priority to lofty values.

And so, I think of psychotherapists having, patients are coming to them, and I remember a psychotherapist saying to someone, "Well, don't you feel like killing that person/" Well, yes, or, I remember that policeman saying, "Why don't you drop down dead". (laughter) Well, instinct. And so, if, let's say it rather simplistically, if you want to be beautiful, you must not hate, and or rather, the only way, and, you can't control your hate, but if you give priority to your quest for beauty, then your hatred will seem to be so inappropriate, like a sore thumb in your psyche. So it will be, kind of redissolved in that purity in the center of your being. 

So, it is really recognizing that purity in yourself in the depth of your being which, of course, defies one to think, in the different way to the usual linear kind of thinking, because you are able to reconcile your purity with your defilement at the same time. As I have said that many, many times. Somehow, that purity gains ground. gains ground over the defilement. They are both there at first, and then gradually it is for you to reverse the defilement, and so then, now you are working in a very concrete way, like for example, I get to a point when I really have a sense of my real being behind things that I have inherited through my ancestors for example. Or then, the spill over from school, one starts as a child, one is very idealistic, and then the children in school make you feel naive. Start laughing at you, and then you close your trust in that beautiful sense of the sublime. In the sacredness of you being. And so, it takes a lot of faith to still keep believing it, faced with, surrounded by people who are trying to destroy your faith. Let's say they are not trying, they are endeavoring to.

So, I see that there is a battle in one to uphold one's sense of dignity, faced with the inroads of, coming from all sides. And in my case, but it is the case of many people of course, one feels that, "my working with my being is important for other people, and their working on their being is important for me". So that while confectioning my celestial body, I don't know whether that is the appropriate word, but let one say, my body of light, because I meant different levels for light. I don't want to isolate myself, I don't know to what extent one can, but I imagine a sculptor again in her or his studio. The statue, to a very large extent, it is a self portrait. Unless one is open to, unless the artist begins to really get into the consciousness of people out there. And then, it is not just projecting one's personal issues, as some artists do, just throwing garbage into a caveat?) and presenting it to the public, because the public recognizes themselves in that garbage. (laughter) That is why it is worth a lot of dollars in this decadent world.

Or, so then I think, be careful not to just try to work with yourself, because I remember a word of, in fact, I often think of words that have altered my way of thinking, or have had an impact on my way of thinking. I think of a word of Dr David Boehm who said that creative thoughts will only be significant if they embody the aspirations of humanity. So, that one's creativity has to include other people. And then, I remember saying, you know you can get into the consciousness of other people. Of course, I have been teaching that. Then, imagine what it is to be like that person. But, now, in my own meditations, and of course, it is what I am advising you to do is, those people are not out there, they are right in you.

So, it is just recognizing dimensions in one's being that include the Universe. First of all, those who are close to one, and then those who are inimical to one, and eventually those who one doesn't know very well, and includes the whole of humanity. But somehow, there is some kind of inner resonance so that, well, we hear about these terrible things happening and, but, we know them, but that knowledge is subliminal, so that we are not always aware of them, but somehow they effect us. I remember Pir-o- Murshid, my father giving a talk, and then all of a sudden he couldn't speak any more, he was almost studdering. And eventually, he just kept silence, and then he seemed very disturbed, and he walked out of the lecture, right in the middle, and you know, it never happened before. So, people were wondering what on earth had happened, or whether he felt ill. And so, one of the Murshids asked, Murshid Green, went and knocked at his door in the oriental room and said, "o Pir-o- Murshid, what happened?" "There has been such a tragedy, such a tragedy, all these souls are asking for my help." And, we read in the paper, a few hours later, that there had been a catastrophic earth quake in Japan. So, you see, we know these things, but not enough to be aware of them, but they are there somewhere in the unconscious.

side 2

...uneasiness. So, that uneasiness is part of, how can I say, it needs to be transfigured in one's statue of light, you see, in ones work of art of light. It's part of it, but transfigured. So, your would have a gross situation, for example like, for example you would have the gargoyles in the cathedral, and then you would have the beautiful stained glass windows. So, there you have a picture which includes elements that are disparage.

It's very difficult to be able to integrate unity in that disparity. The only way to do it is to transmute the gargoyles. You find that in, for example, the Ramayana where the monkeys are still within us. Of course, they, you know, Rama is in search of his soul, Sita, who had been robbed by the devil. He took power over her, which is a typical situation you know, because you fink that angelic people often are the victims of abuse of devilish people. Because, angelic people don't have a power of discernment, so they can't see evil. And, what the devilish person does is comes and says, "Nobody understands me, and you are the only one who can, who has compassion for me, and so on and forth." It melts the heart of an angelic person, and they get into the hands of this person who takes over and alienates them from their friends. It is happening all the time, you just look around and see it everywhere.

So, Rama was trying to recover his angelic being, who had been alienated from him, not just taken away, but alienated. She had lost her contact with him, to the extend that she was even critical of him. To the extent to which very gullible person, because angels are very gullible, can have their thinking distorted. And then, in order to recover his soul, his angelic counterpart, he put his animal nature, not his devilish nature, to the service of his celestial nature. And so, he used an army of monkeys to fight the devil. But, those monkeys could not, or rather, in the course of their battle, they developed wings, In other words, they were transmuted by their act of service. And of course all three, all four, there was a (person?), represent different aspects of our own being. So that Rama represents our humanness, and the monkeys, of course, the animal in us that can be transmuted, and Sita, our celestial counterpart, and then there is the devil who is manipulative, and dishonest, and on a power trip, and tends to, and evil of course, and has a lot of hatred and violence, resentment. All that is in us.

So, it, so the defilement reaches the angelic level, but it is, like I say, a distortion in the voice of Caruso. So, that is difficult to understand, that, that purity of one's being is still there within its distortion. Or, you have a very strange kind of a picture, I'm often trying to figure out by my understanding, because of course, for example, I have often given you the picture of a hologram with, you have two images that are superimposed. You can toggle from one to the other. But, the reality is, much more complex, is the interaction between these two images. Though, that you can integrate them instead of toggling from on to the other.


So, it is quite paradoxical, you know it is possible that the Venus of Milo is more beautiful because there is an arm missing, there is a kind of a flaw. And, it is certainly true that musical instruments do have a flaw. That is why they call that 'the timbre' of each instrument differs, because of the differences in the flaws. If they had perfect tones, then it would sound like an electronic organ, then it wouldn't have the beauty of a symphony.

So somehow, we have this idyllic idea of perfection, and then we are able to see perfection within imperfection. That is the great art you see. That is what Pir-o-Murshid is saying, "God discovers his perfection in our imperfection." And, his perfection is not knowable except in our imperfection. We cannot discover our perfection except in our imperfection.

Now, it is very challenging to the mind of course. And, not only challenging to the mind, but challenging to our self identity, to our validation to ourselves, to our self esteem, challenging to our emotions.

So, you see that our meditations include the whole of life. How can I say, organized by our realization in a way that makes sense, whereas in our ordinary minds it doesn't make sense. And, I think that, that is the role of faith. It is not belief, belief in God, or concepts, anthropomorphic concepts. No, it's a trust. It's not, I used to think it was a trust that things make sense. It's not. God, that, like it seems ultimately there is meaningfulness. And, I'm beginning to think that, it discovering meaningfulness in our minds. A kind of meaningfulness that organizes our world.

You know, I quote again Dr David Boehm who said, "A fresh sense of meaningfulness is going to alter the circuits in your brain, and I would say not just the brain, but the whole body, and also the hormonal activities of the endocrine glands, and much more of course, but, I would say that the brain doesn't only function, as Carl Pibram says, it doesn't only function in circuits, but holographically, I mean holistically. And, that accounts for the whole body. And then he says a disturbing thought will cause frayed circuits in the brain, and I would say effect the whole hormonal balance in one's body, and much more of course. The eutrophy. One tries to bring the body back into balance in the hope that it's going to restore the circuits in the brain. One has to rebuild new circuits, which will take over from the circuits that have been defiled.

So, you see the importance of meditation. And so, you see that working with that statue is not good enough just to be there with that statue, you are seeing all the time your realization is going to effect the richness that you bring into that statue, and therefor it's meaningfulness.

And then of course, the wonderful thing is that you, like this is what the Tibetans do, you walk about, thinking that you are that statue of light, and it makes it very difficult to pass through the doors. And, you, it is difficult to cross the streets also. So, it's what one calls being spaced out.

So, then you have the problem of reconciling this idyllic kind of discovery, it's not just discovery, you are discovering yourself by becoming what you are. But then reconciling this with getting, with the nitty gritty mentality of the people around you. And, one is just amazed by how simplistic one's thinking is ordinarily. They are just thinking in terns of what they think is themselves which is not what they are anyway. So, it's like a crazy world. totally, people have no idea.

Then, you look at yourself, and you think, well I'm not only just as bad, but even worse. So, the difficulty is, the challenge now is to try and make that picture of what we have had of ourselves impact the personal dimension of our being. otherwise there is a split. And do, you are continually correcting yourself, just like a pianist, or a cellist, or violinist, or singer of course. I remember Pablo Casals, he would just grind his teeth. He would play and then he would, (Pir makes a growling noise) and he would stop, and he would try again. And, he would never be happy. Never contented. And, he would do that with the orchestra too, when he was conducting. He would stop them twenty times, and people would get so fed up, and he would say, "No, no, no. Do it again." "Sing it." "Do it again." So, that's a way that meditation works, you think to yourself, well, I am entertaining these ideals, and these are not just ideals, because I have really made them a reality in their body of light. Now, that body of light will dissolve unless you keep building it up again, keep at it, all the time. So, in your daily meditations, every time you get back to it and do it again. And, eventually, it becomes adamant, so it's there. It's like building the circuits in the brain. If you just pass on a lawn, once, then you will fray a kind of pathway but, it will soon grow again. But, if you deep walking the same path, then eventually it will become a real path. So, at the end of the meditation, then, I'm looking at myself, and I am saying, you entertain all these high fallutted ideals, you talk about truthfulness, like you are working with Ya Haqq within, but, how truthful are you? And, that picture of your celestial being, well, the celestial being it's light, and light always breaks through the darkness. It's like truth, truth will always, eventually manifest to you. So, now that statue is going to be blemished if I or you, if we don't follow our ideals in the reality of our lives. So, one has to know this, and that is the reason for, perhaps you know the story of the picture of Dorian Gray.

There was this beautiful young man, and there was this picture of him, and he was doing horrible things, and the picture showed it. But, you couldn't see it in the face of the young man, but you could see it in the picture. And, I don't remember the whole story, but, he was horrified when he saw it, because that, it was... So that picture of, in the body of light, can get defiled even though, so, the story of Dorian Grey is not absolute, a hundred percent, because that reality at the celestial level is there, but it's, you see, it is like the voice of Caruso, it's present within its distortion. So, you lose sight of its adamant condition, because you just see the distortion. That's what happened in the picture of Dorian Grey.

So, now you establish some kind of congruity between that picture and your behavior in life, and you are continually watching it. As though, if you have been working with that picture all the time, every day, and perhaps even twice, then it's very present in your mind, and then you find yourself in a situation in which you get irritated, and upset with someone, or find it difficult to love a person for example, all these things, you find it difficult to be peaceful, and so on. And, it's difficult to believe that your life makes sense because it is so nonsensical. These are, it's always there, and one is trying to match it with the nitty gritty on one's life. And, that is where you think of the wazifas. I think of the wazifas as, like I've repeated wazifas millions of times, in the past, in my life. There are all the right things, and the dhikr, and now I just, I'm thinking of a wazifa while being in a life situation. For example, I'm thinking now, for example, I was in a ice cream parlor with my two kids, when was it, about ten years ago or more. And, so, it was nice to be in a..., it was a nice change. (Pir laughs) from being up here. (laughter) Imagine me in an ice cream parlor, and all these people around sucking these ice creams. (laughter) And, I must say, I thought to myself, well, it's like really being caught in a perspective, like really, it's like a prison. People don't realize it, but it's so so narrow, I suffocate. 

So, I think of Einstein for example, walking, pushing a pram in the streets in New York, and a lot of people do that, but he was thinking of, like, look at me pushing a pram, this is, I mean, I think that I am pushing a pram, but, I'm in New York, I'm not in New York! I mean, I am on the planet, and the planet is part of the galaxy, and he would just have this large vision. So, while I was in the ice cream parlor, I thought of that, I thought of Einstein. (laughter) So, one never knows what people do to one.

And so, it made it, it almost seemed ludicrous really, but it made it more understandable, like the ice cream parlor. It's all part of a (?) of galaxies. As long as you see it in connection with the galaxies instead of being closed in that perspective.

And then, now when I think about my problems, I think, how stupid can one get? To just, you know, interpret them in the logical way. So, looking back upon all that suffering, it makes sense. Because, there is a meaningfulness of the heart, instead of a meaningfulness of the mind.

And then, I think of the words of Shams Tabriz who said, "The man of God is a palace in a ruin." And, I remember visiting (Persepoulis?) in Iran, and you can just see the whole thing as it was. But, that totality is present in each part. That's why you can reconstruct the whole thing. And, but, I must say that I prefer that ruin to the Casino of Monte Carlo. That's a palace in a ruin.

So, life impacts with its wear and tear, and your magnificence is not impaired by the wear and tear. It has to do with your way of thinking. In fact, everyone is in life according to their degree of realization. 

So, I know I've gone far beyond the time, it's a.., I've been allowing this as an exception to the rule, because it is the last one. So, I think I will end with a story.

It's the story of a, mind you it's my paraphrasing of the story, because, Zuleika was spinning yarns, and the story was probably quite changed by her. So, story telling is always creative. So, I don't know, to just repeat the things I have learned. But, Let's say, there was this fakir, or dervish, or sanyasin, whatever, who was sitting on an arch, and that was his permanent seat. And, people would come and go, and he sat there in his ecstasy. And then, the king was about to pass, with his elephants, and procession, and fanfare, and all that. So, the policeman asked him to stand, and he just kept on being in his ecstasy, so they started manhandling him, pushing him to get up. And so, he looked at them and he said, "That is why." So, they thought he must be crazy, "That's why?" What do you mean, that's why? Well then, the officer passed by, well took over from the policeman, and he said, "There is a rule that when the king passes, you have to stand up." So, the policeman knew brutality, the officer knew the rules. And so, the dervish said, "That why." That's why he was an officer. And then the minister descended from his elephant, and said to the man, the dervish, "'ut of courtesy to the king, it would be good for you to stand up." And so he said, "That is why." That is why he was a minister, not just the rules, he saw something else. And then the king descended from his elephant, and asked him, "How long have you kept your legs bent, sitting crossed legged?" And he said, "Until I could meet you." And he said, "That's why." The king wanted to know why. And that's why he was a king.

So, each one is in life according to his realization. And that is what meditation is about. So I end this meditation now.

So we have some music now, so if you wish, why don't you just stand up, and if you wish to, you can move to it, and perhaps even allow yourself to dance. 

end of tape



SEP 01, 1995		Tape 01

 Labor day Retreat 1995 Tape 1 Meditation

.....the One being of whom we are apart, whose body is the physical cosmos, which we share in our bodies, whose mind is fashioned in our thinking, whose emotion calls for our acts of glorification, whose presence is always hidden, invisible within our being and whose nature is beyond one's concept. We are about to engage here in a retreat. We are in this together. You will be sharing this retreat with me and I'll be sharing it with you. Our  objective is our ideal, to make our ideal reality. It's very difficult to describe. But we all have a need to awaken beyond our personal perspective so that we may be able to understand better what is enacted in our lives. We have a need to attune ourselves to a high pitch and overcome our low key and despondency. And we have a need to seek a source of power or find a way of enhancing energy by drinking at the source of power. And in order to do this we are going to follow very systematically one step after the other those steps which I think will require on our part skills which will enable us to shift our perspective and also change our of our sense of identity, modify our sense of identity. 

And ultimately find ourselves carried beyond the limitations that we ourselves set upon our notion of ourselves. I will be meditating with you. I think that in order to make this, to get out of it all that we hope, it will be absolutely necessary for you to engage in silence for two days, Saturday and Sunday. And then on Monday you can start getting back into the sort of kind of attunement that makes us able to deal with the nitty gritty of our lives. And I am listening to the call of your souls, and your hearts, and your minds, even though you are in silence. And there is a way of communicating if you wish to. You could leave a, write something on a sheet of paper, a question that is on your heart. If I can answer. Please don't write too long epistles. If I were to spend the time reading them, I wouldn't be able to meditate in order to get myself into the attunement you're looking for. You'll find that in order to be able to achieve what we have in mind we are going to have to challenge our commonplace way of thinking. And you'll come across paradoxes that are very enigmatic and as you say challenging to the mind. The reason for being in silence is because our thinking is constrained by our language which is made for the kind exchange between people at a commonplace level. 

But there are levels of our thinking which are obstructed by our need to express ourselves in words and which we never avail of unless we have definitely cut away any chance of expressing ourselves in words. And then you begin to discover another way of thinking which begins to make sense beyond the usual sense. And ultimately of course you'll discover your real being as opposed to the notion we have of ourselves which is inadequate and misleading and sometimes even self destructive. What I do suggest is that we have sessions where we meditate together. And then you may be invited to go off on your own if the weather is fine and sit in nature so that you may experience something of the state of the what they call the sanyasins in India, the hermits. It is not our objective to encourage other worldliness, but we can learn from the attunement , the realization of beings who have explored uncharted reaches of the mind. Perhaps going to help us to be able to deal with our lives more adequately. And of course that requires techniques or skills that will help us getting into that particular attunement. What it amounts to is that you don't have to go to India and sit in a cave in the Himalayas. We have right here, it's a matter of ...inhere is a place that you can't reach by going anywhere, says Buddha. It's a question of finding the right kind of attunement. So we are going to start of very simply, so don't be put off if the first stages seem a rather trite, not yet inspiring. But there is a lot of clearing that we need to do before we can take off. So all meditation sessions, I say it's advisable to start and mediation with a breathing practice. 

We will be encountering several breathing practices in the course of this retreat. Therefore perhaps you might make a point of taking a note of those practices you are unfamiliar with. So when you get back to America again you'll be able to do them yourselves. Well the first breathing practice I recommend is to be aware of your breath. When you're not it is an autonomic function. I would say that Yoga is precisely the art of shifting one's awareness so that one's autonomic nervous, the autonomic physical functions will be taken over by the will, central nervous system. So now just be aware of your breath. And do not try to control it. The reason for that is that nature has a way of self organizing itself if we do not interfere. And eventually we need to customize this activity of nature. But first let this activity be given its chance. So just think of the ebb and flow of the ocean for example. Say the whole Universe is like a cosmic ocean of energy. There are all kinds of different frequencies and they are all in some kind of synchronism. So your breath is part of that rhythm. And the breath of each person is different, the rhythm. And that rhythm acts as a metronome and gives us a sense of the passage of time. And by the sheer fact that you're aware of it, it is going to slow down. 

But you're not trying to slow it down. And take advantage of the exhaling to relax totally. You know that normally one only uses one fifth of the capacity of the lungs. The lungs are filled with polluted gases. So if you relax you'll find you'll be evacuating a lot more detrimental gases, kind of like a deflation. It's also let's say it favors, that kind of exhaling favors release of kind of psychological tension, particularly release of suffering. It's the time to own your suffering. And Mother Earth is very kind in absorbing our pollution. We mustn't abuse of her kindness. And also you can entrust your pain to Mother Earth. And then just imagine that Mother Earth, Gaia, that archangel of which the matter of the planet is the body , is able to recycle the polluted energy. And so as you breath in you are availing yourself of a fresh dispensation of energy. And just imagine that you are like a tree that is drawing energy from the earth, and it rises as the sap in the trunk of the tree and your spinal cord. I think at this stage it is good to hold your breath after inhaling. Because now you can imagine that the trunk or let's say the potentialities in the roots are unfurling in the form of branches and twigs and leaves, and eventually blossoms and even fruit. Of course there is an expenditure of energy there is waste just like in our digestion. Consequently as you exhale you're able to thread this energy down along actually the immune system . 

The lymph glands are able to evacuate much of the polluted energy that builds up in the body. It's evacuated downwards. Believe me this kind of thinking can actually play a part in the remission of cancer. Mind over body. And you could even if you know something of the lymph glands and the whole set up of the immune system macro phases and so on, you could really visualize the way that this system is continually at work clearing the pollution impurities of one's body. And the same is true for one's mind, one's thinking, one's emotions. otherwise you get clustered up like for example if your room gets untidy you can't get anything because everything is strewn all over the place. There has to be some clearing before we start meditating. Alight, now we're going to do some very basic work. How does one learn to meditate, just from scratch? What does one do? Somebody who doesn't know how to meditate, doesn't know what meditation is about. What would he do? Well if you are sitting trying to meditate, you'll find that your random thoughts seem to crowd into your mind. The reason is because normally one's thinking is monitored by the call of the environment to do things. The challenge of life. And so we are thinking about the things we have to do. And so our thinking is kind of monitored, ordered in a way that is a response to the environment. But if one tries to well withdraw within, one tends to close the door to the environment, but then it continues to manifest itself in the form of thoughts and one's emotions. So let's say the physical world lives now as in transmuted into our psyche. 

And we are not normally equipped to deal with that, because for physical events and even the psychological events in the social environment. They are continually being ingested, continually being incorporated into our being. For this to happen there has to be our psyche undergoes a process of digestion. It's like digesting food. And consequently there needs to be a breakdown of the elements that need to be ordered in a new order. Just like the proteins that we take in need to be broken down in by the parcreas and the amino acids change those to match the DNA of our bodies. Somehow this process of digestion is taking place within us normally unconsciously. But if we meditate then we become conscious of this rather chaotic process that does not need our consciousness or awareness. And which can only be very confusing. The unconscious does it much better than our conscious could possibly do it. However, there are some, there is a very serious misassessment, misinterpretation that takes place in this transfer from events, physical events into psychological events, the content let's say of our psyche. And consequently we are carrying within our psyche a false interpretation of the world, of our lives, of ourselves, of our situations, our social environment and so on. 

And therefore the first thing we need to do is to correct this misassessment. And this is where, the first step in meditation, I would suggest referring to Yoga. The first step in Yoga in the steps leading to Samadhi are to consider that, well it's an extreme view, mind you, to consider that the physical world is illusory. I think that there is a mistake there. I think that it really means that what we think is the Universe, what we think is physical matter is not really what it is. And any physicist will tell you that. But that has some meaning when you are sitting in nature meditating. But we are in our present civilizations. It is our social environment that is, our assessment of our social environment that is misleading. It is that which has the most impact upon our being. And it does have an impact on your being. And consequently the first step is to question your assessment of your problems. Just imagine that for years, decades you have been assuming that things your situation in your life is the way you think it is. And suddenly you realize that perhaps that view that you have is wrong. Imagine the relief. 'n the other hand the uncertainty. This kind of dark night of the mind that St. John went through in his life, on his journey let's say. It's important to be aware of the impact that the environment operates upon our consciousness. It forces our consciousness in a certain focus. 

Because that's the way we have been conditioned. And consequently limits one's understanding. Because one is looking at things from a vantage point. And you know very well that if you look at a building from one vantage point you haven't seen the building. So let us say that we project our psyche upon situations, events, and read into it that which we have projected upon it. And never experience it in its real naked reality. I do not say what a situation means to us personally is not valid. It is just one vantage point among the others. Because a psychologist asks us "What does it mean to you". That is a valid point of view. One doesn't always realize what it means to one. But then there is a bias, a personal bias. Let's say our assessment is flawed by our personal bias. And so then how do we remedy that? We remedy that by extending our consciousness beyond the frontiers of our notion of yourselves as me the spectator. And in order to do that you need to, one of the skills we use is to try to see from the point of view of the person with whom you involved in this particular situation. There may be several people, but start with one. The Sufis say I see through the eyes of that person. So we have an alternate vantage point. And actually when you do it you can see that you can extend your consciousness into the consciousness of another person. But in order to do that , you have to overcome the thought of being the spectator and the other person is other than yourself. 

You have to think that there is some commonality between us. It's based upon resonance. It's like two gongs. Which if one starts vibrating, if the other gong has similar frequencies, then it's going to resonate in harmony. It is really recognizing oneself in another oneself instead of in another. And of course in some cases it's very clear that your concepts, your diverse concepts, your interests, personal interest in the issue of that conflict for example are opposed. So if that person were doing the same about you, then he/she would understand why you're doing things the way that you are doing them. Then there would be some understanding. Or maybe when you get back into life again, you need to talk to the people with whom you have a problem. 'pen you heart and tell them how you feel or how you see things. And maybe even say that you assume that you what you think they think and maybe you misunderstood them. And then the other thing is of course, that if there is a conflict of interest then one needs to find a solution whereby there is give and take on both sides. And so instead of just following blindly a strategy without opening one's, putting one's cards out on the table. It's better to put one's cards on the table so we know which are the fears about these things. And everything is clear. Now there is a further step here. The first step was I see through his/her eyes. The second step is I see myself through his/her eyes. That is you are beginning to see how that person perceives you. And you may be quite surprised to find that that person's assessment of you is totally different from how you assess yourself. 

Now you understand that they are acting on the strength of what they think you are. And that's not what you are. That's what they think you are. Or then you might find that indeed they are able to see something about you that you can't see yourself. So we have two eyes, normally. And our vision is improved by the fact that we have two eyes, much better than if we only had one. And of course what you hope is that that person will see you through your eyes. That's again, in everyday life, that's again something that one needs to consider. For example, you could say " Place yourself in my position". And the person would understand. Normally people don't think that way. Alight well this goes for the well, this goes further. Generally there are more than one person other than oneself involved in one's problems. And so you could start incorporating more and more people, including more and more people. A third person and a forth person and proceed thus further . And you could even carry this further into for example getting into the consciousness of the trees or the birds or the flowers. What would it be like to be a tree? Instead of just looking at the bark of the trees and the surface of the leaves of the trees. That's what St. Francis was doing. If you do that particularly in this enchanted nature that we enjoy at the abode, you would find yourself in a transfigured world. 

St Francis gave us a clue to this when he said, The Universe is looking at me. When you're walking in nature or sitting in nature, think that the Universe is looking at you. There is a further step. That's a little more complicated. That's the point of view of the Sufis. That is that God is discovering aspects of His/Her being as you, not in you but as you. That is that by diversifying what was potentially in the unity a mode of cognizance accrues to the divine awareness and therefore somehow our, let's say that if we think of ourselves as parts of the integral being, each integral part is not like a discrete entity. Each integral part incorporates the totality, but in a special way. That particular special way adds to the cognizance of the totality. Now that's Sufism and we will be encountering it as we proceed further. For the time being just stay with the thought that as you're walking the trees are looking at you. If you want to go further, if you meditate under the stars. Then what will happen is now your consciousness now extends much further. Because you start getting your consciousness in another person, and now into the trees, then eventually you can extend your consciousness into a wider outreach. And eventually get into the consciousness of the stars and the galaxies. That's what Jelaluddin Rumi was doing. But now you make that shift, and you think that the starry world, the ocean or the stars is looking at you, or is discovering itself as you. And this is facilitated by the fact that our bodies fashioned out of the planet which is out of the starry sky. So imagine that you are walking the streets of New York and have forgotten the stars. 

You are caught in the immediate the environment. So the immediate environment encloses our consciousness in a very narrow purview. And we suffocate in these constrained circumstances. Therefore we have a need for immensity, vastness. As a result our consciousness expands and extends and one begins to discover the cosmic dimension of one's consciousness that is now decentered, defocalized. And consequently it can look upon itself and realize that your consciousness is, it is the consciousness of the Universe that is focalized. And you can alter that focus just as you can alter that focus of your eyes to look at a panorama or to look at the letters, the words in a a page of a book. Now the consequence of this is enormous. Because you have tasted of the magnitude of the this wide outreach you will always see problems in their context instead of limiting them, let's say zoning them in a narrow outlook. Because as I say normally we are looking at things from a very narrow vantage point. I'll give an example. The eclipse of the Sun, Moon is only meaningful from the point of view of the earth. But their respective positions is a reality beyond our vantage point. If we are looking at problems from our personal vantage point, we are not seeing the issues of the problem. So one of the things one needs to do in the morning is to think of the implications of one's actions in terms of more and more people, and perhaps eventually in terms of the whole Universe. Because perhaps you know if a wave emerges out of the ocean, the whole rest of the ocean has to adjust to this wave, which a condition of the whole ocean of course. 

And consequently we begin to take charge, gain control of our lives. If we are able to see the implications of our actions in terms of a far wider scope than what we normally see. If we set up forces in the Universe that act counter to our own well being so that it is counter productive. As my father Pir o Murshid says Survey your domain.. You see that meditation is not forgetting the world. Your problems are the theme of meditation, providing that you look at them in a different perspective. Survey your domain. Let's see there is this where I have responsibility. And your responsibility is balanced by that of the other people. So you can't impose your will at the cost of the freedom of another person. So it's a very subtle. See exactly where your responsibility is. And the more the clearer you are as to where you have responsibility and what measure of responsibility you have with regard to the free will of another person, the greater you are as a being. You have a wider kingdom. And that kingdom does not depend on your power as much as your sense of responsibility. The power will come. If it's just power and no responsibility, you get the kind of situation you find with Hitler. Totally irresponsibility for the lives and well being of people. A power trip. Now ultimately, if we can reach of the consciousness of others, other ourselves, we can reach into the consciousness of a master or a saint or a prophet, and experience what it would be like to be one of these beings whom we idolize. We can see ourselves through their eyes. And that's where it's important , and I will quote Jelaluddin Rumi who said If you could only see yourself through my eyes, you'd realize how beautiful you are. 

SEP 01, 1995		Tape 02

Labor Day Retreat 1995 Tape 2 

Learning how to meditate starting from scratch and going one step at a time. And so this morning we were concerned with the way we perceived the environment. And particularly the social environment and consequently the impact of our way of perceiving the environment upon our psyche. And so if there was something we had to correct there. There was a misassessment. And if you remember to overcome this misassessment,we had to extend our consciousness beyond its personal vantage point. But further more needed to realize that the environment exercises strong impact on us because it is, it has emotional implications for us because we are in some way involved emotionally with the the environment. And that is what enables the environment to have such a grip upon our consciousness. And therefore it is true that in order to awaken in life we need to be able to to do two things which seem as though they are pulling us in two opposite directions. One is let's say be able to find freedom in ourselves from the impact, well that the emotions that tether us to the environment. And consequently this is where we can learn from the ascetics who are following the way of detachment and indifference. And I realize that it does of course look as though it makes one look other worldly. But sometimes one needs to withdraw from being caught, being bogged into a certain situation and not look at it from a certain perspective. 

And it is that detachment and indifference that Pir o Murshid talks about which enable us to be able to fly, that will give us that perspective. The Hindu method is rather drastic. It is really carrying one's need for detachment to the point where one discards the physical world. And the way to do it is to consider that the physical world is illusory. I already mentioned this morning. And of course our assessment of our problems is illusory. That is negative. And one always has to balance a negative thought with a positive one. And that is what you find in Sufism. Instead of just saying that the physical world is illusive, deluding. Yes, but if you grasp that which transpires behind that which appears, or through that which appears, then you can find something positive. That which appears at the surface is only the way that things manifest at the surface of course, obviously. But we must consider the reality behind it. And therefore the Sufis say the physical world is made of devices which give clues as to the reality behind that which appears. And so you see it's a positive way of thinking instead of thinking it's just illusion. And so a good example is if you have seen the pug marks of the bear in the snow, you haven't seen the bear. So but still it does give you a clue. There is a method used by the Sufis which consists in following up a clue to try to get into what's behind the clue, what the clue is leading to. 

Follow the pug marks of the bear until you find the bear. So as I say to be able to attain awakening which is our objective, we obviously have to overcome any inadequacy in our conceptualization of the Universe and of ourselves, and of our situations in life. We need to correct it first. And so the salient thought here is that we tend, that when we are functioning from the personal vantage point of our consciousness, then we see that , the way things appear at the surface. For example if you are swimming at the surface of a lake, you see what appears through the water lilies. And you think that that's what they are. They are water lilies, they are separate. There is this water lily here and that water lily there. But if you swim under the lake, then you see that its a network. And that this network emerges as this water lily here and that water lily there. So that is what you do when you turn within. And that is what I want us to do now is to consider that that which we experience in our commonplace conditions in life, our attunement, focus in life, is only that which appears. I mean the way things appear, the apparent let's say, like a product. And we're missing out on the reality. And therefore we are acting inappropriately and caught up in a perspective. We want to shift that perspective. And the way to do it is to downplay the previous perspective that is the way the water lilies appear when you are swimming at the surface of the water. So that's where detachment comes in. You have to downplay a perspective which you find is relative, is not ultimate. And then thanks to having downplayed a perspective you are able to highlight another perspective. 

And that other perspective is being able to see things in their context. For example your problem, your concept or your assessment of your problem. That's like the water lily. But the reality behind it is very complex. In fact it's a network of relationships which is absolutely infinite. And so we learned to do this this morning by extending our consciousness into the consciousness into other people. And you realized of course that one can only do it from within as it were. We're all linked together like the network of the water lilies, we are all linked together. And that's where we can start understanding each other. Now just think that the way that the world appeared to you is like the surface, and that you are looking at things from within. OK so that is difficult if one is not yet familiar with how things look when one turns within. Because then it becomes rather nebulous. At least when we are assessing our problems we have very concrete facts. When we turn within we don't know how to cope with this very wide outreach. So we will need to make further steps in order to be able to see that more clearly. So the next step consists in, you see so far we've been talking about our perception of the Universe because basically we think of ourselves as a subject experiencing an object other than ourselves. Now in this next step, we are considering that we are ingesting the environment. As I said this morning, the physical world continues to live in us, in our psyche, in our memory. It is incorporated in our psyche and continues to live in our psyche distorted, flawed by that fact that we projected our personal bias upon it if you remember. 

Now we are continually subjected to impressions of all sorts, particularly in our modern days. Just have to open the radio or television or just walk on the street to realize the extent to which we are subjected to impressions that can be very hard to digest let's say. In fact they could be very detrimental so that we really are suffering from a kind of indigestion and the consequence is that we lose our attunement. We lose the sense of who we are and we suffer in our self esteem of low profile. And so we need more than ever before, we need to be able to protect ourselves, or at least screen ourselves. So we have the ability to select between impressions that are favorable or in resonance with our being and those that are detrimental. That is why I would say meditation I would say is absolutely essential. More needed by the people who are involved the kind of civilization in which we live than ever before in the past. A kind of decadent, rather gross world in which we live. In order to do that we need. There are two steps. One is to place a sentinel or sentinels at the doors of perception. What the sentinel does is to allow some impressions to come through and others not. So let's say that we are setting up lines of defense, consciously. The second method is consists in really placing a buffer between the challenge of the world and ourselves. Because if we simply spring into reacting rather than acting, if we simply react to the challenge, we do not call upon all the resourcefulness in our being. 

Or, so you could consider meditation as learning how to place a buffer between the challenge of the environment and ourselves so that we are able to muster all our potentials in our being in order to deal with our problems. So those are the two methods. And we'll follow, consider each one in turn. And the first one is, as I said, to clearly place what one calls a sentinel at the doors of perception. It means that we have the ability to refute thoughts or emotions that are disturbing. Perhaps we don't know that. We do have that ability. And that ability rests upon a very strong sense of who I am. And it's very important because if you apply many of the methods that have been imported from India particularly, as has been happening in the last decades, you'll find that those methods tend to make one lose one's sense of one's individual self. Emerging into the totality. Of course those are methods that are prepared for ascetics who are by essence, by definition otherworldly. And behind that there is a kind of metaphysics whereby life is considered to, let's say the process of becoming in life, let's say an existential condition, are considered not to be useful to attain awakening. So it's a way of thinking that has become, that a lot of people have taken for granted, that spirituality is being otherworldly. And consequently one does not need to take responsibility in life. It's called the spiritual bypass. Of course there is such a thing as a psychological bypass too. So, but Sufism presents a very different metaphysical background. There is a real validation of life, even a celebration of life all that is achieved by God as us. 

Through our interrelationships with each other and our achievement, accomplishment and involvement to a beautiful world to build a beautiful people. And that does require that one being to be customized in each fragment of Him/Her self. You find that when you exhale, your sense of yourself, as you expand your consciousness, your sense of yourself tends to get thinned out, fanned out and eventually perhaps even peter out. I think it's important to be very clear about this. There are two wasifas amongst the Sufis. Basit and Wasi. And basit represents that state of expansion which is let's say detrimental to the sense of the person, emerging into the totality. Where as Wasi gives a sense of encompassing a wide outreach like an envelope. Encompassing instead of merging. And so that is the kind of mental attitude that I would recommend when you are expanding your consciousness. Just to feel that your consciousness is embracing a wide field instead of a very narrow usual commonplace field that one is normally preoccupied with, but not lose yourself. Because in fact one can't lose oneself anyway. It's just an illusion. Right, now as one turns within that is where the sense of one's specific Iness, one's uniqueness comes back again or is retrieved. Because it is the sense or me as opposed to not me that enables you to make a selection between those impressions that you wish to imbibe, ingest and those which you do not. That's the measuring rod, the criterion. And perhaps you know that the immune system is based upon me or not me. 

The body will allow the transplant of an organ that has a similar DNA, but if it's too different then the body will reject it. So we have that ability in our body. And we also do have that ability in our psyche. But somehow we have abused this faculty in us by being over tolerant about the impressions that we cannot digest or have difficulty in matching with our real being. It's true that there's another second immune system whereby the body adapts itself to the environment. otherwise you'd never be able to eat food for example. And so that is the immune system in our psyche that has been a little bit overextended. Now, over tolerance. And the consequence is that we lose our own specific idiosyncrasies. And therefore as you meditate you become very, very clear that that's what we are about is awakening is becoming very, very, very clear. And so this will lead us towards almost prefiguring the next step which is having a very strong sense of who I am. That will give you the faculty of operating selectivity. This is me. That I find I feel at harmony with these impressions, this music for example, or the music, or these people, or the situation even the environment, physical environment. Whereas that other situation, no, that's too it's too unfamiliar or at least it's too different from what I really am. I can't digest it. Let's say I put it on hold. So you don't have to be judgmental about it but to say well maybe it's alright for others. I don't know. But as far as I am concerned, I cannot incorporate it in my psyche. 

So I put it on hold for a moment. So think of that now. Think of situations in your life. Think about well life expects me to be comfortable in these circumstances but by so doing I lose my identity, and consequently my self esteem. And I get lost of course in life. So out of the goodness of our heart, our compassion, we become not only over tolerant but overindulgent and lose our specific identity. So as I say if you can do this without being judgmental, for example somebody whose attunement I find jarring to my sensitivity so I can even have love for that person, unconditional love. But I must not allow myself to lose my attunement in order to adapt myself to this person. It's not good for that person. It's not good for me. It's rather paradoxical to be welcoming to a person without succumbing to the impact of that person's attunement upon your attunement. Of course that requires a great sense of identity. But as I say it is our sense of who we are that gives us the criteria as to what the impressions from outside are in synch with our being. It's like we say that we prefer eating food that we can digest well. Not to over stress our digestive system. We could eat things, and we do eat things that are damaging. But to some extent, and eventually if we are not careful we develop all kinds of illnesses. The same applies to music of course. Music that I don't like and of course I like to be tolerant and so on. But it's true that we learn by trying to incorporate elements that are a little bit more foreign to our being. But we must not overdo it. 

There are two things. One is selectivity, our ability to select. Therefore sentinels represent that ability to select, make a differentiation between those elements that are in keeping with our being and those that are not. And the second one is transmuting impressions that are rather foreign but can be incorporated if we transmute them. That's what we're doing with our food. What one means by transmuting. Well a very good example of transmuting is an operation one performs in alchemy which is extracting the quintessence from what they call the materia prima. It's called distillation. For example the perfume of flowers. Flowers are very smart in that they are able to overcome their precarity. They have a very slender foothold on planet earth. But somehow they are very smart in that they transmute their matter into perfume. And that perfume lives forever. That's what we call resurrection. So we have that ability to somehow extract the quintessence of the experiences that we are subjected to in our lives, or that we are or that we interface in our lives. And then we're not subjected to them any more. We can somehow discard the dross and avail ourselves to the quintessence. And that's what we do when we digest our food. And I dare say that that quintessence is what we mean by our realization. It's beyond our understanding, our realization. It's Quintessential. Quintessential way of thinking. Somehow it is, let's say the survival of, maybe we say better, it is the eternalization of what would have been transient if we had not extracted that aspect of itself that can last forever. I often quote the saying of Jelaluddin Rumi, which I think is really like almost the definition of Sufism. He said, Tonight the umteen stars give birth to the life eternal. 

That is that which is achieved in life has value and will be eternalized. But in order to do so, one has to extract the quintessence and reject the dross. And that is what our memory does. But somehow the memory tends to get clustered with the details of a situation and miss out on the essence of the situation. And the same is true of our when you consider problems as you're meditating consider the details of the problems and then you miss out on what the issues are. And that's a great art. I would say it's the art of learning how to think, learning how to discriminate between the contingent aspects of our thinking and the essential ones. So let me remind you there are two steps. One is rejecting or simply putting on hold those impressions that one cannot digest or that one finds overdifficult to digest. One is overstressing one's psychological digestive system. It could be a cause of cancer as a matter of fact. And for example it doesn't mean that you're rejecting a person. But you do not allow the attunement of that person, if it is gross, to aspoiniate your sensitivity. And consequently it is very prodent to be able to get into one's attunement. And that's where meditation is wonderful because you don't have to adapt yourself to the environment. And therefore you are able to find yourself. And if you are not continually trying to attune yourself to the attunement that comes to you from outside. 

Then you are able to, the attunement that is the one of your being, I mean your real attunement is going to be able to come through. And so if you remember then there are two steps. First of all putting on hold those impressions that are too different from ones being that we can't even transmute. And the second one is of course transmuting the impressions that are not quite in keeping with one's being but still which will enrich one's outreach. And transmuting. That is exactly what the body does. The RNA altering the sequence of amino acids so that they match those of the DNA. That's exactly what we're doing in the psyche. That is what one calls transmuting. As a matter of fact, you become more cosmic the more diverse impressions you are able to incorporate, the more cosmic you become. And so one has to be careful about rejecting impressions that are difficult to digest. Because the consequence would be that one would become very judgmental and stubborn and stereotyped and sclerosed into what one thinks is one's personal identity. And so you see there has to be a balance between those two concerns. So perhaps you have noticed that our considerations so far have led us from highlighting the environment to highlighting ourselves. And that's the clue to meditation. Because at first the impressions of the environment become so overwhelming that we lose the sense of ourselves. And so the breakthrough comes, when you begin to turn within. So we did all this filtering so that at least we are able to protect ourselves from being too much delivered let's say in the hands of the environment. Now we can turn within. 

And at first one doesn't know who one is of course. Somehow one has a self image and that self image is not who one is. It's what one thinks one is. One has to be very careful because a lot of people say I want to know who I am and they think it's one's self image even one's personality. Be very careful. otherwise meditation can simply lead to introspection. Introspection would be like exactly the same thing that we're doing judging the environment, but we would be judging ourselves. We would still be caught in that duality - subject/object, me the observer watching myself let's say my qualities and defects, my complexes and so on, and acquiesce to them, unable to do anything about it. The introspection can lead toward mental pathological disturbances and that is why I warn people against all this new idea about mindfulness. It's not exactly what Buddha taught. Buddha taught consciousness extends beyond the point where it is an individual consciousness. This universal consciousness in you can watch your thoughts without being caught up in them. otherwise, if you are looking at your thoughts from your personal vantage point, you are caught in a circle, a vicious circle. That is very dangerous and it's very popular these days. Misconstruction of what Buddha's original teaching was. Yes, what Buddha said is, it could be illustrated by a tree. For example if you fell a tree to its roots the tree might grow again. It might look very different from what it was before. Is it the same tree or is it a different tree? 

Now we are, when we say I want to knot who I am, we are identifying ourselves with that part of the tree that is above the earth. And which changes, and is not really our essential self. Because a tree needs to incorporate, is the unfurling of the root. And therefore as you're meditating now instead of turning around in circles, considering on your defects and you qualities and your hurts, or wishes or frustrations and all things one finds when one gets caught up in one's psyche, just consider that these are the elecoperations of a deeper level of thinking whereby one discovers the universal ground of one's being. The root, rather like the seed, in fact you can see that the bulb is really like the seed of the plant, that it has, it carries within it not just the DNA of each of the cells but the DNA of the whole Universe. So let's say that the ground of our being is the Universe and becomes customized in what we call a plant in a special way. Then if we identify with unfurled so far we miss out on it's ground what can I say it's seed bed, it's source of life of bounty, let's say it's pool of resourcefulness. Consider your personality to be just the way the reality of your being manifests and is transient, fallible, inadequate, not really you. But you cannot be the spectator who cognizes your essential being, the ground of your being, which is your real being, because well just in the same way that physicists can never know an electron. Because in order to know an electron you have to, to observe it you have to disturb it. There is no way of knowing who you really are by trying to observe yourself. The secret of it is to decenter your consciousness as the observer. 

As Buddha says Consciousness spills over the boundaries of our notion of ourselves. And then your real self is revealed to you. You cannot know it by an act of will or determination. And it is revealed in gradual stages. Now you can however, help this process in your meditation. And this is a clue. Think to yourself, Well I'm responding to the demand of the environment and therefore I am playing a role in life. I didn't realize it. It's not really me. It's that ability in me that is able to adapt itself to the environment we have in us. But by adapting ourselves to the environment of course we lose our own specific idiosyncrasies. But one is so concerned with the urgency of adapting oneself to the environment that one does lose one's sense of who one is. So but if you think Well I'm giving myself a break from my playing ball with the environment, like Beethoven did in the forth piano concerto. Now again be careful about the thought I want to know who I am. It's not who I am, but who I am becoming. And you'll find that in the voice in the burning bush. Translated in the Christian scripture in the 'ld Testament it is I am that I am. And if you look at Jewish 'ld Testament it is I am that I am becoming. Don't try to say I know who I am. I am beginning to grasp something that is becoming as me. It's like something that is merging from within and therefore unbeknown to me, and therefore just like a root of a let's say for example of a bulb of a crocus underneath the snow. So it's unknown. But at a certain moment it breaks through the surface and then it becomes known. So it becomes known as new features in your personality. 

Perhaps you have found that certain moments in your life you find you've changed. You are not the same person that you were before. Somehow new qualities have surfaced. They were there. They were in a state of incubation. They were not noticeably until a certain point. And at that point you were beginning to be appraised of them. But it is true that if you do the same thing that we did with our assessment of our problems. If you question your self image, and that's the only way in which to do it, if you question your self image. Think, It's just my notion of myself. It's fallible, totally fallible. In fact it's illusory and very deluding, and I would even say that is the obstacle to our being what we could be if we would be what we might be. That is assuming that we are our self image. That is where we get imprisoned in our self image. And there's no way of changing. As long as you are convinced that you are what you think you are, there is no way of changing. And that's why our self image is not our personality. It's not the plant, but it's what we think is the plant. But even then the plant is not what we are. We are much more the root than the plant. So turning within, that is letting go. You see it's not really letting go of the impact of the environment because the impact exercised by the environment upon us is the consequence of our attachment to the environment. And therefore it is the detachment, the indifference of the ascetic that will protect us from the impact of the environment so that we're able to highlight what is coming through our being. It's always a balance between indifference and interest as Pir o Murshid says. 

So on the one hand indifference with regard to one's emotional addiction to the environment. And on the other hand interest in the discovery of God coming through as us, emerging as us. Now that detachment, you can't just assume. It goes very deep. I has to do with even a metaphysical conception of the meaningfulness of our lives. And the clue is to be found in the words of Jesus, of Christ They are in the world but not of the world. Because the ascetic is not in the world and is not of the world. But the way of Christ, which is the way of the Sufis, is to be in the world but not of the world. And that's a way of thinking. In fact initiation is a covenant whereby one has decided that albeit one is in the world, one is in search of another kingdom. And that is absolutely basic. And there is not much point in pursuing meditation if it is for the purpose of stress reduction. That's the way of the world. And so what we are doing is really giving vent to our need of the sacred. One of the rarest things in the world today is the sacred. Where are you to find the sacred? How do we find the sacred in ourselves? By our attunement. So the key to this is of course addiction. There are grosser forms of which are the obvious addiction to drugs, tobacco, TV addiction to TV or vain chatting, adulation and so on. But what one means by addiction is dependence. Dependence upon the underpinning, upon the support system which in our civilization has become so very comfortable, at least for some, and very uncomfortable for others who are homeless. The support system takes over. So we spend so much time providing ourselves the good solid support system, comfortable, reliable and so on, that we miss out on, well it's just like for example, we spend so much money and time on the base camps that we were never able to climb to the top of the mountain. 

We justify it. We justify the support system because in our minds we think that this will facilitate attaining our objective until finally we don't make it. So there is a very, very deep thought here, a very deep concern and that is supposing everything broke down. Would I be devastated, or would I find enough independence in me to maintain my attunement at the crucial test? Could I be in a state of ecstasy in a concentration camp? As Abdul Baha was in prison. He was in ecstasy in prison. Pir o Murshid says We are being tested in how indifferent we are. Interest, indifference, that dichotomy, antimony really at the fulcrum of our lives. As Pir o Murshid says Everything that we achieve in life is a consequence of interest. And your interest bears fruit in your achievement, and that will give you confidence in your ability to achieve. And as a consequence with this consequence you'll be able to achieve something even more challenging. But your power is limited by your objective. And if your objective is infinite, is not personal, let's say it's being of service, your power is infinite. So these are thoughts that are absolutely essential if one wants to meditate. Look upon your lives. Instead of saying I'm on retreat, I don't want to think about my life any more because I want to attain illumination. One needs to look at one's situation in life in a new light. And look at oneself in a new light, in a new perspective. And it is only under those circumstances that one can awaken. And what is meant by awakening is simply a change of perspective. One is caught in a perspective. You know what it means to be caught in a perspective. 

Perhaps it is best illustrated by a person under the effect of drugs. That's caught in a perspective, not free. And so awakening consists in our ability to switch our perspective. Just like you could do if you were looking at a hologram, a holograph. You could see it this way and change the perspective and you see it another way. What one means by awakening is shifting one's perspective. You can do that. When you are meditating you can just shift your perspective. We already learned it this morning, for example instead of thinking I am looking at the Universe, think the Universe is looking at me, a shift in perspective. Instead of I'm looking at the trees, get into the consciousness of the trees. Instead of being judgmental of this person, get into the consciousness of this person and see how it looks from their vantage point. It doesn't mean that their vantage point is right and mine is wrong. It's just that I have an alternative perspective than my present one and therefore a richer grasp of the meaningfulness. You'll find that one can switch something on in one's consciousness and find oneself in a transfigured world. You're able to see your life with a kind of overview. So what I suggest now that you go and simply walk in nature. I think it's a bit cold to sit. Anyway it's wonderful to be able to meditate while walking. It's the Sufi way. Samadhi you have to sit still. But instead of thinking I'm walking, let's consider how life is coming through everywhere. Through the plants, through the trees, through the birds, even through the insects, and through you. Let's say your roots reach out infinitely into the ground of your being. And therefore you become more and more have a sense of being cosmic, of the cosmic dimension of your being instead of the personal image of your being. So I suggest you do that. I think we could meet again at 11 o'clock, so you have about forty minutes.

SEP 01, 1995		Tape 03

 Labor Day Retreat 1995 Tape 3

...There's that first stage when one needs to understand the process. And then one needs to do it. And so now we're going to try and do it step by step. You remember the main points. We're learning how to meditate ( inaudible) as I say. So you're sitting in meditation and trying to get into a peaceful state. There is all that turbulence about. There might be cars out in the street. And there are random thoughts that might overpower you and which you feel you can't control. You don't have the kind of will to control them. And so you just feel that you can't meditate. So how does one proceed? Well I do think that there is an emotional attunement that acts acts more forcibly than one's personal will or one's personal incentive. And that's why I would say that to start with if you would just think of those ascetics who are sitting in a state of contemplation. I have met of course these wonderful beings in the Himalayas who are not in the world and of course not of the world. And somehow the feeling that one has is that they have withdrawn their consciousness and their attunement from the impact of the environment. 

So you can do that Somehow by surrounding yourself with a zone of silence. Just imagine that you're for example in the middle of a hurricane. And there's a lot of turbulence around. But where you are sitting, totally peaceful. Because the center of a hurricane is a vacuum. And maybe your could think that the periphery of your being is involved in all that turbulence. There is some spill over from the environment. But the more you turn within the more you find peace in silence. So you can feel the pull of the environment trying to draw your attention toward the periphery of your being. And as I say, our need for freedom from the compulsion of the conditioning of the environment that will help us to find ourselves, our real selves in the depth of our being, emerging from the depth where it is perfectly silent. I already said that those lines of defense, which are called the sentinels are the measure of your interest and your indifference, the balance between the two. And just think to yourself I'm a sensitive being exposed to all this rather gross influence. And somehow my objective in life is to become who I am in the process of becoming. To become my ideal. I don't to die until I have made my ideal a reality, not just wishful thinking. So you can find yourself in circumstances that are constraining but nevertheless keep your attunement. You have to observe how that influence does have a mark on your attunement. 

There is a tendency to adapt oneself and one does it out of good will, out of as I say out of compassion. So perhaps you can feel the feelings that one has when one finds freedom from the constraint of the environment. You can relax and say, Yes this is my real being.This is my real attunement. At last I have a moment in my meditation to be able to be myself. And it is in this perspective that you are able to see that your assessment of your problems was really fallible in fact terribly misleading, and that was due to the fact that, as I say, you had or we had succumbed to the impact of the environment upon our freedom because we ourselves were seeking some kind of fulfillment in it, and as a consequence lost sight of our ideal. Its a question of what is important for you? What are the values that are important? For example if you consider that the ultimate values for you are illumination, realization, being in a high state of attunement, having a sense of the sacred, and unfurling the divinity of your being in your personality, then that takes priority over the satisfaction one can get out of one's wallowing in whatever the world can offer one in terms of comfort and perhaps flattery to one's ego. So that is very fundamental. I think that before one meditates, one has to think about what are the values that one really values in life, that one treasures in life. And see how one gets way laid very easily and even to the extent of doubting the realness of one's ideal. One wonders whether it's not just unrealistic, a utopia. 

So one is tested in one's faith in the intuition in one's soul and the skepticism of one's mind. o K so now you can get a little bit more into looking into your thoughts. And you can see that your thoughts are always referring to situations. And that there is a certain bias in the way you look at these situations because you are involved in these situations. And when I say that I mean what we think we are is involved in what we think are the situations. That's why one needs to place a buffer between the challenges of the world and oneself. And now you feel a kind of impending urge for fulfillment, like the Universe is knocking at the door trying to come through. I think, What am I doing? Busying myself with the environment, totally oblivious the main thing which is what I have become in my life as a being. Now the second step if you remember is seeing that one is drawn to the surface and missing out on what is trying to transpire behind that which appears and therefore one turns within. And you get into the consciousness of those beings who are involved in your problems with you. Now you are beginning to have a wider purview of your problems. But as you know we never can consider our problems irrespective of our self. We are part of the problems. We can never consider a problem objectively. And so from the moment that you turn your attention to how you are unfurling as a being. And then you'll find that those random thoughts will proceed in the twilight of your consciousness. The thing to do is this. It's a principle that we find in the Koran. It is said that the prophet did not turn his eyes left or right. 

So in fact when one is in prayer, one isn't supposed to turn look on the right or the left, except right on the end of a prayer when one is sending a blessing out to all and sundry. So just think of this. Normally one turns let's say the searchlight of one's consciousness towards a thought, an emergent thought. And since thoughts are emerging all the time, one's consciousness is giggling about from one perspective to another and confused. So this is what the Hindus call (ecar garta) one pointedness. So then consider that the impressions take place in the twilight of your consciousness, and do not turn your consciousness towards them. They're there. So we don't ignore them. We don't cut them out altogether, but we don't turn our attention towards them. But this can only happen if your attention is drawn towards something more important. For many contemplatives it is like a nostalgia for God. It's like giving vent to one's love for the unattainable. It's love. It's not cognizance. It's love. For example, you could be in love with a person, you could be in love with music, you could be in love with love. And at infinitum one can be in love with God as the reality behind all this. So it's a question of degree, but it's a very powerful thought because one's whole being is involved in that nostalgia. So one is being is so uplifted by that. But in comparison the things of the earth don't seem to have so much impact on one's being. It's a question of values, what one values most. You could just say, it's difficult to say, that one is in love with God, because one doesn't know what one means by God. But you know there are situations that move your soul. There are situations that move your heart of course. There are situations that move something deeper than your heart, your soul. A sense of awe of bewondering that leads one towards glorification. And one feels uplifted to the point that this is all so much more engaging than the nitty gritty of the rather trite commonplace life situations. 

That is so powerful that it takes away the wind from the sails of your random thoughts. They are not important anymore. Let the unconscious deal with them. So it's not even a sense of who I am. It's a sense of what Pir o Murshid calls, A passion is awakened in one for the unattainable. It's always somehow one's intuition about a reality that always lies beyond what anyone could hold or grasp or encompass. So you see one one hand there is indifference which will cause you to withdraw from the impact of the environment. And on the other hand the nostalgia that will lift your consciousness beyond the earthly planes. You know that to go sleep, you do automatically, you do exercise detachment and indifference, or else you would never be able to go to sleep. In fact that's why people have insomnia. It's because they are so concerned with their problems. But that indifference then is compensated by the opposite, this very powerful nostalgia for a kind of intuition regarding a reality that is beyond our grasp. And however one still has a sense of the realness of that reality. It's not just a fiction of one's imagination. And as I say one sees it transpiring in the different forms of the world, in the beauty of the flowers or the mountains or whatever beautiful voice or whatever, beautiful face. Alight so then as you withdraw you see things from within. And therefore you can get into the consciousness of other people. Where as if you did not withdraw from the impact of the environment you would only see things from your point of view. Consciousness can only expand by turning within. It seems rather paradoxical that one can extend one's consciousness by turning within, reaching out from inside. Now with regard to our identification with our substantial body, our material body , note that you need to shift your sense of identity with your body to identify your self with let's say the template in which your body is being formed which is at first your electromagnetic field, say magnetism, the magnetic field around your body and also inside the cells of your body. Magnetic field in a magnet is to be found inside the magnet, not just outside. 

And so the clue to this is to feel etheric. If you identify yourself with an area which is beyond the skin. Normally one identifies with that which is inside one's skin. And that area that extends beyond one's skin. Well it peters out so it doesn't have a profile. And it tends to evaporate at the jagged ends. We don't know. Maybe it's transmuted and merges into the Universe. Can you feel yourself to be like an etheric body, like gossamer? Feel it around your arms and around your chest and above your head. And remember that is the template in which your body is being formed. Now there is some kind of graduation there so that the center of the etheric body is very, very fine, very subtle. And you realize that it is immaculate. That is that the outside may be tarnished to some extent. That is like a flower where the outer pedals are tarnished but the inner pedals are pure, undefiled and germane. And of course I would say that for the fresh pedals to unfurl, the peripheral pedals will have to fall apart. And so your indifference applies here to free yourself from those aspects of yourself which are not quite in keeping with your real being and which you borrowed from the environment and you're not that attached to. In fact it's only because you're not that attached to it to them that you can free yourself from them. Now as I said, well maybe I need to make this more clear. For each type of identity there is a corresponding way of thinking. If you identify yourself with your body, then you think the way that most of us think in a very commonplace way. One's thinking is conditioned by the environment and so on, education. But then if you identify with your etheric body, you see that your etheric body is interspersed with that of other beings. 

So you don't have the sense of me and other me any more. It's much more a sense of me inter meshed with all other beings and yet still maintaining one's identity. Or even though one is inter meshed, just like the eddies on the surface of the water when they start crisscrossing with other eddies you think they've disappeared because you can't see them anymore. But you can retrieve them. So it's just your identity is not based on a profile, but more based upon an axis. You're the axis around which things gravitate. Now as I say for each mode of identity corresponds a mode of thinking. And so if you identify yourself with your etheric body, then your thinking is not reacting to the environment. But your thoughts emerge spontaneously from within as you will find happens when for example you are about to go to sleep or you are in a state of what they call revere. Then you find that you can't control you thoughts. That your thoughts, they might be of course as a mixture. Sometimes your thoughts simply regurgitate the impressions of the day of the environment. But you might find that there are some thoughts that emerge ex nilo, that means out of nothing, totally spontaneously undetermined, non determined. Those are the creative thoughts. At first they seem to be amorphous and nebulous. And that's why I say that nature has a way of self organizing itself if we don't intervene. But at a certain point we need to take over and start taking responsibility for the unfoldment of our being, owing it. And therefore being truly ourselves. And so consequently at first the thoughts are rather nebulous because they are not a reaction to the, they are not determined by the environment. You're free from the impact of the environment, your thinking is free. 

And to such an extent that you might say what if my assessment of my problems is totally wrong? So you're free from it. And it's under those conditions that thoughts will emerge that are free, that are not determined by the environment and those are the creative thoughts. And you'll find that they come in a state of revere. You'll find that there's a mixture there, so it's not always very easy to discern which are the thoughts of the regurgitation of the impressions before and which are the spontaneous new thoughts. And if you follow me carefully this is rather difficult but one could best understand by illustrating it by music. I've often talked about the 4th piano concerto of Beethoven, second movement. You see he is describing himself as the pianist and the world as the orchestra. And the world comes with a big wallop, a big challenge, pabum pabum, and he reacts, instead of reacting as one would react if one is short circuiting, he, his resonance comes from within ( hums musical notes) in other words as if he were saying, I don't want to be bullied into reacting. I want to consult my deeper self. And is exactly the message. What we're doing in life is we're jumping into action without mustering all the pool of resourcefulness that's in our being. And that's where meditation comes in to place a buffer there. And then out of this came this wonderful melody that never could have come if he had just reacted. 'n the other hand, if it had not been for that challenge, this melody would never have arisen. 

It's not a reaction, but it somehow acted as a catalyst that set of things that were in a state of preparation within one. In a state of incubation and then just takes that catalyst to trigger off the whole system. See the difference between reacting or then allowing the situation to act as a catalyst. So that means that for the situation to act as a catalyst, then you must not discard the situation because then it can't have any effect upon you. Then perhaps you remember this, as you turn within you seem to have been removed from the constraint from the images of the environment, but still you are not encapsulated within walls. Somehow you are able to reach out from within, as we've already said. And perhaps there is an action from outside towards within you that takes place underground. It's a little bit difficult. You can try it when you're meditating. But it's a difficult because one is not totally in control of one's thoughts or even one's consciousness. It's something that develops in time as you get practice meditation. And you can discern those impressions that simply regurgitations of the impressions of the day and those which emerge unexpectedly. For example if you sing in your bathroom, you find melodies come to you unexpectedly. You haven't prepared them. You haven't thought them over. They just come. And there is a way of letting oneself somehow customize the symphony of the spheres. Somehow it comes through you in a particular way. So that would be the first step in creativity. It is in the attunement, not yet the understanding, just the attunement. Let's say for in example in music I quoted Brahms( Hums). 

It comes like spontaneously. You can't do that. You can't wish it. No it just comes. And in the same way your personality can find itself all of a sudden projected upon the screen of your mind. You could just see yourself being different to the way you've been so far. It's like a vision into the future. It is freeing oneself from the scleroses of one's identity in the here and now, and accepting that one can be different, and in fact very different, quite different. And that encapsulating in our selves in our self image is standing in the way of the way you could be. So let us do this now . And you'll find it's a very good way of getting rid of your random thoughts. You could imagine yourself for example in a kind of dream world. You know that we have absolute, you recognize you have a dream personality. You have a different personality than in your day consciousness. And you might even find that dream personality again next time you dream. Have you noticed that? That means that our ordinary personality is only one facet of our being, and we have many facets, many of them are totally unknown to us. So in you dream and in your state of revere imagine that you are walking along a lake in the moonlight, and where you are everything is very peaceful. There is hardly a breeze on the surface of the water. And somehow you're transported by that whole scene so that you walk differently, in fact you float rather than walking. Now imagine that your body is etheric or gossamer. And that's much more real that you physical body is like the crystallization of that template, that etheric template. So let's call it your dream personality in that specific scenario. 

And so you find that the whole scene matches your attainment, peacefulness. A kind of magic transfigured scene. So you can see that this really happened. You were really able to get into that attunement. And so this is one of the many facets of your many faceted, your many splendored multigfacetedbeing. But there are many others. For example you are mountain climbing, skiing, hang gliding, doing something which requires a lot of mastery. Now let's bring something else out in you, mastery. Taking control. once again your personality matches the challenge of the mountains or the scenario in which you, in your dream. So that's an aspect of your being. There are many aspects. But normally that aspect has not even awakened its potential. And the reasons why all these attributes of our being are not more developed than they are is because they have a shadow. For example one doesn't like to be too masterful because one is afraid that one is going to be ruthless or go on an ego trip. And one has difficulty in being peaceful because one is afraid that one would be indolent, lazy and so on. So how these aspects of your personality are trying to come through but are being blocked by your fear of the abuse of them, the misuse of them. And the same thing is true of compassion. For example think of a person who has been wounded and is suffering in agony, mentally too, terrible despair. They have been unjustly treated as a result of our greed. And your heart goes out to this person. Now if you're in a state of revere, then this is not a scene but a scenario in which you are engaged perhaps even more intimately than the former cases. And somehow the circumstances call for the awakening of qualities in us that probably would not materialize unless they were called for. And that's why for example if one goes to church the atmosphere, the whole setting of the church is going to awaken the sense of sacredness in your. Consequently one is transformed. It doesn't have to be a church. It could be a synagogue. 

It could be a Hindu temple. It could be a mosque. So you'll find that your impending qualities will are unfurling. So it's no use to try to develop compassion or to develop power or to develop peace. It becomes wishful thinking. So if you create circumstances that are favorable to the emergence of that quality then that quality will emerge. If you can't create circumstances in you life.( inaudible)well then we can reach out even further by creative imagining. Imagine circumstances, we call them landscapes of the soul, that favor the unfurling of a certain quality. And now you try to earmark that quality in you as you're engaged in that mental representation of that scene or scenario. So you'll notice now that having turned within we are drawing our attention toward the emergence of our being and we're trying to facilitate that emergence by means of projecting a scenario in our creative imagination. And not then just dwelling upon the scenario, but trying to sense the personality features of ourselves that are awakened in ourselves by the scenario. More like discovering ourselves through projecting a scenario. And that is, there was a question asked about an artist who said, I can't see what I contribute toward the Universe. I would say that an artist does contribute immensely, very considerably the enriching of people, people's psyche by projecting a scene which favors the emergence of the matching quality in the beings who are watching the painting. It serves a very important, I consider it a great service to the unfoldment of our being. No doubt that these attributes of our personality which we call our idiosyncrasies, are not really us. They are the way that we are manifesting. Just like a wave is a condition of the sea. Pir o Murshid said, We are a condition of God. And that's why the Tibetans call it illusory. Not only the world is illusory, but our personality . 

That is saying things a little bit too strongly I would say. But one could say that our personality is a device which reveals our divine nature coming through. So it's a way of discovering God in ourselves, as ourselves. And if you have no room for the concept of God then I don't how one can really attain realization. It's like in mathematics, I don't know how you could do mathematics without the notion of infinity. But instead of thinking of God up there and me down here a miserable worm as somebody said, think of. Instead of thinking of yourself of God, which is really illusory, but think of God becoming in you, emerging as you. So as I say the nails of your fingers are expendable, but there is a deeper reality coming through . So there has to be, to understand what we mean by God there has to be some dissolution. For God to be becoming instead of being static there has to be some disintegration, disbanding of the being of God for there to be the emergence of the new dispensation in the being of God and we're a part of this. So this would be a further thought, again a scenario. You can imagine in your state of revere. You could think of yourself as a plant that at a certain point it's very remarkable that at a certain point the whole tree begins to blossom. It's funny it took all that time before there could be that breakthrough. There are succulents in the dessert that take years and years to build up their sugars and within a day the whole thing opens up into a fantastic flurry of colors and within the evening the flower has faded and gives birth to a further plant. Just have that sense that there is that process of incubation in you. And somehow your creative imagination has the power to unleash that process so that all of a sudden it materializes. 

Just like the chicken and the egg shell incubation. At a certain point the chick breaks through. And you are standing in your way, just like the chick shell. You are standing in your way by thinking I am who I am without realizing that you are becoming all the time. And that process can be slowed down or even arrested by thinking I am that I am. Now think of the plant then, emerging unfurling, your being unfurling. All those qualities that were potentially there becoming more and more manifest. So you become a very rich personality. Joy, pain, expectation, spontaneity, rigor, discipline, compassion at the same time a certain amount of firmness, severity. All of it..peace at the same time joy. So this is this stage is called by the Sufis Mithal, which reminds one of the word mythology. Because we were able to withdraw from the impact of the environment, we were able to gather a better sense of ourselves. And since our identification with our body represented only one level of our identity, by switching to identify yourself with your etheric body, it's called Arwah by the Sufis, you're able to enlist your creative imagination. As I said for each identity there is a corresponding mode of thinking. This mode of thinking is described by Vedanta, in Vedanta by ( ) Panashad, where it is said there are four states. In the first state you are the spectator of other than yourself. In the second state you are the spectator and also that which you are observing. And that's what happens in dreams. Don't think that dreams are less real than every day life and the physical world. It's just that we're used to thinking that way. Everything that ever materialized in the physical world started in the imagination. And so your personality also. The Sufis say Our  imagination is a continuation of the divine imagination. And Pir o Murshid says God can attain a high degree of perfection in a being , but where that being participates consciously and volitional ly in his/her creativity God can attain a higher degree of perfection. 

You could give an example. If you were improvising on the piano for example, you could start just playing randomly. It could be anything. So maybe that's the way the Universe starts before it's able to organize itself, self organize itself. And you'll find that in your playing there are patterns which seem to make sense. There is some kind of orderliness in them that arise out of the chaos, or awareness of these and your determination to follow it up by your will, will make your invention more meaningful to others. And the same thing with your personality. You'll find that when you're in a state of revere thoughts are nebulous, some of us. Just as random as the thoughts that impinge upon your mind when you start meditating and so the thoughts which represent the regurgitation of the impressions of the outside world. The same thing is true inside. But now they become more ordinate, because we must consider that you customize the order of the Universe. That's the whole beauty about the whole meaning of the life is that the totality is fragmented and each fragment has within it the faculty of customizing the totality in a new way. That is what is gained by existence. And so your ability to be a unique person different from others and yet somehow becoming, manifesting, I mean giving expression to the cosmic bounty of the Universe. That is of course the objective in our creativity. Personal and impersonal at the same time. The Sufis call this level Mithal, as I said it reminds one of the word mythology. You see the world of metaphor. We seem to be immersed, our minds are immersed in the world of metaphor. The way that the thinking of the Universe gets concretized in the imagination in the cosmos and is fashioned in our personal imagination. 

You see there is a difference between fantasy and imagination. Fantasy would be like you have cut off your connection with the thinking of the Universe and you do your thing. And of course it's never very meaningful, it's random. Could be anything and nobody would know the difference. Whereas creative imagination customizing the imagination of the Universe in a particular way. Somehow that imagination of the Universe is behind your personal variation, like variations on a theme in music. So maybe in your meditating you find not just random thoughts that are regurgitations of the impressions of the day before, but you'll even find thoughts emerging, all of a sudden new vistas being revealed to you which you had not determined by your will and which are telling you something about yourself. So we have to end here and have our break for lunch.

SEP 01, 1995		Tape 04

 Labor Day Retreat 1995 Tape 4  If you want to make the best of this retreat and get yourself into the consciousness of an ascetic, as you walk you must feel that you are surrounded with a zone of silence. The physical world is there, but somehow it doesn't touch you. It's remote and you reach it from inside but you're not caught up in its perspective. And if you do so, somehow you will get in touch with a kind of an inner power that emerges from within. you could never develop that power by your will. If you did, it would be an ego trip. If you are able to get into that state which one calls being transfigured, the world seems transfigured. If you could just switch it on in you consciousness. You remember the formula that we talked about this morning like you are in the world but not of the world. It's a sense of identity to the one that one usually has in one's every day life. Then you can look at the world from a different perspective than the usual one. And as I say you're not caught up in it, you're not jammed by the appearance of things. So that in fact you enjoy a freedom a kind of inner freedom with regard to what appears or the way the Universe appears, not the way it is, but the way it appears which operates a kind of an impact, a pressure, a kind of constraint upon your attunement. Now by freeing yourself you'll unleash, I don't know how we can call it, a sense of mystery maybe, a sense of otherworldliness. Something like for example when you try to remember your early childhood. 

You remember that it was, then I'm sure that you were in a conscious state. But when you remember it now, it seems like a kind of dream state. I don't know whether I'm expressing myself clearly. There is a way of offsetting one's consciousness from the usual setting. That you can do. We can do this now for example imagine that your glance is made of two beams of light. And you're casting your glance upon the physical world. You have your eyes closed. And now you open your eyes and you find that the impact of the way the world appears to you forces your glance to focus. Now if you can resist that, you have a feeling that something is transpiring behind your perception of the physical world, a deeper reality which you can't define and you certainly can't perceive, but there's just that sense of a different dimension that comes through. Just like the you look at the painting of Van Gogh of the church. It's not a photograph it's quite, but something comes through of a deeper reality that ultimately makes sense of life. The important thing is that when you do this you get into a very beautiful attunement, high key instead of low key. This attunement acts like sunshine so that you're being blossoms in the light of the sunshine. Now as I say as far as our relationship with the outer world. One could say our consciousness offset. But the important thing is to turn your attention towards what is emerging from within. And especially if you have a feeling that you're surrounded by a zone of silence. And you'll find that indeed there is a kind of inner peacefulness, that is able emerge because you're not perturbed, or even concerned about the challenge environment which makes us feel inadequate. And we tend to call upon our notion of ourselves instead of whom we really are in order to meet our challenge. It's like in an emergency you can't just muster all the resourcefulness of our being. 

So the consequence is that if you're not challenged by the let's say the urgency of reacting. And since you've found some kind peace some kind of freedom. You'll find that a state of inner peacefulness that emerges. You couldn't ever try to attunement yourself to that state of peace, but it emerges in you. And it manifests, you see, there is a difference between peacefulness that one might achieve by withdrawing from pressure. But then there is a peacefulness that arises from within, a sort of active peacefulness. One of the thoughts that you may entertain while you're meditating is to be found in the words of Buddha when he says With the thought of peace I want to contemplate the world, and may this peace to extend to its four horizons. And then with the peace unending, let me encompass the whole Universe up to its confines. You see this occurred because we were not simply concerned with the environment. It is like for example as long as the sun is in the sky you cannot see the stars. So as long as you are preoccupied with the environment, your problems, your challenges and so on, you are not in touch with your being. You're not using all the resourcefulness of your being. As soon as you find some freedom for it, even if it's just a break, then you attention towards inside is going to unleash forces that have been held back, have been obstructed, have been frustrated. And you'll find that with together with this peacefulness there is a kind of power. It's a kind of power. This comes because normally we are identified with the slice, let's say of our being that appears at the surface. And we call that our personality , well we identify with that. It's really our self image. Imagine a three dimensional, three dimension. Then you have a cross section of that three dimension in a two dimensional system. And so you're not enlisting all the richness in the three dimensional system because you're only living the cross section. So your personality is just a cross section of your being. And now the way to. 

That's because our self image is static. We think of ourselves as a discrete entity. But now as we turn within, you can experience your being dynamic instead of static emerging recurrently. As so I say we had identified with the part of the tree above the earth. We're not aware of the bounty in the roots or in the seed. So the secret is as you meditate, not to continue to identify with your self image. That will limit you. There is no way of meditating if you do that. Identify yourself with the ground of your being. Like a tree can be felled and grow again, and felled and grow again. So what happens at the surface is secondary. So if you identify with it you are not identifying with your real being. And by one's false representation of oneself in one's inadequate self image, one is killing one's creativity. Because one thinks it's the way I am. Always think this is the way I could become, I can become, or I am becoming, or the way that the Universe is becoming in me. Pir o Murshid says Discover in yourself the same power that moves the Universe. Not your power, the same power that moves the Universe. We are so vulnerable, so precarious, so much on tender hooks in our lives. Sometimes courageously meeting challenges we feel we're not up to, trying to muster the strength to do this. And going about it in the wrong way. Because that power is within us. We're just blocking it with our self image. But one must take into consideration that one is not just an individual. That one is both an individual and also the totality. I know it's very paradoxical. Let us say that in as much as one can fraction the totality, every fraction carries within it the potentially of the totality. At least that we can say. We carry within ourselves the potentially of the Universe. The Universe is not other than ourselves. Let's say that we're a pyramid and that the base is the whole Universe, the base of the pyramid. 

And the apex would be then in this illustration our individuality. And we're the whole pyramid. We're not just the apex and we're not just the base. We're the whole pyramid. Then imagine that the bounty at the base can emerge all the way up the pyramid if we don't block it by our self image. So that is as the Sufis say, Accept the gift of the God within. You see that very much , I would say the key to meditation is in correcting a lot of false views that we have been brought up with, and stand in the way of our awakening. An so there is no doubt that awakening does consist in letting go of our commonplace ways of thinking which is standing in our way. And what does it mean? What are those common place ways of thinking? Well first of all we assume that we are the spectator, and that the physical world is the way that it looks and that our problems are the way they appear. So that is all of those three notions are basically, well relatively untrue, relatively invalid, because our consciousness, what we think of is our consciousness is the focalization of the consciousness of the Universe. And that focalization can shift, just like our glance can shift from reading the letters and words in a book to seeing the panorama. In the same way our consciousness can focus itself and defocus itself, decenter itself or even offset its focus. And the physical world is not the way it appears, any physicist will tell you that the way it appears. But that is negative. And so the positive view,which you find in Sufism, is that these are devices whereby that will lead us, will act as a clue that will lead us to grasp the intention behind the clues. Just like if you've seen the film ET for example Spielberg goes about using devices. 

Like ET a turtle of wax, was a face of a turtle and the voice of an old woman.These were devices where by he way communicating his intention. So think of the physical as being made of devices. So it illusory in a sense. But on the other hand it's illusion, the face of the turtle and the voice and so on, somehow led you to grasping surreptitiously the intention of Spielberg, what he was trying to convey. So the clues are always leading to something that can never be the object of your cognizance, but can only be revealed to you. You see the difference between trying to understand, like trying to perceive the world or then let something be revealed to you. For example all of a sudden, as I say sometimes it's like a penny dropped. You see something you hadn't seen before. You couldn't have seen by trying . The situation is such that a perspective is revealed to you. The same reality conceived from a different angle. And then your personality is not your self image. And your personality is only the outgrowth of the reality of your being that at the one side, at one pole absolutely cosmic and at the other individual. So these are very different ways of thinking. And then furthermore in our limited way of thinking we think in categories. It is this and not that. In a more advanced way of thinking, if we cease identifying with our individuality, our physical body, or our psyche, or notions of our individuality, then an alternate form of thinking begins to emerge or to aver itself, and that is reconciling the irreconcilables. For example you can be sad and happy at the same time. Or you're cosmic and individual at the same time. Or you're mortal and immortal at the same time. Or for example, you know there's some kind of inter meshing that takes place in our psyche. People you love or who are close to you, they are very present in your being. 

So you can't altogether say they are there in their house. There is so much inter meshing even interfusing so that for example if we concentrate on great beings who inspired humanity like what you call masters, saints and prophets. You see there's a process of resonance. Their attunement, or way of looking at things, has its match in our own attunement. Because we have several frequencies in our attunement. So if we just attach to the frequency that matches their's then you can say that, you can't say they're other than us. Well in one respect they are in that we are in the other all intertwined we are enriching ourselves mutually with each other. The consequence is that it has enormous consequences in terms of how you assess your problems. Now you see your problem in the context. In other words you just zoom a kind of spotlight of the problem without taking into consideration for all the relevance in terms of this problem, in terms of other people, in terms of humanity, in terms of the whole Universe. And so you revert to the intuitive mode which is unaccountable. Reason is accountable causality and so on, you can determine it. But as soon as you find freedom, inner freedom from the dependence upon the supports system, as I said this morning, then your thinking does not rest upon experience. It's unaccountable. It emerges. It surfaces unaccountably, spontaneously, irrationally. And that's creativity. Creativity is born out of freedom. And the ultimate freedom is freedom not only from all our false notions, but essentially freedom from the constraints of our personal identity. Or rather to see as Preston the American poet said, I want nothing less than the impossible possibility, Infinity in the finite fact , and eternity in a temporal act. 

We call it the here and now but it is the the everywhere and always manifests in the here and now. Must be very careful of that notion of here and now. It's a very simplistic notion. It's missing out on the reality of it, on the richness of it. Again I know I'm presenting you with ways of looking at things. And actually it is our inadequate notion of things that stands in the way of our meditation. Unless we get very clear about it we shall involve ourselves into a kind of wishful thinking. It can lead to sentimentality. This is not real ecstasy. You have to be very careful. So if you don't mind we'll continue trying to unmask the hoax of our false assumptions. And that is that we imagine Universe to be three dimensional. That's all we are capable of is extrapolating between three dimensions from a multidimensional reality, and we think that's reality. Like imagine an insect that can only conceive of two dimensions. It would be like living on a sheet of paper. And anything that intersects that paper, it would only experience the point where it intersects and doesn't have any idea about the richness that can come through. That's what we're like. If you know that, then perhaps you understand what I mean by something emerging in you from within, like a white hole. Reality the bounty of reality subliminal, keeps on emerging within this three dimensional Universe like in a white hole. And the black hole we think that the light has disappeared, but actually it's been resorbed in the wider dimensionality. And it's recycled again in the white hole. And to be dynamic one needs to keep on disintegrating into the multidimensional Universe and then being recycled again, and remerging recurrently and being reborn recurrently from within. 

And so you see the importance of being able to let go which is the attitude of the ascetic, indifference, detachment, letting go. So we were talking about addictions as illustrating what we mean by dependence instead of independence, addiction. And maybe the ultimate addiction is the addiction to our individual self which is frayed with trepidation. As one isn't too happy about one's self and at the same time there is something about human nature that hangs onto things one isn't happy about anyway. Because one doesn't know better. That's where the notion of God would make all the difference. A power comes through you if you are aware of the divine reality of your being. You could call it God consciousness, the power of the mystics. Those words of St. John of the cross, If you lose yourself, you will find yourself transfigured. But you have to lose yourself. And that is the secret of the zikr of the Sufis. 'lla illaha and so on. One is losing oneself, then refinding oneself again, or being reborn again. Indifference to the less important things will give you space for the more important ones. Therefore you ask yourself What do I want of life? Am I a door making machine, or am I satisfied with my being my realization, my attunement. What is important for me? There are a lot of things we like. There are things we dislike. But what is important? When you meditate you have to get to some very important thoughts which one does not generally entertain because one is to busy dealing with emergencies. If you made a survey of your life one has concepts. So one has concepts. And of course those concepts are inadequate still. You have to start with them. Like I think the most valuable thing would be to attain a greater realization. Of course it becomes very easily a stereotype thought like for example in India one says, Don't you dare die without attaining illumination. 

Well you never attain illumination anyway. That's why Pir o Murshid says, Passion is awakening for the unattainable. You mustn't think you can put it in your pocket. So we have to be careful about our representations of something that can never be represented. But still there is a sense of the need, well there is a sense of suffocating in one's ignorance, and suffering from one's ignorance, making the same mistakes all over again. The need to awaken. A sense that, well as I say, if you can really see that one is caught in a perspective. One is free. But somehow one doesn't realize that one is caught. In fact one's freedom consists in realizing that one was caught in a perspective, and that frees you. In the sixties that's called freaking out, when you realize that you're caught in a perspective. We want to be free. You see that that freedom is in our thinking, in our awareness, in our realization, not necessarily in the situations in our life. One can be free inside and bound circumstantially, and one can be free circumstantially and bound innerly. And one's freedom is, how can I say?, is illustrated by the fact that one can customize the orderliness of the Universe in one's own personal way. That's where one's personality comes in. And this is what we learn in music school. We learn how to compose variations on a theme. So the theme is the given and the theme is customized by our own personal idiosyncrasies. So when I say one gets trapped in one's individuality. That is if one has alienated one's notion of oneself from the totality, that's where one gets encapsulated. It's customizing the totality. So let us try and follow this up now. So just feel as though you've given yourself some kind of, I want to say protection, some kind of a space so that you're not crowded in by the environment, the social environment particularly. So you can breath. You're not forced by the pressure of the circumstances and not avail yourself of tall the richness out of your being. So the word is surrounded by a zone of silence. 

Now there's a principle. And that is that when our consciousness which is used to turning outside encounters and obstacle like the sentinels at the doors of perception, it's not quite a wall but it's some kind of it's not a blockage. It's a screening. So when one's consciousness encounters the kind of obstacle when it's turning outside, it about turns and turns within. Cause if you tried to turn within, you couldn't. You wouldn't know how to do it. How does one turn within? If you find that there is a blockage, an obstacle, then as I say thoughts seem to emerge randomly from inside. And that is where you start needing to customize them, giving them a direction. For example we were giving ourselves some guidelines when we were thinking about a lake. Then we did give some guidelines to our imagination. But then each one of us imagined the lake differently and imagined ourselves differently. And so we were customizing those general guidelines. And the same applies now to your self image. So as you turn within, not only the physical world seems to be remote, although not totally blocked out. Consider that your random thoughts, at least the thoughts which somehow boomerang back, well which are connected with the outer world. Think that those thoughts are at the periphery of your being. so in other words, you don't let yourself wallow in that area of your psyche which is concerned with the situations outside. You draw deeper within., so you consider those thoughts are circulating in the twilight of your consciousness. Can you do that? So that's negative so your have to compensate that by if you can you feel how something in your being is emerging. If you don't feel hard pressed to meet the challenges of the environment, let's say that it emerges without regard to the environment. It is not a response to the environment. You can steer that process a little bit, not much. 

But you can in a state of revere your will is, you can't determine your thoughts as one does in every day consciousness, but you can still direct your thoughts in certain directions. You give it certain guidelines, for example you feel you're at a certain stage in your life when a certain quality seems to be coming through. It's not yet very definite. Some quality that you, already, we already had all these qualities, but not as developed as we would like. Certain quality is coming through which albeit was there is now coming thought much stronger than ever before. For example, of course the clearest example is of course a kind of inner power. Imagine that your self image is a broken crutch so it won't take the weight of your body. And consequently you discard it. And then you find a source of power that you didn't think that you had. I remember my father giving, healing a person who thought they was paralyzed. He said " Do away with your crutches". They didn't think that they could walk without crutches. But low and behold. Didn't know that you could. Don't rely upon your self image. It will always let you down. Always think it's inadequate. It's a most unreliable support system. Power from within. A power from within which emerges for one thing when you have abandoned the crutches. And it does require trust. That's where faith comes in. And it's faith in the kind of basic inherent knowledge that we have. And we base our knowledge, our understanding upon the evidence of the senses which is most unreliable. And therefore we mistrust our intuition, or distrust our intuition and then when we find that our judgment was mistaken, then somehow have no alternative but to call upon our intuition. It's like something that one has always known and one was not aware that one knew it. So what are the things that are emerging in you at present? It is different for every one of us. 

It could be a great sensitivity about the suffering of other people, which calls upon your compassion. Compassion that you did not have before because you were concerned about making success of your life. Or it could be a kind of insight that you didn't have before. You see something in people that you hadn't seen before or you see something in a situation that you hadn't seen before. So it is a quality in you that affects you relationship with the outer world. Or it could be a concern about truthfulness, authenticity. You tend to be extremely sensitive to any form of manipulation and guile or dishonesty to the point of being absolutely uncompromising. It gives you kind of sharpness, of realness, of authenticity. And that's a source of power. It can emerge in you more and more. It gives you an incredible insight into people. You can see that people are fooling others and fooling themselves for a game which is very precarious. Christ said, Of what use to win the world if you lose your soul/?" So what we are beginning to see now is our way of handling problems, our way of behaving can block the emergence of qualities in us or enhance emergence of qualities in us. So that there is no point of working with the wasifas one might do to develop qualities without taking into consideration what it implies in terms of one's behavior. It doesn't work. In fact it's dishonest. So it's an antinomy. 'n the one hand if you develop a quality it will have its effect in your handling of certain situations. For example if you become more aware of the divine power in your being, it's going to give you more confidence in your way of dealing with problems and people. 

But on the other hand it is also true, and that is that by handling people with a sense of responsibility, even with a sense of authority, you are creating circumstances that will favor the emergence of authority in you. So it works both ways. So you see that turning within does not mean that one disregards the world altogether. It is really one's conception of the world that seems to be out of perspective, out of one's perspective because it was not true. And therefore there is some error in trying to isolate oneself from the environment. That was a tendency of those who are meditating to place a borage, a wall between yourself and the environment. That's why Ibn Arabi said, For one who is God conscious a retreat is impossible. In other words it is impossible to isolate yourself because you will find the signs that will reveal the divine nature in the existential world. So you're missing out on the disclosure the divine nature that comes through those devices which we call the clues which what physical reality is about. And the same thing is true of one's personality. I said identify yourself with the ground of your personality, the root of the tree. But that does not mean that one disidentifies oneself with the qualities that come through one's being. And that's why Al Hallaj said, The first step in order to reach tauhead, which is the sense oneness ahob the oneness is to give up isolation. It's very important because some of us have become so wounded by life that we tend to escape by turning within. It can lead to dysfunctional psyche. One thinks one is too sensitive for the world. That has to be reversed. That's why the Sufis say, Renounce the world, renounce yourself, and then renounce renunciation out of love. Your renunciation, as I say to lose yourself to find yourself, or you have to let go of your crutches and so on. Yes that's renunciation. But it's always got to be compensated by the opposite. 

Unconditional love. In fact isolating oneself is a feature of a lack of love. One sees that in people who are supposed to be spiritually evolved and have a lack of love, and a lack of the human touch and a lack of humility. So it's a great art to be able to turn within without isolating oneself. And the only way to do it is to look at the world in another perspective. It doesn't mean not to look at the world. Look at the world in another perspective to the usual one. Complement your perspective. I'm trying to point out where some false notions that we have of spirituality can lead one into a kind of spiritual bypass that psychologists are pointing out. I won't speak for some time so we can just get into that attunement. (pause) Just relax. Breath heavily as you exhale. Start moving your fingers and your arms and stretching. We'll have a little break now, about a half an hour. So we meet again at 5 o'clock. It's now half past four.

SEP 01, 1995		Tape 05

 Labor Day 1995 Tape 5

A'UM chant. So we have natural overtones in our voice, but we don't generally bring them out. It's just a matter of concentrating on them. Close your lips and increase the pressure of the air in your mouth, and you'll find that these overtones start becoming audible and they act as a kind of ladder leading beyond the audible into the inaudible. And it's one of the techniques used by Tibetans for example in order to shift their consciousness into the higher planes. Now since, perhaps you've noticed that we at least in the early stages of meditation the key is to downplay the impact of the environment and try to highlight what is emerging from within. One learns to turn within. That doesn't mean to build a barrier between oneself and the environment, but to reach the environment from within. As is often said you can get into the way a person thinks into the consciousness of a person from within. You don't have to sit and talk to that person. Now this will enhance our creativity, the creativity of our personality, and for the Sufis that is very important. It's not Samadhi, it's the other way around. It's not Samadhi. It could be illustrated by the saying, To render states of consciousness corporeal. So that it will actually bring transformation in the body itself. Mind over body, whatever, mind over matter. The method used by the Tibetans consists in sitting and looking at a statue. And finally Tibetans identify so much with that statue, they walk around thinking they are that statue. Since that statue is a representation of a certain attunement, certain manner of being. They are able to enhance that manner of being or attunement that is already within them. 

As I said before, if you create circumstances that are favorable that match your inner being, then it will awaken your inner being, at least those propensities in your being will blossom in favorable circumstances. For example a plant will unfurl when there is sun and water and so on. So you have to create the circumstances in this case your mental representation of that statue. The beauty of this is it is not abstract thoughts. It is the way that an ideal or an archetype is projected into a form. Now of course in Sufism this would be idolatry and it's true that this method has limitations because one is aping a model, and therefore not bring out all the bounty of one's own being. And the same thing is true in trying to imitate a guru for example, not finding one's own being, because one is trying to imitate a role model. Therefore Sufism makes a further step. The first step being (tashavuri murshed), which means one represents to oneself the form of one's ideal teacher or an ideal master that one imagines. Then comes (tawaje) which means getting into the attunement. You overcome the limitation of the form. For example one imagines Buddha sitting cross legged, one imagines under the tree. One imagines Christ on the cross of course, or a lot of scenes Christ washing the feet of his disciples and so on. These are images. And each of these images are examples of an attunement. For example Christ on the cross, well it represents the disintegration of the contingent aspect of one's being so that that quintessence of one's being can live forever. 

That's resurrection and so on. The importance of the form, as long as the form is not the ultimate. It's only the expressing of something that it represents. Therefore, the Sufis, if indeed the world is made of devices, then you follow those clues, those devices. Then you follow those clues backwards as it were into reaching the reality that is being projected as these forms. And that's what we do working with the Wasaif, the wazifa, that is the sifat the divine qualities because somehow in order, for example in order to develop more compassion, one needs to reach up from one's own limited mode of compassion to the archetype of which it is the exemplar. And that is called divine compassion. So now the Sufi method therefore as compared with the Tibetan in rendering states of contemplation corporeal, would be to try to sense the countenance on the face of your aura, that is your body of light. Perhaps I'm going to fast. We're going to go into that tomorrow much more early morning working with light. We, the body does absorb light and does emit light. There is some kind of permanency of the light that represents a kind of shroud which we call the aura, although it doesn't have a boundary. And it's not just a vague sort of effulgence, but a, it does have a configuration even though it doesn't have a profile. And so it's difficult for us to understand, but for example the expression on your face does not have a profile. But we're not talking about the features of your face. Were talking about expression, the countenance. That's something more difficult to grasp what one means by it. Something that transpires behind that which appears. 

And so, if you concentrate upon a particular quality like peace, or mastery, or compassion, or truthfulness, or purity, or joy or whatever, you'll find that the expression even on your physical face, but certainly on the face of your aura matches your particular attunement. And so that provides us of a feedback system whereby we are able to be more aware of our real being, of who we are as one says, when it is projected in a form. One could even say that that which is gained by the existential condition is form. Is that reality that has no, that does not have form can manifest as form. And one of the wonderful expressions of that for example is the B Minor Mass. Behind it there is an attunement, but it manifested in a very concrete form, the themes and the rhythm and the choice of instruments. The whole thing is very concrete. And so instead of being vague like samadhi, we're working on the way that our attunement can reveal, make itself known to us by that feedback system whereby we are able to discover what it does to our body, and even our physical body, but certainly our aura. Before the break I was saying, I think already I was saying, that there comes a time when you realize that you're playing a role in life, because that's what life is asking you to do. And thereby adapting yourself to the environment. And there's some spill over from the environment. And therefore some alteration in your identity, some deformation of your real identity because you have to adapt yourself to the environment. And therefore what we were doing, if you remember, as we turned within is we were discovering who we are. And if you remember, we said well do not think of, when you say I want to know who I am, do not think of it as static. 

Think of it as dynamic in the course of unfurling. And then more specifically try to earmark certain qualities emerging from within and therefore you are in a process of unfurling or becoming. And therefore be careful not to make the mistake of thinking that when you say I want to know who I am, of thinking that who you are is your personality. It goes much deeper than that. But now I am saying that not only are we playing a role, but we are wearing a mask. And we are reinforced in wearing that mask by that most deceptive and cheapest of all feedback systems, which is the mirror, unless you can see what transpires behind what you see in the mirror, then you could see as Rumi said, If you could only see yourself through my eyes then you would realize how beautiful you are. So there is a breakthrough in meditation. If you suddenly discover your real face. It might be very different from what you think it is. Or rather your real countenance. That's why there is a saying in the Koran Every face is His face. What is meant is the reality behind our face. Now in order to do that you have to get into this very high state. I'll tell you what it's like. Buddha points this out when he says Our  memory was interrupted at the time of our birth, and the memory of the whole Universe is registered in our deep unconscious. I'm paraphrasing of course what Buddha said. And I suppose we are programmed. It would be too difficult to remember all those things. We would be overwhelmed by so much memory. And therefore nature protects us against this by making our memory a clear slate so that we are able to remember the impressions just since our birth. 

But what Buddha says is, and you can just try this as you meditate, is When consciousness extends beyond the boundaries of your personal identity, which means your personal vantage point, then that memory comes back. And he proved it because he said there was a time when there was no smoke on planet earth. How could he know it? Perhaps he didn't use the words planet earth, perhaps he said earth. But in those days that meant there were no humans. In those days they didn't know anything about evolution. He said that there was a time when planet earth did not exist. How could he have known that in those days? That the stars were just decorations for people on the earth. He said that there was a time when the cosmos did not exist. It's only in the last that physicists are saying that. He said that there were other cosmoses disappeared, dissolved into new cosmoses. That's totally avant guard concept in astrophysics. How did he know? He demonstrated that one does have that memory. And that comes when you're able to, how can I say, complete your sense of identity by encompassing the impersonal infinite cosmic dimension of your being. And the consequence is your consciousness becomes cosmic. And what happens then is that you can see how the bounty of the Universe is customized in your being funneled down so limited of course, and yet still present, potentially. And therefore all those qualities that we try to develop are already potentially present within our being. And what is more they are, since that which is gained by the Universe by the existential state is form. As a device of course, as we said, a device, a clue to what is behind it. Then if we could know our deep self, we would realize that it is a many faceted reality that is of tremendous diversity. Instead of the poker face of person who does not let very much of his/her emotion come through. 

Whereas her it's the other way around. It's all we have to do is to concentrate on a particular quality, and if you're aware of the countenance of your aura, you'll see that the face of your aura corresponds, matches absolutely the attribute that you are contemplating. Now that's the secret of working with the wazifa. otherwise you're working with concepts, with the mind, here this is really concrete. Discovering yourself through the mediation of form. It's only a medium, but still something tangible. Liberate you from the image of the mirror. We think that we are, well our bodies are fashioned in fabric of our ancestors, originally of course the planet. In fact originally our bodies originated in the big bang. And so imagine that you're a artist, and if you're working with clay it's fairly malleable. But if you're working with stone, for example, you'll find that it's much more difficult. And so the matter that, the materia prima, as they call it, the alchemists call it, the fabric of our bodies, doesn't lend itself so well to our attunement. But as you go deeper into the higher, more subtle levels of your being, that's where you find your real being. Not only are we playing a role, but we're wearing a mask. So you can do like the Tibetans do. Imagine walking in this enchanted forest here and being aware of your real countenance and thinking to yourself, "People don't really know me, but it doesn't really matter as long as I know myself". And that will cure from the constraint of a bad self image. That will fill you with delight, and delight in the value of life. And cure many of us from despondency and despair. That's a great secret. So could we could just do this. 

There is another thought that is important before we do it. That is of course when you discover your real self you'll realize that it has undergone defilement, distortion, been tarnished, perhaps partly by transmission from one's ancestors who themselves have inherited the divine perfection, but it's gone through, has been followed down and distorted. And so that divine perfection has been handed down to us in our inheritance through the transmission of our ancestors in a distorted fashion, and also there is a spill over of the environment. So somehow a germane being has been very badly battered, very badly distorted. And further one's guilt, one's actions that one can not subscribe to have added to that distortion and that defilement. And so these factors contribute towards having bad self image and low esteem of oneself if one is really sincere, one has to accept that. But the saving grace is that one's germane being is present in the distortions. And that is something which is not rational. It's not our usual way of understanding things. But it is illustrated by something I've often referred to, and that is the voice of Caruso that can be retrieved in its prime (tape turns)... has undergone in the course of your incarnation. And that is the meaning of the immaculate state of the Virgin Mary. And what that means is that the child in us is still present within the so called adult being, still present but buried. Not the abused child, the real, the innocent child is there. And that is the clue to your celestial being. You're able to honor that pure being within all the distortions that is still there. Somehow in order to retrieve the voice of Caruso one had to reverse the distortions. 

You can reverse the distortions. Like for example the clue to it is really those aspects of yourself that you do not like. They give you the clue. Because you know that every quality has its shadow. And so if you are lazy, it's the shadow of your peacefulness. And if you're ruthless, is the shadow of your mastery. And if you're overindulgent, it's the shadow of your compassion. Every quality has its shadow. So if you want to know what your qualities are, just ask yourself what your defects are. And you can look at it and say, I see, life requires of me to take responsibility, and in order to take responsibility I need to give vent to the power in myself. The power of intervening, taking responsibility you have to intervene, your power your will. But I don't want to do that because I don't like Hitler, I don't like dictators, I don't like ruthless people. So I find it difficult to give vent to my mastery. That's the kind of thinking that we all have if you're a very genuine person. And that's what is standing in the way of your developing qualities. What you can do is to watch that little ego that comes in when _you have power, and stop it in time. I want that. Then you have access to what is called divine power. Or you could be peaceful without being lazy, or you could be compassionate without being indulgent. Now what I'm saying is that in order to be able to discover your real being if indeed you are wearing a mask and playing a role and think you are what you think you are, and that's not what you really are. In order to discover your real being you have to unleash the buried memory in your unconscious. 

And as I say there are circumstances which will trigger off that memory. For example when I look into the eyes of a baby and see a light in the eyes of a baby, a pity babies grow up, it reminds me. It's like a feeling of déjà vu. I know that, it's my world, it's where I belong. It's like a sense of conditions that favor the awakening of memory. And then the awakening of memory will awaken qualities in you which emerge from the immaculate state in all their integrity and all splendor. And you just think it is God who has awakened as me. And when you do that then you are creating circumstances that are favorable to your discovering your celestial countenance behind your physical face. And you know that that is true when something clicks in you, Yes this is me. And do that. It's a little bit more complicated because your real countenance is many faceted depending upon the quality that you're contemplating at the time. And also that the child or the angel has become a master, let's say is on the way to becoming a master. Let's say is developing maturity within the defilement, not just defilement because it's an error that Al Hallaj saw in his teacher Junayd. Junayd condemned Al Hallaj, and Hallaj saw the error in the teaching of Junayd, because Junayd was teaching one to return to the condition which one was prior to to one's being involved in the process of becoming. And Al Hallaj said What's the point of all this life if I return to the way I was before. He was validating life, what is achieved by life. And Junayd condemned him and finally he was crucified. 

So it's a little more complex. First you try to sense the child in you, recognize the child in you. As I say it's many faceted so it's there. It's like a hologram. It's like an image that is there. If you attune, focus your consciousness in a certain way and then you change your focus, then you see the mature person. And then if you focus in a certain way you see the distortion. It's all inter meshed. Caruso within its distortion, but more even. The voice of Caruso that carried even in those days the portence of how it could unfold further. How you could be if your would be what you might be. Not just the way you were before you became involved in the process of becoming. Because the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. Now as you see you can simply concentrate on a quality and try to see how it alters your inner countenance. An illustration of this. I don't know if you've heard about Walter Chappell who photographs flowers with ultraviolet. And you see the corona around the flowers. You see the profile of the flower and beyond it like a corona. Like in Kirlian photography. And then he came across the bright idea to beam the violet light of his aura upon the flowers and see if it would make a difference. And he had the same results. Except that when he was in a good mood the corona was beautiful, and when he was in a bad mood the corona of the flowers had a lot of spikes. 

So the flowers were telling him something about himself, were mirroring himself. And so you see that disposition alters the form of our aura. And so we can't alter the form of our aura, but we can alter our disposition, and that will alter the form of the aura. And actually that is the art of creativity. Because you can't compose a piece of music unless it corresponds to your attunement. And you can't alter it unless you alter your attunement. Now I promised to answer questions, but we have very little time. I'll try to be brief. First of all how to overcome fear. Well fear is not just negative. It's a signal. If it weren't for fear, we would jump off a cliff. It's a kind instinct of self preservation. That is a defense mechanism. So do not try to overcome fear. But there are circumstances where one is challenged by a situation where one is afraid one is delivered into the hands of something one cannot control. For example, I remember during the second world war when I was an officer in the Navy, British Navy. And we were, our captain was drunk. And we felt extremely insecure in the hands of a man who wouldn't watch over our security. So there's the fear of the unknown, of being delivered onto the hands of random fate. We can't be sure that fate is always intended. There are metaphysical problems behind that which I won't enter into, but very important is the program of the Universe rational , or at least meaningful or is there randomness in it. I won't go into that because I know people don't like my talking about physics. It's very important, our metaphysical understanding, when it comes to understanding our fate. 

For example accepting that if everything breaks down, it's OK. That's very difficult to accept. But I'll tell you a story. There is a custom in India that if a man dies his wife has to be burned at the stake. The reason is because the women can't get jobs and won't be taken care of by the man's family. And so they would end up indigent or become prostitutes so that's the reason why they burn the body. So this young princess married an old man who died and she was so afraid of having to be delivered in the hands of the fire. And so she had fear of course. Anybody would have fear. And somebody told her, Go and see this guru, this lady guru who had a pet cobra. And she said" I can save you from the stake, but you'll have to pet this cobra, and this cobra will bite you if you're afraid". But she didn't have much alternative. So she finally petted the cobra. And the guru said "Yes, so you are saved now from the stake, but you will have to live as a sanysin. You know they wear the yellow robe ( ). And she herself became an illuminated being. So there are moments when we face such terror and we wouldn't think that we could. And there is the fear of fear actually, the fear of fear. It's an instinct. And then when we're in it. I met a lady who knew my sister during the resistance. And she survived. She was beaten to the point where she was blind for years and years, a fractured skull and thrown into a dungeon. Somehow she survived. And you can't imagine a person with more joy I've ever seen than this woman. And she said you see the Nazis used to enjoy us screaming and therefore we didn't scream. 

And she said When the pain was too bad we'd go into an astral state and then think they can do with my body what they can't touch me. Somehow one is afraid of the terror of torture. And when one comes to it, there is some kind of power in one that one didn't know one had. That is of course an extreme case. But in the cases of many people who find themselves faced in a situation which they can't cope with. It's in their mind that they can't cope. When it comes to the point, they can cope. A fear of not coping, of not being able to cope. The other question was about forgiveness and resentment. You can't force yourself to forgive. And don't allow someone to should into forgiving. I used to do that I used to say you've got to forgive, because that was the message of Christ. You can't force yourself to forgive. It's a matter of greatness of your being. It's only great beings who can forgive. It's a matter of generosity, of having room for obnoxious people and still loving them. One can love obnoxious people. You know what Christ said They don't know what they do. You can forgive them if they don't know what they do. I don't know if you know the sequel to the book Life After Death. I think it was Brody, if I remember the author. And these are people who have tortured other people and come back after suspense of their life. Their heart had stopped beating, but they weren't dead. But still they had that experience of otherworldliness. It's supposed to be like the experience after death, a premonition at least. They came back absolutely reformed. They got into the consciousness of their victims. And when you've done that then you can't do it again, you see. We're tested in our magnanimity. And it's a greatness of your being that enables you to forgive. 

But you can't force yourself to be great. And the third question was about running, marathon runner. I remember climbing a very high peak on the way to Tibet, on a forbidden zone actually . And there was a group of Tibetans who were running across the snow at such speed I couldn't believe my eyes. They seemed to be floating above the earth. And it's a real fact. They weren't floating, but they had a way of walking that gave vent to a kind of levitation, really amazing. And so the question was, What can spirituality do to help in becoming a better runner? Maybe it is discovering that you were really intended to have wings. But somehow they never developed. But they are still there on our shoulder blades. God bless you.



SEP 01, 1995		Tape 06



Labor Day 1995 Tape 6 .....illumination. We'll start with a very simple one that I would advise you to do every day. And that's simply to be aware of the light of your glance. And believe me it's not just imagination. The body does absorb light and emit light, particularly the nerves, more particularly the retina. But generally the eyes operate as organs of perception, therefore passive are receiving light, absorbing light from the environment. And so we are not very aware of the fact that the eyes also do emit light. And if you have your eyelids closed then you're not impacted by the light of the environment much and therefore you can really concentrate on the radiation of those two beams of light that radiate from your retina, through your cornea and into outer space. Now in a second step you imagine a landscape of light and it can be whatever you like. One idea is the dawning of the sun above the horizon in the midst of an array of clouds of many different hues and some kind of transparency, so that through one cloud you see another and another. And then you see the glorious glow of the sun rising in all its majesty and illuminating the whole sky. And you're walking towards it in a kind of dream world. And now you see the connection between your glance and that light. And that light makes you aware of your own light. And so you're experiencing a communion of light upon light. And you could alternate. As you exhale you concentrate on your glance and as you inhale you are receptive to the light of the morning dawning of the sun. What we're doing is availing ourselves of the power of creative imagination in order to enhance of our own effulgence. 

Now in a more advanced mediation, after doing this practice you hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling. And when you hold your breath, you turn your eyeballs upwards and actually you curl your tongue and press the bottom of your tongue against the soft pallet. And so your eyeballs are turned upwards, and you imagine the light of the heavens. So it's much less concrete, it's much more in the realm of imagination. And once more the interface between yourself and that nonphysical light will awaken a sense of your celestial identity. You will feel this is my world. I'm a visitor on planet earth, but this is where I really belong. And it will also give you a sense that your purpose in life, or at least one of your purposes, perhaps a major one, is to be able to communicate something of the nature of this nonphysical light in the world, at the existential level by several devices. One is your glance the other is your aura, that is your physical glance, your glance of physical light and your physical aura. And the other is entertaining luminous thoughts and luminous emotions, if I may speak metaphorically. Now this is what in the Koran is called a light upon a light.( ) that we often quote. And it bespeaks of the catalyzing effect of the awareness of the light of intelligence, that is being aware that one's intelligence acts like a light that discloses, unveils the unknown. And so the impact of the light of intelligence upon the physical light of our body, this could be illustrated by for example a child looking at a mother shows the child a riddle and asks him or her Can you see the pixie in the tree? and the child says, No Mommy , I can't see it. Look again. 

No I can't see it. Look again. And all of a sudden the child says, Yes! And at that moment the whole face of the child lights up. And that's what I mean when I say the impact of the light of intelligence upon one's aura. And that's what's meant by that ( ) in the Koran. OK now we're going to backtrack. I suppose that when one meditates that one starts by assuming that one is one's body and also that one is a spectator. So it is a good thought to think that one's body originated in the big bang as pure radiance. I suppose it's rather simplistic for physicists if one were to say that the light of the big bang crystallized into what we understand as matter. Because for physicists light is also matter. But anyway imagine that light has therefore crystallized as crystal for example. And the body is actually a liquid crystal. And that the crystal has the ability to absorb light and to radiate light. So think of your body as a crystal, which is a very good model. Because there is some kind of orderliness in the configuration of the cells and the electrons within the atoms of the molecules of the cells have the ability to absorb light, that is to avail themselves, to feed themselves with light, as it were. And use that energy to start dancing and freeing themselves from their orbital, and then falling back into place and then start dancing. Whatever excess light energy is available is then radiated as an aura. So just think that your body as a crystal is able to absorb the light. It's better to think of it as a light of a candle if you're meditating at night. Or the light sun, even an electric light as a matter of fact. And of course particularly if you are meditating at night and you look at the stars and you close your eyes and you realize that in fact your body is able to absorb even the light of the stars. And what is more that the whole Universe is, the stars are only that condition of space where light has converged because the gravitational forces, but the whole cosmos is one ocean of light, all the ultraviolet light rays, neutrinos, cosmic rays. 

It's a tremendous bounty of different frequencies of light. So just think that even though perhaps you can't see the light in the sky. Perhaps there are just clouds. Even then your body is able to absorb the ultraviolet light which is processed by the body, particularly the pineal gland which is called the third eye. So you see what I want to make clear that after having absorbed light you radiate light, but let it be clear that it is not like a mirror that simply reflects light or even refracts the light. But the light has been processed in our body and has transformed our body and whatever remains is radiated as one's aura. So I know that it's easier to imagine that one is just absorbing light and radiating light. But it's important to hold one's breath between inhaling and exhaling and become aware of the way that the light that one has absorbed affects the cells of one's body. They are fed with light you see. And the consequence is that they start dividing, as a matter of fact mitosis, more rapidly and therefore it has a rejuvenating effect. And also perhaps it enhances the immune system so it also has a healing effect. And of course it takes place without our knowledge. But if you draw your attention to it, if your visualize it, it is going to enhance tremendously this region radiating and healing activity of light. Mind over body. That's Yoga. That's the way that conscious action will do something that the unconscious can't do. Then afterwards you relay it to the unconscious. And the unconscious is picking up your new suggestions now. That's feedback but instead of having a machine it's your own sensitivity, your own inner awareness, the awareness of your body cells which one neglects because one is too preoccupied with one's interface with the environment. 


But if your meditating, turning within you may become aware of all that ebullient activity that takes place within your body. And it works not only in the cells of the body. I can say there is an esoteric chemistry in the body, the enzymes, neurotransmitters, macro phases, hormones. It's quite extraordinary how the matter of the stars, if I may say it, is processed so intelligently as to fashion these very sophisticated cells which govern the functions of the body, catalyze energy in the body for example. That is a very great secret. I'd say it is the secret of longevity. And then as you exhale just imagine that you do emit light. And that is not just a fantasy. That can be measured in a laboratory. By your luminescence you are able to, that the body is really radiating light that most people can't see. It doesn't mean that it's not radiating light. Some of it is infrared, so it's in your heat, in the heat, the temperature of your body. Some of it is in the physical range and some of it in the ultraviolet. And that these photons are traveling through space at the speed of 180,000 miles a second. And since your aura is also you. It is also your body. It's not other than your body. Your aura is right out there in the stars, amongst the stars. And forms with the light of stars what one calls the wave interference pattern. So once again here we are again confronted with totally new ways of thinking, of conceptualizing beyond our commonplace views that the bodies are there and the stars are up there in the sky. That you realize that spacecraft has reached into outer space? But do your realize that we are in outer space? Planet earth is in outer space. 

So these thoughts have the effect of enlarging, extending your identity beyond the skin bound concept of our bodiness, of our body. So a sense of bodiness instead of a body. And this has the effect of expanding our consciousness which is normally focalized. And you remember what we said yesterday about the words of Buddha that When consciousness extends beyond the boundaries of the notion of the self, the memory of the Universe surfaces. Something like the collective unconsciousness of Jung. But I would say the collective consciousness of the Universe. And so we are overwhelmed sitting meditating there you're lifted beyond all the limitations with which you constrain yourself by one's programming for one thing and one's education and all the sort of commonplace thoughts that we sort of read in books. All of a sudden Ya awakening from that prison that is in one's thinking. And you discover yourself to be a cosmic being. To illustrate it imagine a caccon thinking that it is a caccon and suddenly it has wings. It didn't realize it at first. Now this is the breakthrough in meditation. Sitting under tree opposite the Bodi tree in Bodia that came clearly to me, meditating at night exactly what Buddha was experiencing. And that's why one doesn't call him Sidhartha, not even Buddha, but Tatarvita. That means the one who has become thus, therefore cosmic.Now of course the converse is equally true and that is really what we are aiming at is to try and funnel down the cosmic bounty of our being while concretizing it into out individuality, customizing it as I say. So that's awakening in life. And this is where after having lifted your eyes, or turned you eyes upwards, when you exhale and you are conscious of radiating, you are radiating from a definite source of light. 

And in fact we always somehow in our conceptualization of light ,we always imagine that light radiates from a source, like it could be the electric light or it could be the sun, or moon or stars, or even your eyes. But there is a further way of looking at this. And that is that the stars converge the light of the Universe. Just like a wave is a condition of the sea. And so our aura converges the light of the stars. This is, well the light of the stars, it converges the all pervading light which the stars converge. Yes now we a new and very challenging outlook embodied in those words of my father's The all pervading light. And maybe that is what is meant in Hinduism by (hijoti). And the only way. As I say I think that we need to clear our minds, be clear in our minds from false conceptions in order to be able to awaken our realization. And therefore I repeat once that we are normally limited by our ability to extrapolate between dimensional space. Most people can only extrapolate between three dimensions. Some mathematicians are able to extrapolate between four. I won't go into that. The fact is that the world is multidimensional. And so we are only experiencing a cross section of it. Within the framework of this cross section the world appears to be three dimensional. And the consequence is that objects such as trees for example seem to occupy a specific position in space, location in space. That's what David Boehm calls the explicate state of the Universe. But behind it there is the implicate state which could be illustrated by radio waves which instead of colliding, compose together and form what is calls wave interference patterns. 

So we're not used to thinking in those terms. So that means that everything is everywhere, that everything kris crosses everything else fundamentally. And then one could say that it is experienced, I think one has to say that it is processed, just like radio waves are processed so that we can make sense of them. Because if they were not processed we would not make any sense of all the radio waves that one is exposed to. So let us say that the way we perceive the Universe is just a cross section of the total reality in which everything is everywhere, everything is in contact with everything else beyond the limitation of the speed of light. So you can't send a message to each other but they are still in contact. Because it's just like those lotus flowers, or water lilies that are all connected by the network of roots under the surface of the water. So this is a key to turning within. You have to give up your concept of the world made up of discrete entities with boundaries and accept this rather nebulous view where everything is related to everything else. That's why one way of helping our minds to overcome resistance in our thinking is to, I think Pir o Murshid, if I remember he said, A wave is a condition of the sea, and we are a condition of God. It's a good way of looking at God. We are not God, but a condition of God. And so our aura is a condition of the light of the Universe, just like a wave. And as you know a wave does not have a boundary. And so our aura sinks below the surface of the ocean of light into a subliminal area where everything is intertwined with everything else. Now that is what Gregory of Nicia call the uncreated light. 

Increata was the uncreated light. Jacob Boehm also mentioned it. He calls it the aurora consolcens. I think that that is what the physicists call the light field, instead of photons, the light field. Anyway we have to overcome our idea that light has to radiate from a particular source, or rather think that the uncreated light, or rather think that the all pervading light, that's the word of Murshid, converges in let's say towards that axis which is the center of of the vortex of our being, and from there radiates (ex manis) in all directions as our aura. The first practice we did we identified with our body, and we tried to enhance that faculty that our body has of absorbing and of radiating light. And then the second step which I didn't clarify very much which is we identify with our aura instead of with our body. And then we see that although our aura doesn't have a boundary, it tends to contract and expand as we inhale and exhale. So we are converging the light of the stars and boomeranging the light of the stars back into the stars. And now we come to the third step which is when we hold our breath ,we begin to discover the all pervading light that we converge and radiate as our aura. So that our aura does not only radiate and boomerang back to the stars, but in addition to that is able to radiate a new dispensation of light that emerges from a subliminal state which is, let's say the seed bed of the Universe that we are able to conceive of. Like as I said the Universe that we can conceive of is like the three dimensional cross section of a multidimensional Universe. 

So it's like the light of the whole Universe that converges into our three dimensional Universe, and is then radiated as our aura. Now that's a very powerful thought. It will make all the difference in your meditation. You see we are used to experiencing the world as other than ourselves, and so it's very challenging for our minds to realize that we are the world. That it is discovering itself in us as us. So were are used to looking out. Should one place a barrier between one's consciousness and what we perceive with our senses. Supposing that we place a barrier at the threshold of our senses, then our consciousness would turn within. It would reverse. It would about turn. Now that's the secret of turning within. But if your remember yesterday I said, it's not quite a barrier. It's more like the sentinels, so that one doesn't discard the outer world altogether, but one sees it from within and therefore has a different outlook on physical matter than one had before. So this will lead us to a practice which will help you to have a sense of this inner light. Be careful that we do not get, do some kind of hallucination and imagine that we're seeing light. Because that's not what it's about. It's not light that one can see. It's a very simplistic way of thinking. It's more being aware of light than seeing it, perceiving it. You would say feeling it but that's not very adequate term. So the practice does consist in, you know those statues of the three monkeys placing a barrier, obstructing one's sight, and one's hearing, and one's speaking, and one has to add, one's breathing, and so on. So this is the way to do it. You need to press the indexes of your hands on your eyelids. But you must turn your eyeballs upwards. otherwise you will being causing a reflex in your retina which gives you the impression of light. 

But it's just an optical illusion. You have to be very careful. It's just a matter of closing the eyelids so that no light can filter through the space between the eyelids. Then you place your fourth and fifth finger on our lips and hold them tight. Which has a psychological effect. Of course one is unable to communicate verbally. But also it reduces one's breathing through the nostrils. And event you reduce your breathing through the right nostril, not both nostrils. So you place the middle fingers of our hands on the your nostrils. Do not press them. Eventually when we do then we will simply release the middle finger of the right hand in order to inhale, the right hand, and hold your breath by pressing your middle finger of your right hand. And then exhale again by releasing the middle finger of your right hand. So you're only breath in and exhale through the right nostril. Three times. And furthermore you place your thumbs in your ears. And I left it to the last so you can hear what I'm saying. And after that then you take your hands away and keep your eyes closed. (pause for practice) You see that placing a barrier at the doors of perception is going to cause one to, favor let's say one's turning within and touching upon the all pervading light you must let's say. In some ways of course it is connected with our sense of time and space. There's a sense that space has collapsed. It's a very metaphysical thought. How can space collapse? 

Well it is our concept of space, three dimensional space, that collapses. That doesn't hold good anymore because our identity is no more constrained within our skin. And of course if you can think of this. Of course it's a scientific view and that is that all the let's say building blocks of the Universe are connected with each other internally, not necessarily externally. And so that if one changes everything else changes. Maxes law of inertia. So that if a wave rises in the ocean the whole ocean must adjust, or rather it is the whole ocean that emerges as each wave. If you can think that way then your sense of space undergoes a challenge. The words of Al Hallaj Where art thou God since my sense of space is collapsed? And the same thing where are the angelic spheres? Not located in space. You see space is only meaningful where there is matter. And gravitation is simply a concentration of matter. Where matter gets sparse then the sense of space begins to get weakened. And eventually for example when we are meditating on peace and compassion space has no meaning anymore. It's only meaningful with regard to the body. OK Now let's make a further practice. We have so little time. Well just imagine that you're looking into a bright light and you're absolutely fascinated, riveted by this light , it's so overwhelming, so beautiful. You can imagine it sparkling if you like, incandescent. And then could you imagine now a diaphanous rather than more concrete kind of light. The kind of eerie light that may come upon you in a dream. 

And that may give you another sense of another level of light than the gross physical light. Like a halo. Well now Hildegard von Bingen, who is that wonderful woman mystic who has now come to be recognized, German mystic. She said, I found myself in a world of light.. And you see if you think that indeed the Universe a Universe of light, is an ocean of light, then it's not imagination. It's really so, it's just a question of realizing it. You're looking into this light. And there is some kind of, we are programmed in such a way as to be protected because we would be blinded by too much light. And somehow one's passion for light, one's ecstasy gives one the strength to confront light. For example if you were to look with your naked eye into the sun at dawn, for more than perhaps, depends how nebulous the sky is. But if it is clear, even for more than a minute you'd probably burn your retina. And yet the rishis and some of us have done this and are able to do this and are able to look in to the sun for hours without being blinded. And there's a word of Plotinus, a Greek philosopher who said, To look into the sun you have to have eyes like the sun. Because if the effulgence of your eyes is very powerful, you will not be blinded by the sun. So Hildegard von Bingen was looking into this bright light of her imagination, overwhelmed by its splendor, almost blinded by it. Then she said it opened up into a further level world of light, sphere of light that was even more brilliant but less concrete. It averred itself to be like a gate that opened up into this further world of light. And then in turn this further world of light opened up into a still further, more subtle world of light. Now this is the key to what we call transcendence. And that's what we were going to study today. 

There is a further practice but I'm going to have to stop here and we'll continue after lunch, after breakfast. There is no doubt that these practices do make one otherworldly. 'n the other hand if one knows how to do it. If one has the will and power, one actualizes these realizations in what I called yesterday making states of conscious corporeal, embodying the higher dimensions of one's being by actualizing them and consequently one is a bridge between heaven and earth. God bless you.

SEP 01, 1995		Tape 07

...meditation right in the middle, we'll just continue. So there's a further practice called kasina, it's a practice, a Buddhist practice so let's just do it and we'll see how it works. [laughter] The explanation comes after as we pursue it, put the cart before the horse. So, imagine that you've painted a red piece of cardboard, you've made a discard of it and put it in front of your eyes and you look at it for some time, the red disk, and you close your eyes and you will be seeing a green disk. Reflex. But now supposing that instead of having a real piece of cardboard with red paint on it you were to just to imagine a red disk with your eyes closed and now you switch your consciousness. You do something to your consciousness, you switch your consciousness and all of a sudden you see a green disk. The only way to do it is to really imagine the red disk very very vividly. And if you are familiar with this practice and if you have done it a long, many times, you will find that the green disk is already there while you are looking at the red one. And if you go further then you find that there is an orange disk, the reflex of the reflex, and there's even a violet one, the reflex of the reflex of the reflex of the reflex. 'kay. 

Now, supposing that instead of it being a disk, of a colored disk, you were to imagine a light, a physical light, like we did before the break, looking into this bright light and do you remember what Hildegegard von Bingen said, it opens up into a further world of light. Well that's the reflex. So what you could do is you could do the same thing but internally now you switch something on and all of a sudden you are beginning to touch upon this reflex of physical light, at least what appears as the reflex of physical light. And when you get accustomed to it then, just like the red disk and the green, it is already there as you are zooming on the physical light, just like the overtones are already present when you are singing a tone, intonating a tone, a sound. And now you can proceed still further in fact in infinite regress, switching further up as it were, so that you touch upon the reflex of the reflex of the reflex. It gives you a sense of the many tiered universe of light of which in our commonplace perception and conceptualization we only experience the more immediate environmental phenomenon and we miss out on the overtones just exactly as listening to sound we are not always aware of the overtones. 

Now these levels of light or spheres of light, actually they are really spheres of light, are the clue to our accessing the celestial level of our being. So one could say that it is not really the light that we perceive. It is the light that is inherent within our perception of light, but which we do not distinguish, but it does represent levels of consciousness, levels of reality which may be zoomed upon by, if we are able to shift our consciousness. But it's the other way round sometimes, simply doing this will help shifting your consciousness beyond the earth, the level of the earth, the earth sphere. There's the word of Pir-o-Murshid, "as one evolves one tends to look to the heavens instead of to the earth." It's a stage that you go through as you evolve. It has a kind of a, exercises a kind of pull on your consciousness so when I say to you shift your consciousness you can do it with your will. But I would say there is such a thing as the ecstasy of light and it is that ecstasy that will lure you beyond the earthly manifestation of light into what Gregory of Nicea and St. John of the Cross called the uncreated light. 

Now, however there is one further step and it really is a quantum leap, so you really switch over now, because now instead of being the spectator of transcendental levels of reality, which you access through your creative imagination, you suddenly discover that your consciousness is a light, not a physical light, but it is what the Sufis call the light that sees rather than the light that can be seen. So just as you can cast a glance of your eyes upon a flower for example or upon a person, you can also cast the light of intelligence upon all things. It's purely a matter of switching one's sense of identity from being the support system, as I say the body or the mind or the psyche or the aura or the etheric body, into being the observer. 

You see if you think of yourself as a consciousness then the consciousness is receptive, just like if you think of your eyes as organs of perception then they are functioning in a perceptive manner. But we learned how to think of our eyes as active, thrusting light upon things and in the same way we can think of our intelligence as casting light upon meaningfulness and therefore here we distinguish between those two words, consciousness and intelligence. In consciousness it's passive, it picks up information and maybe that information is then processed, by our interpretation of it, we try to make sense of it, but intelligence is not, does not depend upon its object, the object perceived. In fact, it's not one of the poles in the antimony subject-object. 

Now I'll say this, Buddha described consciousness as a flame that needs a combustible, and so the flame can pass from one log of wood to the other as long as there is a combustible, so your consciousness is in the process of burning and therefore it is ephemeral. It is a continuity in change. It's not the permanent thing that one thinks it is, but the ground, but let's say intelligence, as Pir-o-Murshid says, "intelligence becomes consciousness when faced with an object." That is, a combustible. And if you relieve your consciousness of any kind of support, let's say a combustible, that is you're oblivious of the physical environment, and you're oblivious of your thoughts, as one does in yoga, then you find that consciousness cannot continue to survive without a combustible and therefore intelligence takes over. And intelligence gives you a mode of cognizance that does not rest upon experience. It is not derived from experience. So there are two modes of cognizance: the one, know-how and even the wisdom that we gain, by our experience on earth, and then a kind of inherent, protocritic, that's a word used in philosophy, protocritic knowledge that we have as our birthright that we don't have to develop it, we have it already, and so there's a matching between the two, for example, if we know the tables are round it's because roundness is somehow written in our intelligence, so it's a kind of mutual recognition system, recognition in computers for example, and therefore we thrust the light of our intelligence upon things and then we perceive things. There are two different modes that are complementary. 

So now this would be the state of illumination. Well as I say, you can never say you've attained illumination as the Upanishads say, it passes before you notice it. But still, just try to think that you are a luminous intelligence and your body is the donkey that's carrying this intelligence or schlepping this intelligence all about the world. But that's your support system, but you are pure luminous intelligence. That would be the state of awakening. Now I have presented those two poles of the same reality as though they were dichotomous but in fact they are complementary and they do relate to each other because it is because we recognize something that is already written in our intelligence that we can perceive the world. 

And what is more, and a little more difficult to understand, is that there is a recycling or feedback whereby our experience is fed back into our intelligence. I don't know if you can follow that, it's rather difficult. And that's why Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan said wisdom is born out of the meeting between, well I am paraphrasing Murshid's words, the meeting with, the intermeshing let's say or the integration between this inborn knowledge which he calls the knowledge of the heavens and the knowledge acquired by experience on earth and wisdom results from the intermeshing between these two. 

But you see it can only happen if you do not simply identify with being the perceiving consciousness. If you think as though, I would say that the practice would consist in simply identifying yourself with luminous intelligence -- nur arcley (?) is the word in Arabic, nur arcre, the light of intelligence, arcel, intelligent, and you realize that it is your freedom from dependence upon experience that will awaken the luminous intelligence in you. Pir-o-Murshid describes the state of illumination when he says it is as though you are awake amongst people who are asleep. And they have no idea what it is like to be awake. You are awake and you can see that they cannot have any clue as to what you are able to see. This is called illumination and of course it is awakening beyond life. It's that association of the word luminous with the word intelligence, otherwise it seems too intellectual. But that's why one uses the word illumination instead of awakening. 

But you realize that this is awakening beyond life and our objective is awakening in life. And so if you just think of yourself as luminous intelligence, having discarded the act of consciousness, then you get into a state of samadhi, otherworldliness, awakening beyond life, para karam, beyond the beyond and to awaken in life you have to be aware of the light upon the light of the Koran, the light upon the light. And that means several things, one it means that you are aware of the way in which your, the breakthrough of realization causes a whole outburst of light in your aura and furthermore to awaken in life you need to see how the light of intelligence that you thrust upon all situations calls for an enhancing of your consciousness. And consequently you are able to see, you see consciousness will perceive the facts, will be aware of the facts whereas intelligence is aware of meaning. Now to awaken in life you have to see how meaningfulness is enacted in the facts. So instead of remaining caught up by observing the facts, you are always extrapolating or rather interpolating and leading from the clue to the reality, to the meaningfulness beyond the clue. 

I don't know whether what I'm saying is too metaphysical. You see if as I've always said in Sufism the world is made of devices, that is clues. Those clues lead toward the intention that they are supposed to lead to. And so you follow the clue backwards as it were. In Sufism it's called taweel, reaching beyond the facts, and getting into, to say it more simplistically, to get into the divine intention, to grasp the divine intention. And you can't grasp the divine intention, it can only be revealed to you, you can't grasp it. 

Now you see the difference between awakening beyond life which is samadhi, when you identify not with the, you start by identifying with the observer, but finally the ultimate observer, but finally the, it's not an English word, the intention, the one who intends, whose intention the universe actualizes, and then awakening in life where you see that intention being enacted in the events. Now you could compare it with visiting the architect or then accompanying the architect to visit the building. But it's not the same thing as just visiting the building without the architect, that's awakening in life. You see the intention. So samadhi leads to otherworldliness and therefore the inability to take responsibility for one's problems, and awakening in life will give you illumination right in the middle of your problems. However, the architect might grace you by meeting you at the building, but you might want to visit the architect's office first, and that's why I believe that one needs to experience awakening beyond life before one learns how to awaken in life. I say that because I know there's a lot of resistance in the Sufi Order about awakening beyond life because it, because of the spiritual bypass, but I think the answer is that there is also a psychological bypass. So, tit for tat [laughter]. 

So okay now so this leads us to learning what are the steps that lead towards awakening beyond life and then we've been warned you know, that we need to, you know if you're learning how to fly a plane you have to first know how to land. So we've been warned, like you need to be able to land and once you know that then of course you can take off. So we've done that before, we've landed several times, I think, so I'll say breathe heavily and move your fingers and so on and get down to the rather trite reality of everyday life. So what are the steps then. Well, everything that we have done so far has been learning skills in order to turn within or clues that will help you to turn within. And as I say it is from this inverted state that one can reach upwards and that's a metaphorical way of speaking because there's no upward and downward. Transcendence doesn't mean higher up, it means beyond, exactly, beyond limitation, to transcend limitation. There's a difference, look up in your dictionary the difference between transcendent and transcendental. Well, the first thing is to be moved by imperative need to follow your bliss let's say, you're need, you have a kind of intuition, we have a kind of intuition that we don't know how to define, of a state of splendor and of ultimate meaningfulness which contrasts with some of the ugliness and chaos and cruelty that we find at the sensory level on planet Earth and perhaps on other planets in other worlds in the universe. 

There is we do have, you can just earmark it in your, in the depths of your being. It's not a very definite, you know, there's no proof of it, it's not even a, it's not an intellectual concept. It's just like one is very very deeply moved when one comes across anything that will evidence the splendor that one tries to imagine as being the condition of the heavens. So let's put it this way, that the beauty of flowers for example or of a sunrise or the mountains or music or whatever or people gives us a clue about the splendor that we ascribe to the heavens, but it's, we think of the heavens as elsewhere but it's not elsewhere, it's just because we're so used to thinking geographically. Exactly in the same way that as we said the physical world is made of clues that gives us some sense of the reality that is trying to transpire behind it. So you could say that wherever there is a touch of beauty, our mind seems to do what the Sufis call zaweel that is to proceed from the actual experience into trying to attune oneself or to, even to grasp that splendor which can never be grasped and which is beyond any attunement, somehow it's in infinite regress, like there's a capacity in the human being always to beat one's records, to reach beyond what one, or imagine that one can reach beyond what one has been able to encompass so far. And therefore, this is expressed in these words of Pir-o-Murshid, if one is motivated by a passion for the unattainable, if it could be attained, then, you know it's, that's what we're doing all the time, we're trying to attain things, but this is, it's (unintelligible) like Pir-o-Murshid says, like the horizon the further you advance the further it recedes. So it's not as though you can say I've got it now, I'm an illuminated being, now I've got illumination I put it in my pocket, [laughter], no it's always beyond. 

Someone asked me, "are you an illuminated being?" and I said, "no I don't think so." They said, "oh well it's very disappointing" [laughter] So I said "well, you know, don't be disappointed because maybe you're illuminated and you just don't know it." [laughter] That's a Zen koan, you see. So all right well then, so it is that nostalgia that will help you take off and I must say that it does pull one in the opposite direction to one's attachment to earthly conditions and so there's no doubt that it does mean as Pir-o-Murshid said, there's a second sentence, "loosen the ties with the physical world," loosen the ties. He doesn't say break the ties. And that's interesting because of course there are sanyasins in the Himalayas, the rishis, have broken the ties. 

I don't know if you know the story of the Gordian knot. There was a knot in a village in Greece and there was a legend that anybody who could unravel that knot would be able to conquer the world, so Alexander the First went there and he gave up trying to unravel it. He cut it and therefore he never conquered the world. 

So unraveling the ties instead of cutting them. Think of a personal relationship for example, the hurt of cutting the ties and the beauty of mutual respect whereby one tries to free that person from their dependence and you from your dependence so that you are mutually complementary in freedom. That's loosening the ties, that's not cutting the ties. And so the clue of this is of course the words of Christ, they are in the world but not of the world. 

So that has, is your decision. You have to decide whether that's what you want or, if it's not what you want, well, then you're wasting your time coming to my seminars. [laughter] No really, there's no point, I mean, just watch TV [laughter]. So I assume that if you came you are moved by a very deep nostalgia. It may be curiosity, is there something up there, is there something, you know, to whether we believe it or not, and I'm not trying to make you believe in anything as you know, I'm trying to make experience. So I'm trying to give you clues as I said. If you can see in something beautiful a reality that is trying to come through and that is much more wonderful than whatever you can see, but it's trying to come through, it transpires behind that which appears. Yeah. That will lure you upwards. 

So that means that one needs to be an ascetic and a knight at the same time. And Sufism is foto hut which is knighthood based upon the tradition of the knights of the Mazdean tradition. It's called fotohot, fotohot is an Arabic, Persian word, but ismabad, ismabad is the Mazdean word, pre-Zoroastrian, the way of the knights. So the knights are beings who have taken a, committed themselves, to make their ideal a reality in life. And therefore combat for what they value, and it leads them to protecting those who are the victims of brutality and cruelty and violence and greed. And it starts with a pledge. And initiation in the Sufi Order is called bayat which means a pledge. You make a promise, just like a knight, do you want to commit yourself to serve your highest ideal and therefore become an ambassador of the spiritual government of the world. That's the commitment. So you don't come because you want to learn or you want to be better, but because you want to serve. And in order to serve you have to become better. 

So okay, so if you are clear about that then you will find that you will be giving vent to your need to free yourself, gradually, and don't force it of course, otherwise you feel sorry for yourself, from your dependence upon worldly conditions. Sometimes the world sees to it that we can't depend on their conditions. That's the first thing. And we've met this all along the road. We found that in order to turn within we had to let go of the pull of the environment and so on and so forth and now it's, to put it in a simplistic way, it is freeing oneself from the pull downwards, it's a metaphor naturally, the pull from the earth, because you feel a pull from the heavens so somehow there's a need to loosen that pull from the earth. So those are two parameters. 

Now then, you'll, so I think that it really starts and I think any retreat should always start with what is called mohasibi which is an examination of conscience and you ask yourself, what is it that I really value in life? what do I really value in life? and then you ask yourself what am I doing in life, am I pursuing what I value? Then you realize that one was caught up in vying with the Joneses, and as I say the support system takes over so that one forgot that one wanted to climb the Himalayas because it's so important to build a very efficient support system. So that, it all starts with that, your meditations start with that. And I suppose that it does mean that if you value something then you have to pay for it. So there is a sacrifice, but if you feel bad about making that sacrifice then don't make it because you won't make it anyway. And it's true that if you force yourself you'll feel sorry for yourself, you mustn't do that. 

'kay so now you feel, like I do enjoy, you know the things that you enjoy whatever they are, yeah, but I also enjoy meditation, well if I have a choice, what is, what value do I attach to awakening. So if awakening is something very real for you, then you will be prepared to pay the price. 

Actually no it was Lane I think who said, who talked about, he was a psychologist who (??) peak experience so he divides the world in peakers and non-peakers. And he said, the peakers are paranoid because they are trying to convince non-peakers what it is like to peak. [laughter] So you understand the paranoia of meditation teachers who try to, yes what does it mean to be illuminated, what does it mean to awaken, how can you define it? So if you'll just think that your mind has the ability to keep on reaching beyond its limits, there's a kind of elasticity of our thinking, of our mind. There's a word of Poincare, Henri Poincare who said "infinity is the ability of the mind to always imagine a greater number than the one you have imagined so far." So somehow we have within us the ability to represent to ourselves perfection. But it's, you never grasp it, because it's always further, n'est pas, like the horizon. So if you can feel that, the pull towards beating your records as one says, reaching beyond your limits and the need to tear away from dependence and reliance upon worldly conditions that are in any case very precarious and absorbing and can really let you down. 

So if that, if you have that, then the next thing is to try to distinguish between the kind of emotion that gives you satisfaction, doing things that give you satisfaction, and the kind of emotion that you feel when you are uplifted, when you are inspired. The kind of emotion that you feel in a church or cathedral or synagogue or mosque or whatever, temple. Let's say, if indeed the conditions describe a state of sacredness or give you a sense of sacredness, then it awakens in you an emotion, pending emotion which can become such a necessity particularly if it's awakened, it's like drinking a, you're thirsty and you just drink a little bit and then you have even more thirst. So somehow the need for that quintessential ecstasy is so imperative, absolutely paramount, and so your other interests in life pale in comparison. 

And of course your tendency will be to get away, get away from everything in order to be able to pursue that passion, because it's really a passion. You can understand the ascetics leaving the world, leaving their families, abandoning everything for the sake of that, pursuing it. But then it's even more powerful if you are able to stay in your situation and still pursue it. That's what we're trying, that's the challenge of our lives at present. Things have changed. But then you need space, you need to create space. I have to end here. So we'll just continue this afternoon. Just remember that we need space, we'll try an create a space this afternoon. Bless you.

1

SEP 01, 1995		Tape 08

Practices with light. Just where we left off this morning. So, the key is if you really are very deeply moved by light, if the light is so very meaningful to you that you are just like a moth that is continually looking for the light. Until you discover the light of your own aura. So, what we, we need to get to a point when, for example just walking in the woods or wherever you are walking, you identify with your aura instead of your body. Now you are not walking, but still if you just identify with your aura, and it's very flattering to the ego -- just imagine that you have a crown on your head, a crown of light, and a mantle of light behind your back, and then two beams of light in your eyes. And it's very interesting to do this -- turn your eyes to the left and to the right, and it's just as though these headlamps of the car were being turned toward the right and left. And up and down. And you can make a circle. And then you're conscious of the radiation of your heart center, like a sun. And it is really the center of the aura. And then your solar plexis is more like the moon, receptive to light. 

OK So, now, what you could do is the following, just for the moment -- 'h, yes, you could concentrate on your third eye. So you have three beams of light. And, actually, the third eye is a beam radiated by the pineal gland. Well, it is, you see, light passing through the front of the brain, passing through the eyes, gets radiated along the optical nerves. But the light from the pineal gland, or anyway the light within the brain itself, does get filtered through -- it's only the high frequency light that passes through the skull. And if your concentration is on your glance, then that light will tend to form itself into a beam, and that's what we understand by the third eye. Therefore, it's generally described as being violet or ultraviolet light. And imagine the light of your eyes to be blue. And the light of your heart golden like the sun, and then the solar plexis more like a sort of orange. OK, now, can you move your head towards your left shoulder, and describe with those, well, you could describe it with your two, with the two beams of light from your eyes, you could describe three-quarters of a circle, moving down from your left shoulder to your left knee and then right knee and right shoulder and then up to the zenith, and then your head moves down, drops, turns down towards your solar plexis, and so that beam of light now is directed towards your solar plexis, or those beams of light. And then your head, you lift up your head, lift your head and turn your head upwards, and the beam of light now passes along the axis of your heart, throat center, third eye, crown center, the light at the top of your head, the crown. Now keep on doing it again, and you exhale as you make the circle. Turn your eyeballs upwards at the end of your ascent, and the end of your turning your head upwards. Hold your breath. And get back into the circle again. Inhale as your head comes down, and continue to inhale as your head comes up again. And hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upward. (long pause)

OK now, imagine that instead of describing a circle of light, you're describing a spiral of light, that extends further and further into space, and you know, there's always the inverted spiral, that as the, as you release centrifugal forces, then the centripedal forces that compensate and that's moving towards the center, which is your solar plexis. 

OK, now identify with your whole aura, and so your aura is whirling, all the colors of the rainbow, and building a temple of light. And centrifugal forces will give you the impression that you are clearing a space in the center, a sacred space, and centripedal forces converge and now they converge in your heart center, so there is a shift from the accent on the solar plexis to the accent on your heart, the center of your spiral has shifted upwards. And now you move your head, of course as you move your head upwards, you shift your concentration from the heart center to the throat center, the third eye, and the crown center. And what we need to do now is to imagine, it might be helpful to imagine a staircase, a ladder of light that you're climbing, and you remember what you did at the end of this morning's meditation, the spheres of light described by Hildegaard von Bingen, and also the (*Casina?) practices. The reflexes. So just imagine that you are reaching from one level of life (light?) to the other, from inside the temple. (pause)

And as I said, the Jews of the desert and the Arabs could not perform their prayers in a synagogue or in a mosque, and therefore, they had to create their own temple. It was a temple of light. And you must, when you hold your breath you must concentrate on that very subtle light at the top of the head and beyond. There's no limit at any point, so it keeps on higher and higher. But remember, you inhale as your head comes down and continue to inhale as your head rises, and then you hold your breath and turn your attention, turn your eyeballs upward and your attention above your head, press your tongue against the palate. (pause)

Now, there's one more point, and that is that as your head comes down -- first of all let us remember that if you circumambulate a temple, you're strengthening concentration on the temple. And as we're circumambulating the center of, the vortex of our magnetic field, that is the solar plexis, then that has an attraction for us. And when the head is turned upwards, then one is the most -- how can one say -- one's center of balance is the most precarious, and that's where the centripedal forces of the solar plexis draw your head downwards into that inverted space that we discovered as we turned within. And having touched the bottom then, a new dispensation of light arises from the void, in the solar plexis, and radiates forth as your aura from the heart center, and then you keep on moving up from one sphere into the next. OK. Now, once more, after doing the circle, with your whole aura, building the temple of light, when your head has reached the zenith, has turned towards the zenith, at the end of the circle. Now, all of a sudden you make that quantum leap that we learned to do this morning, and you identify with the light of intelligence. And now as your head comes down, the light of intelligence, releases the inner light, a kind of explosion of light, and this is what is meant by "a light upon a light". Like a chain reaction of light. So you have that moment of samadhi, I would say, of very high transcendental awareness at the end of the circle, the apex, the zenith of the circle, and then the light upon the light as your head descends, the explosion of light in the subliminal levels of the void, and then the emergence of a new dispensation of light that rises and acts as a ladder which leads you from one sphere to the next. 

And, now, as you hold your breath and think of, identify yourself with luminous intelligence, now, this -- and the way I do the -- and this is the zikr of light -- the way I do it is a little more difficult. I divide the exhaling in two also, not just the inhaling. And therefore, as I start exhaling I think upon, I think about the way that the light of intelligence unleashes the light of my whole aura and therefore sets off these centrifugal forces in my aura. And then that first half of the exhaling is followed by a second half, in which I am whirling my head and therefore the whole aura. And then once more I identify with the light of intelligence, and then as the head comes down, now I am reaching right into the depths of the solar plexis, and it's just like a tremendous upheaval, and, in the subliminal level where the light is being -- how can I say -- awakened by the act of luminous intelligence, and therefore now it's not the aura any more, it's not the physical aura that radiates centrifugally, but levels of the aura, levels of light, in what might call the transcendental dimension instead of the cosmic. 

I think I must have explained this wrongly now when I remember how I do it. It's I, the period when I'm holding my breath, that's the one I divide in two, not my exhaling. I am holding my breath, and first of all, at the end of the ascent, one is in a state of samadhi, awakening beyond life, and then ones head turns toward the heart, and that is the awakening in life. And that's why, that corresponds with the h and the u in "La illaha illa'lah hu." H is samadi, and then the Hu, human, you see, the divine becoming human, hu, awakening in life. And then one goes into the circle. I said it wrongly then. You divide the holding of your breath into two parts. 

Now, that's the first way. I have to do it to remember.  It's the first half of the exhaling that is descending into life, awakening in life, concentrating on the heart center, and then the head moves up just slightly and gets into the circle again, that's the second half of the exhaling. 

So now, you need to be clear about several things. FIrst of all you need to be able to feel or be aware of the effulgence around your body. And you need to be aware of the inverted light and the inverted space that plunges into the void through the center, through the solar plexis. That's the all pervading light Pir-o-Murshid talks about. You need to be aware of the beams of your two eyes, in fact in ( 's) practice you would do it simply with your third eye. And further then, you need to be aware of the light above your head, the light that radiates from your heart and the light above your head, and have some sense of levels of light, whether we had some clue to that when we were doing the Casina practices. And then one has to be able to identify with the light of intelligence. And the word, "nur" means the light of intelligence, the light of the aura, that is "munawwer", but nur is the light of intelligence.

OK, now there's, something happens if you do this a lot in a retreat. You are building a temple, to make a sacred space, to invite the divine presence, and all of a sudden something is revealed to you, and the only way to say it is that you discover that you are the priest in the temple. Because what is revealed to you is your celestial face, because your aura has a face. And that face, you can't be aware of it as you're whirling, but as your head ascends, in the samadhi state, the all of a sudden, your celestial face is revealed to you, and then you feel called upon to commit yourself to act as an ambassador of the divinity, as a ( ). 

So, you tend to turn your head upwards at the end of the ascent of your head as it moves upwards, and as you hold your breath you tend to keep your head turned upwards, and you do that while you're in the samadhi state, awakening beyond life, beyond the beyond, and like it's a suspense of space and time. And now you awaken in life, and that's where you exhale and turn towards your heart center. So now, this is, you could call this a zikr of light, and indeed it's a very powerful practice. 

And now we might go a little more into detail and try to see if we can get some clues as to what we mean by those spheres. And so, there are clues in the esoteric schools of different religions, for example the Hekaloth of the Jews, or the angelic spheres according to Diogen.......? in the Christian tradition, and then you have the Sufi ones. And so when you concentrate on your heart, there are different interpretations, but this is the one that I feel ( ), when you concentrate in your heart, you, you have lifted yourself above the earthly conditions and are experiencing your celestial state. So, it is at the edge of form, there's still some idea of configuration, it's not exactly form, there's no profile, but still there's some sense of your celestial countenance or expression. And then you pass by a center which is very rarely described, that is not described by the Hindus, and the Tibetans call it the "Wheel of Fire" and which corresponds to the thymus gland. And then you shift your attention to the throat center, maybe the thyroid gland. So when you shift from the heart center to the wheel of fire, that's when you let go of any sense of form whatever, let alone matter, and then your attention is drawn towards yourself as an extension of the divine spectator, the witness, shahid, the witness. 

And then when you turn towards the throat center, then you lift your consciousness to the level that the Sufis call lahut, I call it the archetypes, and I called it the treasuries. Buddha calls it the sphere of all possibility. The Christians call it lugos, at least the Hesicath Christians. And now your eyeballs are turned towards upwards, and you reach the, it's not a plane now, how can I say, the perspective of unity, Ahad, unity. And ultimately it's all one, and different aspects of the one. So it is that oneness that will get you into a state of samadhi. For example, if you're walking the street and you're in a very high state, and all of a sudden it looks like an ants nest, and it looks like all these people are really like the cells of one being. So, you're beginning to sense unity, and when you discover that we're all enmeshed with each other, then you can find somebody in your self, and you know that you can be found in another person. Then, again you have a sense of unity in diversity, or diversity in unity. I use the word Vadat and Vadyadat. And then if you reach a little bit further upwards, you lose the perspective of diversity. It's like for example, a distillate which has reached the  point of saturation, and now you begin to see the minerals, the crystals coming out, salt water for example, and before that you can't see the -- or it's the other way around, a state in which you can't see the crystals anymore. It's just one homogeneous distillate. You know the crystals are there, but they are resorbed in the unity. That would give someone some indication of what is meant by samadhi. 

At that point, well, I suppose it would be simplistic to say that one has a feeling as though one had flown in outer space outside the cosmos, but that is not an acceptable physical concept. Because space is, how can I say, curled upon itself. But that's a sense of having lifted oneself beyond the existential state, or at least the existential state has fallen out of focus. And then one realizes it is all a matter of focus, you see, like looking at a hologram, you can change your focus, and you can get to a point when the existential level is out of focus, the existential world is out of focus. And so, we, in our common language, our commonplace language, we say, you have descended through the spheres. You have not descended through the spheres. That would be displacing oneself. You have shifted your focus from one perspective to another. So that, we think that we are what we think we are, because that is the way it appears from a certain perspective. From another perspective, things look different again. An example is, for example, a king thinks he is a king because he sits on the throne and people call him majesty, but if they don't  then he does not know that he's a king. Or you might be rich, but you didn't know that your father left you an inheritance in the bank, so you think you're poor. 

Or you might think you're an old man or a young woman, and that's a condition of your being, but that's not what you are. As Pir-o-Murshid said, "We are a condition of God." And so in this state of samadhi you have attained God' s state in what the Sufis call azaleat. They call it, well, I call it transiency, and they often call it pre-eternity, but that doesn't make sense to me, pre-eternity. Transiency. So that you have overcome time, that is you're not caught up in the perspective where time is meaningful. You've overcome space, so that you're not caught up in the perspective where you think of yourself as located somewhere in space./ And you have escaped causality, at least you are not aware of the way that causality affects your body because you're not aware of your body. So, it's like being backstage of the Universe. And so there's the impression that I have been caught in a perspective, and now I've been freed from that perspective, and now I can see behind the scenes. It's like you have been looking at a film of ET, and you've been laughing and crying and caught in a perspective obviously. And now you enter into the mind of Spielberg, and then you say, ah, of course, he was very clever in finding devices which could communicate his intention to simplistic minds. As if you've been able to get into the mind of Spielberg, you didn't need the film. That's God-conscousness.

And well so far we are missing out on its ground, its seedbed, its source of life, of bounty, let's say its pool of resourcefulness. Consider your personality (blank space on tape)

You see how that word maya is the clue. You're caught in maya, illusion, it's the same word as magic. Life is magic and imagination. And the way of the Magi, same word. The Universe is the imagination of God that became actualized. And our imagination is an extension of that imagination that gets actualized in cars and computers and hang-gliders, and . . . (music plays, sounds like electronic Bach), laughter. You've been waking up at night. (music) He's describing the motion of the galaxies. as it passes through his brain. (music) (laughter as music stops)

Yes, the marvel of being alive. And the marvel of being together here on this special occasion. And the marvel of getting out of the cobweb of our consciousness. So, you can do it. You didn't think you could do it, but you can do it. You switch something on, and all of a sudden you're in samadhi. Letting go of something that's holding you back and following your nostalgia to, well, to understand, to grasp meaning, the meaning behind whatever happens, beyond what you can ever, ever perceive, conceive. It's a very strong impulse. It's exactly like awakening, for instance awakening in the morning, after going to sleep at night, awakening. You're letting go of your dream. And I'm sure that there's some sort of impulse in us that wants to awaken. Actually, we don't always want to awaken. But still there's both. There's also that need to awaken. 

And now I have mentioned the opposite; that you awaken from the day state into the sleep state. And first of all you awaken in the sleep state with dreams. So, that's imagination. And then you go into deep sleep, where there are no more images, you awaken in deep sleep, but you don't know that you awaken in deep sleep. But there's a technique used by yogis that's called Nidra yoga, which consists in maintaining a certain amount of awareness while you're sleeping. So, perhaps some of you know this. You're aware of the sound of the cars in the street, and the furniture in the room, and even of your body. And there are all kinds of pictures that keep on being projected onto the screen of your mind. And you can't really control them, and they are totally incongruous, and so you are freewheeling a little bit. You have let go of the day state. But you're in a kind of intermediary world, which the Sufi's call an intermediary world. 

Shahabuddin Surwawardi. Ib'n Arabi also, of course. An intermediary world which he says, which Sufis compare to the images in a mirror which are not where you think they are. In fact they are not even, well, then, not ( -----sile), as in the world of imagination. And then you awaken in your sleep. Of course we know that. We know that there is a switch during your sleep from a state where you're what they call rapid eye movement, where you have images, dreams, and then deep sleep, and that's what you can observe in a laboratory. But now, those who are practicing nidra yoga willfully awaken from that state of reverie, where you are a little bit conscious of the environment but not very much, so you are in a threshold state. So you're dreaming awake, a little bit like, you're in the threshold state. Now, if you can do that, it requires a lot of discipline. Then you awaken from the dream state, and it's very difficult, because as Buddha says, consciousness needs a combustible. So, if there are no thoughts and no images, then normally consciousness will peter out, you see. And, it's not like, you're not aware of images so you're aware of something else. No, you're not aware of anything anymore, there's no object anymore. And yet, you are aware. And so, the only way to say it is that this knowledge is revealed and not acquired. It's like internally, it's revealed like you know sometimes when you have an intuition, and it surfaced all of a sudden, without your having causated it at all. 

It's like, I think, well, one has the impression of omniscience -- that one knows without having any support for ones knowledge. That's what one calls intuition. There's no support, there's no experiential support for ones knowledge. So, you are really in a state of suspense without, you've left your crutches behind. So, the yogis, now it's not the yogis, it's the Vedantists, who compare this state with, well, the state of awakening, the different stages of awakening, they compare that with the stages of sleep. Sleep with dreams, and sleep without dreams. They call it prajna. It gives you incredible insight. 

For example, you're talking to a person and you can see exactly why they're saying what they say. And that would make a very good psychologist, if you can do that. Instead of just taking for granted what they're saying. You may say, "Ah, yes, of course, I see why they say that, because they see things from a certain point of view. I'll give you another example of that. I was in a group amongst people who were visiting a rishi in a cave in the Himalayas, and it was quite dangerous country. There were wild elephants and tigers and bears....and there he was sitting there in ecstasy. And so the people in the group asked him what I considered to be very stupid questions. And there he was, like "don't bother me." I mean, really, I couldn't understand what they were doing. He was trying to understand how they think. And so that's so typical of the samadhi state, where you think differently now. In fact, you might even remember having thought the way those people are thinking, but now you don't you've risen above that. So it's very difficult to get down to the way people think ordinarily. You see, all the incongruences in people's way of thinking, all the assumptions and suppositions and acts of faith and conditioning, and all the confusion. And you see clear. You're awake. Now, you can do it. 

Don't think that it's just other people who live in the caves who can do that. We live in modern caves now, with electronics and things. So, it's not the place that makes any difference. But it's something that happens to you. As I said, the Upanishads said it passes before you realize it . So don't think, "I can really hold it." So, if you accept not to be able to hold it, then -- or you can do, like, shake yourself. Yes, shake yourself. Yes, that's good, because most of the time when one is meditating one is half-dead. Yes, but now, wait a moment. That's just the beginning. Shaking yourself. Now, you have to give your consciousness a jolt, like, be very aware. And in the here and now. Just think that this is illusion, here, down there. You see, you can do it? I remember visiting, well meeting a psychotherapist, who was accompanied by the father of Dr. (Exxon?) . . . And so, here was this man, I couldn't believe my eyes, he was so ( ). He was awake. That's why he was looking like that. He was awake. He saw into each person and that's why he was such a good psychotherapist. 

So, I have learned very much from the glance of my eagle. Because that's the way my eagle looks. (laughter) OK now, we're going to break right now. Half an hour. (end of tape)

1

SEP 01, 1995		Tape 09


Now, that's very important, because a lot of people feel that even, well precarious, and even depressed because they don't seem to make any major steps in life, or don't seem to have the recognition that they would like, and consequently they feel that they are not up to much. I mean, they have a low profile, and so I hope that some of the things that we have been doing will help you to realize just how unreliable self image is. I've said that over and over again. Sometimes I wonder whether it really has registered or whether I'm just talking to a black hole, but I hope that it's really sunken in. I've said it so many times, but it's no use my saying it. You have to, it's really a matter of, you see I've been giving you ways of thinking, that are very different from the commonplace ways of thinking and are keys that can trigger off certain realization. So, if you use that thought it's like a shoehorn, like a trigger that will set off in your situation a new way of, a new realization. And we're stuck in our lives by where our realization is at. As everyone is in life according to their degree of realization. So, that's what we've been trying to do. But it only works if it really has made a difference in your way of thinking. otherwise, I wonder what I'm doing.


Now, it is true that if we are idealists and courageous. I think we all entertain an ideal, but it may not be very clearly defined. But somehow, when faced with the nitty gritty, we doubt our ideal. We wonder if it's just fantasy. And you've got to cool it and come to a more rational way of thinking. And that could lead to disenchantment and then even a lack of motivation, and that's why Pir-o-Murshid says, "Undertake something which is a little less than your capacity. Don't overstress your capacity." And then, with the power that you will gain by doing this, then you will be able to take on a greater challenge. So, I see people starting with a lot of high ideals about things, and not having enough practical know-how as to how to make it really happen, and then losing confidence in themselves and also losing belief in their ideal. So, it's better to do it the other way around. And, I can tell you from experience, because, as you know, I'm a falconer, and if you fly the falcon to your hand. And if you fly it from too far, then it will lose confidence. You have to always increase the distance, but very gradually, and just feel if you are overstressing the falcon's confidence, then you mustn't do it. And that's what we are doing all the time. You see. 

So, it's really a matter of testing your trust in yourself and testing it step by step. I'm convinced that it's not just a matter of realization. There's faith in it. There's trust. And it's not mental. No, it's trust like your ability to do something which you thought you couldn't do. I've told this story once. It was in Chamonix. We were climbing the mountain, and it was very rough, and the rocks were very brittle, and we knew that we could never come down by the same way we went up. And the only way was, there was a wall of ice. And we didn't have ropes. So we had to knock a hole with our boot in the wall of ice and then let go of our foot and put our hand there and then make another hole. And for hours and hours, climb down the wall. Never would I have thought that I could do it. It's like that story that woman with the cobra. She would never have thought she could pet a cobra. So, you discover capacities in you that you didn't think you had. But you can only discover them by doing it. So, there is according to the Sufis, there is a knowledge that is gained by doing. So, for example, a sculptor discovers his/her statue by making it. And you would think you would first have to know it and then make it. But, both are true of course. You have to have some preconception of it. But there is a knowledge you gain by doing. 

Now, of course, some people at an early age have a very clear idea as to what they want to do, and take the steps necessary to make it really happen. And other people are not quite as clear as to what they want to do. And it might be forced into doing something by their parents for example. For example, I know a man who always wanted to be a musician, but his father took away his piano and wanted him to become an engineer, as his father was an engineer. And now, at the age of 40, he wants to become a pianist. And he's losing his job because he is following his bliss.

So, we would like to know what our talents are. And that is something which really depends upon what is really very meaningful for you. You see, ultimately, one can only be really fulfilled if one has the feeling that one is contributing a certain service to ones fellow being, or even to the planet. There's a saying of Feriduddin Atar, who was one of the Sufis, who said, "The world is a field. All you have to do is to cultivate it." So, if you're wanting to know what to do, all over the world there are things to do. There is no lack of things to do. But, of course, there are things that you can do better and things that you can't do so well. So, somehow, meditation might be a rehearsal for life, rather than a retreat for life. So, instead of jumping into situations, it would be much better if you would try to get in touch with your deeper self, or your resourcefulness. There's a wonderful illustration of this in the 4th piano concerto of Beethoven that I often play, second movement, where Beethoven described the world as the orchestra and himself as the pianist. And it's a very clear case where the world comes with a challenge -- bum bum bu bu bum -- and he, instead of, you know if you were reacting, you'd react strong. See? No, he, it's duh, dee, duuh......" He's saying, "No, I'm not ready to play with you. I need to consult my deeper self." And so, you can consider meditation as an opportunity to place a buffer between the challenge of the world and your resourcefulness. Because otherwise you're not going to master all the pool of resourcefulness in your being. If you react, you're short-circuiting. 

And so then, as you turn within, now you can do now, what I call introspective work, if you like. And, as I said this morning, when we were doing it, I think, and that is what are the things that I really value in life. And that's not the only consideration. The first one. And the second one is, "Well, there are things that I'm good at and things that I'm not good at. Do they correspond to the things that I value, or not?" And the third consideration is, "What is, am I challenged in the world?" That is, every situation calls upon certain qualities in your being. So you ask yourself, "What are the qualities in my being that are called upon by this situatioN?' For example, I have a boss who keeps on bullying me, and the question is how can I counter this very demeaning attitude of my boss which is so bad for my self confidence. Now that's a typical situation. It might not be a boss. It might be a wife or a husband, or anybody. A teacher. 

So, how do you deal with it? Now, if you were to react you'd think, 'Well, I need to have more strength, and then he won't be able to bully me." As I said, if you were Abraham, your boss wouldn't bully you. Well, since you are not Abraham, that's perhaps not the best method. So, maybe there are better ways that are more subtle. Because, conflict breeds conflict. It doesn't get you anywhere. And giving in doesn't get you anywhere anyway. And those seem to be the two alternatives. So, is there a third one. Yes. And that is, the person who is trying to undermine you, and you know life is a game of egos, who is dominating whom, even in marriage situations. And if you don't have the rough ego of the person who is trying to demean you then you are the loser. And if you're a fine person, you don't have that kind of ego power. And then you'll find that the person who is trying to undermine you will always try to draw you upon their battlefield, where they can dominate. And so, but they can't quite, they don't feel secure in your battlefield. And the only way to avoid your drawing them into your battlefield is to say, well, that's nonsense. You're just up in the moon. You don't have your feet on the earth. You know, that's a typical argument. You've probably heard it a number of times. You're not with it. So, for one thing, one thing that we learn is not to take opinion for granted, to question the opinion of people. Don't let it affect you. It's not ( ). And that's true of your own opinion, also. And it's true of my opinion. 

So, you see, your battlefield, if you are a fine person, is detachment. And people can't trap you because they can't get ahold of you, because you're free. And the best example of that is that woman who was lynched in the Southern states who said, "You can do what you like with my body, but you can't touch my soul." So, let's say, you can try and make me angry or upset, but in fact I won't be upset. It's called Varaigya, the way of indifference of the sanyasin, is very operative in everyday life. We can learn from the ascetics something that is operative in the nitty-gritty of our everyday lives. 

Because one thing that people who will try to dominate you will do is to try to make you angry, and then you lose your power if you get angry, or sometimes you frighten the other person. But sometimes there is a point in getting angry, but one can, there is such a thing as an explosion or an implosion. You have heard of that word implosion. That means that the energy is kind of contained, and they feel it. Like the dervish says, "Don't come near me, I'll burn you." It's not an explosion, it's like a sort of inward force. ( ) People will try it on. Like children will try it on. And they like to know where they have to stop. It's good for them. It gives them a sense of security. "I'm allowed to do this, but after this, I'm not allowed to do any farther." So the same with people. So, your love and compassion has got to be balanced by severity and discipline, and the person knows that you have that sense of the boundaries. And that's why in the Kabalah for example, you have this opposition between (fesed) and (din) for example, between compassion, it's actually rahman, magnanimity, as I said. And then, din is the law, the restraint, the constraint. So, that all is balanced. And unless you understand that, you'll just give vent to your compassion, and your compassion will be abused over. And that's the reason why, when I'm giving wasifas, which are concentrating on certain qualities, I would always, if I prescribe the quality rahman, which means compassion, or, it doesn't mean compassion, it means experiencing magnanimity, then I would give at the same time, for example Qaher, which means "authority." at the same time. 

And the reverse is also true. If a person needs to have a little more strength -- and you will often find that it is kind-hearted people who don't have the strength to stand by what they believe out of the goodness of their heart. Their kindness becomes indulgence, and that's why there is a place for mastery, and the other way around of course. And that is that if one has a lot of mastery, one needs at the same time to be considerate to other people. So those two qualities are really very nicely -- one needs to balance, and be very aware of how one needs to balance them. So, I would say that what Beethoven was doing here was placing a buffer between the challenge of the world and himself, and starting to consult himself and discovering potentialities in his being. And here again, these potentialities became, let's say were awakened in him, by composing his melody. You see, by doing the qualities become real by doing something. And therefore, when you are meditating on those qualities, you have to think, "Well, when I see this person again, then I am going to say this or do this. I mean it's got to be very practical. Instead of saying, " I need to have more compassion," or "I need to have more power." I am thinking of a specific case in which I want to try to understand how I can handle my relationship with this person, and therefore, I will try to see if I can be firm and kind at the same time, or I can be kind and firm at the same time. And how can I do it, and how can I say it to this person. 

And sometimes it's good just to speak to this person and say, "Look, I have to open my heart and be frank with you, and there is something in you that I perceive as being hostile to me. And maybe you don't realize it, but that is how I perceive it. And maybe it's not true and it's just the way I perceive it. And so," Yes, well now you have a really clear encounter, and I've done it with people who, you can't imagine the kinds of things I experience sometimes, with giving a lecture, and there is always someone looking at me like this, and looking at their watch, and being very nervous and so on and disturbing the whole thing. And, well, once is enough, and then there's a second time and third time, and I think, well, I must do something about this case. And so I go up to the person and say, "Well, what is it. There is something. You're trying to do something to me, and perhaps you don't realize it, but I must be frank to you. Really, I find it very disturbing." And, it's really very disarming. You know. And so, I don't know whether you would shock a person, outright, by saying, "You know, I have a feeling that you are trying to dominate me. But, I don't want to be dominated. You know, I have my own personality, and I have my own opinions about things, and you can be frank about it. In a marriage situation, for example, you can say, "Well, the time has come when we've got to talk together, now." Or you can even say, "You know, you and me, we were different people when we married, and now we're different people than we were when we married, and so, we will have to renew our marriage, or at least adjust ourselves. And I want you to know how I've changed. And I want to know how you've changed."

And you realize, that when you are saying how you've changed, you are using the language of wasifas. You are saying, "Well, you know, I've become much more truthful than I was", or, "I've become much more conscious or much more wary of causing pain to other people." 

Or, "My need of high attunement has become so desperate now, that I can't really feel happy in a low-key situation." Or whatever. I mean, but those words that I'm using, those are the wasifas. More truthful, that's haqq. Need for more service, malakut, for example. And I need to be in a high attunement, ya azim or ya ali. So, we're talking about qualities. 

So now, when you consider the challenge of the world, if you turn within, you could ask yourself what are the qualities that the situation is calling for. But of course you are figuring it out with your mind, and remember that your concern then is to adapt yourself to the environment. And we have learned in meditation that if your prime thoughts are concern with the environment, you have difficulty in turning within. And perhaps you know that in life there is always a balance between the degree to which we adapt ourselves to the environment and the degree to which we adapt the environment to our own sense of purpose. And so, at first your concern when you tried to figure out what were the qualities that you would need in order to meet the challenges of the environment, your first consideration is how can I adapt to that situation by developing qualities that will help me to meet that situation. But, as you turn within, Well, let's just do this very quickly, very briefly. Think of a situation, your particular rapport with a person, and you think to yourself, "Well, yes, that's a challenge, and maybe I should develop certain qualities that would help. What would those qualities be.? Should I develop more power, should I be more compassionate, should I have more patience, should I be more truthful, should I be more peaceful, should I be more tolerant?  Should I be more patient? Difficult to be patient. Well, elephants have a great problem in in accepting the agitation of chickens. (laughter) That's a problem with patience.

So, you develop qualities by facing a situation which requires you to develop those qualities. 

OK so, now, we have learned to turn within. What I'm trying to do is to see how meditation can help us to deal with our problems. If you are trying to figure out what is a quality you need to deal with a particular problem, you are using your mind, your ordinary, commonplace mind. But now, we've learned to turn within. And therefore our mind thinks differently when we turn within. And if you remember what I was saying, is that when you turn within, you discover an emergent yourself, yourself emerging and unfurling from within. And I would add, irrespective of the challenge outside.

So now, as you turn within, you're not concerned with, "What are the qualities I need in order to meet my problem?" but, "What are the qualities that are coming through in me at this moment?" For example, there was a moment, a time in my life when I was impressed by the authority of people, like the professors, and then  there was a time when I was impressed by the humility of the saints, and then there was a time when I was impressed by the intelligence of brilliant people, and then there were times when I was impressed by the beauty of people, the kindness in people. There was a time when for me the most important thing was service, instead of authority. And so on. And so you go through different phases. And the Sufis call is "maqum", different phases, different stations. Now, what station are you in now in your life?

Now, supposing that you were very strongly aware of that quality, you could reinforce it. It's trying to draw your attention, to make itself known to you by passing over the threshold between the unconscious and the conscious. And as soon as it begins to break through that threshold, like a crocus breaking through the snow, then turn your attention towards it. Because otherwise, it will be still-born. Like a little fresh sprout that needs protection. And you can build a little fence around it, or however you can protect it. otherwise it will be still-born. So, it's like the awareness -- like, "I'm in a state now of truthfulness. Now, that's the maqum, the stage in which I am now. So what does it mean? It means that I go and talk to this person and tell him what I think. Even if my whole life is shattered, that's what it means." otherwise, it will be still-born. Or, "I'm in the phase of majesty, dignity, and so I can't go on slovenly as I have been doing so far. I must remember, be aware of the divine status of my being, to uphold the dignity that I'm invested with. So, immediately it has big consequences in the way I walk, the way I sit, the way I talk to people, and so on."

So, the consequence is that you will become a richer and richer personality, and that will alter the situation, which you couldn't alter by your will. But since you are a different person, your whole relationship with that other person is going to change. And you might find that, if you had tried to adapt yourself to the environment, maybe it, there was a misassessment on your part, and it doesn't work. And when you're turning within, you were not concerned with whether it would have any application in your problem, and in fact ultimately you find that it does. And so what I'm saying is, "Bring your world with you wherever you go," instead of feeling that, shoulding yourself into adapting yourself to what people want you to do or want to be. And then the qualities in your personality will unfurl. If you give them scope, then they will unfurl. But that means your psychological space. You have to have that psychological space, "This is me, and it's what I am becoming now, and people will have to adjust to it." And there will be conflict. You know, people will try to hold you to where you were before. Like the mommy of the President says, "My Johnnie." It's difficult for her to recognize that he's the President of the United States. You know, so, it's like the Buddha, after his fast, and people were, the disciples who had abandoned him because he broke his fast were curious to find out what he was like now, and all he said was, "Have I ever spoken to you thus before?" He wanted them to know that he was not the same person that he was before. So, you have to recognize the change in you and do not allow people to continue to force you into the pattern that they project upon you. And you can say it, "I'm a different person." And they will say, "Nonsense, what do you mean?" And you say, "Yes, I'm a different person. You'll find out. I'm a different person now."

Well, that's the second thought. The way that we adapt the environment to our own sense of purpose. And you know in evolution, the more advanced animals adapt the environment to their own sense of purpose. 

However, we have been trying to grasp the unfurling of our being, the way that nature itself organizes itself in us, without our own will. To put it in a rather outrageous way, we could say, "God is manipulating my personality to make it what He wishes it to be." And that's not a very nice thought. So, as I said, it's true that nature does self-organize itself, but there's a point when one has to take over. And so the third question is, "How would you like to be?" Not how is life making you, but how would you like to be? And so, if your concern is how am I becoming, somehow surreptitiously, there is some sense of being conditioned, and that means causated by the determinism, causality, the determinism of the past. But, to be what you want to be, you have to project into the future. 

And that's why the slogan -- it's become a slogan now -- "the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. It's now being recognized in science. It's amazing that a change in science now in physics , as it was based on determinism, and now Precogine is opening a whole new field, like attractors that are drawing one -- the possibility of the future, although it is not yet there, is still drawing one out of the past. It's the ultimate optimism. And you'll remember there's a word of my father, said, "The optimist takes the chance of losing, but the pessimist loses the chance of winning." So, I see people who have lost hope. In this very troubled world in which we live, people have lost hope. And the message is, "Never lose hope." Even if everything breaks down -- That's another thing that I need to mention, but I get -- it's all right -- Anyway, let's follow this idea first, and then another one. 

How would you like to be? So, turning within will give you a sense of that which is beginning to surface in your being. But how you would like to be is not something that you can assess by turning within. You can only assess it by turning upwards. And you remember in our meditations, we start by turning inside, and now we made a start this afternoon in learning how to turn upwards. It was only a start. We have to pursue that tomorrow morning. You might just call it transcendence.

It's only if you're in a high state that you can see how you could be. When you're in your normal consciousness, you can't. One could illustrate it, of course. And that is, if you are walking in the streets, you can't see very far, and so imagine that you were able to -- or a better example would be imagine that you're sitting in a train and all that you see is the present that keeps on moving, through the windows, but if you -- this won't be allowed, except in India -- but if you were to sit on top of the train, then you already see the future. So, if you get higher up, like in a helicopter, you see more of the future than if you're sitting in a train. Now, that's where transcendence in meditation is going to give you an overview, and the overview will give you a sense of how you could be. And that is, how can I say, provided by the kind of perspective that the Buddha calls "The World of all possibility." The level of all possibility. For example, if you are playing a game of chess, then at first you are faced with all possibilities, and then gradually, all possibilities are reduced by your moves. They are reduced. But, think of life as a game of chess where the pawns are unlimited, so you never lose your possibilities. That's the ultimate optimism. 

So, if you lose hope, you cut out your possibility. You discard your possibilities. It's like throwing away your pawns. So, there comes a point in ones meditation when one is aware of the infinite possibilities that are being actuated in the here and now in a limited way. From the moment when one sees those possibilities, one can begin to actuate them in the here and now. See what I mean? There's a modern wazifa for that. It's an American wazifa. It's called, "what if". That was really the wazifa of Einstein. That's why he was turned down in his doctorate at university because he was thinking, "Well, that's what my professor says. But what if my professor were wrong?" And the professors didn't like that. But what if, and this is very serious, what if all my assessment of my problems, my assessment of myself is completely wrong, and I have been slepping these misgivings all my life and cutting out all my chances of making good in my life because of my misassessment. Imagine. And that's the situation of most people. And therefore, it's I would say one of the most positive ways of meditating -- it's not transcendence -- but if you're high, then you can visualize how you could be if you would be what you might be. Can you imagine what it would be like if you were as you would like to be? Just think it for a moment. (pause)

See how you would like to be. But you know, to describe how you would like to be, you would be using wasifas. You would be saying, as I would say, "Well the way I would like to be would be dancing with joy. Why am I not dancing with joy? Well, life is hard, and people are mean, and there's a lot -- and I try to do good, and it goes against me -- those are arguments, invalid arguments. They are excuses, because we are psychologically lazy. We don't have the courage to be the way we could be. And the worse thing is that we think we are damaged and we will therefore never be able to be the way we wanted to be because we've been abused or damaged. It's in the mind. And you can be full of joy while dancing on thorns and having a crown of thorn on your head. In fact, I don't believe you can be in a state of joy unless you are dancing on thorns. That would be facetiousness, but it wouldn't be joy. And so, would you like to be full of joy and dance with joy? Well, why don't you do it then? If you'd like to do it you can. There's nothing to prevent you. Nobody's going to stop you. I remember a woman, in Amsterdam who was dancing in the street, and people thought she was crazy, and really isn't it terrible that we're living in a world where people think we are crazy if we dance? 

And then, I'm sure you'd all like to have more insight. Well, that's what we're working at. And, we'd like to be more warm-hearted and overcome our resentment and our cantankerousness. That is, you can't will it, as I've said, you can't force yourself. You know, it's really love, being in love with love. Not necessarily a person, but being in love with love. It's a kind of state of ecstasy, that you don't have to try to be kind to people. It just comes naturally, if you're in a high state. And there are all kinds of arguments, like, "Well, the reason why I find it difficult is because people take advantage of my  twarm-heartedness or my kindness, and so on. So what. Of course people are going to take advantage. You can take it for granted that they are. It's OK. It's not an excuse for not being kind-hearted, because people are going to take advantage. The thing to do is you be kind to a person and that person slaps you in the face, and you keep on being kind to that person, and they keep on slapping you in the face, and you keep on being kind. That's OK. You're the winner. And, when one adopts that attitude, there would be no more wars. 

So, we're working with ourselves, and meditation is a very good opportunity to think about all these things and see them from different angles. As I say, we've learned how to attune ourselves by turning within and now moving upwards. It's more difficult upwards, but we'll be working with it. 

Now, . . . I had a whole pile of questions, but I think I've left them in my pod, but there's one question here. There are two questions. Yes, well, this is a question of psychology, and as you know, I'm not a psychologist, I don't have a diploma in psychology. "What is your view of chronic depression?"

You see, we're very delicately balanced psychologically and physiologically, and a trauma which one might not even be conscious of can set one off balance to the extent that one does not know how to maintain ones joy or ones hope or ones validation of life. And it affects the body, too. There's a word of Dr. David Boehm, which is, he was a physicist, as you know, but towards the end of his life, he became really I would say a world-class philosopher. Physics and philosophy are very close. So, he said, "Be not surprised if a change in your sense of meaningfulness is going to affect the circuits in your brain." So there are meaningfulnesses that disturb the circuits of the brain, and consequently, mental disturbances are not just psychological but physiological, too, at the same time. And if you just deal with the physiological disturbance, you're not dealing holistically with the problem. And that's what psychiatrists were doing in my time. I remember, I was studying at ( ) in Paris, at University, and we had this course of psychiatry, and they were trying to find drugs that would heal patients who were mentally disturbed. And now, of course, psychologists realize that just the drugs, the tranquilizers, will perhaps cool down the emotional disturbance, but there needs to be psychological therapy, and that's very long and very painstaking, and in practice there are more elements that are involved than just purely psychological ones. One has to also consider the spiritual values, which are very difficult to determine. And that's why, as I've said, there's such thing as a psychological by-pass, too. That's why we're beginning to realize the value of -- you see, it's like, unconsciously, I'd say, we entertain an ideal, and then through our trauma we begin to doubt that ideal. 

And the trouble is that ideal is sustained by a way of thinking. For example the ideal -- one can't express in words, but let's say, the ideal that behind all this is splendor and divine intention, divine perfection. You see, so that's the way that our minds try to represent that ideal, which can't be represented by our minds. And then we come across the horror of Concentration Camps, and we think, "How can there be a God who allows that to happen?" And, incongruity, like this wonderful person has an accident and dies and then this other person who has done so much harm, and that person continues to live. And it doesn't make sense. So, we go through what St. John of the Cross calls the Dark Night of the Mind first. But it goes much further. Dark night of the mind, we've already talked about -- our assessment of our problems is wrong, and so. But all those ideas that the church had conveyed, he was questioning them. He was wondering that, "Well, I've always assumed that, but why do I assume it?" He was doubting it. But then much deeper doubt came in his mind, and that is, "This ideal that I've been entertaining, is that really so, or is it just wishful thinking?" So, that's a kind of metaphysical anxiety that a lot of us encounter as we go through our lives. And then, especially if our mind, which was supporting that ideal, breaks down -- at least the arguments of our mind that were supporting that ideal break down -- then the ideal itself doesn't have that basis any more, and so it breaks down, too. 

And then the only saving grace is that somehow, when we know that our mind will not be able to sustain our intuition -- it's like, well, St. John of the Cross calls it the "bright flame of love" -- He says at the end of the dark tunnel, there's just a little light. And I suppose it's like we have the intuition, well it looks like my ideal were wishful thinking, but how if it were not wishful thinking? I would be losing that chance. So, that's the light. Even if it appears wrong, somehow my intuition says, well, I would be losing my chance if I did not hang on to that possibility that it was right after all. And that's the saving grace. And if you don't hang onto that, then you are lost. I know this because of several cases, particularly one case, of people who are going through the dark night -- very, very dark, I mean so much that one wonders whether it is at all possible for this person to ever come back into the light again. I remember the, during my studies in psychiatry, it was the case of Laura, who said, "The psychiatrists were trying to bring me back to where I was before, and that's where they are, but I can't come back to where I was before. They're trying to draw me back to where they are. They can't see what I see." So, I'm talking about this lady who went through this very dark night, and in my youthful days, I was trying to fix it. "Do this wazifa and ........ - it didn't work. 

And I thought to myself, "What am I doing in life? If I can't help this person, what am I doing? Maybe this person needs therapy. Well, yes, of course. But then what is the point in what I am doing?" Now, there are several cases that were similar. But, one day that person telephoned me and said, "I'm back." I couldn't believe it. I thought, well, I'm dealing with part of her craziness. She says she's back. Truly, she was back. Unbelievable. She was back. So, how it works, we don't know. It resolves itself in the unconscious.    I'll give you another illustration. It's very interesting. A psychologist who treats children who are a bit pathological. And as a play gives them sand to make all kinds of constructions with sand. And she can see how their mind is working projected in the sand, in the formation of sand. And at a certain point, the child says, "I don't have to come any more." And the psychologist knows by those configurations of sand that that child has resolved his/her problem, unconsciously. And I thought it was unconscious that the child said, "I don't have to come any more," but the child knew. 

So, I don't have an easy solution, of course, to depression, because, as I said, my tendency would be to fix it, and it doesn't work. And just to let go, let happen, stay with it, as one says, doesn't necessarily work, either. But there is such a thing as a kind of transmission at the soul level.. So the mind can't do anything any more. There's another case of that woman who, well, she was so devastated, I can't tell you the whole story, but she was so devastated, and I asked her -- in those days, now I would never do that, but I asked her to forgive the person who did it to her, and she couldn't do it, and she felt terrible that she couldn't do it. The last time I ever asked anyone to forgive. In fact, she resented me, that I asked her to forgive. And then she said I couldn't help her any more, and she went to psychological treatment. And she came back to me one day and said, "You know, Pir Vilayat, if it hadn't been for your influence in my life, I would have committed suicide. So I couldn't help her like, as a psychologist could, but somehow there was something there, like a very thin thread, that kept her hoping, and by means of that thread, she was able to pull herself out of the despair. 

So it's something that communicates from one soul to another if one is in a high state it -- I suppose the condition of one's soul needs confirmation. If you find another person's soul in a high state, it encourages you to find that attunement in yourself. and so that is the ultimate healing. And then the circuits in the brain will change. It's as if in the brain it's very much like -- of course the brain doesn't only work as circuits, it works also as a hologram, so it's both. Dr. Carl Pribram is working with a holistic view of the brain, and then there are others who are working with circuits, and they don't agree, but in fact it's both at the same. So, the circuits of the brain -- it's very much like if you are walking on a lawn, and you keep on walking the same way, it will fray a path. It's the same thing with the circuits of the brain; if you keep on thinking the same way, then it will fray a path. And if that thought is faulty, then it will cause a bad circuit in the brain. And so then, if you correct your way of thinking, then that path will start growing up again, the grass will grow up again, and you have another circuit. And that's what the wazifa is. You are repeating it, if you like, you keep on walking on the same path, fraying, making more of a path the more you walk on it. And that's why you're repeating, in the wazifa, you keep on repeating the same thought over and over again. (ENDING) (the tape breaks on again into the middle of a sentence and goes on about fasting)

. . . I have starved also, but fasting is not the same thing. Doctors will tell you it's very bad for you. Maybe in moderation, but it's got to be very carefully supervised, so I got to the point when -- It's a wonderful experience to fast, and you feel so clean, and light as though you are walking on air, and you are very sensitive and very happy. But your stomach is growling and, you're happy all the same, but your craving for food gets worse by the minute -- up to a point -- after ten days, and you can't even stand the sight of food. And then eventually you get so weak that you can hardly walk. And so many ascetics have done that, and Buddha realized that that's not the way to get illumination. But it's -- it's an experience. But, silence, yes, it's due to the fact that by -- I've already said this -- by expressing what we are used to expressing our thoughts in language, and language limits our thoughts. And if we are in silence, then you don't have to -- you're not thinking in terms of language. That's a question I've asked myself, because, when I'm in Germany, I'm giving talks in German, and someone has asked me, "Well, do you think in German, or do you think in English?" So the question is does one think in language? It comes out in language, but while one is thinking, not speaking, is one thinking in a language. WEll, you can ask yourself that question. But, you see if you are on silence, then you stop thinking in terms of a language after some time. And then you can't even express yourself. Because I remember this man came to me after a 40 day fast and silence, and he asked me, "Could you tell me what you experienced?" And, I couldn't speak. I didn't know how to say it.

The other question is celibacy, and I would say that it just depends. For a retreat of course, you see there's always this balance between love and sex. And, it affects ones consciousness, ones level of consciousness. And sex without love is very degrading, I would say. And love without sex is uplifting, challenging and not fulfilling but uplifting. And in fact, redeeming. And so, it's very powerful, for a retreat of course, absolutely the ideal of course. It makes ones love golden, somehow. It makes it sublime. So it's a question of the delicacy of your sensitivity. 

And the other thing is the vow, and that's true that every time one says a wazifa, one says a vow, one is reiterating a vow. And otherwise it is dishonest. For example if you say ya wali, then you must not say that you can't stop smoking. If you can't stop smoking, then you mustn't say ya wali, unless you think that by saying ya wali it will help you to stop smoking. It's the recognition that one has not the strength to overcome ones addiction that is ones weakness, and therefore it's the opposite of mastery. And if you say ya haqq, then you have to go and tell people about things that you've kept secret. Or then don't say ya haqq. otherwise it's dishonest. And that's a pledge. And it's true that on retreat one is so sensitized that that's the moment to make a pledge. When I get back into life I'll do this, or I'll do that. It gives you a direction in your life. And it gives you power. And self-esteem. Power and self-esteem go together. So, if you violate your pledge, you lose your self-esteem and you lose the honor in which people hold you. (ENDS SESSION



SEP 01, 1995		Tape 10



Sufitape Tape 10 Labor Day Retreat 1995

Side one

	...challenges ahem, I think it's good to start with uh, typical Sufi breathing practice, ahem, it's uh, based upon the word of uh the dervishes that was uh, incorporated in the book of Qalibadi, when he said um, uh, think of your breath as an extension of the divine breath, the divine exhaling, whereby God descends from the solitude of unknowing, ahem, moved by Ishq Allah - which means nostalgia, so that the splendor latent within His/Her being may become manifest as form. And as God inhales, He/She ahem, (inaudible) that which has been achieved by life back into, I would paraphrase it and say, in modern language, feed back, back into soft-ware of the universe. Ahem. And so here you have uh, those two very strong impulses that may pull you in two opposite directions - on one hand a need for involvement with people, with situations, to achieve, to accomplish, to build a beautiful world of beautiful people. To become beautiful yourself - to become bountiful, cosmic, yourself, and to build a support system that will enable you to unfold and entertain ah, very deep ah, interaction with beings, and thereby enrich yourself, ahem. 

And then, the other way around, the need to find freedom, um, from conditioning, freedom from - as I said, one's um, one's perspective - one gets caught in a perspective, ahem, uh, freedom from all those notions that one makes of the situation of oneself, ahem, ahem, and um, as a matter of fact if indeed uh, that which is achieved in life has a contribution to make to, let's say the soft-ware of the universe, to, let's say, the programming, then, there needs to be an alchemical process whereby the contingent aspects of one's being get disintegrated and the quintessence is extracted from it, just like the perfume, the flowers, and so as you're doing these breathing practices you can alternate between these two very important impulses, and in fact poles of your being, so just try it and see if you can consider your - uh, the way to do it is to really feel your breath is, it's not - you don't decide how you inhale and exhaling, just just feel the ebb and flow of uh, the universe, of energy of the universe, of the cosmos, you're like a wave in the sea, a part of the tide, and then as you exhale feel the kind of emotion that um, ah, one calls nostalgia, that honors the celebration of life. Ahem. 

The great achievement of the great civilizations um, uh, we are part of it uh, even if our contribution is not very great, still, whatever you do, somehow it's a little piece in the enormous achievements of humanity and thereby we are fulfilling the divine desire ahem, that the splendor and the meaningfulness behind the universe should become a reality, tangible, ahem, and ah, for it to become a reality there needs to be um, a process of disintegration and whirred, uh, uh, uh, or at, in any case for it to be dynamic instead of static and therefore for it to progress then there needs to be an expenditure of the jagged ends as I say like your nails that you cut, and your hair, and then at the other end, uh, recurrent whirred, and so you're caught in the - you're part of the current, you're not caught in the current, you are part of the current of uh, becoming, and in so doing uh, moved by that um, deepness or feel that nostalgia in you, so you see that it is not the way of the ascetic, it's the way of the knight, ahem. 

And uh, so, it is your motivation that will uh, fulfil that deep nostalgia, and then as you inhale you've, you will feel the way that ah, one gets constrained, of course, by the circumstances, but um, ah, not just by the circumstances, um, one can be constrained in the circumstance and free, inside, and so it's more like one is caught by one's addiction, so it's an emotional attachment or then one is caught by one's opinion which is uh, again, a bind, ahem, and uh, one is um, caught by one's self-image, or imprisoned uh, trapped in one's self-image, and so on, so those are the things that um, you feel that you inhale, your need to sh - to - it's just like the, feeling of the chick uh, breaking the egg - the shell of the egg, free yourself, or perhaps you know that beautiful mime of um, Marcel Marceau, where he pushes the walls, the invisible walls, further and further away so that he can dance the dance of freedom. Uh, it is uh, maybe you can experience it as um, a need to follow your place - a need to um, because there's a kind of intuition as I said yesterday, of, that behind all of this there is - there is splendor, there is, there is, um, meaningfulness, there is uh, there is, there is generosity, there is - all of those qualities that we attribute to God. And so somehow we have a sense of an ideal, because uh, if we have a scale of values, like this I consider to be rather degrading or demeaning and this I feel is uplifting and so on, so we have a sense of values that is based upon our sensitivity with, if our soul is uh, um, is elevated, ahem, uplifted, um, and, or then if we feel uh, degraded or defiled, we have that uh, intuition and so at the limit or there's no limit but at, let's say in infinite regress we have a sense of soaring, of um, of reaching beyond what we can embrace uh, with our understanding, well you're further and further uh, from the common place, uh, nitty gritty uh, of uh, the routine of everyday life, ahem, and it's necessary to give yourself that uh, fulfilment for your soul otherwise you will have a very bad self-image, and you will be disenchanted with life and uh, your motivations will suffer from it. 

So we are catering for the needs of our bodies and our minds and our hearts and we need to cater for the need of our soul. and as a matter of fact, as I said uh, before when, there is a concern - even though we're not thinking about it, as to, uh, well, what after - what happens after life or what uh, uh, is this all uh, just passing and there's that concern - even though we're not thinking about it, as to, uh, well, what after - what happens after life or what uh, uh, is this all uh, just passing and there's that concern because we, as we meditate we feel we're very aware the, that we're being pulled in the process of becoming, we're aging and whatever uh, uh, the past seems to get further and further behind us and the future is drawing us forward so there's a sense of being inexorably um, moved, um, uh, pulled uh, forward and uh, somehow there's a sense "yes, what is the purpose - what is gained by all this, hmmm? Is g - is it get, does it get lost after death?" And that will make sense, of course. And so somehow there's a need to have a - let's say, get more deeply in touch with something that is intangible, that we can never grasp yet somehow touch upon it um, and that's why Pir-o-Murshid says um, uh, "A passion is awakened for the unattainable". That will lure us beyond um, the limitations of our worldly condition and as a matter of fact shift our sense of identity so that um, we will look in to discover our immortality. Or let's say cleave to that dimension of our being that is not subject to death. 

And then there's the opposite then as we exhale now we want to, as we have had a taste of this excellence uh, we are more able to really actualize it in everyday life, and otherwise we simply bob up and down uh, and uh, get uh, then open up one drawer and close the other and so on, so we need to keep the doors of communication open between these two poles of our being, and you see the beauty of this practice is that you're not just in Samadhi or you're not just in the world but um, uh, you're able to correlate these two, and uh, so consequently of course these are the practices that will lead towards awakening in life rather than awakening beyond uh, beyond life. And that's the way of the Sufis. All right, so if you do that practice now....Now, in fact um, um, to be more complete, um, uh, we could add uh, a further axis, because it's the verticle one, and there's a horizontal one - make a cross. And so, let us say, that to get in trim, before you start engaging in your life's work and that the, the first thing that one needs to do is to uh, surround oneself with a zone of silence so uh, just to get to have a break from the continual impact of the environment. and then as one turns within one, one has access to a pool of resourcefulness, uh, absolutely uh, bountiful, absolutely unlimited, and consequently as you exhale now, you feel a a new kind of power coming through you, hmmm? 

A power that you yourself would never be able to muster but somehow you've touched upon such a powerful storehouse, ahem, within your being that um, and you and since you are protected by this zone of silence, now you are able to do what I mentioned the other day, peace - active peace instead of peace as withdrawing from action, and so that active peace is very powerful- it's peace at the same time as power, ahem and so for those who are familiar with the Sufi Wasaiif, um, Sufi mantrams even I'd say, ahem, then it would be Ya Salam as you surround yourself with a zone of silence, and then Ya Qadr as you find this inner power that uh, you uh, radiate, ahem, and then the other axis um, is uh, you have Ya, uh, Mawjud which is making God a reality as Pir-o-Murshid says or the need to find a way of funnelling down the bounty of the heavens in a concrete way in your life ahem. Now, it's very concrete, ahem, it's as I said, making states of consciousness corporeal, hmmm? Incorporating. and that's the knight in you, as I said. And then, as you extract um, the quintessence of all that has been achieved in life then think of the word Qayuum, which means resurrection. So there you have four uh, cardinal um, attitudes, attunements, uh, which are all balanced, beautifully balanced, instead of just losing yourself in Samadhi, hmmm, a sort of a vague and nebulous kind of state. 

So you life is there but you have called a break so that you can look at it with a a certain ah, with an overview, and with a certain distance, first of all with a certain distance and then with an overview and uh, become more aware of your resourcefulness. All right, now we're going to try and uh, pursue the um, steps, uh, leading to Samadhi. So, you remember those two um, poles, well, that we've just encountered in our, in our breathing practice um, passion for the unattainable and then loosening the ties with the world. Those two uh, how can I say, complimentary uh, forces, that that that is, those are the forces that will enable you to start taking off. So, there is no doubt that um, if you question the validity of your opinion about the physical world and uh, particularly your problems or your involvement, then that will loosen that a ahem, that very heavy bond that holds you into your personal vantage point, and ah, into your identity, even identity with the body. so it's there you see, but um, somehow in order to hoist oneself into Samadhi one needs to uh, finds loosen those that that bond ahem, to some extent, it's there but it's just, I think the real clue is in one's sense of identity, that is um, one of the ways of doing it is to just think um, I am a denizen of the higher planes and I am a visitor on planet Earth. But um, I am not going to return the way I was before because I am not just a visitor, but I have been enriched by the, by having fed um, at uh, by all the bounty that I have found in the existential condition and therefore I will be able to carry all of this further. 

I transmute it and so, really, speaking, maybe this is not quite what Samadhi - I'm not teaching Samadhi - this is not exactly what Samadhi does, this is the Sufi way, ahem, it's really um, experiencing or let's say not experiencing, but uh really touching upon um, resurrection um, before dying. Ah, well, let's say while still alive, hmmm? A sort of prefiguration of that state when one is - has found some kind of um, freedom and yet has not cut one's link with the world, even after death, hmmm? It's a matter, as I've said it's a matter of um, focus, you can, looking at a hologram - I've already said this, um, looking at a hologram you can um, you can um, shift your your uh, focus, some point, looking, and then you see it, you see one slice or another slice and so on because it's difficult to see, extrapolate between all of them are the same time. So, something like that so you shift your - now to start with as you go move up you shift your, your uh, focus, uh, from the earth plane so it's true that one has the feeling as though one were leaving the earth plane behind and, as I say, I, one, I I think it could induce one into error by thinking that way, it could lead into astral travel, for example, ahem, so I think it's better to say - to think "My consciousness is off-set from the focus of the world". It does not, that does not mean that I have disconnected myself, it's just that I've, I have taken another perspective, ahem. 

I am assuming another perspective. and I suppose the key to that is what we did the other day, finding oneself in a transfigured world and uh, perhaps you remember that we, I mentioned this and perhaps we did it um, if you remember your childhood and even your babyhood, mmm, it seems a little bit like a dream state, mmm, um, it um, one was not quite incarnated, one was in an sss - enchanted world or a, something magical about it, uh, and uh, and so, that will give you a sense of um, of what I mean by finding oneself in a transfigured world. It's uh, almost like uh, you think, "Well, if you think the, things are not the way they appear to be then you can offset your consciousness from that perspective and then, but that's the negative thing and the positive thing will be like, there is something that is trying to transpire in this limited uh, purview of my common place consciousness uh, set - common place setting of consciousness, something coming through". You remember I was talking about the, the church, uh, the painting of uh, (inaudible) ahem, there's something comes through, it's not uh, it's not, it's obviously not a photograph it's, it's a little bit unreal, you see, and so you can get into that state where it, it - the world seems unreal, mmm. 

You even feel like touching your body and thinking well, is it solid or, ahem? And so it's like it it it one would like to think that the physical world, the sounds of the, of the world seem to be remote, it's more like one's perspective of that, the way the physical world looks has now, is now out of, out of focus, it's like uh, for example if you're taking a photograph of somebody, then you focus your camera in such, the lens in such a way that either that person is prominent and the background is vague, nebulous, or then you could do the opposite, and you can have the background is clearer and the person in front is nebulous, so you can do the same thing you do the same thing with your consciousness, the physical world now is nebulous, and you have a sense of eternity, like there's some kind of perenity, that you feel, where as um, the the world, as we call it, seems to be changing uh, so rapidly, there's uh, there's a typical experience of the Yogis um, sitting in the forest, uh, they make the distinction between Prakritti and Ruusha, and that distinction is not matter/spirit, it's between that which is uh, subject to change and that which does not change. 

And so they're there sitting, absolutely motionless and the leaves in the trees are falling and the insects are flying around them, and everything is moving around them and perhaps they're even conscious of the motion of their heartbeat and their breath, and so on, so there's allot of motion not just outside the body and while one is doing that one still grasps a kind of motionless uh, eternal um, changing state, and I suppose it's because one sits cross-legged and does not move for hours and hours and uh, perhaps also because the breath is reduced to, it becomes hardly, uh, uh, hardly noticeable at all, and and because one does not continue to to dwell in one's body consciousness, that one has a sense of stillness, permanence, and so one releases the world, releases it, that is one does not move in the current anymore, one isn't, maybe one, then, one knows that one's body body is is a is cu - is moving in the current...

End of Side one.

Side Two

...uh, there's some kind resistance to uh, being uh, mmm, being drawn into the current of becoming, and the consequence is that one begins to discover the immortality of one's being, which is very surprising it's ah, in one's mind one can, aaas (inaudible) said, "Think of yourself as a metronome, so at one end you're moving, at the other end you're still", but that's not (inaudible) um, uh, uh, uh, realization but uh, mental construct but um, to actually experience it... it will leave you a sense of what we mean by resurrection. and then that's a kind of flow from the transient, instead of thinking of a real cleavage as we find in Buddhism um, between becoming and being - those are the words of Buddha himself, um, a kind of bridge so that that which is moving tha tha that's the essence of it is extracted and that essence becomes, becomes eternalized in the process of distillation so it's not as though it is eternal as compared with the transiency of the body, that's the old fashioned view of the Yogis, ahem, no, there's a, there's a bridge, it is becoming more and more eternal as one, in the course of the distillation, there is a cleavage, of course because the contingent aspects of one's being have to fall apart, and that means one's personality, that one identifies with - you have to let go of it otherwise you can't reach higher, so don't identify with your personality anymore, hmmm? so you're not sitting there thinking, "Here I am meditating", you're carried beyond yourself. Beyond all the notions, physical body, personality, problems, all those notions uh, myself as the spectator, all those notions, questioned, and, as you question them they lose their hold on you. 

And you find freedom. That's the negative, but there's a always a positive and the positive is discovering your real being behind the role, behind the personality, behind your face, behind your mask, behind even the real th - your real thinking, behind your evanescent thoughts. You're real emotional attunement between all the disturbing emotions that are spilling over continually from the environment, and your realization which is mmm, beyond your understanding, and just think that you are - everyone in life is according to their realization, so if you think of that, that your - even your understanding is a support system for your realization, so it's not just words but like all of a sudden you have a kind of insight into meaningfulness, irrespective of those facts that seem to have contributed towards the awakening of your realization, it's like uh, the base camps where they're - but now uh, you forget the base camps because um, you're on your own,ahem. You leave them behind. So that of course is the negative aspect, it's uh, letting go of all those things that bind one, the priority thing is as I say like a kind of, it's as though you are able to confirm something that you wish to believe in but you couldn't quite believe in it because you have no evidence of it, and if I say splendor behind all this meaningfulness, well that's just words and that's not uh, good enough just to say that, but there's no way of saying it. I think it's much more - what's happening to you then the projection that you make of yonder ahem, ahem, ahem, what happening to you is that uh, your emotions are becoming sublime instead of thinking there's something sublime behind everything, that sublime ahem, excellence is awakened in you. It's like the wings that help you to soar above the earth. You see, it starts - there are so many degrees of uh, emotion and uh, Buddha, ahem, describes these very beautifully, ahem. 

There's the personal satisfaction, uh, ahem, and then there are emotions that um, cannot be ahem, uh, limited to the individual, some - it's um, they are perhaps emotions of the uh, cosmic dimension of our being, it's like, almost like a sense of the emotion of the cosmos, the ecstasy of the cosmos that uh, manifested in all those wonderful creations ahem. It's your ecstasy that carries you - not your mind, not your will. It starts - as I say, with bewondering, uh, in the very simplest way, like um, in the course of our lives we come across um, rather amazing things like conic - what you call coincidences,, encounters with beings who are significant to us, the, the way that our intelligence delights in the - discovering uh, uh, uh, the the creativity of of intelligent beings, for example, just imagine what it, what ingenuity takes place that is, in order to build a cathedral, for example, or a beautiful building hmmm, or to compose a symphony or B Minor Mass, Bach, or whatever, that, just think of what it takes to make a beautiful human being, what for - what kind of investment it takes, what bounty of investment to make a human being unfurl to become a wonderful being, ahem, like a work a work of art, there are some examples of these uh, so it starts by this just sense of bewonderment, yeah, the uh, physicist never ceases to be amazed by the extraordinary ingenuity behind the functioning of the universe, that sense of awe. 

How is it that the sugars of um, of the chemistry of the planet can suddenly break through in the flurry of colors of the flower, how is that possible? How is it that the harmony of the universe can break through in a, the music of Bach, hmmm? Those are the, if you think of that you, you've uh, moved, something in you is very deeply moved by the the the discovery of the the magic of life, ahem. And you see that kind of emotion is different from uh, the emotion of uh buying a new car, ahem, or a new computer or um, um, ahem, wither you'd rather celebrating one's eightieth birthday, whatever. Ahem. Um, that kind of thing um, it's just that's a very personal kind of emotion, hmmm? But this is uh, cosmic, mmm. So it starts by bewonderment, the um, uh, scientists - physicists have a word for it uh, instead of, just uh, thinking, of the uh, intelligence, of recognizing the intelligence behind the functioning of the world, they are tau - functioning of matter, for example, uh, they use the word elegance. It's elegant. In a kind of aesthetic sense, um, and that, and this uh, emotion, mmm. It's not slovenly, it's elegant (chuckle). And then there's a still higher emotion. So it starts by bewondering and then I - it becomes ecstasy. It's even beyond um, um, beyond bewondering. So what we're doing - understa - you can never uh, grasp the intention - for example if you were to um, ahem, if a martian were to um, dissect a a computer, he or she would never be able to derive the software from the hardware. Ahem. It goes the other way around, you start by the intention and then you see how it works. And that is awak - that is awakening in life. Relax now.

End of Side Two




SEP 01, 1995		Tape 11



Labor Day Retreat tape #11 So I feel that we are in the mood to pursue our efforts to lift our consciousness in samadhi. So we can use all kinds of methods. There are several methods and they all help. One would be to consider that you're a pilgrim. Well first of all there are two things well first of all that you're a visitor on planet earth we've already said that you don't really belong to the earth but you're visiting it and you're enriched by it and you've left a mark on the planet contributed towards the well-being of the planet, the evolution. But then on the other hand you need to take a break and you become a pilgrim. And somehow you free yourself from let's say your underpinning, your home, family, your job, all those things that provide you with a support system. And let's say that you are amongst the throngs of people who are climbing the Himalayas in search of the great Rishis who are living in the caves. And on the way you find so much enchantment. Sannyasins singing themselves into ecstasy, the temple bells, all the rituals of the flowers and the perfume and the incense and the ablutions and the whole scene is sort of conducive to other worldliness. 

And somehow you feel so much at home in this very different world to the grub gruff world of competition and greed and selfishness and violence and hatred and cruelty, injustice. In fact that is just a scenario but in fact you're really leaving that part of yourself behind that has adapted itself to the environment and has some contribution to the environment. But now you're seeking for another kingdom. And so there's a sense of freedom. You'll find that at first you took a lot of things with you where you had a rather heavy backpack because you there were things you thought you needed and then you find that it is so heavy so you start jettisoning things on the way, one thing after the other, and find that you can do without it. That's a bit harder but then you get tough and you'll find that it's worthwhile the freedom you get. And then it's like that terrible oppression that could be depression has been lifted from your heart somehow, that sense of inadequacy, sense of wanting having to keep on being abreast with the challenge that the low key that you find people in, dragging their lives across time hopelessly. Somehow you're relieved of all that and a kind of natural joy seems to emerge in your being, a very facile kind of joy without effortless, absolutely effortless it comes out of itself. And now you find that your body is a useful transportation vehicle but it's, now this is--we're getting away from the scenario and getting in to a more, how can I say, metaphorical way of thinking that somehow you shift your sense of bodyness from your skin bound body to your etheric body. And in fact, that is even the case, as I pointed out about those Tibetans who were running at high speed and while being perfectly peaceful. 

And I believe that indeed they were identifying with their etheric body and it is true that when you leave your support system behind, you even your body feels like gossamer so your body that is you are you're focusing on you've shifted your focus of about bodyness and you identify with your etheric body or electromagnetic field or even with your aura. Now, let's bear in mind a slogan of the Tibetan's. And that is: the mind rides the wind. So the wind is your support system. It could be a body, it could be your psyche, it could be your emotional attunement, some kind of, it could be your personality, your real being, what ever. It's the support system the wind. Wind means energy you see, so, it's energy. And the body is energy, and so on and the mind is energy. It's all forms of energy. And then somehow the mind rides the wind. That is as your notion of the support system shifts from being a gross physical body to being an etheric body and then being an aura and so on, you're way of thinking shifts also. So, now you feel like gossamer as I said, but also you're aware that the way you identified yourself determined your assessment about the situations in which you were in. Now as you're climbing the Himalayas, you can see things from above as it were, from, with an overview. And so, now it's very clear that you were caught in a down there in the valley you were caught in a perspective, what I call worm's eye view and now you've got the eagle's eye view. It's the same reality, but looking at it from a different vantage point. And you see a kind of vast panorama. So you see your life and you don't have to scan your life and think of all the details and the events and so on and how you have progressed in the course of your life. But you just it's a kind of general panoramic grasp so on. Somehow you can't fragment it any more. It's just one global panoramic vision. 

And when one says in context I can see my life in context in its context. (Brief pause) Now if you remember, the Sufi view was that the physical world is not illusory but it is a device it's made of clues, ayat, clues. But these clues have some kind of transparency about them so when you look at let's say your life with an overview you don't just see the flattened out panorama of your life, but you're beginning to be aware of issues enacted in your life, not the facts so much as develop insight into how did this come about, how did, what kind of purpose could this serve and so on, but not with the mind, but some how you're seeing something as I say like a kind of that which is transpiring behind the actual facts as though there was a dawning insight that tried to pierce through the threshold and make itself known to you. Life revealing itself to you. Now you do remember that at a certain point as we turn within there are all these creative thoughts emerge without particular concreteness but ( ) ephemeral images which come and go and are replaced by others. And that is somehow thanks to having turned within you're beginning to enhance the creative unfurlment of the potentialities of your being. And the reason why they seem those images seem so random could be illustrated by, for example, Leornardo DaVinci. Before making his big paintings he would always make little sketches. And so consider that your formation of your being happens by trial and error somehow. It's not a given. It's like a sculptor taking adding a little bit of clay here and then taking away and changing the shape and so on. So it's trial and error. 

Now there are all kind of elements that come in to the formation of your being. And here you are you are part of the process, you are the process, you are also the fruit of the process and you just see it all happening with a certain amount of distance, perspective. You're participating and at the same time watching it. And the more you are able to watch it the more nature does it for you and the more you participate the less you are able to watch it. There's some balance between the two. So now one goes through an identity crisis. Because as I say the right circumstance will favor the awakening of qualities that otherwise would not awaken. And so the scenario of that pilgrimage is like here are circumstances that are propitious to the unfurling of certain qualities in us, but you don't have to go the Himalayas for that, it's just a matter of your attunement. You get in to an attunement which favors the unfurling of impending qualities that are trying to come through and which were blocked because you didn't have the right attunement. So you don't have to try to create yourself or to consciously fashion yourself. Somehow it is your attunement that does it and the unconscious then knows how to make it happen. At this time one could do some introspective work. For example, this is introspection, one would be, for example, watching a thought. As you are meditating a thought emerges and as I said, don't turn your consciousness, let's say the head lamps of your consciousness, don't turn them towards that thought because then that thought will have power over you. So your indifference will help you to just let that thought (oglit?) in the periphery of your consciousness. 

However, you will be at least remotely aware of that thought. So what I suggest is that you try to feel the emotion that powers that thought, because all thoughts are emotionally loaded. And so that thought is trying to draw your attention to the urgency of an emotional need in you. And so, if you are in a high state of awareness, you can listen to what that thought or that emotion is trying to tell you. But you can decide whether you want to give satisfaction to that emotion or whether you want to prioritize a higher emotion. And thus you can really monitor your assent through the spheres by clearly selecting the kind of emotional attunement that you feel comfortable in or that you are seeking for and let go of the one that way lays you from your objective. You see how thoughts emerged spontaneously totally uncalled for. And then you discover that there's some very powerful emotion that powered this thought so that it could pass over the threshold between the unconscious and the conscious. But now you have some power of selectivity. Now the key to it if you want to get in to samadhi is to foster thoughts concerning how you unfold rather than considering how you adapt in the environment. So it's a process of self discovery. And now, it's very easy to get bogged in here, therefore one really has to know the skills of meditation. Just like in music, sometimes the teacher just tells you use this finger or put the bow this way or that way and that makes all the difference. So one has to know sometimes. 

And so, there is we're just coming to a threshold now in our realization because so far we have some concern about unfolding our being. We feel that there are potentialities there and we don't quite know how to unfurl them. And the clue then to make the next step, and it's really like a quantum leap to make the next step, is to be found in the words of Ib'n Arabi, that are, how can I say, central to Sufism. The first one is: I know myself through the way that God knows Himself through me as me. So instead of trying to know yourself, even how you are becoming, you get so isolated, so limited in your personal vantage point trying to know yourself. So now there's a whole other dimension. You know yourself through the way that God knows Himself, Him Herself, as you. So, exactly as we were able to get in to the consciousness of another person, we try to get in to the consciousness of God. How would it look, how would I look from the divine point of view? Or how would God see Himself as me unfurling as me? You do remember that we started by trying to get in to the vantage point of another person how that other person sees our problem or sees us. And we said that that point of view is not necessarily any better than your own or your own is not necessarily better than that point of view, but at least you do have two points of view instead of one. Complimentary. But of course if you could extend (the?) vantage points to all beings then of course you would have a much truer assessment. Well, I suppose this is what is meant by seeing one's self through the divine consciousness or the divine vantage point. 

And it's very similar to what Saint Francis said when he said the universe is looking at me. But it goes a little further. It says that God or the universe is discovering Him Herself as me. And so, remember, that we said that the even matter that the existential world and that includes our characters, our natures, personalities, are clues whereby the reality that transpires behind it gets known. So you look at the world and you look at yourself and you consider that these are means whereby God is discovering Him Herself and by the same token by which we are being revealed. Our  self is being revealed to us. So that's the first stage according to the Sufis--the knowledge that one gains by means of signs. So it's never a knowledge of reality, it's always the way reality becomes manifested in signs. That's the first stage. And then at a certain stage, and just if you can just follow me now, Ib'n Arabi says, now you know God by the knowledge that God has of Himself through you. So, at first you know yourself through the knowledge that God has of himself through you, him herself, and now you know God through the knowledge. At first it was that you know yourself, and now you know God through the knowledge that God has of Himself through you. And if we could complete this, because it seems very strange to think that God needs us to know Himself, Him Herself, until you realize that, according to the Sufis, God knows Himself in the principle of His being, but by fragmenting His Her being and also diversifying His divine will in to wills that may be contradictory, something is gained. 

Or one could say that He She unfolds Him Herself in the universe so the potentialities in His Her being unfolded in the many splendored qualities that come through in the universe. So think of the universe as the place of revelation. The place where revelation takes place. And then everything reveals meaningfulness to you. And therefore you are discovering yourself through the knowledge that God or the universe develops of Him Herself as you. But then the second stage, if you remember, is that you try to know God, it's not to know yourself, to know God. But you can only know God as the archetype of what you are, like, imagine that a rose should all of a sudden have enough intelligence to all of a sudden discover that it is the exemplar of rosehood. So all of a sudden you awaken and discover that you are the exemplification of eternal qualities. So now you know God. Not just God as the infinite cosmic transcendental dimension of yourself. So you're beginning to discover a level of your being, (break in the recording) which Buddha calls the level of all possibility, the archetypal level, by the knowledge that God has of Himself through you. The first one was the knowledge that you have through God and the second one is the knowledge that God has through you. And then the third level is where you know God, but not through the signs but through what He is. And that seems totally unrealistic because what it really amounts to is that you are entering in to that eternal thinking whereby God knows Himself in the principle of His being without manifesting Him Herself as the universe. 

I hope you can follow what I'm doing, because these are the stages that will lead to samadhi. Because at first we thought that we were the knower. And then it was God who was the knower and we are the known. And then we realize that we are part of that aspect of God that is the knower. And therefore we can know beyond what we would know if we remained encapsulated in our personal identity. I hope you can follow me because these are the clues. So what does it mean to know God by the knowledge that God has of Himself irrespective of the universe? That is the world of all possibilities as I say. This is described by Al Hallaj in a very wonderful epistle called Kitable(?) Ishq where he says, in His pre-eternity God was contemplating the qualities in His Her being one by one. So you imagine God as repeating the wazifas now thinking of each of the wazifas discovering each one of the wazifas. So that's the kind of knowledge that God has of Himself in the principle of His being irrespective of the existence. And so, you can do the reverse, you can get in to that state in which God is contemplating his attributes, irrespective of existence. That's what Ib'n Arabi means by knowing God irrespective of the signs. But the catch 22 in it is that in fact you are to know you can never know God. So it is because at the apex of your being you are the being of God. And so then you can understand it at that level the God in you knows Himself without knowing Himself through you. 

And then Al Hallaj goes on to say, and every time that God contemplated an attribute he projected it in to a being. And we are those beings. So we are those beings through which these attributes become known in their application. Let's say, for example, roses are that through which rosehood becomes actuated. So we are the beings in whom the divine qualities become actuated. Or, let us say, as exemplars. And therefore, in whom these qualities are revealed. So that's what we mean that imagine a rose that began to have a sense of what rosehood is like. So the same thing applies to you if you begin to discover what God is like as the archetype of which you are the exemplar as God consciousness. (Pause) Which will perhaps These are thoughts which are intended to trigger off a break through of realization and therefore lead you towards awakening. So if it's just a thought it's just a thought. You can entertain nice thoughts or interesting thoughts. But what we want is for each one of these thoughts to trigger off a whole new way of looking at things. For example, at first we learned in yoga that the world is Maya and therefore misleading, and I've said this millions of times now. The metaphor used by Tibetans is it is like a mirage, so you see the glistening at the surface of the sand in the desert and you're convinced that it is water. and we get there, there's no water. 

So that's the kind of thinking that you find in a number of ascetics in both Hindus and Buddhists. You are meditating and you think, it's all illusion, I'm going to wake up from this illusion. So it's a negative thought. And if you can awaken from it, it's very wonderful, but in Sufism you would not say it's illusion. You would say the opposite. You say, this is where God becomes a reality. And beyond the existential realm God is a virtuality. You encounter just the most challenging all our assumptions are reversed all of a sudden from one moment to the next. And that's the break through of realization is always realizing that what one thought was wrong. Now we realize something else. It's a real jolt. It's like the dark night of the mind. But the dark night of the mind is replaced by awakening. Now you might say, yes, but what is happening down at the existential level is imperfect and we imagine that God is perfect. And so, that God should know Himself in the perfection of his being that as Al Hallaj described, that we can go along with that. But how can God discover Himself in an imperfect exemplar? And that's perhaps the greatest of paradoxes. And it's to be found in the words of Pir-o-Murshid, God discovers His perfection in our imperfection. That is, God descending from the pinnacle of virtuality and discovering his perfection by descending by seeing how it gets defiled and distorted in beings. 


Maybe there are examples of this. For example, an orchestra would not be possible if it weren't for the imperfection of the instruments. If they were all perfect it would all sound like an electronic organ. It's just because the oboe has limitations has flaws and so has the clarinet and so on. So therefore, somehow the perfection of the whole symphony is present within the imperfection of the instruments. And that is how the divinity of God is present within the limitation of our human condition. This is Sufism you see. And it is this way of thinking that will lead you towards awakening in life. Because if you think that the world is illusion then you would want to awaken from the world in to samadhi and be oblivious of the physical world and therefore one might ask well what is the point in existence if you discard it. So the beauty is seeing that perfection in the imperfection. And therefore discover God in the imperfection of your own personality. 

You see how helpful it is. If one is denigrating one's self because one has a low profile of one's self and still validating one's self because the divine perfection is there within its distortion like the voice of Caruso. And therefore Sufism will not lead towards leaving the world but validating celebrating the marvel of life. And therefore it is the message of our time. Leaving the world is old fashioned now, it's not in any more. No, well that Rishi in the Himalayas told me, he said something very surprising. He said, you know we live--you see there was no food there--so he said, we live on atman, breath. And well, he didn't use that word polluted, but he meant that the air is polluted there at what is it twelve thousand feet high the Himalayas. We can't live on prana yama anymore. He said that times have changed, He said, (End of Side 1).

He said, before there needed to be just a few people who had attained samadhi and who people come to them. I'm paraphrasing what he said of course, but he said, now there must be many people illuminated people in the world who are helping others to get illuminated.. Go back, go back, don't stay here, go back. There's a job to do down there. So you see it's a total reversal of all those things that one had assumed. Of course, you know you can practice samadhi. And that is: if you consider the world to be maya and you develop that detachment and indifference so that you become so peaceful you can not be affected by the environment or by anything. You see that, some of these ascetics are sitting there in the terrible heat and the terrible cold, no food, and it's quite incredible, can't be affected by their conditions. If you think the world is maya, that is you've offset your consciousness, and you don't attach much value to personality to the unfoldment of the personality because you think it's all maya, then you can really withdraw your consciousness from the existential state. As I said yesterday, it's just like as though you had to fly in a spacecraft so far that you'd reach out of the universe outside the universe. But in fact the universe doesn't end at any point. 

But any way, metaphorically you can think that. Now you're sitting there, totally oblivious of existence, your thought, no value, emotions, just peace. No nostalgia. You become neutral. Tatagata -- neutral. You've lost your sense of being an individual. And there's not even the notion of God because the very thought God is only meaningful with relation to us as an individual. Like infinity is only meaningful from the point of view of a unit or more units, but if you've lost the sense of units, what does infinity mean. So the only way to have some sense of what samadhi means would be like awakening not only beyond day consciousness, call it diurnal consciousness, or awakening beyond dream consciousness, but awakening even beyond that in to the unknown. And either you blank out and you think it was samadhi, which is what most people do, or then you really awaken. And since there's no more subject and object, you can not say I have now reached the point of being aware of the meaningfulness behind the universe because there is no duality anymore, so our language can not be used anymore. It doesn't function anymore at that level. But there's no doubt that--can you imagine having a sense of omniscience without being omniscient? You understand, without being the spectator the knower, because there's no dichotomy between subject and object. If you can imagine that. It's very difficult because we're so used to duality. There's a way of saying that. Instead of I think--I am thought. 

That's not quite it because you're still saying I you see. So, there's no way of saying it. But there's no doubt that there's a sense of omniscience because one has cast away the limitations in one's common place thinking. All the barriers have been destroyed, one after the other including the sense of being the spectator. So imagine that you don't know who you are and it doesn't matter. That would be a kind of clue to samadhi. I remember repeating the sicker in a retreat and the guide who was conducting came to call me for prayer. And he said, Vilayat? And I thought, that's a familiar name but I really don't know (laughs). And that's the reason why the Rishis never give their name. Never. As you know they say, I'm Bagavan. I was talking to a wonderful being in a first class waiting room in Delhi at a station in Delhi and a policeman came and asked for the identity cards of everyone. And then he saw this rishi in a yellow robe talking to this strange man. And when he asked me for my identity then of course he thought me more strange than he thought at first. And then he asked for the identity of the rishi. And of course the rishi didn't have an identity card. And he said, but I want to know your name. And he said, Bagavan. He said, Bagavan, but I mean that's God, but you, your name. I don't have a name. What do you mean you don't have a name? You must have a name for the police, you must have a name. I don't have a name. And it was very extraordinary because in the end the police was so impressed by him that he asked for his blessing. 

So these are clues to samadhi. Because even more importantly than considering that your assessment of your problems is not reliable is who you think you are is not reliable. And so it's such a total error to ask I want to know who I am, it's so simplistic it really shows just how far our ignorance can reach in our time. If we lose the tradition then we get fall back in to the nitty gritty, I want to know who I am. And there's a word of St. John of the Cross who said, to become who you are you have to lose who you are. And this is samadhi. It's extraordinary that one can really escape from the trap of the personal experience. Reach out beyond the limits of one's understanding. It's an extraordinary feat of the human being that one can do this. It's the ultimate freedom or the culmination of one's longing for freedom that one has escaped from conditioning. Those are the last words of Buddha under the tree when he received illumination he said, it is the end of conditioning the ending of conditioning. It's a very interesting thought here if that would help you in your meditation. It's the story of Heragle who studied the art of archery a Zen master in Japan. And the last day he asked the teacher if he would demonstrate his art and so the teacher was blindfolded. The target was at a great distance and he hit the bull's eye straight first go. And Heragle was so amazed and he said how on earth did you do it. He said, my hand did not determine the motion of the arrow. It was the arrow that determined the motion of my hand. 

That was the end of determinism. Now of course in our days physicists who are the modern philosophers call it retro-causality. It's not determinism that is--it's not that the past determines the present or the future, but somehow although the future is not there yet, the possibility of the future acts as an attractor and that is why there comes a break through. And I hope you're not just listening to my words, but try to experience it. That if you are able to attune yourself to that state which is called which Buddha calls all possibility, Sufis call it Incan, all possibility. You see that it acts as a kind of attractor that opens up the door to the future that ultimately there is no limitation to the possibilities. Because our despair is because we've given up believing in further possibilities. In the words of Buddha, although he, well it's very similar to samadhi, he says, well the aropajanas are really the same as samadhi I would say. So he says, beyond existence and then, so that's where consciousness peters out because there's no more no combustible as I said. So you are unaware of existence. But then he goes on to say and beyond non-existence. Very difficult to understand what that means. Beyond existence and non-existence. And then he says beyond consciousness, because consciousness is only valid when there's an object. So there's no one has forgotten existence so there's no consciousness anymore. It's replaced by intelligence. And then he says, the realm of all possibility. And that is the treasury that the Sufis are speaking about or the Quran speaks about the treasury. That you see the possibility of existing, of anything, the possibility of existing is a reality. 

Whether it exists or not is not important. That it is possible to exist is real. And that's where the Quran says God is independent of existence. So there is a level of your being which is independent of your existence. So perhaps that will give you some prefiguration of after death. Or rather, after life. That dimension of your being that is not subjected to the existential state. That's your immortal self. And you see, if one develops this detachment then one is creating conditions that are favorable to just having a sense of being independent of whether one has a body or not or being on the planet or not being on the planet or what ever. Being beyond existence. And so this is a state of Buddha. So that's Buddhism, but as I say Sufism is like the antipodal point of view. And the connection between these two, I don't know whether, I'm talking theory now but somehow it affects my meditations, so I hope it does yours too. You remember the text that I read yesterday which was really absolutely crucial. You see our personality unfurls the root of our personality and that root is infinite it does not have any limitations. So let's say the DNA--each cell of our body has the same DNA but most of the genes are inactive and some are active and that makes the difference between the cells. 

But the DNA of each of our cells, therefore the DNA of the whole body, carries within it, potentiality at least, the DNA of the whole universe, so it's not just the DNA of the body. And therefore consider that the root of your being is not personal, it's the way that the universe is customized, but as you go deeper let's say then the roots are part of a network of roots or part of a composite network so a global network. So somehow you go in to the depths of your being you discover the universe. But then that tree grows in a particular form and as Buddha says if you fell the tree it will grow again and it will grow it will be look different. And so is it the same tree? Is it another tree? Our  sense of identity is very questionable. So maybe our identity, let's say idiosyncrasies, our idiosyncratic identity is only valid for the present. And that in the past it was different and in the future it will be different. And if we hang on to it then we're standing in the way of its progress. So it's all a question of identity. Meditation is a question of identity. And of course in the roots of our identity there is our ancestral inheritance. Maybe more, because Buddha is talking about samsaric, so it's not just the heredity of one's parents, but through the process of reincarnation there's a samsaric root that gets formed and that unfurls as our personality. But if you remember the text that I read yesterday, because Buddha was talking about not just, let's say, disintegrating--letting our personality disintegrate so that a new re-birthing may recur from that root. 

But he's talking about destroying the root. And that is very radical. And if you leave it at that then you feel stymied until you read that text. And what that text says is that you now call upon another extra-samsaric root of heredity. And that I haven't seen anywhere. The first time I saw that. And that's what Pir-o-Murshid means by the divine inheritance. That's exactly what St. Francis meant when he said, I have another father. And exactly what Christ meant when he said, be perfect as your father. And, they are in the world but not of world. You see it all comes in the end. It all comes together. So that is the secret of awakening. Whether you call it samadhi or not. Because awakening is not just realization. It is and it's true in yoga too it's recognized, Ilyiad says that it's a transforming awakening, not just awakening. It's not just in the domain of knowledge of realization. Discovering meaningfulness by being transformed. Or the meaningfulness that transforms you. And that tallies again with the words of Al Hallaj when he said, 'h God! Do away with my nazutiat so it might be replaced by Thy lahutiat. So nazut--human level--you know when I described the different levels. There are qualities, that is the way that lahut--that is the archetypal qualities--have been customized and as I say it is like the exemplars of those archetypes. That's our personality our idiosyncrasies--nazutiat. And he said, do away with that nazutiat. In other words, disintegrate this formation. And that's what Buddha is always talking about, formation. 

Our  personalities are a formation. So that, well I'm paraphrasing of course, so that I may avail myself of a fresh dispensation of qualities from their source not those that have been distorted through my ancestry--handed to me through my ancestry. That is extra-samsaric. You see the freedom in it. Freedom from thinking well, I was born in this environment, and I'm a product of this environment and so on. That's not recognizing all the dimensions of your being. That is confining one's self to a very narrow slice of one's being. And therefore not availing one's self of one's freedom. And as the Sufis say, oh man, if you only know that you are free. It is your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity. I hope that as I'm speaking you're beginning to feel something about a(your?) way of thinking. Sort of, it will shift your way of thinking. And as soon as you shift your way of thinking immediately there's a kind of break through of realization. There's something you grasp and maybe it's just a flash and then, when you know custom dies hard so one falls back in to one's usual way of thinking, and if you keep on reminding yourself of this new way of looking at things then it has the effect of awakening you and consequently transforming you all together at all levels. And you see that the importance of the notion of God in Sufism because if you see if you can instead of thinking, I'm imperfect and I want to become more perfect. 

If you think the other way around, God discovering Him Herself in my imperfection and it is really God not other than myself. And so somehow that perfection is present in me but is distorted and I can somehow reverse it, it's a whole new way of thinking which is thanks to the concept of God. If you don't have a concept of God you can't think that way. So let's just sit together for a few minutes and let these thoughts trigger off a realization and a sense of freedom and a discovery of who you are in reality in a cosmic sense. With all that we've learned about light and then awakening becomes illumination. And the key is to identify yourself with the light that sees instead of the light that could be seen. And therefore identify yourself with the light of luminous intelligence that thrusts its light upon all upon your understanding. Your glance thrusts it's light upon physical things but the light of intelligence casts its light upon understanding. And if thereby you identify with your aura and not just the physical aura but the counterpart of your aura that we call the celestial counterpart and then you're aware of the countenance of the face of that aura, those are concentrations that lead towards illumination. 





SEP 01, 1995		Tape 12

Tape #12 Date: September/'95 Location: Abode Labor Day Retreat

 feels oneself so light and I never really understood until it became an experience, because one is alleviated from all the weight of the kind of burdens and hassles and dependencies and addiction one is carrying one's - the weight of one's support system. That's why (inaudible) could not attain the Olympus without - he had to leave Pegasus behind - and Pegasus couldn't reach the Olympus. The support system. However much you transmute it at a certain point you have to let go. (Short pause). So, some of you would like to go and sit in nature or walk in nature and um some of you just need to have a break and rest so you must do whatever you feel like and uh then we meet again in ah I would say twenty five minutes so, according to me it's ten to eleven so it would be quarter past eleven, according to me. Those of you who have maintained your silence and ah for having stayed with me for this ah inner process so I would like to announce the ending of silence so perhaps ah we could ah chant um what is it I said Mareshin yes well you've already heard many chants um yesterday at the universal worship but of course there are more so one is (chanting, Sum Tus). Now I hope you remember it because I can't sing two voices at the same time unless someone would like to come up and (inaudible), you know it don't you, Sum Tus? No? No? So someone who really is sure. Yes, of course! Um you can come up and share the throne (laughter). So, ah, perhaps you start, hmmm. 'h yes, yes, so, you, ah, from you folks from this side on - you ah follow her and from this side, follow me (laughter). Would you like to start? (Chanting). 'k. 

Wonderful. So we could do it two, three voices now because Rahima's here - you know it, do you? You know it? No? Yes, of course, yes. Yes. You can, you can come on this side here, this side of me, yes, so, I'll hold it here so um then you have to divide it in three actually one could sing it with five voices but three is difficult enough so I guess, so, up to here - you understand what I mean and then, that's, and then um up to there, yes, you're fine, okay, so, you start and then oh yes we all sing it together for - yes - (laughter) so, we all sing it together. (Chanting). All right now you no you won't you'll be conducting those over there, that's why that's why I stopped you - I'm sorry, I apologize but I had to and so ah ah yes, and I'm conducting here and ah Zaripha is conducting there, and the reason is so that we don't turn our backs on each other - that we're communicating - right? (Laughter). 'kay, so, you start, eh? (Chanting). (Laughter). All right, all, we'll sing it once together, all together, now yes - and uh, it was a bit fast. (Chanting). So you notice that, um, that second phrase is ah, with a dead beat, it's, first of all you have, you start on the, on the full beat. (Chanting). And then you have a a dead beat so it's a syncopated (Chanting). Now it's the second part and the third part is syncopated. 'kay? So, let's sing it all together once more, for Rahima's sake. 'kay. I'm sure that you're musically enough, minded enough to do it. So, (Chanting). once more. (Chanting). Yes? 'kay? Start. (Chanting). All right, well, never mind. I know, I'm sorry to spring this on you at the last minute like that um, um, it's just because I take you to be a genius um, but um, (laughter), so consider it as a compliment. 'kay? So, thank you. Well, now, we're all concerned about ah what use you're going to make about what you learned during this weekend ah when you get back to America again. (Laughter). 

That's a good question. Um, well, you'll find yourself uh, back in the same situation in which you left except that ah hopefully you will have changed somewhat and therefore you will no exactly find yourself back in the same situation because the situation is not just out but is the relation between you and the situation - and the outer circumstances in - so, there will be change and if you expect there to be a change then there won't be a change - so, no expectation, there's a word of (Swami Sachiananda) who said 'no appointment, no disappointment'. (Laughter). Um, and um, the other thing is um, one is a very bad judge of one's own progress and uh so um, if you find that you haven't progressed it's uh you're opinion is as I've already said many times, is not reliable, so um, if uh, the people um, who um, you come back to, say 'oh, but ah, you're transformed - I've never seen you like this' um, ah, don't say it's thanks to that guru because um, first of all I'm not a guru and secondly it's thanks to yourself. So, because, I mean, I was trying to teach you to do it yourself, so , um, uh, be careful of all those conversions and isms and missionary work and so on ah, that's not what we're into. Um. 

You will probably find life more difficult then when you left (laughter), and you were hoping to make it easier but ah, the reason for that is that you have become sensitized and ah, will be very sensitive to the grossness of people, more so then ever before, and um, the trouble is that now after hearing all that we've been saying you will be rather cautious about being judgmental people so it's difficult because you are sensitized and the same time you are not to pass judgement so, and of course it's true that um, one is tested, in fact ah, there is a world of my father - "we are tested in our love" and that is uh, it means that you find yourself feeling that you need to love people who are obnoxious and so it becomes very stressful to feel you can't and you want to and you, it's really very difficult so don't, it's ;not easy and and can't assume that you've just got to do it - don't shoot yourself into doing something that is too difficult and that is the reason for um, a wazifa which I never use, in fact you might have noticed that so far I haven't been speaking about the wazifa (short pause). there's, ah, but um, maybe, I would like to say a few words about them, you see, um, the word - it's just a language it's a it's a different language to the usual and therefore you don't have ah, ah, you're not using words that have certain stereotype connotations so it's useful sometimes to use words of another language like in for example in arithmetic or geometry you're using symbols that ah, sometimes - Greek symbols, so it's something like that. So, never mind the word, what is important is that um, um, that one represents a certain attunement in a certain type of insight and so ah, forget the words. 

I might mention them but they're not important but um, for example, uh, you are forewarned now between, uh, about uh, let's say the danger of losing yourself as you expand consciousness and of course it's uh,you know, coming back from this seminar you'll, or this retreat, you'll have a sense of - a need of immensity, a sense of having touched upon immensity now and you have a kind of claustrophobia to get back into a very confined situation and so this tendency, as you meditate, it will make you feel like losing yourself in the vastness and ah, in fact it's, it's very um, very mystical, very uh it's very wonderful, wonderful feeling um, and especially if you if we say that ah, to find yourself you have to lose yourself as St. John said, but ah, the beauty of the wazifa is then that you are always balancing one by another so that as you inhale then you become aware of your idiosyncrasies, of the uniqueness of your being because that gives you the power to make a selection between the impressions you want to ingest and those you want to reject or at least put on hold, so, that's the kind of thing that we've been taught so I'm, it's a kind of warning not to just go into the kind of thing that one often finds in India and especially in some of the Gurus coming over uh, lose a sense of who we are and um, even though it's it's relative and not absolute and so on, still and that's why as I said Steiner uh warned people against um the danger of losing our sense of our own uniqueness in meditation, becoming cosmic, um, the word (taharga) means cosmic, having become thus, and that's Buddhism, but it's not Sufism - it's not what we want, hmmm? 

We want to validate our being and honor our being and celebrate life, so um, on one hand, um, if you become sensitized then it may be that you feel that you've touched upon something so beautiful and so meaningful that um, you find life on the kind of common place mentality of people very trite and low key and um in fact um, rather boring but um, people try to overcome that boring by entertainment and uh, so you might feel a bit out of synch, but it's true uh, and uh, uh, the only way to um, be able to meet that is to uh, uh, think that you're playing with children - they're children and so you can be like a child if you're playing with children and you enjoy playing enjoy being a child but you're not really a child but you can enjoy being a child and so it's okay and then that um, otherwise you'd be estranged and that's not what we are looking for. People sometimes get spaced out and then they come back and then uh, they, they can't adjust so uh, it's um, it's it's a kind of humility - the human touch, you see that the thing is that Gurus often give you a sense of being special and uh they think they're special and so they make you feel special and you lose your common touch and so that's why the words of Christ so absolutely essential here; it's "One is in the world but not of the world". So it's not one is special, it's just that one is just not um, one has a kind of dedication and I think that the only way to um, to feel that one is not of the world um, is if one feels that one wishes to be of service, so then one is like an ambassador like a knight, who is on service and so that makes it easier then to think well, I'm an initiate now and I'm on the spiritual path and those people are not on the spiritual path, that kind of thinking is very bad for you, detrimental - it leads to sanctimoniousness. 

And so it is true that each one of us has a certain status but nobody can decide what status it is and therefore I have my reservations about the initiations, because it says ah, I'm assessing what rank a person has and you can't - I can't - I certainly can't, assess what rank a person has, it's only to try and give an encouragement for people to feel they're moving ahead and they're not staying - remaining stagnant. The proof is, one says the proof of the pudding is in the eating so I have often been asked ah, when you see people in the course of the years do you find they have improved or not? And if they weren't improving then I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't, I would be doing something else - I wouldn't feel there was any point in doing it if it doesn't make a difference in people. But I must say that when I see people after many years, I'm very moved because I see the transformation. So you can't assess it yourself but um, it's something that um, happens um, uh, unconsciously, and maybe you realize it and maybe you don't, and it doesn't matter if you don't realize it but um, don't think to yourself, well, um, I'm not progressing - I would say that a consolation would be to think that most people deteriorate instead of progressing so if you even stand still it's better (laughter). No, it's true. If you look at young people, so full of life, ideal and so on, light in their face, and then get bitter and hardened, and greedy and indulgent and so on, so uh, in fact that's why I started camps for when I was a young man altogether was just to warn people not to get like that. 'Cause then it's much more difficult to undo all the the harm that's been done, all the damage that's been done so I keep a childish attitude towards life, uh, that will keep you from becoming greedy, and hardened and uh, and uh, low key. It's being delighted in everything, in looking at the flowers, looking at the trees, delighted in even looking into the heart of a person who is forlorn and lost in life and you still see beauty there like Mother Theresa of Calcutta - there was this baby that was all distorted, disformed, smelly, and uh, dying, and she took it in her hand and said "yes, there still life in it" - you see? 

She say beauty. It's true that uh, you have learned um, detachment, compensated by interest and that's very paradoxical, to be interested and at the same time detached, but then uh, all um, especially Sufism, is paradoxical and uh, so it's not simple, and that's the reason why there are so few people who, so far, who have been interested in Sufism, because it's just very much more difficult to understand then Yoga or Buddhism. So, just accept contradictions, um, and so um, you'll - your detachment will give you strength because you're not dependant upon people or circumstances, leave you strength - you are detached and on the other hand your love for people will increase while you're detached which is very paradoxical. Because that is what one calls unconditional love. If you say to a child "If you're naughty I won't love you" - that's not unconditional love. So Pir - o - Murshid said "one is tested in one's indifference", but as I say don't force yourself to be indifferent, to be detached. Um, for example, um, uh, there, one can encounter such terrible injustice towards oneself or towards other people and it can unleash in you a rage, and it's very important to see the difference between rage and outrage. 

Rage is personal - I am angry personally because I have been let down, I have been betrayed, I've been badly treated, I have been undermined, demeaned, that, and that uh, especially in the form of jealousy um, um, one can uh, that ah, rage will manifest as hatred and is, so all those ugly feelings come up and uh, it's, if you can't control it, well, that's where you're at but of course if we don't have ah, strong feelings about things we become uh, insipid and consequently it's necessary to have some backbone, some strength and so then um, the uh, rage um, when it becomes impersonal because and that means that one is, it becomes outrage you see and one's outraged because of what happened what - the treatment of other people - not just for oneself - rage for oneself but outrage - one is outraged by the con- by what we hear happened in the concentration camps and is happening now - a -days on is outraged - one is outraged by the lie in economics and politics and so on - outraged. And if you're not outraged, well, then you're you're you're spineless and you don't have an impact on on on the environment. So, we don't want to make people meek - that is not spirituality to me. Meek and uh, I know there's this picture of Christ - meek, but uh, you know, he had a whip in the temple - he was not meek. And if you see that picture of Christ on the on the on the Turin cloth, which I know the Vatican says is not authentic but I know it's authentic - with all due respect, that is Christ - that's how Christ looked. He's a powerful being. 

So we can recognize that same power of the prophets of the desert - Abraham, Moses - they were powerful beings, hmmm? And so um, you see we belong to the tradition of the magi, and the sufis are, I remember I did a retreat once in uh, in uh, um, Iran - well I did several retreats, I did two retreats in Iran, but one - it was in Shiraz, at a place called Quli which is a grave of a dervish - a great dervish, and allot of people used to come and visit um, to be with in the the presence of this dervish, to meeting dervishes, but of course he had died a long time ago and um, I sought my retreat an um, lo and behold, on Friday all these a lot of young men came up with uh, playing uh, Iranian Rock and Roll on their radios and so I didn't feel like it was a place for me. So I sought for the place where the dervishes meet but it is but anyway when I went behind I looked in the crypt, there were the pictures of the dervishes of the early well the late eighties and early nineties, lets uh, say a hundred years ago, or a little more - there were photographs then, already - and they were like kings - I mean it was incredible. They, the power and the beauty of those beings, those were dervishes - and so uh, and you see that in Pir -'- Murshid Inayat Khan. And uh, so I think that we pride ourselves in our humility and it's uh, it's what they call false pride, we have to be careful about denigrating ourselves, saying I'm no good and I'm not - you know - uh, I don't like myself - self hatred and so on. No uh, it is, the sufis say if you do that you are insulting your creator. 

It's like uh, telling the artist that you don't like his painting. So, in fact it's not recognizing the divine, divinity in your being, and of course if you think of God as other than yourself then of course you uh, can uh, denigrate yourself but if you recognize the divine inheritance in your being then you mustn't denigrate yourself. And so again a paradox that is that that perfection uh, is there together with the association - within the association and uh, Pir -'- Murshid has a formula for that - a real slogan and that is "The aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the ego". The real aristocracy, the nobility that goes together with one's realization. There's a word of Buddha, again, he said um, um, "The more realized you are, the more you behave with" - a word which - well, the only way that I can translate it is decorum, which is a Latin word, decorum um, to act with a nobility. So when you see that kind of slovenly ah, attitude of people these days and it seems not done to be noble these days, um, cause we're living in Cali Yoga, a real um, a real um, dark uh, decadent condition of the humanity at present. I think humanity is ill, literally ill, there are a few people who are not contaminated or but we all uh, run the risk of getting contaminated by this decadence and so it's good that there are a few people who represent that uh, that tradition of the Kings and Queens and the nobility of the past. 

Which is still, the vestiges of this is to be found in the ruins of the Paris of Parsappellis for example, if you consider that uh, what are we making now like um, the building of Pompideau in Paris after the when you consider what was the greatness of the Paris of Parseppellis and all that we are capable of doing is something that is really kitsch - like the casino of Monte Carlo. I prefer the Paris of Parseppellis that is a ruin - at least you can see the grandeur of the conception behind it. And that is true of us also. There is a word of Shams-I-Tabriz - who was a great dervish and who initiated Jelal - Ud - Din Rumi -and he said um, "The man of God is a palace in ruin". Dare I say I prefer a ruin then a Kitsches um, um, um, rather cheap kind of construct with no style at all. It's um, there's no accounting for taste. So uh, that's something, taste is something that one develops and uh, that is what we are doing here - when you become sensitized then your taste uh, changes - it's almost a kind of education like like the kind of music we're playing here. It has - it corresponds to a certain attunement - a certain level of realization. But at the same time, as I say, um, uh, what is important is uh, to maintain the common touch at the same time. And uh, it's only the power of love that will do it. Now, um, I'm interpreting the wazifas so I start by saying yes, there's the wazifa Wazit, which means expansion and there's no limit in, one's like the horizon - infinite regress but then there's um, its Basit I'm sorry, Basit - but then there's another wazifa that is, means wide compass and yet still some some kind of containment and that is less detrimental to our sense. 

In fact it, instead of it being detrimental to our identity it gives you the a sense of the dimensionality of your identity and so there you have another word which is um, um, which is Wasi and um, so uh, for example my father instead of uh, inviting people to expand their consciousness when they exhale as we did during our retreat and that is right for a retreat but instead of doing that he would say everyday during your meditation survey your kingdom - that is, survey the area of which you have responsibility, of which you are responsible and that is that is uh, Wasi. So, in fact it doesn't really have a boundary but still, you say, well, yes, I feel this, that person there I should have telephoned that person that I'm that that's part of my my responsibility, and um, that this person who is in need and uh, well, maybe even just thinking of that person, so um, those are my, that's my response - and the more you are aware of your responsibility the more your are fulfilling your purpose in life as an ambassador of God - that's the way the Sufi's say, that that's knighthood - ambassador and uh the consequence is that you develop qualities that you would not develop if you were not conscious of your responsibility. And so you see that spirituality here is not, does not make you other worldly, but on the contrary very conscious of your responsibility. 

So then let's just uh, uh, uh, uh, touch upon some of the other wazifas: there's uh, Ya Batin, Ya Zahir, and uh, I find that allot of people who come to spiritual groups um, are introspective let's say ah tend to turn within and find it difficult to communicate with the world - and uh, that can lead towards pathological condition of of isolation, so on, loneliness, so what we're encouraging and on the other hand as I've said uh, um, one needs to be able to place a buffer between the world and oneself in order to be able to avail oneself of the beauty of one's resourcefulness, a pool of resourcefulness in one's being so it is necessary to learn how to turn within - we've been doing it the first two days of the retreat but then one needs to balance it with the other way around, Zahir, which is reaching out and it's not the same thing as expansion uh, it is reaching out from within and uh, the word Zahir means the manifestation of the non-manifest and the whole universe is the manifestation, the gradual manifestation, the unveiling of the veiled, of the unknown and that has enormous tradition in Islam with that woman who, the great poetess who um, I forget now which century it was - she was very famous for it, yes, in the middle of a big meeting she unveiled her face and then the mullahs came and killed her. And you know that's the eternal feminine now that we see as revealing the the secret of God and Al Hallaj was accused of revealing the secret of God. That's what's happening in our time and that's why um, the arcane, you know, the sense of, like the secrecy of the esoteric that has to be hidden and only given to the initiates, that's opening up now and that's why I'm giving practises to initiates or non-initiates, it doesn't make any difference - as far as I'm concerned uh, and um, ultimately there are no secrets. They're sacred but they're not secret, but the secret gets unveiled, hmmm? 

That's one of the meaning of Zahir, manifesting the unveiling of that which transpires behind that which appears because the veil is that which covers that which is trying to transpire and there's a wonderful word of Farid 'ud-din Attar who said "Glory to the One who manifests Himself by the same veil that conceals Him and conceals Himself by the same veil that manifests Him". That's one way of looking at the universe, as a continual disclosure of that which you have not yet grasped - it's continual Being is real to you. Uh, Zahir really means the same thing as Epiphany, epiphanous, the appearance of light which is the word used uh, in the connection with the three wise men who visited Christ a few days after his birth, the day of the Epiphany, you see,the day when the light that the shepherds saw in the stars begins to appear in that child. So, um, that uh, thought as I've very often associated with Munawir which means the lamp (tape cuts off)

(End of side one).

Side 2

...Munawir is a lamp and so you think of yourself as a lamp which is what we tried to do when we're working light, remember, and there's a lovely, uh, picture of Christ, um, his heart his like, uh, lamp, and he's holding this lamp - he's shielding this lamp against the wind, and that's the kind of feeling that uh, you, I hope you, maybe you have, working with light, you're walking in the woods and somehow you're protecting this light from the disturbance of the agitation around you and keeping this sacred, this lamp, um. That's Munawir. Ahem. Ahem. Now, um, ahem, oh yes, we have time, yes, ahem, you see, that's one way of looking at things that um, whatever, uh, materializes in the existential world is the manifestation of, that is that which transpires between that which appears behind that which appears, but then there's another outlook, and that is that God becomes a reality and that is a thought which um, is to be found among the Sufis, embodied in the words of Murshid "Make God a reality and He'll make you the truth". 

Ahem, and you see behind that there's um, a whole way of thinking because instead of thinking God is reality and we are just the exemplars of that reality as I said, if you think of it in the complimentary way, the archetype is only real in the exemplar. Rosewood is only a reality in roses. Roundness is only a reality in round objects. And God is only a reality in us. So it's exactly the reverse of the Mayat theory, and, both are true, both are complimentary as I say - Sufism is paradox, ahem. Reconciliation of the irreconcilables. And so we have that word, Mawjud. Mawjud means existence, God has become existentiated, up and um, this uh, is a thought which um, well, it uh, it needs interpretation in is in Islam and that's why Sufis have a problem, because it needs interpretation. The word exists and therefore, you know, it can't be questioned that but it is questioned but it shouldn't be but ahem, and um, so it it means it doesn't only mean that God God - the reality behind the universe gets manifested increasingly in the course of evolution, but what it means is that it becomes concretized, that that in in in form, in matter ahem the value of matter of our bodies which is undermined by a lot of acetic schools um, and which we realize in our time, we realize the importance of the body as a temple of God. Ahem. Ahem. 

So when you read the words of Murshid "Make God reality" then you think of the Mawjud, God is a reality in your being so that in fact it one it can even go further, like some of the Dervishes say "Why do you look for God up there - He is here?!" And Pir - o - Murshid Inayat Khan says "Where are you to find God if it's not in the God conscious beings"? And so that's important because in our meditations we tend to want to reach beyond the beyond - that's a word in uh, uh, uh, Sanskrit, uh, Barat. Barum means beyond the Beyond. And um, not realizing this is right here and uh, Buddha says there is place you can't reach by going, by moving (chuckle), I say that because um, I see people meditating, and try to enter into their consciousness, and sometimes I see that they're simply getting spaced out and getting lost and get into a nebulous condition and that's why I said people are half dead and they think they are meditating and they are just very close to going to sleep (chuckle), in fact it has been there has been a survey and they found that more than seventyfive people who practice um, T.M. go to sleep while meditating ahem, um, but um, I don't think it's bad to go to sleep while you meditate because um, then it's continued in your sleep - you are you are um, ah, um, programing your sleep. In fact it's a very good thing is to is to sit cross legged in bed and then you meditate and then at a certain moment you just lie down (laughter) and then and then when you awaken again you sit up again and you can continue all that happened in sleep, continue (laughter), ahem, okay, so that's Mawjud. So that um, will emphasize in you the importance of awake - awakening in life. So, to be more precise because what does it mean - I mean to have been said it all along awaken in life but what does it really mean - how do you do it? 

One way of doing it is to follow a thought in its creative unfoldment until it manifests as a form and even even manifests as matter. Ahem, of course a wonderful practice of course for for people who have some musical training is to start with a thought with even start with an attunement as your meditating and then you find that attunement gets followed up by thoughts and then you project a thought ah,ah, form or if you're musically minded then you improvise a melody, ahem. We're trying to do that at the music camp ahem, in 'mega Institute, ahem, um, um, for a musician, but um, otherwise, if you're not a musician it doesn't matter, which I would say that um, the best illustration for it would be to take a wazifa, for example um, Ya Wahabo, which means you keep on advancing and advancing, so it's an attunement, isn't it? It's just, of course you can you can project this attunement into a picture like uh, you're on in a car that is advancing or a train or air plane or whatever that that you're moving, you're advancing so you can really picture it very well or then for example um, uh, a a river that keeps on advancing, so there you have a picture and that picture gives you much more precision then just the thought of the kind of Wahabo as being like um, something that is in motion or ah, you're attunement is not static, it's, ah, instead of you - sometimes when we we meditate become very (inaudible) sclerosed in a and in a thought and now ah, the thoughts are uh, um, uh, set into motion, uh, I don't know if you've ah, studied Yoga - perhaps you've you know that um, one um, learns what is called eckagrata, which is not allowing your thought to keep on juggling one thought to another but to keep to a very very clear essential um, thought. I think that may be true of (inaudible) and I, maybe you know if you're riding a horse maybe you have to be able to hold the reins tight and you have some sense of discipline but um, on the other hand if you want to horse the horse to run you have to let lay the reigns free. 

And so I think that one is doing violence to the mind by trying to still it. And so you don't find that in the Sufi teaching - you find on the contrary that the mind is ah, activated, we encourage creativity, and ah creativity means that um, it starts with an emotion and then the emotion is translated into lots of thoughts, not just one thought but a whole plethora of thoughts um, they're all in some way connected uh, and then it is followed up by um, form. And that's why I I'm talking mainly to the initiates who are have been given practises, like what we call the wazifa and that is always associate a wazifa with a picture, always, and it, you make your picture - it doesn't matter, don't uh, think well what did Pir Vilayat what was picture for this, no, you make your own picture. Ahem. It could be a scene, or one calls it a landscape of the soul or it could be a scenario and um, I don't know if you know the difference uh, a scenario is uh, uh, like a situation like a a theater in a drama that's a, where as a scene is like panorama of nature and so on, it could be transfigured scene, but it's still as a scene where it's apparent scenario, well actually, um, what I have already taught is that um, that you are in the panorama and therefore the it is a scenario, not just a scene. You are part of the scenario of the scene. So it does something to you if you can actually um, uh, have a clear picture of what was at first just an emotional attunement um, that is the reason for music at all it's because uh, uh, uh, the music then, which a lang - which is a form of course uh, is a language which um, communicates the attunement of the composer. 

And but then between the emotion and the and the and the the picture, the form, is uh, allot of thought and that's why we uh, you know, as I say that, we customize the thinking of the universe, so there's so much richness in our thoughts if for example when I was at music school in at (inaudible) music in Paris we took a prelude of Chopin and Chopin well, it's very romantic uh, very uh, uh, one thinks of, it's easy to listen to ahem, and ah, to feel um, comfortable with ahem, but if you start analyzing it, the intelligence goes into a simple prelude of Chopin is incredible, so behind it was an attunement but the amount of thought, how he moves from one scale to another and um, how the rhythm uh, corresponds with the melody well, the knowledge behind that is incredible ahem, and therefore the attunement is not good enough to be creat - uh, creat - uh, it needs to become uh, it needs to pass through the level of the activity of the mind so let us not denigrate the mind uh, you know sometimes some people say well, this is a mind trip - yes, it's a mind trip if one is not aware of the role of the mind as a bridge between one's attunement and ah, concrete nitty gritty. Yes, ahem. And remember that the mind is elastic. Ahem, so, as you know in as um, in at least at one level of um, um, activity of the mind the mind um, is very resourceful as it proceeds by association so for example uh, take another example of a wazifa um, um, you, well let's take again the example of Zahir which is uh, the Epiphany we said, well there you are you think of a light that emerges from a source and expands like a um, well it's a nice um, painting of Mawjud in the Qalbi ah, ah, qalbi ah, cafe, and you see all this light, really exploding out of that like a volcano so that that's a wonderful illustration of Zahir, hmmm? 

And so if you think like that - if you just say Ya Zahir Ya Zahir it's not going to do any good, the word some people think that the word will do it for you - it doesn't. Ahem. Nor does the grace of the Guru does it - do it for you either. Ahem. If you as you're saying Zahir if you thinking, yes, the light the ah, ah, uncreated light in my being is expanding and reaching into people and even the planets and even the stars so you have a concrete picture and then Zahir will really have a transforming affect upon you. Ahem. Ahem. And there are of course many examples um, um, for example um, well, the practise Ya Zahir is always well let's take Ya Wali, which means mastery. Now just saying Ya Wali Ya Wali because you want to become more masterful - it will it will induce you into an ego trip. I would say it's very dangerous, hmmm. I've seen that happen, I've seen people say (gruffly) Ya Wali Ya Wali - ahem, ahem, ego trip, ahem. Um, I already talked about this inner power that comes through from within, the spiritual power is not the ego but then what would be the concrete expression of it? So originally as I say for each wazifa there is a certain emotional attunement so, the emotion of being in control - you know that feeling, don't you? When you're in control of something - even just driving your car, hmmm - you're in control, hmmm? Swimming, whatever, you're in control. Skiing, ahem, there's an emotion in it. Uh, certain well, it might appear like a personal satisfaction, but it's more than a personal satisfaction - a sense of fulfillment there like this was this is part of the purpose of my life, ahem. Uh, Wali is really um, um, in scientific terms, is negenthropy, which is the opposite of entropy, and uh, which can be illustrated by for example a library where we been taking the books out of the shelves and haven't put them back - that's entropy that - a loss of orderliness. 

And entropy is the opposite, turning chaos into order and um that can only be done by dint of hard work (chuckle), it's up hill, up hill. Ahem. Hard work, hmmm? So, Wali means then making order out of the chaos of your life (chuckle). Ahem, tidying your room - it starts with tidying your room, I'm not a very good example of that myself. (chuckle). Ahem, but um, getting one's trip together as one says um, um, very, um, ah, conscious of um, not letting something pass which needed to be controlled by just letting it pass, hmmm? A very good example of it is a conductor with a choir of course, or orchestra, it's a stop the choir, yous - you played the wrong note you sang the wrong note - start again. Ahem. Never let it continue because then it becomes a bad habit and we're doing that all the time. Yes. Stop it, take control, hmmm? That's Ya Wali. So in this case just saying Ya Wali Ya Wali because I want to develop more master - it won't do it for you and that's why I do not blame people who proceed to wazifa who discontinue saying it if doesn't do anything to you you're wasting your time. Ahem. But if you, so the only way in which it can be useful if you think of a definite situation in your life like a situation which you are not controlling now, the wazifas are always given, or mostly given in tandem and the reason is that if you apply one wazifa uh, it might be at the cost of another. It's a little bit like if you develop the muscles in your right arm you have to also develop those in your left arm. Some, always, and that's the reason why in the Kaballah you always have those two sides, those, the essential one ah sophorotic tree, and then you have the left and right, ahem, (inaudible). 

So, the complimentary one is um, well it is Rahman, which is magnanimity and so that is what balances uh, mastery because if you don't then you if you just pursue mastery without having respect for the freedom of people then your mastery becomes an ego trip. And that's why we have the wazifa always I give the wazifa always um, Ya Wali always with Ya Rahman, always, hmmm. And one can even say that the reason why one has difficulty in developing mastery is because one doesn't want to uh, uh, discard the free will of people. It's the other way around - one wants to encourage the the the free will of people. And if they see that your mastery helps them to master to achieve mastery, then you are encouraging their free will by manifesting mastery.

Question: Pir Vilayat, could you, uh, speak of when you give Ya Hadi with Ya Wali?

	Yes, um, thank you, it's a good question because as I said um, the wazifa are often given in tandem but uh, they are not necessarily the same choice of the two, it could be another two, and you're quite right uh, Ya Wali Ya Hadi, um, Wali, it's a very interesting word, Wali, you know, it's the origin of the word Vilayat, um, um, because on one hand it means uh, it depends upon how where you place the accent in Arabic but um, in one way it means mastery and in the other way it means friend-friendship. It's very interesting because the master is the friend, hmmm? And it's quite different from, in, the Swami is the master but the Pir is the friend and there is even a word of Jelal 'Ud-Din Rumi, "The Pir is the destroyer of the idol people make of him or her". Ahem. 

It's part of the Islam that destroy the section of the idols, hmmm? So, and ah, there's, I could add something to this because it is really those of you who are in a position where you are guides or invited to be guides or representatives or coordinators and so on, ahem, you see one has a feeling that people are looking for a role model and one doesn't feel up to it, if one is honest, and if one is not acquiescing to the need of people one is letting them down. So one finds oneself in a bind and that's a situation that allot of spiritual leaders have found themselves in that they didn't acknowledge their humanness because they were expected to be non-human or superhuman and then when their humanness was discovered then people were disenchanted and lost not only faith in the guru but faith in their own ideal, they thought it was eutrophic - it wasn't real. And we're all faced with this um, not just those who are called upon to be in a position of leadership but also ahem, everyone, ahem, because on one hand we as I say the aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the ego. 'n one hand we have an ideal and we um, there are moments when we feel that we are living up to that ideal. And then there maybe times when we have to acknowledge the limitations of our being and it would be dishonest if we did not. And, ah, therefore on one hand if you are in a position of leadership then I think it's - first of all underplay your leadership instead of overdoing it, hmmm? Uh, and secondly um, um, you - don't let people make you feel that you need to be what they want you to be. You are what you are. Ahem. 

And what is more, if you don't have the frailties of the people you are guiding, you wouldn't know what their problem is, and you wouldn't be able to help them anyway. So, this idea of the superman is um, is a high filuted um, thought that had its terrifying consequences in Hitlerism. It all started with um, um, concept of the superman, hmmm, hmmm, ahem, or superwoman, but um, because there are cases of superwomen also (chuckle), ahem. So you see that's why the word Wali is um, it's wonderful that we have these two meanings, Wali is the master and the friend, at the same time, somehow. The Pir walks by your side instead of walking in front of you, guiding you, ahem, and shares your joys and sufferings, and and your frailties and your despair and your hopes, ahem.

Question: Pir Vilayat, I'm sorry. My question had to do with the Hadi.

	I know, it is coming (laughter). I didn't forget that (chuckle). I, I know, ahem, I'm very clear about it. Ahem. You came just in time and I donated what I had to say about the two aspects of Wali (laughter), ahem, well, just as uh, Wali can, of course, obviously Wali is the opposite of Hadi, obviously it's a doing instead of being receptive to one's guidance, ahem, taking control instead of listening in and it could lead to terrible stubbornness, as you can imagine, ahem, Wali could um, ahem, I'll give you an example of the many abuses of Ya Wali, of course, ahem, as I say Hitler is a very good example but um, ahem, the power trip but, um, I think of that man who um, as a yogi was in India who was who made a a vow to stand on one leg for three months, I think it might have been six months - I don't know, and so that leg became enormous, the other one was all ah, small and reduced, and just to prove that he can do it, now, so that's typical of Wali, of the danger of Wali, the the the need to prove oneself to oneself or to prove oneself to others. It can lead you into a power trip, hmmm. You don't have to prove, either to yourself or to others what you are - who you are, what you are, you don't have to prove it. And nobody can take away what you are. Um, now, Hadi has the same uh, shadow, or a different shadow um, but it has a shadow, and that is, um, wishful thinking - people say "God told me I have to go and kill someone". 

That's a very clear example of wishful thinking (laughter). It's very dangerous, extremely dangerous. Ah, people um, ah, it's a kind of um, it can lead towards uh, pathological condition, I uh, ahem, so well, then, what is the role of of listening to your guidance and it it's ah, if there's a danger of wishful thinking could it be that you are receiving guidance that is not wishful thinking? Your intuition? And there are so many clear cases of intuition, for example I mean you're heard I'm sure of of heard of many extraordinary cases, I know of one case for, I'm thinking of one case for example there was this young girl who was about to take the um, bus, in London, and all of a sudden she had a vision of her grandmother, who had died a long time ago, and to say don't take it, and the bus crashed. Now, a very clear case of intuition, ahem, and I'm sure you could all recount stories of extraordinary stories of ah, at um, a a kind of warning that was given to you um, ahem, by your guardian angel. Well you see, um, it's true that um, tuition does require that one at least give some credence to a point of view other than one's own. otherwise you don't learn. So that's what we mean by guidance is to um, listen to um, guidance that is coming to you rather than just doing your thing, cause then you'll never improve, if you're just doing your thing, it's going to lead to terrible stubbornness. 'n the other hand, um, I can think of cases where, that um, ah, the need for guidance is abused of, um, by people who want to control you, like the teacher who wants to control you and tell you what you have to do and what you mustn't do, an I suppose that um, even in the case of children sometimes, telling a child not to get too near the fire, yes, sometimes the child has to burn his finger to know that it's not good to get too near the fire. It's not always the best thing to tell a person what to do and not to do. 

But that there are such abuses of it in the world - need I say ahem, um, do's and don'ts um, ahem, and I think a a new spirituality it is very it matches now the new methods in pedagogy in in teaching, it's um, to encourage the initiative of people and and their inventiveness and creativity instead of learning parrot fashion and saying this is the way it is, hmmm? So, we have new concepts about Hadi, about ah, guidance, ahem. The old concept, I can illustrate it, that's a there's a very typical illustration of it ahem, um, the story of um, the man in the desert who, people in the desert who get lost and uh, you know it I don't know wether you know what it's like to walk in the desert for days and days, ahem, the yellow sand and then come to an oasis and it's all green and uh, flourishing and fantastic of course, contrast that people build there and so if one is longing for that moment then one can get lost in the desert. And, uh, then uh, one gets terribly dehydrated in in fact one can get into a sterile panic state, hysteria, and, um, in that uh, panic state one has hallucinations and so the story is that the Green Man comes to you that is of course, the oasis - the Green Man, um, Khidr, called Khidr, and he says um, um, "You've got lost - can I help you"? Uh, "'h yes, please". uh. "Well, one condition, and that is that you don't question my guidance". "Of course, of course". And then you're following Khidr and you see the glistening at the surf- at the horizon, and he's going the other way and so you think to yourself - "Well, it's my life after all and perhaps he didn't see it", so you say, uh, "Khidr", and he says, "I told you, one condition, that you follow my guidance, you're on your own now". And so you go to that glistening and you find that it was a mirage. 

So, that's a typical Eastern story of what, of Hadi - that's guidance. Ahem. If um, anybody could claim to be omniscient then, um, and even then, even then. I remember my father never told me what to do, except once, that uh, he uh, in fact ahem, I always asked him why must we do this or do that and he always tried to explain and um, trying to underst - enter into the brain of a child ahem, and then once he said, "You know I've always told you why but this time I can't because we're in a hurry" (chuckle). And another time he said uh, "Well, when you grow up you'll understand but at present you wouldn't be able to understand so, since I, whenever you could understand I told you and now, now, you must just um, take it that I know what I'm doing". So what a fantastic education that was, you see, the teacher, ahem, so that um, there are cases where um, Hadi comes in, and that is where um, uh, one, well one cannot rely upon one's judgement and therefore the judgement of one who can see further is going to help you. And that's Hadi. Now, it can be someone else, or it can be an intuition that comes to you. And ah, ah, very an overwhelming conviction uh, that this is right and uh, it's something that tells you and uh, now uh, but how are you sure that it's not wishful thinking? So uh, Pir - o - Murshid gives an answer here um, at least a clue. Um, he talks about the spirit in you in a different sense I think to the descent of the spirit, or maybe it's the same think, and it's like a thermometer, barometer, in your being that is very sensitive, um, you feel right or you feel not it's not quite right - it's a very sensitive feeling, green or red, hmmm, and it's not your mind, you can justify anything with your mind, so but somehow in your consc - it's your conscience actually, you feel, "No, I don't feel comfortable about that - I don't know why but I don't feel comfortable". 

That's your guidance. Now, um, and that's why Pir - Murshid's teacher, Abu Hashim - Moin 'Ud-Din, said uh, intuition is a revelation of the condition of your spirit. And so you turn within uh, in order to uh, uh, uh, sense how you feel inside, uh, for example this is a story,I'm often um, often telling about this young man who came to me and said "I'm accused of having burnt up, set a fire, a hospital, a fire, um, can you help me"? And uh, I thought, well, this is a lovely young man, very, looks at me straight in the eyes and of course I'm sure that he didn't, how could he have burnt that hospital, I mean really, how can how how can, there must be some miscarriage of justice here. And I said, "Well, let me just," I thought of the words of my father's Murshid and so then I said, "Well, just let me meditate, let me close my eyes, and all of a sudden I felt dishonest." 

End of tape.

1996

MAR 09, 1996		Tape 01

 Texas Spring Retreat Tape #1	Saturday Morning Meditation	 3/9/96 Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

SIDE A:	... many familiar faces...so radiant. Well, were going to start with just a few practices and then at 9:00 o'clock I shall announce the process which we shall be going through. 

So, let us start with breathing practices with the elements. But before, as a preparation for that, let us first make, well, double-check, that we are very clear how we contract our abdomen and chest as we exhale and then we dilate our abdomen and chest as we inhale. So there's a strange kind of opposition here because we are contracting our body and expanding our energy field and then we do the opposite: we're dilating our body, and we are drawing in the energy field from the universe. 

Now the second consideration is that instead of exercising pressure by our will upon, let's say, the rhythm of our breathing, we just let ourselves get in synch with the rhythm which is natural to us, and think of it as our participation in the ebb and flow of energy in the universe. 

So, let the universe self-organize itself in the rhythm of your breath in a most basic way, without intervening with your will. Then perhaps you'll notice there's a natural pulsing from, if you are familiar with the wazaif of the Sufi practices, then you realize that there is, there is an alternation between BASIT, expansion, and QABID, constriction. Those are the two basic, how can I say, digits in the rhythm of the universe. 

So, as you exhale you become like a wave in a wave-interference pattern, and as you inhale you become like a particle. The field has granulated itself into particles, discreet units, which means that as you inhale you merge with the environment, like waves which composed together form what one calls a wave-interference pattern, and then this is balanced by the opposite, the sense of the uniqueness of your being as you incorporate the universe and that aspect of the universe that is the cosmos, the existential aspect. It is being converged and consequently there is some sense of constriction, of even confinement, of limitation, but what is gained is free will, and that is taking responsibility. So you're really alternating between what in science is called auto-structuration, now that is the way the universe or the cosmos has a way of self-organizing itself, and then that self-organizing faculty is then customized in our being which is holistically linked with the totality. So, it's called a sub-whole, by means of free will and our free will is a feature of our sense of uniqueness. That is what is gained by the existential state, that the totality manifests, comes through, in a multitude of diverse presentations of the totality, which then enrich each other and consequently enrich the totality. So that at some point we do take over in our breathing, and that once you have the hang of letting things happen without any coercion, then you find that you can, by your will for example, extend your exhaling and extend your inhaling. So that is the way in which you are extending variance into the cosmic harmony which is enriched by our personal initiatives. 

And that is particularly so if you hold your breath because then you are really interrupting the ebb and flow, in fact you are suspending the passage of time. In fact you lose your sense of what one calls becoming, the arrow of time, the state of suspense, and you find what happens then, you're creating a situation which is favorable to the emergence of something new in your being that is not determined, a new dispensation. That is why it is considered as a state of voidness, which just means, it doesn't mean actually what we understand by a void or a vacuum, it is a state of all potentiality or virtuality, and creativity is always, there's always, it starts by the old potentiality, you see, and then there's some choice that we make unconsciously, and eventually perhaps consciously when you pass the threshold from the unconscious to the conscious. So that in the void there's a, it's almost as though the inward thrust that started as we inhaled continues in the void, just like, for example, if you're flying a plane and you interrupt the engine it will go on for some time. And then the opposite, you feel the emergence of something that you cannot grasp because it is in the implicate state, which is starting to configure itself, fashion itself, and it is only when that process has become a little more clear to your awareness that you can intervene and that is when you start exhaling, by customizing the self-organizing power of the universe. 

So you have to think of it this way, that the causal chain, that means that which determines how you unfold, that is actions of the past have an effect in the future, and so on, causality, and then there's the opposite, retrocausality, that is the pull of the future, like your plans, for example, that affect you. You have to distinguish this from, well, one could call it the horizontal vector of time, or if you like, a causality, a causality in time, to the vertical vector which is going from all potentiality to the breakthrough in an instant of time. Something new emerges which is not condition, something new emerges in your being which in fact cuts the logical, the causal chain, determinism, and represents none of that factor that may be in there, and that there's some kind of coordination of these two forces, just like for example, the tide, if you're in a yacht, and you have to take account of the tide, the way that the water is pushing you in a certain direction and then you have to take into account of the wind, two different forces, and then you have to take account of your own free will in deciding how you want to deal with these two forces. So you see that holding your breath as the effect of placing you before something totally unknown, but which carries the promise of change; now, freedom from conditioning, and creativity is freedom from conditioning. 

So it's like plunging into a whirlpool of abundance and maybe you make a, your unconscious makes some kind of choice and that the more you're aware the more you're able to make a choice. And that affirms your uniqueness, your choice, and it's a feature of your freedom. 

OK, let us do the practices with the elements, inhaling through the nostrils, exhaling through the nostrils, that's what we do generally, but being conscious of the gravity pull of the planet upon your body, for example. If it weren't for that gravity pull we would be flying out in outer space, and at the psychological level, of course, some kind of coercion which does make for cohesion. otherwise we would be dispersed, so it gives us a sense of togetherness and, consequently, free will, of course. So we're all experiencing that constriction that we find ourselves involved in by, by involving ourselves in life, by getting inveigled in social situations that restrict us, put us in a straightjacket. But, it does have the advantage of giving one a sense of self-motivation, responsibility, taking upon oneself the credit and also the blame for what one is doing to be answerable in one's person, reliability.

Now, of course, if you're aware of your life field or energy field or magnetic field, then you see that there's again some kind of, I'm not sure that it's an alternation but maybe it is, yes, it is an alternation as you breath, as you exhale, the magnetic field is pulled into the geomagnetic field, that is your magnetic field is pulled into the geomagnetic field, that is sucked into the earth, let's say, and consequently, well, purified, at least, and then as you inhale of course it is recycled again, always a renewal, a kind of filtering affect of the earth, and indeed in order to be able to assume responsibility one needs to purify oneself, not just at the level of the magnetic field but at the level of one's psyche, though one's psyche undergoes exactly the same process as the magnetic field. Seems like, so to speak, metaphorically, the heavier defects, let's say, those aspects that we are not comfortable about about ourselves, heavier, I'm talking metaphorically, but still there seems to be some sifting that takes places so that the heavier element are drawn downwards into that wonderful recycling thing that is Mother Earth, or Being that is Mother Earth. 

And then you feel that you've, it's a kind of purification, a catharsis, you get freedom from a lot of things that you were fighting against and you'll found it very difficult to deal with them by your will because it brings about conflict, but somehow a lending yourself to that purifying action of the earth, this process seems to happen in the course of, well, maybe in the course of years. And then there's that vitalizing effect of the earth, the geomagnetic field of the earth, that we call in Sufism MUHYI, the wazifa MUHYI, regeneration. So if you're thinking in terms of wazifas and as you exhale, MUID, which is like a, sort of a, actually MUID is inertia, it is the ability of things that have been disturbed to return to their pristine state. So it's like there's been some tarnishing and then finally the substrate of our being returns to its pure state: MUID. And then MUHYI, that's when the regeneration can take place.  

Now breath in through the mouth and out through the nose, I mean the other way round, breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. Now you become aware of the fluid aspect of your being instead of the solid, so the ability to adapt yourself, the ability to love, that is to adapt yourself to another, as a matter of fact, to commune with another for there to be an exchange at the, an enriching exchange, at the psychological level. The earth has difficulty in yielding whereas the water will find a way of composing with the environment. There, now, you're experiencing your, not just the connection between your electromagnetic field and the geomagnetic field of the earth, but of the, of the universe, of the cosmos, of the environment at all levels, not just the earthly environment, and of course it's true of the psyche. 

So you have that sense of, you know there's an osmosis between beings, like those of you whom I know more, better than others are a part of me and I maybe part of many of you, so there's a kind of osmosis between us at some, at the psychological level whereby we enrich each other and perhaps also burden each other with our trips, but then that's life, that's the beauty of giving, even at cost, the ability to change instead of being sclerosed, and not quite as much as the air, but because there is some direction, and you see that the gravity pull of the earth does play a role because water does descend, a slope for example. So that gives you a sense of motion, of evolution, of changing, for the better hopefully. Of course, it's not dissolution yet, it's, the water has the ability to dissolve aspects of ourselves that are soluble in water, let's say. So not everything, all the impurities cannot be got rid of by water, so it may be that in our contact with other people we are able to get rid of aspects of ourselves that we don't feel comfortable about. For example, if we see the effect of the features of our being on other people, a kind of mirroring effect, then we realize how much we learn with our interaction with the others, as the Sufis say "I see myself through the eyes of another person, through the eyes of another person, and I see that person through his or her eyes. So it gives you a sense of communication now, purification through communication. 

Now, baptism with fire. It's, of course, drastic. Unless we have that element in us we are rather spineless and amorphous. It gives us pep, a kind of surging energy that flames, flares up, for example, outrage rather than rage. Being outraged by terrible dishonesty and cruelty of people, or of oneself as a matter of fact. It's that capacity which will help us to correct ourselves also. If we can, it's easier to judge others of course, but if we practice this practice of seeing ourselves through the eyes of another, we get outraged by our own actions. They seem to have an all-consuming effect upon us, a purifying effect by consumption. Here we, we inhale through the mouth and inhale through the nose. Breathing through the mouth has a much more traumatic effect upon one than breathing through the nose because it involves, well, it involves the throat chakra: the thyroid gland and the parathyroid; somehow our rate of combustion, our rate of burning, our rate of involvement, commitment. So the key to this is HAQQ, the truth, that's the key to fire, truth. 

One will not brook the slightest departure from absolute truth. And the consequence is, of course, light; if you, light as a result of consumption of matter by fire, so that all of a sudden, whereas if you tried to concentrate upon light you, it wouldn't really work, very often just doesn't work because there's something we need to do with ourselves before we can really bring out the light in our being that is covered under a bushel, as one says traditionally. As you inhale, as you exhale, there's a breakthrough, that's like the fire draws the air into itself in order to burn, so as you exhale, as you inhale, I'm sorry, through the mouth, and this is often associated with kundalini practices, one imagines a flame in the center of your spinal cord that is aroused and reaches upwards, like the snake that was dormant and becomes awake, starts rising as it was coiled upon the spine, something like that, a sense of a flame is, that shifts from the infrared to the ultraviolet so that when you get towards the top then it's a much more cool light than warm fiery light, infrared, incandescence. 

You could almost feel that incandescence at the bottom of the spine and then the very high frequency light, violet and ultraviolet, even blue of course, at the top of the head, well, blue at the level of the eyes and then violet above the crown center and then ultraviolet beyond. So the consumption of impurities at the lower levels seem to enhance the radiance at the higher levels. 

Now, breathing, inhaling through the mouth and exhaling through the mouth, air, baptism with air, just try it out. Here you need to identify yourself, yourselves with the higher strata of your being. We won't try to define them, but we could say, perhaps we could say the celestial level of your being. And it's really a process of distillation, distillation like in alchemy. Of course a very good example of it is the work that we are doing to resurrect before dying. We're doing this all the time, for example events that take place in time and space, that is in our experience, continue to persist in our psyche, so let's say leave a mark in our psyche, so that the so-called outer world continues to live in the inner, but for that to happen it undergoes a process of transmutation, so that for example, we remember the gist of the experience rather than those aspects that are contingents, like there was an accident and you don't remember anymore the date or the color of the cars, but you do remember the expression on the face of the people, the woman who was hurt, the man who was guilty of the collision. So that's how, that's a very clear example of what I mean by transmutation or even distillation. Like in alchemy the liquid, the fluid, is heated and boiled to the point when they are just able to retrieve the vapor and so there's at the bottom of the vial you have, of the vial you have the dross. So in the process of purification, of distillation, there is some kind of separation between that which is called quintessence and that which is expendable, let's say the support system. But of course, as I say this is an example, but of course, the same thing occurs in the whole gamut of levels of our being, something of the...

SIDE B: 

...leaves its mark in our celestial being, but hopefully, when I say leaves it mark, hopefully we're able to extract the wisdom that we have gained at the cost of defilement that accrues to us at the celestial level of our being, and wisdom is not the same as know-how. Know-how was a kind of a support system that was a consequence of our manipulating physical matter or even circumstances, and then wisdom is like the quintessence of that. For example, an example of this a doctor has know-how, and develops know-how how you treat certain things, certain illnesses, but then one hopes that the doctor hopefully develops a kind of wisdom about the meaningfulness of life which is written right into the practice, but somehow it is the quintessence of the know-how. And of course it's true that the process of distillation requires a dissolution of the substrate which is, which undergoes, which incurs constraint, coercion, like water is subjected to the gravity pull of the earth, so if you want to, water becomes steam it develops some kind of measure of freedom from the coercion of the gravity pull of the earth. And so it is your sense of freedom or your need for freedom that will encourage your ability to distill your personality, that is, freedom that is non-attachment and non-dependence upon what I call support system, like a rocket that was launched out into outer space and at first it needed that support system, that launching platform, and now that thrust continues having its effect, detached from the support system itself. 

And then at a certain moment, the spacecraft has to be able to avail itself of energy of the light of the environment. And that's also true of the story of Pegasus: Bellafron was, rode Pegasus, the winged horse, you know, in order to, with a view to reaching illumination, which was the state of the Olympus. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately perhaps, Pegasus could only reach a certain altitude, and beyond that, so, but of course he imprinted upon Bellafron a certain momentum, and then Bellafron was able to continue on the strength of that momentum, on his own. That's what you experience. As you're doing this practice at the end of your inhaling, as you inhale you think of the propelling action of, that develops in a life situation when you have freed yourself from attachment or dependence; it has a propelling effect to the soul. And you see that this air, of course, gives you a sense of, well it means really the gaseous state, gives you a sense of the opposite of constraint or constriction or coercion, and also a sense of dissolving, so it's only, as I say for example, a wave interference pattern instead of a particle. So that applies to the higher levels of one's being where we are so much a part of the totality that is the opposite of the sense that we have in our bodies of having definite boundaries, our skins are boundaries, what one calls a discreet entity, whereas at this level one has a sense of participation in the totality. One does not lose one's identity but that one's identity becomes cosmic. 

The wazifas for that are YA WAHID and YA AHAD, the Solitude of the Divine Unity. Solitude of the Divine Unity, instead of the solitude, or rather instead of the loneliness, of the one's limited personal identity. 

So, God bless you now!

MAR 09, 1996		Tape 02



Texas Spring Retreat Tape #2	Saturday Morning Session	 3/9/96 Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

 SIDE A:

It is a very rare opportunity to share a retreat of this kind. Now of, course, if you're not mentally balanced, then it is not advisable to come here at all, because it could make you worse. There are things that need to be dealt with by a psychotherapist, and there are psychotherapists here, as in the case of Azar Baksh. And so if you have problems, I would just, it doesn't concern me if you stand up and walk out, if you feel you can't handle it, because if you want to do something that has, that is significant to bring about a change then we have to use fairly strong measures and that is bound to awaken all kinds of emotions and so forth, and so if you're not really totally in control that can, of course, surface, make certain very strong emotions surface, so in that case then, it's better if you simply walk out, and ask Azar Baksh, perhaps you know him, you know who Azar Baksh is. There he is. Will you please stand up? 

So he's your resource person. 	Now, what are our objectives first? Even though one mustn't limit oneself by one's projections, so we have some kind of idea what we need but it's always beyond what we try to define with our minds, but let us say that, you see the trouble is that one is using words and words tend to become stereotyped into cliches, so for example awakening, it's a word; illumination, a word. But the reality is like developing insight into situations that you hadn't seen that way before, and you can never say "I'm illuminated. I'm awakened. I've reached illumination or awakening." It's always perverse, Pir-o-Murshid says, it like "The horizon advances the further one proceeds". So, the other one is the hook that this insight is going to help us unfurl the potentialities of our being.  	(L'UD FEEDBACK) So, I think there's something very seriously wrong with the system. (CHUCKLE). But I'm sure they're doing everything possible to correct it. 

So, that transformation does not take place just by wanting it. Meditation is a very, very elaborate technique just like a musician who just supplies a lot of know-how. What we're going to do is try to share in the, one could say, skills that are intended to trigger off a change in our perspective, in our way of looking at things, and furthermore a change in our sense of self-identity, our self-image for example. And hopefully this is going to have some kind of effect upon the way that we handle our problems, so that we have a sense of achievement, fulfillment in our lives. I'm sure there are many other things that we hope to get out of this, for example, recharging our batteries. We tend to get depleted in the rat-race in the world. And so, of course there are a lot of psychological implications. I do not consider that spirituality (whatever that is, another cliche) has all the answers and there are many cases where one must resort to psychotherapy, and we don't want to play the apprentice sorcerers and try to meddle in situations which require that kind of expertise. 'n the other hand, psychotherapists are very interested in that dimension which we are working with, because they consider the whole being includes all the dimensions, all the levels of being. So our retreat is going to be based upon the staple food of the Sufis, the practice of the Dhikr. But instead of just repeating LA ILLAHA IL'LA 'LLAH, hundred of times, thousands of times, we're to explore very deeply each the steps that are embodied in that practice and see what relevance it has for us and the way that it opens up perspectives that we have not foreseen before. 


In general, I don't want to make these preliminaries too long, I want us to plunge into the process as quickly as possible, but let us say that perhaps you could recognize the different states, settings of consciousness, for example consciousness can be expanded, it can be contracted, it could be transcended, you could reach into an transcendent state, or even a sub-transcendent, so there are different perspectives of consciousness. And for each perspective there is a different mode of thinking. And we're used to the familiar, sort of commonplace, mode of thinking, so it's very difficult for people to imagine that there can be other ways of thinking than the ordinary way of thinking. Scientists are beginning to recognize that you can't go any further in science if you just continue to think in an ordinary way. So you would be confronted with new ways of thinking and sometimes I'll just have to use skills, as I say, techniques that will trigger off these states, these modes of thinking, just describing them isn't enough, we have to experience them. So, how do you experience them? How do we get ourselves into such a perspective that we're able to change our way of thinking and, of course, change our sense of identity. And then just distinguishing these different levels, perspectives, you know, it's like a hologram, for example. 

You see things in a certain perspective and then you change your setting of your glance and you see things in another perspective, so you see it's exactly the same thing. So we have to downplay one perspective in order to highlight another. But eventually what we want to do is extrapolate the frame of those perspectives, and of course that's the problem. So that's what we do with our eyes, for example. Each eye sees slightly differently, they call it parallax, the difference between the setting of both eyes, but then somehow our brain is able to extrapolate between these two. Now in meditation, it's a little more difficult because we have to extrapolate between several, quite a number of different perspectives. (Unintelligible). But I'd like to say this right away because it is not samadhi in the sense of how it's described in the Yoga sutras, say Pantajali for example, not being aware of the physical world, a kind of leaning that can lead to otherworldliness, so let's, how can I say, bring to bear all the abundant perspectives and also features of our being in a wholistic way, wholistic with a "w", wholistic in that sense, the whole person. So those are our objectives. 

So, I would say at first, what we do is maybe we would try it. It seems rather elementary, but I'm beginning to realize more and more how important it is not to bypass these first steps, because otherwise one gets, one starts getting spaced-out and (unintelligible) in some other world without having built a bridge with reality, the everyday. So, but I want to warn you that, of course, what we, we're building something up progressively and that in the advance stages, of course, we're going to look into, try to attune ourselves to our celestial counterparts, to the level of thinking beyond the kind of thinking that's based upon experience, and into further levels of experience. So, you know I hope you're all familiar with the Dhikr, but if you're not, then I hope whoever's giving the talk this afternoon will properly be able to describe to you basically what the practice is, at least in it's rudimentary form. But let us say that, first of all, that the body participates in the experience, which is not the case if you're going into samadhi. Let us say that one is moving from, one is moving outward, and that means that one is moving from a center towards the outside and then one's moving from outside to inside, the kind of thing that we did in our breathing practices this morning.  

So, the, let's say, that the totality suffers constriction by being fragmented, constriction in each fragment. Actually, it's not a fragment, each sub-whole as one says, as it's being said now by Dr, David Boehm. We think of ourselves as a sub-whole instead of a fragment of the totality, that means we carry within us potentially the totality but most of it is inactive, recessive, only certain aspects of the totality are active, and so you could say that the totality suffers constriction in having to contract within our self-image. And there's a consequence of that: we tend to alienate ourselves from the totality, or alienate our ourselves, identity from the totality. And the consequence is that we develop traits, features in ourselves which we ourselves don't like and other people like even less than we do. So, it seems that the first step is a kind of catharsis. It is what the Sufis call MUHAISIBI, which means self-examination, like what are things in me that I don't like. And you could put it down to the fact that you lost sight of your real being by the impact of the environment upon you, upon your sense of identity, Just like, for example, if you were to, for example, if you were to close your eyes and imagine that your glance is made of two, like, two headlamps of a car, for example, and then when you open your eyes you'll find that you'll have to reverse things, and your eyes would be active organs of perception, so somehow the environment exercises an impact upon your glance, forcing it into a certain focus. 

Now if you were to resist that impact, then you would, of course it would take a long time and a lot of practice to resist that impact and be, simply continue to be aware of the power of your glance that casts light upon things, rather than your eyes being an organ of perception. So that is an example of what I mean by the way that, somehow, our whole upbringing, civilization and so on, culture, has had the effect of making us tend to, to forget our connection, to alienate ourselves from our connection with the totality. And that is why, the Way of the Sufi, I think, will have a very important contribution to spirituality in our time, because that consists of being able to see from two antipodal standpoints at the same time: the personal standpoint and the divine standpoint. Because if you're seeing things only from your personal vantage point, you're not seeing things clearly, you have a very clear bias. Well, then, you can say, "How do I know what the divine standpoint is?" And so all the skills consist in gradually espying, as one might say, as the Sufis say, behind that which transpires, behind that which appears, that which transpires. And gradually there's a way of espying, I have often described this, for example, as seeing the steps of a bear in the snow, of the pad marks of the bear, but you haven't seen the bear! So that's what the physical world is. According to yoga, the world is illusion, your problems are illusions, and so on and so forth. According to the Sufis, they're not illusions at all, but they are signs, signs that are some indication of what is being enacted behind what you think is your problem, and if you judge your problem by those signs, you haven't got ahold of your problem, you're not dealing with your problem. So we are learning to shift, setting your consciousness and awareness, our concept, our reality, and of course our judgment. 

So, now, start with, like, your Tabula Rasa, your bottom, how much cover-up is there that we're not aware of? For example, ask yourself, "Why am I doing what I'm doing? What are my motivations?" You know the mind plays all kinds of games, it's very deceptive. So there's of course, can you distinguish the difference between wanting to build a peaceful world with beautiful people, and covetousness, for example? Covetousness, very close to envy, wanting something that somebody else has. That's covetousness. Envy would be a little worst; it's like feeling a very strong emotion, and destructive emotion can lead to hatred. That's what Pir-o-Murshid calls "the false ego". So there's no use getting into a kind of fictitious high state unless that ground is cleared. What I'm not saying that we couldn't even eradicate our covetousness by wanting to, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that in the Dhikr that you are moving from the center outwards when you say "LA". You are causing unconscious motivations and thoughts and emotions, particularly emotions, to surface from the unconscious into the conscious. 

That's self-examination, MUHAISIBI, self-examination. So we're bringing things into light, it's a matter of owning up to something that one is to likely own up to. "Yes, it's true, I do have emotions, I do have antagonism against this person who harmed me", and so forth. So what? I mean, let's say that these negative, what we call negative things, are the result of having forgotten our real identity. It's all part of the formation of the ego, which is that which is gained by life, is the totality, is fragmented but each so-called fragment, we call it sub-whole, the potentiality that is of the totality, the sub-whole, that comes from being latent becomes active. So that the whole is included more and more into the fragment. And so the totality does require a very strong sense, I mean this fragmentation does require a strong sense of the "I", so that "I" affirms itself, "I want this and I don't want this, and I dislike this" and so on. So instead of condemning it, you consider that its something that will finds its place in the whole. Like, for example, the color black in a painting, for there's a lot of white, but there's a little black too that bring out the white, because that's all part of the whole. The other thing is resentment, of course, there's no doubt that resentment brings one into one's ego consciousness, one's identity as a discreet entity, as one says, so that it diminishes one and one's self esteem, and therefore one's self-validation, and of course, one's self-image. So that you can't just by your will eradicate your resentment or forgive someone you feel resentment for. But, if you're able to try to reverse things and realize the total being is coming through each fragment, just like the whole tree comes through each branch of the tree; and the branch of the tree is unthinkable without the tree. 

So there's a way of doing it, as I said, these are ideas, but we want to see how we can do it, you see. So think of the thought which clicks, makes something click in our understanding and suddenly there's a whole different sense of identity. For example, the atoms my body existed at least as a potentiality at the moment of the 'big bang", so somehow the totality of the physical cosmos has fashioned itself into this body. If we think of that then more and more, you don't just identify with your body but you're linking your body with its wellspring, with its foundation. As soon as you do that, perhaps experience the cosmos, the physical cosmos, coming through your body trying to manifest it's whole bounty in your whole body. In the words of Hazrat Inayat Khan, "The consciousness of the universe buried in matter is trying to awaken in our very body." David Boho says, "A change in your thinking is going to bring about a change in your body," (which has been confirmed by scientists); change the circuits of your brain, change your identity. So just a thought, like "It's not just my body, it's the whole, it's stardust that has fashioned itself. I can think of this wonderful word of Jelaluddin Rumi who said, "The galaxies are just like foam on the shore of the sea. 


We came whirling out of nothing, sparkling like stars. The stars form a circle and in the middle we dance. The atoms are in ecstasy as they discover their identity and dissolve into God circling Himself." So this kind of cosmic vision is going to free you from your puny sense of "me" as opposed to the "others", and "I'm angry with the others because they've been mean to me", a very small way of thinking, instead of thinking in a cosmic way. Imagine God suffering constriction in our awareness of what we think is ourselves, with all the consequences of, which lead towards hatred and wars and all that terrible cruelty and torture. So, one of the, not just covetousness, but also manipulating others for what one thinks is one's own gain; now you must be quite sure that you're not doing that. I have to be sure that I'm not doing it. And as I say, the mind deceives you very easily; it will always justify you; you have to dismiss those mind games.  	

So that fact is that if you are thinking of the Dhikr, then you realize that which was unconscious is now surfacing, as "ILLA" from the center, actually from way down; think of the solar plexus as a gate, giving access to the states of the unconsciousness, and the whole thing erupting into "ILLA". And when it comes to the surface, then it disperses. You see, it's like anything, like our aura disperses as it comes through, as you become aware of the aura, it begins to enhance, it enhances the effulgence of the aura and then it disperses. Well, it disperses, well, that is, it spreads out, further and further and further, and eventually it forms with all other photons of the universe, a kind of wave interference patterns, not the photons with the light waves that form light interference patterns. So you can say that our, what we call our defects are really our participation in the universe. Instead of thinking that the universe is good, think of it as being all-inclusive, yes, all-inclusive, and therefore, for it to be enriching, it's has got to include, to include qualities and defects, as we call them, features. 

So this is a general policy that we would like to follow during the retreat, and that is, instead of thinking "These are my problems", you think "They are the way in which I am participating in the drama of the Universe. They are not MY problems. I am participating in the drama that is now the Universe." And it's some, difficult for the mind to understand what we're about, what we gain by it, but hopefully, as we gain insight and begins to understand better. Can you do that? Just think of your problems; instead of thinking " These are MY problems", see that as a situation that has arisen in the complex relationships of our societies. "I'm involved in some way, and the measure in which I'm involved in it, of course, I do have an impact, it has an impact on me and I have an impact on it." Instead of saying, "Why does this happen to me?" It doesn't happen to you, you're involved in it, other people are involved in some other way, 

So, now we come to the second step of the Dhikr. The first one is moving from inside out, and, the second one is moving from the outside in. So we have to consider the impact of the environment upon us and that's what we call our problems. The fact is that we are ingesting the environment. And transforming the environment. For example, a plant is a program that is endowed with an energy that transforms the environment into a plant. So we are continually ingesting the environment and not only in our food but psychologically; we're really suffering from indigestion. If you listen to TV all day, you'll be really saturated with impressions that are, some of which are good and others are really obnoxious and destructive. And so, obviously, we need to make a selection. And so, the question is, can you project, if you're meditating, can you just reflect thoughts that are emerging in your mind? They are stronger than you. How do you do it? How can you meditate at all, or just give it up as a bad job? 

Let's take a sample from the body: the immune system. There are two immune systems. The fundamental immune system is based upon "me", or "not you"; for example, when the body will not accept a transplant of an organ that is too different from us, in fact principally it should it's own organ; of course that doesn't happen.. So "me" or "not me". So, our psyche also has the ability to ingest impressions from the environment that correspond, that are in synch with one's being, the essence of one's being, but obviously to be able to make the choice you must have a very strong sense of identity. As you know, psychologists and psychotherapists accuse literalists of weakening one's sense of personal identity. And, as I say, in Sufism there strengthening of our sense of personal identity, because it's that sense that give you the ability to make a choice. But in those elements which you are comfortable with and those you cannot handle. and there's no judgmental, well, it's trying not to be judgmental about it. I try not to be judgmental about heavy metal (music). But it feels very difficult. (CHUCKLE). But somehow, if you have a very strong sense of "me", then you don't have to do much to reject impressions because you can't resist them, you can't handle them, so they fall off you like the water on the back of the duck. But if you, then the second immune system, there is a second immune system which adapts itself to foreign agents. otherwise it would never be able to improve, and also which adapts itself to, to your person. 

So we do, and I think that it is that aspect of our immune system, our psyche, that is overloaded, our adaptation to our environment and we lose ourselves. And so meditation could be an opportunity for you to have a very strong sense of your self, and to the extent to which you're losing that sense by adapting yourself to the environment (I'm don't say that we must not adapt to our environment, in fact it's the only way to enrich yourself), but it's your selectivity which makes all the difference. So in your meditation, you just decide on a practice that may enlist one's curiosity, and by doing so you open the door to their leaving a mark in your psyche, which is, in fact, is very, very sensitive. So that I think that at first one needs to protect it; it's like a young tree, you needs to protect it. Then as it grows stronger, it grows stronger, then you're able to withstand more strain. But I think that we are being too lackadaisical about protecting ourselves from the terrible decadence we see in our world in which we live and in which we get dissolute and we lose our authenticity. So meditation would be the way of, and this is where the language of the wazaif, the wazifas, (perhaps Azar Baksh will explain what this means) are truly labels that we attach to archetypal principles like compassion, like truthfulness, or mastery, or whatever. So if you know that language, it gives you a tool that enable you to say, "Yes, there's something in this, this impression that I'm getting into that I must say is enriching to our being. I'm watching that person skiing or hang-gliding or conducting an orchestra, something, something about that is enriching to me, because that, I have mastery but when I see that there are people really struggling, it makes me more aware of that quality, in fact that quality begins to emerge in me much stronger than ever before." 

So that's the way we are enriched. Some people enjoy harlequins; I think it does tarnish one's being at some place, so nobody enlists you, except in a few cases nobody forces you to go through the cauldron; I can hardly think of a case where somebody takes you by the skin of your neck and forces you into a cauldron.. We inadvertently see it in passing the TV, and we don't have time to switch it off. So there is that attitude which in the East one calls VAIRAGYA, detachment, as I said like water drops off the back of a duck. But there's a sense that you can develop and that makes for, well it makes one beautiful, that makes for one's special evolution....

SIDE B: ... it's a feature of our freedom, our freedom from the impact of the environment, our freedom from conditioning, and what is more, conditioning does lead to dependence. One becomes dependent upon things that are doing one harm, and that applies to food also, and that's VAIRAGYA, practiced in the East as VAIRAGYA. And here we have this main, this sort of dichotomy which we're involved in in our lives. 'n one hand, our enthusiasm is for, involved in ourselves and our life situations, and then on the other hand, one's need for freedom. And of course, we need both. The ascetic just follows the way of freedom. You're in life and it's more challenging to be able to just insert that measure of freedom in our involvement. And I think that maybe the criterion is to see whether we have become dependent on that in which we are involved. We have such a need for freedom; we suffer a terrible sense of constriction when we're not giving vent to our need for freedom. So can you experience a small, you know, it's a kind of an emotional attunement, or an unemotional attunement. You can imagine Buddha, for example, he had left his palace and donned the robes of a sanyassin, a mendicant. That emotion, that sense of freedom from dependence on the support system. 

Or do you have to leave your palace, you don't have to leave your palace, unless there's a situation to find freedom., but consider doing what Buddha did. Can you find a kind of inner freedom in the situation while being involved in the situation. And that would mean, that supposing that the whole thing were to break down and you would not be distressed. Or the person you love leaves you. you would not be distraught; that's seems inhuman. But I would say that this would be very helpful for people who are involved in some distressing situation, if they could find some measure of freedom, realizing the extent to which one has become dependent, dependence upon drugs, or dependence upon tobacco or alcohol, dependence. Do you see that in your life? And we're involved in a situation, for the sake of, as I said, building a beautiful world full of beautiful people, for the sake of achieving, but as far as you're concerned, you don't want to wallow in a kind of self-satisfaction it gives, because something in your nature is the nature of the dervish or the sanyassin, the need for freedom. Now this, how can I say, aspect of our being, is described by Pir-o-Murshid in the metaphor of the mirror. 

The mirror is not tarnished by the impressions cast upon it. Somehow if you turn the mirror, the impression is gone, the reflection is gone. So, maybe we can do that, we might have a situation that becomes obsessive or compulsive, and then your freedom consists in being able to turn the mirror of your, the deep core of your being and that somehow the impression seems to get more remote, maybe it's not right out altogether but gradually somehow that purity of the mirror seems to gain over the tarnishing of the impression.  

So to do this, think that the peripheral area of your, zones of your psyche are, let's say, dovetailed within the environment, so there's a lot of tarnishing that goes on, and a lot of enriching, too, at the same time. It's like ingesting food at first; it's not yet appropriated into the cells, it's being processed. So part of our, the periphery of our psyche is intermeshed with the environment, so that one, the outer aspect of your personality is not really you; if one is playing a role or if one is wearing a mask, that's not, so if we identify with it we have lost a sense of our real being. So just imagine, think "I'm playing a role because that's what life asks me; I'm a father or a mother or I'm a doctor or a psychotherapist or a politician or whatever, I'm a carpenter, or whatever. That's my role, generally. But my inner being, the trouble is that I identify with that role." For example, Pir-o-Murshid describes for example a king, you think you're a king because people say "Your Majesty", and you're sitting on a throne. So one's identity is somehow diluted by the environment, the way that the environment mirrors what one thinks one is. Or then a more typical case was the story of that young man who thought he was poor and his father has left him a fortune; so one identifies with a certain sense of identity, but that's make-believe, but that's a role. 

So that's what we need to do in meditation, you turn within, that's what you're doing now, you're turning within, is to see very clearly that you are playing a role, to acknowledge it, and that's what the world is asking of you, and that what you think is your personality, or your self-image is just a mask, it's not you. And now, you're able to do that, to dismiss or downplay that sense of identity, then, all of a sudden you discover, well, let's say, an image of your being which is much more authentic. I don't say that it's really you absolutely, but it's getting there. At least it's more germane than the self-image that we have of ourselves. Now there's noway of defining ourselves, it's just a kind of sense of ourselves as an identity which is different from the one you had when you were identifying with the mirrored zones of your being. And now we can go one step further, and try to see if we have a real sense of our real countenance behind our physical face, "that which transpires behind that which appears". Of course, there's always a danger that one is fantasizing, idly, but somehow one's imagination has some kind of basic substrate; it depends just whether one is bringing, I think it has to do with one's sense of truthfulness, then that will keep you from fantasizing and then your imagination is authentic. 

You'll find that that image includes the beautiful and ugly, good and bad and so on and so forth, it's all intermingled. So that's part of our acknowledging the reality of our being instead of having high-fuluted sense of what we think we are. And this is where I need to refer to the, to illustrate this, by the story of the voice of Caruso that can be retrieved nowadays through, by, you know the voice was very badly distorted by the bad recordings of the time. Now with new technology, one can reverse the distortions, which means that the authentic voice is present in the distortions and isn't lost. So if you'll just translate in terms of your being and realize that even though there are distortions in your being from what you would like to be, that these distortions do not take away the fact in the depth of your being that you are beautiful. The distortion can be such that, I mean if one focuses on the distortion, like for example if you listen to the recordings of Caruso, the bad recordings, you have the sense of the real voice. So if we, if we set our consciousness in such a way as to grasp our personality, then you see the distortions, then you are able to reach deeper below the distortions, then you see something of great excellence. And it's very good to be able to recognize that in yourself and to help you overcome one's self-image. As I say, you're not just that, I, you, us, we are not just that, we are also that distortion, but somehow it does not, the distortion does not take away the germane nature of our real being.  

So, what we could to do is to just try and do the first steps of the Dhikr now and see how it works. So, if you'll just move your head, turn your head towards your left shoulder, then, say, your left knee, and then your right knee and then your right shoulder and then your head upwards toward the zenith, so you've described 3/4 of a circle as you exhale, and think "I'm reaching out into the vastness" like centrifugal forces that are reaching out further and further, so that "features of my being that are buried in the unconscious of my being are coming forth and I can see that they are matched by the same kinds of qualities in other people, or defects in other people, so as they come out they're no more just mine, they're are part of the universe, somehow they're my participation the universe." That's the first step. And then as you inhale, turn your, having, after your head is at the zenith, turn your head towards your solar plexus as you inhale. And now you do the opposite: you think of the way that you are enriched, and also sullied by, tarnished by, the impressions of the environment and, as I say, it's your very strong sense of who you are that is going to act as what Buddha calls it, the sentinels, doors of perception that are going to allow certain impressions through and reject others. 

Perhaps you could think they're made up of several concentric zones, the more external ones are grosser, and they get finer and finer as you move towards the center. Each zone is protected by sentinels, and then you have to pass through the next row of sentinels, that is the impressions of the universe are being filtered, like first there's one barrier, and then there's more and more and it gets deeper and deeper within you and eventually it is even resorbed in the void as you turn towards your solar plexus, the way the universe is forming itself it gets resorbed into the void and gets recycled again. That's where your head turns upward after turning downwards towards your solar plexus. 

So what we're doing now is, right, we exhale as our head moves in, actually, I'll tell you the truth, it is a heart instead of a circle. You'll notice that your, alright, you head is, you are facing forwards, and you move your head upwards like a heart, you see, and then downwards on the left side, then up again, from down below and then you reach right up, then you go straight through the heart, the heart is the point in that heart where the two loops meet, I mean the heart chakra. I hope I'm not going to fast for some of you people. So, now as you go into the heart now instead the circle, you exhale, and while you are exhaling you are aware of the centrifugal forces that you are triggering-off, that pure element in your unconscious to the surface and reaching out into the universe. 

Now for those who are familiar with the Dhikr, when you say at first "LA", that means, no, the negative, and then "ILLAHA", as your head moves from the right shoulder to the zenith, and "ILLAHA" means the cosmos rather than the universe, the existential manifestation of the universe, the "foam on the shoreless sea". So somehow, you recognize the defects and the qualities in your being to be features of the cosmos, a kind of matching. So instead of condemning yourself, you recognize yourself as a participation in the cosmos. Now let's just do the circle for the time being and then turn within.

So they get dispersed, just like one's pollution which gets absorbed by Mother Earth up to a point. Now then, as you inhale, as I said the head descends, from having been turned towards the zenith, descends towards the solar plexus, and at that time you think its the whole universe or cosmos is moving in, cosmos actually, is moving in to your being, you're ingesting the universe as it converges, and as I say you place sentinels at the doors of perception, like exactly just like when you're eating something you don't like to eat, you don't want to eat the shells of a nut, for example, things you'll reject anyway. In the digestive system there are a lot of elements in the food that are rejected. Then somehow those features of the environment which are filtered by you filtering system, the sentinels, it gets recycled, it goes through a deeper transformation somehow in the unconscious and it is recycled again; as I said, as you inhale you experience that quintessenciation of the essence of what you've ingested from the universe. As Pir-o-Murshid says, "You can turn within, you can experience in the seed the whole fabric of the flower, the essence, the whole flower is present in its essence but in a compact way, as a concentrate." 

OK, let's just take moment, as I said before, when we are cogitating on problems, or cogitating on our assessment of our problems instead of dealing with our problems, because we are looking at them from a personal bias. That was the first step in Yoga, in the Yoga sutras of Pantajali, the first steps Satshakti samadhi (?), one is trying to clear one's perceptions of one's problems from personal bias. And so obviously one is going outwards. So that a technique, and we follow other techniques and eventually get to a point of realizing the cosmic dimension of our being. So the first step would be, try, think of a problem in which there may be some conflict between yourself and another person, for example. Not all problems are like that, but a lot are, of course. So try now to look at the problem from the point of view of the other person. What in your mind, in your judgment, are the motivations that prompt the other person to handle questions that conflict with your motivations. The situation does involve a person, the persons involved, so the next step you see is to try to see the person through his or her eyes. How does it feel to be that person? Now remember that this is, as much as you can grasp the way that person is, irrespective of your bias upon that person. 

Now take a second person involved in your problem and do the same. And that is, perhaps, you might realize that the way the person is handling the problem is partly biased by their sense of who you are. In other words, they see you through their eyes, and so it is good for you to see yourself through their eyes. And you see that their sense of who you are is totally different from the sense you have of yourself. Now you're beginning to understand much better why they're handling the problem as they do. Now can you see the relationship between who you are and the way you're handling the problem. Like for example there's a fear in you and you're handling the problem is dictated by fear, so you're extra cautious, to the extreme, so that you don't, as one says, "nothing ventured, nothing gained", to the point of enhancing your fear. You know there's a saying that we spend a lot of time worrying about things that never happen. So there's that aspect of fear. There might be also a feeling of jealousy, like this person would like to come into my place, and I don't want it. Or is it, that you don't want it or you are fulfilling a purpose and that would defeat that purpose that you're following. So you have to be very, very clear as to what's motivating you in this situation, and did not mis-assess the motivation of the other person, because even if you try to get into the consciousness of the other person you, it's doubtful that you can do it perfectly, and there are some personal projections, and so you're mis-assessing the person's motivation in handling the problem, and maybe not acknowledging not only your own motivations. It's possible that that person sees your own motivations and you can't see them. So there's a kind of mirroring effect. 

Now, if you'd increase this, extend to a third person, and fourth person, and so on, you'd realize that what you see as your problem involves the whole universe. There's no end to your participating in the drama of the cosmos! Now if you'll carry this skill further and further, you reach a point where you're able to see how the situation looks from the point of view of the universe, or, I'll quote St. Francis of Assissi, who said, "That which we are looking for is that which is looking at us." Total reversal! So, not only do you think that you're being looked at by the universe, but if your consciousness can reach right out into that antipodal vantage point, then you can see yourself at the butt-end of that vantage point. And there's a little shock of course. All one's wishful thinking begins to break down and is not at all what you thought you were, for better or worse, or whatever the difference, and see how very biased we are in our self-image and in our motivations. And so that's what you do in the Dhikr when you turn your head towards the solar plexus you imagine that not only are you ingesting the universe, but the universe is looking at itself as you and even discovering itself as you. So here you have these antipodal poles, vantage points, the personal and the totality. 

o I'll just end with the thought, let's use the word "universe" instead of the word "God", and let's consider the cosmos as the existential condition of the universe, that it's not just it's body or it's psyche and so on; let us assume that the universe is like a being that is endowed with consciousness and intelligence and will, ,,,(unintelligible)... So ask yourself if we are like branches of a tree, part of the whole universe, then does our knowledge of the universe contribute to the knowledge that the universe has of itself? Now look, just imagine that you're looking into the starry sky at night and your heart beats faster and somehow you're overwhelmed by the immensity, especially if you realize that you're part of it all, and the universe has evolved that brain that helps you to see it. Well, it's the same thing as does... END OF TAPE
MAR 09, 1996		Tape 03

 Texas Spring Retreat Tape #3	Saturday Morning Session (cont'd) 3/9/96 Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

 SIDE A: ...in other words, does our awareness contribute towards the awareness of the universe? Does our awareness of the universe enrich the awareness that the universe has of itself? In order words, does the universe discover aspects of itself through our awareness of it? Do you see the meaning of the meditation? Not just being closed in one's own little vantage point, but seeing how one's understanding connects up with the understanding of the totality, and that's what one means by God-consciousness. There's a further step, and that is, what knowledge do we gain by the knowledge that the universe has of itself. Further step. What knowledge do we gain by the knowledge that the universe has of itself through us, or that the universe has through our knowledge of it? Just like a mirroring. The Sufis describes that as "INA HALLA" (?), the palace of mirrors, where there are two mirrors facing each other, and they keep on reflecting each other over and over again. So that meditation connects you with the totality of which you are a part and if you don't do that then you are circumscribed within your own limited sense of identity, and you turn around in a circle and you never get anywhere. 

So this a way out of a vicious circle, and Dhikr is a way of getting out of this vicious circle, because otherwise you'd just keep on turning, at every, every, continually reaching out from, I mean, breaking out of the circle by the motion of the head downward and upward. So, just do that again, just do the motion and see how it, somehow it has an effect upon your understanding, your mind, your consciousness, self-identity. The head comes up again after having descended and enters the circle again, so it's like a heart, as I say. 

So as the head moves, from being turned downwards towards the solar plexus, let's say, concentrating on the heart center, you're beginning to attune yourself to the different levels of your being. And that's the next step that we're going to working with; that is, to start with you have identity with your etheric body. Or, you could think of it as being the electromagnetic field, which gives you some idea of what one means by the etheric body. And then eventually your celestial body, that's something difficult to describe. So that's something we're going to do, to look into it more and more during the course of the next two days. So, once more, so if you lift your head upwards, then, into the different planes, you'll find that you'll be, that in the middle of the heart there will be an axis from the point where the two loops meet, moving upwards. I don't know if you realize, but of course, the heart is a circle that has been subjected to the gravity pull of the earth, and is compensated by the wings. So that, let's say you think of it as an arrow that is moving from the place where the two loops meet, upwards, so that you're making a circle from that point which corresponds to the heart chakra and up, around and down, you'll feel the gravity pull of the earth, and then up and outside, and now you move right down into the heart and into the solar plexus which deeper than the heart is, as you inhale. And you continue, as you continue to inhale, as your head moves up, it rebounds.  

Now in the Sufi Dhikr, the head descends again in your heart center. And the reason for that is that one is, one doesn't only want to awaken beyond life, but in life. you see. Having awakened beyond life, one awakens in life; so one gets back to one's heart center again, and then one goes into a circle. And then of course, that's a very short explanation; we're going to go into it more deeply. For the moment, just do the practice and see how you feel.

Slowly, ...to be able to experience all the things that I was talking about while you were doing it. Immensity! The circle, into the heart of the circle, immensity. That sense of immensity draws you, draws the elements of your unconscious up to the surface and then they get dispersed and the whole universe absorbs them, the whole cosmos. Because you know, when, if one is circumambulating a center, it awakens that center. That center is the solar plexus which acts as a gate between the unconscious and the conscious. And as soon as you become aware of those features of your self, which one might call one's faults, one's defects, suddenly when you become aware of them, somehow by the very power that you set into motion, they get thrown out, they get dispersed, they find their match in the universe. It's like wave-interference patterns with all this, match what's in the frequencies. It's very difficult to compose for some of you. 

But you know, we can't dispose of them like that, in one goal, it'll take time, but if we keep on doing it, there's a sense of dispersing elements that have become so deeply imprinted in your psyche, that one doesn't know how to get rid of them. So, one could think, for example, "Yes, I'm getting free of my fear, my anxiety. I'm getting free of my resentment. Because I'm owning it, I'm not tarnishing it. I'm not blaming myself for it. I see that it's the result of having lost touch with my real self. As son as I see myself as part of the universe, it's much easier to let them disperse." Now, we're thinking of the cosmos instead of the universe. As you go in the circle, then think of the starry skies, the galaxies, and then at the level of the psyche, let's say the psyche of the universe that includes all those qualities that we label as good and bad, and everything as being... (unintelligible)... Here we have a choice. So you put your defects out, I hope there's no offense if I say "you have defects", and you put them on the account of the way that you're participating in the nature of the totality that has suffered by its fragmentation and somehow, you find that they, they correspond to your sense of your personal identity, and even hold you in that identity, whereas you want to discover all the dimensions of your being, therefore these emotions are standing in the way of your discovering your cosmic identity. And the other way around is true also, and that is discovering your cosmic identity will rid you of these defects that are so distressing. So I wonder if you are able to follow me. I hope that it means something to you. I see some faces that seem to be rather bored, and I'm trying to do my best to give you something that you can work with. Shall we entertain with a chant? (Pir sings a Kyrie Eleison). 

So you know what that means; on one hand, we ask to be forgiven for our trespasses, that is where we have conned other people, and secondly, we forgive those who have trespassed against us. So, doing those will help us. In one of the Apocryphas, when Christ was on the cross, he said ,"Forgive them for they know not what they do." If we don't know what we do then it's easier to forgive. In fact, it's the only way to forgive. Then you're free! The power has set you free from all that stuff that is weighing you down. You can be yourself! You will begin to like yourself, to be comfortable in your little ol' bod! (CHUCKLE) The saving grace is that one cannot be damned forever; that's the saving grace. That is what is meant by the Divine compassion. And so, we are free to forgive others, exercise the same compassion that we ask of God, we ask ourselves the same compassion. So it's impossible to be taken off the hook if you can't taken others off the hook, too. (20-minute break)  	Somehow the immaculate nature of the call of one's being seems to gain ground, evade those murky areas, that's the saving grace that one can forgive oneself, instead of asking forgiveness of God, by allowing that internal purity to gain further ground and it will sort of sweep away those elements which we are not comfortable with, only we are uncomfortable with them, because otherwise they will persist, of course. In other words, it's our sense of our spiritual dignity that acts as the best therapy; hence, the need of the sacred.  

Now the one mistake that we must be very careful about is as we turn within there is a tendency to simply encapsulate ourselves in our psyche, or at least the more external zones of one's psyche, and one is judging oneself as one is judging other people, or judging the world, or other circumstances, assessing problems. So there again, one is trying to apply the same kind of principle upon which our commonplace connection with the world is established, one is trying to apply it as one turns within and it just doesn't work! Vedanta sees that way very clearly, makes the distinction between our relationship with what we call the world, relationship of "otherness". We are the subject experiencing other than ourselves and when we turn within we tend to do the same thing: we tend to think of ourselves as a subject looking upon our thoughts as the object, not getting anywhere. The even more confusing thing is that there's a different relationship than the "I"/"it relationship which Martin Buber calls the "I"/"Thou" relationship or even the "I"/"I" relationship, It is, as Vedanta says, points out, Shankaracharya points this out, "You are both the spectator and that which you are experiencing." As so you'd become a spilt personality if you thought of yourself as the subject AND your thoughts as the object, because by observing your thoughts they incur distortion. For example, the electrons, we can never see an electron because to see the electron, we'd have to use protons which distort the electrons, so we'd never be able to see it as it is. 

So, Heisenberg's principle. So you have to be careful about the personal bias now not applying to the world anymore, but applying to your own inner scanning of your own psyche. So, the way to do it is instead of thinking that you are encapsulating yourself in a, with a boundary, think that you are interspersing with the universe, like waves intersperse with other waves, instead of particles that collide. So now you have a different relationship with the universe, as though you could reach it from within towards out. Like for example, swimming in a pool of water you see lotus flowers and then swim under the water and, at first you think you see separate flowers when you're swimming on the surface, but when you swim underneath the surface of the water you see there's a network of roots, This network of roots emerges here as a flower and there as another flower, but basically it's roots. So as you turn within you see relationships between events which you could not have seen when you were in ordinary state of consciousness. In your ordinary state of consciousness, you only see your more overt relationships. For example, you're only aware of the spatial relationship between the sun and the moon during an eclipse, but there's always a spatial relationship between them, but you're not aware of that because one only, in one's ordinary consciousness, one only experiences that which is related to one's sense of one's personal "I". But as you turn within, your sense of "I" disperses; instead of being THE subject located in space at a certain place in time, and so on, the subject in you disperses and it is true that in order to do this, you first have to start by changing your sense of bodiness. Think that your body's just a hard core within your electromagnetic field, for example. 

Or if you know something about science, you'd say that wave, there's a transit between a wave and a particle, because there's such a thing as a standing wave, that is waves can behave sometimes as a particle. So let's say that your body is like the particle, like that aspect of that deeper reality which is like a field materialized in a tangible way in time and space. So if you, it's not a matter of just being aware of the force field around your body, see if you can feel that. And you see it doesn't have a front here, it doesn't have a frontier, it doesn't have a boundary. It doesn't correspond to your skin; it seems to extend far beyond your skin. Then, it doesn't have a boundary but still you can feel, well if you're very sensitive you can feel zones, like up to that point, then there's another, maybe it's another frequency. But now, as I say, it's not good enough just to feel that, actually the field is also interspersed within the cells of your body. So it's like the field of a magnet: you can put metal filings around it, somehow you can see the structuration of the field. If you, well, actually, the field is also inside the magnet, it's not just outside. So the same thing with you, so don't just think of the field as external, but think that your body has emerged out of this field, just as a solution, a chemical solution, that has frozen into a crystal, jelled into a crystal. So, no sooner you think of your identity as being, you shift your sense of identity so a to identify with that field and you see that it intersperses the fields of all beings. 

So that your sense of identity is not based upon boundary, but is based upon, actually the truth is that it is based upon the frequency pattern, that's the root truth of it. It's like radio waves that have their identity by their identity is not due to their spatial location but simply due to their particular frequency. So that you can never lose yourself really, even if you form with other wave interference patterns, you can't lose yourself because that particular frequency pattern is still there, can be retrieved by the fully retrieved by the fully advances. So, see, turning within one thinks that one is setting up barriers, and one is encapsulated, one thinks about one's, one is turning around in circles in one's mind. No, the other way around. You think that the way that the mind thinks is, ordinarily, reminiscent of being in one's ordinary state of consciousness, but that way of thinking is, of course, as the Hindu's say, "it's MAYA", it illusory; the Sufis would say it is the way that we are trying to, actually the way that we perceive signals, signals that are telling us about a deeper reality behind the scenes, because if you turn within then you realize that your ordinary thinking is not valid anymore, at least it's relative, has relative value. But it does not give you a sense of the kind of meaningfulness that you want to discover as you turn within, so the only way to do it is to think like this: "I'm trying to express in words how I think. 

By trying to express what I think in words, I am somehow limiting my thought." That's the only way of communicating it, well, that's the usual way of communicating it, but "behind what I say or I explain is what I imply". And when one says "I imply something", it means that one expects that other people will pick it up, because it's implicate in one's speech. We imply a lot of things. We imply that that person is there, that we are there, that we imply a lot of things. We take it for granted that, so, what we imply is the context of what one might call discreet thought, a thought, like this is a thought. That thought is just like the particle that expresses the whole field, just the way what is implied behind it is ever formulated in a way that can be explained, formulated by the mind that can be explained, it can be articulated. So the beauty of being on silence is that you are not in a situation where you are called upon to explain to others how you feel or think, and consequently somehow to monitor your thinking into the levitation of language. It has an advantage of course; it makes your thoughts more clear, more definite. But still you're losing something. And that's the beauty of being on silence, that you soon,.. 

You see, I mean, sometimes even if we're not speaking, we're so used to speaking while we're thinking that we're formulating our thoughts in words and things. But if you're in silence for some time, then you lose that habit of communicating your, what you imply, in the language, and all of a sudden..., it's not as though you grasp what you imply, you really get immersed into it, like you lose yourself into it, we dissolve into what we imply. In fact, you realize that you are your meaningfulness. That's what you are. Your body is just a support system. And so is your mind. And now can you tally that with our sense of identity. Like we said, well, you're like a subtle body, like for example, like steam for example, as compared with rocks, subtle body. And now if you remember what we said earlier on about like we're wearing a mask and playing a role, as you turn within you shift your identity from identifying with the more peripheral features of your being to identify with the more authentic features of your being that are really you, because as I just said, the periphery, there is some overlap with the environment, some spillover. 

And all of a sudden, " This is me! YES! This me! I've been adapting myself to the environment and doing all the things that are required of me, but somehow I lost myself. This Is Me!" And you don't know, you can't, of course, define .. (unintelligible)... by it. You find that that way, that identity, well, it starts by a focus of consciousness, isn't it, instead of focusing on outside, you focus inside. Pir-o-Murshid says, "Our  consciousness is continually called upon by the environment." Now suppose you put a barrier in the way of your communication with the environment, then somehow your consciousness would turn within. But what I add, I'd like to add is that your consciousness itself becomes dispersed, In other words, become cosmic, or at least reaches into its cosmic dimension...

SIDE B: ,,,of reaching out externally, one is reaching out internally. I don't know whether that makes any sense to you. It like radio waves that are reaching out by being interspersed.  

So, we're going to do a practice that I hope will be helpful to you. If you will place your, well to start with I'd say, just place the middle fingers of your hands, but don't press on the nostrils yet, and then place the fourth and fifth fingers on your lips, pressing your lips tight. Now you could place your indexes on your eyelids, but you must roll your eyeballs upwards, so you don't exercise any pressure on your cornea which will exercise pressure on the retina because that'll give you optical illusions that you'll see what you think is marvelous heavenly light and its just an optical illusion. And now, I warn you, you simply breath in through the right nostril, that is pressing your left middle finger on your left nostril and then hold your breath by pressing both fingers, and then exhale through the right nostril, You don't inhale through the left nostril nor exhale through left, always, only through the right. Only three breaths, after which you gradually take your hands away but keep your eyes closed. And now you can put your thumbs in your ears. 

And now you can reach out from inside, for example, you could experience what it's like to be another person, to be a friend of yours for example, not the same way as we did earlier this morning. But really getting into the attunement rather than getting into what I said before, like the assessment of the problems, the way they see you, and so on. This is much more like into the attunement, or what the Sufis say, "TAWAJEH", instead of "TASSAWURI MURSHID:", getting into the attunement of the master or saint or prophet or holy man or holy woman, instead of trying to understand what they're saying, it's more like what the Sufis call the "knowledge of the heart". That is, really imagine that you are that person, and you really get totally into that person's attunement, consciousness, not thought, no, it's much more, it's not like telepathy, you're not reading a person's mind, that would be an indiscretion, or even their body consciousness. No, it's a, really, at the soul level. In fact, I find the best way to contact a person is to imagine them in their meditation and they get into a high state and that's where one can really reach them, because one has a great affinity so one is experiencing bioresonance rather than receiving "otherness". In fact, it can elevate your soul, as it were, you can be inspired by the attunement of a being and maybe you are inspiring that being also; so there's a mirroring effect.  

As I said before, what we want to do is to be able to avail ourselves of that kind of insight which we develop in the course of our meditations, and we want to apply them to our dealing with our problems, so as I said, for each mode of, for each setting of consciousness there's a different mode of thinking. If you're now, if your focus of consciousness turned inside, inside out once would say, then your mode of thinking is going to be different. I have already said one thinks what one implies or people imply. One could be more specific, and that means that one sees the problem in its context instead of its content. Problem is content; it's circumscribed by one's range of one's understanding; one circumscribes one's problem, and thinks "This is my problem". But now as you turn within, you see it's context, in other words, what it implies for more and more people, moreso even. You begin to see what are the issues that are being enacted in your problem. Like, the whole problem is really so that eventually so the truth will erupt. The whole problem is there so that eventually one will learn to love. Or the whole problem is there so that one will learn N'T to coerce people with one's will. 

And so on; you're beginning to see the problem in its relevance instead of just the factual description of the problem as it appears to your finite mind. So, I remind you then that we are placing barriers at the doors of the perception; no just sentinels, but real barriers that there's no, hopefully one doesn't hear the sound of the, closes one's eyes one doesn't see anything, there's still some kind of tactile cognizance, I mean perception, but even so that's very remote. Perhaps the wind blowing if your sitting outside. Even the sense of smell is gone. So there's no doubt that one is downplaying one's subjection to the impressions, physical impressions, of the environment. But the next step would be while you're doing this, to downplay your commonplace assessment of your problems because you can't grasp what is behind them while you are assessing them at their face value. It like you can't see in the mirror, you can't see the mirror while looking in the mirror, I meanwhile looking at the reflection in the mirror. It difficult, you could, but it's really very difficult, you can't extrapolate between these two perspectives. So for the time being, you just downplay your assessment. It's just like, for example, you can't see the stars while the sun is in the sky; the stars are there but, and somehow the light of the sun impacts you much more strongly and therefore you're not aware of the light of the stars. So in the same way, if you downplay one, then the other one begins to transpire, so if you downplay your assessment of your problem you think "Well, what if it's wrong? I'm turning around in circles. I keep on thinking of my problem the same way that is totally counter-productive." So, what if? What is its wrong? And then a sense of meaningfulness can emerge; you see the problem in its context. You see other problems that you hadn't thought of that come into the problem.  

OK. Now see if you can do that while you have your fingers on your senses. So do it again, once more, with only three breaths. This time concentrate on the psyche instead of the physical body, the perception. For example you can think "I'm a denizen from other spheres and have landed on the planet thanks to my parents having provided me with a body. And somehow at the start I'm immaculate." Like the bay, if you look into the eyes of a baby the light in the yes has not been tarnished by the shadows of the world. "And then somehow when I started to grow up, I started to become, well, selfish, defensive, fearful, aggressive, so on and so forth, hurt, incurred damage in my psyche because of egos of other people and then doing things which I didn't totally subscribe to, but there was a compelling, a compellingness of the body, whatever it was, curiosity. Somehow I forgot who I was. Now I've stepped into this problem which I myself got into it, even if I don't think I did, there may have been something in me that called for that problem. Somehow I'm participating in that problem to such an extent that my whole being is involved in it and other people, too. And, if I just look at the problem at face value then I don't see all that is involved in it. So I'm just blind. 

There are worse thing is, of course, that I'm schlepping this assessment of this problem into my life all the time, into my psyche, I'm carrying this with me all the time, this totally false assessment of the problem. So can I see..?" Now see, the problem is the context and seeing, for example, how "I impact that problem by my, how I handle it, so it changes, and the way I handle it depends on my understanding of it, so that ultimately my understanding of it is crucial to the problem. For example, I can see what the problem does to me but can I see what I do to the problem?" And that means to other people, of course, more and more people. 

Now, as I say, our understanding depends very much on our self-image. The self-image is extremely inadequate. For example, the old-fashioned view of life: God is eternal "up there" and we are miserable worms down here. I'm being manipulated by this big man with a white beard - the old-fashioned view. So, if you can think of yourself as being this being that, well, to tell you the whole truth, God is a virtuality. He becomes a reality in us as us. I'm sorry if I'm shaking a lot of faith, but that gives you a still greater faith. The Sufis say, "Where do you find God if it's not here? Why are you looking for God up there?" Somehow, our self-image is somehow connected with our sense of God. And if we think of God as "other", our self-image is inadequate. It's distorted. In fact, the only true realization is by being in the Divine consciousness. God becoming a reality as us. God awakening as us, in our problems, as us in our problems, not us in samadhi, but in our problems. So you can the whole thing now. 

God walking on earth and stepping into that problem through my involvement; God suffering constriction, "Constriction", that's a word used in Judaism, SUMSUM, KABID, the wazifa, KABID, constriction. Like for example, a three-dimensional, at least we think the world is three-dimensional, we make a two-dimensional photo of what we think is the three-dimensional reality, so there's constriction. So that means that the photo has to suffer somehow; it can't carry all the details of the three-dimensional reality. So, that's what's happening in us. But then the more we identify with our personal self, the more constricted, the more we constrict the totality which we call God, and thereby distort it. So you see that looking into your problem then, if you just think of yourself as a denizen from outer space. Even just that. Landing on planet Earth and you're getting yourself inveigled in all kinds of problems and situations, and then yourself being altered by that. You can see the whole thing, see? That makes for awakening, that leads towards awakening. That's awakening in life. 

Just one more thing before I leave, because I left it out this morning. I said, "forgive them for they don't know what they do". Well, this is really confirmed now by science. I was able to discover circuits in the brain of psychopaths. You know that psychopaths were chosen as gauleiters in the Nazi concentration camps, they were psychopaths, they were chosen. Or they did, or they acted as if there were running amok in New York and killing people. And so it's been ascertained that there are certain functions of the brain that, you'd better worry, they're not the same as what one calls normal people, if there is such a thing as normal people. I'm not sure. So in any case, I remember quoting David Boehm, and of course it's now confirmed, of course, that a change of meaningfulness is going to change the patterns in your brain, and in fact in your whole body. And that's why even our sense of bodiness, being our subtle body, is going to, it corresponds to a certain way of thinking, and it affects one's way of thinking, and the way of thinking also affects one's body; it works both ways. So as I said before, instead of thinking that God up there and us miserable worms or then, the soul eternal and the body corruptible or perishable; that's the old view, the new view is that our body is a continuity in change, so that is reconciling the irreconciliables, complementarity instead of thinking categories, a different mode of thinking. 

Thinking that you're transient and eternal at the same time, whereas in our ordinary logic, either you're eternal or you're, for example, I remember at university studying logic, a long time ago, it is in 1936, and then it was like, the description of synergistic logic: Man is mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. That's synergistic inference. Whereas, in fact, it never occurred to them that man is, I would say the human being because it includes women also, at least fifty percent, (CHUCKLE), is both mortal and immortal. It's a different way of thinking. And so, for example, you can be happy and sad at the same time and you can see things from your point of view and the point of view of another person at the same time. Complementarity. And you can think, see things from your point of view and the Divine point of view at the same time.  

So, this afternoon we'll proceed further with the next step. This is a process that we're going through. These are just, as I say, techniques, ways of thinking that all of a sudden trigger off a new insight and then there's enormous consequences in our personality, even in our body.

MAR 09, 1996		Tape 05

 Texas Spring Retreat Tape #5	Saturday Afternoon Session	 3/9/96 Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

 SIDE A: ...retreat together, and I feel that I'm one of you. I think of Buddha and his father, was, he was to pass through the town in which his father was the king, he was brought up, and the king sent a large procession of elephants to greet him. And couldn't find him and somebody recognized his face among some hermits who were begging in the back streets of the town. So Buddha didn't like show-biz. And I appreciate the deference that you are giving me, but its very bad for my ego. One should only show that deference to God, so its my, rather, way of kind of any protocol or formalism, so I just like to greet you with my eyes. That sort of act of mutual recognition. And I can't say this aloud, in every case, I think of the of the Sufi greeting "How gloriously do You reveal yourself to me through you", I mean "How gloriously does God manifest to me through you." Now that's, I would say the nicest greeting that one could ever say instead of saying Heil Hitler. In fact, God met Heil Hitler sometime and Hitler said to God "Heil Hitler" and God said "Curse God." 

So, just think of like all of a sudden you have been transformed into monks and nuns or ascetics and your with me together and we're in the retreat and I'm on retreat while your on retreat too, and I have the disadvantage of speaking you have the advantage of being silent. And really speaking, all that I'm saying is that something that is already in your mind but I have a kind of experience of formulating ideas, which some of you might have difficulty in doing or some might be able to do it much better than I do. But, whatever is formulated is articulated, is nothing in comparison with the actual experience. So, its only a matter of triggering off a certain frame of mind, a certain attunement, There just, those thoughts are just catalysts. The reason why I speak is because if I didn't you'd all be half asleep within a few hours, well a few minutes. But that's, I realize, the limitation of it. In fact there's a word of lbn-Arabi who says "Knowledge is a veil over the Known". So the best thing we can do is of course to do the practices, and see if while doing the practices, we can see something that we hadn't seen before that will change, will change totally our since of identity and way of looking at our problems and our mode of thinking and then sometimes its good to recognize where we're at, like the map. 

There's the word of Kocepski the map is not the territory. So to know where you are at is not very, it is useful, but its not the ultimate. I made a land trip to India without a map. 

So let's do a practice again, the practice of Shaghal; that is, the fingers on the senses. Now I'd like you to just consider as your doing it, and particularly, well, as you hold the breath and then particularly afterward, like think of the saying of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan my father "In life", no "In matter, life unfolds and realizes the Divine Consciousness that was buried in it for a long time". So think of your awakening, lets say, in matter in life. In life, matter unfolds, and consciousness awakens the consciousness that was, that is in matter. So think of your involvement with not just physical matter but in your circumstances the problems that are calling and see how somehow your consciousness, which the Divine consciousness awakening in this, in discovering the way that matter discloses or the situation discloses meaningfulness to you. Lets try to do that. 

So can you distinguish between acquired knowledge and knowledge that is revealed. So you are trying to acquire knowledge by dint of experience. You accumulate knowledge by learning, then become more proficient. But then if we apply the Sufi principle of seeing things from two antipodal standpoints, then the universe of God is disclosing meaningfulness to you right in matter itself, in your relationship with matter, like the galaxies or your involvement with your body, and also in your involvement with your situations, your social psychological situations. So it is meaningfulness that one can't acquire by trying to, in fact that one cannot acquire. I mean there is a meaningfulness that one can acquire but then there is a certain, there's a complimentary meaningfulness that one cannot acquire, but which is revealed. And if you confine yourself to the personal vantage point, then your understanding does stand in the way of the revelation of a different meaning to your personal meaning, personal sense of meaning. So the only way to do it is to try to grasp God or the universe trying to reveal its meaningfulness, that is, you consider your problems or situations clues that lead toward what the clue is about. For example, the pad marks of the bear, if you follow the pad marks chances are you might find the bear. so that's called TAWILL in Sufism. 

Starting with a clue and then moving from the clue to the reality which is as the clue. Knowing that that reality does not have any form, or not limited in time and space. And so the steps leading to that in this famous slogan "that which transpires behind that which appears". So when you think of your problem, think the facts are what appears and that's the way I tend to see my problems. Now I feel that there is something that is transpiring which I can't figure out with my mind. I have to alter my consciousness. That could be illustrated by looking at your face the mirror and realizing that the mirror is the most deceiving of all and also the cheapest of all feedback systems in the world. And then you can avoid deceiving yourself allowing yourself to be deceived by shifting your glance so your able to see that which transpires behind that face in the mirror, that's what one calls a countenance. And according to Sufis it is the form of your inner face which does come through the expression on your face, you call it the countenance. It transpires. 

That's the idea. Something of your expression tells you about yourself much more than the sclerosed structure of the muscles of your face because the physical does, the matter of the physical body offers some resistance to the formative processes of light, something comes through. So, now apply this to your problems you see that you do have to shift your, the setting of your consciousness so that you don't judge things by there appearance, but you suspect and espy a kind of meaningfulness which your ordinary mind cannot grasp, but which your inner mind, the mind at that level that you call ARWAH, that the mind at that level is able to grasp meaningfulness irrespective of the personal vantage point. For example, you see the relationship of the sun and the moon without it being with reference to the planet. In fact in every point of space there's a, at every moment there's a eclipse of the sun and moon, but its just significant to us on the planet. You see there are ways of thinking different. For example, we think that space astronauts are traveling in outer space, but the planet is in outer space. Its just a matter of thinking the way we think. So your problems only have a significance for you and if you only, I mean ordinarily, and if you only look at them from what they mean to you, you haven't really understood your problems, and that's why its useful to look at them from the point of view of other people. We are deluding ourselves and schlepping, as I say, all this false assessment of our problems throughout our lives. Its just imagine that your doing it to yourself, and then we take all the wrong decisions and really a bad self image because you're flunking. So its a bad situation that we're in, really I mean, thank God for meditation.  

So, its helpful to be able to eschew seeing things from our personal vantage point its helpful to think that a meaningfulness other the one we're familiar is revealed to us. Or let us say the thinking of the universe start overwhelming our personal vantage point, or if you like the thinking of God. Just reflect on that one moment. So you down play your personal assessment and you can't prefigure what meaningfulness is going to come through, but those are choices that favor the revelation of the meaningfulness beyond your vantage point.  

So let us follow certain criteria that we find in Sufism. It's a, I found very helpful, that is, at the bottom, rock bottom, when we consider the physical world then we can say that what we perceive are clues, I've already said that. And from the Divine point of view these clues are the Divine device in which is His/Her intention is communicated to us. For example if you've seen the film E.T. a long time ago, and I hope you laughed and I hope you even cried, though it's difficult for men to cry, but still that child was so endearing. You could just see ET through the child. Actually, it was Spielberg was using devices to communicate his intention; so think of the universe like that. So our problems are clues to convey the divine programming, and be careful not to assume that programming is already made, pre-existential harmony of Liebnitz not at all, because we're part of it. It is very complex, so its no use, you cant just say, just say, I'm a puppet in the hands of the programmer. No, but still somehow clues, just what does a clue mean, symbols, yes, clues. Our  language are clues, word are clues to meaning. We've associated meaning with the word and now the word serves as a signal to get us in touch with the meaning.  	All right, then the second stage as we turn within, the clues are in our own nature. So our nature gives us clues as to the nature of the Universe, the Divine Nature. 

For example, if we have a little compassion in us, it gives us a clue as to compassion in its perfection as an archetype, and so on, so these are clues. So, God or the Universe reveals to us clues as to His/Her nature through our personality, not just through situations, in which we are in, the circumstances which we are in, and those clues lead us to discovering the Divine nature. This is Sufism now. There's a word of Shabistari, "Discover the whole universe in yourself" and the word of Pir-o-Murshid also "The same universe that you find outside is also inside, but in a different mode". 'kay, now let us do this practice again and then we'll make the next. Think of what we've said so far.  

So, there is a very good illustration of what we're doing. For example, Einstein had very bad marks at University because he saw something that his teachers didn't see and they didn't agree with him. But, imagine that he saw very well that we' re looking the universe from that vantage point which is the planet earth but supposing that you were traveling in space at the speed of light how would the universe look? That's exactly what we're doing, we're eschewing our personal vantage point. That's a clue and that is Sufism, that's a clue to Sufism. And so we can formulate in the following formula of Ibn Arabi, and that is, God knows Himself through His discovery of Himself through us. God knows Himself through His, I would say His/Her, discovery of Him/Herself through us. Can you think of the complementary point of view? We discover ourselves through the knowledge that God has, discovering Himself through us. One further one, we discover God through the knowledge that God acquires by discovering Him/Herself through us, a three-part series. 

That's Sufism. It's like a mirroring effect. That's why, you remember when I said, what knowledge does the universe acquire through our knowledge of it. And what knowledge do we acquire by the knowledge the Universe acquires through it's knowledge acquired through us, that's mirroring. And so, that opens a whole different perspective than simply looking at things from our personal vantage point. So I would suggest that that would be very useful in psychotherapy. In fact, I think psychotherapist are beginning to feel there is something there that to discover, because people get bogged in by their personal vantage point and self image. In fact I think we can understand each other very well, we are trying to help people. And, just therapy is not good enough, one wants to reconstruct the person, overcome the damage. So the self image, of course, so God, your self image, you see, God discovers Him/Herself through your discovery of Him/Her as you. That is, for example, you discover the perfection of compassion through those clues that are to be found in your compassion. You see that? There a word of Ibn Arabi that says that "the ephemeral gives a clue to the eternal." We never know God, there's no way of knowing God, no, but there are clues. For example, round objects give you a sense of roundness. 

The ephemeral gives you a, some sense of the archetype. You only know the archetype through the exemplar, by inference, one might say, unless, (and that represents a very high state that we shall be, try to explore tomorrow), unless you're able to grasp meaningfulness without the support of the existential state. There was a question that I said, something what I said, there was a question, "What do you mean by the difference between the universe and the cosmos? The cosmos is at the foam of the sea, of the shoreless sea of Jelaluddin Rumi. Well, it would be like the difference between the wave-interference pattern and particle, for example. Or the difference between the software of the computer and the hardware, or the difference between a fluid and the crystal that is formed, that is seeded within the fluid, something like that. That's why he [Rumi] said it's like a foam in a shoreless sea. Or for example the picture that you see on the TV, as compared with all the wave patterns behind it, is an example of what I mean by the cosmos as compared with the universe. These words are helpful, because otherwise one lumps it out into God, and now we have a more clear vision of what we mean. 	OK, now we're going to make another step. Because so far we've said my nature is a clue to, let's say, the Divine nature coming through me or one could say the seed-bed of my nature, which the way the universe is coming through me. Yeah, that is static, but now we're going to think of ourselves as dynamic rather than static, so think of ourselves as how we are becoming instead of how we are. And that means how we could be if we would be as we might be. So there's a sense of projection into the future, rather than determinism, and being determined by the past. If you think of yourself the way you are you're not thinking dynamically, you've not taking into account that most essential aspect of our being which is our creativity. So, now we want to enhance our creativity. 

That impulse in psychotherapy is extremely important. I mean, just repairing the damage is just, to get back to the set you go, that's the idea of therapy, that's not good enough. You have to really turn the tables on the damage so that you become a better person from your damage instead of simply returning to the place you were before. In fact there was a case of, when I was studying pathologic psychology at the University of Paris, that was way back in 1936 or '37, and there was a case of Laura, who was what one would call pathological psychotic, and she said, "The doctors are trying to draw me back to where I was before. I can't come back through the same door from which I left. What I want the doctors to do is open a new door", but of course they [doctors] walked out of the room. And that's what spirituality is about. So, how do we enhance creativity, the creativity of our person, personality and, eventually, being creative in our loves, but it's all related, of course. Well, it is relying upon that faculty of self-organization, the self-organizing faculty, which is written right into our nature, if we trust it. Because in it's initial stages we can't take an initiative, we have to simply give support to what is coming through without really knowing what is coming through, until it breaks... It's just like a seed under the ground; you don't yet know what, is, how it's going to unfurl, some idea of how it's going to unfurl, but the difference is between, if it's a tree for example, then the structure of the tree may be different from one of another tree,. the same seed. 

So it is the unexpected, impromptu, and consequently not determined that is just exactly what Professor Prigogine was looking into in physics and he said, "I was surprised to discover in dissipative structures", (that is structures that are not in equilibrium, that are, keep on shunting, that is shifting), "to discover autostructuration that cannot be determined." Something new emerges in the universe. Think of you as the way you are evolving as not the continuity of being the monkey, as according to Darwin, but something new, a new dispensation, that does not obey the laws of causality. It could be illustrated, because if you look at the sea and the waves, it seems as though there's one there's tidal wave and it is followed by another and it seems to be like a continuation and the replication of the previous one, like one determines the other. But you know that the whole ocean emerges as the whole wave, anew. There are two things: causality and this other, let's say, dispensation that emerges from within that cuts the continuity of time. Now I'm using a word which is used by a Sufi, Hujwiri, who was, who was settled in India long before Moinuddin Chishti, in Lahore, but Lahore was not India then, and he said these very important words, actually he was really formulating what the dervishes were saying: "The instant of time is like a sharp sword that cuts the guilt of the past and the preconfiguration of the future." Now that is, you know, just think about what that means; "cuts the guilt of the past". So he's speaking in terms of psychology, he's not in terms of philosophy. As I said, if you think in terms of causality , then you think "what I've done was so bad that I'll be damned for the, not just for my life on earth, but forever." And so, that there are new dispensations which can atone, have you atone from lower causalities; freedom from determinism. That's freedom, that is freedom, freedom. And the last words of Buddha was: "it is freedom from determinism."...

SIDE B: ...Now, freedom from, science was always based on determinism, and all of a sudden there was new realization, fantastic, the undetermined, how does this work, by cutting, that is, given a different direction to the causal chain. As I said, if you're on a boat, and the water's pushing you a certain direction but the wind is pushing in further direction, but you have to account for both now. The instant of time. What is the difference between the instant of time and the moment of time? In the moment of time, there is an overlap between the past and the future. For example, you listening to a melody and the note that just heard continues to resonate in your ears while you hear the present one, and if you're listening to Bach you can sometimes prefigure what is going to be the next note. At the moment of time, there is no boundary; the instant of time is like suspense, it suspends the motion of time. Now we have evidence of this in a pendulum, for example, or a metronome. It moves to one side and then experiences a state of immobility before it moves in the next direction; that's what is meant by the instant of time. There's no duration; you can't determine what duration there is there. It's just that time is landscaped just like space is landscaped by its gravitation, so is time landscaped. Time can stand still. When you hold your breath after inhaling, you are creating conditions that are favorable to your experiencing that state of suspense of time. When you exhale, you start moving again, in the process of becoming. 

That is an extremely valuable situation where time is suspended, because at that time our mind is able to conceive forms without matter. The Sufis call it "forms in suspense". Like matter has forms in its structures and so on, but imagine a form without matter. So imagine your image, without your body, without the constraint of your face, without the constraint imposed upon your image by the matter of your body. And now it is not the way we have done it before, like "what is your face, that is what is your real countenance behind your face" but it is your countenance in the process of becoming. That is instead of just thinking that your, that image that is a kind of feedback that gives you some sense of who you are, think that it is just not determined by the past but also by your prefiguring to the future. There's a word of Ula, actually I used to, I mean Kursula used it, referred to it, but he didn't go into the sources of it, Ula was as biologist, I think, and remember what he said that there was a formula, it was very important, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past." That's the secret of creativity. The way you could be is going to pull you out of the way that you are as a consequence of the way you were. In science, one calls it "attractors". It doesn't mean that the future is there; the possibility of the future is itself, acts as an attractor. So you have that notion of possibilities which saves you, rescues you, from the here and now. When people talk about the here and now, it's very simplistic: "I want to know who I am in the here and now," Very simplistic. "Who are you?", and that kind of stuff. The way that everything and always manifest in the here and now; THAT's multidimensional. 

For example, there's the word of Preston Milford, great American poet, who says, "I want nothing less than the impossible possibility". Does that makes sense to you? Is that how you feel also? (CHUCKLE). I don't want anything less than the impossible possibility. You don't content yourself with the crumbs when you've been invited to the banquet, because the word "impossible" is N'T in the Divine dictionary. The idea of all possibility, INKAN, in Sufism it's called INKAN, or all possibility; you see, that makes for optimism and the word "impossible" makes for pessimism. That's thinking positive: all possibilities. Think of the way you could be: you be dancing with joy, you could be full of insight, you could be powerful. Why are you not, why am I not, why are we not? Because we don't believe in all possibilities. We're stuck in our self-image. That's creativity. And your bounty is so great that, of course, autostructuration or self-organization is the beginning, the first impulse, but eventually you have to make a choice between that bounty of possibilities. That's where your free will comes in, when you decide amongst all the possibilities, "...that I could be..that I've decided that I want to be this or that, " or whatever. And you have to have a sort of a prefiguration, projection of how you could be. Do you see what a departure it is from the traditional view that one tends to fashion oneself according to one's guru. Now I say FREE Y'URSELF from gurus. Be how you could be. 

They were as they could be. Why do you have to be as they were? In fact, the new spirituality, there are three features of the new spirituality. First of all, "No belief system"; EXPERIENCE! The second one is "No do's and don't's". I can't think of a rule in the Sufi Order(CHUCKLE). But there are certain don't's, like you don't start killing people; those are sort of elementary. No prescriptions. And I must say, be careful of authority figures, because even if they don't tell you what to do, you assume that you know what they mean that you should do. (CHUCKLE) They're depriving you of your freedom. So, yes, Guide. Like for example, you go to Chamonix, and you climb to the Mont Blanc, you don't venture alone, of course you go the (Unknown French Phrase) and you say "I'd like a guide", and all of a sudden eight burly people present themselves, men present themselves, and you have to choose. Well, at least it was so in the old days; I don't know what it's like now. How do you choose a guide? You think, "Well. this one seems to be rather 'sympa', sympathethic; the other ones I don't know, I don't contract myself quite with them, but this man is, yes, really he's really knows and he won't force me beyond what I can't do." And then he's testing you while you're testing him. He tries you out on a easy terrain, and you'll hang onto a rock with one finger, with your feet dangling in space. 

He says "OK, grasp another rock and let go of the finger on which your whole body depends. You'd never do it on your own! All the guide is telling you is that you can do it! So, it's not "do as I do", but "I'll show you how to do it." That's a guide! 	So. think of God as the ultimate guide, and so one is learning one's own capacities, one is discovering one's own capacities without them being revealed to one. So that self-organizing faculty reveals to you the challenges in your being and draws your attention towards them. So think of it, like you're meditating and now instead of just turning around in circles of introspection and trying to sort out your problems, which never leads anywhere, think: "The problems depend upon me; if I change the problems are going to change, so what's the point in just simply analyzing the problems?" Well, be creative! I don't know if you've noticed there are stages in one's life when suddenly a new quality seems to come through that wasn't, that you hadn't paid attention to comes through. something, "Now that's important; before I didn't see the importance of it." For example, the Sufis call it MAQAM, different stages. For example, in one stage you're very impressed by people being of service, so you feel "Yes, that's what I want to be, I want to be of service. Then you find that two things happen: one is that gives you a personal sense of satisfaction, you're a do-gooder, it bloats your ego and you must bevery careful. And the other is that you get burnout and you feel sorry for yourself for having sacrificed things you wanted to do out of a spirit of service. 

So you must be careful. So only do it if you find such happiness in doing it that you don't regret doing it! Then, maybe, at some point, you say, "Yes, but really to help people I need to develop wisdom, and that's something I didn't see at first. So how do I develop wisdom? But I see that there's a way of developing insight." The fact that you're concentrating on the need to develop wisdom will awaken faculties in you that will help you, as long as you know how to work it, because otherwise you might think "Well, wisdom consists in know-how", but it's not. Know-how is just one element; wisdom is, as Pir-o-Murshid said, "the conjoining of wisdom of the heavens and the wisdom of the earth." Somehow, I would say, know-how gained by experience, and then a kind of protocritic knowledge that is inherent in our being prior to our experience. I hope you can follow me. 	So now, the thing about creativity is that it originates in an attunement, and perhaps even a way, a mode of thinking, but it actuates itself in a form. 

That's creativity. An emotion or thought is fashioned into a form, and that form acts as a feedback. So now apply this; so imagine the form of your face, if you were to develop more compassion. Compassion - suffering with. It's not being kind to a person, that's not compassion; suffering with. Because if you're kind to a person you feel that you're giving something, whereas compassion you are in a state of solidarity, that magical word from Poland, and you are sharing suffering. And so you are sad; of course, you're sad if you have compassion. There's nothing wrong in being sad; it's being very sensitive. It might even seem selfish of us, wanting to be happy...selfish, when a lot of people are suffering. It's not our goal to be happy. The word of Meher Baba: Be Happy!, it's rather a short-circuit. When people are suffering, and "I want to attain illumination" and we find other people...I remember going to Mount Athos and talking to the monks, and they said "well, we're coming to some sense of what we're seeking for.." but they weren't at all concerned about other people. (Unintelligible). 

So what would be the expression on your face if you had a lot of insight, Well, penetrating insight? Well, I remember being invited to a, I think it was lunch, in New York by a doctor who presented me, introduced me to his psychotherapist. Now I'd never seen a psychotherapist like that in my life. In fact, he looked rather like a rishi, instead of like a psychotherapist. He was looking at people like this.... Well, I've seen that amongst the rishis,...insight. So the expression of the face acts as a feedback to your attunement. So you might, it's a little too unreal, to say "I want insight. What does it mean, insight? I want insight!" But if you develop your insight to the point that it transforms the very image of yourself, then it's real. That's why one says that wazifas don't work. Of course the wazifas don't work if you just repeat a word. You can't expect it to be magical or something. No, you have to see how, to be quite concrete, you have to imagine an image of yourself that expresses this particular attunement.  

Can you do that? Choose, first of all, as I said, compassion. I think you have to imagine a scenario, say, someone in a concentration camp being tortured, and they're all bleeding, and your heart goes out to them. You will find that scenario awakens the quality in you that is already there, but it enforces it, enhances it tremendously, so you're awakening potentialities in your being by representing to yourself a real-life situation. So, the life situation acts as a catalyst. In creativity, there's always at first some type of catalyst that triggers off something in you, like potentialities that are latent in you, but something needs to spin off, like... It does not mean that you are reacting; it just means that scenario brought you home, brought you in touch with the potentials in your being, the virtualities that are beginning to come through, And now, to make this creativity more adamant, you need to represent your face. If you're really suffering, because suffering hurts, not just trying to be kind, if you really suffer, you will see the expression in your face, and you become sensitized.  

So, now you could look at your problem, in case that what the problem requires of you is to have, to understand the sufferings of the people involved in the problem. So, it's not just seeing from their point of view but feeling their suffering. And now you go to see that person, because meditation is a rehearsal for life, for real life, so you go and visit that person, and you say to them, "I'm sorry. I really never knew you...superficially...but now I am beginning to reach into your soul, and I see what is there. And so I understand much better our mutual involvement in these problems. because I see your being. And your being mirrors my own being." And that person may be encapsulated in their own suffering, but when they see that you are suffering too, it releases them from the constraint of their suffering. And this goes further, because, of course, that is a first step to realizing that the whole of humanity, of the whole cosmos, is suffering, and then one isn't so constrained by one's personal suffering because one sees that it is a condition of the cosmos, so one is participating. One is not victimized by it. 

Now take another case: mastery. Pir-o-Murshid defines it as, illustrates it by the yacht which is sailing. It is pushed by the wind, but the yachtsperson is able to somehow give a direction to the yacht different from the wind. So you consider that your impulses like the wind, like one has a compelling impulse to do this, or have a relationship with a person, or somehow it can be very compelling, particularly, of course, anger. That anger tends to accumulate and increase to the point, the dangerous point is of course is when it becomes hatred and consequently results in cruelty. So that's an impulse. So we don't want to kill our sense of propriety, our outrage. So for Pir-o-Murshid, mastery is not repression of , it's giving a direction to an impulse. And that will give you authority. Mastery will give you authority. For example, people in India, perhaps if you've been to India you've seen these people kicking dogs and you get outraged. If you don't get outraged, you're spineless. So you get outraged. How can one do that? I think of what the gauletiers did in the concentration camps; we have no idea what they did. If you have no outrage, then you're a very weak person. You'd like to go and give than man a real blow, a good lesson, but perhaps he's stronger than you, and he'll laugh at you. 

Or you'll get angry and lose your temper, and he'll laugh at you and everyone will laugh at you, But then imagine that you can have a kind of authority, and you look at him with that authority, "You there. You! That's not right." He'll feel small, like this, You won! If you get angry, he'll laugh at you. So that's a very clear case of harnessing an impulse, giving it a direction instead of repressing it. So when you hear people say "in Sufism we learn to repress untoward thoughts", no, we don't repress them, we give them a direction! So, this is Freud updated! (CHUCKLE). In fact, he was bit of a psychotic (CHUCKLE). So, can you feel that authority now? That is mastery; not controlling things with one's ego, to have it one's way, but taking responsibility to insure order in chaos. It's really not giving in to one's sense of inadequacy, and therefore recognizing one's spiritual status which gives one authority. There's a difference between authority and being tyrannical! That's the meaning of the wazifa YA QAHER, sovereignty. You see you can't develop it yourself, by your own will, that's why for the Sufis it is, you consider yourself as the ambassador to the king, (God is the king),and consequently the ambassador is not just a messenger. The messenger is the postman or postwoman. But the ambassador is supposed to confer something of the nature of the king, not just convey a message. So that requires of one to discover one's divine inheritance. You see, you can only, if you just, I think, if your self-image is based on your personal vantage point, you may recognize your parents in your ancestors, but you don't recognize your divine inheritance. So that requires one to downplay one's personal idiosyncrasies and discover behind them qualities that one could ascribe to one's divine inheritance and which are trying to come through and overpass one's personal idiosyncrasies. Do you see that?  

I am anticipating a future step which we'll go into tomorrow; it plays a very important part in creativity. Now, the features of creativity. Yes, the word of Prigogine, a physicist, perhaps the leading physicists in our time, in Belgium, who said, "To my great surprise I discovered in dissipative structures", (that is, where there's a variation from stable situations so that means there's life, there's possibilities opening up), "I discovered order and disorder." And the thing is about creativity that is if it were set, one would be sclerosed in it. That's the word "adamant", whereas creativity proceeds by trial and error.

MAR 09, 1996		Tape 06

 Pir Vilayat Texas Retreat 3/9/96		Saturday Afternoon Session (cont'd)		Tape #6

 Side A: .....

They made patterns and then they destroyed those patterns and replaced them by better ones. They didn't allow themselves to be bogged-in by their creativity. So, this is how I could be, if I would be, as I might be, but then, as I begin to try to be as I could be, as I might be, then I discover other ways of being which are other than those that I have seen so far. So, do I have to stick by what I saw at first? Of course not. This creativity is by trial and error, because if it weren't by trial and error, then everything would already be there, pre-established harmony, as Liebnitz called it, and all you have to do is to find out what is there. 

Now, God becomes through our creativity, as us, in trial and error, God in trial and error. And that's the feature of the divine perfection, that includes orderliness and disorderliness. because you know that evolution proceeds by random variations that become, that prove themselves to be optimal and finally, become adamant. Musicians are doing it all the time. Brahms, variations on the theme of Haydn, or whatever, Bach, and then each variation is an effort to try and bring something out of that theme, that was potentially there, each variation is different and some of them hit right on and others are less good and sometimes we just destroy the variation that was less good. That's a feature of your creativity. That is, do not think that you are programmed and you've got to conform to your programming. You are, you contribute toward the programming of the universe by your free incentive and you're free, since you can never know what is the best, you're trying it out and the universe is trying it out through you. Totally different way of looking at spirituality, hmm?  

So just think of your, how you could be and then, acquiesce, but then, as I advance, as Pir-o-Murshid says, the horizon recedes, so what I prefigured changes, so that's why what Hujwiri says, VAKT, that is the instant in time, does not only act as, it acts as a sharp sword, it does not only cut the guilt of the past, I would say the determinism of the past, but also the prefiguration of the future. That means that you set yourself a goal and then, you find that you're limited by your goal, and so, we have to be prepared to replace your goal by more satisfying, fulfilling one. And that's why Pir-o-Murshid says, "Shatter your ideal on the rock of truth." A lot of people do harm to people by their idealism. I'm sure Hitler was an idealist, so he should've shattered his ideal on the rock of truth. Human suffering is a Truth, that is a reality. But I don't suppose he ever read Murshid's works, (CHUCKLE) and if he did, he wouldn't have approved of them anyway. If you read Mein Kampf, then you'll understand what I mean. 	'kay, now, what's the difference between creativity and fantasy? 

We fantasize all our life, and some people think it's creative. It's worth a lot of dollars if you have a big name, your fantasy. Now, there's a criterion here, I used to say the criterion is your authenticity, that is, your scruple about truthfulness, so your creativity must really actuate the reality of your being instead of being just pure fantasy. So there's a sense that one is customizing the order of the universe in a new way, but that means that one has to, somehow, not lose touch with that orderliness, and it gets further complicated by the fact that that orderliness is not there, that you're discovering, or you're, you know, there's a kind of knowledge that is gained by doing: God discovering himself through your discovery of the possibilities of Him/Her as you. So, there's a word of Dr. David Boehm, if you, I do encourage you to read at least one book of Dr. David Boehm, Unfurling Meaning, if that is, how would you call it, whole new perspectives. In fact, he's saying exactly what the Sufis are saying, in fact, well, we are friends, and as a matter of fact he applied some of my ideas in his book, Unfurling Meaning. There are many others, The Implicate State, for example. So, what he's saying is that in the last resort, creativity needs to be significant for the universe and not just for yourself. That's the criterion. That means that the way you become is the way that the universe is becoming. 

So, randomness is the trial and error, but eventually one targets, one picks a target by choosing an optimal variation that makes sense for the universe. So, once again, you will see that it is God-consciousness that will make our creativity authentic, rather than fantasy. Something of the trend in the universe comes through great composers. Arvo Paart can't compose like Schubert, it's not possible. That's what Stravinsky told us. Of course in music, you have to feel the trend, so that you are not just the result of the past. The universe is coming through in a new way. 

So, can you do that, can you imagine how you could somehow actuate in your being the trend of the universe, or the cosmos, in a time? And you notice that the accent is on free-wheeling, rather than conformism. Inventiveness, brainstorming, so there's a sense of a goal that keeps on moving like the horizon as you advance and is propelling you forward out of the past. The challenge of the technology, to allow your computer to limit your creativity, creativity or thoughts, exactly as our language limits our thinking or it gives it precision and consequently enriches it, but does, like I say, does cull it, it cuts out a lot of things, because of the nature of the language which reflects the simplistic way people have thought in the past; unless you're a poet and you know how to juggle with words so that you give them another meaning to the conventional meaning. So, can you use your computer in such a way that it doesn't use you? Like, if you get yourself too involved in your anger with Bill Gates, then that could kill your creativity. (CHUCKLE) The trouble is, he always wins. (M'RE CHUCKLE). But his mind is so complex that it really is challenging for your mind, to understand, how one can think in a more complex way than one's normal simplistic way of thinking, so the computer does that to you. (CHUCKLE) 

But that applies to all technology on our planet. Can you see the devastation wreaked upon our societies by our technology - the homeless, the automation, we don't know how to create works of art anymore, everything is on the conveyor belt. So, we've lost our ability to be creative, that is, to exercise our creativity, and then, just imagine voice recognition will do away with a lot of secretaries, more people on the street. And you see what technology, that's the reverse side of technology, the instrument that takes over, instead of being at your service, like you thought it was at the beginning. So, can you use that creativity, that technology without being the victim of it? That's a great art. That's the challenge of our time. So, I would say that the intelligence of humanity is not up to the challenge of our technology. We don't know how to handle it.  	So, there comes a time when we have to get back to roots, like rocks, instead of lush vegetation, pure water, unpolluted air, if there is such a thing. Basic things like, not thinking sophisticatedly, but letting a kind of, a very pure kind of thought emerge like a little wellspring. Art is in spring, welling up within you and refreshing all the jaded forms of thinking that have resulted from our conformity, conformism to the train of our time. 

There's a word of Shahabuddin Suhrawardi, a wonderful Sufi, 12th century, who said, "When your being has become pure, it is able to, the soul is able to project it's, to discover itself, in your image." And so, if there's something, if we haven't gone through all the catharsis that we went through this morning, then that image of yourself is murky. It is the purity in your soul, if I may say, that will bring out the germane aspect of your being, distorted by the defilement, which is still there, as I've already said, in the case of Caruso.  

And so, I know that we have been accused of otherworldliness, and making people otherworldly, what they call psychological bypass, I think, I mean a spiritual bypass. Of course there is a psychological bypass, too. But, as you know, bypass is sometimes very useful and so, let us consider that what we are into now is a sublime dimension, different from the commonplace dimension, and we are taking a sabbatical from life, and you know how useful a sabbatical is. So, we try to relate it with life, but we don't want to be bogged in by our concerns about our lives, because our concerns about our adapting ourselves to the environment and if we do this, we stand in the way of the unfurling of qualities that are coming through, irrespective of whether they make us more effective in our lives. 

Could we end with just a little bit of music? Would it be all right if we listened again to that Arabic music we heard in the beginning, because it gets you in touch with your heart, whereas I have been making your brain tick more, faster than usual. We'll get back to basics, which is the heart. That's number two. Just a few minutes before six o'clock. No, no, the Arabic music. (Asrea?) Incidentally, if you are interested in knowing what are the pieces that we are playing, you could find out, you could ask Shams, somewhere in my computer is a list of them, a detailed list, where you can, what is the company and so on, but this, (Asrea) is a Syrian who lives in Paris and a Sufi, and so I think you can only get that CD in Paris, I think, and what he's saying is, he's talking about someone who gave his life, he was the mayor of a city, for what he believes in and he says, and of course, he was tortured actually, and he said, "I kiss the ground under your feet." Music here

SIDE B:....My sister Noor was beaten to death in a concentration camp in Dachau, because she was outraged by the Nazis. And she ended up by being a victim of the very violence which we were combatting. So that, according to the reports, she was a bloody mess. They shot her in the back of her head and threw in the oven when she wasn't totally dead. And her last words were, "Vive la liberte," - freedom. That is the issue that is enacted in the drama of our lives at present, finding freedom.  	I met a lady who knew her. She was a bit younger and who knew her in the resistance and was beaten to such an extent that she lost the sight of both eyes, she had a fractured, composite fractures of the skull, and she was thrown in the dungeon for dead. And here she was, talking to me. This lady of about, I would say, my age, and here she was, full of joy! And a more beautiful person you could never meet. And she said that the Nazis enjoyed hearing their victims screaming and so, they decided not to scream. And that at a certain point, the pain was so great that one made an astral projection and one thought, "You stupid man, you think you hurt me, you can't touch me." And she said, of course she doesn't know what it's like to be punished for a misdeed, but when one is being tortured because of one's dedication, one experiences a state of joy. You can think of Christ on the cross, experiencing a state of joy. That's an aspect that is not brought out in Christianity, a kind of sense of overcoming in the extreme. 

So, that woman wouldn't have been what she is if it hadn't been for what she went through. And so, think of your problems that are nothing in comparison, and think that you could not be what you are if it were not for your tribulations. Either it will make you bitter or it will make you beautiful. You have the choice. 	So, God bless you now!

MAR 09, 1996		Tape 07

 1996 Texas Spring Retreat Pir Vilayat Sun. Morning Meditation Tape #7 Side A I think the best time to meditate is in the early morning. You get the sense of being turned within, of as Buddha says, "Being surrounded by a zone of silence", some kind of aloofness, some kind of distance from the pressure, freedom from the pressure of the environment. The kind of sense of cleanliness inside, a kind of purity that has, really touch upon the core of your being that has not been tarnished by the world because, as I said, that defilement only affects the periphery of our being. So if you turn within, you discover that beautiful inner purity, peacefulness. One could walk of course in nature and find oneself in a transfigured world. You see we have this idea about wanting to be illuminated. The fact is that we all have some some degree of effulgence, some of us more some of us less. I hope that you are one of those who are dedicated to the path of light, even more important than the path of wisdom. I hope that you are moved by the presence of people who have a lot of light in them and awed by people who carry a lot of darkness. And of course I hope that want to belong to the gang of people who believe in light. 

Now, there are ways of, we all have some degree of luminosity, of effulgence but this effulgence can be increased. There are techniques. There are skills. I would say it can be increased by concentrating on light, by imagining light. It's a kind of feedback system so that by imagining light you are able to enhance the effulgence of your aura. And the other thing is, well there are three things. The second thing is what's called the ecstasy of light. It's like being so thrilled by the encounter with light that it seems that the experience of light coming to one from the environment tends to enhance one's own radiance. But it's not so much a matter of concentrating as being very deeply I would say shattered by the encounter with light to the point that one's whole being is sort of impacted into it's very depths by the encounter with light. And one feels then inspired and one undergoes a kind of catharsis of light, a kind of purification of light, like a shower of light. The third thing is being very alert. So every now and again when you're meditating you shake yourself and awaken. Very very alert. It's a matter of the way that energy, there's a sort of breakthrough of energy that triggers off awakening. And when I say being alert, awake, there's another meaning of the commonplace perception of the physical world such as it appears. But just think of it as that there are parallel universes. So when I say you find yourself in a transfigured world, it's the same world but you are grasping another perspective of it. The heavens are not up there somewhere but something that is trying to transpire through the perspective that we have through our ordinary senses of the physical world. 

So it's sharpening your senses. And you can do that. There is a practice I've done. And you can do it if you have the patience and alacrity. And that is to keep on watching the slightest appearances of the light before the sun rises. Of course you have to account the differences of the time the sun rises. But you'll find that you are able to perceive the emergence of this light much sooner as you sharpen your senses. So it's a kind of sensitivity to light which might manifest of course in what we call clairvoyance. Even seeing the auras of people. And of course the wonderful thing is you see the, well let us say the authentic face, countenance coming through the physical face of people. That is of course if that person is a beautiful person, then of course what is coming through is a million times more beautiful. 

So it's really, the way of illumination is really embodying light. Or let us say, I mean we are light, but let us say, imagine that we said your bodies are formed out of the fabric of the planet. That's what we said. That started the big bang. Actually there were universes before the big bang. But the fabric of the planet originated in, not this sun, but the companion to this sun because the stars, there are always two stars in the couple situation. So the companion to the sun became the planets. But at least we can say that originally the fabric of our bodies was incandescent, what they call plasma, light, incandescent of course gasses. But it wasn't solid. So if you can think of yourself of that nature is still present in you, that nature of what we call incandescence. 

And so at first we experience a very perfunctory thing. We experience what one calls bioluminescence, that is that the body is able to absorb light from the environment. Then it doesn't reflect light. It emits light. It processes that light. That's a complicated thing. But it's like a crystal for example. So that's the bottom line. And you can get, if you're still in your body consciousness, then you can, you know when you're sunbathing, you tend to open your pores to absorb the sun. You can do that. See if you can do that. Think of the, well not just the electric light here, but of course if you have a candle, not just the light of the sun, but the light of the stars, in fact the light of the stars but the light of the universe. Because the way that the all pervading light is converged in certain locations in space. So just think of the sky as being the firmament as one says, as being just glaring, effulgent, reality studied by those points where the light is converged and then radiates from that point of convergence, and that your body has arisen out of that light and has this nature, this luminous nature. And that becomes buried if we identify with our physical body. So if you downplay your identification with your physical body, then rather than thinking that you're absorbing light, you realize that, or absorbing and emitting light, you think that you are the light of the stars that has converged and is radiating. It is alternating between convergence and radiating. 

And let us not be limited by our notion, our rather simplistic notion that light is a physical phenomena. It can be perceived as a physical phenomena, and can be ascertained as a physical phenomena in laboratories. But it doesn't mean that it needs to be reduced to what can be perceived of it or can be ascertained of it. So it's a reality beyond our physical perception. 

So when you think of yourself as an aura, at first you may think of it as a physical what they call bioluminescence, which, as I say, can be measured in a laboratory and which responds to your imagination, to your representing to yourself the effulgence around your, you can do that. Just imagine the, can you just, I hope you've already been able to feel the magnetic field around your arms and shoulders, like a force field. And the second step is being able to feel the light around your arms and shoulders and chest and eventually above your head.

Nowadays at least we know that it's not just wishful thinking or that we are hallucinating because as I say the photons, the photon output can be measured in a laboratory, in fact I know a laboratory in which it can be done. And of course it has been ascertained that if one imagines the aura, then one increases its effulgence. So that's purely physical phenomena. But the interesting thing is to be able to shift your sensitivity from the physical aura to what the old church fathers used to call the uncreated light. Gregory of Mycia called it uncreated it uncreated light. And "Jak of Burma called it aurora con solgence" that is the emerging light of dawn. The Tibetans the clear light of bliss. Whatever the words are, it's another perspective, therefore another level of light. 

And so I'm going to give you a practice. It's a practice performed by Buddha himself under the tree. Well actually Buddha made several retreats in caves before he sat under the tree. Now imagine a red disc, for example cardboard disc, cardboard for example painted red. Look at it for some time. And if you close your eyes, you'll see a green disc. And if it were a green disc, maybe if you close your eyes, I think you'll see an orange disc. And if it's an orange disc and close your eyes, you'll probably see a violet disc. Now, that's what one calls reflex image. Now you could do this without looking at a disc. You could imagine a red disc. Then somehow you do something. And I don't know how to say how you do it. But you just know how you do it. You switch your consciousness and it's green. And you can toggle between the two. And almost, you could almost espy the next reflex which is orange. So that would be the reflex of the reflex. 

So when you exercise yourself with this, then just think of colorless light and imagine a very powerful beam of colorless light. I don't know whether you have the courage to look into the beams of the headlamps of a car. One generally turns one's glance away. But you can develop power in your glance by getting yourself used to looking into brighter and brighter lights. So that the Yogis for example and the Sufis of course, the dervishes, I've done this practice myself in Ajmere. Start looking at the sun at dawn and increase the, without wavering your eyes of course, increase the amount of minutes each day. You can reach twenty minutes. You can reach even, some of them reach, are able to look into the sun for three hours. Actually if you look into the sun for one say three seconds, your retina can be totally burned for ever. So the technique consists in strengthening your glance so your eyes are not operating as organs of perception but as headlamps like the headlamps of a car. And if you do that, then you can look into a bright light and it's really like an encounter with light. And a communication, a communion of light. You discover your light by matching it with a light that it is confronted with and eventually there is a mirroring effect. 

OK. So now imagine you are looking into a bright light and you're really flooded by this light, flooded. In fact not just the surface of your body but somehow I suppose the high frequency light is able to penetrate into the cells of your body that start responding by being in what is called the excited state. And the molecules themselves of course, the atoms themselves of course get into the excited state. So you can actually feel it in your body, feel the effect of that, even just simply just representing to yourself light will have that effect upon your body that will start replicating, dividing much quicker in the process of mitosis. They will be dividing much faster. And of course it's wonderful therapy for the physical body. In fact it's the secret of longevity if you want to know. So can you feel the cells of your body beginning to giggle more, faster than usual. They are really enjoying this. It's like food for them. Light is food, it's energy. And of course at the psychological level there is wonderful rejoicing because light is associated with joy. 

All right now. Just imagine the reflex of this light. You do the same thing as you did with the disc. You shift your consciousness, the focus of your consciousness back. I think that's the impression I have. And of course you can toggle between the two which is good because then you see the difference. And I don't think that it's another frequency because if you have colorless light, it includes all frequencies. Let's say light that we perceive is colorless. No, I think we're talking about levels of light. It's not a concept in physics. However there is a physicist who does refer to these levels but it's quite unorthodox in physics. What Dr. David Boehm says is,"What we know of light is just like a ripple on the ocean of light". So imagine that it's a kind of, you'll find it of a very different nature to the light that you perceive with your eyes because it is not radiant. It's all pervading as Pir-o-Murshid says, all pervading. Radiant light radiates from a source that is located in space. All pervading light like waves that are spread out in space, not specific by their location in space, but by their frequency. That's another notion than location in space. And so when you do this, if you're very observant, you'll notice that you've lost your sense of space, I mean of location in space. And as a matter of fact our notion of space is only relevant to physical matter. Were there is no reference to matter, there's no reference to space. So that's a very useful experience because you can imagine that you could exist without being located in space, without having a body, as a being of light. It's not just a poetic metaphor. 

So if you are able to espy, because you say you're perceiving it, to espy that level of light, the setting of your consciousness has shifted from the ordinary setting. And consequently if you were to go out into nature, you'd be surprised that you seem to be in a transfigured world. It's the same world but transfigured. The trees are luminous and flowers are luminous. Everything is light. You see, you're in a world of light. And it's not like the world of imagination, like a kind of representation of angels that are made by artists. It's very real. The forms of the physical world except that they don't have profiles. I don't know whether you are familiar with the photographs of flowers made by Walter Chappell with ultraviolet light. And you see that the effulgence around the petals is clearly, comes out very clearly and something of the shape of the flowers but it doesn't have a profile. So it's very difficult to describe it unless you actually see the photo. And it rings a bell because that's the kind of experience that one has in a transfigured world. 

Now whether the light that one sees is indeed the light of an objective world, or whether it is the light of one's own aura or even the light of one's third eye, one could try and work that out. But I think that the experience is much more important than our interpretation of it. 

So Hildegard from Bingen, a wonderful German mystic who is becoming better known now particularly in the States. She said, "I was meditating on light. And it was as though I was flooded with light. I was so overwhelmed by this blinding light. And all of a sudden something very curious happened. This world of light seemed to open up like a gate into a further world of light, more luminous but less tangible and shattering to my being. I think I was perceiving it at a different level than the level at which I perceived light before". 

So you see that, imagine that we have several bodies like Chinese boxes for example. And that each of these bodies has its perceptual range. So when you shift your identity from one level to the other, then the particular perception of that higher body begins to seep through as long as you maintain yourself at that level. As soon as you try to explain it then of course it falls, you slip back into your ordinary consciousness. You've lost the experience. And the reminiscence of the experience, it's not the same thing. So as Pir-o-Murshid says, "There is the consciousness of the body." Then he says, "There is the consciousness of the heart. There is the consciousness of the mind and the consciousness of the soul". Well these are terms that were used in the esoteric lore of the time. But let's say, just think that you're made levels. You have your existence at several levels. And if you downplay your identity with your physical body, then the perception through the physical body gets petered out. And then a finer perception begins to emerge. And that's what's called a transfigured world. And that's what's called Arwah, the plane of Arwah in Sufism. And Hildegard of Bingen says, "That world of subtle light seemed to open up like a gate into a still further world of light more overwhelming than the previous one, even more". That was the reflex of the reflex, the same thing that Buddha was talking about. 

So these reflexes serve as the rungs of a ladder helping you to ascend through the spheres. There was a word of Ibn Arabi who says, "He", that is God, " guides you into the different spheres and is closest to you, the counterpart corresponding to those spheres". So imagine we're a many tiered being. And the Universe is many tiered. And there's a correspondence between each of those echelons. And the condition is, what he says is the condition is that you let go of the previous sphere, he even says of the counterpart of the, so you don't identify, you let go of your body consciousness. He even goes so far as to say, "It get's dissolved". Well the body is continually being dissolved of course. And that must be so at all levels. And this can be evidenced by Krilian photography for example, a cold emission of electrons, of photons. 

There is a certain dissipation of the elements of our being that were cohered. A kind of premonition of death. If you're able to even enjoy that falling apart as Al Hallaj says, "As a promise of my resurrection". Then you think of a flower for example. It's jaded petals need to fall apart so that the fresh petals are able to emerge. So think of it in the same way that, for example, think that your physical aura, if you want to reach into the higher spheres, then somehow the cohesion holding your physical aura together seems to be weakened. Because it's your sense of identity that's holding it together. So you're incurring a kind of death, not total of course, but. Our  aura is, in any case it's traveling, you know it's scattering. It's radiating as one says. It's, the photons are traveling at a speed of 186 miles, 186,000 miles a second. Imagine. So then you can almost be aware of that scattering. So instead of thinking of your aura as being a stable kind of thing, it's like a vortex. It's continually being scattered. Now the interesting thing that we haven't said yet is that it is reborn from it's center just like a vortex. The water flows into the axis and flows out at the periphery. You could do this if you're breathing. As you exhale imagine that your aura is scattering, radiating and scattering at the same time. 

Side B The Universe emerges in the center, as you inhale, in the center of your aura, recycling it. Now think that the more your enlist the scattering of your physical aura, the easier it is then to grasp then the next level of your aura, the transfigured world, let's say the level corresponding to the transfigured world, Arwah. And then even that world disperses because let us say that that is a world of forms in the fabric of light. And then you get to Mithal which is the level of forms without even like a substrate of light, the fabric of light. Or let us say that light is so immaterial that you can hardly call it a body of light. That's why they say that it's the level of pure forms, or forms in suspense. 

So the more you are aware of this emergence of light from within and think that it rises, well it's useful to think that it rises in your spinal cord. But that will make you slip back into your physical consciousness. So it's not the best way. But subjacent, the best view is subjacent, parallel universes. And if you're able to grasp the reflex of the reflex of light, that light is so tenuous that you can hardly call it light at all. And that will give you give you a sense of the celestial level, Malakut, the celestial level. Your celestial being. 

Now that takes some skills that can help us through the device of creative imagination. As you know according to the Tibetan Buddhists for example, it creates illusion. But that illusion is a way of, gives you feedback. So it's practical. But they call it the illusory body. Just like of course for them the physical world is illusion also. But let us say that, by the word illusion, let's say that to rely upon it is misleading. So the imagination is working at a very high level here. If you can do that. It's difficult because one is so used to thinking in one's usual commonplace representation of the physical world. If you can do it, then you will find it, you might call it wishful thinking. You know it is very difficult to imagine something that is not. 

For example, a dragon, say a dragon, actually now they've found out that dragons do exist. But you know you make a, I mean the mythological dragon is the head of a lion and the wings of an eagle and so on. So after all you are imagining something that is a replicate of your physical experience. Now then your imagination can reach a higher level. For example Bach is really featuring a cosmic celebration at the angelic level in the B Minor Mass, particularly in the Samtus and Hosanah. The descent of the Holy Spirit "cum samtus spiritum". Or Gloria, the opening of the veil is rent asunder the threshold between the earth and heavens. These are in this case, let's say auditory representations. But then of course the Mass and candles and so on. So you have visual representations that are features of our imagination gives us a sense of the, well the kind of attunement corresponding to the heavens. It's an attunement. So, you know the angels, trumpets, fanfare, the bugles, the messengers. 

All that is a dramatization of something very real. But we don't know how to grasp it without that representation, or let's say let that representation act as a stepping stone. So if you don't take your imagination to be ultimate but just a device, as the Sufis say, " A clue", then your representation of the heavenly spheres, even if you imagine it to be up there somewhere, it will awaken an attunement that is authentic. And the reason why it does so is that it is simply confirming a déjà vu. It is confirming something with which you are familiar as though you had, it is as though you had reminiscence of having experienced heavenly conditions prior to your birth. Now Dr. Grof, a psychotherapist, calls it perinatal rather than prenatal because one is still in that state now. So it's easier to remember it as having happened before one's birth as though one was segregated from what one was, what one isn't any more but one was. No, one is still what one was and one's body has accrued to one. So that in your present state you can recontact that celestial state. 

Your imagination is just, as I say, a clue. And there is a word of Ibn Arabi who says, "Having enlisted your imagination, disband your imagination". Like the rocket that has freed itself from the launching platform now. So your imagination did it's job. And so it is your soul as one says, in any case a higher level of your being. In fact it is your celestial counterpart that is now discovering itself. When imagination has ceased, then for all that we know it is emotion that takes over, ecstasy. All those things that we idealize. There are two words of Pir o Murshid. One is, "There are times in one's life when a passion is awakened for the unattainable". And it keeps on luring you further and further. And the other one is, "One is raised above earthly conditions to the point of experiencing unearthly joy". And now the world seems to be very remote. But it's like an anchor that you can pull on if you want to and get back to your ordinary consciousness again. 

Now you will find that if you do this, there is one further stage of course. These are steps. The further stage is that you discover yourself no more as an angelic counterpart. But you discover your self as being luminous intelligence, "Nur Akle", luminous intelligence. And I think that that is what is generally meant both by the word awakening and by the word illumination. One has a feeling, instead of being receptive to the impressions of the earth, which will give you some clue about the reality behind it, you are casting the light of your intelligence upon things just like an x-ray. And now even your aura is just a support system. Even your celestial being is a support system. So that where ever you go you bring light, not just the light of your aura, but the light of your insight. So God bless you now. End of Tape

MAR 09, 1996		Tape 08

 Texas Spring Retreat Tape #8	Sunday Morning Session 3/10/96 Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

SIDE A: (Music playing)..

.in the Sistine Chapel on Good Friday. Nobody was ever supposed to know about it or play it and, at the danger of being excommunicated, and Mozart went there and when he got back home, he wrote the whole thing down. And that why, thanks to him, we have it. Yes, (thank you) heavenly music. (Music stops) 

Well, today, is a very important day, an intensification of the retreat process. We've done a lot of preparation. We need to be, first of all, clear about certain guidelines. You notice that the key to shifting your consciousness in the transcendental dimension is to shift your sense of identity. Just like what we did with light, the reflex of light. So I hope you can do that. Instead of thinking of yourself as the physical body, you downplay your body identity and then identify with the force field that intersperses all force fields. Identify with your aura. And now keep on shifting from identifying with the aura of physical light to identifying with the higher light counterparts of our being, auras of our being. Now, you can't do it just by your will, although, the practice that we did with light is a help, but, the best thing you could do is to recognize in yourself, if that is the case of course, as Pir-o-Murshid says, "Passion for the unattainable..", a real, you must be sure that if you came here there must be some sort of longing or nostalgia for conditions that you could describe as celestial conditions instead of conditions of the physical world, even a sense of being in exile here on the earth plane. 

That doesn't mean on the planet, that just means in the physical perspective. One can be caught in a perspective. So it becomes like a passion, it becomes so important that it becomes just more important than anything else in the world. One's quest for beauty, for splendor, for glory and, of course, one's aversion for all that is tarnished and sullied, and depravity, that terrible greed of egos, hatred, cruelty. So, it's the other way round.  	Now, let's say, there's no use to imagine it when it corresponds to a real experience. So it's only possible, if one does a lot of ground work, which we tried to do yesterday morning, but that is, somehow one has to, as Pir-o-Murshid said, "loosen the ties with the physical world". Well, what he said, no, he doesn't say loosen, he says "work through the ties". It's not the same thing. It's like seeing just how one is dependent, becomes dependent, and consequently somehow has taken away one's sense of freedom and maybe diminished one by being dependent or somehow what that means is not cutting, it doesn't say cut the ties. That is, of course that is the tradition in India, the sannyasin cut the ties or if you're a monk you cut the family ties. 

No, it's, I think it could best be illustrated by a knot, for example, a knot in a string, a rope or whatever, a thread, a knot, a very inextricable knot, very complex. And then gradually unraveling it, painstakingly, instead of cutting it. So a lot of us, in our lives, we cut our relationship because it doesn't work, but there's pain and also, it's not a solution or a resolution; but I'm not saying that we need to loosen the ties in the relationship, what I'm saying is that you are able to, with the light of intelligence, you are able to see how those, how the situation, got entangled and then if you pull on it, then it becomes worse and it becomes so tight that you can't unravel it. So, there's no use pulling on it and if you cut it, well, then you haven't taken advantage of this opportunity that life offers you. So that means seeing how one thing lead to another and lead to another and how one got surreptitiously drawn into a situation which was determined by one's motivation in the beginning. And now if you have evolved and your motivations are different than what they were before, then you can't, if you feel uncomfortable with your involvement then there is a way of making it beautiful, so that, for example, you can turn that knot into a beautiful tassel, for example. The way of bringing some kind of aesthetic beauty in that situation so that, how do one say it, to take off in the celestial spheres one has to have a very good launching station, as Pir-o-Murshid says, "if you have any debts to pay" he says, so, that doesn't mean just money, but a kind of commitment. It's, you're not free. You might cut it but you are letting people down. You can't be elevated in your highest attunement if you have lost your self-esteem. So it doesn't work that way. Let's say making relationships beautiful rather than selfish. Perhaps one could say interdependence rather than co-dependence. So there's that side of it.  

As Ibn Arabi says, "you have to dissolve your lower bodies". I, we, I referred to it this morning, but I think one should add to that, "transmute". So, for example, instead of just thinking, "Now I identify with my subtle body instead of my physical body", could you think, "Somehow the features that my body has gained through my experience, through the wisdom of the earth; the features of my body, not just the face; but, the whole body, the nervous system and the cells, the features that have arisen out of my interface and interaction and involvement with the fabric of my body, well, those features can be transmuted like perfume, flowers." That means, one can extract the essential from the contingent. For example, wisdom rather than know-how is a good example that I gave yesterday. It would be an example of transmuting something into something else, know-how transmuted into wisdom. Or for example, this is something that Buddha goes into very much, it's the different types of joy. There is such tremendous range of joy from simply essential satisfaction to serenity. Somehow, it's not just different levels but the way that the nature of one level can be transmuted into another level. So it's like one doesn't really leave one's -- I'm saying all this because one tends to think that one has to leave one's body behind in order to lift one's consciousness into the higher spheres and what I'm saying is, no, you schlep with you the quintessence of your body like, in fact even you're, the features of your countenance carry something of what has been achieved in your incarnation. Further upwards and then you get to forms that don't have profiles, for example, that would be another further case of distillation, transmutation. 

Wisdom, for example, as I said before, for example, you remember an event after many years, you just remember the essence of the event not all the details. That's a way of transmuting and if you don't do that then you become a split personality, you open one door and close another. So you what to be a whole being, wholistic. I hope you're doing it while I'm talking. For example, that's what we did with light this morning. It looked as though we were just shifting from one level to another, but, perhaps I didn't emphasize enough the way the features of the heavens, well, the features beyond the heavens, features, I say features, let's say the principals, archetypes, are fashioned in the course of their descent. And then the structures are quintessentiated and the wisdom gained by them is shunted upwards. I don't know whether that made sense to you. 

Pir-o-Murshid once said that the heavens are formed after the earth. Of course the philosopher that was there said, "Pir-o-Murshid, did you really mean that?" "Yes, uh-hum." So instead of thinking "I existed as a heavenly being, as a heavenly being I was embryonic and through my trying to develop a celestial nature in my humanness, I am building my celestial body on earth." That's why the Sufis say "resurrect before death". So that's what you're doing now. So now, how can you build a celestial body within your own physical body or your own subtle body? Well, this is a great art, of course that is carried out by the Tibetans and, of course, the Sufis. That is, I think, that to start with, one has to earmark those things that sort of trigger off in one a high emotion. So that's why the values, the scale of values of emotions represents really guidelines. That's why Buddha attached so much importance to the difference between gross pleasures and what they call bliss, the whole gamut of emotions. So you could recognize in yourself the kind of things that give you pleasure in life and then you recognize the whole gamut of values, for example, yes, "I like Haagen Daaz but I prefer listening to the B Minor Mass of Bach". There are different levels of our pleasure. Discovering beauty in the soul of a person is a joy beyond many of the joys that we are pursuing in our lives, so when you see the general thing that you find amongst people, the kind of joy that is sought after is extremely trite. 

So it is that sense of, how can I say it, thrill of your soul when you come across something that is reminiscent of the heavens. I would say looking into the eyes of a child, of a baby; not a child, a baby, because the impressions of the earth have not yet tarnished that beautiful clarity of the eyes. Now that is, when you see that, or at least if it is meaningful to you, as it is to me, then it triggers off a sense of déjà vu"; yes, I know this, this is familiar. Maybe I've forgotten it, but, now it comes back. That's the world I belong to. I've lost contact with that world. I must try and recover my contact with that level, because if I don't I slip into greed and selfishness and hatred and all those things or covetousness or then depression or bad self-image, gross emotions and so on. So, that's your life, lighthouse, let's say. Now, there are things, for example, the music we've just heard. It was a monk who has composed this in that sphere of, sacred sphere, that was produced in the Catholic churches, especially in those days. So in those, that kind of social environment the celestial level of one's being or counterpart part of one's being is aroused, and not just aroused but is unfurled. So it was embryonic and now it begins to unfurl and develop and become much more a real being. So you see the relationship between realization and configuration, or fashioning, fashioning. You see your realization becomes, by a sense of déjà vu", is going to effect the fashioning of your celestial body. 

You do have a memory of your celestial conditions. It's like a kind of call. Like, "Ahhh!" What a relief to attune ourselves to splendor when we are plunged in so much grossness and ugliness and selfishness. What a joy! That emotion that is going to keep you high. I suppose there is some judgementalism in it, of course, that's what establishes a scale of values, it's your sense of judgment. As they say, "there is no accounting for taste". So if this has meaningful with you and you are with me in this and if it isn't, then perhaps you think I'm talking about Santa Claus. Do you believe in angels or not believe in angels; that is not the question. The question is, is the splendor that we generally ascribe to the heavens, not just important for you but so important that everything else pales as compared? That's the question. That is, instead of thinking of the heavens up there, it's like, as I say, a parallel universe, it's right here, in you.  	So somehow you let yourself be carried by that very high emotion, attunement and the secret of it is glorification. That is what prayer is about. And if you divorce meditation from prayer then you've lost what it's all about. Or let's say, if you divorce meditation from the sacredness, then it becomes stress reduction; our need of the sacred, otherwise we flounder in this world. The connection. The word religion comes from the "relegare", in Latin, to link, to link yourself with the divine foundation. That is re-discover it, re-establish the connection.  

Now there is a word in Islam, it's in the Koran, that says, "Allah makhluk 'fil itikadat". That means the "God created by your prayer". Because by praying you are not only evoking but arousing aspects of yourself which express the divine nature much better than if one is trying to achieve something in life and so God is created as you through your prayer. And that's the reason why in Islamic prayer, in "namaz", one is supposed to try to stalk the divine revelation, and this revelation can only come through your own being. In the word of Ibn Arabi, "God describes Himself to you as yourself". So somehow you imagine God on the model of your own image. That's the only way in which something that does not have a form, a reality that doesn't have a form can become tangible to you, present to you, as your own being; that is, within your capacity - each one according to their capacity.  	

There is a passage in the Apocrypha, the Acts of Thomas, which says that the pupils of Christ wished to have an experience of the transfiguration of Christ after Christ's crucifixion, so they climbed on Mt. Tabor and, it was St. Peter, the Act of St. Peter, not St. Thomas, St. Peter - and so St. Peter, and so everyone was hoping to have a vision of Christ but nobody saw anything. Now he said "try and see with the eyes of your soul, not your physical eye" and everyone saw something. But when they started describing what it was that was seen, they saw that each one saw differently and they thought that they had been deceiving themselves. And I remember exactly the words of Latin of St. Peter. St. Peter said, "Talem aeum vidi polem potui", each one of them saw according to his/her capacity. "Potui", capacity. "Talem", according to. "Aeum", of them. "Vidi", saw. Each one of them saw according to their capacity. So, it's like the same water but different vessels and it takes the shape of the vessel. So we shall see God in our own image.  

This image is a projection. It's a clue, as we've already said. It's a feedback system. But then, the more inspired one is by the possibility of what God could be beyond one's understanding, the more beautiful that image, and consequently, the more beautiful one becomes. This is called fashioning the states of realization. Not just realization, but fashioning them. So, we already, if you remember the phases we went through, you remember my saying you're wearing a mask and playing a role and so then we downplay your identity with that mask or that role, then you start discovering your real countenance behind your face. And then if you remember, the next stage was that subtle body, let's say, that subtle face, if you like, countenance, in the process of becoming, that is not just static like "This is me", but "I am becoming something which lies beyond the horizon but as I advance, the horizon recedes". Or rather "God is becoming as me", so some, that sense of that's why, at this level we're saying, Ibn Arabi says "I know God through the knowledge that God acquires of himself through me." And I know myself and, I think that one would have to add "I become, configure my subtle body on the model of the knowledge that God is gaining through my trying to grasp His/Her being and the only way I can grasp His/Her being is through me and the consequences are a real configuration of the subtle body", which I call the magnetic field, but it's not just an amorphous field, it has a structure. 

And of course, the same thing is true of the aura, and then the different auras. At this level, the celestial level, somehow there is a purification that takes place because your real being behind the mask is still, well, I hope there's no offense, it is a mixture of excellence and some kind of deformation due to the affirmation of the ego - defilement, could even be depravation, of course. So it's like, I don't know, if are you familiar with the story, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" So here was a man who looked very beautiful, but in the painting, the painting showed how he really was. And that got worse and worse as time went on. He was doing very bad things. So we could think that, that the way you handle things and also the way you think has an immediate effect upon the configuration of all these subtle bodies, including the angelic ones, the celestial ones. And therefore, as I say, instead of just repeating the wazifa..., I would say that wazifas are wonderful models that you can use in order to discover God like in prayer. It's a form of prayer. Now discover, to use the words of Ibn Arabi, "to discover the way that God is discovering Him/Herself through what is coming through you" by repeating the wazifa. So it's a process of, an evolving process, a transforming process. 

But now, celestial level, there's, somehow that defilement is, I don't know, I mean as far as I can experience it, it doesn't seem to be there anymore. It's like the voice of Caruso that has been rid of it's deformation. And you know, the machines that they use for that are, they reverse the deformation. They get ahold of the kind of machine that was registering the voice and compare it with the new ones and they reverse the distortion. So you can do that by reversing the distortion in yourself. In fact, I would say that the only access to celestial spheres is by reversing the distortion. So then it's a work of self examination, when one looks at one's self and it's . . .hum, I see, there's something in me that I don't like, I just keep repeating it over and over again, sort of like a pattern. So, it will go on like that unless I reverse it. Like for example, if you're playing the piano and you keep on playing it wrong. Habituation and automation. The only way to correct yourself is to de-automatize it; playing it consciously, you see where you went wrong and therefore you are reversing the distortion in your conditioning. So that's exactly how one proceeds. 

So you have to earmark the most overt, the most obvious things are those that you really don't like about yourself. Like "I tend to become defensive when I'm being criticized", for example. Or "I have resentment for this person so, it's very difficult, I can't love this person because I resent them". Those are very human things, very normal, but, of course they do constitute distortion because the only access to the celestial spheres, that is to discover one's celestial being is to rid it of it's scories, it's to be without guile, to be innocent, in fact. And you know, of course, if you're naive, then people are going to step on your dead body, and it's very difficult to be able to survive in this very harsh world while being innocent. That's why a child can't stay in this state anymore because a child won't be adapted to this world. So, you must expect that it makes you very vulnerable.  SIDE B: ...clarity, it's the other way around. You see into the soul of people and your assessment is based upon their authenticity.


1996 Texas Tape #8 Side B

...clarity. It's the other way around. You see into the soul of people. And your assessment is based upon their authenticity. You can see it right away. If people are trying to manipulate you or lie, you can see it right away because there is an osmosis at that level far greater than at the physical level. At the physical level there is osmosis between people. There are a lot of beings whom we love or who are meaningful to us become a part of our being. And there is some reciprocity. But you know that we say like what we call the spiritual link is in the higher planes. Like we're connected in the higher planes. And it's not just a formula. It really is like at that level one is really able to really reach each other. That does not mean, it's not telepathy. It doesn't mean we know how another person thinks or you know anything. There's no indiscretion about how they live or anything like that, nothing at all. It's just that there is a reciprocity in ecstasy. So overwhelming that one feels totally shattered. It's based upon affinity instead of otherness, not complementarity or otherness, but affinity. Can you do this? I hope you're doing it while I'm talking. At the level of your being which is present in your personality. When we say level, we think that's other. So perhaps that's not a good word. How can we say it? Like a perspective in a hologram, hologram for example or wave frequency, something like that, that intersperses the others, the other waves. So it's not like a level, like you know up there somewhere at all, that is innocent even while one may be having to fight the battle of the victory of light over darkness. One can be a knight at the same time an illuminated being. 

Anyway the clue is innocence. First of all being absolutely up front, no manipulation, as I said, like an open book. But people can do that without being innocent. If you're very gross, you don't mind what people think of you. And so you can just be overt. It's not a big deal to be overt. But to be innocent, yes, as Christ says, "You have to be, to become like a child to have access to the heavens". And wise at the same time. That combination. Can you have strength and be innocence? So the model of the child is not always the best. I think there is strength in the eyes of a child, a baby, not just beauty. There is strength, the power of God, spiritual power. 

And that level, what the Sufis say, the dervishes say that this level, called Malakut, Malak being the angel, is a kind of transient or halfway house let's say, between connecting the absolute supreme pole of reality and the physical pole, so that the impressions from levels above the celestial sphere are shunted down. And consequently, as I say, the angelic being, or that which enhances the angelic nature is of course looking up, let's say contacting the supreme level of reality which we call God. Contacting that is always being conscious of the divine presence. And then at the other end the rather tenuous link between our celestial nature and our human nature, just like the voice of Caruso once more. 

So it's still there within our human nature. And we have to account for our inheritance from our parents. We have to account for, as I say, our need to be able to maintain ourselves in the struggle of life. There is of course a certain spillover from the environment, unless of course you're an ascetic living in a cave. In normal life there is so, I don't say there is a compromise, but there is an indwelling of a very innocent core of one's being within the substrate of one's personality. But the thing about it is that it does convey, if it is indeed a halfway house, clearing station, then it does something of the supreme level is able to reach right down into the existential state. And what is more, and that's very important, is that the extract, the quintessence of what is gained by the existential state is recycled upwards. And consequentially, as the Sufis say, the divine programming is enriched by our experience. 

So think of that, that as in your angelic nature together with the innocence, you carry quintessential wisdom. And therefore the angel becomes a master through incarnation. While still remaining an angel, and that's even in our present incarnate state, that celestial nature is there. Like the child in you, not the abused child, the innocent child is there in you, still there but covered over. So it's not like you have to, it's you reverse the distortion because it's easier to grasp it, but it is there. And I think it does arise every time that you eschew from defending yourself under attack. That's what Christ did. He didn't defend himself. He said, "You said it". 

So that's true that it doesn't make you very effective in this gross world. You know Joan of Arc. She, under duress, she signed a paper that her voices were just imagination. And then she abjured the statement despite the torture. And that's innocence. You know, facing authority and thinking, "Well who am I?" And then somehow the innocence prevails over authority. 

You see that this is how one has access to the heavenly spheres. Rather than imagining the great cosmic celebrations in the heavens up there somewhere, that is of course projections of our imagination which are very helpful until they break down. Then one realizes that the cosmic celebration is happening right here on the earth in the middle of the human drama and we are part of it. Either we play the role of the angels in the celebration or the part of the devil, or whatever part we play. It just depends upon what our real motivations are. 

Now, together with that comes a sense of deathlessness. First of all, a sense that one can exist without the body. If you do astral project, then you know that you can exist without the body. You can see without eyes. And you can move without legs or wings. And you know that you can think without a brain. It's that sense, that sense that gives you access to the celestial sphere, independence of the support system. So we are convinced that we are dependent upon our support system. What would happen to you if you didn't have a house, didn't have a job, end up on the street, and so on? No support system. There is even anxiety. And of course in India, especially in the time of Buddha, that was the quest, to free yourself from the support system. So that's what they're really doing, these sannysins, young men. They're living in caves and feeding from the roots of the bushes and the fruit if there is fruit. And they're cooking some of the leaves. Just find that they can. The support system is reduced to the minimum. That one can't do exactly in the West unless one becomes a hobo. And that's not the answer anyway. And that's not the answer in India either. No, the answer is to avail ourselves of the support system provided by civilization but use it for a higher purpose. 

It's in one's sense of identity. That's the secret. In some way it's connected with the idea of inheritance. Like, can you, of course we can earmark idiosycrasies in ourselves that we recognize maybe in our father or mother and maybe ancestors. One doesn't know much about our ancestors. But still something comes through. The Buddhists call it the samsaric matrix of our being. And it tends to recycle itself like a plant that becomes a seed and then a plant again and a seed. So it just recycles itself. And what Buddha is saying is that freedom, freedom from the recycling, you have to bring another factor in which they call extra samsaric matrix of your being and which Sufis call the divine inheritance. So it's just in your identity. If you think,"Yes well I'm a person like all the other people. We all have our ancestors and belong to, I'm an American or I'm Indian or I'm French", you know that kind of sense of identity, Westerner, Easterner. And then there's a wider identity like, "I'm a citizen on planet earth", that's a little bit better. But then there is that extra samsaric identity of which St. Francis spoke. St. Francis was arraigned before the judge because he wasn't working for his father. And his father said, "You're wearing my clothes. These are clothes from my shop". So he took them off and he said, "I have another father". That's what Pir o Murshid means by divine inheritance. 

You have your ancestral inheritance and then your inheritance that your ancestors inherited but distorted, communicated to you in a distorted manner. And you have a direct access to this inheritance at what's called the Lahut level, the level of archetypes and all possibilities that we came to in the course of the day. That's what the wasifas are about is discovering the divine inheritance, that is seeing the link between your qualities and the qualities that you have derived from your divine inheritance. Because if you just try to develop a certain quality like,"I need to have more love", you can't have more love just by trying to have more love. It doesn't work that way. 

So a very nice picture would be imagine that, well yes, a very nice picture would be like this catholic priest who was celebrating mass in a concentration camp. Or you could think that that's the world. That's the way it is. And either you're a Golitis or then you're a victim, or then you're a priest who is celebrating the mass right in the middle of that concentration camp. So the mass is not happening up there. No, right here, right in the middle. It's just that what role are you playing in it? And of course Golitis came and tortured him and he was unable to walk, and dragged him back to the place where he was worshiping and celebrated the mass even more fervent than before. That's the way that one brings the heavens on earth, or even in hell. Like 'rpheus. Do you see the drama of your life now? It's very different from clocking in at you job every day and then cooking, and washing up, and looking after the kids and paying your insurance. It's a whole other dimension. It's not, it's other but it can be brought right into every day. It just depends upon what motivates your relationship with people. God bless you now.

End of Tape


MAR 09, 1996		Tape 09

 1996 Texas Spring Retreat - Pir Vilayat Sunday Morning Session Tape #9

...or combustible for the train of consciousness. So that would mean that not only are you not conscious of the physical world around or even the memory of the physical world, and you're not conscious of your thoughts, particularly of your creative imagination. And so it's like a threshold. There's a barrier there and you have to make a quantum leap passing through a kind of blackout and trusting that you will find yourself on the other side of the fence. Well how do you do it? obviously if you try, you can't do it just like that. So let's try and see. Some kind of skills might be possible. So imagine that you walking on retreat. We are on retreat. And you're walking in nature and you think well it's wonderful. It's a lovely day. You see some grass, not very green but still. Well it's got this beauty, more than other places. Still it's wonderful to be alive. So why worry about all these (inaudible) things? Here we are right here and it's wonderful. Remember that St. Francis was walking in the forest and instead of just watching, observing the surface of the leaves of the trees and the trunk of the trees, he was really getting into the consciousness of the trees. 

That's a million times more wonderful than just enjoying the environment. That's why he said, "That which you're looking for is looking at you". He saw that the tree was looking at him. So that's a further dimension. So if you're satisfied with the commonplace "inaudible" there is not point coming here and going on retreat. It's taken for granted that you are inhabited by a passion for the unattainable, that you're suffocating in the constraint of your ordinary consciousness. You have a kind of intuition that there is something beyond. But it can't be the object of your knowledge you see or of your experience. So it's beyond the existential level. OK Now supposing that you're being on retreat. You're walking there as I walked for example in India, in Ajmere, in the streets of Ajmere for example. In a state of ecstasy. And thinking to myself," Yes, my eyes are the eyes through which God sees". In fact they are the eyes through which God sees his own body. So that would be a whole new dimension. Can you do that? You don't have to walk. Just think. well there is a word of Suhrawardi, "You thought you were the spectator, but the real spectator is in the heavens". That's a clue. That gives you that jump over the fence. So God looking through my eyes. 

Then keeping with all that we've said. God knows himself through the knowledge that I have of him and so on. He said. He asked the question "Does the Universe know itself through the knowledge we have of it?" It's one in the same. And then we think to ourselves "'h this is it, this is it"". And you'll find we'll be in a wonderful state. God looks upon, there is only one supreme spectator. And at a certain point you realize there is a further outlook. Because if you say "I am the eyes through which God sees", you're still thinking in terms of duality, God and Me. The ultimate reality is unity, oneness. So if you got to the point where you're trying to imagine that your glance is the divine glance. It's not an instrument. Ibn Arabi says," He is the seer and also that through which he sees. So let's say your eyes and your body is the extension of the divine being. So don't think that it is God and you, but it's all one. So my glance is the divine glance. It has got of course limited (inaudible) it is very greatly reduced. But it is the divine glance. You could do this practice. For example with your eyes closed. And then just for a very short time just open your eyes like a shutter in a camera. And, but while you have your eyes closed, imagine that your glance is, I said before, I said it is like two head lamps of a car, but I think that's just the light of our eyes. But the intelligence, the light of intelligence. 

That's the divine glance. It's not my being the instrument of the divine glance. It is the divine glance. So the divine glance is the luminous intelligence. So as I turn my head the divine glance is scanning the horizon. Because my glance is the divine glance. And that glance has a penetrating effect. But it's not like clairvoyance or something like that. No, like xray,no. It's the light of intelligence that sees into the souls of beings. So that's where you're jumping over the threshold now from the other side of the threshold into this side. But at first you have to jump from this side into the other side side. And do that with inhaling. You believe the setting of your consciousness, what it is experiencing, let it go. There is a kind of blank. And then just think that you are luminous intelligence instead of consciousness. And that intelligence is not fragmented. So it is the divine intelligence that's been, just like a funnel, edited, circumscribed. Now the next step is that instead of thinking of yourself as the divine glance, you, let's say your understanding is the divine understanding. Let us say that your intelligence is isomorphic, that is of the same nature as the divine nature. As the divine intelligence, the divine understanding. So this may sound strange to you, but I'm thinking of Newton who said, "I think as God thinks". 

And people thought he was ridiculous. But the fact is that if a scientist has any understanding of what makes the Universe tick, it's because his or her thinking is of the same nature as the thinking of the Universe. Let's say the thinking of the Universe has been monitored by our brains, by the way that matter has evolved to the point of fabricating these wonderful brains. It's the same intelligence which has an inherent knowledge that is not based upon experience. It could be matched by experience. That's a level that the Sufis call Jabarut. So it is, you don't have access to it without having gone through the Malakut level, the angelic, the celestial. Another clue is to be found in the words of, again in the words of Suhrawardi who said," The real witness, you reach a point at which the witness in you is your celestial being". Now that sounds very beautiful, but how does it apply. Like there is a consciousness of the body for example. When I go to the dentist, I am aware that my pain is my consciousness, body consciousness. The body is conscious of itself. Cells are conscious. And when I have quandaries in my mind and I am let down by people or shattered by the encounter with another person, then it is the consciousness of my psyche that is affected not the consciousness of my body. 

So at each level there is a setting of consciousness. So when I identify with my aura, then it is not the consciousness of my body or the consciousness of my psyche that is active, or functioning, but it is a different kind of consciousness. That's what Suhrawardi means. Then at the celestial level, and again it is another kind of consciousness that takes over from the other modes of consciousness. And so what would it mean like for example, the real witness in you is the witness in the heavens? That means that you're judging things from the point of view of the angel. I'll give you an example of this, a very tangible example. As I was visiting a rishi in the Himalayas in a cave. It was very dangerous to go through that jungle with wild animals. And we had to go through mountains and there were monks and sanyasins. And here was this man in Samadhi. So we disturbed his peace by asking questions. Most rishis don't speak when in samadhi , but he condescended to speak. Very rare. And one man asked a silly question. It was really silly. And I could see him descending from Samadhi and trying to see how one thinks as a human. It's a totally different way of thinking. So if you want to reach that point, you have to see how incongruous our human thinking is. 

If you're convinced that it is valid, or ultimate, then of course you'll never be able to reach beyond it. And that's why one questions one's thinking. And you can see that people are caught in their thinking. If you're a psychotherapist, you see that person speaking, or you listen to that person speaking, again you can see exactly where they are at. They are speaking from what they can see. That's where they are at. They can't see otherwise. And if you're a good therapist, then you see something beyond what they can see. otherwise you can't help them. So this is what we're learning now. We're learning to think differently to our ordinary way of thinking. Pir o Murshid calls it the reason of reason. And Ibn Arabi, I already quoted him when he says, "Ecstasy is born out of the reason of reasons". And I already quoted him, "If you are aware of an object, he has already escaped you". So there is no awareness of the physical world. Because we can't see in the mirror what's behind the mirror. Now it's of course a tremendous achievement to be able to not be aware of the physical world any more, or even of one's thoughts. I don't even advise it because we need a lot of training to be able to do it without freaking out. You think ,"Well I can't get back". 

One says there is a faulty sense of reality, I would say a faulty sense of actuality. So it's very difficult to bridge over that quantum leap, gap. But without doing it to that extent, if you put your trust in your intuition. If it's real intuition, it's not based upon experience. In fact if you see clues in experience, then your intuition is not genuine. For example someone has a very clear and tidy mind and living a very tidy life dresses up as a hobo and visits a seer. And the seer says," You can't fool me". If the seer went by the clues , then he would think that this person was slovenly. So in a simplistic way we would say we learn to trust intuition. Let's say you learn not to rely upon the evidence of the senses. You do away with your crutches. It goes together with a sense of suspense in the passage of time, and also losing the sense of being located in space. Therefore if you don't identify with you body then you do lose your sense of being located in space. Now let's just do that practice that we... let's do another practice than the previous practices we've done so far. 

Place your thumb of your right hand under your chin and the middle finger of your right hand on your, well don't press it, on your right nostril but don't press against it yet. And then the palm of your left hand resting on the back of your right hand and the thumb of your left hand resting on your left nostril. Now breathe in, press the right nostril, breathe in through the left. Hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upwards. Exhale through the right nostril. Now inhale through the right nostril. Hold your breath. Exhale through the left nostril. Breathe through both nostrils. Hold your breath. Exhale through both nostrils. Now I'd like us to do it again. But this time think of a pendulum. So the way that a pendulum or a metronome for example at the end of it's course the needle, or whatever it is, is suspended in time and space as a matter of fact. And then it switches to the other side. So consider when you're holding your breath that is the moment when the pendulum has reached the extreme end of it's swing before it starts swinging in the opposite direction. So that is the condition that is favorable to experience what I called yesterday the instant of time. That situation which is favorable to the breakthrough of a new dispensation from the vacuum, the void, creativity as we said yesterday. So just do it and see how you feel. The pendulum moves from one end to the left. 

Then to the right. Right? Now you breathe in through both nostrils. Hold your breath. Exhale through both nostrils. So think of a pendulum again. Actually there are three points, I mean states, which are immobile. When it swings to the extreme left, when it swings to the extreme right, and then that point at which the pendulum is suspended. Three points. The point at which the pendulum is suspended corresponds to what one might call eternity, unchanging. And the points at the left and right are the instant of time moving from past into the present and from the future into the present. Present being that instant. See that. So remember that we said, as we do the zikre for example, when the head turns toward the solar plexus, is when you are...it's like a pendulum when it's reached the point of suspense. You are touching the void within. It's not eternity. It's a new beginning. There is an interruption in the arrow of time in the process of becoming. But then in the zikre after having turned the head towards the solar plexus, when turn your head upwards, that corresponds to that point of the pendulum which never changes. The upward most part' point of the pendulum, the fulcrum as one calls it. 

That's where you have a touch of eternity. So this practice is intended to help one reach beyond the transient realm and touch upon that point of one's being that, as Pir o Murshid says, is not subject to death nor to change. So you are the whole pendulum. So as I said yesterday it's not that your body is transient and that your soul is eternal. No. There's a gradual transit from one pole to the other. But in your meditation now, as you're lifting your consciousness, you are less and less conscious of the motion of your being in the process of becoming. That is your perishability or perinity. And you become more and more aware of the changeless fulcrum of your being (inaudible). So of course the end of the pendulum which is a mooring in time and space that gives you a sense of my my body and my psyche and so on, my emotions and my thoughts and so on. That's all a continuity in change. It's not just transient. It's a continuity in change. But then if I concentrate on the timeless eternal state, then I consider the transient state as being a condition of the unchanging state. Now I know that doesn't seem to make sense, but I think it will if we just follow this a little further. A word of Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan, " The waves are a condition of the sea". 

The transient realm exhibits conditions of a reality that remains unchanged in the middle of these conditions. If you can identify with that state of your being that is deathless, as Pir o Murshid says, is not subject to change and to decay, while at the same time chronology, the other pole of your being is involved in becoming and as I say a continuity of change. And so there is also not only the process of becoming but also the process of resurrection. That's moving up the finger of the pendulum, the string of the pendulum. It could be a bob. You're moving up the transient more and more eternal, more and more eternal and therefore aloof, not subject to the vulnerability of the transient state. And then all of a sudden you begin to see things as that rishi saw them. Or then you find it difficult to get back into your ordinary thinking now because you've gone to a totally new way of thinking. The way the universe thinks. Sufis call it Unc, which means the divine intention or actually Unc means the intimacy of the court. You're in the presence of the king, chosen to be privy to the divine strategy. And then you see that what's happening on earth is only a secondary consequence of the programming behind it. Although I remind you as I said the other day, you mustn't think that programming is all preconceived, but is continuously adapting itself to your free will or your free incentive. 

See how your mode of understanding shifts as you shift your sense of identity along that rod, pendulum from the transient pole to the eternal one. (tape turns) The Sufis call this state (Fana fil matkur an al zahir), which means the annihilation of the subject and the object. God is no more the object that we would like to know , but as the knowing subject. Level of Jabarut. So when you're doing the zikre. So let's review what we've been doing so far. So first of all you got into the circle and as I've already said it's more like a heart than a circle. You are reaching out from within. That is what we're doing by being conscious. The first impression you have is that your consciousness can reach you to the vastness of the sky. That's why better to do the zikre at night when there are stars in the sky. That is when the stars are visible in the sky. Then remember the words of Jalaluddin Rumi,"The galaxies are just little foam on the ocean of reality. We can worry not of nothingness, the stars dance, form a circle and in the middle we dance. And the atoms are enthralled. And it's all God surveying himself". So that kind of thinking is a different way of thinking to normal thinking, you must admit. So that kind of thinking gets us out of our ordinary nazut experience, our judgmental perception of the neighborhood, the immediate environment, expends your consciousness. 

And so that is ( fana al bil, fana bil, Fana al makur) that means the annihilation of the subject and the object, God appearing as the Universe. So the Universe like a clue. And it forces your consciousness to expand and reach beyond its narrow sense of being a discrete, think of your being as being a discrete entity. The consequence of this expansion is that the repressed, unconscious, murky areas of our psyche are brought out into the open. And that corresponds with the wazifa Zahir, Zahir, Ya Zahir. Zahir means, actually the real word is (tajalli or tajaliat) which means the manifestation of the not yet manifest. Ongoing manifestations. Zahir means the epiphany. So that there is a sense of the unknown becoming the known like is synonyms of what becomes known, you see visible. So we're not denying our dark areas in our being. We're bringing it to light. And of course it causes one to be up front and so that those of you who would like to do the practices, it would be a preparation for this first state with the zikre. We'll do the practice Ya Zahir - Ya Haqq because Haqq is truthfulness. And it's a very powerful practice because it makes the dervish Ya Haqq. It's uncompromising. Ya Zahir. Ya Haqq Ya Zahir. (....) You see you've all become dervishes in an instant. 

It brings something out in you, the word, the fact of expressing it brings something out in you. All that stuff that was inside comes out, dervish comes out. The power, divine power. Whereas if you're just turned within you don't have power. But if you can move from inside outwards, your power. So turn within Batin. And it's true that after reaching outward, centrifugal, then your head turns toward the solar plexus. Circumambulate the center. It strengthens your concentration on the center. So now there's, now you're bring in centrepedal forces, forces that are drawn into the center. So sometimes vortexes, like the water from the outside seems to be flowing toward the center, down and then have the opposite. So while you can rid yourself of a lot of things by bringing them to light, still there is some reliquite of features of our being that are unwanted and which could not be got rid of like that. They resist much more, much more resilient. So they get resolved as you turn within into the void. Now the other point is of course that that is where you are aware of, you see when you are going out, your sense, it's not only that your consciousness expands, but it tends to disperse and merge with the totality. And consequently you lose your I ness as the axis of your being. 

Whereas then the next move after saying " La illah illa.." you turn within and that is where you are aware that you are continually ingesting the Universe as I said, at all levels, not just physical. Not even just psychological, at all levels including the celestial level. And that, unless you've make a selection, decided which of the elements you wanted to ingest, you would suffer from a terrible indigestion. So actually we recover our sense of ourselves, of our ego sense, as psychologists would say, we need to have a strong sense of ourselves. You see. But that's why you recover it again. But then again it gets lost in the void. And it's recycled again as your head moves upwards. And well you're not quite yet, because you see you say "illa 'lla". You see there is that gap between the i of "illa" and the i of "'lla". There's that gap and that's a void, you see. This first i of alla, that corresponds, so I should say let's see backtrack a little bit. So when you're turning within that's what we mean by arwah, that is rhu the spirit. Then you can see the arwah, Hebrew, spirit. 

So the center of the subtle body. So when you're doing the zikre, then as you turn within then you identify your subtle body instead of your physical body. And therefore your consciousness is looking at the Universe from within instead of from without. Now the head moves upwards, well very, no actually not. You starting turning your attention from the solar plexus to the heart center, not even, no not even. That is where the creativity is emerging from the unknown depth of your being, from what they call the mithal level, the level of creative imagination. Projecting an image of yourself. You remember. So that's mithal. So just think of the word mythology, mithal. I know there is some etymological link there. And then, so that's the first a of "alla" so 'lla, still you can't quite locate it but it's inside. Then you have the two "l" s corresponding the the malakut level and the jabarut level. That is the level of the angelic sphere and the level that we just talked about which is the jabarut which is the level of the subject beyond consciousness, pure intelligence. And they correspond, if you're interested in this, some of you may be. They correspond in Islam is called the two throws of the bow, of the arrow. It's what they call the (qutb) is the distance, when you have a bow. 

And there is a cord linking the two ends of the bow. And you have the arrow. Pull the arrow back. And the distance between your hand and the cord, that's called qutb. And so that was the distance that they said of the prophet. A distance of two qutbs from the lotus of the limit. So "inaudible" So that's the distance then, the two throws, the two arrows. And I said before, be creative. It's not good enough to just recycle it all again. That's why you have to include the transcendental levels. So that's the point at which you start rising through the spheres. You say the word "alla". So mithal is ( fana bil, thiker an el ekul). That means the annihilation of the act in the creative, the created reality, ekul the object. And then you have the opposite, the celestial sphere. The annihilation of the object in the act. Because the celestial sphere represents a link in between the pinnacle of existence and the existential state. So that means the influence from above descending and even fashioning themselves in the configuration of the celestial being. And then the other way around. The feedback of the existential state up towards the pinnacle through the celestial sphere. 

That means that even now as we resurrect before dying, somehow the quintessence of the wisdom that we have achieved on earth, our realization is registered in our celestial body in its configuration. So the embryonic body became unfurled. As I said, the angel became a master. That's why Pir o Murshid said," God creates the world first and then the heavens". And that's why Jalaluddin Rumi says, " Tonight the umteen stars give rise to the life eternal". And Jami says, "That which was ephemeral becomes eternal". That's resurrection. That doesn't mean that you leave your body behind. No. You have to transmute your body. Because otherwise the ephemeral couldn't become eternal if you left it behind. Now is that fiction? Do we drop our bodies when we die? it seems that way. It's a very sad thing to see the body being, you don't see your body but you see a coffin. You don't know what's in that coffin under the ground. What a frightful thought. But there is an endearing thought. In fact a very endearing thought in science. And that is that electrons never die nor do protons. So that means that somehow, I keep on saying that the body is a continuity in change. That means that there is a continuation of it in another form where it is, how can I say, dispersed, you see. 


Dispersed to such an extent that the electrons can't contact each other by signaling to each other because of the limitation of the speed of light. And yet they are in touch. And that has ( plumoxed) physicists. Einstein had predicted it but there was no proof. And finally Professor Aspect in Paris made an experiment. I won't give you all the details. But his experiment shows that you can separate two electrons on a machine. And then you affect the spin of one. And the spin of the one is affected although they can't signal to each other. It means that they are related in an eternal way that is beyond our understanding. That means that all the, let's say, that all the electrons, particles of our body, are in some way still connected although not in the ordinary way as when your body was alive. So that's rather a hopeful thought. And then what is more, electrons are converted into protons. And what is more matter is converted into eternity. So that eventually that support system undergoes the same kind of transformation that we are experiencing in our meditation when we identify ourselves first of all with our bodies, then with our force field, then with our aura and you know you move into subtler areas, for example levels. For example what we did this morning with light. So you see that we are in our meditation we are prefiguring resurrection before dying. Or as Prodi says life after life. Bless you.

End tape.

MAR 09, 1996		Tape 11

 Tape 11 March, 1996 Texas Retreat

 ...I wish I could share, communicate - well, several of my maybe more significant experiences. One was under the - well, a tree opposite the Bhodi tree in (Bodga), meditating at night time - every night and - the whole night, and it got more and more intense. And then finally one gets to a point when, you see, isn't contemplating the physical world, of course - one is not even aware of it, but - how can I say, life itself. One is in awe faced with the marvel of the universe and especially that one is part of it, and involved in it.

So that one is over awed. In fact it's something like what scientists are saying now, that what they discover is not only extraordinary intelligence in the planning, but what they call elegance. Now that's a sense of - kind of an aesthetic sense. For them, of course, it's beauty - the beauty of even an arithmetical formula, but here it is beyond beauty. It's splendor, and consequently one feels called upon to worship - to glorify, and that carries one beyond the earth spheres.

So remember those key words of Pir-o-Murshid: One attains a stage in life when one is moved by a passion of the unattainable. And the other one is: One reaches a stage when one is lifted above worldly conditions. The simile of sitting on the top of a mountain is just an outer image of reaching very great height in one's attunement, and the consequence is a sense of - well, we've already said being protected from the immediate environment - physical environment by a zone of silence. It gives you a sense of aloofness so the physical world - it's not quite true that if one isn't at all conscience of the physical world - that is (Asamtratic) Samadhi. 

I think that - I used to think that one needs to go through (Asamtratic) Samadhi to awaken in life, and now I think one - it may be a trance state, you see, to have totally lost touch with physical reality. The only way - the only approach would be - again, Pir-o-Murshid's words: The waves are a condition of the sea. So just consider that the reality is like the sea, and what you are experiencing not only on the physical level but also at the level of Arwar - and even at the celestial sphere, is still waves. It's - as Dr. David Boehm says: A ripple on the ocean of reality which gives you some clue. And you remember that we compared Sufism with Yoga and we outlined that in Yoga you can see the world as an illusion and in Sufism you consider it as a clue. Or made up of clues that give you access to - it doesn't - when I say give you access - you can't perceive the reality behind it, but you may - at the edge of your perception, perceive that which transpires behind what appears.

And do you remember - all the way along we were awakening by following the clues? Like - as you say - as I said, one follows the pug marks of the bear in the snow to find the bear. So, it's those - so God manifested Him/Herself to you through those devices which are physical world, phenomena, circumstances, in your life; Your participation in the cosmic drama.

Clues in your personality - we've been through all this - and then one reaches Jabarut level where there are no more clues. No more clues! And that's why Ib'n Arabi says: God reveals Himself to you in the reality of His being. And the only way to do it is to pass that threshold. So, let's try and see if we can - you see - as I said, instead of being delighted by the marvel of the physical world, galaxies, also being awed by the fact that we are a part of it. And that will trigger off even more emotion. It's - because there is still something tangible, like the experience of physical phenomena, and so on.

And here there is - you have to give up that crutch. And so this is replaced by a sense of the wonder of life, not the support system of life. But the fact of - I - well, of course there's no way of saying it... . You're carried beyond worldly conditions. And it's not just that, because that would be negative, carried beyond - you're leaving something behind. But the positive side of it is that you discover - actually, the correct word is that you discover splendor and meaningfulness. Again, these are words but - like a flower conveys by it's beauty the splendor of the heavens. So that the beauty is only the means - the device - and so at this stage you are not perceiving you are not perceiving beauty, no, you are - and you're not perceiving - you can't perceive splendor, you are immersed in it. You are totally overwhelmed by it, and absorbed - your being is absorbed to such an extent that you realize that you are splendor. There's no subject-object any more.

At this level, then, you feel as though you were - I remember the words: Back-stage of the universe. Sometimes one thinks: I'm like that. Like one - you know, in our very simplistic minds we think - well, imagine that you - that there's an edge to space and you're able with a space craft to fly out of space. Well, of course that's not possible, of course, but most have a reason. But that would be a rather bad image of - illustration of what - there's a sense of not being involved in the physical world.

It starts by - you see it starts by a sense of the universal immensity, like - I'm trying to communicate something that I did experience, but of course - particularly in Bodga - one doesn't have to be in any place to experience it, but of course, it was thinking of Buddha - getting into Buddha's consciousness. At first there's a consciousness of immensity. And so you understand what he means when he says: Beyond matter, the immensity of space, hmmm? It's just a way of using common place terms, concepts, because it's not space as one understands it - it's something quite different.

But it's just - a sense of - first of all - it's - one thinks one is losing oneself in immensity, and then one realizes that one is this immensity. So it's not merging anymore. And then, in as much as there is any reminiscence of one's involvement in the human drama on earth, it is seen as the way that the reality behind it is enacted in drama - "inaudible". But, so you can see it with a kind of perspective - you're not inveigled in it.

You are inveigled in the reality that is enacted in the drama, yes, and there is a word for it. The word used by Buddha is: Beyond existence. And you find the same thing in Sufism, of course. There are no more clues - the clues are to be found in the existential realm so you know God - or God reveals Him/Herself to you without any clue, without any device. And you remember that the first step was to discover that your intelligence is the divine intelligence, that it becomes consciousness, dealing with the existential world - or even conception of it, then all that remains is the divine Shahid. That means the divine witness.

And then - we've already said this, like the different levels of the subject - of consciousness: Consciousness of the body, consciousness of the mind, and so on and so forth. Consciousness of one's celestial being. And at this point - that's Malakut - one is at the top of the levels in the existential world. So the threshold is between Malakut and Jabarut, where there's still some sense of - relative sense of individuality. But one is really cosmic but - and then at Jabarut - then of course there's no sense of individuality any longer. No images. No forms. So how can one describe it in our parlance?

We say splendor, meaningfulness! It's as though you are awakened into meaningfulness, where as you are trying to understand with your mind, and now you can't use your mind. So it seems as though it's being revealed to you. Splendor - and that goes together, you see, so - not like - in our common place thinking we make a difference between emotion and mind but here, it's all one. You don't have that dichotomy.

So, splendor and meaningfulness. It is triggered off by glorification. That's why you're sitting there and you are just very, really shattered by the significance of life. It's so overwhelming, and you don't understand exactly what you mean by it. It's not like you understand something. It's just that you are - the word used by Abdul Karim (Algihi) is: It is the consternation of intelligence. 

And Pir-o-Murshid said: Perplexity. You are perplexed. And he even says: At that point, not only are you perplexed but you realize that God Himself is perplexed.

So you see, it's not just not letting go of understanding. It's the - may I say, the splendor of paradox, 'cause the paradox is a challenge to our simplistic mind, and there's beauty in that - well, that quantum leap from understanding to realization.

So, as you know, as Kosipski said: The map is not the territory. So that occasionally you look at the map, and so the map is... . The next stage, now, that we are reaching, is called Lahut, which is the level of the archetypes, of the qualities. In Sufism one says Sifat, the qualities - let's say, the archetypes of which everything in the existential world is the exemplars. So, I gave you rather trite examples of it - roundness, for example, is an archetype, or... . But all the wazifas are archetypes - that's what they are.

And so, I'll give you an example of the way of thinking. For example, in our ordinary thinking we think: Well, this person has allot of compassion, and this person - or I like this person because that person is very peaceful or very joyous. So we ascribe these qualities to the people. But if you're in the state of Lahut and somebody - a peaceful person comes in the room, you don't say: Isn't it wonderful to see a peaceful person. You say: Isn't it wonderful to see the divine peace coming through this person. That's Lahut.

It's like seeing behind the curtain. So the wazifa that we are given in the Sufi Order - a skill, I would say, that if we follow it correctly, it would lead us from a quality in us to try to grasp the quality in its eternal dimension. One could even say in its perfection, that one ascribes to God. And so it is a discovery of God, through one. This is based upon a saying in the Koran, which says: There is nothing in the world which does not have its, let's say, correspondence in us. And to be more specific, I think it was Ib'n Arabi who says: These are tenuities. You know what is a tenuity - like a very fine thread - very fragile, that you need to grasp, connecting the divine qualities with our human qualities, hmmm? So that our human qualities are exemplifications of the divine qualities and remember these - the word of Jarmine: The ephemeral will lead you to the eternal. Or let's say one never knows the archetype but one only knows the archetype through the exemplar.

But if you first get tied up with the exemplar, you have lost your connection with the archetype. So that's why there are tenuities, and those tenuities are described by Ib'n Arabi as ladders. These are ladders communicating - establishing a communication between - I would say, our divine inheritance and our human personality. There's some correspondence there.

Well, I referred to - you know, I referred to Saint Francis, who said: I have another father. So, and Christ said: Be perfect as your father. So this is right on. It is discovering the traces of the divine perfection right into your being. And I would even say, actuating these archetypes, which - if we did not actuate them in our personality, would remain virtual. And that's the reason why Pir-o-Murshid says: Make God a reality.

So far there has been concepts of God - imagination, projections. That's why the Buddhists don't go along with that, of course. Projections! Now, one goes through a dark night, like St. John of the Cross, when he went through a dark night. All the things he'd been taught in the church. He was questioning them. That support for his mind was falling apart in the dark night. So he wasn't really very popular with the church - in fact he was put to prison - taken to prison. Then he said - no, it wasn't him. (Mykite Echardt). So, while I'm saying it - no, don't just listen to the words - we're trying to experience it.

(Mykite Echardt) said: There is something in me that is (Increatus et Increabilae) - that is, not created and not subjected to the act of creation. It's very important because we were participating in the creativity of our being at the Mithall level. So it is discovering a level of one's being that cannot be created because it is homologues - isomorphic - that is, of the same nature as the divine nature. And, of course, he was placed on the index because of the Vatican, because that's saying that one is God. So it's the same kind of thing that Al Hallaj was condemned for.

He rescinded, just like Joan of Arc. He said: There is something else which is as though it might be. And, well, he died very shortly - he died mysteriously very shortly afterward.

But, as Pir-o-Murshid says, you can't say that unless you experience it. Christ could say it because he experienced it. If you discover features of your father or mother, or grandparents, you can claim to be their child. But do we discover features in ourselves that we cannot trace back to our parents? Or ancestors? That's why St. Francis said: I have another father. Can you trace them back? Think of it as a ladder, like, if I - Pir-o-Murshid, of course, says it very clearly. He says: Where are you to find God if it is not in a God-conscious being? So, that means conscious of the features that one ascribes to God in one's own being.

He goes on to say: God discovering His perfection in our imperfection. Like discovering the voice of Caruso in its distortion. So, that's the ladder, and wazifa is that ladder - provides you with that ladder. Let's say, assigning the imperfect qualities that you may have in your personality, like: I have some compassion, but there are limits to my compassion, and I have some mastery but there are limits to my mastery, and so on. I have some joy but there are limits to my joy - I'm a little peaceful but not very peaceful, and so on. But, then, always saying: Well, that is the way in which the divine qualities are coming through me and so it is my vision - by ascribing these qualities to God I develop a vision of how these qualities could be in their perfection. As predicated by God.

Just like, for example, in mathematics - it was Pontcarre, who was a great mathematician, who said - Henry Pontcarre, who said: Infinity is to be found in the possibility of always matching a larger number, and the largest number that you can imagine so far. So I would say it is the ability in our minds - a kind of elasticity in our minds that we're able to imagine a greater perfection than the greatest perfection that we have imagined so far.

That is why Preston Milford - whom I quoted yesterday - an American poet, said: I want nothing less than the impossible possibility. Infinity in a finite fact. And eternity in a temporal act.

So, discovering the infinity of a quality - the perfection of a quality, that is kind of subsumed within that quality in you but needs to be uncovered and awakened. And the word used by Pir-o-Murshid is: To awaken the God within. Actually, if you go - make a study of the different stages - I would call them developmental stages, in Pir-o-Murshid's teachings, then it starts by a concept of God. Which is a projection, of course. But it's kind of tangible.

And the next one is the experience of God. So, as we see in the seminar, what we are into is experience - not belief. We call it experiential. What do you experience, hmmm? How can you experience? How can you extend your experience beyond the middle range - what are the techniques? And then, of course, God cannot be the object of one's knowledge because all that we know are the signs - Ayat - the signs, the clues. But then you remember that the key was - you remember that was God discovering Him/Herself through us. And so we discover God discovering Him/Herself through us. And we dIscover ourselves through the discovery that God has of Himself through us. You remember those are the stages?

So, in the wazifa, that is what you are doing. You see, it's like the archetype, like - for example roseness discovering itself in roses. That's the owner of roseness discovering the quality in His/Her being by - in the roses themselves. In fact, one could even say the archetype is a virtuality, "inaudible" actuated, and that's why PIr-o-Murshid said: Make God a reality.

So, experiencing God would be the second step but to make God a reality one has to awaken the God within. That's the third step. So it's not knowing, but doing. And the Sufis speak about knowledge that is gained by doing in addition to doing because one knows. For example, the sculptor discovering his/her statue by making it. Knowledge gained by doing. By making God a reality, one discovers God. One discovers even the divine act of making God in one's own making of God. And that is a secret of - as I said this morning, of the nimaz - of the prayer, because one is projecting upon God the most excellent qualities in one's being and by so doing one is awakening those qualities. And therefore one is creating God as one.

These are very challenging thoughts. I fail to see them anywhere except, I must say, in Martin Luthor, Martin Luthor, curiously enough. Yes, in what he called (Significatu Pasiva). He was taught in the church to think of God as just. And he said: In what way is it helpful to me to imagine that God is just? But then, he thought: Yes, well, it's only significant for me if I discover in me the divine justice. That's a secret of the wazifas. It's called Significatu Pasiva. Passive significance.

That is, significance that is revealed to you - not one that you can acquire. So now we are at the Jabarut level, where you cannot acquire knowledge through the physical universe. So it is beyond the wazifa - the practice - the wazifa ends here. It's the Dhikr now that takes over, because if you remember, when the head comes up, gradually you are shifting your sense of identity from one level to the other. Angelic plane, and then that level - Jabarut, which is beyond existence - so that's where the threshold is. Between existence and non-existence. You find it in Buddha's Ayatannas, the five awakenings, Arupa, beyond form. He says - first of all he says immense space or eternal space - I mean infinite space, and then infinite consciousness, and then he says beyond existence - well, all right, let's do it because otherwise it's just words. So...

Now, just start by imagining the immensity of space... do you realize that where there is an accumulation of matter, space is landscaped - space is contracted. It is what is meant by gravitation. Like, for example, an orange - if there are dry spots in the orange then the whole skin of the orange is drawn toward each of those dry spots. So that's - would be an example of what we mean by gravitation. That's the thing that keeps you on earth - otherwise you would be flying in the sky.

So, that's space, hmmm? So now, if you think of yourself as a body then of course you see that your body is subjected to gravity. Now, if you shift your sense of identity from being a body, then your sense of the coercion of gravity has disappeared and now you can grasp space as a reality. As an expression of the divine reality, and it gives you a sense of immensity, and that's what I was experiencing in Bodga. A sense of immensity. It's unbelievable - it's overwhelming.

And the consequence is - the next step in Buddhism, is infinite consciousness. So, instead of your consciousness being pin-pointed into a focal center, it becomes all-encompassing. So if you want to get into the consciousness of Buddha under the tree, that's what happened.

Side 2

...landscape, if you're flying low you would be rather confined within a narrow range, and then if you fly higher, then you wouldn't have the sense of being located on a particular spot on the planet because you are overviewing the whole planet. So you see, your sense of space can alter as your consciousness rises - your sense of space gets wider and wider. Infinity of space, as we've said, infinity of time - of consciousness.

And then infinity of time. Of course, this could be illustrated if you were to sit in a train - the window is like a frame. The frame is moving in time-space. You only see a very small range, but if you have the courage to do what allot of people do in India, and that is to sit on top of the train - that wouldn't be allowed in the states - then what seemed to be past when you're sitting in a compartment is not passed. You see that our sense of time is very - it's a framework.

And that's why Al Hallaj, for example, says two things. one, he says: Where art though since my space has been inverted. Just imagine, inverted space, Al Hallaj - in those days. And: Since I have overcome my transiency - and the key is - as Pir-o-Murshid said, to discover your deathless state beyond those aspects which do not die anyway but are - as I said earlier on - a continuity, a continuity in change. See what I mean? Sense of time - if you can get to that state when your sense of location in space - like, you know the most limiting thought that you could ever come across when you are meditating is: What am I doing here?! There is me - that is the first mistake, doing is the second mistake, here is the third mistake. Yeah, because that is your common place way of thinking, of course.

So, if you could reach this point, when you think: Even my body is not really located in space because the photons are traveling through space at a speed of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second - I'm being dispersed all the time in space. And my aura is spread out. So you lose the sense of being, sitting here in this room. That gives you a sense of immensity, then consciousness becomes more encompassing to such an extent that your memory of what is beyond the physical world comes back. It's been buried.

I can document this, 'cause Buddha said: There was a time when there was no smoke on planet earth. How could he have known, in those days? That means there was no humans. It's only much later that people started realizing that there was an evolution in the animal kingdom, and so on. He said there was a time when planet earth did not exist. I mean, in those days it was inconceivable - even the thought of the concept of planet earth... after all, for them the stars were like decorations in the sky.

There was a time when the cosmos did not exist. It's only quite recently that people are - that physicists are telling you that. Before the big bang there was nothing. There was a time when there was other universes, prior to this universe. Now that is the most challenging - what, well, thank you very much. Yes, that's wonderful, thank you.

There was a time when there were other universes, as I said. So, that means it's like you're flying so high you don't see the details of the landscape of the planet earth, but you have a kind of overview of extraordinary magnitude. That's why I say you're not perceiving the existential state, but somehow you are grasping life. It's like grasping the sea instead of the waves. You see the waves, you've lost sight of the sea. And particularly, of course, the foam on the surface. In the words of Jelal 'Ud-Din Rumi: Existence as the foam on the shoreless sea. The shoreless sea - sea without a shore.

So, you see, it's not not - it's not losing contact with the earth, but it's flying so high that you can see it as an expression of a wider and more transcendental reality than whatever comes through at existential level. Can you do that? You do that for a moment - for a few minutes I'll stop speaking.

What do you find, beyond existence? The programming? But the programming is in the course of being structured. So it is still subject to change. So that is the Lahut level. There's multiplicity. And, I'll repeat again the words of Jelal 'Ud-Din Rumi: The umpteen stars give life to the world eternal. Or the words of Pir-o-Murshid: Heaven is made on earth. Or (Jeromy): That which is transient has become eternal. So there is a feedback from the existential state to the Lahut level. The programming is upgraded and updated and needs to take into account the feedback. And our Angelic being acts as a transit, carrying the impressions of the earth that have been transmuted up into the Lahut level where there's still a different rate of time then the course of time at the physical level.

Like, for example, the time of mutation of a plant is much slower than the recycling of the plant - a very fast turn-over. So there's a different sense of time. Pir-o-Murshid makes a difference between them, and he calls it everlastingness instead of eternity. Because he's translating in English terms the word Azaliat in Sufism.

So, what does that mean, beyond existence? Where consciousness is carried into intelligence, it's ground - which is intelligence at the Jabarut level, what is that? All possibilities. And that is the word Incarn in Sufism - all possibilities. The realm of all possibilities. And so, you see, what happens when earth is a limitation to the all-possibilities. When you see that, then you realize that there is nothing that is not possible.

So that means you can see how you would be if you would be as you might be. You're always - there's no end to the possibilities, hmmm? So, that is freedom from conditioning. You don't have to be the way you've always been because you were conditioned by - and so on. Somehow the butt-end is absolutely infinite. Buddha speaks about the realm of all possibilities.

And Pir-o-Murshid, of course, said: The divine perfection in human limitation. And: God discovering His perfection in our limitation and our discovering divine perfection coming through our limitation.

So, the wazifa is the practice that gives you some kind of communication with the Lahut level. And I'll always remember the words of Al Hallaj, who said: 'h God, take away my Nazutiat - that's the lowest level, and replace it by thy Lahutiat - in other words - that there be a fresh dispensation of my being by my annihilating the present formation of my being. You know, according to Buddhism, everything is formation, you see. So, my personality is like a formation and, so what he's saying is fanna - that means annihilate, this formation, so that it can be replaced by a new dispensation. Because if I hang on to this formation then there won't be room for this new dispensation. So, that's the role of fanna, which means annihilation.

The role of Shiva - for example, in Hinduism. The role of the - the reason why the outer petals of a plant need to - of a flower need to fall apart so that the new fresh petals can come through. But that is a simile which is valid for the kind of creativity that emerges from within. So yes, when we say Illah, then that is where that new dispensation emerges from within.

But now we're talking about a crowning reality that bypasses the process of time, and which the Buddhists call the extrasemsaric matrix of our being. Like our - there's our parental or ancestral inheritance, and there's our divine inheritance - ancestry. So Buddhism wouldn't agree with this way of speaking but it's - I see it as a parallel between that - our divine inheritance and - what we call our divine inheritance, and what Buddha calls extrasemsaric matrix. That can then enlist a new formation, just like a mutation in the plant, but it does require a breakdown, so that eventually the breakdown will aver itself to be a breakthrough. Or as Pir-o-Murshid says: The defeat can aver itself to be a victory. The defeat, can aver itself, to be a victory! Like the crucifixion of Christ was a coronation. It was a fiasco - it turned out to be a victory.

There was a question, and I feel called to answer it now. What is the meaning: Poor in spirit? Well, you know, it was wrongly translated. Now we've got back to the original text and what Christ said is: Be of good cheer you who are broken in life, hmmm? There is no end because Christ's message was for those who were broken. It wasn't for the heroes, like Shiva, but those who - to realize that your frailties, and inadequacies - they - you can turn the tables on them and find that they are advantages rather than disadvantages. Like in the case of Dr. Hawking, for example. His infirmity is - had the effect of giving him extraordinary brilliance in his mind. Now, think of that.

So, there is in that ascension a sense of victory. Buddha says that, 'cause his last words under the tree: I have discovered the way of freedom from conditioning. It is the roar of the lion. If you want an affirmation - this is it. It's been overcome, been overcome, hmmm? 

So that's a kind of experience in this very high state, and you feel that somehow, when you see what the divine intention is behind the game played in the human drama - which doesn't make sense when you're caught in the drama. When you're able to have this overview, then you see that the whole drama is really a victory of wisdom over ignorance. Of light over darkness! Of love over hate! So you have a sense of victory. The word Qahir, Qahira - victory, means victory!

Victory over ignorance; Limitation of the personal vantage point, personal self-image - victory! Victory over the personal self-image! Discovering the divinity of one's being. That's Lahut. In Yoga, it's called (Sarbiga) Samadhi. There's absolute correspondence between each of the stages that we've been going through and those that you find in Yoga. It's just that there's not much point in making it an academic study for you - what you want to do is have the experience.

But, as I said, for example, you are aware of the qualities coming through the existential state. So that is a level of realization which we would say is what one means by God-realization. Now, it gives you an overview. So, as I said, you haven't lost the physical world but you see the physical world as from its program - as seen from its program rather than being right down there and caught up in it. Not seeing the wood for the trees, as one says.

Now, there's a further step. There's a word of Ib'n Arabi that says it right away. It says: If you are into the divine names you are into the level of multiplicity, and if you have overcome the notion of the qualities that predicate the divine being, then you reach the sense of unity. And the 'H' of the word Allah stands for Hahut. It represents that level beyond Lahut which is realizing the unity, and that means the changelessness - and of course beyond multiplicity, of course - of reality.

So, that's the pinnacle of the pendulum - there's no more motion there. Where the - I think - of course it would be a mistake to think that one can attain it, because Pir-o-Murshid said: It's like the horizon - the further you advance the further it recedes. But it's also a mistake to think that it is there. That baffles our understanding altogether, yes. It's a new view in science, but it's to be found in Sufism.

You make God a reality, so God is existentiated as you, and beyond that God is all possibility, because in the existential state there is some limitation to possibility. So we are, if we think of God as a model of ourselves, we fail to understand what is meant by: To be beyond to exist. You remember the words of Shakespeare: To be or not to be.

To be instead of to exist, hmmm? So, let's say God does not have to exist to be. Of course it's beyond our understanding, and of course at this point one is so - such a different perspective that... very difficult to see how this perspective can be coordinated with experiencing life in the world. But that is the great challenge. And that is what Sufism is trying to bring about, and that is what Pir-o-Murshid is trying to teach. Awakening in life rather than awakening beyond life.


I'm trying to find some illustration of this, and, it will be - like, for example, you visit a building. A beautiful building- a marvelous building. Like the Rockefeller Institute in New York. And you think: Yes, it's fantastic, and really wonderful, and so on. But then you meet the architect, and then you visit the building accompanied by the architect. Now you see things about the building that you couldn't possibly have seen if you had not visited the building. That's awakening in life.

You see the divine intention that you can't see when you are in your ordinary consciousness. That's why the Sufis call it (Unst) - that is, being admitted to the court of the King. So, that means being privy to the divine intention - that's - actually, the divine strategy.

So, imagine that you are in a very high state in your retreat, and you're walking the streets and somehow you're seeing it all as an expression of the divine intention. Like, I would describe the film, E.T., and you can see that really it's all a way - devices whereby Spieler is tying to communicate his way of thinking. So the universe is a way in which God communicates His/Her way of thinking to finite minds, until one is able to reach into the divine mind!

And so you can understand that beings who have done that are so over-awed, like Al Hallaj - being accused of being - saying the most outrageous things: I am God!, for example. Well, the Dervishes will say things that are quite - don't seem to make sense. Like, you can only know me from the other side of the curtain. Or, knowledge is a veil upon the known. Or, the very veil that conceals him reveals the countenance of His face. Glory to God - I'm quoting Farid 'Ud-Din Attar - Glory to God who reveals Himself by concealing Himself by the very veil that conceals Him, and conceals Himself by the very veil that reveals Him. These are words of the Sufis, hmmm? So, you have to really give up your "inaudible" logic in order to each the higher spheres.

So, let us just - I'll stop speaking now so that - what - maybe some of the things I said could trigger off something in you that you follow up.

Don't try to do it with your will, or your understanding. But allow yourself to be moved by such a strong emotion, it carries you beyond the world. Imagine the emotion of being in love with a person, and then it's being in love - the same kind of emotion which is admiration or - actually, even glorification. You could extend that to being in love with God, whose body is this physical cosmos. The emotion that transports you by it's intensity, your whole being is shattered by it! overwhelmed! Transfixed! Imagine the emotion of a cell of your body discovering your body.

I want you to depart.

MAR 09, 1996		Tape 12

 End of Tape.

Tape #12 Spring 1996 Texas 

...accessing divine mind, and the thing about this love is that it is sacred, so it's - in that sense it's, let's say, a sublimation of human love that connects self between a sense of sacredness. And it is even beyond anything that we could ever feel. And then, the great discovery, and that is that one thought that one loved God, and this God loves you. One is just reciprocating by releasing you from the solitude of unknowing, from the virtuality into reality, out of love.

And of course the combination of love is in Rahman, which is not compassion but magnanimity, that would be - imagine a father, or a mother, of course, would wish for their child to be - have all the things that they have - that's why they give "inaudible" to them, but then imagine that the father, or mother, would like their child to better themselves, so imagine then God in his Rahmaniat, improving by actuating himself at the Lahut level while remaining unchanged at the Hatmahut level. It's of course beyond our understanding but this accounts for a word in the Koran that says God is independent of existence. In other words, existence was an act - surogatory act of love, but not a necessity and therefore one could translate the way that the, the basic Hadith which is really the basis of Sufism is - has been handed down through posterity - God speaking: I was a hidden treasure and desired to be known and therefore I create the world in order to know myself. 

But then there's a secret in there, "inaudible" said: I loved to be known. And therefore it was out of love rather than a wish to be known. So one could say it was out of love that, let's say I - the dervish speaking - I'm in the first person, God speaking: It was out of love that I descended from the solitude of unknowing. 'ut of an act of love. One could say that the existential state adds a further element to the divine knowledge of himself - God knowing himself eternally in the principle of his being, like in Samadhi, and then God awakening, and so a further mode of knowledge accrues to the divine being through the intermission of - what do we call it - the creature, ultimately on the planet that exists as human being, the second mode of knowledge, further mode of knowledge.

But it's not only that, and if you go into Sufism...because to become a reality God has to become the Lord, and that means a relationship with the Lord and the vassal, as in medieval days. So there's a saying of (Saltosstadi) who was a great dervish who influenced Al Hallaj very much - maybe he was one of the Murshids of Al Hallaj - and he said: The secret, that you are the syrup of (Rabubia) - you are the secret of the divine sovereignty, 'cause a King is a King wether recognized or not, but to become a Lord it needs to have sovereignty - it needs to be recognized. And what we are doing in the wazifa is that we are recognizing the divine sovereignty by actuating it in our personality, so we're fulfilling a cosmic purpose. So hence the importance of the wazifa. And what is more, initiation in the Sufi Order is called Bayat, which is making a pledge of sovereignty, sovereignty, fielty, these are words used in the medieval religions - a pledge, a covenant, establishing a relationship between the Lord and the vassal, "inaudible" and so we are the secret of maintaining God on His throne. Let's say, there are Kings who are not on their thrones anymore, or there are Kings on their throne who are not Kings anyway.

So, somehow our role is in someway related to the divine sovereignty, and according to the transmission, God spoke to the souls of humans when they were still in the loins of Adam - that means that they were not in their existential state, and said: Will you declare my sovereignty? That is, he was establishing a covenant of sovereignty, and the answer was: I will! And the magical word that we lose at initiation - we're not using but maybe we have to talk about that - is: I will! It is a token of your - it is evidence of your freedom to say: I will. You have taken it upon yourself the decision. And so that was the departure from the oneness into multiplicity, as each fragment recognizes the sovereignty of the oneness over the multiplicity.

So in that sense, for the Sufis, we are ambassadors. I said yesterday, the ambassador is not just a messenger like a postman but a, or a post-person - that brings the post to you, unless you don't have E-mail, but is a representative - and that's why we are using the word representative in the Sufi order, is a representative of the King, and therefore has to develop a manner of a King, it's called (akhlaqada), the manner of a King. And that's why the Sufi Murshids display something of the nature of the King or Queen. The more they are able to establish this communication with the Lord of which they are the ambassador, the more they portray the nature of a King or Queen. Now, that sounds very undemocratic in the United States to say that but we're not taking about the kind of conventional aristocracy but, however, we're talking about something that is a very important slogan in our time, and that is the aristocracy of the soul, together with the democracy of the ego. Pride in our divine inheritance. And it is that pride which will help you to denigrate yourself, to not denigrate yourself rather, to overcome the denigration of your self. And that's the only way in which you can allow the divine qualities to come through. If you don't denigrate yourself. If you do, there's no way. So, think of yourself as an ambassador.

Now, you know that this is the tradition of the (Maga), the (Masdean) maga, and (prisoners) inherited that tradition. I remember when I was doing a retreat in (Insh Allahs), in Iran, southern Iran, at a place called Bala Kuli, which is the grave of a great Dervish, Bala Kuli, and then when I went behind the sarcophagus I could see there was very early photographs of - I didn't know that photography existed already at the end of the nineteenth century or - so, there were photographs of the dervishes. And it was incredible. They were all like Kings. Of course, there weren't any women in those days, but there are many women dervishes in India "inaudible", like Hazrat Babajan - it would be a good example. The dignity of these beings, for example Hazrat Babajan, was incredible - dignity - she was like a Queen in that she was dressed in rags and lived in a hut and she would - people would pass by and she would say, you know, if she was eating she would say: Come and share my food. And then if people didn't respond to her invitation then like, then like a Queen was very upset, and then she would say: You can't reach your destination without looking into my eyes, and if you're lying, you can't look into my eyes - you must know what you want to do. Divine power.

So, we are used to being rather meek because as we stick our heads out there's a good bang on our heads so we develop false modesty. It's an inverted form of pride. Pride in our modesty. And so the answer is, aristocracy of the soul against the democracy of the ego. And so Bayat - initiation in the Sufi Order, is considered to be a renewal of that pledge that one made in pre-eternity - the establishing of covenant - that word is familiar to you, the covenant in "inaudible" for example, and you see that pledge means that one is making a vow, and it's the vow that changes, that opens a new chapter in your life. And I spoke about the instant of time yesterday. Do you remember I said it cuts its (shopsorba), it cuts the past and preconfiguration of the future, but that which determines that break from the past into the future is your pledge. So it it cuts the guilt of the past - it's your pledge: I won't do this anymore! And preconfiguration of the the future: I will do this! And then you find that your scheduling breaks down and then you have to replace it with a new pledge.

So you see that there's something cosmic about our spiritual commitment. It's not - we're not alone in it, it is establishing a relationship with the - it's not just the physical cosmos, it's a - let's say, the whole hierarchy of beings. And that's the transmission. It's like cutting you loose, and that the consequence you can see, that terrible lack of dignity that is the consequence of having cut oneself away from one's roots. 

Now I just want to make one correction because I said rather judgmentally that we are living in a decadent world and it's true that there seems to be more decadence than ever before in the past, but maybe it is because there are many more people. But, on the other hand there is an awakening - look at you here - why do you come? You could be sitting at home watching T.V. No? No, you would have done gardening or something more intelligent than just watching T.V. I hope! But, anyway, we were reconnecting, like a "inaudible" you follow your computer that gets reconnected now, but, the main.... So, I'd be very surprised if you could remember all the things I've said. I don't even remember them myself, but that's the work of those who are doing transcriptions and trying to bring the teaching out in publications and so - there's allot of work being done behind the scenes, and of course there are some very wonderful people behind it, working to make this possible. To which I'm very grateful.

Yes, we still have this marvelous, precious, quarter of an hour - every minute is so important, and so I've reserved for that some of my quotes, which are right on and this says much better than I could ever say...

Side 2

...there's a word of Ibn' Arabi: By actuating the divine nature in my personality, I confer upon God a mode of knowing. Well, there are four propositions, so just listen - there are four propositions. 

One is - the first one: By discovering divine consciousness behind my consciousness - that is the state of Jabarut, I confer upon God a mode of knowing. That is, God is able to know himself through me. As we said, this is the second mode of knowing - the first mode is God knows himself "inaudible" beyond existence, existential state.

The second proposition: By actuating the divine nature, which is ground of my personality, I confer upon God a mode of existence. That's making God a reality. Ya Mawjud, the wazifa, Ya Mawjud - making God a reality.

And the third one is a little more difficult: By discovering the divine consciousness as a ground of my consciousness I confer upon God a mode of knowing, because I - being the instrument through which God knows himself through me, I am helping God to acquire a mode of existence.

And the third one is: By actuating the divine nature in my personality - which is what we are doing in the wazifas - I am conferring upon God a mode of knowing.

Well, this is a word of Pir-o-Murshid that I'm sure you know: The one who is conscious of his earthly origin is an earthly man, one who is conscious of his heavenly origin is a Son of God. The same God, so little known, of whose perfection manifested in the plant, rises again and again in the pursuit of excellence, trying to emerge as perfectly as possible in the midst of human imperfection. Well, that is what I was saying behind what I said. Divine perfection coming through our imperfection. That is what we are doing in the wazifa.

And then - this is the Koran: There's no form in the lower world without a likeness in the higher world. And that word, likeness, is Mithill, out of the word comes Mithall, and one could say, metaphor. The world of metaphor - Mithall. The forms in the higher world preserve the existence of their likeness in the lower world. Between the two worlds there are tenuities which extend from each form to its likeness. That's - when we are doing the wazifas, then we - we are conscious of these tenuities, these very fine threads that connect up. These are like ladders for the Angels, while the meanings that descend in these tenuities are like Angels. 

Well, this is a - I don't know wether it grips you in the depth of your being, because you know, when you're - it's one thing that I do myself, when you're repeating wazifa, instead of just saying, you know, the wazifa over and over again, parrot fashion, I've been trying to envision an Angel expressive of that particular quality, like an Angel of purity, or an Angel of truth, or an Angel of mastery, you know? And being fashioned in the fabric of light and - really I'm projecting something in myself which probably is in some way connected with divine inheritance, because that is where the tenuities are. 

And it's always - the form is just a projection, as we know, that it's just a feedback that enables you to see something more clearly than if you just think of the wazifa as a concept. And believe me, you try it out and you'll see it will change your whole - the whole effectiveness of the waz - of the practise, of the wazifa! You do this! And also one begins to familiarize oneself with one's celestial countenance.

Yes, this is a word of Nefari. Now, Nefari was a dervish who lived in the desert, and he had a daughter who was married and he would occasionally go and visit her, and then he would say this - these rather perplexing things that don't seem to make sense. and they were published by Arbari, and one can have that book, I think there's a new publication now, and I think that people are interested in sayings that don't make sense, in our days. So, that's why Sufism is a little more popular now, because it doesn't make sense. Yoga makes much more sense, and Buddhism makes allot of sense. So, it's perplexity, you see? And so, he's always - you see he's always speaking as though things are being revealed to him instead of - he's seeing things, but they are revealed to him, so that's the other side. That's what we are trying to do - we try to include both sides, you see? And then he's always saying: Yes, well I have to wait. So, until I'm ready for the new revelation - the next revelation. We call that (Wakif) - waiting. Like the stop light - red light at a crossing - you have to wait for the green light.

So he says: When thou perceivest, thou seeist limitation openly, and thou aspirist me at the back of the unseen. This is typical of Murshid, of course, and I - you know - we wanted to launch into experience rather than define too much those states, so I didn't define them intellectually - preferred us to just experience them. But of course one can then make an autopsy of this tape one went through, and then we distinguish between Hahut and Tawhid. Hahut, the state - that's Samadhi. "Inarticulate" Samadhi - that's beyond existence. So that's what Buddha - now let's remember the stages of Buddha, the (Ayatannas), the (Faya Ayatannas), the last Arupa, the last stages. Arupa, that means beyond form. So there was infinite space, and then there was infinite consciousness, and there was beyond existence, and beyond consciousness. So beyond existence - that is the Malakut level - "inarticulate" state. And then, beyond consciousness, that is the Jabarut state, and there is beyond existence and non-existence, so, it's like adinfinitum, you know? Infinite regress. And, of course, beyond our consciousness and unconsciousness. 

And then, finally, he says: The state of the undetermined, if overcome, determines you've overcome conditioning. And that's the ultimate freedom. And that's what Buddha was looking for. And when you get into the state of Samadhi, "inarticulate" Samadhi, you've attained the same thing, the state of absolute freedom. It's wonderful! To feel free! Because we don't feel free! We're not free in our thinking, not just in circumstances. In fact, the sardonic incongruity of life is one realizes how wonderful things could be if they could be as they might be, and what a pity it is that they can't be. From our point of view we have this regret like - it's terrible - could have been wonderful but somehow - why couldn't it be wonderful? Why, why couldn't it have been hunky-dorey? 

And then, if you look at it with the eye of wisdom you could say: Well, it's a challenge. So something's gained. If things are too easy we wouldn't have gained that something. And that is only true if we handle an ugly situation beautifully. So getting out of an ugly situation is not the answer. Handling it beautifully. That means, for example, that you - you are kind, and you get a slap in the face and you continue to be kind and you get another slap in the face, and you continue to be kind and so on - you are handling an ugly situation beautifully. And if you just get angry, you haven't made the grade. So you have lost an opportunity. Life is very short, I can tell you. When one is to be Eighty one realizes how short it is. It passes very quickly. What an opportunity!

So this is awakening in life - to see the drama that one is. As I say, one is involved in the drama, it's not one's problem. One is involved in it. One has stepped into it, of course, and then to be able to involve oneself while remaining free from being conditioned. Conditioning, like - reacting, like someone hits you and you hit back - that's reacting. This is acting, not reacting. So, this - these, are the wonderful words of Pir-o-Murshid which are expressive of awakening in life, or then awakening beyond life - that is typical Sufism.

Well, in order to gain God-consciousness, the first condition is to make God a reality, so that He is no longer an imagination. At present there exists only in the world a belief in God. God exists in the imagination. It is such a soul which has touched upon divine perfection that brings to the earth the living God, who, without him, remains in the heavens. If there is any sign of God to be seen, it is in the God-conscious. The soul of every individual is God, but man has a mind and a body which contains God according to the accommodation. "Inaudible" when he says: The fulfillment of this whole creation is to be found in man, and this object is only fulfilled when man has awakened that part of himself which represents God Himself. 

It is man - it is in man that the divine perfection can be seen. God knows Himself through His manifestation. Manifestation is a self of God, but a self that is limited. A self that makes His perfection known to Himself when He compares Himself with a limited self we call nature. Therefore the purpose for the whole creation is the realization that God gains by discovering His own perfection, through our imperfection.

Yes, this is a very important saying when you're meditating, to avoid losing yourself in a trance state. Samadhi. And it says: True exaltation of the spirit resides in the fact that it has come to earth and has realized there it's spiritual existence. Instead of slipping down into earthly conditions, you realize your spiritual existence in life. 'h yes, and then this wonderful word, allot of wonderful things that Murshid said: In man is awakened that spirit by which the whole universe was created. These are the thoughts that will help you in your meditation. In fact, that is one of the projects that I have in mind, is to choose things that are like trigger - trigger off an experience in our meditation - a very short one like this, and then follow it up by instructions and the meditation that correspond to that same.... There's allot of work for me to do still, so I have to try to keep these old bones on the planet a little longer.

Yes, typical of the Hahut level - not, this is much better than I could ever say - this is again Ibn' Arabi: In the station of unity, that's Hahut, touching upon the unity, one accesses - that's a computer word - that's my word - my translation of Ibn' Arabi - the supreme knowledge whereby the grasp of the qualities falls away. Indeed, the qualities cannot add anything to the essence. And he goes on to say: If the names disappeared the named one would appear. So you see that the wazifa reach a certain point - that's Lahut point, and beyond that they can't carry you any further. And that's where the Dhikr will carry you.

While I think of it, in the Dhikr the H, you say it Allah Hu, the H represents the Hahut level and the - when it merges into the Hu then it is Tawhid - it is awakening in life. And that's why your head comes up and then down again towards the heart, and then you go into the HHH, you know, the form of the heart, you know, towards the circle - the form of the heart.

So there's nothing but perplexity upon perplexity. Be not surprised if God himself is perplexed. So if I have perplexed you, I hope you will consider it as a gift. The best thing is - that could happen to you is that you didn't understand anything of what I am saying, at all.

End of Tape.



MAR 09, 1996		Tape 13



Pir Vilayat 1996 Texas Spring Retreat Mon Morning Meditation Tape #13

...the fingers on the organs of perception. And just three breaths. And as you take your hands away identify yourself with your aura. That is not just think, not just be aware of a zone of light around you but identify with it. So the the body is like a hot coal within it. And then concentrate on your, the light in your glance. And just imagine that there is a lot of light in your brain which has been threaded through the optical nerves and reaches out into space through the nerve endings which is your eyes which is the retina, and then through the cornea, which is like a lens. Just like two headlamps of a car. Now put all your being into that, that is the light in your brain is being shunted forward through your glance. And then at the same time the light of your heart center, the heart center is just like a sun. And it is radiating as your aura. Like a miniature sun. Now turn your eyeballs upwards and press your tongue against your pallet as you inhale. That is you curve your tongue so that the bottom of the tongue is pressed against the pallet. As you exhale, relax your tongue and your eyes are, have returned forward. 

OK Now we're going to do the practice of shaggily, that is "inaudible" your senses. But turn your eyeballs upward while you're doing this practice as you inhale. And hold your breath. And then turn your eyes forward as you exhale. And imagine that your eyes are like the headlamps of a car as you exhale. Now take your fingers away and concentrate on those two beams of light which are with your eyes closed. And now just open your eyelids just for a flicker of a second and notice that the objects in the room force your eyes into focus so you can't lose your concentration on those two beams of light. But if your keep on doing it, keep on concentrating, the very power of your glance. And you can open your eyes and you don't see the objects. It's like a blur. Keep on concentrating on the glance. All right. Now imagine a flower. It could be whatever flower you like with your eyes closed. Now remember the practices we did with the reflex images. OK So now as you exhale you're in your body consciousness and you're conscious of this the light of the glance. And you are conscious of casting that light upon the flower. And you see the flower such as it is with a profile. 

Now as you inhale, you switch. A little bit like we did with the reflex. In order to switch let's say your focus, Identify with your aura now. So you're going to toggle between identifying with your body as you exhale, identifying with your aura as you inhale. Just like a hologram. You can see it one way and then you can switch something in your glance and you see another, another slice of the hologram let's say. All right now as you switch as you turn within as you identify with your aura, then at least to start with imagine that the petals are surrounded with like what is called corona, like in Kirlian photography. So that corona does not have a profile. It's just radiance like the photographs of Walter Chappell who photographed flowers in ultraviolet light. Now that kind of way of looking at, well you could consider this second perspective to be seeing that which transpires behind that which appears. Like the countenance of the face transpiring through the face. All right. Now go one step further. That is imagine that you are walking in nature. It could be very beautiful landscape in nature like St. Francis walking in the forest near Assisi. And somehow you identify with your subtle body or with your aura as you are walking. And all of a sudden it's as though you'd switched something on. 

And all of a sudden you find yourself in a transfigured world. And the forest is transfigured. So the trees are no longer the objects of your perception. In fact they are live beings. And in fact just imagine that they are looking at you instead of you are looking at them. Or while you are looking at them they are looking at you. All right. Now the next step. Think of a problem, perhaps your most difficult problem in your life. So to start with you're in your ordinary consciousness. And you think well these are the facts. I mean you can tell me what you like, but these are the facts. Now you switch, as you inhale, switch as we did with the flower, switch back somehow and try to see that something, some kind of, let's call it a drama seems to be coming through that problem. That problem is just the way it appears in your ordinary consciousness. And as you switch into that inner attunement for one thing you see the problem in its context, like the implications. There are far reaching implications. So the problem is like a wave in the sea. 

And behind that wave there is a whole sea. OK Now that's one further step. Get back to the flower again. We said that in the transfigured state you see the aura of a flower. Well now that would be if your vantage point is interfacing with the flower, is facing the flower. Now try and see if you can imagine that your consciousness is now in the flower, or the vantage point is within the flower instead of your looking at the flower from a distance, perspective. And so you can almost see how the, let us call it the reality behind the flower, is configuring itself into those petals. Or better still, how let's say the harmony that is virtual in the Universe, the virtual harmony of the Universe. For example the harmony of the orbits of the planets and the stars and the galaxies. That harmony, mathematical relationship, cosmic, is configuring the petals. You can see it from inside now, almost as if you were able to enter into the unconscious of that flower. OK Now let's do this with our problem. Instead of watching the problem from your vantage point, just like you'd watch Notre Dame in Paris from a certain angle. You haven't seen Notre Dame. You've just seen Notre Dame from that angle. So imagine now that you do the same thing as you did with the flower. You really enter into that problem so you're not looking at it form the personal vantage point. But you're trying to see the, I mean your consciousness is homologous, that means of the same nature as the programming inside that flower, inside that problem. 

So your view of the problem is not limited by your vantage point. But you vantage point has got totally merged into the kind of meaningfulness that is coming through that problem. And so you see that there is a measure of freedom and a measure of constraint in that problem. You understand what I mean? I would illustrate it by for example the words that you're using have a certain range. Like you use a word and there's a range of meaning. It's very difficult to define, but there is a certain range of meaning. But if it meant everything then you couldn't use, then there would be no language. So your words to be meaningful there has to be a constraint and a range of freedom. And so if you enter into that problem from within and you see that for it to be meaningful, there needs to be some kind of obstacle to it being let's say hunky dorry. There has to be some kind of constraint in the problem and that is compensated by by the meaningfulness. That is the meaningfulness like your language is enhanced by the constraint in your words. So the consequence is that things don't happen as we would like them to happen, but there is beauty in the way that things, in the way that the meaningfulness in that problem emerges out of its very constraint. OK So you see things, let's say to put a label on it. We're seeing things from the azut point of view, then we're seeing things from the arwah point of view. 

Now we're going to see things from the mithal point of view. So now see what impact you have on the problem. Because the problem isn't just there irrespective of you. So somehow your handling of the problem effects the problem. You can't just consider the problem per se, as it is. Now in order to do that, to test yourself, I mean to test your understanding of the problem, imagine that you've changed your way of handling that problem. How would it affect the problem? Supposing that you're working with somebody you don't like and that person feels it. And supposing that you were to go to that person and say,"Look I think we just need to talk because I don't know quite honestly there is something about you that, I don't know, that I have a problem with. I don't want to be detrimental. It's not. I don't want to blame you for it. Maybe it's something in me. Anyway I feel it's not good for us to go on like this. So I hope you don't mind if I just open my heart and tell you that there is something that makes my relationship with you really very difficult. It would be wonderful if we could overcome that". Of course it takes courage because you're afraid that person will become angry and might slam the door in your face or whatever. You're taking a risk. So I'm not telling you that's what you should do. I never tell people what they should do. But supposing that in your meditation you imagine that you are then taking a different tack in your dealing with this problem than the one that you've been taking so far. 

Then how does it affect the problem? The problem is always, problems are always problems of relationship, between people. It could even be between yourself and matter. For example if you're a carpenter or a mechanic or whatever, then there's always a relationship between you and matter. But very often it's between people. So now can you feel or be aware of the idiosyncrasies of your being? For example, I'm rather trusting person and I get deceived. Or then I'm a fearful person and consequently I find it difficult to involve myself or commit myself. Or then I'm a melancholic disposition and I find it difficult to be joyous. Or I've suffered in my childhood from owning up, and consequently I do not always tell the truth because I'm afraid of being punished. That's a kind of education we've taught children, develops a kind of deviousness. Or then I'm a very truthful person, candid, and the consequence is that I step on people's corns and always cause rows. And so on and so forth. So those would be examples of idiosyncrasies. Now see how these idiosyncrasies affect your problems. People perceive these things and react or, how can I say, adjust themselves accordingly. For example they think, "I can't trust this person". And the consequence is you don't get a job for example. Or they think, "This person is insecure, so I wouldn't like to find myself in a situation in which the uncertainty of this person is going to affect my life". 

Or then that's an irate person, I mean you're an irate person so the people you're involved with can't really, are afraid of opening up with you. So are not really communicating. So you see how our idiosyncrasies affect the problem. Now your self image has the effect of operating a kind of sclerosis in your personality, in your idiosyncrasies. So they cant change because you identify with them, so they can't change. So you've gone through your life like that, without progressing. What a waste of opportunity. Now supposing that you think of yourself rather instead of being a static notion you have of your self image, think of it as dynamic, as progressing, as evolving. It's as though it were flowing from inside and moving in such a way, moving that is the new qualities that are emerging like the fresh petals inside the flower, are pushing the other jaded idiosyncrasies out and out of the way. They're being dispersed. You see that? So now this is mithal. You see your, the creativity of your being affects your problems. Transforms your problems, transforms your relationships with the people involved and that is what the problem is about. And remember that the secret of creativity is what is called in science retrocausality, that is the effect of vision of future upon the present. 

So you might call it wishful thinking if you like. But if you imagine how you could be, then it encourages the flow of new dispositions in our being and that will eventually transform the relationship with people. But of course there is some resistance. And because people have made a picture of you that was based upon the picture that you had of yourself, and they are holding you to it. And consequently you might find that you need to talk with the person and say, "Look, we've got to sit down and talk this over because you know both of us are not what we used to be. We've changed. I'm a new person, you're a new person. Now I think I know how you've changed, but you know it better than I do. And the same way, perhaps you don't know how I've changed, but I think you just need to know because then we can communicate much better". So now that is mithal. Now the kind of setting of our consciousness that we found when we were inhaling and identified with our aura, that kind of sense of difference of our identity is going to help you now because you see our usual vision of the world is very limited. It's like for example, what you see on the television screen. 

But behind it there is a whole, a tremendous array of wave and wave interference pattern. So I don't know whether it's ever occurred to you to get into I suppose it's almost like a trance state. So there's a change in your sense of reality. Like yes I know this, it's funny but I remember this. It's funny but a kind of different kind of perspective than I had when I've got my feet on the earth. Especially if you try to remember your childhood and even babyhood if you can, it has a kind of impact on your consciousness that seems totally out of sync with the present. The present seems real and those impressions seem to belong to not just the past, to another perspective. I don't know whether you see what I mean. And so it's true that in that state you can't see details. You see a kind of, like as I say it's like seeing the sea instead of the waves. And that's what I mean by seeing things in their context. Like if you fly very high you can't see the trees in the forest, but you see the forest. Something like that. So you see implications in your problems that you can't see when you're standing there at a close range. And of course there's no way of explaining it not only to other people, but even to yourself. Because language was made to give vent to the usual perspective and not for this alternative perspective where everything seems to be intermeshed with everything else. 

But then you toggle between the two, just like we did with the flower. So you get back to your personal perspective of the problem and then you move back. In fact when you move back, you're much more aware of the emotions behind the problem. In fact you see the problem as, how can I say, as the crystallization of the emotional forces behind it. (tape turns) ... meant by the witness in the heavens. That requires you to somehow let go not only of your body consciousness, but also of your personality. Let's say, consider that you have been in some way inveigled in the world. And consequently it has changed your sense of your identity, that is you've lost your sense of your pristine identity. And now somehow you switch again. You switch upwards instead of backwards. And you can see that, let's say by your inter facing, let's say your relationship with the existential condition an aspect of yourself has accrued to what you were before. But what you were before has not been diminished thereby. It might have been tarnished but like the voice of Caruso it's still there. So it will you give a kind of, let's say, a kind of aesthetic sensitivity, looking at the things from the vantage point of the angel, I mean that you are very sensitive to the purity of people or the impurity, and therefore to the authenticity or the manipulation or the grossness or whatever. 

Somehow it's a very sharpened sense of emotion that is of course evidenced by your choice of music, or your choice of clothing or choice of where you make your house, and so on, your relationship with people. It can be very beautiful. It can be kind of commonplace. You chat together and like each other. So can you look at your problem from the vantage point of the angel now? And it is as though mud had been cast on the snow. That is a more perfunctory way of looking at it. Because it would be irretrievable, irreversibly, whereas I think a better way of looking at it is what we encountered yesterday, the mass being celebrated in a concentration camp. Like your soul is so pained to see the sacrilege that one gets into in the problem. You know as I say, the purpose doesn't justify the means. So for example people take up a cause. For example we were fighting the Nazis. Take up a cause, a just cause, like a knight. And then the very people who were fighting the cause would slip into the same things that they were fighting against. Like for example, there were Germans struggling in the burning water. There were flames around them hoping that we would rescue them. The captain refused to rescue them. Now that's the kind of thing that I mean. 

You commit yourself to a cause and make yourself believe that you're following that cause. But one tends to use means that are, that contradict one's cause, that defeat it in fact. So that's looking at things from the vantage point of the angel. Because the only weapon of the angel is a sort of light. That means to bring those situations that are murky and covered up into the open. And then the forces of evil tend to disperse like the bare mountain at the pinching of dawn. So you could say that it is the understanding of the heart instead of the understanding of the mind which is what the Sufis are talking about. And so your judgment of a person is the result of the sensitivity of your heart, how your heart feels meeting a person. And if you're sensitive and that person is beautiful, I mean beautiful, I don't mean physically beautiful, but a beautiful soul, your heart is shattered. You feel like crying with joy. The discovery of beauty is the most shattering, and overwhelming, and also transforming experience. And now, so this is enhanced, this kind of perspective is enhanced if you are able to earmark the angelic counterpart of your being which is interspersed with the subtle body and the physical body. So you mustn't think it's up there somewhere in the heavens. It's right there. It's not quite like the aura. It's, I don't think there's any way of, it has some kind structure but it's not a physical structure. It's some kind of eternal face. 

And that's probably what is meant in the Qur'an by "Everywhere is the face of God". It doesn't mean the physical face. It's something intangible. Now you switch or you make that quantum leap into the Jabarut stage. You have to pass through that place where everything is assessed according to the sense of your sensitivity, to access a whole different way of thinking. Remember that rishi who had such a problem trying to understand that man who was asking him a question. It was a totally different way of seeing. We are seeing not just as we did before, what are the issues active in the problem. You're seeing the programming. It's as though there is some kind of veil now separating where you are to where you used to be judging your problem. You've passed that threshold. And so you can't judge your problems the same way any more. It's no way. In fact you realize it's totally off, your judgment about the problems, totally off. In fact this is called, well it's both build up, the Qur'an builds up Vakil an al zikre. That means you're conscious of action beyond the dichotomy subject object. As Pir o Murshid calls it,"Grasping the mechanism behind the Universe". And even talks about a finer machine behind the grosser machine, and maybe the finer machine is like the computer behind the machine tools for example in a factory. Something like that. 

Eventually, you see the secret to this is just as for example to get into our arwah, the subtle body, the electromagnetic field and then particularly the aura, the light is an electromagnetic phenomina. Now the secret is what we call sound rather than light. But as I say what we call sound, because that's the way that our ears perceive, and of course our brains, perceive vibration. And we call it sound. But it's really vibration. It's a vibration of energy. That is moves. For example you can have a wave on a cornfield, you don't call it sound, but it's the same thing. It's a vibration. So remember these words of a physicist called (?),"For the physicist the world is a code that the physicist is called upon to decipher". Or for example the body of the human being from a certain angle is a code. The DNA is a code. So that brings you to what Pythagoras called the symphony of the spheres which the Sufis call a language, language of God, because meaningfulness is articulated though vibrations. So the enormous, infinite range of frequencies provides intelligence with a language. And so what happens for example, your body is the result of your DNA. And so your problems are the expression of that symphony of frequencies. Let' say it's like a melody in that symphony. 


And each melody implies every other melody in the symphony. And so now your problem looks very different. Somehow you're seeing some relationship between top and bottom for example. That will give you some sense of what we mean by the tenuities between the archetypes and exemplars. And so it just takes one further step now to see that that code is exactly that marvelous composition of archetypes, what we call sifat, qualities that are then enacted in our problems. So if you can use these tenuities as a "inaudible", you're continually, you can toggle between the two then all the time, between the exemplar and the archetype and then the archetype and the exemplar. So you always see your problems from the qualities that are enacted. That is the reason for the practice of the wazifa is that you're establishing that connection, or reestablishing that connection. And of course up to the present we were interested in the world of multiplicity. 

Now imagine that you're in a very high state in your retreat and you're walking in the street. And normally if you're walking in the street, you see a lot of people rushing about, like ants. But now somehow they seem like the cells of one body. So beginning to grasp unity behind multiplicity. And then finally you come to, we've gone as far as we can go now, the metaphor,"If you see the waves, you can't see the sea". And if you see an object, he has escaped you. And "Knowledge is a veil upon the known". And one further saying and that is, "How much more important the knower than the known". And that's God consciousness. And your problems, well as compared with the knower. Imagine that we're so puny as to get upset about our problems, when we're invited to the divine banquet. So bless you now.

Tape ends

MAR 16, 1996		Tape 01

 tape 1, page 1

Madison March 16, l996

(music) Yes, well, this is an example of Indian music. Sometimes it is very good to attune ourselves to music that sets the pace. Well, greetings to you. We are about to engage in a transforming process, and this requires a lot of participation on your part. If you want it to be effective for you and to really leave a mark on your being, then it will require some kind of commitment on your part, so stay with it, with me. I will be sharing that process with you and conveying things that are happening to me, so that you might reflect them and mirror them, so its an interactive process. 

I would like to start with a few preliminaries that seem so common-sensical that it's a pity that one has to mention them. The first one is that we wouldn't like to have babies here. I love babies, but it's not the right place for them. I say that, because occasionally people bring their babies. The other is even more dramatic. Please refrain from screaming. Well, yes you might laugh, but it has happened now twice I think, or three times, at a seminar, when everyone was very peaceful, and simply because I mentioned like looking into your  tape1, page 2

personal problems. Now if, and I consider a retreat as a preparation for life, as a matter of fact--a rehearsal for life, rather than a retreat from life. And that being so, then we hope that it will give you a new insight on your problems and help you to resolve them or deal with them, so if calling your attention to your problems causes you to get so hysterical as to cause you to want to scream, then, please be so kind as to walk out and scream outside. But spare us that terrible ordeal, because it just ruins the whole retreat. It has happened before, and it is really very painful for everyone, including myself, who has always considered to be the one responsible. The buck stops here.

Actually, if anybody has had problems, pathological mental problems, then you are not advised to go through this process, because it might cause them to erupt again, even if you are cured, and so on, but maybe they're still there in the deeper unconscious, and as we are peering very deeply into the unconscious, they might crop up again. So, once more, I think you are advised to see a psychotherapist instead of coming here. These are two farther--well, there's some overlap between spirituality and psychotherapy, but still, they are complementary in some way. 

The next thing is very challenging, and I am not sure that you would be happy about it, so I will have to ask you. You see, for a -- either it's a retreat or a seminar -- so, either one or the other. If it is a  tape1, page 3

seminar, then we can speak and so on. If it is a retreat, then it means that you will -- for it to be really effective, you will have to remain silent throughout the . . . Well, of course the best thing would be throughout the day, until the evening, until five o'clock or five thirty. But many of us are not used to prolonged silence, and therefore, I don't want to impose something on you that is unpleasant for you. So, it's up to you. I'll go by the majority. But before I pass a vote, I would like to mention that -- You see, ordinarily we are used to articulating or to rethink using language, which does impose some constraint upon our thinking. Language, the commonplace way of thinking. And, we are going to explore alternate ways of thinking that are much more fulfilling, richer, even transcendent. But, and so, if you -- being on silence is also a protection against, not only being interrupted by people who want to chat with you -- there is plenty of time, 365 days in the year, to chat with people -- so there is just these two days that would be an opportunity to do something different and to get in touch with your real self and try to awaken potentialities in our being that are calling out to manifest and to become actuated in our personality. And so this is the tuition method, and I can only say it works, because you are not called upon then to express your feelings and thoughts in words, and consequently you will get much more in contact with those deeper inner forces. Now, it's up to you, and so I would like to simply ask you. Hands up. 

Those who would like to observe silence throughout the day, that is even during the intermissions in the morning and at lunch time, up to the termination which would be 5:00 or 5:30, of the day's session or meditation. That's alternative #1. Alternative #2 would be that you would, well, that you could speak during lunch time. I don't think that's such a good idea, but it's a less good idea than the first one. So, anyway, option #l, hands up then, please. Well, I must say it's very encouraging to have that kind of -- You didn't know what you were going to hit when you came here, and maybe you were really interested in a kind of seminar, where people are chatting and so on. This is a very different thing altogether. 

OK. Well, now we are going to pass together through different stages, step by step, leading from the commonplace way of looking at things to what they call awakening, that is developing a kind of overview, gives you insight into your life and into the kind of programming behind the universe, and what it means to you, its significance, and your participation in it. Well, it's a process. Also, together with a shift in one's sense of identity from, assuming that, well, from one's body consciousness into becoming aware of other levels of one's being. Like, for example, one's subtle body, or one's aura, one's celestial being and so forth. And so, I want you see much more, you see, I'd like to plunge into the actual experience.

You see, for each self-image that we have of ourselves, for each identification that we have, corresponds a setting of consciousness, a  tape1, page 5

mode of thinking, and an emotional attunement. And so, we are going to examine these, passing from one to the other. So, to start with: Well, of course we could have started with a breathing practice, but we did that this early morning, at the opening with less people here. But you could just simply observe your (prayers?) as you exhale and inhale, and consider it simply to be not only a function which enables the body to absorb oxygen from the environment and release toxic gases, but as a real exchange of energy -- we'll talk about different forms of energy -- between let's say your force-field and the force-field of the universe.

So, think of it as a kind of ebb and flow. Consequently, if you do this, you'll find that your breath will slow down, which has physiological and psychological consequences. In physiology one says one shifts from the catabolic to the anabolic stage, that is you are not ready to spring to action, but you are in a state which lends itself to inner reflection, introspection for example, peacefulness instead of drawn into pain. That would be a preliminary. And in the course of these two days which will be going past very fast, we are going to sometimes share in breathing practices. But that's just a little preliminary. 

Now, as you're breathing, consider that you are actually imbibing, ingesting the universe. That is that you are not only your body is feeding on the food of the planet of course, feeding on the planet. So  tape1, page 6

you are ingesting the physical world, and of course processing it. And the same thing is true of our psyche. Now, consider that as you exhale of course you are impacting the environment with your being and therefore you are --on one hand you are ridding yourself of a lot of things that let's say, that you can't digest, and secondly that you are processing what you ingested so that what comes out of your impact on the universe is the way that the universe is fed back into itself through you.

OK. So, that is true at the physiological level, but what is important for us is at the psychological level. You realize that we are exposed to all sorts of impressions. We could say good and bad. We could label them. That's rather judgmental. Our  assessment is not always reliable, but let's say that some of the impressions that we are subjected to, forcibly subjected to, even are deleterious and even damaging, and if you. You see we are used to being. Our  minds are used to being monitored by the challenge of the outside world. Now, if you sit and meditate, then you don't have that challenge any more that kind of configures your thinking, and consequently you have to provide some direction to your thought. You have to monitor your thoughts from inside. And the consequence is of course a very highly enhanced awareness.

So, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that we do have an ability to choose those elements from the environment that we wish to imbibe, that we wish to incorporate in our psyche. And we also do have the ability to reject those elements from the environment that, let's say that we can't digest, that we can't handle. Now, normally, that ability to select is kind of overstressed by the impellingness of the impact of the environment without any discrimination.

So, while you meditate, all you would be doing normally, unless you are very careful, would be to simply regurgitate the impressions from the outside world. So, that's not, that doesn't get you very far. And, so, there are several stages here. 

The first stage could be illustrated by our immune system, the immune system of our body. The immune system -- well, there are two immune systems. The first one, well, both of them, are based upon the sense of me or not me. Like for example, the body will not allow a transplant of an organ of another body that is too alien from its own code, from its own nature. So, it's me or not me. So, it's that sense of me and not me that will give you the ability to select those elements from the environment that you wish to ingest and those that you wish to reject. So, just reflect upon this in your life. 

There are impressions of horror, gross impressions, hatred, violence. All kinds of things that we are exposed to which are hurtful to our sensitivity if we entertain high values. And we do not know to what extent there is a spillover in us. In fact we will be going over that later. And they call upon in us a reaction which is not always in sync with our real being. So, we are adapting ourselves to the environment.

Now, the second immune system is capable of adapting itself to the environment so that under special conditions the body immune system is able to tolerate the transplant of an organ that is rather different. And if it weren't for the second immune system we wouldn't be able to eat food at all, or we wouldn't be able to adjust at all to the various bacteria or viruses to which we are exposed. So, that's true of the physical body.

The model of the psyche. We are strengthened by having to handle impressions that are alien to our nature, and the consequence is that we become more and more cosmic and less and less enclosed in our own idiosyncratic nature. So, that is how one is enriched by the environment, by being able to integrate in oneself elements that are more and more alien to one, but which can, if one has the capacity then to integrate them, if one becomes more cosmic in our being. Instead of, if I may use the word, puny. Instead of puny, one becomes cosmic, all-encompassing.  tape 1, page 9

So, you find that the first stage in mediation consists in expanding your consciousness, and that we are doing with our eyesight. For example, when we are, if we, say for example, you are reading a book, and then alternately you are looking at a landscape, a large panorama. So you are modulating your glance, and you can toggle between one and the other. And so we can do the same thing with our consciousness. You can extend your consciousness with your exhale and it becomes all-encompassing. And as you are inhaling, your consciousness seems to converge into a focal point. And so, perhaps you notice that this has and immediate effect upon your sense of identity. As you exhale, your sense of identity becomes more and more cosmic, and as you inhale or course, it becomes more personal, more individual, sorry. Now, what does one mean, what do I mean by that. 

Well, once more we have to borrow a paradigm. I mean it's very helpful now that we in our day and age that we can borrow scientific paradigms to understand better what is happening to us in our inner processes. Because, and I am talking about the holistic paradigm. That is that you are not just a fraction of that totality of the universe, but inasmuch as the universe is fractionated into what Hewlet? calls subwholes, each subwhole carries potentially within it the totality. That's the holistic paradigm. 

So, it just depends upon our sense of identity. The common place sense of identity is me as a separate entity and you as a separate entity and so on. That's the usual, rather simplistic way of thinking. But if you adopt this paradigm and you begin to grasp the dimensions of your being that you were unaware of, so that eventually you can even discover the universe in you, but potentially, that is latent, virtual, and even feel a kind of nostalgia, let's say, of that many-splendored bounty to emerge as your being. The way that the totality is present in each, as I say relative, fractions of the totality. 

So, we have that ability to toggle, to alternate between losing our sense of individuality and the sense that we have of merging with the totality. Let's say on the exhale for example, we lose our sense of identity, our individuality, and as we inhale, recover our sense of uniqueness. And I say that because at least the way that some of the oriental schools have been criticized, particularly by psychotherapy, is that those methods make one tend to lose one's personal ego, sense of the uniqueness of one's being. And one could say that that's what the whole of life is about. That the totality is appearing in the part. And the part is, each part is absolutely unique. And so of course, the beauty is alternating between the two. Because then you are able to converge more and more of the totality into your being, or coming through as your being. So, you never lose totally sight of your ego self or individual self, but you also avail yourself of extending,  tape 1, page 11

expanding beyond the constraint of our rather inadequate self-image. Discovering potentialities that will only emerge if we stop setting boundaries to our sense of identity.

So it is as you inhale you recover your sense of individuality that your ability to make a selection of the elements that you wish to incorporate in your being and those that you do not. That is where that ability comes in. When you merge with the totality you have lost your sense of discrimination. 

Now, we could carry this a little further. So that as you exhale, you -- In fact it's a good thing to do. I've often done it myself. Is meditating at night under the stars. If the sky is clear. And then -- I think on the word of the Sufi mystic Mevlana Jelaludin Rumi who said, "The galaxies are just like a little form on the shoreless seas." So the galaxies, let's say the cosmos, represents a very small fraction, or is an expression of the total ocean of reality that you could call the universe. I make a distinction between the word universe and cosmos. Cosmos: the way that the universe is existentiated or actuated in the existential state. The stars, for example, the galaxies. Now, "The galaxies are a little form on the shoreless sea. We came whirling our of nothingness. The stars dance and form a circle, and in the middle we dance. The atoms are perplexed in their choreography. And it is all God, turning around himself."

It is a poetic expression of something that does something to your mind and makes one realize to what extent one has become encapsulated into one's little world that seems so important and has lost sight of the magnitude in which we are merely willy-nilly involved. And it is our awareness of our participation in the choreography of the galaxies that will help us reach out from the limited purview of our commonplace thinking. Our  thinking starts becoming cosmic.

For example, I'll give you an example. Einstein was pushing a pram in New York -- lot's of people push prams in New York -- But somehow, as he was doing it, he was envisioning the planet as whirling within the solar system, and the solar system as just a small part of the Milky Way, and so on. And so, he saw himself in the context of the totality. Most people are simply caught in themselves, what they think of as themselves, which is not what they are. It's just a limited sense that we have of our identity.

That would be what I would consider the first step in what we call awakening. We could bring this even closer if we would spend some thought on the fact that our bodies erupted at the moment of the Big Band, at least the fabric of our bodies. Let's say the universe has fashioned itself into, I mean the physical, the cosmos, sorry, has fashioned itself into us. That is really -- if you think of it then you  tape1, page 13

reconnect with the totality. Exactly as one would recharge a battery. The battery would run down if it has been disconnected too long from its charger. So, think of it like that. It does something to you by reestablishing the connection at the physical level. And I suspect it does something to your body, too. It recharges the cells of the body as well as reconnecting.

I forget now the poet who established the relationship between the __________ of a star and the flutter of your eyelids, or the sparkling of your eyes, a kind of relationship. It has consequences because you will at least be able to accept that our thinking is really linked with the thinking of the universe. You could really think that the universe is a being that is able to think and is aware and so on, and your thinking and awareness is part of the awareness of the whole universe. So, in other words, you are connecting up your thinking with its source, which is very important, because otherwise if you are meditating then you are simply caught up in your personal thinking. So that's what we want to bring about a dramatic change in our way of thinking. otherwise, you're just going around in circles; you're not gaining anything by introspection.

OK, and, now, well, we could bypass that we, well, when we ingest food, we reject parts that we cannot ingest, and of course then there's a further rejection in our excrement. So, we are filtering the material that we are imbibing. The same thing is true of the psyche as I said  tape1, page 14

earlier. And so, as you inhale, imagine that you are setting up protecting zones, protective thresholds, let's say "sentinels at the doors of perception," as Buddha says. Those sentinels will allow certain things to pass and others not. That means that you really have the ability to reject impressions as you are meditating. To boomerang them back, like a ball that will rebound, or water off the back of a swan for example. The Hindus call that vairagia, which is a measure of freedom. A measure of freedom is determined by our ability to be indifferent and independent of those things which we do not want to be impacted by or by which we don't want to be impinged upon. Like, for example, addiction of any kind. Freedom. So, it is your need for freedom that will protect you from those impressions that are disturbing, so that when you meditate you're able just to cogitate on those things that are enriching. 

Well, that selection is not that easy. In fact, the reason that it is not easy is because of the forcefulness of circumstances, exercised by circumstances on our consciousness. For example, you have just gone through a dramatic crisis in your life, and you can't just sit there and think about the stars. Those circumstances act so compellingly upon your consciousness that -- and of course one tends to get stymied by situations that one is unable to change, and one does wonder whether meditation could help in any way, or in what ways it could help. 

tape1, page 15

 Well, there are several thoughts here. First of all, I am thinking of the situation that was illustrated by Beethoven in the Fourth Piano Concerto, where he describes the world as the orchestra and himself as the pianist. And the world comes to him with a big wallop, "Ba bom, Ba bom." And he reacts "hummmm dumm, dum, ta tum...." Well, it's a very clear case of not reacting, of saying, "I won't play ball with you", because if you do you are not mastering all the potentials of your being. It is like saying, " I place a buffer between the challenge of life and all the potentials in this being. I have to interrogate myself before -- I don't want to react. I will respond, but I don't want to react." 

That's the first thing. So, when you are meditating, you can think of that. Think that the challenge of the world is trying to force you into reacting and that when one reacts one short-circuits. Like, for example, if you are crossing a road and there's a car there, you don't have to use all your wisdom to step back. So, it's in the cortex of your brain. But when you have to decide something that has is going to be decisive for your life, then of course you have to call upon all the faculties in your mind, and so, not just in your mind. And so, think of meditation as a chance of placing a buffer -- and that does not mean a barrier -- a buffer between the challenge of the world and yourself. 

(side one ends) (side two)

________ (blank tape) the tables, and start being more aware of your impact upon the circumstances. So, could you just do that for a moment, and then we'll continue. 

So, I want to point out that the circumstances are still there, but they act as a catalyst, or I mean you reduce their effect upon you to acting as catalysts to spark your own creativity. The creativity of your personality to unfold potentialities in your being. We will be going into that a little more, a little further, a little later. But you know in that piece of Beethoven, you will find that as a consequence, there's a kind of dialogue between the challenge of the environment and himself, and eventually he wins. He prevails. And then out of this arises the most wonderful musical theme, that would never have arisen if it had not been for the challenge of the environment. So, you don't discard that challenge, but you make the best use of it. 

Now, of course it is true that when one is subjected to a very compelling impression, one fails to see another perspective, an alternative perspective. For example, if the sun is in the sky you don't see the stars. They're there in the day, but you can't see them. So, in the same way, our circumstances are like the sun that blinds us from what is being enacted behind the circumstances. And  tape 1, page 17

consequently, the only way to go about it in meditation is to downplay one perspective and highlight the other. There are several examples. For example, if you drew a cube on the blackboard, then you could see that it could be one way or the other. You could alternate. All of a sudden one side comes forward and the other back, and then the opposite. You know, you can toggle between the two. 

Well, and if you look at a hologram. There is a hologram in which there are two images, superimposed images, of Christ for example. And you can toggle. All of a sudden you see one perspective, and then you can see the other. As you can change the ___________ effect as the cornea acts as a lens. Actually we don't know that, but we change the convergence of that lens, the concavity of that lens, and we can shift it.

So, this is what we do in meditation. But of course, what is important is to not just dismiss one perspective, as illusory, which is the theory of Maya. If you're familiar with it. It's a kind of way of looking at things which makes the ascetic. You could make use of it; in fact you could borrow it. But be careful with that method because I would say it is one sided. Any physicist knows that the world is not the way it looks. And so in the same way your problems are not the way they look. But that's active. We want to know what is 

being enacted behind our problems, rather than just saying we've been misassessing them. 

Now, it is true, is a given that we in general we are grappling with our concepts of our problems, that is our interpretations of our problems, rather than with the problems themselves. Because we generally only see our problems from our personal vantage point. For example, if you look at Notre Dame in Paris from one vantage point, you haven't seen Notre Dame, because each vantage point is different. And so that's the way we're assessing our problems, from a personal vantage point. And we're so convinced that that's the way they are that we schlep this interpretation of our problems throughout our lives in our psyche. That is a false assessment of our life. We carry that in our psyche. Just imagine! 

And so the purpose of meditation would then be to see our problems from other perspectives than our own. So the first method would be. Think of your problem, whatever. So please don't scream. Think of a real bad problem. I think everybody has some kind of a problem. I've never met anybody who doesn't. And you notice that problems always involve our relations with people, unless it is our relations with matter, like carpenter or electrician, whatever. Anyway, relationship. ordinarily in a social problem, there are several people involved in a situation, and of course it is very exceptional if  tape1, page 19

everybody agrees, because everybody has a different point of view and different values, and they act accordingly. 

So now, instead of just jumping to conclusions or being convinced that you're right and the other person is wrong, try to get into the consciousness of that other person. And you know, one can. If you've started expanding your consciousness as we did, for example into the starry skies, then you learn, you develop a skill of being able to transfer the center of your consciousness, let's say the vantage point of your consciousness, into another person's consciousness, and in this specific case see how they think and feel about this problem. Now, maybe they told you, maybe they didn't tell you, and maybe they don't even know themselves.

Now, to be able to do that, you really have to get into the consciousness that that person has of themselves, not just their view on the problem. And so, there is a Sufi saying, or Sufi motto, that says, "I see him/her through his/her eyes. I try to imagine what it would be like to be him or her. And of course the reciprocal would be, "He/She sees me through his or her eyes, and if I pick up the impression that he/she has of me, I may realize how very different it is from the impression that I have of myself." And I don't say that my view is right and theirs is wrong, or theirs is right and mine is wrong. But that two perspectives are better than one. Like, for example, we have two eyes, and consequently there are two images,  tape 1, page 20

and our mind, our brain is able to extrapolate between those two images and make a three-dimensional picture of it. It's called parallax. 

So we also have the ability to extrapolate between our own sense of identity, our own self-image, and the self-image that somebody makes of us. And the image, the representation that we have of the other person, we can extrapolate that with the representation that they make of themselves. And now you see the connection between the being of that person and the problem. Just like you, well, I'm moving a little bit too fast.

First of all, could you see the effect of your personality upon your problem, rather than of your problem upon your self? You see that the problem is not a problem irrespective of yourself. That you are involved in it. And that means your personality. And likewise, the personality of that person is involved in the problem, too. Now, bringing the third person, and a fourth person, and more and more people. So that would be like looking at Notre Dame from several vantage points at the same time. And you'd have a far better appreciation of Notre Dame than if you were just seeing it from one angle. 

Now, the same thing would apply to your own self image. Imagine  that you are able to collate the vantage points of many people about  tape 1, page 21

your own self and extrapolate between them. And then you have a rather incongruent admixture of opinions that are contradictory, and yet somehow, the reality seems to emerge out of that incongruence.

To give you an example, I don't know if you're familiar with that book of Khalil Gibran called Jesus the Man . You have all these different people saying how they saw Jesus. And every one is totally different, absolutely contradictory, but when you bring then all together, you have a picture of Jesus that you couldn't have from just reading the Bible. But you have to read the Bible, too, of course.

In the same way, a sort of a great diversity and richness of vantage points that tally, although they seem sometimes absolutely opposite. For example, Dr. David Boehm. I don't know whether you've heard of him. He was one of the greatest physicists who became one of the greatest philosophers of our time, or at least in my opinion. So, he suggested an experiment. Imagine that you have two cine-cameras, and you film fish in an aquarium from both sides at the same time, and then if you were to view those two films side by side simultaneously, they would be very different, and yet you would see that there is some connection between them. So, you see what I mean by the sense that you get out of collating several vantage points. 

 tape 1, page 22

 Now, this could be carried further. Well, can be carried further. What one could say has been said better than I've heard it said by anybody by St. Francis of Assisi, who said, "That which I am looking for is looking at me." That makes all the difference.

In physics we know that, the investigating subject alters the function of the electron by looking at it, you see. Yet, we don't know what the electron is like if we don't look at it. So, your view of your problem has a distorting effect because you are somehow impacting it by your view. And so, it's wonderful of course to learn to be able to question one's vantage point, and that represents exactly the first stage in the steps leading to Samadhi in Yoga. In Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, the first step is to question your assessment of your problems. That's the first thing. But the second step, that's not good enough; it's still negative. The second one is really looking at them as though they are looked upon as they are, rather than looked upon by you. So, do away with psychological projections upon the problem. So that's a first step, or amongst the first steps.

 I don't think that you're ready for a break, but I'm going to open a new chapter, and we're going to have to interrupt it with a break at some point. 

 tape1, page 23

I said before, a simplistic mind is reactionary; that is that it is reacting, so that it's not just interpreting, but it is reacting on the strength of one's interpretation. So, now you are meditating, and you realize that thoughts impinging upon your mind from outside, because the world is not transposed within you. So, that which was actual, circumstantial, makes up the elements of your psyche now, which have an impelling effect upon your consciousness. They force your consciousness into looking at them, seeing them. 

Well, we could do a practice just to prepare ourselves for this. Just think that your glance is made up of two beams of light, like the head lamps of a car. And that is true that our retina does not just absorb light from the environment. It does fluoresce light, or emit light, because there's a lot of light in the brain. So just concentrate very strongly on those two headlights with your eyes closed. Now, if you open your eyes, immediately the environment will force your glance into focus so that you see the objects, and you've lost your sense of the beams of light that are emitted from your eyes. So, close your eyes again, and concentrate a little more intensely on the power of your glance. Think that those searchlights are cast upon all things, that you're looking upon the darkness and it is not the light of the environment that is hitting your retina, but that the light of your glance is hitting upon the objects, for example. If you open your eyes now, the physical world will look like a blur, unless, I mean, normally it's the other way around. Normally, our eyes will be  tape1, page24

forced into focus by the objects. Now, if you keep your concentration, everything will look like a blur, but in time, if you do that day after day and day after day for many, many months, you'll get to the point where you're able to open your eyes for a short while, and then train your eyes towards a person, for example -- do it with a flower first, and then with a person -- and you are able to see what the Sufis call "that which transpires behind that which appears." 

Now, that's a point of words again, but I'll try to illustrate it. I don't know whether you're familiar with the photographs of Walter Chapell, who photographs flowers in ultra-violet light, and you can see that they look very different from the way they look in ordinary light. One can see a kind of radiance, and effulgence, like in Kirlian photography, around the flower. And while you still see the profile of the flower, the outline of the flower, that radiance extends beyond that profile and does not have itself a profile. So, after you, sometimes you can even sense the radiance coming from within the petals, not from just around the petals. So, that's what the Sufis call, "that which transpires beyond that which appears."

So, if you look at people while off-setting your glance from the ordinary setting of consciousness, then you might do two things. one, well, you might perceive the aura, but that's not what our objective is, but you might perceive a kind of expression that is coming, that is  tape1, page 25

transpiring through the configuration of the face, and you know how the same face can look very different depending upon one's attunement. So, that's what the Sufis mean by "that which transpires behind that which appears."

So, all right, now if that is accepted, then if we make a next step, considering your problems, and try to x-ray your problems with the light of your understanding so that you are able to grasp that which is trying to transpire in that problem, rather than that which appears. There are many things of course which are trying to transpire. 

We're going to try to earmark them, but at least one of them might be, what are the issues that are enacted in that scenario. For example, the whole problem is there so that eventually truth will become known. That's the issue that is enacted in this problem. Or, then, the issue is compassion. Or the issue is orderliness, as opposed to randomness or chaos. Mastery. There are all kinds of issues that we might try to identify. So, you could say that that gives you a sense that there is something that is trying to transpire in circumstances which make up your problem. So, if you just judge the problem from the face value, then you haven't really grasped the problem, because that's a very perfunctory way of looking at things. There are deeper issues. 

But you will find that you can't sort these things out with your mind, with your ordinary mind. So it's a much more, an intuitive sense, rather than reason, and it's not supported by reason. And in order to do that you will need to shift your sense of identity and identify with your subtle body, for example, rather than your physical body. This morning I was talking about the electromagnetic field, or the life field, or the force field. They are not the same thing, of course. They are different ways of looking at it. But, if you think of yourself as a field rather than a composition of particles. If you think of yourself as a wave interference pattern, like radio waves, for example, and your body as a hard core within this radio-interference pattern, you'll see connections between what one calls facts or events, circumstances, that you hadn't seen before. Because you were looking at things from one vantage point. Now, if you turn within, in what Dr. David Bohms calls the implicate state, then, you do not refer things to your own sense of your individual self.

Now, I'll try to illustrate this. For example, and eclipse of the sun with the moon is only significant from the vantage point of the planet at a certain point in time and space. But the sun and the moon are always eclipsing themselves, would look eclipsed if they were looked at from some other location in space. So, situations are only significant to us when they are seen from our own personal vantage point. Now, we were extending our vantage point a  tape 1, page 27

moment ago, and so the consequence is that you are able to see situations irrespective of your own personal vantage point. Now that happens as you turn within. 

To explain exactly what that is. You see, the trouble is that if you were meditating, one assumes that meditating means turning within. One assumes that. One sits quietly and, as I said, the world continues to exist within you, transposed, as psychic events. That's introspection. And the trouble is that it is very misleading, because we're so used to thinking that we are the subject observing an object other than ourselves. If you turn within, that kind of way of thinking doesn't work any more. Because you are both the witness and that which you are observing. In other words you are the subject and the world is other than yourself. But here it is yourself that you are observing, and you are also the observer. And so, one has you replace the usual way of experiencing and of thinking by basing your cognizance on a very different principle from that of the dichotomy subject/object. And that principle is of resonance of affinity. It's recognizing something because it matches something which is within you. Not other than yourself, but in you. Recognizing the other in yourself and yourself in the other. A kind of osmosis between beings.

So, the frontiers that seem to divide us at the surface have petered out. Therefore, things look very differently. I'll give you an illustration. Supposing that you are swimming at the surface of the lake and you saw water lilies, and you plunge under the surface and you see that it is just a network of roots that emerge as water lilies, but those water lily plants are not discrete entities, but they are all linked up together. They are expressions of the root.

So that's what you do as you turn within. Think of the world as the outer manifestation of a reality where everything is intertwined, intermeshed. What Prigoine calls the implicate state. And you yourself are so inextricably intermeshed with all other beings, that I don't say you lose your identity, it's a different sense of identity. That is that your identity is not based upon your sense of location in space.

Again, I could illustrate it. For example, if you throw several pebbles on the surface of the lake, and you'll see individual eddies on the surface of the lake, and eventually these eddies start composing with one another and forming what is called a wave-interference pattern. And eventually you've lost sight of the individual eddies. And you think they have disappeared because you've lost sight of them. But each eddy has its own signature, let's say, frequency range. And the fact is that even though they compose, they still maintain their identity within this admixture. It's very difficult to understand that. But physicists are able to isolate waves that have been, that have merged into a wave interference pattern, by what they call a f____ analysis. So, in the same way, as you turn within, you merge with all beings without really losing your identity. We're not used to thinking that way. 

It will give you a mode of understanding that is very different from your usual one, because one sees things in their context. For example, you see your problem in its context, instead of just seeing your problem. 

I hope you see the difference between this and introspection. In introspection, you are the judge, and you think of your thoughts as the observed, and here your own sense of being the subject is expanded, is interspersed in the totality, and consequently you have a very different understanding, and your problems involve not only a few people, but in fact the whole universe. So instead of thinking, "These are my problems," you think, "I am involved in the drama that is enacted in the cosmos, and I thought that this was my particular problem, but it is really my participation in the drama of the cosmos, and in fact I am the consciousness of the cosmos discovering itself as me. 

It's good to start the day in early morning meditation in silence and then gradually build up one's energy by using breathing practices. We shall be in the course of this retreat we shall be going through a very deep internal transformation process. So this morning, we're just going to prepare ourselves for the journey. What I suggest is that you start by simply being aware of your breath, inhale, exhale, and just be aware of it without trying to influence it in the least. 

You will find that by the sheer fact of being aware of it it will slow down, especially if you are in a peaceful mood. Now, it's important to know that you are not just drawing in oxygen from the environment and ejecting toxic gases, but one is plugging into the energy field of the planet and in fact eventually the whole universe. And so there is an exchange between one's own electro-magnetic field, for example, or life field and the electro-magnetic field of the planet -- called the geoelectromagnetic field -- or even of the whole universe.  So, this function is enhanced if you are aware of your own magnetism, or electromagnetic field, or life field. It seems to be surrounding the body and also is interspersed within the cells of the body. tape IA, page 2

 And then, identify with that field instead of with your body. And so, it is just as though -- let's say one can illustrate it by a balloon, for example, that is being inflated as you inhale and deflated as you exhale. And yet there is something rather perplexing, because according to Yoga, as you exhale you contract your abdomen first and then your chest, but while you do this you expand your life field. As you inhale you inflate first your abdomen and then your chest, and you experience a convergence of the magnetic field of the universe into your force field, your life field. So convergence together with dilatation of your abdomen and chest. 

Now, there may be, you might recognize several modes of breathing. Let us, well, inhale through the nose out through the nose, inhale through the nose out through the mouth, inhale through the mouth out through the nose, inhale through the mouth out through the mouth. So let us examine each one of these in turn. 

First of all the usual way of breathing: in through the nose, out through the nose. Now, this is considered by the Sufis as, or you could look upon it as "Baptism with Earth." Alchemical process. And that is, it is the first stage in the process of catarthis, of purification. So, imagine that as you exhale, your force field or electromagnetic field or even life field is drained either through the bottom of your spine or the soles of your feet, into Mother Earth, who very kindly accepts to take upon this pollution and recycle it. So that when you inhale you are drawing in earth energy that has undergone this process of, let's say, dialysis. 

So, one feels integrated with fresh energy as one inhales after having cleared a lot of dross. In fact, now you could start by exercising some measure of will power to extend your exhaling volitionally, because you know that normally we only use one fifth of the capacity of our lungs, so this would be an opportunity of really voiding your lungs of a lot of static gasses that have become congested. And then you find that you can inhale much more deeply, in fact you can refill your lungs now with much more oxygen than ever before. 

Now, that being so, the same is true of your psyche. So, just think of those elements in your psyche that you are unhappy with, uncomfortable with, and which you would like to drain. Just like the toxins of the body are drained by the lymph glands, the whole lymph system, into the kidneys. And just like a drain in your bathtub. So, it works both ways, physical pollution, and also the psychological pollution, both at the same time. And it's good to be able to associate these two as you exhale. 

As you inhale you will find that while you are drawing in fresh energy from the earth, at the psychological level, you know that we  tape !A, are continually imbibing the psychological environment, and if there has been a clearing, then one is able to ingest the psychological environment more effectively, and as a matter of fact, the earth element in alchemy is used as a filter. And the reason is because the heavier elements are pulled downwards by the gravity pull, and then there is a kind of counter-force that we call buoyancy. So, you might find that those psychological aspects of your self, those features of yourself that you are not comfortable with, tend to wear you down. So think of a kind of psychological gravity pull. And then, the other way around, a kind of buoyancy, in the sense of being freed of the ballast of those elements of the psyche that one would like to get rid of and one cannot combat by one's will. 

I don't know how many of you are familiar with Sufi practices. I would point out that the two wasaif that you could make use of her are Subhan and Muhyi. Subhan as you exhale and Muhyi as you inhale. 

Now, each of the four elements, let's say, as defined by alchemy, have their psychological connotations. I'm sure that you'll confirm that if you think of the earth it gives you a sense of support, reliability, responsibility, being consequential, being germane. I think of people you can really count upon, and you want to be amongst those who can be relied upon in, for example, a team. Each person takes responsibility for each other.  tape 1A, page 5

So, one wants to reestablish a kind of covenant with the earth. For example, as the Native Americans did, or do. She will provide you with your nourishment if you respect her and give her, satisfy her basic needs, which are less exacting than your own. And of course, it will require what is called husbandry. You will have to tend her with care and consistently in an ongoing way. Thus, does the earth call upon our sense of responsibility. And, just communion with the very spirit of the earth will give you a sense of strength, resilience, a kind of sustained power, and then naturally, that is true at all levels, including the psychological level. 

So, for those who are familiar with the Sufi practices, Wasi, the sense of containment in one's responsibility and Muqit, nurturing. As you see, it is a covenant. 

Now, if you inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Try it. Your lips are closed and therefore you force the air between the lips. It gives you a sense of coolness. As you would do if you were whistling. So, as you see the energy is clearly oriented, or much more oriented than in the previous one as you exhale. So, now, if you, instead of identifying as your body, you identify with your electromagnetic field, and you will find that, at least you will be aware of the currents of energy, like electric currents, that are flowing within that magnetic field. You will discern an ascending/descending current, alternating, or even parallel.  tape 1A, page 6

So, then you have again this dichotomy between the gravity pull of the earth and buoyancy of the heavenly spheres. But this time, it's not filtering, but washing, as one might say, ablution. So, exactly as though you were taking a shower, but imagine that the shower intersperses your body cells, internally. And, I suppose as you inhale you could think of a fountainhead rising as a spring, an artesian spring rising. And a waterfall descending as you exhale. 

Of course, it's a feeling of transmutation, at least of distillation. Water flows downwards, but in the retort it is of course distilled and becomes steam, as you inhale. So it is another step in working with, well, preparing oneself for life after life, that is fashioning the body of resurrection. So, I would say that maybe I should have been a little bit more precise in saying that when we were dealing with baptism with earth we were dealing with our electromagnetic field, or even force field, but here we are dealing with our life field. I am talking about something a little more difficult to grasp.

Now, together with this catharsis of your life field, there is an impact of this practice upon your psyche, catharsis again. First of all let's just try to feel what water means to you in your interface with the planet for example. It's flowing, whereas the earth gives you the impression of being static. And it's much more malleable, that is, while the earth will crack up into an earthquake, for example, water will wend its way between the rocks. So one who has that feature in  tape 1A, page 7

a prominent way would be more versatile and more adaptable, and certainly more loving and more giving. Earth is already giving, nurturing, but the earth vitalizes. Water has an extraordinary property which chemists know about in the way energies pass from the electron of one atom to the other. There's a flow of energy internally within your body cells. And so at the psychological level it favors communication. The flow of energy from one being to another. And even the osmosis between beings at the psychological level.

The tendency to confluence instead of interspersing. For example, waves will form together wave interference patterns, whereas particles will either avoid each other or collide. Or it's a different kind of disposition where you find more willingness to cooperate. So you could think of those situations in your life that have become static and you would like to make situations more flowing, moving. So that's the practice Wahabbo. And then of course love, compassion, willingness to cooperate, to work together, to feel a part of each other, solidarity. So, waddud, which is love or rahman/rahim, magnanimity and compassion. 

Now, let us try breathing in through the mouth, exhaling through the nose. This would be the baptism with fire. At this point, it's possible for you to identify with your aura, rather than with your magnetic field or life field. That is the bioluminescence, that is the light that  tape1A- page 8

you absorb from the environment and also transmit in the environment, so that the body fluoresces. Think of your, that there's a central axis within the aura that is something like a flame that is rising in your spinal cord. And you notice all the differences in the colors, that is the frequencies of light, that follow in a sequence that is in a spectrum moving from red to vermilion and orange into gold and green, blue, violet, ultraviolet, colorless light. So that there is a transition as you inhale through the mouth you feel that the flame is sucking oxygen out of the environment in order to fuel the flame. So it is really consuming the environment, but transforming it of course in a rather drastic way, so that eventually heat is transformed into light, or at least plasma, that is the heat-element, well, the infrared is somehow transmuted into, well, the colors of the spectrum and then eventually ultra violet light.

Now, as you exhale through the nose, and feel as though having burnt as an incandescent body, you now radiate pure light. We call it the transmutation of fire into light. That is what it's called traditionally. 

At this point I start being conscious of radiating light from the heart center, but in a second step through the crown, or from the crown outwards. Perhaps you notice that breathing in through the mouth has a very different effect than breathing in through the nose, because if your lips are as close as they can be while you are sucking in air, then the current of air seems to hit, I think the thyroid gland, the heart chakra. So, it vitalizes the whole combustion process in the body. And of course at the psychological level, it gives you zest, it gives you courage to stand by what you believe in and also courage to be absolutely up front, and consequently truthfulness, so that truthfulness is often associated with a flame that burns intensely. And consequently, of course, burns all the impurities in a more, in fact even within one's aura there is some pollution due to the environment, so that even one's aura is purified and transmuted, so that eventually one radiates beautiful -- what the Tibetans call the pure light of bliss. And you feel as though you'd had a shower of light, but instead of the shower going down it's going up. And so, I would say Ya Haqq and Ya Nour. 

Truthfulness purifies the psyche. Where there is deviousness and ambiguity. 

Now, the last one, baptism with air. So, you are breathing in through the mouth and out through the mouth. Now, this seems to match a mode of being that seeks freedom, that tends to disperse. Like air will disperse unless it is subjected to some kind of containment, like  tape 1A, page 10

the gravity pull of the earth. So a sense of a longing for freedom tends to make us defocussed and less open to constraint and therefore subject to constraint. And so you find the features in character that are of the nature of air. There is no way of holding one, or even if one's body is in prison, one's mind cannot be subjected to constraint, one's soul. In fact there was a lady who was being lynched in the Southern states, and she said, "You can do what you like with my body, you can't touch my soul." And so that -- our celestial counterpart, which gives you a sense of freedom from death as a matter of fact, from mortality of eternity rather than being subjected to the process of becoming. So it's a kind of freeing, emancipation from the kind of restraint in which we engage ourselves not only factually, but also in our way of thinking or of identifying. 

Purification in the sense of for example not allowing oneself to be held by addiction, for example, because one needs to be free. So in that sense it would be a purification from a kind of defilement that one incurs by one's interfacing with the psychological environment. Shake off the fetters and then you find yourself out of prison. As the Sufi's say, "'h man, if you only knew your freedom: it is your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity." So this has consequences with regard to our modes of thinking. Because let's say, when one is attuned to the earth one's mode of thinking is interactive and even reactive. When one is attuned to water, it is creative, that is it emerges from within. I didn't say, it's a kind of new dispensation, that one is not simply converging the -- confluing actually-- the energy of the environment, and rebounding it again. But one is availing oneself of a new dispensation of energy that emerges from within. So that at this level one is not highlighting the ascending/descending currents, one highlights the centrifugal/ centripetal ones. So that's the kind of attunement that is going to awaken the emergent forces from within. 

Whereas the third attunement, the attunement with the whole process of effulgence, radiation and so forth, will favor your recollection of your having been a celestial being and still being a celestial being now. And consequently, our sense of our values, our ideal, those things that we estimate highly. So that your mode of thinking is not based on experience but rather on a kind of innate sense of values, like aesthetics, for example. It is the celestial within us that suffers from the defilement of our earthly conditions. And acts as a continual reminder of one's ideal. And that kind of consciousness suffers if not given the appropriate meditation practices. Baptism with air. Our  very need for freedom will help our consciousness to free itself from the impelling force of experience, the existential state. And consequently, one discovers modes of  tape 1A, page 12

thinking that are not based upon experience, but which only arise when, as Murshid says, consciousness has been voided of its objects and it returns to its ground which is intelligence. So, it's a whole different way of thinking. And this can only happen if one identifies the subject in one, that is the witness, with the divine spectator, the one and only spectator, of which one's ego as the subject is an extension. But whereby it is limited and focalized and even distorted. 

So that, let's say the thinking of the cosmos, and eventually the thinking of the universe will eventually overwhelm your personal thinking which is subject to the limitations of the existential state. And this leads of course to samadhi. 

The practices here are Ya Wahid and Ya Ahad. Ya Wahid could mean, well, there are several senses, one would be multiplicity in unity. And the other is the unity inherent in multiplicity. And by derivation, the solitude of oneness. And Ahad means that one has lost the sense of multiplicity, and all that remains is the sense of oneness. 

Bless you.

MAR 16, 1996		Tape 03

 PVK MADIS'N 3/16/96 TAPE 3, SIDE 1 1)

Let us start with a breathing practice, a typical Sufi breathing practice. That is, as you exhale, think that your exhaling is an extension of the Divine Exhaling whereby God descends from the solitude of unknowing about the existential state and moved by what is called Ishk Allah and nostalgia to actualize His/Her  vision into existential reality so that splendor may become beauty or be manifested as beauty and also majesty. And as you inhale, it's the other way around. Imagine that you are inhaling as an extension of the Divine Inhaling whereby God draws the  quintessence of that which has been gained by the existential state back into the programming, that is thereby upgraded and updated, and consequently so that the quintessence of that which has been gained by experience may be eternalized. 

Let's say may avail itself to the universe somehow, just like the perfume of flowers. In order to extract the perfume of flowers one needs to drop the dross so that only the essence is extracted and so that acquires a certain freedom or detachment from let us say the support system and so consider that on one hand let us say these are two very strong motivations in our life: on one hand involvement in life with people and the kind of know-how that arises out of this and on the other hand our need for freedom. We think it is freedom from circumstances but really speaking it is freedom from conditioning and for this to happen we need to do exactly what distillers are doing with perfume: we need to cleave to the essence of our being that is eternal that is eternal, like the perfume. Let's say the flowers are smart or they have a very precarious foothold on the planet earth and they manage somehow to eternalize themselves or make themselves eternal by transforming themselves into perfume. 

So that is the process of resurrection. We're working with the body of resurrection. We see those two forces and you might recognize in the first one nostalgia which is translated by desire--I don't think that's the appropriate word: I prefer nostalgia. But anyway, a kind of joy to find fulfillment in life. So, as you see, the way of the Sufi is not asceticism:  'la Rabin*(??)*ff 'n Islam**(?) And consequently it is not the way of desirelessness as in Buddhism for example. But, however, one has to be clear what the motivation is behind our motives and if we alienate our sense of identity from our Ground which we call God, then that nostalgia, that deep nostalgia gets distorted and can work against itself as is the case where desire becomes counterproductive and destructive. So of course the clue behind all this is to reconnect ourselves with the totality of which we are the expression instead of which we are a part. 

And do this as you exhale and inhale so that what it amounts to really is to start by trying to look at things from the Divine point of view and then work down into your personal point of view, like going down a funnel for example. 

Silence.So although at first sight these two tendencies would seem to pull you in opposite directions. The whole idea here is to reconcile them, called the reconciliation of the irreconciliables because somehow we had to actualize that initial drive in ourselves in order to be able to contribute in our experience to the know-how of the universe. And they're both connected as you see. (silence) 

So you may be aware of your desire which might lead to covetousness wanting to make your house beautiful and have a beautiful house or nice car or whatever, clothes, somehow, and involvement with people where you are enriched by your interface and interchange with people and feeding on the wonderful things that our great civilizations offered us in terms of music and architecture, now of course, technology, so not to be ignored or discarded. Then on the other hand, of course, you realize that this involvement gives joy but at the same time it is at the cost of some measure of pain and at some moments one has a real need for freedom and one does not know how to find that freedom because at first one thinks that it is allowing to free ourselves from circumstances and so what does it mean to find freedom in oneself? That is exactly what we want to pursue in our spiritual quest. I would say--if a word could say it, of course that word would be awakening and though maybe you can feel, while you feel that nostalgia in yourself or involvement you may, there is a saying of my father that might trigger off some very meaningful discoveries in you, and he says: "Every planet, every star, every atom, every person has a moment of awakening or is seeking for awakening so somehow you can feel that the awakening of your awareness beyond middle range is just absolutely knocking at the door and becomes such a need that everything pales as compared with it. You may reach a point where you are suffocating in your ignorance and would like to know: how does one gain more insight. This is what we propose in the course of this retreat. 

Well, there is a secret. Of course we have the efforts of the contemplatives of many different schools: Yoga, Buddhism, Cabala, Christianity. Of course they are different in many ways. There is some cross-over, of course, some overlap, so one has to be a little bit careful of generalizing but I would say that I see in yoga an effort of the will to take over and take over autonomic functions in the body and also to control the mind and  it seems that the will of course then starts at least by being grounded upon one's sense of personal identity and then one gradually shifts one's sense of identity but eventually it is-- how can I say--that attractor, that is Atman, that is, let's say, the soul of the universe. 

That is what is meant by one way of thinking of God which frees you from the limitation of your personal will so the personal will is overcome. So I see there is something which is--you find the same thing in Buddhism--which does resemble Sufism but somehow in Sufism the notion of the antipodal point of view or even consciousness, vantage point of one's own is absolutely prevalent and so if you want to understand Sufism you have to--I think the thing to do is to understand that one is always seeing things from two antipodal standpoints: one being the point of view of the individual and the other the point of view of God but of course, well--say that the notion of God is very different in amongst the contemplatives of Sufis than it is in the outward religion because, you know, the Prophet Mohammed gave the outer religion for the masses and in the course of the (**newmass ??**) of prayer the contemplatives began to have a deep experience beyond their concept of God. You see, we make concepts of something that is beyond our understanding and of course we limit it by our understanding so somehow if somebody says, "God", well then we try to understand, well, what does it mean? Does it mean a big man up there with beard, big white beard, and us miserable worms down here being manipulated or then what do we mean? See. 

And so we project what we would like God to be based on what we know of ourselves so that concept depends upon the degree of our realization and then Pir-o-Murshid, my father, goes on to say, "But mysticism starts by the experience of God rather than the concept." And so our way is not the way of belief but the way of experience, but belief is like the shoe-horn. But then you might say: "But how can you have the experience of God because God-- that ultimate reality--is unknowable and cannot be the object of your cognizance." And so here we have the great dilemma and the fact is that if you see things from two antipodal standpoints then they reflect one another. That's a mirroring effect that you find in Sufism. And so, say that we have to distinguish between those two poles of knowledge: one is acquired knowledge--call it know-how by experience--and the other is revealed knowledge. Revealed.

Now that's a very different way -of looking at things. Somehow the unknown making itself known instead of thinking that we can know it, we can acquire that knowledge. And therefore for Sufism the whole of the universe is manifestation of revelation of something that can never be the object of our knowledge because it does not have a form and is not attributable to time and space.

So these are the premises upon which we are going to base a very deep study of a practice of the Sufis which is called the Zikr. But there is no use just repeating the words and doing the practice. What we want to do is for the practice to trigger off  realizations and to see how we can enlist these realizations. 

And I want to say in addition that according to Pir-o-Murshid, then the third step after the experience of God is awakening the God within. And that is doing instead of knowing.

So that is a feature of Sufism. Now, if you might say, what does it mean, awakening God within, well there's a word Murshid, my father says: "The mind of the universe has been buried in matter and is continually trying to awaken." It's a very interesting way of looking at things. Imagine for example that your body is intelligent instead of that the cells are intelligence, instead of thinking that it's just dust. People used to think that dust goes to dust and after we die then the body is just a clothing. So that carries with the thought that somehow every atom has a moment of awakening. 

We have body consciousness and that is a symptom of the awakening of matter within us and consequently you'll find that in the Zikr the body participates in the spiritual experience because the body is making motion that corresponds to what happens to our  understanding and whereas if you seek for Samadhi then you sit in one place and do not move but then your seeking for Samadhi is awakening beyond life but what the Sufis are seeking for is awakening in life, so much more difficult to understand than Samadhi. So before we engage in the practice of the Zikr one more of those preliminaries.

That is, you could ask yourself: Does the universe as a being have awareness of itself as a being? Now, of course, you could say, "Well, we can't answer that. We don't know." Well, does our knowledge of the universe contribute to the knowledge the universe has of itself? Does our knowledge of the universe contribute to the knowledge that the universe has of itself.

If we are like the branches of a tree, then does the knowledge of the part of the whole contribute toward the knowledge of the whole? Well, that would mean that the universe awakens in our awakening and instead of saying that we are awakening it is the universe that is awakening in us and as us. 

You could even ask a further question which is: Do we benefit by the knowledge that the universe has of itself through us? Well, the way that I put this corresponds to three propositions of a very wonderful Sufi teacher, Ibn' Arabi who says, for example: "In contemplating Him we contemplate ourselves" or in contemplating us He contemplates himself, and so on. Well, that's reciprocity which is typical of Sufism and which evidences a kind of mirroring effect and in fact the Sufis have this view of what they call (?*Ina Hannah (sp)??) the palace of mirrors, mirrors that reflect each other in infinite regress so there's no end. 

So that would make us understand what we mean by revelation because there's always the opposite to our understanding. You see, there's some kind of reciprocity. Well, what implication does this have in terms of our experience of the world for example, and of course our problems, because they're always there somewhere. And when we meditate it is very difficult now to wipe out altogether any thoughts regarding our problems. Well, I referred to what has become a metaphysical tenet but I think that it is really more pragmatic than metaphysical: it is that the world is maya, I'm referring to a Hindu point of view. It's a mirage. It's maya. It is an illusion and deluding and  misleading and of course it's true: if a physicist sees a trace  on the screen and jumps to the conclusion that it is an electron, well he or she may be deluding himself by basing him/herself on appearance and that's what we are doing all the time. And so what the Hindus are saying is that you shouldn't rely upon the  evidence of the senses, that is, appearance, because it is misleading. But then, you know, to realize that it is misleading doesn't get you very far. It's negative. 

With the Sufi point of view as compared with that point of view it is very interesting because the physical world is made up of clues. Clues. That is, signals that give you a sense of the  reality that is manifesting itself through those clues. So you could say you never know God but you know the clues as to that  reality are being manifested to you, revealed to you continually. That's true. For example the pug marks of the bear in the snow. You haven't seen the bear but you've seen the pug marks--that is, not an experience of the bear but still it does conduct to us knowledge of the bear. So let's say that according to the  Sufis then, the ultimate reality that we might call God escapes your grasp but there are clues that lead towards it and so you're not going out to think that they are clues but they lead towards beyond the clues. 

That's the meaning of what transpires behind that which appears. You can see that for example a signal--if we are listening on planet earth to signals from outer space it will give us some indication as to whether there are intelligent beings out there. So we're listening to signals and then perhaps we will follow those clues and try to organize some kind of encounter, or whatever. But the clues lead us beyond the clues, you see.  So what's obvious here is that we are not just limited by our cognizance but are opening up to the revelation of the point of view that we ascribe to God and that is revealed to us but we cannot acquire. We will always have this bipolar antinomy at every step in the zikr and the consequence is that one is carried beyond one's personal vantage point by subsuming a vantage point which one can never totally encompass but which does free one from the limitation of one's own standpoint. So there's a negative aspect and there's a positive aspect.

In the zikr you have ('la Illa il allah.(sp) You have the two. The negative aspect and the positive aspect. So now the thought is arising in my mind: that is, that you see for the Sufis, and this is just a point of the Sufis (and of course they are being condemned for this view) is that this whole universe is the being of God. For example, Ibn' Arabi says: "He is both the seer and  that through which He sees." So we mustn't think that God is up there and we and the universe are other than God, so let's say the cosmos as the body of the one being that is the universe, uni-verse (das so es uno ??SP) . (PIR LAUGHS HERE)??) So we have this challenging paradox of a view of the dervishes that can only be condemned by religion or let's say by theology because  theology is a mental representation of something that cannot be  represented by the mind. 

So the dervish is always saying: "Why do you look for God up there? He is here." Well! That's a totally different way of looking at things. And why do you think God is other than yourself? He is you. But then if I say I am God, then of course that--you'd end up in an asylum. That's why Ibn' Arabi says: "know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God." So you get into paradoxes. As soon as you try to reach beyond the only way of thinking you get into paradoxes and so that's why the sayings of the Sufis are so incongruous for simple minded people. And that's why Sufism is so little popular and so little known: because it's so challenging; except that now we're seeking the incongruity (*it) is fashionable, and therefore Sufism would probably be a little more fashionable in the next (?***) (Laughter) 

So what does that mean? I hardly dare say it because I could be burned at the stake for saying this. Can you think of God as a virtuality that becomes a reality in existence? or like the code, for example the software of the universe that becomes reality--yes, software of the computor that becomes reality in the hardware. Can you see that? Well, that's a very revolutionary view which carries absolutely with the modern views of physics. I could illustrate it--for example, well--for example the pathway of an airplane, it's not like the auto route or the highway for a car which is already set but the airplane discovers its path and in fact constructs its path as it moves. So you can see there's really autoconstructing, autostructuring itself. That's a word of Prigogine. God autostructuring Himself in the forms of the world but existing as a potentiality. Existing--it's the wrong word. God is and becomes existant in the universe. Is as a potentiality, and that's the idea of (?SP Imkann) in Sufism. It means all possibility as a level that one reaches in one's meditation when one somehow reaches beyond the limitation of one's mind and one can't say one grasps. One can only say that one espies the level of all possibility and one sees that whatever occurs in the universe is only, represents only a very small fraction of the all possibilities that are virtual. 

And consequently for the Sufi--there is a saying of Pir-o-Murshid that I would say is absolutely central and which corresponds with the view of the Sufis, Ibn' Arabi particularly, and that is: Make God a reality. Instead of saying I want to know God, make God a reality. How can you make of God a reality? As you. So therefore the accent is on, well, I refer to a word of I'bn Arabi that is based upon the Koran, Sheriff, and which says, the Sura in the Koran says: "There is nothing on earth that does not have its tenuities (that means very fine correspondence. That's a fine thread, isn't it) with us." So there's a word of Ibn' Arabi that says: "Our  response to the Divine action in us causes the Divine Archetypes to descend into forms." I'm sorry, I'm talking a very highly metaphysical language but it's the only way to say it. So, as you say, Sufism is only for smart people. (much laughter here). This sounds, of course, very intellectual but the mind participates in the realization that we are looking for by extending beyond its limits and as I said, the whole body participates in it too. 

Let us start with the practice of the zikr now and I'll try to  see if I can point out clues on the way. First of all, simply move your head in a circular fashion and imagine your head faces your left shoulder and if you are sitting cross-legged, then your left knee and your right knee and then your right shoulder and then right up towards the zenith. So that would be, at least at first it seems like a circle. If you like you could think of it a s a spiral. You'll notice that even just the movement of the body has the effect of expanding your consciousness into the galaxies as Jelalludin Rumi said. So somehow you are reestablishing your connection with the total--not just cosmos-- but even the total universe, because, well we described layers of our being, the peripheral layers and then the inner layers, so obviously when you are expanding then you get into the outer layers where there is overlap with the environment and that extends right into the whole universe. So then you lose a sense of yourself as a discrete entity just like, for example, a vortex: a whirlpool in the water that doesn't have boundaries. So now you've lost a sense of your boundaries and your consciousness becomes all encompassing and expanded or expanded and all encompassing. (pause) 

Now you notice that at the moment when your head is turned towards the zenith it is in what is called a state of unstable  equilibrium just like imagine that you had a pail of water and you were swinging it around in circles. If you keep on moving the water won't drop out, even if the pail is upside down. But of course if there is a moment of hesitation it will. So at the moment--so you realize that moving in a circle you are generating centrifugal forces and then you're generating centripedal forces. The centrifugal forces are expanding your consciousness right out into infinite regress into the universe. But, as I said, you might lose your sense of your personal identity and then now if you just let your head follow that impulse, let's say feel the pull of the void in your solar plexus--think of your solar plexus as a gate into the vacuum because you know that the center of the centrifuge is a vacuum. So now you're breaking out of the  circle because you are responding to the pull of the center and that's the reason why when one is circumambulating a  temple one is strengthening one's concentration on the temple. So now you are, by the fact that you have been circumambulating your solar plexus you will be generating more and more power

 End of side 1.

as you turn toward your solar plexus.

So you remember this morning we started by looking at our problems and seeing how we were interfacing with circumstances  around us and adapting ourselves to the environment and trying  to provide some means of protecting ourselves or coping with the  assault of the environment upon us, upon our vulnerable being inside and then if you remember we turned within because we found that if we were just concerned with the environment we were identifying with the peripheral areas of our being and not  really in touch with our deeper self and so if you give vent to the centripedal forces instead of the centrifugal ones, then you attempt to highlight your inner being. That is called turning within. And, you remember this morning, we suddenly discovered who we are and our countenance behind our mask. You see, that is what transpires behind that which appears. There is a sentence in the Sura of the Koran: "Everywhere is the face of God," and what is meant is the reality that does not ever form is continually coming through by the divisive forms. If you remember, this morning, then we tried to get in touch with the environment from within instead of from without. 

We got in touch with the lotus flowers or the water lilies from underneath through the roots. So while you are doing this, there is a kind of--how can you say--a psychic effect so that having turned within, then as you reach out you would be reaching out from within rather than returning into your only way of looking out  and consequently what I would advise you to do now is to, particularly as you turn within, to shift your sense of identity and say it's your body that you identify with. You identify with your, you could call it your subtle body, etheric body, electromagnetic field, light field, whatever. See if you can feel it around your arms, your forearms. Actually, your shoulders. You feel a kind of--like the feel of a magnet, you know. So its the energy field, and also in front of your heart. I hope you can actually feel that energy field and think of your body as a formation within that field so that field is like a  template in which your body is being formed. Now really identify with that field: subtle body; latif; and see then how it affects you as you are doing that motion. Your magnetic field is whirling like a story of Jelaluddin Rumi, and well, you know what happens when one whirls a magnet, for example: you are inducing a current. And so you are building up a tremendous amount of energy which will affect many things. It will affect your body, and so on. 

Now, this is rather subtle. Well, let's continue. You notice that when your head descends and turns towards the solar plexus it tends to rebound again. In fact in order to be able to get in the circle the head is going to have to rebound again and so now we are proceeding in a totally different dimension that you  could call transcendental or transcendent instead of cosmic. I hope you can follow what I'm saying. You see, the sense of expansion gives you a sense of the cosmic dimension of your being, like the wholistic--your wholistic interrelationship with the environment. But when your head turns upwards then you have a feeling of being elevated. Maybe its just a feeling but you're creating circumstances that, conditions that are favorable to discovering levels of your being which one could call celestial  levels of one's being and which are not subject to the same time relationship to the same mortality as our physical body and even our **??? *?. 

OK, so now after going into the circle as you exhale in the circle you inhale as your head comes down which seems rather strange and you continue inhaling as the head goes up. Try and see how it works. (pause)


That will give you a sense of--well, maybe its a kind of illusory sense of lifting oneself above one's body and one shouldn't follow-up that up because it would lead to astral projections and that's not what we want to do. But let us say that we start shifting our sense of identity from identifying with our physical body and identifying with our psyche into identifying ourselves  with, as I say, a level of our being that one might call celestial. So let's stop here and try to look into this a little more. (pause)

You see, when our head is turned towards the solar plexus and I said imagine a vortex, you know, that the center of a hurricane for example, there is a vacuum. So one is drawn into sanyata: into the void. And as the head rebounds then somehow one emerges from the void and so consider that this is creativity, that first of all you remember that creativity was enhanced by a break in the continuity of time--if you remember. So when your head descends and turns toward the solar plexus and then again rises there is a break of continuity although in both cases you are inhaling but just imagine that there is some interruption in your inhaling and during that short interruption you are doing exactly what we were doing this morning. You are enlisting a new birth or a fresh beginning. One is recurrently reborn. If you just observe creative people, like composers for example, you find that they get in a kind of inner space where they can't really grasp what happens. It's like finding oneself in the void. You can't function as a consciousness anymore. And then somehow spontaneous thoughts that are not determined by causality emerge from within and they have the effect of contributing themselves into new elements in your personality. It's like the petals within the flower that unfurl from within. See. I think of the petals that are unfurled from within. 

Now, this is called Mithal. The Allah al Mithal. The Sufis, Shahabuddin Surawardi, for example, calls it thoughts in suspense because they are not the only thoughts. They represent another plane of reality to--whereas normally our thoughts simply reflect the physical plane. These are our thoughts that are not connected with our experience on the physical plane and therefore completely impromptu and that is why the word that is used by the Catholics is "Ex Nilo," one is born "ex nilo": out of nothing;  unpredictably. So just think of that. Think that you are like the flower is, in the way that the roots are below the ground and so forth, in the form of the petals. So an unknown matrix of your being begins to manifest in form and I suppose the definition of the form according to Ibn' Arabi is that it is a  means--it's like a feedback system, it's a means of discovering something that can never be the object of our cognizance but when it is projected in front on the screen of our mind then we have a sense of what it is. In fact, it is a process of self discovery and that's why this morning I said: "Try to imagine the countenance of your real face behind the mask," and it's not something tangible. It is just the way in which something that does not have a form is projected as a form. It is a feedback system so that it helps you to discover yourself. 

In that sense the zikr is a process of self discovery. God continually is revealing Him/Herself by the divisive forms that are only signals but which do lead one into grasping this reality that is continually projecting itself as form. 

Now, one further point and that is that normally if you were to  simply give vent to the new dispensation emerging from within, you would--say, for example, you would transfer your attention from your solar plexus to your heart center and radiate out from your heart center because the heart center is expansive and the solar plexus turned within, inverted, so you would reach from  inside, outside. For example you'd say: la( 'illa illa 'la:??) reach out.

However, to be creative, it is not good enough just to unfurl the potentialities in the seed. For example, a plant is continually recycled. Let's say there's a seed, and then the plant and then it's the seed and so on. You go on like that recycling itself forever unless one breaks the vicious circle, and that's what nature does, by what is called mutation. That's bringing a new element into that eternal recycling and consequently that new element requires one's access to the higher levels of one's being. So, in other words, to be really creative, it is not good enough to recycle what's already there to unfurl, let's say, you potentialities, everyone says. But it is important to fertilize this seed with levels of reality that you could call celestial levels: Malakut; celestial levels.

OK. Let's just pause a little moment (because It might be difficult for me.??) Just come back to the story of the baby, again to the eyes of the baby; particularly a young baby. Well, I don't know if you react the same as I do but it confers in me a recollection of what is called déjà vu. It's like this is familiar somehow but I can't quite place it. It's not--well,  it's very different from what I see in the world. It has to do with some--it tells me something about a dimension of reality that I have lost sight of and which is so meaningful for me that like it's my home and I feel as though I've been exiled from my home; that experience. And it's only if that is so--I mean if that is really so meaningful to you that you can awaken. otherwise there is no way of awakening. So Pir-o-Murshid says-- my father--'ne reaches a stage in one's life when one is moved by a longing for the unattainable and one's soul is elevated beyond the earth plane and those are the moments when one discovers one's true being whereas before when you turned within we thought this is me and now one realizes that there are dimensions of one's being that one cannot reach just by turning within. And the thing about these dimensions is that they represent a break from the recycling, as I said. The influence of mutation of a plant for example, a whole evolutionary process. 

Now this evidence is something which scientists are not all in agreement with. Some are. And that is called retrocausality. That is that instead of the present being the the consequence of the past--now listen to this formula--the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. And that's a real slogan so remember that. The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. 	

For example, there was an article in the "Scientific American" which purported that the evolution of chemistry on the planet earth could not be conceivable if the advent of the human being had not been foreseen. So that is what is cause and attractor. The future has attracted us beyond the present so it's not just the push of the past that determines how we are but somehow-- you see, creativity is, inlists the vision of how things could be. In other words the pull of the future instead of the push of the past. And therefore to really be creative of yourself you have to imagine how you could be and that does not mean--so when I said, looking in the eyes of a baby, brings recollection of a pristine state, well, one is still in that state now. 

But  one is not aware of it. But because if one thinks a pristine state, then it's the past; and so there is some mistake that you find in some Sufis, in fact in Junaid, who talks about returning to the state in which you were prior to your being involved in the process of becoming. Returning to the state in which you were: that's not what spirituality is about. That means that your angelic counterpart, much as it is like a baby, like an embryo, is enriched by your experience of the earth. So seeing the baby will remind you of something of the past and that will bring you in touch with a level of your being which is of a celestial nature but that counterpart of your being--celestial counterpart of your being--is enriched by your experience on the earth. So instead of thinking that my angelic being is defiled by the experience of the earth, which it is, of course, but  although just like the voice of Caruso it's purity is present within its defilement. In addition to that, it is enriched. 

Now, there is just one more piece to this and I don't know whether you can follow this, and that is, my father, Pir-o-Murshid was saying, "The heavens are built on the earth" or he said, "God first built the earth and heavens" and then there was a philosopher there and he said, PIr-o-MUrshid, do you mean that?" "Yeah, yeah," "but I mean, normally one says our country." "Yes, I know." 

Let's say that our celestial state is embryonic and becomes adult through our experience as humans without losing its idiosyncratic nature. So what is that nature? There are a few clues. One is that it is innocent, to the point even of being naive, if you like. And of course perhaps it's the great art of being able to remain innocent and at the same time be wise. The purity of one's understanding that a child has, and animals have sometimes, and which we have lost by our sophistication. Then also by manipulation. Greed, manipulation, and so on. Somehow the child within is buried by those strategies of the ego that I talked about. Just buried. And one can awaken the child within while within one's adult wisdom. The other thing is that the child, I mean the innocent child, is defenseless and so the celestial aspect in our being is unable to defend itself; so that's why our humanness will provide us with a protection because otherwise we would be overwhelmed by the attacks and the assaults of the environment. But still, the--let's say the celestial nature in a being that you find in a saint, for example, makes the saint unable to defend him/herself. The consequence is that you find a great beauty in these beings because the germane features of their being have not been distorted by the strategies of the ego to protect themselves. It's lost innocence, one could say. 

So these are just reflections that may help us to try to understand what happens when one sublimates one's being, because that is exactly what happens in the zikr: as the head goes up, rebounds upwards, somehow the quintessence of one's being is being extracted from the dross. That is a typical alchemical process: distillation. And the consequence is that one begins to identify with the immortal condition of one's being although it is not unchanging because somehow we always associate mortality with change. We change, we die, and so on. But this is a sense like the perfume is in the process of being extracted so it's not unchanging but the flower is eternalized as a perfume. So that's the sense that you have of suddenly discovering your immortality. That's a very strange kind of feeling, like somehow one can survive one's transiency. A kind of victory over death.

So you see, the motion of the zikr, the movements of the head and so on are just indications of the different settings of one's  consciousness and realization corresponding to each of those stages and you can recognize four stages.

One is turning towards the outside and the consciousness expands. The other one is turning within and one begins to see outside from inside. That's called Arwah! Allah( m'al) Arwah. And that state will favor creativity. It starts from inside, Mithal, the world of metaphor, thoughts that are projected as forms, and which reveal our being to us so whereby God reveals his being to us the way it manifests to us because our personality is also made of clues; and then reaching upwards as one calls it, or shifting our sense of identity into discovering the celestial  levels of our being. And to do that, one has to--what one means by shifting one's identity is of course downplaying one's previous self image and replacing it by a celestial one.

Can you do that, like just without the motion of the zikr but think: I thought I was that person who was aggressive because I'm trying to protect myself from the assault of people, especially one person who is trying to destroy me, so I thought that was me but it was a subterfuge and in fact as I turn within then I discover that's just the outer layer of my being and I turn deeper within. And I find something very curious. Because on one hand, you know, we are continually being dissolved. As I say, the jaded petals of the flower fall apart and curiously enough we are being recycled from within so we are dispersed from without. 

Even, you know, the cells of the body are continually being dispersed and there are some electrons of the body that free themselves and Kirlian photography has shown what they call a cold emission of electrons. So they begin to detach themselves from the body. So we are continually dying in that sense and our body dispersing itself and then as we turn within we realize that there is also a kind of absorption of one's being in the void and a recycling where one is a new person. But there is no point in being a reiteration of what one was before. To be a new person one has to enlist all levels of one's being and consequently we start shifting our sense of identity and you cannot do it by your will. It is only your emotion. In fact, your ecstasy that will carry your consciousness beyond the earth planes. And really, the best way to do it is to think that you are being hoisted. I'm thinking of the words of Ibn' Arabi, instead of hoisting ourself, you know. 

So that's where revelation predominates over acquiring knowledge. Ibn' Arabi says: "And God reveals to you the different spheres by helping you to discover that in yourself which corresponds to those planes, those spheres, your counterpart, let's say. Your celestial counterparts. But the condition is that you let go of  the lower spheres and I think one has to go into that a little further. Let go. What does it mean? Because if you let go of your body consciousness you do an astral travel. So what is in my mind, what you are doing is really transmuting your bodiness rather than making a break with your body. See what I mean, because in meditation I think a lot of people--it's a simple method, you see, a lot of people think well, I am not my body, and I discard my body, and I'm taking off and, you know, you shift your sense of identity. For me, for one thing, one can extrapolate between levels of one's being. One can downplay one and highlight the other and toggle but that doesn't mean that one makes a break in the continuity and the sequence of bodies. That's the first thing.

And the second one is that the features of the body are carried upwards into lets say celestial planes. There is a word of Jami, (?Rahman) Jami, who says, "That which was ephemeral has become eternal." And then there is a sentence, a phrase of Jelaluddin Rumi which is absolutely shattering. I don't know whether it's as shattering to you but it is to me or has been to me. So when he says, "Tonight the umpteen stars give rise to the life eternal," that confirms, of course it starts on the earth and then in the heaven but it is that there is a feedback from the existential state into the programing. otherwise, what would be gained by the existential state if it's just illustrating what is already there? Something must be gained by the universe by the existential state and that means that there must be something gained in you, after death, for example, or it doesn't have to be after death even now, by your existential state. Your celestial condition is enriched by your earthly experience. There is no hiatus. No break. 

Now, what Pir-o-Murshid says is to do this you have to work through the ties with the earth: with the world. Work through  the ties. He doesn't say break the ties. It means look into those ties and see what they are doing for you. Are they tethering you? Are they holding you back? Is your concern for earthly conditions standing in the way of your inspiration of the flight of your soul, of your ecstasy? It's true that the kind of personal satisfaction in acquiring things that one wants will engage your emotions to such an extent that you may not be aware  of those higher level emotions, if I may say that, which you're longing for: another dimension than the existential reality.

So it is that longing which is going to help you see how you are connecting up with, let's say your support system. You see what I mean? Well for example imagine that there is a team of alpinists who have built a lot of base camps in order to reach the top of the mountain and they've spent so much time building up these base camps that they have no energy remaining or no money remaining--well, no energy remaining to reach the top. That's what we are doing in our lives. One could say the support system takes over. Perhaps you can recognize something in your lift like that? So we realize that we need a support system except that some alpinists climb very high even without gas masks but still, we do need a support system but to what extent do we let this support system tether us to the extent that we are not free to give vent to our inspiration and aspiration into what is called the heavenly spheres. So there are moments when this becomes very impelling. It sounds as though there might be a baby here and if there is, I did say that we don't want any babies here so please out of respect for what we're trying to  do--I was just talking about babies, but... ( Pir laughs) in a positive way, but now it's negative. (Pir laughs again) Yes. Now, you see, well I spoke about this long before the .......



end of side 2, tape 3

MAR 16, 1996		Tape 04

 PVK MADIS'N 3/16/96 TAPE 4 SIDE 1 1)

...and Samadhi. That is, one has given up judging things from one's mind but one's assessment is based upon emotional attunement instead of understanding. Can you see that? Like for example you could, instead of passing a judgement on a person, saying: I don't like this or that or the other thing, your assessment of that person is simply due to the way of your attunement. Like you feel that that person is drawing you down into the dumps or you feel that person inspires you. So it's a kind of knowledge of the heart, what the Sufis call the knowledge of the heart. So it is that kind of knowledge that is going to lift you into the higher spheres. In fact, it is ecstasy.

That is precisely what the churches are trying to convey. In fact, the churches are trying to convey, and I mean I don't mean just the Christian churches but any religion: Islam, Hinduism and so on, and even Buddhism is--to try to enact on earth conditions that are reminiscent of heavenly conditions: music, beautiful whatever, the beautiful architecture, whatever. Something that somehow reflects that celestial state and that would have the effect of enlisting the high emotions in people. 

And so perhaps you can recognize in yourself emotions that you find are degrading and emotions that are uplifting. The whole gamut of emotions. In fact, if you look into Buddhism you find that Buddha differentiates very clearly the kind of emotions that are gross and emotions that are fine. If you look around you, if you watch TV a lot you find that you come across a lot of very gross emotions and one is subjected to them. And so somehow you cultivate situations that arouse beautiful emotions like music for example, in you meditation: beautiful thoughts that will elevate your soul so that if you are very concerned about your problems you can't do that. And so if you simply think that your ordinary assessment of your problems is not reliable and that you are missing out on a way of looking at them which will not be demeaning and compelling then you find a kind of measure of freedom in yourself. That's what Pir-o-Murshid says by "working through the ties." 

That word, the ties, is very interesting. I don't know whether you know the story of the Gordian knot. There was a village in Greece. It was a legend I think, an old legend. There was a village where there was a knot which was so inextricable that somebody said if anybody is able to unravel this knot they will conquer the world. And so Alexander the First went there and he got impatient with the Gordian knot and therefore he never conquered the world. That's the story. But it's very true because we like to cut--we think that the way to reach into the heavenly state is to cut our relationship with the world like  monks, for example, nuns; whereas and of course we think in terms of relationships like this relationship is standing in the way of 

PVK MADIS'N 3/16/96 TAPE 4 SIDE 1 2)

my attaining illumination, until you realize that you don't solve the problem by cutting your relationship. And so the story of the Gordian knot is that you unravel the ties that get very entangled because you look into them and see how they got entangled. So its a whole--its a kind of looking at things from on top instead of on the same level. That's why Shabuddin Surawardi says: "The witness in you is your heavenly counterpart. You are the heavenly witness." So imagine how the angel looks at conditions on the earth rather than how humans do. Let's say the birds-eye view instead of the worms-eye view. 

So in order to do so you have to identify with the idealistic  celestial inspired being that you are in your soul and then look at what your addiction, let's say, to the earth, does to your soul and see how you can still remain involved without being addicted: being involved without being addicted. Because addiction is a conditioning. One is conditioned by one's addiction. And we want to be free. But the freedom is the freedom from conditioning. For example, instead of depending upon somebody's love you love them even if they don't love you and what is more, the great art of loving is of course to love obnoxious people. It's very difficult. That's where we are tested in our love. It's easy to love a nice person. That's very easy. But that's the test. I'm sorry for that judgmental statement. 

Are we supposed to end at 5:00? Is that so? Yes. I suppose we are. That's terrible. (laughter)  (someone in audience says something inaudible.) Pir: Yes. But you need to be able to wash and get yourself together and get yourself grounded again. 

Now I understand that there are a lot of questions. Today was  a preparation for being a little more experiential but we wanted experience but the trouble is that our experience is distorted by our interpretation of it and that's why we have to not just work with experience but see what meaning it has for us. But of course one is--I'm challenging one's ordinary way of thinking, and consequently that's what's happening in your meditation. You are questioning all the time your ordinary way of thinking. That allows you to just remain in a circle. You're caught in the circle. 

And so I can understand that it arouses a lot of questions and consequently I have demurred into spending one hour this evening to answer questions though I don't like it very much. No, it's because one gets caught up in one's mind and it becomes like a debate: who's right and who's wrong, and I said already, I talked about this Rishi who was trying to get into the thinking of this man who was asking him questions and he couldn't ever satisfy the mind of this man because his way of thinking was so different.

PVK MADIS'N 3/16/96 TAPE 4 SIDE 1 3)

And I'm not saying that my thinking is different. I'm just saying that I think opinion is relative and I don't--as Buddha says: Free yourself from opinion. So if that's the case I would like to free you from my opinion. (laughter) And if you're asking questions you are asking my opinion. And I'm relenting by accepting to get myself caught in a hornet's nest. So I find sometimes the only way to get out of it is by humor which is very healthy to avoid being sanctimonious. But still, it's very difficult to try to avoid getting into these mind games. So if I'm doing it it's because I feel that there is a real need. I wish I could satisfy the need but I'm not sure that I can. 

But I think we've already planned something for this evening. It's going to be a cellist who is playing Indian music and I was going to--I was dithering about being present because I'm a cellist myself and also into Indian music but I've heard her and I must say that I have to be very careful to safeguard my health because if I overstress myself then I can't do anything at all. You know, I'm nearly 80. In a few months' time I'll be 80.  So I have to be very careful. I would say, at what time does the evening start? 8:00 o'clock? 7:30? We could compromise and start at a quarter to 8 and I could start at a quarter to 7. That would be the only way to slip it in because we won't be able to do it tomorrow and these days pass very quickly. 

OK, well after all that palaver I still would like us to get attuned again so observe your breath. It will slow down. Reflect on many of the things that we said: for example, the way that we are drawn into the reverie of our being by providing a defence system and losing sight of who we are; the way that when we turn within we transfer the way we see the world in our psyche, which is miss-assessed, and consequently we can't discover who we are if we simply transfer our assessment of the world situation inside ourselves; and therefore we need to unmask the hoax. That is maya, the miss-construction, and at least accept that our assessment may be wrong. 

And so the mantrum here would be: What If my assessment is wrong? What if it is so-and-so rather than what I think it is. That's freedom from opinion and therefore you gain a measure of freedom. Then if you proceed further in the depth of your being and place sentinels at the doors of perception and also somehow if you are able in the zikr, to dissolve those false assumptions and the notion of yourself called the false self, then you discover your being in the process of becoming, of unfurling, and you realize that you have to let the outer petals of that flower that you are fall apart rather than hang on to them. 

Then somehow you find that as you meditate and you turn within, images will be projected on the screen of your mind and that's the way in which reality that does not have a form is being revealed to you: through form, or through forms. And, as Ibn' 

PVK MADIS'N 3/16/96 TAPE 4 SIDE 1 4)

Arabi says, amongst these forms you will discover your own form; your true countenance. And then, if you remember, we had to be fully creative. It wasn't just good enough to project what we are becoming but we have to include all levels of our being: transcendental, and consequently there is a sense of down-playing our earthly condition and giving vent to our aspirations and ideals and discovering the child in us that is beautiful, untarnished, and lies at the core of our being and can be awakened so as to prevail upon all those extraneous aspects of our being that have tagged on. And so then we really are discovering--it seems much more true that this is our real being rather than the one that we think that we discovered when we removed our mask. 

The consequence is a real break-through of joy: overwhelmingly so, like you were going to dance with joy; a sense of having awakened, and as I say, a sense that the universe is awakening itself through us and as us as we free ourselves from our false  identity.

The last thought is that for those two poles of our being to be able to interact and promote awakening there needs to be a sense of our interfacing with God as we imagine Him/Her to be, that's not what He/She is but still that very effort of interfacing of standing before God even if it's an imaginary projection, will enhance and awaken the more noble aspects of our being that we project upon God, but they are awakened thereby and that is why there is a saying--I think it is in the Koran, the Sheriff, that says: (Allah al Ma****ouk ***********) and that means talking about God created through one's prayers. Creating a situation whereby God can create himself as us. And that is the meaning of the sacred. That's the thing that we miss the most in our life, the sacred. Without ritual, without support, just by finding that sacredness within ourselves and the zikr is really creating a temple in which we can discover God as the sacred quintessence of our being. 

(L'NG SILENCE)

So, God bless you now.

MAR 16, 1996		Tape 05

 Madison #5 

Madison 3/17/96 Pir Vilayat

The path that we have chosen is the path of light. So if you belong to those who are, let's say overwhelmed by the appearance of light whatever the origin, you've found the right, you've knocked at the right door. It's a kind of commitment that in fact the Zoroastrian Maji used to make to fight for the victory of light over darkness. And of course it has a lot of different meanings, but you know let there be light. It is like, ultimately of course it's the emergence of truth covered under a bushel, by a kind of cover up by a kind of manipulation and dishonesty in life. So it's a very deep significance for our soul. And I'm sure that, I hope you're amongst those who are delighted when you see somebody who carries, brings a lot of light with them. And there are people who bring the dark clouds with them. And you'll notice that those who bring a lot of light are selfless, giving. And those who have a dark cloud are selfish and tyrannical and depressed, but tyrannical at the same time. 

Some kind of a maladjustment in their being. And of course there is no doubt that the cure is to bring to light everything that has been covered up and kept in the dark whatever the cost. All of a sudden something happens to one. Perhaps you have sometimes the feeling as though you are just absolutely flooded in life and radiant. Our  objective is of course is to, is to well actually one says to obtain illumination, but one can never attain it. It's an ongoing process. But anyway that's the concept that goes together with awakening. And the reason is because you have something much more tangible here. 

Awaken here is all of a sudden shifting into another perspective but illumination is like one's intelligence, first of all one's glance, and secondly one's intelligence. Of course first of all one's aura, then one's glance, then one's intelligence avails itself to be luminous. It's something one needs to work with every day, it will just transform your being. And the reason is that actually, originally you know the physical universe was simply a big breakthrough of light. The big bang was just an explosion of light. And there's been some crystallization of this what we call light in the form of matter. Although according to physicists light is matter. But anyway it's the electrons rather than photons, or particles rather than waves. So it's, on the other hand the extraordinary thing is that this light aspect of matter if I might call it so, or light like aspect of matter, is somehow subsumed in matter and can at any time erupt, like for example in a radioactive substance. 

And the same is true of ourselves. If you think that way, then your realize that you don't have to forget your bodiness in order to become luminous. It's rather the other way around, that the body can actually, I mean there is a lot of luminescence in the body because you know the cells of the body are able to absorb light from the environment. I won't go into the mechanism of it the electrons begin to dance, they begin to free themselves from the pristine constraint. So something happens to the body by simply absorbing light. And the more you concentrate on the, absorbing light, the more light you can absorb. There is a mind over body effect here. And that's what meditation is about. The cells begin to divide more rapidly. They begin to, actually as I said the electrons and the atoms begin to really literally dance a dance of freedom. And consequently the cells are energized, nourished by light as it were. And consequently the cells begin to divide. And that's the reason why one can use light for healing. Or there are ways of using light for healing. Then the cells also emit light. That is they don't simply reflect the light that they absorb, go through a kind of process. And it's a kind of sacrifice because the electrons have to get back into their original place again. And whatever energy remains is radiated out. So there is some sacrifice even in the cells of the body in order to radiate light. So sacrifice seems to be written right into the program of the world. But it's a joy. 

Now these are some of the practices. Let's start very simply. Just simply be aware of a lot of light in your eyes. It's because nerve cells of course are much more sensitive to light. So the retina is particularly much more sensitive than our skin. And so it absorbs a lot of light that gets threaded into the brain cells. And then that light is again emitted through the, passing threaded through the optic nerves, into the retina through the cornea and into the environment. So just think of that like as you inhale and draw a lot of light from whatever it could be, the sun, the electricity or whatever it could be, the candle. And think that that light is threaded right into your brain so the brain is, builds up a tremendous amount of light. And that's why one pictures a crown as a kind of a corona, a kind of a area above the skull. The light in the brain, at least high frequency light is able to pass through the skull and form, that is particularly true when people are inspired. Then the light that is built up in the brain is more in the nature of ultraviolet and colorless. And so that light is adumbrates one's whole being and can pass through the optic nerves and pass into outer space, traveling through space at a speed of 186,000 miles a second. 

So then as you inhale you are drawing in a lot of light in through your eyes. And when you exhale you are radiating a lot of light through your eyes. Now eventually you exercise yourself to imagine that you're looking into a very bright light This is a practice that yogis do and dervishes do and I myself have done them at the top of the hill in Ajmer where Hajji Moinidin Chisti used to do the same practice. It is looking at the sun at dawn without blinking one's eyelids and trying to hold out as long as you can, and a little bit more every day until you get to, well some of these rishis and dervishes are able to do this for hours and hours. And normally your retina would be burned in a few seconds, or even a split second if you were exposed to a blinding light of the sun without a shield. So there's a kind of technique. One uses a kind of shield, one's hands. Eventually it's just to protect the eyes a little bit until they get strong enough to be able to face the sun. That's a very extraordinary feeling of an interface with a very powerful light. And of course the secret of it is to be able to do exactly a practice we did yesterday. That is concentrate on the light of your glance. And so you're not, the light of the sun is not perceived as such. It is you're casting light upon the sun actually. 

Of course the light of the sun is stronger than yours but, like for example the light of the stars is stronger than that of the sun. But still somehow you're blinded from seeing the stars because of the sun. So if you're, there is a word of Platinus who said, "Those who produce light have eyes like the sun". So think of your eyes like the sun, as emitting a lot of light. If then the power of one's glance is stronger than the power of the sun, well as it reaches one of course. It could never compare with. Then that's the secret. That's how they're able to do it. So once more,well we'll repeat what we did yesterday but with a difference. So imagine your eyes to be like the headlamps of a car. And you're looking into, or confronted, or facing a bright light like for example a search light. There is a confrontation of two lights that have a mirroring effect. So that by it's interfacing with the search light, the light of your glance is enhanced. All right now, think of what you think of as the starry skies. It's really an ocean of light let us say. That light gets converged in points, pinpointed like in the stars. And that's what we see. But in fact the whole firmament is a tremendous array of light. 

And think that indeed your body is crystallized light, like a crystal. And yet the crystal has extraordinary faculties of fluorescing. of first of all absorbing light form the environment and then emitting it. So in the same way your body is like a crystal or crystallized light. And does have that faculty of processing light, the light of the environment, not just the environment but the whole cosmos. So that means as you inhale absorbing it, and as you exhale radiating it out And imagine that your heart is the center of your aura, just like the sun. Alert, now hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling. Now this is a little more difficult to understand. But I'll try to put it the best I can. Imagine that there are what they call parallel universes and we are only aware of a chunk of the Universe, a layer. Because the parallel universes all intermesh, intertwine. And so for example when a new star is born, it's as though a luminous reality that was a virtual in the subliminal universe emerged in this universe. So the same thing happens to you. 

You can call a new dispensation of light that is not due to your absorbing light from the environment, but which emerges from within If you remember, when one holds one's breath, one creates a situation that favors the emergence of new life. So now when you radiate light, you are not just boomeranging back the light that you've absorbed form the stars. You are actually, there are two things that are composed now. 'n the one hand the way that you retransmit the light that you absorbed, and the other thing is the new dispensation of light. So there are two, how can I say, light has originated in two different ways that merge as you exhale. Now of course this was elementary. These were the first steps because all the while we were identifying with our body. And so the light that we, we absorb light then we think that it is the body that absorbed light. When a new light emerges from the body coming from within=  But now we're going to do something else. We're going to identify with our aura. And think of it as a template in which your body is being formed. 

So if you see it that way, then your aura is the light of the stars or the light of the cosmos that has been converged. So it's not something else, it is the light of the stars. And which then having converged, expands. But it is like a vortex so it does not have a boundary. When one says it converges, we say there is intensification towards the center axis, just like the vortex a whirlpool in the water. All the water of the lake gets pulled into the whirlpool in turn and gets dispersed into the whole pool of water. And if you do that, then you get a sense of déjà vu. That is you have a sense that ,"I have always been a being of light and it was that light pattern that fashioned my body in the womb. Or the cells of my body had to conform to the genes of my parents. And yet I'm not just a product of those genes. There is something different in me because I always was a being of light. So maybe what I am is, has been buried somehow like the light in the bushel. In biology one calls it recessive. And all I need to do is to call it by being aware of it, by earmarking it. And it will awaken." So that now the body seems to be a formation that undergoes change continually while one's aura has a kind of stability like the matrix in which the transient body, the ephemeral body is continually being shaped, other influences come in of course. So one says, "I'm a being of light". 

At first one thinks, one identifies oneself with one's aura. And of course one doesn't know what one means. It doesn't mean one's, the aura of physical light. Well of course that's true. But as you know, it is evolving. It's continually being converged and dispersed. It's a continuity in change. But now comes the real breakthrough when you're able to grasp that it would be a limitation to reduce light to it's physical expression. That evidences the limitation in our finite minds to grasp reality beyond what we perceive. And so if you're free from that compunction of having to think of light as physical, then that is where you discover what is meant by the celestial spheres, non physical light. And then of course you don't have a profile obviously. Your aura doesn't have a profile anyway, your physical aura doesn't have a profile. But still you do have a, well it's not like, the physical aura has a, at least the shape of the aura does espouse the physical contours of the body to some extent. Where as at this level you're just absolutely at the threshold between form and no form. 

And so let's say that it is of the nature of the expression of your face rather than your face, something that transpires through that which appears. Now once more, so now let's try to be aware of both, one's celestial counterpart and then one's physical aura. There's some interaction between the two. The way that your aura does reflect the nature of your celestial being. But on the other hand it is exposed to the shadows of the world. And consequently there is some distortion so that it can not render adequately the nature of your celestial being. It is hidden within the physical aura. But if you're conscious of it, then of course it does shape your physical aura and transform it. Now let's just concentrate again on our glance. There again to start with you think of physical light, as I described it. But now can you imagine that these beams of light are, how can I say, unfiltered perhaps is the word by non physical light that passes somehow through your glance on condition that you identify yourself with your celestial being? Then that kind of light begins to come through your physical glance. Now there is a secret here. You know that there is a point in the skull where the three sections of the skull coincide called the fontanel. And actually Tibetans somehow place a straw in that aperture there and break through the skin so that you reach the brain from, so there is an opening sort of communication between the brain and the atmosphere. That's a rather drastic method. I wouldn't recommend it to you. 

But still think of this aperture. And since the skull does prevent most of the light from the environment from seeping into the brain, the eyes are the generally way in which this can happen. There's only ultraviolet that comes through. But here we have another aperture which affects another part of the brain than that which is reached through the optic nerve. In the cortical area, I don't know all the details. I don't know it could affect the pineal gland. It is particularly sensitive to light, to ultraviolet light. And there is a third inlet which is the atlas, that is at the base of the crown of the skull. Well there is a juncture between the skull and the vertebra. You can feel that in your neck at the back. And there is again an aperture there. So you have, that's again a practice that one can do to open up that center. So that, well anyway, if you just consider the first two, then as you exhale you are concentrating on the light that is emitted by your eyes, by the glance, the celestial light. But as you inhale you have the feeling that you are drawing that celestial light, not the physical light, into your brain from on top. Now I don't know that makes, in terms of physics probably this is absolutely nonsensical But I can only say that it works. And so you think that this light that descends upon you is then cast forward you refracted, as one says, through your optic nerves and eventually your retina, and eventually of course your glance that is reaching out into the starry sky. 

Now if instead of concentrating on the two eyes, you concentrate on what is called the third eye, which is really the pineal gland that is external apparently in some snakes apparently, but is internal in the human and in most animals. Well, as I say, it's very sensitive to ultraviolet light and therefore cosmic rays. And so it responds to the monitoring of the center of the galaxy instead of the sun, and as you know determines our circadian rhythm. So if instead of simply just concentrating on the glance of your two eyes, you imagine that there's a third beam. It's difficult because in fact it is threaded through one's glance. I don't know exactly how to express that in a logical way. But it is as though your glance becomes like x-rays instead of just casting light forward. In fact I know a yogi who was working with this and he challenged anyone to test him. So blindfolded in a dark room they placed a book in front of him and he could read the book. I think that we're not talking about the body. The pineal gland simply acts as a transducer. But this only happens if you really identify yourself with your celestial counterpart. And remember the words of Shihab al Din Suhrawardi, "The witness, the commonplace witness that you thought you were is replaced now by the witness in the heavens, the celestial witness". 

I was able to access things according to a very different measuring rod than that of our ordinary judgment (second side of tape) subjecting you with intelligence rather than consciousness. So what is the difference? Consciousness is receptive to impressions, like the faculty of a photographic plate to pick up radiation and it is imprinted by, and that's the reason why one needs to purify one's consciousness from all the extraneous impressions that are damaging to our soul. But when as Pir o Murshid says, "When consciousness is deprived of an object", that is you're not aware of what you perceive with your senses, and you're not aware of your thoughts, that is a very high state of meditation. So it is not akin to the dream state. It is akin to deep sleep where there are no images and no thoughts. So consciousness does not have a support in the object. Because there has to be a dichotomy of subject -object. And so when this happens, then consciousness returns into it's ground, which is intelligence, let's say is resorbed into it's ground. For example, well to illustrate this Buddha compares consciousness with a flame that needs a combustible, for example, logs of wood. 

So if one log is burned and if you put a new log on, then the flame continues. But if you don't fuel it with wood any more then it disappears. And so as consciousness, it is dependent upon it's object. Where as intelligence is a reality (sui generous) as one says in Latin, that is in itself because it carries within it the wisdom Universe beyond the existential state. And so when one places oneself in that vantage point, and then one looks at a circumstance for example in one's life, it is as though one were casting light upon the situation instead of just witnessing the situation. Consciousness witnesses the situation. But intelligence scans the situation and eventually the intention of the program behind the event begins to manifest to view. Like looking at the building complete by the architect, so you see how the architect thought, or what he intended, or what she intended. And that's why Ibn Arabi says, "Knowledge is a veil upon the known". 

While consciousness is personalized, let's say the consciousness of the cosmos is focalized in each one of us, intelligence can never be fragmented. And so when we resort to it, we're calling upon divine intelligence. So the word uses luminous intelligence. Think of your intelligence as luminous. And so the word uses Nur Akle, the light of intelligence. And the Tibetans call it the clear light of bliss. Now we have this curious interrelationship between the light of intelligence and the light of our aura. And perhaps you'll notice that if you highlight or awaken intelligence while downplaying consciousness, it is called awakening, your aura burns more brightly. Eyes, you can see that the whole being begins to glitter. And that's the significance of that sura in the Qur'an, "Light upon a light". The light of intelligence that enhances the light of the aura. Now you see that you could never enhance the effulgrance of your aura simply by trying to become aware of your drawing in light from the environment and radiating light. It will give you some kind of radiance. But it does not compare with what we are doing now, because we are bringing all the levels of our being into action. 

Now there's just one further thought. That is that by this, I would say emergence of intelligence and consciousness buried in our very body, the cells begin to dance, as we said a choreography of light. And consequently they divide much more rapidly, and what is more there is a co emission of electrons. That means that the, let's say elements in the cells of body begin to disperse in the Universe, in the Cosmos. And also there's a transmutation of electrons into photons which means instead of just particles, waves of light. And so in that sense we are preparing our body for resurrection. Because it's the body that resurrects in that sense. That it is transmuted into, let's say matter is transmuted into energy, so that aspect of light that is not particle light. And these waves are interconnected in a way that particles cannot be because they simply collide. In other words it's called wave interference pattern. So this would be a kind of vision, a prefiguring our state after what is called the death of the body. Instead of thinking that the spirit survives but the body dies, I think that the body too, the aspects of the body that are able to survive the disintegration of the cells and which then are able to carry the memory of one's existential condition, and maybe work in a creative way in the Universe. 

So now the secret of a retreat is to always keep oneself in a high attunement even if one is resting or eating or whatever. So what I would like to advise you to do is to keep your attunement in keeping silence during breakfast. And then come back again at 8:30 as I promised and we'll listen to that magical music representing the ordeal of Joan of Arc and the victory.

Yes, we're already a little bit. But I'd like to introduce what we're going to do. It's the story of Joan of Arc, one of the most amazing stories one could ever imagine. She was a young girl of 13 who used to listen to the church bells and she interpreted them as voices. And of course she was a very mystical being. And at the age of 15 she had the impression that she was sent on a mission to restore the king of France on his throne. The British had besieged many of the cities of France. And the Dolphin was rather a weak character. And here was this amazing young girl who followed her voice, and dressed in men's clothes . And somehow by her conviction she convinced the governor of a city to let her go and visit the Dolphin who was living in a castle in Chignon. That whole area was under the governance of the British. So she had to disguise as a man, well anyway it's a long adventure. But anyway she was able not only to have an audience with the Dolphin, but also to convince him to follow her. By that time of course she had collected an army of volunteers who were kind of very deeply moved by what she represented, the power that was coming through her. 

And so they rode their horses and on the they conquered all the British forces. And finally they took Orleans, which was a very strong garrison. So there was some kind of magical legend about her that, so it wasn't just their, their army was not very strong but there was a kind of myth of this extraordinary woman. She was then 15. No sorry she was 15 when she heard the voices, and she was 17 that's right she was 17. No she was 16, very frail, rather illiterate peasant girl who just had the strength of this conviction of her voices. Where as nowadays if somebody hears voices, you close them up in an asylum. That's the paradox of this story you see. And so they managed to conquer Orleans against the British. It was a great feat. And then finally they went to Orleans, or to Rains because in the cathedral of Rains, that's where the kings of Rains were crowned. And so the crowned prince was under the protection of this little maid of 17 and was crowned king in Rains. And then on her way to Rhone she was captured, dragged off her horse and tortured and thrown into prison, jail in chains. And then, sorry I should have said that she faced a trial with all the learned men of the time of the church and also the powers that be. And of course she proclaimed her innocence. 

And then she was tortured and then dragged out of the cell to sign an apparition, which means to recognize that the voices were just illusion, hallucination. Weak and distraught and broken. And the whole idea was to discredit that myth about her. It was an inquisition by the church fathers. And then a few days later she relapsed. Because she realized that her voices were true. And then she was excommunicated and subjected again to torture. And then burnt at the stake, burnt alive. So you recognize something of the Nazis. In fact that is the kind of thing that my sister experienced. She was chained also for 9 months. There you see the brutality of the powers that be, the kind of ego power of the people condemning her. And then the fanaticism of the theologians in the lack of understanding of course. And then her, she didn't know how to argue. She couldn't protect herself. So at one point maybe thought, " Well after all who am I? These people, you know they are learned people and who am I to, I can't even read or write?". But it was only for two days I think. And after that she had these terrible thoughts," How could I be untrue to my voices?". And that's when she relapsed. And she was eventually burnt on the stake because there was a kind of custom that witches should be burnt at the stake and they considered her to be a witch who had magical powers. So as I said she was excommunicated from the church. But a few centuries afterwards the Church itself relapsed. 

So this little girl made that Catholic Church relapse and come back on its decision of condemning her. And behind that there is something which perhaps we understand in our time and that is the feminine, that strange kind of power of the feminine which men don't always understand. In her vulnerability I think again of my sister who was so vulnerable. The cruelty of it is just unbearable, unbelievable. So this is a composition of a modern composer who lived the whole thing, who was absolutely overwhelmed by thinking of the story and went to France to try and retrack the traces of Joan of Arc. And so he is placing himself really in the consciousness of Joan of Arc. He is not so much describing the story as what other states of the consciousness of that young girl faced with this incredible mission. So we'll start with really the end in which she said," I am innocent and I had to follow my voices. I was the victim of their malice". So it's exposing the malice of the world, the voice of innocence exposing the malice of the world. So that's how it starts and that's how it ends. We won't be able to listen to the whole thing. But what we'll do is just highlight parts. So the first one is what we've just heard. But I would just listen to it again now after what I've said. So it is her. 

It is Joan of Arc expressing how she feels listening to those voices. Number 1, yes. A little bit louder, just a little bit. To the armies approaching Orleans. But he doesn't describe the armies. He's describing her, how can I say, can you imagine her emotions of all those soldiers taking over the challenge of the army, the British army in Orleans? Number 2. The voices again. Subjected to the interrogation of the court. So there she is sitting in front of all those notable powers that be with all their church knowledge and theology and their righteousness, self righteousness. That's number 3, the interrogation, repeating the same old questions. And all she can say is,"I'm following my voices. That's a priest who is saying,"You should follow the Church. You are from the devil". Now let's put on number 6 now. So now she is being tortured. Although the reports say that they only presented her with the instruments of torture. Still that the way that they were, it was a cover up. So the righteousness, the self righteousness of those who were torturing her. So "I beg you, I beg you. I beg you don't do this". Her story goes that she collapsed. Now this was filmed and maybe there are several films of Joan of Arc. But there was one memorable one perhaps the most moving film ever made. The actress was (Palconetti). Then her hair was shorn and she collapsed. And the entire film crew was in tears. 

And a few years later somebody put a fire to the house where it was film was to destroy it. So after this she was broken. So the next scene is her illness. In her distress she is asking to see into the wounds of Christ whom she can identify with. That's the next one number 7. Dragged out of her cell to the court again to sign a paper that she abjuring that her voices were perhaps illusion. There was that moment when she thought," Maybe the right" , and then as I said after that she relapsed. So we'll pass that by that last part where she was then burnt on the stake with an enormous crowd enjoying the scene. And so this is the end of the whole story. It is number 14. Yes, so you can understand that this is very significant to me because my sister volunteered to, when she heard about the tortures inflicted upon the Jews by the Nazis, she volunteered to land in France with a radio in order to maintain contact with the war office, between the war office and the underground forces of the resistance. And there was a time when it was her messages were decisive in the victory of the allies against the Nazis. She had a chance of leaving. But she refused to leave because she felt that she had to do this. 

And she knew the danger. And then there was a time when she had accomplished what she needed to do. And there was a plane that had landed to fetch her. And she went to her apartment to fetch her last things and particularly her code. And the Nazis were there to capture her. And later we heard that, from the Nazis. Actually I was at the trial afterwards. The Nazi who had arrested her said that he had received a telephone call from a French woman who said that she had the address of my sister and wanted to sell it for 100,000 francs. So the Nazi met her on the bench. And the transaction was made. And the consequence was that the very brother of this woman and hundreds of people as a consequence were arrested and tortured. Betrayal. I saw that woman at the trial. And she was acquitted by the judge because the lawyer said,"Well we've suffered enough through the Nazis and now it is a Nazi who is the only witness here against our French people". She was imprisoned in Dachau. She made an attempt at escaping and was placed in chains for nine months in a cell. And this is the most vulnerable child, beautiful person, idealist. And then she got news that she was condemned to death. And she was thrown in a lorry and taken to the concentration camp in Dachau in chains. 

And the goliter kept on kicking her. So there was enormous hemotosis all over her body. And she was exposed all the night, throughout the night practically naked on the cement floor without shelter in agony. And the next day she was whipped and boxed, or whatever, hit to the point that she was, as a witness said, a bloody mess. And then she was made to kneel and was shot behind her head. And her last words. She didn't cry. Her last words were, "Vive la liberte". So then finally the allies overcame the Nazis. We were all in it together. I was myself in the landing in Normandy. So this story reminds me very much of her, this wonderful being who is called Nur. And on, apparently there was still some motion in her body when she was thrown into the oven. And that oven is still there in Dachau. And to celebrate my 80th birthday which is on June the 19th. But on June the 28th I shall be conducting the B Minor Mass a Dachau. You can imagine what an emotional challenge it will be for me So if any of you would like to go of course for that occasion, it's a real historic occasion. And I understand that there is a way of flying from New York to Paris, I don't know about Germany, on a courier flight, for $100 return. But you can't have any luggage and I suppose you have to bring your own sandwiches. And also there is no guarantee that there will be room for you of course. It's a kind of standby situation. 

But anyway I say that for any of you who would like to go but your purse doesn't allow you. I'll be sharing the conducting with a professional conductor, a Dutch conductor who is also a mureed. The composer of this is a young Dutchman called Richard Einholn. I don't know whether you can get it. But you could ask Mikial because I got it through him. So I feel that it, yes what he did was very remarkable when he got into the consciousness of Joan of Arc. But of course in my mind there was a piece missing. The last piece was not up to the jubilation in the heavens. It's still on the earth, what it means to us. But that's as I said the crucifixion of Christ was a coronation. So I have music here which I think is important for a retreat because it's modern and it really represents let's say the cosmic celebration which we think is in the heavens but which is always coming through us whenever we glorify. So this music by (Avo Pert). I thought it was important for us to get in touch with very deep emotions that are not just our personal resentment for something that happened to us, our storms in our teacups as they say in England. But for meditation to be really significant and transforming... End tape

MAR 16, 1996		Tape 06

 Madison Tape 6 Pir Vilayat ....or attain something oneself, or for example to get illumination, "I want to get illumination" you know. And also of enclosing oneself in one's meditation room or cell or even just in one's own, or even encapsulating one's psyche in one's state of introspection. And that's why I started the retreat yesterday with looking at our programs because if you meditate and your desire is to attain illumination, then it's obvious that your, the reminiscence of your of your problems will keep on knocking at the door of your consciousness and conscience of course so that you will not be able to get anywhere in your meditation if that's all, that's cogitation it's kind of ruminating upon your personal problems. That's not meditation. And that's because one has limited oneself to one's notion of oneself. And therefore the problems seem in respect of one's notion of oneself, one's self image. And therefore the first step in meditation is to reconnect, as I said yesterday, with the totality. And that happens by expanding consciousness. 

Now yesterday we made a first step, of course the first motion of the zikre where the head is turning in a circle. That is of course the first step. But if you remember, what we did was to think of the starry sky and our bodies as part of the... Yes, that's the first step to reconnect with the ground with, out of which one has emerged. But at a further, in a further step, one sees one's problems as part of the cosmic drama. And so one can't say these are my problems anymore. For example what happened to Joan of Arc or my sister. In that case was it wasn't her problems. It was her involvement in the drama of the cosmos. And that drama does, I must admit, it does involve suffering. It really does. Although one doesn't understand why things can't just, one can't just be happy. Why should that be? I think it is because of the fact that by the fragmentation of the total being that each fragment is endowed with that most essential of all the qualities of the overall being which is free will. And the consequence is that people will alienate themselves from the divine will and that, very clearly, that was exactly the message of Christ. So that's what we're doing. 

We're reconnecting. And so it has to do with, you see the role of the notion of God here. If you just look at things from your point of view, you're caught up in a perspective, limited perspective. And that's why when you're meditating, always keep in mind that, well the antinomy between on one hand your consciousness acting like a, focalized as I say, acting as a pinpoint, as a vantage point, you see things from a limited point. And of course the amount understanding does hopeful increase as you evolve. But still it's your understanding. And then, while your doing, at the same time see that relationship between this vantage point and your notion of yourself, your self image. Can see that you think of yourself as an individual person and the consequence is that you're going to react to the bad situations, the assault on your person by developing a kind of ego power because we don't know how to do otherwise. 

It draws you into your ego identity, which means of course discarding the main experience of your being, the range of your being which includes the Universe. And that is what we mean by ultimately God, and whatever we mean by God. So that's why it's a kind of policy if you're doing the Sufi practices, always to bear in mind throughout all the time while you're meditating those two poles, the personal vantage point and then the divine vantage point that one does not know but which is revealing itself to one. That is it can not be the object of one's cognizance. And so what you do from your personal point of view seems like active, whereas you are responsive to the divine revelation. So it's both at the same time. Now that response gives you a kind of access, not quite access, but let's say enables you to espy the meaningfulness that is coming through that revelation, whatever. You can follow what I'm saying here. And gradually one learns to shift one's consciousness from one's limited point of view into the divine consciousness. That's the whole process. Let's say that's the end of the process. At first it doesn't seem possible. It seems like a presumption on one's part. 

 These perspectives are to a large extent triggered off by our emotional attunement. So you can't really do it with your will. So when you're meditating you can't just, you know mastery, trying to discipline your thoughts. That doesn't work. So for example you're doing the zikre, the first, when you're moving in the circle, you know yesterday we started by looking at how we are involved in situations with people and so on. But now at a further stage today, as we go deeper into our retreat process, we experience our involvement in, as I say, the drama of the Universe. Yesterday we tried to learn how to get into the consciousness of those people involved in our problems but at the, at the range which we are now talking about, one somehow having developed a skill of getting into the consciousness of other people, and it becomes, it includes more and more people. And eventually you get into that state articulated by St. Francis of Assisi, "The Cosmos is looking at me". As I am involved in the problem, the Cosmos, that is looking at that problem through me. So there is a transformation of the object, the situation is not what I think it is, and of the subject. I am not the subject. This is the key if you want to meditate. otherwise it's cogitation, whatever, reflection It's not meditation. This is the key. So I think we need to remember that when we're meditating and to keep on remembering it. 

So we come back to the proposition that we started with yesterday. I think it was yesterday afternoon when I said, I asked a question,"Do you think that the Cosmos", that does not mean only the physical world, but all levels of reality, the celestial levels and so on, subtle levels, celestial levels, "Do you think that the cosmos is endowed with overall consciousness, or do you think that we're the only ones who can have a consciousness?" Now I asking that question because, you know, I'm positive myself that the the Cosmos, Universe has an overall consciousness and that's what we mean by God consciousness. But if we say God consciousness, we must know what we're saying. We say a lot of things that we don't know, so. But then the second question is, "Do you think that," you see we are gradually trying to understand the Cosmos a little more. Like for example in the time of Buddha, most people thought the the stars were just decorations in the sky. 

And there was no notion of the planet as a planet. They didn't know what was beyond the horizon. Just go there and see that the horizon was moved. There was no sense of the planet as a reality. Absolutely no sense of the solar system or the galaxy and so on. So just imagine that we have gained a kind of knowledge, albeit it very limited, of understanding the Cosmos. Just imagine that the Cosmos, the physical Cosmos, has fashioned in the course of the eons of time the brain that enables us to know it. So it's knowing itself through us. And that's Sufism. That you'll the Sufis that God knows himself eternally in the principles of his/her being. But there is a further mode of knowledge that is acquired through us, or through God becoming us, or God as us. Now there is a second level of cognizance. So that was the second question. "Do you think that the Cosmos gains something by the knowledge that we have of it?" And then the third question is, "Do you think that we gain knowledge thanks to the knowledge that the Cosmos has of us?" That's a little more difficult. But if you understand the first two propositions, you can perhaps reach a third one. One calls that mirroring. And Sufism is based upon mirroring. So if you translate this in terms of, use the word God instead of the Universe, then you understand the words of Ibn Arabi, first of all," God discovers", let's say, "a further aspect of his being by discovering himself in us, or as us, or through us". Now we don't know that.  

We project an ideal of what we think is God. And if we're intelligent, we realize that it's just a projection. But if we're a little more intelligent then we realize that by trying to imagine what God could be like, we ascribe to him, project upon him, ascribe to him the most excellent qualities in yourself. Or we are able to somehow transpose the notion that we have of these qualities by imagining how they could be if they were perfect. For example, we have compassion is us, but divine compassion. And we have that faculty and it's perhaps the key, illustrated by the words of Poincare, a famous French mathematician, who said,"The notion of infinity in mathematics has it's ground in the faculty of the human being to always imagine a larger number than one has imagined so far" So if you translate that in terms of qualities, then you see that while we have some compassion in us, somehow by extra pulling, we are able to imagine what infinite compassion would be like, what endless compassion would be like. So we have some master, but we imagine what the most limitless mastery could be like. Now of course we never reach it. It's like in infinite regress. We never reach it, like the horizon. But still that kind of faculty lifts us from our personal self image into the model of which our self image is the exemplar. We call it the archetype and the exemplar. Or somehow consciously when we are using words, we are imply the archetypal meaning. 

For example when we say, not when we say."My Compassion", then it's limited. But when you say,"Compassion", then we're not talking about limited expression of compassion but somehow we are implying an infinite compassion. And that's what we mean by the qualities we ascribe to God. Sifat, the qualities that we ascribe to God, or we predicate God with. So it is that which,if we give vent to that quality, and that's what we're doing with the wazifa, wasaif of the Sufis. It's, we choose a quality, but the quality is a clue leading us to reach beyond our limited mind, finite mind. And therefore exercising higher faculties of the mind. And consequently it is lifting us up beyond our limitation. It is rescuing us from our limitation which is the cause of all the trouble. That's what we're trying to do in meditation. (inaudible) is illustrated by the prayer, the Islamic prayer. That's well it's one prostrates oneself. One bows one's head on the ground. And you know it's not done these days in modern civilization. You'll spoil your trousers by kneeling, that kind of thing. 

But the experience of that is absolutely, just it does something to one. It's beyond what one could ever say, a sort of act of utter humility. And that's not humiliation, humility, facing the overwhelming greatness that we ascribe to God. So that is a way of weakening at least that aspect of our self image that you could call the ego and that is intolerant of others, to that it is replaced by compassion and love. So you see the role of prayer. And you find that among the orthodox and the orthodox church. People bow right down to the ground. I've done some practices. Well I mad a retreat to Mt. Athos and also in Mt. Zirat. And so one bows one's head saying"Kyrie" and then lifts one's head "Elison". Kyrie Elison. Kyrie Elison. (...)Now in this setting it doesn't seem appropriate to get you all to start kneeling. Of course if you want to do a retreat, that's the way to do it. It's easier if you're in your cell and alone and not exposed to other people. 

Sitting cross legged will lead to Samadhi. It gives you a sort of balance so you won't topple over if you're not conscious of your body. But kneeling is a way of expressing in one's bodiness one's interfacing with the divine presence. So it has a very different effect on one. That's why the Sufis always kneel instead of sitting cross legged. You find it in the early churches but then later on, as I said, it wasn't practical so one didn't do it. But one is, the consequence is that I think for a very strong ego it's very difficult to bow. And the Hindus get you to bow before the Guru. But the Sufis, no, the only being that one bows to is God. So this has the effect of transmuting, what one calls one's false ego, that is the image that one makes of oneself as an individual will. And so one connects up with the totality of which one is a part. So I find that if you're seeking for, to become a superman or super woman, because I think that's a concept and you find that in Hinduism, the rishi sitting there is a kind of Olympic hero who has overcome the world. I see some very high falutin self assertiveness in it. I used to be very impressed by it when I was young. But one realizes the beauty of the humility of Christ washing the feet of his disciples. He doesn't sit on a throne. And so that's the involvement in life and loving involvement in life. And so let your meditation reflect that attitude instead of trying to achieve something for yourself. It will transform you but you're not doing it to try and get transformed. 

You you see the kind of emotions that are aroused by taking that attitude are going to make all the difference in your meditation. Because now you're not just encapsulated in the perspective of your personal problems You get shattered by the enormous significance of your involvement in the human drama. And that shattering, as long as accompanied by being overwhelmed, that's the, I think that's the best way of translating fana and baqa, annihilation and reinstatement. Now that has the power of transforming you because it deals with exactly with that which is standing in your way which is the assertiveness of the ego. And I don't say that it makes you meek. The dervishes are an example of tremendous power. It gives you a tremendous power. But it's not ego power if I may use that word. Although Pir o Murshid says that, that which is gained by life is the ego but it is the false ego that stands in the way. That means that one's identity with what one thinks one is and which one has been led to think what one is because one is encountering the assault of the outer world. If you lose a finger, you don't say that that finger is you. So the false ego has alienated itself from the total reality and assumes that it's a reality. So that would be the basis of meditation. 

So now you don't have to do the notion of the head of the zikre but you could, I find that one can move one's subtle body while one remains still. At first it appears like a circle, then a spiral. But instead of dispersing oneself in the totality, think that one is encompassing more and more, encompassing instead of dispersing, if you understand what that means, embracing instead of dispersing as you expand. And so, as I said, one thinks that, well one almost has a need to lose oneself in that totality except of course one doesn't realize that one can't lose oneself in the totality. Especially if one has a bad self image, one enjoys to lose oneself in God, in the totality which is then very difficult to reconcile with one's notion of one's uniqueness, sarmad, sarmad, alla sarmad one's uniqueness. And as you know, psychologists are very concerned that that merging with the totality acts in a counterproductive way for our personality because we have to have a very strong sense of ourselves, as I said yesterday, in order to operate a selection for what we want to ingest from the universe and what we don't. So one is pulled in two opposite directions, then it's OK. But what Pir o Murshid suggests is for example, in your meditation for example, surveying your kingdom, that is your responsibilities. 

So now you're reaching out but you're not losing yourself, although there is no boundary to your kingdom, that is there is not boundary to your responsibility. There's always more. But still, there is some containment there, some sense of, "Well I can reach, an outreach, you know, I can reach this far. And beyond that, well of course I have responsibilities but I'm not quite ready for them". For example one has responsibilities for one's family and one's friends. How far does it go? For example if there is a homeless person who is starving, is that part of your responsibility? Or, that's a very paradoxical question because by helping them you're perhaps even strengthening them in their alienation from society. We we can't enter into that for the time being. But I would say that there is no boundary to our responsibility. It just depends upon how we think. And for example there is someone being tortured in a concentration camp, and that's still happening for political reasons, do you think that's not our responsibility? You know there is Amnesty International. We could do something about it. So that's what I mean losing yourself in God. So if you don't like yourself and you're enjoying this losing yourself, it's, well I can understand psychotherapists who say this is really counterproductive. 

So these two attitudes are labeled by two different wasifas or wasaifs, for those of you who are into the training in the Sufi order. The first one is Basit. And Basit is expansion as compared with Quabid which is convergence. So when you're breathing out you're expanding, basit. And when you're inhaling you're converging the energy of the Universe and that's quabid. The Universe is becoming you. That's quabid. God is becoming you. But one could, one could replace these concepts, well these wazifa that represent concepts, by Ya Wazi which means outreach, your domain, your responsibility. Samadhi, you don't take responsibility. But in Sufism you're a vice regent of God. You're taking responsibility. So samadhi will lead to otherworldliness. Whereas this would be being more effective in life. So you see the difference. So you survey your kingdom. "Yes, I see there is something there, I forgot. There is a person there who needs a letter from me or a gesture or something. Well I was into my problems. And I was trying to get some entertainment in life. And so well it's a bore to have to think about this person". And so you develop a kind of kingship if you survey your kingdom or queendom develops certain qualities in you which is sovereignty. The wazifa for that is Quahr, sovereignty. Mastery, wali, mastery, sovereignty. 

Now there's always two sides of everything because mastery can inflate your ego, you might want to prove yourself to other people or to yourself at the cost of other people without having compassion, like the people condemned Joan of Arc. They were validating themselves as VIPs of the church by condemning this little girl. 

So where does mastery come in? For example you have this strategy of the psyche to protect itself. You could say, "Well I don't like my resentment. Particularly I don't like my anger and my spite. And so if I follow the way of Yoga, then I become the master and I am able to overcome everything. So I'm, not only I can slow down my breath, but I can control my thoughts and therefore also my emotions. And so I slaughter that, I annihilate that hatred in me. I don't like it." And according to psychologists of course, if you do that with your hatred, it will seek refuge in your unconscious and it will be doing things that you will not ascribe to your hatred because you will disavow it. You'll say, "No I've overcome my hatred and I've, for example, I've forgiven this person". But still if you're invited to a party and if ask who is invited to that party, so and so, that's wonderful, "'h, this person? 'h no, I don't want him to come". You've forgiven them but you don't want them to come,right?" So it's in your unconscious. Or you meet them in the street. So that's impromptu. So now you're, you had forgiven them, yes there is that uneasiness because there is something in you that you carry spite. 

So what I'm saying is that you must be careful of the fight of the ego against the ego. Like my will against my selfishness or greed or whatever. As I said, if you remove those strategies, you suffer from terrible withdrawal symptoms. You've got to replace your crutches by something else. That's why you can't just stop drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes if you know that it's bad for your health just by wanting to. One could, in fact I did. But I wouldn't recommend it to other people because it's a crutch upon which one has become addicted, dependent. And even there are physiological withdrawal symptoms like headaches and so on. So what you want to do is to replace it, that is to build up something in yourself in lieu of that crutch. That's what alcohol anonymous is doing is build up something in yourself that doesn't ... (side two) your pride. And I think it's a word that we use in a derogatory sense. But that word that the Tibetans use is, and of course the Sufis, your pride in your divine inheritance. And I thing that that is, it's a power instead of false humility which is really an inverted form of pride. Where as this is authentic. And consequently that pride gives your a kind of power so that you're not dependent upon that crutch anymore. And that pride comes by discovering your real self. And that's why in the zikre after turning outside. 


So when you're doing the zikre now, instead of losing yourself in the vastness, immensity, you will expand your consciousness simply becoming aware of your involvement in life. I call it your queendom or kingdom. Involvement. That is a very concrete way of expanding your consciousness instead of being like, if you think of your problems, you're generally defensive. You're passive. You're suffering from the impact of your problems upon you. And this is the opposite. You are adapting the environment to your own sense of purpose rather than adapting yourself to the environment. So it's the opposite. And that's why the zikre starts with, it's not just reaching out. You see it's, by becoming aware of the problems, actually of one's involvement in the drama of the Universe, one's consciousness is expanding, but it doesn't get totally dispersed. 

Now as one turns within again, the head comes down to the solar plexus, of course, you could say well that is where having placed sentinels at the doors of perception, you are now filtering the impressions from the environment because you have a very strong sense of "me", because as you move further inwards you discover your real being as opposed to as I call it those strategies, the peripheral area of our psyche. So it is that sense of "me" that constitutes those sentinels at the doors of perception. But the accent is on having access to the deeper unconscious recesses of one's being that one experiences as a void and which represent the realm of all possibility. 

There is perhaps the most important moment in the practice of the zikre is after having said," La illaha illa". And it's, and then you say " 'lla". And it that just at the gap between the "a" of the "illa", the last "a" and the first, and then the first "a" of "alla" that one doesn't pronounce. It is just during that gap that you are in the abyss, or that you don't know what is happening. I mean there is a kind of voidness in your thinking because you are in a state of expectancy, awaiting. And that's the word "vox", well that's watif. I'm sorry, this is a, you have to know Sufism. Now Nafari, who is a dervish was a great dervish in the desert. And came in and said to his family, to his daughter and son in law. And he would say these strange things and then he wrote them down. And now we have them published. So what he is saying is that one can be in a state of awaiting, awaiting for the divine revelation because one isn't yet ready for it. 

So if one is full of expectations, then one is precluding what's going to come through in the revelation. So one has to be in a very neutral state of awaiting. That's the state of the void that you experience, that you encounter when you are, after saying the last "a" of "illa", you say "La illaha illa" the head descends into, well it's turned towards the solar plexus. And then there is the last "a" of " 'lla". And that is the moment when some of the elements of the unconscious let's say that are subliminal are beginning to break through the threshold into what one calls creativity, creative thoughts. And so one needs to capture them. 

So what I am saying here is that master must always be balanced by lending oneself to the self organizing divine power. I mean in science one would say nature has the ability to self organize itself. And that's the reason one always says, "Ya Wali, Ya Hadi", always the two because Wali is will power but it's always balanced by being in wait for the guidance that may or not emerge. So we have a case of that guidance in the case of Joan of Arc. As I said that's a very controversial. I mean was that pathological? Was she hearing voices? A lot of people in mental institutions hear voices and the doctors are trying to say it's illusion So they are doing exactly what the church was doing with Joan of Arc In this case it seemed to work by some miraculous reason. But I say that because people engaged in the spiritual path sometimes place make believe in their intuition, and especially when it has to do with their own person. "God told me to do this or that". There are quite a number of cases of people who say, "Well Pir Vilayat, you told me to trust my intuition". His intuition was to take his son away from his ex-wife's custody so that he wanted the son for himself. So there was some kind of personal bias in it. So you see, you flounder in the abyss between the two horns of a dilemma, mastery and being passive to guidance. 

Well now, when does intuition aver itself to be authentic and when is it make believe? The answer is that if one is very cautious, consistently cautious of never saying anything that one doesn't know, or never saying something that one doesn't mean, like,"How nice it is to see you again". I mean one can say it if one really is happy to see the person. But otherwise one wouldn't say it. That's why the English in their coldness say, "How do you do?" They're not committing themselves yet. But being polite of course at the end one says, "I enjoyed meeting you", of course. So anyway this (inaudible). But if one develops a great concern about haqq, which is truthfulness, then one will not indulge in fantasies. One becomes a very authentic person. And then one's intuition is kind of vouchsafed by one's authenticity. So that the best way to develop intuition is to become a stickler for truth. But you can't reduce truth to facts. So you see it's not that easy. 

But as I said, that is the crucial moment in the zikre, the first "a" of " 'lla" is a crucial moment when, as I say, a new dispensation arising in you. It's based upon a saying in the Qur'an, "One is recurrently reborn". I've never seen that elsewhere. One is recurrently reborn. That cuts the, well it cuts the causality of the past and the prefiguration of the future. But however, that which makes for creativity is that one does not limit oneself by the past, by causality, but feels the call of the future. But that is prefiguration. But somehow, as I said, imagine how you could be. And this is, so it's the action of the future upon the present although the future is not yet there, but the possibility of the future, the probability of the future to use a word in science. And that's called retrocausality, the opposite of causality, the action of the future upon the present instead of the action of the past on the present. There is no doubt that the action is still there. But as Ella said, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past", in creativity. That is in biological field, not in the inorganic. Well maybe also in the inorganic. 

So that is the moment when you think of those, you see to have a vision of how you can be, you have to include your whole person. And that means it includes the celestial levels of your being. And that represents, that, let's say access to it is through your ideal values, all those things that you highly value. That will give you some sense of the nature of your celestial being. So remember this. This is a typical Sufi technique which consists in projecting one's being which originally does not have a form into a form. And one knows that that form is only a device and that it is an inadequate expression of oneself. But still it's concrete and has the effect of feedback, a measuring of yourself whereby you discover yourself. 

So at this point, if you keep on saying to yourself," I'm experiencing this and I want to capture the new me coming through" and so on, you're not making the best use of all the capacities of your being. And that's where this typical Sufi point of view comes in, "I know my", well first of all we said we assume God knows himself through me, like the Universe, the Cosmos knows itself through my knowledge of the Cosmos. No the Cosmos knows itself through me. But the second proposition is , "I know myself through the knowledge that God has of Him/Herself through me" So when you think of that in the zikre, you' re thinking , "Now of course, my, the being that is coming through now is being revealed to me. I can't grasp it. It's being revealed to me. So God is revealing to me how He is becoming as me". See that relationship. 

Because, so that is the witness in heavens. I mean the witness is a means towards it. In other words, if you keep on being limited to your personal self image, you can't be creative at all levels of your being. Your creativity is something like maybe the recycling of a plant. You know what's the point. It keeps on, you know the seed come then goes in the earth and then there is another plant. There is nothing gained by it. So meditation would be there is another matrix that influences the formative process. And so that is where your projections of your ideal into that being that you think is God is going to affect the new birthing in your being. In other words, one is turning in circles. And that's why in the zikre, we have broken out of the circle moving upwards. So the Buddhists call that the ( extra samsaric) matrix of one's being. Pir o Murshid calls it one's divine inheritance. So it's only if your realize that you have another father and mother that you have another access to your being than the usual one. 

So that does require one to try to reminisce one's state prior to one's birth and even conception. Now there a quite a few experiments being made. For example, Dr. Grof, a psychotherapist, has been experimenting with people since he is not allowed to use drugs, he is using some kind of carbonic acid. I don't know exactly what it is. But anyway some kind of artificial device. But in order to get people to, a kind of hypnosis, in order to get people to remember not just their childhood, but even their babyhood, and even right back into when they were an embryo in the mother's womb. And then if you can pass that threshold then you have really a memory of your celestial state. But not very many people make that leap, you see, quantum leap. And that fact is that that memory is still there. It's just deeply buried in the unconscious, very deeply. Because there are several layers in the unconscious. What Buddha says is that, you see we do carry actually the memory of the whole Universe, not just the Cosmos but the Universe. Now I've made a difference between the Cosmos and the Universe. Cosmos would be, would include not just endless galaxies. I mean we don't know where it stops or even if it does stop But also the subtle level of reality. 

We talked this morning about different levels of light and so on. So that would be the Cosmos endowed with consciousness, and emotion, and mind and so on. But then remember that word of. Then we think we've got it. That is God. And we've limited God to our own ability to conceive of God as a being. We ascribe to Him'/Her all things that we know of ourselves, or think we know of ourselves. But you remember the words of Jalaluddin Rumi, "The galaxies are just a little foam on the shoreless sea", So the Cosmos is very little in comparison with the Universe. But it's the way that the Universe is actuated or actualized or existentiated. So that would mean that you don't only carry in your body... Actually this is something that has, you know biologists were not that opinion but are getting more and more of that opinion that we don't just carry the code of our bodies in our genes, but the code of the whole Universe. But then at the psychological level we carry the genes of, I said the Universe, I should say the Cosmos. So in our psychological genes, let's say the genes of our psyche, we also carry the code of the Cosmos. 

Whereas that that is what we mean by the divine inheritance, I think it would be limiting it to what our finite mind can grasp because it means the memory of the Universe rather than just the Cosmos. It's difficult to follow this, but I'll try to say this a little more precisely or document it actually. Buddha said, " There was a time when there was no smoke on planet earth". I mean that means that there were no humans. In those days they never had any sense of evolution. They never knew that there could have been a time when there were never any humans on planet earth. So how did he know? Then he said, "There was a time when planet earth didn't exist". I mean people didn't even have any clue about a planet. And he said, " There was a time when the Cosmos didn't exist". Now, as I say, for them stars were decorations in the sky. So how could he know. It's only in the last decades that people are realizing that prior to the big bang there was a time when this wasn't, the Cosmos didn't exist. And then he goes on to say, " There was a time when there were other cosmoses instead of this one". Well that you know is only the very leading edge in physics that are beginning to say that. They talk about parallel universes and so on. Buddha said that. 

That was six centuries before Christ. He said that our memory is interrupted at the moment of our birth, that is our memory of the whole Universe that is present within us is those genes. The memory is there but it is so deep in our unconscious. I would say that, paraphrase what he is saying by saying, " Yes that is the strategy of the programming because we wouldn't be able to cope with all that memory. So we just remember those things that are practical for the environment in our daily lives". But if you're evolved you're able to cope with more memory. And that's what is happening now. That's what is drawing you towards the spiritual way, or meditation, is that one recovers the memory that is buried very deep in one's unconscious or collective unconscious. That's why there is a breakthrough in the zikre when somehow you remember your angelic nature, it comes back to you again. So you can never be the same. It will affect the way that you're reborn. And that's what the Sufis call God consciousness. 

You remember the things we said yesterday. That state was called malakut, the angelic state. One has to highlight all the excellent thoughts and emotions and downplay the ugly ones that are born out of one's involvement with the earth plane. So there is a sense of having overcome the pull of the earthly conditions on one's consciousness, or even, not just one's consciousness, one's own self image. A kind of freeing from that, how do you say, that psychological gravity pull. That's why by projecting one's ideal as God in prayer, one is not only enhancing those ideals, one is awakening those qualities in oneself. And that's why Pir o Murshid says, "One is awakening God within". 


So consider the zikre as a prayer. And as a matter of fact, in the advanced zikre you don't say, "La illaha illa" but just, " illa 'lla". And then you are kneeling instead of cross legged. And you bow your head on the ground. And that is a state of prayer. So one is downplaying the spillover of the earth in one's being and highlighting one's aspirations. So one is turning towards the heavens. And that, as I said, makes you innocent. I mean you can't be manipulative and so on. There's a whole catharsis that takes place then. Then of course there is a further stage. But I think we just really need to have a break here. And then we'll go on to the next stage.

Yes, now we're going to practice what we've learned and then make the next step. So start making a circle. And you remember what you do. You experience your involvement with the drama in the Universe. And so you must be very deeply shattered in your emotions. The significance of you in the Universe. All that's behind you and gets enriched by your encounter with what is outside you as you turn your head downwards. So you make a, it seems like three quarters of a circle. But if you look at it more deeply, you'll find that it is a heart. You'll find that you start the zikre at the heart center and then you move up and down. And then up again. So it's, "La illaha" comes at the end of the upward motion. It's like the right lobe of the heart. And then you head reaches down toward the solar plexus. So the heart, so your reaching into what is actually the moon in the Sufi symbol. So it's like, you can say it's like a heart. La illaha. So illaha comes right at the end of, as I say the right loop of the heart. So when you say, "La", then you're thinking of your, as I say there is an expansion. But instead of losing yourself you think of your involvement. So you're not encapsulated in your own storms in your teacups, as one says. 

Then the head comes down and at first you realize that the whole Universe gets processed in your being like the water in a lake is processed in the vortex, and the filtering of the sentinels. La illaha. The reason for illaha is that when you say, "la illaha" represents the higher levels than the physical Universe. La, the physical Universe, illaha, celestial spheres, higher spheres. Now you get right down into your solar plexus, illa, so that your being is recycles. It is resorbed in the void and then recycled again in a new birthing, illa. 

And that rebirthing would just be a recycling of what was if you stopped at illa. The last "a" would be like the rebirthing. But now you invite another element, transcendental element in your formative process, illa 'lla. That is you don't say the first "a" but it's a very difficult thing to do, illa 'lla. So that gives you a sense of drawing something out of the void. And it's followed by the two l's, 'lla. Now remember at this stage, when you say, " illa", there is at first the "a" is the void and the "la" is that which is beginning to surface out of the void, that's self organizing itself. But not the breakthrough that enables you to mutate, let's say to bring in another factor than just the continual repetition, occurs when you say the "', la illaha illa 'lla. That's the first "a" before lla, you are thinking, "I see myself. If see God becoming in me as I am becoming". So in other words at this moment, that is when you are beginning to give vent to the divine point of view instead of your point of view, or rather the interconnection between the two. So now you think, " Not only God is discovering Him/Herself through me". Well actually, you see when you say, "illa", then God is discovering Him/Herself through you. But when you say, " 'lla", then you are discovering yourself through the discovery that God has of Himself through you at a further stage. 


So it is that discovery that will put you on the track of what you can become. otherwise you would continue to be what you are. So it's a kind of vision. And you could even project it as an image. So for example your face, all of a sudden like a flash of your face as it could be if it reflected your celestial nature plus all the wisdom you've gained from the earth. So let's say the realm of imagination, creative imagination. So you have two l's. The first "a" of 'lla is not said. And that's, you have this vision of the way God, that you discover the way that God discovers Him/Herself through what you're becoming. Then you have two l's. And then your head is turned upwards from having turned to the solar plexus. So at first your head is turned towards your heart center and then your throat center, and then right toward the zenith. And then your head descends again you return to your heart center. Now you'd of thought that one ends with your head turning upwards and that would be the case if you just said, "illa 'lla". The "h" representing the transcendental aspect. Tape ends

MAR 16, 1996		Tape 07

 Madison

...very interesting that. I sigh about it. 

I wanted to spare you all the little words but perhaps it's helpful to - the first 'L' represents Malakut, which is the Celestial sphere, and the second one - Jabarut, which represents the, well, the intelligence rather than consciousness. The mode of thinking that is - that does not rest upon experience, and which is compelling - Jabarut, means compelling, so it is much stronger than the knowledge that you gain from experience. It's - let's say, paramount - I think that's the word, paramount. So that means that you have to shift your identity, first of all in the first 'L', reminisce your angelic state, and extract your being from the dross - just like in alchemy one extracts the - by distillation one extracts the - what they think is the essence of the materia prima, the first substance that is used for the operation. One distills it so that one is extracting the essence as vapor in the retort and then it is condensed again as water. That's the same thing that we're doing here. So you have to have really a sense of not just leaving the earth behind but transmuting in yourself all that was borrowed from the earth - we've already been through that - because of your - following your bliss, let's say, your aspiration towards divine splendor, beyond beauty. That is what I would say the definition of the celestial sphere is, splendor beyond beauty.

Now, the second 'L', Jabarut, well, that is where you think of the words of Ib'n Arabi: Knowledge is a veil upon the known. So that you pass through a kind of dark night of the mind, of the understanding, like St. John of the Cross did, where all your mental constructs pale. They seem to be absolutely useless in comparison with the kind of knowledge that is being revealed to you which you can't acquire. And it's so exciting that one - one has a sense of awakening - one is down playing one's perspective and opening another. And so what is said here is by - well, it's Surwardi who says: The witness - you thought you were the witness but the real witness is the witness in the heavens. And Ib'n Arabi who says: No more imagination. So you don't project upon God any kind of imagination as you imagine God to be - form. No more creative imagination. No more mental constructs - that's the dark night of the understanding. You are doing it with your crutches.

And then the next 'A', that's - lastly of - 'A' of the word Allah, represents Lahut which is the plane of Archetypes, the archetypal level. So, you think in terms of archetypes instead of in terms of exemplars. For example, somebody comes into the room and there's a very peaceful person so somebody might say: 'h, isn't that person peaceful - it's wonderful to see a peaceful person. But the Dervish would say: Isn't it wonderful to see divine peace coming through this person. That's the difference. You're seeing qualities in their exemplars, you're not just seeing their exemplars. That's a level of consciousness called Lahut. 

And so that is - when we talk about our divine inheritance it means in our personality - or let's say the features of our personality, are the exemplars of those archetypes. And in the practise of the Waziifs - the Wazifas, one is connecting the exemplar in one to the attribute of its perfection that one ascribes to God. And between these two there are what they call tenuities. If you look up the dictionary you find that tenuities means very fine threads - tenuous. They're very fragile, mmm? There are some connection between the archetype level, which is called the super-celestial, not the celestial but the super-celestial level and the Nazut level - the level of the existential level. There are correspondencies so there's nothing on the - as above so below - that is said exactly by the Koran when it says there is nothing on earth that does not have its, its correspondence with us. That means in, at that archetypal level. And then Ib'n Arabi goes - adds, by saying: These tenuities are ladders built by the Angels. 

So just think that you have a ladder there that enables you to reach upwards from where you ascribe your qualities to your person - you think: This is me - this is my attribute. The ladder helps you to realize that these are really absolutely cosmic and I am exemplifying them in my being. I am the exemplar! and not a reality per say, but only a derived reality.

Then, consequently, one establishes some kind of covenant or relationship between these two levels and it's interpreted as a covenant, like the covenant of the knight, between God and man. It's called Rabubiat, Rab - the Lord and Ab'd - the servant, and so one is establishing a covenant of fielty. Or sovereignty. That's a word used in the middle ages. And so that's very important in Islam, and of course in Sufism is the covenant that... initiation in the Sufi Order is renewing the pledge that one made in pre-eternity, Asaliat, in pre-eternity., to affirm and serve the different - the divine sovereignty. In other words, one's establishing a covenant, a fielty, and every time that you say a wazifa you, you declare that you wish to serve that quality - divine quality of God, by actuating it in your being. You establish a connection, hmmm? And that's not God - that's God as the Lord, not the ultimate Being of God, but it's a very high level.

Now, for those who are interested in the Islamic tra- transmissions, there's a story that - in the Koran, that Muhammad made a journey from the mosque in Medina to the Mosque in Jerusalem, well, the Dome of the Rock. But in his dream, in his vision - and it wasn't really... it was beyond an astral travel, and he found himself - so that's called the celestial (chosem), you know, and so he found himself at a distance of the, what do you call it? What you call the lotus of the limit which is the throne I suppose one could say, the throne, at a distance of two throws of an arrow. So that, that's measured distances by the distance that it - that is to be found between the chord of a bow and the way you hold your hand when you pull the arrow. You're pulling the arrow - oh I see! Of course! What it means is you pull, you are pulling on that chord with the arrow in your hand, and so the distance between that chord and the bow is called: Kab, and so that would be the distance, you see? So it means very close, hmmm? And so those two 'L's' are the two throws of the arrow. The connection between the first 'A' of Allah and the second; The first 'A' where you are, as Mithall, where you are rebirthing yourself by recycling the matrix of your being, the (sumsaric) matrix of your being and then Lahut, the transpersonal level of archetypes, and there are tenuities between the two, hmmm? So that to rebirth yourself it's not good enough to recycle through your creativity that which is in the unconscious, to unfurl, let's say, the potentialities of your being, but to re-contact the archetypal level. That is, rediscover your divine inheritance. And so then you are born out of those two parents: Mother and Father. The Divine Father and the Earthly Mother.

That's - so you see the importance of the Wazifa and as a matter of fact I don't think you can really do the Dhikr unless you really have - you've experienced that connection in the Wazifas.

Now then, after that there's an 'H' at the end of Allah. If you know something abut the Arabic then it is very remarkable because 'A' is the arrow, and 'L' is the bow, and so you go from the 'A' to the 'L' and the 'L' to the 'A' -Allah, Illa Ha always the 'L' and - two 'L's", and the 'A' - or the 'A' becomes an 'I", but the 'H' is something totally different. It represents a totally different dimension called: Hahut; Transcendental dimension. so let us say that that's the kind of thing you experience in Samadhi - it is beyond existence. And to use the words of Buddha: Beyond existence and non-existence. So you do have just a flash of Samadhi at the end of the ascent of your head. La Illaha Illah, and the 'H' at the end of Allah, but it's just a moment of suspense, and then it's followed by Huuu. So the 'H', so 'U' is appended to the 'H', so you turn your head towards your heart center now, and what Hu means is Him - Anna means me, Hu means Him - and what it, and a word of Al Hallaj, who says: When several people in a room are thinking about a being who's not in the room, it makes that person more present in the room than the people in the room. And that's what the Dhikr is about - it's to make God present. and that's the meaning of Hu, hmmm? And thus you awaken in life, instead of waking beyond life. So I don't know if you remember all these stages but I can go through them again.

Now, I like to just interrupt this sequence of thought with, by a practise, and so place - let's say, turn your eyeballs upwards. And place your indexes on your eyelids in such a way that you don't press the cornea through the - I mean the retina through the cornea. If your eyes were in their normal position you would be pressing upon your eyes and you would have optical illusions. As it is you probably have anyway because one is - you may see sparks and it's not God revealing Himself to you but it's just...

So then place your fourth and fifth fingers in, on your lips and now your middle fingers in the proximity of your nostrils, but do not press your nostrils yet. You could exhale through both nostrils, inhale through both nostrils, and now press your left middle finger and inhale through the right nostril. Hold your breath, and exhale, so you'll be doing this three times - three breaths only, inhaling and exhaling through the right nostril, not through the left. And after three breaths then you take your fingers away but keep your eyes closed, and now you can put your thumbs in your ears.

So that is a practise that favors turning within. And you notice that you're not at the call of the impressions from outside because you have placed - not sentinels, but real barriers at the doors of the senses, so when consciousness is, consciousness then returned outside. And if you place blinkers or barriers, or whatever, to your access to the environment, then consciousness turns within. But then - let's say your consciousness is not focused anymore. It becomes - how can I say, inter-meshed with the consciousness of the whole universe. So that - the word of St. Frances will help you here: I'm being looked at. And you see that normal, cause relation dwindles because it doesn't have much food, much support, but there's a kind of overwhelming emotion that one doesn't know how to interpret.

'k. Well, I don't know of course what you did, wether you concentrated on the solar plexus when you did this practise or on your pituitary gland in the middle of your brain, at the bottom. So if you concentrate on the solar plexus then you will get into that void that we talked about, and as you exhale then something new will be coming out of that void. If you turn your eyeballs upwards and curl your tongue so that you press the bottom of your tongue against your palate, then it will have a very different effect because now you are inviting the higher levels of your being to associate with the new elements that are coming through from the solar plexus - it's emerging through your solar plexus. So it's like a marriage of those two parents, and so your being ensues out of that, the marriage, the juxtaposition of those two. And that's why Pir-o-Murshid says: Wisdom is born out of the mixture of the wisdom of the heavens and the wisdom of the earth.

'k, so let's do this practise again, but now turn your eyeballs upwards and see what effect it has. And just three breaths, not more. And when you exhale, then of course, your eyes get back into the normal position. 

So, now having had that experience we can apply this to the Dhikr. So when you sing La Illaha Illah you get into the same state as when you did this practise - which we call Shaghall, and the Hindus call it (Yonimudra). When we were concentrating on the solar plexus and, so it's like the universe emerges out of this subliminal place - it's normally called the void. And then, so imagine then that as you say Illah you've turned within, and then La your turning upwards, you see. So those two things we did in the practise of the Shaghall - first time in the solar plexus and then secondly turning upwards.

And now, of course, I hope you remember those two planes - Malakut and Jabarut - Angelic sphere and then thinking beyond the level of existence. So it's like the other side of the curtain. And now somehow that way of thinking that is not, that does not rest on - upon experience will give you access to the plane of all possibilities which is called the plane of archetypes, Lahut, and you see that everything that happens on earth is - is derived from this level of reality. Like the universe is an exemplification - exemplification of this archetypal level and so your thinking is now going to shift. You always think in terms of this transcendental level.

And now you just have to make one more leap and it's as though you have freed yourself from the existential condition totally, and had access into the divine mind, or the divine strategy. Well, that's the moment of awakening, when you say the 'H' of Allah. So, when you were on the circle it was exhaling. One's head comes down inhaling, and you continue to inhale as the head rebounds upwards - that's, you're passing through the planes, transmuting them as you go along. And then you hold your breath, with your eyeballs upwards, think of the word 'H', the letter 'H'. You'll find the same in the Jewish language, actually, there's ultimately the name of God in Hebrew, just 'H'. So, it's a state of suspense, that you hold your breath. And now, if you say Hu, so actually one says - one holds, the head turns back toward the heart center, so the 'H' is very short because it goes, it measures into Huuu, because our objective is not Samadhi - it is Samadhi with open eyes.

So, I think one can only awaken in life after having awakened beyond life. So, remember the metaphor, that you visit the architect - that's the 'H' of Huuu, and the architect accompanies you and you - and you now understand life, that building, much better - immensely better than you did without seeing things through the eye of the architect. So things like that are happening to you. You are being revealed the meaningfulness of what is enacted in the world because you are seeing it from the divine point of view. It's a very different vantage point to the human vantage point.

'k. So, now do the whole thing. What I'll do is what I suggested, if we just say the words, if you can think of the - those different stages, saying the words - I hope that saying the words does not deter you from getting to the experience. Eventually you associate the words with the experience. Now, think the words without saying them aloud, but just make the motion upon the breath. That is, as you're doing the circle you would be saying La Illaha, you exhale. Centrifugal. Now, you reverse things. You inhale as you turn within. Yes, well, even if one says it out loud one inhales... . You can't really inhale, no, you do it afterwards, but if you're not saying it aloud then of course you inhale. So exhale La Illaha - inhale - Illah. So your head is coming down - Illah, you can think of an arrow hitting your heart center, well actually it's the solar plexus. Illah, and then one continues to inhale as the head comes up, so your gradually moving upwards from the Illah, from the solar plexus. 

So you're transmuting things from your personal self into a transpersonal dimension. It's when you say Allah you always feel the impact of the Lahut level - of the last 'H' of Allah, so that is the pull of the future. Retrocausality. Now, there's a thought which has been very helpful to me and that is that it is a level beyond causality.

Side 2

...of the determined. Utter freedom, hmmm? So now just do it on the breath - think of these stages. So the holding of the breath starts with the 'H' and continues as you say Hu, 'H', 'U', turning towards the heart. And now you can see how it is a heart because now you rise from the heart center - you turn your head - you move your head upwards in the left loop of the heart. You move it downwards and then upwards again. So you see that the motion serves as a setting, I mean as a signal, telling you now is the time for the next setting of consciousness, hmmm? So you're putting your being though a process of self-discovery.

So, we're going to have our lunch break now. So these are things you can practise on your own - you'll probably find it easier to practise on your own than in a group. 

Bless you.

MAR 16, 1996		Tape 08

Yes, this was an Arabic song. It says - it's to the hero. He must have been a very wonderful being, and it says: I kiss the ground under your feet. And it's by - sung by somebody called (Azzriae), Hammad (Azzriae), and I don't know if you can get it in the states - you can get it in Paris.

So, a few last minute hints as to how to proceed in a practical way to meditate. For one thing I think we need to meditate everyday, at a regular hour, as a preparation for the day. It's worthwhile getting up half an hour in advance - it will make all the difference in our day. But you have to know what you are doing, and therefore you have to make a schedule for yourself. And it could vary but there's some continuity in it. I make my schedule according to the moon - new moon and full moon and so on. First portent and so on. Or you could divide the moon period in four parts and stare at it. You can even decrease the meditation it - in the last quarter and start again a little more, and even, if you like, even give yourself a sabbatical during the last. It's good to start your period of meditation with a breathing practise, and - so you have been exposed to some, some of you were not there, I think it was yesterday morning. We did some rather basic breathing practises with the elements but maybe you can get that tape. It is very important how effective it is as a preparation for meditation. If it's all too much to do in one go, you could - there's four different types of breathing so you could do it over four days, you see, and then start again.

Then of course there's the breathing practise that we did, breathing left - holding the breath, right, and then breathing into both nostrils and holding the breath and breathing out though both nostrils. So, that's a practise that is very wonderful. We'll be doing - we'll be going though it cursively again so you're quite clear as to how, how one does that.

I would say a light practise every day - a visualization of light and once again these are the practises that I gave in the early morning yesterday morning. So, quite a few people weren't there so maybe, again, you could get it on the tapes. Many different practises - a whole series - they all build up as a whole, so I don't think it's a good thing just to pick one out and say: Well, I like this one, and so on. It's, it's all consequential so you have to follow - start with one and then the next, and so on. In a regular manner, and then build it up over a period of a month, for example, and then you start again.

There are very important psychological implications in our practises because our real struggle in life is with our self-esteem and for our self-image, which is not what we are. And meditation is a way of learning who one is, or who we are, and consequently avoiding to denigrate oneself, and in fact a kind of self-defeatism that comes when one does not know who one is. And consequently one is, as I say, it's counterproductive - one is defeating one's own purpose. And that's why when one meditates one - there's no point in not trying - I mean in trying not to think about one's problems because they're stronger than you. They will - those thoughts will force their way in your mind. The beauty of the practises for light is that as soon as you start being aware of that area of radiance around your body - and actually it does intersperse the cells of your body, you not only have a different sense of identity which intersperses all things rather than having a sense of boundary... . 

And, you know, in physics, for example, particles collide where as waves compose with each other forming a wave interference pattern, so if you think of yourself as a field rather than a solid block - the boundary is your skin, then you have this new experience of a kind of osmosis, or communion, between yourself and other people. And it makes for a - not just an expansion of one's notion of oneself, but also a freeing from the limitation of one's self-image, mmm? And as that self-image is not what one is but - I imagine that one is carrying it the whole time, and so one is working on false premis all the time. Absolutely basic. And if you don't do that then of course you will, naturally, slip into the common place kind of consciousness that most people are in, are at, with all the defects and foibles and there are of course the rather harmful impressions that you think you have acquired from your interface with the social environment. But if they were not in you, you - they would not - you would not be able to - they wouldn't spill over on you. So, one doesn't like to own that one has these in one. And so I think it's very urgent that we should be able to deal with that.

So, imagine now that you're, you are sitting in meditation and think: Well, what should I do? If I just sit there and evil kind of thinking thoughts will keep on accumulating in my mind - I won't get anywhere. So, a few suggestions. I would say, first of all, think that you are - you are a denizen from outer space who has landed on the planet earth. So, it's a rather a simplistic way of thinking but actually it is - ultimately it is really true - I don't mean we are from outer space but that we, that, let's say, our body has accrued to us in the course of time. So that, in other words, that will make you at least open to the, to sensing levels of your being that cannot be limited to your body or your mind, hmmm? So, it's just - you know - an idea that I found very helpful, to think that one is a tourist on the planet earth. And - but more than a tourist because hopefully one is leaving a mark on the planet. But that would be the - it would - it gives you a jolt in your self-image as we ask ourselves: Who am I? At least that you question who you are, you see, because that's the worst thing, of course, if one is convinced that one is what one thinks one is. That's what is happening all the time, of course.

So then the second thing is having been gifted by the whole cosmos with this fantastic body, and really, what it takes to make a body - nobody knows how to make a body. I mean, it's such an extraordinary privilege and think that people commit suicide. I mean, what it means to be endowed with a body! As I said this morning, the cosmos has confectioned this brain that is able to help, let's say - enrich - consciousness, is buried, and in which this consciousness awakens which is actually the consciousness of the universe, that enables one to get to know the universe. I mean, that is really extraordinary. It doesn't happen to rocks. Animals to some extent, but what a privilege it is, so think of meditation as a means of being very clear of who am I, what am I doing? And you think to yourself: Well, now, ok, I've got this fantastic equipment now, but what am I doing? Well, I have to really get to work, otherwise I'll be on the dole. That is a familiar name. I hope it doesn't put more people on the dole. I'm not supposed to make some politics. 

Anyway, so, so it's true that you, one really - one gets into a kind of machinery and if one does not then one will be right out there, the homeless. So, one really has to get one's trip together. But on the other hand, if that is the purpose of life, then it's really not worth its while. And, in the mean time one has a terrible sense of frustration - I'm not getting anywhere in my life, what's it all about and I'm no good anyway, you know? One is always trying to vie with the Joneses and competing. And the bright guys get the better places, and all that kind of stuff that we're into. And one feels that if I do that well, then somehow I develop in me animosity for people. So, lack of love, and so it's very bad for my being, and so on, so we have to see very clearly what life is doing to you. All that is just the premises of meditation.

So, according to Sufis, the first step - what we all Makum - the first step, is, what is called Muhasibi, which means self-examination, or examination of conscience. So, it's not working with consciousness, but working with conscience. So, now, in the course of one's involvement in life one loses sight of one's values. When one is younger and caught up in our naive youthfulness we entertained high ideals of splendor, and life is going to be wonderful and - I don't know. Perhaps it's not true of everyone but somehow I was brought up in that sort of thought of God beautiful, and you aspire towards something noble and high in your life and so on. So somehow those initial drives get washed out of one. It starts very early, now, in school. and one begins to doubt those values, and so when you are examining yourself then, or examining what are my motivations, you see what you need to match is your motivations with your objectives, eh, objectives? objectives hopefully, are high, based upon your scale of values. My objective is living up to my ideal and - you know, so you have definite objectives.

And your motivations are, like: What am I doing to match my motivation - my objectives in the reality of the nitty gritty of life, what am I doing? And then of course you find there's a difference between the two. And that is already rather devastating because one finds that one hasn't been able to live up to one's objectives. And of course one puts it down to circumstances: In these circumstances there is no way in which I can fulfill what I would have liked to do because I'm limited in my circumstances. And I would say that the issue is really the degree to which one adapts oneself to the environment, or one adapts the environment to one's sense of purpose. And the strong beings in life have adapted the environment to their own sense of purpose, and - instead of adapting themselves altogether to the environment. Therefore one leaves an impact on the environment.

Of course there's a balance between the two, and the more - and that is really - ultimately it amounts to the interface and interaction between oneself and - let's say oneself - when I say oneself let's say one's qualities - idiosynchcrosies. One's personality - features of one's personality, and the circumstances. That's the interface. So, a practise you could very well do is, it would be - one would have to have a whole week of seminar to be able to do all these practises. It would be like recollecting your past, if possible in a chronological order and then the first thing that you notice is the way that the circumstances affected your nature. For example, after an accident you became more cautious; When somebody did you harm you adopted anger or even hatred. So the environment one has - has reacted to the environment. That you can see, and it's good to see it very precisely - each step, like remember this happened and I remember from that moment on I was different.

What is more difficult is to see the affect of oneself on the environment. But you can - there is a way of doing that. If you recall how you were in retrospect at say, twenty years ago, say ten years ago, I'm sorry. I'm thinking from my perspective. For me twenty years ago is nothing, I mean... . So then, think yourself: If I had been then what I am now, things would not have happened the way they did. And there you see the impact of your being upon the environment. That will convince you that indeed your being impacts the environment - has an impact on the environment, but, in - there's something more to it than that and that's something that Jung saw, because sometimes one does not see how one's being affects the environment. 

There are even, there are sometimes situations where it becomes rather evident but one doesn't like to see it. For example, if you find that people turn away from you then it's a bad sign. So you've got a feedback right there, you know?

But Jung say that very precisely, very deeply. I mean, what he - and so what they call synchronicity, which we were talking about last night. and that is - there is some kind of synchronistic link between your being and your circumstances. And I know we like to think that circumstances are totally fortuitous and happen irrespective of us, but that's because we don't see the link. 

Now, so what he says is if you don't deal with your shadow it well appear to you in your fate. That's a very important statement. If you don't deal with your shadow it will appear, sometime or other, in your fate. So then your fate is somehow related to the way that you are dealing with your shadow, which is what I was talking about yesterday. The shadow would be those strategies of the psyche whereby we identify with our reactionary defence system.

Well, ok, another example of your shadow would be - to be more precise, would be for example - yeah, I'd better explain - illustrate it by a story. For example, that woman who is a workaholic finds it very difficult to be peaceful. Do you recognize that in yourself? I do, sometimes. So, and the reason is because she can't stand that woman who is lounging about on the beach munching chocolate the whole time. In other words, you see, laziness would be the shadow of peacefulness, eh? So one doesn't want to be peaceful because one doesn't want to be lazy, you see? So, the shadow - another example is mastery. One had difficulty in developing mastery because one doesn't like those ruthless people who are just - as "inaudible" said one day: I don't mind stepping on the toes of people - on the corns of people, actually. 

So, that kind of mentality, you see, and so on. Facetiousness is, would be the shadow of joy, for example, so I can't be joyous because I can't stand these people who are so light-hearted and so facetious that I just - it's really very superficial. So, that's the shadow. So what he's saying is if you don't beat your shadow, that is those aspects of yourself that you dislike, and there are other shadows - I defined it - of the good aspects of yourself - if you don't deal with them then they will appear in your fate. So, how that is linked up - that is beyond...well, there are allot of theories. Jung got in touch with a physicist - Pauley - at the time, Pauley, and that was Swiss, I think, and they came up with a theory in physics which was quite extraordinary - the cone of light. But that's, you know, beyond even my understanding of it, so - but it goes into metaphysics.

Like - I mean, I'm very interested in it, like, you know - are things programmed in advance? Or is the programming random? Or do we have free-will and in what measure do we have free-will? These are all very deep metaphysical questions which the physicists are working with now. "Inaudible", for example. So, it does - let's say that link that Jung talked about is not - does not always work. For example, you can't say that the people who are starving in those African countries are, that it's because they are not dealing with their shadow, that their fate comes to them like that. You can't say that. Or you can't say that the victims of the war in Bosnia is because they are not dealing - some of them are not dealing with their shadows - but you can't say that. So, it's just an indication that there might be some link there that we should look into. See if there is something in us that is causing that situation.

For example, a very good example is - well, I can tell you the story. It was Dr. Kubla Ross! You know, Dr. Kubla Ross, and she was, she asked to go to visit a prison and she wanted to see one - she asked: Who is the worst inmate? Who had killed I don't know how many people. Very strong man. Violent! And she asked to go in alone. And she's a teeny little woman. And now, if she had been a priest she would have said: You have got to repent. But what she did was to say: Tell me something about yourself. 

So he said: I was brought up by a step-father who was drunk and kept on beating me and my mother who was an alcoholic and then telling me that I was no good. And so, then when I was twelve I left home and well, you know the only way to survive was to meet up with a gang of robbers and then that's how I made my living. 

So they said: Yes - but - she said: Yes, but they say that you killed people. 

Yes!! I hate people!! 

Ah, why do you hate people? No, she didn't say: Why do you hate people? No, no no. She said: Well, you hate people, hmmm? You mean, you hate your step-father or other people? 

Everyone!! 

Hmmm, well, tell me something about your step-father. 

Well, my step-father was brought up with his step-father who was a drunkard and he came home and beat him up. 

So she said: Can you see that your anger was due to the anger of your step-father and it will go like that if you don't see what is the reason for your anger? So if you just say you hate people - there must be some reason why you hate people. 

And all of a sudden the penny dropped, and he saw that and he broke down and cried. And said: I could never do that again. Just imagine.

So, that brings us back to what I was saying. That our shadow - we can justify our shadow. You can say: Well, that person hurt me and so why, you know, I can't allow this to happen. And of course naturally there are emotions - I am reacting so, of course that's very human and so that's where the shadow is! It's right there! In fact, it is fear that begets violence, as you know. That's the reason for wars. 

Now, to break that vicious circle - and therefore in our meditation we have to deal with that shadow aspect of ourselves. And what is more, we identify with it. We think this is - that's how I am. I mean, I mean perhaps you don't admit it but somehow, surreptitiously we do identify with what is just one dimension of our being, which is the most obvious because it is personal and we think of ourselves as a person. As a, of course, as a discreet entity.

Now, while you're meditating, then you're sense of being what you think you are is going to generate thoughts that are related to what you think you are. Your problems are always related to what you think you are. And that's a vicious circle one is caught in. So, meditation will then consist in breaking that vicious circle, and the only way to do it is to change your sense of your self-image. That will change your way at looking at your problems.

So, the Hindu method consists in questioning our assessment of our problems. It's part of that whole general view that the world is Maya. So, your assessment of your problems is Maya, it is - it is - at least it's not reliable. I gave an example of that the other day. For example, if a physicist sees a trace on a screen, he or she might think it is an electron. But that is an interpretation - that's an assessment and in fact we're not even sure electrons exist. I mean, they only have some reality in, with regard to the whole context. And even probabilities. So - so our assessment of our problems is guarantied wrong - that you can take for granted. 

So, if you accept that, then, well, so what? So, but what are they? so, the theory of Maya is - doesn't get you very far. At least that's my opinion. So, as opposed to that there's the Sufi way of looking at things and, for Sufism, those problems are not Maya, they are not illusory. You can say, I mean you can say what you like but it's a real fact that, you know, there's this situation here. I mean, don't say it's Maya. Like, for example, in India they - someone there was illustrating Maya and said: Well look. If you're on the road and there's a mad elephant coming, it's not Maya because if you think it's Maya you'll soon find out. So, that theory really doesn't work. So, it's negative, but the - you have to always consider the opposite, the positive aspect of it. So - so this is a Sufi view and really this is very important. If you see that then it makes all the difference. And you can say: Well, the physical world is made of devices which gives you a clue as to what is intended behind it.

Now a very good example of that is the film E.T., for example. I hope you saw E.T.. I hope you laughed, but I hope you cried, also. And, why do you cry - you're just seeing shadows? You cry because you saw shadows? Well, there was a very interesting manipulation of your mind there by Speigal. You know that turtle - I mean that E.T. was - had the head of a turtle, and it was the voice of an old woman and somehow if you had just seen that it - if you were a little bit smart you wouldn't have fallen for that.


But the fact is you saw E.T. through the eyes of that lovely child. And it made E.T..

End of Tape Tape #8 March 17, 1996 Madison

MAR 16, 1996		Tape 09

...says that communicate his intention, and so our problems are those devices. So, the device is meant to lead you to what is behind the device, to unmask the hoax, you see, so that's what meditation is about, hmmm? So, how do you do that?

Well, the thing is not to - if you think that what appears at the surface is only a clue, then you naturally - your curiosity will make you try to see what is coming through that clue. For example, if you see the pug marks of the bear in the snow you will want to - you might be tempted to follow those pug marks unless you're afraid of meeting the bear. But you know the clue leads you to something and so that leads us to grasping that which transpires behind that which appears. So, if you think of your problems, then what transpires - I mean, there are many examples.

For example, if you see - for example, a countenance of a face transpires through - behind the muscles of the face. That's an example. So the same thing is true for your problems. Something is trying to tell you something. So if you judged your problems at their face value you're not listening to what the problem is trying to tell you.

So, when you're meditating, instead of just turning over your problems - that's regurgitating them - that won't get you anywhere, try this device, you see. Try this method, hmmm? But then, it is true that our ordinary minds - our common place minds are going to try to draw conclusions within the limits of our understanding, hmmm? I remember a french physicist, Jean Charon, who said - who tried to compare the experience of the physicist with the - observing flying fish in dirty water so that you only know what happens when they've flown over the surface. You don't know what's underneath. And so you have to, if you could plot a kind of curve then perhaps you give some clue as to what is happening, what you can't see.

So, so let us say that our - only mind is not able to really grasp what are the issues behind our problems. We will - we will jump to conclusions, of course, and what I would suggest is that you could, you could try that out. For example: I think that what this problem is asking of me is to have to be more up-front. Or I think that what this problem is asking me is of being more masterly. Or what the problem is asking me is to have more tolerance and more love, and so on and so forth. You can jump to all kinds of conclusions and you can even try to develop qualities in order to be able to meet that problem. But if you are doing that you are trying to adapt yourself to the environment. So that kind of thinking is what one calls reactionary - you're not acting, you are reacting.

So, to understand - I mean, to deal with a problem then, or without dealing with them directly, there is a subterfuge. That is, placing a buffer between the problem and yourself in order to discover yourself irrespective of the problem. I gave an example of that. For example, Bethoven illustrated this in the fourth piano concerto. He - he illustrated the world by an orchestra and himself as a pianist and the orchestra came with a real wallop - PA BUM PA BUM - and he reacted hum hum hum. In other words, he refused to react, hmmm? I've already said that.

So, in your meditation you think to yourself: Now, if I just turn over my problems in my head I would be reacting. But Bethoven taught me not to do that. No, that doesn't get my anywhere, so you simply - you think of your meditation as a sabbatical from your problems. And so down play your thoughts with regard to your problem because - well, it's true it's very difficult to do it with your will because the thoughts regarding your problems are very compulsive. But, so, as I said, it's emotion that is more, emotion works much stronger than will and so every now and again we need to give ourselves - as I say - a little bit of Hagen Das. I mean we need to just say, think of something we really like, like - what I do is, of course, is listen to music that I really like then if I feel a bit upset about something - which often happens, I then - that's one of the things that I do, and I find... that's why we're listening to music. You notice just - it has a way of bypassing the mind. So that, you can't do it with mind - that's the whole thing. That's the reason for meditating, is that we bypass the ordinary mind.

So, if you know that, if you know I can't rely upon my mind to sort out this problem, and then, if there's something that grips you well - of course, the thing that grips one the most is being in love. But then, being in love with a person is sometimes rather deceptive. So it's better to be in love with God. But, if God for me is that concept, then you could be in love with love. And I think that's what I am - I am in love with love.

And the consequence is that it does something to you, to be in love, you know? It - it awakens allot of enthusiasm for which you would be prepared to sacrifice anything. So, it's like the wonder of life. Like on one there's the drama as we saw early this morning, and on the other hand the wonder that comes through. Just imagine the heroism of Joan of Arc. Well, we were talking about her martyrdom, but of course - I didn't mention it this morning of course but there's that - I don't know - well, actually in the past - in the last part of that music there was that saying of - I think it was Hildegard De Bingen: Wondrous wounds. Very strange term. And some how, the thought that there are - people who are tortured experience incredible joy. Especially if they are tortured out of their - their dedication to righteousness, to an ideal. Like Christ, for example.

And you might think it's morbid but it's kind of cosmic. It's like the joy of release from the constraint of suffering. It's a victory over, over, over defeat. That's a very powerful thought.

So, as I say, life is just so full - it's such a rich offering at our disposal, so if you allow yourself to delight in even just the thought of having landed on planet earth and experiencing the wonder of even just looking at the stars. I mean, that is so gripping to your emotion that that kind of emotion can be so strong that you shame yourself at letting yourself be caught in your storms in your teacups, in our little problems - your puny problems. You feel like: Shake yourself together! Are you so puny as to just keep a grudge against someone when life is offering you such a glorious opportunity? It's like being invited to the divine banquet and spending one's time picking up crumbs on the floor.

So, it's that discovery of your real self that will help you overcome those shadows, as Jung calls them, those aspects of yourself that you dislike, and that hold you to your personal ego. And - because that is where prayer is really traumatic - I mean, it really will change one totally because as I said it will enlist qualities - beautiful qualities - in you that you project upon God. But by - in order to project them you have to awaken them in yourself.

So, you see, if you don't bring in - if you remember - I'll repeat something that I've already said and that is there is always that dichotomy, or that "inaudible" between the divine vantage point and the human vantage point. Always the two. And so, if you're just in your personal vantage point then you're like everybody else - you'll never get any where. So you have to bring in that other vantage point. And the best way to do it is to exalt in glorification, hmmm?

Of course, we don't know how to glorify because we have - I have - for myself, at least, don't like ritual. It seems like a show - show biz. And yet, I remember an occasion when I was leading a meditation on light. And then I opened my eyes and looked at people, and I found that they weren't any more luminous than before. So, I thought: Well, what am I doing here? I'm wasting my time! There are allot of other things I could do. So, that was, I think it was on a Saturday before Easter and then on Easter day we had an alter in the middle of the hall, with allot of candles, and we were dancing around the alter with our candles. And everybody had light in their eyes. And I thought to myself: There you are. You don't like ritual but you see that it works. And that is because one is creating an environment that is conducive to calling certain emotions or realizations to the surface. And you can see that, in the Catholic church, for example. After - and you know, I'm not a Catholic - I'm not - you know, I don't have shares in the Vatican. But I must say when I see people come - having had communion and come back to their seats transfigured. 

And I must say I have difficulty with conformism, like: You've got to say five prayers a day if you're Muslim. If one is imbued with a spirit of freedom then one doesn't like people to say what one is supposed to do. So, I am a rebel and therefore it is difficult for me. But when I walk in the streets of Cairo, during Ramadan and see - hear the call for prayer, and then everything stops. The trams, the bicycles - everything stops. Everybody puts down their prayer rugs. Thousands of people, bowing. And when I look at the faces of these people, transfigured just by the act of glorification - it really works! It really works!

So, then meditation is then a very live experience for you, if you do that. And then you are transformed by it. And otherwise it's stress reduction. Perhaps there's nothing wrong with stress reduction but it doesn't quite do it, I mean it doesn't give you illumination. I remember talking with Maharishi about it, and I said: Well, of course it's easier for you because you don't refer to God so, you know, so, it's much easier for people if you don't talk about God. I remember somebody saying to me: Pir Vilayat, if you didn't bring in God in your talks you'd have much more public (as far as themselves). So, I said: Well, that's not what I'm looking for. Anyway. So, he said - so he answered and he said: Well, I'll bring God in gradually, but you see I want to prove God by levitation. I don't think that's the best proof.

So, what I'm saying is that curiously enough you're sitting there so it's not a ritual - you're not in a church, you're not exactly repeating the prayers of Islam or the - you know - the ritual in Hinduism with the flowers and the oil and fire and so on. No, so you don't have the support. But you're providing the support yourself. The support of - let's say, that enlists ecstasy in your being. That's why, when you're meditating - we started by self-examination because it is your personal vantage point that you bring to bear in your trying to look at your problems. And so, you have to do the opposite.

And you have to high-light in yourself your need for - well, the word used by my father is: A longing for the unattainable. I would say, a need for splendor. Something in you, that is there, but you are not giving satisfaction to. That's where all the things I said about, you know, looking at the eyes of a baby, listening to the B-minor mass of Bach, or whatever - something that really lifts your soul. Think about that when you're meditating, hmmm? Or play the music!

Now, there are skills which, well, are effective. For example, the practise that we did with our fingers on our senses. It's a skill which helps you to turn within, and perhaps you notice that it works much more effectively than if you try to turn within because you are doing something to your body by cutting your body's ability to communicate with the outside world. And that has an immediate effect upon the setting of your consciousness.

The other practise is using breath in order to - as a kind of lift to hoist your consciousness into the higher spheres, and that is a Hindu technique - Yoga. It's very effective. So that is practises we are going to do now. We started by breathing left and right and so on, but I didn't follow it up very much because we couldn't do to much right away. We had to get into it gradually. OK., and then we'll proceed from there. So what I'm saying is when you meditate during them don't let yourself get bogged in by your trying to figure out your problems with your mind. Think of, turn the other way and just think of something that is uplifting.

Now, there is something else in Muhasibi, in self-examination which started by our motivations - I mean our objectives and our motivations. Now, supposing that instead of trying to figure out what are the qualities that you need to develop in order to meet a problem, meet your problems - like you jump to conclusions as we did. Forget your problems for the time being and think to yourself - and then as you turn within think to yourself: Seems to be some quality that is trying to come through me at this moment. Strange. It's a quality that I never worked with before. And you'll notice that, for example, if you look back at your life in retrospect, perhaps you will remember that there was a time in your life when what was important for you was to be of service. Or there was a time when what was important for you was to have mastery over situations. Or what was important for you was understanding. Or what was important for you was love, or compassion, or kindness, communication with people. So one goes through different stages in one's life. And that's what the Sufis call Makum - different stages. And many Sufis have tried to outline what are these stages but they're different for each person. So one can't generalize.

But, in your personal experience, you ask yourself: Now, there was a time when I was geared to a certain quality that, for me, was just very very important and I was looking everywhere to see if I could see this exemplified in people. Or even, you know, for example - power. I could see it exemplified in the lightening and thunder, and so on. Peacefulness - I saw it exemplified in the lake, in the high mountains, and so on.

So, but now, at this stage in my life, I just feel that there is a quality that is coming through and I can't quite put my finger on it. If I read the lists of wazifas - one hundred - I mean, ninety nine names of God - no, I can't say that there's one of them that says exactly what's coming through. In fact, I don't know the word for it. But still, I just feel there's a quality that is coming through me, and that is so important it's just like the chicken in the egg that's trying to break the shell. And if - as I said that before - if I don't acknowledge this - if I'm not aware of it, it will be still-born. So it needs a support of my awareness and also of my nurturing it.

So, this quality didn't seem to have anything to do with your problems. And I've made experiments to ask people to do this and see if the quality that is coming though is the quality - is the same quality that they felt they needed in order to meet the challenge of their lives. The trouble is that I suspect that in their mind they - there was - they would still think of their problems. So, it's very difficult to make an experiment and find out if truly enough if one can grasp the quality or several qualities that are coming through without being concerned about their effectiveness in dealing with one's problems. But, if that is so - and I believe it is so, then - what I've done myself is - all of a sudden I see that quality and I see that that is the best solution for my problem. But if I tried to figure it out with my mind I wouldn't have seen it. Because the mind is deceptive.

So, that is a way of seeing the impact of your being upon your problems, hmmm?

OK., so. Time is going on - it's rather frightening. And I must say I admire you to sit there but, two hours... I don't even give you a chance of stretching, but, well, I'm a hard task master. OK., well, now, start this practise again.

Now, put your thumb under your chin and your middle finger of your right hand on your right nostril and the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand and the thumb of your left hand connects with your left nostril. And now just breath normally - in fact, extend your exhaling a little longer. And then you find you can inhale more. Exhale again, inhale even a little longer now. Now, put your left thumb on your left nostril and exhale through your right nostril. Now, inhale through the right nostril - hold your breath - exhale through the left nostril. Inhale through the left nostril - hold the breath - exhale through the right nostril. Now, inhale through both nostrils - hold your breath - exhale through both nostrils.

So, think of the past on your left, and the future on your right, and so when you are breathing through left nostril you can think - you can.... If you get to a point when you are able to breath very slowly to increase the amount of time when you inhale or when you exhale or hold your breath... . You see, now, you can start with - for example four - beat of four. Four, inhaling - actually it's too short, but, four - you see, it's a technique - I don't know wether you, you can do that. One becomes aware of one's heart-beat. Actually, if it's not your heart-beat, you can be aware of the pulsing of your blood. That's something like seventy-two beats to the minute, for example. So that's a little bit faster than a second. So that will give you a sense of - it's like a metronome - it will give you a sense of rhythm. And so I - personally I, actually I start with Eight, just - you could start with six heart-beats, let's say, or six seconds, as you inhale. And then hold your breath twelve. Exhale six breath only. Well, it's a bit stressful to start with unless you are used to it.

So, I think to do this to start with, four - eight - four, and then increase it to five - ten - five, and then increase it like that. Some Yogis are able to hold their breath a few hours. In fact, they are buried under the ground and they come out alive. It's a state of hibernation. So, I think it's possible Samadhi is a state of hibernation.

That is, the more peaceful you are the longer you can hold your breath. And the longer you can exhale the longer you can hold your breath. So, there's a way of slowing oneself down, and the consequence is your heart-beat will slow down, and also, incidentally, your blood-pressure. If you - as one gets older one has a blood-pressure problem. Unless one is well - one is very careful about one's diet. Need I say. And then you go to the doctor and the doctor gives you pills and says: Well, for the - in the future you won't be able to survive without taking a pill a day, or half a pill a day, and then you go by the doctor, of course.

But, I've tried a technique - of course there are allot of techniques, like meditation will do it for you - like you have to learn to relax and then your pressure will go down. But it's not always easy to relax. I mean - if you're a lazy person then it's easy, but if you're - it's difficult to do the opposite - to get yourself going. So I've developed a technique, because the day I was whisked to a hospital because my pressure was two hundred and thirty-six over a hundred and thirty-six, and normally it is a hundred and ten over seventy.

So I developed a technique and it consists of - you have to lie down on your stomach or at least rest on something and you dilate your arteries. You don't try to relax because your mind turns around fast and it takes a long time to do that but you can just imagine arteries in your arms opening up like, and you try your pressure and it has gone down. So, of course doctors are very interested in that because that's really... . It wouldn't be very interesting for the American Pharmaceutical Society...

But that's why I say watch your breath. Be aware of it, you see, and if you are aware of it, it will slow down. Don't try to slow it down. Like if you try to relax, you can't. But it is, see now it is in exhaling that you relax.

OK., so, now, to come back to this practise, then you stagger the amount of time you take for inhaling - holding your breath - exhaling. In Yoga it is four - sixteen - eight. So four beats to inhaling, sixteen holding your breath, and eight exhaling. But it is only good to do that if you are able to do what they call the (bounders) that is, you develop the muscles in your, your abdomen and on to withhold, I forget now. I know the word in German. Your, the partition between your lungs and your stomach - the diaphragm. That's right. So, withhold your diaphragm because if you don't have strong muscles and you exaggerate your efforts in trying to hold your breath, the diaphragm will be pushed downwards and will affect your pancreas and your liver and even your heart. So that's why the Sufis are very careful not to advise people to hold their breath as the Yogis do, hmmm? It's all right if you do those (Bounders). And the other one is the throat. Strengthen the muscles in the throat so that you avoid having damage to your thyroid, or parathyroid. So, and that's a....

Now. We got to the point when talking about the sword that cuts the guilt of the past, well, let us say the conditioning of the past. So , as you hold your breath, you just experience that moment of freedom. And maybe it's relative freedom. I don't know wether one can just free oneself from guilt that way but, as I said, you make a pledge. As a moment of suspense, but as you exhale right - if you think of the future on your right then - we are often thinking of the future, aren't we? We are thinking we have our plans, projects. We have our fears about the future, concerns. And so those projects are going to pull you forward into the future. 

That's why the pull of the future is stronger than the past - the push of the past. And amongst them there is a projection of how you could be. How you could become in the future, which pulls you forward. So that's what they call retro-causality.

However, we - one limits oneself by one's projects. For example, I - it often happens to me - I have - I schedule a seminar somewhere and all of a sudden I'm invited to a big conference - a world conference and I have to refuse that wonderful invitation because I'm giving a seminar. So - so sometimes you limit yourself by your scheduling, you see? So, I'm not saying you should not schedule, but what I'm saying is one depends - one becomes dependent upon one's prospects and it can even become addictive - one depends upon one's success. And so when you are breathing in through the right nostril, then think, what if your projects would fall through. Kind of you're prepared for a collapse of all that you projected for the future.

So, that's something like the dark night of understanding, the (offsenjohn), but applied to our projects. And it's a safeguard because otherwise you would be very disappointed if your projects don't materialize. So, let's say, if our quest is freedom, then it is not only freedom from conditioning but freedom from one's own projection from the future, hmmm?

So that's what happens when you hold your breath. And then as you exhale left then you look at the past and you see how your preconfiguration of the future has freed you from the past, hmmm?

You see, we think of the past like - our guilt - when we think of our guilt we're right back in the past. But things have changed since that time - that person changed - we have changed. You know, the stars that we're looking at now - most of them don't even exist anymore. It's the past. We're looking into the past, hmmm? So when we look at our guilt we're looking into the past. 

And so somehow in - it's our way of thinking to understand how the past has been processed by our pledge in the present and by our projects for the future.

Now comes an interesting thing and that is when you hold - when you inhale through both nostrils. Now, what I suggest is that you become aware of the energy that rises in your, in the center channel of your spinal chord. If fact, if I may...

Side 2

...pituitary gland as you hold your breath, and as you exhale concentrate on the current of energy that descends along the right channel of the spinal chord. Then you inhale through the right nostril, and you concentrate on the current that rises on the right channel of the spinal chord. You hold your breath - concentrate on the pineal gland and you exhale through the left nostril. You concentrate on the energy that descends in the left - lateral channel of the spinal chord. And then when you inhale through both nostrils you concentrate on the energy that rises in the central nervous - central channel of the spinal chord, which is the sensory motor, central nervous system. Hold your breath. Again, concentrate on the pineal gland and when you exhale, then at first you concentrate on the two descending channels, right and left. Then, as you inhale, you concentrate on the way that those two lateral channels merge at the bottom of the spine, and move upwards. 

In India it's called (Pralaya) - that is, the meeting of two rivers, and that's why the great centers of pilgrimage are where two rivers meet - that's where they build their temple. There's a Rishi sitting there. So it's like there's a break-through in the positive and negative current - electrical currents get to get together, then there's a break-through of energy and that energy rises in the spinal chord. So one is arousing what they call the serpent - that is energy, Kundalini - they call it, at the bottom of the spine.

Earth energy. But then there's the other way around and that is the energy that descends is bifurcated from the center. Now, I have a little time to say this. The early Hindu's dissected corpses and knew much more about the nervous system than one ever thought, and they had noticed - they had discerned these two lateral channels, and the central one. And then what they call the afferent and efferent nerves linking - and of course now we know that the lateral channels serve the autonomic nervous system that takes over automatic functions in the body. 

The central nervous system is subjected to our will, our decision. And so for Yoga, yoga is based upon the preponderance of the central nervous over the autonomous nervous system. That is, functions that are generally catered for, like our circulation of our blood or, of course, nervous impulses, hormonal secretions and so on. All those things - digestion, all those functions that happen - that we don't have to worry about because the unconscious takes - I mean the autonomic nervous system takes over - can fall under the volition of the will. And the way to do that is for the - to, the work proceed in such a way that the energy that the... . Let's say the impulses in the lateral nervous system are transmitted to the central nervous system. That's the different nerves.

So, there are nerves linking - all the way along the spinal chord, linking the lateral channels with the central channel. So, I'll tell you the way that one does that in Yoga, hmmm? That is, as you inhale through your right nostril - your left nostril, left, hmmm? So you imagine that energy impinging in the bottom of your spinal chord is going to spiral upwards to the right, dextra-rotary, to the right. So you breath in left, so the energy flows from your bottom left and then forward and then right and then keeps on spiraling up. And of course the opposite, of course when you breath in through your right nostril. And if you exhale after inhaling through your left nostril, and you hold your breath and then you exhale through your right nostril, then energy is now spiraling downwards to the right. And so it is descending on a different spiral stair case then the one on which you inhaled. You can see that. Two spiral staircases that crisscross, hmmm?

And, if you inhale though the right nostril after exhaling through the right nostril, you're moving upwards - you're ascending through the same staircase that you just came down. And then you exhale through the left nostril, you are descending the same staircase upon which you ascended in the first place. Now you can figure that out at home, if you like.

So, now, as I said, in the first stage you simply breath in - concentrate on the central channel. But knowing this now, when you inhale through both nostrils you think of both spiral channels, or the energy in both channels now appear like spirals instead of like straight lines because you are taking into consideration the afferent and efferent nerves. And so the energy of the two currents rising through lateral channels crisscross in the front of your second chakra at the back of your solar-plexus, in the front of your hear chakra, in the back of your throat center, in the front of your third eye, and reach up into your crown. That's Yoga, hmmm?

So, if you think that way you are encouraging the flow of energy from the lateral channels into the central channel, which takes over, you see? And so it helps - that is like, the support system for your will. It's able to take over functions that are normally cared for by - catered for by the autonomic system, hmmm? And that works at the level of the psyche, too, so it enables you to control your thoughts, and so on. But, you know, it's a technique that requires total dedication. It doesn't work like that.

So, then there is a movement toward the center as you inhale - let's just - like a vortex - all the water is flowing towards the center, a whirlpool for example. And when you exhale, then it's the other way around. When you exhale from both nostrils the energy from the center is flung toward the periphery, in through the efferent nerves, and the consequence is that you have rendered an autonomic function conscious and now you give it back modified to the unconscious. It takes over. I'll give you a good example of that. For example, you're playing the piano and you keep on making the same mistake. And so your autonomic nervous system has taken over, has been educated into playing - it doesn't know that it's doing wrong. But you know it so you repeat the piece over and again, consciously. Do it right. And then, if you keep on repeating it, then you don't have to do it consciously anymore because the autonomic nervous system has been corrected.

And so that's a wonderful technique because you can alter errors in your thinking by reversing the distortion, the error, which is exactly what one does with the voice of Caruso. That one - actually the way to retrieve the voice is to get a recording machine of the time and then compare it - compare the frequencies with those of modern technology, and then you can reverse the distortion and you get the original voice of Caruso. So it's a very good method if you want to deal with the shadow in yourself - to reverse your - the defects by comparing them with the qualities. Like, you consider the defects to be a shadow.

In fact, I would say that if you want to know what your qualities are, ask yourself what your defects are because your defects are the shadows of your qualities. So, if that will help to inflate our ego...

OK. Well, now let's do this - as we breath in then - yeah - now, so there's a further piece to this and that is that so far we have been working with energy. Now I want to draw your attention to a Tibetan motto that says this: The mind rides the wind. The mind rides the wind. So, the wind is energy, for example your magnetic field or the energy in your nervous system - whatever, it's energy. And the mind - that is, your way of thinking, varies according to the nature of the energy you are working with. So, for the Tibetans, for example, Tibetans make a distinction between the gross mind and the subtle mind, and the very subtle mind, gross energy, subtle energy, very subtle energy.

So, the gross mind is the mind that interprets phenomena - so it's the react - or reacts to phenomena. So, for example, when you're meditating, when we reflect upon our problems we're utilizing our gross mind. The subtle mind is the creative mind so, that's what we do as we turn within and we imagine how we could be, for example. That's the creative mind - the subtle mind. And so it prevails over the gross mind. And, so when you are seeing things from - in a creative way then you are not totally subjected to your interpretation of situations, hmmm? You are acting upon the environment instead of allowing the environment to act upon you.

And then the subtle mind is exactly what we meant by Jabarut - that is, where one's thinking is not based upon experience at the existential state. So, it seems to be inherent in our own thinking but we're not aware of it because when we base our know-how upon experience - but if we downplay our dependence upon our experience then that mode of thinking begins to emerge. But you see, in order to do that - first of all in order to be able to let the creative mind be active you have to identify yourself with your subtle body, or your aura. But in order to be able to enlist the activity of your very subtle mind - Jabarut, you have to let go - we already said that - let go of any crutches that you get from your experience. But in addition to that, your sense of identity has shifted into being the knower - that is, or better still, in being an intelligence rather that an consciousness. And that means instead of being passive to the divine revelation - no, no, it's not that, no. It's letting the divine revelation prevail over one's own acquired knowledge. And consequently one is thinking - seeing things from the divine point of view.

Now, at first you never thought that you would be able to but if you follow these steps, then eventually you can do it. And that's why Neuton said: I think as God thinks. And allot of people thought: Well, that's ridiculous - what does he mean he thinks as God thinks? Actually, he was quite right because if one has any clue as to how the universe thinks it is because one's thinking is of the same nature as the thinking of the universe.

So, now, coming back to this - as you're breathing in through both nostrils, you imagine energy rising in the central nervous system while there is an inflow of energy from both lateral channels and that energy acts as a lift which carries your consciousness upwards. So you're hoisted - your consciousness is hoisted above the world - perspective of the world. Now, a further help to do that is to - while you're doing that turn your eyeballs upwards. And there are several reasons fro that.

One is because the eyes are continually in motion - in fact that is how one tells if a person is sleeping, if they are dreaming or if they are in deep sleep. Now, it's called paradoxical sleep and orthodoxal sleep. And if you turn your eyeballs upwards, you stabilize them and so you encounter a very different mode of thinking to the rather unstable, quivering kind of thinking of one's usual state of consciousness, or even one's dream consciousness. Or the relationship between the eyes and one's state of - the attunement of one's consciousness. 

And then you bend your tongue - curve your tongue and press the bottom of your tongue against the palate, which has a very definite affect. In fact there are some kind of practitioners who have developed this technique of pressing certain points of the palette which will affect an incredible change in the whole functioning of your nervous system, and also your brain waves. So, it's a very dangerous technique and that's why I don't advise it, but if you press your tongue then you are doing - your body knows how to do it better than if a practitioner is trying to do it to you, hmmm?

Well, the effect is - there are several effects. One is that it enhances the flow of (spinorashitic) fluid in the four ventricles of the brain. And secondly, if your tongue is well back, then you do exercise some pressure on the (medulla um lagatta) which eventually will affect, well, eventually it will reach your pineal gland. That's why the Hindus - Yogis, attach allot of importance to the function of the pineal gland and work at - particularly at the relationship between the posterior and the anterior pituitary glands. So they call it: Bindu, and so this practise really has a tremendous implication in one's body functions - their nervous functions and the effect of exercising some pressure on one's pituitary gland will be the secretion of Beta endorphines that are a kind of morphine that the body produces itself. And which gives one a certain amount of immunity against pain and will also give you ecstasy. So that's why the Yogis say that they have a taste of the nectar, and that's a kind of sensitivity in your tongue and maybe at the back of your throat because the endorphines secreted in the blood and - if you're very sensitive you can actually sense it, hmmm? These are Yoga techniques.

So, that's very complex, so one shouldn't do it without proper tuition but - however, if you do this practise, simply think that the energy is flowing upwards and acts as a lift that shifts your consciousness upwards. And, of course, while you're doing it you have to concentrate on each chakra, one after the other, in turn, hmmm?

But your objective is not Samadhi and consequently the reverse is even more important, and that is the energy that flows downwards through the central nervous system and then bifurcates left and right in the autonomic nervous system. And - so that leads to the state that the Sufis call Tawhid, which is awakening in life. That is, you see the Divine intention. You can't figure it out with your mind, of course - that's why we can't understand why things happen the way they do - it's totally incongruous sometimes. But somehow one overcomes the limitation of one's finite mind and then one sees the whole working of things - it's like awakening into life. The final words of Pir-o-Murshid, before he died, were: When the unreality of life fades away, it's reality strikes my heart.

So, one sees meaningfulness where one didn't see meaningfulness. Pir-o-Murshid tries to express that in words when he said: The fulfillment of the divine purpose is to be found in the human being who is God-conscious. So, being conscious of the divine purpose has the effect of your fulfilling that purpose - or being the fulfillment of that purpose. So there are two ways of doing it, and this is where I'm going to end.

First of all, every now and again, when you're meditating, you literally shake yourself. Just shake yourself, now! Awaken! Be very, very alert, hmmm? It's very healthy to do that, isn't it, instead of getting sclerosed. And then you do the same thing with your glance because that's, again, a feedback system. Your glance becomes very alert - very alert, like the eyes of an Eagle. So, I remember being invited to - by a doctor in New York, to meet his father. I met his father in a rest home, and his father was accompanied by a psychotherapist. I've never seen a psychotherapist - in fact I've never seen a glance like that except in - in anyone, even those super beings who are psychotherapists. But, I've seen them in the Rishis in the Himalayas. Yes, I have.

You can't believe how he was looking at people. He was looking like this... . Well, I've got an eagle, and that's how the eagle looks at me. Looking right into your soul. So that's being awake in life, where you don't have your eyes closed in Samadhi, with eyeballs upwards and tongue pressed against the palate. But you're right there in the here and now.

But then, you must be aware - be wary of the simplistic views of finite minds. You say well, that's what it's all about - it's being aware of the here and now. No. It's being aware of the way that the everywhere and always manifests in the here and now. So, it's very simplistic to say: Well all you have to do is to be very aware in the here and now - who I am. So you don't know who you are anyway - so what? It's almost simplistic - who are you, you know? Really, so, well, it's kindergarten.

So the clue is in words of - I'll end with these words - of Preston Milford, who was an American poet, and who said: I want - I wish for nothing less than the impossible possibility. Infinity in a finite fact. And eternity in a temporal act. That's what I mean And so you experience the bounty of God in your finite being.

So, God bless you now.

Yes? Thank you. You see, it's empty. I didn't bring my beggar's bowl because I had so much secretarial stuff to bring - my computer. And when I used to bring my cello I was - always had to be charged extra for excess luggage. So, this time I sacrificed my beggar's bowl but I'm provided with one here. So we have several projects.

One is, in India, the project for the children who are starving and who would never get enough milk to develop even their bones - I mean, very essential nutrients. So we are offering milk to children - I think it's something like three hundred - four hundred children every morning. And we have a school for children and also training for teen-agers, to give them a skill so they can make their way instead of becoming beggars. And also we have a clinic and you can't imagine what happens. There are people who don't have enough money to pay for a bus to go to a hospital. And we're providing them with medical care - with medicines. And so this is a very endearing project, and as a matter of fact this is the kind of thing that the Sufis do around the Dharga. That's the traditional social service that is not taken over by the government but by the Sufi orders. So, we have such - there's no such social service in India as in most European states and in America, so this is your social service in India. If you'd like to help out that's what it's for.

Thank you for the idea. (Singing Alleluia)

End of Tape.



MAR 19, 1996		Tape 01


Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Can you say, "Good evening", to me? Well I'll need a good evening because I have a rather bad cough so I'll be disturbing you a good deal this evening. My first question is whether you can hear me right at the back. Yes? IF at any point that you can't, then put up your hand or make a big fuss so that I know that there is something wrong somewhere.

A few little preliminaries. Doesn't seem to be necessary but still. One is we don't want to have mothers bring their babies here because it is very disturbing when one is meditating. And the other is, well I love babies but it's not the best place for them. And the other is well in the past, well occasionally we've had people starting to scream. And I don't do anything horrific to you I can assure you. I'm not ferocious that way. But it's just that I do invite people to think of their problems. And you do feel like screaming if you think of your problems. Well if you would be so kind as to go out side and scream outside. Thank you. Spare us.

Now I assume that if you are here, then you are on the same quest as I am. And I think we are all in this same quest. That is that we have a feeling that life the way it is isn't quite doing it for us. We have a feeling that we're missing out on something very important. And we don't know what it is. We don't know how to say it. And it's not even important to say it. But to know what it is. The important thing is to do it. So what I'm proposing to do this evening is I hope that this evening will be an experiential opportunity for us to share rather than my talking at you. So there will be on the one hand some experiential work and on the other hand some theory. Because it is necessary to know what's the thinking behind all this. 

So let us start. I suppose that what we feel is that we would like to develop more insight into our problems and in problems in general, into life, the meaningfulness of our lives. In the east it's called awakening. And some times you can use the word illumination. Well these are big words and you know words don't work for you. And the other is I think we have a need to unfurl potentialities in our being that are still in a latent state. So all we could offer this evening is let us say skills that help us to trigger off these resources in our being and at least to find out exactly what are the elements that are standing in the way. And then I think that we would like to be more effective in our lives to fulfill our purpose in our lives. So I think we need to be very clear about the impact of our being upon the environment.

All right let's start and just think that we're going through a process together. So the first step. Imagine that you're a denizen from outer space who is landing on the planet earth, who has landed on the planet earth. And what's happening is first of all you're experiencing the Universe, or rather cosmos, as you perceive it through your senses. And what is more you are ingesting, that is you are digesting the Universe in yourself. Not only in your body you're digesting your food of course. But somehow you're picking up a lot of impressions. Just watch TV and then you're exposed to just a tremendous amount of impressions. And the fact is that I think we're really suffering from an indigestion. I think we need to be able to make a selection between those impressions that we wish to imbibe or not. otherwise we lose our uniqueness. Every being is absolutely unique. And we want to respect that. So you see many of the eastern techniques of meditation do tend or have tended to make people otherworldly, what psychotherapists call spiritual bypass, although there is such a thing as psychological bypass too. And of course bypasses in the medical sense of course are sometimes very useful. So I think it's true that we sometimes need to call a sabbatical and try and experience something different from the usual routine. I think that many of the techniques of meditation were intended for ascetics and we're living in a world where I think it's good for us to be able to be cognizant with some of the techniques of the ascetics and apply them to everyday life.

All right so let us start. Now we're going to use our breath so I would say first of all just be aware of your exhaling and inhaling without trying to influence it in any way. So if you are simply aware of your breath, it will slow down without trying to slow it down. And the consequence is that you're going to be able to absorb much more oxygen from the environment and as a matter of fact normally we only use one fifth of the capacity of our lungs. All right now, as you exhale just imagine that your consciousness is rather like your glance so that as you exhale your consciousness expands just like after having, while looking at a book for example, reading the pages of a book you could start looking at the landscape and look at the book again. So you're able to alternate the span of your glance. So you can do the same thing with your consciousness. 

So just think that, just imagine this, that the consciousness, that 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. And if you expand the outreach of your consciousness, you'll fell that the consciousness of the Universe seems to flow into your consciousness like for example the sea flows into the waves. So that will give you a sense of vastness, of immensity. And of course these are conditions that tend to make you lose the sense of your individuality. So that's the way of the ascetic. Now let's do the opposite as you inhale, just imagine that in fact you are absorbing the Universe, not only in your body but also in your consciousness at all levels as a matter of fact. And so you have a sense of convergence of the Universe as you. I don't know whether you are aware of the cognizance with the holistic paradigm. That is that every fraction of the totality carries within it potentially of the totality. So don't think of yourself of a fragment of the totality but consider that you carry within yourself somehow potentially the totality. But only a very small part of that tremendous bounty in your being is ever active. Most of it is recessive, that it it's there. But it's waiting to be called upon. All right now as you do this now imagine that, because there is so much bounty one wouldn't be able to take in all the bounty. To start with just think of the galaxies. And just think that your body started at the time of the big bang. It was like an explosion of radiance and the planets were formed. And eventually your body was fashioned out of the planet, out of the fabric of the planet. And somehow the past of the Universe is there in your body. And the consciousness of the Universe is trying to awaken in you, as you.  OK now it you do that, then the next step would be you noticed at first we lost a sense of uniqueness of individuality. And now as we inhale we recover the sense of our individuality. And as a consequence it gives the opportunity of making a choice between those impressions that we wish to imbibe and those which we do not wish to imbibe. And Buddha expresses that as one places sentinels at the doors of perception. So your choice resides in your ability to repel certain impressions and to on the contrary welcome other impressions. Actually your choice reflects your sense of me. If you know something about the immune system for example in your body, you know that the immune system will reject an implant of an organ of the body that does not have the same DNA as the body. You know that. So the immune system is based upon me and no me. So we have a kind of psychological immune system so that we are able to reject impressions that we don't want to imbibe. As I say we don't want to incorporate in our being. But of course you realize that what this is calling for is a very clear sense of me, of who I am. 

And I don't know whether you noticed that, well perhaps you notice this when you turn within. I'm sure some of us, many of us tend to relax and then we tend to turn within, what we call introspection. And then I don't know whether you find or discover that somehow you are playing a role, at least let's say you're adapting yourself to the circumstances. And as a consequence you're not quite yourself because you're giving prevalence, precedence to adapting yourself to the environment. It's sometimes a question of survival. But you know that in every being there is some balance in the amount that one adapts to the environment and the amount that one adapts the environment to one's own sense of purpose. So, for example, while meditating just imagine what has been the impact of the circumstances in your life upon your personality. You see that perhaps when you were a young person there was an accident or something terrible happened. As a consequence perhaps you have become more cautious. Or then, somebody betrayed you and so once more you don't trust people until you get to know them better. And so you see that the environment does influence our personality. 

But now it's more difficult to see what is the impact of our personality upon our problems. There is a word of the psychologist J C Jung who said,"If you don't deal to your shadow, it will appear to you in the form of your fate". Now this is a very shattering statement. It shattered me for quite some time. If you don't deal with your shadows, those will appear to you in your fate. Now normally one doesn't, one imagines that one's fate is random or programmed by God or whatever. But it's very difficult to see what connection there could be between one's dealing with one's, those aspects of one's being that one doesn't like. We call them defects and one's problems. But actually there is one. 

And so this would be the next step. You see normally although we are, let's say our personality is the expression of a very wide let's say seed bed let's say. And so our personality is only an expression of it, only expresses a very small part of the bounty of our being. And now the fact is that we tend to identify with the periphery of our being, peripheral areas of our psyche for example instead of identifying with our real being, our total being. And that peripheral area of our psyche is made up of those aspects of our self that are reactive. That is there is a spill over from the environment to our personalities, as I already said, the way that the environment influences your personality and of course the other way around. So that somehow we build a defense system against being, let's say the assault of the environment. For example having been ill treated or abused or so many things have come out in the last decades. The degree in which we have suffered. And I think we all have some wounds in ourselves. And the consequence is that you know nature provides us with some kind of means of let's say placing a dressing on those wounds, or then perhaps a shield to protect ourselves. So then as I called it a defense mechanism. And consequently somehow, since there is a spill over, or defense system uses the same tactics as the assault. That is that anger begets anger and hatred hatred and so on. So we're caught up in this vicious circle and we identify with it. And as a consequence we have difficulty in discovering our real identity. 

So what I'm trying to do here, what I have in mind is to try and see if there are skills will enable us to discover what our let's say what our holistic identity is. Let's say the wholeness of our being instead of just a fraction of our being. I can think of a very good example of, in which this has been illustrated by Beethoven. I don't know if you know the fourth piano concerto. He describes the orchestra as the world and himself as the pianist. And the world comes with a wallop. I think this is a concert hall here isn't it? So it comes with "ba pumpa pum". And he reacts "...". In other words he told the world that was attacking him, "I don't want to play ball with you. I have to consult my inner self". And you see that's what we're doing all the time. We're reacting and we don't give ourselves an opportunity to place a buffer between the impact of the environment and ourselves to discover the potentialities in our being, the resourcefulness in our being. And as a consequence then Beethoven starts, let's say improvising or let's say developing this theme that becomes one of the most beautiful melodies that he had ever written. And if he had simply reacted, it wouldn't have happened. So it's a very good example of how we can deal with our lives. And I think that that's a good definition of meditation. It's the ability to call a halt, downplay the impression of the earth. Now supposing that you were to sit down and try to meditate, unless you have a lot of experience in meditation and that requires a lot of knowledge. I think that you would probably think that, " It's very disturbing. And there is a lot of emotions. And I can't control them. And I hear that Yogis can control them but I can't. And so maybe I'm no good. I can't meditate". 

Well, how can you downplay the impressions of the environment so that you can really begin to honor and also of course unfurl all the potentiality in your being? Well, it's of course there are techniques or skills. I would say that the first one is to realize that one's problems are not what one thinks they are. Or rather they are surely not what one thinks they are. One is continually miss assessing. You can just take that for granted. And that doesn't mean that they are all together off. It's just that they are relative. For example we have seen our problems from a vantage point. For example, I lived in Paris. If you've seen Notre Dame from one angle, you haven't seen Notre Dame. And that's what we're doing with our problems. We cast a personal bias on our problems. That is that we assess our problems in terms of what they mean to us. So we have a personal bias, or rather what they mean to what we think we are. And we're schlepping this miss assessment of our problems throughout our lives. You can just imagine. So it's just about time to grow up. So ask yourselves. So of course this sounds like Maya. You know there is the theory of Maya of Yoga. The physical world is not what we think it is. And any physicist will tell you that. If you look, if the physicist looks at a screen and sees a trace, he or she might jump to conclusions and think that it's an electron. But that would be a miss assessment because in fact it might be a flow of electrons. There are all kinds of ways of looking at it. So don't go by your face value. 

But what does Sufism say? And that's very interesting. It's not the same as the theory of Maya. It is that circumstances, well the physical world let's say. Start with the physical world. The physical world is made of clues as to the meaning behind them. Clues. For example like the pug marks of the bear in the snow. You haven't seen the bear but the pug marks are clues. So according to Sufis, now let's just plunge into, let's go into a heavy Sufi trip. That's what I'm suppose to be teaching. So, well, I think I'll have to open up a parenthesis so you'll be able to follow me. So I'll just open up us the subject open up the parenthesis, go off the subject and then we'll come back again. OK? 

So I'm going to ask you. Well you don't all have to answer of course. But I'm going to ask you a question in your mind. That is do you think that the cosmos, I make a difference between the universe and the cosmos. That is that the cosmos would be the physical world,and maybe the magnetic fields, and maybe the world of light, that is also a physical world according to scientists. But still let's say the existential aspect. And the universe would also include the programming for example and maybe a lot of things that we find it very difficult to define. So that word Universe is very much in the Sufi line because it is the Spanish translation of verso el uno. Verso el uno, towards the one, the Universe. That's a joke. It was meant to be a joke but nobody laughed. OK So, now. Do you think we could posit that the cosmos has a kind of collective consciousness and that our consciousness is part of that consciousness? Like for example a tree includes the consciousness of the branches. So if anything happens to the branches or a branch, then the tree knows it. 

So if you would accept that, the next step would be, do you think that the knowledge that the branch has of the tree, well first of all do you think that the branch has a knowledge of the tree? Well at least we do have some knowledge of the cosmos, not very much but some knowledge of the cosmos. So do you think that the knowledge that we have of the cosmos adds to the knowledge that the cosmos has of itself? Or do you think that the cosmos knows itself through our knowledge of it? Well now this is Sufism. If you want to know it through that it's Sufism. That is that there is always the two antipodal standpoints, that is the human standpoint and what the Sufis call the divine standpoint. And if you don't like that word, we can use the word the Universe. But you know it's like the Henri Poincare the French mathematician said, "Infinity consists in the human ability to always imagine a larger number than the largest number that you've imagined so far". So the same is true here that somehow, although we don't know what we mean by God, and we don't know what we mean by the Universe or even the Cosmos, somehow or other it's good to have this sense of an opposite pole to our vantage point. So it adds an infinite number of possibilities. In Sufism the Persians talk about the "eina hana" that is the palace of mirrors in which the mirrors reflect each other continually. So think of yourself as so much a part of the totality that you can't cut yourself away from it. For example if you cut your finger off, it wouldn't be living anymore. So we can't really segregate ourselves from the common ground. So if you see it that way, you see how mistaken it is when we see things from our personal vantage point. 

And so you could say that meditation, I would say spirituality consists in discovering the total reality of which one is not a fragment but with which one is related in what is called the holistic paradigm. Now I don't know if your are familiar with that word holistic paradigm. That is that if you fragment whatever it is, every fragment, what we call the subwhole, carries with it potentially the totality as I said. So we carry, let's say, the totality in ourselves but we think of ourselves as a fragment. But if we are able to question our way of identifying ourselves and begin to become aware of that totality, then of course we start growing and we develop potentialities that would be latent within us if we hadn't done that. So that's what meditation is about. 

So let's come back to the view of the Sufis is that these clues, from our point of view, let's say that from our point of view the physical world is made of clues that lead us to grasping what is intended behind that. And that is also true of our personality. So that the idiosyncrasies of our personalities are only clues as to I call the seedbed of our personality which is, includes a tremendous richness. But they're clues. If you suffice yourself with the clues, you have not got a hold of what it's all about. And therefore for the Sufis, we need, instead of saying the world is Maya, is illusion, we need to grasp these clues. But in order to have any sense of what's behind these clues, we need to, how can I say, let's say espy the opposite standpoint, the divine standpoint. And imagine the Universe is continually trying to reveal its meaning to us. We're trying to understand it. The Universe is repeating it to us. It's not the same thing to understand and to reveal. I'll give you an example. For example I hope you all saw ET. It was some time ago but for me it was quite recent. I hope you laughed but I hope you cried too. Do you mean to see you cried because you say shadows on the screen? Especially if you know that ET was made of the head of a turtle and the voice of an old lady. So you took that for real and cried? No the reason that you cried is that you say ET through the eyes of that child. So let's say that the whole film was a strategy of Spielberg who communicated his intention by using devices, clues. So if you like, instead of thinking of God as a big man up there with a white beard, manipulating us miserable worms down here, think that somehow the Universe is trying to reveal to us a meaning that's going to help us overcome our limited understanding. And as a consequence we will start developing all kinds of resourcefulness in our being that we haven't so far. So that we realize how we could be if we would be what we might be. 

So what would be the techniques there, meditation? Well the first thing is of course to consider your assessment of your problems as limited. 

So I would say that one of the first techniques would be to try and see your problem from the point of view of people involved in the problem, for example the person who is against you, or whatever, your enemy or whatever it is. So there would be at least two points of view. You might question that. You might ask, "Is it really possible to see things from the point of view of another?". Well if you try it out in meditation, you'll see that one really can. One has to downplay one's own perspective and just really imagine sitting in the skin of that person. Imagine what it's like to be that person. And then imagine how that situation looks to that person, what the motivations are behind the way that person is handling that problem that goes counter to the way that you want to handle it. So you see the conflict. So there's a Sufi saying of Ibn Arabi, "I see him or her through his eyes". So you can see a person through their eyes. And he/she sees me through my eyes. So that would be a mirroring effect. So if we are able to do that, then we would be able to have a shared vision of the problem instead of just looking at the problem from our own point of view. 

The second proposition is, "I see myself through that persons eyes". So you have the picture that that person has of you. And you see that person, that picture is not at all what you are. At least it doesn't correspond to what you think you are. But still what you think you are is not necessarily right. What you think you are is not necessarily right. But by having the two views, it's already better. But eventually you practice getting into the consciousness of more and more people. I don't know whether you know that bood of Kahlil Gibran called Jesus the Man, where he describes Jesus as seen from the view of the many people who lived at the time. And all together it builds a picture of Jesus that you couldn't get just from one point of view. 

So now, if you continue like that, then you can imagine, well then you can understand what St. Francis said. St. Francis said, "That what we're looking for is that which is looking at us". And that is a real breakthrough in meditation. Instead of thinking that you are the subject experiencing other than yourself, let's say the universe is looking at itself, well first of all the Universe is looking at you and secondly the Universe is looking at itself through you or as you. There's a saying of St. Francis of Asissi again. You see he was walking in the forest. Normally if you walk in the forest, all you see is the bark of the trees or the surface of the leaves of the trees. But he got into the consciousness of the trees. And that's why it was like a total experience of, a live experience of communion. And he could see himself as seen from the trees and so on. A real, if you do that, you find yourself in a transfigured world. Somehow, I don't know, you have those moments. It's like something magical happens to you. You find yourself in a totally different kind of connection with the world. For example, especially if you're sitting for example talking with someone. And all of a sudden you feel well, we're talking beyond time and space. And well there is a kind of osmosis between people. For example, I'm sure that some people, you can find them in yourself. So you can imagine that people find you in them. That's osmosis, a kind of, as I say, a kind of mirroring effect that takes place. And when you do that then you realize you grasp what the Sufis say is that which transpires behind that which appears. 

Now, again they are words. But now let's try and see what we mean by that. Well I don't know whether you've ever seen the photographs of Walter Chapelle. He made photographs of flowers in ultraviolet light. Of course you see the profile of the flowers but, or the petals of the flowers. But you also see the corona as one calls it, a zone of radiance which doesn't have a boundary surrounding the petals. And even petals seem to be translucent so that you can see one petal through, behind the other and so forth. So that is a different way of seeing the world than the ordinary way of seeing it. And I must say that that is a very wonderful state. 

Now if you try and translate this in terms of your problems, then you are beginning to see what are the issues behind what you thought of your problems. For one thing, as I said, our sense of me with regard to one's problems is a very limited one. And the consequence is that you only see the surface of the problem. But if you think that this is not my problem, but I am participating in the drama of the Universe, or the drama of the cosmos, then somehow you think there must be something in this problem. It's not just my storm in my teacup. But it must, it in some way links me with the universe. And this will do something to you emotionally. It will shatter you and overwhelm you with the significance of life. In fact perhaps that's a great breakthrough in meditation. Yes, all of a sudden, life is, well there is no way of describing it. But it is so much. It is really dramatic. What is enacted in life is quite incredible if you can see it. 

You know that my sister was beaten to death in a concentration camp in Dachau in Germany. She volunteered there as a radio operator. Well, did this have to happen? Was it just her problem? She was participating in the drama of the Universe. I just read about the story of Joan of Arc. Do you think it was just her problem? She was involved in the problem that had to do with, it didn't even have to do with France as against England. It had to do with well, with triumph over injustice somehow. So that in fact I met a young lady who, well she was an old lady when I met her of course. She is a little bit, well she is still younger than me, but she is still an old lady. And she had been so badly hurt by the violence of the Nazis that she lost her sight. And she was thrown in a dungeon for dead. And here she was talking to me. She came out of it. And she said that, "You see when one is working for a cause, somehow pain is always bearable because one feels that it is dedicated to that cause". That's an incredible thought. So you think of Christ for example. I don't think that Christ was enjoying crucifixion. But somehow the ecstasy of suffering not in a masochistic sense, in a personal sense, but of sharing in the suffering and the joy of the Universe, the tragedy and the victory of life. 

And so if you see that way, then your life seems to make sense. otherwise it doesn't. It's just make money in order to survive. It doesn't make sense. You're caught in this machinery that doesn't get us anywhere. So if you do that, then you get to the point when you feel ashamed of having resentment. You see I remember telling, you know being the preacher telling people to forgive, like using the words of Christ, like forgive those who hurt you. And a lady from the public stood up and said, "Pir Vilayat, I feel so bad for what that person did to me. And I feel still worse now because I can't forgive that person. And you made me feel guilty because I can't forgive that person". And that's the last time I ever said that. 

Then of course that's why people go to a psychotherapist. Because it has to be processed. But let's say, I would say that what spirituality has to share in psychotherapy, because there is some overlap between psychotherapy and spirituality, is that if we are able to grasp a different kind of sense of identity to our puny identity, I hope you'll excuse that word, then if you have a sense of the greatness of your being, I mean of your divine status, that's what the Sufis would say, a dervish would say, " Shake yourself. Don't you realize that the divine being is present in you?" The dervishes are very forceful. And then you'd feel kind of ashamed, " You know I'm wallowing in this personal pain. And think of people who have really dedicated themselves to service. And compare the pain that I have with those people". At that moment I think that could be helpful in dealing with one's resentment. And the trouble with resentment is that it can degenerate into hate. In fact it often does. And hate will degenerate into cruelty. And that's what wars are about. And it's just being caught in a circle. Maybe if you can't forgive, then the answer is to discover your real being. So maybe there are moments when you're sitting in a room. And as I said earlier on, you think to yourself, "Well I've been doing what the world is asking me to do. But that's not really me. I'd like to know what is really me." 

Now there are skills because that itself is a philosophical statement. But the skills, what I would recommend as a skill would be first of all to discover, well to feel your magnetism, actually one calls it the electromagnetic field around your arms. I don't know whether you feel it. Like for example, a magnet, you can actually, at school I'm sure that you have poured some metal filing on a magnet and seen how the metal filings distribute themselves around the magnet. Well we have exactly the same thing around the body. Now if you've done Kirlian photography, if you've had you fingers photographed with Kirlian photography, you've seen that around your fingers is a corona. So do not think that your body ends with your skin, you see. For the time that you think that, even, or better still, if you really experience that force field or whatever it is, it could be a light field, that will help you overcome the sense of boundary (tape turns) electronic. But it's OK so don't worry. 

Yes, well let's open up our parenthesis again. So you've landed on planet earth and availed yourself of this wonderful body that the whole cosmos has prepared for you and that was donated to you through the intermission of your parents. And somehow you're a tourist on the planet. And it just depends upon how smart you are to see what it's all about. And now, not only do you want to understand what's happening and try to learn something and hope that your consciousness will evolved and you will become more awake, but in addition to that, as I said we are really imbibing and ingesting the Universe. So not only at the level of our food, but as I say, from the environment . But we've already talked about that. The way that people, actions of people, impressions and so on incorporate into our psyche. One can stop them at a certain point. And then one can absorb them because a second immune system that adapts itself to the environment. The first one rejects that which is not of the same nature of itself. The second system is open to adapting itself to impressions. So you enrich yourself by adapting yourself to impressions that are not exactly what you are. That's how you come more cosmic. 

Now there is another source, resource. I've already there are latent potentialities in your being, the seed bed of your personality. And of course it's a great skill to know how to call them in to action because they're recessive. So you have to really call them. You have to really challenge them. Now it is true that the situations in the world constitute a kind of challenge that do tend to call qualities that would be dormant in ourselves if we did not meet that challenge. But I think that it's important to be aware of what these are. And what is more, I think that unless you really earmark them with your consciousness and really support them with your whole being, they will be stillborn. I think that we are like a plant for example or imagine a flower that there are fresh petals in the center of a flower for example, that are trying to unfurl, and that could only unfurl if you let go, if the jaded petals at the center, or at the surface fall apart. And in this case, in the case of your personality, you have to really, it's not just a question of what we did before of saying, "This is me". 

But saying, "I can see something is beginning to emerge in me. I don't know what it is but there is something new happening in me". Now this is the secret of creativity. Because creativity is always the undetermined, the unpredictable, undetermined. So the way to do it is to downplay the impressions that are coming from the outside, and try to espy something new that's coming through you at this time, inside. For example, there is a practice that I've recommended. And you can do it. For example, you could ask yourself, "What are the qualities that I feel I need to develop in me in order to meet my problem?". That is think of your worst problem. I think everybody has a problem. So your worst one. And unless you don't have any problem. You're a very extraordinary person if you don't have any problems. So that's the first thing. So then imagine now," What would be the quality that is asked of me? Should I develop more power? Because there is somebody who keeps undermining me and demeaning me. Or then, that won't work because then that person is going to be even more tyrannical. 

Or should I have more compassion? Would that help? Or would it? Or then, maybe I'm not up front enough because I'm afraid." And perhaps that's true that some children were punished at school for having owned up. And consequently they are afraid of telling the truth. So that's a pattern there. So ask yourself, "What are the attributes, the qualities that I need in order to meet my problem?". Now you're trying to sort it out with your mind. Now supposing that you downplay the scene of the outer world. Like you say, "Well for the moment I just want to turn within and just try and grasp what is coming through me at this time". Because you know that the Universe has a way of self organizing itself. If you don't do anything it does it for you. But then after that, you have to take over with your will because the job of the will to say customize the order of the Universe. otherwise we would just be puppets. But it starts by something quite spontaneous that you can't control yourself. If you do that, then all of a sudden the penny might drop. You say, "Ah yes. There is a quality coming through. It was never that strong in me but it was always there. Now it's coming through quite strongly". If you think of it. You see we tried without understanding to sort out what the qualities were needed to meet our problems. But when we turn within, then you can say that the quality that was not obvious to you is revealed to you. 

And that's what is meant by Sufism. When the Sufis are always talking about those two vantage points, the personal vantage point and the divine vantage point. So there are some, I could quote some sayings of Ibn Arabi which are very remarkable, very powerful. For example he says, "God knows himself through me". Like a tree knows itself through it's branches. Or then, "God knows Himself through the knowledge that I have of Him". So we have some knowledge of the Universe. So that constitutes the knowledge that the universe has of itself. And then it goes on to say, "And I know myself through the knowledge that God has of Himself through me". I'll say that again. I know myself through the knowledge that God has of Himself through me. So you see if you bring this further dimension in, if you imagine, instead of imagining like St. Francis imagined how he looked from the point of view of the trees, imagine how you would look through this transcendental vantage point which we ascribe to God. And we can call it the Universe. 

So the Sufis call it the recurrent rebirthing, happening all the time. We are continually being reborn. That's creativity. And consequently you see, as I said already, creativity is not the sequel of the past. It is always a break from the past. And as a matter of fact there is a saying of a Sufi, Hujwiri whose tomb is in La Hore and who said, well he is quoting the dervishes who said, " Time", well he's talking about a notion of time that you find in Sufism. And it's a little bit confusing. We have to be very clear about it. You see the moment of time and the instant of time. In the moment of time the past overlaps with the future. For example, if you're listening to music, the notes you/ve just heard continue to resonate in your ears when you're listening to the next note. So there's an overlap. And there's no boundary between the past and the present, or the future and the present. So there's an overlap. And in fact if you're a musician and you're listening to music of Bach, you could even sometimes prefigure what is going to be the next note. So there is an overlap, right. 

But the instant of time, is a break in the continuity of time. And it's important for us to understand that because there are changes in our life that take place all of a sudden. Like a new chapter in our life. And generally it happens in a crisis. Because if everything is hunk dory we don't make decisions. But when you're in a crisis situations, then that's the point when you have to make decisions. So what Hujwiri says is that, "Vact", that means time, "is a sharp sword that cuts the quilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future". Now that's not a philosophical statement. It's a psychological statement. How is it possible to cut the causality that you have involved by your guilt? Is it possible to find absolution for one's quilt? What is the effect of this break in the continuity of time? And the answer is that that which brings about a sudden change in the continuity of time is a pledge. For example, from the time that you make a pledge that, "I will not do this again", or a pledge, "I will do this", that makes the break. That opens a new chapter. Actually Sufism is based upon a pledge. It is the way of chivalry of the ancient Iranian maji, knights actually. 

So this is something that you could do in your meditation. You ask yourself, this again is a Sufi practice, we call it muhasibi you ask yourself, "What are the things that I really value in life?" And then ask yourself, "What are my motivations in life?" And then you can see that one isn't always honoring one's values in one's motivations. And also you can see that the mind plays mind games so that one is always justifying oneself. And one doesn't always see that one is actually defeating one's higher purpose by miss assessing one's motivations, or even forgetting one's motivations by just jumping into things without, you have to stop and ask yourself, "Why am I doing this?". And I'm sure that if you ask yourself this, it would change your life. And the only way to see this clearly is to see how it corresponds with your values. For instance, "Am I doing those things that are, or what I'm doing, does that in any way does that favor those values that I value highly?". 

OK And then he says the prefiguration of the future. Well we have plans. But it's good to know that our plans might very well break through, break down. So the instant can cut your prefiguration. And you might find that it's just as well that things didn't happen the way that you'd planned them. And as a matter of fact what seems to be a defeat might aver itself to be a victory. In fact that was the message of Christ. Because the crucifixion was a terrible thing that averred itself to be one of the greatest victories that the world has ever known. Because it seemed like a crucifixion but actually it was a coronation.

Well, now could you give another example of what we mean by the instant of time? Well like in our rather perfunctory thinking, we assume that things are the consequence of the past. Like you do things, what you sow you reap. That's the old idea of causality. It's been in science a long time Laplacien causality. And then somehow physicists now realize that's only one thing that accounts for the way things happen. The other thing is a retrocausility. And that has been described by a wonderful biologist called Euler in a formula that I hope that you'll always remember. And that is that the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. Remember that. 

The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. An example was given in the Scientific American, it was a few years ago there was an article, which showed that the progress in the chemistry could not have been accounted for if the advent of the human being had not already been foreseen. That's a very shattering thought that it wasn't there but somehow that it acts as, and actually it wasn't there. It's like an attractor. It's like the horizon. You never get there. But it acts like an attractor. One could go into this in science. But it's very interesting because it leads to a very new concept of God. Well it's a concept that you find amongst the Sufis but it's very surprising in ordinary theology. And that is God as a virtuality. That means God does not have to exist to be. It's a very strange kind of thought. But you find that in the Sufis, Sufi dervishes where they say,"Why are you looking for God up there? He's here. He is in you. He's you". We are, and there is a word of Ibn Arabi, "Know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God.". So otherwise you'd end up in an insane asylum. 

So there's that kind of thinking that represents a different kind of thinking to the usual mode of thinking. And is very challenging to our minds. So I want to say that if one changes let's say the purview or the setting of one's consciousness, one changes one's mode of thinking. Now I'll try to describe this because it sounds like metaphysics. But our ordinary way of thinking is in categories. It can't be this and that. It's either this or that. For example, when I was at university studying logic at oxford, there was syllogistic logic was, men are mortal. Socrates was a man and therefore Socrates was mortal. So that's a very limited way of looking at things. Because one is both immortal and mortal, or rather mortal and immortal at the same time. That's a different, a second different mode of thinking. Or for example,imagine for example, that it's never the same water that passes under the bridge and yet it's the same river. So continuity in change. 

So if you think of yourself as you are now, that is the rather commonplace way of thinking. "this is the way I am". But if you think of yourself as a continuity in change, then you can envision being different from the way you are now. otherwise you'll be jammed, you'll be sclerosed in the way you are now. Creativity is always being, actually being enthused. Because it's not just being aware. But it's being really deeply shattered by the way you could be if you would be what you could be. It's like a kind of vision of things. Well you know, "Why am I not dancing with joy? Well life is hard and people are mean". There is always a good excuse. I remember walking in the streets of Amsterdam. And there was a woman dancing in the street. And everybody thought she must be crazy. Isn't that a pity that people can't just dance and be happy? Really. OK Well. Sorry I shouldn't start coughing. It'll never stop. 

Think of a, for example, you look at the sea. And you see one wave, then another wave. And the next wave seems to be like the repeat of the previous one. That would be causality. But you realize that the whole ocean emerges as each new wave. So it's both at the same time. And creativity is that. So the way to enhance creativity in your meditation is to just feel like the whole Universe is merging, or converging not in me but as me. Just like the sea is converging as the wave. So it's a different way of looking at things. So if you think," through me", then you have a limited sense of yourself. But if you think, "as me", then your sense of yourself is unlimited. 

Well of course the best way of being creative, of course of being creative out of one's personality. And maybe creativity is the ability to project in a form something which is just an emotion or a thought. And the form itself is just a feedback system that enables you to have some sense of what that thought is and that emotion is. And so you find that in order to be creative, one can't just sort out things in one's mind. One has to, as I say, to be shattered by the significance of life as I said a moment ago. You find that also in Yoga. The stage in samadhi they call ananda samadhi where, before you get to asimita samadhi which is a state of very great awakening, you pass through that phase of bliss. You know the word of Campbell, "Follow your bliss". A state of bliss. You can be in a state of bliss while you're suffering at the same time. You mustn't think that it's bad to suffer or that you know , hopefully one can transform oneself into joy. But you know the secret of being shattered and overwhelmed by life is to be in love. And being in love with a person is very often rather disappointing. And they say being in love with God, well you know we have these projections about God. But I would say being in love with love. It does something to you. And it's that kind of emotion that sparks your spirit and makes you creative.

So this helps us to make the next step which is well the ascent into what they call the higher spheres. And you mustn't think that they're up there somewhere. But it's really a perspective. Now I'll just jump into it. I'll talk about babies. One of the things that is most significant for me is looking into the eyes of a baby. And I often ask myself why. And of course because somehow the light in the eyes of that baby, you can't see it in the world. It hasn't been tarnished. You see the hard glance of the people who are carrying the shadows of the world. And here it's spontaneous. The reason for that is because it reminds me of what one calls in French the déjà vu, that is something that is familiar. So one would jump to the conclusion, "Well I must have experienced it in a previous life". 

So I don't want to make assumptions that I don't know of. But there is a word used by Dr. Grof who is a psychologist working in our time. And he, you see, one would think it was prior to one's birth or one's conception, a memory of a state prior to one's birth. But it is, he used the word perinatal. That means beyond the motion of time, beyond the, like, imagine a pendulum. Where at one end it's moving in space and time and at the other end it remains stationary. So perinatal in that sense means transcendent level of reality. Right at the top of the pendulum it doesn't move any more. But the whole pendulum is a gradual transit from transiency to eternity. And there are definite steps there, definite quantum leaps. 

So for the Sufis somehow maybe we have an aesthetic sense for splendor. You know even scientists, physicists are using the word elegance. So the programming of the world is not only extremely intelligent but it's elegant. So in your meditation you get to a point where you grasp splendor. And you see that that splendor manifests in the world as beauty and majesty. I'm using the language of the Sufis, beauty and majesty. But beauty and majesty are only the existential expressions of a reality that is beyond existence and that you could call the world of splendor. And many mystics of course talk of that world of splendor. 

Now I don't know whether perhaps some of you would like to be inspired and some of you resist being inspired. I tend to inspire people. But then there are people who don't like to be inspired. You know the word of a psychologist, I forget his name now, who speaks about peak experiences. Like people have peak experiences, like mystics, that just transform your being. And so he divided human beings into peakers and non peakers. And he says, "Peakers are trying to convince people of what it's like to peak". And unfortunately they get very paranoid because as soon as they try to do that, then they get a kind of resistance from those who don't understand what it means to peak. So I'm trying to spark peakness in you, my own peakness. And I get a cold shower sometimes. They say, "Well that's not rational. You know be a little bit more reasonable. You're talking about Santa Clause". So every time I talk about the celestial spheres, I become rather paranoid. 

But you know the child in you is still present in you. Not the abused child of all that sort of, but the immaculate child. Just, and we have a wonderful example of that excellence. You know the whole dogma of Holy Mary, you know the immaculate state. If you unpeal one layer after the other of your ego personality, psyche, you get to what the Tibetans call sunyata. That means a void. You get to a place that is absolutely immaculate. It is like untouched. And that is the perfect excellence. Now that, there's a very good example of this in the voice of Caruso that can be retrieved in our days by modern technology. As I was talking to my friend who was a part of this work. It was really through mathematics formula, anyway those are details. But the beauty is that that voice is still there within it's distortions. And so just think that your being in its immaculate state, pristine state is there even if you think that it's been defiled, and so on so forth. And you have guilt. And all kinds of things. It's still there. And it were not for that, then one would be damned forever. So that what Hujwiri really means by the instant of time that breaks the guilt of the past. 

Well when you discover that, you have a sense, "This is me. And somehow I'm not just a tourist on planet earth but I've forgot where I am because I am facing all these challenges in my life". And all of a sudden you discover an aspect in your life that is hidden and that wants to come through. And so you have to give vent to your nostalgia for the unattainable. That's a word of my father. At a certain point in the life of a mystic, he or she becomes drawn by his nostalgia, his/her nostalgia and you might say for something beautiful. But it's not that. It's beyond beauty. There's no way of defining it. But that would give us some sense of what we mean by God even if it's a virtuality it becomes a reality as us. And so there is a saying in the Qur'an that is very amazing. It says, "Ama ma lup fil ita carat", which means God is present,no, by praying you, well it doesn't only say by praying, by glorifying you make God present. It says that by praying God is created as you. 

That is because by projecting the higher values in to what you imagine God to be, therefore you are awakening these qualities in yourself. And so glorification is really the ultimate agent of creativity. And we don't know how to glorify. We've lost the sense of the sacred. Some people likely still have it. But we don't, I'm one of those who doesn't like ceremony. Like you know like meditation, rather perfunctory, bode of meditation is stress reduction. If you cut out glorification, then it becomes stress reduction. That's not meditation any more. So actually I think that meditation is prayer in its ultimate form. And I must say, as I say, I don't like ceremonies, but still there is some magic about them. I remember leading a meditation asking people to meditate on light. And I opened my eyes to look at people. And they didn't seem more luminous than before. So I thought, "What am I doing? I'm wasting my time". That was, the next day, that was Easter. We had, we were dancing with candles around an alter. And everyone had light in their eyes. And I said, "There you see. The ceremony does it for you." It's, you're creating an environment that is favorable to being in a high state. 

So that's what meditation is about. You're creating by your skills situations, tools, skills that enlist a discovery of the potentials of your being. And as a consequence, unfurling those potentials. And the consequence is that it will change you life. And also, not only further your potentialities, but also help you to fulfill the purpose of your lives. Because perhaps one of the worst things that happen is to die in despair. And that is because one thinks of those things that one wanted to do and never did. 

I admire you for sitting there very patiently. Well, there is a practice of the Sufis which is based upon the saying of the Sufis, "Die before death and resurrect now". In other words don't wait for death to resurrect because it might be too late. You better start doing it now. So that consists in being able to grasp those elements in yourself that are not subject to death. And really identify with them. Now you might say,"Well I don't know which are the elements that are not subject to, I assume that after one dies one dies and that's it". But well there are new views even science, you know the electrons and protons continue to live after death. Ideas about death are amongst the most nonsensical. And of course electrons are transformed into photons. I don't know whether that convinces you about life after death. Life after life. But us say that the very best example that I could give of this is, flowers are very smart because they have a very short foothold, very precarious foothold on planet earth. But they manage to survive by turning into perfume. And then live forever. And that's the secret of resurrection. And what that amounts to is distilling yourself, the aspect of yourself. Because you see the old fashioned view is, "My soul is eternal and my body is transient. 

So to meditate I have to become aware of my soul and forget about my body, and so on". Those are the old fashioned views although a lot of people still do it. The way that , I was assuming that the modern view is the Sufi view . So I was jumping to conclusions there. But anyway, it is that you schlep your body upwards in your meditation. In other words you transmute it so that instead of forgetting your body while trying to reach up into the higher spheres, you think of your body as for example an etheric double for example. It is like the template in which the body was formed. And you identify with your aura. And aura is really in some way the way that your body and also the physical world has been transmuted, and so on. So you're doing exactly what they do in the alchemical process, distilling the grosser forms of matter and making out of them something more and more subtle. 

Now there is a thought here which has shattered me for some time. Your body. 'h, let me just quote Jalaluddin Rumi. We have just a few more minutes before we leave. He said, "The millions of galaxies are but a little foam on the shoreless sea". So that means that the cosmos is but a little foam in the Universe that is absolutely infinite. So the existential world is very little in comparison with reality. Even though the existential point of view, that reality is virtual. Still if you look the other side, then it's the other way around, it's the existential state which is rather, well, it's transient. Well it's a means whereby the Universe discovers itself. Then he goes on to say, "The atoms form a circle. In the middle we dance. We came whirling out of nothingness. And it is all God whirling. And we think it is us". There's the word of Jalaluddin Rumi. Perhaps you've seen the whirling dervishes. The other word of Jalaluddin Rumi that I want to come to is when he said, "Tonight the umpteen stars", that means an infinite number of stars, "gives birth to the life eternal". And there is another word of Jami who says, "That which was ephemeral has become eternal". That means that then, that the quintessence of our being, or let's say that the know-how that we have gained by out life accrues to the programming of the Universe. So nothing gets lost. So instead of thinking of God as static, you're thinking of God as dynamic, changing, evolving. And we are part of that being. And therefore our knowledge has a contribution to make to the Universe. It's not just something that happens to us alone. So that is, I must say that the program of the Universe is not already made and we are just puppets that have to subject ourselves to it. But we're a part of it. Our  actions have a part to play in it. And it's not random. And it's not programmed. And it's beyond, of course beyond our understanding. 

So what I wish for you now is that when you go back, you dance with joy. And I hope that you've been able to take something with you when you go back that will help you. If you're meditating, then some skills about meditation. otherwise then of course even without meditating, it might give you some sense of seeing something that you hadn't seen before. I think of, last words, I think of, we made a, you know when I was younger. I'm nearly 80 now. In the month of June I'll be celebrating my 80th birthday. And I'll be conducting the B Minor Mass of Bach at Dachau, the place where my sister was beaten to death in the concentration camp. 

What I was saying is that when I was younger, I was on a guru hunt. That is I was climbing the Himalayas, and of course the dervishes in the desert, and Mt. Athos, and everywhere, and made retreats. So I remember going with a group of people through a very dangerous forest where there were a lot of dangerous animals to meet a rishi in a cave. A group of people, normally rishis don't speak. But somehow he spoke. So one of those men asked a really stupid question. And this rishi was in a state of samadhi like this. And then he was trying to get into the mind of that man. 

So that would be a very clear case of what I mean by meditation, like the different kinds of thinking. So it's a different kind of thinking. And somehow you can't achieve it by trying to gain that way of thinking. There are skills. But the best was is always to think that it's the other way around. It's the way that the thinking of the Universe reveals itself to you. That's why there is a plane the Sufis call Jabarut where your knowledge is not based upon experience. But it is based upon a kind of inherent knowledge that one has irrespective of experience. So there might be some moment in your life when you all of a sudden grasp something. And it does not rest upon experience. It comes through like that, spontaneously. And you're awake. 

So I'll just try to describe being awake because it was in New York. I was visiting, well I was accompanied by a doctor. We were visiting his father who was also a doctor. And this man had a friend who was a psychotherapist. I've never in my life seen the glance of a psychotherapist like this one. And I'll trying and describe it. Well I've seen that in rishis in the Himalayas but I haven't seen it in normal people in New York. But imagine, that would be a very good expression of being awake. Imagine you're awake, very, very alert. And it also requires one to be alert physically. I mean energy, a lot of energy, and very clear in one's consciousness. And it does not simply mean to be aware of the here and now, as a lot of people say, the here and now. It's being aware of the everywhere and always in the here and now. 

So maybe I'll end with a word of Preston Milford, the American poet who said, "I want nothing less than the impossible possibility, infinity in the finite fact End Tape

MAR 23, 1996		Tape 05

...who is a Sufi from Syria and who lives in Paris. And it's a somewhat praise to the hero. He says: I kiss the ground under your feet.  

So this is the morning of Wazifas - I don't know if that's what Aziza was doing... she's very much into that. So let us say that we're pilgrims; just imagine that you are - have landed on planet Earth from outer space and somehow you're discovering the universe on planet Earth and in order to discover it, the universe needs to reveal itself to you in yourself. You see that. So that there's two things. 'n one hand, our discovery of meaningfulness and on the other hand, revelation to us, whereby we're passive. So this is Sufism, and I would say this is the clue to understanding Wazifas. The clue is to be found in a saying in the Koran, actually: I show them my signs in the Universe. So I've already said that, first of all all that one sees, for example, sunrise, a car accident, people being tortured in a camp, the B Minor Mass, all this - they're all signs in which meaningfulness which is far beyond what we could ever grasp is revealed to us, what Murshid calls our - the divine intention. 

But at the second stage, the meaningfulness, which is fulfilled in the universe is revealed to us through ourselves, through our nature. So in other words, God reveals to us, himself, through us, and reveals us to ourselves through him. There's a process of revelation. So the Wazifas are signals, labels, referring to different modes whereby God is revealing Him/Herself to us in our very nature. So, for example, if we find that there's a little bit of compassion in us, well, that is how God is revealing His/Her compassion to us, and that is where - and for us to be able to discover the whole range of compassion that is in us, but not active - it's recessive - we need to somehow be able to look at things from the divine point of view and discover the way that the divine being is hidden within us. So Murshid is always talking about - God is hidden in His creation, revealing Him/Herself in us and through us. So let us say that having landed on the planet, we are involved in a process of revelation and that is - revelation is Zahir, Zahir, and what revelation means is unveiling, and it is a gradual process, so that it is never complete, so that the signs - Ayat- the signs, reveal more and more meaningfulness to us, but we can never say, there's only one point at which God reveals Him/Herself to us without these devices. 

You understand what I mean by devices?  

Perhaps you've seen the film E.T., and I hope you laughed and I hope you cried also. And, so do you mean to say that you cried and you laughed because you just saw a few shadows on the screen? Is that what made you laugh and cry? Well no, of course, you saw and then you find out that E.T. had the face of a turtle and it was the voice of an old woman. So, you mean to say that you were duped like that? No, the fact is that you saw E.T. through the eyes of that lovely child. So Speilberg was inventing devices in which he could reveal to you his meaning. And so think of God as very smartly figuring out all kinds of devices in which His/Her intention can be revealed to us, you see. But that is - all that one saw was the devices, you see. I mean, he never said what his intention was because it was through the devices that we could get to know them. But then, there's a different level, further level, according to Sufis, in which one knows God without God revealing Him/Herself to us. There's a total, let's say, total - total coincidence between one's understanding and the divine understanding. And that is a point at which one says - Newton said, for example: I think as God thinks. 


He must distinguish those two levels. So that corresponds to the Jabarut level. I don't know if you've seen some of the stages. So let us say that our path goes - we are going through different stages. They call it "Makam", stages in which more and more is revealed to us but we need to do something on our side, although we can't acquire the knowledge. It is revealed to us - we can't acquire it. But what we need to do is to reciprocate this revelation by our wisdom - that is, our wisdom mirrors the divine revelation. 	So, I would say that to start with I would recommend - two wazifas that I would recommend is Ya Zahir, Ya Alim, you see? Because on one hand you have the divine revelation and on the other hand you have the kind of knowledge that we acquire and hopefully is on the increase as we proceed further on our path. 

Now, let's go into this revelation, because there's something mysterious about it - paradoxical, and I suppose it is really because if we really knew the divine intention, we would be totally shattered, and so revelation means as a veil, right, and that veil, like the veil of the Muslim Kladie, is a protection for her, and I can assure you women, here, that if you went to some Arabic countries, you'd be very glad to have a veil. So, but the thing about it is, is, that well, there's a saying of Farid Ud'Din Attar who says: Glory to the one who reveals Himself by the same veil that conceals him and conceals himself by the same veil that reveals him. Lovely paradox here. For our simplistic minds, it's very difficult to understand. The protection, yes, I understand, there was a story of Farid Ud'Din Attar who said there was a king who was so magnificent that people passed out, so he veiled himself. So that I understand. 

You see, there's a very strong word of Abu Yazid Bastami, who was a very strong Acetic who lived in the mountains of Northern Iran for forty years alone as an Acetic, as a hermit in the mountains. And he said to God, well he said some very harsh things. I mean, it's surprising that he wasn't killed, but I think they thought he was mad, and so that's the best protection if you're a Sufi. 

But he said: 'h God, Thou deceiveth people in the bizarres of the world by concealing Thyself, but the one who is invited to the divine betrothal need not suffice himself with the veil of the bride. So, in other words, he wants to get to know God without those devices, those clues. And then God said: 'h, I. And then he said: Art thou testing me in my ego? And then God said: 'h, thou. He hadn't made the test. 

So the clue was, of course, to have - the only way in which one need not discover God through those devices is if one has lost the sense of one's - let's say, segregation from the totality. So I say that because this is really the clue to the whole experience of the Sufi on the path and particularly in the use of the Wazifas, because the Wazifas will always keep you at that level of the means through which the clue through which God becomes known, like you've seen the pug marks of the bear but you haven't seen the bear. So, but it has a further significance, because, for example, well - let's try to explore the meaning of Ya Zahir, Ya Batin. 

Zahir means, well, the best translation of the word Zahir is: The Epiphany. Now we know that word, that first feat of the Epiphany when the three wise men came to visit Christ, but epiphanos means the showing forth of light. And so, when you say Zahir you could think that the whole of the universe is an outburst of light, which is exactly - that's what's the big bang, hmmm? 'utburst of light. And that is just on the physical plane. I mean from the point of view of the physical world seems like an outburst of light. But from the spiritual point of view, it is an outburst of meaningfulness, hmmm? God disclosing His/Her meaningfulness. Whereas Batin is that which remains undisclosed, and it's called the secret of God. 

And I think we all have that, some aspect - different for each person of course, but some aspect of ourselves that we find we can't just declare on the roof tops - it's too sacred. And maybe when we were children, we suffered at school from derision. So from that time, for example, we talked about Santa Claus, and big children said: You still believe in Santa Claus? 

So until - somehow or other one lost one's faith in opening one's heart and saying how one feels, but of course there's more to it than that because sometimes one feels that there are no words in which one can say what one means. And in fact it is what one implies behind what one explains. That's one of the reasons for being on silence, because we're used to speaking and even if we are not speaking, we're still thinking in terms of having to speak whereas, if you're on silence you cannot explain how you think, and consequently you discover how you think unimpaired by the need of expressing these words. And if you do not do that then you become very superficial. Sometimes one feels that sophisticated people in society have lost a sense of the depth of their being because one is too expressive - too overt instead of covert.

And of course you find that generally those who come to the Sufi Order or any spiritual order for training - very often they are people who are covert - that is who are a little shy of expressing themselves totally in society. And so what we are doing is we are really balancing the two, so that one is always knowing how to reveal without - while at the same time respecting the sacredness and the secrecy of one's soul.

As a matter of fact Al Hallaj was accused of having revealed to people the secret of his love for God. And I would say that maybe that is a secret - that-is-the-secret! It is - you see, I think that meaningfulness is always in some way connected with emotion. And that's why, for example, in the famous Hadith - God speaking, and he says: I created the universe so I may know myself. That's a very simplistic rendering of probably what were the original words of the Prophet. But sometimes we have that word translated by: I love to know myself. But even that doesn't say it, quite. It is - you see, there's an interpretation - you know, Sufis are always making interpretations of those Hadith. So, I saw an interpretation that really shattered me: It was not in order to know myself that I descended from - that I created the world, but it was out of the love for the possibility of you that I descended from the solitude of unknowing. 

So, you can imagine how - what that meant to me to hear this other side of it instead of just knowing, you know - out of love, you see? And then I looked everywhere to find out who said it 'cause in those days I didn't write my references anymore. So I went to all the professors - Anna Maria Shimell, and Nasir, and they said: Well, we don't know - it sounds like heresy, I mean, to say a thing like that. You're contradicting the prophet. And then a smart young man said to me: You know what? I think it was your words.

So, it's the meaningfulness of the universe - is it's splendor. And as you know scientists are using the word elegance now, instead of meaningfulness - I mean in addition to meaningfulness. So, it has a kind of significance - elegance has a kind of significance - and so that enlists your love rather than your understanding. And so I think the only way to progress on the spiritual path is to be shattered. That's the word Fanna - to be shattered. Not just by understanding - in fact, the word used by (Al Gili) is: The consternation of intelligence.

But, like - the poignancy of the human drama is - the emotion that is involved is so incredible, and so paradoxical that ... . You see, what I'm doing is - I don't know wether you notice that - you see, the one thing that we must avoid doing is to think of the wazifas as a way of perfecting ourselves; I come to the Sufi Order and I ask my guide to help me develop qualities in myself.

You could say that every fraction of the cosmos carries within it, potentially, the cosmos, and that means that as much as we are a fraction, we carry potentially in ourselves all those qualities that we ascribe to God. And so, what the wazifa consists in doing is to awaken the God within. And, so the knowledge is not the ultimate purpose - it is the awakening of the God within, hmmm? And, of course, if you discover God within yourself then - I mean, it's too fantastic to believe. I mean - you cannot - that's where one is shattered, you see. I think that is the meaning of Vujud, you see.

The Vujud is - you see, so far we said Zahir - like manifestation and the Batin - that which is gradually being revealed but is concealed, and so on. Then we have Vujud, which I've often translated by existentiation, or actuation. You see, behind it there's allot of controversy because for allot of theologians in Islam, God only reveals Himself while concealing Himself, whereas for the Sufis God actualizes Himself - becomes a reality. You see, that's in those words of Murshid: Make God a reality. And that's not just revelation. It's actually being because revelation is knowing, and this is actually being. And so it's a kind of knowledge that comes from doing instead of knowing. Like the scout discovering his/her tattoo by making it.

So, just imagine that the bounty of the universe is hidden within your personality. And also the divine consciousness is : Hidden in matter. - Murshid says, or in your personality, and that God is discovering Him/Herself in a mode that a secondary mode - a mode that accrues to the initial mode - the initial mode God knows himself eternally in the principles of His being, I would say.

But then the secondary mode is, and He discovers Himself in that which occurs when these principles are actualized. See what I mean? That they - before - like, they re divine qualities - yes, but how these qualities come through each person in their unique way. That is making God a reality, hmmm? And also the interface between people add a further dimension of knowledge to the universe.

Incidentally, one can use the word universe instead of God. I know somebody who told me: Pir Vilayat, if only you didn't use the word God you'd be much more successful. But all of a sudden it occurred to me that universe - Verso el uno...Towards the one? Towards the one! Towards the one! Verso el uno! If you speak Spanish.

So, in other words the wazifa - you are not alone repeating the wazifa. You are participating in a cosmic act whereby God - or the universe - is discovering Him/Herself in your discovery of God - or the universe, in yourself. So, without that connection to God the wazifa is, you know, just an auto-suggestion.

But, you see, one - perfunctorily one would have thought: Well, it's good enough just to - as I've already said, you can always imagine a quality larger, more wonderful than the qualities you have imagined so far. Compassion, for example, or whatever it is. Truth, or whatever. But these qualities are ascribed to God and not to us. They are borrowed by us, let us say. So, it is discovering God predicated by a quality, and then another quality. And consequently awakening the quality in oneself, hmmm?

So, as you see, there is an emotion there and so Vujud is a - it means two things. One is to actualize - to make God a reality, you see, which is much more than just to manifest that one is the manifestation of God. But the other one is, God is present - Mawjud - God is present. So, that is a very deep experience. I would say this is the experience of what we call the sacred.

I'm sure that you must have gone to a church where - there are lots of kinds of different churches, but - where you feel a strong presence, hmmm? Certainly in India there are some Dhargas where you feel a very strong presence. In temples, and so on. 

So the Dhikr is the practice of the presence of God. That's what it's called, hmmm? Now, as I already said, you see, it's not God other than oneself, God present as a second person - it's discovering God in oneself rather than other than oneself. So it's a very mystical experience rather than a religious experience. It all starts with being in a state of bewonderment.

As I say, the - just walking in the high mountains, looking at the sunrise, or lightening. There are allot of experiences that are just overwhelming. You encounter people who are meaningful to one, or listening to - actually one is really meeting Bach by listening to his music. So, it's like - it's always like meeting God in different forms in which the one and only being appears. And that includes those who are attacking one or who are even humiliating one - kind of - part of the drama, you see? That God appears as a warning, for example - that's also the hand of God. So, these are words you find in the mystics. And Murshid, for example. And one wonders, how real is this? Until one is able to really see that indeed... .

You see, if you take your personal point of view then you dislike a person who is countering you and you put the blame on them, and so on and so forth. But then if you feel that it's God who is countering you and giving you a chance of learning by discovering in yourself something that is being revealed to you, then that person is your guide. But if you consider that that person is countering you, then you haven't learned from it. So, it's a very special approach that you find amongst the Sufis.

So, we come to this word - Ya Hadi, and very often this is given in conjunction with Wali. Ya Wali, Ya Hadi, hmmm? There are two meanings to Wali. One is, let me see, I think it's - if the accent is on the 'i', it is the friend and if the accent is on the 'a' it is the master. That's a very interesting way of considering the master as a friend. And even the friend as a master.

Now, I'd like to draw your attention to the particular (antenimy) between two principles which we find in the universe. One is the ability the universe has of self-organizing itself, and the other is our ability to intervene. And there are cases when, by intervening you would hamper the self-organizing faculty of the universe and there are cases where, if you just let happen what happens without using your will, then things - somehow things can take a random course. I'm trying to say it as clear as possible.

You see, Pir-o-Murshid really described Wali - mastery. I've never come across such an extraordinary, wonderful clarification of how mastery is looked upon in Sufism, because there is a difference between mastery in Sufism and Yoga. Yoga is definitely - one is definitely taking on - taking over and even suppressing things in oneself. And repressing. Where as here, what Pir-o-Murshid says of course is that is like a Yacht and the wind is, let's say, that self-organizing power in the universe. It's a kind of impulse that is always moving.

But then you have - the yacht's person has a rudder and is able to move the sails so the power of the wind can be directed where he or she wants to go. So that is where mastery comes in, you see. And otherwise the boat would just go where ever the wind lists us. And the reason for that is because perhaps the greatest gift is our freedom to take responsibility. That is - when I say gift, it's as though the ultimate divine power is in His or Her ability to make decisions, let's say, initiative. And just imagine that this greatest of all faculties is delegated to us as humans. It's like - imagine a father would like his son to be - to have all the qualities that he has, or his daughter - or the mother her daughter or son.

But then imagine that the father should wish for his son or daughter - or a mother should wish for her daughter or son, to develop even more qualities that he or she has developed so far, hmmm? Now, think of God as, let's say, the very extreme of generous. That's the meaning of Rahman. God as dynamic rather than static; Becoming instead of just being, in the course of evolution. And consequently it is that delegation of will that makes for evolution, otherwise things would remain the same as they were before. And so our initiative in taking responsibility, hmmm?

So, there's a combination of wazifas here. Of course, obviously Ya Wali, Ya Hadi, is the standard thing, but the combination I have been working allot with - that is Ya Wali, Ya Wasi.

Now, Wasi is, maybe - I hope you don't mind if I just open up a parenthesis here. Because you have - you know, to start with - you know, we've been doing some practices in which we expand our consciousness - that is Ya Basit, yeah. For example, I think it was yesterday, we were just imagining the millions of galaxies and the big bang. And our body is a continuation of that whole outburst of energy, and also of our realization. So, that has the effect of expanding your - by expanding your consciousness you expand your notion of yourself and therefore discover the magnitude of your being. 'Cause otherwise you would be limited by your sense of being 'me', which is not what you are. It's just a limited sense of yourself.

So, you realize in doing so one tends to lose one's identity in the vastness - to merge with God, as one says. Whereas the marvel of the universe is that the totality is actuated in a unique way in each fragment of the totality. So, in other words, the importance of our own personal self-consciousness and also, initiative.

So, I know, it's a very wonderful experience to - if you're on retreat - to just merge in the totality and lose your sense of identity. What I have been doing is to alternate between that as you exhale and then as you inhale. Be aware of your...

Side 2

...identity, and the wazifa for that is Qabid, which I mentioned the other day. Your individuality. But always think of it as a conversion - don't think of it as a fragment of the totality but the way the totality is converged in one point.

Now, Murshid saw this very clearly, of course, and so what he would give to the mureeds was Ya Wasi, Wasi, instead of Basit. That is because here there is a sense of containment: This is my responsibility. And it gives you a sense of vastness - but you don't lose yourself in it; This is my realm. My Kingdom. My Queendom, if you're a woman. And it is true, of course, there is no limit to it - to one's responsibility, as you know. The more capable you are the more that is put upon your shoulders. And also, whatever you do involves an infinite number of people. So at no point can you say this is the frontier of my kingdom because your decisions affect - in fact - the whole universe. Every wave in the sea affects the whole sea, hmmm?

So, that is absolutely, I would say, absolutely what Murshid would - typical of what Murshid's attitude was. Take responsibility, mastery, but think that you are taking responsibility as a delegate, that it is - you are an ambassador, or a delegate. And so the whole of Sufism is really based upon the ancient chivalry of Iran. It's called (Esbabad) - it's an old word used in pre-zoroastrian days. (Madean). And it's (futohat), (futohat), and actually initiation in the Sufi Order is a covenant based on the ancient chivalry of Iran. It's a pledge of service, hmmm?

And so you see that Wasi is like: I have been intrusted with this area of responsibility. And so every morning you survey your Kingdom, or Queendom, and think: Yes, well, I am responsible for this situation. And then there is that situation there and it's true, if you don't do that you might forget it. Or you might - no, but you make a point of remembering, yes. And people depend upon it, and so on. And it is that which - but then you are doing it - you're not exercising your power but delegating the divine power so that your will does not come from an ego place, from an ego-trip, a power trip.

And, so, there, once again, you see, it would be counter productive if we were to just remain in our personal sense of identity. You always have to refer back to the totality coming through as you. I don't know if you noticed I did not say the totality coming through you, but through as you! 'Cause otherwise you think that I am this container and divine power is coming through - then there is still the sense of your own power. If you say: This is the divine power that is converging as what I think of as my power, then of course you don't have the - let's say the ego game of the personal self.

Now, the - you see, alright... well. One's responsibility is in the world, but with regard to one's - let's say husbandry of one's own nature, then there are... . For example, there are things about oneself that one doesn't like. I don't know if that is - you all have that, yeah? Yeah? And as I said before, those are part - part of a defense system, so if you get rid of them you would find - you would have some withdrawal - psychological withdrawal symptoms. So, and what happens is that they would be in the unconscious - you wouldn't acknowledge them, but they are in you. And they would play all kinds of games on you, so that's not a good way of going about it, by trying to make a surgical operation by getting rid of those elements in yourself that have a role, you see.

So, there's that sense - as I said, if you don't like it in yourself then there's a judgement about it, like... . Which is telling you something. But you see, we are in a continual process of transformation, and so just picture it like this. Like a flower, for example. There are fresh petals continually unfurling from within, and they can only find room to unfurl if the outer petals fall apart. So think of it that way, that you don't have to push the jaded petals apart because it is the fresh petals that will do it for you. 

So, the thing to do is cleave to those qualities that are coming through you at this moment, and they will eliminate those things that are, that you don't like. They are - actually they are scattered. They are scattered into - you know, everything. Photons, protons, electrons, are being scattered all over the world - the universe. We are in a process of disintegration on one hand, and on the other hand building from within. So, you can only replace them by high-lighting what is coming through now.

So, now, the language of the wazifa provides you with a kind of, maybe we could say a code - it's a language. It's a language maybe a little bit different from the current languages, and provides you with a means of being able to identify qualities that are coming through you. For example, I don't know if you noticed - perhaps you go through a phase when all of a sudden there are certain qualities that are coming through. And it wasn't - it was there but it wasn't very, very strong, and somehow... . Now, I've said this before but maybe some of you are new so you don't remember that.

You see, supposing that we told you well, you can just prescribe your own wazifas. It would be like - supposing that a doctor said: Well, you can just prescribe your own medicines. Well, I bet you would prescribe to yourself the qualities that you feel would make you better adapted to the environment, hmmm? Yeah? So you would figure out, with your mind, this situation is calling for a certain quality, so let's see - look it up in the book what the quality is - OK., then I repeat the word, you see? Now, that's the mind that says that, and let us say, our rather inadequate, finite mine, let us say.

Now then, can you feel there a certain quality that is coming through now, in you, much stronger then ever before. You had those qualities but somehow they are so important now. Before they, they were there but now it seems that your whole being depends upon them. They're revealing themselves to you, or God is revealing to you those qualities in yourself being awakened in you, irrespective of your problems. So that is in line with the Sufi view that we go through Makum - that's+stages, and those stages are related to crisis situations in our life.

When we go through a crisis situation, it's an indication that there's a change of tact, somehow, in us, which is calling for a new quality to come through. And then, interestingly enough, you look at your problems again, and you see that that is exactly the quality that you needed to meet that problem. You couldn't have worked it out with your mind. And that's why we don't advise you to prescribe your own wazifas. But your guide is supposed to see that.

And it has the effect of pushing the shadows away, you see, and you couldn't push them away with your will but somehow this new quality is so important for you that it takes - it gains ground in your personality. 

Now, of course there's (no route) that all the wazifas are, refer to our divine inheritance and so there's again a practice that you can do, to be very clear. I've done that allot. You can just try to earmark qualities that you have inherited from your parents, or your ancestors. And then you can earmark qualities that you have - that have spilled over from the environment, from people because, as I've said, there's allot of osmosis between people so that qualities in one person seem to spill over in you. And visa versa. Qualities, or defects, of course. Idiosyncrasies.

Now, of course, it's a word. I mean, if we say the divine inheritance, we have to be very careful using - and especially in the realm of spirituality, just using words, and assuming that - you know - that there's a concept. But we have to be quite sure that we are speaking about something real. And that's why... .

You see, otherwise it's words, you see? That's why I think that one needs to... I think the ultimate, let's say, magic, that's going to trigger off a transformation in one's being is - starts by a kind of confrontation between one's self and what one imagines God to be, hmmm? Because, in fact, one is calling forth qualities in oneself that one is projecting upon God - I've said that before. But anyway, that is the only way, in my mind, to be able to make a reality out of that practice, said Ya Warith - Warith - divine inheritance.

That can only happen if you... it can't happen if you think you're a fragment of the totality. It can only happen if you think that the totality flows in each fragment of itself, and so the bounty that is lying in wait is so infinite that one is really shaken by the sense of what this really is. It's so - so amazing that one - that is prayer. It's like a confrontation with - it's not even - it's not another - one's other self, or it's not - of course one is projecting qualities in one's imagination but it's really the ultimate self-discovery. It's discovering who I am! We wouldn't have the courage to ever claim anything like that, and that's why Al Hallaj was crucified. Yet it's the ultimate truth.

Now, there's a very interesting simile to be found amongst - in the Sufi literature in Iran. I think it was Shahabuddin Surwardi who said this - maybe not. Maybe it was - I forget, anyway, he was - it was like a kind of vision. He was advancing in a kind of dream landscape and there was a magnificent being walking towards him. And so, he was so overwhelmed by this being and of course you're getting closer - you know, it's like meeting one's Murshid, like meeting someone who is like, so meaningful to you. And what he couldn't believe was that as he was getting nearer he thought: I can't believe it but I resemble this being. And finally he realized that it was himself - his real being.

So I think that's a power of the wazifa, is to realize that one is discovering one's real being and that it is one's self-image - notion that one has of oneself that is standing in the way. So, it is a revelation of oneself to oneself through the vision that God has of Himself through us. To which we participate. And therefore it cannot happen if we keep on thinking - identifying ourselves with our personal self-image. It won't happen that way. And the power of prayer is that one - somehow one is carried beyond one's self-image, and it takes allot of power to overcome one's personal self-image. It doesn't happen like that. It takes a traumatic, shattering experience.

Don't expect wazifa to make you high. It's the other way around - you have to be high to repeat the wazifa. Perhaps it works both ways.

So, thank you.

End of Tape. 

MAR 23, 1996		Tape 04

March 23, 1996, Pir Vilayat Khan at the Abode of the Message. Tape #4

How can one lift one's consciousness into the celestial spheres? Are there skills? There are three sayings that would give us some clues. The first one perhaps you could resume it in the words of Joseph Campbell: follow your bliss. That is, as Pir-o-Murshid says, a passion is awakened in one for the unattainable. So that we have the ability to think of something more wonderful than anything that we have thought of so far. And that itself has the faculty of raising one's consciousness. 

I'm quoting again Pir-o-Murshid, above the world--and so there again, one has to be very clear as to what kind of attraction the world has for one because it pulls one in the opposite direction and there's no use in forcing one's self, so one has to just be able to measure just exactly how important it is, how important one's involvement is in the world and how, on the other hand, how important this attunement is. And then furthermore, Pir-o-Murshid says, work with the ties of the world, that is, one has to be very clear as to what these ties are and how forceful they are and so on. Work through them, he doesn't say break them, he says work through them. So perhaps it's rather like the Gordion Knot that one had to--you know the story don't you. There was knot in a village in Greece and it was said that if anybody could unravel it they would conquer the world. And Alexander the first went there and he got inpatient and cut it and therefore he never conquered the world. So that's what Pir-o-Murshid says, work through those ties instead of breaking them.

Well, know let us just see what happens as you are meditating. All kinds of thoughts surface in your mind. Some they seem rather random, others seem to have some kind of congruence, but not always clear just exactly what the effect of your will is. So you could just watch your thoughts. Sometimes one sees a pattern sometime one doesn't, one is not clear as to what the emotions are that prompt these thoughts. But what we want is more clarity because the clues are right there. So, perhaps you--can you distinguish thoughts that are concerned with your problems? And if you remember what we said yesterday is that the that kind of perspective calls emotions in us to provides us with a defense against situations that are threatening to us and consequently, well, the peripheral area of one's psyche which is very compelling and in which we there's an overlap with the environment. And if you remember we said that it is reactive. That is, one is reacting one isn't acting one isn't using all the faculties in one's being. So if you think of that, if you just earmark as they come as they surface those thoughts that have to do with your problems and realize that those thoughts pull you toward the periphery of your psyche and therefore away from your awareness of who you really are--of the bounty of your being. So the thing to do then is to be--you see you can't just eliminate these thoughts by your will or if you do they will probably seek refuge in the unconscious and cause a lot of irrational problems. So it's better that they are there in your sight.

But ultimately of course we want to, you remember what we did yesterday, we want to honor the splendor and bounty of our being and the power that comes through and there's such that it can very well overcome thoughts of and emotions that are linked with the personal ego. Defensiveness.

But anyway we need now to proceed and see if you can earmark amongst the thoughts that are coming through thoughts that, how can I say, thoughts that link you with, let's say that you see connections between yourself and situations that are not obviously logical. You see, well, the best way to understand this is if I were to illustrate it by, for example, you are swimming at the surface of a lake and you see water lilies and then you swim under the lake and you see that it's all a network of roots. So now those water lilies are connected internally whereas at first you can't see how they are connected, you see. So that would be a kind of thinking that is rather different from the ordinary one and you might call it intuitive whereby you feel that you are connected somehow with everything from inside.

So, you see if you just think of your sense of identity, the first mode of thinking one would normally that's the kind of thinking that you have when you identify with your body, or even with your--yes with your body, that's right. The second one is where you identify with your aura. And you see your body has boundaries and therefore connects with other beings and with the outer world through your senses. Whereas the aura is related to the auras of other beings internally rather like the water lilies and so, corresponding to this more advanced form of identity, which is called identifying with your subtle body, there is a mode of thinking whereby, for example, you are able to reconcile the irreconcilables. I gave an example yesterday: for example, I am mortal and immortal at the same time. And in this condition you discover that you discover people in your own psyche and you know that you are present in the psyche of other people. Or somehow there's an osmosis between beings so you don't think of beings as totally other because they are part of you. And so you see your connection with them in a very different light to if you thought of them as other than yourself.

You see that and this leads towards a state which one could compare with a being in a transfigured state. Therefore, for example, you are walking in nature and you find that all of a sudden you have a feeling that you are in an enchanted world and it's because your consciousness extends beyond the boundary of your notion of yourself--that you experience that deep communion with all beings and all things. That's the kind of thing that St. Francis did. And you can do it too, of course. You can just switch on something and you find yourself in a very strange space, like you know you have the sense I know this but I'd forgotten it. It's a state that is very different than ordinary state. It's: I'm much more in touch with reality and I see that what I'm experiencing in my everyday consciousness my common place consciousness is just the surface just the way that this reality surfaces emerges at the surface like the water lilies for example. But now I'm in touch with the whole network of roots.

So there you once more you understand the words of Saint Francis, that which I was looking for is looking at me. So you see that the world is looking at you and there's some reciprocity. So that would be a further state and you'll see that the thoughts are not granulated but dovetail with each other form what one calls a wave interference pattern.

And so perhaps the best description of this would be a hologram, for example, and you see that the way it looks can alter according to the way you change the setting of your consciousness. So all of a sudden you see things in one perspective and then you shift your consciousness and you see it in another perspective so that's how the world looks like then, like intermingled interrelated perspectives in which you are involved. And so you can see very well that the same thing can be seen in one perspective and another. All right.

Now, for example, you see how, to be more specific, you see how qualities in you trigger off situations with you and the world because one generally sees it the other way around. One usually sees how situations in the world affect one's character for example. But now you see that somehow you had called you called upon a situation which you would have never accepted to see it that way. You would have thought people are unfair to me and you wouldn't see that there is something in you that somehow triggered off this reaction in people because you were enlisting your defense system to protect yourself from being hurt and that defense system acts aggressively towards other people and one doesn't know how not to do it because one needs to protect one's self so it's kind of a bit of circle. That's what we're (? word not clear) are about.

So in this state you see those connections because, for example, you see yourself through the eyes of another person and you see another person through their eyes. So now, as I say, there's a kind of a surreptitious internal relationship that is not apparent at the surface. Like, as I said, the water lilies--you can't see how they're related if you just swim or take a boat at the surface of the water. And now you see that connection. This will if indeed it is that it is the kind of ego not when I say ego I mean the fact of limiting one's reducing one's sense of identity to the external area of one's psyche, in other words, a faulty self image. It doesn't take into consideration all the bounty of one's being, as I say, and which is reactive and consequently aggressive. And that itself stands in the way of the thoughts that are typical of the celestial level because celestial thoughts are and emotions not only are they idyllic, of course, and very beautiful there's no ugliness in them no aggressivity, but they are naive. Maybe I should say they are ingenue rather than naive. Like the child. And that means defenseless. In other words, to have access into the heavens, you have to give up your defenses. And in lieu of the defenses you develop a kind of spiritual power that is not the power of the ego, but let us say, the power of pure splendor. The power of a morning sunrise in the mountains. The power of the B minor Mass. The power of the saint. In other words, it is the way of the saint that gives access to the celestial spheres--not the way of the master. And therefore, if one is not ready to forego--as I say, there's some danger in abandoning your defenses. You develop psychological withdrawal symptoms.

And therefore, as Nefari---Abdul Jabir Nefari says, one is in a state of waiting. You have to wait on until somehow the maturity, well, it's a kind of painful operation that takes place within one. There's a pain in being delivered in the hands of a ruthless world without defenses. But curiously enough that pain results in incredible joy and that I've heard that from those who were tortured in concentration camps. It seems on our side it seems so incredibly cruel and they say that there was a moment of bliss--having gone through the torture there was a moment of bliss because one was under going this process in one's self. The (go lighters?) or who ever doing the torturing were just instrumental to trigger off a process in one's self whereby one was led to give up one's personal aggression and then something happens. But one becomes like a child again--no guile. As I say, defenseless.

The kind of thinking there is not, of course, it's the opposite of being manipulative, it's totally impromptu without any strings attached one says. And in a sense that kind of thinking is luminous. And therefore--I don't know whether I can really say this I'm just finding my way but--you see you think of your aura as a one tends at first one thinks of one's aura as well a formation of light. And it is of course it's pulsing. It's alternating between expanding and contracting.

Actually, let's try and do this now. You know like a vortex whirlpool in a lake for example. Well, just imagine the whirlpool of light. And so if you watch the whirlpool in the lake you find that the water of the lake keeps flowing into that well towards the axis, let's say, or converging. And then it flows out in some other direction. And if it pulses, then it flows back from the direction from which it flowed out. And then it flows in by the direction--no--it flows in through the direction in which it flowed out and then the other way around. So if you can just imagine the pulsing of your aura. All kinds of colors. Colors change according to one's attunement. And then if you could see that your aura of course has a does bear a resemblance with your body, particularly your face, and that alters from one moment to the other as you shift your thoughts and emotions--your attunement.

And now, I've been imagining thoughts as like the aura is sparkling. So you have a certain core situation in the aura that has somewhat the countenance of your face or (also?) of the heart. And there's some kind of effervescence that seems to sparkle at the jagged ends and which for me are the way that your thoughts are translated in the fabric of light of your aura. And sometimes those thoughts are explosive, like a real whew, cracker, fireworks. And other times they are rather dull and repetitive. And somehow your whole aura is involved in that in a process. It gives you feedback. Sometimes you feel that these formations are harmonious and congruent and at other times you feel that they are random and almost disruptive. So you have a wonderful feedback system there, but you see that depends on your own sense of esthetics. In fact, the clue to the celestial spheres is in the nature of one's emotion--is in eschewing gross emotions.

In fact, if you study Buddhism, you'll find that Buddha was there's a whole kind of kind of processing of emotions--really overcoming the emotions that tie one to the world--by detachment. That means the opposite of addiction, of course, freedom from addiction to gross emotions. And then they are replaced by then you are enhancing subtle emotions. The subtle emotions do not affect your ego the same way. It's not, you know, wanting to possess and wanting to compete with another person and wanting to have the best of another person, and so on, not that kind of thing like we learned in soccer at school. But the other way around. Emotions can somehow affect your ego. For example, you enjoy music that is very meaningful or beauty in all its forms. And then there's a very subtle emotion according to Buddha that is really cosmic. To a certain extent that you can hardly say that it is a personal emotion. It takes over--I think that's what Pir-o-Murshid meant when he said, one is lifted beyond the world and experiences such bliss. If one if people (end of side one)

(beginning of side two) ...what that is like. They would want to covet it for themselves, but that's why you can't have it, you can't, it's not something that you can enjoy personally. So, somehow our ego is involved in this whole thing--at all levels. And I say that, there's a word of Pir-o-Murshid that says, of course ultimately it is the ego that is that which is gained by life. So, one must not use that word in a pejorative sense. He uses the word the false ego--it's just a mistaken sense of identity where one does not enlist all the beauty of one's being.

Now, you see, I think that it starts by being very perspicacious. Being very clear, these are thoughts that are somehow connected with the assessment of my problems and then I see that, you know, they enlist reactions in me that, well, I don't like. So, you ask yourself, is there an alternative, could I deal with this in a different way than the rather perfunctory reactionary way. For example, a very good example is of course Christ before Pilate. Pilate was kind of disarmed. He thought, well, I don't see anything wrong in this being. If they want to crucify him but I honestly because Christ did not try to defend himself. So it's that kind of attitude that will give you access, well, will give you some access to celestial spheres. I don't just say that these are just vadimecum prescriptions, I'm sure that there are many more.

Now, I think that this needs to be done with the feedback that one gets by seeing how one's thoughts affect the expression on one's face and, what is more, the expression of one's countenance that transpires through one's face. And eventually you get into the face or countenance of your aura and that and then the also the way that you are fashioning the new the new yourself--the new rebirthing of yourself. So these are things that you can do while meditating instead of just trying to pinpoint your thoughts: zoom upon your thoughts and try to distinguish these different modes of thinking. And to be more concrete you could actually, for example, a thought comes into your mind, impromptu, you haven't decided upon that thought, you haven't determined it, it just arose. And so what you could do is just stop everything and try it and see: how does it affect the expression of my face. For example, you could even watch yourself in the mirror. You would see a good a very clear picture of how your thought has altered the expression of your face. And once you do that you know how the physical form reflects the attunement and one's realization. So, of course, these thoughts emerge impromptu, as I say, and therefore, one has to wait until they emerge, but they will emerge, they do all the time. And then, you can reconnoiter them, investigate them, see how they affect you.

The expression on your face is one thing, but, as I said, there's the countenance of your aura, there's the many different levels of our being. Ultimately, one's celestial counterpart is just like the voice of Caruso--it's somehow there is some defilement that reaches right up to that level, and of course some enriching. So, but, as I say, in order to be able to identify with that counterpart, celestial counterpart, you do have to give up resorting to reactionary emotions, attitudes, and thoughts. So that one could say that at that level the aura is extremely sensitive. It's like a, it suffers so much from the grossness of the world. It's really injured by that, not just by any sort of spill over from the world and one's own emotional set up, it damages, or no, it doesn't damage because the core of one's celestial being is immaculate, but is covered over, distorted like the voice of Caruso. So there's some suffering there for a sensitive soul. It's like throwing mud on the snow.

So, as I said, thoughts will arise at random. And a lot of people think, well, that's not good. If I'm going to meditate I want to be able to control my thoughts. Well, those thoughts are telling you something about yourself. And it is true that you can at first distinguish these thought patterns. For example, this kind of reactive way of thinking to thoughts of connectiveness with all beings and totally different type of emotions. So that's the first thing is to distinguish them very clearly, earmark them. And then, well, one can't remove them as I say, they are part of your being, but one can enhance the impact of one's soul upon the world rather than simply incurring the impact of the world upon one's soul. In other words, not just adapting one's self to the environment or adapting the environment to one's own sense of purpose, but somehow if clearly your purpose is your ascent into the higher spheres, then of course it is we're talking about the impact of your soul upon all the levels of your being, including the affect that this has upon world around you.

Now, as I said, there are different subtle bodies, and I think it would be rather simplistic if we were just to try and define them, it's much better to experience them. So, of course you, at first, you are aware of a kind of magnetism, magnetic field as I call it, but then I would say as quickly as possible start feeling your aura. It's feeling it; you can't see it. Feel like light around your shoulders and heart and eventually you have a sense of this whole body of light called the aura that is pulsing--we've gone into this a lot. But now the interesting thing is how do you see what we have in view is of course how we access the celestial level. So how do you do that?

Now there's a practice of Buddha that I would like to recommend. Imagine for example that you are looking at a red disk, cardboard disk, carton. red, round. You look at it, close your eyes and you see a green one. And now supposing that you could do the same thing, you don't have to have a cardboard disk. Imagine the red disk with your eyes closed and you do something, I don't know how to say how one does it, I know I do it, but I don't know how to say how one can do it. But you shift the focus of your consciousness and all of a sudden you see a green one. So that's the reflex. Right. Now you can proceed further and you see an orange one. So that would be the reflex of the reflex. And you then shift again and you see a violet one. Well, it might take a few months to work on this until you're able to shift your consciousness in such a way that you offset it from the way it was before how it's setting previous setting. Actually, I think that it's not just shifting the focus of your consciousness. I think it has to do with shifting your sense of identity. One or the other they both affect one another. All right.

Now. Imagine a white light I mean a colorless light. To a certain extent that you are absolutely blinded flooded with this light. Now breathe in as you offset your consciousness and all of a sudden you discover the reflex of that white light. And that is a million fold more bright I mean brighter and more magnificent and then you can proceed even further. So you are discovering a world of light and so the starry sky is only a very inadequate expression of the whole array of spheres of light. And now I dare say that this experience is related somehow with one's notion of, how can I say, yes--of realization. One's ability to grasp beyond the usual bridge outreach of the mind. I'll give you an example of this. Supposing that you were to look at the stars in the sky every morning while the sun came up and you kept on trying to see how long you can look at the stars while the sun is comes up, you see. Now if you do that every day, of course there's a change in the time that the sun rises, but if you account for that change, you will develop your perspicacity to grasp the stars when the sun is in the sky. And that's the kind of perspicacity that I'm talking about. You can sense is worlds of light. And what is more you get used to it. Eventually you can see your participation in them. Let's say that, for example, you start with your aura, your physical aura but then the next level we discovered the aura of non-physical light of your being. And the next one of still less physical light, and so on. And then for each of these levels there is a countenance. And so of course when you discover the countenance of your celestial being you are so overwhelmed because while God is continually revealing Him Herself to us through all those devices that we've been talking about, this means is more overwhelming than any other. And I end with the words in the Quran, where ever I look is the face of God.

And so I must ask, Aziza, are you there? If you feel comfortable about taking the session at 9:30? And then I'll come again. End of tape.

MAR 24, 1996		Tape 06

Tape #6, Pir Vilayat Inayat Kahn: March 24, 1996 at the Abode of the Message

Legendary figure in the cello world and I used to come and sit in his drawing room while he was playing and I remember this piece in particular. That was in Spain near Barcelona next to the sea at 1936 before most of you were born.

Well now, we have a problem. We're challenged on all sides not only from outside by people but also from inside and we feel we need to use will in order to be able to face that situation. And I think most of us are rather awkward and are going about it in the wrong way. We're trying to muster personal power. It's like, you know, don't need a bulldozer to kill a fly. So, we muster all our strength ready for battle, with ourselves also you see, and then it creates a short circuit and confusion. Actually the truth is that it takes a stronger power than our personal power to deal with the smallest situation. But it's not a personal power it's a different power. I was trying to remember Murshid--it was incredible how the power that came through, and yet there was no personal edge at all. You never felt an ego trying to affirm itself or, you know, up tight about not being recognized or anything like that. So natural. So, there is the challenge coming from outside and there's the power coming from inside. And that's why the word wali, mastery, and especially with qader, power--I find that one has to be very careful with them because they contribute towards ones trying to validate one's self, prove one's self to others and to one's self. One feels very precarious. So I prefer words like I prefer ya qaher for example. 

Well actually there's a word that I like very much and that is ya kabir and you find of course it's akbar, Allah ho akbar, great. It's an American word, as you know, everything is always great. It's great. So, one doesn't use that in England, one doesn't say, it's great. So, you see for me there's the difference between being great and being puny. I mean, I know you may laugh, but I remember I was in Sharaz trying to do a retreat in a place that was a rendezvous of the dervishes, very powerful dervish, dervishes are very powerful. And, well I won't tell you the whole story, but in the back there were photos of the Sufis of 19th century so there were black--photography started I think some towards the end of the last century. And I must say the photos of those beings they were like kings. And it occurs to me that there's a kind of you see if one is the ambassador of God, because that's the whole chivalry you see and that whole tradition, then it's not good enough just to carry out the orders, one has to reflect the manner of the of one's king or queen. 

And so that makes for greatness. So that I know it's not the way of democracy but it's the way of greatness. So somehow--great concept of life, I would say: accepting and acknowledging the gift of the divine inheritance in one's being and wishing to honor it by in one's personality. And so it is that way of thinking that makes one admonish one's self for being puny. So that for example, that would help in overcoming resentment--don't be so puny as to be upset about this person who hurt you this is ridiculous, I mean, who do you think you are, I mean. A sense of, you know, taking yourself to task. Because no doubt that our resentment and our anger brings us right back into our personal ego again. And so I think that the best counter to, the best way to meet those negative aspects of our selves that are so counterproductive is the sense of greatness instead of trying to master that situation, master one's thoughts and so on, it's really being able to identify with that flow of the universe that is converging as us not through us but as us. 

And being--you go up the stream, lets say, you incorporate more and more of that richness and makes for greatness. And it makes for people who are cosmic instead of personal and therefore a very wide spectrum of qualities will develop. You can't work with these qualities it doesn't work so well if you just try and develop compassion and truthfulness and those individual qualities. Whereas if you have that sense of the cosmic dimension of your being, then you know that those qualities are there and that you can call them forth. When I say they are latent they are potential, so you could illustrate it with a piano that has a most of its keyboard scotch taped and so you can play a melody but a very limited melody and all you have to do is de-scotch tape the whole thing and then you can play what ever you like. So it's the same idea is to discover all the potentials that are there and that are really longing to come through.

And so the other wazifa that I use to go along with that is ishq'allah ma'boudl'llah. Because you see I was speaking about this longing and it is really the divine longing to manifest to view. The whole universe as put in motion by the divine ishq'allah. Eshq'allah I meant to say. Eshq. You know that of course the way of the Sufi is very different from the Yogi or the Buddhist. Those were intended for monks whereas this is for knights, actually, knights. And so trying to attain something in life or trying to have a nice house or nice car or nice friends, what ever, music, what ever, that is not un-spiritual or anti-spiritual according to the sufis as it is for example for a yogi for example.

So there's a breathing practice which I would recommend and we could do it just right now as a preparation for what will be coming. It is: as you exhale consider that your exhaling is an extension of the divine exhaling whereby God translates the perfection of His Her being into existential reality. So that means that what you are trying to do in life is to translate in terms of your life those things that you value. Because something is gained by the fact that divine splendor becomes beauty or majesty. That's what life is about. And when you inhale then you think the other way around: think that you're inhaling as an extension of the divine inhaling whereby you are being you are undergoing a process of transmutation or distillation so that eventually only the quintessence of your being is then fed back into the universe again. So it's like one is enriching the universe and I don't think that it means that you are lost forever. 

You could illustrate it by a wave interference pattern where the waves compose together and you think you've lost them--like you have eddies on the surface of a lake and you can't see them anymore because you know they're all intertwined and you think you've lost them--the fact is they can be retrieved. So that means that death and resurrection is not a process of annihilation but a process whereby one has a contribution to make to the divine programming. So perhaps you recognize in these two breaths the two poles of your being. 'n one hand, your need for involvement in life with people with circumstances with matter which robs one of one's freedom that's the price to pay. But one is enriched by it and that's what life is about. And then on the other hand there are those moments when one feels suffocated and has been caught in a machine in the rat race and one has paid of one's freedom to such an extent that one is no more free of course. And also one realizes to what extent one is conditioned. And so somewhere there's a longing in us for freedom and that doesn't just mean freedom from conditions it means from the way one thinks is conditioned. The way one feels is sometimes conditioned, so we're the product of an incredible amount of conditioning. The leeway of freedom within this conditioning is very very small indeed. And so there's a kind of longing for freedom.

Now in terms of a science you remember my saying that the electrons feed on light and consequently they begin to free themself from the constraint of an extremely narrowly constraining program and start say jumping their orbitals. So that would be a very good description of, for example, ballet in which you give the dancers (a) little chance of being a little more creative you see. So to do that you have to provide them with energy as a matter of fact. If a metal is heated then it begins to display that more and more degrees of freedom the more it is heated, so the more energy it gains. So that's what's happening in our modern society, people have gained more and more freedom and Pir-o-Murshid is talking about spiritual freedom whereas in the realm of religion of course we are very constrained and very narrow programmed.

So this is a breathing practice that I do every day because it balances first of all, it connects one with one's ground let's say--the Divine being. One's own breath is a continuation an extension of the divine breath. And secondly, because there are those two main poles of attraction in our life that are seem to pull in opposite directions. Unless one is able to--well I was going to say to balance them--but eventually one is able to see how they contribute towards another. For example, that you can find freedom in involvement. And also it does help you to understand the purpose of your life to make your objectives into your motivations. In fact, it's a very good practice in the morning to do this every morning. Ask yourself 'what are my objectives?'. Well, there are certain that things that I value. And then you can make even a priority list and you can change the order, specially on the computer. So and then. Now, this I think is more important, well it's all more important, but still. OK. So, these are the things I really value. And I see people doing them, I see people really committing themselves to these ideals. The world is full of wonderful people doing fantastic things. People dedicating themselves to helping people with AIDS for example or working with the homeless. Or, fireman, just imagine what dedication to be a fireman. Think of the war correspondents in Bosnia and so on. There are a lot of heroes in the world. So those represent our highest values.

There's a story of Joan of Arc, I don't know whether you know that story, but perhaps--I was wondering might be able to go into it this evening--it's the most incredible story. Here she was sixteen when she led the troops against the British garrisons that fled because she heard voices to tell her that she should. She was listening to the bells in a church and she interpreted them as voices telling her to go and crown the king of France. Now she was a little peasant girl, illiterate, from a little village somewhere. And then they tortured her, well now, they captured her eventually and tortured her. And then pulled her out of her cell in chains and made her sign an adjuration and then she suffered terrible agony because she'd let down the party, she wasn't true to her voices anymore. It was very difficult for her because in those days the theologian knew everything and a little girl of the country, she wasn't supposed to know anything. So she thought, well maybe after all, they are right and then all of a sudden she realized that what ever their wisdom she had to be true to her voice.

So you see that's dedication to objectives and once you know the objectives then you can look in your life and see what your motivations are and whether they match your objectives. And of course there are reasons why they can't always work. But at least you are very clear in your meditation--this is what I'd like to do, those are the things that I really value, I see why I can't do it because so on so on so. But there's one niche there somewhere where I can do something of the kind that I value so much. Sufis call that muhasibi which means the examination of conscience. And then you examine all your dealings with people but one-by-one each person. And you think to yourself: well, did I really apply my objectives there? See because the mind will always justify and always provide you with an excuse why it wouldn't work and so on and so forth. 

But then you sort of unmask the hoax of the mind and then you begin to--of course the main concern is to be very very truthful but then extremely to the very limit. And I would say that makes a dervish is being uncompromising about the truth to one's self not just to others. So I would think that then I would think that the wazifa kabir and haqq are an extraordinarily powerful combination because it is that concern for authenticity that will give you greatness and consequently power. So that, as I say, that little girl Joan of Arc had a much greater power than all her enemies together. And so when you have that when your way of dealing with things comes from that place of power of divine power, then you don't have to apply your will or your power because it works. And in fact it makes things happen, that's the extraordinary thing. It's almost magical.

It's very strange how everything is connected in the world in such a way that you can't see it at first. Like, for example, one can't see how a change in one's self is going to change one's situation in life, perhaps one doesn't see it. And it's as though everything were connected like those lotus flowers or water lilies in their roots and so that's why the point at which--see we have to work on several fronts at the same time to be able to make good of our life our lives. And so one thing is achieving and the other thing is knowing and the relationship between the two. So if you got this background of power--you see there's another wazifa that's linked with that and that is ya ghani. And ghani is best described in a custom of the sufis in India. And that is if there's a branch of a tree or a rock in the way on the road, then they stop and remove it. They could very well go around it so they're removing it for someone else. Or for example, the dervish Baba-baba-john says drop a penny in the well but you must know that that penny is not going to give you luck, it will give luck to somebody else. So that's ya ghani you see. It's being a trailblazer. And so, but as I say, it's very curious because even though it doesn't benefit one, it enriches one's being. One is not of service in order to be benefited by being of service but it does enrich one's being.

So, this is as I say, in sufism there's a mode of thinking that is acquired by doing--as I said this morning. So that's why sometimes it's good to connect a wazifa of doing with a wazifa of knowing. We know that of course one says very often if one I'm sure that if you feel if you are asked what is your spiritual purpose in life I'm sure that you say well my yes it is awakening and then or then you might say it is illumination. And of course these are slogans these are words. So what do we mean? Awakening would be seeing something that one had not seen before like a shift in one's perspective. Like for example, one awakens from sleep in day consciousness so then you could do the opposite you could awake from day consciousness into sleep. A change of perspective if you gives you a sense of realizing something that you hadn't seen before.

So now you know these wazifas are sometimes interpreted differently by different people. I've been into a study of the references to these wazifas by sufi famous sufi teachers and I can see that they're different, they're not all the same. So we have khabir which is I would say great perspicacity as opposed to alim which is wisdom. So I would say that khabir is the closest you can get to what we mean by awakening. You see the trouble is these wazifas are used in, as I say, in different senses. For example, khabir is an expert. A khabir--an expert. So, maybe you're a spiritual expert if you're awakening--become a spiritual expert. So, whereas alim is wisdom. That is a word that Pir-o-Murshid brings out very much in his teaching wisdom. And perhaps you know the saying of Murshid when he said wisdom is the product of the meeting between the knowledge of the heavens and the knowledge of the earth. So if you hear that, you think, well, knowledge of the earth that I know what he means or I think I know what he means. 

The knowledge of the heavens, well what does it mean? But then you remember yesterday I was talking about the bird's-eye view of the--Suhrawardi proposes the witness in the heavens seeing things from a different angle and so the integration of these two opposite angles would give wisdom. And so wisdom is not awakening it's a--wisdom is a kind of maturity that comes to a person who has is conscious of the earth plane. That's not just because very often awakening is in the east is considered to be like downplaying the consciousness of the earth in order to highlight beyond existence as in Buddha, for example. Whereas for Murshid the important thing is spiritual realization in the world and therefore awakening leads towards wisdom. Therefore that combination khabir alim is very wonderful if you can see that, if you can see that khabir is a kind of insight that you get--use the word perspicacity. And the consequence is it gives you wisdom. So wisdom is a more pragmatic thing how you are able to apply your knowledge in concrete situations.

Now then, as I say, sometimes one uses the alternately the word awakening and illumination indiscriminately and I think it's important to be very clear about it. The fact is that they go together. That is, when one the more awake one is the more light one radiates in one's glance and in one's aura. But I think the most important thing is that dimension of light that is the light of intelligence. Now I may be moving a little bit too fast so I'll try and retrace the steps that we went through in our meditations on light, yesterday I think it was, yesterday morning. If you remember, there was like the light that we absorb from the environment so in a sense we are ingesting light from the universe, from the cosmos. And then we emit that light in our aura so that's one level of light. Then if you remember, there's another mode of light which emerges from within: a new dispensation--the all pervading light. 

So it's not from without it's from within. And so as Pir-o-Murshid says, we're like imagine yourself to be like a star that is able to converge the diffuse light of the universe and then beam it out in a in one direction. And then there's another light if you remember quality of light which is well, call it non-physical light. And when you identify with that light then type of light then you realize that you were a being of light prior to your birth so your aura's not just the light that you've absorbed from the environment, and then you see the interaction between those different lights. And then there's a further level, well there are several further levels, there's level of celestial light, and then there's the light of intelligence. So now our wazifas do not reflect these differences, so that the word is a catalyst but it's up to you then to be clear as to what is that the light that you are aware of at the time or working with at the time. But what I'm trying to point out is the importance of that the relationship between ya, well first of all, the relationship between ya nur and ya munawwir. Say your aura is munawwir. Your aura is the lamp. And nur is the light of intelligence. And the light of intelligence seems to awaken or enhance the light of the lamp. And that's the meaning of a light upon a light. In the Quran you read, we're using that at Universal Worship a lot, a light upon a light. So if you say, ya nur ya munawwir ya nur ya munawwir you're aware that your perspicacity affects your aura and makes you more radiant.

Then it's good to see the relationship between awakening and illumination so that would be ya alim ya nur. Or ya nur ya alim. I'm sure that's a practice that Aziza has given you. That awakening is always in some way connected with light. You can't it's not an intellectual thing it's has to do with somehow not only the radiance of your aura but I would say luminous thoughts. A kind of clarity in your thoughts it comes that overcomes ambiguity because light brings out the edges of things makes everything clear. So that's an important concept amongst the sufis--luminous thoughts.

And now we have this wonderful wazifa that, I don't know, perhaps you noticed that I been talking a lot about working with your the configuration of your subtle bodies in order to be you have a feedback system there that gives you a sense of yourself--you can see yourself mirrored in that image. Now that plays a very important part in sufism. If you remember, I quoted Ibn 'Arabi saying, your soul projects its form in an image whereby it gives you a sense of the nature of your soul--it's a process of reflection. And if you remember, I said that is creativity. Creativity is always translating a thought or an emotion into a form. And even though you know that the form is just a means it's a clue. Still, it acts, as I said, as a feedback system. So that would be, that wonderful combination is ya munawwir ya musawwir. Because musawwir means the sculptor the fashioner and munawwir the lamp. The lamp that is your aura is being confectioned in the form that expresses the nature of your soul so you discover yourself through these projections. Now, it's not one to one situation because one could say that one's soul carries an infinitely wider range of bounty than our psyche and so that image--let's say those projections that manifest as images--are changing all the time. And therefore some of the techniques used are to imagine landscapes--some of the sufis call landscapes of the soul--in which you discover aspects of yourself.

I would suggest doing it now because otherwise I could keep on talking, but we could actually do it. So would you just like to stretch out a little bit. OK. sit down. So there's this woman at your office who is a workaholic and the reason for that is that she can't stand that woman who's spending all the time munching chocolate at the beach. And as a consequence she finds it difficult to be peaceful because she doesn't like that kind of slovenliness, so she's forcing herself to beat her records. So would you say this person you've jumped to the conclusion that this person is not peaceful. But actually it's just that she can't really make this peace a reality in her being and call it forth. And you can you know that can have rather disastrous effects because workaholism is an addiction. So, now, this what I would prescribe [end of side one, beginning of side two] you see, you can't do it in your conscious state you are using your will. And she doesn't want to use her will to be peaceful because it doesn't, as I say she has a dislike for it, but the unconscious can do things that the conscious can't do.

So, there is a way of meditating in which one gets into a state that is called reverie where one is somewhere on the threshold between the awakened the diurnal state and the sleep state with dreams. Perhaps you notice that state. Perhaps you're lying in bed and you can hear the cars in the street and perhaps you're even aware of the furniture in the room and even of your body, but somehow or other thoughts seem to run amok randomly without your being able to give them a direction or even some kind of congruence so they don't seem to tell you anything because they don't they're not constructed in any way that makes sense. And of course, the same thing could happen with images rather than thoughts--all kinds of images jumbled--like, I don't know whether you have that in America on TV but in France they have these images rushing forth at a high speed so you'd have hardly any to time to see one because you're already on to the next one. Something like that, so. I don't think it's very good for one's psyche. So that's the situation in which a person is who's rather agitated would find themselves and of course if you control that situation, you'd slip into your ordinary state of consciousness so you wouldn't be able to avail yourself of what the unconscious is doing is trying to tell you. And if you simply fall into sleep, then you might not remember what your unconscious was telling you in sleep when get back into day consciousness again. So you have to stay at the threshold between those two. And we are sometimes we find ourselves at the threshold.

Now curiously enough, one can give some sense of orientation to the image formation. You can not determine the images that you are going to see, but you can give some orientation to those formations. And as a matter of fact you can program yourself by auto-suggestion prior to going to sleep and then you'll find that it happens. In fact, you see, the unconscious will always try to retrieve passing impressions that one didn't have time to hold. You know, you're passing in the street and you saw something or you were in the car and saw and somehow that impression will come back in your dream. OK, so, there's a way of auto-suggesting images by passing in review pictures that you can not concentrate upon because they are passing very quickly. I'll have to say this more precisely. For example, you have an album of photographs of all kinds of photographs, landscapes--lake, mountain climbing, forest, desert--all kinds. Landscapes. And you go through these without allowing yourself to concentrate on one and when you're interested in it you keep on moving. So somehow the unconscious has been alerted you see. Now all you have to then while you're in that state of reverie between day consciousness and sleep is to think: yes there was that picture there that I passed so quickly I was unable to really get into it. And you'll find that you'll plunge into that landscape. Try it out and see. Really.

So, for example, there was a lake and it passed so quickly then there was a desert or all kinds of other things. And now you're in that state of reverie and you could precondition yourself somewhat. For example, you would say: well I would like to go into this scene of the lake a little more. Then somehow you will find yourself walking along the lake at midnight in the full moon in the light of the full moon--in an enchanted landscape with it seems to be transfigured. And somehow your personality I mean even your body is different, it walks differently. It reflects the nature of the landscape. Somehow or other you have discovered an aspect of your psyche that became known to you through that image. And by discovering that aspect of your being then you will awaken it so that the unconscious will sometimes erupt in the conscious and bring you that moment of peace right in the middle of a struggle. Now of course sitting here you know that you can imagine that you are walking along a lake and imagine the moonlight, but you do that with your will. Whereas if you are in that threshold state, then you give yourself a signal: it's the lake, that's all. But your psyche self organizes itself in producing a much more detailed scenery than you could if you tried to figure it out with your conscious mind. So your unconscious telling you something about yourself which your conscious mind have rejected and somehow it has a way of forcing its way upon your awareness. So that would be the wazifa ya salaam. Salaam means peace of course.

Now I suggest another scene. You're rock climbing so there's the abyss beneath you and there's the challenge and your courage is being pitted. You have the courage to go forth. Perhaps you feel you're not quite competent enough to negotiate this very difficult situation. So, somehow that challenge calls upon a quality in you which is courage and you wouldn't have thought that you had that courage if--it was a situation that called upon that quality. So you see now I suppose the wazifa for that would be ya qader or even ya wali, but you see the wazifa itself just repeating the word doesn't do it for you to be quite frank. It can't do it for you just saying the word. It's got to be associated with a whole attunement, a whole way of looking at things. and I would say a whole landscape and a discovery of latencies within you that are emerging--the whole package, as I say. But if you repeat ya wali, for example, in that situation there, I mean when you're in that state of, for example, before going to sleep now you again you look at that album and now you think: yes oh those rocks oh well, it's too late I've passed it by. But then when you start, you get into that threshold state. One has just a little bit of will not very much but just enough to say yeah, I really want to pursue that rock climbing scene. And you'll find that your unconscious will take you much further than looking at the photo would ever do. And you discover qualities in yourself, but remember that this is true as long as you don't over stress yourself. And that's what Pir-o-Murshid says, by achieving something you acquire power and with that power you can try to achieve--challenge yourself--to achieve something more difficult, but go step by step. If you over stress yourself, you loose trust in your capacities. Because instead of it giving you courage it might develop fear in you if you over stress yourself.

So, now that was a technique that you could use during your retreat which will yield a lot of capacity in your being. But now to come back to ya musawwir and munawwir. While you're in the first stage of working with the aura you are breathing in and out and so you tend to just think of the aura in an amorphous as just a collection of light. But now while you're fluctuating you might be able to grasp the, let's say, the contours of your aura. It doesn't have a profile but it has some kind of a--it resembles your face and your body particularly the arms and shoulders and so on. Now, as I say, what you could do is of course look in the mirror and then you see how and just think of someone who has done you a lot of harm and you see the expression on your face and then think: I can forgive that person--and see the expression on your face. That's the cheapest feedback system in the world the mirror. You see it right away, you see it right there in front of you, you can see it, there's no doubt about it. And you can work with any wazifa--like, haqq, truth--and see what happens to your glance. Or, compassion and then you see what happens to the expression in your eyes. And so on.

Well, now once you've done that then you turn within in what is called the subtle body. The word that we use is latif. It is a wazifa as a matter of fact. Latif means subtle. And so subtle would be like, for example, steam instead of rocks, for example, something like that. Two clouds merge whereas rocks will collide so it gives you a sense of, a very harmonious sense, of merging--as a being of light--of merging with other beings of light and mirroring beings of light and so on. It's a wonderful sense communing with light. And then you get this mirroring effect. The extraordinary mirroring effect. And that is that you see how people react to your light or your darkness. And how you react to the light or the darkness of people. So this is if you remember that we described this as a state of--like the roots of the water lilies under the surface of the water--that network, let's say, of connectiveness in terms of light, now. In terms of light. Now, if you start, you can do exactly what we did previously, but without looking in the physical mirror. You would just you're--actually one has a kind of sense of the countenance of one's aura. And it's a much better feedback system than the physical mirror.

And now we come to the important thing, because at first it's a feedback system it gives you sense of how your thoughts affect the configuration of your aura. But then we come to that point which is I would say is a very important breakthrough in meditation and that's what one calls fashioning--no--actually one could say making the states of consciousness corporeal. Making the states of consciousness corporeal. It would end up by fashioning your subtle body so you become like a sculptor who is able to fashion the body of light, your body of light. And you can't do it--I mean even a sculptor can only do it by if his her hands were to follow his her esthetic sense. It has to reflect one's attunement. So that means then that your state of consciousness in meditation is going to actually configure your subtle body of light. So it not only serves as a feedback system but as a means of making one's realization concrete so it becomes reality. That's the meaning of mawjud.

And now we come to a very challenging thought, very, must say it's quite incredible. Because, you know, you had the Hindu theory of maya, you know. So, to get to samadhi you have to not be aware of the physical world and even you have to not be aware of your thoughts or your personality and gradually you overcome the existential conditioning (of) which you are and awaken beyond the beyond. That's yoga. Now according to sufism, the world is not maya, it is constituted by signs, as I said, devices, clues. Yes. From your point of view, let's say this side of the veil, that's what the physical world is--or all the situations are. But from the other side of the veil: that's how God becomes reality. So the device becomes the objective. It's a very surprising about turn of one's way of thinking. That's what Ibn 'Arabi says, He is the knower and also that through which He knows. Whereas you might think: that through which He knows is just the instrument, but ultimately, that is the objective because that's how that knowledge becomes configured in its support system. 

You see the purpose of a blueprint is the house. And if that is so, then you see the importance of participating in translating spiritual experience or attunement into the configuration of one's own body and subtle bodies. Now the Tibetans carry that out very very intensely. They concentrate on a statue to such an extent that when they walk in the street they think they are that statue that is walking it's totally impersonated in that statue. Like an actor who's able to get so much into the role that he she has become that role. So, this is this leads us, of course, the sufis do not concentrate on the form because if you do that you somehow the fashioning of your bodies is kind of stereotyped by it is reflecting a statue, you see, it is not really you. And so what the sufis are doing is to indeed configure the attunement of a wazifa but in your own way so that--in your own unique way--so that each one of us is able to be totally ourselves. And the consequence is that we do not, for example, we do not sit with a photo of our guru in front of us--like in a Hindu ashram, for example--but get into the attunement of a master so that we are able to see things in a way that we wouldn't have seen it otherwise. And then somehow or other we can configure the image that--of ourselves--that was triggered off by getting into the consciousness of the master. In other words, you are able to see how the master sees you and then you configure yourself according to the form that you have discovered when looking at yourself through the eyes of the master. Now that is a very very powerful method. In fact, that is the method that makes a Murshid.

I remember in my early training in Hyderabad in India sitting at the tomb of the grand Murshid of Murshid, that is the Murshid of the Murshid of Murshid, and I was being led by the grandson of that Murshid. And I at first I said, no well I don't want I'm, my teacher is Murshid, so I don't want to concentrate on you. And he said, oh no, no, I'm just there to communicate the traditions of the sufis but you must concentration your father. So then, I just imagined Murshid in front of me when I was repeating the zikr. And he said, no, no, no, no--no, no, no, no, no. That's tasawari Murshid, that's a picture of Murshid. That is limiting. No. You have to get into the consciousness of Murshid: imagine that you are Murshid repeating the zikr. That makes all the difference. All the difference.

You remember when I was saying that we can get into the consciousness of another person with regard to our problem, for example. And of course we can get into the consciousness of a master, saint, or prophet--man or woman, of course--and see things from their point of view and, in fact, see ourselves from their point of view: get into their attunement. And somehow that attunement is really in resonance with our own attunement, but our own attunement is perhaps latent and theirs is active and so it will awaken that attunement in us just like by resonance. Like when two harps or a harp and a piano are in the same room and they are tuned to the same pitch then one will--the chords of one will resonate in resonance with the other.

Now, as I say, that image is changing all the time and so you are having access to an extraordinary rich bountiful pool of resourcefulness so that when you come into the battle of life, you are coming from this deep place. Power comes from within. And the insight comes from within. Now it's very wonderful to do--if you do the three wazifas: ya nur, ya munawwir, ya musawwir. And you can see all these qualities being awakened by the fact that you are trying to fashion them into images. It's like if you're a creative person, like if you're composing or painter or so on, you'd be awakening latencies in your being making them conscious so that you may apply them in your work of art. 

So the same thing that happens in your relationship with the master then happens in your relationship with God. But in that case, you see it's so traumatic, it's so utterly uncompromising. There are no half measures here--otherwise it doesn't work. So, well, that is the reason for the second zikr. Because in the second zikr you are prostrating in a condition of, from one point of view it might be surrender, but it is really like offering, let's say, God or the universe to take over without one's intervening and then eventually take over from there. Because there's that first thing is a total, well as I already said, a confrontation of God--face to face. A dialogue. And then a real take over so that one does not have a will. And then one is delegated a will. It is--a new will is delegated to one because then one has to take responsibility. There are stages there. There are three stages there. So these are embodied in the zikr. 

And I want to point out something that I haven't said so far because there was a question, how, you know, what happens with those thoughts that you wish to oust that you wish to clear the aspects of yourself that you don't like? Now I said, we are in a process of continually disintegration and rebuilding. So at the jagged ends we get dispersed and inside we get rebuilt. Now in the zikr when you say, la illa ha, that's where many aspects of la illa ha that I've talked about--one aspect is then that your being gets disintegrated in the totality and then it is rebuilt from inside. So: la illa ha il'llah, and that's where it's built in from inside. But in the second zikr you don't have to worry about the disintegration. What is much more important is that you have this encounter with that being through the intermediary of your projections. That is God as an effigy, let's say. And it must be so overwhelming that one feels like prostrating before it because, that is, the body partakes in the action of the psyche. And then somehow something happens, if you visit a Dargah in India, for example, that is a tomb of a Murshid, and you prostrate at the feet of the Pir, and then the Chadeem, the person who's watching over the grave, pulls you up, you don't redress your body yourself but somehow it is being pulled up. So, somehow after saying il'llah then you feel: I'm being elevated--I'm not trying to reach the crenolations of the castle by my will, but I'm invited to participate in the cosmic celebration. And that sense of the take over of--the universe takes over until then one is delegated.

So I'd like us to, we have a little time don't we? Do we have to stop? I'd like us to really experience this if you feel that's it OK. You know in the Victorian days' one didn't, you know. Before that people used to bow used to prostrate when they came in the church on their knees and hands. And then in Victorian days of course it wasn't good for the creases of one's trousers so you just do a gesture, but not too much. In Islam, of course, one does it and the Buddhists do it too. You just have to experience what it's like to do it if it's a novel experience. So, quite honestly I'm not sure I can do it might myself. I mean, do what I say but don't do what I do. No, I've done it lots and lots and lots, thousands of times. But you know, there's a word of Shams Tabriz: the body of the man of God is a palace in a ruin. It would be nice if I could do it: Illah 'llah hu. Illah 'llah hu (....).

So, when you say Illah, then you are turning within in--in that place, you know, that we described under the surface of the water where everything is intertwined. And then, there is the 'lah--Illah, so when you say the 'llah after the Illah then you are in the plane of mithal which is the creative plane where you are projecting the image of yourself. So you have to have this sort of it's like imagine like a projection of yourself in front of you like in a mirror, yes, one of the practices that we do in the sufis. And then so that's Illah. And then, 'llah, you see. And you don't pronounce the first "A," but the first "A" of Allah is--that is where you are emerging out of the void and that's why it is silent. And in order to be creative you have to muster all the levels of your being so this is where think that you are following your nostalgia for what Pir-o-Murshid calls beyond, well, he calls it the unattainable. Somehow you are being lifted--lifted that is, simply your sense of identity or your attunement is shifting into the celestial spheres and then beyond that into the plane lahut which is the plane of the archetypes so that that's what we are referring invoking in our wazifas. And then ultimately the ultimate oneness: Ahad, oneness. That is the H of Allah. And then when you say hu, so the H you already start the H at the end of the ascent, and then your head turns towards your heart and the H becomes hu because that's awakening in life. OK? Let's do that: Illah 'llah hu. And now just to end with just saying hu: Hu. Hu (....).

End of tape.

 Pir Vilayat Inayat Kahn: 3/24/96 at the Abode of the Message


MAR 24, 1996		Tape 07

 PIR AB'DE TAPE #7 3/24/96 SIDE 1 1)

...simply by being aware of the light in your eyes, and it's not just the physical phenomena of the emission of light from the retina but it has to do with a kind of an attitude of a very powerful kind of divine love that does not brook of either personal power or any kind of psychological resentment but just pure loving light, if I may say that. A giving light. Of course it comes from a place of absolute sincerity as in contact with the very depth of one's soul and then it manifests through one's glance and communicates to other beings. 

Now, turn your eyeballs upwards with your eyelids closed and you could also curl your tongue and press the bottom of your tongue against your palate as you inhale and hold your breath. 

And then as you exhale, bring your eyes in their forward position and now somehow you have a feeling that the light that you are emitting is the light of the heavens instead of the light that emanated from your own person. So the first one came from the depth of the solar plexus and this one from the top of your head--or through the top of your head. (pause)

OK, now as you breathe in transfer your attention from the bottom of your spine passing through each chakra until you reach the top of your head and image a flame rising in your spine and then when you hold your breath turn your eyeballs upwards and press your  tongue against your palate and there you may still be aware of your aura as a kind of support system but you identify now with being luminous intelligence and when you exhale that luminous intelligence seems to be monitored by your glance. (pause for practice) That is a light upon a light. (pause, more breathing practice)

Now I think that your glance--its not like an x-ray that sees through matter but it's like the ability to grasp the thinking matter, like the intelligence buried in matter. (pause) And  consequently you are able to see right into the souls of people with the light of truth. 

Now you are aware of the energy of your body. Well, actually you could even feel the cells of your body as alive beings endowed with some relative intelligence and will and drive and also pain, of course, and being able to reproduce themselves, communicate. So it's a whole kind of effervescence of life taking place within your very body. And I think that all of that enormous breakthrough of energy from the moment of the Big Bang that has accumulated in the course of evolution across the galaxies still active as your body is a fantastic support system for your understanding which is buried within that matter but which then tends to emerge. And so there is a Tibetan expression: The mind arides the wind. So the wind is your energy and the mind, of course, your understanding or your intelligence; your consciousness. 

PIR AB'DE TAPE 37 3/24/96 SIDE 1 2)

And so the wind can be directed as you wish so you could direct that energy outward for example and then be communicating with life wherever you go. So imagine that if you are sitting in nature and the flowers begin to blossom and people, you have a healing power. You are communicating life. In fact, one can shake oneself literally physically because the energy gets sclerosed and so you can activate it and then you can direct the energy upwards through your spine--well, through the whole body but centered in the spine. And think of that energy as a lift or as the story of Pegasus, the winged steed that carries your consciousness aloft. 

You see, when your consciousness is attuned to a high pitch it is as though you had covered some distance from the earth plane and in fact you can really get into the consciousness of illuminated beings and the angels, archangels. But only then. So one has to have made that departure and so the simplistic way of thinking would be: I leave my body behind and my soul soars high in the  heavens. That is the old fashioned view and it's not right anyway. 

Now, you have to first of all consider that that support system that is your body is an expression of your being, not just a support system that you can don and cast aside and that it is  multi-tiered so that it exists at several levels and all that we know is the commonplace physical one. So it includes subtle body and aura and so on. And that your subtle body is not just another body. For one thing, it acts as a template in the formation of your body and as it changes your body changes but also it acts as the transmutation of your body. I mean it represents how your body is transmuted at the first level so it's exactly like your body but imagine just a force field that has the same kind of configuration and then consider your aura to be a first stage in the transmutation and then think that there are several auras: one more subtle than the others. 

We did yesterday when we went from one reflex of light to the other. So these thoughts will act as the rungs of a ladder which will help you shift your consciousness from one thing to the other without abandoning your body. It's the other way around. You transmute your body and so one is already prefiguring resurrection and of course there's no doubt that resurrection does require the letting go of the contingent or dross aspect of one's being. For example, a very good illustration of resurrection would be the way that flowers are able to transform themselves into perfume and then they survive the demise of the support system which is what I call a contingent aspect; and at the level of the psyche it means that one has to let go of the personal spite or anger, covetousness, envy, which are all mind games whereby one tries to justify oneself when one is faced with a bad self image. That self image is a bad strategy and counterproductive. So somehow there is that catharsis and (**? * ) as I've already said,

PIR AB'DE TAPE 37 3/24/96 SIDE 1 3)

throughout, doesn't take place by pushing it out but by the replenishing of one's being by the power of love. And when I say that, I'm talking about unconditioned love. I mean, I'm talking about loving the people who hurt you or do you harm, or counter you, and the word for that--the key word in the words of Christ, "They don't know what they do." So why do you blame them if they don't know what they do. You just don't blame them anymore. Well, I still love them. I'm sorry that they feel the need to have these feelings against me because--like a little child kicks you, well you should understand the child. 

So these are the kinds of preparations for the boost up into the rocket into the heavenly spheres. So the boost itself gets to be transformed, the launching platform. That has to be transformed. So maybe one can speak about psychological energy instead of physical energy and you will notice that it has an extraordinary uplifting effect. Immediately your soul rises. It seems to be unburdened by the pull of the earth. You feel as though you are rising above earthly conditions. That is, you have found independence from earthly conditions, or some degree of independence. That is, not being addicted to the support system  and of course it means shifting one's thinking from thinking about the circumstances of one's life for example or about one's personality. One can confide one's psyche in the hands of that  wonderful self-organizing power that I mentioned. It will take care of it just like our body programming takes care of our heart beat and our digestive process and so on, hormonal exchanges and so on. 

End. Nothing more found on tape.

 ??



 

AUG 09, 1996		Tape 06

So this was the "Call of Nidria" of Max Brook played by Lynn Harmon on the cello. He is a great specialist in librato, master of librato. Call Nidrial is a ceremony of repentance in the Jewish tradition. And the reason why I put it on is because I thought at this stage, at the inception of our days sharing together we need to get into touch with our deeper emotions, the deep longings of our souls. otherwise we're dealing with just superficial layers of our being. 

So I thought it would be appropriate to start this, what I have in mind for this afternoon, by a typical Sufi meditation, or breathing practice. That is as you exhale, consider that you are an extension of the divine exhaling. And in that, in the course of that exhaling, well that flow, ebb and flow, in that flow the sublime mystery moving the Universe gets manifested and actuated at the existential level in the Universe, and in the cosmos, and in us. So that our motivations are an expression of that divine nostalgia that the treasures hidden virtually in the (alraib), in the world mystery, should become actuated in what we call world reality. So this is typically Sufi because where as the way of the ascetic to give up the world, this is really some kind of validation of our wish to build a beautiful world, a beautiful people. Instead of thinking that goes counter to the spiritual ideal, it is the fulfillment of the divine purpose. So you don't have to have the guilt feeling if you want to build a beautiful house, and have things nice and beautiful, beautiful music and clothing or whatever. As long as it is really an expression of the divine impulse that we call Ishq Alla. As soon as that impulse gets distorted by one's ego, that is one's identifying with a fraction of oneself, then of course it can turn against itself and be disastrous, have disastrous effects, cruelty and violence and all those things that we see in the world today. So really the Sufi method here is to try and feel that impulse in our motivations. 

And then as we inhale it's the other way around. It's somehow, you see if you are trying to actuate your nostalgia for, as I say, to make the sublime into beauty, as I say that sublime and also beauty and majesty, the feminine and masculine. The, in order to do so, one can still evolve oneself with people and situations which are confining. And therefore it is always at the cost of one's freedom. And so we are pulled in the opposite direction at the same time, which is our longing for freedom. So as you inhale, you give vent to this need for freedom. And of course, because our inhaling is an extension of the divine inhaling whereby, according to Sufis, God draws the quintessence of what has been gained by existence back into the software of the Universe as feedback. That's why, for example, Jalaluddin Rumi says, "Tonight the unteen stars give birth to the life eternal". What ha is saying then is that which is ephemeral will become eternal. And so as you inhale, of course you give vent to your need for freedom because in order to extract the quintessence of, for example, what you have gained by life, which is wisdom, you need to give up the dross, let's say give up a lot of the contingent aspects. To put it more clearly, for example, this could be illustrated by extracting the perfume from a flower. And so the dross has got to be rejected so that one can just keep the essence. So this is what we're experiencing. Our  need not to give up the world but to try to extract the quintessence of the wisdom of what we've gained by our experience. And that will never die. But it means also of course letting go of those aspects of our life that confine us and limit us. 

And that is, I think that is what we have to look into very deeply. What does it mean exactly? Pir-o-Murshid says, something that has been said in two ways and I'm not sure what is the correct way. One is, " You loosen the ties", and the other is, "You break through the ties". So I'm not sure exactly what were the words Murshid used. And that is you look into those ties. And you see with the, if they confine you in,how can I say, externally in a circumstantial way. That you know you can be free in your spirit while bound in your circumstances. So that's not really freedom. To free oneself from circumstances, that would not be real freedom. So it's more like,"How have I developed dependence upon conditions in my thinking and in my emotions?". So that would be an addiction, to take away my freedom. So can I accept limitation in the circumstances while finding a way of freedom in my soul. So it's, I think this is a thought that we are grappling with in our lives, the degree to which we find freedom, and the degree to which we are involved by our interests. 

And on this subject Murshid is very, very clear. He says that everything that has been gained in life is the result of interest. So it's not the way of indifference, it's the way of the ascetic. So he says, "And the power that you gain by pursuing your interest will give you the ability to take upon yourself a greater challenge than you have taken on so far". So, you gain in power by pursuing your purpose in life. So for Murshid the purpose in life is extremely important. How we handle situations and what we accomplish in life is very important. But then he says, "Your motivation does limit that power". If your motivation is for personal gain, for example, that certainly limits your power. And so the ultimate thing is of course to find, so that your motivation is not personal, in fact is of service. And if you can do that, then he says that, he says of course that could be interpreted as being indifference or detachment which is the way of the ascetic. So the ideal would be to be in life, to evolve yourself and yet somehow, in the depth of your soul not to become dependent, let's say, on the underpinning of the circumstances. I keep on repeating a word of Shahabuddin who once said, "The support system takes over". That's exactly what happens to us in our lives, the support system takes over. It's just like for example, one puts so much energy into building the base camps for an Everest expedition that there is no energy and no money left to reach the top. That's what we're doing. 

So that requires a lot of insight on our part. Because if you are a teacher, that is if you take responsibility to help guide a person in their lives, you'll have to understand what are the motivations in that person. You will have to have had those motivations in yourself so you understand where those motivations come from. And then you've got to have found some kind of freedom. Because otherwise you can't free another person from their dependence upon conditions. And the conditions break down, then they break down. So you've got to help people find some kind of immunity against disaster. And that is the way of indifference, of detachment. So this is a very subtle teaching. And you see that it cuts right into our problems.

So let's simply do this practice for a few minutes. As we exhale, you think that you're...in fact I want to say this is, be very careful when you do the breathing practices that you don't determine the inhaling and exhaling yourself. That you don't cut in with your will. And the way to do that is to think that the rhythm of your breath, ebb and flow, is like in some way an expression of the ebb and flow of the total Universe. Here you have this ebb and flow, divine exhaling and divine inhaling. And you'll find that if you do that, then your breathing can be much slower without forcing yourself. So could we put the air conditioning off for now. Because it's very difficult to meditate with this humdrum. 

So exhale and experience like the descent of the total being as you into the cosmos in search of the fulfillment of Ishq Alla, a longing to bring heaven on earth, to make your dreams come true. The nostalgia that is a basic drive behind your life. And just feel that nostalgia very deeply, very deep nostalgia, what life means to you. There are, personal wishes are perhaps very inadequate expression of our deep nostalgia which we cannot define in words. But if can get in touch with your deeper feelings, then you realize what is really important for you. 

And then as you inhale, you can look upon your life, your situation. And then, of course, it's clear that in order to pursue our nostalgia, we had to evolve ourselves in responsibilities which were in constraining, and in relationships which represent some kind of curtailment of one's freedom. But see how it is your understanding of that involvement that will give you a sense of freedom. Because ultimately that is what is important, our realization, how our realization can be affected by our lives. Or how independent can our realization be from the limitation of our circumstances? 

And maybe you feel now a need, it's not just a longing. It's an imperative almost desperate need for freedom. The more involved you are, the more imperative this need is. The whole of Buddhism was a quest for freedom. And Pir-o-Murshid, the message that Murshid announces is the message of spiritual freedom. And you see in politics and well in general, the way that we are moving towards situations out of concern for personal freedom, there is chaos. But that's the price to pay for that most valuable thing which is freedom. Except that of course freedom is misunderstood there. Real freedom is to be able to pursue the purpose of one's soul. So that one's personal interests do not represent our freedom. In fact they represent confinement, a trap. So one isn't free just to be able to follow one's fantasies, one's whims. That's not freedom. So in search of the ultimate freedom. That will enhance as we inhale. And you know what Buddha calls it? Freedom from conditioning. We are conditioned and we don't know it. That's why the Sufis say, "'h man you are free. It's your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity". It's not the external circumstances. It's not realizing one's freedom. 

And of course to be free in yourself would mean that nobody can insult you, nobody can hurt you, nobody can grab you with your will. Just like that woman in the South who was being lynched who said, " You can do what you like with my body, but you can't touch my soul". That's why the Muslims say that they never crucified Christ. All they grabbed was his body. Can you just feel what it's like to be free, free in your being? 

One of the features of this freedom, what Murshid says is in the core of our being is something like a mirror that cannot be stained by the impressions upon it. The immaculate core of our being is totally immune from our own guilt. It's the ultimate grace, the saving grace, the ultimate refuge against one's dissatisfaction with oneself, a mitigating factor that can turn the tables on the law. Because grace is always an exception to the law. 

Now in this context, I think that we are ready to look upon our motivations, that is called muhasibi. The Buddhists call it "channadarsun', that is you observe yourself as though you were another person, that is objectively, without personal bias, without efforts of justification or any kind of judgmental assessment whatever. So it starts by asking oneself very simple questions like,"Why am I doing what I'm doing?". And the second question is, "What are my motivations in my relationships with a person? Is it something that I want to gain for what I think is my own well being, or what I consider the well being of that person, or is it oath or whatever?". It's a matter of being very honest. Is there any manipulation there? Or is it absolutely up front? And muhasibi can be extended to dialogue between people, asking each other what you are awaiting from the other, what you are expecting from the other, or disappointment because your expectations were not met. But then you have to be very clear as to what those expectations are. 

And therefore you have to ask yourself the next question, which is much more difficult to answer. That is, "What is it that I value? That is what are the things in life that I prioritize over others?" And in fact you course make a whole catalog of values, what they call a scale of values. "I like this, in fact I'm trying to pursue this thing that I delight in. But it's true that there is something else that I value more. And so if it came to having to make a choice, would I opt for the thing that I value more? That is would I sacrifice the thing that I value less. And if I'm not prepared to do that, then I cannot say that that value that I would have liked but have not pursued, I cannot say that this is a real value. It's fictive, fictitious and not real because I can't implement it by my actions". And that what Pir-o-Murshid calls the ideal. And Pir-o-Murshid was very realistic when he said, "Shatter your ideal on the rock of truth". So one can formulate all kinds of ideals. But I don't think that they qualify as motivations unless one is prepared to make the sacrifice that it requires to pursue them. They remain idyllic. 

And there is no, as I say, you must do it without judgment. It's not,"I should be pursuing a higher ideal, but I'm not prepared to make the sacrifices". No, that is if you deny yourself your personal wishes excessively, you will feel sorry for yourself and will not have the joy that one needs in order to pursue one's higher ideals. So it's different for each person. And you have to know that, you have to know exactly what balance between those ideals that you really wish to pursue and those personal needs that will keep you from being sorry for yourself and give a certain amount of fulfillment. 

But of course the next step is of course the culmination. And that is to see how your motivations are an expression of the divine impulse towards manifestation. It's really to feel that impulse, to become conscious of it moving you towards the fulfillment of your life's purpose instead of being constrained within one's personal identity because the only way to do it is to think of yourself as a funnel which includes the large end and the small end and all that is in between. 

Now there is no doubt that pursuing one's ideal gives one what is called spiritual power and confidence and validation for one's self image. In fact it makes one into a hero. And pursuing one's personal objective gives you a kind of personal power, it might be ruthless and merciless and can even lead to manipulation causing a lot of suffering amongst victims of your whims as we see in the history of the world. That's not power. It tends, it can all of a sudden collapse when confronted with divine power, or even when confronted with the truth. Like some of the x Nazi war criminals who were confronted with the commission of investigation. They started collapsing. They were very powerful. So it doesn't last. But Christ did not relent facing the power of Rome. 


I say this because if we claim, we purport to be teachers, you know just giving guidance, understanding, that's not the ultimate. That's not what people are looking for. One has to become a powerhouse upon which they build their houses. So that it's true that we're not teaching people to believe in this or that or the other thing. But I think that once you have seen something, that's what they call realization, then your faith comes into the picture. Because then you trust what you've seen. So that ultimately our faith is that which people are hanging onto in their disbelief. Pir-o-Murshid describes it, he says it's like, for example, it's not just like swimming, but you're swimming with a person who is floundering in the water. And so not only you have to be able to keep yourself afloat, but you have to keep afloat that person who is a dead weight and not able, not trying to save themselves. That's where your faith is being very much tapped upon by people of little faith. And if you start doubting what your realization revealed to you, then you cause the person who is looking to you for your support to sink in the water. So it is better not to undertake that project at all to start with. We have to know what we're doing if we want to claim to be representatives or guides. We have to know what that means. What happens is that. Perhaps I have another quarter of an hour, don't I? No. We'll have to continue later. I feel there is a lot of power coming through in this room at present. Somehow I think it's the power of the hierarchy of the masters saints and prophets that is, that we're representing. When we realize that, we establish a connection. It gives us empowerment. OK Bless you now.

Second side Tape 6

I see people startling in. And let's try to keep just a few minutes of silence before we start.

So this session, which we call open heart is an expression of the emerging format that is taking place in the Sufi Order as a sampling of the spiritual organizations of the future. So it's a departure from the guru /chella relationship which is, can be very misleading. People can be manipulated, of course, by the guru. And also take away personal freedom. So what we are doing is absolutely in sync with the trend of our time. Of course we must realize that as soon as you introduce freedom, then you tend to have a great diversity of views that can be conflicting. But that's OK. There must be some way sometimes of reconciling the irreconcilables. But it's better than conformism to some kind of belief system or prescription system that confines people and makes them submit to some kind of authority figure. So this I think is something beautiful that is developing now that we feel comfortable about opening our hearts and exchanging how we feel. Even if we don't have to be afraid of hurting feelings as long as it's not done with animosity but as an expression of, if there has been some hurt, then I think that one has to be able to say it, articulate it and get it off one's chest. But I think that that is still looking at the past. 

And I think it's much more constructive to look at the future because you know there is a wonder saying of Euler which is. "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past". So somehow we're building a wonderful organism, rather than organization, an organism to incorporate our ideals. And we call it the Sufi Order. But we could call it anything else. It doesn't matter. The important thing is that we are in it together and we all have a part to play in it, a sharing, each one in our own place of course. 

So as far as the administration is concerned, we have the Jamiat Am which has I must say enlisted a lot of enthusiasm amongst people who felt that they were being heard. And that their dolances or needs were being listened to. So that the Sufi Order is not being run simply by a group of people selected, but everyone has somehow, can be heard. But of course to have no organization, you need to have some small gathering of people who make decisions otherwise if there are too many people it becomes impossible. But that's as far as the administration is concerned. 

As far as the actual teaching is concerned, then I think that's the reason why we instituted this open heart session. There are just three of them. So take advantage of them because the time will pass very quickly. It's your opportunity to say how you feel about the teaching. What is significant in the teaching. What you find difficult in the teaching. I suppose we could refer to, after all the formality of our, let's say the set up of our leadership is somehow connected with the teaching. It reflects the nature of the teaching. So it's very difficult to separate them. But still, I want you to just feel to open up your hearts and say how you feel. Whether it's nice or whether it's not nice it doesn't matter, as long as you're saying how you really feel in the depth of your being. And certainly don't be afraid of me. I'm not a person who takes offense at people. And I will certainly not jeopardize a person because I don't agree with them. I think that the way of freedom is to agree to disagree. So I've thrown the doors open now so it's up to you now. If one of you would like to take the initiative in saying how, whatever you feel. But it's really got to come from the depth of your heart, your soul, you know, and not just an expression of a sort of perfunctory expression of gratitude or whatever. There are microphones. 

I think there are two microphones. "Hello" "Hello, Shams from my heart".  Shams: I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to embrace you yet. Well as you know Pir Vilayat, and as some of you in the room know, I've been having very radical thoughts for some time. I gave you a paper that I wrote a couple of years ago that I feel was some reflection of a kind of inner turbulence and also some deep concerns that I was feeling. And that process is going on. It may just be that I'm in the Shamsian tradition and so I can't help it. But what it really revolves around is that I'm concerned about the terms of discourse in our community. And although I've heard you say, and I've heard a number of the presenters say already, that we need to be free not to simply adopt a system, my concern is that it feels to me that there is strong inducement to do that, to exchange one thought system for another. It may be higher, more refined and have great values associated with it. 

But it doesn't seem to me that that is itself a foundation or authentic kind of spiritual work. We use terms like "attunement' and.... sorry some of my favorite ones just slipped my mind. So we use terms like attunement like "attunement' and "spiritual' and "God' and son on without a whole lot of examination with each other it feels to me. And so we're adopting a form of discourse as if we've done this with diligence. Now I feel sometimes there is enormous precision that you've brought over for many years around some of those terms. But I guess what I'm saying as a community here, as a group of seekers, I don't find that we've been really doing that in a scrupulous way. And it concerns me that we sometimes can't speak one or two sentences without these terms wafting all over. 

Pir: Well thank you for shielding me from what can sometimes deteriorate into disagreeable situations I was showing my good will. But it is true that when I was part of Winged Heart, I was rather shocked by the level of expression of people, animosity, and anger which became like to the degree of hatred. So that I thought that it was really unworthy of the Sufi Order to do this, totally out of keeping with what we are about. And consequently I withdrew from the Winged Heart for which I was very sorry because I wanted people to feel that I am with them and not on a guru trip. But I'm trying to listen to what they have to say. But when it becomes so gross and impolite and angry, even violent, and also very personal, like attacking people personally in their honorability. Well I think then it doesn't belong to us. So there has to be some kind of containment, I agree there. It's true that I was a little bit, let's say, over courageous in opening the door to expression of dissatisfaction. When I was talking to Sarmad yesterday about Jamiat Am, he told me that that wasn't the case any more. It used to be. But he feels that people just wanted to be heard, and wanted to feel that their part was happening, but didn't feel that there was a feeling of animosity there. But maybe those are the guidelines that we have to follow. So I suppose that the best thing is for me to, there has to be some containment, so for me to curtail my good will. And if I feel that somebody is saying something that I feel is out of place, then I'll have to say it, simply. Just be honest and say in England, "infurdig', it's not appropriate. But that should not deter you from opening your heart.

Shams: I'm not sure if you were meaning to respond to what I said. But I don't think that that did respond to what I said. I'm just curious if you were attempting to or not. I was not talking about the tone of discourse. I was talking about the terms of discourse, the way we talk about our spiritual, there's one of those words, our endeavor together. The way that we discuss with each other what we are doing. That's what I was talking about, not the tone of it.

Pir: The tone is something that seems to develop although it wasn't intended. That's why we put a halt.

Shams: But what about this other aspect.

Pir: Yes, the terms, absolutely. Like for example, if you like, we could just start by asking a very simple question. And that is "What do you expect of, not your spiritual guide, but what do you expect of spiritual guidance in the Sufi Order? That would be a very clear question that some of you might feel you would like to respond to. Thank you Shams.

Woman: What I would like from spiritual guidance is openings further along the path than I am that will bring me deeper and deeper into God realization.

Pir: May I ask what the path is that you are on since you say that you are on a path.


Woman: I know that those are incorrect words because you know we just are. All I can say is that my interest in life is in illumination which I understand as becoming conscious of God.

Pir: You say that this is the path that you're on. But I think that that's the path that we're all on. That's why you're here. So why don't you say. If I were you I'd say, "The path that we are on".

Woman: OK. The path that we are all on, traveling together. 

Pir: You said a few things that I think are important. You said "illumination'. I think you said something else, but I'm not sure.

Woman: I'll just say again what I said before is that what I would like in spiritual guidance is the experience of those who have gone further than I have and can open those vistas to me that I don't know about because I can only know what I know. It's about illumination and God realization.

Pir: That's quite right. What we're looking for is experience rather than just learning words and thoughts and theories, really experiencing. That is, I don't know whether you noticed, but that has become more and more of what I'm doing, and I think more of what many are doing, we're highlighting experience above everything else. I can tell you, I'll make a little comment because the camp in the alps we had a lot of people. Well we had the English/French camp and then we had the German camp for one week. And then it was followed by a retreat. And a lot of people could not leave their jobs, and so could not attend the camp which was supposed to be a preparation of the retreat. So I was rather stymied. I thought, "I can't understand how these people could ever follow the retreat because they haven't had all the explanation preparation they needed before". And curiously enough I found that that's how they could understand what I was trying to say by putting the cart before the horse, putting the experience first and then the explanation rather than having the explanation and the experience. So that's my new format now. Less explanation but really doing it. Thank you Sherri. You want to say something? Can somebody pass the microphone on? 

Man: Pir Vilayat, many years ago when I was in the Army, I picked up my first book on metaphysics. And somebody walked by my bunk and he said,"'h, looking at metaphysics". And he said,"Yea, it's kind of like a history of mankind's mistakes trying to live correctly". And I just remembered that because of this dialogue. What I've always experienced here in the last few years is being in a laboratory. Kind of a living laboratory. I've watched us over the last 21 years, our interactions together. And certainly the guides and teachers that I've been allowed to spend some really quality time with through these years. And I've watched our evolution together. That's why I call it a laboratory. Because one day we're here and one day we're there. And at this point for me, one of the things that I feel that I'd like to get from the experience of these last 21 years is a more intimate forum. I occasionally will speak with one person or another person about some ideas that I have or things that I've experienced and work them out. And I would like to see small groups of people engaged one or one with you, four or five people at a time. 'h, I know, yes, but in the course of a day or in the course of a retreat or in the course of some of these meetings where you can experience us experiencing you. As I sit here now, this is the best I can give you from the Sufi Order. This is the best I can give you from your father.

Pir: Well you know, there is no doubt that the real training is one to one. That's the way it's done in the East. That is really the need of people is to have one to one contact with someone who is able to act as a guide and to understand them completely and to follow the path with them, by their side. I understand that. In fact when I was younger, that was my one need, my one longing was to have a guru who would be able to train me. And I attended a lot of meetings of Swamis and Buddhists and Sufis and things and groups. Of course it wasn't the same thing as when I was sitting in the presence of a rishi in the Himalayas. It's true. And it's true that I did make an attempt at doing that two years ago, three years ago. I was seeing each representative individually. And the consequence was that I did not take part in the group meetings at all. 

So it's a choice between the two. It's no doubt that if I were to see each one of you, which I would very much like to do, there would be no group meetings at all. Or I wouldn't be able to give the teachings I've been giving. So it's a choice. It's a difficult choice because both are important. We'd have to have more time. You would have to have more time. Some of you find it difficult to spend a week here or two weeks. And so that's purely a logistic problem. It's true that in the Pyrenes that we had a meeting of 25 representatives. And although we were in a group, I was, I asked each representative to give themselves a practice, a wazifa, and asked them why they thought they needed that wazifa. So that was very good because then I would say,"Yes, I understand why you did that, but there is another aspect. And perhaps you haven't seen it. " and so on. So there was real personal contact. That would be really wonderful if we could do that. But with the numbers of people increasing, I don't see how I could possible do it because you know I've been spending, nobody has any idea of my life, but you know I'm doing this all the time, everywhere, in Europe one camp, one seminar after the other and after the other non stop. 

So it's true, I realize that. But there is such a thing as silent teaching. And I have the privilege of being able to look at you each individually and sometimes I feel that we are communicating in one to one format where really I'm sending you a message in my thoughts or I'm picking up your thoughts. So there is a personal communication there. And as I say there is an osmosis between us. I feel that, some of you I know better than others, of course. But those of you I know best whom I've been very close to, you're always there. You know, if I'm sitting in my office in Paris or in Fazl Manzil, or wherever I am, on a plane. You're always there with me. And I can identify with you. And I always think that sometimes I'm also with you. It is true that I've had people feel that they had been disconnected. You see a teacher has to go through, for a teacher to be talking from their real realization instead of talking from book knowledge or whatever, the teacher has to go through a process. 

And it may not be the same process as their pupils are going through but there are similarities of course, conjunctions. And so I had to make my journey. And there were times when, it is true, that I was a little out of sync or out of touch with a lot of people who are looking to me for nurturing. But I had to drink at the source of wisdom and go through my own trip so that that wisdom would be really practical instead of just theoretical. But now, perhaps you've noticed that there has been a change in me. In fact there has been a change in all of us. So I feel that our connectedness is so much deeper than ever before. Perhaps that's why it's better to look to the future instead of looking at the past. The question is what can we do together to raise each other's consciousness? What that lady said about illumination, that's a word of course, illumination. But it's true that we mustn't lose our objectives out our sight. And so how, we can help each other. You helping me. Sometimes I feel that I'm the voice piece and maybe I'm helping you too. That is perhaps the important thing. How can we connect in such a way that your spiritual needs are met? So would somebody else like to speak?

Man: Pir Vilayat, my question has to do with being a representative. In a way I feel that of course we are representatives of the Sufi Order. But we have a fealty of being a representative to you. And also you're a representative of us. So we all want to be representing what is your feelings, very much in part because your feelings are representative of us. This comes, so how does this relate to the teaching? There's two very real world occurrences. One which I've just heard rumors about, wanted to know if you could explicate more the way you currently see this in focus. And that is the relationship between Sirs, Sufi Order and your brother's Sufi Movement. And one would feel like there is some kind of coming together. 

And I feel that that is something that you are representing of us. And another, you know of course, there's all these different movements and each movement has its own history. It has to be redefined because now we're 50 years old and not 30 years old. And the same representative role comes in another way. And that way is that I have this understanding or experience that there is a lot of mastery that people have in this room in their own particular lives. And the Sufi Order has participated in that mastery and recognizes that mastery. However, there is nowhere in the teachings where that mastery is brought to the person's ego. Where the person says, "Yes, I really do have the power to create my whole world". They only feel that, I perceive this, that people only feel that they are good at their vocation or one particular thing.

Pir: Yes, Michael I was going to cut you, but you just stopped in time. Because you said three things that were rather vaguely connected. And that's the maximum that I can answer. To start with, the more practical one. I would like to announce the good news. And that is that we are planning a meeting of the Sufi Order, Sufi Movement, and Sirs next year. So a meeting of the ways. I see some connection between the things that you said because many of those here, or perhaps each one of those here see something different in the teaching, or understand something different in the teaching which is important for them. And I have mine. And I don't want to impose my way of thinking on the others. I respect each persons point of view, or let's say understanding of the teaching as long as it is an understanding of the teaching. Because there has to be some cohesion of the teaching. otherwise you get a very chaotic situation in which people are on their own, or doing their own thing, and there's no kind of coordination between the teaching of the different teachers of the Sufi Order. That's been the case sometimes, it's been a great concern of mine. I've always asked myself, "In what way does this teaching connect up with the teaching of either Pir-o-Murshid, and then not just Pir-o-Murshid but the ancient Sufis? And in general I should say the general esoteric teaching of the world." And sometimes I feel well, some of the teaching that I have echo of goes too far away from what is our spiritual format. 

As I said before, as I said this morning, I think we are highlighting a different dimension than the personal one, or a dimension that belongs to us, the personal one being only a fraction of the bounty of our being. And if you just emphasize the personal dimension or the personal perspective, then you are defeating our objective which is beyond our person. I see that danger as being a very great concern of mine. You know it's very simplistic. Like how do you feel? Well I feel this or I feel that. That's very personal. OK But what our personal feelings are represent only a fraction of our real being and can be very deluding and very confining. Or for example "being in the here and now'. The here and now is only an abstraction. The reality is everywhere and always. So somehow I want to know who I am. When they say, "I want to know who I am", people are thinking of their own personal self identity. But it's not what they are. So it's very, it's a kind of leveling to the lowest level. So I'm rather concerned about it because it's not the way that I understand spirituality, not just the way I understand spirituality, but that's not what spirituality is about. We're talking about is other dimensions of our beings other than the commonplace ones. But if people find some kind of fulfillment in that, well God bless them. But I don't think that that can be given as being the teaching of the Sufi Order. So there may be some differences here. But if your understanding of Murshid, each one of you is going to see in that teaching that corresponds to your realization at the time. And that changes as you evolve. The same thing happened to me. I'm looking at the teaching. I understand it very differently than I did 20 years, 30 years ago. So you have the right to have your way of looking at the teaching. 

So how that can be coordinated is a very interesting challenge because as I said we are developing a format, much more free format in the Sufi Order, than in an ashram. For example, if you were to attend any of the ashrams in India, at least most of them that I know, you'd, the word of the guru is law. And you don't, you can't do anything without asking the permission of the guru. And you can't think anything, believe anything that is not kosher, not the sort of accepted way that it's looked upon by the guru. 

Now we have this wonderful scope of freedom so that each one of us can have a facet, a many faceted totality. That's how the Universe is. It's a being of many facets. And each one of us represents one of these facets. So what we're doing now is very much in keeping with the Universal law, or the nature of the Universe. But it's very challenging. And the consequence is that as soon as you have freedom, you have conflicts. You have egos coming up and you have dissension and so on. One could be scared of it unless one realizes that it's OK. That's the way to encourage freedom. I think it's good to keep in touch, even if one has different opinions at least to keep in touch. So for example, what we're doing with Sirs is a way of keeping in touch or what we're doing is reestablishing contact. We're doing a similar thing with the Sufi Movement. But it's a rather different situation there because we're dealing with bureaucracy. And of course you know what bureaucracies are like. So it's very difficult with a spiritual being to have to deal with bureaucracy. So I don't think that you would be happy if you had to deal with that kind of thinking. So it's wonderful you know, that there's so much richness and spiritual variety here. So we've come to a point when it would be good for somebody to open their heart and say how they feel. Yes.  End of Tape

AUG 09, 1996		Tape 01

This is going to be, we are going to start meditation on light. So, let's start with just be aware of the light in your eyes, just like two beams of light, and by being conscious of them, ah, you will enhance their brightness. But it just depends upon how important light is for you. In fact, the only way, you can't do this with your will, you can only do it by being very deeply shattered by the ecstasy of light. So as you know, of course, meditation is really discovering who we are in the universe, and so just think that our bodies are fashioned out of the fabric of the planet, which is crystalization of the light of the sun, and eventually the light of the galaxies, so that our bodies themselves, carry within them, the cells of our bodies carry within them the nature of the light of the universe. And realizing that does something to the cells of our body and to our understanding, and, as a consequence, we are discovering our own effulgence, we become luminous. 

We awaken the light within that is hidden under a bush until we become aware of it. So of course the most elementary aspect of light is we think that we perceive the light that is emitted or reflected by objects; but in fact we also cast light upon objects. And the more we do this, the more we are able to have an insight into the nature of what we think of is the object of the objective world. So the Sufi's call it the Light of Intelligence, rather, so the light that sees rather than the light that can be seen. It is as though your insight, your realization, rides, let's say casts it's light upon your glance and therefore you do not only see what you are conditioned to see, but what your insight is able to espy behind the appearance. So now, having concentrated on those two beams of light, think that the light of your insight is somehow interacting with the light of your glance, or acting upon it, somehow giving it some kind of sensitivity which it wouldn't have had otherwise because what we think is experience is really self-discovery. 

It's like we have a pre-knowledge that is hidden and is awakened by perception, perceptions ask just like a catalyst that awakens what the Sufi's call an inherent knowledge that is therefore disclosed, or revealed, rather that acquired. And of course all our preconceived ideas would stand in the way of this disclosed knowledge so we have to be very neutral as far as our subjectivity is concerned, and consequently the very essence of the practices of the Sufi's is always to see things from two vantage points at the same - the personal vantage point and the divine vantage point. But at first it is difficult to reconcile those two, and our personal vantage point will stand in the way of our being open to the diving vantage point. It's only later that we are able to reconcile the two. So, the way to do it is to think that, it's just of course let's say it's a method, think that you are revealed, you are being revealed, one could say that the universe is revealing itself to you and what you perceive is just devices to divert your attention through which you can read whatever is in your understanding or in the understanding of the universe coming through you. So practically speaking, one imagines the light of intelligence crowning your glance, adumbrating your glance, as you exhale; and as you inhale think that your perception of the universe is acting as a catalyst to awaken the knowledge stored in your superconscious devices. 

They are just devices; instead of thinking of them as realities, they are what Islam calls Ayat which means "signs" which gives you clues as to a reality that is behind whatever these clues are. Now if you can keep this in mind, then you would just open your eyes very briefly at the beginning of your exhaling and then close them right away because you find that if you open your eyes, the objects in front of you are going to force your glance into focus so that you can see them the way they appear, in the ________, so you can't see what is trying to transpire behind that which appears. But if you keep on insisting on maintaining your focus, the focus of your glance as two beams of light, then you will overcome let's say what I call a gravity pull and don't try to see anything, just keep on thinking of your glance as two beams of light, and then maybe it is as though one is seeing things from inside instead of from outside. Like as though they were reflected in a mirror.

So you can see that the physical world is just the way that reality appears at the surface like the lotus flowers at the surface of the lake - you haven't seen the network of roots; so that the universe is a revelation of that which is veiled. Which is of course a warning not to take the obvious for granted.

Alright, now we are going to concentrate on our own, the light of our aura because you will find that you can enhance your glance if you consider the whole of your aura and your glance as a particular aspect, function of your aura. So the elementary steps you know them already but we'll go through them. You know that the cells of the body absorb light and so as you inhale, just be aware of the cells of your body, and that although they are themselves crystals, liquid crystals of light, crystalized light, but they absorb, they have the faculty of absorbing light, just like a crystal absorbs light and atoms in the crystal begin to dance so your cells begin to dance, cosmic dance, in ecstasy of light and as a consequence reproduce themselves much faster; and it's also a healing process. And now of course exhale and then you find that the light that has built up in the cells of your body tends to radiate out into the universe, eventually hits the stars. So that's the elementary level, what we understand by what we think is physical light, which is only one level of a many tierred world of light.

Now, what I suggest is that you hold your breath after inhaling, before exhaling. Now you see, I think that we have to have some kind of mental representation, you know, you've heard about a white hole in outer space where new light emerges into this universe from subliminal universes, so just think what we call this universe is only a cross-section of a multiple universe, or a multidimensional universe, and there's a continual flowing from one level to another. And think of your solar plexus as a door, as a threshold through which light from this universe, let's say this cross-section of the multiple universe is reabsorbed into subliminal levels which are called the void, and that as you exhale, then new dispensations of light emerge from the subliminal levels passing through the door, your solar plexus, and radiating out as your, the radiance of your heart which extends it to the whole aura; so Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan and of course all the Sufi's, Ibin Arabi particularly, make a difference between the light that has rays, that's what they call the radiant light, and then light which Pir-o-Murshid calls "all pervading" which does not have a source of light located in space. Like radio waves for example spread out. The sound of the radio definitely comes from a source which is the radio, but radio waves extended throughout space, something like that. 

I don't know if you know the word "wave interference pattern", so that everything is intermeshed, all different frequencies of light are intermeshed like for example eddies in the surface of the lake which keep on criss-crossing each so you've lost sight of the individual eddies. Something like that you see, so if you can feel that, what Dr. David Boehm calls the "implicate state of light" which is what happens if you turn within, what they call turning within in meditation; but of course it is true that you lose a sense of radiance, what one understands by radiance or effulgence. In fact, your, let's say the underpinning of your aura is not just the physical light of the universe that you absorb, which we did a moment ago, but it's that implicate light behind the light that manifests in the universe. It's hidden, veiled; and as Pir-o-Murshid says, he says "Imagine that the sun converges the light of outer space into a point and then it's radiated from that point, so we are doing the same thing. But instead of converging the light of the physical universe, we are converging that inner light which seems to emerge then through that door of the solar plexus and then rushes forth by radiating from the heart center as your aura in a tremendous onrush of light, a breakthrough of light.

So can you do that now? So remember that the physical light gets reabsorbed in the void and one might say recycled, but that's not exactly the right term, but you can think of it that way if you like. Just like a wave is reabsorbed in the ocean. And then the whole ocean reemerges as a new wave, it's not the same wave that reemerges, it's the whole ocean. And you can imagine that the light of your aura illuminates the immediate neighborhood and reaches right into the stars, but be conscious of immediate environment as you exhale. So hold your breath after inhaling, even though you find yourself in what they call Allah Malhaib which is the world of mystery, so don't try to perceive anything, you can't perceive anything there, that's why they call it the void. It's like Fana, like being annihilated in order to be reborn. The words of St. John of the Cross, "to be what you are, you have to pass through a stage of being nothing." And then the universe will reinstate itself as you. So that when you are radiating, do not think that you are radiating, the whole universe is breaking through as you. Not breaking through you, but breaking through as you. And that will give a tremendous power to your aura, and eventually to your glance.

Now the perfect practice for this, which is a very advanced practice is called Yoni Mudra in Yoga, and it's called Shaghall in Sufism. So you place your indexes on your eyelids, but you must first turn your eyeballs upwards, so that you don't press on the cornea, __________ on the retina; and then the fourth and fifth finger on your lips, close them; and then middle fingers on your nostrils, but only press the left nostril so that you may breath in through the right nostril, then press the middle finger of the right hand to hold your breath and exhale through the right nostril and you do that with three breaths. And now you can place you hand after that, after three breaths you take away your fingers, keep your eyes closed and see what you are experiencing. So now you can place the thumbs in your ears. So keep your concentration while your fingers are not on the senses, so that's an advanced form of Shaghall, but the effect continues without doing the practice. 

You see, what you need to do is to keep concentrating on the light that emerges through your solar plexus. The thing is, as Pir-o-Murshid says, by placing an obstacle in the way of your senses, the perceptual senses, sensorial senses, consciousness has no alternative but to turn within. But when you exhale, then you need to reach out from inside, but as we have seen now clearly, it's not the light, the physical light that we absorbed, that we re-emit, but it is the inner light, implicate all-pervading light of the universe that we transform into radiant light, so we are just like a radio, we are a transducer of what one might call the wave interference pattern into tangible radiant light. And the power behind that is the power of imagination which as Ibin Arabi says "acts as a bridge between the divine intention and it's actualization at the existential level." The divine intention assumes a shape through the act of imagination, cosmic imagination and our imagination as an extension of the cosmic imagination.

Now remember that your ability to radiate the implicate all-pervading light depends upon your condition, your capacity, your capacity for light, and if what is connected with somehow the kind of emotions, the kind of thoughts that we entertain, because if we entertain any thoughts of hatred or jealousy or intolerance, that will impair very greatly our capacity to transduce the inner light into outer light. So in that sense, we are not just talking about the healing effect of physical light upon the cells, but the healing effect of our way of thinking and of feeling upon our inner bodies. If we can heal our minds and our emotions from those grosser activities which we ourselves do not feel happy about, then it has an immediate effect upon our aura and in general our subtle bodies.

Now we are going to work with another dimension of light because there are several dimensions of light. That is what one might call at the transcendental levels, that is all the transitional levels between physical light and the light of intelligence, and different levels between these two. So let's start by referring to a meditation by Hildegaard of Bingen, that wonderful German mystic who is now becoming a little more known. Let's do it rather than just quoting her. So imagine that you are looking into a bright light that is so overwhelming and shattering that you are, your body is flooded with light and that light even penetrates through your skin and into the cells of your body, which begin to dance as we already said. So it's like confrontation. At first you are simply thinking of, that you are looking into, or imagining that you are looking into a very bright light, like the headlamps of a car for example, or into the sun, or the limelight of the stage or the T.V. set. And then the fact is that by so doing you become aware of your aura. At first you think that your body is simply flooded with light from outside, but that makes you aware of your own effulgence and so it's not just perceiving light, but it is really confronting, a confrontation between the light accruing from outside and the light emitted by you. 

And as a consequence of this confrontation, there is of course an interaction of one light upon the other, on both sides, reciprocally, and eventually an intermeshing takes place. Now what Hildegaard of Bingen says is that that world of light, or let's say that perspective of the universe which highlights the light of the universe, physical universe, seems to open up just like a door, just like a gate into a further level of light which is even more blinding and which seems to have been shielded by the first level of light that we confronted. So it gives you a sense of the levels of light, the more overt, the more obvious kind of, well I wouldn't call it gross, well we could call it gross, relatively, light as compared with a more subtle light. But then she says, and this world of subtle light upon up into a still, just like a gate into a still further level of light - even more subtle. So it gives you a sense of the celestial spheres and do not think that they are up there somewhere, otherwhere, somewhere else, but that they are different perspectives on the universe, depending upon the setting of our consciousness. 

We can click our consciousness into a different perspective than the usual one, and then click it again and so on. In fact, it'll give you a sense of a transfigured world behind the world that we call physical reality, ______ ________ ________. But that depends upon your ascent through the spheres, depends upon your ability to question your commonplace sense of identity and discover the angel in you and really believe in it. otherwise, access to these higher spheres of light is not possible. And it isn't only discovering that aspect, but, that is the angel, but handling situations as the angel would do. We are a cross between the evolved animal and the angel. And it's not good enough just to be an evolved animal. So it's really in the level, at the level of attunement and identity rather than the visualizations. The visualizations will not do it for you unless it matches your attunement and your realization.

Now there are some practices that one can do of course. Let's say, as long as you do not lose, well we just said, out of your, out of you, then these practices are useful. otherwise then they might even be misleading or confusing. There are what they call the Kasina practices of Buddha, that he did himself. Well first of all imagine that you are looking at say a cardboard that you cut out and rounded to a circle and you painted it red, for example. And if you were to look at it for some time and then your attention would withdraw from it, then you would see green, what they call the reflex. And in fact as you exhale, think of red, and then as you inhale, think of green, think of green as the reflex. So the reflex would represent a higher level than the perceptual level. Now then, of course you could imagine a green cardboard plate and then the reflex would probably be orange, I think, but that is not the practice. The practice consists in reaching from the reflex of red, which is green, into the orange which is the reflex of the reflex. So the way to do it is to think of the red as you exhale, and then you divide your inhaling into two, into the green and the orange. So then you go a little further and you imagine the red as you exhale and then you divide your inhaling into three, the green, the orange and the violet. And eventually you will get into the green, the orange, the violet, and then passing through ultraviolet you get into colorless light.

'kay, well this was just preparation, a kind of illustration, more tangible illustration of what we want to do, and that is as you exhale, you consider physical light, and as you inhale, you keep on shifting into the reflex of physical light, and in the reflex of the reflex of the reflex and so on, until you reach the light of pure intelligence. Hold your breath and then as you exhale you just can represent yourself how the light of intelligence is able to adumbrate the light, the physical light; this is the meaning of the Surat of the Q'uran, "the light upon the light". A similar illustration of this is to be found in the teachings of the Tibetans, what they call "the mind rides the wind". 

So they apply it to, for example, consciousness and bodyness which is the wind which is energy and then they talk about subtle mind, so it's not the ordinary consciousness but a kind of understanding of a higher level, which we are going to be studying in the course of these days, rides the subtle body so for each type of body there is a matching type or mode of thinking. And then there is the very subtle mind that rides the very subtle body. So there's always this antinomy between mindness and bodyness, consciousness and energy and the action of one upon the other reciprocally so that it's a kind of concentration that one maintains in the retreat, because the light of intelligence gives you a sense of the way things look from the antipolar point of view to your own point of view, the divine point of view. That is one of the salient features of Sufism, is always to see things from the divine point of view, or rather try to accede to this point of view as one downplays ones personal point of view. Or transfigures one's personal point of view in order to be able to connect it up with the divine point of view. So in terms of light, it is imagining intelligence to be luminous in contrast with the act of consciousness which is receptive, as intelligence is active. Just a few moments of silence before we end.

So, God Bless You Now. 	END OF TAPE ??



AUG 09, 1996		Tape 07

Man: ...say that appreciate the freedom with the different centers on how to approach the curriculum and how to approach the organization of the centers. At this point I would like to see us as a group pay more attention, or look creatively at how to organize centers in a way that are matching lifestyles of the people. I don't have any specific suggestions except that maybe we could share our stories of how our centers are organized and maybe look at new ways of trying to organize our centers. Maybe even at a program like this to have some resources. I know that a mureed that I'm working with has come up with some training that has helped him. And I know that I am going to meet with a few people here because I feel I need new ideas on how to do that. I feel I am a creative person but how to do that. That's something I'd like to ask us all to do.

Pir: Yes, I know we have access here to a tremendous pool of resourcefulness based upon the experience of people in the field, working in the different centers. And we haven't imposed a format for the different centers just so that we would encourage the incentives of the different representatives. But it's true that the consequence is that there is a lack of coordination between them and we could learn from each other how perhaps some of us have ideas that others could benefit by if we would exchange our modes of operating. I wonder how this could be done. Of course this is really something that is of the purview of the Jamiat Am. As I said, this "open heart' is not really about administration. And of course I don't know what we have in mind for the Jamiat meeting. It would be rather, I don't know, it would go out through the night unless we, if we dealt with all the questions we would like to deal with. So in one session it's not enough. So it's true that it would be good if we would have a little more opportunity to do exactly that. We've already established the schedule for these, what is it 3 and 6, these ten days. But I don't know whether we can include these in some way. 

We'd have to talk about it. But your's was a very good one because it's one of my concerns. It's not just the curriculum but how do we run our centers? Different ideas. For example, do we allow people to ask questions? Do we have discussions? Do we have the prayers before the meeting? Do we have silence before the meetings? Do we do practices? Are the practices coordinated with the text we read? All kinds of things. Do we give people a chance of, for example, an idea that I had when I was running a center in Paris, was to ask each mureed to go through any of the teachings that they want of Murshid and choose one sentence, it would be easier with the Guyan, but it could be any text, that they feel is just very important for them. Then they would come and say that. And then I would ask, "Why did you choose that text?". Of course I felt the reason, but it was good for him to be able to say it. That's a very dynamic way of bringing people into the work. Many other ideas. So it's true that the next is not just the curriculum but the format of the meetings. And as far as I know it's not on the agenda of the Jamiat Am. But of course we can put it on. But I say it's going to evolve us into much timely discussion, I mean time keeping discussion. So let's see what we can do.

Woman: Two separate points, Pir. First, I feel the need for all of us to have a much longer as leaders retreat. Three days. That seems, and I know that we're trying to get a lot in. But I also feel that three days is just touching the surface of what as a body we need. So I'd like to see the opportunity in future years to have a much more extended experiential retreat in nature where we can actually be outside. For a lot of us this is the only time of year we have to do a retreat. Some have more some have less, but under your guidance. So just a longer opportunity for that portion teaching and training. My second point is that when I come back from being on retreat or being here, there is an attunement and then gradually over time it starts to fade as more and more we're in our daily life. And more emphasis on the practicality in bringing our spirituality, there's that word again Shams, into our daily life so that the attunement stays as part of our daily whatever we're doing in the world. Because that is the path we're on is in the world. And I think that we need some more concrete training on bringing it in daily.

Pir: Of course that's the main thrust of what's happening in the Sufi Order. I want to say in any case that this, these first three days are only an introduction to the retreat. And of course the format of the retreat is going to be very different from what we are doing during these three days. In fact we'll be doing practices and practices and practices. It's not very practical to sit out in the sun. So it's not an ideal place for individual retreats. But we'll try to organize it in such a way that we can still be in a retreat attunement even though we're in a group. Somehow we'll have to try and do that. And the last four days. That's where we're going to try and translate whatever attunement or whatever realization we've come to during the retreat into how we deal with practical life. So the concentrations are trying to bridge the gap. But it's true one must always have in mind while one is on a retreat, "How is that going to affect my life?". When I come out of a retreat I'm going to do this and that. So how is it going to affect my life? So think of a retreat, in fact the word retreat, I don't think a retreat is an appropriate word. I would rather call it a rehearsal for life than a retreat. I think, so do you want to say something?

Woman: I just wanted to maybe draw. Not maybe. I'd like to draw attention. I'm sorry can you hear me now? I have a soft voice, I'm sorry. I just wanted to go back to what I felt was Shams's question. I felt it was about terms, the words we use. For instance, hearing you speak brought it to me because for instance, if you say, "I go back into my life and then I lose my attunement", I would want to know exactly what do you mean by that? What do you mean by attunement? And what do you mean by the fact that you lose it because my concern again is spiritual guidance. It's the same thing as when Marylee talked about that her goal was illumination and self realization. I think this is where...she said my path and you corrected her and I think that of course you're absolutely right. We're profoundly on a path that we share. There is something that's moving humanity beyond you know the individual for certain. I think that's what Murshid talks about, becoming one body and the organs of that one body. He's not just talking poetry, there's a reality. But on the other hand our path is composed of individual paths so that I would want to know, if I were talking with her,"What do you mean at this point in your life, at this time by illumination?".

Pir: Yea. I hear what you're saying. That is it. That is the issue. I remember, I think it was about 10 years ago, sitting in an ice cream parlor with Zia and Merlin, my two sons, having ice cream, Hoggendas, and thinking to myself," Hum, that's very different kind of attunement from that at our meetings. Now do I reject that kind of attunement?". I must say and I admit that I was judgmental. I found that the kind of attunement that I felt around me was, I thought rather gross and low key let's say. I didn't see any ecstasy in it. People were, there was enthusiasm, yes, some euphoria even. But there was a difference. But somehow. So I thought to myself, I was being sentimental I suppose. So I thought, "Well this is a chance for me to apply the teaching". Like are we to open up one drawer and close it and open up another drawer in life, or are we to bridge the gap between the two? So I started to, well, to make an effort to connect these two attunements that seemed very different. And somehow I found that the only way of doing it was to really get into the soul of the people there. If one can use that word. But anyway a deeper level. 

And I found that they were not conscious of it themselves, at least I thought so. They were into their personal trips. And behind it there was ecstasy actually. There was the joy of life. It doesn't have to be sort of staid the way that we, people in ashrams have an artificial sense of what is spirituality. So that I started by being judgmental. But in the end o found that it was OK. But I think that the best way of bridging the gap between our spiritual life and the nitty gritty of our lives is being tested in our tolerance for people who are, who, well who are aggressive to one, who are critical of one, or even aggressive. I think that's a test. If one is able to maintain one's attunement, I think that attunement is really divine love. In fact I really think that, I think that spirituality is the ultimate expression of love. I'm in love, but I'm in love with love beyond people, or I'm in love with life. And in that case one is not judgmental, and one does not make a separation between spiritual life and the worldly life. In fact that's a kind of artificial separation that people make in India, like the sanyasin and the householder and so on. No it's very pretentious to be a spiritual person, whatever. 

Illumination, yes, you see again it's a term used, I see light in the eyes of people sometimes and think, "Well that's illumination". And perhaps they don't realize it, but there is just light in their eyes. And the same people could at other times perhaps not have light in their eyes. Somehow in a certain conjunction it comes through. And I feel that that's what we're looking for. And it's really tangible. It's really light. You can perceive it. So it's true. How we translate, for example, what we were doing this afternoon, like breathing in and realizing our need for freedom, and breathing out and realizing our need for fulfilling our purpose in life. Well when you're in your situation in your job and whatever it is, you can just see how your, what is behind your motivations. You're not stuck right into a groove in life, but you always see things in an overall perspective. I'll give you an example. Einstein was pushing a pram in New York and a lot of people are pushing a pram in New York. But then they are right there in the street pushing a pram. And he was thinking, while he was pushing a pram, "Isn't that strange, me, I'm supposed to be Einstein, pushing this pram". And most people think that they're in planet earth. But actually we're in the Universe. We're not just in planet earth. And then for example. You think the sun is over there. We're inside the sun because the sun doesn't have a frontier, doesn't have a skin. We are inside the sun. The same thing that we look at in a limited way. That would be... I'm trying to see how we can bridge a gap between our spiritual ideal and our practical life. Yea

Woman: Is this on? I think the example you gave just now was a good one as far as spiritual guidance. For instance, Einstein's experience of pushing a pram is very different from Emily's experience of pushing a pram. So if I were guiding Einstein, and he talked to me about his experience pushing a pram or let's say then we were talking about illumination, I would, in order to offer him the next step for him, let's say, I'm being presumptions. Then I would need to know what is he saying when he uses the word illumination versus the lady next to him who is also pushing the pram. What is she saying when she uses the word at this point, at that moment in her life. Because as you know from your own experience, that definition for you most likely has changed with the evolution of your life. Would that be right to say? 

Pir:That is exactly the reason why I'm very wary, or have become very wary of using words that are stereotyped like awakening and illumination and so on. They are abstract thoughts. They are metaphysics as you say. And the reality is experience. And so of course ultimately what we say can never be totally adequate. So that's the reason why, of course it's much better to, well, to say things that could act as catalysts that will trigger of an experience. But it is the experience that is important. And when we try to interpret it, we are limiting it and we lose the value of the experience by trying to interpret it. So I think we're on the same beam. I think we have to end here don't we? OK Bless you End of tape.

AUG 10, 1996		Tape 09

In the cool of the early morning we can find peace and quietness which is conducive to discovering our deeper selves. , and one calls it turning within. and one assisting the process and there by one concerns about ones relationship with the outer world , and as a consequence that more subtle reality that one doesn't see through his gross senses begins to manifest as me.  First of all surround yourself with a zone of silence ., and place a sentinel at the doors of perception. , so that your not exposed to the onrush of influence of all kinds coming from the outer world.. Then place the centennials in your mind so that you may be able to guard yourself from thoughts that are disturbing. and that are concrete circumvention so as to get into a deeper place of thinking, where thoughts emerges from within instead of being a reaction from outside. Then thoughts may servicing within may manifest in the peripheral area of our psychic and get infused into the universe, but you keep on touching upon the life source of creative thinking , and discard the disorder of expression, and that  thinking of course beyond words and without words, and the same applies to light, and sound. 

Our attentions and turned outward, our consciousness is turned outward in order to receive light, sound and many other things, and as long as we are alert to those impressions coming from outside we shall not be sensitive to the light emerging from within or the sound of the universe emerging within. So we are going to practice the practice of shagall called .....mudra......Where by Pir Murshid says , seems to be placing obstacle to consciousness incidentally is turned outside. Consciousness will aboutturn and direct its awareness deep within so that we may discover a whole world that is emerging from within and of course it does manifest outside.  So for Pir Murshid the breath is the bridge between the outer world and the inner, and so the secret is as your breathing continue thinking you are drawing energy from outside because breathing is not just absorbing oxygen, but energy from the environment , so  imagine you are converging this energy as we often do, and think that you are breathing from within that is you are drawing energy from inside from the source of all energy, and that energy is surfacing as emerging and then eventually defuses into the universe, so it's  like a new dispensation of energy. 

There is reasons why one only breathes through the right nostril which I could explain another time.  In so doing one is awakening latent faculties in ones body or rather in their subtle bodies, and that point is becoming aware of the subtle counterparts of ones being we call bodies subtle bodies, celestial spheres and consequently they become a whole person . That is the feeling that passes up the spirit discoloring it's self at the existential level. One is placing a bind on the eyes, and ears. The lips are closed which is significant of the fact that one is affecting ones thinking so that one does not think in a way is limited by language are concepts as I say the breath is one is drawing energy from within in ones breath and the  affect of this is cumulative and so if you do just a few breaths the effect is v varied after you take away your hands and then of course you would be ............. What I suggest for this first time, and this morning is that you concentrate on the solar plexus even though your are turned upwards and just imagine that you are drawing energy from the subliminal universes toward our gate of your solarplexus as you inhale and as you exhale this energy   is extended into the universe , the solar energy therefore you are acting as a transmitter of energy from the different planes into the physical world. 

OK well lets do it now with three breaths. So concentrate on the light now rather than the sound for example the inner reality beyond all forms in the depths of our being manifests to our cognizance through the means of what experiences light or sound or as smell perfume, or taste or touch.  So these are the things we discover as we turn within , but it is too taxing to give to con- centrate on all these things at the same time so you start by simply being aware of the light not the light of your aura which converge with the light of the stars, but the light that  emerges from within. And which you converge as you exhale into a radiant light , but in it's initial mode it is all pervading it is not radiant. You converge it as it emerges and then it radiates from your heart as your aura. It's that your aura is made up of the light that you converge from the stars, let us say ,and also the inner light that emerges from within.  So discard any impression of light that are seeable that you could see. It might be due to your having exercised pressure on your cornea that means on the retina, and so it's an optical illusion and you might think that this is the inner light so let us not deceive our selves, delude our selves. So it is not light to see at least at first until you can distinguish between the two. 

The only way to put it is light that you feel. But of course it does become visible to some extent as you exhale it becomes radiant light, light of your aura. So as you exhale you thing of yourself as Alladns lamp which cast it's light upon all things  I did not of course mention the details that I mentioned yesterday. For example there may  be new people that were not here yesterday. For example turn your eyeballs upward so you do not press upon your retina through the cornea. To avoid the optical illusion as much as possible and you find that the breath becomes very very fine. and you only breath in and out, in and hold your breath and then out through the right nostril. So let us do it once more What I do very often is imagine that the current emerging, surfacing from within and lighting up a bulb in the heart. When it's some relationship between the breath and the light, but more deeply , identify with your subtle body that is one of your  subtle bodies instead of the vehicle body while you are still aware of your physical body If you can think of your subtle body as the template which configures the atoms of the cosmos into a body and eventually then the subtle body as the affect of the transmutation of the body into a subtle body, so it's both the templet and the in cought up of the bodiness.  

So you feel like around your shoulders like a magnetic field , and around your chest and of course it does permeate the cells of your body so it's not just outside, and doesn't have a boundary and it seems to be vibrating very fast beyond what one could ever imagine so we can only perceive as sound. You see turning within is only the first half of two steps the other one being turning outside from within. So as you breath in you highlight your subtle body and your body seems to be at the surface, the template behind the configuration of the atoms , and then when you exhale you build a bridge between the template and it's outer expression. It's like reaching the surface of life from the depth as though for example your swimming under water and so the roots the network of roots and from there you reach up into the lotus of flowers floating at the surface. And so their inner light is the template of the outer light, the light of you aura as the outer expression of your inner light.   So let us do that now. Identify with your subtle body and then move from your subtle body into your physical body as you exhale . So your awakening faculties in the template of your body that are going to affect your body. 

That are going to awaken faculties in the subtle chemistry of your body like enzymes and harmons, and neuro transmitters circuits in the brain, the holistic function of the brain as a wave interference pattern like a hologram.  As Pir Murshid says it's the first step and this is not, do not think this is illumination,  illumination lies further ahead. In fact is beyond , is unattainable beyond the beyond . Let us now move into the second step which is shifting ones sense of identity from one subtle body to the next upwards rather like we started to do yesterday the different spheres of light. Perhaps you will notice that at first your aware of a kind of magnetic field as I call it, energy field. Then at the third level that energy field avers it's self to be a field of light not physical light and then you recognize different levels of light, and each one of them of those what you call it, spheres of light or rather in our spheres a counterpart of our subtle bodies that corresponds to each one of those spheres.   

So next step would be turn within and reaching upwards from within which is the only way of reaching upward anyway. So what I suggest is that you now instead of concentrating  on the solar plexus as you inhale and the heart center as you exhale and concentrate on the pituitary gland as you inhale and even reach from the pituitary gland to the fontanel the apex of your brain, and as you exhale concentrate on the pineal gland- third eye . So let us do this now. Actually what you experience after taking your hands away is almost more important than when your hands are in position. Because the practices are like a  ladder in order to trigger off an experience that has a lasting effect. So you continue the concentration after taking your fingers away. In fact the whole purpose of shagall is to be able to do it without using ones fingers upon the senses at anytime because of the........  Now to this last practice more perfectly, as you inhale the breath that you are drawing through your solar plexus acts as a Pegasus as a flying steed Barok as they say in Islam Barok. 

Baruda in Hindusim that carries your consciousness upward Belafon was the rider of Pegasus, but at a certain point Pegasus couldn't reach higher the altitude of 'lympus therefore Belafon had to proceed on his own, and therefore consider that as you inhale  the energy that you are drawing from the solarplexus is like Pegasus that carries your  consciousness upward from the solar plexus well from the level of reality corresponding to the solar plexus upward through the spheres. I don't think that it is useful to think of your  chakras and we have done that before, but simply think that at the point corresponding to your pituitary gland - the Hindus call Bindu Pegasus can not fly any higher and therefore Belefon your consciousness needs to avail itself of the momentum imprinted upon it by breath and now proceeds on its own by simply shifting the level of consciousness from being consciousness to being pure intelligence.  

I said yesterday consciousness is passive or receptive incomative, but if you deprive con- sciousness of its object of any perception or any conception then it returns to it's ground which is pure intelligence like a kind of a inherent cognizance that we have that is confirmed by experience, but does not result from experience. So let us do this now. So as one reaching into well what the Sufis call the light of intelligence beyond con- sciousness which is the ground out of which consciousness emerges and which the  Tibetan call the clear light of bliss, and sufis call it the light that sees rather than the light that can be seen.   Therefore as you exhale you illuminate your aura with the light of intelligence. That is the meaning that surround the Koran, the light upon the light. This is the light the Qabbila calls Insufaura insufaura. The aura of consogents of Jacob Bohn , in fact this is the secret of secrets, the key to illumination.   
  

AUG 10, 1996		Tape 10


(Discussion about air conditioning.) Yes well this weather makes one appreciate the abode. So next year we'll have this meeting at the abode. Of course I don't want you to feel uncomfortable. So you don't have to wait for the break to drink your water. You can bring your water bottle with you. As a matter of fact, there is another method. I don't know whether the doctors approve here. When I was overland on a trip from Paris to India, passing through Iraq it was so terribly hot that we felt like passing out. And I found the only solution was to pour water on one's head. So, if you come here soaking wet, it's OK. Nobody will hold it against you. Is that OK from a medical point of view? And your ankles and your feet also wet. That's very helpful. And anyway if you feel anyway really uncomfortable, you're welcome of course to leave. But you'll find it even hotter outside. And I've looked all around to try and see if there was a place in the shade outside and there would be one behind this hall. But it's, there is so much traffic, it wouldn't be very pleasant. So, and if you really feel the need for it, we'll put the air conditioner on full force. We'll put the fan on full force. It's very disturbing of course, not only for me and for, or for me and for you, but maybe that's the way it is.

So , I must open my heart to you and say that of course I have a problem. That is that I have been holding myself back all this time from giving advanced practices. And a lot of people were expecting after all these years, to have further practices. And the trouble is that every now and again we have the experience of somebody passing out. I must say this morning wasn't at all aware at all of what was happening around because I was, I took off, and you were taking off with me. So I don't really know what the solution is, because I do feel responsibility for it. I know I am held responsible for it. But the alternative is to just do simple practices. Or then of course my father's solution was of course the different grades. But even then I find it very embarrassing for me to decide who is 8th degree or 9th degree or 7th degree. I wish that I could be clearer about it. But I myself feel that it's, I'm embarrassed by it sometimes. I feel that personal egos are involved. So for me this whole initiation thing is a terrible hassle. But I can see the wisdom of it. So we'll have to deal with it. But even that's not a guarantee. 

I think the issue is a deeper one. I was moving fast because we only have three days for what we need at least two weeks for. And what we did in the second part of this morning had to do with lifting one's consciousness into the higher spheres. And that requires a lot of preparation. So while I said let us start with the practice and then have the explanation, I can that there is a point in having the explanation first because I can tell you right away just in a short cut is that the answer is to transmute your body and schlep it upwards with you instead of leaving it behind. That's the answer. Like don't have a break, astral projection or whatever. That's the answer. Maybe I should have said it. Normally I plan it. I planned this whole meeting so that we move from one step to the next so that we deal with the outside world, and then the inside, and then. Tomorrow we were going to explore the higher spheres. That was for tomorrow. And then I would have prepared you for it. So I apologize for it particularly to the lady who passed out. 

So what I'd like to do now is to continue what we started this morning at this time. And if you remember, first of all we have to remind ourselves we are here as representatives or coordinators who are perspective representatives in the esoteric school of the Sufi Order. And we want to undergo training to know how best to help people who come to us for guidance. And it's true that there are questions that have arisen in the minds of many people. Like we talked about Murshid's teaching, but do we know what it is. And in which way does this teaching differ from the teaching of Buddhism or Yoga of Kabbala, Christianity and so on? Well that is a fairly theoretical question which I am interested in of course. It interests the engineer or the mechanic. But , as I said, I don't want to restrict what we project upon Murshid to the limitation of our own thinking, because Murshid's scope was very vast and included the ancient Sufis and also all religions. But that is theory. Now we want to see how it works in practice. And of course that's what we're going to some time. We're going to enter a little more into what do the Hindus say about this, what do the Buddhists say, and so on. Then we see a little better what it is specifically that we have to contribute to the evolution of thinking and particularly in the spiritual sphere of our time. 

So what I decided, if you remember yesterday, was that rather than asking, " What is the teaching?", and seeing how it flies, is asking, "What are our problems and what is it in the teaching that will help us to deal with these problems?". And for this I was using the words of the wasifas, which is the wrong word anyway, wasaif is the plural of wazifa. But anyway wazifa, the word simply means repetition, reminiscence of whatever it is. So the word is sifat. Sifat means qualities, different qualities. And if you remember, I said that these are labels, a language which is foreign to most of us. And consequently we don't project upon them connotations as we do in our own familiar language. And therefore they can mean something different which is beyond our understanding anyway. And therefore it is a great mistake to try to understand what is the meaning of the wazifa. That's the general thing that people ask,"What does it mean?". And then you get bogged into the limitation of the way that the mind is limited by language. I much prefer translating the wasifas, sifat in terms of forms. And that's extremely important in Sufism. I would say it's embodying states of consciousness into, well embodying, that means in one's body, incorporating in one's body. Actually to say it more precisely, rendering states of consciousness corporeal. So that they get shall we say adamant in the configuration of the cells of the body. And it does make a difference in the body. So that we have to consider our bodies in meditation rather than seeking samadhi where one is not conscious of one's body at all, or not concerned about one's body. So you see the difference.

So we started by talking about, I think it was resentment, and deeper still than that is feeling distressed, and distress in general. That is that we carry wounds in us, not only because of the past, but sometimes because of the present in an ongoing situation which is very painful. And we touched upon guilt, but not very much yet. If you remember I was evoking wasifas, sifat, which I haven't ever used so far, the negative ones, because it is honest to recognize in oneself that there is suffering and not force oneself to be happy when it doesn't ring true. And also, that in fact, we carry resentment. Much as we would like to be magnanimous, I must say like when I think of the woman who gave away my sister for 100 thousand francs and the consequences it had, it's very difficult for me not to have resentment. So how can I teach forgiveness when it's a problem for me. My only answer, and I'm sure that that is helpful to you too, is the words of Christ. And that is, "They do not know what they do". Makes it easier. They do not, they're children, they do not know what they're doing. They think they know what they are doing, but they don't. 


So that is part of, if you'll remember, the solutions so far. I don't know whether they're solutions, but they are indications, was to not limit oneself by how one feels oneself, but get into the consciousness of the other people. And that's where the practices, as I say the sifat, which reply to the expansion of consciousness are, I don't say it's a solution, but it's a kind of medicine let's say. So if you remember, what we did was try and get into the consciousness of a person who harmed one. Now for example, I've tried to get into the consciousness of the goliter who beat my sister to death and kicked her and let her lie there bleeding throughout the night. And you know, forgive him, I don't think that's the issue. What I understand is that now is they used psychopaths as goliters. Psychopath, he would kill anyone anywhere. Now there a lot of psychopaths all over in Europe and in the States who kill people just for the sake of, the joy of killing people. So they were used, mental disease. So it's very difficult to have a lot of resentment when you know well that's, maybe there are some psychological, maybe he was brought up by a stepfather who kicked him out of the house and was drunk all the time. You know that kind of thing. The woman who gave her away, I must say that was much worse. So anyway I'm talking about myself. Probably we all have cases where we have been so badly maligned or badly abused, or badly treated by people, that we find it very stressful. We have a difficult enough time be able to survive without having to forgive people. It requires so much of us. But somehow the consequence is that we are the sufferers because we carry the wounds in our hearts and that will stand in the way of progress. So I think we have to open up these wounds sometimes and put some disinfectant on them. 

So that's part of, I think when you're going on retreat, you see what we have in our experience now, we've had a lot of retreats, in the alps for example, people doing individual retreats. And what happens is all of a sudden all their problems surface. They find it very difficult to concentrate because these thoughts are compulsive. And then you say, well you know we should call for a psychotherapist because we don't have the expertise to deal with it. Yes, I used to think like that. And now I think that what we're doing has some relevance to psychotherapy. But let us at least apply what we know. And as I say, so let us see what light the esoteric traditions throw upon these situations. 

Well as I said, if you look into Yoga, the first steps called (sabitar ka samadhi) consists in realizing that one's assessment of one's problems is false. At least, that's what Yoga says, it's false. Because it is biased. It's looked upon from a biased point of view. Now that's Yoga. Then of course the next step (niri ka samadhi) is trying to not be limited by one's personal assessment of one's problems. But that is, that's still negative to say that our point of view is biased, is wrong, that's negative. But what is the reality of the problem. And that's, so Sufism does not discount one's personal assessment of one's problem. It is a valid point of view but it's just one point of view. and it's got to be completed by other points of view. And as I said, what spirituality is about is including a wider perspective to one's commonplace perspective. Wider and also higher. Let's say other perspectives than the common place perspectives. If you keep yourself caught up in, jammed in your personal point of view, then of course you're turning round in circles like a fly in a bottle, doesn't know how to get out. And that's where I think our practices have a very definite relevance in terms of psychology. 

So the answer then. There are two, I wouldn't call it an answer, but what we suggest as a possible help would be for one thing to extend consciousness, and do it systematically because we can really try and see things as they look from the point of view of another person. We can do it. And there are two ways, two steps. One is to get into the consciousness, how that person looks upon our problems, the problems we're involved with that person. And then at least you understand. It's not a question of justifying. At least you understand,"Well that's the way that person sees. I see things differently". One tends to think that one is right and the other person is wrong. But one might be wrong and the other person might be right. At least there are, you are confronting these two vantage points. And the second step is how do you look from the point of view of the other person? So the other person has what they call a self image, you have your self image. But the person has an image of you that's not you at all. But your self image is not you either. So there are two errors here. So one is spending one's life in error. Just think one is schlepping one's miss assessment of oneself throughout one's life, in one's psyche, very serious. That's one as I say help. It's also a solution. But the other one is the other dimension which I call it transcendent. We will, I think I'd rather pursue turning within now and tomorrow we'll be exploring this other dimension. One thing at a time. 

So guilt. Yes there is one, I spoke about distress if you remember the wazifa for that was "daar', I am distressed. And you remember that I said, it makes it easier if you find that you are sharing in the distress of the cosmic drama. So instead of thinking,"This is my distress", it makes it easier. So there again it's an expansion of consciousness that will do it. If you remember there were two stages. One was expansion of consciousness which tends to makes one lose one's personal center, which is embodied in the word "basit'. And then expansion of consciousness with some kind of containment, which is the word "wasi' which means to embrace or to encompass. I prefer that because you are not losing your notion of your personal center there, but somehow you are extrapolating it with a wider notion of yourself. And what is more, you feel that you, like we've already said, you feel that those people are part of you, so kind of embracing them in your consciousness. So that makes it easier to deal with distress. For example, distress tends to make one get constricted in one's personal identity. Whereas if you are thinking of the distress of humanity or if you even just think of the sadness of people around you, the problems of people around you, then of course sometimes you realize how puny your concern about yourself is. When you think about other people who are suffering. I just think of that little girl of 11 in Bosnia who had lost both arms. And she can't wash herself, and she can't eat. You know, what does it mean? So we have our suffering but just imagine how people suffer. 

So in fact I think that the only way to deal with, if one can call it dealing, with one's problems, is to have a broken heart. To really feel broken about the suffering of people. Not to think of oneself as a therapist, "I want to help people", you know. It gives a certain pleasure. No, it's I'm part of these people and I understand how they feel and so you can only bring any kind of help for a person if you've gone through the same problems that they have gone through. And somehow, I don't say overcame them, but somehow you found a way of living with them. So that's, in the end it's really love because love breaks one's heart. 

OK So then, this is expanding our consciousness. There are cases where it's the other way around, it's turning within rather than expanding one's consciousness through help. Or rather it thrusts a different perspective on a problem and the way it looks by expanding one's consciousness. And really speaking, turning within really means reaching out from inside. It doesn't mean withdrawing. But reaching out from inside. But of course there are the two, inhaling, exhaling. You know the wazifa for that. There are two wasifas actually. One is Batin and the other is Latif. And it's good to associate those two. Batin, most of you know at least the kind of meaning that is attributed to it. It's like, it could be illustrated by the veiled one. And perhaps the best illustration of it is that one feels that one cannot express what one means by the mediumship of language. And perhaps one realizes the degree to which one's concern about expressing oneself in words that are inadequate anyway tends to affect one's thinking, to limit one's thinking. In fact that's the reason for a silence in a retreat is because one is so used to thinking in terms of words even if one isn't speaking because one might be called upon to speak at any time. Whereas on a retreat you are not at all concerned about expressing your thoughts in words. And the consequence is that you will be able to start discovering levels of thinking, depths of thinking, that you had never suspected at all. You had no idea what was going on in the depth of your mind. So I would say that that would be the best indication of what we mean by turning within.

So what I suggest is that we try to do that first and then we'll go further. Of course turning within is enhanced, the most favorable condition that is conducive to turning within is as one inhales, now just let us think this as we inhale. We are continually ingesting and digesting, not just the physical world in our food, but psychological impressions in our psyche, rather in the same way as our bodies with our food. And that these impressions, they could be like walking in the street of talking to a person or TV or radio or anything that accrues to us from outside, leaves an impression upon our psyche. Then our psyche needs to digest it. Like we're ingesting all kinds of food. But we might have an indigestion if we have taken the wrong food or more food than we can and so on. So we are suffering from real psychological indigestion in our lives at present. And the consequence is imbalance and pathological mental states and chaos and so on. The kind of degeneration of our times is really frightful. 

And so meditation, the technique in meditation will consist in placing sentinels first of all at the doors of perception. That is the word of Buddha. I wouldn't say that. I would say lines of defense in the psyche that act as sentinels. So that one has the ability to select those impressions that one can digest, that one can handle, and those which are too difficult to handle. It does not mean that one should be judgmental about them. But one can say that for the moment I'm hot big enough to handle all this. So I give priority to those that I can digest. And you'll find that those that you can digest are those which are in resonance with your being. For example, the music you like is in resonance with your kind of attunement. 

And that is based on, as I said the other day, the immune system. The immune system is based upon me or not me. The organism knows whether an organ is too different from its DNA and therefore it's rejected. And then somehow, the second immune system whereby the immune system adapts itself to the environment. We have the same thing here in our psyche. So we are suffering from an overly sense of adaptation. And the consequently lose our uniqueness. One could simply, well how does one reject an impression that one cannot digest? Well first of all you identify it. Well I don't feel comfortable with this. I'll tell you the only way to, maybe the word reject is not the proper word. Maybe it's better to say to not admit, to not accept, to not give entrance to an impression, is detachment. There is no doubt about it. It's the way of the ascetic. 

And it's really wonderful that we are able to introduce the way of the ascetic right in the middle of life. And that's why we started when we did this practice yesterday, we were alternating between exhaling, discovering the way that we are enthused with life and involve ourselves with life, and then detachment, freedom, not from the would and situations, but inside ourselves in our thinking and our emotion. So that is something that will give you a lot of, how can I say, a sense of rightness. How can I say that differently? To find that you have enough freedom in yourself to be able to discount an impression that you cannot handle until such time that you can handle it of course. It's not rejecting it in that sense, rejecting it in any way. But for the time being I cannot deal with it all.

But there is another factor here. And that is the ability to transmute. In fact that is what we are doing with our food. So it's true that perfunctorily we do reject those ingredients in our food that we can't digest or are difficult to digest. But then you know the amino acid chains of the food that we ingest is totally broken down by the pancreas and the liver, maybe the duodenum, I don't know. Totally, and it's only the enzymes of the RNA that are able to rebuild the amino acids that are incorporated in our bodies. So the same thing is true of the impressions from the outer world, the psychological impressions. We have to break them down and see how they connect up with our idiosyncrasies. otherwise we would be carrying all this undigested food in our psyches and would become very confused. This is the case of most people. I think that that is particularly the case for psychotherapists who are dealing with people who don't know how to digest their impressions and consequently get very confused. And as a matter of fact, cancer is in some way is connected with the difficulty in transcribing the DNA and RNA, that transcription, because of over stress. 

And also, I think that, and psychologists are right there, psychotherapists are right there. I think that we have to have a very strong sense of who we are. That's true. That's what the immune system is built on, "Who I am". That is my likes and dislikes. I prefer Bach to hard rock. So that's me. Other people prefer hard rock to Bach. So that's them. So each one of us have a very strong sense of,"This is me". That's why we started yesterday with muhasibi, which was looking very clearly into ourselves to see what we really value. Because that is me. What I value is me. And be careful of not fooling oneself. And therefore the only way to avoid fooling oneself, or deluding oneself ,or deceiving oneself is to ask yourself what are you prepared to do to pursue that value? If not, then platonic. It's not a real value. It's an ideal And Pir o Murshic says, "Break your ideal on the rock of truth. Shatter your ideal on the rock of truth". So it's of course, the condition for doing this is to be very, very honest with oneself, and to recognize that one has personal needs. And one has ideals. And one has values. And to tell the difference between what are one's values, what one thinks are one's values, let's say idyllic, and what are one's motivations, and what are one's personal needs. And to what extent one is able to give vent to these different needs, and to what extent to prioritize a value one is prepared to make a sacrifice of a personal need. I think we're all into this. There is not judgment about it. It's just that we go through a process. And we are transformed. Life transforms us. But it's good to be very clear as to where we are at. So muhasibi, turning within, as we say there are a lot of implications in that word Batin. And I would say that I would associate Batin with Haqq, with truth. Ya Batin, Ya Haqq. 

Now it's all well and good. But you see if you start turning within as we're doing in meditation, the first thing is that one tends to not be aware of the surrounding. And if one is aware of the surrounding, one has a guilt feeling like, "I shouldn't be aware of the surrounding". That is a wrong way of thinking. I would say one should be aware of the surrounding. Because of you're not, that's when you pass out. That's when you have this break in your consciousness. 

Now what we did this morning in the first part of shaghal was to look at the body from the template, from the way that the template configures the atoms. So that applies to the surroundings too. You look at it from, as I pointed out, if you were to look at it from the lotus flowers from underneath, from the roots, so you got the sense of how the cosmos configures itself into individual flowers. No, but let's say one downplays one's attention to the environment. 

I remember making a kind of test. I don't remember whether it was Menninger Institute or whether it was Swami Rama's place. But it was trying to see if I could have delta waves and at the same time be aware of a conversation around me. So that means that you can be in an alternate state of consciousness and at the same time be conscious at the physical level, which is not samadhi. That's being awake in life. So that's what I suggest is that you turn within. Maybe you downplay the physical environment. But it's OK if you hear the sounds of the cars in the street and people walking by. It's OK as long as it's, I think that you could say the consciousness is like a beam. And then the psyche is like a screen. And so the beam lights up the middle of the screen. But then there is the periphery, the twilight. And if a thought emerges or an impression from the outside world, you tend to move the beam towards that impression. But the secret of meditation is to keep your attention on the center of the screen. And then you're aware of what's happening in the twilight. But you don't turn your attention towards them. That's the secret of meditation.


So then you, the next concern is that you will find yourself exposed to the onrush of all kinds of random thoughts. And you might come to the conclusion that you're not the meditative type because you just can't deal with these impressions. Everyone has that. It's OK. There are two methods. One is, as I said, to keep your attention and to avoid shifting your glance. As a matter of fact in Islam there is that thing about during the prayer you keep your glance straight in front of you. You don't turn left or right. It's the same thing. That's one thing. The other one is a real insight into the thinking, the process of thinking. I'm not saying the thoughts. I'm saying the process of thinking. And the reason for that is that thoughts are abstractions. They are static words whereas thinking is dynamic. So our minds, there is no such as thing as a mind anyway. It's very difficult to talk here, right? Using terms "our mind". But how can we do otherwise. But let's say there is a process of thinking going on that is, as Buddha says, conditioned to a large extent, and which...(tape turns) And so one could discern the peripheral areas of thinking to the deeper areas of thinking. And the peripheral areas of thinking, there is an overlap, a spill over with the environment, or with the psychological environment. So that our thoughts are regurgitating impressions of the environment. 

Now there are grades as we go deeper and deeper, moving from that peripheral mode of thinking to what one might call thoughts emerging from within ex nilo, out of nothing, creative thoughts. And that is what Sufism is trying to highlight. Not only Sufism but Buddhism. Buddha distinguishes between the gross mind, well I'm opening a parenthesis here but I think it's really necessary for you to know this because it will help you in your meditation. It has helped me certainly. That is for, let's say that, this is theory of course. But we exist on several levels. We are a many tiered being. And one could, it would be helpful to distinguish between 3 actually 4 levels, that the Tibetans call the gross mind, no,no. What the Tibetans are saying is that the mind rides the wind. I was talking about Garuda this morning or Pegasus. The mind rides the wind. The wind is energy. So your body is energy. Your subtle body is another more subtle form of energy. And then there is a very subtle body. So to every level of identity, if you identify with your body or your subtle body or your celestial body, there is a mode of thinking. So as, if you're sitting there meditating, and you're absolutely identified with your body, your thinking is what the Tibetans call the gross mind. And what the gross mind is doing is interpreting the experience with the environment whether it's physical or psychological. And as we already said, Yoga says it's maya, it's illusory. I would say it's a valid point of view. But it is a limited point of view. And it needs to be completed by other points of view. And therefore the art of turning within is to shift your sense of identity. It's no use just working with you mind. And therefore think of yourself as a subtle body. Or think of yourself, I mean become aware of your subtle body and identify with it. 

Now as I said this morning, you could think your subtle body. Well you feel an area of like magnetism around your body. But then you can feel it also within your body. You can feel it above your head, in front of your heart center. And that's the first thing, the feeling that one has. And it's rather like steam. I mean it's unstable. In comparison the body is rather stable. Whereas this is kind of shifting like a balloon. And it's vibrating very fast. So it's a very different feeling. Now what I'm saying is that the danger would be to discount your body and simply identify with your subtle body. And what I'm suggesting is that you think of your subtle body as a template of your physical body so that you are still able to be aware of your physical body. But it seems to be like the manifestation, the outer manifestation at the surface of life of a deeper reality, which is your subtle body. So that's only the subtle body. It's not yet the celestial body. It's the subtle body. 

And then you find, and that what I want you to just discover yourself, there's no use in my saying it. Experience it yourself when you're meditating. You'll find that your way of thinking is different. Of course I have been concerned with how could you define, I mean what would be the difference, let's say? Well, I hope you're interested because that is the thing. I mean when you're meditating, you have to know what's happening. otherwise you're confused. There are all kinds of thoughts coming in, not connected. 

So OK well, I apologize, this is theory. But you have to know it when you're meditating. And that is that in one's ordinary thinking one thinks in categories, what they call discrete thoughts. If you know something about philosophy, there are categories of reason of Emanuel Kant, the German philosopher. It's a certain way of thinking. Like this tree is there. That tree is there. Your commonplace way of thinking. This person is here. I am this person and so on. The second thing is that you're not only thinking in categories, but you're thinking in causality. That is this happened because it resulted from that, what they call causal chain. So this happened to me because I did that in the past and so on, karma. And so I have to repair the bad karma, so on so forth. That's the most elementary way of thinking. And so one's interpretation of one's problems is in the mode of this rather commonplace way of thinking. Yes, I can see that I made a mistake and now I'm suffering from that mistake and so on. I don't say it's wrong. It's true. But it's only one point of view. 

So then what would be in comparison when you identify with your subtle body? That's the reason why I say the word Latif, subtle. So Batin, Latif, subtle. That is what is now in computer language called parallel thinking. Concatenation of causes, synchronisity. Now this is way above the heads of a lot of people here. But it would be worth while. I don't see who spirituality has to exclude clear understanding. In fact it is clear understanding. So why do people think,"This is too intellectual. This is about my head. Pir is on a mind trip. So it's not for me. I'll go to Rasnish". Really why not take up the challenge? Just see what Jung is saying for example, synchronisity. What does he mean? There are concurrences of situations that cannot be accounted for by causality, parallel causes. And so when you're turning within, all of a sudden you think it's intuition. But to be quite clear about it, you see a connection between things that you could not have seen in your ordinary way of thinking. And it was again Jung who said that. He said,"If you do not deal with your shadow, it will come to you in the form of your fate". He saw that. He saw that connection.Whereas most of us would say, "I don't know why God is so unfair to me. I have such a very bad fate in my life Everything goes wrong". And one doesn't, one would not like to think that one is causing it oneself. One doesn't see the connection. And I don't say that one is causing it oneself. It's not causal. It's some kind of causal concatenation between causes. So you're seeing relationships of meaningfulness which you can't see otherwise. And that's the reason why mystics are speaking a language which people can't understand because it doesn't fit into the common place way of thinking. OK well we have to break here. We'll continue sometime. End of Tape

AUG 10, 1996		Tape 12

96V08-10.#12

Joshua Eso 8/10/96 Tape 12

So we're going to continue what we started this morning. We were learning how to turn within. And it was always related to our dealing with our problems. So it's not just a trip that we're doing for the sake of our curiosity. And I said we want to have a different view, perspective on our problems than the common place one. So already acquired an alternate point of view by expanding our consciousness into the consciousness of people.

But now there is a different view in addition to that one. And that is because we are now identifying with our subtle body. And we see relationships that we could not see if we identified with our personal notion of ourselves. And a very good example of that is, for example, if you have an eclipse of the moon and the sun, it's only meaningful from the point of view of the earth. There's always a relationship between the sun and the moon. But there is a particularly meaningful relationship as viewed from the earth. But as you turn within, your sense of being located in space has altered. And your sense of your individuality as extended without any boundary. And so instead of thinking that one is constricting oneself as one is turning within, one is really expanding within. And as a consequence, one's insight is not linked with one's notion of oneself as an individual. And so one is able to see relevance in one's problems that one could not have seen if one had judged one's problems from one's personal point of view. Now I'll give you an example. You think, "Now as long as I'm in this situation I'll never be able to attain illumination". Then all of a sudden you discover that it's just within the constraint of these circumstances that these are most favorable to your spiritual advancement. So something that is not logical but which you suddenly discover beyond the logical linear thinking of, that is linked with one's identification with one's gross body. One calls that intuition. But I'm trying to get more deeply into it and see how it works.

And now we have a clue, a real breakthrough. And that is that one is replacing one's interpretation of events, of circumstances, by an insight that emerges from within ex nilo, out of nothing, which is not in any way, at least visibly, related to the insight that we've developed by trying to interpret what's happening from without. I say as far as we can see because, as I say, it's totally spontaneous, ex nilo. You can't quite see, it's not reactionary that's for sure. As I said, if we in our ordinary consciousness limited to our notion of ourselves as a person, we are in a reactive mode. And the ego as Pir-o-Murshid describes it is reactionary. It's a strategy. It represents one very small fraction of our being that we identify with. And this sense of ourselves, the self image that we have, and we call it ego, is reactive. It works as a defense system to counter the assaults on our integrity because it's the only way we know. But we're not availing ourselves of the whole pool of resourcefulness of our being. Now if we extend into the consciousness of other people, that is a way of overcoming the notion of our, let's say, the personal bias. But it is still not availing ourselves of the richness, the pool of resourcefulness of our being. And therefore it is useful to turn within. Now what that means. Well we're going to do it rather than talk about it.

Could you think that in your what we call real life situations you are playing a role? It might be extremely deluding, or be that deluding. I'm trying to think of extreme cases. As Pir-o-Murshid says, "A king thinks he is a king because people say,'Your Majesty', and he is sitting on a throne". Or a guru thinks he is a guru because people consider him with very high regard. So he's playing a role he or she, and is trying to play up to that role that people expect of an authority figure which leads to dishonesty. Then there is a typical English businessman who has a top hat and going to the foreign exchange with his umbrella. And he's just totally identified with a sclerosed prototype of a British businessman. And so on and so forth. Even the hippy is, also has chosen to play an alternate role to the British businessman. It's still a role. It's refusing to conform by a new conformism which is almost more restrictive than the alternate one. So these are roles. And when you're free of your role, you're free. Perhaps you've found that in me. I've found freedom from my role. Head of the Sufi Order. Not interested. It's not important. Pir. Well yes, I suppose in India you don't validate the Sufi Order if you don't have a Pir at the head, so it's a formality. At the congress in Paris there was a lady who was calling her, the person she was translating, a Tibetan Lama, she was calling him Reverend So and So. She said, talking about me, she said, "Mr. Kahn". I thought that's really lovely. That frees me from all that heaviness of having to be a Pir. It was wonderful. She thought she had offended me, but no not at all. It was very nice. So the role.

But the next step is more important. You wouldn't believe it, but we're are wearing a mask. And that is the mask that we see when we are looking in the mirror. The mirror is the most deceptive and the cheapest feedback system in the world. We identify with that picture of ourselves which is misleading. So I don't know whether it's a relief to you to learn not to have to trust what you see in the mirror. But if you could see what transpires behind that which appears, then of course you could trust it. 

So this is the breakthrough as you turn within. And it is a real breakthrough. If you are able to discover the features of your, let's say, internal countenance rather than your physical face. I used to say your celestial countenance. Maybe it's helpful to think of it that way. It's a little more complicated. One is a many faceted person so I don't want to make it too complicated for you. But at least to start with, if you do that and you happen to just capture your celestial face, you're absolutely bowled over. Something clicks and you know,"Yes, this is me!". 

Yes, it changes. So it's not static. And it changes according to what you're thinking and your to emotional attunement and to your realization. Yet beyond all that change, those fluctuations, there is some commonality that remains stable. That is how the reality of the Universe manifests as you through a form. And somehow one's self image is associated with a form. The forms are configured by the idiosyncrasies of our being but the matter of our bodies doesn't always lend itself to this configurating power. It is like it's more difficult to make a statue with granite than it is with clay. 

So you find that your subtle countenance, or the countenance of your subtle body, or the countenance of your celestial body is so volatile. And of course, if it's a countenance, it does not have an outline, it doesn't have a profile. And therefore it's not something that one is used to grasping. Because we're used to grasping objects that seem to have a boundary. But if you are familiar with the photographs made by Walter Chappell of flowers with ultraviolet light, then you see that they don't have a profile although they do have a configuration. And that they are translucid, or transparent, translucid I think. So that you can see the other flower behind a flower. And what is more, Walter Chappell experimented by instead of photographing these flowers with ultraviolet light, by projecting the light of his own aura. And he found that the configurations on the photographic plate matched absolutely his attunement. So that when he was in a bad mood, the flowers had spikes. And when he was in a good mood, their auras were harmonious. And so in the same way, you'll find the configuration of your subtle body, the countenance of your subtle body on the face, and your celestial body particularly does change very easily according to your attunement. So you have a wonderful feedback system there. You can make it as beautiful as you can, as you wish not by changing it's configuration but by changing your attunement and by the breakthrough of finding new ways of looking at things, called realization. The Tibetans say the only people who can see that in you are the people who have eyes to see. But it does eventually affect your body over a period of time. Anyway it is that which transpires behind that which appears. So now in this situation you have a feedback system right there. You call it making a state of consciousness corporeal, fashioning one's subtle bodies by one's attunement and realization, as I said. So now you have a way of feedback, as I say. 

So if you consider a situation in your life where there is a lot of anger, recriminations and so on. And you see right away how it affects the configuration of your subtle body, or the countenance as soon as a thought of anger, jealousy, intolerance, whatever, hatred arises, immediately it distorts the beautiful celestial picture of what one might call your real self. So this is a wonderful way of curing oneself from one's resentment. There is a psychotherapist, I don't know his name, who is saying, "I'm not judging the person who has done me harm. I don't like the way I feel about it.". So if your feelings can be translated into a picture, you've got a very clear confirmation of what is happening inside your being by your emotions and your thoughts. Now this is still looking at things from your personal point of view. Seeing "how what I feel', how it affects the configuration of my subtle body. 

Now there is a further step of course. Because as I said, if you're turning within, you'll have to free yourself of your interpretation of the situations, your assessment, in order to give vent to the thoughts that emerge from within. So this is where you, let's say, you do place a buffer between you and the impact of the outer situations. So that you are able to consult with the pool of resourcefulness in the depth of your being and awaken some of these latent qualities. It's not quite reactionary. No, but you could say the situations outside act as catalysts to trigger of what was pending inside you. It's not the same thing as reacting. Because here you are consulting the bounty of your being instead of just using your ego to react. So we're saying the configuring states of consciousness. Let us say, in fact the whole idea of "this is me', could be misleading because we tend to think of it as that is static. And as I say, there is something in that continuity of change. 

But the next step would be to think of yourself as continually being reborn or reemerging or recurrently reborn. Think of yourself dynamically. And so consider the situations as catalysts that are calling for the awakening of all the resourcefulness in your being, but you have to accompany this emergence with your awareness. otherwise it's like fresh petals in the center of a flower that will never unfurl. Perhaps I should give better examples of flowers that will not unfurl unless they receive the proper care. So you could say that the emergence of your new self does require the support of your awareness. You have to capture the new birth as it were. And so it is a support if you're a aware of what's emerging and capture it as it begins to pass the threshold between the unconscious and the conscious. So your awareness gives it support, not only your awareness but your approval. That's a word used by Al Hallaj. God approves of you, a kind of empowerment. A very nice thought. He congratulates you on your appearance, He/She. Like an approver. Now this is of course, you might think this is metaphysics, of course, but according to Sufis God knows Him/Herself in the principles of His/Her being. But further knowledge of Him/Herself acquires to Him/Her by discovering the way that His/Her archetypal bounty is actuated in each one of us who are an extension of the divine being through which He/She discovers aspects of His/Herself that could not be foreseen just by contemplating the archetypes. And so for Ibn Arabi we confer upon God a mode of knowing by actuating His/Her being in our personality. So that the actual structure of our subtle body is according to Sufis, one of the faces of God. All faces are the faces of God through which God discovers Him/Herself in a concrete form which reveals Him/Her to Him/Herself, and reveals Him/Her to us, and reveals us to Him/Her, and reveals us to ourselves. 

So as I said in Sufism you're very cautious about constraining yourself within your personal point of view. And that's the same in Buddhism of course. Or your personal identity. You're always open to how things would look from the antipodal point of view, the divine point of view. You could say,"Well how could I know the divine point of view?". And the answer is well the archetype cannot be grasped on its own, but the exemplar does give some clues as to what the archetype. So that we know God through the way that we project upon God what is really already in ourselves. And therefore awakening ourselves to what Pir-o-Murshid calls the God within. 

So that for the Sufis, this incorporation, or embodiment of what might be pure qualities which are conveyed by the mediumship of a form, is like a mirror in which God discovers the multiple aspects of Him/Herself which are not known in the solitude of oneness. Consequently God is moved by the nostalgia of that tremendous enrichment that comes by fragmenting Him/Herself into each one of us. This is Sufism.

So you see that the beauty of this is that instead of closing yourself in your personal self which a lot of people do, you open yourself to the vastness and the transcendental dimension of your being which includes the whole Universe. So you're not alone in your meditation. 

So now if you do this, that is if you're on the alert for what seems to be emerging spontaneously from within. And if you do not in your thinking, think that what is emerging from within is a quality that you need to develop in order to meet the challenge of the world. That's thinking in a linear way, let's say, causality. If you avoid thinking that way, and you realize that there is another way of thinking, then you can see that this quality that is emerging in you now is going to not only affect your assessment of your problem, but is going to affect your problem. You're a different person. And therefore your relationship with people has changed. The problem has changed. And you can see the problem from a different angle than you did before. And that does require indifference to your attachment to your personality. otherwise you would become sclerosed in your personality cannot be improved as you are reborn. That's a kind of recycling, like a vicious circle as we call it. 

So now your thinking has shifted from being, as I call it, an interpretation of the situation outside to the thoughts that emerge without reference to outside, and which however do have implications for dealing with the problems outside spontaneously. And that is called creativity. Then you see that the way you can progress is by freeing yourself from the push of the past so that you can highlight the pull of the future. So to be creative, you have to project how you could be and you have to project non attachment to the way you have been. And the way you could be is infinite. There are no limitations. The past is limited. Ibn Arabi says, "Through the magic of imagination", it's the same word magic, imagination, image, "making a thought into a form, you are rendering what seems impossible possible". 

So creativity is freedom from causality. So it's your way of thinking. You have to let go of your concerns about the past. And in psychotherapy one is dealing with the way that the patients keep on reflecting upon their past, are bogged in by their past. And that's why therapy is the repair. I mentioned that yesterday, the word Muid, to reinstate, or let's say to allow the self organizing capacities of the Universe to repair, well to reinstate that which has been disrupted. 

But there is another wazifa which is Jaber, which means forcefully repairing. I referred to that yesterday when I said, "Well I've heard a lot about stay with it, I've heard it once too many times I think the last few years". I've heard it a few more times than I like. I agree that one has to start with letting that repair system take over. But at a certain point one has to take responsibility oneself. And that's why it's good to do these two wasifas Ya Muid and Ya Jaber. Now you'll be surprised. The origin of that word Jaber, at least that word is used by chiropractors who put bones back into place forcefully. So there is that element of the will coming in there. We don't want spirituality to make us spineless . I mean you know, forego your will and God will do it for you. Fatalism. We've had a lot of that in the past. That's mastery. And I know that mastery is questioned by party line psychology, has been at least, Freud at least. And I see the dangers of it, validating oneself by proving that one can do it. And forcing oneself. The only way to look upon mastery, to understand what is meant by mastery in Sufism, to look upon your will as the customizing of the divine will instead of thinking of it opposed to the divine, that it could be opposed. You could have a bad customizing, a bad tailor who just didn't do it right. So but still on principle think that the divine will is coming as your will. It's not coming through. That's why I didn't say coming, I stopped at coming. It's not coming through. Because if you say it's coming through, then you think as yourself as other. Whereas it's the same will but becomes, that's like in a funnel. It's become constricted but it's still the same will. 

So to make this clear to the unconscious sometimes in my retreats I've been doing Ya Wali, Ya Kabid. So the divine mastery being restricted but still it is the divine mastery, not my mastery. As a matter of fact that word Wali is, the Arabs have this play with words sometimes. So you have Wali and Wali, either the accent on the "a' or the accent on the "i'. And I looked at my name it's Vilayat, not Vilayat. If it was Vilayat it would be mastery, but Vilayat means friendship. But anyway the association of those two ideas is, I think is the clue to the mold of leadership in the Sufi Order. Instead of being based upon governing other people by one's will, it is walking beside people. Because we are in the same boat together. Sorry that's rather a mixed metaphor, isn't it?. But I think you understand what I mean. So the guide walks in front of you, but the friend walks by your side. 

So that gives you a clue as to when you have turned within and you've discovered your real being, then when you look at your problems, they look different now. And you cease to think that you need to control the situations with your will, but you see that you need to take responsibility so that somehow the self organizing principle gets delegated by your intervention, when you take responsibility by your intervention. 

So Murshid illustrates mastery by, that is the concept of mastery that I think is really much more his than anything that I have seen amongst the old Sufis. That is the yacht person uses the wind but turns the sails so that the wind will not push him or her or the yacht in the direction in which it is blowing, but in the direction that he has imprinted upon the sail. So it is the same force, the divine impulse, that is given the direction. 

So now the words for, as I say we speak in the language of wasifas because, I mean sifat, because the word will trigger off a whole sense of meaning that you will discover in your meditation. So it is not in your mind, but in your meditation you'll discover it. So we've been looking at the wasifas from the point of view of experience instead of trying to understand what they mean. 

So that recurring rebirth is actuated into a shape, an emergent shape. All creativity is exactly that. It's like when you think of any composer like Bach or Beethoven or Brahms, then you think it starts with an emotion. And it doesn't, it's an emotion that emerges spontaneously. Of course there are cases where an emotion is a reaction to the environment. There are cases where Beethoven shows very well in the Fourth Piano Concerto how the world is bullying him where instead of reacting he,you know the orchestra is ta da da pum pum pum, instead of reacting, his answer is hum, hum, hum, hum, hum, hum..... So he is not allowing, he is saying, "I'm not playing ball. I'll have to consult my deeper self". And out comes this wonderful melody. And it's true that this melody would never have emerged without the challenge. But if he had simply reacted, it wouldn't have emerged anyway. So creativity starts with an emergent emotion. 

Brahms, of course it's true that Brahms was living a terrible tragedy. But I don't know whether you can say that, well at a certain time I think that he had found freedom from the circumstances. And he wanted to convey that in his music. Fourth Symphony......Somehow that melody came out of that sense of joy from having freed himself from the impact of those circumstances. But it was totally spontaneous. It wasn't a reaction. So that impulse doesn't have a form to start with. And eventually it developed a form. It got a form. So in the same way your creative impulse when you turn within is like, "Yes just imagine how I could be. This is ridiculous for me to go on like the way I am. Just imagine how I could be. I could be dancing with joy. This is ridiculous to go on like this.". So it's a very powerful feeling. And then that will have immediate effects. And the configuration of a new personality that was virtually present within you but you had to awaken. So the wazifa for that is Khaliq which is the word for creative imagination. And then the configuration, the form is called Musawwer. And I say this particularly for Aziza because yesterday I was talking about distress, Daar, and I didn't mention the opposite in the tandem which is Nafi which means propitious. So let's say we've come across unfavorable and also favorable circumstances in our lives, the good and the bad. OK so we'll continue this further. Tape ends

 Joshua Tree Retreat, Southern California Pir Vilayat Khan


96V08-10  Tape 15

96v08-10.#15

"..........stage during our retreat that we need to really have a breakthrough. Tomorrow's the last day and we've, you've got a headstart now and we've been talking allot about problems so that we're able to look at them at a certain distance and take off without having a split in our constitution. So, ...talked about this extra samsaric matrix and, or rather several matrices that are an exercise , how can I say, are an upward pull upon identity, commonplace identity. And so what we want to do is to awaken those levels, those, well those counterparts of our selves, so that we become aware of them and also fashion them. 

So, I, you may have noticed, I mean, talk about a level of I call subtle body, and I was not just talking about it but feel it, yeah, almost like steam or something like that, or, like a magnetic force, or very difficult to define it, but as long as you feel it, that's the important thing, that's a kind of energy. And then we have, and I brought you to notice the fact that you can distinguish in this energy field,an energy that is grosser like I said allot of amperage and not so much voltage, and then the other way around, allot of voltage and not much amperage. And so if you can just feel, for example when you concentrate on the top of the head the energy seems to be very fine as compared with the energy at the bottom of the spine. And then there are relays between them, which are called the chakras, and there's a transit from one pole to the other. 

So one way of what to call lifting consciousness, (although it is not the proper word, but it's the word that's used), through the planes, is to shift ones identity from the, not just from bodiness to subtle body, but to different levels of the energy of the subtle body. That is done by transferring your attention from one chakra to the next as you inhale, and then holding your breath and then again, doing the opposite. But the opposite is not, well if one may be at, it looks as though what the (atlas, atoms) may call materializing the spirit, materialization of the spirit, instead of spiritualization of matter, but I think of it again, in terms of the what we did with light, light upon light, so the quickening action of pure spirit upon your subtle body, even though your spirit is, maybe, the apex of your subtle body.

I think I've already, I don't know if I've already mentioned four wazifas. Well actually there are four safad. Feeling that there was Moeed, a kind of resilience at the bottom of the spine, Moeed. And then moving up to Kaduus, pure spirit, at the top of the head, so you can distinguish those two poles of energy. And then muhyi, m-u-h-y-i, which is like a renewed, a new energy, or dispensation of energy that surfaces from the (spinal uh) from the solar plexus. And then "Hai" which is energy radiating from the heart center. So it is good to be aware of those four manifestations of energy, modes of energy, before we undergo, undertake the practices that we 're going to do now, because it gives you a clear orientation. 

Now, simply by referring to these four modes of energy, you've had a sense of up-down, ascending-descending and then from inside toward outside, and outside toward inside, essentially . fugal centripetal......... So let's say the subtle body is like a vortex. But, and vortex is a very good word, because it is continually in motion, hmm? They're currents. And as a matter of fact, the practice of the zikhr, enhances these currents, the circulation of these currents in the subtle body, if you identify with the subtle body. Tomorrow we'll be going into zikhr much more And so we want to prepare ourselves for the zikhr with a practice called Kasaab, or, well lets call it Kasaab the Sufi word. 

So far we have, I've been talking about this morning we were practicing the actual confection of the structure of this subtle body, especially the face, if you remember. But now we want to enhance all that energy, and the currents. All this is a preparation for what we're going to do. I hope you remember: gross body, gross, mind, subtle body, subtle mind and then very subtle body, very subtle mind. So that now we are working with the subtle body and of course the subtle mind, which if you remember is the creative mind, that translates that sort of interpreting experience translates impinging thoughts into form. And by the same token fashions our subtle body. 

And as we move along, we move ahead, we shall encounter the very subtle body, which is our celestial counterpart of light . And then the very subtle mind, which is neither the understanding that interprets events nor the creative thoughts that invests as forms, but a kind of direct knowledge that is already inherent in us but which is awakened and therefore the Sufis call it "revealed". And as long you know that then that is a good orientation from here. A sense of how we're doing this, because otherwise breathing in and out, that won't do it for you. 

So now, place the thumb of the right hand under your chin and the middle finger in your right nostril And the back of your left hand on the palm of your right hand and the thumb of your right hand in the proximity of your left nostril. And now press um, first of all, breathe out through both nostrils. Now press your right finger and inhale direct in left nostril. Hold your breath. Turn your eyeballs upward, and curl your tongue, press up on your palate. Exhale through the right nostril, energy pure spirit Kaduus descends on the right side of your spinal cord. Inhale through the right nostril, Moeed, the inertia energy, ascends up the right channel of the spinal cord. Hold your breath, eyeballs upward, tongue curled, press against the palate, pure spirit Kaduus, exhale left. That energy of pure spirit descends on the left channel of the spinal cord. And is, as I say, it adumbrates the energy at the bottom of the spine which is, well allot of amperage not so much voltage. Now inhale through the left nostril, and consciously transmute that gross energy with allot of amperage as you are ascending into very fine energy, Kaduus. Hold your breath, eyeballs upwards, curl your tongue, press against the palate, think of pure spirit, exhale right down through, So that this very fine energy descends and not only adumbrates but permeates the energy all the way down like, light upon light, if you remember. 

Now, inhale right on through, now you now how to do it.

 Now inhale through both nostrils, and concentrate on the energy that rises in the middle channel of the spinal cord. Turn eyeballs upward, hold your breath. Now as you exhale the energy, pure spirit descends, passing from one chakra to next , but keeps on bifurcating right and left. Enter the lateral channels. Now once more, inhale through both nostrils and concentrate on the central channel. Hold the breath, and now if this very fine energy descends in the central channel and gets bifurcated right and left and descends.

OK, now just relax and breathe normally.

I hope that you feel you have enhanced the flow of these currents of energy. They also correspond to the transmission of energy, in fact it's electrical energy partly, along the three trunks of the spinal cord. I don't know if you know that the central nervous system is governed by a whole system of nerves which are centered, which well are related to a central trunk of nerves which is to be found within your spinal cord. And then right and left, you have 2 lateral channels, trunks, that govern the autonomic, no this is, not governs, functions, physical functions that we don't have to think of like breathing and so on, circulation of the blood, heart beat and so on, digestion. And there is some relationship, there's some connection there with the psyche. For example, the control of thoughts, the central nervous system, and then the unconscious autonomic nervous system, somehow, some relationships, between the two. And then there's the lateral nerves that's connecting the autonomic system with the central nervous system.

Now yoga is based upon the principal that there is no autonomic function that cannot be taken over by the conscious will. And consequently, that there is no mental, or lets say by the same token there is no mental function that cannot be taken over by the central nervous system. That includes of course, functions in the brain. The Hindus dissected bodies corpses and knew allot about in the early days about these nerve connections. Nothing like we know about today, of course. Now the principal that they're working with is this. Perhaps you are learning how to play the piano, or to type, or whatever, drive a car. First of all, you do movements that are intended, and therefore it involves your will, and therefore the activities of the central nervous system. Now somehow, that, how can I say, custom that you've set up, is going to be relayed to the autonomic nervous system, so eventually, you don't have to think of how you use your fingers or whatever, it is the autonomic nervous system takes over. You have trained the autonomic nervous system. I have told you by doing wazifas, we are training the unconscious. But the point is, that if you keep on, if you have, if a mistake keeps setting in, you will keep on repeating the same old mistake, because it's become automated. And therefore you have to redo that action which was automated consciously, and several times and then the autonomic nervous system will take it over and do it automatically without you having to think of it. So that what we are really enhancing is the connection between the, the autonomic nervous system and the central nervous system and that is the afferent and efferent nerves it's connected to. 

So the practices we are doing now are going to enhance that interaction between the autonomic nervous system and the central nervous system. So, this is the practice: 

If you think of your subtle body as a vortex, then the center of the vortex is a vacuum, so the center of your spinal cord, which will correspond to the trunk of the CNS, the main trunk, operates a kind of suction affect upon the, the periphery, and that's what the Tibetans called, say the wind is sucked into the center from the periphery. And the way to do it, is to imagine a flame in the center of the spinal cord. 

Now the opposite is true. That is, when you're exhaling, then you're bringing the energy down, which is probably called the quickening of the holy spirit. Which ascends through the fontanel and descends through the central channel and as I say keeps on being bifurcated left and right, so you are enhancing the control of the central nervous system over the autonomic nervous system. In the first place you are relaying information from the autonomic system to the central nervous system that takes over and controls the autonomic. So you see the practice that we do has definite consequences in terms of the configuration of our nerves. You know the circuits and also, think of the whole circuitry of the nerves as a hologram. It acts holistically and not just in terms of circuits. And so this is the practice:

 You see, if you draw energy, yes, first of all you have to understand that, I think it's easier to explain in terms of the electromagnetic field. I say, can you feel, Imagine that your body is like a magnet, and then can you feel the field around that magnet. I'm sure that at school you had a magnet, and you poured metal filings around the magnet and you found that it was configured in a certain shape which is the shape of that configuration of the field of that magnet. This is exactly what happened in our body, but you can actually feel it. And that will give you a sense of what your subtle body is. Now, the magnet is static, your body is dynamic. and so, It's not a static electric field, but, I mean magnetic field, but dynamic electric field, in which our currents of electricity and I don't know whether you know this law of Goes, who says that if you have your right hand and you have a magnetic coil, that whirls as your fingers go, therefore to the left, you would be enhancing the electric current in your thumb. So the relationship between the magnetism and electricity. 

 So, now if you are, if you, so your electromagnetic field and then there is the electromagnetic field of the planet. And of course your electromagnetic field is part of the electromagnetic field of the planet, but still it is like a vortex within the lake, which has its own kind of identity. And so, if you are sitting particularly if you are sitting cross-legged, then at the bottom of your spine, there is a threshold mode, which is called, moldadara chakra, the bottom of the spine, where the exchange between the 2 fields is particularly felt. That's why the yogis attach so much importance to the snake that is coiled or the 2 snakes that are coiled at the bottom of the spine called kundalini. And if you, while you are breathing in, consciously represent mentally to yourself the way that those snakes are going to coil upwards, if you awaken them, like in the Kadusayas then you will enhance the spiraling of this energy. So,

Right, so you are sitting cross-legged, and so you can feel what they call telluric energy, earth energy. And then the bottom pole, let's say of that magnet is your body. Now if you breathe in through the left nostril, that energy that impinges upon your body at the bottom of the spine is going to be drawn to your left. Breathing to the land . And the to spiral, and remember that energy is going to somehow keep on being sucked in by the vacuum in the center of your spinal cord, the center of the vortex, and so its going to spiral instead of going up straight. So its going to spiral in front of you and then toward your right and back and keep on like that, clockwise. Spiral, that means it is going ascend and at the same time turn. Now, then you hold the breath. And so that energy is now going to be directed in your pituchi's land. You've arrested the upward flow. And then as you exhale through the right nostril, that, well you are, since you have two poles, the bottom of the spine where the snakes are and then the top of the head, the fontanel, then you mention that's the opposite of tuluric energy now, that is very fine energy. We call it christening of the holy spirit, (that now), kaduus, that now spirals down, as you breathe through your right nostril. And if you can imagine that those two spiral staircases that crisscross then you realize that it does not, you do not descend on the same spiral staircase that you came up on. 

Now as you inhale thought the left nostril, then you spiral, you whorl, lets say, the energy, the teluric energy, the earth energy which is, impinges on the bottom of your spine, you whirl it anti-clockwise and eventually the flow is stopped by the fact that you stopped breathing through your right nostril, so it settles in the pituitary.. You hold your breath, and then you exhale it through the left nostril. So I am remind you that as you doing, you are inhaling through the right nostril you are ascending through the same staircase that you just went down on. And now you (inhale) you exhale through the left nostril. Pure energy or energy of pure spirit descends in a spiral anticlockwise on the same staircase that you ascended in the first place. You have two staircases that crisscross.

Now if you inhale through both nostrils, then you have 2 spirals as in the catacias that are going to crisscross in front of the 2nd chakra, behind the solar plexus, in front of the heart center, behind the throat center, which is called the atlas, incidentally, in front of the 3rd eye, and eventually meet in the pituitary gland which the Hindus call bindu. in the center of kontendu or the kon, sansara chakra. 

So you have 2 spirals that are spirals simply because the energy cannot rise and because that the peripheral brims, let's say, are being sucked into the center by being drawn upwards and transmuted as they move upwards. The effect upon the other systems, is extremely important, pertinent, because of course, the information in the autonomic nervous system is being fed into the central nervous system and reaches the brain. These are nerves, these are neurotransmitters, communicating this information, not just energy, but information, because the mind drives the wind. So it is moving in and up. And as you exhale, then through both nostrils, then the energy descends in the central nervous system and is relayed to the autonomic nervous system. I call it bifurcating, right and left, two spirals. Now the important moment is when the two spirals meet. And of course they meet not only at the bottom of the spine and at the top of the head, and the tuchri, but also at each chakra. And so you're awakening the activity of those chakras, correspond to the black sea of the autonomic nervous system, awakened, awakening that latent energy. So when one is doing something to one's body, awakening faculties that are not normally active.

OK, so lets do this now. Remember to turn your eyeballs upwards, as you, even as you are breathing in, actually, and curl your tongue, press against your palate, then particularly when you hold your breath, get your eyes, turn your eyes in horizontal position as you exhale and relax your tongue.

Yes, for the next step, we'll have to do the next section, but if its already anticipated, its because these currents act as a lift. Remember the words of the Tibetans, the adage, the mind drives the wind. So these currents called wind will have the effect of shifting your mode of thinking mode, from the gross mind, to the subtle mind, and then the very subtle mind and eventually beyond that into what is called the clear light of bliss.. 

And then you have the opposite, which is the impact of this higher realization upon the thinking at all the previous levels. I will have to do that after the break, I mean later on in the afternoon. OK, alright.

End of Tape

AUG 11, 1996		Tape 18

PVK Joshua Es Tape 18 8/11/96 Step to Realization

...the music that you didn't hear because there was so much conversation was Montiverdi, Magnificat out of the L'Eternier de la Bertie Verginea, which means the litanies to the blessed Virgin. That's the music of the great moments of the great achievements of our civilization in Venice. Palace of the dodgers. 

Now we have this morning, we're going to try and go through the steps leading to the realization that corresponds with, which is often identified with samadhi, but which I would call awakening beyond life. Or let us say, let us try to explore what we mean by transcendence instead of just saying transcendence. So in terms of our experience we've been trying to experience what the word "cosmic' means, and we've been trying to experience what it means turning within. Now we're going to try to explain, or to experience what is meant by transcendence, transcendental meditation. If you look at your dictionary, you'll find two words, transcendent and transcendental. What's the difference? Well look up your dictionary. Terms used in mathematics. So Maharishi was a mathematician. So use that word. Both are different expressions of going beyond. In yoga one calls it prart param, beyond the beyond. And I think that corresponds with what Pir-o-Murshid calls longing for the unattainable because it's always further. Murshid said, "The further you advance, the further the horizon advances". 

And so there are practical practices which you do with your body, let's say, breathing. They don't quite do it for you. But if they are done in conjunction with a shift in your sense of identity and a shift in your perspective, let's say, the focus of your consciousness, then of course they are affective. That's why the basis behind these are found in what I've already said, but I think it's important to repeat it again. That is basically you have, well I "m quoting the Buddhists, the Tibetan Buddhists. You have the gross body and the kind of thinking that corresponds with the gross body. In Sufism that's nazut and shagal, is the kind of thinking corresponding to the gross body. So that's the kind of simplistic thinking that we're all into. Like,"How do you feel? How do you feel about what that person did to you?". That's elementary. 

Then there is the subtle mind, the subtle body and the subtle mind. And what the Sufis say is that the mind rides the wind, like Bellerophon rides Pegasus. So if you shift your sense of bodiness to your subtle body, then you'll discover a different mode of thinking to the one that we've been assuming so far. Sufis call that subtle body arwah. And the kind of thinking that corresponds with it is at the level mithal. And that is reminiscent with the word mythology, if you want to remember the word Mithal. The world of metaphor. That's the world of creative imagination. So the gross mind is interpreting the experience of the environment. Whereas Mithal, the subtle mind is projecting creative thoughts upon the environment and transforming the environment by those creative thoughts. 

So creativity always starts by a kind insight or a kind of emotion that emerges from within and that takes shape. And therefore we have the wasifas, if you remember, halik which means creative imagination, and then musawwer which means fashioning so that what was pure realization becomes actually fashioned into a shape. That's why we're working with the face of our subtle body. And the way that we can fashion it not by trying to work on it's physical structure but simply by the attunement. So that's what we've done so far. 

Now we find that in order for our creativity to be really, how can I say, really effective, I mean you see there are levels. So to be a whole person, our creativity, you see if our creativity does not include the higher levels of our being, then it is of the domain of fantasy. And if you look at the works of art, if you are a connoisseur of music, you see right away that some composers are just casting their personal rubbish upon one in their music, or painting, or so on. So for $10,000 it's their own personal rubbish from their psyche. It's awful. But they fetch a high price because it is, it resonates with the rubbish of other people. So they see themselves in it. So it just depends upon, as I say, there is no accounting for taste. So it depends upon the kind of, what are the levels of your values, value system. According to Sufis, of course, for creativity to be sacred art rather than profane are, we need to include those higher levels of our being. What do you mean "higher levels of our being"? 

OK So let's not assume that there are higher levels of our beings. Let's try to experience it, right Shams? So as I said before, of course experience. We want experience. But experience is interpreted. And we limit our experience by interpretation of it. Therefore it's necessary to understand that that word "higher' is very deluding, deceiving. It's not higher. If we think it is higher, then we will do an astral travel and we'll start fainting. But there will be a break between our physical body and our subtle body. Then we'll go on a flight ,astral trip. I love that actually, just like hang gliding. But still that's not what we're about here. And also it makes a break in your, let's say, the constitution, let's say the underpinning. So let's say you're driving a car and all of a sudden you go into astral projection, you could have an accident. So we don't teach that here. There are schools that teach it. So perhaps we should not use the word higher. And that does affect our meditation. We tent to look up and think that the heavens are up there and the earth is down here. 

And it's true that psychologically we have this kind of geographical representation of levels. But let us say that space is only meaningful where matter is concerned. So that is the reason why these higher meditation are described in Buddhism as beyond space. It's not beyond space. It's beyond the, I think it's better to say this. It's like the Universe is a hologram. And you can have different perspectives of that hologram. So it's not like one is higher than the other. But it just depends upon your perspective. You can highlight a certain cross section of the hologram or then you can highlight another one. Then perhaps you can oscillate between the two. And perhaps then you can extrapolate between two or more. So that's theory. But I say that because there are some misleading ideas that we have when we are doing these meditations that might cause us to have a split in our personality. 

So far that's what we've been doing. We've found mithal, the subtle mind, the subtle way of thinking when we turned within. And our sense of bodiness was shifted into a sense of being a subtle body. And then we found that this subtle body is not within, but does not have a boundary. So it's just because of not having turned one's consciousness outside that we were able to sense something that is coming through us from, let's say the void of the vortex. Think of as a vortex that doesn't have a boundary. 

And now perhaps you noticed that there were two steps here, one inhaling, the other exhaling. That is first of all, if you remember, we ingest the environment, also psychological environment. And we have to make some selection between those psychological ingredients that we feel comfortable about incorporating into our psyche and those which we can't handle. That's what we said yesterday. And then there are several defense lines. And as you proceed deeper and deeper, you get more to the core of your being. And you realize that the peripheral areas of our psyche, there is a spill over with the environment. So that it's not quite you. So there's a spill over with the environment. That's why we're playing a role and wearing a mask. Whereas the inside, the further you go inside you discover who you really are. And that's why I said," What is your eternal face or your celestial face behind your physical face?". That's what you really are. And the core of your personality instead of the outer aspects of your idiosyncrasies. If you remember. And then when we, then somehow in the vortex, you know there is a void in the center of a vortex, so somehow all of this stuff that accrues to you from the environment and is incorporated in your psyche get's resorbed in the void. Therefore you hold your breath. And then it's not recycle exactly. I don't know how to say it. It's like a wave in the sea is not recycled. The whole sea emerges as each new wave. So as you exhale, that is when you are, you have to try to capture the new being that is emerging within you, within the old being. And really identify with it. And you find that it is accompanied by some kind of projections, for example your new face. So that your celestial face is not static. It's dynamic. It's continually changing. So the way you could be if you would be if you might be. So that's creativity, right? 

But now what I'm saying is that this creativity that starts to emerge from within gets completed by, enriched by your discovering your being at all levels. So the next step is identifying yourself with your very subtle body and then comes the very subtle mind that is matched with the very subtle body. So the very subtle body is what the Sufis call Malakut which is the angel, your celestial counterpart. And the mode of thinking corresponding to that is called Jabarut. We'll try and not define, we'll try to experience. So that was in preparation for that that yesterday I suggested that we grasp our celestial face, countenance rather than face. But now we can go into it more deeply. And just think of it as being modeled in the fabric of light. Whereas the subtle body would be a body of energy. But this body is a body of light. Your celestial countenance fashioned in the fabric of celestial light will eventually affect your aura of physical light. Fashioning, be careful, do not think that you can change it's configuration by your will. It will only respond to your emotional attunement and to your level of realization. 


But it's not a matter of your either imagining it or seeing it but identifying with it to the extent that you consider your body, first of all your subtle body then your physical body, as being, let's say the other way around. That you consider your celestial counterpart, call it matrix or whatever. You consider it as the template which configures your subtle body. And the subtle body is the template that configures your subtle body. So it depends if you want to identify with the outcome of the template which is the body, or if you want to identify with the template itself. Except that the word template is not quite correct. Because a template is generally a form. Whereas this is more like a code than a form. And also a template is static whereas this is dynamic. Therefore I use the word matrix. 

You know this morning we were talking about the root of a tree. But you know the reality of your body is your DNA. The body itself is a secondary result. But the reality behind it is your DNA, code. 

So that represents a different level of thinking than thinking in terms of forms and space. Think of form as the result of a reality that does not have a form. That is why Buddha calls this level beyond existence. And that means where space does not have any meaning at this level. But what happens at this level is translated in space in terms of form. 

So it's a level of thinking that is different from what we encountered when we turned within. Because if you remember when we turned within we were projecting thoughts and forms that were emerging into a form. And now we are letting that happen without concerning ourselves about it. And therefore Ibn Arabi says, "This is beyond imagination". Because imagination is always translating thought into a form, an image. 

So now you're beginning to realize your real being not only beyond physical substantiality of your participation in the bodiness of the cosmos, but beyond your form. So therefore the angel does not have a form. I'm talking about configuring or fashioning the fabric of non physical light, celestial light. Because I already mentioned the flowers photographed by Walter Chappel that don't have a contour, don't have a profile. So somehow that configuration is much more subtle than what we imagine form to be because we always imagine form to have a profile. So it's more like a kaleidoscope. There is a lot of configurations but not a form as such. 

I hope you're following me because I think it is important to pass from one echelon to the next in one's ascent rather than skipping the intermediary stages and just losing yourself in samadhi. That's what a lot of people do. And then you've lost your connection with the physical world. So what we are doing is trying to be very clear about each step. And then we're able to extrapolate between those levels instead of leaving one's body behind. 

So you can still be aware of your physical body, but it is an outcome, it's a secondary effect. It's not the reality of your being. It's the way that the reality of your being imprints the fabric the galaxies have offered you in your bodiness. So can you imagine yourself to be a being without body although somehow connected with the body? Or let's say imprinting the body. And if you could think of yourself as not having a form although the reality of your being does manifest as a form. That form is, as I say, an outcome. 

So this is not imagination. That's why Ibn Arabi says it's not imagination. Because imagination is, as I say, the way that a thought is expressed as a form. Now I hope you're following me because it's getting very, very important now. It's coming through now. This morning I spoke about the samsaric matrix of our being. And then the other matrixes that affect the samsaric matrix. So you mustn't think that they are independent. They are all connected. So that your creative thoughts will trigger off a state of mutation, the force of mutation, to bypass the recycling of your being. otherwise you'll continue being what you are. You won't progress. 

Now as I said before, the thing about Sufism is that one is always seeing things from two polar vantage points simultaneously, the personal and the divine. otherwise one is caught up in one's personal samsaric being and simply recycles. So that's that other element, like the way the sun affects the earth and the galaxies affect the sun and so on. So the way that you can really grasp this is to be found in that formula of Ibn Arabi that says, "I know myself through the knowledge that God has of Himself through me". So you have those two vantage points, the personal and the divine. I know myself but I can't know myself just by my knowledge of myself. So I have to let the divine action or the divine vision in me adumbrate my personal image of myself so that I can see myself as I would be seen if God were contemplating me. But more so because God is contemplating Himself as me. He is not contemplating me. I am the mirror in which He/She is able to discover His/Herself.

So if you can follow this, then the next step is that God discovers Him/Herself, and that very expression of Him/Herself through which He reveals Him/Herself to us. I know that's difficult to follow. But we are establishing a connection between ourselves and God. It's not just theoretical. It's experience. 

It can actually, you see, one would really have to already foresee the next step in order to understand this step. And that is, as I said, you can only know the exemplar, I mean you can only know the archetype through the exemplar. You can only know rosehood through roses, or roundness through round objects, or peacefulness through peaceful people. So somehow we do have an ability to, I'm thinking of a Sufi word "tawil' which means to go from, to move in our thinking from the exemplar to the archetype. We call it tawil. For example, working with wasifas, say compassion, I think of compassionate people. I don't have much compassion. I'd like to have more compassion. So that is the exemplar. But somehow that's the way that an archetype comes through the exemplar is exemplified by an example. An exemplar. So somehow that archetype is inherent in that exemplar. And our mind is always able to imagine something more infinite or more perfect than it has imagined so far. That's a word of Poincare, Henri Poincare, a mathematician. Somehow we start with the thought, " I love this person who is so compassionate". Actually that person is really the donkey that is carrying that compassion. So it's that compassion that I love. I think that I love that person. But it's that quality that is a divine quality. So somehow through that exemplar you are reaching to the archetype. And therefore ultimately you are seeing things from the divine point of view although at first it doesn't seem possible. 

And as I say, that's really the next step. And that's called, well I'm skipping still another step, but a much further step which is called "lahut' but we'll be reaching it later on. So mithal, creativity, to incorporate all levels of our being instead of just being our personal fantasies. We need to proceed with our thinking from thinking in terms of exemplars to thinking in terms of archetypes. So that's the thinking of the very subtle mind instead of the subtle mind. 

That is somehow the divine viewpoint, is subsumed within our viewpoint. And we can awaken it. It is virtual. It's latent. We can awaken it. And we can never say that we see things from the divine point of view because it's like the horizon. It always recedes. But, as I say, it's some kind of a capacity that we have to reach beyond our limitation. In our thinking also, reach beyond the limitation of our thinking. 

So I'll come back to the formula of Ibn Arabi, " I know myself through the knowledge that God has of Him/Herself through me". That is imagine that the qualities in my personality are examples or exemplifications of divine qualities and that God is seeing how those archetypal qualities are actuated, that is what are the possibilities within those archetypes which otherwise He/She would just be contemplating these archetypes without knowing what can be the consequence of those archetypes if they were actuated in existence. So the knowledge that God acquires through us accrues to the knowledge God has in His original state. So there are two modes of knowledge that are ascribed to God. Is that difficult to follow? Does that make sense? This is Sufism. 

So you see it's very different, It's very subtle of course. It's very different from just, they call it in French Brule les estates, that is not considering the intermediary steps. That's reaching up, and then you lose yourself. At this stage then, one must always instead of thinking I am being seen by God, my sight is subsumed within the divine sight. But if I limit myself to my sight, my vantage point, then that possibility never materializes. Therefore it is the realization, let's say the intuition that there is a vantage point other than my vantage point which I call the antipodal vantage point which helps me to free myself from the limitation of my vantage point. So I say that again. At the malakut level, angelic levels, celestial sphere, if I identify myself with the celestial counterpart of my being instead of my subtle body, and therefore my aura, but not my physical aura but my celestial aura, that's the very subtle body, then I discover something about myself that I could not ever discover if I were assuming that I were my physical body, identifying with my physical body or my subtle body. But now my view is not just my view. It is really the way in which the divine view begins to manifest in my view. 

And so my angelic countenance, although it's not a form, serves as a mirror in which God sees how His/Her qualities get configured into faces, into countenances, into figures, into forms. And those forms that become, how can I say, adamant or become crystallized or become gelled at that level are signs, that is indications of what is behind of the reality that has no form. So God reveals His qualities, archetypal qualities by means of forms, if we are perceiving forms, then consider those forms as signs, indications, clues, then you find those signs in your own idiosyncrasies in your nature there are also signs. That gives you clues of the divine nature coming through you. Then at a certain point you discover your angelic nature... (tape turns)..is where God can disclose to us His being in a much more wonderful way than could ever be disclosed in the forms of the world or in the forms of our subtle bodies. And the consequence is not just in terms of realization, but in terms of emotion. The divine emotion at the discovery of His/Her sublime, sublimity is not an English word but I'll say it in French sublime. The discovery of the sublime as it starts manifesting on it's way down on the way to more and more concrete forms as beauty and majesty. 

So you see that we are not just turning upwards. We are looking down from upwards instead of just trying to reach upwards. Then anyway, as I say, those terms are misleading. 

So the first stage is I know myself through the knowledge that God has of Himself through me. And the next stage is I know God through the knowledge that God has of Himself of the knowledge that I have of Him. That's even more difficult. It's a mirroring effect. So first I know myself through the knowledge that God has of himself through me. Then I know God through the knowledge that God acquires through the knowledge that I have of God. And the knowledge that I have of God is due to the fact that I can always reach beyond the exemplar into the archetypes. 

So this kind of thinking and the matching emotion has the effect of, I'm trying to avoid the word elevating our soul you see, but I don't want to fall into cliches again. What Murshid says is, he says two things. I think the most important one is, "One is able to loosen the ties at the physical ties at the physical level". That is that they become less constraining to one. So one finds a kind of freedom to let's say the addiction to the underpinning of one's life. The other one is that one is able to see how those ties work. And it is that which loosens them of course. One is able to see how one's addiction was due to the fact that one was not able to look at them objectively. That one is caught up in them. So that's exactly what Buddhism is saying. 

What is more now, and that represents the next step, is that one discovers one's deathlessness because one does not only overcome the sense of space, form is always associated with space, but one also overcomes the sense of the process of becoming, of the passage of time and the causality that goes with it. And so as Buddha says, "It is only that which is subject to birth that is subject to death". So that one discovers a level of one's being that is not subjected to birth or death because it's a deathless state. And that does not mean that the past continues to live. One has overcome any sense of the past or the future. That's the meaning of the wasifia Ya Sarmad, the eternal. 

Now this is the level called Jabarut, beyond malakut, beyond the angelic state. And what the Sufis say is,"Now God becomes known without the mediumship of the clues". The clues are the forms of the world, idiosyncrasies of our being. These are clues through which something of the divine nature is conveyed. Now the need for those clues has been overcome. So it's beyond the wasifas. That's where the zikre comes in. 

So I know God not through the knowledge that God has of Himself through me but through the knowledge that God has of Himself through Himself without those devices. That means beyond qualities. That means beyond what we are doing with wasifas. 

And so what one discovers is that there is an inherent knowledge which is the same knowledge that God has of Himself which is not founded upon experience. So experience was the support system, the Pegasus that helped to free you from the trap of your vantage point. And then you realized that God was manifesting Himself through devices, as qualities, archetypes being devices. But the reality of God is beyond the multiplicity of qualities. We call it the divine essence dhat instead of sifat. 

So that behind our perfunctory thinking there is the divine thinking that is buried in our thinking. And when we pass through the dark night of understanding, so that we devalidate our personal thinking, then of course the divine thinking comes through. And as a matter of fact, Newton said that once. He said, "I think as God thinks". And that is right. If a physicist has any sense of the thinking behind the Universe, because that's what physics is about, it's because our thinking is of the same nature as the divine thinking except that it has been blurred by the way that we customize that thinking into our own personal vantage point. If we are able to overcome that, then the divine thinking comes through. And with it the divine power and the divine emotion. 

So the Buddhists call this beyond consciousness. And as Pir-o-Murshid says, "Intelligence becomes consciousness when it's faced with an object. But when consciousness has been deprived of an object, it returns to it's ground which is intelligence". 

So we're speaking now about the level of knowing, the ultimate level of knowing, Jabarut. So you would have thought that there's nothing higher. There is. Because the next level, lahut, is the level of the seeds of existence. Lahut, the sifat, the qualities, the archetypes are the seeds. That corresponds to what the Hindus call "sabijat', the seeds. Of course there is still multiplicity there. So those are the let's say, the treasures. The Sufis say treasures. Actually it's a word used in the Quran, the treasure house. Then there are tenuities. You know the word tenuities? That is fine connections, between these treasuries and their exemplification in the world. That means that nothing in the world exists except that it is connected with it's hidden treasure in the treasury. And the angels form a ladder between these two. That's a word of Ibn Arabi. 

So this is a level at which the programming of the world is being devised. And that's why the Sufis say that you can be invited to the court of the king, or the unc, where the strategy is being worked out. But only if you are a trustworthy person and you're up to that level of thinking, you are invited to participate in "unc' that means the intimacy of the court of the king, privy, let's say, to the divine intention. It's only beyond that that you can reach into the unity which is Hahut, which is beyond thinking. So thinking stopped at Jabarut. Beyond this is reality beyond thinking. And perhaps one could say ultimately the divine presence without regard for any of the devices whereby God becomes manifest to Him/Herself and to us by the same token. 

I must apologize that I went beyond the time but it would have been bad to cut it short before we completed the whole picture. These are the steps. There is a word of the wonderful scientist called Kasipski who said, "The map is not the territory". So if you know the steps, it's helpful. Then you have to do it. You'll discover territories much richer than the map could ever tell you. But this is Sufism. And you see that it's parallel with Buddhism and parallel with Hinduism. That's why Pir-o-Murshid opened our souls to the vastness of all religions. Perhaps I shouldn't say this is Sufism because that's just a language. But it's beyond any kind of ism. It's the reality. OK God bless you now. Tape ends

Joshua 8/11/96 PVK ES Tape 20 Zikr

Yes that was a wonderful Indian singer Jalotta. I think you can get that tape through Mikial at the Abode. 

Yes the Zikr. The practice of the Zikr includes all those things that we have gone through in the course of these few days, and in fact in the course of the whole past. So what I suggest is that we do it. And then in the course of doing it, I'll draw your attention to the aspects that make it much more meaningful. 

As you know first of all one, let us say this, if you want to attain samadhi, you have to sit still. But if you want to awaken in life, then your body has to participate in your experience. That's hence the motion of the body which corresponds to the kind of consciousness that you are moving into. Because you are moving from one state of consciousness to the other. So it starts with the circular motion of the body. As you know your head turns first towards the left shoulder then the left knee, then the right knee and right shoulder. And then there is the, so that is 'La'. La, a half a circle. Then the 'allaha' is from the right shoulder upwards. 

Now that of course corresponds with what we've been learning of the cosmic dimension. So let's say the boundary between yourself and the Universe gets petered out and so consequently you discover the enormous immensity of your being, the cosmic dimension of your being which dovetails with the range of the whole Universe. What they sometimes say is that one loses one's individual self in the vastness of the totality. And I would say that one finds one's real identity by incorporating all the dimensions of one's being. 

The word 'la' means no. And so it is true that one has to start by negating false assumptions. That is the assumption of what one thinks one is or the assumption if what one thinks the world is. So that is exactly the meaning of the word 'Maya'. I, what I do myself, and I picked this up from Jelaluddin Rumi, is how one's body is part of the galaxies. So I always think of this quotation of Rumi where he says, "The galaxies and the atoms are whirling and we are part of that whirling in the ecstasy of the dance". Then he says," It is all God whirling around himself". Somehow this vision of the galaxies helps us to reach out from the limitation of who we think we are through the body because that's, our body is made of star dust, of the that started breaking through as the big bang. Our  bodies are as old as the big bang. 

I've done this, the ziker by night looking into the stars then doing it. In fact doing it with the eyes open. And of course it is a very extraordinary feeling because you are whirling. And you can imagine all the galaxies and planets whirling. Or you can see that vision of Jelaluddin Rumi. How you are part of that whole dance, the cosmic dance. It's a very strange thought. All kinds of strange thoughts come through. Like, "I think I'm sitting on the planet earth?". But then, "Why do I think planet earth is under me. Maybe I'm under the planet earth". Strange thoughts. It's, I know there are all kinds of explanations, gravity pull and so on. A strange kind of feeling, "How is it I'm sitting on planet earth. But then I am part of planet earth. What does 'I' mean in all this?". You know these kind of thoughts that are totally incongruous . But then realization of meaningfulness is always beyond logic. And also there is the ecstasy of the dance and the ecstasy of the vastness. And then well then it's a kind of intoxication. You can imagine what dervishes getting intoxicated just doing the first part of the ziker. 

So your, it's not only your consciousness that expands but your whole notion of yourself mainly at the existential level. It's only when the head moves from the right shoulder upwards that you include your participation in all the spheres. And up to that present you have not yet really got into the counterpart of your being corresponding to those spheres. You're just into those spheres. Understand what I mean? Because for each of those spheres there is a counterpart in us that corresponds. Like our body corresponds to the physical sphere. So there is a counterpart. So here you're just thinking of the spheres of pure energy, and then the spheres of pure light, and then the different spheres of light, then reaching to the angelic, celestial spheres, and then beyond the celestial spheres to the realm of pure intelligence, then beyond that the divine programming, and beyond that the oneness. 

So as one's head reaches the summit, the zenith, that is where you touch upon the apex, the unity. So this has got to be done very slowly. And what I'm suggesting is doing the fikre of the Zikr which is you do this as you exhale. So some Sufis say that this is already fana, the annihilation of yourself. No it is the annihilation of your notion of yourself, not annihilation of yourself. Now, as you know, when you are making a, like you have a centrifuge, you're making a circle of motion, then you're releasing two forces, centripedal and centrifugal. So centrifugal forces that tend to scatter, and at the same time forces that tend toward the center. One circumambulates a temple because by turning around it it reinforces the sense of the center. So when you are in the most precarious condition where your head is turned upwards, that's when you feel a pull of your solar plexus. If you think of yourself as a vortex, then you must really experience that pull you see. There is a pull. And it's the pull of the void. Because we've already encountered that in our meditations, the way that everything is resorbed in the void and then there is a new life, right? 

So once more one thinks "la illaha illa". "illa" means except. Well once more one thinks that one is being annihilated. In fact that is so strong that one thinks, well I've seen dervishes collapse totally on the ground when they say "illa", totally fana, annihilated. But as Ibn Arabi says, you can't be annihilated anyway, even if you wanted to. So it's just your assumption of being what you are. Now on the Thursday which is I think in the course of the retreat, I think it is, I'd like us to do that practice. But you can do it any time. I used to do it when I was younger. I wouldn't trust myself to do it now. And that is that one turns 360 degrees as one says,"La ilaha". Then as one says "illa" then one collapses on the ground. 'illa. And then one pulls oneself up as one says, " 'llah". So it's a very dramatic experience to be annihilated to that degree. So you would thing that all the bad things get away when I collapse like that. And that only the good things come up when I stand up again. Because at that time you are glorifying. And so you are calling the most excellent qualities in your being when you say " 'llah" in the act of glorification because you're projecting these qualities and ascribing them to God. Then when you say, "Hu", then you feel the divine presence in your heart. 

OK so "illa" is done when one inhales. And if you say it aloud then it's somewhere between "ill" and "elle". And it's the sound of a crystal. It's not the sound of a gong. It's the sound of a crystal or even a crystal glass for example that you strike. I've never really been able to produce the kind of sound that I've heard from the dervishes, " illa, illa". I don't know now to say it. The way I'm doing it is too strident. But it's reaching into the solar plexus which is the access to the void. So it's like opening that door into the void. But of course I was forcing myself and doing it with the ego and not, it's the whole being of God that shatters you and then rebirths you again. So it's a very, very deep experience. Maybe if I'm saying this it's just your notion of yourself. It's all those qualities of your being and your personality are disrupted, disintegrated, and then built up again maybe in a new way, not recycled, but in a new way. That's the whole idea. 

I don't know whether you know in nature there is a kind of what one thinks is a flower. And it's insects that form into a kind of a clump, conglomeration that looks like a flower. And if you blow on it, they all fly away. But if you wait a little bit then they all come back and there is the flower again. But what we don't know is if it's exactly the same insects that come exactly in the same place that they were, or even if it has the same configuration as previously. I would like to find out more about that. So in the case of the Zikr I would say that you're not annihilated but let's say that the particular chemistry of your idiosyncrasies is disrupted so that it may be replaced hopefully by a better one. It's your chance of changing in a dramatic way. And you have to yourself will it and that is when you say "La". 

Now perhaps you know that there is a hiatus between "illa 'llah". The first 'a' of 'llah you don't say. The reason is, well there are grammatical reasons of course. If there are two 'a's' ou say the first 'a' and you don't say the second 'a'. But a deeper reasons than that is because that is the first 'a' of ' 'llah' is the void. The way that reality is emerging from the void, ex nilo, out of nothing. So that's why you say "La ilaha illa 'llah". Two l's "illa 'llah". If you say illa allah it's flat, nothing, it's flat. Illa 'llah. It's difficult to say. I've spent weeks and weeks trying to get it together in my retreats. It's worth while trying that. It's easier when you think, "illa", you're opening the door into the void, al ama, the void. And then, that's the first "i" of "illa", opening the door. And the two 'l's', there are two 'l's' that's right. They represent that whole process that is taking place in the void that you don't know what's happening there. 

You know some physicists have described this and say for example, "Imagine that you have flying fish and you only know what they are doing above the water, the velocity and so forth. But you don't know what happens under the water". That's like, you don't know what's happening in that depth. A process is taking place subliminal. So with the two 'l's'. So " 'llah". And then the emergence of a new dispensation. And that is very important in Islam, what they call the recurring birth with each breath. That is something that I haven't seen anywhere that we find in Sufism. That instead of being the continuation of the past, at every breath there is a chance of a total break form the past. A totally new dispensation. That's the ultimate resort to freedom from conditioning as I said this morning. That's important to think that " 'llah", something is emerging now, a new dispensation of light of sound and qualities in my personality and so on. There is a break, like opening a new chapter, turning a new leaf. 

And the thing to do now is that of course you are now, the thing that makes you recreated is your glorification. And unless you do glorify, you will continue to be what you were before. Let's say the possibility of a new birth will be still born. And that's what happens all the time with most people. That's what I said this morning, it's recycling all the time. Twenty thousand monkeys is no more than twenty monkeys.

So there is a, how can I say, a tip here. That is capture the new birth as it emerges. That is through your awareness, capture it. It's quick. And you really have to capture it, like, "Something happened to me now". It's like just waiting for the crocuses to break through the snow in January. It's too late if you wait . Later on it's too late. You've already been formed and you have to wait for the next breath. And as I have already pointed out, it is your, the thing that makes for creativity, is looking to what you could be and at the same time freeing yourself from the way you were before. So freeing yourself from your previous identity. It happens in one second. But of course if you keep on saying it, you get used to that thought, "illa 'llah". 

Now as I said to be really creative, that is to reach out of the samsaric wheel, the viscous circle, as they call it, on a tangent, then you really have to not just project how you could be, but include in that projection all the levels of your being. That is why by glorifying, you become cognizant of the nature of the higher levels of your being. As I said before, in order to glorify God, you are awakening qualities in you when you then, how can I say, you are proceeding in what I called tawil this morning. It's the ability to reach from the exemplar of a quality to the archetype of a quality. You project upon God. You imagine God is perfect wisdom, perfect beauty, perfect majesty, perfect truth and so on. 

Somehow, by that act of glorification you are reborn, or rather God is reborn as you. And that is the formula in Islam which most Muslims don't even know about. They call it (allah makluk fil ita carat) yes. God created through your glorification. God created as you through your glorification. That is at the core of Sufism. Instead of I am created, God created as you through your glorification. 

So that of course there is no doubt that the Zikr is really the quintessence of the Muslim prayer. There is no doubt about it. There is a prostration in which the false ego is annihilated, well is dispersed. I don't know the word annihilated. I want to remind you. This is very important what Murshid teaches about the ego. And that is what we call our ego or other persons ego is a fraction of their total being, in fact what Murshid calls the divine ego. So they are not, we are not enlisting all faculties of our being in our defense system. That's why I say that it's the notion of ourselves that's annihilated because it's only part of ourselves. It's not really an ideal. It's part of ourselves is not considered any more to be ourselves. We don't identify with that part of ourselves. So that notion is eliminated. And consequently all the richness of our being can come through. Because if we identify with only a part of our being, then it can't come through. 

And consequently really, if you say the Zikr is a combination of the practices with the wazifa, wasiaf, because in fact when you're saying "la", you could incorporate all the qualities that you are cognizant with by repeating the different wasifas, by the practice of the wazifa you become, you have a sense of what these qualities are. And in the act of glorification, as I say,you are awakening these qualities in you. Although you are not supposed to do wazifa when you are doing the Zikr, you could think of certain qualities that you are working with and that emerge from the unknown, ex nilo, and project upon those qualities God. For example, at that moment as you say "la" think God is most compassionate or God is great, or God is whatever, truthful, or beautiful, or whatever qualities you are working with. And in so doing you are awakening those qualities in yourself. 


Now to do the Zikr well, then you should know what those levels are which I tried to describe earlier on this morning. Of course just knowing the words won't do it for you. As I say, the map is not the territory. But still it is when you turn within, that's where the creativity of your being is triggered off. But then you complete it, let's say, with the reality of other levels of your being, all the levels of your being which eventually get incorporated in your creativity. 

So if you remember then, the next level, well perhaps you remember that these levels are always twins. Let's say there is always the body, or the subtle body or whatever, and the way of thinking corresponding with that body. So the subtle body arwah, as you turn with in. As you turn within "illa", you identify with your subtle body instead of identifying with your physical body. When you say "La illaha", still think of your physical body as part of the galaxies. When you say "illa" you turn within. And that's when you identify with your subtle body. And the way of thinking when you identify with your subtle body is creative thinking, halik, creative imagination. And now as your head rises, it is the thought of the heavenly spheres that shifts your consciousness from turning within to turning upwards, if one might say it that way. And of course it corresponds with the head moving upwards. 

So as I said, this geographical representation is effective because that's the way you think. But of course the heavens are not up there. But still one uses that word, "I'm being elevated". But do not think that your celestial being is up there somewhere. At that level, as I said, space doesn't have any significance. So you can't say it's embedded in your body because it's not something that is spatial, well space like. But never the less as we already said, the extra samsaric matrix is kind of latent within the samsaric. So you're awakening it. 

So that is where your praise, your glorification is going to create a kind of disposition in you to find some kind of affinity with what one imagines angelic beings to be like. And here there are a few secrets. That is that it is as Mother Theresa of Avila says, "The fine core of your being that is immaculate". So it is present within it's distortion, like the voice of Caruso but it is immaculate. That means it cannot be in any way tarnished by whatever your guilt or whatever your feelings. But it can be covered up like light under a bushel. So that is not active. It's recessive. But you can awaken it. But you can only awaken it by enlisting the appropriate emotional attunements. And one is of course, makes life very difficult in the world because one is defenseless like a child. You can't use your ego to protect yourself if you're being humiliated. You're defenseless. That's true of a baby. Children start developing their ego, but at a very early age the child is totally... It's the child in us actually that is still there. And the other thing is that it is, the thing about the angels is that they don't have judgment. They only see beauty. They can't understand that there should be evil. Like a baby doesn't understand that there could be evil. So defenseless and immaculate and innocent. 

The kind of emotional attunement that develops amongst people who are glorifying. And you find that in the music. For example, some of the church music is very clear in expression of the beauty, beauty where there is no room for ugliness. So the important thing is to realize that that is still there in you even though one might have lost sight of it and that you can awaken it. 

But by your, I say glorification, I think maybe the first level of glorification is maybe enthusiasm. One might use the word bewondering. That's what happens to physicists when they are bewondered. It's not just they think it's very intelligent the way things are planned. But they are bewondered by the very beauty of even the mathematical formula behind the laws of the Universe. There is beauty in it. So it's kind of aesthetic sense of beauty which you find amongst children who are just fascinated by flowers and butterflies and lovely books about angels and fairies and things like that. The whole different kind of level than the gross decadent kind of world we live in. So it's believing in the sublime. Then we doubt it because of our experience in the world we have to defend ourselves. If we would continue to be like children, then people would be walking on lacerated bodies. Take advantage of one as people use children, taking advantage of their innocence. We have to develop that defensive that faculty as we get adult. But the important thing is to be able to still maintain that innocence at the depths of your being while at the same time becoming an adult, being able to fare for yourself in life. 

So as I say we are many tiered beings. And it's like as I say the voice of Caruso. It's present within its distortion. It's there and can be called upon. And the Zikr is a wonderful way of calling upon it because one keeps on doing it you see. And you reinforce, each repetition reinforces. You find that attunement by each breath you see? Of course then one would have to know the levels beyond the celestial level. I've tried to describe them. But of course there is a way of describing them, as we said, Jabarut which is the way of thinking at the level of the angel, is one sees the divine intention. There is a word of Surawhardi who says, "The real Sahid", that means the witness in your being, "is your angelic being". So imagine that it's not your psyche that passes judgment, that is the subject judging objective reality is considered to be objective, but it is your angelic being that is the judge. Of course it's not quite right. He didn't say the judge, Sahid, that means the witness. That is you are witnessing, you're participating in the divine witnessing whereby God discovers Him/Herself in the mirror of you, that you represent. So can you imagine it's not the judgment as I said? Because if you read Pir o Murshid's texts, you'll find that he says, well it's a legend of course. He says, "At the time of death there are two angels that come. One who judges you according to the good and one who judges you according to the bad". But the same angel doesn't have the faculty of discriminating between the two. So can you imagine how, well imagine an angelic being to be extremely sensitive to beauty and very deeply wounded by ugliness? So it's a mature person who is able to overcome that wound. But an angelic being is defenseless and has no discrimination. 

So what would be the witnessing of the angel? It would be a very fine kind of assessment of the kind of attunement of people. Like when you become, as you evolve spiritually, you become very sensitive to the attunement of people. It's not being judgmental, but they wound you. Very sensitive. One could easily become judgmental and say, "This person is very gross and I don't like it" and so on. It's very difficult to avoid doing that. The best way is to say one becomes so enthused at the encounter of beauty in a person that I think that that is really the meaning of love. It's not unconditional love of course. But it's being very deeply moved by beauty of the soul of a person.

Those are typical attitudes of the angel. So that is why an angelic being is only happy for example in a church when listening to a mass or beautiful music and feels very very out of sorts in the gross world, very difficult to living in the gross world. 

So of course what is required of us is to be able to extrapolate between that aspect of ourselves and then the mature being. The angel becomes a master. How are you able to extrapolate between those two aspects of yourself without damaging one or the other? That we find later when we say the HUe. 

But as I say, if you proceed beyond, if you're able to reach beyond that rather fascinating attunement of the angel. You know there are a lot of words of Murshid where he says how one is drawn by the angelic beings and one is only happy in the attunement of the angelic beings, that is a sign of a certain makum, a certain station that one encounters in one's progress. So that is so fascinating that it is really difficult to imagine that one can reach beyond that. But the Zikr does lead you into the divine unity, Ahad. So I would say that one passes from one attunement to another. We call them levels or spheres, but they are really attunements. And that the threshold between these attunements or makum, is what Nafari calls a stage of waiting. Because one can't achieve it oneself. So one is inviting the divine action upon one. 

So in your thinking, there is that shift in your thinking from acquiring understanding to being revealed meaning. It's in your thinking, "I cease to try and understand". You've gone through the depth of the dark night of the mind. Only then when you have really ceased to try to understand meaningfulness, to understand life, but of course the more intelligent you are, I mean the more realized you are the more you realize how totally incongruous life is. I mean it's just not logical at all. It doesn't fit into one's logic. So when one tries to understand with one's mind then there is not way. So it's just at that moment that one begins to realize that God is trying to reveal His/Her intention. 

Now I realize that I'm speaking a language that, after all what we said last night, we say, "After all what do you mean by God?". And because we project upon God what we would like God to be. So we have to be very careful. "God told me to do this. And God told me to do that", you know. There are people who say, "God told me to kill this person". So you have to be very careful. 

But metaphysically it is the action of the universe upon each part of itself instead of the action of each part upon the Universe. So it's easier if you use the word Universe instead of God because if you use the word God then you have preconceptions. But if you say the Universe then it's something that you don't project qualities upon the Universe. 

So you remember the questions that I asked the first day. That was the day before yesterday. First of all, do you think that the Universe if a being? And do you think that the cosmos is a body of that being? And the second question is do you think that that being is conscious, aware? And of course all that we are doing now is the way that the Universe is conscious of itself through us and conscious of itself beyond us. And does our knowledge of that being, of the cosmos, the Universe, contribute to the knowledge the Universe has of itself? And our knowledge of the Universe can only be due to the fact that the Universe is discovering itself through us. You have the whole of Sufism there using a totally different language to the traditional language. And it's much easier to follow because of the connotations of the word God which are jaded, hackneyed. 

OK So now you're shifting, that's Jabarut, you're shifting from trying to understand to a passive mode. And at first you think it is God revealing Him/Herself or His Her intention. But if you are doing that, then you're still in a state of duality. God revealing to me. Until you realize that your consciousness is the divine consciousness that has been followed down. So you're beginning to understand the unity behind multiplicity and behind duality. And that is the ultimate affirmation of the Zikr is the unity. It's all one. That's what it says. Ahad. It's all one. The same as the Jewish call Ahad, it's all one. So that is like, you know you can't grasp it, but you are being pulled into that consciousness of oneness. You can't grasp it. It has an overwhelming effect upon you if you are prepared to let go of your sense of your individuality, the ultimate hurtle. 

So the last 'a' of " 'llah" is the level of the Lahut which is the, as we call it the archetypes behind the exemplars. And then you have the 'h' at the end of ' 'llah' which represents the unity behind the multiplicity. There is a word of Ibn Arabi who said, "If the names disappeared, the named one would appear". So the wazifa still keeps you into the level of multiplicity. And the Zikr tries to draw you into the realization of unity. 

That's where you see multiplicity is the devices through which God makes Him/Herself known to Him/Herself and to those to whom He makes Himself known. Whereas these devices are only devices. The reality behind that is one. And that's why Pir o Murshid says, the last word he said before he died, or before he passed away was, "When the unreality of life scatters, disappears, then the reality of life pushes against my heart". That's the ultimate realization of unity behind multiplicity. 

Now there are a few examples of that. otherwise it sounds too much like metaphysics. If you are in a very high state and you're walking in the street, then you see that it's like a very different. It's like an ant nest. So you see the ant nest instead of the ants. That's where you're beginning to grasp unity behind multiplicity. And what is more reality behind the devices. 

So the 'h' of ' 'llah' is the same 'h' that is the ultimate name of God in the Jewish tradition. I don't know whether you know that letter "h" which is the ultimate name of God was not supposed to be revealed. It was only the high priest who was supposed to know if. And gradually it got known. The 'h' in Jehovah. This is very interesting because Jehovah is Ya Hu. And Ya is the call to the angel. And beyond the angel, the ultimate reality. And then Hu, the way that reality manifests in existence. 

So the 'h', when you think 'h' "illa 'llah", you just think of that 'h'. You don't have to say it that distinctively but still you think it. And then you mustn't really make a break between the 'h' and the Hue to keep the continuity there, " 'llah hu". Then you get that sense of the apex. The 'h' is the apex. Then you bring it down into your heart. That's' why when you're saying the Zikr, you say the Hue, you turn your head towards your heart instead of keeping it up. 

I used to that , in fact I was doing that in Ajmere at night time. And there was this wonderful, it was an extraordinary story. I was so moved because while I was doing the Zikr, there was a musician sitting there in the hallway, singing and accompanying himself with the vina, which is very rare. Pir o Murshid used to do that. But they don't have a vina to accompany them. His voice was like the voice of Murshid. I was so overwhelmed that I didn't even dare look at him. This presence came into my Zikr. And then I did look. And somehow, maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed to assume the face of Murshid. I couldn't believe it. You know what happened when I looked at him he stood up and came towards me. And he said, "I have a message from your father. You should not turn your head upwards when you're saying the Hu. You should turn it towards your heart". So that's first hand information. Because if you turn you head upwards then you're in samadhi. And the whole purpose of the Zikr is tawhid which means seeing God in all things. It's awakening in life. So that was the story of the Zikr. End tape

 Joshua Retreat PVK 8/13/96 Shaghal

...they become extremely sensitive of course. And the consequence is that a kind of realization flashes upon you impromptu, suddenly, unaccountably. So this is exactly what we've been talking about. Not the kind of knowledge that you acquire by experience and which is of the nature of that which is conditioned. But something that, as I say, is unaccountable for, and which seems to carry a message, like a warning about a certain person, or insight into a certain situation that you hadn't thought of and you hadn't seen. And sometimes this intuition is communicated to you in a dream like fashion, in a state of what one might call revere. I think you would say also sometimes in a dream. So that since it cannot be a knowledge that our understanding can grasp, it has to be presented to us in a cryptic way through an image. That's why Jung interprets the images of dreams in the scenarios so as to try and make sense of them. 

Now of course we would like to make sure that it's not wishful thinking. And there have been quite of few cases of people in the Sufi Order who have been fantasizing and say they've had this intuition of this or that or the other thing and it might in some cases even be wishful thinking. So it's not some, some people are naturally inclined toward being a psychic. So it's not something that you can simply sort out with your mind. So as I said, the practice of Shaghal makes you very sensitive so that you can pick up these intuitions. 

They also manifest in the form of sound. And one may interpret as sound. Like for example the prophets of the desert would hear the blowing of the wind. And they would interpret it as the voice of God. And it's well possible that the whole, how can I say, harmony of the spheres is materialized, is made concrete, concretized in situations that seem to be purely accidental. For example, my great grand uncle was a dervish living in an island in the middle of a river in Lahore. And people used to come to him and he used to read their fortune by watching the waves of the water, the way that the configuration of the waves. So that was just the outer trigger that got him in touch with a deeper intuitive sense. 

Now this is something that we need very much as representatives. For one thing, if you're talking to a mureed and you get into their way of thinking, you've lost your intuition. You are basing yourself upon what they think. So that is the reason that why sometimes you can gain much more knowledge by silence than by talking to the mureed. That's why Pir o Murshid said, "Do not talk, just try to think about silent teaching". But all of this is only possible if you have been practicing shaghal a lot, and in its advance stages. 

Perhaps you are aware that there are five sources of information: light, sound, perfume, taste and a kind of kinesthetic sense. So far we have been drawing attention towards light. It's the most tangible thing that happens in doing shaghal. And I pointed out yesterday be very careful that you're not simply perceiving what might be called an optic illusion by the fact that you're exercising some pressure on your retina by pressing on the cornea. And that by pressing you thumbs in your ears, you're not hearing the onrush of the flow in your semicircular canals, called Brownian Movement which is called the (entimosic) effect. Music, Mose, based upon the name of Moses. But as I say it's possible that the motion of the Brownian Movement is in some way of the same nature as the what they call the symphony of spheres which is just the complex of the vibrations of energy that manifests as the physical Universe. So there is some relationship there. 

Perhaps you are aware that Murshid mentions ten different sounds that you can hear, or that you might be hearing when doing the shaghal. And he draws your attention to it. One would be like the sounds very like the buzzing of bees. So while I say this try and see if you could represent to yourself the kind of sound that this would be. The ringing of bells or gongs. Did I say the rustling of the leaves? And the wind. The bubbling or gurgling of water. It can be like the crashing of thunder. Or the sound of the vina, a kind of twang. And then he says that it could be like the symphony of the spheres. There is a lot about the symphony of the spheres. It's a word used by Pythagorus. And there is a word of Proclus who was a Greek philosopher, neo platonic, who said, "If you could hear the sound produced by a sunflower as it keeps on turning towards the sun and displacing the wind, and if you could hear the sound of the planets in their whirling, and the galaxies", well he didn't use that word because it wasn't known then, "Then you would hear the symphony of the spheres". 

So every object has it's signated tune. A piece of wood, if you hit it, it's like a gong. It has its tune. And of course human beings have a much more complex signature tune, a lot of frequencies. So that Murshid has, as he is called the Musician of the Soul, was very sensitive to the kind of music of each person. The kind of thing that he developed, that kind of sensitivity. He says that your breath that is fine tuned in the shaghal acts as a kind of bridge between you and a person and gives you a kind of sensitivity about their condition. And this kind of sensitivity which results from the practice of shaghal can be developed when you're doing the shaghal by what Murshid calls hearing the workings of the Universe. Hearing the workings of the Universe, like listening in to a kind of language of what has sometimes been called the audio sphere. What is the meaning of 'sauti sarmad'. Like the deeper reality behind what emerges as atoms, molecules and all kinds of constructs, is purely a vibrational complex which is probably what Pythagoras meant by the symphony of the spheres. So the workings of the Universe. Like you pick up conditions without having to hear about it in the papers or radio. But be very careful that you don't misconstrue by doing wishful thinking. 

Pir o Murshid gives indications of how your intuition about a person can become enhanced and sensitized. That is that you feel that person in yourself rather than looking towards the person as outside yourself in what might be called the principle of resonance. So he says for example, "If that person has a guilty conscience, you feel guilty", uneasy let's say. That's resonance. So you're not the subject looking at an object, what Martin Buber call the I - it relationship. And the mid way leading toward the ultimate resonance is what he calls the I - thou relationship. And eventually it becomes the I -I relationship. 

Now the perfume. It's a very strange thing. I've been talking about it a lot of course, the perfume of the flowers. Somehow, of course it's a paradigm. It's a wonderful illustration of what we're doing to try and transmute even our physical body by enhancing what I call the esoteric chemistry of the body, hormones and enzymes, neurotransmitters. 

It's a kind of very delicate sense of identity that you develop so that it's what the Sufis call preparing oneself for resurrection, forming the body of resurrection. The body of resurrection being something of the nature of perfume. It's something that you may have experienced in a retreat. That you can't walk heavily anymore. You walk very lightly. The whole sense of yourself is very fine. And of course I don't know to what extent we are aware of the perishability of the body and the way that the body is deteriorating. But this is like a kind of victory against it, like being able to hang on, to cleave to the deathlessness within our own body. Well I try to explain it in terms of what I call the template or the matrix of the subtle body. These are just words or concepts. But it's something that you need to feel and identify with. And when you do that, then you become extremely sensitive to precisely the equivalent in another person that matches you. And it gives you a sense of where that person is at which is of a different nature than your vision or your audition. 

And then there is the taste. Pir o Murshid refers to the taste, I forget exactly where. For example he says the taste of the tongue in the mouth is kind of gross in comparison with the taste of the stomach. But most of us are not aware of the taste of the stomach except when we have an indigestion. And there is a finer taste that we are absolutely not aware of. For example the enzymes that govern the digestion of our food are gifted with a sense of taste. But of course it escapes our knowledge all together. And there is probably a still finer sense of taste in the enzymes that govern the replication of DNA and RNA. 

So it's a very fine sense of a kind of sensitivity which is not, we mustn't confuse with one's kinesthetic sense. And of course the Hindus in the practice of Yoga do experience, and perhaps some of you have experienced it too, a very strange taste in the mouth when you do certain practices. It's called nectar, like a nectar. And I've sought an explanation for it. Of course an explanation wouldn't be quite totally adequate. This happens when one turns the eyeballs upwards and presses the tongue against the pallet. And so when you're pressing the tongue against the pallet, you're exercising some pressure not only upon the hypothalamus but also upon the anterior pituitary which gives out bitter endorphines. And maybe that is what you taste. It's a kind of morphine that is produced by the body itself. And you find amongst animals that have been attacked are preserved from some degree of pain by a certain flow of endorphines. So it's a kind of morphine, a kind of drug that is produced by the body itself and which confers ecstasy. It's OK because the body knows what it's doing. So it doesn't fall within the rules of the Sufi Order. It's not just the pressure of the tongue. And the pressure of the tongue, and I'm not physiologist. But it does affect the flow of the (spinorashidic) fluid in the fourth ventricle. And consequently it has the effect of enhancing certain mental activities. So one is using the body to enhance one's, the level of one's thinking. It's a technique used by the Yogis. 

Now if you turn your eyeballs upwards, that has a different effect. I think it's an effect more upon the mind because as you know, when one is sleeping with dreams, one has rapid eye movement because the eyes are, the brain is representing pictures. And the eyes are used to fluctuating when they are perceiving objects. In deep sleep of course there is no rapid eye movement. If you turn your eyeballs upwards, you fix them so they can't fluctuate. And so that has the effect of stopping the activity of creative imagination which is a second mind according to the Tibetans, subtle mind. And consequently certain levels of awareness are released which Tibetans call the very subtle mind and where one's knowledge is not based upon experience and not based upon one's creative thoughts. And that's called revelation. 

So what Murshid suggests is, on one hand he suggests that you do the shaghal at first only closing the eyes, then only closing the ears, then only closing the mouth and only closing the nostrils. Then do it all together. I've tried that. It doesn't seem to do much for me. But what I have tried to do is to, while doing the shaghal complete, concentrating on one or the other of those five aspects of the shaghal. And then after that coordinating all five of them. But I find that very difficult. It's easier to concentrate on one then the other. 

Now you remember that what he says about light is that, well he compares us with the sun. And he says that the sun converges the light in outer space. I think that there is a lot of cosmic rays is outer space and so on, or the neutrinos or whatever. And somehow it transforms what he calls the all pervading light, spread out, into radiant light. So that's what we need to do. So now you remember that in the practices that we've done with light, I've been saying, "You absorb light. You body absorbs light and then re-emitts light, the light of the stars". And then in a more advanced step, you are drawing the all pervading light from let's say a subliminal level of your being. And then it emerges by going through the gate, let's say plunging through the gate of your solar plexus. And then you are transforming that all pervading light into radiant light which radiates from your heart center. 

But in shaghal, since you are closing the doors of perception, consciousness finding the doors closed, about turns. And consequently these are conditions that are conducive to enhancing the all pervading light. And then as you exhale, you radiate that light light even though the senses are closed. So the senses are really acting like a diode. So it allows light to pass out but not from outside in, one way. 

Now this is accompanied by, and this is the great secret of shaghal, it's accompanied by a mode of breathing. Remember we are talking about breathing. We're not talking about taking oxygen from the environment. We are talking about an ebb and flow of energy. And that is consciously instead of breathing, when you breathe, you think you're drawing energy from outside. You've closed the doors. And so you are drawing energy from inside. You're breathing from inside. And so the breath seems to, the breath of the Universe, prana, seems to emerge through your solar plexus. And then you breathe out from your heart center. As I said it's like a diode, just one way. The other way is closed. So you have to get energy from within. 

Now you'll find that if you do this, you won't need much oxygen. As a matter of fact, if you're very calm, you won't need much oxygen. You need oxygen if you're active. So it's, we have within us something of the reminiscence of the hibernating bear that can reduce the metabolism of the body by being very sedate. So that shaghal has got to be done, that's why Murshid suggests doing shaghal early in the morning before one's whole metabolism and mental activity and psyche has become activated. A very peaceful state. 

So just try this. It's really, I suppose mentally one imagines that the breath emerges from the solar plexus from a subliminal level. So one is drawing a new dispensation of energy into the Universe. And this energy is informed, that is it is imprinted by the frequencies of the, of what Pir o Murshid calls the workings of the Universe. You feel it internally in your breath. Now your breath, although it doesn't originate outside, it's beamed towards outside from inside, acts as a kind of radar. So that it's boomeranged back. 

So let's just do this now. There are a lot of things to think of now. Just three breaths. Then take away your hands and continue your concentration.

So Pir o Murshid says that you can see without eyes and hear without ears. Now that sounds like poetry. But I can assure you that many years ago that I came across many years ago a Pakistani who claimed to be able to see without eyes. I met him at a party at the Pakistani embassy. I said well,"I want you to prove it". He said, "Yes, do what you like". So I said, "OK". I blindfolded him and I took a book off the shelf, opened the book and said, "Can you read it?". And he did. So it's not a metaphor. I've checked, double checked. He claimed it and he proved it. I'll try to explain it. But if the retina is an extension of the optic nerve, it's part of the brain. The brain cells have the same capacity as the retina. And the same is true of someone who could listen to the radio without having the radio on. The brain was able to pick up wave lengths and select them. Our  brain is subjected to all these radio waves all the time. 

So it's a thought that imagine that you are blindfolded by putting your index on your eyelids actually. And somehow you are discerning vague effigies in the dark like thrusting your glance upon them. That is one of the reasons I've been doing this practice and teaching this practice of with eyes closed, you imagine your eyes as being made of two beams. Then you know that if you open your eyes, your eyes will be forced into focus by what appears to be the object. But if you can maintain your concentration with your eyelids open, then what appears in front of you seems like a blur. But if you keep on doing it every day for a long time. of course during a retreat, then you choose a flower for example, take a flower. And you center your gaze upon that flower without fluctuation left or right or up and down. And open your eyes. But do not let the flower force your glance into focus. Keep an offsetting glance. And then extraordinary things happen. Do it and see what happens. You discover something about the flower that you could never do because ordinarily your eyes are fluctuating all the time. So you look at one side of the flower and then the other. But if your grasp the whole flower. It's a Zen practice actually which is keep your glance fixed on the flower or vase or whatever for twenty minutes. If you can avoid fluctuating your glance, then start looking around the room. And it's the most amazing thing because this vase, flower, seems to be floating around the room in contrast with the environment. 

Now there is a further practice. That's to know how to direct your third eye, legendary third eye, which is probably what was meant by the pineal gland which is very sensitive to ultra violet light. So the way to do it is to imagine your third eye as a third eye, not the two beams, but the third eye which (tape turns) I could follow this up but we are running out of time. But it's a practice that I've done sometimes. Perhaps I ought to do this tomorrow. That's to imagine the face of a person in blue. And then you see if you do this practice with a flower, and then eventually you do it with, you sit in front of a person, you begin to see that which transpires behind that which appears. So you imagine that which transpires to be violet and that which appears to be blue. So you have two images. And so you understand the person much better. But then the next thing is a little bit like playing. I must say it's a typical guru trip. And that's to correct the blue face so that it approximates the violet one. And somehow the person picks it up as if you were really doing something concrete. But that's the great art of the guru. That's the great art. So we have to end here but we'll have to continue this tomorrow. 

Tape ends.


96V08-11  Tape 23

96V08-11.#23 

Please take your seats now. Well it' kinda difficult going to see what I would like to say it gets more difficult as time goes on because we realize how inadequate the words are and what is much more serious is that the practices themselves don't do it for you. So when one is in a high state it is difficult to do a practice. It seems like coming down so the practices is like the lips that help you get into a high state, but if you are already in that state it seems to be rather redundant to do the practice and indeed you need to stop doing the practice because it's going to hold you back. So I'm in rather a delima because we are suppose to review practices and I think it's much more important to see how the practices work than how to do the practice, also not to assume that they are going to work, but just see how they work.

It's much more subtle than one would thing at first, but it is true that for example when I use to visit Publiksars ?? in 1936 in Spain before the revolution he use to play scales to start with and was only after many hours that he started to really playing, and so perhaps you could consider the practices like the scales, and even the sites of Bach were really intended - wew practices that Bach may have thought candid at chellis, and of course you can play them with very deep feeling although intended as practices so in the same way we can do our practices not as a perfunctory way because the were prescribed to us, but put in our whole being into them and, then something will come out of it which was much more important than just doing the practice.

T think I will practice the practice of Kasab a breathing practice that is prescribed by Pir Murshid and has it's origin amongst the Yogi practices and it is exactly what I have been describing so far, the mind rides the wind you see so that the breath acts as a wind the kind of energy that is transmuted is suppose to carry your consciousness upwards, but be careful of these words you see upwards because it's not really upwards, but since you pass in view one chakra after the next then somehow the higher chakras are higher in the body so you have a sense it's pulling you upwards. I think it's better to think what I'm trying to do, well I'm sure you all know this practice so there is no use my telling you to breath in through your left nostril and hold you breath and out through the right . That is not what this meeting is about. 

What we do with this practice that's important so I would the way, well you see what we want to do is see if the practice can trigger off insight in us and now that we have this background that we have built up in the course of these three days whereby we realize that there are different levels of thinking modes of thinking then I would like you while you are doing this practice to try to shift your thinking as your moving from one chakra to the next. So if you remember when your concentrating on the solarplexus that corresponds to the subtle body and to that mode of thinking which we call creative thinking is not reaction to the environment, but not spontaneous and then when you concentrate on your heart center then it is celestial very subtle body of light not physical light and then when you transfer your attention upwards have the throe t center corresponding to Jabarut the word well I mean I don't want to talk theory you see I like to for you to see how somehow the particular maybe the endocrine glands and this corresponds to this chakra somehow associated with the meaning that is translated language. That means that the meaning does not depend upon the language, is not limited by the language. So at the level of understanding which you could never express in words and that's Jabbarut. It's a kind of inborn understanding realization we have which is not, does not rest upon experience.

It's important cause we are talking about experience now we are saying that when at this level you have to forego experience because it wont serve any purpose to you anymore you have to get into your own intuitive understanding without needing some kind of proof. That's why Al Halage says at this point I don't need any proof anymore. It's proof in the mind, and then the third eye that is an insight which is absolutely has nothing to do with language at all that is the level of the programming the intention the archetypes as I said. Lahaut so I know that what I'm saying now seems like a system so I simply want to draw your attention to the fact that the while you are doing this practice you shift your not just your mode of thinking, but your realization from one level to another. Ibn 'Arabi says this point."God reveals to you the meaning of His names" so it doesn't say God reveals to you His name, but the meaning of these names, and those meanings are not the meanings that we have the Divine meanings of the names. We try to understand what these wazifas mean , but this is God disclosing to us what they mean from his/her point of view, and this is what Anifari a wonderful dervish "says we are trying to reach God and we are separated by a veil and at a certain point we are at the other side of that veil.

So God is no longer the object of ones cognizance, and then finally of course you have the you reach the apex the sense of unity beyond diversity. So let us do this practice now I don't have to remind you of the stages if y you remember one breathing in through the left nostril and holds ones breath, breath out through the right nostril and there are two ways the Sufi way is to say do three breaths left hold your breath exhale right three times you see then three times inhale in right hold your breath exhale left and then three time alternate between the two. what am I saying three times and breathe in through both nostrils. The yogi way is that you breath in through the left nostril hold your breath breathe out through the right nostril and then breath in through the right nostril, hold your breath and breathe out through your left and keep on alternating three times and then you breath in through both nostrils, hold your breath and breath out through both nostrils so you have the choice between the two and what I would suggest is that you try them and see how they work for you. I must admit that I prefer the Hindu way which is alternating left and right. 

This is particularly pertinent because at the second stage one realizes that the energy impinges upon ones body through the bottom of the spinal cord that is earth energy if one is breathing through the left nostril this energy is going to be pulled toward the left then it will spiral up clock wise so pull to the left and then forward and then right and then behind and so on as it spirals up, and then when you hold your breath and concentrate on the pituitary gland then when you exhale then this very high energy spirals down clock wise, but on different spiral staircase than the one you came up on, and then when you inhale in through the right nostril the energy is spiraling anti clock wise ascending and so your ascending on the same staircase you just came down on and then you hold your breath and then when y you exhale then that very high level of energy which you call pure spirit Qaddus spirals downward anti clock wise and therefore your going down on the same spiral staircase you upon which you came up in the first place. Now the interesting thing is when one breathes in through both nostrils because then the energy at the bottom of the spine bifurcates left and right two spirals that crises cross in front of the second chakra, in back of the solarplexus, in front of the heart center, the back of the throat center, front of the third eye, and link up in either the pituitary or the fontanel that's the different theories about that. Now when you exhale through both nostrils the energy descends in the central channel, but bifurcates left and right, now lets look at it differently. 

Thing that your energy field is like a vortex and as a void in the center of the vortex vacuum and so there is a flow into that void, The void absorbs the water of the whirlpool into the void its being drawn down. Actually it's being drawn inside - the reason why the energy spirals it's because of the pull of the vacuum of the center of the spinal cord otherwise it would rise up straight. While you are inhaling the spiral keep on ascending and being drawn towards the center of you spinal cord, and as you exhale the energy descends in the center and then moves outwards at the same time., so that the effect on y our consciousness is that you consciousness rides the wind as we said. Your consciousness is drawn upwards while being drawn inside in other words you turn within and you lift yourself up in the transcendental dimension at the same time, so what we have done is we've been studying so far the cosmic dimension as we exhale and then the internal turning within as we inhale and then we were studying the way that as we inhale energy moves upwards, but now in this practice it is moving in towards inside and upwards at the same time.

When you exhale it's the other way around it is moving down and outward at the same time. I just wanted to point this out to you and then the importance of the crises crossing of the spirals because they will activate and in fact awaken the chakras. It is like perhaps like striking a gong for example so it starts vibrating in some way one is enhancing functions in ones body that are not normally active and which serves ones realization of ones consciousness like the underpinning of ones consciousness. This is very technical, but it's like you know you want to be a musician you have to have a lot of feeling and emotion, but also you have to have the good technical basis so one is training. We are training our body to serve as an underpinning for our realization. we are awakening faculties in our bodies that match faculties in our mind. Let us do this practice now and I want to draw your attention that each of your chakras corresponds to a level of reality or a level of consciousness or level of the counter parts of your body, yes of your subtle bodies, now of course you know you place - there are two ways of doing it the sufi way you place the thumb of your right hand under your chin and the middle finger on your right nostril and the play of your left hand on the back of your right hand and the thumb of your left hand on your left nostril. The Hindu way you place the index finger on your forehead and you use your thumb of your right hand on your right nostril and the ring finger on your left nostril so your left hand is free and of course this position of your hands will activate your third eye. So it's up to you to choose either method or try both methods and see which one works the best for you.

I'm sue to the Sufi way. Now you always exhale before starting and really concentrate on that spiral of energy and also be aware of the difference between the gross energy at the bottom of the spine as compared to the very fine energy and the top of the head, and how that energy is transmuted as it rises. Hold your breath exhale right spiral down, inhale right nostril the energy is turning upwards in a spiral, hold y our breath pure spirit, exhale the energy is somehow materialized as it descends and now the interesting part now You inhale through the right nostril oh yes we have already done that, now you inhale through both nostrils and just feel how the energy flows upwards and inwards at the same time and passes through these nodes that are the chakras and also you could imagine like a positive and negative poles of a current and that meet and all of a sudden a bow lights up and your one chakra and they meet the other chakra and it alternates between the front of the second chakra and the back of the solar plexus and so on alternating in front and behind. 

Now while your so I draw your attention on the energy and the way the energy works and is transmuted, but now while your doing it you have to think of how your realization shifts from the earthly view and the heavenly view and then descends from the heavenly view and to the earthly view if one may talk that way. You are linking all the levels of your being . You feel that your energy carries you carries your consciousness and lifts it up, then there is a saying in alchemy the spiritualization of matter and the materi lization of spirit. The spirit discovers itself through matter and matter is made conscious through spirit. I know I'm using inadequate words, but it's your experience that's important., and now I remind you of that word the deathless state so that as you shift your awareness your realization you discover your heredity and then your eternity.,and as you descend you discover affirmer dimensions of your being that transience and the perishability. The one thing the beauty of this is that you have to pass from one step to another you can't - your attention is drawn to those steps you can't just all of a sudden fly off into samdi, but it is true that when you are holding your breath that's where Belefon. where Pegasus can't carry Befell any further, so there is that moment. It's beyond time of course I say moment but that condition is a timeless condition.


It's like that point in the pendulum where it's suspended and at that point it does not change place, it's only the bottom of the pendulum that moves in time space. Of course your not aware of the motion of the pendulum when you are centered upon it's apex, but still if you are, well the beauty of course in Tauheed is to be able to extrapolate between ones eternity and ones transience and so this whole practice is like a pendulum it's a little it's not quite the same, but let us say that at the end of the swing of the pendulum time stops and that's called instant of time. and it's in the instant of time that something new can emerge in the universe the difference between instant and the moment, the moment is a bow lap between the past and the future, but instant cuts the process of becoming so that something new can emerge, These are the words of the Divershes. When you hold  your breath after inhaling left or after inhaling right your experiencing the instant of time that is when the pendulum reaches the end of it's swing, but when you are holding your breath after breathing through both nostrils your experiencing eternity, immortality rather than the instant of time, and that's the meaning of samad eternity. 

When you are moving upwards that is Qayyum there are two wazifas one is Qayyum and the other is Bayet resurrection well Bayet is resurrect when y you are resurrecting , you are extracting the quintessence of your being from it's transient elements like the perfume of the flowers so that's bayed and qayyum is the asrenety that is that which was transient has become eternal is being eternalized qayyum. That which was transient has the quintessence of that which was transient has become eternalized. or is becoming eternalized that is the word of Jayme and that is the same as Julladine Rume says "Tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal". That means that which epheral says Jayme will be eternalized or rather the quintessence of it will be eternalized just like perfume and that's what is happening to you.  You are rehearsing for the passage of death by resurrecting before you die. That can only happen by transmuting your body enhancing the - maybe from a purely physiological  point of view enhancing the esoteric chemistry of the body hormones and the neurotransmitters and the enzymes maybe transmuting electrons into photons so that you continue to live as a being of light after the demise of the lets say the demise of the body is not the correct word after the spreading out the dispersal of the electrons of the body. Because the photons don't have any mass. The process of transmutation takes place in your body which is enhanced by your awareness of that process in your body. While the very subtle body your celestial counterpart acted as the template of your subtle body and your physical body now it is the results of the transmutation of your body and celestial body . I don't know if that makes sense to you. 

The template is transformed and eventually your realization reaches beyond the representation of the template. to being like the, well one uses the word the code the divine intention there is no form anymore, so you are seeing the meaningfulness in life and the meaningfulness of your life, but doesn't make sense to the ordinary mind . Now that was the upward movement , but the decent is called Tawhed in sufisim is seeing how the divine thinking is working it's way out in the phenomenal world. That which does not seem meaningful now becomes meaningful, and I would say that it is replaced by insight so you have to, if you have faith in your opinion your faith depends upon something that is fallible, but you have faith in your inside, in your realization. Consequently you can see that's working it's way when where as your mind would produce proof of the contrary to your inside. So that is the ultimate faith. 

Where as what we call I call faith in your opinion as belief its not faith. So you see that this practice which started by a thing like a breathing practice led us to realizations that we could not maybe we could have attained without the practice, but the practice served as a wonderful support system to shift our understanding from our opinion to our realization. and then beyond realization into the sense of the Divine presence, subsumed by the appearance of the physical reality. Pir Murshid said " God is hidden in his creation" because beyond realization the discovery of the sacred, the presence of God not the nature of God, not the realization of God, not the knowledge of God, the presence of God. And so this whole practice and the things??? toward the ziker was building a temple to invite the divine presence. If you think that that is just a view of the mind to invite the Divine Presence what does it mean to invite the divine presence well I can refer to one of the latest rules in physics, and that is that in an electron only exist if you call it, if you create the circumstances that favor it's appearance it exists, before that it is virtual and that is why Pir Murshid says make 

God a reality because otherwise God is a virtuality. The wazifa for that is Vajid in fact there are two wazifas Mujid and Vajid. Mujid means like putting out your antenna and being receptive like putting out your antenna and just feeling like trying to find something like for example" When I was in the navy, British navy during the second world war I spent four hours every night watching for German U boats, and I was taught that if you scan the horizon you can never see them. Your eyesight has to be totally neutral " Then a shadow appears and then you draw your glance toward the shadow if you scan the horizon you miss it. So this is the meaning of mujid is that you are totally receptive in a state of awaiting mujid and then Vajid means to find and if you remember the words of Pir Mushid when he says where will you find God if it's not in the spiritually God conscious man being- where will you find God? Where do you find the electron? You have to create the conditions in which the electron will appear so that from a verturnate it has become a reality and so the practice of the ziker is one of creating the circumstances that are favorable to the appearance of God. So one is creating a temple for the ziker as you could think it' an aspect of the ziker that we didn't elaborate yesterday because of lack of time, but really with ones body with ones subtle body very subtle body one is building a temple, by the motion when ones building a temple is building a temple of light and then you concentrate on the alter in the center of the temple of light and you are therefore creating circumstances which are favorable to the appearance of the divine presence and it's not the divine when I say the appearance not to see, but the Divine Presence is something felt rather than perceived. That's a sense of the sacred.

Ultimately if you ask what do we mean by spirituality it's not realization it's one level that we reach that level I mean we refer to that level. It's not awakening, It has to do with inviting the Divine Presence. That's what the churches are about, Holy Communion inviting the Divine Presence. They are using little bits of wheat or whatever, but that's a means that you are inviting the Divine Presence. Creating circumstances that are favorable to finding the Divine Presence . Now there is a practice which I would like us to do that I pointed out in the course of the retreat. There is a picture of Christ, Christ is holding his - his heart is like a lamp, like well yes like a flame a lamp and he is protecting this lamp with his hands against the storm. It's like carrying the Divine Presence in ones heart and having to protect it against the sacrilege of the gross world. It's a kind of feeling that you come across when you have been to a Catholic church I don't know it's probably also true in the synagogues I don't know, but there is that moment of course it's a shakina?? the Divine Presence. In the Catholic church of course then the people go and have holy communion the take the pastier ?? and they eat it and the important thing is they come back to their seats they conscious of carrying the body of Christ, the Divine Presence in their being. The peace of cake or what ever it is that is a means of certain attunement of ones consciousness that is thinking of or is become aware of the Divine Presence in ones heart. and that is tawhed is not awakening, is not illumination, is not in the realm of realization it's much more important, much deeper.

AUG 11, 1996		Tape 24

Someone:...that was a wonderful topic which you do in the early part of the retreat. Pir: Yes of course. The early part is the best. And that's the reason we scheduled them for this time. But then as I say, it wasn't organized properly. Because they would have come, they were are Palm Springs, if they had known in time. So well, have you a suggestion. Have you a suggestion? Person: In the past it was the evening of that first day where you talked about problems. And it was very helpful that we were in the attunement of the retreat, and people could see some of the problems and could be aware of them as they went deeper. So maybe tomorrow evening. I'm open to that. Pir: That's a good suggestion. Well you know something about it. OK Well I see people passing by so I don't know whether they think it's elsewhere, or whether they've just gone home, or whatever. OK 'h, now they are coming. Yes come along. Well I think the best thing is for me to stand amidst you. And for you to come and sit here because there will be more of you. I don't know whether there will be more people coming or not. Why don't you just sit over here? I'll be having my back to you, but that's the only way. Person: We can hear you now. Pir: Yes that is true, but then I want to hear other people. It's not a lecture. It's communication. It's community. Whatever. So I'll just throw the first ball. But I'll try not to speak after that so you'll be invited to speak or encouraged to speak. This is something novel which have been done in the past. It's something very wonderful because then all kinds of things open up. 

In the context of what we said yesterday, I think it was off by Shams's remarks about assumptions, opinions, we are taking a fresh look at the teaching or even the curriculum in the Sufi Order. Because, and I've been looking into Murshid's words and the Sangithas, and what are the instructions for the Representatives. And Murshid's approach is exactly what we've been catching on now. He says it is absolutely useless to try and debate about opinions about the teaching. And you must not consider the teaching a dogma that you are supposed to believe in or not believe in. It's purely experiential. Of course Murshid doesn't use that word. Perhaps it wasn't even used in the time. But if you read between the words then he is talking from the practical point of view of working with people to try to bring about a change in their being, in their personality without telling them what to do or what they are supposed to think or how they are supposed to change. So it's very very subtle. We're not playing the Pygmalion at all. So that has practical consequences because one of the questions that I was going to even raise today, but I was going to raise it anyway during the concentrations during the last four days, is about the format of the meetings. Not just the curriculum, but the format of the meetings. 

And as you know, you have this choice between having a meeting where you are reading Murshid's texts and having a meeting with practices and not inviting people to ask questions. Or the alternative of inviting people to ask questions. And of course asking questions, that's not what happens. They are expressing opinions. And then you have a debate between people. And in no time people get angry with each other because they don't agree about their opinion. It becomes a debate like a debating society, like Oxford although there it's rather more polite. And a higher lever of intellect. So that it is really...you see on the other hand, people don't want to just sit there and listen to something that's read to them. They want to see how, if anything in this teaching relates to their lives. But then when I say, "This teaching", it's not like this is it , you know. So it's different to what one might suppose at first. Like there is a teaching. Then one tries to build a bridge between that teaching and the lives of people. But it's very different. So there are whole dynamics as to the way that one, you as representatives, not as coordinators so much, as representatives are communicating what I would call an insight. And you can't tell people what it is. You have to help them to discover it. It's very very subtle. 

If you told them what it is, then it would be book knowledge. Like Pir o Murshid said this, you see? I mean in the past, I've lived this for many years. In the past people keep on quoting Murshid. "Yes, Murshid said this, and Murshid said that". And then there is a debate and so on. And that's not at all what was Murshid's intention. So the challenge of leadership in the Sufi Order is something very special, very different at least from all the groups that I know. But how do you introduce that interactive communication without having a debate? That is really the issue. So if you have an answer to that, that would be wonderful. Person: In my initiators classes he would ask for what people experienced in the experiential practices. And people were giving feedback in the context where it is expected that different people will experience differently or describe differently, then it doesn't deteriorate into a debate usually. And that gives people affirmation of their experience through hearing it through other people's words.

Pir: Yes. Then is just listening to a feedback which is very useful in fact. It's of prime importance. But then how do you bring about any help to the people whom you are supposed to be guiding if you're just listening to their experience? To listen to their experience is the first thing. And so I think that one has to know this teaching. And I say teaching, but it's not like a dogmatic teaching. So It's, as I say, it's difficult. It's really very subtle. But for example, Murshid says, "Everyone will have a different opinion about things. And do not try to convince people of your opinion because you are going to build up resistance in them". And then there will be a debate and so on. So what you're trying to do is to surreptitiously invite people to discover something. And you give them some clues. And then they'll discover it. But you don't tell them what it is. Surawardi, I think you wanted to say something.

Surawardi: I've done a practice in the Gathas and Githas which has been very successful. Murshid's teachings are full of practices either implied or stated. So I've tried to select out a particular practice from the lesson that I'm giving and give it as homework. And ask people to think about it during the week. And come back the next week and talking about what their experience was. And then after each person has talked, I try to tie it back into the lesson and complete it.

Pir: The most successful centers are those which give homework to their pupils. I don't know whether you all do that, but that's a strong suggestion that I make. People like to know that they are called upon to do some thinking of their own. And they are given a little time, like a week or whatever. And then you have a new recycling of the teaching and a new flow of ideas and so on, so forth. I think that what you have to do is, and that's where what Shams is saying is very important, is that I know it's unpleasant, but you have to stop people when they are saying things that represent opinions. For example, illumination or God. You know we're using those terms all the time. But it's very...well we had all of this out last night, evening, late afternoon. It is manipulative if one keeps on cutting people. Because if they say, "Well what do you mean by this?" It's like cross examination. So be careful about this also. But if people are already forewarned that we are using a lot of cliches in our language. And we assume that we understand what that means. And we assume that other people know what that means. In fact they are just cliches of the mind and don't correspond to reality. So wherever possible it's good to ask people, instead of saying, "What do you mean?", in an aggressive way, to say, "Well we would really like you to tell us how you feel about this, for example illumination, in you experience. Could you talk about anything that for you is like an experience of illumination?". So that's real. Is that how you feel about this Shams? Or are you a policeman of opinion?

Shams: I don't want to be Pir Vilayat.

Pir: Well you asked for it. 

Shams: No I asked that we talk about it.

Pir: I'm joking of course.

Avalon: I've found it very useful that before we get into a topic of the cycle of Gatha or Githa papers, to talk over what we are going to head for, like into the intuition papers, and to encourage people to be on the alert from week to week, and to find something that expresses what they feel they need in intuition, either through a poem or sharing a piece of music or a picture. And this opens them up on levels that are free of opinion because they bring it and they share it. And they don't necessarily talk about it. They read the poem and what is unsaid is the personal opinion. But what is said is the expression of how the papers are working on them. Not everybody can write a paper and have homework and bring in a typed sheet. But people pay attention in their lives if they are requested to.

Pir: We've done that at camps sometimes. It was wonderful. The beautiful thoughts that came through, the creative thoughts of people. It's just so amazing. I think it went on for days and days. It was so valuable, each one of them. But the thing is that there again we have the feedback of people. But we are supposed to be adding something to what is happening with people so there is some teaching. otherwise there is no teaching. otherwise it's just a wonderful communication.

Avalon: That happens after the papers.

Pir: That's what I wanted to ask you. What do you do then listening to these papers or poems or music or, what do you do yourself?

Avalon: Prayer and practices that reflect the paper to open the attunement to intuition. And once they are separated from the class and back in the world, they keep an eye out for poetry or music or a picture that reflect what they are learning.

Pir: So practices that reflect the presentations.

Avalon: That's what happens in the class itself.

Pir: That means that you have to really know what the practices are. As I said, you know we've been used to giving the answers before asking the questions. Now we are doing the opposite. We are asking the questions. But then we have to know...I don't say that we have all the answers. But at least to we have to be able to bring in or trigger off in the person with whom we are working a view point that they hadn't seen before. And you can't tell them, "You're supposed to see it this way". But how can you trigger off, and that is through a practice rather than through a talk.

Avalon: Exactly. We don't chat. I mean we don't have small talk at all.

Pir: So is that helpful as a suggestion to some of you who are running centers? New ideas.

Hafizulla: In Seattle we just opened a new center. And this is an opportunity for me to delve into the papers at a greater depth than I had an opportunity to the last time when I was a coordinator. And it's been quite a few years. And so we have these new mureeds. So I'm going, How would I like to have been trained when I was new? And I knew what I wanted then. And I also knew what I wasn't getting. And so, as I was looking through the Gathas, what was most alive for me were the papers on breath. So I pulled them out and put them in a sequence that seemed that it was going to work. And it was not the sequence that they are in the traditional whatever. And so the way that I do the class is around the usual format where we open with the invocation then Saum, read the paper. I'll sometimes take two papers if it seems that there is material where it really comes at a certain point that seems to me to be key from a couple of different angles. And I'll usually read them twice. I'll read them three times if it seems particularly juicy. We'll do Salat. And then I'll have designed a series of practices that hit the key points of the paper in a sequential kind of racheting people into what feels to me to be the kind of general thrust. We'll drill for twenty minutes or half an hour making it so that everybody has got it every step of the way. And it's, it can be wasifas. It can be zikres. It can be breathing practices. But something that really experientially illustrates what it's about. And then the opportunity for questions will be. OK How do I do this. When you say focus in a certain way and so there is space for questions, but it's more like, "How are we going to do this practice?". So I make sure everybody's got it and has it precisely before we get into it. I'm a precision maniac.

Pir: You can cut a person if they start giving an opinion? And you say that's not what it's about?

Hafizulla: Actually they treat me very respectfully and don't tend to offer opinions or discussion or small talk about it. And that's just very helpful.

Pir: Maybe they are afraid of you.

Hafizulla: Could be. After that then there is room for some discussion. But I'll still try to keep the ship a little bit tight. And when people start getting into their opinions or I read in such and such or I saw on Bill Moyers or whatever, then I'll kind of tend to reign that in a little bit unless it really is triggering peoples experience of what we just did. If it seems to be opening that up or illuminating that in a different way, then I'll let it go.

Pir: Keep it under control because otherwise it becomes chaotic. Then people leave because they say, "Well this is not what I came for". 

Hafizulla: And I give them homework. And sometimes I call them randomly during the week and say, "How are you doing on that?".

Karima from Madison: We've been through a lot of cycles in the Madison community in the last 20 years. And I've been a representative there for about 8 years now. And I've grown a lot and changed myself. And what I've found is that in our community is that when people mention small talk, I think it links for me back to what Shams brought up. Because what we've really found that we need to have the spirit of the heart, of the community. It's not that there is a ton of people coming to the message classes. We used to have when Satia and Momine were the representatives years ago. We used to have Gatha classes, Sangatha, Sangitha. And it was very wonderful for a period of time. Then there started to be struggles about the levels. And people were feeling left out or hurt or whatever. And at this time in our center Ramat, Andy Moor, and I are the two reps. And what we do is we trade off. And the classes that we offer often have something to do with certain parts of our own journey that we're going through to make them as alive as possible. 

And we always invite discussion from people not to get into their opinions per se, but to allow for people to bring up what's going on in their lives. Like if we're presenting something on creativity, recently I had a man say who is a professor at the University, he said he hasn't drawn since he was ten years old. And he had been really criticized. And I was reading papers on creativity and imagination, just a couple paragraphs, not a long. And he started talking about how Murshid, how the writings had inspired him. And I think each of the people in the class went around the circle to share something of their life. And it made it very alive for them. And then they continued to go and to choose readings of yours and of Murshid's. And I just think there are so many different forms. And I don't think that there is one way that it should be.

Pir: That's not what I'm saying.

Karima: I'm not saying that's what you're saying.

Pir: What I'm wary of let's say, is that the exchange is at the purely personal level, like "me" and what I think I am and how I understand my life. And if you'll notice my whole teaching is how you extend that vantage point. You don't devalidate it. But you understand that it's just one vantage point amongst many others. And so if you don't do that, then the level of the exchange is very trite and not very inspiring. One can be enthused by it, but that's not what the teaching is about. And so of course one has to, as Hafizulla says, keep a very tight rein on those exchanges not just to avoid that they should just become opinions, debates about experiences. You are talking about something much more experiential than just debates. But even then I think you have to show another dimension than what that person is seeing. otherwise that person is, you are confirming that person in their point of view and not helping them. 

So that's the job of the leader, of the representatives. Now to Hafizulla I would like to say that my main concern during these last years has been on one hand what a number of people are doing in classes is that they are reading texts of Murshid, and then they are doing practices. And there is absolutely no relationship between the practices and the texts. And most of the practices are ones that I've been teaching, or ones that are based on Murshid's teachings and Murshid's practices. And sometimes I've elaborated further. And so my concern has been to try and see if I, when we are talking about the curriculum, if we could insert in the curriculum the practices that go with the text instead of just the total incongruity between the text and the practice. A lot of hands are up. Man: I wanted to say what we've been doing in Charlotte. And that is on the Gatha class on Thursday nights which we keep open to the public and advertise as such. 

So we are trying to carry on something on a slightly different level than the closed Gatha classes. We have the class upstairs in the Center. And we don't have discussion and we try not to have discussion. We don't always achieve it but that's the aim. And then at 9:30 we break. Everybody can go to the bathroom or whatever. Then we go downstairs for tea and cookies. I think you suggested this several years ago. And then we can have the discussions that build the community and some of the perhaps more superficial discussion about the topics. But that's not a required attendance. So those who wish to go home and not discuss it, may. And then on Sundays when we have our Gatha papers, often we'll have a work party afterwards. So it gives mureeds an opportunity to come and approach Alima or myself and perhaps have a direct person to person serious discussion about one of the issues in their lives.

Pir: Well I find these exchanges exciting and so important and we've only just got going. It took us a half an hour to start taking off. And I'm sure that just a lot of you would not only like to speak but could really contribute a lot to common understanding and give us ideas about how to improve our effectiveness in running our classes. I think it is of the most utter importance. I'm just sorry that so little time is dedicated to it. We will have a chance during the concentrations, but again there will be a lot of sessions on Universal Worship and healing and so on so forth. So that discussions about the esoteric activity of the Sufi Order will again be constricted, will be limited. So I don't know how to deal with that, unless we had classes going on until 10 o'clock at night or starting at 4 o'clock in the morning. Anyway. But anyway I hope that you have all benefited by some of the ideas that have come through. 

This is our way of working. Instead of saying, "You've got to do it this way", it's got to be based upon your experience upon how it works. So it's a totally new dynamic. What I was going to say is if you're talking about a curriculum it's got to include the practices connect with the teaching. And as I say the teaching is not at all dogmatic but practical, pragmatic, how it applies in practice. How it helps people. There is of insight in that in the Sangithas. So that's, I've been working with that now. So doing the curriculum I'll be picking out with multi select the passages that are particularly pertinent. So perhaps it will give us some sense of, an integrated sense of the kind of method used by Pir o Murshid to help mureeds. So I think we have to unfortunately end here. There are so many people here who really would like to speak and could contribute a lot. At least myself, I must say that I have to be present for the Jamiat this evening. I'm at the edge of my strength. I have much more strength than I thought that I would have at age 80. But still there is some limit. So anyway we have to spot here. And also the cooks are waiting for us. 

But we need to make an announcement about who attends the Jamiat Am. He did that. It is for active representatives and coordinators and guides in the esoteric school of the Sufi Order. Active. And the reason for that word active is that we don't want for people who have a high initiation to tell people in the field what to do. It must be the people who are on the field, who are doing the work, who come together and we try to find out how we can improve our effectiveness. So that is what we mean by active is someone who is running a center, a guide who has some mureeds they are guiding, or a coordinator who is organizing a center. So it's not based on initiation, 7th, 8th whatever. That's not the issue. So we were going to offer an alternative at that time. 


Tape Ends.

AUG 12, 1996		Tape 02

 Tape #2 August 12, 1996 Joshua Tree

...yes, a most wonderful opportunity is being offered us by the Sufi Order to share a retreat, in the middle of the desert, in the heart of America.

It's a very rare opportunity - very short, but it is your chance to get into the attunement of those hermits and those ascetics who are living on the fringe of our civilizations.

It is not our purpose in the Sufi Order to promote living as a hermit - that might be considered as an escape from life. But sometimes it's good to look at things from a perspective, some kind of distance, so that your problems seem remote although they are still there. And I do not advise you not to think of your problems - in fact you will forcibly think of your problems because you have nothing else to do.

In daily life one's thinking is monitored by the challenge of the circumstances, but when you are on your own, well then, sometimes, very emotionally charged problems erupt with dramatic force and shatter you totally to the extent that you don't see how you could possibly meditate.

And that is the reason we have to know that and that is the reason what we want to do now is to, well, first of all to realize that our - and this is really an axiom, that is our ordinary, our common place interpretation of our problems is wrong. Or, let us say, relative.

It is a point of view amongst many other points of view, and in the course of the retreat we are going to learn how to look at things from alternate points of views to our usual one. This requires allot of skill, and believe me, behind such a retreat there's a tremendous amount of work, preparation, of research, of know-how, built in the course of many, many years.

So, my first concern is exactly this, that sometimes it is necessary to open up a wound to heal it. And I think we all do carry wounds. I've never met anybody who doesn't but if there is anybody here who doesn't have wounds in their soul, or in their heart, or in their psyche, then I would love to meet them. That shouldn't be an excuse for a private audience, of course.

Now, I used to think that spirituality - whatever that is because I'm very wary of words, and psycho-therapy, and psychology, are two areas that complement each other, and so on, or maybe two poles of the same reality. Now I've come to the conclusion that there is so much overlap that I feel that what we are doing and what is called spirituality - as I say, whatever that means, is a kind of psychology - psychological technique, that doesn't fit into the party line of psycho-therapy. But many psycho-therapists now are looking for that alternate mode of dealing with human issues in depth, including other dimensions than common place ones.

So, but it is true that every now and again, not only in the course of a retreat, but in the course of a seminar, sometimes, all of a sudden either somebody passes out or somebody starts screaming. And it's very disturbing when we're all in a very peaceful state. And of course I always get the blame for it. So, I would like to advise you that if you feel like screaming for an unaccountable reason then please walk out, and scream outside. If you can. If you can, wait for your screaming until you make a few steps out.

And of course you can't always help passing out, of course, but if you feel a little bit dizzy, then stand up and maybe you could - maybe some kind of sign, like you could put up your hand of something like that, so the psycho-therapists here feel that you need some counseling. Or they come to you succor.

The reason why people pass out, and my experience is because of lack of clarity as to how to extend the range of your consciousness beyond the middle range without losing touch with the common place. In other words, for example, in a typical case which we call Samadhi - getting into what is called beyond the beyond, getting into a state of consciousness beyond the usual one. And in fact very remote. And there's a sense of awakening.

The rather simplistic technique consists in not being aware of your body. And that's the mistake. If you do that then there's a split between your body and whatever it is - your soul, or whatever it is. So, the skills, because that's what is behind it all - that is skills - how you do it. We're much for how you do things than theories about things.

Of course it's true that we all want experience - that's what we're looking for and that's what the retreat is about. And incidentally there is not going to be very much acclimation, so that it starts with experience. But remember that experience is interpreted, and that is where it is distorted. And that's the only reason for any explanation what-so-ever. It is to warn you against fraudulent interpretation of experience that could induce you into some kind of deluding affect upon your psyche.

So, the thing is that, you see, for example, the idea - and you know in our common language we're using these words all the time. We say higher consciousness, and we think it's up there somewhere. Or the Angels are up there somewhere, and the we're down here, miserable worms. Well, that's - those are cliches in our thinking because in fact there's no up or down. But if you - it is true that there are - some of the techniques used in order to, let's say, free ourselves from the trap of our common place perspective, the personal point of view.

Some of the techniques consist in, for example, shifting your attention from one chakra to the next, and so it's going up, you see. So one has a sense of going up, you see. And I think that tends to be misleading. The only reason why I'm talking about it is because of the serious consequences it can have, because then if one thinks that way then the danger is that one makes a split between one's body, and whatever it is. Soul, or whatever, psyche, or whatever, to the extent that one makes an astral projection out of what they call out-of-body experience. And that's when you faint, hmmm?

So, the way to avoid that is to schlep your body upwards, as it were. And the only way to do that of course, is to transmute the body - now those are words. And of course I'm very wary of words although I'm using words all the time. So it's - you have to think what you think is your body is only the way that - let's say the template of your body, or the code of your body, manifests to view at the existential level.

So that it's the way - our concept of our body is the way we have been programmed to think of our body. But that's not what our body is. And so if you think that way - for one thing you shift your identity from what one understands by the gross body - which is the sense of bodiness - substantiality of the body, to the template.

So, actually the word template is not quite right because the thing is, a template is static, is a mold of a form, where as it's much more like a code than a mold. Like the code of the DNA, for example. And I'm using the word matrix, and the reason for that is because a matrix is dynamic, instead of static, and we must be very careful about our rather stilted ideas about things, which tend to scleroses one's mind.

Then the other aspect of that is called the subtle body which is - really it's not the subtle body but let's say, this code, is that it is not just - it doesn't only act as the template but the body itself can - let's say body functions can be transmuted into this high, well, I'm using the word high - this subtle sort of code, let's say.

So, there's a feedback. And that's the meaning of resurrection, that one is beginning to identify with - maybe the subtle chemistry of one's body. For example hormones, and then neural-transmitters, and the enzymes. They represent a very subtle chemistry in the body to such an extent that one could say that these elaborate, very subtle chemicals are elaborated in the course of our experience of our bodiness.

And - I don't want to advance a belief, you know, but let us say that it makes sense that this is like the perfume of the flowers that survives the demise of the flowers. So, that will give you a sense of what the Sufis call: resurrect before you die. There's a work that we do with our bodies - that's what I'm saying, is that if you are seeking Samadhi then you leave your body behind.

But what we are doing is much more difficult, of course, much more challenging because the body is involved in it, and part of it, and transformed by it. And of course one's psyche, at the same time.

Now, just a warning as to how you can avoid a possible split at some level, which one calls an astral projection. The other thing is, of course, actually, one needs to be forewarned that one is spending so much time and so much heart-break on one's concepts of one's problems, instead of dealing with one's problems. And I think we have to just take it for granted that our concepts of our problems are not what our problems are.

So that will give you some freedom from being bogged into your concept of your problem and not being able to get any further. So there's allot of work that we are doing in the course of a retreat, with ourselves, in order to correct allot of bad thinking which has a deteriorating affect on the psyche. Damaging affects upon our psyche.

Now, the other thing that I would suggest is that - because, you see, I have a problem. And that is I would like - you see there are many different kinds of people here. There are some who have lovely experiences with meditation, others who do not, people who are bound to different schools, and so on. Buddhism, or whatever. Hinduism. And so I have a problem because I am thinking of those who have experience in meditation and who are really looking for more advanced meditations.

And what I'm afraid of is that those who are not up to it will get themselves lost, or will not be able to handle it. That's my problem, and it's terrible for me to constrain myself - I've been doing it allot throughout the years. But now I feel like taking off and you take off with me, and as long as we know that there's some kind of safe guards.

And one of the safe-guards is that you need to have an anchor on the earth. Like you know - this is a mixed metaphor, but if you're learning to fly the first thing you have to do - I mean to fly a plane, of course, is to learn how to land. So, that's what we - in the first stages now, that is what we are going to do - is to keep on learning how to land. Keep on landing, and gradually then you have a little more confidence and you can go a little bit higher and so on.

So, that is - while you are in a very high state you still have some reminiscence of the vantage point in which you were in your common place condition. It's a little remote, yes, but it's there. And so you know you can grab it, and pull on it and then you get back into your ordinary consciousness again. That's what I call the anchor.

So, actually, what it really amounts to is being able to extrapolate between different perspectives. And for me, meditation is really learning how to shift your perspective. Think of the universe as a hologram, and you can just highlight just a certain cross-section of the hologram. Or then another one.

For example, I remember looking at a hologram. There was the Shroud of Turin - of Christ, the picture of Christ - the Shroud of Turin, and then there was a painting of a German painter - a very famous painting of Christ, and there was some resemblance between the two. And you could just shift your - you could toggle, let's say, between one and the other. And you didn't know how you did it - you just did it. You just changed over from one perspective to another.


So, I think that's what meditation is. Like, you are able to toggle from one perspective to another, and then - much more difficult of course, is to extrapolate between those two, or between more and more perspectives. That's the ideal, which I would call stereoscopic consciousness.

But of course that is very difficult. But then that is what we are called upon, in our time, and you see what we are doing is very different from the kind of methods we have imported from the east amongst many of the teachers who have come from the east - Hindu, Buddhist. Because I remember that those schools were intended for ascetics. And consequently it tends to make people other-worldly, unadapted to life - that's one of the concerns of psycho-therapists, that those methods weaken the sense of one's uniqueness.

One tends to discover the cosmic dimension of one's being, and of course it's very difficult to extrapolate between that cosmic dimension of one's being and the personal dimension of one's being. So the ascetic's way is that one is detached - one frees oneself from one's personal perspective, and the consequence is that it makes one unable to deal with problems in life.

Which is okay for ascetics living in caves in the Himalayas, but it's not okay for people living in life. and of course it's allot more challenging to be able to do both at the same time. So, that will give you an insight into what we're looking at.

You'll also notice, perhaps, at least my - I think some of us are very wary of cliches - words that one takes for granted. Like: I'm looking for - my object in life is illumination, and one says that and one doesn't know what illumination means. Or is awakening, or one is using the word spirituality.

The word God, as a matter of fact. God is an Anglo-Saxon God, actually. And the trouble about that is that one projects upon this concept of God that one has what one would like God to be like. One's own idea of what one would like to be like. So that's not God - that's how one would like God to be!

So, in preparation for the passage into the new millennium, which is pretty soon now - I think it's three and a half years now, isn't it? I think we need to look forwards instead of backwards, hmmm? Because allot of spiritual groups are right back in the twelfth century. 

So, when I refer to the Sufis I use the word God because that's the word they use - my father also. But sometimes I use the word: the universe. And the beauty of that is that it doesn't have the same connotations as the word God. Somehow it's free from our projections.

And it also fits in very well with our particular language because: Towards the one, in Italian: Verso el Uno, is the universe, or the universal. So for me it's a very appropriate word, and perhaps that's the reason why Pir-o-Murshid used that word for the temple of all religions, the Universel.

And we shouldn't confuse the word universe with the cosmos. So let us say that - one could ask three questions like, first of all: Do you believe that there is some kind of cohesiveness - that the universe is like one being? Do you believe that being is conscious of Him/Her/Itself? Do you believe that we are part of that being? Do you believe that our knowledge of the universe contributes to the knowledge that the universe has of itself? So these are exactly the questions asked by the Sufis, but instead of using the word God we are using the word universe.

'k. So this is as much theory as you will ever get from me during these three days. But it's just a warning against wrongness thinking which could be dangerous to your retreat. We are going through a process together - in fact I'm doing the retreat with you, you are doing the retreat with me. I'm doing the retreat the way that I would be doing it if I were on my own - and we'll be sharing together. There are a few conditions.

You see, you really have to make a total break from your ordinary attunement. From your ordinary day attunement. You just imagine that you're a pilgrim, that you've left your world behind and that you're getting into the attunement of the ascetics. It's just for a few days. That's not our purpose but it is an experience that is going to complete the experience that you have in your daily life. And as a preparation so that you develop views about things that you couldn't have possibly had if you had been bogged into your usual pattern of your life.

So, that has allot of consequences. One is that it will be absolutely essential that you will observe silence. Now of course it is true that I don't like to impose my will upon people - I'm here for you and it's your retreat. I can do a retreat on my own without you so...

So I would like to ask you, put your hands up those of you who wish to observe silence during these three days. Good. Thank you. So, it's overwhelming. So, if there is anybody who is not happy about it - I can understand that very well but it's going to be a little bit difficult in the desert because you are advised not to go off too far away - to wander too far away from where people are. And if you start talking then, of course, it disturbs other people. So, out of consideration for them, for the large majority of people, I must ask you to - if you just feel a terrible need to speak, then you could perhaps whisper to somebody.

I know it's very awkward. You see, if you're on a retreat all by yourself then you're not speaking. But when we're all together, for example, coming for a meal, then it's kind of awkward. Like, could you pass me the salt, or what ever. Or, will you close the door? Or, sometimes, there's a real need to speak.

So what I would advise you to do is always to have a little note book with you and a pen or pencil. At first it seems rather ridicules to have to write things down instead of speaking, but I'll tell you the reason for being on silence.

It is because normally we are used to translating our thoughts into language, into words. And those words limit our thoughts. And so even if we are not speaking we are thinking in terms of words - in fact I've asked myself this question: Do you think in English or do you think in German, or do you think in French, or, so, or in Urdu. It's true, I've been checking on that and I realize that in any cases I really do think of words when I'm thinking. Perhaps you don't notice that because you speak just one language.

So, the fact is that by expressing oneself in words one is missing out on what one implies behind what one explains. And the thing about a retreat is that you are discovering realizations - actually, modes of thinking, but you could call them insights. Perspectives for your understanding that you had never suspected before - that had remained. They had perhaps impinged upon you consciousness from the unconscious, and then you never took heed of them because you try immediately to capture them and understand them.

And as soon as you try to capture spontaneous thought like that it's limited and you've lost it. So the beauty of silence is that you're not trying to either explain to others or to explain to yourself, the thoughts that are emerging in you.

So, it's an experiment, and if you do it you find out it will be quite a discovery, hmmm? But it's true that three days is not long enough. In fact, the retreat really starts out with three days, which is too late, of course. So try to take the plunge as soon as you can.

If you feel uncomfortable either because of the heat or because there's a practice you don't feel attuned to, it's okay. Just simply walk out. We have no compunction about if you stand up and walk out. It doesn't worry me.

I remember once in Los Angeles, when I was much younger, of course, well... . Of course people always walked out of my lectures because they come out of curiosity and they leave by the same door. But I used to feel - I don't know if you know what it's like to be up here, talking? One feels rather paranoid. So, then, of course, one tries to put the blame on the other person, like: that person is an idiot - he doesn't understand me. And then of course they say: Pir Vilayat talks far beyond your head, so what do you expect?

And then there's the women who bring their husbands to see that strange phenomena, which is Pir Vilayat. Like one likes to visit the Panda in the zoo. And then the husband thinks, well, I don't see what's special about him, and then he's looking at his watch. So, you know...

I remember one man - somebody came up to me and said: I am the man who walked out on your lecture three years ago, in California. I'm so glad to be able to come to you and apologize because I know it was very impolite. But you know I just had a hunch my wife was committing suicide and actually, when I got there she had the gas on, and she was. 

So, whenever somebody stands up and walks out, I always think their wife is committing suicide. There might be less dramatic reasons than that, but...

So, I'm immune to that now, so do feel comfortable about walking out. It's okay. As long as you don't scream - that's one thing that I really find disturbing. No, it really happens, quite allot.

Two reasons are - one of them is the eruption of personal problems, and even though I'm warning you that what you think are your problems are not what they really are, it's - you don't have to believe what I'm saying. Never-the-less, it may be helpful if you follow it up and see if indeed it is true, that your problems are not what you think they are.

But it's true that if you think they are what you think they are then of course they can be devastating because you haven't thought of them for a long time and all of a sudden they erupt. And that's why we need to have some precautions here, so there are quite a few psycho-therapists here, and of course there are allot of back-seat advisors who don't have the expertise of a psycho-therapist, so beware of them. Self-appointed psychologists.

Now, I have asked Dr. Richard Resnyk and Elaine Resnyk to address you. I don't know if it's been made clear to them that it is really for this evening, because Dr. Resnyk is a psychiatrist - psycho-therapist. As I say this is an area which requires allot of expertise. The area of psychological disturbances requires a tremendous expertise. Especially when it becomes really dramatic, and I think it's a part of this retreat process that we have the - take advantage of this expertise by people who really know something about how the psyche works - or reacts, to situation, and things like that.

One think I want to say is that - well, I'm quoting Dr. David Boehm who wasn't a psychologist. He was a physicist. And who says: do not be surprised if a change in your thinking is going to affect the circuits in your brain. And I would say not just the circuits in your brain but your whole body. And therefore be not surprised if a disturbing thought will disturb your body, so the illness is really right down in the body, then.

And then be not surprised if one can correct distorted configuration. Are you there, Dr. Resnyk, and Elaine? No? Are you agreed to address us, let's say, next period is 10:00? 9:30? 9:30 to 10:30? 'k, so 9:30 to 10:30, so you don't have to make your vow of silence yet. But at 10:30 we'll make a formal promise. Pledge!

'k. Now. Take a little rest. I think you've been warned about the heat. If you're - drink allot of water, of course. If you're - I mean if it's really just too hot I would say pour some cold water on your head and come dripping in the room and then on our ankles and your fists.

'k.

Bless you!

No side 2.

AUG 12, 1996		Tape 04

Tape #4 August 12, 1996 Joshua Tree

...so, at the outset, be prepared to make a radical break from your usual thinking. From your usual attunement, and if you like you could just imagine - and that's very effective, that you are first of all a pilgrim like the pilgrims to the Rishis in the Himalayas - to the temples in the high places.

So you leave your world behind you, although there is some kind of memory of it but it's rather remote, hmmm? You are in a totally different attunement, and as a matter of fact, while the challenge of life is very demanding upon you, and in order to meet the challenge you have to be interested - you have to have interest in achievement. Now it is the complimentary attunement, which is detachment, indifference.

And that is that one is always... so, after being a pilgrim then you have chosen a spot somewhere in nature where you're alone, with nature, and sheltered from the continual hassle - challenges of life. And now you surround yourself with zones of silence. That's the word of Buddha. You surround yourself with zones of silence, hmmm?

And of course, the consequence is that you will tend to turn within, but now just think that you are reaching out from within instead of being encapsulated in your own psyche. And if there are thoughts that - random thoughts that surface, don't try to combat them. Don't get worried about not being able to concentrate. They have every right to be there - they're trying to - it's a process of digestion of the psyche. The impressions of the environment are processed and one becomes aware of some of that process.

What you need to do is to - I think it's your attunement - it's your nostalgia for what is undefinable, of course, that is so strong your - I would say even euphoria - that tremendous ecstasy of finding yourself in this place of solitude, is so strong that you don't have to use mastery to keep your glance or your attention forward because random thoughts are going to try and draw your attention to them.

So imagine that your consciousness is like a beam that lights up a target, or a screen, you see? And when a thought emerges in your mind then normally your consciousness - the beam of your consciousness would turn towards that thought. But now indifference has the consequence - your attitude of indifference has the consequence that you're not going to turn your full attention to that thought or impression and therefore that thought or impression is then going to circulate in the twilight of your consciousness, and you may be vaguely aware of it but it will not occupy full impact of your consciousness.

OK. These are just the initial steps. So, the impact of your - the change in your emotional attunement is so intense that it will be triggering off lots of thoughts about yourself and your life, and 'who am I?' and all these. And of course there is no way in which these thoughts will make any sense. But let them be there. And now we're going to plunge, as I promised, very deeply into the retreat process.

The body participates in this. One gets into a very deep place. It could be illustrated by being in a cell - like the cell of a monk or a nun, and prostrating. And it's not just the annihilation of yourself - which is a false notion anyway. It's annihilation of the notion you have of yourself. But - and it's not surrender either - that's again a psychological misconception. Surrender. No. It is finding yourself. Finding the depth of yourself. And the word self doesn't really apply here because it is so impersonal that this is difficult to think that this is - this is me!

So, now I must ask you to kneel.

Now, this is a practice that I was taught by - in Mount Athos by an orthodox monk. You must do what I tell you but I can't do it myself because I have a problem with my legs. Maybe I can try again - no, it's all right. You see, you prostrate yourself, saying Kyrie Elliason. Or rather saying Kyrie, which means God, and then Elliason, which is often interpreted as meaning 'have mercy upon me'.

Now, logically I would have a problem if having caused pain to somebody. I'm asking to be taken off the hook. God have mercy upon me! Instead of assuming responsibility. But as Elaine said, a moment ago, throws a new light on this because behind our resentment there is always some irrational guilt. And maybe that guilt is even, 'forgive me for not being able to forgive'.

So, let's not try to reason it with our minds but not be limited to the concept of the interpretation of 'have mercy upon me', but just get into that state, whatever it means to you.

And what you should do is think of a person who you have - you feel you have harmed or you've done damage to or treated unfairly, and then another person and another person, and so on. It doesn't have to be a number of times - it could be three times, five times, whatever. You think of that person and then you think of another person, and so on.

Kyrie Elliason. (Practice repeats)

Amen.

Now, the next one is Christy Elliason. But, of course if you do not belong to the Christian faith you might have some problem in saying that, but you could say some other word. If I understand well this is the call during the ceremony of repentance. Barmitzva for the Jews. And for the Muslims, (Harphoor). So, Christy Elliason - now, you're not thinking about your guilt, or being aware of your guilt, but you are thinking about the way you have been abused by others and therefore your resentment comes up. Your rage. And what we want to do is to transform our rage into outrage. Because rage is personal and outrage is like God is offended. The whole of humanity is offended by what that person did - it's not just me.

And so, the reason for Christy is because you think of Christ being tortured, and forgiving the people who tortured him. And because, as Richard said this morning, it's - if you're able to get into the pain of the person who tortured you, it makes it easier.

Christy Elliason. (Practice repeats).

Amen.

So, it's not like you're doing a good act by forgiving that person. It's that you're getting into the consciousness of that person and think of the words of Christ: They don't know what they do. They don't know what they do.

Now, out of that we take Kyrie Elliason again but this time it's - I interpret it as - think of the last words of Christ: Why has thou forsaken me? He was quoting Psalm of David. If you interpret that in a simplistic way you think, well, Christ felt that he was abandoned. 

What if it was the voice of God speaking through Christ and saying: Why have you abandoned me? Hmmm?

So we're not talking about resentment, we're not talking about guilt, but we're talking about a very deep issue. And that is, treason! Betrayal of our highest ideal!

Kyrie Elliason. (Practice repeats).

Amen.

Just stay where you are now.

Now, this is called the practice of Muhasibi. So, you ask yourself, 'why am I doing what I'm doing". Behind that question, there's a deeper one, and that is: 'what are those things that I value in life'? And you can even make a priority list. Some things that you prioritize above others. And then there's the acid test: are these just idyllic lip service to a cause or are they really values that are real for you? Not wishful thinking, but really values that you pursue. And so the acid test is in how far do your actions match these values? Are you pursuing these values - are you not pursuing these values? Why are you not pursuing them? Ask these questions yourself?

And of course you know that the mind will always provide a justification. So be wary of the functioning of the mind. Circumstances make it difficult, engagements, and so on. That's all very true. Wether one can pursue these values in the midst of limiting circumstances - that's the great challenge. But wether one is really pursuing them or wether they are just ideals that one holds very high, but which are not lived or not - they're just wishful thinking. That is - there's some kind of split in our personality in that. some kind of incongruity.

Of course it's an enormous subject so you could start by approaching it with something a little more tangible, like, for example, what do I like? Like in your choice of music, for example. That gives you some sense of values. This is what I like, this is what I don't like. What I like in people, and what I like in myself, and what I don't like in myself and what I don't like in people.

So, rather than - you see, I'm very wary of the kind of abstract archetypal thinking that one ascribes to the wazifa. It's in the realm of the mind - it's a kind of projection. Abstraction. So, for example, when I say I like that person because that person has allot of love, then let us just feel that instead of filing it under the category of love.

And there is something in me that I don't like because I find that I lacked love in my way of handling a situation. So now it's real, it's not just an idea, you know, love is a pin up of love, but it's something real.

And truth. I value truth. So that's a platonic kind of idea. I value truth. But then in your life, that's where it's being tested. So think of situations in your life and then there may be conflict. For example, compassion and truth - by being truthful you may hurt a person, and you spare a person but then you're not truthful. So, there might be a conflict.

There's no way of sorting this our logically, but what we want to do is be very aware of what our motivations are - and they could be general or it could be in particular.

For example, in - particularly, what are my motivations in my relationship with this person? Or that person? Or another person? Am I manipulating that person for my advantage? Am I binding that person to me? Am I freeing that person from dependence upon me? Am I giving to that person, or is there and exchange - I am giving and that person is giving, so there is inter-dependence? And can you see the difference between co-dependence and inter-dependence? And independence? Co-dependence, inter-dependence, independence. How can I make my values actual - how can I actuate my values so that they are real in life situations.

So, this first step in a retreat, Muhasibi, and it is called in Buddhism (unclear), which consists in observing yourself as though you were another person, without identification. And it shows to what extent identification with what we think we are thrusts our bias upon our ability to be clear about ourselves. Therefore one is looking at oneself subjectively instead of objectively.

Now, of course, in Buddhism this is part of a whole series of practices where you observe your body and you observe your thinking and you observe your personality, and finally you observe your consciousness. In this kind of subject-object relationship. But there's a gulf between the subject and the object. In order to eliminate the subjective bias due to identification, and so the method used in Buddhism is to consider your body as the product of formative process that happens in physical - at the physical level. The whole cosmos has molded itself into this body without any reference to you as a person.

And on this I disagree with Buddha, with all due respect, because not only do we have an impact upon our bodies, but also we may have had an impact upon its formation already in the womb of our mother. And perhaps even prior to that!

But, anyway, it is the method that is important, rather than the metaphysics. so that method is going to help you to watch yourself and allay any tendency to justify yourself by your subjective bias.

Now I reiterate something I said rather perfunctorily earlier on this morning. You see, the first step in the steps leading to Samadhi in (unclear) consists in realizing that one is - normally one is commonly looking at one's problems from one's personal bias, and therefore one is not rally able to understand one's problems 'cause one in only seeing them from a certain angle. And consequently the first step in meditation consists in extending your consciousness and a practical way of doing it is to try to see if you can project your consciousness into the consciousness of another person. Or rather you can imagine what it would be to be another person.

But then that is only the first step because you're still caught up in the personal perspective of that person. So try and get into the consciousness of a person who is close to you, and see how the same situation that you're involved with, in that person, are seen differently from the vantage point of that person.

Now, there are two steps here. One is: I see that person through his/her eyes. so that would be I see the situation - that I see in a certain way, I see it differently now. The way it looks through the eyes of that person. Now, the second step - I see myself through the eyes of that person - I see myself through the eyes of that person. And so that is going to widen your self-image to elude the subjective bias of your self-image. and it does not mean that the opinion of the other person about you is better than your own - they are both partial. But if you include that of more and more people then you get a many faceted outlook which approaches more and more to reality.

So you can discover yourself mirrored in another person, and the other person mirrored in you, and then more and more people mirroring each other until you reach what the Sufis call An'l Hannah, which means the Palace of Mirrors. And I hope that you feel a kind of relief from the constraint of your self-image which is limiting. At last! I'm beginning to know myself. At last! And I'm beginning to know others through my knowing myself through them.

And now there's a further step, and that is that you don't have to get into the consciousness of another person because those people are partly present within yourself. There's an osmosis between beings, and so we can find people who we thought were out there somewhere, within our won psyche. We are encompassing them.

'k, now, since we are on retreat we're going to follow this up by a technique which consists in training the unconscious - because so far we have been doing this consciously. Then you might forget it. So, for it to become adamant it has to build tracts, or perhaps networks in the unconscious. And the unconscious takes on propositions from the conscious mind, providing that they are repeated, repetitive. Just like if you follow the same path all the time, you strengthen the - you make it into a path. You strengthen - in the grass, for example, it becomes a path You reinforce it. You are thinking with the brain and the same thing in the psyche.

So, we are associating a sound with a meaning - we're using a foreign word because our familiar words are attached to a particular meaning and the meaning now that we are discovering is beyond any meaning that we are familiar with in our common language. And that's why we're using a foreign language.

So, let's just repeat the word, Basit, which means widening. So you think of, for example, you're reading a book and then you look at the horizon. So your glance can expand...

Side 2

...can expand incredibly. You can reach galaxies in your glance which don't exist anymore - haven't existed for many eons of time. It's quite extraordinary - beyond time and space. I mean, the extension of time and space.

So, the same thing applies to your consciousness. So, as you say Basit you think: my consciousness is expanding, expanding, expanding, and of course it is true, if your consciousness expands, your notion of yourself is going to expand. And therefore there is a tendency to lose the special uniqueness of your being and discover the more cosmic and impersonal dimension of your being.

And therefore we want to balance that by the opposite, which is rediscovering that particular uniqueness of each one of us which we call our idiosyncrasies, and whereby we customize the cosmic dimension of our being.

So that word is Kabid, which has a sense of constriction, and what we want to do is to balance these two and - not only balance them, but co-ordinate them, integrate them into a sense of oneness.

Basit. Kabid. (Practice repeats).

Now, may I interrupt you? You see, there's no point in saying these words - that's what Christ called vain repetition, unless everytime you say one word or the other you are experiencing - not just thinking, what it means, but you are experiencing your consciousness having become wider and wider. And then the way that the consciousness of the whole universe is converged into that focal point which we think as our own personal consciousness. It is really the consciousness of the universe that has become constricted and focalized.

So, these are concepts, but what is important is somehow to think of a funnel, for example, and really experience that your consciousness is really - it's not your consciousness. It really is the consciousness of the whole universe, but that is, it has been constrained, constricted, and that's the meaning of the word Kabid.

There's - somehow this sense of constriction is based upon the skin of our bodies. The sense of this is me, and outside - this is not me. but when you say Basit, then instead of identifying with our body, you identify with the force field, like the electro-magnetic field, for example, surrounding your body. That does not have a frontier, a boundary, and that also permeates the cells of your body.

And, since it doesn't have a boundary, it helps you to overcome the idea of being a discreet individual. And then, furthermore, you identify with your aura, which gives you a far greater sense of vastness than your life field, or your force field because as you know, the photons are scattering in the universe at the speed of a hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second.

And therefore I find it useful to think of the galaxies as Jelal 'Ud-Din Rumi did. As you say Basit, instead of being enclosed in a room - and you could meditate at night, looking into the stars, and then when you say Basit you think: my body is made of the fabric of those stars. It has existed since the big bang. That could be a psychological shock to your sense of being a discreet person. and consequently you begin to become aware of the cosmic dimension of your being. so, let's do that now, as we say Ya Basit, or just Basit. Kabid.

Kabid. Just imagine that those stars - those galaxies, the whole universe - physical universe, is somehow - has contracted itself in the - not only in my body but even in the cells of my body, which carry the DNA of the whole universe, not just our body. Each cell! So the totality is implicit in each fragment of the totality, potentially.

So, it's not just an idea, the theory of it, but really experiencing. Like (Ashabestari) says: Behold the universe in yourself. That's Kabid, hmmm?

Basit. Kabid. (Practice repeats).

OK. So of course you could do that when you're on your own. You could do it many more times, but as long as you're always aware of what you're saying.

So now the unconscious is taking up that suggestion - that auto-suggestion, and when you're in your life situations you may not remember what we did. But somehow, unconsciously, you are not totally restricted to your sense of yourself because somehow, in the unconscious, there's that notion of the cosmic dimension of your being that you actually experienced in your consciousness.

So the consequence is that there is no person in the universe whom we cannot reach by expanding our consciousness. That includes not just the persons we know, but masters, saints, and prophets, and even angels. There's no limit. And eventually, that is what is called God consciousness.

So, now that you're used to expanding your consciousness, so think of a person who has harmed you. and of course it's going to arouse all kinds of emotions, but if you can think that person was in pain and you were the scape goat in which that person in his/her ignorance, tried to relieve his/her pain. So now it's more bearable to enter into the consciousness of that person you didn't want to know any more about because it was too painful. Now you can really face that person. If you think they were in pain.

So, this is what the Sufis call the Way of the Broken Heart, because you can only love if you have a broken heart. And of course the beauty is to be able to integrate pain and joy at the same time so that - it's like the rainbow. As the sun and the rain, at the same time. Sunshine!

Or the Dervish spinning on thorns, with a crown of thorns on his head and being in a state of ecstasy. I hear that those who have been tortured in concentration camps get to a place where they are able to transmute their pain into a kind of ecstasy. Especially those who suffer because of having dedicated themselves to their highest ideal.

So, the retreat process is the awakening of your heart. Sensitizing it and therefore it begins to awaken, becomes vibrant and consequently there is a kind of understanding of the heart. It's not the understanding of the mind. It's a different kind of logic, hmmm? In fact, one wouldn't call it logic. No. It's like when PIr-o-Murshid says: you might find that a defeat avers itself to be a victory, and a victory avers itself to be a defeat. So it's not logical.


So your distress may aver itself to be your triumph over the constriction of distress. There is a word of Shams-i-Tabriz: the man of God is a palace in ruins. Which is much better than a casino in Palm Springs. A palace in ruins, hmmm? It represents higher values. Supreme values! Paramount values! Sublime values.

Now, the next step, which is embodied in the wazifa, Wasi, and that is because you don't have to try and transfer your consciousness into that of another person because there is an osmosis between us, and so consequently a kind of overlap between us. And that means those persons whom we are acquainted with are present within us, are embodied - encompassed, within us.

And so Wasi means to embrace, encompass. So it's not the same thing as Basit, which means just expansion, but this is expansion with containment. Embracing. And of course those beings who are encrusted into your psychic flesh, can be gritty, and it's illustrated by the illustration in the East of the oyster that has a grain of sand in its body - which is painful, and transforms that grain of sand into a pearl. It's not painful anymore.

So, instead of trying to reject people that one does not like or who have done one harm, one recognizes their presence in one and by embracing them and somehow hopefully one's love will transform their grittiness into a beautiful pearl.

Now the fact is we can invite people to be our friends if we can tolerate them in our psyche. And otherwise we reject them and we are without friends. For that's the price to pay, is to tolerate that which is painful in another person - in the presence of another person - in your own psychological psychic flesh, as I say.

So the wazifa is - that is Jami. To collect. To collect flowers, to collect fruit, to collect people who will feel safe in your custody because you tolerate them. And if you tolerate them it's because you love them, unconditionally. And so perhaps the word tolerate is not the right word.

There's a word of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Kahn which was intended for the representatives, and he said: we are tested in our love! That's how we are tested in our lives, in our love!

Now, I know that of course one's love can be misconstrued, could be, even, exploited, manipulated by somebody. And that is why one feels safe by keeping people who might be doing that at a distance. It just depends on wether you are able to find that kind of inner freedom that goes with unconditional love. It's really freedom from dependence upon the person you love. And then they have no impact - they cannot abuse of your love. And they feel it right away. Perhaps some more than others.

So, that would be Ya Jami, Ya Wasi. (Practice repeats).

Now, please remember to keep on being aware of the - not just the meaning but, in practical terms, let's say, that you're welcoming people - some with whom you have a problem. It's very difficult - they make themselves unlikable, somehow, to you. And somehow you're still opening the door. Somehow! But it's only a very great power on your part that is going to keep them from abusing of your kindness. You have to feel that power in you!

So, to encompass Wasi, you know - you open your arms. There's some power in those arms! So, Jami, Ya Wasi. (Practice repeats).

Yes, I know a man whose profession is a specialist in handling dangerous animals; Scorpions and some very dangerous snakes, of course. Also, all kinds of animals. And somehow he knows how to handle them. Placing them in confidence. So they can't harm him. It's a great art in knowing how to do that. otherwise through your love, your goodwill, you expose yourself to be manipulated. Those scorpions - he picks them up! Very dangerous spiders. And he just - they know from his atmosphere, or his touch - they know! He is aware of their danger and that he can master it by putting them at ease because it is their defensiveness that will make them attack. He has to overcome their defensiveness.

So the people that you need to guard against are the people who are trying to guard against you. While they're defensive!

So, God bless you now.



AUG 12, 1996		Tape 06

96V08-12.#06

Pir Vilayat Joshua 8/12/1996 Tape 6

I'm trying to communicate to you the attunement that I have been in during my retreats in India although with a difference. But it might be helpful to you to just feel that kind of attunement. As I said this morning, "Surround yourself with a zone of silence", so that in some way you're impervious to any kind of disturbance while you enjoy the wonderful sense of communion with nature until such time that you turn within and you're not conscious of the environment at all. So I can think of those wonderful moments sitting at the source of the Ganges in the early morning with the Sanysins coming and sitting around me in a very peaceful state with a wonderful sense of peace beyond any kind of description what so ever. 

Now this state gives you some kind of a shield from, let's say, from being continually, let's say, the victim of the challenge of the environment in our civilizations. So of course sitting in that state I would not have heard about the crash of the plane, TWA plane, or the bomb in Atlanta, or the terrible murder that took place, or all those horrible things that are happening. So I feel that one is sitting in the splendid isolation, and not, and so finding beatific peace in oneself, but not really sharing in the suffering of the world. That was the reason why Buddha did not go along with the way of the yogis because he felt that they were not dealing with suffering. 

So what we are about is very, very subtle. And that is to be able to place a buffer in between yourself and the environment instead of... Or let's say consider those zones of silence as a buffer. And all that it means is that you do not react to the disturbance of the environment. But you do not cut it out altogether. And I think the best illustration of this is to be found in the piano concerto of Beethoven, the Fourth Piano Concerto, where he is describing the world as the orchestra that comes with a terrible challenge, ta tum bum bum. And instead of reacting, he illustrates himself by the piano, dum, dum dum dum. So he is not out of touch with the world, but he does not react. Because if you react, you're not using all the faculties in your being, all the pool of resources in your being. It's like a reflex action. 

But he is taking into account that cry of agony. Because maybe it wasn't just a challenge. It was a cry of agony of the world. And out of this comes one of the most wonderful melodies that Beethoven has ever written, composed. So you might say that if he had reacted, this melody would never have arisen. But if it had not been for this challenge, this melody would not have arisen either. So that somehow we process that cry of agony in the depth of our being instead of simply reacting at the periphery of our being. And somehow there is no causal relationship, you can't say it's a causal relationship. But it acts as a trigger and arouses in us something that I think ultimately is an answer. So what I'm suggesting now, during this retreat, is that you don't isolate yourself totally. But you'll find a very peaceful state in yourself which is listening to all the rather disturbing things that are happening around earth. And you know that you cannot help out by simply reacting. 

Now let us just set up this zone of silence around us. And now let us realize that we are continually ingesting the environment. That is just think of impressions while you're sitting meditating. I'm sure that impressions from your life, from the environment, the news, all kind of things that are sometimes very disturbing, tend to pass through the threshold between outside and inside. And the effect, the effect, your psyche, the caring, the outer world, inside you it has been transformed into the elements of your psyche. It's just like eating the food. You know that food, as we ingest it, it's part of your system. It's been processed. Now, in the case of food, you can reject food that you can't digest. That's why you peal a vegetable and so on. So the same thing with the psyche. 

Can you reject impressions that are disturbing by the power of your inner peace? What I mean by rejecting them is refusing them to cause a disturbance in your psyche while you're meditating for example. Because it's not very constructive to react. Now what we want to do is if we can downplay all those thoughts that are connected with the environment, then thoughts will emerge from within that are uncalled for, that cannot be accounted for, that are not causated by the challenge of the environment. So can you do that? 

So as you inhale, think that the impressions of the environment are filtered through a kind of a buffer. What is more, we don't only ingest our food but we transform it, we digest it. And therefore can you, see if you can just for a moment? See if you can do exactly what one is doing when one is extracting the perfume from the flowers. If you can, if your mind is thinking of a situation in your life, can you just try to extract in your thinking the essence of that situation rather than the contingent aspects of it? I'll give you an example. For example, there was an accident. And at the time you remembered the name of the street, the color of the car, a lot of details. After many years, you don't remember the details. 

All that you remember is the expression of anguish on the face of the person that was hurt, or the expression of guilt on the face of the person who was responsible for the accident. So that is the quintessence of the situation. So as you turn within, you need to, in order to prevent your psyche from being disturbed by let's say the outer expression of the problem, you transmute and just maintain in your psyche the gist. Now as you, after inhaling, hold your breath, and see if you can pick up, you can grasp the core of your being which is like a mirror that can never be tarnished by the impressions upon it. So that of course it is open to the impressions, but you simply just turn the mirror and the impressions have gone. So somehow the impressions from the outer world are absorbed by your psyche, transformed, and eventually resorbed in the void. That is the way that the aesthetic finds peace in the middle of the disturbance of the world. 

Now let's follow this up. In the world we are, whether we know it or not, we are playing a role and we are wearing a mask. That mask is what we see when we look in a mirror. Now in the course of a retreat you discover your real being behind the role you're playing in life. And you discover your celestial countenance behind your physical face. So what I would like to suggest now is that you try and grasp the countenance of your real being. Just think that you're wearing a mask and you discard the mask and ask yourself,"Who am I?". You can, maybe you can actually grasp the features of the countenance of your real face behind the mask. And you know that, if you come across that, you know,"This is me" something clicks and you know, "This is me". 

So you'll notice that at the periphery of your psyche, there is a spill over between the world and yourself, between the environment and and yourself. That's the area of your being that's adapting itself to the environment. If you turn deeper in yourself, then you discover who you really are. Now what I suggest is that you hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling so you're absorbing the environment as you inhale. Then as you hold your breath, there's no more thoughts, and no more emotions, and no more consciousness, suspense. Because what's happening is not conscious any more. That's what is understood, one translates by the void. One interprets as being the void. Now as you exhale, try to reach out to the outer world from inside. I'll give you an example. For example you're swimming on the surface of the water of a lake and you saw water lilies. Now you're swimming under the lake and you see that there's a network of the roots that surface in the form of the flowers. So that would be an illustration of what we're doing now. You're reaching the outer world from inside. 

Now place your indexes of your, your indexes on your eyelids. Turn your eyeballs upwards. Place the forth and fifth finger on your lips. The middle fingers on your nostrils, but do not press yet. Just press left, the middle finger of your left hand. Breath in through the right nostril. Hold your breath. Exhale through the right nostril. Now place your thumbs in your ears. And you simply do three breaths with your hands in position. And afterwards take your hands away. And maintain your concentration. You see, our consciousness is used to being turned towards outside. And if you place an obstacle in the way of your consciousness, then it is going to about turn. And then you'll be able to discover what you were looking for outside. You will discover it inside. 

For example, with your eyes open, you see the light that is emitted by the objects around you. But now as you close your eyes, after doing this practice, you may have a feeling as though you were seeing light. In fact you're not seeing radiant light, but what Pir-o-Murshid Khan calls all pervading light. It's like radio waves. Everything is everywhere. The light forms what they call wave interference pattern instead of being radiant. 

So let us do it again. And again three breaths. And now concentrate on sound instead of light. So when you're turned outside, you can hear sound. When your consciousness about turns and is turned within, then maybe you're not hearing sound, but you're aware of a kind of internal vibration. 

Now let us do it again. This time as you hold your breath concentrate on, think of the solar plexus as a gate that opens up into the void where everything is resorbed in the void, then emerges again, emerges in a whole new way as you exhale.

Now we shall do it once more. But this time turn your eyeballs upwards and concentrate on the pituitary gland as you hold your breath so that you're not just turning within but you are turning upwards at the same time. So now instead of looking at the outer world from the inside, you have the impression as though you had a kind of bird's eye view over the world. So you see the difference between considering the world from within and considering it from above. 

So let us try and pin point the wasifas that correspond with these four different dimensions. The first one is Ya Zahir, Ya Batin. Ya Zahir reaching out, manifesting to view. Ya Batin, turning within, the veiled one, the secret of your soul that you cannot express in words. And then somehow it becomes express without words. Zahir, manifesting the non-manifest. Ya Zahir, Ya Batin. Ya Zahir, Ya Batin.(...) Zahir is the epiphany, that is the manifestation of light appearing at the surface. And Batin, that which is not yet manifest which is hidden, the secret of your soul, and which is trying to manifest by means of devices. So that the physical universe is made of devices in which the divine reveals his/her intention, that which appears. And Batin is that which is hidden behind that which appears. So think of for example your life, your life situation. You're aware of that which appears. That's how your problems look to you. That's the way they appear. But one is not aware of what is hidden behind it, behind what appears. What are the deep spring heads behind the situations. If you do not try to grasp things as they appear, then the secret is revealed to you. You cannot reach it with your efforts. But it is revealed to you from the inside as a kind of intuition.


So let's do it again. What I suggest is now instead of saying the words, think them. Think Zahir as you exhale and Batin as you inhale. Very slowly. For example, what you explain or what you understand with your mind and therefore explain in your words, Zahir. And Batin what you imply behind what you explain and which words could never express. 

And the other two dimensions, reaching upwards, Ya Ali, a sense of existing on several levels, several spheres, the angelic spheres. Being uplifted through one's act of glorification. And then Ya Mawjud. It will give you a sense of, for example, having descended through the spheres and landed on planet earth in order to experience conditions on the planet. But you're an exile from your real realm which is beyond the earth's sphere through a sense of incorporating through your bodiness, through the existential state, incorporation of pure spirit. So as you inhale that is called in alchemy of the materialization of spirit, and as you inhale the spiritualization of matter. Mawjud. So Ya Ali, Ya Mawjud. Mawjud, actuation, existentiation. We can use the word incarnation. And so you see how your consciousness can shift from one attunement to another. You're conscious of your body, Mawjud. And then when you say Ya Ali, you downplay your body consciousness, but you are transmuting your bodiness as I said this morning. So you're not separating, you're not building a cleft between spirit and matter. That's why it's called spiritualization of matter. If you remember, this morning I said you could think of the esoteric chemistry of your body, you can think of your subtle body as the template of your physical body, and also the resurrection of your physical body, the body of resurrection. So it's not different than your body. But it's much more subtle. 

So these are practices to work with now. And then come back again in half an hour. End of Tape


AUG 12, 1996		Tape 07

96V08-12.#07

Joshua 8/12/96 Pir Vilayat Tape 7

and kneeling. So this is the advanced zikre. illa "lla hu, illa "lla hu, (...) Amen. Amen. So just a moment of reflection. I have to stand up because I have a problem with my legs. 

There are several stages. There is no point in just saying these words and prostrating unless it corresponds to something we are aware of realizing. And, as I say, there are several stages. The first stage is that we are so shattered by the discovery of the divine presence that somehow it affects our whole sense of ourselves. And as a consequence it is destructive to our ego, to our ego. An perhaps you know that Pir-o-Murshid has a very definite teaching about the ego. He says that what we call ego is only a fragment of ourselves that we use as a defense. So it's our defense system. So the crushing of the ego is not the crushing of ourselves but the crushing of the false assessment that we have of ourselves. So it's very important to know that because it's a rather simplistic kind of a thing that we find amongst a lot of people who enjoy being annihilated. People who are self destructive or who devalidate themselves. So it is only a false concept of the ego because for Murshid the real ego is God. Now that's the first stage.

What I said is that this collapse of our false self identity is, somehow opens up a sense of confrontation with the divine that is so strong that one feels like glorifying. And so as one's head rises, one exalts in glorification. Illa "lla, illa "lla. And in order to glorify, one is awakening in oneself dormant faculties that one ascribes to God. And in this way one's act of glorification is a means whereby God is created as ourselves, that the divine qualities are now awakening and become real in our being. Pardon? Difficult to hear me. Do we absolutely have to have that sound all the time? It's very disturbing. That's one thing that I fear having the meeting here in this heat. For me speaking with that terrible sound going all the time, I can't tell you how I suffer trying to fight against this sound. 

Well the second stage is really what is called fana. And that is that there is no doubt that our being is continually disintegrated and reintegrated again at every breath according to Sufis. Now this is best illustrated by the example that I've already mentioned of insects that form together something like a flower. They kind of conglomerate into what seems to be like a flower. And then if you blow on it, all of a sudden all the insects fly away and then after some time they come back and settle back into a flower. Now whether it is exactly the same insect that gets back into the place it had before, which I doubt myself, and whether the flower looks exactly the way it does, has the same configuration as before, that also I doubt. 

So the interesting thing is that by, that it's not really, the annihilation is only have the process. The other one is baqa. Fana, Baqa. And that the only way to bring about a change in oneself is a radical disintegration of one's being. And somehow or other the self organizing factor in the Universe is able to recreate itself hopefully in a better way than it was before. So it's like trusting the divine action, creative action in one to take over without our, but the only thing that we are doing is exalting the glorification. And somehow it triggers off a whole creative action whereby, according to the Sufis, God is recreated as us. So you mustn't think, "I am reborn, but it is God who is reborn as me". So that's the advanced Zikre. So let us do that again, thinking of that. Illa "lla hu, illa "lla hu. (...) Amen.

Now. An advanced form of the first Zikre, La illaha illa "lla hu.. That we've already done many times. But it is thinking that, well it's a sentence that Pir-o-Murshid gave, "This is not my body, it is the temple of God. And this is not my heart, but it's the alter of the temple of God". So that one is creating an accommodation. Perhaps you were not all here, I think it was yesterday when I said that, I was talking about the electron that only exists only if you create circumstances that correlate. And so God is only present, or God is a virtuality and only becomes present if you create the appropriate circumstances. And so the Zikre is creating a temple an accommodation to call upon this presence. It's not like calling a presence like a spirit or something. It's just, as I say, a situation which is conducive to discovering the divine presence. So we're not talking about the divine qualities. When we talk about presence, we're not talking about like a person who is there or something like that. So maybe the word presence is not quite appropriate. But perhaps you know what I mean.

So the emphasis is not on "Hu". So when you're making the motion, you think that you're building a temple. It could be a temple of light for example. It could be very helpful if you think you're building a temple of light. La illaha illa "lla hu. Now then again you're not just annihilating yourself. You're annihilating all the devices whereby God reveals Him/Her self. Because that is only the first stage of divine revelation. But in this advanced stage you know God not through the devices through which God manifests Himself, but directly. And that means in His/Her presence irrespective of any qualities. The wasifas play no part in this at all. There is a word of Ibn Arabi who said, "If the names disappeared, the named one would appear". So the emphasis is on "hu". So when you say, "illa", it's not what we did before which was first of all annihilating our self image. And then afterwards allowing ourselves to be disintegrated and then reintegrated again. But this is the whole mode of experience which is based upon devices whereby God becomes known or manifest to us. But by means of these are devices and therefore never totally. All of that is wiped away and there is a direct encounter. Like when Bastami says, "If you're invited to the divine marriage, you don't have to suffice yourself with the veil of the beloved". The veil is lifted. And so you think of your heart as the alter in which the divine presence is to be found. That word "to be found' in your heart as an accommodation. So it's La illaha illa "lla hu. La illaha illa "lla hu. (...)

And now you can dispense of the La illaha and just say,"Illa " lla hu". Illa "lla, and as I say, just doing away with all the structure that is composed of the devices whereby God reveals Himself. Then the act of glorification. And in that act one is calling. As I say, if a situation is favorable, by one's glorification, one is calling upon this presence. So that's all that remains now is "illa "lla hu, illa "lla hu. So we can also do away with the "illa" and just" "lla". So that's the supplication. It's not a supplication. It's like a call. "'lla hu, "lla hu" (...)

And now think of the word of Al Hallaj who said,"'h God I would not have deigned to say "Art thou there", if thou had not already whispered in my ear,"It is me" ". So that we think that we are calling the divine presence. But it is the divine presence that is beckoning us to call upon it. So that corresponds with the last Zikre. Hu Hu (...)

Now a last remark. We were building a temple but the Bedouin has to say his or her prayer without the use of, the protection of a temple. And that's why in the second Zikre one does not say, "La illaha". But so in the second step one does away not just with dependence on the the temple, but also the devices whereby God becomes known or reveals Him/Herself. And that was exactly what Bastami said was, "'h please free me from those veils that stand in the way". And when you say," 'lla", you're the priest in the temple. Or rather you're the priest. The temple is immaterial now. And then when you say "Hu", the priest has disappeared and there is just the divine presence. So these are amongst the advanced Zikres.

 Hu in the heart. One raises one's head "lla, and hu in the heart. The alter in the temple.God bless you. End of Tape

AUG 12, 1996		Tape 08

96V08-12.#08

Joshua 8/12/96 Pir Vilayat Tape 8

So I feel that we need to do a repeat of what we did earlier on because I have to adjust. There are quite a lot of new people here and I'm not, we're not yet quite in resonance. And of course it's always very difficult speak while being in that state and trying to find the, be able to cross the boarder, the threshold between turning within and communicating with the outside. And so maybe a lot of things are not clear because it is, what we are doing is very challenging, very difficult because it is, it would be much simpler to follow the traditional way which is to just simply to cut out the environment altogether and any memory of the environment and just turn within. Call a sabbatical and then, and then you find yourself back into life again. It's like opening one door and closing it and opening another. So it doesn't make sense to me. What we are doing is much more subtle. And that's because if we expose ourselves to the past, we fail to see the hope of the future. And so we're bogged into a vantage point in which there is a lot of disturbance and calls upon our anger and perhaps even desire for revenge via vengeance against people who cause so much hurt against innocent victims. And so of course it seems like, are we just ignoring this in order to just enjoy beatitude, perfect bliss? 'n the other hand...Could you bring the sound down a little bit? There is some feedback. 'n the other hand, we're, we can't help by simply reacting. And that's why I quoted the case of, the illustration of Beethoven.

So now this is a great art in knowing how to filter the impressions so that we don't ignore them. But somehow when I say,"Filter", there are two things actually. One is the grosser way which we find in alchemy, the first step of alchemy, which is sorting out things like the gross and the finer and so on. So for example, as I said, rejecting those impressions that you can't deal with. For example, in my case, hard rock. I can't deal with it. So I don't go to hard rock concerts. I prefer Bach. So that's me. Maybe there are some people that feel differently about it. But it's just that in my case there is a rejection of something, maybe it's judgmental, but I hope that it is not judgmental. I hope that it is something that I feel I can't handle. So it's like that same thing with your food. There is something that you can't digest. So you don't eat it. So when you're meditating, you'll find that there are thoughts and emotions that are disturbing. 

And the only way to reject them, to repel them, is by enlisting the forces of detachment in your being. And we have that in us. In the course of a retreat of course, these are, this kind of function in the human being is enhanced. The, it's called viragia in India, detachment. And I try to illustrate it by the mirror at the core of our being that can never be tarnished by the impressions upon it. So a kind of immunity. And you know that the immune system, the immune system of the physical body is based upon me and not me. Like the body will accept an organ that is similar, the DNA is very close, but not too different. And so in the same way our psyche has the ability to reject impressions that are too unfamiliar. 'n the other hand, there is a second immune system which adapts itself so that the body can adopt an organ that is not quite, that does not quite correspond to the DNA. Or for example, we eat food which doesn't correspond to the DNA of our bodies. So that we suffer from indigestion of impressions that we can't digest.

So in a retreat these impressions will come through stronger than ever before because we're not busy. And therefore, this is the time to call upon that faculty that you have in yourself to repel impressions that are undesirable for you at this moment. And we have that faculty. It's just that we have to discover it. For example, the duck in the water is able to repel the from its wings. So we have that faculty. 

And it gives you a wonderful sense of freedom because you see we involve ourselves with situations and people at the cost of our freedom. And sometimes we think that to find our freedom, we need to free ourselves from those circumstances. But actually it's not the circumstances that are constraining. It is our way of thinking and our way of emoting. So it is for example, a vagabond is not free, a hobo is not free, is free from circumstances but not free in his/her being. So it is something that you discover in a retreat is the longing of your for freedom. And do not misinterpret it from freedom from the world. That's what a lot of people do when they leave and become an ascetic. So it's freedom in your way of, for example, in your opinion, that is your assessment of your problems. So can we while I'm talking, can we think of our problems? And it's no use my saying our assessment is wrong. But think of the way you assess your problems, a problem, just a problem. And think to yourself, "What if my assessment is wrong?". For example, "As long as I'm in this relationship, I'll never be able to attain illumination". And one is convinced. And supposing we are wrong. Supposing that it was just within this constraining circumstances that you can develop qualities which you would not develop if circumstances were more favorable. Missassessment. So freedom from your assessment of your problems. And then see how you feel. Just every degree of freedom that one gains is like a pean of joy. That wonderful relief in one's emotions from the compellingness of opinion. "I'm free". And that's what you need to do in a retreat is find freedom.

And then there is freedom from emotion. One becomes obsessed by a personal emotion to such an extent that one can't get oneself out of it. One is caught in a trap. Now somehow this emotion is linked with one's notion of oneself. That is somehow if one is very limited in one's sense of who one thinks one is which is not what one is but what one thinks one is, then the that emotions one is experiencing are related to our sense of ourselves as a person, as a limited person. Now if you discover the cosmic dimensions of your person, because our self image is not us, it's a notion that we have, and that represents a distorted representation of only a fraction of the totality of our being. We get caught up in it. Now if you can accept that. But that is still negative to say," It's wrong it's a missassessment". That's negative. Now you have to. The positive thing would be to start sensing the vastness of your being. Just imagine the depth of your being, the virtualities, the latencies are infinite. And only very little of it comes through to the surface in what is called your personality. But your personality is not really you. It is that which is the outcome of this enormous pool of possibilities that is really you, but they are still in a latent condition. So it's a question of, you can do it actually with your. What I'm saying is theory of course. But you can do it. And the way to do it is to think,"I could be". Like I could be full of joy. Or I could be much more masterly. Or I could be much more truthful. Or I could be more compassionate. Or I could have more love, and so on. It's because it's there. It is in you. It's something that you could be. Because it is in you, you could be it. It just has to surface.

So the negative thing is, "I'm not what I think I am". That's negative.That's does not help very much to know that you're not what you think you are. That's a negative statement. But discovering. You see I think we suffer from modesty, from I would say an inverted form of pride. That is we pride ourselves in our modesty. "I'm no good. I'm not up to much", and so on. And the Sufis say, " God is offended by your criticizing his creation in you". It's not accepting the divine gift. So just imagine the joy of being free from your self image. Realizing that is was deluding and demeaning, and constraining. 

OK So now however, the latencies in us are called upon by matching them with what accrues to us from outside. You understand what I mean? For example, we may have developed so far a certain degree of compassion. But this compassion is after all limited. There are limits to our compassion. But then we come across someone who is extremely compassionate and that awakens our compassion. So what I'm saying is not only we do have infinite potentialities within our being, but also our personality, in which these qualities have not surfaced altogether, enriches itself by ingesting the environment. Just like the food. The environment of the psyche. Because it matches what is already in us and it activates that which is already in us. The trouble is that unless we are very clear, we expose ourselves to all kinds of impressions, some of which are very deleterious, damaging to our psyche because we can't handle them. And so this is where we have to learn how, learn detachment, indifference. And the way to do it, as I say, is to have a very strong sense of, "This is me. And that impression is too different from me. I can't, I can't deal with it." So a very strong sense of me. That's like the immune system is based on a very strong sense of me. And that's why we started this morning by asking ourselves,"What are the things that I like? What are my values?". Because that's you. That gives you a very clear sense of you. So if these impressions call upon some response in me and I pursue them and they are too much out of sync with what I am, then I fail to unfurl the potentialities of my being. And therefore your indifference is a protection. And that is the way of the ascetic, detachment. And that's why I said surround yourself with a zone of silence.

Something that is very difficult to do in life. But in a retreat you have the opportunity to do this. And eventually you become so use to this that you'll be able to apply it in your daily life. And further the thought that even if these impressions are allowed to pass through the control of the defense system, the sentinels as Buddha calls them. So first of all the sentinels at the doors of perception. That is that, well literally you turn your eyes away from what you don't want to see. A horrible film on TV. You turn it off. That's a radical, the first, the outer line of defense is radical, rejecting altogether. Then, as I say, those impressions that have not been stopped by the sentinels at the doors of perception, have come through somehow into the psyche. Then there are defense systems within your psyche. The inner core of your psyche is very vulnerable and very subtle. And the outer core is tougher. So sometimes the Sufis consider it to be like a nut ,for example, which has a hard shell and a soft center instead of an apricot, for example, that has a soft outside and a hard core inside. So the defenses stop impressions as they, they've already entered into your psyche. 

But somehow they are filtered a little bit. But if they are able to reach very deep into your psyche, then of course they become very disturbing. And therefore it is only the thought that first of all the mirror that cannot be tarnished. But there is another thought which is...Could you bring it down a little bit? That's too much feedback. Thank you.....The other one is illustrated by the voice of Caruso. The voice of Caruso can be retrieved in it's distorted reregistrations, the way it was registered many years ago. The voice was distorted. But somehow the real voice is present within its distortion. So therefore think that your real being is there within the distortion. So if you feel that there is a lot of things in your that you don't like, and you feel that life has carried a toll upon you, and that you've been damaged, and somehow defiled, tarnished. Maybe, but the immaculate state of your being is still there within its distortions. You mustn't think that it's there in the depth and the distortion is at the surface. No it is inter meshed. It's right there. And consequently as you hold your breath, if you identify yourself with that core of your being, it has the faculty of correcting the distortion, reversing the distortion. That's the way that they recovered the voice of Caruso. You reverse the distortion. And that gains further and further. It spreads into your psyche and reaches the periphery of your psyche. The void is of course, Sunyata, is of course a very misleading term. But let us say that that immaculate state is a kind of inertia. That means that how ever much it has been disturbed, it will return to it's pristine state.

So you see we are placing the accent on Viragia, a kind of immunity built into our very being. If we become aware of it, we able to even cleanse the defilement that has taken place due to the spill over of the environment. So the first, amongst the first stages of a retreat is a catharsis. And now there is a further aspect of it. 

I don't know whether you noticed it this morning or this afternoon. It's that most of our thinking is reactive. Situations trigger off a response in us. And as Beethoven showed us we're not enlisting all the resourcefulness in our being by simply reacting. So in this first stage of our retreat, you place a buffer between yourself and the environment. It could be quite radical. For example when we placed our fingers on our senses in the practice which is called shaghal, or (yermi mudra), we were doing something very radical. We were definitely cutting out the impressions of the environment so that this has a dramatic effect on the consciousness that turns within. And therefore we are creating conditions that are conducive to the emergence of purely spontaneous thoughts that are not reactive and we call them creative. But those thoughts will never emerge if are minds are full of reacting to the impressions of the environment. And even if you try to be creative, it doesn't work. There are however methods that we're going to use in order to enhance our creativity. But we'll have to do this tomorrow. 

I'm sorry I went over the time. But tomorrow we'll have a different schedule because I feel that we need to do this together a little more. And also I'm a little bit concerned that where the circumstances are favorable to your doing your practices individually, that's what a retreat is about is learning how to do it yourself. But that's you need to go on your own and try to do it yourself. If you want to learn to pilot a plane, you have to, eventually you have to take the stick in your hand. But I'm not sure that the conditions are, I'd like of course to have feedback and unfortunately you can't speak. But I'll try and get some feedback on whether circumstances do permit you to do some practices on your own. We have those practices. But we'll just have one period of practices instead of two so that we're not so rushed as we were this afternoon. Bless you End of Tape

96V08-12.#08

Joshua 8/12/96 Pir Vilayat Tape 8

So I feel that we need to do a repeat of what we did earlier on because I have to adjust. There are quite a lot of new people here and I'm not, we're not yet quite in resonance. And of course it's always very difficult speak while being in that state and trying to find the, be able to cross the boarder, the threshold between turning within and communicating with the outside. And so maybe a lot of things are not clear because it is, what we are doing is very challenging, very difficult because it is, it would be much simpler to follow the traditional way which is to just simply to cut out the environment altogether and any memory of the environment and just turn within. Call a sabbatical and then, and then you find yourself back into life again. It's like opening one door and closing it and opening another. So it doesn't make sense to me. What we are doing is much more subtle. And that's because if we expose ourselves to the past, we fail to see the hope of the future. And so we're bogged into a vantage point in which there is a lot of disturbance and calls upon our anger and perhaps even desire for revenge via vengeance against people who cause so much hurt against innocent victims. And so of course it seems like, are we just ignoring this in order to just enjoy beatitude, perfect bliss? 'n the other hand...Could you bring the sound down a little bit? There is some feedback. 'n the other hand, we're, we can't help by simply reacting. And that's why I quoted the case of, the illustration of Beethoven.

So now this is a great art in knowing how to filter the impressions so that we don't ignore them. But somehow when I say,"Filter", there are two things actually. One is the grosser way which we find in alchemy, the first step of alchemy, which is sorting out things like the gross and the finer and so on. So for example, as I said, rejecting those impressions that you can't deal with. For example, in my case, hard rock. I can't deal with it. So I don't go to hard rock concerts. I prefer Bach. So that's me. Maybe there are some people that feel differently about it. But it's just that in my case there is a rejection of something, maybe it's judgmental, but I hope that it is not judgmental. I hope that it is something that I feel I can't handle. So it's like that same thing with your food. There is something that you can't digest. So you don't eat it. So when you're meditating, you'll find that there are thoughts and emotions that are disturbing. And the only way to reject them, to repel them, is by enlisting the forces of detachment in your being. And we have that in us. In the course of a retreat of course, these are, this kind of function in the human being is enhanced. The, it's called viragia in India, detachment. And I try to illustrate it by the mirror at the core of our being that can never be tarnished by the impressions upon it. So a kind of immunity. And you know that the immune system, the immune system of the physical body is based upon me and not me. Like the body will accept an organ that is similar, the DNA is very close, but not too different. And so in the same way our psyche has the ability to reject impressions that are too unfamiliar. 'n the other hand, there is a second immune system which adapts itself so that the body can adopt an organ that is not quite, that does not quite correspond to the DNA. Or for example, we eat food which doesn't correspond to the DNA of our bodies. So that we suffer from indigestion of impressions that we can't digest.

So in a retreat these impressions will come through stronger than ever before because we're not busy. And therefore, this is the time to call upon that faculty that you have in yourself to repel impressions that are undesirable for you at this moment. And we have that faculty. It's just that we have to discover it. For example, the duck in the water is able to repel the from its wings. So we have that faculty. 

And it gives you a wonderful sense of freedom because you see we involve ourselves with situations and people at the cost of our freedom. And sometimes we think that to find our freedom, we need to free ourselves from those circumstances. But actually it's not the circumstances that are constraining. It is our way of thinking and our way of emoting. So it is for example, a vagabond is not free, a hobo is not free, is free from circumstances but not free in his/her being. So it is something that you discover in a retreat is the longing of your for freedom. And do not misinterpret it from freedom from the world. That's what a lot of people do when they leave and become an ascetic. So it's freedom in your way of, for example, in your opinion, that is your assessment of your problems. So can we while I'm talking, can we think of our problems? And it's no use my saying our assessment is wrong. But think of the way you assess your problems, a problem, just a problem. And think to yourself, "What if my assessment is wrong?". For example, "As long as I'm in this relationship, I'll never be able to attain illumination". And one is convinced. And supposing we are wrong. Supposing that it was just within this constraining circumstances that you can develop qualities which you would not develop if circumstances were more favorable. Missassessment. So freedom from your assessment of your problems. And then see how you feel. Just every degree of freedom that one gains is like a pean of joy. That wonderful relief in one's emotions from the compellingness of opinion. "I'm free". And that's what you need to do in a retreat is find freedom.

And then there is freedom from emotion. One becomes obsessed by a personal emotion to such an extent that one can't get oneself out of it. One is caught in a trap. Now somehow this emotion is linked with one's notion of oneself. That is somehow if one is very limited in one's sense of who one thinks one is which is not what one is but what one thinks one is, then the that emotions one is experiencing are related to our sense of ourselves as a person, as a limited person. Now if you discover the cosmic dimensions of your person, because our self image is not us, it's a notion that we have, and that represents a distorted representation of only a fraction of the totality of our being. We get caught up in it. Now if you can accept that. But that is still negative to say," It's wrong it's a missassessment". That's negative. Now you have to. The positive thing would be to start sensing the vastness of your being. Just imagine the depth of your being, the virtualities, the latencies are infinite. And only very little of it comes through to the surface in what is called your personality. But your personality is not really you. It is that which is the outcome of this enormous pool of possibilities that is really you, but they are still in a latent condition. So it's a question of, you can do it actually with your. What I'm saying is theory of course. But you can do it. And the way to do it is to think,"I could be". Like I could be full of joy. Or I could be much more masterly. Or I could be much more truthful. Or I could be more compassionate. Or I could have more love, and so on. It's because it's there. It is in you. It's something that you could be. Because it is in you, you could be it. It just has to surface.

So the negative thing is, "I'm not what I think I am". That's negative.That's does not help very much to know that you're not what you think you are. That's a negative statement. But discovering. You see I think we suffer from modesty, from I would say an inverted form of pride. That is we pride ourselves in our modesty. "I'm no good. I'm not up to much", and so on. And the Sufis say, " God is offended by your criticizing his creation in you". It's not accepting the divine gift. So just imagine the joy of being free from your self image. Realizing that is was deluding and demeaning, and constraining. 

OK So now however, the latencies in us are called upon by matching them with what accrues to us from outside. You understand what I mean? For example, we may have developed so far a certain degree of compassion. But this compassion is after all limited. There are limits to our compassion. But then we come across someone who is extremely compassionate and that awakens our compassion. So what I'm saying is not only we do have infinite potentialities within our being, but also our personality, in which these qualities have not surfaced altogether, enriches itself by ingesting the environment. Just like the food. The environment of the psyche. Because it matches what is already in us and it activates that which is already in us. The trouble is that unless we are very clear, we expose ourselves to all kinds of impressions, some of which are very deleterious, damaging to our psyche because we can't handle them. And so this is where we have to learn how, learn detachment, indifference. And the way to do it, as I say, is to have a very strong sense of, "This is me. And that impression is too different from me. I can't, I can't deal with it." So a very strong sense of me. That's like the immune system is based on a very strong sense of me. And that's why we started this morning by asking ourselves,"What are the things that I like? What are my values?". Because that's you. That gives you a very clear sense of you. So if these impressions call upon some response in me and I pursue them and they are too much out of sync with what I am, then I fail to unfurl the potentialities of my being. And therefore your indifference is a protection. And that is the way of the ascetic, detachment. And that's why I said surround yourself with a zone of silence.

Something that is very difficult to do in life. But in a retreat you have the opportunity to do this. And eventually you become so use to this that you'll be able to apply it in your daily life. And further the thought that even if these impressions are allowed to pass through the control of the defense system, the sentinels as Buddha calls them. So first of all the sentinels at the doors of perception. That is that, well literally you turn your eyes away from what you don't want to see. A horrible film on TV. You turn it off. That's a radical, the first, the outer line of defense is radical, rejecting altogether. Then, as I say, those impressions that have not been stopped by the sentinels at the doors of perception, have come through somehow into the psyche. Then there are defense systems within your psyche. The inner core of your psyche is very vulnerable and very subtle. And the outer core is tougher. So sometimes the Sufis consider it to be like a nut ,for example, which has a hard shell and a soft center instead of an apricot, for example, that has a soft outside and a hard core inside. So the defenses stop impressions as they, they've already entered into your psyche. But somehow they are filtered a little bit. But if they are able to reach very deep into your psyche, then of course they become very disturbing. And therefore it is only the thought that first of all the mirror that cannot be tarnished. But there is another thought which is...Could you bring it down a little bit? That's too much feedback. Thank you.....The other one is illustrated by the voice of Caruso. The voice of Caruso can be retrieved in it's distorted registrations, the way it was registered many years ago. The voice was distorted. But somehow the real voice is present within its distortion. So therefore think that your real being is there within the distortion. So if you feel that there is a lot of things in your that you don't like, and you feel that life has carried a toll upon you, and that you've been damaged, and somehow defiled, tarnished. Maybe, but the immaculate state of your being is still there within its distortions. You mustn't think that it's there in the depth and the distortion is at the surface. No it is inter meshed. It's right there. And consequently as you hold your breath, if you identify yourself with that core of your being, it has the faculty of correcting the distortion, reversing the distortion. That's the way that they recovered the voice of Caruso. You reverse the distortion. And that gains further and further. It spreads into your psyche and reaches the periphery of your psyche. The void is of course, Sunyata, is of course a very misleading term. But let us say that that immaculate state is a kind of inertia. That means that how ever much it has been disturbed, it will return to it's pristine state.

So you see we are placing the accent on Viragia, a kind of immunity built into our very being. If we become aware of it, we able to even cleanse the defilement that has taken place due to the spill over of the environment. So the first, amongst the first stages of a retreat is a catharsis. And now there is a further aspect of it. 

I don't know whether you noticed it this morning or this afternoon. It's that most of our thinking is reactive. Situations trigger off a response in us. And as Beethoven showed us we're not enlisting all the resourcefulness in our being by simply reacting. So in this first stage of our retreat, you place a buffer between yourself and the environment. It could be quite radical. For example when we placed our fingers on our senses in the practice which is called shaghal, or (yermi mudra), we were doing something very radical. We were definitely cutting out the impressions of the environment so that this has a dramatic effect on the consciousness that turns within. And therefore we are creating conditions that are conducive to the emergence of purely spontaneous thoughts that are not reactive and we call them creative. But those thoughts will never emerge if are minds are full of reacting to the impressions of the environment. And even if you try to be creative, it doesn't work. There are however methods that we're going to use in order to enhance our creativity. But we'll have to do this tomorrow. 

I'm sorry I went over the time. But tomorrow we'll have a different schedule because I feel that we need to do this together a little more. And also I'm a little bit concerned that where the circumstances are favorable to your doing your practices individually, that's what a retreat is about is learning how to do it yourself. But that's you need to go on your own and try to do it yourself. If you want to learn to pilot a plane, you have to, eventually you have to take the stick in your hand. But I'm not sure that the conditions are, I'd like of course to have feedback and unfortunately you can't speak. But I'll try and get some feedback on whether circumstances do permit you to do some practices on your own. We have those practices. But we'll just have one period of practices instead of two so that we're not so rushed as we were this afternoon. Bless you End of Tape

AUG 12, 1996		Tape 09

96V08-12.#09

Joshua 8/12/96 Pir Vilayat Tape 9

Yes, I felt that there was a need for us to bond ourselves a little more this first day. You haven't much opportunity to express yourselves except in writing. So I would be happy to read any messages that you write on paper. You can simply ask a question or say something or write something that is very important for you at this point. And I'll try to respond the best I can. So if you'd bring these papers here to me and I'll see if I can respond to them. No speaking. OK Thank you.

What is the most important quality for a teacher? Is it different for a child? You see it's, being a teacher is a role and we need to be free from roles. And therefore I don't consider myself to be a teacher. I consider myself to be a human being who has a lot of experience of meditation and perhaps a lot of experience of communicating with people who are in search of their ideal. And so I will say there seems to be absolutely no end to the qualities that one is impelled upon to develop in one's nature. So it's of course a wonderful situation in which, I think all of us are in a sense in the same situation. I think that all of the qualities, we need all the qualities. It's simply that we can't develop all the qualities at the same time. So it's sometimes best to start with concentrating on one quality and then another. That's the reason for the different wasifas. As for children, well I would be very careful of avoiding to manipulate a child by influencing them in any way whatsoever in the religious field. And that's the reason why Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan used to hold classes for children. And he would tell us stories about the prophets of the great religions like Buddha, Krisha and so on so that we would be familiar with the teachings of those beings rather than talk about their teaching. And that is perhaps the reason my sister Noor Anissa wrote a book called the the Jutica Tales which was the story about the Buddha in previous lives as a deer and the different animals.

Yes that's a very good question. Could you remark as to why the right nostril, we breathe in and breathe out through our right nostril in that practice of Shahgal. Perhaps you know that the planet whirls to the left. And perhaps you know that when we're whirling the zikre, whirling, turning, we always whirl to the left. Now the fact is that we are ambirotary, that is that we're dextrarotary and leverotary at the same time. That is we have those two rotational faculties in us that balance each other. But in these practices one is getting down to one's relationship with the cosmos. So then we've become like a planet that whirls to the right, to the left. We have that in us somehow. The memory of the planet is written right into the programming of our being. So just imagine we'll be doing this practice tomorrow. We've done it already the first three days before some of you came. Breathing in through the left and out through the right and then in through the right and out through the left and then both nostrils. The fact is that if you're breathing in through the left, then you're creating a spiral of energy that whirls, that is pulled toward the central axis of your body, the spinal cord. It's like a, the axis is like a a void and pulls the energy, the wind as they call it towards the center. And then the energy at the same time moves upwards while moving towards the center. So when you exhale, yes when you exhale, then the energy is ascending from above through the central channel then moving outward. That's the reason for it. You could interpret it in terms of right brain, left brain.

There aren't many questions. I thought it might be a nice change for you to have this opportunity of asking questions. I wanted to avoid giving any explanations during this retreat, which I did of course during the first week. And we had a very nice balance between practices and explanations, and more practices and explanations. I thought that this time we'd just have the practices and less explanations. And I found that it was difficult for me to get through to you to understand to do the practice. You need to understand something about the practice to do it. Just breathing through the left and right doesn't do it for you.

The teachings have such a strong emphasis on the light that I don't see how they avoid potentiating the shadow. That is, what approach to shadow material and issues do you recommend? Well that word shadow is used for one thing by Jung in a very wonderful axiom where he says, "If you do not meet your shadow, it will appear to you in your fate". So he sees some synchronistic relationship between our shadow and what he calls our real being. So the shadow is the reflection of one's being and absolutely inseparable from one's being. Unless the case of Islam. They believe that Mohammed didn't have a shadow. There is also a word of Ibn Arabi that, "God discovers his being through that shadow of his being that you are", you are His shadow. So that means that you are inseparable from God. Anyway that's the different references to the shadow. And the word "the shadow" is used in psychotherapy for one thing because it's so much a part of one's being. And also because rather than saying one's higher being and one's lower being. That's some kind of geographical connotation going up and down. But you see when we are working with qualities, we must realize that every quality has it's shadow. For example, joy. The shadow of joy would be facetiousness. Or the shadow of peace would be laziness. Or the shadow of mastery would be ruthlessness. 

And so on. So every quality has it's shadow. And one of the reasons why we have difficulties developing certain qualities, for example mastery, is because we don't like the shadow of mastery. For example, the reason why that woman who is a workaholic doesn't like the woman who's sitting on the beach the whole time munching chocolate is because, no the reason the workaholic woman finds it difficult to find peace is because she can't stand that woman who is sitting on the beach munching chocolate the whole day. So she does not, she dislikes the shadow of peace. So you find the shadow of the qualities that you would like to develop put you off developing that quality. So we need to come to terms with the shadow in ourselves. First of all recognize it. And as a matter of fact there is a very interesting point here because we have the quality of the defect. So if you want to know what your qualities are, just ask yourself what your defects are. Or let us say what are the propensities for example that are within you. For example, if you are a ruthless person well you do have propensity for mastery. And if you know that, then you can try to highlight mastery and downplay the ruthlessness. No I don't think that we, of course we emphasize light, of course I hope that that is what we are about. If that's not what you're looking for then you've be knocking at the wrong door. That is to reach a point of clarity so that your thinking becomes crystal clear so that you become like sunshine. Wherever you enter the room you bring sunshine with you. That light. And light has the fantastic capacity of dissipating the shadow. Like perhaps you know the dawn on the bare mountain (inaudible).

'h I've got these mixed up. Please review which direction health spirals up and down in shaghal. We're going to do this practice tomorrow. So it is not the best moment for me to answer that question because it will take a whole session for me to go into it more deeply. Just to say how you do the breathing, that's not good enough.

But again about the shadow. I don't know from that question came. obviously someone who was not present during the first three days when a lot of things were elaborated. Just the last three days. Because what I was saying is that in order to be able to work with a quality, one has to be able to recognize and own the shadow of that quality within oneself. And therefore we, I have lately, I haven't been doing it in the past, but lately I've been giving wasifas in which you bring into tandem a quality and also the opposite. For example, the honor, muis is always compensated by musil which means the dishonor. And that's very good because then you can think to yourself,"Yes my self esteem is so very precarious, so delicate, so vulnerable. And I can see that when I do something that I'm not happy with myself. I am dishonored . People dishonor me, I dishonor myself. And then when I am totally in sync with my real being, then I am honored. So you see how it works with you. Instead of just saying,"To be honored", doesn't mean a thing unless you are conscious of what that means to be dishonored.

How does one balance hope against desire? That is to desire something yet be detached but not lose hope in the process. Yes, if you remember this morning we started off by trying to be clear as to what are the things that we like and dislike because that was a very simplistic way of understanding what are values are. Now in Sufism we do not, in contrast with Buddhism, we do not deprecate desire. That's one of the things that tomorrow we're going to this practice, a breathing practice, typical Sufi practice, in which one alternates between as one exhales giving vent to one's need to involve oneself with people with life, to build a beautiful world, a beautiful people and so on. And when one inhales, the other way around, to find freedom which goes in the opposite. Because I said this morning that of course it is true that one's desire does tend to limit one's freedom. So always one is pulled between the two and the need to find some balance between the two. Hope is for me I would not contrast desire with hope. I don't see why the, exactly the relationship. 

For me hope is because somewhere we have an intuition that there is nothing impossible. That word impossible is not in the divine dictionary. And there is a word of Ibn Arabi who says,"Imagination makes the impossible possible". So hope for me is related with creativity and with the future. And I don't see why it should be opposed, in any way contrasted with desire. Each one of us has to know which are the things that we desire. It depends upon our values, as I said this morning. And be very careful because if you deny yourself your desires, eventually you'll feel sorry for yourself. And then you will not be able to fulfill your being. So it's just a question as one evolves, one discovers desires that prioritize other desires. And then one is faced with that choice. I give and example. You want to go to the concert. But then you're hungry. And think, "Well I have to choose between going to a restaurant and going to a concert". So it's a question of priority. They're both desires. And of course as one evolves, one's desires become more and more lofty. Though just think of Buddha leaving his palace to become a mendicant. Was he sacrificing something? No. What he was in to was far more valuable than a palace. So it's just a question of how you perceive your desires.

What's the meaning of the different sounds we hear when we do shaghal? For God sake don't listen to sounds when you do the shaghal. Nor do you attach any value to the light that you perceive. These are auditive and visual illusions. If you press your retina, or if you press your cornea which is going to press your retina, of course you're going to have all kind of flashes of light in your eyes. If you think that's illumination, it's going to delude you. And the same is true if you place your fingers in your ears, well you're causing a pressure on your drums and some kind of action on your semicircular canals, and as a matter of fact it's an interesting point because it is possible that one perceives the motion, what's it called, the motion of the fluid in the semicircular canals and takes it to be the symphony of the spheres. Well it's an interesting point, because, it is very well possible, it's called brownian motion, the fluid in the circular canals is let's say is of the same nature as the symphony of the spheres. So it gives you a clue. And it's possible that the sparks of light you see when pressing your retina are in some way an expression of something much more cosmic. 

But the thing is instead of perceiving, you need to, I don't know the word, I use that word "feel" because I don't know another word, feel light. How can you feel light? You see light. Can you feel light? Can you feel sound? Well there is not word for it of course. But you see what we call sound is simply the way that energy affects the air into waves. And we interpret them into sound. But you could have, for example, a wave of energy on a wheat field. So actually sound is really energy, frequencies of energy. And therefore we use the word sound, but it would be more correct to say vibration. I don't know whether you remember today when we were turning within I said,"Try to vibrate with the vibration inside instead of perceiving sound". I think I remember saying that. And the same thing with light. I said, "Try to feel the light. Do not perceive the light". I'm glad to have this opportunity because I was trying not to give any explanations and then I, on principle because that's what people want, just practices. But the trouble is that you do the practices wrong. Because, for example, without this explanation, for example I forgot what I wanted to say. 

Yes, you see there is a difference. Well I did mention it but I mentioned it so fast that probably those of you who are here for the first time had no idea of what I was talking about, because there is a difference between radiant light and all pervading light. Radiant light, for example, the light that we generally perceive is radiant light. That is it radiates from a source that is located in space. Well then, what is all pervading light? Well the only way to have any sense of what that is, it's a far bigger theory of course, is think of the difference between the sound of your radio and radio waves. The sound of your radio is definitely broadcast from your radio, but behind that is a whole wave interference of radio waves. And that wave interference pattern we can not perceive. We cannot be aware of in our consciousness. It has to be limited into the sounds that you hear through the radio, processed through the radio. So in the same way we cannot see light that is all pervading, all pervading light. But the reality behind what we perceive is what Dr. David Boehm calls the implicate state in which everything is intermeshed with everything else. And the implicate state manifests at the surface in the explicate state. For example, of course you look at a tree here and a tree there, and this person is here and that person is there. 

And you're quite convinced that that tree is there and that person is there and so on. But if you study physics, then you learn that there is such a thing as a field, and the field does not have a boundary, and the fields are interspersed. And so what we think is an atom is really ultimately an field that we perceive as an atom. So the deeper reality behind what we perceive is what Dr. David Boehm calls the implicate state where everything is intermeshed with everything else. That's why when we turn within, we can't perceive anything because we are dealing with a totally different mode of experience. Instead of being the subject experiencing other than ourselves. And that mode could be called resonance. That is for example, if you have a piano and a harp that are tuned to the same pitch and you play the notes of one instrument then the other begins to vibrate in resonance. So it's not I - it, me the subject experiencing other than myself, but being in resonance. So if you remember I said this afternoon "I don't feel that I'm yet in resonance with you. So we've got to get in resonance." So that means that as we turn within, we have been prepared to renounce experience. And that's curious because we are saying all the time what we want is experience. And now we're saying,"Well yes, but if you turn within, you'll encounter a very different situation where you're not experiencing". What is it then? The only way that one can put it, or the way the Sufis put it is, "Something is being revealed to you that you cannot grasp yourself". Because the notion of the subject has been dissipated.

How do we embrace all, as in wasi, and yet reject impressions that are contrary or damaging to one? The whole idea of wasi is that there is a boundary. One does not embrace all. In basit yes, but then you're not embracing in basit. You're expanding and there is no end to the expansion. But wasi, there is a definite boundary. You're embracing. There is containment.

That's rather dramatic. I was initiated 18 years ago and after that light life was misty, I think missly, I'm not sure what that means. Ecstatic doesn't seem to mean whatever missly means. Life seems to have been revealed to have gone from bad to hopeless, at least in my life. Could you speak on this? Well of course it's true that, of course I don't know you personally. But one has expectations that one's initiation is going to do everything for one. And one is always, when things go wrong, one is always trying to put the blame on something. And initiation is a very good scapegoat to put blame on. If one is not totally, let's say grounded, then I would say that one's expectations about initiation might very well make one more spaced out than ever before. And therefore I do not think that meditation is advisable for a person who is already by nature spaced out. It's not a cure for people who have difficulty in getting their trip together. As a matter of fact now we're being much more cautious about giving initiations. But people are very offended when one doesn't give them initiation. I can tell you a story. There was a young lady who wanted initiation from me. And I took one look at her and said, "Who is your psychotherapist?". So she was kicking back. 

Why did I think she had a psychotherapist? And so on. So eventually I persuaded her to give me the name of her psychotherapist and I found his telephone number, and I telephoned him. And he laughed his head off at the other side of the phone. And he said,"It's the the first time that a guru asked me for advice". I said, "I'm not a guru, but". And he said, "Well why are you asking me?". And I said,"Well I'll tell you. Because in my understanding, psychotherapists are trying to give one a very strong sense of who one is. And these spiritual practices tend to make one aware of the cosmic dimensions of one's being. And one loses the very specific nature of one's individuality. And here is someone who is rather fragile psychologically, and I feel she would be pulled in two directions". Well he said,"Really I'd like to meet you because it is the first time that I've heard sense from a guru". So we never had the chance of meeting, but I have been meeting with psychotherapists and of course I studied psychology when I was younger. And I realize, and perhaps you've notices now in the practices we've been doing that we've been balancing that reaching out and then having a very strong sense of ourselves because it is only your sense of yourself which will help you to make a selectivity, a selection between those impressions that you want to reject and those you want to ingest. Besides that which is gained by existence is that the total virtuality becomes a reality in, becomes a unique reality in each fragment of itself. That is what is gained.

Proposition that children are going to participate in the celebration of my eightieth birthday. I can't understand why people want to celebrate my birthday. I couldn't believe it when on the 19th of June I walked down the steps of Fazl Mazl and I saw all these wonderful people come from all parts of the world to celebrate my birthday. I mean generally people come for one's funeral. So perhaps this is a good president.

Yes that's a good point. The wazifa that you recommend for purification breath and also for casab. This is really more of an advanced question for the retreat guides and representatives, it is true that Murshid does give sifat, that qualities to think of when doing the purification breaths, but we haven't done that before, to the present. But we shall be doing them tomorrow. So well have the opportunity to go into that a little more.

Yes. What is the phenomenon of seeing another face, being when looking at someone? Yes, well that's again that we haven't done yesterday. And that's true that we will have to do these things tomorrow because the retreat is very short, three days. It's a practice with the eyes. There's no point in my describing it now because it's much better to do it than just to hear the description of it. So I'll defer that until tomorrow.

But I want to point out something that remains pending because I don't like to leave you in suspense because I have to end at 6 o'clock this late afternoon. But if you remember that what we are trying to do is to downplay our attention upon the impressions accruing from outside in order to highlight the impressions emerging from within. And then I said creative thoughts, and then I added, if you'll remember, that one can't force oneself to have creative thoughts. Soon as you try to, you can't because you kill the sponti....because it's not your will that does it. And if you just expect, it won't happen either. So there are techniques and as you know imagination which has the same etymology as magic and the magi and image, is the process whereby a thought or emotion that does not have a form manifests as a form. And so a face for example, is not always a very adequate expression of thought or emotion because the fabric of our flesh offers some resistance to the fashioning of our real countenance. Although something transpires through the appearance. And that is what the Sufis mean by that which transpires through that which appears. 

So if you look at a person and judge them from the appearance of their face, you have not really seen the person. So there is a way of shifting your glance in such a way that you begin to grasp, to pick up, to espy actually that which is transpiring through that face. And that's the real person. What I'm saying is rather simplistic. It's a little more complicated than that because the face of the real person changes from one moment to the next. So, it's not static. What we did this afternoon when I said, "Try to discover your real face", well it was very perfunctory because we should have had time to go into it and see how it varies according to one's thoughts. But what we're going to do then, what I have in mind for tomorrow then is to see how our thoughts project into forms using wasifas because that is I would say one of the most important elements of the development of meditation. It's called rendering states of consciousness corporeal. That is embodying states of consciousness. The way to do it is of course to work with the subtle bodies. 

And whether that transforms one's physical body or not, that is the case. But it's secondary. But that's not the objective. But by repeating continually the same image over and over again, it becomes adimate. It becomes a reality and then you identify with it. The Tibetans do that. What they do is they represent a statue Hercola for example. They have that statue in front of them and they contemplate that statue to a certain extent. Then they mold their subtle body to that statue to such an extent that when they walk in the street, they think that they are that statue that's walking. It's a very effective form of autosuggestion. But of course it's sclerosed because it's, you know, you're limited by that statue, not your real being. So in Sufism, no idolatry of course. What we do is, I think is much more vital, and that is we create a form through our own creative imagination. And that form corresponds to the reality of our being. So it's much more effective. So these are things that we have in mind. I'm glad I was able (second side of tape)

...very very difficult. Perhaps you noticed it's very difficult. OK so I'm gland there are no more questions. It would be good if we would sit together in silence for ten minutes without any kind of instructions. You could of course surround yourself with a zone of silence. And of course you could imagine, as I do, a being, well of course I always imagine those wonderful beings I've met who are in a state of ecstasy in the vastness of nature in the mountains. You know you couldn't believe it . They are just sitting there in the solitude. And discover something in yourself that is the of the same nature as that representation. So God bless you now.  End Tape



AUG 12, 1996		Tape 10

J'SHUA TREE CAMP RE10 PIR VILAYAT

....stand up for me when I come in. I am--that's a formality, it belongs to the world. I am one of you. We're all in this together on retreat. 

I hope that you love light. I hope you love people who just bring a lot of light wherever they go and I'm not speaking metaphor but actually it is true that our bodies also emit light and particularly our eyes. 

So let us start with the simplest of all light practices, something that I recommend that you do every day and perhaps many times a day and perhaps as many times as you like a day. Let's just become aware of the light of your eyes and by becoming aware of it, it will become brighter. Just like the headlamps of a car.(pause) Now there is an interesting thing you can do and that's to turn your eyes to the left and the right and up and down and so you are making a cross of light. (pause) And you can even make a circle clockwise and anticlockwise (pause) and then you can make a spiral clockwise (pause) and it reaches out further and further and anticlockwise (pause). Now you could make the spiral reach towards the center from the periphery clockwise and anticlockwise. And now you could turn your head towards the left and towards the right and you see how the views of your eyes describe a horizontal line and back from right to left. once more, and up and down and then in a circle. 'k, well this is just an introduction to all the series of practices with light.

Well, can you feel the cells of your body, not individually but a kind of jiggling inside the body and a tremendous effervescence of life. Now you know how when you are sunbathing--perhaps you don't know it, you don't do it deliberately--but you open up the pores of your skin to receive the light, be receptive to the light of the sun. Incidentally, of course, it's not advisable to do it, particularly in the desert, because of the lack of ozone--the damage that we have done to the ozone layer. Now, as you breathe in can you feel, it's not just your skin that opens up, but you feel the way that the cells of your body are absorbing light from the environment (pause) and the light of the sun or even electric light, light of a candle and if you meditate at night you can absorb the light of the stars which has a very different effect upon you because somehow one is picking up the ultraviolet rays much more than the case of the sun and that's why the rishis in the Himalayas sit and meditate long before dawn to pick up the transit of the light from the light of the stars to the light of the sun. At first it is the ultraviolet rays of the sun that reach the earth before the sun rises above the horizon. So what we want to do is therefore to really feel, not imagine but really feel the reaction of the cells of the body to light. 



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One way of doing it would be of course in a situation in nature where the light of the sun is blurred by a cloud and then the cloud is removed and all of a sudden the light shines and the whole landscape starts lighting up. So if you were lying down while the sun is blurred by the cloud and then all of a sudden the rays of the sun can reach your body freely, then would you feel like a sudden break-through of energy in the cells of your body, because light is energy. Now imagine the cells of your body are crystals which they are in fact. They are liquid crystals. And so having absorbed the light they re-emit light and that is what one normally calls one's aura. So as you inhale imagine that you are absorbing light and as you exhale--well, don't just imagine you are absorbing light--really experience absorbing light and as you exhale really experience radiating light not just from the pores of your skin but from the cells of your body, each of the cells of your body. And you can actually feel that radiance surrounding your body and reaching out. 

Now I don't know if it is helpful to know that the photons of that radiance are travelling through space at the speed of 186,000 miles a second. It's unbelievable. So that your aura reaches out into the starry sky and bombards the stars; and since, in fact, it was the same light which you absorbed. Since there is no boundary to your aura and since scientists consider light to be matter that means bodiness; your body is intermeshed with the stars. So the stars aren't out there somewhere. And as a matter of fact we think that the sun is out there but the sun doesn't have a skin and therefore planet earth is in the sun. So this realization triggers off a whole break-through in our thinking because we are no more the observer experiencing other than ourselves but we are also that which we observe. That is why St Francis of Assisi said: "That which you are looking at is looking at you." So that experience avers itself now to be communion. 

OK, now what I suggest is that you draw your attention to the differences in the frequencies of your aura from the radiance at the bottom of your body, let's say the bottom of your spine, to the top of your head. For one thing you could--of course these frequencies are experienced as colors--so you could simply as a preparation, you could simply radiate red light for example. Just imagine that your aura is red and the extraordinary thing is that, well, that's the magic of mind over body, is that indeed you will be emitting red or even infrared light. In fact that's exactly what the Tibetans do sitting in the snow and trying to dry a wet towel or wet sheet by the heat of their body. In fact experiments have been made. For example you could imagine your right hand to be hot and your left hand cold and in a laboratory situation you could actually measure the temperature of both hands and you would see that it does make a difference. So now 

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imagine any kind of color, for example yellow or blue. OK now of course auras vary not only from person to person but from moment to moment according to our attunement and our thoughts and so on. But there would be an ideal situation in which the different colors that we emit in our body, which is most of the time the subtle colors, not just one color, but that these colors would be ordered in an orderly fashion and they would then correspond to the color of the spectrum which you see in the rainbow, except it would be the other way around. So you would have red at the bottom of the spine and ultraviolet at the top of the head. 

So let us just try and pinpoint each one of these colors, like the red of a flame or the bottom of a flame, bright red, the Muladhara chakra, the chakra at the bottom of the spine; and then terra cotta or something like the color of the pots that you use for plants or then the color of the robes of the sanyasins in India: the second chakra, the Swadisthana. And then Manipura, orange--bright orange; Manipura, that's solar plexus. And then Anahata, the heart center, the cardiac plexus, gold like the sun; and then lovely emerald green in the throat chakra: the Vishuda chakra; and then lovely blue in the eyes, but actually there is a chakra between the two eyebrows, a lovely celestial blue. I'm going to call it a sky blue, Ajna. And then violet or ultraviolet corresponding to what the Hindu's call Bindu which is the center of the crown center and it is situated in the pituitary gland. And then colorless light in the fontanel at the top of the head and that colorless light is rather like a diamond that shines in all kinds of hues. You can discern violet and blue and red and yellow in the effulgence of the diamond. That is the crown chakra, the Sahasrara.

All right. Now its very good to, instead of identifying with your body that is emitting light--which it does--to identify with the light, with the aura. That is difficult for some people because one is so used to identifying oneself with that which is within one's skin, so it's very difficult to imagine that one is right out there intermeshed with everybody else. So there's no boundary to your aura and so what is a wonderful practice is to really identify with one's aura and consider that it is the template or the matrix of one's etheric body and the etheric body or the subtle body or let's say our electromagnetic field or light field or force field or--there are many different terms that can be used--is the template of what we think is our physical body. So think of your body as a hard core within your aura instead of thinking that you are your body and your aura is radiating around you. 

So what is going to be the difference then is instead of what you were doing a moment ago when breathing in the body was absorbing light from the stars and as you exhaled the body was radiating light into the stars. Now if you identify with the aura itself the aura contracts and builds up towards the center as you inhale J'SHUA TREE RE10 P 4

and expands and decenters itself, therefore, as you exhale. (pause) So in some way you are monitoring the light of the stars. 

There is a very interesting point and it is that what we think is our physical body is really the crystallization of the light of the big bang and in turn these crystals are able not only to absorb light and to remit light but are able somehow to monitor the light, I say, of the stars, but of the galaxies; and of course between the stars and between those cosmic rays and so on. So an ebb and flow of light. 

And I'd like you to draw your attention to the fact that the light that is absorbed by the crystals that are ourselves activate the cells to the extent that they divide and consequently are regenerated and therefore that has a healing effect and a regenerating effect which is a great secret in healing with light and is a secret of longevity. So I wish you to all be as healthy as I am at 80. That's the secret, or one of the secrets. 

Alright. Now let's hold the breath between inhaling and exhaling. (pause) Somehow we think of our solar plexus as a kind of a gate: a threshold, opening up into the void, because  at least your subtle body, your electromagnetic field, for example, is like a vortex so that the center is a vacuum and so there is a continual flow from the periphery into the vacuum where everything seems to be resolved in what we call the void. And I think it is simply a subliminal, how can I say, slice of the multiple universe. Let's say that what we think is the universe is just a slice of a multiple multidimensional universe. And so we think it's a void because we don't know what's happening below that threshold so we think that the light has been absorbed like in a Black Hole but what I want to draw your attention to is that now as you exhale you encounter quite the opposite effect. It's just like what happens in a White Hole in outer space, and that is new energy, and in this case new light emerges from these subliminal levels of reality into the existential universe. And so it's a very wonderful discovery of  the emergence of light that is not accounted for by absorbing light from the environment. 

One of the ways in which Pir-o-Murshid describes that is imagine that the sun is really the convergence of the light of outer space that is converged in a point and then from there it is radiating so that originally light is in what we called yesterday the all pervading state, that is, the implicate state. Everything is everywhere, like a field, a light field; and then under certain conditions, gravitational conditions, it becomes radiant: radiant light. So we have to distinguish between these two modes of light. So just imagine then that as you exhale the implicate state of light, all pervading light, like radio waves, a wave 

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interferon pattern of light gets converged and is radiated out through your heart center and therefore through your whole aura. And that light accrues to the light that you have absorbed from the stars so that your aura is now like a hologram. 

As you know, a hologram is due to the interference of two different lights. I mean between two different lights or perhaps even more. So that you are the transducer of subliminal light injecting new light into the universe; into the cosmos. (pause) And also that new dispensation of light is going to affect the cells of your body, I would say even more effectively than the light of the stars. So here again is a more advanced method of healing with light. 

Now let us make one further step. First of all, it is important to distinguish between the fluorescence and phosphorescence. 

Fluorescence: that is the ability of a crystal, for example, to absorb light and remit light, which is not the same thing as reflecting light because the cells are transformed. The electrons within the cells start dancing and then whatever energy remains when they fall back into their original orbit is then emitted as radiance and called bioluminescence; whereas phosphorescence is the ability that deep fish have or bats in a cave to produce light out of the combustion of their own body--or fireflies for example. 

We have that ability too. In fact, if we have temperature in our body it is because the body is in a state of combustion and that's called infrared light: fire. Now the great secret of--one of the great secrets of working with light is traditionally called transforming the fire into light which is not the correct way of saying it really, but let us say shifting frequency of infrared light right up into ultraviolet and that is a very good, a very clear example of what one means by transfiguration. There may be transmutation, I think more transfiguration, and as a rehearsal for rehearsing for life after death. 

So the way to do it is to imagine that your spinal cord is like a chimney and inside this chimney is a flame and that flame--if you watch a flame you find that the bottom of the flame is red and then you observe the different colors in the flame and find that they follow exactly the sequence of the spectrum so that at the top you have--well then, you have orange and yellow and green and then finally you have blue and violet and of course you can't see the ultraviolet but, so there's a sequence. So if you represent to yourself that flame as you inhale you will be doing something to your, lets say the effulgence of your body which is your aura and by making use of the phosphorescence in your body and transforming it into pure effulgence at all frequencies of light, the middle range and also ultraviolet, now this is a Tibetan practice.

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As you inhale you imagine that the wind's (energy is described as wind) energy is drawn into the flame so let's say cosmic energy is pulled into the flame, which is exactly what happens when there is a flame, and is drawn upwards: so it is pulled towards the center and drawn upwards in the flame. Now we have all this  onrush of energy converging into the axis of your being and at the same time this energy is transmuted. It doesn't rise just simply, but it is transmuted as it is turned upwards. And what one means by transmuting energy is like, for example, can you imagine of can you represent to yourself the difference between a current, an electric car that has a lot of wattage but not much voltage or then one which has a lot of voltage and not much wattage? 

So there are differences in energy between these two extremes and so you imagine the energy around the bottom of the spine as being something like that type of energy that has a lot of amperage and not much wattage, like for example a heavy river on a gentle slope and at the top of your head something like a jet of water that has not nearly as much water as that heavy river but is moving with tremendous speed like a spray, and this is called Vajra which is very often interpreted as lightening or in the Christian tradition being quickened by the Holy Spirit. So these are the forces that we are working with now. 

Now that was, let's say, the setting but now let us follow this up. The Tibetans say: "The mind rides the wind." So our consciousness needs energy as a support, as an underpinning, and as that underpinning gets transmuted the mode of our consciousness is altered so that's often interpreted as "the mind rides the wind," that is, our consciousness is carried upwards by this upwind of energy that we are working with in our practices. It's not really up or down. But of course there is a difference in the location of the chakras. But let us say that for every mode of energy is a matching mode of thinking, so for example, if you identify with your physical body then you think the way that most people think: that is, interpreting experience. That's what the Tibetans call the gross mind rides the gross wind: the gross body, the gross wind energy in its most gross form and then a grosser mode of thinking. 

Now, if you identify with your, I call it electromagnetic field but it's really your light field, subtle body, you can do that, you feel that energy around your body, inside your body, and then you identify with that energy instead of identifying with your body. Think of your body as the, think of this energy as being the, as I call it, the template or the matrix of your body which is true. I mean, scientifically Dr. Becker showed that the magnetic (?coil) for example will resuscitate a broken nerve, even a broken nerve and a broken bone so the magnetic field configures the fashioning of the cells and their 

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distribution so its a deeper reality than, let's say, the physical body as a result of it. So if you do that then this is something we are going to investigate a little further today. They you'll find that your thinking is not based upon your experience but seems to emerge spontaneously in what we call a creative wave: creative imagination. And this is what we want to encourage in meditation rather than simply regurgitating impressions of the day. 

Now, if you identify with your very subtle body and the best way to describe it is not just your physical aura but light at all levels of light, nonphysical or at least not what we generally describe as physical, then your thinking will again be totally  different and at that point your consciousness will have undergone rather something like a quantum leap because you have deprived your consciousness of any kind of content like experience of physical objects or your thoughts. Those are the objects of your consciousness; even your emotions particularly deprive your consciousness of its content and it recedes in its ground which is intelligence. And while consciousness is  passive, intelligence is active. 

So now what I want you to do is this: You shift your attention from one chakra to the next as you inhale. You can imagine the different colors if you like, but all in one inhaling, and think of the flame. You could think of the support system that is afforded by all the different forms of energy and think of your consciousness as riding that upwind and finally your consciousness gets resorbed in its ground which is intelligence and which the Sufis call luminous intelligence and Tibetans call the clear light of bliss. So you hold your breath after inhaling and you do not identify yourself any more with your aura but you identify yourself with being pure luminous intelligence without a content, without an underpinning. (pause) 

And then when you exhale you experience the impact of your luminous intelligence upon your aura and that is called a Light upon a Light which is, I am referring to a surat of the Koran, you remember it's a surat that we often use in the Universal Worship, "a Light upon the Light." So the light of your intelligence is going to spark the light of your aura in a way that you could never have obtained by your will by concentrating on converging the light of the stars or the light that emerges from within. So we're talking about a third kind of light which is absolutely paramount and transforms your whole being. And this is the point which is often described as illumination. 

(long pause) God bless you.

AUG 13, 1996		Tape 11

96V08-13.#11

		 Greetings to you. I would like us to start with a typical Sufi breathing practice that I would advise you to do every morning, that is, but, let us start to prepare ourselves for it. First of all remember that when you exhale you have to first contract your abdomen and then your chest, and when you inhale you first dilate your abdomen and then your chest. And it is rather paradoxical because if while you are contracting your chest as you exhale, but you are expanding your consciousness and your notion of yourself as you exhale, and when you inhale, you are dilating your abdomen and your chest and you are converging the energy of the universe and you are centering your consciousness, focalizing your consciousness; so you are doing the opposite in your concentration than what you are doing in your breath.

Now instead of determining your exhaling or inhaling, perhaps you have noticed that I say first exhaling, then inhaling, could you just think that the whole universe is exhaling and inhaling in you, as you, as your breath, so that the rhythm of that ebb and flow is of that alternation, fluctuation, oscillation, is determined by the ebb and flow of the energy of the universe, just like an ocean. So you don't determine it by your will, but you can consider your will as the customizing of the Divine Will.  Now think of your exhaling as the extension of the Divine Exhaling whereby God descends from the solitude of oneness, motivated by his/her nostalgia, Ishq Allah, nostalgia, then we can interpret it in two ways: one is so that the latent and one might say paramount qualities predicated to his/her being should become actuated in beings who are fractions of him/herself through which and in whom he/she discovers the bounty of potentialities present within those archetypes which are the qualities of his/her being. So, as you exhale, you become aware of your nostalgia to actuate the virtual possibilities, the virtuality of the (Divine?) (bait?) in your being at the existential level by building a beautiful world of beautiful people. 

So that, as you see in Sufism is not desirelessness, but one's desires are an expression of the Divine Impulse so that the virtualities behind existence will become actuated right in matter and at the existential level and what we call real life situations; but that impulse can be, of course, distorted by our not recognizing our real being in all its bounty, all its range, and by identifying ourselves as only a fraction of the totality of our being which Pir-o-Murshid calls the ego. The real ego is the ego of God with all its wealth, bounty, normally splendid bounty, but its our erroneous self-identity, the notion that we make of ourselves that constricts and therefore distorts the gift of our Divine Inheritance; and therefore our desires could be counterproductive to the well-being of the whole. But that does not mean that we need to be desirousless, as long as our desires are an expression of the Divine Ishq Allah, the Divine Impulse, nostalgia behind the existential state; and when we inhale, we are participating in the act whereby God extracts the quintessence of what has been gained by this multiplication of his/her being into our beings and consequently, the know how, the knowledge, the wisdom even that has been gained by the interaction between these fractions of the one being. 

So something is gained by the existential condition which is called Ya Alim and as we inhale, we participate in the Divine Inhaling whereby God extracts the quintessence of, not only just that which is being gained in terms of wisdom, but maybe there's more than that that we don't have any words for and which is recycled, if I may use that word, into the Divine Software, the Divine Programming, and hence the words of Jelalludin Rumi, "Tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal." So there's a feedback into the programming from the existential state and consequently reprogramming continually taking place; it is Jami who said, "That which was ephemeral becomes eternal." So that is what is what I was trying to communicate yesterday in a practical way, you remember I referred to a concrete situation like there was an accident for example and all that you remember the essence of that situation in terms of the know how that you gained by it is like the expression on the face of that man who was guilty of the accident or the one who was the victim. So those are like (that?) the quintessence. So our memory does that already, but of course you realize that in order to extract perfume from the flowers, one has to reject the dross, let's say the contingent aspects of the flowers and only capture the quintessence, that's the process of alchemy. And so there is a letting go that is required, and if we are attached to the dross then we cannot extract the perfume. 

And so this is the role of detachment in life, so that detachment is not just cutting out life altogether, but simply making a very clear distinction between that which is, let's say, the support system and that which is essential. So this has allot of consequences in our lives because in order to resurrect, that is to prepare yourself for life after life, you need to let go of allot of dependence, attachment, to situations which really just constitute the support system of your life, and pinpoint and highlight the essential in your life. And, of course, you realize detachment, vairagya, as one says in India, detachment, indifference, independence, the word of Pir-o-Murshid indifference and independence are the two wings that enable us all to fly. So you realize that independence and indifference, or rather indifference and independence are going to give you freedom from bondage, it's really being caught in a perspective, it's not bondage in outer circumstances, that's (demeaux?) the kind of perfunctory interpretation that we make of it that we are bound externally, no it's not that; we are caught in a perspective just like people under the effect of drug are caught in a perspective - it's called freaking out, being caught in a perspective. So here we have this alternation between the two poles of our being. 

One is our need for involvement with situations, people, all the fantastic culture that our civilizations have offered us which we are the beneficiaries, the legacy of great beings, created beings, all that is the ingenuity of humans to build our societies to insure some kind of a orderliness, and justice and security. So all of that is what we are involved in the nitty-gritty of our lives and that we are, if we do involve ourselves in it, it is because we find in it not just satisfaction but fulfillment, that is as I said yesterday that we are continually ingesting the universe at all levels and digesting it so that we would be very impoverished if we were to cut out our involvement with all that bounty which is like an expression of what we ascribe to God. But then we get caught in it, in our thinking, our emotions, we get conditioned by it, and so if you attain by your dint of your indifference and detachment and independence, you are able to watch your involvement and, consequently, if you are able to watch your involvement, you are not totally caught up in it, so that's Jelana Dashana in Buddhism and in fact it is, I would say, the very clue to Buddhism.

Watch your involvement, and I think that that is what Pir-o-Murshid means by breaking through the ties, you can see those ties, he doesn't say break the ties, he says, he uses the words "breaking through the ties", I'm not even sure that that's exactly the word he used because sometimes they were misconstrued, but I understand what he means. You see, if you take the example of the Gordian knot, you know that there was a legend that there was a knot in Greece in some village, that if anybody could unravel that knot, they would conquer the world because it was just impossible to unravel it. And of course Alexander I tried to unravel it and couldn't and therefore he cut it and therefore he never conquered the world. But the thing is, the whole idea is to painstakingly unravel it, not cut it, because if it's a knot, it is counterproductive, it is working against itself. For example your relationship with people, instead of it being a kind of a knot, like an involvement which is confining, it becomes a very beautiful trusting partnership where there is respect for each other's freedom and yet and at the same time an interdependence as I call it rather than codependence. 

So these are ways in which as we are on retreat are able to look at our problems and ourselves and our involvement with our problems in a new light, and see exactly in what way are we involved. Is it circumstantially, or is it in our thinking, is it in our emotions, and so this is realization, realizing very clear - that word is Habir, realization, as opposed to Alim, the know how, the knowledge or the wisdom that is gained; see that connection. And so know this is of course a further more detail on this breathing practice. So there is the exhaling and there's the inhaling, but then the interrelation or interaction between the two is, so as you exhale, you may think of Ishq Allah Ma'abud Lilah and that means actually, Ishq Allah means, Ishq is an untranslatable word, I've used the word nostalgia, but I prefer it to the word desire and the word love is sometimes misconstrued so nostalgia is a nice word, the Divine Nostalgia, Ishq Allah; and then it's followed by Ma'abud Lilah, Abud means the servant, or I call it the Seziran, and Ma'abud means that he is the worshipped one, the one whom the servant worships, or let's say we constitute him as the worshipped one by our worship. 

So personally I, although this is the conventional term, as I do the exhaling, I don't think of Ma'abud, but I think of Ishq Allah, just Ishq Allah, and then Ya Mawjud which means the actuation of, what I said yesterday perhaps you noticed that the Divine God as a virtuality becoming a reality, make a God a reality, Mawjud, make God a reality. It also means make God present, Mawjud, make God present. And then as you inhale, the closest word amongst the wazifas that, I'm going to actually use the word sifat, actually the Isme Ila He (three inaudible words), the closest to what we understand by freedom is Wahid, Vehedo, Wahid, which is let's say is often translated by the solitude of unity. It's the opposite to the multiplicity, but it's two levels - Vahadat and Vahdaneer, so one level is the multiplicity that is present within the unity, and the other is the unity behind multiplicity. For example, a chemical where there's salt, for example, sugar and it's, when mixed you don't see it until a point of saturation, so at that point you see the crystals, so the unity which is present within the diversity or the diversity that is present within the unity. 

So it is that sense of unity that frees you from the constraint of your personal ego, so it's a feature of freedom. You think that following your ego is freedom, it isn't freedom at all, it's being constrained by the misconstruction that we make about ourselves. So Wahid, and then that words Ahad, which is God, the oneness where the multiplicity does not appear, Ahad, Wahid, Ahad, so where there is the multiplicity in the unity, and finally just the unity. I don't want to complicate things too much because there are two more wazifas that I use sometimes, and one is Ya Ali which means the very high one, very high, most high, lofty; and the other is Samad which means eternal because then that which was ephemeral as Jami said, is eternalized. And in so doing we discover the process in so thinking we discover the process whereby by letting go of our attachment to our notion of ourselves, we can highlight the eternal that is called deathless dimension of our being.

I think we will have to follow this up later because it's getting too complicated. I just want you to feel that it's, at first it seems like two poles, one is pulled into the world and then to accomplish things and involvements with people, then the fulfillment there, then one sees that there is some price to pay for one's freedom and one thinks it's because that one has involved oneself circumstantially but then involvement is really in one's thinking; and then the opposite, finding freedom, for Buddha of course he defines it really clearly, it is freedom from conditioning; but that conditioning, the reason why conditioning is effective is because we tend to identify ourselves with a fraction of our being, we are conditioned by it. Let's say we respond to the conditioning by our societies; by, we are trapped let's say by our ego. So you see that conditioning everywhere, like why do people do things, well they've always done it, that's the way things are done, conditioning; in religion, conditioning to belief, that's what I was taught and so on, conditioning. And Pir-o-Murshid's bringing about the message of spiritual freedom.

So I'd like you, these are words of course, but I'd like you to just feel like that you are free and you didn't think you were free, see, all of a sudden it's realizing something that one hadn't realized before. It's a word of the Sufis, if you only knew that you were free, it is your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity. And that is the ultimate hope, because there is no end to the possibilities in your being, it is your disbelief in those possibilities that limits you. Actually, it is a matter of faith; not of belief but of faith. So if you are free, you feel like dancing with joy; and I don't say that you can thrust away your suffering, but somehow there is a, well simplistically one could say that one can be happy and sad at the same time. Maybe it is more defined to say that there is joy hidden in our sadness, just like there's victory hidden in defeat. It's a paradox of course, but then I say when you advance in your realization then you come close to thoughts that do not fit into the common place logic.

'kay, so now let's do this breathing practice now a little bit. So you wouldn't think "I'm involved in life," you'd think "it is God's involvement in the existential state where there is constriction", and that word is in the Jewish faith, it's called tsum tsum - constraint - qabid - constraint. God, all powerful, accepting to be on the cross, I mean accepting constriction. The story of Gargantua and Pantagruel, I don't know if you know that story, the giant that is being tethered by cords, totally powerful and yet somehow in limited circumstances; yet it doesn't take away his power. Again, paradox. It's a very good thought, you see, to think of it because otherwise you think of yourself as limited and inadequate, poor self-image, and inferiority complex, all that. Think of it like a funnel, like a funnel, and so think of you as a being of God, but then getting constricted and yet in each fragment of the totality, the totality is potentially a prism, so you are not just a fragment because you carry the totality potentially.

A very good wazifa that I do sometimes is Ya Kabir - Ya Mawjud, because Kabir means great, or somehow you are aware at least of potential greatness invested in your being and then it's coming through into your way of handling situations in your life, and you never let yourself be constricted, you keep on thinking of the greatness of your being actually; that giant is being tethered, but he is still a giant, you see. It's a very important word, Kabir, same as Allah Ho Akbar, but I prefer saying Ya Kabir; it's like something that you feel in context with great rishis or dervishes, there's a feeling of greatness there instead of being puny as you encounter when walking the street, you come across people, just puny people, that have no sense of the greatness that is invested in their being. That's a secret, secret of the dervish. So the adage of, well it is to be found both in Hinduism and Buddhism is "your realization will make you free"; which is Habir - realization; and I would, but this is of course subject to question and controversy, but there is a word that is called Badi, one of the wazifas, Badi, there's a similarly translated by "the incomparable", that is, the uniqueness of your being and that is your freedom that you're unique. 

So Habir and Badi; and of course what I have been doing sometimes is Ya Kabir - Ya Habir. Kabir as you exhale which is like your power, Divine Power coming through, and your involvement doesn't constrain you because you're still conscious of this power; and then Habir, your realization, which frees you from your involvement, I'm not talking about circumstantial involvement, but being involved in your communication and your thinking. So I think I've given enough wazifas to work with, but the whole point of it is that we are talking a language which is different from the usual one and language is a way of fixing one's thinking, giving it definite hold, definite orientation you see, in meditation, because otherwise thoughts are random and totally incongruous; but know you are thinking a direction by the word which is just like the shoe horn let's say that gets you into a certain place.

So perhaps we will just do these so they're really imbedded in your unconscious. So this is what they call a Fikr, that is, one is thinking of what we call the wazifa but without saying it aloud; so as you exhale then your involvement in life, Mawjud, moving back into the oneness, freeing yourself from the multiplicity into the oneness, Wahid; so it's Ya Mawjud - Ya Wahid, Ya Mawjud - Ya Wahid ... Now just don't say it, but on your breath, think of the word Mawjud as you exhale and Wahid as you inhale, you don't include the Ya, it's without the Ya... Now of course the trouble with this alternation with the breath is that one is polarizing these two aspects of one's being more than ever before; but what we want to do is to introduce freedom into our involvement, so what I do is sometimes I think of Ya Ahad as I inhale and then Wahid-Mawjud as I exhale, both of them in the exhaling. That's introducing freedom in involvement. And now the alternation between Habir and Kabir - as you inhale, Habir, you're inside your realization gives you freedom from the conditioning of your mind or your conditioning of your mind by your upbringing, assumptions and so on; and Kabir, you feel the Divine, the breadth of your being, the scope of your being, involved in situations which cannot rob you of that strength, however constraining they are.

So I'm not very clear about time, whether I've gone beyond the timing or not so I think we will end here and you will have time to go on to the next meeting. Bless you.

 BEGINNING OF AZIZA'S ENCAPSULIZATI'N

...the longing of unity, that was, so what I suggest if you like do Ishq Allah Ma'abud Lilah Mawjud, exhaling, and then inhaling Wahid. 'kay, then he gave a series of wazifa that correspond to Eternity and oneness and Unity, and he was thinking, he kept giving them as he was thinking it so one was Ali, it just lifts you up, it's like lifting your consciousness to the highest point in your being, Ali; and then he followed that with Ahad, which is "The one,", Ahad. And then again he mentioned Wahid - Samad, which is unique, it means Eternal, Samad; so there are three qualities representing that very high state, so, well, meanwhile an undercurrent was this whole tone of watch yourself, be aware, realization of modulating consciousness from the highest to the lowest, from the inner to the outer, he kept referring to that detachment and that involvement; so that modulating consciousness, that watchfulness was Habir, with the H sound, and then he spoke of Alim, Alim, and that was the wisdom, the knowledge gained in existence; so Alim has to do with knowledge with experience, Habir is intuitive knowledge. So one's the inner knowledge, Habir, and then he confused them, he went back and forth a little bit, and really your mind was really stretched, but those two are very nice to do together - Habir - Alim, inhaling Habir, the inner knowledge, exhaling Alim. I don't want to add any more to what he said, but then he went on, once again he got on a tangent and this time he talked again about the paradox and freedom that when you do reach that realization of victory in defeat and when you stretch yourself, then the sense of breakthrough of Kabir which was greatness, with more of the K sound. Kabir, Ka, whereas the intuitive knowledge is Habir, but it's spelled Kha, Habir; where Kabir is the greatness, Kabir. And then he put that with, I believe, he combined those two together, so that you have that watchfulness. And then he had another breakthrough where he placed the Badi, which is "The Incomparable", and so, that's like when you cannot compare that uniqueness of your being, when you touch that place of freedom, your being, the uniqueness of your soul, there's nothing that can compare with it, that's Badi. So that he combined intuitive knowledge and Badi - incomparable, so that when you have that breakthrough, there's a state of being incomparable, there's nothing to compare with your uniqueness, your, that quality of the soul. And then, of course he was then concerned about integrating. once again, he referred to Mawjud and he kept going back to Mawjud, and he placed it with a series of practices, originally he did the Ishq Allah Ma'abud Lilah for that nostalgia, for Mawjud; and then he did it again with Ahad, the oneness, Ahad again that's the unity with existence, so the paradox of unifying our whole being.

So this is all here and I'll post it outside, and what I suggest is that you just choose maybe two pairs that inspire you at this time, or even one and work with outloud and then internally. And do some breathing practices, get centered, in fact if you wish to work with just lifting consciousness at first and working with the combination of Ahad and Ali, Ali - Ahad, you know, something that lifts your consciousness and then combine the ones that bring in the paradox, the unity and the multiplicity, with the Mawjud, so you have then Ahad - Mawjud. He gave so many variations of the theme that you will just have to choose the one or two and work with it. And don't leave here confused. I mean, it's quite simple actually, I mean, I promise you. He really wanted to blow our minds, and he succeeded. No, so, sit quietly, do the attunement to detachment and indifference, the wings of soul; do a simple breathing practice, watch your breath, connect with the universe and when you feel that centeredness and that sort of detachment, then work with a practice or two, and that should fill the hour. And then take a break. And be sure to drink lots of water, wear your hat, and be gentle with yourself. And if your have a question, there are those who have florescent buttons on them are here to help you, are you here, are any of the, they've all gone naturally, the easy escape, so I'm here for now, so if you have a question, please ask before you go. If there's something that you felt particularly inspired by but it's not clear yet, please see me before you go. And this is a real opportunity, and the Sanctuary is open, it's a huge building and it's cool inside, you can find a niche for yourself, a niche of light. Alright.

 END OF TAPE 11


AUG 13, 1996		Tape 12

 

 TAPE 12 AUGUST 13.1996 J'SHUA TREE RETREAT PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN Transcribed by Habiba 'livia Batchelder

We are converging on Quan Yin, the Eternal feminine. It's very appropriate for our time. Yes, of course the argument that meditation is prayer -- I think that something that Richard Resnick pointed out the other day -- the importance of prayer -- and as I've said, it is caused by glorifying -- one awakens one's qualities in oneself that would not have become activated if one had one hadn't projected them upon God. Because one cannot see them in oneself. And so it starts by simply bewondering -- a state the Sufis call Hyrat, which means to be in a state of bewondering. And even physicists are in that state -- they're deeply moved by the elegance and even the mathematics behind the universe. But then that bewondering gets further into worship and glorification, and for that there are several wazifas, in which we'll be doing that with the whole group. But the thing is that the prayer needs to involve our body. Pir o Murshid gave prayers to the few and every evening PIR o MURSHID used to get the family together and we used to do the prayers with him and those prayers, Saums, a lot. 

Incidentally, I want to say that I think its good to say it in a small group. Of course we are accused by the diehards in Islam of having done the outrageous thing of introducing a new prayer to the prayer of Muhammed, which was the ultimate one. And I think that you need to have the arguments to counter that argument, and these are the arguments that I'm going to give you now, because if you look into the words of the prayer, Saum, you will find that it is sometimes almost a literal translation of the prayers of the Islamic prayer. So you could say Pir o Murshid gave prayers for people who don't understand So, its a good argument. The other argument is that there is such a thing as "dual", which is like, more or less, free-rendering of one's prayer, when one does it oneself. So they can't sack you on that. But you have to know it, you have to know your Islam. And ( ? ) you're attacked. 

Now, as you know, and you do know, of course, that in Islamic prayer, you (I'll show you . . . .) Standing up, you bow twice, (once, then twice) and then you kneel and prostrate. So, now, we're now going into meditation here. So if you do the prayers with me, as Pir o Murshid did it, in what might be called the Inner Circle, so first you say (standing, you say), "Praise be to Thee, Most Supreme God" and you place your hands like this, which was what Moslims would do, and even the Jews (Shema, Israel) . "Praise be to Thee, Most Supreme God". So in Arabic, it is "Al ham du l'allah." And then, "Supreme God". I'd translate that "bodi" and then "sarmad", unique God, the Only Being. And then omnipotent, omnipresent. So then when you place your hands like this, omnipotent, omnipresent, all-pervading, the Only Being, well, each one then corresponds to a wazifa. omnipotent (qaher), omnipresent (mawjud), all-pervading (qaim, quaimoon) perhaps this is a wazifa that you don't know, and then the Only Being (sarmad). And then, you bow, and you say "Take us in thy parental arms", and you have your hands like this. So, "take us in Thy parental arms" and then you say, "raise us from the denseness of the earth" and I remember that Murshid used to put his hands like this -- "raise us from the denseness of the earth" 

So, take us in thy parental arms, and raise us from the denseness of the earth. So that corresponds to what one thinks (one doesn't say this aloud in the Moslim prayer, but one thinks "Suban Allah Rab'l Azim" -- it means "glory to thee". Azim, the great being or wonderful being, azim . So, and then one of the priests (there's no priests), but Iman says, "Sami Allah la aqa hamd." That means, well, You've been raised above your limitation. So, "raise us above the denseness of the earth". And then, once more, you bow. "Thy duty to worship" Actually, I remember now Murshid doing this, like this, "Thy beauty do we worship" and then you lift yourself up, and N'W, you definitely prostrate and you say, "To Thee do we give willing surrender". And it is that which Pir o Murshid says by annihilating your sense of yourself in that surrender, then you're able to lift yourself up in your glorification. So you surrender to the divine mercy and compassion. "To Thee do we give willing surrender, Most Merciful and Compassionate God." And then you think, "Most Merciful and Compassionate God," yes, "the idealized lord of the whole humanity," you lift yourself up, and then again you prostrate and you say, "Thee only do we worship, and towards Thee alone do we aspire." Now then, you stay kneeling and then you put your hand on your heart, on the left side, and you say, "'pen our hearts toward Thy beauty, and illuminate our souls with divine light." You have your hands on both breasts and then the rest of the prayer is done kneeling. 

"o, Thou, the perfection of love, harmony and beauty." So, this is the way that -- and then -- yes, "Lord God of the East and the West" . So, in the Muslim prayer one does turn the head to the right and to the left, so that's what you do . "Lord God of the East" (turn to the right) , and to the West, to the left, and for the worlds above, up, and below. And so notice that this is the course that is used in the orthodox church: one does the horizontal line first, and then the vertical; whereas, in the Catholic church, you do vertical first, and then the horizontal. And the orthodox one is the original one, because it corresponds to the zikhr. First you annihilate yourself and then you affirm the divine. And when you say "the seen and unseen beings", you open your eyes (you have you eyes open when you say "the seen" and close your eyes when you say "the unseen"). And then, there's the palms up, when you say, "pour upon us Thy love and Thy light", that corresponds to what they call the dual in Moslim prayer, and that's a prayer of supplication, as Richard [Resnick] said, when no one is asking something. 

One is asking for the divine love and light, and the sustenance of one's body. "Give us Thy daily bread", you know. "Use us for the purpose for which Thou chooseth" and "Guide us on the path of Thine own goodness." In Arabic, "Idn Arsi Sarat a Musaphim", that is, guide us on the path, on the straight path, you see. "Draw us closer to Thee every moment of our life." Now that is the mystical instead of the prophetic. They mystical. The mystic is being drawn closer to God. It's a very intimate experience. Perhaps you know that thing of Murshid where he says, "when Thou sittest on Thy throne and I bow at Thy feet, and then draw me closer to Thee," and so on, and finally "I discover that I am Thou and Thou art me," and so on. Those are the different mystical stages. So that's a very important moment when you say "draw us closer to thee every moment of our lives" because it is only then that we can mirror therefore, until, and that's "be reflected." "Thy grace, Thy glory, Thy wisdom, Thy joy, and Thy peace." And of course, for each one of these, of course, you can think of a wazifa. 

So, you see the relevance of the prayers. Much deeper when we do it this way than if we just stand up. But I remember Murshid was very respectful for the customs of the people in the West, and especially in those days, in the Victorian era, which was still very influential. The Victorian era. So, it was Murshida Sofia Green who said "Pir o Murshid, you can't expect Englishmen to bow on their knees, because they would spoil their trousers." So Murshid thought, "Well, you know, I have to adopt the ways of the West, so, maybe we won't have these prayers kneeling, you know." But you see how much more effective they are, because your body is involved in them. 

QUESTION:: I seem to remember back in the days when I sort of learned the movements that there was a previous place where we actually did cross ourselves. If we're going to cross ourselves, I think was right before the phrase, (Murshida [Vera], you'll remember this,) "Illuminate our souls with divine light" and we would cross ourselves at this point. You made a comment about the Roman Catholic and orthodox and I feel that this is extremely significant in the way that that's done. In the Central Asian Sufis, where Pir o Murshid got some of his inspiration, there is a set of subtle centers, they're not chakras, they're a level subtler than that, the lataif and the sequence in which those were activated (and they have colors that go with them) was yellow, red, black, white, green, which is from something that Sharif sent me, the sequence that the primer should use, so its the same thing. 

PV: Yes, I'm familiar with these, the teaching of Alluad Sanani, the lataif. We don't always let up to all the methods used in different Sufi orders and that's a very complicated way, the choice of those colors, and I think it's good enough if we do them, and most important, carry out the most important aspects of the prayers as they were given by Murshid, and I can assure you that this idea of crossing ourselves, as you say, "illuminate our souls with divine light" -- Wait a minute, let me see, I'll have to do the prayer myself and then I'll realize it better. (PV does it, whispering. Yes, you're right. Yes, you do cross yourself before you say, "illuminate our souls with divine light" And it's the orthodox cross, it is when you turn your face the East and the West, you turn your EYES to the right and to the left, or your HEAD to the right and to the left. That's correct, yes. I'm sorry, I missed it when speaking about it. One has to do it and then one remembers. 

So I won't give the translations in Arabic, but just the ( ? ). So first of all, the position that Murshid used to assume was the one that you find in Islam, the right hand on the left fist, like this. "Praise be to Thee, most supreme God, omnipotent . . ." (so, it's a little lower down), ". . . omnipresent, all-pervading, the Only Being ". Now, "the Only Being", its like this: omnipotent, omnipresent, all-pervading, the Only Being. Take us in Thy parental arms". 'h, yes, now wait a moment. I'm mixing it up with the Moslim . Yes, one does place one's hands down. "Take us in Thy parental arms. Raise us from the denseness of the earth. Thy beauty do we worship." Then, you have to lift yourself up for that. And then, "To Thee do we give willing surrender." So that's a very important moment. That's a termination. "To Thee do we give willing surrender." Wait a moment, I have to follow this. Do they do that? So then, you sit like this, "Most merciful and compassionate God, the idealized Lord of the whole humanity" and then you prostrate once more. "Thee only do we worship, and towards Thee alone do we aspire." And then "open our hearts towards Thy beauty, Illuminate our souls with divine light," and then you do that. Then you do the cross. 

PV leads group in the prayer, all together: "o, Thou, the perfection of love, harmony and beauty, all powerful creator, sustainer, judge and forgiver of our shortcomings, Lord God of the East and of the West, of the worlds above and below, and of the seen and of the unseen beings. Pour upon us Thy love and Thy light. Give sustenance to our bodies, hearts and souls. Use us for the purpose that Thy wisdom chooseth, and guide us on the path of Thine own goodness. Draw us closer to Thee every moment of our life, until in us be reflected, Thy grace, Thy glory, Thy wisdom, Thy joy, and Thy peace."

QUESTION:: Did we not turn our hands over for "the beauty"?

PV: 'h, yes. That's correct.

Now for the Salat, there's a motion in the prayers, you say, "Most gracious Lord," and then "We greet Thee in all humility with your hands like this. That's where you stand up and you kneel again and the whole rest of the prayer is done kneeling without bowing. So its only once that you . . . (when you say "we greet Thee with all humility"). Its only when you say "May the Message of God" then you put your hands up like this. 

Now, the prayer Khatum is a prayer of supplication "'h, Thou, the perfection of love, harmony and beauty, Lord of Heaven and Earth, open our hearts that we may hear Thy voice." So,"'pen our hearts that we may hear Thy Voice, which constantly comes from within. Disclose to us Thy divine light," so one is asking something of God now. So that's what in Islam they call dual , you see, and generally they have the hands like this when they say dual. Like this. So, "'h, Thou, the perfection of love, harmony and beauty. All powerful creator, sustainer, judge, "'h thou, the perfection of love, harmony and beauty, open our hearts that we may hear Thy voice," the whole thing is done like this, you see. And then, only, at the end, yes the whole thing is done like that. And when you say "Amin" then do it like this. So, its, generally, Moslims when they do the dual they sit cross-legged or they don't, they can't sit cross-legged, they don't have to kneel, sit back, so it's called the dual. 

Am I going beyond the time? Another 15 minutes? Yes, I can see that ... I have one too. 'kay, well this time is very precious, so there's a very advanced friend and you could say its the fikr of the prayers, so that you don't say them aloud, but you do the movements and you just do exactly the movements that we've been doing so far, bowing and prostrating, but without the words. So, perhaps you could do it together. You'll have to be in sync with each other. 

And the rest is kneeling and you do the prayer and then you sit back and ( ? )

Well, since we have a little more time, Murshid gives symbols in what he calls the internal zikhr, and also the external zikhr so that while you're saying, "La illaha, illa la hu" you think of a bow and an arrow so that you are tensing the bow (this is the fikhr, so you're not saying it aloud) so then arrow shot in the heart when you think "illa". So that is gives you a great emphasis on well, its based upon the arrow of Cupid that opens up the heart to the power of divine love. And its also associated with the thought of having a broken heart. As I said yesterday, you have to have a broken heart in order to be able to love unconditionally. Do that, and as your head moves upwards, your love is directed towards God, in an act of worship, and then there's that moment when reciprocation becomes known to you, let's say, revealed to you, as though God were saying, "I love you". Its a special moment. It's very not quite acceptable in Islam. 

You cannot say that you love God -- that word "to love" (muhabr) is between humans. But in relation to God, you worship God, and that's why you don't say "Ishk Allah". I forget now. But you say, "Ishk Allah mabud", which means you worship God. Well, the word ISHK is love ( ) but then you don't say you love God, you say you worship God. A difference of status. But that is in Islam, you see. But in Sufism, then the mystics do use words "love for God". It's not acceptable in Islam, but it's because you worship in a difference of status but then you realize that you are the being of God. Then of course it's love. The divine love comes through in your discovering your love for God, and then there's reciprocal God. Well, it's sublimely beautiful, of course, but God glorifies you. You find that in the text of Al Halaj. You must read that text. It's very extraordinary. It's called, "All about Ishk", (?) the book of divine love. in which he's talking about his own meditation and experience. He gets into that state of, well, at the origin of things where God is contemplating his own qualities and in doing so, in order to see them in implications, like how they are manifesting as exemplars, he projects them into beings and then he congratulates the beings on their good looks. So, somehow its kind of a mirroring effect. Somehow this its something that Pir o Murshid says in a very cryptic way -- it's one of the most difficult sayings of Murshid -- that 's most difficult -- the divine vanity. You see, it's unacceptable to a limited mind, that somehow the formless should manifest as beauty and as majesty, because those two are very similar. 

So, I almost don't hardly dare say this, but I think its that God compliments you on your good looks. He glorifies you or, rather, he glorifies himself in you. So think of the chapter, the 17th chapter of St. John, "glorify them as thou hast glorified me since the beginning of time." So that's the reciprocal -- you glorify God and God glorifies himself in you. And I would add, because you wonder how on earth could God glorify himself in me? The only way to understand that is in the words of Murshid, "God discovers His perfection our imperfection." So that establishes a very deep connection. 

Now the other one is imagining a crescent moon and a star. "La illa ha illa ". So, "La illa ha Illa ," you imagine the two lines of the crescent moon -- the bottom line and the curve, and the top curve of the crescent moon, "La illa ha" and then (No, I'm sorry -- "La illa ha illa la"). So, "illa la" you think of the star. The "illa" dissipates the clouds. And "la," divine illumination. So, its a practice that's given for illumination in the heart. So first you think of the crescent moon and then the star, and then you think of the heart. Your heart. And you could even think of the heart with wings. 

Now the other one, I should have said this first, I suppose. The illustration is of a cross and so when you say "La illa ha" you think of the horizontal line of the cross and "illa", descending the cross vertically, from top to bottom, and "la" and of course, the point where the horizontal and vertical lines cross, "illa la". (No, I'm sorry. No.) "La illa ha" in a horizontal line . "Illa" descending. "Allah" rising, and then "hu" at the moment when, the place where the two lines cross, in the heart. So Murshid says it's given to crush the ego, and to replace it by the discovery of the divine presence. So these are the signs. 

Now there is another sign, and I was a little bit hesitant about giving it. Perhaps you know that sign of the scepter -- the king with the world, and they have a cross on the top there -- the sign of the bishop, I think, I don't know whether it's the Pope or him. You see its the sign of expansion of the message to the whole world. In the Catholic church it's called "Urbi et Urbi". and so this is given to people who are really ready to follow the prophetic line, instead of the line of mastery and sainthood, and that means to spread the message of this time. So far, we have been working with ourselves and trying to improve ourselves. But I think the esoteric school is only a preparation for the dedication to the spreading of the message of our time. But it does require all that training to prepare ourselves for that . But that is a dimension of Murshid's teaching that I haven't been emphasizing very much, because I wanted it to be real and not just paying lip service to something that is not real enough to us. There was something that Pir o Murshid used to instill into the Representatives who were very close to him and would come through in those papers called The Message. I don't think that we should presume to do this unless we are really like some of the pillars of the Message, and that was a word that Pir o Murshid used himself. When I remember the kind of atmosphere surrounding Murshid in those . . . END OF SIDE

We don't have much time now. 

Commentary by Mureed: I believe the phrase in Khatum, "Draw us closer to Thee every moment of our LIFE (singular)" is the way it's written. It seems to me to be very significant. And also the title, as it were, of that final prayer. It's not [pronounced] "kah-toom". In proper Persian or Arabic, it's "KHA-tm". And it has two meanings. One of them is "closing recital" and the other one is "to place a seal".

PV: We all know that Khatum, Khatum allah al rasul allah, the end of the prophetic line, that's how it's interpreted, but you know what Murshid says, it's a seal on the letter that can only be opened by the one to whom the letter is destined (addressed?). 

END OF TAPE

AUG 13, 1996		Tape 13

PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN J'SHUA TREE 8/13/96 C'13 (1)

...and if we fall below that level then we make our ideals cheap and lose the power of the Message. In Sufism we call this Adab, exactly the kind of thing that Prajapati was demonstrating at the altar, now the way one talks, and the way one thinks and the way one dresses and that, and Murshid did institute robes for the  Universal Worship and I know some people didn't like, but it all is part of the standard that we need to honor because it goes with the sense of sacredness and as soon as one becomes slovenly in one's manner or one's way of dealing with, as one might call it, the regalia, those objects as Prajapati said, that bespeak of sacredness, and I don't know whether you can say the opposite of sacred but they are symbols of sacredness of our sense of the  divine presence which is the very essence of spirituality. In other words, one falls right back into purely discussing psychological trips that people are into and the whole standard drops in such a way that we lose the whole, what its all about.

So there are three, and that is probably the reason for which Pir-o-Murshid did institute initiations of different grades and then we have a problem with it because people want, somehow it hurts the peoples' egos. They want, everybody wants to be equal. We have to be very careful that our regard for--out of the goodness of our hearts to honor people and share with people, that that good will on our part should not be abused to pull down the authority that comes with the wisdom and which is the only way in which we can--what we are teaching can be taken seriously. So I notice that in the last few years in the Sufi Order that the tendency of our time, democracy, which is spirit, of course, Murshid's message of spiritual liberty doesn't mean a free for all and even democracy doesn't even work in politics so  in the spiritual realm it destroys the whole sacredness of what we are standing for. 

So there are--one could distinguish at least three levels of the zikr and so the first one would be the way that the zikr is taught to people who are not yet familiar with it and have not yet any sense of looking for the sacred but do not know what it really means yet, so there is still--and one can still give it to them in the way that I used to give it, as a matter of fact, because it embodies the four dimensions that we have been studying in the course of our retreat: La illa ha: the expansion of our consciousness, and consequently the expansion of our notion of ourselves beyond the individual notion of the individual to such an extent that one discovers one's coextensibility--it's not a word in the dictionary--with the Universe. One discovers that one is coextensive with the Universe. 

So I'm using some skills. For example, your body is made of the atoms of the stars and galaxies and so on: one of the sayings of Jelaluddin Rumi, though that kind of mental representation has a psychological effect on one by freeing one from the limitations 

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of that particular dimension of oneself that one might call one's individuality, and which is based on, of course, the skin that divides, that is the barrier between what you think is you and what is outside you. I'd like you to notice that La is really a half, a crescent moon, a half a circle. 

And when you say illa ha, you are talking not just about the physical realm, so thinking about the stars and so on, that is not appropriate to that phase in the zikr where you are lifting your head up from the right shoulder to the zenith and at that moment you are thinking that you are one, not just in your bodiness with the stars, but all the levels including the celestial levels and all the levels beyond one's understanding. 

And illa ha, a derivative of the word (ulluvia ??sp?) which Murshid has a very, very-- well of course it's to be found amongst the Sufis. Murshid has a very specific meaning of that word: the Divinity of God. So the difference between God and then Divinity. You'll find that in (___??___________) also. So the Divinity of God in us. It's not the same thing as God is transcendence; any kind of admixture with the existential state. 

Then when your head descends, when you say: illa, then we are turning within so those are all the things we are learning, how to turn within, so there's no point in my repeating things that we've been going through a lot. There's a word of Shabistari who said: "Discover the whole universe within yourself." The implicate state. So there are many other quotations. Murshid  says you get in touch with the essence of your being and so on. And, as I say, you look at outside from inside and can reach people from inside in a state of communion rather than judging people as other than yourself, and a kind of osmosis between other people and yourself and yourself and other people; though you can find people in yourself so of course the barrier--there's no more barrier. The I, It relationship has become I, Thou  relationship and ultimately an I, I relationship. I am quoting Martin Buber. 

Now a very critical moment is exactly the passage from Illa to La. Zia referred a lot to the Mithal level. It is based upon an idea that is found in the Koran: Sheriff. And that is that we are recurrently reborn and consequently if we--most of our thinking is reactionary. We are reacting to what accrues to us from outside. We are interpreting our problems and so on. When we meditate those are the thoughts that keep on striking our minds and the clue of course, to meditating, is to discover another mode of thinking that emerges from within and that is creative, and which is so powerful that the other mode of, the elementary mode of thinking where you are referring to thoughts that accrue from outside seems to be dimmed by the power of the thoughts that arise from inside. 

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So that's one of the great secrets of meditation. But you remember then at that stage--Mithal--which Zia referred to as the mode of resurrection, state of resurrection, it's not just resurrection. One is actually projecting that new dispensation of being, the rebirthing that is taking place which happens, which is initiated in one's attunement in an attunement and in a realization, suddenly a realization. One doesn't know how to say it. It's just suddenly something about one's self that one has never thought of and discovers all of a sudden. And then, so creativity is projecting, is imagination of course. Imagination that is translating a realization into a form. And so that is the moment when, for one's rebirthing to become adamant one needs to gel what is emerging into a countenance. And that's why I've been insisting a lot upon when you are repeating your wazifas--wazaif, actually--to (actually the word is sephat which means qualities) to try to grasp what your concentration on that wazifa does to the countenance of your being. What is the countenance of your being if you are experiencing mastery. What is the countenance of your being if you are experiencing compassion; and so on and so forth. Truthfulness, whatever the quality. 

So this is a very concrete way of making something that is rather nebulous concrete, you see. It's very short lived you see. When you say 'La 'illa ha illa it is the ah of illa. Illa, just imagine that you, I said you are turning within but really speaking that is turning within reaches a point where you pass the threshold from existential level into the void. So fana, the void. So there is a transit there where you lose the sense of yourself. It's like the flying fish under water. You don't know what's happening now. 

So that is, when you say Illa it's a whole process because as Shabistari says, you discover the whole universe in yourself. But then as you go deeper then you realize that the universe is not static, it's dynamic. So what's happening is it keeps on being recycled. It keeps on being resorbed in the void and then recycled again, you see. And so Illa is a process, not just a state, a process. But the words, I and then two ll's and then ah (a) go right--so the ll's represent now your getting into the void, you've lost any sense of what's happening, and as a matter of fact you're not supposed to introduce a state of holding your breath between exhaling and inhaling but there is a kind of hiatus there: La illa ha, Illa. a kind of hiatus, kind of suspense. Because then all of a sudden, well it occurred to me that you cannot--if your were recycling what you were then you are not evolving, it's just recycling. It's like a plant that becomes a seed and then a plant and so on. Recycling. 

That's exactly what Buddha means by samsaric, the samsaric wheel. And so what Buddha is talking about is he refers to the extrasamsaric matrix of your being which Buddha calls your Divine Inheritance which causes a mutation. It's another center, a 

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power center that mutates your samsaric being. otherwise you'd just keep on being what you are. So that creativity is only really--only leads to a wholistic state, with a W. Wholistic state if it includes all the levels of your being, you see. And that's why this spontaneous effervescence of the new dispensation in you needs to incorporate the higher levels of your being and therefore it needs to have the support of the consciousness of those levels and that is why your consciousness shifts upwards through the planes and particularly highlights the celestial level of your being when you say 'lla. 

And the reason why one does not say the first A of Allah is not because simply because of according to Arabic grammar if there are two A's, you do not pronounce the second A. You don't say Illa Allah. No. You say Illa 'lla. And there is a sort of break which is very difficult to say and the reason is because it is emerging from the void and therefore you can't say it. See. And then the first L of Allah, then you are measuring from the void. And it is very important to capture that particular privileged moment when you are being reborn. otherwise you will be stillborn or that rebirthing will be stillborn which is happening all the time to most people. 

So you capture it, as I say, by projecting it into a form but at that moment it's an encounter between all planes. Its exactly what Zia was saying the other day. At the Mithal level it is an intermediary world. It includes both the higher and the lower. Both Nazut, the lower plane and Lahut the celestial level, which is exactly what Buddha means by the extrasamsaric matrix of your being. 

So at that moment there's almost a kind of intuition that enables you to foresee the action of your celestial being in the formation of your new personality and it's being (___??____). Now of course when you say 'la you, of course your head turns upwards and so that corresponds with the kind of sense that one has of lifting one's consciousness through different planes and one mustn't think that there is just one plane, Malakut, the celestial level. There are several celestial levels, and so on.

But, so all the practices that we did on the first days of the retreat and also prior to the retreat, the preparation, the training, was trying to gain some sense of what we mean by those higher planes. otherwise we are just using words and I become more and more wary of words because they become cliches and empty of meaning so that they can only act as labels if when we mention a word we are thinking of the kind of experience that corresponds to that word. 

So it is discovering, really discovering the angel in you which is perhaps hidden under a bushel which is there in your deep 

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unconscious maybe. It's the child in you or even the baby in you that is defenseless, innocent and immaculate and which is there, just like the voice of Caruso within the bad admixture that was due to the spill-over from the environment. 

So this is where your self image meets with a tremendous paradox  because what you have, because it's very difficult to believe in oneself when one is very aware of one's guilt and one's resentment and all one's inadequacies and all those things, those kinds of psychological trips that are exactly what the psychotherapists are helping their patients with. So it's very difficult at the same time to believe in the divinity of your being which is your only salvation and that is why Pir-o-Murshid speaks of the aristocracy of the soul and the democracy of the ego being able to reconcile the most irreconcilable of any kind of thought that you could ever have. 

And I think the best--what is happening a lot is exactly this particular illustration of this situation which we found in the fact that the voice of Caruso is recovered nowadays in its pristine glory within its bad recordings. So it's there. So you don't have to imagine the angel there, you see. That's somehow something you inherited from the legends of the past. You know, it's really discovering the child in yourself that is innocent and pure and immaculate and can never be tarnished whatever you do, and whatever, its as Pir-o-Murshid says, its like a mirror that can never be tarnished by the impression upon it. All you do is turn the mirror and the impressions have gone. And this cuts right into all the psychological problems of people: self esteem and also our need to discover the sacred because the child is sacred. 

And once you've grasped that, then you know that you are of course associated with the ideal that "I am the temple of God and my heart is the alter in the temple of God," so of course this is where you discover, you touch upon the sacredness in your being and now it is true that you see, well Pir-o-Murshid, of course talks about, he says "there is a time that you reach a stage in your life where you are in the quest for the unattainable." It's a wonderful thought because if it could be obtained then, you know, you could put it in your pocket and say, "Now I'm a realized being or, you know, an illuminated being." So you could never say that but it kind of lures you beyond yourself. 

An associated idea is this: That is that by glorifying one awakens one's--of course, one projects upon God excellent qualities in oneself that are made into superlatives and so consequently one is awakening these qualities in oneself that would be dormant if one were not glorifying; and so you see the secret, the need of glorification. And even though the qualities that we project upon God are not what God is, but they have--the very active glorification does awaken these qualities. 

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And that's why in Islam there is a word (Allah Al ? Mahlook (?sp) phil it i khadat??). That is, the God created in your prayers. It's not God. It's the God created in your prayers. But that--the God that becomes you because you are awakening the God within. 

And that's one of the things that Murshid says is there are several stages. One is the concept of God. The second one is the experience of God and the third one is awakening the God within. Make God a reality and He will make you the truth. 

So in this sense of course the zikr is a very deep experience but if you just simply repeat the words: 'lla illa ha, illa 'lla, you know, it becomes vain repetition that Christ deprecated so. There is no point in doing it. It will get you into a trance state and hysteria and all that kind of things that you find amongst some of the Sufis in the East. That's not what the zikr is about. 

So I would say that the ziker really embodies the Islamic prayers without the words. Without the Suras of the Koran and so on, but just the fact of prostrating, because of what Murshid said, and you must know this because it is very important. What Pir-o-Murshid says about the ego is right on. What he is saying is that the ego is the way that we identify with a fraction of ourselves, which we prayed as being us, and which we utilized as a defense system against attacks of people. We don't know how to defend ourselves except by our ego, you see, so we are really calling upon only one aspect of ourselves and not, of course, utilizing all the enormous pool of resourcefulness in our being.

So that illa is not just turning within as I said already but it also fana and we think that, and now there are two aspects of this and I think there are two levels. The first one is that, as Ib'n Arabi says, one is not annihilating oneself but one couldn't annihilate oneself anyway. All that one is doing is annihilating that false idea that one has of oneself, ones self image which is not what one is and which is the ego which is only a part of oneself. And having done that, then all of those latent qualities in oneself start emerging in the new birthing by the fact of one's turning upwards in an act of glorification. 

There may be a deeper aspect of this and that is--I suppose I could only illustrate it by a very tangible example. I don't know whether you know there is a situation in nature in which you think it's a flower but it's really a lot of insects that have all conglomerated into something that looks like a flower and if you blow upon it, all of a sudden the insects fly off in all kinds of directions and then if you are very quiet and keep a little away, you'll find that they come and settle back again. 

 PVK J'SHUA TREE 8/16/96 C'-13 (7)

But the question in my mind is, is it exactly the same insects that returned to exactly the same position as before or is it the overall form which is determined and the position of the individual insects is not important. And the second question is, whether they do get back, or whether the flower or what looks like a flower is exactly the same now as it was before you blew on it or whether it looks different, whether its configuration is different. I don't know that myself but I suppose that it is different and therefore it is true that as in alchemy coagulae, before the coagulae, that is, first of all solve, that means dissolve before you can restructure yourself again, so maybe its true that one has to lend oneself to this disintegrating power in the universe in order to enlist the way in which the universe self organizes itself in a way that is beyond our will and beyond our understanding. 

So that is of course a deeper experience of the zikr, Fana. And Fana is always accompanied by Baka. That means that that dissolution is always accompanied by a--its not a restitution. And that is why we must be very careful of the concept of therapy. A person would be healed because they get back to the way of good health where before, I think that is one of the views that Himayet has been bringing into healing, using healing as, I mean turning the tables on the illness so it sparks a new birth in your being, a new personality. 

These are dynamic ways of looking at what is happening to us but now we come across a thought that has, at least for me, become very important. And that is that we are an admixture of the evolved animal and the angel. The lovely word of Khalil Gilbran. Of course, I could go on. I could quote a lot of cases where beautiful sayings of the Greeks, who were talking about this. 

So the samsaric recycling element in our being is exactly what Buddha deprecates. The wheel, reincarnation, making the same mistakes and continuing to be what one has always been, in fact sometimes the different degenerating people were nicer when they were kids or young people. When they get older they become surly and lose their enthusiasm for life and so on. So this happens unless you can enlist that other extrasamsaric matrix of your being which is discover the angel in you that uplifts you and transfigures you and transforms you and so I find that one--as Pir-o-Murshid himself says, to discover this you have to find yourself in a situation which is called, which enlists what is called a déjà vu; that is, for example, looking in the eyes of a baby you see the light coming through the eyes of the baby seems to remind you of something that you have forgotten, reminds you of another level of reality that is familiar. You think, Ah, yes, I'd forgotten this, yeah, of course. The memory of the celestial spheres or then listening to music, the whole atmosphere of a Universal Worship if it is really a deep 

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experience will awaken that level of identify which in Sufism corresponds to Malakut, the level of the angel. 

So its not just projecting sort of unrealistic thoughts of what one thinks of an angelic world up there but it is discovering the angel in oneself which is hidden under so many veils and also so many excuses that one makes too, and in fact the false modesty because as the Sufis say, one is refusing the divine gift by deprecating oneself, devalidating oneself: I'm no good, and you know, and all that kind of thing and bad self image and inferiority complex and so on. In fact it's an inverted form of pride. So you do have to know--well, let us say that the Sufis present a map and as of course as (--Sipsky ) said, the map is not the territory but it is good to know that this new creativity in you is perfected or completed by your rediscovering the celestial being in you and this does require one to free oneself from the limitation of earthly conditions. I'm not talking about circumstances, you know. Freedom from one's opinion, one's way of thinking and ones way of emoting that is limited by earthly conditions. 

Pir-o-Murshid used a word that--I'm not sure whether he said one loosens the ties with the earthly condition or whether he says one works through the ties. I'm not quite sure. I ought to check again with Sheriff because sometimes there are several versions of what he has said but the way I see it is what you do loosen is your dependence or your attachment to worldly circumstances. I think that is what is meant when Christ says, "They are in the world but not of the world." So it doesn't mean not in the world as the sannyasins for example in India. No, that's not the Sufi idea. No. Somehow it's just something very internal that happens that you are not in a state of dependence like you know what addiction is, addiction to all kinds of things, and one of them is of course, earthly conditions. Let's say the support system that takes over, as Shahabuddin says. I keep on repeating that. Just caught up in the support system and one doesn't have time or energy to reach beyond. 

It's also, well not only discovering the divinity of one's being of course but it is, it comes as a surprise. One discovers the divinity, the deathlessness of one's being and that's something we have to discover. (? Because there's no use saying it??). But at first it is the perenity of one's being, perenity like for example always the same water that flows--that is, always the same river but is not the same water that flows under the bridge. So perenity is a continuity in change, you see. So that is not deathlessness but it is a step toward understanding or realizing one's, that kind of continuity that frees one from one's limitation in the transient and empirical condition of one's being and that's true, that if one does that then one shifts one's identity from identifying from one's body and I want to 

PVK J'SHUA TREE 8/16/96 C'-13 (9)

make it quite clear that there is a difference between one's body and one's bodiness. 

One's body after death undergoes rather dramatic changes. It is not true that one's bodiness dies because the electrons of one's body continue to live forever and so are the protons so that idea about death is one of the most nonsensical ideas that we have. So, but what is important here is to no just to realize but to actually work on the transmutation of one's bodiness and I'm not speaking metaphor because if you identify yourself with your, what I call the electromagnetic field which is really a force field, your subtle body, what they call the subtle body, then you realize that it's not only a template, more the matrix or the code that configures your body, the cells of your body, so it's a deeper reality.

But then as your body evolves and as it's in the process of what is called resurrection, the matrix itself is transmuted. And that's what is called resurrection. Somehow in one's meditation one schleps one's body upwards in one's realization instead of leaving the body behind which is a very dangerous situation. People pass out and you know, they get into state of trance and so on because you've neglected your body. Your body is part of you and so the only way to do it is to really experience what it means to transmute the body like the activities of the body that  represent what I call esoteric chemistry. 

For example the enzymes that transmute the--that see to the replication of DNA and RNA and so on, neurotransmittors; those represent a kind of esoteric chemistry, the hormones of the body. And so they represent a level of one's bodiness which is higher than, for example, the structure of the nails of your fingers or hair and so on. So if you identify with that subtle nature of your bodiness then it will, you don't have to discard your body but you do realize that it has a--it is the underpinning of your resurrection. It is the instrument of your resurrection. It's like, for example, extracting perfume from the flowers so it's true you have to give up the contingent part of the flowers in order to be able to extract the perfume so it's true that in your mind you have to let go of your attachment to aspects of your body that need to fall apart but still cleave to the quintessence of your bodiness and that is what you experience in a transfigured state. I don't know whether it happened to you. Just walk in nature and you find yourself in a transfigured  world. So that is an experience of what we stand by our subtle body. 

So this is, these are clues to how one lifts one's consciousness because that word lift one's consciousness is very misleading. It's not like your shifting your consciousness from one level to another. You have to incorporate all those levels and be aware of them as you move upwards. But it is true that you tend to 

PVK J'SHUA TREE, 8/16/96 C'-13 (10)

down play your, how can I say, your, the fact of being limited by the perspective of your bodiness or your ordinary psyche--commonplace psyche, like how do I feel and what do I think and so on. You--I have to transcend them ....;

end of side one of C013, 8/16/96, J'SHUA TREE, PVK

--------

PVK J'SHUA TREE, C'13, SIDE 2 OF TAPE, 8/16/96

For every level of identity there is a mode of thinking. So if you identify with your body then there is a of thinking which is called Hayal. If you identify with your subtle body, Arwah, then (A-rhou--), (Rhou) means spirit. If you identify with your subtle body then there is a mode of thinking. It is called Mithal which is exactly what Zia was talking about: a mode of thinking that is creative instead of depending upon being a reaction to the environment and then if you identify with your celestial body which is (Malakut) then there is a mode of thinking which is called Jabbarut where your thinking is absolutely free from being based upon experience. It is a thinking that the Sufis call is revealed to you instead of a thinking that you acquire and it's revealed to you because we are born with an inherent knowledge. 

Well, we are born with the thinking of the whole universe but as our consciousness becomes limited to what we think we are as an individual we lose that thinking of the universe and base our knowledge upon our experience or our way of interpreting experience. But then when we rediscover that thinking again, then we realize how inadequate our personal thinking is. So that's Jabbarut. It's a kind of break-through of realization in the zikr when you, maybe the two ll's of 'lla would represent Malakut and Jabbarut and then the last a of 'lla would represent Lahut which is like the archetypes, we say the archetypes behind the universe, all the, the sephat, all that we are referring to in our practice of the wazaif. 

So it's like being invited to be privy to the thinking, well, to the thinking, the principles in the thinking of the structuring of the universe: what the Sufis call (unse ? sp??) which is being invited to the court of the king like being invited to be privy to the strategy that is the secret of the king and cannot be conveyed to everybody. That's Lahut. Then beyond that, there is of course then, you know, there's an h at the end of Allah and you must say that h. You must not say Alla Hu. No. It's "Allah Hu." "H" is a part, a continuity of the a, Allah Hu. And there's no break there. It is very difficult not to make a break because that h represents Hahut which is the level of unity beyond diversity.

PVK J'SHUA TREE C'-13 (11)

That means beyond the diversity of Sephat, the different qualities, and well, I wish I had more time but Ib'n Arabi says "If the names disappeared the named would appear." So stress, accent upon the wazaif, stands in the way of our experiencing the reality of God. That's why the zikr represents a far more advanced stage than representing and repeating the wazaif. 

And I think of the words of Pir-o-Murshid when he said, the last words before he passed away were: "When the unreality of life strikes me--" no, "disappears, then the reality--fades away," he says, yes; "then the reality of life strikes me." So it's like all of a sudden like awakening from that vision in which as the  Sufis say, God is revealing himself by devices. So what we are  experiencing in the physical world and also qualities in our personality and so on are only Ayat. They are only signs in which that reality that could never be limited to the way that it is disclosed is disclosing itself. But then at the Hahut level God does not need to use devices anymore and so this is the ultimate reality. 

Now the beauty of the zikr is that it is followed by Hu and therefore the objective is not awakening beyond life in the heart but awakening in life. Of course there are many ways in which Murshid says this. I often say well, imagine that you have visited the architect and the blueprints and then afterwards you go and visit the monument accompanied by the architect and so then you understand what is on his mind; so that is awakening in life rather than awakening beyond life. But what Murshid says more specifically is that first of all, you know, he says, "Where are you to find God if it's not in man?" Well, "Where are you to find God if it's not in the God-realized man?" 

That word "find" is very important, incidentally, because perhaps you known the wazifa Mawjud which we often describe as meaning, you know, the existential state, to make God a reality, Mawjud, to make him present. Well, there is an etymological link with the sephat Wajid which means to find. And so he says well, "You find God." It's very interesting--if you make a parallel with the latest, some of the latest views of science now, physics, an electron only exists if you find it. If you create circumstances which enable you to find it. And in the same way you can consider that God is a virtuality and only becomes a reality if you create circumstances in yourself in which God becomes a reality. 

And that's why Murshid says, "Make God a reality." And so the whole purpose of the ziker is not to know God, it's to make God a reality. So it's not Samadhi. Samadhi is knowing beyond knowing but this is really making it happen in your being. So one cannot exaggerate the sense, the meaning of Hu. -- (We have another 7 minutes)--Because so far I've been describing the

PIR J'SHUA TREE 8/16/96 C'-13 (12)

zikr--we started with something down to earth, like your bodies, are part of the stars, and so on, and then we got to more advanced ways of thinking. 

So I started by saying there are three different types of zikr, so the first one is where you are going these four different dimensions and discovering their meaning and so on to you. The second one is really like it's not knowledge any more but its meaning is revealed to you which you could never have attained by trying to capture it with your mind. 

But the third zikr is the one that I want to emphasize now, and that is that you are doing the zikr for your mureeds. And so when you say 'lla illa ha and your consciousness expands, it is not just Basit which is existential consciousness but Wasi which means that you are encompassing your mureeds. You are holding them in your consciousness. In fact you are gathering them in your consciousness: Jami. Gathering them in your consciousness. As you know, there is an osmosis between beings so that we can find another person in ourselves and they can find us in them. So that you don't have to look for that person out there. That person is there in you, and the ziker, that's what you feel. You think of your mureeds as being in your flesh rather like the gritty grains of sand in the oyster that you are transforming into a pearl. And you are not just incorporating when you say "'lla", of course, thinking of the personality but as you say "'illa ha" then you are incorporating the higher, and including of course the celestial and divine levels of your mureeds and then somehow you are assisting them or accompanying them in their fana. 

You are not promoting their fana. We have to respect their process that they are going through but you are with them in their annihilation and for them it often means distress because they often interpret it in a personal way. So you're with them with their distress, in their distress, and their anguish, and their little faith and their bad self image and so on. And it is important when people are in distress for there to be someone there who is with them, without saying anything necessarily, but as in psychology one says, now in a safe environment, and assign a containment, but your insight into their fana, you can't say it in words but when you are doing the zikr somehow you are establishing a resonance with your mureeds and therefore somehow your insight into their particular fana is going to help them even though they can't understand with their mind, but that they are understood even if they don't understand, is a help-- that they know they are understood. 

And so of course any criticism we make of them would of course destroy them altogether. So you can't criticize your mureed. So if your mureeds insult you and whatever they do to you all you say is, well, as Christ said, "They don't know what they do. 

PVK J'SHUA TREE 8/16/96 C'-13 (13)

They're children. They don't know what they do." 


Now one thing that you can do, and I think it is important to do with your mureeds, is for them to know that their suffering is their participation in the cosmic drama instead of thinking, "This is happening to me. "So it makes it easier if you think, well, we are all in this together and some have a little more, are carrying a little more weight of the cross than others, but it's the cosmic drama. So instead of saying, "Why does this happen to me? God is so unfair to me," and so on, so of course there is no doubt that in fana there is pain. There is a pain of separation, of abandonment, "Why hast thou abandoned me!" In our minds we can't understand what is happening. 

Now, then, of course, as you say 'lla, then of course you are exalting in your worship and you carry your mureeds with you in your exhortation because you know, when one is sharing bread at the same table something happens that does not happen if one is eating alone. That's the reason for joint prayers together. But you can, you see, the thing about the zikr if your working, well, the thing about guidance of your mureeds is that what you can do in your counselling is very little in comparison with what you are doing in the higher spheres. 

In fact, people asked Pir-o-Murshid something about this and he said, "Most of my work is done on the higher spheres." So that you are working with your mureeds on the higher spheres going through the different phases of the zikr with them in the higher spheres and you're even reflecting their image so that when you are at the Mithal level you reflect in the configuration of your aura, you reflect their aura and somehow send it and then somehow they reflect your aura so there's a mutual mirroring which is called (aina hana ?sp??) the palace of the mirrors in Sufism and so somehow when you see them again in the flesh somehow--they don't know this, of course--but in the depth of their being they know that they have been seen by you in their soul. And they wouldn't believe it themselves. You have seen beauty in them and they haven't seen that beauty in themselves. But by the fact that you've seen it in them it helps them to recognize it in themselves. So what you are doing for them is of such importance, I can't tell you the importance of what our work is on the spiritual field. 

So, God bless you now.

-----

End of SIDE 2, TAPE C'13, J'SHUA TREE, PIR, 8/26/96

Transcribed by Amira. I didn't check the spelling and punctuation as much on this one, as you can see. 

AUG 13, 1996		Tape 15

 96V08-13.#15

PVK Joshua Tree 8/13/96 RE Tape 15 Casad

...at a stage during our retreat that we really need to have a breakthrough. Tomorrow is the last day. And you've got a head start now. We've been told a lot about problems so that we are able to look at them with a certain distance and take off without having a split in our constitution. 

So we talked about this extra samsaric matrix, or rather several matrices that exercise an upward pull on our identity, commonplace identity. So what we want to do is awaken those levels, those counterparts of ourselves so that we become aware of them and also fashion them. 

So you may have noticed I've been talking about a level I call the subtle body, not just only talking about it, but we really feel it. It's almost like steam or something like that, or like a magnetic force. It's very difficult to define it. But as long as you feel it that's the important thing. It's a kind of energy. 

And then we have, I brought to your notice the fact that you could distinguish in this energy field energy that is grosser, like I said a lot of amperage and not so much voltage. Then the other way around, a lot of voltage and not much amperage. You can just feel that. For example, when you concentrate on the energy at the top of the head, it seems to be very fine as compared with the energy at the bottom of the spine. And there are relays between them, which are called chakras. There is a transit from one pole to the other. So one way of what we call lifting consciousness, it's not the proper word but it's the word that's used, through the planes, is to shift one's identity from the, not just from bodiness to the subtle body, but the different levels of energy of the subtle body. That is done by transferring your attention from one chakra to the next as you inhale. Then you hold your breath. Again doing the opposite. But the opposite is not, well maybe... It looks as though the alchemists call it the materialization of spirit instead of the spiritualization of matter. But I think of it again in terms of what we did with light, a light upon a light. So the quickening action of pure spirit upon your subtle body, even though pure spirit is maybe the apex of your subtle body. 

I think I've already, I don't know whether I've already mentioned four wasifas. We actually there are four sifat. If you remember there was Muid, a kind of resilience at the bottom of the spine, Muid. And then moving up to Quddus, pure spirit, at the top of the head. And so you could distinguish those two poles of energy. And then Muhyi, which is like a renewed energy, a new energy or dispensation of energy that surfaces from the solar plexus. And then Hayy which is energy that is radiating from the heart center. So it's good to be aware of those four manifestations of energy, modes of energy, before we undertake the practices that we are going to do now because it gives you clear orientation. Now simply by referring to these four modes of energy, you have a sense of up / down, ascending / descending, and then from inside towards outside, and from outside towards inside, Centrifugal / centrapedal. 

So let's say our subtle body is like a vortex. And vortex is a very good word because it is continually in motion. There are currents in it. And as a matter of fact the practice of the zikre enhances these currents in the subtle body if you identify with the subtle body. Tomorrow we'll be going into the zikre much more. So we want to prepare ourselves for the zikre by a practice called Casab, or well let's call it casab, the Sufi word. 

So far we have, I've been talking about the, this morning we were practicing the actual confection of the structure of this subtle body, especially the face if you remember. But now we want to enhance all that energy, the currents. All this is a preparation for what we are going to do. I hope you remember gross body, gross mind, and then subtle body, subtle mind, and then very subtle body, very subtle mind. So we're working now with the subtle body and therefore with the subtle mind which , if you remember, is the creative mind that translates that sort of interpreting experience, translates impinging thoughts into form, and by the same token fashions our subtle body. Now as we more ahead, we shall encounter our very subtle body which is our celestial counterpart of light, and then the very subtle mind which is neither the understanding that interprets events nor the creative thoughts that manifest as forms, but a kind of direct knowledge that is already inherent in us but which is awakened. And therefore the Sufis call it revealed. So as long as you know that, that's a good orientation. And we have a sense of how we're doing this. Because just breathing in and out, that won't do it for you. 

So now place the thumb of your right hand under your chin and the middle finger on your right nostril, the back of your right hand in the palm of your left hand, and the thumb of your left hand in the proximity of your left nostril. And now press, first of all breathe out through both nostrils. Now press your right nostril and inhale left nostril. Hold your breath. Turn your eyeballs upwards. Curl your tongue press the pallet. Exhale through the right nostril. Energy of pure spirit, quddus, descends on the right channel of your spinal cord. Inhale through the right nostril, Muid, the inertia energy ascends the right channel of the spinal cord. Hold your breath, eyeballs upwards, tongue curled upwards, pressed against the pallet. 

Pure spirit, quddus, exhale left. Energy of quddus descends on the left channel of the spinal cord, and is, as I say, it adumbrates the energy at the bottom of the spine which is well a lot of amperage and not so much voltage. Now inhale through the left nostril. And consciously transmute that gross energy with a lot of amperage as you are ascending into fine energy, quddus. Hold your breath, eyeballs upwards, curl your tongue press against the pallet. Think of pure spirit. Exhale right nostril so this very fine energy descends and not adumbrates but permeates that energy all the way down, like a light upon a light, if you remember. Now inhale right nostril. Now you know how to do it. Now inhale through both nostrils and concentrate on the energy that rises in the middle channel of the spinal cord. Turn your eyeballs upwards. Hold your breath. And now as you exhale the energy, pure spirit, descends passing from one chakra to the next. But it keeps on bifurcating right and left into the lateral channels. Now once more inhale through both nostrils and concentrate on the central channel. Hold your breath. And now this very fine energy descends in the central channel and then gets bifurcated right and left. OK. Now just relax and breathe normally.

I hope that you feel that you have enhanced the flow of energy. They also correspond to the transmission of energy, in fact it's electrical energy partly, along the three trunks of the spinal cord. I don't know whether you know that the central nervous system is governed by a whole system of nerves which are related to the central trunk of nerves that is to be found within your spinal cord. And then right and left you have two lateral channels, trunks, that govern the autonomic nervous systems. That governs physical functions that we don't have to think of like breathing and so on, circulation of the blood, heart beat, digestion. And then there is some relationship, there is some connection there with the psyche. For example, the control of thoughts, central nervous system. And then the unconscious autonomic system. Somehow some relationship between the two. And then there is the lateral nerves that connect the autonomic system with the central nervous system. 

Now Yoga is based upon the principle that there is no autonomic function that cannot be taken over by the conscious will. And consequently that there is no mental, or let's say by the same token, there is no mental function that cannot be taken over by the central nervous system. That includes of course the functions of the brain. So the Hindus dissected corpses and knew a lot in those very early days about these nerve connections, nothing like we know today, of course. 

Now the principle that we are working with is this. Supposing you are learning to play the piano, or to type, whatever, drive a car. First of all you do movements that are intended. Therefore it involves your will and therefore the activities of the central nervous system. Now somehow that custom that you've set up is going to be relayed to the autonomic nervous system. So eventually you don't have to think of how you use your fingers or whatever. The autonomic nervous system takes over. You have trained the autonomic nervous system. That's what we're doing with the wasifas. We're training the unconscious. But the point is that if you keep on, if a mistake starts setting in, you'll keep on repeating the same mistake because it's become automated. And therefore you have to redo that action which was automated consciously several times. Then the autonomic nervous system will take it over and do it automatically without your having to think of it. So what we are really enhancing is the connection between the autonomic system and the central nervous system. And that is the afferent and efferent nerves that connect the two. So the practices that we're doing now is going to enhance that interaction between that autonomic system and the central nervous system. So this is the practice.

You see if you think of your subtle body as a vortex, then the center of a vortex is a vacuum. So the center of your spinal cord which corresponds with the trunk of your central nervous system, the main trunk, operates a kind of suction effect upon the periphery. And that's what the Tibetans call, the wind is sucked into the center from the periphery. And the way to do it is imagine a flame in the center of the spinal cord. Now the opposite is true. That is when you're exhaling, then you're bringing energy down which is called the quickening of the Holy Spirit which descends through the fontanel, and descends through the central channel. And, as I said, keeps on being bifurcated left and right. So you are enhancing the control of the central nervous system over the autonomic nervous system. In the first place you are relaying information from the autonomic system to the central nervous system. The central nervous system takes over and controls the autonomic. So you see that the practice that we do has very definite consequences in terms of the configuration of our nerves, nervous circuits. And also you must think of the whole circuitry of the nerves as a hologram. It acts holistically and not just in terms of the circuits. So this is the practice.

You see if you draw energy, yes, first of all we have to understand that, I think it's easier to explain it in terms of electromagnetic field. Let's say, can you feel, imagine that you body is like a magnet, and then can you feel like the field around that magnet? Like I'm sure that at school you had a magnet and then you poured metal filings around the magnet. And you found that it was configured in a certain shape which is the shape of the configuration of the field of that magnet. That's exactly what happens in our body. You can actually feel that. That will give you a sense of what your subtle body is. Now while the magnet is static, your body is dynamic. So it's not a static electric field, I mean magnetic field, but a dynamic electromagnetic field in which there are currents of electricity. And I don't know whether you know this law of Gous which says that if you have your right hand, and you have a magnetic coil that whirls as your fingers go, therefore to the left, you would be enhancing the electric current in your thumb. So a relationship between magnetism and electricity. 

So now, if you are, so your electromagnetic field, then there is the electromagnetic field of the planet. Your electromagnetic field is part of the electromagnetic field of the planet. But still it's like a vortex within a lake. So it has it's own kind of identity. And so if you're sitting, particularly if you are sitting cross legged, then at the bottom of your spine there is a threshold, node let's say, which is called muladhara chakra at the bottom of the spine, where the exchange between the two fields is particularly felt. That's why the Yogis attach so much importance to the snake that is coiled, or the two snakes that are coiled, at the bottom of the spinal cord are called Kundalini. If you, while you're breathing in, consciously represent mentally to yourself the way that those snakes are going to coil upwards, if you awaken them, like in the caduceus, then you will literally enhance this spiraling of energy. 

So you're sitting cross legged. And you can feel what they call telluric energy, earth energy. And then the bottom pole of that magnet that is your body. Now if you breathe in through the left nostril, that energy that impinges upon your body at the bottom of the spine is going to be drawn to your left, breathing to the left. Then it will spiral. And remember that that energy is going to somehow keep on being sucked in by the center of your spinal cord, the center of the vortex. And so it's going to spiral instead of going up straight. So it's going to spiral in front of you and then towards your right, and back, and keep on like that, clockwise. So it will spiral. That means that it's going to ascend and at the same time turn. Now then you hold your breath so that energy is now going to be directed in your pituitary gland. You've arrested the upward flow. And then as you exhale through the right nostril, well you are, since there are two poles, the bottom of the spine where the snakes are and then the top of the head, the fontanel. So that's the opposite of telluric energy. That's very fine energy. 

We call it quickening of the holy spirit, quddus, that now spirals down as you breathe through your right nostril. If you can imagine that there are two spiral staircases that crisscross, and you realize that you do not descend by the same staircase that you came up on. Now as you inhale through the right nostril, then you spiral, you whirl the energy, telluric energy, earth energy which impinges on the bottom of your spine, you whirl it anti clockwise. And eventually the flow is stopped by the fact that you stop breathing in through your right nostril. So it settles in the pituitary. Then hold you breath. And then you exhale through the left nostril. So I must remind you that as you're inhaling through the right nostril, you'll be ascending through the same staircase that you just went down on. And now you exhale through the left nostril. Energy of pure spirit descends in a spiral anti clockwise on the same staircase that you ascended in the first place. Two staircases that crisscross. Now if you inhale through both nostrils, then you have two spirals, as in the caduceus, that are going to crisscross in front of the second chakra, behind the solar plexus, in front of the heart center, behind the throat center which is called the Atlas incidentally, in front of the third eye, and eventually meet in the pituitary gland which the Hindus call Bindu in the center of the crown center, sahasrara chakra. 

So you have two spirals that are spirals simply because the energy cannot rise and because the peripheral winds are being sucked into the center as they move upwards and being transmuted as they move upwards. The effect upon the nervous systems is extremely pertinent because the information of the autonomic nervous system is being fed into the central nervous system and reaches the brain. These are nerves, neurotransmitters communicating this information, not just energy, but information. The mind rides the wind. So it is moving in and up. 

And as you exhale then through both nostrils, then the energy descends into the central nervous system and is relayed to the autonomic nervous system. I call it bifurcating right and left, two spirals. Now the important moment is when the two spirals meet. And of course they meet not only at the bottom of the spine and at the pituitary, but also at each chakra. And so you're awakening, the activity of the chakras corresponds to the plexi of the autonomic nervous system. So you're awakening that latent energy. So one is doing something in the body, awakening faculties that are not normally active.

OK So let's do this now. Remember to turn your eyeballs upwards as you are breathing in actually. And curl your tongue and press your tongue against the bottom of the pallet. And particularly when you hold your breath. And then turn your eyes in the horizontal position again as you exhale and relax your tongue.

Yes so the next step we'll have to do the next session. But it's already anticipated because these currents act as a lift. Remember the words of the Tibetans, the adage, "The mind rides the wind". So these currents are called wind, will have the effect of shifting your mode of thinking from the gross mind to the subtle mind and then the very subtle mind. And eventually beyond that into what is called the clear light of bliss. And then you have the opposite which is the impact of this higher realization upon the thinking at all the previous levels. We'll have to do that after the break, I mean later on in the afternoon. OK Bless you now. Tape ends.

AUG 13, 1996		Tape 16

Joshua Retreat PVK 8/13/96 Tape 16 Shaghal

...they become extremely sensitive of course. And the consequence is that a kind of realization flashes upon you impromptu, suddenly, unaccountably. So this is exactly what we've been talking about. Not the kind of knowledge that you acquire by experience and which is of the nature of that which is conditioned. But something that, as I say, is unaccountable for, and which seems to carry a message, like a warning about a certain person, or insight into a certain situation that you hadn't thought of and you hadn't seen. And sometimes this intuition is communicated to you in a dream like fashion, in a state of what one might call revere. I think you would say also sometimes in a dream. So that since it cannot be a knowledge that our understanding can grasp, it has to be presented to us in a cryptic way through an image. That's why Jung interprets the images of dreams in the scenarios so as to try and make sense of them. 

Now of course we would like to make sure that it's not wishful thinking. And there have been quite of few cases of people in the Sufi Order who have been fantasizing and say they've had this intuition of this or that or the other thing and it might in some cases even be wishful thinking. So it's not some, some people are naturally inclined toward being a psychic. So it's not something that you can simply sort out with your mind. So as I said, the practice of Shaghal makes you very sensitive so that you can pick up these intuitions. 

They also manifest in the form of sound. And one may interpret as sound. Like for example the prophets of the desert would hear the blowing of the wind. And they would interpret it as the voice of God. And it's well possible that the whole, how can I say, harmony of the spheres is materialized, is made concrete, concretized in situations that seem to be purely accidental. For example, my great grand uncle was a dervish living in an island in the middle of a river in Lahore. And people used to come to him and he used to read their fortune by watching the waves of the water, the way that the configuration of the waves. So that was just the outer trigger that got him in touch with a deeper intuitive sense. 

Now this is something that we need very much as representatives. For one thing, if you're talking to a mureed and you get into their way of thinking, you've lost your intuition. You are basing yourself upon what they think. So that is the reason that why sometimes you can gain much more knowledge by silence than by talking to the mureed. That's why Pir o Murshid said, "Do not talk, just try to think about silent teaching". But all of this is only possible if you have been practicing shaghal a lot, and in its advance stages. 

Perhaps you are aware that there are five sources of information: light, sound, perfume, taste and a kind of kinesthetic sense. So far we have been drawing attention towards light. It's the most tangible thing that happens in doing shaghal. And I pointed out yesterday be very careful that you're not simply perceiving what might be called an optic illusion by the fact that you're exercising some pressure on your retina by pressing on the cornea. And that by pressing you thumbs in your ears, you're not hearing the onrush of the flow in your semicircular canals, called Brownian Movement which is called the (entimosic) effect. Music, Mose, based upon the name of Moses. But as I say it's possible that the motion of the Brownian Movement is in some way of the same nature as the what they call the symphony of spheres which is just the complex of the vibrations of energy that manifests as the physical Universe. So there is some relationship there. 

Perhaps you are aware that Murshid mentions ten different sounds that you can hear, or that you might be hearing when doing the shaghal. And he draws your attention to it. One would be like the sounds very like the buzzing of bees. So while I say this try and see if you could represent to yourself the kind of sound that this would be. The ringing of bells or gongs. Did I say the rustling of the leaves? And the wind. The bubbling or gurgling of water. It can be like the crashing of thunder. Or the sound of the vina, a kind of twang. And then he says that it could be like the symphony of the spheres. There is a lot about the symphony of the spheres. It's a word used by Pythagorus. And there is a word of Proclus who was a Greek philosopher, neo platonic, who said, "If you could hear the sound produced by a sunflower as it keeps on turning towards the sun and displacing the wind, and if you could hear the sound of the planets in their whirling, and the galaxies", well he didn't use that word because it wasn't known then, "Then you would hear the symphony of the spheres". 

So every object has it's signated tune. A piece of wood, if you hit it, it's like a gong. It has its tune. And of course human beings have a much more complex signature tune, a lot of frequencies. So that Murshid has, as he is called the Musician of the Soul, was very sensitive to the kind of music of each person. The kind of thing that he developed, that kind of sensitivity. He says that your breath that is fine tuned in the shaghal acts as a kind of bridge between you and a person and gives you a kind of sensitivity about their condition. And this kind of sensitivity which results from the practice of shaghal can be developed when you're doing the shaghal by what Murshid calls hearing the workings of the Universe. Hearing the workings of the Universe, like listening in to a kind of language of what has sometimes been called the audio sphere. What is the meaning of 'sauti sarmad'. Like the deeper reality behind what emerges as atoms, molecules and all kinds of constructs, is purely a vibrational complex which is probably what Pythagoras meant by the symphony of the spheres. So the workings of the Universe. Like you pick up conditions without having to hear about it in the papers or radio. But be very careful that you don't misconstrue by doing wishful thinking. 

Pir o Murshid gives indications of how your intuition about a person can become enhanced and sensitized. That is that you feel that person in yourself rather than looking towards the person as outside yourself in what might be called the principle of resonance. So he says for example, "If that person has a guilty conscience, you feel guilty", uneasy let's say. That's resonance. So you're not the subject looking at an object, what Martin Buber call the I - it relationship. And the mid way leading toward the ultimate resonance is what he calls the I - thou relationship. And eventually it becomes the I -I relationship. 

Now the perfume. It's a very strange thing. I've been talking about it a lot of course, the perfume of the flowers. Somehow, of course it's a paradigm. It's a wonderful illustration of what we're doing to try and transmute even our physical body by enhancing what I call the esoteric chemistry of the body, hormones and enzymes, neurotransmitters. 

It's a kind of very delicate sense of identity that you develop so that it's what the Sufis call preparing oneself for resurrection, forming the body of resurrection. The body of resurrection being something of the nature of perfume. It's something that you may have experienced in a retreat. That you can't walk heavily anymore. You walk very lightly. The whole sense of yourself is very fine. And of course I don't know to what extent we are aware of the perishability of the body and the way that the body is deteriorating. But this is like a kind of victory against it, like being able to hang on, to cleave to the deathlessness within our own body. Well I try to explain it in terms of what I call the template or the matrix of the subtle body. These are just words or concepts. But it's something that you need to feel and identify with. And when you do that, then you become extremely sensitive to precisely the equivalent in another person that matches you. And it gives you a sense of where that person is at which is of a different nature than your vision or your audition. 

And then there is the taste. Pir o Murshid refers to the taste, I forget exactly where. For example he says the taste of the tongue in the mouth is kind of gross in comparison with the taste of the stomach. But most of us are not aware of the taste of the stomach except when we have an indigestion. And there is a finer taste that we are absolutely not aware of. For example the enzymes that govern the digestion of our food are gifted with a sense of taste. But of course it escapes our knowledge all together. And there is probably a still finer sense of taste in the enzymes that govern the replication of DNA and RNA. 

So it's a very fine sense of a kind of sensitivity which is not, we mustn't confuse with one's kinesthetic sense. And of course the Hindus in the practice of Yoga do experience, and perhaps some of you have experienced it too, a very strange taste in the mouth when you do certain practices. It's called nectar, like a nectar. And I've sought an explanation for it. Of course an explanation wouldn't be quite totally adequate. This happens when one turns the eyeballs upwards and presses the tongue against the pallet. And so when you're pressing the tongue against the pallet, you're exercising some pressure not only upon the hypothalamus but also upon the anterior pituitary which gives out bitter endorphines. And maybe that is what you taste. It's a kind of morphine that is produced by the body itself. And you find amongst animals that have been attacked are preserved from some degree of pain by a certain flow of endorphines. So it's a kind of morphine, a kind of drug that is produced by the body itself and which confers ecstasy. It's OK because the body knows what it's doing. So it doesn't fall within the rules of the Sufi Order. It's not just the pressure of the tongue. And the pressure of the tongue, and I'm not physiologist. But it does affect the flow of the (spinorashidic) fluid in the fourth ventricle. And consequently it has the effect of enhancing certain mental activities. So one is using the body to enhance one's, the level of one's thinking. It's a technique used by the Yogis. 

Now if you turn your eyeballs upwards, that has a different effect. I think it's an effect more upon the mind because as you know, when one is sleeping with dreams, one has rapid eye movement because the eyes are, the brain is representing pictures. And the eyes are used to fluctuating when they are perceiving objects. In deep sleep of course there is no rapid eye movement. If you turn your eyeballs upwards, you fix them so they can't fluctuate. And so that has the effect of stopping the activity of creative imagination which is a second mind according to the Tibetans, subtle mind. And consequently certain levels of awareness are released which Tibetans call the very subtle mind and where one's knowledge is not based upon experience and not based upon one's creative thoughts. And that's called revelation. 

So what Murshid suggests is, on one hand he suggests that you do the shaghal at first only closing the eyes, then only closing the ears, then only closing the mouth and only closing the nostrils. Then do it all together. I've tried that. It doesn't seem to do much for me. But what I have tried to do is to, while doing the shaghal complete, concentrating on one or the other of those five aspects of the shaghal. And then after that coordinating all five of them. But I find that very difficult. It's easier to concentrate on one then the other. 

Now you remember that what he says about light is that, well he compares us with the sun. And he says that the sun converges the light in outer space. I think that there is a lot of cosmic rays is outer space and so on, or the neutrinos or whatever. And somehow it transforms what he calls the all pervading light, spread out, into radiant light. So that's what we need to do. So now you remember that in the practices that we've done with light, I've been saying, "You absorb light. You body absorbs light and then re-emitts light, the light of the stars". And then in a more advanced step, you are drawing the all pervading light from let's say a subliminal level of your being. And then it emerges by going through the gate, let's say plunging through the gate of your solar plexus. And then you are transforming that all pervading light into radiant light which radiates from your heart center. 

But in shaghal, since you are closing the doors of perception, consciousness finding the doors closed, about turns. And consequently these are conditions that are conducive to enhancing the all pervading light. And then as you exhale, you radiate that light light even though the senses are closed. So the senses are really acting like a diode. So it allows light to pass out but not from outside in, one way. 

Now this is accompanied by, and this is the great secret of shaghal, it's accompanied by a mode of breathing. Remember we are talking about breathing. We're not talking about taking oxygen from the environment. We are talking about an ebb and flow of energy. And that is consciously instead of breathing, when you breathe, you think you're drawing energy from outside. You've closed the doors. And so you are drawing energy from inside. You're breathing from inside. And so the breath seems to, the breath of the Universe, prana, seems to emerge through your solar plexus. And then you breathe out from your heart center. As I said it's like a diode, just one way. The other way is closed. So you have to get energy from within. 

Now you'll find that if you do this, you won't need much oxygen. As a matter of fact, if you're very calm, you won't need much oxygen. You need oxygen if you're active. So it's, we have within us something of the reminiscence of the hibernating bear that can reduce the metabolism of the body by being very sedate. So that shaghal has got to be done, that's why Murshid suggests doing shaghal early in the morning before one's whole metabolism and mental activity and psyche has become activated. A very peaceful state. 

So just try this. It's really, I suppose mentally one imagines that the breath emerges from the solar plexus from a subliminal level. So one is drawing a new dispensation of energy into the Universe. And this energy is informed, that is it is imprinted by the frequencies of the, of what Pir o Murshid calls the workings of the Universe. You feel it internally in your breath. Now your breath, although it doesn't originate outside, it's beamed towards outside from inside, acts as a kind of radar. So that it's boomeranged back. 

So let's just do this now. There are a lot of things to think of now. Just three breaths. Then take away your hands and continue your concentration.

So Pir o Murshid says that you can see without eyes and hear without ears. Now that sounds like poetry. But I can assure you that many years ago that I came across many years ago a Pakistani who claimed to be able to see without eyes. I met him at a party at the Pakistani embassy. I said well,"I want you to prove it". He said, "Yes, do what you like". So I said, "OK". I blindfolded him and I took a book off the shelf, opened the book and said, "Can you read it?". And he did. So it's not a metaphor. I've checked, double checked. He claimed it and he proved it. I'll try to explain it. But if the retina is an extension of the optic nerve, it's part of the brain. The brain cells have the same capacity as the retina. And the same is true of someone who could listen to the radio without having the radio on. The brain was able to pick up wave lengths and select them. Our  brain is subjected to all these radio waves all the time. 

So it's a thought that imagine that you are blindfolded by putting your index on your eyelids actually. And somehow you are discerning vague effigies in the dark like thrusting your glance upon them. That is one of the reasons I've been doing this practice and teaching this practice of with eyes closed, you imagine your eyes as being made of two beams. Then you know that if you open your eyes, your eyes will be forced into focus by what appears to be the object. But if you can maintain your concentration with your eyelids open, then what appears in front of you seems like a blur. But if you keep on doing it every day for a long time. of course during a retreat, then you choose a flower for example, take a flower. And you center your gaze upon that flower without fluctuation left or right or up and down. And open your eyes. But do not let the flower force your glance into focus. Keep an offsetting glance. And then extraordinary things happen. Do it and see what happens. You discover something about the flower that you could never do because ordinarily your eyes are fluctuating all the time. So you look at one side of the flower and then the other. But if your grasp the whole flower. It's a Zen practice actually which is keep your glance fixed on the flower or vase or whatever for twenty minutes. If you can avoid fluctuating your glance, then start looking around the room. And it's the most amazing thing because this vase, flower, seems to be floating around the room in contrast with the environment. 

Now there is a further practice. That's to know how to direct your third eye, legendary third eye, which is probably what was meant by the pineal gland which is very sensitive to ultra violet light. So the way to do it is to imagine your third eye as a third eye, not the two beams, but the third eye which (tape turns) I could follow this up but we are running out of time. But it's a practice that I've done sometimes. Perhaps I ought to do this tomorrow. That's to imagine the face of a person in blue. And then you see if you do this practice with a flower, and then eventually you do it with, you sit in front of a person, you begin to see that which transpires behind that which appears. So you imagine that which transpires to be violet and that which appears to be blue. So you have two images. And so you understand the person much better. But then the next thing is a little bit like playing. I must say it's a typical guru trip. And that's to correct the blue face so that it approximates the violet one. And somehow the person picks it up as if you were really doing something concrete. But that's the great art of the guru. That's the great art. So we have to end here but we'll have to continue this tomorrow. 

Tape ends.

AUG 14, 1996		Tape 19

 Tape Number 19 August 14, 19965, Joshua Tree Retreat

Yes. Greetings to you. It is of course wonderful to have an early meditation, early morning meditation. In fact, it's something that I advise you to do, to have your morning meditation before the sunrise. These are very special conditions that are favorable to calling a very fine energy into operation in your being. Before your energy has become outgoing and you're still in a receptive state. And actually the impact of the sun, even if you don't see it makes a great difference in your energy. Also the rishis capture the ultra violet light, ultra violet rays of the sun before the sun has passed, has passed over the threshold of the horizon. So that's a wonderful condition.

Now we're going to follow up what we started yesterday; the practices of light. I hear people say "I'm seeking for illumination" and one has difficulty in defining exactly what one means; but I would say that some of the more tangible aspects of it would be to have a lot of light in one's eyes, to bring about a lot of light wherever one goes, and that one's insight into things is really luminous. So that one thrusts the light of one's intelligence upon things that one's mind cannot discern. And so, in order to promote that state which won't come about unless you do something about it, you need to train yourself, and just like one trains a horse or trains oneself to play the piano and so on, it's a training. That means it has to be done every day.

And so, what I suggest is that you have a little notebook and you write down very clearly what are the practices you do which day starting with the New Moon, for example, and then you divide the lunar period in four, so that the practice is stepped up - New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon. And then for the receding Moon, then you could perhaps do less practices or even perhaps give yourself a sabbatical, and then start again with the New Moon. It's sometimes good to call a halt in one's practices and then start again because then one starts with a new, a new energy. Can you hear me? Is that - yes? OK.

Incidentally yesterday the sun was very strong so if it is again that strong, at about quarter of seven, then I will, I will end the session to protect you from that,- from a sun stroke, for example.

So there are many different practices of light. And I think it's important for you to know exactly what those practices are, which - what is the sequence of practices. 'Cause I don't always give them in the same sequence. And then try them out yourself and then see which are those which work best for you. And then always follow-up practice by a period in which you are just letting it happen to you without doing any further practices, so that you see the effect. And then you do the next practice. Because we have to know that the practice doesn't do it for you; it is your realization and, of course, the effect on your body that will trigger off transformation.

'k. Now the practice that I recommend every day is simply, it's a very simple one, it's simply being aware of the two beams of light cast from your eyes forward. And since imagination is sometimes so effective, mind over body, you could- for example, you have blank walls in your room so you could open your eyes and turn your head from left to right and right to left and imagine a spotlight that is travelling along the wall - or two spotlights actually. Or then up and down. Of course that's - they're easier to do when one is in a cave in the Himalayas - and then you're really in the dark and then you imagine a spot of light, even a line of light that moves along from left to right. And so you do it with open eyes - so at first you do this with closed eyes. You concentrate on those two beams very intensely. And then, of course, if you open your eyes, your eyes are going to be forced into focus by the way things appear; the whole programming of your body. But what you could do is just open your eyes for just a very short flick of a moment - of an instant-as you start exhaling. And then close them again so that you are not caught up by the impact of the environment. Of course, if you're in a blank room then it's easier then, of course, if there are objects in the room.

And eventually you get used to just being aware of the beam of light of your eyes without, without closing your eyelids. In fact, now there's a secret behind this, and that is to see without eyes. In fact, it isn't one's eyes that see anyway; it is one's brain that sees.

So the way to do this is to concentrate not just on the beams of your eyes but the light of your brain because the light absorbs - the brain absorbs a lot of light from the environment and radiates light forth through the optic nerves and the retina.

So you could be aware of this process when you're inhaling; you are absorbing light through your eyes. And that light is threaded along your optic nerves and right into the cortical area of your brain; the visual zone. And of course it effects your whole brain.

And then as you exhale, you think that this light is, cannot, most of it cannot break through the skull and therefore it follows the only path that is open to it, which is the optic nerves.

Now a further aspect of this practice is, imagine that you're looking into a bright light. And this is a practice that is done by the rishis and the Sufis - looking into the sun at dawn. I don't advise you to do it because you can burn your retina within a split second. That I've done myself so I know. But there's a technique of shielding your eyes. As long as you keep to this technique, you're safe. But I don't want to involve you in anything that could be dangerous. The way one does it is that one places one's hands as one puts, as a telescope for example, or binoculars, and then one sweeps one's head from left to right, right to left till one only exposes one's eyes to the sun for a very, very short while. And the faster you do it, the safer you are. Because the shorter is that period. And then you do the same up and down.

And then you do this; you make a circle motion around the periphery of the sun and so the edge of your shield is never over the border, let's say. It's never exposed to the sun. So the sun seems to describe a circle around your shield in the opposite direction where you're moving your shield clockwise and then anti-clockwise.

And as soon as you see a kind of a reflex then you stop it right away. That's an indication; if you see a double sun or something like that it's an indication that you're in danger so you have to stop right away.

And a very nice thing to do is then to soothe your eyes with the dew on the ground, if there is dew - on the eyes.

Now how is it that rishis and dervishes can look into the sun for hours without blinking. Well, the answer is in the words of Plotinus, the Greek philosopher, who said, "In order to look into the sun, you have to have eyes like the sun." And that is, that if the radiance of your glance is stronger than the radiance of the sun then they protect you from the rays of the sun. But that is, of course, an extreme case.

But, in general, I would say that one develops a kind of courage in facing light. Because generally one is afraid of the beams of a car, for example, the headlamps of a car. One develops courage and one enjoys being flooded with light.

Now this is all mind over body. Now, there's in Tokyo, and I think probably elsewhere, a cell which is practically lightproof within which is a photoelectric cell and you can go there and test yourself if you're able to radiate enough light from your aura. Then it sets the whole circuit into operation and the light goes on. It's not your light but it triggers off the light, the photoelectric cell. And of course, meditators who are accomplished meditators always manage to make the light come on. And if you're - most people who are not familiar with meditation can't do it.

So what you do is, you have to have a very strong imagination. You have to imagine your aura very intensely and if you do it, if your imagination - if you're used to imagining your aura you will be strengthening your aura in the course of the years. And so, you could have one of these devices here in the states and you could test yourself and see how far you've gotten in your meditations on light.

So if you have a very strong sense of the radiance of your aura, again you can, I don't know if you can call it testing yourself, but you feel that you're bringing your light wherever you go. And so you make it a custom of walking in the dark feeling that you're illuminating, you're just like a lamp illuminating the environment with your aura. And you do that deliberately. And this is mind over body. As I say, one's - it's a principle from which all feedback systems are established. Biofeedback. By the power of imagination you're able to enhance physical functions that are normally not very strong.

And now, of course, the step consists in being very strong, identifying yourself very strongly with your aura and, at the same time, the light of your glance. Now in addition to that, that would be a fourth step, would be to be aware of the light above your head and that light is radiance from your brain which able to pass through the skull and so it's in the area of high frequency light. And therefore it's more like violet or colorless light. And then you've got those two beams of light passing through your eyes.

Now there's a fifth step. And that is that you imagine that light is able to penetrate through your skull or at least is able to come through in the cracks, because there are three sections of your skull. There are cracks between them, spaces. Not spaces exactly, but cracks. And then there's the fontanelle which is the point where they meet. And the Tibetans place a blade of grass in that cavity in order to keep it open. And so I don't suggest you do that but - I don't think that doctors would approve of that. But you imagine this cavity here at the top in the fontanelle. You can actually feel where it is. It's a very highly sensitive spot. And so you imagine that, just as you imagine that your body was absorbing light from the stars, as I say, from the environment. Your brain doesn't only absorb light through your eyes but also through the fontanelle. But I think that it is only very high frequency light that is absorbed. And so imagine violet light; a beam of violet light descending upon your crown, passing through your crown center and breaking through your skull, penetrating into your brain. And I dare say that there's probably some physical substance in this. I think we're probably talking about the cosmic rays that reach - or even, it's even possible that we're in some way connected with the light in the center of the galaxy, the Milky Way. Exactly as we're connected with the (inaudible) of light that we're experiencing comes from the sun, but then it also comes from the stars.

So, in some way, your connection with the galaxy has an effect upon your consciousness and maybe the consciousness of the millennium will be galactic consciousness instead of planetary consciousness.

So there's some relationship between our aura and our consciousness and consequently our realization.

Now I'd like to follow this up with - you see, at first one thinks that one is working with physical light as we understand it, as we perceive it, as we interpret it, as we hear from scientific research but from the moment that we realize that what we understand by the physical world is only a slice of a multiple universe and a multidimensional universe, then we can accept that there are other levels or modes of light than physical light. And that is, of course, a clue to the angelic spheres, which represent, as I said, that other matrix which will cause mutation instead of recycling.

So these are techniques, skills let's say that help you to get into, get some sense of your celestial being.

So we start with a Buddhist practice called Casina(sp ?). Now, supposing that you were to cut a cardboard out into a disc and paint it red and you were to look at it for some time, and you were to close your eyes, you would see a green reflex. But now you could do the same thing without having this cardboard. You could just imagine a red light, a red disc. Now I don't know whether, does a green disc all of a sudden appear somehow unaccountably, unexpectedly? You mustn't try to imagine a green disc; you're imagining a red one. Maybe now that I've said it you're suspecting it now. Track again. The fact is, of course, that green disc is there, but it, it reveals itself at some point.

Now, there's no use to imagine a green disc and try to pick up the reflex which would be orange, but if you keep concentrating on the red disc and let the green emerge you may just capture an orange disc that emerges without your trying to imagine it. So that would be the reflex of the reflex.

And so one could go on like that infinitely. Now the practice of Casina; this was only a preparation - the practice of the Casina consists in imagining a white light. It doesn't have to be a disc, a white light, clear light. And then as you inhale try and capture the reflex of it; then as you exhale get back to the white light again. And then you keep on doing it. In fact, it can't be effective if you just start; it takes a lot of work before it becomes really effective.

So, what we're doing really, is to try to receive something that one might consider to be intangible at the edge of our consciousness. And now of course the next step is, consists in doing the same with your mind. So you have clear thoughts that seem to conform to our syllogistic logic and then you move, and as you inhale you shift your mode of thinking away from the logic thinking categories, linear thinking and then you get into a, for example, reconciling the irreconciliables, coniunco oppositorum(sp?), that's a Latin word, the Church fathers. The consolation(?) of the opposites, complimentarity. Then you get into parallel thinking, synchronicity, concatination that causes a whole different way of thinking. Then gradually you discover that it's not your thinking any more; that it's really the thinking of the universe that you're capturing as your thinking. Or that is the very basic, - basis of your thinking that has become limited by the commonplace vantage point.

'kay now these, of course, are very advanced meditations.  So Buddha would make a further step. If you could follow the same sequence then think of the physical world as you imagine the red disc, for example. And then you shift your consciousness to, what Buddha calls,beyond existence. And, I suppose the only clue to this would be like, for example, the code of the DNA, for example. Is that the nature of existence? Or is that a reality that is subliminal to the existential world? And it's a matter of definition; it doesn't matter but just being able to grasp like behind all of this there's a kind of a code. First of all there's a matrix or a dynamic or matrices. And then a complex of matrices and then behind that code and a complex of codes.

So it's a reality that cannot be limited to what we understand by physical reality. But it's reality all the same; in fact it's more real. So that you consider the physical world as the outcome or the outgrowth of the template or the matrix or the code that is behind it and that's a reality. And then perhaps you could see, you think of the DNA of the body; that every cell of the body has the same DNA. But some genes are active in one - and recessive, and other genes are active in another one. So that in order to bring about the diversification of the cells in the organs of the body - so in the same way you could think that that code is effected by, what one might call, the way that reality is awakened or withheld. And the more advanced cells - in the more advanced cells, more of the DNA is active and less is recessive.

So that the ultimate would be awakening all the faculties that are in abeyance and therefore you have to have a sense of that reality behind the physical world which Buddha calls beyond existence.

And then he says beyond consciousness. And so now when you're meditating you think you want to be conscious of what's happening; so you're conscious of the sounds of the cars in the street. Or you're conscious of my voice. Or you're conscious of your thoughts. Or you're conscious of your body. Or you're conscious of your emotions. And now perhaps at the edge of our consciousness we can get some sense of a kind of orderliness behind, a kind of programming behind the universe.

So that's right - as far as our consciousness can go. Now this is a transit and I just warn people that it's very advanced so that nobody's going to pass out now - if you lose your consciousness. So if you think you might, just stand up and walk out.

'kay, so you realize the limitation in your realization incurred by the act of consciousness. And because we are endowed with a mode of knowledge, a cognizance that is not based upon experience. So that's what you need to do now - is to shut down or downplay anything that is of the nature of the cognizance acquired by consciousness. It's just like when the sun is in the sky, you can't see the stars. But then when the sun is not in the sky you can see the stars. So that consciousness is so imperative that it blurs a deeper mode of knowledge. So if you can just downplay it by, well, devalidating it to some extent. It has relative- so this is what the Sufis called a revelation; understanding is revealed instead of acquired by consciousness.

And now Buddha says, "Beyond existence and non-existence". That sounds quite paradoxical but it's just a negation of that duality of existence and non-existence; it's beyond that - that duality. So of course there's no way to define it.

Now one touches upon a point - a level, let's say, beyond where the programming takes place. If you're interested in that, I mean if you have a scientific mind, then you can look up a book, an article by Speiser(sp?), in a Jewish journal called (cannot understand) that is about freedom where he talks about this level beyond the programming. If our mind can reach that point. Because, as Buddha said, the last state is the cessation of the determined. So that means beyond programming - beyond programming. The non-determined which is the essence of creativity. The ultimate freedom.

It's a way of interpreting our lives that we realize that, although we are subjected to what we call destiny or our programming to some extent, we do have a measure of free endeavor, free incentive. And the more we avail ourselves of that free incentive, the more we free ourselves from our destiny. So it's a matter of seeing how one allows oneself to be determined by fate, by what one calls fate. And in what one can gain freedom by not playing ball to fate, with fate.

Now the sun is up. Is it bearable is it? It's ok . Let me know if you feel it's too strong.

So we're going to end with a practice of light leading to illumination based upon the testimony of Hildegrad of Bingen. Hildegard of Bingen. So imagine that you're looking into a bright light and you're enjoying it, being flooded with light. And you're experiencing what one calls the ecstasy of light. And, as we already said last time, the cells of your body are exuding in joy because they're absorbing light and light is energy so that they're highly dynamized and in, what they call, an excited state. And then they divide more rapidly than ever; so there's a renewal of your body - within your body. And, of course, the more aware of it, you are of it, the more it effects your body.

But then that's just at the physical level, but at all levels there's a kind of ecstasy of light. At the level of the psyche it distances dark thoughts, gloomy thoughts. Now keep on thinking of that, just imagining that very bright light that you're looking into and think of those words of Plotinus, "To look into the sun one has to eyes like the sun." So you match the light that you're facing with the light of your glance.

Now what she says is that this world of light that is so overwhelming opens up just like a door into a further world of light that is even more magnificent and blinding. And so one might say that you're getting to a even more intense ecstasy of light. And now she says,"And this world of light opens up into a still further world of light."

So you see it's rather similar to what the Casina practice is. She's given you clues as to how you can reach beyond the commonplace sense of physical light into what we call celestial light. And so these are clues that will make you, if you go further then you discover that that light that you are looking into makes you aware of your own light. So instead of just limiting it to the light of your glance, your whole aura. You think of your whole aura as matching that - those different levels of light. The different levels of your aura matching the different levels of light of the spheres that you are encountering.

So this wakens the memory that has been interrupted by our birth but it is still in our deep unconscious. Of always having been a being of light prior to one's conception or birth. And when one says that one does not mean physical light.

Now, of course, the next step would be to try to get some sense of the - the countenance of your celestial body of light. It's not a form; it doesn't have a profile but still an expression - that bespeaks of your ideal of the sublime. And then there's this - this moment when one has so much difficulty in believing that that is what one is because one is so used to denigrating oneself. That was Jacob fighting the angel, refusing that it was his own higher self.

There's a Macedaen(sp?) story of a vision of a magi, magus who was - in his vision he was walking in the unreal kind of landscape, in a kind of a transfigured world. And here was a magnificent being that appeared on the horizon and kept on walking getting closer to one, to him. Ane he was so overwhelmed by the magnificence of this being. And then at some point he discovered that there was some kind of resemblance with himself he couldn't believe that was possible. And the more this, the closer this being approached the more he saw the resemblance. And the more was his amazement. And eventual there was, what one calls, a coincidence and he realized that it was his heavenly counterpart.

And for the Sufis, for Surawhardi, for example, it is the image- that countenance is the image in which God discovers Him/Herself in that particular facet of His being which is you. And in, by the same token, the image in which He/She discloses Him/Herself to you. Through your image.

So I think we're going to end here because the sun has become rather strong now. So God bless you now.

End of Tape

AUG 14, 1996		Tape 20

 TAPE: 20 DATE: 8/13/96 L'CATI'N: J'SHUA TREE 

Yes, we're moving towards the end of the retreat and there's a kind of concern of not having attained samadhi by the end of the retreat. So we're doing our best. Generally it takes several lifetimes. And if you go to an ashram in India, till months and months and months and months and perhaps years before they give you the advance practices that you've been getting here without an initiation.

But we're living in a time when everything has to be done fast.

So I have to work fast and sleep fast and meditate fast. So it's a course of knowing exactly where to go. If you have the technique then you know. So it's good to have very definite guidelines. 

So we have encountered many different methods, different schools.

And so it might be a little bit confusing. In my mind its all been integrated over a period of many years. But let us just consider the steps leading to samadhi according to the very famous yoga, (S??). And then apply them. See how they work with us. 

So, the first one is (Sugasa???), that I've already mentioned.

That is you try to overcome the limitation of your personal bias upon your representation of the universe, physical universe, of your problems, of your personality, your self-image, that of other people, and so on. So you just, the only, you see all these steps do require down playing something and upgrading or highlighting something else.

So you're down playing the personal perspective. And the only way to down play the personal perspective is to widen the expanse of your consciousness in what we call the cosmic dimension. And we already did it. Got into the consciousness of other people and eventually, if their are more people and more people and more people eventually you would be able to see the problem irrespective of a personal vantage point. That is not only yours, but also those of another person. So that is (Nev???)samadhi.

In that case you are, you must be aware that you are carrying your assessment of all these things in your psyche throughout your life. And so now you are really correcting that misrepresentation, misassessment in your psyche. And it requires (reading?) a kind of book with your thinking, because some of our thinking is die hard or dies hard. So we are so used to thinking in a certain way. So maybe when we're meditating we can think otherwise, but then we fall back into the way we used to think. And so this consists in making this new way of thinking adamant. So that in everyday life you have some kind of support in your unconscious. You've trained your unconscious in such a way that it does not allow itself to slip into this kind of very common place way of thinking, always attributing everything to the, one's personal notion of oneself. So it's a kind of, one could say one reaches a kind of, selflessness. And there's no doubt that to give, to get rid of something, whatever it is, one needs to adopt an attitude of detachment. Which is, of course, the particular quality of the hallmark let's say of the ascetics: detachment, indifference. So you remember what Murshid said, ". . .everything that's achieved in life is due to interest", but whatever your interest in does impose a limitation upon your power. And so if your pursuit is not in your personal interest, your power is infinite.

So I hope that you can discover this kind of power. So your indifference is like a shield. And there's no doubt that the, all our defense systems are, represent a shield. The sentinels at the doors of perception. A shield, and those sentinels are your detachment. And Pir-o-Murshid said that we are tested in how independent and indifferent we are. And of course, it's very paradoxical how you can, it doesn't mean that you're not concerned about the terrible things that happen around you. It's very subtle how you can still somehow preserve the peace of your being, because otherwise you can't do anything anyway to help. 'kay, so peace, not as a refuge from distress but, as a power that can motivate action. 

Now the other step is (Saricara?) samadhi, which goes into (Nericara?) samadhi. And the text in (Upatangeli?) made much clearer when you study Tibetan Buddhism, because they're referring to what they call subtle reality. And so that is where identifying with our subtle body comes in. So this is one step towards samadhi. And even at some point the aura, the aura of light. They call it the luminous body. The word used is (tanmatra?), which means subtle reality. 

And that doesn't only mean that you have, one of the counterparts of your being is a subtle body, but also everything has its subtle body. So that, if you are in that state and you're walking in nature, you will find yourself in a transfigured state. I don't know whether that's ever happened to you, to walk, nature. And its almost like you're in a state of reverie. Its almost, its like everything is kind of, has a kind of mysterious, meaningfulness. And you're really communing with things instead of just being there walking, stumping about as one does in New York. 

So its due to the fact that if you have shifted your identity into your subtle body, then your consciousness is reaching out from inside. And consequently you're getting into the consciousness of the trees, for example, which is what Saint Francis was doing. Instead of the trees being the object of your cognizance now you experience what it's like to be those trees.

And that's why Saint Francis says, ". . .that which I observed is that which observes." So the trees are watching you and you are watching the trees. So there's a communion.

And so that (tanmatra?)the (sari cara?)samadhi and then (Neri cara?)samadhi means that now your thinking has altered. And your mode of thinking, is as I've already described it. Your thinking in context instead of just in a linear fashion. And so sometimes you can recognize what I call the reconciliation of the irreconciliables. It's how you think when you find yourself in a transfigured world. As you can see a meaningfulness, but it's not you that see's that meaningfulness. Somehow it all becomes very known to you. 

And now that's very interesting because in the stages leading to (asanbra adja?)samadhi, the ultimate samadhi, you have to go through the stage of (ananda?) samadhi, which is ecstasy. 

So we're not talking about realization anymore, but ecstasy. And the reason for that is that you've reached a point now where your understanding cannot give you anything further. And so you have to bypass it, or go through the dark night of understanding, as St. John of the Cross did, because it is now only your attunement

and it's got to be in ecstasy. The Sufi's call it (Hihrah), that will hoist you beyond your consciousness, or the focus of your consciousness, beyond the common place "I","it" relationship, you look at the world as think of the world as being what it looks like and yourself as being the observer. 

So there's no way of describing this but I mentioned many times it starts by bewondering and eventually it culminates into a feeling of glorification. Which I think is, the body expresses very well, when one prostrates oneself to the ground and then rises again. It's a very beautiful way of experiencing in one's body one's being shattered by the discovery of the sublime nature of reality. Shattered one's center, one's self is shattered.

And therefore all the conclusions, all the opinions that one had totally shattered by the power of ecstasy. The word of a Sufi, Jalaludin, Abdul Karim Alji, who says, "it is a constination of intelligence, constination of intelligence. 

So this is such a wonderful state to be in that I suppose one doesn't want to go any further. This corresponds to what the Sufis call Malakut, the level of the celestial level. And so one's glorification is going to awaken most excellent qualities in one's being. So one is transformed by the power of ecstasy.

And so ecstasy, we have after a facts to be manifested in a creative way, in a change in one's attitude and in one's relationship with people. They will feel this ecstasy and it will awaken the same in themselves by the effect of resonance.

So that one is by and large talking to a person, one is really communing at the same time and that communion at the level of attunement is much more important than the words that one is saying. Sometimes as a way of matching one's attunement with that of another person. Of course, each persons attunement is different and keeps on changing all the time, but it's just like a musician who is able to coordinate, for example, two themes.

That's what you learn when you learn composition of, Bach did that, for example. Very often you had a theme and then you had variations on that theme and then you brought in another theme and that's, coordinate those two themes. And so you can do that with a person. And that coordination can be very, how can I say, very closely matched or it could be remotely matched, but still some kind of a sense of a connectivity. Now the next stage after that is (Asmita) samadhi. And what is meant by that is that having passed through this stage of pure ecstasy the mind is now, has been freed from it's ordinary way of thinking by the power of ecstasy. And so under these circumstances another way of thinking emerges, which is, that's precisely what the Sufi's call Jabarut. The universe reveals its thinking in your thinking. Not to your thinking, but in your thinking. 

And so there are stages here in our retreat, for example, there's stage when your walking about in nature and you think, "isn't it beautiful?" So now you think that you're the witness and then if you want to follow the stages leading to samadhi, then you think to yourself, "I am the eyes through which God sees." So it's all the one being discovering him/herself in his/her body, which is the universe, the cosmos. And I am that, that transducit through which that happens. So it's God who is the subject now and the object is that which transpires through the universe, through the cosmos, and I'm, as I say, the transducit between the two or at least my consciousness is. Then you could think, "Well, yes, but of course what I see is very little in comparison with what I imagine that God sees so my glance is like a lens which limits the Divine Vision. 'h this idea of the lens, you'll find it in (shankara chia?) Buddhism. Also, of course, I think (Sham Cara Chia?) got the idea from Buddhism. It's like this is the way things look through that lens and I know that that is not the way they are, but the way they look through this lens. And so if I can discard the way that they look through the lens. You see the reason why they are distorted by the lens is because I think I am that, what is actually the lens, I think that I'm it.

But in fact, the real "I", the real subject, the real Shahid, the witness, is God. 

So there's a sense of making one's lens so, you know the liquid lenses which can be monitored, be a change in the, a change of focus or you can change a focus in your camera. So that the next step is to realize that your glance is not the lens through which God sees, but is an extension of the Divine Glance. So that's the third stage. My glance is the Divine Glance.

Followed down, limited all your life, but it's not other. 

And when you think like that, then you gain a totally different understanding of the cosmos and of yourself. 

It's like seeing as God sees or thinking as God thinks. 

And even, it seems presumptuous, of course, but that would be like, at the, at the very limit. But there are stages. But that's just like, it's because it's, you know, how in our simplistic way we think, "I'd like to know God" or "I'd like to know how God thinks" or whatever and that would never work, of course, but it's because then you have totally lost any sense of you as a lens or as the focal, focalization of consciousness.

And then it is, I would say, the Divine Vision takes over. Can you just, I'm saying this now but can you just see if we can do that? (. . .) Of course, the Hindu's are very, the Yogi's are very wise so instead of saying God, Brahma, or Brahman or Atman, they use the word (Ishbara?). Which is clearly the God of your own making.

So they see that it is useful to project one's representation of what one thinks God should be or is but everyone knows that's not God, but one's representation. But it's better than not having one. And so that's (Ishbara?). And now one sees how this projection of one's virtualities into a fictitious being does awaken one's faculties because one can't project them unless,

except by awakening them. So that's (Asvita?) Samadhi. Did it ever occur to you that you grasp something. You had a kind of insight, that you could never possible put in words. You just know but there's no way of demonstrating. That's the kind of knowledge. You can call it what you like, intuition or whatever. Now this is what the Sufis call revealing knowledge instead of acquired knowledge. 

And so there's the assumption that God reveals it to one or the universe. Actually the universe upon each a part of itself. But you see one has to really, and this is a paradox of course, because on the way up in samadhi you do have to discard your personal vantage point and therefore any kind of knowledge that you have acquired through experience is simply brushed aside. At least for the time being, put on hold. So that this other mirrorize. It is not possible to see the sun and the stars at the same time or at least it's very difficult. Or it is not possible to see the surface of the mirror and at the same time see what is being reflected in the mirror. It's one perspective or another. You have to choose. So it's like things that you could have never sorted out in your mind are being revealed to you. That's the way it looks, but the way it is is that that knowledge is already there, inherent in your soul, and just the veil has been lifted. Now there's a further stage. So this stage corresponds, we've already said corresponds, with Jabarut. There's an absolute correspondence between the different stages in Sufism and those to be found in Yoga and also those to be found in Buddhism. Now this corresponds to Jabarut and it's called (Asmita?). And then the next one is called (Sarsbija?) samadhi and corresponds to Lahut in Sufism. And that is the level of the programming. The archetypes behind all, the exemplars, programming of the universe, the software. So this is a practice. I wonder whether you could try and do it.

It would be simplistic to think that what it means is, "I think of my problems and I assume that they have been programmed by destiny for me. That would be a simplistic view. So our ordinary thinking will not suffice here, but if one is able to stretch one's mind in order to try to see how the programming works. For example, and it's very paradoxical, for example this tragedy had a purpose because somehow the defeat was turned into a victory. So it's a way of looking at a situation and seeing something in that situation that you couldn't have seen with your ordinary mind. 

So that's the reason why I'll say when you are on retreat and you're considering your problems always ask yourself what are the qualities or even, you can even translate this whole problem in

terms of the wazifa, of the (safard?) of the qualities. 

So the word is, what are the values that are being enacted in the drama of life, and in your particular drama, because I don't know. Maybe I didn't say that during these three days, but consider your drama to be part, to be your participation in the cosmic drama. We can't always see it of course very difficult to see for example, if you're using the computer you know how to make your computer do certain things and then there are more complex things that perhaps you don't know or you can learn, but that does not mean that you know how to program your computer. You wouldn't know anything about the software except what use you can make of it. So that's the way we are in life. We know how to do things.

We are trying to deal with the problems and so on, but we are not aware of the programming behind what comes through as problems.

And in samadhi, as you get further and further into a state of awakening, that's what you begin to realize is what was in the Divine Intention behind that particular situation. And as I say, be careful, because you can't figure it out with your mind and that's the reason why we had to first pass through that stage when we're able to discard, dismiss all together, mental functions in sorting out things or assessing things. So it's only after having made that shift in our thinking. So that it's the thinking that is coming through irrespective of circumstances. 

It's only then that we are ready for the next step which is really to grasp the Divine Intention. And once more it's, we would wallow in wishful thinking if it were not for the fact that we had different, any kind of effort in sorting it out in our minds. So you see that at this point, well you know, the physical world, our perception of the physical world doesn't mean much. It's you know that, that's not the way things are. And all those things that we've been so convinced about, our problems, our assessment of our problems, our personality, all those things, personality of other people, our thinking, our mental constructs, all this seems to be so unreliable that it really doesn't have any hold upon one's consciousness anymore. 

It's just as though all that's important is to understand what was intended. And, as I say, and then one can't hold thoughts with one's mind. That is, I'm saying this at this moment in the process of which we are of a reaching further and further remotely let's say beyond the existential level, but a maybe if we do the opposite, when we're awakened in life then we'll see that we have to extrapolate between these two modes of knowledge of cognizance. But we're not yet there. So imagine your sitting there. Imagine you're, you are a rishi.

You're a sage or a, what one calls an awakened being, which is just a cliche of course. You're sitting there and people, or your a psycho-therapist, for example, and you're sitting there and people come and are talking about there problems. And you think to yourself, ". . .good God, they have just no idea of what's going on. . ." 

I remember once visiting a rishi, very high up in the mountains, in the Himalayas, about a place called (Nilekant??) above Rishikesh. There was a group of people because we had to go through the jungle with very dangerous animals. And there he was sitting in samadhi and fortunately he was, most of them don't speak, but he tried to speak. 

So one rather simple man, simpleton, asked him what I consider to be a stupid question. And I think most questions are stupid anyway. You could see his trying to descend from his state of realization to get into the thinking of that man to try to understand what that man meant. 

So you see, there are levels of thinking. And the question of that man was due to the fact that he saw things from his personal point of view and couldn't possible imagine that you're going to look at things differently than from one's personal point of view. And I think that most of us are like that. And that's why sometimes I think that I'm speaking, well people say that I'm speaking far above the heads of most people. Because it doesn't make sense if you're not speaking the language that people understand, which is "What it means to me. . .", see, "How I feel", it's very simplistic. Everybody does that. There's nothing special about that. "How do you feel?" "What do you think?"

What we're learning to do is to upgrade our realization from that very common-place level. But it's go to be real, of course. 

Now this morning I mentioned something that supposedly is very difficult to understand. Well, before I say what I was going to say, perhaps there's still something I have to, we have to experience. Because I hope your not just listening to my words. And that is that in our common place thinking we assume that things are causated by a prior cause, a cause prior in time. That's one calls causality. Like for example, what you sew, you reap. So now you made a mistake and now you suffer from it. So that's causality. Now that's the thinking at the base level of the gross mind. END OF SIDE 'NE0D

There's another ch...and of course then there's randomness. So there's the unexpected, or you know, creativity. But there's, another, how can I say causal chain, that the Sufi's speak about, Ibn Arbi speaks about and one could call it vertical instead of horizontal. What Aristotle, even Aristotle used to call it 'primal causes' and he wasn't thinking of causes in time but totally in another dimension of time, which is vertical instead of the process of becoming. And so, that will give you a clue to the programming. It is how archetypes manifest as exemplars. That is like a causal chain.

And if you know Buddha's, how can I say it, research because he did research like a scientist would do research in modes of thinking. That's what he was doing and it's called (Batika some padam ?) that was reaching from a, how can I say an existential level to the cause behind it, to the cause behind it, to the cause behind it, back up, all the way up. The opposite of incarnation. What is it that caused incarnation? Like you know, because desires, and then come (tact???). The whole series of the decent into the existential world through what is called (Avitia?) which means ignorance. Decent from a state of omniscience to a state of ignorance, by the limitation in one's understanding in one's, by one's notion of one's individuality. And so if you overcome the notion of one's individuality as a discrete entity. Then of course you'll recover (Vidia??) which is knowledge, which is wisdom. So now to, in our experience then because I'm talking some, it sounds a little bit intellectual. In our experience, like we started by, you see if you identify with your body and with the thinking that goes along with your identification with your body.

Then you see that your body is continually changing and is perishable, actually it is not really perishable, but everyone supposes it is. The electrons continue to live after death, but any way there's a change and your thoughts change and you personality changes and so on. Now as you begin to identify with your subtle body then you find that it is much more lasting than, it doesn't change as fast. It's like the same seed comes over and over again, you see, but then there's a slow process of mutation, but still sometimes, sometimes not, but so there's it's a different kind of time value at this level than the recycling.

What they call the process of becoming. So if you can do that, identify with the template. We call it template of your body.

Then of course, that has a lastingness that your body doesn't have, because it's not a template. It's a matrix as I said so, but still it has a kind of (perientity) about it. Now if you think that it is not just the template or the matrix, but it is also the perfume, the quintessence, what remains after you've sifted the essential qualities of your body to the contingent ones.

There is such a thing, for example your nails are much more contingent than the cells of your brain. So then your sense of duration in time has altered. And we use the word (perennial?) which means continuity in change. For example, a river - it's never the same water that runs under the bridge, but we say it's a river. So it continuity in change. At this level of your subtle body you have that sense of, "Yes, I'm a totally different person to what I was when I was a child and yet I am the same person." So that's a continuity in change. So it a that continuity, how can I say, it evidences some kind of survival of that which is, of the essence of that which is perishable. 

Now if you move on, you shift your identity to your celestial being. Then the notion of space has disappeared. You can see the angels are up there somewhere or you know, it's just a different perspective, like in a hologram, different perspective.

And the notion of time has changed also. So the sense of (being perennial?) is much more advanced than the, with the subtle body.

As I said before, like you feel as though you are, you have always been a being of light. They're almost. . . it's almost like eternity one thinks it's eternity, but a . . . Now the secret of samadhi then is to (cleave?) to that aspect of your being that is deathless. And it follows that one realizes that one can think without a brain. Then one can go on: ". .2Eone can see without eyes, hear without ears and walk without feet and fly without wings. . .", in the words of Jalaladin Rumi. The important thing is that sense of independence from the support system and it is that which gives you samadhi. But it's, be careful of operating a cleft, setting a cleft, a break in the continuity of the different bodies. Their interaction and so on. 

So you could think without a brain, but there are some thoughts that become more precise with the brain and thoughts where the brain doesn't seem to be able to be up to serving those thoughts or those realizations. 

So you must differentiate between the, what we mean by resurrection and what we mean by the deathless state. Because what we mean by resurrection is that the grosser aspects of one's being, like one's body and so on, are being transmuted.

Which is effectively true because, for example, even the electrons of the body are converted into photons after death or even during one's lifetime. So there's a shift anyway. And so it's a process linking all the levels of one's being and transmuting them upwards. 

Where as the deathless state is really identifying with that in you which is not subject to birth and therefore not subject to death and which is the ultimate pinnacle of your being. And so that is a state beyond programming, beyond conditioning, that I referred to this morning prior to that level at which the programming is being devised. 

Because according to Sufis, the whole of existence is just made of devices in which God makes his intention known and that's why, it starts with archetypes and those are the names of God and that's why Ibn Arbi says, ". . .if the names disappear, the name to one would appear. . ." or he says, ". . .wherever you pay attention to an object, HE has escaped you." That's samadhi. Or "Knowledge is a veil upon the known", Ibn Arbi. 

And so in the state of samadhi then there's absolutely no further reference to the existential state and that's why this morning we were passing through one state to another beyond existence, beyond consciousness, beyond existence and unconsciousness and then finally the cessation of the determined, if you remember. And then, the words of my father, his last words before he died, and he said, "When the unreality of life fades away it's reality strikes me, strikes my heart." And so all those levels like the subtle body and the aura and so on, are modes of reality, but not reality - devices. So, we're going to have to end here. END OF TAPE (Pir Vilayat)0D

 J'SHUA20.PVK=

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  Cynthia Trapanese (Tape #17) P' Box 529  Croton Falls NY 10519 (914)276-9537 trapanese@aol.com

Joshua Tree Retreat 8/14/96 Tape # 17

Yes, I think we've had enough methodology, now I think we need to take off. So I'll just (play it by ear). So of course you ask yourself that impossible question: "Who am I?". And you feel that there's a lot of memory that is hidden, subsumed, in your psyche, and you can recover, retrieve that memory. For example: you can remember when you were a child, and perhaps you can remember when you were a baby--I do. And perhaps you can even remember when you were in the womb of your mother. And you can even remember prior to your conception, in what Dr. (Groff) calls perinatal states. And if you can't remember that then at least just think that you have at some point landed on planet earth, and that means that you belong to other levels of reality. When I say landed on planet earth, I don't mean from another planet, but from other levels of reality that you are not clear about, but that, let's say, just the sense that you are a visitor, a tourist, on planet earth, and that it's not your real home. 

It's your 'home from home' for a time. And that the planet, through your parents and your ancestors, has provided you with an underpinning, a body, that is of the same nature as the planet, and which enables you to find out something about what things are like at the existential level. And as you developed further, you got yourself so involved with your involvements, got so inveigled in your involvements with situations and people, that you forgot what this was all about. You forgot that you're a denizen from other planes, and you forgot that you're a visitor. And, you get caught in a limited perspective, and your sense of identity has become funneled down and extremely constrained. And you suffer joy and pain. Or you incur joy and pain, and are pummeled by life, the challenge of (a inaudible). 

Now what you want to do is the reverse, and the way to do it is to consider that your body is an underpinning that has accrued to you in the course of your descent, but, and since it has accrued to you it has become part of you so you can't separate yourself from it, but it is less essentially you then your, let's say, super celestial being. Or somehow, as you, we, already experienced we were, when we were concentrating on the beams of our eyes and we saw how as soon as we opened our eyes the objects in the room forced our eyes into focus. So in the same way you can see how the appearance of situations in life have forced your consciousness into focus and affected your identity. So it suffices that you just, you know that, that you have forgotten or discounted your true identity; that's all you have to do. And then your need--your real, sort of imperative need--to see clearly, to discover yourself, to see what's, to overcome that limitation, will be enough to awaken dull memory. 

So now you can see that you can shift your focus upon your bodyness, so that it's there, but as I say, it's like an anchor that you're not centered upon. It's like in the twilight of your awareness. And the same thing is true of the physical world. It's, well for one thing, it's very helpful to know that it's not what you think it is. And so it doesn't have the same, exercise the same, pull upon your consciousness as if you think it is real; in fact it seems unreal. And consequently since it doesn't have the same impact upon your retention, it seems to be remote. Rather like when you're going to sleep: you're not aware of the environment, so it's remote. It's there, but it's remote. Like for example when you're sleeping you could have thoughts, I mean images that are projecting on the screen of your mind and the same time be aware of the sound of the cars on the street and the furniture in your room. Something like that, you see. 

Now, at a further stage you're not aware of the physical environment, but you remember the way that the physical world looked, and the way that you, the awareness that you had about, of, your body; you remember that. But it seems like it does not impact your consciousness all that much because you always keep on reminding yourself that it is not what you thought it was. The physical world was not what you thought is was. The circumstances were not what you thought they were. And your body was not what you thought it was. And now, when thoughts, random thoughts, impinge upon your mind, simply think to yourself: 'they are misleading because they refer to only one limited vantage point which is connected with my sense of identity.' So somehow if you devalidate your thoughts then they don't have the same impact upon your consciousness as before. 

Now, we may distinguish the peripheral thoughts and the deeper thoughts. So the peripheral thoughts are always concerned with your relationship with the environment; and the deeper thoughts seemed to have escaped that conditioning. In fact you begin to discover a kind of freedom from the way that thoughts become compulsive and obsessive, and all you have to do is to devalidate them, to question their validity, and then they don't have an impact upon your mind. Now a great, a very great, breakthrough comes when you think that your self-image of your personality was faulty. And that if you remember that in your dreams you assumed very different personalities to the one that you identify with in your day consciousness, so then just imagine that there could be different ways of looking at your person, and the commonplace way is rather inadequate. So, I am not what I thought I was. 

And therefore I do not continue to think I am what I thought I was, because that was a fallacy. So you can watch your personality having become sclerosed into a self image. And you really went along with that hoax, and took yourself to be what you thought you were, and now you're free--you have unmasked that hoax--free from your assumption of being what you thought you were. And so then, there is no limit to what you are, because that includes all the potentialities and possibilities that are lying in wait. And to think that, again, the personality on one hand was inherited from your ancestors, so it's not really you; it's something that's accrued to you. And what is more, that it is an outgrowth from the stump of your being, which is the real being as compared with the outgrowth. So that outgrowth is as transient and perishable as your body, at least what you think your body is. 

And as a matter of fact, if you hang on to it it will not change, therefore you have to let go of it or dismiss it. That's not me, it's a parade that I put on, I feel comfortable with and people identify me with, but it's not really me. It's transient and (ephemery), whereas my real being is, has a perenity about it as compared with the transiency of what I thought I was--my personality. So you find that not only is it much richer, infinitely richer, with potentialities, but it has a stability that gives you almost a sense of eternity. I say, 'almost' because you don't know the stump, but you can see that it is evanescent; that it is it's continually emerging, and so you can almost take it for granted that there is extraordinary wealth there that is your real being that is coming through as you let go of your false conception of yourself. 

Now this is reinforced by being aware of the fact, I mean acknowledging the fact that you, what you see in the mirror lets say does affect your self image, in fact you do tend to, unconsciously, you tend to identify with it. And therefore a real breakthrough consists in questioning that that form or formation really represents your being, because there are many factors: there's inheritance from parents, from your race, your age, perhaps sometimes even illness, the spill over from the environment, a lot of things. There's the fact that flesh doesn't always lend itself that easily to the configuration of the reality of your being, your celestial countenance. So if you, so we've discarded several things now haven't we? We've discarded our sense of bodyness. We've discarded our personality, our thoughts. Having discarded, we've devalidated them, or the representation we made of them. And now, we are freeing ourselves from our identification with the very form of our face. Now at this point we need to make a quantum leap. We can't reach higher just by like, say, unmasking the hoax of all those things that we've assumed, because now it is our sense, not our sense of our personality, but our sense of our individuality that stands in the way. 

Now the way of doing it is then is to bring into account the antipodal pole of your being, which we call God. So instead of saying 'I want to know who I am beyond the hoax of mirror and self image and body and all of that, thoughts,' and you cannot know who you are, or even what the countenance of your real being is by trying to grasp it from your personal vantage point. And this is where the notion of God comes in. And remember, the breakthrough here is: "that which I think"--it's a word of Saint Francis-- "that which I think I am observing,"--well, he says the observed-- "is the observer." What I think is the observed is the observer. So this is a real quantum leap now. That is your real being is the way that God manifests Him/Herself to Him/Herself through you. And by the same token, through you, as I said. And by the same token, discloses His being to you by means of an imperfect image, like the voice of Caruso, like a bad recording which carries nevertheless the true picture within it. 

Now this is what the Sufis call Jabarut, and the Hindus call Asmita Samadhi. And I've jumped the gun a little bit because I wanted you to just have a sense of where you were going, but that breakthrough cannot happen either by your will or your realization. It's only by your ecstasy; it's only by your attunement. And that's, the Hindus call it Ananda Samadhi. Before Asmita Samadhi you have Ananda Samadhi. So now, we've already said it is first of all Ananda, that is, well, different levels of emotion leading up to ecstasy. It starts by simply bewondering, like it's an attitude of bewondering. Like, I think it's so extraordinary, life is so, it never ceases to amaze me, with its good and its bad, but still somehow, the, if I could just realize that a photon in a beer can is as beautiful as the photons of the stars, and the beauty of the soul of that person who is forlorn and cantankerous. 

It's seeing beauty where others can't see it. So there are wazifas for this: Ya Jemal, Ya Latif for example. The subtle, the beauty that transpires behind what might be an ugly appearance. And then, Jelal and Majid: the divine majesty, that you see in the majesty of the mountains, the majesty of the trees, the majesty of the lion or the elephant or the tiger or the king, the dervish. Divine majesty. Divine beauty. So it's like a symphony of emotions. It starts by bewondering and then it becomes glorification. Ya Azim, Ya Alim. (Muta ali.) It's just your intuition espies the nature of the sublime hidden behind the appearance of the opposite. And it is that thought which will give you a sense of the divine ecstasy at projecting his/her being in, as you. 

Discovering His/Her perfection in your imperfection, in our imperfection. It's beyond logic of course. So you have turned the tables and now you are getting into the divine consciousness, at least starting with the divine ecstasy. There's a story about this, and that is that Zeus was (inaudible) at his throne, and his son Zachiarias sat on his throne, and the Titans presented him with a mirror and he discovered in the features of his face those of his father. And he was so overwhelmed that the Titans took advantage of his ecstasy to throw him into the abyss, to drag him into the abyss, and devoured him. And when Zeus came back he shattered the Titans with his thunderbolt, and men are born out of the ashes of the Titans who had eaten the Son of God. Therefore, they carry within them the inheritance of the Titans--the animal nature--and they also carry within them the divine nature. 

So the ecstasy of discovering your Father in yourself. Or your Mother. Your Divine Father. Your Divine Mother. The ecstasy. It's not just the ecstasy of seeing how wonderful the reality is behind the universe, but in yourself. Being amazed by the beauty of yourself, instead of denigrating yourself. Because that's what happens if you about-turn and you see that it is God discovering Him/Herself as you; that's when you can accept the beauty of your being as you couldn't have seen yourself. And the consequence is that that divine vision of Him/Herself in you is going to transform your being, releasing potentialities which could never have occurred if you had tried to mold your subtle body as we did previously. So this was the missing factor in what we did before. 

Assuming that we can mold our subtle body or very subtle body, and what I said of course you can't do it through your will, but your attunement. But this is the attunement, it's the divine ecstasy that is your attunement. God in ecstasy discovering Him/Herself as you. Imagine what that does; all the inadequacies fall away--that was the hoax of our limited vantage point. So this is the extra-samsaric matrix which overrides the samsaric, and makes for mutation instead of recycling what we've always been, and frees you from conditioning. So this is where your detachment and indifference and independence is going to free you from the sclerosis of your personality so that you may be molded by the divine action upon you. Or the divine action of each fragment of Him/Herself. Or if you like, the action of the universe upon each fragment of itself. 

Now when you try to reminisce your perspective in your everyday condition, it seems such a far cry, it seems so erroneous, so mistaken, so totally inadequate. It's like having been, it's like those, you know, the men in that, or the humans at least, in the cave of Plato, who are chained, and can only see shadows on the wall, and then Plato says: "Well supposing that you take away their chains, they would be so blinded by the light that they wouldn't see anything anymore, and they would prefer going back to where they were, looking at the shadows." But then he said, "Imagine that amongst those people there is someone who thinks well, maybe I can't distinguish colors, or I can't see anything in the, like an owl in the daylight, or certain owls, and but, I'll get used to it." And so you get used to this transcendental overview. So that you're able to discern now meaningfulness that you were not, is not familiar to you, like a kind of super logic. 

So you seem to be invited to the, being privy to the, thinking of the universe, that is, the divine thinking. But it's (source is) not your thinking, but you realize that your thinking is of the same nature as the divine thinking, but it was blurred by your personal thinking, the personal mode of your thinking. So, you have a sense of awakening. And Pir-o-Murshid describes it. He says: imagine that you're awake and walking about amongst people who sleep. And, of course, how can you communicate with them, you realize that they can have no idea about what you are aware of because they're still sleeping, and that you used to be like that yourself. But now you are awake. That's what Christ said: "They don't know what they do." Like drunken people who don't realize that they're drunk. 

So, remember, awakening is a shift from a perspective to another perspective. But, the higher the perspective, the more inclusive it is. So it's not just one slice of the hologram, but a view that makes sense of the whole hologram. Prior to this I said it was one slice, a different slice, different perspective, like looking at a cube on the blackboard and seeing how it shifts according to your glance. No, it's more than that, it is like the two eyes that can extrapolate between, the brain that can extrapolate between, the vision of the two eyes. So, it is seeing meaningfulness. That's awakening: seeing meaningfulness where your mind cannot see it. And the only way to do it is to question your commonplace place mind, or your commonplace perspective, or your commonplace opinion--that's what Buddha calls it, freedom from opinion. Freedom from the notion of the personal 'I', which is again Buddhism, (Annata). And now we have to do the reverse, and that is awakening in life instead of beyond life. In beyond life you're grasping the programming, and the intention behind the programming, so it's like visiting the architect and seeing the blueprint of that building. But awakening in life is like visiting the building with the architect, and now you understand why the building is the way it is. 

And so now if you can maintain your overview and at the same time be aware of the way your problems seem to appear to your personal vantage point--that's remember situations, in fact better still of course, to remember situations regardless of your opinion about them, then you see the issues that are enacted in your problems. So instead of considering your problems, you're able to highlight what the issues are. And you find that those issues are always a quality. For example, that which is enacted in this situation is truth; that 's which is enacted, that the truth may become known, may explode. That which is enacted in this situation is compassion. So, as long as there is no compassion, the situation is there. That's what's being enacted. 

So it's seeing a quality instead of ascribing a quality to a person. Can you see that? For example, a peaceful person, I mean somebody comes in the room, and people think ''h isn't it wonderful to see this peaceful person.' Or a happy person comes in the room and people rejoice and say 'it's wonderful, this person is so happy.' Now if you adopt the point of view of awakening, you would say 'isn't it wonderful to see peace manifesting as this person.' Or, 'isn't it wonderful to see joy manifesting as this person.' So you begin to be acquainted with the qualities and you see those qualities being enacted in life. That's where the language of the wazifas is going to throw light on your problems. So I think I have to end here. Bless you.

END OF TAPE 


AUG 14, 1996		Tape 23



Tape #23, 8/14/96, Joshua Tree

Pir Vilayat

This is the last session before the Grand Finale later on this afternoon, and I'll say I'm very really almost obsessed by that view I had of Murshida Vera when she was in her very high state; it was probably triggered off by high pressure, but still there's no doubt that something was happening to her. I've never seen a face like that, I mean, that's what's incredible, and the beauty of that face I'll never forget. So it awakened memories in me of some of the things that I've encountered in my visiting rishis, holy beings of all kinds, monks and so on. And, so I remember particularly a statue of a Chinese monk, it is in a museum in San Francisco, I forget now, near the Golden Gate there's a museum there with Eastern things and it's not that conspicuous, it's in a little covered "inaudible" with glass and that monk is in ecstasy you see. So that, in fact for years I used to think of that monk because that expression, I've been talking so much about expression, and that expression matches a state of consciousness that is not, well it's not all our projections about being awake or illumination or whatever; it's, so there's no way of describing it. But, perhaps you felt when I was trying to mimic it, it was coming through you see. 

So that's real, it's something tangible, you've got it, you could even visit that, see that statue and I don't know some of you were there when Murshida Vera was going through that. Now it seemed to be agony, but it was, it was extraordinary because she said things that, for example she said "I'm trying to come down, I'm up on the ceiling, well, and you're all down there." And I asked afterwards and she said "yes, I could see my body down there and you were all around it" so she did a typical astral projection, there's no doubt about it. And then she had this wonderful expression on her face of extreme beauty. Then she said that she was, she could (couldn't?) see beings but she was in a world of light, fantastic light, but the most extraordinary thing is that at certain, and that "inaudible" of light was beyond beings, but then the most extraordinary thing was when she said "well, then there was a moment that faded away and I saw wheels, and wheels, you know the vision of Ezekiel, the Galganin, and "inaudible" other archangels of the galaxies, so it was a cosmic vision. So, and after all that, she's back here again. Because she didn't want Bismillah to miss the meeting. And she asked to be apologized for her having caused so much disturbance. And imagine, it was the most fantastic gift for us in the retreat, because it was part of the retreat. Because we are not into an abstract kind of samadhi state, but something real.

So, it has helped me very much to remember that statue, but sometimes I didn't have to remember that statue but just think of that expression of "inaudible" beatitude. I thought well then, think of all the things that we have been doing, and the practices we have been doing, the retreat, working very hard to get into higher states of consciousness and insight and so on, and here is is right there. So I'd just to just share in meditation, just getting to that state, think of us as mirrors reflecting each other, and I'm reflecting expression that I've seen amongst some of the wonderful beings I've encountered in my life. And so this is called Ruyaw, which means vision, and I suppose the way to think about it would be to think that you are looking into the celestial face of the person who is in ecstasy or let us say that you are looking into that celestial face that is transpiring behind the face of a person who is, who has a vision of the celestial spheres. And of course you have to realize that you are a being of light. Here on the passage from one sphere to the other, just like a threshold, a sudden change of consciousness, attunement, whatever, sudden leap from one state to another. 

So that you could easily slip back into your ordinary nature and you can just jump over the barrier into your heavenly nature. And the thought of light is a clue, and of course your celestial face, and if you have any doubt about all this, we, well I had a proof there, how a face can be transfigured by the vision of the heavens, there's no doubt about it. It's for real. But you can do it you see, if you just toggle between your ordinary consciousness of yourself, which matches the expression on your face, and where there's all kinds of things, feelings of inadaquacy, guilt, resentment, all those things, and then you pass the threshold, and then all of a sudden you find that it is also you, this but is very different, but it is you, it's not like something unknown, it is you. And then the incredible joy of finding yourself, it's your real being. And now I have a kind of skill because, I hope that you get some, capture some sense of the contents of your own celestial face and the vision of celestial spheres will help this to come about. Your mirroring many wonderful beings. And so then my skill consists in matching that expression with that of your ordinary face, physical face, and eventually they're not too, well they interpenetrate each other. 

Somehow, the impact of your celestial face is going to have some influence on you, not just on your personality, but all the levels of your being. Now, there's a word of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, you develop the capacity of attuning yourself to what he called the abstract planes at will, right in the middle of life situations, the ability to shift just like pressing a button. But I remind you of that threshold, it's just like while you are meditating, you all of a sudden have passed a barrier and then you are on another level and it's not astral, astral projection is different. And the vision of, even if it is the virtual vision of, celestial spheres lures you beyond your common place identity. And it's as though you are relieved of a kind of weight, the weight of your earthly personality is heavy. So the vision is like there is all this yourself, and then like what you did this morning, there's the light that you are flooded with and then there's your aura. 

There's always the two, there's the interface, that's vision, so the projected vision of the heavens is going to affect your light and manifest as a form. And the form of your real countenance, and when you know that, you know this is me. And then you realize that you are playing a role in life and wearing a mask. And so this gives you an overview, and that was the message for this afternoon, after having sought samadhi, the overview is looking down from above instead of trying to look up from underneath. And then the only way to be able to look at all is to, well I mean you can't even avoid always grasping that which transpires behind that which appears because you can't focus on what appears, you only see what's trying to come through. Some mystics, Hindus, Sufis, I can see them shedding tears because of the beauty that they perceive.

We are hardened by our need to fend for ourselves and defend ourselves, but when one gives vent to one's high sensitivity, so then you don't hold yourself back from your ecstasy. It's a gift you that are giving to your soul, allow your soul to enjoy ecstasy. We are being unkind to our soul. So that's the whole objective of the Sufis is to be able at any time to lift your consciousness into another attunement and then toggle back and forth through, to and forth. Now, if you turn your eyeballs upwards too much, then you will be creating circumstances that are conducive to ecstasy that you really have lost touch with the physical world, so that's not at all what is our objective, so I find that one needs to turn one's eyes slightly upwards but not totally, and one needs to project - now there's a word of Pir-o-Murshid "to see without eyes", or to see through the vision and beyond the vision of your eyes. So you create the object of your vision by projecting it. So, it's sometimes like, think of the vision of Hildegaard of Bingen, sometimes like looking at a sky lighted up by the sun at dawn or sunset, those colored hues of the clouds and beyond one cloud, another cloud, still further another cloud, even further, and so somehow your vision is being pulled further and further into worlds of light, and then beyond the reach of your eyes, beyond form, all that manifests as form. Then you feel that it gives you insight, beyond your understanding. Insight into all beings, into all situations, into yourself, into life in general. So, God Bless You Now.

Aziza

Everyone back here at 4:30, so we have a half an hour break about and for those who would like to stay and talk a little about bridging heaven and earth and what to do after retreat, I'll stay here and have a dialogue with you if you like. And the other retreat guides, if you could be available too to participate in that dialogue, I'm giving clues to what to work with and what might come up for you. There's no session this afternoon is my understanding, but you could go outside and check.

Qahira is going to talk a little about bridging retreat and life.

 Qahira

I remember in 1975, Pir Vilayat was talking to a handful of representatives in Los Angeles and he said that very often after a retreat we go home and we are very fine tuned and we feel a lot of insight into our problems and crises come and we seem to just really be on top of them, and then as the weeks and the months go by and we somehow seem to lose that and seem to slip into a more ordinary consciousness, and then he said that there's a way to not slip back. So by this time, he certainly had me on the edge of my seat. I used to describe my life like that, you know, like slowly, slowly coming down, and life was just one big Sufi camp and what I did between Sufi camps was just that, what I did between Sufi camps, but to be at a camp was for me was to just feel the most alive I'd ever felt, so what he said was the way that you can not slip down is to find a way to be conscious of God every moment of your life. 

That sounds very simple; I wrote it down in my notebook and I took it seriously and so I would just say for myself, I found a way that works for me and then it changes from day to day, or decade to decade, but for you to find a way that works for you is what's important, and all the tools that we're getting. So it's again a key, a clue, because what connects you with the source of your being, what works to connects you with the source of your being. A breath, of course, is a key, and when you can on one breath turn to a state that you have experienced when you're with a Master of Light, that key of breath is a very refined one and it has to do of course with the refinement of our breath which then goes all the way back to the way we eat, the way we think, what our motives in life are, it's all interwoven. The first step on the spiritual path you already know is purification, and the second is assimilation. And Pir says to spend the longest time in assimilation. And the third is expression. Most people want to jump right away into expression, and I would say "go kicking and screaming into that arena of expression. Wait. Assimilate. Empty out. Assimilate. Empty out. Until by Grace, you may be able to remain empty enough to just assimilate the heavens and have a way of having your feet on the earth and your head in the heavens." And it works differently for each one of us, but that is our inheritance, so I guess what it all boils down to is find a way to remember God every moment of your life and watch your breath.

 Aziza

So many of you will be staying on for a few days, so there's an opportunity to come down slowly, to exchange, to talk, to eat together, to share our visions, and our lives. But for those who will be leaving today and tomorrow morning, it's important to remember that the retreat process doesn't stop when you leave and that you're, it's very hard to assess where you are when you are swept into that inner state and into the planes, you lose your objectivity and one just is, so you may think you are grounded and ready to go home, and you step out into the airport and find that it's rather a shock. Or you get home and you think you are really there and you are really ready to do everything and you are just in another state of being and, so be gentle with yourselves and I would say some helpful hints are to ground the energy, to walk, to have a good meal, to share, to be with a friend, to bring that sensitivity really present in your being as you prepare to leave. Now there's practices you shouldn't do outside of the retreat - Shaghall is one of those practices really for retreat, and it's advisable not to go home and do, just to administer whatever practices you like but to talk to a retreat guide before you leave if you have a sense that you wish to carry some of these practices on into your everyday spiritual work, it would be good to just get some feedback before you decide how to do that. And there are lots of retreat guides here who are available to you, I could ask you to stand once again but, yes, why don't you just stand to see who they are. There they are, a few of them. 


Thank you very much. Now, when you leave here, be very careful driving, just be conscious, get your feet on the ground, be present, and as I say, you think you are, but then the most incredible things happen to you and we have allot of stories people could share about what happened as they left retreat. No, not now, let's get the facts our first. And then, now, the next thing is when you return you feel yourself very open and you might feel that you are too open and vulnerable and you are picking up too much pain and too many gross vibrations, all of a sudden you are just overwhelmed by life and so there again it's very important to before you leave to be centered, to bring your energy in, to be aware that you are very open and that you can keep your heart open and be, have that loving kindness and compassion for other beings, but if you indeed feel overwhelmed and, by the conditions of the world at this time, then it's time to sit quietly, to get centered, to bring your energy in, to work with purification practices, breathing practices, try to release that energy so that it goes through you and release it. 

Also you'll find that your loved ones in your community who have not been here will not be in the same state that you're in and all too often when you return home you just feel extraordinary and you burst in with all this energy and light it just flattens your friends and loved ones out, I mean they just don't know how to deal with it. So I'd just be aware that they need you and they have been struggling while you have been flying, you know. And it's nice to meet them just sort of where they are, listen, listen in to their concerns and how they've dealt with the children while you were away, or the problems at work and all those kinds of things with allot of insight and your wisdom of what you are bringing back, but be aware that it can be overwhelming if you try to hug them to death, love them and hug them, be aware of that, they haven't been here and they are in need now and maybe you could share some of your energy and consciousness with wherever you go. And, so I will just see if you would like to add...


 Retreatants

Speaking purely for myself which is what any of us can do, and my opinion carefully labeled as such, is that many of the states that we experience on retreats are special purpose states. They come, they do their job and they leave and they have a wisdom of their own that it's not a good idea to try to fight, so some of what we experience does leave, be prepared for that. It's doing its job in the way that it's doing for us in it's way. The other thing is that there's a tendency to really to get our energy up into our heads, and the Sufi way, according to my understanding, is the path of the heart so what I've found to be the most useful is to bring this energy, all of this high, light and expansiveness down into the heart, and rather than radiating from the third eye and crown and, which is really much more of the yogi way, to bring it into the heart and radiate all directions from the heart center and from the solar plexus as well. It's much more connected to the world around us and what works very well for me in very abrasive situations out there in the alleged real world, is when I'm the most radiant thing in the vicinity, much of that can't touch me and people can do what they do and they can be who they are as abrasive or as demanding or as whatever as they are, and I'm able to respond much more from a place of compassion that's in tune with the need of the moment, rather than trying to impose my idea of who they ought to be or who I ought to be on the situation.

 Aziza

Are there any other comments? If you have a question or a thought yourself of experiences leaving retreat that would be helpful to all of us, please feel free to share that.

 Retreatant

I just wanted to share what I found very useful when the last retreat I went on which was to intentionally, while I was still on the retreat, think into my life and think about how I would develop a support structure for my spiritual life, and I know in each one of you the longing for that spiritual life is very strong because that's what brings you here. So that goes without question, that that's there, but sometimes it's a kind of pragmatic, you know, like making time to just sit quietly or to listen to a beautiful piece of music, or to find people who you can share your spiritual ideal with, whatever it is we have to be very creative because we don't always live in a community where that's obvious, but if you think of it as as intention or very creative, whether it's E-mail or quiet time, it can be allot of different things, but it might be a very good thing while you are still here before you return.

 Suhwardi, do you have anything to add?

There's allot of people here that have done allot of retreats with Pir and retreats, and there's some people here who haven't done too many, and I think that in both cases people can agree that there were some times during this retreat where, actually I can tell you that Pir was bringing us in deeper places than he often does in this kind of a public retreat, and even though there was some trouble hearing him and our minds weren't connecting all the time with what he was saying, nevertheless the retreat process is happening, and I would like to make another suggestion and that is, so you should be aware that really the retreat was happening even though you weren't paying attention and you didn't seem to quite hear him or something, and that has it's time that it evolves. And one of the ways that you can take that with you is to do something between now and dinner to make this whole retreat experience adamant. Write something in your journal, a reflection or a flower, not one of those poisonous flowers that are growing, but do something so that you can look at it for a few days, connect the retreat space with your everyday life as the world pulls you back.

 And then, we are going to take a break in five minutes and we'll have a fifteen minute break and, yes we still have time, just a moment.

 Retreatant

I just wanted to get them prepared for the energy to move in any way that it can. I just wanted to tell you a very short story about a woman that I had on retreat. It got to a certain part of the retreat, about the third, almost into the fourth stage, and I came in to see her and she laughed at everything I said. She went into hysterics, was just laughing, and I thought, then I found that I was stimulating her laughter, and after I went back to my space, and I had given her her practices, I'd given her her meal, then I thought to myself, "if Aziza ever found this out, she would truly fire me for having made this woman laugh." But the next day when I went to her, she said that her energy was moving and it was that which was the crux that got her over her hard space. So, energy moves in very wonderful, strange, and mystical ways. So if it's laughter or tears or whatever, we're here to share that with you.

 Aziza

I realized that for many of us, sometimes in retreat a process is opened up, something is revealed that is not complete when you leave and you aren't necessarily feeling at peace with yourself, you feel like there's a little turmoil in there now to really resolve it in your life. Or perhaps you have opened up something that is very painful and you still feel the pain of that and you're wondering if you have passed the retreat or failed the retreat, there are moments where you wonder "well, have I done it? Shouldn't I be feeling all that sublime joy and, not necessarily, I mean some retreats there's work to do and you leave feeling in a deeper way all these feelings that a human being can feel and other times you are at peace and other times you do feel light and joy. Usually it's a combination thereof, but please don't leave here feeling inadequate or that you haven't, I mean, speak to someone first and share a little bit about what's happening for you so you can see how the retreat can bridge things, and there's a healing going on. But, it can be many things; there's not just one way of being in retreat.

Let's take a fifteen minute break and he'll be with us then at 4:30. Thank you. 

 END OF TAPE ??



AUG 14, 1996		Tape 24

 



96V08-14.#24 PVK Joshua Tree 8/14/96 RE Tape 24

...middle of this afternoon. And now of course, we need to prepare ourselves for our returning to America. Just sitting in that reception room in the hospital, it got to me how different our attunement is here. It's very different. So Richard turned off the TV. Although it was presenting something we would have all liked. It was people in water, very nice cool water. 

So we have touched upon our guilt and out resentment and all those things. And somehow we felt that was enough with all of that stuff. And we going to other dimensions. And we realized that the instructions which were just like triggers that could spark a state. What I'm saying is that the practices don't do it for you. So I'm not here to tell you what practices you should do and what practices you shouldn't do. Because it was important for you to see how those practices could trigger off a state. And then you know it yourself. It's much better than when somebody tells you to do this and do that and the other thing. Of course Aziza was doing a very important job. And that was to build a bridge between those rather metaphysical things that I was talking about. The nitty gritty of how you do it. Thank you very much Aziza for your work.

Now I think what we ought to do is to get in touch with our heart and our personal emotions. Somehow not descend into them but let's say our personal emotions in the light of the emotions of the higher spheres that we have encountered in our meditations. And that's what is called awakening in life. An so I thought that rather than describing what it is to awaken in life, I think one pertinent thing that I said was that it's just as though you, after having visited the architect, you visit the building accompanied by the architect. So that would be clue as to what we mean. We've said enough of the importance of seeing that which transpires behind that which appears. It becomes such a slogan that it doesn't make sense any more to repeat it. Then of course, when we work with our glance as we did with this morning. 

And try to maintain the glance as beams of life, then it becomes real. otherwise it's again a slogan. Rather than trying to describe how do you wake up in life, you have to have already awakened beyond life in order to wake up in life. I tried to communicate it by examples. For example, this rishi was trying to descend into the thinking of that person in order to understand how one could possibly think the way he thought. And you can do it with your own thinking. Think to yourself, "Gosh, after all that sublime vision, how can I let myself just sink right back into the way I was before? That just doesn't make sense". So I hope this retreat has left an impact on you when you get back, so that when you will see how easily one gets constrained and trapped by the personal vantage point and the by one's personal emotion. 

But instead of saying like there is this high thing up here, the celestial, and impersonal emotions, and ecstasy. And there is down here limited some pejorative sense of something demeaning about it. I think what we want to do is to really relate the two. That is to see how our personal emotions can be somehow transfigured by higher emotions. And of course these are words. How can they be real for us? That's my personal concern. 

So I thought that the best thing would be to let music tell us that. Because that is a language that does not use the intellect. It bypasses the intellect. Of course music is always part of the lives and especially the lives of the composers. So we can sometimes resonate with the composer. Because what happens is that the composer is translating in music a process that he or she is going through. And that music acts as a transducer. And then when we listen to it, somehow we pick up the state of attunement of the composer or the process that the composer is going through. And for the composer to compose any music that is at all meaningful to us, he or she must have gone through the same states that we are going through in our lives, sometimes much more intensely. 

So for example, Brahms is an example of someone who, you know it's quite unbelievable, Brahms. When he was a young man, a genius, he said, "I don't think that I'm worthy of the love of any woman". And I don't know whether you know the event when he was invited to visit Schumann. And Schumann asked him to play the piano. And when Schumann heard it, he called his wife, Clara. He said, "Clara, come down, have your ever heard music like this?". And when the two met, it was love at first sight. And then Brahms always respected that relationship. Still he did visit them at least one more time, maybe more. And Schumann made an effort to commit suicide. And Brahms, even though there was absolutely nothing between the two. And so Brahms was trying to express, of course, his personal pain. But the extraordinary thing was his ability to transform pain into joy. I mean what an overcoming. So we have examples of this. For example there is the (Chato of the Soul) movement of the Cello Concerto which shows the agony of his heart. Then there is the Fourth Symphony where all of a sudden he overcomes it. Then the feeling of joy is fantastic. 

Well, quite apart from the pain and the joy and you know the drama, something much more important goes on. And that is the kind of understanding of the reason why things can't be the way we think they should be. It's very difficult to understand. We think, "If only things could be the way they should be. Why not?". Well there is no way of explaining it, but somehow it makes sense beyond our understanding. And it was exactly that which the composers were picking up, that sense beyond understanding. 

Now that comes through much more in Beethoven than Brahms because Beethoven was, well a very cosmic being. Perhaps less personal than Brahms. So he represents another dimension. So that in the Ghosts Trio, the slow movement that we are going to play, you see him ponderings about the meaningfulness of life. And it's not just intellectual. It's the emotions that go with the understanding of the meaning of life. The maturity of a being. Can you imagine Beethoven, a genius beyond words. He wrote to his nephew a letter that is not in the archives. He says, "'h, I must apologize to you. I couldn't say this all these years. But I felt terrible about neglecting you. But I must tell you why. Can you imagine what it means for a composer to become deaf? And I didn't want to admit it. And therefore I had to isolate myself from the world. ". So in that isolation, he was really meditating. He was finding meaningfulness in life that you could never find in samadhi. Right there in life with the wisdom of a very mature being. All these composers. 

Of course then you have Mozart who was such a genius that he couldn't stand fools. And so he laughed at the face of the king. He thought it was an idiot, that king. He was rather insolent, almost shamefully insolent. But he was miles above anybody else. So he could perhaps afford to do it. It caused a lot of anguish. At the end of his life he had that vision of a man coming with a black cloak. No. You see what happened was that somebody came to ask him to write a Requiem and pay him for it. And he had a black cloak. Then in his vision he saw that it was the Angel of Death who had come to him. So he wrote the Requiem for his own death. So there is a lot there that is terribly meaningful to us. 

Beethoven, just imagine that Beethoven during his sleep, he heard knocks at the door, ta, ta, ta, tum. Ta, ta, ta, tum. And here it was the Fifth Symphony. Now do you write a symphony on the basis of four knocks that you hear in your dream? And those knocks reminded me of the dervish that was knocking at my door in Ajmere to say to me, "Wake up", at three o'clock in the morning. And he didn't mean just wake like we understand "wake us" but really"Wake up!". So Beethoven was waking up in the Fifth Symphony and telling you to wake up. So they have a message. And I've often referred to the Fourth Piano Concerto when Beethoven was describing the world as the orchestra and himself as the pianist. And I've referred to it many times. So if you don't know that piece, all these pieces, I mean they are absolutely magnificent. I don't have shares in the record companies. But you can buy them of course. 

And then there is that (Colideri) of Max Bruer that we played the other day celebrating, it's a celebration of repentance. It's a Jewish celebration. And if you don't know it, well I mean you have heard it. But some people were talking. And it was magnificent music. I don't know what you were talking about but maybe it wasn't quite as brilliant as listening to that music. So we don't have time to play over that. 

But I wanted us to go through a kind of process. I must ask Vakil, Vakil, did you ever find that Temptation of Christ? You didn't. Gosh. Well, you can buy it of course but are you going to be able to find the passage that I mean with the voice of Fatte Ali Khan, when Christ is hanging on the cross with a cry of agony. And the voice of the angels and the choir that comes after that. Do you know that? Again a genius, Peter Gabriel, it was extraordinary what he was able to render in that modern style. 

And then of course we've been listening to the music of Al Rupert who is a modern composer in our time who is one of the few who is presenting spiritual music in the idiom of modern music. Almost, kind of reminiscent of Gregorian chant, but transposed into modern harmonies. So that will train your ear to appreciate, let's say, the new spirituality. 

They are of course very different from the B Minor Mass of Bach. I was conducting part of the B Minor Mass of Bach at Dachau in Germany, a concentration camp where my sister was beaten to death. I didn't have the courage to look at the oven, but I've seen it before. But there was a picture of my sister there on the wall. And I was facing that picture while conducting the choir. And it seemed to be changing all the time. And you know, I'm not a believer. I'm a doubting Thomas. I've never asked you to believe in anything. Sometimes I say well you know ultimately there is faith. But I'm very cautious about that because one can fool oneself about that. I was thinking, "Well, am I trying to see something in this fact that's telling me something, and it's just my projections?", and so on. My sister is always present in my mind, all the time. If I'm eating, I'm thinking of her starving. I can get in touch with my friends. And she was...well, you know what it means. So I thought, "Well, could you give me some sign as to whether you are still living and whether it's good, it's wonderful where you are?". And the picture seemed to smile. And I thought to myself, "Maybe that's just thinking again. I'm projecting". So then, "Could you give me another sign?". It was a gray day, dark clouds. And in fact we expected rain. And at that very moment the clouds opened up and there was sunshine. 

You see I'm very concerned about not leading people into any kind of illusion or delusion which is very often the case in spiritual groups. So perhaps you feel that concern about truthfulness and authenticity even at the cost of questioning beliefs. So again this afternoon, or was it this morning? Yes, it was this morning. I just couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the face of Murshida Vera transformed, just unbelievable beauty that was coming through. That was a proof. All the things I'm talking about. You know, you could ask yourself, am I, is that just wishful thinking talking about the heavens. It's not very fashionable to talk about the heavens these days. People wonder if you still believe in Santa Clause. So there again you have real tangible proof. 


So I thought first it would be good to go through this inner process. It's not listening to music. You can listen to music at home. I'm indicating some pieces that are particularly meaningful. It's more like meditating with music. And it's true that some of the music that we have chosen is extremely conducive to meditation. Of course we've been choosing many different types according to the teaching that I was giving at the time. Gregorian Chant. Many different things. Indian music. And all kinds. 

So we're going to listen to the second movement of the First Piano Sonata of Brahms for Cello and Piano, played by Jacqueline Dupre. I don't know whether you know who was Jacqueline Dupre, but she was a wonderful woman. Beautiful voice, who was a genius, proved to be a genius, absolutely plays herself to ecstasy. And I would say that this sonata by Brahms has never been played by anybody the way that she did, or does, or did. Because she was afflicted by MS. And she still continued to give lessons in cello to the more advanced students. And when you'd see her sometimes on TV, her whole face bloated, her body totally unrecognizable, and yet smiling with joy and verve and humor and energy. Fantastic. What a victory over disaster. So that somehow she, I don't know whether at that time she already had a warning that that was coming on. But somehow that association of Brahms and Jacqueline Dupre is extremely meaningful because I think that she could just look into his heart and soul and see what he was going through. So let's say that this is the music of the broken heart. I think that one has to, I don't want to depress you after having been ecstatic. But I think that sometimes one has to really own, not only one's defects, but also one's personal emotions instead of pushing them aside. So the Sonata of Brahms, second movement. (Music) So Brahms was talking to your heart from his heart. 

Now the wisdom of Beethoven. And you'll notice that at the end whatever happened to him can never take away from him his thunder. He ends with a growl. ( Music) So you see, he doesn't just lament. He fights through. And all the forces of life are there. All the misgivings, our quandaries, our hopes, our fears, everything is there. 

I know I promised Vakil I wouldn't spring anything on you. But. If we just hear just the beginning of the Fourth Symphony of Brahms. You've got it there. I'll tell you. He found joy. He heard this melody in a dream. Tum tum to tee, to to. ta tee.... No Brahms. Well 'k. There is so much. We'd be going right through the night if you listened to all my repertoire of music. But it's all the significant things. I'm trying to convey something to you. 

Now we're going to have another agonizing piece of music. But I can assure you, after that, there will just be joy. But if you can bear with it a little bit more. The Temptation of Christ. This is the voice of a Pakistani Qwali singer, Fatti Ali Khan, who become famous through this film. And of course, his voice is very extraordinary. (Music) So the transformation of suffering into angelic beatitude. 

So I'll ask you all to stand up. I would like to first make the happy announcement that this is the termination of your silence. I want to congratulate you on keeping your vow of silence if you have. And if you have not, you still belong to the caravan. There is always room for you in that caravan, as Rumi says. Perhaps we'll hear that tomorrow when (Julie How ) will be coming to dance for us. In the mean time it's up to us to dance and to rejoice at having overcome our suffering. So I congratulate you anyway for having gone through this whole process. As you see, it was perhaps very different from what you expected. It was very different from what I expected. So it was very spontaneous and real instead of based on a whole system. And it was, we were getting in touch with very deep emotions and transforming them. So I hope it was a significant process for you. And perhaps you will not have realized it totally until you have gotten back into America again. So in the mean time, just to operate this transition, I invite you to dance with me if I can pick up my legs. You can't listen to this music and not dance. Don't be shy because nobody is watching you anyway. If they are, they are perhaps full of admiration. Mozart, Jupiter. (Music) End Tape


END =pvk9597b.* , Rename as =pvk9598b.txt
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AUG 15, 1996		Tape 04

--Can you hear me? Yes. Kindly take your sseats now.  Yes. Can you put yourself
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