AUG 15, 1996		Tape 04

--Can you hear me? Yes. Kindly take your  seats now.  Yes. Can you put yourself in my vantage point, sitting in awe, listening to my son who used to scratch my face when he was a baby? An accomplished teacher. And what it means to me to have that assurance that the future of the Sufi Order is insured? And to see, return to the source as one calls it, a pilgrimage to the source, to feel the place where Pir o Murshid was coming from. Right back there again in a new way with all the academia of American university background. But with the attunement of the mystics amongst the Sufis which gets very easily lost when one gives priority to what I call the psychologitus. 

Yes, I think it's the stage where we need to have an overview of what we're about in the course of these nine days. That is particularly significant, of course, for those who have been here since the beginning and are continuing to be here during the next four days. We've been going through a process. And there are many different stages in the process. And it seems that we were following a logical sequence in these stages. 

So in the beginning my job was to raise the consciousness of the people. And then I left it to Aziza and Perjaporty and Saraswate wasn't there, but there wasSura and Madia and Safira to build a bridge so that in the beginning we adopted a completely different approach. Instead of saying, "This is meditation, this is what you've got to do". we started by saying, "What are the problems?" Then we tried to get an attunement through which the problem looked very different to the way when you were in your ordinary attunement. So it wasn't like saying, "This is the way things are". It was like saying, "If you change your attunement, then you'll see that things are different". So my job was really attuning you to a pitch that I myself find in my retreats and carrying you into that state. 

Then of course there was the nitty gritty, like we were talking the language of the wasifas. What are the wasifas that say something about that particular concentration that you need in order to face this particular problem. That was always there. At the back of it there was the attunement, different stages of attunement, and then trying to make it a little more specific. Like what are the wasifas? Then Aziza was carrying it through saying, "What is it that you.." Because the wazifa is just a label, a language which is not our familiar language. Consequently it is saying something that we cannot say in our ordinary language because there are projections in our language, connotations. These words are free from those connotations. 

We went through a process, as I say. There was a logical sequence there. It was expanding our consciousness and then turning within, and then turning upwards, then downwards. So there were four stages. But what we're doing was, it's true that there was a kind of knowledge of the process, meditation. But we were doing it. And I tried not to say what the process was so that we could put the emphasis on the skills that we needed in order to do it. 

Then we had the retreat. We were reaching again into the, we were doing the same thing but much more experiential. If you remember very cautious because while we had the nostalgia for the beyond the beyond, as Pir o Murshid says, the unattainable, I was very cautious to keep us still, if even remotely, in contact with our problem and our needs, our psychological needs because I saw the danger of what I call rift between what we call realized situations and then our spiritual ideal. The kind of thing that psychotherapists accuse spiritualists of is making people otherworldly. 

And then I was perhaps a little bit over cautious because I heard people screaming in the middle of a peaceful retreat and getting the blame for it for having given people too advanced meditations. And on the other hand I am blamed if I don't give meditations that are advanced enough as what people expect. So it's a kind of no win situation. 

Then we, the whole process was rather interrupted by an incident that seemed to have been side tracking us. But I felt it was rather essential to our inner process. And that was what happened to Murshida Vera. Somehow we were all in it. And it was a real situation that had a kind of message for us. And so as a consequence I changed what I had in mind. For one thing because I had to go to the hospital with her. But somehow for me teaching must correspond to something that one is going through oneself in depth. And not just this is the way that the teaching is given. So one needs to play it by ear sometimes and listen to what is happening. 

And consequently what happened was the way that a being can be so totally transformed by a vision that it gives us a kind of proof, if one is a doubtful person, of all those things that we are saying. You see throughout this whole process, which was an inner process, which was a transformation at the soul level, I was always very conscious of Shams's remarks which apply to anybody's thinking and particularly spiritual schools. And that is the use of terms that become stereotyped like, spirituality and God and illumination, and awakening. It's so easy for these terms to which have lost their meaning. We assume that people know what we are talking about. We're using the same words but they are empty of their content. So that was the reason that I was very cautious of words. But one becomes rather up tight because one becomes rather paranoid because one realizes that these words don't say what one wants to say. But there is no other way of doing it but using these words. But of course trying to define them all the time so that there is no confusion. 

But it's true that when I read books on spirituality I think,"These people are saying things that I'm supposed to believe in, but now people want to experience more than just believe". When one is experiencing, one wants to have a kind of a proof. So here was a proof, living proof. Like I've never seen a face transformed like that. It was a living proof of what we're talking about. So that's real. 

So of course it did interrupt the program in a sense because what we were expecting of course was more training. How do we train ourselves? And how do we train mureeds? The nitty gritty, let's say. How do you bring that attunement down in to the nitty gritty specifics? How do you work with people and so on? We had started doing that in those two meetings in the Grove which I'll never forget. Some of you were not there. 

I had changed the program because I had intended to give more specifics about how you train a mureed and so on and so forth. I thought well rather than my telling you how you're supposed to do it, let's just talk together. And we called it 'open heart'. And so we were just communicating. It was just like the Pir with all his friends. I was bringing out things in people and they were communicating with me. It was one of the most wonderful things I've experienced. And I realized that it was one of the needs in the Sufi Order, something that traditionally never happens. I've never heard of a guru talking with his mureeds and asking them, "What do you think?", and so on. 

So that was a period that we were supposed to be talking about the training and indeed we did. We were talking about, for example, I was talking about how I used to give practices to the mureeds in France in the early days when they were just not so many mureeds. Very specifically. Then the next day we were talking about how they start, organize classes. And people were talking about how they organize classes. Then we could learn from each other. Then I asked people to write their own specific message as to what were their own expectations for the Sufi Order. And then what was their expectation for their representative or their leader or their guide. 

I have this bunch of papers here which I must say is amazing. It was a tremendous joy to go through these. Sometimes the words that were said came from a very deep sense of integrity and a deep need of the soul. So it was wonderful to hear what it means to people, what this whole spiritual path means to people is was just incredible. It was pure delight. I've asked someone to try to collect these so that we have just one kind of report so that we have a kind of sense of the gist of what people are really looking for in the Sufi Order, or in any order for that matter, in any spiritual institution. And especially he kind of thing that they expect from their representatives. So we really have a lovely feedback of the mureeds and I was hoping at least a deep connectivity between yourself and me and between me and you. So I was reserving now for. 

So what I want to say is that of course on that last day, that was yesterday, I had in mind that we were going to do the Zikre together. So that was missing from the retreat. It was, the whole retreat process was moving up to the Zikre and then we didn't do it. So, but we will be doing it, of course. We can catch up now. But we did do the advanced Zikre for a smaller group of representatives, the advanced Zikre. And then a very sacred thing which is, how can I say, the esoteric motions of the prayers. And that is a very deep spiritual attunement that Murshid gave to the mureeds who were very close to him, and which got washed out because in the Victorian days they said men can't bow, prostrate on the ground because they spoil the crease on their trousers. You know that kind of thing. Anyway.

Now Pir o Murshid has given very specific instructions as to how one trains a mureed. I must say that the method that I'm is suggesting is very different from that which you find in ashrams and what you find amongst Hindus, gurus. It's very different. It's very gentle, very respectful of a person's freedom, very wise, and I would say that it was based upon... You see it's very tempting to give one's opinion to a mureed and say to a mureed "Do this or do that", and so on. But this method is very subtle, like how you bring the pupil to discover something of him/herself? You just act as a kind of trigger to enlist realization in the pupil instead of telling the pupil what your opinion is. And it also shows that Murshid's teaching is not at all a dogma, not in the least. It's really totally pragmatic. It's just how to bring about the transformation in a person? What are the skills whereby you can bring about this transformation? 

So we have to work on several levels. And we started by this very high level of the attunement at the soul level in the course of meditation because whatever know-how you have about the method whereby you can help a person, the bottom line of it all is your attunement. It's your attunement. If your attunement is God consciousness instead of your personal consciousness, then the mureed is going to respect that and pick that up. And it will help the mureed to look at their own situation, their own personality, their own problems from a different vantage point. And if you tell them that vantage point, it won't help them. They'll discuss it. They'll debate and so on. So you see it's a different method. 

And of course you know that the medicine that we are using is the wasaif which is really sifat, the qualities that we prescribe like a doctor would prescribe. And the whole gist of it is that one is, it acts like a kind of koan. One is suggesting to a person to ponder upon a certain quality. And then until they realize it, that that is the quality that they need in order to develop. So it's like a medicine. But it requires the participation of the mureed. It's not just, "If you'll do this you'll be OK". That's not it. 

And as a matter of fact, one of the things that we have to be very careful with is any kind of effort to try to fix it. Like playing the Pygmalion. For example, there was someone who was kind of rather lackadaisical and found it rather difficult have any enthusiasm for anything. And their retreat guide gave them the practice Ya Azim. And he said, "I can't do it". So that's an effort to fix it. It doesn't work. 

Then there is the other policy of wait, just keep waiting until nature does it, self organizing itself. Stay with it, as one says. That is necessary at one stage. And it's very important to realize, to know how long that stage lasts. At which point one needs to take responsibility. 

A lot of people come to ashrams because they hope that the spiritual teacher takes responsibility for their lives. And if one does that, one is robbing them of taking responsibility themselves. So they never become responsible people. So one is doing them an injustice. And that's what they're asking you. And you are not helping them by doing that. 

Now on the other hand it's true that it's very difficult to relate this with what Pir o Murshid says when he says, " You must act as a father and a mother to your pupils and be interested in everything concerning them on all levels". Now he didn't say advise them on all levels. But still it's important that you take into consideration, I think that we make a artificial distinction between the need of the soul and the need of the psyche and the need of the body and so on, the job of the person, and all that kind of thing, marital status and so on. You're not supposed to intervene in their private lives. And on the other hand you need to have some insight into what are their problems. That is why right from the beginning I asked that question, "What are your problems?". But we don't want to bog them by their problems. Then we look at things from a higher point of view. Then somehow we establish, we build a bridge between these.

These are some of the guidelines that Pir o Murshid gives in dealing with mureeds. By accusing a person of his faults we often strengthen the roots of his faults. So that's not the way to do it. If people...this is a little bit random. I could have organized a little bit more systematically. But if you could only, if you ever had an idea of the rush of my life, one camp after the other. 

If people speak against you, take notice of it. Judge it and wait in yourself impartially and correct yourself if there be in reality some fault in you. If you find the reason unfounded and it only comes from spite, then take care that you may not partake of their poison by returning the same to them or even by keeping some memory of it in your heart. That's a very important injunction because I don't know whether you know that in the West, in the East of course it's very different, but in the West as son as you stick your head up and there is that sense of having a certain status as you know a spiritual guide, it's very bloating experience for the ego, a status you know. And of course people feel that right away and don't like it. 

And what is more the demands of people are tremendous. People expect you to really lift them up into the heavens and know all how to help them and take care of them and so on. So the demands are really enormous. So just to read the replies to the questionnaire that I put out, to realize what one is asked to respond to, actually to live up to. Actually people want to be nurtured. And it is legitimate. If we claim to be teachers or leaders or guides or whatever, guides, or whatever, then it is quite natural that people have those expectations. And we are called upon to live up those expectations. And if they don't receive the nurturing that they want, then they are going to tell it to you in uncertain terms. And you'll feel bad. And you'll feel judged. And it will take away your self confidence as a teacher. Then as Pir o Murshid says, a person is floundering in the water, and you're trying to save them, and you don't only have to swim yourself, but you have to carry the weight of that person who is floundering. 

So you can expect criticism. And a lot of representatives have been burned out because they felt criticized, they felt demeaned, undermined, and burned out. And therefore it calls upon a great power, inner power, a great faith actually in the God in you. And faith in your highest realization. It's not your belief. The only thing that will help you to maintain your self esteem which is being eroded all the time by the criticism of people, is if you have had an experience of the divinity of your being. And nobody can take it away from you. That is your safety buoy. 

So try to cope with the others whatever their stage of evolution. Because I realize sometimes one feels like, "Well I can get along with most of these wonderful pupils. But there are one or two pupils who are difficult. And I find that their state of evolution is...", or you know one is judgmental about people. One thinks that they are not up to it. They're not on the spiritual path or their evolution is they are a kind of a low person or whatever the judgment. So what Pir o Murshid is saying is that you can't just reject people who you feel are not up to what you expect of them. You have to cope with all people. But of course it's true that you have to realize that they are acting according to their degree of realization. And that's where they are at. 

Now you might feel compelled to answer questions. And that's one of the questions which I arose on the second day at the Grove. That is, " Do you include questions and answers in your classes". And it's a very moot point because that's not what the teaching is about. It's not discussing and debating ideas. It's realization. So then it brings the whole thing down to what is your opinion, what is my opinion. And really opinion has no value. That includes my own opinion. That's not what things are about. It's realization. It's not opinion. Of course it's true that people want to be able to ask questions. It's quite legitimate. They want to understand. 

I think that of course we need to build a bridge between the teaching and the problems of people. And sometimes I think we are giving the answer without asking the questions. So I've been reversing this by asking what are the questions. But if we ask what are the questions, then we have to know what are the answers that we can give. And we mustn't assume that we have all the answers. And also the answers cannot be of the order of the understanding. It can only be of the order of realization. 

So what I would like to do is to follow this up by something a little more pragmatic. And that is if a person is asking a question, you see they are looking at the question from a certain perspective, generally their personal perspective. You know I said this right away from the beginning. That is that we are convinced that our problems are what we think they are. And in fact we have a bias. We're looking at the problems from our personal angle. So as long as people are caught up in that perspective, they are going to discuss, debate with you and say,"I don't understand what you mean", because you are talking from another perspective. So what's the point in discussing it with them? So I would say, and this is a very strong suggestion, I would say if a person asks a question like,"Pir o Murshid says this but I don't understand how that fits into my life", I would say, "OK let's meditate". Instead of saying, "Well Pir o Murshid meant this". And then they say, "I don't agree with Murshid" and so an so forth. 

Pir o Murshid may say things that are really paradoxical. For example he says, "Shatter your ideal on the rock of truth". But then, "Your ideal, my ideal, why should I shatter my ideal? And the rock of truth. What does it mean". You see they are words. But then think of for example, "Meditate". Then you're thinking of your concepts of God, then you'll realize that your concept of God is an ideal. And suddenly you realize that you are projecting on God what you expect God to be. Just like mureeds project on their representative or their guide what they hope the guide will be. And so you have to shatter you ideal and say, "The reality is God is right down here. God is not up there. God is right down here in us". So it's just an example of the way that our teaching would be much more real if it were always connected with experience. And I would say experience of what is now called altered states of consciousness. I don't call it altered states. I would states of consciousness that are not the familiar ones, not the commonplace ones. As one is discussing things at the purely the lowest level, at the nitty gritty level, no way you can't get out of it. You're stuck. And that's not what the teaching is about. 

The one who asks questions is stronger than the one who has to give answers because he hasn't given his opinion. And you have to, if you have given an opinion, then you are stating a point of view which might be contrary to the point of view to the one who is asking the question. Then you are forced into a debate at the level that I was just mentioning, just arguing thoughts. That is the reason why I am very wary of asking questions, actually asking questions at the end of the meeting sometimes it doesn't doesn't remain questions and answers but it becomes a debate. And people get annoyed. And I don't know whether you've had that experience. And the whole atmosphere of the class is totally ruined by that one person that can just disturb the whole group. So I would say be very careful about that. Besides asking questions is also sometimes scratching one's heart.

Now our relationship with the mureeds is also very important because you know we come across such wonderful people. It's a heart that is so delighted by that very wonderful friendship that one develops with these wonderful people. So it's very difficult to play a role as a teacher. And you know I mentioned this in the course of the retreat. In the course of the first three days. When people have an expectancy in us, then we try and fit into their expectancy of us by playing a role as an authoritative figure. And that leads to a terrible dishonesty because one does not want to recognize one's weaknesses in order to live up to the expectations of people. So it's much better not to assume this role at all. And that's one of the reasons why we changed the name of leaders to representatives. It's a term, in fact as Aziza was referring to this morning, we are Kalifs of God. We are the representatives. There is a word which Pir o Murshid used for example, the president of the Sufi Movement is not the president, but is the general representative. So to represent something is much easier to do that. 

But however it is true that there is some difference between the relationship of a father with their children or a mother with their children to the relationship of children with their friends. It's a different relationship. And so it is of course, seems so natural to delight in the friendship with people. But if one looses one's role as the father or the mother, then of course the pupil does not expect teaching from one. Then it's impossible to help them. So it's a very delicate situation. So Murshid says friendship on the spiritual path is one of the most wonderful things that can happen. Be careful that it doesn't degenerate into that person being your chum. I don't know whether that's an American word. But too familiar. 

So that it is true that the representative does find, is in a situation that they find that they are lonely. That is why it is so important that representatives be able to have a peer group. That's not Pir but peer which means to be able to talk with people who are in the same position as themselves. So at least it helps you in your loneliness. I said rather facetiously that the buck stops here. But I still ind great fulfillment in allaying my loneliness by being able to have contact with representatives with whom I have been working for many many years, and who are so much in resonance with myself. So there is a kind of mirroring effect that takes place. So I'm sure that you know this kind of loneliness and how important it is to be able to open your heart to someone who is rather in the same position as yourself rather than feel that you are isolated and are supposed to play a role. So it's a fine line. It's very difficult to just feel that yourself. 

But you can't, of course the thing about the leadership in the Sufi Order is that it is based upon absolute integrity. That there is no show. That you are as honest with yourself and with other people. And one can only teach that which one knows. I mean not that one knows from learning, but what one knows from one's own experience, the wisdom that one has acquired in the course of the years. The only thing that will sound true. Other things like book learning, yes you can do it, but it doesn't do much to people. That's what I enjoyed in listening to Zia because I saw that there is not just knowledge there but wisdom. Not just regurgitating things that he has learned, but some realization that comes to one. And that's something nobody can take away. And that is exactly what people want. That's what the people need. 

'h yes. Of course Murshid describes different types of people. And as a matter of fact one of the descriptions Murshid makes of people is based upon the elements, earthly person, watery person, and fire and so on. That's one of the things that I hope we might go into in our meditations on breath. Different elements and what that means. It's not just you refer to fire and and so on. But how fire works in your being. And people with fire in their temperament or water in their temperament brings it home to you. 

Be very careful of self assertion. It puts people off of course when they hear you are asserting yourself. So it's a very fine line because, between confidence in yourself and humility. Because you know that humility can be false pride, it can be an inverted pride. One prides oneself in one's humility. It's true that people also suffer from bad self esteem, bad self image. And what they are looking for is confidence. In fact that's one of the reasons why some of the gurus are popular because they have a gloated ego. So it gives people the feeling,"Well that man has self confidence. So maybe I can have self confidence too". So they give you self confidence because they're self confidence. But then it's based upon some kind of parading of self assertiveness... (tape turns).. perhaps when you question the guru. Then all of a sudden the guru collapses because it's not real. 

So that relationship between the pride in one's, of course it's in the divinity in one's being, as Pir o Murshid says, but it's being aware of it. And in the same time humility,that is not being conceited about it. It's a very fine line. And therefore Pir o Murshid described that in those words where as you know where he speaks about the aristocracy of the soul and the democracy of the ego. Now I don't know whether that is an acceptable slogan in America. But this idea of the nobility is I would say the hallmark of spirituality. And most of the expectation of mureeds in what the Sufi Order has to offer, or what the representatives have to offer, it came up several times. What we appreciate is the sense of nobility because we are living in a decadent world in which people have become very slack and slovenly. And slap dashing and gross. There was a word of Buddha who said that together with your realization comes a word that is used in Latin is decorum. I don't know whether that word is used. That you do everything with a certain degree of elegance. The way you sit, the way you speak, the way you hold a book that corresponds to the realization of the divinity in your being. If you dance, you dance with elegance instead of dancing in a gross manner. 

I also think that that goes together with a sense of sacredness. Most of the practices, perhaps you've noticed that the practices are really creating a sacred attunement. So that I think that one is limiting the teaching too much when one tries to find in the teaching a solution to human problems. That is very, it's not seeing the core issue. Of course sacredness is something that is organized in institutions, like Mosque or Church and so on. You're creating situations which can favor a sense of sacredness. We are living in a world now when we find difficulty in involving ourselves in institutionalized spirituality. So we have to create that sacredness in ourselves. So the practices are really skills whereby we build a kind of temple out of our own body and our own psyche in which to invite the divine presence. So the time is up now but we'll continue this training next time. Tape ends

Joshua Tree PVK 8/15/96 C' Tape 4

--Can you hear me? Yes. Kindly take your  seats now.  Yes. Can you put yourself in my vantage point, sitting in awe, listening to my son who used to scratch my face when he was a baby? An accomplished teacher. And what it means to me to have that assurance that the future of the Sufi Order is insured? And to see, return to the source as one calls it, a pilgrimage to the source, to feel the place where Pir o Murshid was coming from. Right back there again in a new way with all the academia of American university background. But with the attunement of the mystics amongst the Sufis which gets very easily lost when one gives priority to what I call the psychologitus. 

Yes, I think it's the stage where we need to have an overview of what we're about in the course of these nine days. That is particularly significant, of course, for those who have been here since the beginning and are continuing to be here during the next four days. We've been going through a process. And there are many different stages in the process. And it seems that we were following a logical sequence in these stages. 

So in the beginning my job was to raise the consciousness of the people. And then I left it to Aziza and Perjaporty and Saraswate wasn't there, but there wasSura and Madia and Safira to build a bridge so that in the beginning we adopted a completely different approach. Instead of saying, "This is meditation, this is what you've got to do". we started by saying, "What are the problems?" Then we tried to get an attunement through which the problem looked very different to the way when you were in your ordinary attunement. So it wasn't like saying, "This is the way things are". It was like saying, "If you change your attunement, then you'll see that things are different". So my job was really attuning you to a pitch that I myself find in my retreats and carrying you into that state. 

Then of course there was the nitty gritty, like we were talking the language of the wasifas. What are the wasifas that say something about that particular concentration that you need in order to face this particular problem. That was always there. At the back of it there was the attunement, different stages of attunement, and then trying to make it a little more specific. Like what are the wasifas? Then Aziza was carrying it through saying, "What is it that you.." Because the wazifa is just a label, a language which is not our familiar language. Consequently it is saying something that we cannot say in our ordinary language because there are projections in our language, connotations. These words are free from those connotations. 

We went through a process, as I say. There was a logical sequence there. It was expanding our consciousness and then turning within, and then turning upwards, then downwards. So there were four stages. But what we're doing was, it's true that there was a kind of knowledge of the process, meditation. But we were doing it. And I tried not to say what the process was so that we could put the emphasis on the skills that we needed in order to do it. 

Then we had the retreat. We were reaching again into the, we were doing the same thing but much more experiential. If you remember very cautious because while we had the nostalgia for the beyond the beyond, as Pir o Murshid says, the unattainable, I was very cautious to keep us still, if even remotely, in contact with our problem and our needs, our psychological needs because I saw the danger of what I call rift between what we call realized situations and then our spiritual ideal. The kind of thing that psychotherapists accuse spiritualists of is making people otherworldly. 

And then I was perhaps a little bit over cautious because I heard people screaming in the middle of a peaceful retreat and getting the blame for it for having given people too advanced meditations. And on the other hand I am blamed if I don't give meditations that are advanced enough as what people expect. So it's a kind of no win situation. 

Then we, the whole process was rather interrupted by an incident that seemed to have been side tracking us. But I felt it was rather essential to our inner process. And that was what happened to Murshida Vera. Somehow we were all in it. And it was a real situation that had a kind of message for us. And so as a consequence I changed what I had in mind. For one thing because I had to go to the hospital with her. But somehow for me teaching must correspond to something that one is going through oneself in depth. And not just this is the way that the teaching is given. So one needs to play it by ear sometimes and listen to what is happening. 

And consequently what happened was the way that a being can be so totally transformed by a vision that it gives us a kind of proof, if one is a doubtful person, of all those things that we are saying. You see throughout this whole process, which was an inner process, which was a transformation at the soul level, I was always very conscious of Shams's remarks which apply to anybody's thinking and particularly spiritual schools. And that is the use of terms that become stereotyped like, spirituality and God and illumination, and awakening. It's so easy for these terms to which have lost their meaning. We assume that people know what we are talking about. We're using the same words but they are empty of their content. So that was the reason that I was very cautious of words. But one becomes rather up tight because one becomes rather paranoid because one realizes that these words don't say what one wants to say. But there is no other way of doing it but using these words. But of course trying to define them all the time so that there is no confusion. 

But it's true that when I read books on spirituality I think,"These people are saying things that I'm supposed to believe in, but now people want to experience more than just believe". When one is experiencing, one wants to have a kind of a proof. So here was a proof, living proof. Like I've never seen a face transformed like that. It was a living proof of what we're talking about. So that's real. 

So of course it did interrupt the program in a sense because what we were expecting of course was more training. How do we train ourselves? And how do we train mureeds? The nitty gritty, let's say. How do you bring that attunement down in to the nitty gritty specifics? How do you work with people and so on? We had started doing that in those two meetings in the Grove which I'll never forget. Some of you were not there. 

I had changed the program because I had intended to give more specifics about how you train a mureed and so on and so forth. I thought well rather than my telling you how you're supposed to do it, let's just talk together. And we called it 'open heart'. And so we were just communicating. It was just like the Pir with all his friends. I was bringing out things in people and they were communicating with me. It was one of the most wonderful things I've experienced. And I realized that it was one of the needs in the Sufi Order, something that traditionally never happens. I've never heard of a guru talking with his mureeds and asking them, "What do you think?", and so on. 

So that was a period that we were supposed to be talking about the training and indeed we did. We were talking about, for example, I was talking about how I used to give practices to the mureeds in France in the early days when they were just not so many mureeds. Very specifically. Then the next day we were talking about how they start, organize classes. And people were talking about how they organize classes. Then we could learn from each other. Then I asked people to write their own specific message as to what were their own expectations for the Sufi Order. And then what was their expectation for their representative or their leader or their guide. 

I have this bunch of papers here which I must say is amazing. It was a tremendous joy to go through these. Sometimes the words that were said came from a very deep sense of integrity and a deep need of the soul. So it was wonderful to hear what it means to people, what this whole spiritual path means to people is was just incredible. It was pure delight. I've asked someone to try to collect these so that we have just one kind of report so that we have a kind of sense of the gist of what people are really looking for in the Sufi Order, or in any order for that matter, in any spiritual institution. And especially he kind of thing that they expect from their representatives. So we really have a lovely feedback of the mureeds and I was hoping at least a deep connectivity between yourself and me and between me and you. So I was reserving now for. 

So what I want to say is that of course on that last day, that was yesterday, I had in mind that we were going to do the Zikre together. So that was missing from the retreat. It was, the whole retreat process was moving up to the Zikre and then we didn't do it. So, but we will be doing it, of course. We can catch up now. But we did do the advanced Zikre for a smaller group of representatives, the advanced Zikre. And then a very sacred thing which is, how can I say, the esoteric motions of the prayers. And that is a very deep spiritual attunement that Murshid gave to the mureeds who were very close to him, and which got washed out because in the Victorian days they said men can't bow, prostrate on the ground because they spoil the crease on their trousers. You know that kind of thing. Anyway.

Now Pir o Murshid has given very specific instructions as to how one trains a mureed. I must say that the method that I'm is suggesting is very different from that which you find in ashrams and what you find amongst Hindus, gurus. It's very different. It's very gentle, very respectful of a person's freedom, very wise, and I would say that it was based upon... You see it's very tempting to give one's opinion to a mureed and say to a mureed "Do this or do that", and so on. But this method is very subtle, like how you bring the pupil to discover something of him/herself? You just act as a kind of trigger to enlist realization in the pupil instead of telling the pupil what your opinion is. And it also shows that Murshid's teaching is not at all a dogma, not in the least. It's really totally pragmatic. It's just how to bring about the transformation in a person? What are the skills whereby you can bring about this transformation? 

So we have to work on several levels. And we started by this very high level of the attunement at the soul level in the course of meditation because whatever know-how you have about the method whereby you can help a person, the bottom line of it all is your attunement. It's your attunement. If your attunement is God consciousness instead of your personal consciousness, then the mureed is going to respect that and pick that up. And it will help the mureed to look at their own situation, their own personality, their own problems from a different vantage point. And if you tell them that vantage point, it won't help them. They'll discuss it. They'll debate and so on. So you see it's a different method. 

And of course you know that the medicine that we are using is the wasaif which is really sifat, the qualities that we prescribe like a doctor would prescribe. And the whole gist of it is that one is, it acts like a kind of koan. One is suggesting to a person to ponder upon a certain quality. And then until they realize it, that that is the quality that they need in order to develop. So it's like a medicine. But it requires the participation of the mureed. It's not just, "If you'll do this you'll be OK". That's not it. 

And as a matter of fact, one of the things that we have to be very careful with is any kind of effort to try to fix it. Like playing the Pygmalion. For example, there was someone who was kind of rather lackadaisical and found it rather difficult have any enthusiasm for anything. And their retreat guide gave them the practice Ya Azim. And he said, "I can't do it". So that's an effort to fix it. It doesn't work. 

Then there is the other policy of wait, just keep waiting until nature does it, self organizing itself. Stay with it, as one says. That is necessary at one stage. And it's very important to realize, to know how long that stage lasts. At which point one needs to take responsibility. 

A lot of people come to ashrams because they hope that the spiritual teacher takes responsibility for their lives. And if one does that, one is robbing them of taking responsibility themselves. So they never become responsible people. So one is doing them an injustice. And that's what they're asking you. And you are not helping them by doing that. 

Now on the other hand it's true that it's very difficult to relate this with what Pir o Murshid says when he says, " You must act as a father and a mother to your pupils and be interested in everything concerning them on all levels". Now he didn't say advise them on all levels. But still it's important that you take into consideration, I think that we make a artificial distinction between the need of the soul and the need of the psyche and the need of the body and so on, the job of the person, and all that kind of thing, marital status and so on. You're not supposed to intervene in their private lives. And on the other hand you need to have some insight into what are their problems. That is why right from the beginning I asked that question, "What are your problems?". But we don't want to bog them by their problems. Then we look at things from a higher point of view. Then somehow we establish, we build a bridge between these.

These are some of the guidelines that Pir o Murshid gives in dealing with mureeds. By accusing a person of his faults we often strengthen the roots of his faults. So that's not the way to do it. If people...this is a little bit random. I could have organized a little bit more systematically. But if you could only, if you ever had an idea of the rush of my life, one camp after the other. 

If people speak against you, take notice of it. Judge it and wait in yourself impartially and correct yourself if there be in reality some fault in you. If you find the reason unfounded and it only comes from spite, then take care that you may not partake of their poison by returning the same to them or even by keeping some memory of it in your heart. That's a very important injunction because I don't know whether you know that in the West, in the East of course it's very different, but in the West as son as you stick your head up and there is that sense of having a certain status as you know a spiritual guide, it's very bloating experience for the ego, a status you know. And of course people feel that right away and don't like it. 

And what is more the demands of people are tremendous. People expect you to really lift them up into the heavens and know all how to help them and take care of them and so on. So the demands are really enormous. So just to read the replies to the questionnaire that I put out, to realize what one is asked to respond to, actually to live up to. Actually people want to be nurtured. And it is legitimate. If we claim to be teachers or leaders or guides or whatever, guides, or whatever, then it is quite natural that people have those expectations. And we are called upon to live up those expectations. And if they don't receive the nurturing that they want, then they are going to tell it to you in uncertain terms. And you'll feel bad. And you'll feel judged. And it will take away your self confidence as a teacher. Then as Pir o Murshid says, a person is floundering in the water, and you're trying to save them, and you don't only have to swim yourself, but you have to carry the weight of that person who is floundering. 

So you can expect criticism. And a lot of representatives have been burned out because they felt criticized, they felt demeaned, undermined, and burned out. And therefore it calls upon a great power, inner power, a great faith actually in the God in you. And faith in your highest realization. It's not your belief. The only thing that will help you to maintain your self esteem which is being eroded all the time by the criticism of people, is if you have had an experience of the divinity of your being. And nobody can take it away from you. That is your safety buoy. 

So try to cope with the others whatever their stage of evolution. Because I realize sometimes one feels like, "Well I can get along with most of these wonderful pupils. But there are one or two pupils who are difficult. And I find that their state of evolution is...", or you know one is judgmental about people. One thinks that they are not up to it. They're not on the spiritual path or their evolution is they are a kind of a low person or whatever the judgment. So what Pir o Murshid is saying is that you can't just reject people who you feel are not up to what you expect of them. You have to cope with all people. But of course it's true that you have to realize that they are acting according to their degree of realization. And that's where they are at. 

Now you might feel compelled to answer questions. And that's one of the questions which I arose on the second day at the Grove. That is, " Do you include questions and answers in your classes". And it's a very moot point because that's not what the teaching is about. It's not discussing and debating ideas. It's realization. So then it brings the whole thing down to what is your opinion, what is my opinion. And really opinion has no value. That includes my own opinion. That's not what things are about. It's realization. It's not opinion. Of course it's true that people want to be able to ask questions. It's quite legitimate. They want to understand. 

I think that of course we need to build a bridge between the teaching and the problems of people. And sometimes I think we are giving the answer without asking the questions. So I've been reversing this by asking what are the questions. But if we ask what are the questions, then we have to know what are the answers that we can give. And we mustn't assume that we have all the answers. And also the answers cannot be of the order of the understanding. It can only be of the order of realization. 

So what I would like to do is to follow this up by something a little more pragmatic. And that is if a person is asking a question, you see they are looking at the question from a certain perspective, generally their personal perspective. You know I said this right away from the beginning. That is that we are convinced that our problems are what we think they are. And in fact we have a bias. We're looking at the problems from our personal angle. So as long as people are caught up in that perspective, they are going to discuss, debate with you and say,"I don't understand what you mean", because you are talking from another perspective. So what's the point in discussing it with them? So I would say, and this is a very strong suggestion, I would say if a person asks a question like,"Pir o Murshid says this but I don't understand how that fits into my life", I would say, "OK let's meditate". Instead of saying, "Well Pir o Murshid meant this". And then they say, "I don't agree with Murshid" and so an so forth. 

Pir o Murshid may say things that are really paradoxical. For example he says, "Shatter your ideal on the rock of truth". But then, "Your ideal, my ideal, why should I shatter my ideal? And the rock of truth. What does it mean". You see they are words. But then think of for example, "Meditate". Then you're thinking of your concepts of God, then you'll realize that your concept of God is an ideal. And suddenly you realize that you are projecting on God what you expect God to be. Just like mureeds project on their representative or their guide what they hope the guide will be. And so you have to shatter you ideal and say, "The reality is God is right down here. God is not up there. God is right down here in us". So it's just an example of the way that our teaching would be much more real if it were always connected with experience. And I would say experience of what is now called altered states of consciousness. I don't call it altered states. I would states of consciousness that are not the familiar ones, not the commonplace ones. As one is discussing things at the purely the lowest level, at the nitty gritty level, no way you can't get out of it. You're stuck. And that's not what the teaching is about. 

The one who asks questions is stronger than the one who has to give answers because he hasn't given his opinion. And you have to, if you have given an opinion, then you are stating a point of view which might be contrary to the point of view to the one who is asking the question. Then you are forced into a debate at the level that I was just mentioning, just arguing thoughts. That is the reason why I am very wary of asking questions, actually asking questions at the end of the meeting sometimes it doesn't doesn't remain questions and answers but it becomes a debate. And people get annoyed. And I don't know whether you've had that experience. And the whole atmosphere of the class is totally ruined by that one person that can just disturb the whole group. So I would say be very careful about that. Besides asking questions is also sometimes scratching one's heart.

Now our relationship with the mureeds is also very important because you know we come across such wonderful people. It's a heart that is so delighted by that very wonderful friendship that one develops with these wonderful people. So it's very difficult to play a role as a teacher. And you know I mentioned this in the course of the retreat. In the course of the first three days. When people have an expectancy in us, then we try and fit into their expectancy of us by playing a role as an authoritative figure. And that leads to a terrible dishonesty because one does not want to recognize one's weaknesses in order to live up to the expectations of people. So it's much better not to assume this role at all. And that's one of the reasons why we changed the name of leaders to representatives. It's a term, in fact as Aziza was referring to this morning, we are Kalifs of God. We are the representatives. There is a word which Pir o Murshid used for example, the president of the Sufi Movement is not the president, but is the general representative. So to represent something is much easier to do that. 

But however it is true that there is some difference between the relationship of a father with their children or a mother with their children to the relationship of children with their friends. It's a different relationship. And so it is of course, seems so natural to delight in the friendship with people. But if one looses one's role as the father or the mother, then of course the pupil does not expect teaching from one. Then it's impossible to help them. So it's a very delicate situation. So Murshid says friendship on the spiritual path is one of the most wonderful things that can happen. Be careful that it doesn't degenerate into that person being your chum. I don't know whether that's an American word. But too familiar. 

So that it is true that the representative does find, is in a situation that they find that they are lonely. That is why it is so important that representatives be able to have a peer group. That's not Pir but peer which means to be able to talk with people who are in the same position as themselves. So at least it helps you in your loneliness. I said rather facetiously that the buck stops here. But I still ind great fulfillment in allaying my loneliness by being able to have contact with representatives with whom I have been working for many many years, and who are so much in resonance with myself. So there is a kind of mirroring effect that takes place. So I'm sure that you know this kind of loneliness and how important it is to be able to open your heart to someone who is rather in the same position as yourself rather than feel that you are isolated and are supposed to play a role. So it's a fine line. It's very difficult to just feel that yourself. 

But you can't, of course the thing about the leadership in the Sufi Order is that it is based upon absolute integrity. That there is no show. That you are as honest with yourself and with other people. And one can only teach that which one knows. I mean not that one knows from learning, but what one knows from one's own experience, the wisdom that one has acquired in the course of the years. The only thing that will sound true. Other things like book learning, yes you can do it, but it doesn't do much to people. That's what I enjoyed in listening to Zia because I saw that there is not just knowledge there but wisdom. Not just regurgitating things that he has learned, but some realization that comes to one. And that's something nobody can take away. And that is exactly what people want. That's what the people need. 

'h yes. Of course Murshid describes different types of people. And as a matter of fact one of the descriptions Murshid makes of people is based upon the elements, earthly person, watery person, and fire and so on. That's one of the things that I hope we might go into in our meditations on breath. Different elements and what that means. It's not just you refer to fire and and so on. But how fire works in your being. And people with fire in their temperament or water in their temperament brings it home to you. 

Be very careful of self assertion. It puts people off of course when they hear you are asserting yourself. So it's a very fine line because, between confidence in yourself and humility. Because you know that humility can be false pride, it can be an inverted pride. One prides oneself in one's humility. It's true that people also suffer from bad self esteem, bad self image. And what they are looking for is confidence. In fact that's one of the reasons why some of the gurus are popular because they have a gloated ego. So it gives people the feeling,"Well that man has self confidence. So maybe I can have self confidence too". So they give you self confidence because they're self confidence. But then it's based upon some kind of parading of self assertiveness... (tape turns).. perhaps when you question the guru. Then all of a sudden the guru collapses because it's not real. 

So that relationship between the pride in one's, of course it's in the divinity in one's being, as Pir o Murshid says, but it's being aware of it. And in the same time humility,that is not being conceited about it. It's a very fine line. And therefore Pir o Murshid described that in those words where as you know where he speaks about the aristocracy of the soul and the democracy of the ego. Now I don't know whether that is an acceptable slogan in America. But this idea of the nobility is I would say the hallmark of spirituality. And most of the expectation of mureeds in what the Sufi Order has to offer, or what the representatives have to offer, it came up several times. What we appreciate is the sense of nobility because we are living in a decadent world in which people have become very slack and slovenly. And slap dashing and gross. There was a word of Buddha who said that together with your realization comes a word that is used in Latin is decorum. I don't know whether that word is used. That you do everything with a certain degree of elegance. The way you sit, the way you speak, the way you hold a book that corresponds to the realization of the divinity in your being. If you dance, you dance with elegance instead of dancing in a gross manner. 

I also think that that goes together with a sense of sacredness. Most of the practices, perhaps you've noticed that the practices are really creating a sacred attunement. So that I think that one is limiting the teaching too much when one tries to find in the teaching a solution to human problems. That is very, it's not seeing the core issue. Of course sacredness is something that is organized in institutions, like Mosque or Church and so on. You're creating situations which can favor a sense of sacredness. We are living in a world now when we find difficulty in involving ourselves in institutionalized spirituality. So we have to create that sacredness in ourselves. So the practices are really skills whereby we build a kind of temple out of our own body and our own psyche in which to invite the divine presence. So the time is up now but we'll continue this training next time. Tape ends

AUG 15, 1996		Tape 08

...Azrea number 2. This is Azrea, the Sufi living in Paris from Syria. And this is a song to a hero. And he says in Arabic, " I kiss the ground under your feet". (Music)

So you're invited to a Sema ceremony, a tradition of the Sufis. So we'll start with the (azran) the call to prayer. Allah ho Akbar.

So this is a very wonderful Imam who is reciting the Qur'an in a very traditional way. You feel that tremendous fervor of the whole assembly of people. Now I've asked Zia to say the Fatti Ha. After that perhaps one of the Sura of the Qur'an. 

Zia: (arabic text) This is (Sura ...). The translation is, "Have we not expanded thy breast and lifted that which had that which had galled thy back and elevated thy zikre, thy remembrance? For surely with hardship, with struggle comes solace. So when you are free endeavor, turn toward your Lord with longing. Amen" 

Pir Vilayat, Zikre. La illaha illa 'lla hu. La illaha illa ' lla hu. (...)

Now I would like to, each one of you take your chance in turning. So I'll show you briefly how it is taught in Konya. You always whirl to the left. You have your arms stretched out like wings. Can you hear me? You could have your arms a little bit above the horizontal. But still it's, they are outstretched. And your right hand is turned upwards, that's the antenna. And your left hand is turned downwards towards the earth. That's the ground. Like a ground of a radio. And you should turn your arm, left arm a little bit towards your, to the front, so that you can watch the knuckle of your index. And you should always keep the eyes focused on the knuckle of your hand because it keeps on luring your around. Now in Konya, one practices at first, one has a nail in the ground. And one places that nail between the big toe of one's left and the next toe. And that is the axis around which you gravitate. And the whole weight of your body has always got to be on the left foot. Don't alternate between left and right. And you lift up your right foot and turn the toes of your left foot towards your, of your right foot toward your left foot. And now you gravitate, you turn around your left foot. 

So now you turn your left foot around that imaginary nail. And you lift your right foot again. You have to really lift your knee high and turn your toe towards inside. And that's going to cause you to keep on whirling and whirling and whirling. Of course you are going to be dizzy. You will find that you are dizzy if you watch people around you, or if you watch the ground which seems to be whirling around you. Like if there are two trains. And the other train is moving, then you think that you are moving. So it's a kind of optical illusion. So do not rely on anything you see around you except whatever is close by. So the knuckle of you left hand is close by. Now if you find that you are still dizzy even doing that, then you could do something that is not really done. But still, it's looking at you little finger because your little finger is where you think it is. Anything that's close is where you think it is. Further away, of course, then it keeps on moving. 

One always starts by greeting the divine presence, represented by the Sherif. One places one's right hand on one's left shoulder and left hand on right shoulder. And one greets the divine presence. You place the big toe of your right foot on the big toe of your left foot. So that's the greeting. That's the typical greeting. Now you start whirling with your arms on your shoulders, like this. Then only at a certain point you open up your arms, unfurl your arms. And you start whirling with your arms out. When you stop at the end, you have to slow down. And that's where you have to be careful because that's where you get dizzy. And if you can of course, you end in the same position as you started. The greeting. But of course it's very difficult if you feel dizzy. But on the other hand if your toes are where you think they are. So it stabilizes you if you have confidence in doing this. Other wise you just have to watch your little finger. 

OK so I'd like everyone to take a turn doing this. But before we do so, I would like to invite Hafizulla and I think that there are others here who have been trained in Konya.

Thank you very much. Thank you. 

Now those of you who are not familiar with this whirling, I'd advise you to whirl very slowly. And make sure that you do not keep shifting from your left foot to your right foot. We'd also like some volunteers to stand watching those who are whirling. If you are whirling in a dangerous fashion, then they need to warn you by placing their hand on your shoulder. And that's a warning that you are whirling in a way that could be dangerous. And the danger would be falling on your back. You could really harm your spine. So if you have any problems with you legs then don't do it. And also if you have a cardiac problem, it's not advisable to do it. So could we have let us say six volunteers. Hands up, those who would like to volunteer. one, two, three, four, five, six. Yes six, that's good. Thank you. So would you be so kind as to place yourselves at the cardinal points and perhaps two towards the center. I would like to ask someone to remove that place that Mabud is...'h I see it's got to be protected. I see. You could put cushions there. OK.

Now let us once more remember this. We're going to say it a little bit faster. La illaha illa 'lla hu. So now were going to start. La illaha illa 'lla hu. La illha illa 'lla hu. (...)

Yes. You seem to have trusted yourself to try it out. I suppose you were rather impressed by the demonstration of the experts. But you can do it. You don't have to whirl very fast. Just whirl. I hope you remember the instructions you got. You have to keep all the weight of your body on your left foot and you lift your right foot and then turn around your left foot. And don't make a motion up and down, but simply a very steady motion. So I hope you'll try it out.

Now we're going to whirl on the music of Ustad Hashim, who was the teacher of Zuleikha. And I've been worried about him for a long time because we haven't had any news. He's a Afghan Sufi of the Chisti order who also visited us at the Abode. And somewhere else, I forget now where, I think in Germany also. And he was a teacher of Zuleikha. And in the White Pavillion, you hear him teaching her a song which we always play. But now the real Zuleikha is right here with us. It's a very great honor and privilege that she should have come to join us on this occasion. So we are going to whirl on the music of, the singing of Ustad Hashim. I just heard the shattering news from Zuleikha that he had been murdered in Germany of all places. Recently by an Afghan. I can't tell you how sad I am. He was such a wonderful being. 

And his atmosphere was that of, that I felt coming through Murshid and the Chisti Sufis. And sometimes in his voice there was something that reminded me of the voice of my father. How this could happen is really very sad. So when we do this whirling, let us think of this wonderful being. Some of you were there when he visited us and we had this wonderful sense of belonging to the same spiritual family. Zuleikha, could you tell us something about him because it must mean so much to you?    Zuleikha: It's very wonderful to be here and remember your meeting with him. Because I remember that before we came back from Afghanistan to bring him to meet you, he had had a dream, I don't know if you remember this, where it was a heaven realm and he met you. But everyone's feet were on backwards. And he asked you about it. And you said it was because you hadn't met yet. It was a great meeting between Pir Vilayat and Ustad. He was from a family that kept the royal classical music for generations in Afghanistan. And when we were going around America, at one point he looked at me and said, "I have to go home because that's my job. And this is what my family has always done." So I guess you know then the war happened. And his family escaped from it. 

A long story. And went to Germany very recently. But mostly what I remember about him and what I feel this evening and this atmosphere, is there was always an exaltation in visiting him. The first time that I was asked to dance for him in his house. And everyone sat around not a room this big with a Persian carpet on the floor. And they served tea to everyone. And I had to dance. And I was so nervous, I was shaking and shaking. And I got up and I danced with my bells, which you'll see another time. And when I finished I could hardly stay in my body. And I sat down. And I knocked over my cup of tea which is not what you do when you're visiting the royal Persian classical musician's house. I didn't know at that time that they were Chistis. They kept that very secretive. I was mortified. Besides I was the only woman in the room. So it made it even worse. And I just wanted to fall through the floor of their apartment. And Ustad looked at me and he picked up his glass cup of tea and he poured it all over the carpet. And that was how he welcomed me. And I never forgot that. I mean imagine, I think of carpets differently now. But in actuality when we were speaking earlier about the friendship, that was an act of complete friendship that I never forgot. So thank you for remembering him.

Pir: So let's just try this now. (music)

I hope that those of you who did not participate feel sorry that you didn't. Especially the young people. So the old fogies have to give an example to the young folks. I mean myself of course.But I think we need a little bit of fresh air and a rest. In the mean time I'd like to ask Zia to recite another code.

Zia: The verses of the Mazdian megus Arari Kavan describing his experience of the unveiling of the heart center. Latifa of the Pal. "I saw a light, precious red like a bezel. Veil upon veil. A moon waxing, piercing my eyes, filling me with liquid lucence. My body, my robe, all light. 'h maji, everything transfigured."

Pir: So now, this is a much more lively song sung by Azrea the same Syrian singer whom we heard in the first place when Zuleikha was dancing right in the beginning. And this a plea, a plea. It's rather surprising. Instead of "I love", it is, "Love me. Love me. 'h please, love me". A desperate cry. So it does cause us to, brings us to some reflection like in order to be loved one needs to love. But of course one needs to love oneself to be able to love. There is something very deep in this whole thing. Of course ultimately it is the divine that is coming through a person that one loves. So that ultimately it is the love of God. And of course if it's a rather reassuring thought that God should love one. Because if God's love is unconditional, then how could he not love one? So it's a very deep plea. Ultimately of course I think that one is in love with love. The great mystery. 

So here we go. I would like to be excused this time. I suppose I'm alright but I don't have my pressure gage. So I can't check on my blood pressure. So the doctors would probably recommend that I not keep on whirling. It generally goes us a little bit, but not out beyond control. But still. So you'll be whirling for me. So there will have to be lots of you to be whirling for me. OK.

(Azrea song) (Sung zikre, Zuleikha)

You're invited to start whirling while Zuleikha is singing and some of you will simply whirl freely like birds in the heavens. Like the atoms and the molecules and the galaxies which Jelaluddin Rumi speaks and says, "This is all God whirling around himself". (Sung zikre, Zuleikha)

Just a little bit of silence just to get in touch with your deeper self.

(song, Pir)

So let's all stand up now. (song, Pir)

So peace be with you know. Thank you all. Thank you particularly Zuleikha and all these wonderful people here. I've felt the divine presence in our midst, never to forget. A word we say is (Ruda hafiz). That means may God protect you, look after you.

Tape ends.

AUG 17, 1996		Tape 13

Joshua Tree Retreat/17 August 1996 Tape #13 Cynthia Trapanese  P' Box 529  Croton Falls NY 10519 (914)276-9537 trapanese@aol.com Tape received: 2 Dec. 1996 Tape e-mailed: 29 Dec. 1996  Typed in ClarisWorks on a Mac.

Tape #13 8/17/96 Joshua Tree Retreat

Yes, I'm so sorry to hear that there are people who couldn't hear the previous session that I gave. It's quite a problem, because if the sound is too high, set too high, then I get a feedback, and it's very difficult to talk when you get that feedback, so then I ask Vakil to put it down, and then it's too low and you can't hear me, so it's a no-win situation. So we'll have to try and strike a balance. But it's really very serious because each one of these sessions is part of a whole package, and if you miss one session then the next one isn't really clear enough because it's built on the previous session. So I suppose the only thing is for those of you who really could not hear, who couldn't get anything out of it, maybe there might be an opportunity of just listening to the tape. I can't see any other solution. But I think it's important because, as I say, it's just because it's part of a whole process that we're going through. In fact, it might be good at this stage to double check, to be quite clear. 

There are things that seem rather evident like, we are on retreat. We are going through a process; that process involves stages. So we're going from one stage to another. And in simple lines, there would be four stages. One would be learning how to expand not only one's consciousness, but one's notion of one's self, so that, and it doesn't only expand, but also that it becomes encompassing, and therefore not, doesn't get lost in it's jagged ends. And that has the effect of freeing us from the limitation of the constraint of our self image. So we're using all kinds of skills like identifying with your, well I call it electromagnetic field, but it's more than that, it's like force-field or life-field which doesn't have, which extends beyond your skin, and then your aura. So these are ways of overcoming the limitation in our self image as due to our skin. 

And then there was a second stage: we were learning how to turn within. And there are several features of it. One was that we do identify ourselves with our, what I call our subtle body, or the life-field or force-field or the field rather, let's say, the wavelike aspect of our being rather than the particle like aspect of our being as they say in science. And if you do that, then you are developing a different perspective on the universe. It's the same universe, but you, it's a different perspective upon it. And yet it's not a perspective because you cannot be anymore the subject experiencing other than yourselves, so it's a state of resonance. And that reality is now in it's implicate state as Dr. David Boehm says, which is like radio waves instead of the sound of the radio. And light is all-pervading instead of radiant. So in that state one's sense of oneself overlaps with that of other people in what one calls an osmosis, and consequently one is able to reach out into the consciousness of people, and they're not necessarily out there, they're much more like as they were, in one, but that there is no frontier really, so that is not relevant. And if you remember what we said is that you can reach out from within. Like for example, imagine that you are swimming at the surface of a lake, and you see a lot of waterlines, and then you swim under the lake and you see the network of roots. And so you could, if you are swimming under the lake, you could follow a root up and reach a flower. Now you see that the flower is not a discreet entity, but is just the way that the whole network of roots surfaces and appears as a flower. So you have a totally different view of the universe. 

And what is much more pertinent is that you have a different view on your problems, because you can see the techniques we used were to extend your consciousness from inside out, so that you see the problem from the point of view of other people. So that's already a wider view. But eventually you see things in a wider context, which you couldn't do when you were limited to your self image, your notion of your self. And an example that I gave last, the three days before this retreat, was the eclipse of the sun and the moon is only meaningful from the point of view of the earth. So your problems, you see your problems from your vantage point instead of seeing them in their context. You see. So if you're, so let's try and do that now. Like, if you think, well as Dr. Kubler-Ross says for example: "What does it mean to you?" Then of course you think: "Well this is terrible. This situation is really terrible. It's devastating to me." 

Or, "This situation is dishonoring to me; these people are humiliating me. And so my self-esteem which is already very precarious gets terribly harmed, damaged." And so on. So you're thinking of your problem from your point of view. Or then: "I'd love to do this, but I can't do it, so I'm frustrated." So it's always "me, me, me" in one's, in the notion that one makes of oneself. So, according to the Hindu's, this personal vantage point is misleading, and constraining of course, to one's understanding. And so in Sarvitarka Samadhi, and the next stage Nirvetarka Samadhi, one tries to overcome the limitation of one's way of assessing one's problems from one's personal point of view. But it doesn't say how you do it, at least, Patanjali doesn't say it. But what I'm saying is that you extend, expand your consciousness from within, but into the consciousness of other people, that is the first step. 

Well, I'm sorry, but I should have said that for the Sufi's, this, we don't, the Sufi's don't consider this personal view of your problems as being maya, as being illusory. We're saying that it is a valid point of view, but it is just a relative point of view. And therefore it needs to be completed by seeing things in their context. Their context. Like the eclipse, the way it looks from your point of, there's always relationship between the sun and the moon, but it is only particularly meaningful for you on planet earth. So if you can expand your consciousness from within, then you're not limited, then you're trying to see how the problem is, not just from the point of view of other people, but in itself, without regard to the vantage point of people. That's Nirvetarka Samadhi, and a condition to reach Samadhi of course. It's one of the first steps. 

Now, as I say, we're ingesting the world, particularly at the level of the psyche, and we are ingesting a false representation, a faulty representation, of not only the physical universe, but of our problems. Physicists know that our usual, the, our representation of the physical world is purely fictitious, as the way the world seems to our senses. Like, Karl Pribram shows that we interpret the world in terms of frequencies in our brain, and so on. So that confirms of course the theory of maya, but what we're much more concerned about is our problems, and, then, the physical world. 

So, what we've been saying so far is that we will be ingesting faulty food which the organism may ingest because its immune system has been overloaded. It could be a cause of cancer. So we're doing it with our psyche, and suffering from a psychological indigestion, with all kinds of impressions that can be very confusing because we haven't known how to integrate them. And so, and that is particularly true if you are meditating, because then you, at least when you are active then the challenge of the world forces you to give some orderliness to your thoughts, but in meditation then you have to impose that orderliness yourself. And so what we are saying is that the first thing to do is to place sentinels at the doors of perception. And at least eliminate those impressions that you can't deal with, can't handle, without being judgmental about them. And, but, it's not as easy as it is rejecting food that you can't digest, because it's much more subtle of course. 

The only thing that will help you is to become aware of that capacity that you have for what is called vairagya, indifference. And it is only if you have a very strong sense of 'who I am' that you can reject things that are not who you are, that are not in synch with your being. And so this is not at all the kind of thing that psychotherapists accuse spiritualists of because, at least in the Sufi way, we see the importance of having a very strong sense of 'this is me, and this is not me.' 'n the other hand, the impressions are emotionally charged and will bypass the senses. For example, the horror of a terrible disaster, like, well there have been so many so I don't know. The TWA flight was only one of many terrible things. A woman being raped and murdered in the presence of her child; terrible things happening. So, these impressions, how can you reject them? It would be like putting one's head in the sand, like a famous ostrich. It's not really accepting the, (honestly), let's say the reality of life in which we're plunged. So, you remember, that what we said then is that our instinct is to react, if we can react by action then we would be shooting people. If, in our rage, if we do not react by action, then in our emotions there is disturbance, so that it is very difficult to find peace in oneself when all these thoughts continually awaken your outrage. 

So this is outrage rather than rage. And so I gave the example of Beethoven who places a buffer between the challenges of the world and himself, simply because if you react you are not enlisting all the pool of resourcefulness in your being. And it's as though he is saying: "look, (luck), hold it, because I have to consult my deeper self." And then the world comes again with a bang, and, a wallop, as you say, and this time he's a little more forceful, and he says: "I told you I don't want to play ball with you yet; I'm not ready." And then there's a dialogue, and finally this beautiful melody comes. So this is what we need to do in our retreat. These thoughts come, and they are emotionally charged, there's resentment, anger, jealousy, a sense of inadequacy, guilt. And if we just allow them to invade ourselves, we're not doing anything helpful anyway. And we're just being disturbed, and we're even, that kind of disturbance is standing in the way of doing what Beethoven was doing, which is to consult the bounty of potentialities in your being, resourcefulness, resources. 

And then you're able to meet the challenge in a very different way. Because then, as Pir-o-Murshid says, instead of the ego as just a fraction of oneself that one uses in a strategy of defense--bloated defense to try to frighten the enemy, and you get yourself in a vicious circle--whereas now, we learn how to discover what I called this morning, your Khabir, the greatness of our being. And then if we're great enough, then we have room in our heart for a person who has hurt us. It's not that we forgive them; it's not even a question of forgiving. It's just we are a great being. And we are not a puny being, and if you're a puny being then you want revenge. That's because now you're discovering all the bounty of your being. So, in order to do this, one has to down play the impressions accruing from outside, and highlight what is coming through from inside. Uncalled for from outside, at least as far as we know. For example, I said, if Beethoven had reacted then that melody wouldn't have come, but then if it hadn't been for the challenge, that melody wouldn't have come either. 

Whether that challenge, that challenge acted like a catalyst, for sure. Whether, it was processed in his unconscious while he had placed a buffer there. And so, well, it wasn't like for example, in the case of light for example, we don't reflect the light upon us, it is processed and then we do re-emit it, but it is not the same light; it has gone through a whole process. So it's possible that that impact of the environment is processed in the deep unconscious in what is called the void. And then it is the sense of being reborn, not because of being recycled, but because something new is coming through. That will help us to meet the environment in a new way. That is because we were assessing situations from our vantage point. 

Now, since, our vantage point was in some way linked with our identity, now from the time that you discover your cosmic identity, I mean the cosmic dimension of your identity, your situation with your problem is different, because you are different. I want you to go through this, because it's very important that what we are doing in our retreat is really relevant to our lives. I want you to accept that you could be different to the way you are. Instead of assuming that you have to be the way you've always been, to just take it for granted, it's almost an act of faith: "I could be a different person. There's all, there's no end to the possibilities in me." That's freedom from your self image. And imagine it very clearly. Now you could imagine it in a rather perfunctory way, like for example: I could be dancing for joy, why do I go about with this long face? So sorry for myself, hang dog. Why? Yes, people are mean and no good and so on. There's all these arguments. 

(Can you hear me? Put your hand up if you can't hear me.) 

So we think it's belief in God; it's belief in ourselves. Or let us say now, there is a paradigm that is very helpful. It is really very helpful. And that is to be found in Buddhism, as a matter of fact. It's, I think it's probably Buddha himself who said that: Imagine a tree that is felled to its roots. And then it grows again. But it looks very different. Is it the same tree, or is it a another tree? Well it's not important what we think, that is metaphysics. But the interesting thing is that, is to recognize, even to identify with the stump of your being instead of the outgrowth of that stump, which is your personality. If you identify with the outgrowth, well then you cut that outgrowth and it's gone. But, if you identify with the root, it's always there. And it can always grow again. And so think of recurrent birth as being continually new trees that come out of this stump. Keep on cutting it, and new trees comes up, or at least new configurations of something basic, which Buddhism calls your Samsaric being. 

Well, of course it's not good enough just to shift your identity from the branches, from the trunk and the branches, to the root. You have to now capture the new birth as it emerges over the threshold from the unknown to the known, or the unconscious to the conscious. And if you don't capture it, then you cannot give it the support of your credence, and consequently it will be stillborn; you've lost a chance. And we're doing that all the time. Just like a frail new sapling needs to be protected. But your protection is more than just protecting it; it's your cooperation in your rebirthing, your participation in your rebirthing. There's a whole Indian alchemy called Rasayana which is based upon exactly that: how you capture the new birthing that the embryo beginning to develop in by differentiating itself. And the beauty of it is: because you don't have to be as you're programmed, you can be as you want to be. That's freedom. Now I haven't found this teaching anywhere. I must say, I think it's the teaching for the next millennium. But Pir-o-Murshid announced it as spiritual freedom, the message of spiritual freedom. And everywhere we see the need for freedom, bursting forth. 

So at this point I'm going to open the brackets of parentheses just for a few minutes, and then we'll continue. I ask you three questions. The first is: what are the qualities that you feel you need in order to meet the challenge of your life? Your most difficult situation. Like somebody keeps on demeaning you and putting you down, that person has a stronger ego than you. What do you need? Do you need mastery? Do you need compassion? Do you need patience? Do you need truth? What is it that you need? So your concern is adapting yourself to the environment. But you know there is a balance in our lives between the degree to which we adapt ourselves to the environment, and to the degree to which we adapt the environment to our own sense of purpose. And the more evolved you are, the more you adapt the environment to your own sense of purpose. So that is a thought, and I think it's good for you to know that one does indeed, surreptitiously, without being aware of it, one does tend to think: "I need to figure it out." With your ordinary mind you figure it out: "yes, I need to develop this quality or that quality." That's the thinking of the gross mind, when you identify with your gross body. 

Now the next question is: Do you feel that there is a quality that is emerging at present, and although perhaps you did have that quality to some degree, now it is coming through with great force. That's what the Sufi's call you're going through a maqqam. That means a new stage in your life. Now, my question is of course, can you earmark which is that quality that is coming through at this moment? And, you see if you still identify yourself with your gross body and your gross mind, then you can't do it. You're using your wishful thinking or whatever. It's not real. So the only way to do it is to identify yourself with that stump of the tree of your personality. And as a matter of fact, as all similes, it's not perfect, so I think it's better to think of the template, or the matrix is a better word, of your personality. And qualities that are subliminal in the matrix of your personality are trying to burst forth over the threshold. But for them not to be stillborn, you need to be aware of them. Or it, it might be one quality. And the purpose of, in the Sufi Order, the work of the 'guide' is to promote in you, to draw your attention to a particular quality, because if, and it can only be effective if that is indeed the quality that is beginning to come through at this particular moment. 

So it depends very much upon the intuition of the guide. Now there are certain signs that that quality is coming through. Now signs are, it's very difficult to earmark them, to put your finger on them, but it's because that is what's called revealed rather than knowledge that is acquired. And it is synchronistic. You know what I mean. For example, last night you dreamt of a butterfly, and as you came out of your house, on the gate there was a butterfly. And then on the way there was an advert about Madame Butterfly opera, and then there was another thing about a certain new form of electronics that's called Butterfly Electronics. And then, so on and so forth, you know. And, so all that on the same day. That's synchronicity. There's no relationship, causal relationship, between one and the other. Today in computer language, it's parallel thinking. Some connection which is not a causal one, concatenation of causal. So, you'll find that in your life, that you keep on running into situations that are calling for that quality. For example, the quality that is coming through is truthfulness, and you keep on running across this all the time, situations of what's being asked of you is being truthful. And there's another situation again, the same thing, keeps on asking you, inviting you to take heed of that quality, because that's the quality that's coming through at this moment. 

Or, another situation in which it is mastery that is coming through, and again, it's mastery that is being called for all the time, one thing after the other. So it depends upon your sensitivity. You remember that wazifa 'Mujid', sensitivity. Like antennae. And then you find, 'Wajid', you find. You just turn it upon that particular quality, so that you find it. You can't do it with your will. You just open to it, and then there it is. Now of course then, you have to realize that it is in you. It's not like a quality that you want to develop; it's in you. It's just asking to have your suffrage so that it may unfurl. For example, Pir-o-Murshid says: "discover in yourself the same power that moves the universe." He doesn't say: develop power. He says: "discover in yourself the same power that moves the universe." Actually of course, in the wider context, it is discovering one's Divine inheritance. 

Now, if we would give credence to this second question then it would lead us into believing that we are being manipulated by a super guru, who is just revealing to us one quality after the other just at the right moment. And if we now look at our problems, then it might occur to us that that is a better quality to help us dealing with our problems then the one that we had figured out with our mind. And if that were the case, then Jung would be right, that if you don't deal with your shadow, it will come to you in the form of your fate. So there's some kind of programming behind it. But as Elaine said the other day, I can't believe that we call our problems because of our inadequacies. There may be cases where we are asking for trouble our self; something in us is asking for a situation that arises because of what we are in ourselves. That is true. But, it does not always work. Because, if it always worked, there would be no freedom. And what is more, there would not be--now this is metaphysics, I'm sorry, but it is metaphysics--there would be randomness, there would be no randomness. And there is randomness. Because that makes it possible to make a choice. And there's a choice between different possibilities. But this is metaphysics. 

I'm sorry to disturb you with all these metaphysical thoughts, but it's relevant to what we're doing now because the third question I want to ask you is: what is the quality that you would like to develop yourself? What is the quality that you would like to develop yourself? So that is your freedom from your programming; that freedom. And so you consider this problem irrespective of whether to make you more effective in life, or whether it corresponds to the qualities that seem to be emerging in the process of the programming of your life, of your being. Alright, now, we are pursuing our quest for freedom, practically, in becoming what we want to become. So how can we do it now? It is not capturing something that is emerging from that stump, but it is calling something that is in that stump. You see the difference: calling it. As I said before, in science now, one of the latest is that an electron only exists if you call it, otherwise it's a virtuality. So this is freedom versus fate. 

So, you're not capturing it as I say, you call it. You know it's there, but in order to, there are skills. In order to make it, well I suppose the word is 'capture'. There are skills, you call it, but then you have to 'capture' it, because otherwise it will disappear. You have to really make it adamant. There are skills. Those skills are, as I said before, you give, you highlight what is emerging now, instead of what is accruing to you from outside. That's imagination: the power to gel a thought into a form. And then it's adamant. It has become adamant. Before it's fluid, it's volatile, now it's adamant. OK, so, this is what I announced the other day: rendering states of consciousness corporeal. You could say: fashioning the subtle body, not by your configuring it yourself, by your will, but by your attunement. And if you think of it like a sculptor, for example, or a composer of course, is translating his/her attunement into a form. So it starts with an attunement, and then it becomes a thought, and then it becomes a form. 

And this is where the magic of the wazifa can be called upon. So now, just take an example. Say for example now, you identify with your subtle body, which, it's not quite a body, but as I say, it's the matrix. The sufi's call it 'Arwa'. Like subtle, well you know, we have this idea of a subtle matter, but it's more like maybe like the DNA. Maybe the DNA is what we understand by a code or a matrix that configures the cells of the body. So it is a deeper reality than the body, and that configures the body. So, you identify with it, instead of identifying with your body. And you don't know it, because how can you know it? It's, I'm saying this, but how can you know that you, well I've sometimes said: can you feel that force field around your arms? And can you feel it inside you, in the cells of your body? And so on, and so really it's not just an idea. 

Now, I, to get a little more into focus, think of that this subtle body does have a face, or rather, a countenance. And I hope you see the difference between a countenance and a face, because a face has a profile, and a countenance is like when you smile for example, or when you are angry, an expression comes through your face. So now, we're talking about that expression, rather than the face with its profile. Now you see that that expression changes all the time according to your attunement, but you could monitor your attunement, and then try to keep it stable for some time so that the imprint of it upon your subtle body becomes adamant. OK, so now, think of, for example, think of the wazifa Ya Salaam, which means peace. Now how would a person look, how would you look if you were peaceful? Well it's easier to have a sense of what that means if you would keep on fluctuating, and imagine then how would you look if you were in control of a situation, mastery. What would be the expression of your countenance if you were mastering a difficult situation like hang-gliding for example. 

Or conducting a choir, orchestra. What would be the expression on your face if you were faced with a person who was suffering agony in their body, or even in their psyche as psychotherapists are continually doing. What is your expression? Compassion? Rahman? Compassion, Rahim: suffering with? It's not Rahman actually, it is Rahim. Suffering with: 'com passion.' But then just, let's do it in depth, not just perfunctorily, like really, like you can hardly keep the tears from your eyes. Each of these expressions: mastery, truthfulness. How do you look when you are absolutely totally honest, open, open front, as opposed to being shifty. These are expressions that are very real. So, now, I went through these too quickly, but it was simply because of the differences, and we have a clearer sense of what these expressions are by contrasting them with others. So just choose one now, and I would suggest just exactly the one that you, the quality that you want to develop at this time. Now you have to represent to yourself very very clearly the configuration of that expression and imagine it to be, I would suggest actually, imagining it to be modeled in the fabric of light. So that's not your subtle body, but your very subtle body, your aura of light. Not the physical light, but there are different levels of light. So if you were to do this every day, you would be making this configuration in your very subtle body adamant. That means that it cannot change that easily, like gold it has become adamant. Stamping gold with an imprint. So it's a reality now that you can count upon. 

Now the next step is of course to identify with it. As I said, the Tibetans will sometimes do exactly the same thing. What they are doing is they're fashioning their subtle body, they call it the 'emanation body'. To model on (Huracoola) for example, sort of statue, representation of an idealized being to such an extent that the actual fabric of their emanation body really takes on the shape that they have been concentrating upon. So that's what we need to do, except that we can choose the form that we want. But as I say, we choose the quality that we want, and then the form will, the appropriate form will become very clear to us, because for each one of us according to our own capacity. But you mustn't waiver, you have to be very clear, it's because you are working with the unconscious, and the unconscious takes on autosuggestion by the conscious mind, but it has got to be repeated. Like walking on the same path, and eventually it becomes a real path, otherwise it's just a trail. You reinforce it by keep on repeating all the time. 

So you keep on thinking of that quality, and that's why we repeat the word. For example, Ya Rahim, Ya Rahim, Ya Rahim. And every time you say that, you think of that form of your, in your, in the fabric of light. That expression. You could just, you don't have to say the wazifa, you could just think it. Think, Rahim, Rahim, and think of a person who is in a terribly broken condition; your heart goes out to them, and then the expression on your face of as I say, almost tears in your eyes, and your heart is broken for them. And somehow that expression on your face is really, it's coming through your face, but it really has it's imprint in your, in the fabric of light. Now the next step, is that you identify with this image, with this effigy, and you really believe "this is me," or at least, "this is one aspect of me, one of my many-faceted personality." I've seen my, what can we call it? I've seen my emanation face, or whatever you'd call it, subtle face, or, it doesn't matter, celestial face, whatever, it doesn't matter so much, but I've seen my, what is behind the mask. 

The mask, but I'm, that I don't quite trust myself to expose to the derision of humans, and so I'm wearing a mask, but inside my heart is broken. And I put on a bold face. But now you can really identify with this, this is now, because, the trouble is if you are wearing a mask, you start identifying with the mask. Now you realize that tendency of identifying with the mask, put on a bold face, or whatever, and now you really identify with this quality which you chose amongst many others--you can choose whatever you like. Let's choose another one. Let's choose joy. So imagine now the expression of joy on your face, like the joy of participation in the celebration of life on planet earth. What a privilege. Or the joy of having freed yourself from a compelling thought, or constraining thought, or constraining emotion. Every new step in the direction of freedom triggers off a breakthrough of joy. So now, you identify with it, at the detriment of any other expression, just for this time, you just have to highlight this expression. Now it's not just a quality, a wazifa, it is a real form. And so you go, then you, meditation is a rehearsal for life, so while you are meditating you imagine that you are going about with this smile on your face. And people don't like it you know, they don't like you. 

What on earth is the matter with you, why are you smiling? Situations are so terrible. And think of yourself, you've got cancer coming on, or whatever, and you're still smiling; it's unbelievable. It's a great power. It's a tremendous power. You know I met a woman who was working with my sister in the underground in France with her during the second world war. And she said my sister said to her: "you're too young to do this." My sister wasn't much older than her. And she was beaten by the Nazis so brutally that she was blind, she had a fractured skull, fractured bones, thrown in the dungeon for dead. And there she was, smiling at me. And she told the whole story, like, she said the Nazis used to enjoy their screaming so they decided not to scream. And she said, "well as a matter of fact, we used to just go into an astral state, and so then they could do what they liked with our body, but they couldn't touch us." And so that was a fantastic consolation for me when I think of my sister. And there were worse things then that, because when the Allies would advance they would take the inmates from the concentration camps away so that the others wouldn't find them and release them, and they didn't have time to burn them all in an oven so they put them on trains and they were like sardines to such an extent that they couldn't breathe in the heat, and without food and water for weeks. So that only about ten percent of the people on those trains ever survived. And then when one person died they would take the liver out of that person to eat it so that they would be able to survive. Just imagine. And here she was smiling, and she's been through all of that. So there's a proof that you can never find an excuse for not smiling. 

Now of course, it's a little more complicated than I've said so far, because, well, just think of the voice of Caruso in the bad recordings that still are present. So that actually as soon as you start discovering your eternal faces, let's say, or countenances, then you discover several. And at the core, an immaculate countenance which is, the Sufi's call your celestial face. And that celestial face is so inter meshed with the physical, with the expression that has been defiled by the spill over from the world, that you have to find it as a matter of fact, you have to pull it out of all those different perspectives, like in a hologram you have to just pinpoint a certain perspective in the hologram and then you find it. But in order to find it you have to attune yourself to the celestial attunement. And that means cleansing yourself from any thoughts that are of hatred, or anger, or jealousy, or contempt, or resentment, or guilt, or whatever. And well the truth is that you have to become, you have to rediscover the child in you that is still there. And be prepared to extrapolate the child with the mature master, or let's say, mature being in you. Matron. Somehow extrapolate the two. It's very difficult because they seem to be so different. But as I say, if you think of the hologram, and think that the child is in you as a very deep core in the center of your being. And that's why Pir-o-Murshid says this very amazing thing, he says: The heavens are still embryonic. They are unfurled by the earth." But he says it this way: "God first created the earth, and then the heavens." And you always think the other way around, you see. And the condition in the heavens is embryonic. It becomes matured through the maturation that takes place in the existential state. 

So that particular quality, the celestial quality, is immaculate of course, innocent, not judgmental of course, unable to make judgments, and defenseless. Defenseless: that means without ego. The ego comes as a defense, strategy. So how can you reconcile that with the mastery, the maturity, the wisdom, that comes through the experience of the earth? That's the great secret. To be both. 

Now what the Tibetans say is that this configuration of your emanation body is not known to, it does not, people can't always see it because it's a reality, that's, it's a form that is really there in your subtle body, but what the Sufi's, of course they say that of course except by those who can see. But the Sufi's would say it is, it does transpire through your physical face. So it's veiled, and at the same time, manifest. 

Now there are, there's a further step, but I don't know whether I'm going beyond the time. Am I alright up to twelve o'clock? Is that alright? I'm not quite clear. I suppose I am. Yeah? OK? Yeah. OK. Then there's a further point, and this is very important. And that is going to give us a clue as to the next step for this afternoon. And that is that the matrix, the stump of that tree, is the samsaric matrix that the Buddhists call the entity of craving, which is like a stream, a current of which our matrices, samsaric matrices, are the waves let's say. And the thing about this is that it keeps on recycling itself like a plant keeps on, then there's a seed, and then you've got a plant, and then a seed, and so on. And that will, what's the point in it? And so to be creative in a wholistic way--with a w: wholistic--you have to enlist all the matrices of your being instead of just that one which is to be found in the emanation body. And therefore Buddhism is speaking about an extra-samsaric matrix of your being. That's a word which you might have thought: well is it a higher matrix? 

Well, it's not higher, so we don't use the word 'higher'. Extra, other than the usual, commonplace. And the key to understanding that is that it is mutation instead of recycling. So to bring about mutation you have to have another matrix, than the one that keeps on recycling itself, and that is your celestial being. So I described it as, for example, the earth turns around it's axis, will keep on turning around it's axis, but it does turn around the sun in addition. So that there's another matrix, then its own matrix, which overrides its, which organizes its motion. So in the same way, you don't have to discard the, let's say your idiosyncrasies, that is the personal, the uniqueness of your being. But you bring into the situation, let's say in the course, you bring in another element which is super-individual, and which adumbrates your person, and that is the great secret of, in fact of what we understand by spirituality. How we found in the words of St. Francis when he said: "I have another father." He didn't say, "you're not," well some people say he said: "You're not my father." 

I think that is more true that he said, "I have another father." So that has enormous implications because that means that we have our ancestral heredity, and then we have heredity at other levels. Now the Sufis speak about the divine inheritance: Warith. Ya Warith. W-a-r-i-t-h. The divine inheritance. But, if you look at it a little more closely, you find that you have different inheritances. And I'd like to point out your inheritance from your angelic parents. Do you know your angelic parents? Do you recognize them in yourself? That establishes the affiliation. And if you feel bad about yourself and you discover the traces of your celestial parents, it will make you feel good. You know that in biology there are qualities that are recessive and others that are dominant, so these are qualities that may be recessive until we pull them out of our pool of resourcefulness, and awaken them, and then they become active. 

So this requires a whole process that I hope we'll be going into this afternoon, called transcendence: shifting our consciousness from, our sense of identity from one level to the other. Well there is one thing that I neglected, for what I said to be complete it would be good to mention at least, and that is imagining a landscape that illustrates the Wazifa. For example, Clair de Lune, like moonlight, at night, and you're in a dreamstate walking along a lake that reflects the moon. Now, it's not just the landscape that is important, but you are in that landscape, and you are different. You are walking differently; you're in a transfigured state. Your body is different; your whole attunement is different. So now the wazifa 'Ya Salaam' becomes a reality, and otherwise it's just a concept. 'Peace' is just an abstract intellectual concept. Or you're climbing the mountains and you're hanging on to a rock and there's the abyss under you and somehow you, either you fall or you have courage, so you discover you have courage and you didn't know you had it. So now there's a landscape and then there's the expression on your face of like mastery, and that is not just a passing thing, but if you keep on everyday thinking of that, then that quality: Ya Qadr, or Ya Wali better still, Ya Wali. That quality will become a reality in your being. 

OK, so now when you are on your own, what I suggest is that you simply do this: take a quality, you choose any quality, and that is good because you choose a quality that you are interested in, not the quality that somebody prescribes to you. And we know the wazifas enough now to be able to choose, and then you just work with configuring your subtle body, and keep on at it so that it's not just a passing thing, but it becomes adamant. And then imagine a landscape that illustrates your condition. And then if not a landscape, a scenario. There are two things: one is landscape, the other is a scenario. For example, compassion: it's not a landscape, it's just a scenario, there's someone that's been wounded, or whatever, there's a scenario. So this is creativity. This is how we encourage creativity. You see the difference between this and therapy. It's not therapy; it's creativity. 

AUG 17, 1996		Tape 17

Joshua 8/17/96 PVK Tape 17 Concentration Training Elemental Breaths

..are going to set the pace for your whole day. The best time is before the sunrise. For one thing then it's picking up ultra violet rays before the sun passes the threshold of the horizon. And secondly because one hasn't set one's clock into activity yet. And so one is in a much more receptive state than after having started being active. Now the practices that, of course I have been giving many different practices in the course of these 10 days, 9 days, 10 days. But, so I don't want to make a repeat of those things that I did in those past days. 

But the practices that I suggest for today, this morning, are I would say the practices for zurat, breathing practices for zurat with the different elements. And that is the breathing practices that Pir-o-Murshid gave to every mureed to do every day in the morning. In through the nose out through the nose, in through the nose out through the mouth, in through the mouth out through the nose, and in the mouth out through the mouth. So if you want to remember the sequence it's nada-nada, nada- mucho, mucho-nada, and then mucho-mucho. Nada, "n' for nose and "m' for mouth, if you understand that language. So it's starting from the negative and going to the positive. 

Now each of these breaths is characterized by a certain element. And we call it baptism with the different elements. Now there is a saying of Pir-o-Murshid that says that we can find that which we need in the Universe. And as I say myself, we are ingesting the Universe. But we can, we have the discernment to enable us to choose that kind of medicine that we need for our unfoldment. So it requires of us a certain fineness of perception to be able to determine which are the elements and how they work. It's also true that since we exist on several levels and have therefore different counterparts to our being, each one of these counterparts needs it's kind of food. So we need to shift our sense of identity when we are doing these practices from the lower levels of our being to a higher. 

So at first breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. As we breathe in through the nose, it's important to get some sense of resonance with the magnetism of the earth. In fact scientifically one can say, I don't know whether it's scientifically or not, but looking at things from purely earthly point of view, we are, the magnetism, first of all can you feel the magnetic field of your body? Feel it around your shoulders and around forearms. Just like the magnetism around a magnet, you feel it. And then feel the magnetism in the bottom of your spine and even in your feet. And can you feel the magnetism of the earth when you're walking for example, or if you're standing? And if you're sitting of course, sitting cross legged, then you feel the magnetism of the earth. Then can you feel the way there is an ebb and flow, to and fro oscillation the way that the magnetism of the earth seems to be drawn into your magnetic field as you inhale, and the way that your magnetic field seems to be resorbed into the earth's field as you exhale. 

Your point of contact with the earth, whether it's the bottom of your spine or the souls of your feet, is a threshold situation in which there seems to be passage from one magnetic field to the other, although your magnetic field is, how can I say, permeates the earth's field and the earth's magnetic field permeates your magnetic field. So there's no real threshold. Then can you feel that magnetism rising as you inhale, passing from one chakra to the next? And then can you feel the way that when you exhale, well the magnetism of one's magnetic field gets polluted. Imagine the magnetic field of a magnet in which there would be a lot of faulty nodes and distortions that take place due to all kinds of influences, extraneous influences from outside and from inside. And so it is good if the whole magnetic field gets drained and then renewed. So you need to feel the draining effect of the earth which is so kind as to absorb your pollution. And that applies also to the level of the psyche. 

So this corresponds to what Zia was talking about, the first stage in the Zurat process, agriculture, is to get rid of a lot of old roots and stones and all kinds of elements that are disturbing to our growth, stand in the way of our growth. 

So it's what is called a catharsis. And is alchemy it's the first stage in which there is a sifting between the grosser elements and the finer elements. And the gross elements are then rejected. So they feel the gravity of the earth that exercises more pull on the grosser elements of your being than the finer ones. So the catharsis starts by getting rid of the grosser elements in your being. And eventually your whole magnetic field gets resorbed and then renewed again. 

Now there are some, Pir-o-Murshid does give wasifas that can be used with the breathing practices. And the one I suggest for this first breath which is called the baptism of the earth, is muid. And muid is not just inertia, that is inertia represents a kind of stability. But it does also represent something a little more dynamic which is the ability of the organism to self organize itself if it has been disturbed and to return to it's original state if you don't intervene with your will. So that's what is called stay with it. It has a kind of stabilizing effect as the earth has. 

And now all of this work we're doing with our subtle body actually does affect us at the level of our psyche. So that Pir-o-Murshid does describe people according to the element that predominates in their being. But just imagine that you have all these elements in you. So the earth element in you represents your durability, the fact that you have some kind of stability and reliability. You can be relied upon. But what Murshid says that a person who has entirely, well predominantly the earth quality needs to be directed. Is full of good will but can not take initiative. So you might recognize that as one of your qualities or defects, or whatever it is, but one of your characteristics is that you want to do things but you're blocked, find it difficult to take initiative, a decision, and very glad if somebody else takes the initiative in telling you what to do. Then you can do it very well.

Now the water element. I wonder whether you can experience the difference between breathing in through the mouth or breathing in through the nose. Just try it. Or breathing out through the mouth. No, breathing out through the nose. First of all try inhaling through the nose and out through the nose. Now try breathing in through the mouth and out through the mouth. So you see that breathing through the mouth activates the thyroid gland which has the effect of affecting many other hormones in the body including the adrenalin. 

So in this practice you breath in through the nose and exhale through the mouth. So now we are making a differentiation between the two poles of our being, the upper pole of the magnet, let us say the north pole, and the south pole of the magnet. And of course the energy field between the two. So imagine that the north field, which is above your head, is of the nature of the Holy Spirit. A very fine energy seems to be quite the opposite of the energy of the earth. In fact the energy that we ascribe to the earth could be illustrated by gravity, the gravitational forces that coagulate the atoms in to formations, what we call matter, solid matter. Whereas the what we call spirit represents quite the opposite, a kind of buoyancy as compared with gravity, levity, dispersful, therefore freedom from constraint of conditioning, all those things that we've been talking about. So now you draw, as you inhale, you concentrate on that very fine energy that we call pure spirit. And think of this concept that we find not only in a Catholic church, but in Judaism also and in Islam, the quickening of the holy spirit, ru al quddus, the holy spirit, which has been illustrated by the visitation of the Virgin Mary by Arch Angel Gabriel. So it's not just the visitation, but a quickening. 

So you feel a kind of different energy coming through you when you're doing the first practice, baptism of earth. And so you had to first clear all the dross, the obstacles in the first baptism. Now in the second baptism, you're doing something very interesting which is first of all the space that has been cleared by the catharsis in the first baptism is now filled by the Holy Spirit. It's as though the heavy material of your being is being drawn down into the earth. And at the same time influence of the Holy Spirit is gaining ground, descending through you from one chakra to the next. So that's where you exhale through the mouth you feel that sweeping effect of the descent of the Holy Spirit that's quickening you. And so the wazifa is Muhyi instead of Muid. So it is, well I don't know whether you can call it self organizing. It's a whole different matrix as I call it. That is that has the effect of really shattering you. The descent of the holy spirit can be shattering and overwhelming. So it's not recycling. It's introducing a whole different celestial influence. So that's the baptism with water. 

So it's like in agriculture, of course, irrigation, you have to give some life sustenance to the seeds. And what Pir-o-Murshid said is that a person with this quality,water quality is very sociable and sensitive and lovable and active, just like water that is running from a stream, life giving and so on and so forth, joyous. But it still needs to have some direction because you know water can flow one way or the other and is influenced by the wind. So this person could easily be influenced by other people because they don't have the stability, the resilience of the earth people. So you've got that in you, as I said, it's not each person has just one quality. So you'll notice in yourself that flexibility which makes that you are not stubborn, but you're open to the influences from all sides. And you'll see that it gives life to your being which would be stodgy if you just gave vent to the earthly quality in your being, stubbornness, as I say. So now you much more flexible, more adaptable. As I say it has a disadvantage too. So that was the baptism with water. 

So let's do this do this, in through the nose and out through the mouth. And see how that energy that descends upon you. First of all think of, as I said the other day, like an aperture at the top of your fontanel of your crown, of your skull. And then very fine energy descending. And see how it seems to affect one chakra after the other. So you're awakening the latent, virtual energies, latent energies in your being. Like opening of the heart center, the region of the heart, the solar plexus, and particularly of course the adrenalin. That is really speaking, there is a chakra between the solar plexus and the second chakra which is the "hara' of the Chinese and of Zen, which awakens the adrenalin, the flow of adrenalin in your blood. And then as you descend to the second chakra forces need to be transmuted as you inhle again. As you inhale again, they are activated, and then like in tantra, they need to be sublimated and then transmuted into the forces of love. And then right down to the bottom chakra, muladara, where you are awakening the what they call the serpents, the snakes, caduceus. And so when you inhale, you have unleashed these vital forces that are looking to be nurtured by the descent of the Holy Spirit. 

They are lying in wait for that moment that they can receive the baptism of water, which is really the baptism of the Holy Spirit. You know, like Elijah waiting for, finding refuge at a wonderful spring of water, the waters of life. Of course the Bedouins have a legend about the appearance of (Hider), who is Elijah actually, the green man in the desert. If you've traveled in the desert, you know what it means to be days and days in the sand like something like here but much worse. And then all of a sudden coming to an H where you have all this greenery and all this vitality. Of course people and camels congregate there. In the vastness of the desert one can get lost. And the Bedouins talk of the appearance of this green man who comes and says, "Do you want me to help you. I can show you the way, but don't question, don't question my guidance". Then you see a shimmering on the horizon and you think he is going the other way. And so you say,"Hider". And he looks at you and he says, " There was a condition. You think you know how to get there. OK Go on your own". That's water, waters of life. You have to know how to find the waters of life. 

Now the next baptism is I would say the transmutation of fire into light. So now you're breathing in through the mouth and out through the nose. So now you have to identify yourself with the flame which is sucking in air from the environment. So it's this tremendous demand of the flame in you, combustion that is going to draw the energy from the environment, or at least enhance draw of the convergence of the air energy of the environment. As I said, we are in a continual state of combustion. otherwise we wouldn't have temperature. So that we are now talking about the effect of phosphorescence rather than the kind of effect that takes place when we draw in light and transmit light from the environment. So it's, both are called biolumeniscence. So as you breathe in, think of a flame that starts burning at the bottom of your spine. So you can think of different colors of the aura that I've described in the past. If they were to be ordered in a proper sequence corresponding to the spectrum, red at the bottom of the spine, and then terracotta in the second chakra, and the orange in the solar plexus, and then gold in the heart, and then green in the throat center, blue in the eyes, actually there is a chakra in the eyes, between the two eyebrows, and then violet in the pituitary gland, and then colorless light in the fontanel above the head. So traditionally the fire is transmuted into light . 

In fact scientifically you can say that one is transmuting infrared light into ultraviolet. Passing by the whole range of colors. And if you look into a flame, you'll see that indeed you'll discern red at the bottom of the flame. Then you'll see some orangy color, then yellowish, and then gold. You find green and blue. You'll find all these colors in the flame in that sequence. So by imagining those different colors, which are just the way that we perceive differences of frequencies, you will be enhancing what is called transmutation of fire into light. So phosphorescence into fluorescence. That was the word I was looking for. Fluorescence is a different process than phosphorescence. Phosphorescence is combustion of matter. Fluorescence you are drawing light from the environment and you are boomeranging it back. No, you're not boomeranging it back. You're transforming it in the cells of your body and you're reemitting it again. 

Now in advanced practice, you continue with the movement upwards above your head. In the practice of cacina, many of you were not present at the time, where you're getting into the reflex of physical light, and the reflex of the reflex and so forth, upwards. Different levels of light which Hildegard Bingen refers to in her testimonies of her experiences in meditation. So these are levels of light that will help you reaching samadhi because they correspond to planes beyond the existential ones, as Buddha says, beyond existence, and beyond consciousness, and beyond existence and non-existence, and beyond consciousness and non-consciousness. So these are stages that correspond with, in the Kabbala, with ensof, ensof aura. There are three "ensofs'. And Murshid does give the practice of imagining a rainbow above the head. But the colors are not what we understand by colors that are visible to our eyes. 

Now if you would pursue this further, then you would be holding your breath after inhaling and discovering your, the luminous intelligence which is at the apex of your being. But we don't do that because we do that in the more advanced breathing practices but not in this one. There is no holding of the breath at all. However when you exhale through the nose, you'll notice the effect of what we might call higher qualities of light over the lower qualities of light. I don't like those words, higher and lower. But it's to be found in the Quran, light upon the light. The way that the light of those higher planes which Hildegard speaks about does permeate, does infiltrate into the light of your aura, and has an effect of transforming it, in fact transfiguring it. 

Now the description that Murshid gives of the fiery person is, of course, like a cracker. So it just takes a match to make that person really explode, a lot of anger. 'n the other hand... and of course it can be very destructive. 'n the other hand the person of this quality is very truthful and cannot stand dishonesty and is ready to sacrifice themselves for what they believe. Therefore I think of Shams Tibriz who said, "Enough of metaphor. I want burning, burning, burning". It bypasses the mind and all of it's justification. 

And of course it brings about a radical change in you which perhaps the baptism of the earth didn't get rid of a lot of things that need to be put aside before you can reach your goal of perfection. Neither did the water be able to wash it away. But the fire will certainly be able to do it. But it is destructive because it is indiscriminate. And there is no way of controlling it. So it's very difficult to control. And of course you'll find that a fire person is always looking for an air person, a vital need. And the air person gets vamped by the fire person. The fire person will of course bring confusion in the mind of the air person, will bring doubt in their thinking because he always questions the thinking, the assumptions of people. So you may see that you also have that element in yourself. And it may be balanced by the earth or the water. If it's balanced, one can't say it's really balanced by the earth because that combination is volcanic, eruptions, instability. The earth is very stable. But under the effect of the fire, it can be very badly disturbed. In combination with water, of course, fire is afraid of water, but will transform water into steam so it doesn't have any action upon it any more. So it's a very traumatic combination. Fire is looking for air, as I say. But when fire is transformed into light, then there is no need of this influx of air any more. In fact then the fuel is ether instead of air which is a very mysterious element. Pir-o-Murshid talks about that cryptically. 

So see if you can do this now as you breathe in through your mouth. Think of your spine as a chimney and inside there is a flame. So at the beginning, you feel the heat of your body, infrared. Then as you move upwards then, for example light, the radiance of your heart. Then it becomes very subtle light at the level of the throat center. Then even the eyes. But at the level of the third eye it becomes violet. Just think of violet light. It has, like an x-ray it has the ability of passing through walls and through your skull. It gives you a kind of penetrating glance. You able to see to the souls of people. That light that would not be called light at all, above the head. It's not existential light. It gives you a clue to what we call the celestial spheres. 


So that's above "cater', cater is the crown. So it's above the crown center, or beyond it. I must say that the sense of, it's a kind of geographical sense of one's lifting oneself. It's true because one is shifting one's attention from one chakra to the next. But when you get beyond the head....(tape turns)..therefore do not think that that it's above somewhere higher up, that the angelic spheres are somewhere up there. The best you could do is to think that it is interspersed with we call the physical reality or reality at the physical level. And then of course as you exhale, it's not, having experienced the descent of the Holy Spirit makes it easier, the quickening. But this is illumination rather than quickening, probably the secret of illumination, the light upon the light of the Quran. Because the impact of the light of intelligence, that is a sudden realization, is going to transfigure your whole aura. 

Alright, I'm sorry we have to move so fast. Baptism of air. You breathe in through the mouth and out through the mouth. Just do it and see how you feel. Yes, OK. Sorry I'd like to open a parenthesis because the relevance for the zurat, agriculture is of course light, the influence of light on the growth of the plants of course. Now let's come back to the air. Perhaps you've noticed that breathing through the mouth and exhaling through the mouth will enhance your need, in fact your yearning for freedom. One's mind jumps to the conclusion that one wants to be free from circumstances. And that's why one people leave the world to become sanysin. But that does not necessarily bring freedom. In fact the great science of finding freedom is as Buddha says, "Find freedom in your opinion, in your way of understanding things, in your attachment and your emotions and in your self image". So it's really freedom from being caught in a trap of your personal vantage point, and also freedom from the condition that ensues from being trapped in your personal vantage point. So it's like a longing for a whole other dimension, bursting from frustration of being caught in a trap in one's mind, in one's realization, called 'abidia', ignorance. 

So the trouble is if misunderstood, the air element in one is going to make one unreliable, unpredictable, moody. And therefore one's energy is not directed in a congruous, consistent way. 'n the other hand it certainly encourages creativity and communicating a lot of energy unpredictably, impromptu. The trouble is that a person of the air element is not so much influenced by other people, but by the impulse rising from within, a readiness to experiment with anything might go just too far, so that it could on one hand manifest as the greatest virtue and celestial quest, and then even skirting evil purely experimental out of a kind of curiosity. So it's very paradoxical kind of state that one finds amongst people. And perhaps you can also find it in yourself. 

'n the other hand, of course, it's those are the qualities that make for awakening and the ultimate freedom of course from the limitations of earthly conditions. I would say that if the air is directed upwards in what is called an upwind that allows the eagles and falcons to soar, rather than the horizontal wind that can be turbulent. 

So in the previous practice with light, the winds were converged inwards and born upwards. And incidentally the wazifa for that is of course Ya Nur. But here the best way to direct the air energy is not to converging it and then turn it upwards, but simply turning it upwards. And that's what Buddha does by shifting his attunement to levels beyond the existential level. So that air acts like a Pegasus that carries Bellerophon to the Olympus although Pegasus cannot fly high enough to reach the Olympus so that he imprints upon Bellerophon momentum that allows Bellerophon to proceed on his own. 

So that is what you're doing as you breathing in through the mouth, feel that kind of buoyancy of your need for freedom, should draw you upwards. Of course upwards is metaphoric. So you have a sense of freeing yourself from the gravity pull of the earth. But remember that we are briefed now in Sufism to transmute the bodiness, and therefore the earth quality in us, and even the water quality in us, and even the fire quality in us as we proceed upwards instead of leaving the body behind. So that is what is the practice of resurrecting the body before dying, a Sufi slogan. You feel that buoyancy. It's what Pir-o-Murshid calls a kind of longing that becomes stronger as you evolve for the unattainable. Because it's always, as Pir-o-Murshid says, "It's like the horizon. It's always beyond whatever you could ever foresee". And then as you exhale, just think of what your, you see, at the end of your inhaling you find, you've discovered that level beyond conditioning. And therefore you can see that there is some, ultimately there is freedom from destiny. You can see that. 

You can see that you are not really totally bound by destiny because you are gifted with the greatest of gifts, the gift of divine freedom. So that's an incredible discovery because we often ascribe what happens to us to our bad fate. So discovering that you are free in that word of the Sufis, I think it was Fariduddin Attar who says, "'h man if you realize that you're free. It is your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity". So that's what you do as you exhale. You suddenly discover that you are free and you didn't know it. It doesn't mean that you are free from circumstances. It's a kind of inner freedom that nothing can affect you and change you and influence you because you are free. And then your relationship with people is going to be as Kahlil Gibran says, "A fresh wind blowing between big trees that do not grow in each other's shade". And so now you can dance with joy. You have overcome pain, overcome pain by the power of joy. So God bless you now. Tape ends

AUG 17, 1996		Tape 20

96V08-17.#20

PVK Joshua 8/17/96 C' Tape 20 Yes, dear ones. It is nice if people would come closer, a more concentrated group. 

Yes, a question does rise in the minds of many of us I'm sure. We would like to have clearer guidelines as to how to guide people, how to guide our mureeds especially if we are representatives or if we are guides, if we are apprentice guides or apprentice representatives or whatever. Somehow that guidance comes in. And it's a very big query what are the ways in which we promote that, what are the guidelines for guidance in the Sufi school which is I must say different from other schools. 

So in order to communicate that I would like to offer a paradigm. So just imagine that you are going on a journey with something. You don't really know the lie of the land but you are familiar with the treks in the country so you have a little more experience than the person that you are accompanying. But that person also has some experience. of course. And that person has asked you to guide them. And you're not quite sure whether, you would rather know the ground, the territory, but the fact is you don't. And there is no way of knowing it. So it will advance as you keep on advancing. And you will discover new things that you could not have foreseen before. 

As as you accompany your friend, you'll find that of course you are on a pilgrimage. So you have left the place where you were. At least you think you have left the place where you were. But the memory of it is still there. And also the consequence in your psyche is still there. So it continues, what we think is the past continues to live in us as we are advancing on the path. So it's, there is a lot of impromptu, learning how to meet the unknown instead of having ideas, hard and fast ideas about how one is supposed to do it.. 

Now I'm complicating things just a little bit by saying that you are not just advancing just in a landscape. And perhaps it's better to think of a landscape of the soul rather than a landscape that we are familiar with, a geographical landscape. So that's a word used by the Sufis, landscape of the soul. Different perspectives, maybe on the same reality, but appear differently as you advance, as you move. 

But also, and this is something that I learned from Jung, not only what seemed to be scenes in the more advanced stages are scenarios. So instead of advancing in geographical areas, landscapes, you are going from one scenario to another. And a scenario is a dramatic situation in which people are involved in a problem. And you're there with your friend. You friend is involved in those problems. And you try to keep some aloofness from, maintain some kind of distance from the problem you friend is involved in so that you are not as biased as you friend. One can say off hand that you friend to start with tends to look at things from his/her point of view which is, one could take it for granted that that view is a limited point of view. That is the kind of thing that I hear here and everywhere when I ask people or anybody asks people about their experience. They say, "I feel". And so they are right there in their personal vantage point. I say ,"Well OK". 

But then what do you mean by spirituality? We are talking about another dimension. So if you're able to guide your friend, the only way you can guide them is if you can see things in a way they can't see them. That's the only way, and you can't tell them the way you see things because you've got to find a way of getting them to see it themselves. So there are skills. That's very subtle the way you do that. So you can't tell people like this is the way it is. So that's a very subtle relationship. 

So let's try and follow this metaphor. So at first you now you, for example, you friend comes across some stinging nettles and gets really upset. And maybe you are also treading on the same stinging nettles or there are some mosquitoes or whatever. Even worse like a bee or a hornet or something like that. It happened to me in Modgial. I was attacked by a hornet. In fact I sat in a hornet's nest once in Ajmere. So there you have your friend who is very upset and in pain. Perhaps you're in pain also. So how can you help him or her if you are also in pain or if you react to the pain in the same way that he or she reacts to the pain? So it's like the blind leading the blind. So hopefully you will already be forewarned that you will be meeting stinging nettles along the way and you'll be both exposed to them. 

And so then we come across a situation, a difficult situation, and that is that one's tendency is to react. It arouses emotions, reaction emotions, hatred, jealousy, anger, outrage and rage. Now if you can be in a similar situation, you could be enraged too, you could not help them. So there is no point in trying and conduct people on the spiritual path if you have the kind of reactionary reaction to the way that people normally react. 

So what is happening is that, what would happen to you if you knew how to help your friend is exactly what Beethoven has been teaching us in the Fourth Piano Concerto. I come back to this because this is absolutely the key as to how one deals with guiding people. He is describing the world "Pa pum pum", and he answers"Hum hum hum hum". He doesn't react. He is placing a buffer between the challenge of the environment and himself. Because if he reacted, he would just call upon a fraction of his being which Pir o Murshid calls the ego. And he says the real ego is God. But what we call the false ego is what we think we are. So it's a fraction of ourselves. So when we are back to the wall, then somehow we call upon this fraction of ourselves which is totally unable to deal with the problem. And we get more and more menaced by the problem. And we turn around in circles. So on and so forth. 

So what Himayat was saying yesterday is that another quality, another idiosyncrasy than anger or whatever it is, being upset, resentment, comes in. Whether it comes in itself or then you have to make it move, I have a feeling that Himayat was letting it happen naturally but still somehow drawing attention of his patients to, "Well do you feel love". Like it's there you see. So it's not like you must develop love. Can you remove it from that deep place in your self so that it becomes a reality in your personality? It's virtual. 

So that's what Beethoven is doing. By placing a buffer between himself and the world. If he were to react, he would only be able to monitor some of the qualities or defects of his being, idiosyncrasies of his being. But by the fact of placing this buffer which is exactly what Buddha is talking meant by placing the sentinels at the doors of perception, surround yourself with a zone of silence. Then somehow he is able to get in touch with the deep resourcefulness of his being. Somehow that resourcefulness comes, that means,... Well I'll give you a simple example. For example, you're crossing the road and there is a car coming, then you don't need to use all your brain faculties in order to react. There is a what they call a reflex. Then when it comes to making decisions about the future of your life, then of course it's no use reacting to somebody who is angry. You have to consult your deeper self. 

In our meditations of course we learn how to consult our deeper self. There are many ways. One is of course, first of all one thinks one should turn within. But in order to turn within, one has to first reach out. Because to allay the limitation or the constraint of one's identity. So when one reaches out, one frees from that constraint. Then one can reach within, one can reach out from within. But the other aspect of turning within is that one discovers one's real self. And this is what I've been emphasizing in our meditations of course. 

One of the clues about this is that one, when one is right in the middle of the challenges of life, one does not realize that one is playing a role. One has to look at oneself with a certain perspective to realize that one is playing a role. There is nothing wrong in playing a role. But at least one realizes that that is a role that the world is expecting of me, so I'm trying to answer that need. But that's not me. If I identify with it, then I don't know who I am. So the only way to do it is to learn, when you turn within, to discover I would say the bounty of your being that is calling to be released. It's a hidden treasure that desires to be known, knocking at the door. And all that it needs is your acquiescence that it is there. Instead of thinking, "I need to develop a quality". It's there. It's virtual. It's a matter of releasing it from the solitude of unknowing as the Sufis say. 

And it's true that you cannot scan your unconscious. I learned that when I was an officer in the British Navy during the second world war, landing in Normandy and of course in the Mediterranean escorting supply ships and flotillas. I was in charge of a watch in the night, watching for German U Boats. And we were taught that you should not scan the horizon because you would miss out on it. What you had to do was to simply have your eyes blank. Then there is a little shadow that draws your attention to what it's trying to say to you. Just a little shadow. So the same thing. You can't decide, "I need to develop this quality or that quality in order to meet this problem". 

Now that is if you remember I asked three questions. Of course many of you were not here during the first three days. Three questions. The first one is, "What are the qualities that I need in order to meet the challenge of situations in the world?". The answer would be first of all you'd figure it out in your mind. Then your concern would be adapting yourself to your environment. 

The second question was"What are the qualities or is the quality that is emerging in you at present?". So this is not something that you can figure out in your mind. So the only way to have any sense of what is emerging is to turn within. That's what we've already said. And be in a state of receptivity. I would say very intense sensitivity. The word is Mujib, great sensitivity. And then a certain quality will draw your attention. You hadn't figured it our with your mind. It's a quality that is coming through at this moment. I'm not saying that is the quality that would be the most effective in order to deal with the challenges of your life. Maybe it is. I'm not sauomg that. If I were to say that, Jung would say that when he said, "If you don't meet your shadow, it will appear to you in the form of your fate". I'm not sure that it is true. There is a relationship there of course. But I can't say that the people who died in that crash of TWA had drawn that problem to themselves. You can't say that. There is not that kind of causal relationship between the two. No I can't say that. But anyway it's interesting because you wonder now, "This quality is coming through. And I'm concerned about how to meet my problems. I'm important to. So meeting my problems is important. But the way that I unfurl is important. Whether it helps in the way that I am meeting my problems, that is a secondary thought.". In some cases it will help you to meet your problems and in other cases it won't. But you know the whole thinking in that direction gets very very complicated. 

But anyway this evidence is the need to adapt the environment to one's own sense of purpose instead of adapting oneself to the environment. You see that? Adapting the environment to your own sense of purpose and then adapting yourself to the environment. And there is always a balance between the two. But most of the time, I think, most of the people are giving priority to the way they adapt themselves to the environment. And I think it's a token of our evolution to be able to adapt the environment to our sense of purpose. If you ask yourself, "What is a seed?". Well a seed is a program that has energy, that is endowed with energy, and that transforms the earth into a plant, and that transforms water into a plant, and the sunshine into a plant. That's of course Zuraat. 

So you are accompanying you friend. And you can see that there are qualities in him/her that would help him or her to, not to discard the sting, but to cope with that sting of the scorpion or whatever it was, the stinging nettle. But that person is so much in distress that he or she cannot see that. You see it. And it's no use saying, "You know you should have more compassion", or whatever. That's why I used to say in the past, I used to say forgive because that was the message of Christ. Now I don't say it any more. Somebody said, "Pir Vilayat, I feel bad for what that person did to me. Now I feel even worse because you asked me to forgive what I can't forgive". So I'll never do that again. 

But I find that, well a lot of methods. One of the methods is of course to, if you help your friend to expand his or her conscious, then he/she can see first of all the way the same problem looks from the point of view of another person. That's not true of the stinging nettle. But let's say that there is a conflict there. And that you see how wrongly, how badly that person is behaving in a situation which concerns you. And you don't know how that person sees that you are handling that same problem. So that would be expanding. If you expand your consciousness into the consciousness of the other person, then you begin to see what is behind their action. 

So that is why we are working with wasifas, as we call it. That's medicine. And the words won't do it for you of course. They're labels. But what you can do is, you see, it's no use telling your friend, "You've got to expand your consciousness". No that doesn't work that way. But if your consciousness is wide, is broad, all encompassing, your friend will say, "Ah, I wonder how you do it. There is something about you. You're being stung also, but you don't seem to react the same way I react. What is it about you?" You say, "Well I really love people. So these people are doing things to be but it's like a child who slaps you.". There was a child who pulled my hair once. I don't feel any resentment towards that child who pulled my hair. So it's just people are what they are and they do what they do. As Christ said,"They don't know what they do.". As you grow in your maturity people appear to you more and more like as Pir o Murshid says, "As animals in a zoo". But I think it's rather a strong statement. I think I would say, "But animals are wonderful". It's not pejorative. I mean think of an elephant or an eagle and a deer. You really don't think that they are inferior beings to you because they can't speak. But they have their defenses. You have to sort of understand that they have to defend themselves. 

So a human being is supposed to have a different kind of way of dealing with problems rather than just defending themselves. It's a different thing all together, another dimension. Because actually we are both an angel and an evolved animal. I would go on to tell you the Greek legend of the son of Zeus who sat on the throne of his father. And the Titans threw him into the, we presented him with a mirror. And when he discovered the face of his father in himself as his divine inheritance, he was so over wrought that they took advantage of him to precipitate him in the abyss. And they devoured him. When the father came back of course he shattered the Titans with his thunder. And the consequence is that humans were born out of the ashes which included the body of the son of God and the body of the animals. That's a great story. 

So that really what you are trying to do is to reveal to a person is their divine inheritance ultimately. But then again it's a word. So how do you do it? So the fact is that that inheritance is written right into the stump of one's being. The stump. For example if you cut a tree to its roots, then the stump will grow a new plant, new tree. And the tree may look quite different. But that is the reality of your being much more than the branches or the trunk. So if you look at that that way, you realize, you draw the attention of your friend to, "Do you know yourself really? If you knew yourself, you'd realize that you have just a bounty of faculties that perhaps you are not aware of. And they would really help you to get out of your anguish, your anger about that sting". 

Now Himayat gave priority to compassion, rachman/rahim is of course the first attributes in the list of what we call sifat. The word wasaif simply means repetition of, concentration on certain qualities is repeated, remembrance. But of course it is true that it's not the only one. Maybe it's the one that comes first. And you find that in Al Hallaj. That wonderful, where he is talking about his meditation, getting into the consciousness of God discovering himself in the different qualities of his being. And then in order to see these qualities projecting himself in beings in whom He/She discovers what happens to His/Her qualities when they are actuated. And also is able to see in Him/Herself reflected in the many faceted aspects of Him/Herself. By the same token disclose Himself, reveal Him/Herself to those who are trying to discover Him in themselves. So it's mirroring on both sides. In fact mirroring and over mirroring all the time in what is called Ina Halla, which is the palace of mirrors. 

So it's, I know it was a metaphysical thought. But referring back to this wonderful book called Kitaba, it's called Ishq, of Al Hallaj. Then he goes on to speak about other qualities, and more qualities, and more qualities. And they are all interrelated. And they call each other into action. So I agree the first one is love. And compassion is an expression of love. And I think that you see, in the words of Al Hallaj, "God descends from the solitude of unknowing". That is He/She knows the principle of his being. But what happens to the principle of His being when He/She descends from the solitude of unknowing by the nostalgia of love, ishq? It says, "He loved to be known". It didn't say, "he wanted to be known". Love in vatat, which means in the solitude, love within detachment, within freedom from addiction, I would say, with freedom from existential state. Very powerful antimony. Those two things that pull us in different directions. One is love and the other is the need for freedom. Both of those together as the original impulse. So if you can see that impulse in you, and see how it works in you. 

So again Himayat was referring to current theories in physics, Prigogine, Ilya Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures. The characteristic of it, "Unless we evolve, we parish". So there is a need to continually incorporate qualities in ourselves that are pending and calling to come through in our being. But we really have to feel that Ishq, that nostalgia of God wishing to emerge as us, in us, through us, as a kind of force that if you feel that, it's so much more important than the pain that you feel from having been stung that you think, "Well I can endure anything if I can become, just imagine I could become a wonderful person. And here I am fretting about that stinging nettle. That's ridiculous". Somehow it's really getting in touch. It's not just asking, "What is my real self?". But discovering my real self revealing itself to me. So it's dynamic instead of static. And it's always changing. So you are sure of whatever it is coming through, could be mastery. Then all of a sudden, "No, yes, well of course mastery was more important, now now I realize that truthfulness is even more important". 

So there are different makums coming through at different times. What they call makums is the different stations that you are in. So it's very important to know which makum I am in now and which is the next one. And of course between those two these is a threshold state where you are in a state of waiting. Waiting is one of the most painful things for me in my life. In fact the one wazifa which I never use is Ya Sabu which is patience. I thought of that book of Nafari called Malakif where he is talking about how he is kept in a state of what they call staying, a process of incubation until he is ready for the next step. And the next step is always revealed to him. He can't reach it through his own effort. In the same way you can't tell your friend what the next step is. But if you, it requires a great sensitivity on your part to sense what is the next quality that is coming through him or her. 

And if you play the Pygmalion to try to decide what you want that person to be, then you are really harming that person. Try to be very careful about that. That's a tendency that's been very much to be found in the Sufi Order is to become a Pygmalion. In popular terms it's called fix it. Like this person needs a little more power, so I give them Ya Qabir to develop a little bit more power. Or then there is the story of that man who had no enthusiasm for life and so on a retreat someone gave him Ya Azim to make him having a little more enthusiasm and put him off totally of Sufism altogether. Because he said,"I can't force myself to have enthusiasm when I don't have it". So our method is much more subtle than fixing things. 

And of course I can see that motto 'stay with it'. That is, it's true that the Universe has a faculty of self organizing itself if you don't intervene. But at a certain point one has to take over. Take over, that is customize that faculty of the Universe to self organize itself in order to enhance the specific uniqueness of one's being. And that is the beauty of life, that everyone is totally different. And so for the Universe to self organize itself, its self organizing faculty needs to be customized by what we wish. 

And therefore the third question that I always ask people is. The first was, "What is the quality that you think you need in order to meet a situation?" That's figuring it out in your mind. The second one is, "What is the quality that is emerging inside you at present?" That is the self organizing faculty of the Universe. The third one is, "How do you wish to be?" So that's your freedom. 

So you're accompanying your friend on a landscape. And you say, "Look, you have a choice. There is a pass here, a mountain pass. If you go over that pass there is a lovely lake there. We could camp if you want. But of course it's up to you because it requires a lot of courage. And also there is a lot of unknown there. You could slip and fall and perhaps, maybe I'm more familiar than you are with rock climbing. I don't want to involve you in danger even though I could make it myself. But you have to decide." So you see how the training involves a real participation between a friend and the friend. Instead of saying, You've got to this or you've got to do that". 

So that the friend learns to take decisions and that makes take responsibility in the course of advancing. And what is much, what is really almost devastating is that your friend could decide on a path that is really absolutely catastrophic. And you can't say to him, "Don't do it". It's very serious. I mean Murshid says that. It happens all the time that people. And Murshid says it very clearly. He says people say, "I have a project. I want to do this". And Murshid remained silent. And they assumed that Murshid was giving his approval. And of course to Murshid they wouldn't question. But to me or to other people they might say, "You're silent but I would like to know. Do you approve of this project or not." And then you're on the spot now. And you know or at least you have apprehensions that it will misfire. And you don't want to give them negative feelings. And what is more they have to learn from experience. That is one of the most difficult situations you can find yourself in. For example somebody wants marriage and they ask you to marry them. And you have a responsibility in marrying them. But you can't, for God's sake, never say it. 

So those are some of the problems on the way. Now, so you have to encourage your friend's incentive and initiative and responsibility. But the only thing that you can do is to say, "Well, just try and figure it. Now you could figure it our with your mind". Like you'll find yourself faced with an option, like option a and option b. Like in your relationship with people for example. And you find yourself having an option between being with one person or another person. Your job or whatever. You have an option. Or training or whatever. And even there is a option in wanting, if you have the choice in developing the qualities that you want to develop in your person, then you have an option between. " I prefer this wazifa to that one". But what you can do is to invite your friend to a meditation in which you ask yourself, "If I choose option a, what are the qualities that I will develop? And what are the qualities that I will not develop if I follow option a? Or even what are the defects that I would develop, that would ensue? Now if I chose option b, then again what would the qualities, what would be the defects?", and so on. 

Now in order to do that , your friend has to know the language of the wasifas because that really gives the clue. Because as I said before, it's a language. It's a language, an idiom that is foreign to us. And consequently the words have different connotations to those familiar to the ones in one's familiar language. And so you are associating, it's not a thought, you are associating a realization with a word. The word acts as a trigger that awakens a realization. So you're used to looking at things from a certain angle. If you say Haqq, a different way of looking at things. If you say Ya Qadir or Ya wali or if you say Wahabo, each one represents a different kind of attunement. Now if it is true that there is no way that we can learn all these at the same time. Like if you study music, cello for example, then you can't take on all of a sudden Hyden's cello concerto and Elgers at the same time. And also work with Beethoven's Ghost Trio. You can't do it all together. So you learn one then the other. But eventually you have to know the whole repertoire. And the same with the training takes many years because you have to get familiar with all those qualities. And eventually when you have them, it's just like you have those different notes at the ends of your fingers. And you can play them whenever you feel that it's appropriate. 

So it's a process. And you have to let your friend know that hopefully you know about all those different qualities, how they work on you. So you can say for example, when I was working on Ya Qadir, I came across a lot of problems. I don't know why my guide gave that to me. I'm beginning to question my guide now. Because I got into a real ego trip. My guide thought that I was weak and therefore gave me Qadir to give me strength. But I didn't know how to develop strength. So what I did is I developed a lot of ego. I was on a power trip. So you don't want to make the mistake of your guides. We hope that the guides will do better as time goes on. So that's why we attach a lot of importance to the training of guides. Not prospective guides only, but guides that are already there. And that's why Madia is talking about consultant and peer groups and all that sort of set up because there is no end to learning. 

Now to come back to the metaphor, you are accompanying your friend in Nepal on an Everest expedition. There are other guides there. You are with your friend but there are other guides there. So you can always stop and say, "Look I have a problem here. I wish I knew how to help my friend. But you see my friend is choosing an option that I really feel is detrimental to him. It's very difficult for me because I can't tell him. So how can I, I need advice. It's really very difficult because I have to respect his freedom. And it's his choice. But then forewarned is forearmed". So there are really times when one really needs counsel. 

Now of course, that, what you need to do of course to help your friend see the consequence of his/her decisions, now I'm not speaking about scenes but scenarios. So the situation in which your friend is in his/her daily life, is right there. While you're speaking about it, it's right there. It's not behind you. You are working with it. And so in his mind or her mind, he/she is addicted... (Tape Turns) "How can I change? How can I free myself from this constraining situation that is detrimental to my being?" And making all kinds of plans without taking into considerations what are the repercussions to this change of plans, like a divorce or whatever. You fall right back into the frying pan again in your next marriage. So it's not an answer to just change the circumstances in your life. I see some reflections there in people. That's not the answer. 

So that's the way that you friend is looking at things. And the reason is because, well maybe this is an assumption. Maybe your friend sees more than you do. That's a presumptive to think that one can help another person if one knows less about their problems than the person themselves. And it happens a lot. It's like the blind helping people can see. It's even worse than the blind guiding the blind. So anyway, the only way in which you can be of any use to your friend is that your consciousness is able to see a perspective which your friend doesn't see. And you can't, he or she has not yet gained the skills or the ability to see this or that perspective. And it's no use saying this is the way it looks. Because you know the story of the people who are in chains in the cave of Plato. Somebody said to them, "'h but he grass is green and the sky is blue". And they said,"I don't know what you mean". "Well then come out, we'll cut the chains and you can see." And they cut the chains. And they still can't see. They are blinded by the light. So you have to get them used to the blinding light. They are not used to it. 

So you have to tutor your friend into levels of consciousness other than the common place one. And it's clear to me that as long as one remains caught up in the common place point of view, "How do you feel", reacting to people, there is no way way out. It's what Buddha calls the samsaric wheel. So now you are, you see something that your friend can't see. But there is such a thing as the mirroring effect. So that somehow that person is able to see, first of all a person is able to see him/herself through that mirror that you are. So you see in that person something that they do not see of themselves. And so you are revealing to them something about themselves that they do not believe because they are used to their self image in which they are entrapped. And so of course it's quite a struggle to get them to believe. 

So ultimately, it's true that the ultimate issue is faith. But it's faith and not belief because it's written in the Bible or whatever. But it's like a conviction that you come to because you've seen it. But if you haven't seen it, then it somehow by the reflection of the soul of the teacher, you're able to see it. In a flash maybe then you forget it, so on so forth. Then find it again. 

So what you have to do is to meditate, let's say highlight in your mind the qualities that this person would develop if he/she were to choose option A instead of option B. And the fact is that this person in a high state through communing with you, or communing with your attunement so that person is beginning to , in that high state that person says, "I choose option A". Then they fall back into their ordinary consciousness and say, "Well it's a pity because if I follow option A, there are those things about option B that I would have to sacrifice. So maybe I'll follow option B." And you loose all the possibilities that would have been there if you had followed option A. 

So the wasifas are a way of training yourself in what are the issues enacted behind the drama of life. It is a way of thinking. We could illustrate it. Somebody comes into the room. And you say,"This is such a peaceful person. It's wonderful to see such a peaceful person". But the realized being Sufi would say," Isn't it wonderful to see divine peace coming through this person". So you give priority to the quality that is coming through. So you get used to these qualities. And you see these qualities in people, you conversations with people. If you're familiar with the language of the wasaif, and you're talking with these people. And you see them coming through in the thoughts of the people. 

So to follow up my references to what Himayat was saying, is that it is true that the Universe the ability to self organize itself. But there are levels of this functioning. So there is a level of maybe physical level, ad hoc level, we call nazut. Things self organize themselves. But remember what I've been saying. Perhaps some of you were not there the first part of these ten days when I was talking about this extra-samsaric level that Buddhism talks about. I don't like, I think a lot of people have a problem with the word extra. A more correct word would be parisamsaric. But that's a word of Doctor Groff. It's not prior to or whatever. But pari, around, or let's say like the way that the earth still turns around itself. But it does turn around itself. So it's another power that is added to you samsaric, circular, let's say repetitive recycling matrix. And that will lure you, open up another dimension of your being that will self organize other qualities of your being that are other than just recycling you. Because otherwise there is no evolution. You see there is all the difference between the plant that keeps on recycling itself, like it becomes a plant and then a seed and then a plant and so on. That's the samsaric thing. So that's the you know ten thousand monkeys is no more than twenty monkeys. It's just recycling all the time. So it gets lost. But evolution, then you're bringing in other factors. 

So it's longing for those unknown dimensions that we intuit in ourselves and we like characterize by the celestial spheres or the celestial in us. That longing that Pir o Murshid calls the unattainable that is going to lift us from the constraint of our repetitive nature. You know, like you're caught in a circle. Like you're reacting to situations and then they react to you. They are the kind of thing that causes wars. 

That is something so you see, well I said that the other day when I was referring to the zikre. You feel a rebirthing that is taking place in yourself. But that rebirthing could just involve a repetition of what you were in a different way, or it could involve a further evolutionary step which would require you to have some sense of another inheritance to your human inheritance. And that's the reason that St. Francis said, "I have another father". He didn't say, "You're not my father". He said, "I have another father". So it is really a matter of that word, warif, inheritance. 

It's a matter of one's identity. And that's the only way you can help your friend. Actually it's the formula of the great maharishi in India, "Who am I?". The essence of meditation is discovering who you are. That is all those dimensions of your being which Beethoven was availing himself of in that great pool of resources of his being. And out of which came this wonderful melody which would never come into being if he had simply reacted. "Pa pum pum", then he would have, you know that's reacting. But then he did exactly the contrary, "hum hum hum hum". Then out of that peaceful and further, and more and more elements. Now I think that peaceful state is what Hindus mean by vairagya, detachment. So it's true, as Pir o Murshid said, that at first you need to put some kind of shield around you so you won't be wounded any more. So that people can't get at you. Like that lady who has been beaten in the South, who said, "You can do what you like with my body, you can't tough my soul", a kind of detachment. 

And then love for yourself in that detachment. Love for yourself. That's what Murshid says. When you think of love, you always think of loving another person. But then we can't love another person unless we really love ourselves. In fact what we are loving in the other person is really what we love in ourselves. And that other person helps us to discover who we are, who is better able to manage what we are than ourselves. So it's a matter of reflection. It's purely a matter of discovering our identity, as I say. And then of course there is the vertical love of God which is, as Rabia was saying, that's a different kind of love. Well It's another expression of that same love. But as Pir o Murshid says, now I'm ending here because I know I'm getting a little bit over time, but it's very important to know these words of Murshid, when he talked about the between the difference between indifference and interest. He said, "Everything that is acquired in life is through interest". But of course the object of your interest limits your power. So if your objective is not for your personal gain but is for service, then your power is infinite. 

And so you see how if you have a objective in view, then the qualities that you're going to develop are related to your adaptation to the environment. But if your objective is not to adapt yourself to the environment, and not even to become what you are, but to be part of the whole marvel of creation, then, of course, that beautiful melody will arise, I'm mixing metaphors, I know, in Beethoven. Our  of that piece came the power of nostalgia, such nostalgia, that melody. It's one of the most beautiful melodies that Beethoven ever wrote. You see it would never have happened if he had just reacted. 'n the other hand if it had not been for that situation, it would never have arisen either. So that that situation was a catalyst. So you tell your friend that that stinging nettle was really helpful in order to release qualities that would otherwise remained dormant. So let us work on our distress with open arms and say, "The best thing that could have ever happened to you". Bless you. Tape ends.

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 01

Date: Thursday, 24-'ct-96 06:56 PM

From: Joel L. \ CompuServe: (74103,1500) To: Maabud Warner \ CompuServe: (75166.1770)

Subject: ef

Mureeds Retreat  Abode of the Message August 96

Tape 1

...practises are, in my estimation, the practises of light. And, I advise you to do them in the early morning, as we are doing it now, possibly before dawn, before sunrise.

So, I would like you to try and remember the sequence of the practises. Simply start by being aware of the light emitted by your eyes, or just think that your eyes are like the headlamps of a car. And, put all your strength, all of your attention in those two beams of light. 

And, what you could do is to imagine that those beams of light are blue, but within those blue beams of light, there is a violet light that passes through the flow of the light.

Now, as you inhale, you may think that there is a lot of light in your brain, which is threaded down through the optical nerves, into your retina, and then, shunted out into outer space.

Now, turn your eyeballs upwards, as you inhale, and imagine that light descends vertically, impinges upon the fontanel at the top of your head, and then is deflected forward through your eyes.

And now, a third step. Imagine that, as you are going to hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling, think that you are, identify with being pure luminous intelligence. And then as you hold your breath, it is the light of intelligence is, how can I say, is investing the light that descends from above through the fontanel, into your brain.Concentrate particularity on the pituitary gland, and then as you exhale, the light is radiated forward, bifocates into two beams, and radiates forward through your eyes.

This is what is meant in the Koran by, "A light upon a light." The light of intelligence which, how can I say, sparks the physical light that you radiate through your eyes.

So, that means that you develop a lot of insight. In fact, these are the practises that leads towards illumination, not just awakening, but illumination. Awakening insight and then illumination. The way that insight is translated into light, even physical light.

A sense of having a deep perspicacity, looking into the meaning of all things, the light of intelligence. And, the violet light will give you a sense of penetration, penetrating light that x-rays all things. You see that which transpires through that which appears.

Now, what you could do is, at some point while you exhale, I would say at the end of your exhaling, open your eyes slightly, and see if you can maintain your concentration on the beam of light. And then, close them again, because the evidence of the senses is going to force your eyes into focus, and you will begin ton see the objects. If you concentrate on the beams of light then the objects in front of your eyes are blurred.

So, at first, then later on, you are able to manage to grasp that which transpires behind that which appears. At first it seems just like a blur.

And then, if you concentrate your glance on a flower, for example, or the face of a person, or a crystal, or whatever. And then, you will begin to see, like the celestial face of the flower, or the celestial face of the person, or the celestial configuration of the crystal.

'k, now we are going to do the practises that lead up to this. What we did now was the culmination. But, these are practises that lead up to it.

Now, if you identify with you body, then you know how you feel when you sun bathe, automatically, without knowing it, you open up the pores of you skin. Well, just imagine that you are absorbing the light of the environment. Even if it is not very bright, there is a lot of ultra violet light that one does not perceive. The light of the stars, the light of cosmic rays. So, the way to do it is to think that you are sitting on planet earth, that is whirling in space, and the sun is dawning above the horizon, or is going to dawn. And, the sun is only one of the, lots of stars in the galaxy, the Milky Way. And, the Milky Way is only just a very small fraction of the millions of galaxies in the Universe.

And so, the Universe is a world of light. And, behind the stars, and what you see is invisible light, an ocean of light. And, your body is a crystallization of that light, the planet is a crystallization of the light of the sun, just like a crystal. And, in turn, the crystal, having originated in light, now absorbs light. 

This is mind over body. The awareness of the light you are absorbing, that your body absorbs, is going to enhance the radiance of the cells of your body. For one thing, the cells of your body, in fact, the molecules and atoms within it. start giggling, and sparkling, and then they start dividing in a process called mitosis. So that, you are setting up a whole effervescence of the cells of the body, and this can be used as light therapy.

I want you to feel all that ebullient energy in the cells of your body. And what is more, the joy, the ecstasy of the cells of you body.

And consequently, as you exhale now, you are radiating much more light than before, just by the sheer fact of becoming aware, and not only aware of the whole process of absorbing light, but aware of the ecstasy of the cells of your body, the ecstasy of light. So, just imagine that you, the light that your body is surrounded by, a tremendous amount of light that is hurtling through space at 186,000 miles a second. And, bombarding the stars.

Now, this is happening all the time, but by the fact that you are aware of it, this activity is going to be enhanced by manyfold, I don't know how much, but maybe a thousand fold.

Now, the next step, instead of identifying with your body, you identify with your aura. Which, doesn't have a skin, and therefor, doesn't have a boundary. And, which keeps on alternating between contracting and expanding. In fact, your aura is like a vortex in the ocean of light. And, so it is really the light of the stars, in fact it is the light of the whole Universe that gets contracted, towards that axis, your spinal chord, and then radiates, expands and radiates, diffuses.

And so, consider that your aura is the template, or rather, the matrix in which your body is formed.

So, it is a reality prior to your birth, and therefor, now, thinking of the aura now, and not simply that dimension of the aura that we inhale, that we draw from the stars, but which has always been, prior to our birth. And, which has been pulsing long before we were born.

And so, that means that suddenly you discover that you are a being of light. And, that you have always been a body of light. And, that your body has accrued to you in the course of your descent through the spheres, and was originally, light. Like a crystal that absorbs light.

'k, now, a further step, We are going to hold our breath between inhaling and exhaling. And, when you hold your breath, you get in contact, or you touch upon what Dr David Boehm calls, "the implicate state of light", and Pir-o-Murshid calls, "the all pervading light". And, in fact the Sufis, Ib'n Arabi, for example, distinguish between radiant light, and this all pervading light. Because, radiant light always is, always broadcasts from a point in space, a source of light, like the sun, a star, a candle, electricity. But, all pervading light is the origin of radiant light, it is the state of light before it has been converged in a point in space. And therefor, it is light which is diffused, wave like, like radio waves. 

And so, you may think that, that what we think is the physical world is just a slice of a multiple universe, or is a perspective in a hologram. And so, the light of the all pervading light is like the light of the whole hologram, and only a very small cross section of it is perceived in the physical world. And, that is what we mean by radiant light. So, let us say that you are the transducer that is able to transform all pervading light into radiant light. 

So, you are drawing, let's say, the all pervading light from subliminal level of the universe, into the universe, just like Pir-o-Murshid says, "A sun is the way that the light of the universe is converged, and then afterwards, it is radiated." So, just think that as you inhale, you get into that diffused, all pervading light. It is not the physical light of the universe now. Scientists call it, "light field". And, now, you dwell into that subliminal light. And now, you awaken that light, it surfaces and it is radiated from your heart center.

So, when you inhale, concentrate on the solar plexis. Think of the solar plexis as a door, giving access into these subliminal worlds of light, and then as you exhale, concentrate on the heart center, that radiates light into the world. So now your aura does not simply boomerang the light of the stars, but is sending a fresh dispensation of light into the starry sky.

Now, you will find that it is easier to have a sense of this all pervading light if you do the practise of Shagall, or Yoni Mudra, In yoga it is called Yoni Mudra. Pir-o-Murshid describes it by saying that when consciousness which is generally turned outwards, finds an obstacle to its reaching out, then it turns within. So, one is, as Buddha says, one is placing sentinels at the doors of perception. It is more than sentinels, I think, because one is really blocking out the input from the outside. So one is doing something rather dramatic with ones consciousness. But, then turns within, and that is where you are able to sense this all pervading light, as you hold your breath.

So, perhaps you know the practise, but if you don't, you place the indexes of your fingers, well, you close your eyes of course, and where your eyelids meet the, let's say, the top of your cheeks, the recess in which your eyes are, the bone recess. So, you place the index, let's say, at the bottom of your eyeballs, between the eyeballs and the bone structure underneath them, and turn your eyeball upwards, so you don't press on the retina, and the cornea. And, place the forth and fifth fingers on the lips. And, the two middle fingers of your hand on the nostrils, don't press them yet. Exhale through both nostrils. Now, press you left finger, and inhale through the right nostril. Hold your breath. Exhale through the right nostril. Now, you can place your thumbs on your ears, and only do three breaths, and then, take your hands away. Always through the right nostril, out through the right nostril.

And, when you inhale, keep on thinking that you are immersed into that subliminal ocean of light, behind the perceived ocean of light, which is called the existential world. But, you cannot be the witness, that is why I say you are immersed in it. You cannot perceive it. In fact, you are dissolved in it, as in the void. And, it is only, as you exhale that, now you concentrate on the heart center, that you yourself, radiate light. So, you are a bridge between the visible and the invisible.

Now, you could just calibrate your aura. Not just the physical aura, but the aura at all levels. First of all, perhaps you are familiar with this concentration on the color red, so that your whole aura is red. And in fact, that is what happens. Mind over body, if you represent the color red, the frequencies of your aura will correspond to the frequencies in the spectrum that are perceived as red. And now, concentrate on the bottom of your spine, (muladhara) chakra. 

Now then, the color terra cotta, like for example, a flower pot, or even a little more bright, like carmine. The whole aura. And then, concentrate on the second chakra. Now, concentrate on the color orange, like beautiful madeira orange that you see in the dawn for example, or sunset. And, your whole aura. And, now, a particular pin point, your solar plexis, that is Incandescent, Now concentrate on green, like the green of vegetation, or the green of emerald in the throat center. And, then light blue in the eyes, rather, between the eyebrows there is a chakra, a secondary chakra that is skylight blue. And then, concentrate on the color violet. If you could just try to pinpoint where your pituitary gland is, it's in, you know the spine impinges upon your skull.   side 2

At the back you have the atlas, and so, from looking at it, you can perceive it as, if you think there is cartilage, your palate is cartilage, and then behind the cartilage is a place where there is a soft, there is no more cartilage, there is soft skin. And, behind that, a little bit higher up, that is where the pituitary is, above the medulla oblongata, and the hypothalamus. 

 So, that's what the yogis do, concentrate on that point, and imagine it to be violet. And then, the fontanel at the top of the head. You know, the skull is made up of three bone structures, and there is a kind of, not quite a split, but something like that, so that is where the three meet, that's where the fontanel is, very important point. That's where we imagine the light descending. So, that is imagining a colorless light, like a diamond, and then, above it, just like a rainbow. In a diamond, you have hues of all different colors, blue, and violet, and red, and orange, and yellow.

'k, so you can do this in your daily meditations. You can do this, you think of each one of these colors, and eventually, in one sweep of your inhaling, you pass, and review each of your chakras. And then you hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upwards. Curl your tongue, and press it against your palate. And now, as you hold your breath, identify yourself with luminous intelligence. So then, as you exhale, then the light of intelligence is going to enhance the effulgence of your aura. All those colors, intertwined, like a rainbow. Not like a rainbow, because a rainbow, you see all the different areas, the different zones, whereas here, it is all mixed up. Or at least, there is some overlap.

'k, I have to pass, and review rather fast those different stages. I hope that you remember them now. Having done this, we are going to do some further practises. Perhaps you have heard of the practises of Hildegard of Bingen, the woman mystic, the german woman mystic. Well, let's try and do this. She said, "I was concentrating on confronting a very bright light, so that I was just flooded with light, flooded with light, and overwhelmed by it. And then, at some point, that world of light seemed to open up into another world of light, even brighter, just like a gate that opens up into another world. Even more shattering, overwhelming, bewildering, blinding. And in turn, that world of light opened up into a still further one. And, so on.

So, just think that there are worlds of light, and you can pass from one to the other. The heavenly spheres, instead of thinking just one sphere, several spheres. Now, how can one get any sense by what one means by these different levels of light. We are going to do a practice, a Buddhist practise called Kasina.

Supposing that you made a disc, painted it on cardboard, painted it red, and you are looking at it for a long time. And then, i guess, that at some point, you would be seeing a green disc in your, how can I say it, it's a kind of optical illusion, or what they call a reflex image. Well, you don't have to cut a piece of cardboard out, you can imagine a red disc now, and concentrate very intensely upon it, and you see that the green is right there. You don't have to concentrate on it. Please don't concentrate on a green disc. It's got to just flash upon the screen of your mind automatically.

Maybe, I didn't have to tell you this, because then you are imagining a green disc. You must not imagine a green disc, keep on imagining a red disc. Now, I find that the best way to do this is to concentrate on the red disc as you exhale, and then, as you inhale, just let this green reflex flash upon your consciousness.

'k, now of course, this is something that you can do in your leisure, at home, in your practises. Now, if you, you know that if you prolong your exhaling, you would be able to inhale longer. So, prolong your exhaling, imagine the red. It doesn't have to be a red disc, you could just imagine just the red light.

As you inhale, you have the impression of the green, and keep on inhaling, and orange is going to flash into your conscious mind, conscious imagination. Now, do it again, back to the red, (pause) Now the green, as you inhale, (pause) And, the orange, And, you have the violet. If you inhale long enough, you could, what I do is I interrupt my inhaling just for a split second, and then, continue inhaling, and then again, interrupt it, and then flash one color after another.

Now, there is no use imagining those colors, you have to just be very passive. 'k, now this was just a preparation. The next step is that as you exhale, you just imagine a colorless light, it doesn't have to be a disc, could be a diamond, or a crystal, the light of a crystal. And now, as you inhale, you are going to pass from one reflex to the next, of colorless light.

Now, imagine that each of these modes of light are the fabric of a further sphere of light, and so, your consciousness is reaching beyond the existential sphere, being hoisted from one sphere to the other, in what Buddha calls, "beyond existence". And, or course, there is no end to these spheres. It's not like you reach a sphere, and then, that's the end of it. No, but, when, after inhaling, hold your breath, and suddenly you make a quantum leap into identifying with the light of intelligence. The clear light of bliss. The Tibetans call it, the clear light of bliss.

And now, as you exhale, just think that you are reliving what you did originally, your descent through the spheres. And, really the descent through the spheres is not displacing yourself in space, but passing from one perspective to another, until you reach into the perspective of the physical world. It is the same reality, but it is seen as one vantage point and then another, and so on. It is not like, the heavenly spheres are up there some where. It is all one reality. Different vantage points. Different perspectives. Now, once you have done this, then next step is to try and have a sense of the countenance behind your face, because this will give you a clue of what one means by the heavenly spheres. So, there are all these levels.

So, a pragmatic method would be to imagine that behind the features of your face, the structure, the muscles of your face, there is a countenance that comes through, for example, if you smile. or if you have a distressed face, or then, there is a strenuous expression on your face, trying to achieve something that is very challenging, and so on. So, you see that the expression, not only, the expression of your face does alter the configuration of the muscles. But now, if you could just concentrate on the expression, and consider the configuration of the muscles as an after effect, as a secondary effect. And, identify with the expression. Of course, you see that it changes from one moment to the other, according to your attunement, and according to your thoughts. However, there is some perenity behind, there is some continuity behind those changes.

Now, as regards to emotions that are in some way, connected with our relationship with the physical world. For example, one is angry, or one is upset, one is happy, or whatever, for some circumstantial reason. But, there are levels of emotion, for example, listening to beautiful music. In fact, of course, there is a lot of difference between the music of Brahms, for example, where there is a lot of human emotion, and the B minor mass of Bach, or then Tavener, or Victoria, or then Gregorian chant. There is all different levels there, there are levels of emotion, and those levels, the higher levels, the rarefied levels, will bespeak of higher spheres of light. Have their correspondence with spheres of light.

So, you have a countenance at each one of these levels. So, at the start, it is that which transpires behind that which appears. But, as you move up the levels, in fact the only way to move from one level to another, there are visualizations, yes, of reflex, of the reflex of light, that is a help, but it is your attunement that is going to hoist your consciousness from one level to another. So, you'll have to exalt in heavenly emotions if you want to have a sense of the countenance of your celestial face. And, it means reversing the process of maturation that has taken place in our lives, by our desire to adapt ourselves to the challenge of the environment, and maybe emulate other people, and so on. And so, there has been a defilement, and a maturation at the same time. Spill over with the environment, and a loss of being in touch with one's celestial nature. So, one needs to reverse that, and consequently return to the state of a baby, and possibly an embryo.

The immaculate state of innocence. Being defenseless, without guile. Some people might even think that it is being naive, I would say being ingenue rather than being naive. It could be wise at the same time, and innocent. As Christ said, "You have to become like a child to have access to the heavens."

So, that one can reverse the defilement like the voice of Caruso retrieved in the bad recordings of the time, by reversing the distortion.

And then, you realize that, that countenance is still there, but buried under a bushel as one might say, and can be retrieved, and it will reveal to you, who you really are. When people say "I want to know who I am", It's not at all what they think they are, the self image.

Now, one cannot achieve this with one's will, but like the five wise virgins, one can prepare oneself for it. But, it is revealed, rather than acquired. What you can do is create favorable circumstances so that this revelation can come through. The Sufis would say, "God reveals him/herself to you, as the very essence of yourself." The same image in which God discovers him/herself is the image in which God reveals him/herself to you.

end 

Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 02

Tape 2

Welcome to this wonderful place, the Abode, the home of the Message. Your Spiritual home, and also, my Spiritual home, in which I feel absolutely at home.

It's an ideal place for a retreat, not many people, and consequently, we are going to be able to have a more intense gathering, a sharing. Our  objectives in the procedure of the retreat have evolved in the course of the years, in order to improve the process that we are going through.

At the outset, as you probable know, I lived in the caves in the Himalayas, and I did retreats in Bogdaya, next to the Bodhi tress, opposite the Bodhi tree, and also, in (Agmere) as a dervish, and Iran. And so, the kind of methods that we were following were those that lead to a state of other worldliness. A wonderful experience of being alienated from the world, and finding one's real deeper being, and also one's high being. 

To do this the way it should to be done, one would need to make a retreat for at least forty days, and follow that up by living a very, rather aloof life, rather remote. Aloof of the crowds. Because it has been found that if one pursues this kind of objectives, then one becomes other worldly, and unadapted to the world. 

The reason is become the teaching in the east, whether it is the teaching of the Sanyasins, or the Buddhist monks, is intended for people who are living as ascetics. And, we are introducing that in the western world amongst people who have responsibilities in their lives. And so consequently, we had to devise methods which makes us able to be, as Christ said, "In the world, but not of the world." 

So, it is much more challenging than living as an ascetic, but it corresponds to the progress in the evolution of people in humanity, and the new horizon toward which we re moving in our time. 

And so, this retreat is a wonderful opportunity to make an experiment in the ways and means of being able to achieve this objective.

So, we shall be sharing in a process, a very deep process, a very intense process. It will require your participation, so it can't be just me telling you what to do. But, you can trigger off emotions, attunement, thoughts, which then you follow up in your own meditating. You know, that if you want to fly an airplane, at some point, your instructor has to give you the stick, and you have got to be in charge. So, that is the only way to do a retreat.

Therefor, the retreat will be divided into instruction, on one hand, and then going out on your own, in nature, and seeing how, in which way you can adapt these instructions to the idiosyncrasies of your being, because each one of us is different. Therefor what is good for one person is not necessarily good for another. But, in a group, we have to give instructions for the whole group.

Consequently, our program is going to be structured in such a way that you will have instructions given by me, and then you will go off on your own. First of all, we have the early morning meditations, 6:30, that I give every morning. 6:30-7:30. And then, 9:00-10:00, I will be introducing perspectives, let's say, over all perspectives in a sequence of states which underline the process that we are gong through. And then, Aziza, although she won't be here today, will be concretizing, bringing them much more into focus, giving you exactly practises to do, she will translate them in terms of the language of wazifas, which is actually not the right word, it really is sifat, which means qualities, attributes. 

So, it is a very extraordinary method used, also by the Hindus, but not by the Sufis. It's, one is associating, not just an ordinary thought, but more like an attunement, or a realization with a word. And finally, that word serves as a trigger to awaken that particular attunement. And, you are building it up in your unconscious, and eventually, you can always fall back on it in your everyday situations. 

You are training the unconscious.

A further reason for the practise of the wazifa, is that while in yoga, for example, the objective is samadhi, (asamfragence) samadhi, which is awakening beyond life, our objective is to awaken in life. And, consequently, what that means is that our personality is important. While if you awaken beyond life, your personality is just a support system that can be discarded, just like your body.

So, it is a different dynamic, and so it is very wonderful to see how this works in practise. You see, up to the present, we have been giving the answers without asking the questions. Now, we are considering first, what are our problems, and secondly, what are the solutions, if at all, that we offer. And, we must not assume that we have all of the answers. 

But, it is true that some of the methods that we are using are very different from those of psychotherapists. Or, let us say, that there is an overlap. There are a lot of psychotherapists that are interested in the methods that we are using, and we need to know something about the methods that they are using. 

Alright, I'm giving the instructions, 9:00-10:00. You may have seen a copy of the schedule. I take the liberty on this first day to alter slightly, and then we will keep to the way that I am suggesting it, and that is that Aziza will continue after my hour. That is from 10:00-10:30 instead of 11:00. 

And then, you go off on your own form 10:30-11:30. And then, Aziza will come back, and guide you again between 11:30-12:00. So, you will have one hour to go off in nature somewhere, and do your practises on your own. The reason for this change is because I find that there are a few representatives here, and I think that this is a wonderful opportunity to give particular instructions to the representatives as to what our methods are, and how they work. The representatives are the engineer. If you are using a car, you don't have to know all about the mechanics of the car, if a mechanic is about, but the engineer needs to know how it works. So, the representative needs to know what is behind the whole mechanism. 

So, then we have a special meeting for representatives, with Aziza, with Prajapati, and Saraswati, and I hope Yaqin. 'h! you are there! And, now, there is a problem of course, and that is, well let's say that in general, you see in order for a retreat to be a really very deep experience, transforming experience, you need to be on silence. It does something to you. The reason is, is because we are used to using words in terms of words, of our language. And, even if we are not speaking, we're thinking, we are so used to speaking that we thinking in terms of language which limits our thinking to what is called the explicate state. To explain what we imply. 

Now, if you are on silence, you don't have to do that. And so your thinking starts getting much deeper into what you imply, rather than what you, and you don't try to explain even to your mind what you imply.

And so, it makes all the difference. 'n the other hand, as I say, we are thinking of improving our format, and it is true in a retreat, one gets very isolated, and this is a group retreat where we are all sharing. And consequently, I should like to suggest an experiment, and that would be to maintain silence throughout the day, starting in the morning as you wake up, until supper. So that in the evening, we have an opportunity to share, to bond, to exchange. And, I find that the concentration of people tends to dwindle in the evening. And so, it is very difficult to keep on meditating in the evening. I mean I have done it myself, but I know what that means. But, I wouldn't like to put you through the kind of stringent retreat as I have done myself. In fact, a lot of people would be totally deranged by them by them. They were so, so very strict and intense.

So, it is better to do whatever you are doing very intensely, and then also have this opportunity of sharing heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul with wonderful people. Because, we are all part of a growing family, which is becoming more and more tightly woven in the course of the years. 

So, I hope that you agree to that, but if you are not comfortable with that, this is your last chance of telling me, because in a few minutes we will be making a vow of silence. (laughter) 

'k, hands up, those who agree with that plan. Those who don't agree. Those who would like to stay on silence all the time, hands up. Well, of course you can. Except that it will be disturbing for you during your meals to hear people talking. In fact, there is an area in the dining room which was originally intended for silence as a matter of fact. So, you have your choice because, the way of the Sufi is the way of spiritual liberty. (Pir laughs)

Alright, now there is however, an exception that confirms the rule, because the sharing of representatives could not take place if the representatives can't speak. Because, it is not like a class where there is one instructor, but we are really sharing our experience in guiding. In fact, representatives are guides. So, a coordinator is somebody who organizes a class, but a representative is somebody who is giving practises to pupils, and therefor supervising their spiritual progress, And therefor, we have found in the course of the years that it requires a tremendous amount of know how. to know how to guide a person in their spiritual quest. And so, we are trying to improve our procedure, and we are welcoming all the feedback from those who are doing this already, have some experience of it.

So that is a little bit difficult, It means that, there are representatives who would be attending that meeting at 10.30, It will be in the Sanctuary, which has been cleaned up, and renovated, I would like to see it again now. Always for a more intimate group. 

Representatives, that means somebody who has been appointed as a representative in the Sufi order, and who is actually active in guiding, carrying mureeds. I understand that this is a retreat for mureeds, and therefor, I don't have to give all the explanations I have to give when talking to people who are coming for the first time, and who are not acquainted with our methods. 

 Now of course, if there is anything that is not clear in what I say, the feedback that I get is that I speak way above the heads of most people, is that you can ask questions to Aziza, in writing if you are on silence, in writing. 

Now, the way to be on silence is to, in a group, is to greet people like ships in the night. Passing in the night, they flash to each other. So, you don't say, "Hello, how do you do? It is so nice to see you again." But, you just smile. It is a lovely way of recognizing each other instead of passing by as though you were ghost. And, I know that it is awkward not to be able to speak. For example, "Shut the door, there is a draft coming in." Or, "Please pass the salt." Or, "Excuse me", or whatever, there are some situations in which one needs to communicate. So, you have got to keep a little notebook with you, be able to tear off a piece of paper. And, in general, I would advise you to have a notebook with you, because it will be very difficult to remember all of the practises that we are doing, and we get back into America again, then you will find that you will need to, you will want to some of the practises that you did before, and you forgot what the instructions were. And, those instructions are very specific, and therefor it wouldn't be good if you did them differently, because there is a lot of know how behind the practises that we are giving.

Now, it is of course, very alluring, let's say, to go and get far away in the woods, especially go uphill here, it's fantastic up there. But, I must say that you can get entangled with the brambles, and lose your clothes, and if you survive at all, you might have to extricate yourself from those brambles. It's quite a feat to be able to get back to normal again, so be careful about that. Don't go anywhere where you feel that it was difficult, because it might be even more difficult to come back.

And the other thing is of course, I don't want people to lose themselves in samadhi, and not get themselves back. So, we are encouraging a very high state, but at the same time, we don't want people to be so spaced out that they have lost their human touch. 

And another thing that does happen, has happened, and therefor I say it, is very disturbing, but I have heard now of two cases, or three cases. It wasn't mureeds, however, it was an intense retreat. We were all in silence, and very peaceful, and all of a sudden somebody started screeching. Now, that is very disturbing, to all those who are on retreat, and it is particularly disturbing to me who get the blame for it. So, if you feel like screaming, please just go as far away as you can, and then you can start screaming there, and somebody will come, and wonder what on earth is the matter with you. 

There are some psychotherapists here, so you can always call upon them to help you, because there is no doubt about it, if one is on retreat, one's problems surface with very great intensity. They really strike you very intensely, because normally, one doesn't have time to think about one's problems, one is so busy in life. And here, all of a sudden, you are sitting there, you are not used to meditating, you can't control your thoughts, and the reality of the nitty gritty of the everyday life strikes you strongly, and sometimes it is very difficult to find peace in that situation. You are struggling with your thoughts which have become obsessive.

Now, that is one of the reasons why, I think that we can, we have the expertise to help people in their spiritual dimension, when it comes to the purely psychological factors. Then I do think that psychotherapists have, they are experts in this matter, and I don't think that we should play the apprentice sorcerer in the act of pseudo psychotherapist when we don't know those methods. And therefor, I don't know. Are there any psychotherapists here? Yes,... that's good. I hope don't mink if people will call upon you in case. Perhaps you could stand up there at the back, because people can't see you. I don't know who you are. The two there. Yes,... that's right.

What I am interested in is of course, to compare notes with the psychotherapists, and see exactly where there is an overlap, and what contribution we spiritualists have to psychotherapy. That is very important, interesting interface.

Now, the methods that I am using now, I am always taking into consideration what your problems might be. In the past I used to say, do not think of your problems when you are on retreat, forget it, and you are just being on a retreat, and hopefully, in the course of the retreat, you will develop an insight which will help you to understand, look at your problems in a new light.

Now, I would say, that would be like opening one drawer, and closing it, and opening another. And also, not recognizing something that is very real. In trying to fight your thoughts and emotions with your will, and then you are always, you are fighting a losing battle. So, what I think is that, what your, actually you problems are the themes of meditations. But, instead of imagining things, that's the reality. But, what we are doing, is to learn how to look at your problems in a different perspective to the commonplace one. It is the same problem, but looked at from a different perspective, and then it looks different. And, if you want to know what I mean by that, if you don't understand what I mean by that, well, for example, Dr David Boehm suggested an experiment. You have an aquarium, and then with fish in it, and then two cine cameras on either side, and then you project both of those films, and you see that they are different, and yet they are related. You see, so, two perspectives on the same reality. You can have more perspectives on the same reality. That is what we are going to do.

Now I agree, that our human problems are not our only concern. That our spiritual evolution is much more important really, than our problems. Everyone has problems, but what we mean by the spiritual way is to enhance dimensions and values in ourselves which are virtual, which are latent, and awaken them, and of course, ultimately, it is what one calls, "awakening", and "illumination".

Now, those are two words, "awakening" and "illumination" which could very well lend themselves to the fantasy of one's interpretation, and as a matter of fact, could very well become cliches. Like, "Well, I want illumination," One says that, but one doesn't know what that means. One says awakening, or one says God, but one doesn't know what that means. So, I have become very careful about the use of words, because one is assuming things without really experiencing them. So, you notice that the accent of our work is on experience, rather than a mind trip.

However, experience is interpreted by our minds, and distorted by our interpretation of it, and consequently, we relive our interpretation of our experience, rather than our experience. And consequently, there is a whole area thee that we need to clean up in our minds, and that is, and one of the first steps in samadhi, sarvitarka samadhi, consists in realizing how your personal bias distorts your experience. And, if doesn't distort it, at least it limits it. For example, "How do I feel? I feel warm, I feel cold, I feel angry." That is very simplistic, that's the person. Everybody knows, I mean, you know, perhaps, something to say, realizing that one is cold. But, I don't call that spirituality.

What we are doing is to awaken other perspectives in the personal perspective. I would like to distinguish cosmic perspectives, or a cosmic perspective instead of the personal perspective. Or then, turning within. That's another kind of perspective, looking at things from within. Or then, transcendental perspective. That is reaching, well awakening higher, well, we call it higher, one has to be careful of the word higher, but let's say, transcendental levels of our consciousness, as Buddha says, for example, "Beyond existence", or, Ib'n Arabi, "The world of possibilities". And, then self transcendence, that is looking at yourself from, with a, as a kind of overview, which in Buddhism is called, (jhanana darshana). And the Sufis call, Muhassabi, the examination of conscience, So, the different perspectives, and we will be learning to distinguish these different perspectives, and see how they effect our understanding of our lives, and also, our self image, our representation of ourselves.

And lastly, I think we have to say that, there are a lot of faculties in our being that are dormant. And, what we aim at in our work, is we awaken those dormant faculties. And, some of those faculties, do involve the body. In fact, maybe all of them do. There is such a thing as mind over body. I mentioned this morning. So for example, if you represent to yourself your aura with your imagination, it will enhance the radiance of your aura, and that's been demonstrated in laboratories, so that is not just a fantasy, it really does happen. That is what we call "biofeedback'. 

Dr David Boehm, you know, he was certainly one of the greatest physicists of the last decades, and the last years of his life, he became a philosopher, or a psychologist. Anyway, he was translating his theories into thinking how it applies to our thinking, in that wonderful book called, Unfurling Meaning. And, he showed that a change of realization, let's say, when you have grasped something that you hadn't seen before, that you hadn't grasped before, is going to change the circuits in your brain, the physical circuits in your brain. And, a thought that is disturbing, is going to cause confused lines of communication within the circuits of your brain. 

So, of course that is one way of trying to heal that distorted mechanism, that has set up into our very physical body. And, that is by correcting your thinking. So, that is, in a sense, you could say that meditation is learning how to think. (Pir laughs) I don't want to limit it to that, but that is one of the aspects of meditation. Correct faulty thinking. 

The other is, of course, awakening emotions that are longing to manifest, and which are withheld, are blocked because of one's concern about adapting oneself to the environment. There is a kind of levelling to the lowest level in one's, in the effect of the, our society upon ourselves. Especially now where we are living in a decadent world. And so, this is the other way around. It's being able to discover who one is, irrespective of one's concern about adapting oneself to the environment. 

And, when I say who one is, I don't mean just one's personality, I mean all the levels of one's being.

Now, as I say, this corresponds to, actually, I would go further than what David Boehm said, and I would say that, our thinking doesn't just involve the circuits in the brain, actually, it is not just circuits, because the brain works holistically. But also, the whole balance of the endocrine glands, and even that very esoteric chemistry, which is the enzymes, not only the pancreas and the liver, but in the replication of the DNA. So, there is behind our physical body, there is a kind of esoteric chemistry. And, we can shift our identity with identifying ourselves with our physical body, and identify ourselves with that subtle reality behind the body, which the Hindus call, (tamatra). At the first step towards samadhi, it's called, sarvikara samadhi. And, that is so, in the course of this retreat, I will be saying, "Identify yourself with your subtle body," then I say sometimes, the electromagnetic field, or light field, or whatever. It is difficult to be very clear about what exactly one means by it, but that's what I mean. In fact, this is the template in which our body is formed. That is again something that has been demonstrated scientifically, broken bones for example, place a magnetic coil, and it helps the growth of the bone. The electromagnetic template which structures the cells of the body.

So, you can think that it is not just electromagnetic, but there is a whole subtle reality which we call the etheric body, and which is really much more you than your physical body. Your physical body is secondary, is the after effect of the matrix of your being. I use the word matrix, instead of template, because a template is static, and a matrix is dynamic. 

Now, if I may pursue this, but after this we will be doing practises. Buddhism, perhaps the key to Buddhism, which is actually really hidden, very few people understand this, is that, that matrix which the Buddhists call, the samsaric matrix of our being, keeps on reproducing itself. It is the wheel. It's like a plant, and then it becomes a seed, and then a plant again. It's recycling. Well, there is not much point to that. Well, opposed to that. Now, as opposed to that, there's evolution, mutation. And so, the Buddhists are talking about, or Buddha, I don't know if he used that word, extra samsaric, I would use the word peri samsaric matric. I don't know, maybe those are strange words for you, but, peri is a word, extra, I don't know, extra, one doesn't like that word very much. Peri is a word used by Dr Groff. Instead of using the "transnatal", he uses "perinatal", because "trans", always one imagines something higher. But, peri is like, of another dimension. So, let us say that what we are doing in our mediation, is learning how to shift our sense of identity from that matrix that keeps on recycling itself, and identifying ourselves with this peri samsaric matrix of our being that triggers off evolution. 

And, I think, this is exactly what Pir-o-Murshid means by, the divine inheritance. You know, when St Francis was arraigned before the judge by his father. And his father said, "Well, he owes me the clothes he wears." So, he took off his clothes, and he said, "I have another father." So, that's what he means, another father.

Now, these days, one would say, another parent.

So, these are words, and what we want to do is try and experience it. And, that's requires skills. So, you consider practises as skills, that have been forged in the course of the practise of millenniums of ascetics who have been working with this, and discover ways and means of bring about a change in our consciousness. And so, I would say that our purpose is not just awakening, because if you say awakening, you are talking about a different way of looking at things, a different perspective. As I said, like, the hologram, you can see it from one perspective or another, that's awakening. But, I would consider this as "transformation", than just awakening. That is a word that we are using a little more now asays than before. And, then the other one, the other word "illumination". I remember in a conversation, exchanging with mureeds, somebody said, "The purpose of my life is illumination". So, I said, "Yes, well can you tell me what it means?" And, it was obvious that it was a cliche, like illumination, a word. But, what does that mean.

And so, the wonderful thing is, of course, the way that, how can I say, the relationship between this change of perspective, which is awakening, looking at things differently. And then, what it does to your whole being by making you more luminous, and therefor radiant. So, that is what we were doing this morning.

So, you see that illumination goes together with awakening. You can't separate the two.

And the key of course is in that word, "luminous intelligence". Because, it is not the aura, but luminous intelligence. So, awakening luminous intelligence. That's the same word as the Tibetan Buddhists use, "the clear light of bliss". Again, as I say, I am using words, and I am very leery of the words, because we think we know what we mean, and it is just cliches.

That is what we did this morning. We were following methods which led us to a certain realization instead of just saying words. That is why a retreat is much more important than a camp, or lectures.

Now, this is really just an introduction to what we are going to do. There is one more point. That's to be found amongst the Tibetans. Well, really two points. Maybe more. It is what they call, "making one the states of realization corporeal", that is, so that one's realization affects one's bodiness, eventually ones body. But, in certainly that esoteric chemistry that I spoke about, which is as I say, the template of our body, so it affects our body eventually. They say that for example, I will give an example to be more precise. The Tibetans represent to themselves, sit there for hours, looking at a statue, Hercoola, for example. And, instead of identifying with their body, they identify with their subtle body, Well there are actually several bodies, but this is just an example, the subtle body, the etheric body, that what we talked about, to such an extent, that their subtle body begins to model itself according to that statue. And, when they are walking in the street, they think that they are that statue as they are walking. So this would be incorporating states of consciousness, and in fact, all the forms of the world are exactly that. They are the way that states of consciousness are translated into form. Our  face is an example of the way that our thinking has transformed, has expressed itself in form.

side 2

We don't do that because, we don't, that's, well, because idolatry. Well, it is very stereotyped, if you are just try to model yourself according to that statue, you are limited that statue. Whereas, we believe in freedom, and therefor each person is unique in their way. So, we don't want to model ourselves on a guru, for example, but find our way of being. So, the wazifas are the method whereby we can try to translate an attunement in terms of the very formation of those inner bodies. And so, the last thing that I would say, that according to the Tibetans. Well, I am sure that you know this, we exist at different levels. several levels, not just on the physical level, but on several levels. And, I don't want to give you, I don't want to close you in a system, so there is not point my describing the methods used, I mean the system of the Sufis. But, the important thing is for, these are really levels of energy. Matter is energy. And so, the subtle bodies are bodies of energy, and they get more and more fine, as you move upwards, and upwards is not the right term.

But, the interesting thing, is that for every level of energy, there is a mode of thinking. So, Tibetans say, the mind rides the wind. So, the wind is energy, and the mind is carried by the energy, just like Belafron was carried by Pegasus. So, if you identify with you body, you'll be thinking the way everybody thinks, the commonplace way thinking, there is nothing special about it. If you identify with your subtle body, then your thinking is different. And so, that is one of the things that we want to do is to experience how, in what way our thinking is different when we are thinking when we identify with our subtle body. 

In theory I can say, "well yes, we see things in their context." Or, I could say, "we can reconcile the irreconcilable." But then again, I am afraid of words, so I think that we need to experience it first, and then you will understand better what I mean.


The Tibetans then recognize three bodies. The gross body, corresponding to the gross mind which interprets experience, the subtle body, which is what we were talking about, the etheric body, that carries the subtle mind which is the creative mind which does not interpret experience, but projects ex milo out of nothing. It's a new way of looking at things that is not conditioned by experience. That's creativity. And, the third step, is the very subtle wind, which it will be rather simplistic to say that, that is our celestial body. Let's say that is as close as we can get. And then, how do angels think? What is the kind of thinking of that level? 

There is a wonderful saying of Shahabuddin Surwardi, of a Sufi teacher, twelfth century, who said, "The witness," well at that stage in your meditation, you discover that the witness in you is the angel.

Now, how would an angel feel walking about the streets of New York? I choose New York, it could be anywhere, Paris, or London, or whatever. But, what would that witness feel, a lot of grossness, and brutality, and ego, and ruthlessness. And in fact, the betrayal of a higher being, sacrilege. So, that being is judging things from the point of view of the sacred. The hurt in one's soul, because of betraying one's soul. So, that is the ultimate in the Spiritual quest, is to rediscover the sacred that we have lost hold of, because of our secular lives. 

People used to go to the church to find the sacred, and now one does not always find in a church, sometimes of course, or whatever, a synagogue, or the temple. We have to find it in our self. And, perhaps that is the reason for the practise of the dhikr. Because that is where you are building a temple in which to invite the divine presence.

So, this was an introduction. And, you will find many of the thoughts that I expressed in the course of our experience, the processes that we are going to go through. I think that you will need a break, I suggest just walking in the woods a little bit. Of course, there is a toilet area there, but there is a little alley there on the left. You could, if you walk along on the path then, and you find a wonderful area there that is, is not too much of a slope, it's fairly flat, rather a transfigured kind of world, where I like to meditate in. If you go up hill, as I say, be careful not to go too far. But, now you won't have too much time because I suggest, yes, in fact you don't have any time at all. (laughter)

So, what I suggest is that you make a pledge of silence, mitigated silence if you so wish. That means that you can speak in the evenings. And, representatives, you also have the choice whether you want to participate in the exchange when you meet in the Sanctuary, or whether you want to maintain silence, even in the sharing. You can always write things down. 

So, would you like to stand up now, and make your pledge. We are making a pledge to maintain silence until, in all cases, until supper on Thursday evening.

11:30 AM Aziza's session

I hope that I am able to live up to it, because she is very, very practical. 

Well, to devise a retreat, now of course you are receiving instructions, but if you go on retreat on your own, then you have be able to devise your own retreat. So, you have to divide your retreat very clearly on your note book, when do you start in the morning, how long do you meditate in the morning, 6:30, or whatever, to 7:30, whatever. Your break for breakfast, and when do you start in the morning, it could be 8:00, whatever. And then, you have a break in the mid day. When I say a break, I find that when one relaxes, one tends to lose everything that one has gained. And therefor, I don't advise you to relax in the sense in which one would just be lying done, getting back into one's personal consciousness again. I would say that the best way to have your break is to walk, and there are walking practises. 

For example, a wazifa, and you keep on thinking of that wazifa without saying it aloud. For example, every time you place your left foot forward. And in the afternoon, perhaps you take a real rest after lunch, and then start again, whatever time you decide. And, that is if you are making your own retreat. And then again have a break in the middle afternoon, and then another session in the afternoon. In the evening as I say, I find that a lot of people find it very difficult to continue meditating in the evening. The energy is dwindling, waning. And, that is the time, if you are making a personal retreat, that you could read some texts which are really appropriate, and that is something that I have been considering very carefully. I want to, myself, at least, as a start, suggest texts which would be appropriate, which are related to the practises themselves that you are doing, and will be doing. That is something that we haven't constructed that yet. That is some part of my homework.

I would say that at least the first meditation after breakfast, say, 9:00, or 8:30, or 8:00, and then the first one in the afternoon, you should start with a breathing practise. Now, we have different breathing practises, and I will very shortly outline what those breathing practises are. We have breathing practises with the elements, called the purification breaths. We have what is called Kasab which means breathing in through the left nostril, holding your breath, out through the right, then the opposite, and both nostrils, and out through both nostrils. We have, you know if you are doing kasab, there are different stages, there are many different levels of kasab. It is called paranayama, it is the same thing as paranayama. And then the third one is associating thought with your breath. So, expanding consciousness as you exhale, and turning within as you inhale, and so on. All the practises that we should be doing of course, which involve both the breath and thought. 

And then of course, What Pir-o-Murshid calls, the Fikr, which is doing the wazifa on your breath instead of doing it aloud. That is again a breathing practise. And then, there is a breathing practise, a Sufi breathing practise, that I'll introduce before we end at 10:30, which is absolutely basic, and I think that, that is what gets you right into the whole objective of Sufism.

'k, then we have, well these can be elaborated further, of course. And then we have the Shagall, which is placing the fingers on your senses. Then, that is a breathing practise that is very special and very advanced breathing practise. So, there you have four different breathing practises, but within these, there are different stages.

Then we have the practises of the wazifa, that means you are given a, well it is not a word, we use the word mantram, it is more like a whole attunement. So, the practises of wazifa. Then there is the practise of the dhkir. So, what I suggest is every afternoon, when I come, we will be practising the dhikr, every afternoon. And, I don't know how to divide the day, I will have to think it over. But, we will, everyday be practising breathing practises, practises with the wazifa, practises with the dhkir, and also, practises with light. So, that is four different types of practises. But within these, there are a lot of subsections. This is just to give you a general outline.

'k, now, I would like to introduce what I call that Sufi breathing practise. To introduce it, I would like to say that it is based upon the reality in us, perhaps you have noticed that you are torn, or pulled between two things. One is your longing, your need to achieve something in life, to involve yourself with people, with circumstances, to unfold your being, and so on. That's what one calls the reality of life. And then, perhaps you have noticed that you have a need for freedom. And, one interprets it sometimes wrongly when one thinks that it means freedom from circumstances. That is the kind of thinking that makes ascetics leave their home, and go sit in a cave in the Himalayas. That is not necessarily freedom. A hobo is not free, because he or she doesn't have a job, or family. 

No, it is freedom in your thinking, from your opinion. Freedom from opinion, as Buddha says, and freedom from emotion, and freedom from dependence, addiction, and so on. So, that is very great longing. A longing to free oneself from the trap that one is caught in, in one's ordinary perspective. 

So, you are pulled in two opposite directions, and it is very difficult to reconcile those two. And, that is the purpose of Sufism, is to find a way of reconciling the irreconcileables. So, this breathing practise is based upon that.

So, I'll first of all quote where it came from. It is of course, the practise of the dervishes, the Sufi dervishes, and it is referred to in a book of (Kalabadi) called (Quitabil Tasa, Tawaruf). So, what he says is this, "As God exhales, he descends from the solitude of unknowing, motivated by his nostalgia, 'Ishk Allah'," that the, I'm using my interpretation, I'm paraphrasing it. The virtuality so that the virtuality of his being becomes a reality in existence. Now, I could paraphrase this further and say, so that the splendor in his being may become Majesty and Beauty. That is the word of the dervishes, Majesty and Beauty in the world. So, when God inhales, or, as God inhales, he extracts the quintessence of that which has been gained by experience, back into unity again. So, I would paraphrase this and say that whatever has been experienced never gets lost, because the quintessence of the experience of life, or let's say that the experience that God has, by fragmenting him/herself into each one of us, is fed back into the software of the universe. So the program of the Universe is dynamic, it keeps on changing as, thanks to the experience of life. So, it is God experiencing him/herself as us, and through us.

So, now, that's seen from the divine point of view. Now, if you see it from the human point of view, and, that is Sufism, is your always seeing things from the divine point of view, and the human point of view, the same time.

So, from the human point of view, as you exhale, consider your exhaling as an extension of the divine exhaling, whereby God descends from the solitude of unknowing, so that the splendor in his/her being can become as a reality as you, and in the world. In other words, your desire to build a beautiful world of beautiful people, including yourself as a beautiful person. And, when you inhale, consider that your inhaling, in inhaling, you're participating in the divine inhaling, whereby God extracts the, let's say, the wisdom that has been gained by your know how, and that gets integrated into the program of the Universe. And that requires then, to extract the quintessence. That is what one does to make perfume out of the flowers. So, what one does, is to extract to essence of the flowers, and reject the dross, or the contingent aspect of the flowers.

So, this is what you do with yourself. As you are inhaling, you identify with the quintessence of your being, which is free from the, how can I say, the constraint of all the support system, let's say. And, that is really what one means by resurrecting. And so, what I said was the template, or matrix of your being is also your body of resurrection.

Now, for those who love Jellaluddin Rumi, there is a word of Jellaluddin Rumi that shook me for a long time, and has triggered off a whole new way of thinking. In fact, what I am saying now. When he said, "Tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal." That means that the transient gives birth to eternity, instead of thinking that it all starts with eternity, and then it is watered down into transiency. It is a very surprising way of thinking. There was a philosopher in the time of Murshid, my father. Murshid said, "God creates the earth first, and then the heavens." And so he asked him, "Pir-o-Murshid, I'm sorry for interrupting you. Did you mean that?" "Yes," he said. "God creates first, and then the heavens." "But that is not what is usually thought." He said, "Yes, I know that." (Pir laughs)

"The heavens", he said, "The heavens are embryonic, and unfold through the wisdom that is gained at the existential level." So, that's resurrection. That is what we mean by resurrection.

So, there is a way, as you inhale, you think of yourself as a perfume of what you thought you were. Like, the quintessence, free from all that heavy stuff that links you to the earth. And, the key, of course, to freedom is, as Buddha said, those were the last words after his retreat, is freedom from conditioning. You know, that was a teaching of Krishnamurti, freedom from conditioning. Incidentally, I asked him a rather mean question. I asked him, "Aren't you conditioned to seek freedom from conditioning?" (Pir laughs) That wasn't very kink.

The quest for freedom becomes an obsession if one doesn't value what is gained by involvement. So, both are equally important. That is the way of the Sufi.

So, you see, it is very different from Buddhism, because Buddhism teaches desirelessness, and in this, you realize that your desire to make your house beautiful, and to become a beautiful person develops the potentialities of your being. And culture, music, and so on. And, that is and expression of the divines 'Ishk Allah". So, it is the opposite of the way of desirelessness. But then, of course, in order to do the opposite, to extract the quintessence, then, it is true, that you have to make sacrifices of personal satisfaction for the sake of, actually, it is really for higher satisfaction, for things that one really values, more than things that one values less.

And that means freedom from things that give personal satisfaction, to give priority to things that give satisfaction to one's soul, fulfilment to one's soul. 

And I'll give you and example, a rather trite example, but, supposing you were going to attend a concert of the B minor Mass of Bach, and you felt hungry, and so, you had to decide whether you wanted to go to the restaurant, or you wanted to go to the mass. So, they are both satisfactions, but it just depends what you give priority to.

So, let's do this breathing practise now. And, just as you exhale and inhale. (pause) You see that your whole life is right there. (pause) So, we are going to have, now you are going to have your freedom and go and sit in nature. And, chose a nice place. You can have your back to a trunk of a tree, for example. And, think of Buddha, for example, sitting in meditation, in nature, free from the world. 

So, it's like you are pilgrims. You, if you are on a pilgrimage, you think that you have left your home behind, and your problems, but somehow, the world continues to live in your psyche. So, you are carrying it with you all the same. But, it tends to get more remote. And then finally, you have this kind of overview where you can see what is the gist of what is enacted in your life, instead of being caught in the details.

'k, so now, I shall be back again in. Well, to keep to the schedule, it will have to be 11:30, so, you have an hour.0 

Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 03

Tape 3

Well, now, you have been launched into a retreat without much instructions yet. It will all become a little more clear in the course of the retreat. So, if the only instructions that you have had so far were the Sufi breathing practise. If you remember, just being very clear about one's involvement in life, and then one's need for freedom. So, those are the guidelines, and of course, we are going to follow this up further. 

If you were able to speak, then you would be able to say what were the thoughts that have cropped up in your mind during the course of this hour. So, that on one hand, maybe, you were trying to give some orientation to your mind, but on the other hand, I assume, that random thoughts started cropping up in your mind, and if you tried to control them, you know that you are fighting a losing battle, as I said, so there is no use in trying to do that. 

So, now let's try to bring the whole thing into a little more into focus. Those random thoughts have every right to be there. They are the way that you are digesting the impressions of the environment, social, psychological, and so on, physical. So, the method that I suggest instead of trying to control your thoughts, is simply to think that your consciousness is like a beam, instead of those two beams of light of your eyes, consciousness as a big beam of light that lights up, that projects a spotlight upon the screen of your mind. And, around that screen, there are areas, there are nebulous zones which one calls a twilight. So, when a thought emerges in your mind, in your consciousness, you tend to turn that searchlight towards the thought. And, what I am suggesting, is you keep your consciousness forward, and let the thought circulate in the twilight. without turning your attention toward it.

Now, at first, one is very much at the mercy of the environment, in fact one's problems keep on erupting, and so one doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. One is just regurgitating the impressions, the problems which are becoming more intense now, because one isn't doing anything. So, one isn't forced to force one's attention on to a certain action, so consequently, these thoughts erupt with great power.

So, now what I am suggesting is this. To proceed in what the Buddhists call, (jnanadarshana), and what the Sufis call (Muhassabi), especially, and this is linked, this matches the exhaling, your involvement in life. So you see, if you are, in the ordinary state, you would simply be the victim of impressions that are crowding up, that are accruing from outside. Now, we are doing the reverse. Instead of just being passive towards the impressions from outside, one is casting one's insight upon life. And, one is, ask yourself these questions, very concrete questions. "Why am I doing what I am doing." Now, they can be very simplistic, like, "Why do I have this job? Well, I was trained, or whatever." Or, "It came my way." Or, "I don't have a job." (Pir laughs) So, why don't you have a job. Anyways, a question. So, that leads towards a second question. "What do I expect out of my relationship with a person." That is, to be more specific. "Am I manipulating this person for what I think is my interest? Am I helping that person, giving something to that person without any question of return? What is the impact of that person upon my level of emotion? Is that person drawing my emotions down so they become, well, at the extreme limit would be vulgar, let's say commonplace? Or, does that person elevate my soul? Do I elevate that person? Or, do I have the effect on that person of drawing their emotional attunement downwards? 

So, that is really what is happening between the two of you. So, the question was, "What is my motivation in relationship to this person, with another person, and so on. You can think of a lot of people you know, your parents, your partners, your friends, you boss, the workers in your job, and so on so forth, neighbors, and so on.

Now, these questions lead to far deeper ones of course, for example. "What are the values that I estimate that I value?" Now, it is very difficult, but you have to be very clear. Like, I like rock and roll, but I prefer the B Minor Mass. Or then, I prefer rock and roll to the B Minor Mass. I mean those are the values. What is it that you really value? That was a rather simplistic example. But, say for example, Is it that you value having a nice house and a nice car? Of course you value it, but are there values that you give priority to? As I said previously of course, it could be, "Music is important to me, because it does something to, well it is difficult to say it in words, but it is more important to me than my house or my car." Or then, you could say, "Life is wonderful, I am enjoying life." But then, What is it that you are enjoying, are you enjoying sun bathing, or is it, there are certain things about life that are more meaningful, that effect you very deeply, in what one calls one's soul. And so, you can even be more specific. And, this is what I'm trying to get at.

I don't know if you notice, that you pass through different phases in your life. The Sufis call it, Maqam, stages, stations. So, that at one point, the most important thing for you was to understand. And, at another point, what was important was to be truthful. And, at another time, what was important was to be noble. And at another time, what was important was to have mastery. Another time was to be of service. Well, you go through different phases. 

So, that phase, the phase that you were in, is exactly what you, well, let's say, is presumably what you value at that time. Everything seems to be contributing towards that particular quality. Now, if you know the language of the wazifas, then you can, you have a label, because that is what a wazifa is, it is just a label. It is a name that is associated with a certain realization, or a certain attunement. And so, in a sense, if you knew that language, you could prescribe to yourself a wazifa. You could say, "At this time, the thing that is most important, there are many things that are important for me. I want to be happy, I want to be peaceful, I want to be pure, I want to be noble, there are all kinds of things. I want to have love, compassion. But, at this moment, it is truthfulness that is most important." So, then you know the wazifa is Haqq, and then you work with that wazifa. So, Aziza will tell you something about the different meanings of the different wazifas. 

And, then there are meanings that are a little more subtle, like, for example, "I find it very important to open up and communicate with people in sharing, because that is how I unfold my being whereas if I turn within, then I find that I am enclosed in what I think is me, and I am alienating myself from what people have to give to me." So, then you have, "But, on the other hand, I find that if I am open to the impressions of all those people, then I loose who I really am, so I need to turn within sometimes to find who I am." So, there are wazifas for that, Ya Zahir, Ya Batin. turning within. reaching without, turning within.

So, we have only touched the surface so far. (Pir laughs) I could ask questions, but I think that it would be too rushed if I were to ask questions that I want to ask now, so we will do that one other time. But, we will still go into a deeper issue. (pause) Because, so far we have been talking of the output of you towards outside. Like, "What are my motivations? What are my values?" Now the further step is to match your values with your motivations. Like, "I attach a lot of importance to that, but what do I do about it?" So, your motivations are what you do about your values. And, if your values are not matched with your motivations, then they are platonic, they are not real. And, they could be what Pir-o-Murshid calls the ideal, and what we call the ideal. And, what Murshid says is, "Shatter your ideal on the rock of truth." That is, an ideal is a fantasy of a mind. "I like freedom," or, "I like truth", or so on, but, how truthful are you? And, how free are you? That's the reality. 

So, the values are still platonic until they are supported by motivations. So, now you ask yourself. "In my life, what am I doing to be truthful? In my life, what am I doing to be compassionate? In my life, what am I doing...?" And so on, and so forth. Those values.  'k, now that is just one half of a far deeper question, and I am afraid if I broach that subject, I am opening a can of worms, as they say. I am really, I don't know whether you have noticed, maybe you haven't yet, but maybe you will. That much as you try to discover the sanyasin in you, the holy aspect of your being, which is still something that one has to reach, that one has to get into. You will find that, well, to say it bluntly, your wounds, we all have wounds, and your wounds open up on retreat. Your wounds open. You had covered them under a bushel, you didn't want to think about them, too difficult, too painful, and somehow, to heal a wound, you have to open it up and then put a dressing on it. So, we don't want meditation to be neglecting the real issues in life; we don't want them to be a diversion from life. We want to incorporate our life into our retreat, so we have to have courage to face our wounds.

Now, that was something that we were discussing, because we are discussing the whole procedure that we are using in order to help people in a retreat process, so that it is real, and not just a made up system. And, so that, we find that our wounds involve our whole being, and it is not just that, "I am in pain because that is something someone has done to me." but I have lost, my self esteem has been impaired by what that person did to me. Or, it is a much bigger issue than just that there is pain. In fact, behind resentment, there is guilt. It is not rational, we don't want to acknowledge it, and it doesn't make sense. We have been abused, and so we don't want to accept that we allowed it to happen. And, it could be unfair, we could be unfair, because it was done under duress, and so on, so, we don't know the circumstances are. But, somehow the unconscious is irrational, and so it does nurture guilt, and that means shame, which erodes our self esteem. 

And so, we are talking about something that is, you see, you can't have ecstasy in your meditation if there is something in you which you feel has been defiled, has been sullied. It is not possible, there is a contradiction there. There is a contradiction until you see something that I have to point out, very important. 

And, I can only illustrate it by something that I have said, over, and over, and over, and over again. And, that is the voice of Caruso that can be retrieved in the bad recordings of the time. That means, within its distortions, the purity of his voice is still there. That is your final reprieve, your ultimate safety buoy from the terrible thought of having been tarnished, and damned forever. Which, as long as you think that, you will never be able to attain awakening, illumination, and so on. Because, always it will be that thing that is holding you back.

So, our rational, ordinary, commonplace thinking thinks in terms of, what one calls, discreet concepts, "I am guilty, I am not guilty". That is the rational thinking. The unconscious does not think rationally. In fact, it is able to grasp, what I call, the reconciliation of the irreconcilables. That is, "That the purity of my being, in the very depth of my being, that purity can never be tarnished." So, it is like, introducing, like, you know, to retrieve the voice of Caruso, one had to reverse the distortion. So, can we reverse the distortion that has taken place in us? And, what we found is, that the way of doing it is to instill an antidote. Like, the whole immunity system, Pasteur, and all of that. Vaccination. The antidote. 

That is why amongst the wazifas of the Sufis, there are wazifas that are negative. I have never used them before, because I didn't like negative thoughts. So, it is not acknowledging something that is there. 

So, there are two wazifas, Ya Mudhill, (Aziza's spelling), and Ya Mu'iz. Mudhill, and Mu'iz. And, Mudhill says, to be dishonored. And Mu'iz says, to be honored. And, the very antimony between these two wazifas, will bring home to one a kind of awareness. "Be careful, I am dishonoring myself. 'k, if I don't dishonor myself, I will be honored." It is that simple, it's like a choice. And so one is passing situations in life when one feels unhappy about something that one did. And so of course, one thinks that it is God that is dishonoring one, or somebody else that is dishonoring one, or even society that is dishonoring one. But, one is dishonoring oneself. And then, if you are aware of it, then you watch it. And, whatever the satisfaction that comes out of it, you don't want to do that, because the price you pay is too heavy, because you are dishonoring yourself. 

So, that is the deeper, how can I say, that is the bottom line of Muhassabi, of examination of conscience. And, from the time that you do that, then you look at the past, and you can see that somehow, you are reversing the dishonor by being honorable... the dishonor of the past, you are reversing it, by being honorable now. 

So, that is, I would say, a critical form of therapy instilling purity into the defilement, until it gains ground. I am trying to think of an example. Yes, I could. I'm not sure just whether that is feasible at all, but maybe. Perhaps some physicists here who know that better than I. But, supposing that you are seeding a crystal, and that crystal is immersed in a murky solution. But whether the seed of the crystal has the force to unfurl itself, and construct the crystal in the middle of that murky solution and gain ground, so that eventually the crystal takes all the place of the solution. I don't know whether that is feasible example or not, but it is just as near as I can come to this idea of your solar plexis as the core of your being, in which a new birthing takes place. And, the new embryo is innocent, immaculate, and then grows, and finds itself, how can I say, dovetailing with the impressions from outside, and consequently there is some spill over from outside, and consequently some defilement. And yet somehow, the crystal, well in this case, the embryo, in its essence, maintains its purity. And, if one is conscious of it, that purity seems to extend, and take over from the impurity. I don't know whether that makes sense to you. So, the wazifa for that is Subhan. One generally says Subhan Allah, but you could just say Subhan. S-U-B-H-A-N, subhan. And, the wazifa for expansion, or extension is, Basit, B-A-S-I-T. So, as I say wazifas aren't just words. I mean they are not just wazifas. They are, what they call, "Isma Illah He," the names of God. But, as I say, they are associated with the significance. So, you concentrate on your solar plexis and you think. "Yes, within all this defilement, it is not just the outer world, but there is defilement in me, there is tarnishing that has taken place in me. But within it, there is a core which is absolutely pure. And this core keeps on purifying the defilement, just like, I don't know, I think that now a days, there are chemicals that will resorb the bad oil that a ship has polluted the sea with, bad oil. And, there are chemicals that can absorb that oil. So, something like that. The purity in you has the power of absorbing the impurity.

So, you see, there is a contradiction in this. You see, because the ordinary mind would think, "No, I am impure." And, the irrational mind, or let's say the superlative mind will think,"Yes, I am still pure." You see, it is a contradiction, and the force of that contradiction is going to overcome the shame, or the sense of inadequacy, or the impurity, or whatever, that constitutes a kind of wound in our being, and that erodes our sense of self esteem. And ultimately, it is your self esteem that is your power of survival in life. So, you see, that this retreat is an opportunity of dealing with really important issues in our lives.

end

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 04

I see that you have got into the spirit of the retreat already. See what silence does. The thing about (ashdana darshana), is that one is looking at oneself as though one were looking at another person, without "I" ness, without identifying with oneself. And, the consequence is that one can see things about oneself that one can't see if one identifies with what one thinks one is. And, what is more, if one is not oneself involved in oneself, then one can consider a dramatic situation relatively peacefully. Whereas, if one is right into one's own personal identity, then all those emotions will well up. So that, in a retreat, if you find that you are over wrought with emotions, by opening up the wounds, it means that you are not practising that objectivity. which is the only way in which we can see clearly what is happening, and therefor do something about it.

So, this is where we are applying detachment and indifference which is of course, the forte of the ascetic. And, which we found in that breathing practise, when, as we exhaled, we were getting involved, or we were validating our involvement in life. And, when we were inhaling, we were able to retract ourselves, look at ourselves with a certain distance, with a certain perspective. And of course, it is that peacefulness, surrounding yourself with a zone of silence, that makes that possible. 

So, Aziza has the gift of translating all the thoughts that arise in the course of a retreat in the language of the wazifa, or the wazaif, which, is very good because, the wazifa is, well it's not a wazifa actually, it's (Isma Illah He), the name of God. Is a label that one associates with a very deep meaning. And consequently, it not only draws one's attention towards that meaning, but it builds a whole inner structure in the unconscious that one can rely upon when one is right back into the situations where one finds oneself in daily life. So, the two wasaif, corresponding to this breathing practise are, Ya Mawjud, and Ya Wahid. So, Mawjud means to, it's an interesting word. Of course, a simplistic translation of Mawjud would be, existentiation, actuation. So, when Pir-o-Murshid said, "Make God a reality." That's what he means, make God a reality. 

So, I said this morning. We were talking this morning about our idyllic ideals, our values, and then our motivations are the ways in which we make those motivations real. So, Mawjud would be, we place the accent on making our ideals real, that is, making them into motivations, which affect our behavior in our lives. So, that would be Mawjud. So, that's what we experience when we exhale. These are, you know, I am talking now about, well, to be more precise, of course, I'll tell you more precisely how this is done. A wazifa is a word that one repeats aloud a certain amount of times. It could be 33 times, or 100. And, one could repeat two wazifas in tandem, one after another, alternating. Now, the fikr of the wazifa, is where you are thinking the word instead of saying it. And, there is no Ya. Ya is the highest name of God, one of the highest. Where you alternate on your breath and so, therefor, one wazifa is done on the exhaling, and the other is done on the inhaling in the fikr. So, Mawjud would be done on the exhaling. Mawjud, and you experience, like the way that you have involved yourself, or are involving yourself in life in order to accomplish something in life, or to fulfil the purpose of your life, or to unfold your being, and so on. And the joy, and the suffering of involvement, because both are to be found there. 

Now, as you inhale, then, Wahid. Wahid mean, well, it means the multiplicity in the unity. Actually, I don't want to make things too difficult, but there are two terms, Wahadat, and Wahadaniat. One is the multiplicity in unity, and the other is unity in multiplicity. But, that is metaphysics. But, the word Wahid would mean, feeling as we said already this morning, like the way that you are, the quintessence of all your experience, and not only that, but the quintessence of your being is going to survive the disintegration of the cells of your body. Death. And therefor, nothing gets lost. That it all well be refed, fed back into existence again, into the programming again. So, it's a sense of extracting the perfume, or really identifying yourself with the perfume of your being, and eventually that perfume is integrated into the total perfume of all beings together. They are integrated, oneness behind the multiplicity. So there is, instead of the know how of different people being different pieces in the programming, they are integrated in a holistic way. That's what it is, you see, Wahid. 

Now, at the cost of making things a little hit more difficult for you, but still, on retreat, you can ponder upon very deep meanings. Because, these meanings are relative to your life. And so, the word Mawjud, or the wazifa, Isma Illah He, Mawjud, is in some ways related with the wazifa Wajid, W-A-J-I-D. And now, that is a very, very wonderful, and extremely meaning wazifa that I have been using so far. And, that means, to find. What relationship could there be between to actuate in existence, and to find? Well, there is the latest view that I have read by physicists, is that an electron only exists if you find it. And so, God only, and you know that term where Murshid says, "Where can you find God, if it is not in man?" I would say that, an electron only exists if you create circumstances that are favorable to its appearing. And so, it is a virtuality, and that would mean that God is a virtuality, and becomes a reality. And, that's why Murshid says, "Make God as a reality, becomes a reality as you."

So, this is a whole very different way of looking at God and man, and the old theology, with God up there and us down here, miserable worms. (laughter). No, but it is a word used by Catholic theologian, I forget now who it was, but that was the old fashioned view. So, then when you say Mawjud, then you may think that what that means is that, "I am creating circumstances so in which the divinity of my being may come through." And so, that is existence, what existence is about. So, it is a different sense than actuating. It is making God a reality. That is the importance of that saying of Murshid, making God a reality. 

'k, so now perhaps that makes this breathing practise even more significant. And, I hope that you, you could even keep on repeating it at times, in the course of the day, to get yourself set again, centered. And then, think of the wazifa, that's even better. That is, do the fikr, Mawjud, Wahid. And, then you could do Wajid, Wahid. Wajid, that is to find, and Wahid, the unity, the polarity.

These are practises that I have done myself, so I am talking from experience. There is some beauty in the harmony of the world, of course. Wahid, Wajid, Wahid, Wajid. And, if you, for the more advanced mureeds, you can do, Wajid, Wahid, Majid. Which is, the divine majesty.

Now, today we were getting right down into the nitty gritty, because something of what one tends to bypass in a retreat. As I said before, there is some danger is simply not dealing with one's problems, and getting into a, well, spaced out. Getting into, what one calls, a high state, and then hoping that it's going to change one's life. And then, falling right back to where one was, after the retreat. And, we wanted to make a difference. And therefor, we have to deal with the reality there, what is standing in the way. So, instead of developing, for example, if you are saying a wazifa, what you want to do is to unfurl a quality that is already latent within you. But, you can't unfurl it if there is an obstacle, and so, you have to know what that obstacle is. In general, of course, all the wazifas are references to the divinity of our being, and so the obstacles is in something in us which we are not proud of, and which impairs our sense of validation of ourselves in our self image. And so, we have to deal with that. 

So, this morning we were talking about the sense of having being sullied, and tarnished, guilt deeper down. Let's say, to be more precise. we can recognize several, let's say psychological shadows, which is called shadows, maybe. One is resentment, that is if we feel that someone has hurt us, abused us, undermined us, obstructed us, and so on and so forth, done injustice to us, and then we nurture resentment. And then, we hear the teachings of Christ, forgive, and we can't forgive. And then, we blame ourselves, we feel not only we have resentment, but then we have guilt. So, that's one thing, and the other is guilt. And, that is because we have done something that dishonored us. So, you remember the word that we used, the wazifas that we used this morning, Mudhill, and Mu'iz. If one is conscious, if one if very aware of watching oneself from allowing oneself to dishonor oneself, or to be dishonored, it comes to the same. Then, one realizes, then it will help one not to do this, because one realizes the tremendous grace of being honored. Honoring oneself, and being honored. Same thing.

So, these are the two wazifas that I gave you this morning. Then, if you remember, I said that, of course, one's love for oneself can not only be impaired, but turn into hate for oneself, if one has shame. And, consequently, one, and it is love that is the ultimate therapy against shame. 

So, if you remember we said, think of the voice of Caruso, you remember, the purity within. The purity which is present within the distortion, the defilement. (Pir laughs) I forget the wazifa for defilement, I'm not happy with them so, I haven't been recognizing them until recently. So, I am going to change this myself, so I'll look it up. Mudsill is bad enough, as it is, (laughter) so, but, so there is a word, actually there is a word, there is really a word for it. There is the word (...?), then there is the word, "leader astray", God leads you astray. Which is, you know, "How could you say a thing like that." It is one of the most paradoxical ways of thinking that you find in Sufism. 

ANd, let us say that the only way in which we can develop personal will, is by making a choice, and therefor facing an option between something that is, well I am saying something simplistic, something that is good, or something that is bad. Like being a good guy, or being a bad guy. Or, there is a choice there. And, I suppose, it is in that choice, that we affirm our individual will, and that is very important in Sufism. because, well we have to watch this, because in our quest for the spiritual dimension of our being, we tend to lose sight of our uniqueness. And, in Sufism, we have both. We have, as we exhale, we have a sense of the cosmic, of the transcendental aspect of our being, which is beyond our person, well, it is a dimension of our person, but, let's say, it seems to be impersonal. And then, when we inhale, we recover the sense of our self, because that is where we make a choice. That is a breathing practise that we are going to do tomorrow morning. 

So, it is in our ability to make a choice, that we can reverse the defilement. And, you remember this morning, I giving you the practise of imagining a crystal that is growing within a murky substance. So that the accent on the purity within the defilement can take over and gain ground, and reverse the defilement. So, that was Subhan. And, that negative wazifa that I have forgotten. (Pir laughs) A Freudian slip. Perhaps Aziza will know it. No? (Pir laughs) So, you are just like me, you don't like those things. (laughter)

'k, so now we come across, resentment, we'll have to go into detail, this is just soliciting, like a catalogue, resentment, guilt that accumulates into shame. Then, of course, both of then involve our self image, so then we say, a bad self image, or inferiority complex. And, the forth which is, they are all linked together of course, is fear. And, we think that it is fear from the unknown of course, fear of death, fear of pain. fear of the unknown. And life tests us sometimes in our courage. And, maybe it takes a lot of courage to face our dragons in ourselves. That is called confrontation, to confront oneself.

I'll tell you a story. The story of a princess, you know in India, especially in the Moslem world, women are in purdah, that means veiled, and consequently, a lot of women develop TB, tuberculosis, and die young, and so the man marries again, and so you have old men marrying young women. So, it was a young princess, and her husband died. And, there was a rule that if the husband dies, the woman has to throw her self at the stake to be burned alive. A terrible cruel custom, which the British did stop, but still it, it still goes on amongst the most primitive tribes. And so, this princess was terrified, as you can imagine, and, well, you could say she didn't have the courage, but it must take a lot of courage to throw yourself on the burning pyre. Well, of course, they throw you on it, they push you. Well, like the fate of Joan of Arc.

Well, somebody told her, "Go and see a Guru, a woman guru. And this Guru had a pet cobra, and she said, "If you are frightened,... I can help you, but you have to pet this cobra, and if you are frightened of this cobra, it will bite you." So, she had the choice between two terrible deaths. (Pir laughs) At least with the cobra there was a chance that she might survive, but with the fire there was no chance at all.

So, she picked up courage, and she petted the cobra. And then, the guru said, "Now you wouldn't have to be burned at the stake, but you would have to become a sanyasin." You know, a person, like an ascetic. And, she did become a very wonderful ascetic. So, courage.

We don't know our strength, until we find our self back to the wall, and then we discover that we have the strength that we didn't think we had. It's true of women, mothers particularly, who had been abandoned by their husbands, and think that they could never make it, and somehow they were able to make it all the same. And find, and somehow developed qualities in themselves that they would not have developed if they continued to be dependant upon their husbands. 

So, this is a quality, which we require in order to face that cobra in us, which is that in us which we don't like, which we call our dragoness. (Pir laughs) I mean, it's a mixed metaphor, dragon and cobra. So, we don't like it. I don't like it, that is why I never mentioned these negative wazifas. A typical guru trip, not recognizing one's shadow, and that of any person in authority, because they hope, they are trying to live up to what people expect of them. And consequently, if they don't recognize their shadow, then, they are deceiving people, and eventually, that shadow will appear anyway. And in the meantime, they will be developing dishonesty in themselves. So, that one of the, and that is not only true of gurus, but it is true of everyone. We like to validate ourselves, and show our best side. Generally, very often, people show their best side when they are dating, and then once they are married, the other side comes out. (laughter)

So, this is confrontation. Now, the strongest wazifa is Haqq, and that is, one thinks it might be confronting other people, but it is confronting yourself. And, if you confront yourself, it gives you a lot of courage, and then you can confront other people without hatred.

There is a wazifa that goes with it, it is (Hiqam), Haqq, Hiqam which means judgement, the judge. And so, you are setting yourself up as the judge of yourself, by dent of the truthfulness of your being. That is what is expected of a judge, to be truthful. To overcome self deception. And, what is more, self justification, because the mind is a master at producing excuses, or justifications for ones actions. 

So, it is very important psychologically, to expose the hoax of one's mind, the mind games. If you do that in the course of the retreat, it is extraordinary what it does to you. All of a sudden you find that you are so powerful, you could move mountains. All of a sudden, some kind of inner power comes through that you never had before. And, as I said before, ultimately, it is our self esteem that is our mainstay, this is going to name the last two, make good in our lives. That is what is being impaired. And, it is no use trying to be illuminated and awakened, and lovey-dovey when there is a lot of murk in the background which one wasn't dealing with. 

So, what we are doing now, in the first days of the retreat is what is called a catharsis, a purification. and that will be followed up by something a little more positive I hope, in the next few days. There is some clearance to do first.

A case where this applies is pearls that are able to covert the murky water in the coast of Japan, and make beautiful pearls out of it. It is a marvelous example. 

There is a further reference to this. It is a kind of slogan that you find in India. But, now, this does not refer to ourselves, but to other people. It is one way of confronting resentment, and that is, to think of your psyche as an oyster which is carrying all this gritty sand in it's body, and transforming it into pearls. Well, actually, the slogan in India is, the guru is the oyster who transforms the grits of sand that are wounding him in his heart, or him/her, and transforming them to pearls, and then they don't hurt you anymore, and they are beautiful. 

But, I've been anticipating what we are going to do in the next few steps. So, now, it is, you see, there is no doubt if one nurtures a sense of guilt, one develops self hate. That is a rather a strong term, but it is really so. And, the only resolution for guilt, is to love oneself. And, it seems the opposite, like, for example, the only resolution to shame, is to inject purity into one's psyche. Or rather, recognize the purity that is there, so it's awakening that purity that is there, within, like the voice of Caruso, as I said. So, it is the antidote, like homeopathy, the antidote. So, you are doing the same thing here. You are instilling love into hate. It is the most powerful thing there is. Now, there is a thought here which is, I think has a tremendous psychological potency about it, and that is if one has self hate, one thinks that God doesn't love one. And so, you are insulting God, because if God is what we hope and expect he/she to be, than his love is unconditional.

So, that is an extraordinary conversion in one's way thinking. That God loves me even though I have sinned a thousand times. And, in therapy, of course, it is very important to be amongst people who one feels loves one unconditionally, no matter what ever one did. Supportive people. And that is why, hence the saying of Jellaluddin Rumi, "Come whatever you've done, there is always room on the caravan for you." So, it is true, that we need support in our psychological trauma, that is the reason for psychotherapy. 

We find the same thing in the spiritual realm, and that is generally of course, in the practise of the spiritual realm. It is in the relationship between the teacher and the pupil. The Pir-o-Murshid said to the teachers in the Sufi Order, well, it was the Sufi movement. He said, "Remember, you are tested in your love, that is where you are tested." That is, it is easy to love a loveable person, but one is tested in loving a person who is obnoxious, and makes himself unlovable, and even preposterous, and still love them.

So, we have a wazifa, Wadud, which means love, to find love. But, you see, I am really so cautious about conceptualization, the conceptualization of the wazifas. It becomes a mind trip, like, "What does it mean? It means love. Well, what does love mean?" And, you know, some times people say, "Pir Vilayat, can you talk about Love?" Well of course, how can we talk about love, one loves. Or, one can be so moved that one says incongruous things. But, they are conveying love instead of being rational, on a mind trip. So, be careful about those cliches in our minds. And, wazifas are often cliches.

Now, of course, if you listen to the Sufi poetry, then you find that they always (...?), the extent to which one is shattered by one's love. So, that love is, on one hand love is very positive and creative, and on the other hand, it is shattering. And of course, it is shattering to the false ego. 

Now, this is a term used, and again, be careful of cliches used, a word used by the Sufis a lot, the false ego, and a lot of pretenses people like teachers say,... I think that this is the worse thing that you can say to your pupil, "I think that this is your false ego." I'm sure that some teachers do that. I wouldn't call that a proper method of teaching. Murshid's teaching on that respect is extremely special I would say, very remarkable. What he is saying, is that the real ego is the divine ego. So, he is not using the word in a pejorative sense. And, that is your divine inheritance. The divine in you is the real ego. And, the false ego is only a fraction of one's total being that one cleaves to in order to defend oneself against attack. So, somebody hurts you, and your ego hurts, and that is where you identify yourself with just a fraction of yourself instead of the totality of your being. And, this is where the lesson of Beethoven, where I have often mentioned, is extremely important. He illustrates in the fourth piano concerto, where he illustrates the world as the orchestra, and himself as the pianist, and the orchestra comes with a challenge, Now, the ego would replicate by answering the challenge with a challenge, and there you have conflict. Now, what Beethoven does is, he responds to that challenge by, (Pir hums theme). In other words, "I refuse to play ball." "I'm not allowing myself to be put in that position of having to counterattack. I want to consult the resourcefulness in by being." And therefor, you have to place a buffer between the challenge of the world, and yourself, so that you don't react, but you are able to act creatively by using all the resourcefulness in your being. And, that is the real ego. 

So, the shattering of the ego, is really the shattering of the false ego. That is the mistaken assessment that we make of ourselves, our self image, that we use in order to, as a defense system. And then comes, an inner power that is finally victorious. Because, in the end, the pianist wins in the fourth piano concerto, and it is a fantastic melody, it comes out of it. Because, if he had simply reacted, this melody would have never come through. 

So, this is a very good example of what we need to do in a retreat. And, that's the reason for Buddha's words, "Place a sentinel at the doors of perception." I think of it as a buffer, and that buffer is peace. Well, that buffer is peace that goes together with a word which perhaps you will not like. Indifference. Or, independence. That is freedom. Like for example, that woman who was beaten in the South, and she said, "You can do what you like to my body, but you can't touch my soul." A sense of, like the detachment, the freedom that one finds if one does not identify with one's person, with the personal dimension of one's person. 

So, that is, Salam, of course, means peace. So, that is the buffer. And, one is finding then, because one does not react, one is protected by that buffer, which is one's detachment, or indifference, or independence. One is able to enlist the tremendous bounty of resourcefulness in one's being, the pool of resourcefulness in one's being, and that is Ya Kamil, K-A-M-I-L, which means the divine perfection.

Now, you see, our thinking stands in the way of our experience. We want to experience, but our thinking stands in our way. Because, we think, "I'm imperfect." Or, we think, "I'm a fraction of the totality." And, if you think holistically, then you realize that every fraction of the totality carries the totality within it.

side 2

So, holistic thinking. So to discover, now there is a word of Murshid that is really, I would say right on, it has been very significant for me. "God discovers his perfection in our imperfection." Again, the voice of Caruso in it's distortion. And so, this is perhaps, the most difficult thing about Sufism, and the strongest thing about Sufism. And, it's a real motto that you have to follow in a retreat, it's difficult, and that is always to look at things from two anti polar standpoints at the same time. The personal standpoint, and the divine standpoint. And, you could say, "Well, what do I know about God, what do you mean my the divine standpoint? I know how I feel." Everyone knows how they feel, it is very simplistic, commonplace. 

Well, one has to do this in slow stages, otherwise it becomes just one more slogan. The first thing is getting into the consciousness of another person, so you can look at yourself as viewed from another person. Now, that is very interesting. And, you can do it. for example, look at yourself from the point of view of somebody you love, or someone who is close to you. Or then, look at yourself from the point of view of a person who is inimical to you. Now then, you understand that they are doing, they are treating you on the strength of their perception of what they think you are. And, that is an erroneous perception. And you are perceiving them, you are behaving according to your perception of them which is also wrong. So there are two mistakes that mirror each other, and accumulate. 

So, looking at yourself, well, first of all, there are two stages. One is getting into the consciousness of another person, and experiencing what it is like to be that person. That's the first stage. And, the second stage is, experiencing how that person perceives you. So, the first stage is expressed in these words, "I see that person through his/her eyes. That is the first stage. And the second one is, "I see myself through his/her eyes. The first one "I see that person through his/her eyes. The second one, "I see myself through his/her eyes." 

Well, now that is going to help you to deal with resentment. I don't say that it is the solution, but it is one of the helps that you can get. And that is, now you understand why that person is doing what they are doing to you, because they have a misconception of who you are. 

Now, or course, obviously, I don't know whether I am saying it correctly, by saying that resentment is always based upon abuse of some kind. It might not be the abuses that we generally talk about, but somehow, misuse in the relationship of a person, of what one is. And so, one is offended, because one has been belittled, one has been undermined, and in one's self esteem. And if one doesn't have much confidence in oneself, then of course, then that person can do one a lot of harm, and then one does not know how to respond to that harm, except by bloating ones ego. And, it doesn't get you anywhere. But, I want to say this, be very careful, because if you destroy the one defence that you have, which is your personal ego, you will develop[ withdrawal symptoms.


Now I say it is the false ego, but it is a subterfuge which you rely upon, it's your crutches. So, you must not replace that, I mean you must not displace it unless you replace it by the consciousness of your real being. And, that is the reason for Fana and Baka in the Sufi tradition. Annihilation always is accompanied, always, by reinstatement, always. Never alone. That is a mistake that dervishes make sometimes, just enjoying being annihilated, a kind of self destructive instinct in people, syndrome in people, that comes out of self hate. Wanting to be annihilated. And, that is the reason for the value of spirituality in psychotherapy. Because, therapy is repairing damage, and spirituality is building, creatively, your person, so that the value of your person is so great, that it overcomes the damage. 

Yes, well maybe I said that (....?) your problems (Pir laughs) So, I'll say that a little more specifically. You have a wound, you will find that the body grows, what they call a scab. And, then, the new material, the new cells develop under that protection, you see. So, there are two words, I mean two wazifas. One is Mu'id, and the other is Muhyi. Mu'id, means to repair damage. That is, for example, if you have displaced a branch of a tree, unless you have damaged it very seriously, it will come back to where it was. So, a kind of inertia. That is, the power of inertia. Mu'id, Mu'id. 

So, that is therapy. Therapy is trying to get back to where you were before you were ill. But then, when I was studying mental pathology in Paris University, way back in 1936 before most of you were born, I remember there was a patient called Laura, and she said, "The doctors are trying to bring me back to where I was before. They have no idea where I am. I can't get back to where I was before! That was the reason why I got out of where I was before." (laughter) "I can only come out of this by another door." So, you see, therapy has its usefulness, but it has got to be completed by regeneration. And, that is the word Muhyi, means to regenerate. So, that you can use your illness as a means of being better than you were before you were ill. Turn the tables on your illness. 

And, that is what we are doing in spirituality. Now, it is true that in psychology, people are doing it more and more, because psychologists are realizing the importance of the spiritual dimension.

Now, I have gone beyond the time. So, remember those two waziif, Mu'id and Muhyi, because, you see, what we are doing now, well, maybe it corresponds to the first stage in the alchemical process where we are dealing with a lot of murky stuff, and sorting it out. And, one doesn't want to be bogged in too much by one's psychological trauma, so one wants to confront it. But, after opening the wounds, then you have to put a dressing on them. So, you don't have to just leave the wound like that. That is why I am not to happy about leaving you just, well, that is why we are beginning to think more positively about ways of reconstructing ourselves instead of just repairing the damage. So, for example, well, as I say, in spirituality, it's the guru whose love helps you to love yourself, because if he or she loves you, it means that you are loveable. At least you interpret it as being that you are loveable, despite the fact that you are despising yourself. But, in therapy, of course, it is what they call a safe surrounding in which people feel safe to go through that repair process. But, what the psychologists are saying is that after the crisis, when all of a sudden those emotions erupt, anger, resentment, rage, you see, there is a period of calm. Like, for example, the sixth symphony of Beethoven where there is a thunderstorm and then afterwards there is, (Pir hums) a wonderful sense like, you know the Universe has the ability to right itself, the word used now is to self organize itself when there has been a disturbance. And, if you interfere with that process, then you can spoil that process. So, there is a time when you have to stay with it, as they say, that is let that process of repair take place under safe conditions. For example, if you have a wound, and you place a bandage on it, so that a dressing with some disinfectant, so that it is, the repair process can take place in safe conditions. otherwise it would be infected. So, that is therapy. 

But, then a second stage, of course, is to discover the bounty present within one's being, and that will made for regeneration. So the positive, you have, Ya Mu'id, and Ya Muhyi, but then I would say, to understand Muhyi, you would really have to discover or embrace, or encompass the bounty of your being, and that is the word Kamil. The bounty of your being.

So, as I said, to withdraw, you would have withdrawal symptoms, if you simply abandoned your defences without being able to fall upon the bounty of your being. So, that is what is important. At this stage, at a certain point, then after staying with it, after letting that process of self repair take place, then there is something positive that one needs to do, and that is recognizing the bounty of one's being. And, that goes together, I hope that I'm not giving you too many wazifas, but it's all coming through now. It goes together with the word, Khabir. Now that is a very important wazifa, because Khabir does not mean power, it means greatness. Recognize the greatness of your being. Now, that is a very positive thing, that means the greatness, that means the compass of your being. Instead of bring a puny being, you are a great being, so a sense of a wide compass of your being. If you know something about the Sufis, that is what makes the Sufi dervishes, is the sense of the grandeur, the greatness of God coming through them. And, they become like kings and queens, the sense of Khabir. And, of course, that is embodied in the word Allah ho Akbar. It is the same word, Khabir, Akbar, but I prefer it in that form, Ya khabir. 

So, we'll do, Ya Kamil Ya Khabir. Ya Kamil, that means divine perfection, "gives me a sense of greatness." (pause) 

You know, a big dog allows children to beat it up, whereas a little dog will bite them. So, be a big being, and if people hurt you, you are a big being, and you have room in your heart for those naughty people, whereas, if you are a puny being, then you are going to counterattack. (laughter)

'k, Well, that is enough for today, so I will leave it to Aziza to follow this up. (laughter)

end.

0  Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 05

Tape 5

Yesterday, we were looking at ourselves with a certain amount of perspective, without identifying ourselves, and asking ourselves questions. What are our values in life? What are our motivations? Do my motivations match my values? Why am I doing what I am doing? What is my relationship with a person? Am I trying to manipulate that person for my gain? Am I trying to help that person? Do I lift the consciousness of that person up? Do I have the opposite effect? Does that person have the effect of lifting my consciousness up? And so on. And, we found that it called upon us many qualities, which is what is embodies in what we call waziif, but really speaking the word is, (Is illa he), the names of God. And, one of them is truth, confrontation, and the other one was finding peace in oneself through detachment, and the other was accepting the divine unconditional, love and consequently loving oneself. In order to overcome any sense of shame or inadequacy, resentment, quilt, all those things, we went into detail of the, well listed some human problems. And, we were asking ourselves what are the, I would like to use the word solutions, but what are the methods used in spirituality complimentary to the methods used in psychotherapy in order to help people deal with these wounds. 

And, that whole idea was not to neglect, or bypass these wounds in order to get spaced out, in a high state, and find yourself back again with these wounds.

Now, the sequel today is, our impact on the past, and on the future. It is in the, let say a variation of a theme which is to be found in the words of a dervish, (first name?) Nifari, quoted by (Hutvi), which says, "Vaqq", that is, the instant of time is a sharp sword that cuts the guilt of the past, and the prefiguration of the future. 

Now, that has enormous consequences in terms of meditation. What happens when we turn within? Because, as we turn within, we have interrupted the causal chain of conditioning, and therefore, we are creating conditions that are favorable to being creative of ourselves. 

So, that is just a preliminary. Now we are going to do the practice. So, imagine that you are a pendulum, and you know that, supposing that you would hold the pendulum up to the left, for example, and you would let it go, then it would swing past the nadir, toward the right, and then it would experience a moment of suspense, a state of suspense, before it swings in the opposite way. One could say that time is landscaped just like space, and so time can come to a standstill. 

Now in our breathing practices, we create situations that are favorable to making time stand still. Supposing that you breath very slowly, you can just slow the process of becoming, the advance of time, but if you hold your breath, you have lost your sense of the passage of time, and so, you are in a different time frame then what we understand by the process of becoming. And this is what the Sufis call the instant of time, in contrast to the moment of time. In the moment of time, the past overlaps the future, and the future overlaps the past. For example, if you are listening to a piece of music, the piece of music that you hear now, you are still hearing the notes, I mean the notes that you have just played still resonate in you ears while you are playing the next note, and you can even anticipate the next note sometimes. So, there is an overlap. But, the instant of time breaks the continuity, the chain of becoming, and the consequence is, it is just like opening a new chapter in a book, the consequence is that these are conditions that are favorable to the emergence of a new dispensation in life instead of being simply the result of the past. And, that is why he says, "it cuts the guilt of the past". He is using psychological terms instead of using philosophical term, it cuts the guilt of the past. 

So, it would be a chance of a reprieve from ones feeling of guilt, one feels as though one can't turn the clock back anymore, and that somehow the past is no more what it was. And therefore, there is a way of having some kind of retrospective action upon the past, by what is called the pledge. A pledge is made in an instant of time, and there is no going back, it is outside time, it is the instant of time instead of the moment of time, and it represents a total break in the continuity of ones life. 

So, I am drawing your attention to the very importance of making the pledge, you have to know exactly what you are doing, I mean, what you want to promise, and that is going to have consequences for your future, and therefore it is going to alter your configurations of the future. 

So now, if you, so put the thumb of your right hand under you chin, and the middle finger of your right hand against your right nostril, the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand, and now, first of all take away the pressure from your right fingers and right hand, and exhale through both nostrils. 

Now, as you inhale, press your right finger, and as you breath in through the left nostril, just imagine that the whole past is moving towards the present instant, like the pendulum that is swinging from the left, and reaches a point of suspense towards, when it has swung as far as it can go on to the right. 

And now, exhale through the right nostril, so that the pendulum gets back to the central position again. Now, we are going to do this practice in slow stages, if you don't mind. So now, as you are breathing in through the nostril, you get used to it, you can't do it the first time, but eventually you get used to looking at your life as a film, the whole past is a film. There are two elements in that film, there are occurrences, and also the way that you have transformed yourself in the course of the occurrences. 

So, as you inhale through the left nostril, you see the process of becoming, you see the causal chain, how one thing leads to another, and so on, how you are conditioned. And when you hold you breath, that is your chance of inserting a break in the continuity of time. A state of suspense, and that break is consolidated by a pledge that you make, which is going to free you, to some extent, from the causal effect of the past, and therefore open possibilities for the future which were closed because the effect of the past. 

Alright, we are going to keep on do that for several times then, breathing in through the left nostril, and then hold your breath. And, as you exhale, then simply, well there are several things that you can do. One is that you do think about the future, such as you had prefigured you plans for the future. And, you see that your plans for the future are as binding, are as limiting as the effects of the past. 'k, lets do this again. And, over again. 

We have found some kind of reprieve from the effect of the past, in the measure in which we are pledges, drastic, lets say, dependent upon the enormous consequences of our pledge. It can be a weak pledge, it can be a strong pledge, it can involve a lot of things. Never make a pledge unless you are quite sure that you can carry it out.

Now, we want to find freedom from the constraint of the prefiguration for the future. And, these preconfigurations include hopes and also as fears, and the whole uncertainty. So, we are going to breath in now through the right nostril, and we're swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction. Hold the breath, and exhale through the left nostril. 

So, remember this formula of Euler, E-U-L-E-R, Euler. Dr Euler. "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past." So, as you breath in through the right nostril, think that the future carries infinite possibilities that were limited by the conditioning of the past, but from the moment that you have freed yourself to some extent, from the conditioning of the past, more and more possibilities open up. (pause) 

Now, when you hold your breath, your pledge is going to effect your prefiguration for the future, so that you are freeing yourself, to some extent, from your past prefiguration, so that the all possibilities lying in the future, let's say more of the possibilities of the future, are opening up to you.

Lets say, one is limiting the prospects of ones future by ones planning. I'm not saying that one shouldn't plan, but ones planning does limit the prospects. And, when you hold your breath, you have to be prepared to find that your planning breaks down, and you are prepared for the unexpected, the unknown. (pause)

And, this is creativity, creativity is unconditioned. unexpected. It is free from the conditioning. So, you are freeing yourself, to some extent, from the consequences of the past, and from the constraints of your own planning for the future, and therefore opening up untold possibilities, and that is creativity.

And, now as you exhale through the left nostril, you find that not only your pledge is going to exonerate you from some of the effects of the causal chain that you have set into operation in the past. But, the all possibilities of the future, are going to effect your past even more than your pledge. "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past." The push of the past is limiting, it is your conditioning. Your pledge is your freedom, and the pull of the future represents the all possibilities that one had limited by ones conditioning. And, from the moment that one has freedom, to whatever extent, from that conditioning, the possibilities open up. (pause) 

Now, keep on alternating between the two.

Breath normally.

Now, there are three critical moments in the motion of a pendulum, when it has swung to the extreme right, and when it has swung to the extreme left, and then the point when the pendulum is suspended. So, the end points, right and left, represents the instant of time, the transit from the past to the future, and the effect of the future on the past. But, the point where the pendulum is suspended, represents another dimension of time, eternity. And, that means the eternal dimension of you being that is not subject to change, and therefore immortal. That is, you have always existed, and always will exist, prior to your birth, after your death, you continue to be. And so, it is something like, well, there are two levels here, one is like it is always the same river that runs under the bridge, but never the same water. 

So, that is called perennity, a continuity in change. You are the same body that you were before but you don't have one of the same cells that you had when you were a baby. And, if you are the same person, as you were when you were a baby, but your personality is very different. Continuity in change, perennity. And then, eternity, which transcends change all together. And, it is that realization that will give you samadhi, that is, pure transcendence. As Professor (Schmeiser), of Zurich, says, "It is a level beyond where the programming of the universe is set up." 

So, it is not your destiny, because your destiny is part of the programming. So, it is a level that transcends not only conditioning, but the programming, the destiny of your life. And, of course it represents the ultimate freedom, freedom from conditioning, freedom from programming. It means that point that your realization, where you have found freedom. Not only from your conditioning, because we are all conditioned to a very large extent, as Krishnamurti shows. But also, as Pir-o-Murshid says, "To pursue our projects, we will gain power, but our projects limit our power. If everything breaks down in your life, you are a candidate for immortality. 

You have not only overcome your conditioning, but you have also overcome your own programming. That is the ultimate freedom. 

This is what happens if you breath in through both nostrils, then hold your breath. So that if you breath in both nostrils, you are overcoming the conditioning of the past, and the programming of the future, your denting. Or, you are overcoming both of them in the course of your inhaling, hold your breath, that is that magical moment, when you are in a state of Samadhi, actually when you consider your body bodiness, your mind, mindness, your sense of meaningfulness, your emotions, your psyche, of course, as all the underpinning of your realization. And, your realization does not depend on experience through that underpinning. That is awakening, beyond time and space, beyond conditioning and programming, in the oneness, in the oneness of the totality. The Sufis say, "in Azaliat," that means, they use the word pre eternity, I would say perieternity.

Quro Seculorum, the century of the centuries. So, let us do that, and see what you experience. (pause) 

Now, to attain that pinnacle of ones sense of meaningfulness, which I call the realization of awakening, one's breathing has to shift from being the type of breathing in which one is drawing energy from outside to inside, or from downwards, upwards, and descending, bring it down, form the cross. That requires a different type of breathing altogether. You may call aerobic breathing, energy from inside, to the extent that the yogis sometimes, seem not be breathing at all, and one can subject them to all kinds of laboratory experiments. They are not drawing in oxygen from the environment, they are drawing oxygen from their bodies inside, aerobic breathing. (pause)

So, now the underpinning itself, instead of the environment, is the wind which enables the mind to fly. (pause) 

But, remember the story of Belafron and Pegasus. Pegasus can only go so far. And, Belafron has to proceed on his own to the Olympus. So that when you hold your breath, you have even left that aerobic moment of oxygenation behind. And so, it is your realization that climbs to the apex of your being. (pause) 

Now we are going to complete this because, the pendulum seems to be moving in a two dimensional space, and space is a least three dimensional, if not n dimensional. 

side 2

Let's think in terms of a hologram which is at least three dimensional. So, when you breath in, first of all, imagine that you are a vortex. That is a vortex, like a whirlpool, or a whirlwind. In the lake for example, the whirlpool is a kind of a phenomenon that organizes the whole lake. Whereby the water of the whole lake eventually passes, is drawn into the vacuum of the center of the whirlpool, and then pushed out, scattered, diffused. And, the whirlpool whirls either dexro-rotary, or levo-rotary, to the right of the left. A planet rotates to the right, at least the planet earth. 

Can you feel the difference? Identify yourself with your force field instead of your body, because that is a vortex. Your body is a formation within that vortex, like a crystal. So, a vortex doesn't have a boundary, so your fore field doesn't have a boundary, but you can see that is the access that is the determining principle of your whole vortex. That's your spinal chord. Can you feel like, the difference between the periphery where there is a kind of overlap with the environment, where there is an inflow, and an outflow with the environment, of energy? The difference between that, and what you feel in the center, it's like a drain, like the drain in your bathroom, for example. The whole environment seems to be pulled into that enter, and evacuated into the void, and then reemerging from the void, and diffusing in the environment. 

So, you feel the pull of the center, the pull of that vacuum. Now, when you are breathing in through the left nostril, the energy that impinges, the telluric energy, that is earth energy, that impinges from the bottom of your spine, is going to spiral upwards, and the reason why it is spiralling, instead of going straight up, is because it keeps being pulled towards the center. So, if you feel that pull in your spinal chord, the vacuum, and you see how that energy would, normally it would either go right up, or then it would move to the left, because you're breathing through the left. But, the consequence of that pull, is that it is going to spiral upwards, clockwise. 

Now, hold your breath so that the spiral culminates in a place which the Hindus call, bindu, and which is your pituitary gland, and as you exhale, then, well of course, if you hold your breath, just think that you are touching upon sublime energy, heavenly energy, pure spirit. And, when you exhale, it is now not telluric energy, but this energy that we call pure spirit, which is now going to spiral downwards to the right, clockwise on a different staircase than you came up on. Now, as you breath in through the right nostril, the telluric energy, the earth energy, is going to spiral up anticlockwise, so, you notice that then the energy is pulled towards the center, and pulled upwards at the same time, that makes the spiral, hold your breath, eyeballs upwards, curl your tongue, and press it against your palate. And, pure spirit, as we said, and exhale through your left nostril, you are spiralling that celestial energy downwards. You are going down the same staircase that you came up in the first place, anticlockwise. You came up clockwise, and now you go down anticlockwise. 

Now breath in through both nostrils, now you have two spirals that crisscross in the front of the second chakra, in the back of the solar plexis, in the front of the heart center, and the back of the throat center, called the atlas, and then the front of the third eye, and then finally meet in the pituitary gland, and radiate as the crown center. Hold your breath. And as you exhale, then this pure energy of pure spirit, is descending through the central channel of the spinal chord, but keeps on bifocating left and right into the two spirals which keep on crisscrossing as they swirl downwards. 'k, now try and do it again without my instructions. (pause)

'k, now we have a new factor here, because when you are breathing left and right, the pendulum, where the notion of the past and the present and the future, the passage of time, the programming, time came in. Now we have a different dimension, a different a different effect altogether, transmutation. (pause) That is moving from outside inside, and moving upwards at the same time. And then moving downwards, and at the same time moving outwards. (pause)

So, when you think of the past, think that you are transmuting the past. As I said, the past is no more what it was, it is transmuted in you, and all those people with whom you were involved in the past. And, what does transmuting mean. It is exactly what happens when one extracts the perfume of the flowers. A quintessence is extracted, and the dross, the contingent aspects are rejected. So, as you do this practise, you think that as you turn within, the impressions of the outside world, not only you ingest the impressions of the outside world, but you transmute them. That is what one does with ones food, You ingest them, and digest them. 

Now, if you have to make a distinction between the two phases in the digestion, the one in which the input of the outside is digested. And, this involves the breakdown of the amino acid chains as you know. and then there is a second phase in which the amino acid chains are reformed to match your DNA. Two phases here. And so the first one is the motion from outside to inside, and the second one is the motion from below to above. So, maybe, one could use the word transmutation and transfiguration.  Transmutation for the first and transfiguration for the second. And, they are both happening at the same time. Because, you are turning in and turning upwards at the same time. And so, what the Sufis say, is that you are preparing your body of resurrection. You are preparing yourself for resurrection. Die before death and resurrect now. 

And, when you exhale, especially through both nostrils, then it is the other way around. You are experiencing incarnation instead of resurrection. The descent of pure spirit, and of course, the way, as soon as you move down from unity, then you have a dichotomy, you have duality, and then eventually multiplicity. So, the one at the central channel represents the unity, but then it gets divided left and right just like in the Sephardic tree of the Kaballa. Do you see that? 

'k, so we'll just do it again now, and perhaps if you think about what I just said, you see what, how it affects your thinking as you do the practice. (pause)

So, it is not just the resurrection of your person, transmutation, but your participation in the resurrection of the universe, which is sometimes expressed as the resurrection of God in the story of Jesus, Christ. And, it is not your birthing, but the birthing of the incarnation of God, of the universe as you. And so, this is expressed by the alchemical slogan, "The spiritualization of matter, and the materialization of spirit." it is illustrated by two sayings, one by Jelaluddin Rumi, "Tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal." That means that the universe is resurrected into the programming, which is reprogrammed, enriched by the feedback. And, the other is a poem by Prentiss Milford, the American poet, who says, "Infinity in a finite fact, and eternity in a temporal act." "I ask nothing less than the impossible possibility, Infinity in a finite fact, and eternity in a temporal act." 

God bless you now.

end of tape 5. 

Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 06

Tape 6

Well, now the first step in the yoga sutras of Pantangali, leading to samadhi, called, Sarvitarka Samadhi, consists of freeing your assessment of the world, and that includes your problems, and also your own self image from the personal bias. So, most people, most of the time, that includes most of us, that includes myself too, tend to get in our personal vantage point, and so we have those simplistic ways of thinking, like, "How do you feel?" "I feel cold. I feel warm. I have a pain in my back. Or, I have a tooth ache." That kind of thing. "I feel happy. I feel unhappy, because someone was very unpleasant to me". Or, "I feel happy, because I met a friend." And so on. Personal bias.

And so, we carry the assessment of our problems in our psyche, so the world continues to live inside us. And so, we carry a false assessment of our problems, permanently in our psyche. Just imagine, throughout our life. So, it is not surprising that we goof. 

And so, the first thing is a kind of catharsis of mind, one might say, to free ourselves from that personal bias. So, I've already said, for example, consciousness is like, for example, the span of your eyes. You could read the pages of a book, or you could encompass a wide panorama. And so, consciousness can be extremely constrained, contracted in the notion of me, as one thinks oneself as an entity other than others. One calls that a discreet entity. Or then, consciousness can expand, and lose the sense of the personal entity into the vastness. Let's say, no horizon. 

So, there are wazifas for this. Qabid, Q-A-B-I-D. And, I am sure Aziza will give them to you. Qabid is where consciousness is contracted, concentrated, and you have a very strong sense of me, let's say, of the uniqueness of your being. And then, consciousness can expand. That's called Basit, the wazifa for it, Basit. That means, your consciousness has expanded, and you have lost the sense of the uniqueness of your being, but you have gained the sense of the wide, cosmic dimension of your being. Basit. So, we can alternate between these two. Breath out, as you exhale. You see, if you, instead of identifying with your physical body which gives you a sense of me, because the skin, so separateness, that this is me, and outside the skin is not me. 

If you identify with your electromagnetic field, which doesn't have a boundary, then of course, your consciousness is able to expand beyond the skin. I mean your sense of me is able to expand beyond your skin. Now, if you identify with your aura, then of course, your sense of me is right out in the stars. So, those are the thoughts that will help you to expand your consciousness. Think of the starry sky, the galaxies, and think that your body is part of the galaxies. That in fact, the fabric of your body is the fabric of the planet. I mean, the cells of your body are the fabric of the planet that has evolved as human beings, and in fact, it is the fabric of the whole universe. In fact it is the "big bang". The big outbreak of radiance. 

So, if you think that way, that is a kind of thought that will encourage the sense of what I call the cosmic dimension of your being, as opposed, as I say, your puny being which is one's sense of what Pir-o-Murshid calls, "the false ego", which is only a fraction of what you really are. However, so you do that as you exhale. However, the disadvantage of highlighting the cosmic dimension of your being, is that you lose the sense of the uniqueness of your person. And, that is what is gained by life, that the one and only being, by fragmenting, him/herself, gives vent to a multiplicity of being, each carrying the totality, but manifesting into a unique way.

You find that in Teillhard de Chardin. Alpha gives vent to a multiplicity of beings, and eventually, they all coalesce in omega.

So, that is why, in our Sufi methods, we always alternate between expansion and contraction, because if you do not do that, then you lose the sense of your uniqueness, and if you know something about psychology, psychotherapists are very uptight, I would say, with spiritualists if they are promoting practises, if they are prescribing practises which make one lose the sense of what they call "one's ego". You have to have a strong ego they say, a healthy ego, they say.

Well, it's true, that as I say, what we call the false ego is our defense, and we don't know how to defend ourselves until we go through a lot of meditations, and are able to gain consciousness of the vastness of our being. So, we call upon this false notion of our being to protect ourselves. As I said before, if you negate this, you will develop withdrawal symptoms unless you have replaced the false ego by the true you.

So, hence, be careful of just wallowing in the sense of discovering the vastness, the immensity of your being, which is also, which is one of the dimensions of your being, and losing sight of your uniqueness. So therefor, you balance the two.

Now, what is more, and this is very serious, and that is that we are continually, as I call it, imbibing the universe, that is that we are being enriched all the time by elements from the environment, just like our food. But, these are psychological elements that we incorporate in our psyche. And, unless we make a selection to determine what we want to ingest, and what we do not want to ingest, we will suffer from a psychological indigestion, and that is what most people are suffering from today. Exposed to TV, and all kinds of news, and all kinds of things, impression that somehow spill over in our psyche, and we lose the sense of our uniqueness.

Now, the immune system of the body is based upon me, or not me. For example, if one transplants an organ, the immune system will reject it if it is too different from me, from the code of the DNA. But, there is a second immune system which adapts itself to the environment, and therefor, the body will accept an organ that is rather different from its own DNA. If one knows how the enhance that second immune system, and if it were not for that second immune system, we would not be able to eat at att, we have to be able to ingest elements that are not like our body, and which we then transmute.

So, the second immune system adapts itself, our body to the environment. And, as I say, we are suffering from over adaptation, and lose ourselves. There is always a balance between the two.

So, when you inhale, you recover the sense of the uniqueness of your being, your person, your individuality. And, this gives you the ability to select between the impressions that you want to imbibe, and those that you do not. 

That means that you reject those impressions that you cannot handle, and that is what Buddha means by placing a sentinel at the doors of perception. The sentinel rejects elements that do not belong to it, that belong to one's organism, to one's psyche.

But, then, that is a difficult selection, because as I say, one enriches oneself by elements that are a little bit different, and it depends just how different they are. Just like your food, you will perhaps, you will reject the indigestible parts of the vegetables, and only take in those that are more digestible. So, there is some selection that takes place. And, as I say, it is your sense of me, a very strong sense of who you are, that establishes that ability to select.

And, I think that instead of being judgmental about it, one can say, well, this is something that I can't handle for the time being. I am not big enough to encompass, incorporate it. 

Now, that word to encompass, is another wazifa. Wasi, W-A-S-I. And so, it is different from expanding to the point of infinity. To encompass means there is a sense of wideness, but at the same time, containment. And so, this is up to you to decide, but I personally like to alternate between Qabid, and Wasi, instead of Qabid, and Basit, because Basit, one tends to lose oneself in the vastness, whereas Wasi means, like the range, your outreach, your embrace. And, Pir-o-Murshid says sometimes, "Everyday you survey your territory." That is, those areas in which you are responsible, that is your outreach. It's wide but it is not infinite.

So, how does one reject those impressions that one does not want to ingest? You know very well that if you keep on watching the news, and most of the news is horrible, those thoughts are so compelling, that you keep on thinking about them. Now, if one could do something about it, like that TWA plane that was blown up, if you could do something about it, then it would be good for you to think about it. But, otherwise, you are better to get on with things where you can do something about. So, we are continually loading our consciousness with a lot of things we can't deal with anyway. And, in a state of distress, and it's true, I don't suggest that we put our heads under the sand and don't know what is happening. But, somehow, can you find, well, the ultimate is really, can you find joy while you and others are suffering?

And, the answer is yes, of course, but that is what we try to do.

It's a creative power. Joy is a creative power.

Well, those sentinels are your immunity, your immunity. Immunity is really indifference, detachment. Now, indifference, I know, we don't like that word. It seems to be very cold, and not accepting the richness of life. The indifference of the ascetic. No, you should replace that by the thought, well, to be more specific, I am thinking of that woman in the South who was being beaten, and who kept on saying, "You can do what you like with my body, but you can't touch my soul." That is what I mean by indifference. A kind of immunity, that enables you to find freedom under the stress of the impact of the environment. Particularly the psychological stress. It is your safety valve. It is the only way to survive. And therefor, we can learn something from the emotional attunement of the ascetic. And, that doesn't mean that we want to be ascetics, as I said, the challenge of Sufism is being able to be in the world, but not of the world.

So, when you are on retreat, you are on retreat now, so when you are sitting in nature, then just try to pinpoint, or earmark the ascetic in you. It's there, it's hidden under the workaholic, (laughter) It's like, just enjoy, just imagine that you are like an ascetic, like Buddha, for example, sitting in nature, and you have found wonderful peace in yourself. Now, what I am saying is, what I am trying to say is the wazifas don't quite do it for you if you think of their meaning. Then, it is not sufficient, it is a mind trip, but it doesn't affect your psyche very deeply. So, you ask, "What does it mean? Well, this means expansion, or this means contraction, this means containment." These are words. And therefor, and for example, if you say sentinels at the doors of perception, that is much more concrete. Sentinels are there, standing there and refuting certain impressions, and allowing others to come through. So, we have that, and it is like a filter, we have that in our body too, of course. We have it in our psyche. 

So, what it amounts to is, as Buddha says, surrounding yourself with a zone of silence. So, as you are sitting there in nature, think, "Yes, I am sitting there, and protected by the zone of silence." Yesterday I spoke about this buffer that Beethoven demonstrated in the fourth piano concerto, between the challenge of the world, and the pool of resourcefulness in his being. If you just react, you don't avail yourself of all that richness of that pool of resourcefulness. So, that is the buffer, enables you to turn within, and access all that richness within you. otherwise your short circuiting by reacting.

So, that buffer is peace. I mentioned that yesterday. We use the word, Salaam, which means peace. But, again, the trouble is just thinking peace. What does peace mean, and so on, and so just the meaning. It is an abstraction. And therefor, for this to be a real deep experience instead of just conceptualization, what I am suggesting is always complete a wazifa with an image, with an imagination. A scene, or a scenario. For example, imagine that you are sitting, I'm sorry, that you are walking alongside a lake in the moonlight, on a moonlit night. Everything is serene and peaceful. And, somehow, the noise of the world seems to be very remote, and your memory of all the tribulation that you are in seems to be dulled a little bit, because the impression of peace is so strong that it seems to allay all those disturbed emotions in you. And, you are floating more than walking, so that somehow your very body reflects something of the transfigured world, landscape in which you find yourself. So, this is real experience. You found peace. Then, as we said yesterday. After the crisis, then nature has it that there is always crisis followed by a peaceful state. It is sort of a natural sequence. What they call resolution. So, you must not say salaam when you are in a crisis situation, because it doesn't ring true, you are right in the middle of the crisis. And, that is why they say, psychologists say, "Stay with it." In a crisis situation, do not try to interfere with your will, because nature has a way of self organizing itself. But, at a certain point, you will, by sheer exhaustion, if nothing else, you will start to relax, and that is the moment to reinforce that feeling of relaxation by meditation, for example, on walking along a lake on a moonlit night. And, once you have got that sense of peacefulness, now you can think, well, that is, that is the zone of silence, that buffer, which protects me against my tendency to react towards the terms of the world. And so, it is an indisputable state that you can turn within. 

Now, there are two things that we have to consider. And that is, first of all, the impressions from outside are imputed into your psyche. They are filtered first of all, that is the first alchemical process, filtering, first edge. And, the second stage is that they are transmuted.

That means that you retain the quintessence of that experience, and the, how can I say, the support system, I mean the underpinning, the circumstantial circumstances. Well, that is contingent, and that is not essential. That is the support system that carries the know how, the gist of the experience. So, what you, otherwise you are loading yourself with a lot of unnecessary details. So, you just retain the just of the experience.

So, that is the first thing, filtering, right, transmuting. The second stage, to retain the gist of the experience. And now, there is a third stage. In the digestion of our food, for example, there is a breakdown, as I say, the amino acid changes. But, then there is an action of our enzymes upon the food. So, there is action, a transforming action of your being upon the input of impressions from outside.

That is, that the impressions from outside have to match your being, and maybe they transform your being, but they must not be like cankers inside your psyche. They have to be integrated in your psyche, and therefor your whole being has to be a part of this process. Now, that is the opposite of the input. That is what we call creativity.

So now, let's make, open up brackets now, to understand this better. The Tibetans distinguish between the gross mind, the subtle mind, and the very subtle mind. And, they say that the mind rides the wind. So, the gross mind rides the gross body, the subtle mind rides the subtle body, and the very subtle mind rides the very subtle body. So, the gross is our physical body. And if we identify with our physical body, then our mind in going to think in the simplistic way which consists of interpreting experience, the input of experience. So, that is the activity of the gross mind. But, as we turn within, we identify with our etheric body, our subtle body, and consequently, it is now the subtle mind that is active. And, the subtle mind is the mind, let's say the creative mind, the mind of creative imagination which translates a deep emotion emerging from within into an organizing thought, and then into a form. That's what imagination is.

I'll give you an example, for example, Brahms, goes through a very traumatic experience when he meets, he visited Schumman, and Schumman asked him to play the piano, and Schumman was so moved by the genius of Brahms, that he called his wife Clara, and said, "Come and listen, have you ever heard music like this?" And when Brahms met Clara Schumman, and Clara Schumman met Brahms, they realized that they were twin souls. And of course, in those days, marriage was sacrosanct. And, well, it's a long story, but, Brahms always respected the integrity of Clara Schumman. So, but, what I mean by that is that at some point, Schumman tried to commit suicide.

So, Brahms lived this terrible tragedy in his life, and he transformed his suffering into joy. The fourth symphony, (Pir hums theme of first mov't), transforms suffering into joy. So, that's creativity. The situation in his life was the trigger, that triggered off the creativity,...

side 2

...emerges from within. So, it is not, it wasn't a reaction, it was simply a trigger. Somehow, something within himself, and I call it the resourcefulness in his being, emerged, starting with an emotion, and then somehow, his mind was able to translate that emotion into a very intelligent construct, and eventually a form, which is, music is a form. The notes of the music is a form, and this rhythm is a form. So, that is what imagination is you see. 

So, when you are meditating then, think, "'k, well, these are the impressions of the world, and they are pummelling my psyche and causing distress, and maybe some joy too, some pangs of joy. But, this is me also, not just the world." Think of yourself as continually unfolding. Now, I am moving a little bit to fast, but still, let's consider each stage now, as you turn within.

Now, can you do this, now, this is a, don't listen to my words, but try and do this now. That is, consider that in the world, in the situations in which you find yourself, you are playing a role. Now, maybe you don't accept that, that you are playing a role. There are extreme cases, for example, the King thinks he is a king, because he is sitting on a throne with a crown on his head, and so on. The English businessman with his black umbrella, and his top hat going to the bank. He thinks he is a business man, and so on, and on. We think, what we are playing a role. A guru thinks he is a guru because people treat him with a lot of respect, where he is just a human being like any other. But, he thinks he is just VIP, and so on, and so. So, it is just a role we are playing.

Now, so you identify with your job, with your position, your family, your father, or mother, or whatever, sister, or brother, or whatever. Now, or you think you are an old person, or a young person. As again, a role. 

Now, much deeper still, consider that what you see in that cheapest of all feedback systems, which is the mirror, is an illusion. (Pir laughs) That you are wearing a mask, and that your real face, your real countenance is hidden behind that mask, and somehow, you identify with what you see in the mirror, and have lost sight of who you really are. So, could you just capture the countenance of your real being behind the mask.

And you know it when you have hit upon it, and you know, this is me. (pause)

Now, if you look into this a little more deeply, you will find that the real you is continually changing according to your attunement, and evolving, as you progress in life. And so, it is not a stereotyped picture, but it is an ongoing, almost like a film in a cinema, going, transforming process. 

Now, you realize that there is always a balance between how much one adapts oneself to the environment, and how much one adapts the environment to one's own sense of purpose. So, you realize that your adaptation to the environment is at the cost of your true being. And, then you begin to adapt the environment to who you are. 

That means, wherever you go, you bring your being with you, you bring your attunement with you. And well, it's like a grownup playing with a child, you can play with a child, but still you are a grownup. 

So, this is going to have an affect on how you input the impressions from the outside world, or rather, how you integrate those impressions in your being. If you have a very strong sense of who you are, they will be integrated in your psyche without your losing the overall features of your being.

That's the way to have a strong personality. Those are the creative beings.

Now, the wazifa corresponding to this would be, Batin, Zahir, of course. Batin, turning within, and Zahir, radiating out.

So, the subtle mind is, as I said, the creative mind that, you see the way that it is described in vedanta is, at a first level, one experiencing other than oneself. One is experiencing the Universe that seems other than oneself. There is me in the Universe. In the second stage, that which you are experiencing is the way that you are unfurling, are projecting yourself in your creative imagination. So, you are both the spectator, and creator, but you are experiencing. The first case you were just a spectator. The second case, you are the spectator and the creator of what you are experiencing.

So, how does one turn within then? Because, by definition, that is what meditation is about. It is, it's not what is meditation, but a lot of people think that meditation is simply turning within. That is just one of the dimensions, but is a very important one. And today, we want to learn how to turn within, because yesterday we were expanding, reaching out, now we want to learn how to turn within.

Well, what Pir-o-Murshid says, is that, when we place a sentinel at the doors of perception. Well, no, it's not good to place a sentinel at the doors of perception, you place a real blockage at the doors of perception. You block out the input from the environment, and then you will find that consciousness finding it's, facing this wall you see, is going to turn within.

So, this is a practise that I would like you to do today, but it is a practise that I recommend only on retreat, because it could make you other worldly otherwise. It is a traditional practise of the Hindus, but also adopted by the Sufis, called Yoni Mudra in yoga, and Shagall by the Sufis.

So, you place the, first of all you close your eyelids, and place the indexes of you fingers, I mean your indexes in the slit between the bottom of your eyelid, and the boney structure underneath, underneath your eyes. And so, be very careful not to press upon the retina, or the cornea. And then, place the forth and fifth fingers on your lips, and place the middle finger of your right hand, and the middle finger of your left hand in the proximity of your nostrils, but do not press them yet. And, simply exhale through both nostrils. Extend you exhaling, and now, inhale through both nostrils. Press both middle fingers, hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upwards, and curl your tongue, and press the bottom of your tongue against your palate. And now, exhale, that means lift your both fingers, and exhale.

Now, press the middle finger of your left hand permanently on your left nostril, breath in through the right nostril. Hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upwards, curl your tongue, press it against the palate. Exhale through the right nostril.

Now, what I suggest is that you concentrate on your solar plexis as you ....(tape cuts out) Consciousness cannot reach out, and so it about turns, and of course, the solar plexis represents the vacuum, the center of the vortex that you are. And consequently, that will help you to have some sense of what it means to turn within.

Alright, now you can place your thumbs on your ears. Only three breaths. After three breaths, inhaling through the right nostril, holding the breath, and out through the right nostril. And, concentrating on the solar plexis, then take your hands away, your fingers away, keep your eyes closed, and continue to turn within. And remember that as you turn within, you will find yourself in a world of thoughts. And, the only way to really turn within, is to consider that the grosser thoughts are biased. So, you devalidate your commonplace thinking in order to have access into the creative thoughts that emerge from within, and that are not a reaction to the input of the environment. That are spontaneous. That is the subtle mind, as we said. 

'k, now do this three breaths, and then, fingers away. (pause)

You find that you do not need to block out the impressions of the physical world in order to encourage consciousness to turn within. But, the sentinel at the door of perception is your ascetic detachment and indifference, which protects you against being delivered entirely into the hands of the appearance of things. And, that indifference is countered by you interest. Your attention upon the spontaneous creative thoughts that emerge from within are more so, the rebirthing that takes place from within, and enlists a whole new way of thinking that it is determined by the conditioning of the environment. (pause)

So, in practise, what it amounts to is that you devalidate thoughts which you would normally take for granted, because you realize that they are of a, let's say, they are illusory, let's say, they are, in some ways distorted by the personal bias. So, if you devalidate them, that is if you don't take them for granted, but are cautious about them, because you feel that they have incurred the impact of your personal bias. Then, you will find that the spontaneous thoughts that are emerging from within, are going to be highlighted, while you downplay the input from outside. (pause)

Now, you cannot then determine these spontaneous thoughts by your will, and therefor, you might say, I'm questioning the validity of my commonplace thoughts, but I cannot really say that I can perceive any new thoughts that are emerging from within."

Well, I think the answer is to think that at every breath, you are recurrently reborn, and so, that's the instant of time, as I mentioned this morning. In the instant of time, you are turning a new leaf, and so a new dispensation emerges, spontaneously, ex milo. And, so the way to do this is, as I said, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past." And so, the way to do it is to think, "Yes, I have a chance of being what I might be if I would be as I could be." So, you project in front of you how you could be, with all the adjoining thoughts. And so, your attention is on that which is emerging from within, instead of that which is imputed from outside.

Now, that is turning within. And, Aziza, I've gone beyond the time, taking time from your time, because I started late. 

The wazifa, let's say, we need to remind ourselves that these are creative ideas, instead of the regurgitations of impressions from outside. And the word for that is Haliq, creativity. And, as I say, creativity is always the way that emergent emotion in the thought is fashioned into a form. And so, Haliq is always followed by Mussawur, which means fashioning, modelling, fashioning.

Yes, I hand it over to you Aziza.



 0  Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 07

Tape 7

Simply by being aware of the light in your eyes. (pause) And, it's not just the physical phenomenon of the emission of light from the retina, but it has to do with a kind of, an inner attitude of a very powerful kind of divine love that is, that does not brook of either personal power, or any kind of psychological resentment, but just pure loving light, if i may say that, giving light. 

And of course, it comes from a place of absolute sincerity, and is in contact with the very depth of one's soul. And, then it manifests through one's glance, and communicates to our beings. 

Now, turn your glance, 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, you bring your eyes in their forward position. And now, somehow, you are feeling that the light that you are emitting is the light of the heavens instead of the light that emitted from your own person. So, the first one came from the depth of the solar plexis, and this one from the top of your head, or through to top of your head. (pause)

As you breath in, transfer your attention from the bottom of your spine, passing through each chakra until you reach the top of your head. Imagine 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, 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, then that luminous intelligence seems to be monitored by your glance. (pause)

That is the light upon the light. (pause) 

Now, I think that your glance, it's not like an x-ray that sees through matter, but it's like the ability to grasp the thinking of matter, like the intelligence buried in matter. And consequently, you are able to see right into the souls of people. (pause)

With the light of truth. (pause)

Now, you are aware of the energy of your body. Well actually, you can even feel the cells of your body as alive beings, that are of some relative intelligence and will, and joy, and also pain. Of course, being able to reproduce themselves and 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 cumulated 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 rides the wind." So, the wind is your energy, and the mind, of course, your understanding, or your intelligence, your consciousness. 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, the flowers begin to blossom, and people, you have a healing power, you communicate in life. In fact, one can shake oneself, literally, physically, because the energy gets sclerosed, and so you can activate it. And then, now you can direst the energy upwards, through your spine, well, through the body, but centered in the spine. And, think of that energy as a lift, or, there is story of Pegasus, the winged steed that carries your conscious aloft. (pause) 

And, see, when your conscious 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 if, 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 is not right anyway. 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 tired so that it exists at several levels, and all that we know is the commonplace physical one. So, it includes subtle body, aura, and so on. And, that your subtle body is not just another body, for one thing it acts as a template, therefore, a formation of your body, and as it changes, your body changes. But also, it acts as the transmutation of your body, I mean it is, it represents how your body is transmuted at the first level. So, it is exactly like your body, but imagine just a force field that has the same kind of configuration. And then, you consider your aura to be a further stage in that transmutation. And then, think that there are several auras, one more subtle than the other, as we did yesterday when we went from one reflex of light to the other. 

So, these thoughts will act as rungs of a ladder, which will help you shift your consciousness from one plane to the other without abandoning your body. It is the other way around. You transmute your body, and so that, one is already prefiguring resurrection. And of course, there is no doubt, that resurrection does require the letting go of the contingent, or dross aspect of one's being. Ror 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 the contingent aspect. And, there is a 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 where by one trys to justify oneself when one is faced with a bad self image. That our self image is a bad strategy, counterproductive. So somehow there is a catharsis and as before, I said it 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 am talking about unconditional love. I am talking about loving the people who hurt you, or do you harm, or encounter you. And, the key word for that is in the words of Christ, "They don't know what they do." "They don't know what they do." So why do we blame them if they don't know what they do? You don't blame them anymore. "Well, I still love them, I am sorry that they feel the need to have these feelings against me, because, like a little child kicks you, and you should understand the child. 

So these are the kinds of preparations for the boost up of the rocket into the heavenly spheres. So the booster itself gets to be transformed. The launching platform, that has to be transformed. 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, and 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 heartbeat, and the digestive process, and so on, the hormonal exchanges, and so on.


So now, you can really give dent to following your bliss, the very deep nostalgia of your soul which had been buried under all your earthly concerns, can start burning bright. And curiously enough, even the suffering of the human condition gets bypassed, and it seems that one is in a state of resonance with beings that have gone through great suffering, and have overcome it to the extent of there just being a state of bliss. It's the past can be transmuted.

So, the mind doesn't have to think anymore. You find that thinking is very automated to a very large extent. So, it will go on thinking without your having to concern yourself with it. And also, you realize that its level of thinking is not particularly relative, that's all, doesn't understand the meaningfulness behind the programming of the universe. It is trying to sort it out, inadequately. It is just like taking a computer to pieces in order to understand its programming, its software. It doesn't work.


So, you begin to reach a level of thinking which is of the same nature as, let's say, disincarnated beings who have attained that same level of realization. Or then, of course, humans who are at present, who have attained that level of realization. You find yourself attuned to them. Like, you feel like that rishi who had so much trouble trying to descend into the thinking of that man who was asking him questions. So, what the Sufis say then, is that one's thinking is not based on experience. At this level, it is not based on experience. Therefore, you shunt out the thinking of existential state, plus all your creative thoughts, images, which are projections, are devices. It's as though, all a sudden, you had awakened, and everything makes sense. And, you see you have been fooled. But, like a blind person, you would just, there are a few indications, like you could feel things, and, but, so there was help, somebody took your arm and helped you not to knock into a wall. So, there has been some kind of clue. But now, all of a sudden, but of course, at first, your mind cannot encompass this celestial meaningfulness. So that is why I call it the consternation of the mind. But, just like you transmuted your body, or bodiness, you can transmute your thinking. 

side 2 

Whether there is a quantum leap from the thinking at the existential level to the thinking beyond existence, is a question. It is the question raised by Buddha, which would mean that there would be no feedback from the earth plane. Well I,... I don't know the answer. But, it looks as though it is a real quantum leap, that the knowledge of the earth avers itself to be totally deceptive, or at least having relative value, or absolute. There is a word by Ibn Arabi, " A knowledge is a veil upon the known." (pause) "Wherever you see an object, he has disappeared." So, if you can maintain yourself at this level, without trying to account for it, in terms of your mind. Give up any kind of communication with your commonplace mind, or with your earthly condition for which you have a feeling of having extricated yourself. Although I said that, that whole support system needs to be transmuted. But, you don't have to be aware of it, it's doing its job. It's like the impulse imprinted upon the rocket by the launching platform. That impulse is there, long after the rocket has separated itself from the launching platform. So, that energy is still there on its way, propelling you, hoisting you aloft. And, you can lend yourself to it. It is a wonderful support. (pause) And, as long as you know that your, any relapse into one's ordinary thinking would cause you to crash right away. 

So, that is why it is a quantum leap in the sense that you have a feeling now that you are in the level of consciousness beyond existence. But of course, beyond the existential state is, you have a sense of the programming, that is all possibilities, endless, inexhaustible possibilities. That in the world is all possibilities. And, whatever happens in the essential state, represents a very small fraction of the all possibilities. It is like the foam on a shoreless sea. Now, your sense of identity has to be transformed of course. Somehow, you are able to realize your immortality, and that the existential condition is just a condition. Like the waves are a condition of the sea. It is not like your body is going to die, and your soul is going to live. No, that is a very simplistic way of thinking. No, there is a perenity in that transiency, an ephemeral, evanescent state of your being at the existential level. And somehow, it is adumbrated by the eternity of your being beyond transiency, and of course, beyond space. Or, there is no sense of location in space a all. 

So, it's like the perfume, or it's like the planet continue to live, it's a perfume. 

Maybe there is more, maybe, that is only an illustration. Remember what we did with light. The (Kasina) practise of reflexes of light. You can do that with your thinking. (pause) Then you find that, indeed you've been hoisted beyond the existential level, and you begin to see beyond the curtain. But, it looks as though the world of all possibilities, like the archetypes that we are invoking in our waziif. But then, something very curious happens now, and I think that it really is a quantum leap. You know Belafron, the rider of Pegasus. There was a time when Pegasus could not fly any higher, to a greater altitude to reach the Olympus, and so Belafrom had to proceed on his own. But of course, Pegasus had imprinted him with momentum. 

So, this is what happens, all of a sudden you feel as though the energy that propelled you has done what it has to do, and now you are proceeding on your own without support.

And so, Buddha calls this the level beyond existence and non existence. (pause) 

The trouble is that if you are listening to me, then of course, your consciousness is activated, and at this point you have to give up consciousness, because consciousness is of the existential state, or whatever memory you might have of it. So as Pir o Murshid says when consciousness is not faced with an object, it is resorbed in its ground which is intelligence. That means that, at this point, the last support for you consciousness was your self awareness, even long after you have ceased to be conscious of the physical world. But, now you have to give that up. And, only if you give up your self consciousness, according to the Sufis, can the divine Shahid, that means the divine witness take over. So, Buddha says, it's beyond consciousness, and non consciousness. (pause) 

So, there is a kind of blackout, or threshold situation from which the divine witness shatters one's consciousness, and overwhelms one's being.

...Appears as light, not physical light. (pause) But, one can see that physical light is the consequence of the light of intelligence. 

Our  objective is awakening in life which is then, the way that the insight that one has gained at this level is going to totally modify the way one sees things in life. It's like you have seen behind the curtain, you can never be the same. So, when you come back, you can't be duped anymore, and also, you realized the limitations in the thinking of people, and their emotions. It's like a villager having made a world trip, and having come back to the village, is never the same person anymore. He can see just how sclerosed the people are in the village, how, to what extent they are conditioned, and caught up in their thoughts. So then, that is what Murshid says, it is as though you are awake, and surrounded by people who are all asleep. 

Now the way to reestablish a connection with the earth plane that one has lost, it's like an anchor on the earth, and one can pull oneself back. Well, the way to do it is to consider your psyche and body from that vantage point, and you see that even though you are not aware of you thinking anymore, nor are you aware of your bodiness, even your aura, still somehow, they have participated in your realization, and gained maturity. And so, I suppose it is like the story of the (Sholam), I don't know whether you know that story. The teacher, people were trying to build a kind of bridge to the heavens by standing on each others shoulders so that the Sholam was able to stand on top, and look into the heavens. And then he came down again, and he was able to convey what he had seen. 

That is awakening in life. 





 0  Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 08

Tape 8

Perhaps you have noticed that in the Sufi retreats, we don 't isolate ourselves, but we are together in it. And so, one's heart can be deeply moved by being together with one's friends. And, realizing how deeply we are connected together. 

I think that is what Pir-o-Murshid calls, The Message. It's the dimension of the message, instead of in Esoteric order. So the Esoteric order is a school to prepare ourselves to be one of the tem thousand workers for the spreading of the message in our time. It has a very different kind of flavor to everything that has preceded us. 

The other thing is that, we are able to weave together methods haling from different schools which at first, may seem contradictory. And, we are able to see how they connect up.

So, yesterday we were trying to explore turning within. And, we had this image of concentric circles, although they are not definite zones, but there is a graduation between the periphery and the inside. Now today, this morning, particularly, we are going to examen the other dimension. which we call the transcendental dimension. And, we will be, in the background of course, there's the know how that comes from the experiences of the Hindu, the yogis, the sanyasins, and the rishis, and that of the Buddhists, and of course, always, Sufism. 

So, yesterday we started, we did the practise of the Shagall, but you remember we concentrated on the solar plexis. And so, we were experiencing the kind of in flow of the universe, just like in a vortex, just like a whirlpool, the in flow, passing through us, and being resorbed in the void. And, then the rebirthing that takes place as the universe reemerges, anew, and afresh, through the solar plexis, and out through the heart center. We were the transducers that were able to convert the implicate state of the Universe into the explicate. 

Now, this morning, what I suggest is that you do the practise of Shagal, but this time you concentrate on, as you hold your breath, and towards the end of the inhaling, you concentrate on the pituitary gland which the Hindus call, bindu. And, then shift your concentration up to the fontanel, the top of the head, of the crown, and then reach beyond it into what Buddha calls, "beyond existence," and what the Hindus call, "parat param," which means, beyond the beyond. And, in Kaballa, it's called (Insulf). So, you know the practise now, so I don't have to describe it again. Three breaths maximum, and then take your hands away. (pause)

Now, let us explore what is happening. In our commonplace, this commonplace setting of our consciousness, we identify ourselves with the witness, and that which we witness. That is, I'm sorry, we identify our self as a witness, and that which we witness is other than ourselves. And, in addition to that, we identify ourselves with our bodies, and our minds, whatever that means, I think that it is better to say our psyche. Now, in order to lift our consciousness into a state of Samadhi, we need to shift this sense of identity, and also our vantage point, from the commonplace setting. And so, these are the methods used in yoga. 

First of all, one questions the objects, that is what one believes is the world. One questions one's assessment of the world. And, I think that it is more pertinent for us living in our present societies, and in our day and age, to question our assessment of our problems. That is the theory of maya. And, it is purely pragmatic, there is no metaphysics in it. It is purely that impact. What we think we experience is not reality, but is the way that reality appears. And, according to the Sufis, it is Ayat. These are devices, in which a deeper reality that doesn't have form, and so, is not subject to time and space, and transformation, becomes known to us. Therefore transpires behind that which appears. 

So that is a first step. Then if you want to awaken, these are the guidelines. So, if you question that what you perceive of the physical world is what it really is, then it does not have the hold upon your consciousness that it has ordinarily, and so the chances are that you will start grasping that which transpires behind that which appears. If you do that, and I recommend that you do this on retreat, you are walking in nature for example, and you find yourself in a transfigured world, like St Francis. The thing that you do is, we have already done that in the last two days, we practise transferring our consciousness into the consciousness of another person. Well, you can do that with the trees as St Francis did, and the birds, and well, the whole universe. And, so the key to this is to be found in the words of St Francis, "I thought I was contemplating the universe, but the universe is looking at me." (pause)

That's a key to shifting your consciousness, so that you find yourself in a transfigured universe. It is just like pressing a button, a switch, and all of a sudden, your whole setting of your consciousness has altered. And, now you will notice that the shift has tremendous implications, it's that you do not consider yourself anymore as a witness, and the universe as other than yourself. And so, what we call experience, where there is an (antinonym) between subject and object, is replaced by what one might call a state of resonance. Just like a piano and a harp where the chords are tuned to the same, exactly, precisely, the same pitch, and so, if you play one, the other one will start resounding in resonance. And, sometimes the sufis call it mirroring, like the palace, what they call the (ina channa), the palace of mirrors, the mirrors facing one another keep on mirroring one another indefinitely. So, you discover yourself in the universe as the universe discovers itself in you. (pause)

Now, you remember my saying that we keep on fretting about our problems, and really speaking, it is our assessment of our problems that we are in grappling, instead of really grasping our problems. And, we carry within our psyche, the false interpretations, the false assessment of our problems. That is a first step in yoga called (savitarka samadhi). Correct our thinking so it is not only the physical world, it is not the way that it appears, but our thinking about it is not the way it is. 

So, if you are in a transfigured state, then you are not limited by your assessment of your problems, and so you consider your problems as your participation in the drama of the whole cosmos. That is what Christians mean by sharing and carrying Christ's cross. (pause)

Whereas, if you just wallow in your personal problems, you are isolating yourself from the universe, from your participation in the universe. And consequently, you will never awaken, because awakening is the way the universe awakens as you, in you, through you. (pause) You are isolated in your own purview, the purview of your personal consciousness, or personal vantage point. 

So, that was the first thing that we did during these days. It was expanding our consciousness so that the witness is no more that very limited vantage point, but the whole cosmos becomes eventually the witness. Transformation in the sense of the object, and a transformation in the sense of the subject. The universe is no more just the object, and we are no more just the subject. And that is the first step. (pause)

Now, the next step, or rather, this step is going to lead to the next step. Which is, instead of proceeding in a kind of autopsy of the world that we experience, it continues to live in our psyche. We are considering the universe emerging within us, dynamically. instead of analyzing what our experience was of the universe from our personal vantage point. That is the second step, and that is what we call turning within. But, be very careful that as you turn within, you don't proceed exactly as you are used to doing when experiencing the universe, when perceiving the universe, The mistake, and I warn you against this mistake, is to continue to think that you are the subject, and that it is your thoughts that are the object, or your emotions, or your body. Because, that is carrying the illusion, maya, inside instead of the way it was. (pause) 

So, when you are meditating, do not think, "I want to, I, the subject, watching my thoughts." So, you will find that there is a very fine line between the thoughts that are reactions to your, to the environment, whether some, a personal bias. Those are the thoughts that one calls random thoughts. When you are meditating, often these thoughts invade your consciousness. And, there is a fine line between these, and what we encountered yesterday, which was the thinking, not the thoughts, but the thinking. But those, that thinking is so emotionally charged, that it does not break up into thoughts anymore. It's like what we were into yesterday, the ecstasy of the emergence of your, the being of God emerging as you, the whole universe emerging as you. 

So, these are more like soul searchings, rather than rational thinking. In fact, yoga clearly distinguishes (savitarka samadhi) and (niritarka samadhi), which savitarka samadhi, you are still proceeding in what we call rational thinking, and niritarka samadhi, in which you are able to expose the hoax of your rational thinking, and then (nirikara samadhi), which is where you have abandoned any kind of validation of your rational thinking. And so, I think the only way, the only word we can use is realization, instead of thinking. And therefore, it is not knowledge that is acquired from experience, but an inherent knowledge that is released, or revealed to you when you question, and therefor downplay your rational thinking. And, that is why it is called a revealed knowledge by the Sufis. "God reveals him/herself in your own realization. (pause)

Now, we did this yesterday, it was, if you remember, the key to this is, instead of being caught in this antimony, subject, object, you find very paradoxical, and bewildering relationship with God in the act of imagination, because the imagination is the function whereby an emotion, and a mode of thinking matching the emotion is fashioned into a form, an image. So, this is a great secret, and that is that God discovers him/herself, as Pir- o-Murshid says, "God discovers his perfection in our imperfection." That is, God discovers himself in the mirroring of an image, discovers himself. That is, the way that his being beyond form manifests in the forms of the universe, or reveals itself in the forms of the universe. And therefore, in the Koran, Sharif, "All faces are his face". Or, it is like the Greek story of the son of Zeus, (Xacarus), being presented with a mirror, and discovering his father in what he saw of the reflection of his face in that mirror. 

So, it is not God himself, really, but it's like a further descent of the being of God. One calls it an emanation. Discovering that which is not known to God contemplating the principles of his/her being in preternity, but accrues to God in the course of the descent from that pinnacle of unknowing in the solitude of the oneness. (pause) 

A further mode of knowledge, whereby God discovers, let's say, aspects of his/her being in the very image of your soul, in which you discover him/her. That means, in your very self. I don't know whether you see that connection. That very deep relationship with God through the image, through God becoming, manifesting as a form, and that is what is gained by the universe.

And, that is why I draw you attention to discovering your countenance beyond the outer structure of your face, for example. Because it is not your countenance as much as the way that certain aspects of God are revealed to you, and therefore God reveals him/herself to you through an image. And, that is turning within. And, you find that this image is then reflected in the universe. You discover yourself in the universe, and the universe discovers itself in you. 

As you turn within, that image becomes more and more immaculate. These are the concentric circles as I said, so that the deeper you go, the more you discover the reality of your being, and at the periphery, there is a spill over with the environment. So, at the mask, as I call it, the mask. 

Now, we want to proceed, as one calls it, upwards in the transcendental dimension instead of turning within, which we encountered in the breathing practice of kasab. So, how do we proceed. 

You see the simplistic way of doing it, which has been done a lot in the past, is to discount your body, as being just a support system, as being not you. It is a method used by Buddha, in satipatana. You watch your body, and say to yourself, "Why do I think that this is me? It is a formation that the whole universe has offered me, and after death, it is going to be dispersed, disintegrated." Well, with all due respect to Buddha, well, it is a pragmatic method, but metaphysically, it doesn't hold good. And, because, for one thing, because the body has accrued to you, just like the food that you eat has become a part of your body, So, having accrued to you, it has become part of you now. And, what is more, the body never does die totally, it gets dispersed. These are present views in science. The electrons continue to live, so they are in a different configuration as when the body is alive. But, so, our ideas about death are among the most nonsensical that we entertain. And furthermore, the fabric of our body gets transmuted. The electrons become photons, and so, instead of leaving the body behind as you shift your consciousness upwards into the state of samadhi, you need to transmute, literally transmute your body. 

Now the body is being transmuted all of the time, because the gross chemistry of the body gives vent to, what I call, esoteric chemistry, like the hormones, and the neurotransmitters, and all the enzymes. And, ultimately the code of the body, like the DNA, is the subtle reality of the body, and perhaps a much more fundamental dimension of the body than the gross cells. Well I say the gross cells, perhaps it is not the right word, but, let's say, what we imagine the physical body to be, substance, and so on.

side 2

If you identify with, let's say, I don't know whether you can do this, but, yesterday we were trying to simply identify with the magnetic field, and the subtle, you know, like the magnetic coil, in which one, which is the template in which the cells of the body are structured, configured. Now, that was the beginning, but now, if you can just try to identify with, well I would say of course, that code, but we don't know that code, but a deeper reality of your body. The Buddhists call the samsaric matrix. 

The Buddhists, Buddha gives a very good example here. You know, sometimes I wonder to what extent Buddha's teachings have been correctly interpreted by the Buddhists. He gives a very good example. He says, "Imagine that you fell a tree down to its roots, and then it grows again, but it will look different, like is it the same, it will look different, the branches are different, and so on, and so, is it the same tree, or is it just another tree?" So, then, consider the stump of your being as a more permanent reality than your personality for example. And so, instead of identifying with your body, and your personality, and so on, identify with the deeper reality of your bodiness, which is, as I said, ultimately of course, it is the DNA, which is not static, it does change. There is a feedback from the experience of the body in the DNA, the code, and also, the substrate of your personality, which is the reality, of which your personality is just a transient expression. 

So, that is the way in which one can transmute ones body, because in so doing, what was the template, or the matrix governing the configuration of the cells, now becomes the body of resurrection, let's say there is a feedback from the experience of the cells of your body into that code. So, the body continues to live, let us say, what we think is the body, continues to live in that very subtle reality behind it, which we might call the code of the DNA. And, that's the way of transmuting the body so that, I am thinking of the methods used by yogis and Buddhists, in their quest for awakening. And, very often they say, well, consider the physical world as maya, as for example, a mirage, a hoax, you get caught into it. I would say you get caught in a perspective. that's true. It doesn't mean that the physical world isn't real, but your perspective of it was relative, and you can shift your perspective. 

But, what the general interpretations of these teaching is, well, discard your body because it is transient. and so on and so forth. And, that is not anymore an acceptable view in our realization that we have come to in our day and age. So, in other words, you have to schlepp you body into samadhi with you. 

That is why Ramakrishna said to ( ), " Can't you have samadhi with open eyes." And, not only your body, but the matrix of your personality. Now, there is a key here, let's try and be very, very clear what we are doing, because otherwise you just get spaced out, and you think that it is awakening, and it is just being spaced out. So, we have to be very, very clear, what are the steps. You find yourself in a transfigured world. You start shifting your identity into what we call now the subtle body, but now we are being a little more precise as to what we mean by the subtle body. The gross mind, that is simply interpreting experience, is shifted into the subtle mind. The mind is a term that is rather misleading, because there is no such thing as mind. There is such a thing as thinking, that is a dynamic word, but not the mind, that is a static word, But anyway, let's say, this inner function whereby realization is revealed when we don't rely upon our rational thinking. So, those are the steps. And, then, shift your sense of being the witness, so that you are experiencing communion rather than the experience. 

So, those were the steps. Now, we start what we call the ascent, although, again it is a misleading word, because there is no up or down. But, let us say that when we are considering ourselves as the witness, witnessing the physical world, or our problems. Then, and, of course, we identify with what we think is our body. Then, of course, we think that we are located in space, and we're involved in the process of becoming, we are transient. So, if you are sitting meditating, that is one of the things that you have to be careful about, is asking yourself, "What am I doing sitting here meditating?" The sense of being here is, if you start awakening, your sense location in space, gets totally lost from your view. And, therefore, there is no up and down, or there is no here or elsewhere. That is only valid when you identify with your physical body, but for the DNA for example, it's true, that the chemical structure, the DNA code does configure itself in a structure, but that structure is secondary, the reality is beyond space. 

So, if you could just follow this in your consciousness. Then, think for example, the light radiates from a source of light which is located in space. But, radio waves, in fact the wave like aspect of light, is not located in space, it is everywhere. And so, it's a certain point, if you want to awaken, you have to reach that point when you don't think of yourself as sitting here, meditating. You have lost your sense of space. And, you don't think that you are lifting your consciousness upwards. That's a misconception.

And, now, the first step towards overcoming, well there are several steps to overcoming a sense of our transiency, that is time, first of all, the instant of time that we discovered yesterday, where there is an interruption in the continuity of the process of becoming. You remember what we said, and I hope that you experience it, you are able to click something, something clicks in you, and all of a sudden, you can see, for example, a wave in the sea, in the ocean, is not just the continuation of the previous wave, but the whole ocean emerges as each new wave. So, there is an interruption in the continuity of conditioning, of causality. And then, you remember there was another dimension of time which we called perennity, continuity in change, so that you are that continuity. If you downplay the transiency of you being, then you can highlight the continuity. Like it is never the same water that passes under the bridge, but it's the same river. If you can sense that, then you are shifting your sense of identity from being transient, to being eternal.

It is called discovering one's immortality, identifying with your immortality, while realizing, just like a pendulum, a pole of your being is moving in time, space, but the other pole remains unchanged. And, so you cleave to the pole that remains unchanged, and let go of your sense of identification with that which is transient.

Now, there is a whole unknown factor that holds you back, that is, one's ties with the earthly conditions, one's dependence upon, one's addiction to the underpinning. (pause) It's like going on a pilgrimage, there are some loosening of the ties, it's not totally, because as I say, while you are on pilgrimage, you are still thinking of your problems. But somehow, they are loosened. (pause) 

So, you don't discard the physical world, but it seems remote. And, you don't discard your memory of the physical world, and of the psychological circumstances, but they seem rather remote. You are loosening the ties, as Pir-o-Murshid says. But, you don't discount them. 

But, let us say, that you downplay them, because as you know, you can't see the stars when the sun is in the sky. So, when the impressions of the world are very strong, then, it masks this level of reality that you highlight, that you discover when you downplay, which prevails you see, when you downplay your, the ties with the physical world, let's say with the prevalent, with the earthly conditions in your life. That is the ascetic in you. It is detachment, as Pir-o-Murshid says, "Indifference and independence are the two wings that enable the soul to fly." But, if you are flying in an clear atmosphere, then you can still see the earth. So, you don't discount it. (pause)

You realize that of course, the higher you fly, the more you see the overall context. The lower you fly, you see the detail, and you don't see the context. For example, you don't see the lie of the land when you walk in the streets of a city, but if you fly, them you can see how they are related. So, as you awaken, you see how your problems are related to other problems, and in fact involve the whole universe, whereas when you were down in your personal vantage point, you couldn't see that, and therefore your problems look very different now. (pause)

Now, the higher you fly, the more remote the physical world is. Now, when you are meditating, you are not aware of the physical world, but you carry the memory of the scenario of the physical world. But, as I say, now, I mentioned the context, so you see the implications. But, there is more to it than that. That is you see, you develop a kind of quintessential knowledge, or awareness. You see that which is enacted behind your problems, instead of seeing how your problems interrelate with the problems of other people. So, this is the transcendental dimension, instead of the cosmic. What is enacted in your problems. 

It is not the circumstances. It is the values, the realization. It isn't the thoughts, but the thinking. (pause) It is not the causal change in the process of becoming, but it is a different causal change that Buddha refers to, called (patika samoprada). The causal chain which the Sufis, also Ib'n Arabi also refers to, a descending causal chain, a vertical one instead of a horizontal one. (pause)

And now we, the key now to this, we are reaching a point now, there is a transient that takes place. Instead of turning within now, there is another level which is beginning to transpire. We are beginning to, how can I say, to discover it in our identity. To say it bluntly, we discover our celestial identity. But, to discover celestial identity, we have to go through a catharsis, and that again, indifference, in the sense that we have to give up those aspects of ourselves which, I must say, form our defense system. (Adversivity), and affirming what we call our ego, which Pir-0-Murshid calls, "our false notion of ourselves", but which we use as a strategy in order to defend ourselves against the attacks of the world. And so, you have to become like a child that is defenseless. If you want to awaken, that's called ananda samadhi, and the sufis call it malakut. It is the level at which you rediscover the child in you that is buried under the adult. And, it is still there, but has been, well it is only superficially defiled, but it still remains immaculate within its defilement, as we have already said. But it is really like identifying it. "This is me." (pause) 

And of course, ananda means the ecstasy, because it is not your realization that hoists you to this level, but your ecstasy. And remember, that which characterizes the angel, is exalting in a state of glorification. One is created out of one's act of glorification. This is a Sufi view, because as a matter of fact, in order to glorify God, you are awakening excellent qualities in yourself. And therefor, your act of glorification is creative of your person. So, it is not just a matter of awakening in a sense of realization, but transformation of your being through your ecstasy in the act of glorification. (pause)

This level of your being is what the Buddhists call the extra samsaric matrix of your being. And, if you do not call upon this extra samsaric, which I would call peri samsaric matrix of your being, you will just remain recycling yourself in the cycle of reincarnations. So, this is mutation, evolution, instead of simply recycling. 

In the Sufi view, this is what we call the divine inheritance, instead of the inheritance of our ancestry. So, it is another matrix, around which the samsaric matrix gravitates, just like the planet earth gravitates around the sun. Although the planet earth does spin around its own axis. But in addition to that, it is involved in the power of the sun that prevails upon its own motion. That is the meaning of the wazifa Qaher, to prevail. So that, let your divine inheritance prevail over your human inheritance. (pause)

St Francis said, "I have another father. You are not my father." He said, "I have another father." So, you recognize both.

Or, you can say, "I have another parent instead of another father."

So, God Bless you now. 0 

Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 09

Tape 9

So, what we want to do now, is to practise along the guidelines of what the indications of what I was giving this morning, but actually do it.

You will notice that there are many different approaches, and it is by the fact of keeping on trying different methods, and so on, that eventually something moves, and as the Upanishads says, "Awakening happens before you even realize it, and when you realize it, it has already passed. So, don't try to hang on to it. So, we will just do practises. You see, we have to be careful that our expectations can stand in the way. There is a word of Swami Satchidananda, "No appointment, no disappointment."

That is why, it is something that is not acquired. One can do like the five wise virgins, just to prepare the oil for the lamp, but one can't light the lamp. So, we will just do practises, without any expectation.

So, you remember behind the practises, of course, how can I say, the engineer. So, you remember the practise of kasab, and you remember that it was a hologram of energy. Not a static hologram, but maybe one can say a matrix, because it is moving. it is dynamic, it is transforming. And, you remember, energy is the Pegasus, is the support system, that triggers of, that supports thinking, and triggers off a shift in the nature of one's thinking until one reaches a point of, where one reaches beyond thinking. But, don't do it right away, because one may make a split in that whole hologram in order to jump the gun as it were. 

So, let's first do this practise, the hologram, now your remember, I don't think that I can just keep on repeating, give the indications of how you do it, so I hope that you remember it. So, in addition to what we did yesterday, I'd like you to think of that energy as a lift, as a Pegasus, which is shifting your notion of being the witness, and all those notions the I talked about this morning, The notion of the physical world, of your problems, of your personality, of your body, all of those, you just let that shift by the power of the uplift, let's say, the buoyancy, of the energy that is being transmuted in this hologram, upwards. And then, the opposite. And so, when you exhale, especially through both nostrils, then think that it is not awakening beyond life, but is awakening in life. (pause)

Now, you might find that thinking of a wazifa will help you. because, as I said, it is a language. So, as you are doing this practise, you are combining Ya Batin with Ya Ali. That is turning within, and reaching upwards. Ali means, most high. And, when you are exhaling, then you are combining Mawjud, with, there are several words. One would be Basit, the other would be Wasi, and the other is Khabir. And, I would chose Khabir, that means, you are discovering the vast dimensions of your being.

Now, of course, since you know the, are beginning to be familiar with the language of the wazifas, then you realize that they act as a kind of koan in the unconsciousness. So, Ya Batin is always associated with Latif, which means subtle, fine, subtle. And, Ali, with Wahid, which means being drawn into the solitude of the oneness, that's samadhi. And of course, Wahid always culminates into Ahad, which means the one.

And, Mawjud, you remember we associated Mawjud with Wajid, which means to find. Remember the electron that we call upon, then becomes reality, to find. Mawjud, Wajid. Now, you must sense the difference between Zahir and Mawjud, because Zahir means the manifestation of the nonmanifest, or the not yet manifest, so, in the hologram, as you exhale, there is a widening of the hologram, you proceed downward in the central channel, and then move in the periphery, not only in the two lateral channels, but in the whole hologram. 

Manifesting, gives you a sense of the devices whereby that which is beyond form, or has no form, acquires, is made known, and therefor is the manifestation of the non manifest. So, that gives you a sense of the cosmic outreach of your being. Whereas Mawjud, is not manifestation, but, actualization, or actuation, or existentiation, make God a reality. So, it doesn't mean just manifest God, but really make God a reality. So, it is much more concrete.

So, that is the downward movement, as compared with the centrifugal movement. So, these words could be helpful to you, because we are not just working with energy, but we are working with consciousness, with our realization. And, energy is the support of our consciousness. So, let's do it again, and let's see if it makes any difference. You remember the spirals I hope. (pause) 

So, you see, you identify yourself with a whirlwind of energy that spirals both, that rotates both anticlockwise and clockwise, at the same time. And at the same time is moving upwards, and moving downwards, and reaching out. (pause) 

And, your consciousness shifts, and your sense of identity shifts, carried by this whirlwind of energy, from the earthly perspective, through the heavenly perspective, to the divine perspective. And, then awakening in life, in the opposite orientation. 

And then, now you remember that the spiralling continues after the two currents have met in the pituitary gland. So, that is beyond duality. And consequently, you concentrate above your head rather than upon the chakras. (pause)

But, one looses a sense of space, so it is not really above your head. (pause)

And, you also, let go of the notion of time passing by. A sense of your eternity. Which is not affected by change. (pause)

So, instead of shifting downwards as you exhale, what you could do is have an overview so, as though, when you are taking off in your flight, and you are looking up. But now, you are looking at the countryside from the high vantage point. (pause)

'k, as I said, we are just going to do practises, and hopefully it will make something move in us, but we, it brings about a change. So the next practises we do is Shagall, with the, you know, with the fingers on the senses. But this time, as we did early this morning, simply turn your attention to the pituitary, and then the fontanel, and eventually, beyond the fontanel. Without ending at any point, you keep on moving further and further away from the existential state. 

So, there is a sense of being invited to, to be privy to the intention behind the universe, backstage to the universe. Let's do it, just three breaths. (pause)

'k, now we are going to do it again, but this time I am gong to draw your attention to things that you already know. And that is that consciousness, which normally turns towards outside, finds itself faced with a blockage, and consequently, turns within. But, now we don't want consciousness just to turn within, which would make you very creative, but we want to include all the levels of your being in your creativity. And, consequently, what we are saying is that we are lift our consciousness upwards, although there is no up of down, but that is just a way of illustrating it in a framework that is familiar to us. 

But, one thing we can do is to think that we are a hologram, and that in this hologram, one can have several images, like there was a hologram with the shroud of Turin, and then there is a reproduction of a painting of Christ. There is some resemblance, but they are not quite the same, so you can toggle your consciousness from one image to the other. So, just think of yourself, and the universe as a complex hologram, and you can vary your vantage point, and accordingly, you see one slice of the hologram or another, or one perspective of the hologram, and another. And so, what we want to do now is shift from the perspective of the nitty gritty of everyday lift to what is coming through life. And, that would include, what we call the divine intention. And think that our consciousness is always trying to grasp other than itself. But now, we empty consciousness of it's content, and so then consciousness returns into its's ground, or is resorbed in it's ground, which is pure intelligence. So, think of that when you do the practise now. We will do it once more. (pause)

Now, can you see, consciousness needs something that it experiences. Whereas intelligence is independent of any object. And so, it is inborn, inherent, and it is active. Whereas consciousness is passive. It thrusts its light upon all things. And so, the memory of the physical world is very remote. You don't remember the events anymore. All that you remember is your realization. (pause)

Now, the third approach is the practises that we did with light. Do you remember the testimony of Hildegaard von Bingen. She finds herself in a world of light. Blinded, and infused with this light. And then, this light opens up, like a gate into a further world of light that's even more bewildering. And eventually, this world of light opens up into a further one. So just the sense of shifting your sense of identity from your physical aura, to levels of light, beyond what one represents as physical light. 

side 2

And then, finally you reach the light of pure intelligence. So, the ultimate witness is not your consciousness, but is divine intelligence.

There so, you have the impression of being awake in the middle of people who are asleep, caught up in their personal perspective. And, you yourself were like that until you awakened. (pause)

Now, your clear insight into the nature of your involvement at the essential level, with people, with situations, a clear insight into what that involvement entails. How it affects your thinking and you emotion. And, to be able to loosen the ties, while Honoring them. So as to not to be in a state of dependence upon circumstances, will trigger off ecstasy. The ecstasy of freedom. And consequently, lift you through the spheres. (pause)

And, finally, just a few slogans that act as koans. A word of Ib'n Arabi, "If you perceive an object, God is veiled. And the next one is, "Knowledge is a veil on the known", And concerning the wazifas, remember that they are steps. Because, as Ib'n Arabi says, "The essence only reveals itself through the names. but never reveals itself without that device." So, in samadhi, you reach what is called, (Nir beacha), which is beyond the seeds, beyond the seeds. And therefor, Ib'n Arabi says, "If the names disappeared, the named one would appear."

And so, the ultimate steps in samadhi, one blows the support system. the bridge, the ladder. One kicks the ladder. One burns one's boats. Pegasus can't fly any further upwards. One proceeds through all the momentum that has been imprinted upon one by the support system, by the up winds. But now, there is silence. There is unknowing, all the concepts vanish. All the projections. 

At some point in your spiritual quest, you will be in the pursuit of the unattainable, because it can never be attained. Like the horizon that advances. And eventually, you will find that the pursuit itself stands in your way. Like, if you pursue the blue bird it will escape you. And, when you have ceased to, given up pursuing the bluebird, it follows you.

So, it is the universe revealing itself, rather than you trying to understand the universe. And the universe transforming itself as you, so as to reveal itself to you. (pause)

And, perhaps even be careful about trying to overcome, or trying to destroy understanding, because that is your will that is intervening. So, at a certain point, understanding is transfigured by what Al Jali calls the consternation of intelligence. (pause)

Remember it passes you by before you realize it, and when you try to grasp it, it has already vanished. (pause)

And, while we have distinguished, even contrasted awakening beyond life, with awakening in life. They are both, both are the same thing. And therefor Nifari says, "I was searching for God beyond the veil, and now I am looking from the other side of the veil." (pause)

And, the I think it was Nifari who said, "Why are you looking for God up there? He is here." (pause)

So, these are paradoxical thoughts that work as koans. And are intended to destroy our mental constructs, and our habitual thinking, assumptions. You open up new vistas, different perspectives, beyond the beyond. (pause)

So that you are not just destroying the ladder when you reach the top, you are destroying each step of the ladder once you have moved to the next one. (pause)

... conscious of dreaming. Well samadhi is awakening in deep sleep without dreams, beyond dreams, beyond forms. (pause)

So just exhale heavily, and move your hands and arms, be conscious of your body, and open your eyes.

God Bless You

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 10

0  Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

Tape 10

Well, we are trying different approaches to bring about a shift in our consciousness, because we that realize by trying to do it, it doesn't happen. So, there are approaches, skills so we will try them and see how they work. Now you do remember the practice that we used to do where you identify, I mean you put all your energy in your glance, and with closed eyes, and then you open your eyes, and try to keep you concentration on your glance. rather than on the objects in front of you. And, the consequence is that the objects look like a blur, because the objects exercise an impact on your glance. So, lets just do that now, and as soon as you start seeing things, and then close your eyes again. (pause)

Now, something you can't do here, but you could do on your own, would be to take a flower, and then, eyes closed and concentrate on your glance, open your eyes, and, well, if you look at the flower, then the flower will force you eyes into its normal focus, but, if you, I don't know if you have noticed, that you are moving the concentration of those beams around the flower. Now, if you are able to keep your glance focused, and not shift your glance, and if you do that for 20 minutes, and then you'd just fall back into the ordinary perspective of your glance, you will see that the flower seems to be floating in space. (pause) 

So, now, that is one step. Now the next one is, if you don't allow the features of the flower to strike your glance, but if you, well there is a method that I use and that is to, well, what I do is I choose a blue flower, and then, I imagine the beam of my third eye to be as a violet beam that flows through the blue, two beams of the eyes, and x-rays the flower. Then, you can try that out but you have to do that on your own, and then you would see the face of the flower, you see that which transpires through that which appears. And, when you have trained yourself, and exercised that for months, as a matter of fact, every day, then you look at the face of people, and you see the real face behind their physical face. (pause)

Now, you could practise, exercise yourself, by trying to capture the expression, when you are looking at a face ordinarily, try to capture the expression rather than the features of the face. That is that which transpires is the expression, for example, the smile, or just if the person is offended, you see an expression coming through, or that person is confronted, and you see another expression coming through, and so on. So, that expression does not have contours, it doesn't have to have a profile, but it passes through, that does structure the muscles of the face. So it passes through the features of the face. That is what one means by transpiring through that which appears. (pause) 'k, Now, the next thing is, when you are on retreat, walking is very important. And, do exactly what St Francis did, just imagine that, first of all you are getting into the consciousness of the trees, and then the trees are looking at you. And, the trees are looking at you with the same way that I am suggesting you look at the faces of people, that is the tree is grasping that which transpires behind that which appears. (pause)

These are various approaches that you do during the course of a retreat. You have to train yourself all the time. (pause)

The next one is this, you can do that now with me, try to remember how you felt when you were a very young child, in fact, you could reverse your memory in retrospect, and just recall certain events, and then earlier events. And the fact is, at that young age, one was not yet quite incarnated, so that one was still in this rather nebulous, transfigured world, a kind of dream world. And, you know there is a way of awakening from day consciousness into sleep consciousness, because there is a reality there that is, well it is, of course, it's distorted by our consciousness, but there is still, it is a different kind of reality to day consciousness. And, it is conveying something to your consciousness mind in which one, very often rejects, because it doesn't fit into the pigeon holes of ones (I mungo mundi), one picture of the world, but somehow, if you are able to waive aside what they call a censorship between the unconscious and the conscious, that is if you are able to keep at the threshold between day consciousness and dream consciousness, then the impressions of the dream are able to pass through. You must not try to capture them because then they withdraw. So, that would be a way of apprenticeship, of learning how to open oneself to revealed knowledge instead of acquired knowledge. (pause) 

Of course, the imaginations of a child tell much more about the real person then our rational thinking that we develop more as we get older, and we question the fantasies of our imagination, but they are telling us something about ourselves. So, when you are meditating, you remember that in the first stage, that was on Monday, we were looking at our problems, now, we about turn, and we are picking up thoughts that emerge from inside, instead of those impressions that accrue from outside. The fact is, that in your psyche, both of those element are intermeshed, and the inside is trying to adapt itself to the outside in the psyche, and so that is why our dreams are rather confusing, because it is totally irrational what is happening. So, what we want to do is to highlight what is coming through inside, and downplay what is coming through from outside, or what has already in us from outside, because it is not just the impressions that we see when we are meditating, and we're not watching TV, and so on, and we are not open to the impressions from outside. So, those are the (relegates) of the impressions from outside that continue to possess in our psyche. (pause)

'k, Now, what we are going to do, we are going to make an experiment. Imagine that you are in a class for artists for drawing, you were learning how to draw, and the teacher asked you to draw a self portrait. And then you keep on making new drawings because you are not satisfied. And, the fact is, is that there is no way of drawing a self portrait, of course you can draw of self portrait that would look like you in the mirror, but, what I am suggesting here is much deeper, and that is to draw the expression that is coming through as you change your attunement from one attunement to another. So, it is discovering a quality, we are using the word wazifa, but (sifat) means a quality. Discovering a quality by calling it, as I mentioned, the electron that by calling it, you make it exist by calling it. So, you make the potentialities in your being a reality in your personality by calling them. So, it is a whole new way of looking at the wazifa. (pause)

Now, the artist, and especially the sculptor, discovers his/her statue or, piece of art, work of art by making it. So, the effort, to draw a picture, is going to awaken a latent quality in a way that you couldn't possibly awaken it if you just conceptualized it. 

So, for example, you sit there and you say Ya Salam, Ya Salam, Ya Salam, it won't make you peaceful necessarily. But, if you imagine that scene that I have already suggested of walking by a lake in moonlight, then somehow, that picture is going to awaken a latent quality in you, and from the moment the it has passed the threshold from the unconscious into the conscious, especially by continually repeating it, it becomes adamant, and becomes a very present feature in your personality. (pause)

So, when I say you draw a self portrait, the fact is, is that, that self portrait is many faceted. (pause) 

And so, what we are going to do now is to think of scenes or scenarios that match certain, what you call wazifa (waziif). So, another one would be, for example, you are climbing a mountain, or you are rock climbing, or you are hang gliding, skiing, or doing something that requires a lot of mastery. So, you could draw if you are in a school for art, you could draw yourself climbing a mountain, for example, hanging on a rock, or whatever. But, the important thing is, not the, well the position of your body is important, and you are walking differently along the lake than you would in the city. The position of your whole body is very different when you are trying to control the muscles of your body in order to survive the abyss. But, the expression of your face is even more important. So, you could make several sketches, say this is me climbing a mountain, but then the teacher could say to you, "Yes, well, how do you look when you are facing a real challenge, you look different from when you are walking peacefully along a lake." So, how do you look? (pause)

So, that would be the wazifa Ya Wali, mastery, but you see how different it is now than just repeating Ya wali, Ya Wali, Ya Wali. (pause)

You find a quality by projecting it as an image, and that is why I said that you are participating in the act whereby God discovers him/herself, at least a certain aspect of him/herself, in the image of your soul, and this very image of your soul is the one in which he/she reveals him/herself to you, as you. (pause)

Well that corresponds with one stage in the sequence of stations, I's say, according to the Sufis, and that is, "I know myself through the knowledge that God has of himself through me." So, if you use the word the universe instead of God, it might be easier. "The universe is revealing itself by dent of a plethora of forms, and so my form is one of the devices in which the universe is revealing itself to me." I don't know whether you notice that one of the things that I am doing here, to issue just being caught in our own perspective, if you go to the art school, and my self portrait, well then, that is, in some ways flawed by what we think we are. (pause) Just like our interpretation of your problems, it is distorted by our personal bias, our notion of our self is also flawed by our own notion of what we think we are, and therefore, you are able to allay that distortion, or at least that limitation by trying to think to yourself, God or the whole universe is revealing itself, or an aspect of itself, amongst millions of aspects, by manifesting that aspect as my being. And, as a consequence, you will discover, let's say, the reality, the substrate behind that form instead of being caught up in the form. And, this is what is meant in Islam by the destruction of the idols. (pause) 

The form becomes an idol unless you are always on the watch out for what transpires behind them. That is why in the ancient traditions, one always destroys the idol at Easter. Tibetans make these wonderful mandalas, and then destroy the mandala. And, that's why Jellaluddin Rumi says, "The Pir is the destroyer of the idols that his pupils make of him." And, that is why in Sufism, in contrast with Hinduism, one does not have a portrait of ones teacher, and one certainly does not concentrate on that portrait. That is what they call Tassawuri Murshid, Tassawuri means a picture. And so what one is taught, is to imagine that you are the teacher, that is a kind of transference into the consciousness of the attunement of that being, and that picture would be standing in the way. So, exactly as we found that we can get into the consciousness of another person, we can get into the consciousness of our teacher. (pause)

So you see, we were working with an image which had the faculty of awakening a quality that is dormant in us. And now at a further step, we are using the picture as a stepping stone to get into what is behind it. otherwise we will just be obsessed by the picture. So, for example, you imagined you are climbing the mountain, and/or then you set walking by the lake, but now, you get into the consciousness of a being who is sitting in the snow, as I have seen it happen in (Kadenarth) in India, by the temple, practically naked and sitting there in the snow, and embodying, the immaculate nature of the snow, peaceful, and beyond our understanding, The is again, a picture, but then you get into the consciousness of that being, and somehow the consciousness of that being is going to awaken peacefulness in you. 

So then, first of all, there is the scenario. You are sitting there in the presence of this being, and you are very impressed by the whole scenario, and it puts you in a state of great peace. So, you try to surround yourself with a zone of peace, (as I've already said,) and now, you place yourself in the skin of that Rishi. So now, the peace that you are beginning to attune yourself to, is far greater than any peace that you could try to muster yourself. So, that is a step towards experiencing what the wazifa really stands for, and that is divine peace, what we call the archetype, would be the perfection of peace. 

So you see that whatever you perceive as peace, cannot compare with divine peace. So, when you say the wazifa, you are supposed to be thinking of divine peace, but unfortunately, most of us are thinking about our concept of peace, which does not compare, of course, with the meaning of Ya Salam, which is the divine peace. (pause)

And so with power, with mastery, we have several words, Ya Wali, mastery, Qader, power. So, there is that scene at the mountains, and then I said your face, but these are pictures, images, that are going to awaken a quality in you that is dormant. But now, you see, you can imagine a fictitious teacher instead of someone who you know, or somebody who you think you know, or somebody out of the pages of the chronicles of history, like Abraham, or Shiva, or whatever. But imagine a fictitious teacher. (pause)

Because that teacher exemplifies, as far as your capacity is, the divine quality that you exemplify in a very limited way, and always the fictitious teacher will never convey totally the perfection of that quality, still it is a stage further than your own representation of that quality. (pause)

So, this in Sufism is called Fana-fi-Sheik, and the further stage which is called Fana-fi-Rasoul, in which you imagine a perfect, but not as an image as one imagines Buddha under the tree, or Christ on the cross, or on the mount of 'lives, well, I would say Jesus, because what we want to do now is to get into the dimension of the cosmic Christ instead of the historic Jesus, or, then, the Buddha, instead of, well actually the Tathagata instead of Sidhartha, that's Buddha. And, (Bagavan) instead of Shiva. So, the historic person is still and idol, and we want to destroy the idol in order to get into the reality that, that idol represents. That is why one is using words like Tathagata, which means, he has become thus. That is the most impersonal word you can use. Or, Buddha is an impersonal word as compared to Sidhartha, which is his given name, and hence the difference between the word Christ and the word Jesus. And, it's only at the very limit, I think that one can never say the limit because it's like the horizon, it always recedes further as you advance. 

That you could ever do what is called Fana-fi-Allah, or reach Fana-fi-Allah, which is what Nifari meant by seeing reality on the other side of the veil. (pause) But, you see that, what we call the archetype, that is what Pir-o-Murshid calls the divine perfection, allures us beyond our concept of the wazifa. And, our concept of the wazifa is going to hold us back, obstruct us. That is one drawback of simply repeating the wazifa. You asked your initiator what it means, and you say, "I know what it means now, so I know that there are of people who have a lot of compassion, so I understand the word Rahman, or Rahim." What one knows about Rahman and Rahim is infinitely, is just like a slither in comparison, with the real meaning of Rahman and Rahim. So, be careful of the concept.

There we have another scenario. You could imagine, there is a difference, but it is a scene that you can paint, and a scenario that you could film, but you could not paint because it is dynamic instead of static. And also, you are in it. But of course, you can be in the picture also, and be in the scene; but now you are in the scenario, like a drama. So, you could imagine anything. You could imagine a person who has been wounded in an accident, you could imagine somebody has been abused, and who is distraught, an agony of soul. You could imagine somebody who has been beaten in a concentration camp. So, what does it all do to you? It awakens compassion. Whereas, if you are sitting in an ice cream parlor, you don't feel necessarily a lot of compassion, unless there is a handicapped person who comes in.  (pause)

So this is a scenario instead of a scene, instead of a landscape of the soul. (pause)

Now, it is easier to feel compassion if ones heart is already broken, because of ones own suffering. So, consider your suffering as a door, as a trigger, lets say, to your opening your heart to compassion. But, again, if you wallow in your own pain, then you will not have enough room in your heart for the pain of others. And, that is why I say, when you consider your problems, always think that you are participating in the drama, of the universe, of the cosmos, and this is your share in it, instead of thinking of just of your pain as a separate reality, unconnected, disconnected with the pain of humanity, not just of humanity, also the animal kingdom. (pause)

Now, I suggest pursuing this further, because as Pir-o-Murshid says, "We are tested in our love." And of course, what he means by love, is unconditional love. And, that means being able to love a person who is inimical to you, and obnoxious, and even preposterous, and you still love that person. And, that is where you are tested. And, it is easier to love, if one feels compassion. So if you realize that, that person who is so nasty to you is in pain, and is working out, is acting out their pain, and you are the scapegoat, then it is easier to love them. Now, there again, it is the ability to transfer your consciousness into another person's consciousness, instead of remaining inclosed in your own purview. (pause)

So, how great is your love, that is, how great is the embrace of your soul. Do you make people feel welcome? I don't mean in your house, I mean welcome in your soul. Like the grain of sand that is painful for the oyster, to transform it into a pearl. So, you see how much more meaningful this is than just repeating Ya Rahman, Ya Rahim. (pause)

Now, so, we have been studying, you could do this with many other practises of course, for example, Ya Ali, you could imagine that you are saying the Muslim prayer which I must say I am, the fact of prostrating, you are down playing your personal vantage point, and you ego, as long as you understand the ego as being just a fraction of the reality of our being, that you use as a defense mechanism, you fall back on your ego when you are attacked. So, I don't suggest you're annihilating it unless you can avail yourself of all the richness of your being by awakening all the different (sifat), all the different qualities, but the thing is that as you lift yourself up in the prayer, in attempt to glorify God, you are projecting upon God qualities that are latent in you and by so doing, you are awakening them in you. So it is the most powerful work that one could do with oneself. Most powerful operation lets say, that you could do. Of course, that includes all the qualities. (pause) You imagine them, You can not imagine a quality in its perfection, because it is always greater than what you can ever imagine, but somehow that very effort allures you, allures your mind beyond its limitation, and conceptualization.

side 2

'k, so, so far we have been, if you follow what we have been doing, we have been trying to awaken qualities by the power of imagination. Imagining an image, and then freeing our self from the limitation of the image, and then, so that, turning with in, you see, the creative way of thinking. And now we are trying to move upwards in what I call the transcendental dimension, and we already started by thinking of, that we, that images, the way that God discovers himself/herself through us as an aspect. So, in the prayers, there is a response of God. In fact God reveals him/herself to one as oneself, or as oneself as one is becoming instead of as one is.

That is the meaning of the wazifa Dhul Jelal W'al Ikram and the feminine of that, that I make up myself is, Hanun Jamil W'al Ikram. Because that is how God is becoming as us, instead of God transcendent, beyond the beyond, is what one is seeking for in Samadhi. 

Now, so far I've been talking about images, and then breaking the idol, and getting to the reality behind it. But, each of these sifakas, these qualities, is much more an attunement, than a concept. So, that's in an emotion, the emotion of peace, the emotion of mastery, the emotion of compassion, the emotion of glorification, it is all emotion. And now, when you think of the emotions that are aroused by your problems, you can see that you are the victim of the emotions of your problems, and here, you are arousing emotions from the depth of your being. (pause) And, those emotions are going to have an impact on the emotions triggered off by your problems. And, it is the only way of affecting a therapy of ones distress. It's like in homeopathy, an antidote, or even in the vaccine, immunity, immunology, the antidote is put in yourself, but you have to awaken it, or the antibody. (pause)

So, we have been turning within, and just starting to have some sense of the vertical dimension, I call it vertical, but transcendental, and I mentioned that, this morning, the extra samsaric matrix of our being. So, we have been plugging into a samsaric matrix of our being up to the present, but, somehow, that samsaric matrix reflects the extra samsaric one just like the earth reflects the light of the sun, so, it was always present, but it is in our explorations but, at a certain point, and that's what is called Fana-fi-Allah, you identify with that peri samsaric identity in your being which is your divine inheritance. So, you are not awakening latent qualities, but you are actuating qualities that represent your paramount investiture. You are discovering God in yourself, instead of just awakening the latencies in yourself. (pause) And so, you are making God a reality. And the key to this is the word of Murshid in which he says, "God discovers his perfection in our imperfection." And so, you want to try and allay the limitation that you impose upon God by only actuating an imperfect feature of your divine inheritance. So, the answer to that is discovering you, yourself. It is not just God discovering his/her perfection in your imperfection, but you discover the divine perfection in your own imperfection. And that is called God consciousness, and that is the teaching of Murshid when he says, "Where can you find God if not in a God conscious being." (pause)

I used to say that one needs to awaken beyond life in order to awaken in life, and now I am beginning to think that one needs to awaken in life in order to awaken beyond life. (pause)

God Bless you now.

end of tape 10.

 Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 11

Tape 11

As you know, meditation is including other dimensions to the general outreach of our consciousness, which is ordinarily very limited. So, In the early morning meditation, it is good to see yourself in the universe, and see the universe in yourself. There is a saying of Jellaluddin Rumi, "A million galaxies whirling, the atoms dance, and we are whirling in this universe, and it is God who is whirling around himself." That is the basis of the dervish whirling that we shall be sharing this evening in the Dhikir.

So, you could consider the starry universe as a temple in which spirit descends and becomes quickened by the holy spirit. And, we have something in our nature of the inheritance of the stars, and then consequently, we too, can offer our, not just our whole body, but our minds, our whole being as temples for the appearance of the spirit. And, there is a word of (Tilhard de Chardin), who said, " The alter is in the stars, and the fabric of the cosmos is the host, which is transmuted into spirit, as matter, transmuted into spirit, and the wine is our suffering which is transmuted into joy." So, we are participating in the cosmic celebration with all our being, including our body, and consequently, there are practises where by we learn to relate to this process of transmutation in the universe by consciously fostering the transmutation of our bodies into spirit. 

Some of the tools used, let's say, and the methods used, are baptisms, baptism with the earth, baptism with water, baptism with fire, and baptism with air, and baptism with ether, which correspond to the breathing practices that we learned to do every morning. It will then correspond to an alchemical process. Perhaps you have heard, or you have read of the way that 'siris' lips where burned. So, he underwent a baptism by fire. And, in the same way, there is such a thing as a baptism by air, and by earth, and perhaps even by water, and by fire, and by air, and by ether. (pause_ 

So, first of all simply breath. (You really accept) that you be aware of your breathing, and by that, you will be slowing it down, breath in through the nose, and out through the nose. And, as you breath in through the nose, just be aware of the magnetism of the earth. When you are walking on the earth, particularly barefooted, you may feel the magnetism impinging upon the soles of your feet, and rising along your legs, and your whole body. And, if you are very, very sensitive, you will experience the way that this magnetism is transmuted, becomes finer and finer as it passes from one chakra to the next. That is, from the bottom of your spine upwards, and to the crown center. Now, that includes, of course, the whole body, not just the spine.  But, you could think of each chakra as a flower, a lotus, each corresponds to a plexis of the central nervous system, and the autonomic nervous system. You could think of them as flowers of lotuses which face forward and have their stump, their branch in the back of your spine, and they radiate. 

So, just think of your, it's like several lamps, or a current rising, and lighting up one lamp after another, and each light is of a more higher frequency than the previous one. Perhaps you remember, I went into more detail about this transmutation the other day when I said how you can shift your body identity to identifying with the more subtle functions of the body, by the endocrine glands, and then finding even the DNA, and eventually even the code. That's the reality of which what you think is your body, is just a secondary effect. 

So, if you do that, you will awaken faculties in your body which are dormant, and which will serve your higher intuition. (pause)

Now this form of transmutation is an elementary one. In alchemy it is called filtering, like segregating the grosser from the finer, or the finer from the grosser, as you inhale. As you exhale, you may feel that you are ejecting the grosser, and I would say the tarnished, polluted elements of your being, not just the body, in fact it is very good to think of the immune system, the lymph glands, and the your whole system is like the drain in the bathroom so that you are able to evacuate the toxins. Consciously if you do this, it will help you in the case of cancer for example, or the danger of cancer, to encourage the catharsis of the immune system. And of course the parallel, in parallel, of course the pollution in our thinking. What Pir-o-Murshid calls mental purification, as you exhale. And, mother earth is capable of taking a certain amount of pollution, but we are over stressing her. Rather over much. (pause)

And, then when we inhale, we are able to replenish our being with fresh energy from the earth, that has been recycled, this is called (telluric) energy, and this energy is transmuted on the way up. (pause) 

Now while you are doing this practice, you may think of, first of all, it is a baptism with the earth, and you may think of what it means to our psyche. You can find the earth element in you, although some people are more earth, than water, and other people are more fire than water, and so on. But, we all have all those elements in us. So, that will give us a sense of reliability, of stability, something like a cone for example, of expansion below rather than expansion above. And of course getting your trip together, or your act to together. The ability to organize ones life in a consistent way, with a lot of coherence, and integrity. But it is true that if we just highlight that element, and not the water, and the other elements, the water, and the fire, and the air, then we should be,we tend to get sclerosed, unless we are able to transmute the earth element. And, because, as you know, the earth element is simply the crystallization of energy. 

So, if you think of yourself as energy, rather than heavy matter, it will have the effect of transmuting the earth element in you. (pause)

Now, breathing through the nose, and out through the mouth, baptism with water. If you place the accent on the exhaling, you can think of your magnetic field, or light field as, for example, the lake of Geneva, the Rhone passes through it. 

So, it is fluid, and there are currents within it. And, by concentration upon it, you will enhance the activity of the energy of the currents, and descending, ascending, and also rotating within your magnetic field. It is a matter of mind over body. So one of the representations of this can be found in India where the shiva's represented as, represent water flowing through his fontanel, down, flowing through his whole body. And of course, everybody knows that water has a purifying effect, but if you sat in chemistry than you find that water has a extraordinary property, which is utilized in homeopathy, of what we call ionization, that is, ultimately, the matter is transformed into electrical charges. 

So that's the gain, the transmutation of an aspect of your being which is the fluid aspect. Now, this is illustrated, as you inhale, by what is called distillation in alchemy. The water becomes vapor, so, it passes from the fluid state to the volatile state and it gets diffused through out in outer space. And, as you can capture it, it's what the alchemists do. 

So, as you inhale, you think of, yes, of that alchemical process where by water is transmuted into steam, and consequently, the impurities, the dross is left at the bottom of the retort. So, that is a more drastic form of purification than baptism with the earth. (pause) 

Another extraordinary thing is that water carries memory. So, the memory of the whole past of the universe, and perhaps previous cosmoses is registered in the oceans of our planet.  (pause)

So, this is, St John the Baptist, baptized with water. That is of great significance, And he said, "The one who comes after me, will baptize with fire and spirit. (pause) 

So, you can discover a quality of water in your being, a disposition to keep on moving, and flowing, and adapting yourself. The river will turn around the rocks instead of attacking them. Gradually, of course, it will wear them down. Love and affection, and kindness, and gentleness, they are generally flowing. But, you will find that it is a quality that is less stable, than earth and therefore, doesn't have the same reliability. You will also find that, that water element in you, or you find it very strong in other people maybe, is very influenceable. So that a water person may change their mind, and will dither a lot, so it is rather unpredictable, because it is moving. It keeps on moving, instead of being just stationary. 

Adaptability. But, in it there is vitality, the water makes all the difference in the desert, and so, if you discover that in yourself, you find that you communicate in life, where ever you go. And so, your presence is refreshing, and generates life. 

Now let us bear in mind, that although we are referring to the physical element, such as we experience them, earth, water, fire, air, and ether perhaps we don't experience. Those are only the outer manifestations of the reality behind them, which escapes any definition, but, one can say, the solid state, and the fluid state and the, igneous state, and the volatile state. and the etheric state of the universe. (pause)

Now, baptism with fire. Uncompromising. You breath in through the mouth, and out through your nose. And, think that you are a flame, or rather, if you like to start with it, you simply represent yourself a flame inside your spine chord. Your spine is like a chimney, and your spinal chord is like a flame that rises within this chimney. And, if you identify with the flame, then as you breath in, you are sucking air from the environment in order to be able to consume energy in order to produce heat, and light. (pause) 

Then you notice that if you watch a flame, you'll find the color red at the bottom, and violet at the top, and in between the whole sequence of frequencies in the spectrum. So those are practises we have done already with working with light. And so, traditionally, this is called the transmutation of fire into light. 

So, initially it is a process of phosphorescence, which means that our bodies are continually being consumed and producing infrared radiance, incandescence. And, then if we know how to do this, or if we follow this up. then we can transmute that igneous, incandescent radiance into the radiance of pure light even reaching it right up into ultraviolet light. (pause) 

As we exhale, then, of course, we radiate that light. We exhale through the nose. (pause) 

Now, of course, we notice that the fire is a much more drastic mode of purification than the previous ones. It is merciless, and pitiless, and ruthless, and reckless. So, you find that people who have fire in their nature, and maybe you will find it in yourself. It is uncompromising, dedication to the truth, at all costs. It can cause a lot of pain, but, it represents dedication to ones highest ideal. And, so you find that the igneous person, the fire person just cannot stand dishonesty. One thing he can't accept, he gets into a temper, and will lash out, like a knight to stand for the truth. That is the very principle of Zoroastrianism, Asha, the truth. So, you remember the words of Jelaluddin Rumi, "Enough of metaphor, I want burning, burning, burning. (pause)

Well, in alchemy it is that burnishing that we make gold adamant, or the clay into the receptacle. So, that one becomes unalterable, adamant, very different from the earth. Although one acquires the same resilience at having undergone a very profound purification. (pause) 

The beauty here is, of course, to be able to include the fire, and the light in the baptism, so that, as I say, one is transforming fire into light. Your attachment to truth, your dedication to truth is going to make your eyes sparkle with light, whereas any compromise will face a shadow in your eyes. Ambiguity, manipulation, guile. So, we see how fire and light are very deeply connected. And of course, once more, we are not talking about just the physical element of fire, or light, but maybe what might be called an inner fire, and might be called a non physical light. And, you could pursue the practises that we have done with light, whereby we pass from one sphere of light to the other, in the course of the inhaling. (pause) so that in the end of the combustion of a star, for example, all that remains is light, and the stardust is scattered. 

So, in the Sufi tradition, the illuminated being is someone who has undergone such a profound process of combustion, that he/she becomes like a star. (pause)

So I say, it is important to balance your verve as a fiery being with the luminosity, the effulgence, not just of your aura, but of your thinking, so one can consume ones, any thoughts of anger.  side 2

It is called a shifting from an explosion to an implosion, where the fire gets lost, and it's an expansion, but then the deeper process is fission instead of fusion. So, the energy is transmuted. (pause) 

Now, baptism with air, inhale through the mouth, exhale through the mouth. Your lips must be as closed as you can possibly hold them, so that it is like a cool breeze passing through your mouth. (pause) 

It's more the breath that involves the activity of the thyroid gland, the parathyroid, which acts together with the adrenalin gland and regulates it. It represents a higher mode of energy than the adrenalin gland. (pause)

Now, or course, the volatile state is a characteristic of dispersal, diffusion, annihilation, falling apart, so it is what in alchemy one calls Solve before Coagule, before building it up again, you have to first dissolve. So it is a more drastic process of purification than any of the previous ones. I think of an example that illustrates this in my mind. You may come across in nature, it is rather rare, but you may come across what you think is a flower, but it is really insects that have congregated, and formed a wonderful structure that looks rather like a flower. And, if you blow upon it, then all the insects will fly away, and so that flower has petered out all together. And then, if you sit there and you stay very, very calm, and all the insects will come back again, and form a flower again, It is a wonderful illustration of what one means by fana and baka. 

Wether it is the same insects that come back exactly to the place in which they are, that I doubt. Whether the flower has exactly the same configuration is also questionable. So, that is an illustration of what is happening to us. In order to be able to undergo a transformation, we have to accept to fall apart. And, all our problems, contribute towards that falling apart of our self image, which is the condition for rebirthing. 

So, as you do this practice, you lend yourself to the disintegrating power written right into the power of the universe. And of course, this goes counter to our instinct of self preservation, which can lead towards a sclerosis in the earth element. So, the person with the air element predominating in them, is absolutely unpredictable, and is able to reconcile the irreconcilable, paradoxes, accepts paradoxical modes of thinking beyond the middle range, and is always ready for something new, a new outlook, a new transformation. 

So, you discover this in you, and or course, it may be balanced by the earth quality, or the water quality, or the fire quality, But, this is your creativity, your need for freedom from conditioning. (pause)   But, you can't count upon a person who is predominantly air, and is not balanced by the others, particularly by the earth element, because that person is always going to break the routine, and try out something new. Whereas, you might expect of a person to tow the line. But, you may discover in you something, a need to be free, a need to explore new horizons. 

Now, there is a further mode of breathing practice by yogis and Tibetans, and, which may develop when you are repeating the Dzkir, and I call it aerobic breathing. It is the ability to draw oxygen from your instead of from the environment, which is what bears do in hibernation. Or, as a child does, as there was a case of a child who was drown, and exposed to the terrible cold in the bottom of the water for hours and survived. It is a function that we seem to have lost that you find in the so called more primitive animals, like the hibernating tortoise for example, the turtle, or the bear, or, there are a lot of animals that hibernate. Snakes, and,... a sort of self sustaining capacity written right into our body. And, which accounts for yogis being buried under the earth and surviving after several hours. 

So, the way to do it, is as you are breathing you imagine you are drawing air from the environment, and you are sending air out into the environment. So, now instead of doing that, think that you are drawing energy from inside instead of from outside. (pause)

And, the secret of the Tibetans is the drawing air from the solar plexis, so at least, thinking that, that is the source, that's where the void is. You have access into the void, and you are extracting, you are exacting, how can I say, you are awakening energy from the void. And, it diffuses in your body through your heart center, so your solar plexis is a gate towards the inside, and your heart is a gate towards the inside. Input, output. (pause)

So, the ether element that was eliminated by physicists the end of last century, the beginning of this century, is beginning to return, in a modified way. It is most undefinable, but in terms of our psyche, it is to be found in a person who is the opposite of superficial, who is profound, and who is always speaking from the depths of his/her soul instead of the surface of the mind. Or, his emotions are the emotions of the soul rather than the emotions of the heart. Or, who becomes pure spirit, the body itself becomes ethereal. (pause) 

It is embodied in that Sufi concept, Sirr a sirr, which means the secret of secrets, a veiled one, that which cannot be articulated in words. (pause) 

It is the thing that one must never say, and for which Al Hallaj was crucified, and Christ, also, of course. And that is, "I am God." That is the one thing one should never say, but it is the ultimate reality. That is the ultimate secret. (pause)

Of course. to bring it in proportion, one would have to quote I'bn Arabi, who says, "Know whereby you are God, and whereby you are not God." Again a contradiction. This is what Pir-o-Murshid calls, "God consciousness", and when you are in that state, of God consciousness, your words don't make sense to the ordinary person. You are carrying the secret of God in your being that you are not allowed to betray. (pause)

And so, this is where having built a temple out of the fabric of our bodies, and our minds, and our psyches, and so on, we invite the divine presence, and ultimately we realize that we are that presence. So we are not only the temple, but also the presence. So, think of the whole universe as a temple inviting the divine presence, and we carry with in us, the inheritance of the galaxies, and in turn, we can construct out of the fabric of our being, the semblance of a temple so that God may be present. (pause)

So, the etheric person is very shy about saying I love you, because it seems like minimizing something that is too sacred to put in words, almost like a betrayal. But, that emotion may manifest as a tear in their eyes. (pause)

There is a word of Al Hallaj who said, "I would not have deigned to say, "Art thou there", if thou had not already whispered in my ears, "It is me." (pause)

God bless you now.

end of tape 11.

Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 12

Tape 12

...Which is inviting, which is the capacity to invite the divine presence. So that faculty of rotating like a star is written somewhere in the depth of our programming, and when we bring it out and start whirling, then we find our connection with the starry, starry universe. And that is why Jelaluddin Rumi, when his dear friend and teacher was killed, Shams Tabriz, was looking for his friend amongst the stars. And he came back and brought the choreography of the whirling dervishes.

So, in the Sufi practises, the body participates in the experience, whereas in samadhi, and in yoga, the body is simply the launching platform, and then it does not participate anymore. In samadhi, Ramakrishna wasn't aware of the pencil that was pushing against his retina, well, his cornea. And, you find that also in the Jewish tradition, the (mer kabba). So, the throne of God has become a chariot. 

And, you have the whole sepharodic tree that comes out of that. dynamic concept of God instead of the static one of God as an abstract reality, beyond the beyond. Unmovable and unchanged.

So, it is good for you to, let's say, we are building a temple out of, not just our body, but all of the levels, including the transfigured body. The body of resurrection, your aura, and so on. Our  minds, our emotions, our consciousness. It's like a hologram of invious modes that are intertwined.

So, I would like you to just concentrate on the forces that you are setting into motion, that you are triggering off simply by making a circular motion of your head, well your bust as compared with the trunk, let's say, of you body, instead of the pelvis. So, imagine that your head is turned towards the zenith, and then towards the left shoulder, and then left knee, and then right knee, and then the right shoulder, and then right up to the zenith again. And, you keep on whirling. (pause) 

So, you may compare it with a centrifuge, so that you feel forces that tend to move outwards, that is centrifugal forces. So, rather than being a circle, think of it as a spiral that keeps on extending, expanding. Think of a pyre of light for example. (pause)

And so, think of it as reaching right out into the starry sky with your consciousness becoming more and more encompassing. 

And, you yourself are like a planet that is whirling amongst the stars.

Now, perhaps you know that the reason why people circumambulate a temple, is because the circular motion draws one's attention towards the axis. That is where the temple is. So, while you are enlisting centrifugal forces, you are also enlisting centripetal forces which pull you towards a center which is your solar plexis. So, if you think of yourself as a vortex, whirlpool for example, well then, the solar plexis is the center of that whirlpool which is a vacuum. So, the energy of the outside world passes into the vortex, and gets sucked into the depth in the, through the solar plexis, to the void, 

And then, the opposite is also true, and that is that fresh energy emerges from within, and is radiated from your heart center. (pause) It emerges through the solar plexis, and then moves up to the heart center, and then up from one chakra to the next. 

So, what I suggest that you do, is as you exhale, just make this wide circle, you could make a circle, well you could just keep on making a circle to start with, without thinking of exhaling or inhaling. And then at one point, you just concentrate on exhaling as you inhale, exhale, what am I saying, exhale as you are in the circle. And then, you find that when your head is turned towards the zenith, it is in the most precarious, let's say unstable equilibrium, and that is when you feel the pull of your solar plexis, which would pull your head downwards, and you inhale at that moment. (pause)

Now, you will find that your head will naturally rebound upwards, after we turn downwards. So, you divide your inhaling in two. In the first half, you inhale while your head goes down, and then you continue inhaling as your head goes up. (pause)

Now, you will notice in the dhikr, we are going through all the phases that we have studied in the course of this retreat. So that when you are in a circle, you are getting into the cosmic dimension of your being. You are expanding your consciousness, your identity, you are discovering further dimensions, cosmic dimensions of your identity. Developing a sense of vastness. (pause) And then, when you turn your head downwards, then when you inhale, that's when you turn within. And we've been studying, very much in detail yesterday, how one turns within. (pause)

Now, it is from that situation, when one is turned within, that one lifts one's consciousness upwards. (pause) If you remember, when we turn within, a new dispensation of life begins to emerge in a creative way, and we project it through our creative imagination as a picture, an image. But, then we find that to be creative, it is not good enough just to project elements of our being, as keep on being recycled, we want to mutate, we want to incorporate the extra samsaric matrix of our being, the higher levels of our being. And, consequently, the head moves upwards. That is, you transfer your attention from the solar plexis to the heart center, and then the throat center, and then the third eye, and then the crown center. As you continue to inhale. (pause) 

So, you are really passing in review, the different planes as your head moves upwards. (pause)

So, if you remember when we turn within, you identify with your subtle body, and your way of thinking is called Mithal, the world of metaphor, creative imagination. And, when your head starts moving upwards, then if you concentrate on the heart center, that is the chakra that is connected with the heavenly spheres, Malakut, the heavenly spheres. Then you move upwards through the, well perhaps some of you are not aware of this chakra which is, the Tibetans talk about, the wheel of fire which is placed between the heart and the throat center. And then you have the throat center. So, after Malakut, you have Jabarut, which is the level, the way that the mind is, the subtle mind of the Tibetans, the way that the mind is able to think thoughts that are inherent within one's intelligence, and which do not result from the experience of the earth. (pause) So, it is a different mode of thinking called Jabarut. (pause)

And now, you as continue to rise, and you reach a plane of Lahut. That is the second "A" of Allah. Which is the plane of archetypes, of all possibilities, what Buddha calls the level of all possibilities, beyond existence, let's say, the soft ware. Well, it's the, that's where the wazifas have their seat in their perfection, the level of archetypes, the names, their divine names.

There is a saying in the Koran, "Everything in the world has its counterpart in the divine treasury." So, this is the divine treasury. This is the treasure that desires to be known. Lahut.

The divine perfection unmitigated by the imperfection of the exemplars, the archetypes are perfect, the exemplars imperfect. (pause) 

This corresponds with, in yoga with (sarabiga). In fact, each of these planes corresponds exactly with those in yoga sutras of Pantangali, ananda samadhi. Well, first of all, sarvitarka, and then sarvikara, sarvikara, the creative mind, and then, ananda Malakut, that is the angelic world, and then Asmita, the way of thinking when one identifies with the angel, and one's thinking is not based upon experience. And then, we have sarabiga, which is Lahut. Sara means "with", and biga means, "seeds". So, these are the seeds of all that happens in existence. And then you have (asemfragenata) samadhi, which is beyond multiplicity, and that corresponds to Hahut. And that is the "H" of Allah. 

So now, it might easier now, if you would say the words. Because then, each letter has its significance. 

So, when you, imagine that the circle is really, actually it is really a heart instead of a circle. It's a heart, rather than a circle. So, your head moves slightly upwards from the horizontal, it moves slightly upwards, and turns towards the left. And moves, well, l would say that the point of the heart is rather flattened out so it is a rounded off kind of heart.

So you are moving, let's say in a half circle if you like, when you say, "La". Actually La is really three quarter of a circle. La, that means, "No, it is not". It is a negation. And then, you have say, "Illaha", and you say "Illaha", your head moves from the right shoulder to the zenith. So, it is "La Illaha". So, when you say "La", then, well, it is negating to the notion that I have of the world, and the notion that I have of myself. But, it is positive in the sense of having negated what I think is the world, and what I think is myself. I discover the cosmic dimensions of my being which are coextensive with the vastness of the cosmos. 

Now, that is exactly what we did in the first stages in our retreat. Expanding our consciousness, expanding your identity, discovering the cosmic dimension of your identity. So, this is where you think of the millions of galaxies. "The whirling", as Jelaluddin Rumi says. But, when you say "Illaha", that is when your head moves from your right shoulder upwards, then you are not thinking about the physical universe, the physical cosmos, actually, that is the word, but, all the levels which one might call the angelic spheres. And, the word "Illaha", (villuhya), based upon the root (villuhya), means exactly what Pir-o-Murshid translated by the word divinity, God. And then divinity, that is that aspect of God that is incarnated. And then, there is still that aspect of God that remains aloof from any kind of involvement in the existential state. 

It's like in Meister Eckart, you find the difference between God and Godhead for example. God, well actually, the words are very different, the opposite of what we say, because God would be (illavilluhya). But, in ancient german, "Gott vert und intvert", that is, "He becomes and unbecomes". But, beyond that, there is "Gott heit", which is really what we mean by God. God transcendent beyond, becoming or unbecoming, beyond change. 

So, "Illa He" then, "La Illaha" Ya Illaha, means, those aspects of God that manifest in the existential world, but are beyond the physical. So, other levels of reality, they say there are celestial spheres and so on. So, that the vastness of our being includes not just the millions of galaxies, but includes all levels of reality, includes the angels at all levels, and archangels and so on. The whole universe. The soft ware of the universe, everything. So, our being is infinite in its breadth, on all levels.

"La Illaha".

And then, when your head comes done, you say "Illa". Illa, "I", you hit your solar plexis which starts vibrating, so you are touching the very core of your being, which is a gate into the void, the unknown. "Illa", and the consequence is that a new dispensation of life arises, emerges out of the void, in the "A" of Illa. So, when you say "La", after "Illa", then you think of, that you are being reborn, and project how you could be if you might be. "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of that past." All those things that we have come across. That is a world of Almithal, all the world of creative imagination, and that word Mithal reminds one of the word mythology, doesn't it.

Now then, as I said, to be creative, its not good enough just to recycle, what is in the samsaric matrix of your being. You want to include other dimensions, and therefor your consciousness rises from one plane to the next. Now, I don't know whether you noticed that one does not say the first "A" of Allah, so one doesn't say "Illa Allah", no. It's "Illa 'La". And so, there is an apostrophe, and the reason is because the new dispensation of life is subliminal. It's still like the crocuses under the snow, it hasn't yet broken through. And so therefor, you don't say the first "A" of Allah, "Illa 'La. And, there are two l's, "Illa 'La", if you just say "Ila 'La", it's very flat. Two l's gives it some dynamism. 

So, just think it's like the shoe horn, like the, something that is setting a whole chain reaction into motion. "Illa 'la". And then, you have, touch upon the angelic spheres. Pir-o-Murshid says, that there comes a time in one's life when one seeks the celestial spheres. When one gets disenchanted with the kind of grossness of the world. One has a need for the sublime. And, that is when one turns upwards. (pause)

It is, at first it seems as though one is in the quest of the angel until one discovers that one is in the quest on the celestial dimension of one's own being. 

So, that is the first "A" of Allah. That is emerging in one's heart. And then, as you know, for each type of body, three is a matching mode of thinking. So, corresponding to your celestial body, there is a mode of thinking. Celestial body, Malakut, belonging to the world of Malakut, belongs a way of thinking, Jabarut, mode of thinking which is not based upon experience. So, it is not acquired knowledge, but what is called, in philosophy is called, protocritic knowledge, a kind of knowing that is written right into your intelligence, but is so covered by the knowledge of the world that it can only manifest to view when you downplay the knowledge that you have acquired from the world.

So, let's say that, this is the second "A" of Allah, the point of revelation, the state of revelation, a kind of a very deep meaningfulness is revealed to you irrespective of the physical world, or the psychological environment. It comes as a kind of intuition. And, Ib'n Arabi says, is that, one has to give up the act of imagination, no more images, and therefor beyond creativity. So, let's just do this, and then we'll continue. (pause)

Now, the second "A" of Allah is Lahut. That is the plane of the archetypes, as I said. That's the names of God, "Asma Illahi", the names of God, which are the safat, the qualities, attributes, the seeds, and therefor the archetypes, and all, what we've been calling the wazifas. Wazifa means the reiteration of... 

side 2

...and think of qualities in their perfection, that's at the Lahut level. And, the exemplars of these qualities, of these archetypes, which are imperfect, in, at the level of Nazut, which is the human level. So, Lahut represents therefor, the divine pole of our being, and Nazut, the human pole. And, so in the dhikr we are riding from our human limitations, and there being a, somehow, given some kind of a touch of the divinity of our being, the divine investment. The divine inheritance. So, let's do it up to this point now. (pause)

Third eye, if you so wish, and there are various interpretation, so you must find which one suits you best, because there is an interpretation according to which one concentrates on one's (yoshoda? spelling) chakra, the throat chakra, which is the center of the "word", the word that was God. But, the third eye gives you a sense of insight into meaningfulness. 

Now, the end of the word Allah, there is an "H", and that "H" represents the plane Hahut, which is the plane of unity beyond multiplicity. It is the "H" in the Jewish tradition. The highest name of God is an "H", which was only disclosed to the high priest, and nobody was supposed to ever pronounce it. That is the "H" of Yaweh. (pause)

So, you must clearly pronounce the "H" at the end of Allah, "Allah". I pronounce it a little bit too strongly, but, it is almost like a whisper. (pause). So, the "H" is like the zenith, the apex. So that is where your head reaches the maximum, turned upwards, the point, its apex. (pause)

The sound of "La" is bounced upwards, like throwing a ball upwards.

Now, so that's samadhi, that's the point, samadhi, asaprada samadhi, beyond the beyond, beyond existence, the oneness, (Khidr) and the kaballa. And then we have, it is followed up by "Hu". And, that's when your head turns downwards towards your heart center. And, that is why it is a heart and not a circle. You have the curve upwards, around from left to right, I mean, down and up again, and then down towards your heart. And, the reason is because, while you may touch upon samadhi, awakening beyond life, the accent in Sufism is awakening in life rather than awakening beyond life, and therefor you don't keep your head, then you would be in a state of samadhi. Turn your head towards your heart center. So the "H" of Allah, is followed by "Hu", so it's really, you mustn't interrupt it if you can avoid interrupting it. "Illa 'La Hu" etc. "La Illaha Illa 'La Hu". And, Hu is like a whisper. "La illaha Illa 'La Hu." etc.

All right Amen.

So, we are building a temple as we said. So, when you say, "La", and your consciousness reaches into the galaxies, and then "Illaha", including the heavenly spheres. And then, you gather all of that material to build a temple, you draw it towards the center, "Illa", your solar plexis. So, your solar plexis sucks in that energy of the Universe, drawing it, converging it, and building a temple. And then, the "A" of Allah, the second "A", is the alter in the temple, which represents, always represents the celestial spheres, one has candles and incense, and so, it is, the heart of the temple is the alter. 

And then "Hu", then your prayers open an opening at the top of the temple, there are some temples that have an opening at the top, in fact, your head has an opening at the fontanel, it's not obvious, but still there is an opening at the top of the head, fontanel. That's the "H" of Allah. So, your prayers are rising, and then they are followed by the descent of the divine presence, that is called a quickening of the Holy Spirit upon the alter. That is the "Hu". The alter is your heart, that is why you turn toward your heart. You see, the word "Hu" means "him". "Ana" means "I", "Hu" means "him". And so, what Al Hallaj says, is that when several people are in a room invoking a person who is not in the room, then that person who is not in the room becomes present in the room. And so, "Hu" becomes present. "Hu" means "him", that is a person that is not present, becomes present. One's making God. That is why it is called the practise of the presence of God. 

This is replicated in the Moslem prayers because perhaps you know that one prostrates oneself, that is, there is a sense of dissolving the notion that one has of oneself. And, it is only in those circumstances that a rebirthing can take place. But, that rebirthing is enlisted by one's act of glorification, in which, as I have said many times, in which one is projecting upon God excellent qualities which then, when a void comes in, one's own personal note to project them upon God. And so, one is creating oneself in one's prayer. And there is a saying of the Hadith of the prophet Mohammed who says, "Allah mathlukh fil itakadat". which means, "God is created through your prayers." "Mathluk", created, "fil", that is through, "itakadat", through your worship.

So, in the Moslem prayer, one, after having invoked God in one's worship, after having prostrated, and then invoked, and then risen up, and invoked God in one's prayers, then one sits in a position of awaking, and then the divine presence becomes felt as a reply to one's plea.

And, that's so one has built, let's say just as I talked about the atom, when there are creative circumstances that call upon the divine presence. So, one's creating a sacred space. That's what the temple is, it's a sacred space. There is a threshold, there is a kind of separation with the world. It's like an extraterritorial area, that doesn't belong to the world. So, there's a kind of containment, a kind of sense of protection from the sacrilege of the world. And, there is some communication with the world, because there are stained glass windows, so that something of the inner, that which is beautiful can pass through. But, there are gargoyles there to reject ugly things. So, that space is kept clean and holy.

And then, when you, having done the dhikr, repeated the dhikr, you come out of that place, then you are carrying that sacred, "many presence." Yes, that sacred presence, you are caring it with you where ever you go. So, perhaps you are familiar with the Catholic ceremony after communion. Having partaken of the host, the Catholics return to their seat, and you can see that they are transformed. They are carrying, they feel that they are carrying something very holy in their body. The presence of Christ. So, it is the same idea, carrying something very precious. 

There is also a picture of Christ, and so one is carrying a lamp, and his heart is the flame in that lamp, and then there is a glass around it, and then his hands are giving further protection to that lamp. And, he is walking in the wind in the storm. So, that's a sense of protecting something very holy, and you carry it into the world in the middle of all the sacrilege of the world. You still keep that holiness in you.

Now, perhaps the greatest mystery of the dhikr, is that having built a temple, and consecrated the alter in the temple, and called upon the descent of the holy spirit, you rediscover that you are the priest. (pause)

And, before that priest, is a temple within the temple that carries that presence outside the temple. (pause)

 0  Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 13

Tape 13

(Continuation of Thursday afternoon, tape 12) - Group repeating dhikr.

When you say "Hu", you are receiving holy communion. (pause)

Without the words. (pause)

And, keep the state of the "Hu" longer. Hold your breath to "Hu". (pause)

So now, the next stage is, one just says "Allah Hu". (pause)

And now, you don't say it anymore, but just on your breath. pause

..."H" of Allah, and exhale with a "Hu". (pause)

And now, you just say, you hardly whisper "Hu", and you are receiving the divine blessing. (pause)

The "Hu" becomes "Ana". (pause) The "I" transfigured beyond the self image. And that is what Surawardi means when he says, "The witness now is your celestial being." (pause)

And then, there is a further step. And then that is one that is referred to by Al Hallaj, when he says, "If you are conscious of being the one who is declaring the oneness of God, there is a contradiction." And so, ultimately you can only say the dhikr if you are not aware of being the one who is saying it. So, it is God who is saying the dhikr through your lips. And those were Al Hallaj's last words on the cross. "It is good enough if God alone repeats the dhikr, and I am no more there." (pause)

So, that is the ultimate initiation. (pause)

God Bless you.

side 2

... be the current thing in the societies in which we live. And so, if you are on retreat, you are on, as they say, as the Moslems say, there carpet is extra territorial. (Pir laughs) It is something different. 

So, I would like to share with you the most significant things that I was into during my retreats. You see, there is no doubt about it that, perhaps you remember, when we started the retreats, we were still pilgrims, and the impressions of the world seemed to accompany us even though we left the world behind, at least in our memory. And then, they got more remote, and more remote. And finally, there comes a time when one has to enter, pass the threshold of the temple, and then one does leave the sacrilegious world behind.

So, that is a definite quantum leap. And then, one gets into a strange kind of mood. It's a very strange kind of emotion, or non emotion, which the Hindus call, varagaya, which means detachment. At least detachment from the commonplace human emotions. And that marks one's entry into the emotion of the soul, rather than the emotion of the heart.

And so, there comes a point when, one wants to be cloistered. It's a choice which one makes. And so, in that choice, closing oneself in one's cell.

I remember once in Hyderabad, it was so lovely outside, and I was doing a retreat exactly where Murshid did a retreat with his Murshid. And, I tried to continue, at least spend half an hour of my retreat outside, and it just didn't do it. I had to sit in that smelly cell, full of cobwebs. (Pir laughs)

Now, ultimately of course, it's like the cell of the monk. And, one is getting into a very deep place. And so, all this talk about the void, well, yes, these are concepts. It's really the secret of the soul, rather than a vacuum. Sunyata, it's the secret of God. 

So, one get's into a very deep emotion in the depths of one's own being, which is called the soul. And, one leaves the world behink. So, the body as you know in Sufism, the body participates in one's experience. And so, this is the advanced dhikr. So, I hope you won't mind if I lead you into the advanced dhikr. And, that, you do kneeling. Now, I am not very good at kneeling anymore, because of my legs, but still, I'll try my best to do it, but I'm sure that most of you are younger than me.

 Amen. Now we can just sit back a moment.

Now, there is not point in just repeating words, and just a movement of the body. So, we'll try to correspond with an envolment of your whole being, and that includes your emotions, your thinking. So, at the moment when you are saying, "Illa", there is a sense of annihilating, and when you rise again, then there is a reinstatement, and those are expressed by the words, "fana and baka". And, they always go together, you mustn't just surrender without being reborn again, or accepting the miracle of life. Now, of course, at first, it is, in the first stage it is, well remember there is a tendency to enjoy being annihilated if one has self hate, and a lot of people have, we all have to some extent in our sense of guilt or shame. And therefor, it is, seems to be the fulfillment of a wish to do away with all that one isn't happy with. But, what PIr-o-Murshid says, and this is very important, because this theory that's come through allot of most of Sufis, the crushing of the ego, you must be very careful of that concepts. What PIr-o-Murshid calls the ego, is only a fraction of our being with which we identify, and which we parade, and we dilate when we are attacked. And so, we are not mustering all the richness of our being, and we don't know how to do that unless we are aware of all the resourcefulness in our being.

So, that is a first stage. So, think that what you are annihilating at first, is you false notion of yourself. And then fana is always linked with baka, which means you are down playing one aspect in order to highlight another. Well, this is, it is, now, you are annihilating the subject in the object, and the object is God. The object is God at all levels, including the existential level, the physical level. So, it is the way that your notion of being the person who is saying the dhikr, gets resorbed in the object of the dhikr. So, they call it, "Fana an al zakir bil matkor", that means, zakir is the person who is saying the dhikr, the subject, "you" as you think you are the subject. And, God is matkour, the one to whom one consecrates the dhikr. And, the dhikr is the act, linking those two.

Now, in the second stage, you absorb the object in the subject. And so now you discover the God in you, instead of seeking the God outside you. Well, that is what we do when we are turning within. Now, we go through further stages of the dhikr, which say that at one point, one entrusts one's fragile soul into the unknown. So, that is perhaps, the ultimate surrender.

So, the unknown is the divine act rather than God as the object. And, the consequence is that as St John of the Cross says, "For having lost oneself, one finds oneself". And so, it is a, we are talking about the level of one's being that one is never aware of, or only aware of in this very sacred place. Because of course, this, what they call, "Solve et Coagule", this dissolution and reshaping, or reforming is happening at all levels, at the body level, at the mind level, psyche level. But, this is a much deeper level still. 

And then, of course where, a very deep phase in which one discovers that what one thought was oneself as a subject, is the being of God. That God is a shahid, that is, that's the witness. And, that is the most amazing thing, because one can accept maybe, that the traces of the divine nature are to be found in one's personality, but to discover that the subject in one, the knowing subject, consciousness, is the divine consciousness is of course, the most shattering discovering. It is discovering God in the very place where one identified oneself most as oneself.

And then the next stage is, of course, there is a way of defining them in all those terms that we are using. There is no more sense of me. So, there would be a stage at which you think that you are the one that sees, and then another stage at which you think that God is seeing through my eyes, and then a further stage at which you think my glance is the divine glance. And then, you think, well, that is it, I've reached that realization. Until, we listen to Shabistari saying, "The "I" is just the reflection of the divine 'I'". And so, it is always further, always further. Like the horizon, the further one advances, the further it recedes.

So, we are deep in, deeply emersed in the whole mystery behind life, the divine secret.

Now, there is a point, I didn't continue this in, of course, in my own retreat, we were doing this for hours and hours and hours. But, I would have very high pressure if I were to do it now. But, then there is a phase at which you do the motion without saying the words, that's the fikr of the dhikr. "Illa", exhaling, "La", inhaling, and "Hu", holding the breath. And, you actually you prostrate, but it is not your body that prostrates. And, you lift yourself again, but it is not your body. At that stage, one is experiencing what one experiences doing the Moslem prayer, that is through the, exposing the hoax of the false ego, one is in a fit condition to worship, otherwise one can't worship. One can't glorify. One can't glorify with one's ego. And so, when one says, "La", then one is really, especially after having prostrated. It is as though one's soul had wings. One is lifted beyond earthly conditions, in one's act of glorification. And, as I say, excellent qualities begin to emerge. All those qualities that we label with the wazifa, then we ascribe to God.

But, we are still in a state of duality. And then we have the answer. "Hu", I am present within you. And then, there is a further dhikr, in which you do the motion without the words.

And then, you feel that it is God who is reborn as you. God recurrently reborn. And so, it's accepting one's being that one had previously denigrated, accepting to be honored, because one recognizes God in one.

...wish to describe that, discover his qualities in beings, and therefor, those beings are the embodiment of those qualities. And then at some point, Al Hallaj said, "and God saluted man." And even goes as far as to say, "and complimented him on his good looks." (laughter) Because, that's the image of God, through which God discovers himself. So, when I think of all the concerns of psychotherapists about denigrating oneself, and self validation, and so on. And, can you imagine a greater self validation than this. They say, "love yourself", but that's poor in comparison with accepting the divine compliment.

The consequence is that one comes into the world with the sense of, just like the Catholics after communion, of carrying something so sacred in one's being, and one is communicating that host to the people one meets, because it is real.

 Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 14

Tape 14

My job is to bring you correctly back to America. And, I would feel very bad if you were so spaced out, that you would make some mistake in your driving. So, and also, people would think that you were hypnotized by this strange exotic guru. So, I have to gradually attune you to, let's say, reversing the machine in the opposite way now. But, not in a violent way now, gradually, and also with great wisdom and insight.

So, what I would like us to do, is relive the process that we have gone through. And, perhaps, prefigure the next step.

So, if you noticed, we started by trying to sit and meditate, and found that there were a lot of random thoughts. And, the problems of our daily life kept on erupting with great compelingness. And so, it was obvious, it was not the way to go about it, try to control our thoughts and our emotions with our will.

We also realized that our everyday problems are a reality that we have to deal with, and we were hoping that meditation would help us to throw some light on these problems. And also perhaps, to be able so find some, I don't know whether the word resolution is the right one, it is a bit strong, but, still some kind of a way of meeting them. 

In the course of the retreat, we discovered that solving our problems wasn't ultimately what we are looking for. (Pir laughs) There are plenty of psychotherapists about. Although, we have been with the representatives. We have been trying to sort out what are the specific methods that we use in the Sufi order, and in which they are, let's say, at least complementary to the methods used by psychotherapists. 

And, we found that there was a lot of overlap. But, the accent is, in our work, is on the, well, what one might call 'other dimensions of our being'. Whereas, at least in the party line of psychology, there is a tendency to reinforce the personal dimension, which is a slither of what our being is, but nevertheless, must be taken into account. And, I realize that the reason why spiritualists are accused by psychotherapists of what they call the spiritual bypass, is discounting that particular dimension. So, it has got to be included and integrated, and of course, incidentally, there is such a thing as a psychological bypass too. (laughter)

As we went deeper into the retreat, if you remember, we found that the first step was to reach out beyond the constraint of our personal vantage point, because we were looking at our problems with a personal bias, and also, it felt better when we realize that our problems are part of the drama of the Universe, is our share in it, and of thinking that we are alone in our problems. Because, when one is suffering, it's a very bad situation, as though one is suffering alone. And, that is true of people who are dying, they need to have someone with them. So, supportive, what they call a safe space. A supportive space. 

And, ultimately, we discovered that perhaps the real issue behind it all was to feel that one is loved. And, it's difficult to accept being loved if one denigrates oneself. And so, somehow, there was, in one's way of thinking, there is, well, there is an obstacle there that one needs to clarify. And, I think the real breakthrough point is when one realizes that if love in it's ultimate sense is unconditional, then we imagine that God's love is unconditional, and therefor it would be insulting God to think that he wouldn't love one, because one is unlovable. And, that goes very deep into our process. 

The other one was feeling tarnished by one's guilt, and even by one's resentment. There is always some rather irrational connection between the two, as you know, the unconscious is, doesn't think rationally. And, the method that we found, I don't know whether you noticed it, but we were going through that. I didn't want to tell you in advance. What, let's say, the point of view of the engineer. You have to drive the car, so you don't have to have the know how of the engineer. But, I have to. So, behind it all was that, when one feels tarnished, one feels defiled in one's, somewhere in one's being. And, it's very difficult to, well, what is a cure? If at all. And, there is a contradiction in thinking that one is pure if one is tarnished. 

So, the mind thinks in categories, and finds it very difficult to reconcile the irreconcilable. And, what we found is that we, I was quoting, I was referring to the case of the voice of Caruso that is present within its defilement. And so, it is not a rational way of thinking, but is something that we encountered during our retreat. We are able to find that purity in us, within the distortion, the defilement, and the bias, and tarnishing, and all those aspects of ourselves that we don't like. 

And so, that helped us in one of the most fundamental of all the problems that are addressed by psychotherapists. And, that is our self image, our validation of ourselves. And, then we find that contradiction. There is always a contradiction in the more advanced forms of thinking, there is complementarity. Sounds like contradiction, but it is not, it is really complementarity. And when Murshid says, for example, "The aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the ego." Seems like a contradiction.

So that, we were learning to think in what I announced as the subtle mind, which thinks in terms of a, thinks holistically in terms of context, rather than in terms of categories. So, we learned to do that as we turned within.

Now, we come to this really, rather paradoxical issue, that is, "What is the difference between turning within, and reaching upwards?" And, if you remember, I referred to two matrixes of our being, the samsaric matrix, and what the Buddhists call the extra samsaric matrix, in which we call the divine inheritance. Extra is an awful word, so I prefer peri, which means outside, of a different nature. I talked about this planet that whirls around itself, around its own axis, and then whirls around the sun. So that, as I say, that when we turn within, we discover the core, let's say, well, I'll use the word matrix again. It's like the stump of a tree, that you fell a tree, and that stump may grow again, and it may look very different. Is it the same tree, or is it another tree? So, when we turn within, we shift our identity into, let's say the root, or the, yes, the roots of our being. A deeper reality than our personality. And when we do that, we realize it contains an infinite number of potentialities. So, we are really fishing in a pool of incredible resourcefulness. And, all that we had to do was call these qualities up into our personality simply by becoming aware of them, or drawing our attention to them, and that is what we are doing with the wazifa.

If you remember, I said that the electron only exists if you call it, Let's say that this is the virtuality, the virtual seedbed of our being, and it becomes a reality as we call it into our being. Now, there was the approach at that stage, but then, I don't know whether you realize it, there is another step that we call creativity, and we realized that, instead of thinking that it's there as a virtuality, and all we have to do is to call it into our personality. That is illustrated by a painter, an artist having a palate of colors, and then making a painting out of those colors. So, it's what you make out of what is there, instead of just thinking that you can call them. 

So, that is creativity. That you have those colors, but what you make out of it. And, that is a beauty that each one of our personalities is unique in its way, and of course, it is God manifesting in multiple ways, and that is why in the Koran it said that all faces are his face.

And so, we were promoting the special uniqueness of each one of us. Whereas, in some of the Eastern philosophies, particularly if one is pursuing to be of the ascetic, then one becomes impersonal, universal, cosmic, transcendental, and loses a sense of one's specific uniqueness.

So, I would like to say that, that for me is the, characterizes the Sufi way.

Now, we found that in order to, you see, what we, this samsaric matrix of our being, the stump of the tree, will keep on recycling itself. Like the seed of the tree, you cut the tree to a stump, and then it will grow again, you cut it again, it will grow again. So, it's cyclic, and it is really the divine inheritance that has been communicated to us through our ancestors. So, it has been somehow limited, funnelled down by being communicated through our human ancestry. And, that is a reason why, to be really creative, we have to include another dimension of our being. A direct inheritance, a divine inheritance rather than accessed through that inheritance through our ancestors.

I forgot to mention that we also have to consider our culture, our education, in terms of the people around us. And then, there is no doubt that we adapt, that we are very concerned about adapting ourselves to the environment, and always at the cost of our uniqueness. And so, when we turn within, we discover our real being, and sometimes even the countenance behind our face. And so, we were really highlighting whom we really are, and that's not what we think we are.

That will give you a sense of, a very strong sense of your role in life, otherwise, if your role in life is simply to fit in with the circumstances, then you are not contributing. And, we all need to feel that we have some contribution to make to the environment, to our society, and so on. That's why, at some point, one needs to go forth, and bring one's attunement where ever one goes. You bring yourself where ever you go. Instead of being overly concerned about adapting yourself to the environment. There is always some balance between the degree to which one adapts oneself to the environment, and the degree to which one adapts the environment to one's own sense of purpose. And, that will give you a sense of power. And, I find that most of us are, if you are attracted to the spiritual path, you will find that most of us are highly sensitive, I would say, fragile. And, we find it very difficult to wield power through our ego. We've suffered, all of us, at some point, have suffered from the autocratic ego of somebody who is trying to put us down. And, somehow, most people simply react by countering with their ego. And, if we don't have that kind of ego, then it is difficult for us to find a way of validating ourselves in life. And so, the only thing that will give you that strength, is to identify with your real being for one thing, and all the tremendous, as I call it, the pool of resourcefulness in your being, all the rich dimensions of your being. And, that gives you power. And, it's not human power, we call it divine power, the power of the dervish. 

And, I don't know whether you have noticed that in the course of your retreat. There were times when, I am sure you felt, what one call, empowered. Like you were really, you felt like a great power behind you that you were carrying forth. And, coming with that power. And, you certainly need that when you get back to your families, and work, and situations in life. We need to feel that sustenance that you can rely upon, that has been built up, maybe in you unconscious, but it's there you see. And, repeating the wazifa, you are really building your unconscious with qualities which now become adamant by the fact of repeating them over and over again, and concentrating upon them. And so, when you find you are reacting, somehow those wazifas will take over. 

I will give you an example. For example, you are invited to a party, and you ask, "Well, who is in the party." And, they say, "So and so." "'h, that's nice". "And so and so". "Yes, that's nice." "This person." "'hhh! No." (laughter) "No, if that person comes, I don't want to go to the party." And, all of a sudden you remember, Ya Rahman. "Ya Rahman. Yes, of course." (laughter) It was in your unconscious, you see. So, that the immediate reaction is the reaction of the conscious mind, but in the depth is the unconscious that you have built into yourself. It's a power. It's a power.

And, for example, somebody is trying to put you down, and as I say, you don't have the kind of ego of that person. But, somehow, you remember that moment in your retreat when you felt like you could move mountains. You felt that tremendous power coming through you.

I can talk from personal experience. You can't imagine what it is like to be sitting up here, even now, after all these years. But, when I was younger and 'green', let's say. I remember, there was a lot of advertising. A big lecture in Amsterdam, I think it was, in Holland. And, I saw all these cars parking there, and my photo on a poster. And, I thought, well, this is ridiculous, what have I got to say to all these people. They have come to hear me, this is really, I'd rather run away. (laughter) Go back to my cave. And, the only thing that enabled me to face that public was... You know that public came like one would come for a new kind of panda in the zoo. (laughter) A strange kind of creature they call Pir Vilayat. Especially, the wives would entice their husbands to come. And, the custom was to be very critical. You know, they'd be watching their watches, thinking, 'well, how long is he going to keep on talking like this? And, paw! I don't understand a word of what he is saying. Maybe my wife, maybe she is intuitive, and so on, but I'm sure that she doesn't understand that.' (laughter) 

So, the only reason why I had the courage to face that public was because I thought, well, at least I bet that most of these people have not spent weeks and weeks in meditation in a cave in the Himalayas. So, that at least I can talk about what I know from my own experience. And, also, because I remember the tremendous power that was coming through. It's unbelievable. One needs power you see, it's not just inside. One needs power.

And, it's easier if we realize that it is not 'my' personal ego, but it it's a kind of divine power that is coming through.

I think of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan. The power of his being was unbelievable. Unbelievable. And yet, there was no ego there at all. There was love, compassion, warmth, sympathy, mystical attunement.

The secret is instead of thinking of God up there, and us down here, to become aware of the, one's divine inheritance. That is the secret.

And so, then we pass on from turning within to reaching, what we call, reaching upwards, which is a misnomer. But, it is true that if we shift our attention from one chakra to the next, there is a sense of going upwards. But, it is very dangerous to think that those celestial planes are up there somewhere. Because, if one does that, then one is going to do an astral projection. And, if you do an astral projection, you are setting up a cleft at some point in the sequence of your bodies, some bodies. So, no, the key to it is, well, let's say, the first thing is that, it becomes very clear then that unless I include what one might call the celestial, or the transcendental dimensions of my being, and just include the cosmic, then, my creativity will never be as complete as I would like it to be. There would be something missing. 

And so, it is that other dimension, that is spirituality. It's another dimension that we are bringing into life in which we call the divine, or spiritual, or the spirit, or whatever. Those words, they are words that are not very important.

So, don't think of it as up. And, the other thing that we encountered in the course of our retreat is that it is very simplistic just to think that the body is perishable, and therefor we have to discard that body when we reach into our heavenly attunement. No, and so, perhaps you noticed that what we emphasize in the course of the retreat was, how do we actually transmute our being at al levels, including or course, starting with the physical body. And so, I remember going at great lengths to try to give you some sense of, give us some sense of what we mean by transmuting the body. So, metaphors are helpful, like the perfume, for example. But, how could we do it more specifically? 

And then, we were starting to do it. We were starting to, not just get into the consciousness of the cells of our body, but, like the, I call it the esoteric chemistry in our body. The finer activities that are actually the machine behind the machine. And then eventually the code of the DNA. And so, finally, we got to a point when we could see what we think our body is as simply a secondary affect of a much deeper, how can I say, construct, well, mode, well the word is matrix of course, an organizing reality behind the body. 

And then, I don't know whether you noticed that we found that the same template, well, it is not the template because the template is static whereas this is dynamic, it is moving all the time. That is why I call it the matrix. That this template, or matrix is also the body of resurrection, and that is enriched by what happens to the body. And, hence, that quotation of Jelaluddin Rumi, that I kept on repeating, and repeating, and repeating all the time, because it absolutely, it marks essentially the special way of thinking, or Sufism, "Tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal."

You know, Pir-o-Murshid once was giving a lecture, and he said, "God first creates the earth, and then the heavens." And there was a philosopher there, and he said, "'h, Pir-o-Murshid, sorry to interrupt you, but did you mean that?" He said, "Yes, I meant it." Then, but for most people, I mean, we have already learnt the other way around. God first creates the heavens, and then the earth. He said, "Well the condition in the heavens is embryonic. It becomes matured on earth, and therefor whatever has been gained on earth, is then fed back into the heavens." So, it is a whole new way of looking at ourselves. 

And then, we found that when we were trying to have some sense of what we mean by our heavenly counterpart, celestial counterpart, we realized that it was like a child, and maybe even like an embryo. It's defenseless, and innocent, without guile, pure, and trusting and so on. And so, we discover the child in ourselves, and it is not the abused child that psychotherapists are talking about, but it is the pure child in us which is still there.

And so, the wonderful thing is of course, is to be able to reconcile the innocent child in us and the mature, wise person. Both at the same time.

So, I've been talking about the defilement of our descent to the earth, and the defilement that we incur by guilt and resentment and all, but it is a accompanied by maturation. So, both at the same time. So, it is very negative just to say that we have been defiled, and not to say that we have been enriched by our descent, by communication with other beings. And therefor, we have to have a better sense of what we mean by the heavens, and that rather half alluded sense that we often have of the heavens being better than humans.

But, we did find that when we discovered the celestial element of our being, it gave us a more complete picture of ourselves. It's just as though one was suffocating in one's personal humanness. Now, in the course of all this evolution, turning within, and reaching upwards. We were highlighting, well, we were discovering, and eventually highlighting, enhancing emotions that emerge from within, and which eventually aver themselves as stronger than the emotions that we incur by our interface with the environment. So, we started by the more overt emotions in our relationship with the environment. They are the more overt, they are the more impressive. At first, if we are not aware of the inner emotions, those are the emotions that take over. So, "How do you feel?" "I feel angry." Or, "I feel happy." Or, "I feel sad." Or, you know. That's, those are rather simplistic ways of experiencing, everybody does that. Nothing special about that. But, then we found, for example, you feel sad, because of a loss, the loss of someone you love, or, I think, being abandoned, being ill. There are a lot of reasons why one can be really very, very, very, sad. And, you realize that you cannot counter that sadness by forcing yourself to be happy. I am sure that some people do this, and a lot of people going to spiritual groups hope to find a kind of joy which will enable them to overcome their suffering. And, one is really burying one's suffering and not owning it. And, of course, that's for psychotherapists, that's very unhealthy, because eventually, at some point that suffering will erupt.

So, what did we do? We were discovering an inner joy that was so much stronger than the joy, the pain that we incurred from outside. So, we were not disowning that pain. We didn't assume that we can transmute the pain into joy. We even said that it is ok to be sad and happy at the same time. But then, perhaps I am sure that you experience moments in your retreat of real ecstasy. Ecstasy. A joy that one can never find in the world. And also, peace that one can't find in the world. And, a power that one can't find in the world. And, a lot of things. Love, that one can't find in the world, and so on. So, that is not, at least what I have found amongst psychotherapists, except for many of the new psychotherapists who are open to the spiritual dimension. But, that is not to be found in the void, you mimic to some extent. I won't go into that. But, I just want to point out, how our methods work. In fact, I would say that our work is much more in the realm of emotion than the realm of understanding. And, I think a lot of people assume, you see, we are using words that are cliches like, "I'm on the spiritual path". One doesn't know what spirituality means. Or, one says God and one doesn't know what God means. What one means by God, or whatever what one means by God is not what God is. So, it's an anthropomorphic projection.

Or, one says, "I am seeking for awakening". And one doesn't really know what it means. And one says, "I'm seeking for illumination." So, these become cliches. And, I don't know if you noticed, that I often try to define the terms that I am using, because they become cliches, and they are empty of their meaning all together.

And therefor, we are giving priority to experience rather than theory. In fact, my concern is, how do you do it? Skills. Tools as one says these days. How do you do it? What are the practical steps that are from our experience, we know is going to trigger off a certain attunement, certain insight, and so on and so forth. But, behind it all of course, there is a theory. For example, it's like a hologram so you can have two pictures that are superimposed, and you could shift your consciousness from one to the other. You could toggle between one image and the other. So, awakening is exactly that. The ability to shift your consciousness from a certain focus, and get into another focus. 

But now, what we are hoping to do, is to awaken in life, rather that beyond life. And, that means that instead of toggling between one image and another, we have to be able to extrapolate between these vantage points in what is called, stereoscopic consciousness. Or, what I call stereoscopic consciousness. And that is much more difficult. And, that is a reason why Sufism is difficult of access. Now people are beginning to think there must be something there, because it is rather mysterious, and people are in search of the irrational, and there is nothing more irrational than Sufism. (laughter) 

So, it's true, that people are, maybe it's a next fad on the American bandwagon. (Pir laughs) But, anyway, but then, one presents things of Sufism, but the reality behind it is. Well, it is very challenging. It is really the next step in the consciousness of humanity. And, that is to be able to, let's say, have one's head in the heavens, and one's feet on the, not just being in the heavens, and not just being on earth. And, to be conscious of one's personal emotions, and divine emotions, right in the middle of life. Right in an ice cream parlor, with your kids, and still, you're in ecstasy, and you find all that gross magnetism, and attunement, and you are still in your ecstasy. And, it's ok. People think that you are not with it, but it doesn't matter.

But, you are also, the beauty is that you can also reconcile that kind of emotion too. You see, you don't, perhaps you might have felt there was some kind of judgmental deprecation there. No, it's wonderful to play with children. It's terrible just to take one's self so seriously, and think that you are really it, you know, 'you've got illumination'.

That's the beauty, is recognizing all the values in life, instead of being too one sided and dogmatic. And so, that is my job today, is to get you into attunements which are able to bridge the gap between your attunement in the retreat, and the attunement that you need to get into, into life. But, to help just making transit, but keep integrating these different attunements, like in a symphony.

And, that includes human joy, not just divine joy, but human joy too. As long as it has a certain standard. The Sufis call it, adab, which means an ability, instead of grossness and vulgarity. And, that's the common thing that is happening today is levelling below, a kind of decadence of a standard of emotions. 

So, it is a question of attuning oneself to different emotions, and then, as I said, right at the beginning of the seminar, because we place the accent on our specific individual being, uniqueness, as I said, we have the power of selectivity. We can select those impressions that we wish to incorporate in our being, and reject those that we do not. And, if you remember, what we found is that we, that our varagya, what they call varagya in India, detachment and indifference and independence, is a power which enables you to reject impressions that you don't like. In fact, it's the only way, you can't fight against them. They're (winning it), and so I said impelling.

For example, if you become a television addict, a lot of people are. Then, you hear all of this bad news all the time, and those thoughts keep on circulating in your mind. And so, it is very difficult to meditate, because you are thinking of all those horrible things that are happening in the world. 

The point is, that you can't do anything about most of those problems. Some of them you can. For example, I would take the opportunity to advise you to become a part of, participate in Amnesty International. Now, there you can do something. It is difficult, but you can do something. Participate in an action to help people. There are prisoners of conscience. Often we have had groups in the Sufi Order that enlisted in their scheme, and really did some very important work in helping people in prison. But, where you can't do anything, I'm not recommending what they call 'splendid isolation', like the rishi in the Himalayas that doesn't know anything about the TWA plane that was blown up. Well, it's like putting one's head under the sand, isn't it.

So, we are part of what's happening, but how do we deal with thoughts that are disturbing, and still find a way of, not just finding peace in oneself, but find a way of, as I call it, enlisting all the pool of resourcefulness of our being, like in the, illustrated by the piano concerto of Beethoven. How do we do it? Well, it's very interesting, if you take this case again, the fourth piano concerto of Beethoven. I could talk about it very much. But, if you remember, you place a buffer between the challenge of the world and yourself so you can consult your deeper self, because it has that very resourcefulness in part. Well, of course, you place a buffer. That means that for the time being, you downplay that challenge, because you are not playing ball, you just consult your deeper self. But, when you think of it, if it had not being for that challenge, that wonderful melody would have never emerged.

So, he didn't react to it, but somehow he processed that. So, it reacted as a trigger to enlist, to awaken resourcefulness in his being that which would not otherwise have been awakened. And, I see a parallel between that and what we did with light. Because, for example, i said you absorb light, and re emit light.

side 2

It's not the same thing as reflecting light, like a mirror, for example, reflects light. Sunlight is boomeranged back. But, in this case, we process the light in the cells of our body, and the light that we send out is not exactly the same light that we received. So, it is different. You see the difference. So it is not reacting. And, you notice that when we react, we react by using the surface of our being. The periphery of your being, there is a spill over with the environment, so there is a lot of reaction with the environment. And the depth, that we can find something that emerges spontaneously from within, and is not reactive.

So, let's listen to that concerto now.

Well, now this is not only what I said so far, but it's a very good example of what we've been doing, and that is we did not discard the emotions, the personal emotions that were erupting. It's true, we did place a buffer, but we processed them. We processed them with our internal emotions. Like, when you are digesting food, then the body produces enzymes, so something out of yourself is coming towards that which accrues from outside, and somehow, you are processing those emotions, and transforming them in yourself. So, this is the gist of the inner process that we have been going through.

Perhaps you will have noticed that of course, the most powerful emotions came when you discovered your divine inheritance. You remember that word of St Francis, "I have another father." You notice that, discovering... You see, if we denigrate ourselves, it is very difficult for us to recognize our divine inheritance. So, we did go through a kind of therapy in which we overcame our denigration by, in this irrational way, by discovering purity within defilement, and divine power within weakness, and so on. And joy within pain, and so on.

And consequently, we were preparing ourselves to recognize the divinity of our being. And, that is awakening in life, and returning to life after having gone through this inner process. Having, it's not a question of belief, belief in God, not in the least. It is a question of having actually realized the hallmark of the divine inheritance within one's own being. And, even being able to see, to earmark the difference between what we have inherited from our parents, and this divine inheritance. 

And, that's the reason for the wazifa. Because, at first we think, we attribute the qualities to ourselves. Like, "I need to have more compassion," so I say, "Ya Rahman." "I need more power," so I say "Ya Qader", and so on. And, it doesn't work.

But, then, when we think that these are the divine qualities, that's the next step. So, we ascribe them to God, but it still doesn't work, because we still have to make that connection, and see that these are the qualities of the divinity of our being. And then it works.

So, how does Pir-o-Murshid describe awakening in life? Well, how, first let's say how I describe it. It's, you have been visiting a monument, and then you thought it was wonderful. But now you visit the architect, and now the architect accompanies you to visit the monument. And now you appreciate the monument much, much more, because you can see it from the point of view of the architect. You see why he did, or she did it, constructed the way he/she did.

So, that's life. Your going back into life again, and all those things that you aspired, you captured in your retreat, you see them in life. And before you didn't see it. For example, you would never, you pass by, well you don't do that in America so much, but in India, you pass by a heap of garbage somewhere, and normally you wouldn't want to look, because it is a heap of garbage. But now, having been awake in life, you notice that the light flashing from the beer can is as beautiful as the light of the stars.

Or, you go to a petro pump, and, I think in America, you say gas pump, (Pir laughs) and, that man is really gross, and grumpy and impolite and so on. And, somehow, you look deeper in his being, and you see beauty. And, the reason why he is the way he is, is because he has been rubbed the wrong way, as one says, he's cantankerous, and angry and upset and so on, and hates people, and so on. So, you understand that. But, behind that, there is a very sensitive soul that has been hurt. And so, you can love a person if you feel that person has been hurt. It's easier to love them, and easier to see their beauty.

So, you are not judging the person from your personal vantage point, but you are getting into the soul of that person. That's what we've learned.

Actually, we trained ourselves to look at things from, well, the point of view of another person, and one's point of view. And gradually then, perhaps there was a piece missing, because although we had four days, four days and a half I think, but the thing that was missing was getting into the consciousness of masters, saints and prophets. And of course, getting into the consciousness of the angels, and the archangels. And, so it is practising this shift of our consciousness from our vantage point into that of another being, and then more and more beings, and higher and higher beings, and eventually, you understand what it means, what is meant by divine consciousness.

But otherwise, it is a word. So, you read Murshid's saying, "Where can you find God if it's not in the God conscious people?" And, then you think, yes, well that is beautiful, but, what does it mean to be God conscious? It is only words until you have actually yourself been able to see things from the anti polar standpoint to your personal standpoint. That is what it really means by 'God consciousness'.

For example, Sufis say, Ib'n Arabi says, "There is one stage at which you remember yourself by the knowledge that God has of himself through you." Now, these are words. And, that is wonderful, beautiful poetry, and so on. But, the knowledge that God has of himself through me? You mean to say that God needs me to know himself? Ya. Well, I mean he knows himself, he, she knows him/herself eternally in the principle of his/her being, but, the knowledge acquired through the creatures adds a further mode of knowledge that God has of Him/herself. 

And so then, all of a sudden, you say, "Well yes, Gosh, I've got a role to play there, I have a responsibility there. Because, that mirror in which, that I am in which God discovers him/herself needs to be made as clean as possible so that it is not blurred, so that I can offer the best of that mirror." So, there you find a reason for your spiritual development. otherwise, why is it that we are seeking spiritual development? Is it for ourselves? That would be purely selfish.

And then, there is a further stage, and that is that, "I know, first of all, that I know myself. So, the knowledge that God has of himself through me." And, the next one is, "I know God through the knowledge that God has of himself through me." How can you know God?

Only through yourself. So that makes a very close relationship between God and Man, and that isn't a living experience. And, that's why Pir-o-Murshid said, "One starts with the concept of God". That's, you know, people have their concepts of God. And, one would like him to be what one most wishes him to be. Or, one imagines him to be the way that one would like him to be. And there is a point when one has the experience of God. And, that is a very strange word. How can you experience God?

And, what the Sufis are saying, is that the whole physical world, and all the occurrences at the psychological level are the signs, like the pug marks of a bear in the snow. You haven't seen the bear, but you have seen, to give you some indication, it's a sign.

And then, more so, those signs are to be found in our very nature. And that's very, very, to discover that the signs, the pug marks of God in your own nature. So, you can say, "Well, how can I know God?" No, I can't know God, but still those signs do give me some indication. 

And finally then you make that shift, and you reach from the signs into the reality behind the signs. And that is, that which transpires behind that which appears.

There are moments when we are transported and transfigured. And, I have been dwelling on the skills. Remember that practises are just the ladder, they are not, they just trigger off, hopefully they trigger off a state of consciousness. But, then, there are moments, unexpected moments, when you find yourself in a transfigured state. You tried and tried and tried, and nothing happened, and then all of a sudden, when you expect it the least, it happens. It's like an incubation that took place. When that happens then, don't try to capture it, it will pass very quickly. As the Upanishads say, "It passes before you realize it was there." But, still, there is some kind of 'after glow', as one says, in your being. You can never be the same after that. And, it is good for you to know, that you are not the same that you were. Because, people will force you back to where you were before. And, that's why Buddha said to his disciples, "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, the sun shines greeting us now, and I think you could go and walk in nature, and take some fresh air. And then, the last sessions is after. This morning I'll be trying to, again, I suppose, I'm the Pied Piper in trying to attune you to different emotions. So, I'll be trying to get you into, well, very deep emotions. You'll find out what it is. (laughter) 

It's really the center of the row of the Universe. So, it's..., and then we just have to end in joy, there is no other way. We just got to, let's say, let the forces of joy in us loose, unbridled. A kind of apotheosis of joy. Because, I think that a lot of people feel that they must be loyal to their sadness. (laughter) You don't have be loyal to your sadness. So, there is room for joy

'k, God bless you.

 Mureeds Retreat Abode of the Message August 96

AUG 31, 1996		Tape 15

Tape 15

This is what we have been going through in the course of this retreat, and it's extreme power, and significance. Because, we are all part of the drama that is enacted in the Universe. And, the more we lend ourselves to being pummelled by the challenge, the stress that human beings are undergoing in our days, and the more we are able to transmute it, for them, less hate, by finding that the heavenly joy that transforms the suffering of the world, the more we are able to help those in agony of heart, and so on.

So, the retreat was not an escape from life. It was a rehearsal for life. And, it's continues to infiltrate our life with a new vision. And, that vision extends beyond the limitation of our self image, of our vantage point, of our personal storms in our tea cups. It's much greater. And so, we are called upon to live up to what life is asking of us. To participate in its deep drama and transformation, and the ecstasy behind the pain.

Now, we have..., you see music is a language, written by beings who have lived very intensely, exactly to things that we have been trying to explore in our meditations. But, they are able to communicate it in a language that speaks directly to our heart and our soul, instead of our minds. In fact, bypassing the mind. And so, these great composers have suffered terrible agony in their lives. And, have known how to find joy, whether one can say to transform it, suffering into joy, or whether they just found joy while they were still suffering. I think that the latter is more true. But, the wonderful thing is, the wisdom that resulted from that transformation. 

And, it's always paradoxical, it's..., I think perhaps it would be best expressed in the fact that our suffering is geared to the fact that things don't happen the way that we feel they should happen. And finally, we discover that it is better that it didn't happen the way we wanted it to happen. That's the wisdom.

So, we are talking about deep ponderings on the meanings, meaningfulness of our lives. Not with the mind. Soul searchings. This is the note that I'd like to ring at this time, when we are on the threshold back to our homes again, and our jobs, and maybe our tribulations, and our little recreations or satisfactions, or whatever it is that we are trying to include in our lives. And, that is very deep. I think that in the light of all that we have gone through, and the transformation that we have gone through in the course of this retreat, we are able to look at our lives and see new meaningfulness in them which we hadn't seen before. Because, maybe we were relying upon our normal, rational thinking, and now we have touched upon modes of thinking that defy our ordinary logic. * And so, you can see a significance where you couldn't see it before. What does it mean to my heart? What does it mean to my soul. Perhaps you realize the soul, the word soul is a word. Isn't it? But, perhaps you realize how fragile you are, to leave it in the hands of destiny. How dependent, and yet free at the same time. How uncertain, and yet at the same time, there is a power in us that says that life does make sense beyond our understanding. That is faith. It is not belief in God.

We find a kind of trust, that is where we are vulnerable, when we find it difficult to trust life, to trust people, to trust circumstances, and afraid of the unknown. Then, somehow, when tested in the extreme, we find an inner strength. The mother who has been abandoned by her husband, and doesn't think that she can make good in life, and then finds that she can. 

The person who has failed over and over again, and just like a..., just a little spark there, somewhere. If you look into the depth of your being that says, "Even if I've failed millions of times, there is always hope." 

And then, the sense that, how much we have sinned or transgressed, and humiliated ourselves in the minds of people, and in the mind of God, there is still room for us in the caravan. Somehow, the worst can be reversed.

What seemed a defeat, can aver itself to be a victory. We can turn the tables on what we think is fate.

And, what it takes for that, is just that little spark of hope, of trust, which is greatly impaired by the situations that we are into. Sometimes, there is just a little spark. It might be just the glimmer in the eyes of a person who is there to tell us something about their own discovery of the meaningfulness of their lives, without words. Just the sparkle in their eyes. What is the presence of someone who, you feel, someone who has learned to trust despite having been let down over and over again.

Learn to trust in themselves, and learn in that deeper core of the beings of those who betray themselves and others. And, in the depth of their being, there is still trust, but one has to dig very deep to find it.

And then, the power of love. Love that transfigures our bad self image. The magic of love. "We have been tested in our love." says Pir-o-Murshid. So let us, as we are going back into life, think of those people who make themselves unlovable, or difficult to love, who we have problems with. We would like to get away, and who are exercising power upon us, what we don't like, demeaning, and our self image is already fragile, and then it gets even more precarious, because someone is 'shoulding' us with their power, and we don't have the kind of ego to counter. And, we don't see how we can love that person.

I'm speaking, it's easy to speak, to make a sermon. I'm thinking of the man who beat my sister to death to death in a concentration camp. Can I love him? Can I forgive him? Well, he was a brutal psychopath who had a grudge against life, and was being washed by the Nazis. Psychopaths need to kill, it's in their nature to kill.

I don't know how I can use the word love, but maybe understanding helps.

And then, there is the woman who gave my sister away for 100,000 francs. Now, that is more difficult. It is much more difficult. I saw him caught. 

I would say that she was a very unlovable person. Too, I feel that my love is tested really in the extreme, in this case. I'm speaking about myself, but I'm sure that each one of you is thinking of cases in your own life where you wonder what are the limits to which you are called upon to love.

But, what I am saying is, when we look at our lives, we found that it's so challenging. We are being tested, we are being pummelled with challenges on all sides. Stress, and we have our ideals, and then we find that our ideals were just hoaxes that we hold true, and then we dump them, and as Pir-o-Murshid says, that sometimes we have to shatter our ideals on the rocks of truth. And so that our ideals are fictitious until they are sustained by appropriated action. That's the reality.

And then, we have good intentions, but then, we have difficulty to live up to those intentions. So, that's the lives that we are involved in. And, we have bad conscience. For example, we think, well, I'm talking about being good, and well, would I be prepared to join Mother Theresa in Calcutta?

I'm not saying that you should, I'm just saying that our eyes are full of meaning, of challenges, of calling upon not just our love, but our wisdom. We want to do right, and then we find that it wasn't right. But, how can I know which is right. Pir-o- Murshid said, "Well, you learn by your mistakes". So, that's what we are into now.

Now, behind it all, as ones gets older, then one begins to feel this more than when one is young. And also, feel sadness, and all kinds of things. Because, very highly sensitized, and there is, you know, you are all going to become old. (Pir laughs) And, hopefully, and face that.

And, of course, one has the fear of the unknown. One has the fear of illness, one has the fear of uncertainty, the uncertainty of the world in which we live in today. Somehow, that has a message for one, Like the knocking on the door that Mozart heard when he, you know, there was a man who came with a black cloak, and asked him to write a requiem. And, he wanted to pay him so that he would have his name on the requiem. And, somehow, Mozart heard, in the knock on the door, he heard the angel of death coming to say there is something for you now, prepare yourself for it. And, if you listen to that requiem, you see that the pain of separation, of, like tearing away, oneself away from all that is familiar. And somehow, the call of the angel. Like, all there is, is to say, "It's ok, it's ok. It's not going to be like you'd like it to be, but it is going to be better than you think it should be." But, there's a message.

So, what I'm talking about now, is wisdom that comes by the maturation of the soul. So we have the high ideals, but, and we feel tarnished, all those things that we have been talking about. But, somehow, what is gained is wisdom.

And, Pir-o-Murshid said, "Wisdom is the combination of the knowledge of the heavens and the knowledge of the earth. So, in the course of this retreat, we have been extolling both. So, we haven't been discarding the knowledge gained by our experience of the earth. When we have been triggered, the kind of knowledge that is totally intangible, and is called, Pir-o-Murshid called it the knowledge of the heavens.

And so, when we get back into life again, then we must, we will naturally return to the know-how, the cognizance that we developed in our lives. But now, we add to that a further mode of cognizance, which is what Surawardi calls, the knowledge that we..., that the angel acquires in us. "He says, "At some point you realize that the real witness in you is the angel". The shahid, the witness is the angel. 

So, how does the angel see life? Like, to give you an example, I remember being part of a group of people who were climbing very high up in the Himalayas to visit a rishi who was sitting in a cave. And, we had to go in a group because it was dangerous, there were so many wild animals in the jungles. And, there he was, sitting in this ecstasy, and rather taken aback by all these people coming, invading his cave.

side 2

And, you could see how he was trying to descend into the way of thinking of that person, to understand how one could possibly think that way. (laughter)

So, that is what I mean. The witness in the heavens finds it very difficult to try and understand how people think. And, that goes further, and, for example, what Christ said, "They don't know what they do." So, that is your safety valve in life, when people let you down, or betray you, or humiliate you, or hurt you, just think, they don't know what they do. It's very helpful.

I don't know whether you know the sequel of that book called, Life After Life, the sequel. There are people who have gone through a clinical death, and had been terribly cruel to other people, came back, totally transformed. Because, they had never got into the consciousness of their victims. And during a clinical death, they got into the consciousness of their victims.

So, imagine the degree of unconsciousness of people. They had no idea about the suffering that they bring upon other people. They were just caught up in their own trip.

So imagine golaters, Nazis, who murder, there are Nazis today of course, it is not just the Germans, they are everywhere, who are torturing people. Totally unconscious. "They don't know what they do."

I would say in comparison with what we may have to incur in our lives, it's very little, very little. Think of that little girl in Bosnia with her, lost two arms, little girl of eleven years old. She couldn't wash her face, couldn't eat. And, that's where people suffered even worse.

So, let's ponder upon our lives now, prepare ourselves to go back into life. 

Now, the only mitigating factor at all, is if you can bring in another dimension, because otherwise you're just like a fly in a bottle. You can't get out. You have to include, it's like being constrained within a prison, a prison in our minds, and in our emotions. You have to bring in another dimension.

And, that is what Brahms did when he was..., I don't know whether you know the story. He..., Schuman invited him to come and visit him. And, Schuman asked him to play the piano. And when Brahms sat at the piano and started playing. Schuman was so overwhelmed, that he called his wife Clara, and said, "Come down quick, have you ever heard music like this." And when the two met, Clara Schuman and Brahms, they realized that they were twin souls. And it was too late.

And that's the way life is. Things do not happen the way one would like them to happen. And after, the next visit, after the next visit, Schuman tried to commit suicide. He threw himself in the Rhine. And, Brahms always respected that marriage and, honored the being of his friend Robert Schuman. And so, somehow, he never married. But, somehow, he carried the significance of that love. It's not so much the..., although the being of Clara Schuman must have been just a very exalted being. But somehow, it was the love that was transforming, had a transforming effect upon Brahms, and transfiguring effect. And so, it comes through, you see, because in his music, you feel that pain, personal pain, but then you feel that other element that comes in, a divine element. And, it's not joy, it's not human joy. No, it's divine joy.

That's what we've been experiencing here, is how we can find divine joy, instead of thinking that we can some how find an antidote against suffering by simply human joy. It never works.

So, I'd like to listen..., it's the second movement of the Brahms first piano concerto. And I'd to ask Zuleika if she'd like to dance. It's very profound, the second movement. The first one is very turbulent, but the second is so...,. And, of course if anyone would like to join in to dance, of course..... 0 

Labor Day Retreat Abode of the Message Sept 1996

SEP 01, 1996		Tape 01

Tape 1

Dear Ones.

We are about to share in a very intense two and a half days of retreat. It's going to pass very quickly, so every minute counts. If we wanted to have some impact on our being, then it is going to require not only my contribution, but yours. It's going to require your participation. And, to make it a success, it will be necessary for you to observe silence. It makes all the difference, because as we enjoy meeting wonderful people, and how important the spiritual community is, somehow in our conversations, as they say in India, we bring the world into the Ashram. And, what is more, we are used to thinking in terms of language, and that limits our way of thinking. For example, there is a lot that you imply behind what you explain, and so you never get in touch with your deeper thoughts if you try to articulate them into words. And so, you will find that not speaking will make all the difference in you attunement. And also, we are going to explore in the course of this retreat, different ways of thinking, alternate ways of thinking as compared with usual ones, that will open up new horizons for you.

It will, of course, be very difficult to define what our objectives are, and what is more, I think that our expectations might stand in the way of our motivations. So, what I suggest is just playing it by ear, being open to whatever will occur to you.

So, my first questions is. Hands up, those of us who would like us to keep silence, to observe silence. I would say up to Sunday supper time, and then on Monday morning, or Sunday evening and Monday morning, then you would be able to speak again, and meet all these wonderful friends. So, hands up those who would like to observe silence. ...So, you are an overwhelming majority. So, it is a little bit difficult for those who do not wish to. In that case, I honor whatever you wish, so this is your retreat, it's not mine. So, if you find it difficult, then I'd ask you, perhaps you go a little bit further away from where people are if you want to speak. We don't want to should you into a rule. It's just for you sake, for the sake of the success of the retreat.

The staff needs to speak, I need to speak, although, I would love not to speak, it would be wonderful just to communicate in silence. So, we will try to be as unobtrusive as possible.

One has to get used to being in silence. One develops a tremendous inner magnetism. When you pass people you know, like ships in the night, you can flash to each other by your glance, and you could even hug if you want to, so that you don't walk past each other as though you were ghosts, and didn't recognize each other. So, it is a very wonderful way of communication, from soul to soul instead of saying the usual thing, "It is so nice to see you again", which becomes rather a platitude.

Well, we could use words, so that is the way I see it, Shifting our consciousness from one vantage point to another, as you would do looking into a hologram, for example. And, you could shift your glance, see one image and another, as there are two images that are superimposed. Illumination is again a word that we use, and I must ask you, Do you like people who have a lot of light in them? Come in the room and bring a lot of light, as opposed to people who bring a lot of darkness? Well, it is a stupid question really, because I am sure that you like light, otherwise you wouldn't have come here. So, we are going to work with light, and see how we can enhance that particular radiance in all these different forms, or aspects. And then, I am sure that we have some, that we entertain some kind of hope that meditation will throw light upon our problems. The specialists, of course, in problem solving are the psychotherapists. We offer methods that overlap sometimes those of the psychotherapists. So, they are not always, they are not contradictory, certainly not. But, it would be interesting to see how this special kind of way of shifting our attunement, what it does to our problems. I don't say that it solves them, but it does something to them. 

And, the next one is. We are living in a decadent world, that inspires a lot of concern, and has become very gross in many ways. And, we are in search of the sacred. It has to do with a certain attunement, and to find that, one needs to sometimes withdraw from the thrust, the impact of the world outside, and find one's real being in the depth of one's being

So, these are some of the things that we are looking for in the course of this retreat. Finding your real being, whom you are really.

So, this morning I'd like to start with practises with light. We will be following a whole sequence of exercise let's say, where I would call them 'skills'. In order for us to unfurl potentialities in our being that are dormant until we call them into action. So, to start with, you are sitting in meditation, with all kinds of random thoughts are going to storm your psyche. And so, you can't control those thoughts, so I think it is good if you have some work to do with yourself. So that, in comparison, you rend, the thoughts will pale. So, you are sitting in meditation. We hope, you see, what we are going to do is to alternate between periods when we are sitting together, and I am giving instructions on meditation. And then, those times when, weather permitting, you will be sitting in nature, and you will find that there are wonderful places here where you can sit under a tree, and do them yourself. Because, if you want to, for example, you want to learn how to pilot a plane, you have to take the controls in your hand. So, we want you to be able to see the instruction, and go and then do them yourself. 

'k, so you are sitting in nature, and a kind of random thoughts are coming in your mind. Your body is, you're conscious of your body. Now, if you are doing a lot of practises with breathing practises and so on, but I thought it would be good for us to start simply by taking the plunge, and working with light.

So, what I would suggest is to start with, could you simply be aware of the light that is emitted through your glance. It is a very simple practise. I would suggest that you do it every day. That fact is that the body does absorb light from the environment. The cells of the body and so, all the body emits light and absorbs light. Absorbs light and emits light. So, for the time being, we are concentrating on the glance, and so, as you inhale, you could think that you, that the retina of your eyes are absorbing the light of the environment. In fact, I say the environment, but this light is not, of course it is the light of the sun, but, for example, if you were to do it at night time, then you are absorbing the light of the stars and the galaxies.

And, this light is threaded through the optical nerves, the optic nerves, into your brain. So that there is a tremendous accumulation of light in the brain, because the cells of the brain, well all body cells, how can I say, they are processing the light of the environment, and then that light is threaded back through your optic nerves, and through the retina, and then the cornea into space around you. Now, you may be aware of the light that you absorb, the light that you are sensitive to in your eyes, now we want to be aware of the light that we emit through our eyes, as we exhale.

It's a very simple practise, but it has a lot of implication in terms of one's emotional attunement, in terms of one's insight and concentration. And, to test yourself, you could turn your eyes, well, you could turn your head to the right and to the left, and have the impression that those beams of light are moving now, shifting from left to right, to right to left. Up and down, like a cross of light.

And, you could even do it with your eyes without moving your head. You could turn your eyes as Indian dancers do, to the left, to the right, up and down. It is a very good eye practise anyway.

All right, I hope you don't mind if I pass from one practise to another rather fast, because we have a lot of work to do in the course of this retreat. And, I hope that you will remember the sequence of the practises. So, if there is anything that you want to be sure that you don't forget, you might have a note book, and note it down.

So now, your whole body, you know how you feel when you are sun bathing, where you open up the pores of your skin, and is receptive mode. It is not always advisable, but that is another story. So, just imagine now that you are, your bodies are absorbing light, which it does. You start by thinking that, well that the pores of your skin are opening, being receptive to light, but you could concentrate on the cells of your body. I don't know whether you can, maybe it's not a very, maybe it's a rather kind of a nebulous kind of sense that we have of ourselves. Maybe there is some visualization too. I don't know whether you can actually really feel the cells of your body. You can feel certain organs, like you could feel your heart, or liver, or pancreas, or stomach, brain maybe, but can you feel the tremendous effervescence of life within your body, apart from the more obvious functions like digestion and breathing and transmission of nervous impulses. 

Maybe just imagining will help. Just as in that, is the secret of biofeedback as you know.

You see a film, you see the cells of the body in motion, mitosis, the division of cells. Now, what we know now in laboratory research, these individual cells absorb light. That is the molecules and the atoms absorb light, and the electron use that energy in order to start evading the constraint of the orbital, and start, therefor jumping from an orbital to the other. Well, in general you could say that they dance, they dance. The choreography of freedom from constraint. And then, when they have used up all that energy, they fall back to where they were before. So, and then there is, of course, renewal of energy, so this is going on constantly. So just be aware of the affect of the light, of light in general. It could be the light of electricity, upon the cells of your body. And, the sheer joy of experience in the cells of your body to find freedom from sclerosis. And as I say, it is experience as a kind of, it's called an excited state.

Now, this is mind over body. By the fact of being aware of what is happening in your body, you enhance the body functions. That is the secret of yoga.

Now, when you, so, I would insist that then when you inhale, well maybe I'm jumping the gun a little bit too fast, let's say, as you exhale, you contract your abdomen first, and then your chest. And, as you inhale, you dilate you abdomen, and then your chest.

And, if you do this profoundly, you will be evacuating a lot of polluted gases in your lungs. Normally one only uses one fifth of the capacity of one's lungs.

Squeeze all that pollution out, and then take in this wonderful fresh air at the Abode.

Alright, now, what I suggest is that you hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling. And you do that, so, always think that you are exhaling first. And now, think that you are absorbing light as you inhale, or rather be conscious of it. Now, hold your breath and be aware of the tremendous ebullience, effervescence of energy in the cells of your body.

And now, as you exhale, consciously radiate light. It's not just imagination, it's a fact that we do radiate light, we emit light.

At all frequencies, at a large range of frequencies between the infra red and ultra violet.

And so, you become like a miniature sun, or a star.

Now, you may feel that radiance around your forearms and shoulders, and in front of your chest. Even in your back. The Sufis call it a mantle of light. And of course, if you can, you could draw your attention towards the radiation through your eyes. The way your eyes emit light, while being aware of the radiance, the effulgence of your whole body.

So, remember that the longer that you exhale, the more oxygen you can take in when you inhale, and consequently, the longer you can hold your breath, and experience the miracle of life within the cells of your body, in the form of light.

Now, if you do this every day, it will make you much more conscious of the effulgence of your body, or of your being in your everyday life, and to make your eyes brighter. 

Now, just imagine that, well, one can hardly imagine it, the light that is emitted through one's eyes, hurtles through space at a speed of a hundred eightysix thousand miles a second. A hundred and eightysix thousand miles a second. If you just think of that. And, think of the starry sky. In fact, it is wonderful to meditate at night time, in the open.

And also, of course, that you are able to absorb the light of the stars now, not just the light of the sun. Coming from tremendous, incredible distances. So, now you're experiencing your communication with the galaxies. In fact. you're being a part of the galaxies. Because, your aura does not have a boundary, and consequently your aura is, let's say, dovetails with the light of the galaxies, with the ocean of light of the Universe, of the Cosmos.

Now, that is an extraordinary discovery, because we generally identify ourselves with whatever is with in our skin. So, it is very wonderful to discover the tremendous outreach of your being that is co-extensive with the Universe.

Now of course this realization which strikes you very strongly is negative to the sense of your specific uniqueness, your individuality. And at first it is very good to balance this with the alternate mode whereby you discover your individuality. And, that is when you inhale. So, when you inhale, you consider yourself as a vortex of light. The vortex does not have a boundary, but it does have an axis, and it is converging the light, well the vortex, in the whirlpool, for example, the whirlpool is converging the water of the lake. So, you are converging the light of the Universe, of the Cosmos. Just like in a whirlpool. So that in fact, now you can identify yourself with your aura instead of your body. Consider the body as a formation within the aura. And, the aura is pulsing, converging and dilating the light of the Cosmos.

Now, if you hold your breath in between inhaling and exhaling, then you'll see, it's as though the light that has impinged upon the surface of your body, now continues to penetrate in the depths, and as a matter of fact, you know, the center of a vortex is a vacuum. We don't understand very much of what we mean by the void. It's just because, it is below the threshold of our experience, so we can talk about subliminal universes for example, consider our present cosmos as only a slice of a multiple universe. And therefor, we only know what happens within this slice.

So that as you absorb light from the environment, 

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...and a new dispensation of light emerges as you exhale. It's like, for example, black hole in space, and a white hole in space.

It's not the same light, so you don't boomerang the light that you absorb. Like in a mirror for example. It is processed in the cells, and eventually gets resorbed in the void, and then there is a new dispensation of light. And that is extraordinary, because that means that we are processing, each one of us, are processing the light of the whole cosmos. In fact, we are transducers of light.

Now, we have been doing these practises, visualizations, becoming aware of what is happening anywhere, but by becoming aware of it, we are enhancing it. But, maybe you are beginning to feel the ecstasy of light. It's a kind of ecstasy.

It's pure delight. (Pir laughs) The delight of light.

Now, I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that the light that we are conversant with is radiant light. We always assume that light is emitted from a center, a source of light which is located in space, but when we turn within, the light that emerges from the void, becomes radiant as it is radiated through our cells, through our bodies. But, prior to that, it is what my father calls, the all pervading light, and it is, that corresponds absolutely with what Dr David Boehm calls the implicate state. Everything is intertwined with everything else. Like radio waves. So, it's a different way of looking at light, and looking at ourselves as be intermeshed with everything else in the Universe. And then, emerging as an individual from that dispersed condition.

Now, that is a very pertinent thought when you are meditation. For example, think of the sun, think that the sun is absorbing light, converging light, not absorbing, so converging light, and then, acts as a source of light. But, behind that radiance there is a convergence of the light of the Universe.

So, we will be, in the course of this retreat, we will be finding that indeed, when we turn within, we are in a rather bewildering mode, what we are not familiar with, because we are so connected with all things that we lose the sense of the boundaries between ourselves and the environment. And, I suppose that is what is being called, 'being spaced out'. But then, what we like to do is to balance this with recovering our sense of our individuality. Or, this is what we are doing with light, this is an example of what we will be doing in the course of this retreat.

Now, I would like you to be able to discern the differences in the frequencies of light. The two extremes would be, on one hand, being aware of the heat that your body produces, what we call temperature. That is partly what is called phosphorescence. That is the ability of the body to produce heat by combustion so that our cells are continuing in a state of combustion, just like a fire.

There are certain animals, just like deep sea fish, or bats, or fireflies that are able to produce light, not by what we just talked about, the ability of absorbing light from the environment, and radiating out. But, by producing light out of the combustion of their own body.

And, this is the secret of Tumo. It is a practise of the Tibetans, the yogis do it also, that is the ability to enhance this human function. But, the greater art consists in being able to transmute this infra red light into light within the whole range of the spectrum of light of the aura, including ultraviolet.

Traditionally, it is called the transmutation of fire into light.

Well, there are skills that enable one to do that. One is to think of a flame. The bottom of the flame is red, and if you follow the flame upwards, you find all kinds of colors that correspond with the spectrum of light, like the rainbow for example, passing from red to orange and gold and green and blue and violet. Now, if you are to apply this to your own visualization of your aura, your own aura, you will find that it will have the affect of giving some kind of a orderliness into the light of your aura. Because, the light of your aura, what one means by colors is of course just frequencies. So, the frequencies of your aura, the light of your aura vary, from one moment to the next. If you are angry, I am sure that there is more red, and if you are in a very pure state, then it would be light blue, and so on. And so, if you are conscious of being radiant, then it will be gold. So, you can alter the color of your aura. You can even visualize the different colors at your discretion. But, now, you could concentrate on the color red at the bottom of your spine. And then, perhaps you are familiar with the chakras of the Hindu, of yoga, muladhara chakra at the bottom of the spine, red. And svadhisthana, second chakra would be like terra cotta, or perhaps even carmine. And then, orange, like lovely madeira orange, like you can see sometimes in the sunset or sunrise, in the solar plexis. And then, gold in the heart center, the anahata chakra. The solar plexis is called manipura, the heart chakra, anahata. And then, vishudda, the throat center, green, lovely emerald green, or the green of nature, and oasis. And then, blue in the eyes, sky blue. And then, violet in the pituitary gland. It's called bindu by the Hindus. And then, the crown center, sahasrara, which is like colorless light, like a diamond, a lot of hues within that flash, out of this colorless light. Your crown center.

Well now, that's just simply a skill which brings you in a very harmonious state, just like tuning a harpsichord for example, or a cello, a violin.

At first, concentrate on each chakra in turn, eventually you can do it in one go as you inhale. And then, as you exhale, instead of just doing the opposite, the reverse, it is good if you see the impact of the higher frequency of light on the lower frequencies of light. Kind of infiltration. Maybe that is a bit difficult to imagine. But, what I am suggesting now is a prelude to the next practise.

There are different approaches. These are the more advanced practises with light that you find in Buddhism, and yoga, and Sufism. And, behind that, I suppose there is a metaphysical view. And that is, that, let's say we should not limit our notion of light to what we experience as physical light. That is a given, an assumption, a rather commonplace assumption. And even physicists are, now a days, are beginning to realize that. There are instruments in the laboratory that are able to register frequencies of light, that it doesn't follow that, that is all that light is, that there are further dimensions of light that we cannot experience through our eyes, or sensory perception, or even in various laboratory experiments. Or, at least different ways of thinking of light. There is a light field for example, instead of photons, and so on. This is metaphysically, let's say that this way of thinking of non physical light, or uncreated light as Gregory of Nassir said. That opens up levels of awareness that are unfamiliar, in which we want to explore in the kind of no mans land of our minds, or our experience. And, which we normally ascribe to the angelic spheres, to the celestial spheres. 

So, these are the practises, the skills that I would suggest. First of all, a Buddhist practise called Kasina. It is very simple. Just imagine that, well, yes, you could imagine that you cut a piece of cardboard into a medallion, a round, and paint it red. Now, supposing that you would open your eyes, looking at that red medallion, and then close your eyes. And, I think the chances are that you would see a reflex image, a green reflex image. Now, you don't have to do that, you could just imagine a red, with closed eyes, you could imagine a red disc. And, I would say as you exhale, and then as you inhale, don't try to imagine a green disc, because that would defeat the whole purpose. But, I think normally a green reflex would emerge of its own, without your trying to create it with your imagination.

Now that I said it of course, maybe you are imagining it.

Now, of course, it will take some time for you to do this practise so, I suggest that you do it on your own when you have time. Now, obviously if you are to imagine a green disc, then you would have the reflex, would probably, I think if I am not mistaken, would be orange. But, there is not much point in doing that. But, supposing that you keep on, as you exhale, you keep on imagining a red disc, and then, as you inhale, just let the green reflex emerge from no where, and continue as you inhale, until an orange one emerges. And, then in more advanced practise, you continue even longer, that's why it is good to know how to slow down your breath so that you can inhale quite a long time. And now, follow the orange by the violet, 

Well, these are just skills of course, but the objective is to gain some sense of what one means by other levels of reality than that slice of reality that we call the existential reality, the Cosmos actually. 

Now, this was only the first step. The next step consists of representing, simply light, colorless light as you exhale, and as you inhale, the reflex of light, colors of course, and eventually, the reflex of that reflex. And eventually the reflex of the reflex of the reflex. So, you proceed at infinitum.

Now, this practise, amongst other practises of course, has the faculty of opening up faculties in us which are normally dormant if we don't use. Or, let's say, fine perception beyond one ordinary sensory perception. It could even be extending our ordinary perceptual faculty, like for example, if you were to try to see how long you can see the stars at dawn, or before dawn, even after dawn, and eventually you develop an acuity of your perception which is quite amazing. So this is what we are doing in our practises, we are becoming highly sensitized to things which one doesn't normally ascribe to the physical universe. And therefore, we are talking about other spheres But, really speaking, that is a misnomer. The Universe is a hologram, and our consciousness is focused in such a way that we are able to highlight one cross section of the hologram or another. And, that is what we call awakening, it's the ability to shift our vantage point from one perspective of the hologram to another. This is what we are doing. 

So then, with the reference to Hildegaard of Bingen, who has become rather better known these last decades, a german mystic, she describes an experience of hers. She says she was concentrating on light, contemplating light, and she felt as thought she was flooded with light, and was overwhelmed, was blinded by the light that was coming through, in a state of pure rapture, ecstasy of light. And at some point, this world of light seemed to open up into a further world of light, just like a gate, and that light was different in that it was even more intense, and more other worldly. And, ecstasy was carried even further. overwhelming. Shattering. And then, this world of light seemed to open up, just like a gate into a still loftier, more sublime world of light.


So, these are the advanced states of meditation, which lead to illumination. Illumination, as I say, is a word, so we try to have some sense of what we mean by it. Eventually, in infinite regress, it culminates into discovering that our consciousness is light, so it is a totally different sense of what we mean by light, the light that is perceived. And, that is why the Sufis make a difference between the light that can be seen and the light that sees. And, maybe that is what one means by illumination, when one identifies with the light that sees, and calls that... It is not even the light that sees that is luminous consciousness, but ultimately the light of intelligence, which is the ground out of which consciousness emerges.

You do that, you hold your breath after inhaling, and passing, in review each of the chakras, and then as you exhale, you experience the impact of your luminous realization, let's say, the light of intelligence upon the aura. That is called in the Koran, 'a light upon a light.' That's the meaning of it. The impact of the light of intelligence upon your aura. Like, for example, a little child said, the mother asks, "Can you see that pixie in the tree?" and the child says, "No, I can't see it." And then all of a sudden, "Yes!" Now, at that moment, the whole face of the child lights up. Well, that is the impact of the light of intelligence upon the aura.

God bless you now. 0 

SEP 01, 1996		Tape 02

Labor Day Retreat Abode of the Message September 96

Tape 2

Pir sings Kyrie Eleison with group.

So, I want to point out that we make a point of playing music that is inspiring for the meditation, starting about ten minutes, or quarter of an hour before the session, and also sometimes afterwards.

Well, now, we want to plunge into a very deep process which is very much reversing the machine. That is getting into a whole different attunement to that which we have come from, or you have come from. Most of you are exposing in, in your everyday lives. And, the best thing to do is to think that we are pilgrims. Well, one can never really leave one's life behind, because the memory of the situations, and especially the emotional trauma continues to abide in one's heart while one is on pilgrimage. But still, one is creating situations in which one is able to look at things with a certain distance, with a certain perspective, and maybe the aspects, dimensions of one's problems that one hadn't seen when one was right into them. So, that is a very wonderful opportunity to be able to free oneself from being right, caught up right into the, 'one's storms in one's teacups', as one says in England.

I do not propose that spirituality, whatever that is, has an answer to your problems, but it is possible that you will touch upon something which adumbrates the problem, and adds a dimension which is uplifting. And eventually, I think it is OK to be sad and happy at the same time. But, what, so we mustn't think that we can transmute suffering. But, on the other hand, because I think we all have wounds. I would very much like to meet someone who doesn't. But, some of them are very severe, and very deep, and others are, perhaps, well everything is relative.

But, well, I hope you will discover that. We have been working with this during lots of seminars and retreats. It is not an antidote really, but it's, like there is a dimension of one's being that seems to add something to the, our usual perspective. And, makes, a paradoxical sense. And, you know we are really, we are challenged in our thinking, because life doesn't make sense. And so, it is just as well to give up trying to sort it out in our minds. So, we will be exploring, let's say, paradoxical ways of thinking that, for example, reconciling the irreconcilable which makes an ultimate sense, but doesn't make sense to our ordinary minds. Well, it is not just that, because we are really working with emotions. that is the reality behind the thoughts. Thoughts are just the interpretations.

So, we are going through a kind of attunement, just like a musician tunes his or her instrument, or voice as a matter of fact. I don't know about a dancer, I suppose they get into a kind of attunement before exposing themselves to the limelight of peoples judgement.

So, we are all in this together. We are going to share in a deep process.

Now, I must warn you that, well a few times in the course of last year, when I asked people to get in touch with their emotions, there was, very often, no, not that often but occasionally, somebody started screaming. It is very disturbing when people are in a very peaceful state, and all of a sudden somebody screams. So, if you feel like screaming, if you could just hold your scream for a little bit, and just walk out, it would be helpful. (laughter) No, but I can tell you a story. I was resting, having my nap in the afternoon, as I generally do, somewhere, at some camp, I forget now. And, I heard a woman screaming out, well, I thought it was a child actually. And, I thought, well, this child must have gotten lost, and that's terrible, so I got up. So, there was a woman there, screaming her head off. So I said, "Well, can I help with the matter." She said, "Well, it's my technique to get rid of my emotions." So, I said, "Well, you chose to do it close by where I am?" (laughter) She said, "Well, it's the only chance I've ever seen you". (much laughter)

So, it is true that one likes to be surrounded by sympathetic hearts when one is in pain. That's true. What one calls a safe environment and also a loving environment, supportive environment. But then, we have people around here who are psychotherapists, and who are also loving people. And, perhaps, that is the right way to go about it rather than disturbing the peace of a retreat. 

Now, there are people occasionally who pass out. (laughter) This is just a warning. And, really, they can't help it. But, so, it's not like screaming, perhaps you can do something about it. But here, it is really due to the fact that they are not following my instructions. (laughter) Because, the method that we are using is to shlepp your body with you as you move, as you get into samadhi, rather than leaving it behind. If you leave it behind, well then you are doing an astral projection. You imagine up there, you know, as opposed to down here. So, that is not what we are doing, and it would make a split in your personality. So, that is something we don't recommend. So, if that happens, then, of course, there may be some doctors here who will test your pressure, and see if it's got too high or whatever. These are emergencies that can occur. So, I'm just guarding you from anything that might disturb you in your retreat. otherwise, a retreat should be a very peaceful condition, and I can assure you that I am not trying to hypnotize people, or do anything that could be damaging. 'n the contrary, we want to put you through a very beautiful process of transformation. And, I am with you in this.

Well now, you see, we are vulnerable, in the sense that we are exposed to a lot of impressions around us. And, we do have a defense system, but it's not always working very well. And so, we are exposed to impressions that are really very disturbing. If you are a TV addict, you will find that it is very difficult to sleep, because you hear about all these terrible things that are happening in the world, and on the other hand, we don't want to be like the ostrich that puts his head under the sand. So, how do we do it?

Of course, that is a reason why Rishis, Sanyasins in India, or hermits amongst the Buddhists and the Christians, and of course, the Chassidim, leave the world in quest of the sublime. I think that we are inhabited by a great need for the sublime, for what my father calls, 'the unattainable'. And, it's good , that is a good word, because unattainable, it means that it is not something you can get and put in your pocket, and you've got it. It is always farther. It like the horizon, the further it advances, the further it recedes.

So, but it is, if you are a pilgrim, or thinking of yourself as a pilgrim, it is helpful, because then you feel that you are following your bliss. And, although the tribulation of the world out there, they are a little bit more remote, and what is more, there are situations which we cannot change, and there are situations which we can. And so, there is not much point fretting about those situations that we can't change.

Now, there are situations that you can change. for example, some of us have participated on groups working on Amnesty International. Now, that is something. You can help people. Or, perhaps the Hope Project in India. Or, there are a lot of things that you can do to help. The homeless, and so on. We have a project for the homeless also in America, which is almost worse than in India now.

But, still, people who work on welfare, dedicated work, to service, find that they do get burnt out. And, so, they do need to find, to have access to a sort of inner power that will enable them to find joy amongst people who are suffering. And, you can't find joy unless you suffer yourself. But, unless you have found a way, however, of accepting suffering, and still finding joy. So, it is something, it is a kind of inner process that we have to learn to go through.

So, what I am saying therefor, as you sit in meditation, which I hope you will be doing at 10:00 o'clock, you find that thought will erupt, random thoughts, and sometimes they are emotionally charged, and they will overwhelm you. And, the reason is because normally in our everyday activity, what we have to do, forces our concentration in a certain direction in order to meet the challenge. But, when you are sitting there, and you don't have to rush about doing all the things that life forces us to do. Then of course, the censorship, let's say, of the unconscious is off guard, and then sometimes these emotions can erupt with such great power that you are just shattered by them, and of course you think, well, I can't meditate, there is no way in which I can meditate.

So, I don't say that we have a solution, but there are methods that could be helpful. The first one that I suggest, is that you consider that what is your thought, was your problem, is your sharing in, your participation in the Cosmic drama in the world. So, it is not just your problem, but that is the way that you are sharing in the problems that, some people that are even worse than yours.

And, so the way we are doing it is to extend one's consciousness beyond one's commonplace range. Because, one's pain tends to pull one into one's self consciousness. Whatever that means, the concept that we have of ourselves, our self image, and so on. And, then we wallow in that sort of constrained situation, and that's like a vicious circle, you can't get out of it. 

So, these are just a few suggestions that you might try and do. Psychotherapists or course, distinguish between resentment, guilt, trauma, and a kind, anxiety, and so on, bad self image. Well, let's take a sense of resentment in what, I used to follow Christ's adage, and say forgive, and of course, somebody stood up once and said, "Pir Vilayat, I feel so bad already, because of what that person did to me, and now I feel even worse, because I can't forgive that person, so, you make me feel guilty." It was the last time I ever said that.

So, what I suggest is then a method that we are using in meditation. And, that is to try and get into the consciousness of the person who did you harm. It's a method, what the Sufi's say is, "I see him, I see him/her, through his/her eyes." Now, can you do that? It easier to do it with someone you love, or somebody who is close to you. Instead of talking to that person, or hugging that person, you try to get into their consciousness, and imagine what it is like to be them. To be that person.

And, when you do that, you realize that, that person has all kinds of psychological problems as you might have yourself, unresolved, irrational, conflicting, incongruous, and is acting them out. For example, somebody who was abused, and is now abusing you. Psychotherapists know that.

But, what we are doing then, is to really get into the consciousness instead of saying, "Well, I understand that, that person is acting out and so on. No, it is really feeling how that person feels.

And, I don't say that you exonerate the person from their act, or you are justifying them, or providing some justification in your mind. No, it has nothing to do with the purely mental dimension. No, it is really much more feeling. It's not telepathy, it's really feeling. A sense of, you see, this is based upon affinity, rather than, let's say perception. It's rather an experience. It's not the subject experiencing the object. It's resonance. So, the only way to do that, is to find that you do have the same propensities in your being, but hopefully you are not giving vent to them. For example, hatred, jealousy, and so on. But, you can feel them, because you have the same in you, even though it has been kept in some kind of control.

Now, I don't say that is a solution. I can only say that it is helpful. 

Now, the nest step is what the Sufi's say, "I see myself through his/her eyes. So, now you are beginning to realize the kind of way that person perceives you, and obviously, it is not the way that you perceive yourself. And, it doesn't mean that the way that you perceive yourself is right, and their way is wrong. ( would say that (?) both are wrong. That is what is called Maya, illusion. Wrong is perhaps a strong word. Both are relative.

So now, you understand them much better. You understand that their behavior towards you is based upon their perception of you which is faulty. That's why Christ said, "They do not know what they do."

OK, now, supposing that you included more people. You got into the consciousness of another person, and still another person, involved in your problem, for example. Then you would have several views about yourself. I don't know whether you know that book called, Jesus the Man. of Kallil Gibran. In which he simply recounts the point of view of different people who knew Jesus. And, of course, it's fiction, but still, each person in this book had a totally different vision of Jesus. But, when you bring them together, then Jesus becomes very present. Dr David Boehm suggested an experiment. Supposing you have a fish in an aquarium, and you have two cine cameras on both sides. And then, you present both films, parallel, on two screens. And, you see that each one is different, and yet, somehow they are related. So, you are able to see all those points of view, and then you extrapolate them with your own point of view, then you get a cosmic view of a problem that was constrained to your own particular vantage point.


So, once more, I don't say that it is a solution, but it is, it gives you an alternative to the commonplace way in which we grapple with our interpretations of our problems, instead of dealing with our problems.

That is a first step in yoga. Sarvitarka Samadhi, realizing that we are always considering our problems from our personal vantage point, and as though, if you look at Notre Dame for example in Paris, from one vantage point, you haven't seen Notre Dame. That's what we are doing. And, what is much more serious, is that we are carrying this faulty interpretation of our problems in our psyche throughout our lives. So, it is a kind of therapy, a kind of catharsis of the psyche. The first thing one needs to do in the beginning of a retreat, is to question your interpretation of your problems. And, but, that is negative. That is what you find in yoga, is negative. The positive thing is to try and see it from several points of view. And, if possible, well, of course, there is another point of view which one could call a transcendental point of view, which really doesn't fit into the human point of view. Like, as I say, that life doesn't make sense. And then, finally one discovers that it does make a very paradoxical sense. But then, you have to really have to overcome your point of view. That is very difficult.

So that is called, generally often called, the expansion of consciousness. Now, think of your consciousness, for example, as your glance, and you know that you can look at the pages of a book, or then you could look at a landscape, a panorama. And then, you could look back in your book again. So, we can do the same thing with our consciousness. We can expand it, until it becomes all embracing. Well, there are two ways. One is until it becomes, say, dissolved in infinity. It is negative to the sense of oneself, you see, consciousness becomes scattered. That is something that I do not advise, although it is a natural sequence to expanding one's consciousness. What I suggest is rather, and there is a word, what we call, like a mantram. The Sufis call Basit, which means, expanding, expanding, expanding, further and further. As I say which is negative to our sense of our uniqueness. I would rather suggest, there is a word Wasi, which means, encompassing, like some kind of containment, a vastness, but containment nevertheless. For example, your outreach. How you, your area of responsibility. Your kingdom, or queendom. That gives you a sense of vastness, but you don't loose yourself, or dissolve in that vastness. As you exhale.

So, that would, you start getting into the consciousness of a few people close to you, and then your consciousness extends to people, a little less known to you, and eventually the whole universe. And, of course, the ultimate is most bewildering. It is to be found in the words of St Francis of Assisi, when he says, "I thought I was looking at the world, but the world is looking at me."

So, that will shatter the limitation of your usual notions, the commonplace notions, especially self image. The assumption that I am the witness, and the world is other than me, and that is the object of my knowledge. And, suddenly, all of a sudden, you find that you have to question that. That most basic of all assumptions. And, all of a sudden, something new opens up. A whole new way of looking at things.

So, you can see how it affects your problems. I was looking at my problems, but supposing that the Universe is looking at my problems. How would they look from the point of view of the Universe? We don't know. But, if you move gradually form the point of view of one person to another, and so on, then gradually, and include more and more people, then eventually, you get some sense of what that means.

Now, in our methods, we always balance the extension, well, we balance one vantage point with another, with its compliment, so that this is what you do. As you exhale, now as you inhale, then you recover the sense of your uniqueness, of your individuality. There is danger in simple loosing one's sense of one's individuality, and that is why it is good to balance the two by alternating as you breath, in your breath.

Now again, this is paradoxical. How can we be this totality, and an individual. I've already warned you, that the way of thinking that one learns in meditation is always paradoxical, it is always paradoxical. It's always challenging to our commonplace thinking. And, or course, that's the beauty of that thing, that it really represents a further step in the evolution of humanity. That we are making that step now, passing the millennium in 3 1/2 years. We are already anticipating a further step in our thinking, which we learn from the Ancients, but we are presenting it in a new way.

So, OK, so, as you inhale now, there are several thoughts now. You see, you are aware of the fact that you are ingesting the Universe. That means that, just like we are ingesting our food, and digesting our food, at the physical level, at the level of your psyche, you are ingesting impressions from the environment, so, these are what one calls one's problems. Or, they maybe not just one's problems, but learning things that give you new vistas on life. So, this happens automatically, of course. But, we are exposed to a plethora of impressions, and our psyche has difficulty in integrating them, and that's why these random thoughts emerge in your mind, surface in your mind, because that's what is happening in your unconscious, and you're off guard, and they emerge into the surface, into the conscious mind.

So, we are suffering from an indigestion of impressions that we have difficulty in integrating, digesting. And so, in the course of meditation, normally in ordinary life, you don't have time, so one does it 'willy nilly', and rather badly, so that accounts for the irrationality of our, most of our behavior I think. I don't know whether anybody can claim to be totally rational. It would be terribly boring anyway.

Now, so, what we want to, let's consider meditation as a, as a therapy, well, as learning how to think. That is only one aspect of meditation, because as I said, it is a deep emotional process that we go through, a transformation. But, at the mental level, yes, there is a word of Dr David Boehm who was a very dear friend of mine who died, but a great, wonderful physicist. And, he said, "Do not be surprised if a realization, he says, "A new sense of meaningfulness", that's what he says, "is going to create new circuits in your brain." And, that a disturbing thought is going to cause frayed circuits in your brain." And, it is not just circuits, but the brain acts as a hologram also. So, that you see the importance, and I would say it is not just the brain, but the whole body. So, you see the importance of coming to some clarify, and meditation is the occasion to do that, because you are not right in the middle of problems, so you can place some buffer between the challenge of the world and yourself, and get in touch with what's happening within you.

So, i would say, that the first thing that you need to do, is to reject those impressions that you can't handle. And, you can't do it with your will, the yogis do it, but it requires a tremendous amount of control. Normally you can't do it with your will. They are incisive and compelling, and obsessive. You can't sleep because of then, and you are disturbed.

There is a secret here. Take the example of the body. The body will reject a transplant of an organ that does not have the same DNA of that of the body. And, that's the affect of the immune system, the function of the immune system. And, so, the immune system is based upon, 'me or not me', Now, the same thing applies to the psyche. And so, we do have a natural disposition to reject impressions that do not tally with our attunement, but then, perhaps you know, there is a second immune system, whereby the body adapts itself to an organ that is different from itself. And, or, material that is different from itself, for example, otherwise we would never be able to eat, for example. And so, we, I think we are over stressing our second immune system. And, by doing so, we loose a sense of who we are.

And, I must say, that I see some danger in the Eastern methods imported in the West. They were intended for hermits. And, they tend to make one other worldly. That's why psychotherapists accuse spiritualists of what they call, 'the spiritual bypass'. I tend to replicate sometimes in saying that there is such a thing as a psychological bypass too.

So, what does that mean in terms of our psyche. If we can't reject those impressions, how can we proceed? And, I would say that it is a very strong sense of me that operates a selection between those impressions that you can handle, and those that you can't. And, that's why, when you inhale, you recover the sense of who you are, perhaps stronger than when you did before, before having dissolved, you can now converge the elements of your being, construe them together in a more coherent way. And therefor, before we go any further, I would like you to just, let's follow this up now. Can you look upon your self, well realize the degree to which you are playing a role, I mean, you, we, are playing, I too, am playing a role, or could easily lend myself to playing a role. Like, I might think I am a guru, and now I think you are my disciples. And, it is just a hoax, we are all humans. It's just the king thinks he is a king because he is sitting on a throne, and people say, "your Majesty'. But, it is just in the imagination, and not a reality. The reality is who is who you really are.

So, somehow, life asks of us, sometimes to play a role, and it's always at the cost of your honesty. It's always at the cost of our realizing whom we really are, because we start to really identify with that role, at the cost of other people, because we are deceiving other people, being a role model. And so, I think that's one of the first things that we need to do, is to blow the hoax of what we think we are. Now, that's still negative of course, but then, it's always having to compensate negative thought with a positive thought. So, the positive thought is, "Well, if that is not who I am, I'm parading something that is necessary in the world, you know, if I put on an air of superiority, people are going to give me a good job, and if I'm too humble, then they won't. So, you know that one is parading some kind of a hoax. I'm now saying that you shouldn't do it, but when you are meditating, then you have to take away all that parade and be real. And, it's very important to discover who one really is.

There is no way of defining it. Now there is a further step. That makes it even more tangible, more concrete. And that is, just imagine that you are wearing a mask, like in some of the theatres in the past, one wears a mask. And then, you drop the mask, and you see your real countenance. So, your face is a mask. Think of your face as a mask that is masking whom you really are. And, that mask is made of the fabric of your parents, ancestors, and so on, the planet, even the Universe has been fashioned in the course of ions of time. And, that fabric doesn't always lend itself to whom you really are. It's like trying to make a statue out of granite. It is much more difficult than to make it out of clay. So, don't go by that cheapest and most misleading of all feedback systems which is a mirror. Unless you can see what transpires behind that which appears, but then, that is a great art.,

So, as you are meditating, it's wonderful just to discard, you know that we have been brought up to look into the mirror. We don't realize to what an extent, what that mirror does to us, in our self image. As a child. Animals sometimes, fight their image in the mirror, they don't know how to recognize their own identity.

Incidentally, there is this wonderful story. It's a great legend. Zeus, you know, Jupiter, Zeus, had vacated his throne, and his son, Zagarus, took advantage of this moment to sit on the throne. And then, the Titans presented Zagarus with a mirror, and he discovered the features of his father. And, he was so overwhelmed by this, that the Titans took advantage of this to catapult him in the abyss. And, when Zeus came back, he was so furious, that he shattered them with his thunderbolt, and humans were born out of the ashes of the Titans who had ingested the son of God.

So we carry many different inheritances, not only that of our parents.

That is why St Francis said, "I have another father."

So, meditation is going to help you to discover who you really are. And, it is not at all what we think we are. So, when people say, "I want to know who I am." They are thinking of their personality, and the personality is only, just an expression of something much deeper, that is the reality of our being. So, don't go either by the mirror or your personality. Or, the personality of others. Don't judge people by their personality. That is not what they are.

So, I wonder whether we could do this. This morning we were trying to have some sense of our aura of light. It doesn't have a boundary, but just as an exercise, I mean, I don't say that this is, well, yes, it is true to some extent. Can you just represent to yourself that your aura is fashioned in the, I mean your true countenance is fashioned in the fabric of your aura, in the fabric of light. So, imagine your real, it's not a face, it's your countenance, because a face has contours. but this doesn't have contours. Like, the photographs of Walter Chappell, photographs of flowers in ultra violet light, and so they don't have boundaries, but, flowers don't have. You can see their petal but then, beyond the petals....

side 2

... corona of light. So, if you can imagine your face, your countenance behind your face, (pause) and you just know that this is me. And, it gives you a sense of freedom, because our self image, and the impression that we have, as I say, about the features of our face, or our body, exercises a tremendous constraint on our sense of identity. 

And now, imagine that, all of a sudden, you are free from this constraint. And, we have such a need for freedom.

Now, this is still static. Now, the next step would be to think of yourself dynamically, instead of statically. Instead of thinking that there is a sort of sclerosed effigy behind your physical face or physical body, think that you are continually being reborn. Recurrently being reborn. And so, that which fosters rebirth, and that's creativity, is to realize that the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past.

That is to imagine how you could be if you would be if you might be.

And, that frees you from the way you are now. That's freedom. (pause) It's freedom.

And, there is a word of the Sufis, "'h man," I would say, " 'h human being," "If you only knew that you are free, that it is your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity."

And so, let us say, that our self image is our prison. And, the door is open, but we don't know it.

We think that it is the circumstances of our life that is our prison. No, one can be free within constrained circumstances. But, it is in our way of thinking, and in our way of emoting, and in our sense of identity. That's where we are in prison.

Now, I wonder whether you are aware of what we have been doing. Because, we started by being, let's say, delivered in the hands of the impressions accruing from outside, and now we are beginning to draw attention to what emerges from inside.

And eventually, what emerges from inside, is going to bring about a transformation in that what is outside. Just like, in the body, the enzymes are going to transform the food. So that you can, so that the amino acid chains, that the food you ingest, have to break down, and be replaced by new configurations which match your DNA. So, that is the impact of your being upon what accrues from outside.

And you will find that it will help you, I would say, overcome, but that at least, to give you some kind of primacy over the impressions coming in from outside, otherwise you are totally delivered in the hands of these random thoughts, and then you can't get anywhere in your meditation.

Now, just a last tip. You see, think of your consciousness as a lamp, as a beam of light, as a search light, cast upon the screen of your mind. And, there are a lot of impressions all around. And, so you could distinguish the area that is lit up by the beam of light. And then, there is a kind of twilight area around it, and gradually peters out into darkness. So, think that thoughts keep on impinging upon this, getting projected upon this screen, and as soon as they enter into the twilight, one tends to turn that beam towards them. Now, what you need to do, is to just keep your beam centred. And, so, those thoughts will have every right to be there, they are OK, you don't have to take over much notice of them, unless you are weak willed. There is a strength of your concentration. That's all you have to do. You can't control the thoughts, but you can keep your glance, for example, centered. 

So, don't think that you can't meditate, because random thoughts keep on circulating in the twilight. It's OK. But, as I said, we have to, our concentration is on what is emerging from within, on our real being, and even though it doesn't have a form. And therefor, it is very difficult to concentrate on it. It reveals itself to you, gradually, and it is emotionally, it is very, very, strong. It's like the discovery of who I am is so incredibly powerful, that all the thoughts coming from outside, pale in comparison. 

And of course, I know there is something in our mind that it's difficult for us to believe in wonderful things. So many horrible things happen, so we are used to expecting things to be bad. So, as one says, it is too good to be true. Well, just think that your being is too good to be true. And, if you don't realize that, then you are standing in the way of your own self.

I know that it is very difficult to reconcile the beauty of your being to the defilement that we have always all incurred. Maybe through the interface, and the spill over with the environment. I know, it's very difficult. We think that we have been tarnished. And perhaps, that is the key to what we are doing. The key could be illustrated by the voice of Caruso that can be retrieved now in its bad recordings. That means that our true self is present within its defilement. In fact, our pure self. And, can be retrieved. That's a saving grace.

So, for our minds, that is the reconciliation of the irreconcilables. But, as I say, we must not limit ourselves to our commonplace thinking, because that holds us back. So, accept that there are other ways of thinking than the usual one. It is a discovery.

So, the sun is shining, and you are in this wonderful place, the Abode of the Message, nature, this is an ideal opportunity to meditate in America without having to go to the Himalayas. (laughter) So, perhaps there are some ideas here that are helpful to you if you try to meditate, and we will meet again at 11:00 o'clock.

end of tape0 



SEP 02, 1996		Tape 10

Labor Day Retreat Abode of the Message Sept 96
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 fiancées. 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 stuttering. 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 tape0 



1997

FEB 02, 1997		Tape 01

Meditation on light. We're trying to introduce a dimension other than the worldly dimension into our perception of the universe and ourselves; that other kingdom of which Christ speaks which is not up there. We have to discover the sacred in our environment and in ourselves. We can do that by meditating on light. Our  path is a path of light, and when children are baptized in the Universal Worship, they are baptized in light. 

Can you imagine how the universe would look in outer space if your consciousness was able to expand and embrace the whole cosmos? It would be like the most incredible world of light. If we were to envision ourselves as being made out of the fabric of this universe of light, we would discover another dimension of ourselves than the one we identify in our commonplace self image.

The powers of imagination in you are an extension of what the Sufis call the divine imagination, which is the trigger behind all creativity. You have the power to extend your representation of the universe, such as it appears from your personal vantage point. You have the ability to extend it far beyond the limits of the constraint of the personal vantage point. Let your imagination have a free hand in representing to yourself the most incredible skyscrapes of light, colors, and sparklings; the explosions of light, effulgence, glory, fire light, clashes of waves of lights sparkling into the effulgence of a rainbow. 

Just let your imagination endow you with the thrill of the ecstasy of light because that is the ultimate victory of our personal pain. From our vantage point there are beings we think we have lost. They have become beings of light, exalting in the spheres of light according to their degree of realization. Even though we feel hampered, defiled and pummeled by the challenge of the social and physical environment, we remain unscathed in our being of light. That's where our real being is, so this vision of the cosmos of light is going to help us to discover our real being and lift us above the limitations and tribulations of existential conditions on the planet. 

Imagine you're a being of light hurtling into this ocean of light that is the cosmos. You are discovering yourself as a being of light in this world of light and exalting in the ecstasy of light. When you find you are free, you can fly wherever your heart takes you. It is your ecstasy that constitutes your wings taking you aloft. It is your attunement, your nostalgia for the sublime that determines the landscapes and skyscrapes of light you discover. They are really mirroring yourself, or you're mirroring them so you discover yourself in them. Pir-o-Murshid says, "In the day condition, the world is outside you. In the dream, the world is inside you."  In meditation, there is no more outside or inside. 

Don't be afraid that you're hallucinating into personal imaginings. Your imagination is an expression of the creative imagination of the whole universe funneled down through the personal bias in a constrained fashion.  Trust your imagination when it is enlisted by your passion for the sublime, because it is through that ecstasy that the universe self organizes itself as you. It's almost as though you create the universe of light as you discover it, or you discover that as you create it. It's beyond the commonplace experience that is demeaning to the spiritual status of our being. 

You may discover in the very configurations of this ocean of light the way your attunements and realizations match the forms of the universe. They might actually fashion the forms or fashion themselves into forms in the world of light. For example, you'll notice the difference between the sparklings where a cluster of light fragments itself into sparks. That will corroborate with your sense of your individuality as unique. Then you find the serenity of a peaceful sunset, for example, where all that variety of multiple expressions of reality seems to merge into oneness in the peace of the unification. You might even find a battle happening there; volcanic eruptions and fire gushing forth form the conflicts of opposing forces.  You'll see yourself engaged in this battle willy nilly if willfully you are a knight of light; otherwise you are a victim of violence. 

Now you realize this universe of light reflects the very drama of your own life and the struggle within your own being. To what extent do we dedicate ourselves to those values we hold? We do it to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice our lives. I think of the firemen and the Russian atomic engineers who flew over the tremendous outburst at Chrenobyl knowing it was at the cost of their lives. You'll recognize yourself in that battle, in the outburst of forces as illustrated in the volcanic eruptions and the consequent earthquakes that shatter our dependence upon earthly conditions. 

Next you'll find relatively obedient light beings as well as rebellious light beings. You'll find photons that are in some way allowing themselves to be ordered by the static architectrony of the cosmos, or the architectrony that becomes sclerosed to repetitive condition. Then you have the rebellious light beings like the comets that will not accept the constraint because they are endowed with greater energy. You'll see them hurtling through space unpredictably. It will make you heart beat faster when you see your need for freedom illustrated in this being of light, as opposed to towing the line and letting yourself grind in the samsaric wheel. There is that repetitiveness of the vicious circle in which we allow ourselves to be inveigled in our lives unless we are moved by the power of the flame of our nostalgia for what Pir-o-Murshid calls the unattainable. 

As you can imagine, those beings of light don't require the dimension of a comet. There are such things as free electrons, for example, that escape from the samsaric wheel of their atom and start hurtling through space at the cost of colliding and losing themselves as an electron and becoming a photon.  That's resurrection. It could almost forestall your body being transfigured into light instead of making a difference between matter and light, the fabric of your body and the light of your aura, because there is a continual conversion from the state of solid matter to the state of light.

See those dimensions of your being. Depending upon the attunement of your consciousness, you can shift it one way or the other and discover an infinite number of facets, perspectives upon your being. That is your freedom to be able to shift your perspective instead of allowing your perspective to be forced into focus by the conditioning of your upbringing, your culture, your education; the whole system in which we are involved in conditioned existences. 

Can you see that light liberates you from the emotional gravitational pull of the self image? We make our self image based on the concept we have of our bodies as sclerosed matter, which they are not. For one thing, light is traveling through space at a speed of 186 thousand miles a second. The thought of being a being of light will liberate you from the constraint of being located in a point in space and subjected to gravitational pull and all those concepts we make of ourselves in our very limited self image. 

Then as the majis say, there is a battle between the powers of light in the universe, between the pure light of selflessness and dedication to the highest ideal and Luciferian light. You can imagine the tremendous confrontations of powers of light in the universe. The degree to which one can radiate pure light is a function of one's selflessness. Light becomes Luciferian when one separates, extracts it from its source. For example, a battery is a power that has been disconnected from the source of the power, so it's limited. The same is true with Luciferian light. If one loses one's sense of one's pertinence to the totality, one's concept of one's own light is then Luciferian. Even one's representation of light can be misleading, deceptive, and ultimately counterproductive as in the case of Lucifer, which acts as a warning to those who want to work with the aura in order to become more radiant, but they think of that radiance as an effulgence of their own person. That would be Luciferian instead of seeing oneself in the context of the light of the whole universe, which the Sufis call divine light. 

There are moral issues behind meditations in light. One needs to entertain luminous thoughts and luminous emotions. That means that one does not allow one's emotions to be tainted in the least by resentment, for example, which is a personal reaction and holds one within one's separateness form the totality. That's Luciferian. It also means being so very up front that there is no shadow lurking in the dark in one's being. That does mean one is defenseless and as a child. To discover one's celestial counterpart one needs to discover the child within that is still present within its defilement in one's psyche. That's innocence. That means the inability to manipulate or plot or any kind of intrigue, any kind of agenda as one says.  It's at the cost of in the eyes of the world of being naive, ingenue rather than being naive, but defenseless. One can not count upon extraneous defense. So that one's only defense is the light of one's being, or the light of the universe coming through one's being. 

So we started with the representation of light which is based upon our experience of physical light. Now we're talking about a level of light that cannot be limited by what we call matter. So that there is something in one's psyche, whatever it is, psyche or soul. We use these words. They are just cliches. But there is something in one's being quite irrespective of the body that is of the same nature, or resembles what we understand by physical light. And which can be blighted by shadow, just like physical light. Ultimately it will always prevail. For example, the clouds in the sky, the sun is still there. Just from the point of view of the planet, the light has been veiled. 

So at this point if we want to fulfill that deep nostalgia for light, we need to see what it is in our selves that acts as a cloud that becloud the light, that act as a screen that cuts away the light of our being and the light of the Universe which is the light of our being. That's the shadow that Jung was talking about. It's of course our anger, our resentment, our jealousy, selfishness, greed, concupiscence, and disregard for the spiritual status of other beings, manipulating beings, undermining beings for one's own power, possession. That's where the shadow is. The light of our being is still there but it is veiled under a bushel unless we are able to meticulously work with each of those elements that are beclouding the light. It just depends on how important it is for us. 

Then we find something really paradoxical when we look into the world of light because we are casting a glance upon the world of light. That's what one means by looking at it. It's not only perceiving it but discovering the likeness between our own glance projected on the world of light and the world of light. The way they match. So it's not as thought the witness in us is different to the object to the object that we experience, but it's counterpoint when we realize that it's all one. At least in mirroring each other and eventually discover their oneness. First of all their similarity, then their oneness. 

Think of your glance as like headlamps of a car. Instead of thinking of your eyes as organs of perception, of course they are. The glance is conditioned by the whole programming of the existential condition so that our eyes, the retina generally acts as the receptor, a transducer of the light of the environment impinging upon the cells of the brain. But if you downplay the receptive activity of your eyes, the way to do it is, let me say first, it's like you can't see the stars when the sun is in the sky. Something like that. The impact on the light on your retina impinging from outside is so great that, in comparison with the light that the eyes radiate, that well it's the light of the brain that is cast forward through the optical nerves.  

In your way of thinking you if downplay that receptive activity of your glance. There are several ways of doing it. One is the Hindu way which is to question the realness of the existential world. I would say in your way of thinking, consider that your glance can shift. For example, if you're looking at a hologram in which there might be two superimposed pictures, you could toggle your glance from one picture to the other. We have that ability although our glance is generally conditioned by the impact of the impression of the environment. We still do have that capacity to shift the focus of our glance. And then imagine that the physical world as we experience it is just a cross section of a multidimensional universe. Then of course if you think that way, you don't say that the world is an illusion. You just say that it's just the way that things look at that cross section. And then you suspect that behind that limited perspective there are other perspectives and there is a whole world of light that is transpiring through that which appears. 

So if you think that way, then you can downplay the subjection to the impact of the impression of the environment. And when you do that, then the light of your glance, to be more specific the light of your brain that is threaded down through the optic nerves, is able to prevail over the light that is drawn in through the environment. And then you becomes like a torch light casting your light on all things. 

And then at the level of the psyche it is instead of judging things the way they appear, one's assessments of one's problems which are limiting and are certainly misleading, being able to cast the light of intelligence upon your problems, the intelligence of the universe, not just your personal assessment. And then you see your problems in the cosmic context instead of under the personal bias. That's where the light of intelligence makes all the difference in one's realization of the meaningfulness of our lives and the relevance of ourselves in the Universe. 

So can you do that? See the difference between the passive attitude of being  receptive to the light of the physical world for example, and remember that as long as you can see the sun, you can't see the stars. I can tell you that there are practices which will enable you to see the stars longer and longer at dawn, much longer than you would ordinarily. You can practice it. But this is another thing. What I'm talking about is the power of the light of your real being. By being aware of your real being as a being of light, it gives such power to your glance that it overcomes the, I would say perhaps even it repels the photons that are trying to impinge upon your retina by its power. Then you become like a torch illuminating all things. 

What Pir o Murshid says is that, well he parallels our own light with the light of the sun. And he says that the sun, that means any star of course, is really the convergence of the light of the Universe as in a vortex for example. And then from that point which becomes a source of light, it is radiated. So think of yourself as having the ability to converge the light of the Universe and then radiate it at the physical level and at all the levels of reality of which are existential world is only a cross section. 

Tape end



FEB 14, 1997		Tape 02

...and survey the circumstances in which you have involved yourself, or which you are involved in. In your relationship to this person, and that person, and the other person, and to your job, to your undertaking, whatever it is: your home, your the facilities, the support system. 

And ask yourself, why am I doing this? Why am I doing that? And what do I expect of this particular person or that particular person? How am I behaving toward that person? What are the motivations behind my behavior toward that person? 

This is called Mohasabi, which is examination of conscience.

Now, of course, the answer is very complex, because mind plays a lot of games upon us. 

But maybe the first thing to highlight is, what are the values that I esteem above other values that I esteem less? So you could make a real priority list of values. 

And then you could ask yourself, "Am I jeopardizing the higher values for values that are less important?" And is that due to circumstances that exact of me to meet them at the cost of my being able to pursue those values that I prioritized? Or is it because those values low down on my list, that don't have top priority, are still valuable for me? 

So let us say that we have personal needs and spiritual needs. And they are sometimes not very easy to distinguish them. 

Now I am, often think of, I think the most pertinent thing that I've ever heard, it was Shahabbudin who said that, he said "...the support system takes over...". The support system takes over.  That is, for example, all that it takes to be able to survive in our society, is so demanding that we have no time to give fulfillment, to give expression and fulfillment, to that which we value most. 

And if this goes on and you reach the age of 80, you run the risk of running, of dying in despair, unless you have given satisfaction to your, the highest item on that priority list. Which, there's no point of defining it because, words are like cliches. I'm rather weary of words.

Now, I think that you may answer, "Yes, of course, I'm not very clear about what those highest priorities are." And if you are aware of words, then you're quite right in saying that. Well you can use the word illumination, and awakening, and ecstasy, and all that but these are, unfortunately these words are not, are inadequate in the sense that they're concepts of the mind. And so we must talk about real things instead of concepts of the mind.

But you may answer and say, "Yes, but you see in order to fulfill those needs, I need circumstances that can promote them or pave them." And the circumstances of everyday life do not favor them. 

Supposing that I were to be living as a monk in Mount (Athos) or in a cave in the Himalayas or whatever, in a community which is very highly dedicated to a spiritual ideal. Then I would have a support system for my attunement. 

And this is cutting right into the issue of this whole retreat, because it is true. It is helpful to have this support. An environment that is dedicated to one's spiritual ideal. And that's the reason why one goes to church, for example. One needs a kind of support system. But you see the Sufis are nomads. And so they can't rely upon a temple or a mosque or synagogue or whatever. And therefore, they have to create a temple out of their own body. 

And therefore the (bulwark?) of this seminar is going to be, to examine how one can introduce the sacred into everyday life instead of escaping from everyday life in a vain attempt to find the sacred without any support system and neglecting one's responsibilities in life. 

Now that is the rub. That is the real challenge of life. Of those of you who are dedicated to your ideal and find that it is very difficult to put into practice. 

Now, this would all be reasonably clear if it weren't for the fact that what we attribute to the prevailing circumstances, the social conditions in which we're living, what we project as such is very often made up of our own projections, and self deceptions and vanities. 

And so we think that it is the world that is our prison whereas the prison is in our way of thinking and of feeling. And this leads to a lot of misconceptions, because it leads to our denigrating ourselves. And to the extend of giving up any hope of being able to fulfill our ideal, because we think that we have been defiled.  We have jeopardized our chance of attaining illumination. 

So somehow we get caught in a way of thinking that can only lead to despair unless we know how to get out of that vicious circle. And I think that vicious circle is exactly what Buddha calls the (samsadic?) wheel. 

Of course, in it's more simple interpretation, the (semsadic?) wheel is that situation in which we find ourselves, in which we go through life without ever improving. In fact, it might be the other way around. 

Sometimes I see such purity and light in the eyes of a child and I see the people grow bitter when they go through their mid-life crisis. And that means that somehow one has given up the battle.  Because one didn't see the way out of the vicious circle. 

That's why a retreat is an opportunity to reflect upon our lives.  And see exactly where we got caught and how we can find, I don't say a way out. I don't like the word escape. Find a way of upgrading that circle. Let's say that the circle becomes a spiral instead of a circle. 

 For example, evolution is a way in which the circle is somehow circumvented. For example, you see there's no point in a seed becoming a plant and it becomes a seed, and a plant, and so on.  That's a vicious, that's a (samsadic?) wheel. But then evolution represents a further dimension. The ability to get out of that vicious circle and improve. 

But, I might say this already at this point. It is the prospect of what the future could be that helps them out of the circle. It's a slogan that I've often referred to. I refer to it again. Of course, the word of (Ulaf?) who says that the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. 

The push of the past is our conditioning. 

The pull of the future is a strange word, because we must assume that the future is there, already there. We create it. And therefore it is a feature of our freedom against conditioning. 

So then freedom would be the way out of the circle. But we have to be very careful with what we mean by freedom, because are we talking about the freedom of, for example our ego? Which, according to Pir-o-Murshid, is only a very small fraction of what we are. 

But still I hope that the word freedom makes your heart beat faster. 

Because, somehow unconsciously, we do have a sense of being constrained by the circumstances. As I said, we put the blame on the constriction, the constraint in our freedom upon the circumstances. 

And it's true that, first off, that it looks as though the circumstances are the things that are standing in the way of our freedom. 

Until we realize that if we change, circumstances change. They have to change because the circumstances are the product of a relationship between ourselves and the environment. If we change then that circumstances are going to change. So our freedom is in our ability to change ourselves, but how do we do it? 

 Now, of course, we hear of the teachings of the Hindus and the Buddhas and the, for example the first step in samadhi is called (savitaka?) samadhi is freeing your assessment of, well, actually in the Hindu sense it is your assessment of the physical world. 

But I would say your assessment of your problems. Freeing your assessment of your problems from your personal bias. That (mia). 

It's not that the world is delusive. It is one's personal bias upon reality that is our, not only illusion, but our self deception.

But that's still negative, that's, ok, we know that our assessment of our problems is not, at least I hope that you accept that our assessment of our problems is not hundred percent reliable.  There's a personal bias in it.

And that's why I am rather weary of any teaching that tells you, well how do you feel. Because how you feel is grounded upon your very limited conception of yourself. And therefore it would draw you even more deeply into illusion.

Now our illusion and our deceptions are part of our defenses. We fool ourselves, but maybe that's the way in which we protect ourselves, by fooling ourselves. Until we don't have to have that kind of protection any longer. We've been able to unhoax the hoax.

I mean unveil the hoax. 

So just, I mean I don't want to go on talking. I want you to try and see if you can look at your problems and see that the constraint that they are operating upon you, at least your way of thinking. The way that they constrain you in your freedom is a function of your assessment of them. It's not the problems. It's your assessment that is, operates, that's the constraint. Can you see that?

Now, so as I say, your by the first step is (sativatka?) samadhi which is freeing your assessment. And now that my interpretation is, of course, of your problems from your personal bias. That is, what does it mean to you? What do your problems mean to you?  That's the personal bias. 

So to free one's self from the personal bias, one would have to extend one's assessment beyond what one considers to be one's personal interest. 

What we want to do is to try to see what the problem is in itself irrespective of our personal point of view. 

And one of the intermediary steps is then to start looking at it from the point of view of another person. To start with the person with whom one is involved in that problem. If you can do that. 

obviously that person is seeing the problem from his/her point of view and you're seeing the problem from your point of view. So you have expanded your consciousness, a little bit.

It doesn't mean that the way that person sees your problem is more  right than the way you see it. Just that it is another vantage point that helps you to free yourself from the limitation of your own vantage point and therefore your own assessment.

Now you could include a third person indirectly involved in a problem, and a fourth, and so on. 

And you realize that it is not your problem, but your problem spills over in the whole universe. We are participating in the drama of the universe and we think it's our problem. Why does it happen to me?

But if you just look at it from your personal vantage point, your caught in a prison and the real prison is one's personal point of view. It's not the circumstances. 

Now if you continue including more and more people ad infinitum, in infinite regress then you'll understand the words of Saint Francis of Assisi when he said, "I thought I was looking at the world, but the world is looking at me."

Now the way that we assess our problems, I said that's a personal bias, well that personal bias is based upon one's values. 

So we come back to our first question, what are we looking for in life? What is our objective? What are the values that we pursue?

So that you'll see that in your problems, there are two things.  That we have, it is not always clear. They are integrated in some way. 

One is circumstances that we believe are fortuitous. It was an accident. A situation which we could hardly say the we chose. 

And seeing from our personal bias, of course, these are circumstances that had been reeked upon us by destiny or whatever and there's no way in which we can alter them. 

There may be cases where we did trigger off a whole chain, a causal chain which led to those circumstances that became, that escaped unnoticed. It's possible. 

Then, of course, are the circumstances which we have created like a spider has weaved it's web and now we're, we live in that web.  We've create our circumstances and now we, you know, what you sew, you reap. Now we created, we built our own prison.

Now that's the extent way. The way that circumstances appear, how can I say, existentially. 

But now the impact of our personal vantage point, our personal bias, that is a function of what we value in life. 

For example, well a very pertinent example is, of course, Buddha gave up all his kingdom. Gave up his kingdom and that means all his possessions, all future possessions. And there are some people who, if they loose a million dollars, will commit suicide. 


So it just depends upon what you value. So our assessment of our problems is, in some ways, related with the things that we really value. 

Now that depends upon you, of course, and it depends upon the stage we're in, in our lives. And it has to do, of course, with our realization of what has ultimate value. 

And let's say if you contrast it with worthlessness or shame. Now that's rather an extreme, opposite poll, of what we value. But if you look around you, you'll see people fretting about worthless things. Trying to acquire them, fretting because they loose them, lost them. Shame, waste of time, as the Sufis say, '. . .picking up the crumbs. . .." We're invited to the banquet and we are picking up the crumbs on the floor. As Murshid says, ". . .we are offered pearls and we choose pebbles." 

So remember that our assessment of our problems is a function of what we value. And so this is, nobody can tell you what you've got to value. It just depends upon your own assessment. 

But, I assume, that if you're here, then it is because you have a need for the sacred. There are all kinds of words like: awakening, and illumination, stress reduction, and so on. But, really, there are objectives, different objectives that are pursued in different spiritual groups. But as one grows in realization, one realizes that the ultimate value is sacredness. 

And it's very important because your self-esteem depends upon your ability to give expression to that need for the sacred. So it's very serious. 

The trouble is that, I mean it would be a perfunctory behavior to escape from life in the quest of the sacred, to become a nun or a monk, or. . .. 

I'm not sure that you will always find the sacred in the Ashrams in India, but anyway it was a quest of the sacred that says, causes a lot of people to leave the world and until they find it wasn't. . .. As Buddha says, there's a place you can't reach by going anywhere. 

The thing is, how do you find it in yourself? 

Well, there is a spillover from the way of the world. There's a spill over that happens surreptitiously without our realizing it.  And then we denigrate ourselves. 

And because we're not fulfilling our highest ideal, our highest passion. That's a word used by Murshid, a real passion for the unattainable. It's got to be so strong, that it, like pre-emptry beyond anything else in the world. 

But, as I say, we feel that we've been somehow defiled. Because, but then we don't realize there's been a spillover. And the spillover came because there are things in us that wanted what the world had to offer. 

And so it's a matter of prioritizing what we value, once more, against things that will give one some kind of personal satisfaction. Is it possible to reconcile the two? 

I think the answer, of course, is in the words of Christ, ". . . they are in the world, but not of the world." But we have to be very clear as to what that means. Because, what does it mean to be of the world? And when he talks about another kingdom, the kingdom of God. Well, what does that mean?

And so that's why, I think we have to be, the retreat, is a wonderful opportunity, as I say, to be very clear about those, how, about that spillover of what one. . .. How in India one calls (doonya), which means the world.. .. 

The way of the (sanyasin?), of course, in India is freedom from the world. So that, I'm not sure the equivalent of the world in us.  I mean, so first of all I think we need to define what is meant by the word (doonya), because it is not the circumstances. That's a confusion. 

It is, to define it, I think one would have to say, it's the pursuit of what one considers to be one's personal interest at the expense of others: selfishness, greed. There's a word of Murshid which is very, I would say, right on. At what point does need become greed. Where is that line of demarcation. 

When you're walking in the streets of wherever and you see the homeless. Do you wonder whether they are the victims of greed?  And do you wonder whether you have anything to do with that?  Because that's what I mean by the weight of the world. 

Now, I know, it's complicated, caught in the system, not that  simple. But somehow, our society is geared in a way that what started by being needs, that's the support system, has become greed. The word used by Buddha is (concupiscence?), wanting to have, to possess just for the sake of possession. Not because it's a need. Like you need a car, you need a house, but I don't think that many of those present are over rich and suffer from an excess of opulence. 

But still, so for each one of you the dividing line between need and greed is important and at a retreat you can ask yourself that question. 

We become addicted to the support system. And we don't know how we could live without it. I must say it's become very convenient to have the facilities, the technology of our time. 

But, I do remember walking in the Himalayas, when I was younger.  Of course, with a very heavy backpack with all the things that I thought I needed. And gradually dumping one after another along the way. And finding it, of course, much easier to walk. You see how we think that we need those things. 

The (sanysin's) harden themselves against cold and heat, to the extend of. . .. Well, that's what the homeless do nowadays, of course. Up, one can survive up to a point.

Well, these are the big questions. What am I doing in life? 

Now, I would say, it is also selfishness to pursue to awakening.  Freedom from one's responsibility in life. So that one needs to attain illumination in life, rather than escaping from life to, in the hope of finding illumination. 

So, I think what we need to do then, is on one hand we have some. . . We have to be very careful of our concept to realization.  Like my quest is illumination, but I don't know what it means, you know. And awakening, you can't know what awakening means unless you've awakened. Just the words of it, the definition of it, is of no use. 

So, it's true that on one hand the lure of our ideal is at the horizon. And as Pir-o-Murshid said as we advance the horizon advances. So we never reach it. That's why he said the quest for the unattainable.

So on one hand we keep that in our heart. And then on the other hand we ask ourselves, but it requires very, very much, absolute honesty. And we ask ourselves, well where does that spillover of the things that I don't like in the world, that I attribute to the world, where does that occur in me. 

And don't just blame the world and have disparaging thoughts about the world. It's true that as one becomes sensitive one becomes more and more judgmental, about, at least critical about the grossness, the vulgarity, the selfishness, the greed, the violence, the power trips, vanity, so on and so forth, of course. That's what we mean by the world. 

Of course, it's easy to criticize it in what we call the world. We project it in the world. 

But if we cannot say that we live our ideal. That, let's say, and if the world, if there's able, if it's possible that there should be a spillover of the world into our being, our psyche. Then it is because there is something in our psyche that corresponds with what spillsover. It matches. So the question is now, to your market. 

What is it in me that I dislike in the world? Instead of saying what is it that I dislike in the world, what is it in me that I dislike in the world? 

Because, once you have freed yourself from it, you love the world.  As Christ said, they are children. They don't know what they do.  You love children. They're naughty and you still love them.

 (END OF SIDE ONE)

I shouldn't say you. I mean we. 

Now those are the things that are standing in the way of our fulfilling, may I use the word our wishful thinking, to attain illumination. It becomes wishful thinking. It is wishful thinking until we have removed the obstacles. 

So, kind of platonic ideal. Not a reality. We fool ourselves.  We're entertaining an ideal. Paying lip service to that ideal.  But it's, but there's no value if it's not a reality in our lives.

Well, then in contrast, could we just have some sense of what we mean by the sacred? There's no way of defining it, but some kind of clues.

I would say the feature that strikes me the most is the immaculate state, purity. 

And, as a matter of fact, we should be doing this in the course of our practice of the Zikr, when we turn within. 

To discover that immaculate state in yourself, which can never be  defiled by all the psychological pollution that we undergo. It's still there within its defilement. 

So that's one of the reasons why it's so important to build a temple in one's, well it's of course it's in the subtle body, not just in the physical body, but also in one's mind. 

So the walls of that temple are, as Buddha calls it, the sentinels at the doors of perception. But I think that it's also the sentinels in our own thinking, not just in relationship with the impressions accruing from outside. 

And then turning within that temple and finding your real self immaculate. So that that holiness that you are seeking for is already in you. But you have to discover it. And to discover it, one has to remove the veils which are, as I say, all those things that we denigrate in the world, in other people. 

The, it goes together with it, of course, the second aspect, I would say, is innocence. But that goes together with the immaculate state. 

So that one is without defenses. And you see we, if you'll place the sentinel at the doors of perception, that is your defense. 

And we need that until we don't need it anymore. Because there're two processes. One is to protect yourself against the (deleterious) impressions accruing from the outside and then, of course, in your own mind. 

And the other one is transmuting those impressions instead of rejecting them. So that's not the sentinel. Transmuting the impressions. 

This is illustrated in a story. I think it's to be found in a, I think it was the an (Apacruth). I think it was the Acts of Saint Peter, if I remember. Yea, I think so. And it said the disciples of Christ were walking on the lane. And there was a dead dog and the disciple said, "'h, don't look Master, it looks, it's awful."  And he looked, of course, all the same. And he said, "Yes, but it's teeth are so beautiful." 

So it's seeing beauty where one sees ugliness and where one would be judgmental of people. And maybe they have a gross exterior, but their beauty is hidden within. And what is more, there is a process whereby that ugliness is transmuted. 

So it's something that one does in one's own, if one has a sense of the sacred in the depth of one's being. 

One transmutes, let's say one's impressions of the world. So that one only imbibes in the depth of one's being the quintessence, which is beautiful. Like the perfume of the flowers. 

I would say the third aspect is unselfishness. The way of the Saint. Though it goes beyond just the ethics of not involving oneself in greed, but it's, well it can exact the toll of sacrifice, selflessness. 

That is if you are in the pursuit of the sacred. otherwise, you know, it seems like the done thing to seek one's interest in life.  So it doesn't, (Domonique?) mentioned it doesn't fit into the kind of programming of our lives. 

It's just another dimension. As I say, spirituality is another dimension. And therefore, I don't think you can use the word reconcile these needs. 

I think it's not something you can reconcile. It's a different dimension. 

So the temple, one is creating a space for the sacred. But that space is circumscribed by the walls or whatever. But eventually, the walls of the temple extend or even break down, like the wall of Berlin. So that eventually, there's room for everything in the temple. 

Somehow the power of the sacred prevails over the (picatamundi), the sins of the world. You can see it yourself. The ability, the power of the sacred, somehow, overwhelms the sin, what we call the sins, in our emotions. 

And I must say that the sacred, it can't be simply protecting oneself against the profane. It's, or the sacrilege, it is really, it's only meaningful in the Divine Consciousness. 

The temple is there for the Divine Presence. That's what it's there for. It's not there for yourself. 

Whatever that means. And whatever we mean by it is not reliable anyway. It's just, so it would even be deceptive. 

So I'm very wary of using the word God, because if we, as Pir-o- Murshid said what we, when we use the word God we don't realize that what we mean is what we, that what we mean is what we mean by God instead of what we mean is God. So it's what we mean as God.  So we have to be very careful with that word. That's why the Buddhists are so very careful of that word, of course, or don't even use it.

But that is, that dimension that frees us from identification with our individual self. And I must say, I don't see how we could free ourself from our identification from our individual self unless we are open to this infinite dimension, which we call God. 

But it's not just infinite, that would be a kind of quality, quantitative dimension. But it is superlative, it is paramount.  It's the very (paragan) of what we mean by excellence. 

Now, we're going to encounter this in the course of this retreat.  I've already say it now. 

You see the thing about prayer, is that one is projecting upon one's representation of God excellent qualities in oneself that one is awakening and transmuting. 

And so it has an operational value. otherwise, one would be trying to obtain illumination for oneself, you see, which is the ultimate selfishness. 

So if you think of that, how can I say the implications of that when you look at the kind of things that are pursued in different religions and in different schools, meditation schools and spiritual groups and so on. Perhaps you see, well you see why you knocked at the door of the Sufis. 

Because, well particularly Pir-o-Murshid, what he's saying is the concept of God is the first step. But the second one is the experience. And the third one is awakening to the God within. 

Experience, you are the subject experiencing other than yourself, experiencing God. 'h, one doesn't experience God, but whatever clues are there. 

No one is able to detect the awakening of God within. That's what we are trying to do in this retreat. And what Pir-o-Murshid says is that the objective of the whole of existence is the awakening of the Divine Consciousness and perhaps you could say the consciousness of the Universe, which is hidden in matter. 

So that our bodies participate in our experience. That's the reason for the Zikr. Because the body is participating in the building of the temple and being transformed and using faculties and the body faculties that are not generally utilized, awakening them. Now that's awakening the God within. 

So now what would be a practical application of this, you're talking to a person who was absolutely caught up in the worldly, the usual way of thinking in the world. And somehow, you don't want to be offstandish and you know, sanctimonious and judgmental. 

 Or how do you do it? Play the game? Like you play a game with children? But keep your attunement? 

See what kind of mode of thinking is at play in that pursuit of worldly interest. There's a kind of mode, a certain mode of thinking. I'll try to say this a little more explicitly. 

Because a few years ago we were, I was making a visit to a Rishi in the Himalayas, in a cave, we were a group of people, because it was a very dangerous jungle. A lot of dangerous animals, wild animals.

 And they, one of the members of the group asked that Rishi what, in my mind I considered to be a stupid question, and he was in his state of ecstasy and you could see him trying to come down into the mind of that person. To try to understand how one could possibly think the way that person was thinking. Well that is really the, I would say that it illustrates exactly what we need to do. If we want to maintain the attunement of the sacred. 

While you're talking to people you can see what is motivation behind what they are saying. But, if you have the same motivation.

Well then you give yourself, you say to yourself well if that's what your pursuing well then, okay, well then you get on with it, but if you're pursuing the sacred, then you've got to do something about it.

Now, what I'm saying I must be careful. Because, it could lead one to being judgmental. And what I'm saying is, that the way out of the circle, the vicious circle is not by the pursuit of freedom. 

 Although that would be the first conclusion one could come to.  Certainly it plays a role, freedom from commission, but is love. 

The way out of the circle that one is caught in, is love. That is caring for others. 

So it's, disparaging greed is still negative. And even disparaging it in oneself, in fact, you cannot overcome those elements that we attribute to the world, in yourself by wanting to free yourself from them. It doesn't work. They would come back in some way. 

But, by really caring for people. Because then you make the necessary adjustments in yourself. 

I'm sorry. It sounds like a sermon. We're trying to get down to the real issues in our lives. So I want you to look into your situations, and because I'm sure these are all kinds of issues that you have encountered at sometime on your path. 

So instead of saying, well right, love is the way out of the circle, ask yourself, what are your motivations in your relationship with people. 

Are you trying to get something out of them or is it, are you giving them something. And are you simply just middle of them or are you creating a gulf between them or are you seeing their real being behind the surface by mirroring it in yourself. So that they will discover themselves in you, through you. 

And therefore, they will be able to go through the same process that you are going through in your quest for the sacred because people are really, it's difficult for people to accept it, I mean to admit it. 

But if one could probe the depth of the deepest feelings of people, the need for the sacred is absolutely overwhelming. It's just that one, it doesn't seem realistic. 

One doesn't know how to do it. That's what we're trying to explore is how to do it.

So the Zikr is the practice which gives you some kind of a support system, not quite like going to the church or sitting on a prayer carpet or circumambulating the temple in (Bodia). 

But still, I must be say that there are those that, let's see, I call it the support system. The set up. It does affect one very deeply. 

For example going to, I remember sitting in, listening to high mass, Gregorian of course in those days, in (Matzarat) in a monastery in Spain. And the whole atmosphere was so sacred. Of course, you couldn't help by feeling uplifted. 

Or, well there was, in (Bogay?) of course, in nighttime, when all the tourist had left. There were just a few monks remaining and bowing a thousands of times and lifting their bodies up again and bowing again. The whole atmosphere, the lights. Thousands of candles, the whole atmosphere was, of course, very uplifting.  There is no doubt about it.

Or a, Murshid in (Hydrabad?) who was, many people a lot of people came to say the Zikr with him. But when you talked to him then you found that he was very (diplomatic). But still there was that atmosphere then. It was uplifting. 

Well that's the support, what I call the support system. Now, we are called upon to do without the support system. Because the support systems at our disposal have become less and less effective. 

I hoped that I'm not being too judgmental. But a, it's very rare to find a situation that is so holy that you are just moved to, in the depth of your being. overwhelmed by it. 

So there is a kind of set up, as I say, it's a, I don't want to use the word show, but still costumes and lights and incense and, but a life is becoming harder in every way. And it is becoming more exacting in the spiritual realm. 

We need to create the sense of the sacred out of our own being and not rely upon outward support. And it's a matter of really being conscious of that all the time in the course of everyday life.  It's much easier to do it in your meditation room. But, I mean, in everyday life, that's well we're being challenged in our time. And so I would say that the spiritual challenge of our time is more exacting, than anything in the past. 

And it will give you the ultimate sense of the meaningfulness of your life. 

So, I think we need a little break now. Let's see, twenty-five minutes, so if we were to start again at a quarter to eleven.



FEB 14, 1997		Tape 03

The music is our support system. It works directly in our soul and gets it in a sacred attunement. 

As I said before, the practice of the dhikr evidences the ability to invite the body to participate in ones realization, in ones awakening, and perhaps even contribute towards it. So if you seek samadhi you'll be sitting still in what the Hindus call assana, but if you, that is if you try to waken beyond life, into the void. But if you try to waken in life then your body has to participate in your experience. 

Your body has to participate in your experience.

Let's say, I'm thinking of a word of Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan who says, that I quoted, the consciousness, the Divine Consciousness buried in matter being awakened. So by using the body as a support system for your realization, you are also awakening the very consciousness that you are seeking for which is buried within your own body. 

So instead of seeking it outside, it's right there. And that's very important, because in so many esoteric schools there's a kind of pejorative contempt for the body whereas the body is the place of the divine sacrament. But, of course, it's got to be purified and sanctified. 

The first, we're going to go through different stages of the dhikr, four different, five different stages. And see, you think of these stages as signalling to us different modes of realization. Though each stage in the dhikr corresponds to a mode of realization. So it's, you have a signal, now this, now you're passing from, moving outward, toward moving within, now you're passing from moving within moving upwards, and now you're descending from upwards with what one calls self-transcendence, and so on. Different stages in the dhikr are telling you, now we are shifting our consciousness into this other dimension, or mode of thinking. Now we have to describe what these different modes of thinking are. And they are different settings of consciousness. 

Well, I'm thinking that the body, it is a mistake for us to limit the body to what we see, to what we think is solid substance, because consider the body as a magnet, and so the magnet, as you know, exudes a magnetic field, and as a matter of fact it is probably the other way round. It is probably, the magnetic field is probably the template in which the magnet is configured. 

So don't think of your magnetic field as other than your body, but as the very foundation of your body, and therefore, I think it's useful right from the beginning as you're doing the practice of the dhikr to think that you are swirling that field force, or force field, or light field, which is, of which the magnetic field of the body is just one item. 

The magnet has become a dynamo. By moving the magnet, it's, the magnetic, the power of the magnetic field is increased tremendously. 

And you may notice that, if you're doing the first part of the dhikr that you seem to develop an incredible magnetic power which would act as a healing power. Healing yourself and healing all those who come in contact with you and even the persons you think of. 

Eventually you will find that that power emerges from within. But to start with you're not conscious of that you're just simply. 

And simply do that with me now for the moment. 

Think that, well, at first it seems that you're describing a circle. You're head is facing your left shoulder and then your left knee, and then your right knee and then your right shoulder, and turning right up towards the zenith, and then you're. 

Well, let's just do that for the time being, and as I said there's different stages. So, it's a circle.

Now to start with while you're doing this, making this circle, be aware of this field, force field around your shoulders and around your chest and your back and eventually even your head that is being enhanced by the circle of motion. 

I hope you can feel it, can feel this force emanating from what you think is your body.

And you can feel it extending and dispersing in the magnetic field of the cosmos.

Further and further. And so you're describing wider and wider circles.

And think of it as a spiral instead of a circle.

Extending spiral.

Now just think of, well, the planet earth has it's magnetic field, force field, and so you're swirling a kind of vortex, a kind of whirlpool, whirlwind, within the magnetic field of the planet, and it is reaching right into the whole of this field, it's affecting this field. Everything is interrelated. And that this circle of motion that you're doing is perhaps one of the basic, most basic, how can I say, processes that we inherit from the stars and the galaxies and the planets and of course the atoms, the molecules, atoms, electrons, that we're doing something very, very basic. We're getting right down to rock bottom. The basic way the forces of life are moving, are rotating, in what one might call the choreography of the heavens.

So, it's not anymore, you're not simply conscious of your own field but the way that you're, that your own field is in some way the expression of the dynamic force field of the whole cosmos. You're, just think of the stars and galaxies. And think that you're entirely, you're like a star yourself. You're, I think a planet. You're part of the whole choreography. 

And now, you'll do this, think that the consciousness within this fabric of the cosmos that we call our bodies that consciousness is being awakened, and expands into the universe, out of which it originates. 

So now, it's not with just your field but your consciousness becomes wider and wider, more and more encompassing. Until you realize that it's so much a part of a consciousness of the cosmos that you have difficulty in thinking of it as your personal consciousness. 

Now, we were at first thinking of the physical world, now think of the psyche of people, and so your consciousness is expanding and reaching into the psyche that is the thoughts and the feelings and the consciousness of more and more people. As I said this morning.

And think of them as other yourselves with whom you resonate. You're in a state of resonance.

So you're reaching, your consciousness is extending into their consciousness and their consciousness is thereby accessing your consciousness. 

And now think of that saying of Pir o Murshid which says "Everything that is thought of by a person is what the whole of humanity thinks but comes through that particular person in a more concrete way." So think of not only your consciousness but your thoughts are surfacing out of the consciousness and the thinking of the whole cosmos. 

By the fact of whirling and reaching out you're able to access more and more of the bounty of the consciousness and the thinking of the universe. 

And you feel that. That expansion of your consciousness because it is the consciousness of the cosmos. Let us say, broadening the walls of that prison so that it's not a prison any more.

Perhaps you remember Marcel Marceau who was the mime who was showing, giving the impression of being enclosed, walled in a very small space, and then pushing the walls further and further away and eventually he was dancing the dance of freedom.

So, it's, the first step out of the circle is the spiral. And so, think of what we mean by the circle being caught up in a repetitive state where you're, one is simply repeating the same mistakes and thinking the same thoughts and behaving in the same manner and expressing the same qualities, and wallowing in the same emotions and that's repetitiveness just like wall paper that keeps on repeating itself. There's nothing gained.

So that's a circle.

And now you're moving. You're not escaping from the circle on a tangent, but you're expanding the circle so that it may encompass more and more of the bounty of the universe and consequently not only your consciousness is expanding, but your notion of yourself, your self image is going to become more and more encompassing and more bountiful, of course, and become more cosmic of course and therefore manifest much more qualities and they've more qualities in a perfected way than they have done so far.

You're on the way to, from being a puny being to becoming a cosmic being. 

And accept the gift of that bounty. 

Be very careful about a false sense of humility which is perhaps a distorted pride. Pride in much humility. 

Now, finally, can you reverse your vantage point. (incomplete)

FEB 14, 1997		Tape 04

So this morning we worked with the first stages in the zikr, whirling our head and upper body and identifying with our magnetic field, at least the zone of the electromagnetic field that surrounds the body. Now perhaps you know that the magnet has an electric field within it and not just outside it. The other thing is that if you are whirling as a dervish for example or as we were doing in the zikr, and you'll find that you will be generating centrifugal forces, that is forces that reach out, but at the same time you'll be generating centripetal forces that draw you toward the center, like in a centrifuge for example. So while you are whirling and your consciousness is expanding and extending and your notion of yourself also, you might feel a kind of pull toward the center of your being, and toward your solar plexus. And that becomes, that is most effective when your head is turned upwards at the end of the upward motion of your head, turned toward the zenith that is the moment when you are most vulnerable, just like an airplane that has slowed down to the point when it starts stalling, and at that moment you will respond to the pull of the center of the vortex which is a void. And consequently you have the impression of being drawn inside. 

Now this is accompanied by a real need to get in touch with ones deeper self, a sense that one's, that one is wearing a mask and is playing a role in life and is only experiencing the surface of life and that one misses out, one is missing out on what is within, and, which is trying to emerge from within towards outside. So this of course must remind you of a feeling that you have when you're meditating when you feel that meditation consists in turning within. one, at first one does not quite understand what that means, so one thinks that it means that one is not experiencing the physical environment but one can very easily slip into encapsulating oneself in ones psyche and ones thoughts and ones emotions and thinking that that's what it means to turn within. And of course once more one is applying the same kind of dual situation that one finds when one is experiencing the life outside, the duality between subject and object. So you are the observer observing your thoughts. Now that is, some people think that is meditation. I would say that one is waylaid into a further kind of deception. One is not deceived by the appearance of the outer world nor by the way that ones problems appear but one is being deceived by, as we've already seen, by one's assessment of ones problems, by the games played by the mind, by the self image one makes of oneself, with which one identifies. 

So that to turn within you have to consider your thoughts as external to your being, not just the physical world, not just the environment but your thoughts. That is you have to withdraw deeper into yourself, then where your thoughts are and then you'll distinguish amongst your thoughts and now notice because its very important the difference between those thoughts that are reactions to the impressions coming from outside and those thoughts that emerge from within. Now that is the criteria. Because if you sit in meditation and you try to turn within and you are just exposed to the thoughts, the random thoughts as a matter of fact, that emerge from outside, then you will not be any closer to reality than when you are experiencing the world as it appears from outside. Because that's what we're seeking for is what is, let's say, what is hidden behind all that appears at the surface. That includes the mind. So can you do that now, and then we'll go, we'll make the next step. So now the way to do it is to remember, of course, what we did this morning. In the circle, as you exhale and when the head turns toward the zenith then you allow the pull of your solar plexus to draw your, to have an impact on your head consequently you'll turn your head toward your solar plexus, as you inhale, very suddenly. 

And you might feel that you are like a vortex and at the center of the vortex is a void, there is a vacuum And while the vortex is spreading out at its ragged ends, and disintegrating at its ragged ends, it is also resorbed in its center, into the void. Now the, allergist having done that, let us, we don't have to keep on making the motion of the body because, well you can think of it, but let us try and see what happens to our thinking as we turn within. See, your thoughts are reactive if you're concerned about what's happening outside. I said this morning if the sun is in the sky your can't see the stars. So if you are, if your attention is drawn towards the events in the environment or even the memory of the events in the environment and that includes the social environment and the psychological environment, then of course there's no way of grasping what's behind it all. And consequently the only way to be able to reach deeper within yourself is by an attitude of what is called detachment, or indifference. In the east it is called vayaragia(sp?). which is of course that particular special quality you find amongst the sanyasins, amongst the hermits in the Himalayas. Now my objective is certainly not to follow the way of the sanyasin nor to teach that way to people who have a sense of responsibility in everyday life but there's something that one can learn from that attitude of serenity and peacefulness so that one does not get flustered by the concerns of ones relationship with the interface with the environment. 

And hopefully one will be able to see the impact of ourselves upon our problems instead of the impact of the problems upon ourselves. So that problems cannot always be solved by dealing with them in a perfunctory way but by transforming ourselves, as I've already said this morning. And therefore it is necessary to get in touch with what I call our deeper selves. Could you consider the features of your personality as just an outcome, a secondary effect of a deeper reality of your being, let's say, the seed bed of your personality. Exactly like a flower, for example, is an expression of the bountiful code of possibilities, potentialities that are present within its roots. So could you, now what we need to do now is shift our sense of identity. And instead of identifying with the totality as we did this morning in the cosmic dimension, now consider that which one identifies oneself of ones being is not ones being, it is a notion a self image it is not what one really is. As I said before, this morning we are devising all kinds of strategies in order to cope with problems outside and those strategies of course are self deceptive and will hide from our view whom we really are. And I think that we all want to know who we really are. As long as we, our minds are filled with the thoughts and devices related to those strategies then we can never find our real selves.

That can make all the difference. So if you will accept that your personality and the notion that you make of yourself which is based upon what you think of your personality is only like the flower, like the outer expression of your deeper self. And can you now simply think that you're performing a role in life, the challenge of life exacts of you to play your part in the drama. So in a sense we are acting although we don't quite realize it, filling, that we are filling that role and could you consider that your face particularly is a mask and behind that role, which is your way of adapting to the environment is your real self which is not affected by your adaptation to the environment. The deeper core of your being that remains really you whatever role you're playing. And consider, behind your face is your real countenance. 

Which may transpire through the features of your face but it might not be very obvious because, well, we've inherited from the fabric of the cosmos through the inheritance of our parents so what we really are is often covered by ancestral inheritance and very often, of course, the role we are playing in our societies, our education, our upbringing. So those are, let's say, layers of our being that have accrued to us in the course of our sojourn on the planet, but if you would peel off those layers then you'd discover your real being. Now I find that it is helpful to try to espy the features of ones countenance behind ones face because you see the whole of the process of existence consists in the configuration of something that does not have a form, into a form. Lets say that countenance is somewhere in between our attunement and our face. Somewhere between the two is this subtle reality. They're the features of our subtle body not of our physical body, which as I say sometimes transpired, but not always, and cannot always be seen. So in order to do this you have to try to identify yourself with your subtle body, or etheric body. We already said that it's like the template behind the body. 

The first step is to try to feel the area of the force field around your skin, that's what we did this morning, which doesn't have contours it doesn't have a profile, but still it does espouse to some extent the form of the body. The next step is to shift your attention towards the internal field within the body which also is configured to some extent according to the features of the body. Now if you can do both of these things, first one outside and then second one inside. That means not to identify with your body at all. You might notice that the subtle body is a little bit like a cloud. Well, I meant it's not substantial like the physical body. It is diaphanous, it is moving, and it keeps on changing. So I think we must be weary of thinking that we can actually capture the features of our real being because those features are changing all the time according to our attunement and our thoughts. But there, of course, is something basic in it. But if you have done this right then you know it, you know 'this is me'. Now think to yourself "all this time I was identifying with a faulty representation of who I am. And now all of a sudden, there's no way of describing it , but all of a sudden I know who I am". 

Of course, it is the features of this, the continually changing features of this etheric double, are the way that qualities, we call them divine qualities, qualities that govern the whole existential world configure themselves in each one of us in a unique way. You understand what I say? For example, in music a student in composition is trained to make variations on a theme. So lets say that, for example, the divine power, the divine joy, the divine purity, the divine truth, whatever, is customized in each one of us in our idiosyncrasies in a very unique way. So what I suggest then is to try to, if you can feel your etheric double. At first it feels amorphous, and now concentrate on a quality. And in order to concentrate on a quality, it is helpful to imagine a scene. For example, imagine that you're walking in the moonlight along a lake in a peaceful environment with no wind. There you seem to be in a transfigured world. And if you concentrate on that scene, that landscape, one calls it the landscape of the soul, notice the features of your, the face of your etheric double. The beautiful serenity, that is very often illustrated in the statues of Buddha, as compared with the features that your etheric, the face of your etheric double, the countenance of your etheric double, are going to, is going to assume if you think of a scenario rather than a scene in which people are being wounded and your heart goes out to them and you feel like giving them all the succor and support in their pain that you can. 

So you see now that the features of that subtle body are going to be totally different. So that scenario is going to awaken potential qualities in yourself, by arousing them, so that they eventually fashion the very fabric of your subtle body. And if this is done repeatedly then these features will become adamant and will enrich your whole being. of course. Now imagine another scenario in which you need to exercise a lot of control, mastery. And just conjure up a scene, a scenario, which requires a lot of mastery on your part. Now see what happens to you, the face of your etheric body. And not only just the face but the whole demeanor of your whole etheric body is now very different from the one in which you were relaxed when you were simply, practically, floating along a lake in the moonlight. So thanks to these imaginary landscapes we are discovering a variety of features in our real being as, I call it, that would not have appeared if we had not done so. And that shows the impact of circumstances in our self discovery and also in the unfolding of our potentialities. 

All right, now let us imagine, instead of imagining a landscape or skyscrape, let us represent ourselves a situation in our lives, a situation in which in your relationship with people, in which you've been able to experience a state of serenity, when both of you were in a state of resonance or then a situation in which you feel peacefulness is being called for. That situation demands of you, or requires of you, to find a peaceful state in order to meet that situation. And as I say, don't just imagine the attunement but the features of your etheric face because that makes it much more concrete. You can really identify with it. Now imagine a person who is suffering and particularly, of course, if we have been the cause of that suffering, perhaps unconsciously or involuntarily. But you see, this will help us arouse qualities in ourselves which would not be awakened if we tried to develop them. It's because we are meeting a challenge for our time that they emerge. I'm saying that particularly because those of you who are repeating wazifas, the wazifa doesn't do it for you, just by repeating the word, it doesn't do it for you. It's, you have to be able to envision that quality being called for in a live situation and what is more, to be even more concrete, the features of your, not just the face of the etheric body, but the whole attitude of your etheric double. That means the deeper reality behind your body. 

Now there's a further dimension to this and that is that quality that you are awakening or arousing in you is present in the whole universe and you are part, being part of the universe, it is latent within you. This is particularly important if we proceed to the next quality which is controlling, mastery. Because unless you think of your controlling power as the way that you're customizing the self organizing faculty of the universe in you, you will be on a power trip. Or then you might even feel that you don't have power, that you don't have authority, you don't have what it takes to have some impact on your life, situations. So this will help us get in touch with our deeper selves, what we call the seed bed of our personality. And so the next step would be to think of your real being, what you call your real being, instead of thinking of it as static, think of it as continually unfurling. So instead of saying "this is me", you will say "this is how I am becoming." This is very important because, perhaps you know, that in the Jewish translation of the ancient old testament the voice of the bushel doesn't say "I am that I am" it says "I am that I become". It makes all the difference. 

Your real being in becoming. Or otherwise you get sclerosed into a static sense of identity which can never change. Now, so far we have been working with the electromagnetic field. Actually the electromagnetic field is just one factor in what one might call the life field which includes many other factors. If you will allow yourself to be drawn deeper into the ground of your being, into beyond what one, I mean deeper than what one can define, therefore into the unknown. Then, I don't know what's been helpful to you, it has been very helpful to me to see in it a state which has been discovered by physicists, in particular by Dr. David Boehm, and (....). That is by neutralizing the electromagnet field, one reaches a deeper level of physical reality, which is called a (scalla?) field. I don't know, some of you have some notion of physics. Deeper down than the electromagnetic field. And which is potential instead of actual. And the best way to describe, to illustrate it, would be, for example, a tug of war between two teams of people pulling a rope in opposite directions. And if the forces are equal there is an energy there that is only potential, the energy is not active it is potential. 

So to realize that potential reality does help you, how can I say, to assist in the transit from the void into the existential realm. I don't know if I'm saying this..It's very difficult to say this. You can capture your creativity as it passes the threshold from the known into the unknown. It would be something like giving support to the fresh petals in the center of the flower, instead of identifying with the jaded petals that are falling apart. You see, because when we, now our sense of our self image, we often identify with aspects of ourselves that would be better if they fell apart. And we're even attached to them. Whereas now we are really getting right down to the core, to that immaculate core, and that's called rebirthing. That's what we're doing, actually. If you can capture that. Of course it's like the crocuses under the snow and then when the snow thaws you are just able to perceive that little shoot that starts emerging from the snow, something like that, just the emergence of your new being. That actually is calling for your support and if you don't give it your support it will be still born. And that's what's happening to us all the time. We have this wonderful chance of changing and we're still attached to our old being or still identifying with our old being. And it's not like something that you can really hold, you know you can just sense how it's coming through without trying to pin it down, trying to hold it, to define it. No, there's no way. It's purely spontaneous. 

You cannot determine it. It cannot be determined. It is the undetermined. So can you think like that in your retreat. Think "my new being is trying to come through but it needs my attention, it needs my protection, it needs my support." My protection, that means I must protect against my self image which belies it. It's absolutely incongruous, we don't believe in our real self but we believe in our false self. Totally counterproductive. But our real self is coming through, that's the pull of the future. So you see, if you go to a psychotherapist you are concerned about the past, you are to be healed from the wounds through the abuse that you've suffered. Unless the psychotherapist is a very visionary person and is able to see that the real issue is not healing but opening a new door for you. I say that because when I was studying psychology in the Sorbonne, in the department of psychiatry, there was a woman, let's say, mentally deranged, and she said, "The doctors are trying to draw me back to where I was and that's where they are. 

Side 2

They have no idea where I am. I can't return to where I was before by the same door that I came into the state in which I am now. I can only come out of the state in which I am by another door." So that door is your rebirthing, because it has nothing to do with the past, it is not the consequence of the past. It's fresh, spontaneous, new, unpredictable. It will cure you from the past without trying to cure yourself from the past in order to rebirth. You might think you have to cure yourself before your can rebirth. It's the other way around, by rebirthing you get cured. And that little baby being that is unfurling is so much more beautiful than what we've made of it. So we can learn a lot from babies and we can learn a lot from the baby in ourselves. That is uncontaminated and which carries the hope of a fresh beginning. Think of the past, it is jaded, there's no hope. Hope is in the future. The key to creativity is optimism, is to believe that things can be absolutely wonderful. To overcome our doubts. Actually that's the only way to be creative. otherwise we'll be grinding the wheel again, even grinding to a halt. So that, you see, it's true that the cosmos has a way of self organizing itself but that self organizing faculty needs to be carried further by our own initiative, incentive. 

We need to customize it in our own manner. And so we are offered all these possibilities, but what we make of these possibilities, that is our own decision and free will, our incentive. And that requires of you to project a picture of the way that you could be if you would be as you might be. A very clear picture. So up to the present we are trying to grasp our real being behind all the features of our etheric face. And now we're trying to see how it could be, or how it is becoming, or how it could be becoming. You see the future carries an infinity of possibilities and in the past all the possibilities have been exhausted. And which of those possibilities is actualized depends upon your choice. So you notice that when one is turning within there are really two stages in one, let's say. One is moving from outside inside and the other is moving from the inside outside. And you'll find that in the zikr because after making a circle, the head turns toward the solar plexus, one inhales. One's inhaling is divided in two halves. In fact, their really divided into three, thirds, because the first one is the emergence of our new being that is through the power of creative imagination. And then we'll go further, but I don't want to move too fast, take each stage in its turn. So what I'm saying is that in order to be creative of ourselves and also to be creative as an artist, for example, one needs to first turn within and then one needs to capture what is coming through so that it doesn't dissolve and give it a very definite form. 

In the case of a musician is giving it a, is turning it into a melody. In the case of a dancer, she or he is translating that emergent emotion into a posture or a movement. I say that emergent emotion but that emotion is also associated with a breakthrough of realization. All of a sudden, you are seeing things in a way that you haven't seen before, triggered off by the emotion. That is seeing how things could be, that is the breakthrough of realization. An American wazifa for that is "What if". That is, never take anything for granted, never. Like Einstein, he didn't pass his test at the university because he didn't agree with his professor. but he saw where his professor was simply taking things for granted. And the same thing is true of yourself. Don't take your, take it for granted that you need to continue to be who you are, I mean who you have manifested in your personality. That's our prison. Now all that I'm saying is related to a view which has been outlined by a great physicist, Dr. David Bohem (sp). Who says that we experience is only the explicitation of a deeper reality that he calls the implicate, which is very close to the Hindu theory of Maya, but no, it doesn't say that but what it says is we see is only the way that this reality appears, which is exactly what the Sufis are saying. 

Now you can translate this in terms of our thinking. And so there's what you imply behind what you explain and in a retreat, wherever it is possible, we observe silence. And it's very awkward when you are in a group and you want somebody to pass the bread. And that's why we're not doing it now, because these conditions would make it really much too hard. But if you have experienced a silent retreat, especially in solitude, then you realize how language distorts our thinking. We are explicating what we imply by the means at our disposal, which is language, which reflects the limitation in the common place mind. It means that we have to, that our mind is constrained by the kind of general way of thinking but is, perhaps you feel that your mind wishes to explode the limitations in its thinking. It becomes, in a sense, of being suffocated by the having to conform to the commonplace thinking, especially creative people. And if you have the courage, and that means that you need to question the only logic, actually. And it's only quite recently that physicists are beginning to say that. For example, (dispania), is beginning to say that if we want to move further in physics we have to discard our ordinary logic because it is totally inadequate. So it is a way of thinking in which you see things in their context instead of seeing things as categories, because our languages are categories, like Emanuel Kant, Categories of Reason. And categories are static, whereas thinking is dynamic, in fact our language proves it because we say our thoughts are static, thinking is dynamic. 

Thoughts are abstractions from the reality behind it because it is a dynamic process of thinking. So when you are on retreat the way to turn within is to be wary of thoughts. That's the way of freeing yourself, emancipating ourselves from the impact of random thoughts is to consider those thoughts are simply broken off fragments of a deeper process of thinking. And if you draw attention towards those disintegrated pieces of your thinking, you never get in touch with your real thinking. Now real thinking is not reactive. It's not an autopsy of events. It's spontaneous and we're killing our spontaneous thoughts by trying to analyze the situations. And that's what most people are doing in meditation and it will lead nowhere. In fact it's most deceptive. Now I'll give you a illustration which I've often given of the reactive mind. I've given it many times, it gets rather stale, I've given it so many times. It's illustrated by the 4th Piano Concerto by Beethoven. The important thing is he refuses to play ball with the challenge of the environment as though he were to say to them , to whoever it is who's challenging him, 'I need to get in touch with my deeper self. I can't just, you know, normally if your reacting its like a short circuit, you're short circuiting the resourcefulness in your being. So in meditation you are able to place a buffer between the reaction of life and spontaneous thinking and therefore all the resourcefulness of your thinking are able to come through because you don't feel hard pressed upon to react quickly to the challenge. 

So that buffer is indifference. That's what I mentioned when I talked about Vayaragia(sp?) the attitude of the sanyasins. Find in yourself a kind of, well of course, it is an expression of your freedom. The ability to not be dependent upon conditions, I've already said that, but further deeper down to watch how you're affected by the circumstances and be able if you can to maintain your calm. Difficult in the course of every day life because one adapts oneself to the environment, to the rhythm, to the manner of behaving of people, but when meditating of course you can find that serenity. So it is that, indifference is the word used, which will enable you to not turn your attention towards the thoughts that are knocking at the door of your mind. So you are able to tell those thoughts, "I'm not in the mood to play ball with you now. I want consult my deeper self." That's detachment. So we can learn from the way of, how can I say, the emotion of this attunement of the sanyasin. We can learn that detachment in the middle of life, and that is, you know, there is a real dichotomy here, antinomy, that Pir o'Murshid points out between interest and indifference. 

And it is very paradoxical. For one thing, he says everything that has been accomplished in life has been the result of interest. But your motivation to accomplish whatever your want to accomplish limits your power. In fact, he says, accomplishment is more important than what's accomplished. If you are indifferent to the ... action that you find in the Bagavadgita then your power is infinite. Its a paradoxical, its a great secret, in fact its a secret of what the dervishes call the divine power, is to pursue action but not target the result. And so in some way that is finding some kind of blend between detachment and interest, or indifference and interest. The Pir o'Murshid goes further and he says that what one desires robs one of ones freedom. But I say, he says it, but you must see that you have choices sometimes. I'm not saying it's bad to desire, to want something, but one has to know that because, as Emerson says, "be careful for what you wish because it might come true." Better caught in the wheel. So what I am saying then is to turn within in the retreat is not good enough just to try to turn, in fact if you try to turn within you can't, you're continuing to function the way you are functioning in the world except that now your targeting your thoughts instead of your events in the world, outside. Still dichotomy, subject, object. So it means that it is only your detachment that will, from, well, its not from the impact of the environment its from your interest in the environment. 

That's what gives the environment power over you. The key is in detachment. So maybe we can toggle between action and life. That is our interest that enables us to accomplish and then in meditation to reverse so that one can see what is enacted in ones action. And that's where indifference is your protection. otherwise you can't see your real motivation behind it, behind your action. Now Murshid uses words which seem to trigger off realizations. For example, as you turn within you're beginning to sense the essence behind what appears on the surface. The essence or the quintessence. He says for example, you get to a point when you are able to experience in the seed that which you normally would perceive in the flower. So in every day life our attention is on what appears on the surface, but as you turn within, you are not concerned, or rather if you are concerned with what's happening outside then there's no way of turning within. As I said, when the sun's in the sky you can't see the stars. So somehow you're able to capture, as I call it, what is enacted behind situations. I think, you see it's very difficult to say this. I think it is the code behind the programming and the difference between the ram and the ROM in the computer, and there's more to it than that. 

You get to a point when, well we all, of course, our objective is reality. So you get to a point where you are getting close to capturing the reality behind events. Its like that (scala) level in physics. So in terms of everyday life it is being to able to earmark that which is essential as compared to that which is contingent in your lives. We are using that word essential. It is essential or quintessential. The consequence is a kind of peeling off of a lot of things that are contingent and not important , things that are not important. It's like a perfume, something quite, that you can't capture, undefined. But that's reality. Now there's a practice that certainly helps us to turn within. It's a practice that I suggest we do on our retreat and not in our every day life, because it makes us other worldly. What Murshid is saying is consciousness isn't only turned without, towards outside. Now if you put a barrier in the way of your communication between your consciousness and what lays outside, then consciousness is going to turn within. So there's a practice, a Hindu practice, which is called yoni mudra, and the Sufis call it shagal. So you can do this practice, but I must ask you not to do it on your own because and especially not to do it a lot on your own because it makes you other worldly. And that's what psychotherapist indict the special groups of making people otherworldly, so the special bypass. Perhaps you also know there's a psychological bypass too. And also sometimes bypass is very useful. So now, are you ready for the practice now? 

So, well, turn your eyeballs upwards. In fact, one can't really do this, but one can think that your eyes are turned inside, they might be slightly converged. And place the indexes of your hands on the bottom eyelids so that you don't press on the cornea, that means the retina of your eyes. Because that's what creates optical illusions. And don't press. I mean just very gently, just simply obstruct the vision. And then place the fourth and fifth finger on your lips and the middle fingers in the proximity of your nostrils. Now then simply breathe in through your right nostril. Press the middle finger of your right hand, hold your breath and exhale through the right nostril. Now you'll be placing your fingers in your ears to obstruct the perception of sound. But now before you do, only inhale through the right nostril. Hold your breath. Exhale through the right nostril three breaths. After which you take away your fingers and keep your eyes closed, and remain in silence for some time. So I hope it see it has a dramatic effective on your consciousness that gets (?) and turns within, and after that it's a little bit difficult to reach outside. Just like swimming under the surface of the water. And you remember that when you were swimming at the surface there were lotus flowers or water lilies. But now that you're swimming underneath the water, the surface, you can see it is a network of roots that surface in the form of flowers. 

When you were swimming at the surface your saw separate flowers but you couldn't see how they interconnected. But when you swim underneath you see that are all connected by a network. Now from this inverted vantage point think of your problems. Now you see them look totally different. Because you see how they're all related. You see them in their context as one says, instead of their content. It's a whole web of situations, complex. And therefore it is not your problem. Your problem doesn't end anywhere, it is your sharing, as I said this morning, in the drama of the universe. And now can you see if you can reach a person from this inverted space because, of course, you could visualize how it could be if you were to journey to visit a person and talk with that person. But how different it is if you're able to transfer your consciousness into the consciousness of that person and see how that person feels and thinks. And see that person through that persons eyes as if through your eyes and see how you look through the eyes of that person. Now I don't know whether you have that strange sense of dejavu that I have when doing this. It's like ones youth is right there in the present , doesn't seem to be in the past, everything is intertwined, intermeshed like (??) waves, like reminiscence of a state that is not in ones usual memory, somehow in a very deep memory somewhere. In fact you find yourself in a transfigured world. 

And so you know that you can switch your consciousness and offset your consciousness from its usual setting. Even though when speaking to a person and all of a sudden you're communing beyond time and space in a wonderful way, kind of magic. And you have a sense of realness as compared with the way that things appeared in your ordinary consciousness. That's what happened to St. Francis walking in the forest. That he could get into the consciousness of the trees and of the birds. It's a very different experience than thinking that you are the subject that is experiencing. And then there's the measuring effect. You are measuring other people and they're measuring you. And so for the Sufis the world is a palace of mirrors. So now just breathe heavily as you exhale. Start moving your fingers, hands, and stretching yourselves. So you can switch over from one setting of consciousness to another at will. So you don't have to be other worldly permanently, just at will. 

FEB 15, 1997		Tape 05

Combined reaching out and turning within and alternating between the two. And then tomorrow morning we will be taking flight in the transcendental dimension we are moving gradually into in the sikhir. If you remember, the kind of thoughts and attunements, the settings of consciousness we developed when we were moving in the circle we called it the cosmic dimension. And then of course we remember more easily what we did in the beginning of this afternoon as we turned within. So now, as you see the motion in the sikhir is like a signal telling us now you extend our consciousness, now you turn it within. Now we won't go into very much detail into as to what it means, what it does to one, how you experience it. So, this is a time to freely do it. So what I stress is do the circle motion as you exhale, and the arrow, it's just like a bow and an arrow, as you inhale, or rather inhale as your head turns toward the solar plexus. (sikhir). If you do it slowly, you can feel you are getting to, well, things a bit more continent, you are reaching out, a sense of immensity, consciousness expanding with attunement. 

You look at your problems, self-image, gradually you get into the cosmic consciousness, and you see things from the cosmic point of view, or try to see things from the cosmic point of view. And then the opposite as you turn within, drawn into the void, you turn within, I hope you remember all the things we said, there is no way of repeating them, I spoke about the etheric counterpart to the magnetic field inside the body, and then still at a more basic level you reach into the obscure level where there is no, no energy is not actuated, its potential, and so that is touching upon the void. And that is of course the most extreme case of detachment, (inaudible), and renunciation, of the personal well. And usually of course you lose sight of what is happening when you pass a threshold into the void. And then out of the void, imagine something more, if you remember, so that your head does roll down after having hit the solar plexus there is a continuation of the inhaling and that is where your creating imagination starts customizing the self-organizing faculty of the universe. 

You see, we can talk about a thought, an emotional configuring as a form, but as soon as we, and then we talk about the form of our etheric body, and face, and so on, continence, but now let us, let me just point out the ability to imagine a form without matter- as your head moves upward after having reached the solar plexus, imagine yourself as a form without matter an imagined form. And may I say that one is really discovering one's being by becoming it. So instead of thinking to unfurl it, to discover it, by making it an image, by arousing it, by awakening it. 'kay? So let's do the movement, by not just thinking it, try to experience this in your retreat. So instead of saying I know my real self, I am discovering my real self by making it happen, by actuating it. And it is to the universe it is a measurement, a unique way, as it is in each one of us. (sikhir). We notice the power coming through you by an extreme sense of immensity, and your self-image more and more cosmic. (sikhir). And then the peace and the purity as you touch upon the immaculate state of your being, the solar plexus, the core of your being. Activity arising out of the stillness, just like the static Shiva becomes Natarota, starts dozing. (sikhir).

And can you just capture as I said, yourself , and as soon as you capture it you have some impact on it, when it's unconscious you don't have any course of effecting it, and so that is where the universe self-organizes itself in the void. And emerging from the void and at a certain point when your head comes up again, you are going to take responsibility of your being. Now to go deeper into the sikhir, we are going to circle and think of the word "la". And when you are turning within, " ill" so the "a" that is expansive becomes an "I" which is punctiform. As you notice when you say "I", the "I" is the vowel that represents the individuality and the "a" is cosmic. And then the "I", as your head rebounds, then the "la" emerges anew out of the "ill". So it's "La illaha-illa" - the "la" arises out of the " ill" as soon as your new being emerges over the threshold, from the ex nihilo, from the void into the world of activity. So the "la" of the circle, "la", is followed by "illaha", and it will be a bit complicated to describe all the significance of that. 

To put it simply your expansion, the expansion of your consciousness occurs on all levels, not just on the physical level, so we think of the physical universe and the vastness of space, and so on, but, even the expansion of our personality---it includes all levels of our being, so the "la" is followed, "la" is of course, there is a movement towards, let's say horizontal, towards outside, and the head is lifted and moves up in a circle, of course,"la", and, as I said, feel the power of the "la" which is freeing yourself from your limited sense of individuality. "La". And you are being part of the whole starry universe. "La". And all levels, angelic levels, all levels of reality. "La". "Illa". And that's as far as we go for the time being.

The "illa", the "I", marks a hiatus in the causal chain. That is, to be renewed, to be reborn, you have to overcome the conditioning of the past. So think of it as that the instant of time which intercepts the process of becoming so that new dispensations can be brought into the forward march of aviation, otherwise the future will be just be the consequence of the past. And that is true of yourself. So, that means one halts, it's just like the metronome or the pendulum that is moving in a swing and when it reaches a certain point in the swing it halts. (La la illa). So that interrupts the sumsanic wheel, the turning of the sumsanic wheel, or it interrupts, or gives access to the center which doesn't turn. That is the moment of the most utter freedom, that is the occasion to be what you want to be. To make a pledge that you will not continue to be what you are. To make a pledge to not continue to do the things you don't approve and to do the things you want to do and a pledge to be what you want to be. (Sikhir). So there's absolutely no thought of the environment or the environmental circumstances of being constrained within the qualities of one's personality. There's no sense of all of that. That is, one has withdrawn from those thoughts by the power of indifference. I mean one has emancipated oneself from the impact of these thoughts. It's like opening a new chapter. But, so far, I meant to place the action on your rebirthing, or our rebirthing, but it is really the whole universe that rebirths itself recurrently as each one of us. So it is the universe that is reborn as new, it is not you that is reborn. That is, emergent from the potential state into the existential state. You are awakening the god within. And the immaculate core of your being, which is the nature of a newborn baby. And I think that the baby in you is still there but keeps on being reborn, I was thinking that it keeps on being reborn recurrently. And now if you can, make the transit, so that you ward the baby against defilement. If you are conscious of the immaculate state, if you honor it, it helps avoiding to tarnish it.

Now you don't have to make the motion of your head, but I find it useful to use your exhaling or inhaling as a signal to shift the setting of your consciousness, your whole attunement. I find it, something, even if you don't move your body, something happens to your, maybe it is your etheric body, that expands as a spiral. (Sikhir). I find it easier to make a slight movement of the head, not an obvious motion, sort of an internal, very subtle motion. (Sikhir). I think that the important thing is inhaling as you concentrate on the solar plexus because it's as though when we're arousing a slumbering dimension of one's being, so that it may unfold in one's personality. And at the same time, think that, now when you think back about the circling motion, you realize that its that the jagged petals, the jagged ends of the flower have to fall apart. So it's a kind of acceptance of death, not that dramatic moment when one stops breathing but continual death, dying process that we're undergoing so that we may be renewed. 

END OF TAPE



3



FEB 15, 1997		Tape 06

There are two catch words in the spiritual realm: one is awakening and the other is illumination. And of course, as you know I'm wary of words because they become cliches, but what do they mean in terms of experience? Well the only way to know it is to experience it. I remember the words of Murshid when he says as we evolve, passion is awakened in you for the unattainable and I would say that of course that is awakening, but illumination would be a passion for light. And amongst all the meditations that we do, these are the meditations that are the most tangible for one thing, and also give us a sense of who we are, because finally we discover that we are beings of light and discover the whole universe is really the crystallization of the Big Bang which was an outburst of light. And, as Pir-o-Murshid says, of course, the consciousness that has been buried for eons of time in matter awakens within matter and so the consciousness of light can awaken in our body and I think that is what is called illumination.

So, we want to take advantage of this rare opportunity to experience what we are talking about. And that means developing the skills that will trigger off an experience which avers itself to be revealing. So I would say that to start with, I would like to contrast the light that our bodies absorb from the environment with the light that emerges from within, and then engages as our aura. 

There are two different sources of light. One is external and the other is internal. So the first one is we are talking for the moment about physical light and of course, different levels of light, but first step would be simply to become aware of the condition of the cells of one's body that absorb light from the stars, as a matter of fact, not just from the stars but from stars and galaxies but from cosmic rays, from neutrinos, from the whole ocean of light of the universe and somehow think of your body as a crystal that is absorbing light which is exactly what crystals do. They are not just refracting light or reflecting light. The electrons within the atoms themselves are modified by the intake of light, so think that something happens to your body by the sheer fact that you are absorbing light and if you know mind over body so that if you are conscious of what it does to the cells of your body, if you are conscious of the cells of your body beginning to jiggle and sparkle and radiate, fluorescent, fluoresce, then it will become a transforming experience.

So as you inhale, just think that you are immersed in the ocean of light of the universe and let us experience the ecstasy of light, the ecstasy of communing with light and also discovering yourself as a being of light and the crystal and the light and the way the crystal is transformed by the light. So when you hold your breath, then just experience the effervescence in the cells of your body. They begin to jiggle, as I say, sparkle, fluoresce, as one says, they divide faster than they would do ordinarily because they are availing themselves of this energy, because light is energy, they are feeding themselves with light and consequently what happens is what is called mitosis, the division of the cells is increased tremendously, so it has a therapeutic effect of course. But only if you, well, mainly if you can actually visualize the cells of your body and of course very difficult to visualize the atoms and molecules but one can, of course. I find it helpful to have a very clear sense of what is happening because that will increase the effectiveness of what is happening, of the impact of light on your body. You can literally feel the jiggling of the cells of your body. 

Each cell is endowed with a kind of some sort of minimal consciousness and that one is awakening that consciousness by arousing the cell from a state of relative lethargy and by the impact of light. In fact you might even reach a point when you are aware that the cells are communicating with each other by sending light messages to each other in a telegraphy of light and what is more, but this is really breath taking, is that you see we think that things that are close to each other influence each other, or a magnet and metal filings, but if you study physics, of course you find that impact does not need to depend upon location in space. It's called the allocal theories and the consequence is that what's happening to cells of your body has some influence in what's happening in the universe, that let's say the cells of your body are in some way communicating with the galaxies and the stars. And perhaps you could even experience the joy of the cells, kind of a bodily joy as they awaken from as I say, semi-lethargy by absorbing a fresh dispensation of energy from the stars, or let's say from the ocean of light. This has a redeeming effect when one is suffering in one's body from bodily ailments, somehow. As I mentioned yesterday, I talked about the lady who was practically beaten to death in a concentration camp and had lost her sight and here she was smiling at me and so there is some way of overcoming physical pain and that applies to the pain of the psyche, in that case it was astral projection, but I would say by the sheer exultation of discovering ourselves as a being of light that cannot be tarnished. It can be beclouded but never really tarnished. 

Now then as you exhale, and you radiate light, and one can Mind over Body, you see if you visualize not just a zone of light around your body but the photons are hurtling through space at the speed of 186,000 miles a second, which eventually hit the stars and form with the light of the universe a wave interference pattern, if you can visualize that, you will become more and more luminous and I think that is one thing we appreciate in people who have a lot of light. There are some people who bring a lot of light wherever they go and I think we want to belong to that gang of people. 

Now, the converse would be converging light that emerges from within as you inhale, and then radiating it out as you exhale, so this is the second sort of light that one rarely thinks about and I suppose the best way to enhance this new dispensation of light that emerges from within is to think of a white hole in outer space, it's one of the views of astrophysicists, that the way to do it I think, I find it helpful and I hope you will too is, I think that the world that I'm ordinarily conscious of only represents a cross section, I would say a three dimensional cross section, of a multidimensional universe, and just like, for example, an animal that could only extrapolate between two dimensions of space would be living in a kind of two dimensional space, like, for example a sheet of paper, and whatever crosses that sheet of paper that would appear as being something on that piece of paper. Now if you can think that way, and think that there is a continual emergence of light, of energy in the form of light, because in the universe you see, because of course there is entropy in the universe, that means that there is a waste, I mean that the energy gets disintegrated at the jagged ends, just like the flower that fades, outer petals start fading, and then there is a new energy that emerges from within, and that is what is called the white holes, instead of black holes. So think of your solar plexus now as a white hole, instead of a black hole, yesterday we talked about the void, being drawn into the void, but there is a two-way movement: on one hand one is drawn into the void, and on the other hand one realizes anew from the void and one doesn't know what is happening below the threshold of consciousness. 

So, as you inhale, now try to see if you can sense that light that emerges, surfaces, it is what Pir-o-Murshid calls all pervading light, in contrast with radiant light, and you see in our minds we think that light is radiant, it radiates from a source because we think locally, we think in the explicate perspective ordinarily, but in meditation we have to learn to think in the implicate mode. As I said yesterday, everything is intermeshed with everything else, in a web, and if you think that way, then you can have some sense of light that does not emanate from a source, but that is widespread, and that is why Pir-o-Murshid used the word all pervading, that would be the implicate state of light, like radio waves that are processed in our radios so that we can make sense of them, but as they are in themselves, we would never be able to make sense of them, and so this light is not something that you can perceive, but it is we do exactly what the radio does. We somehow process that light so as to make it radiant, and so as you exhale, then, think that you are radiating that energy that emerged in its implicate condition. You're converging it and radiating it. 

Now as you inhale you're converging that light as it's drawn into a center, the solar plexus, and as you exhale, you radiate it from your heart center, because those two chakras are deeply connected. And, so you see that that light then accrues to the light that we boomerang from the environment, from the stars. Although actually what we converge is the light that is subliminal to the light that we perceive from the stars. Now it's a little more difficult to hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling. If you can do that, it's, you see, I don't know whether you got that point yesterday when I talked about turning within. But you see you can't turn within, you have to cease thinking of yourself as being the witness, the subject, experiencing other than yourself. And of course it's very difficult because we are so used to thinking of ourselves as the subject, experiencing other than ourselves. It is only if consciousness is voided of its content that means of the perception of an object, that consciousness peters out. You see it's like as Buddha says, the consciousness is like a flame, so as long as there is a log of wood, the flame would pass from one log to the other, but if there is no more fuel, then of course the consciousness peters out. So think of consciousness as being functional, being dependent upon perception, and as you turn within you have drawn yourself away from perception and consequently one can't use the word experience any more. One is talking about resonance or communion (or there's no way), but anyway it's not experience, it's revelation.

So if you can think that way, that means that you really do place a barrier between what was at first your consciousness and what you conceived of as being the external world. You place a barrier in an obstacle in the way of your consciousness' ability to perceive other than itself. Then, well what Pir-o-Murshid says, I would have said that consciousness peters out, but what Pir-o-Murshid says is probably true, and that is that consciousness turns within. But be careful of that term, because you are not the perceiver any more. Don't try to experience, let state of reality be revealed to you. If you try to experience, then you are standing in the way. 

Well, as you know, we can avail ourselves of skills in meditation, in order to trigger off realization. So the practice we did yesterday what Sufis call Shagal and Hindus call Yunnimudra is a very useful tool in order to be able to get some sense of what is, how is all pervading light. 

So let us do it again. This time, concentrate on your solar plexus, much more than we did yesterday. Yesterday we turned our eyeballs upward but we, I would say converged them rather than turning them upwards, but just be very careful not to press your indexes on your cornea, which means of course the retina. And, try to, well you can't perceive, that's the whole thing, you can't perceive the inner light, or if you do, it's purely an optical illusion. It's really more like identifying with this, how can I say, foundation of your aura, in the realm of all pervading light. So instead of perceiving that light, you discover that you are basically that all pervading light of the universe that has become focused into a center, or that is continually being focused in a center, and is radiating from there. 

OK, and so you remember, it's three breaths, that's all. Then take your hands away. You can continue to be aware of your breathing in and then definitely hold your breath, and exhale. You can hold your breath without placing your fingers on your nostrils. And as I said this is the real breakthrough in one's realization because there's no boundary between yourself as a being of light, and the ground of yourself as a being of light. The cosmic ground, which is infinite. It's, let's say, like a pyramid upside down, for example. No, it's like a pyramid, actually. Yes, that's right. There's no point at which the individuality separates off from it's ground. That's what you experience as you hold your breath. 

OK, now we're going to explore further aspects of the practice of light. Well, right, before we do this, there's still another point. As you exhale, I spoke about the photons hurtling through space. But, however, there's a kind of, how can I say, consistency in the zone of light surrounding the body which we call the aura. It doesn't have a boundary, but it's, I don't know whether you are familiar with, I suppose you are familiar with Kirilian photography which gives a very good idea of what one means by zone of light which does not have a boundary, although what Kirilian photography is photographing is what they call a cold emission of electrons, which is not exactly what we are doing. But think of the photographs, I don't whether you are familiar with photographs of flowers made by Walter Chappel of Santa Fe, in which you can see the petals are transparent, you see one petal behind the other and the petals are surrounded by zones of light and that peter out at their edge so they don't have boundary but still they do have some kind of configuration and so if you could think of, as you exhale, think of the form of your body and yet it doesn't have a profile. It's very difficult to imagine that. 

There's some likeness, let's say, between let's say we are talking more about the architectony of the aura, a rather inert form. And that is going to lead us towards what we want to do this morning, which is raising our consciousness into the higher spheres, and this is an intermediate step, (a clue,) discovering your, what, well yesterday we were talking about your real being, it's relative, of course, but now we may be talking about your higher being, your celestial being (they'll) say I'm a little bit careful of words. But the thing to do is to discover, let's say, something like the countenance of your face, for example, instead of the features of your face. Something that is transpiring through that which appears and which does have some kind of structure even though it doesn't have a profile.

And, of course it does alter, in fact, one could very easily slip into self deception if one slips back into the etheric realm, whereas we are, which is the realm of electrons, magnetic fields (inaudible) The celestial level, this is the level of light, you have to be very aware of the light of your being and the structure is secondary, it's the light that's important. This is of course, a process of self revelation, you're discovering yourself dynamically instead of statically, that is that the zone of light keeps on altering according to your mood and that's what Walter Chappel found working with flowers. 

So, now to think back to again, as you inhale, turning within, and the emergence of the light, the subliminal light of all pervading light, and then hold your breath, it's very, it's very difficult to define what you're focusing on because you're not the subject any more that is experiencing other than yourself, but, so it's a difficult thing to do. As you exhale, then you'll find that your essay, the ecstasy of light, is going to determine the, let's say, there is no proper word for it, but let's say the countenance of your aura, is now going to be a result from your attunement. So if you're in your very high attunement, it's very beautiful. Light is always beautiful, but this, as I said yesterday, can be Luciferian, where as this is heavenly light. But that depends upon your attunement. It means that you have to overcome what Jung calls the shadow. That is anger, resentment, judgmentalism, concupiscence, a lack of charity, cruelty, manipulation, dishonesty, all those things that stand in the way, or rather, distort your aura into what one calls the Luciferian light.  So it's not like perceiving your aura, it's identifying with it. 

OK, now we're going to make a further step. Instead of working with florescence, we are working with phosphorescence. In simplistic language it is the ability to transform fire into light. (Inaudible) It's an ability that humans have lost to some extent. And, that is that of course the cells of our bodies are continuing in a state of consumption. Incandescence. That's why the rate of that consumption is evidenced by what you call our temperature, the temperature of the body, (inaudible) programmed. One can increase that phosphorescence that (inaudible) of phosphorescence, for example fire flies and bats in dark caves and fish in deep water are able to produce light and out of their own bodies because they are not able to absorb light from the environment, except of course ultraviolet. So that is an ability that is dormant in us, but in many of the yoga practices, one is availing ones' self of that third source of light. The Tibetans do that in a practice called Tomoov. 

They have competitions to see who can dry a sheet that has been soaked into icy cold water on their backs in the cold of the Himalayas. Who can dry it first? So that means that by their will they are able to increase the effulgence of the infrared, that is the heat of the body, the inaudible phosphorescence. As a matter of fact, that is what of the rishis are doing, sitting in samadhi in the freezing cold, without hardly any clothes. Sometimes no clothes. Simply by awakening this, arousing this faculty, if you are in a state which is called righteous indignation by the Catholic Church, your temperature rises. If you are very keen on truth and you're repeating the wazaifa Ya Huk which means the truth and you become like a dervish, then your temperature rises, but great art is to transform that infrared light into ultraviolet, ultimately, and light at all levels of frequency, it's a source of light, and this is illustrated by a flame, and (though) there is a practice that enables you to do it, a skill and that consists in imagining that you're spinal cord is a chimney, and within it there's a flame, and you know how, if you look at a flame you can see that, there is here a color like reddish at the bottom of the flame and then you get into all the different colors of the spectrum. You get into an orange, and gold and green and blue and violet and ultimately, of course, ultraviolet. 

So you imagine that flame, and imagine the different colors of that flame, as you pass and review each one of your chakras as you inhale. Until you, having terminated your inhaling, you pass your eyeballs upwards and curl your tongue and press the bottom of your tongue against your palette, and there are several stages now. One is simply to concentrate on the light above your head, the crown chakra, which is colorless, and at the same time carries within it an infinite number of shades, of all kind of hues, blue and red and green and violet and all kind, like a crown. 

We'll just make the next step, which is, it is only towards the end of your inhaling that you, well, you're aware of the light above your head, but when you hold your breath, you make a real quantum leap, you don't continue to identify with your aura, but you identify with the light of intelligence. Now that of course seems a little bit difficult to follow, so well, maybe we could just make a break here and open a new chapter and then come back to this again. 

So the new chapter which will help you to make this next step. As you breathe in, think that you are breathing in light through your eyes, which is actually so, because the light of the environment is threaded, passes through the retina and is threaded in the optic nerves, through the optic nerves, and eventually enhances the light of the cells of the brain. So just think that as you inhale, it's the same thing that we did with the whole aura, but now, more specifically, now the light that comes that you absorb from the environment through your eyes. Now, I don't know whether we all realize it, we think we see objects, what we see is the light that is refracted or radiated from these objects, or fluoresced from these objects. We don't see the objects, we see the light. And, OK, so as you inhale, then, you are absorbing the light that those objects are reflecting or refracting or fluorescing into your being. In which there is a tremendous accumulation of light. The cells of the brain are functioning at high speed, processing all this light. 

Now, as you exhale, just think that the light in the brain also is able to be threaded through the optic nerves, and reach out into the environment through your retina and cornea. But of course, if you just concentrate on the light that you draw from the environment, then you don't give much chance to the light that would otherwise be cast forward through your glance. 

So, the thing to do then, is to, of course as you inhale you are drawing light, you are absorbing light from the eyes, breathing through the eyes is (what). But then as you exhale, of course if you have your eyes closed, I mean your eyelids closed, then you are setting a barrier, obstructing the light that accrues from outside, and consequently you are creating conditions that are favorable to becoming aware of the light of your glance. For now just concentrate on the light that is cast forward, the light of your brain that is now threaded through your optic nerves and cast forward through your retina and maybe it is passing, it's because the eyelids are permeable to some extent in case the (high) the ultraviolet light passes through the, well it even passes through the skull, let alone the eyelids. 

Now you know that if you were to open your eyes, the impact of the light from the environment would be so strong that you would be hard pressed to be able to cast any light forward through your glance. However, we do have that ability. We have the ability to somehow block the light that impinges upon our retina from outside. We have that ability. Something to develop, you have to do that practice every day, consistently for months and months. That is the reason why the rishis in the Himalayas and also the dervishes are able to look right into the sun with open eyes at dawn and for hours sometimes after dawn, because somehow the light of their glance is stronger than the light of the environment. There is a word of (Platyus) who says to look into the sun, I have to have eyes like the sun.

So we protect our glance by our eyelids and what you could do is at the beginning the exhaling, just open your eyelids for a split second and see, you can observe the impact, the overwhelming impact of the light of the environment upon your attention, and so this is where this, for one thing, this attitude of vayaragia, which means detachment and indifference, will shield you. But the yogis do it of course to consider that physical matter is an illusion. So it's not a philosophical statement, its purely pragmatic, you see if you think that it is illusion, well then it gives you some kind of way of discounting it. And, I find it better to think that one is caught in a perspective. The impact of the environment is so strong that it catches your attention and forces it into a perspective and that one has the ability to free oneself from that perspective. You know that people under the effect of drugs are caught in a perspective, that cause freaking out, are caught in a perspective. Now you can then, the effect of the chemical is so strong that one cannot shift one's perspective, that's why taking drugs is very limiting for a person who wants to attain illumination, as we are meditating now, we are able to use our incentive, our will, to free ourselves from a perspective and we've already done that, we did it yesterday, if you remember we were able to offset our consciousness into a transfigured world. And of course the Sufi way is to think that what we call physical light is just the way that light appears to us. It doesn't mean it's light, it's just the way it appears. Now when you think that way, it helps you to overcome the impact of the way that light forces itself upon, well forces the focus of your glance into a perspective. 

Unfortunately we have to end here because breakfast is waiting for you, so let's continue after 7.

END OF TAPE



FEB 15, 1997		Tape 07

We're going to pursue the study that we're making of the zikr going through the different stages, each stage corresponding to a different attunement of, setting of consciousness, and emotional attunement and a different mode of thinking and a different way of looking, a different perspective and therefore a different way of looking at our problems, and of course our sense of identity, self-image. So there's no way in which I could go back, and even go through briefly the different thoughts that were connected realizations that were connected with the first stage but I suppose you do remember that we were moving in the circle our head and upper body was moving in a circle, and it was more like a eventually it was a spiral, and that motion and what happened to our magnetic field had an effect of expanding our consciousness so that you were no more the subject experiencing other than yourself, the universe as other; and eventually it is true that at the end of that expansion one does lose the sense of one's personal individuality, and that of course culminates in realizing that one is, instead of thinking, that one is being thought, and or thought at or thought of, and that in fact it's the universe that is looking at you instead of you looking at the universe. You remember that. So that we were overcoming this polarity between the subject and the object, which keeps us in a certain perspective, and we want to try to free ourself from any perspective that forces us into its setting.

There was also a wonderful sense of immensity, sense of identity becomes bountiful and eventually merges with the totality-it's very difficult for the mind to accept that we are an individual and also the totality, or potentially the totality, but at the end of this expansion one has totally forgotten one's individuality and then when your head has reached the zenith, then you feel the pull of the vacuum in the center of your solar plexus, because that's the moment when one is the most vulnerable and therefore that your head turns towards your solar plexus and that is where we discover a whole new mode that we call turning within, and perhaps you remember that to do this we have to, well, set sentinels at the doors of perception and not only that sort of perception but let's say the threshold of our minds, our thinking and our emotions, and so it is an attitude of detachment and indifference that will enable us to put some kind of baffle between the impact of our environment and ourselves, and that you remember when you turn within we can't think of ourselves as being the subject perceiving, perceiving subject, so that and therefore do not observe your thoughts-in fact the-so now we'll just-what I, I think what we're going to do now is just to really do it, at this point, and then lead up to the ascension through the spheres, because after the head descends in the zikr, then it rebounds upwards, and so we did the beginning of that yesterday and get a little more into detail.

So incidentally, the stages that we go through in the zikr are precisely the stages that one goes through in yoga. Precisely. But you know I don't want to bother you with theories but, behind it, because how could it be otherwise, there must be some commonality in human experience. So as you turn within, you try to withdraw your consciousness from the impressions of the immediate environment; however, there might be a lot of noise around, and commotion, and so there's a way of, well of course as what I said, surround yourself with a zone of silence, acts as a kind of buffer, but there's a way of devalidating the impressions occurring from the outside by considering it as maya, you see, and as I said before, the theory, maya is pragmatic, it's purely, it's not, it doesn't, it's not, you can't say that the physical world is not, is not real; what you can say is that what we think it is is not, not what it is; but that theory, but in practice, simply the fact of thinking, I'd been letting myself being fooled by assessing things from my personal perspective, particularly my psychological problems, and so it is just that thought that will take the wind out of the sail of those thoughts; they don't have an imperative impact upon your consciousness; and so you'll find that if you do this the physical environment appears to be kind of remote, and one could even say-well.  

That's what we did yesterday if you remember we offset our consciousness, we found ourselves in that transfigured world, we do that by identifying with your subtle body instead of your physical body, you can feel, like, the magnetic field, call it, around your shoulders, and chest and back, and inside the body, and identify with that field and consider that it's the temple in which the body's being configured; and if you do this then and then also think that whatever in one's ordinary consciousness whatever one is perceiving is only the iceberg, let's say that which appears and so you can if you discount it as being all that reality is about, then you take away as I say the force of the, the impact of those impressions upon your consciousness, and consequently you find yourself in a transfigured state. It's also as we said, like swimming under the water as you remember, under the surface of the water, and so what you used to consider reality is only that which emerges at the surface and seems like separate objects but behind it all it's all a web of interconnectedness, and so you can reach what you used to think of reality just as one could follow the roots up to the, the lotus flowers or the water lilies.

And in the same way you can reach people; you don't have to visit them and talk to them; in fact you can get to know them much better from inside and getting into that inner communion with their consciousness and their attunement rather than communicating with them by means of talk or speech. Because now they are other yourselves; they're not other people, they're other yourselves. There's some kind of resonance. We've done all of this but this is going to lead us towards the next stage.

So the physical world seems to be as remote, but one remembers the impression of the physical world. But since the time that you, from the time that you consider that which you thought was the physical world has only the appearance and then your memory of them presents you with a distorted picture, a faulty picture of the physical world. And therefore you have to-and this is to be found in Tibetan teaching-you have to question your memory of physical events.

And the only thing is that, you see this is a negative attitude which we only [words unclear] . . . it is not this, it is not that, and so the physical world is not what we think it is and so on, that is a negative proposition, but of course a negative proposition must always be balanced by a positive one, so if it is not what I think it is because I'm projecting upon it my own bias, then what is it, you see? That's why, as I said, if you expand your consciousness then the universe knows reality without the personal bias. But of course we never reach the outer limits of this expansion. But I think of the word of Pir-o-Murshid which is I found very helpful, that is, consciousness awakening in matter. So instead of being the observer, spectator, watching physical reality or then even your problems, you think that they are clues revealing something that [word unclear], and which can never be quite the object of your cognizance. So don't try to think of yourself as the observer trying to get to know what's behind it; it's more like, it is a [word unclear] reality of which you are a part. I know this sounds very difficult but it's the only way to have a breakthrough in realization. So you remember not only does the physical world seem remote, and we've placed a zone of silence around ourselves, but the memory of it, we are wary of the, our assessment and our memory of it because that is flawed by personal bias.

So that it requires of us to alter our self-image so that as you turn within, you're not dealing with the environment, you're dealing with yourself and altering your self-image to think of it as more and more cosmic instead of what one calls a discrete entity. I used the word pyramid this morning; you could say like, maybe it would be better to say like a funnel turned upside down so that the individuality emerges from its base, or ground, or seed bed, which is infinite, so you see how that, as soon as you think like that, it alters your sense of being the observer, you see; in fact it could be followed up by thinking that the observer is the universe and your consciousness just the focalization of the consciousness of the universe.

So at this stage one is encountering a mode of cognizance which is quite surprising and paradoxical, that is, we're talking about a knowledge that is not acquired but is revealed. That's the essence of Sufism. And that only happens if, it only occurs if we try to shift our consciousness into the antipodal standpoint of the personal one (?), now can you imagine two poles, one is the personal, and the other is infinite, what you call God, and so our ability to, we are the whole whatever it is between those two poles, and we can shift our sense of identity along this line, imaginary line between the two poles until we get more and more to look at things from the antipodal, that means the opposite, point of view to our personal point of view, but it's infinite. So as soon as the thought comes, so now we're not dealing, of course we are dealing with the memory of the physical world, as I said, that you question, also thoughts, memory of your circumstances, social and psychological circumstances, and as you know a lot of people, that's where a lot of people are blocked in their retreat, because they keep on thinking of their problems, if you think of them from your personal point of view, you're lost, of course.

The first thing is of course to think that your assessment is not reliable; in fact it's mostly likely faulty, or let us say just this one point of view, we've already said that.

As I say, instead of just placing a sentinel at the doors of perception, think that you're placing some kind of a buffer in your mind instead of in your senses, as we did in the practice with the fingers on the senses this morning [word unclear]. You do the same thing with the mind, and so you are wary of the way that your thinking breaks up into thoughts, which capture your attention and waylay you from grasping the flow of, the dynamic flow of thoughts, of thinking, of thinking. So, well, we've already said this, it's not your problems but the problems we're participating in, the problems of the world, but I think that one is protected of course personal by questioning the validity of one's assessment of the problem, because one is seeing it from a personal bias. But the thing is that that personal bias is based upon one's desires or even concupiscence or need or even greed, so that the clue is not in debarring, preventing impressions to reach deeper into your psyche by rejecting them; if you're emotionally attached to those concerns, those heart, pains in your heart, then you can't simply repel them. You can only confront them and ask yourself, as we did yesterday, what, what I'm, do I really want what I'm looking for in life, is that, do I want to just go along with the sort of way that everybody lives, the kind of petit bourgeois as they say in French, or do I want illumination? That just depends upon what you value. I think, well, you can along, either way, you can go along in the samsaric wheel and keep on repeating the same mistakes and getting attached and getting disappointed and getting hurt and getting angry and so on, that's the usual commonplace kind of thing, or then, well, you have such a strong need for to awaken from all that trip. And so it is that passion for the unattainable that will somehow get you out of that vicious circle.

It's free yourself from addiction-addiction to, dependence upon people. That's the greatest addiction that is, hm? I would say, I'm not proposing to follow the path of the sunyasen, but let us say interdependence rather than dependence. And of course be careful about codependence. I mean one doesn't always realize what extent one is, buying cigarettes for one's friend, joints would be a little bit worse, another glass of wine. . . . So cutting right into the heart of the subject, it's like, you're meditating now and you can't control your thoughts and you can't repel all your heartbreaks by your will, there's no way, one can only unravel that knot there, the Gordian knot, unravel it, you see. I see, yes, I see. And, but behind that mental clarity there's a kind of, the guiding path is your emotional attunement, like when I fret about my pain, it pulls me into my personal individuality and takes away my high. And when I'm in a state of high, ecstasy, then it's so wonderful that I must choose, of course. Maybe at first, well, one tries to compromise, of course, reconcile the irreconcilable-that's, it's a perfunctory strategy of the psyche, you know, to give Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give God what belongs to God, but eventually you find that you have to be very clear as to what gives you a sense of exaltation, and you do see that it is, that one's personal grief will keep you from it, will keep you back from it, unless you, but I'm not saying that one should give up one's grief; one transmutes it.

So these are very strong emotional forces that run amok in one's retreat, and there's no point in just waving them aside, because they'll keep on coming back and back again all the time. So you see that now instead of remembering the circumstances that ail one, one is looking at oneself, instead of the, that's what is turning within, instead of looking at the circumstances. One sees that the problem is really inside one, your own psyche, the question of, again, of course, what one values. Still, one mustn't force oneself to sacrifice physical needs and psychological needs for spiritual needs; they will crop up again and in an even more pernicious way, so that's not a solution. So maybe at first give Caesar what belongs to Caesar and God what belongs to God, that maybe that is the first step, but when you're meditating then I don't think it's good simply to open one door and close and open another, I think you have to still confront these personal needs, look at them very clearly, and, I think, see how they affect you, emotionally, in your awareness, in your attunement, in your realization.

Now I find that, you see, as I said yesterday this is only the first half of turning within; the next half is the rebirthing, and I find that if you, while you're meditating, if you concentrate on the emergence of your new self, it can be so overpowering, overwhelming, that it pales the memory of, at least your assessment of your circumstances. Now, yesterday I said this reality that is emerging, this new dispensation that is like renewal of your being, rebirthing, is unaccountable, is not determined by causality, and therefore totally spontaneous and unpredictable. I think that has to be completed, that statement's got to be completed. The fact is that the circumstances act as a catalyst. So it's not like a one-to-one situation, like you're reacting to circumstances by being creative, no, but circumstances do act as a catalyst that will trigger off the emergence of something new in you, or can, and therefore you'll find it very different when you're meditating, if instead of just wallowing in the pain of circumstances that are not favorable, if you just consider them as catalysts. That's true that Beethoven would have never composed that wonderful melody in the fourth piano concerto if it hadn't been for the challenge of the environment, but he didn't react to it, he, it was a, triggered off a-another example: I remember studying composition with Nadia Boulangerie [?] and she said, "Well, this part of your composition, it, you must have started working at it at five o'clock this morning in readiness for this meeting. It's not as good as the others, the rest." She was right. So she said, "Well, what do you want to do with it?" I said, "Well, of course, cut it out." "Well, if you cut it out, well, then there's a hole in your composition." "Well, then I could fill that hole." "No," she said. "You've got to destroy the whole composition, start again." Now of course what was in the composition gets restructured because it's there in the deep unconscious, but you understand now why Shams Tabriz threw the manuscript of Jelaluddin Rumi in the well.

So the moral of the story is that we can't really just hope to get rid of our bad defects and keep our good ones. We have to go through the fire and lose the whole thing and then start again.

So be very careful of self-condemnation when you're meditating, qualities, attributes of yourself that you don't, idiosyncrasies that you don't like, wanting to get rid of them, trying to fight against them. It doesn't work that way. Let's say, take advantage of that wonderful opportunity that the universe offers you to be recreated recurrently every moment anew, to make the best of all the potentialities that are offered to you in that rebirthing. It's like a painter who has a palette of a lot of colors, but then what do you do with the colors? That's the important thing; the colors are there. Well, the colors are more available at that moment, but you have to make use of them and configure them in a meaningful way.

So anyway, I find that the concern about the positive, because that's a positive thing, you see, [inaudible] is, carries hope, is positive in your meditation, is, will eventually help you to at least downplay the stress and the pain of your grief. If you try to deal with your grief, you can't; there's no way, it's too strong, you keep on being caught in it. That's why I think creativity is really the next step in psychotherapy.

So that if you remember that was the next stage after, I haven't been using the Sufi words because we, the trouble with words is that they become cliches, and one gets, one's mind gets structured into those, those mental constructs. The mind has got to, our thinking must flow freely. So I'm not using the words but of course sometimes they can be useful as a signal that now this is the next step. So when you say, when you're saying the words of the zikr, you remember, "La . . . illaha,"that is the expansion, and then "Ill-la" the head comes down, and as we already said the i is, contrasts with the a because it's very punctiform, it's, it's like a point, individuality, the word individuality starts with an i and the eye starts with, is an i, so it's a point, convergence of the totality in a point. And if you remember, so, we say, "Ill-la" and it's that "la" when the head starts rebounding that represents the emergence of your rebirthing process, and so your attention on that is rather like giving support to the fresh petals in the center of a flower and drawing your attention away from the jaded petals at the jagged ends. So [inaudible] to consider your, your problems have tainted your, the external petals of your being, which will fall apart anyway, and there's a fresh hope emerging from within.

And what I mean by that is that, you see, the potentialities of your being have been exhausted in the past and are absolutely infinite for the future. It's, you might think of a game of chess in which you've lost all the pieces and somehow it's a magical game of chess because the number of pieces at your disposal are always infinite, however many you lose.

Do you feel a bit happier now? Because one has to be happy to meditate.

Of course, as I say, one of the most helpful thoughts is that what seemed to be a defeat could reveal [avail? unveil?] itself to be a victory.

Yes, so now we shall proceed further, because creativity, to be, how can I say, complete, perhaps it's too much to say complete, but let's say the richer it is, the more levels of your being it integrates, so that you mustn't think that that which emerges from within is the totality; it's the way that the totality is funneled into your being. And just like, for example, if you're photographing a three-dimensional scene and it's projected on a two-dimensional photograph, much of the richness of the scene has been lost, you see? So that which emerges from within, the rebirthing, is the fresh beginning, and so on and so forth, and carries potentially the totality, but still, we're still thinking of the totality in its extension and not in its, let's say, hierarchy of levels. Two dimensions: the cosmic, which is like an extension, and then transcendental, which is, threatens, which is, well, I use the word hierarchy-one can't get away from that, much as sometimes some people would like to, for example, there's a difference of level between the, well, mind and body, of course, but although they're both sides of the same coin. But, for example, the software of a computer and the hardware. There's some kind of hierarchical difference in the levels, for example, the archetype of

End of Side

of an exemplar, represents another level in the exemplar. So, I know that isn't any help to you, but it is to me. So I'm just telling you those things that help me-that's all I can do! You're stuck with your teacher, you know. A teacher can only say what he or she knows, but, so . . . . I remember my cello teacher saying, "You know, ultimately we're all self-taught."

So I'll tell you what I [inaudible]. It's because as one's consciousness is, let's say, exalted, one has a feeling that, that beauty that one perceives from the earth, in the world, is only a very inadequate expression of what we might call the sublime, which is beyond form. Now of course these are thoughts that, as I say, have something to lift my consciousness, but maybe the most tangible thought is, well, as I say, it has to be behind it all there has to be that passion for the unattainable; otherwise, you remain in your personal vantage point and identity. It's being very deeply shattered by, by beauty, where you, you see that it is the expression of something beyond form. otherwise, if you're attached to form, well, then, you're limited by the form, you see? Now there are some stages in the [inaudible], in the, how can I say, initiation of, in the mysteries of Eleusis in Greece, in the old days, of course, the neophyte passed through different initiatic [?] stages. The first one was to go through a labyrinth in the dark, full of mud and so on, try to find one's way, and one knew that at the end of the labyrinth was a statue of Apollo; oh, that was a lure, they had to go through that dark night, you see? 

And then in the second stage one, one was asked to imagine the form of Apollo without the statue. So that's the form without substance, of which Buddha talks about. And then in the next stage you have to imagine the being of Apollo irrespective of his form. Ah, those stages. And [inaudible] beyond that you can come to a point when you see the cosmic reality of, which is, which is customized, let's say, by the being of Apollo, on those different stages. And you find that same thing in Buddhism--in Sufism; maybe you start with tasa'uri [?] Murshid, although we aren't supposed to, the tasa'uri [?] is the picture, the picture of your guru, which is not allowed in Islam, for a reason: because that's idolatry; one gets attached to the form. And then comes a time when tasa'uri Murshid is replaced by tawajji [?], which means that one gets into the attunement of the teacher rather than the form, [inaudible] the form is, is a, as a means, a stepping stone, but there comes a time when one has to free oneself from the support, the support system once more. The Tibetans-I've assisted a ceremony of the Tibetans where they were, they were destroying that beautiful mandala. And perhaps you know that Easter is the Lent when one destroys the idols; the idols are destroyed, are burnt. And that's when the body of Christ was being crucified.

So these are the kind of thoughts that Buddha lead you taught [?], hoisting yourself, as one calls it, hoisting yourself through the spheres; it's a misleading term because it has no geographical connotations. But one of, perhaps one of the strongest thoughts that will set you into that upward flight is, well, is described in the words of Jelaladdin Rumi when he says, "Walk without feet and fly without wings and see without eyes and hear without ears." Now that's poetry, of course, but Murshid talks about that condition in which you notice that the light of your glance passes through your eyes but it is not really your eyes that see as it is your glance. It's just a way of thinking which would lead to the thought of being able to see without eyes or to see or let's say, to think without a brain, to be without a body, to discover one's immortality while one is aware of the mortality of one's body.

There's a shift in one's sense of identity; you're not really lifting your consciousness. I think that's a misnomer; I think one is just changing one's sense of identity from being transient, and therefore, of course, perishable. That transitory steps one is thinking of yourself as a continuity in change.

For example, I'm not quite sure about this, but I think that there's not one cell of your body that is the same as when you were a child, for example, or many years ago, but you are the same body, so it's like it's the never the same water that passes under the bridge, but it's the same river. So that's the sense of being a continuity in change. And that's already helpful, you see, if you think, yes, there's that aspect of me that is changing but still I can see a continuity there. So in a sense it frees you from your sense of dependence upon your body for your thinking; in fact, space is only meaningful in connection with matter. If when you're meditating you're not thinking about anything that is connected with your body or matter in general, then you have lost your sense of space. That is, at least you start by losing your sense of being located in space. That's a very real experience; try and see if you can experience that. If you identify with your body then of course you think you're located in space. Now if you think that your magnetic field is also your body, which is true, or your aura, it's also your body, light is matter in physics, but it extends right out into space. and you lose the sense of location in space.

If you fly low, for example, in a helicopter or whatever, hang glider, you have a clear sense of location, you can pinpoint the place on the planet that is right underneath you; but if you, the higher you fly the less you have a sense of being located with regard to the surface of the planet. And so that's what happens in meditation. Now that's very interesting because it corroborates what physicists call the nonlocal laws, allocal, sorry.

So I don't know whether you can follow me here, but it's, this is to be found in Buddhism in one of the ayatanas, leading towards awakening, and that is: consider space without matter. Matter is a landscaping of space. I don't know whether you can see that. It's a, this is one of the stages that will help you lift your consciousness beyond the perspective of the earth into the higher spheres.

It's a wonderful feeling of, that at some level of one's being one is free from the constraint of earthly conditions, the limitations [?] imposed by the body, even the limitations imposed upon our minds by our brains.

What Pir-o-Murshid says is that one needs to work through the bonds that link one to the earth-our dependence, as we've already said, and attachment-so, of course, the need for freedom now prevails over the need to involve ourselves.

So you see that this pales altogether any kind of memory of existential conditions. You consider yourself as a visitor on Planet Earth, and you may even-well, this is pragmatic; this is a method; it's not real, but it's a method-you would consider your visit on Planet Earth as a dream. It's not quite true, but it's a, it's a method; it's a way of-let's say you were caught in a perspective--you didn't, it's not true that you descended on Planet Earth, no. Your consciousness was captured in the earthly perspective. And if you really wish to you can free yourself from that perspective. And if you think that your real being, you lose a sense of your real being by being caught in the earthly perspective, and you want to find your real being again, that'll help you to emancipate yourself from the earthly perspective. But it's true that it is, all that kind of judgmentalism that I mentioned yesterday about the grossness, the selfishness and so on, all the things that seem to have developed in the course of the earthly conditions in which people are subjected, that it is your, I think that it's true, I don't like to use that word contempt but it's true that there's some kind of judgmentalism in you that will free you from your attachment to earthly conditions, and that is the only way in which consciousness can take flight.

Just think of it as a change of perspective, like in holograms, I said yesterday.

And the other is the sense of time, and the body is, of course, subjected to the process of becoming, but somehow if you shift your identity you get to a point when you discover a level of your being which is not subject to perishability. It's a level of your being; it's like a pendulum, so at the bottom it's moving in time-space and at the top it remains unchanged. And you're the whole pendulum. So you can shift your consciousness from being that lead bottom of the pendulum or, of course, the stable fulcrum is always beyond reach, somehow.

It's, of course, one's simplistic mind thinks in categories, so you think, well, my mind is, my body is motile and my mind is transient and my personality changes, but whatever one thinks, one's consciousness is eternal, but one has these ideas about oneself, thinking categories. And if you say levels, of course you're thinking categories. But the reality behind that is, let's say, the mindness in one's bodyness, and the emotional attunement in one's thinking and consciousness in one's identity, so it's, there's a kind of dovetailing of all these levels; you mustn't think of them as separate levels.

So it would be, I would say, even dangerous to think that you free yourself from this essential state in samadhi, but say that it is, well, this is the word of Pir-o-Murshid, that one has come to earth in order to discover one's spirit.

As I say the mind hidden in matter, that's the word of David Boehm; of course he doesn't, quite rightly of course he does not make a distinction between mind and body, and Murshid, Pir-o-Murshid, the consciousness that has been buried in matter throughout the eons of time. So don't think in categories because otherwise you will get into a trance state. That's exactly what we want to avoid. So it's really like seeing the interconnection between all these levels of your being, and keeping the lines of communication open between all these levels. It's just simply unmasking the hoax of what we think is our body or our mind and so on, but do not discard any kind of consciousness and bodiness.

But perhaps you've noticed that the clue was working with the, one's personal involvement with the earth. Some, one's desires, one's needs, one's opinions, one's fantasies, one's power trips, of course, and mind trips, and all the things that, that tether one to earthly conditions, to the earthly perspective, yes, to the earthly perspective. And so that is a condition, but the powerful uplift comes by, as I say, being shattered by the manifestation of splendor in whatever form, because that's what you call beauty is just the form in which this ineffable reality becomes known to us. At least-it's never known to us-it's revealed by means of these outer devices. So it's emotion, you see, and that is the key, if you'll study the, your Sutra Rapatanjani (?), you'll find that he describes the stages leading to samadhi; the first is saritaka samadhi-that is your questioning your mental perception--, your bias, your psychological projections and your problems; well, on that he says on that, and then niratalka (?) samadhi, your perceiving, grasping reality irrespective of your perception of it; and then saritara (?) samadhi, your perceiving the, what they call tanmatra (?), a subtle level of reality, which is exactly the things that we've been doing, and then we read (?) kara (?) samadhi, your grasping reality irrespective of its subtle manifestation, and then you have that quantum leap into what is called ananda nogatha (?), which corresponds with the celestial spheres. Ananda means ecstasy. You cannot reach it with your will or your intellect, and so the clue to lifting your consciousness to this level is by, as I say, bewondering (?) and ultimately, of course, glorification.

Now we like to have something concrete to trigger off our bewondering; that's why, as I said, they never seem to be, cease to be amazed by the elegance of the program of the universe, but, so that's what one might call bewondering. But one can avail oneself, trigger in the existential realm, for example, music, the kind of music that we've been listening to, or a beautiful church or a beautiful person or a beautiful act, a beautiful gesture, a beautiful hero, for example, beautiful thoughts, of course, which will uplift your being, discover your own beauty hidden behind the outer appearance. And the thing that shatters me most is looking into the eyes of a baby-I see such beauty and I think, People grow up, and the shadow of the world beclouds (?) that light of the eyes of the baby, so why there's (?) a, so it's something that, the reason why it, it helps you to shift your, your attunement to the heavenly spheres is that it is reminiscent, that it is, carries a déjà vu.  

The reason why it's so meaningful is because you know why it's familiar; it reminds you of something that is deep in your unconscious, and here it is right there. And so that will trigger off the memory of having existed, well, the word is of course prior to one's birth or to one's conception, but you know that Dr. Stanislav Grov (?) uses the word perinatal, instead of prenatal, and what he means by that is that we are still, we still have a level, let's say, counterpart of our being, to put it simplistically, at that level, say that's the level. It might be embryonic, but it's, it's there. So it's easier to grasp it through one's, to capture it, let's say, through our, our memory, unconscious memory, but if that memory can help you to become aware of that level of your being, which we call the celestial level, of course, and of course it's, you have really made it, you've made that grade (?) to the ananda nogatha stage, which Sufis call malakhud (?), the angelic, the celestial spheres. But, as I say, it means having to work with your, one's personal trips, attachments, and see exactly how it affects one's soul, and go through a catharsis so that one's really able to overcome one's resentment and any kind of sense of guile or manipulation or dishonesty of any kind, and, of course, power trips and vanity and, of course, lack of charity, cruelty.

That which stands in our way is, that we are aware of, our iniquities, and our minds find it very difficult to reconcile our celestial nature with our, with our, the defilement of our humanness; there again, of course, you have to do something with your thinking; you have to discover a new way of thinking, where you're able to accept that, for example, the celestial nature of our being is present within its defilement, just like, as I've often said, the voice of Caruso [is] present within its bad, the defile-the distortion due to bad recordings of the time. If you can think of that, then you don't think of your angelic counterpart as being up there somewhere but as permeating your being in the most, the purest of, of dimensions of your being, like at the core of your being, which is immaculate. As I said yesterday, that's that innocence that gives you access, as Christ said, gives you access to the heavens.

Now of course it depends upon whether that is something that you relish. And if you don't, well, then, of course, it's all rather boring. You know, you might think it's fantasy, and, you know, wishful thinking and all that, you know, do you still believe in Santa Claus?

Now I'm trying to sell you the angelic plane, but maybe that's not what you're looking for. But you know, there are a lot of other teachers you can go to, you know, you don't have to just come here; it's, it's, there's no accounting for taste.

So I think I've broken the spell, so maybe it's time for us to have a break.

End of Tape



FEB 15, 1997		Tape 08

Now we are entering into the, how you say, crucial stage of the retreat. And of course it means hoisting ourselves beyond the commonplace attunement point of view, so some of you might feel a bit like being drawn into unfamiliar land. We are embarking into the very grand stages of a retreat or meditation. And so for some of you, you might find it rather strange, unfamiliar, out of touch with what one thinks is reality ans so I have to keep on step by step, just to find what I am doing. THat's a very tiring thing It would really be much easier to be sitting in a cave in the Himalayas just doing it and being silence. As I've often said just the presence of the rishis, just being transformed by their beings and not needing to say a word, I feel as if I need to convince you. I can only do it by my own experience. I hope you feel that. And then to take you with me by realizing how inadequate not only words are but all the skills that we are using. And still sometimes it will just happen like that unexpectedly to prompt you. So I am trying to highlight devices, called skills, something that will help you hopefully because it has helped me. Now there is of course the traditional guru worship. 

I feel that I spent much of my youth on what I might call the guru hunt. Not only in the Himalayas but in Christian monasteries, amongst the Buddhists and amongst the Sufis naturally of course. And there was always several criteria. The first one was hwther that guru or whatever was trying to do. Well the first test was honestly Most didn't pass the test. And In my estimation of course. The second was whether he or she, mostly he of course, was trying to exercise, a kind of power over me. And derived some kind of satisfaction in having that power. And so then I would say goodbye. And then whether they were just very skilled in the art of sophistication and were just good at the rope trick and could get lots of people coming because they were flummoxed by their marvelous trickery. And then the ones who climbed upon their popularity and so that the reason why people came was because the people were there, and there were more people coming and they thought so there must be something there because so many people are coming. And of course those who thought they were real VIPs and really it and had a kind of contempt for anybody else. And then, there were those who put you in it and I knew that because first of all you can tell, I knew that from those effects and because I felt as though I were walking on air after talking to them I felt uplifted by their being.

So, what I am trying to say is that it is true that the attunement of a person will shift ones' consciousness in a way that one cannot do by trying to do it one's self, that is what I am saying. And now I found that ultimately we have the ability to represent to ourselves an ideal goal. Let us say that you could say that ultimately god is your guru, or the universe is your guru, but ultimately these are words but what I am suggesting now to make this next step is to try to represent to yourself an ideal being. It could be man or woman. Doesn't have to be guru or a projection or role model. No. But a being who inspires you and uplift you and also opens up new perspectives in your understanding without the sophistication of a kind of mental constructs. And who is overwhelmingly has this wonderful heart quality that you feel really cares. Those are the great ones. The are never talking about themselves, they are always trying to see how they can help you. Each on of you will represent to yourself a being. And I would start with the face, and demeanor, and all the details of a person, a real person. Doesn't have to be what one calls a spiritual person or an official or VIP in a particular special order. Just a being, it is a fictitious being it is not any person that you know. 

Who embodies your ideal and remember that your ideal is not something fixed, it is like a horizon, it is always beyond what you can conceive. Now it is true that there is an intermediary step which makes it easier and that is to concentrate on one of the great prophets or saints or masters who have been described to us in the chronicles of history. Like Abraham, or Jesus, or Shiva, Buddha, Zoroaster, but also saints like St. John of the Cross or some very saintly beings in all religions. Rafael or Rabia amongst the Sufis and then masters who have, there is always, I would rather just think of somebody who does not live at present because it is only after time that one begins to make sure that one hears about their faults. History tells us, so that is why the Catholic church is very careful about making papal saints until many years pass by. A master as compared with a prophet, for example <<sheru dispah>> or <<hurric Baba>> they are some very wonderful masters, of course Pir Murshid Anayat Khan, it is up to you to choose. First image a being who's description has been passed down through history, maybe distorted to some extent in some way, but still behind that distortion you can just feel the being of Buddha for example has a very clear sense of the being of Buddha and in that way we can have a very clear sense of the being of Christ. The Virgin Mary. 

There is an Egyptian queen called <<Haetshepsuit>> who is wonderful master I would say. Zoroaster I would say. So you can concentrate on one two three maybe five different being each one being very different and just try to see how that concentration affects you. What the thought of that master does to your attunement When I say master, I don't mean just men, it could be woman of course. These beings is purely fictitious for one thing because their description has been distorted by the passage of time and by the way they have been transmitted. Also because one thinks of them as past and reflecting a certain civilization, the civilization in which Buddha lived was very different from that of Abraham for example. Now it is difficult but there is a way of overcoming that particular projection of the certain time in history to represent them as beyond that particular civilization in which they lived and even how they would be today. I think Shiva would be teaching people how to self cure their bodies by mastery and I think Buddha would be the most eminent psychotherapist of our time. And I think Abraham and Mohammed would form a coalition to try to show the unity of all religions. They would be the High Commissioners of the Congress of Religions. And Christ would probably be in a concentration camp. So we are talking about the essence of those beings instead of their historical circumstances. So can you get into the essence of the being of Christ. 

The church calls it the cosmic Christ instead of the historical Jesus. Not the events of his life and irrespective of any kind of picture. And Buddha the <targardata> Instead of Siddhartha <gutaman>. And Krishna is representing the how can I say it, the Olympic overcoming of the frailties of the human condition. And Mohammed is representing the divine power. And the Virgin Mary is our soul in its purity and the purification of our being so that the essence of our being is the immaculate state that gives us access to celestial counterpart. And Abraham, the divine sovereignty, the orderliness in the chaos, the power that keeps the religion from misuse. So you see, try to enter into the quintessence of each those beings. Now we can image a master, as I say it can be a woman, maybe we don't have to try to categorize them as a prophet or a saint or a master but simply a being who represents your very ideal. In fact it is really a projection of your higher self. And now the next stage. That is you project upon what you imagine to be God the most excellent qualities that you could conceive of and imagine them in their perfection. Perfect mastery perfect peace perfect joy perfect love perfect harmony perfect beauty. It was the French mathematician <pracahe> who said that infinity represents the capacity in miles of always representing the a larger number than the largest number we have conceived of so far and always we have the capacity in always imagining a greater perfection than the most wonderful manifestation, actualization actually, of a quality that we value. Now in order to be able to project these excellent quality in a being who is not really a tangible being but sort of a model one has to awaken those qualities in one's self. 

That's a great secret, is that one is arousing and awakening in oneself potential latent qualities and by projecting them upon a fictitious being our representation of what we understand by God, and by so doing, and we are not just projecting and we can't project them unless we are really glorifying them and consequently we are reborn recurrently by our glorification. Which is perhaps the most central adage of Islam. <Allah aluck fel ika adot> God created by your glorification by your prayers. Or it is expressed further God created as You through your presence because you are thus created or you are thus creating as you so this leads us to a metaphysical how can you say, paradox. Or a paradigm rather than paradox. That is god as a virtually becomes a reality as ourself. This is sufism and is very, how you say, amazing paradoxical challenging - reverses all the old ideas of god up there as a supreme being and all of us down here as miserable worms. God being awakened as us, not in us, as us. And that leads us towards some of the more advanced forms of meditation articulated by <ignabe> and the first one knowing oneself through the knowledge that god has of himself through us. 

Knowing ourselves through the knowledge that god has of himself through us. I would have said him her self. That means that we can't really know ourselves but if we could imagine how we appear at the antipodal point of view to our own point of view then we can see that this knowledge is a discovery. God discovering him her self through us. And the second proposition which is a little different from the first, which is God discovering him her self through our discovering him in us. Now this is the thought that governs that state that one encounters in the zikr after having turned one's head toward the solar plexus and then the head arises. So as I said Ill you are reaching into the void and then llaa that is the rebirthing and then you have laaa and the first a is not pronounced - first of all in Arabic grammar one doesn't pronounce the second a if there are two a's one after the other you pronounce the second, but there is a different meaning in it because the first A that one doesn't say aloud represents one's discovery of the celestial level of one's being and so one is awed so awed that one is overwhelmed by it that one cannot say it aloud. It is just in one's breath because really what it amounts to is that one is discovering god in oneself at that particular level which is the celestial level of as ones self. 

So its very amazing. Now steps of course. So lets try and go through these steps now. I am thinking of a description of an experience in the meditation of <Sham su a badeem> it corroborates things that are said by the magi of the religion of Zoroastrians. He says I find myself in a most wonderful world that I could ever imagine. A kind of paradise. And somehow I suspect that it is populated by beings but I am not quite yet capable of grasping these beings, just like a baby at first is not able at first to have any sense of what is happening on the planet. And then there seems to be a being who is walking towards me as I am walking towards him and I am overwhelmed by the splendor of this being. But as I advance I can't believe it, I am paraphrasing because I see a resemblance between myself and this being. I can't believe it. And then eventually there is what one calls a coincidence and he realizes that that is his heavenly counterpart. So it is the story of Jacob fighting the Angel and it refusing to fighting because he doesn't accept it because it is his real self. So this is an expression of our nostalgia to discover our real selves. 

Popularly, one says, rather simplistically, one says "I want to know who I am" but has no idea when one says that of what who one is. If one knew who one is one would be shattered and overwhelmed. Shattered of one's emotions and then all of one's representations of oneself and of the world and of meaningfulness simply shattered like the deepest night of St. John and at the same time overwhelmed. Beyond belief. It is I would say false modesty that we call humility that stands in our way. It is too good to believe. Too good to be true. Because we can't reconcile that with the defilement of our being due to the spillover of the earth plane. And if it was the only way in which this encounter could take place for us because his consciousness had been lifted by projecting upon a being the most excellent qualities in his being and discovering that in fact what he was projecting was really in himself at that level, at the celestial level. Now this is the breakthrough in the zikr. And in a sense of course you can see that it is basically the experience of the Muslim prayer you see one is prostrating ones head on the floor and then rising and in fact perhaps the most dramatic thing is rising from the prostrated position into not just into the supine position but standing up you see. 

And it is a very effective thing i see that of course. And the Buddhists, especially the Tibetan Buddhists do that at <<bovian >> totally, their hands stretched out in front of them and then there the body participates in the experience of a total annihilation of the notion of the the false notion that one makes of oneself. As I say it is like the composition that one you put in the world, it is ones glorification that brings one to rise that lifts one up so that the body participates in that uplift by rising and so it is not one's physical determination to rise that makes one rise but one's upliftment through the ecstasy of discovering ones ideal represented not only as qualities, excellent qualities, as i said in the perfection if a being , but in a being, in the ultimate being which we understand by god. We know, maybe we have some sense of the qualities of the being beyond the qualities. So you see just as one was uplifted by the masters, but that was a step, now one is uplifted by the being of god which is not tangible. It is like a kind of phantasmagoria that emerges like a rainbow that emerges. The rainbow is not tangible, in a sense it is an illusion, and it is the way that you see a certain condition of the atmosphere. God is appearing beyond one's understanding. Or any kind of <<???>>. That is what the Sufis call the divine manifestation. And of course for the Sufis the whole universe is divine manifestation. But conditions in which this manifestation is particularly striking. Now this very strange relationship between the two A's of the word Allah because the second A represents the level called <lahoot> which is the archetypal level. 

The Abode N' DATE Tape #8 SECOND SIDE

And when we are doing the zikr that is exactly what we are doing is we are trying to have to reach beyond our concept of qualities in order to imagine the mere perfection as I said and it is that's where starting to have a sense of the archetypes behind the exemplars and in the actuation of their existence where they are. The Sufis call it the Treasury and they say there is nothing on earth that does not have its correspondence in the divine treasury that is the correspondence between the archetype and the exemplar and you can hardly say something. Most amazing he says the Angels constitute a ladder between the existential world and the Treasury. They are the steps to our discovery of our celestial counterpart. We will hoist our consciousness into the manifestation of the divine qualities and their perfection while we have to realize of course that these qualities are not god but they predicate the being of god - they are still devices. Do you understand what I mean by devices? For example, if you have seen the film ET? And did you remember did you cry and did you cry and did you laugh? And didn't you cry and laugh because you were watching yourselves upon the screen? 

Well those shadows were devices. Through which what's his name now was communicating to you his vision. So ET was very revealing to you if not just shadows, but in it you saw ET through the eyes of that lovely child . These are devices in which Spielberg was able to communicate his thinking through these devices. So you could think of the world of made of devices in which god is communicating his/her intention. And so what is mean by the Sufi <alyat?> which is means a sign a signal devices like for example pad marks of the bear in the snow, so you haven't seen the bear so that's, the physical world is made up of signs that are really thoughts grasping what these signs are of. So this is Sufism. So Samadhi is not just departing turning away tearing us away from the existential state but it is clearly seen peeling off one device after the other. Certain devices the qualities in our being are devices in which the archetypal qualities are revealed to us.. So that's the way god reveals himself to us. Qualities in our own being. This is Sufism. And so on. Devices, celestial sphere, that also is our celestial counterpart to ourselves, devices which give us some clues as to the spender of the treasury. 

There always refers to a famous hadif which says , god speaking, I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known, I was a treasure you see, I was a secret treasure and desire to be known and therefore I create. Well it is a simplistic version, therefore I created the universe as a means of knowing myself. But there is a well I don't know if you want to enter into the niceties of Sufi thoughts but there was a Sufi and I think it was pir valayat who said But I was convinced there was someone who said that, someone who kept on asking all the great authorities LIke <crused> and then all of them said well we don't know we don't know and then some wise guy said to me could it be yourself? We what I am saying is really heretical and not really acceptable. I mean it wasn't in order to know him her self that god created the universe it was out of love for you that he descended from the solitude of unknowing. So if love understand mind heart then it is whatever it is polarity. Though maybe it was both but there are clues indications of this in Juladin Rumi. It was for the sake of the flower that god cultivated the garden. It's for the sake of your house that the architect made the blueprint. So in samadhi one is seeking the blueprint and forgetting that the purpose of the blueprint was the house. 

So instead of thinking that the political world is Maya that is where reality is to be found. <<??????>>> not. But it is true that to awaken in life, in my estimation one needs to awaken beyond life first. And that is why we are making the steps to samadhi and that is why in the zikr you go through these steps because while the second A of Allah represents the divine qualities lets say, call them <<??>> of god. The H represents the reality which is predicated by those names, by those qualities, so their unity beyond multiplicity, and somehow it is true that we while we are aware of the <lem ty>> to fulfill our lives purposes whatsoever, somehow surreptitiously we are in the quest of reality. We, I don't know if you have that feeling of suffocating and because you feel real life is a hoax unless you see what's behind it. These are very hard words and they can trigger off an real conversionism/ I call it<<bestami>> a very hardened dervish who lived in the mountains of<<hurran>> and was doing <hurarti> for 40 years and he said , and these are his words, the apostle's words, and he says, God fools you in the markets of this world. Now when you see his effigies, they are just devices. 

The reality is hidden behind them. And then he goes on to converse with god and say "The bridegroom doesn't have to suffice himself with the veil of the bride" so all these devices are veils behind discovering reality and you need to peel one veil after the other and then <<cardasn>> also says you are not strong enough to stand the solitude of my oneness. And then he says but that is what I want. So god says to him, oh I. And he says to god <<archgest>> to me in my pride. And then god says to him oh thou. So he didn't make the test. And then he said god shattered me. That is what the zikr is about. To a certain extent that I was involved and then bastami said to god oh I. Now that this is far beyond the experience the understanding the conception the most people this is the ultimate the summit of the mountain. And when we think of the words of pir murshid, the last words before he died, he said when the unreality of life strikes my heart its reality is revealed to me. So at that the ultimate moment, the ultimate state, one discovers to what extent one allowed oneself to be fooled. When one sees that one is being fooled, then one awakens. 

And pir o-Murshid described that, he says it is just like being awake while people are sleeping and they have no idea you are awake and then you can see they are all caught in their trips and he says the things that people fret about for you they seem worthless and the things that people don't seem to value for you are of the greatest value. And you see how situations affect you and are affected you and now you have reached a point when you see that that's the way they are. So that's the way it is in life and I wanted to I know it is putting the horse before the cart but I wanted to say that because if you would pursue the status of leading to samadhi then I think you could find yourself in that trance state and I don't want you to do that. In fact that is what Buddha criticized the rishis of his time and said in fact they re looking for it in which they re going into a state of trance in which they think is a awakening it is just trance and they are seeking these powers what they call siddhis. And to use a French work <<<>>>>>> de bourgeoise I don't know if you understand French. Miracles, you know some people come to you for a miracle a fantastic thing.

Whereas the greatest power the Sufis call divine power and that's, the Murshid calls it the divine sacrament, it is creating a kind of holy attunement. And that's where the divine power comes through. But then that's of course the way of the dervish. But samsamadhi the way you feel like. But Murshid goes on to say that those who are strong enough to take this wine would be exalted and those who cannot will be subjected to the division of the world. Its a very powerful wine. And that's why dervishes are often considered to be crazy. As one can't understand that their madness is the ultimate wisdom. Well, how about the ll's between the two a's. The Arabic you know L is a arc of a circle and A is a vertical line which is very significant because the vertical line represents the axis god man or god human and then the circle represents of course the wheel, the samsaric wheel, and the arc of the circle and also the emotional galaxies that is basically being somewhere in our consciousness you just have to experience the wheel and what that does to you. All is aligned. 

So the zikr all this represents a state the l represents the transition between one state to another and that transition is operated through a change of perspective and a change in ones mode of thinking. I didn't want to say this in the beginning, too much theory, but to see that when you're I'd rather not say it further until you experience it but this explains it so lllaaahhh lahhhhhhh illllllllllllll aaaaaaaa laaaaaaaaaaaaa illllllllla allaahhhhhhhhhhh So remember this and all the things we've said the last part at least ill llahh then touching the chin to the forehead and then rebirthing and then ah of illah illah so your head rises slightly illah and and now it rises you concentrate on the heart center as you think the first word the first letter of allah that is the celestial level so that point you need to identify with your celestial being and then there is the two lls leading to the A of Allah which <<<???>> that is you must think of it as of as being throat center chakara and the heart but too I think it is in the pituitary gland, the r is the realm of the archetypical the realm the attributes so it is very high not quite samadhi in the language of the Hindus its called the sal diga which means what seeds concentrating on the seeds of existence, and then after that comes <aseprita> samadhi which is beyond without seeds <<nil bija>> without seeds to that so between the first a of the word Allah which says a kind of signal which says now this is the time to identify with your celestial being and the last a which is what we are aiming at in our wazifas which is the qualities of the perfection there is two lls and maybe those two lls we like to build a system out of it maybe it would be in the throat and maybe in the third eye. 

I am improvising a bit here but you find its tell you its helpful when I tell you to think of these chakras rise and so those two lls represent what in the <ssamki> tradition is the two souls of adul in the vision of Mohammed he said he was at the distance of two throws of an arrow from what is called the lotus of the limit it was the presence of god but there was that distance , but like ikahara never got to that distance felt the bottom of the drum of the being of god. Meta drum they called it meta drum. two throws of the arrow it is very interesting because it the Arabs used to measure distance by the distance between the bow and the way you pull the arrow back before you throw it. That represents a measure of distance. It is very interesting because the arrow is like targeting the ultimate of the soul you are some distance away from it you are targeting it. Now the lls represent as I say, as in modes of thinking, that our soul finds difficult to reach but if you define it as of course I do you should really don't adjust this but still it'll do it all the same as long as you realize it is not totally adequate because there is no way of seeing it in an adequate way but it is the clue in the words of pir murshid again of course where murshid makes a difference between consciousness and intelligence and he says consciousness is let's say intelligence becomes consciousness when it faces an object. So if you empty your consciousness of its content in samadhi, there is no object and therefore consciousness returns into its ground which is intelligence these are two realms of course in context.

Now we are going to do that in light meditation tomorrow and a third meditation tomorrow morning. Now we started doing it today the difference between the receptive attitude of the glance of the eyes known as receiving the light, the light from the environment and then the additive aspect of activity of the glance which throws light upon all things. Which <<archidel >> calls active looking. A very interesting term active looking. So when you start meditating you still think of your self as a consciousness you experience life outside outside, your thoughts your emotions, and so forth you consciousness, your subtle body, and so on you are still consciousness and I say the notion of the consciousness as you turn within you can hardly pinpoint it as a source as a localized witness. The notion of consciousness gets gradually more and more disintegrated and actually the notion of intelligence seems to take over. And what does that mean. That means that all that you experience there is always confirming something that you know intuitively that corroborates a kind of inherent knowledge that we already possess. Which the Sufis call the knowledge of the soul. And which in philosophy is called protoclytic knowledge. So imagine that you are looking at something out there and it reminds you of something that you know. 

So instead of thinking that you are perceiving something out there that you are discovering something that you know. For example if you, how do you know that <<deer jant>>> It is because it is written in your own intelligence and because this an archetype and there is the exemplar. ANd so we have a kind of inborn knowledge but that knowledge needs to be corroborated by experience until such a time that one realizes as <acknobly> says that "The known is a field of the knowledge" Now I must say that this is very profoundly what Buddha is teaching. When he makes a definite cleft between the become and the non become. So there's the knowledge that we acquire in the world of becoming by the knowledge of the existential realm and what he says, we're getting into metaphysics now and I hope it's all right because you want experience and not and somehow it helps to bring about experience to see this he says that become does not consider T'was the non become that's a very serious statement because it contradicts what Rumi says when Rumi says Tonight umteen stars give birth to life eternal. So that means existence has no contribution to reality? Did he really mean that, or is it something that his disciples said thinking that they knew what he was saying. Or is it that in fact one can reconcile the irreconcilibles in the creator's level of understanding? I don't know if you can follow me.

So this is metaphysics. But for us in our practices and in our meditation at this level when we are at this level when we are moving up the zikr when we are moving upward from illah upward from one stage to another after saying the first ah , but you don't say it , thinking the first of Allah which is he celestial level of your being that operates at the transcend so that you cannot be the human witness as one thinks one is anymore because as sillowadi says it is your angelic counterpart that is the witness.That is the significance of that is absolutely incredible. It is the celestial counterpart in you that is the witness He doesn't say it that is several stages stages, no, what could this mean. How would the world occur to you if you were an angel? If you, things would be very different than if you were a human being. But since there is a level of our being which does correspond with the celestial level then could we just try to grasp how that level of our being sees the world? If the angel sees beauty where others don't see it I told you the story of Christ looking at <<???>> they are so beautiful Maybe it is deeper than that, maybe it is seeing the world in the soul of the people who appear gross to your judgementalism you see the wounded soul there is beauty in it. It is because that beauty has been abused, there is a wound. 

So let us say that your judging seems according to the emotional measuring rod instead of your judgment. And for example, there are people whom you feel that their atmosphere is an insult to you and others you feel in presence with their being so that's an emotional assessment. You become very sensitive, very highly sensitive. Vulgarity and grossness and so on, lack of charity, you become very sensitive. So this is the level the dervishes are talking about <nefafferee> for example, he says for example, I am haunted because of my realization has taken me and I am awakening the moment when further perspective will be revealed to me. So that it is not a quiet knowledge. You have to be in a state of readiness for this revelation to take place. So this is the level of <<traervush>> between malakut and blahout which is seeing things first of all seeing things from the point of view of the angel and seeing things from the divine continuum. \ Do we have to end here. We have a living alarm clock here. It is very good very useful. WE would have probably been quite hungry. So we will meet again at 2:30.

END OF TAPE


FEB 15, 1997		Tape 09

So one wants to use several different methods in order to help one take off. But the thing is that one wants to schlep the whole of one's being in one's upward surge instead of just making a break between one's higher self and one's lower self. So that means that one has to resurrect before dying. It's a bit late if you wait until you die. So just imagine the tremendous privilege we have to be able to avail ourselves of all the experience, techniques that were used by our illustrious fore fathers and mothers. 

I'm thinking of a method that was elaborated by the Yogis then further by the Tibetans. And of course the Sufis are using it now. That is the practice of pranayama, the way it has been developed by Tibetans and eventually the Sufis. The Tibetan principle, remember this because it's really a very important principle. That is that it's formulated in the words, "The mind rides the wind". That is that one can use energy as a lift to hoist one's consciousness into the higher spheres. Rather it is a matter of knowing how to direct and transform the energy of one's body, particularly of one's breath, actually of one's magnetic field. It acts as a Pegasus that carried Belerphon to the Olympus, but as you know, Pegasus could reach only a certain altitude and not beyond that. But he imprinted momentum upon Belerphon so that Belerphon was able to continue on his own. So you consider these practices as just a primer which will set you, give you an impulse towards upwards. Then eventually you have to take over yourself in your attunement. 

So let's just do these practices in different stages. First of all you place the thumb of your right hand under your chin, and the middle finger of your right hand on your right nostril but don't press it yet, and the palm of your left hand on the back of the right hand, and the thumb of your left hand on your left nostril. Now simply breath exhaling through both nostrils trying to evacuate as much polluted gases from your lungs as possible. Now inhale through both nostrils. Now press both nostrils and hold your breath. You could turn your eyeballs upwards and press your tongue against your pallet as you hold your breath. And then exhale through both nostrils. Take away your fingers. 

Alright now we're going to, first keep pressing the middle finger of the right hand and inhale through the left nostril, hold your breath, eyeballs upwards, tongue, exhale through the right nostril. Now breathe in through your right nostril, hold your breath, eyeballs upwards, exhale through both nostrils. Inhale through both nostrils, hold your breath, exhale through both nostrils. Now breath normally.

So to start with, let's say to start with that we are calibrating the forces left and right. I'm sure it has some kind of action, left brain, right brain. Connecting the two. It goes much deeper than that of course because the early Yogis in the very early days started dissecting bodies and found that indeed we have a central nerve in the spinal cord and we have two lateral nerve trunks on either side. And somehow, I don't know how they found that those are two different nervous systems. The autonomic nervous system in the lateral channels and then the central nervous system in the center. And that there are afferent and efferent nerves connecting the two. And that the central nervous system is associated with mastery and will power of course and conscious will. And the lateral channels with autonomic functions and the unconscious. We are programmed in such a way that functions that do not require our attention are attended to automatically by the autonomic nervous system. Breathing, digestion, a lot of things. 

And what the Yogis are trying to do is to take over functions that are normally governed by the autonomic nervous system, take over these functions volitionally and therefore consciously. And I think that in the realm of psychotherapy it must be very relevant because it means making the unconscious conscious. Now that means that the nerve impulses in the lateral channels are directed, converged towards the center, I think it's called the afferent nerve. And as I said small branches of nerves that connect the two. And the other way around. once a function has been taken over by the conscious, then it can be relegated back to the unconscious. For example, if you're practicing to play the piano, and you keep on making the same mistake, then that mistake has become automatized. Then you correct yourself by making the motions of your fingers conscious. And once you've corrected the function, then you don't have to think of it any more. Then the unconscious takes over. You see?

So, at first one is awakening the functions of the lateral channels if you breath in through the left nostril, out the right, in the right out the left. Then the central channel. Now the second stage. As you breathe in through the left nostril, imagine that the telluric force, that is let's say the magnetic field of the planet is shunted upwards in the left channel of the spinal cord. You can really feel that current rising in the left channel of the spinal cord while you're inhaling through the left nostril. And then when you hold your breath, you turn your eyeballs upwards and curl your tongue against the pallet because, actually I say you turn your eyeballs upwards. You really converge your eyes, well a little. In your mind at least, your eyes are turned towards each other. 

But the action of the tongue is of course more important because your tongue is pressed against the pallet, the back of the pallet. And consequently this has some kind of action on the brain functions. For one thing the spinal (rashidic) fluid in the fourth ventricle. And secondly you are pressing against the base of the pituitary gland. Somehow you are doing something with your brain functions. You're awakening, and also the secretion of bita endorphines which gives you a kind of ecstasy. It's really a drug that you body produces itself. So therefore not only do you concentrate on the nerve impulse rising in the left channel, but you concentrate on each chakra as it rises. And then as I said, hold your breath, now you are concentrating on the, what is really the center of what is called the crown chakra. And that represents a very high level of realization. So that is the center that is in some way connected with the state of Samadhi. 

Now as you exhale, then you think of energy descending along the right channel of the spinal cord. And again you concentrate on each chakra as it descends. Then if you do this, well we should be doing it, I hope you'll observe that it's a very different kind of energy that descends. It's like what one calls pure spirit as compared with telluric energy. So that would let's say favor awakening in life. So you have awakening beyond life in the pituitary gland and awakening in life with the descent. Then of course you do the opposite. 

And then when you inhale through both nostrils, then you have the two currents rising. Actually the two currents converge in the central channel. So that's what the Yogis are trying to do. The autonomic nervous impulses are now being taken over by the central nervous system. And now of course you can concentrate much more easily on each of the chakras as you inhale. And then as you hold your breath, you concentrate on the pituitary gland, it's call bindu. And now as you exhale, you concentrate on the channels right and left so that the volitional functions are now being taken over, are now autonomatized. You've trained your unconscious or autonomic nervous system to take over.

So let's do this do this now. And if you can concentrate on those channels and chakras. Always exhale before you start. Always think that one exhales before one inhales. So at least breathe in through each nostril twice, I mean breathe in and hold the breath, breathe out, and then breathe in again because after the first exhaling, where the energy is directed towards the bottom of the spine, you'll find that those two snakes, those two poles of the same energy, now conjoin together as you inhale because now you're concentrating on the central channel as you inhale. 

Now what you could do is to visualize the flame in the central channel, all different colors as we did this morning. OK. Now the next step would be to think of this uprising current of energy as a lift which carries your consciousness into the higher spheres. So now I would suggest simply inhaling through both nostrils , holding your breath,and exhaling again. 

Do it several times so that you can feel the impact of the energy, telluric energy rising as a support of your consciousness. But you have to try to observe in which way that rather gross earth energy is transmuted as it rises. Now of course it would be a mistake to think that your consciousness is shifted upwards in space. That would lead you into astral projection. Remember all the things we've said, that you lose the sense of location of space and time and the sense of what we call the substantiality of the body. Then if you remember, for example, the emergence of the new dispensation of life and light of course when you concentrate on the solar plexus. I mean when you're passing, transferring you attention from one chakra to the next. When you reach the solar plexus, then you're aware that that's the portal that leads towards the void. And then the heart center, your celestial counterpart, and so on. 

Then you move upwards into different modes of thinking where it is the Universe that is thinking as you're thinking, or God that is thinking as you're thinking, as Newton says. Moving up eventually one loses the sense of being able to determine a level. It's just one is in a very high state. Don't try to observe it. Don't try to define it or check what's happening. Just let yourself be inspired and uplifted. 

Now you might find that you might prefer placing the index of your right hand on your third eye and the thumb on your right nostril and the middle finger of your right hand on your left nostril. You might find it more convenient. I find that I can hold the breath without pressing the nostrils. 

There you see converging the eyes stabilizes them. And as you know, in dream consciousness we have what they call rapid eye movement. And in deep sleep the eyes are stationary. There is some association between at least thinking in terms of images and the motion of the eyes. So if you stabilize the eyes, you are favoring that state of the eyes when you're not thinking in terms of images which are of course related to space.

As I said right in the beginning, instead of just shifting your attention from one chakra to the other, consider that the telluric energy is being transmuted. So it's more like a chain reaction. Gross energy triggers off subtle energy. And subtle energy triggers off even more subtle energy. And the Tibetans do talk about subtle energy and very subtle energy and the subtle mind and the very subtle mind corresponding to these various modes of energy. So somehow your whole sense of identity shifts from thinking of yourself as a body to thinking of yourself as pure spirit. 

You must turn your eyeballs, I mean direct them forward as you exhale and relax your tongue. So your sense of identity keeps being transfigured. And your representation of the environment, as your representation of the physical world is replaced by that of an etheric world, then astral, and then world of light and so on. You keep on moving up. 

Now I find that I don't like keep on moving up and down. So somehow I don't know whether you've ever seen, like a fountain of water, then there is a ball. The fountain keeps on rising and falling. But the ball is suspended at the top of that fountain. It's something like that. Your consciousness keeps on being held up by that upward thrust of energy.

Now this is of course Yoga. But you see in Sufism it's a little bit different because one is, well one is in love with God. Even if you think God is a virtuality, what does the mind know? But it's a very special kind of love that is called glorification. But it shatters your emotions and gives you a sense of the sacred. As a matter of fact, what we're doing now is a preparation for the advanced stages of the zikre because you could consider the left and right breath like a swing, something like the nature of the spiral. 

You're building a temple. And you're in the temple. In the temple is that center of holiness. And because by your glorification of God, you make God present. And it is true that if you think of a person very much, then that person is present, perhaps more present than the people in the room, as Al Hallaj says. The temple has, as I said, color glass windows at the side, but a sky light at the top, and an alter which corresponds to your heart center, and even a sanctuary corresponding to the solar plexus. And so it is not limited. The upward portal leads into infinity. You're not an enclosed space in the sense that we imagine a temple to be. And what is more, when you're exhaling, then you could represent the descent, the quickening of the Holy Spirit descending on your heart which is the alter. 

You see that as soon as you bring in God as a presence, beyond our understanding, you mustn't limit it, you bring in a whole new dimension in the practice. Instead of a quest for freedom, liberation or escape, or awakening, there is a sense of the spiritual status endowed upon our being, of which we are endowed in our being. The kind of investiture, divine investiture, so that in a sense we become a priest or priestess with a commitment. So you see this is awakening in life rather than awakening beyond life. But still there is that moment at the end of the inhaling when you are hoisted beyond the limitations of earthly conditions. That corresponds with the 'h' of the word Allah. And then the hu, the 'u' is added to the 'h' because now one awakens in life instead of beyond life. 

Now to make this picture more adequate because so far it was just a preparatory step. Energy spirals upwards, swirls upwards. It doesn't rise in a straight line. You find that in smoke for example. So if you're breathing through the left nostril and you're drawing up telluric energy through your spine, then that energy will move towards your left. And then if it's spiraling, then it's going to move towards in front of you, your right and so on, upwards like the needles of let's say clockwise. Then you hold your breath. Now if you exhale through your right nostril, then that celestial energy of pure spirit is now going to spiral downwards clockwise. It's a different staircase than the one we went up in the first place. So there are two spirals that criss cross as in the caduceus, criss cross at each chakra.

But now if you inhale through the right nostril, then the energy is going to move to the right, in front of you, to the left behind you, right and so on, anti clockwise. So you are ascending the same spiral staircase that you just came down on when you exhale. Then hold your breath. And as you exhale left, that celestial energy is going to spiral, swirl downwards anti clockwise down the same staircase you went up in the first place.

Now inhale through both nostrils. So now there are two spirals. So those are the snakes of kundalini and represented by the snakes in caduceus. And they will criss cross in front of the second chakra, behind your solar plexus, in front of your heart center, behind your throat center, in front of your third eye, and will meet in the crown chakra which is called Bindu. Then you hold your breath. And when you exhale, then that very beautiful energy of pure spirit is descending obviously in the opposite direction, yes from upward downwards. Perhaps you will notice that when you are inhaling through both nostrils, the peripheral energy is sucked into the center. So those are the afferent nerves that are connecting the autonomic system with the central nervous system. So the energy rises and is drawn in at the same time. And when you exhale, you find that the energy which would normally descend in the central channel is bifurcated right and left into those two spirals. 

Now it's the other way around. At first con....(tape turns)

Having expanded ones consciousness, now consciousness is drawn within, the energy is drawn towards the center and lifted upwards at the same time. Consciousness then is both turned inside and moved up in the transcendental dimension. And when you exhale then you find that when the energy moves downwards, the energy spreads out. So the walls of the temple are extended further and further. Or let's say that the energy form the temple is now diffused into the profane world. Now see, now we have a better sense of the temple than we had in the previous practice because now the temple is made of spirals of energy that criss cross in the central column. And of course we are at the center. So the beauty here is that the spiral, or that the samsaric wheel has become spirals that reach upwards and extend outward. OK so now just relax a moment. Perhaps you'd like to stretch.

OK Sit down now. Now during the next practice. It is a Sufi practice. As I said before, we are like a pendulum so that one pole of our being is moving in time and space and the other pole remains stationary. And we're the whole pendulum. Now in addition to that the pendulum does experience a state of suspense beyond time and space at the end of its swing right and its swing left. That is a very special condition that illustrates what we mean by the instant of time that intercepts the process of becoming. And it is in that instant of time that rebirthing takes place because otherwise we would continue to be what we were, or we would be the consequence of what we were let's say in a causal chain. Where as here you interrupt the conditioning of causality by the emergence of a fresh dispensation which we call rebirthing. So the Sufi dervishes treasure very much that instant of time that does not have any duration and were the forward march of time is suspended. 

Hujwiri who was the first Sufi to visit India before Moinidin Chisti, his tomb is in Lahore. I think he was quoting the dervishes when he said, " Vact", which means the instant of time,"Is a sharp sword that cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future". Now that is not a philosophical statement. It's a psychological statement which has enormous implications because somehow we feel if we think in the sense of causality, determinism, then we could never forgive ourselves and could never expect to be forgiven for our wrong doings. So you could also say that that instant of time is the divine grace. That is the gratuitous divine act which is not constrained by law, by causality. In fact it's the instant of freedom from law. If you think of Kabbala, then of course din represents law on their side and hasad or dulla represents that principle that is not restricted to law, a reprieve as one says, magnanimity instead of holding people responsible for their guilt. In fact it is love instead of law.


So we're touching upon something very important because we have to notice the difference between the moment of time and the instant of time because for example, what we mean by now, the past does overlap with the future. For example a note that we just heard in music continues to vibrate in our ears while we hear the next note. And there is a kind of overlap. And one could prefigure what is the next note, if it is music of Bach for example. But the instant cuts the continuity. There is no effect of the past upon the future. 

Personally I think if you illustrate this by a wave on the sea, that wave is a continuation of the previous wave, but at the same time the whole sea emerges as each wave. So there is both causality and free will, the unpredictable, both at the same time. 


But still the fact that there is the slightest chance that one can bring about a change, sudden change, a hiatus in one's life is very important. It is a pledge that turns a chapter in our lives. The pledge happens in an instant. It doesn't have any duration. It marks a change from one state to another, threshold state. 

So for one thing during this retreat, if you remember we started by looking at our selves, asking ourselves what our values are and what our objectives are. And now we are at the point of asking ourselves, "How can I bring about change?". That change of tack. So this is a chance to make a pledge. And it's up to you to decide what pledge you will make. A pledge is, there are two ways. One is I will not do that again. And the other one is I will do this. So you could make two pledges. So I'll just leave it to you to do this now. The pledge doesn't take long. But the decision as to what pledge. 

Now if you have questions in your mind now, "You mean to say that by deciding not to do what I regret, that is going to absolve me from my guilt from having done it?". Well that is a matter of how you think. But I think a more important question is, is it going to affect the situation in the past. Can the present have a retroactive effect on the past because we always think that we can't change the past. But the fact is that the past is in the present. For example, if you look into the sky in the night time, most of the stars that you see don't exist anymore. So you're looking into the past. And, well what you see is the photons that have scattered. A few of those photons are hitting your retina. The star doesn't exist itself. It's scattered. But the photons are diffusing in space. 

Now we experienced this this morning. If you think of yourself as a beam of light, your aura, and the photons of your aura are hurtling into space and form with the photons of the stars a wave interference pattern, then of course your being has impact upon the stars, and therefore has impact upon the past. It might be difficult to follow that. If you've studied Einstein's Relativity, then you understand that. So that is like such a solace to think that by your pledge you can affect the person you harmed in the past by improving that condition. Of course you could simply write to that person if that person is still alive. Or then if not, you can still reach a person with your thoughts and say, "I'm sorry and please forgive me". But it's only authentic if you decide not to do it again. otherwise you're not really sorry. Now how it affects the future is again of course if you are a new person, it's going to alter your plans for the future. So the present has an impact on the future. 

So now we're going to do the practice now. As you inhale think that you are a pendulum. As you inhale through the left nostril, the pendulum swings from the left to the right. As you hold your breath the motion of the pendulum is suspended. And then you exhale right. So although the motion of the pendulum is suspended, the force that was instilled in the pendulum is going to continue to move upwards into eternity. Now as you inhale through the right nostril, that's where you experience the pull of the future, that is your programming. And then as you hold your breath, your pledge which is going to change your programming. And as you exhale through the left, somehow the force that was set up in the pendulum is going to continue upwards into let's say everlastingness. Now let's just do that for a little while and see how you experience it. 

OK So now there is that mysterious thing that happens when after the pendulum has reached the end of its swing, there is a force that continues upwards. Let's put it this way, that whatever action has been performed in the world, and particularly whatever realization we have attained will never get lost. But it will only survive by being transmuted. That is there is a feed back from the existential realm into the programming of the Universe. If there were not, what's the point in anything that we do? It would get lost. So there wouldn't be any point. That's what Julaluddin Rumi means by, "Tonight the umteen stars give birth to the life eternal". So let us say that the transient is eternalized. Or the ephemeral is eternalized. 

Now think in terms of we're all going to die some time. You have plenty of time. I have less time than you I think. There will be a transit. Do you mean to say that all you've done in your life is just gone and lost? Doesn't make sense. Now think of an event that took place in your life where you learned something. So perhaps you don't remember the event so much. But what you learned is eternalized. Pir o Murshid used the word everlasting rather than eternal because it had a beginning and doesn't have and end. It's not the same as eternal that doesn't have a beginning and doesn't have an end. 

So that's what one means by resurrection. Something happens in your memory too. You don't remember the contingent aspects of an event, but you remember the gist of the event. So can you think of yourself as surviving death by becoming the perfume of what you are? The flowers are much more smart than we are. They have a precarious foot hold on planet earth, but they are able to transmute themselves into perfume into perfume. And that perfume lasts forever. So that means that you develop in your retreat the ability to think of yourself as the essence of what you are. And that is precisely what is being done in alchemy. The first stage of alchemy which is called 'solve', distillation. It was water. Now it's become vapor, distillation. And so if the flowers of earth become perfume, then it doesn't really matter what happens to the flowers. They can be thrown on the garbage heap. But they continue to live as perfume. It gives you a sense of freedom from the fear of death which is one of the most basic fears of humans. 

Now of course if you don't mind me talking physics, some people don't like it, but I'll try to minimize it as much as possible. For me it's fantastic. Because you see matter is converted into energy and electrons can be converted into photons. That means that the body can continue to live as light. In a very different mode. The electrons and protons of the body live forever. They don't die. They are scattered but they don't die. And each one carried a certain amount of bites in the world. So that the memory of the totality of the body is still there but it's wide spread in space. If we realize it, space has no sense in the local laws of science, then we see that we survive. We don't survive located in space. 

It's a little bit more complex because the electrons can't send messages to each other because of the limitation of the speed of light. But they do communicate. And that has been ascertained by an experiment by professor Aspect in Paris based on the Einstein Prodosky what they call Dent experiment, Rosen. Which proved that electrons live as couples. So if one whirls to the right the other whirls to the left. You can separate them artificially so they can't communicate because of the limitation of the speed of light. But if you change the whirl of one, the other changes its whirl, paradox. It just shows that our conception of death is simply ignorant, the ultimate stupidity. What we think of as death. I know it's very frightening to look at a body that's died. But that's just our point of view. 

But you see that is associated with this sense of our immortality which I referred to yesterday. Because in your meditation you get to that point when you shift your identity up the pendulum closer to the point that doesn't change. So now somehow you escape the entropy of disintegration by what is called negentropy which is the opposite, increased information at the cost of the expenditure of energy. So you see the connection between science and what we are doing in our meditations. 

So that means then that after you inhale, somehow you try to sense all that's happened in your life and your realization is being transmuted and eternalized while life continues. Therefore the pendulum descends again. While something is going upwards, the pendulum keeps on moving. 

Now of course it's more difficult to understand what happens when the pendulum swings to the left. Because that's where you are experiencing not only the impact of your pledge upon the past, but upon your prefiguration of the future upon the past. But of course your plan does prefigure the future. Now once more I repeat these words of Euler. When you're meditating. Somehow at first one is thinking about the past. One is thinking about one's problems. They maybe happened a few minutes ago, but they're still the past. That autopsy. One is thinking about the past. If you remember what I said was the way of overcoming this autopsy of the past is to foresee your future. That's why Euler said, "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. That means overcoming determinism by your free will because the future depends upon your free will. That is the victory of life. That is what happened to Buddha at the end of his retreat. He said, "I have overcome determinism". It's called the cry of the lion, the affirmation, the victory over determinism. And that is over the samsaric wheel. 

Now Buddha I quoted when he said, "That which is of the nature does not contribute to the eternal". There seems to be a contradiction there. How could that which doesn't change be altered by that which changes? So you can see that what he says is quite right. But somehow there is a difference between the everlasting and the eternal. Let us put it this way. You could illustrate it with a wheel. The center of the wheel doesn't change but in some way the force that makes the wheel turn is centered in the center. It's paradoxical. That's the way it is. Now a pendulum. If the pendulum, that upward motion, the continuation of the swing towards the right. If that motion reached the zenith, it would reprogram the whole process of becoming. Now that's what happens when you breathe through both nostrils. 

So we've had the caduceus, right? And you can see the resemblance between the swing of the pendulum and the caduceus. Now breathing through both nostrils. So you have two swings, right and left, and both reaching upwards and meeting at the top. And that does not represent eternity. Eternity is the center of the circle. The top of the circle represents everlastingness. So when you hold your breath after inhaling through both nostrils, that's were you experience eternity, the eternal center of your being. When you exhale you can see, it's very difficult to understand, you can see that even though when we turned within we found that we had our personal incentive, you can see that your future is in some way a blend between your programming of your being and your free will. 

Now I reach a point when I don't know how to say it anymore. But if in a retreat you look at your life and your destiny, and it's all beyond your understanding, but somehow your intuition tells you that even though it seems totally incongruous, it makes ultimate sense. You see the point of eternity is the point where the irreconcilables can be reconciled. Contradictions. You see the oneness behind the polarity. There you see the unity between the non become and the become. That is beyond our understanding. So what it amounts to is that we lose any ability to fit meaningfulness into our mental constructs. It's the dark night of understanding of St. John of the Cross. And when that happens, we're touching upon the reality behind the our reality. 

That's what happens when we're doing the zikre. We'll be doing the zikre. And we'll see how all that we've been doing now applies to the zikre. So just think of yourself in a break. I think there is a bit of sunshine. Walk in the sun. Half and hour let's say. Tape ends.

FEB 15, 1997		Tape 10

 But it gives you some, the (savou) of some sufi (doshas), (asccessee) So you know the different stages of the zikr, at least gone through them, so now we are going to actually do the zikr together , so I'll be occasionally stopping you, and putting you, giving you some thoughts into the practice.

La illah ha illah hu so remember that (romantic) H at the end of la, you say the H before you say the Hu, I mean it's the same H but you emphasize the H because that's the moment of samadhi. La illah ha illah hu La illah ha illah hu Last time La illah ha illah hu

Alright, now can you instead of saying it aloud, and just think it, the words, and as you know each word is a signal for a certain state of your consciousness and attunement, so as you exhale, the circle gets wider and wider, and then as you inhale the head comes down facing the solar plexus, plunging into the void, and then you continue inhaling as the head turns upwards first as little bit and then concentrate on the heart center and then the chakras upwards and that is when you, rising above earthly conditions, transmuting all the levels of your being, and awakening from the earthly perspective, and discovering the everlastingness of your being, and eventually in the H touching upon eternity. 

 So awaking in life you're aware of meaningfulness and purposefulness in the middle of the ignorance and incongruence of people and situations and you see in that , in the existence the fulfillment of the divine purpose. And if you are able to maintain the awareness of unity, while being aware of the multiplicity then you see that, as Pir o Murshid said it is all a condition of God. It's all a condition of God. So just like wave is a condition of the sea, that all is the sense of the oneness behind the multiplicity. 

So the head rebounds and after hitting the solar plexus, and remember well that this is your nostalgia for the unattainable but it's also your glorification that hoists your consciousness or shifts your acumen to a very high pitch. And when you hold your breath, there are no thoughts, it's eternal so it's beyond change, and of course no sense of space, and maybe just a sense of being overcome, being involved in existence, you are able to have an overview of the existential state, just as though you were flying so high that you reach beyond the cosmos, not just the planet, although there is no such thing, but still this is a metaphor.

 And the way to do it is to shift your perspective you see, from one perspective to the next, from earthly perspective through heavenly perspective, beyond any, actually what Buddha says is beyond existence and beyond consciousness and beyond existence and nonexistence and then, as you see it's beyond existence, beyond existence and nonexistence, beyond consciousness, non existence would be like programming its even beyond the programming, but at first there is not a n overview its just a sense of being backstage of the world of existence of awakening from the existential perceptive.

So in the second dhikr you don't go into the circle the head bows as you exhale, illah, exhale and la, inhale, and because, the second zikr, first dhikr your still conscious of the, well your using the samsaric wheel as a trigger that catapults your consciousness beyond the circle, but after that well you don't have to you free yourself of the samsaric wheel what Buddha calls an extra samsaric inheritance, which is very similar to what the Sufis say of course, the divine inheritance, so you don't think of yourself as the progeny of your parents but your carrying in you the inheritance of something undefinable of course that's why it's not samsaric, which the Sufi's call God, which is not flawed, not flawed by existence, and the Sufi calls that the divinity of your being. 

To a certain point you proceed with the third dhikr which is Allah hu, Allah, and then H holding the breath and then Hu exhaling, that is a lifting not only hoisting yourself beyond the human condition but even the angelic condition, any condition, because as say you can think of existence as a condition of God as Pir o Murshid says, so the condition is subsidiary to the reality., of which it is a condition. Well at a certain point, these are things that I thought strike a certain realization in you and then when that happens you discard the thought, and so as I said, as Ibn Arabi said, knowledge upon the known, so you discard knowledge, so no more thought no more consciousness no more thought the awakening of intelligence, the emotion of joy is transmuted into peace, that one has lost ones sense of individuality, now its very short lived, you can't hold that for along time, so as the Upanishad said, "the breakthrough of awakening is like a flash, that passes before you realize it, and you can never hold it", and that's the H of Allah, the H, as in no thoughts, no considerations, and when you add the U it becomes Hu, now you awaken in life and you have these ponderings or soul searching's without, beyond your understanding but you just can see yourself in life in life, in the world, wonder who you are and what it's all about, and you know there is no way we can grasp this miracle of life...... cannot grasp.....and that... could never attain, and now there is joy and pain, whereas in samadhi there is just peace, but the joy and pain can never touch the reality, the core of your being,

 Murshid says you see if you identify yourself with your, well it's an illustration of course of what we call the soul and the soul can be illustrated by the eyes that can't see themselves, so the soul thinks that it is the garb in which it had invested itself, for example your a man, or a woman, or a young man, or an old man, or you think your a philosopher, or you think your no good, or you think your very smart, or you think your rich, or you think your poor, or think your inadequate, you think all kinds of things about yourself, and that is because one identifies with the circumstances, but it does not affect the reality of ones being. For example Pir o Murshid said a king thinks he's a king because people say "your Majesty" and he's sitting on a throne and there is a crown on his head and so on, or the businessman in London has a top hat so he thinks he's a businessman, or that young man who has a fortune, he didn't know that his father left him a fortune, thinks he's poor. So that's awakening in life realizing that one is nothing of those things that one identified with, that one thinks one is happy or one thinks one is sad, one thinks ones failed or one thinks one has achieved, it's all air condition, of ones true being that remains basically unscathed by it's condition. 

So you the ridiculous assumptions that we make like, I would be a fool to think that I'm teaching you and maybe I'm just reminding you of things you already know, and I'm really you, and your mouthpiece. Were caught in a perspective and to be awake you free yourself from that perspective. And beyond all the exchange of thoughts and ideas and words and even realizations there's sharing the same bread at the same (alterm) a the link at the soul level as the ultimate expression of love, love, finding affinity at the soul level. And so that, you know how you can, not just (when) you think of a person, but you can really find that person in you, you begin to talk like that person and think like that person so there has really been an osmosis and that is what one means by holy communion at the soul level, so one realizes that "inaudible" being whom one cannot reach as Buddha without going anywhere past and present so that one can reach into the consciousness of Buddha or Christ or any being and this "inaudible" you know you have, obviously we have physical parents and ancestors, and but we also carry we have maybe celestial parents too, and so one have different physical parents, we find an affinity at the celestial level, and if you count our ancestors, we had more ancestors, the count of our ancestors is more than was the population of that time, so somehow we do inherit from the whole universe. 

So when they say the divine inheritance what does it mean, because it is potentially present in each one of us and that means that it is inherited at all levels so you can think of yourself as a wave of the sea which is not separate from the sea, there is no boundary so it is an expression of the whole sea, now that is awaking in life. But you see it is at the higher levels that commonality, affinity is discovered and at the lower levels we are very different and consequently that's why Whitman says that in the state of samadhi you reach a sense of oneness and overcome multiplicity, like you see the beehive instead of the bees.

Remember that a state of transfiguration off set your consciousness then one can follow it up with further transfiguration, so I'm trying to articulate what's happening to me at present, very inadequately of course 'cos in a way of saying it, but I was wondering if it corroborates with what you are experiencing because at some point, at some level, we contact, and what's happening to me is happing to you and vice versa. That's why Pir o Murshid said you think the purpose of our life is to give lectures" most of my work is on the higher planes, and the wonderful realization that there is no being in the entire universe that you cannot reach, at some level.

 There was a breakthrough in Buddha's "inaudible" and Buddha was doing the "inaudible" meditations, you know Herman Hesse in the voice of Siddharta, criticized Buddha for not telling one how he did it, but he did tell you how he did it, so he says - you see when consciousness extends beyond the boundary of the individuality, and I would say the notion of individuality then the memory of the whole universe comes back because our memory is in some way connected with our sense of identity, and so our memory of the universe is buried in the unconscious and really kept there because of our identifying with our individuality and that identity starts at our birth so "inaudible" says, he says our memory of the universe is interrupted at our birth, actually our conception, but if we cease to simply think of ourselves as what one calls discreet entity, in other words one loses the sense of the boundaries of our being, then memory of the whole universe comes back. And he proves it because he says there was a time when there was no smoke on planet earth, well he didn't say planet earth of course, well that means that there were no humans, in those days nobody knew anything about evolution, that there was a time when there where no humans, how did he know? 

There was a time when planet Earth didn't exist, how did he know? There was a time when the cosmos didn't exist, that is only quite recently that astrophysicists are saying that, started with the big bang. but didn't happen at any point in time, because the notion, time loses it's meaning at that level, so he said there were other universes prior to this one, how could he have known that? There is only very few astrophysicists who say that nowadays, only nowadays, and that was said six centuries before Christ. And then he says beings, lets say migrating from one layer to another according to their realization, it is your realization that determines the level at which you migrate, and then he speaks about, beings of pure radiance, that's what he means by angels or celestial beings, beings of pure consciousness that is beyond even their auric body, and the beings of pure realization without, beyond any consciousness so some kind of approximation it gives you a sense of what one could mean by the levels of reality so that each one of us is in life according to our degree of realization. 





FEB 16, 1997		Tape 11

That's (Alegre Miserere). And it's a unique version of it. It doesn't compare with any other. None other compares with it. It's very difficult to get. And we're hoping to sing it at the Abode choir and also in the camp in Switzerland.

Motivations in the light meditations that we were doing in the morning and which I invite you to do yourselves because they are the most inspiring of all practices I think. And the motivations behind it is real passion for light. It's in the realm of emotion. And maybe one could say that there is such a thing as luminous thoughts and luminous emotions. So what we are doing by way of skills, practices must be considered as just a trigger to spark an attunement of one's consciousness. So that light could be considered as the ladder that hoists the soul towards it's highest ideal. And we have to be careful not to formulate it in the most commonplace way, like, "I am seeking illumination". No that's, there is a word of Pir o Murshid that says, "Every atom, every being, every star, every galaxy is preparing itself for the state of awakening". And as you know, awakening is like the breakthrough of the clarity of light. Light is not as physical. But it signifies the emergence of clarity out of let's say ignorance or ambiguity.

So let us start this morning with the practice of the Shagal. But I want to point out that we're targeting three chakras. First we'll be working with the first one. That's the bottom of the spine. Then the second one the solar plexus, which is the counterpart of the heart. The solar plexus and the heart are both parts of the same chakra. And then the top of the head.

So now this time as you hold your breath, try to see if you can experience the flame that we mentioned the other day. As you know, the body is in a state of combustion that's regulated so that you have a regular temperature. And that means that the cells of our body emit infrared light. And that light can be transmuted to light in the middle range and also to ultraviolet light.

So as you hold your breath, you concentrate on this flame in that chimney which is the solar plexus. And think of the different colors that appear in the flame. Well start doing that, then we'll make another further step and we keep on making further steps.

For this practice I suggest inhaling through both nostrils. Now having taken away your fingers, can you visualize your body as incandescent? And to do this of course you find yourself in a transfigured setting of consciousness. That's the reality behind what appears at the surface. And so the fabric of your body is, now it is your subtle body, it's not your physical body. It's within your physical body of course. It's even the template of the physical body. But it is like gossamer. In a sense it is translucid and at the same time incandescent. Something like for example if you burned a candle, and you find the mesh is kind of deep down in the candle so that you see the light coming through the wax of the candle. So the light is diaphanous instead of what we call radiant light. 

Time seems to have slowed down. So you are in a state of quiet abeyance. Having distanced yourself from the rat race. So that you are generating your own light. In fact your are transmuting matter into light although light is considered matter. It's a very advanced state of matter where there is no mass, particles but no mass. Now if you transit from one chakra to the next, then you discover the spectrum is in your own aura and like the rainbow except that it's reversed. The red is at the bottom and the ultraviolet is at the top. Until you get to that diamond like colorless light at the top of the head which is kind of like a scintillation of all kinds of different hues that all seem to merge in the crown chakra. So it gives you, it has a sparkling effect whereas lower down the light is diaphanous, but at this level the light is sparkling. Of course you turn your eyeballs upwards and press your tongue against your pallet. 

And I find that it is helpful to imagine a landscape together with discovering new vistas regarding oneself. Of course you can be creative and inventive. But I would suggest either sunset or sunrise where the sky is a very brilliant red shifting into rose and eventually orange. And so somehow, you see one is choosing, selecting landscapes that match one's own particular way of envisioning oneself. And so you are in the landscape or skyscrape. You reflect it and it reflects you. That will bring you into a state which is likened to the state of revere. So your consciousness is offset from the day to day diurnal mode of, well focus of consciousness. 

So we don't only concentrate on the flame, but the whole area around it, the effulgence of the body of light, the aura. So that if your are sitting in a room meditating, you feel as though you are illuminating the room just like a firefly. And the consequence is, that if you can keep your concentration in everyday life then you are aware of bringing light where ever you go. And that concentration will enhance that particular radiance of your aura. That particular radiance because, as I said, that light is diaphanous and at the top of the head it is sparkling. 

Now the next step. I don't know some of may not have heard that I said that in this case one breathes in through both nostrils at the same time and exhales through both nostrils. And I would suggest that you do what we were doing in the practice of casab, the last one, where you are converging the light of the, the peripheral light into the center of the channel so that it burns as a flame. 'n the other hand, when you're inhaling you see, you know what is a diode. That's that the current is allowed to pass one way but not the other way. 

So as you inhale, I don't know whether you know, in the old days of wood fires, open fireplaces, one used to place newspaper around the top of the opening to make the opening smaller. Then you'd find that the flame would burn much more violently. So you have a sense of protecting that flame by the same kind of thing that we've come across all the time, placing a barrier in the way of your senses of perception, sensorial. That's what we do in Shagal. Then as you exhale, then you remove that newspaper, that barrier. So you can radiate. When you inhale, you think of converging peripheral energy into the center. And when you exhale the efferent moving from the center to the periphery. So should we do this practice once more?

Now, you understand why one breathes in normally through the right nostril? If you breathe in through the right nostril, perhaps you know the law of Gous. If your right hand is a dynamo and it's turning towards your fingertips, that is anti clockwise, you'll be generating a current in your thumb. The relationship between a magnetic field and the current, electrical. And so you're enhancing the energy that is rising in the center of the spine. Then you reverse as you exhale and imagine that your hands are reversed and once more the energy is flowing towards your fingers but this time the current is ascends. So you could do it either way. You could do it breathing in through the right nostril. See how it works if you breathe in through both nostrils. See the effect of it. 

OK Now we are going to proceed to the next step. That is concentrate on the solar plexus as you inhale. Then the new dispensation of energy that emerges as in a white hole as you hold your breath. And as you exhale, radiate energy from your heart center. So in this case I suggest breathing in through both nostrils and breathing out through both nostrils.

As you exhale, the light is radiant and seems even to move out in concentric circles. So it's a much more overt kind of light than diaphanous light that we experienced in the first step. 

Now this time. Yes, simply inhale through the right nostril. This time as you inhale, you are aware of the light that is emerging in your eyes even though you are, if you place your fingertips on your eyelids, you are cutting out most of the frequencies of light. But the ultraviolet light can pass through your finger. So your fingers act as a king of filter. But you think that you drinking light through your eyes. And as you hold your breath, concentrate on the pituitary gland. And as you exhale. Well you could do it either way. You could either exhale through, imagine that you're casting light through your glance. Or then in a more advanced stage, you could concentrate on the pineal gland and cast the light forward through your third eye. So try and do that.

All right now there are some practices we can do with our eyes without putting the fingers, the indexes on the eyes. Your eyes, eyelids, are almost totally closed but not quite. There's just a slit. And as you breathe in you think that you are drawing light in through your eyes, that is threaded up into your brain. Now you close your eyes and you hold your breath. As you exhale, you open your eyes just slightly so that you are concentrating the beam of light of your glance much more than usual.

Of course, you must not, you see you have to reverse the function of your eyes so that you don't see things as you have them half open. All you see is light. Now what you could do is imagine that you are looking into the sun. But don't actually do that because unless you're very careful you can burn your retina in a few seconds. And I don't advise...(tape turns) ...a candle has a kind of hypnotic effect and you might get into a kind of astral state. So I'd be careful about that. So just imagine a very beautiful dawn. The light in the very early, actually the light before the sunrise where there is a lot more ultraviolet in comparison to the middle range frequencies of light. 

So the skyscrapes correspond to these two later practices. The former one would be, if you can imagine that, light emerging from a subliminal level and manifesting at the surface. Then for the practice that we have just done, the very early beginnings of the dawning of light. You see this is the kind of thing we do in the Himalayas. We get up very early and meditate before dawn and capture that very early, I suppose it is the earth shields most of the light rays, but of course the ultraviolet rays are really able to pass through the surface of the earth. So you get a lot of ultraviolet light. And you drink it through your eyes. 

OK Now the next practice is going to be Shagal again. But this time you concentrate on the light that descends through the fontanel, the top of your scull, and impinges upon the brain cells. As you hold your breath, you concentrate on the pituitary gland again. And this time you could really concentrate on the pineal gland as you exhale. That means that you are beginning to develop that light that sees through light. When Pir o Murshid talks about seeing without eyes, it is seeing a light that passes through the light of the glance of eyes. There is a word in the Psalms of David. I believe it says, "In thy light shall we see light". So it's not the light of our glance, that was the first step. It is, the way to reach that point is, of course the skill, I think of now it is not the light of the galaxies, it is actually cosmic rays. I mean you have to imagine instead imagining that you are converging the light of the stars as we did at the beginning, it's cosmic rays that hit your head vertically and of course have tremendous impact on the cells of the brain. And consequently the light that passes through your eyes is, which is already the light which is inside the brain, is enhanced by that further dispensation of light that descends upon you. So a number of contemplatives described it as being struck by lightening. 

Now I tested a Pakistani man by the name of Kahn who claimed that he could see without eyes. He was very angry that I would question it. I said, "Well prove it". It was at a party at the Pakistan Embassy. We blindfolded him and opened a book. And he read the book. Seeing without eyes. So it's not just poetry. Now of course that's a whole technique. It is making astral projection. The astral body can see without the body. So I'm not teaching that. But the technique that I'm talking about does give you that kind of insight because the sharpness of your glance affects your thinking and your consciousness of course. So together with that very penetrating light. It's a lot of ultraviolet and therefore it's passing through the surface of things. There is that insight beyond your understanding. And so that is the act of intelligence rather than consciousness, as we said yesterday. 

So let us to this practice now. I forgot to say that in this case you breathe in through the left nostril. So try it again now. Now after having taken away your hands, then you continue the practice by turning you eyeballs upwards as you inhale, this time you just inhale through both nostrils, with your eyelids nearly closed, but not totally closed. But the slit is up because now your eyeballs are turned upwards slightly. You can imagine, in fact rather than imagining the sun, you can imagine the cosmic rays hurtling through space. Then you hold your breath, close your eyes. Concentrate on the, well actually you concentrate on the link between the pituitary and the pineal gland, the effect of the pituitary on the pineal. Then as you exhale, you definitely radiate light from the pineal gland through your forehead. You must know of course that ultraviolet passes through the skull. So this is not fiction. And having done that, then I've given you a lot of practices.

This one is you open your eyes again, but slightly. And you envision the ultraviolet light of the third eye passing through the beams of light of your glance, the two headlamps that are represented by the glance of your two eyes. That is a light within a light.

We are running out of time. We have another 5 minutes don't we?

So there is another real breakthrough practice. It's a practice given by Buddha or that Buddha did himself. I don't know whether he did the first stage. The first stage is you take a piece of cardboard and you paint it red. I can't imagine Buddha doing that. Now you look at that cardboard, disc. And close your eyes and you see a green reflex. Now you don't have to cut out a cardboard disc. You can imagine a red disc and close your eyes and have the green reflex. 

But now the important next step. You see you imagine the disc as you exhale and the reflex as you inhale. Now the next step you jump from the reflex to the next reflex. But of course if you imagine a green disc, then of course you're not doing it. So you have to keep thinking that that green is simply the reflex of the red. And then jump from there to the next step which is I think violet. And so on. You move from one reflex to another. So each of these reflexivities acts like a key that unlocks the door of a further sphere of light. 

So that your sensitivity then to different levels, different spheres of light. Instead of just thinking the malakut level, the celestial level, there are several heavens, let's say within it. Hildegard of Bingen referred to this when she said, "I found myself in a world of light, absolutely dazzled. My whole body flooded with the light of that world. Then that world of light seemed to turn into a gate and open up into a further sphere of light even more dazzling and overwhelming. And eventually that world of light opened up into a still further world of light". Those are the words of Hildegard of Bingen.

Now the last stage is instead of imagining a disc, you simply imagine colorless light. And then the reflex of the colorless light which is not what we understand by a reflex, but indeed there are levels of light. And I dare say that as we do this you're gradually moving away from our commonplace conception of what we understand by light and closer and closer to what the Sufis call the light of intelligence. 

So this is, I would say the key. Maybe I'm saying too much. The key to illumination is that sudden outburst of the clarity of intelligence that sparks your whole aura into a tremendous outburst of effulgence. That is what is meant in the Koran by a light upon a light. You can just imagine that it's like a penny dropped. All of a sudden, "Aha, I see it". And all of a sudden your aura lights up. Perhaps it would be a misnomer to say that this is the key to illumination, but it is a pointer to illumination. Because your body participates in your realization.

Tape ends.

FEB 16, 1997		Tape 12

...we're concerned about getting back to America again. Getting back to where we were. We can't go back by the same door. I hope the things that we have been doing, the meditations and sometimes the sort of view on things has triggered off new ways of looking at your problems. Because now we need to build a bridge between our meditations, as I call it a rehearsal for life, and our real life situations. And for me of course that is what they call the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And now that's a crucial test is it has made some difference to you in your way of dealing with your problems.

Now so I wonder whether we could take each point in turn. Make some kind of a summary. When you, your consciousness is expanding, if you remember, you are creating conditions that are favorable to getting into the consciousness of other people involved in your problem. More and more people and eventually we have, can see the problem in a very wide purview as being an aspect of the whole drama of the Universe. So if you think it's your problem, then it makes you feel absolutely inadequate to solve it. 

Also, if you're in a situation with a lot of people, it's all rather chaotic and inconsistent. Still, if you have meditated in this dimension and have a sense of immensity, that gives you a kind of power, let's say resilience. Because it is our limited sense of ourselves that is our weakness. The trouble is that when we are facing the challenge of situations then we tend to fall back on our ego self. When we're meditating, we are able to see better what is enacted in our problem. But when we're right there in the midst of people, then we cope inadequately, the best we can. And we find ourselves backed to the wall and then of course we resort to our last resort mechanism which is to fight from the place of the ego. 

This is really an adage to remember. It's a word of Pir o Murshid, "The ego is only a fraction of what we are". And that is what we are resorting, rather we are resorting to the strategies of that ego, defenses, denial sometimes, wishful thinking. Denial to the extent for example when a situation is very painful, one can't, a person has died for example you can't accept it. It's not possible. That's a denial. It might take you a long long time before you accept it. And even then you may never accept it. That's the way that the ego is able to protect itself in some way. In a very inadequate way by some kind of a delusion until such time as you don't need that device and look at reality face to face. But it takes a lot of courage. 

But it is this sense of the all embracing dimension of your being that will help you allay that rather inadequate strategy of simply enlisting a very small fraction of yourself which is not up to dealing with the problem. So that was very clearly outlined by Beethoven when he showed in the 4th symphony instead of reacting he just placed a buffer between the situation and himself. So that's where meditation is an opportunity to place a buffer between your problems and yourself. 

Now when we're turning within, that's where we're dealing much more with ourselves in relationship with the situations. And there we have to face a lot of concerns because, soul searchings, because unless you are a megalomaniac, you can't be totally satisfied about yourself. I don't know where there is anybody here who thinks they're just it and they don't have to improve because they are absolutely perfect. I don't think there is anybody who would volunteer to put their hand up. I certainly don't belong to that category. It's only superman, that is the gurus. They are the super beings. So they say. 

So we're dealing with a lot of painful things. And guilt. And we try to deceive ourselves by not admitting guilt to ourselves let alone to other people because it diminishes our self esteem. Yet somehow we know that we are guilty So there is some inconsistency and there is real some dishonesty in our mind, denial. And I must say that admitting guilt to others will help you to admit it to yourself whatever the consequences. And if you're surrounded by friends which is rather rare, you know I can't tell you how amazed I am when I find that people behave properly. So that's when you get 80, you start to look at how people behaved and also yourself of course. And you think to yourself, "Good God, it's unbelievable. It's really unbelievable". So therefore... we have one of the greatest graces is to be supported in one's guilt by people who love one and who will support you if you acknowledge your guilt, and of course cannot support you if you don't because that would be dishonest about it. Now that's real friendship. And of course if they know that you have make a pledge and really decided that you are not going to repeat that which was the cause of your guilt. 

The other thing is resentment. And I know that in the old days I used to ask people to forgive because of that's message of Christ. Then somebody stood up and said,"Pir Vilayat, I feel so terrible because of the abuse that I have suffered. Now I feel even worse because I can't forgive that person and you make me fee bad that I can't forgive that person". Of course that was the last time I ever asked people to forgive. But I realize that, well you can only try it yourself and see, and see the fantastic freedom that it gives you, not to condone, it's not the same, but let us say not to bear a grudge against a person who has done you harm. It's difficult. It's terribly difficult when somebody who has done harm to another person, a person you love. That's very difficult. Like I think of the goliter who beat my sister to death in the concentration camp. Well of course it's very difficult for me to love him. Can you imagine and to forgive him? And to forgive him. But I could see that he was on a trip. He was brainwashed by the Nazis and he had a lot of grudge in him. Perhaps he had a father who beat him. There are all those psychological reasons. But the woman who betrayed her for 100,000 francs, that is of course unforgivable. So maybe there is a limit to the extent to which we can forgive people for doing things to other people. I find it easier to forgive people who have done bad things to me. And Christ had the answer of course, " They don't know what they do". 

But now of course there is a complicated situation where there is some guilt mixed up with one's resentment. One does not like the fact of having accepted to be abused. So there is some kind of inconsistency there in the unconscious. The unconscious is not very reasonable, logical. In that case, one can't forgive that person until one is able to come to terms with one's own guilt. And as I say that guilt is not founded, not grounded. So it's a hoax. That's very complicated. I'm not a psychotherapist. I'm always full of admiration for the way that psychotherapists are able to proceed very painstakingly over a period of months and years to try to bring to light the way that people think which is the cause of the trouble. 

I can only say that what we're doing, turning within, I think has a very great contribution to make to our sense of inadequacy. That's the third thing you see, guilt, resentment and inadequacy. And it's all related because if we feel we have bad self image. And in that way we don't feel up to forgiving, big enough to forgive or whatever. It has to do with our own self esteem. You know if you're... sometimes a big dog is safer with children than a little dog. A little dog might bite. A big dog would be more lenient with atrocities the poor dog is subjected to. He is strong. You see he can take it. So a sense of inadequacy. And of course the beauty of turning within. 

If first of all when you realize that were wearing a mask and playing a role. So what you thought your were is not at all what you are. But that's a first step. A second step is of course...if you remember what I said is instead of saying, "Well I want to know who I am", your real being, we said it is emerging. Instead of, "This is me", "I am emerging". Dynamic instead of static. The beauty of that is that it carries hope because one can change. One can improve. And then we see the impact of the person itself upon the situation outside. And at first it's not clear. 

Sometimes one simply thinks that one is the victim of the situations outside that are totally, we call it destiny, fortuitous. And it's very complicated. I'm sure that there are situations. Well let's first say what I wanted to say then we'll say this. Jung said, "If you don't meet your shadow, it will appear to you in the form of your fate". And when I heard that the first time, I was absolutely shattered and stymied and overwhelmed. It took me a long time to accept, although I'm sure that I had intuited that connection, that somehow the same is true at the level of the psyche as at the physical level if indeed, if a wave emerges in the Atlantic, the whole Pacific had to adjust itself to that little wave in the Atlantic, that's the law of physics, then it's true at the level of the psyche. So that indeed there must be some relationship between how we are dealing with our shadow and the situations. And it's not always, in a one to one situation you can't always say, "You caused that situation". It's more complicated. It's, there is an invisible causal link. Or maybe it's more like a (cacatnative)rather than a causal link. And that's what Jung means by synchonicity. There are several factors instead of just one to one causal link. 

So one of the things you can do when you've turned within, if you begin to become aware of the emergence of your real self and the kind of hope that it opens up. So then if you look at your problems and try to see if indeed there was a link between the way you were and the way your problem is. And then if you can see that, then you can see that if you have changed, then there is going to be a change in the situation. Because there is a kind of 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 the more evolved one is, the more one transforms the environment to fit one's purpose. When say the more evolved, I think I should be more specific and say a person on a ego trip will try to adapt the environment to his or her sense of purpose, and that does not mean that's an evolved person. But as you evolve, you're able to transform the situation around you, the people around you by helping them to fulfill their purpose. So your purpose is to enlist the purpose of other people. And that is really the secret of leadership. Like you know that these people wish something. They have an ideal. And you have that ideal. But they can't make it. And you can organize them in such a way that you'll help them to make it. That's leadership. At least that's spiritual leadership. 

Now, as we already said, you can get into the consciousness of people much better form within than if you are simply expanding your consciousness from without. And it happens even if you don't try. It's a kind of faculty that you develop by the fact of training yourself to turn within. You experience much more that osmosis that I talked about yesterday, that people live in each other, like particularly people we love. But the people who are with whom one is in resonance have, let's say the psyche of those people has become let's say an element of one's own psyche. So it's not like they're there and we're here. But a real osmosis between us. The other thing is that that being so, then of course one can get into the consciousness of those people. Sometimes one is not aware of it. Sometimes I feel like somebody is calling me disparately. A kind of S'S. And I wish I were more able to know precisely what it is and who it is. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. But that's a kind of faculty of becoming very sensitive to the conditions of other people. 

And of course the next one, but that's a more advanced stage is that one really carries, let's say, the psyche of people in one's own heart. There is a word used by the Hindus, "One becomes like an oyster that has a grain of sand in it, and transforms that gritty bit of sand into a pearl". So the pearl doesn't hurt you quite as much because it's rounded. So that is the briefing of the, for example the representatives of the Sufi Order. That's what we strive to do. So the presence of another person in one's psyche can be very painful. A selfish person might say," Well I don't want anything to do with that person. I don't like them and I don't want anything to do with them". That's easy. But the spiritual path is a path of selflessness and of altruism. So really if one presumes to be on the spiritual path, then one needs to follow that precept. It's not just to be tolerant of people. Really it means to carry them in one's heart. And that is particularly difficult if they are obnoxious let alone have hurt you, in addition obnoxious. As Pir o Murshid says, "We are tested in our love". That's again a precept for the representatives. We are tested in our love. To love somebody one dislikes and still loves. Well that's what it's all about. So as you turn within you do that. 

You see the danger is that one just withdraws within oneself, and places buffers, one places sentinels at the doors of perception. Yes one makes, the whole idea of the sentinel is that it acts as a kind of a filter so that one has kind of a selection. One can, you see you can have psychological indigestion if you just take in everything. So you just have to protect yourself at first. But gradually you become stronger and you're able to take more and more. 

But if you remember what we said, is that first of all that selection is a feature of our freedom. Because if you just expand your consciousness, then you've lost your individuality then you've lost your sense of freedom. And secondly, if you remember what I said is the second feature is transmuting the impressions from the outside instead of simply rejecting them or ingesting them. By transmuting them you can ingest them. And that's what the body does with food. The body does reject some food. And some food is simply transmuted. So we do that and that's how we can learn to cope better with people. It also means that one is able to see the gist of the problem instead of the way it appears at the surface, the events or circumstances, what is enacted by the problem. So it gives one a deeper insight. And as I said, that state when one turns within is exactly what Dr. David Boehm calls the implicate state, everything is inter meshed with everything else. So we can see our relationship with our problems much better from the inside than we can in the usual way we think of ourselves and our problems as their own separate things. And now we see a connection between them. So we see not just in their context but in connection with ourselves. 

But now you find that turning within, as I say it's like a funnel upside down. I said a pyramid, but it would be better to think of it as a funnel. So the totality of the Universe is funneled into the void in the solar plexus and then emerges and fans out. But obviously by the fact of having to converge, much of the wealth of the Universe has to be sacrificed. Just like in a two dimensional photograph. Much of the three dimensional richness of the three dimensional reality is sacrificed. And that is why it is not good enough just to turn within. People think that that is what meditation is about. You have to turn upwards. That is include all levels of your being. That's where we were working in the zikre. 

With regard to one's problems I'll say several things. One is if you remember that we said that the witness is a celestial counterpart of your being. It's a kind of, maybe we could call it an aesthetic sense like what the physicists call elegance. A sense of beauty. So that one is judging a situation not with the mind, but one is sensing the beauty of the ugliness of the way that the situation is being handled. I think the policy would be to handle an ugly situation beautifully. So you can't account for the way that other people handle it but as long as you handle it beautifully, that's all you can do. It's the same kind of a sense that a conductor has for example, in a choir or an orchestra. A sense, "Well, you could do it better. Yes if you sustained that note, yes that would give a totally different coloration to the whole piece of work". As I told you, we have several cassettes of Allegris Miserere. They are very good of course, but this one is just superb. And that's because it's a sense of, well that sensitivity of the conductor and of course the singer is fantastic. So that's the angel in you, the judgment of the angel. There is a word after the crucifixion of Christ. I forget now I think it was al-Ghazzali who said, "When there is a stupid judge in the court, then there is a victim on the cross". It has a lot of implications doesn't it? So let's say that our ordinary judgment is the stupid judge. 

So it is that fine sensitivity that gives us our sense of the values that are enacted in a situation. But through that you have to be not just be uplifted by looking into the eyes of babies. But you have to be something of a baby yourself. You have to become let's say, enginu. Is that an American word? I think it is. That means no guile, absolutely with no guile, no manipulation, no strategies. It's kind of germane honoring the purity of the soul. It's really honoring the spiritual status of people. And by so doing, one is helping them to have self esteem for themselves. And of course you can only do it if you have a sense of well it's called spiritual pride. It's pride in the divinity of one's being. Humility, be careful, for what one calls false humility can be a distorted pride. In fact one prides oneself in one's humility. So be very careful. 

So I thought the key note here is to find a way of being high. Again it's the sensitivity that helps you to be high. Like you feel the attunement of people. And you see that there is a kind of spill over. And one easily lets oneself slip into that kind of attunement which is sometimes really rather vulgar, slovenly. You know the kind of world we are living in at present, decadent. So somehow one tends to vie with the Joneses as one says. So it's like a constant reminder of being high. I remember sitting in an ice cream parlor in California with my two little boys. Of course they wanted an ice cream. So they took dad to the ice cream parlor. I thought to myself, I was high. I would see the attunement of people around me and I would think, "Gosh, if only they knew what they miss. I mean they are looking for ice cream. But just think, this is the ice cream of the soul". 

So that's a kind of briefing and it's something we need to remember in our daily lives. You can even see how people are trying to pull you down to their attunement. And they think you're upish or sanctimonious or whatever, standoffish. So one has to play the game while still being high. Without being presumptive any way of course. Just like you play with your children. You're not quite at the level of their kind of what they enjoy. But you enjoy it because they enjoy it. 

Now it's true that there are further levels which we have encountered in the practice of the zikre beyond the celestial sphere. And if you remember, it was the knowledge that is manifested instead of that which was acquired. And that is what is ordinarily called intuition. Sometimes you can't figure it out with your mind. But sometimes all of a sudden something becomes clear to you. And you didn't do anything. It's totally impromptu, unexpected. And you really have the feeling, "This was revealed to me", because I haven't done anything to acquire it". So that's what is meant by Jabarut, that level. You see there is an adage behind it. Newton said, "I think as God thinks". Of course scientists in those days were shocked by what he was saying. But what he meant was if you, if physicists for example can have any sense of the programing of the Universe, it's because his/her mind thinks like the Universe thinks, less well like the fraction of a hologram behaves less well than the whole hologram. But it still behaves like the hologram. 

So that will give you a kind of overview. David Boehm. Well I can tell you. When I first met David Boehm, he was at one of our conferences. And afterwards we spoke. I said, "Well of course you know your theory of the implicate and explicate state, that's exactly what I teach and that's what we find amongst the Sufis. So I'm very glad that you've said it so explicitly. It helps us to have a model, like scientists also need models. But there is another dimension that I don't see in the implicate/explicate state. I call it transcendental levels." He said," It's to be found in the holomovement". And I said, "No, I don't think so. It's something else". And then he came out with his book called Unfurling Meaning, where he spoke about these levels, you see. What did he called it? Neosomatic. I forget what he used now, the word. But you must read that book, Unfurling Meaning. That's where the great physicist became a philosopher. And there he speaks about levels of meaning. And so when you look at your problems you can see that there are levels of meaning in you problems. And you think you grasp what is enacted in the problem, then you see that there is another level in which you see it looks different. It's always a matter of reconciling the irreconcilables. 

I'm letting myself be carried away. But I'll say this because the way that meditation, let's say the way the Eastern meditation has been imported in the West, and I would say misinterpreted, has led towards people being otherworldly. That's why I'm emphasizing the way that meditation can help you to deal with your problems better instead of just discarding your problems in order to get into a state of samadhi. 

So there is not doubt that finding freedom within an involvement, not from circumstances but from you personal opinion and from your personal emotions, and your notion of yourself and so on. Finding freedom will give you an insight that you can't have if you have the personal bias, obviously. And that insight will give you a sense of priority of values. Then you are much clearer about what you are doing in life. You ask yourself,"Why am I doing it. What are the values I am pursuing. And how does that compare to...I pay lip service to those high values, but when it comes to action, I find that I am pursuing totally different values. There is some kind of inconsistency there." So you see the values much more clearly when you have kind of extricated yourself from the involvement with a kind of overview, and are able to look at it with a certain amount of objectivity. That was the teaching of Buddha. Or is the teaching of Buddha. It is objectivity instead of subjectivity. 

Watching the body without thinking, "This is my body. Why do I think this is my body". It's a product of the fashioning of the whole planet, of the Universe in fact. I have to live with it as it is. One can have some impact on it of course. But if you look at it objectively and don't identify with it, it gives you a certain amount of freedom. You even think,"Isn't that extraordinary, I'm able to schlep this body about and yet it's not, well is it me or not? It's a product of the fabric of the planet. Isn't it extraordinary that I have some power over the fabric of the planet, to move it about, even transform it by my realization? I can smile for example. Those atoms of the earth are transformed and my emotion of mirth, so that I can smile. It's amazing", Then your mind. I used to think that my thoughts were original. But Buddha is pointing out to me that they are conditions. Now you think of it. Yes to a large extent we are almost totally conditioned. That's Krishna Murti's teachings as you know. But I asked him a question, an impertinent question once, "I just wonder whether you were conditioned to free yourself from conditioning". He didn't like that question. Whether that wasn't the ultimate condition. So you can't win. But anyway, I don't go all along the way along with Buddha because we do have some original ideas too. We're are not all just totally conditioned. But it's good to realize to what extent we are conditioned. 

And of course our personality. That's again something we inherited from our parents. Now parents and, as I say, maybe we have angelic parents too, maybe parents at all levels. Maybe we inherit, so when Murshid says divine inheritance, he is not thinking of God up there with a big beard and us down here miserable worms. But he is thinking that we inherit for the whole Universe at all levels. But it's true that there is a sense of, when one says divine, there is a sense of priority given to the sublime, or let's say that which has not been tainted by the existential condition. Like fruit that before it starts becoming jaded, becoming rotten. Even when it's rotten it's still fruit. 

So then, so that is an extraordinary experience when you look at your personality and think,"Well it's not me. It's something that has grown. Maybe I've inherited it from my ancestors", and so on. You can even earmark exactly a quality that was to be found in your father or in your mother. If you can do that then, "There is something in me that I can't account for by my inheritance of my parents". And somehow you are able to overcome your identification with your personality. But the real breakthrough is watching your consciousness operating and thinking to yourself, "Why do you think it's my consciousness? Why do I think that I am my consciousness?" Consciousness is like a flame. It depends upon if there is a log the flame can burn. If there is no log there is no flame. So I am not my consciousness. The fact is a breakthrough in Buddhism. But of course Buddha doesn't say, "I identify with cosmic consciousness and my consciousness is just the focalization or the lens through which I see, or through which the Universe sees". He doesn't say that because he never uses a word on the strength of a presumption that there is such a thing as cosmic consciousness. It's assumed but he doesn't say it. Sufis say it. Cosmic consciousness, divine consciousness and so on. That's why Buddhism is hard to follow because there is never any act of faith in it. Purely practical. But still if you read behind the lines you see it differently. 

So I think I've gone beyond the time. No I haven't but. 

That's why I think that meditation is wonderful to be able to look at things with a certain distance, certain perspective. But then you have to continue it in a day. The trouble is that one tends to slip back to where one was before. That's why I, there was a time when I was following a policy which was to meditate on the hour for five minutes throughout the day, all the time. Do whatever you have to do and then when the clock was on the hour. You can't always do that if you're in your office. Maybe you put your hands on your head and you boss comes in and says, "Well you're supposed to be typing this letter. What are you doing?" So you mustn't lie. To say,"I have a headache". That would be a lie. You might be dismissed simply because you're not well. If you're not well, you're dismissed. But you could say, "Well I'm practicing yoga. And it makes me more efficient so in the end I'll type better". So I think I have to end here. I've enjoyed very much...I've enjoyed talking to you.

Tape ends. 


FEB 16, 1997		Tape 13

Care wasn't taken to keep this from happening. There were people who were responsible for this. I remember him. He was a lovely person, very quiet. Now I understand that he was controlling a lot of things in his own harmonious way without much show. So I can understand what a shock it must be for his family. So think of him and also send him wishes to soar high. And those fears that we've been trying to reach in our meditations. Now he is free from all those earthly bondage. So it's probably much easier.

Then there is the husband of this lovely friend of ours, Robin, Peter Calby. Well here again, here was someone who meant very much to me. Perhaps he doesn't know how much he meant to me because I didn't see him very much. But I was visiting Robin. But here was her husband who was sort of a bit, you know he didn't come foreword. When I talked to him, I felt such a deep spiritual connection. Now here was someone who followed his father's advice to become an engineer where his soul was to become a musician which is a warning. Don't follow your father's advice. And he suffered from it all his life. Somehow he did manage to start playing the piano. Although he didn't think much of his playing, I thought he did a very good job of it. He was really very gifted. So I think of him. Jogging. He was full of life and dynamism. It's extraordinary how these things happen.

Then thinking about Vilma Daxon who was a Cleveland Sufi. And I believe that her husband is here at present. I want to tell you that our hearts are with you in your bereavement. The only words of conciliation we can say is that the things that are said during this seminar, our concepts of death are the most stupid concepts that we have ever formulated. So good tidings to those who have reached beyond. We'll be following suit sometime.

Revelation. It was on the occasion of a retreat on the west coast somewhere. And here was Murshida Vera. Some of you know her. Well she is a comparative old lady. I hope she has no objection at my saying that. She had something that looked like a stroke. It was very dramatic. And some of you were there at the time. I was away somewhere. I was on the way coming to that meeting. Everybody was very worried because we thought this is it, she is really dying. She wasn't conscious. Then when I held her hand, he still had her eyes closed. When I held her hand, she opened her eyes. And I couldn't believe what I saw. Here was Murshida Vera looking like a young lady. All the things that I'm talking about, the countenance behind the face. It was as though she had a vision of the heavens. She was transfigured by that vision of the heavens. And we were there supporting her. And she is still alive today. What an experience of a transition between two planes. Actually her heart pressure was so high that she should of died. One couldn't expect to survive that high pressure. A miracle.

Let us send our good wishes to Swami Rama and Idres Shaw and to anyone you know who has passed away. Alpanipa, yes. Of course the older one gets the more one hears about people dying. So it's sad on our side. It must be joyous on the other side.

Universal Worship

Pir Vilayat, Seattle 2/97 at Lakeside School, Tape I Transcriber: Anahata Pomeroy

We are going to go, we are going to share together now in a very  deep process of, hopefully of transformation. It's going to be mostly  experiential. Behind it all is a dialogue between those of you who are  (No, we can't have babies here. I'm sorry. I love babies, but this is  not the place for them.) So it's going to be a dialogue between those  of you who are committed to silence and me who's chatting all the  time. But somehow I am picking up your, hopefully picking up your  thoughts and your concerns, and trying to voice them. It's also the  result of explorations over a long period of time, and trying to find  out in which way people, all of us, including myself, of course, can be  helped in fulfilling our needs. 

We have physical needs, psychological needs, moral needs, cultural  needs, spiritual needs, and need of the sacred. And sometimes these  needs seem to be conflicting. So rather than my simply speaking, I'd  like you to get in touch with yourself, and feel, at least be aware of  the needs as I list them, and at the same time you will see that, of  course, we suffer from pain, frustration, sometimes fulfillment, and  then even a sense of precariousness because we don't know how long  this paradise situation can last upon which we depend for our  happiness. And then we have concerns as to how we can transmute  our suffering to joy. And where the suffering can simply act as a  catalyst or springboard to help us reach where we wouldn't have  reached if it hadn't have been for our suffering. 

So I know if we touch upon these very deep psychological traumas,  then in the past I've experienced sometimes the fact that somebody  starts screaming which is very disturbing. So if you want to scream,  then please go outside, if you would just spare us a little bit because  it, I tell you, especially if you were here, you would realize just how  very disturbing it is. And, of course, it is due to the fact that one's  looking at things from one's personal vantage point, and the whole  teaching consists in being able to reach beyond the limitations of that  vantage point, because it's true that our pain does pull us into a  personal vantage point, and then we fail to see, to identify our self  with the totality of our being, and to see our problem, all the depth  and different facets of our problem. That is the gist of our  orientation. 

So maybe I should say right away that we do have defenses. And  these defences help us to cope, and sometimes they break down. But  my concern is, you see, I think that the personal problems are not, I  would have liked to be able to affirm that the spiritual dimension  does provide a healing and solution to our problems. It might work  for some people. It certainly works with me. But it might not work  for other people, and that is why I don't think that the spiritual  dimension, I don't think spiritual groups or whatever it is,  spirituality, whatever you mean by it, I don't think that we have all  the answers. So we pass in review psychological needs: loss, the  need to be loved, the need to love, the need to be able to lean upon  somebody you can trust, the need to be able to trust other people,  the need to be able to be a support for other people, and the need for  culture to enrich our minds and to cultivate our value system. 

There  are a lot of needs. The need to converse with people, to exchange not  only thoughts but emotions, the need to find ourselves mirrored in  another person and that we become ourselves a mirror in which that  other person sees him/herself. All these needs can become so  imperious that they fill our lives, and there is also, of course, the  tremendous concern about developing the skills to be able to, as they  call it, keep the wolf from the doe (?). I mean keep our jobs to avoid  being thrown out in the street amongst the homeless. So we have a  lot of concerns: relationship with people, finding fulfillment in that  relationship without a problem. Maybe one of the greatest problems  is in our self-esteem. 

So as I say, these are problems that in which one may derive help  from psychotherapy. There is some overlap between psychotherapy  and spirituality. But our concern here is regarding our spiritual  needs. And of course they are the most undefinable. We don't, we  see I'm very wary of words which reflect limitation in our minds,  and of course the conditioning of our education and society and so on.  And become cliches. So we say, "I want illumination," or "I want  awakening." Or we use the word spirituality or we use the word God,  and we don't really know what we mean by them. So rather than  trying to articulate what we could never express in words, what we  ought to do is to experience it. And then it's real.  

So, first of all, we need to make a priortitic list as to those things in  life which are the most important for us. And those that are less  important. And that is different for each one of you, so that's  something that you can only do yourself. Nobody can tell you what  you're supposed to value more, or value less. So just stop for a  moment, so you can just ask yourselves, look up to your deep, the  depth of your being and say, "Yes, there are things I enjoy in life.  There are things I don't like in life. The things that I enjoy more  than those other things. And again, there is something that makes  me delight in the state of exaltation. I come across it sometimes, and  there's no way of saying what it is." But one could say one feels  exalted. There's no doubt that society provides us with a support  system which creates an environment, circumstances that are  favorable to what one calls experiencing the sacred. Religions  provide that. There is no doubt that it is easier to be able to get  attuned to that need of the sacred in us if we sit in a beautiful  cathedral and listen to beautiful music, and the vestments of the  priests, and the sound of the music and the whole attunement of  people coming there with respect for the sanctity of the place. That  whole environment is, as I say, favorable to giving us some  fulfillment in our need for the sacred. 

Alternately, sometimes one is able to encounter a person who is, as  one calls it, highly attuned, and that attunement seems to then spill  over upon one. Then of course, I myself have, I find it helpful when  I think of the great beings with whom I have meditated. I don't just  think of those beings, but I remember the attunement in which, the  very high attunement of the of the soul, (word/phrase unclear) as  one says in which I found myself meditating with them or  communing with them sometimes without words. In fact, preferably  without words. And then I felt them called upon to communicate  that attunement to those who are seeking that kind of help. That it  rests upon a kind of attunement, a resonance. I think of, for  example, that great orator who, in Hyderabad, who had thousands of  people come to his talks, and then once there was a dervish who  came, and from the moment he saw that dervish he couldn't speak a  word. And from that time he became a source of inspiration for  thousands of people. And before that he was enthusing people by the  brilliance of his mind, but he wasn't giving them that particular  quality which as I say is indefinable. And which made all the  difference. 

So sometimes, many times, of course it's helpful to attune oneself to  beings unless one has met those beings oneself. Then at least (It is  really very disturbing to have a baby's voice here. Please, for my  sake and for the sake of all of us, I'm sorry. I wish you could attend.  Sometimes we have a system so the people with babies can sit there  and the sound is relayed, but we don't have that system here.) So,  now of course, that's been a great privilege of mine. I felt it for of  course mostly with Pir Murshid Inayat Khan, my father. But you  could imagine a being whose, who inspires you. Not a being whom  you know. A fictitious being, a sort of idyllic being, who attunes you  to let's say what Pir O-Murshid calls the way that one's consciousness  can be raised about earthly conditions, if that's meaningful to you. 

So, in these words there is a sense of, well I suppose there is some  judgmentalism about earthly conditions. And if you look at your life,  you will find indeed that the support system takes over. You will  find that is very much like you wanted to climb to the top of the  Himalayas and spend so much time and concern and energy into  building the base camps that you never reach the top. So there is a  kind of concern about well what am I doing with my life? So you  could ask yourself that question. Where am I getting in my life?  What am I doing? Um. And why am I doing what I am doing? That  is, do they reflect my priorities in my value system? Or then, do I  find that I've been caught in a kind of a trend which the society in  which I live has imposed upon me, and which has robbed me of my  freedom. 

So that is what Buddha calls samaric wheel. Repetitiveness. We are  doing same things, a little bit different, but still very similar to what  our parents did, our ancestors did and so on, so it is, if we go on like  that, there does not seem to be any sense in simply repeating things  that have all been done before. And, of course, it represents the  impact of the environment upon oneself. That, of course, there is  always a balance between the degree to which we adapt ourselves to  the environment the degree to which we adapt the environment to  our own sense of purpose. So if you simply adapt to the  environment, then of course you've lost your freedom. And if you  try to adapt the environment to your own sense of purpose, you  might appear to people as a freak and will have a lot of opposition. 

That word, the sacred, which we can't define, but perhaps we could  have a better sense of what we, when we contrast it to what is called  the world. And perhaps you know the words of Christ, "They are in  the world, but not of the world." Again, when he says, he talks about  the Kingdom of God, or he talks about the divine inheritance. Talking  about a different dimension, and then but we ascribe to the earthly  condition, and of course some people simply leave the world in quest  of the sublime, let's say awakened beyond the world. Those are the  great ascetics, but the challenge of our time consists in being able to  bring the sacred into the profane. But first of all we have to be very  clear as to, it is very difficult to have any sense of what we mean by  the sacred except that I say an attunement. But I would saying  contrast with earthly conditions. 

What do we mean by that? Well,  we see that it starts with needs even to survive, even to adapt  ourselves to the environment. But need becomes greed. Where does  need become greed? You see how greed can lead towards a power  trip causing suffering to people. Manipulation, dishonesty and, of  course, dependence, upon circumstances which of course robs us of  our freedom. So can we recognize that there is a spillover of the  world in our being? And at the same time recognize desperate  nostalgia for what (unclear) called the sacred or the sublime or  whatever it is. And ultimately of course I think it is the trigger that  will help us to reach beyond that conditioning is a need for freedom.  And maybe, ultimately of course, we need to discover who we are.  So we, perfunctorily we assume that the circumstances of the present  which rob us of our freedom, or sometimes we created it ourselves,  done ourselves, and that if we reach a greater clarity, then we realize  that the present is in our own way of thinking. 

So let us pursue this a little further. I think we hang upon our self- esteem, and that is based upon our self-image which is only a notion  of what we are, that is not really what we are. It is a notion of what  we are. But somehow, I think that it is the need of the sacred that  makes us feel impaired in our sense of self-esteem. I think that's  where it lies, and somehow unconsciously, the feeling of having  failed to give expression and vent and fulfillment to this great need,  and this need becomes greater as one advances in life, or rather as  one evolves, as Pir O-Murshid, my father says, there comes a time that  one is motivated by a passion for the unattainable. A passion for the  unattainable. That way, it is very appropriate, because it is not  something you can get and put in your pocket. It is always further,  and it is a real passion. It becomes so imperative that it is much  more important than anything in the world, and so one, it frees one  of course from one's dependence upon, to some extent from earthly  conditions. 

Now as I say, our society provides a support system for the sacred,  and consequently people feel uplifted. They go to church, in England  for example, on Sunday morning. They go to church. And then  there's the pub just next to the church after church. So there is just  that need to feel the sacred, and then slip right back into the sort of  the way of the world. Now, and as I say, we also, people go to gurus  because, especially if they have a broken heart, and they hope that  the guru is going to by his or her high attunement help them to get a  feeling of that attunement which seems like a safety buoy when one  suffers so much in earthly conditions and frustration. But you see  the Sufis are nomads. And so they can't avail themselves of the  church or a temple. And, therefore, they have to generate the sense  of the sacred in themselves. It is also true that if you have a very  intense sense of integrity and authenticity, you see that religious  display may, well it is a support system as I say, but it is something,  it is enacting on earth rather inadequately what one imagines to be  the cosmic celebration in the heavens. And so if one is extremely  bent on truthfulness, and does not wish to let oneself be carried by  what appears like a show. I'm not saying it is, but it might appear as  a show. 

And consequently one has need to be able to generate the  sense of the sacred in oneself. This kind of rebellion is to be found  amongst those who do not wish to simply hang on to the aprons  strings as (unclear) of our guru, but the need to make their way  themselves and find the sacredness of their being through their  search for truth.   There was a Sufi, Abu Yasit Basami, who was a dervish who lived in  the northern mountains of Iran, and who said these rather shocking  words. He said, "God fools you in the markets of the world, and only  presents effigies, but I want the real thing." So effigies, that is  according to the Sufis, whatever we experience in our commonplace  experience subject/object is clues, signs, effigies in which according  to Sufis, God reveals the reality of his/her being by means of these  clues. It's like you see the paw marks of the bear in the snow. You  haven't seen the bear. And so those paw marks are real, but they  are relative to the bear. They only have meaningfulness in  relationship to the bear. If you take them for real without seeing  what they refer to, then of course you are caught in a hoax. That is  what is called maya. The trouble is that if one tries to self- generative the sense of sacredness in oneself, the danger is that one  identifies oneself with one's personal self and is trying to find the  sacred in that constrained space, that's called the personal space.  

And of course it is true that the totality is present within each  fraction of the totality, so that it is in our personal self that God is to  be found. That is the teaching of Pir O-Murshid Khan. Can you feel  that? Like you are a, inasmuch as you are a fraction of the totality,  the totality is somehow potentially present in you. Potentially. And  that the whole evolution of your being consists in arousing the  bounty of the universe that is hidden in the depth of your being, and  which is calling for your support in order to be able to awaken. That  is what Sufis call awakening of God within. You can feel that. Sufis  call Ishkavata, nostalgia, divine nostalgia, trying to burst through, the  being. And in a sense we are sometimes counterproductive because,  although it is true that, as I say the totality is present within each  fraction of itself, it does get reduced. Like, for example,  photographing a three dimensional panorama in a 2 dimensional  photo. So somehow, the totality is there but somehow reduced, so  the only way in which we could incorporate more of the richness of  the totality, the bounty of the totality of the universe, is to expand  our notion of ourselves. And if we do not do that, then we run into a  very dangerous situation where we haven't seen clearly that our  notion of ourselves, our self-image, is not what we are. And so we  are limiting ourselves to the notion we make of ourselves. And we  are trying to find the sacred in this constrained area which we call  ourselves and which is just our notion of ourselves. And then we are  turning around in circles in desperation and that can lead to the dark  night of the soul. 

Now it all started by doubt about the way that the sacred was  institutionalized in religion or in spiritual groups. And it is reflected  in doubt about ourselves, and of course that doubt is due to the fact  that one is convinced that one is what one thinks one is. So somehow  one has encapsulated oneself in an inextricable situation which I  would say is very dangerous. And one realizes one can't as a  psychiatric patient said "I cannot return to where I was before. I can  only come out by another door." And that door is discovering your  real being by expanding the notion that you have of yourself. So it  starts with realization, in fact, what we mean by spirituality is a  series of realizations that, well all of a sudden you see something  different, you see the things are quite different from what you  thought before. So that first realization which you find in the first  step of yoga, called svitatha samadhi, consists in realizing that our  assessment of our problems are distorted by our personal bias. So  will just stop for a moment so you can think of that. Ask yourself  you are so convinced of our assessment of our problems and ask  yourself, " What if my assessment is mistaken, because I am asking  myself what that problem means to me, that is who I think I am,  that is not what I am, so that is just a vantage point on my problem.  What is means to me." And when one says me, it all depends what it  means by me. If one says me, most of the time one means, one does  not realize that one means what one thinks one is, not what one is.

Without realizing that one's assessment can't be absolute, like for  example, if you look at Notre Dame in Paris from one angle, you  haven't seen Notre Dame. You see, so if you look at your problem  from your personal vantage point, I mean by that what you think  you are, then of course you can't have a real sense of what the  problem is. But that is still negative. That 's a negative statement.  It is not what I think it is, so that's negative. But then what is the  positive? Well, of course, the way to do it is to start looking at the  problem from other alternative points of view to your own point of  view. So what I suggest now is you think of a problem, but as seen  from the point of view of another person who's involved in that  problem with you. And that doesn't mean that that point of view is  more valid than your own. But at least you have two eyes to see  instead of one. 

End Side I Begin Side II

Being able to transpose our consciousness into the consciousness of  another person. That is, generally we think of another person as the  object of our awareness, but in meditating, you discover that you can  literally transpose your consciousness into that of another person.  For example, you mention how it would feel to that person. And of  course, that person's way of looking at things may be as limited as  yours, or may be better than yours, or more limited, whatever, but it  does alter. Say, for example, if that person were attuned to a very  high state, than what you grasp of that person is going to be different  from the way that person would be if they were dealing with the  nitty-gritty of human problems. What is more is that you could just  imagine how you appear to that person. And you realize that the  image that person has of you is not what you think you are, and not  necessarily better than what you think you are, or might be worse.  But then, I am not saying that is how you, that's the real thing. No,  I'm saying that you then have, that you have the ability to that, and  then you can see something about yourself that maybe you didn't see  when you were in your own personal perspective. Because as you  know the eyes can't see themselves.

 Now you could expand your consciousness to more people, three  people, four people, many more people, and eventually, well can you  just... First of all, can you just feel the joy of your consciousness  expanding. It's like, for example, sitting in your office or in your  house the whole day, or you have the opportunity to make a trip in  the mountains and sit on the mountain top and watch a fantastic  dawn. Haah, what a joy to be out of that prison, to have that, the  walls that hold you into their containment, then, perhaps you know  the mime of Marcel Marceau who has, (inaudible), he's walled in, and  he keeps on pushing the walls and they get further and further  away, and the further away they go, the better he is able to dance,  and eventually he dances the dance of freedom. Now that is  essential. Ha, pushing out our limitations. 

  Now, there is another way of doing it, and that is, if you imagine the  starry sky, the galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and realize that the very  fabric of your body is the fabric of those galaxies. And that the  fabric of your body originated in the Big Bang as a pure outbreak of  light, of pure radiance, and that this light crystallized itself into what  we call matter, although for a physicist, light is also matter. Rather  like image light that has gelled into a crystal. But our bodies are  much more elaborate than crystals. They are what (unclear) calls  liquid crystals, so they are much more than time (timimic), of course.  They are not frozen as a crystal. Well a crystal is not a frozen as one  think, as the atoms are transformed by light. So, from the moment  that you do that, that you reach out in your thoughts into the  vastness of space, and you realize that you yourself, your body itself,  is part of this starry universe. It can't be separated from it. That  has traumatic effect on one's way of thinking of oneself. Say you are  thinking of yourself as a, what they call a discrete entity with a  boundary, the skin, your boundary, you are beginning to... it, so, you  are not just expanding your consciousness, but you are altering your  sense of identity, or rather gleaning awareness of the vastness of  your identity.   

Now we could, it is true that as one extends one's consciousness, one  loses the sense of one's individuality, and so it's good to balance that  by the opposite. For example, if you exhale, then you could say  experience this wonderful expansion of your consciousness reaching  out further and further, and then losing the sense of your individual  center. And now you can do the opposite as you inhale. See how the  totality of the universe converges as you. Converges you see. Just  like as I said, three dimensional panorama converging into a  photograph, a two-dimensional photograph. And see how the  consciousness of the cosmos has become focalized. Do you  understand the word focal? The focal point, focalized like light is  focalized through a lens? And you focalize as your consciousness. So  your consciousness is not different; is not other. It is the  consciousness of the totality that has, well, if the image of a  focalization is difficult, then you could imagine for example, a funnel.  	 We have the ability to toggle between the all-encompassing setting  of consciousness and a personal one. For example, if you read pages  of a book, through the consciousness, your eyesight is highly  focalized, focused. Then if you look at the panorama, then your  eyesight is all encompassing, and you could toggle between the two.  You could read a book and then if sitting in a beautiful mountain  scenery and then look at the panorama and look at the book again, so  you can tell between the two. You can do the same thing with our  consciousness.

 So, when our consciousness is expanded, then we can see our  problems in their context. That means to say we can see the  implications of our problems instead of just seeing them from our  limited, personal bias. Then we realize that what we thought was  our problems, or our problem, is simply our participation in the  drama of the universe. See that is a way of liberating yourself from  constraint of our commonplace assessment of situations. I say our  problems, could be just situations in general, and our self-image that  we are carrying in our psyche throughout our lives. Can you imagine  if you are carrying unaware, unawares, we are carrying in our  psyche a false assessment of our situations, of ourselves, of our  relationship with the universe, and convinced that that the way it is.  And suffer because of it. And confused because of it. And we see  that the expanding of our consciousness does have an effect upon our  identity. And I say that because of course it is easier to think that  you can expand your consciousness like your eyesight. And then it is  to have a wider sense of your identity. It doesn't seem logical that  you know one thinks that one is fraction of the totality. It's very, it  doesn't seem logical. One is a totality. How can you say that? Some  mystics say that, but then you think they're crazy. You can't  understand how they could say anything like that. So it's something  that one has to gradually train oneself to in meditation, so it's not  something you can do just like this, and one day in a few hours it will  (unclear) together. 

But, see, for example, we would never be able to make sense of the  radio waves. The radio processes those waves by impoverishing  them so that we can make sense of them. By limiting them. by  impoverishing them as I say. So the same thing is true of our lives.  We have difficulty in extrapolating between different situations. I'll  give you an example. Perhaps you remember the days when, you  had three screens in the cinema, and so the whole idea was to have  this wide grasp of this wide panorama, and we found that in fact we  were scanning, anyway. We didn't have the faculty of being able to  encompass all this richness, and so I'm sure that if we trained  ourselves, we would be able to extrapolate between those different  images and make sense of the whole. That's what we do with the  eyes. We have the vision of each eye is different, but we are able to  extrapolate between those two visions. So this is what we are  learning in meditation, to do in mediation. To be able to make sense  of our lives in the context of the whole humanity, instead of being  caught in our personal trip. So that makes for maturity. One  becomes a mature being. 

One becomes more and more cosmic, and  less personal. That's the reason why one uses the word Tatagata for  Buddha instead of Sidhartha or Gautama. Because Tatagata means  Thus, one becomes Thus. Impersonal.   Now I don't know whether you've noticed that what we are doing  now is to try and reach beyond our narrow self image which does not  only distort our understanding of our lives, but also affects our self- esteem. And our self-esteem is so important, in order to find  fulfillment in our lives. And so, just image, that we are proceeding in  a counterproductive manner in our lives by standing in the way of  the fulfillment of our lives. By limiting ourselves to our self-image.  But I don't know whether you've noticed that, (so little body have  come to??) notice that we are always relating our self-image to the  totality, and totality to the self. 

We are always connecting the two.  So that is why the Sufis speak about the Divine Consciousness. And it  seems at first, in our minds, we think in categories. We think the  Divine Consciousness is out there somewhere and me, this is me, this  is my consciousness, and so. In your meditation, if you start working  with expanding your consciousness over a period of time, it might  take months and months, even years, you might reach that point  which St. Francis talked about when he said, "I thought I was looking  at the universe, but the universe is looking at me." That's a break  through in meditation. The Sufis would say, "I thought I wanted to  know God, but it is God who is discovering him/herself through me."  Or I can only know myself by trying to have a sense of the  knowledge that God has by discovering him/herself as me. That's  Sufism. 

Now maybe it's difficult. In theory it sounds, in poetry is sound  beautiful, wonderful, paradoxical, and so on. But you see we have, if  we have the faculty of transporting our consciousness into that of  another person, then the capacity of transporting it in the  consciousness of more and more people, then of course in infinite  regress we are able to transport our consciousness into the  consciousness of the universe. But in order to do that, we have to  down play our personal consciousness. Or the purpose of our  personal consciousness and highlight that of the universe. That's  what happens in a very advanced state of meditation. But maybe  you can do it. Maybe you can have a flash of it. 

Just think that the cosmos, there is difference between the cosmos  the universe. The cosmos, let's say, is the body of the universe. And  think of the universe as a being, composed of lots of cells, just like  each cell of our body which is endowed with certain amount of  consciousness, and will and so on. Being endowed with awareness,  global awareness and your consciousness is, as I say the focalization  of this total consciousness, this global consciousness. That means that  it is part of that global consciousness. That means that your  knowledge of the cosmos has a contribution to the knowledge that  the cosmos has of itself. Can you see that? So means that when you  are looking at the stars, the stars are seeing themselves through your  glance. Well, the stars are discovering themselves through your  glance. And now perhaps we can understand better the words of  (Itnallabi name??), the Sufi who says "God discovers him/herself as  you." Let's say the way that the totality is actuated in a unique way  in each fragment of itself, so it's not God static, it's God dynamic.  

Discovering God awakening by becoming existential, that is activating  him/herself as us. That is a very different way of thinking, to think  of God up there and us down here as miserable worms. It's a  completely different way of looking at it. And I must say, I dare say  that, that somehow this way of thinking is going to open the door to  having a sense of the sacred. Because one respects each being as an  expression of the Divine Being. One sees, this is what is called God  consciousness. And that will make you high. Is it possible that that  being of God whom I imaged to be up there somewhere so remote is  present within my own being? So we realize that then it is concept  of ourselves, self-image we call it, refusal to accept the Divine gift of  our being that stands in the way of our ecstasy that makes us low  key. The breakthrough of ecstasy, realizing that the totality of the  Being at all levels, not just the physical world, but all levels, celestial  spheres, that is coming through me or is me, is being aroused as me.  That's an incredible thought. 

See for example, giving several examples. One was Einstein pushing  a pram in streets of New York. A lot of people pushed prams in the  streets of New York. But while he was doing it, he was thinking of  the starry sky. He was thinking of space and time and galaxies and  so on. And he was thinking, you see, most people think that they're  pushing their pram. Most of them are right there in the streets of  New York. But they cannot see that that is only a very small piece of  that totality. So you see how you can be caught in a perspective.  And the others is, I forget his name, the first American astronaut  that landed on the moon and gave us a seminar at the Zenith  Institute, and he said, you see, you can't imagine the thrill of hurtling  back home through space at tremendous speed and thinking my  family down there, right down there on that planet, over there it is  very far away, and thinking to myself, well, yes, I am looking  forward to meeting my wife and children and all the circumstances,  but I just hope that I won't lose that sense that I have gained of the  vastness of reality. And in fact, he never lost it. 

So, you don't have to take a space car to do that. But this is what we  are doing now. It's a matter of our realization. They are not only,  well that is the way out of the prison. And it makes for the  maturation of your being. That's why Laura said, "I can't come back  from the door through which I came to this state. I can only come  back through another door."  	 So we need to have our break now for whatever it is, and so that will  be let's say 20 minutes. Would that be alright? 20 minutes? And  then we start again at 11 o'clock.

We are proceeding through the stages that we would be exploring if we were on retreat. Now, we would have more time. So, we are a little pressed for time, but it's good, I think, it might be helpful to you to have some taste of these different stages, which I intend to help us in being better able to understand our lives and also help us to unfurl the potentialities of our being. Now, generally one assumes that meditation consists in turning within, so what we did in the earlier part of this morning was the opposite. So you can't limit meditation to what I mean by turning within. Further more, the danger in turning within is that one simply gets encapsulated in one's thoughts and, of course in one's psyche, and one finds that the random thoughts are turning up here and there without being able to control them. And, however much you use your will, you are fighting a losing battle. So that, that is not the best way of proceeding when meditating. 

So, we are going to try and explore different ways of being able to turn within and gain a totally different perspective to the one that we gain when expanding our consciousness outward. The first thing is that we are continually... well, we are continually doing two things, we are ingesting the environment, whether it is the physical universe or the psychological and social environment..We're ingesting it, that is, we are being enriched by it. And then, I want to draw your attention to the opposite, we are continually being reborn from within, and some how there is some connection between these two extremes. So first, we'll examine the first one. Just think that ... think of all the impressions that you are subjected to in your lives. If you're listening to the radio or TV, or talking to people, or walking the streets and coming across ... well, the sufferings of people. Especially if you're walking in the streets in India. And so, we are subjected to all kinds of impressions, some of which become really obsessive and seem to take over, and some of the impressions, of course, could be really harmful. And we would like to protect ourselves against them, but, on the other hand, well, it would be like putting ... the ostrich, the famous ostrich, putting its head under the sand. It would be not acquiescing to the reality of ... well, the drama of life. And yet, some how or other, we do need to defend ourselves, we need to protect ourselves. 

And so, we do have a kind of defence system, adhoc, which is rather imperfect, it is not very efficient most of the time. But we protect ourselves by illusions and by justifications, sometimes by not acknowledging guilt. For example, because it would be too demeaning to our self-esteem. So we kind of producing a rather false and precarious bastion to protect our psyche that is very vulnerable, knowing that it ... that bastion itself is very precarious, and could break down, and causing a lot of unnecessary anxiety. We do have the faculty of filtering impressions before they reach right into our psyche. The ... that faculty evidences our freedom. Because, you see, when we extend our consciousness into the vastness, we tend to lose the sense of our personal center. Let's say the center of this ... the totality that we are, that we might call the personal center. And there is a danger in that. And that is why psycho-therapists accuse spiritual groups of what they call psychological by-pass, - "inaudible" - making people other-worldly. Psychologists see the need to have a very healthy sense of the self. And that is also to be found in the teaching of Pir o'Murshid Inayat Khan, and of the Sufi Order, in general. But, of course, the self is always seen in its relation to the totality, of which it is the self. 

Pir o'Murshid has a very interesting theory about that, and that is that, what we call false ego is really only a fraction of what we are, but with which we identify, especially when we are challenged. Then, back-to-the-wall, we fight by affirming what we call our ego, and its very ... let's say, inadequate way of dealing with the challenge. Because if we could use ... could avail ourselves of all the bounty of our being, then we would be able to meet the challenge more effectively. This could be illustrated by something often referred to, and that is, Beethoven, in the Fourth Piano Concerto, describes the world as the orchestra, and himself as a pianist. And the world comes with ... well a (some bombastic onomatopoeic sounds)... And normally, when one faces a challenge like that, one would react all so brutally. I mean some people would. Some people have those what they call "fight or flight" mechanisms. So, some would run away and others would just confront. What he does is very ... is a wonderful lesson, because he answers (more onomatopoeic sounds, this time humming softly). In other words, he is saying to the world, "I am not ready to play ball with you now. I need to consult with my deeper self." So, he is placing a buffer between the challenges of the world and himself. 

And so, you could consider meditation as opportunity to do just that. Because, if you are just reacting, that short-circuit, like that what we do when crossing roads, for example, you don't have to use all of your brain to avoid being run over. But, when it comes to deciding on big issues in your life, then, of course, it is very damaging if you just react to the challenge of life without availing yourself of all the richness of your being. But, in order to do so, you have to really know who you are, and we don't. Most of the time we don't. And we think that we do, but we don't. So, the first thing is, of course, to be able to affirm your unique identity by your free will. That is, it is your determination to ingest and digest those impressions you wish to or you don't... that you wish to reject, is a feature of your sense of identity. For example, we have in our psyche the same mechanism as the immune system in the physical body. You know that the immune system ... for example, the immune system will reject an organ that doesn't have the same DNA, or doesn't match the DNA of one's own body. So, the immune system is based upon me or not me. And so, it is that very strong sense of "who I am" that will help you to reject those impressions you cannot cope with, and accept those impressions that will enrich your being. 

But there is another second immune system in the body, whereby the body adapts itself to elements that are extraneous to itself. And, I think that we are suffering from over adaptation in our lives. We're suffering from a kind of psychological indigestion. That is, as we are invited to adapt ourselves overly to the environment and therefore lose the specific idiosyncrasies of our being. And therefore, I think, our whole civilization calls for us to have a clearer sense of who we really are. So, what is that ... the ... Our  self image does not include, of course, as I have already said, all the richness of our being. And we tend to identify with the role we are playing in life and with the mask that we are wearing. We are called upon in our lives to play certain roles, like the guru thinks he's a guru, or a king thinks he's a guru ... a king, you know. I don't know if the baby thinks he's a ... she's a baby, but an old man thinks he's an old man, and so on and so forth. One identifies oneself with what is really a secondary aspect of oneself, that is not the very essence of one's being. 

And secondly, we allow ourselves to be impressed by what we see in the mirror, which is one of the most misleading of all ... of all feedback systems. To ... actually, our countenance is hidden behind our face. We ... some of the features of our face have been inherited from our parents and our race, whatever ... We have to live with our body, the way that it is ... But, somehow, that is what appears at the surface. And when you turn within, your beginning to ... or you are called upon, your invited to discover what transpires behind that which appears. Now, I know, that sounds like theory, and, of course, I'd like ourselves to experience it. So, let us make a ... make a first attempt at experiencing it. Now, supposing that you ... you know that the retina in your eyes is sensitive ... receptive to light, and so it is the light that is fluoresced, or refracted, or even reflected by the objects around you that is threaded up the optic nerves into your brain. But do you know that the brain is absolutely full of light and that the light of the brain does ... is threaded down through the optic nerves, and, but of course, the receptive setting of our eyes makes it such that the light that enters into the eyes is much stronger than the eyes ... the light that we can ... we can project. 

But ... just close your eyes and imagine that your eyes are like the head lamps of a car, beams of light, or rather that there are beams of light that are threaded down through the optic nerve, through the cornea ... or through the retina, then pass through the cornea, which is like a lens, into outer space. You could even move your head to the left, and the right, and it looks as though those beams are displacing themselves, sort of just like a light house, the light of a light house. And head up and down. OK. Now open your eyes and you see that the light of the environment is so strong that it over powers the light of your glance. When you close your eyes it is easier to be aware of the light of your glance than when your eyes are open. So, that is... evidences the impact of the environment upon ourselves. Now, what we want to do to gain more awareness of ourselves is to be able to find freedom from the impact of the environment, and that means freedom from the conditioning of our societies. For example, to find your real self. So now, let's do it again. Close your eyes as you inhale, and now exhale, just at the beginning of the exhale, open your eyes and see if you can keep your concentration on those beams of light. 'pen your eyes just a little slit, not wide, I mean your eye-lids, not very wide. 

Now, of course, you can only do it ... at first, it is very difficult to do it, so most people ... so the best thing is to close your eyes again, because there's no point in just doing the thing that one always does. But, gradually, in time you get ... you develop the faculty of being able to maintaining your awareness of the light that is coming through your eyes, instead of the light that is being absorbed through your eyes. Well, it has enormous implications, because if you've done that for many months, you'll begin to be able to ... of course, you know, if what we ... in order to be able to do it at all, your eyes need to be not focused. That is ... I don't know how they look, but they are not in focus. And so on ... The whole environment appears like a blur. Now, in time you learn to focus a little more, but not quite, to just offset your glance from the usual way. And when you do that, then you begin to see the countenance of people behind their faces. And that is another source of ecstasy, because people are so beautiful. If only ... I forget now, I think it was myself who said that, I forget ... "If you could only see yourself through my eyes, you'd see how beautiful you are." So, that is much more reliable information about yourself than the mirror. That is that which transpires behind that which appears. Or you could do it with a flower, for example, or practice with a flower. 

And then you ... suddenly you see the radiance of that flower is extraordinary. The flowers that have been photographed by Walter Chappel [unsure of correct spelling of this name] in ultraviolet light, they're translucid. You see their ... the aura, what they call the corona behind ... around the edge of the petals. So, that's the countenance. Its ... countenance does not have a profile. It's ... it has some kind of structure without having the profile. Just like the corona of, for example, of your fingers on a ... in Kirilian [sic] photography, for example. Now, this has further consequences, and that is that you find yourself in a transfigured world. That's just like your consciousness is offset. Perhaps some of you know that stage. Your walking in the woods and finding yourself in a transfigured world. Or even just talking to someone, and it's not like your body is there and that body is there, and we're talking, but some how, there's ... something happens, and you r... there is a communion between you, and it doesn't belong to time and space, at all. It's something else.

Now, when one gets used to it ... you do that in meditation, when you turn within ... you get used to it, you are able to switch your consciousness, just like you press the button of the electric light. It's the state which one could call reverie. That's not the dream state, but it's somewhere between the dream state and day consciousness. And I find that if I think of ... I try to remember my childhood, and even my babyhood ... you know, I was a baby once ... that the sense that one is the same person ... It's so disturbing to us, to our usual way of thinking of ourselves. So ... And then you look at life, and its ... its like a mystery, really. One wonders just how real it is. How's it possible, that I exist? What does that mean? You know ... So, perhaps that gives you some sense of the attunement of the mystic, who are ... does go by appearance. You see, most of the time we go by appearance, we are judging people for the way they look, or the way they talk, or the way they express themselves,and so on. And here it's ... you discount it, in order to grasp what's behind it. For example, what is behind your problems. And so, just ... the problem itself is just the way it appears at the surface. 

But what is being enacted behind the problem? Now, we already practised this. Because, for example, Saint Francis was walking in the woods, at night time. Now, if your walk in the woods, you will be perceiving the surface of the leaves on the trees, and the bark of the trees, and maybe you see a bird or an insect, or even an animal. But St. Francis was getting into the consciousness of the trees, just as we did earlier on, this morning, with people. And getting in touch ... in the consciousness of the animals. And so, if you do that, you find yourself in a transfigured world. And you have the feeling that everybody is caught in a ... in a perspective, and you have been able to withdraw your vision from the common place perspective by offsetting your consciousness, or the focus of your consciousness. We have that ability. So, that is what Sufi's mean by, "that which transpires behind that which appears." Now, if you - "inaudible" (384 on counter) of your problems, then you'll see that beginning to see that you'd been judging the appearance and had failed to see what are the issues that are being enacted behind your problems. And that's the real thing. Now, how do you do that? 

Well, as I use the word, you down play a perspective and highlight another. Right, for example, if you had a ... you know the holograms in which you have two pictures superimposed. Like, for example, the face of Christ on the Turin shroud, and then you have a painting of Christ. And you have two images, and you can just toggle your consciousness and you see one and the other. Well, the same thing in life. We can toggle between perspectives. But normally the impact of the environment is so strong, the way the environment appears is so strong, that it seems to force us into the ... well, what we call, the common place perspective. Now, how can you down play that perspective? And this is the ... this is the clue to meditation, actually. Now, I would say, that we are talking about skills rather than metaphysics. So, let's say one of those skills is to consider that, what you are seeing, is an illusion. In fact, it isn't an illusion, but if you think it is, then it helps you to free yourself from its impact. That's the trick. The world is illusion, you see. It's just a different ... there are different perspectives. 

But ...that ... I think that ... if one is more ... how can I say?... more with it, then one has to realize that that is just a skill, to think that the world is ... is illusory. But I think it is a dangerous skill, because then you start losing your sense of reality and you become other worldly. So I don't recommend it, at all. Perhaps it is in the physical world that reality is to be found. Maybe the other way around. And Pir o'Murshid talks about ... he says, "Throughout the aeons of time consciousness has been awakening in matter". But consciousness, that is buried in matter, is awakening. So don't think of your body as something else than you, that you have to discard, or despise, or whatever. No, I think the ... let's say ... try to get some clues as to how to do it. That's what we want to know ... how to do things. You see, if you ... you know that the stars are still in the sky, when your ... when you see the sun, you can't see the stars. Now, that is because the light of the stars is much more impacting upon you than the light of the stars that is much weaker, but it's still there. 

Now, of course, in the night time, you don't have the sun so you see the stars. But now, there is a technique that has been ... it's used by some yogis, and that consists in trying to see the stars longer and longer every morning after sunrise. And eventually, one gets into that ... develops that ability to grasp something which is less striking than that which is more overt. Now, there ... there's another technique, another skill, and that is what is called, in India, Vayralya [sic] which is the particular ... how can I say ... defines an ascetic. It's a sense of detachment, indifference, independence. It would seem to go counter to our interest in life. And our lives require us to find a blend between these two. Instead of just either being involved in the world, allowing ourselves to be conditioned, or then leaving the world by developing a sense of independence. That means not being dependent upon conditions, either physical or psychological. And also a kind of psychological immunity from being disturbed. That means being able to maintain your calm under all circumstances. 

And that is of course a wonderful defence against psychological despair. It may ... I think that the psychologists ... psychotherapists would say that it's not really facing one's suffering, it's a kind of anaesthesia. I think that some cancer patient's would rather suffer the pain than be drugged. So, we have this kind of psychological anaesthesia in us... we don't ... something that we don't always use, but it is useful to use it. That is part of our defence system. And of course, it is true that we become psychologically dependent upon circumstances, people, environment, and so on. And dependence will always free ... rob you of your freedom. And so, if you have a strong urge for freedom and you ... at the same time, you have a sense of responsibility, then you don't leave the world as an ascetic. But then you find a way of eschewing being caught up in let's in, let's say, in one's thinking and one's emotions by the circumstances. I don't know whether you can follow me here. You see, I'm not talking about running away from circumstances. No that's the way they are. 

But assessment of them, as we said before, and emotional dependence upon them robs us of a need that is very strong and becomes stronger as one evolves, of freedom from conditioning, freedom from dependence. And for that you don't have to leave the circumstances, because, as I said, the prison is not the circumstances that we think it is. Then we try to escape from the situation and we find ourselves in another that is just as bad or even worse. No, that's not the answer. But the prison is in our ... is in our opinion. That's the word of Buddha: "Freedom from opinion." And that includes my opinion. Our  freedom from any kind of dependence upon a guru to make you high. And because if one really wishes for the good of a person, then one wants to show them how to not to depend on one. How to become self-motivated. So, I am locating the random thoughts that disturb you, because they have an impact upon your emotions, because they are important for you. And therefore they are able to hold your attention. Now, as I say, there are two methods: one of them is to think that it's all illusion, and so on and so forth, but that not the one I would suggest. 

The one would be to say, yes, that thought keeps on recurring, and I want to be high, but this thought keeps on recurring. Now why is it? Because there's something in me that it speaks to, that it ... It represents the need, or greed, as I say. Or my validation ... the value that I attach to this ... what the thought represents. It always represents a definite situation in life. So, as long as that is important then, of course, being exalted, being high, being ... having a sense of the sacred, seems to be secondary. Now, as one evolves, one changes one's sense of values. And then it is just that, the sacred that is the most important. And so, it is so much more important than one's physical needs, or psychological needs, that it takes over. That's why Murshid calls it a passion. It's really paramount, almost a desperate need. The sense that, as they say in India, "don't you dare die before you attain illumination". Your sense that life is going by, well, I've been attending to all these things, but this is the most important thing. And I've been so busy that I haven't been able to do it. As I've said so far, if it is of great value to you it becomes so ... so important, that you just have to adjust your life to it. 

So that's what they call Vayralya (sic), ok, indifference. Will it give you ... will it protect you against the impact of thoughts that waylay from your highest aspiration? And of course, the beauty is that that indifference reflects your need for freedom. And the further one evolves, the further one has a need for freedom. And the further one suffers from the conditioning of circumstances, upon one's thinking, not just upon one's circumstances. The conditioning ... I said circumstances, I am sorry, the conditioning upon one's thinking. And, worse still, upon one's emotions. And, as I said, when your ... one's personal concerns about one's problems, that is, seeing the problems from one's personal vantage point, will pull one into that vantage point. Confirm one and consolidate one and so one. And so one can't ... one gets caught in a prison and that prison is in the mind. So that when one finds some freedom from one's attachment ... END OF SIDE #1, TAPE #2.

BEGINNING OF SIDE #2, TAPE #2: Then one begins to discover one's true being hidden behind the mask and behind the role. And that is a real breakthrough. And likely to... Let's try to do that if you can with me, at this moment. Think to yourself, "Yes, I am playing a role. I have to be ... I'm a housewife, or I am a typist, or I am a whatever, ... nurse, or whatever, ... or a doctor. I'm a lawyer, or whatever, ..." And think well that's not me, that's something that I developed the ability to ... to do that. I'm very good at washing up, for example. But, you know, that's a role I'm playing. But ... And I think even more so thinking I'm a man or I'm a woman, I'm an old man or I'm a young man, or whatever ... I'm an Indian, or I'm an American, or whatever, that is. 

Again ... how can you say, that is secondary. But I think the breakthrough comes when you discover the features of your countenance behind your face. That is your real face, actually, your cosmic face. And it's incredibly beautiful. It could be the face of a young person, all the wrinkles have gone. Or then, it could be the face of a very mature being in the body of a young person. The thing to do is to, of course, to cease to identify with your face, altogether. And then something clicks, all of a sudden your ... "this is me!" Of course, the features are simply the way that your real being becomes configured into forms without ... without boundaries. So, freedom from the self-image. So, as you notice now, what we are doing is exactly what those people are doing trying to see the stars while the sun is in the sky, is trying to perceive a subliminal reality behind the appearance. So, that ... if you do that in meditation, you'll find that you're not disturbed by random thoughts. But now we come to a totally new facet of the same problem ... the same question. And that is that as you turn within, you discover the emergence of your new being. 

So, instead of thinking this is me, that is a static picture, you are continually being reborn and consequently reformed, restructured exnihilo, out of nothing. And so, you'll find that you'll not be disturbed by random thoughts, if you try to grasp the emergent you emerging from within. Try to capture it. Now, that's turning within, you see. Now, of course, from our point of view it looks as though we are being reborn, hopefully. Because if you don't give support to that new dispensation in your being, it will be still-born. That means, that you ... one has to capture it as it emerges, just like the crocuses in snow ... when they start breaking through the snow. You just have to capture it, that instant when it's beginning to emerge. And it is true, that in order to be able to do that, you have to let go of your old self. It's like, for the fresh petals in the center of the flower to unfold, the graded petals at surface need to fall apart. If you hang on to your personality, you can never change. And, in fact, I would say, if one doesn't evolve, one goes backwards. And, I would even say, it's rather hard to hear, but a lot of people go back instead of forward in life. And see lovely people, young people,full of ideals and so on that ... and they get disappointed and bitter. 

So, the only way to do it is to, well ... as I say, down play, that is, turn your attention away from the impressions that are calling from outside, that we talked about - how we ingest the universe. And draw your attention to what is emerging from within. But, as I say, it is not really you ... No, it is one way of looking at it, that you are emerging and you ... but really it is the whole cosmos ... the whole universe that is emerging as you. The beauty of this is that it is not conditioned. Now, let's put it ... say this more precisely. The whole universe has the ability to self organize itself in each part of itself, each fragment of itself. But, as Pir o'Murshid said, "God can entertain a greater degree of perfection in a being who participates in His creativity." This is creativity. It is our most wonderful gift that we don't always use. And the ultimate work of art is ourselves. Personality, for example. So, we are endowed with the faculty of being able to become what we want to become, and we don't avail ourselves of it. Instead of thinking, well that's the way that the world comes through as me. 

To begin with, yes, but at a certain point you take over. Remember this formula of a wonderful mathematician, was also a biologist, I think, Euler [sic], who said that, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past." That is, how you could be is much stronger than the way you've got to be because of your past. The future is more there. You create it by your imagination, in the same way that the whole universe is created traditionally by the divine imagination. The word imagination, image, ... image, that is, that an emotion and a thought becomes configured as a form. So, instead of trying to find out what your real faces is, now you ask yourself, "How could my face become?" That reminds me of ... Incidentally, if you look at the Jewish bible, instead of the western translation, then the voice under the bushel doesn't say, "I am that I am", but says, "I am that I become." So, it is your prefiguration of what you could be, in the future, that pulls you out of the conditioning of the past. There's a saying of the Sufi's that, "'ld man, it is your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity." Your freedom is through your imagination, your power of being able to project, in a very concrete way, as a picture, the way you could be. So, meditation as a means of enhancing our creative power. 

But at first, imagination starts with an emotion. Not a thought, an emotion, an emotional attunement. It could be an emotional process. Like, for example, Brahms dealing with the - "inaudible" - and trying to cope with the great tragedy of his life. Falling in love with the wife of Schumann. And it was an impossible situation. Transforming that suffering into joy. Now all of a sudden that ... that emotion manifested in a form [hums a tune]. So simply, started by an emotion. You can't sit down and write that thing. You have to be stirred to the depth of your being. To be creative of yourself, you have to be very deeply stirred by the miracle of life coming through you. That is ecstasy. So, can you feel that ecstasy of life burgeoning in your being, and see how we tend to ... to stand in the way of this emergence of new dispensations of life by being attached to the way we think we are? But it really means giving it up. And that's not easy, because, at least, we think that we can rely upon the way we are, we don't know what's coming through. I remember studying composition with Mme. Belanger (sic) in Paris, and ... That was way back in 1936. And she said, "Well, this part of your composition ... I don't know ... it doesn't really seem to fit into the rest. I bet that you composed it at five-o'clock this morning." So, I said, "Yes, your right, that's the truth, I did. I felt I had to ... I mean, I had to have it ready for you." 

So, she said, "That's the trouble, you see." So, I said, "Well, then what do you think I should do if I try to change this part." She said, "No, that would be a collage. You can't do that. It must be organically part of the whole." So, what does it mean? Well, throw it into the waste paper basket. Well, I mean, all that ...all that work I put into ... all that heart that I had put into that composition to throw it into the waste basket? Yet what will come of it will be better. Well, one has to really have faith to believe that it will really be better. What if it isn't? So you understand the story of Shams Tabriz taking the ... snatching the manuscript of Jelaludin Rumi and throwing it in the well, and saying, "If you want to, I came pick it out of the well. It'll be dry." He said, "No." Now, let me go a little bit further, because we are already getting quite heavy. And that is realizing that your defeat ... your defeat can aver itself to be a victory. And your victory can aver itself to be a defeat. 

That is very heartening, because, if I think, most of us feel that we have failed, and it is good to accept that failure as a spring board to beat our records. I don't know whether you know that disablement in some cases ... either a person takes it for granted that they're damaged, and then never makes anything of it. Or then, some people can use they're disablement as a spring board to not just only beat their own record, but to beat the record of all other people. Churchill was a stutterer, and he became ... he was one of the most wonderful orators in history. And Dr. Hawking cannot communicate, except through a very high-tech computer. So, somehow I think in terms of yourself, we ... unless you are a megalomaniac, your bound to have ... not necessarily a bad self-image, but a precarious self-image. And in that there is some judgementalism about oneself. There's some judgementalism about the world in general. And doubt, which results from a very strong sense of truthfulness. 

You can ... one can bask oneself in spiritual law, until one comes to the point when one's need for truthfulness is so strong that one is very suspicious of either words, or then the euphoria of spiritual emotion, which is not the same as exaltation. It's euphoria, it's not the same thing. Somehow, that sense of truthfulness is going to make us be very perspicacious, and consequently doubt all that one believed, and doubt one's own validity, and have a sense of having failed. For example, Gandhi, the last ... at the end of his life he said "I failed." Just imagine. And that he freed India. So, there's that ... As I say, it's a very stringent sense of authenticity which will not accept any compromise with either make belief or wishful thinking. And in spirituality there is a lot of wishful thinking. Or rather, in false rendering of spirituality, there is a lot of wishful thinking. And so, what we want to do is to have a sense of our real being which is what we did earlier on, behind the mask. Because that's real, without wishful thinking. 

Suddenly, this is me. I can tell you an experience that I had, because you know, if one is very keen on truthfulness and authenticity, then one likes to have a proof, like, you know, an indication. otherwise, words ... I can say all kinds of words that are enchanting and then you go back home and you think, well, I don't know, but it doesn't ... it doesn't... it hasn't affected me. At the time, I was under the spell of that guru, and now I go back home and I think well, what have I got in my pocket. So, that experience that I mentioned the other day was really ... I mean, if you wanted a proof you really had it then. It was an old lady who went into a kind of comatose state. She was really dying. And, you know, she was in delirium. I was away, but then I came in the hall. I could see her lying there, and everybody concerned, and thought, "This is it." And somehow she ... she felt my presence and I got close to her, she put her hand in my hand, even though she was in a state of coma. And she opened up her eyes and, you know, literally all the wrinkles left. I mean, she became a young girl, radiant, full of light, as though totally transfigured. So, that's a reality. It's not something like wishful thinking or make believe. There it was, right there. And that was the reality of her being that was covered under the bushel. 

And now we must know that we have the same in us, too. And we ... if we do not know that, then we have a bad self-image, and we suffer, despair. And I am not inviting you to imagine what is not. So, it's only ... One has to be very careful of fantasizing instead of ... there is a difference between imagination and fantasizing. And the reason ... The difference is ... Because, if you're fantasizing, you are caught up in your personal identity. You are disconnected from the totality, like a battery that's been taken away from its charger. Creativity is always somehow ... There's always a connection between the totality and the part. It's ... There is the words of Dr. David Boehm, who said that ... He said that in the future ... It's true that we are trying to evolve toward that ... Creativity will only meaningful ... meaningful if it is meaningful for humanity, instead of just the creating person. That you are meaningful to humanity, instead of trying to be creative in and enclosed space within yourself. Because, then, if you do that, then it's fantasy. Could be anything. You know, if it's signed Picasso, or whatever. 

So it's worth thousands of dollars, but it could be anything. You change a color and nobody would notice the difference. That's fantasy. And creativity, ... you couldn't change a note of Bach without if a musician would see it, that it's wrong. It's somehow describing ... As I say, the whole - "inaudible" - universe has a faculty of self organizing itself in each part of itself. But then we have to customize it. We have to take it from there, because as Pir o'Murshid said, "God attains a greater degree of perfection when the individual participates consciously and volitionally in his or her own creativity." Now, the last remark, before ... since I... I know we have to go ... but since I wrote to this concerto of Beetohoven ... You see, if he had reacted, then, of course,this wonderful melody that came through would have never come through. It's true. I don't know whether you know the piece. 

But, at first, there is this contrast between his buffer, as I call it, and challenge, and then there is a dialogue. And it's as though he said once more, "Well, I told you that I don't want to play ball." And then ... then he is a little more emphatic ... and then a little more emphatic, and more and more emphatic, and the orchestra recedes in the background. And that's comes this wonderful melody. Now, on the other hand, it is true, that if it had not been for that challenge, that melody would have never occurred. And so, you could consider the circumstance in your life as a catalyst which enlist your creativity. That doesn't mean that your reacting. It just it triggers off a process of rebirthing in you. So, instead of ... So, look at your problems as being catalysts, as being a spring board which will enlist your creativity, if you take best advantage of it. And if you simply deplore those circumstances, haven't made anything of it, and they've been lost. So, enjoy your problems. END OF TAPE.

FEB 22, 1997		Tape 04

(Inaudible)...deep experience hopefully to trigger off transformation in you and also in me, we need to communicate at a deeper level than just at the mind level. And therefore, it must not be a lecture, but what we call retreat. So, for us to communicate together, you, I have to be able to get into your consciousness as we tried to do earlier this morning and you have to be able to get into my consciousness and we have to mirror each other. So supposing you first try to get into my consciousness, and put yourself in my place. Sitting up here and then if I were in my personal self-image I would think to my, I would be really scared of all of you, I would think to myself I would have what they call stage fever and say, "Who am I to be talking to all these people?" I mean, it's ridiculous, crazy, what have I got to say? and anyway, what is the value of words anyway- unless I thought that I were a super-guru and then of course then I would be, have that self-confidence that is based upon an illusion, and then I would really make a road trick. So, so, how am I going to, I d like, I think you hope that I can help you and actually you're helping me too. 

So, now how can I help you? Well, I'm thinking, for example, if you could guess my thoughts, I'm thinking of those nights when I was meditating through the night in Botgeya next to the, facing the Bodi tree where Buddha is supposed to have attained illumination and a lot of monks are bowing on the ground and lifting themselves again and there are a lot of candles and the whole atmosphere is magical and I get into the conscience of Buddha and imagine him sitting there and in those days there were wild animals, and having fasted and fasted and fasted and somehow his consciousness reaching to the outskirts of the universe the thought of universal outreach of his being so that his whole being extended he saw himself as that totality instead of thinking of himself as reaching out of his personal self. You see the difference. So, you see there so I remember the attunement and maybe, most of you have not done that, so maybe I can communicate something of that attunement if you are able to extend your out, your consciousness and reach into my consciousness then perhaps you feel something of that attunement of immensity. so it's not an effort of your will to try and control your thoughts as one thinks one does in meditation. But it's an overwhelming surge of realization prompted by cosmic emotion, let's say an emotion of cosmic scale which transforms one's being. Now, you'd say, well, there was a support system there, there was an environment which was conducive to that attunement and also the whole historical past, so the ability to visualize a being who had attained illumination, and at least that is our projections upon this being. 

And what it amounts to is that thinking of this being will, has the effect of awakening in me and therefore, if you are communicating with me, in you, what happened to him. In other words, revealing to us what is already in us. And that is all that I can do or anyone can do is to reveal to you what is already in you and which maybe you don't know yourself. For example, if you take an alpine guide in Chamonix, for example, and he tests you at first and then if he thinks that you're, you can stand a further test then you'll hang on a cliff with your right hand on a crag and your left hand on another, left foot on another crag, and maybe you have your left hand on another crag, and now he says to you "Let go of your left foot and swing it to that next crag over there". Now, you would never do it yourself. 

And all he is telling you, he, he's not telling you to do it, he telling you you can do it. He is revealing to your capacity. And our doubts are in our capacity because we identify ourselves with what we think we are. Our  doubts are in two areas. One is what about ourselves and another, much more subtle one is where the support system, the conditions which favor an attunement are not after all an artifice. Supposing you go to church and you have this all this beautiful ceremonial, and the beautiful cathedral and the colored windows, the organ playing, and the colors of the priests' robes, and the intonation of the prayers, and so on and so forth and incense and so on. So that's real, what I call a real support system. And under those conditions, it is easier to be in a high state because you are supported by the environment. Now that means that one is dependent upon outer circumstances. And that doesn't, now if you were to be sitting in an ice cream parlor, then it would be very difficult to maintain that attunement. So we have become dependent upon what I call the support system. 

Now there comes a time when one begins to see the hoax of the support system, the hoax of ashram, the hoax of a guru, the hoax of all that one believed in that was a support. One sees that, well, I am going to use a strong word, there was some make-believe in it. Or wishful thinking. That happens if one is extremely scrupulous about truthfulness. Now I'll tell you a story that I mentioned the other day, I am referring to the Mass of Bernstein. Now they told me to never go there, it's just horrible. Of course that is a reason to go there. And here was this wonderful celebration, dancing, joy, the prayers, wonderful communication between the priest and people. And the priest would say, "Let us pray" and everybody would kneel down, and pray, and there was this wonderful feeling and then there was a wise guy who said, "'h, this is ridiculous, you let yourselves be fooled by this priest" and so on, he was really impolite, so you know the priest came, and there was this kind of malaise and people came again, priest said, a priest came again and that was, I would say a very wise man, that is maybe I should not say a wise man, a person who could see that there is a show here, that is, that people are enjoying, but somehow it is a show. 

So for him it was a show but maybe he should not have said it to the people because for them it was wonderful. And so the lay priest started to disrobe themselves and then more and more priests and a great priest came back again and prayed there was still a sense of malaise. And then more priests disrobed and then the big priest came back again having disrobed himself and pushed the alter over, threw the candles on the floor and collapsed, and everybody collapsed. And I thought, " Good God, what a pity! It was so wonderful." And then out of that darkness, dark  night of the soul, came a young boy, a little boy, twelve years old, voice of an angel, with a candle, chanting. And the people were starting to stand up again, and made a procession behind the little boy. Now, there is great significance in this. Because of course you see the insight of that wise man, well, he wasn't wise because I say he shouldn't have said it to people, but maybe, well, we don't know, I don't know, I don't know the answer myself. 

But anyway, we, in our time, we are going through a transformation from that outer display towards the real thing within. And it is the dark night of understanding that St. John, of course, spoke about, that is, it is our doubt as long as we keep the spark of light in the middle of the dark that helps us undergo that transformation from being the priest to being the priest of the future that is that little, the little boy who will grow. Let's say the past is now coming through in the child who announces, who will become mature and who announces the future. Let's say it is the child in the priest himself that we don't always recognize the child in ourselves. And that is turning within. Turning within is discovering the innocent core of your being from which you emerged, and there was some defilement in that unfurling of your being through the spillover of the environment. And somehow one needs to return to that pristine state like in the embryo and be born anew. 

So, now, let's proceed further. I've been thinking about that moment when I was sitting under the opposite the Bodi tree. But that past experience is in me, and consequently, you, I am communicating it to you. What I am saying is that the past is still living in the present but it is transformed. So now we get to a very important realization as to what happens when we turn within. Because unless we really understand what it means to turn within, what we're doing is to, as I say, downplay, the, even the memory, certainly the experience of the environment. When you are sitting in meditation, close your eyes, you try not to draw attention, pay attention to the sounds of the cars in the street or whatever is occurring, happening to you around yourself. And if you do that then you will start well you will allow yourself to be encapsulated in your thoughts in your psyche. As I said before, the environment, the physical and social environment continues to live in your thoughts. And one, that means that the memory of those impressions is still functioning in you and that's, as I say, that is a mistake that we make when we turn within, that we find ourselves encapsulated in these random thoughts. 

Now, the realization that I mentioned is this: And that is the totality of your being which is the universe is inside you and in our usual experience, the world is outside, we are the subject with the world outside. And now as you turn within, realize that what you thought was outside is inside you. I ll give you an example. For example, you note that there is an osmosis between people's psyches', so that for example, people you know, and particularly people you love, you can find them in yourself. You can find them in yourself. So we think that they are out there and it's true that this corresponds with a certain perspective, but we can shift our perspective. So, for example, that experience of Buddha, is in me and it can be communicated to you or rather it is in you but all that I can do is if I am aware of it I am awakening something that is in you. So just, so lets' just, I won't talk for some while, and just think of, it is a metaphor of my father's. When I am in my ordinary consciousness I think I am a bubble in the ocean, and when I turn within I realize that the ocean is present within the bubble. If you identify yourself with your self-image, you can't do it because your self-image is a notion you make of yourself. 

You think, these are my qualities, these are my defects, this is my experience, and so on. And you think this my personality and these are my relationships with people and so on. So that a whole kind of construct in which one encloses oneself. Now, what we want to do is to realize that this concept of ourselves, this notion of ourselves, is only a very small fraction of what we are but with which we are familiar, and which even provides us with a strategy to defend ourselves when we are attacked. So now we must very careful of what we mean by how do you feel. How do you feel, how do you feel now? Well, I think most people respond by asking themselves how they feel in their personal notion of themselves. Whereas, that is not what we really are. So, can you accept that there are potentialities in your being that are immensely wider and richer than anything that you identify as being you? Now I'll give you an example, an illustration which might help. Just consider a plant. What is a plant? A plant is a seed. 

A plant is really a program that is endowed with energy and that is transforming the environment into a plant. Transforming the earth into a plant, transforming the water into a plant, transforming the air into a plant transforming the light into a plant, that's really what we are. So that means that the environment gets sucks into the unfurling of the plant, gets condensed in that plant. And so, think that in the same way that you are like that plant and the whole bounty of the universe gets organized in you in a different way to the way it gets organized in somebody else. That's what I mean by customizing the creativity of the universe. So that means that those potentials that lie beyond your self-image, those potentials that lie beyond your self-image, are virtually present in your being, because your being is co-extensive with the universe. Though either we say they are present in the universe or we say they are present in ourselves. We, in the, think of yourselves as,  say, a pyramid that carried the totality potentially like an iceberg and you identify yourself with the tip of the iceberg, but you are the whole iceberg. So, you see that there is a sense of vastness, the vastness of your being but how can you say, internal instead of external? 

Now it is true that the our sensitivity to all this bounty is so fragile so dim in the case of most of us that the impressions of the outer world, and our assumption of who we think we are much stronger and consequently, it is just like as I said, the light of the sun is stronger than that of the stars. And therefore, maybe we could be helped if we would use some kind of a skill in order to downplay, as I said, the more overt impressions of the outer world, and also of our reality, our self-image, so we are able to be sensitive to this deeper and wider area of ourselves. So there's a practice to do this. So let's do this practice because practices are a way sometimes to trigger off an experience. So would you just like to stretch for a moment? That after lunch ( inaudible). Okay. 

Now place your the indexes of your fingers of your hands on your eyelids but you must turn your eyeballs upwards because if you don't, you'll be pressing against your retina and it will cause optical illusions and you will think you are seeing light. And you might even think you are illuminated now. Now, place the fourth finger and the fifth finger on the mouth, lips and close them and now place the middle finger of the right hand and left hand against your nostril. But do not press against your nostril yet. And in a minute you will be placing your thumbs in your ears but before you do that I still want to say that you only breathe in through the right nostril and exhale through the right nostril. And you hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling and after three breaths, and not more than three breaths, you take your hands away, and keep your eyes closed, and try to see how you feel. 'kay, now you can place your thumbs in your ears. At first breathe out, exhale. Only through the right nostril (..shagall..).

So, you have set a barrier standing in the way of your consciousness perceiving the outer world. And so when consciousness is debarred of its ability to perceive outside, it turns within. But, the mode of experience as one turns within is totally different from that which is experienced as you turn without. Because when you turn without you consider you are the subject experiencing other than yourself. Whereas when you turn within, you discover the universe as you! The universe emerging as you. And so, you are not the subject anymore experiencing other than yourself. And so it is a different mode of experience which one could call a resonance, attunement, one could call it a revelation because it is not a knowledge that is acquired, but simply a knowledge of your real self, that is revealed to you as long as you don't hold it back by clinging to your self-image.  Remember that this morning that we were trying to grasp who we really are and even physical countenance still thinking of me as a subject trying to perceive a form. 

That was an intermediary step. Now we are going much deeper. Because instead of trying to visualize your real countenance, just think that it is revealed to you. And instead of it just being one face, it is many faceted. And you have some kind of input in what aspect of your being is revealed to you. So let's try this out. Think for example, of a situation in which you are walking in the moonlight alongside a lake in the peace of the night. Everything is still, there's no wind. The light of the moon, is, seems to be reflected on the ripples, the very gentle ripples at the surface of the lake. Reflecting a diaphanous light, and the whole scene seems to be absolutely magical. And now, if you turn your attention towards yourself, you'll find that your being matches the nature of the lake, well of the whole scene. For example, you, instead of stumping around, you seem to be floating more than walking, and your body seems to be ethereal instead of solid with a definite profile, boundaries. You could even feel that you're really part of that whole scene. 

So, let us say that an aspect of your being is now revealed to you, and you had some input in that you decided that you were going to visualize that landscape of the soul one might think. Now think of another situation, instead of a scene, a scenario, well, somebody is coming out of a concentration camp and you are there, and that person is dazed, and can't believe that he/she is free, and is wounded in body, and in the mind, in the soul, heart, now how does your face look when you look at that person? A very different expression than the one you had when you were walking along the lake in a peaceful state. We say it is compassion. And that means that you are suffering with that person, in what one calls solidarity, and so, by, if you are able to suffer with that person it means that your consciousness is able to, translate itself, to transpose itself into the consciousness of that person. And so your compassion is healing their wounds, is giving them support. So you see that that scenario is going to awaken a quality in you which is latent. It took that situation to awaken, as the Sufis say, the God within. To awaken the potentialities of our being are continually being awakened by being called for by the situation and we also have within our minds the capacity of representing ourselves a scene or scenario which will awaken the corresponding qualities.

Now, when you turn within as we had done, we did with, I mean I hope that the skill that we used, placing our fingers on our perceptual senses had the effect of turning our attention within instead of without and that wasn't just encapsulating ourselves in our thoughts but reaching deeper so you could consider your thoughts as external, not quite as external as the physical world but external to your real being. That's the way to turn within. And so you remember that we are continually ingesting the environment but now we have placed sentinels at the doors of perception that filter impressions that are desirable, but there's a second set. And that is that we transmute the impressions. We don't just filter them off, but those impressions that we cannot cope with, we can transmute them. You know what that means to transmute? For example, it's an alchemical process. 

For example, distillation or another example is, of course, making perfume out of flowers. That's transmuting. So, the quintessence of that experience, is now digested, it is assimilated in deeper and deeper in your being, enriching your being, but the fact is that as you turn within, your whole being keeps on being distilled, keeps on being refined, quintessenciated. So if you follow that inner process, to as far as you can go, you reach the immaculate core of your being, that's the child in you, the immaculate core of your being. So this is very different from thinking of the universe as potentially present in you. The, it is, but it's like the embryo that everything is potentially there but needs to be unfurled. But the beauty of it is, is it is pure. That it has not been defiled so that will help us in our struggle with our self-esteem when we realize that whatever we've done, or whatever has been the spillover of the impressions of the environment, the core of our being is like a mirror that can never be tarnished by the impressions upon it. So that one could say that to rebirth oneself or to undergo the process of rebirthing we have to reverse the maturing process in our personality and return to the state of original innocence. 

And that's why that, that's the reason for that child in the Mass of Bernstein. Now, there's something paradoxical about it. And that is that, that pristine purity is present within its defilement. It's not there's like my nature which has been defiled by my guilt or whatever it is, that, then there's another part of myself which is the core, which is pure. It's not like that. And that's why it's paradoxical for our understanding but it could be illustrated by the voice of Caruso that can be retrieved in its bad recordings. That means that the voice of Caruso has been distorted, defiled in the, due to the recordings and yet it can be retrieved from those bad recordings. So that means that in its purity, it was present within its defilement. And that is an extremely important thought. When we are very aware of our guilt, and we can't forgive of ourselves and there is nothing that we think we can do to change things-the past, is the past. It's a kind of divine grace as it is called. That somehow that purity is there, but in order retrieve the voice of Caruso one has to reverse the distortion and so that's a kind of process of catharsis that you can do with yourself. 

It, to be very precise, it operates by your resolve, by your pledge, for example, your pledge never to do that again. Now that decision, that commitment, has the effect of, of rubbing out much of the distortion of the defilement present within your immaculate, the immaculate core of your being, clearing from it from, let's say, the, the mud. It's as though the, shall we say, the whiteness of that core, that immaculate core of your being, gains ground, is, gets, pushes away the tarnished areas. Now, there's a resistance to it, of course, because maybe we like doing the things that we dislike. Compulsively, all kinds of reasons. There's contradiction in our being. So I, one has to be very courageous to make a decision that is going to cause, cause allot of sacrifice. So it is only because of the ecstasy, that incredible joy of being free from that aspect of ourselves that was weighing so heavily upon one, that one has the strength to make that resolve. 

You know, it could be in a more innocuous behaviors, for example, intolerance for someone who is obnoxious and one doesn't realize how this intolerance manifests as a kind of a grime in the purity of one's being. Let's say that we are tested in our love by being beckoned upon to love people who are, who make themselves unlovable. That's the way we are tested. Whereas the baby doesn't know how to hate, not yet. So what we were doing was artificially removing the impressions from outside so that we were able to be more sensitive to the reality inside, emerging inside. Just like, as I say, if you would shut out the sun you would see the stars. But it is a conception of ours, of the outside and inside, in fact, it's just the way we perceive things, it's just our attunement, we can tune ourselves within or outside, but what I am trying to say is that we had placed, as you say, a real barrier on our senses, but think that instead of a barrier, it's a kind, it's like the windows of a cathedral, the colored windows of a cathedral, that there's some kind of exchange between the outside and the inside. 

Now what I am saying is leading me towards, leading us towards the next step which I announced when I said that the Sufis were, at least originally, nomads and therefore could not avail themselves of a temple or a mosque, or church, or whatever, synagogue, and consequently, they had to build that temple out of their own self. That is the Sufi practice of the sikhir, what is called the sikhir. So what does one mean by the temple then? Well, it is composed essentially of walls, of course, but, as I say, those walls can have windows in them. Let's say the wall represents a threshold, the passage from the profane to the sacred, that is protecting the immaculate state of our being from the defilement of the way of the world. And this morning we tried to define what we mean by the way of the world. Need becomes greed, and there is (inaudible), concupiscence, there's an ego trip, there's manipulation, there's vulgarity, there's allot of things that we one become very sensitive to and judgmental of. So somehow there is a split, at, in the beginning there's a split between those aspects of ourselves that enlist our, our, our self-esteem, nobility, the sublime, purity, truthfulness, and so on. 

All those qualities that we, we value, and we find that we, they are exposed to the spillover of the world, and therefore we'd like to place a kind of barrier there, a kind of threshold that would protect us from, protect these values in us from that defilement. So there's a kind of split there, you see, by setting up these, these thresholds. Though it starts like that, but eventually we will be experiencing this when we start doing it, you see that the walls of the temple extend further and further and so impinge more and more upon that environment that one wanted to protect oneself from, and consequently, one is bringing the sacred into the profane instead of withdrawing oneself from the profane into the sacred. I, I don't know whether you follow me there. And that's a challenge of our time. In short one says bring heaven on earth. So in the second part of this afternoon, what we are going to do, if you would like to do it, is to start doing the practice itself because that the practice has the faculty of affecting our, of triggering off, let's say, realizations that we can't attain by our own efforts. So now we are going to have a break. I would, if you value what we're doing now, I would say that we should make the break as short as possible. So let's say a quarter of an hour but I think it will probably be twenty minutes. 

Break

So reflecting on the story of the Mass of Bernstein, the people lost their, did not only lose their faith which rested upon a display that acted as a support system but they lost their high. And consequently found themselves in the dark night. Cause when you find yourself between two chairs, as it, as it were, rested on that outer thing, and then found that it is was display, then you, doubt comes in, of course, and that's the dark night, and the only way out of that doubt was to discover the sacred in the depth, in the immaculate core of their being which was the child. And that rescued them from the despair of having found doubt, that they were depending upon outer conditions that could collapse. Because that alter, you see, it was made of a few boxes and candles were made of grass or whatever that it was, it's not, people thought it was sacred. 

But it was made-up of cardboard, whereas the reality of your, the core of your being inside you, is real and that's the reason of the temple to be able to honor that deep core in own's being that does represent the, what I call the sacred, for no, cause there's no better word, I don't know how to use any other word. So now, as I said, Sufis therefore build a temple and that temple gets transformed and transmuted, of course, out of their own body. Well, you know that our body is not just what we think it is, obviously. Just, whatever, I don't know what we think, it depends what you think your body is, substantial, flesh, whatever, matter, whatever, but actually, can you feel around your shoulders especially your shoulders and chest, can you feel like a kind of magnetic field like the magnetic field of a magnet, for example. Now that is, it at first you think, well, it is kind, it is like an emanation of my body, like the corona of a, of a Kirlian photography. But can you feel it? Feel the magnetism of, that surrounds your body as a kind of, like a zone of  force field or life field ? 

Or you could feel it in your, the palm of your hands like an extension, one could even imagine etheric hand extending beyond the one's physical hand, that's a trick that is used in healing. And you could even feel the magnetism of your fingers, the tips of your fingers, if you are conscious of that, you, if you press the two hands together it'd be just like pressing a rubber ball. Some kind of resistance there, conscious of that field. As a matter of fact, if you have allot of healing power you can have little bits of toilet paper, for example, and on the table and, and, you place your hands close to, your fingers close to it, and you find that those bits of paper will be drawn to your fingers, and then proof that you have healing power. We need proof, you know, no use in my saying things, you've got to be able to demonstrate it, to document it. So you know I don't want to induce you into hallucinations, wishful thinking, it's got to be real. So, do you feel that, that magnetic power around your body? Just like the magnetic field of a magnet. 

Now that magnetic field is also inside the body, just like the magnetic field of a magnet is not just outside it, it's inside also. Now, can you identify with that field instead of your body, or what you think is your body? And consider that field as the template in which your body is being configured? Which is actually so, I'm not saying something that I wish for you to imagine but I, I could document it by the research done by Dr. Becker, for example, with curing, helping, the healing process by using electric coils, for example, and he discovered that this electromagnetic field is the template in which our the cells of our body have been organized. 'kay, well, if you can do that, now can you just whirl your head and your chest, let's say, imagine that your eyes are facing your, the left or the left shoulder and beyond, then your left knee, and then your right knee, and your right shoulder and then up beyond, of course, and then up to the zenith, and continue doing that. Now the magnet has become a dynamo. Which means that it's energy has been enhanced tremendously, and now describe a wider and wider circle so that, so that instead of it being a circle, it is a spiral. (..practice..) So that it extends further and further into space. So that motion of the body will help you in expanding your consciousness, that is creates conditions that are favorable to extending your consciousness as we did earlier this morning. 

And, of course you can think of the galaxies' atoms whirling and dancing, a choreography of the heavens. Now you are like a centrifuge, which is, centrifuge, I think, which is generating centrifugal forces that is whatever material is in the centrifuge tends to be pushed towards the periphery so that it has the effect of your magnetic field extends now further and further into space and consequently your sense of identity of that magnetic field is, is a part of your body then you realize that it extends in outer space and forms with that of other beings, what we call a wave interference pattern. Now in a centrifuge, I mean rather, a centrifuge generates two forces, centrifugal and a centripetal one, and that is that the grosser elements are pulled towards the surface, the finer elements are pulled towards the center, and so just think of your being, that those aspects of your being that you dislike are scattered, and the finer aspects of your being seem to collect into the center. So in order to enlist that, the centripetal forces, when your head has returned towards the zenith, that is the moment when that you are the most precarious and where you feel pull of the center of your being in the solar plexus, and so you interrupt the circle, the circle of motion, and you let your head, you turn your head towards your solar plexus. So you describe the circle, and then the vertical motion of the head turning towards the solar plexus. 

Now I would advise you to do it as you exhale as you make the circle of motion and inhale as your head turns towards your solar plexus. So now you remember what we were, what we've been practicing throughout the day, you remember what happens to not just our consciousness, but our sense of identity, even our mode of thinking as we reach out, we expand, and this afternoon we have been trying to explore what happens as we turn within. That's when your head comes down, turns towards the solar plexus. It is as though your being were not only scattered at its jagged ends, but also sucked into the void in the center. And then, reborn again, and that was that the story of the partition that had to go into the wastepaper basket and then something new emerged that was better. Think of that as you, after turning your head towards the solar plexus, it rebounds, and imagine that you, concentrate on your heart center after having concentrated on the solar plexus. (..sikhir..). So that is, there's a shift of your attention from the void accessed through the gate which is the solar plexus and then the emergence from the void of a new dispensation of life and it is at first discernible when it reaches your heart center, as I say, like the crocuses that start breaking through the surface of the snow. So just at that moment, that's when you can capture the new birthing. 

So you continue to inhale when your heads rebounds. So can you feel that you are securing a space within space by building a kind of a partition, that's a temple, the walls of the temple, but these walls are very different, they are made of the magnetism of your magnetic field and they are permeable, rather like the windows of the cathedral. But still there's some sense of, of protection within that space. Now if you, as your head comes down, turn towards your solar plexus. And just think of immaculate core of your being, I think that is what gives us some sense of what we mean by the sacred. (..sikhir..) And now can you feel as your head moves up from facing the solar plexus, I mean, to facing the heart center, can you feel as though indeed the whole universe is being drawn, converging, drawn upwards as it were, converging as you, just like the earth is being converged through the roots of a plant, then it starts moving upwards. Not only the earth of course, as I said, the whole environment is being transformed into a plant. 

So you could look at it as though it were the outer environment, but you can shift your setting of consciousness and then if you turn within you find that it is reality, reality, fundamentally reality is in the state of, that Dr. David Boehm calls the implicate state, that is like radio waves and the particle light aspect is something is secondary, that results from the interference between the waves so that solidity of your body is secondary and deeper down your body is more like wave interference pattern. Like radio waves, for example, which intersperse one another, intermesh and are woven into each other to form a network, and out of this arises the discrete, yourself as a discrete entity, just like, for example, if you were swimming under the surface of the water, you'd see that those water lilies or, yes, those water lilies that you had thought of as separate entities, are just expressions of a whole network of roots. So now you see that your being, that which you think is your being, which is, as I say, our self-image, is just the way that the incredible network managed to express itself at the surface just like the whole ocean expresses itself in each wave. 

You can see that. 'kay, now let's, just, we don't have to continue doing that, the motion of course. I think once when I said that once you set that motion into operation, it seems to continue inside without the body moving. It's, your magnetic field seems to be whirling even when your body is still but it is set into motion by the motion of the body. Now let us just explore another aspect of what we're doing. You know that when we talk, we are trying to articulate what we imply. And whatever we explain or articulate is only a very, very inadequate rendering of what we really mean, what we imply. And the fact is, that our language which we developed in our schools and education, decreases our thinking, it forces our thinking into patterns...

END OF TAPE

FEB 22, 1997		Tape 01

Pir Vilayat, Seattle 2/97 at Lakeside School, Tape I Transcriber: Anahata Pomeroy

We are going to go, we are going to share together now in a very deep process of, hopefully of transformation. It's going to be mostly experiential. Behind it all is a dialogue between those of you who are (No, we can't have babies here. I'm sorry. I love babies, but this is not the place for them.) So it's going to be a dialogue between those of you who are committed to silence and me who's chatting all the time. But somehow I am picking up your, hopefully picking up your thoughts and your concerns, and trying to voice them. It's also the result of explorations over a long period of time, and trying to find out in which way people, all of us, including myself, of course, can be helped in fulfilling our needs. 

We have physical needs, psychological needs, moral needs, cultural needs, spiritual needs, and need of the sacred. And sometimes these needs seem to be conflicting. So rather than my simply speaking, I'd like you to get in touch with yourself, and feel, at least be aware of the needs as I list them, and at the same time you will see that, of course, we suffer from pain, frustration, sometimes fulfillment, and then even a sense of precariousness because we don't know how long this paradise situation can last upon which we depend for our happiness. And then we have concerns as to how we can transmute our suffering to joy. And where the suffering can simply act as a catalyst or springboard to help us reach where we wouldn't have reached if it hadn't have been for our suffering. 

So I know if we touch upon these very deep psychological traumas, then in the past I've experienced sometimes the fact that somebody starts screaming which is very disturbing. So if you want to scream, then please go outside, if you would just spare us a little bit because it, I tell you, especially if you were here, you would realize just how very disturbing it is. And, of course, it is due to the fact that one's looking at things from one's personal vantage point, and the whole teaching consists in being able to reach beyond the limitations of that vantage point, because it's true that our pain does pull us into a personal vantage point, and then we fail to see, to identify our self with the totality of our being, and to see our problem, all the depth and different facets of our problem. That is the gist of our orientation. 

So maybe I should say right away that we do have defenses. And these defences help us to cope, and sometimes they break down. But my concern is, you see, I think that the personal problems are not, I would have liked to be able to affirm that the spiritual dimension does provide a healing and solution to our problems. It might work for some people. It certainly works with me. But it might not work for other people, and that is why I don't think that the spiritual dimension, I don't think spiritual groups or whatever it is, spirituality, whatever you mean by it, I don't think that we have all the answers. So we pass in review psychological needs: loss, the need to be loved, the need to love, the need to be able to lean upon somebody you can trust, the need to be able to trust other people, the need to be able to be a support for other people, and the need for culture to enrich our minds and to cultivate our value system. There are a lot of needs. The need to converse with people, to exchange not only thoughts but emotions, the need to find ourselves mirrored in another person and that we become ourselves a mirror in which that other person sees him/herself. All these needs can become so imperious that they fill our lives, and there is also, of course, the tremendous concern about developing the skills to be able to, as they call it, keep the wolf from the doe (?). I mean keep our jobs to avoid being thrown out in the street amongst the homeless. So we have a lot of concerns: relationship with people, finding fulfillment in that relationship without a problem. Maybe one of the greatest problems is in our self-esteem. 

So as I say, these are problems that in which one may derive help from psychotherapy. There is some overlap between psychotherapy and spirituality. But our concern here is regarding our spiritual needs. And of course they are the most undefinable. We don't, we see I'm very wary of words which reflect limitation in our minds, and of course the conditioning of our education and society and so on. And become cliches. So we say, "I want illumination," or "I want awakening." Or we use the word spirituality or we use the word God, and we don't really know what we mean by them. So rather than trying to articulate what we could never express in words, what we ought to do is to experience it. And then it's real. 	 So, first of all, we need to make a priortitic list as to those things in life which are the most important for us. And those that are less important. And that is different for each one of you, so that's something that you can only do yourself. Nobody can tell you what you're supposed to value more, or value less. So just stop for a moment, so you can just ask yourselves, look up to your deep, the depth of your being and say, "Yes, there are things I enjoy in life. There are things I don't like in life. The things that I enjoy more than those other things. And again, there is something that makes me delight in the state of exaltation. I come across it sometimes, and there's no way of saying what it is." But one could say one feels exalted. There's no doubt that society provides us with a support system which creates an environment, circumstances that are favorable to what one calls experiencing the sacred. Religions provide that. There is no doubt that it is easier to be able to get attuned to that need of the sacred in us if we sit in a beautiful cathedral and listen to beautiful music, and the vestments of the priests, and the sound of the music and the whole attunement of people coming there with respect for the sanctity of the place. That whole environment is, as I say, favorable to giving us some fulfillment in our need for the sacred. 

Alternately, sometimes one is able to encounter a person who is, as one calls it, highly attuned, and that attunement seems to then spill over upon one. Then of course, I myself have, I find it helpful when I think of the great beings with whom I have meditated. I don't just think of those beings, but I remember the attunement in which, the very high attunement of the of the soul, (word/phrase unclear) as one says in which I found myself meditating with them or communing with them sometimes without words. In fact, preferably without words. And then I felt them called upon to communicate that attunement to those who are seeking that kind of help. That it rests upon a kind of attunement, a resonance. I think of, for example, that great orator who, in Hyderabad, who had thousands of people come to his talks, and then once there was a dervish who came, and from the moment he saw that dervish he couldn't speak a word. And from that time he became a source of inspiration for thousands of people. And before that he was enthusing people by the brilliance of his mind, but he wasn't giving them that particular quality which as I say is indefinable. And which made all the difference. 

So sometimes, many times, of course it's helpful to attune oneself to beings unless one has met those beings oneself. Then at least (It is really very disturbing to have a baby's voice here. Please, for my sake and for the sake of all of us, I'm sorry. I wish you could attend. Sometimes we have a system so the people with babies can sit there and the sound is relayed, but we don't have that system here.) So, now of course, that's been a great privilege of mine. I felt it for of course mostly with Pir O-Murshid Inayat Khan, my father. But you could imagine a being whose, who inspires you. Not a being whom you know. A fictitious being, a sort of idyllic being, who attunes you to let's say what Pir O-Murshid calls the way that one's consciousness can be raised about earthly conditions, if that's meaningful to you. 

So, in these words there is a sense of, well I suppose there is some judgmentalism about earthly conditions. And if you look at your life, you will find indeed that the support system takes over. You will find that is very much like you wanted to climb to the top of the Himalayas and spend so much time and concern and energy into building the base camps that you never reach the top. So there is a kind of concern about well what am I doing with my life? So you could ask yourself that question. Where am I getting in my life? What am I doing? Um. And why am I doing what I am doing? That is, do they reflect my priorities in my value system? Or then, do I find that I've been caught in a kind of a trend which the society in which I live has imposed upon me, and which has robbed me of my freedom. 

So that is what Buddha calls samaric wheel. Repetitiveness. We are doing same things, a little bit different, but still very similar to what our parents did, our ancestors did and so on, so it is, if we go on like that, there does not seem to be any sense in simply repeating things that have all been done before. And, of course, it represents the impact of the environment upon oneself. That, of course, there is always a balance between the degree to which we adapt ourselves to the environment the degree to which we adapt the environment to our own sense of purpose. So if you simply adapt to the environment, then of course you've lost your freedom. And if you try to adapt the environment to your own sense of purpose, you might appear to people as a freak and will have a lot of opposition. 

That word, the sacred, which we can't define, but perhaps we could have a better sense of what we, when we contrast it to what is called the world. And perhaps you know the words of Christ, "They are in the world, but not of the world." Again, when he says, he talks about the Kingdom of God, or he talks about the divine inheritance. Talking about a different dimension, and then but we ascribe to the earthly condition, and of course some people simply leave the world in quest of the sublime, let's say awakened beyond the world. Those are the great ascetics, but the challenge of our time consists in being able to bring the sacred into the profane. But first of all we have to be very clear as to, it is very difficult to have any sense of what we mean by the sacred except that I say an attunement. But I would saying contrast with earthly conditions. What do we mean by that? Well, we see that it starts with needs even to survive, even to adapt ourselves to the environment. But need becomes greed. Where does need become greed? You see how greed can lead towards a power trip causing suffering to people. Manipulation, dishonesty and, of course, dependence, upon circumstances which of course robs us of our freedom. So can we recognize that there is a spillover of the world in our being? And at the same time recognize desperate nostalgia for what (unclear) called the sacred or the sublime or whatever it is. And ultimately of course I think it is the trigger that will help us to reach beyond that conditioning is a need for freedom. And maybe, ultimately of course, we need to discover who we are. So we, perfunctorily we assume that the circumstances of the present which rob us of our freedom, or sometimes we created it ourselves, done ourselves, and that if we reach a greater clarity, then we realize that the present is in our own way of thinking. 

So let us pursue this a little further. I think we hang upon our self- esteem, and that is based upon our self-image which is only a notion of what we are, that is not really what we are. It is a notion of what we are. But somehow, I think that it is the need of the sacred that makes us feel impaired in our sense of self-esteem. I think that's where it lies, and somehow unconsciously, the feeling of having failed to give expression and vent and fulfillment to this great need, and this need becomes greater as one advances in life, or rather as one evolves, as Pir O-Murshid, my father says, there comes a time that one is motivated by a passion for the unattainable. A passion for the unattainable. That way, it is very appropriate, because it is not something you can get and put in your pocket. It is always further, and it is a real passion. It becomes so imperative that it is much more important than anything in the world, and so one, it frees one of course from one's dependence upon, to some extent from earthly conditions. 

Now as I say, our society provides a support system for the sacred, and consequently people feel uplifted. They go to church, in England for example, on Sunday morning. They go to church. And then there's the pub just next to the church after church. So there is just that need to feel the sacred, and then slip right back into the sort of the way of the world. Now, and as I say, we also, people go to gurus because, especially if they have a broken heart, and they hope that the guru is going to by his or her high attunement help them to get a feeling of that attunement which seems like a safety buoy when one suffers so much in earthly conditions and frustration. But you see the Sufis are nomads. And so they can't avail themselves of the church or a temple. And, therefore, they have to generate the sense of the sacred in themselves. It is also true that if you have a very intense sense of integrity and authenticity, you see that religious display may, well it is a support system as I say, but it is something, it is enacting on earth rather inadequately what one imagines to be the cosmic celebration in the heavens. And so if one is extremely bent on truthfulness, and does not wish to let oneself be carried by what appears like a show. I'm not saying it is, but it might appear as a show. And consequently one has need to be able to generate the sense of the sacred in oneself. 

This kind of rebellion is to be found amongst those who do not wish to simply hang on to the aprons strings as (unclear) of our guru, but the need to make their way themselves and find the sacredness of their being through their search for truth. There was a Sufi, Abu Yasit Basami, who was a dervish who lived in the northern mountains of Iran, and who said these rather shocking words. He said, "God fools you in the markets of the world, and only presents effigies, but I want the real thing." So effigies, that is according to the Sufis, whatever we experience in our commonplace experience subject/object is clues, signs, effigies in which according to Sufis, God reveals the reality of his/her being by means of these clues. It's like you see the paw marks of the bear in the snow. You haven't seen the bear. And so those paw marks are real, but they are relative to the bear. They only have meaningfulness in relationship to the bear. If you take them for real without seeing what they refer to, then of course you are caught in a hoax. That is what is called maya. The trouble is that if one tries to self- generative the sense of sacredness in oneself, the danger is that one identifies oneself with one's personal self and is trying to find the sacred in that constrained space, that's called the personal space. And of course it is true that the totality is present within each fraction of the totality, so that it is in our personal self that God is to be found. That is the teaching of Pir O-Murshid Khan. Can you feel that? 

Like you are a, inasmuch as you are a fraction of the totality, the totality is somehow potentially present in you. Potentially. And that the whole evolution of your being consists in arousing the bounty of the universe that is hidden in the depth of your being, and which is calling for your support in order to be able to awaken. That is what Sufis call awakening of God within. You can feel that. Sufis call Ishkavata, nostalgia, divine nostalgia, trying to burst through, the being. And in a sense we are sometimes counterproductive because, although it is true that, as I say the totality is present within each fraction of itself, it does get reduced. Like, for example, photographing a three dimensional panorama in a 2 dimensional photo. So somehow, the totality is there but somehow reduced, so the only way in which we could incorporate more of the richness of the totality, the bounty of the totality of the universe, is to expand our notion of ourselves. And if we do not do that, then we run into a very dangerous situation where we haven't seen clearly that our notion of ourselves, our self-image, is not what we are. And so we are limiting ourselves to the notion we make of ourselves. And we are trying to find the sacred in this constrained area which we call ourselves and which is just our notion of ourselves. And then we are turning around in circles in desperation and that can lead to the dark night of the soul. 

Now it all started by doubt about the way that the sacred was institutionalized in religion or in spiritual groups. And it is reflected in doubt about ourselves, and of course that doubt is due to the fact that one is convinced that one is what one thinks one is. So somehow one has encapsulated oneself in an inextricable situation which I would say is very dangerous. And one realizes one can't as a psychiatric patient said "I cannot return to where I was before. I can only come out by another door." And that door is discovering your real being by expanding the notion that you have of yourself. So it starts with realization, in fact, what we mean by spirituality is a series of realizations that, well all of a sudden you see something different, you see the things are quite different from what you thought before. So that first realization which you find in the first step of yoga, called svitatha samadhi, consists in realizing that our assessment of our problems are distorted by our personal bias. So will just stop for a moment so you can think of that. Ask yourself you are so convinced of our assessment of our problems and ask yourself, " What if my assessment is mistaken, because I am asking myself what that problem means to me, that is who I think I am, that is not what I am, so that is just a vantage point on my problem. What is means to me." And when one says me, it all depends what it means by me. If one says me, most of the time one means, one does not realize that one means what one thinks one is, not what one is.

Without realizing that one's assessment can't be absolute, like for example, if you look at Notre Dame in Paris from one angle, you haven't seen Notre Dame. You see, so if you look at your problem from your personal vantage point, I mean by that what you think you are, then of course you can't have a real sense of what the problem is. But that is still negative. That 's a negative statement. It is not what I think it is, so that's negative. But then what is the positive? Well, of course, the way to do it is to start looking at the problem from other alternative points of view to your own point of view. So what I suggest now is you think of a problem, but as seen from the point of view of another person who's involved in that problem with you. And that doesn't mean that that point of view is more valid than your own. But at least you have two eyes to see instead of one. 

End Side I Begin Side II

Being able to transpose our consciousness into the consciousness of another person. That is, generally we think of another person as the object of our awareness, but in meditating, you discover that you can literally transpose your consciousness into that of another person. For example, you mention how it would feel to that person. And of course, that person's way of looking at things may be as limited as yours, or may be better than yours, or more limited, whatever, but it does alter. Say, for example, if that person were attuned to a very high state, than what you grasp of that person is going to be different from the way that person would be if they were dealing with the nitty-gritty of human problems. What is more is that you could just imagine how you appear to that person. And you realize that the image that person has of you is not what you think you are, and not necessarily better than what you think you are, or might be worse. But then, I am not saying that is how you, that's the real thing. No, I'm saying that you then have, that you have the ability to that, and then you can see something about yourself that maybe you didn't see when you were in your own personal perspective. Because as you know the eyes can't see themselves.

Now you could expand your consciousness to more people, three people, four people, many more people, and eventually, well can you just... First of all, can you just feel the joy of your consciousness expanding. It's like, for example, sitting in your office or in your house the whole day, or you have the opportunity to make a trip in the mountains and sit on the mountain top and watch a fantastic dawn. Haah, what a joy to be out of that prison, to have that, the walls that hold you into their containment, then, perhaps you know the mime of Marcel Marceau who has, (inaudible), he's walled in, and he keeps on pushing the walls and they get further and further away, and the further away they go, the better he is able to dance, and eventually he dances the dance of freedom. Now that is essential. Ha, pushing out our limitations. 

Now, there is another way of doing it, and that is, if you imagine the starry sky, the galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and realize that the very fabric of your body is the fabric of those galaxies. And that the fabric of your body originated in the Big Bang as a pure outbreak of light, of pure radiance, and that this light crystallized itself into what we call matter, although for a physicist, light is also matter. Rather like image light that has gelled into a crystal. But our bodies are much more elaborate than crystals. They are what (unclear) calls liquid crystals, so they are much more than time (timimic), of course. They are not frozen as a crystal. Well a crystal is not a frozen as one think, as the atoms are transformed by light. So, from the moment that you do that, that you reach out in your thoughts into the vastness of space, and you realize that you yourself, your body itself, is part of this starry universe. It can't be separated from it. That has traumatic effect on one's way of thinking of oneself. Say you are thinking of yourself as a, what they call a discrete entity with a boundary, the skin, your boundary, you are beginning to... it, so, you are not just expanding your consciousness, but you are altering your sense of identity, or rather gleaning awareness of the vastness of your identity. 

Now we could, it is true that as one extends one's consciousness, one loses the sense of one's individuality, and so it's good to balance that by the opposite. For example, if you exhale, then you could say experience this wonderful expansion of your consciousness reaching out further and further, and then losing the sense of your individual center. And now you can do the opposite as you inhale. See how the totality of the universe converges as you. Converges you see. Just like as I said, three dimensional panorama converging into a photograph, a two-dimensional photograph. And see how the consciousness of the cosmos has become focalized. Do you understand the word focal? The focal point, focalized like light is focalized through a lens? And you focalize as your consciousness. So your consciousness is not different; is not other. It is the consciousness of the totality that has, well, if the image of a focalization is difficult, then you could imagine for example, a funnel. 	 We have the ability to toggle between the all-encompassing setting of consciousness and a personal one. For example, if you read pages of a book, through the consciousness, your eyesight is highly focalized, focused. Then if you look at the panorama, then your eyesight is all encompassing, and you could toggle between the two. You could read a book and then if sitting in a beautiful mountain scenery and then look at the panorama and look at the book again, so you can tell between the two. You can do the same thing with our consciousness.

So, when our consciousness is expanded, then we can see our problems in their context. That means to say we can see the implications of our problems instead of just seeing them from our limited, personal bias. Then we realize that what we thought was our problems, or our problem, is simply our participation in the drama of the universe. See that is a way of liberating yourself from constraint of our commonplace assessment of situations. I say our problems, could be just situations in general, and our self-image that we are carrying in our psyche throughout our lives. Can you imagine if you are carrying unaware, unawares, we are carrying in our psyche a false assessment of our situations, of ourselves, of our relationship with the universe, and convinced that that the way it is. And suffer because of it. And confused because of it. And we see that the expanding of our consciousness does have an effect upon our identity. And I say that because of course it is easier to think that you can expand your consciousness like your eyesight. And then it is to have a wider sense of your identity. It doesn't seem logical that you know one thinks that one is fraction of the totality. It's very, it doesn't seem logical. One is a totality. How can you say that? Some mystics say that, but then you think they're crazy. You can't understand how they could say anything like that. So it's something that one has to gradually train oneself to in meditation, so it's not something you can do just like this, and one day in a few hours it will (unclear) together. 

But, see, for example, we would never be able to make sense of the radio waves. The radio processes those waves by impoverishing them so that we can make sense of them. By limiting them. by impoverishing them as I say. So the same thing is true of our lives. We have difficulty in extrapolating between different situations. I'll give you an example. Perhaps you remember the days when, you had three screens in the cinema, and so the whole idea was to have this wide grasp of this wide panorama, and we found that in fact we were scanning, anyway. We didn't have the faculty of being able to encompass all this richness, and so I'm sure that if we trained ourselves, we would be able to extrapolate between those different images and make sense of the whole. That's what we do with the eyes. We have the vision of each eye is different, but we are able to extrapolate between those two visions. So this is what we are learning in meditation, to do in mediation. To be able to make sense of our lives in the context of the whole humanity, instead of being caught in our personal trip. So that makes for maturity. One becomes a mature being. One becomes more and more cosmic, and less personal. That's the reason why one uses the word Tatagata for Buddha instead of Sidhartha or Gautama. Because Tatagata means Thus, one becomes Thus. Impersonal. Now I don't know whether you've noticed that what we are doing now is to try and reach beyond our narrow self image which does not only distort our understanding of our lives, but also affects our self- esteem. And our self-esteem is so important, in order to find fulfillment in our lives. And so, just image, that we are proceeding in a counterproductive manner in our lives by standing in the way of the fulfillment of our lives. By limiting ourselves to our self-image. But I don't know whether you've noticed that, (so little body have come to??) notice that we are always relating our self-image to the totality, and totality to the self. We are always connecting the two. So that is why the Sufis speak about the Divine Consciousness. And it seems at first, in our minds, we think in categories. We think the Divine Consciousness is out there somewhere and me, this is me, this is my consciousness, and so. In your meditation, if you start working with expanding your consciousness over a period of time, it might take months and months, even years, you might reach that point which St. Francis talked about when he said, "I thought I was looking at the universe, but the universe is looking at me." That's a break through in meditation. The Sufis would say, "I thought I wanted to know God, but it is God who is discovering him/herself through me." Or I can only know myself by trying to have a sense of the knowledge that God has by discovering him/herself as me. That's Sufism. 

Now maybe it's difficult. In theory it sounds, in poetry is sound beautiful, wonderful, paradoxical, and so on. But you see we have, if we have the faculty of transporting our consciousness into that of another person, then the capacity of transporting it in the consciousness of more and more people, then of course in infinite regress we are able to transport our consciousness into the consciousness of the universe. But in order to do that, we have to down play our personal consciousness. Or the purpose of our personal consciousness and highlight that of the universe. That's what happens in a very advanced state of meditation. But maybe you can do it. Maybe you can have a flash of it. 

Just think that the cosmos, there is difference between the cosmos the universe. The cosmos, let's say, is the body of the universe. And think of the universe as a being, composed of lots of cells, just like each cell of our body which is endowed with certain amount of consciousness, and will and so on. Being endowed with awareness, global awareness and your consciousness is, as I say the focalization of this total consciousness, this global consciousness. That means that it is part of that global consciousness. That means that your knowledge of the cosmos has a contribution to the knowledge that the cosmos has of itself. Can you see that? So means that when you are looking at the stars, the stars are seeing themselves through your glance. Well, the stars are discovering themselves through your glance. And now perhaps we can understand better the words of (Itnallabi name??), the Sufi who says "God discovers him/herself as you." Let's say the way that the totality is actuated in a unique way in each fragment of itself, so it's not God static, it's God dynamic. Discovering God awakening by becoming existential, that is activating him/herself as us. That is a very different way of thinking, to think of God up there and us down here as miserable worms. It's a completely different way of looking at it. And I must say, I dare say that, that somehow this way of thinking is going to open the door to having a sense of the sacred. Because one respects each being as an expression of the Divine Being. One sees, this is what is called God consciousness. And that will make you high. Is it possible that that being of God whom I imaged to be up there somewhere so remote is present within my own being? So we realize that then it is concept of ourselves, self-image we call it, refusal to accept the Divine gift of our being that stands in the way of our ecstasy that makes us low key. The breakthrough of ecstasy, realizing that the totality of the Being at all levels, not just the physical world, but all levels, celestial spheres, that is coming through me or is me, is being aroused as me. That's an incredible thought. 

See for example, giving several examples. One was Einstein pushing a pram in streets of New York. A lot of people pushed prams in the streets of New York. But while he was doing it, he was thinking of the starry sky. He was thinking of space and time and galaxies and so on. And he was thinking, you see, most people think that they're pushing their pram. Most of them are right there in the streets of New York. But they cannot see that that is only a very small piece of that totality. So you see how you can be caught in a perspective. And the others is, I forget his name, the first American astronaut that landed on the moon and gave us a seminar at the Zenith Institute, and he said, you see, you can't imagine the thrill of hurtling back home through space at tremendous speed and thinking my family down there, right down there on that planet, over there it is very far away, and thinking to myself, well, yes, I am looking forward to meeting my wife and children and all the circumstances, but I just hope that I won't lose that sense that I have gained of the vastness of reality. And in fact, he never lost it. 

So, you don't have to take a space car to do that. But this is what we are doing now. It's a matter of our realization. They are not only, well that is the way out of the prison. And it makes for the maturation of your being. That's why Laura said, "I can't come back from the door through which I came to this state. I can only come back through another door." 

So we need to have our break now for whatever it is, and so that will be let's say 20 minutes. Would that be alright? 20 minutes? And then we start again at 11 o'clock.



FEB 22, 1997		Tape 02


 97V02-22.#02 BEGINNING OF SIDE #1, TAPE #2: We are proceeding through the stages that we would be exploring if we were on retreat. Now, we would have more time. So, we are a little pressed for time, but it's good, I think, it might be helpful to you to have some taste of these different stages, which I intend to help us in being better able to understand our lives and also help us to unfurl the potentialities of our being. Now, generally one assumes that meditation consists in turning within, so what we did in the earlier part of this morning was the opposite. So you can't limit meditation to what I mean by turning within. Further more, the danger in turning within is that one simply gets encapsulated in one's thoughts and, of course in one's psyche, and one finds that the random thoughts are turning up here and there without being able to control them. And, however much you use your will, you are fighting a losing battle. So that, that is not the best way of proceeding when meditating. So, we are going to try and explore different ways of being able to turn within and gain a totally different perspective to the one that we gain when expanding our consciousness outward. The first thing is that we are continually... well, we are continually doing two things, we are ingesting the environment, whether it is the physical universe or the psychological and social environment..We're ingesting it, that is, we are being enriched by it. And then, I want to draw your attention to the opposite, we are continually being reborn from within, and some how there is some connection between these two extremes. 

So first, we'll examine the first one. Just think that ... think of all the impressions that you are subjected to in your lives. If you're listening to the radio or TV, or talking to people, or walking the streets and coming across ... well, the sufferings of people. Especially if you're walking in the streets in India. And so, we are subjected to all kinds of impressions, some of which become really obsessive and seem to take over, and some of the impressions, of course, could be really harmful. And we would like to protect ourselves against them, but, on the other hand, well, it would be like putting ... the ostrich, the famous ostrich, putting its head under the sand. It would be not acquiescing to the reality of ... well, the drama of life. And yet, some how or other, we do need to defend ourselves, we need to protect ourselves. And so, we do have a kind of defence system, adhoc, which is rather imperfect, it is not very efficient most of the time. But we protect ourselves by illusions and by justifications, sometimes by not acknowledging guilt. For example, because it would be too demeaning to our self-esteem. So we kind of producing a rather false and precarious bastion to protect our psyche that is very vulnerable, knowing that it ... that bastion itself is very precarious, and could break down, and causing a lot of unnecessary anxiety. We do have the faculty of filtering impressions before they reach right into our psyche. The ... that faculty evidences our freedom. Because, you see, when we extend our consciousness into the vastness, we tend to lose the sense of our personal center. Let's say the center of this ... the totality that we are, that we might call the personal center. And there is a danger in that. And that is why psycho-therapists accuse spiritual groups of what they call psychological by-pass, - "inaudible" - making people other-worldly. Psychologists see the need to have a very healthy sense of the self. And that is also to be found in the teaching of Pir O'Murshid Inayat Khan, and of the Sufi Order, in general. 

But, of course, the self is always seen in its relation to the totality, of which it is the self. Pir O'Murshid has a very interesting theory about that, and that is that, what we call false ego is really only a fraction of what we are, but with which we identify, especially when we are challenged. Then, back-to-the-wall, we fight by affirming what we call our ego, and its very ... let's say, inadequate way of dealing with the challenge. Because if we could use ... could avail ourselves of all the bounty of our being, then we would be able to meet the challenge more effectively. This could be illustrated by something often referred to, and that is, Beethoven, in the Fourth Piano Concerto, describes the world as the orchestra, and himself as a pianist. And the world comes with ... well a (some bombastic onomatopoeic sounds)... And normally, when one faces a challenge like that, one would react all so brutally. I mean some people would. Some people have those what they call "fight or flight" mechanisms. So, some would run away and others would just confront. What he does is very ... is a wonderful lesson, because he answers (more onomatopoeic sounds, this time humming softly). In other words, he is saying to the world, "I am not ready to play ball with you now. I need to consult with my deeper self." So, he is placing a buffer between the challenges of the world and himself. And so, you could consider meditation as opportunity to do just that. Because, if you are just reacting, that short-circuit, like that what we do when crossing roads, for example, you don't have to use all of your brain to avoid being run over. 

But, when it comes to deciding on big issues in your life, then, of course, it is very damaging if you just react to the challenge of life without availing yourself of all the richness of your being. But, in order to do so, you have to really know who you are, and we don't. Most of the time we don't. And we think that we do, but we don't. So, the first thing is, of course, to be able to affirm your unique identity by your free will. That is, it is your determination to ingest and digest those impressions you wish to or you don't... that you wish to reject, is a feature of your sense of identity. For example, we have in our psyche the same mechanism as the immune system in the physical body. You know that the immune system ... for example, the immune system will reject an organ that doesn't have the same DNA, or doesn't match the DNA of one's own body. So, the immune system is based upon me or not me. And so, it is that very strong sense of "who I am" that will help you to reject those impressions you cannot cope with, and accept those impressions that will enrich your being. But there is another second immune system in the body, whereby the body adapts itself to elements that are extraneous to itself. And, I think that we are suffering from over adaptation in our lives. We're suffering from a kind of psychological indigestion. 

That is, as we are invited to adapt ourselves overly to the environment and therefore lose the specific idiosyncrasies of our being. And therefore, I think, our whole civilization calls for us to have a clearer sense of who we really are. So, what is that ... the ... Our self image does not include, of course, as I have already said, all the richness of our being. And we tend to identify with the role we are playing in life and with the mask that we are wearing. We are called upon in our lives to play certain roles, like the guru thinks he's a guru, or a king thinks he's a guru ... a king, you know. I don't know if the baby thinks he's a ... she's a baby, but an old man thinks he's an old man, and so on and so forth. One identifies oneself with what is really a secondary aspect of oneself, that is not the very essence of one's being. And secondly, we allow ourselves to be impressed by what we see in the mirror, which is one of the most misleading of all ... of all feedback systems. To ... actually, our countenance is hidden behind our face. We ... some of the features of our face have been inherited from our parents and our race, whatever ... We have to live with our body, the way that it is ... But, somehow, that is what appears at the surface. And when you turn within, your beginning to ... or you are called upon, your invited to discover what transpires behind that which appears. Now, I know, that sounds like theory, and, of course, I'd like ourselves to experience it. 

So, let us make a ... make a first attempt at experiencing it. Now, supposing that you ... you know that the retina in your eyes is sensitive ... receptive to light, and so it is the light that is fluoresced, or refracted, or even reflected by the objects around you that is threaded up the optic nerves into your brain. But do you know that the brain is absolutely full of light and that the light of the brain does ... is threaded down through the optic nerves, and, but of course, the receptive setting of our eyes makes it such that the light that enters into the eyes is much stronger than the eyes ... the light that we can ... we can project. But ... just close your eyes and imagine that your eyes are like the head lamps of a car, beams of light, or rather that there are beams of light that are threaded down through the optic nerve, through the cornea ... or through the retina, then pass through the cornea, which is like a lens, into outer space. You could even move your head to the left, and the right, and it looks as though those beams are displacing themselves, sort of just like a light house, the light of a light house. And head up and down. OK. Now open your eyes and you see that the light of the environment is so strong that it over powers the light of your glance. When you close your eyes it is easier to be aware of the light of your glance than when your eyes are open. So, that is... evidences the impact of the environment upon ourselves. Now, what we want to do to gain more awareness of ourselves is to be able to find freedom from the impact of the environment, and that means freedom from the conditioning of our societies. For example, to find your real self. So now, let's do it again. 

Close your eyes as you inhale, and now exhale, just at the beginning of the exhale, open your eyes and see if you can keep your concentration on those beams of light. Open your eyes just a little slit, not wide, I mean your eye-lids, not very wide. Now, of course, you can only do it ... at first, it is very difficult to do it, so most people ... so the best thing is to close your eyes again, because there's no point in just doing the thing that one always does. But, gradually, in time you get ... you develop the faculty of being able to maintaining your awareness of the light that is coming through your eyes, instead of the light that is being absorbed through your eyes. Well, it has enormous implications, because if you've done that for many months, you'll begin to be able to ... of course, you know, if what we ... in order to be able to do it at all, your eyes need to be not focused. That is ... I don't know how they look, but they are not in focus. And so on ... The whole environment appears like a blur. Now, in time you learn to focus a little more, but not quite, to just offset your glance from the usual way. And when you do that, then you begin to see the countenance of people behind their faces. 

And that is another source of ecstasy, because people are so beautiful. If only ... I forget now, I think it was myself who said that, I forget ... "If you could only see yourself through my eyes, you'd see how beautiful you are." So, that is much more reliable information about yourself than the mirror. That is that which transpires behind that which appears. Or you could do it with a flower, for example, or practice with a flower. And then you ... suddenly you see the radiance of that flower is extraordinary. The flowers that have been photographed by Walter Chappel [unsure of correct spelling of this name] in ultraviolet light, they're translucid. You see their ... the aura, what they call the corona behind ... around the edge of the petals. So, that's the countenance. Its ... countenance does not have a profile. It's ... it has some kind of structure without having the profile. Just like the corona of, for example, of your fingers on a ... in Kirilian [sic] photography, for example. Now, this has further consequences, and that is that you find yourself in a transfigured world. That's just like your consciousness is offset. Perhaps some of you know that stage. Your walking in the woods and finding yourself in a transfigured world. Or even just talking to someone, and it's not like your body is there and that body is there, and we're talking, but some how, there's ... something happens, and you r... there is a communion between you, and it doesn't belong to time and space, at all. It's something else.

Now, when one gets used to it ... you do that in meditation, when you turn within ... you get used to it, you are able to switch your consciousness, just like you press the button of the electric light. It's the state which one could call reverie. That's not the dream state, but it's somewhere between the dream state and day consciousness. And I find that if I think of ... I try to remember my childhood, and even my babyhood ... you know, I was a baby once ... that the sense that one is the same person ... It's so disturbing to us, to our usual way of thinking of ourselves. So ... And then you look at life, and its ... its like a mystery, really. One wonders just how real it is. How's it possible, that I exist? What does that mean? You know ... So, perhaps that gives you some sense of the attunement of the mystic, who are ... does go by appearance. You see, most of the time we go by appearance, we are judging people for the way they look, or the way they talk, or the way they express themselves,and so on. And here it's ... you discount it, in order to grasp what's behind it. For example, what is behind your problems. And so, just ... the problem itself is just the way it appears at the surface. 

But what is being enacted behind the problem? Now, we already practised this. Because, for example, Saint Francis was walking in the woods, at night time. Now, if your walk in the woods, you will be perceiving the surface of the leaves on the trees, and the bark of the trees, and maybe you see a bird or an insect, or even an animal. But St. Francis was getting into the consciousness of the trees, just as we did earlier on, this morning, with people. And getting in touch ... in the consciousness of the animals. And so, if you do that, you find yourself in a transfigured world. And you have the feeling that everybody is caught in a ... in a perspective, and you have been able to withdraw your vision from the common place perspective by offsetting your consciousness, or the focus of your consciousness. We have that ability. So, that is what Sufi's mean by, "that which transpires behind that which appears." Now, if you - "inaudible" (384 on counter) of your problems, then you'll see that beginning to see that you'd been judging the appearance and had failed to see what are the issues that are being enacted behind your problems. And that's the real thing. Now, how do you do that? Well, as I use the word, you down play a perspective and highlight another. Right, for example, if you had a ... you know the holograms in which you have two pictures superimposed. Like, for example, the face of Christ on the Turin shroud, and then you have a painting of Christ. And you have two images, and you can just toggle your consciousness and you see one and the other. Well, the same thing in life. We can toggle between perspectives. But normally the impact of the environment is so strong, the way the environment appears is so strong, that it seems to force us into the ... well, what we call, the common place perspective. Now, how can you down play that perspective? And this is the ... this is the clue to meditation, actually. 

Now, I would say, that we are talking about skills rather than metaphysics. So, let's say one of those skills is to consider that, what you are seeing, is an illusion. In fact, it isn't an illusion, but if you think it is, then it helps you to free yourself from its impact. That's the trick. The world is illusion, you see. It's just a different ... there are different perspectives. But ...that ... I think that ... if one is more ... how can I say?... more with it, then one has to realize that that is just a skill, to think that the world is ... is illusory. But I think it is a dangerous skill, because then you start losing your sense of reality and you become other worldly. So I don't recommend it, at all. Perhaps it is in the physical world that reality is to be found. Maybe the other way around. And Pir O'Murshid talks about ... he says, "Throughout the aeons of time consciousness has been awakening in matter". But consciousness, that is buried in matter, is awakening. So don't think of your body as something else than you, that you have to discard, or despise, or whatever. No, I think the ... let's say ... try to get some clues as to how to do it. That's what we want to know ... how to do things. You see, if you ... you know that the stars are still in the sky, when your ... when you see the sun, you can't see the stars. Now, that is because the light of the stars is much more impacting upon you than the light of the stars that is much weaker, but it's still there. Now, of course, in the night time, you don't have the sun so you see the stars. But now, there is a technique that has been ... it's used by some yogis, and that consists in trying to see the stars longer and longer every morning after sunrise. And eventually, one gets into that ... develops that ability to grasp something which is less striking than that which is more overt. 

Now, there ... there's another technique, another skill, and that is what is called, in India, Vayralya [sic] which is the particular ... how can I say ... defines an ascetic. It's a sense of detachment, indifference, independence. It would seem to go counter to our interest in life. And our lives require us to find a blend between these two. Instead of just either being involved in the world, allowing ourselves to be conditioned, or then leaving the world by developing a sense of independence. That means not being dependent upon conditions, either physical or psychological. And also a kind of psychological immunity from being disturbed. That means being able to maintain your calm under all circumstances. And that is of course a wonderful defence against psychological despair. It may ... I think that the psychologists ... psychotherapists would say that it's not really facing one's suffering, it's a kind of anaesthesia. I think that some cancer patient's would rather suffer the pain than be drugged. So, we have this kind of psychological anaesthesia in us... we don't ... something that we don't always use, but it is useful to use it. That is part of our defence system. And of course, it is true that we become psychologically dependent upon circumstances, people, environment, and so on. And dependence will always free ... rob you of your freedom. And so, if you have a strong urge for freedom and you ... at the same time, you have a sense of responsibility, then you don't leave the world as an ascetic. But then you find a way of eschewing being caught up in let's in, let's say, in one's thinking and one's emotions by the circumstances. 

I don't know whether you can follow me here. You see, I'm not talking about running away from circumstances. No that's the way they are. But assessment of them, as we said before, and emotional dependence upon them robs us of a need that is very strong and becomes stronger as one evolves, of freedom from conditioning, freedom from dependence. And for that you don't have to leave the circumstances, because, as I said, the prison is not the circumstances that we think it is. Then we try to escape from the situation and we find ourselves in another that is just as bad or even worse. No, that's not the answer. But the prison is in our ... is in our opinion. That's the word of Buddha: "Freedom from opinion." And that includes my opinion. Our freedom from any kind of dependence upon a guru to make you high. And because if one really wishes for the good of a person, then one wants to show them how to not to depend on one. How to become self-motivated. So, I am locating the random thoughts that disturb you, because they have an impact upon your emotions, because they are important for you. And therefore they are able to hold your attention. Now, as I say, there are two methods: one of them is to think that it's all illusion, and so on and so forth, but that not the one I would suggest. 

The one would be to say, yes, that thought keeps on recurring, and I want to be high, but this thought keeps on recurring. Now why is it? Because there's something in me that it speaks to, that it ... It represents the need, or greed, as I say. Or my validation ... the value that I attach to this ... what the thought represents. It always represents a definite situation in life. So, as long as that is important then, of course, being exalted, being high, being ... having a sense of the sacred, seems to be secondary. Now, as one evolves, one changes one's sense of values. And then it is just that, the sacred that is the most important. And so, it is so much more important than one's physical needs, or psychological needs, that it takes over. That's why Murshid calls it a passion. It's really paramount, almost a desperate need. The sense that, as they say in India, "don't you dare die before you attain illumination". Your sense that life is going by, well, I've been attending to all these things, but this is the most important thing. And I've been so busy that I haven't been able to do it. As I've said so far, if it is of great value to you it becomes so ... so important, that you just have to adjust your life to it. So that's what they call Vayralya (sic), ok, indifference. Will it give you ... will it protect you against the impact of thoughts that waylay from your highest aspiration? And of course, the beauty is that that indifference reflects your need for freedom. And the further one evolves, the further one has a need for freedom. And the further one suffers from the conditioning of circumstances, upon one's thinking, not just upon one's circumstances. The conditioning ... I said circumstances, I am sorry, the conditioning upon one's thinking. And, worse still, upon one's emotions. And, as I said, when your ... one's personal concerns about one's problems, that is, seeing the problems from one's personal vantage point, will pull one into that vantage point. Confirm one and consolidate one and so one. And so one can't ... one gets caught in a prison and that prison is in the mind. So that when one finds some freedom from one's attachment ... END OF SIDE #1, TAPE #2.

BEGINNING OF SIDE #2, TAPE #2: Then one begins to discover one's true being hidden behind the mask and behind the role. And that is a real breakthrough. And likely to... Let's try to do that if you can with me, at this moment. Think to yourself, "Yes, I am playing a role. I have to be ... I'm a housewife, or I am a typist, or I am a whatever, ... nurse, or whatever, ... or a doctor. I'm a lawyer, or whatever, ..." And think well that's not me, that's something that I developed the ability to ... to do that. I'm very good at washing up, for example. But, you know, that's a role I'm playing. But ... And I think even more so thinking I'm a man or I'm a woman, I'm an old man or I'm a young man, or whatever ... I'm an Indian, or I'm an American, or whatever, that is. Again ... how can you say, that is secondary. But I think the breakthrough comes when you discover the features of your countenance behind your face. That is your real face, actually, your cosmic face. And it's incredibly beautiful. It could be the face of a young person, all the wrinkles have gone. Or then, it could be the face of a very mature being in the body of a young person. The thing to do is to, of course, to cease to identify with your face, altogether. And then something clicks, all of a sudden your ... "this is me!" Of course, the features are simply the way that your real being becomes configured into forms without ... without boundaries. So, freedom from the self-image. So, as you notice now, what we are doing is exactly what those people are doing trying to see the stars while the sun is in the sky, is trying to perceive a subliminal reality behind the appearance. 

So, that ... if you do that in meditation, you'll find that you're not disturbed by random thoughts. But now we come to a totally new facet of the same problem ... the same question. And that is that as you turn within, you discover the emergence of your new being. So, instead of thinking this is me, that is a static picture, you are continually being reborn and consequently reformed, restructured exnihilo, out of nothing. And so, you'll find that you'll not be disturbed by random thoughts, if you try to grasp the emergent you emerging from within. Try to capture it. Now, that's turning within, you see. Now, of course, from our point of view it looks as though we are being reborn, hopefully. Because if you don't give support to that new dispensation in your being, it will be still-born. That means, that you ... one has to capture it as it emerges, just like the crocuses in snow ... when they start breaking through the snow. You just have to capture it, that instant when it's beginning to emerge. And it is true, that in order to be able to do that, you have to let go of your old self. It's like, for the fresh petals in the center of the flower to unfold, the graded petals at surface need to fall apart. If you hang on to your personality, you can never change. And, in fact, I would say, if one doesn't evolve, one goes backwards. And, I would even say, it's rather hard to hear, but a lot of people go back instead of forward in life. And see lovely people, young people,full of ideals and so on that ... and they get disappointed and bitter. So, the only way to do it is to, well ... as I say, down play, that is, turn your attention away from the impressions that are calling from outside, that we talked about - how we ingest the universe. 

And draw your attention to what is emerging from within. But, as I say, it is not really you ... No, it is one way of looking at it, that you are emerging and you ... but really it is the whole cosmos ... the whole universe that is emerging as you. The beauty of this is that it is not conditioned. Now, let's put it ... say this more precisely. The whole universe has the ability to self organize itself in each part of itself, each fragment of itself. But, as Pir O'Murshid said, "God can entertain a greater degree of perfection in a being who participates in His creativity." This is creativity. It is our most wonderful gift that we don't always use. And the ultimate work of art is ourselves. Personality, for example. So, we are endowed with the faculty of being able to become what we want to become, and we don't avail ourselves of it. Instead of thinking, well that's the way that the world comes through as me. To begin with, yes, but at a certain point you take over. Remember this formula of a wonderful mathematician, was also a biologist, I think, Euler [sic], who said that, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past." That is, how you could be is much stronger than the way you've got to be because of your past. The future is more there. You create it by your imagination, in the same way that the whole universe is created traditionally by the divine imagination. The word imagination, image, ... image, that is, that an emotion and a thought becomes configured as a form. So, instead of trying to find out what your real faces is, now you ask yourself, "How could my face become?" That reminds me of ... Incidentally, if you look at the Jewish bible, instead of the western translation, then the voice under the bushel doesn't say, "I am that I am", but says, "I am that I become." So, it is your prefiguration of what you could be, in the future, that pulls you out of the conditioning of the past. There's a saying of the Sufi's that, "Old man, it is your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity." 

Your freedom is through your imagination, your power of being able to project, in a very concrete way, as a picture, the way you could be. So, meditation as a means of enhancing our creative power. But at first, imagination starts with an emotion. Not a thought, an emotion, an emotional attunement. It could be an emotional process. Like, for example, Brahms dealing with the - "inaudible" - and trying to cope with the great tragedy of his life. Falling in love with the wife of Schumann. And it was an impossible situation. Transforming that suffering into joy. Now all of a sudden that ... that emotion manifested in a form [hums a tune]. So simply, started by an emotion. You can't sit down and write that thing. You have to be stirred to the depth of your being. To be creative of yourself, you have to be very deeply stirred by the miracle of life coming through you. That is ecstasy. So, can you feel that ecstasy of life burgeoning in your being, and see how we tend to ... to stand in the way of this emergence of new dispensations of life by being attached to the way we think we are? But it really means giving it up. And that's not easy, because, at least, we think that we can rely upon the way we are, we don't know what's coming through. I remember studying composition with Mme. Belanger (sic) in Paris, and ... That was way back in 1936. And she said, "Well, this part of your composition ... I don't know ... it doesn't really seem to fit into the rest. I bet that you composed it at five-o'clock this morning." So, I said, "Yes, your right, that's the truth, I did. I felt I had to ... I mean, I had to have it ready for you." So, she said, "That's the trouble, you see." So, I said, "Well, then what do you think I should do if I try to change this part." She said, "No, that would be a collage. You can't do that. It must be organically part of the whole." 

So, what does it mean? Well, throw it into the waste paper basket. Well, I mean, all that ...all that work I put into ... all that heart that I had put into that composition to throw it into the waste basket? Yet what will come of it will be better. Well, one has to really have faith to believe that it will really be better. What if it isn't? So you understand the story of Shams Tabriz taking the ... snatching the manuscript of Jelaludin Rumi and throwing it in the well, and saying, "If you want to, I came pick it out of the well. It'll be dry." He said, "No." Now, let me go a little bit further, because we are already getting quite heavy. And that is realizing that your defeat ... your defeat can aver itself to be a victory. And your victory can aver itself to be a defeat. That is very heartening, because, if I think, most of us feel that we have failed, and it is good to accept that failure as a spring board to beat our records. I don't know whether you know that disablement in some cases ... either a person takes it for granted that they're damaged, and then never makes anything of it. Or then, some people can use they're disablement as a spring board to not just only beat their own record, but to beat the record of all other people. Churchill was a stutterer, and he became ... he was one of the most wonderful orators in history. And Dr. Hawking cannot communicate, except through a very high-tech computer. So, somehow I think in terms of yourself, we ... unless you are a megalomaniac, your bound to have ... not necessarily a bad self-image, but a precarious self-image. And in that there is some judgementalism about oneself. 

There's some judgementalism about the world in general. And doubt, which results from a very strong sense of truthfulness. You can ... one can bask oneself in spiritual law, until one comes to the point when one's need for truthfulness is so strong that one is very suspicious of either words, or then the euphoria of spiritual emotion, which is not the same as exaltation. It's euphoria, it's not the same thing. Somehow, that sense of truthfulness is going to make us be very perspicacious, and consequently doubt all that one believed, and doubt one's own validity, and have a sense of having failed. For example, Gandhi, the last ... at the end of his life he said "I failed." Just imagine. And that he freed India. So, there's that ... As I say, it's a very stringent sense of authenticity which will not accept any compromise with either make belief or wishful thinking. And in spirituality there is a lot of wishful thinking. Or rather, in false rendering of spirituality, there is a lot of wishful thinking. And so, what we want to do is to have a sense of our real being which is what we did earlier on, behind the mask. Because that's real, without wishful thinking. Suddenly, this is me. I can tell you an experience that I had, because you know, if one is very keen on truthfulness and authenticity, then one likes to have a proof, like, you know, an indication. Otherwise, words ... I can say all kinds of words that are enchanting and then you go back home and you think, well, I don't know, but it doesn't ... it doesn't... it hasn't affected me. At the time, I was under the spell of that guru, and now I go back home and I think well, what have I got in my pocket. So, that experience that I mentioned the other day was really ... I mean, if you wanted a proof you really had it then. It was an old lady who went into a kind of comatose state. 

She was really dying. And, you know, she was in delirium. I was away, but then I came in the hall. I could see her lying there, and everybody concerned, and thought, "This is it." And somehow she ... she felt my presence and I got close to her, she put her hand in my hand, even though she was in a state of coma. And she opened up her eyes and, you know, literally all the wrinkles left. I mean, she became a young girl, radiant, full of light, as though totally transfigured. So, that's a reality. It's not something like wishful thinking or make believe. There it was, right there. And that was the reality of her being that was covered under the bushel. And now we must know that we have the same in us, too. And we ... if we do not know that, then we have a bad self-image, and we suffer, despair. And I am not inviting you to imagine what is not. So, it's only ... One has to be very careful of fantasizing instead of ... there is a difference between imagination and fantasizing. And the reason ... The difference is ... Because, if you're fantasizing, you are caught up in your personal identity. You are disconnected from the totality, like a battery that's been taken away from its charger. Creativity is always somehow ... There's always a connection between the totality and the part. It's ... There is the words of Dr. David Boehm, who said that ... He said that in the future ... It's true that we are trying to evolve toward that ... Creativity will only meaningful ... meaningful if it is meaningful for humanity, instead of just the creating person. That you are meaningful to humanity, instead of trying to be creative in and enclosed space within yourself. Because, then, if you do that, then it's fantasy. Could be anything. You know, if it's signed Picasso, or whatever. So it's worth thousands of dollars, but it could be anything. 

You change a color and nobody would notice the difference. That's fantasy. And creativity, ... you couldn't change a note of Bach without if a musician would see it, that it's wrong. It's somehow describing ... As I say, the whole - "inaudible" - universe has a faculty of self organizing itself in each part of itself. But then we have to customize it. We have to take it from there, because as Pir O'Murshid said, "God attains a greater degree of perfection when the individual participates consciously and volitionally in his or her own creativity." Now, the last remark, before ... since I... I know we have to go ... but since I wrote to this concerto of Beetohoven ... You see, if he had reacted, then, of course,this wonderful melody that came through would have never come through. It's true. I don't know whether you know the piece. But, at first, there is this contrast between his buffer, as I call it, and challenge, and then there is a dialogue. And it's as though he said once more, "Well, I told you that I don't want to play ball." And then ... then he is a little more emphatic ... and then a little more emphatic, and more and more emphatic, and the orchestra recedes in the background. And that's comes this wonderful melody. Now, on the other hand, it is true, that if it had not been for that challenge, that melody would have never occurred. And so, you could consider the circumstance in your life as a catalyst which enlist your creativity. That doesn't mean that your reacting. It just it triggers off a process of rebirthing in you. So, instead of ... So, look at your problems as being catalysts, as being a spring board which will enlist your creativity, if you take best advantage of it. And if you simply deplore those circumstances, haven't made anything of it, and they've been lost. So, enjoy your problems. END OF TAPE.



FEB 22, 1997		Tape 05

...it decreases our thinking. It forces our thinking into patterns, and thereby impoverishes the richness of our thoughts. And that's the reason for observing silence during a retreat. Whereas, if we keep on talking we're only, we are, well, our thinking is limited by expressing it. Or, our whole way of thinking is limited, not just at the moment when we are talking about it, the whole way of thinking is limited also when we're not talking. Unless we, well that's the beauty of observing silence, because then we, in time, we lose the habit of translating our intention, or what we imply, into the idiom, and then you discover the incredible meaningfulness that you missed out by trying to explain it. So, as one turns within, one is creating conditions that are favorable to having a sense of the meaningfulness of your life. 

So let us do that now. If you could just question the adequacy of your speaking, or even thinking in terms of words, because I do think that we think in terms of words. So give up any effort to try to explain to your mind what you mean so that you are able to articulate it, write it down, say it, or whatever. And then just try to see yourself in life without being able to define what thoughts, what thinking, emerges out of that sudden grasp of the meaningfulness of 'me in the universe'. That's a very high, advanced state of meditation. 

And it's paradoxical because I am the universe, and yet, well as I say, as soon as we try to explain it in words we are involving ourselves in all kinds of contradictions, because it's not just our language that is limiting our thinking, but it is our logic. It's thinking in categories. Because our thoughts are associated with categories, our thinking is broken up into thoughts, and consequently, distorted. So, if you are able to see how limiting to our minds it is to break up our thinking into thoughts, then all of the sudden a totally overwhelming grasp of meaningfulness emerges. It appears like a revelation. And this is what one means by realizing something that one hadn't seen before. Now this is then, the new logic which we discover as we turn within, which differs from the logic when we're looking at ourselves as subject experiencing other then ourselves (the world). It's a different logic. And that logic could only be formulated as reconciling the irreconcilables. 

For example: we are both a fragment of the totality, and we are the totality. So those seem to be irreconcilables. We are defiled and at the same time immaculate. So again, contradiction. We are continually changed; we are not the same personality as we were when we were children, but we're the same person. There again, contradiction. We are a continuity in change. Like a river: it's never the same water that passes under the bridge, but we say it's a river. So can you think of yourself, let's say shift your identity from identifying with your personality which keeps on changing, to identify with the ground of your being, that is, represents a continuity. And if you do that, you are beginning to overcome your sense of perishability, and so you are beginning to discover your immortality. 

So these are the things, the kind of realizations that one discovers as one turns within in the Dhikr, in the practice. So, let's do the practice again. And just, as you turn within, as your head hits the solar plexus, just think of what we were saying about the meaning behind your thoughts. A kind of realization that you can not have if you are turned outside, and which you do not acquire, but is revealed to you. You see, the motion of the body simply gives you a signal, like: when I'm in the circle then I'm turning my attention towards outside; when my head descends then my attention is drawn towards inside. That's a signal. When my head rises again then I'm experiencing my rebirthing out of that implicate state inside me, well inside the universe. So, (INAUDIBLE). OK...

...Feels like awakening that is shifting from one perspective to another. All of the sudden a perspective is revealed to you that was masked by the previous perspective, and now it comes into focus. 

Now perhaps you would like to include the words, because they give a support to the experience. So it's like a kind of mantram. The words are: La--as you go into the circle. La ilaha. It's La ilaha. From the right shoulder upwards, ilaha. So, La ilaha. And the head comes down: illa. illa 'llah. The 'llah, then, is the beginning of your turning upwards, moving from the solar plexus to, your attention from the solar plexus to the heart center. La ilaha illa 'llah. La ilaha illa 'llah... You see how the sound illa, 'il' is a piercing sound that seems to help you to dive into the depth of your being. There's also a way of imagining a bow and an arrow: you tense the bow and then release the arrow. The head comes down, the arrow of Cupid in the heart. La ilaha illa 'llah. La ilaha illa 'llah... 

Alright now that you've got the beginning of a feeling of it, a feel of it, can you feel the power, like as I said the magnet has become a dynamo, so it's greatly enhanced. One is withholding the power of one's being by not accepting the bounty of one's being by limiting oneself to one's personal self image which is always inadequate and limiting. So if you are able to, if you are going into the circle you tend to free yourself from your self image, and consequently you have a sense of great power, cosmic power coming through you, or coming through as you. And when you turn within then it's a very different kind of power. I don't know how to explain it, but perhaps you'll notice the difference between that kind of cosmic power, the same power that moves the stars as you reach out. And then a kind of emerging power from within that awakens. It's like arousing a sleeping foundation of your being; it begins to surface. So can you feel that as you're doing the practice now? La ilaha illa 'llah. La ilaha illa 'llah...

Yeah, now just, let's interrupt for a moment. If you remember what we did in the beginning of this afternoon when I was trying to see how I could help you, and how you could help me to help you, and therefore I was using the memory, therefore, the memory of (?(sitting bull?) or as I said,?). So that was, there was a support system there; that was a situation that favored an attunement of my consciousness into the vastness. Now, that event took place a long time ago, but somehow it is in me now. And being in me now, it awakens the same thing that is in you that is not triggered off by the same kind of outside situation, but it is in you. That is that sense of immensity, that attunement, that emotion of vastness is suppressed in you, and longs to breakthrough, to burst out. And so when you are doing the circular motion of the Dhikr, you are helping that yearning for vastness to come through in you. The very motion of the body helps. But I want you to know this. I want you to do it consciously. So it's not just power, it's also emotion. A kind of cosmic, overwhelming emotion of greatness. OK, let's do the Dhikr again, with that in mind...

Just do it as you breathe, you don't have to say it aloud. It's easier sometimes not to say it aloud, but you think of the words...

So there's the emotion of vastness, and the, how can I say, the exaltation of the new emergence of your new being, or the emergence of your new being. And there's a kind of ecstasy in birth, or rebirth, or recurrent rebirth, and, because, it carries the hope of a fresh beginning. Of freedom from the past. Of freedom from conditioning. And the ability to make your real self break through all the obstacles in your mind, which are counter productive, where we refuse to accept the freedom that is offered us in becoming what we would like to become. So that's ecstasy. Freedom gives ecstasy. It's like: imagine the ecstasy of being freed from prison? And that prison is your self-image. 

Now as I say, the walls of the temple extend to such an extent that they are not walls anymore; they interpenetrate the environment. And consequently, what you thought was the temple is the priest. It's yourself. But now you discover yourself not as being protected by the temple, but being the priest who is communicating the ecstasy of the sacred attunement far and wide. 

So I'm afraid we have to end this day now. Thank you for bearing with me. I realize that it's very challenging. It's challenging to our minds, to our usual as I say, assumptions of what we are, and of what we think is the world, and what we think are our problems. It's very daring, but it's real. And that is your true self. So, God bless you now.

...close your eyes and just imagine that you are looking into the starry sky, and you're amazed that your glance is able to reach at such distances that one could never reach in a space craft, and also that your glance is able to encompass such a wide space that extends far beyond anything that one could ever imagine, and that the stars are really vortice in which the light of the ocean of light of the cosmos is converged, and as you're looking at the stars, most of those stars have ceased to exist many light years ago, so you're looking in the past. But the past is present in you, because the light of those stars is now--some of the sparks of that light, some of the photons--are now impinging upon your retina. So what I'm trying to do is really to blow our minds at the thought of the miracle of life. 

Think then that your body is made out of the fabric of not just the planet, but the fabric of the stars. And that it started to exist in its primordial form, I mean primordial condition, in the great outburst of the big bang. So it has taken all these billions of light years--I think it is fifteen billion light years--for the universe to elaborate you. And me. And that that whole past is present in us. And that means that even in our body-ness we are beings of light. And that light has crystallized itself into what we think is matter. So think that your body is something like a crystal for example; it's not a static crystal, but it's a biological crystal let's say. So and the extraordinary thing is that it has the faculty, well that it can, yes, it has the faculty of absorbing light from the environment, and being transformed by it. And so just, if you can just imagine your body as a living crystal which is, it's not jelled, but it is vibrating and being transformed continually, being transmuted. 

And see how it is, it reaches what is called an excited state by absorbing light. So just enjoy the discovery of light. Enjoy first of all the encounter with light. For example, imagine that you are looking into a bright light, and you are just flooded with that light. Instead of trying to shield your eyes, you enjoy being blinded by that light. And you experience the ecstasy of communion with light. And that very encounter with light reveals to you your own light: that is the light that is not just absorbed by the crystal, but is present in the crystal, and radiated from the crystal. So, if you're a crystal, then think that indeed you, not only do you enjoy the ecstasy of being able to draw in more and more light, but as you hold your breath, the cells of your body begin to jiggle and vibrate much more intensely than ever before, and begin to sparkle, and to communicate with each other in the language of light, transmitting messages to each other, and exult in the ecstasy of light, and divide in what is called, in the, it is called mitosis. 

So that you can see, that just by the impact of the power of your representation of light upon the cells of your body you are able to actually heal your body with light. You are able to generate a light energy by the power of your thought, and then if you could experience your whole aura now. We think of the aura as external to our skin, but it is also, it is interspersed within the cells of our body very deep down, even within the nuclei of the atoms. So it's like we are participating in our body-ness in the miracle of light. And there's such a thing as mind over body, the fact of being aware of it has an immediate effect upon your body functions, your body-ness. 

Now then, if you could then identify with your whole aura now, outside and inside you skin, then you'd realize that it has a kind of configuration. It's not a shape with a profile, but it espouses somehow the contours of the body. But if you could just imagine, I would say the most tangible way of proceeding is to imagine the face of your aura, because that's the most expressive part of our body. And now, could you sense the way that your countenance, the countenance of your face, is transformed, transfigured by the encounter with light. For example, just imagine if you're looking into light, very bright light, and somehow that light triggers off memories of having been a being of pure light prior to one's incarnation into what one calls one's body. A kind of sense of déjà vu. So I know this: this world of light. It's there in my memory. It's true I forgot it because I got exiled in the world of the shadows as the Sufi's call it. But somehow, deep in my memory I have the recollection of moving about in the world of light, and being myself just light, before that light condensed as what you call a physical body. 

And so if you do that, if you just have this, what one might call 'the vision of the heavens,' if you really, you could really, deliver yourself entirely into this world of light. Like it's not there, faraway, and you're here, but you go right into it, plunge into it, and move in it. Discover your real being. And of course, it is the very feeling of the ecstasy of light, as I call it, that hoists you from one perspective into another, because it's really like a hologram. So in one perspective you experience yourself as a physical body, like in a hologram you see, and you can shift your perspective. It's not that you are hoisting yourself out of your body as in astral travel, no, it's just a different perspective. But it is the pure delight of light that will lift you. Or the prospect of that delight that is impending in your soul that will help you shift. You can't shift by your will; it is emotion that will do it for you. It's like, it can only happen if light is so important for you that it surpasses anything else. 

Then you'll find that indeed the countenance of the face of your aura seems to flower into great beauty. Just like that vision that I was talking about yesterday, of Murshida Vera. The reminiscence of the heavenly state is so powerful that it will transfigure your aura, because your aura is extremely sensitive to your attunement, to your thoughts. So the only way to do this is to purge your thoughts from any ugliness whatsoever; that includes manipulation, power trips, selfishness, dishonesty, that are like clouds that cover your light under a bushel. And so there's a kind of work to do, if one did so, one may be indulging in hallucination or wishful thinking. You've got to correspond to a very real state of your psyche that has been purified from all those things that we don't like anyway. So that for example, the slightest thought of intolerance about somebody who offended you, would immediately blemish your, the countenance of your aura, the face of your aura, giving it some kind of distortion. And so you see that of course, the key is of course, letting yourself be raised, letting your consciousness be raised by your nostalgia for light. But at the same time, there's the work that needs to be done to clear anything that might stand in the way in your thoughts, in your emotions. 

Now so, imagine then that the light of that ocean of light which is the cosmos, and which becomes known to us through the light of the stars has fashioned itself into the human shape of the countenance of your aura. So that your aura is an expression, a customized expression, of the light of the cosmos. Customized, and to use a word of Teilhard de Chardin, homanized, that is: made human. So what I invite you to do is instead of just identifying with your aura and trying to espy the features of the countenance of your aura, what I beckon upon you to do is to think of it as an expression of the light of the whole cosmos. So that is, don't disconnect your aura with its foundation. There's a key word in Murshid's sayings, where he said: o Think of yourself as a condition of God. Just like a wave is a condition of the sea.' So think of your aura as a condition of the light of the universe. And that is continually changing, and recurrently reshaped, and which is very sensitive not only to your thoughts and emotions, as we pointed out, but also to the setting of your consciousness. For example if it is broad, wide, as we did yesterday in the beginning of our meditations, then, how can I say? Your aura in any case does not have a profile, but still it is a lighted up zone which peters out at the jagged ends, but it can increase in its extension, and so your aura can become enormous. And if you identify with it then you might have a, think that there's a problem passing through a door. 

Now in addition to that, if you turn within, then you might see that your aura is not just the light of the stars that has been converged, but there's a subliminal level of light which Pir-o-Murshid calls the all-pervading light, which emerges from within and then fans out into your aura, which is already there as a convergence of the light of the stars. The way to do that is to think that the world of which we are normally aware is only a three dimensional cross-section of a multidimensional universe. And there's a continual spill-over from subliminal levels. But in any case, I mean if you were like an insect that could only conceive of two dimensions, then a wheel intersecting this sheet of paper would, you wouldn't conceive of it as wheel, you would think of it as a vibration for example. So in the same way we don't, can't have any sense of the nature of this light that is emerging. That is, it's really, as I say we are a cross section of a multiple universe, and that is not only true of what I call subliminal all-pervading light, but then there's the opposite, and that is descent of levels of light that of course we can't perceive with our senses, and which require of us in order to have sense of this, because you know there's no point in theorizing about it, it's a question of really experiencing it, which would give us some clue as to what we mean by our celestial counterpart. The Sufi's refer to Shahabudin Suhrawardi for example.

So now there are a few skills that will enable us to get some sense of what we mean by these higher (I don't know whether that's the right word), but, superior, or more excellent let's say, levels of light, then just the all-pervading light. The all-pervading light is like the implicate state of light, like radio waves. Whereas or one could even say, the light field. I think that's probably the right term used in physics: the light field. But we're talking about other levels of light, so a transcendental dimension. So these would be some of the clues. First of all I'm going to simply refer to a practice given in Buddhism called Casina. So in its more primitive form, you cut out a disk, a cardboard disc, or whatever, and paint it red. And you look at it, and then you close your eyes and you'll see a green reflex. Now, you don't have to have a cardboard disk, but you could just, but if you, you've got to be very careful. So imagine, project on the screen of your mind, a red disk. And now, you can shift your, actually I think one shifts one's glance, although one's eyes are closed, but I think one shifts the setting of one's glance, but I'm not sure about it. But certainly you shift your, the setting of your consciousness as though you were, well one way of doing it is withdrawing a little further back, the other is lifting your consciousness up. Or then you could start by withdrawing a little bit, and then shifting the setting of your consciousness up. If you think of your consciousness as a spotlight for example, then you can shift it, you can, if you can change the lens for example, the setting of the lens, you 

can shift it. Anyway, perhaps you can do it without all that explanation, you can just simply, I would say, represent to yourself the red disk as you exhale. And then withdraw somehow so that you are able to perceive the reflex which is green. Now it's no use imagining a green disk of course. So it's got to be a reflex. Or you can toggle between the imaginary disk, and the reflex. But the reflex has got to be of a different nature then the disk. 

Now the next step is more difficult, and that is trying to shift your glance or your consciousness so that you're able to grasp the reflex of the reflex. And it's no use trying to imagine now a green disk, because then you'll get back to square one. So you're going to have to keep that sense of the green disk as a reflex, then somehow, it's as though you were shifting into a more subtle level of reality. So, I dare say that maybe you should find out yourself, but it appears to me to be orange. But, as I say, I shouldn't say that because then you're going to imagine an orange disk; it must be something that suddenly flashes into your consciousness. That means that the red disk is, you see the way to do it is to imagine the red disk to be kind of out of reach. You see the secret of what we are doing this morning (is really, reaching into Samadhi) is a kind of setting your consciousness in which the physical, it's not the physical world, it's the scenario, or the scene of the physical world, seems to be out of the focus of your consciousness, or let's say, seems to be remote. It's there, but it's just, you can't, it's not easy to get in touch with it. You remember it, but it appears as a dream as a matter of fact. 

So, what we are doing is literally what one calls hoisting oneself in the spheres. But, the trouble is that our prefiguration of it, and our theories, our representation, might stand in the way of the actual experience, because it's nothing like what we could ever imagine in our minds unless we have actually experienced it. But a clue is instead of thinking, you know, it is true that it is helpful at an early stage to imagine perfunctorily that we exist on several planes. And one imagines that one is higher than the other, and that is a rather simplistic way of looking at things. But we're so used to thinking in terms of up and down, because that is the way space appears to us, especially the gravity pull of the earth. Whereas, we're talking about levels of reality where space has no meaning. For example, if you're meditating on, sometimes if you're, for example if while you're meditating you're imagining a form, or your imagining even the form of your aura for example, or the countenance, well it does have a, it doesn't have a profile, but it still has some kind of configuration, so it simply, it does have some meaning, space does have some meaningfulness. But as you reach beyond, then you're entertaining thoughts that do not relate in any way to space. And therefore, it would be misleading to think that you are lifting your consciousness. The word 'lifting' has some kind of connotation when one thinks of space. No, it's something else. I find that the easiest way I can do it is to think that it's a hologram in which you can just shift your perspective, and then you see one picture in the hologram, and then you shift your perspective and you see another one. I find that more helpful. Now that's what we were doing, we were shifting our perspective. 

Somewhere we have to deal with, well we have to overcome the limitation of our commonplace minds, because somehow we always think of light as a physical phenomenon. David Boehm said: 'It is just a ripple in the ocean of reality.' I mean, the physical nature of light. So that we have to eschew this rather simplistic representation of light, if we are to have any sense of what is meant by celestial light, or the light of the spheres. And ultimately this notion which is very strong in Sufism: the light of intelligence, which is a far cry from what we understand by physical light. 

So now, once more, let us try to use some skills. The first one would be if now, try to get some sense of the different colors of your aura. Now there's not really, there's no such thing as color, there's only frequencies of light that we interpret as colors. But let's say that your aura, even though it has a configuration, a human configuration, and does have some resemblance with a spectrum of light, so that in the lower layers of your aura the light is red, and in the higher it is ultraviolet or appears as ultraviolet, and in between you have all colors of the spectrum. Now generally our, the, let's say, the frequencies of light in our aura keep on shifting all the time, they keep on shifting depending upon our attunement and our emotions and our thoughts, and so on. So it's a kind of mixture of colors, I would say most of the time rather chaotic. When we are very concentrated and attune ourselves to a specific emotion like peace for example, then of course the colors get much more ordered. And we can by our will impose some kind of orderliness upon the colors of our aura, that is, the frequencies. So that the aura gets in tune, just like one tunes a harpsichord, so one can tune one's aura too so that the sequence of colors corresponds with the spectrum. 

So if you'll follow me now, oh yes of course, the technique would consist in imagining a flame rising in that, in a chimney. Your spinal chord is considered to be, is compared with a chimney. And imagine a flame. If you look at a flame you will distinguish several colors. And in fact, the colors in a flame do correspond with the sequence of colors in the spectrum. Now we are referring to a different principle to the one that we talked about in the beginning, because in the beginning we, I was talking about absorbing light from not just the environment, but from the starry sky. The electrons, I mean the atoms, of the cells our body have the ability to absorb light, and consequently the electrons start jumping from one orbital to the next, so that one could say that literally they can free themselves from the constraint of their original state. And one calls that the dance, that is the dance of the atoms that Jelaludin Rumi refers to, and the dance of Shiva. And you might feel that, as I said, in the jiggling of your cells; the, as I say, electrons are in an excited state. And as a matter of fact some electrons free themselves from their orbitals all together. Just like a comet can free itself from the orbit of the sun. So this is a vision, a kind of cosmic vision that will help us to become aware of the extraordinary miracle of light that is, of the phenomenon of light taking place within our own bodies. So that was the first phenomenon that we referred to early on this morning. Then the cells, that is the atoms do not just reflect the light, or refract light, but they emit light. That is the, so they have been, the cells have been, have absorbed light, have been enriched by light, and radiate light. 

Now what we're talking about now is a different phenomenon, and so that's called fluorescence. Now we're talking about a different principal which is phosphorescence: the ability of the body to burn itself to produce light. We are producing infrared rays, that's our temperature. And certain animals like deep sea fish, and bats, and fireflies are able to generate light from the burning of their bodies. And that's an ability that has been badly lost by the human being, but is there and can be aroused, can be awakened. And it consists in the ability to transmute infrared light into light in the physical range or even ultraviolet light. And the secret of doing this is to pass and review each of your chakras. And label each chakra with a certain color. So, as I say, it's like a flame. So imagine the bottom chakra Muladhara to be red. And the second chakra Svadhisthana, imagine it to be like a vermilion color, or an ocher color like the robes of the Sanyasins in India. And then, the solar plexus Manipura to be orange like madeira, a beautiful orange, like you can see in the clouds sometimes at dawn or at sunset. And then in the heart chakra, Anahata Chakra, gold, like a beautiful gold of the sun for example. And then in the throat chakra, green, emerald green. And then, in the eyes, blue, sky blue. And the third eye, violet, or even ultraviolet. And then the pituitary gland, which is called (Bindu) by the Yogis, is the center of the whole fanning out of light, of multiple, well, colorless light but which is scintillating into various hues, and which one calls the crown centerSahasrara. So if you imagine those colors, that will have the effect of ordering the frequencies of light in your aura, rather like as I say, attuning a harpsichord. 

And now, instead of just thinking of each chakra separately, and the color as a sort of band of color, striated, think of a flame, so there's a gradual shift from one color to the other, although there are certain principles. There are quantum leaps. There's always something like, well, that's quantum. 'k, now, if you can do that, here again there's an ecstasy. It's of course, we are doing some work with our imagination, with our creative imagination, which hopefully does have a real effect upon our aura; mind over body. But, I think that it is only effective if one enjoys the ecstasy of discovering the different colors of light, as for example, watching a rainbow. It carries you beyond your earthly consciousness, and even your earthly identity. There seems to be a sequence in even the psychological effect of these different colors. Besides, these, the colors of the different chakras now are looked upon--because they're not really colors, they're frequencies--as the ladder of light. The Jacob's ladder of light, which helps you to hoist your consciousness beyond the earthly spheres. And indeed you'll notice that your attunement, whole attunement is very different when you, if you concentrate on one chakra, or then concentrate on another, you'll see that your attunement gets, becomes quite different. As I say, the earthly sphere, the earthly perspective let's say, falls out of focus, as you move upwards. There's a sense of being able to exist without the body, independently of the body. And it's not quite true, it's just that, it depends what one means by the body. But let's say that the subtle body acts as a support system at a certain point as one's consciousness shifts in the transcendental dimension. And then the aura. And then there are several levels of the aura, of light. 

So now, let's just explore this. It's might be difficult for some of you to get right back down to the earthly sphere, but that's what we're doing; we're learning how to be able to shift consciousness at will, instead of being caught in a perspective. Like for example, people taking drugs are caught in a perspective. And here, meditating, you are free to shift your perspective, and it's very good that you are able to shift your perspective right down to the earth plane, and then at command of your will to raise your consciousness above the earth's sphere. And do it several times, though that you don't, get, become other worldly and disconnected with the earth. So now, let's make that experiment. Now as you, just imagine that you are your body. So then if you think you're your body: you're sitting where you think you are sitting, and the world is outside you, and you think that you're the subject experiencing the world, physical world. So that's what I call commonplace thinking. 

Now if you, now start identifying with your etheric body, and it's magnetic field or light field, it doesn't matter, but just that sort of very subtle force field which you can feel. You don't feel it just around your shoulders, and arms and chest, and around your head, but also inside your body. It's like the magnetic field of a magnet. And you see that if you do that, you are not quite clear about being a subject experiencing an object, because this field intersperses with the fields of other beings. So, you don't have quite as clearly defined a sense of the subject and the object as two different realities. There's a kind of sense of the intermeshing of consciousness with the object. In fact, David Boehm said that if you start looking deeply into matter, you'll find something which is of the nature of the mind. So, not just an interconnection, but intermeshing. Interspersed. Interfused. Like radio waves. And so you can see that your thinking now, you can't think the same way as when you thought you were a body. You see that you are connected with all beings, and they are you. There's a kind of osmosis between beings and yourself, and yourself with other beings. 

So, if you were to examine the nature of your thinking, you would find that you do not think in terms of what one calls discreet entities, with frontiers, for instance. Or in, your thoughts are not in categories as Emanuel (Kant) said, categories of reason. Or, in terms of physics, it's not, you're not looking at matter as particle-like, but as wave-like. Particles collide. And waves compose to form wave interference patterns. So, a web of interconnections. And so it is in this state that you can get into the consciousness of another person, because they're, we're all connected in the depth. Like the lilies, or the water lilies at the surface of the water are all connected in their roots. You see, so that is a mode of thinking that is not logical, or at least does not fit into our solipsistic logic, and which one could only define as the reconciliation of the irreconcilables, as I mentioned yesterday. 

Now, try to feel light. I'm not saying, imagine light. I'm not saying that it has anything to do with your thoughts. It is like, it's not even you're imagining something that is, otherwise it would be a hallucination. But you can actually feel your light aura, your aura of light. And it feels very different from the etheric body. And now, identify with it. And consider your body as a formation within that template that is the etheric body, and the etheric body as a formation within that template which is the aura. 

Now there are amazing thoughts connected with the aura, because it's not like a zone of light that is maybe not, doesn't have a boundary, that is of course, it boggles your mind to think that. So let's say the area closest to your body is a little more intense, or luminous let's say. It gets, the light gets scattered a little bit as it goes further and further away. Now, your connection with, for one thing, other persons, for example, is a much more closely woven one then when you identified yourself with your etheric body, because then we said with the etheric body there is a spill-over. Whereas here there is a real, very deep, as I say, very fine woven intermeshing

End of Tape

FEB 22, 1997		Tape 06

...So you, if you identify with your etheric body, you can find people in you. Yes, in your psyche. You begin to think like them or speak like them or they are really there in you, present. But not quite the same as when you identify yourself with your aura. Just try it out and see. You see, light, photons are, do not have a mass where as electrons do. So the ehteric body is, you don't feel the same kind of close kind of interconnection with other beings as you do when you identify with your aura. 

Now one of the ways. Now the first thing of course is to sense of countenance of the face of your aura. And then to think of a person. Instead of thinking of that person as a body or located in somewhere in space that you'd have to visit. And even instead of sensing something of the kind of power emanating from that person, if you could imagine the countenance of the aura of that person. And see that it is another yourself. See that it is like each wave is like another aspect of the sea. So it's not like another person, but it's another yourself. You see the difference. So it's like a condition which is, there is some kind of affinity with your condition. So you know that person by resonance rather than by I - it relationship. 

And remember what we said yesterday that somehow the decor of beings is immaculate even though it is defiled, which is illogical. But I illustrate it by the voice of Caruso that is present within it's distortion. So when you think of another person, at the level of the aura, the distortion is more at the surface. And if you reach into the essence of that person then of course, then it is pure. It is germane. It is authentic. So it is a way of getting to know people in the way that you could never know them by judging them in  your minds. And you can even feel the struggle of what we call the soul of people with what we call the defilement of the world. It's very painful for the soul to feel that distortion that affects it superficially. But still it does affect it. A strange thought, pain at the light level. 

We have to have a break. But I don't like to end with the word pain. But the funny thing is that you can.... I don't know how to say this. But you can also sense the joy of people, not just their pain. If I might have just three minutes. Sorry. It's very interesting. Walter Chappell was photographing flowers with ultraviolet light. So he got these wonderful photographs that you see with this halo of light around the flowers and they're sort of transluced. It occurred to him, "Well if indeed my aura does indeed emit light, could I photograph them with the light of my aura?". He concentrated very intensely on ultraviolet light, on the violet color for example. And he made the photographs. And low and behold the photographs had an aura. The flowers had an aura. But then he noticed that when he was in a good condition, the aura was beautiful and harmonious. But when he was angry, the aura of the flowers began to have spikes. So that the auras of the flowers were picking up his attunement. So that pictures were a feedback system that enabled him to sense something about himself, like a mirroring phenomenon. So that being so, as we lift ourselves to the level of light when we communicate with people, we can sense their auras that look very much like the photographs of Walter Chappell. So we're going to have to have a break now. Say twenty minutes.

Basic skills. First of all, if you can just be aware with your closed eyelids, aware of the light that is emitted through your eyes. And you could alternate between as you inhale, imagine that you are absorbing light through your eyes. And as you exhale you are emitting light through your eyes. Very slowly. So you could follow the light as it is threaded along the optic nerve right in to the brain cells. And then hold your breath, just being aware of the light in the brain. And of course the ultraviolet light breaks through the skull. And that is what one calls the crown of light. Now of course, the brain also absorbs ultraviolet light from the environment through the skull. And there is a point in the skull that is called the fontanel, where the yogis concentrate on the light that descends through the fontanel into the brain. So it's not just ultraviolet light. 

So what you could do is as you inhale concentrate on say for example the light of a star. You could do that at nighttime. I've often done that when I was in a cave in the Himalayas. I was just meditating in the nighttime. And spotting a star. And then consciously following those photons, consciously being aware that those photons are waves of light rather are being resorbed by my glance and threaded along the optic nerves. And this fantastic outburst of light in the brain which reaches beyond the skull. Then that you do as you hold your breath. When you inhale, you are drawing light from the star. Then you hold your breath, light is radiating around your skull. Sorry, sorry. No. When you hold your breath, concentrate on the light that descends in the middle of the light that is radiating in the middle of the crown in other words. And then as you exhale, emit light through your eyes. 

Now you could do the same practice. But in stead of having you eyes focus in the usual way, horizontally, turn your eyeballs upwards. And imagine that you are absorbing not the physical light, but the light of the celestial spheres. Like for example the light that we accessed by thinking of the reflex of light. Just wait a moment. I think to do this we have to first prepare ourselves. 

Now we did the practices of Casina with the difference colors. Now there is a sequence to this, a sequel. That is imagine that you're looking into colorless light, not a red disk but colorless light. And you are being flooded by this light. And now turn your eyeballs upwards and try to represent to yourself the reflex of that colorless light. So as you inhale, you absorb light through your eyes. And as you hold your breath you turn your eyeballs upwards. And you are now absorbing light from the celestial spheres instead of physical light. 

Now if you were to be able to turn your eyes inward, which of course one cannot do. But still if you concentrate on the fontanel and so that the light that you absorb through the fontanel is of an even more excellent nature than the light of the, represented as being celestial light. And of course as you exhale then you radiate that light through your, now this is interesting because what you can do is, well you imagine the two beams of light cast forward through your eyes. Then somehow you represent this celestial light as being infiltrated in the beams. A light within a light, as it's said in the Koran. Imagine a stream of light within a grosser stream of light. A stream of higher frequency light, whatever. I don't know how to say that. 

Now in order to do this better, we could resort to another practice. I'm thinking of Hildegard of Bingen that wonderful German mystic who is becoming known more and more now. So do it with me as we get into her consciousness. She said,"I am flooded with light. I'm sitting there absolutely flooded with light ". Imagine light on your chest, on your shoulders, on your face. Just as thought you're sitting in front of a very bright lamp. Then she says,"Low and behold this world of light begins to open as if it were a gate, into a still higher world of light, that's even more brilliant." And then she goes on to say, "And then this world of light opens to still a further world of light". 

Now I don't know how one can visualize different levels of light. We thought of different colors. That was a first step. But when you thing of the reflex of the white light and the reflex of the reflex and so on, it gives you some sense of different levels of light. 

But there is a greater clue. Because somehow our powers of imagination are a function of our attunement. So this is a clue that might help you. That is thinking that you're awakening from a perspective of light into let's say a higher perspective of light. I described a hologram. But just like for example one awakes from a dream. So that one's consciousness is raised beyond the limitation of the sphere of light in which one was caught, one's perspective was caught, into a still loftier level of consciousness. 

There is a clue here in the world of Pir o Murshid who says, "We are awake to the world that we are able to grasp and of course asleep to those levels that we are not able to grasp". So to awaken... so let's say, obviously as I'm saying we are caught in a perspective. That's how can I say, the level at which we are conscious. And the other levels we are not conscious of unless we awaken from that level. And Murshid describes it, he says it's like...Let's not translate this literally because you'll do astral travel if you do that. Imagine that you're on the first floor and you're contemplating the ceiling and you walk on that ceiling and then you're contemplating the ceiling of the next floor. Now that would be, it's not quite that. It's a very remote comparison. But it gives you a sense of the ladder, hoisting yourself from one rung of the ladder to the next by awakenings, successive awakenings. And each awakening corresponds with a different level of light as we describe them both in the casina practices and in those of Hildegard of Bingen. 

Now I find that if you turn your eyeballs upwards, it has some kind of effect upon your attunement. And what is more one curls the tongue and presses the underpart of the tongue against the pallet. I could describe what physiological effect it has. But if you do it, just see how it works. That you do as you inhale and as you hold your breath. But when you turn your eyeballs back into the horizontal position, you turn back into the ordinary position as you exhale. 

Now let us concentrate a little more on the glance that we were being aware of as we exhaled. Especially if you are able to shoot an arrow of light through that stream of light, of higher light one would say, then your glance has a rather penetrating effect. It's not exactly like an x-ray. For example, as I said yesterday, you can see the etheric counterpart of a person instead of the physical body. And at a further level, you can see their aura instead of their physical body, or the etheric counterpart. So it's not the same as an x-ray, but it has a penetrating effect since it is grasping what transpires behind that which appears. Now the, if you, all the light that we've been absorbing somehow gets shunted into the glance. 

Now there are some elementary practices that one can do to work with the glance. For example as you're walking in the physical environment. Well at first you think that you are seeing the things that delight you or scare you or the things that you don't like. And the second step you may think well my eyes are simply the eyes through which God sees. God is discovering His/Her body, which is the physical world, through my eyes. So that represents a more advanced step from the usual one of thinking that you're the one who is perceiving. But it's still limited by thinking in terms of duality. 

So the third step is my glance is the divine glance that has been funneled down or focalized as through a lens. In other words you are connecting yourself to the totality, at first we used to say of which you are a part or a fragment. But holistically every fragment carries within it the totality. But now we're saying of which you are a condition, like a wave is a condition of the sea. Now if you think that way, then automatically you have raised yourself to a higher level than the commonplace one just simply thinking that way. 

Now there are ways of hoisting your consciousness as one says. The clue would be to disengage the center of the being from it's secondary effects, let's say, like unclutching. In Buddhist terms it is of course it is unclutching that in you, or that which is an unbecome from that which is of the samsaric nature of becoming. The important thing is unclutching. 

Now let's try and do this in practice. Suppose I say, "How do you feel?". Then you'd say," Well feel cold or I feel hot or I feel sad, or I have a tooth ache or I'm bored". Whatever you say, "I'm angry, tired", so on. Well if you answer that, it's obvious that you are identifying yourself with your self image. You're not identifying yourself with your real being. So somehow,I have consolidated you in your self image, whereas what we are trying to do in meditation is to eschew that limitation whereby we identify with our self image so that we can discover our real being, our total being. 

Now supposing that as an alternative you were to say, "Yes, my personality is sad, but that is not really me. It's just like my body is in pain. But I don't say I'm in pain. My body is in pain. So I'm unclutching the deeper reality of my being from its secondary effects which is the body or the personality. 

So you see that most of the time we are identifying with dimensions of our self that are as I call them secondary, that are subsidiary that have accrued to us the the course of our descent through the spheres. When I say descent, I just mean the way that the setting of our consciousness has shifted. We haven't descended geographically. If you can see that, that is the clue to meditation. 

The criterion is the confusion in our minds between our self image and the thought, "Who I am, who we are". Our  self image is not what we think we are. And when we are asked to say how we feel, then somehow we fall back in our self image unless we are warned that that's not what it's about. Because it is true that every fragment of the totality carries the totality. And therefore in our being the totality is potentially present. But that's in our being, not in our self image. So this is a way of hoisting your consciousness in what is called what is called the transcendental dimension. 

Consider yourself as a pendulum. So at one end it is moving in time and space. So that's what one calls bodiness. And at the other end the non-become. That aspect of our being that does not change. And in between are all the transitional stages. So it just depends at which point of the pendulum you identify. Normally one identifies with the bottom of the pendulum, that piece of lead that is swinging right and left. And what we're trying to do is to shift our identity up that whatever it is. If it's a pendulum, it might be a metal cylinder. Or it could be a piece of string that we swing with our hand. 

So that means, what it means is that one is... you see simplistically one would think that one is extracting or extricating one's higher being from one's lower being. Like my body is not me and so on. That's the old fashioned way of thinking. My body is just a garb that I donned by incarnating on the planet. And that finally it will dissolve. That's the old fashioned way of thinking. Now we know that the body itself does carry the impact of our awareness. The very cells of our body. That the the protons and possibly photons live forever. And so rather than thinking that you are extracting your higher self from your lower self as you are hoisting yourself upwards. A lot of people think it's geographically. One is lifting oneself upwards in space. That would result in a break at some point in your being which is what happens in astral travel. 

No it's much more subtle than that. The fact is that the body is transmuted just like in alchemy. The liquid is distilled into vapor. Or in flowers, one can extract the perfume. Perfume represents a condition of the flower whereby it has transmuted itself form a perishable nature to an everlasting nature. That means that there is something everlasting even in our bodiness. But it's not extracted. It's the product of the process of transformation of the very cells of our body by dint of realization. 

But it is true that there is a psychological element there. And that is our attachment to earthly conditions maintains us in our body consciousness. Our  attachment. So it is therefore our freedom from attachment, and that means also dependence upon earthly conditions, that enable us to shift our consciousness into higher levels of awareness. 

So that's something. So there is no use just imagining higher spheres. Then we are inducing ourselves into some kind of wishful thinking or hallucinations or whatever. So we have to be very careful of deluding ourselves. So that it really has to do with how we consider our life. 

What is important. As we started yesterday morning, if you remember, like what is important for you? And one can test it. For example, I've lived in caves in the Himalayas as a sanyasin. And at first I had this veneer of western civilization. I had a very efficient back pack with even a tent and even a cooker, blow up mattress, and of course food, all kinds of things like that. And of course it was very heavy so I kept on dumping things along the way. Well maybe I don't need the cooker. Maybe I can just burn some wood. And eventually well even a sleeping bag. Well I can do without a sleeping bag to. Because you know it gets to the point where you harden your body to endure the cold and heat and thirst. So you find freedom from your support system. So maybe that is something most people living in the West in modern civilizations don't know. We don't know to what extent we become surreptitiously dependent on our fridge and our cooker and all those things. And a car. You have to know that you can do without it. Then you can have it as long as you know that you can do without it. 

But then it goes further. And that is to realize that one can think without a brain. In fact the brain reduces ones thinking infinitely. And it goes further. Actually one can see without the eyes. One thinks one needs the eyes to see. The brain can see. The retina is part of the brain. In fact I tested someone who said that he could do that. Blindfolded and he could read the book. So we must even there I'm talking about something concrete. It's not poetry. 

That is what in India called viragia which means detachment. It starts with doing things. I mean rather not doing things. For example not smoking any more. We not taking drugs of course, not smoking and so on. Discovering one's addiction. Seeing one's addiction very clearly. Like if you can't stop smoking it's because, well of course there are withdrawal symptoms. But fundamentally your psyche is producing a kind of strategy which gives you self confidence when you're surrounded by those puffs of smoke. Addiction, dependence. 

So that's what Pir o Murshid means when he says the secret of lifting one's consciousness, raising one's consciousness as he said. Well he said working through one's ties with the physical world, or with the world, not just the physical world. It's really going to the solitude of the soul. One doesn't have to go in a cave in the Himalayas. But finding that deep authenticity in one's being in the silence of independence from any support system whatsoever. For example is you're a composer to be able to compose without a piano. Just imagine the notes. You see. So it's freedom from the support system. 

So that just depends on the evolution of each person. So there is no use in just trying to imagine ourselves into Samadhi when it's just imagination. I also think that one has to test oneself in the nitty gritty of a retreat situation in which one is fasting for example. So you know that you can do without food in many ways. Or, as I say, putting up with the cold or the heat, particularly the cold. It's the secret of longevity to put up with the cold. Or do without TV. All those things that we've become dependent upon. 

So perhaps we could do that now. Just think of your eyes. I don't say that it's bad to depend upon a support system. Whatever it is. I think that you have to have a good car to get a good job and to vie with the Joneses. I think that it's more practical to have a fridge than not have one. And it's good to know what's happening to Clinton and to the Simpson case. lt's all part of our culture. So I'm not saying that you have to do away with all those things. That would be becoming an ascetic. That's not what we're trying to do. 

So what we're trying to do is very challenging is being in life while being clear with how one is endowed with he ability to involve oneself and also the ability to find detachment at the same time. And detachment is a defense against pain. So when I say downplay a perspective and highlight another, that's an effort of consciousness. But now we're talking about an emotional attunement rather than shifting your consciousness with the will. In fact it is that inner detachment that will shift your consciousness. And you can't shift your consciousness by your will. 

So just think of what Pir o Murshid calls the ties. It's not just circumstantial ties. But it does work in circumstances. But emotional ties. For example a very crucial case is of course a personal relationship. There are three words. One is dependence. Another one is co-dependence. And a third one is interdependence. There is another one which is independence. But that's not what I'm suggesting. It's interdependence. To find that beautiful fresh wind, the breeze that blows between big trees as, I forget now. Big trees don't grow in each other's shadow. So it's that kind of mutual respect for the freedom of another person. Instead of making that person feel dependent upon that person's dependence upon them. Freedom from that dependence by your own independence. But somehow it works into interdependence. Maybe I'm contradicting myself. There is just no way of saying it. 

Somehow it is in relationship that the whole thing becomes most crucial. I'm not talking about asceticism. Really you see the old fashioned either/or situation. Either you're a householder as one says, or you're a sanyasin. That's the old way. Now we have to find a way of being both at the same time. That's much more difficult. That's my point of course. 

In the more subtle level it's emotional dependence or then the opposite pole is unconditional love. For example if you say to a child you say, "If you're good I'll love you. If you naughty, I won't love you". That's not unconditional love. Unconditional love means that one will love a person even when they are obnoxious. So in other words one's love is not dependent upon the nature of that person. 

OK well if you can see that in your life, it's seeing things that liberates you. It's not in doing. It's not like severing relationships. That's the way of the ascetic. It's seeing things. As a matter of fact the consequence is that the relationship becomes golden. It becomes mutually enriching and inspiring. 

So now let's get back to the practices with light now. If you think of a person, if you represent their aura rather when you think of a person instead of thinking of their body or their mind or their personality. You imagine the aura when you're meditating. Now maybe it's the imagination. But somehow one tends to. We are gifted with a kind of intuition. That is we have a kind of knowledge inborn in us that can be awakened in the right situation. For example, if you are thinking of that person and imagining their aura, you are awakening a knowledge that is hidden in yourself of that person that is hidden in that person that is revealed to you. 

And therefore Pir o Murshid says the glance. Because you see it is your glance that is building the picture of that picture of that person. So you imagine the glance as we have done. And now you imagine that your glance is fashioning the fabric of light into the image of the aura of that person. Somehow you are, that image surfaces from the world of light. I remember a word of Plotinus who said," The sculpture", in wood for instance, a person who carves wood, "Is releasing the form that is already there in the wood". So let's say that the aura of that person is there in the world of light and that your are arousing it by your glance. And you're making that person present at the level of light. So that applies to people who have died. Well you think, "Well there lost and I'll never see them again". Some people think, "Well perhaps I will see them when I die". But you can see them now. You don't have to wait until you die. Not at the physical level of course. But at the level of light, yes. Because light is a wave interference pattern. I said photons don't have mass so they are all interconnected. That means that at that level, at the level of light those people are in us and we are in them. 

The important thing is your glance. Think of your glance as a paintbrush of an artist that is.... a good idea is you know you have those things for children. You know you have an invisible picture on a piece of paper and all you have to do is to put a liquid on or you could use a brush then somehow the picture emerges. Something like that. Well there is a little more to it than that because you can help a person to arouse potentialities in their being by making them aware of their aura of light by visualizing the aura of light. So what Pir o Murshid says is that the glance unlocks that which is potential, that is subliminal arousing it, awakening it so to speak and making it actuated. There is a word of Murshid when he says, "God is hidden in his creation". And one can awaken the God within and that is true of people of course. Or where he says, "In matter consciousness has slumbered for eons of time and is continually awakening in matter". So the sense of awakening something which is virtual and leads much further than that because you could think of God as a virtuality that becomes a reality in you. Now that's a far cry from the thought of God up there and us miserable worms down here. 

And there is a secret there. That is to be found in that wazifa of the Sufis, wajid. Wajid means to find. Those of you who have a computer you know the 'find' function. So you press a button you find God, you see. 

Actually there is a scientific theory according to which an electron only exists only if you create favorable conditions for God to exist. So God exists only if you create favorable conditions to exist. It doesn't mean that God isn't but He exists only through creating conditions. That's why Murshid talks about making God a reality. He even say where are you to find God if it's not in the God conscious person? 

OK so now enough of sermonizing. Let's get back to meditating again now. So you, instead of thinking, "I'm not a body, a physical body and not an etheric body, but I'm a being of light". Think that for example that light is present in the crystal. So if you are a crystal then light is not, your aura is not other than your body. If you can feel like, as I said, where a need becomes a greed, how that effects one's identity if it leads into concupiscence and power trips and ego trips and cruelty and dishonesty and manipulation. All that is going to of necessity keep you in your body consciousness, let's say earthly consciousness. 

So consider that you're invited to be an initiate in a cosmic initiation, not necessarily in the institutionalization of spirituality. And as such you are invited to take the steps that lead towards awakening and illumination. And that those steps require of you to look very clearly as to what your motivations are in your life. Because to be an initiate doesn't mean to be a sanyasin. But still it does mean that one is dedicated to a very high venture. And therefore one needs to make the steps at all levels of one's being to be able to reach that objective. And that objective is like the horizon. It always goes further and further away. It recedes as you advance. 

Now once more look at. Now we're going to be doing the opposite of what we've been doing so far. Light is already in the body. Now we're unclutching. So you can see the body needs, psychological needs, cultural needs. All kinds of needs. And you can also see that there is pain and frustration when those needs are not fulfilled. And you can see that those needs, legitimate or not, justified or not, rob us of our freedom. I'm not saying they are bad. But they rob us of our freedom. And consequently they will act as a deterrent against the raising of your consciousness which we understand by awakening or illumination. 

Now let us say that you could never say that you are awake or that you're illuminated. But let's say that there are outbreaks of awakening or of illumination. Both are very closely connected. For example, even just thinking about something on which you have become dependent. And think that you feel how that dependence is holding you back. It has a kind of gravity effect on you being. And somehow realizing...finding some independence from your dependence...a kind of freedom just on that particular subject. All of a sudden there is going to be a kind of emotional outburst of what I call ecstasy. Ah yes, that's true. I'm free. And that's like an awakening. It's as though I'm awake from a way of thinking that had limited me within my mind, in my realization. I see something that I hadn't seen before. 

Well the example that Pir o Murshid gave is he describes being awake, imagine that you are awake amongst people who are sleeping. And as he said, things that seem real to people are unreal for you. And things that are unreal for people seem real to you. And things that are of great importance to people don't seem important to you. Like, you know Buddha left his kingdom. It wasn't important. For some people it's important. So things that seem important for some people don't seem to be important anymore. And he says everything seems to be quite the contrary of what one was convinced of. 

So imagine for example that you feel quite sure that you understand your problems. And all of a sudden you realize that it wasn't so at all. But you were quite convinced. For example one might think, "Yes, I'm on a spiritual path, whatever that means. And I'm seeking illumination. But of course I could never attain illumination living the life I live". So you're convinced that your circumstances are a kind of prison that prevent you from awakening. And all of a sudden you realize that it's the other way around. That it's just in these conditions that you can awaken. Now that's all of a sudden an awakening, an aha feeling. 

So the prison is in our thinking, not in the circumstances. And deeper still it's in our emotions. Can you just have a fore taste of the exultation of finding freedom in your emotions? Exultation. You see the Tibetans use that word. Illumination, they call it the light of bliss. So they're not just talking about light. They are talking about an emotional high. And it is that emotional high that is going to hoist you from your earthly perspective. And you can see that people are looking for some kind of entertainment to help them to be a little bit high, or to allay their boredom. And really the kind of, let's say, as one says there is no accounting for taste, the kind of entertainment that gives them a little bit of euphoria is rather pitiful. As Pir o Murshid says we are offered pearls and we choose pebbles. 

So it's in the realm of attunement. Like if you're in a high state and you sense the kind of attunement of people around you. You think, "What a pity. If only they knew what it's like to be high". It seems low key. It's just well sometimes it's really boredom. You see repetitiveness is boredom. Like wallpaper that keeps on repeating itself. That's a samsaric wheel. You know one is doing the same think one has always done. And you know you just do the right thing and you're a good citizen. But then what's the point. You're not getting anywhere. 

So the consequence a kind of emotional that is, OK, a bit of excitement from time to time. One needs to have fireworks on the 4th of July. Some type of excitement. So that is the reason why. If you were practicing yoga, if you were to follow the steps in Patanjali's sutras, he describes the stages leading to the asampra samadhi, which is the ultimate samadhi. And the first one is the one I mentioned yesterday is saritalka samadhi. That is that you free yourself from the personal bias of your problems. That is how we started yesterday if you'll remember. And the next one is (naritatka) samadhi where since the world continues to live in the psyche, you rid yourself of the bias that is right down in your unconscious. We call it tamata, the unconscious. Then after that there is (sadikara) samadhi where you are beginning to realize that the source of that illusion is deeper down than just in your thoughts. It is in your realization. And then (nivakara) which is freeing yourself from the distortion in that high level of thinking. You can't reach as a product of samadhi which is awakening without having passed through ananda yoga which is change in your emotion. That's where the key is. Now you can't reach it by thinking, by realizing. It's by ecstasy. 

So there comes a time when you meet people and you're able to gauge, let's say, the attunement of their emotion. And also when you're very aware of your own attunement, and somehow or other if you are aware of your attunement, and you feel a nostalgia for the being for the sublime, then somehow you attune your emotions very high. Now you find that it has a transforming effect even upon you body. But it certainly has a transforming effect on your personality. So you can try being as creative as much as you like. Or trying to capture the emergence of the new creativity as you turn within and it doesn't work because one has to include all levels in one's creativity. That is what we are doing in the zikre which we started to do yesterday.

Tape Ends.

FEB 23, 1997		Tape 08

I'm going to start with a rather simple skill and then build up on that. So once more think of your eyes as the head lamps of a car piercing through the dark. The other day you remember what we did to strengthen our concentration and our glance, now as you inhale turn the beams upwards and converge them, and as you exhale bring them down again and now they're separated into two beams and cast forward. 'kay, now you remember the practice we did passing you through the different chakras, mentioning the colors and then at the end we concentrated on the colorless light in the crown _______________ colors. We even started to have some sense of the beam descending through the fontanel. 

Now what we are going to do is, instead of thinking of the colors, you remember the practice we did with the reflectors and also the reflectors of colorless light, instead of colored light, and also the different spheres of light experienced by Hildegaard of Bingen. So now, what I suggest that you do is as you inhale, you don't have to think specifically of your different chakras, but simply think that you are making quantum leaps, let's say, shifting from one sphere of light to the next, and when you hold your breath now we have something new that we're beginning to grasp now, that is that your intelligence is like the nature of light, not physical light of course. And then when you exhale, think that your intelligence has now become consciousness. As Pir-o-Murshid says, "When intelligence is faced with an object, it becomes consciousness and when consciousness is bereft of any perception or any content, then it ____________ to its ground which is intelligence. 

So we'll do this practice once more now. So it means that when we hold our breath we do not concentrate on our crown, but we can only contemplate from identifying with our aura, like to identifying with pure luminous intelligence. And now intelligence is beginning to turn towards the existential world and therefore is perceiving, but now let us be very clear because now this is a totally new way of looking at things. Our  own consciousness is passive, receptive, in fact we are exposed to our retina, exposed to the light that is reflected or refracted or fluoresced from the environment. Now we are talking about a new way of looking at things. We are looking at things by casting a light upon things. So ___________ for example think of the case of Aladdin who has carried this lamp, or he was himself a lamp, and consequently wherever he went he thrust the light of his whole being upon objects rather than picking up the light that was fluoresced by the objects.

Now this illustrates the fact that we have to distinguish between the knowledge that we acquire by perceiving and interpreting what we perceive, or by learning, and then knowledge that is revealed that we just know or is intuited, and which is therefore inborn, inherent, and then philosophy which calls it protocritic. Now the way to access this second mode of learning, of cogniscience is to think that, let's say our mind is part of the mind of God. Or let's say that there is a storehouse of knowledge of which you have access, of which you are a part. For example, Pir-o-Murshid says "what we think are our thoughts are the way that humanity thinks", but I am paraphrasing of course, it is customized in our particular mode of thinking. 

But that is a clue, because instead of thinking "I think", thinking as Newton said, "I think as God thinks". The work of Newton. ____________________ connecting your thinking with that storehouse of knowledge which is the knowledge of the universe. Just think that the universe is endowed with consciousness, think that God is the universe, of which the cosmos is the body, and which is endowed amongst other things with consciousness, awareness, being, and so on, knowledge. And that consciousness is of course holistically a fragment of that totality, as David Bone says "a relatively autonomous expression of that totality" so that you are always connecting your mind with the mind of the universe. Let us say that imagine that you could ask yourself "If my consciousness is one of the say focalizations of the consciousness of the universe, then that means that the universe knows itself through that expression of itself which is my consciousness, and that means that my knowledge is fed back into the knowledge of the universe." And what it means is, to go further, is that my knowledge of the universe accrues to the knowledge that the universe has of itself.

So this is a level of thinking beyond a commonplace way of thinking because if you identify with your personal self, and then the knowledge that you have of life in general, of things, is limited to that particular vantage point. So in high states of meditation, one downplays the knowledge that one acquires through one's personal vantage point, and consequently this knowledge, transcendental knowledge, begins to reveal itself, so that's not the acquired knowledge, it's the revealed knowledge. And in the word of Ibn Arabi who said, "Knowledge is a veil upon the known." So this state is a description of what one means by the Jabarut level, beyond the celestial level, Malakut.

Unfortunately, I have to go rather fast because we'd really need another day to go into this without just talking about, by really experiencing it. Because that implicate knowledge let's call it that is revealed is of a different nature to the personal one because one is thinking in terms of archetypes. Now that is of course you know what we mean by archetypes, well I could describe it, I could say "Yes, for example rose is the archetype of roseness, and roundness is the archetype of round objects," but that is theory. A more tangible description would be, somebody comes into the room and is very peaceful, and somebody says, "what a peaceful person" and the dervish says "Isn't it wonderful to see the divine peace coming through this person." That is what I mean by thinking in terms of the archetype. And can get a point where you are always seeing things from a kind of overview, as though you had raised your consciousness of the limitation incurred at the existential level, so as you see these are steps towards samadhi. And there are clues to this to be found in the words of the Buddha in what is called the Ayatanas or Arupajanas. He says "Beyond existence, beyond consciousness, beyond existence and nonexistence and ultimately beyond dichotomy, consciousness or nonconsciousness." Well of course, this is baffling to our minds, but it's just a way of trying to say something that one can't say. Anyway, that would give us a sense of not relying upon the knowledge that we acquire of things, considered to be limiting, limited and limiting.

That this goes together with a notion of our identity which we have been working with you remember a little earlier on this morning we said "If I say, how do you feel?" Most people would be inclined to say, well I feel happy or I feel sad, or I feel ... whatever. They are identifying themselves with the personal self-image. Now to have access to this higher level, you have to take to yourself, well I will quote the words of Pir-o-Murshid when he says "The soul identifies itself with", well I'm paraphrasing now, "and the soul identifies itself with its support system", that is, just imagine if you could do this as I am talking, if you are able to retrieve the memory of your prenatal, or perinatal, as Dr. Groff calls it, condition, that is prior not only to your birth but actually to your conception. Move back in time and you might recover the memory of how you descended through the spheres, and actually one hasn't really descended in terms of space, but consciousness has awakened gradually into the perspective of the existential condition, which has limited, of course, a scope of consciousness. And so it is as though, of course this is just an illustration, one could say it is as though one had accumulated the fabric of the planes that one descended through and started identifying with that fabric. So one identifies with the personality, with one's mind, with one's body, actually of course with one's consciousness, as Buddha shows in the Satipatana. And therefore, one's says "I am sad, I am glad," and so on, it is the body that is happy or uncomfortable or whatever, the mind is happy, the personality.

Now this is in some way linked with our sense of our inheritance, because we've been built up to think that we are the children of our parents and of our grandparents and ancestors, and there's no doubt that we exhibit features of these predecessors, but then as you get into a very high state of consciousness, you discover a more universal inheritance which Pir-o-Murshid calls the Divine Inheritance. And that's why St. Francis said "I have another Father." So the features of the inheritance of one's parents and forefathers is let's say more superficial, and more deeply somehow in our being is covered over by the features of that inheritance is the inheritance beyond existence; that's really what is meant by Divine. Buddhists call it the "extra-samsaric" element in which is not of the nature of the samasaric wheel, the repetition, and even evolution, it's of the nature of eternity. once you do that, then you come to a point, this is of course a very high state of meditation, see if you can do it of course, wonderful if you can. For one thing, its thinking of yourself as a continuity in change. Instead of thinking "my body is perishable, but my soul is eternal", that's a rather perfunctory way of thinking. You know that somehow there is a kind of permanence behind that, not just changes, but even the evolution of my being. Like it's the same river that ___________the same water that passes under a bridge.

And now I am looking to have some sense of your imperishability, because of course we are used to the thought that people die, that's the most stupid of all our assumptions, that we are convinced because we don't see anymore. Nothing is lost in the universe. The flowers continue to live as perfume, everlastingly. And so you can really start grabbing hold of that thread of your being that is not subject to mortality or perishability. So if you remember that, as you are doing that, if you remember that the soul thinks that it is sad and so on because it identifies with the body, and so on; if you think that way, then you'll see that the illusion is not that the physical world is not what it is, the illusion is what we think we are ourselves. So just imagine that you awaken from your self-image, and you think "I thought I was what I thought I was now, and I realize it was just a certain kind of perspective which was very limited.

'kay, so now we are going to do some more practices. So what I suggest is doing again the practice we did yesterday, that is putting the indexes on your eyes, you remember the practice don't you, so I won't take time to describe it. But, as you know, you only inhale through the right nostril, not the left and exhale through the right, not the left, and you hold your breath in between. Now you only breath through your right nostril three times in that position and then take your hands away. And while you hold your breath and concentrate on the light that emerges from the within, what we call the subliminal all-pervading light, if you remember, or the all-pervading light that emerges from subliminal levels of the cosmos, if you think that the world of which we are familiar is just a cross-section, so it's just like a white hole of light, the light that emerges from a white hole into this universe from subliminal universes. Think of that as you hold your breath, alright.

So, at the subliminal level, the light is, Murshid calls it "all-pervading", it is what Dr. David Bone calls "light in the implicate state". It may be the light field, I don't know enough about physics. But it is changed into radiant light, and you can imagine that that switch takes place as you move your attention from the solar plexus to the heart center, I should have told you that as you exhale you concentrate on the heart center. Now you can do that some more. Now, we are going to do this practice again, but instead of concentrating on the solar plexus and then the heart as you exhale, concentrate on above your crown center as you hold your breath, and as you exhale concentrate upon your glance. Now when you concentrate above your crown center, you remember what we did, you made that quantum leap and discovered ourselves to be pure luminous intelligence. And then as you exhale, that's exactly what in the Q'uran is called "the light upon the light", your intelligence seems to enbrighten your glance. 'kay, let's do that now, again three breaths.

'kay, now I think that we are ready for the further stages in the zikr that we started yesterday. So, if you remember we did a circle with our head and our chest, moving, if you were a clock, it would be anticlockwise. No, no, it's anticlockwise if you look at a clock, which is really clockwise, right? So you move your head toward the left shoulder, left knee, right knee, right shoulder up to the zenith, if you remember, and as you do that of course the motion of the body has the effect of expanding one's consciousness, of the outreach of one's consciousness, and one's sense of identity, one's ability to get into the consciousness of _____________, and consequently of freeing oneself from one's limited assessment of one's problems. Now then after that, if you remember, we brought our head down, we turned our head towards the solar plexus, so what we did was we exhaled in the circle and we inhaled as the head comes down and that was the effect of making our consciousness turn within. 

And that is we downplayed the impact of not only the perception of the environment but the impact of the environment upon us by placing in our minds sentinels at the doors of perception, and we feel sucked into the void and the vacuum in the center of that vortex that we are, and then as the head comes up slightly moving from the solar plexus upwards to the heart we experience like the reverse, kind of the emergence of new dispensation of our being, what you call rebirthing and if you remember we needed to capture that rebirthing, otherwise it would be stillborn and then if you remember, the universe has the faculty of self-organizing itself in each fragment of itself, but to be creative we need to participate in our creativity and therefore at some point one needs to customize that self-organizing faculty by one's personal incentive. And then what we did is to project with one's creative imagination how one could be if one would be as one might be. So that it needs to be very concrete, if for example you imagine your face as it could be, or your personality as it could be. That's the only way to pull oneself out of the past and evolve. otherwise one remains the same as one is, but one will even go backwards, becoming bitter and self-destructive.

So, that's where we got yesterday. Now, the head lifts itself up further and further up, and in doing this one is passing in review the different planes, so that is the raising of your consciousness above the limitation of earthly conditions, from one plane to the other step by step. Now of course, there are lots of planes so to simplify things, the next step after imagining let's say your, the new configuration of your being as it could be, you imagine it actually, I think one could say that your imagination does configure energy so you are configuring your energy field. But in the next step, you identify yourself with your aura, concentrating on the heart center, and then you, well you are fashioning your aura of light as we did this morning, instead of your etheric body, and the troubling thing here is that the celestial level of our being is a halfway house. Somehow reflecting the on one hand our perinatal ____________ and at the same time our existential one. So, as Pir-o-Murshid says, "the heavens are made on earth." So it is our thoughts which create this, which build this image of ourselves in the world of light, our thoughts are tuned as we saw this morning.

Now, the clue to, you see what we are saying is that to be creative we have to include all the levels of our being, so it's not good enough just to concentrate on whatever is emerging from within, we have to include all the elements, and that's why when one's lifting, one is passing in review one level after the other in the ascent in this part of the zikr. Now the clue to lifting one's consciousness upwards, you can do it if you will as I said, is glorification. You see, we carry within us a kind of nostalgia for excellence, for perfection, for beauty, for the sublime, somehow just like we carry within our minds the ability to imagine infinity and eternity, in the same way we have that capacity to imagine a more excellent quality than we have been able to imagine so far in infinite regress, so that in our prayers, you see all prayers I would say start by bewondering like never ceasing to be amazed by the miracle of life. However distressful it is, the incredible challenge, the beauty that emerges out of our beingness and so on, the whole manifestation, breaking through the veils. You know, physicists say they never cease to be amazed not just by the intelligence of the programming, but the elegance as the notion of beauty.

So the brain starts by simply bewondering, bemusing and then it reaches further into glorification, and that is that one projects upon a fictitious representation that one makes of God, that's not God, but it is the representation that one makes of God, one projects into that representation the qualities that one features in one's own personality, but somehow in that affection somehow the superlative of those qualities in their perfection that is in infinite regress, when one reaches that sense of that perfection, it's like raising further advanced ________________. You think you've really reached it, but still as Pir-o-Murshid says, "God is the horizon, you will never reach it." But still that kind of act of glorification has the effect of arousing and awakening in us qualities that are somnolent, latent, and which become thereby actuated and activated so that our prayers are really full of self-discovery and not only self-discovery but self-actuation. 

And so, you see in the zikr one starts by building the temple and eventually as the head rises up, one becomes the priest or the priestess in the temple. One has created a sacred space, now one sees that it is ourselves who is the temple as a priest glorifying God. And as you proceed upwards, I'm sorry we have to move so fast, then of course one's consciousness is lifted above the limitation of worldly conditions, it's limiting condition that we are in and consequently all that image that one thought one had acquired seem to prove to be worthless. That is at least relatively worthless, relatively relative. That is what ___________ calls "the consternation of intelligence". So that at that level then in the dark night of understanding, the intuitive faculty begins to break through and all of a sudden we see things in a way that we'd never seen before. That's like awakening at the level called Jabarut, and ______________ this kind of overview where one identifies oneself with one's, that more essential inheritance, we call the Divine Inheritance instead of ancestral. And consequently begins to see, how can I say, the ROM behind the RAM, beyond the programming idea, the Swiss call it the Divine Intention. So it's beyond the Divine Programming, it's the Divine Intention. And then things that don't make sense start making sense, and that's the way as Pir-o-Murshid said "the defeat avers itself to be a victory."

Now if we were to continue, it's pretty high as it is, but there's one more step, in fact of course an infinity of steps, but the only that we could have any sense of is of course samadhi, which is like awakening from the unreality. There's no way of saying it of course, the final awakening. And as the Hindus, the yogis say in the Prihada Aveac Upanishad "it happens as a flash, unexpectedly and passes before you realize it." And when you realize it you try to recapture it and then it's too late. But it's like seeing back stage of the universe and from the time that you've had that flash of realization, you're never the same person. So just think of again the words of Buddha, "Beyond existence, beyond consciousness, beyond nonexistence, beyond consciousness and unconsciousness," and then his last word at the moment of illumination which is when he said "it is the roar of the lion that I found the way to liberation" and he said "it is the cessation of the determined of the conditioning, it is the ultimate freedom." And you can see involvement, freedom, freedom from the narrowness, freedom from illusion, freedom from personal identity, even as I said the known is freed from the knowing. It is a state prior to the planning. That is a statement from a wonderful scientist in Zurich called Schpeitzel in an article called "Uber Ef I Heicht" about freedom.

'kay so now if that makes any sense to you then what we're going to do is a motion of the zikr, but you remember those, even just a few of the thoughts, those thoughts act as catalysts to growth, realization. So in doing the zikr, maybe you will just do it without words then once more, a circle as you exhale, not quite a circle, three-quarters, and now the head comes down as you inhale facing the solar plexus and continue to inhale as the head moves up from one chakra to the next, eyeballs turned upwards, and now you hold your breath. Now it's very subtle, but right at the end of the inhaling comes the "h" of the word Allah that is that extrasamsaric element of eternity that is not of the nature of becoming, that's a point of samadhi, and then in the Sufi manner, when you hold your breath, you awaken in life. As to what does it mean to awaken in life, Pir-o-Murshid describes it again when he said "you realize that you came on earth in order to discover your spirit." Or again where he says "in man is awakened that spirit by which the whole of creation was created." Or when he says "consciousness awakens in matter where is has been buried for aeons of time." So that would be awakening in life, and to see that in fact it goes as far as saying again a word of Pir-o-Murshid "God awakens in man after man awakens in God." And I think of the word of an orthodox priest who said "God becomes man so that man may become God."

So just let's do this motion now if you can, of course, there's no way that you can think of all of this, but it's got to give you some sense of the steps in one's realization. You concentrate on the heart center when you hold your breath after having lifted your head upwards up to the "h", then with the "h" you concentrate on your heart. Now to do it well of course it's much more, it's very difficult but it is to open your eyes when you exhale, but still remain awake. Now you cease to make the motion of the body, but maintain the thoughts corresponding to your exhaling and inhaling and holding the breath. And now you cease to think of your breath, and just be very aware, very awake but it does not mean that you slip back into your ordinary consciousness again, identifying with your personal vantage point and with your self-image. But it's like you see the miracle of life appearing in those devices that are events, people as a condition of God just like waves are a condition of the sea. It is the everywhere and always in the here and now, it's not just the here and now, it's the everywhere and always is present in the here and now. Eternity in a terminal act and infinity in a finite act.

So we are going to have to end here. One never slips totally into one's ordinary consciousness. There's always that sense of having seen behind the curtain and you will never forget it. So we are going to end with what I call a Cosmic Celebration. You've got to be rather succinct because of Saturn, that is time, so give yourselves a little rest now, take a walk in the sunshine, say twenty minutes maximum, twenty minutes not quite, compress the twenty minutes into fifteen!!

END OF TAPE 8


FEB 23, 1997		Tape 09

What was it? Toccata and Fugue? 'h. Yup! (If you can) hold this. 

Towards the one, the Perfection of Love, Harmony, and Beauty, the only being , united with all the illuminated souls who form the embodiment of the Master, the Spirit of Guidance. 

To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light, symbolically representing the Hindu religion. 

(Thank you. We do the chant now, I guess)

We will do a chant for the - honoring the Hindu religion; it's honoring Shiva, and the words are: aum, namma, Shiveiya - and we'll sing it together and I'll start and please join in as soon as you can. I think most people here know this. 

Aum...........................................Namma..................................................Shivaiya..................... Aum...........................................Namma...................................................Shivaiya.................... once more. (.......) ___,(.............) (..............)

To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light symbolically representing the Buddhist religion. 

Trying to go through all those great Buddhist composers to find what we all remember - we'll do an old chant from the Tibetan tradition and it's the Bahdragu mantra. It's 'Aum Ah Aum' and very very briefly it would be like the Sufi equivalent to Zat, the point of all generation; then Vadra, pure mind, pure awareness, pure intelligence; (guru) which literally in Sanskrit is heavy. So it's like the base metal upon which there can be no alchemy; Penna or padme, which would be the lotus, compassion, love, and the last one would be Sitee; so that would (be) the power, the energy which allows all  this to take place; and 'hum' is the final one; so we've brought the origin of generation to completion. So - if I can remember this one.........

Aum ma hum Vadra guru Pemma- Sitee hum

Aum ma hum Vadra....guru Penma Sitee hum 

 One more time 

(...........................................)

To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light symbolically representing  the Zooastrian religion. 

This will be a Zooastrian chant that invokes the holy archangels of the world of Zarasthrustra : 'Ahura Mazda', 'Spenta Meinu', 'Zvarna', 'Vohu', 'Mahnu', 'Asha', 'Cashatria', 'Art Vesura', 'Huarttat', 'Armattat', 'Spenta Armighty', o'oshi Dahdreyna', 'SheekDeezamyatey', and 'Darehna'. So you'll have to participate because they come in on a beautiful hum. these angels do. And Bee bee John and Nizam are going to help me with the hum, so you maintain the hum and I'll do the invocation - that's the trick.!

Hum um um um um um um  Hu____m um um um um um um um um um  A Hura Mazda spenta mei nea zva arna Vohu ma nu asha qui sha tria artvisurra -  Hurarta darmartat spentah ---------mariity -  'oshita (ney nak sheet) de samyat tey dahjehna -  A hura Mazda Spenta Meinx zvainu -  Vohuma Nu asha kay shatria art visura Huarttah armahtahtspenta armaheetee -  'oshi dahahrenahksheet deezamyat teh hey daireheyna.

To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light, symbolically representing the feminine aspect of God that is represented in many religions as the Mother and the eternal feminine in the great ascetic mysteries. 

(Home) (bed)

This is a chant that invokes many of the names that are used for the Divine Feminine in the world religions. Because there are so many names, it would be too difficult to teach quickly, so I invite those who know it already to join me in singing this chant and those who don't, please just listen with your heart. 

Cali Rahday sira____ parvati, Mary Full of Grace Hanna, Rachel, Quanyin, Fatima, Let us see your face.  Bless us, 'h Mother, sister and lover, take us to your heart. Teach us your mercy, strength and compassion, - hold us in your love.

 Cali, Rahday, Sita, Parvati, Mary full of grace -  Hanna, Rachel, Quanyin, Fatima, Let us see your face -  Bless us, oh mother, sister and lover, take us to your heart -  Teach us your mercy, strength, and compassion, - hold us in your love. 

To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light, symbolically representing the tradition of the Native American and kindred religions dedicated to the force of nature throughout the world. 

I'd like to share the sunrise chant from the Ute people of Southern Colorado. It is the first song that they sing each morning during the sundance ceremony. The dancers line up outside the arbor with their arms outstretched to the sun and they dance and greet the sun as it rises, welcoming those first rays of warmth that come to initiate each____ new day. ItÕs a simple song ; it's a straight song. It has only two syllables, o'h Way' - 'Way 'h', 'Way 'h', and those repeat over and over again. I'll begin (to) singing it and as you catch on just please join me. 

Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way --ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way - - - - - - - -  Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h - Way 'h, Way 'h, Way 'h, Way 'h, Way 'h,   Way 'h Way 'h, Way - - (ee)

Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way----------'h Way-------------------------- Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way---------'h Way---yey,yey,yey,yey,yey -  Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h Way 'h --way oh, way oh, way oh, way oh,way oh,   way oh, way oh, way----------

To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light, symbolically representing the Hebrew Tradition. 

(So) I want (to) lead us in Shamei Israel ; and (we'll) do it two times. If it feels right we'll do it three times. 

Shemei Israel (aza) noiy - Elloynay -oo Aza Noi Yeh Za Sheimei Israel aza noy --ello hey noo  Aza Noi eh za

To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light, symbolically representing the Christian religion. 

 This next song is from the Christian religion and it has one simple word, and it's Alleluia, which I know I won't have to translate, and let's catch on first to the beginning and all of the men, and whoever would wish, would sing this part, and then those of you women who know the counterpart, please join in. 

Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia All - - le - - lu - - ia - -  Alleluia Alleluia ____ Alleluia Alleluia All - - le - - lu - - ia - -  Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia 

(.........................(all 6 lines.......................)

To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light, symbolically representing the religion of Islam 

I'm going to recite the (Sura ta fa tey ha) which is the first (sura) of the Koran and is said to be the whole Koran, the holy book of Islam, in miniature. It's also said that the Koran really cannot be translated, so I'm not going to translate this (sura), just listen with your hearts and with your third eye and with your crown and just feel what the words do you, and those of you who know it, feel free to join me. 

Bismillah, Erachman, Erachim. Al hum du lilah  Hir a bir, lalamin, Erachman, Erachim  Maliki, o -ma-din, eeya-ka-naw bo-duee-ah-kah nos-ta-een Ill da nos sera to moos ta crim seral ta la din a  Ram tah alleh him, a hi reem adu bi alleh him Walla dah-----lin. A____men (ah min)

To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light symbolically representing all those who whether known or unknown to the world, have held aloft the light of truth, amidst darkness of human ignorance. 

Am I expected to sing a chant?

Eve - ry step in Thy Path. Eve - ry step inThy Path Draws - me nearer to Thee,----Draws me nearer to Thee Every breath in Thy thought, Every breath in Thy thought,  Excellerates my spirit, my spir - - - it. With every glimpse, glimpse of Thy smile, 

Is inspiring to my soul.  Every tear in Thy love, in Th Love Beloved ------- Exults my being.

So let us pray together . We will invoke all the great masters and prophets of all the great religions.  If you will all stand up now. 

Most gracious Lord, Master, Messiah, and Savior of humanity, we greet Thee with all humility. Thou art the first cause and last effect, the Divine Light and the Spirit of Guidance, Alpha and Omega, Thy light is in all forms, Thy love in all beings, in a loving Mother, in a kind Father, (in) an innocent child, in a helpful friend, in an inspiring teacher. Allow us to recognize Thee in all Thy holy names and forms, as Rama, as Krishna, as Shiva, as Zarasthrustra, as Moses, as Jesus, as Mohammad, and in many other names and forms, known and unknown to the world. We adore Thy past, (the) presence deeply (lights) our being and we look for Thy blessing in the future. 'h Messenger, Christ, Nabi, the Rasul of God; Thou whose heart constantly reaches upward, Thou (comes) on earth with a message, as a dove from above when Darma decayeth, and (speak) the word that is put into Thy mouth, as the light filleth the crescent moon. Let the star of the Divine Light (shine) in Thy heart be reflected in the hearts of Thy Devotees. May the Message of God reach far and wide, illuminating and making the whole humanity as one single brotherhood, and sisterhood, in the parenthood of God. 

Please be seated now. 

Well, in a few minutes (we'll) be parting the ways and coming black to our various abodes and i hope that (you will ) carry in your heart some of the things that we have shared together during these few hours. I hope that it will help you to fulfill the purpose of your life, and to unfurl your being and eventually to obtain illumination. I wish to take this opportunity to thank those 'back room boys and girls', as one says in (the) second world war, who (were) working behind the scenes to make this possible. A lot of dedicated work has been done by people; some of whom I do not even know who they were, but my heart goes out to them in thanks for having made (or) given us this opportunity, a rare opportunity I would say, to be able to share so much beauty that has been communicated to us through the great spiritual traditions of the world and particularly in that synthesis that Pir-o-Murshid, Inayat, Khan made of it, together with a new step that he seems to have made out of this synthesis, announcing the advent of the future, particularly at a time when we are standing at____ the threshold of the new millennium which is definitely going to mark (a) very dramatic quantum leap in the history of humanity. 

I must say that I've been very aware of my sister, Noor a Nissa, who some of you have perhaps not heard of, who gave her life to her ideal in the second world war and was beaten to death by the Nazis in a concentration camp, I must say, it's very - I can't see how I could not think of her every moment, when I can walk in the garden and she was in chains in a cell, and I can eat if I want to and she was given soup of potato peels which would burn her stomach; and just kind of dejection and solitude that is something beyond words. I don't want to end with this note, I just want to say that somehow there was such a validation of her (the) human kind in this heroic act that gives us hope that indeed in the human nature there is the hidden - the hidden - I was going to say hidden treasure - the hidden here, if we 

 End of side 1

I know that when (we are) faced with such beauty, some people are held back by the dark night , and they find it difficult, I think, that when something is too beautiful one has difficulty in believing in it. It's too good to be true, as one says. That is a reaction which causes one to enclose - encapsulate oneself in one's personal self-image and the only way of that is exactly what we have been doing - is to expand and reach beyond the limitation of (free) conditions. In other words, one keeps on turning in circles in one's own despair. So this is the liberating realization. 

So I'd like to (introduce) the song by sister - Noor an Nissa. I would rather sing it without the words. The words are what she made up in 1929 when we, after Murshid's passing, after our Father's passing, I was 10 years old - she was 12, and then we made a visit tp India to visit the tomb of Pir-o-Murshid , and so she was - she invented the song - composed a song (that I think it's what it's called), o I Come to Rest'. __

 I sang this particularly for Nazim, who is writing a play or a - I don't know how to call it - a great work of art - musical - inspired by the being of Noor. 

So now we have a couple who would like to come and receive a - ('h dear) the  organization - yes - what? Is this right? (what?) ordination first, yes. 

Can we have a - a pillow. ( ) (yes, thank you) (you're welcome). What's your name? Subeyta. Subeyta - beautiful name. ( ). Will you make a pledge to serve the message of the unity of all religions? I will. And will you respect the prophets and masters and saints of all the great world religions? I will. And do you wish to affiliate at the alter in the Universal Worship founded by Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan? I do. Well then, will you kneel now?

Towards the one, the perfection of love, harmony, and beauty, the only being , united with all the illuminated souls who form the embodiment of the Master, the Spirit of Guidance. 

In the name of God, in the name of all the prophets, masters and saints, who form the  (special) heirachy (to) the government of the (world); in the name of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, I ordain you, Subeyta, as a Cheraga, as a Cheraga in the Universal Worship, the church of all, and of all churches, that you may spread the message of God and by so doing, serve____ God and humanity. 

Rise Reverend Cheraga. (So I trust you with the scriptures that they meant and the light that they brought.) ( ) to protect you (God).

So you've already been married once, but there's no harm in renewing one's vow's - - the more the better. So just - can you just (whisper to) each other - something that we won't hear, but our hearts are with you. Yes, (these) are one of those moments amongst moments, as the Sufi's say, ( where) (our) hearts are very deeply moved, and perhaps we recognize something of ourselves in you, at this time. May your marriage be golden ('till) if you inspire one another and share whatever are the challenges of your life in loyalty and friendship, and in joy, then your marriage will become sacred. 

'h - yes - well first those that are already born. So first the little pixies, all come along, all of you at the same time right up here. Don't be afraid of Grandpa. That's right, the little bones with the big bones and all kinds. Yeh - OK. ,well, I hope you like light. Do you like light? - like looking into a candle? Do you? I like looking iinto (a)  candle, and actually you have a lot of light in your eyes, (but) perhaps you don't know it, but I can see it. So, I'm going to baptize you, with light - yes, you're a real strong guy, aren't you! How old are you? About eleven? Eleven, yeh that's really great. I remember when I was eleven. So, do you know what it means to baptize? I don't really know myself, actually. But there's a story that - you know St. John in the desert -  he was a real very great being and so people used to come to him and he used to dowse them with water and so they were baptized with water, and so then he said that somebody would come after him who would baptize with fire and spirit, and that was Christ. 

So I - if - you must hold this for me so I'll be placing a little bit of light in front of you - (I) baptize you with light. Look into the light - yeh - baptize you with light. I baptize you with light. Don't lo____ok so serious. ('h but or that's good) That's good. Thank you. Baptize you with light. 'h - you are really fierce. I baptize you with light. 'h, that's nice - yes - I baptize you with light. Baptize you with light, and I baptize you with light. OK., now, have you heard of the ( ) what is the symbol of the Sufi Order - the heart and wings? You've seen that, haven't you, a heart and wings? Well that means that it makes our heart fly, because, you see, that the heart is like a circle and somehow the top and the bottom of the circle have been pulled down by the earth. And so we want to counter that by flying; well that's a symbol of the heart and wings. Now, my Father used to make a heart and wings on my forehead and that of my brother and sisters and there were a lot of children when my Father was there, and so he used to place that heart and wings on the foreheads of the children, just like I did to the - Subeyta, who was ordained in the Universal Worship. So I've got to - if you look at me now - I know it's difficult - so I'll make a little heart, and two wings and a star - 5 pointed star - and a crescent. God bless you. And I'll do the same with you, but you've got too many bangs that I can't reach your forehead. And under those bangs is a lovely forehead - and we'll make a heart and two wings, just like the wings of an eagle, and then a 5 pointed star and a crescent. God bless you./ Thank you - a heart and 2 wings, and then a star and a crescent. God bless you. ( ) a heart, two wings, and then a 5 pointed star and a crescent. And you - a heart, 2 wings, and a 5 pointed star and a crescent. And you - a heart. and 2 wings, and a star - 5 pointed star, and a crescent. (God) bless you. A heart. and 2 wings, and star, and a crescent. A heart and 2 wings, and star, and a crescent. God bless you. 

I forgot to ( ) look up 9 0 OK. Yes, yes - - - - Hu - - - Hu- - - that child is stirring in his/her sleep, and is longing to come out in the world. So, God bless this baby. (I get my ____instructions) from her. 

So, I wonder whether we could sing Halleluiah again - a little faster, in my rhythm. 'h - let's stand up - and perhaps you might hold hands. 

Halleluiah Halleluiah Halleluiah Halleluiah Halleluiah Halleluiah Halleluiah Halleluiah

Hall Le Lu ------- ia----------  Halleluiah Halleluiah Halleluiah Halleluiah

Halleluiah Halleluiah Hallelu___mia Halleluiah Halleluiah Halleluiah Halleluiah Halleluiah 

----Halleluia ----Halleluia ----Halleluiaa ----Halleluia ----Halleluia ----Halleluia ----Halleluia ----Halleluia

Halleluiah Halleluiah Hlleluia Halleluiah (................................................................................................) 3x

So, may God bless you now and may His/Her Spirit quicken you and His/Her Glory lift up you soul. God Bless You now. Thank you. 



FEB 28, 1997		Tape 01

...Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan, who said, "One develops the ability to raise one's consciousness to the higher spheres at the command of one's will". So it's something that one trains oneself to do. And you can't expect to do it right away. But keeping on doing it over and over again you develop the ability to raise your consciousness above earthly conditions, above your earthly identity, and your personal vantage point. In the course of these three days we're going to examine many different attitudes towards self image, towards our selves, towards our real self, and towards the situations around us, our relationships with people, and in dealing with our problems. Of course in some cases we have to keep the lines of communication open between the earthly conditions and ourselves. But for the purpose of attuning ourselves, then we will need to make a definite break, a definite hiatus between the earthly perspective and the divine perspective. 

Now there is no way of doing it through our personal will, by dent of our personal will. It's a matter of attunement just as as a violinist or cellist or harpsichordist will attune themselves to a certain pitch. And that's a word that Pir o Murshid uses is the pitch. So, as I say, we can't do it out of our own will. 

Therefore we need some kind of a support system. And that is thinking of let's say a role model. And as you know in our Sufi perspective, our teachers are the prophets, saints, and masters of all religions. There is of course a hierarchy in the transmission. So we have our personal teacher. But there is as I say a hierarchy which reaches into a very high levels of attunement.

There are two steps. The first one is representing...actually there are three steps. The first one is representing to oneself a prophet or master or saint such as they have been described in the chronicles of history. And the other is getting into the consciousness of those beings. So that is really shifting one's consciousness and transferring one's consciousness into those beings. So that one imagines what it's like to be that being. Then I think the third one is our ability to represent to ourselves an anonymous teacher of our own making who really represents a kind of projection of how we would imagine our ideal teacher to be. And of course it leads in an infinite regress towards what Pir o Murshid calls God consciousness. Which is of course is at the limit of our outreach. 

So the image of the teacher is a support system. As I say, it could be a master, saint, or prophet of a great world religion. It's a support system. But any dependence upon that support system would stand in the way of really allowing the impact of their being to lift our consciousness. And that is why at some point one needs to destroy the idol. You find that in every religion, Hindus, Buddhism, I don't know about Zoroastrianism, but Judaism, Islam. The crucifixion of Christ was of course the destruction of the idol.

Then the idol is replaced by tasawwir. Tasawwir means the picture. So one imagines a picture of a teacher. And you know in the ashrams we have the picture of the guru on the table and a candle and so on. We never do that in the Sufi order. And please I ask you not to do so because Pir o Murshid would be very offended by having that kind of, observing that kind of idolatry. It's true that a picture is a stepping stone. But one has to reach beyond that stepping stone. And the only way to do it is really to reverse one's consciousness and try to imagine what it would be like to be that teacher. Of course there is no way one could ever do it. But one tries to. As a consequence one is lifted into the attunement, by the miracle of resonance one is lifted into the attunement of the master or prophet or saint. In India the, most of the rishis whom I have met were munies, that is didn't speak. And I must say that the effect of these beings on me was much stronger that those with whom I was able to converse. In a public lectures of course we can't do that except at certain moments because people are so used to using our minds. And of course one has to correct one's faulty thinking. But yes, in our classes, attunement is I would say priority one. 

So there are skills. The skill is, as I say, to earmark a prophet or master or saint of one's choice. Today we will be considering several of them regardless of whatever is your particular choice so that one has the ability to extend one's, the compass of one's consciousness into a larger pool of resourcefulness. But when you are doing the practice yourself, it is better for example to select three masters, saints, or prophets. We are working for the message of unity of our time. It would be advisable to choose a master, saint or prophet from different religions. Then of course in addition to that, we come down the hierarchy. Some of the Rajahs or Pir o Murshids of the various Sufi orders, then to Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan. That's how the transmission comes down to us. 

Now what I'm suggesting now is something rather novel. And that is to try to ascribe, of course we ascribe qualities to these teachers. In fact what happens is that by thinking of a being there is a kind of mirroring effect that takes place, one is able to discover potentialities latent in one's being that are displayed in the being in the prophet master or saint one is concentrating upon. And consequently it has the effect of awakening, or arousing those latent qualities. And there is no way in which we can develop qualities or even enhance qualities simply by our will or even by our concentration which we often do in repeating wasifas. That's not the way it happens. The only way it can happens, let's say the practical way is by the leverage of the consciousness that one gains by the prophet, master or saint.

So what I suggest doing this morning is to ascribe a or more quality, qualities to the prophets that we are going to call into our minds and hearts and souls. There is something arbitrary about that choice. But it will help us to focus. And also I, we're going to use a different language to our conventional language, and that is the language of the wasifas. And because somehow we are able to attach a significance to these words which we do not attach to the words in our conventional language. 

So I suggest starting with the representation of Shiva. Now traditionally he is represented by sitting in a very high climate in the vastness, actually at the top of Mt. Kilos on a tiger skin with a cobra around his neck and a trident in his hands. And he is, he typifies our propensity to develop master over outer conditions, the furtive mind, disturbing thoughts, and random consciousness, including personal emotion of pain,or horror, or dismay, or joy, or euphoria, ecstasy. The rishis harden their bodies by putting up with the most stressful conditions imaginable, extreme heat, extreme cold without protection, hunger, fasting, extreme tiredness, keeping awake through the night, controlling their heart beat and all bodily functions, mental functions. The joy, maybe the euphoria that it gives is of course beyond description. But you know that when you had to discipline yourself to give up something that you very much wanted to to for the sake of your ideal, a kind of euphoric condition overtakes you and carries you into high dimensions as compared with permissiveness and slovenliness and randomness. 

So the wazifa for that is Ya Wali. And one could add Ya Qadir. Wali means mastery. And Qadir means the release of a kind of divine power. That is that you thought that you were controlling things. And eventually you realize that you are giving vent to a dimension of your being that is super personal and therefore could be ascribed to the divine power. 

I want to point out that every quality has it's shadow. And it's because of our fear of slipping into that shadow that we have difficult in developing that quality. The shadow of mastery of course would be ruthlessness, despotism. And that is if one isolates oneself in one's self image from the totality of one's being which is coextensive with the Universe and therefore with what we mean by God. As long as one maintains that connection, then one is exercising what one calls divine power and not despotic personal will which is called being on a power trip. 

OK Now so having started representing to ourselves the traditional representation of, picturing of Shiva, let us try and get into the consciousness of a being who has conquered his/her tendencies by putting up with the most incredible discomfort and stress. And loneliness. Try to imagine what it is like to have segregated oneself from the world to the extent of living alone in a cave in a high mountains having not seen another human being for ten or twelve years. If you could get into the consciousness of such a being, you will be discovering a propensity which is hidden within you, but we never exercise to that extent. But it will help you, me, help us to awaken to that faculty and contribute towards the enrichment of our personality. But that is not our purpose to develop our personality. Our  purpose is to fulfill the purpose of our lives which is beyond our personal purpose. Our  personal purpose can be aligned with it which Pir o Murshid calls the divine purpose. 

So if we shunt our consciousness into the consciousness of that being, and try to experience how he felt, feels, then we would realize that he has a feeling of having overcome personal conditions. And consequently his consciousness is raised beyond the existential perspective, and particularly is a kind of emotional detachment to the worldly conditions. And consequently is able to have an overview of the physical world, existential conditions and even heavenly conditions. Imagine that one were to fly, and not just beyond the the planet, but beyond the solar system and beyond the galaxy and beyond and beyond the existential universe. Now that is a very imperfect simile. It has nothing to do with space. It has to do with dimensions of reality. The important thing is the pitch of consciousness. I don't know whether you can say pitch of consciousness, the pitch of one's soulness. Just like reaching to the harmonics of sound and pitching higher and higher.

Now let us get attuned to the being of Buddha. We all entertain some kind of a picture of Buddha whether it is based upon the traditional representations of him. It could be Buddha sitting cross legged. It could be walking amongst his disciples with similar dress than the monks around him so that one could only recognize the difference by the incredible radiance of his being and the tremendous peace that surrounds him and the light of his eyes. And his deep concern for beings in their suffering. He followed a very similar path. His formation was that of a sanyasin, so he showed contempt for the world. Looked upon it as conditions which deter one from one's highest aspiration. One's dependence upon let's say the goodies that the world offers. So he discarded his wealth and position, considered them of absolutely no value. To such an extent that the only thing that was meaningful to him was a state of freeing oneself from conditioning so that one may awaken from the personal perspective. And as a consequence attain illumination. So here is a radical break from the kind of compromise in which we find ourselves in our lives, having to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. So... tape turns

So, absolute one pointedness, determination. Going through the most I would say painful asceticism renunciation, to the extent that he crawled on all fours to get to the water. Covered with vermin and weakened to such a point to which he was like a skeleton. He found that, just those kind of hardships did not make for illumination. But they certainly marked his determination to make a break from the commonplace way of life. Then one sees him, actually he made retreats in a cave. It was only later on that he sat under the Bodhi tree for a period that we don't know. It may have been forty days without eating, also without sleeping. IN those days of course the place was infested with wild animals and venomous snakes and insects and so on, hornets. And there were storms. And here he sat keeping to his vow undeterred, unrelentingly. He passed through a process which he has described and therefore Herman Hesse's criticism in the words of Sidhartha were not totally justified because he not only gave the doctrine, but he did show how one can attain, what are the steps leading to illumination. 

Toward the end he describes, well the breakthrough is when consciousness is carried beyond the limits of the personal self, the outreach let's say, the personal vantage point. Consciousness has been carried beyond the personal vantage point. And therefore has become cosmic. That's the first thing that you, the experience if you shift your consciousness into the consciousness of Buddha sitting under the tree if you like. First of all he is protecting himself from the environment by surrounding himself with a zone of silence. Like sitting in a temple. But the temple is not made of walls but made of his own sense of boundary between the sacred and the profane. And so it is detachment that constitutes that boundary. And the consequence is a sense of great serenity, peace untrammeled by the disturbance of what we call now the rat race of the world. Those are the conditions that favor the expansion of consciousness beyond the limits of what we think of as ourselves. I remember Pir o Murshid saying, he said higher consciousness is reached by finding conditions that are favorable to being peaceful and silent and aloof. So it is true that it is difficult as it is extremely challenging in the middle of the world. So it is certainly more realistic to find that attunement in silence. And not just of the body, but the silence of the mind, the silence of emotions and even the silence of consciousness.

Now under these favorable conditions, I don't mean just the physical environmental conditions, but that attunement of where he is, find some protection and also is able to reach out. So it's a very other, it's surprising. It's like a diode. 'n the one hand energy can flow out from inside, but can't flow inside from outside. So it is these conditions that consciousness can be raised so it does not only extend. Imagine that you were sitting there as I've done myself sitting under the Bodhi tree throughout the night, meditating and trying to get into the consciousness of Buddha. You have sense of a tremendous expanse, starting with space but eventually an expansion of consciousness, a sense of immensity, and realize how poor our normal purview is when we identify with our personal self, and depressing as a matter of fact. 

So it is thanks to these conditions that consciousness is able to rise, to shift it's pitch from one level to another. Of course there is no way of describing them in our ordinary language. But he does make an attempt when he says, "Beyond existence, beyond non-existence, beyond consciousness, beyond non-consciousness, beyond consciousness and unconsciousness". What is missing is beyond consciousness and unconsciousness until he reaches into the ultimate freedom which is overcoming determinism. 

So now try to get into his consciousness and see how one can monitor one's consciousness into perceiving the physical world, that's where most people are at. And then if you mask that perspective. And you can't do it with your will but only by detachment. In India what one calls vairagya which means indifference. And in which whatever we perceive in existence is a result, is an expression, is a secondary subsidiary. The consequence is that of course consciousness is only, as he said himself, consciousness like a a flame needs a log of wood. And of course if there is no log of wood then there is no more flame. Consciousness depends upon its objects and a few empty, consciousness of its content, of its object becomes its content. And bereft of support consciousness peters out into what Pir o Murshid calls intelligence and what Buddha calls beyond consciousness. And then beyond existence and non-existence. It's difficult enough to imagine what it means beyond existence. But of course there is a still further level. 

So these are guidelines that are only meaningful to those who have reached that point when it acts as a beacon in the wilderness. So there is no point in simply presenting the theory of it. But these ideas sometimes act as a trigger that may suddenly unleash a flash of realization that one can't capture and consolidate. That's why the Upanishad says (" "), that is it passes before you have been able to be aware of it. If you try to recapture it of course then you distorting it and simplifying it. It becomes an autopsy. 

But could you just experience, try to feel that sense of freedom. It's not mastery as in yoga. It's a very clear sense of the way in which we allow ourselves to be conditioned. And giving vent to our need for freedom which represents a very deep longing and seems to go counter to involvement in life. Unless as one says in Sufism one tries to introduce freedom in involvement. But in this case maybe one needs to at first find freedom and then see how it can work in one's involvement. And it's not freedom of what one thinks one wants. That is one's personal identity. In fact it is ultimately freedom from one's identity, from one's personal identity which is conditioning. 

So getting into the consciousness of Buddha at that point when he said, "I have overcome conditioning", or he calls it , "the freedom of determinism". But if you have had a taste of Buddha's attunement, it will awaken your need for freedom which is apparently withheld by commitments in life, our responsibility. So that is the only way to meet that problem, I think is to be found in Sufism. Buddha shows the way of the ascetic. Buddha describes the way of the ascetic and the steps leading to freedom.

If you think of Zoroaster, the transmission describes Zoroaster as a magus, the singular of the magi, a kingly luminous being who reflects that whole Mazdain tradition that came before Zoroastrianism. And which always opens, let's say, dissolves the veil between the earthly plane and the celestial planes which are always described as planes of light. 

So Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism particularly is a path of light which is I think a real criterion in our commitment. That's what we are seeking. And which of course overcomes darkness and ambiguity and manipulation, all those, and greed. All those things that lurk in the dark. That is due to instead of living a flattened universe confined to this reality that we call the existential world, always being aware of the beingness of what we call matter. Water is not just H2' that we pour out of our faucet in our kitchen or bathe in in a river. But it's a body of a being. (Hadi Sura, Hadi Hita). And we are privileged to be able to participate in the gift of her being providing that we respect her instead of polluting her like we've been doing. And she's even prepared to recycle herself. But we are overstretching that good will. So it's a whole different way of looking at life. Asking permission of Hadi Sura to bathe in the river or in the bath tub. That is the permission to pollute her purity. Of course her purity remains unscathed within its environment. 

And so with the earth which is the body, or let's say the crystallization of that arch angel that is Zamiat and which we are manhandling and abusing and polluting of course. And of course respect for the sanctity of animals and the spiritual status of all beings instead of judging things on the assessment of their personality. Entering into resonance with the real being hidden behind that appearance, that formation which is their personality. 

So in the case of Buddha, I for got to say the wazifa would be Ya Wahid. And eventually Ya Samad, which means eternity. In the case of Zoroaster it is Ya Nur and Ya Quddus.

So unfortunately we have to end here. But I think that we have to continue when we start again at 9 o'clock. I hope this will also give you a new outlook on the wasifas, seeing them as being concepts, abstractions of the mind, constructs of the mind. They become real when you see them in a being. And the attunement of a being spills over so that it is passed from one being to another like the Olympic plane.

So God bless you. Tape ends.

FEB 28, 1997		Tape 02

Yes, my question to you is would you like us to continue what we started this morning or if there is something else that you would prefer that we...and I'm here for you. Silent dialogue? So I suppose maybe it's a vote of confidence. Perhaps you noticed that what I was doing was that instead theorizing on the wasifas and trying to explain them, to make them much more real by seeing how they are present in beings who represent our projections of what we could never venture to expect to ever be, but represent however targets on the path, luring us further and further. 

So far we have tried to get in touch with the consciousness of beings who are very much on the ascetic line, except in the case of Zoroaster. I think it's important at this stage not to lose our way and to be very clear what our objectives are in our day in age. Because these were the exploration of beings in no man's land of the human mind, the far reaches which does not take into account, or does not take sufficiently into account our concerns about being present in everyday life and assuming our responsibilities. There is a kind of contempt for the world, as I said. And a kind of detachment which is, well seems to be the opposite of involvement and love, unconditional love. 

In my estimation, it's helpful to reach some, awaken in life having first awakened beyond life, in other words reach samadhi first before awakening in life. But that's my personal opinion. And there may be, there may be those who follow the opposite way. But there is no doubt that Pir o Murshids teaching is awakening in life. So it's not the way of the ascetic. But he himself did do his innings in the way of the ascetic and was in a state of samadhi for days in England in the new forest. 

So the beauty is that in our perspective in what one might call the new Sufism. I ought not to use the word new Sufism. But we embrace all the masters and saints and prophets. So we have a tremendous pool of resources to inspire us on our path. 

What we're doing here is simply to, first of all to rededicate ourselves. That's what we did earlier.this morning. And then to attune ourselves. So if you tuning your violin or your cello or your harpsichord, you're not playing it, you're tuning it. So that's what we're doing. Then tomorrow we'll be looking at the way that we can apply the realization that we have attained and how we have attained that realization, how we can apply it to everyday problems. And how our practices fit into that. So today we might simply concentrate on attuning ourselves. 

So realization is a function of our, could we say emotional attunement. Rather than thinking that you can reach realization by wanting to, by seeking it. That you can actually acquire it and put it into your pocket. It doesn't work that way. And that's probably the reason why in Yoga, if you've studied that yoga sutras of Partengeli, you'll find that after having cleared the miss assessments of the mind games and the mixed up emotions that we get entangled into, and also having overcome assuming that the physical world is the only reality. Then we are on the way to samadhi. But the step that opens up the doors to samadhi is what they call Ananda nogata which is a state of attunement and a very high attunement. I don't think there is any other way. 

So we are proceeding rather randomly from trying to get into the attunement of a teacher and then another, one prophet or master or saint. I could be a woman of course. It doesn't have to be a man. So far it's been a man. 

So a being who plays a very important part especially in the religious thinking of the West is Abraham. So let's try once more to portray him according to the descriptions that have come across the chronicles of history. One imagines him to be almost like a giant or a man, fatherly or grandfatherly figure. Towering personality whom one could not not follow. Who is so imperative in his authority that one inevitably feels like, " This is what I need to follow in my life". 

There is no point in recounting all the stories that you probably already know in the 'ld Testament. But we have this picture of the authority comes from above in a kind of hierarchical grading because he is speaking in the name of God, or he claims to speak in the name of God. 

The reason why he claims to do that is because he too has lived or lives in the dessert. I don't know whether you know what it is to wander in the dessert. It is a very different experience to living in the urban areas. For one thing the silence is overwhelming. And the loneliness. And you feel that you're in contact with an invisible reality that you do not even try to see because it's so present that it speaks for itself. But it's true that you do hear the sound of the wind. It may be just a flutter. But it can be even violent. And it seems to be speaking to you. And of course when you realize, as we do now, that everything is related, so that this sound is saying something which has a cosmic significance. Of course we interpret it. In that special condition one finds oneself in the dessert, one feels that interpretation is not simply one's personal vantage point. 

There is something cosmic in it. Well I suppose it is similar to what Buddha experienced, that sense of immensity. It's true. But the message seems to be for one's whole community, or for humanity rather than a personal message. Or even rather than indication of how one can lift one's consciousness into other levels. Let's say instead of going from down to up, it descends from up to down. Which reminds me incidentally of, when I look at pictures of Pir o Murshid, he seems to be meditating downwards instead of upwards. So it's the opposite of samadhi. It comes out of a very great sense of responsibility for one's community, for one's fellow beings. A sense of God as a reality incorporated in humanity instead of contempt for the world, and detachment, and cloistering oneself away. So it has a very social import. 

Consequently one could describe that as the divine guidance. You see that very strong in Pir o Murshid's teaching. His teaching is obviously in the prophetic line. Perhaps you know that Pir o Murshid distinguishes between the line of the prophets, the line of the masters and the line of the saints. And that is in line with the Sufi transmission. In Arabic it is translated by Alif seen mim, that means ASM. M for the prophet line of Mohammed, A for Hazarat Ali who represents the line of masters, Vilayat. And S for Sarman Fasi who represents the saintly, sainthood, saintliness. So there you have the prophets, masters, and saints. 

So Abraham is very much the prototype of the prophet. And of course you find the same thing in Moses and most of the prophets of Israel. But you notice that they simply felt like the mouthpiece of the divine guidance. They never claimed to speak out of their own authority but always as an ambassador of the one and only being. So there is a very great sense of the oneness of God overriding the multiplicity, which you find later on in La illaha illala, the oneness. And there is no claim of being an incarnation of God. That's an Avatar as you find in Hinduism. You don't find it in Buddhism. So you see that this whole way of thinking and feeling and realizing has its influence in the personality of the teacher, in this case the prophet.

Now the sense that people need guidance and will only follow the guidance of someone who really impersonates the authority which is derived from the divine authority. So the wazifa for that is Qaher, the divine authority. And of course you see what happens when that authority is discarded. Of course people want to have their personal freedom, but it can lead to chaos and disruption and a lot of suffering and so on for selfish aims. So it is the authority which curbs the selfishness of people which is always at the expense of other people. A principle of orderliness. And that's the whole personality of Abraham. It typifies that authority that comes from, or of the orderliness that comes from authority. 

The same applies to Moses who then is dynamic instead of static. He is a pioneer and shows people, he opens the door to his people. And to a totally different environment to the one in which they were imprisoned in Egypt. So it is somewhat of the same nature as Abraham. Except that he is moving forward whereas Abraham is stationary, not that stationary because in those days of course the population were shepherds, nomads. And they didn't live in houses. They lived in tents. 

The important thing is to see the relationship between Abraham and Melchizedek. Because the kind of authority of Abraham is secular in comparison with the authority of Melchizedek which represents the ecclesia, the church, religion. Now he was a high priest. And no doubt he sacrificed at the alter in Jerusalem which is probably the stone which is now hosed in the dome of the rock, and where he was supposed to, where the sacrifices took place. And I believe that he lived in that cave at the top of the Mount of 'lives in which I made a retreat once whereas most people were living in tents. So just to picture, if you could picture the being of Melchizedek as being very holy. One imagines a very high priest. The whole personality becomes sacred, totally dedicated to the sacred attunement. 

So his authority is very different from that of Abraham. And as a matter of fact has prescellence. Prescellence is the superlative of excellence. And so predominates. And consequently he is the one who crowns Abraham as king and anoints him. And that is a ceremony in which there is a sacrament of bread and wine which is then carried in the Catholic Mass. So here the religious attunement is brought down to the masses through a sacred ceremony in which they participate. 

But for the masses it's a sacrifice of sheep on the alter and it becomes kosher. So that's an aspect of a whole picture untoward, a little painful. There is some blood, some horror in the killing. It's recognizing something which is written in our existential condition and is refined in the more advanced human beings. That is that animals cannot survive without sacrificing others, or sacrificing plants. We can't even without sacrificing plants. So there is a whole chain there of, ecological chain, which involves pain. And that pain becomes very intense of course in the human drama. The shedding of blood, victimizing. 

Somehow it's a reminder of that dark shadow that seems to be lurking always in the depths unless we are able to transmute it. And that's the whole thing about the mass, it's transmuting, well what was originally the blood sacrifice into a higher level of transmutation. Let's say the renunciation of some of the things that we want for our ideal. There is a process there. And that process is embodied in the Kabbala, the Siforot. Siforotic tree. Tiforeth represents the alter in the temple and passage from the human to the divine and that passage is not by a sacrifice. That's what we call fana in Sufism. So what it amounts to is the readiness to give up something for something that we value more. 

So if you can see the cooperation between these two powers, the secular and the sacred, both vying, not one without the other, not the other without the other.\. Interdependence between the two. So that the divine guidance, application of the divine guidance is insured in the secular government. But of course that couldn't last because the successes were not up to the standard of Abraham. So then Abraham represents a prototype of what government should be. And of course he had to lay down the law and give prescriptions to people which were meaningful at that time. But they are not necessarily meaningful to people now days. Some of them are and some of them are not. So that one is insuring the steering of the human destiny is on course by maintaining contact with let's say one's higher intuition of the divine guidance. And if a person is not up to doing that in an authentic way and slipping into their own power trip, then you have all the kind of deterioration that has developed in the forms of governments and political parties and the mess in which we find ourselves today. 

So if you can just feel the difference. Well if you get into the consciousness of Abraham first then afterwards Melchizedek, and then the two together. So if you get into the consciousness of Abraham, you'll discover in you and arouse in you an impending propensity for authority. And you see that it is linked with discipline. So which is quite the opposite of playing it by ear, permissiveness, slovenliness, untidiness, unruliness, sloppiness. In scientific terms that's called entropy. Like for example a library in which you don't put the books back. So it's slipping from order into disorder. And then you have to do work to put them back. So that's overcoming slipping on the slope of entropy by what is called negentropy. 

There are certain qualities that are within you. And when you find yourself in resonance a being that has that quality, it awakens that in you. And the curious thing is that this authority is in some way derived from the sacredness. The sacred is of course quite impossible to define, something one feels, for example, in a church, or in a temple, a synagogue, in a mosque. One feels the need to protect this very fragile attunement in one's being form the sacrilege of profanity, lack of respect for the dignity of the human being, and also animals of course and plants. And of course all this covetousness and concupiscence and defilement and power trips and manipulation developed in those people who have lost contact with that sacred element at the core of their being. So it's an attunement. And you can see that attunement, in order to honor and preserve that attunement, you need to express it in the form of orderliness, discipline, authority, patronage.

So the word that is closest to sacredness is Quddus. So we have Quddus / Qaher. That's a wonderful combination, the way that the authority comes from your sacredness which commands respect. People only follow someone they respect. And that of course starts with self respect. 

It's a sense of carrying something sacred in one's being. Perhaps you have seen people in a Catholic Church having Communion. And when they go back to their seat, they have the sense of carrying within them something sacred. It's the support system of course. It's the host. But that is because physically they are imbibing that you see. So they are carrying it in themselves. It's strange how that nitty gritty, rather trite experience, is so significant so that people feel that they are carrying something sacred in their being that they need to protect. Of course we find that in Christ, of course in the prophets. 

In Buddha one feels the kind of nobility. He says, your realization results in your behaving with dignity. So nobility is the inevitable consequence of your higher realization. So that word is Majid, nobility. Also it's translated by majesty. You'll find it in Buddha. 

Melchizedek it's holiness which is very close to nobility but it's not the same. It's a kind of cleanliness. In fact we'll be encountering it later on when we try and get into the consciousness of the Virgin Mary because she is, really she typifies the immaculate condition of the core of our being which cannot be tarnished by the impression upon it, as a mirror, as Pir o Murshid said. It's the same thing somehow. 

It's also a kind of a rather dignified rhythm instead of the chaotic rushing about, scattered thoughts and conflicting intentions and crisis situations in which one gets entangled. It's very strong, very sort of centered. There is a word, another wazifa. But I think it's perhaps more appropriate for Mohammed who is very much in the same prophetic line. In fact it's the same religion that's been carried further by Mohammed. Whereas Christianity is, well the Sufi consider Christianity as the way of the saints, not the way of the prophets. Turn the other cheek, the way of the saint. 

OK I'm anticipating a little bit on what we're going to do. If you've got that sense of the relationship between the sacredness in you and the authority, the nobility, the majesty, then it has awaken something in you which you couldn't awaken just by trying to. If one tried to, it would just become a power trip. 

Well now let us just try to represent to ourselves Christ. Jesus, the historic Jesus. Then the cosmic Christ, the two dimensions of the same person. But the Cosmic Christ is beyond time and space and becoming. So Christ who represents a certain development of the Jewish religion. Whilst the only way to bring about something new is to be a rebel and he was a rebel. There is no point in my recounting the stories of the three wise men and the shepherds and the lights. Now days the astronomers have been able to ascertain that there was a comet that was moving in the sky at that time. But I think that the important thing is that he did his training amongst the Essenes, spiritual training. And the Essenes represented a kind of underground...tape turns

... found in the Koran. And as you know the early, even amongst the Zoroastrians there was the expectation of the (Saoshen), the savior, a kind of a cathology which was always present which was a kind of lure towards the future, moving us forward. 

So the Essene order was very structured as any order, with a hierarchy of grades, initiatic grades. Some people were supposed to predominate over other people by their grade. The older people had precedence over the younger people and so on. And even some of the rules were rather incongruous. If people were somehow dishabilitated. For example, had some kind of physical impediment, they couldn't be in the order. If they had for example an amputated leg or an eye that was operated, then they couldn't be a member of the order. So there were some limitations of that order. But, as I say, it carried a very solid authentic tradition that had developed amongst the Zoroastrians in Iran, and that carried some of the teachings of Pythagoras. So from Egypt you see. 

So at a certain time there must have been some kind of revolution within the Essene order because St. John of the Cross was also in the Essene order recognized that Jesus was the master that they were awaiting. And Jesus was a rebel, wouldn't conform himself to the rules of the order as any strong person is in the Sufi Order. So for example, Jesus wears, there was a seniority status. Jesus said, "The last will be the first and the first will be last". So he was countering the order of that, the rules of that order. And if he had stayed as the head of that order, his world mission would have never happened. So you see that the message can never reach the world if it's confined to the Sufi Order. It's a school, a springboard. 

So they were both outcasts of the Essene order. I don't know which one was the first. St. John the Baptist was, well it was very difficult to survive because you couldn't have asylum in any home if you'd been cast out of the Essene order. So he had to live on locusts or whatever he found in the dessert. 

And so in that alienation and loneliness, he developed great inner magnetism. Exercising a great attraction for people who were drawn by his being. They didn't know what it was. And then he would baptize them in water which was like marking a definite step. That's what initiation is, a definite step, commitment towards following one's spiritual ideal. But as far as we know it wasn't followed by a teaching. Maybe it was. It's not clearly indicated. 

I think that some of the disciples of St. John the Baptist accused Christ of not respecting the Jewish holidays, celebrating marriage when people were supposed to be fasting, things like that. I don't know the details. And as you know, St. John announced that he wasn't even worthy of tying the laces of the shoes of the one who was coming after him who would baptize by fire and spirit. So that's a much more drastic purification than the baptism of the font. Purification which takes away some of the more superficial dirt from one's body. But purification by fire, that's much more drastic. That's the kind of thing that happens to Azia though it wasn't in the tradition of Azia. 

Well these are just, perhaps you know all these stories. It's just to bring his being a little more, perhaps more present now. Now his teaching is totally unconventional and I would say democratic. Instead of sitting on the top of Mt. Kilos, having become an Olympic hero, overcoming the body and mind and so on, he washes the feet of his disciples. And he goes and sits in the taverns with the drunkards. And he even, well at least he honors a prostitute. And he says, "Who will throw the first stone?" So he is very challenging. Provocative. For example he went as far as to say,"I could destroy the temple and build it again". Now if you said that in Paris. If you say to the police, "I could destroy Notre Dame and build it again", the police would take you and put you in manacles. 

Then he talked words that didn't quite make sense to people like Judas for example, because people were suffering from the rule of the Roman Empire. Just imagine like France under the Nazis. So it was a rule of iron. However it was possible that they were careful not to violate what was holy for the Jews, but still there was a rebellion. And Judas was part of that rebellion. When people asked Christ, "Well you're talking about this kingdom of heaven. Should we go along with the rules imposed by the Romans? We have to pay a tax". And he said,"Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and God what belongs to God". Whereas Buddha discarded Caesar altogether. That's not a historical metaphor, a mixed metaphor. 

Instead of saying, instead of introducing another kingdom which would have been challenging to the secular kingdom of the Jews and of course of the Roman Empire, he said of his disciples, "They are in the world but not of the world". That's something new. The sanyasins are not of the world nor are the ascetics. 

Now he is introducing something. The prophetic mission in Israel was bringing the law, the guidance to the people. But Christ wanted to carry that further and really bring into life the way of the sacredness that he ascribed to the way of God. And that's why the Muslims call it the way saints rather than the way of the masters. Because he didn't give prescriptions, you've got to pray 5 times a day or you've got to go to hadj. He didn't say you'd be cursed if you didn't go to mass. That came later. 

So if you can really get into the consciousness of this being. How could we? It's beyond what you could ever do but we start by the image, the picture, the idol of course. You've seen the shroud of Turin. And you know that it's been examined over and over again. And there is a lot of controversy about it. The Vatican really stepped into it by declaring that it was a fake. It's a rather rash decision involving the whole Catholic Church when we know that scientific theories always disprove the previous one. So that you can't rely on carbon 22 or whatever it is. But is your gut feeling when you look at that picture? Of course it's Christ. There is no question about it. It's not the blue eyed blond young man presented as Christ by a lot of romantic pictures. It's a very strong being. It's a super being. The dimension of that being is beyond the normal human frame if you look into it deeply. It's not the meek kindly Jesus. It's only if you are strong that you can be compassionate. I'm sure that you've all seen that picture. See how that picture leads you into that which transpires behind that which appears. 

In fact if it's photographed with ultraviolet then it looks different again. And then that other dimension that is beyond form. So that form leads to the non form. That's what the Sufi call Tawwil. Following the pug marks of the bear until you get closer to the bear, until you intercept the bear. It's a journey of the mind. It's not discarding the picture. It's not destroying the idol. It's using the picture as a springboard. And perhaps in you mind transmuting the form so that it becomes less of a profile and more of a, like the corona of Kirlian photography, or the photographs of Walter Chappell. And reaching beyond that form into diaphanous light, translucid, gossamer. And even beyond that when there is no form, getting into the attunement of Gethsemane and asking people to be with him. And as you know, they slept. Just like when that Murshid Hafiz. They were all sleeping. There was only one who responded. It was like that. Try to think that Christ is still calling. He is inviting you to get into his consciousness. Instead of the historical fact, this is the real thing. 

And now for his ultimate message which has been articulated in the words,"Blessed are the poor in spirit", which was wrongly translated as reported by Shirake who has looked into the original text. And what it really means,"Be of good cheer those of you who are forlorn in life". So his message was for those who are floundering in life, for the poor, for the suffering, for the dejected. And that includes that (paramite) in ourselves where we feel dejected or rejected, in our very vulnerable self esteem. That was his message. 

Be of good cheer. Now what he meant to say there was said by Pir o Murshid many centuries later and that is that defeat can aver itself to be a victory. And a victory can aver itself to be a defeat. It shows how our assessment of our problems is totally unreliable and can cause a lot of dismay and sense of failure and denigration of our person. That's what he is addressing. 

And he is proving it at the very limit between life and death. Because that last scene, called the crucifixion, was a terrible fiasco. His disciples didn't have the courage to affirm that they were his disciples. Just like one would be afraid to say that one was in the Resistance if a Nazi were to interrogate one. They were scared of the violence of the Romans. That was the population who had cheered him on the Mount of 'lives. When they saw him in such a, well the superficial nature of people's loyalty when they saw him on the cross, they said," Ha, he said he could give us life eternal. He talked about life eternal. He talked about the kingdom of God and miracles. Well let's see if he can save himself". And what did he say" "Why hast thou abandoned me?" They said "You see, it was a hoax". 

That fiasco turned out to be one of the greatest victories the world has ever known. Because what seemed to be a crucifixion turned out to be a coronation. But one would have to have eyes to see it. Now perhaps you know that it could be looked at the other way around. It could be like God saying to the people, "Why have you abandoned me?" There is always to sides. 

So you see the whole human drama is right there. That's why it's been so significant for generations of millions of human beings. It seems to be like an exemplification of all the soul searchings and tribulations of humans and their little problems. That's why the message of Christ is cosmic. It's not just a personal life but it has cosmic implications, a cosmic context. So this is another aspect of Christ than we have pinpointed so far. 

So see if you can now do that same thing, not starting with a picture, but finding something in yourself which is evoked by Christ and lived out by Christ in his personal journey, and which is really, it really resonates with what's happening in you. 

And of course you can see in yourself the way that, let's put this way, that the divine authority is usurped by what one calls the powers that be who are self appointed judges of your conscience in what I call the institutionalization of spirituality which is religion. Now you can see that the authenticity in your being suffocates under that constraint of this effort to institutionalize what is the real spiritual experience and attunement. 

This was carried further in the case of Al Hallaj. It was one of the clearest examples of the way that the institutionalization of Islam couldn't make any sense of the deep realization that Al Hallaj came to. And it was Al Hazali who said, "When there is a stupid judge in the court, there is a victim on the cross". 

So just look at your life in the world now. The semblance of justice and the miscarriage of justice and the misjudgment of people. And the authority of people that is suppressing you until you feel terrible pangs of conscience. 

Just imagine what happened with Joan of Arc for example. Faced with the authority of the church. She had this very deep feeling that her inspiration was real. And yet it was very difficult. She was a pedant young girl. There were these learned people and they must know. So there was doubt and at the same time that doubt was not strong enough to suppress the very deep sense of the authenticity of her very deep intuition. Then there was a moment when she relented. Then she came back again. And at that moment they tortured her. I see that happening in the world. Not only amongst the Nazis but it happens throughout the world today and has happened throughout history. 

So you see Christ is representing the downtrodden the suppressed by the secular authority that keep on taking over of course, any institution. Maybe the message of Christ reaches us in our adhesion to what our conscience is telling us instead of the prescriptions of people who try to impose their will upon us. Follow your conscience, what seems right for you. 

But that's where our quest for freedom is leading us in our day in age. Nobody can tell you what you must do or can't do except in as much as it might damage other people. And nobody can make you what you're not or take away what you are. 

And that applies to initiations in the Sufi Order. It doesn't mean that because you've been recognized in a high initiation that you're a VIP. It's the reality of your being that counts, where you are in your realization. So you see the danger of institutionalization of spirituality. We have to bear that in mind, we have been trying to observe that in the Sufi Order but there is always that tendency to fall back into rules and regulations and all the trappings of structure. If you don't have a structure, then people don't know how to deal with things. 'n the other hand you have to have structure. So that's a problem. Perhaps you know that Pir o Murshid described the Sufi Order, no the Message as the message of spiritual freedom. So I think we have to have a break for half and hour. It's five minutes early. I think it would be good if we could start at ten to eleven. God Bless Tape Ends.

FEB 28, 1997		Tape 03

Yes. If you want to keep your attunement high, then it is helpful if you are surrounded with an environment, that is conducive to, that is in sync actually with that attunement. So one can't always do that. It just depends upon one's living every day situation. It is very difficult to maintain a very high attunement when one is exposed to the vulgarity and the grossness and selfishness and violence and chaos of what is generally ascribed to the world. Now there are wonderful things in the world too. But somehow there is a mixture. So it's good to just give precedence to those aspects of the world that are inspiring and that are in sync with your being in order to keep yourself in your high pitch. Music like this for example. This music that has been written by, well has come through the inspiration of people who are monks who were living in a state of prayer. So what we want to do is to introduce the scared in the profane instead of escaping from the world. 

So I know that, you see the wasifas are skills that trigger off a certain kind of attunement . In a sense you could say that they are a support system that has the effect of, let's say you are associating a word with not just a thought but an attunement. Then every time you say that word, you evoke the corresponding attunement. So you're building something up in your unconscious. By repetition it becomes adamant, indelible. For example if you keep on walking on the same path, well the same way, then you create a path. In a meadow for example, you create a path. The same thing is true in the brain. If you keep on following certain brain patterns, it builds up a a network of nerve connections in the brain, of connections in the brain, connections of neurons. 


So even our physiological wiring system results from our attunement. That's why in pathological cases where somehow the thinking is wrong. The consequence is somehow it works at the level of the brain and eventually it works at the level of the whole body. 

So that's why we need to train ourselves by doing the practices. Just like a cellist or a violinist, pianist who need to keep doing practices or scales and so on in order to keep in trim. otherwise one loses one's ability to play altogether. And as I say, it's by repetition or even routine, setting up a pattern. 

Now tomorrow we'll be going much more into it because it's for the public and we're going much more into the kind of concerns that people in our specialty can help and so on. Now of course we have problems and maybe we'll have to go into them a little later and see how they affect our way of thinking and how our thinking affects them. 

But for the moment I'd like to just continue that what we started which was attuning ourselves to a certain pitch and maintaining that pitch. And I think it is true that to start with one needs to set, not a barrier, but at least a threshold between the environment and oneself. Later on then we have to open up the doors of communication as I say, and see how we can bring our ideal into reality. 

So for the moment seems like what one calls the spiritual bypass. But that's the only way we can attune ourselves. Then after that we have to see how we can reconnect with the world.

So what Murshid says is that consciousness is let's say captured by perception. And perception is either of the outer world, and then it might be conception that is consciousness, that is one is conscious of one's thoughts or even one's body or whatever one is, one's emotions and so on. So if you place an obstacle in the way of the object of your perception, then consciousness is going to turn within. Then you have a whole different perspective on the same reality which you couldn't have if you were looking at it in the usual way, from the personal vantage point. 

So I consider this practice of the greatest importance. It is true that Murshid limited it to the more advanced Mureeds. Then you find the public groups that have brought it to the public. I myself don't assume that mureeds are more advanced than the ordinary public. There is no reason to believe that. Or even that representatives are more advanced than their mureeds. So there are a lot of assumptions that we have to be careful about. And therefore I think that any practice that is helpful if it is not harmful, then of course you should be able to avail yourself to it. It could be harmful if you were to overdo it. I'm talking a practice which is called shaghal and the Hindus call (yonamudra). It's like taking an overdose of a medicine. It would be rather harmful if you didn't follow the doctor's prescription. But you thought, "This is really a good medicine. I'll take ten times what the doctor said". The doctor wouldn't be very happy about that. That's why we prescribe three breathing, three breaths. That's all, not more. Perhaps in the advanced stages, in a retreat and so on more. But not more normally. Because it makes one other worldly. Because you're really building a barrier between the world and yourself. And that's not our objective, but as I say, we need to attune ourselves to a high state then we can face the world unless we have really burned our boats or blown the bridges. Then we find ourselves ineffective in life, unable to take responsibility. We have to be very clear about that. That's the way of the Sufi Order. 

So when the consciousness turns the opposite direction, that is turns within, one tends to, if one isn't careful, one would mistakenly adopt the same method one adopts in one's relationship to the outer world, that is consider yourself to be the subject experiencing the outer world. But in this case it is not other than yourself. So it's a process of self realization. Therefore that habitual dichotomy between subject and object doesn't function anymore unless, if you do it, then you find yourself encapsulated in your thoughts. That's where a lot of people get stuck in the meditation and all they are doing is introspection. A better word for it is just turning around in circles considering your thoughts. 

So the thing is that I often quote Buddha in placing a sentinel at the doors of perception. That's exactly shaghal. That's the practice. One places a sentinel at the doors of perception. But the sentinel doesn't cut out all the information from outside. It filters the impressions.

But the next step is placing a sentinel at the doors of the mind. So that you grasp what is behind your, the constructs of your mind. And you get into a deep place. And remember that as one keeps on turning within, one gets drawn into the vacuum in the center of the vortex. So one sees, as the Buddhists say, the voidness of commonplace thinking, or let's say the invalidity of the ordinary thinking. 

So that is where you have to give up your reliance on your judgment. So that your intuition may emerge in you rather than hanging on to your assessment based upon your personal vantage point. That is why if one does not do that, then one will not be doing what is aimed at in this practice and find oneself in the state of self delusion which is a danger on the spiritual path. I say that because I think that we are more and more, especially in the Sufi Order, very keen on authenticity. Safeguard it against wishful thinking. And it's particularly dangerous, I would say enhanced, by the practice itself. Because you know if you place your fingers on your cornea which will press the retina, then you will be causing optical illusions. And you might think that you are seeing light, heavenly light. And if you press your fingers on your ears then you will probably be hearing what they call the Brownian Movement of the fluid in the semi circular canals. And you think you are hearing the music of the spheres. So you see how we have to be very cautious.That's why what we are doing is just taking away from the consciousness it's support in the object perceived. So the reliance of consciousness on the object. Like in Buddha's words the flame that needs a log of wood to be able to continue burning. So it's very tenuous. And I'm saying that as a warning because it's a practice that once you do it, you'll want to do it more often. Because it does something very traumatic to your being altogether. 

So I would say don't try to, first of all, attach any importance to any kind of perception. Because that's not what it's about. It's not perceiving light or seeing light or hearing sound and so on. Because then you would be concentrating on what accrues from outside, to inside from outside. So to eschew doing that, Pir o Murshid suggest the other way around. That is try to get in touch with what is emerging from within and manifests at the surface as perception. What he is saying is, I know I find it difficult to see how it tallies with current notions of physics because he is talking about the inner light and the light that emerges from within. What could it mean for a physicist? Well we have the example of a white hole in space. So a new dispensation of energy emerging from within. We have Dr. David Bohm's implicate state. So there are let's lay sign posts in physics. For example there is a light field instead of the photons. Maybe that's, Murshid had an intuition of the kind of knowledge that physicists are beginning to grasp. 

Now there is a deeper level beyond the layer of the aura and the layer of the magnetic field. I mention this so that we're not perturbed by grasping something that doesn't seem to tally with the ordinary knowledge we have of reality. And it's called a scaler level. When the magnetic field has been neutralized there is a deeper level of reality which the doctors are working with now. A whole new breakthrough in medicine. 

So that's the reason why I'm saying it is because we must be careful of interpreting what is happening to us as we turn within in terms of our familiar perceptions, or familiar ways of thinking, or our representations of what we mean by the magnetic field or the aura. All those ideas don't tally with what is happening as we turn within. So just be open to it without trying to grasp it or hold it or analyze it. And just think that it is whatever it is it might appear like light or sound that is emerging from within. 

Again from within, I find it helpful to think that the Universe we are familiar with is only a cross section of a multidimensional Universe. So when you say within, it's really just like if a wheel were to intersect a sheet of paper and a primitive animal, say an insect were only able to extrapolate between two dimensions, then that wheel would appear as a vibration. That's what I mean is that we must be careful of the explanation that we make of what is happening to us. So it's from the silence within. So therefore think of it first of all as an attunement than thinking of it as a realization. We need some quietness before we start doing this. It's a bit unfair to the child actually and of course to us. OK It seems alright.

So place your index of your, or indexes on your eyelids. But turn your eyeballs upwards and towards the bottom of the cavity of your eyes so that you don't press on the cornea. And the forth finger on your lips and middle fingers on your nostrils. But then one inhales through the right nostril, hold your breath then exhale through the right nostril. And then your thumbs in your ears. Only three breaths and then take your fingers away.

So, you see that it's a very different attunement to the attunement that you're in in the world. Everything seems to be interior. In fact Murshid says, "In the world I'm like a bubble in the ocean. As I turn within, the ocean is in the bubble". It's very strange. In fact that is not a perfect simile because the bubble has a boundary but here there is no boundary. We started with a boundary. Remember we cut out the outside. And then we found that in this inverted dimension there is no boundary. 

So this is, actually you are in the state of an imaginary sanyasin, that is an ascetic, a hermit, sitting in a cave meditating, having left the world behind. Then you find that for having set boundaries to the outreach of consciousness from the outside to our side it reaches infinity from inside. But it's not like stretching out into space. It's very difficult to express it in words because everything is intertwined. So you're part of everything. It's not just that you are coextensive with the universe, with space. But you're part of everything else. So in that state, for example, you can find another person in yourself and you know that you're part of another person. So there are all these boundaries between what they call discrete entities have disappeared. 

So that's the state called Batin. Batin is illustrated by the veiled person, especially the mother of the world who is veiled. That's exactly what we did in shaghal, to cut out the input from outside. But then you see what we seek outside is knowledge that we can accumulate, and therefore acquire, that accrues to us. It enriches us. When we turn within, we realize that this knowledge is latent in the deep roots of our being but we are unaware of it. Although it is always trying to reveal itself to us. 

So what Batin means is really that the fundamental reality of which the Cosmos is the actuation is continually trying to unveil itself and thus reveal itself to us. This is embodied in a rather tragic, traumatic historic event. It was an Iranian poetess who many centuries ago, very famous. So in a gathering she unveiled her face. And the Mullahs came and killed her right away. That is of course the whole principle of the divine feminine aspect which is hidden and will unveil itself in the measure of our capacity of protecting it, of honoring it. So that it's not exposed to sacrilege. 

Of course Batin represents all those, that thinking rather than those thoughts, and that feeling rather than those feelings which not only do you have difficulty to express, but which are still in a gray area in your deep unconscious and which are trying to reveal themselves to you. So Batin is a process of self revelation. The secret behind that is to be found in the words of Murshid when he says, "The creator is hidden in his creation". That's the meaning of the veil, hidden yet trying to unveil him/herself. But it is trust. And therefore one can't reveal one's deepest feelings to somebody who might betray one or who might not value the sacredness of what one is doing. So it's a very deep situation. 

You see that as soon as one tries to grasp that impinging thinking. I know that what I am saying is not grammatical. But you see thinking is the reality behind thoughts. Thinking breaks down into discrete thoughts categories of reasonness. The German philosopher says, Emanuel Kant. So that's reality. It's an unbroken continuum that is distorted when it is fragmented. Therefore you can never grasp it by trying to analyze each fragment. It's a totality. In other words things are seen in their context instead of content. 

So that tallies with the sense of light that emerges from within and perhaps sound. It's more vibrations than sound. And life and energy that emerges from within. Now the life and energy that emerges from within is typified in the wazifa Ya Muhyi because that is the emergence of new dispensations of life. 

So you could do the practice Ya Batin /Ya Muhyi. Now you see the connection. As I turn within by protecting myself from the way that things appear at the surface, that which is trying to emerge from within has a chance of surfacing. But I can't capture it because then I distort it. So I have to cease trying to make it the object of my consciousness or my cognizance because it is really my own self, my real self. So associated with it is the sense that my real self is covered by the role that I am playing in life, the mask that I am wearing. And when I turn within, I don't have to play a role. And I don't have to hide the countenance of my being underneath the mask of my face. And then what is more, that my being is continually emerging instead of thinking. "This is my real being, it is continually emerging and according to my attunement and according to my realization". 

So this is perhaps the most basic of wasifas, of wasaif actually, because it is awakening the God within, I would say the arousing of God within, surfacing. God is the total reality of which one is an expression. Like there is another word that Pir o Murshid used and that is, "We are a condition of God just like the wave is a condition of the sea". So instead of thinking I am a fraction of God, no I am a condition of God. It's different. As a matter of fact it is the whole ocean that emerges as each wave. It's not just a fraction of the ocean. That is God awakening as me, not in me but as me. 

Now there is a further wazifa which I feel is really like a key that I would like to give to you, or draw your attention upon. And that is Ya Wajid. Wajid means to find. Well to find is to earmark. And it means causing something that is part of a network to emerge as a single reality. For example, God emerging as you. So to find is like scanning the sky, scanning the horizon as I used to do when I was a British officer in the Navy during the Second World War, trying to spot German submarines, or E Boats. So you keep on scanning the horizon then something hits your unconscious. You haven't really seen it. But it seems to attract your attention. So you zero on it. And gradually you've got it. So that's what it is. The sense of God is just too vague to unveil. Then all of a sudden it becomes a reality as you. That's the only way it can become a reality. 

You see it is being revealed. And the meaning of, the wazifa for revealed is Zahir. You have Batin / Zahir. once you have turned your attention within and you are not directing, pinpointing your attention toward any particular azimuth, but are open, then whatever needs to be revealed will draw your attention. So it's complimentary to finding. Finding is like scanning on a computer to find a key, browses, scans and then finally comes upon it. But then that is you who are doing it. Whereas Zahir, you are not doing anything. It is revealed to you. So that's why they are complimentary, YA Wajid and YA Zahir.

So this is very useful when you are doing your practices. Because it's very difficult not to think about your problems. Unless you, as we did this morning, then you get into a very high attunement. And your problems seem to be so unimportant. But if you think of them again, then they assume their importance. So what Zahir means is that it reveals to you an aspect of your problems that you hadn't seen. 

So you start by scanning the horizon, by trying to do exactly what the computers are doing, to find. To find means more than that actually, much more than that. The example of the computer is not perfect because you are finding something that is there. Whereas, I don't know whether you know that in physics one of the latest theories is that an electron only exists only if you create favorable circumstances for its emergence. So it's not as though it were there. You have to create the circumstances. So God is a virtuality that becomes a reality as you. So you have to actuate the God within, what Murshid calls make God a reality. You can't know God. You have to make God reality in order to know God. That's the whole Sufism. 

So there's this trade off between scanning in order to pinpoint where you can find that electron if you create favorable circumstances. So there is some scanning. But then the electron reveals that of which it is only the appearance because an electron is not a little speck somewhere, like a particle, but is a whole connection, is a whole field and involves other electrons. You cannot separate it. Well you can separate it but they are related in a deeper way. This is physics. I don't want to bother you with physics. There is a great mystery about the way that the divine being reveals actually His/Her intention behind the occurrences. 

So you see there are several dimensions of this revelation. Consequently you can reconnoiter that area by combining practices. For example. A very powerful one is Ya Zahir/Ya Mawjud. Because to reveal Him/Herself God actuates Him/Herself, becomes a reality as Murshid says. The revelation monitored, let's say is triggered off by an actual nitty gritty situation which gives you a clue as to what is being revealed to you. 

It's a very powerful combination because there is a lot of controversy in Islam between the fundamentalists Moslems and the Sufis because according to the fundamental view God reveals Him/Herself by clues, does not become a reality because that's a Christian view that God becomes a reality as Christ incarnated, the whole idea of incarnation. But we have that wazifa Mawjud, that's what it means. This would be totally unacceptable for Islam. There is a word of St. Irene, and it says, "God became man so that man may become God". Now that would be totally unacceptable for Islam also probably for Judaism. That's the message of Christ. It's embodied in that word of Teilhard de Chardin called hominization. God hominized, that is become man. That is really what is meant by Mawjud whereas Zahir means that God is hidden behind whatever clues He/She reveals. That is also true because existence is made of devices, clues to a reality that cannot be the object of your experience. 

So you see these are theological considerations. They have some significance in your practices because our objective is not to develop human potentials but to fulfill the purpose of the whole what you call divine purpose whereby the whole discovers itself in each fragment of itself by actuating itself in each fragment of itself. So that your meditations always link you with God beyond whatever concept you make of God and never encapsulates you in your personal identity.

Now we have another wazifa that seems to be connected with what we are saying. And that's Ya Wahabo. Wahab stands for becoming, that is moving forward in time. I think that it inevitably subsumes the idea of evolution which you find in Julaluddin Rumi instead of the samsaric wheel that keeps on repeating itself. It's what Buddha invites us to do is to free ourselves from that repetitiveness. And one of the ways is if the wheel starts instead of turning around in circles, what we call vicious circles, if it advances, I would say that the metaphor is inadequate because the wheel becomes a spiral. Or let us say you know a comet has it's orbit but it doesn't gravitate around the sun. So it's another orbit let's say, evolution. That's Ya Wahabo. It's often interpreted as, of course wahab means the divine gift bestowed upon one. Divine bounty, generosity, endowment. 

It can also be seen as a compliment to arousing the virtuality of your being by bringing it into motion in the arrow of time, moving from the past into the future. Therefore it's the practice that sets things into motion, particularly a situation that has become static. You know, one gets stuck in life in a kind of a rut. One doesn't see any future and doesn't seem to advance. The danger is that if one doesn't advance, one goes backwards. So it's a sense of motion forward drawn by the promise of the future. I would say the unfurling of those potentials in the advance of time. That is for example, all the blossoms of the tree don't sprout at the same time. Sometimes one branch proceeds the other, perhaps even just a few hours before. But somehow there is a time factor. 

But we must always bear in mind Murshid's words in the wazifa. We're not trying to develop a quality in ourselves. We are trying to awake the God within. We are trying to awaken the dimensions within our being which are coexistensive with what we mean by God and which are sombulent and inactive. So instead of saying, "I want to be powerful. I want to arouse in me the same power that moves the Universe". That's a difference.

Now if you reflect upon it, that's something I would like to invite mureeds to do every day. It's called Muhasibi. And ask yourself, "What am I doing in my life? And why am I doing what I'm doing in my life?". An examination of conscience. You have to unmask the hoax of all the justifications, the denials, projections, all that strategy of the ego that makes life at all feasible and without which one is very naked, very vulnerable. So one is, you know it's like gaining assurance by smoking cigarettes, something like that. So it's threatening because to do away with that strategy, the psyche is very smart in building up this whole smoke screen. Then one isn't able to realize it oneself. 

Muhasibi is really a quest for authenticity. The wazifa for that is Haqq, Ya Haqq, the truth. The confrontation of oneself without defenses. Of course it is very often paralleled with removing, pealing of one veil after the other of self deception, wishful thinking, all those things that act as crutches in our infirmity and which could crack up and be collapsed if we depend upon them. So the power of truth is shattering to the extent of laying one bare and defenseless. And I think that the ultimate meaning of surrender is to surrender to the truth, to surrender any kind of effort of masking it to validate one's self esteem. And even acknowledge one's doubts which are a safeguard of authenticity. 

So Ya Haqq is very grueling. It' the word of the dervish. That's what makes a dervish. Let's say that the only way that it is safe to awaken the latent power in one's being, which we call divine power, is if it is the result of one's authenticity, of truthfulness. Therefore the combination of, I never use the wazifa Ya Qadir except in conjunction with Haqq. Ya Haqq, Ya Qadir gives you strength, the ultimate strength. You know that Pilot asked Christ, "What is truth?", he thought, "Now here is a wise man. I'll try to learn from him what is truth". And Christ said, "I am the truth". It's not something you can know. You can only be it. I would say it is the only guarantee against being on a power trip. But it does awaken power, but then the real power not despotic power of an ego, the power of the Universe coming through you.

Now once you cast the light of truth upon yourself, your motivations, then the thing that becomes very clear to you is why you are doing what you are doing. In other words your involvement with people, situations. What are your motivations in your involvement. And of course very often there is a selfish motivation, something one does for oneself. And then the degree to which one is independent or not attached to that involvement. And perhaps the crux of motivation of people who are in the world but not of the world who are initiates in an order and who are seeking sublime values while at the same time need to acknowledge their personal needs also. So one doesn't deny one's personal needs. But of course Murshid says, "One is tested in life. See how free one is from one's dependence". That is how detached one is while at the same time involved. That's a very difficult thing to balance. 

So the word Ya Wahid means, well it's translated in the Sufi books as the solitude of unity. (Vahatad allad) solitude of unity. Like the loneliness of the man sitting in a cave in the mountains, the man or woman of course. So maybe that is the word for freedom and for detachment and indifference, all those things that seem to go counter to involvement and which we find different in the world to reconcile. We reconcile the irreconcilables. 

So one finds God in Ya Wajid, in emerging within oneself or in one's life, emerging, being revealed to one. But then the divine unity reveals itself in the solitude. So that would be Ya Wajid / Ya Wahid. 

And of course there is something very paradoxical and mysterious about that because of the particular journey of the mystic. Of course we are going through that journey. But it depends on how important the spiritual life is for us. But you could consider life as a search for one's real self, of self discovery. It starts by thinking that one means is one's personal self until one realizes it does not have frontiers. So at first there is that sense of, well Martin Buber says it very clearly when he makes a difference between the I - It relationship, the I - Thou relationship, and the I - I relationship. So at first one thinks of God as other, the I - It relationship. Then there is a dialogue. There is an antimony, a kind of an exchange between the two poles of reality, one being infinite and the other finite. So in the words of Al Hallaj, for example he says, "There is not one tear between my eyelids, or one drop of blood in the cockles of my heart that are not aware of thy presence". So the consciousness of God as a presence other than one's self. Or like St. John of the Cross, the quickening of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit descends upon you, in the Jewish tradition, Shikina, the infusion of the spirit. So one is still thinking in terms of duality. It's very difficult to reach beyond that, but Al Hallaj does at a great moment of a peek experience when he says, "An al Haqq", which means I am Thou, Thou at me. That of course is unacceptable to the religion. That's like a claim to be God. One doesn't understand that the person is not claiming to be God but realizes that the core of his/her being, the deep reality is the one reality. Your saying, "La illaha", you're saying there is only one reality. So that's the practice of Ya Ahad. That is what we mean by Hu in the zikre because the zikre embodies all the levels of consciousness. 

So you see there are stages. That's why we have different degrees of initiation in the Sufi Order because the teaching would be lost. If you're in first grade school and you go to university, you can't understand what they are talking about. It's lost on you. That's why there are grades in the Sufi Order. It has nothing to do with a status. It's just levels of realization. 

So there is difference between Ya Habir and Ya Alim. Ya Alim. You see I think that this is rather simplistic if one thinks, I think it's not correct to say that Habir is the knowledge that is revealed and Alim is the knowledge that is acquired. But Pir o Murshid draws attention to a very important realization in a maxim of his which says, "Wisdom is born". Well he says it in his words of course. I'm paraphrasing it. "Wisdom is born by the interaction and maybe the integration of the knowledge that is acquired and the knowledge that is revealed". He calls it the knowledge of the earth and the knowledge of the heavens. Now it would have been nice if those two wazifa, Ya Habir and Ya Alim corresponded to those two modes of knowledge. I don't think so. I think that Ya Alim really means exactly that, that wisdom that is born out of the interplay of those two modes of cognizance. You see originally Habir means very expert cognizance. It applies to for example someone who is very knowledgeable about even a trade, for example, or a wonderful musician. I think it is a further refinement of Ya Alim. Now I think that we've already said it. I think the best way to approach, in a any way of what we mean by revealing knowledge, as we've already said, Ya Wahid/ Ya Wajid. 

So I've opened up all these wasifas so that you'd have a sense of the tremendous bounty that we're into in the Sufi Order. And you can't do them all at the same time. So the Representative points out a particular practice. Now perhaps you see how they are all connected together. And if you're a more advanced mureed, then you're encouraged to do more and more practices and eventually to get to know all of them is rather a lot. But still more and more. But knowing what they mean is not good enough. It's how they work when you find them in yourself. See how they affect your realization and also your personality. Your personality gets transformed by your realization. But you can't transform your personality by wanting it. So you can consider the wasifas as modes of realization and modes of attunement. Because each wazifa triggers off a certain attunement. 

OK Thank you for your attention and God bless you now. Tape ends.

FEB 28, 1997		Tape 05

So at this point I'd like to just open my heart and share. We will need to go deeper into the actual practicing which we should be doing now. But if you put yourself in my skin as you have been getting into the skin of the prophets masters and saints, then you'd realize that when you're 80, which I hope you'll be perhaps even more of course, then you feel that your time is running out. Then you think, "I'd like to give it as much as I can before it's too late". And so while I'm speaking to you, I know that this material is going to reach maybe far and wide. I don't know. But it will reach further. And of course I'm always amazed at how few people are in the Sufi Order or come to these meetings anyway. It used to worry me. But it doesn't worry me anymore because if this is valuable material eventually then it will be food for a lot of people. I hope there is no presumption there. It's just the way that I feel. That's the reason why I've been sometimes reaching in a flurry of thoughts which I feel act as catalysts in order to trigger off a real experience in us. So it's not for the sake of giving talks but for the sake of what we can make out of them. But the trouble is that we have so little time. So that in one day sometimes I feel like I need to cover a lot of ground. I wish we had a week or two weeks. Then we could go into it much more deeply. Of course that would be wonderful. But it doesn't seem to be practical. So I have to keep on moving. But now we're going to try to do what we've been, I've been presenting. Might not refer to exactly the same wasaif. 

So you're sitting in your room. Put aside a half an hour to meditate. So what do you do. If you just sit there and let your thoughts wander randomly, then you'd have wasted your time. And you'll be worried about all the things you have to do. So you need to make a real halt from your everyday commitments. It's just like a sabbatical or just like a Sunday that you just have to stop everything. And maybe you'll be better able to fulfill your obligations after you've had that break. 

So to make that break, you have to cease to be concerned about your responsibilities and obligations. That's the reason why I'd advise to start with Ya Batin. And I think it's very effective with the practice of shaghal. It is recommended to do it in the early morning before you even have your cup of tea or coffee. It's like the attunement that you get into before dawn. In fact the best time is before dawn. When people are sleeping, everything is reasonably quiet. And the energy is just simply brewing in the depth and hasn't started to sparkle at the surface. So those are conditions which are favorable to attuning oneself to one's deeper self. And so remember that you're placing a veil upon your eyes. So you have the image of the veiled one. And of course the best image is the mother of the world. There is a picture of the mother of the world veiled. That is the seen from outside she is veiled. But seen from inside the world is veiled from her. 

So let's just do this practice of shaghal. You get this, have this image. Concentrate on your solar plexus. And think that there are several veils like let's say an onion, several peals. So that you're pealing one layer after the other, or rather highlighting one layer after the other. Getting deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper as you inhale. Then you lose count of the layers as you hold your breath. At that time your thoughts are resorbed in the unknown, in the cloud of unknowing. And your notion of your self has become lost to you. And out of that collapse something emerges anew which could not have emerged if you had not reached rock bottom, if you had not had the courage to descend deeper and deeper into your deeper self. OK So let's do that three breaths.

So your veil is your protection against the grosser impressions of the world. Then you find one layer of yourself. Then there is another veil deeper down. So what seemed to be there is now the other side of the veil. So if you, I suppose one would have to experience what women who are veiled experience in the East. They may prefer wearing the veil not because it's an edict of Islam which it isn't, but because they feel protected from the lascivious glance of men, some men. So it's a protection so that they can hold sanctity of their spirits without having to deal with this kind of a sacrilege women are often subjected to in the West. It's the same thing. It's just something that is true for all of us. And then you know how it is to like withdraw a little bit deeper as you inhale. And every time that you peal off a layer, you have a sense of, "Ah this is me. I've been wearing a mask. I've been playing a role because that's what like asks of me. I didn't even know myself. And now I can feel comfortable in myself, my real self. And I don't have to be subjected to the judgment of people, nor even to my own, the limitations of my self image, nor my need to validate myself". 

So we can say now. The word Batin. But you see the reason why I said this because it's no use just repeating the word. I believe that these words do have some kind of effect in their very intonations. But still I think that the important thing is to associate the word with not just meaning, but a very deep experience. So every time you pronounce the word that meaning and that attunement particularly becomes utmost in your being. So I remember Pir o Murshid saying the wasifas, sitting in the oriental Room in Surene. So I'm just trying to capture that. Ya Batin, Ya Batin,(...). 

So you're creating a whole atmosphere, an attunement to such an extent that the environment that you had turned away from is infused with that atmosphere which although it's a withdrawal, it's very powerful. Let's say instead of peace being a withdrawal from action, peace as a catalyst of action, an action which emerges out of a sense of peace, a realization that emerges out of a sense of peace. 

So that word is Ya Salam or Ya Salim. Depends some say Ya Salam, some say Ya Salim. That means that is a condition of the one and only being in the original state as Pir o Murshid describes in one of his early books as a state of stillness out of which activity arises like just the little wave emerging out of a very quite peaceful lake. Then it becomes more active, and more active.

Now this morning of course if you remember the things I said. You get into the consciousness of Buddha sitting under the tree throughout the night and throughout the day and throughout the night forty days in the stillness of the forest, surrounded by a lot of turmoil, although that turmoil in the forest arises out of a peaceful state. And there is a representation of him where he is sitting in the middle of a storm. And everywhere he sits there is no wind. It's totally peaceful. So that is a very good image when you're meditating. If there is a lot of noise. There are children screaming and telephones ringing and all kinds if upsets. And if you're able to think of that image of Buddha sitting there. Actually the reason why there was no wind where he sat is he sat in the middle of the whirl wind, in the middle of a vortex. That's where you find a vacuum. So you create a vacuum in the middle of turmoil. And you remember that it was our detachment, in India one uses the word vairagya which can never be well translated in English. But say it's translated by indifference, independence, detachment. That's your protection. 

That representation of a veil is the more, covers one. But the more inner one is, your protection is in your freedom from dependence or from the impact or from the fact that it is what you desire that matches the environment . Or rather that the environment reinforces something that is already in you, and which you want to get rid of. So that it's an aspect of oneself that one is overcoming in order to find inner peace. As Pir o Murshid says,"The prison is not in the circumstances of your life but is in your way of thinking, of feeling, your realization, limitation. And also in your self image". That's a wonderful feeling, "Nobody can touch me. Nobody can harm me. Nobody can influence me". Like that lady who was lynched in the South and said, "You can do what you want with my body, but you can't touch my soul". And that's the only way to find peace. Because there is something inside us that matches that which disturbs us outside, that keeps us under the sway of what is outside. We think it's outside.

Now if you remember then we reversed our attunement. And that was Ya Zahir. So that's the unveiling. Traditionally in the Christian tradition it was the epiphany, epiphanos. So when you say Zahir, you concentrate on, you think of the whole Universe as a gradual disclosure of the reality that's behind it all through devices. Phenomena, occurrences, personalities of people and so on, are devices in which the intention is made known, it's revealed. So when you are able to look at the world in that perspective, you get into a very deep kind of attunement. It's like, isn't life a miracle. It's all beginning to surface, to come to view, to become known. In the Sufi view of course, it's God who is discovering Him/Herself in the world. So God, asleep in the original state, and waking up in existence. And we are party to the waking up, the waking of God in our lives. God in ourselves waking up in the whole of our lives. 

So if you feel like that, think like that, you are all the time on the look out for that which transpires behind that which appears. You feel that that which you see is just the device, just that which gives some clue as to what is behind it. So it's that deeper layer of reality that reveals itself through the apparent surface. It's a little bit like sometimes when you're flying, the clouds are a bit translucid so that you can see the mountains, for example, through the clouds. It's a wonderful, it gives you a kind of ecstasy, you know the revelation of something that you didn't see. It's what one calls that 'aha' feeling. 

Now I think that this whole attunement is really typical of the prophet Mohammed. First of all a description of him. There is no way of course. You know that the Arab people, at least some of them are very proud race who have great difficulty in submitting. So Mohammed must have been overriding, and exceptional being of tremendous magnitude and majesty for unwilling people to, who are all into their trips, to surrender so that he could make order out of the chaos of that time with the result of enormous works of art that have ensued, much creativity. And I think it is because he was so conscious that the human being is the place of the manifestation of God. It's a different view to the Catholic view that God has become man. No it's man is, of course it's very close. Because if you think that man is, the human being, is just the means through which God becomes manifest, then you're thinking in terms of duality. 

That's why Ibn Arabi said, "He is both the seer and that through which he sees". That's the vision of unity, La illaha illa 'llah, the vision of unity. So I think this majesty that made for the orderliness that resulted in the religion of Islam had its roots in the grasp of the unity behind diversity, behind multiplicity. And that's Ahad, the one. That's a strong running point of Islam, Allah o Ahad. Ahod, the same thing, Allah o Ahod. So it's not this flower here and that tree there and that cloud there and the dawn. No, it is the one reality manifesting itself in all its different modes, devices. 

Of course ultimately the divine intention manifesting through your problems. It seems paradoxical because it seems to be quite the opposite of what one would like to ascribe to God's intention. But as Pir o Murshid said, "When you awaken, everything seems quite the opposite of what you thought". That's revelation. So it's not just the physical world. It's in your thinking a meaning is revealed behind the meaning that you saw, and that emerges within the meaning that you saw and regresses it, or overrides it, to a continual revelation. Zahir, continual revelation. 

So the sound is very different. Ya Batin, turning within. That's covert. Then Zahir is overt. Ya Batin, Ya Zahir. Ya Batin, Ya Zahir. (...). Alright, we can do it on our breath. So as we inhale, we think Batin. We don't say it now. We just think the word. And as we exhale we think Zahir without the Ya. And without the Ya for Batin. So it's easier to get into the attunement without saying the word aloud. But it's consolidated if you have got used to associating the sound with the meaning, then afterwards you don't have to say the sound. But it's as though the sound were repeating itself somewhere in the akashic body. 

So when you say Zahir, you think that the reality behind regardless of form is manifesting as forms so that it may be known. That is the secret treasure, the desire to be known in yourself. The same is happening in yourself. That is that the God in creation, in yourself, is revealing Him/Herself to you as the reality behind your personality for example, behind the appearance of what you think you are, self revelation. Or discover aspects of yourself that you never knew, or never understood, or had no idea about are disclosed to you from inside, which you couldn't have found out if you tried to inquire into them. 

But there is a very curious fact here. And that is that in order to reveal itself or themselves, these covert qualities in your being need to be actuated in your personality. That's the word Mawjud. So you have Zahir and Mawjud. Can you see that, for example, that you may have behind, if you're a workaholic you may still have great peace in yourself, but you don't know it. And if you're a shy person, you might have a lot of courage, but you don't know it. And the only way in which it can be revealed to you is if you exercise, for example, an act of courage which you never thought you could. Then that sombulent aspect of the being of God which is let's say the underpinning of your being, is revealed to you by it's actuation. Or for example, if you are able to find a lot of peace in a crisis situation, then it gives you the feature in your personality that you never thought you had. By exercising serenity in a traumatic situation, you are discovering something about yourself which is being revealed to you. I must say that I think that the best typification of this quality for Mawjud, actuation or existentiation, is to be found in Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan. You know the importance of the words,"Make God a reality", I would have said, "Make God an actuality and he will reveal to you your reality". 

So it's very important to our time. It's diametrically opposite to the samadhi of Shiva and that other worldly attunement of Buddha. It's right down into life. It's awakening in life. Being very realistic instead of wallowing in wishful thinking or would believe, make believe. It gives you a kind of solidity which one felt in the being of Pir o Murshid, a kind of authenticity. It wasn't a flurry of words, but very real. So that is a very interesting passage from Mohammed to Murshid, from the revelation to the actuation of reality. 

So now when you say Zahir it's, you see there is a further aspect of Zahir. (tape turns) 

You know that. It's something that you recall having known this. But you don't remember. Maybe it was in childhood. Or maybe it was in a previous life. But it's like a kind of enchantment, almost like a kind of spell. So that's where that which transpires reveals itself regardless of the way it transpires through that which appears. I say that so that when you say Zahir, you get into that spell. And then when you say Mawjud, then it's much more grounded. Now you see how that which transpired through that which appears is not just an appearance. But it is for real. 

There is a paradox about all this of course. That is that if we that we may think, if apply the theory of Maya, we may think that the reality is hidden. But that reality is embedded in its appearance. That's where Niffari for example says, "Why do you look for God up there when. He is here?". That's Mawjud. Let's say that existence makes God who was originally a virtuality an actuality. So you see the incongruity of trying to escape from life in order to reach God. It's the other way around. 

So let us say that now. Ya Zahir, Ya Mawjud. Ya Zahir, Ya Mawjud. (...) You have to say it a little slower. Ya Zahir, Ya Mawjud. Ya Zahir, Ya Mawjud (...) So now let's just, of course if we had a more time, we could do each of these a little longer. But I wanted you to have a fore taste of them. 

Now I suggest something which I don't see in the instruction that Murshid left. And that is to do the fikre but not just inhaling. You know the fikre means that one is thinking a word without saying it aloud. But now I would include the holding of the breath. I would include three wasaif. When you inhale you think of the word Batin. Then as you hold you breath, you are in that sort of enchanted spell. Then when you exhale, you're earmarking the reality that has, let's say it has become adamant. As I already said, like if you keep on walking the same way, then it will form a path. So it's become consolidated you see. 

It's a further stage because so far we've been considering reality manifesting itself. We've been considering turning within. And then being sensitive to the way that the Universe manifests itself to view. Which is hidden becomes known gradually. Then the consolidation of it in Mawjud. Now that step is that, well we've already done that. You peal those layers until you get into your real being. But you see your real being is, as I said, it can only be known to you by your actuating it. 

Now there is a missing link there. There is a piece there. That is that it manifests to you and then becomes actuated as you in your personality through the instrument of your imagination. That is translating an attunement or a realization into a form. That's what creativity is about. That is the form of your real countenance behind your face. That's how your being is revealed to you in a very concrete way. And you'll be amazed to discover how beautiful it is. But it's beauty will only be revealed to you if you are able do exactly what we are doing now, with the voice of Caruso to retrieve it from its distortion by the defilement due to the bad recording at the time. If you can grasp the beauty within its own distortion. So you have to do something to reverse the distortion. That is a kind of catharsis. It is spotting of the obstacle in yourself. As soon as it's spotted, somehow it recedes. Like spotting the enemy in the war, then the enemy recedes. Or especially in the traditions spotting the devil. The devil hides in the dark as soon as you bring light. So it's something like that. 

So the word for that, the wazifa for that is Khaliq, Ya Khaliq. So it means God is the imaginer. That's the real meaning of the creator. The one who translates an intention or a vision into a form. So now we have this, yes Khaliq. Well there are many masters we could concentrate on that typify that creativity. So you could think of your favorite musician. Bach or I don't know. I hope it's not rock and roll. So like Beethoven or whatever, that is Brahms or whatever. These were masters, Handel. So if you get into the mentality of a creative person like Brahms for example, processing his pain into musical themes that serve as a language to communicate with others so that they may themselves discover their pain. And then transform that pain into joy, like in the 4th Symphony. 

So that's Khaliq. There are two further wasifas. There's Khaliq. And then there is Bari and Mussawwer. Mussawwer means really like an artist who is making a statue, molding it. And then Bari is more like fashioning. There is not much difference there. Khaliq is a more fundamental wazifa. 

So now this is what we do. You think of Batin, all the things that we have learned to do as we say the word or think the word Batin. Turn within. And then Zahir. The reality of being reveals itself to us, ultimately by Mawjud of course. But it reveals itself in our own participation in it's revelation by translating what is being revealed into form. 

So that would be Ya Batin, Ya Zahir, Ya Khaliq. Let's say these words first then we'll think of them as a fikre. Ya Batin, Ya Zahir, Ya Khaliq. Ya Batin, Ya Zahir, Ya Khaliq. (...) Alright now you can do it without saying it aloud on the breath. So Batin is inhale, Zahir this time is holding the breath, and Khaliq is exhaling. 

So my being is revealed to me through the fact that I project it through my imagination as a form. And that form now reveals myself to me. Instead of thinking of that form as static like a statue, it is continually transformed, upgraded. 

Now you could follow that because when you have Khaliq / Mawjud, or even I would say Khaliq/Mussawwer/Mawjud. Because at first there is just the emergent imagination. Then it becomes a little more concretized in the sculptor, Mussawwer. Then you can see that now it has become a reality in your personality. You see Mussawwer is still in the making. And eventually it's like the pot that one puts in the fire and it becomes adamant. 

Now can you just get into the consciousness of a creative being? It could be a sculptor it could be an artist, could be a composer, could be a writer. You just can't stop creating. You get up in the middle of the night and write or get back to you easel, or statue. You just have tan idea, " Yes, I can do it better". So continue perfecting that. Instead of thinking that we are created, what Pir o Murshid is saying is that in a being who participates in his/her creativity can obtain a greater degree of perfection. So it's not just you creating nor is it God. But somehow you are customizing that universal creative faculty of the universe to actuate itself in forms. So the form is very important because that's what's gained. 

So that means the features, those subtle forms that the Sufis call the subtle forms, your personality is like a composition, like a musical composition or a statue. It's the reality behind. In fact it's not just your personality. That's still too nonphysical. It's the template of your body that you're fashioning. Call it the etheric body. The Tibetans call it the emanation body. And you can actually fashion it. You can make it as beautiful as you wish. You can make it as powerful as you wish. You can put your whole heart into it. You might say, "Well I'm doing it. But then it seems to disappear". Well if you keep on doing it, then it will not disappear. Not quite like a statue. The statue eventually becomes adamant. Maybe there are other examples like the goldsmith. At first it's a little bit fluid. It's not, hasn't jelled yet. once it's jelled then you have to start all over again.  So Mawjud is the nitty gritty. So I would concentrate on the creativity. Now you might say, "Well when I'm doing that, I have a very clear sense of the configuration of my subtle body. I can see that that's valuable. 

And I can really mold it as I wish. I can make it as beautiful, as ugly as I want. That's what a lot of people want. But when when I look in the mirror, I see my rather trite face again and again. So I can't see that anything has really happened". What the Tibetans say is that only those who have eyes can see it. But it's there. And it is that that transpires behind that which appears. Because the form acts as a catalyst for experience. That is that, for example, your attunement is communicated to another person through the form of lets say of your emanation body. The word used by the Sufis Arwah, the plural of (Arwhu). For example, Beethoven's attunement in the Ghost Trio, that was configured as those notes, it's a form that communicates an attunement to other people who are sensitive to it. And consequently it triggers off the same attunement in them as Beethoven was in when he composed it. So you see the importance of the wazifa Khaliq.

We'll have to take a pause here. And say we meet again at quarter of 5. Then we don't have much time unless of course we go until quarter to 6. Let's take a break. Tape ends.



MAR 01, 1997		Tape 06

So, we are using the word retreat and I'm not all together too happy with that word, I'd rather call it a treat than a retreat, but seriously I'd like to consider it as a rehearsal for life. And consequently when we are doing our practices, I think it's, the practices are only really, I mean there is no point in just speaking words, that will not do it for you, that's why people don't do it because it won't work. You have to make the bridge between what's happening to you here in that room sitting repeating wazifa and your situations out there, to make a bridge. And so you could do it after repeating your wazifa. That's the instant in which you make a pledge and that pledge is of course binding and that would make all the difference in your life. To bring about change in your life, you have to open a new chapter, a departure from the previous one, so it's a quantum leap, it not a slow transit, so there are two different situations. 

One with slow transit and the other is a definite quantum leap, and so nature is made in the same way. And it is your pledge that opens the new chapter. And that's what the Sufis call "Makam" which means "a station", and then your pledge opens a door to being revealed the next step. But you have to do something, you can't just wait for it to be revealed, you have to make a pledge. And a pledge is a departure from the past, like "I won't do this any more." It's a definite departure. So the only way for this to be real is to imagine a situation in which that particular wazifa makes a difference. There are very simple cases, for example, imagine a situation where you decide from one moment to the next, you are doing the wazifa Ya Wali and so what's the point in saying "mastery, mastery, mastery", it's got to be real, it's got to have consequences in terms of your life. So you think "what is the situation where I am not exercising mastery", "oh, I'm still smoking cigarettes, that's where it is, right there." 

And apart from the fact that the surgeon general says that it is bad for you, it's the fact that I think I can't do without it, which is a sense of limitation, of helplessness, which goes in the opposite direction of mastery, oh I know all about withdrawal symptoms and all that, I've already done that myself, but finally this habit __________ there's suffering there, but I'm just giving you an example. There are many situations in which one doesn't feel up to taking control of the situation and one becomes a victim of it. So there's no point in repeating wazifa unless one, after repeating it imagine the situation in your like in which it applies, and for example Ya Huk, for example, well you are a truthful person but still there's one thing that you have denied, and the reason for that is because you are afraid that if you say it then your whole world will collapse, you might lose your job or whatever, your relationship or whatever. So, but it goes deeper than that, as I say the ego produces a strategy to validate itself, of self, very fragile self-confidence which is based upon make-believe, a kind of a display. Like for example an owl looking to open up its feathers when it's threatened, to appear larger than it is, that kind of thing, and creating illusion. And the trouble is if one believes in it and so one is self-deception, but then so one's, that's one's self-image you see, and so one's self-image is then threatened by one's truthfulness. 

So I remember a case where there was a man who kept on looking at me with such distain that I thought, good God, what have I, I must be a horrible person, that person really dislikes me tremendously. And so I didn't like it, it required some courage to open up and say it to him, but I did, and he was totally transformed by it, he said "Well now I really appreciate you because I see that you are absolutely upfront." Change all together. So sometimes one is afraid of being upfront, of opening up doors of communication and that makes all the difference. So that's a pledge. That's not to just say "Huk, Huk, Huk", but there you are, you're in a situation where you are really applying it. So that means earmarking a typical situation in your life when you are not applying this quality nearly as much as you could and you make a resolve, that's why you make a pledge "I will do this or that". And there's a, see if one is very perspicacious, very frank with oneself, very honest with oneself, one keeps on earmarking guilt, one becomes very scrupulous about any damage one has created in another person, and one doesn't like to, one denies it because one had denied it up to that point because one, it is so demeaning to one's self-esteem. 

And then there's a wazifa which means "to honor" or "to be honorable" and it is the prospect of, well it's not the fact of being honored by people, no, but the fact of being honorable that represents a kind of emotion that's not just thought. And so that helps one to pull oneself out of a guilt situation because somehow the joy of being honorable is much greater than whatever pleasure one could get from that situation. There's a question of course of value, so that wazifa is "Muizz" and I, as I said before, wherever we can we try to portray the wazifa in a form, let's say a scene or scenario, so the scenario that I select for this is Christ riding out on a donkey from the Garden of Gethsemane down the hill and down to the, what used to be a temple of Soloman. I don't know if you know the story, it's a poem actually, it's a poem of the donkey, so as you see, it wasn't a Rolls Royce, it was a donkey. And the donkey says "It's true, I have a roqous voice and I have rather unseemly ears but I did have my moment of glory because there were alms under my feet and halleluiahs around me." So that's of course the message of Christ, of course the poor in spirit participate in the glory of heavens. So that, when one reverses one's guilt one's soul is lifted, is a kind of emotion which one feels that one is now has a free ticket to heaven. It's being honored.

Now, more generously but there is a saying, I think it's the Qur'an that says "Allah al Mahluk Fil itifidat", and that means literally "the God created by your prayers". It's a very amazing statement. So how can you explain this? Well, all the wazifas are based upon this principle and that is in one's quest of glorification which is a very deep instinct, a need for glorification, a need for the sacred, in order to pray therefore, to be able to, it's really like a superlative of bewonderment, like being full of wonder for the marvel of life. And then it goes a little further into glorifying the splendor that is coming through life, just think of well the beauty of the cathedrals and the music and the wonderful achievements of humans, the splendor somehow finding its way down into the human drama, the __________, the acts of sacrifice of people dedicated to their ideal, it's a great beauty coming through so one never ceases to be amazed by actually the glory that's coming through. 

So one, as I say, coming through, so one imagines that that is divine glory, one ascribes it to God, one imagines God up there which is of course a naive but still it's a very workable way of perceiving. Because in order to be able to glorify, one projects upon this representation that one makes of God, which is not God but it is a representation one makes, one projects upon it one's own qualities by imagining how they would be in their perfect state. So the exemplar reveals something of the nature of the archetype, so somehow one is arousing dormant qualities in oneself by one's glorification, and so glorification is the ultimate creative act. That is prayer, and when we did the prayer this morning you remember that was really very similar to the Muslim prayer and Buddhists do it also. One was, we were prostrating our head on the floor and then rising, we didn't quite do that but one can, that is after saying "and to thee do we give willing surrender" and prostrating with on one's knees and one's head on the floor, then one can rise again, that's a very great moment because then the body participates in the raising of one's spirit as Pir-o-Murshid calls it. 

And one is ascribing to God those wazifas and many others of course that we have outlined today, many others, and so when doing so one is awakening those qualities in oneself. So there's a practice I used to do during my retreats which was, when I was younger, bowing and then as I'd rise I would be thinking of many wazifas, wazaif, and projecting them into a sort of idyllic representation that I made of God, knowing very well that's not God but at least a stepping stone. So the wazifa for that __________ act is Ya Ali, that means "most high". So that seems to resonate with the word to raise your consciousness into the highest spheres. So we started like that and I'd like for this to be a rallying point at the end of this day. It is one's act of glorification that raises one's consciousness. One can't reach into the higher planes by wanting to. So Ya Ali is the catch word, it really represents that passage into, well of course it's beyond our understanding but the Sufis have a way of giving you landmarks so that's a thought that is very beautiful and very helpful, I find. Ibn Arabi says that you know that the Sufis like to look upon all the qualities as archetypal treasures in the divine treasury. 

And that treasury is what is called "Allah Mal Lahut", the world of, that secret treasure that wishes to be known. So it's the archetypes of what we experience as exemplars, you know what I mean by an archetype, for example rosehood instead of roses, or roundness instead of round objects. So the archetype, and we have that faculty of imagining always something more perfect that what we have imagined so far and so that is an act which has the effect of lifting your consciousness above the existential world because that's where the exemplars are into the world of archetypes, Lahut, Lahutiat. And what Ibn Arabi says is that the angels built a ladder between the earth and the treasury, that's a beautiful thought, the ladder of Jacob upon which we climb. That's the Sephardic tree that's the ladder. One labels the different levels and when one meditates on it one can hoist oneself from level to the other and one could very well label each of the Sepherod by wazifa. 

I was just thinking of these and it occurred to me that I've been avoiding the bad wazifas, like instead of the honorer, the dis-honorer, Mundil instead of Muizz. And so it's typical of not wanting to acknowledge one's shadow. Denial of one's shadow, you see I trust why I couldn't understand why there were such horrible amongst those sublime ones. I see that it is very realistic because one has to acknowledge one's shadows. So have I never prescribed them myself but somebody once asked me what they were, but you can find them in your books, I won't take responsibility for telling you what they are, but when you think of an act which you don't approve of yourself, you can say "Bad boy", well then the wazifa would be Mundil, you see, and then you think "yes but I would rather be honored than continuing to be doing that makes myself condemn myself so that's why you have that antinomy between the wazifa and the shadow.

Now see there are really two dimensions in glorification, maybe there are three. One is a kind of cosmic emotion which you could translate by the word magnificat and the wazifa for that is Ya Azim. So the way to say it is, I mean it's got to express one's emotion of the miracle of life, how wonderful, Ya Azim, Ya Azim, Ya Azim.... Yes alright, now, you see there was a case of a murid who was disenchanted with life, with himself, passing through a kind of dark night and the teacher, guide gave him the wazifa Ya Azim and that made him so turned off because he couldn't be enchanted, and you can't force yourself to be enchanted, and consequently he was, well he practically dropped out of the Sufi Order. He didn't quite, he stayed with it, but still there's a, we have to be careful, I mean I'm talking of course, that is it applies to, this would be a message to the representatives, to the guides, but also to those of you are not, forcing yourself to get into, not just to repeat a wazifa, I see that all the time, people repeating wazifas almost as a punishment, "I'm supposed to repeat the wazifa because 

Pir Vilayat said, I've got to repeat it 100 times and so I'm afraid that he might curse me if I don't do it." Well I wouldn't anyway, but that, you can't force yourself, and that's why the wazifa must be documented by something tangible. You just have a flower, look at the flower. And instead of saying "I've got to be enchanted", but then think "how beautiful this flower is." I remember when Pir-o-Murshid was giving a, actually it was a lotus, it wasn't a waterlily, or maybe it was a waterlily, I'm not sure, but anyway I remember his, the emotion of discovering seeing so much beauty, so it's not the archetype, it seeing, it's right there in the exemplar. So that's Ya Azim. Now the same is true if one has the courage to unpeal, unravel all the levels that cover one's real being and then being enchanted with one's real being instead of just being enchanted with a flower that is what one would call reenchantment. But you can't be enchanted with you personal self unless you are a megalomaniac, you can only do it if you discover what one imagines to be God coming through you. So that's Ya Azim. 

And so the combination of Ya Azim, Ya Ali, it's a very wonderful combination, because you start by, I suppose you could say euphoria, Azim, and that leads you into exhalation. Now I hope you are not just listening to words, but are listening to what's coming through now. Now we started with that this morning, continually being mindful of raising one's consciousness beyond the earth plane and that is the only way in which one can bring into the earth plane something of the glory of the heavens. So, I repeat what we did this morning, it resides in one's scale of values. Pir-o-Murshid goes to an extreme when he says when you awaken it is as though those things that mattered to so much don't matter anymore, or those things that perturb people don't perturb you in the least. And then he says those things you are so sure about prove to be exactly the opposite of what you think. And then he says those that seem to have value now seem to have no value whatsoever. Like Buddha for example at the palace, when I visited the palace of the Maharaja of Baroda, which so many people admire, and I thought "what a token of selfishness and greed," worthless unless, it gave work for people, yes in that sense yes, but there's a saying of Shams Tabris, who describes what he calls the man of God, and he said "the man of God is a palace in a ruin". 

And when you think of it, if you compare, for example the palace of Sirus in Iran, which I visited, which is a total ruin, but beautiful as a ruin, with the palace of Monte Carlo, then you see what I mean by what has value and what is worthless. Some call it angel, some call it kitsch. So that what I mean to raise your consciousness above the earth you, the way to do it is to access the values that you come across differently to the way you've done it so far and so you are making a priority to those things which are of the greatest value and in comparison the others seem relatively at least worthless. So it is that which raises your consciousness, so you can't just pull your consciousness up into the higher spheres by wanting to, it doesn't work that way. It has to do with dropping ballast that retains you a prisoner on the earth plane that enables your soul to rise. That's why Murshid says, detachment and indifference, or indifference, he says, indifference and independence are the two wings that enable the soul to fly. Just think of that now in your life, see that we are attached to things and depend upon things, and well there's nothing wrong with it, if we really do fulfill our purpose of life. But if you can fulfill that purpose, and yet maintain your freedom by not being attached to them, that's the only way in which you can raise your consciousness into that sublime attunement which the Sufis call "Hal", translated by exaltation or ecstasy. It's in America one calls it being "high". And so maybe one could say when one is awake, it's not just that one is more aware than most people, but one is high amongst people who are low key. So the wazifa Ya Ali represents exactly that, raising of consciousness into the higher spheres by one's ecstasy.

I have to end here, but just a remark that I was thinking of and that is the symbol of, the Sufi symbol, because you know that the heart is a circle of which the top and the bottom has been subjected to the gravity pull of the earth, and the wings are the redeeming uplift which balances that gravity pull. And that which balances that gravity pull is detachment and independence. And so Pir-o-Murshid says that we are tested in life by the degree to which we are free. Now there's a wonderful combination of, there are many more practices that I didn't have time to talk about, but I'm thinking of a combination of Ya Ali and Ya Wahid which are often, in India one says Vehedo instead of Wahid, because Vehedo represents that detachment, he calls it "the solitude of the oneness". Because if you raise your consciousness you are very alone unless you balance your indifference with love, and that's what Al Hallaj did. So you see that Vehedo, Vehedo is rather typical of the samadhi, quest for samadhi in yoga, Ya Wahid, and Ya Ali is very typical of the kind of music that we play in the Christian music, uplifting, angelic spheres. 

And Ya Azim is typical of the dervishes because as I said the dervish is a palace in a ruin, that is, it's like as I said the ultimate value of your being that can never be defiled, that's the immaculate state, or the voice of Caruso, all those things we have been talking about, that's the palace in the ruin. This triumph of the ultimate values over the powers of destruction. We have a very wonderful combination of Ya Majid/Ya Maujud, because Majid represents the sublime and Maujud reality of everyday life which is flawed by the distortion due to egos of people. Combination of the two, Ya Majid/Ya Maujud, Ya Majid/Ya Maujud, Ya Majid/Ya Maujud... You see, that's very important because we have difficulty in reconciling, well what Pir-o-Murshid calls our divine inheritance which he calls the aristocracy of the soul and our own inadequacies, very difficult, which he calls the democracy of the ego, so it's very difficult to reconcile these two. If you can go about in life being aware of your divine inheritance and accepting that it had to undergo defilement and yet that perfection is still present within that defilement, that is the palace in the ruin.

God Bless You Now.

END OF TAPE 6

MAR 01, 1997		Tape 07

We are preparing ourselves and attuning ourselves in view of what I hope will be a deep process of transformation, which we are going to share together. And there's a special value in early morning meditations, when everything is quiet, people are sleeping, and we are awake, and the energy that leads towards them, sometimes our chaotic rat race has not yet hit the planet at this part, in this part. And consequently, somehow the whole setting of the environment is conducive to a peaceful state, which ... inaudible ... a very fine tuning of our being, and enables us to have an overview of our lives, of what is being enacted in the problems of our lives, so that we may come to a deeper realization.

To start this attunement, I can't think of a better way than to work with light. So, if you'll bear with me, we'll start ... inaudible ... the practices and then we'll be building up ... inaudible. So, to start with, could you just be aware of the light of your glance. The fact is that, there's ... that, of course the whole body absorbs light from the environment, but particularly our ... the retina of our eyes, and that light is then threaded up the optic nerve into our brain. And then the light of the brain also is threaded down through the optic nerves and reaches out through the retina. So, imagine that your eyes are two head lamps, like the head lamps of a car. Of course, there's an effect of mind over body, and consequently, if you do this your going to enhance the luminosity of your eyes. So, as you inhale, think that you are absorbing light from the sun, and the stars, and well, of course, your artificial light, every form of light whatever. And when you exhale, you are emitting this light, radiating it.

For the moment we are concentrating on our glance. But now we could include your whole aura. So, if your conscious, if you identify with your body then you might try and see if you can feel the cells of your body. A tremendous jiggling and effervescence of activity of all kinds and energy. And now you're ... if you can feel your cells, you can't feel them individually, but you can feel that intense activity going on within your skin, within what we call our body, then can you see how ... if you are aware of the cells of your body absorbing light, when you inhale, can you ... ? You know, I hope you are delighted by light, that you are open to being moved by the ecstasy of light. And so, the same thing is true of the cells of our body. In fact, they feed on light. They ... light is energy, and consequently, it has enormous consequences, in terms of the atoms, the electrons, the photons within the cells of the body that start ... well, finding a new dimension of freedom through having acquired this energy, and that is called the dance of the ... for example, the dance of the cells of the body, or the atoms as described by Jelalludin Rumi.

So, it's a kind of joy that you feel in your very body and, as a matter of fact, the cells divide more rapidly, a process called mitosis, and so, of course, there is such a thing as a therapy of light. So, I would say that, after inhaling, as you inhale, feel the way that the light of the sun and stars, actually the cosmic rays in the universe, are reaching right into your body and awakening, arousing cells and consequently the cells of your body are sparkling. So, that's when your holding your breath. And now when you exhale, then all that light is radiated, and you have a strong sense of radiating light, like phosphorescent, or chemical, or radio-active, like the chalice of the grail. Now, we are not imagining something that is not, simply becoming aware of something that is happening in us, and by so doing, we are enhancing the radiance of our body, of our aura, of our bodies aura, and together with that, experiencing the ecstasy of light.

Now, we could carry this a little further. So, could you just ... supposing you were to meditate in the open air in the middle of the night, and you would observe how your glance is able to reach out into the starry sky, beyond where a space craft could ever reach within known technology. Isn't that amazing! Or be it that most of the stars that we look at are not there anymore, but we are looking into the past, that is of course mind boggling. But the important things is that somehow, our very body is the crystallization of that ocean of light, that exploded at the time of the big bang, so that ... Just think that we incorporate in our own body the light of the universe. Think of your own body as a light that has jelled into a crystal, as a crystal, and is still able to, as a crystal, is able to absorb light and to emit light. In other words, recognize the connection between yourself and the stars. Not just the stars, but, that is, the stars are just pin-pointed areas in space in which the ocean of light of the universe gathers, converges, so that it may radiate from those ... the centers of those vortices. So, just allow yourself to be carried by the ecstasy of this vision of your participation and this outburst of light that we call the physical cosmos.

Now, amongst the lights that we emit, there are those ... in particularly those two beams of lights that I ... upon which I drew your attention ... the glance. Now, just ... so while your aware of your aura, there's ... you see there's ... of course, there's an alternation between ... if you identify with your aura instead of identifying with your body, see if you can do that. Consider that your aura is the template in which your body is formed. So, it's a little bit difficult, because our aura does not have a boundary. So, it is something of the nature of a vortex, that is, a whirlpool, illustrated by a whirlpool, or whirl wind, doesn't have a boundary. And so, we think of your body as a formation within the aura. So, before we thought of our body as a prime reality that absorbs light, and now we are thinking in the converse. We are thinking that our aura is the template in which our body is ... jells, or is crystallized, is configured. Since your aura is ... actually really coextensive with the light of the universe, because since it doesn't have a boundary and since the photons are hurtling through space at the speed of a hundred eighty six miles a second ... a hundred eighty six thousand miles a second, your aura hits the stars. So, you ... but somehow the area around your ... closer to your body seems to be more intensely luminous, more effulgent and, even though it doesn't have a boundary, there's some kind of a structuring within it, a kind of architecturing within it, which espouses the contours of the body. Feel that.

It's like those ... the corona of Kirlian photography, for example, or the flowers photographed by Walter Chappel (sic) in ultraviolet light, it's translucent, and like gossamer, and you can see one flower behind the other but ... and you can just about detect the boundary of the petals and yet, at the same time, you see the radiance around the petals, around the contours of the petal's profiles. So, that would be ... give you some ... and then, of course, the light peters out, because it gets ... it's beyond ... it's too subtle for our senses to grasp. So, that would be ... give you some sense of your aura. And then the other senses that, in fact, since there's no break between your aura and the light of the stars, you could say that the light of the stars is continually fashioning itself as our auras. So, the importance of your auras ... being aware of the relationship between that reality of which you are an expression, rather than thinking of that reality of which ... or rather than thinking that you are a fragment of that reality, you are an expression of that reality, of the total reality. So, it is establishing that communication, that connection.

Alright, while we ... if you are able to maintain some ... well, if you are able to identify with your being as a being of light, and that's not just the corona beyond our skin, but that light is ... also permeates the cells of your body, so it is within let's say the ... your skin and outside your skin. If you are able to do that ... Now then that ... you can maintain that awareness, and then concentrate intensely on your glance. Now, you could shift your glance to the left, and to the right, and upwards, and downwards, just like a spot light can be turned different directions. So, if you do that, it will give you a stronger sense of the reality of those beams of light.

Now, this we can do with our eyes closed. If we open our eyes, then, of course, the way that the objects in the environment ... well, I would say, the way we are conditioned to adjust our glance to be able to grasp the appearance of the objects around us, that has a conditioning effect upon us, so that, as soon as you open our eyes, you begin to see the objects again and forget the light of your glance. Now, there's a way of strengthening your glance, so that, you can maintain your, let's say, the perspective ... let's say, your awareness of your glance with open eyes. The consequence is that the world will appear like a blur, but ... by ... inaudible ... you enhance the intensity of the light of your glance, by challenging, let's say, the appearance of the environment by the power of your glance. Now, that ... what I suggest then is that you think that you are absorbing light, which is what happens, of course, through your eyes as you inhale, and that light accumulates in your brain. 

And now, you exhale, that light is threaded through your optic nerves and reaches out into outer space through your retina. So, just at one point I would say ... I used to say, when you start exhaling, I would say now, at the end of your exhaling, open your eyes, and don't try to see the objects. Let's say, think ... don't think of your experience of the universe as being receptive, don't think of your eyes as being receptive organs of perception, but think of your eyes as the lamp of Alladin, for example, that thrusts its light upon all objects to make them reveal their true nature, almost like x-ray. one could call that active looking. And the secret, there is a deeper secret, of course, at the level of the psyche, and that is that one is recognizing in the objects something of which the archetype is written right into our own being, so there is a matching process that happens. So, for example, in our inherent being we have the notion of roundness, and when we see round objects then there is a matching that takes place, we recognize that that object is round. How can we recognize it if we weren't ... roundness weren't already present, inherent in our intelligence? Now, that's how we do throw upon objects, but metaphorically, but now we're learning to do it in actual practice, physically thrust light upon objects.

Now, as I say, to start with, if you open your eyes, the conditioning of the environment, well the way that you are conditioned will force our eyes into focus ... into the only focus, and so if you don't allow this to happen, then the world will appear as a blur. Everything will be sort of intermeshed like a wave interference pattern. But after very much exercise, and that means doing it every day for months and months, you reach a point where you are able to zero in on a person, for example. But your glance is offset from its normal perspective so that you cannot actually see the physical features of the face, for example. And ... but if you do that, then you begin to see the countenance behind the face, that which transpires behind that which appears. And you'll see that what we're experiencing in our new consciousness is only the tip of the ice berg, it's only what transpires at the surface.

What is more that reality you grasp behind the appearance seems to be of a nature akin to light. In physics, one would say, that it doesn't have mass, you see, it's energy without mass. That it jells into ... the photons jell into electrons, and that is what we see, but we don't see what is behind the veil. But it is a wave interference pattern. It sounds like if you throw a lot of pebbles on the lake, for example, at first you see the individual eddies and then afterwards you ... it's all just one pattern ... what they call one wave interference pattern, you can't distinguish the individual eddies any more. When you're looking at the stars there however wonderful and ecstatic the experience is, you could think that they are just the convergence in localized areas of that ... the ocean of light that is the universe, that is revealing itself to you through its convergence in the form of stars. So that, the whole universe is an epiphany, epiphanos (sic), the revelation of light. And your being is part of it. So, that the light of the universe which is the light of your being is revealed to you, it's not something that you can see. We have to ... when we are working with light, we have to eshew (sic) our habit of thinking of ourselves as subject that is observing an object, and see that now we are proceeding in the mode of self discovery.

Now, to come back to what we are doing, when we're ... we keep ... we maintain our concentration on our glance, if you can do that, and you see ... and you remember that what you were seeing before you did this was only the appearance, whereas the reality behind that appearance is the reality of light, which is of the same nature as your own aura, a mutual recognition. Now, to ... there's a skill to carry this further, and that is to imagine a light passing through light. You know, just like the river Rhone passing through the lake of Geneva. So, a light passing through a light.

Now, so there are different levels of light. What we normally experience is just one level of light, which we think we know what we mean by light. So, of course, it's very difficult to have any sense of what these levels could be. So, there are skills that we can use, and I'm suggesting several of them. One is turn your eye balls upwards now, when you inhale, and converge them a little bit if you can, and press the bottom of you tongue against your palate. So, now there are different ways of approaching this. One is that the ... how can I say, the higher ... that word is not the best, but let's say the transcendent levels of light descend. It's very difficult to say that. Well, you can just imagine that light descends through the fontanel at the top of your skull, there's a point there which is called the fontanel, and penetrates your brain from above, in addition, of course, to the light that you absorb through your retina. So, that thought will help to draw your attention to the light above your head, not just the light that radiates from your crown center, but the light that descends, let's say, in the middle of the crown center. And this is favored when one turns one's eye ball upwards, and closes the eyes, presses the bottom of the tongue against the palate. And now when you exhale, you reverse things and now you think that it is not just the light in your brain that you project through your glance, but also this transcendental light that descends upon you. Descends upon you like a light upon a light, as is said in the Koran, light upon a light.

Now, we could explore this a little further by doing a practice that Buddha did, or that Buddha gave to his disciples. So, this is it. These are the first step, and then we'll build up. Imagine a red disk in front ... on the screen of your... in front of your mind, you see. Now, as you exhale ... as you exhale, imagine a red disk. Now, as you inhale, you may find that your beginning to perceive a green disk. It's a little bit like a hologram, you can ... for example, hologram you can have ... or holograph, you can have, for example, two pictures that are superimposed, so, for example, a figure of Christ on the Turin Shroud and then a painting of Christ, and so you can toggle your glance to see one or the other, but you have to down play one in order to highlight the other. So, it's the same thing, you can highlight the red disk, but instead of toggling the way you would do in a hologram, you must think that the green disk is the reflex. It's not just another disk. It's the reflex of the red. Now, if you exhale as you concentrate on the red disk, and then you inhale in order to capture the reflex, you might sense that it is, instead of in a hologram, it is of the same level, think that it is ... it represents another level of reality, like a many tiered display of reality. And then you can go back to the red disk again, and yet somehow, as you get used to this, then the green disk is always there, hovering above the red disk. You know it's there and you can just tag onto it.

Now, the next step is a little more difficult, and that is to step from the green disk ... well, it's not a disk, it's the green reflex, into the reflex of that reflex. Now, it's no use thinking of the green as a disk, because then your doing the same thing as we did in the beginning, so it's not the reflex of a disk, it's the reflex of the reflex of a disk. I see it as orange. Then one has to be careful that one doesn't simply do what one did in the beginning, so you must always think of it as a more subtle reality than what you had experienced before. And then, of course, you reach into the reflex of the reflex of the reflex, which I see as violet. So, this is a practice which is intended to help us shift our consciousness from one plane of reality to the next, in other words, what is called the transcendental dimension.

Now, we could complete this by the testimony of Hildegaard of Bingham, so try to do this while I'm talking ... while I'm simply quoting her. She said, "I find myself in a world of light." And you see, you can only find yourself in a world of light if you are able to earmark the light of your own aura. If you identify the light of your aura and you can see that your aura is part, let's say, of the world of light. At first, of course, the physical world, the physical light, that ocean of light the I said we've already met this, but now ... END OF SIDE #1.

 BEGINNING OF SIDE #2. ... in order to reach into the transcendental realm, one has to think of not physical light, but that there may be ... there are several levels of light. For example, the light of intelligence, it's a different type of light. It is light, because it makes everything clear, but it is not what we understand by physical light. So, this is very subtle. So we follow Hildegaard of Bingham. So, you see, there is a factor here which we have to meet at this stage, and that is that just the visualizations won't do it for you. In fact, there could be some wishful thinking within it, some kind of projections. You have to be very careful of the authenticity of our what we experience in meditation, because we can easily deceive ourselves.

So, I think that all of us, myself included, would like to have a clear documentation of what ... inaudible ... tells us. So, I can tell you a story of an old lady who got herself in a state of coma and we thought that she was dying. We were all surrounding her and I was holding her hand. And she seemed to be looking into the heavens. It was the expression on her face was just unbelievable, totally transformed. And all of a sudden all the wrinkles have gone and here was a young, a beautiful young girl, radiant with light. So, this is the miracle of ... the miracle of light. And the reason for this, because, as I said, it expresses itself right into the physical configuration of the face. For this to happen, it requires a catharsis in our thinking and our emotions. That's why I am interrupting this visualization, just to avoid leading you into wishful thinking.

So, can you ... So, metaphorically, can you think ... can you envision what it would be like to entertain luminous thoughts? It's a kind of clarity in one's thinking, instead of ambiguity. And can you also envision how the emotions can be luminous, that is the opposite of guile, manipulation, ambiguity, or ambivalence? The consequence is that the defilement in one's ... even in one's aura, there's a defilement, a distortion, flaws that result from, let's say, the spill over of the world. And, as I've often said, the voice of Caruso (sic?) is ... can be achieved now in the bad recordings of the time, so, that means within its own distortion. So, if you think of that, then you realize that those thoughts and emotions that besmear one's aura and one's ability to experience the ecstasy of light, that they can be reversed. Not removed, reversed. The consequence is something that happens to one's consciousness, by clearing one's conscience and by the power of truth. The consequence is that one can see one's consciousness as a light, not just the one's glance, but one's consciousness as a light. And now, this is going to have some impact on our vision of light. For this is what happened to Hildegaard.

And then she said, "At some point well I'll be flooded with this light." I hope your doing it while I'm talking about it. We're not just recounting the story of Hildegaard Bingham. And think that you're flooded with light, and not just on your chest and your face, as though we were facing the head lamps of a car, for example. But this light penetrates right into the cells of your body and they are jiggling, in ... like the dance of Shiva, the dance of ecstasy. And so, there's the encounter between the light of your being and the light of your vision. At first it seems like two different things, and yet as I said before, your light is an expression of the light of the universe that is now seems to be light appearing to you in the form of your vision.

Now, at a certain point she says, this light, this world of light seemed to open up just like a gate into a further world of light. And that corresponds with a shift in one's identity as being an aura. You can sense yourself as being an aura now, but of the nature of a higher level of light than the one you have been resonating with so far. So, your ... some how ... your light is like a ladder which has hoisted you from one level of awareness to another. But you see that it is ... You can't do it just by shifting your vision. You can only do it by this transformation in your thinking and emotion and really that means, let's say, departing from one's links with the earthly ... with earthly conditions. It's ... I nearly said one's involvement, but it's not one's involvement, but it's some how the participation in one's emotions to what the contemplatives ascribe to the way of the world, which is concupiscence, greed, selfishness, manipulation, vulgarity, sacrilege, so on and so forth, so that's a sense of values. There's a spill over in us which, as I say, effects our aura and our ... and certainly stand in the way of shifting our consciousness into higher spheres of light.

Now, there is a further step. Now, again there is a practice we could do which would, ... it's a technique, a skill that we develop in our meditations. It can prove effective. And that is, shift your attention from the chakra at the bottom of your spine to the second chakra, corresponding to the reproductive organs, to the solar plexus, to the heart center, to the throat center, to the third eye, and then to the point bindu, which is ... the Hindus call bindu, which is ... corresponds to the pituitary gland, and then the fanning out of all that light in the crown center.

So, it's like a ladder. Now, to be more effective, you see, if you ... your vaguely aware of your aura, it's seems rather amorphous and one doesn't have a very clear sense of what it's like. One is absorbing light and one is emitting light, but at a further stage you begin to realize that there are different frequencies of light, that we experience as colors. So that our aura has the aspect of the spectrum of light, like a rainbow, with the red at the bottom. Then you have a kind of vermilion color at the second chakra, and then orange in the solar plexus, like that wonderful Madeira orange that you see in the clouds sometimes at sunset. Then gold in the heart, and green in the throat center, blue in the eyes, and violet in the throat center [undoubtedly he meant the third eye]. Then colorless light like a diamond in the point bindu, it's often called ... compared with a diamond, and then all the wonderful hues, fantastic array of hues, like you see sometimes when you look at a diamond, blue and red and violet and all kinds of colors scintillating. So, if you pass in your view your different chakras and just ascribing a color to each one of them it has an effect on your consciousness.

The next step is practice ... [squeak in the tape here at 235 on the counter, starting from zero on side #2, and Pir Vilayat's voice gets kind of high] You imagine colorless light, a disc of colorless light. Or it doesn't have to be a disc. It could just be you are looking into a light, colorless light, and then you shift your consciousness from that light to the reflex of that light, and then the reflex of the reflex of that light, and so on. You see. Now, the ... maybe I'm doing it rather fast, but what you could do is then proceed thus as you inhale. Then when you hold your breath, and you make a real quantum leap in your identity, and identify yourself with luminous intelligence, instead of your aura, instead of the calm of your aura. And so, it is of a totally different nature to your aura. Certainly, you identify yourself with, not the physical light of your glance, not your consciousness which is receptive to the light of the environment, but your intelligence envisioned as light, or be it not a physical light.

And now, the real break through, which is expressed in the words of the Koran, a light upon a light, and that is that if you grasp a meaningfulness that you hadn't grasped before, your whole aura lights up. For example, if you tell ... if you ask a child ... you place a puzzle in front of a child and ask the child, "Can you see a pixy in the branch of that tree?" and the child said, "No Mum, I can't see it". You say, "Well, look better." "No, I can't see it. Yes!" Now, all of a sudden a break through. The whole face of that child lights up. So, that's what I'm talking about. The break through of what is called awakening will trigger off illumination. ... So, God bless you now.

END OF TAPE.

MAR 01, 1997		Tape 09

So, let us keep in mind, all the time, what our motivations are;  keep reminding ourselves of that. The question is what am I doing  in life? Why am I doing what I'm doing? Am I doing anything that,  or my way of doing things, is that a, does it make sense in terms  of the values that are important for me? Or am I just adapting  myself to the challenge of the circumstances.    You see Buddha draws one's attention to the repetitiveness of the  wheel of, the (Samsadic) Wheel. That is, what is a point in a  plant become a seed and then the seed becomes a plant and so on.  It's totally circular. There would be a little more sense to it if  the plant could mutate. And so that's evolution.    So when we look at ourselves and we ask ourselves "am I evolving"?  Or is it, sometimes people instead of evolving people go backwards  and become bitter and disappointed and hardened and they've lost  the fervor of youth and the idealism and confidence in the  meaningfulness of life.    

So we could ask ourselves these questions, has life become more  meaningful to me, and have I found a way of giving vent to all  those potentialities in me that are calling for expression?    So those are real pertinent questions to ask oneself. And then  there is maybe, there's a kind of image of the self since, as I  said, the ego is very adapt in a, making all kinds of appearances,  parading appearances - the self-image - that we make of ourselves.    There is, in the lives of some people, some people experience a  real breakthrough at a certain point in their life, when they  discover the sanyasin or the initiate in their being.    It's like one's real being was covered by the more superficial  layers of one's being that, in which the spillover of the world is  felt or has left it's mark.    Where as if we go deeper into the deeper layers of one's being, and  reach the core of one's being, then one realizes - one discovers  there is something which resonates with what we - the echoes that we  receive from the sanyasins and the dervishes and the recluse of all  kinds and the (hasadin?). It's like unpeeling the surface layers  of our psyche, in which there's a lot of overlap with the  environment.    

And in the (parlance?) of the, those dedicated to the spirituality  ideal that is considered to be the world, the way of the world. As  Christ said, ". . .they're in the world, but not of the world."    And so when one sees that in one's self, one would like to change  one's way of life. In fact, the way of the world, that we, in  which we have imbedded ourselves - sometimes of our own choice -  avers itself to be a prison.    And then one, a simplistic way would be to reach out of that  prison. And that's not the answer. The answer is in exacting  one's self that matches that in the world which one despises.  That's where the prison is.    And so then of course, the need is to find that in one which is of  the nature of (that is of sort?), by the sanysins - as I say - and  the recluse and dervises and (hasidins). And it is, the only way  to label it, is to call it the sacred.    We don't know how to define it. But as I said earlier on, there  are moments when we receive a kind of attunement which is, which  contrast with the way of the world and which enlists our  exaltation, our - an emotional high.    And it immediately has an effect upon our self-esteem, which is,  can be rather depleted by our adopting the ways of the world.    

There comes a time when one realizes that that's where, that's  exactly where the crux of the matter is.    It can reach a point, if one really decides for oneself. Its,  there's a confusion there. So one dislikes something in one that  is really the spillover from the world. But which has become  adamant, which is (various?), got imbedded in one's psyche.    So there are two things there that one needs to do. One is of  course, to reverse - to look very clearly into what is it in me  that I dislike? To really spot it.    And then you can say all sorts of things which may be true or maybe  not true. But one tends to sometimes denigrate oneself unfairly.    And then, it's very subtle like where does need become greed. Now  where is that line of demarcation?    I remember when I was climbing the Himalayas, living as a sanyasin  in the caves.    I had a heavy backpack with a tent, and cooker, and brought  mattress and all kind of things. And, of course, it was so heavy  that I started dumping things on the way.    And then I realized that I could find some kind of a shelter  without having a tent. And I could use a local firewood, whatever  there was, to cook. And if I didn't find anything then I would do  without cooking. 

And I certainly didn't need a blow-up mattress.  And I sleep on the rocks. And gradually you see, if you do that,  then you realize to what extent that you have become addicted to  your frig or your TV and not to mention the computer. So, it's the  support system.    Now, you know that the sanyasins harden their bodies by exposing  themselves to the cold and the heat and hunger and lack of sleep  and pain.    The consequence is that one finds one develops a since of freedom  from the support system. And we all have that in us, the need for  freedom.    And there is, of course, a conflict between our need of freedom and  our need of involvement. And of course its rather simplistic just  to leave the world to be free and give up our involvement because  our involvement means our responsibility.    So that's where the conundrum?) is and we need to be able to see  into that more clearly. How we can introduce freedom in captivity  and in relationship, by honoring the freedom of one's partner. And  thereby finding freedom in one's self. And at the same time the  involvement becomes that of interdependence instead of co-  dependence. So that's what Kahlil Gibran calls the breeze between  great trees that don't grow in each others shadow.    So if you can, I think that at a certain point one suddenly awakens  to the fact that one has allowed oneself to be trapped in a, not  just the circumstances - as I say - 'tis in one's way of thinking.    

And that's why Buddha speaks about freedom from opinion. That's a  first step towards freedom.    Well freedom from dependence upon a, as I call it, support system.  I've used that word several times.    I think for example of a team, of Himalayan rock climbers who spend  so much energy in building the base camps that there's not enough  energy to reach the top. And that's what we're doing in our lives.  We know that our highest values are exactly the reason why we came,  but then the support system takes over.    So, but there's a proportion there, that's why Christ said ". .  =2Egive to Ceasar what belongs to Cesear, and to God what belongs to  God."    So as you proceed thinking that way, then you can earmark exactly  the way that we have become addicted to the support system.    And then sometimes one has to really do something, in which one can  prove to one's self that one can do without it. And if one can  prove it to one's self, then one can have it.    It's like just, Isaac didn't have to be sacrificed than to realize  he was prepared to do it. So it's something like that.    That's the reason for fasting, for example, to prove to one's self  that you can live without eating for sometime, then you can eat.    

So it is that, the key to that is, what in the East is called  (vayaragya) which is translated in the West by indifference or  independence.    And as you evolve you will find that, as my father says, you are  tested to what degree you have found freedom in your being. In  otherwords to what extent you are dependent upon conditions.    You know, you can have those conditions as long as one, don't  become dependent upon them. One doesn't realize that one has  become dependent upon them.    Then there's a further thing, which is a realization. And that is:  the worthlessness of things that mean so much to so many people and  have meant so much to one's self. And so that's what I mean by the  scale of values.    You tend to be much more clear about them and you spare your energy  from pursuing things that are counter-productive in view of what  your real purpose is.    So that is how one, the word of my father, Pir-o-Murshid, that  one's, raises one's consciousness about worldy conditions.    

And then you find that the consequences that your attunement, in  your attunement you get to, you resonate at a very high pitch. In  fact, you're, as one says 'high' and you see what was taking,  keeping, taking away your high. What was impairing your high was  compliance with things, which have lost their value for you now and  which other people value.    And you can play with children without, you don't have to be a  child to play with children. You can find a way of playing with  children while not letting yourself be caught up in their way of  thinking.    Now, now to make this transit from, these two things which do  dovetail: one is the way of the world and the sense of the sacred.    You find that you, it is more convenient if you have a support  system. Like you know all religious ceremonies are wonderful. How  can we say, wonderful dramatization of the cosmic celebration,  which one imagines to be in the heavens. And here we have candles  and a beautiful temple and chants and prayers and incense. And so  we have, as I say, a support system in which one's high attunement  is enhanced, supported and enhanced.    But you see the, for one thing the Sufis are nomads. That is, they  are wandering in the desert. They can't rely upon a temple or a  church. And therefore they have to build a temple out of their own  body. And that's the secret of that practice called the Zikr,  which we should be learning.    

Well, what does constitute this temple really? Well, at first  sight it is fra. . .. Well there's a partition, an arbitrary  partition. It's a wall really, between the profane and the sacred.    So there's, one doesn't intend to account the overlap but one has  to see clearly where the difference is. So one passes over the  threshold from the profane to the sacred or the sacred to the  profane.    And it can be rather marked, for example, in England they always  build a Pub next to the Church. So you have that very clear  transit from the profane to the sacred.    Now, fortunately in a number of cathedrals and temples and I expect  also synagogues, there are colored glass windows. So that there's  some communication between the outside and the inside, but it's  filtered.    So that is the first step that we need to do, is to filter the  impressions of the world, because they have a way of getting  imbedded in our psyche. So that we think the world is outside, but  actually we carry it inside us.    So there are two steps, three steps here. One is to filter, as I  say, the impressions coming from the world. And the second one is  to reverse the defilement that has taken place by that spillover.  

And the third is more difficult to understand. And that is to  transmute the impressions of the world so that one may absolve  them. One may resolve them.    So let's consider these steps now. So just follow me now in a  meditation.    I'm using a word of Buddha. You surround yourself with a zone of  silence. So that's a buffer that I referred to in the composition  of Beethoven. Surround yourself with a zone of silence.    So that means, reversing the machine. So that you are not  delivered entirely into the hands of outside. Or there's some kind  of protection.    Further aspect is indifference, detachment. That's the kind of  thing that you find amongst the, the so called Holy Beings, the  sanyasins and ascetics and (hasidims?).    As I said, as Pir-o-Murshid said, we are tested in how detached we  are. So that's a protection.    You see it is impossible to have any sense of what is happening  inside if our attention is drawn towards that which is outside.  Consciousness is generally turned outside.    What is more, you know that when the sun is in the sky, you can't  see the stars. So that, let's say the impressions of the outside  world are so much stronger than the very subtle ones that you could  consider to be inside you. That your consciousness is inexorably  lead, pulled towards outside.      

We experienced that when we were working with our glance this  morning.    One can place an artificial barrier between the outside and inside,  which is very effective. Putting blinds on one's eyes and stoppers  on one's ears, and so on. One can do that.    And it has a rather traumatic effect upon consciousness, because  then consciousness, bereft of it's content - that is of it's object  - which is what we perceive - and also what we conceive, tend to  turn within.    But you see if you just downplay what we perceive, at the physical  level through the senses, then you are still immersed in what you  conceive, let say in the games of the mind.    So that the second step would be to place a barrier between, let's  say the constructs of our mind and our deeper self. And that's  what we do is we turn within. That's how we learn to turn within  when meditating. That is the first, those are the first steps in  meditation.    So let us start with the first one, this is a traditional practice  done by yogis and also by the dervishes.    Now you place your indexes on your eyelids. You turn your eyeballs  upwards, while your eyelids are closed. And you press only the  bottom of the orifice of the eyes are housed so that you don't  press on the cornea, which would be pressing on the retina.  otherwise, if, give you optical illusions.    And then place fourth and fifth finger on your lips.    

And your middle fingers on your nostrils, but don't press them yet.  You could, well you could, you could just simply press your middle  finger of your right hand, of your left hand on your nostril and  simply inhale and then hold your breath and exhale through your  right nostril.    No inhale and then when you hold your breath you press your right,  your middle finger of your right hand also, then exhale through  your right nostril.    Now you do this, now as you do this you concentrate on, let's say  the vacuum and the access through your solar plexus. As the, it's  like a gate, a threshold.    And now you place the thumbs in your, your thumbs in your ears.    And only three breathes, after which you take away your fingers and  keep your eyes closed.    (silence)    So, I hope you're able to observe that it has, this practice has a  dramatic effect on your whole relationship with the physical world.    In fact, you find yourself in a transfigured world. Like the state  of St. Francis when he was walking in the forest. And instead of  just looking at the bark of the trees, of the surface of the leaves  of the trees, he was getting into the consciousness of the trees -  and the birds, and the animals, the insects.    And so if you do that, that you find yourself in a transfigured  world. It's something that you're familiar with, a sort of (dish  ah fushe?) feeling. And maybe that it's reminiscent of the  perspective we had on the world when we where babies. Maybe we lived  in a transfigured world and then our world became more and more  concrete.    

An eerie kind of feeling of a, like a, as though in a state of  reverie; as though one had shifted one's consciousness from the  perspective of the world. And how this perspective (adept?) was  deluding. And now one has a feeling of seeing behind the curtain.    'kay, now can you imagine then that a, imagine yourself as a, as a  cell, a biological cell that has a permeable membrane. And that  means that the membrane acts as a filter that allows certain  material to pass through and others not.    Well we are constituted rather in the same manner. Our  psyche is  constituted rather in the same manner. We are not only, not only  is our body imbibing the physical world through our food, but our  psyche is continually. . .. Not only it emerges anew from inside,  as we said this earlier on, but it is also enriched from the  elements of the psychological, as the psychological elements of the  environment.    So any experience is incorporated in your psyche. And so your  psyche is fed, is enriched by this, this psychological - whatever  it is - element that has now been incorporated in your psyche.    

You see that, that you're not only reborn continually from within,  but we are also being enriched from our interface with the  environment. And eventually that becomes interaction and  eventually an interrelation, and then finally an osmosis.    Now, if we expand our consciousness now, our self image - our sense  of identity - beyond the personal self, then you know we open  ourselves to the environment. So that we may be enriched by it.    Now our psyche is constituted rather in the same manner as our  body. 'Tis endowed with an immune system.    You know that the body rejects organs that are not in sync with the  DNA of the body. And so our psyche would normally, is constructed  in such a way that it rejects impressions that are not favorable  to, that we would be damaging.    Now that which operates a selection between those elements that we  can incorporate and those that we can't, in our body, is the sense  of me or not me. That's why the body rejects the organs of people  who are, who's DNA is very different from their own, but will  accept those that are closely related.    

And so the same with your psyche. Your ability to select those  elements that you feel comfortable of, about incorporating in your  being is by having a very strong sense of who you are. Whereas,  when we extend our consciousness into the vastness we loose the  sense of our idiosyncrasies, because we become more and more  cosmic.    So now it is, as we turn within, the sense of who we are, our  uniqueness begins to strike us. And that is where you are  operating a choice between those elements in the environment that  you wish to imbibe and those that you do not wish to.    So, and this is where our sense of values is. Like, this is  something that I really, I feel very much in harmony with. For  example, in my case listening to the music of Bach, or (Vittorio?)  or (Monteveti?) or whoever - Brahms.    But I don't feel attuned with hard rock. So somehow, it's true,  that I reject the impressions of hard rock just as you would reject  a food that is damaging to your body.    Now that's where you operate the choice. That's the selection.  But now we have a second (inert?) system. And that is our ability  to adapt to the environment. And if it weren't for that, we would  never be able to eat food for example, because the food is  different; has different DNA.    

So that the second immune system opens us to indigestion. 'pens up  to the faculty of incorporating aspects of our being, aspects of  the environment that a, we have difficulty in digestion and which  cause a kind of disruption in our psyche. And I think that we are  all suffering from this in, psychological indigestion in our time.  We just have to watch TV and see what happens.    So that's where you need to be very clear about those things that  you, they're your priority list of things that you value.    So that is, I call it the filter, that is the sentinel at the doors  of perception which Buddha talks about.    So now as we meditate. So we started by placing the hands on our  sense organs. So that was a real barrier, that wasn't a sentinel,  that was really a barrier.    Now the, as I say the cathedral, and temple has windows, so now  that's the second step that we begin to encourage the, enrichment  of our being by ingesting elements from the environment, people we  meet who have had an impact on our being, experiences watching a  beautiful dawn on the top of the mountain, or. . .. Great  experiences that are enriching to our being. Now just think of  those.    

And now, how can you protect yourself from the impressions that are  harmful. Well, first of all by having a very clear sense well,  this is not me. This is not me. This is the, maybe there are  people like that, but not me. So that a very strong sense of 'this  is me'.    Can you do that now?    And for example, you are talking to a person. And you say well,  there's something about this person this is really very, very  strange for me. I mean very different. I really, you see there is  an osmosis between people, like people are present in your being.  You are present in the being of other people. You begin even to  talk and to think like those people. The people whom have been  incorporated in your being. And so to maintain the integrity of  your being, you need to be very clear as to the attunement of that  person. It may be very different from your own. And this, in  order to . . ..    END OF SIDE ONE. .and then you dislike yourself. But then it would show a lack  of love to a, intolerance, I mean it would show intolerance to  reject that person because you feel that you are not in sync with  that person.    And here comes the grind, you see there's a third solution.    

Well the, we still have to consider the first one, which is  filtering. Like you, in that person there are things that you like  or that are worthwhile and things you dislike so that's where you  can, you make, you filter. You make a selection and those aspects  of that person that you feel in sync with you can ingest more  easily and it becomes a part of your being and those parts you  don't like well then how do you hold them at bay, you don't reject  them, but how do you hold them at bay. By that essential protective  mechanism, which is detachment. That's your protection. That's the  wall of the temple.    So that, that disturbance in that person cannot disturb your peace.  There's a protection, and that, the only protection is your  indifference.    And that's the way of the sanyasin, That's the way of the hermit.    So what we are doing now is, we're learning from the hermit and we  are introducing the way of the hermit in the middle of our lives  which are involved in action and so let us say the hermit has  become the (knight?).    Now, I already said there is a third solution. And that is to  transmute the world as you incorporate into your being. That is  what we do with our food. 

We, our cells could never ingest the  food directly. It has to pass through a whole process. Whereby  the amino acid chains are changed in their sequence so that they  fit into the DNA. There is a whole work done by the enzymes to  match the RNA with the DNA.    And when there's a faulty replication, then that's where cancer  develops. So, cancer is really an indigestion, a very deep  psychological, due to a psychological indigestion. An unacceptance  of the world.    So, you see, that what we're doing is a real protection, in  learning how to cope without simply parading, as I said, a display  of superciliance, or powerplay, and bloated ego and all the kind of  projections of the ego, that devices in order to, to maintain it's  self-image or, let's say validation.    How do you transmute? Well we have a, the simplest illustration of  transmute, of transmutation would be in alchemy. The (materia  prima?), that is the material that is put in the (alembic?). 

Is a,  well there are several processes of course, but if it is liquid,  then it is a, it is boiled to the point when it becomes vapor. And  then as the alchemists say, beware of the green dragon, that's what  they say, that might escape from the retort. So one has to hold it  So that, otherwise one evaporates. And that's what one might call  the spiritual bypass. And a, one gets lost, you see. So it's a  question of a, knowing how to a, to perform that operation.    Actually, it really requires one to be very clear about the process  of transmutation that's happening in one's own being. And then one  understands better how to transmute the effects of the environment.    So how does one transmute one's being? That is a, traditionally  one says, confectioning the body of resurrection. The body in  which one will be when the physical body has disintegrated. Well,  they're all, well not just theories. There's some real practices  done by the Tibetans for example, in operating that transit while  still alive. And that is why the Sufis say die before death, and  resurrect now. Don't wait for death to resurrect. So it's a kind  of work that one does with one's self.    That is, that's very subtle if you're, I hope you can follow me  here.    Alright, let's start from scratch.    So you're sitting there, hoping to meditate and finding that a, all  kinds of random thoughts distract you. And you think well, I can't  meditate and I don't know how people meditate at all. I try to  control them but I'm fighting a leading battle.    

Well, the thing that will hold you back totally, will arrest any  kind of possibility of meditating, is asking yourself the question,  "What am I doing here?"    There are three mistakes in that: 'I', 'doing' and 'here'. That is  your limiting your experience by, by identifying yourself with self  image and that is what I call what 'I'.    And then, 'here', where the sense of 'here' is somehow linked with  one's, the sense of one's skin bound body that is located 'here'.    And of course in our thinking, it's very difficult. Well we can  overcome that a little bit, as we did by becoming aware of our  electro-magnetic field and our aura.    But actually it's only in the vistas of, the advanced vistas of  science that one can understand what mystics have said for ions of  time. And in science it's called non-local theories. So  localities only corresponds with a certain way of thinking.    I don't know whether that's helpful to you. I think, that's the  mistake you see?    So, now if you think of yourself as dynamic, instead of static.  That is in a state of continual renewal. Then you're making a  further step instead of thinking you as being here in this body, or  whatever.    So if you think of the ebb and flow of the universe in you and  yourself in the universe then you circumvent that sense of being  enclosed in that what you call 'me' or 'I'.    

Well, those are the, now then, after that, then yes. You think of  the renewal of yourself as coming from within.    Now the next step is being able to really discern the levels of  one's being. Instead of working the cosmic dimension, the expanse  of one's consciousness and one's being. in what I call the  transcendental one. And we made some effort this morning in doing  that, if you remember.    For example, passing in review each chakra. And then in the  practices with (Kasina?), the practices of light. We just get some  kind of inkling as to what one means by these higher levels.    That word is, does, not a good word of course, 'higher'. It's not  higher, but still that's the way we think in terms of space.    To be more concrete, this morning we started to become a little bit  aware of our magnetic field. But if you explore it a little  further, you'll find that although it has a, it doesn't have a  boundary, it still does have a structure. otherwise, it couldn't  work as a template for your body. And that structure is very  difficult to grasp because it is, it manifests as the, as a form of  the body, but it is not a form. And one now, it responds to one's  attunement much better than the body.   

 The body does too, for example, you have a spine for example, so  the muscle of the face respond to an emotion. But this subtle  body, I don't want to totally equate the subtle body with the  magnetic field. It's much more subtle than that. There are  layers, and there's a deeper layer which is called the scaler  level. I don't know whether there're physicists here who know what  that means. So there's a deeper level of the, of this what we call  the subtle body, but the key, and this is a key, is what one calls  a, making the states of consciousness corporeal. Making the states  of consciousness corporeal.    There's this fashioning to starter, to be precise, fashioning the  subtle body in accordance with your realization and your  attunement. Let's just say that it gets, it's continually changing  and it is continually structuring itself according to your  attunement and realization.    But any function that happens unconsciously can be enhanced by  doing it consciously. So this is consciously fashioning the body of  resurrection.    It's the Tibetan call the emanation body, several bodies.    So I don't know whether these theories are helpful. They have been  helpful to me.    

That is the Tibetans distinguish the gross body, the subtle body  and the very subtle body. And for each body there is a mode of  thinking. The gross mind, the subtle mind and the very subtle  mind.    And the way the Buddhist put it is the gross mind rides the gross  wind, and the subtle mind rides the subtle wind and the very subtle  mind rides the very subtle wind. And each one of them corresponds  with one of our bodies.    Well that's looking at things (schematically?), of course, which  helps us to develop some kind of clarity in our thinking.    So, the way that we have collated the impressions of the  environment, so that they live further in us, is by the fact that  they structure our subtle body.    Whether, well, it would be easier if we would simply take it that  the magnetic field is the subtle body. I don't think it is, but it  makes it easier. If you think that, that is like a magnetic field  which is structured. And it's structure is of the same nature as  the physical body or espouses the nature of the physical body. If  you think that way.    Now how can one do that. How can one really do it, instead of just  holding the doctrine.    Well these are the deep meditations and I would say the most, how  can I say, realistic meditations.    Now this is, how can I say it, this is a skill I'll call it.  

Though it's not the real thing, it's just a way to get to it.    I'll give you an example. For example, imagine that you are in a  state between the (di dal) state, that is one thinks one is awake  in life, and a state of sleep. In between the two there would be  a state of reverie. Perhaps, I don't know whether you, perhaps it  happens to you in your sleeping that a, well you're not quite  sleeping and a, so you're aware of the noise of the cars of the  street and even the furniture of the room. But you can't, there  are all kinds of images that flash upon the screen of your mind.  And you are not controlling them. You're not projecting them, at  least not consciously, with your will. So that would be a state of  reverie, between sleep and day consciousness.    And normally when one a, does, if one is totally conscious one is  willful. That is, there is some rapport between consciousness and  will. So you can will an image consciously. But in this state  you're between the day consciousness and sleep. And the key to  that is that you have to give up your will of determining your  thoughts. And offset your consciousness from the physical world but  avoid slipping into slumber because then, of course, you don't  remember then anymore what is happening. Some of you probably know  that state.    

Now as I said you assume that there was no way in which you could  have any impact upon these images. But that is an error. One can.  But how one does it is very difficult. There would be two steps.    One would be that you auto-suggest to yourself: pictures, images  before going to sleep. And then the unconscious takes that over,  that suggestion over and you dream what you auto-suggested to  yourself. Now that's a method can be used.    And it's very effective for people with a, who a, suffer from  epilepsy. Because epilepsy is often linked with nightmares.    And so you auto-condition your, you train your unconscious to, into  patterns.    And as Dr. David BOehm?) said, be not surprized if new ways of  thinking are going to set up new circuits in your brain. So you set  up these circuits and the, by repetition you see, keep on repeating  that image and eventually it becomes adamant.    So now take an example, well I think the key is to be able to  offset your consciousness into that state which I described as the,  a transfigured universe. It's kind of a spell, like a  sortilege?), an enchantment. You know like a, I suppose like  being in love. Or like a, listening to music that has so deeply  affected you that the whole, everything seems different. What one  calls a peek experience.    

So let's say a, be kind to the need of your soul for ecstasy. Give  yourself a chance of being able to fulfill that need. So you find  yourself in the transfigured world. Now we could, you could now  work more specifically with the power of imagination. Which is the  creative power per se.    So, now imagine you're walking along in the moonlight. You are  walking along side a lake. There is no wind, but just a slight  ripple on the surface of the lake. And the light is absolutely  diaphanous. And there may be a little bit of mist so that the,  it's just the, you're looking at the lake through a translucent  veil.    Now if you turn your attention towards yourself, you'll find that  you are a, you're not stumping about. As one does in the streets  of New York. But you're kind of floating. And that your body is  like gossamer. And your emotions, your aura is diaphanous light.  And the whole scene is illuminated by this diaphanous light of the  moon.    And so you discover, actually it's a way of discovering your subtle  body. It's very different from the physical body. It doesn't have  the solidity. It's much more malleable, which is also much more  volatile.    So you see that this is very similar to what alchemist were doing  in, in the process of distillation. They were doing it with the  materia prima, as they call it. 

And there's such a thing as the  (Aus Ragia?), the royal art of the alchemist. Who say that what  they were doing in their experiments with matter was really a way  of projecting in matter a process that was happening in themselves.  So they were really working with the transmutation of their own  being, own body.    Now there are other ways of looking at it. You know there's are no  absolute truth of our approaches, you see.    So for example, you know the scientific theory according to which  matter can be transmuted into energy and energy can be converted  into matter. There's a. . ..    Now you could exemplify it as electrons that a, under certain  conditions may be transformed into photons. So that, photons they  don't have any (mats?).    So if you think that way, then you can see that what seems, your  body seems to be material organism that a, it could be transmuted  into a, not solid, subtle reality. What Dr. David BOehm?) calls  implicate and implicate?) means a, closely woven. That's very  interesting, closely woven, actually intermeshed. You see?    So whereas one thinks of the body as made up of cells, which are  you call it discreet entities.    

Or one thinks that, for example, light is made of particles,  photons, particles. And there's also the wave like aspect of light  instead of the particle aspect of light. And so in the same way  you, instead of thinking of your body in this particle like aspect  you can think of it in it's wave like aspect.    It's, of course, it's very paradoxical. But then that's the, one  of the great problems of science: to reconcile the irreconcilables.    But if you can think like that, then you have a totally different  sense of identity.    And now you can. So in the case what, that we just did, we were  setting up a structure in our subtle body. Just like, as Dr. David  BOehm?) said, you can set up a structure in your brain circuits by  a pattern, by certain thoughts, by certain realization. Well, you  can do the same thing.    Now if you keep on repeating it, then it becomes consolidated. It  becomes adamant. That is what you call coagulate, to coagulate  into alchemy - solvent to solvent - coagulate to coagulate.    So that when you turn within, you find this body. It's like you  change your, your setting of your consciousness. And you find that  body. And you can really identify with it. And what's more you  can transform it.    The Tibetans do this by contemplating a statue of divinity, or  imagining that statue. 

And then conforming their (amination?)  body, the subtle body, with the statues. So that you're just like  a sculpture that is sort of fashioning this subtle matter to match  that statue.    And it's so effective that when they're walking the street, they  think they're that statue. I mean that's really, is become a, very  transforming identity.    Now the Sufis don't use statues, as you know. So we work with what  we call the Waziaf, the qualities.    But I find that we need to see how these qualities would be  configured as shapes. So what we did now, for example, the quality  peace or serenity, Salam. And then we tried to translate it into  a form. Actually it was a scene. A landscape of the soul, as one  calls it. And it had an effect upon the configuration of our  subtle body.    So that somehow, it can be so concrete that when your in the middle  of a crowd and there's a stampede or there's a terrible crisis  going on, you can really identify with that subtle body. With that  feature of your subtle body that you have built up in your subtle  body, which is peaceful.    

Now what the Tibetan says, that one can't see it, you see? Except  for those who have eyes to see. Now I would say that this is, you  can see that in the countenance passing through the face of a  person. To such an extent that the face is totally inadequate in  comparison. I mean very poor in comparison with what is coming  through. And it's a, it's a more real reality than the face.    Now there are, the Greeks used to do this in the mysteries of  (Illusis?). They used to, the neophytes had to pass through a  test. And so they had to walk through a labyrinth where there was  a lot of mud. They could be bogged in and loose themselves. And  at the end of the labyrinth there was a lovely lighted up area with  a statue of Apollo. Now that was there, there prize for having  made it through the labyrinth, through the maze.    And then at a further step they would, there was no statue but they  had to imagine a statue. That was a further initiation.    

And then there was a further initiation in which they had to  imagine the being of Apollo regardless of his form. Now that's a  process you see. So at the subtle level is somewhat between the  two. The form is, it's not a form with a profile but it is a,  (architecturally?) made. It's a kind of a configuration, an inner  configuration; like the DNA for example. Behind it, of course, is  a code.    Now that is a, in some way connected with a, it's all connected  with a, with the most non-sensical of all our assumptions. And  that is what we understand by death.    So it is associated with the sense of surviving the destruction of  the cells of the body. Well, it's not the destruction really.  It's the disintegration of the whole construct.    And, of course, if one gets use to shifting one's sense of identity  into that which survives, then one has prepared one's self for the  transit after death. And otherwise then one may get lost, or one  might find it difficult to a recognize one's self after the body  isn't there to remind one of what one thought one was.    

It's accepting that you can be a different person to what you  thought you were. And I don't know whether you know when your  sleeping, for example, one has a very different self image to one's  physical body.    Do you remember dreams? Like your somewhere, and you know you can  be visiting a place, in your dream. And I don't know whether you  notice, that you not only don't have the same body, but you don't  have the same personality. And you think differently and your  consciousness different.    And that's the reason why we have difficulty in, one of the reasons  why we have difficulty in collecting, recollecting our dreams  because we think well that was illusion, that was just a dream.  Because we can't see the continuity. We're the same person, but  different.    And once you've accepted that you can be the same person and yet  different, then you can make the, the transit in the state of  resurrection.    

And Pir-o-Murshid calls it discovering your immortality.    Now how could you think that you're immortal. I mean how, what  does it mean?    Well there are clues, for example, a river. It's never the same  water that passes under the bridge, but you say it's a river. And  so the river is a continuity in change. And so if you think of  yourself as a continuity in change, then you have the beginning of  the sense of what is meant by resurrection.    But it's not the perfect example, because the example in alchemy is  a better one because it's the same water that has become vapor now.  There's a continuity but it's not the same as, the same water that  flows under the bridge.    'kay, well I hope this is helpful to you. It challenges a lot of  our ordinary thinking.    And that's why the Tibetans say, 'the gross mind is interpreting  things in a very complex way'. You know you get, you discover the  faculty of the subtle mind; then you see that it sees things very  differently.   

MAR 01, 1997		Tape 11

...who will be presenting you with a dance this evening, and she's singing a song that she learned from (?Ustad Hashim?) who was a dear friend of ours in Afghanistan who unfortunately was, actually was murdered some years ago. Probably by fundamentalists. He visited us and we did the Dhikr together and well it was a wonderful experience of communion with another, well, he belonged to the Chisti Order of the Sufis in Afghanistan. 

So, what I suggest today is to work with the practice of the Dhikr. As I said this morning, the Sufis, the Sufi Dervishes were nomads, and therefore they had to learn how to produce the kind of support system that would enlist the state of sacredness without relying upon a temple built of stone or whatever. So it is the temple of the sanctity of the human body. See, if you're seeking Samadhi, then of course you want to sit still in a state of what they call the asanas which enable you to sit still for hours. If you want to awaken in life then you need to, your body needs to participate in your experience. So we want to just see ourselves how the motion of the body seems to trigger off a state of consciousness, and how one state of consciousness is followed by the other in a sequence. And I can tell you what that sequence is: first of all, what I call the cosmic dimension, that is expanding our consciousness and our self image--our identity--into the vastness. Then turning within. And then raising one's consciousness up from one plane to the other leading to a state of awakening; that's transcendence. And then, the opposite, awakening in life; we call that the overview. It's not just the overview, it's much more like actuating the state of consciousness. As I said before, making states of consciousness corporeal.

So, you could consider the Dhikr as a dynamic mandala which you create by your own body. Actually, by your, all your body; it's not just the physical body, but electromagnetic field, subtle body, or the aura, or every level of your being. So, it is based upon two very basic cosmic principals. One is the circle, or the arc of a circle. And the other is the vertical line. So the circle, of course it represents like the motion of the galaxies and the stars, and so something of that nature is still written deeply into our human nature. And then the vertical line represents of course the vector linking God and man--man, and the human being. And they are represented by the two letters in the Arabic alphabet: laam, which is the arc of a circle, and 'alif which is a vertical line.

So now I'd like just to, let's just experience it. Let's try the experience together. So at first if you could just think that, whirl your head and your upper body: if your face, or your eyes are turned toward your left shoulder, and then your left knee, and then your right knee, and then your right shoulder, and then up towards the zenith. And now continue to whirl like that and see what it does to you, because if you consider your body as a magnet, then by whirling, the magnet becomes a dynamo. Or its energy is greatly enhanced. So, you will feel that you are like a centrifuge; you are generating a lot of energy that is emerging from within and reaching out. Now instead of thinking that you are turning in a circle, whirling in a circle, think that you are whirling in a spiral, so you're gaining further and further expansion. 

And now I've found that if while you're doing that you think of the way that your magnetic field and your aura, your whole being is intermeshed with the starry sky, then it will be a cosmic experience. And it is that experience that Jelaludin Rumi had when he inaugurated the Dervish whirling which you, I am sure you are familiar with. And I remember his words: 'The atoms and the galaxy are like foam on the shoreless sea, and they dance, and it is all God dancing around himself.' The choreography of the heavens. So that will, that's something in the nature of what I said this morning; it gives you a sense of immensity. The outreach of your being that constitutes further areas of your being then those with which one normally identifies oneself. And in the view of the Sufis it is coextensive with the being of God. So God is never thought of as other. In the words of Ibn 'Arabi: 'Know that you are not you; you are not other than Him.'

Now you see the Sufi view is very different from that of the Yogis because instead of considering the physical world as maya, or even our own, well our self-image is maya, but based on the Qur'an, it says: 'everywhere is the face of God.' Everywhere you will find ayat; you will find the signs that give you a clue. So what you, you never know God. You only know the clues as you've never seen the bear, but you've seen the pug-marks of the bear in the snow. So when you whirl, your consciousness is reaching out into an enormous expanse where the signs, the clues as to that which transpires behind that which appears are revealed. So it's a process of revelation. Zahir, if you remember--well that was at the meeting of the Mureeds-- Zahir, the revealed, unveiling. So the Divine treasure is gradually being unveiled as you embrace more and more of the bounty of the signs; ayat: the signs. 

But, so that's the half a circle, crescent moon, but now as your head turns upwards from the right shoulder towards the zenith, then you have a very, I would say a secret clue about awakening. And in Islam it's called tawil, that is it's like following the pug-marks of the bear, like you've seen the ayat, the signs. But now if you follow the signs, you have a chance of getting closer to the reality of which they are the clues. So that's when your head reaches up from the right, turning to the right, to reaching right up toward the Zenith. So the words are: 'La Ilaha.' La is, gives you, actually what it, 'La' means 'no' you see. La means that this is not reality, so it sounds very much like maya. There is a word of Abu-Yazid Bastami who said: 'God fools you in the markets of the world, because all that you see is effigies.' That's, it's, but the extraordinary thing you see in Sufism is that those very clues that veil the, well the very thing that veils the Divine reality reveals it at the same time. Just like the veil of the Muslim woman who, which espouses the form of the contours of the face, and therefore it hides while revealing. And therefore Fariduddin Attar says: 'Glory to the One who conceals Himself by the very same veil that reveals Him, and reveals Himself by the very veil that covers Him.' That's Sufism. 

So, that, you're entering into that whole mystery of the maya that is kind of transparent, and through which the revelation takes place. The unpeeling of the veils of the Divine Beloved, as Abu-Yazid Bastami said: 'If you are invited to the Divine betrothal you don't have to suffice yourself with the veil of the bride.' So, when you, as your head goes up you are not just expanding in the existential world, in outer space, but reaching out into all the levels which are not yet clear to you, but it's part of your expansion to include all the planes and not just expansion on the physical level. 

So let's do it again, if you remember all the things I've said... 

Now identify yourself with your magnetic field instead of your body, and you'll find that the power of the Dhikr will be greatly enhanced. And if you like, if you don't like that word magnetic field you can think of the Divine power of the Dervish coming through you as you depart from the constraint of your personal self image, and are able to have some sense of the vastness of your being which is as I said coextensive with the being of God. But it is true that as you expand, you go into the vastness, you lose the sense of your individuality, your uniqueness. There's a word of Ibn 'Arabi who says: 'People think sometimes that fana--that means annihilation, annihilation in the Dhikr--means that you cease to exist, and all that it means is the collapse of the limitation of your notion of yourself, which you think is your individuality.' 

Now this motion is followed by rapid descent of the head which turns toward the solar plexus. And what I'd suggest that you are doing is exhaling in the circle, and then inhaling when your head descends which is rather surprising. So it's a total about-turn, and it's exactly what we did this morning--we started by expanding, and then we turned within. And you remember there were layers and layers and layers, like peeling off an onion skin for example. And then you remember that you reach, well you, yes you touch upon a point at which you really have the sense of having lost yourself in the void, of being resorbed in the void, and that is only acceptable if it is followed by a rebirthing. So the words then are: La ilaha illa--so when the head comes down, you are touching your, actually you are pummeling the solar plexus which is like the center of your being, and which is really the tabernacle in the temple: it's the most, the holy of holies where the renewal of life takes place. So it is followed by a rebirthing, and that is why you say: illa 'llah. La ilaha illa--so, illa, the head plunges, I mean one's, how can I say, one's, maybe it's one's identity, or one's consciousness plunges into the vacuum where there's nothing; or, actually, there's everything, but one doesn't, one, there's no way of knowing what is impending, and a virtuality. God is a virtuality. 

And that 'il' which is very pinpointed, so it's really turned, you're turning towards the solar plexus, is followed by 'la'. Illa. And that 'la' represents a whole, very important new shift into being recurrently reborn. That's a word in the Qur'an: 'we are recurrently reborn.' As I described this morning, the fresh petals in the center of a flower need to unfurl, but only if the jaded petals at the jagged ends fall apart. And so when you're doing the 'La ilaha' you can consider that there's a kind of dispersal of your being in the universe. And when your head, after having descended, when your head returns, rebounds again, then you can experience the blossoming and eventually flowering of your being, emerging out of ex nihilo, out of nothingness, so what doesn't, what seems to be an emptiness, but which is really a plenum, a fullness. 

And the important thing is that, as I said this morning, that while the whole universe self-organizes itself in each one of us, at some point we need to customize that programming of the universe according to how we wish to be; so that's where our incentive comes in. And so, when you say 'illa', then in a flash you think, you project a kind of image of yourself, as we did earlier on when we were imagining our subtle body, and we were trying to fashion it the way that we would like according to our ideal, according to our attunement. So that's the creative outburst, and it's very important. So let's say the words: La ilaha illa. It's followed by something else, but we'll just follow what we're doing step by step. La ilaha illa. You see the effect of illa, it's very penetrating, and then it rebounds as a new birthing. But you see in the Sufi view, instead of thinking 'I am being reborn,' you think that it is the universe, or God, who is reborn as me. So as I said, as a principle behind everything that we have been doing: you never consider your personal vantage point without seeing it in its context with the overall point-of-view, or the Divine point-of-view. And you never consider the Divine point-of-view, or the point-of-view of the universe, without reference to the personal one. 

OK, now what we could do is, you don't have to repeat the words, but you could, if you make the motion, then you'll notice that, and you exhale as you go in the circle, and you inhale as your head turns down, and you continue to inhale as the head rebounds up again, slightly, let's say you move your attention from the solar plexus to the heart center. So you'll notice that if you were a centrifuge, you'll notice that you are generating two forces: centrifugal, and centripetal. So that at first you highlight the centrifugal forces that make for an expansion--Basit, an expansion of your being. And then, you, when your head has turned, has reached the zenith, has turned towards the zenith, that is the moment when you are the most vulnerable. Just like if you had a pail of water and you were to turn it in a circle, and when it's upside down then that's the moment when it would, the water would fall, and as you keep on moving it very fast. So that is the moment when the pull of the center of that vortex that you are is, gets, very strong, and so you feel that, and your head then turns toward, and your attention turns towards your solar plexus. So try to experience that without saying the words now, but with just the motion of the head and the breath...

Now I'll talk while you're doing it, so that, I hope you'll keep on doing it. It's, as you turn within, Pir-o-Murshid gave us, Inayat Khan, my father, gave us a clue when he said: 'In my ordinary consciousness I think I am a bubble in the sea, but when I turn within I discover the sea in the bubble.' So the same thing that you had experienced outside is revealed to you inside. And do you remember what I said? That outside we are playing a role and are wearing a mask, and inside we discover our real countenance and our real being which is veiled but transpires through that which appears. And now note that very important moment of creativity when the head just rebounds a little bit. Then you think of that, as I called, outburst of creativity; it's the great moment in your life when you are creative of that masterpiece which is your own being. It's a kind of power that you feel is delegated to you by the Divine creative power. And it's a recognition of your relative freedom, relative autonomy in the whole, in the context of the whole. So your real being never expresses itself more authentically then in your creativity. 

But now you have to, it's, if you get used to turning within then you get used to your real countenance behind your face, and you begin to identify with it, and you know: 'this is me.' But it is continually changing, upgraded, updated. It's evolving, hopefully. But you have to capture it at its inception, because unless you give it all your support and protection it will be stillborn. That's what's happening all the time to most of us: we lose that chance. It's like the unfurling, the unfurling of the blastema, you know, that is the embryo, but the first cell of the embryo is called the blastema which is all the DNA, there is no diversity yet, so it is all concentrated. The DNA is there, but the mechanism whereby some genes are active and the others are not is, hasn't entered into operation yet. So that's a very initial stage. And I'd like to also point out that if you turn deeply inside yourself you will find that at the core of your being, you will find that the core of your being is immaculate. And that's a feeling that we all have, that we have been defiled by the spillover of the environment, by a lot of things, perhaps even by the inheritance of our parents. But nevertheless, whatever that defilement, it can never take away the purity of that immaculate core of our being which is, you might call, the child within. And so your creativity is, you're really prefiguring the way that this child is going to unfurl, where the potentialities of this child are going to unfurl, to reach maturity. 

So if you do it very slowly, otherwise you don't have time to think of all of this... 

Now perhaps you'll notice the kind of emotion that is triggered off by the sense of immensity, greatness. There's a, some of the Wazifa that we repeat, Ya Kabir for example, the greatness of God, the greatness. (?Muta?) Kabir, very great. And then as you turn within, it's a very different emotion, it's a, we call it Latif which means subtle, fragile, the new, the budding of the flower, very subtle, very fragile, that needs, like the child that needs protection. We suffer in the sensitivity of the child in us, the vulnerability of the child in us. And we, in our simplistic mind, we think that it is defiled; it's very difficult to realize that it's purity can never, that it is present within us, in defilement, just like the voice of Caruso. So that is the Virgin Mary, the immaculate state. And it is that which gives us a sense of holiness, so that in the Dhikr we are, we made that circle, we were building a temple of energy let's say, and within that temple then we were able to protect and safeguard that holiness, the sacredness that we were looking for, and which we find is in our own being, at the core of our being, and out of which we are born, because the birth starts in the state of the blastema, of the embryo of the child. So in a sense it is as Christ said, something like, returning to the original state, and starting all anew from there; it's like opening a new chapter. Instead of being the victims of the past, we have access to the, to a renewal at the early beginnings. (?Muji?) means the originator, the beginning. 

Now, let's just suspend our motion and our thoughts for the time being because we're coming across a very important teaching that is found amongst the Sufi Dervishes. It's a word of a Sufi Dervish who was the first, he was the first Sufi, Pir-o-Murshid, to settle in India, what they called (?Tatabon Tanj?) Hujwiri, before Hazrat Moinuddin Chisti as a matter of fact, and his Dharga, his tomb, is in Lahore. Now he, in his book called Kashf al-Mahjub , he talks about the instant of time. And you see the Sufis have a very special notion of time, the difference, they make a difference between the moment of time and the instant. Because in the moment of time there's an overlap between the past and the future. If you're listening to a piece of music for example, you can still hear the notes that you just, are still resonating in your ear, your ears, while you are hearing the present note. And if you are a musician, you could perhaps anticipate what the next note is. So that's, the moment does not have any boundaries, it's just an overlap between the past and the future. 

But the instant of time, and these are the words of Hujwiri: 'is a sharp sword.' And instead of speaking philosophically and saying: a sharp sword that represents a real break between the past and the future, therefore interrupts the process of becoming and interrupts the causal chain (that's my paraphrasing), he uses terms which have a psychological implication. He says: 'it cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration, or the expectation, of the future.' Now that is very very significant. Because that which can operate a change, can help you to turn a new leaf in your life, is a pledge. Like the pledge of the knight. And as you probably know, Sufism originates in Espabod which is the Iranian knighthood, which originates in the Mazdaean tradition. And of course is to be found again in the Qur'an and the covenant, and between God and man, it was that word 'I will' which is a pledge which established our relative autonomy. That means what we call our individuality, which is relative, but still there's some sense of responsibility that we take over as the ambassadors of the Divine Sovereign. So that's the great moment in our life: when we make a pledge, which represents a total departure from the past, and a new beginning. 

And as I say, a pledge is made in the instant of time which has absolutely no duration, you really interrupt the whole process of becoming. Now, more, how can I say, scientifically, you could say that there are several dimensions of time, at least two. So Einstein's (grade) was incomplete, and a continuum. And that in fact you could consider a time that intersects the process of becoming, moving from transiency to transcendence, and if it were not so, then the future would simply be the outcome of the past. So that represents the possibility of the advent of something new in the universe.

And that pledge is written right into the Dhikr at that moment when one says illa. It's just like a flash. It marks a hiatus in the circle, an apostrophe. You'll find that in Indian music: what they call a dead beat. And you find it Western music: in a halt before the last note for example of a choir, held in suspense. So just think of the time is suspended. Now this suspense of time is illustrated by a pendulum. As you know the pendulum swings from one side of its course to the next, and it slows down before it reaches its peak at one end of its swing, and then it moves down, accelerates, and then slows down again. So you could look at it another way, and you could say that time grinds to a halt in that particular situation where the pendulum has reached the end of its swing. And one represents--now this is a little bit metaphysical--one represents the disjunction or the interruption in the causal determinism. 

And as you probably know--I'm talking metaphysics now--perhaps you know that creativity is always unexpected, can never be predicted, and therefore it is of the nature of, it is to be found where the conditioning of the past ceases to be operative. So that's the crucial moment, when creativity is possible, when one has overcome conditioning. The last words of Buddha were 'this is the cessation of the determined.' The great moment. The freedom. The ultimate freedom. In fact, creativity is an expression of your freedom. So we could illustrate it again by a wave in the sea, a tidal wave. You might think that each wave is the continuation of the previous wave, but in fact, that is true, but also the whole of the ocean emerges as each new wave. So you have the two, you have the determinism of the past, real creativity to some extent, but the more creative you are, the less your work of art is determined by the past, and the more it is determined by your free will. 

OK, so now, so bear it in mind now as you do the Dhikr, that when the head comes down--la ilaha illa--remember that's the interruption in the causal chain. That's the moment when your free will is called upon. And now, what Hujwiri says is I must say very heartening, because he says, 'it is a sharp sword that cuts the guilt of the past.' That is very paradoxical. How can it be? Well, if you make a pledge, for example not to continue doing something you did before, does it have a retroactive effect upon the past? It has an effect for the future. But how can it have a retro-effect on the past? That's a question. Well, of course, if you were to write to the person whom you harmed, after many years perhaps, then your pledge will have a retro-effect upon that person because that is, you're then giving them some kind of, releasing some of their resentment.

 That's a clear case. If you don't write, or can't write, but still you repent and you're thinking of that person, and perhaps that person died so you can't, you don't know how you, whether you can communicate, the fact that you have made a pledge is going to in some way effect that person. And there's no way of documenting this, but we know that every fragment of the universe is linked with every other, so whatever happens--if one wave rises in the Atlantic, the whole Pacific ocean has to adapt itself to that one wave. So everything is interrelated. So that's a very important thought because we have difficulty in forgiving ourselves, and think that the past is the past and there is nothing we can do to change it. And the fact is that the past is in some way changed in the present: it is no more what it was. And so we can, as much as we change the present we are also retroactively changing the past. It's a difficult thought; we're not used to thinking that way. 

That's why I say that Sufism is really based upon the pledge. That is, even initiation in the Sufi Order, called bayat, is a pledge. A pledge that I wish to receive training, or I wish to recognize the Divine Sovereignty, or somehow enter into an Order, get on line, on track. Now, Hujwiri says it is a sharp sword that not only cuts the guilt of the past, but the expectations of the future. That is a very, a thought that requires a lot of soul searching. That is that our planning for the future is, reflects our, the way that the past continues to have an influence in our future, but our pledge is going to cut the causal chain so that our planning can be made without any sense of limitation--we can't do it because of the past. You see you find when you're planning you don't have to take into consideration the past in any way. And the other thought is extremely important and that is that of course the future is not there, and so we mustn't think that we are moving toward something that is there. We create it. By our pledge. Because our pledge is our determinism. 

So you find yourself in that very precarious situation when you say 'illa,' like the fulcrum of a balance where you feel that your whole destiny is precariously suspended on your pledge. 

So the Dhikr, if you just read the words, I mean, you know, it doesn't, I don't think that the words are magical, maybe they are, but I don't think that will work nearly as well as if each phase represents a whole attitude, a whole state of mind, opens up a whole new way of looking at things, triggers off a new realization, and also a transformation in one's being. So that the Dhikr is an opportunity to consider your life while moving in a sequence, because the beauty of the words is that they are signaling to you: 'now you extend your consciousness, now you turn within' and so on. They're giving you guidelines, instructions as to a process that you go through. And all the while you're looking at yourself in life, in the universe, in the cosmos, and as the universe, and as the cosmos. And a lot of these reflections are not something that you can determine, they are realizations that flash upon you as you're doing the Dhikr, to such an extent that sometimes after having done the Dhikr very intensely, one can't believe that one is the same person who was so totally transformed by it.

So, let us try this again, once more up to this point and then we'll make the next step. We'll say it first. La ilaha illa... alright.

Now we'll make the next step. And this is a very, I think it's a great key, we're talking about creativity, being what you want to be, but who is you that wants? There are levels of value of a work of art. Even if it is your creativity, you know if you're a musician you wouldn't put Rossini on equal level as Bach for example. There are levels of creativity. So to be a whole person, we need to embody all the levels of our being, and so far, turning within we have only invoked a level which we are able to think of, to be aware of. Now we need to be aware of what one calls the higher spheres. And this morning we made an attempt at shifting our consciousness from one level to another because there's no point in theorizing about it, we need to really experience those levels. 

Now we can't do it by trying, by trying to lift our consciousness from one level to another, Pir-o-Murshid says that, but, it takes more than just willing it at one's command. There are several thoughts that may be helpful here, several clues. One is that when we make that scale of values that I talked about, then depending upon what is important for you of course, you may put in the amount, in the priorities, or perhaps as a top priority, well it might be awakening, or it might be illumination, but we must be very careful about words because they are, they become cliche's and we don't really quite know what we mean by awakening unless we awaken. And illumination, unless we really are illuminated. But they lure us beyond our earthly condition, I mean those thoughts. But there is one further thought which I think is very operative, and that is splendor. You see we understand what beauty means, or at least we think we understand. 

One can even have a course in, a university course on esthetics, some kind of harmony in the forms, etc. But the reality behind these, the harmony of these forms, represents a kind of attunement which, as matter of fact the scientists, physicists, talk about because, and more and more now, they say we, not only do we never cease to be amazed by the extraordinary intelligence written in the programming of the universe, but the elegance. So when you say elegance, you think is it the elegance of a costume, or the elegance of a person, or? So there's a deeper significance in that word that you couldn't define, but the closest to it is splendor. 

Now the clue that I suggest is a sense, well again, it depends upon finding the appropriate support system. For example, sitting in a church or cathedral or maybe a synagogue or a temple, or a stupa, whatever, in an atmosphere that is, that favors one's sense of the sacred. And so far we've associated sacredness with the sanctity of the immaculate state we needed to protect. But now let's look at it further: the sense of déjà vu. Now this is, for me, it's a particularly, it triggers off a traumatic reaction when I look into the eyes of a baby, not all babies, but a lot of babies; the light in their eyes is something that reminds me of something that I had forgotten. The déjà vu, something that is familiar, but if one, I don't know if we can establish a proof of having lived before one's birth or conception in a previous existence, that would be perhaps, well, I think that one could, a lot of people do, but that is jumping the gun a little bit. But Groff, Dr. Groff uses a word: perinatal instead of prenatal. And that's a very interesting way of looking at it. Because if you say (asaliat) in Arabic means prenatal--actually it's translated by 'pre-eternal' which is a total anomalous translation. But then you're thinking in terms of precedence in time. Like: I remember something that happened at a time when I was not yet born, so you're thinking in terms of time. But perinatal means that it is still there now. Or the memory of the past triggers off a consciousness of the present. 

And so it's as though we lived on several planes but we are not conscious of, we're only conscious of the physical one, and perhaps a psychological one. Are we able then to, is it perhaps something like that experience that triggers off the sense of déjà vu that can help one to get into the attunement of one's celestial counterpart? And of course as you know, that in all religions you have what one calls an angelology. But sometimes they even discard it. I'm talking about experience; I'm not talking about doctrine, although the doctrines reflect the experience. The Hassidims for example are speaking about the (?chekolof?) which are spheres, some of which could be considered angelic spheres, or celestial spheres. Well this is a whole level that seems to contrast with the earthly level, and it is that attunement, rather than trying to reach it that helps us hoist our consciousness to a point that we are able to reconnoiter levels of our being which make us a whole being, a wholistic being--w-h-o--wholistic being instead of, excuse the term, a puny being. 

Now I've gone far beyond the time, so I, or a little beyond the time, so I apologize, but you have a break, then we'll have to have a break. So, could we make it a short break? About twenty minutes, and start at ten to five. I'm sorry but it's very difficult for me to watch my watch when I'm carried into the celestial spheres. So we'll meet again soon.

End of Tape

MAR 01, 1997		Tape 12

That, I have never required of you to believe, but rather to experience. And so of course it would be much easier to say 'You see there are several spheres, and this is one of them' and put it on a blackboard and describe them and so on, you notice that's not what I do. Of course it's very wise because somebody could ask me do you still believe in Santa Claus, so do you still believe in Angels. So that's not the way I present it, but it's, we're proceeding very carefully I think it's really a concern for authenticity, and so I think the display that surrounds special groups, as I call it a support system may help to maintain a certain level of credence, one comes under a certain spell, and it's very easy to confuse that spell with true exaltation. And so then doubt rises, and doubt is a safeguard for our authenticity, as long as we are able to ride the tide of doubt, rather than to allow ourselves to be bogged in by it. And so doubt marks a transit from the wishful thinking to the actual experience, it's a journey that we're making towards more and more authenticity. 

So it's, as I say sometimes one needs some kind of a (inaudible) use the word proof, now we use the word document, to document as I said I told the story of this woman who was aged lady who was about, was in the pangs of death, really and that the transformation on her face was for me at least a sign, I don't know it you can say it's a proof, but a sign of the effect of her celestial attunement upon the very structure of the body, so it's something tangible, it's something real. I've noticed the transformation of the faces of people praying for example in the streets of Cairo when, during Ramadan for example buses stops, tram stops, cars stop everybody stops and they put their prayer carpets down. And it's unbelievable you see and I watch the faces of people and transfiguration on the, not all of course, very few but sometimes the transfiguration gives evidence to something that has happened to their being. And I've been looking into, let's say of course doing it myself so seeing how it happens and that is that in order to, to pray or to express one's glorification one is projecting upon what is really a fictional representation of God and that one confuses with God but it's just what we imagine God should be.  

Or what we would like God to be so it's fictional but still somehow in order to project these qualities because that's what one says and that's what our Wazifas say God is all powerful and majestic and pure spirit and supreme Judge and great and all those ideas truth and all that, in order to do so one has to arouse those qualities that are potentially present in oneself so that one is really discovering through the act of prayer and not only discovering oneself but actually creating oneself through ones prayer. And that, tallies with a word on the Koran, phrase that says "Allah El (inaudible) and talks about the God created through ones prayers, so you see prayer is the very paragon of creativity and of course I think of the words of Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan "God hidden in his creation and awakened from that sleep in us as us" and of course the words of Ibn Arabi "God discovering Him/Herself through seeing Him/Herself projected as us and thereby limited, but Pir o Murshid said God discovering His imperfection through our imperfection. 

So like the voice of (Karuta) (inaudible) imperfection one discovers the real voice. There is something there that is very profound, and that is what happens in the Zikr because after saying "La illah, illa'llah" , you say "la" you don't pronounce the first "A" of "Allah" because, for several reasons one is because in Arabic grammar you don't pronounce the second "A" after you say (inaudible) after you say the first "A" but secondly it's because that is the moment of (consternation), the discovery of what one perhaps imagines to be God but let's say the traces of God, the revelation of that presence in ones heart is breathtaking, so there is an apostrophe and remember it is not we who discover God according to the Sufis, God discovers him/herself through our discovering Him, and we discover ourselves through entering into the consciousness of God discovering himself through us, that's Sufism. And that's why there's so few Sufis in the world because it's really very subtle. 

So if you say God is love well then everybody can agree but if you that, then of course they think that's a bit complicated but it established that interaction that very deep interaction between the human and God, a living relationship. So that'd a great moment in the Zikr and I think that our imaginary (representation) of the glory of the heavens that you find in many of the religious texts of the world is somehow, has the effect of lifting our consciousness into a state of exaltation and it is that exaltation that gives us a sense of the state of those heavenly spheres, now we imagine them to be other and different and elsewhere and so it's of course it's very difficult to, eventually of course in the Zikr we realize that they are right here, but one doesn't always, it's difficult to see it. 

Now I think that the clue to this is our nostalgia for the sacred, I don't think that we can do it, it's true that for me looking into the eyes of a baby will sometimes trigger of a déjà vu, but I don't think that one can just at the command of ones will lift ones consciousness to a higher level but if one feels a very strong nostalgia for what I call the sublime and a kind of aversion towards grossness and vulgarity and well, (inaudible) the way of the world as one says, I think that that itself has the effect of shifting ones consciousness, one has to Pir o Murshid says unravel ones links with earthly conditions. You know just think of the great mystics of all different religions and just, if you can just get into their consciousness I've done it myself of course. when I was a young guy I've traveled throughout the East and also amongst in the West of course looking to visit illuminated beings.  

And I have come across some wonderful beings who have just lifted my soul and inspired me, and transformed me, and the clue what we learn in my training as a Sufi Pir was to instead of sitting there looking at a teacher or envisioning a teacher is literally getting into the consciousness of that being, and then if that being is in uplifted state somehow one is sharing in that attunement, that's a secret, that's the way that consciousness is uplifted from one sphere to the other, so that's the sense that you get when your head comes up after turning towards the solar plexus, as Pir o Murshid says raising your consciousness beyond your earthly condition. That means that your ties with earthly conditions are loosened. otherwise you couldn't extricate yourself you couldn't pull yourself up, those are the tethers, those are the things that are holding us back. So it is again your detachment which is your freedom to allow your consciousness to rise and that's the feeling one has.

There's a thought that, well there are several thoughts that will help you here, first of all Ibn Arabi says beyond imagination, so no more, he says, no more images, so to be creative when you say "Illah", we were actively creating ourselves and now at this point no more images and therefore Celestial Being does not have a form, not even construct of any kind, consideration of any kind, so we don't know how to describe it accept as an attunement, now not surprisingly the same is to be found in Yoga because after going through the initial stages one of the breakthroughs if you, comes at the level which is called Anandanagata, which is one level of samadhi, and ananda means of course bliss, so access to this level is through a state of exaltation, and I think exaltation starts with bewondering, like watching the snow on the mountains this morning for example, or the beauty of a flower or whatever, just, ultimately of course being bemused by the miracle of life, seeing yourself in life, not just the physical world but what it all means is so beyond description and so that's a way of getting attuned. 

And then the Sufi's use the word (consternation) of intelligence, because there is no way in which minds can make any sense of ( inaudible) for example, or the sacred. And so bewondering becomes glorification, bewondering like sitting watching the sunrise in the mountains for example, bewondering at the beauty of the crystals of snow for example, or the crocuses anything that is, or even as scientists say, the wonder of how everything is beautifully planned or even where randomness comes in the planning. It's all so incredibly miraculous, so the mind is (cocenated )because one can't account for it, in ones understanding, there's a word of Ibn Arabi, who says 'knowledge is veil on the known', 'knowledge is a veil on the known'. So that reminds us very much of the dark night of St John of the Cross, when he passed through the night, first of all the night of understanding, so he ceased to try to make sense of what he was beginning to realize and then a deeper dark night, where, which was beyond understanding, so one couldn't understand it unless one had gone through it, but that is that, marks that transit from relying upon the (ayat) the signs as I call in the support system you find yourself without crutches any longer and so that's where the doubt creeps in because all that you believed collapse and you don't see what could maintain you because you can't get back by the same door you came out of the world, and you don't know what the other door is out of it. 

That's the dark night of the mind, that's the dark night of the Soul (inaudible ) is the deepest part of the night, where the mind is a blur and emotions run amok and there is no sense in anything, no motivations, kind of impending death of the soul, it's very, gets very heavy. Then there is that little spark, little indication of how one can squeeze oneself out of that dark night, and one can't use any of the tools that ones used so far, you can't use like argument or belief or reassurance or anything, but just I'll tell what was a clue, (inaudible) to someone whose passing through that night, what if, what Pir Vilayat is saying is true, and you misdoubt because you doubted it, you lost the chance. Now that's a rather unreliable way out but one needs some way out. But the way out is, if you expect it, it won't happen, or you try to get out, it happens as an overwhelming breakthrough as a flood of enlightenment, and I think the reason is because, when one has given up any effort, for example of acquiring knowledge or whatever, then something is revealed, but until such a time, one has to stay in A state of waiting, that is the world of (niffari) on of the (doshas), when he said "God stays you between two mukhams, two stations, until, I think I would paraphrase it by saying that there is state of incubation that takes time, and while one doesn't know what it happening, because one doesn't know what is brewing in the depth. 

And then all of a sudden it shows forth. So that transit from where one has the support at least of one's ecstasy, like the ecstasy of the sublime, and then the transit from there into illumination, is in the plane called Jabrud which is very remarkable because Jabrud means, it means the bone setter, the chiropractor, so the one who puts you right. So it's like, one's thinking was wrong, because one was trying to acquire it, and so if you give up trying to acquire knowledge, then knowledge is revealed, that's the passage, there's the alchemy, it's the jump into the unknown. So that's marked by the two ll's of Allah, which represent in Islam the two throws of the, of the (jettewa) of an arrow, because that's how the Arabs used to measure their distances by the distance between the cord of the bow and where you're putting your arrow. So two (distances), so there's just a sense of like, there is that jump that needs to be made, that leap, that quantum leap from the exhalation of the glory of the heavens, into the state of illumination, where there's no more, even the emotion of bliss is no more there. 

So one has no more support, either one's memory of the physical world or the memory of one's thoughts or psyche or people there is absolutely nothing remaining till there's that breakthrough of illumination where everything is totally transformed, one is seeing things from the divine point of view, the antipodal point of view of one's own and that's called the plane of Lahut, so your moving from Malakut which is the celestial sphere, ( inaudible ) the first "A" of "Allah" to the second "A" which is the sphere of archetypes and between them there's that throw of the two throws of an arrow, the two ll's. If you know something about Navy as I do, in order to sound the depths of the water under the ship, one has like apiece of lead for example at the end of the rope and one is twirling it and then at a certain point when it has reached the Zenith then one let's go of the part of the rope that is attached to the lead and it plummets down to the bottom of the sea so that's something like that ALLah you see, and then after that there's an H, and that is very exceptional because after the (plunge) you've just had a A and L or an I which is also a (deformation) of the A, but now we have an H. And as the H represents like a breath, it's the highest name of God I Judaism, ahleluiah, ( ) Jahveh, H, it represents the state of Samadhi, the oneness behind multiplicity, (Ahad,, ) oneness behind multiplicity, when everything looks, all is integrated in the oneness, that's how things look from the (antipodal) point of view of your own.

 So I could say that in the Zhikr one touches for a very brief instant, the state of Samadhi, that is awakening beyond life. But the Sufi's do not stay in that state because what is the point of our existence if we want to depart from it. If we want to forget it or be unaware of it, so the awakening the Sufi's are looking for is awakening in life, and therefore the H is followed by a U, and so you don't, you turn your head, naturally you turn your head upwards Allah, you remember the H on the end then you say Hu, you turn your head towards your heart center, that's awakening in life. So if you'll remember this the we'll do it now, and if you think of these thoughts, these realizations then maybe it might make it more clear to you.

La illah ha illa'llah La illah ha illa'llah (...) Hu

So it's better to say it just a few times, but very concentrated than just to repeat it in what Christ calls vain repetitions. Because you have to think of all those things that I have been mentioning and anything that occurs to you at the time, is revealed to you if you're doing the Zhikr because it's an opportunity to open yourself to what is called real knowledge and that is to have a kind of hunch about something that you never saw before, for example you were sure that your assessment of your problems was correct and all of a sudden it's clear to you that it is exactly this problem this situation which will trigger off your realization and all of a sudden you see that something that is quite the contrary of something you were absolutely convinced of, so that's our (relation). And it doesn't make sense to your mind because your mind had sorted out the problem and you saw it very clearly and there's no doubt about it, and then all of a sudden you're looking at it from a totally different perspective, you looking at it from the antipodal perspective to your own, and all of a sudden you see it's quite different, and what is revealed is really, what the Sufi's call The Divine Intention. In fact what they say, (I) put it in an arrogant way, they say "You're invited to the Palace of the King, to be appraised of the Strategy " .

 So that is awakening in life. I often tried to describe what that could mean in as practical way that one could illustrate it for example, you had visited a beautiful a wonderful building, for example The Empire State Building. In New York, and now you visit the Architect and the architect accompanies you and shows you the building, so now you can see the building through the eyes of the Architect and you see a lot about the building that you never got from your own vantage point. So that's awakening in life. There are some misconceptions because of our commonplace thinking, we tend think that it means being in the here and now, that would be slipping back into our commonplace thinking and our personal vantage point, and our rather trite self image. No, it is seeing how the everywhere and always manifest in the here and now. 

 There's a word of the American Poet, I can't just remember his name now, Preston ( Menford), Preston (Menford) yes, and he said "I ask for nothing less than the impossible possibility, infinity in the finite fact and eternity in a temporal act". That is awakening in life. So could we do it just one last time now, and this time don't have to say the words, let, so you go into the circle as you exhale and your head descends as you inhale, and the head rebounds upwards as you continue to inhale, and the you hold your breath when you would be saying the H, no sorry, the H comes at the end of, and then you turn your head towards your heart center and that's when you would be saying the H U the Hu, but this time you think of the Architect , you think of what I said eternity and temporal act and you also think of the words of Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan, awakening in life is discovering that one has come on earth in order to discover ones spirit.  (inaudible ) very slowly. And find yourself awake in life. So head up Samadhi, awakening beyond life, and head towards the heart center, awakening in life. So just relax now, stay in your state, stay with it without thinking, or trying to account for it.

END OF TAPE





MAR 01, 1997		Tape 13

Yes. Thank you. What we have are more advanced stages of meditation. And it's going to be exploratory. We are exploring the no man's land of what we call the soul, the higher levels of our being. Behind it all is of course the solid foundation of the transmissions of the great religions of the world. So that we don't have to conform ourselves to the doctrines that have been elaborated by those who had a real experience. But sometimes we can refer to them without adopting a particular way. 

Behind it all, as I say it is exploratory because we're trying to discover perhaps a new way of meditating which incorporates all the traditional ones. But we're looking into the future. The challenge of our time is very different from that of the past. We need to be able to extrapolate between two very different attitudes, those of the sanyasins, or the hermits, and those of most of us who are in some way engaged in life and who still treasure our spiritual quest and are trying to see how we can introduce it into everyday life. So that's a challenge of our time.

Now I'd like to start with a breathing practice which was introduced by a Sufi dervish. And it is to be found in the manual Kalabadi. And that is as you inhale, rather I always think first exhale and then inhale. So as you exhale, you become aware of your involvement in the world, with people, with situations, with challenges, with all the problems, the drama of life. And you can feel that the driving force behind this is the divine what is called Ishq Allah which is expressed in these words,"God descended from the solitude of unknowing moved by the nostalgia of love". So that's Ishq Allah. That is so that for example the splendor in His/Her being could manifest as beauty. Or as Pir o Murshid says, "Man is the fulfillment of the divine purpose". Or as Ibn Arabi says,"God discovers Himself through that expression of Himself which is us". So there you have the opposite of the withdrawal from the world. You have the validation of our sense of achievement, of fulfillment, of involvement, and particularly of the relationship of unconditional love which seems to go absolutely counter to detachment and indifference and withdrawal from life. So that's what you do as you exhale.

As we inhale, then we consider that our inhaling, just like our exhaling is a further extension of the divine inhaling. And as God inhales, that's a Sufi view, then God withdraws, no extracts the quintessence of that which has been gained by the existential state back into the oneness. That is the way that Kalabadi puts it. I would say in my modern terms that the know how gained and maybe the qualities gained by humans by pursuing the divine wish for existentiation, actuation, actualization. That which has been gained, the quintessence of that, is fed back into the programing which is continually upgraded and updated. 

And in order to do that, it's the same process as distillation, one needs to let go of the dross, as in alchemy, let go of the contingent aspects of ourselves, of our knowing, what I call the support system, and really get into the gist of who we are or whom we have become, and also let's say our realization instead of our knowledge. That's the process of transmutation that happens within us. And if we are conscious of this within ourselves, then we are participating in the divine in breath. There you notice that it is the need for freedom which we felt very strongly in Buddha that operates this transmutation. otherwise, if we remain attached to that which...you see if we forget what the purpose of our involvement was, and we become addicted to that which we have been pursuing, then it is the cost of our freedom, and it is the cost of participating in this process whereby everything is unified in the divine unity. 

So here we have two diametrically opposite orientations, attitudes, attunements. And now in this practice, one is alternating between the two. But the challenge of our lives is to be able to extrapolate between the two at the same time. That's what we're going to try to explore this morning.

So let us start with this. So consider your exhaling the extension of the divine exhaling whereby God descends from the solitude of unknowing. So what is gained is knowledge. God discovers Him/Herself through the actuation of His being, Mawjud, the actuation of His being, as you and through you in the existential Universe with all it's drama and suffering and soul searchings. So you see how, you can see your involvement in life. Then as Pir o Murshid says, "Man has come to earth in order to discover his spirit". 

But we have to be careful that we do not lose our way. You see we get attached to the support system and become addicted to it. Therefore we are unable to make that second step, which is process of resurrection, which is like extracting perfume from the flowers. Because the contingent aspects of the flowers are going to fall apart, are going to disintegrate. And the quintessence of the flower is going to survive it's demise as perfume. 

As you inhale, think that you are participating in the divine act whereby all that bounty that has unfurled in the existential state is all unified, integrated into the oneness. But the only way it can be integrated is by extracting the perfume and letting go of the support system. It is your need for freedom, your longing for freedom which is the emotional drive. What you may also feel in yourself equally strongly is your drive for involvement. And you see that it is the sanyasin in you, the being who like Buddha who would be not attached to your kingdom, and who understands how easily one gets inveigled in the ways of the world. So it's the other worldly aspect of yourself that frees you from being caught up in that tangle. 

And you see we talk about the need for freedom, but it depends at which level of your being you want to be free, whether it's at the earthly level. If you become a hobo, it doesn't mean that you are free because you don't clock into your office in the morning. It doesn't make you free. So it depends what we mean when we say we want to be free. That's why Pir o Murshid used the word the message of spiritual freedom. 

So that is the way in which one can participate in the divine unification, the process whereby everything in integrated into the oneness. So it's not one's own freedom. It is the divine freedom that we promote in our quest for freedom. And we don't always understand. Sometimes we think that it means political freedom or whatever aspects in which we try to interpret that very fundamental drive. There is a need for freedom. 

You can see that the pursuit of freedom does lift you consciousness above the earthly conditions. And that is the only way in which one can awaken into seeing things regardless of one's personal vantage point which bogs one in. That's awakening. We think of the words of Pir o Murshid, "As one evolves in live, one develops a passion for the unattainable". That's a very beautiful word 'unattainable' because if you thought you could attain it, well then that means there is involvement, something that you want to acquire. That's something we want to acquire in our worldly pursuits. But we are so used to thinking in terms of what we want to acquire, that we want to acquire awakening, revelation. That's why he says, the unattainable. So you must never think that you can put it in your pocket. Always, as Murshid said, "The horizon is always further afield and lures you further and further". So instead of thinking that you can reach upwards, that unattainable portrayed as the horizon that keeps on luring you beyond the limitations of earthly conditions. 

And then one reverses this. And having found freedom in oneself, one is protected against the danger of getting addicted and therefore bogged in and not being able to see the woods for the trees, and suffering despair and self denigration, and all that we see around us which causes so much dismay. So that is seeing very clearly and with great discernment where are those trammels that bind us. See we want to become involved and we get bound. Can we involve ourselves without being bound? 

So now we're not alternating between our involvement and our freedom. But we're trying to see how we can introduce that element of freedom in looking into our involvement without being constrained by our personal bias which is of course an expression of our emotional attachment to the object of achievement. I hope you can follow me here. I remember Pir o Murshid saying, "One cannot reach the freedom of indifference unless one has experienced interest". And of course he goes on to say, "The pursuit of achievement is going to give you power". And you'll develop qualities in your being in your endeavor to achieve and to master and to find fulfillment in your life in the world. But he said the object of your achievement limits that power. If that's what you want to do, that in itself is a handicap. 

And so if your motivation in your endeavor to achieve is not in acquiring something for yourself, and I think that the only way that that would ever be real is if our motivation is service. That's where you are introducing detachment and indifference in your achievement. And consequently free yourself from the kind of covetousness and concupiscence that goes together with, well that motivates perhaps surreptitiously our involvement. So be very clear as to what the motivation of your involvement is because that is the only way in which you can awaken. 

That is the test of authenticity you see. Because otherwise we may delude ourselves as to being in a high state when it is really euphoria instead of exaltation. Where, as Martin Buber said we are we are in a state of samadhi because we have a sense of unity, but all we're doing is to grasp what he calls, I think he calls it our parabiographical unity. Let's say the unity of our individualness instead of our overall unity. He saw that the wish to achieve illumination or awakening will bring us into a vision of the unity, or a grasp of unity of our individuality of our unity. Therefore it is only actually the quest for the impersonal. Therefore God is the impersonal that will help us from that deviation in our spiritual quest. You'll find it all over when you look at a lot of spiritual groups you see that. 

Now I'd like to pursue this but there are a lot of thoughts that are absolutely crucial in our experience, in monitoring our experience through this process. So I'll try to explore the stages now with you. You see if you study the Yoga Sutra of (Patangali), these are the classical steps leading to samadhi, to (asampraja) samadhi. Well it's really wonderful because, well I'm opening the parentheses here. 

Perhaps you remember in the book Sidhartha of Herman Hesse, Sidhartha is really, Sidhartha and Buddha are the two faces of the same being really except that as a person Gotama pursued the rule of the teacher whereas Sidhartha wasn't happy with doctrine or adherence to a particular or initiation because he accused Buddha of not having taught people how to do it but just giving them the result of his experience. And it's possible that he thought people weren't up to it anyway. So it would be not real if he tried to show then how to do it when they wouldn't be able to do it anyway. We don't know. I don't think that was absolutely true because Buddha has left very clear guidelines about the steps in realization. 

But anyway, the reason why I say that is we have now reached a point in the advance of the thinking of humanity when we want realness. We want real experience. We want to know how to do it instead of doctrines. That's why the sutras of Patangali are particularly helpful because he is saying,"This is how you do it". But of course it leads towards otherworldliness. These are the prescription for a sanyasin who has left the world. So it's useful to us as a model. But what we are seeking is much more difficult because we are trying to combine this with our rapport the world whereas this is leaving the world behind. As long as one sees that clearly. I think one needs to see that clearly. 

So you remember the first step was (sabitarka) samadhi. It is actually rather typical that samadhi is attained by what is called "neti, neti" which is "it is not, it is not" which is the foundation of maya. Like the world is not what we think it is, we are not what we think we are. It is true that physicists will tell you that the reality behind the physical world, we don't know it, but we are exploring. But it's very different from the commonplace conception that we have of the physical world. Maybe psychotherapists are beginning to realize that we are not at all what our self image is. At least what I'm saying that we are not at all what our self image is. You see that's "neti, neti", "it is not". 

And the consequence is retraction from the world, otherworldliness, the spiritual bypass. And what strikes one there is a lack of love. And that's exactly what you find in Sufism. So I think that what one needs on one's path is to compensate that detachment that is motivated by our quest for freedom with putting ourself totally on line with the drama of life instead of suspended isolation. And it's only really caring for people that guards us from enclosing ourselves in our own individual cell as a discrete entity and thinking that we are attaining awakening or illumination. That's why Pir o Murshid said, "Every atom, every person, every planet is awaiting the moment of illumination, awakening". And it is actually the whole universe is awakening and we are participating in it. It's very different than thinking, "I want illumination". 

So now what would be the Sufi way then? I hope it's now become clear to us that we are assessing our problems from the bias of what they mean to us, that is our self image. So it's only a very relative assessment of reality. It could be a deluding assessment which then we carry further in our psyche without clearly seeing where it is faulty. So that is part of the first step of catharsis. But it is, the way to overcome that bias is love. And that is why we need to involve ourselves emotionally in the drama of life instead of seeking peace within ourselves. 

So now the negative, "It's not what we think it is", is compensated by the opposite,"What is it?". If it's not what we think it is through our personal bias, then what is it? We can only, if you remember what we did yesterday was to try to see our problems from the point of view of other people and so on. So we were able to extend our representation of what's happening in the world by looking at things from several vantage points at the same time. These were the personal vantage points of different people that were all faulty, as faulty as our own. Not necessarily less true than our own. It gives you an additional picture of reality than if you look at things from your personal vantage point. But it is based upon relative points of view. 

Now a deeper way of doing it would be to really get into the sufferings of people instead of their assessment. Put yourself on the line totally. So you not a judge anymore. You are in a state of solidarity with beings. You recognize your own suffering and the sufferings of other people. And so you see that your problems or what you thought were your problems are really the sharing in the drama of life. And so it is through your love of people you can see what you thought was your problem in the light of emotion, in the light of love rather than in the light of judgment. And then you understand the meaning of wounded love, the meaning of treason, the struggles of people with their own shadow, and your own struggle. 

And therefore the heroism of being able to ride the tide of doubt while not floundering because it is the neti, neti, you see the negative proposition which represents doubt. That is it's not the way it appeared. That's what Pir o Murshid says that when you awaken you see that, well he says you see how unreal it was, like it was all a sham. His last words were, "When the unreality of life becomes obvious to me, then its reality strikes my heart". So that's the first step is that all that you believed in, I call it the support system, all that you leaned upon collapses, then you can only rely upon a kind of intuition. That's where we have to be careful when we say you can only rely upon your own truth. There is no such thing as your truth is the truth. Somehow it's again personal to you which always proves deceptive. That's how you ride the tide of doubt just like the shepherds who were pursuing that light, the star of Bethlehem they call it. Actually it was a comet. 

So as you see what we are doing is balancing detachment with love because detachment will lead you into the neti, neti, it is not, it is not. That's when the unreality becomes clear to you. But then that is only the first step to catharsis. 

Then it has to be replaced by Ishq Allah. There is another half of this proposition. That is Ma'abud Lela. We'll have to pursue that a little later because we'll just have to go step by step. Now if you remember in (sabikara) samadhi one is turning within and we're not used to turning within. So most people find themselves encapsulated in their thoughts. (tape turns) ...put a sentinel at the doors of our thinking so that you guard yourself against incongruous thinking. 

One of the ways of doing it is to realize that one's thinking is an autopsy of real life situations. Whereas if you turn within, then you become conscious of the impact of your being upon the outer situations as opposed to the impact of the outer situations upon your being. But of course in order to do that you have to unpeal one layer after the other to get down to your real being. And so you become aware of your real being. It's all relative of course. 

And then one can understand one's problems better in the light of the vantage point of one's real being instead of the bias of one's self image. Actually this is (nivicara) samadhi. We've skipped something. And that comes through in the words of Jung this amazing thing. He says, "If you don't deal with your shadow, it will come to you in the form of your fate". So here you see the impact of our being upon our problems instead of the impact of our problems on our being. And from the point that you don't consider them to be your problems any more, and you have really put yourself on the line in the drama of life, then you can reach outside from inside whereas most people are reaching outside from inside. It's a little bit like a diode. A diode will allow the electricity to flow one way but not the other. Your detachment is going to stop the flow from outside to inside so that you can enhance the flow from inside to outside. 

So you see here the balance between indifference and interest. Because your indifference will shield you from the impact of the outside upon you. And so your interest will allow you, which is your love, will allow you to have a totally different understanding of situations. Then if you are motivated by your personal love instead of unconditional love. 

So you see that that detachment has helped us to make that step from the personal to the impersonal. Because as you turn within, it's as though the whole universe were emerging as you instead of thinking of yourself as a discrete entity. And the consequence is that your love becomes an expression of the universal love instead of the personal. 

Now let's examine the next dimension which is described by Murshid as rising your consciousness above earthly conditions. So, as I've already said, you examine exactly what are the threads that are holding you, tethering you to earthly conditions. And as long as they are there you would be splitting yourself. If you are on one side you would be trying to follow your bliss, your passion for the unattainable. 'n the other hand you would be pulled by your dependence upon earthly conditions. It's much more subtle than that because it's really like you can continue to find yourself involved in earthly conditions. It's really what the emotions are in you that establish your dependence. once again if your motivations are service, emotionally it's not binding to you. 

So it means really looking at each thread, like one's relationship with each person, one's life, all the goodies, one's house, one's car, you know all the things that we have become so used to that we don't realize that we have become dependent upon them. TV. And we have to examine each one. It's OK to attach a lot of importance to these. It's much more subtle than that. It's not a question of leaving your palace to live in the forest. No, it's like seeing that, for example, does that lead me into a kind of power trip? Am I going to dominate people so that I can have what I want? That covetousness can lead toward cruelty, misery, concentration camp. See how the emotion ascribed to the world has taken over. It started by involvement but in the course of the involvement there were emotions of greed, manipulation, domination which came in. One lost one's way as Pir o Murshid says. That's why you have to be very clear about every situation in life, what kind of binding effect it has upon your emotional involvement rather than your circumstantial involvement. 

Then if you really value what I call the sacredness in contrast with worldliness, we call it the spiritual, then I think that one can unmask the hoax. It's a question of not denying. That's Muhasibi is looking at things with power of truth, not fooling oneself and admitting that we have our personal needs, psychological needs and so on. That horizon of the unattainable just depends upon how much value we attach to those things. As we evolve we change our valuation of things that mattered before and now they don't matter in the same way. We can't force ourselves to devalue something which is for us important. Because then we would suffer what they call withdrawal symptoms which are counter productive. 

Perhaps you might notice something here, the power that helps our soul to rise. That is where love becomes glorification. That's the reason we don't say, "Ishq Allah mabob lela" which means God is nostalgia. I translate Ishq with nostalgia. God is the object of my love. Mabob would be the object of my love. I love God, as one says commonly,or even on a poster, "Love God",whereas the Sufis would never say that. God loves you but you glorify God. So Ma'abud, the object of my glorification. That might give us some clue. 

First of all let's do what one means by transcendental dimension. But that's still theory. In our experience, in our passion for the unattainable, it's passion. It's not quest. It's passion. So it's an emotion of love that has been transmuted into glorification. So by our glorification, in Sufi parlance, we make the glorified one because Ma'abud means the glorified. God becomes the glorified one through our glorification. 

So it is just envisioning the cosmic celebration in the heavens as something in contrast with the drama of the earth. That is again a kind of strategy whereby we show how dependent we are on a support system, on imagination, on a representation of you know the glory of the heavens and the lights and the processions of the angels, and those imaginary representations that exercise an effect on our being by getting us into a state of exaltation. So we need instead of going into a church and listening to the organ playing, and the people praying, and the beautiful costumes of the priests and the whole solemnity of the occasion, and taking the host, holy communion. That is of course much more dramatization where we construct a very tangible support system. But there is a subtler one. That is in our meditations we are imagining a kind of celestial scenario like in Dante's Paradisio, which acts as a support system that triggers off a state of exaltation until we go through the whole process of the mass of Bernstein where we see that the alter was made out of cardboard boxes and the candles were glossy metal. We thought he was a priest because he has wonderful robes. The whole thing was a kind of dramatization of an enactment on earth of what we imagine to be the cosmic celebration in the heavens. 

By the doubt which was exactly as Pir o Murshid says, when you awaken and you see that the whole thing was a show, then collapse. If one doesn't see the way out of that dark night, there is a collapse because one had depended upon it. There's withdrawal symptoms. 

And then the child represents the real thing. The new which is the birthing that is continually happening within ourselves. And then we see that, as Pir o Murshid says, that the heavens are made in us instead of thinking that they are up there somewhere. And it is through our glorification that our celestial being is unfurled. otherwise it is embryonic, a virtuality as a matter of fact, and sometimes just a fiction of our imagination. 

Then we find that it is at the core of our being that our real being is to be found. And that core is immaculate like a child, and innocent. and I think that it is that quality of innocence that typifies the celestial state. And you know of course the child in us is very vulnerable, is defenseless. So one cannot use guile, manipulation, justification, denial, all those strategies of the ego to validate itself precariously and deceive itself until one sees how self deceptive it is. So there is a catharsis that takes place in order to find our celestial counterpart. And of course it is beautiful. That's where you find the divine splendor. 

So that would be guidelines which would help us to raise our consciousness. As you see it is in the realm of emotion rather than in the realm of understanding or as a consequence of our will. 

Now there still is maybe something that might be holding us back. There's still some reliquite of our commonplace way of thinking which is based upon the notion of the self to acquire knowledge. So this is where we have to give up that tendency in us, that attitude in us, wanting to achieve knowledge. I think the key is in the words of Ibn Arabi, "Knowledge is a veil upon the known". The Sufis call it the consternation of intelligence, agili, consternation of intelligence. So that's why after Malakut, which is the celestial sphere, one passes through that process whereby acquiring knowledge is replaced by being receptive to revelation. That's Jabarut. 

So however much one has, you see the child is making the whole journey towards adulthood anew without being blemished by all the distortions that took place previously, that is by not losing his/her way. And consequently one eschews any effort to acquire knowledge. The child is now a new person. It's ourselves that is renewed now. 

So that's a further extension, a further development of what we did when we were doing the practice of shaghal. We were placing sentinels at the doors of perception and even now we are placing a sentinel at the doors of conception. Because as long as we attribute any credence to what we know, we are not open to what is called revelation which is to seeing things perhaps in the opposite way to which we had been seeing them before. That's why Pir o Murshid says that when you're awake, then things seem quite the contrary of what you thought. So that's where the child is becoming an adult while maintaining his/he innocence. 

Then one is able to see from the antipole of one's own point of view. That is called Lahut, seeing things from the divine point of view. So that means thinking archetypically instead of thinking in terms of the exemplars. All that we experience as Bastami says, is the effigies, is the ayat, the signs. But now we are invited to the court of the King. I would say the court of the King and the Queen and are privy to the divine intention. And we can see how futile it was to try and judge things from our personal point of view. So it is awakening from opinion. 

Then there is an incredible quantum leap after that. Because it's beyond knowing, beyond even revelation. And that is the ultimate I would say, the ultimate quantum leap as far as I can see. But of course it's infinite. That is when Al Hallaj says, "I am the one I love", and has overcome duality.  So God bless you now. Tape ends



97V03-02  Tape 13



MAR 01, 1997		Tape 14

That I'm flashing thoughts that seem perhaps sometimes random, in order to trigger off breakthroughs of realization in you and also to set your attunement, and to activate your attunement, set it in resonance. And perhaps you've noticed that behind it all is the tradition, teachings of the mystic schools of the great world religions but instead of just following these methods as they were taught, weaving all these different ways, approaches into a web, into a pattern, and removing this pattern into the future, and so looking ahead, instead of simply repeating things that have been done in the past. But of course, we have the benefit of all that has been achieved by our predecessors (inaudible) at least a very important part of what has been achieved by our predecessors (inaudible). 

We have some things to wrap up that may seem rather disparate, but which need to be somehow connected we have to, as I've been doing all the time - proceed extempore, simply just without prefiguration of where we're going. But as a teaching, this is all made and is given to you, it's not like that, we're going through this process together, of exploration. 

So, we'll start with a practice and then move on from that practice. We have very little time, unfortunately, it's impossible to do it in the time that we have, it's just not realistic, so we'll start with, I'll have to move rather fast so I hope you will excuse me if I, but what I wish to do is of course to focus your minds or your attention on a certain aspect of things and then give you time to assimilate it and then go to the next step. And I've been moving fast because we are doing in this weekend what would take at least, well in India, of course it would take you years, and anyway, I'm not sure that you could...would achieve that, so I hope you will excuse me if we are moving fast but it's all part of this process and I fear we need to find some kind of completion.

Well, now it starts with a very simple practice that I'm sure you all know and that is, OK, well, just to do it, so place the thumb of your right hand under your chin and the middle finger of your right hand on your right nostril, but don't press it yet and your left hand on the back of your right hand and the thumb of your left hand against your left nostril, but don't press them yet. And, simply just exhale, you know the yoga method which consists in contracting the abdomen first and then the chest. And then as you inhale, you dilate the abdomen and then the chest. Now the more polluted gas you evacuate that is in your lungs through your nostrils, the more oxygen you can take in as you inhale, and consequently you can hold your breath and as I say the longer you do it the longer you can hold your breath. You've got to press your fingers when you hold your breath. 

OK, now you press the fingers of your right hand and inhale through the left nostril and think of a current that is rising in the left channel of your spinal cord, from the bottom to the top. Press both fingers, hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upwards and curl your tongue and press your tongue against your palette and then exhale through your right nostril and think of a current that is descending alongside the right side of the spinal cord and now breathe in through both nostrils and hold your breath, now when breathe through both nostrils you concentrate on the central channel there, energy that ascends in the central channel and gets transmuted in the course of its ascent. Now hold your breath and dwell upon being pure spirit, and then as you exhale, that energy bifurcates as it descends, right and left, alongside the side channels, and then that energy then converges in the center of your, in the bottom of your spinal cord, and it rises again now in the center, so it bifurcates in the descent and then it rises in the center and now it rises, oh what am I saying, yes as it rises it moves towards the center and as it descends it moves from the center towards the lateral sides. Now think of your spinal cord as a vacuum tube, chimney, and of course one of the practices with light is to imagine that there is a flame that rises in your spinal cord and you think of the different colors of the flame, moving from red through vermilion and then orange and gold and green and blue and finally colorless light, ultraviolet and then colorless light. 

Now the thing is that, think of the Tibetan adage "The mind rides the Wind" so one is working with energy, and transmuting energy and if your consciousness rides that winged steed that is energy, Pegasus, then you find that as the energy is transmuted, the setting of your consciousness keeps on shifting up from the earthly existential level to the higher levels, the transcendental levels, so that is a way of triggering off samadhi, so think that you are both Pegasus, the winged steed and also Belafron, the rider, and at a certain point, Pegasus can't reach any higher so the rider has to, Belafron has to continue on the momentum being imparted upon him by Pegasus reaching further and further towards the Olympus. 

Now that's of course the classical Hatha yoga that some of you are familiar with, but now there are further thoughts, considerations, that I have to, I have to open up your mind to these. You see as I said earlier this morning the gist of our experience, and even of our personality is somehow integrated into the totality, that there is a feedback to the software of the universe. And, that is why Jelaludin Rumi says tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal, and that's why Pir-o-Murshid says the heavens are formed in you. But Buddha says this become does not contribute towards the non-become. It seems in contradiction with what the Sufis say, but it makes sense because if it's (non-become, then it is unchanged, and how that can which changes have any contribution, how it can be incorporated in, the fact that it doesn't change, so it doesn't form our minds, it just doesn't make, you can understand Buddha's position).

But if you think that way, then you are establishing a breach between the existential condition and the nirvana condition and you can make a quantum leap from one to the other but there is no bridge, and so one is still in duality, so it is only later on, you see that is what the disciples cried out (while) Buddha reported, but in Mahayana a bridge has been built, but it's possible that Buddha meant that and that it wasn't expressed, that is, the minds of his pupils were not able to see the unity. But in order to see that unity, one has to overcome the categorizing activity of the mind. So maybe Buddhism is just exactly that process of the mind that overcomes its thinking in terms of duality and is able to reconcile the irreconcilables. So that is, I know it sounds like theory, but as you are meditating, then, there comes, you reach a point when you have to make that leap and it's very paradoxical and even confusing. 

Now, Sufism does present a bridge, there is a bridge there, but of course it's very difficult to understand. These are the more advanced meditations. You see the Sufis make a difference between everlastingness and eternity. Everlastingness, to be found in the wazaifa Baki, Fana Baka, Baki. That means that that which had a beginning will continue to be, but transmuted, as we did this morning, the alchemical process, distillation. Whereas samad means eternal and there is no, it can't be enriched, and if you know, if you think that way then you think well what's the point of what I'm doing in existence, it doesn't have any ultimate value because well, unless you can see that it becomes, well that its everlastingness is fed forward into the programming, but how what relationship can that have with the eternal non-changing pinnacle? Well, I shouldn't say pinnacle, I should say center of our being, the center of the samsaric wheel, I mean, how can I say, in theory, you can imagine that the point at the center of the wheel does not change but the motion of the wheel radiates from that center, is triggered off by that center. OK, now sometimes one needs a model and the models are never perfect, but they will help you to see something and seeing that will help you of course, will have the effect in your higher meditations, because otherwise, if you experience samadhi, you have left the world behind, or let's say you have-there's a break between life and what the Hindus call parat paran which means beyond the beyond, and so if you leave your existential support system, body, mind and so on, personality, behind, then you are operating a break in the continuity of your being. It's like discarding the whole scaffolding, that construct possible. 

The answer is of course, that one needs to transmute one's sense of identity as one moves up into samadhi, or better still, that one needs to schlep one's bodiness upwards, pardon me, coarser language, so that one doesn't leave it behind. And if you leave it behind you do an astral projection. So that's a warning when you're meditating, not to, when Pir-o-Murshid says to loosen the ties, or he says to work through the ties as we did this morning, you don't break the ties, because then samadhi is trance. And we think it's samadhi and it's trance. And that's exactly what Buddha said when he went through all the schools of his time and he was disappointed and he said all they are looking for is trance, or powers (saygees), magical powers, and in what manner does it help those who are suffering? But of course he sees that suffering is due to just being involved in the repetitiousness of the wheel, the wheel keeps on turning and turning, so we do the same as our parents, well, a little bit different, but it's still the same old process, that we go through, ignorance and suffering, and so there is not much hope in that. 

There is a little more hope if there is evolution, that is mutation of the plant, but you see that which helps the plant to overcome its conditioning is a kind of anticipation of the future. And that's why (Eula) said the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. But that future is not there. You are making it. So the key to the future is in your creativity in your (insentient) in your freedom. Well actually, that pull we imagine it as a horizontal vector moving from left to right but then if you remember what I said yesterday in how the Sufis discover the other dimension of time so that means that there is a pull, in fact the pull toward the future is somehow, I want to say, catalyzed by the pull upwards, and the pull upwards is or from upwards is something that is, I would say the key to Buddhism. It's of course in our rational mind it's very difficult to understand what it means but he is talking about what Buddhists now are calling an extra samsaric element, that is not of the nature of heredity, and that is let's say an exception to the wheel, to the turning of the wheel, that is what helps us to reach out of the wheel on a tangent. Now that is probably what Pir-o-Murshid means by our divine inheritance, it's another kind of inheritance than our ancestral inheritance, and that's why Saint Francis said "I have another Father". So it's a different element than the earthly one and that's why spirituality is really introducing a paramount element in our life which is not of the nature of the samsaric repetitiveness of the usual commonplace experience.

So, as I said, this all becomes a little more clearer if we can, it might be helpful, let's say, to illustrate this as a model, that's what scientists do, they can't say what they find so they use a model to communicate it, like a language. So if you think of yourself as a pendulum, and then you realize that the bottom of the pendulum is moving in time/space, and the top is theoretically there as a point which never changes. So that point at the top could represent what we mean by eternity or one could even say the eternal dimension of our being, and in samadhi, that is what you identify with. But all the while, the pendulum is still moving, although one concentrates on that point that doesn't move. Now then, as you realize that the pendulum reaches a point of suspense at the end of its swing on one side and then swing on the other side, so that point of suspense represents the passage from the, well for one thing it represents the instant of time that I mentioned yesterday, I'd say time stops, you see, there's an interruption in the, time is how can I say? Well, it can't be landscaped, but it doesn't always advance at the same speed, so it slows down and at the end of the swing, on one side you get that state of suspense beyond the break in the continuity of time, and that's where the other vector which is moving upwards can start operating and so imagine that the pendulum has - the motion of the pendulum - let's say it has triggered off a force which continues to move upwards while it moves downwards.

And that force represents the passage from the existential condition to let's say, well what are called a state of baka which means everlastingness. So you see that the center of that pendulum is like the center of the wheel, and that's the point of eternity. But, everlastingness is represented by the reach, the upreach, if I may use that word, of the force that is set up by the pendulum, even though the pendulum descends the opposite direction, that force continues to rise, and ideally, it reaches an apex, which you could consider to be the top of the wheel, and then is fed back in the wheel, in the descent. So, the pendulum goes up there and back and now you imagine the pendulum goes higher, the swing goes higher, and then eventually it's still higher and then it reaches the peak, and then it ( ) back down to the circle. 

Now if you can imagine then, then we can do this practice now, so once more we will repeat this practice now in view of all I hope you've realized. So again, place your thumb underneath your chin, and middle finger of the right nostril and pound your left hand against the back of your right hand, the thumb of your left hand against your left nostril, and now press the right finger and inhale through the left nostril and think of a pendulum that is swinging towards your right, so it is moving from the past into the present, but it's not just a horizontal line, it's moving down and forward at the same time, so it's a combination of moving down and moving to the right (it's a curve, then). 

Now you hold your breath and when you hold your breath, think that now the pendulum has reached, has ground to a halt, and this is the instant of time where time is suspended, and so I am free from the effect of the causality that I have set in motion in my life, in other words, I have that moment of respite from conditioning where I can take a step out of my will whereby I am not impeded by the past, at that moment of freedom, instant of freedom.

Now then, consider that the impetus, rather like Pegasus and Belafron, that impetus that has been inculcated, imprinted upon the piece of lead and the end of that string, the pendulum, is carried further, whilst the piece of lead starts moving back in the opposite direction. There would be another way of looking at it. The instant of time, is, it interrupts the force of becoming so that the ascent does not take time, you see the ascent of the, let's say the energy on that has been imprinted upon that piece of lead, that goes up further and it doesn't take time, you see so you don't have to think that it happens while the pendulum swings back, it is timeless you see. It is moving out from transiency to eternity.

Now when you, yes that's right, so as you exhale through the right nostril, that's a time when the energy is moving upwards and also forwards so it's pulling you towards the future. Now then you inhale right and hold your breath and exhale left. Now when you inhale right now you think of it's the opposite of the push of the past, the conditioning of the past, now it is the anticipation of the future, let's say that the future has a retrospective effect upon the past. Now you feel that it's power that is moving you towards the future is affecting you, is transforming the past, and perhaps you'll remember that I said that I use, I referred to (Huchfiri) who said that the instant of time is a sharp sword that cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future. 

So as you inhale right you see that instant of time that was suspended, at that moment your past is changed and as you move to the left, you can experience the retroactive effect of that, of your move toward the future. Now the pendulum is suspended again on the left and so there is again a feedback right up into the state of, well use the word everlastingness. 

Now when you breathe through both nostrils, now you have a different thing altogether, because this is where you are connecting the everlastingness with eternity. But I can't say it in words, I don't know how to say it, it's what I am experiencing when I am doing it. And that is that bridge that is so difficult to see. There's also the mystery of the relationship between your, what has been called one's feet, or one's destiny, and one's free will. It is beyond our understanding, but you just find you can see yourself in the drama of life, and the peace of the higher spheres and the meaningfulness behind it all. There is no way in which you can sort this out in your mind, but suddenly, it all makes sense, when you hold your breath after inhaling through both nostrils.

OK now just relax a moment and then we make the next step. Because all of what we did was just the preparation. Now we're preparing ourselves for the ascent through the spheres. And for this I'm adopting the Buddhist meditations, but I'm always thinking of the Sufi ones in parallel with the Buddhist ones. So it's not just the Buddhist ones. 

So, to start with, you are sitting. Imagine now you are sitting as Buddha sat, in the forest, in a grove of beautiful trees, in the wilderness of nature, and you have left the world behind so what he says is that you surround yourself with the zone of silence. So all the busy, chaotic energy of the world has settled down to a state of peace, and it can best be described as Buddha sitting in the middle of a storm, and where he sat everything was peaceful.

Now your effect upon your involvement in life and you see that your involvement in life is in some ways related to your physical body, so the Buddhist practices at this stage consist in absolute objectivity, uncompromising objectivity. That is, to take away the identity, the maya, the illusion of identity, whereby one identifies with one's body. And you might say that you don't, but still you say that you have a toothache, or a headache, or you are hungry, tired, so it proved that we do when we say I, we do identify with our body to some extent. So that's that's the first thing, disidentifying ourselves with our body, so that you can look at it objectively.

Now, the body is the result of the formative process. The whole universe has contributed towards it. It existed even already in the Big Bang. It has come through the aeons of time. Well, yes, but it has accrued to our being. It's like you eat food and now that food has become part of your being so I think that objectivity would lead one to think I am not my body. And that's where I've hunted, this method has some kind of significance because it does free you from your, free us from being too much identified with our body, and therefore not identifying ourselves with our real being. So say it is pragmatic, but it's not a metaphysical statement. But that's what Buddha was doing under the tree.

And now so, I am not my body. But you can't consider your body as you would consider a tree, for example, or a scientific experiment because somehow you do have an impact on your body, so it's not totally (out )seem contradictory, but (can clear ) complementary. The whole idea is to get yourself unstuck from the, unclutched let's say from the very powerful influence of our body, influence upon our body identity, upon our sense of identity.

Now the next step is looking at, consider your thinking. Now you're meditating, and you find that all kind of thoughts crop up in your mind, and they are disturbing, they seem to be random and so you can't concentrate, and you're not getting anywhere and you wonder what on earth, what purpose it serves to continue in that way. So there are different methods, and the method that Buddha suggests in the Sativadanas is that you watch your thoughts. 

So can you do that now? Watch your thoughts, and you see that a thought emerges, draws your attention, and then another thought emerges. So that's the way that the universe is functioning as you're thinking at the mental level, just like the body, as the body is the way that the universe molded itself into your body, in the same way your mind is the way that the mind of the universe fashioned itself into your thinking. But then we rebel against that because we say, do you mean to say that there nothing, that my thinking is totally conditioning, that there is no originality in my thinking? And of course, there is. In fact your thinking is very greatly influenced by your state of realization. But of course, again the method is pragmatic because we get so bogged in if we meditate by our thoughts that if you think that these are not my thoughts but this is the way that the universe, the thinking of the universe manifests in my thoughts, then it helps you to look at it objectively, and consequently you can have, you can free yourself from its impact.

But you remember the steps that we made earlier on, I think it was yesterday, when as we turn within, then our thoughts do not react with the thoughts in the environment, but arise out of the depth of our being. And, since that this new birthing, it starts by that the way that the universe have organized itself, but at a certain point you take over, as we've already said, and you see that there is some originality in your thoughts. But that's very interesting if you can do that when you are meditating, instead of allowing thoughts to simply impact you from outside, you downplay those thoughts so that you're just picking up the thoughts that emerge from within instead of those that are reaction to the environment. So that's an important key to meditating. 

Now the next thing is you observe your personality. Now I think that we came to identify ourselves with our personality. We think, yes, I have these qualities and I have these defects, and that's me and I think that when we say I want to know who I am, I think that one means one's personality. I think most people mean their personality. They have no idea that their personality is only a formation that unfurls out of a deeper reality that we really are. Or that even like just a sliver of a whole being that has formed, coagulated itself into a personality. And also that of course Buddha is right that our personality has been inherited to a very large extent from our parents and ancestors, so of course the universe has fashioned itself as our personality. But we have some impact. 

We can unfurl qualities that were latent and so it's not good enough just to dismiss our personality as being not us because it was a formation to which the whole universe contributed. So you see in the way of Buddhism is of course freedom. So now you're getting free from your identity with body and identity with your mind and identity with your personality. But what we're trying to do is to balance freedom with the other way round, with love, with attaching value to what is achieved in existence, and so your personality, your body, your mind, your personality is, these are things that have been gained instead of by the whole involvement in life, instead of thinking that these are things that have been imposed upon us by conditioning, and we need to free ourselves of.

Now the real breakthrough in Buddhism. And that is that when Buddha says "watch your consciousness." Now see if you can do that. Instead of watching your thoughts, watch your consciousness. So for example, if you downplay your identification with your body, and your identification with your thoughts, and your identification with your personality, then you can think that I am a consciousness. That's why I am, don't tell me that I am not a consciousness . Maybe I'm not my body, my mind, but I am let's say, consciousness. I am the knowing subject. I am the Shahid, the witness. And what Buddha is saying is that you can watch it. That means that you are not it. And, as a matter of fact, he shows that consciousness is (erectile). That consciousness is like the flame. As long as there is a log, there is a flame. So you can't be that which is dependent upon the object that you experience, because you can void your consciousness of any content, and then the consciousness disappears. So that's where most people are at in their realization. Most people are ready to identify with their consciousness, which is a real breakthrough to be able to unmask that hoax. 

But then what is it that is watching your consciousness? Because that which is watching, one assumes, that which is watching, is consciousness. And of course, Buddha can't use the word God so it's much easier to think that it is, that the ultimate consciousness is the Divine consciousness, and that our consciousness is our focalizations of this overall consciousness. We are the eyes through which God sees, and so on. Now our consciousness is like a lens through which the divine Shahid, the Divine Subject sees, or experiences. One is still thinking in terms of duality. And Sufism seeks for the vision of unity instead of duality, and so instead of saying I am the eyes through which God sees, in the Sufi perspective you have to say My glance is the Divine glance. 

So there you see the difference between Buddhism and the, let's say, the complementarity. Now of course, in the language of Buddhism, one would be tempted to say the consciousness of the totality takes over from the personal vantage point, and that is exactly so because what Buddha says is that when consciousness is carried beyond the limits of its outreach, then, the memory of the whole past of the universe comes back. That is, let's say, our consciousness, is as I say, the focalization, you understand what I mean by focalization? It is focalized, like through a lens. Seeing light that has been focalized, that means concentrated in a certain way, converged in a lens. But it is really the total consciousness that has been converged, it's not a different consciousness. But, let's say, think of it as a funnel if you like, it's easier than focalization. So that one is functioning at the small end of the funnel, and consequently there is a lot of memory that one is not aware of, it's like deep memory in a computer that is stored in some way, it's a little more difficult to reach. But when you shift from the small end to the wide end of the funnel, then the memory of the totality of the universe comes back. And what he says is that our memory is interrupted, the universal memory, let's say, which is as a psychologist one would say, is the collective unconscious, stored in our unconscious, is there you see, but we cannot retrieve it. But if we don't think of ourselves as an individual any more, but as the totality which is absolutely what the Sufis are saying, then that memory comes back, and then he says there was a time when there was no smoke on planet earth. Well, he didn't use the word planet earth, but how could he know because that means that there were no humans. In those days they had no idea about evolution. And there was a time when the planet didn't exist, and how did he know? It's only quite recently, and there was a time when the universe, the cosmos didn't exist, it's only very recently that astrophysicists are (saying that). 

And so, how could he know? That shows that, it's a demonstration of what happens to consciousness when it has been freed from its narrow purview. So see if you can do that now, if you can just, instead of thinking I am the witness, Shahid, think that the real witness, that my consciousness is just the focalization of the real witness the consciousness of the real witness, and that's, in Sufism it's called (Vastatel Shahoud), the unity of the subject instead of (Vastatel Foutoud) which is the unity of the object. 

So let's think that the memory of the whole cosmos - the cosmos as a global reality, of which we are like a cell, has a memory of the whole past, of its past, and since our consciousness is coextensive with the consciousness of the universe, that we do have the memory of the whole past but it is covered, buried in the deep recesses of the unconscious.

Now if you imagine you are sitting under the Bodhi tree and your consciousness becomes vaster and vaster and vaster, so it's no more the consciousness of what you think is me, so it becomes cosmic. In fact, you are the universe. Then you can look at life, not just your life, but life, in its wide scope. You're not even part of it, you are it.

But then he () speaks about another dimension, which is the transcendental dimension, instead of the cosmic one, and he says, and I am aware of beings who are lifted from one level to another and the ascent of the descent, and the level to which they are lifted or, he doesn't use the word incarnated, but let's say existensiated. (Voujoud, Bajoud, Maojoud), existensiated. That level depends upon their realization. So that means that your realization, the level of your realization, will determine the level of which you are conscious. 

So, for example, if you realize the nature of your spiritual counterpart, then you will have some sense of the condition of the celestial sphere. Then a totally different outlook. For example, (Shahahbrin souro wadeen) who was the author of (eggmata rashad) said, you discover now that the real witness is the witness of your celestial being. What does it mean? How would a child see the world? And, if the child becomes a saint, then becomes an adult which still maintains that innocence, then how would the saint look at the horrors of the defilement to which humans allow themselves to slip. There's pain, you see. Are very sensitive, the child in us, is the Agnus Dei in the mass. It is the victim of the sins of the world. It is suffering. 

So you see that it is that sensitivity at the level of emotion that determines our grade of, our level of our being. Everyone in life, according not only to their degree of realization, but according to their values, to their resonance with the nature of the sacred, that is being betrayed.

You know when Al'Halaj was condemned, he said truth, treason, truth, treason, truth, treason. That was his wazaifa. God being betrayed by our iniquities. That's the great, the vision of the great drama of the cosmos in the Divine perspective. God crucified, so that we may be free.

So you see that is the vision reached in meditation, and that is awakening in life. That is including the drama of the universe, of the cosmos, instead of just segregating ourselves from it, in a state of splendid isolation, in samadhi.

A curious thing is that the two which I have presented as being at least like dichotomy between awakening in life and awakening beyond life are in some way related. That's the extraordinary thing about it. It's not an alternative, unless you just go into the (asnalmprachla) samadhi, but that's not what Buddha was doing. Though that's why Mahayana Buddhists say the samsara is also present in nibbana because that's the visionary unity. So that let's say, the higher you reach, the wider your perspective, like if you fly very high, the area that you're able to survey is wider. (And) you see the relationship between the two. So you know the stages of the (ayatanas) what they call the eight (vimulcas), eight liberations in Buddhism, that's the very transcendental meditations of Buddha. Let's just examine them, because that's what you may be coming across in your meditation.

First of all he says the level beyond existence, so you'd think like, well, then, it's, I don't know what's beyond existence, it's, how can there be a level beyond existence? It may be in theory, but well, you could imagine it a little more concretely, you could say like it's a software behind hardware of the computer. Beyond existence, like the way all the programming takes place. But that's you know, a view of the mind. But Nefari, who was a dervish, an extraordinary dervish, who wrote (Wakif Maouki), well, he didn't write it but when he was a (nebbe) he was always in a very strange state, and his daughter wrote down what he was saying and it didn't make sense. But she still wrote it down. And we have it down. But he said there, you see, instead of thinking like that the veil there, like, I'm for example, under the smog ( ) the veil, I can't see the sun. And, wanting to pierce through the veil. He says you find yourself at the other side of the veil.

So now it's the physical world that is veiled. So there's a quantum leap. So he says beyond existence. So, either existence is veiled from you because you've leaped the other side, which is I think what one does in yoga, anyway. You could see how things look the other side of the veil, how things down below look from the other side of the veil because in Islam, you know the woman is veiled and the veil espouses the contours of the face and therefore as (Faludin'attah) says Glory to the One who manifests himself through the veil that conceals him. Though that veil does betray the reality or give vent to the reality that it veils. 

And then he says beyond consciousness, so that's something that we have encountered in these few days as Pir-o-Murshid says intelligence becomes consciousness when it is aware of an object, when it is cognizing and object, perceiving an object or cognizing it, but when if you empty the consciousness of its content like if you're not perceiving the physical world, and you're questioning the validity of your thoughts and therefore they don't have any impact on your consciousness, so your consciousness is empty from its object, and consciousness returns to its ground which is intelligence, that's the word of Pir-o-Murshid. 

And, as we know, consciousness is passive towards what it experiences, intelligence is active. I said before it projects its light upon things. We recognize things because we know them. We recognize that table is round because roundness is already written in our being, so that's intelligence. So, that's what Buddha says. Beyond consciousness. Then he goes further, beyond existence and non-existence, because you have a duality there, so the unity behind that, that's of course beyond our understanding. And then there's a further piece which is, I think missing, and that is, beyond consciousness and non-consciousness. And then he says, the cessation of the determinant. He has freed himself from determinism. Which means of course, causality, what we call our destiny, the divine - what we call the divine programming. So that's the ultimate freedom. And, so when you are free from the determinism that binds you, then you yourself determine your fate. And that's what Murshid calls Man, the Master of his Destiny. That's the message of the future. The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. 

So I hope that this will help you in your meditations. Because if you don't see beyond where you see, you get stuck in what you see. Or somebody has to tell you how it looks. If you look at it beyond the way you see it, and then that opens the door. So that's what I have been seeking to do.

So God Bless you (inaudible).

End of Tape.

AUG 08, 1997		Tape 01

We are assessing our problems from a personal vantage point.  So that we never know what our problems really are, 'cause all that we know is our faulty interpretation of them.  And what one means, in meditation, what one means by awakening is down playing that particular perspective in order to be able to highlight a truer one or a more elaborate one or more comprehensive one or more meaningful one.  So you'll find that throughout this course you'll continually be called upon to down play a perspective and highlight another perspective.

For example, perhaps you've seen a hologram in which there are two images that are super imposed.  For example the image of Christ on the Turin Shroud and then a painting of Christ and then you can just toggle your glance so as to pick up one image or another.  So in order to pickup one image you have, to highlight one image you have to down play the other.  Now that's the secret of meditation.

So now we proceed a little further.  Your aura, we, so far we've been alternating between inhaling and exhaling.  Let's just go into breathing again a little more deeply.  According to Yoga, as you exhale you first contract your abdomen and then your chest and as you inhale you dilate your abdomen and then your chest.  

Now what you can do is hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling.  In my mind I always start thinking that I first exhale to get rid of a lot of polluted gases and then inhale without effort and I find that the more extensively I exhale the more oxygen I can take in as I inhale and consequently the longer I can hold my breath.  

Let's try it out.  Keep on extending your exhaling by contracting abdomen and chest.  Now you see how you can inhale, you don't make any effort to inhale and you can draw in much more oxygen.  And now hold your breath.  Okay, well now you find that if you think of your aura again as you inhale, you are absorbing light from the environment.  As you hold your breath identify with your aura, instead of identifying with your body surrounded by the aura, simply identify with your aura. 

And then as you exhale, think that the light that you are radiating is hurtling through space at the speed of 186,000 miles a second and consequently, at some point, the photons are going to bombard the stars.  Now see what this does to your self image, because according to physicists light is matter.  So the matter of your body does not end with your skin.  It is spread out throughout the whole cosmos.  So now you have a totally different image of yourself than you have if you are encapsulated in your skin-bound self image.

Now, what I would like to point out is that the consequence of this shift in one's self image should give you a feeling of relief from confinement, a real breakthrough of freedom, freedom from confinement.  And also, if I may call it the ecstasy of immensity,  the ecstasy of immensity.  So this has very serious consequences in terms of our psyche, not just our body or not just our aura, because that means that what we think we are is a very small fraction of what we really are.  

What is true of the body is also true of the psyche.  That is what we think we are is a certain composition of qualities.  We have certain qualities and certain defects and so on.  That's our self image.  Now you see we converged, when we were thinking about our aura, we converged the light.  We were converging the light of the, at first we thought we were the body and therefore we were absorbing light.  And then at a further stage when we identified with our aura, then we realized that our aura converges the light of the stars and then radiates the same light.  

Well now the same is true of our psyche.  That is our psyche, that is, well it's not quiet exactly the same thing as what one means by personality, but let us say this, that our personality is like the convergence of the qualities that are to be found in the whole universe:  in all people, in animals, in plants everywhere, in minerals everywhere, throughout amongst in the galaxies, in the stars; qualities, like for example joy, compassion, truth, mastery.  These are qualities.  You can say this person has a lot of joy, or this person has a lot of mastery or this person has a lot of, whatever compassion or - these are qualities.  So this is how we define what we mean by our self image.  We, the same qualities that we ascribe to other people, we ascribe also to ourselves.  But then we could say, "Well I have a certain amount of compassion, but not nearly as much as St. Francis.  Or, I have a certain amount of mastery, but not as much as Buddha or Shiva," and so on.  "I have a certain amount of joy in me, but not as much as I find in some people who have a lot of joy," and so on.  So that we have a limited sense of ourselves and as a consequence, we are stuck with our self image and we will remain what we think we are unless we are prepared to question our self image and this is what meditation does.  It's to teach you to question your self image.  

Well once more let us now, as we exhale try to, you remember what I said about the sight?  You can look at the pages of a book or you can scan a wide horizon.  So you can do the same thing with your consciousness.  So now your consciousness might be encapsulated in your body or it might extend into this room or then you might think of people, your family or people outside that you are thinking about or you might think of the kind of things that you saw on TV. Now could you extend, so that is extending one's consciousness.  So could you extend your consciousness into, into outer space, into the stars?  Now isn't it extraordinary that our glance is able to encompass enormous distances in space.  If we look into the starry sky, we are looking at stars which, most of which have disappeared anyway.  That's rather intriguing.  We are looking at stars which are, some of them millions of light years away.  Now the same thing is with consciousness.  You can extend your consciousness and it will give you a sense of a great joy in the sense of immensity, of encompassing a wide horizon.  

Now this is what I find in my encounters with great meditators.  For example some of the ascetics living in the Himalayas, or some of the dervishes.  Their consciousness has become enormously broad.  In fact, and as a consequence their way of thinking, I'll give you an example.  We were climbing the Himalayas, visiting a great Rishi who was sitting in a cave.  Hadn't, this he probably hadn't seen anybody for 5 or 6 years, through the jungle.  And one of the members of the group ask him, what I thought was a silly question, and you could see he was trying to get into the thinking of that man as though, you know.  How can one think that way?  Like, he was thinking vastness and here was a man who was thinking small.  So that's meditation, reaching into a wider expanse and that's part of evolution.  

Well I would say this, what is the point of continuing to doing the things that one has always done or to think the way one has always thought or to have the same emotions that one has always had?  That is what Buddha calls a samsadic wheel.  It keeps on turning around itself endlessly, uselessly; ten thousand monkeys is not much better than 20 monkeys.  What's the point?  Evolution, yes now that means that the wheel is starting to move forward instead of turning around itself.  So what meditation is about is to teach one how one can one promote evolution in one's self.  So there are skills and these are the things that we will be, we have started to share and we will continue to share.  But I expect that if you're not used to meditating then you'll find that your attention doesn't, span doesn't last very long.  

So, I'll tell you a story.  Perhaps you know the story, anyway it's the story of the cave of Plato.  So there were, you know in the Greek mysteries, I'll stand up for this, the Greek mysteries they had a sort of a like a play in which there was a choir and the singers in the choir wore white robes and they had white wings like angels and then people came and tore away their clothes and tied them chained them inside a cave and so what Plato was saying is  that we have forgotten what we were and we are caught up in this very small environment, which is the world in which we live.  And then imagine that some people came to visit the prisoners who were in the chains and said, "The sky is blue and the grass is green and the flowers are pink and red and yellow and so on", and they would say, "I don't know what you're talking about.  I can see shadows, but red and blue, that doesn't mean anything to me."

So for Plato, that's the condition in which we are.  That there's something that we can't grasp because we have forgotten it, because we've been caught in a very small environment, psychological environment, physical environment, and so on and then Plato goes on to say, "And supposing that someone were to break the chain of some of those prisoners and let them come into the light.  And when they come into the light they can't see anything.  They are blinded.  And so they prefer going back into the cave.  At least, they can distinguish something.  And so that is the condition in which most of us are.  When somebody tells you about other dimensions to what you're familiar with you say, "Well that, you talk like, that's nonsense.  It doesn't mean anything to me.  What I'm trying to do is to convince you that you do have a memory of what it's like to see the blue sky and so on.  You have a memory of other dimensions of your being and all that we're trying to do is to retrieve that memory.  So I'm using techniques which will hopefully help you to do that.  That's what we're doing in meditation.  Okay, I'll sit down again.

Now, one's breath acts as a metronome.  That is the speed of one's breath alters one's sense of time and if you slow it down then your psychic activity gets into what is called the anabolic state which is a state of the animals when they are digesting their food in their cave.  And if the breath is fast, then you're in the catabolic state, which is that which happens to the animals when they are able to catch their prey or to defend themselves. Now in the case of the human being, if you answer the telephone quick and have to open the door and have to think of things and are disturbed by a lot of things, then your breath is fast.  If you slow down your breath, you are in a condition which is much more favorable to dealing with big issues, important issues, because if you react to a challenge, you are not using all the faculties of your being.  For example, if you're crossing the road and a car comes and you don't have to use all your faculties to step back.  That's reacting.  What they call reactive strategy.  But if you are placed with a challenge that concerns your whole life, your future, an important decision that you have to take, then be very careful of simply reacting.  And that's why meditation could be considered as placing a buffer between the challenge of the world and your,  and calling upon the resources, the pool of resources in your being, which you have to discover.  But you can't discover them if you are reacting.  

Beethoven described that very beautifully in his, I don't know whether you know the 4th piano concerto, in which he describes the world as the orchestra that comes with a 'wallop bop bom bop bom' and instead of reacting, he describes himself as a pianist. (Pir humming)  That's what we mean by meditation.  As though he said, "Well, I wont play ball with you now, I have to first consult my deeper self."   So, but now how do you consult your deeper self?  That's what we're going to learn, because if you turn within, well let's do it.  Let's imagine that you've never meditated before, perhaps many of you have not ever meditated before.  So if you slow down your breath first, as I said, because if you breathe fast then you are in that position that is favorable to reacting, whereas if you breathe slowly then you're more relaxed and you're able to look at things with a certain amount of objectivity.  

Okay, so now just instead of trying to slow down your breathe with your will.  Just think that your breathe is like part of the ebb and flow of the energy of the, the ocean of the universe, let's say.  So you just let it, let it self organize itself with out your intervening with your will.   And you'll find that if you're aware of your breathe it will slow down.  First of all in and out, inhale/exhale or exhale/inhale rather.  See we're used to doing everything with our will so it's very difficult to learn how to just let things happen, let the universe self organize itself in us.  Now hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling - and you see that you get into a state of suspense.  You have lost the sense of time.  

Now it is in those conditions, those are the conditions that are favorable to turning within.  Now what does that mean turning within?  Okay, so now forget your breath for the time being.  Close your eyes, relax and watch your thoughts.  And now you'll find that that you'll be thinking about the things that your worried about or your frustrations, your bereavements.  For example, the people you loved and who died or the people you loved and who left you, abandoned you or that terrible accident that happened to someone or the kind of news on TV or radio and behind that there's, of course, a lot of emotion.  There's the fear of well abandonment, the fear of failure, of not being able to keep up with the Joneses.  So that means that on one hand we are attached to people who are dear to one, to us and we suffer when that attachment has been severed for some reason or the other and then are seeking for something else, because we're left high and dry.  

And the same thing is dependence.  We depend upon a lot of things.  We depend upon having a home.  We depend upon being able to eat.  We depend upon having clothes.  We depend upon friends.  We depend upon being able to chat with people.  We depend upon a lot of things.  Now I have lived in the caves in the Himalayas, without food, in the cold and the heat, totally alone without being able to talk to anybody and so and of course one enjoys a totally different feeling than the one that one does in the kind of civilization in which we're living today in our day and age because well you are free from depending upon anything.  Now, I'm sure that we all have a need for involvement in our lives.  Want to achieve something we want to have friends, we want to have some relationship, family and so on so forth, dependence.  Dependence can even reach a point of addiction.  For example, an addiction to tobacco, addiction to drugs, addiction to alcohol.  Do we know what it means to be free from dependence?  To realize that you don't have to depend upon those things?  Now, you have to have done it to realize it, but what I'm saying is that we have not only a need for involvement, you also have a need for freedom.  And I would say that when we are bereaved of an attachment, then one is able to resort to that sense of freedom which will act as a balm to your wounded heart.  If you are able to value freedom and you'll find that it's one of the most wonderful things in the world.  

The other thing is a freedom of choice of incentive, because you know that we are conditioned now more and more in our societies of course, we are like cogs in the wheel of a big machine and so do we have some way of freeing ourselves from that conditioning?  For example, I'll give you an example.  I'll ask you three questions.  You don't have to answer them, but in yourself.  First question is: when you think of your situations in life, your problems, your challenges, what is the or are the qualities which you think you need to develop in order to meet that situation.  For example, you have a boss who keeps on undermining you.  Do you need to have more power?  Or then if you have more power then that boss is going to be even more oppressive.  Do you need compassive, have compassion, that boss wont understand your compassion.  Do you need to be truthful?  Well maybe, I don't know, you see, but my question is, "What do you think that the quality is that you need in order to meet that particular challenge?"  Do you need to be more peaceful?  Do you need to be more tolerant?  Now, you know that if you react, that means that if you give expression to your anger, you might be fired, right?  So you can't always resort to the strategy, the reactive strategy of the ego.  So what can you do?  Can you just be long suffering or now. . .?  

Now, in India, the elephants are known to maintain their calm and their dignity when surrounded by chickens.  They don't let themselves be disturbed by the chickens.  Well that is the strategy of the dervish.  This is the way of the Sufis.  Is that you, somehow you have a sense of your Divine status and do not allow yourself to be disturbed by that person that is trying to bug you. Now that's not a reactive strategy, but in order to do that you have to have a high self esteem and that's what we're working with in meditation is that, what I'm saying is that our self image is denigrating it's not that we, most of us unless we have (megomania), most of us have a bad self image and what I would say is that, I'm asking whether we can somehow combine a very high self image together with humility.  That's the great, that's a great challenge, the two, reconciling the irreconcilibles together.  

Well how do we gain that high sense of esteem?  That's what we're trying to do, but you can't expect an answer like that, you have to, we're working towards it. Alright, now come back to your thoughts.  Now close your eyes.  So you're thinking of, I've asked you to think of situations around you, which you will do anyway if you're, if you turn within that's the these thoughts become compulsive, random thoughts, compulsive, you go from one thought to another and you think to yourself, "I can't meditate, I can't master my thoughts."  So don't try to master your thoughts because you're fighting a loosing battle.  

So I'm trying to give a little more direction to your thoughts now.  So I'm asking you like, think of a situation and ask yourself, "What quality?"   So that means that you are concerned about adapting yourself to the environment, to the psychological environment.  Now perhaps you know that in the course of evolution the more advanced animals adapt the environment to their own sense of purpose instead of adapting themselves to the environment. So I'll ask you a second question, "Have you noticed that a certain quality seems to crop up almost compulsively, just very much in the last few days or the last few months.  It's always the same.  Something that keeps on drawing your attention, a quality.  I remembered myself. I'm sure that we've all gone through different phases in our life.  That's what the Sufis are saying.  They call it (Mahcum) stages.  

For example, there was a time when you or I, when we admired courage.  For example, I was in the landing in Normandy.  So I was very proud of the courage of the soldiers who were facing death.  So that's a quality.  Now I remember another time when I was full of admiration for people who are very, very wise, very clever, very smart.  So that's another quality.  And then there may be another time in your life when you felt that what was most important was being of service to people.  And then there might be a time in your life when you felt that what was most important for you was to be able to, to master a situation, to control a situation instead of being like a cork on the surface of the sea.  Being manipulated by the people.  Now you want to be in control of your own life.  Well, that's another quality.  So, and there are many more.  Or for example you might value the wonderful peacefulness of a person whom you admire.  That's a quality that might be coming through to you at this time.  It depends.  

So I would like you to ask yourself if there is a quality that is coming through now and which quality that is.

Now what do I mean by whether a quality is coming through?  Well supposing that your personality is like a flower or let's say a plant and there are a lot of potentials in the roots or in the seed that have not yet manifested in the flower.  So consider your personality as just that which has surfaced, but a larger part of your being is submerged just like an iceberg.  So what you think is your personality is just the tip of the iceberg, but below that, below the surface, there's a lot of potentials that are lying in wait, and which one is not aware of and then amongst these potentials there might be one that is coming through particularly strongly at this particular moment.  How could you ask yourself that question, what is that quality?

For example, you can say lately I have become a little more conscious of the feelings of people.  So I've become a little more compassionate.  Or lately I've become more truthful.  So that was what I mean by the quality is coming through now.  It's always there, but it's always been there, but somehow it's was subliminal and now it has become more active. Now the third question is, "Do you think that this quality would help you to deal with the challenge better than the one that you figured out with your mind?"

Well, I'm not sure what the answer is, because it may be different for each person and also I don't want to go by theories, because a theory would be that destiny is manipulating us to the extent of giving us exactly the challenges that we need in order to develop the qualities that we need to develop and that would be unacceptable, I think.  That would be, it would be like puppets in the hands of the (Stuberg?) guru up there who's manipulating us.  I don't buy that.  But it could be.

Now there's a saying of Jung that really through me for sometime.  He said that, "If you don't deal with your shadow, it will come to you in the form of your fate." Now, what does one mean by a shadow.  Every quality has a shadow.  I'll give you an example.  For example, that woman who is a workaholic has difficulty in being peaceful and the reason why she has difficulty in being peaceful is that she can't stand that woman who is spending all her time on the beach munching chocolate.  So the shadow of peace is indolence or laziness and so you'll find that you have difficulty in developing a quality because you don't like the shadow of that quality.  

For example the shadow of mastery is ruthlessness.  So perhaps you have difficulty in developing mastery because you don't like Hitler.  You don't like ruthless people.  I remember the vice- president of Shell, I think.  He said, "I don't mind stepping on the corns of people".  That's ruthlessness.  So, that's what I mean by the shadow.  So we have defects and qualities in our personality.  For example, if you want to know what your qualities are then ask yourself what your defects are.  If you're ruthless then you know that your, you have the quality of mastery.  And if your facetious, then you have that quality of joy.  

Okay, now there's a third question, a fourth question and that is, "What is the quality that you would like to develop, irrespective of the situation in your life, irrespective of whether it's coming through now or not, just the way you would like to be.

. . . . . . . . . . . . End of side one

And that is, we spoke about the magnetic field, didn't we, the etheric, well the magnetic field.  Once more this is not my imagination, it's scientifically demonstrated that the body has a magnetic field, a static and an electromagnetic field.  That is probably what some people experience as their etheric body.  So I don't know whether you can feel.  You see, you're etheric body is really the template in which your physical body is being configured.  You know, it is the template, it's not the model and that is again, it's a scientific fact.  

So now we have the ability to identify with that subtle body and consider your physical body as just the outer expression of a deeper reality, which is your etheric body.  Now your etheric body does espouse the form of your physical body to some extent, just like your aura does, but now it doesn't have a contour, doesn't have a (propher).  

But now the extraordinary thing is this, and that is that you can mold the shape of your etheric body according to your emotional attunement and your thought.  Now I'll give you an example.  You know behind the face of a person, the form of the face of a person, is the expression that's coming through, the expression.  It's more important than the face.  For example, if that person is happy, then all of a sudden that expression changes.  If you see something that you hadn't seen before then all of a sudden your whole expression changes, that is, that which comes through your face.

Another example, for example a mother with a child says to the child, "Can you, can you see that pixie on the", she shows the child what a puzzle and asks the child, "Can you see the pixie on the branch of the tree?"  And the child says, "No mummy, I can't see it."  "Look again."  "No mummy, I can't see it."  "Look again."  "Yes!"  And all of a sudden the face of that child brightens up.  That's what I mean by an expression.  So, what I'm talking about now is your inner face behind your external face, which changes according to your attunement.  

So now we're going to do some practices so that you can work with that inner form, let's say.  We call it countenance, that countenance behind the face.

So imagine a moonlight, a moonlit night and you're in a state of reverie.  You're almost asleep, but now quiet.  Reverie is half way between being awake and being asleep.  So imagine, can you imagine a moonlit night and you're walking along a lake and there's no wind and there's a lovely sky, full of stars and somehow the whole scene is so very peaceful that you'll notice that you'll walk differently.  You'll be floating rather than walking.  And then you'll find that somehow you're whole attunement is of the same nature as the environment.  And now if you were to become aware of the countenance of the face of the etheric body, you'll find that it is peaceful.  

Well now this is a meditation skill, because if you were to come home after a hectic day and try to be peaceful, you wouldn't be able to.  But if you have a definite image before you, that's going to help you to find the attunement.  So instead of starting with the attunement and then working with the form.  You start working with the form and then the attunement follows.

Now let us contract this with another one, another form of reverie.  Imagine that you're climbing the high rocks in the Alps, for example and it requires a tremendous amount of courage and skill, taking up a challenge and you don't know about the weather.  It seems to be changing.  It's rather threatening and you can see lightening in the, in the neighborhood and you've got to make it in order to be able to come to safety.  So now you see that the, your whole attunement is going to be very different from that of being peaceful.  

Now if you could try and, if you're in a state of reverie then you will identify with your etheric body.  And so you find that the form of your etheric body is now very different.  It's not peaceful.  It doesn't express peace.  It expresses courage, endeavor, resolve, overcoming, mastery.  So now you're discovering something in yourself that you didn't know, perhaps to what extent.  You didn't know just to what extent you had it.  

It happened to me once when I was climbing the mountains in (Chamahnee) above, in France in the Alps and the rocks were brittle and we realized that we would never be able to come down the same way we came up and the only alternative was a wall of ice and we didn't have any ropes and we had to dig holes in that wall with our feet and then shove our hands into where our feet were and then dig another hole and hang over the abyss without any protection.  Now, I would have never thought I could do it, but when you're challenged you discover faculties in yourself that you didn't think you had.

So what we're doing in meditation, is to develop faculties that are latent within us and we're using skills in order to be able to awaken these faculties.  Now that's what I've been doing with you now, awaken faculties within you which may not have been as developed as you like because we are always, we want to evolve.  We want to progress.

Okay, now, one more step.  So once more you're setting back, relaxing, meditating and you're watching your thoughts.  And you'll find that your thoughts, as I say they're compulsive.  You can't change them, you can't master them.  Well if you try, you'll find that they will keep on coming all the same.  

Now you'll find that most of your thoughts, or at least many of your thoughts, are based upon the way that you interpret your problem in your life or your problems.  And what I said before was that a assessment of our problems is limited by our personal bias.  In other words, what does it mean to you?  You see, it doesn't mean what the problem is, what it means to you - that is from your point of view.  And the consequence is that we are carrying a false interpretation of our situation in life, throughout our life.  Until all of a sudden we realize that our interpretation of our problem was wrong and just imagine we've been carrying it, harboring it in our consciousness for many years.  Can you think of that?  So think of your, a problem or your problem.  Think to yourself, is my assessment correct?  What if it is not correct?  And I can guarantee that it's not correct, because for example, if you have looked at Notre Dame in Paris from one angle, you haven't seen Notre Dame.  So if you're looking at your problem from one angle,  you haven't seen the problem.  And the other people involved in the problem are seeing it from another point of view.  And that's why you don't agree.  

Now we have the faculty of extending our consciousness into the consciousness of other people.  So could you try and do that?  Could you try and get it for, think of a situation in which, for example you are in conflict with somebody and you see things from your point of view of course.  Now try, the first step would be to try and get into the skin of that person as it were.  What would it be like to be that person?  What would it feel like to be that person?  Now you can think that person is all kinds of trauma, all kinds of concerns, all kinds of motivations just like you have motivations, a certain understanding, limited of course and your understanding is limited.  So anyway to start with just, forget the problem but just try and get into the consciousness of that person.

Now the next question is, how do you appear from the vantage point of that person?  Because the representation that person has of you is certainly very different from your own self image.  That's why you say to that person, "You don't know me",  of course.  "You're acting the way you do because you don't know me", but what I'm saying is that you can actually see how that person sees you.  So what the Sufis say is, "I see him/her through his/her eyes, which is, of course different from the way I see him/her and I see myself through his/her eyes.  

Now that's a very extraordinary thing to see yourself through the eyes of another person.  Now you can extend to that to more people and more and more people.  I don't know whether you know that book, of Kahlil Gibran, called "Jesus the Man" in which he describes, well it's, he recounts the kind of impressions that different people who met Jesus had of Jesus and they're all different of course, totally different and somehow you can see Jesus through that (composite) many fold vision then much better than from just one point of view.  Now there's a word of St. Francis of Assisi who said, "I thought I saw the world, but the world is looking at me." 

The fact is that our consciousness is the focalization.  You understand what I mean by the focalization, the focal point, hum?, of the consciousness of the universe.  It's not a different consciousness.  Well first of all I'm saying, I'm assuming something here that perhaps we have to be clear about.  So I must ask a few questions.  Do you think that the cosmos is, has awareness of itself as a whole?  Like, and would that awareness include the awareness of it's parts?  Like, for example, is a tree conscious of itself as a tree?  And that includes the consciousness of its leaves.  If you say yes, then that means that you believe that our consciousness of the universe contributes to the consciousness the universe has of itself.  And the reason for that is that our consciousness is part of the consciousness of the universe.  I mean is the leaf of a tree conscious of the tree, as the same consciousness as the tree?  No, it doesn't have the same consciousness, but is it conscious of the tree?  

So these are, I know these are challenging questions.  I mean I'm sure that you, we don't know what the answers are, but it's good to challenge our mind, because we take so much for granted.  So think of the words of St. Francis, 'The world is looking at me. . .'  So the question is, "Can I see myself through the eyes whereby the world looks at me?"  and that's meditation.  So you see how that we have tried to free ourselves from being stuck with our personal vantage point.  That's what I've been trying to do all the time, if you noticed that, because I started by saying, 'How do you feel?' and if I went on by asking you how you feel I would be strengthening your being stuck in your personal consciousness.  But then after that I said, "Well, you are - your body is part of the totality and therefore how you feel if part of the totality and so on.  In other words, reaching beyond our personal vantage point.  That's what we were doing.

Now just one more meditation.  As I say one is really delivered in the hands of these random thoughts if one doesn't know how to meditate.  So the question is, "How can you try and find your real self in this whole (embroglio) of thoughts?"  

Well, here we have an image.  I'm quoting Buddha.  There is a story of Buddha, about Buddha and Buddha was sitting in the middle of a storm and where but where he sat, everything was still.  And it's not miracle.  It's simply because in the center of a hurricane, the center of a hurricane is a void.  So there's no motion in the void, in the center.  If you're right in the eye of the hurricane, there's no motion.  So that's an image that you can keep in your mind as you meditate.  That there's turbulence around you and somehow you find yourself in a state of peace in the middle of this turbulence, and Buddha says, "Surround yourself with a zone of silence."

Now you'll find that, of course, a lot of the turbulent thoughts, disturbing thoughts, all kind of thoughts, nice thoughts also, of course, keep on knocking at the door of your consciousness, let's say, drawing your attention.  Now think of yourself as a vortex, a storm is a vortex, that is like a whirlpool in the water.  That means it doesn't have a frontier, it doesn't have a boundary, the center is a void.  For example, in the lake the, the whirlpool let's say all the water of the lake gets, in turn, gets drawn into that whirlpool.  So that whirlpool really does extend to the whole lake.  There's no frontier.  So think of yourself that way, that you're part of the whole universe and there's no boundary and the center is peaceful and there elements are trying to come towards the center, being pulled towards the center.  

Now you know we are continually ingesting, not only the physical world, but also the psyche, the psychological environment, and so on, ingesting and then digesting.  Now what Buddha is saying is if you want to meditate you need to place a sentinel at the doors of perception so that the, your, the sentinel is able to reject certain impressions and admit others.  So that is your incentive, your free will.  You can affirm your free will, but you might say, "I can't.  These impressions come in.  How can I reject them?" 

Well, there's a law of the physical body, the immune system.  The immune system will reject an organ that is, doesn't correspond to the DNA of the body, the cells of the body and will accept one that is very close or perhaps, of course, absolutely the same, of course.  It will accept it.  So the immune system in the body is based upon me or not me, me / not me, and so it is your, a very strong sense of who you are that will give you the power to select between those impressions that you want to ingest and those that you want to reject.

Like in music, for example, you say, 'Yes, this I like and this is not, this I don't like."  Well, you could just as well say this is me and this is not me.  So now that does give you a capacity of rejecting thoughts that would be harmful, because they aren't you and they can, they can damage the integrity of your being.  

Now we have another, there's another immune system in the body which adapts itself to the environment.  Otherwise we wouldn't be able to eat food.  And so what we're doing in our lives is we are suffering from an indigestion, a psychic indigestion.  We're exposed to all kinds of impressions and as a consequence we lose our own integrity.  And so in meditation we learn how to be very clear about, no this is, this is not me and reject. Now there is a further function, we'll have to go into this a little more tomorrow and that is our ability to transmute an impression that isn't digestible and draw the essence of it.  

So these are techniques that you can use when meditating, but as I say we are going to have to go into it a little more in detail tomorrow.  I think that this is really the maximum that we do this evening.  Some of you obviously very tired and probably had a long day and traveled and whatever and find yourself in this strange situation here with this strange man here talking to you about things that perhaps don't seem to make sense.  I think they make, they make sense to me, but that's not good enough for you, is it?  

As you see, I'm not trying to preach, but trying to get you to do things yourself.  

Okay, so I'm supposed to keep to time, but I don't, I'm very disobedient person and I suppose some of you are also, but what I'd like, what I would suggest if you would agree, is that you simply, if you want to, we're going to, we could play some music now and what you could do is to simply lie down, because sitting the way you do is very stressful, especially if you are not used to sitting cross-legged like a yogi.  So you just lie down and listen to this music.  It's again, I think that the only music I have is, for the moment, is Indian music.  So you could put on (Figruos) who is a marvelous Indian singer, really marvelous.  Or then of course your choice is to go, to leave and go to bed.  It wont be very long, it'll be about 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour or so.

END OF SESSION

(NEW SESSION)

There are not many people, but a few people are still trickling in.  It is, according to me it is one minute to nine, but maybe I'm wrong.  What time do you have?  It's, that should be the official time.  So it's about 2 or 3 minutes to.  So I thought we might warm up by just chanting a little bit together.  

It's a Sunday isn't it, today Sunday?  Yes? Oh it's Saturday. I'm out of sync.  Well anyway, imagine it's Sunday and we're going to mass. 

  (Pir singing the (Kyrie Elysian))

Yes, good morning.  I want to clarify what exactly we're at here.  What my motivations are, what your expectations are and so on and so forth.  

I see that there's about, well half the people here who were here yesterday, which means that a lot of people were put off and I must say that when I'm, sometimes when I'm talking to people I feel like a, a Professor of physics who is talking to a kindergarten.  Now, I hope there's no offense.  Some of you understand and I feel that you're with me and others have no clue as to what I'm talking about.  It's just like the people who I illustrated the man who said the sky is blue and the grass is green and the people who are in chains had no idea what he's talking about.  So I feel that that's what's happening here.  

So I'm trying to fit into the Omega sort of a concept, which I created in the beginning, but it's gone far beyond what I had anticipated at first.  It's wonderful, of course, but I'm back to, you know, the roots.  

So I can say that I'm trying to convey the way of thinking, the kind of experience, the kind of awareness, the kind of consciousness of people who have gone beyond the ordinary common place, place where most people are at.  People who have lived in caves in the Himalayas, dervishes who are, sit on a, you can't imagine what a dervish is like.  I mean talk about being far out.  I mean they have a least 20 rings on each finger and have a (barroom) (raucous) voice and their hair all muddled up and a few bugs crawling in their hair too, of course and there they sit on the top of a banana heap of, in the market place instead of in a cave and if people come to them they say, "Don't come near me until you cay the truth."  And so you know, they're really strong.  Well, if I said that here in America you'd have, I'd be in a lot of trouble.  But yet, that's what we believe in - in being truthful, right?

So what I'm trying to do is a, I don't know whether you've noticed, of course, that I've tried to avoid encumbering you with words, oriental words.  I mean I could give you all kinds of Sufi words, you know and it's been announced as a, the way of the Sufis.  So you expected a lot of Arabic and Iranian and I don't know what.  But I can't see the purpose of it.  What I think is important is, what does it mean to you?  See, I'm trying to translate that very subtle way of thinking of people who have reached a very high degree of realization into terms of what can help people in our daily life, in a situation in which we are living in our day in age, in our modern civilizations and so I'm acting as a kind of bridge between east and west.  And not just east because of course I have lived also amongst the hermits in Mt. Athos in Greece and also amongst the, in (Mantzarat) amongst the monks there.  I've done a retreat there.  So it's really absolutely universal, what we're doing.  

Now I start off from where people are at in their usual way.  I say, in one's usual way of thinking, way of feeling, way of consciousness one is caught up in one's personal vantage point.  That means "I think I am me."  If you've, I ask a very simple question, has been asked of course, a lot is, 'How do you feel?'  Okay, a psychologist would say, 'How do you feel?' And if I ask, 'How do you feel?'  Then your going to say, 'Yes, I feel cold or I feel hot or I'm tired or I have a headache or a toothache.'  So your going to talk about, that means you are confusing yourself with your body.  That's the first thing.  And what we're saying is the body is an expression of you, but there is more to you than you're body.  And then you might say, "Well I'm bored listening to this man talking.  I'm sad because my partner whom I love left me.  Or I'm happy because my Grandchild is born or whatever, but some how, some kind of identification with one's psyche and so it's again me, me, what one thinks is me.  And the fact is, that by so doing, we are extremely limited and the fact is that we are intermeshed with the whole cosmos.  And so what I'm, and the consequence of thinking that your 'me' is, first of all, a lot of suffering and that's one of the things that Buddha tried to do is to free, find a way out of suffering and the other was, the other is that you never change.  That you, in fact if one doesn't change, one deteriorates, I'm sorry to say and so what's the point?  And keep on doing the same old thing one has always done or thinking the same old way that one has always one wants to learn to think better and to realize more than one has realized so far.  

So that is what meditation is about.  But for this to happen it's no use my saying it, we have to do it.  That's why what I tried to do yesterday was started to trying to see what it's like to extend our consciousness into wider horizons.  Now it's true that people are not used to that.  So you know a lot of people got lost.  So they prefer going to the other seminars.  They learn how to heal or whatever, or dreams.  So if you want to bring about a change, you have to use tough methods.  Really you have to question your way of thinking.  Question your way of experiencing and on the other hand.  That's still negative, you see.  If I say, in India they say, (netti, netti) it's not the way it is, the way I think it is.  Well that's negative.  So okay, well there's the usual maya.  Well, so what.  So I mean, it's not what we think it is.  Any physicist will tell you that, but that's not good enough.  We want to know, but what is it?  That's more difficult.  And in order to do that, we have to work with ourselves, with our consciousness, try to alter our consciousness and if you notice, that there are several dimensions of consciousness.  Consciousness can expand and we did a practice of that kind yesterday, if you remember.  

We started to think that our body is part of the fabric of the planet and then part of the galaxies.  So that you are connected with the whole instead of being encapsulated in your body.  It's not despising matter, on the other, it's the other way around.  It's honoring matter to see that, to realize that it's absolutely cosmic. 

So there's a saying of, since we've announced this as Sufism, there's a saying of Jallaladin Rumi, who said, "A million galaxies are just but a little foam on the ocean of reality.  We came whirling out of nothing like the planets, like star dust and in the cosmos we are dancing amongst the stars.  And actually if you knew what was behind it, you would realize it is all God dancing around himself."  Now that's one of those sayings of the Sufis that is, that well that attracted your, your mind.  It's just a different way of looking at things.  

Now, that is a key to Sufism and I didn't want to dogmatic yesterday, but you see if you've studied and really lived, I mean experienced the way of the yogis, and the way of the Buddhists, that I have done in (Boglia) in India and then of the Christians and the Jews, actually Kabbala and also of course lived as a Muslim as I have done, then you realize that if you follow Yoga, your objective is awakening.  Awakening, that is you know what it means to awaken.  Like for example your sleeping and then you awaken.   So you've changed your perspective.  All of a sudden you see things differently to the way you did before.  So their objective is to awaken beyond life and if you, it's called Samadhi, and if you would do that then you're able to look at life with a kind of overview, like you're not in it.  So you're able to look at it with an overview.  In fact, at first you don't even have the overview.  You've lost all together any consciousness of the physical world or your thoughts or your emotions or your consciousness.  You have absolutely, you're into, you have awakened into a whole different kind of perspective that there's no way of describing it to, unless you have done it yourself, then you don't know what we're talking about.  

But then the way of the Sufis is the other way around.  It's to be aware and awake in life.  And consequently, I feel, that this is what people need to do in our western civilizations, because in the East it was a custom in India particularly, it was a custom that when people reach a certain age, instead of touring the country in a (Winabago) they become an aesthetic.

AUG 08, 1997		Tape 02

. . .for this society now they want to come to some kind of realization.  Otherwise they will die as stupid as they were when they were born.  Well slightly different than ( ), but anyway totally different than ( ) ( ) here.  

So now for the Sufis, well what's the point of life if you want to reach beyond life?  But it is true that if you've seen beyond the curtain, behind the curtain, then of course you can understand life better.  

Now in order to do this, you cannot remain stuck in your personal vantage point.  That's what I'm coming to, back all the time to and therefore it is only possible if you are able to switch over totally and see things from, what I call the anti-podal point of view.  The anti-podal, that is the other pole of your being, which the Sufis call God.  

Now the Sufi concept of God is very different from that that you learn at school or whatever and that is God is not considered as other.  You must think of yourself as being many tiered, that is existing on several levels.  And at one level it's personal and the other level is what we mean by God; is absolutely, cosmic, universal, transcendent, and so on.  

So like for example a pyramid and so you're not just the pinnacle of the pyramid, but you're the whole pyramid.  So think of yourself, not just as 'me', what 'I' think 'I' am, but a lot of other things that one is not aware of and that I'm trying to make one aware of and in order to do that you have to be prepared to switch over totally, turn about totally and be able to imagine how things would look from the what the Sufis call the divine point of view.

Now I didn't want to broach that yesterday because everyone was tired and it was too much and it's too dogmatic ( ) and I want to have a real experience.  So what I'm trying to do is to get people to experience what it's like to get into the consciousness of another person.  That would be a first beginning of trying to get out of one's own personal vantage point and look at one's self from the opposite point of view and so on and so forth.  

And then if you remember then at the end I was, you know I was trying to be totally, purely experiential and then I thought, "Well people have to know what's behind all this."  So that's what I'm (saying?), telling you now and so I said, "Well do you think that our thinking contributes towards our knowledge of the Universe, contributes toward the knowledge that the Universe has of itself?  So what I meant by the Universe is what we understand by God.  It's just that I think that's the modern name of God is the Universe.

 Now you could say, "Well what do you know about the divine point of view?"  And of course the Sufis are, go into that of course and they say, "Well you only know the archetype through the exemplar, but what does that mean?  That sounds like metaphysics.  What do we mean by 'archetype' and what do we mean by an 'exemplar'?   Well for example you, why do you, how do you know that the table is round?  There's that table there and another table, or whatever it is that you're looking at is round, how do you know it's round?  Because somehow roundness is written into your intelligence.  That means that you have an inherent knowledge of things and then they're confirmed by your experience.  

So that is what one means by the archetype.  Roundness is the archetype and a round object, the round table is the exemplar.  So you only know roundness through round tables but it's because, but if you recognize the tables are  round its because somehow in you roundness is a reality that belongs to a totally different level of your being which we call, well we call the archetype level.

Now one more point and then we'll be doing some more experiential work.  In order to grow, we have to include several factors in our being.  First of all, we carry within ourselves the inheritance of the whole universe.  And now, I'm making a very clear distinction between the universe and the cosmos.  Let's say the cosmos is the physical world, the galaxies and so on, the cosmos, but ultimately even the physicists are beginning to realize that it's all one being and so 'being' is not just this body and so what we mean by God is not just the physical cosmos, but the Universe and if you know Italian then its (verso el uno) means 'Towards the One'.  That's the motto of the Sufis, The Sufi Order and so that's, I'm using the word Universe you see.  

Okay now so, we carry this incredible, bountiful inheritance in ourselves.  Now what does it mean?  For example, every cell of your body carries within it potentially the code, not only the whole body, but now where physicists are beginning, biologists are beginning to realize, that we carry within us, in each cell of our body, the code of the whole universe.  So that code is there, latent and what we're trying to do in meditation is to discover it, to awaken it, to arouse it and to become aware of it.  

So the skills that I'm talking about in meditation are methods which hopefully will help you to do this, which is of course very difficult.  So what I'm saying is then that we have in ourselves already inherently within ourselves the inheritance of the whole universe, but it's not good enough just to say that in theory.  We have to do it to see how it works.

Now in order to unfurl these potentialities, we need to see them outside ourselves.  You know to discover who you are, you have to see yourself in another yourself who's better able to manifest what you are than yourself.  That's why people go in for gurus, because, so a kind of role model. 

So we are, exactly as our body is enriching itself by imbibing food, we are doing the same thing with psychological, at the psychological level.  We are being enriched by music, by our conversations, by our (report) with people and so on.  We are being nourished, nurtured by the, not just the physical environment, but also the psychological environment, but you know we can't, there's a lot of, you know food is the fabric of the planet but you can't eat the planet.  I mean there are things in the planet that you couldn't digest, like you couldn't eat the earth.  So we have to select what we're going to imbibe, but at the psych, it's true of the psychological level.  Where we are ingesting elements that are very difficult to digest because it's not us as I said yesterday.  It doesn't, it's not in harmony with our being and so we're suffering from a psychological indigestion and that's where meditation is going to help you to be very clear about, "Well this is me, I feel happy with this.  This, well it's, I can't deal with it."  It's not, you don't have to be judgmental about it.  You can just say, "Well, you know I can't digest it for the time being, you know.  Maybe if I grow I'll be able to."  And it's true that the further you grow the more you are able to assimilate bad and good and everything, but first it's, you have to make, you have to protect yourself.  

And so that's what you were doing yesterday.  If you remember, we were surrounding ourselves with the zone of silence.  We were placing  sentinels at the doors of perception and I would say, sentinels at the doors of our thinking so as to be able to reject thoughts that are disturbing.  Now you can't reject them with your will.  You can try it.  You know you've seen those terrible scenes on TV and then you think.  You can't sleep because you've seen all that blood and things.  How can you reject those thoughts?  And I must say that, of course it's very difficult.  You can't do it with your will.  So it requires of one a certain kind of, what is called in Eastern, independence or the word is indifference, which one doesn't like to use that word indifference but, when there is so much suffering, but somehow, if one can't do anything about it, then it is really counter productive to keep on allowing oneself to be so badly battered by everything that's happening in the world today because then one can't help anyway.  

So somehow we need some kind of protection.  And that's where, you see the way of the aesthetic in India is, well it, you see there's a balance between what one might call interest and indifference.  So you find it in your life like you're interested in something, your indifferent to something else.  So you can't have everything, do everything.  They say in English, they say, "You can't have your cake and eat it."  So you have to make a choice.  So your indifference is your protection. 

So for example, you are suffering from a bereavement and you go to a psycho-therapist and you go through a whole process and so on and so forth, but ultimately the only real saving grace is a kind of an inner need for freedom.  We have that.  You know that.  

For example I can't imagine what it is like to be in prison.  We are fighting for freedom, politically, emotionally, in every way; in the women's lib movement freedom from being put down by people and somehow when thoughts are compulsive and emotions are compulsive, it takes away your freedom.  You're not free because you're under the impression of those thoughts and consequently what we want to do is, what we want to do, what I'm really trying to do is to introduce something of the way of the aesthetic into everyday life, you see.  So that touch of freedom, of indifference will give you a kind of immunity.

And so yesterday I was thinking of two very clear cases.  For example, somebody treats you in a patronizing way and you feel kind of humiliated and put down and, or of course, it can be extreme cases you can be abused by somebody.  So you have resentment and resentment expresses itself as anger and then your anger is going to make, to escalate and then other people will be angry and that's the kind of thing that leads to war.

Now if you don't react in any way, you let this happen then that person is going to take more and more advantage of you (until) you can't allow this to happen.  So what do you do?  So the only thing that is going to help you is to find a kind of authority in yourself and that authority depends upon your self esteem and you know we're living in a society in which if you try to validate yourself you get a good bang on the head like you know you're pre, being presumptuous and so on and so forth.  So we learn to be humble and being humble one is frustrated somehow.  One feels that one is not able to present all the value of one's being and so somehow the problem is to be able to reconcile this state of validation of ourselves as our real self together with humility.  

Now we have a great lesson in India, in fact it's a lesson from the elephants because there are two animals that the elephants fear most or dislike.  Well one that the elephant fears most and that's a mouse because it doesn't like the mouse to come in and (strung coid) in it's ears, you can understand that, and the other is chickens, you see when there in the farm then and so that's what I was saying yesterday is that the you can learn a lot from the elephant because the elephant treats the chickens with, well a certain amount of contempt.  

Now if you, your partner, because this happens a lot in marriage your partner, your husband or wife, tends to undermine you and you get angry, then your partner's got you exactly where he or she wants you to get, to get you, on his/her battle field.   Now he's got you, now your angry, you loose your power because your angry. 

So the Sufi, the answer of the Sufi is authority, we use the word sovereignty instead of power.  It's a different thing, sovereignty instead of power.  

Now a very clear case of that is, for example Christ and Pilate of course.  Pileate had power and he saw this man who had been condemned in front of him and he didn't know how to deal with him.  He washed his hands.  He didn't know, you know how can you deal with a man who has this authority and you have power but you can't do anything.  You can kill him, okay but you can't kill say his soul.  

So that's the kind of protection that I'm talking about that the Sufis, but in order to do that you have to really discover your real self and the fact is, if we don't know our real self, our self image is not what we are.  It's what we think we are and so all the meditations that, many of the meditations we are doing are based on trying to discover your real self.  

Now that is done so, as I said, we are enriching ourselves by the environment: physical and psychological, but we're also enriching ourselves by the emergence of the potentialities in our being that are still lying dormant by (awaking) them; arousing them and (awaking) them and in order to arouse them awaken them we have to learn how to turn within and that's the reason why to be practical as practical I could, I said, "Well, could you discover your real countenance behind your face?"  Now that's much more real than your face.  

So don't trust the mirror.  That is the most mis, the cheapest and the most misleading feedback system in the world.  No it, your real being it that which is hidden behind the mask. 

So just think that your appearance is a mask, and behind there's your real being, but somehow one has so, got so used to the mirror that one identifies with the mask and the other thing is your role, your role playing.  We're playing a role.  

You know some people are really in their role, like the British businessman going to the bank.  You know, he's a business man.  He's identifying with that, you see, and then there's the French artist, painter and (mo mart) who is totally a painter.  Fact is you know, you play a role; or your a father or a husband or a wife or whatever, you're playing a role, but that's not your real being.  That's what life demands of you, and so to realize who you really are behind that role, that's very important, because that's what's going to give you a sense of, help you to have a sense of authority.  That will give you a sense of the reality of your being.

So in order to do that we have to learn how to turn within and for many people of course, meditation consists in turning within, but these are words.  

So how do you turn within?  What does it mean to turn within?  Because a lot of people think, well if, turning within that means that you simply are not, you don't pay attention to the surrounding, the physical surrounding and then your in your thoughts.  That's not turning within, because your thoughts are just as external as the physical world.  

So the art of doing that and of course, as you know, as I said yesterday, you're faced with all these random thoughts and you can't deal with them.  So the art of turning within is to see how thoughts become, how can I say processed, in their outer expression and behind that the thoughts are genuine or a, well I'm, it's very difficult to use language you see because or language is all static instead of dynamic.  

For example, when you say, "Our thoughts" well there's no such a thing as thoughts.  There's such thing as thinking.  Thoughts are just the way that thinking breaks up into fragments.  So we say our thoughts you see so.  So had you turned within, you begin to discover what you imply behind what you explain.  So that's your real, you get in touch with your real thinking and the fact is that we don't know our real thinking because we translate our thinking in words and as, they're distorted by the words and that's the reason for the silence of the contemplative, because in the silence you get not, unused to using words.  I mean even if your, you have an afternoon free and you're not talking to anybody, you're still so used to thinking in words, you see?  

In fact, sometimes I ask myself, "Do I think in English or do I think in French or do I think in German or do I think in Indian?"  Difficult, I mean sometimes I think in one, but I'm sure that I think in words when I'm speaking the language of that country, but then what does one do when one is alone, you see?  So, I think that, in my case there's a lot of, how can I say, a hodgepodge between all these words, but you're fortunate just to speak one language if you do, but let's say that if you, I remember doing a retreat of forty days, fasting and, you know very disciplined and then there was a man waiting for me when I came out of that retreat to ask me, "What did you experience?"  And I had lost the use of words.  I'd didn't know how to speak anymore.  And I thought, "Well, whatever I say could never convey what I experienced.  

There's no way of saying it."  So and I was searching for my words and fumbling, of course and something came out and I said, "It was a symphony of emotions."  So, you see how our thoughts betray us and if you're meditating and you're caught in your thoughts, you're allowing yourself to be betrayed by the way that you're thinking and distorted by your language.  So one learns to think without thoughts, turning within and you see, the discovery, your real being is something so dramatic, like 'this is me.'  You know I mean all this time I thought I was, but you know people will force you to fit into their picture of you.  You know, "My Johnny" the mother says, "My Johnny. . ." to the president and so somehow to find your real self, irrespective of what people think of you, that's very important.  That is a protection against the way that people, well really people can be so mean and really break you altogether unless you have that inner conviction of who you are.  We'll see how important it is.  Okay, so now we're going to do some more experiential work.  So, what time is it now?  Would you like to just stretch out a little bit?

Ready?  We'll be doing some more stretching later.  It's a bit early to stretch.  So now, I have made it a point of always starting my meditations with a practice on light and I can tell you the reason is because my objective, or our objective is to awaken, that is, as I said, a different perspective and somehow when you're working with light you have something very concrete and tangible that we can visualize and imagine and it's not only that which we imagine, but the fact is that the body does absorb light and emit light.  

If you know a little bit of science you know that, of physics that the cells of the body are able actually to absorb light just like when your, for example sunbathing and if you could experience what's happening in your body, when exposed to light, you'd realize that the cells of your body are beginning to sparkle and they're beginning to jiggle and they're beginning to divide themselves and what is, the process of division, yes and reproduction by division and you'll find that, actually if you could really experience the cells of your body you'd realize that your, the cells of our body are experiencing ecstasy, the ecstasy of light, but in order to do that one has to be very, be able to turn one's consciousness, the light of one's consciousness into the cells of one's body and really experience the joy, the fantastic, I mean each cell has it's own kind of identity and it's own function and they're all working together and so on and then they're feeding on light.  Can you imagine?  They're feeding on light.  They're feeding on substances, but light and we are feeding on light, too.  I mean our whole body is feeding on light.  

Now there's a principle in physics, actually it's really psycho- physiology, and that is that, by being aware of a function you enhance that function.  So if you're aware that your body is, or even just imagining, by imagining that your body is being, is absorbing light, it will absorb more light and by imagining that your radiating, your body is radiating light, you will be radiating more light.  So that's where we stopped.  Okay and so we did that yesterday and we'll do it again.  

Now you hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling and that's where you're aware of the, the sparkling of the light of the cells in your body.  

The light of the cells of your body, collectively, form what is called the aura.  So now instead of trying to concentrate of the cells of your body, concentrate on the halo of light around your body and it might just start with imagination, but you're not imagining something that is not, because, as I say it's, it's confirmed by laboratory experiments and what is more, Walter CHapel made photographs of flowers in ultraviolet light and then you can see, what we call the corona.  That is the area of radiance around the petals, around the profile of the petals.  So that is a fact, you see.  So by, if you imagine that light around you it will enhance that radiance, sparkling, and as you exhale it is hurtling through space at a speed of 186,000 miles a second.  Therefore intermeshed with the light of the stars and so now, instead of being encapsulated in your aura,  you can see that your aura does not have any boundary and consequently it is, well, I suppose it's like a wave in the sea.  It's like there's no boundary so its really an expression of the whole sea, whole ocean.  

The consequence is that you will, if you do this every day it will not just have consequences in terms of your radiance of your body so that wherever you go you bring a lot of light and people feel that right away and people are drawn to it because it helps them to validate themselves, but it will also have consequences in terms of your thinking. 

In fact, it's not good enough just to imagine the physical light.  Does the word luminous thoughts have any kind of meaning for you?  Luminous, to entertain luminous thoughts, sparkling thoughts.  That means that there's no shadow in those thoughts.  That means there's no ambiguity.  That means that they are totally up front, clear, no guile and of course people feel that right away.  So the password is 'total honesty'.  That means that one has to clear one's emotions from emotions that one doesn't feel comfortable with.  

For example, well resentment is a very usual kind of thing that, it's not blame worthy, I mean it's normal to, for most people it's very human to have resentment, but there is an element of hatred in it and that is a shadow and so what the Sufis, what the Sufi dervish does is to love people who make themselves unlovable and if you do that, then there's nothing in your emotions that you feel uncomfortable about.  Or if you like you could say, "Love people you dislike."  You can dislike a person and still love them.

Well now doesn't that give you a sense of freedom?  Freedom from, you know a hankering with resentment and anger and perhaps even wanting to revenge, vendettas of the, that lead to wars like a real sigh of relief from all those things in oneself that one doesn't feel comfortable with.

Okay, now so your aura, curiously enough, at first it seems like a, it has like a corona, it has like a halo so it doesn't have an edge exactly, but it peters out at the edge, but now we see it as being really intermeshed with the light of the stars and so it's a wonderful sense of cosmic enlightenment. 

Now, however, there are areas of your aura that are more luminous than others.  The light tends to scatter of course at the jagged ends.  So closer to the body your aura does have some kind of a, let's say it disposes the contours, the profile of the body.  A particular attention to your face and more so to the, you see the nerve cells absorb more light than bones or flesh or whatever and so if you could actually be aware of your aura or see your aura, you'd realize that there's this whole sort of a configuration of light, but there is, there are three columns in the middle that correspond with the, the nerve trunk in the, inside your vertebrae, your vertebral column and then both lateral trunks.  So there are three columns in the center and then you'll realize that there's a tremendous accumulation of light inside your brain, because the brain is made of nerve cells and they absorb a lot of light.  

Now the nerve cells of your brain absorb light from the environment through your retina and also some light passes through your skull, that is the high frequency light, violet and ultraviolet and so on, passes through your skull from the stars and then of course, much of the light passes, well impinges upon your, the cornea of your eyes and then the retina and then it's threaded along the optic nerves reaching right into the brain.  

So think of that as you inhale, think that you are absorbing and then threading light, say the light of the sun or the light of the stars, or whatever, or even the light of a candle, through your optic nerves and consequently there's a tremendous amount of light in your brain and some of that light, which is the frequencies of light that are ultra violet are going to be able to pass through your skull and form what is called the crown above your head, which is, one imagines it to be violet or ultraviolet or then colorless. 

Right, so now as you inhale you think that you're growing light, threading light through your eyes and right back into your brain and then think of the crown and as you exhale you are, the light of your brain is being threaded through your optic nerves and is radiating through, passing through the retina and corneas is like a lens and is reaching right out through outer space like two beams of light.  So imagine how your eyes as being like the head lamps of a car that are radiating two beams of light. 

And as a matter of fact, you could just turn your eyes to the left and to the right and you'll have that feeling as though those beams were now directed to the left and then to the right or then up and down.  That you do as you exhale, then as you inhale it's the reverse.  

Now you know very well, that if you were to open your eyes then somehow the physical, the experience of the physical world, the physical scene is going to exercise a kind of impact on the focus of your eyes so that you loose the sense of those two beams.  Now if you have a lot of strength of will, you can keep that, that the awareness of those two beams very clearly and while, with open eyes, and the consequences that you wont see objects.  I mean it'll only be a blur, but still that's one, a certain stage.  

Now if you do this months and months, you can't expect to do it right away, if you do it every day for months and months you get used to being aware of the beams of light in your eyes and now you direct those beams towards, first of all you take a flower for example and you keep, you keep visualizing these two beams of light, but you're still, you're glance is focused upon the flower and then you'll begin to see the aura around the flower and if you do with, and then you call a person and you ask them to sit in front of you and if you do the same, then you'll see the countenance behind the face of that person and of course that countenance is very beautiful and so you'll find yourself in a transfigured world.

Somebody's snoring, so we'll have to, for your own sake we'll have to shake you up a little bit.  Okay, so I know, I mean, I you know, apparently the people doing Transcendental Meditation, they say that about a, I think it's 70% go to sleep while meditating and feel, have a guilt feeling about it, but actually it's the best thing that can happen to you because then what you experience in mediation is carried over into your sleep.  So it's not a bad thing, so, but, so.  

Okay, well then I think, oh, gosh I've gone.  Okay, so let's relax now and start stretching if you like.  You know, I don't know what your span of attention is so, but I'm trying to spare you because, I'm of course used to meditating hours and hours and hours at a time, but if your not used to it's stressful, so stand up.  

What I'd like to do, is if you like, don't run away because it's important now, is, I thought that, you know we have very little time and we want to make the best of it and we've announced this as the Sufi way so I'd like to participate in the whirling of the Dervishes.  So to get us out of that very heavy meditation trip.  So, I'll show you how to do it in a few minutes.  

Well it takes years of practice.  Well this is the way that the derv. . ., you've seen the whirling dervishes, I think.  No, you haven't?  But you've seen them on films of something.  No?  No idea?  Really, I think some of you have.  Yes, yes from Konia and Turkey, right, well you see, you become like a planet.  In fact it was a vision of Jalaluddin Rumi and so you're whirling just like a planet and the fact is that you discover something that is      END OF SIDE ONE  . .on the floor and they place the big toe of the left foot on one side of the nail and the second toe on the other side of the nail and that's the axis around which they gravitate.  

And then what they do is they lift their right foot and place it as far as possible on the left, on the left floor, like that you see?  As far as you can, you see?  And then you, but remember that you have this axis here on your left foot and so now your turning around that axis, your whole body is turning around that axis, that nail there in the floor.  And now you lift your right foot again and do the same, you see?  So you keep on lifting your right foot, you see, that's right, your right leg?   Yeah, I think you've got it.  So, you don't jump up and down like in rock and roll.  

And, of course, we know that if you, well you'll, normally you'll become dizzy so there's a way of avoiding to become dizzy but it's rather difficult.  It's because, it's the objects that are around you that keep on moving, so, when you, it's very puzzling, because, but those that are close to you, that's where they are.  So your left, your both arms are out stretched and you turn the knuckle of your left hand as close as you can to your eyes.  So you can actually, so that's close, so there you can, that's where it is.  It's everything is moving, but that knuckle is where you can rely upon it.  

And then your right hand is turned upwards.  Your arm outstretched, and so that is the antenna.  And the left is the, is the ground of the radial.  And you always whirl to the left.  So your whirling like this.  There, you've got it.  Now, as I say, so you look at your, that knuckle and you don't look at the people around you.  You don't look at the wall.  You don't look at the floor.  And in the end you become just like a planet whirling in outer space. 

Okay, then we're going to put music on.  It's an Afghan Sufi who's singing.  Wait, just wait, oh yes, (Celli) excuse me, just a moment.  

Well of course, it's not a folks dance.  So it's done very, as a prayerful, as an aspect of prayer traditionally.  You always start by greeting the Divine Presence.  You have your two hands on your shoulders, and bow and you have your, the big toe of your right hand, your right foot on the big toe on your left foot.  

Now that's how you start and that's how you end, stop, how you end, but of course if your dizzy it's very hard to keep that position there, but you'll find that in fact, it is just the right thing to do because that point there is not moving, where as everything else is moving.  It gives you a sense of stability and as a matter of fact one can start by whirling with one's hands on one's shoulders and eventually unfurl them.  Okay, now we're going to have that music, please.  

That's music from Iran, it's Sufi music and the singer is (Shahran Naseri), who is one of the most famous singers in Iran at present.  He does come to the states and we're hoping to have a seminar on Sufism in Boston with his participation. 

Right, well now as I say you've notice that what I'm trying to do is translate the experience of contemplatives in terms of helping us in dealing with life situations and you remember I said that we are enriching ourselves by drawing in elements from the environment just as our body does and now there's a further source of, pool of resourcefulness which is latent within ourselves, potentials within ourselves and therefore turning within is not just withdrawing from the environment but also trying to awaken latent potentialities that are longing to manifest and trying to draw your attention and which we try to arouse and that's what we are going to try to do now.  So in order to do that you have to first learn how to turn within.      Now there's just the remark, which I think is rather pertinent, the difference between trying to do something or then letting it happen and the fact is that thinks don't happen unless you create situations which are conducive to there happening, so favorable to there happening.  

So that is, there are two things that we are doing at the same time.  We have to be very clear about it, but there is such a thing as discipline, that is because discipline is affirming your free will instead of just playing it by ear and that is while the universe has a way of self organizing itself in each one of us.  The beauty of our existence is that we are endowed with free will.  So that means that we can ourselves customize the, our programming the way that we want and that is the, how can I say the dignity that is according to the Sufis conferred upon the human being by God, the Divine gift of freedom.  

So that's something that the dervishes emphasize a lot, being self motivated while at the same time being aware of the Divine programming behind one's life, in one's being and yet somehow customizing it, as I say, making it in some way giving a personal stamp to something that is beyond one's own idiosyncrasies.

So now how do you turn within?  Now there are certain images that I've found helpful because as I say if you turn within without knowing how to turn within then you are going to be bugged by all kinds of random thoughts that you can't control.  So there's no point in that and it's best to just be active.  

So now one of the images that I have is, is imagine, well I think it's very pertinent here and ( ) because if your swimming or taking a boat on the surface of the water you see water lilies.  Now if you were to swim under the water you would see that they are not separate water lilies but it is a whole network of roots.  So things look very different from inside to the way they look from outside.  So from outside everything is made of what they call 'discreet entities' whereas inside it's a web of interference.  It is what they call in physics a wave interference pattern.  

So one isn't used to thinking that way and the same thing is true of one's thoughts and of course it applies to one's problems because I think this is my problem.  It's not your problem.  It's your participation in the drama of the universe, the cosmic drama and it's all intertwined with what is yours, seems to be your problem as problem of other people and more and more people involved and eventually the whole of humanity and the whole, in fact the whole universe is involved in every little thing that happens to us or that we think happens to us.

So remember actually what I didn't make it quiet clear that the first step in yoga, that's leading toward awakening, is to realize that one's assessment of one's problems is biased and that one is carrying in one's everyday self image a faulty picture of one's situation in life and that's very, very serious.  So the first thing is to at least correct that mistake that we're making.  Unless you do that then you continue, you will never get anywhere, you're just lost in that particular perspective.  

That's why people go to a psycho-therapist because they're lost in a perspective, captured by a perspective.  Just like drugs in,under drugs, the effect of drugs, people are caught in a perspective and can't get out of that perspective.  They are not free.  It takes away their freedom.

So ordinary life is also, one is caught in a perspective and what we're trying to do is free ourselves from that perspective and therefore there are always two things when we are meditating: one is to downplay a perspective and up, and highlight another.  

So when, that is the reason why in yoga they say, "Well the world is my eye."  It's not, well actually what it really means is it's not the way we think it is.  So that is very helpful if you're meditating.  Just to think 'the physical world is not what I think it is', so because if you think it is what you think it is then it's going to have an impact upon your consciousness.  Your consciousness is going to be, how can I say, determined by the way things appear.  So that is, I think the first step is to think 'well the physical world is, I'm caught in a perspective.'  So if you think that, that gives you a certain amount of freedom from it. 

Now, now you have to highlight the perspective, another perspective and I'm not saying that that other perspective is ultimate.  It's just another perspective and then from that you go into another perspective and so on and so gradually you discover that you are living in a many tiered universe with different perspectives.  Just like a hologram.  You can have several perspectives in a hologram.

So it is true that when the sun is in the sky you can't see the stars.  So as long as you're under the impression of the, impression of the physical world through your senses, then it is very difficult to intuit what is coming through from inside.  You see your, the outer world exercises a kind of impact upon your, the focus of your consciousness.  

And so there's a practice which is very helpful.  It's a Hindu practice, but the Sufi's have adopted it, in India.  So we'll do there now.  You'll see how it, you'll see if a consciousness is generally turned towards outside.  Now, or then if you try to turn within, your consciousness is still turned towards your thoughts which are really an outer expression of your being.  Now if you deprive your senses of perception, then your consciousness is going to find itself bereft of any kind of objects or support and consequently it's going to turn within.  It's going to reverse its, its purview.  

So this is how you do it.  First of all place the indexes of your, both hands, your indexes on the cavity of your eyes, that means you know the bone structure of your cheek.  Turn your eyeballs upwards so you do not press your fingers against your retina, I mean the cornea, turn your eyeballs upwards right and then press your finger underneath, let's say between your eyeball and your cheek bone and then place the fourth finger and fifth finger on your lips, closing the lips.

Now you place the middle fingers on your nostril, but don't press them yet.  Now first of all exhale through both nostrils, inhale through both nostrils, and now press the middle fingers, hold your breath and then release the pressure of your fingers so you can exhale through both nostrils, okay?  Now breathe normally.  

Now your going to do the same thing, but a little bit different.  You press, you keep your, the middle finger of your left hand pressed against your left nostril and only breathe in through your right nostril.  So first of all exhale through your right nostril.  Breathe in through your right nostril.  Press your middle finger of your right hand against your right nostril, holding your breath and exhale again through your right nostril. 

Okay, now you do this three breaths: breathing in through the right nostril, holding your breath, exhale through your right nostril; three breaths and then after that take away your hands, but keep your eyes closed and just see what happens to you and now you can place your thumbs in your ears.  

If you react to this practice as I do but the physical world seems to be there but out of reach, remote, but what I'd like you to do now is to consider the thoughts that are somehow connected with the physical world and circumstances and consider those thoughts to be at the periphery of your consciousness so you can't quiet reach them just like you can't quiet reach the physical world and now are there thoughts that emerge from within, spontaneously as the Christian fathers used to say, (ex ni lo?) out of nothing, which are not a response or reaction to the outer circumstances, but purely spontaneous, because you're limiting those thoughts by your will.  

So this is where, as I say, you can call upon that faculty of the universe to self organize itself in you, as you.  Just like the universe self organizes itself into the form of the flower.  

How, so perhaps you've noticed that what we're doing really is to downplay the thoughts that re, are reactive to the environment, physical or psychological, and to highlight the thoughts that emerge from within that are spontaneous and not reactive.

Now some clue as to how to make that distinction, is that these thoughts, which the Sufis call creative thoughts, are always in someway connected with how you could be if you would be as you might be, let's say, how you could be instead of how you have to be.  It's always like freedom from conditioning, that's creativity. 

So it's like releasing all those potentials in you, the Sufi called the possibilities that lie at hand.  So I think that the (mantram) for this is 'what if'.  What if I were to be this rather than the way I think I have to be?  My freedom.  

Now this creativity, perhaps you know creativity is always translating an emotion into a thought and then translating the thought into a form.  That's creativity.  So creativity always starts with a strong emotion.  

You know, it's really a recognizing your nostalgia.  You know there are a lot of who people find it very difficult to get in touch with their feelings.  One has learned to control one's emotions, to subject them to discipline one's self and so on and so forth so and of course one needs to do that when those emotions can be destructive and harmful to other people, but for the Sufis the real source of emotion is what's called (Ishk Allah), which is the Divine Nostalgia that manifests as the universe and as each one of us.  

So deep down in you you'll find an emotion that is like really a nostalgia for something that you can't define exactly, but one could find words for it like a quest for splendor which so now according to Sufis splendor manifests as beauty and majesty.  Those are the two, the female and the male, those are two expression of this fundamental nostalgia.  

So your nostalgia for splendor, in face of all the ugliness and defilement that you find in the world, it's something like a fruit that has become rotten, but still is a food.  So there's been a deterioration somewhere, entropy, and what you want is to get in touch with the originating impulse which is to be found in you.

So of course a very good illustration of that is to be found in, amongst musicians, composers.  For example, (Shuman), Brahms, was well when he met Clara (Shuman), the wife of (Shuman), he discovered his twin soul you see and it was too late.  In those days of course, there were no divorce so but somehow that emotion was overwhelming because she embodied his nostalgia and so it manifested in the 4th symphony.  You know it was the 4th symphony.  So it started with an emotion.  

So now your getting in touch with not just your reactive emotions, like anger and being upset and pleasure and whatever it is, the superficial emotions of the person, but now you're getting in touch with what the Sufis call your soul and here you find a very deep nostalgia which my father Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan calls, a passion for the unattainable and it's good that word 'unattainable' is very good because you can't put it in your pocket.  It's like it's always further.  You can't say, "I've got it"  and it's a real passion.  It's very, it's so profound that you think, "Well what on earth am I doing in my life.  It's ridiculous.  You know, I'm doing all things that life demands of me to do, but behind that all there's such a longing for what I don't know, I don't know how to express."  but I'm using the word splendor, but that's just a word.

Now, as I say creativity is always translating an emotion by means of a thought into a form.  The thought is important also, for example if you were inspired by music, if you're a musician then of course you could improvise.  If your heart beats faster.  I mean if you're very moved by something very significant for you then you could, if you improvised that the sound, the music that you're going to improvise, is going to reflect that type of emotion.  So it just depends upon the type of emotion.

For example, in contrast with what I've just sung or tried to sing.  There's Beethoven was, had a dream, there was a knock at the door (da dat da dum).  Now he made a symphony out of it.  Would you make a symphony of it?  Now what he, and all that he did was really to carry this by his intelligence into a score, into a musical score.  So with intelligence there's, if you analyze the music of those great composers you'll find that there, not just the emotion is very profound, but they're extremely intelligent.  Bach was a super genius of intelligence.  

So the mind plays a part in it, but it does get expressed in a form and otherwise it gets lost and that's the reason why the Sufis attach very much importance to what we tried to do yesterday and that is to translate an emotion, an emotional impulse, into a form. If you remember we tried to do it yesterday we, for example the form of the countenance of your face and when I say a form, it does not have a profile.  It's as a configuration.  

So, for example, if you're thinking of a lake and a peaceful moonlight, moonlit night, then that whole emotion is translated into a form.  A form without a profile and eventually it will also manifest as a stable form in matter. Now, so far I've been talking the common place language of somebody who is in touch with their deeper self and does not realize that this deeper self is really part of the deeper reality behind the whole universe.  

That's why a composition is meaningful, because it has a cosmic significance.  It's not just a personal thing, you see.  So it is your significance in the universe that is important.  How you customize the universe in your own unique way. Now to talk the language of Sufism.  I've tried to hold back as much as possible things that are really very difficult to follow, but of course that's Sufism.  As I said, it's always seeing things from your personal vantage point and the anti-podal vantage point, which is the Divine vantage point and in fact they're both poles of your own being.

So I'm going to say something metaphysical now.  I'm quoting Ib'n Arbi, a Sufi, who says, "God knows himself (or discovers himself) in the form, (which is your form), to which he manifests himself to you."  Now that sounds rather complex doesn't it?  Until you actually experience it and then it's real.  God discovers himself, I would say him/herself, through the mediumship of your form and that doesn't mean the external form, but the, and when, and it is actually the form that is unfurling.  A form in the process of becoming instead of a form that is static.  God discovers him/herself in the unfurling form in which he, through which he reveals himself to you.  In other words God is revealing himself through your form to you, through your form.  So your form is somehow related to the totality of the universe instead of just being your particular form.  Going back to very, how can I say, very concrete.  I mean, not vague.  It's not abstract.  It's not Samadhi.  It's something very tangible and the consequence is that it will make you very creative and the fact is that we are, we have talents that we don't know.  

There was a time I came in touch with a lot of well, women who had had children and their children had grown up and they didn't know what to do with their lives and the fact is that they had a lot of talent and had not given themselves an opportunity of developing that talent, and didn't even believe in it.  When one is blocked, one doesn't think one can do it, one is blocked and of course the best work of art is the human being.  So just do believe that, well how would you like to be?  That's a, to believe that you can be the way that you would like to be.  So how would you like to be?  

 would like to be, but I would say to be absolutely radiant, to be free, to be kind of a little control of yourself to some extent and at the same time to be open to inspiration and guidance and you know to dance with joy even though on your, on thorns because there's a lot of pain at the same time, but you know I'm using a very inadequate way of trying to express what I feel that, I think that most of us would like.  

Well, why don't we do it?  Well, life is hard and people are mean and things don't happen the way one wants and so, you know there's a kind of defilement and discouragement, disenchantment and so on and so you can't force yourself to be enchanted if your disenchanted, but the power of the dervish is ecstasy.  Is somehow I think there's an act of faith there, I think there's an act of faith.  It is believing that behind all this ugliness there is beauty and behind all this incongruity there's (meaningfulness) and it's very difficult, because to the mind it doesn't seem to make sense, but you know that the photons of a, emitted by a beer can in a garbage heap are just as beautiful as the photons of the stars, but they, we have difficulty in seeing beauty, because in the middle of ugliness and that gives ecstasy.  Now I think belief comes into that, like I believe that there is beauty that I can't see and I try and while the fact of believing it maybe I can, it will start transpiring.  What the Sufis are saying is, are talking about that which transpires behind that which appears. 

You see, so for, when you turn within you get in touch with that which transpires and when your in your ordinary condition all you experience is that which appears, but having seen, having turned within, then when you get into your ordinary consciousness you're always suspecting that there's something that's just transpiring behind that which appears.  Now so far again, I've tried to make things a little simpler, although perhaps you think it's rather complicated, but of course Sufism is very challenging to our way of thinking and that's why it's so, it's less accessible, let's say than yoga or than Buddhism.  So Buddhism is very popular these days, but Sufism is beginning to but it's difficult you see.  People are not used to that way of thinking.  

You see the thing is that you can only understand Sufism if you're able to take into account the way things look from the divine point of view, otherwise you are stuck in your own personal perspective.  That's a key to the dervish.  So it's based upon a saying in the Quran SHerif and that is 'All that you are experiencing are', what they call (ayat) which means signs, signs.  Like the pug marks of a bear.  'You haven't seen the bear if you've seen the pug marks of the bear in the snow and all that we experience is like the pug marks of the bear in the snow.'  We haven't seen the bear.  

So while the Hindus say, it is maya, it is deceptive."  The Sufis say the contrary, it's not deceptive.  It is, what you see is a medium through which the reality, the Divine reality is trying to transpire to you.  So in other words, God is trying to reveal himself to you through these media.  So if you are satisfied with the media then you do not have no sense of what is trying to come through.  So for the Sufis then there are two modes of knowledge.  There's acquired knowledge and knowledge that is revealed and most of us are familiar with acquired knowledge.  We think, well, I've learnt this and I've learnt that, this is a knowledge which is acquired, but the Sufis are talking about another mode of knowledge which is revealed and of course if you base yourself on your acquired knowledge that revealed knowledge will never come through.  

Like for example if you're psychic and you try to go by what you see, well then you're not a psychic.  You're just trying to interpret what you see, but the good psychic is wary of his/her experience, which can be very deceptive, and that's what it is intuition, is picking up something that is not obvious it's comes from inside.  So once you've turned within, then you start getting used to, well down playing your experience and trying to  , espy, I mean espy, which means trying to get in touch with that which is coming through that which is inside.  

For example, you're talking to a person and that person seems a nice person and so on and so forth.  You know a nice fellow, well met and so on and so forth and your intuition says, "I don't know.  There's something about that person that doesn't ring true", and so you see that the outer appearance is deceptive and in fact in time circumstances might prove you to be right. 

So what we're learning is intuition as we turn within, but your intuition needs to, one, it's too vague, you see, it's too abstract and so sometimes we need to project that intuition in a form which is tangible, which is meaningful.  So for example your dreams are exactly that.  They are the way in which the universe, let's say, is trying to draw your attention to something that is important for you and the only way in which it can draw your attention is by means of images.  So in the dream you find yourself in the world of images and for the Sufis the images are like forms in the mirror that are not substantial and that are, let's say, evanescent and so as soon as you turn the mirror that form is gone, you see.  So that's imagination is that.  It's a reality that is of a different nature than the substantial world, evanescent.    

AUG 09, 1997		Tape 03

  . . .gave the impressions from outside, you might find that there are images that come into your, that strike the, let's say the screen of your consciousness.  You can't do it if you try and yet if you just open yourself to that as your meditating, perhaps with, if you don't expect it, unexpectedly, there will be an image that will come to you and you'll wonder what that image is about because it's totally impromptu.  

If you force yourself, then it won't be done true, so you mustn't force yourself.  Your listening to what the Universe has to say and which it is revealing to you in the form of pictures.  So it could be, for example, it could be a landscape that is rather reminiscent of physical landscapes, but they're a little more etheric or it could be what Jung calls a scenario rather than a scene, that is a situation like for example, well a concentration camp or a heroic act of someone who dedicates their life to save people or it could be something like that or it could be a hospital scene.  It could be a surgeon trying to save a person's life.  A lot of scenarios that could all of a sudden occur to you impromptu, that is you without seeing any connection whatever with, it doesn't seem to be causated by any previous thought or situation.  It just arises purely spontaneously.  Or then, it could be the face of a person. 

I don't know whether it happens to you, that happens to a lot of Sufis in their meditation, that somebody appears to them and maybe it's just imagination but the fact is that it's really something that's being revealed to you through a form.  

I'm referring to the words of (Shahabidin Surawadi) was a very wonderful Sufi, Iranian Sufi who died in, well he was executed by the orders of (Salidin) because he believed in; well he was asked, again a very stupid question, "Do you think that there can be a prophet after Mohammed?"  He said, "Well God is free to, if he wants to bring another prophet."  So, head off for having said that, but because there's a word of having, it was (Hazali) who said "When there's a stupid judge in power, there's a victim on the cross."  Just think of that.  Look around you in your life and you'll see that that's what's happening.

So (Surati) said that, was describing a vision that he had.  He was meditating on light, as we've been doing and then thinking of beings who do not have a physical body, but who are auras, or beings of light, and those beings have some kind of a countenance although they don't have a face as we have or a body as we have in the physical world,  but still as I said like impressions in the mirror, forms that are, just like the clouds, formations and then they scatter and then there's another form coming through and so on.  So he said he, in his vision he was walking and wandering in a landscape of light and there were a lot of forms around, but he couldn't really grasp them.  You know like if you, for example the bit baby is surrounded by a lot of forms but doesn't quiet grasp these forms until he gets used to them.  

So if you find yourself in this world of light, there are a lot of things happening but you don't quiet realize what's happening, what's surround them and then, somehow just as in the mist, a form of a magnificent face seems to appear before him.  It seems as though a person was walking towards him while he was walking toward that person and at first he was overwhelmed by the splendor that was coming through and then at some point it struck him that that person resembles him and he thought well how is that possible and finally there was what one calls coincidence and he realized that was his soul.  Now that's very important, the encounter with one's real self seems to be an encounter like that one's real self seems to be other than one's self until one realizes it is one's self.  So this is the discovery of the self through an image.  An image which is evanescent and illusive and which one can't quiet identify with because one has a bad self image and one has to realize that one's self image is deceptive.  

So I can see that faith comes in you see.  I've been talking about experience and I'm very wary of belief.  I make a difference between belief and faith.  Belief "it's written in the scriptures or somebody told you" or whatever, that's a belief you see, but faith is being able to realize something that does not fit into your mind, does not fit into your, the understanding of your mind and that means that you have to be prepared to accept that our perfunctory logic is not adequate, is limiting.  

If you study Buddhism you'll find the same thing.  Buddha says the same thing.  Its, you have to overcome logic otherwise it won't work.  You can't reach those levels of understanding.  If you think in terms of what they call (synergistic) logic, which I learned at university.  

That is for example a thing 'is' and 'is not' at the same time.  Now that's not logical is it?  But you find that in Buddhism, for example they ask, "Is that person after they've died are they, do they continue to exist or don't exist?'  He says, "They both exist and don't exist."  So you know, and Ib'n Arbi says for example, "No whereby you're God and whereby you're not God",  so you know contradiction here see?  So you have to accept contradiction if you want to lift yourself in the higher levels of realization: contradiction.

So I think there is an act of faith.  It's like something in you tells you that there is splendor behind the defilement and the ugliness.  That there's beauty in that person who is obnoxious and  that there's meaningfulness in what seems so incongruous, like the most wonderful people die in accidents and the people who are, can be so destructive to other people continue to live.  It doesn't make sense, you see and people who work so hard and have been discarded and people who are no good are in good positions and so on.  There's a whole, situation is just all wrong.  If a worldly point of view it's wrong.  

It doesn't make sense and behind that there's something that touches us very deeply.  It's embodied in the words of my Father, Pir-O-Murshid, who said, "Be not surprised if you find that what you thought was a defeat avers itself to be a victory."  I think that's the most, the strongest statement that I've ever heard.  And in fact, that explains the whole meaning of Christ because from a worldly point of view it was a defeat.  Everybody abandoned him, he was let down and he said himself, "Why hast though abandoned me?"  As though God himself had abandoned him.  So from the worldly point of view it was a defeat and that defeat averred itself to be the greatest victory that the world has ever known and by that he wanted to prove to people that if they are floundering in their lives, they're broken in their lives, they need to be of good cheer.  

You know those words, "Blessed are the poor in spirit?"  It was badly translated.  If you get back to the original Jewish Bible it says, "Those of you who are floundering in life, who are broken in life, be of good cheer."  Give hope to the broken hearted.  That's a message of Christianity.  

That's very important for us to know that from our point of view we can have failed and there's that sense of, "I'm a failure", you know. 

Look at my life and I think, well you know, made so many mistakes, you know.  Come to the seminar, how many people are here?  If you go to (Rajnesh) there will be about 1000, 2000, 3000 people, you know, failure, from a worldly point of view, failure. 

On the other hand, so if I listen to what Christ said is, "Be of good cheer."  Even if you feel that, "Well yeah, the outer thing is not much but. . .."  So just think of yourself that way.  

So now what we're doing now is, I don't know whether you noticed because behind what I'm doing there's a lot of know how, you know, there's a lot of the tradition and a lot of teaching, you know, my whole life.  

So behind, so we're now we had turned within, now we're moving upwards in what is called the transcendental dimension.  So now, once more, now as I said before, we are enriching ourselves by the environment.  Then we turned within and we're trying to enrich ourselves by what is coming through from inside, what is emerging, surfacing and which in order to capture what is emerging you have to translate it into a form otherwise you loose it.  You have to get it, you know it's a form, there's something tangible, but now to be really creative you have to incorporate all the levels of your being. 

So what I mean by moving upwards is beginning to discover levels of your being beyond the existential level, the level of existence.  So the first level that you encounter is, the Sufis call it the celestial level.  Now again you might think, "Well do you still believe in Santa Claus?"    Well, you see, when I look into the eyes of a baby I'm, sometimes, I'm so very deeply shattered by the beauty that comes through the light of the, that shines through the eyes of a baby and the reason why it shatters me is that it reminds me of something that I thought that I had forgotten and that is the heavenly spheres and then I think, "What a pity that that child goes to school and then that, all that light is rubbed out, washed out and you know children laugh at children at school and they think that they're naive and so they loose their faith in their real self.  I see that.  I see people growing up and deteriorating instead of progressing and I think, what a pity.  They were so lovely when they were children.  

So what is it then that is so significant about what is called the celestial nature?  Well first of all it is immaculate.  That's the reason for the Virgin Mary, the immaculate condition of the Virgin Mary.  It's no guile, no artifice, no role playing, it's absolutely authentic, genuine and the secret is innocence, is innocence.  We loose our innocence by having to fight in life with to, you know to protect ourselves and somehow we loose touch with that, and then we loose our self esteem because there are aspects of ourselves that we don't like that we had to develop in the battle and then we think that we have been defiled and what, what we need to know, and this is really very important so remember this, the voice of Caruso can be retrieved in its distortion, because it was distorted by the bad recordings of the time.  

How is it possible?  Now that due to the new technology we're able to recover the voice as it was out of it's distortion.  That means that that voice is still present in its distortion and so that means that the immaculate spirit of our being is present within its defilement and so we are, our thinking is simplistic if we think that we are defiled because of our guilt or whatever it is that we feel that we don't like in ourselves.  

Remember that your true self is absolutely immaculate within its defilement and that's what you find when you turn within, but I say our true self, well let's say it is the child within us.  So the child within us has matured and so in that course of that maturing there's defilement and also there's enrichment of course, there's wisdom, the child hasn't got that wisdom, but somehow we exist on several levels at the same time and so we are able to reconcile all these different aspects of our being, but that, the child within will protect you against your denigration of yourself.  

Now if you're doing the meditation with light, then so far we've been working with the physical light, right?  And generally we assume that light is physical.  In fact, for physicists light is matter.  Although its photons are, don't have mass so it's still very different from electrons that have mass.  So, but still for physicists light is matter.

But then there are several levels of light and I don't want to say something that, you know asked to believe my opinion and so if I say there are several levels of light, I need to try and give you some way of making sense of what I'm saying.  So we can use a simile, an illustration which is maybe not, doesn't quiet do it but is helpful. 

So, now lets follow this through now just a little bit.  Imagine that if you could get into the consciousness of a worm, instead of that of an eagle.  Well the worm, does the worm understand three dimensions?  Perhaps it knows that its advancing and then perhaps it has a sense of gravity so it knows it's going up hill or down hill but is it able to extrapolate between three dimensions?  Maybe not and in that case it's world is like a sheet of paper, a two dimensional world.  

Now we human beings are able to extrapolate between three dimensions and so we live in a three dimensional world.  So anything that happens outside that sheet of paper is unknown to the worm, but in as much as it intercepts that sheet of paper then it is part of its world.  So we are living in a three dimensional world, but actually the world is multi-dimensional and all that we're experiencing is a cross section of that reality.  

So what we call light is only a cross section of the reality of light that is far beyond the limitation of the three dimensional world and we're convinced that that's light, but there are other dimensions of light.  

So in our meditations with light we are able to somehow our consciousness is able to grasp higher levels of light and this is important, perhaps I should say, anticipate what I have in mind of course because we're all we're moving towards, you know further and further towards something that, towards awakening actually and that is you see I didn't want to say it, you know as a dogma, but for the Sufis, the Sufis distinguish between the light that one sees and the light that sees and so if you work with physical light, then your working with light that one sees and even if you're working with your glance and you think of the rays of light, the beams of light of your glance it is, well it is light that one imagines that is light that one can see, like the beams of the light of a car, of the head lamps of a car, but then if you think of your intelligence as light instead of just your glance, that will open up a whole new dimension of your being and that's what we're trying to get to in slow stages in the course of this day.  

So we have to interrupt it now because it's 12 o'clock, but continue this afternoon and we'll be doing practices with, I intended to help you to make that shift from physical light into transcendental modes of light.  Okay, that's (enough).

                         END OF SESSION

. . . we have Russian Orthodox Church and it is composed by (Rachmoninoff), feel the sacredness and the power, spiritual power that comes through it, its very wonderful music because it has the contrast between the men's voices and the women's voices and the heavens and the earth and it's all that. . ..  

Well, now what we have to do this afternoon is one step further and so it is, as I said before, we enrich ourselves by imbibing the environment and digesting it and then we enrich ourselves also by calling forth the potentialities that are lying latent within our being potentially, but there's a third factor that is a little more difficult to experience because well it's very special and difficult of access.  One has to get oneself in a kind of frame of mind for that.  So you can't do it in cold blood, you know you can't pull yourself up to the highest spheres with your bootstraps.  You have to be hauled up from above instead of pushing yourself up from underneath, you see?  

So its something, a kind of element in you that, at first you think is other than you and that seems to quicken you.  So that's why the Christian monks described it as the quickening of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is thinking of the holist because something other than yourself that quickens you and actually it is, let's say the pinnacle of your being because as you can't make a separation between man and God.  That's Sufism.   You can't.  That's duality and Sufism is La illaha illa 'lla', it's all one.  So you can't make that distinction.  

There's two poles of your being, but it doesn't mean two sections of your being and I don't know whether you know, for example, magnet.  If you were to fragment a magnet in several fragments, each fragment would have a north pole and a south pole.  So you can't all, positive and negative, so you can't, even as much as you fraction the totality every part of the totality functions like the whole totality, less good but like the totality.  That's the holistic paradigm. 

Well now to get into that frame of mind you would have to think of yourself as a visitor on planet earth.  You would have to think that you don't really belong to planet earth, but somehow you're visiting, you're a tourist and you hopefully, not only but, not just tourist, because you really are participating in transforming the earth by your presence.  You've left a mark on the earth, but still think of yourself that, well I don't, I don't really belong here.  So that is, there's something in me that is not of the world and if you don't have that feeling, well then you can't do it.

You know what happened to St. Francis when his father arraigned him before the magistrate because he was pilfering the possessions of his father and giving them to the poor and he called him before the court and said, "Well I'm your father, you know you, everything that you have you owe to me, your clothes.", because his father was selling the clothes.  He took off his clothes and said, "I have another Father."

Now you might remember the words of Christ.  So it's like saying, "Yes, I realize that I, there are qualities or even defects in me that I could ascribe to my inheritance from my parents, but then there are aspects of me that are not derived from my parents.  It's another inheritance.  

And Christ was very clear, he said they are in the world but not of the world.  So you don't have to be an ascetic who's not in the world.  You can be in the world but still realize you are not of the world.  

Well what does it mean 'of the world'?  Well the kind of mentality that you see around you, the greed, the selfishness, the unkindness, the cruelty even, the jealousy, the intrigues, well name it and so there comes a time when you get very disheartened by it all.  You think well you know this is really, is that what life is about?  And so you're seeking for, what Christ calls, another kingdom and so it is that quest for something else than, what Buddha calls the samsadic wheel, that makes for illumination.   So that word illumination is a very important target let's say for spiritual work.  

So Buddha says something which is very pertinent, he says, "The, this become (that means this which is becoming, like all that is in the realm of time, of existence, the wheel) does not lead to the non-become."  So he makes a distinction between the non-become and the become and so there's no use, so I was saying yesterday and this morning that what we want to do is not just to keep on turning in circles, we want to evolve, but now Buddha is bringing something totally different into the picture.  It's not evolving or mutating.  Mutating is like improving things.  It's bringing in a totally different dimension into your life and that's what the Christians call the descent of the Holy Spirit and it's not your inheritance.  That's why the, in the Catholic Church there's a difference between the Son and the Holy Spirit.  The Son that is something in you which you feel that you are inheriting from not just your parents from your divine ancestry, but then there's that other thing, which has nothing to do with qualities and which is called the Spirit. 

So how do you do it?  Well, I think the first thing is to think yourself, "Who am I?  What am I doing here?  What is all of this?"  You know, asking that question, I mean, "Is this true?  Is it real?  I've been, am I just caught in a certain perspective?"  And "Who am I?"  You know, these questions that are totally unanswerable and that confuse us.  So we are rather afraid of asking these questions.  

So, so it's like Buddha said, as a matter of fact he said, "Memory is interrupted at the moment of birth."  That is at that moment after birth, actually it's conception really.  From that time onwards, we only remember the things that occurred to us since that time.  That's our memory, but we do have an unconscious memory and that unconscious memory can be retrieved if you extend your consciousness beyond the reach of the 'I', of the personal concept of yourself as an 'I'.  

So that's one of the practices that Buddhists do, and of course the Sufis do the same thing, and then the memory of the Universe that is consigned within your unconscious or what Jung calls this collective unconscious begins to emerge.  

Now I know this sounds like theory.  This sounds like words, but Buddha gave us a proof, because he said, "There was a time when there was no smoke on the planet earth."  Well first of all 'planet earth', he didn't use the word 'planet earth' of course.  But I mean, you know, in those days how could he have known when there was a time when there were no humans, no smoke that means no chimneys, no fire, that means no humans.  So he knew that there was a time when there were no humans on human earth, on planet earth.  Now how could he know?  I mean it's only recently with all the research and so on it becomes clear.  There was a time when planet earth did not exist.  How could he have known that?  It's only much later that astro-physicists are beginning to realize that there was a time when planet earth didn't exist.  There was a time when the cosmos did not exist.  How could he have known that?  I mean it's only very recently that astro-physicists have the theory of the big bang.  There was a time when there were other cosmoses before this one and then there was a breaking down of one cosmos and then another and so on.  That's something which, how could he have known?  You have a new theory in science.  

So what we're trying to do then is to recover a memory that has been, that is consigned to the unconscious and recover it, retrieve it.  So as I say that's when I look into the eyes of babies as I say that, somehow that memory comes back.  

I find that when I enter in the cathedral when there's a, they're playing the B-Minor Mass of Bach, well then it all comes back to me like 'Ah, this, I know this, this is familiar to me' or if I climb the high mountains and look at the fantastic dawn all the different colors of the clouds at dawn and then I think to myself, "Ah, this world is known to me.  It's true.  That's where I belong."  So it's a sense of belonging to a level that you had forgotten and being, having descended into a, well banishment, exile as the Sufis call it and now I wish to recover that memory.  

Alright now, there are skills.  That's what I'm pointing out.  There are certain skills, practices which are helpful.  And so I'm giving you here a practice which was done by Buddha himself, called (Casina).  I wonder whether it can help you.  

Well, I'll describe this practice.  First of all you, imagine that you are looking at a red disk of card, you cut a cardboard, a disk of cardboard and then paint it red and you're looking at it.  And now you close your eyes and I think you'll see a green disk.  Now, next step would be, so as you exhale think, imagine the red disk and as you inhale, just don't try imagining anything, just let that green disk all of a sudden shoot forth in your consciousness and then keep on alternating between the two.  Now then as you exhale think of the red disk and when you inhale the green and then continue to inhale, that is divide your inhaling in two and the second part of the inhaling you try to grasp the reflex of the reflex, which is orange.  Can you do that?

It's a pity.  I shouldn't have told you it's orange.  I think that you would have found out yourself.  Now you could go further, one step further and you could divide your inhaling in four, I mean in three and then try to touch upon the reflex of the reflex of the reflex.  

So as I said this morning there are different degrees of light, levels of light.  Now instead of a colored light.  Think of colorless light.  Think that you are looking into a bright light, like the head lamps of a car, for example, as you exhale and as you inhale you keep on moving up from one reflex to the other.

Now the Sufis add a further one, stage and that is after inhaling when you, you hold your breath rather than exhaling again.  I mean, and then the exhale and as you hold your breath you make a quantum leap in that you think that your intelligence is luminous intelligence.  It's not just intelligence.  It is a different type of light altogether than anything that we imagined light to be.  So now, just think about this: consciousness is passive, isn't it?  It is picking up information whether it is physical or psychological, psychic, but intelligence thrusts its light upon things.  So it is active instead of passive and Walter (Chappel) is teaching people what he calls conscious, no active awareness instead of passive, active awareness.

So now just think that you're awakening from the perspective of the world and instead of being a consciousness that is picking up information, you identify with your intelligence and all that  consciousness can do is to confirm something that you already know and so you are awakening to what you know.  Kind of inner awareness, an inner knowledge, regardless of experience.

                         END OF SIDE ONE

. . . that's what's limiting your knowledge and the knowledge is inherent in your intelligence.  So you've made a pilgrimage.  You've left the world behind, like the Rishis do in the Himalayas and you realize that you were caught in a hoax and now of course you can see that your assessment of your problems was totally mis- assessed because you had not seen what was behind it all, what was being enacted behind.  Now at this level it's just like as though you're flying in a helicopter instead of walking the streets of a city.  Now you can see the land, the (lie) of the land, whereas if you had been walking the streets you would be caught up in just the little bit of purview that you have around you.  Now you can see the whole thing with an overview.

              A BREAK (Tape was turned off then on)

. . .that Buddha's speaking about and you can see that however you try to figure out the become that is existence, existential conditions, you can't see what's behind it, whereas now you can see what's behind it.  What is being enacted in the drama of life and that is all the things that you were so sure about now appear quiet different of what you were convinced of.  So there is a quantum leap.  

At one point one goes through the dark night of St. John of the Cross where all that you believed in seems like a hoax and all your opinions about things prove worthless and so that of course a negative state and so that's a threshold state.  Until you get into that state when you begin to see meaningfulness where it seemed quiet the contrary. 

For example, you might think, "Pir Vilayat is talking about these high things, but I can't see how I can do this in my daily life.  As long as I, if I were to live as an ascetic.  Yes may be, but then living in the world I could never awaken; but if you awaken in life you realize that it is just exactly in these conditions that you can awaken, which is quiet the contrary to what you thought.  Because if you leave the world then you find yourself in a kind of void whereas you know that stress, challenge, will call upon faculties that would otherwise remain untapped.  

Now there's just one more point to make.  Is a word of a Sufi called (Nifari) who is a dervish who lived in the desert and used to come from time to time to visit his home where his daughter was,  lived with her husband and he used to sit there and say the most strange things and (shoo) them down although they didn't understand what he was saying.  Now we have them and one of the things he said is, "We are in search of knowledge, but do we know the knower?" 

And I would say, "We enjoy the music, but do we know the composer?"  And I would even say that we can't really understand the music, appreciate it thoroughly unless you know the composer."

Okay, now just, I don't want to, you know, call upon too much attention on your part because this may be all been new to you, you know.  In fact in the Upanishads they say, "It passes so fast that you don't have time to realize it and if you try to catch it it's gone."  It's just like the bluebird that you can't capture the bluebird.  It escapes if you try to catch it.  So that's why I don't try to linger on with it.  There's that flash of, what they call (satori), a breakthrough of realization and then let it go and leave some.  It will leave a mark with you.  Don't try to keep on at it with your will.

So just relax, you can lie down if you like.  You might be listening to some music, because I find music, it bypasses the mind you see.  Well now, I was talking about (Beethoven).  I don't know, in America people don't seem to have the same interest in classical music as in Europe.  So I hope that Beethoven is a name that is familiar to you.  

Well, Beethoven, well was, his music is heroic and, you know, very powerful and totally romantic and anything we can say about it and so does that music give us any clue as to the being of Beethoven?  We think so, but I don't know whether you've read that letter that Beethoven wrote to his nephew and said, "I must apologize that I am unable to look after you after your father died.  In all these years have passed and I have felt terrible about having let you down, but now I've come to a point when I can tell you why.  You see, I have become more and more deaf and for a musician it is just the worse thing that can happen and I didn't want to admit it."   (Nowadays one would admit it, but in those days, well for a musician to admit that he's deaf it's terrible.)  "So, and as a consequence I have isolated myself from the world." 

Now that's the heroic Beethoven, broken in his heart and at the same time powerful.  Now if you know that and now you listen to the 9th Symphony of Beethoven, now you understand much better than if you just listen to the symphony.  

And so the Sufis would say, "Do you, you can't know yourself unless you know God."  And how can you know God, you see.  So that's a problem.

So there's always this connection between that pinnacle of your being and then, which is the same as what we mean by God, and then the level of your being which is a, let's say a (customization) of a customizing of the universe.  The uniqueness of each one of us. 

 So now I'll repeat to you some of the sayings of the Sufis.  Ib'n Arbi, one of the greatest metaphysicians among the Sufis, who says, "I know God." No, first of all he says, "I know myself not through myself, but through the knowledge that God has of himself through me."  Now that's a whole different way of looking at things.  So we want to know ourselves, but how can we know ourselves if we don't see ourselves from the anti-podal standpoint to our own personal standpoint.

For example, there are qualities if I, to know myself, like do, what do I think I am?  Like what do I think of another person?  A package of qualities like, I like this person because this person is a happy person or I like this person because this person is truthful or I like this person because this person is very peaceful or I like this person because I feel that that person is a, has a kind of authority and I admire that authority in that person, courage and so on.  So really you are ascribing qualities to these people.  Just like you ascribe qualities to yourself.  So, I am, who am I?  What am I like?  Well I have some qualities and some defects and so on and so forth.  But whatever, however wonderful these qualities are, then they can never be perfect.  I mean they can never be, like for example I have a certain amount of compassion for people, but my compassion is not infinite or I have a certain amount of mastery, but my mastery is not perfect and so on and so forth.  So somehow or other we're able to imagine a quality in its perfection in infinite regress, in infinite regress.

Now there's a word of, and this is a very important clue, because that will make you understand Sufism.  There's a word of (Hali Paw Cari) who was a French scientist, physicist, and he said, "Infinity represents the possibility to imagine, to always imagine a larger number than you have imagined so far."  So somehow infinity is written into our very thinking.  The possibility of always exceeding the range of a thought that we have had so far.  And the same thing is true of space and the same thing is true of time.  

So, now it is because I can imagine a greater compassion than mine that I can increase my compassion.  Otherwise I would be limited by the amount of compassion that I know and that is how my knowledge of God, because that's what we mean by God - the perfection of these qualities - is going to help me to discover my own qualities and by discovering them, arouse them, awaken them.

So my last statement in this connection and that's the Muslim prayer.  One is bowing, prostrating and then rising again, and then prostrating and rising again.  Now if you haven't done it, you don't know what it does to you.  It's not only to be found in Sufism, it's to be found also well amongst the Muslims and of course amongst the Sufis, but also amongst the Buddhists.  I've sat under the tree opposite the (Boddhi) Tree in (Bogia) in India at nighttime throughout the night meditating and here there were all these Tibetan monks and other people, who were not monks who were just prostrating on their stomach hands outstretched standing up again, back down again, thousands of times throughout the night.  Old men, women of eighty, ninety, incredible and I was trying to get into the consciousness of these people because, of course, I've done the prostrating myself doing the Zikr.  Now of course, in the case of Buddhism, it's overcoming the personal self and then rising to the, an impersonal self, I'd say and so annihilation.  

Well now amongst the Sufis, it's a little bit different, because Sufism  originated in Islam and that is prayer, you see.  What one is doing is to project upon, one builds an image of God and one, that's not God, it's just a picture that we make of God, but we think it's God, but somehow that image is made of qualities.  For example God is majestic and he's truthful and he's and compassionate and all these qualities.  So in order to make that picture of God one has to awaken those qualities in oneself and what is more one has to keep on excelling.  So those qualities get better and better.  So that in a sense one is creating oneself out of one's prayer and that is a typical Islamic formula, (Allah al ma'haluk fil ita qa'dok) that is God created in the prayers, you see.  So instead of thinking God created us, we created God through our prayers, but let's say God creates himself through our prayers.  That's Sufism.

Okay, well now let us just listen to some music, because it's perhaps it's difficult to keep on following me all the time.  So just relax, you can lie down if you want and so what I've chosen is music is my, one of my favorite pieces that I used to play on the cello, but I have disgraced myself three times now trying to play the cello because my hands tremble and my fingers don't do what my mind tells them to do. So, I've given up playing the cello, but this is my model of perfection of cello playing.  It's (Harmon) playing the ("Coloni Dri") which is a Jewish hymn.  Well it's a Jewish ceremony of repentance.  I'd like you to listen to that because, as I said or I've heard that a lot of people, particularly men, have difficulty in getting in touch with their feelings and this music will really you get in touch with your feelings, your heart.

Can you find yourself in this music?  The nostalgia, the longing and the despair and everything's there and have you ever heard of anything like this? 

So you see it's just as, just exactly the opposite of fleeing the world and seeking the peace and quiet and so on.  It's living very intensely and that is the way of the dervish.  The dervish is very intense, nostalgia, that is communicates itself and gives you ecstasy.  He calls it the wine of the Divine sacrament, intoxication.

So you see, you cannot improve yourself by trying to want to improve yourself by using your will or your knowledge or whatever.  No, it doesn't work, but just allowing yourself to be in touch with tremendous emotional upheavals and agony, cry of agony of your heart and a nostalgia for the sublime as I call it.  All that makes ultimate sense or rather that is ultimately meaningful to you and that is what will transform you.

So we have been working so far with self image and with consciousness and with the mind and so on and now we're working with emotion because if you start wanting to know the composer, instead of the music, then you get in touch with the emotion of the composer. 

So your emotion can become absolutely cosmic, instead of personal.  That makes all the difference, like personal emotions: I'm have a party because I bought a new car.  That would be a personal emotion or I've been elected president of my club, so I drink champagne.  That's a personal emotion and that will strengthen your ego image of yourself, but then there's an emotion that carries you beyond yourself.  

There are events that will contribute towards this.  For example, I remember when that airplane had crashed in Washington, D.C. many years ago in the water and people were trying to rush out of the plane and there was a man who kept on enabling other people to come through to save themselves instead of himself.  Now that thought arouses an emotion in you, like ( ) is that wonderful.  So that's what I mean, cosmic emotion instead of personal emotion.  So that's what you find with the dervish.  The dervish communicates cosmic emotion.

Well, we distinguish really two types of emotion.  A cosmic and a very high emotion, one could say a transcendent emotion.  Cosmic emotion like for example that saying of Jalaluddin Rumi, 'like we dance in the galaxies' and so on.  Gives you a feeling of the emotion of ecstasy of the choreography of the heavens.  So that's a very cosmic emotion.  Now then there is that nostalgia for beyond the beyond, beyond the beyond and so on, which is were called transcendental instead of cosmic.  Now these are embodied in a practice of the Sufis called the Zikr.

We could just make a start and then we'll have the break and then we'll continue.  So it's better if you'll just sit up now for the moment.  So if you just make a, of course, we did the whirling this morning.  So you already had the sense of the circular motion.  Now you could make a circular motion with your head.  Now there are people who are sleeping and it's a pity because you paid a lot for this meeting.  You're missing out on it.  So could you shake them up and wake them up and say well breakfast, it's time for breakfast, awaken, rise and shine.  Your missing out on something.  So I'm sorry, I know I love to sleep too.  Shake yourselves a little bit.  Okay.

Okay, so if you make a circular motion with your head, like turn your head or your whole, towards your left shoulder, then your left knee and your right knee and your right shoulder and then right up and so you're moving in a circle, right?  Well now supposing that your body is a magnet.  It has a magnetic field and if you move, if you rotate the magnetic field it becomes a dynamo.  So that means that the energy is enormously enhanced.  So you just, now if you can feel that magnetic field around your body and see how it your energy is increased tremendously and do it a little bit faster.  So a lot of energy, right? 

Now you know what is a centrifuge?  So a centrifuge is like a, if you put stuff in the centrifuge it's going to the heavier parts, the more denser material is going to be shoved to the periphery and the finer is going to come towards the center So now you're, that's what you're doing now. Your feel like your consciousness is expanding further and further into the cosmos.  You're whirling like a planet. So you're communicating with the whole universe.  I mean the cosmos and now what happened in the French centrifuge is that, not only the gross energy is shoved towards the periphery, but also the finer energy is drawn towards the center.  So while you're doing that you'll have a feeling of the attraction of the center of your being, which is a void like the center of a vortex is a void.  

So now when you're, after your, when your head has reached the zenith has turned upwards, now turn your head down facing your solar plexus as you inhale, so you exhale in the circle and then inhale as your head turns toward your solar plexus and really sort of try to plunge into the depth of your being, plummet into the depth of your being.  And now divide your inhaling in two so that after, as you inhale as your head comes down your head rebounds and continues to move upward and now moves upwards as you continue to inhale and this is when you're conscious, you discover another emotion at that cosmic emotion and it's your nostalgia for something higher and higher and higher, always more wonderful and more beautiful.  (He) works as a kind of lift for your consciousness and now that, of course that's the reason why the dervish has so much energy and a kind of, what they call divine power and you'll notice that it will give you a kind of authority.  Divine power will give you a kind of authority.  That's why the dervish says, "Don't come near me unless you, if you lied, don't come near me."  

Well I hope that you feel a kind of power in you, coming through you.  I do and I am as fragile as you are and we're all very vulnerable if we're sensitive people and we have to do with egos in the world.  People who are much stronger than us, less vulnerable, more hardy and ruthless.  So that it takes a different kind of energy to deal with these people and it might be true in a marriage situation were there's very often a battle of egos.  Who's going to be able to put down the other one to dominate.  So that kind of situation happens all the time and so what we're learning now is to  how to find a form of energy that is more, well that will have supremacy over the kind of gross energy of the person who has a very strong ego.  As I mentioned before, Christ and Pileate and that's something that you develop in yourself that I can't tell you how you do it, but I hope that you're just feeling this kind of energy coming through.  

Now according to the Sufis, the Sufis make a distinction between a kind of restoring energy, restorative energy.  You know that there's a faculty in nature to restore itself.  There's a healing faculty.  For example if you cut down a rain forest it's going to grow again and even if you put asphalt roads there, they will crack up and eventually the rain forest will grow again.  Perhaps not exactly as it was, but still.  Somehow if you as you're moving through the forest if you displace the branch of a tree or the twig of a tree it's going to come back to where it was.  So that's a restorative faculty that we have and what I call it is like the faculty of the cosmos to self organize itself without our intervention and if we intervene then the body says, "Okay, you think you can do it, okay.  I leave it to you."  You see and that's what we're doing with medicine.  We start intervening with taking drugs and the consequence is that of course the body says, "Oh well, you think you can do it better than me, okay, go ahead."

Now the other faculty is, well this first faculty, I don't know whether it's interesting for you but it's called Muid.  Now this other faculty called (Muhib) is a faculty of regenerating.  So that is, so that for example restoring the way you were before you were ill, that's therapy, right?  But this is taking advantage of illness to be better after your illness than you were before you were ill and that is a different faculty.  That is a faculty that makes for evolution.  Now that's called (Muhyi?/Muhib?).

I could tell you a story.  There was a, where I was studying psychology at a Paris university and then we part of psychology was psychotherapy and psychiatry.  So we went to an insane asylum and there was a professor who was interrogating the patients and there was this lady called Laura, who said, "The professor is trying to bring me back to where I was before.  He has no idea where I am", and she said, "I can not come back through the same door from which I came in, where I am.  I can only come out of where I am out of another door."  So that's this other energy that we call (Mohib?) and I would like to say that this represents the pull of the future against the push of the past.  

Now I'm quoting a very famous physicist called (Yuller) who said, "The pull of the future is stronger the the push of the past."  So that's very revolutionary in science, because up to that point people had always, Newtonian physics, people had always thought everything was a consequence of the past.  Like what they call determinism, causality.  Whereas this is a completely break from free, freedom from causality.  It's retro causality. The pull of the future instead of the push of the past.  So think of yourself as how you could be, you see.  That's the way that you overcome determinism.  How I could be instead of thinking how I was as a consequence of what I was, I am now a consequence of what I was, you think how could I be totally free from the determinism of the past?  So that's in terms of energy and in terms of realization.

Now the other energy is Hayy, which is, it's called Hayy.  That's strange because that's what we say in America, hi.  Broad, broad connection there, is there, but still you see these people dragging heavy things and then, "Hayy, Hayy, Hayy" and I mean you can imagine the amount of energy that you're generating by just saying Hayy.  So that's the kind of energy of the environment for example, if you, you know, you're depleted at the end of a days work. You're depleted of your energy and how can you sort of recharge the battery.  Well if you go to a help yourself service store, there's a lot of energy floating about.  So go there, pick up all that energy and get out quick, as soon as you can, but carry this energy with you because that is energy and we're working with energy.  That's Hayy.  

And then there's a fourth form of energy which they call Qaddus, Ya Qaddus and which means the energy of the Holy Spirit.  And that is of a totally different nature and this is what Buddha calls an extra (Samsaric) element.  You know (Samsara) means the wheel.  So as I say you just continue to be what you were and you know that then you evolve, but this is like a total change from the whole rotary system in which you find yourself.  That is what we're trying to work with now.  It's paradoxical.  A form of energy that we don't know, we don't understand how it works, but it does work and it works like there, it is described by the Tibetans as lightening and by the Japanese it's called (satori), which means, 'a sudden break'.  All of a sudden something happens to you all of a sudden, like lightening, a flash.  So it's not the consequence of the past.  It's something all of a sudden, sudden.

Now when we're doing this practice of the Zikr, the motion of the body was, how can I say, was plugging in to the different forms of energy that I've just described.  So it was like a wheel, it was like a wheel.  And so the energy became we were plugging into cosmic energy and then when we turned within that is that self generating energy that we found in the depth of our being and then we lifted our head upwards, reaching, going from one plane to the other and we have to describe these planes, because I haven't made it clear yet.  And at a certain point, you touch upon this level of your being that is beyond qualities and therefore beyond your divine inheritance which is pure Spirit.  And then you turn your head forward and you say, well, I think perhaps to make it, it would be helpful if we knew the words, the sounds, the (mantrams) that are said during this practice of the Zikr.  So it might be interesting for you and anyway if you go to a Muslim country then if you know that you'll be invited, you'll be very welcome.  

So it is La illaha illa 'lla' hu.  So la is the circle, la from the left shoulder through your left knee, right knee, right shoulder, la.  Like the arc of a circle and then from the right shoulder upwards illaha so la illaha and then the head comes (up) illa so that's where you hit your solar plexus illa and then your head rises 'lla' and then hu you see.  So your head, when you inhale, so you exhale as you go into the circle.  Well actually you first say it and if you say it you can't regulate your breath, but when you can not say it loudly and just do it on your breath and then you exhale and you think la illa ha and then inhale when your head comes down illa and then continue to inhale as you say and you think 'lla' and you hold your breath hu.  Now hu is that extra samsaric element beyond the circle.  It's out of the circle.  It's everything in the Zikr is la and al and la and allah and so on and so forth.  So go from the vertical line 'a' to the arc of the circle 'l' well then the arc of the circle to the 'a' and then 'h' is different thing altogether.  This is pure Spirit.  So let's do it just a few minutes.

La illaha illa 'lla' hu, (repeated 7 more times), and now try to extend the Hue a little longer now. La illaha illa 'lla' hu, (repeated 3 more times).  Alright, so perhaps you feel a kind of power in this.  A kind of power and an attunement in this practice.  It's almost magical.  You see one of our greatest needs is not just understanding or unfurling our capacities and so on, but is, is a sense of the sacred.  That's why one goes to the church or the synagogue or ..

                           END OF TAPE 


AUG 14, 1997		Tape 01

...very important occasion right at the heart of the Sufi Order which I think should have a snowballing effect on the spreading what we call of the message. This is the combination of our retreat and leaders training program. And the reason for that is because we found that people only had a limited time at which they were able to attend. And of course it would have been much better if we'd of been able to have a retreat on its own and then a leaders training program. But logistically it had to be done this way. It will require of you particular attention to maintain your concentration because if it is to be partly a retreat then you need to observe silence during that period that is allocated to the retreat process which is in the morning up to noon, up to twelve o'clock. I think there is also some advantage in being able to divide the day, the first half in a state of seclusion and retreat, and the second being able to translate what has come through in one's silence in the activity that we have undertaken as representatives. 

This is therefore not only a training for representatives but also a retreat for representatives and coordinators, leaders. And the consequence is that you need to see things form the perspective of the teacher rather than from the perspective of the pupil. So it's not like learning how to drive your car, but how the mechanic thinks, what the mechanic knows about the car. And even the engineer. There are several stages there.  

We'll have to practice on our own. And then see how it works with other people. Instead of telling people what to do without having tested it oneself. And hence the tremendous importance of a retreat for representatives and coordinators. In fact it is the most important issue at present in the Sufi Order.

Now I've made it a practice always to start every meditation with a practice with light. And of course if we had time, then we'd be able to match the light practices with the other practices and go through the developmental stages in meditation, and our personal development, and see how it relates to the different stages in the practice of light. But unfortunately we don't have enough time to do that. 

But briefly let us. Well first of all I have to ask you of it is your wish to observe silence every day up to 12 o'clock during the time allocated to this meeting. Could you put your hands up if you really do? I can't see any abstentions. The reason for the silence is we are used to translating our realization in terms of language, which limits our realization. And even if we're not talking, we are still so used to doing that. And if you stop talking for some time, then you cease thinking in terms of words. And then you get into your deeper driving emotions and thinking rather than thoughts. And consequently these are the conditions are conducive to what we call awakening. 

We have to be very clear as to what our objectives are. I think it's a good thing if you remind yourself of your objectives first thing in the morning as a prelude to meditating. I know it's a very difficult thing to define them. But you can make a try. And say for one thing our ultimate objective is what we call awakening which is seeing things from a different vantage point than the usual one. And I think illumination is very close to that. Awakening and illumination are two dimensions of the same thing in terms of light. And that is why this morning I'd like to start with a meditation with light. Because the objective in the meditations with light is to reach a point when we identify not with our aura, but with what the Sufis call our luminous intelligence. Not consciousness, but intelligence. So that's the ultimate goal. 

So I think that the practices of light, I've devised the practices based on a lot of skills that have developed in the course of history with this as an objective leading up to that point when, of what we call illumination where we are able to see ourselves as a luminous intelligence. 

Then of course we want to see how this realization and therefore this shift in our vantage point, let's say is going to trigger off and foster the unfurling of the potentials of our being. And you know Pir O Murshid attached a lot of importance to the personality which I must say is not to be found in a many of the eastern traditions that I've studied. It's particularly important in Sufism. 

And the next one is the way that this realization and also the unfurling of our potentials is going to affect our accomplishment or achievement or activities in daily life. So those are very clear objectives. 

Unfortunately we are limited by time. So I think that some of you are familiar with the practices on light that we've been doing for many years. Perhaps, I don't know whether you've notices that they have progressed in the course of time. So, what I think I need to do is to review briefly the earlier stages, and then go more deeply into the more advanced stages. 

The principle with we start is mind over body. Is the fact that creative imagination by visualization is going to enhance something that is already happening.  For example, we do radiate light. But if we can visualize ourselves as radiating light, we'll be radiating more light. 

And further there are different levels of light. And so our usual common place assumption that light is a physical phenomenon is of course questionable. But, well we could have a whole discussion on physics on the subject. What we are doing is based upon experience and, of course, interpretation of experience rather than belief. And so it is a kind of unveiling of something that we know. But we are not aware that we know it. And we are using skills, that is what we are doing in our practices in order to unveil the knowledge, well actually it's the knowledge of the Universe that's hidden in each fraction of the Universe.

So let's start with the early stages. And as I say, let's bear in mind that we're not asking people to imagine something that is not. The fact is that the cells of the body do absorb light from the environment and do emit light. And in the meantime the cells begin to giggle and sparkle when they are fed by light. Light is energy, a form of food for the cells of the body. It has the consequence that the cells begin to divide in the process of what is called mitosis. And together with this there is an ecstasy of the body which gives one energy, psychological energy and makes for improvement in our lives and in ourselves. 

Well, now we'll start by simply being aware of absorbing light through the pores of your skin like one is sunbathing. You open up the pores of your skin. And one is absorbing the light of the environment. Now I've been doing these practices at night time under the stars when the stars are visible. And I must say it does convey to this practice a whole further dimension because one realizes that one is so much a part of the galaxies and that one's body is like a crystallization of the light of the stars and and the big bang and the beginning of time and so on. But you can't divide them. There is no boundary. So the consequence is that right away you realize that it's not your body that's absorbing light. Your body is the crystallization of the light of the galaxies. And curiously enough then this crystal absorbs light, absorbs further light. This also has the advantage of expanding your consciousness right away, right in the beginning instead of dwelling on one's personal notion of oneself, one's personal identity. 

Now there are two stages here. One is identifying with the body, that is absorbing light. The other one is identifying with one's aura. In that case, if one identifies with one's body, then one thinks that the body is absorbing light, and then is emitting light. Then one is aware of the giggling and the sparkling of the cells as one holds one's breath. But if one identifies oneself with one's aura, then of course the aura does not have a boundary. And consequently one becomes like a vortex of light. 

Now one is aware that one is a vortex of light. And consequently the light of the stars and galaxies and so on, cosmic light, cosmic radiation is converged in each fraction of itself. So the sense of convergence instead of otherness. The cosmos is not other than ourselves. It converges as us, not in us but as us. 

And then right away we make a quantum leap into the next stage which is as we hold our breath, grasping an inner light that emerges from within. And of course this sounds rather strange to one's common place way of thinking. It's important for me at least to see what scientific views, the way that our present views of science may help us to understand that. Let's say that our mind is only able to extrapolate between three dimensions. There might be animals that can only extrapolate between two or even one. And there are super intelligence that can extrapolate between four. In fact that is true. So we live in a cross section of a multiple Universe. And what is true for us is only in that cross section. And if we think in terms of light, then there is a continual transfer of the light in the other dimensions of the cross section into the cross section.  So there is a dispensation of light emerging form within. So if you think of your solar plexus as a white hole at which new energy emerges into the cosmos. And that's the difference between the cosmos and the Universe. The cosmos is that body of the Universe. 

So that is what Pir O Murshid calls the all pervading light. And if you are familiar with the theories of Dr. David Boehm, then you realize that it is the implicate state of light instead of the explicate. That means that the light in its, well in our way of looking at light. For example, wave interference patterns, waves that criss cross and intermix. Instead of our way of looking at light in terms of particles that radiate from a particular source. Two different ways of looking at light. 

As we turn within we learn to shift our way of representing light to that implicate mode. That light is everywhere, spread out, diffused let's say, instead of radiating from a center. And what Pir O Murshid says is that, well he bases himself on the theory according to which the sun converges, or any star of course, converges the all pervading light of the Universe. I think I can see that. There is a tremendous explosion of light. And within this ocean of light there are vortices, that is many vortexes, which are able to converge as light. Then having converged it, radiate it out. So for Pir O Murshid what is very important during these practices is to realize that we function in the same way. 

And so we converge the light of the environment such as we know it, or we perceive it as we inhale. But as we hold our breath, then we call on the emergence of the light, subliminal light, known to other dimensions of the Universe. In the course of calling it forth, it becomes converged in our heart center. And from there it is radiated just like any source of light radiates light. You can see that clearly. You'll find that when you exhale, you don't only boomerang back the light of that you've absorbed from the environment, but you are also adding a further dispensation of light which emerges from within. Your solar plexus is the gate which gives access to this other subliminal level of our being. Let's just do this for a few minutes.

So clearly two stages. First of all think of, identify with the body. And we are absorbing light, and then diffusing light. And in the mean time when you are holding your breath, the cells are in a state of ebullience, sparkling. Then the second stage, you identify with your aura. And then you see how it is so much a part of the aura of the whole cosmos. There is no boundary. But there is a convergence. Just like a in a whirlpool. Then you hold your breath, the new dispensation of light. Then you exhale both lights. There is a word of Ibn Arabi, "A light within a light". It's like a new dispensation of light is now infusing the light that that we emit. Of course we have processed that light that we have absorbed from the environment. So it's not like a mirror. The electrons of our body process that light. 

OK we have to go rather fast now. The next stage is being able to feel your aura. At first of course, we start by our body consciousness. It's a realization some people can visualize, other people can't. It's more like really feeling light. I don't know if that's an adequate expression. Around your shoulders and in front of your chest and above your head until the feeling becomes so strong that you feel that wherever you go you bring this light. So at first you identify with your body and with this light that is surrounding your body. This light is also, infuses your body. It's within your body, I mean within the skin within your body and also outside your body. So it's just like the magnetism of a magnet, for example. The next stage is that you really identify with it. 

Now the beauty of this practice is that it overcomes our rather inadequate sense of being what you call a discrete entity, that is having a boundary. Because light does not have a boundary. It's hurtling through space at 186 thousand miles a second. So it does affect our notion of ourselves, our self image and of course the outreach of our consciousness that becomes all encompassing and this has enormous consequences in terms of the unfurling of the potentialities of our being. 

And the other thing is the convergence curiously enough is not just convergence. There is a conversion of light from the surface, from the periphery where it is radiant, to deeper down in the center where it is all pervading. There is a gradual transit from one to the other. That will give you a sense of, let's say this will give you access to the higher levels of your being. 

Turning within, having turned within one can move upwards. So one needs to turn in first, within first. We'll see that in our practices and in our studies in the course of the day. It teaches one to get in touch with one's deeper self without being articulated in terms of our thinking. But it's much more in terms of our representation of light which is so very essential. So that when one comes to a point when one is not limited by the notion of the aura as a physical phenomenon. But one is beginning to have some sense of what one means by other levels of light. 

Now this is the point of departure in an ascending mode of practices which are going to help us to awaken because awakening is very complex because it does entail looking at our thinking, examining our thinking and questioning our way of thinking and so on, our personal self image and the setting of our consciousness. With light you have something more tangible than thinking and thoughts. 

So perhaps you remember this practices, imagine that your spinal column is a chimney. And within this chimney there is a flame. And if you look at the flame carefully, then you'll see that basically there is red. In fact you don't see the infrared. You see that there is a vermilion color, then perhaps ocher, then becomes orange, then becomes green. Then it becomes gold, yes. Then it becomes green, then becomes blue, then violet and ultimately colorless light. 

This is not just a theory. The fact is that that is the spectrum of light and normally, actually color is just psychological interpretation that we make of frequencies of light. So color is not a reality in itself. It's purely a psychological impression that we get. But for visualizations it's good to, you see the frequencies therefore what we think of as the colors of the various regions of our aura continually vary according to our attunement, our thoughts, or realizations and so on. Sometimes very chaotic. Of course if we were to learn about some kind of orderliness, some kind of...(tape turns.) ...in fact link us with the cosmic principles that you see in a rainbow, for example. 

So the way to do this is to visualize the various colors red at the bottom of the spine. Then a color which is difficult to define. There are several layers let's say, moving vermilion to ocher, or even a kind of pink almost, a very bright pink. Then to orange. That is in the second chakra. Orange in the solar plexus, gold in the heart center, green in the throat center, blue in the eyes, sky blue, then violet in what they call the third eye. They're not very clear about it whether it's the pituitary, well that's the pineal. But then there is also the pituitary gland. And I think that the pituitary gland is the center of the crown center. Therefore it's colorless. At least that's how I experience it. Then you have all these wonderful flashes of various hues which are form what is called the crown about the skull. You can imagine a rainbow. Well rainbow is not the best. I would say rather like a kaleidoscopic array of different hues that are sparkling, almost like fireworks. 

So you do this at first, at home you just work with one chakra. And the next day another or whatever, three days or whatever. Then visualizing color. Finally you are able to do them all in one inhaling, passing from one to the other. Now what I would suggest is that of course you'd tend to want to hold you breath and concentrate on the crown. And one can do that as a transit. But to advance more rapidly, what I suggest is that when you hold your breath you make that quantum leap. You have to think of your breath as just a support system for your luminous intelligence. That's a moment of awakening when you are able to iden...tify with a luminous intelligence as your aura. 

So that one was identifying with their support system and now makes that quantum leap. So you have to do what is called fana, that is free yourself from your identification with your aura. I dare say that when there is a quantum leap, there is a threshold situation that one has to go through where one tends to blank out because it's some kind of transit between identifying with the aura and identifying with one's intelligence. That's a kind of dark night. It's not a dark night of understanding but it's a dark night, a very deep dark night of any notion we could ever have of ourselves. That's a real fana. And then the beauty is that at the end of the dark night there is a light that is luring us out of the night. And it comes as a sudden outburst of realization. A kind of "aha feeling, "Ah yes that's what I am ".  Intelligence becomes consciousness when dealing with an object, interfacing an object, as Pir O Murshid says. But ultimately, it is intelligence. So when we say luminous we are speaking figuratively. It's not luminous in the sense of what we normally understand as light. But it's luminous in the sense that it makes everything clear.

Now as you exhale then there are two things. The first stage you infuse your aura with the light of intelligence. That is absolutely what is meant by the sura in the Qur'an we often refer to, "A light upon a light". Well now remember that we have already encountered a light infusing light. An inner light infusing the radiance of your aura. Now we have a totally different type of inter relationship between two different, the non physical light and the physical light. The Sufis call it the light that is sees and the light that can be seen. And the interaction between the two. There is no doubt that when you have that sudden jolt of illumination, your whole aura begins to burn more brightly. Sometimes it's been described as lightening. In Zen it's called Satori, a sudden breakthrough, a quantum leap one calls it. Particularly the heart. Pir O Murshid attaches a lot of importance to that relationship between the crown center and the heart. And in this case we are reaching beyond the crown center into other dimensions of our being that are not located in space. 

So you see the difference between trying to radiate a lot of light by our will or then being fathered in your understanding. Abdul Karim al Gili calls it the consternation of intelligence. At that moment when one has, is in a state of perplexity, that is all that one thought doesn't seem to have any value anymore. It all seems to be misleading. That sudden Aha feeling. 

The consequence is that it affects your hole being in a way that your will could have never brought about which is a very important lesson to remember in mediating, to wary of the will. The will will discipline you, but will not foster awakening. Because the will itself is attached to the limited notion we have of our selves. That cannot help us reach beyond itself, beyond our notion of ourselves because it is itself rooted by our a notion of ourselves. So it's, it is ecstasy rather than will. And you cannot force yourself to be enchanted either. That's why working with light light, you have something really tangible. 

Now when you've done this you have a further practice, further step. That's to concentrate strictly on your glance. That you shunt light in your brain through the optic nerves through the retina and cornea right out into space. Now of course I did mention that when you're doing this practice, you tend to turn your eyeballs upwards towards the second half of your inhaling, and curl your tongue and press the bottom of your tongue against the pallet.  It has a lot of physiological consequences in terms of brain function, spinal rashidic fluid in the fourth ventricle. 

The, for one thing, you know that in one's sleeping with dreams. One is dreaming as one sleeps. There is what they call rapid eye movement, flashing of images on the brain. In deep sleep there is no more rapid eye movement. The eyes are stationary. So now if you turn the eyeballs upwards and converge them slightly as we turn them upwards, you're immobilizing them. Consequently it has an effect upon your thinking. In fact it suspends the process of at least what I would call horizontal thinking proceeding in that causal chain. And therefore gives you access to another dimension of your being which one might call vertical. So then of course you keep your eyes closed and turned upwards and the tongue curled and pressed against the pallet as you hold your breath. And then release that when you exhale. So we get back to the normal position. 

But when you're working with your glance, then you do the same of course, but you're very clear you are really shunting I said the light of the brain. But actually the light of the brain is quickened by your luminous intelligence. And consequently the light is shunted through, threaded through the optic nerves is greatly enhanced. You can really be aware of it. What we did with our whole aura. Like the way the light of intelligence is going to enhance the radiance of our aura, we could do the same thing with the light in your brain. All of a sudden the light in your brain is somehow, I suppose one could translate in terms of a kind of thrill of the brain itself. Like the thrill of a child who is able to see the pixie in the tree. All of a sudden the whole face lights up. So it's something like that. 

So that light requires some kind of outlet. So it's going to push through the optic nerves and reach right out into outer space. You could think that your glance is reaching, can you imagine, isn't it extraordinary that our glance is able to reach into stars many light years removed? I don't know what the term is, millions or billions of light years. Some of those stars don't exist anymore. But isn't that extraordinary that our glance could reach that far? So think that you're enhancing the light of your glance. That becomes as Pir O Murshid says a torch that reveals the secret of all things. That's very important. Gives you insight. 

Now what Murshid says is turn your eyes upwards as you inhale and as you hold your breath. Then turn your eyeballs forward and think of your eyes as a vehicle of your glance. So while you concentrate on the light that is moving in a horizontal line, direction, instead of descending in a vertical direction. Well it's not descending. I said that wrong. The light of intelligence must be looked upon as a catalyst which galvanizes the light that is stored in the brain.

Now to be complete, I know we are moving rather fast. But we have so much to do in these days that's so important that I think we have to precede to the next step which is really a further extension of what we've been doing in working with the frequencies of light of the different chakras. It's a practice that Buddha did himself and that has been communicated through the ages as a secret as a matter of fact. It's called casina. So it starts with imagining that if you were to be looking at a red disc, cardboard disc that you've cut out and painted red as you exhale. As you inhale, you forget that disc. Somehow in your mind somewhere, I don't know where it is, you see a green disc called a reflex image. 

Now supposing that you would in a further stage do the same thing, but instead of concentrating on a green light, disc, and then envisioning the reflex of it which I think is orange, you'll still concentrate on the red disc. Then you'll divide your inhaling in two. The first part of inhaling, you'd grasp that green disc. And you realize that in order to grasp the green disc, you have withdrawn yourself from the representation of the physical world. It seems like another world. So you divide your inhaling between the reflex of the red disc and the reflex of the reflex. It's not the reflex of the green disc. It's the reflex of the reflex. Of course you could divide your inhaling in three. So you'd get the reflex of the reflex of the reflex, ad infinitum of course.

Now the next step would be to imagine colorless light. It wouldn't be a disc. But say colorless light as we imagine colorless light to be. Most of the light that we see has some kind of coloration. And now you do the same. But you imagine the reflex of that colorless light. We call it white light. But it's not really light. But anyway the reflex. And now you divide your inhaling into two. And you reach into the reflex of the reflex. 

And if you keep on doing that, then you'll realize that there are levels of light. And physical light is one of those levels. And consequently your representation of your aura only represents a small piece of this whole many tiered world of light. So you start shifting your identity" from being an aura that is a support system to the light of intelligence to identifying with a higher level of light, you could call it your aura, but let's say your light beam. 

This is exactly what Hildegard of Bingin said when she said, "I found myself in a world of light. And I'm absolutely flooded with light. Then all of a sudden this world of light avers itself to be a gate opening up into an even more dazzling world of light. And in turn that world of light avers itself to be a gate through which I have access into an even further world of light". 

Of course these quantum leaps parallel the views of physicists regarding quantum mechanics. It seems as though there is a sort of black area, there is a threshold situation between one level and the other. And there is a Sufi called Abdul Jabber Nifari, lived in the desert, a dervish who said that one is most of the time in that threshold situation between two makums, that means two stations. And one cannot reach the next stage by one's will. It has to be revealed to one. That is if you think of God as other, then of course God will reveal it to you. You could also think of yourself as bipolar. And the higher pole of your being is what we understand by God. So it's your higher being that is revealing itself to you, your being. That's another way of looking at it. 

I'm sorry that I have to interrupt you now because the only way that we can work currently and with mutual respect for each other in this camp is that we observe not only the time that we start but the time that we end. And also it's good practice to be able to switch from one state of conscious to another instead of just being stuck in one state.

Tape ends


AUG 14, 1997		Tape 02

It's somehow difficult to combine the retreat process with real training for leadership. On the other time there is some advantage because for the training to be real it has to be backed by our own personal experience. And so what I propose to do is that after this first period of training, you'll go and sit outside or walk and see if you can practice some of the things that we've been talking about so that it will be real to you instead of just concepts in your mind. 

To start with, I'm going to say some very basic things. Perhaps they are rather boring. But we'll start with the principles. Well first of all as you probably know, the Sufi Order has gone through a lot of phases. We've come a long way. I think we're really getting there. After 50 years of soul searching and a lot of investigating and looking at different chapters. 

I think that the reason we're getting more and more into focus is that we're basing our orientation on the words of Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan. I hear a cry of humanity and the message is an answer. And I think that so far we've been giving the answers without asking the questions. And even assuming that we had the answers. 

Now I think that we need to ask the question, "What is it that people need?" We are there for our mureeds. And we are providing a service. That service consists in helping people to unfurl the potentialities of their being, and reaching something which actually they may not even believe that they could ever reach which we like to call illumination, awakening. And there is no such thing. There is a gradual process of awakening. 

There is no doubt that the advent of psychology has played a part in drawing our attention to the fact that the mureeds have deep psychological problems. Although we don't have the kind of expertise of a psychotherapist, we are proposing alternative, or at least complimentary solutions which answer not the psychological needs or the human needs of people, but the spiritual needs. Of course, it's very difficult to define what that is. But we're gradually becoming a little clearer as to that kind of nostalgia in the human being which is the ultimate value of, the quest of the ultimate value. Whatever words we use, like sacredness, that's not very important. The important thing is that we validate, honor that ideal that as Pir O Murshid says, "The horizon. The further you advance, the further it recedes. So you can never really touch it". But it lures you forward. And also validate ourselves. And I think that the most vulnerable aspect of ourselves is our self image. And that's exactly what we're dealing at. 

Now the basic things are this. This is a training program for representatives, guides, coordinators, conductors, whatever sherag. But the objective is to see how one can help people who come to us. We can help. So we need to be very precise and very clear. While at the same time, the way that we help people requires a very deep soul connection with our pupils. Never the less we need to have a very clear sense of the lie of the land which we haven't had before. 

Basically we are, our resource is the teaching of Pir O Murshid Khan which yields much more than one ever thought it would if you go into it very deeply, and see how it applies to real life situations. So he sowed the seeds that we are flowering and I would add mutating. In the 90's we don't have the same perspective as they had in the 20's. Things have moved. Pir O Murshid himself, if he had lived, would have moved on. So one thing we want to be very
clear about is not to be dogmatic. I've heard all these battles. "Murshid said this. And Murshid said that" and so on. Of course it's always limited to one's particular interpretation of what Murshid said out of context sometimes.

The second one is according to the statutes of the Sufi Order initiated by Pir O Murshid in 1916, the time of my birth in London. It includes the teachings of the successors in turn. And you know that Zia is the next one. And it includes in the second place, the teachings of the ancient Sufis which are our spiritual ancestors. Murshid moved a lot from being more traditional to being more universal. So it includes teachings of all religions, at least the schools of all religions. And it includes the teachings of at least the representatives who are qualified and authenticated to give what Murshid calls interpretations. First of all commentaries and then interpretations of the teaching. I know this is rather boring. But we have to be very clear of what the base is. 

And consequently this is very different from a guru trip. There is a call which has been very much in line with Pir O Murshid's teaching. Then there are branches, let's say, imagine concentric circles or concentric zones. And so there are zones that are a little more removed from the central theme. And the beauty of that is that it gives people the freedom of incentive and creativity which is one of the things that we foster in the Sufi Order. And you don't find that in the other spiritual groups. And the consequence is that sometimes it's difficult in the minds of people to extrapolate from the different points of view and think that they are in contradiction And I would say that we have to be very careful to make sure that they do not contradict each other but are complimentary. For that I think it's good sometimes, if we feel our differences, to speak, to have a dialogue and see where we concur and where there are differences. The differences are very often differences of methodology instead of principle if we refer back to the initial inspiration experience of that great being which was Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan.

Now the nitty gritty of it all is that in the early days the people used to be enthused by my seminars. Maybe they still are. People used to come to me and say, " Pir Vilayat, how can I help you?" And I would say, "Well you could help, you could start a center". So people were out there in the field without the backing that they needed. And the consequence is that they got burnt out, they got criticized of course. And people were leaving left and right. And they left themselves. So it has been a very quick term of relationship in the Sufi Order which worries some people. It doesn't worry me at all. On the contrary. When I'm walking in the airport, all of a sudden somebody comes up to me and says, "Are you Pir Vilayat?" I say,"Yes". "Oh yes. You had a much bigger beard then. It was twenty years ago you initiated me. And you know I feel conscience stricken because I haven't maintained my connection with the Sufi Order. But I can tell you that what you said just changed my life. You are always present with me". So there you are. So that's rather ingratiating. One objective is not the number of people, but whether what we do has a real contribution and really meets the spiritual needs of people. We want to ascertain that. One of the things that helps me to overcome that feeling of disenchantment I find amongst some people. Disenchantment is always because what happened didn't meet one's expectations.

One has to be very careful because you know it could come to the point of thinking there was failure. Did Christ fail because his pupils abandoned him? And did St. Francis fail because they kicked him out of the leadership of his order that he created? Ultimately nobody remembers the people who kicked him out, but St. Francis is still present. So we must be careful of our assessment. But it is true that criticism, one has to listen to criticism because it says something to you. 

And that we are trying to get more and more in line. What do people expect of us? What can we give the people? What are the skills that we can use in order to be helpful to them? Well some of you are representatives or guides. And that means that you are authenticated to give the practices. Some of you are conductors or coordinators. Therefore we wanted to spare you of the ordeal of being criticized, or even of giving practices that could be considered helpful could be deleterious to the pupils. So we wanted to spare the people too. That's why we are waiting until you have the right training. And therefore one has to give that training. 

This is what I want to do during these two days. And to be more precise. It could amount to which wasifas to give to which person in which case. So at least which case. And then individual differences which are difficult to account for in general. So the guidelines. But of course I don't want to reduce the training to prescribing wasiaf as a doctor would prescribe medicines. Because there is much more to it than just choosing the right kind of medicine if it is a medicine. It's to trigger off something, a way of thinking. A wazifa, you mustn't think that the wazifa is a magical word that's going to do it for you with the grace of a guru. No, one is, you know the Pavlov reflex, one is training the unconscious and maybe the super conscious. But that's a question that could be debated in psychology. To respond to a word, one is associating a word with, it's not just a thought, it's an archetypal thought, in any case it's not just an ordinary thought. But it's also an emotional attunement. And as a matter of fact a certain perspective of a realization. So there is much more to it than that. That's the reason for repetition. Because by repeating, one is reaching into the unconscious. And the unconscious is not reasonable as you know. It's probably for the best at times. 

So it is, there is a saying of Murshid that's struck me as I'm speaking, really it threw me for some time. I think some of you have received my work called "Developmental Stages". I think I quoted it there where he said how everything gets moved into order. Like what in science call the order out of disorder principle. So that the unconscious is rather chaotic at first. We try to coordinate the unconscious in a way that the conscious couldn't do. It is a very great art to know how to work with the unconscious. It's very nebulous how it does it. It's very subtle how one can work with the unconscious. I don't say that we have the answers. But I think that the use of the wazifa has proven effective in quite a few cases. 

One of the things that makes me confident in continuing to do what I'm doing over 80 is that I see that people have really blossomed in the course of the years in the Sufi Order over the course of the years. That's the proof of the pudding as they say. You can't eat it like a food but that's a tangible thing. That's why I'm always delighted at a meeting like this. I see all those wonderful people, radiating, radiant. I feel sometimes talking to the public I don't know whether people have a clue as to what I'm saying. I must think that you are in sync with me to some extent at any rate. I'm trying to be as precise as possible. 

So faced with a person who has come to us with expectancy, and who has all kinds of problems and concerns. Problems as to how to handle their situations, their problems. I find that most people are always in a crisis situation. So you go from one crisis to another. You're never without being in a crisis. And so you'd like to help them. Of course, it's not that east. Of course it would be a short cut if you could	say, "Well do this or do that", which is the kind of abyss that gurus fall into. To say, "Yes do this, do that". It's much more complicated than that because you are taking away the incentive of people and their ability to see what is being enacted behind the problem is not a solution. And I dare say that a lot of people have left the Sufi Order when we said that representatives were not to give advise. So people think, "We'll go somewhere else to get advice". Should you move to Santa Fe or should you divorce. We don't give that kind of advice.

So the first thing is, of course, to be able to see things from the eyes of that person or the pupil. That is from their point of view, they assess their problems from their point of view. And that's not where their 
problems are, but that's the way look from their point of view. And of course they cannot see it from your point of view. They would like to believe you. But they would still have to do it. And so you have to show them how they can start looking at things from an alternate point of view to the one from which they are looking at things. And of course very much connected with the occurrences is of course the self image which is their sense of identity, the representation they make of themselves, which is by definition faulty. Just like the assessment of their problems. But it's much more convincing. So it's very difficult to convince people that they're not what they think they are. You can say what you like, but it dies hard as one says, or back to the personal vantage point. So somehow that is linked with the way that we modulate our consciousness which is normally in the middle range. So we have learn how to expand our consciousness and also lift our consciousness in other dimensions. So there is a whole lot of techniques that are required in order to bring about a change in one's consciousness. 

And then, of course, there are emotional issues. I say, "And then". But maybe I should have started with those. And those emotions are a criteria about the developmental stage in which one is. So I think that we need to have a kind of overview over the whole process of developmental stages, the lie of the land. Then we need to be able to identify the problems and see how they correspond. So really speaking, one would need an info base procedure, which I tried to work out on my computer, and include in that very pertinent sayings of Pir O Murshid or other Sufis or other teachers, Buddhists and so on, which concur with the insight that one's gaining while working at this whole problem in a sort of overview like a chart. 

So we have in Sufism very clear data regarding the developmental stages at least for spiritual growth. And maybe they don't correspond with the developmental stages outlined by psychotherapists. But still I think they are complementary. I'm sure that they can enrich each other. Let's say that for the time being I have to look at the, well I am considering psychological problems. So you know nomenclature, words are not very helpful, using oriental words, words used by the Sufis. But those words are like categories, like alpha beta or X Y or whatever. Just categories.

Now what I'm going to do is a little bit difficult. Because rather than just proceed theoretically by giving a charter, we need to experience each of these stages in our own realization and attunement. Otherwise it's just theory. IT's just words. It doesn't really work. Bearing in mind of course, the. 

If I could make a chart as one could in school, then I would place 7 sheets there. Pin them up on the wall and say,"This is Nazut, and this is Mithal, and this is Hayal, Malakut and Jabarut and Hahut and this is Tawhid." Then I would outline the different problems or attitudes of mind corresponding to those stages. So it's transversent. Vertical at the same time. You have to consider both. 

So we find that to start with, we find that people are attached, have a need for the attachment as the attachment of the child to the mother. Of course, more generally, I should say, well there are several aspects of this problem, that we are endowed with a rather simplistic defense mechanism to protect our vulnerability. That is what is called the ego strategy. That is when we are attacked, we attack and so on. That's a reactive process. And, of course, it can lead us into trouble. And when we can't counterattack, then we lose our self esteem. And so you can't win. Therefore, as we evolve, we learn to wean our dependence on that perfunctory strategy. And gradually by bringing in self esteem. I'll say it already now, but it should come in the course of discussion. And that is that in India the elephants are known to, normally elephants don't like chickens, the agitation of chickens. And somehow they learn to withstand that agitation by what the Hindus call Viaragia, which is indifference. Actually this indifference is a defense mechanism. It's not the same defense mechanism as attack, you see. It would be stupid of the elephant to attack the chickens. It doesn't make sense. So they find a strategy that will work. And the reason why the elephant is able to maintain that indifference is because we assume the elephant has a higher self esteem than the chickens. 

And so self esteem is very vulnerable. As long as we are dependent on our attachment, attachment and dependence are very close together, then our self esteem is very vulnerable. It depends on being loved. That the child needs care, needs the mother's care, and to know that they are being loved and that they are in a safe environment and so on. Now should this fail, which happens in children that don't receive the love and care of their parents, then they are looking for somebody who can provide that love. 


So there is a transfer as one gets adult, one seeks it in partnership. One seeks it in partnership. That is that at this stage, one seeks to be loved. One is not yet clear of the need to love, just the need to be loved. And if that partnership breaks down, which is often the case in our modern society, then of course, one transfers that need for love to a father figure or a mother figure. It could be a  hat sense, there is that need until one outgrows that need. So the weaning has to be done, proceeded in slow stages. If one weans too fast, then there are withdrawal symptoms. 

So your people may very well be coming to you because they have a need to love. That love has been sublimated into veneration. No, sorry, they have a need to be loved. It's only at a later stage that they have a need to love. They have a need to be loved. Therefore Murshid said, "They are tested in their love". Some mureeds can make themselves very difficult to be loved. So we are tested in our love. 

I think we need to give guidance to people. Yes. But basically let's deal  containment. They feel they are being nurtured for someone who really cares for them. Of course that's very demanding on us. We have responsibilities. We have our own cares and so on so forth. So it's really asking a lot, taking on the responsibilities of being a guide. But it is a feature of your growth. And it does help you to grow. One can call it patenting. 

Now, it is true that as one evolves in their developmental stages, one does reach ultimately a stage of independence, of detachment. And there are quite a few sayings of Murshid where he says independence and indifference are the two wings that enable us to fly and so on and so forth. 

These are the kind of things you find amongst ascetics. And it's not at all our intention to make people ascetics in the Sufi Order. And I think that the great challenge in spirituality in our time is to learn how to introduce that defense mechanism of detachment and independence in the middle of our commitment in life. It's very difficult to be able to reconcile those two. On the other hand where there is distress and there is abandonment and well there is meaning because the guide needs to be clear that the pupil needs attachment, but to evolve the pupil needs to be weaned from that attachment. And so there is that kind of distance there that is very difficult because the heart of the guide is vulnerable too. But somehow needs to become adult and less dependent. And there is that process. 

At first attachment is, actually dependence is a further feature of attachment at the Nazut level that is right at the start when we are just in our perfunctory, commonplace way of thinking and feeling and so on, we're very much in the body consciousness. So we see that everywhere. Most people are in their body consciousness. So they are dependent upon comfort or a body well being even gratification of body pleasure and of course basic instincts like the instinct of reproduction and also the need of the family unit. Things like that are very basic. And that depends ultimately, of course, as one is at the end of one's life in the Hindu tradition that one reaches the point of independence. So all that is the scaffolding that one needs to start with. 

But of course Murshid makes a distinction between self sufficiency and the need for complimentarity. And the ideal is self sufficiency. But that's a far cry. That's a long way along the way. In the meantime there is dependence. But the flip end of that is that dependence becomes addiction. It becomes addiction very easily. So addiction, need I say, to drugs, to tobacco, need I say? In our modern world, addiction to tobacco. Addiction to alcohol, rock and roll, actually music. I'm addicted to music. 

So a kind of dependence upon conditions to conditions that are favorable to one's growth. And one thinks that one really needs those conditions for one's growth. Maybe true. I don't know. But the Yoga tradition is that people who go up there, leave their homes, and expose their bodies to heat and cold and hunger and the hazards of the jungle and the weather and so on, having no proper house and like the homeless and so on. 

I think it's good to bear in mind that one has has to become dependent, and dependence does take away your sense of self sufficiency. If that's the ultimate goal well then where is the break up point? And I think that is in what Murshid calls the difference between need and greed. And for each person it's different. But you can very well see how needs can escalate. "Well I need this and I need that". And it's, well one becomes the custodian of one's property. So it's a balance that you need to find. And to tell you the truth, I think that spirituality is the quest for what has often been called another kingdom by Christ, "They are in the world but not of the world". I think it's very difficult to reconcile those two needs but we are doing it. And at some point one has to ask oneself very clear questions. What is it that you really value in life? And then see whether, as Shabudin says, the support system takes over. So you do all the things that you need in order to be up to reaching your ideal. 

But you never reach your ideal because it takes so much to do the things that are needed as a support system. And the same applies to the Sufi way, for example the use of the Zikre, because people are dependent upon a church to be high, although in England the pub is always placed next to the church so after having what they call an HSE, that means high spiritual experience, they end up in the pub. So anyway we have a need for a support system or even just for the sacred. But the Sufis were nomads. So they could not rely upon a church. Therefore they had to build a temple out of their own body. So that's the reason for the Zikre. 

So I think that one has to be very clear in one's thinking to what extent one is really dependent upon those things that one has become used to take for granted. And whether one would be able to continue to subsist without this support. That will give you a sense of independence. Actually we suffer in our self esteem from our dependence. 

So it's another dimension. As I say at least it can afford a protection when you are abandoned and you can't transfer your dependence upon someone else, then I think that is where the way of the ascetics, well it's written in us because we do have a need for freedom. We have a need for involvement and we have a need for freedom. So in a case like that, it's our need for freedom that will come to our rescue to help us to face that hurtle. 

Now at the next stage of course, actually moving down that list of items in one stage. Then we move on to the next stage and so on. But I think it's good to anticipate the next stage already and say that the next stage would be the need to love rather than the need to be loved. That's the next stage, Hayal. And also dependence in the Hayal stage dependence is not on food or eating or shelter, but on values that, one could say cultural values like music or poetry, art, things that are not exactly physical but have a significance to us and nurture our soul instead of our body, our psyche instead of our body. That's a further stage. 

Now consciousness. Somehow if one is, I think it's true, as Taj says, that a lot of people are not aware of even their body feelings and how they feel emotionally. They are not in touch with their feelings. So that's a very elementary stage that one begins to, the consciousness is linked with the body to start with one thinks somehow or other, there is a confusion. There is,"Who am I?" Somehow one can't distinguish between that in one which is the witness, and that one which is the body, and that in one which is the psyche. Also one's feelings and one's thoughts is all mixed up. That's I, the complex. And of course, there is no doubt that the fact that the body is skin bound, at least what we think of the body is skin bound, has an affect upon the way the consciousness of the cosmos is funneled down and focalized in what we call our consciousness. And the consequence is that our consciousness is that we assess our problems from that vantage point. And, as I often say, if you see Notre Dame from one vantage point, then you haven't seen Notre Dame. 

And so there is a bias in our assessment of our our problems. And, by the same token, there is a bias in our assessment of our selves and of our self image and in our emotions and so on. They are all levels because consciousness is being followed down. So the only way to remedy for that is to expand consciousness. And it's very difficult if you think that you are your body because your body ends at your skin. So your consciousness is limited by that. 

And that's the reason for the method that I have been using in trying to become aware of your magnetic field, and trying to become aware of your aura so that it extends beyond the profile of your body. That has enormous consequences in terms of our assessment of our problems. Because the consequence is that we learn to look at our problems from the point of view of other people, of the persons who are involved in that problem. And so when you see the problem from two vantage points instead of one, it's better than one. It doesn't mean it's perfect. But it's better. And if you increase the vantage points, even then, that is not sufficient, but it's still ahead of the usual vantage point. 

So, now the wasifas. Ya Wadud means divine love. It means that one's love for a person is somehow, one doesn't quite realize that what one loves is God. But one sees God through the picture of that person. That's what one calls idolatry. That's what Islam is about is overcoming idolatry. That is the reason why if you go to a Yoga school, they give you a picture of the guru and a candle. You've got a candle and flowers. And that's your alter. That's tasawiri murshid. Tasawiri means picture. And then of course in Islam this brings about the destruction of idols. And it's nothing new because in the old traditions at least, they used to destroy the idols and then build another one. And in the pagan traditions. And the Tibetans do that with their mandalas. The beautiful mandalas. Then they destroy the mandalas. So that's the meaning. 

The meaning takes place right there in translating from tasawiri murshid to tawaji which means getting into the consciousness of the murshid. And as you know, the beauty of what we're doing now in the Sufi Order that it is all the masters, saints and prophets of all the great religions who are our teachers. We are not limited to a guru. So that's rather wonderful to be able to choose your guru amongst the masters, then try and visit another one and so on so forth. And of course we project what we would like our guru to be. Still it is because we see in that teacher something that is in us and it helps us to discover ourselves. By seeing ourselves in another ourselves we are better able to manifest what we are in ourselves. 

But then the next step is really the breakthrough. You really get into the consciousness of a master, prophet or saint and imagine what it is like. You might say, "Well I can't do that". Well you'd be surprised. You can. That master is really like the archetype of that exemplar that is in you. So you discover yourself not in another yourself but in the archetype of yourself. The capacity that we have to always imagine a larger number than the largest number that we've imagined or a more a more perfect quality than the qualities that we've experienced in ourselves. And that's the secret of the wazifa, that it leads us into extending our sense of a quality beyond the known quality that we see in people and in ourselves. 

So that word is Wadud. And that is rather simplistic formula, like God is love. So base it on your karma. But it gets to a point when, you know it is an extraordinary thing to be in love. All one's faculties are enhanced tremendously. One starts being alive. And imagine being in love with love regardless of a person. It's the most wonderful thing in the world. And that's what the Sufis call ecstasy. So if attachment is love, then the ultimate expression of attachment is divine love and the ecstasy of divine love. It's a kind of magic. 

Otherwise one gets caught in one's hum drum routine of every day life. I find it boring myself. I don't know how you feel about it. It's rather dull, rather disheartening. What's the point if one continues to be what one has always been? One entertains an ideal, then one doesn't even believe in it anymore because one has been deceived so many times. It takes a lot of courage to keep on believing in one's ideal, not formulating it in words, but beyond what one could ever conceive of. 

So extending consciousness. So when you have a pupil who you find is right there where most people are at, "I've been badly cheated by this person. And I'm angry. And I have resentment. And I've been to a psychotherapist. And of course the psychotherapist confirmed that of course I have been abused. So I feel damaged and so forth and so on". That's you know... everybody knows that. And the crux of the question is that that person is looking at things from their personal vantage point. And as I say, the personal vantage point does include the vantage point of the Universe. 

That's been my discussion with Taj. Exactly that. We got in touch with discussing what was the difference in our methodologies. And it's only in our methodologies. And she says, "Well the consciousness of the Universe is present within the personal vantage point". It is subsumed. It is latent. It is potential. One has to, I think it's important to draw to our attention right in the start that it is there. Otherwise there is a danger of getting encapsulated in one's personal vantage point and not realizing the tremendous expanse, content of that vantage point. In other words it's something like when you learn music, it's good to start with scales of course. But it's good to play a little bit of Chopin even though you're still at the scale level because you see where you're going instead of being stuck with where one is at present. 

So the two wasifas for that are, it's very interesting the difference between them. There is basit which is expending, an outreach. Ya Basit. A very good illustration of that is of course first of all our glance. You can look at letters on the page of a book or you could look at a panorama. So that's a very clear description of the way your glance can expand. Now the same thing is true of your consciousness. But of course for this to be real, you have to test out if you are able to experience what it would be like to be another person. It's very difficult. But still you can get into the consciousness of another person. That's not telepathy. That would be indiscrete. It's getting into the attunement of that person and seeing the place from which they come. 

And consequently the second stage which is, first stage is what the Sufis say is,"I see him/her from his/her vantage point". Actually say, "I see him/her through his/her eyes". The other one is," I see myself through his/her eyes." So when you see yourself through the eyes of the person who is opposing you, then you realize that they have a conception of you which does not concur with your conception of yourself. That's why they are treating you the way they are. It doesn't mean their conception is better than yours or that yours is better then theirs. They are both relative and inadequate, incomplete. 

Then if you can expand your consciousness into that of more people, because there are always more and more people involved in what one thinks is one's problem. And ultimately one realized that what one thought was one's problem is the problem of humanity. That it doesn't have a frontier, it doesn't have boundaries. It involves the problems of all people. It's not my problem. It's my participation in the problem of the Universe, in the drama of the Universe. So you see that looking at it from your point of view is totally inadequate. I mean how stupid can one get? So if you start getting into the consciousness of more and more people, then you're beginning to see the whole significance of what you think are your problems. So basit would indicate an expansion of one's consciousness and as a consequence, one's self image, one's assessment of one's problems and so forth. 

Then there is wasi, Ya Wasi which is very close of course. It means encompassing. So there is some kind of containment. It's not that clear. But embracing. I see the importance of the difference between the two because basit, there is a tendency to lose oneself in infinity. And over stressing one's outreach. Murshid is very clear about that. I think that is something we need to do when we are meditating. We call it the practice of muhasibi which is considering your intentions. Asking yourself very clear questions like, "What are my values? Am I pursuing my values or is it just lip service because it is not real?" And then the next question is, "What need I do to pursue my values?" And the next question is, "Why am I doing what I'm doing?" I hope you don't lose your job by asking that question. Within your job let's say, like whether you're trying to bring your values into your job, or in a relationship with a person. "What do I expect in my relationship with that person? What do I expect of that person? What does that person expect of me? What does our interrelationship carry as expectancies of both of us?" You're asking very clear questions. 

So that is, what Murshid says is that each of us has our domain. I think he uses the word outreach, domain, realm. That is a very basic instinct. Animals have their territory. That's their domain. If anybody encroaches that territory then of course there is a fight, competition. And wars are increasing one's territory, enlarging one's territory until one finds as Russia did that it's unwieldy. Then all those political problems. Our territory is the area where we assume responsibility. 

So we could ask people that question, "Can you figure out in your mind where you think is your responsibility and where you think that responsibility ends, where you pass the buck to somebody else?" So it starts with a sense of accountability, answerability, reliability. We ask very concrete questions. So if you do it yourself, then the pupil will feel that they can rely upon you because they will feel that you are someone who is conscious of their responsibilities and has taken upon themselves to help you to assume your responsibilities. 

And of course these responsibilities are in some way associated with our self image and self esteem. So we think well that is beyond what I am capable of doing. And Murshid is very clear about it. He says do not take on something which is beyond your ability. You will over stress yourself and be discouraged. So those areas where you have responsibility. Can you assume responsibility? What it does it take to assume responsibility? And it's not that simple because it doesn't mean telling people what to do. Ultimately it's true of representatives but I think it's true of all people to some extent. 

There is a very beautiful formula amongst the Hindus. And it is that the heart of the teacher is like an oyster. And the pupil is like a grain of sand that is rather gritty. And one transforms it into a pearl so it doesn't hurt any more so much. So a sense of really those people who look to you for guidance are really there with you. They are in you all the time. You can find them. It's extraordinary the osmosis that exists between people. Sometimes you talk like a person who is very close to you. And you think and have the same kind of emotional attunement. But we need to do is not just let this osmosis take place, but really nurture that being in your being. And curiously enough, they feel it. There is some interaction, interrelationship between things that are at a level which Jung called synchonicity. So that the way that you nurture that child in you is affecting that child out there. As Murshid said, "I work on higher planes". Still that's the deeper aspect form of our teaching in the more accessible form. You're prescribing wasifas, but it's no good just prescribing words. It must mean somehow related with your understanding of where they are at, and what would get them out of the thicket to see things in a wider perspective. So they must know that you're not just prescribing a wazifa, but that you understand them. But be very careful in articulating what you think of them because they will say, "Oh you're misjudging me", right away. So don't put your finger in that hornet's nest. Don't pass any judgments about the person. 

You know there are master teachers in cello, Jacqueline Du pre, for example. She used to say to her pupils instead of saying,"You're doing this wrong", she would say, "Well how about if you used the second finger instead of the third finger on this note. Try it out and see how if you put your fingers a little bit different on the bow. Try it out and see how it works". That's the way to teach. See if for example, if you were and look at your problem from the vantage point of a different person, see what what that would mean. So that word wasi is just a catch word. It just triggered off a change in your attunement, in your vantage point. So could you do that? So then you can only do that with a pupil if you have done that with yourself. If Jacqueline Dupre said that, it's because she has tried it out and knows how it works.

Now wasi is more like, it is really containment. So it's really feeling that person in you. So it's really much more for you than for the pupil. Then the pupils have exactly the same problems as you have. Like they have a problem to carry the persons that they dislike and they are dealing with in their heart. So if you think of that grit of sand, it's helpful. You mustn't think that you can change people. Sometimes it does happen. But one must not have the illusion that one can change people. You can try and help.

Now, I have for the sake of clarity and for the sake of having very definite guidelines for representatives, I have written down in my computer the principles that I've been trying to outline here so that you'll receive it at the end of the meeting. If you received it before, then you'd be reading it while I'm speaking. So it is better to have it afterwards. I hope to be able to follow it up. But it requires a tremendous amount of work. And if you ever knew my life, you'd realize the amount of homework I have, the amount of stress is just incredible. I just came back from a three week camp in the Alps with about 900 people. And people who really are tough, who are really expecting something. So the only way in which I can do that would be to miss out on the classes of other leaders. I would be missing something very important, so it's a very important choice. Finally I had to decide to do that, otherwise I would not complete the work. I've been working since 5 o'clock every morning in order to be able to do it. But there is a lot of detail. I hope the presenters don't take any offense if I can't be there. But what I have asked is to have the tapes so that I can listen to them when I get back after this camp and I face a whole load of responsibilities back in Europe. So, if you don't mind, I will consult my paper because it's very difficult to remember the things I had on my mind.

Yes. I was talking about, I've gone beyond the time. It's all right up to 10:30? I've got to move fast now.

As I said what we need at the first stage is nurturing even at the purely physical level. And one mustn't discount it. What Murshid said, well it's rather surprising what he said, "You might have to go and try and get a job for your pupil". You know you're really the father and mother of your pupil. So it's not just at the soul level but really at the physical level. Rather help a person to get a job in their thinking. It has something to do with their self esteem. It has to do with their readiness to improve their skills. There are a lot of things behind it. I know basically there is a thought in the East. It's a very dangerous thought, "God will provide". And then one thinks, that evidences a rather simplistic way of thinking. God is other so God will provide. Me, miserable worn down here and God up there manipulating my life. He will provide me with the food I need. 

So I think it's good to not discount the importance of having a so lid underpinning for one's life, to get one's trip together, as one says. I think that idealistic people tend to rather despise or neglect that nitty gritty level that needs to be OK in order be able to take the next steps. Instead of the wazifa Ya Rezzaq which means in general it means nurturing. Of course it's often interpreted as food or providing the necessities of life. But it's just to draw your attention to the fact that you need to see to it that you have that base upon which you can rest. So that's Rezzaq. But I find that a more general word which is Muquit. I think that it means that the food is there but you need to cultivate it. You know that parable. That was the answer that Murshid as the question what was the purpose of life. He said, "You are offered an enormously rich field, but you have to cultivate it". So you mustn't just think the field is there. You have to do something. 

So that combination, Muquit and Rezzaq is very useful but you find that there are obstacles. The obstacles are not only outside but inside people. For example there are people who have a lot of talent. But when they are about to start paining or whatever it is, they have a block and can't do it. You can't do the thing you want to do most. There is something irrational about the unconscious. So that's internal and maybe it does have its effect on the situations outside. I remember that word of Jung. It threw me for quite some time. It still does actually. He said, "If you don't deal with your shadow, it will appear in the form of your fate". There is some connection there. It's not a causal one. It's synchronistic so it's not that easy to see. It's not a one to one effect. 

But somehow to be aware of the fact that what I think is the obstacle outside is within me. So I've got to see if I can remove that obstacle. And so there is a custom in India amongst the Sufis the east. That is that when one is walking in the path and there is a twig on the road or stone, one removes it so that the ones who are coming after one will have a free passage. So one isn't just removing it for oneself. One could perhaps climb over it. 
The word is Ya Reni. It has several connotations. One is to see in one's life what is standing in the way of, there are several things. One is the solution to one's problem. The other thing is what is standing in the way of the unfurling, the unfolding of the potentials in one's being? What is standing in the way? Sometimes it is in one's incongruous way of thinking. First of all a missassessment of the problem. That's why the first step in yoga which is after sabitaka samadhi, is correcting the false assessment of situations which is carried in the psyche throughout one's life. Just imagine if you're carrying throughout your life a false assessment of your problem of which you're convinced, and it's in your psyche. It's not out there. It's in your psyche and standing in the way of the unfurling of the qualities in your being. That's where the obstacle is. 

Now you as a representative must not tell the pupil where the obstacle is. You must ask them to find the obstacle. That's a koan as they say. Figure it out, where is the obstacle? So if you're giving the wazifa Hale, then there is an obstacle. That's true of most people. But if they see that, that's a real breakthrough. Qualities could start emerging. So they are all withheld because of that misconstruction. 

Now I find that when it comes to nurturing, now as I say, there is a field which we need to cultivate that field. But then we need to garner the crop. That's what we find in Zurat. That means that we need to be able to connect. You see our being although it is potentially self sufficient, only very little of the potentials of our being are active. Most of them are recessive. In order to be able to bring out the qualities that are potential within our being, we need to match them with qualities, with resources outside. Let's say just exactly as we are nourishing our bodies with food, we are nourishing our psyches with impressions from the world, all kinds of things that accrue to us from outside. That means to collect. And the word is Jami. Ya Jami means to collect. So make a person aware of the need to collect that richness that is out there. In order to collect it you have to evaluate. You collect those things that you value. Amongst the stones you collect the more beautiful stones. You collect things that are meaningful to you. That's Ya Jami.

Now I spoke about the need for protection. That's dependence of course. There are situations in which one really need protection, where one really does feel that one hasn't enough strength in oneself to deal with the stress. And one really does need protection. As I say we were seeking it in our parents and in our teachers and so on. Ultimately there is a weaning. So one seeks that protection in God. That's the reason for the wazifa Ya Muhaimin which means divine protection, to feel secure. 

You know one spends a lot of time worrying about hazards that never happen. And there is a fear of whether one is strong enough to meet catastrophic situations. One would never think that one was able to do that. For example, women abandoned by their husband and have children feel they would never be able to cope with that situation. I remember myself climbing the high mountains in Chamonix. And the rocks were brittle and falling under our hands. And we realized that we would never be able to come down the way we came up. There was an ice wall. And we didn't have any ropes. So that meant that we had to make a hole with our foot and put our hand in that hole, then hand on to that and make another hole with our foot and then descend. If you had asked me if I could do that, I would say no. But when you are faced with it, you find that you have faculties there that you didn't think that you had. So it is discovering faculties that you didn't think you had before. 

One of them is courage. That makes cool zafir on my back when I talk about courage facing danger. I can tell you a story. You know that there is a custom in India that when the husband dies the wife has to be burned on the stake. What happens is that a lot of women die of TB because they are in veils so they can't breath properly. And old men marry young women. So there was this princess whose husband had died. She was to face the stake and as you can image she tried to get out of it. And of course no way. Somebody said, "There is a woman guru who might help you. So go and see her." That woman had a pet cobra. She said, "If you can pet this cobra, you won't have to go to the stake. But if you're afraid, it will bite you". So she had to think that over. Eventually she petted the cobra. So she passed the test. Personally I think it was a reasonable alternative to the stake. At least there was some chance of surviving. At the stake, there is no chance. But then she said, "Well you passed the test. But you will have to become a sanyasin, an ascetic. You can't get back into ordinary life again". That was a test of courage.

So there is a time that one has to wean oneself even from divine protection. There is only one thought that will help you face that. I think about that when I think about my sister Nur. What happened to the divine protection? And the only answer is in the word of Pir O Murshid who said, "Be not surprised if a defeat can aver itself to be a victory". Things that seem catastrophe might in another perspective appear as just exactly the way that things are supposed to be. But it defies our mind.

Now you have this chance not of doing a retreat. A retreat is something that one needs to do on one's own. Of course one needs to have guidelines to proceed on one's own. So you have a lot of themes here that may have triggered of a sequence of thoughts and considerations in your mind when I was talking about them. You'll have picked up those things that are more significant for you. And it's only those things that are more significant for you that can help people who have the same concerns and the same problems. So look within. There is no way you can do all the things that we've been talking about. But you'll have the paper given to you. So then you'll have the guidelines as well as I was able to articulate them. Then we'll proceed at 5 o'clock.

Tape Ends



AUG 14, 1997		Tape 03

A lot of energy flying about. Get a little more centered now. We're going to continue our study now. If you'll remember, first of all I'd like to say that I'm very sorry, a lot of us are very sorry that my son Zia is not able to be here. He really cannot be here. So he apologizes and it's a great pity because he has a great contribution to give to what we are doing. So we'll continue our study. If you'll remember, at the Nazut stage, at the first state we were very much into our body state, we are very much into our body consciousness. We, our emotions were very much connected with the body. There was a state of dependence upon physical conditions. The reactive strategy of the ego was one of violence, of as one says, " Attack is the best form of defense". So that can lead to brutality and cruelty and violence and of course the kind of thing that we see all over the world now. So if we want to evolve, we need to bring other dimensions into our being. 

So we've moved to the next stage which we call Hayal. If you'll remember then, Hayal is really the state in which one is a little bit clearer in one's mind because in the first initial stage there is a confusion between what one thinks is one's consciousness and the subject. The knowing subject is what we call Shahid, the subject. Or then one's psyche, or then the events outside. It's all mixed up. One is making a miss-assessment of one's problems. Then one has a faulty assessment of one's self image. Therefore one's assessment is biased as we already said. And what is much more serious is that one is carrying throughout one's life this faulty assessment in one's psyche. And one is convinced that that's the way that things are. 

So it is really important to make that next step which is looking at the events and realizing that one is looking at them through the vantage point of one's psyche, that one is projecting one's psyche upon events. In psychological terms, what does this mean to you instead of what does it mean. That's where most people are, "What does it mean to me?". But that's not what it means. It's a valid point of view. 

Now the Hindu's attitude about this is discarding totally the, not only the representations we have of the physical world, but of circumstances. Circumstances are viewed as Maya, so they are discarded altogether. 

Now the view of the Sufis is very different form that of Yoga. What it says is that the circumstances and the qualities, idiosyncrasies are clues to reality. They are clues. So instead of discarding them, they are means of media through which you might be able to reach reality that is trying to transpire through that which appears. Or let us say that which is enacted through the drama of one's life. Now this is the Sufi point of view. The reason for that is because to understand Sufism, you have to know that one is always seeing things from two anti polar standpoints at the same time, the personal and the impersonal, or the and what is called the divine point of view. The anti polar point of one's own personal point of view. And that gives a sort of dynamic to one's point of view. If one just thinks from just one point of view, then one's point of view is of course limited. If you are able to extrapolate between those two points of view, then of course it gives you a whole new picture, a very rich picture of reality. 

 And of course you may and say how can you look at things from a divine point of view. We don't know what we mean by that and so on so forth. But I'm asking a very basic question to myself and to you. You see we are moving to a millennium and maybe we will be changing our terminology. The term God has connotations. You know Pir o Murshid made it very clear that when we say, " God", we don't know what we mean is what we think God is what we would like God to be. So we're fooling ourselves. So, as I say, the word has connotations. In French "Dieu" is simply the word "Zeus", which is the name of Jupiter. So we have advanced a lot in our thinking since that time. 

So I'm proposing a word that's rather revolutionary I know. But I don't mind being revolutionary. I think we all know it's a time to wake up, grow up. So I'm proposing the word "Universe". If you know, I think it's Italian but it might be Spanish. Towards the One is 'Averso el uno' a averse universe. So it seems appropriate name for God, perhaps a 102nd name of God. 

So the question I'm asking is this. Let us consider that the Cosmos, let's say the Cosmos is defined as the body of the one being. It's all one being. So we assume that that being is endowed with consciousness which is intelligence, with thought, with emotion, and so on so forth, with intention. All kinds of things. 

Now if you just take the example of a tree. Does the tree have a knowledge of itself? And does the knowledge that the branches have, or the leaves have, or the flowers have of themselves contribute to the knowledge that the tree has of itself? So does our knowledge we have of the Cosmos contribute to the knowledge that the Cosmos has of itself? 

So you could say, "Right, well what do we know about God?". Somehow at the first stage, one wishes to know God. And then at the second stage, one discovers God through the clues that are to found in the situations in one's life. They are clues. That which transpires behind that which appears. And also in one's idiosyncrasies. And this goes very deep. Because somehow the thought of whether God exists or not, or you know thoughts with regard to God are very enigmatic in people who will not simply tow the line if you tell them to believe in God, they believe in God. Now that was the old fashioned way. Today that doesn't work anymore, at least in the case of most people apart from the Bible belt. So now we need a new paradigm. 

What do we mean by clues? Perhaps you've seen the movie ET. Do you mean to say you are crying and laughing because you've seen the shadows on the screen? No, those shadows, yes they represented ET. And when you hear that ET had the voice of an old lady and the face of a turtle, then you wonder if you haven't been fooled. But no, because you saw ET through the eyes of that child. So it was very real for you. Really what Speilberg was doing was conveying his thought by means of devices. So you could say that God is conveying His/Her intention through devices. And the devices are clues as to what that intention is. So you never know what the intentions. But the devices will lead toward that intention. For example, if you see the pug marks of a bear in the snow, you haven't seen the bear. But if you follow those pug marks, you might find the bear. So that's what we mean by clues. 

So instead of discounting the physical world as being illusory, as the Hindus do Maya, it is a very valid indication of reality. In fact, the Sufis go further than that. They say God is absent there, present here. God becomes a reality in existence. And prior to that, or without that, God is a potentiality. Now that's a very revolutionary way of looking at it. But you see it has enormous consequences because it means that we have to make that potentiality actuated in ourselves in order to know God. 

So at first you think of God as other, then you realize that you can only know God by discovering, by following the clues in your own self. That's why Murshid says, "Make God a reality". So the teaching of Murshid is very concrete, very tangible. So this regarding the concept of God, which as you see is more advanced than the first stage than the first stage, or rather the experience of God. One could say that. 

Now, so come back now to the reactive strategy of the ego in the case of Nazut. Then there is a very brutal reaction, a bodily reaction in actual fact, anger. In the more advanced Ed people, the reaction is a little more sophisticated. Actually at this level we can talk about the abuse at the psychological level being accumulated, being ostracized, being undermined. But in both cases, whether it is physical abuse or that kind of humiliation, the reactive strategy is one of, well first of all registering pain. Pain is a kind of alarm system. Like if you have a tooth ache, you're body is telling you that there is something that's got to be done, to deal with it. And so when you have psychological pain, it tells you that you have to do something to deal with it. And there are cases where the reactive strategy of countering back is not possible. For example, you are afraid that you'll lose your job if you tell your boss what you think of him or her. So it doesn't work. 

This is where actually where the abuse is in one's self esteem. That's where the pain is. It's in one's loss of, damage to one's self esteem. Self esteem is vulnerable as it is. And now for having been humiliated, it gets really very bad. Since one's whole behavior in life depends so much on one's self esteem, it's a very tragic situation. 

Now, in that case, one's dependence on people becomes much more important than ever before because having lost one's self esteem, one needs help. And that's why people go to a psychotherapist to see that they have some support. So it's not just that the psychotherapist mirrors their thoughts and so on. Behind it all there is a sense of containment, of being somebody who is supporting one and is not judgmental about one and so on so forth. You see therapy is one step. I think it could be considered as trying to recover the situation as it was prior to being humiliated. Let's say it is reinstating the integrity of one's being that one is doubting. 

But the second stage in rebuilding, well in promoting growth in a person, is to turn the tables on the trauma. So that one is better after the trauma than before. In fact it could be true of a physical illness too. And certainly psychological. There is the case of Laura who said, a patient when I studying psychiatry in Paris University. And she said, "The doctor has no idea where I am. He wants to bring me back to where he is. I can't come back to where I was by the same door through which I came out of it. I can only come back by another door". 

So I think perhaps the new concepts of therapy are not in trying to regress a situation but it cuts right into the main theme that I come back all the time. A reactive strategy is perfunctory and not quite satisfying to a more evolved person. And therefore ultimately one needs to wean one's reliance upon reactive strategy of the ego, which is the false ego actually, a representation of what we think of as ourselves, wean it and to replace it by a more comprehensive notion of ourselves. And that's a build up of self esteem. 

In fact much of the work which we are doing is exactly that. But as I said before, I would be very careful of weaning reliance upon the ego strategy until you can really count upon the potentials in your being, you really know that they are really there and you can actually call them into operation in your personality, you can really rely upon them. It's just like having relied upon your safety belt when swimming and trusting yourself to swim without the safety belt. One has to, that's a transit. That's a difficult transit. I would say, continue to use your, that perfunctory strategy of the ego. It's OK to be angry. Because if you're not angry, you'll denigrate yourself. But at the same time, see if you can get to know, that's what we're doing in the Sufi work is to try and get the people to know who they are. And that's not an easy thing because our self image masks who we are. And we are so convinced that we are what we think that we are that it really takes a lot of work to be able to undo that image and replace it by a truer one. That's most of the work that's being done. 

Now the wasifas, we have Ya Muid and Ya Muhyi. Muid is restoring, that's therapy. That's as I understand it. Ya Muid. And Muhyi is regener___8ating. So that is introducing, well maybe one could say it is fostering, galvanizing the energy written right into nature of self organizing itself. First of all Ya Muid would be like when an order has been disturbed, there is a force in nature that restores it to where it was. Actually up to a point. For example, if you displaced a branch of a tree when walking through a forest, it will get back to where it was, a kind of elasticity. But of course, if the damage is too great, then of course it's much more difficult to restore the status quo, like the rain forest for example. The rain forest will grow. I mean the asphalt roads will be pushed by the vegetation in the end. They will have to keep repairing the road, but they won't be quite the same as they were before. But it's good that we don't return to where we are, but we go forward you see. 

So that is is Muhyi. It's a kind of consciousness one has. It's reinforcing meditation. It's knowing that one can really rely upon the ability of nature to self organize itself. At first if one does not intervene. If one intervenes, it's like medicine, for example. Take a medicine. The body says, "OK, you think the medicine can do it". So we don't have to count upon your immune system because the medicine is going to do it for you. And so the same way here.____ If you intervene you might blow the whole trip. Just at first, just feel that tremendous energy that emerges if you don't turn it away. 

But it is true that this energy needs to be customized. I don't know whether you can call it intervening. One is customizing something, a power that has emerged, a kind of cosmic power. In fact the whole of the life is exactly that. It's the way that the Universe is customizing each one of us in a unique way. So it's not a matter of towing the line, but really bringing your personal will into operation, or incentive into operation. 

Now the other aspect that I want to talk about is in the realm of emotion, emotional dependence. As I've already said, that at this stage instead of wanting to be loved, one has a need to love. So that's already quite a step forward. So there is some attachment to that need to love. And generally it is love turned towards a human being but could be toward animals. 

But the values here are not at the same as at the first level. At the first level one valued very practical needs, comfort and so forth. Now what one values, as I said this morning, aesthetic values. And one feels the need to accomplish and achieve. So you find that you can encourage that in your mureeds. Murshid attached very much importance to what is gained by accomplishment which is quite the opposite of what one finds in the tradition of the ascetics. And it's because in Sufism one validates what is gained by life instead of retiring from life. And if that is so, then our accomplishment is very important. 

And of course Murshid sees a relationship between our accomplishment and the unfurling of our potentialities. For one think he says, for example, by facing a challenge, one develops a power. And then with that power you can accomplish something more challenging. So that's a quality. But there are other qualities that will be enhanced by the fact of action. In fact the Sufis make a distinction between a knowledge that precedes action and a knowledge that is gained by action. Like a sculpture discovers his/her statue by making it. So we discover ourselves by our activities out there. otherwise our potentialities remain latent. So that is one of the ways of calling the, you see it's very difficult, in fact, well nye impossible to know what one's latent qualities are. They are laying in wait. One needs to call them forth. But one cannot know them unless one creates situations in which they emerge. That's very an interesting thing. I remember an article, I think it was in Scientific American, which said that electrons exist only if you create circumstances favorable to their actuating themselves in existence. That's a very revolutionary view of things. 

So God only exists if you find it. Computer experts control F. I can tell you a story of Mary. It was in New Deli. There was one of these witnesses lady who came up to her and said, "Have you found God?". And she said, "Why, did you loose Him?". 

So this is for me a very important wazifa that I've been working with a lot lately. And that is Ya Wajid which means to find. I remember when I was in the Navy during the war. I was an officer in the British Navy watching German submarines on the horizon at night time. You know if you scan the horizon with your glance, you wouldn't be able to pick up the impression. It's a very nebulous impression. So you had to be really sort of withdrawn and watchful. And an impression will force your attention towards it instead of your turning your attention towards it. And so that particular wazifa is linked in my mind with Ya Rahid which means to be watchful. So it's a good place to keep on the alert and watch for what's coming through you. otherwise you won't find it. And the other thing is that for that quality to become real then there is a whole chapter in how we are able to make a potential quality real in us in a creative way. But that will be looking into tomorrow. 

In terms of dependence because I'm making a difference between attachment and dependence. So one is attached to the need to love. But one's dependence, you see, as I said before, it is only at the end of the journey that one finds self sufficiency and that means total freedom. That was Buddha's quest. But on the way, one still is dependent upon all those elements that accrue to one from outside to enrich one. 

So it's not just dependence upon food or comfort or those kinds of things, but one's exchange with human being, kindred human beings who have similar aspirations and thoughts and emotions and so on. There is a mutual enrichment there. And consequently there are people who are lonely because that need for dependence is not satisfied for whatever reason. It might be that they themselves have alienated themselves from other people and at the same time have a need to foster an exchange with people. But still somehow there's a contradiction there. But there's a lot of contradictions in human nature, in the unconscious. 

So isolation is a very dangerous thing. A lot of people think that is that which leads towards unity, toward discovering God is to isolate oneself from the grossness of the world or whatever. And Murshid said, "The one who thinks he is a special person by saying that he can't bear the grossness of the world, it's simply because he is not up to dealing with it". It's not a particular quality that one can pride oneself of, that one can't stand the grossness of people. I mentioned that when I was talking about the elephant. It would be rather counterproductive if the elephant got angry with the chickens. It doesn't make sense. They are what they are. So people isolate themselves, or then they don't realize that they isolate themselves and suffer from loneliness. 

And I think the reason is because one is just giving vent to one's dependence instead of considering one's contact with another person as an exchange. In other words, one is needy. And so the only way to overcome that loneliness is to learn to give instead of just wanting to receive. And that means of course sensitivity to how the other people feel. Sensitivity because I don't know whether you just consider the conversations of people. You find that the people are talking about themselves. They just want to talk about themselves. I remember of course meeting Murshids in India and they were always interested in the other people. They were interested in me or in other people whom I introduced. They would never speak about themselves. Whereas in our ordinary conversations, most people are just speaking about themselves. What's important for them and, "I'm doing this", and so on and so forth. So that makes for real exchange. 

 And if you start being sensitive to how people feel, the word for the is Ya Mujid. That would be a practice to the mureed, be sensitive to the pain of people instead of just thinking of your own pain. And I would combine it with Rachman or Rahim. Now those are two very different, they have very different meanings. Ya Rahim is suffering with. That is the real meaning of compassion. So only if you are really sensitive to the suffering of people that you can develop that heart quality which makes you endearing and will therefore foster the exchange between you and other people. If you love people you have a warm heart. So if you don't have a warm heart, then be not surprised if people shun you and ostracize you. They don't feel that you really care for them. That's Ya Rahim. It seems very simple. But it's a way of helping a person to get out of their feeling of loneliness and honoring their need for dependence on that exchange. 

Rachman is a different word altogether because Rachman is a kind of generosity, a kind of magnanimity. That is there is room in your heart for people you dislike. That's magnanimity. That goes together with this sense of vastness of your being which I talked about this morning, expanding not just your consciousness and not your self image, but expanding your heart so that it embraces, as I say it's very easy to love people who are admirable. But to love a person that really, people who are even pernicious, shockingly so, and yet to love them. That's really a hard exercise. 

You see when one has really felt that resonance with the sufferings of people, then it is difficult to find happiness in the kind of situations in which one finds oneself amongst people. One feels that one is being disloyal to one's loyalty for the suffering of those people by being happy. 

That is true to such an extent that I'm thinking of a case of someone who was very shattered by the terrible ordeal through which his family went through by the Nazis. And consequently a rather, well one's sensitivity becomes very deeply damped by the terrible cruelty of people. Also it's difficult to be happy, force oneself to be happy. And it's very dangerous for the guide to think that they have to fix it. If a person is unhappy, let's give him a wazifa like Ya Azim, and make him happy. It doesn't work that way. It's the other way around. Then that person lost his confidence totally in the Sufi Order because if that's the kind of teaching, it doesn't work. It's not realistic. Playing the Pygmalion, thinking that you know the way you'd like that person to be. 

It also goes together with a kind of feeling uncomfortable about the pleasure that people relish in life. Like sitting on the beach munching chocolate. I don't know what it is but feeling uncomfortable. And the consequence is that one begins to doubt the teaching, doubts belief in God, the faith that people have. And quite rightly so. I think it is a good caution to be very wary of belief. 

There is a difference between belief and conviction. Conviction is based upon real experience. And belief is based on what is written in the Bible or Koran or wherever, or somebody said so and I believe in that person and so on. One has to be very careful. So I can understand that one needs to follow a very tenuous path. That was exactly what happened to St. John of the Cross. If you know, first of all all those things he learned in catechism in the Catholic Church he questioned. So he went to a dark night of the mind of his understanding. Then he went through a deeper night which is one can't define exactly. But I think it involves doubt in all respects. Not only in understanding or one's self image or one's ability, but in one's being altogether. A kind of shattering that one goes through, the dark night. I think we all have that or are very close to it. And we sometimes ascribe it to the teaching itself. And it's true that if the teaching is not given with great caution and with great wisdom, then of course it is liable to be attacked for its incongruity. 

That's why we have to be very careful in interpreting Murshid's teaching for example. Murshid said this and that and so on. But do we know from what place that came? And he said himself, "If you don't agree with what I'm saying, put it aside. You don't have to follow dogma. There is no dogma in the Sufi Order. I think that's very helpful to people. They know that they don't have to follow the belief whatsoever. 

But the consequence is that one is honoring one's doubt. And that doubt is accompanied by disenchantment. And one can't force oneself to shift from disenchantment to enchantment by will or by a wazifa or by the good advice of the leader and guide and so on. So I've been thinking of some way of proceeding. I would say if you see things from your personal vantage point, then of course things do look disappointing. 

Already talked about that which transpires behind that which appears. For example, if you look at the photons on a bear cans on a rubbish heap are as beautiful as the photons of the stars, but one doesn't quite see it. So that gives some sense of that which transpires behind that which appears. 

Now if you, one of the practices that I've been doing has been to train your glance in such a way that you think of your glance as being two beams of light rather than perception, the eyes passive, receptive to impression. Active looking, as Walter Chappel calls it, instead of passive looking. If you do that, then you look at people or you look at things, then they look like a blur. But if you continue working with that consistently month after month, perhaps even years, you begin to see the countenance coming through the face. So now you see beauty where there could be ugliness. And you don't rely at all upon the surfacE appearance of things. 

If that is true of the physical form, it is true of the nature of a person. So behind what is considered to be something that one doesn't like in the person's character, maybe if you go deeper, you find there is a broken heart, there is hurt feelings, there is denigration, there is vulnerability. There is such a need to validate oneself. One doesn't know how to go about it so one parades a bloated ego in order to validate oneself. One doesn't even believe in it oneself. Others believe in it. That's a kind of strategy of the ego. 

So that ultimately the doubt is not upon God or the teaching, but is upon oneself. If that is really the source of one's doubt, the bottom line of one's doubt, then I think that one has to work with who one is. One has try to discover what one doesn't know about oneself. Many of the wasifas in fact are really ways of discovering who we are, working with the personality. 

Murshid has a theory about it. It comes over and over again. The seed and the plant. The personality is like the plant. Behind it is the seed. What we know is the plant. We don't know the seed. The seed is subliminal. It's hidden, it's potential. That's where our potentials lie. And of course, if we don't know them, then we don't know ourselves. We only know what is the secondary effect of those potentials but not what we are really in all the dimensions of our being. And consequently we have a bad self image. 

Rather than giving a practice like Ya Azim or Ya Ali or whatever have to do with enchantment or glorification and so on, I would give a practice like Ya Basit, which is expanding one's consciousness and one's self image. And it has to do with one's way of thinking. There is a paradigm shift there. It has to do with, well it is really in keeping in sync with the paradigm shift of our time, the holistic paradigm. I know it sounds like theory but if you break a totality into fragments, every fragment carries within it potentially the totality, potentially. 

It's a new way of thinking. Instead of thinking of yourself as a discrete entity, think like for example the cells of the body carry the code of the whole body. But only very few of the genes are active so that there can be diversity. otherwise they'd all be the same and you wouldn't have an organized body. So think of yourself in the same way. That you're like a cell in the body of the totality. Within the cell most of the potentialities are unknown to you because they are recessive. If you are judging yourself by what has actuated itself. Of yourself it represents a very small fraction of yourself. So it's a way of thinking. I've found it helpful. But I suppose I'm an intellectual or they think I am. I'm not really. I'm much more emotional than you think. But I have that reputation. But to be pragmatic, I find that our way of thinking does reflect upon our self image. 

So it's no use telling a person, "You have a lot of potentials you don't know". They hear that but it doesn't mean a thing unless they experience it. The way to experience it is to expand your self image beyond what you think it is. So exactly as we were expanding our notion of our bodiness by magnetic field and our aura,and we're expanding our consciousness and realizing we can get into the consciousness of other people, you can do the same thing with our self image. 

There is a word that Murshid uses. It is in connection with the wazifa Ya Qadir. He said, "Instead of trying to become more powerful, which would just be an ego trip, think that you'll find in you the same power that moves the Universe". So it's just a different way of thinking. It makes all the difference. And that applies to all the wasifas.

Now just very shortly because there are all these different categories for each of the stages and I'd like to make a chart and have them all very clear if that's the kind of thing that helps you. 

So at this stage one becomes increasingly aware of one's guilt. And the importance of acting fairly, of acting justly at this stage. There are other stages, but at this stage that is what we encounter. You find it in people who have a sense of propriety, have a sense of acting fairly with regard to people. I think behind it all there is a sense that one has to account for oneself. There are all these myths about the weighing of the soul in Egyptian mythology, or the day of reckoning. I think that that keeps one on the straight line to know that one has to account for things ultimately. You know it's not an advanced state but it's a state that one encounters in one's developmental stages. 

There are two wasifas, Ya Hasib and and Ya Muhsi. And I think it just draws one's attention to one's sense of responsibility, one's sense of accountability. I think that it will have enormous consequences in terms of one's behavior. And it will unleash potentialities that will remain latent if one continues to act in a way that is damaging to other people. 

Now the best form of this sense of propriety is to be found in the word 'adil o which means just, to be just. You know we pass judgment sometimes without weighing the situation carefully enough. As a consequence of damaging other people. And we can impair a situation by our faulty judgment. And so at this level, one's judgment is based upon an innate sense that we have of fairness, of being just in one's dealings with people. I think that if you, it's happened to me many times, if you feel that your verdict in a situation was not well enough thought out, and you have other thoughts about it, misgivings about your judgment, then redress it. Call that person and say, "Look, I must say, I'd like to reconsider what I said because in my conscience I'm not quite happy with the conclusions I arrived at". So that's Adil. So you can give it to a mureed if you feel that their way of viewing a situation is not based upon a concern about fairness. They're concerned about their personal interests but not about fairness. The consequence is that that person is going to complain. And quite rightly so. And if a person complains, they may be wrong or they may be right. But it is an indication that there my be something in your behavior that wasn't fair and you need to redress it. So that's that stage now. Of course there are further stages that we'll be encountering tomorrow.

Tape Ends

 

AUG 14, 1997		Tape 04

For your work to be satisfactory you need to answer the call of the mureeds. They expect a lot of you. And it's not just help in their daily life, some of the things we are trying to work out in the course. But what they are looking for is magnetism from you, inspiration, light, awareness, love. And so it is necessary for us to prepare ourselves to meet the expectancy of people. There are people who come to us in good faith in hopes that we will be able to provide for them those things that they are looking for. So there is a lot to be done behind the seen. Like, or example, a conductor has to work with the score for months and months before having just one hour of rehearsal with the orchestra. And engineers, everyone, they all need to work very hard behind the scene so as to be able to meet what is expected of them.  

So for that there are skills. And these skills can only be applied in the course of meditation. And there is no doubt that the best time to meditate is in the early morning as we are doing. A better time would be a little before dawn. 

So here is a practice that is really intended for the more advanced pupils. One needs to be cautioned that if one does this practice before one is ready for it, it tends to make one other worldly. And yesterday I mentioned, I talked about this other kingdom, which is a kind of a slogan that stands for a very special attunement and realization. But that other kingdom is within this kingdom. So it's not like something other, something else. However, there is no doubt that the ultimate help that we can give to people is by being able to communicate to them something of what we have been used to calling the higher planes. And they're not planes in the sense that they're somewhere up there. But let's say they are dimensions, attuntments. So that is our source of power of energy of inspiration. And without that we would be drained and disappointing, and people will of course abandon us because they are looking for something we can't give them. So they go for it elsewhere. 

So that practice is what is called in India Yonimudri. Yoni is a womb. And in Sufism it's called shaghal. And it's not that simple. It's not just simply as we ordinarily do, placing sentinels at the doors of perception so that consciousness is not pulled outside. And as Pir O Murshid says consciousness tends to turn within. It finds a block in it's encounter with the environment and turns within. No it's not just that.  

It consists first in the ability to grasp what is coming through from within. And to bring it forth so that it expresses itself outside. So it's the opposite of what we're generally doing. What we're generally doing is drawing the outside in. And then trying to reach out. Now what we're doing is drawing from within then expressing it towards outside.  

So one of the keys of this is in our way of thinking of our breath. Because generally when we inhale, we draw breath from the environment. Then we hold the breath and exhale. Actually we're really talking about prana instead of breath. It's really energy. But breath is a vehicle of that energy. So as I say it's a way of thinking. When you inhale, think that you're drawing your breath from inside instead of outside.  

It means that you concentrate on the solar plexus. And imagine the solar plexus as a kind of threshold or gate, as one says, opening up into a subliminal world. Or rather, as I said yesterday, all imagine that all that we experience is a cross section of a multidimensional world. And so the reality in that multidimensional world keeps on crossing the boarder and we find expression in the cross section. According to the Sufis, that multidimensional reality is potential, and becomes a reality as us, not in us, but as us. That's what Pir O Murshid means by making God a reality. 

Now the second piece in this is light. In fact that's the first thing I think that one becomes aware of when one does this practice. Pir O Murshid describes it thus. He says, "The sun simply converges the all pervading light of the cosmos in a point and then radiates it from there." Well regardless of how it concurs with scientific views, there certainly is a gravity pull that exercises some stress upon the light field.  

So we've done those practices in which we absorb light from the environment, then hold that light and radiate it out. Then if you remember, we did practices in which, as we hold our breath we try and become aware of the all pervading light, that's the implicate condition of light, where everything is everywhere, defused. And then draw it together in a focal point and then radiate it. So that condition in which light is spread out everywhere. If you turn within your solar plexus, you're creating conditions that are favorable to touching upon that all pervading light, light in the implicate state. 

And then the transit form the all pervading light to the radiant light takes place as you transfer your attention form the solar plexus to the heart center. Because then that all pervading light becomes now radiant. And the heart center is considered to be the center of your aura. 

There are several aspects here. The third one is sound. I think we must be very careful of that word. Because sound like color is just the psychological interpretation of frequencies of energy. And therefore when Murshid used the word sound, I think he is thinking in terms of vibration with all those different frequencies which is the language of the Universe. So what he is saying is that not only the all pervading light of the cosmos surfaces, manifests to view then you process it and radiate it out. But also the vibrations of energy, that is different frequencies of energy and their composition. It's like a symphony of the spheres.  

And it is telling you something which your mind can never grasp. Because sound is, vibration is the vehicle of the programming of the cosmos, of the intention behind that programming. And so if you concentrate on this aspect of the practice of shaghal, you'll develop intuition. It's telling you something that your mind will not be able to grasp. That's in the realm of what is called revelation instead of acquired knowledge. Because we acquire knowledge with our interfacing with the environment. That is acquired knowledge. Whereas revealed knowledge is only revealed to us when we have downplayed the acquired knowledge and realize that this knowledge that has been revealed to us can never fit into our thinking.  

So it requires of us to call upon what Ospensky calls a higher mode of logic than the syllogistic one. It doesn't mean that there is no logic. It's just that it's based on much more cosmic principles then the usual commonplace logic. So the Abdul Karim Gili calls it the consternation of intelligence. So there is some shattering that takes place. Without that you remain wherever you are. That's no progress. That's fana.  

So the word used by Murshid is, "You heal the mechanism of the Universe". What he says really is that one is sharpening inner senses which then become therefore sensitive to something that would not normally be aware of. So that for each sense, seeing and hearing for example, there is corresponding inner sense. When you downplay the perception through the outer senses, then of course the inner senses are able to function but of course. But it's much more subtle.  

I'll give you an example. There is just a certain threshold point at which we can still see the stars at dawn. There is just a point there. Then after that, there is a certain point then we can't see them anymore. Now that point can be displaced. One has a kind of sensitivity that enables one to continue seeing the stars after the sun is in the sky. It requires a very great sensitivity. The same thing with sound. That's what Murshid means by hearing the mechanism of the Universe. He says, "That which is invisible becomes visible". Or that which is inaudible becomes audible. There are other senses too, fragrance, and taste and even a kinesthetic sense.  

It is, I would say that shaghal is one of the most powerful support systems for awakening, because one is refining one's perception. You know, I use the word downplay instead of irradicate.  

So that at first you really irradicate the light, the perception of light by placing the indexes on your eyes. Then after that you irradicate the sound by placing the thumbs in your ears. Here one needs to be very careful. Because if you press the cornea and the retina, then you will be creating optical illusions and you might think that you see light. So that is very dangerous, very deceptive.  

The same is true of the ears. Actually there is what is called the inter mosaic effect, that is the brownian movement of the molecules in the semicircular canals of the ears. That's what you hear. You might think that you're hearing the working of the Universe. But actually the Brownian movement does reflect in some way the nature of the workings of the universe. So there is a meaning. Getting in touch with that bigger, larger reality. Because this is all based upon clues. For example the stars are clues as to the light of the Universe. And sounds are clues as to the working of the Universe. They are very subtle clues. 

So this is, corresponds to the the first phase in the shaghal. In the case of light then I would say that you exhale, as I've already said that as you inhale you draw your breath from inside. Then you feel that, hold that energy that has emerged through your breath from the multidimensional Universe. Then as you exhale, you are consciously radiating magnetism.  

In the early days we've been working a lot with the magnetic field. Your pupils will be drawn to you like one can be drawn to a magnet. If you are able to charge their battery with your magnetism, even if you talk nonsense which a lot of the gurus do. The reason why people come is because of magnetism. That's what people need is a source of energy.  

So as you exhale, be conscious of exuding magnetism. The Sufis call it spiritual power, the power of the dervish. And Pir O Murshid has a very special teaching about magnetism. He makes a distinction between the magnetism of the body, magnetism of the mind, magnetism of the heart, magnetism of the soul, and magnetism of the spirit. Magnetism of the body. If the body is well and clean and one's habits are clean and proper. With age this magnetism needs to be substituted by the magnetism of the etheric body which anyway is a template of the physical body. And then there is the magnetism of the heart which is the magnetism of unconditional love for all beings. It's a form of magnetism. Then there is the magnetism of the soul that is much deeper than what could be sentimental. It's a very deep, very difficult to describe magnetism that Pir O Murshid said, "Gets lost by your selfishness". And there is the magnetism of the spirit. Magnetism of the spirit is still more difficult to define. Pir O Murshid says, "It gets lost even if for one second one is not conscious of God". The requirements are very high. 

So behind all this is there is something which I started to talk about yesterday. To understand Sufism, you have to always see things from two anti polar point of view, the personal point of view and of course the divine point of view. And the more you advance, of course, the more God consciousness take  __s over from your personal vantage point. And so this is the secret of what is called spiritual power. And that is what people are looking for in you. The magnetism of the spirit that can never get lost as long as you keep in touch with the divine consciousness. And if you are just encapsulated in your personal vantage point and lost touch with divine consciousness, then of course, that magnetism is gone.  

So that's why when you are doing this practice, it's very important to be aware....well I would say, what I've been doing prior to doing the practice to ask myself well, "What do you mean by personal consciousness? What do you mean by divine consciousness?" And then try to experience what does this mean, divine consciousness, God consciousness? It's like the consciousness of the whole Universe that gets funneled down into your consciousness instead of your just being encapsulated in your personal consciousness. There is a difference. And then do the practice. Then when you exhale, you are conscious of exuding the magnetism of the spirit through your breath. The breath is the vehicle of that magnetism. While there is a physical breath, there is a breath of all the different levels of one's being.  

Now as far as sound is concerned. As far as light is concerned then as you inhale, instead of thinking, of course you cannot draw the light from the environment, at least in your way of thinking, because you've placed an obstacle by placing a sentinel at the doors of perception. So think there is an internal light which is subliminal. So as you concentrate on the solar plexus, think that it is like a gate through which this magnetism emerges from inside, surfaces and permeates your aura from inside. Suffuses your magnetic field from inside. So it's like a light within a light. It's not a light upon a light as in the Koran, but a light within a light that emerges within it. And it gets shunted into radiant light into your heart as you exhale.  

There again as you are meeting your mureeds, you need to be conscious that you are communicating light to them. That can only be done if you are aware of your aura. And of course your aura doesn't have a boundary and therefore interpenetrates people you are in contact with. Just like for example, you think the sun is out there somewhere. But actually the earth is in the sun because the sun doesn't have a boundary. Actually the earth is really in the sun. So the auras of those people are really within your aura. 

OK so that's, well there are other aspects of shaghal and that is fragrance, taste and as I say, a kinesthetic sense. Fragrance, you see, the best illustration of what we mean by resurrection is what happens to flowers when they transmute themselves into perfume and therefore escape the demise of their body because the perfume is immortal. So in a sense they are eternalizing themselves by becoming a perfume. In terms of physics, it is the volatile state of matter. And it's one of the basic principles of alchemy.  

So that to do this you need to think of yourself as existing on several levels. At one level you are pure, like a perfume, what we call pure spirit. That will give you that spiritual magnetism. What Yoga calls Bagera, which is lightening. It has an immediate effect. It doesn't take any time. It's very sudden. A sudden change of state. Like, for example, when water becomes ice or water becomes steam. And of course this associated with what one calls being aware of the deathless state, aspects of oneself that get disintegrated not only at death but even in the course of one's life. The gist of one's being that remains, that cannot be tarnished, what Murshid calls everlasting rather than eternal. 

Then there is taste which is a very intriguing subject because as Pir O Murshid says, we are aware of the taste in the mouth, the tongue and whatever. We can taste sweet or sour or bitter or whatever. But we are less aware of the taste in the stomach. The stomach also has it's own taste, awareness. And the pancreas, and liver and so on duodenum. And even the cells of the body. It is that sense of taste that governs the work of the enzymes that transcribe the DNA and the RNA. So it's a very fine sense.  

In fact its a sensitivity to absorbing, ingesting the cosmos in fact, at the physical level, of course, food. At all levels of course psychological levels. Ingesting is followed by digesting, assimilating. So it's a very sensitive sense that becomes rather warped by fast foods and the kind of psychological elements which we're fed on the TV. So you become very sensitive about the foods that you eat and the programs that you look at on TV. You become very sensitive to the attunement of people. And you realize that if you're ingesting it, there is a spill over. So you place a sentinel at that door of perception. One doesn't only place sentinels at the doors of perception of the body, but also the mind, the conception of the mind. 	 

This sensitivity to taste, I would say takes in what the Hindus, the Yogis call the taste of nectar that occurs in the course of meditating. And of course it is caused by what the Tibetans call the dripping of the pituitary grand. Beta endorphines are excreted more intensely because of one's concentrating more intensely on that center. And the consequence is that one has a very strange kind of taste which is called a nectar. Maybe this is not only true of beta endorphines, but in general of, I could call it the sort of the whole esoteric chemistry of the body that one feels in one's bloodstream, in the cells of one's body which confers on one a kind of physical ecstasy of a very subtle nature. And of course it's very closely associated with a kinesthetic sense of glee. It's not the physical body. Maybe it will manifest, become perceptible in the physical body. Maybe it's a kind of ecstasy in the etheric body or other bodies. 

Let us first do the shaghal now. And I hope you'll remember these points that I mentioned because they may cause a difference. So as you inhale, you concentrate upon the solar plexus. And then consider it as a door to inside. Then as you hold your breath, you experience the transit from inside towards the heart center, from the solar plexus to the heart center. Then as you exhale radiating out from the heart. And if you can, first light then sound and those other things. Only three breaths. Of course as you know you must turn your eyeballs upwards so that you don't press at the retina through the cornea. Turn your eyeballs upwards. OK now take you hands away and keep your eyes closed.  

Now a correction. I said turn your eyeballs upwards which is true to avoid that you should exercise pressure on the retina and therefore have optical illusions. But for this first step in shaghal, you need to think that you are turning your eyes within. Obviously one can't turn one's eyes within, but it's in one's way of thinking. Instead of thinking that you are turning your eyeballs upwards.  

Actually the Yogis, the practice which consists in looking at the point of their nose or then the bridge of their nose or even turning, converging the eyes at the meeting place between the eyebrows, then start trying to reach up to the third eye. One is then as one says cross eyed. And you'll find that some Yogis are cross eyed. I don't recommend that. So it's more in your thinking that the eyes are converging and turning inside as you inhale and as you hold your breath. And of course as you exhale, then the eyes need to be turned forward in the usual orientation.  

You also need to curl your tongue and press the bottom of your tongue your pallet which has sometimes even dramatic effects upon brain functions because you are affecting the flow of the spinal rashidic fluid. You are pressing against the hypothalamus, exercising physical pressure on the hypothalamus and upon the medulla and 'longata' by inference and also the pituitary gland. There are some very high specialists, chiropractors are specialists exercising pressure on your pallet in order to bring about some kind of balance in brain function. It's a very dangerous practice. I know there are some specialists who are able to do this without incurring too much danger, much hazard. So you see one is doing this oneself. Maybe one's tongue is better able to do this without damaging oneself than if one were to use one's thumb. Of course you've got the back of the pallet you don't have cartilage and so that's what the Yogis are aiming at. That's where you have a direct contact with the brain, at least the steam of the brain. 

OK Now. We do have time. The second stage in shaghal is instead of turning within one turns upwards. As you know one needs to learn how to turn within until one is able to reach upwards. When I say, these are terms which are relative. There's no inwards or upwards and so it's an analogy. That is the theory behind it of course is that we exist on several levels. But one must not think that these are planes that are situated somewhere in the cosmos other than the existential realm. It's just different, just like in a hologram you can have different pictures, images. You can toggle you glance and look at one image or the other. And you can downplay one and highlight the other. So it's something like that.  

Now these are the planes that we are examining in the course of our study, in our course during the day. Now we are really trying to really experience what we mean by these different planes. So we have skills here that will sharpen our awareness and then enable us to sense what we mean by these different attunements, let's say, instead of different planes. So Pir O Murshid says shaghal gives you the opportunity to raise at will to the abstract planes. Of course all the Sufis, Ibn Arabi, speak about that God leads you from one level to another in the ascension through the spheres.  

So in the practice of Shaghal. O Yes. Pir O Murshid says this. This is really a clue. It's a fantastic clue actually. It's again an analogy, an illustration. Supposing you're walking on the floor. And now you are concentrating on the ceiling. And then you get in to a like a space walk where one is weightless at that altitude of that ceiling. And then you are concentrating on the ceiling of that ceiling. So it's a little bit like what we did with light the reflex of light in the casina practice. That's of course an analogy but it's just the sense that one's attention is on a certain kind of perspective in the physical  world as it appears. And now you are shifting the setting of your consciousness to another level which could be like a ceiling as compared with the floor. That means that you have to let go of your hold on the earth plane. That's only for the time. It's not a condition that one is recommending for daily life.  

It's like when you climb the mountain and the alchemist guide, you're hanging on with your fingers on a very little ledge. And then your feet, again you've got some support for your feet on the ledge. Now he says," Let go of your left foot and swing it upwards. There is another ledge up there". You think, "How can I do that? I depend upon this support". All he is telling you that you can do it. Otherwise he wouldn't tell you to do it. He is making you aware of a faculty that you have which you didn't know you had, or that you didn't trust. And that is of letting go of the hold of your feet on the earth.  

And so it's, I could illustrate it, because once I fell in a hole in Chamonix, very high up. And there was no way in which by my feet I could get out of that hole. So I had to hoist myself up with my hands. So it's like being pulled up from above instead of pushing from underneath. So it is your what Pir O Murshid calls passion for the unattainable that is going to pull you up. And it's a wonderful term. Because if he says you can attain it, then it's limited. But it is in infinite regress. You can't put it in your pocket. Never get to the point of illumination. It's nostalgia. 

So in this practice you need to turn your eyeballs upwards instead of thinking that you're turning your eyes inside. And your breath, you need to think that you're breathing down from above instead of from within which is a tradition called quickening of the Holy Spirit. And you need to, instead of wanting to hear the symphony of the spheres, you're thinking of the divine intention manifesting itself as a mechanism of the world.  

What Pir O Murshid says is it's like you have several machines, what he calls the subtle machine behind the gross machine. And that now days of course we understand that the computer behind the machine in the factory represents that finer machine. But then there is not just the program of the computer, but there is the intention, the programmer, behind the way that he or she programs the computer, the soft ware. So it's really getting into that, I'm thinking that the working of the mechanism of the universe is just a secondary effect of something that cannot be limited to that effect. So it's the clue, but it can never convey all that is behind it.  

Then, as I said, instead of looking forward to tasting that nectar, you're conscious of pure spirit. I've often tried to illustrate what one means by pure spirit. The comparison between the current that has very few ohms and a lot of watts, let's say, not very much intensity. And the other way around the current that has a lot of intensity and very few watts. Now the difference between a heavy river that is on a gentle slope, or a cascade of water that is descending at high speed. So you don't have that much water but the intensity is much greater. So that word quickening is very important.  

There are several stages here. At one stage you're being quickened by the spirit which is looked upon as other than yourself. Then at a further stage, you realize that you are that spirit. At the pinnacle of your being you are spirit.  

Now as far as when you're exhaling, instead of thinking of the radiance of your aura from your heart, you're concentrating on your glance, the light of your glance. We worked on that yesterday, the light from your brain that threaded through the optic nerves and through the cornea right out into space. But now it is, well just think of the words of Pir O Murshid. He says, "Turn your eyes upwards as you inhale and hold your breath. And as you exhale turn your eyes forward". And Ibn Arabi says, well he talks about the light upon a light. And the light of intelligence as we said yesterday that is infusing the light of your glance. And Ibn Arabi says that it is like a light that is passing through your glance. So your glance is already light then there is light that is passing through it. Like, for example, the river Rhone and then it passes through the lake. So it's water within water in the Lake of Geneva.  

So let's do that now. So there are two stages here. One is that one considers one's glance as the vehicle, one through which divine light is cast forward. The other one is that the glance is the divine glance that has been focalized. And since the message of Sufism is unity, it's all one. So it just depends upon whether you are identifying with the light of your glance as we've practiced many times or you identify with the light that passes through your glance. That's what is meant in the Koran by a light upon a light. We're speaking about the light of intelligence instead of physical light or even subtle light.  

Now my last word is that we are preparing ourselves to meet the call of the mureeds. And what is expected of us is to become a bridge between heaven and earth. And if we do this, as Suhrawardhi says, we are invested with the mantel of the initiates. We carry the mantel. 

Tape ends 

AUG 15, 1997		Tape 05 

 ...yes, over the course of the years many of our guides and representatives have been burnt out because they felt the need of the pupils for help and they were not given the where-with-all how to help. That is something that we  have been elaborating of course with our decades as a matter of fact and I think that we're getting to a point where we're a little clearer as to how we can meet this requirement on the part of those who come to us for help. As we know, that is w hat our role is: to help.    You can feel in the pupil an impending need to unfurl their being, a very deep yearning based on dissatisfaction in the way they are, and maybe a kind of intuition of how they could be if they would be as they might be; but it' s not yet clear so it is just simply rather nebulous, and it affects of course the most important thing we can rely upon in our achievement in life, and that is of course our self-esteem.

So we're cutting right into the deepest need of human beings, hmmm? So all that people know during the years is the reactive programming - in fact we are reacting instead of acting. And if one reacts one is only using a ver y small fraction of the capacities in our being. Like when you cross the road you don't have to be very intelligent to just step back, so one is not using all of your faculties. That's a short circuit! That's reaction!    But when it comes to the deep issues in our life and of course the problem of unfurling the potentialities in our being then of course the reactive loop is totally inadequate. And the fact is that one soon encounters frustratio n because the elementary reaction is brutal, violent, hmmm? It's at the body level, Nazut, there's only forms and one puts a brake on that kind of instinct and consequently there's a sense of frustration.    In the old days when people were angry they used to go into those vendettas and wars and all that, and now as we advance then we find that if we can't do that then there's flack. It gets into our psyche in the form of fru stration. 

We can't retaliate and therefore we experience resentment. And that's devastating for the psyche. Counterproductive. And so one finds oneself in a real bind.    So, as I said, so what we need to do is to learn how to wean our reliance upon the feedback loop, the reactive statutory of the force of ego. Force of ego - that's a word used by Pir-O-Murshid to say that's not what we ar e, that's what we think we are. You see? It's only a fraction of what we are, we identify with.    And so we go on like that unless we begin to realize who we are, and therefore able to muster all the faculties in our being that are lying in wait. And so then this weaning must take place very gradually because it takes quit e some time before one becomes aware of who one really is. And in fact I think there is some misnomer there because it's really how one is becoming rather than how one is. It's dynamic instead of static.    

You see, if you know something about - if you, read the Jewish bible you find that \'91I am that I am' has been wrongly interpreted. In Christianity it is \'91I am as I am becoming'. Quite another way of looking at thing s. So the way you are is not the way you are - the way you are becoming, hmmm? And so that carries within it the promise of the future instead of the push of the past.    So, as I say, that weaning needs to take place very gradually, otherwise one develops withdrawal symptoms - psychological withdrawal symptoms, which happens to a lot of people who come to spiritual groups. They're told not t o be angry, not to have resentment, and so on and so forth, and consequently they have a terrible sense of frustration, and one hasn't known how to replace the reactive strategy with - as I say - a better sense of - let's say, the potentialities  in one's being, and how one can pull them out of the latent state and make them actuated in one's personality.    So, for this we have paradigms. There's a very clear paradigm of Murshid, and that is the seed and the plant. He says it repeatedly. So we identify with the plant, our personality, and not aware of the seed, hmmm? And act ually the plant only manifests a very small fraction of the richness that is in the seed. So, how can we do this?    Your pupil comes to you for help. And with all that I've said yesterday and, I don't know... to provide them with a safe kind of caring environment, and a kind of rescue from out of the stress that they cannot face - deal  with stress. It is helping them to discover their real self. Actually it's more complicated then that because to discover one's real self one has to actuate it. So it's not like you can know it unless you are able to make it really concrete.  That why I quoted yesterday, for example, the sculptor discovers his/her statue by making it, you see?    Now, that's a very Sufi point of view. You can't know an electron until you create the circumstances favorable to its appearance. That's what I was saying yesterday - so you have the control F mechanism, the find mech anism - Ya Bawjid, whereby you make something that is potential, reality.    

What Murshid was saying was that the seed is always there but it's unfurled in the form of the branches, and so on, but somehow it's implied behind the whole thing. Implicit behind the whole thing. And that moment when i t emerges again, and out of that a new plant unfurls.    So what we are trying to do is to - you see, this is cyclic. You see, this is what Buddha calls the Samsaric wheel - it's repetitive, you see, and there's no point in keep on repeating the same old things that one has alw ays done, one's parents have done, one's ancestors have done. What's the point? At least the next stage would be mutation, and what does that mean?    That means that the wheel is beginning to advance instead of turning around itself. And the only way in which that wheel can now mutate - that situation can mutate, is by introducing a new element. An element that has - and t hat element cannot... what we recycle from the environment - that is repetitive, maybe some progress but that is not mutation.    

No, but I say new, although I say it lies in wait in your potentialities, but your potentialities are - can be dynamic, instead of thinking that they are there and all I have to do is get to know them. As I get to know them the y unfurl. That's mutation, you see? The seed mutates. It's not just the plant, but the seed mutates.    So the question is, well, how do we then get in touch with these potentialities? How do we capture them as they emerge so that they will not be still born? Because it's happening all the time. For example, you as a represe ntative, you are sitting in front of your mureed, and you feel that longing from your mureed - a desperation, actually, a cri-du- coeur. It's really - well, as I said yesterday, that one's self-image is so vulnerable.    Facing the stress of life - psychological stress - it's very damaging to one's self-image. People are mean, they try to humiliate, pull one down, patronizing, and so on. One tends to believe in the image that people make  of one. And identify with that image. 

That's why Buddha, when he - after his retreat when people came to him and he said, \'91Have I ever talked to you thus before?' He wanted them to know he was not going to fit into the image that they make o f him.    So that's the desperate cry of the Mureeds, and they come to us for help and if we don't provide that help then they're going to go elsewhere, obviously. And we have failed- well, you know we can fail some of the time  and still at some point make it - well, the first thing to do is to learn how to turn within. And as I said before, if you start meditating, then what you are doing is - you are really reacting because what you are doing is you're processing the imp ressions of the outer situation.    That's what you're thinking of while you are meditating, and regurgitating them and digesting them, and so on, and as I said there is a confusion between the subject in you - Shahid - the subject, and the psyche - and the  situation. 

It's all mixed up - you don't know which is which - there's a kind of mix up between all of those elements in one's being. And so - we've already done this in the past sessions - it is being very clear as to the distinction betw een the offense and one's person.    Now, I know there is some interference between the two because what we are has an affect on situations and situations have an affect upon us, so there's a lot of intermeshing there, but still through the moment that we - we' ve already said this; from the moment that we can see very clearly that we're looking at the events with a personal bias - that is we are thrusting our personal self-image into the events, then we see that we are not assessing the events correctly.    And so then we are able to do this thing which is found in Buddhism, and it's call \'91un-coupling'. Un-coupling. 

Shifting gear, you see? Shifting gear. So that you are able to look at the situation without the persona l bias, you see? And as I've already said, of course, the cycle is - you're carrying the impressions - your faulty impressions of your situations - assessments of your situations in you psyche throughout your life. You see? And now that's a kin d of clearance that you need to make, to clear your psyche of your false interpretations so it's free from that that is standing in the way of the unfurling of your potentials.    And then later on one does the un-coupling between one's psyche and one's consciousness - I mean the Shahid - the witness. That's a further stage and we're going to examine that a little later. But that's what w e do when we start meditating, as most people do. And if you do that you are reacting and you are certainly not mustering all the latent faculties in your being. And so, consequently, we need to break that pattern.    So, turning within. 

We must be careful with that concept of turning within because turning within - very often the outer world continues to live inside us. That's what we think is turning within. So one needs to make a rad ical about turn, and yesterday we were saying - well, we need to get in touch with our true self hidden behind one's image of one's self-image.    So, I would say to be very clear about it; this is really an about turn. When you are meditating you down play the impressions from the outside and are in a state of watchfulness - that was Ya Raqib, if you remember that - wat chfulness. And also sensitivity - Mujib - sensitivity, to what is emerging inside.    Now, at first what is emerging from inside is random - random thoughts don't seem to make sense, and we think we are wasting our time. Well, you know, evolution proceeds by trial and error, and so amongst these apparently ra ndom thoughts there is some congruity that we perhaps do not see.    Well, you realize of course what I am talking about is creativity. That is, creativity is the emergence of something that is not determined. Otherwise it is not creativity. 

The undetermined, and for Buddhism that is very impo rtant - the undetermined. To break the causal chain, because it's also in our way of thinking. We think, \'91Well, I've done this and consequently I am suffering for the consequences of what I've done'. The idea of Karma. So you're thi nking in terms of causality. That's our common place way of thinking, common place logic.    Now in science, of course, now we know that determinism - causality, is only one factor, and that there is such thing as the spontaneous emergence of the undetermined. That's the whole philosophy of precogine. So one is wat ching for the emergence of something new, that is not determined by the past and one cannot determine by one's will.    So I mentioned this yesterday when I was talking about when I was watching for German submarines during the war, and you can't scan the horizon. 

You have to be in a state of watchfulness, and then somehow that little shadow  will force your glance in its direction, you see. So that is Raqib, watching. And Mujib is - as I mentioned this morning, a certain kind of - a very highly - a high sensitivity. So that, for example, you can see the stars while the sun is in the sky. That kind of sensitivity.    So, actually we are continually exposed to flashes of intuition which we abort because we don't believe in them, hmmm? Because they don't fit into our pattern, our life pattern - they don't fit into our self-image, and  so on. So we ignore them.    And it's like something very evanescent that one is trying to hold onto, and it's elusive at the same time. It escapes. So it's very difficult to be able to turn within. So now we have to learn how to turn within. A nd it's not just getting in touch with one's thoughts - people think turning within means introspection, like being aware of your thoughts. That's not turning within.    

No. You then have to distinguish between those thoughts that are, as I say, reflections - a regurgitation of the impressions of the outside world, and then, as I say, those emergent thoughts. But let us say this: that the - o f course the method used in Yoga is simply to discount the - not only our impression of the psychological world but also the thoughts related to the physical world, as maya, as illusory. It's a rather drastic method.    No, as I said yesterday, the Sufis would consider them as clues, that which transpires behind that which appears. So, you don't discount those thoughts. How you get to those thoughts that emerge without discounting - I said  down play, which is not the same thing as discounting. How you get to those emergent thoughts - spontaneous thoughts, without totally discounting the thoughts - the acquired thoughts, the acquired cognizance - acquired from outside, that is very subtle  and I would like to illustrate it. I think we need to understand this.    

Well, I often illustrate this by an example. For example, the fourth piano concerto of Beethoven - you've heard that many times now. So, he's describing himself as the pianist and the world as the orchestra and the work,  the world is coming with a challenge. And what I often say is that if he had reacted, that beautiful melody would not have emerged. Now, on the other hand, if it had not been for that challenge that melody would not have emerged either.    And so what then is the relationship. It is not a causal relationship between the events and what emerges. It's not determined - what emerges is not determined, you see. But you can only say it acts as a catalyst. There' s some relation but it's not a causal relationship, hmmm? If you discount them then you re not availing yourself of the power of the catalyst. 

That's why the Sufis say don't isolate yourself from the world. And we think in categories like th is kingdom and the other kingdom, as I said yesterday there's not another kingdom - it's just within a certain other dimension of this kingdom.    So we have to be careful. Sometimes our thinking stands in the way of our experience. That's why we have to be very clear in our thinking.    Well. O.K.. so now you're - if we do it, perhaps you could do it.... You see, consider that your face is a mask, and your real face is your countenance behind that mask. And that's why the mirror is one of the most mis leading and cheapest, of course, feedback systems in the world. It's misleading if you go by what you see. And although we're not aware of it the mirror has played a very important part in the whole evolution of thoughts of humanity.    So, as in the Greek plays, you have a mask, and at some point you take off the mask. So, it's quite a radical thing to do when you're meditating, to take away your mask. 

That is, your - somehow your identification with t he form. It's not just your face, of course, but your whole body. With form. And, you know, imagination is dealing with form. It's fashioning form.    Now the second way is taking away your role-playing. That is, as Pir-O-Murshid says, \'91A king thinks he's a king because people say your majesty, and he's sitting on a throne, and if he weren't then you wouldn't t hink he's a king', and so on. The banker in England has a top-hat and has a very certain role and identifies with that role; and the painter has long hair and a long beard and has filthy clothes and is sitting in Montmartre, painting. Well, th ere's some kind of image there that is somehow associated with role-playing. Or the Guru thinks he s a guru because people - or she - because people treat him as though they think he's a V.I.P. It's all roles, role-playing. 

And as long as yo u identify with your role you'll never how who you are.    And the other thing is in the rhythm of our thinking, we translate what we imply by what we explain, and it's the language that makes that transit and therefore limits what we imply. And the trouble is that we forget what we  imply and believe in what we explain. We've lost touch with what we imply, and that's what we call our intuition.    And so to turn within you have to give up - well, to be precise, thinking in terms of words, because it's our language that limits what we imply. And in fact I often ask myself whether I think in English or French or German  or Dutch or Hindustani, or whatever... even Arabic. And it's true that I catch myself thinking n German all of a sudden and - so it makes sense. So, it's easier if you just speak one language - well, I don't know. Perhaps it might be more li miting. But anyway, that's where the wazifa come in because it's another language.   

 It's like in science you use X and Y and PSI and PI, and whatever, but it's a different kind of language. And also it's an archetypal language instead of talking about tables and chairs and things. Conventional langua ge.    But more deeply, as you turn within, if you can unmask the hoax of the thoughts that accrue from outside and ask yourself - well, I think that it really has to start with asking yourself what is it that I really value in life?  And although each wazifa represents a certain value, still, that is also limiting. and that is why the Sufis are talking about getting beyond the names and forms, hmmm?    So, it's really getting in touch not just with your heart but with your soul. That's why Pir-O-Murshid says \'91A passion for the unattainable'. Your deepest nostalgia.    Now that's going to stir you in the depths of your being so that a lot of qualities that are longing to manifest will come through.    

I'm anticipating what I was due to say in the next session - the value of prayer - especially the Islamic prayer, and that is projecting upon what one would like God to be - it's not God but what we like God to be, one' s image that one makes of God, an image which is made of qualities. He is the judge and He is compassionate, and so on and so forth. So it's always somehow these qualities that we project, and in order to do so we have to have some sense of what we  mean by those qualities.    And so actually one is awakening qualities in oneself, starting from the quality as it is actuated in our personality and - how can I say, getting into more and more perfect dimensions of this quality. Kind of what one calls su perlatives. So the wazifas are superlatives, hmmm? They represent our ability to imagine something that is more perfect than what we've imagined so far, and then beyond that even more perfect, and so on, you see?    And that's why there's a saying in Islam. It goes: "inaudible\'94 which means the God created through your prayers. You create God as yourself through your prayers. So creativity - we're talking about creativity n ow, hmmm? And ourselves as the most wonderful work of art, hmmm? Our personality.    

So there's a practice that you could do everyday and when you do it then you can help your pupil. But if you haven't done it yourself then you can't. And that's to try and grasp your real being behind your self-ima ge. Behind your role, your form, and so on. And when I say who you are I mean who you are becoming instead of who you are static.    So one has to be careful because naturally, well, I am even fostering the fashioning of thoughts into forms but wary of - let's be wary of sclerosed forms, because it's that which transpires instead of that which is alread y there. It keeps on transpiring, so it keeps on changing as it transpires.    So, you'll notice, if you do this, there comes a time when something clicks and you all of a sudden say \'91Yes, I've seen my real self!' It's unbelievable. It's totally different from what you see in the mirror ! Totally different! There's that AHA! sense. That this is it - this is me!    Now behind it all, of course, is the whole process, the creative process. 

Just look around. Composers, for example, or creative people. It always starts with an emotion. Always! And an emotion that is impelling, and imperat ive, and almost compulsive... it is possible that situations will act as catalysts to set off this spark - to spark this emotion. For example it's possible - I'll give you an example.    For example, Beethoven had a dream. He heard a knock on the door - Da Da DA Da! And out of that he made a symphony. Well, actually, that knock was just a catalyst. But it triggered in him a tremendous welling up of the rich ness of his being, the nostalgia of his being - the fear of death or the encounter with - would that mean his death and what it means to - the heroic overcoming of death, and so on. The whole drama of life came through just because of that knock on the  door.    So it starts with an emotion, and it's very extraordinary how we are able to translate an emotion to a form. that is creativity - how we translate an emotion into a form. And the middle between these two is intelligence. T he intelligence of Bach is unbelievable! 

No comparison with the intelligence of most people. No common criteria, no common denominator. It's super-intelligence.    So emotion is not good enough. Emotion has to be translated into structure - a mental structure and then eventually a physical structure. Or physical... let's say spatial structure. That is what is called imagination.    It's a very interesting word because you can see the etymology of the word maya - imagination, and the magi. Image, hmmm?  An it is true that this is the way in which the ultimate reality which we call God is revealing its elf to us through an image. So as I said yesterday, if you remain stuck in your personal vantage point you don't have that sense of being revealed something. You acquire something, but now if you have the dynamic between the personal vantage point  and the Divine vantage point, now you have the whole richness that comes out of that that is formulated in the words of Ibn' Arabi when he says: \'91God discovers himself in that image that is you - that is your image, through which he reveals himse lf to you.' 

So there are two things, you see?    God discovering himself, and you being revealed - that discovery whereby God discovers himself through your image. So the image is the middle - the medium between the two. But what the Sufis are talking about is what they call  forms in the intermediate world, Mithall - you can think of the word mythology, the intermediate world. And they say it is forms that are similar to the forms you see in a mirror because they are not concrete forms like in matter that have some kind of  stability. But they're evervescent, and consequently malleable and will change according to your attunement.    So when you think you can see who you really are as a form, then be careful because it's not only becoming, but it changes from one moment to the other according to your attunement. In fact, at some point we need to interpre t the waziif in terms of form. In fact, Murshid made a start there.    

See how - what would be the expression of your face - well, even of your face but certainly of your countenance, if you were in a state of reverie and thinking that you're walking along the banks of a lake in moonlight. Then  your expression - the countenance on your face behind that would transpire through the muscles of your face - would express peacefulness.    So if you choose a wazifa - you had the wazifa Ya Salam, and then you imagine that scenery, then of course - now what is important is that it's not just the lake - that only the catalyst. The important thing is the form of y our subtle body - that's what I call Arwar - the subtle body. The is changing all the time according to your attunement. And you can determine your attunement by realizations. By autosuggestion, and Murshid was very interested in autosuggestion.  In those days psychologists were working very much with autosuggestion. (Quay), for example, Dr. (Quay).    

So, it adds a whole further dimension to the wazifas. Instead of just repeating a word and thinking that word is magical and is going to change your life, then being disappointed because it didn't, you have to add these othe r dimensions to make it more real.    So supposing that you have the wazifa Ya Wali, mastery. Well now, if you imagine that you're rock climbing and there's a storm coming and you have fear, of course, and you are trying to overcome your fear. But you see that  you really need mastery - you need to really control every muscle of your body to know how to get out of that. Or if you're hang-gliding... the same thing. You really have to have mastery. Or skiing. Or whatever.    So you imagine a situation like that and you will notice of course that the expression of your face - the countenance of your race is totally different with that of the peaceful setting. 

So our subtle body is not that simple -  it has many facets, and that is probably the reason why the Sufis say: \'91Everywhere you may find the face of God.' You see, the face of God is manifesting in many different faces. You see? It's coming through. And that's why God discover s himself through your face, you see? It's different faces, but they're all expressions of the one reality. The way that reality is translated in form. That's creativity, hmmm?    So the wazifa for that is Halik. Halik means creativity. To be creative. And you see, we have a real need for creativity. You'll find it - you'll get the papers afterward so you don't have to write it down.    You see, when I first came to the states I was more or less comforting people. Many of the people who were coming to me were women of - let's say forties and fifties who had children who were grown up and they didn't know  what to do with their life. 

And I realized a lot of them had really wonderful great talents, but they had not developed those talents, did not believe in those talents. And it was no use my saying that they had a talent because, well, anyway, I'm n ot supposed to tell people what to do. But sometimes in the past I used to. I remember that man coming to me and saying, \'91Oh , Pir Vilayat' - I met him in a corridor at the airport, as usual. He said, \'91 Well, twenty years ago you gave me Dar shan, and you said that I have in me the talent for being a doctor, and it shook me because I never thought that. And now I am a doctor.'    So, and Christ talks about the talents, you know. So, creativity is always linked with sensing one's talent and cultivating it so it will really yield some concrete result. It's a matter of translating emotion into form.  I remember when I was learning composition with Nadea Belanger, and she said \'91Mr. Kahn' - I was Mr. Khan in those days - I still am, actually. She said, \'91You're not in touch with your feelings. I can see that you are trying to express them  but you have to be in touch with them to express them'.    

So that's the first thing, to really have the courage of the expressions of one's emotions. To acknowledge them. And then you will find that somehow nature has the ability to self-organize itself in you and translate th ose emotions into form without your having to do much about it yourself.     Perhaps you know there was a technique used in psychotherapy where children were given clay - I think, or sand - I forget which now, and they were making all kinds of forms with that sand. And it seemed to be rather random, and  the psychotherapists who were there were watching the process and could see that they were projecting their problems into those forms. And they could actually see that when the unconscious had found a solution or resolution to their problem, they said, \'91 I don't have to come anymore.'    

You see, that was very real, very convincing. You see, where creativity is - at first it's very random but then the whole universe is...    End of Side One.        ...I mentioned it in - I think I quoted it in the developmental stages, which you were supposed to have got, in which he says it starts with a situation where things are not right - they're not congruent. That's what we m ean by chaos. And then gradually things are falling into place. Sometimes it's not obvious, it seems the other way around - that there used to be more order. But that order was rather simplistic. Now the order is becoming more and more sophistica ted and consequently it is more difficult for things to fall into place. But that is the trend - that is the pull of the future which is stronger than the push of the past.    Now, the word for that is Ya Jabbar - which is - originally it's the name of the chiropractor who puts the bones back into place. So if you look around you, you see that things are not in place - like there's a wrong pers on in the wrong place and you feel that you should be in their place, of course. Everything seems to be random, and it's true that at first things are random. Luck or bad luck or whatever, so don't judge your self-esteem - establish your self-es teem on your success in life. It doesn't mean a thing.    

You've got the wrong people in the right places or the right people in the wrong places. So, that is true - while it's true at the cosmic scale it's also true at the individual scale, and so at first the qualities - I' m talking about our potentials, but they are random. It's a - that is not where orderliness is to be found. The orderliness is in the principles at a further stage which is Lahut, not the Mithall stage, as potentials.    So when I talk about unfurling potentials, it's not good enough. I already said those potentials are themselves imitating, but somehow it is like the blending of themes in a piece of music, for example. When we study compos ition we started with two themes - we had one theme, and then another and then we blended the two, and now of course there are thousands of themes so it's much more random than ever before, and therefore seems to be less orderly.    

So it's very difficult to make sense of a situation. It gets very complex. but that's the way life is and so it's true that calling one quality, pulling it out of its potential state in the seed of our being and bring  it into the plant of our being which is our personality doesn't seem to be complete enough, satisfactory enough. It's true that when the blossoms come on the tree then they don't all - they come very close to each other but sometimes there' s one before the other, or one animal has given birth to several babies, then one comes sometimes a little before the other, and so on.     So it's true there is some sequence but still you have to consider the context rather than the contents, so we have to consider - you as a representative have to consider the whole picture of the person and their life and how  a lot of qualities that are trying to manifest and how one can perhaps pinpoint one particular quality. But then there are others that are related and that's why very often we give two wazifas together, in tandem. Or even three.    

So, that would be Halik, Ya Jabbar, or course. So, if you remember then, we started with Batin, and you know so far we have saying Batin - turning within - that's the veil state, that means the non-manifest that is graduall y manifesting in life, and in you, and so on. But if you look at it - that's your point of view, but from the Divine point of view, if you take into account God or that other dimension of your being then it is a revelation, turning - Batin - means t hat your being is revealed to you, is being revealed to you    So I've made the distinction between acquired knowledge and revealed knowledge. In acquired knowledge, if you are simply encapsulated in your personal, false ego, your self-image, then of course the only knowledge that you unde rstand is the knowledge that you acquired. But to have access to the revealed knowledge, then of course you have to think of yourself as passive with regard to God. Or at least in the early stages one thinks of God as other, so then it's easier to  be passive towards God and as you advance then you see that it's all one and then it's much more difficult to find that passive attitude together with the person-less incentive, you see? 

And that's why I'm saying that what we're doing is  customizing the Divine programming.    So, you mustn't think that you have to unfurl the qualities that are lying in wait in your being, but you can decide which are the ones that you want to. And not only that you want to pull into your personality, but which you c an mutate. In other words - you remember there were three questions that I used to ask, at seminars, to people?     The first one was: What is the quality that you feel you need to develop in order to respond to the challenge of the environment? So that evidences our concern about adapting ourselves to the environment.    And the second question was: What is a quality that you feel is coming through now? That is Makum - that is, there is a process of unfoldment in each person and somehow there are certain qualities that are beginning to.... Wh en they are way up into your personality, as you advance, you go through different - what they call Makums, stations. 

So at one time what was important for you was service, and at another time what was important for you was understanding, and at anothe r time what was important for you was compassion and another time what was important was truthfulness, and so on. You go through different Makums. And so that is a guideline for the representatives at some point who decide: Now, which Makum is the pu pil in at this moment, and so I will give them a quality that matches that particular Makum.    Now, that does not evidence our need to adapt ourselves to the environment - it just simple has to do with our personal informant. And so the quality that is emerging now may not be the quality that you figure out is the qualit y that you need in order to meet the challenge of the situation. And the question is whether in fact it is not a more appropriate quality to deal with the problem, that you could not figure out with your mind?    But still, that attitude of mind represents our assumption that we are being manipulated by a Guru, up there, like puppets in a puppet show. And that He/She - or both, knows what qualities we need to develop in our unfoldment,  irrespective or regardless of our personal wishes.    

And so the third question is: How would you like to be? What is the quality that you would like to develop? Irrespective of your need to adapt to the environment and irrespective of what is coming through at this time?    Now - so you see, there are three different considerations when you are giving practices. There are more than three but anyway, think of these three. So, what do you want to do? Do you want to - that depends -each case is dif ferent, of course, but do you want to encourage a person to feel more able to meet the challenges. And then is it what they think is a quality that they need? And then, you know, like you're a doctor and your patient says, \'91Well, I think I need  a Beta blocker,' and the doctor will say \'91Where did you hear about Beta blockers? Well, I mean, leave it up to me - it's up to me to decide. Perhaps it's better for you to take a "inaudible\'94, for example.    So, it's the same think. Of course you have to consult your pupil, and find out if what they think is like what they need, and it's not necessarily right. But you must give them a chance of saying what they think. Then  you think: \'91Yeah, well...'. 

But you see things differently so because you feel there's a quality that's coming through them that they do not acknowledge, and it would be a much better, more adequate quality to help them in their....    As a matter of fact, one's situation in life is important, one's accomplishment, but the unfoldment of one's being is important. So, we don't have to clear everything to our effectiveness in life, hmmm?    The third one, of course, is one's realization, which is - actually, one can try as one may to unfurl the qualities of one's being with one's will, but a break through in realization is going to transform your personality  without trying to reinforce or upgrade one quality or another. So it's a much more effective way of working with ourselves, by fostering what is called awakening. That's what we are looking for and what we will be trying to meet in the next stag es. How we foster awakening.    Let me just see if I've got my notes here, see if there's something I've forgotten. That's a cause for anxiety if I don't, but it's all on paper so you can always read it. One has to have inspiration and als o memory. It takes away spontaneity.    

So, Ya Batin - Ya Khabir, which is a very interesting combination because this is the awareness that is revealed instead of acquired. Ya Batin, Ya Khabir. And then there are two wazifas that I did a long time ago and I must sa y they have come back to me more clear than ever before. And that is the difference between Ya (Biddi) and Mu (Qaddam). I used to say just Ya Qaddam and I think one can say Ya Qaddam, and not just Mu Qaddam.    And it's very interesting because Mu Biddi is the origination of the causal chain. That is determinism, hmmm? So everything was programmed, although according to the Sufis - the more advance Sufis, of course, the Divine pro gramming - because they're not all the same, you know - the Divine programming is dynamic instead of static and therefore there is a feedback from the hardware and the software.   

There's a word of Jelal'Ud-Din Rumi which is really shattering. He says: "Tonight, the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal. Tonight, the umpteen stars give birth the life eternal!' And I think it was Far id \'91Ud-Din Attar who says: "That which was limited by effermary will be eternalized.' So that is the feedback - from the existential to the programming, hmmm? So, Mu'Biddi is really talking about the way the - although the programming ori ginated, it has progressed. But it mutated, you see. But Mu'Qaddam is very interesting because Mu'Qaddam is talking about what in Christianity is call Creasio Ex Nilo, creation out of nothing. So, it interrupts the flow of the causal chain, the  evolutionary flow. It's a new element that comes in.    That's creativity, hmmm? Or maybe creativity requires a combination of those two. What is determined, and what is new. It could be illustrated for example by a wave in the sea. In a sense the wave has been causated by the  previous wave, but on the other hand the whole sea emerges as each wave. Emerges anew as each wave. 

You have the two - one is the causation, determinism, and the other is freedom, spontaneity.    And that element of freedom - that is something that we will be finding more and more as we advance. That was the ultimate aim of Buddha. His ultimate state - he called it overcoming determinism. Freedom. and you see that in volvement limits one's freedom. On the other hand one can find room within that involvement for one's need for freedom, but it becomes more and more, stronger and stronger, as one evolves, of course.    So, it starts with creativity. That's the first way that you are able express your freedom. There's a word of a Sufi - I forget who now, but Pir-O-Murshid often quotes it. He says: "Oh man, if only you knew that you  are free. It is your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity."    So, we'll have to end here, but there's still a lot to say about this. We'll continue this afternoon.    End of Tape.       

AUG 15, 1997		Tape 06

...Victoria, who's a monk and who wrote this requiem for a queen who had died and must have been a very wonderful, admirable queen, and he was looking for her in the Celestial spheres. It's a very good introduction to the stage that we have reached now, and also the memorial service that we will be doing this evening for Arifa. 

Well, you have noticed that we have been trying to find concrete devices that will help us to discover things about ourselves that we couldn't discover with our mind or with our will, and so we resorted to creativity. That faculty whereby emotion and thought gets configured into forms, so you have a feedback there that helps you to discover who you are. In fact it's a mirror in which you discover yourself. And so far these forms were what Ib'n Arabi called 'forms in the intermediary world.' 

That is, not physical forms, and not spiritual ones, but some intermediary world which I would say is a level where we're not talking about matter - we're talking about space, configuration of space, as such. 

So if you can imagine form, as it were, without substance - this is one of the tests that initiates you to go through. In the mysteries of Ulysses for example, they were taken through a labyrinth and then they were asked to - then at the end of that labyrinth there was a statue of Apollo, and if they had made that test through the labyrinth, then the next time they would have to imagine the statue without the substance. And that's the second stage. 

And if you remember, these forms are evanescent and the forms in the mirror, and elusive because if you turn the mirror then the forms disappear. And the beauty of these forms is that they are malleable and consequently they keep on reflecting your attunement. and we said that the form of your being is not stable - it's dynamic instead of static. So, when you say 'I like to know what my real countenance is,' it's not like the form of a face - it has some kind of continuity, it's evanescent. 

Now we are reaching a further level and all the practices that we've done with light lead towards that. Towards discovering that level of our being which is our celestial being. 

Now normally of course one has no idea about it except if one finds oneself confronted with the luminous eyes of a baby. And all of a sudden that sense of Déjà Vu will trigger off a memory. A memory! Something like 'Yes, I know this but I don't see it in adult people but I must say it reminds me of something.' And of course that's all that happens. 

And then, so, we think that we are retrieving a memory of the past. So it's very difficult for us to understand that we are still in that condition at some level, but we're not aware of it, or pre-conceptual. But we remember. But if we realize there's another dimension of time which is vertical, then we realize that we're still in this state, and so that word 'pre' is not suitable. 

And so Dr. Droff inaugurated, uses, a word which I think is very relevant - he says 'peri'. Peri-natal. And that says it, hmmm? It's not previous. It over-archs the processing time. So if you think of a pendulum, then the bottom is moving in time, space, and the top remains stationary. We are just like that pendulum but we are all the states between the top and the bottom. 

So, we do carry in us many different levels of memories. Some of them are consigned in the unconscious and will emerge if one is confronted with a situation that matches them. I don't know whether to say that this is the unconscious or the super conscious - there are all kinds of theories in psychology now. Or collective unconscious. What is important is to realize we are still functioning at that state although all be it not aware of it, and that one can become aware of it. And being aware of it will transform one's being altogether. Totally! 

So, now, to be concrete again, we have been working with imagination - creative imagination, and trying to represent to ourselves, for example, the countenance when we are walking along a lake in the moonlight. Or if we were doing rock-climbing and it was becoming very stressful then the countenance would be very different. We're not talking about forms that have a profile, so it - we use the word countenance instead of a face. So it's a different proposition all-together. 

Now, we're talking about forms that are even more elusive, more nebulous, and I suppose the best example of it would be, for example you must have done that at some point - placed your fingers to get a "inaudible" photograph and seen the corona around your fingers. And so that is a very good illustration of the way our aura is at the level, at the level that we are talking about. 

It doesn't have a boundary. It has a configuration, peters out at some point, and is of course effulgent, and radiant. So as I say, our practices with light will eventually lead to that point when we are not just conscious of the radiance of our aura, but its configuration. 

And so we an do the same practices that we did working with those forms in the mirror - as we called it, form in the intermediary world. That is the forms of our own being at that level which is the Mithall level - or the level of - one could call it the effigies. And now we could do the same thing not with our aura - our physical aura, but that is if you remember - I forget now - it was yesterday morning, yes, we did a meditation with light. And we talked about a level of light that is not physical, and yet still definitely is light. 

So it is at that level that we can - if we do the practices we've been doing with light, and you remember there's a whole sequence of practices leading toward this point, well, beyond this point. But we reach this point at which we are able to grasp something of the countenance of our face and our body at that level which we call the celestial level. 

Now I could say that if we are on a quest of self-validation and self-esteem, then I can't think of anything that will upgrade our self-esteem more than being able to discover our celestial counterpart. There we have something very concrete. It's so beautiful that one is really shattered. I mean, you can't believe it! 

But there are conditions. It doesn't work just by doing the practices. And those conditions are rather drastic. The condition is innocence. Innocence! That means no guile, no hatred, and I'm afraid I have to say, no resentment. I say I'm afraid because at some point we need our resentment. We're talking of a fairly advanced state now, where we don't need our resentment anymore - we've overcome it like we say the elephant with the chickens. 

No, really. That's very important, that sense that you don't let yourself be bothered by people who bug you. It gives you supremacy. In fact it gives you mastery - what am I saying? Splendor! Of course mastery will follow. 

so the wazifa for that is - well, there are two. One is Ya Jamil, and the other is Ya Majid. Now, of course, you have it in the papers so you don't have to write it down. Somehow we have - we're talking about needs, you see, and as one evolves one's needs become more refined. I often say there's no accounting for taste. So at the more elementary stages one's taste is rather gross, and as one advances it becomes more refined. 

And one could even say, talking about dependence, that one does experience dependence upon beautiful music, beautiful people, beautiful situations, in life. When I say beautiful people I mean people who have a beautiful soul, beautiful behavior, or beautiful attunement, and so on and so forth. It's a quest for beauty. Beauty is just the way that splendor manifests as form. That's why an action can be beautiful. It doesn't have to be a form. 

I must say that this level - obviously this level cannot be reached by one's will - you cannot. Even with all the visualizations of light and so on, that won't do it for you. The act of glorification! It doesn't have to be a conventional form of prayer but, well, it starts by bewondering. That is, being shattered by - a situation corroborates one's intuition that behind all the defilement at the human level, there is splendor. And paradoxically this splendor is present within its defilement. 

We're cutting into something very very serious - very important for us in our self-esteem. And that is it's very difficult for us to believe in the splendor of our being while being aware of the defilement that that splendor has incurred by our guilt or by our hatred, or whatever. All those things that are the reactive strategies that we've been talking about. 

So it's like reconciling the irreconcilables, and so I find the best way of meeting a paradox in our mind - because that's where our mind is standing in the way of our experience, is the case of the voice of Caruso which I often talk about, which has been retrieved from the bad recordings of the time. That means its defilement is present within its distortion. That's paradoxical - it doesn't make sense of one's ordinary logic. But if you want to lift your consciousness into the highest spheres you have to give up your ordinary logic and accept that there are higher forms of logic. For example, the reconciliation of the irreconcilables. 

Murshid calls it the aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the ego, or the greatest pride together with the greatest humility, both at the same time. And that's very important because people identify with self-image and de-validate themselves - or denigrate themselves because they feel they have guilty feelings or a sense of inappropriateness and inadequacy. Consequently it's no use telling them they're beautiful because they don't believe it. It doesn't help - they can't see it. 

So we have to be able to se deeper into reality that does not fit into our only way of thinking and also it does not fit into the forms of the world. It may transpire through these forms but it cannot fit into these forms. They're subsumed, as one says. 

But as I say, it's not the visualizations that will do it for you - they will take you so far and no further - visualizations of light. But something much more profound which I would call taking a shower of light! Cleaning your soul with light! 

And light is very cleansing - you know that evil will only work in the dark, so it's coming forth in the light. Totally up front. And with the most ultimate scruples for authenticity, to the point of being - I would say ing‚nue rather than naive. Very close terms but it's not quite the same thing. 

So, the ing‚nue state of the child at first doesn't know how to lie until they go to school. And actually is defenseless. And the fact is that we still have that child in us. And the child will help us to validate ourselves - the child in us. In fact we have a lot to learn from children. They're our teachers. 

But of course the consequence is that you are defenseless. That's the consequence - that's the price you pay. And it's a heavy price. You know how people always take advantage of an innocent person - they think they're stupid. They've confused innocence with stupidity. It's just that they can't promote their ego well-being. 

That's a sign that one is starting to function in a manner that is - that matches one's celestial counterpart. And Ib'n Arabi says, he said: 'Try to find in yourself that which is of the nature of the dematerialized spirits' - that's the word he uses. And Murshid says: 'The pursuits of the world lose their attraction and color'. 

Now, if you notice that, it is a sign that you are progressing in your developmental stages. We've gone through different stages now and we know that at first one is dependent upon comfort, physical conditions, all kinds of things - there's no point in going back to what we said before. And then dependence of, if you remember, on things like loving instead of being loved, for example, or - well, that's attachment. Well, that depends. And also upon aesthetic values, you know, as I've said. 

And eventually one needs to sense the splendor behind the ugliness of the world. Otherwise one is totally alienated from one's real being. And what Ib'n Arabi says is that: 'You will be surprised to find your semblance in other beings at that level'. That's a - there are testimonials, for example. Shaabudin Shurwardi, whose whole way is the way of light, he wrote "inaudible" which is Theosophy of Light. And he talks about an experience - it illustrates a kind of experience that you might have. He says: 'The world - the earth - the floor, let's say, started opening up under my feet. And I heard a voice saying 'Hang on to the crenelations of the castle''. 

So, in other words there comes a time when the support system that the world has offered you becomes distasteful. You know how people are looking for luxury and you know, the good life, and so on and so forth. There comes a time when you don't like it. You feel a greed behind it, and you don't want to share in that greed. So you can understand the ascetics. They want to live with the greatest simplicity - to have what you need to work but not indulging in worldly goodies. 

In fact it's more than that. One is hurt in one's sensitivity by the ways of the world. Remember what I said, I quoted Pir-O-Murshid the other day when I said that he said we mustn't think that a person who is overly sensitive to earthly conditions is a superior person. Or they think they're superior, because it's simply that they cannot stand the stress. 

So that's why while one would like to retire from these conditions to find one's own attunement, one realizes that would be a flight from the purpose of one's life. Dropping out, as one says. 

And so then all that remains to one is to find splendor from within the distortion, you see, to find it. For example, without resorting to that technology of being able to recover the voice of Caruso to some extent - it's not done perfectly. If you want to know the methods used - "inaudible", who was here has gone into it very deeply - in fact he has participated in that research, so he can give you the details of how that is done, which was very interesting. But of course, it is rather technical. 

But what I'm saying is that you can see beauty, that splendor that you are seeking in the heavens - you can see it right here! 

And otherwise there's a split. One is escaping from life and one is not fulfilling - you see, the point is this. The celestial condition originally is embryonic, like the child - it's embryonic, so that one does not have the maturity of judgment and wisdom that comes out of dealing with the world. 

And so Murshid says something very surprising. He says: 'The heavens are built on the earth'. So it's very surprising. In fact there was a philosopher when he was saying that who said: 'But we've always been told that first of all there is heaven and afterwards there is the earth. Did you mean that when you said that?' And I said: 'Yes, oh yes, I meant it'. 

So that is - how can I say, reinforcing the child in you while you gain maturity rather than losing the child in you while you gain maturity, and so gain maturity without the defilement. 

Pir-O-Murshid says it's like not losing you way. for example, remembering that you're a denizen of the heavens and you're a tourist on planet earth, and one tends to forget who one is, hmmm? That's very challenging, so that's not done by simply fleeing the world. 

Or this contempt that I talked about, well, it's a kind of sensitivity that one has. Let's say that one does not want to participate in the greed that led towards this comfort, or well being, and so on. But one avails oneself of it as a tool to promote as a support system to be able to achieve one's ideal, actually, to make one's ideal a reality in one's actions. 

So, once more, I may have quoted the Tibetans who talk about three levels. First of all there's a slogan: The mind rides the wind. So the wind is energy - matter is energy - a form of energy, and the mind, well, one could say one's realization. so let's say one's realization is - there's a support system for one's realization. It could be one's body, or one's subtle body. And the they make a distinction between the gross body and the gross mind, and the subtle body and the subtle mind, and the very subtle body and the very subtle mind. 

So at this stage we are talking about the... 

End of Side One. 

...which will only start functioning if we identify ourselves with our subtle body. So you find that you - and this is more than just the magnetic field which is as I've said several subtle bodies, but now identifying with the aura and especially the higher levels of the light of the aura, which doesn't - is very different from what we mean by the physical light. 

If you do that you'll find that you think differently. You think differently! You don't think in terms of calculating how can I do this best or whatever, no, sell, it's very subtle. Shaabudin Surwardi said you find yourself thinking as the Angels think. 

I know. What does it mean? Well, of course I can try and illustrate it - it's a bad illustration, I mean, no analogy is perfect but it's helpful sometimes. So I'll tell a little story. 

We were climbing the Himalayas, very high up - about visiting a rishi is a cave. And we had to be a group of people because it was very dangerous. There were a lot of dangerous animals in he jungle. And here we came to this man who was - we don't know how long he hadn't seen another human being, but there he was lost in his ecstasy. You can see it on the face - the smile on the face - it's just fantastic! 

And so one of the men asked a question. I would qualify it as a silly question. Silly, stupid question. But that's my opinion of course - for him it did not seem stupid at all. and could see this rishi opening his eyes and trying to descend into the thinking of that man to see how one could think that way. 

so, when you are meditating, if you get to that level - celestial level, then - it might sound a little bit naive, but you think like the Angels think. And that means that you are very sensitive to the attunement of people. Very sensitive. So that's Mujib, if you remember - very sensitive to the kind of attunement - and of course what you are attuning to is splendor. And that sense of splendor comes - as I said you start with bewondering, like one never ceases to be amazed by things. Everything is fantastic! If you start looking at things, it incredible! 

Scientists, physicists particularly - they're beginning to say - well, you know, they never cease to be amazed. Not just by the extraordinary intelligence with which everything is programmed, but the elegance! 

Now that is an aesthetic value, hmmm? That's what I mean by bewondering. That leads towards ecstasy. Well, there's a continuation of intelligence, and then at the emotional level - and you cannot reach the celestial spheres except by your ecstasy. There's no other way. You can't with your will, you can't with your reason. 

And I must say, yes, there are a lot of things that are really wonderful - a beautiful dawn in the high mountains, in the middle of a storm - that's really fantastic, of course. There are wonderful things in the world. Music, cathedrals, wonderful things - wonderful people! 

That is beauty, but splendor is that which comes through beauty. And that is the word Majid. So beauty - Jamil, and Majid - splendor. That only is revealed to you because remember, as I said, we cannot attain it by our will. So there's always God revealing Himself! God revealing His/Her splendor to us in our celestial counterpart. God discovering Him/Herself - the splendor of Him/Herself, in our celestial counterpart, and God revealing Him/Herself to us through the splendor of our celestial counterpart. Both at the same time! 

So, you don't know yourself until the Divine splendor is revealed to you, and the only way it can be revealed to you is through your act of glorification. And hence the enormous importance of prayer. I said that this morning. 

In Islamic prayer, for example, one is always ascribing to God all kinds of qualities. In fact the wazifas are just those qualities that one is ascribing to God. He is majestic, and truthful, and powerful, and so on and so forth. And in order to do this one is arousing the matching qualities in one's own being because the only way we can ascribe qualities to god is because we have some sense of these qualities as they are actuated in us or in other beings. 

So we start with that, you see, and then somehow - we have this faculty, as I said this morning, of always imagining something more perfect. That's why Murshid says: 'We discover the Divine perfection as God discovers and reveals His perfection in us'. 

I see sometimes people praying at - not just Muslims or Christians - all kinds of people praying, transfigured. Just transfigured by the act of prayer. so, I mean I know that we don't like the conventional kind of church prayer laid down for you, but this is the real thing, hmmm? 

And then there's a further thing and that is - what Surwardi says is the consciousness in you - that is the Shahid, the witness - he calls it the witness in the heavens. Let's say, instead of thinking of yourself as a consciousness - identifying with your consciousness - your human consciousness, it is now a celestial consciousness. You have a totally different way of judging things than one's human consciousness. 

And I think that is why - for me, of course, that is what made Pir-O-Murshid what he was. I can see that. In fact I remember peeping through the door at the oriental room when he was meditating, and he was in a state of ecstasy. It was quite incredible. He wasn't - you know, like most people are in their ordinary consciousness and their ordinary emotions - anger, and pleasure, and dependence. Here he was like - and I could see that it was God consciousness, you see? 

Now, that's the ultimate! But these are steps, and the celestial level is a step that helps one to reach that point. 

You know, we carry within us the inheritance of not just our parents but all those levels of our being. Well, one could say it might be rather simplistic to say that we have parents in the celestial spheres, but, I don't know. Sometimes one meets someone and one feels like one came from the same celestial village. some kind of sense of affinity. 

I was describing this experience of Surwardi when the floor seemed to open up at his feet and he was hanging on to the crenelations of the castle - that is to hang on to your celestial counterpart because you know you can't pull yourself up by your boot straps. So it's not your feet, you see, it's you hands that will hoist you up. I said that yesterday, and then he said: 'I found myself in a world of light, but I couldn't discern anything'. You know, like a baby; in the first months the baby can't discern things on the physical plane. You know that there are a lot of things happening but you don't quite realize what is happening, what it's all about. 

Then he said: 'At some point there seemed to be a being, and he was walking in my direction and I was walking in his direction, and I was overwhelmed by that being. And then as that being came closer, I realized a similarity with myself and I just couldn't believe that'. And then finally there was what we call a coincidence and he realized that that was his celestial counterpart. 

So, talking about self-discovery - discovering yourself at that level is just pure excellence. So, of course, in a sense it is as though one remembers having been a being of light in the celestial spheres and has found oneself in exile - you know, I don't know whether I said that. I've had so many camps one after the other, I can't always remember the things I said, where, but did I say that? It was the cave of Plato, right? No? Well, that's very important. That's really very relevant because what Plato is describing was a ritual that happens in the Ulysian Mysteries. 

There's a choir of angels and they wear white robes, and those robes have whit wings. so then we have this choir, and the music of Bach, I think of that choir of Angels. And the some people come and pull their clothes off and tie them with chains in a cave. So that is a metaphor, a picture of having experienced the celestial state and find ourselves now exiled. In a world of exile - what the Sufis call The World of Exile. 

With vague reminiscence of that state, but when you are in that cave it's very difficult to believe that state was real. It's like a dream or something - it doesn't seem possible. 

And now supposing that people would come into that cave and say to the prisoners the sky is blue and the grass is green, and there are a lot of golden yellow flowers, and red flowers and all kinds of things, and they say: 'I don't know what you're talking about'. Because all that they see are the shadows. 

So Plato is describing by trying to illustrate it by analogy, the state in which we are when what we perceive of reality are only shadows. I mean, in comparison with what it would be like if we became the witness in the heavens. It is like shadows. And somebody else releases the chains of the prisoners so that they can come out in the light. When they come out in the light, they are so blinded by the light that they can't see anything at all. And they prefer returning to the cave where at least they can see shadows. And so that's the state of many of us, hmmm? 

There are teachers who can tell you about that world. I say, well, I don't know - it doesn't make sense to me. All that I know is what I see. They don't know they're shadows - for them that's reality. 

But then Plato goes on to say - but supposing some of those prisoners still thinks that - they're so enamored by the light that although they can't see anything they still do prefer that to being in the shadow world. And that's the initiates. And eventually they get used to the nebulous forms that begin to take shape and become a little clearer, and so that is exactly what we are doing in our spiritual work. 

So as I said, we have this inheritance. And of course if you say inheritance you are, well, are you talking about the past? You inherit from your parents, but if your parents are still living you are not talking about the past. So it's a timeless condition. It's a condition where the process of becoming doesn't enter into account. And so that inheritance is of the nature of becoming, and it can prevail of course, but in us there is ultimate inheritance which we call the Divine inheritance. And one can only become aware of that if one is able to identify with the deathless state in one. 

It's the pendulum, you know. So, identify with that point in oneself that remains unchanged in the process of becoming. That's of course right up there, very far, so it doesn't seem realistic at first. That's Samad, not Sarmad, but Samad. Samad means eternal, and Mawjud, the existential state. So it's good to be able to have this antinomy between the two. 

And let us say the celestial state is also an inheritance. So that means that there are features there in us which are our potential, and which can be aroused. And the they become real. So what we're doing now is to try to arouse and awaken those features of our celestial inheritance, and the consequence is that one becomes totally transformed by them. 

It's very important, as I say, because this is the ultimate self-validation. If one is able to overcome logic, overcome the thought: 'Well, this is too good to be true because I am a horrible person'. If you think that way then of course there is no way of helping you. 

But it is true, the best way of making sense of what I'm saying is to do it, of course. In a retreat situation or whatever, a meditation, when what seems to be the memory of the Déjà Vu, becomes very real to you - it is there. And you really believe that it's present in its defilement, but you had to gain maturity in your life and so there was a price that you paid for that. But you don't have to continue to do the same. 

Now, I'll end with a word of Murshid: 'Our soul is blessed with the expression of the Glory of God whenever our lips praise Him!'.  



 

AUG 16, 1997		Tape 07

Just start with the practices of Shagall, three times turning within and three times  turning upward. (inaudible) 

. . . that the difference in the first one, one is breathing in from inside instead of from  outside. Drawing energy from inside. One is inviting a new dispensation of light -  emerges from inside in the solar plexus. One is aware of the vibrations, even the cells  of one's body act like a gong - like the (inaudible) gong, which are (jingling?) all the  time, but imperceptibly to us. But you've become aware of that impending vibration and  you know that it just takes a little strike that brings that additional energy to make that/  those vibrations audible.  

And that's what Pir-O-Murshid is saying, is that in shagall what makes one, one  enhances the activities of the senses so as to make the abstract visible and audible.  And also to be sensed as perfume and tasted as nectar. And then, I hope you do  remember that as you exhale, you are aware of the enormous radiance of your aura,  but I hope you remember also that you are consciously exuding magnetism and this is  where the practices that you do are different from the practices of your mureeds,  because you are doing your practices for your mureeds. For example, when I make a  retreat, I make a retreat for the mureeds. I don't make it for myself. So the  consequences are that when you're exhaling in these first 3 breaths you consciously  think of your mureeds. And, to do it well, you need to imagine your mureeds, the form  of your mureeds as fashioned in the fabric of light. So that may settle the countenance.  

So working with magnetism, when you exude magnetism then you represent the effigy  of your mureeds in that subtle, etheric fabric that the Sufis call the fabric of the  intermediate planes. Like forms in a mirror and now when you are radiating light then  you represent yourself, the same form, but it's different at this level, the level of light.  It's much less structured, more effervescent, like a halo, and yet it still has some kind of  inner structure and what you need to do is to experience the impact of your light on that  halo of light of the mureed.  

Now when you are in the second phase, the next 3 breaths, you remember that you  draw your breath from above, it's like the, or rather, you are receptive, the descent of  the holy spirit, really it's like the descent and then the quickening of the holy spirit, the  infusion of the Holy Spirit. And so that I find that, maybe this is just imagination but  imagination can be very effective, an opening at the top of your head, or temple, with  the dove descending, or the Holy Spirit descending, from above. And so a totally  different level of energy.  

So this is what Pir-O-Murshid calls the magnetism of the soul or the magnetism of the  spirit instead of magnetism of the body or heart. And so that means that you - your  center of identity, you have shifted your sense of your identity from being a body or  being an etheric body or you're being an aura, to being pure spirit. And that's where  perfume is a wonderful analogy because it represents the ability of the flower to outwit  it's death by resurrecting and constantly eternalizing itself. So, at that moment you  need to identify with the deathless dimension of your being and consider the body, and  the etheric body, and aura, as simply scaffolding.  

Now if you remember, the breath becomes very, very, very fine and as always said, the  thought becomes what the Tibetans call the very subtle mind, not just the subtle mind,  but the very subtle mind. So yesterday we started to work with that, see how one's  thoughts or one's thinking varies according to one's identity. If you think of this as a  body then you think of yourself in a certain way. If you think of yourself as a being of  light, your thoughts are luminous. And that will, of course, contrast with the kind of  ambiguity that you find in people who are manipulative. And that's why the code is, of  course, the password is innocence. And the consequence is that one's thoughts  become clear, as crystals. It's also in some way associated with emotions. Emotions  are clean, or cleansed. I can say a kind of catharsis of emotions.  

Now the consequences, of course, of what you call ecstasy and this particular pitch, as  Pir-O-Murshid calls it, a pitch, will spill over to the mureed, somehow. Of course,  actually, if you want really to have a very deep relationship with the mureed; you can't  do it if you have a lot of mureeds, but, fortunately, most representatives don't have that  many mureeds; so then take advantage of that fact and, I would say, ask your mureed  to meditate at a time when you are meditating. You're establishing a thought  connection. 

Now, I say, that this kind of emotion is somehow the outcome of having found freedom  in oneself. And so, I think there is room for the way of the sanyasin, the ascetic in our  lives, while we are active in the world. And that's what Christ meant by being in the  world and not of the world. He didn't say, being not in the world, he said being in the  world, but not of the world. So it's a different thing to being an ascetic. But somehow,  to be able to proceed toward awakening, one needs, somehow, to be free. And that  freedom is internal, so you can be bound externally and it does not necessarily curtail  your freedom. In fact, it might be the other way around. It might be that you're tested in  your inner freedom more by the constraint of environmental circumstances. It's a kind  of prison, as Pir-O-Murshid says, but the prison is really, you think that the prison is the  outer circumstance but really it is one's way of thinking of those circumstances, or think  of oneself in relation to those circumstances.  

So, I always think of the words of Murshid, indifference and independence are the two  wings that help the soul to fly and those are to be found in our Sufi logo. But that word,  "indifference", is vairagya in the Indian colloquy so the word indifference seems to be  like "not interested" and that is not what is meant by that. It means that one cannot be  stirred in one's peacefulness, by the, either the agitation, talk about the chickens, and  also the greed and dishonesty and guile, and all those things, grossness, vulgarity,  slovenliness and all those things that hurt one's sense of dignity, would hurt one's  sense of dignity. So it's a kind of a very subtle defense mechanism, much more  evolved, of course, than the reactive strategy of the ego.  

So that it's no use pretending to be free. At that stage, one has to really ask oneself,  "What does this mean, in my relationship with people, in my dependence upon  circumstance, and so on?" So, that is the Greeks used to call it, no it was the Romans,  I think, they called it "apathia" which means, one translates by being apathetic, but  that's not the right word, but it means to kind of found peace while at the same time  suffering, I would say. Not seeking to immune oneself from suffering but find peace  within that suffering. And realize that suffering is the human condition. There is  suffering written right into our bodiness and our psyche and it is a token of our  involvement with people, involvement with situations, and so on. So, of course, the  artist can find freedom in one's involvement and that doesn't mean not being involved.  It's just in choosing that fresh breeze, as Khalil Gibran calls it, between the two big trees  that grow in the forest.  

So it is really only if you, well you can't help your mureed if you, well you have to have  gone through where they are. That means you will have had to have had despair and  anger and resentment and greed and even grossness to some extent, and slovenliness  and all those things. You will have to have doubt and question your values and  question your world dimension, question your self-dimension. You have to go through  all those things yourself. In other words, you have to know what the mureed is going  through. But the only way in which you can help the mureed is that, in having gone  through all that, you are able to have come out of that trip free, as a snake is able to  free itself from it's skin.  

And so, there's a feeling of dancing with joy on thorns and with a crown of thorns on  your head, and still, you're not really lamenting. You see that that is the human  condition. You see it's OK and that's the way it is. But you're free, you're dancing. And  so it's only if you are very clear, not imagining that you are free, but you're very clear  that you see a situation in which you are emotionally involved and you still love very  deeply and still feel vulnerable, and all those things, and feel defiled and tarnished and  upset, and all those things, those human things. Human trauma. Yet somehow you  see, I think it's a British saying, if you have been able to spot the demon, you are able  to free yourself from it. So you see where it is, that's where it is, you see it in yourself,  not in others. Then you can see it in others. If you first see it in yourself, then you can  see it in others, otherwise, you can't , otherwise, if you see it in others, then you are  judgmental. If you see it in yourself then you won't be judgmental, you'll say, well, that's  the developmental stage, and you want to help them to get into a further stage. 

So this is communicating ecstasy. Now in India, most of the Rishis are in silence for  their life. And so you go and sit there, and what they're communicating is their ecstasy.  And the fact is that this emotional attunement will change your way of thinking. This is  something that I tried to say yesterday, to communicate, to articulate yesterday. The  way that the thoughts become immaculate, because the emotions have become clean,  and as soon as they have, then they shift, they are sublimated to a very high level of  emotion. All this culminates, of course, in the story that Pir-O-Murshid talks about the  Murshid who was, whenever he was in a state of what is called Hal, which is a very high  state of ecstasy, he used to call his mureeds because he wanted to - because that is a  precious pearl that is communicated on the spiritual path. And of course, they were all  sleeping except one, (inaudible) meant that they knew the Koran by heart. And so it  was that same one that kept on receiving that transmission of ecstasy. So the thing is  that it is when you are in the state of ecstasy and most times one is not, but when one,  in the course of one's, particularly in the course of a meditation and, in a retreat, more  so, then, that is the moment when you as a guide, need to let the moment par  excellence to be able to reach your mureeds and communicate that precious gift.  

And I dare say, that even the mureed might be, of course it's better if you ask the  mureed to be meditating at the time when you are meditating every day, if that's  possible at all. But even if the mureed is active at the time, there is something that  happens, at some level, and you will have noticed it because when you, the mureeds  come in the classroom for the class you can see that the mureeds knows that you  thought of them. As though, ah yes, we've met elsewhere, now we meet here, but we  have met elsewhere. 

But you see you are able to communicate, you know, as I've been talking about getting  into the consciousness of another person, and of course, it depends at what level, you  see. You can get into the consciousness of the common place level of realization of  that person, in their ordinary life, but then that same person could, in the course of their  meditation, get into a state of higher consciousness. And so, you can, you are reaching  the mureed at that very high level, so it's not like telepathy, you're not reading their  thought. That would be indiscretion, but you're getting into a resonance with them, or  rather you bring them in resonance with your attunement, and, you mustn't assume that  your attunement is better that theirs, so it might be the other way round. And the  important thing is to be in synch. Because, in fact, you are responding to their call.  And we must realize that that's what the mureeds are looking for.  

I know they're disappointed if you don't give them personal advise, but some leave,  because that's what they are looking for. But, the mureeds don't know it themselves,  but what they are looking for is to be transported, to be inspired, to validate their utopic  hope in the splendor of their own being - that they have difficulty in believing and you  can't convince them by words. So, now, in the second phase of the Shagall, as I said,  you are breathing from above, descending, the descent of holy spirit quickening, now  the holy spirit, now the energy is communicated at a very high level. (inaudible) You  know like high frequency radio waves or something like that.  

When you are thinking about them as a being of light, if you remember now, we are  working with light, now you are not radiating from your own aura, you are conscious of  the light of your glance, even though your eyes are closed. If you remember, it is as  though we, when holding our breath, we were discovering ourselves as luminous  intelligence. That's what the British, the Tibetans, call clear light of bliss. And so now,  remember there's a light passing through a light. And I think of the, could be the  (strait?) by the river Rhone that passes through the Lake of Geneva, so it's like infusing,  but it's a little bit different because it's of a totally different nature - that pure intelligence.  So it's maybe it's more like a zephyr passing over the surface of the water, I don't know  how to say it, but we don't have the right kind of analogy, but the important thing is that  you do not identify with your glance but identify with pure intelligence, luminous  intelligence, and your glance is just the vehicle now that carries this . . . 

 . . . this (stage?) was you're radiating from your aura and then you remember that  when you are doing the second three breaths in the Shagall, then the first one was, as  you exhale, you infuse your aura with the light of intelligence. And then, in the next  phase, if you remember what we said yesterday, instead of infusing your aura with the  light of intelligence, you infuse your glance with the light of intelligence. And so you  think that your glance is reaching right into the soul of the mureed and therefore you are  communicating at a much higher frequency. End of tape.  

AUG 16, 1997		Tape 08

And now I think it would be good for us to ask ourselves where we are and where we're going, and for that I think it might be good to step back in order to move forward more clearly. It's always in the perspective of how you guide your mureeds. So as I say you are doing your practices for your mureeds.  

So I started doing that this morning and we'll continue now this early morning meditation. That is, you know that when your mureed is meditating, they, unless you give them a clear practice like repeating a wazifa or the dhikr or the visualization of light and so on, if they just sit there to meditate without any support then what they are going to do is to think about their problems and the stress of their life and there'll be those thoughts are emotionally charged and they're turning around in circles.  


That's what we said already. And as we already said there is no use telling them they are caught in a perspective because, well so what. How does one get out of that perspective? Now if you remember, yes, and I think that one has to add that that perspective is, it's not maya, it's a valuable perspective but it's only a perspective.  

It's incomplete. So how do you proceed? So if you remember what we did was to encourage the pupil now to turn within in order to capture the creative thoughts that have not been conditioned by the environment. 

So it's not reactive, you see. And in order to do that, well of course one has to downplay the impressions from the environment, but if you, the Hindu method consists of dismissing them altogether, the radical method. The Sufi method is a little more sophisticated. You see, now take the model of the human body. Now our psyche rather like the human body needs to enrich itself by the interface with the environment - the physical and psychological environment, emotional environment, all levels of the environment.  

And then that means like ingesting food, and then the food needs to be digested, and in fact even at the stage of ingesting one rejects things that are totally indigestible. So there needs to be some power that rejects that which is unwanted in our thinking and the only faculty in us that gives us the ability to reject an impression is because it is not in sync with one's true being. 

You see based upon the immune system, the immune system is made in such a way that the body will reject an organ that doesn't have the same DNA. So it is based upon me or not me. The body has a sense of me or not me, and in the same way the psyche has a sense of me or not me. But there is a second immune system whereby the body adapts itself to elements that are not in sync with its own nature, like food for example.  

Otherwise you'd never be able to ingest food. So that's the adaptive immune system, and we have it in our psyche too. And what we are doing is we are suffering from indigestion, that is our second immune system is working to such an extent that we are trying to take in a lot of things that are totally incongruous, that don't fit into our own pattern, and consequently we lose our identity or our idiosyncrasies. 

And that is why people have this cry almost a cry of agony, a plea like I want to know who I am, you see. So that's very real. It's like one realizes who one is has been so diluted by the environment that one has lost really a sense of that very specific uniqueness of each being, which is something that we of course value in Sufism, and which you don't find in Yoga which is the other way around, it's universal, eternal, and so on - it's impersonal whereas here we value the person, you see.  

So the only way in which you can protect yourself as you're meditating and (turn your pupils) against thoughts that are disruptive is to start by having a very clear sense of who you are. And so then that's why I say downplay the impressions of the environment. You're not dismissing them if you're downplaying them, but the important thing is now, and so now what I'm, what I've been working with lately is, you know how can you have a sense of who you are, you see. 

At first, as I say, it's so diluted that one doesn't know, because the periphery of one's psyche is intermeshed with the environment. There's not a clear boundary between ourselves and the environment. We think there is but there's an osmosis at the jagged end. 

And that is why I've been utilizing a Sufi method which we explored yesterday, I think, yesterday morning. And that was to try to discover who one is by the mediumship of an image, a picture. And therefore, as I say, for example, one of the real breakthroughs is when you ask yourself or ask you, well have you any sense of the countenance of your true being.  

So its, at first one thinks well how can I, and then all of a sudden you have a breakthrough and you think, YES, I've seen my real face. And you know that that is me. So that's very concrete. Now it's not as simple as that. Because that face is changing all the time, as I said yesterday, and it's not, it doesn't have boundaries, I mean it doesn't have profile and also it's not, it's evanescent, like the pictures in a mirror.  

But still, having discovered who you are, it's a device. It's not really who you are, but it's a way in which you can have some sense of who you are. That's our picture. 

Now the process of digestion. Yes, well I should add that now, we have in the course of this study we have been doing, we've realized that there are several levels of that picture, that form. There's the physical form, then, which is not, doesn't always say exactly what you are, then there's the subtle, let's say the form of the etheric body. You know, this sounds too much like theory, so I want you to really be able to feel your etheric body and identify with it, your subtle body. 

And realize that it really does have at least the configuration. It doesn't have profile but it really does, and I find it easier if you identify with your aura of light. Of course, you know, well we've already said that the cells of the body absorb light. So that of course your aura does espouse in some way the form of your body, like the Kirlian photograph of a finger for example. 

So like a halo, so it does have a form. But that form is much more, there's no profile, so it's very difficult to understand what one means by that. But it has some kind of configuration which represents a whole different sort of space configuration than physical forms in the physical world.  

So that's a countenance. We've learned to distinguish between the countenance and the features of the face, for example. The countenance is something that is coming through, that is that which transpires behind that which appears.  

Now when you're used to doing that, that's what I'm calling turning within because when you turn within then you shift your identity from your physical body to your etheric body. Then as I already said, there is a rule of thinking corresponding to each body level, so your mode of thinking, of assessing your problems when you're identifying yourself with your physical body is, as we've already said faulty or questionable assessment whereas when you're identifying with the etheric body, and you really can feel, can be aware of that expression particularly in the face. It's coming through your real face, your true face. 

According to Islam, everywhere that you look is the face of God. So it's the way a being that does not essentially have a form assumes a form through you as you. The consequence is that since now you are identifying with a different level of your being your thinking is different and consequently now what you see in your problems is what is enacted.  

And you realize that your problems are a secondary effect of something deeper, that is, those are the issues. And this is where I find that the wazifas are very helpful because you could say, right well now the issue at stake in my situation is compassion, the issue is truth, the issue is joy, the issue is kindness, the issue whatever.  

So just think of the wazifas and that will give you a sense of what the issues are. That's why I think it is very good to know all the wazifas, and at first I used to never talk about the bad wazifas, only the good ones. And there are some that are really, sound really bad, like God is the humiliator, dishonorer, and so on and so forth.  

Until I realized that of course it's very good to realize that one's action can dishonor one and perhaps that's a way that one learns how to be honorable, so God is teaching one to be honorable by letting one know that one is dishonorable. 

Some of these wazifas are making you aware of something in yourself. So now you have a different assessment of your problems. Instead of saying (tacks), situations, occurrences and so on which seem to be incongruous, random, you suspect that there is some kind of sense behind, but in any case what you do see is that there are values that are at stake, for example, in politics the values are freedom or the values are honesty so that the lives of people will, the hoax will be unmasked. Those are the issues in politics. So in our situations too there are issues. And that's why I think that at least you as representatives need to know all the wazifas, and that is why I've been giving a lot and more and more wazifas so that you have a whole catalog of categories that you can say that's the one (enap). 

Now as you turn within the attention is on you rather than the situations and now you can see the impact of yourself on a situation and otherwise you think that you are the victim of the situation. In fact it's very easy to see the impact of the situation upon you, like my life is so hard and consequently I've developed resentment, or I've developed anger, or I've developed a sense of disenchantment or whatever, bitterness or whatever.  

So you think that you are the victim of a situation outside. Now looking at it the other way around how does your being affect the environment. And so of course in order to do that, it's not that simple because your being is in a process of unfurling, and as it unfurls you discover new ways in which you can impact the environment.  

You know that to digest the food the body produces enzymes so it's not just ingesting food but there's an interaction between ourselves and the food. And the same thing with our psyche. Now you are beginning to see, because as I said already, we are carrying in our psyche a false assessment of our problems. Now if you are beginning to see the issues then and you see that those issues have to do with you, like if I was more truthful or if I was more patient or if I had more mastery or if I had more joy and so on, how this would effect the problem. 

And so somehow those are the enzymes that are helping you to digest the environment so that your psyche is now loaded with the more significant sense of what your life is about. And that will make all the difference. Otherwise, I say you but really I think of your pupil because your pupil has come to you for help and you can assume that unless they are advanced, they are caught in a perspective and they are fretting and suffering, in fact in despair and perhaps even in panic. There's a lot of psychological stress and distress amongst people.  

So now you are giving them something to work with. So you say, well, when you're meditating don't just keep regurgitating your problems, that doesn't, it's circular, it doesn't lead to anything. Ask yourself what are the issues. 

Now there is a further, well in the process of digestion the food is transmuted and that's the whole principle of alchemy. The food is transmuted. And so we are transmuting the environment into our psyche. And that means that we are making it fit into our idiosyncrasies, whom we really are, somehow.  

So it's a different principle. Instead of rejecting impressions that you feel are disturbing, you are able to transform them in your being, transmute them in your being, and take them in and that will enrich you. So you think of very specific cases where something that you find that is very disturbing to you and keeps on bugging you when you're meditating. You keep on thinking about this mean man who is disturbing your life and you think it's such a pity, that things would be wonderful. And there's always the same trouble continuing. 

Now you wonder whether, well how can I transmute that situation. First of all you get into the consciousness of that person, and then you see from what place that person is coming from. And of course people are always justifying their actions and of course we all are fooling ourselves. 

They think they are justifying it on moral grounds when it might be purely selfish ground. But they don't know it. They justify it.  

There was a time when I was at the United Nations and I'd see all those lovely speeches and what was behind it. So you, to transmute there is a wazifa, ya latif. Latif means subtle. So it's, transmuting is really very much like what happens with flowers when they become perfume. 

It's a process where one extracts the gist and one rejects the contingent aspect of it. So there is no doubt of course in the process of digestion there's rejection of a lot of elements that are expelled from the body. You have to make that shift. And that is the only way in which you can draw the, extract the essence of that situation.  

Now we've already talked about how you if you downplay the situations and highlight what is coming through you then, if you remember already, I said you have some kind of a choice. So even though there is programming, certain qualities are coming through at this time, and so on.  

And I think it's very important to know what is the quality that is coming through.  And you will find that seems to be confirmed wherever you go, like that is synchronicity.  

You know what is synchronicity, like for example, last night you dreamt that there was a butterfly and then when you got out of your gate on the porch there was a butterfly, and then you wonder whether it was because you had seen that butterfly but how is it. But no you hadn't seen it.  

It wasn't there before and then on the way there is an advertisement for an opera, Madame Butterfly, and then you come to a seminar with Pir Vilayat and Pir Vilayat is talking about Chuang Tzu who said, last night I dreamt that I was a butterfly and today I wasn't sure whether I was a human who dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly who is dreaming he is a human. 

All that on the same day. You see, that's synchronicity. So that is the kind of thing that points out what is the particular quality that is coming through you at this particular moment. It keeps on bugging you all the time. All the time you come across the same quality. I tell you, this is what you have got to work with. 

For example, truthfulness. All the time you come across the same, like a message, it's coming through to you. That's what is (aprow) of you now. So now well we do have of course that ability of downplaying does count upon or is based upon a very deep faculty in us which is embodied in that word independence and indifference and detachment. In fact, it is our need for freedom.  

And of course we think freedom in our perfunctory way, we think freedom from circumstance. No, freedom from opinion. Freedom from opinion. So that is a mode of detachment. So actually what we are doing, what I'm doing, I don't know whether you feel absolutely in line with what I'm doing, but what I'm trying to do is to introduce somehow the way of the ascetic in the middle of life, without becoming an ascetic. 

But availing ourselves of some of the faculties of the ascetic to help us find a kind of immunity in ourselves against the stress of our circumstances. Detachment, indifference, independence.  

So now it's independence from one's opinion. That is a very great breakthrough in meditation when you ask yourself what if all I have thought of so far was wrong. There's a word of Pir-o-Murshid when he describes what happens when one awakens. He says, all of a sudden you realize that all you were so convinced of now appears to have been wrong.  

And think you have gone through your life just being so sure that what you thought was right and all of a sudden you find the whole thing was wrong, right from the start. And I think it is true that one has to clear what is wrong before one can see what is right.  

So there is a point where you go through a dark night, and that dark night is often interpreted as doubt. You doubt yourself, you doubt the teaching, you doubt the world, you doubt people, you doubt everything. And it's very stressful, but of course it is cleansing, that is a process of purification. So if you remember we started with dependence, dependence upon circumstance, people, all those things we talked about in the beginning in the first stages.  

Now you are reaching independence. And it's not only independence from outside but also from your own thoughts, and your own emotions. Now if you remember then we went through a further stage and that was that we got in touch with our nostalgia. So that's not in the realm of understanding, it's in the realm of emotion. And the curious thing is that in order to reach a further level of understanding which the Sufis call Jabarut, one has to go through access to Jabarut to that higher, more advanced understanding is to get in touch with one's ecstasy, one's nostalgia, Ishq Allah, one's ecstasy. 

Now as I say you can't force yourself to be enchanted. So it's no use giving your pupil ya azim, ya azim, ya azim, and think that would make them re-enchanted. It doesn't work that way.  

Because for one thing our doubt stands in the way. Because if our doubt is based upon logic then of course at some point one's logic doesn't, one can't make sense of things so then one is in the dark night. So in some way our emotional attunement is tied up with our understanding, and we're talking about a higher understanding. That means that one is prepared to accept that things are quite different to what one thought, to what one thinks they should be. 

Things are different to what one thinks they should be. Because to know what makes sense one must have to get into the mind of God. And that is of course what the Sufis are trying to do but it doesn't happen that easily. So this is a kind of threshold situation, in which we discover dimensions of our being that we're not usually aware of.  

I call them the celestial or Sufis call them the celestial dimensions of one's being. And you see there is logic in a sense in a way because our logic says nonsense, I mean I'm a very imperfect person. My nature has been very badly defiled and tarnished and I have a lot of guilt and I keep on doing bad things and so how can you tell me that, when you talk about splendor that seems utopist.  

It's not in me. Perhaps in some people, but not in me. It's disenchantment, denigrating oneself. And so you see there is some logic here that has to simplify, a simplistic form of logic that needs to be overcome. And if you remember we did that. The breakthrough was in realizing that the voice of Caruso is present within its distortion. 

That is the breakthrough. Yeah. So instead of saying yes in the depth of my being there is an immaculate core and the outside is tarnished and thinking no but that that my real self is present all the way through in my psyche, within its distortion.  

So it's a different way of thinking. That's why there are two levels of in some way related its called in Yoga its called Anato nugata and Asmita nugata and in Sufism its called Malakut and Jabarut.  

So yesterday we tried to examine well we tried to get into that state of Malakut where we, our sense of d‚j... vu triggered a kind of memory and we saw that that memory was not quite the correct interpretation by it because we still our in that state and therefore, if you remember I changed the word prenatal to peri-natal. When you say memory, I remember the celestial spheres so that kind of memory, (nemosis) in Greece, that's what the Greeks were trying to do. 

And now I'm saying, no, I'm using a word of Stanislov Grof, peri-natal. That is it is still there, it will always be there, it is not of the nature of transience or transiency. So it requires a totally different way of thinking. Instead of thinking in terms of becoming, that is the time moving in time from past to future thinking in a horizontal dimension of time. That's what I said yesterday, in a vertical dimension of time. 

Now there's a little piece that I forgot and I think it is important. You do it yourself and of course you tell your pupils and that is it's a practice we haven't done yet but maybe we'll do it. As you breathe in and when you hold your breath you have lost the sense of the, of becoming. The sense of the advance of time, what they call the arrow of time, advancing, keep on advancing. 

So the sense of an interruption in the flow of time. And so these are conditions that are favorable to discovering something that is emerging impromptu, non-determined, not causally discerned and that is creativity. We talked about yesterday I think. And it is going to then have an effect upon the causal train. It's going to alter the cause/effect chain of causality. 

I call it a new dispensation. So you capture that, what is coming through. Okay now we are going to try and see if we can get some sense of what is meant by Jabarut, the next level. But as I said you can't do it in cold blood. Its only when your attunement is, when you, as I said yesterday by the act of glorification and somehow your attunement is the emotions that you're experiencing are cosmic. They carry you beyond your personal emotions. It starts by bewondering and it ends by glorification. 

So now the next step. Now supposing you are on retreat and you are in a lovely place, it could be the Abode, it could be the mountains, the Alps for example, and the day there's sunshine the sky is blue and the mountain is covered with snow and its just wonderful. And you just enjoy being on retreat and you think this is a marvelous retreat.  

I would call it a holiday. I wouldn't call it a retreat or if you like you could call it a holy day, but that's where you start. Now you remember doing that (inaudible) then it's difficult to meditate when the scene is so beautiful that you keep wanting to look at it, open your eyes, you see. If you close your eyes you're missing out. 

Of course, the thing is to try and you can switch something in yourself and find yourself in a transfigured world. And the way to do it is to get into the consciousness of the trees, and so on. I spoke about that the other day, like St. Francis was walking in the woods and instead of just looking at the surface of the leaves or the trees or the boughs of the trees, he was getting into the consciousness of the trees. 

And the trees were looking at him, you see, and so, when you do that then you have a very different picture of the environment than from your personal vantage point and you feel like you're walking on air. You just, if you want to be high that's, you can just switch on something in your consciousness and there you are. 

Now the next step that I tried to do in my retreat was well we're talking about divine consciousness. But that's theory, we're talking about it, what does it mean. We know what personal consciousness means, but when you say, well try to get into the divine consciousness you say well I don't know how you can do that.  

Maybe there are some people who can, but I don't know how to do it. So once more we need some skills, you see. So then you're walking in nature and you, I'm talking from my personal experience, and you think to yourself my eyes are the lenses through which God sees, or you could say through which the universe sees.  

God discovering his body through my eyes, let's say the physical world is the body of God and my eyes are the instrument and so of course it is a totally new way of looking at things and I must say that it represents a real breakthrough in one's attunement, just imagine that my eyes are serving God to see himself. That's unbelievable. 

Now if you have already practiced the practices of light whereby you're shunting the light of your brain through the optic nerves and out through the retina and then you have been able to sort of (over arc) that whole process by identifying with divine intelligence, luminous intelligence, instead of your consciousness.  

Then of course your glance will be very significant to you as it is for the Sufis. And so wherever you're walking you feel as though you were thrusting your glance upon all things, like Saladdin, like Aladdin with a lamp, like a torchlight as Murshid said. Wherever he went he was bringing his light.  

So it's a very extraordinary condition to be in. We have done practices with this. If you remember, you identify your, well you place all of your attention in the light of your glance. You identify with those two beams of light of your glance, with closed eyes and when you open your eyes then of course the environment is going to force your eyes into focus so you lose your concentration.  

But then you learn to keep your concentration while you just open your eyelids for a split second and eventually longer and longer and longer and eventually you are able to maintain that sense of your glance while at first the objects seem to be a blur and then gradually you begin to see well what one might call the aura of people or the countenance coming through or whatever. That's whatever is transpiring behind that which appears, you see.  

And when you do that then of course you do find yourself in a transfigured world. But the skill, you have to do it first. You can't just switch, I'm saying it's easy to switch over, you have to do this practice first and then you can switch your consciousness in that other mode.  

It's best to do it in nature. Don't do it in the street where you can be run over, or bump into people. Now it's, one is very satisfied with that state and think that this is it of course. Then all of a sudden you think of the words of the Sufis la ilaha la illa 'llah. It's all one.  

So how can you say God is looking through my glance, if it's all one. Then my glance is the divine glance. And that's why Ibn Arabi says he is the seer and also that through which he sees. That is la ilaha la illa 'llah. It's all one.  

So think in terms of duality, yes. But there comes a time when you get to the next stage. So now, this is what Buddhism says. Buddha is talking about, Buddha himself actually, unclutching. Unclutching consciousness from its content.  

Because as I said in the beginning it's all mixed up. I think I don't I'm mixed up whether I'm the shahid or the witness or whether I'm my psyche or my body. It's all mixed up, you see. My emotions, my thoughts, all mixed up. So uncoupling, unclutching. As you do in your car. So that the mind will continue to idle like your engine will idle, will continue to idle.  

Now this is that stage. This is the Jaburut stage. Now you identify yourself with the witness. Not with your psyche. And what Ibn Arabi says and I think it is Jami who said the same thing, he said let go of imagination. So imagination has taken us so far and at this stage it will stand in your way.  

So the form at this point the form of your etheric body, aura, higher bodies of light, and so on those are only media through which reality is coming through what the Sufis call ayat, meaning these are signs, signals, clues to that reality which we call God, or clues whereby God reveals him/herself to you, but at this stage what Ibn Arabi says is that you know God not through those clues but by God himself. That's a real breakthrough. That's awakening.. 

So as you see this is a very advanced stage. Because now one is not grasping reality, one realizes that one is oneself reality. And that's why when Christ was asked by Pileate what is the truth he said I am the truth, and that's why al Hallaj was crucified because he said ana'l haqq, which means I am the truth.  

So it is a totally different level of thinking altogether, or level of realization altogether. Now one of the clues in order to get to that point is as Pir-o-Murshid said consciousness is really intelligence that is facing an object interfacing with an object and so consciousness is receptive, and it is the way that intelligence is limited by the object of consciousness.  

Now if you downplay your experience of the physical world, your representation of the physical world, and I would say it is there but it is a little bit offset from your consciousness. You can't quite reach it. It is a little bit remote. That's a state which leads to samadhi. So you remember the how the world looks, the physical world looks. You remember people, you remember circumstances, and so on, but let's say the existential state is reduced to memory. It's not there. You remember it.  

And then if you think that your memory is faulty interpretation of it, then your memory loses its grip on you. So its like rather like a dream like when you wake up, and you remember your dream but it doesn't seem so convincing anymore. So at that time when consciousness which is receptive as I say does not have a content then it will revert to its source which is intelligence. Now these are words so we have to see what that means. 

You will find that you have an inborn knowledge and that what you are experiencing is only confirming something that you already know. Or let us say that your inborn knowledge is of the principles of things and your experience is of the way that these principles are activated in practice. So this will give you a clue about the programming behind your life. For example, as I said what are the issues. Now we're talking about something more like the principles rather than the activation of those principles.  


So that's what Ibn Arabi means by knowing God without the devices through which God reveals him/herself to you. So now there's been a gradually shift. I don't know whether you noticed that we started by looking at things from our vantage point, then somehow the notion of God came in and especially at the Malakut level where we by our glorification of God we awakened, aroused qualities in ourselves because we were projecting them upon what we thought was God.  

So that gradually there has been a shift from personal consciousness to divine consciousness. You see, you couldn't do it like that all of a sudden. You couldn't all of a sudden try to get into divine consciousness. We're shifting, we're moving, gradually. But it is true that there is a moment when there is a real quantum leap from one, from the vantage point of consciousness to that of intelligence.  

Some people would say, well this is intuition isn't it. You know something but there is nothing in your perception that could give you any reason to have thought this. It just came to you spontaneously. So the reason for this is because our intelligence is so much part of the intelligence of the universe that we can't divide it. Our consciousness is a clear focalization of the consciousness of the universe.  

But our intelligence is so totally intermeshed that we can't really there is no its not like a fraction of it. And that's why Newton said, I think as God thinks. So I find one of the clues is to think, you see that word God is, we have so many projections in that word God. If you were to use the word universe I find that it's very useful for me to think of like the universe as a being and our body which is the cosmos and thinking and consciousness, and so on and so forth, intelligence.  

And that every fraction of that being has the whole being in them and it's only a matter of realizing at what level and so the universe knows itself. But our knowledge of the universe adds something to the knowledge that the universe has of itself. It's all part of the knowledge that the universe has of itself in the first place.  

And so if you think that way now you are opening yourself to revealed knowledge instead of acquired knowledge. Now this cuts right into a very deep principle that Pir-o-Murshid talks about, the difference between self-sufficiency and acquisition. So in the early stages we will talk about acquisition, first of all from the environment even the potentials that are emerging in you are not quite acquired but they are features of your self-sufficiency but that were not known to you.  

But at this level, the Jabarut level, your knowledge is self-sufficient. It does not depend upon any knowledge that occurred to you from outside. And of course it is linked with your sense of identity.  

So there's been a gradual shift in our sense of identity from body, and etheric body, and body of light and so on and eventually you get to a point when bodiness seems like simply the crystallization of light for example, somehow or matter or somehow the way that energy functions in a certain manner so you don't think the same way any more.  

You think as God thinks because your sense of your individuality has got so much, corresponds so much with God, with the totality that you don't have that clear sense of a boundary between you and other beings and so on.  

Well the consequence that this gives is that when you, remember what we were doing this morning, when you are talking to your mureed you realize that there is no use arguing in the terms of ordinary logic.  

That's one of the reasons why it is counterproductive to have discussions after the Gatha class. Everybody 's trying to make their point and the ego comes in: I'm right and your wrong, and so on and so forth. And really it is, lets say you question your opinion and question the opinion of people doesn't lead you anywhere.  

So we're talking about a kind of insight that doesn't fit into the logic, but you know that that is the way things really are. The fact is that in the course of the descent let us say to the existential state things have got out of order and on the other hand there's what they call all out of disorder principle so that eventually things are trying to get in order within that disorder.  

I don't know if you follow what I'm saying. So Jabarut if you remember what I said the other day, Jabarut originally is the name for the bonesetter, the chiropractor who is putting the bones back into place. At this level our thinking gets put into place again where it was distorted at the existential level. And there is a saying of Murshid I think I quoted it in the developmental stages where he says how at some point everything seems to be out of place like there's the wrong person in the right place and the right person in the wrong place and everything seems to be higgledy piggledy. It just doesn't make any sense, you see.  

And but there is a process whereby this all comes into place and at this level that's where you feel in your life, you see that your life is coming into place. Situations that didn't seem to fit into make sense to you, now you see that they make sense in the higher context, in the lower context they don't sense. But in this higher context, yes, they make sense, not to our ordinary logic.  

So you don't have to change the outer circumstances, but you have an insight now that your pupil, if you are a teacher and that pupil is a pupil of course you see that in the pupil and the pupil doesn't see it in their life. And the pupil can't see it. Its like those people in the cave of Plato who couldn't see that the sun was in the sky and that the sky was blue and the grass was green. They can't see it.  

So there is a saying that we spend our time worrying about things that never happen.  

Okay. Can you just observe a moment of silence, and then we will continue. Because this requires of us to experience rather than figure it out with our minds. So think of what revelation means to you instead of acquired knowledge. Revealed knowledge.  

Abd al-Jaffar an- Niffari, who lived in the desert and came from time to time to his home where his daughter was living, and he would say things that didn't seem to make sense, and they ultimately, the ultimate sense. He wrote that book called Wakif & Mukhatabat.  

So what he is saying is that one is in a threshold state, a state of waiting, between two stations, that is between one point of view and another point of view. That's what I'm saying is that now you downplay that point of view and then you highlight the other point of view, but until you are able to highlight that other point of view and that other point of view is revealed to you, you see, and the first point of view is the point of view you have acquired so you are at the threshold and you know that the only way in which you can access the knowledge that is revealed is to let go of your acquired knowledge, that's fana.  

But what if you find yourself in a hole then because you have given up your acquired knowledge and you still you can't count that that divine revelation is going to be revealed to you if you can bargain with the price that you pay by giving up your acquired knowledge.  

Now you can't play chess with God. I think it was Einstein who said that. So you are in a hole. right, that's the threshold situation. And it is doubt that is your protection against your acquired knowledge.  

So think of doubt as a very positive thing. Because otherwise you would continue to believe in your acquired knowledge. So you're going through the dark night of understanding, but the beauty is that if you in your mind you are waiting for a further perspective to be revealed to you then there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel.  

Now otherwise you are in the dark tunnel and there is no hope at all, you are in the labyrinth. So you don't know yet what is going to be revealed to you. You cannot pay the highest price to get that revelation by giving up your acquired knowledge. So you can pay in vain.  

And I think that one is tested in one's faith, so it is beyond knowledge, it's beyond knowledge. So that the dark night of understanding leads to the deepest dark night of the night of St. John of the Cross. Where he is not just doubting his understanding but he is doubting himself. He is doubting God, he is doubting the most fundamental things upon which one rests in the sense of meaningfulness, or I'm talking about the splendor behind the universe, and so on. All of these things, you question them.  

And that is of course very similar to the abandonment of Christ on the cross. He wasn't just abandoned in his understanding. He was abandoned deep down, very deep, trust in God, actually.  

And so we are talking about, we're meeting a something that is very essential in our lives. We are afraid of it really, and sometimes people simply flip into the dark night and others are, well if you hang on to your acquired knowledge then you are okay. If you give up your acquired knowledge then of course you can flip into the dark night. It's there, it's like a hole that you are wanting to avoid, because it takes a lot of faith to believe that you can be pulled out of it.  

And so when you know that, you will understand that your pupil is doubtful. You will understand that your pupil doubts your words, doubts your teaching, is disenchanted, will try to seek teaching elsewhere. You can expect that. It's, you have to honor the doubt in people's mind. The only argument that I thought might have helped someone who was in the dark night was the fact in saying, well supposing that this disenchantment in the meaningfulness of life and the splendor of life and so on, supposing that it is true and that you just missed out on it. It would be a pity. You would have missed out on your real chance, so give it a chance.  

Now its not a question of believing in God, like the concept one makes of God when one realizes that it, as Pir-o-Murshid said, the concept you make of God is not God. It's just concept. Or the way that you like God to be.  

But so to abandon that dependence upon one's projection upon God, and that includes one's dependence upon one's projection about the teacher, is the acid test and it is only if you have accepted that test that you will, you awaken do you reach the state of awakening, you will find what Buddha called freedom, freedom from conditioning, the conditioning of our mind, the conditioning of our emotions, the conditioning of our behavior and so on.  

So you can't help your pupil by arguments, that's for sure, when it comes through those very deep soul-searchings. You can help the pupil by your ecstasy. Because that is something you can grip onto. That's why the people in India they go to see this rishi. They, he's in silence, or she, of course, just lost in ecstasy, doesn't say anything and so he's not doing what we're doing, I'm doing now, showing you that there's acquired knowledge and revealed knowledge and all that or creativity or anything like that.  

Just somehow another dimension, just a sense that there is something deeper than the humdrum of our lives, than our understanding, and our emotional issues. Something that is intangible and that Buddha called the non-samsaric, the extra-samsaric, because it was a wheel you see. And then there's this totally other dimension. It cannot has no room in the wheel.  

And that's why Buddha makes a very clear distinction between this become and this non-become. He says that become, situation of become, does not lead to the non-become. So at a certain moment there is a total break.  

Now if you look at the dhikr, now we are going to go into the study of the dhikr in the course of this retreat. The wheel is of course that circular motion that we're making, and the way out is when the head is, rebounds upwards, so it's a vertical line instead of the circle.  

So that's why I say, now we're talking about a vertical line instead of a horizontal or circular line. Ibn Arabi talks about voyages in celestial and super-celestial spheres and I would say it is a venture into super-logical modes of the functioning of the mind and super-personal emotions, super-personal emotions.  

Like for example you're distraught because you've gone through a crisis in your life and the person you loved has abandoned you and you can't see any purposes in life anymore and you're in despair and then somehow if you go to a church and you hear this organ and there is this altar and this priest and so on and somehow it's a different emotion.  

That's a healing (inaudible). It's, that's transfer, from dependence upon a person to dependence upon God. Or then the intermediary stages depends upon a role model, a teacher, whatever.  

And then eventually, the call it dependence upon God, but you see, that's still dependence, and so there is still that what I'm talking about now where there's this crisis where you can't even depend upon God, you see. That's the only way to be free.  

God bless you. 

(end of tape) 

AUG 16, 1997		Tape 09

We can all carry the ecstasy of this music, and I also remember him describing to us children three styles of music, the popular style, and then the little more classical, and then more classical and eventually the very spiritual music. And I remember my sister was in tears, Noor was in tears. So it touches one very deeply. So I find it very conducive to meditation, and as you know, the Sufis use meditation as an introduction to their meditation.  

Well, as we advance in the more advanced stages of what I call the developmental stages, I find that it becomes just too metaphysical to try to express it in words, and therefore, it's just got to be much more experiential. Otherwise, we lose ourselves in concepts, however much sense they make.  

Now you might have noticed that we have been transiting from the personal vantage point to the divine consciousness, and the question to ask is, well how to do it, because these are words otherwise, like for example, if when I ask you how you feel, well then you will say yes I feel cold or hot, or I feel thirsty, or I feel sad, or I feel happy or I'm anxious, worried, or I have a nice mood of peace, and so on, but I have a toothache, a headache, whatever.  

So now when we say, yes, but of course you know that that personal vantage point is really a focal point and the whole of divine consciousness is present within it. Well that is true, but most people don't feel it, and if I were to ask you what does it feel, divine consciousness, I think we would be trying without will.  

We try to get into the divine consciousness, and although we went through that phase when we realized that we couldn't use it, get there through our will, but through our emotion. You get again stuck in your emotions, as I said it starts with bewondering, bemusing, and that's true.  

We may be disgruntled, disenchanted with life, but when we, there is such beauty, so it is our disenchantment will make it very difficult to grasp that beauty, but still it transpires. Sometimes one, you know when one is looking for something one sees it, if one is not looking for something (inaudible).  

One's disenchantment is going to stand in the way of discovering it, and if you think that it is transpiring behind that which appears then of course it makes it, the search, a little bit easier, and all the things we've been saying this morning about getting into a transfigured world, especially here, you can just do it. You can find yourself in a transfigured world. I think sometimes we have these magical moments when we are all transfigured.  

But now you see, we need help to be able to make that transit. And so I think the best way for me to now communicate what I think we need to start exploring is to share with you my own retreat, and especially the retreats I have done in India, I did in India, but of course the recent ones also. My retreat. Which are the same as your retreats, I am sure that there are a lot of similarities.  

And for that I think that we will have to go into the practice of the dhikr. And really go very deeply into the practice of the dhikr. So as we already said this morning, that that circular motion of the head is like the samsaric wheel that Buddha talks about.  

So if you were to just keep on whirling your head, you would get into what one calls a vicious circle. It keeps on repeating itself, and nature works that way sometimes, like keep on repeating itself. And then you find that in nature there are quantum leaps, sudden change, and that makes for evolution.  

Now, in addition, I need to say that of course this wheel is, it does expand, you see. Instead of thinking of it as a circle as I used to do, I think of a spiral, even a spiral of light, and that's the way to get out of your personal encapsulated vantage point and include in that vantage point wider and wider horizons. But that is the first procedure, the first way of getting out of the constraint of the circle, but the other is to make a break in the continuity.  

You find that in music, in Bach for example, sometimes the music is, well like for example, what they call harmonic progression. So it's not circular, its progressing, but still its, there's a pattern that's set up, and then all of a sudden he stops and he breaks the pattern, you see.  

Now if you look at your life, you will realize that there is of course a tendency for it to become a pattern. Same things repeat themselves, and so on, and so on. And so what they don't call the potentials that lie in wait as I say in the seedbed of our being, we need to break the circular motion and break the sequence, and so there are two ways of doing it.  

 First of all, break the sequence, that is the practice of Kasab which we haven't practiced but I am sure you are familiar with it, it is the practice that is called pranayama in yoga.  

So let's just do that first, just to have some sense of what that means. Now when you are, if you were to inhale left, and exhale right, without holding your breath in-between, then as you inhale left you can think of the past and as you breathe out right then you think of the way that the past continues to condition the future. That's what they call determinism.  

Now what we do is to hold our breath. Well there is a transit between the inhaling and the exhaling but we emphasize that transit by holding our breath. Now see if you hold your breath after inhaling, now if you brought about a break in the continuity of the causal chain, and so you have created conditions which are favorable to the emergence of what I call a new dispensation that is from the seed.  

The seed is beginning to mutate now instead of just recycling itself in the plant. So we've done that before, but I just want to point out the implication of these practices. Otherwise you're just doing the practices without seeing how it connects with our growth, how it can foster our, the growth of our personality.  

Now when you are doing the dhikr, then as I said, if you are just continuing to do the circle, then its circular as one says. However, now your head comes down, your head turns towards your solar plexus, you inhale, so that is the same as when one holds one's breath as in Kasab, in pranayama.  

And so you must think that at that moment you are opening a door so that the potentialities, the potentials of your being, are able to emerge in your personality. So you are recalling them, and they are trying to come through, and they are even endowed with what the Sufis call the nostalgia to manifest through you, Ishq Allah.  

And so you have to capture them, otherwise they will be stillborn. They're just like the crocuses that break through the snow. That's a precious moment, when they're just breaking through.  

That moment, that transit moment, is very important. The threshold. I talked about Niffari this morning. I talked about that state, the threshold state. And the beauty is that, it points to the need to suspend one's will so that the universe can function now without our intervening with our will.  

The universe, nature has a way of self-organizing itself without our doing anything about it, but we are entering into, well, paradoxes, or let's say ways of thinking that would seem contradictory to our ordinary mind. That is letting things happen, or encouraging nature to do it, and taking initiative, and both of them seem contradictory to our, we think we have to do either one or the other.  

So it's very difficult to see, well, there are, sometimes one can show that in fact the potentialities arouse, emerge in, surface in one and then having captured them we have to customize them. So that is where we take over from what I call the divine will. We take over from the way that nature is able to self-organize itself.  

But I think it is important for me to point out that the potentials in our being are the way the divine programming is being customized in our individual, at our individual scale and so that is what you experience as your head comes down in the dhikr, illa, but when your head comes up again, then you are able to get into the program irrespective of your person, of your individuality.  

And that would be the best description of what we mean by lahut, the next stage. We call it the archetypes or the principles or whatever. Now, as I say, it is getting too intellectual. We have to be careful. We have to stay with our experience. 

So you know it is not my intention, I think we have to refer not just to the dhikr but to the Muslim prayers, and its certainly not my intention to make you into good Muslims but there is something there that is, well I've seen Buddhists bow and stand up again throughout the night at (in bodia) but still it's different, let's say.  

Let's say that we cannot advance in the further stages, at least in the perspective of Sufism, without the notion of God, without God-consciousness. And on the other hand, God is a notion, until God is a reality. And we must be very careful not to fool ourselves. We say God and as Pir-o-Murshid what we think say, we're talking about God, we're not talking about our concepts of God.  

And consequently, what happens in the Muslim prayer is that when one is bowing, one is prostrating and one's head touches the ground, there is an act of surrender of one's will. And as we already said, you cannot obtain these planes through your will, so there is a need at a certain moment of suspended your incentive, and that applies also to what I said this morning, our acquired wisdom or knowledge.  

And our personal consciousness. So, that is that threshold state which the Sufis call kemal. A kemal state is a state where there is a transition from one state to another, a sudden transition. There's a point where we mean quantum leap. For example, a very typical case of kemal state is if you have a pail of water and you were to whirl it and if you whirl it fast enough when it is upside down water will not come down. So that is a kemal state. Or if a bicycle, you slow down the bicycle, and at a certain point you can't continue to maintain your balance. That's a kemal state.  

And so the kemal state is the state that favors the transit from one state to another. Otherwise you stay in the state in which you were. So you have to go through that phase, that dark night, as it is called when you don't understand. And in Christianity it was Martin Luther who called it significatio passiva, passage of significance. I am thought by God instead of I am thinking God. Passive.  

So then, now, so we have surrendered our will, but we have also allowed our personal consciousness to fade out and that, so we are creating circumstances favorable to the divine consciousness taking over in the place of one's personal consciousness as the head comes up in the course of the dhikr. 

Now as you remember what I said is that, you see we don't know God of course. There are two things of Ibn Arabi that seem contradicted, but as I say, at this level, you can expect, if you make a statement it can only be contradicted by its complementary, there is no way of saying something that hasn't got its complementary.  

So I think it was Ibn Arabi and I think it was Jami also who said since the ephemeral is, the activation of the eternal it is by the eternal that one knows oneself. I know that this is a little bit metaphysical, but let's see this.  

In the Muslim prayer one is imagining that one is glorifying God you see, so first of all one prostrates and then somehow one redresses one's body or one stands up and at that time one is praying, as one says, one is glorifying and as I said before it starts with bewondering but somehow one is projecting a picture of what one imagines God to be or would like God to be. And one can only make that picture of oneself. And when I say a picture I don't mean the physical image.  

We were working with the forms in the intermediary world, but now we are working with qualities, and hence the importance of the wazaif because they are nomenclature that stands for qualities.  

So one is saying God is the most high, and God is great, and God is merciful, and God is beautiful, and God is majestic, and so on and so forth. Actually one is trying to ascribe to that picture that one is making of God qualities that are present within oneself but in a limited fashion so that somehow as I said the other day, there is something in us that all, our capacity to all this imagine, infinity and eternity, and perfection, and so on.  

So somehow we have that ability to starting with a quality that we experience in ourselves and in other people, for example we have a certain compassion but a certain amount of compassion but not very much and perhaps we have a certain amount of power but not very much and so on.  

So we imagine God to be all powerful and all compassionate and so on and so forth and so what we are really doing is we are seeing our qualities as the exemplars of perfect qualities. There's a correspondence here, and that correspondence, there's a saying in the Quran which is which says this, which says, there is nothing in existence that does not have its archetype, with us that's in the Quran , but actually at the level of lahut which is the archetypal level. (inaudible - something happened to the microphone). 

But what we're saying is that it is made of devices, devices. You remember, I talked about E.T., devices, devices to which God reveals himself to us. And then if you remember what I said is that at the Jabarut state God reveals him/herself to us without devices, and so when you are doing the dhikr, then the devices are, no, when you are doing the wazifas, the devices are the qualities, but when you are doing the dhikr there are no devices. I don't know if you didn't get the beginning of that sentence, I don't know how to catch up again. It's all very confusing.  

I'll say it again, when you're doing the practice of the wazifas, well first of all, when you start meditating and you're enchanted by nature and so on by lovely people and so on then you could consider that those are devices through which God reveals himself to you and that makes you enchanted. 

Now if you think that the form of your subtle body is a device through which God reveals him/herself to you then you are even more enchanted than by seeing a beautiful flower. Because it is much more in your very self that God is revealing himself to you through you. There is the word of Ibn Arabi, God reveals himself to you through you. 

But then at a certain point God reveals himself to you without any device. And so at that time the wazifas don't do it for you anymore, because even the wazifas are devices through which God reveals him/herself to you through the qualities in your being not the form of your being, but the qualities in your being, but now this is beyond that, and that's why the dhikr represents a whole further development, stage.  

And I think that is probably a reason why Pir-o-Murshid did not want to give the dhikr in the early stages of the mureeds, only much later when they have reached that point when they have been working the wazifa and saw how they see how wazifas are something, a device, as I say, something to hang onto, but then the dhikr you reach beyond, you see.  

So at first, it's true, that at first, as I said, you are projecting upon God in the first, how can I say when I was first doing the dhikr one is still projecting upon God the qualities and arousing these qualities in oneself. But I think that is this first stage, and corresponding with what one says subhan allah (arabl asm), and the second one then says subhan allah (rabl) allah. I think that is when one is reaching beyond the qualities. (recording seems to have stopped and restarted here)  

A circle. So it is only in the second dhikr that you are getting into exactly what happens in the Muslim prayers and as a matter of fact in the advanced dhikr when does just the second dhikr.  

So this was just an introduction, but if we want this to be real, rather than just my talking to you then I think we need to do it. And so I would like you to share in the retreat as I'm doing, maybe you're doing the same thing as I say. I don't know. But I can only say that it is of the most utter importance.  

You see, for one thing we choose a place which is in the solitude which is protected, and a protected environment so one isn't exposed to all the hustle bustle of life unless one is a dervish, and then one does it right in the middle of everything. And perhaps you have seen some of the Muslims doing their prayers right in the corridor of an airport. People passing by them. They've got to do it, so they do it.  

But of course it's a wonderful experience to, well to take a sabbatical from the world, on a retreat, and find yourself in a place which you come back to all the time, that's where you are doing your retreat. And then you see if you're trying to reach samadhi you are sitting cross-legged, but if you are doing, if you are a dervish if you are in the Sufi way, then you are kneeling because if you're sitting cross-legged you are the center of the world.  

You've seen these pictures of a swami sitting on top of the world. You know they are VIP, whereas here the VIP is God and that's where the buck stops, and so you're they're kneeling and so you are not the center. Now of course I would like to do it with you but I have to be careful, my blood pressure goes up if I start bobbing up and down, but most of you are younger than me... 

(portion of tape blank) 

little bit of, so I don't know, do it and I will do it myself, but of course I enjoy doing it but, so I won't do it as drastically and violently as you do, or as you may do. When we were in Germany, that was in the '60s of course a long time ago, we were all young then.  

And so we used to do a fantastic, a real dervish dhikr that is we used to say la ilaha, we would whirl, illa 'llah, we would fall to the ground, we'd collapse like a sack of potatoes, and then we'd rise without using our hands, using our feet, rise and say illa and then 'llah and then we'd do this gesture here, hu. Incidentally, hu then that is the action of God upon you.  

So your glorification is as you rise, first of all, you surrender your personal will and then you rise as you glorify and then there's that magical moment when, huuuuuuu. And you say hu with a totally different voice than the voice that you use when you're saying illa 'llah, or then Allah hu. For example, Allah huuuuuu, Allah huuuuuu, Allah huuuuuu. You see, that's the dervish way of doing it. 

The word Allah means the object of our adoration. That's what it etymologically, that's what is means. So I'll see if I can (inaudible - shifting position?) 

Now, one must kneel on one's heels and might find it a bit difficult. So this is where I have to accept that I am 81. It's very difficult to accept. So I can see that I can't do it. I'm sorry. But you can do it, most you. I think you can do it. You don't have to do it. Please don't try.  

Yeah, okay. The spirit is young but the body is old. So now, I'll do it sitting. So, well we can just say the word illa, well let us start with the whole dhikr, but then, wait a moment, no, because if you're doing dhikr then you have to sit cross-legged. The second dhikr you're kneeling. So we'll do the second dhikr.  

So when you bow you say illa, but saying the words there's no point, that's the danger of repetition, that Christ was talking about. There's no point. I've done that. 20,000 times a day. But what's the point, you're just giving yourself a real bang on the head.  

No, its like you really have to think this is beyond my will so I'm inviting the universe to self-organize itself and emerge as me and as you then move upwards, so it's illa 'llah, and remember that it's not illa Allah, one does not say the first a of Allah. So its illa ''llah, and there are two l's, illa , there are two l's in illa, illa 'llah.  

And now the response is hu, and that is why you turn your head back down towards your heart center and don't keep it up because that would be awakening in the samadhi state, beyond the world, beyond existence, but the divine response, you must think the divine response is that having glorified God, God reveals him/herself to you in the measure of your capacity.  

So this is the as I say the revealed knowledge instead of the acquired knowledge. So if you think of that, illa 'llah hu. Turn towards your heart, hu. illa ''llah hu, illa 'llah hu.... 

(blank portion of tape) 

Very much later, when they have reached that point when they have been working the wazifa, and somehow they see that wazifas are something, a device, as I say, something to hang on to. But then the dhikr, you reach beyond, you see.  

So at first, it's true, but at first as I said, you are projecting upon God in the first, how can I say, when one is first doing the dhikr one is still projecting upon God qualities and arousing these qualities in oneself, but I think that is the first stage, and corresponding with, as one says subhan Allah asm, rabl asm, which means rabl asm. And the second one says subhan Allah rabl Allah, I think that is when one is reaching beyond the qualities. 

Okay, so I don't know whether what I'm saying makes sense to you. I hope it does. But one has to do it, otherwise it's just words so I'd like us to do it again so: illa 'llah hu, illa 'llah hu.... 

So every now and again I stop repeating the dhikr so its not just repetition, and I want to make quite sure that I am concentrating upon what I'm doing instead of just repeating the words. So then I stop repeating it, and remember that when you are bowing you are getting into a kemal state so that you are surrendering your will, your notion of yourselves, your acquired knowledge, your personal emotions.  

So you are in that threshold state before God reveals him/herself, or his/her intention to you. And then it is your act of glorification that establishes some kind of contact with God whom you could also consider as the pinnacle of your own being and so you are departing from your personal consciousness and you are entering into the divine consciousness.  

So at first it seems like you are asking God something, to reveal him/herself and he/her is responding, but in a more advanced state your consciousness is reaching beyond it's limitation and becomes the divine consciousness. Because it is not other than your consciousness, because otherwise, you can't say la ilaha, it's all one, divine consciousness other than your consciousness. That is the exoteric dhikr, the Muslims, or the prayer the Muslims, that God is revealing him/herself to them.  

And now you think that that knowledge is already within you and it is being revealed because you are not attached to your own knowledge, or your own opinion, or your own point of view. So what I would suggest is that you do it without saying the words. And so you exhale as you bow, illa, and then inhale as you think the words 'llah and then hold the breath as you concentrate on your heart center. 

Now one is asking God to reveal his/her intention because one has given up one's personal knowledge and one is hoping that one will receive insight from the divine point of view, and the extraordinary thing about this all, is that God reveals his/her presence, and the knowledge ... 

(side two)  

...a presence. One thinks sometimes, I wish a person were present and so one attaches all kinds of aspects of that person to the presence of that person, his physical presence, or her physical presence, or talking to him or whatever, or her. But what is meant by the presence has nothing to do with qualities whatsoever.  

That is the secret of the mystic. To make God present. That is something that Catholics do in the holy communion when they make Christ present by taking the host, then holding that host in their heart. So it is something of the same nature.  

It's in your heart, the divine presence. Like carrying something very precious, of which you have the charge and you need to protect it. So there is a picture of Christ his heart is a frame and there is a lamp around it to protect it and he is protecting the lamp with his hands in the storm, so that's the sense of carrying within oneself the divine presence. In the Jewish faith, it is called shekinah, the divine presence.  

Now if this is real, if it is really, it's not just because you've been repeating the dhikr a lot, but somehow you, you get into it very deeply, then wherever you go you are carrying this presence, and people feel it. You don't have to say anything. 

So that is the very advanced dhikr when one just says hu. Hu. Hu... 

I think of the word of al Hallaj when he said, thou art present between my eyelids and in the cockles of my heart. So you know when you are in love that person is always present, and the presence of that person does not necessarily mean, well it doesn't mean the physical presence because that person isn't there physically, and at first you think of the qualities of that person, but that is tasawwuf, that's still the qualities, it's not an image but it's the qualities, also forms, and then finally there is just the presence without any qualities, irrespective of the qualities.  

And that's why the dhikr is not talking about the qualities, its beyond the qualities. Its getting in touch with Beethoven through his music or then getting in touch with Beethoven and then understanding his music.  

There is the word of Niffari who says, more important than the known is the knower. And at the Jabarut level you discover yourself to be the knower.  

So perhaps, well we wish for the representatives to have gone through several retreats as a matter of fact and perhaps you know that state when you are coming out of a retreat back into the world, and there is something in you that is so significant that you can't quite make that bridge with the world, and yet well you can bring it wherever you go.  

You know, it is very difficult to say what I'm trying to say. That's the divine presence. And what the mureeds want is to feel the divine presence coming through you because they have difficulty in finding it, because what we did now was well something that would take months and years of work in order to reach that point when it really jells, it really happens. It's not just in the mind, it really happens.  

So I hear that we're being called. The bugle is sounding. 

God bless you, now. (end of tape)  

AUG 17, 1997		Tape 10

Yes, good morning. 

We're trying to explore ways of shifting our consciousness from the personal vantage point to the Divine vantage point, which can't be done by trying to do it.  

And even if one says that they, let's say the consciousness of the whole universe is present within our vantage point. If we're not aware of it, then it doesn't mean anything. So we want to make this real. 

If you will notice that is, that (one's?) sense of (vision?) you must know that one's always seeing things from two anti-polar vantage points: one's personal and the Divine vantage point, which you could call the overview that the universe has of itself.  

And then one learns how to extrapolate between those two.  

So the consequence is, with this bi-polarity, you have a kind of dynamics that you would not have if you were limited to - you were trying to reach beyond - your personal vantage point. 

You can't do it yourself. As I said, you can't pull yourself up towards your boot straps. 

So for this morning meditation, let us use an analogy. So we'll be proceeding step-by-step.  

So imagine that there's this wonderful being whom you don't know; would like to know. And who is revealing him/her self all the different dimensions of his/her being to you. And at first using devices. And then gradually you get more and more into the consciousness of that being, with the being of that being and so on. You a, it's different steps.  

I could even think about some of the great rishis whom I have met in the Himalayas; I meditated with in the Himalayas or dervishes in (Ajmir) or then, of course, Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan.  

So that's the first step. And then afterwards you try to imagine what it's like for this to be God instead of a person you, you can sit, in whose presence you can be seated.  

As what first, I remember when I was wandering in the Himalayas in search of great beings, as my Father advised me to do. And I would be impressed by the extraordinary majesty and beauty of these beings.  

One, we're talking about analogies. So we don't have to be limited by any particular person but there was an actual Shivananda's Ashram.  

There was an ashram with a not very old guru. They say that he was 108. And everyone went to Shivananda, but hardly anybody went to this and this was the real person. And I used to go and sit. He was silent. He was a Muni. I used to go and sit in his presence.  And all I had to do was look into his eyes. And so he was revealing to me the Divine Splendor through the light of his eyes.  

So it's two ways. It's not just that you are observing, but there's a revelation at the other end. 

So consider that for example, the physical world is the body of this great being. And so this great being is revealing to you his/her majesty or beauty through, in the forms of the physical world, the beauty of nature.  

Now two things, according to the Sufis: majesty and beauty, Jalal and Jamal.  

So the forms of the world, devices through which that being is revealing some kind of clues about something that is beyond those clues. And so according to the Sufis and that is the Divine Splendor, which doesn't have a form but is transpiring through that which appears.  

So at a next stage then, that would be the - so this first stage is the (Nazut?) stage and the second stage would be the (Awrah?) stage.  

You are looking at his face or her face. It could be a woman rishi. And now all of a sudden he/she is revealing his splendor beyond the features of his/her face. And of course it's in (complementary?) more beautiful.  

So that is what Christ did on the Mount (Tabol?) in the scene of the transfiguration.  

So you're wandering in nature and all of a sudden you find yourself in that transfigured state that I mentioned yesterday. And it can happen if you are just in the crest of that which transpires behind that which appears.  

Then you will, as I say, downplay the device and get into a more subtle device; (that) is Latif, Ya Latif and Batin. Inside, you turn inside somehow. Your consciousness is not turned outside but somehow it's reaching reality from inside.  

And so now you see the countenance coming through the face of that wonderful being. And it expresses much more richly and much more adequately a majesty and the beauty and the, well the splendor of that being and then the majesty and beauty of the body. So that would be (Arwah?).  

So Ya Batin, Ya Latif.  

Somehow that rishi is trying to help you to discover yourself through him/her instead of him/herself being the one who is revealing himself.  

He, well the fact is that it's a little more complex. Because you are really him/her. So he/she is now revealing him/herself to you through the very subtle form of your subtle body, your (etheric) body. And a kind of mirroring effect. Because as is said in the Qoran, "Where ever you look, you turn your glance, is the face of God." So it's the one face in multiple facets. And your subtle face is one of the facets, but it's dynamic instead of static. As I already said. So its a, keep on changing. So in a sense he/she is revealing him/herself to you through yourself.  

So the Sufis say, I know God through the way that God reveals himself to me. In the very form in which he reveals himself - to me. So that's (Mithal?)  

And for this to happen, the potentialities, latencies lying wait in the seed bed of your personality and need to be aroused by, and you cannot realize them by your will, but if you are aware that -that other part of your being which is the Divine pull is trying to reveal himself to you through the features of your own becoming - the unfolding of your potentialities. It will arouse those potentialities. Now that's Mithal.  

The Sufis would say "Well, I know myself through the form through which God knows himself, which is the form through which God reveals himself. Well, the form through which God discovers himself, which is the form through which he reveals himself to you. So there's the two poles interacting.  

And so at this stage you are so very deeply turned within that all that remains of the physical world is a memory, but as we have already seen the interpretation of the physical scene is misleading. So you consider your memory with caution and consequently the scene of the physical world does restore to your memory, does not have the same kind of impact on your consciousness as it would if you really believed that it was the way it looked. 

So in your meditation, now the world is still there but it is, you've grasped it at the periphery, in the twilight of your consciousness. But you can't really. It's offset from the center of your consciousness like a peripheral vision.  

Now what has happened this teacher, this rishi, or whatever, this great being realizes that that device, which is form, has its limitations. Will allow something to transpire, but still that's a; so, now at this point he/she is revealing him/herself to you, which is actually revealing yourself to yourself. And through the devices of the qualities of your being rather than the form.  

And so in order to do that you have to let go, let's say you have to downplay of course, any notion of form. That is you have to give up the act of imagination, which has been so useful so far.  

You will find that the only way in which this revelation of the qualities in your being can take place is because now your not only enthused by your interface with this wonderful being but somehow you're moved by an act of, that we call glorification. That is you're really very deeply shattered in your soul. You're not just perfunctory admiration for something that you value, but somehow you're very deeply moved by a, you realize that this being has much more than just the beauty and majesty or the whatever. And you see that in fact what you admire in this being is really, for example, his/her incredible compassion, his/her truthfulness, his/her peace, his/her joy, so on. All those qualities that we find predicated by the, those names of God we call the wazifa, wazaif. That's what you are now trying to see in this being. And this being can only reveal to you his/her qualities because they match qualities in yourself. Now there's a mirroring effect as I say. So what this being is doing to you is revealing yourself to yourself by revealing himself/herself to you through the devices of his/her qualities.  

So we're not talking about form anymore. We're talking about being. The being of God, which is like when you want to get to know a person. Yes, get to know their body, their thinking, perhaps even their emotion. But deeper still you start getting to know their being. And that's what you love, their being, beyond their external aspects.  

And so the Sufis say, "I know myself through the knowledge that God has of himself through me." I know myself through the knowledge that God has of himself through me. In other words, God knows himself eternally in the principals of his being, but the existential condition adds something to that knowledge of the principals. Exactly like for example, variations on a theme in music would add something to what was already, seemed already there in the theme. And so this is a second (dura?) form of knowledge that God acquires by discovering himself as you. And the consequences that you discover him as you. Coming through you.  Him/her coming through you.  

You see you can't discover yourself, but yourself is revealed to you by - well it gives you access into the Divine way of knowing.  We've already practiced this. Because if you remember, what we did is we tried to get into the consciousness of a person. And then we tried to see. So that means we tried to see how, what it would be like to be that person. And then we tried to see your, ourselves through the eyes of that being. So now this is what we're doing in the case of, with God, we're trying to see ourselves as seen by God. But there's more to it than that because as a situation whereby God discovers himself in himself in us. Not just in us because we are him/her in a derived fashion. Just like the variation is somehow the theme, but has been derived from it.  

So you see that, because we hear these rather simplistic views like, "I want to know myself. I want to know who I am". You know, you can't know who you are by, through your own eyes. That's why St. Francis said, "I think I'm looking at the world, but the world is looking at me." But of course what the Sufis say it goes further, because the universe is discovering itself by actuating itself as me. And further the act whereby I discover the universe in me. So you see there's a sort of an interaction.  

So what this being is revealing to you is now the qualities of his/ her being. As I say, it could be compassion. It could be splendor, of course. It could be truthfulness. It could be joy.  It could be peace. All the qualities that you can imagine: greatness, subtlety, Latif all kind of different aspects, the judge and all those qualities.  

Then so he is really revealing himself to you by you. But not by your form. And that, if you can think of that then and do the wazifas as you repeat the wazifas and before you start repeating the wazifas, just try to get clear in your mind that that's what is happening. You are not developing a quality, you are just, a quality is being revealed to you. 

So, that corresponds to the Malakut level, celestial sphere. God is revealing to you your celestial nature, which is your true being within its defilement and regardless of its defilement, which is much more authentically what God is than his/her form. Like a being is much more than the form, than the body of that being or even the subtle body. So that's the Malakut level. So at this level all the, all of us (e fast?) are functional.  

And what you can do is represent yourself a face to illustrate each wazifa, a countenance to illustrate each wazifa. The countenance of Ya Qadr is very different from the countenance of Ya Qaher or of Ya Qaddus or Ya Hayy. Everyone is different.  

And if you like to venture a little further, by personifying these qualities, you could say that each of these qualities embodies the being of an angel. So there's an angel of power and there's an angel of majesty and there's an angel of joy and an angel of peace and so on.  

And one can even go further and say that we inherit from this celestial level of reality. And all the way have lost our connection with it. Or at least we're not aware of it. It suffices to have been exposed to a situation of (de ja vues?) in order to reconnect. It's as though something's happening at one level of our being that the other level doesn't know. And sometimes we have an intuition about it but that it's a, we find it difficult to extrapolate between the two levels. We tend to toggle between them but we find it very difficult to a, and that is something that we learn to do, of course.  

Now, of course, you do remember that the access to this level is innocence, which one could interpret as ingenue, which I said is not the same thing as ( ) naivety. But still it is, well its being absolutely authentic, (germane) with the consequence that one cannot use any guile or strategy to protect oneself. So one becomes as a child, extremely vulnerable. That's the only access to discover this level of your being which is being revealed to you in response to your glorification.  

So that is in the Muslim prayer when one has prostrated. So one has given up not only one's will but also one's self-image. And then one's celestial being is revealed to one in its splendor and magnificence and glory. So that one is in a state of (hawol) which means ecstasy, the Sufis call it intoxication. And Pir-O-Murshid calls it the wine of the Divine Sacrament. 

So it is within this (sortilege) that the real true core of your being, which is immaculate within its distortion, is revealed to you - which is the being of God. And so that's how you're beginning to get more and more into the Divine consciousness instead of your personal consciousness. If you thought you could know it, you could reach it; it wouldn't be the Divine consciousness it would be your consciousness. That's the beauty of this whole paradigm. 

And you know this being, or you could think of a rishi or then you could think of God him/herself, is inviting you to see things from his/her point of view. That is inviting you to align your consciousness as the witness. Sha'hid the witness with His/Her consciousness, the Divine witness.  

And so you remember that we encountered this yesterday when we started by enjoying walking in the nature. And then we found ourselves in a transfigured state. And then we thought that we were the eyes through which God sees, the lens. And then finally we found that our glance was the Divine Glance. So that's the way.  Those are the transitional steps leading to the point where the, that Great Being is inviting you to see things through His/Her eyes. And you realize that your eyes, your glance is his/her glance. But had to been so further down of course. And so greatly diminished that one had lost sight of what that a, the Divine vision is. So this is Jabarut.  

But what the Sufis say is that now God invites you to get to know him without any devices. So its not, there's no form. There's no qualities. It's beyond the qualities, just consciousness. And you see when consciousness has been voided of its object. That is your not conscious of a physical perception and your not conscious of a mental conception. Consciousness will return into its ground, which is intelligence, as Pir-O-Murshid says.  

In Sufism the word intelligence is (Archal) but its not a wazifa so the closest we can get to it is, Ya Habir instead of Ya Alim. Ya Alim is the wisdom that one gains as part of their acquired knowledge and Habir is a very super knowledge that is already written right into your intelligence. And that is corroborated by your experience to some extent.  

Now you can well imagine that things look very different from the Divine point of view to your point of view. And that is why actually it is so hard. Shahabadin did say this, but it was  (Natcha din cuva) that said it originally, he said, "You thought that you were the witness, but the real witness in you is the witness in the heavens."  

So how do angels see humans? How do humans appear to them? I mean, I'm not talking about physically, but a the kind of judgement of the angel is based upon a great sensitivity, (Mujib?), a great sensitivity. A sense of, first of all of course, of truth, of authenticity. And that, that's the angel in you; is that in you which cannot stand lies and cannot stand grossness and vulgarity and greed and generally that one often ascribes to the world. The way of the world.  

So it's a different judgement from the judgement of the person who is pursuing what they think is their personal well being. Its a different way of looking at things.  

I would say that consciousness has become conscience. And ultimately betrayal is always the betrayal of one's conscience.  The betrayal of one's conscience. One is letting one's higher being down and that's why Christ said, and it was actually God speaking to Christ, who said, "Why have you abandoned me? I have been let down." But we are letting ourselves down by betraying our conscience.  

So the Sha'hid, the witness, is seeing the way things are. Whereas we started by seeing the way things appear. Do you remember? And you remember the word Jabarut? Jabarut means the bonesetter. The one who puts things that have been displaced back into place.  

So seeing things as they are instead of through the personal bias.  That in, one could say 'its seeing orderliness within the chaos'.  Or as Pir-O-Murshid said, "God seeing his perfection in our limitation." Or even discovering his perfection in our limitation.  Discovering the voice of Caruso in its distortion.  

And so of course you see that you have to, really not just downplay but you really have to dismiss your personal judgement, and personal opinion that is the word of Buddha. In fact Buddha says, ". . .consciousness has been carried beyond the point where it is acting as a personal consciousness." And he goes on to say, ". . .consciousness like a flame. . .", and Islam says 'log', "then there's flame." So as long as your perceiving something or conceiving something then or even emoting, then there's some object of your consciousness. So there's a support system for that flame.  But a if you are to discount your memory of the physical world totally, and your, all your assessment of things. That is go through a dark night of the mind. And then finally the deeper sense of beingness, of your individuality as a discreet entity.  

Then there comes a time when consciousness peters out altogether and that's where the revealed knowledge the Divine insight into all things is revealed to you.  

Particularly yourself, of course, the way that God sees you.  Instead of the way that you see God.  

And so now instead of saying 'I know God through the way that God discovers himself through me. I know God through the way that. . . No I'm sorry. No, that's not yet so. That is the next step, La (Hut). No that great being is revealing his/her intention. Before he/she was revealing his/her insight, judgement, assessment. Now at the La Hut level, after Jabarut comes La Hut. That Great being is revealing his/her intention.  

And you could never guess that intention by observing facts. Just like I don't know whether it would be possible to figure out the programming of a computer by taking it to pieces, I don't think so.  

So this is what the Sufis call (Uns), which is being invited to the court of the King. Nowadays one would say, the court of the King and the Queen, but lets say the highly confidential level of the programming of which we. . . It would not be good for us to know our programming unless we are up to it, because we wont understand why we are programmed the way we are. And also because we wouldn't understand that we participate ourselves in that programming. So its not just the act of God upon us, but that's also the act of us upon God. Because the programming is fed back into, I mean the (actigation/activation?) of the programming is fed back into the programming. So the programming keeps on changing, keeps on evolving.  

Now, what , I think it is in the Quran that says that there are (tenuities) between the programming and your qualities. And Ibn Arbi adds, ". . .and the angels form a ladder between those two."  That is the angelic level represents the bridge between those two.  So that is between the archetype and the exemplar.  

So how would you know the table was round if roundness was not written right into your intelligence? So those are the (tenuities).  

So now we've reached the more advanced understanding of the wazifa, because we're establishing an organic link between the quality in its perfection which we call, Murshid calls the Divine perfection. And then the qualities such as, 'it is accurate, it is in our personality'. There are (tenuities) between the two. They are very fine connections between the two.  

And at this level, La Hut, our connection with that being, that great being, is that of the vessel with regard to his Lord, like in the (Futile?) systems. Covenant of fealty, as it is called by the knights. And so that one has pledged oneself to serve the Lord.  And that's the way, that's an aspect of God that the Sufis call ('Rob') instead of Allah. (Rob) means The Lord. So it's a particular relationship. Like you would be the ambassador of your government for example. A particular relationship that you are representing something that is not. . . So you're not a personal person anymore. You are a public figure. Lets say, 'you are representing something beyond yourself.'  

And that's why , of course, for Murshid the word 'a representative' is so important. We are representatives, that's the word that we use now, instead of leaders. And so the ambassador is not just the postman or woman of course who communicates a message from the governor to another, but it leads to really a represent the policy and maybe the whole attunement of his/her government.  

The French Ambassador to whatever it is, the United Nations or whatever is very different from the English one. Each one has their own. So you are the ambassador of a quality. And therefore you need, when you represent your vessel, your Lord, you need to present his/her qualities. You need to a. . . Your qualities need to match those of the Lord. Even though they are imperfect in comparison. They are perfect qualities that you ascribe to God, because that is the way you are revealing God to the people you are meeting. So you are, you're ambassador. Its a lot to do that of course. One has to work with re-establishing those, reinforcing those (tenuities) between the qualities of the Lord and the qualities of oneself. And it goes very far. It goes to that point that as (Tolstari) says, ". . .the secret of the Divine Sovereignty, Qaher -sovereignty, the secret of the Divine sovereignty, is us." The secret of the sovereignty of the King is because we recognize that he's the King. Otherwise, if we don't recognize him as a King then he isn't a King. So that somehow, some kind of God delivering him/herself in the hands of us, in our hands, in all and that's the very paradoxical thing. A powerful being becoming (vulnerable) for having delivered him/herself into the hands of people who have no idea about the value and the sacredness of what is in hands. It's like Christ being delivered into the hands of his judges. Or as Pir-O-Murshid said once day, one day he said, "My heart is a like a glass, and I hand it to my disciples. And then some of them say, if you don't do what I want, I'll break it." Now if you were in my position, you would understand that that is happening. And if you are a representative, that will happen to you too. You have delivered your hands, into the hands, yourself in the hands of your Mureeds.  And at a certain moment they will know that. Knowing that they will say, 'OK, they have what they want. They have their agendas, one says. Ok, I'll break it if you don't do what I want.  So that's the great, that's the drama, that's the human drama. I would say the Cosmic Celebration, how can I say, damaged by - in the human drama - by the egos of people. So, I know it's very difficult to say this but God defiled in the hands of the beings to whom he/she has delivered his secret; not just his secret, his very being.  

And so, the a, at the La Hut level you realize that at the Divine Sovereignty is in your hands. You have to uphold the King and the Queen as a knight. And so this is why the ultimate responsibility comes in.  

At first one was a disciple hoping to know oneself, and you know to learn and so on - and now one sees that one's learning requires taking responsibility.  

It happened when, in the time of Murshid, when people use to; they were people came all the way from America maybe to Paris to see Murshid. And they said, "Oh, I've come for you to learn meditation from you" and he said, "There's work to do." And actually it was because he knew that their ego was wanting to learn meditation but the only way in which they could go through that deep process was to dedicate themselves to service. In the course of that service, they would discover themselves. 

So now it is not God discovering, revealing him/herself. Well revealing his/her strategy, policy - yes - his/her policy, but it is only revealed in the measure in which you accept to serve it.  I remember Nur-a-Nisa telling me that in the secret service one was only allowed to know what one needed to know for one's service.  And that's why you are only revealed the Divine strategy if you are of course up to understanding it and if you are dedicated to serving it. And you'll only know that bit of the strategy that is required for your service.  

So the word used by the Sufis is 'the secret', the Divine secret.  And perhaps you know that the word secret and sacred are very close. That they are related etymologically. And the secret of God is the sacredness of God.  

And the same word is used in the word secretary. The secretary is supposed to keep the secret. And in the case of spirituality to uphold the sacredness.  

So that's the word (ser-a-ser-a). And so (Solstostari?) says, "You are the ser." That is you are the secret. (Rubabubie?) of the Divine sovereignty. But if you are the secret of the Divine Sovereignty, then God is the secret of that secret. And so the word used is (ser-a-ser), the secret of secrets. 

So we've come a long way, but there's still one further level, (Ha Hut). It's true that the, we've come across that word 'the being'.  God revealing his/her being at the Malakut level, at the celestial level, as your being. Now that was still a device. It was a very fine device as comparison to form and the qualities but at the ultimate level then there really is no more devices.  

So, actually the trouble is that a language in English, we have lost a distinction that is to be found in Latin and also its found in German. In German, (sein und wesen) there's a difference between sein and wesen. And that's why when, for example, we have the invocation, in German we translate it by (den ange di? eistifolder?), (den Einsigen sein duten?) we say, the only ( ) (wesen) that would be like ascribing certain qualities, but this is beyond qualities. For example in German one would say (was fuer ein Wesen ist das) what kind of being is that? Well one is talking about qualities. And in that one of course is (essay) and (pahsay) the difference between (essay) and (pahsay), (pahsay) potentialities and (essay) being. Well, in French (ek ezestay) it makes a difference (ekezesestay) in English that would be, it's rather ambiguous you see. So Murshid was using, translating in the English language what he understood, what had much more meaning in Arabic. The difference between (zat) and (sifot) you see. (Sifot) qualities, but (azat) well translated by the word essence, but its wrong. It doesn't correspond to any. . . Essence is a, we're talking about something much more fundamental than the essence.  

So we're getting to a point which is of course, beyond our understanding. So fumbling with words, but the only way we can translate it is in those words like the knower - we already said, the knower - instead of the known. But now we're reaching a further stage and I, in the English language, I said, "Do you know Beethoven?" instead of simply listening to the works of Beethoven.  And if you know something about the biography of Beethoven and so on, then you understand his music much better. So this is what is Murshid means by the being of God. Which is not knowing Beethoven, I'm not talking about his qualities, or defects. No, so it's a much deeper reality than what we mean by being. So that level God reveals what is called Haqq. That is the reality of his being beyond all those molds whereby he/she reveals him/herself to you.  Well to the fearless fragments of him/herself. 

Like for example, do the cells in the body know anything about the intention behind their functioning? And is that, perhaps the brain cells know a little more about what is intended by the whole programming, but a little more than the cells of the flesh for example or the bones or the hair. Something like that you see. So we gradually we are invited to get right into beyond the intention, beyond the intention that which is even more elusive.  

And all of a sudden one sees that it's all one being. Diversity, multiplicity in unity and unity in multiplicity; Vadhat in Vayhatdiat, Vadaniyat in Sufism, and then (Ah Had), the unity. You see? There's a multiplicity in unity, alright? Like for example in a chemical where the salt for example has been dissolved. So that would be the multiplicity is hidden within the unity. All the unity in multiplicity being able to see God in all things. Be unity in multiplicity.  

But the Ha Hut level is exactly the same thing as samadhi. That is one has lost sight of the multiplicity because all that one, one has down played lets say, the multiplicity in unity, because all that one is aware of is the unity behind it all. Now that's samadhi.  

But as you see the only way that this is possible is to loose one's sense of individuality because that would be part of the multiplicity. And that is why Al Halaj said, I think these were very close to his dying words on the cross, when he said, "To affirm the Divine Unity." La illa ha il'llah, in what is called the (Shaharah).  

Sha'hid being the witness this absolutely, I don't know whether he used the word dishonest but a incongruous, because if you are conscious of being the one who is a form of the unity you are still in the state of multiplicity. And that's why his dying words were, "It is good enough if God alone affirms his unity and I'm not there to affirm it." 


 AUG 17, 1997		Tape 12

PIR: I feel that there's a shift now, towards -- I'm kind of concerned, well, we want to make the best of these days together and how are we going to transit back into our Centers again, and what difference are you going to make and so on. That's why I think it is appropriate that there should be these meetings of the Jamiat Amm (?sp) in which we are able to get some clarity as to quite a number of issues that have been much too nebulous.  

As for myself I think that it would be better if I would continue  do describe the wazaif that I listed yesterday tomorrow morning so that this afternoon we can go into what I think is the burning issue. I wish I were able to really meet that issue and that is the question: Which wazifa to give to which case. So I wish that there were clear rules. You see, we are acting rather like a doctor but in a certain sense our work is a little more difficult  because the doctors do have maybe at least more clear guidelines we have but as you know, a good doctor is always concerned about their patients. I wonder if doctors are ever able to sleep for I'm sure they are wondering how does this medicine work with that person, I'd like to see that person again, or like to hear from that person. If it's a conscientious doctor then the doctor  feels very fully engaged in helping the patient. I know that some nurses, especially the sisters--I used to go and  make astral travel to visit their patients when they were sleeping because they were so concerned about their patients that they would just always want to know what their condition is.  

So I would say that is the principle. So you can't just give a wazifa and wash your hands and say, "Get on with it." No. It has really got to be followed up and that's the reason why I am not giving wazaif to initiates except in exceptional cases and as  you know the exception confirms the rule and the reason is because one has to follow it up and see exactly how it works with  the pupil, to get a feed-back. That means that you will have to keep on consulting with your pupils at a regular rate and I would  suggest once a month at least. In any case, once a month. I'd also suggest -- well, you know, it is really asking a lot to be a  representative and we want to, that's the reason we have coordinators, because we want to spare those who are full of good  will and would like to help out in the Sufi Order, from the responsibility of giving the wrong wazifa to someone; and so they  could be, to some extent, -- we don't know to what extent -- damaging a person by giving the wrong wazifa or, but fortunately the people don't do their wazifas so it doesn't matter!  

No. But there are cases that rather than damaging a person they have simply left the order, decided that it is not working, and so--and the reason that people are not doing their wazifas is, as  I say, is simply because just repeating them is not going to do it for you. So quite right, there's no point in wasting one's time repeating a word if it's not working and therefore I'm--it's  a kind of organic situation where the wazifa is part of the developmental stages through which, of the growth, of the special  growth of the pupil and so it has to be, from the point of view of the teacher it has to be seen as how do we process. So you have to know what the different stages are and what stage the pupil is at this moment and how the pupil is proceeding. And of course, see exactly what is holding the pupil back. And so the choice of the wazifa is very often not just what the pupil needs but what can one do to help remove that which stands in the way the pupil's progress. So, as I say, we would like to have as clear guidelines as we could possibly muster and that's my concern this afternoon; and eventually, of course -- you see the is that each case is so very different. It may be true of patient's -- for doctors there are general guidelines and then  each case is different, so we have to have some sense of what the quide-lines are and then the individual cases, there's a way of giving guidelines to the individual cases So that depends upon your expertise.  

 

I've given a few indications of practices. I won't say they were  harmful but they made the pupils question our whole system in the  Sufi Order. I've already mentioned that man who had difficulty in being enchanted and in the retreat he was given the practice, "Ya Azzim" and of course he resisted it because he couldn't do it, because he doesn't want to be enchanted, so he lost faith in the guidance given in the Sufi Order.  

So one thing we have learned from that -- there have been many other cases -- one thing that we have learned from that is not to think that we need to fix it. And the other is not to play the Pygmalion, that is to think that we know how we would like that person to be. Pir-O-Murshid mentioned this when he says that he met that wonderful agriculturist, Burbank, I think, in California  and he said, "I always encourage a plant to develop according to its own tendencies. So if it's a climbing plant I will help it to become a better climbing plant," and so on and so forth.  I don't know if that principle is always followed by breeders at present, people who are innovating, but this was based upon a very deep respect for the uniqueness of each plant and so in the same way, for example, I think it would be very simplistic if one  comes across somebody who has a lot of authority and gives them the practice "Ya Jamil" to make them a little more gentle, to compensate.  

In fact, there was a case of a mureed of Murshid who was, well, a  rather authoritative figure. And Pir-O-Murshid gave him "Ya Qadr" which strengthens the ego, you would have thought, but Murshid knew what he was doing. But of course you have to know whether you are, whether--you see, I say strengthen the ego; you know, that word ego has a kind of pejorative sense. We think it's bad to have an ego, something like that, and we don't want to make people meek. That's not what we want to do. We want to have people come forth with all the richness of their being, be strong beings, and in fact I think that is one of the policies of  the Sufi Order. At least, I've been promoting, and that is to encourage people to be really strong in their own and consequently sometimes I feel like a lion tamer, not amongst the mureeds, it's amongst the representatives. Some of them are really fierce but it's alright. I'm not intimidated. I would rather that than trying to tame sheep. I see how this contrasts with other spiritual groups where you can't do anything without the grace of the guru.  

So the same applies with the way you are dealing with your pupils. You have to encourage them in the way that is the direction that just seems to be the direction they are taking in their life and so of course your diagnosis is the most important thing and then afterwards to know which practice to give. The pupil him/herself doesn't always know what his or her fortes are or defects are. They think they know but they don't. I would say that every quality has its defect, well, its shadow. And so if you want to know what a person's quality is you just ask yourself what their shadow is and then you know what their quality is. For example the lazy person is someone who has need of peace so laziness or indolence would be the shadow of peacefulness. I've often illustrated that, that workaholic woman  finds it very difficult to be peaceful because she can't stand  
that woman ho is lazing on the beach munching chocolate all day.  So that one has difficulty in developing the quality because one does not want to enhance the shadow of that quality in oneself. 

And the same thing is true about power, authority. For example one dislikes the kind of ruthlessness of people who are prepossessive and consequently one finds it difficult to work with "Ya Q"Ya Qahr," for example, which is authority. That is the obstacle. So when giving practice you need to see what the obstacle is that is standing in the way of that person developing  that quality. The same thing with joy, for example. The shadow of joy would be facetiousness. There are people who would like to be a little happier but they don't want to be too light hearted, too superficial. So these are good -- name any quality and you see right away what the defect is.  

So now how do we -- well, first of all let me say that Pir-O-Murshid and the Sufis distinguish three main categories of wazifa, so at least three different cases. One is concerning the  ability of the person to accomplish their purpose in life. The second one is to unfurl the potentialities in their being and  the third one is to attain enlightenment and realization: awakening of the three categories, at least three main categories.  

And so of course when pupils come to you for several reasons and they are not always clear as to what the reasons are, so that one  feels that there is really a need to have many wazifas. So it seems to be restrictive to give them one wazifa. But if you are seeing them every month then you could already foresee the practice that you would be giving in a few months' time and then give each wazifa in turn so they can really get into each wazifa and concentrate themselves enough on one wazifa before they start  working with another. Otherwise it's just too much. 

If a teacher of music would give too many pieces to the pupil to practice it would be too much so you make a choice and you have in mind, "Yes, well next time I'll give them this other piece of music that will be a little more challenging," and so on. 

So one thing is these are very practical leaders. You must make a note of the practices that you give. It's rather elementary but Pir-O-Murshid was very systematic. He had one of those old fashioned notebooks with carbons and so on, so he wrote the practice on one page and there were two carbons. I think he kept  the first carbon. The one he originally wrote on he gave to the pupil and then there was another one for headquarters, the Secretariat. I think it was confidential. The Secretariat was supposed to receive it and put it in a file without looking at it.  

Now, there is a principle that one isn't supposed to discuss one's practices with others and somebody might say, "Oh, why didn't he give that practice to me? I would like that practice." 

Of course the other thing is asking oneself what did my teacher have in mind? He gave me that practice. That means that they thought that I wasn't very good at whatever it is. For example, if it is "Ya Wali" I think the teacher must think that I'm not in  control of myself or my work." So they come to a conclusion: the teacher is criticizing me in a cryptic way by giving me a wazifa and actually the wazifa is really a koan. That means that even if you don't do it--you see, the reason for doing it, for repeating it, is because one is training the unconscious by repetition based upon the autosuggestion that Pir-O-Murshid was very much into. In those days the new psychology was very much into autosuggestion, Charcot and -- so what one is doing is associating a word, which is a signal, with a meaning which is archetypal. It's not just an ordinary meaning, and one is using a  word that is not in one's own language, a foreign word, and therefore it does not have the connotations that one has in one's  ordinary language and so it works. That's exactly what scientists are doing. They are using " X, Y, Zed", and so on, signals that do not have the connotations that one would ascribe to them if one were using the words in English or American or whatever.   

 So, no. If you give a wazifa then the pupil may, it is helpful to the pupil if the pupil will repeat it because, then you know, the unconscious response to repetition. The unconscious is not rational. You're building a kind of fortress in the unconscious so that you are--actually what you are really doing is you are them elements that will help them to deal with problems without--well, you know, the reactive strategy is a reflex so it doesn't involve one's whole brain so it's one of the most elementary forms of the programming of our being, like for example knowing how to step back when a car is passing; so that's a reactive strategy and so the unconscious is very good at that.  

When it comes to decisions that involve our life, then of course, some one's potentials, one needs to be aware of one's potentials and so one is pulling those potentials out of the unconscious and  pin-pointing them. Perhaps that will give some idea about the policy that we follow as guides so that some of the wazifa--wazaif--that we give are strengthening the reactive strategy of the ego and the others are to help the person to get, arrive at some clarity as to how they could meet their problems and of course there are many other reasons but what I am saying now is that of course it is useful to do repetitions but you remember the words of Christ: "...vain repetitions," warning against vain repetitions.  

And that is one of my great concerns, particularly during a retreat I see people repeating and repeating the same old word--wazifa--without remembering what it means or thinking about what it means, and perhaps even believing that that word will do it for them and it does not. So I see people sometimes really transformed at the end of a retreat and other people who on the contrary, they had lots of expectations and they come out of that  retreat and they find their expectations were not met and then they lose faith in themselves or in their teacher or in the whole  process in the sufi order so the practices that we give do involve credibility of the Sufi Order.  

For me, you see, I am continually asking myself whether what we are doing is doing any good to people at all. And I am always really enchanted to find that many of the people I have been following and seeing year after year seem to have improved. And as you know, they say the proof of the pudding is in the eating so that for me, in fact if it weren't for that I would probably have handed in my resignation a long time ago. I don't know, I wonder what we are, so what are we doing if it's not going to help people. 

Now, perhaps--I'm sorry to say this but perhaps you won't agree with me anyway, but I find that unless one progresses one goes backwards so even if one remains the same it's already a good sign instead of deteriorating. So the first repetition is effective as long as one, I would say one should stop repeating the wazifa from time to time and ask oneself, "what does it mean?" (not with the mind). And that's the whole point. I don't know if of course you remember that when we got through the developmental stages, I think it was at the level of Jabbarut, we entered into a different level of thinking, in fact a different logic than the commonplace mind and so the wazifa is supposed to give you an insight beyond the way you can figure things out with  your mind. You know, we've all said this many times of course but we carry within our psyche a faulty interpretation of our problems, a biased interpretation of our problems, of our situations, interpretation, assessment and so on, also as an assessment of our personality and our self image and so one of the things that you have to have in mind as a guide to help a person to--well, it's not good enough just to question their assessment of their problems but to see their problems from a different perspective, or in a different light. And for that of course it is necessary to question one's interpretation but it's not good enough and when studying yoga I find that what they're doing is they're saying, "It's maya, it's maya, it's netti netti," it's not what we think it is but that doesn't say what it is. And so it's very negative whereas for us what we want to do is, actually the key to it not to figure out with your  mind but with a kind of intuition an ah-ha feeling that tells you what are the issues in the problem of your life instead of what are the problems. And that's where the language of the wazifa (wazaif) is very useful, because that's what the wazifa stands for. They stand for issues.  

For example, the issue of my life is compassion or truth. Am I priority to compassion, am I giving priority to truth. Those are the issues. Or the issue might be mastery or the issue  might be the ability to listen to what life is telling me instead  of being pigheaded and going ahead without being mujid (mujid means sensitive) to what the universe is trying to tell me, so if  you give the practice hadi and mujid you are making a person listen in. So what I'm saying then is repetition has its, well I'd like to say much more about repetition because I think just repeating the word just doesn't do it. The sense we ascribe to our practice, like you can read our books which have a translation in English of the different wazifas but you know, just the intellectual understanding of what that means doesn't really do it for you. Maybe a little bit, but it's just, in fact  as I said this morning the teacher will not say what it means but  ask the pupil to try and discover it.  

So the wazifa or wazaif are really a koan. It's a riddle. It's asking the pupil to work with a seed thought and perhaps unmask the mystery that is not clear because everyone is caught in their  perspective so it's inviting one to consider another perspective than the perspective that one has considered so far. So there is, as I've already said, downplaying. Tbat's fana, downplaying the perspective to awaken another perspective and I think maybe the American wazifa for that is, "what if." So there are two American wazifas. One is "aha!" but I think that's international, and the other is "what if." And I don't know how to translate it from German, "++++++++German phrase++++" (Vive Err Ess Bin ) So there are too many words to translate but in English it is "what if." So that means what if all these years I have been taking for granted that my assessment of my problem is correct and all of a sudden I realize that it is wrong and I've been acting accordingly. So that's a breakthrough of realization. Now whether just working with a wazifa for realization will do it, I wouldn't say that. I would say whatever  wazifa you give is pointing to a way of looking at things that one had perhaps not considered before.  

 
AUG 18, 1997		Tape 13 

Of course we're more and more concerned about, well, practical things about how we can guide people. And so I really don't want to procrastinate any further about trying to pinpoint practices in terms of problems. Instead of just saying this practice means so and so, starting with the problems, and then seeing well, which practices would one give in this case. Now yesterday, last evening, a question arose that is very very important, and as you know, Pir-O-Murshid in his instructions to representatives says: encourage the good side of a person, and do not emphasize the dark side. And the question was, well, one has to deal with the dark side, and so is it not well, denying something that is there? And (inaudible), so this is a very real question. Well, try it out, and see what happens if you start to criticize your pupils. I've done it before, when I was rather green, and I soon learned that that is not the way. People will of course sit on their high horse and feel hurt in their feelings. 

And of course their reply is "well you don't understand me." So then they're turning the tables on you. And you're making yourself the object of their criticism now, as you were criticizing them. So don't get your fingers burnt in that, stung in that hornet's nest. But you see, love has a much greater power than judgment. Now what we do do is to encourage people to make, be critical about themselves, yes. But even then, I keep on saying you know, our assessment of not only our circumstances, but also our self image is not reliable. And so one can, it can be counterproductive to denigrate oneself. There is a shadow, the shadow gets resorbed when one is very concerned about one's self-esteem. So there is a Wazifa that I admit for years and years I did not even list it amongst Wazifas that I've given: there are those Obad' wazifas, like the satanic virgins--versions. 

But I think it's probably a Freudian slip there, it's refusing, so I had to first of course answer for the dark side myself you see. And so I can see that perhaps the leading question, well I've said this several times, you see if you're in the position of role-playing, like a guru, then of course you feel the expectations of people. And people will not be happy with anything less than the very best, and so you feel that you need to live up to those expectations. And so it does lead to a kind of dishonesty because you're not acknowledging your shadow. And if there is a lie somewhere in yourself--self-deception--then of course you are deceiving others, and eventually it is going to be found out anyway and there will be a breakdown and you're hurting people terribly.  

So I think that maybe the practice which I would now put on the priority list, this is a practice of the dervish, is Ya Haqq, which means truthfulness. And apply it to Muhasibi, in fact it is the practice of Muhasibi. It is looking at yourself without covering up anything from yourself, because there's not just a cover up from other people, from your own self. And, it's very nice actually to associate that practice with Haqqum. So, Haqq-Haqqam; it's very powerful. Haqqam is wisdom: the wisdom that comes from truthfulness. It is very powerful. And, as a matter of fact, there is a Jelali Dhikr which is Haqq Allah ilaha illa llah hu. Haqq Allah ilaha illa llah hu, so it always starts Haqq. Very powerful. And, this, so it will upgrade your self-esteem, and the consequence is that it will give you a kind of authority. And that's what the Mureeds expect from you. 

Not power, not the power that puts them down, because criticizing a person is often manipulating a person: putting them down in order to have power over them, so you have to be very careful about that game. But if your self-esteem is enhanced because you have confronted your own shadow, the power of truth will give you authority. And that is what people are expecting of you, but it must come out of truthfulness within yourself, otherwise that authority is simply that of a dictator. So, in some way this is linked with honor, and that is a term that is used very much by the Sufis. If, the thing is that the shadow aspect of one's being does have the effect of dishonoring one in the eyes of other people, and in one's own eyes. If there's a cover-up then perhaps the other people are not dishonoring you because they don't know, but you yourself feel that you're a fraud, if you have a conscience. And, consequently you come to have the kind of authority, and also the kind of calm self-possessiveness that people expect of their teacher. The teacher has got to be like a rock--as Pir-O-Murshid said--that one, upon which one can build one's house, instead of moving sand. So it's necessary to find that, to be very, as I call it, self-possessive.  

So that's where the Obad' wazifa (what I used to call bad wazifa) which so far I've given to only person who really asked for it, but I think that it's, but it, no, what I mean to say is literally asked for it--not the same thing. But now I feel it's something we can all do, so it's all the sudden come out of the woodwork. So it is, in fact it's not on this list, but it's on the book, which says a lot. And that is Mudsill, m-u-d-h-i-l-l. And, this is a book by ??Baba Moyhaiuddin?? I don't know whether it's in the bookstore, maybe it is. At least the translation of the words is ok. The explanation, I wouldn't go for it, but the translation is, I think is quite reliable. So, Mudsill is on the opposite page to Mu'iz. So Mu'iz is the Honorer, the Honorer, so you are honored. If you have overcome that which is standing in the way of your honorability, and it is up to you to do it. 

As I say there are dervishes who say, "don't come near me because you're lying." But those are dervishes. They're not Pirs. That's not the method in esoteric schools where one has respect for people. And ultimately, Pir-O-Murshid says, well what he says is: "who is going to throw the first stone?" Like you can spot the shadow in a person because we all have those shadows in ourselves. It's just a matter of whether we're able to overcome them or not, but they're there. So that's, so there we have two things that are important, one is Haqq-Haqqam, and then the other is Mudhill-Mu'iz. And I forget now, there's a passage somewhere in Murshid where he says: "that which makes the Murshid is if he or she is venerable." That's that particular kind of quality which has to do with honorability. 

Alright, let's turn now, proceed to look at different problems. As I said before, there's always something standing in the way of a quality coming through. Or rather, the only reason why all these qualities do not come through as well as we would like them to is because there's something standing in the way, so we have to spot exactly what is standing in the way. And rather than criticizing a person, if you make them conscious of the need to look and find out for themselves what is standing in the way. Now I forget now, I think it's the word Mani, but I just want to double check again, it's called the Preventer, I think it was Mani, let me just check.  

(Pir Vilayat, I'm sorry, I missed what you were going to say about Mudsill, you alluded to it, but you didn't describe it.) Mudsill is the degrader, or the dishonorer. (And what would you say about that?) What would I say about it? What I'm saying is that by either not, well, by pursuing our shadow, and especially not owning it, we are dishonoring ourselves and our self-esteem, and since everything is seen from the point of view of God, one is dishonored by God. And so from the time that one becomes aware that one is doing something, or behaving in a way that is dishonoring one; not, it could be in the eyes of other people, but maybe other people don't know it, but one is dishonoring oneself in oneself, and one can't hide it from God. From that time on one has an incentive to change things so that one acts honorably because it's so important for one's self-esteem. So there we have two, how can I say, two twin wazifas: one is Haqq-Haqqam, and the other is Mudhill-Muiz. And I think it's good to have both together because than you have the quality and then you have the shadow at the same time, at least in the case of Mudhill-Mu'iz. 

Now, so, yes to remove the obstacle, I was looking for that word, I think it was Mani, but I want to be quite sure...well, anyway, I do remember, it is Ya Mani which is the Preventer. Now, one is projecting these qualities upon God, so maybe it's written in our programming that there have to be obstacles. I think a very clear case of obstacles is stress for example. If it weren't for stress one would not develop strength; it's a challenge. And therefore, maybe the obstacles are written right into our programming, so that everything is always ascribed to God as the wisdom of the programming behind everything that happens. There's another word that I just came across a moment ago, and that is the Delayer. So that is something which, you know we're living in a world in which everything has got to happen very fast, and so one gets very impatient. One would like to progress very fast, and work fast, and sleep fast, and meditate fast. Ah yes, Ya Mani, the Preventer, yes, I've got it, Ya Mani, the Preventer. I've already said that. 

And the other is the Delayer. That's one thing I must say I haven't used because I must say I'm a very impatient person. But I appreciate its value, since you know that... (It's on the bottom.) Yes, you can see it, from there? That would be preventing, it's delaying. You must have x-ray eyes, because it was behind the bottom page. So, it's Muaqhir (sp??). Muaqhir. Aqhir means later, you know, manana. So Muaqhir, you know, wait, it's ok, just wait. And you keep on waiting and then nothing happens. And it happens a lot in India, you go to Rajmir and you want to go to the tomb and you say, "Yeah, a cup of tea," and the cup of tea never comes, and it's too late anyway. So putting things off. No, but, there's a deeper sense of it, as I say I'm beginning to see the value of it in the teaching of Nefari. Nefari was that dervish who I quoted who lived in the desert and kept on coming home and saying these very extraordinary things, paradoxical things. And he's talking about that place where he, in the language of Arberry, I think, Arberry, Professor Arberry, it is to be staid. To be staid. 

That is halted in one's advance; like to wait until one is ready for the next move. And I tried to illustrate it by the break in the continuity when you're breathing in through the left nostril and then you hold your breath before breathing out through the right nostril; there's a, the process of becoming is interrupted. And so that's being staid, between one Maqqam and another you are staid. And the thing is that at that time you have to let things happen. You can't, what is staid is your will. You'll realize that there's a point, that there are many occasions when our will is, plays a decisive role, so we're not discounting our will. But there are times when we have to let the universe self organize itself; it can do much better than we can do in us. 

And afterwards, we customize that activity. So you might find that a person is in that state where they are well, it, very often a person misinterprets it, and thinks well, I don't have any incentive, I feel rather disenchanted, and I don't have any motivations. And one feels well this is a bad state to be in, one should fix it because we have to always go on and progress and so on. And maybe there's a reason for, maybe that represents a certain state, a threshold state in which one is in one's progress. My concern is of course always, well, the representative has ultimately some responsibility, so not to do anything is that good? And it might be situation where it is required not to do anything. And that for me I find very difficult, but I can see that it is true. (Oh, thank you, it is very kind of you, it's a bit cold isn't it? Yeah, thank you. Thank you Dad. It's alright for the moment.) So we have two words here: one is Mani, the Preventer, and the other is Muaqhir, the Delayer. (Thank you Mom.) 

So, in which case which? Well the Preventer, that really raises your blood pressure, you think if I should have cautioned that person to prevent this from happening. It's a kind of sense of responsibility. If there's a stone on the road and there's cars rushing by, and you haven't removed the stone, you are really responsible for the accident. So there's, so by giving this practice, perhaps you are drawing the attention of the Mureed to the fact that there's something that they need to do to prevent harm coming to other people or to themselves. And as I said, if you're not supposed to give them advice, then you can't say you've got to do this or that or the other thing, but look into yourself and see whether your actions could have consequences that are harmful to other people. You see, remember that I said that we are not allowed to interfere in the private lives of people. 

But on the other hand, we find that when activities of other persons or of ourselves have harmful affects upon other people, then there need to be guidelines. I remember that that corroborates that sentence of Pir-O-Murshid in that last prayer Rasul where he says "Warner of coming dangers." So I think those, to delay a thing is, to delay is also well as I said that is that threshold state that I find in Nefari's (Wakifa ma wakif ). (Wakif) means time. Where time stands still. The instant of time. If you remember the words of Hujwiri, I've quoted them many times, Hujwiri says: "Wakf," which is, well he's using the word wakf in a very special sense. If I remember well, but I may be mistaken, in Arab countries instead of the word "stop" for the traffic, there's a word "wakf" which means wait. Now I often quote Beethoven who in the fourth symphony, in the fourth piano concerto, he doesn't react to the challenge, he places a buffer between the challenge of the world and himself. And so of course he is interrupting that, let's say the causal chain effect. But one could say that it is delayed action. 

This is rather subtle, but you remember I said that that melody would not have arisen if he had simply reacted, but I also said that that melody would not have arisen if it were not for the challenge. So that one is delaying the challenge so that one isn't reacting in a circular fashion, but the challenge is processed then in one's unconscious, and gives vent to a creative act in oneself. So for example if somebody asks you a question and you're placed on the spot to give an answer, there are times when you need to say, "look, I need to think it over." And we find that in our meetings, that very often we've come to a resolution and then we find that there were aspects of the problem we hadn't considered, and then it looks very bad to come out and say, "well we're of a different opinion now." It's better then to say, "hold it for the time being." So that's Muaqhir, aqhir means later.  

Now, a word that I've used very much is Ya Ghani, because what it, there are several meanings of course to it, in fact there are several meanings to each wazifa, but somebody, we're talking about obstacles, and delaying is not removing the obstacle, it's at least not making a wrong decision, but or waiting to have clear guidelines of how to proceed. But if one is very clear that this is exactly what I spotted, exactly that which is standing in the way of one's progress, then Ghani is just the right answer. And that is it's a custom of the Sufis that if there's a branch of a tree across a road you remove that branch even though you could step over it, but you remove it so that anybody coming after you will be saved from what might be an accident. As I said, if there's a stone on the road and you don't do anything about it you might be responsible for the accident. So that's Ya Ghani. So that does require of you to spot exactly where that obstacle is in your life. Of course the easiest thing is something that one is doing, so one finds that all one has to is now stop doing it, and do something else. And you have a very clear cut answer. 

And it is true that even if the benefit is not, at least one doesn't see the benefit is for oneself, that benefit, if that, the benefit of that comes to someone else, then it seems almost more important in the Sufi view. And that's why there's a saying of Babajan, the woman dervish, Hazrat Babajan who said "throw the penny in the well, but don't expect that it's going to bring you good luck, it will bring good luck to someone else." Well that's the whole idea of removing obstacles to make it clear, the way clear for other people. At first of course one considers one's own well being, but as one advances then of course one is there for other people. So Ya Ghani is very pertinent.  

Now the obstacle could be not in a situation, but in one's own thinking. And even in one's own emotions. So you know that there are people who are blocked. They have wonderful intentions but they do everything except what they really want to do because it's just to big or I don't know, the unconscious has this way of jamming. For example that is particularly true of creative people: a painter for example, or a composer. You say well, yes well, I'll go for a walk, I'll make a cup of tea, or something, but one, it's too big a thing to get down to it and just take the plunge. And people are blocked. And so it is removing the block. Now as I say, the block is very often in our own self image, and that's why I talk about it all the time. It is not necessarily our misassessment of the problems, but of our own self. 

We don't believe in ourselves. And Murshid emphasizes that very much, to have faith. People are talking about faith in God, but he is talking about faith in yourself. And one's concern about one's inadequacies will block one's vision of one's positive qualities. I'm no good, I'll never be any good, you know, and other people are wonderful' and so on. Denigrating oneself. That's why Murshid's always upholding the pride, to save the pride; to safeguard the pride, I think it's in the American song, safeguard the pride of those who will come to one with love. So much so that people used to think that they were just a very special friend of Murshid, and each one would think that they were a very special friend of Murshid.  

Now, the word Ghani is often associated with Mughni, and Mughni is a very powerful word. The, you know any translation one makes of the wazifas is not, is never satisfying. Mugh is, in Iranian means the Magi, the Magus. In fact there's a word that Murshid used once, and called, one calls the Pir Mughni. The Pir who is also a Magus in the tradition of the Magi. Because, as you know, Sufism has its antecedents in the Mazdean tradition. Of course there are many ways of looking at that word: magi, magic, imagination, many different words that derive from that: maya, maya, yes, maya, that's the root: maya, and then magus, magi, imagination. That word maya has often been misinterpreted. Maya, the whole universe is created by imagination. And imagination is rendering in a form an intention that does not have a form, and so in a sense it is deluding, in one sense. And that's the thing about Sufism is that one can see things from two opposite angles. We find it in the words of Ib'n Arabi sometimes. Because in one sense, as you know, I've already said this many times of course that for the Sufis the world is made of Ayat, which means signals like the pug marks of a bear, signs, devices, whereby the Divine intention is manifested or is unveiled. But then in the other way, it is in the existential state that you find God. 

So it is the opposite you see, it doesn't fit into one's ordinary logic, but it's higher logic. So when Murshid said "make God a reality," it is the existential state; it's not maya, it's that this is where things are happening. This is where God becomes a reality. So the word Mughni in my mind is as I say has several connotations, and one of them is a concept that you find in Murshid's teachings, which is extremely important and very essential, and that is that we are moving from dependency upon self-sufficiency. If you remember when we went through the initial stages in the developmental stages, at first I was talking about dependence: dependence upon bodily conditions, emotional dependence, dependence upon one's understanding, one's logic, and so on. Dependence upon friends, upon support, that kind of thing you see. And also, enriching oneself by ingesting the world at the psychological level too, so that's not self-sufficiency, that's, there's some kind of dependency in it. And then we found that all these things are present within us, but it's easier to discover oneself in other oneself because that's the kind of format that we have been programmed in in our lives, to perceive and conceive and experience and involve ourselves and so on. 

But the ultimate goal of spirituality is self-sufficiency. So that for example the knowledge which is already in us surfaces, that's what you call revealed knowledge. So one does not depend upon what one might call know-how, acquired knowledge, which is of course precarious and really can let you down. Like you're convinced about it and then you find that you go through the dark night of understanding and you see that it isn't reliable at all. A lot of physicists are right there you see, they are questioning the views of their predecessors because you can't rely upon opinion. And of course there's a part played by intuition in physics, ultimately.  

So, Mughni does not mean self-sufficiency. I would say that self-sufficiency, there are two words, if you're interested, but these are the more advanced practices: well one is Baqa, and the other is Qayyum. Now this is getting a little bit difficult. Because the word Qayyum is often interpreted as meaning resurrection. For example, one says Ya Hayyo, Ya Qayyum. Those two words are very often associated: Ya Hayyo, Ya Qayyum. Hayy, life, and then Qayyum, resurrection. I think it's a misconstruction of the origin of these words. I just have little holes of memory sometimes. I know I didn't, and I, I've got it here. Ah yes, I've got it right here, that's why I couldn't see it. It is, you see there are two words, I'm jumping a little bit too fast. One is Warith, and the other is Ba'ith. So Warith means inheriting, so when Pir-O-Murshid says discover your Divine inheritance because that will upgrade your self-esteem, your self-image, and it is present within each one of us, that word is Ya Warith. And when Saint Francis says "I have another Father," that's what he means,: his inheritance from his divine inheritance, that's Warith. 

And of course I myself of course associate, have in my practices often associated Warith with Ba'ith, b-a-'-i-t-h, which is, well he translated by the Resurector, and I would say Resurrection, which is of course complementary. Because, well, it's getting very metaphysical, I hope you don't mind, but we, I mean we have to be clear, the mind has to follow the experience. You see, what is meant by resurrection is that that which was ephemeral has become eternalized. I'm quoting ?Jami? actually, those are the words of Jami. Rumi said: "Tonight the umpteen stars are giving birth to the life eternal." So he's saying the same thing. He's saying there's a bridge between the existential and the programming, and the programming is then upgraded, refurbished by the... (side 2)  lack of, recycled by the feedback of experience. And I've often given the example of the resurrection of the perfume of the flower that survives the demise of the contingent part of the flower. So that is exactly what is meant by Ba'ith. So that's not what Qayyum means. Qayyum means everlastingness. And Pir-O-Murshid makes a very clear distinction between everlastingness and eternity. Because everlastingness is something that had a beginning in time, but does not end. And eternity has neither beginning nor end. So the word for eternity is Sarmad, and the word for everlastingness is Qayyum.  

Now these are the more advanced practices, but as I said before although we would like to be clear that, of the three, about the three categories of practices: those that would help people in their problems, and those that are intended to help them to unfurl their potentials, and the third one is to help them attain illumination and awakening. These three things are related, and also everyone has all three needs, and so it is always very difficult to know where you put your priority. But since our inadequacies are so linked with our dependence, and if we really want to progress in life, then there's no point in continuing to do the same things one has already done, or think the same way one has always thought, or have the same kind of attitude of dependence upon circumstances. That is what one calls weaning. And so the whole spiritual evolution is a process of weaning from dependence to self-sufficiency. So the word Qayyum is not quite self-sufficiency, the word for self-sufficiency is Baqa. Fana Baqa, you know. Or Baqi, I forget now if it's Baqi or Baqa. I think it's Baqi. God: Baqi. 

So. Is this getting too difficult? Is this helpful to you? Because it has to do with a very important thing, and that is to, in Murshid's teaching is being aware of what he calls the deathless state. It's important when one is concerned about death of course, and gives one some kind of resilience against the precarity of one's evanescent state. So the Sufis give, for the Sufis there are many different dimensions of time, not as simple as in a lot of Western philosophy. One is perenity. That is for example, it's never the same water that passes under the bridge, but it's the same river. Or for example, our body is made up of totally different cells to the cells that we had when we were babies for example, and yet we think it's the same body. Or there will be a time when not one person who is living at present will still be on the planet earth, and yet humanity will continue, hopefully. So that's what one means by perenity, which gives you some indication about what one means by the deathless state, but it's not quite that because for example, the fact of resurrecting, of becoming perfume, is a requirement in order to be able to, for there to be a continuity. So there's a continuity in the horizontal dimension of time, and a continuity in the vertical dimension of time. 

In the words of Al Hallaj, he talks about Thy perenity and my transiency, and so on, very beautiful, but rather paradoxical words. So I used to think that Baqa meant reinstating a state that had been put aside, but never ceased to be: a reinstatement. But I don't think it is now anymore. I think it is that the most permanent center of your being is not effected by change. If you think of a pendulum for example, because one of our practices, Qasab, is very much based upon the pendulum, the weighted end swings to one extreme point on the left, and then another point on the right, and when it has reached that point it is suspended, so that time is suspended in a state of timelessness. Right? But then the point at which the pendulum is suspended is not, that state is not suspended, but it remains stationary, so that's the state of Sarmad which means eternity. And then there's a very troublesome and rather very difficult condition that is extremely meaningful to the Sufis, and that is that supposing you were able to swing that pendulum to such an extent that it started reaching the zenith, and then it would continue back down again then you would have a feedback from the past into the programming of the future. So for me that, the pinnacle is not the center of course, so the pinnacle, that's Qayyum. And the center, that's Baqi.  

Well it is important, let's see it's practical application in the way that people are dealing with their problems. Pir-O-Murshid gives a very important teaching on this subject. Because if you follow for example, a curve, say for example, the sun rises at a certain point, and then it reaches a zenith, and then there's sunset, and then it goes under the earth. So that's like a, eventually it could be expressed as an inner graph, as a curve. So then there are what they call jelal points, and jemal points. And kemal points. So, kemal represents a threshold state from one state to another. So for example, very clearly then, when the sun is under the earth, it's just like the seeds under the earth like in the ritual of Persephone. That's the jemal state. And in that state we are receptive to our guidance without taking responsibility or assuming control. And then there's a threshold point where that idea has matured to the point where we're able to make it happen. And at that moment we are lured or we're drawn toward the jelal point, the zenith, that's our objective. And so it's very important for you to know in which condition your pupil is. 

Are they in a point where they're still incubating an idea that they have, creative idea? And so you mustn't force them into action at that time; they have to be in a passive state. And you could really disturb them very much if at that time you were to give them Ya Wali for example, to be masterful, or accomplish things, or take responsibility. No, at that time, there are two wazifas that I would use, one is Mujib which means sensitive, and the other is Hadi which is of course allowing oneself to be guided. But if you remember, that that is a state of self-searching, one has not yet taken a direction, so one is still fumbling. As I said before, the universe proceeds by trial and error, so there are a lot of ideas, one hasn't yet really decided one's plan of action; one is just trying to feel out what the situation is. And so that is the time when I would give another wazifa which is, I've already mentioned it: Ya Wajid. Wajid means to find; it is control F on your computer. To find. So now, it's like the needle is pointing there and yes, got it. Yeah. So, and I would say that that marks the transit from the jemal state to the jelal state, is when you've found it. That's the Oaha' moment. Yes. I've been looking for it, and yeah, got it. 

Now after that Murshid says now you have to really pursue that and not waiver, and not allow yourself to be distracted by anything else. And also never allow yourself to lose heart because of the negative opinions of people about your project. Now you're in it and you pursue it, and so you have to give your pupil every encouragement because at that time the pupil might think, Oyes, but there's something else that maybe I could have done...' and that's what we call dithering. And in the end, what Murshid says is that with the power that you've gained by accomplishing something you can accomplish something much more challenging. So you should pursue it, but there is a moment when you feel I've reached that jelal point there at the top, the zenith, and there's no point in continuing to pursue that." Except of course to, as one says, to lie on one's laurels. You know, that's the time when you're pensioned off. It depends, I mean if you like that, but I wouldn't like it I can tell you. You're put on pasture as one says. 

So, but the beautiful thing about this is that then when you that it's coming down, you've passed your leave, you've gone past your leave, now then the thing is to already, once it's starting to move down, already project another circle. But you see that in order to do that you still have to go down into that (Nadir??) the underground to nurture that plan. You can't just do it like that. So the fact is that instead of it being a circle, it's really becoming a spiral you see. So you keep on going back down again in your soul searching, and you find that now it's reaching beyond the zenith. So let, it's ok if everything falls, breaks down, falls apart, it's ok, as long as I have it in me to start something of greater importance. So if things break down, don't hang on to them. Start something else. Because you're going against a current. And if your body is breaking down, well then you've got to renew your body, but don't hang on to that which is breaking down.  

So when you see, now you see an application of those wazifas that I was talking about. And kemal is very significant for the Sufis; as I say that is what Nefari is talking about, it's a threshold state. One is between two chairs as it were, between two makams. And it can be interpreted as a negative state because one doesn't have any motivation you see, but it's part of the programming; it's important for the programming. But of course the word kemal also means perfection, so it is very difficult to reconcile these two senses. And of course, do you understand them in the words of Christ for example when he says, "It has been fulfilled." You see, that's that kemal state. So ultimately, the jelal state can aver itself to be a kemal state: I have reached the top, and it has been fulfilled. Buddha said the same thing, exactly the same thing: "what had to be done has been done," was what he said. And it's a pity to end here, because I don't think that things have been fulfilled yet. We leave that for manana.  

Now, come down to something more practical. You see a lot of people who come to us are, find it difficult to make their way in the world. Might be disappointed, might be disappointed in themselves, going through a dark night of the mind, and consequently are looking to us because they want encouragement in their turning within. And what they understand by turning within is an escape from life, is withdrawing, in meditation. And that kind of thing is encouraged in the Indian concept of spirituality. But then we have to remember that in the Indian customs it's only after a man or a woman have fulfilled their life: they've had a family, they've cultivated their field, and whatever, then they can start, instead of being put on pasture as I said, then they become a sanayasin, so then they pursue the spiritual life. And at that time they are not what they call a householder, and so it's a totally different mode of life, and what's happening now is that that kind of mentality has been introduced in America and Europe by the swamis, when actually that's not what we seek in the West. So, it's opening one door and closing another. 

And it does make people other-worldly. And there are quite a few sayings, of Ibn' Arabi for example, who says something very drastic, he said: "for one who is God conscious, retreat is impossible." So that means you know, questioning all that we're doing, and it's good to question what one is doing. Well my way of answering that is think of what we call a retreat as a rehearsal for life instead of a retreat. Because then you can prepare yourself in some distance, but don't, yeah, maybe it's a sabbatical, but I think it's better to use the word rehearsal for life. And hence, be careful with that wazifa Ya Batin, or even Ya Quddus, but Ya Quddus is quite a different thing all together. Ya Batin, but however you can see the value of Ya Batin because we don't really know ourselves. As I said, we are wearing a mask, and we are playing a role, and we're explaining, but we're trying to explain what we imply, and we don't know what we imply. So there's some incongruity there, and so Batin which means the veiled one, I talked about yesterday, is, what is intended is for it to lead to unveiling. And that is a dramatic issue because I think the case of Al Hallaj is the most pertinent of all the cases that I know, he was accused by his friend (Chibli) for having revealed the secret of his love relationship with God. The Jews are very very particular about that, the Kabbala is very hidden and so on, esoteric, one isn't supposed to talk about it. 

It's exactly what I mentioned yesterday about this poetess in Iran who unveiled herself. The whole of life is the unveiling, that's what life is about. And it's called the manifestation of the non-manifest. (Tajali-Tajaliet) means the manifestation of the non-manifest. But it's always at the cost of your life. I mean it could be at the cost of your life. It was in the case of Al Hallaj. In other words, you're putting yourself on the spot. You can expect derision, and being put down, and having opposition, and being persecuted, and all kinds of things, but that's the way things are. That's the way it is. That's life. And therefore Batin is always associated with Zahir. And so if you just give the practice Batin because that's the way that that person is, and yesterday I said that one can encourage a person the way they are, but still, in this case I would say no, you have to make it clear that instead of just looking behind the mask, one has to transform the mask. And one has to transform one's role, instead of identifying with one's role playing. 

Because the whole of life is as I say the manifestation of the non-manifest, and Zahir means exactly what in Greek is called the epiphany--epiphanos--phonos--light: the appearance of light, or the disclosure of light. And therefore I find it very useful, because you know yesterday I was talking about the forms that go together with the repetition of the wazifa. So in the case of Zahir, think of your aura as a radiance, particularly of your heart center as the sun which is radiating itself as your aura. And that's how you can come out and start expressing what you thought you couldn't express. Because, you know that you can't express it. You remember I said that once; I asked a Dervish, "(inaudible) what is the best way of bringing Sufism to the West?" And he said: "Never say anything if you think you can say it." So, since I know that I can't say it, it's OK. So it's, Zahir is learning to trust one's deeper insight even though one does not find a way of articulating it. 

For example I remember talking to, when I was, I started with the Youth Camp, and there was a young girl who said, "Oh, can you help me because I'm so isolated, I can't communicate with people. I don't know what to do. Can you tell me something that would help me? I see these people talking and enjoying their communication. I can't do it." So I said, "have you ever listened to those conversations?" "Yes." "Well, have you noticed that most of them are not particularly brilliant?" So you don't have to say something extremely smart; you can just say something that is even nonsensical. Like for example, if you are in a lift, and there's somebody, and there's that sense, well I mean you know, when you don't know what to say, and so then you say, "Nice weather today." And you forgot that it was raining, but it really doesn't matter. The important thing is that you've established some communication. So we'll have to end here. 

End of Tape 

AUG 18, 1997		Tape 14

The piece of music that we have just heard is called the Niedrei by Max Bruch if I may add a personal note, it is my favorite piece of music and I used to play it on the cello myself except until the time that I disgraced myself at the camp in the Alps trying to, with my hand trembling and doing all the wrong things and so I decided never to play the cello in public again. But this is the height of excellence, played by Harmann who is a master of vibrato on the cello, unprecedented and unsurpassable. This is on a CD which is called Caprice Italian which has nothing to do with Max Bruch and could never be found again, it is out of sale, you can't get it anymore. It's also to be found at the end of a cassette with Harmann playing the concerto of Dvorcak, I don't know if it is still available, probably not. 

It is, as you know, a Jewish celebration of repentance, guilt and so it touches upon very much what we've, those wasifas that we are working with now. So instead of working with the inspiring wasifas, I think we need to get to get back to the bad wasifas, what I call the bad wasifas.Some of them are even worse that the one I, The Dishonorer or The Humiliator that I is pretty bad but the one that I have kept away for a long time, never given to anyone, is The Distressor. But it is the most relevant of all practices because one feels that one's tribulations are the process of life, are part of our participation of the cosmic drama instead, there is some meaningfulness in the fact that we are distressed. And of course it is always necessary to see how we go from despair to victory, that's why there has to be two wasifas, of course. 

I think of the words of Al-Halaj who was crucified, and tortured, crucified. For having said, well, there were political intrigues behind it all, but still I mean it was mainly because he said: "An al-haq")  which means that "there is something in me which is uncreated". It is the same thing as Miester Eckhart said when he said " there is something in me which is "increatis et increabile" that is not created and not subjected to being created, in other words, God. I mean it's not the creature but it's the Creator in me. And of course, Miester Eckhart was put on the --- in the Vatican. His death was rather mysterious anyway. In the case of Al-Hajaj it was clear that he was condemned, and his last words were, amongst his last words were, well one thing he said is " I have been invited by the divine host to drink from his chalice and it contains poison how can I refuse?" So you think of, take away this chalice. 

And then he said, "Thy abandonment of me is a proof of thy love, because thy testest most thou lovest most". Now that is the answer. If you have, if you are a school teacher, you will test the good pupils. Those are the ones you are going to test. So this cuts right into perhaps a central feature of, our own particular as they call it in English, our own storms in our cups of tea, that our participation in that drama of the universe, we all have some measure of distress small, or greater and it is possible, I don't know, I don't want to make assumptions here, but maybe if the test is very great then its an indication that we are worth being tested. So we can compliment ourselves on our tribulations. But we don't want to stay there, of course. And so the interesting thing is that passage from crucifixion to resurrection which you find, for example, in the B minor Mass, a sudden shift, quantum leap from one to the other is dramatic. And it illustrates what Pir-o-Murshid, who says: "Be not surprised if defeat can aver itself to be a victory." 

And, a clear case, of course, the case of Christ because he was abandoned by all sides, by the very, his own disciples who did not have the courage to come forward and say they were disciples. You can understand it because they knew that they were going to be killed, but still, and so, and you know the people, the same people who had celebrated him with hosannas on the top of the hill said: "Hmm-m, well, he said he could destroy the temple and build it again, he said he talked about the kingdom of God, well, let's see whether he can save himself now". And what did he say? "Why hast thou abandoned me?" You see, it was a hoax, and that fiasco averred itself to be one of the greatest victories that the world has ever known. And if, actually, that was the teaching of Christ, what he really wanted to do was to, his message was for the poor in spirit, for those who are floundering in life, give them hope instead of, to the people who are triumphant like the yogis who sit on the top of the hill, cross-legged having overcome the existential state. This was a completely new message.

So we have two words here, in fact there are small nuances (? Or liances?) Amongst the wasifas that are difficult to understand. In any case the word for distress is "darr".And please don't say it unless you add the other word the tandem, and that could be "bakhi" (sp?), which is, God is "bakhi", that means, it derives from the word "bakhau" which means, well, you see, I used to think it meant "reinstatement", in fact I think I do, I still do, and I think I was right, and I still do, and therefore what I told you this morning, I think I made a slip there, khayum means "self-subsisting". And bakhi, I think so, but my opinion is open to, of course challenge, and "bakhi" would be "everlastingness". 

If you remember what I said was everlasting starts at one point so its not the same as eternity, but is eternalized, continuous akhir in the future eternally but it has a beginning in time. Whereas samad which is eternity has no beginning in time and no end and then you have mudim which is origination so origination takes place in time and then you have mukhadem if you remember it was, well, Moyadin translates it the "expeditor" to expedite several connotations to expedite. But the way I understand it is to trigger off something that then has consequences so I think that applies to the emergence of new dispensations, our potentials when they emerge into our personality. Ibn Arabi calls it observe the engendering of possibilities, that's what he calls it, inkhan, possibilities, you see. So its, each one of us carries within us possibilities so we can trigger off those possibilities. So this is, I wanted to correct something I wasn't quite sure that I made it quite clear that kayum really means, or is often translated as resurrection, but that's wrong I, resurrection is bayith, bayith is, you see I want to make quite sure, because I sometimes I get confused about that, yes it's bayith, warith, inheritance, and bayith, resurrection. 

And bakhi then I think that, you see, in Islam there's an article of faith, you might call it an article of faith, according to which we are continually reborn. Its called recurrent birth, and if it were not so, then we would be the consequence of the past. So that's where there is hope to be different to be reborn again, you see. And so, that s the reason for fanah and bakha. Because then fanah means that recurrently there's a destruction and reconstruction, recurrently. Fanah, bakha. So we have bakhi this carried my thoughts something, that's right, I said when you are incurring distress think that is the fanah and that the consequence is bakha, the consequence of that distress is not resurrection is that there is a reinstatement of your being. You remember I was saying turning the tables on illness so that you are better after the illness than before. So, I , I think that we need to get in touch with our distress because, and we need to face it with passion, with passion. That is very different from Buddhism which is objective watching your personality or whatever, very objective, cool, whereas this is really jumping into the fire as they say or as Jahladin Rumi says, "Wreck your house, you ll find a traitor underneath it, but you can't find him unless you wreck it". 

That's very dervish. So there's some passion in it. So this, in our time, of course in the ???, that came, there was that transit from total, the agony of the crucifixion with resurrection in the B minor Mass, but things are moving, of course in our time we have "The Last Temptation of Christ" it's a film that a lot of Catholics have objected to, I myself haven't seen it, but there's no doubt that the music of the agony of the crucifixion and the fantastic choir of angels after that is something that really reaches down into the depth of your being. And of course it is music of our time. So I think we should just listen to it and see, I think it is important to identify with it, and not just say that it is an event that took place in history but there is "cri du coeur" as one says in French, a cry of agony that comes out of our heart when we realize how very painfully we can be distressed in our lives and keep on thinking about that little spark of light at the end of the dark tunnel which represents our ultimate hope.    END TAPE  

AUG 18, 1997		Tape 15

Yes, what you want to do now is to look at our problems or issues or objectives and so on, from different vantage points, the vantage points that we have learned to clinch in the course of these last days.  So in other words, it's a practise of muhasabi, but whereas without warning, unless one is warned, one will be looking at one's objectives from one's ordinary vantage point and now we look, and also we're looking at the measures that we have been using or to apply these ideas, now we are going to look at the whole thing from different vantage points, instead of one's ordinary vantage point.  

One of the clear consequences is that one is going to be clearer as to what is being enacted behind one's problems instead of, you see at first you ask yourself "what are the qualities that I am am challenged with in my problems?", and now you ask yourself "what are the issues that are being enacted by our problems?".  So irrespective of me; for example the issue is Truth or the issue is Compassion, or the issue is Joy or the issue is Respect, or whatever is it.  So, it's not that I need to develop that quality, but that is the quality that is being enacted in this particular problem.  

So to achieve that, what I am suggesting is that we do a breathing practice - it's called Qasab, and breathing with the left nostril, holding the breath, out through the right.  But instead of just doing the breathing practice, we use that particular rhythm of the breath in order to modulate our concentrations from one to the other.  So when you breathe in through the left nostril, yes first of all I must say that before you do any breathing practice, you should always exhale deeply, that is always in my mind, the breathing practice always starts with exhaling, then inhaling.  And also I hope that I don't have to remind you that one contracts one's abdomen, then one's chest as one exhales, and that one dilates one's abdomen and one's chest as one inhales.

Okay, so having taken a very deep breath, and having therefore evacuated all of the ______ gases, now you breathe in through the left nostril, and hopefully then your breath is slower so we have more time to concentrate and so you concentrate upon, you think about, you look upon your life as like a film.  And if you do this everyday, or during the retreat you do it everyday of the retreat, then you start getting used to the sequence of events in your life and your able to do it much faster, normally we do this, we take time over this, now you have to do it in one inhaling.  Now inhaling, so all that you remember is a sort of general outline of your life and so you are not, you don't concentrate on each event, you wouldn't have time.  And the beauty of this is that what comes through now is the most significant moments in your life, and actually it is really the most dramatic decisions that you had to take.  And then right away you see the consequence of  that decision, of those decisions.  

Now if you do this, you will see how each event, well you will see two things, one is how the events do result from your decisions, and on the other hand they often we think that fortuitous situations that irrespective of our will or decision, that is it's possible, I can only say that remember the words of Jung, "If you do not face your shadow, it will appear to you in the form of your fate", so that there is a good chance that that event that seems fortuitous or that you ascribed to fate is the way the Universe is teaching you or challenging you into developing a quality.  So it is important to see that, but not with your ordinary mind.  What we are trying to do is really to learn to use our intuition instead of our figuring things out with our mind when looking at our life.  So that what we are looking for is revealed knowledge instead of acquired knowledge.  Now all the time while you are doing this you know that behind all of this is your motivations, behind your decisions is your motivations and when making one's decisions, one is not aware of one's motivations most of the time.  

What we are doing in Muhasabi is to be very clear as to what one's motivations are, and therefore one does a fikr, the fikr of a wazifa while one is doing this breathing practice, and that is Huk as I said yesterday.  The power of truth will open up the doors to your intuition and reveal to you the, well it's not like there is a program of the Universe and you are the victim or the puppet in the hands of that program,  it will reveal to you that connection between your will and the programming, or it's beyond what one can figure out with one's mind.  Let us say that you have been guided and you have intervened with that guidance by your will and behind it all are two things - one is your original intuition and secondly hopefully you have gained wisdom in the course of the process.  So that is Ya Huk.  I said Ya Hakim, that is you are the judge if you are doing Muhasabi, but the further step is Hakam which is the wisdom that arises out of  observing very scrupulously absolute authenticity, consequence is a kind of wisdom, you might call it the wisdom of the truth.  What we could do is of course not think of the breath to start with and just take some time to do this and then eventually you will bring in your breath.  

And as you know, you interrupt your inhaling, hold your breath, and that time you have to be prepared to interrupt any thoughts concerning retrospectively the past and consider what you could do to break the pattern of the past, that is to interrupt the cause and effect of past actions by your pledge; and as you hold your breath, that is the instance of time so at that point you are a knight, make a pledge of fealty to the Divine Sovereignty, so that word is Fatah.  And perhaps you know that the illustration that Pir-O-Murshid gives is a knight, of course meaning in the temple and at dawn the door opens up, it's what you call a French door, and reveals a path in which the knight is to engage.  

So there's an opening into the future, so as you exhale down you prefigure how things could be so in that prefiguration there is very difficult to strike a balance between utopist wishful thinking and more realistic possibilities.  And these are revealed to you as Pir-O-Murshid says "the purpose of life is is like a horizon, the further you advance the further is recedes" and so you can't really see the purpose, there's a purpose behind a purpose behind a purpose.  These are not your motivations, they are that which lures you forward and of course in some way they are connected with your motivations.  And as you do that you feel that your future is pulling you out of the past.

Now this is very controversial because yesterday I gave the official interpretation of the word of Muhaaher which is translated by the delayer and Mushid gives the opposite interpretation - it is exactly that pull of the future, Aher of course means the future in infinite regress; so it isn't there, it is the way things could be if they would be as they might be, so that is what is pulling you forward.  It's not as though, although it's not there actually you are creating it.  So the future pulls you forward, it is your creating it that brings you forward.  It is your imagination, it is what Ibn Arabi calls "observe the generation of possibilities because of the engendering of possibilities".  Now this is rather, well I think it's understandable, it's not really productive to hope that in the future the obstacles will be removed, or that situations will, you will recover situations that were damaged by an event or a situation, that is therapy as we call it in working with energy therapy, no it is the way things could be better than they were before.  And there is another wazifa that I associate with this one, and that is Wahabo because Wahabo, of course it originally it means the "Divine Gift", the "Divine Bounty", it keeps on flowing so, but in a sense it is the way that more of this bounty will be invested upon you, bequeath to you, as you find your path.  It's as though when one is doing the right thing one gets help, and Divine help.

Okay, well now let's just see if you can just do this on your breath.  First inhaling, then holding the breath, exhale, and then start again a few times, you know how you do it, you place your thumb of your right hand under your chin, and then the middle finger of your right hand on your right nostril, and then you place the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand and the thumb of your left hand against your left nostril and so then you press the finger of the right hand as you inhale through the left nostril, then press both fingers, and then release the right finger.  So it is your pledge that opens up the door to the future.  And now you are able to see the possibilities that you couldn't see when that door was closed.  __________ form.  As you breathe in you, instead of just thinking of the events in your life, in the past, recollecting them you see what were the issues, for example "when I was in that situation what I didn't realize was that the issue that was being enacted was Truth" or "when I was in that situation I didn't realize that the issues that was enacted was Compassion" or "when I was in that situation what I didn't realize was that the issue was taking control" or "it was listening into Guidance", so now you are not considering just the events but you are considering what was behind the events.  

And consequently when you hold your breath, now you have definite guidelines as to what pledge you need to make because now you see that your decision is not with regard to the situation, change the situation, but your decision is with regard to facilitating that quality which was the issue behind the event.  For example, "I have decided to become compassionate", and then you have the consequences, but so you are not thinking of a particular situation in which you are going to become compassionate, but have pledged yourself to be compassionate.  Or then you have pledged yourself to be happy for example, or you have pledged yourself to be mastery, or whatever, it's a quality, the pledge has to do with a quality.  Rather than in the early stage it had to do with an action, I will not do this anymore, I will do this, but now in the more advanced stages the pledge is with regard to a quality and therefore your knowledge of the nomenclature of the wazaif is helpful.  Now you prescribe to yourself a quality.  

If you have trained your mind to associated a quality with a word, then that word acts as a trigger to arouse that quality.  And now as you exhale, you are beginning to see how that applying a quality is going to change situations in your life, and open up new avenues which were closed because that quality had not, you hadn't developed that quality sufficiently in your being.  Now you have the opposite, and that is be prepared to find that all your prefigurations for the future do not turn out to be as you had foreseen them, or even planned and hoped for them; that means that you free yourself from your attachment to or dependence upon your future, which is of course freeing, and consequently you might find you had limited your freedom by your planning and other possibilities out there which you could not see because you were limited by your planning.  It __________ a kind of fana, it's a kind of, there's a collapse of the total structure that we had built up because it made us dependent and what we are seeking is freedom.  

And freedom will give you a chance of finding new ways, so you almost, you don't fear the collapse, on the contrary you almost hope that wherever it does collapse it will open up new vistas, new possibilities.  That's what you do, is inhale through the right nostril and now you'll find that you, it's going to alter your pledge, now you make a second pledge; Incidentally for those who are into Islam, there are two throws of the arrow in the myth of the Mirage.  Now there's a second pledge here, the first pledge was with regard to the past to open up the door of the future, it had consequences with regard to the future, but now your pledge is definitely concerned with the future and with regard to, well the way it is going to alter your prefiguration of one.  It's going to alter your planning now because you are not attached to your planning, so now things will open up.  So there's the other sense of the work Mohaiyera which is going to thinking, not be attached to your planning, the _________ question whether you are prepared to listen to the Divine Guidance instead of limiting with your own planning, that's going to maybe delay what you had planned, but by delaying it that you are opening the door to an alternative.  

So the curious thing is that when you are holding your breath and making a pledge, you are in that state of waiting which I referred to the other day; I don't know how to say this, it's really very contradictory because there's a waiting and an expectation and a transit all at once and I think that the pledge marks the passage from a state of waiting, waiting while you are waiting for your intuition to tell you what Divine Guidance is.  And then the pledge sets your intuition into motion.  And now when you look at the past in the light of what the future's revealing to you, the past looks very different.  And for one thing, the past in not sclerosed as we often think it is, we can't change it, it's sclerosed, those stars that you are looking at tonight or last night maybe have not existed, have disintegrated many light years ago, the past has altered itself.  But the difficult thing to understand is that one's pledge can alter the past.  For example, you are freeing people from their resentment by forgetting what you did.  Now, you remember that Mukadim was the wazifa that stands for the spontaneous emergence of the quality or potentiality, so your pledge is going to call a quality from the potential state and make it real in your personality and then it's going to have an effect, a retroactive effect upon the past and this is really important because as Hujwiri says "the instant of time is a sharp sword that cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future."

So what we do now has enormous consequences in terms of our guilt and in terms of our resentment.  So you see the value of holding your breath, and therefore of breaking a pattern and waiting for the door to open, which your pledge is what makes it open, but you still have to wait before you make your pledge, to wait for your guidance so that period of suspense is a period of a deep soul searching, of waiting beyond time if one could put it that way.  Yes, now you are to inhale through both nostrils, hold the breath and exhale through both nostrils, and so you remember that to start with we are using our ordinary mind, we are figuring out, trying to figure out what is happening to us, what has happened to us in the past, what will happen in the future, and we still are in our personal vantage point, so that our  judgement is inadequate and consequently our pledge is not totally satisfactory.  Now as you inhale with both nostrils you pass in review the different stages that we have encountered in the course of these days, and if you remember what we said is that for each stage there is a different mode of thinking.  

Perhaps you will remember that the subtle mind and the very subtle mind or beyond the logic of the common place mind, or then the emotions that becomes sublimated and therefore open up a whole new way of judging things on the strength of the emotional attunement rather than of what one calls the facts.  And if you remember then, our revealed knowledge rather than acquired knowledge, intelligence instead of consciousness, the physical world now seems to be not maya, but it seems to be aware, you find the devices to reveal the Divine Intention, so the intention is right there in those devices, but still now if you just concentrate on devices you can't see the intention so you have to downplay the devices.  So you are awakening from one perspective to another, which means of course to free yourself from the previous vantage point, I call it downplaying, and so you do remember that the second stage or the third stage are missiles of that stage we are trying to arouse the potentialities, but those potentialities are somehow a customizing of  the Divine Planning, but now as we reach upwards we are no more into let's say the seed but the code of the seed, so you could put it that way; in other words, the potentialities are not limited by our individuality but are infinite because we discover our Cosmic dimension.  

So you know it is a rather simplistic way of thinking that one is rising above the Earth plane and so it's much better to think that our consciousness has become Cosmic and transcendent while at the same time not discounting the Earth plane - I am not saying this very well, it's very difficult to say it while meditating,  so let's say that the programming is in its implementation so instead of disregarding the world, the Earth, one is seeing the events and one is seeing at the same time what is behind the events.  So now when you are not looking at your life as a film as we did before, but  let's say that, you know if you fly very high then there's no sense of advancing on the surface of the Earth so the sense of becoming has got lost out of sight so it's not like events that succeed each other in time, you have an overview of your life that doesn't, you don't look upon your life as the past now anymore.  It includes the future, it includes the present.  So you reach a kind of insight that defies the mind, you can't reduce it to mental concepts, it's much more like the ecstasy that Pir-O-Murshid talks about, the reason of reasons gives you ecstasy, or as Nasrudin __________ said "the witness in you is now the witness in the heavens."  

I wish I could say it, there's pain and joy and also peace and ecstasy in your understanding or in your realization.  And when you hold your breath and you reach that point when you are reconciled with what seemed unacceptable to your mind.  For example there are thoughts that would be regarding events that are unacceptable like when I think of the ordeal of my sister, it's unacceptable when I think of her in that situation it's unacceptable.  One says "No", it's not a no, so there are failures in life, you know when somebody say somebody has died and you say "no, it's not possible", it's unacceptable.  And it's unacceptable because to our logical mind death is unacceptable to the logical mind.  So it means to see meaningfulness in that which seems meaningless to our ordinary mind.  That's the ultimate awakening.  That's the meaning of the wazifa Habira.  

Now as you exhale Habira is going to revolutionize Alim, your understanding, so as you come back into life having seen the meaningfulness where you couldn't see it before and that gives you the wisdom in life which you didn't have before.  It's like once you've seen behind the curtain, you are never the same.  Pir-O-Murshid says you see in the root of the flower, of the plant, you see the branches and the flowers, instead of just seeing the branches and the flowers you see then in the root, in the essence.  That is Tawhid, Tawhid, after having reached Ahad which is The One, the Oneness that is awakening beyond life, now you awaken in life and that is called Tawhid.  And Murshid, in fact that is the focal point of all of Murshid's teachings, the seeing of the purpose of life, and then as you see the purpose, well as Murshid says "the purpose of life is fulfilled when man embodies that purpose."  So now you see your purpose of life in the light of the purpose of life.  And one could never have a sense of the purpose of one's life disconnected with, I mean regardless of the purpose of life.

The End

AUG 19, 1997		Tape 16

.So this is Men... playing a suite ..., and he is considered to be the best interpreter of Barsom (?) suite.  The richness of the tone of it I think is quite extraordinary.  So now we are getting towards the point where we need to be as clear as possible, and have guidelines about how we can help outreach(?)  So you are sitting there, and the word comes to you, and you feel a need on the part of the murid, and you would like to live up to that need.  You would like to answer that need.  Provide help.  But how can you help?  You need to know how to help.  There's diagnosis and then there's the prescription that you are giving, and um so the bottom line of all of this is that um whatever the problems of that person are, and whatever the issues are in their life, they are in the depths of their being, extremely vulnerable.  

They are placing their vulnerable soul in your care.  And their vulnerability is in their self-esteem.  And if you criticize, then you hurt their self-esteem further.  And even if you think critically of them, you hurt their self-esteem further.  And the thing is that you yourself are vulnerable.  (laughing)  In your self-esteem.  And there is no use putting on a pretense of being what you are not.  In fact that would be not only counterproductive, but really harmful.  So they are counting upon your authenticity, and they will soon feel if you are playing the role.  And of course you can't try to figure out how you can help them in their self-esteem by any argument whatsoever.  It won't help.  

Pir-o-Murshid describes this sometimes.  He said it's like swimming in the water, and rescuing a person who is floundering, and if you have difficulty in meeting yourself at the surface anyway, then you are floundering with the person floundering.  And of course it is said doubt, that doubt that we talked about, is doubt in themselves.  And they project it upon you, so then they doubt you, or they doubt the teaching, or they doubt God or whatever, life whatever.  And for you, of course you know that doubt is due to a misconstruction, and of mind which is backed by an emotion of despair for having been abandoned.  Abandoned by God, abandoned by people, let down, so on whatever the circumstances are there is a sense of being abandoned.  And they are looking to you as a safety buoy to rescue them from that sense of abandonment.  

So your first concern is to help them rid (?) by your own conviction.  It's a a, they would pick it up somehow, so no argument.  No prescriptions would do that, so that means, it means how deeply you are grounded in your own conviction.  And that conviction cannot be belief.  It has to be based upon real, real authentic...  Conviction is a word, of course.  Knowing, it's not belief.  It's knowing, and of course that means that is based upon not just experience.  It is the interpretation of experience.  The way that you are able to see meaningfulness in your experience instead of just ah, we often say we are into experience and to the theories here, but it is what that experience is, what kind of insight that experience communicates to you, so I guess your, anyway your realization.  

Of course as I said, they are very vulnerable.  And they have really become very dependent upon your opinion of them.  And even though they will not acknowledge, sometimes it's very difficult for, if one feels vulnerable.  It's very difficult to acknowledge one's defects because one is already vulnerable enough, and so one would like to feel a bit better, in hopes that the leader is going to make you feel better, and so, and um so, the only way in which you can do it is if you are able to see beauty in them that they do not see.  So you become their mirror, but as I said yesterday, maybe I'm not right in saying this, some parallel between psychotherapist and a spiritual representative.  A psychotherapist is supposed to be blank mirror I think in which the pupil is able to see themselves, talk aloud, and so on, bring it all up to surface, whereas the spiritual teacher is measuring the murid while the murid is measuring the teacher.  So it's like two mirrors that are face to face.  And the context of a far bigger outreach, and that is what the Sufis call Inaan Hannad (?).  That means the palace of mirrors.  All the Universe is a palace of mirrors.  

So now from all that we have been doing this week, it is clear that in past days, it is clear that um, you cannot pass a judgment or an assessment, either an assessment of their problems or a judgment about their person if you are in your personal consciousness.  That is, if you are, when I say in your personal consciousness, I know that the consciousness of the whole universe is funneled into one's personal consciousness, but if you are not aware of it, then you are simply limiting your, your judgment is limited, trying to figure things with your mind, but it just doesn't work in this spatial field at all.  

Now if we have in mind.  First, to prelude this I'll say, ah I'll quote Murshid when he said um, 'you must be able to lift your consciousness to the abstract planes at any moment.'  From any moment, you see.  Like, hopefully we do it in meditation, but it's like at any moment, so by having done it so in meditation, you know that you can do it impromptu at a moment's notice.  And so one botches oneself, and one says yes, I see now.  I am, I've really, I'm in my personal consciousness in the sense that I am not aware of all that is coming through or trying to come through this personal consciousness because, well, I'm, you know, there is a gravity pull on the earth.  And then so how do I get into those other dimensions of consciousness.  Is it going to throw light on this whole situation?  So then now you remember.  You turn within, that is the first step, remember.  Umhuh.

To prelude what I am saying I would say, I would, I used to, in fact I still do it when I can, I course I am living such a rushed schedule now, but I would meditate sometimes even for, at least for an hour, before interviewing murids, before giving them a practice.  I know it is very difficult.  In fact generally the representatives are busy people, so people who are able to take responsibility in life are people responsible people, and those are the people who then may make that further step which is taking responsibility for the spiritual life of people.  In time, of course you get to the point when you can reach it.  You can shift your consciousness at will, one might say.  You remember when we came to that point when we were able to shift into what I call the transfigured world.  And the key to that was turning within.  That means, if you remember, turning within is not introspecting.  

But it is, we found the key to that 'cause experience identity, or shifting your identity from body consciousness to what I call the template of the body which is the etheric body, although it doesn't matter what you call it.  Could be called life view, whatever, you understand what I mean is that sense of a fluidity of being part of all things like radio waves or something like that or so that it is not, turning within is not being encapsulated within with a barrier, in respect to our time, but its intermeshing with all things from within.  In fact, rather than think of time within I think it is better to think of reaching out from inside.  That is a better way of thinking of it.  And so if you do that, then you begin to see the expression, well what I call of course, countenance behind the face, but to be more concrete, it is the expression that is coming through that face.  Now that expression is telling you a lot of things.  

And in fact your understanding of what it's telling you is because you have the same thing in yourself.  Remember this is really a slogan or a principle.  It was Abu Hashid Metamida, Pir Murshid of........Han who said intuition is a revelation of your own spirit.  So it's like, for example, you are talking to a person and you feel dishonest.  So it's not you think that person's dishonest.  You feel dishonest because we all have all these things in us.  Fortunately we are able to overcome them, but they are still there, potentially there.  They could burst forth unless we keep the jack in the box.  So that is just an example.  And you feel the doubt, and you feel the need for care and comfort and all those things which we have gone through in the early stages of the developmental stage:  attachment, dependence, and sentiment, anger, resentment, guilt, but behind all this the main thing is the vulnerability in one's self-esteem, so we see that in a person.  And you see also the reactive ego, which is a perfunctory way in which a person can validate themselves to maintain a semblance of dignity when that is what is at stake.  

So it is only if you yourself know how important it is for yourself to honor your Self that you can help them to validate the dignity in their own being.  That's why as I said when people came to Pir-o-Murshid, they always felt that he was their real, their best friend, because he was, he was treating them with very much respect and dignity.  So he didn't play the role of the VIP guru, and when people were coming there for your help you treated-- part of what is happening to that people and you are taking them in your heart and your soul.  You recognize yourself in them, and they recognize...and they can only understand themselves by .....??? themselves in you.   So that adage is founded, I have often quoted of Inarbe (?) when he says, 'I know myself with the knowledge that God has of him/herself through me.  I am myself through the knowledge that God has of himself through me.  

So there is an assumption that God knows him/herself in the principle of his/her being.  He/she acquires a further knowledge by discovering him/herself as you.  It's a further knowledge.  And the mirroring effect is that you are then like God would be, the one who is discovering him/herself in your people.  And consequently your people is able to discover himself by your discovering of yourself through him/her.  And if you remember that this discovery is at one of the elementary levels through form.  I quote...??? 'God discovers him/herself, (well, he says himself) through the very form in which he reveals himself to you, and that is your form.'  And that is the whole importance of (mithal?) that is in your interface with the murid.  It is the ability to see the form of the inner- say if you like the etheric body or the aura.  Let's say the inner form of that person that is coming through their countenance.  There is a clue.  You've got something really concrete there instead of abstract.  

And for this, I've given a practice, I don't know to what extent people have been doing it, but I would say it is a key practice that you do on your own in you meditations, and that is, you identify with the two beams of light of your eyes.  Think of your eyes.  Well you identify with your glance, and it's a reality that the eyes do emit light, or rather light in brain is created through the optic nerves and breaks through the retina and breaks through the cornea and reaches out into our space.  So normally that light is so weak as compared with the light that accrues to us from outside that we don't realize it.  But if you can, if you have closed eyes then you can concentrate on that, on those two beams, and you become very aware of them.  Now when you open your eyes you know that the light from the environment is going to prevail upon the light in your eyes, and therefore you won't be able to, you won't be able to keep your concentration unless you exercise a very strong intent of your will.  

And so what you do is train yourself to just at the mo...when you start exhaling and you open your eyes and then, but try to keep your concentration on those two beams and then you can't see people.  It's a blur.  And if you keep on doing that you become used to it.  I don't know whether you've seen the eyes of Chinmoy.  That's a very good example of someone whose doing this practice all the time.  That's what, that is his particular asset is that particular way of looking.  Then of course if there is a blur you can't see anything anyway, but now you start practicing with a flower.  So you have a flower in front of you and you do this, and then you open your eyes and your glance is however directed towards a flower, and now...I don't know whether you know of course that we are, we are continually moving the eyes very rapidly.  You call rapid eye moment for example in dream.  Rapid eye movement.  

That's what we're doing looking at a flower.  Looking at one petal, then the other, and some extrapolating between those two, those visions.  But there is a zen practice which consists in looking at the flower without moving your glance from one petal to the other, and at the exclusion of anything around it, the flower, and then after 20 minutes, you look around the flower.  (laughs)  The flower seems to be floating in the air.  It's an unusual way of looking, and so you realize that one can allay the usual way of looking.  So that having done this practice, you are able to look at, then, rather you are able to look at, for example, you invite a person to sit in front of you, and you are able to look at that person without seeing...through the aura of that person.  And now you see something about that person that you cannot see if you are judging thing either by what the person says or by the appearance of that person.  

It's much more real.  And so now it is not, well that in you which is mirroring that person is not your ordinary personality.  It's a level of your personality whereby you see your personality as the way that beacon of God comes through in its individual aspect and its individual presentation, so one is still conscious of one's individuality, but one's individuality is somehow seen in context, in the context of the whole.  And therefore you are able to relate much better with that person, because if you're caught up in your personal individuality, the individuality of the other person is different, so you are not really mirroring each other.  But from the moment that you discover the wider outreach of your being, then it is better able to mirror what is in that person, and consequently that person is able to see themselves in a wider context than within the limitation of their individuality.  The first step, that is mithal (?)

And then if you remember, there is one point when Inari (?) said, 'I think' [Chami (?) said the same thing as a matter of fact], he said, 'now discard imagination.'  Because imagination is a way of translating reality by the device of form, and while form is able to translate very much of what is present within the initial thought or emotion, still by the sheer fact that it is in three dimensional space, it is limited.  

The Tibetan called the illusory body, it is illusory in the sense that it's not quite you.  It does express you, but not totally adequately, and therefore if you identify with it, it is deluding.  So that the form while being a device and helpful needs to be transcended.  And so if you remember the next stage is what is called the malakud (?) level.  And at that level, form is, you could hardly call if form anymore.  It's more like, how do you call it, configuration.  I don't know how to say it.  But like, like a halo, for example, that doesn't have a definitely... it doesn't definitely...  Not only doesn't it have a profile but it's evanescent, illusive, renewing itself continually and so on.  It's something you cannot really grasp.  And so you are overcoming the anti...? between subject and object here.  Up to that present you are the judge.  Judging that person and trying to not reject person but still you are still I think in terms of I am supposed to be the person who is diagnosing this person as doctor, and giving prescription, using your mind.  And as you remember, the only access to this level malakud is by ecstasy.  

There is no other way.  It's, that's why Surowady, it wasn't, actually Surowady said the same thing, but it was Najmuddin ...? who said this: ' the weakness in you is the weakness in the heavens.'  So as I said the other day, 'how does an angel see people?'  That is how I refer to that guru who is trying to get into the fault of that person who asks a silly question.  How does kinnon (?) see a person...measure is not the right word or assess, but still sense a person in terms of their emotional attunement instead of in terms of the qualities of their personality?  And that's something I'm sure you have a basic instinct about that.  I'm sure that, you know sometimes you come across a person and you feel inspired without words as a matter of fact.  And then sometimes there are people whose emotional attunement sort of troubles you.  It makes you, you feel that is, it would pull you down unless you really, you really have to call upon, remember who you really are as essential dignity.  In fact it is essential dignity.  

And um, well, I wanted to keep as much as possible to the nitty gritty, but still I think that one has to work longitudinally and latitudinally at the same time, because here, I'm thinking of resentment.  Like the, several things of course that solve problems in the person and in yourself, of course.  One is need to upgrade one's self-esteem, or vulnerability in one's self-esteem.  The other one is resentment.  And the other one is guilt.  There are many more.  So with regard to resentment.  One does not like how one feels.  It is not just that one doesn't like the way that person treated one, but the reason why one doesn't like the way that person treated one is because the consequences that one doesn't like how one feels in reactive mode.  Because if in the, at the elementary stage, one would retaliate, and that leads to the vendettas and wars at the primitive stage of animals and humans.  

And then as one advances, one's hand is stayed.  One is not allowed to kill the person who has damaged one (laughing) by the law.  And consequently one is frustrated.  And that is what this resentment is.  Can't do it.  What to get it even.  So there is, and the reason is because one has been hurt in one's self-esteem and because actually one um, is so vulnerable that one really believes that one is no good, in a way that is somehow is sad.  One puts it into the thoughts that one has been tarnished psychologically.  Psychologically tarnished or damaged.  And the fact is that one has been violated in one's self-esteem.  

And therefore here is a thought which is absolutely, absolutely the ultimate refuge from that terrible sense of despair, and that is, as I often say the voice of Caruso is present within this distortion.  So that your real being can never be affected by the bad treatment of people or by your own guilt or so on.  In the depth of your being you are...your being is immaculate.  Within this distortion.  It is a difficult thought because it doesn't seem to make sense in one's ordinary logic, but if you study physics of course you find that that is so, for example.   For example, the waves in a wave interferon pattern can be retrieved, so they haven't been lost.  No, it's a way of thinking, you see, it's a holistic way of thinking, of thinking categories.   Different way of thinking.

So that, of course, you are the mechanic instead of the driver of the car.  You are, you need to know what is behind the whole system if you are the representative, so you need to know how the psyche works, how it works.  But your understanding of the situation of which a pupil is cannot be understood by the pupil.  You can say it, you know, your state in inaccurate and so on, you can say all you like, but still they feel they've been tarnished.  

And so there is another solution, I don't know at what extent.  I hope it is a solution.  I first........this The Elephants and the Chickens Come Back Again.  The elephant it's below the dignity of the elephant to get upset about the chickens.  (laughs)  So people are bugging you, well, that's their problem.  (laugh)  That's where they're at.  As Christ said, they don't know what they are do.  So it is bad enough that they do it, but that you should be upset about it, that that's a pity.  That's reactive, you see.  And well I need to be independent from the reactive strategy.  

Now this sense of dignity, one cannot have it...yea of course it's present within one's humanness, but still I think that it has to do with, it has to do with one's values.  So it has to do with this thing that I come across all the time, like um, in the world and also of the world, what does one mean by spirituality, what one doesn't mean by the sacred and so on, the means by another kingdom or another Father, or then the other kingdom that is within this kingdom.  But it has to do with whether one wants to continue reacting in the samsaric wheel, or one wants to get off and dispense of it.  And if one wants to evolve, then that means that one is not going to continue to react.  Not going to go off on a tangent from that vicious circle of the wheel.  So it has to do with values.  And I, the saying that I use in my mind for that is, the word of Moshedam ?, a passion for the unattainable.  He didn't say the quest for the unattainable.  

He says a passion.  So like it's really most important thing.  Everything else is secondary, but that is so it's awakening a human need to...that passion is there potentially in people, but it needs to be awakened, like for example, a conductor of a choir or an orchestra is not just teaching them to sing the right tone and the right pitch and the right rhythm so on and so forth and all the details.  But is galvanizing their passion for the wonder of that piece of music.  That's the way it is.  You can, one can awaken that passion.  It's there but, the minds of people tend to damp that passion because one thinks, well is that utopia, and you know if its, the mind is not able to sustain the power of belief actually.  Of faith.  I am not talking about belief.  Faith.  Faith is not the same thing as belief.  

So it is something that is communicated from person to person.  So that means that you, your passion for the unattainable...the beauty of that word unattainable is that you can't put it in your pocket.  It's always further of course.  It will always draw you further.  But your passion then works on the emotions of the people where there is disenchantment and a sense of abandonment, all those things we've said, resentment, anger, and despair.  And it's not your argument.  It's felt in a deep communion, but that means that you are communing with them at a very high level of their being, so when I talk about our ability to shift our consciousness into the consciousness of another person, it has nothing to do with thought reading, telepathy.  No.  It's really communicating, and it would be really discrete to try to get into the consciousness of another person.  No, it's really communing with them at a very high level.  

So now we are mirroring each other.  In fact the analogy of the mirror doesn't really work anymore because mirrors are, we are talking about form.  So it's better to say commune with one another, because there is no form anymore, at this level.  And the extraordinary things is that this, the emotional attunement is going to, for one thing, will call the qualities that lie in wait, and the potentials of our being much more effectively than if we tried to call it up with our will.  Like it is the emotion of the composer that will translate itself in terms of the music.  But if the composer would just sit back and try to figure out the notes and it wouldn't be, it wouldn't mean anything to anybody.  Some composers try to do that and it didn't work.  

So that means that you need to be sensitive and be aware of that level of your being which we call the malakud ? level, that's the next level.  And I've already said, there's a sense of déjà vu, and which ....? that means you come across situations in your life which remind you of a state that you had forgotten or discounted.  I mentioned that looking to the eyes a baby, but it could be listening to some of the music we listen to.  It could be entering to a cathedral.  It could be thinking of the heroism of a person who sacrificed their for their ideal.  Anything that tells you of values that are not what one generally ascribes to worldly values.  Like somebody trying to make money to have more comfort and exercise power on other people, and that kind of thing. It's what is called the way of the world.  

Now you remember that the password was innocence.  And so it, the opposite of guile, of manipulating, having an agenda ..??  trying to figure out how one can deal with this person's ego, for example, figure it out with your mind.  That's not innocence.  And the consequence is that it makes you extremely vulnerable.  I mean the child is vulnerable, innocent.  You are without defenses, so so far, programming has provided us with perfunctory defense mechanism, which works in a rather simplistic way, and then as one evolves, one finds that it's, it has a lot of defects, like it makes one aggressive and brutal and can lead to cruelty.  And so then one develops to a point when yes, it's a very challenging thing.  Like for example, Christ not being able to take his defense.  That's the way of innocence.  

A child as it grows up beings to find out limits to defend himself, herself, but at first it doesn't know how to defend himself, so that's what one means by innocence.  So it represents another level of thinking to ordinary thinking which is with its kind of strategy.  No strategy then.  And that means that if you are to inspire that person, and I said that that is going to make--transform the person rather than trying to work with qualities and bring him out.  That means that you have to examine your thoughts, so that your thoughts are luminous.  Your thoughts are luminous.  You see, if one has an addiction?? as one says now, one is using guile, manipulating people, there is a kind of basic dishonesty there, and the consequence is that one's thoughts are ambiguous.  They are not clear, 'cause the thoughts reflect one's intention.  So if one's intention is totally authentic, then the thoughts are clarified within, so you watch your thoughts and you will see ambiguity.  Then you ask yourself why...

Side 2

..a word a metaphor that I use is luminous emotions.  Luminous emotions.  Nothing murky in one's emotions.  Beautiful, luminous emotions.  Yes, sometimes I think of taking a showers of light.  Clears a lot of stuff.  And so one finds oneself back ...?? but actually it's just there.  You see the baby was still there in one, but one had lost sight of it.  And now of course the job is to reconcile the child and the mature, wise man and woman.  Both at the same time.  And that wisdom is not smartness.  Smartness.  To be smart is a different thing.  To be wise.  Let .....(cough)  ..that meaning of alima alim?  I would say there's a .....of the earth, yes.  Pir Murshid has a sentence, 'wisdom comes by the mingling of,' he says, 'the knowledge of the earth and the knowledge of the heavens.'  I would say the know-how acquired by experience of the earth, and then this kind of in-born knowledge that you have which is typical of that level that is called jaberud.  

That is the next level after malakud.  Malakud seems that one has to have passed through this emotional catharsis of ecstasy in order to reach the higher knowledge.  It was surprising I thought to myself, well first of all you have high knowledge and then you have the ecstasy.  No, it's the other way around.  And both in Sufism and yoga, because in yoga the state of samadhi is called ananda samadhi, and then ananda nogata, and then asmitha nogata ...samadhi.  The soul, and I think in short one says it's the knowledge of the heart.  Wisdom of the heart.  Someone says it.  But I would call it the wisdom of the soul, rather than the wisdom of the heart.  But it's a matter of how one interprets those words.  

So it's very funny because you know people used to wait for years to have an interview, 20 minutes with Murshid, and now I'm not even giving any interviews at all.  And I think Murshid was just overworked to a point, and that's why he died so prematurely, you know.  Four hours sleep.  Because there's all that work behind the scene too, because he said he, the work that I'm doing by murids in the meditation is much more important than talking to them.  

So people used to come up to the door and expect to, you know, if you know something about the customs in India then you are supposed to bow to the feet of the guru and bring flowers and that kind of thing.  And Pir o Murshid used to open the door and say, "Come in.  (laugh)  Come sit next me."  (laugh)  As an old friend, you see.  And then, they were so amazed sitting so close to this great being, that they forgot all their questions.  And then within time which was, maybe it wasn't 20 minutes, maybe it was 10 minutes, I don't know, but there was a wonderful person called Angela who was really an angel who would knock at the door, you see.  And she told me she got a lot of pain in her knuckles.  (laughing)  Because people would still stay.  (laughing)  So a little knock, and a little louder and then finally she would open the door because they had to know it was time to leave.  

And so Ah,I missed this opportunity to ask what I came for.  I wanted to ask him these questions.  And then somebody, sometimes some of them said many years later, you know all of a sudden I saw the solution.  But it was because Pir o Murshid had taken me in a helicopter.  (laughing)  So I was able to see the problem from that helicopter.  And before I I working the city you can't see the lay of the land unless you have an overview.  So that's a method you see.  It's a very different method to what one expects with a logical method.  Helping people like figuring out where their problems are and telling them what the solution is.  It's not that simple.  It doesn't work that way.  So like what is a wazifa for resentment?  What is a wazifa for forgive and so on?  It doesn't work that way.  I know that's what is expected of me, but it's certainly more subtle than that.  I'm not trying to evade it.  It's just that we, what we're doing here is much more dynamic.  

Now at this level, the wazaif are not concepts, but are emotional attunements.  So there is emotional attunement of the Akaha ?  And there's the emotional attunement of Khaduse ? and there's attunement of Hiye, and so one, each one totally different emotional attunement.  And you know we have a habit of trying to personify things, so like the Greeks did with their gods.  So you could see archangel Khaderroh, the archangel Khaduse or the archangel Wahabol, like image the archangel who who represents that particular quality because then it makes it more close to us like there is a being who's manifesting this particular quality.  And of course the beauty of our opening up the whole range in our spirituality, that was the genius Pir o Murshid. is that our teachers are all the masters and saints and prophets of all times.  

So at this level you would try and help if you would get into the consciousness of a master or saint or prophet.  And when I say a master it could be a woman, of course, who identifies that particular wazifa.  There have been tools like, I mean, I think that most of those prophets and masters and saints have all the qualities, but you could say, you could pick on one quality and say well in Abraham I see kahar, sovereignty.  In Melchizidek I see Yaali, the most high.  And so on and so forth.  You can say in Christ I feel Yhadaman, or then you say no, but I also feel, for me it is Yahiina, his giving the life, the orders of life.  Whatever, you have to see a quality that is important for you in a master who then serves as a more tangible model than what you would imagine God to be.  That's why one starts with Fanafee, Murshid, and then Fanafee Rasoul, and Fanafee Alam (? ) 

So there you have, you need a support system in our meditations.  Otherwise it's too abstract.  When Murshid says rise to the abstract planes, yes, but then there's a s.....? and the work used by Iknadabe is .........??  In the Koran, it's said, 'there's nothing on the earth that does not have its model.  (I think the word is model.) in bethas??  And that's at the level, that's after the next level after ......?  And then Iknadabe adds, 'and the angels built ladders between the two.'  (laugh)  So the malakud plane is a transitional plane which serves as a link between what is connected to God as divine qualities, and then the corresponding quality in yourself.  

And telurtes is a very interesting word.  Look up in the dictionary.  It's a very fine link.   .....one says ......  You know, yes, (laughing) another ...... The Sufis have elaborated a whole sense of relationship with God, and consequently there are several names of God instead of just God.  And so there's a specific role let's say, office fulfilled by God for the Sufis as Ahrab, which means the Lord.  That is a word that we use sometimes, the Catholics use it in their prayers.  And of course in Muslim prayers, Rabil Anum, for example, Rabil Assum.  I use it to your relationship of with God to your qualities.  Your relationship with God is that of the vessel towards the Lord.  And that relationship is established by a covenant of (?)  It means that there is an empowerment.  There is transmission of responsibility.  

And so the attitude of Sufis is that one--it's not that one want to develop a quality for the sake of being better, but of being able better to fulfill one's mission as an ambassador of the Divine Lordship.  So that particular relationship is called Im robubyat.  So that when every time you are repeating wazifa you think to yourself that I am reiterating the current, the covenant with I in the initial stage I pledge myself to serve the Divine sovereignty on earth in my own nature.  Because the ambassador is not the postman.  Or postwoman.  The person who transmits the message, but has to embody a message.  So as some mystics say, God comes to me through the form of this person.  Because that person is revealing to me a certain quality.  God's revealing Himself to me through that person.  In that sense, yea that the person through whom God reveals Himself...there's a saying of Abuiyasatpasthani, because you know, A.....was a very harsh, very stern ascetic who lived in the high mountains in Iran.  

He says some very harsh words.  He said God deceives you in the markets of the world.  All that you see is effigies.  It sounds very much like maya.  It's deceptive.  And then he says, if I am invited to the Divine betrothal, you see his devices are veils, are considered to be veils hiding the reality of God, so invited to the Divine Betrothal, and so you are, if you are the perfect husband and you can't ......yourself with the veil of the beloved.  So he said, and God tested me.  And said, maybe, he said, 'O God, art thou testing me in my ego, that I am God?  You know?   ....?  And then God said to him, O Thou.  To him pass the test.  I forgot.  There's a piece missing, because God said to him, "You have only to understand the solitude of my unity."  Because that's unity.  And then its just all I, there's no Thou.  (laugh)  Then he said God shattered me with Fana, and the sikkar.  Then he turned toward God and said, " ? That's the hahud (?) level, the level of unity.  Of course it's, you feel that.  It doesn't seem to be realistic to ever think that one can quite reach that.  But you know, in Upanishads, they say, that 'Aha' moment, I think they don't say aha, but at the end of awakening takes place in a flash, and so it happens before you know it.  And you try to retrieve it but you can't get it.  So that it is possible that you've had flashes of realization and you don't know it because it passed so fast.  

The .....that you really recognize yourself in the peoples so you're not to judge anyone.  As all One.  And the consequence is that people discover (himself) as you.  But it only works if you have really, you live up to what is expected, and that's very high demand upon ourselves.  So we have to, I think we need to go through our trips, and because otherwise it would all be, it wouldn't be real.  And then we can understand people's problems better because we've gone through those problems ourselves.  

There's a moment that one carries the mantle.  So I, I would like to respond to that as best to say what practice to give for what problem, but as I say, it would be too simplistic.  It wouldn't meet the real need of people.  The need is deeper than finding a perfunctory solution to a problem.  (laughter)  However, (laugh) I try to get......??  (laughing)  It does seem like there is some kind of indication of what wazifa one could use.  


AUG 19, 1997		Tape 17

...instead of being a guru trip as I say, it has been able to incorporate different attitudes, views, interpretations of the teachings and so on, which enrich each other and they often enrich my own view. So we have gained a lot by it.  

Initially we're trying to apply Murshid's vision, not only his teaching, but also in the form is organization. I like to use the word organism instead of organization, 'cause an organism is a living thing made of people instead of rules and or regulations. And that is what he meant by the Universel which is when he calls it the temple of all religions. He said it is a temple made of humans rather than stones. So we are the Universel, and if you know Italian --I forget now if it's Spanish or Italian. Verso el Uno. Ver, uni, ver, sal - toward the One. And I'm often using the word Universe to refer to God, as Universe. 

Pir O Murshid said, himself, that in the beginning he found that a lot of the energy got scattered because there was no container, and so he called the organization, he called it a basket. That,I mean, carries all these beautiful things. He himself saw the drawback of giving parity to the organization over the Spirit, which is happening all the time, everywhere. And I call the spiritualization, the institutionalization of spirituality and becomes sclerosed so we have developed a format in the Sufi Order which is I think in keeping with our ideal of what Pir O Murshid calls spiritual liberty. And that is by honoring all those who are part of this process and consequently it was Murshid's wish that we should hear the feelings and opinions of people instead of just imposing rule. And that's the reason why he instituted what one might call democratic institutions. 

Or, it has to be, it's very unwieldy for decisions to be made by a large number of people especially if they are scattered throughout the United States. We had to find some way in which we could hear the intentions of people and try to weave it into the whole process. So it is a multi-tiered organism that Pir O Murshid envisioned. So, and rather complex. First of all, as you know, Murshid created first, well first of all he incorporated the Sufi Order in London, in fact he founded the Sufi Order in America before that in 1910, I think, 1910 when he first landed in America, but it wasn't incorporated. But what I'm trying to say is that then finally Pir O Murshid's vision grew from that of an esoteric school with it's foundation in the transmission of the Sufis into a Universal Message. And he was using the word Message more than Sufi and he was using, and in the end, of course, he was using the word Universal. And so that incorporated several activities and he had this logo of a star, and the esoteric school was the top, a five pointed star, so the top, so then there was the Universal Worship, Healing, Zaarat, and what we used to call Brotherhood and we call now, Kinship.  

Then for reasons that would take, that would be rather counterproductive to talk about anyway, to say it quite bluntly, Pir O Murshid's wishes with regard to his succession were not honored by the organization that he founded in Geneva, and consequently we have operated under the aegis of the original constitution that Pir O Murshid established in London in 1916, which was the date of my birth.  

So, what I'm trying to say is that each of these activities, the Universal Worship, Healing, Zaarat, and also the Sacred School have their own identity although somehow they're all linked together by what we call the Message. The consequence is that we've had to have organisms that carry each one of these concentrations so as to be able to make their purpose, to fulfill their purpose, for the purpose of the Universal Worship. It's not the same as the esoteric school. For example, there's a much wider outreach as the esoteric school is much more internal, much more a school of training, people who will then go out there and bring this message of unity forward. And so on. And so, within the esoteric school we have then the ........, which is composed, well, let's put it this way. We have the ....... which is composed of all the representatives. That is, what you would call, the representatives who are currently active. And then I've conceived of an extended ..... which includes representatives who are no more active. That is in creating a center, but it could include being a guide for example, and then who are really in their way of living they are really serving this great ideal in what one might call a covert way so it's not that obvious but they're still part of this whole thing. So that would be what I understand by an extended ...... And then there's a ...... which is made up of a few people and they are rotated all the time so it's not the same people out of a pool of rather quite a large number of people whom, who have chosen to take a higher degree of responsibility, I would say than most representatives and give some kind of direction to the work of the order as a whole. And now then recently, I think it was last year we started to, I drew attention to the importance of hearing the people who are there on the field working that is the representatives, the active representatives, and so, to establish a nice dialogue between ... haus and ....arm. And it looks at though that has been happening and on Tuesday evening then, we're going to have a more like an official meeting of the, we already have had a meeting of the ..... without me in which the major issues were outlined and now we're going to follow it up by working a little more detailed to see exactly how this can be done. That will be the final phase in our representatives' meeting. But then there are many other things. There's for example, the Universal worship that does have what they call an ..... and that is the same equivalent of what we're doing in the esoteric school. And the other activities that have not elaborated quite as clear, how can I say, support system, infrastructure as we have in the esoteric school, but these activities are developing further and further. The healing activity, for example, with Himayat, and so we're getting a little more structured as time goes on.  

And then there's the body of all the Mureeds. Which is a very large body including not only representatives, and coordinators and cherags and so on, but healing conductors and so on, but the broad spectrum of all the Mureeds and this is what we are here. It is impossible to gather all the mureeds in the United States because of the distances, and as a matter of fact, it is impossible to gather all the mureeds in Europe and in America and perhaps some in India and other countries, so that is the reason why we have what they call regional meetings that have sometimes been very helpful in helping people. Because, you know, what the organization is about is just to provide a help. You know, people are out there with the best intention to work for something that has meant so much to them and there they find themselves high and dry, they need to have some kind of support. One of them is what one calls empowerment. Which is to know that they are not free lance. They could be, but they like to feel that there is something behind them. A whole structure that they can rely upon, and that they have been empowered to go forward and of course there are legal aspects of this. Everyone can't involve the Sufi Order officially without being empowered by, otherwise you'd have a free for all. There has to be some kind of structure. So what this meeting is about is really listening to what you have to say. So I just gave the introduction so we would know what is behind it. With regard, so it would be, even with regard to the policy, or the orientation, or the intention of the Sufi Order, so it would be a general question. It would be more specific questions. As to details of initiations and nominations and things like that that have to be made very clear. Or it could be anything we would like. So I'll stop talking now and pass the microphone to whoever would like to speak. 

 You spoke this morning about awakening in people a passion for the unattainable. And I wanted to ask about the role of the Universal Worship in that. It seems like that is such a powerful tool to do that and that hasn't been talked about much this week and I realize that not everyone here is a cherag and we've talked a lot about guiding people but I just wondered if maybe you could address that because it seems like such a powerful tool that we have. 

Yes. I remember the day when Pir O Murshid had the vision of the Universal Worship. It was like the blossoming of all that had been incubating for years, and he said "the time has come when the wish of all the prophets can be fulfilled for what was this great ... forward and consequently the Universal Worship opens up areas for guidance for people who do not feel comfortable about being in an esoteric school. Because, you know, the requirements of being in an esoteric school, and that, I want, I want to point this out. We make, we promise that, we, that is, now, I'm talking about the representatives who are giving initiation. We promise that we are going to train people. That's why, that we, if people want to be initiated it's taken for granted that it's not just a membership of an order but, or an organization, but they wish to undergo an ongoing training. And we, we commit ourselves to provide that training. The Universal Worship, therefore, is able to communicate this teaching to people who do not feel that they're ready to go, to enter into a school with it's, within the limits of a school with it's framework. So the cherag is communicating a teaching and that the, actually a critical thing about it all is that we are honoring all the great religions, but that the Message does, although the Message converges those, the activities and the energies of those different religions, still, it, there's a new vision. And so there's some, I don't say it's ambiguity, but there's some paradox there. There's some. I'm talking about something very real that happened in the time Murshid because Baron Sir ... who was a cherage was proposing that the cherags should undergo real schooling in the different religions. Because it seems rather amateurish to say all relations are one and so on. I mean we really have to know what we're talking about. And that's one of the reasons why, I've been, in addition to the teachings of the Sufis, I've been incorporating in my teachings the teachings of different religions. And in so doing, I'm simply just, how can I say, I'm rearing the seeds that Pir O Murshid sowed, because it all started by Pir O Murshid's vision of the different religions. Now Murshid realized that the Universal Worship is not what the School of Comparative Religion is about. That, you know, these professors who have some standards in academia are specialists in a particular religion and they are people who dedicate their life to that particular concentration. Where cherags are people who are active in life. They can't afford the time and the expertise to go into one particular religion and they're expected to know all religions and so you see there's some paradox there. And what is more, the Message is not just the synchronism, synchrotism, synchrotism, it's just not Russian salad, it's a different religion, it's a mishmash as one said. No, so there's more to it than that and so that's what I've been trying to do in my life is trying to see, there's such differences in the different religions, but how do they intermesh in a significant way and whether this vision of the future, because that's where the Message is, throws new light upon those religions, so we can see those religions sometimes as stages in the development of the thinking of humanity. Pir O Murshid has this vision of humanity as a being that is thinking and progressing in it's thinking, and there are different stages in it's thinking so that, for example, the time of Buddha one didn't know, one had never seen electrons and the electron microscope, so Buddha said well the body returns to the earth as dust, and now we don't think that the body is dust anymore. And so we've changed. In many ways we've changed. The Rishis were seeking for refuge even out of life and so on. So many different, humanity has gone through different phases and now we have an orientation which Murshid defined very clearly. He said, when he was asked, what was the purpose of the Message, he said it is awakening to the Divinity of man. Those are his words. Awakening. So it's not awakening in Samadhi. And the Divinity in man is that God is to be found in man instead of seeking God up there. So it's very specific orientation. And so I would say that constitutes a very definite direction for the teaching of particular the Universal Worship.  

So it's not exactly the same thing as the kind of individual teaching of the guide and mureed that we find in the Sufi Order, but somehow that teaching passes through to the people who come to the congregation for what one might call a high spiritual experience.  

So what we want to do, of course, and I'm sure we're all thinking about that, Parjaparti in particular is.  

You see, Murshid's teaching was, well, he was sowing a seed and sometimes it was random because he was giving a lecture here and a lecture there and sometimes repeating himself. Now we've come to a point where we want to bring all these threads together including what I've developed out of those seeds so that we have, I think we need a curriculum for the Universal Worship now. We're already working with a curriculum for the Sufi Order and we find that it's a very big undertaking, so, but that is the next step.  

Anymore questions from anybody. I would just open your heart and say how you feel. Don't have to be a question to me.  

 

 I've never found reference anywhere to God referred to as "We" and if we are all one that makes as much sense to me as "I", "Thou" which maintains the duality. 

 

Well, there's a wonderful saying of Jullaldin Rumi who says "All the I's and Yous flashes and, flashes, that means ... representations of the one I. So that if you say "We", one is assuming that multiplicity is there and of course it is there, but it would be diminishing God to think in terms of multiplicity because ultimately it is over... by the unity. That's why we don't use it. But I know that is a word used by royalty. And actually, our language is totally inadequate and there is no doubt that when we say "I" we really do mean "we" also. 

 

Just quickly. Maybe it's just a translation of the Koran that I've read, but isn't, in the Koran, doesn't God always say "We". Or. Isn't it "We" in the Koran or is it just the translation. 

 

Yes, you've got an authentic answer there, it's both. Bismullah,... So in the name of God. But it depends what one means by God. But, well, I'm not as scholarly as the person who just answered this question so it would be interesting to follow this up and of course, yeah, it would be very helpful in this connection, where in the Koran the word "We" comes in and where "I" comes in. Oh, yes, it does come in. That's right. Yes. 

 

 Yes. "We" sent you the Koran. 

Yes. "We" sent. Yes. Yes. "We". Yeah. That's right. Yes. Very interesting. 

Yeah. Please. 

If I may. 

Yeah. Also, of course, the wonderful parable of the conference of the birds. I mean, to bring about the paradox of "I" and "We" that you've been discussing because at the end the birds want to find God and find that "We", "They", are God. 

 Yes. That's right. It's a combination. Yes. 

Yes. There was another person who asked a question. Oh, yes, that's right and then afterwards Omar. 

 This isn't a question, it's just a comment since we're sharing, and I want to express my gratitude to the Secretariat. Yeah, Devi, Jimayat. All the people who've been working so much over the past year to increase the communication. The Keeping In Touches I've been very grateful for, the Connections magazine, the people who have made the e-mail happen. I know that people have been working at great sacrifice to their time, and so I've never felt more connected as I have in the past year. And the organization just really seems to have jelled over the past couple of years and I think, I really want to publicly say how much I appreciate that. 

 

Thank you. So I see that there's a consensus. Yes. That's very gratifying indeed. 

Yes. Go on. You wanted to say something. 

 

"I", "We", again. Pir Valayat, I've told the story one, actually a lot of times, and, we were in the Alps, and I was very upset about the concept of God, and I think, one day, I sort of belligerently asked you, well, what is this God, and your instantaneous reply was "us". And after all of the Dhiker and all of the questioning, and all of the, ', I just got it.  

 

You see, that apostrophe in the silence, Murshid articulated it when he said God is not what you mean by God.  

And it's very dangerous. God told me to do this and do that. That's very dangerous. 

 

We have a lot of discussion that has to do with helping people with their problems in life and helping us with empowering ourselves to, but it comes from a point where we see that the world is imperfect and there is these problems and that we are an agent of fixing it. And I was wondering if there's another part of Sufi philosophy that we can include in our teaching that would honor the perspective that life is perfect and that we travel on the eddies of life and maybe customize those eddies but that the primary perspective is not that oh I have a problem and something is wrong, but that things are perfect and they're evolving from perfection into another or a more beautiful perfection or more.  

 

Yeah. Yes. That's one thing that I've been trying to guard against. Perhaps you've felt it. It's very... because of these days and that is of course the simplistic thought that we can fix it. And I think we become more and more aware of the fact that there's no way in which we can be of any help at all unless it comes from a realization that we've got in our cells. So that some of the, I felt sometimes that what I was doing was that I was putting the cart before the horse. Telling people how to help people instead of telling people how to help themselves. But of course there's some incongruity in the fact that we have, we have committed ourselves to try to help people. Although we feel that we're not quite up to it and if we waited we would wait a whole life and so that sometimes one has to go forward even though one feels that one isn't up to it. And as long as one does make it quite clear that one is not fallible, that one is not infallible, and also that one learns ones disciples much more than one disciples learn from one.  

Now what you're saying made me, reminded me of a passage of Murshid's which is really absolutely paradoxical and really it's fantastic when he says, you see, in the beginning everything is higglety, pigglety. Is that a word to use in Eng, in American? Yes? So there's the wrong people in the right places and the right people in the wrong places and you wonder why things happen. That's ridiculous. I mean, how is it possible? There should be a God and that this should happen and so on and he should be all powerful. And he got to, God's got to get his trip together. And you see that's where the buck is. Well, I mean. No. It doesn't seem that He's taking responsibility. So that's a rather simplistic way of thinking. But of course, it's quite natural that one should think that way. But what Murshid is saying is that in the process of life things are getting gradually into place. And sometimes one wonders whether that's not the other way around. But there's such a thing in physics as what they call the order out of disorder principle. So that out of this, the more disorderly it is, the more challenging it is to be able to find order, but then that order is of a much greater value than simplistic order. So that's what's happening. 

Which is very helpful because I think that a lot of us feel, that well, you know, there's not enough jobs to go around for all the talents, so that we are underemployed, let's say. And I'm sure that sometimes we feel that we could do a better job than our boss. But that's the way it is. So, right, so we're not trying to fix it. In fact, that's the kind of process that takes place in us.  

You know, I would like to elaborate a little bit on something I said a bit too hastily this morning because I was concerned about the time. You see, on one hand as I said, people are vulnerable, and we feel we need to give them a container, let's say, for their self esteem. On the other hand we don't want to induce them into error by simply upholding their self esteem or their high, let's say, giving them an upgrade their self image because, and on the other hand if we criticize them then we are undermining their self esteem. So what we can do is to validate their own concerns about their inadequacies without it in any way impairing their self esteem. In fact, it would be the contrary it would make them have more self esteem if they were felt truthful about owning their shadow, because self esteem can be only based upon truth. The other thing is that the child in us, yes, I said this rather rapidly that this wonderful blend between the child and the mature person. I was just talking about this with Taj and it became very clear that there's a kind of purity that comes in the maturity and it's a very difficult to say this because the child is there within the unfolding of the child in the maturity of the wise person. But it's not two separate things, so there's a kind of purity. Well, for one thing a sense of authenticity will give you that purity. But it's putting that purity at a test in the confrontation with people. That's where, the child wouldn't be able to deal with it.  

 

You didn't exactly get what I said, I don't think. Could I just make one more attempt at it? 

 

Of course. 

 

I'm trying. I think that where the teachings that we're getting are coming from is maybe where we have a mission or a message to bring and we're knights in bringing that message. But, which would be maybe mythol, but in a higher, or another plane, jabbaroot, you have all these angels saying, "It's okay. It's okay. Actually, it's really great." And that's the Divine inheritance that we can bring down, so how it would work in a more personal thing is if someone comes and says "Oh, my God, I gonna lose my job and what am I gonna do, and there's this problem, but." If they have a sense of peace where you can say, "Wait. Just be peaceful and let two or three months go by and you're a person that naturally work accrues to you because that's who you are and then they find that they have power to have work come to them without having them to worry about where how they're going to find a job. So it's having the sense that the moment of course looks chaotic, but that in a broader perspective there's a more harmonious story being told. 

 

Yeah. I understand what you're saying. You know. I'm very cautious about the use of the word "message". There are kind of preconceived ideologies, for one thing the word message is used in Islam and some people associate that word with Islam and it's true that there was a message there, in fact it's all messages. If we think of it in terms of we have a mission to do, we're limiting the scope of the message by our narrow understanding of what the message is. I think, when he was, when Murshid was asked what is the message and he said the awakening of humanity to the Divinity of man. He said, not the awakening of the person, but the awakening of humanity so it's cosmic. It's not just the esoteric thing for what happens to you as you awaken but it's something that's happening all over. I think that one is talking about a realization rather than a message. We're talking about a realization. That is, humanity is coming to a realization and we're just the facilitators at least in the context of the Universal Worship, we're the facilitator that are helping the incubation of that realization of that divinity in the human being. And rather than thinking that we have a mission. It's a dangerous mission to convert people, it's a dangerous and rather old fashioned, out dated policy, as you know. And so as I say, I always that think we are facilitator instead of teachers. That's our role. In fact, I remember when we were going to change the word leaders to something else because we found that leaders was too much like a guru trip. Then I suggested the word facilitator and somebody said, well, that's a word that's copyrighted in psychotherapy so we can't use it. So we used the word representative, which is a very significant word because one is representing God you know as the ambassadors. 

Any more questions?  

 

Pir Valuate, I had a mureed last year ask me a question which really altered who I was in this work, so I'm going to ask you the same question. 

 

I see I'm on the spot now.  

 

What she said to me was that, you know, you very genuinely offer your heart to people and give something that's so incredibly precious and yet at the same time the hours are bad and the pay is lousy and you open yourself up to the criticism of people. What in the world are you committed to that would have you do this. 

 

I know, it's not reasonable at all. And yet I want to tell you that I am always very wary of people losing their jobs because they're committed into the Sufi work. It's happened over and over again. People are enchanted and turned on and so on. The fact is by not having a job one becomes dependent upon other people, so that it's very unfair. And also because there is something in one's accomplishment in life that is not not spiritual. Let's say, that is of the same nature as spirituality, so I think this division between life and beyond, well, that you find in India, between the housekeepers, and the sannyasins, I think that's a faulty division, an artificial division that doesn't, we've come to the point when that doesn't apply any more, that's not valid any more.  

Also, I know this is a very revolutionary idea, but, maybe I'll have the courage in saying it, I think there'll be a time when the Sufi Order won't exist anymore. There will be a time when none of us are here on the planet anymore, but, as Buddha said, there was a time when the planet, when planet Earth didn't exist. So we are not, our purpose is not to serve the Sufi Order. And a message that's, as I say, it's rather presumptuous to come with a mission. And as Parajaprti said the other day, he said, you know, that message of unity has spread to such an extent that we don't have the monopoly of the unity of all religions. So I think that the organization, in as much as it gives you, it is a support system, that gives you some kind of containment. Yeah. Okay. But when it comes to decisions which involve for example leaving your job in order to serve in the Sufi Order then I think, well, I wouldn't, I disadvise people to do this. Over and over again. 

Actually, the most wonderful thing that could ever happen, if the Sufi Order is important at all, I would say that the most wonderful thing that could happen is that, you, you know, you go to the shop every day, you know, the grocery, and the man is very surly and then every time you go there you smile, but then he responds with a grunt, and then eventually he starts at least not grunting when you smile, and then eventually, he finds it very difficult to smile, but he's just holding back a little bit, but he can't quite help it, and then eventually he really does smile. And then one day, this goes on, escalates of course. And one day he says, Hmm, there's something about you. I must say, I wonder what it is." Now that temptation would be to say, Yes, because I'm a Sufi. But at least what you are is going to prove what the teaching is instead of saying you should become a Sufi. That's the reality. 


AUG 19, 1997		Tape 18

I'd like to start with a few random remarks. First of all one of the things that we miss, I  feel that we missed at this camp, we have missed at this camp is a choir. As we have at the  camp in the Alps. But it's true that at the camp in the Alps we had three weeks or another  week without me. That we had two wonderful conductors and that I myself who used to  conduct found that the demand on, well, the work that we're doing with meditation  became so intense that I couldn't give myself the time to start the work with the choir and  then I left it to Adell(?) because there was no way in which I could do it. But I missed it  very much.

We have here a lady who was at the camp in Olea(?) who is a wonderful singer and who  was part of the choir and I'm sure that she will confirm just how important that is. It's not  just listening to recorded music, let's say tinned music, but live music.

So I wonder whether we couldn't start by chanting together. The chants of the different  religions because normally we end with the Universal Worship and this time we have not.  We're doing it at the end of the whole camp which I think is on Saturday or Sunday. So  first of all ... ohm ohm ohm ohm nama shiva ya ohm nama shiva ya now me ah moo shoo na moo meda boo shoo na moo meda boo shoo

Then the (unknown) of our chants ...

ah houra majda ah houra majda a mitee anaheta arsha ryou a mitee anaheta arsha ryou ah  houra majda ah houra majda

I think this would be a very appropriate chant for Zirat because we are invoking the  amorous response that is the archangels of the different elements. Now then ...

Shamal ya shiel  (unknown)   repeat

Now we have different Christian chants but let's do a more lively one. ...

soorex et christos ho de ay halayluya halayluya halayluya halayluya. Repeat

Or we could do it in two voices. Is there somebody here who could lead one of the voices  it would make it easier. I can't sing two voices at the same time. Oh yes of course. There  we have someone. We could have three voices. Up to five. Yes come along we could have  three. So if you'd stand on this side, so you.... Actually the best way to do it is that you  face these people here and you face those people there and I'll face those in the middle so  that we're not turning our backs to each other as we're coordinating. And so if you can  maintain that rythm....

soorex et christos ho de ay halayluya halayluya halayluya halayluya. Repeat

Well it's nice. So ...

neu na be salam a layka yahra sool salam a layka ya habib salam a layka sala waha toola a  layka

And then perhaps inevitably a song of my uncle, my dear uncle Shem Hashenk (?) the  words of my father ...

Every step in thy path, every step in thy path, draws me nearer to thee, draws me nearer to  thee. Every breath in thy thought, every breath in thy thought, accelerates my spirit, my spirit. Every glimpse, glimpse of thy smile, is inspiring to my soul. Every tear in thy love in thy  love beloved exalts my being.

So we see that gets us into a Sufi attunement, the kind of attunement that erupted at the  time of Murshid. That's a very deep mystical experience of God.

And as I say there are a few random remarks I wanted to make and one was that I would  like to propose Professor Azziz Clinton to be part of the resources for Islam and Sufism.  And I see that he is not here at present. And the other resource person is myself of course.  I have some experience of Islam.

You know that one has to know how to get the right (unknown) that the prayers could be  considered as a further rendering of the Islamic prayers and the (unknown) prayers,  particularly the, yes both the first prayer and the second prayer and even the third. They all  correspond essentially to the basic principles of the Islamic prayers. 

Well see one has to know if it's Islam if one is being challenged and then there's a way of  comforting those who are trying to attack one. Otherwise we are very open to being  considered as not only phony Sufis but traitors to Islam, so we have to be very careful.

Yes, well, now we are concerned with what we are taking with us back into our various  place of residence. Sometimes I feel, well, our hearts are so full that, well, is there room  for more? Well, I think that our processes become more and more interactive than ever  before and I'm glad that, I think it was Asha (?), no it was Azziz, who suggested a more  interactive approach by smaller groups that are able to relate more easily so that it will  consolidate our relationship with each other much better then we have been doing so far. 

Our concern is of course, and in the (unknown) class particularly, has been to get back to  the original inspiration of Pir O Murshid and go from there. And, as I've already said, we  have developed a format which is very broad and all encompassing, including the  teachings of different teachers so that I am not the only teacher. And I feel very happy  about that My concern, of course, is to keep the orientation absolutely genuine. So sure  there are different methods to, methodology to meet the requirements of the mureeds and  as I said before we have been giving the answers without asking the questions. And now I  think the interactive processes are bettered whereby people can present their concerns  when they work in the field. 

What are the problems that they encounter when they're right  out there in the field? And it's true that I seem to be unreachable and it's also true when  I'm not scheduling then I'm working at my computer writing books and articles. So it's  true that it's difficult to reach me and I might be a little bit evasive, but, here is a last  opportunity for you to come forth with anything that you feel very strongly, very deep in  your heart and soul is a deep concern which arises out of your work and you could even  be more specific and say `Well it is, Pir Vilayat, you did give out some hope that we would  have some wazifa, and we would know which wasifas to use in which case.' And I started  with that and as you know I took off. And that's because I thought it would be too  simplistic to do that. It wouldn't be satisfying. But still we have that concern.

And as you know in the last decades psychotherapy has proven to be a very important  resort to people who are in distress and Murshid himself was very interested in those early  beginnings of psychology and I'm sure if he were here today he would feel the importance  of some kind of a reactive work with people who have some expertise in psychotherapy.  One thing that I want to make clear is that if we do not have some kind of authentic  know-how in psychotherapy. And we are coming across, all the time, people who have  psychological problems, and, also the frontier between the two is not very clear, between  spirituality and psychotherapy. Then I would say be very careful not to give advise in that  particular area which does require expertise. We ourselves want to know more about what  the physiological format is. We'd like to learn more about it. But only, we can only do as  much as we can because it takes years and years of work to know this. 

And I think that  accounts for differences which may have arisen in the teaching within the Sufi Order and  which some people could have interpreted that we are at variance with each other and I  want to make quite sure that while we invite all these various points of view that there is a  kind of cohesion between them. So one of the things I've done was to spend a few days  with Taj Montego on the West Coast to try to compare our approaches and see how,  where there was a common denominator, what that was, and, whether the differences are  deep ones, or, if they are questions of methodology or approach. Therefore we came to a, I  must say, a  wonderful sense of consensus.

 It was very clear that her teaching and that  applies to many others, I think Atoum, and many others, Himayat May, who have  developed their own expertise, their own area of concentration that somehow it is all  essentially based upon Murshid's teaching but we have to work out ways and means of  making this really happen in practice so that Murshid gave the general orientation but the  way that we precede in order to make this happen varies from one person to another. Our  conversations, although very deep and very elaborate have a need to be carried even  further, and we hope to do that. But, I would have like for ... I can't see Taj, I would have  liked for her to ... She's not here. I would have liked her to come and present her views so  that we are able to see what is her concern, and I think her concern is of course the  sufferings of people.

Well now, if somebody can find Taj it might be a good idea to ask her to come, could you  find Taj?  Someone responds: She's getting in her car. She's not up here. So, this, we don't have much time remaining but I would like you to come forth if you  would with questions which concern you very deeply about how to deal with some of the,  let's say the difficult cases, for example, in your center.

Question: With your permission, Pir Vilayat, I'd like to address what you just left.  Obviously I wouldn't even attempt to speak for the Order or for Taj, but, I've been in the  field for a long time, too, and I'd like to present a different view, and one could say that  the construct which we call science took over the field of guidance by dint of classical  psychotherapy. And that the spiritual world as represented by the religions of the world  seem to ceded to them without a heck of a lot of resistance and now that we are  awakening and taking back what is rightfully our realm, not to exclude anyone else, but  that it is definitely our realm, the realm of helping people and of guiding, and particularly  people affiliated with the Sufi Order need to support the current marriage of therapy and  spirituality so that the people that we're trying to help get the best possible help of this  time.

Answer: Yes, that echoes exactly how I feel at this time. I, it looks as though  psychotherapists are looking for the spiritual dimension of therapy. And we need to take  into consideration the need of people for a safe environment in which they can deal with,  confront their psychological problems which keep on cropping up during a retreat for  example and sometimes very difficult for a retreat guide to deal with eruptive issues of  very strong emotional load without having some knowledge of how the psyche works.  How one gives care and some kind of security to people who can't cope with their  problems. It gets overwhelming sometimes.

Question: I just want to add more to what  Silimon (?) was saying. In that I observed at  some of the teas we're having in the evening, some of the conversation always came back  to problems that we were dealing with in our own lives. And I would ask for more time  just to be able to meet with each other and discuss that because those are the things that  we're going to be dealing with with people in the center. And I was only half kidding at  lunch when I was speaking to someone as we move into the concentration training saying,  `Gee we should have the guilt concentration over here and the low self-esteem  concentration over here'. Just so that we can sort of somehow really not just get trained  or continue our education in retreat guide training and in the healing order but also our  own healing and our own unfoldment.

Answer: Yes, so maybe we will follow up the proposal of Azizz Clinton and at the next  camp we'll have smaller groups where you're able to perhaps express your feelings better  than in a large group and then that's got to be monitored to the large group. 


Question: I would like to reiterated the standard of confidentiality around what's shared in  the groups. I don't want to become next year's teaching story by a senior teacher. You  know, I mean I think if things are shared in the groups, the confidentiality needs to be  there because those are vulnerable moments for us when we open to each other and we're  trying to build a network. And we don't expect to be held to that. And although names  might not be mentioned, the framework of the teaching story, so to speak, would be  recognized and that can be an embarrassment and also some more information around confidentiality. For legal purposes with mureeds that  actually is the scope of the psychotherapist, they might be able to better inform us around  that. That if we do see some issues we're legally liable to tell people that we do see certain  things.

Answer: Yes, well this is a further extension of what's happening in the one to one  relationship between psychotherapist and patient.Because in this case, the patient knows  that they can count upon confidentiality and they can open their hearts and say how they  feel. In a small group people somehow, I think the situation calls upon one opening one's  heart and perhaps people do respond and by so doing they have handed their vulnerable  being into the hands of other people who are perhaps not aware of how sacred it is and  how important it is to treasure that and not speak about it to other people. So maybe  meetings of this kind need to be preceded by a clear statement by those organizing them  asking them to observe that confidentiality.

Question: Just a little perspective I think is in order. The entire school of psychology is a  hundred years old. The school of Sufism is several hundred years older than that. All the  issues that you're speaking about today I think can be found in the silver and gold copper  rules of Murshid. They're there. They're exactly the formula and the format for  conducting yourself in every situation is contained in that one page. And these schools of  Sufism, and other schools have held that light of psychological truth for a thousand years  or more. And this is a new pup. I think maybe instead of going from this direction that  direction, maybe we need more of an integration of the old with the new as well.

Answer: Yes well Murshid of course was a bridge and ....

SIDE 2:

... if only principles and today we're much more conscious of the particular, the nitty- gritty let's say, the actual situations that arise and I think that some of the principles, we'd  would like to apply a principle, sometimes you have to really see something in the  principle that is not in the principle if you just read it as such. You need to carry it further.  I think that's what we're doing. We're becoming much more realistic. We are  acknowledging our shadow, not just, not a matter of a representative making a person  aware of their shadow it's the mureed is mirroring the shadow of their teacher of the  representative and the representative is mirroring the shadow of the pupil so there is an  interaction there which is, you know, it's in the principles but this is the reality, this is how  it works. 

Question: Pir Vilayat, this issue of psychology is a very delicate one, the integration, and I  think we can create wonderful opportunities for the interfacing, the integration of  psychology and spirituality and many of us who are therapists here are already breaking  ground in this area in our own practices. I myself am a licensed psychotherapist and  practice. My, the issue that I would like you to address if you can, has to do with the  relationship between a guide or representative in a working center and a potential situation  that would involve a mureed who has real psychological issues a real pathology,  particularly the personality disorders. I'm just not talking neurosis, I'm talking about  severe personality disorders in as much as they are in a position of threatening the  harmony and the integrity of whole center. It's my biggest challenge. And you know at  what point do we, and how would you suggest that we handle this? You know so that the  whole center doesn't fall apart, so that egos aren't more, vulnerable egos aren't more  seriously wounded? Do we ask the person to leave? If so, then you know we're denying  them their spiritual path, it's very difficult. Please address this.

Answer: Yes, I'm very familiar with this problem. It has arisen many many times during  my seminars. In fact quite recently during a retreat in Tucson, and a we were very high,  everyone was really very high and in a peaceful and harmonious state and all of a sudden a  woman started screaming. A kind of alarm, and at first one was asking oneself `Could this  be the result of a teaching, or, is this a particular trip that that woman is laying on us and  she can't help it'? and so there are a lot of questions that we ask ourselves and people  were trying to comfort her. You know how it is, like with their heart and so on and so  forth. But, the problems are deeper than that. It was clear that we had to interrupt the  meeting because there was no way of continuing concentrating. 

Which I did and of course  I saw the lady, and I could see that she had been interned before so it wasn't something  that was you could say was caused by the meeting but to what extent that particular  attunement of the meeting could have triggered off by reaction this counter-reaction, that  was for me, the trouble was, when a situation like that arises somehow you feel that you  are considered to be responsible and even if you do consider yourself responsible, you ask  yourself `well what is it that I can do to avoid such a situation?' So since that time I have  been very cautious. I haven't done that recently, but, ya well have actually at that camp. I  ask people point blank at the beginning of the meeting if they feel like screaming, if they  would be so kind as to go outside to scream. It would be kinder to us. 

So since that time  I've never had anybody scream but I don't know if it's due to that announcement.  Sometimes you know there's a screaming therapy. When I was at a camp in Los Angeles,  I was having my nap in the afternoon and I heard terrible screaming, and I thought `it must  be a child screaming. So I hope that child hasn't got lost and maybe the parents would be  there.' But that person kept on screaming and then I realized that it wasn't a child it was a  woman so I got dressed, went out there and said, `Well what's the matter?' `Oh', she said,  `It's my method to release my emotions by screaming.' So I said, `Well, why do you have to choose a place where I'm napping to do that?' 

You see I come from a tradition that is very disciplined, very masterly. Not just the Sufis  but especially the yogis and the Budhhists. And now psychologists feel that one should not  frustrate oneself or withhold one's emotions because then they fester and become very  explosive and dangerous. So it's much better to give expression to those emotions so that  we have to look at this question very deeply and see how we can meet it in the context of  where we are now instead of thinking of what the methods were previously. Now we have  developed a method of dealing with this. For one thing we have, there are always   psychotherapists at meetings and so the, first of all before a person attends a meeting, we  have to, we ask them if they have had a history of a pathological condition so that we, and  we warn them that the spiritual attunement may bring it about, may worsen it so that we,  this is not the best was to deal with them, their problems. 

And they are attracted to us  because they hope that we will be able to help them with problems. So it requires  specialized care. And it's not something we can do. We don't have all the answers. We  can't do everything within the context of spirituality. We can help, of course, and of  course the best thing is if there is cooperation between a psychotherapist and a spiritual  guide. Or if the spiritual guide is both a therapist and a spiritual guide which is very often  the case in the Sufi Order. There was a case when there was a young lady who of course  wanted to be initiated and I just felt that there was something, that she was a bit out there  somewhere, so point blank I said `Could you tell me who is your therapist?' I assumed  that she had a therapist. Well she was of course non-plussed. 

And so she said `Well why  do you want to know?' I said,`Well, I feel that our methods may not concur with those of your psychotherapist  and I don't want to cause a confusion in your mind if you have two different directions  given to you and you can't reconcile the two.' So finally she gave me his telephone  number, of the therapist and I telephoned the therapist and the therapist laughed his head  off. And he said, `It's the first time in my life when a guru comes to consult me about a  pupil.' And well I said, `It's about time.' `But', he said, `Why are you asking this?' I said, `Well you see, I feel that psychotherapy is trying to give people a sense of  containment of their individual ego, give them some sense of who they are as an  individuality and spirituality very often leads one into a universal, non-individual state.  And some people are strong enough to reconcile those two things and other people are  not. And, therefore, I think that in that case where it could be confusing for people it is  really important for the spiritual guide to consult with the psychotherapist.'  That's something that has developed in our Order. We honor the need to be clear about  psychological problems.

Question: Holder of the mic, what about if you have a representative such as myself who  has also, has a mureed who comes in the course of guidance, it becomes, because of the  fact that I am also a psychologist, that it holds in that realm, could you, you've spoken  about this before, but I found it difficult to keep a total separation, and I of course don't  charge for guidance, but I felt that there was something that was happening where I was  being taken advantage of.

Answer: It is of course very difficult. That question has arisen, a lot, particularly lately.  We have guidelines but our guidelines are rather perfunctory, and are simply that if you are  giving a session of psychotherapy then as acting as a psychotherapist then of course you  can charge. And if you are giving a practice then you can't charge. And it's got to be a  different session altogether, so, you can't give a practice during the session when you are  doing the psychotherapy. Now those are simple guidelines. But as you can see there's  some cross-over between the two. And so it's very difficult to see just exactly how one  can hold one's team while one feels like giving a practice. In this particular case and then  of course I think its's true that it's ok to let the patient know that there is such a thing  as  spiritual guidance. And we are able to give that, it's another area. I see Maheyazoob (?)  has her hand up so could you pass the microphone to her?

Question: Pir what Zirifa is raising has been an issue for some of us because our ethical  guidelines clearly say, `you cannot function as both a spiritual guide and a psychotherapist  for someone. And many of us have sort of found ourselves backing into situations where  we wind up doing the work, we some of us have, and I hope some of the people who have  talked to me about this will speak, some of us have had mureeds who say, `I won't go to  anybody but I would go to you'. So that I think that when we look at our ethics we need  to look at the fact that some of the psychotherapy guidelines don't fit for us...  Well are  we officially changed? I... ok.

Answer: We have come back, at the German house a few days ago we came back on those  guidelines very clearly. I think those guidelines were made prematurely and it was due to  the fact that there was too much of an overlap so we wanted to arrive at more clarity, but  now we've arrived at a very good, clear solution. And that is that the sessions need to be  at different time, that's all. But you can accumulate both functions. I wonder whether  Atoum has an answer about this because, Atoum, you are working in both areas at the  same time.   Well that's ok you still have a contribution to make.

Atoum: I think it's a very large theme. One that interests me very deeply in terms of   relationship of psychotherapy and spiritual guidance. And I've only been here about and  hour and already someone has approached me in a private conversation saying that they  felt left out in the Sufi Order now as a leader because they're not a psychotherapist and  that there is an elitist group of psychotherapists who are...

Pir Vilayat: (Laughter)  That's just not true. That's a misconception. It couldn't be true.

Atoum: No I'm just saying that there's a whole level of feeling that's involved in the  conversation beyond the content of the conversation. I personally think it very much  depends upon the person, and it's very helpful to have guidelines, and some people are  able to keep those boundaries clear and well defined and able to discern which they can, in  what areas they'll work in as a therapist and in what areas they'll work in as a spiritual  guide with a client. And the client can keep it clear. But that's not always the case and so I  think if we place that sense of faith in people who are therapist and also spiritual guides  within the Sufi Order, we need to make sure that people have a sense of being able to  discern that difference in themselves and also with the person that they're working with.

Pir Vilayat: Thank-you. Well I must say that, I'll say once more that I'm sorry that Taj  isn't here because at some times there have been questions in the minds of people as to  whether her teaching was within the spectrum of teaching within the Sufi Order. And  that's why, as I say I went into very deep conversations with her. And I am convinced  now that her teachings are really based essentially upon Pir O Murshid's teaching. She is  using methods that we have not been using, used in the past, but that is her aim, highest  objective, her motivation. I want to make that clear so that there's no sense that there's  conflict, you know pulling in different directions. Yes...

Question: Pir Vilayat for the whole time that I've been in the Sufi Order, I feel like at the  essence of what I've watched you do as a mentor is constantly experiment, let creativity  come through as you're being guided in the moment, make rules and guidelines and totally  break them. Try something else and be surprised. by your own new form that comes  through. In that regard, I feel, in terms of the bigger picture, it's very clear that in the  worlds of psychotherapy, more and more there are transpersonal dimensions that are  coming into all realms of that in ways that never happened before so that meditation, so  that various kinds of spiritual practices become even part of the therapeutic training in  whole other realms. Similarly, I feel, as guides in the Sufi Order and as an evolution of  guiding training is emerging, with many of us doing trainings in other places in order to  bring it back to the Sufi Order which is, and the teachings which are our core calling, so  that we can be more effective in bringing through Murshid's and your teachings. In that  regard, it means that of course we're going to go toward more and more integration  between those worlds out there that can be of value here. Methods, methodologies,  repeated questions is just a technique, so is expressive arts therapy, so is working with  dreams. These are all just methods to try and help people to get to who they really are,  and to heal themselves in the process so that can be real and authentic. And I think that's  at the core of what's happening. And it's beautiful.

Answer: Thank-you. 

Question: By this remark I may be walking out on a limb and soliciting the business cards  of every psychotherapist in the tent, but I would like to put in two cents for integration  and normality because I think that when you assume that because of your career path  choice, if that's the length that you chose to look at everyone that it severely limits the  people around you and their potential. And so perhaps a practice that the  psychotherapists could do as well as well as informing us of what we could do as guides,  they could also rotate the lenses that they use to look at their guidance practices and the  people around them and there are some of us who did not come from disjunctional  families. And enjoy a rather normal and integrated lifestyle. And celebrate that and share it  with others and as I said I have room in my pocketbook for all your cards so I just wanted  to put in a note for, not the assumption that something's wrong in the first place and to try  to fix it through a therapy.

Pir: Could you say that again, the last thing. `Cause I didn't hear you.

Questioner: Not to assume that something is wrong in the first place around  psychotherapy, so that the psychotherapists would have, change the lense of the way they  look at things. Occasionally. That they are informed by their career choices about their  guidance and it's deeply meaningful to them perhaps in their lives, and now certainly in  their guidances, but, that there's a level of normalcy that has never called for  psychotherapy necessarily. That, I just think, I think there's some normal people out there,  and in here. 

Pir: In here I think there are probably more psychotherapists than non-psychotherapists.  Plus what one calls backbench councilors who are not authenticated psychotherapists but  self appointed. 

Yes, of course it's my concern, too, to widen the spectrum of our teaching by maintaining  the cohesion in it and the (unknown) of it. And, as I say, after my discussions with Taj, I  came to the conclusion that her teaching is based upon Murshid's teaching. And that is my  only concern about any teaching within the Sufi Order, that it is, that it's basically based  upon Pir O Murshid's teaching. There could be differences in methodology but, and ... I  see Taj here so I'd like to ask her to come and say what is her, what are her objectives. 

You made the mistake of coming, and now  you are here so, and , it's not a mistake for  us, it puts you on the spots, but it's, now we'd like to hear your voice.

Woman's voice: How long is this meeting going to go on? Man's voice: For two days.

Pir: This last meeting has some kind of elasticity about it. 

Taj: I just wondered what you meant by a statement . Like a minute? or a half a minute or  something?

Pir: Open up your heart. Open your heart.

Taj: I think it's open already.

(Laughter)

Taj: What are you discussing?

Pir: Assume you just came in.

Woman's voice: Integration of psychology and spirituality.

Taj: That's what we've been doing for years, I think.

Pir: No, that's not it. No, no. That's not it.

Taj: What's your question? What's your question?

Pir: Alright. Your aim, and your objectives in your teaching which I feel are the same as  mine. But, I would like you to confirm that they are, or, then say that they're not.

Taj: My objectives are to support people in waking up to their Divine nature. And I'm  assuming that that is your objective as well.

(Laughter)

Pir: Is that it?

Taj: Yup.

Pir: But you've left people on their appetite.

Taj: What else? Oh, but you said what is my objective. You mean  more about it? Or ...

Pir: No, you know I don't want this to be just, how can I say, just an intellectual  exchange. I want to give you the opportunity of, make us find ourselves in sync with your  being.

Taj: OK Let's see what I can do about that..... Just thinking what that might be. No, I'd  just like to say that, I feel that this (unknown) stays together that I'm very, that there's a  smile inside me, because of the kind being, feeling, working in partnership with you in the  same, in the same work. So I'm just, I'm grateful for having spent this time here and being  part of this week, and the class that I did, and those of us who ended up in it today, we, I  think we just went, got more of a taste of the way that I'm working. And there's some  interest in deepening that and I'm very happy to make my services available for those of  you who want to continue working in this way, and, I mean I feel really silly sitting up  here, just coming in and not knowing what that you're talking about. 

Pir: No, it was just as well. No, I think let's bring in a little more personal element here.  You know that we are both parents of Zia, and that for reasons that are, for whatever  reason I can't define here. Our powers diverged in, at least apparently in some manner,  I'm sure there was a personal element there. Somehow it has, it was rather devastating for  a lot of people in the Sufi Order. And on the other hand enriching, because, Taj was able  to find her own. And now I find that there's a convergence. And I feel, the reason why  I've called in cards is because I feel that it has it's repercussions in the whole Order. That,  you know, that we have found the resonance between us at the soul level and at the level  of  the, at the soul level it was always there, but, let's say at the level of our teaching, and I  hope that that will give a whole new impetus to the Sufi Order. Is that how you feel?

Taj: I'm very moved. Yes, thank-you for saying that. I couldn't have said it.

Pir: Thank-you. This is how we end this meeting.

End of Tape
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AUG 21, 1997		Tape 01


This meditation is based upon two wazifas that emerged in the course of last week, in reference to the practise called muhasabi, which one could call the 
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