AUG 21, 1997		 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 examination of one's conscience. Those two wazifas are Haqq and Hakim. Haqq, truth, and Hakim, the judgement of truth. 

And, as you know, truth can act as a bomb. (Pir laughs) And, it's true that truth can be painful. And, it is possible that pain is part of the catharsis that takes place. So that, myself, and I think, some of the representatives feel like, as I said before, like holding the pupil in their heart, and protecting their self esteem. 

And sometimes, one can bring the truth inside that containment.  So that the.., for example, it's better for the garden, if one takes away the weeds. So, it's in the good of the being, or it's good for the body sometimes to give the bacteria a good bang on the head. So, it's a kind act in the end.  

So, that is, of course, a kind of problem that we are confronted when we have the responsibility of that delicate soul of people. 

But, it all starts with ourselves. We have had a lot of preparation for this in the course of the last years, working with light. And of course, there is no way of making the next step, if one has not already done the ground work. So, I hope that those who are here, are privy to the.., how can I say, the fundamental steps that we have been going through in the practises of light. 

And now, what we are going to do, is to somehow, connect these practises with muhasabi, with looking into our shadow side, or casting the light that we have been working with upon our shadow side so that the shadow disappears, or peters out. Like, in the Night on Bald Mountain, by Mussorgsky, when the light comes of dawn, then of course, the devil starts rushing away. So, it's something like that. 

I've been using the words, entertain luminous thoughts and luminous emotions. And, that's a word, isn't it. So, we want to see how that works in practise, how the reality of that.... 

So, if you remember, when we were working with light, we distinguished four different forms of light. One was the light that we absorbed from the environment, and it was processed within us, and transmitted in our radiance. But, that is not the same thing that happens in a mirror. So, it's not reflected, but it has been processed in the very cells of our body. So, we are not just boomeranging back the light of the environment.  

And then, if you remember, there was a light from within that Pir-O-Murshid calls, the all pervading light. And, that is for physicists, rather paradoxical what that means. Maybe, the more advanced physicists. I've been talking to them about it of course, can concur, though they are using a different language than I am. But, the way that I explain it is that we are living in a multi dimensional world, and we are only able to extrapolate between three dimensions. So, that which we cannot fit into that framework, breaks through this cross section which is our three dimensional world. And, if we can't fit it in, we experience it as all pervading. That is not light that radiates from a point in space, but the light that is diffused, as one might say. The light that emerges from within. And, as Pir-O-Murshid says, we shift that light from being all pervading to being radiant, by shifting our attention from our solar plexis to our heart. The solar plexis will give you a sense of penetrating into the deep void, as a matter of fact. The void just means that it is beyond your grasp. It's something that is happening unconsciously.  And then, at some point it emerges, and one becomes aware of it. 

And it's of course, a fantastic source of light, much more effective than the light that one absorbs from the environment.  And then, there's a whole other, how can I say, a whole hierarchy of light, of modes of light ranging from physical light to levels of light that we can only..., of course, it is very difficult in our language, but the only way to say this, we are talking about the reflex of the reflex of the reflex of light. That's an analogy, but it will give you a sense of what we understand by light is only a very small slice of the reality of light in all its modes, in all its range. 

And, if we pursue these different levels of light, we reach....  Well actually, for example, you can consider each of the chakras of your body as the kind of light that is emitted by each chakra, like the different colors in the spectrum. Actually, they correspond with different frequencies. We interpret those frequencies as color. But, as I say, there is ultimately..., one gets to a point where there is a kind of quantum leap. One makes a quantum leap. And, a quantum leap means that one passes through a blackout, and then reaches beyond that blackout where our notion of light is totally eradicated, collapses. And then suddenly, we have a whole different sense of light, of what is called the light of intelligence, what the Sufis call the light of intelligence, which the Tibetans call the clear light of bliss. 

Now, the extraordinary thing is that, well of course, you can see the relationship between this light, and what we call awakening.  And, that's why we use two words that are really in tandem. One is awakening and the other is illumination. And those two words are, those two concepts are very, very close. And, that is why working with light presents us with some kind of help in triggering off awakening. It's much more tangible than abstract thoughts when we have something that we can work with. 

Now, the extraordinary thing about it, is that the light of intelligence is.., which comes as a kind of.., actually, it is called vajra, which means lightening by the Tibetans. It has the effect of suddenly lighting up our aura, enhancing the light of our aura dramatically. Like, all of a sudden, turning on a light bulb, or something very sudden. 

As I illustrated sometimes by that little child. The mother says, "Can you see the pixie in the tree of that puzzle?" And, she can't see it. And, then all of a sudden, "Yes!". And at that moment, she starts smiling, her whole being starts beaming.  And, I dare say, that if one were to subject her at the time to a laboratory experiment, one would see the radiance of her aura has greatly increased. So, there you have mind over body, the effect of realization over the radiance of our body, of our aura.  That's a reality. 

That's good for people who have difficulty in believing in all that we do, and think that it is imagination. Well, you know, imagination is a key. And, as I say, it gets demonstrated in laboratories. So, it's not some invention of mine. 

Now, that same light, that is exactly what in the Koran is called, the light upon a light. 

And, the Sufis say that the light that sees, enhances the light that can be seen. You see there are two categories of light.  Well, there are several categories of light. 

Now consequently, one can instead of, let's say, directing this light downwards, as it were, upon one's aura, so that it starts radiating, one can thread it through the actual optic nerve. No, actually, it's like a zephyr on a stream of water. One can filter it through, infuse it through the glance, the glance of one's eyes. A good example of that could be illustrated by the river Rhone that passes through the lake of Geneva. It's something that Ib'n Arabi mentions where there is a lot about light in the teaching of Ib'n Arabi. 

And of course, Pir-O-Murshid says, your glance becomes like two search lights which are looking right into the soul of beings.  Gives you insight. 

So, that's three sources of light isn't it. Yes, well the other one is, of course, the ability to transmute infra red light into ultra violet. It's called, it's a phenomenon that has to do.., let's say, it's related with a phenomenon called phosphorescence, instead of florescence. Florescence it the way that we process the light of the environment and radiate it. But, phosphorescence is a quality that you find in fireflies, for example, when bats in the cave, and deep sea fish that burn their body to produce light. 

So, the light that is produced is basically, infra red, and then it is transmuted into light within the physical range. And, that's why we can see that light in the fireflies. 

It's a very important function. And, the reason why is because that is the process that governs resurrection. That is the practise that governs... We are preparing ourselves for resurrection by learning how to transmute our body into light.  And, that means our electrons into photons. So, that many of the practises that we are doing now, are effective in dealing with that scare that we have about death. And, as you know, the Tibetans are very much for preparing one's self for that great event. That transit. 

Now, for each form of light there is a mode of thought. And, that's what I want us to explore now, that particular connection.  This morning I said, for example that we entertain luminous thoughts. And, what does that mean? 

So, this is purely exploratory. So, first of all, you remember the elementary practise. You are consciously absorbing light, say, through the pores of your skin as you inhale. And then, as you hold your breath, you are conscious of the giggling and the sparkling of the cells of your body that are really enthused by the, turned on by that administration of that energy that is light. I mean, fed with light. And now, the consequence is that they start dividing in the process that one calls mitosis.  

And so, there is an expenditure of light and energy, and having used that light energy then, whatever remains is radiated in the form of the aura. 

Well, that's at the body level. Now, what happens at the mind level, this is the first stage in meditation. Exactly as the body is absorbing elements from the environment, our psyche is absorbing elements from the psychological environment.  Impressions of all kinds from walking in the streets, and there is an accident, or having a chat with somebody, or watching TV, going to a class, reading books. So somehow, one's psyche is nurtured by a lot of impressions which are imbibed, I mean they are psychically imbibed, those impressions. And then, one needs to digest those impressions, which are random at first. And so, it's quite a problem to try to make a nice tapestry out of all those random, colored threads, weave them into a meaningful pattern. And, that does mean eliminating those that cannot be incorporated in the tapestry. 

Now, one of the basic things that I've been saying repeatedly, and is becoming more and more clear, is that our assessment of.., because when we are taking in impressions they are related with our involvement with life, with beings other than ourselves. And consequently, and what I am saying is that our thoughts, when we start meditating, really are giving us some clues as to our problems. We are assessing our problems in a biased way, because it is biased by one's particular vantage point. And so, our assessment of our problems.., we are not seeing.., I think that our assessment is maybe a valid point of view. It is not a comprehensive point of view. 

And consequently, it is biased. And, we have been carrying that in our psyche throughout our life, being convinced that our assessment of our problem is correct. Now, when I talk about casting a light upon our problem, let's say, we cast our light upon our thought, our pondering thoughts, ponderous thoughts, we ponder upon the problems. So, that means we are casting something of ourselves upon that psychological food that we are imbibing, exactly like the body casts its enzymes upon the food that it ingests in order to digest it. So, that there is always those two, the interaction between ourselves and other than ourselves that gets incorporated into ourselves. 

So, what is important here is, of course, the clarity of our thoughts. And at first, our thoughts are very confused. For example, there is a confusion between that in us which is the witness, and that in us which is our psyche, and that in us which is our assessment of our problems. So, we have three elements there that are already, first of all, that are mixed up, and secondly, each of which is flawed by inadequacy. 

So, metaphorically, light makes for clarity. And so, maybe the first thing, is to be quite clear about the difference between our assessment of our problems, and what are problems are. We are grappling with our concepts of problems, instead of our problems. 

So, at this level, clarity makes clearer distinctions. And you know, the mind has, well actually, there is an emotional bias in the mind, and we are not clear about it. We are deceiving ourselves, because we are just trying to justify ourselves. So that mind caries its own confusion within it, unless we bring about clarity. 

So that when one.., you know, our self esteem is so vulnerable, our mind comes to our rescue to protect ourselves against the light that would shatter us. So, that confusion is programmed right into our programming in order to protect us in a perfunctory way against, if we would have difficulty in coping with the truth. So, it requires a lot of courage to face the truth. That's something that one gains as one moves from childhood into adulthood. So, the effect of this confusion is that we are making a kind of compromise in our minds.  Compromise. As one says sometimes, one would like to have one's cake and eat it at the same time. So, a kind of confusion there.  Make a compromise. And, you know, I often use this word reconciling the irreconcilables, but we must not confuse that with the compromise. It is not the same thing.  

So at first, the mind works in what one might call, thinking in categories, as Emil Kant says, in the Categories of Reason, in what one calls discreet thoughts. It's like particles, for example, in physics. One thinks that they have, like they have their own identity, instead of waves where it is much more difficult to see exactly what those particularities are. So, that's how we start. That's how the mind functions in its most elementary way. At first there is confusion, and, I think one has to be careful in meditation, one tends to let the mind defuse itself into nowhere. Let's say, a lack of concision. And, it is true, that as one turns within, then of course, the mind is able to act in a holistic fashion. That is, it is able to see everything in it's interaction with everything else, as it is intermeshed with everything else, in what one calls the holistic view of what Dr David Boehm calls the implicate state. Whereas, now, to start with, we are going to work with each type of light, step by step. So now, we are working with that... 

side 2 

...imbibed from the environment, and the kind of thinking that corresponds with that light. So, it is our concern about truth that is going to clarify those thoughts. And hence, the wazifas, Ya Haqq, Ya Hakim. So, our concern about truth, Haqq, is going to have an effect upon our judgement about our way of looking at our problems, and therefor, unmask the hoax of our personal bias. 

You see, it is no use saying that our assessment of our problems is faulty, but then, how do we clarify it.  

Now there is an adjoining tandem practice, which is, Ya Haqq, Ya Noor. And, that comes very often in the words of Murshid, of Pir-O-Murshid, my father, the light of truth. And, that is what we are working with now. So that we could build a metaphor as we are meditating, and imagine that our, especially when we meditate, our thoughts are in the nimbo. Our thoughts are, let's say, below the... Let's say, the threshold between the unconscious and conscious is not very clear. And so, there is some kind of mish-mash in our thinking. And now, all of a sudden, we are casting light upon it. And, the important thing is, because the reason why these thoughts are confused is because it is painful to face the reality. 

We are protecting ourselves against what we find difficult to face. And, that is our darkest night. Because, as I say, it destroys our self esteem. And, that's why, I think that we need to have some protection, and that protection comes by a thought which is really one of the guiding thoughts behind the teaching that I have been giving. And that is that, well, I was talking about the voice of Caruso, it is that, within the distortion and defilement of our being, the purity of our immaculate state remains untarnished, even though it is within its, lets say, it is tarnished, and at the same time, as I say.., I mean, if we think in categories then we say like, we have a pure core in the center of our being, as Saint Teresa from Avila says. I think she calls it the fine point of the soul which is immaculate, and then outside, it is defiled by the overlap, the overspill with the environment. That would be a simplistic way of thinking, and then we need to find that core within ourselves, and so on. That is a dualistic way of thinking. Categories. So, the more advanced way of thinking is that, that immaculate state interpenetrates it's own defilement. So, that's a way of thinking that.., one isn't familiar with that, It is very surprising to be able to think that way. But, of course, it is illustrated in physics. Because, for example, we lose sight of a wave when it is intermeshed with other waves in what one calls a wave interference pattern. And yet, the (foray analysis?) shows us that we can retrieve it. So, that shows that it has remained unscathed within its interaction with other waves. You see, it's a different mode of thinking, you see. And, that is a saving grace.  

And, I think that if you are able to hold that, then you are more capable of facing the shadow, your shadow. Because, it doesn't take away your self esteem, you see. 

And, if you are a teacher, then you uphold the dignity of your pupil which would be impaired if you were to criticize your pupil. But, when you are upholding that, the pupil feels a kind of safe, protective containment, and has difficulty in reconciling that with his/her own awareness of his, his/her own defects. And so, you need to help the pupil, to cast light upon these defects while feeling safe that it will not impair his/her self esteem, you see. 

You know, it's like keeping a person alive while they are undergoing a heart operation. A very serious surgical intervention. And so, that is a Sufi method. It's a very subtle method of working with people.  


And all the time, your light is being mirrored by the person, and they can see how you are enhancing their light by your light.  And consequently, that light will start bringing the defects into the open, because, of course, that which is blocking everything, of course, is denial. And Haqq, of course, does not tolerate denial. So, you are unmasked. 

And, that's what I mean by innocence, it's the inability to defend one's self by justification, and of course, the inability to use guile in one's strategy in life, manipulating people. But then, it's the same thing, if you don't deceive yourself, then you don't deceive people. Some relationship between the two. 

So, one is deceiving one's self by denial, because one is trying to preserve one's self esteem, and if your self esteem is OK, then you don't need to deny, and so you can face your shadow. Or rather, you can, you see, from the moment that you bring your shadow out into the open, it dissolves. You don't have to fight it, it dissolves. 

And you see, if you look into the metaphysics of the Sufis, the whole of life is the tajaliat, the manifestation of the non manifest. And, that is bringing to light that which is nebulous, that which is subliminal, bringing it into the light. And that's the meaning of Zahir. Zahir means it is the epiphany, the epiphany is the sudden outburst of light, the emergence that had been under a bushel. Almost like an explosion. You know, the word Zahir is the equivalent of the Greek word epiphanos, epiphany. The shepherds followed the star that was leading them to the emergence of light in the child Jesus on the day of the Epiphany. So, that is Zahir. 

So, you could do the practise. Well, there are several. You could do, Ya Noor, Ya Zahir, or you could do, Ya Haqq, Ya Zahir.  Both. 

It's extraordinary. It's as though something that had been hidden, all of a sudden comes out, you see, in your being, and gives you a tremendous power. It's the power of truth. 

So you see, well, for example, if you are doing the breathing practise, then, as you inhale, you think that the light that you are imbibing from the universe, well, from the cosmos, is being cast in the dark areas of your psyche. And then, there is that period of incubation, as you hold you breath, and as you exhale, then all of a sudden, the emergence of that light now, I mean of those dark elements that begin to emerge, and are then dissolved in the light. 

So, for Sufism, the spiritual process is a process of unveiling.  And, unveiling is the action of the universe upon us, instead of our action upon the universe. Because, as you know, there are two modes of knowledge, there is acquired knowledge, and revealed knowledge. So, acquired knowledge is the kind of knowledge, the know how, that you gain in your experience in life, that makes for wisdom. But, revealed knowledge is something that you cannot acquire. It is the way that the consciousness of the universe breaks through your consciousness, which is of course, a fraction of the, well, it is a convergence of the light of the universe, of the consciousness of the universe. And, that's where God comes in, you see. He is already there, he/she is already there.  It's not that he/she comes in. But, the thing is that one has to admit that there are things that are a little bit too challenging for us to do with our will. Of course, we could say the divine will is written right into our will, of course, it just depends how you see it. 

And, it was Martin Luther who called it the significatcio pasifa, that is, you think that you are passive in respect of the divine action, but your passivity becomes activity as your will takes over from the self organizing faculty of the universe. The universe has a way of self organizing itself in each one of us, and at some point we have to take over. Just like a musician will make variations on a theme that has been given to him, allotted to him, him/her. 

So, this could be illustrated by, there's a mouse in your hut, and you put a torch on. I mean, you call it a flashlight in America. In England, one calls it a torch. And, all of a sudden the mouse leaps out of the light to get back into the shadow again, but you don't allow it to do that. So, that's the way that your light is able to unmask the hoax, bring it out into the open. That seems to ring a bell. (laughter) Talking from experience. 

So, this is just the first stage. Here we introduce the general concept of light, and now we have just been talking about the light that we have brought from the environment, and that we own.  Because, that becomes a part of our being then, and then we can use it to bring the mouse out with the shadow.  

Now the next one is, we will be dealing with that tomorrow.  

God Bless you.


AUG 21, 1997		Tape 02

Yes, as you know, it is a custom of the Sufis to use music to inspire them, and, either prior to their meditating, or while they are meditating. And, Indian music is particularly devised for that purpose. There are different styles. And I remember very well, Pir-O-Murshid, my father, inviting us to come, and he was teaching us the four different styles of Indian music that he was illustrating and singing, and playing the piano accompanying himself. And, the first was the popular music, the equivalent music in the west, although not quite, of heavy metal. (laughter)  And then, there was, like, the folk music, which is perhaps a little more like rock and roll. And then, there was the classical music, like Beethoven, Brahms. And then, there was the sacred music, like Victoria, or Monteverdi, Gabrielli, and of course, Bach. 

And, when he played and sang that very high music, my sister Noor was in tears, and he was in tears. And so, he realized that he had touched her heart, in something that, I think, became a governing factor in her life, because it brought out her ideal through the language of music. And, very often when I speak, I feel rather paranoid, because I feel that this is a far cry from what the great composers have said, it reaches, in one's soul, directly without the words which always have some kind of bias and limitation. 

But, there are times when, behind the words, we feel a connections, which we call it, a heart connection or a soul connection, but it is really resonance. Like being part of the symphony of the spheres. So, it's not just reverberating like two gongs, but somehow those two gongs are an expression of what Pythagoras called the music of the spheres. 

Now, perhaps you noticed, if you listen to this music, that he starts with the dominant, and the bass note, and then he keeps on..., variations there, and he is looking for..., (Pir hums), but it is not yet there, you see, and then, all of a sudden, he hits it, right there. We are anticipating that, and that's what we feel in our meditations. That there's that note there that is luring us, and we can't quite get it yet, so we have to first do our homework. And then, at a certain moment, "Yes, got it". It's that note, you see, and then of course, it's very short lived, so then they go back to the basic things as (Bonachart?) says, "It happens before you know that it was there, and it has passed before you know that it was there. And, you try to hold on to it, but what you hold on to is your memory of it which is not it". 

As you know, if you try to catch the blue bird, it will always escape. If you turn you back, it will follow you. So, that's the paradox of what we are doing, it is not rational. What we are doing, really, if you seek for rationality, you have knocked at the wrong door. You know that. 

Well now, this is rather paradoxical what we are doing now, because it is part of a whole process that started at the representative meetings that took place the last few days. We've had, I think it was six days, and now we continue with some of the same people, and other people. There is some continuity there, because those who are present here are people who are mureeds, who are cherags, or healing conductors, or in other activities, like zira'at, or even kinship. 

So, there has been a program, as a training program for those who are taking responsibility in these various activities, and of course, there are two paradigms, one is the one that was devised by Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan, and that is a star, so there are five activities, and the esoteric school is one of them, and then there is the universal worship, and healing, and zira'at, and what we call kinship. 

And then, the other one, which seems to have developed in the course of the Sufi order for practical reasons, and that is the Sufi Order at the center, and then those four activities as branches. And now, we are trying to come back to the original star. But, in my mind, those who are acting as cherags and healing conductors, and also in zira'at, and kinship, need to find the source of their inspiration in the esoteric heart center of this overall picture, which is perhaps what we understand as the Message. 

So, the beauty of the way that we have scheduled things now, is that the activities are having their, giving their training, the heads of the activities are giving their training, and at the same time parallel, we are trying to deepen our experience of the esoteric, what is meant by, what is sought after in the esoteric school. This is a school, a school of training. 

And, we have found that the only way in which our teaching can be authentic, is if it starts in ourselves. And, that's the reason why we have scheduled this meeting, so that it is part retreat and part training in the activities. And, I know that when one is on retreat, one finds it difficult to then close one door and open another, and start thinking in terms of working in the field. Translating one's deep experience into a teaching that is given to people, or leadership that is given to people who are looking for that leadership. 

So, it's a difficult transit, I know, but on the other hand, I'm thinking of a word of Ib'n Arabi who says, "For a person who is continually conscious of the divine presence, a retreat is impossible". That was the cause of a lot of laughter by Aziza, when she heard that first, and in fact, it makes the ultimate sense. 

But then, I suppose that since we are not God conscious all the time, then there is room for it on a retreat. But, I like to think of a retreat as a rehearsal for life, and so, let us consider the morning retreat as a rehearsal for what you are going to do in your activities as a cherag, or cheraga, or a healing conductor, or in the various activities of the Sufi Order.  

There was a question that was asked here yesterday. That was, Well, in one's capacity as a cherag, one is communicating a teaching to people, which is not the same thing as when people ask to undergo a training in the Sufi Order, and they are given practises. So, it's a different model, but still, one is communicating a teaching, and so, that teaching has to be based upon real experience, and that's why the need for retreat. It is conceivable that, although we are trying to maximize the time, people leave their work and their families to come here, so we want to maximize that time. But, it is conceivable that we might devise, for example, a healing retreat, or a universal worship retreat, a zira'at retreat, and os on. Each one having their own specific orientation. But, although we have opened the field so that cherags could not be members, initiates of the Sufi Order, or healing conductor, and so on. So that we don't restrict ourselves by making it too much like a sect. We're not, but we would be interpreted as such.  

Still, I think, that connection with the heart of the message, which is the original consideration, is important, so that it is all nicely integrated. So, now, for example, we have come to the point when we feel that in an activity, like the healing activity for example, there are waziif which are relevant, or for universal worship, so there are some connection between the two. 

So, some of you here are cherags or not cherags, or healing conductors or not healing conductors, but I believe that most of those who are here are initiates in the Sufi Order. And so, what you are looking for, we already started training in the preceding days, in the Esoteric school, and now we will pursue that, because that is what will give you inspiration and insight and strength to carry out the work in your sphere, in your activity. 

So, I think, sometimes it's good to get back to basics, as one says, back to headquarters again, because you are teaching, or your service in whatever function needs to emanate from a deep realization in yourself. And, meditation is, as I call it, a rehearsal for life, it's an opportunity to open one's self to what the Sufis call the revelation, the unveiling of something that is known to us in the depth of our soul, but we are not consciously aware of. And, that realization comes, as they call it, vajra, like lightening, a certain breakthrough in what we call the "aha!" feeling. 

As you know, the methods that we are using in the training in the Sufi Order are very special, very different. There are many other schools. It is very subtle, so it's not like, you know, for example in the course of the last few days, we were aiming at making a catalogue of the problems of people, and then saying what wazifas could be the right medicines to use. And, I found myself, that, that was really limiting our ability to help by getting enclosed in a system. And so, then we started to take off, as it were, and look at the problems from a different angle.  And then, they looked very different from the way they look, the way we are sorting them out in our minds.  

And so, it was clear that there was no way in making a system.  On the other hand, these waziif are, I would say, signposts.  They draw attention to what we think is a quality, and we even try to translate that quality in a word, translating an (?) in the word, in American, or in English translation. And consequently, we are limiting what the wazifa is really about.  You see, it's really based upon a basic Sufi teaching. There is that word Ayat, which is to be found in the Koran. It is the forms of the physical world, and also the forms of your idiosyncrasies which are not physical form, I mean they are not forms in the spacial time/space framework. They are still forms, are devices whereby the divine intention is communicated to you.  And since, it is also called veiled, so it is the unveiling of a veil, tajaliat. Tajali means the unveiling of a veil. And that veil is the limit in our realization. The limit in our understanding. And so, you could consider each wazifa as the unveiling of that particular veil that is standing in the way of realization. So, one is drawing attention to something that one hadn't seen before. 

And so, it is pointed out to one, but one needs to see it. So, that's the unveiling.  

What it means is that you can't really grasp it yourself, but you have to be open to the way in which the universe is revealing itself to you. I am using the word universe this time, instead of the word God, but I mean God. But, that God has a lot of connotations, and we are living at a time when the Buddhists are presenting, are confirming a kind of wariness on the part of many people in the use of that word God which has all these projections, anthropomorphic projections. In fact, as Per Murshid says, what we call God is what we think God is. I would add, that what we would hope that God is. 

So, by not using that word, I'm opening up a whole..., I'm taking away some of the reservations in the minds of many people. And, the word universe is very appropriate, because Verso el uno, means towards the one. 

So, the oneness behind the multiplicity, that's our point of convergence. 

So, in the future, instead of asking yourself, someone asking you, "Are you a Sufi?" You say, "Are you universal?" And you say, "Yes I'm universal". Which is what one means by being God consciousness. 

So, the significance of the wazifa, waziif, it's very special, it's true that the Hindus give mantrams, and some of these mantrams do pinpoint a particular quality. So, in that sense, there is a lot of similarity. But, we have gone into, let's say, we, the Sufis have gone into this very deeply, and are about to distinguish qualities more clearly by articulating them, and by giving them a label, you see. So, the wazifa is a label. It stands for not just a concept, but the whole attunement, and the whole realization and unveiling, as I say. 

So, during the last camp, I was trying to see more clearly what are the different stages that a person goes through in what we call, the developmental stages in their spiritual progress. And, it became more and more clear to me that the Sufis have definite guidelines about, what they call the maquamat, the different stages one goes through in one's life. It will help one to see where one is at, and what is the next step. It's just like a map, sometimes, I know a man who made an overland trip to India without a map, but it would have been more helpful if I had a map. (laughter) So, the map is useful. And, there is a word of Corsipsky, it says, "The map is not the territory". So, we must know that the map is not the territory, but it is helpful. 

It's helpful, not just to know where you are, but what the next step is. 

Now, what I have been trying to do, is try to explore what are the wazifas corresponding to each stage. And, of course there is a lot of overlap, and of course, I myself, am wary of systems, so it's not really, totally, as I say, the map is not the territory.  So, it's not totally satisfactory, but still, we need to start with basics. And, the thing that is basic is that our unfoldment is, in some way, tailored by our realization and therefor, in the nitty gritty, it is our interpretations of one's problems that is how we understand the situation in which we find ourselves in the world, in our relationship with people, and then circumstances.  The occurrences.  

There is, of course, not only interfacing, but intermeshing between ourselves and the circumstances, so that we are not always very clear what is the part of our own psyche, and what is the part of that which accrues to us from outside. And how, what accrues to us from outside influences our personality, and how our personality influences that which seems to accrue from outside without our having called them. Now, somehow, we tend to, if we think simplistically, then we tend to think that we are the victims of circumstances out of our control, which is a very frightening thought. That there were circumstances that could be damaging, devastating, and could occur without any reasons. So, we feel ourselves very vulnerable in the face of what we call fate. So, it is very difficult for us to see that there is some relationship between ourselves and what is happening, and I don't think that it is always true, that's the trouble. There's a word of Jung who says, if we don't deal with our shadows, it will appear to us in the form of our fate. So, you see, it's that connection. If you change yourself, things are going to change.  

Do we call upon ourselves our tribulations? That's a very frightening thought. You know, you asked for it, and there you got it. It's not always the case. I mean, how could one say that those people who are starving have brought it about, like, it used to be in Bosnia, now it's all over the world. You can't really say that. So, well, this is metaphysics of course, but you know that evolution proceeds by trail and error. That is the only way in which one can come to a realization, is when one is offered a choice. 

And so, you could consider our mistakes to be the errors in that trial and error process. And, we learn more from our mistakes than our good decisions. And, maybe those mistakes do reflect something in ourselves that needs to be met, by the light of truth. So, that is what we were doing this morning. So, I think that the first two wazifas in that process are Ya Haqq, Ya Hakim. 

Now they are two words, one is Hakim, which means the judge, and Hakkam, which means the wise man or woman. So, you see they are related, but it is not exactly the same thing. But, when one is looking into one's problems in the light of truth, then it alters one's judgement of them. One is interpreting one's problems, that's judging them. And while we know that our judgement is fallible, we have every right to judge, in fact, not only that, but we cannot not judge. I remember asking my father when I was a child of ten years old, perhaps nine years old... You see, because one can't count upon one's judgement, then one should never act, because, if one is acting, one is acting in accordance with one's judgement. So, that was a block in my mind, like, you know, "What do you do, Dad?" And, he said, "You have to act, and then by the feedback", he didn't use the word feedback, "then you will see where you judgement was wrong."  

And then, I went further. It was surprising for a child of tem.  And I said, "The trouble is, that then, by your mistakes, you are causing suffering to people." And he said, "Yes, it's true." He says it's true that really suffering is written right into our life. And, the fact is that, for example, there are cases, for example you have a surgical operation, and that's painful. And, the consequence is that the aftermath can me painful, but it is kindness in the end. And, that was something that was, at that age, it was difficult, and even at this age, I still find it, that's my problem. Perhaps you have noticed that. (Pir laughs)  Compassion and trying to save people, spare people from suffering when maybe they have to go through the suffering in order to progress. Everyone has their particular quality, and sometimes at the cost of other qualities. 

So, I think that, you know, when we start with this, Hakim, and then it could reach into Haqq, Hakkam, which means from the innocent child that is present within us, one has grown to maturity, and become a wise person, while one's innocence is protecting one against guile, dishonesty, which would, of course, distort one's judgement.  

So, that innocence which we call the immaculate state, that is Quddus. Quddus means Holiness, and I think that, that's what one means by the innocence of a child, a holiness that has not been tarnished. And, I was saying, well, can you reconcile the innocence of a child with the wisdom of the old man, or woman.  But, that's, maybe we have to go deeper into that. Maybe It is that innocence that is the guarantee that vouchsafed that your wisdom is not smartness, but is really wisdom. There is a difference. You know that people who are people who are very smart. Those are..., generally these people who are more successful in the world, who have a lot a guile, you know. I remember, it was a Vice-President of Shell, who said, "I don't mind stepping on the corns of people." Yes, well, that is why he is the Vice-President of Shell. He wouldn't qualify as a leader in the Sufi Order. (laughter) So, it just depends what you want to do in life. And therefor, in the course of one of my retreats, well, many of my retreats, but it's become clearer in the course of the more recent retreats, one needs to be very clear as to what one values in life.  

And, so what became more and more clear to me, I think that is true of all of us, is that, that's why you are here at all, is because there is a certain value, or certain values, which have been considered traditionally as not "of the world". And, maybe that is a misnomer. But, what they mean "of the world", for example Christ said, "they are in the world but not of the world." It is just those things that I tried to pinpoint in my retreat, and in myself of course, that is the only way that you can see it, is if you see it in yourself. And, that is those are those dark sides. One is concupiscence, covetousness, and then..., I know you can answer and say, "Well, you know, we do have human needs in order to function, otherwise we will have self pity". So what are those needs? So, I became more and more clear that I have to make a difference between what Pir-O-Murshid calls need, and what Pir-O-Murshid calls greed. And so, perhaps what we mean by the ways of the world is greed. Accumulating things, because of one's covetousness. And so, that is the criterion. 

The other one is ambition. Well, it can escalate into wielding power over other people. And, with all the consequences, it can reach a point of Hitler, you know the cruelty that can result from that terrible wish to have power, that he probably wasn't even aware of it himself. Because, one can always justify one's self, it's for the sake of the country, or whatever. 

So, that is, let's say, the power trip, the ego trip, the power trip. That would be the way of the world, you see. So, when Christ speaks about another kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, then he is talking about that kind of power that people seek after, and gives a personal satisfaction. And, one of the plays of Pir-O-Murshid, right at the end, the king hands over his kingdom to his son, and in that son, I was that son.  And then, he says, "I am seeking for another kingdom." And, I'm thinking of doing the same thing with my own son. So, it's another kingdom. So, but what that other kingdoms means. And of course, we use that word other, and maybe, it is not another kingdom, it is a kingdom that is hidden within this kingdom.  There is a word of Murshid who said, "God is hidden within his creation". 

It is a power, and it is the power of the dervishes, and the Sufis call it spiritual power. And, it is true that we need some kind of power to be able to cope with the challenge of life.  And, there's a power that comes from the ego, that is a perfunctory way of affirming, and then there is this different kind of power that is not an ego power. The Sufis make that distinction, well, to some extent, there is a difference between Qaher and Qader, for example. They are two waziif. And, Qaher definitely represents the divine power, and it's a very dangerous word because some people have been using it to enlist their will to legitimize their stand in war, for example. Qaher means to overcome, you know, overcome the enemies. So it's, how can I say, a distortion of the original meaning of that word, Qaher.  To prevail. Not to prevail in one's ego, prevailing over the ego of another person, but the prevalence, or I would say the presilence of the divine over the human. And, that is where we... These are not two different things, like two poles of our being, or two different dimensions in our own being. And so, Qaher means that we give presilence, and therefor prevalence to that other kingdom in ourselves that is our divine inheritance, instead of our human inheritance. You know, St Francis said, "I have another father". 

So, that was, as I say, a very, I mean, I always thought that.  but you know, in the course of a retreat, you can come to some clarity, and say, "Well, what am I doing in my life. These are the things that i value. There are other things that I pursue.  But, are these things standing in the way of those values that I prioritize. Now, you can even make a list of values, and write them down. So, then you know, and then you are very clear. And then you see, "Well, it's true, there are things that I like to do, but if I give priority to these values, then..., well, I can do without those things, the things that I value most are so important, so overwhelming in import, that it is no sacrifice at all. You get to that point. 

And of course, the other thing that belongs to the world, is of course, manipulation, guile, dishonesty, intrigues, getting people where you want to get, manipulating people, you know, that is very often the case in business. Although, now managers are beginning to realize that, that is ultimately, long term, it is counterproductive in the long term. The pursuit of excellence you see. If you are pursuing excellence, then of course, beguiling people is not going to get you anywhere. And that is where there is a sense of honor. And you know in India, the richest people in India are the Parsees. And the reason for that is that they make a pledge every day never to lie. And, you find a lot of people lie in India, it is even taken for granted that one lies. Terribly. And, then you know, with the Parsee, you ask if he would sign the contract and he would say, "No, my word is my word. So, trust me or not, but my word is my word". And, true enough, that is why they are the richest people in India.  

So, it is counterproductive to manipulate in the end, in long term. Beside, what it does to one's person, of course. 

So, I have been avoiding, or evading, I'm not sure that there is a difference between avoiding and evading, what one calls the "bad" wazifas, that I never listed them in my list of wazifas.  But, you find them in the books which include all of them. How could you ascribe to God to be the distressor, or the dishonorer, or the abaser, humiliator, and so on. So, you know, the buck stops with God. So, he has the ultimate responsibility for all of those tings we don't like in ourselves. So, I must say, I didn't like that at all, but I have gradually come to terms with it, because you see, if you realize that you are being dishonored by your actions, then it makes you value being honored. So, the bad wazifa is Mudsill, which means to be dishonored. So, let's say, that you do something which is dishonorable, and the consequence is that you are being dishonored by people, by yourself, and ultimately by God, because it is all one. And so, it is very helpful, because then you see how bad one feels when one is dishonored, and so you value Mu'iz, which means being honored more that ever before.  So sometimes dealing with the shadow will make you aware of the importance of the quality of which it is a shadow. 

So, all of these practises, I mean, what I am talking about are really practises that you do in your meditation. And, if you are using wazifas, they are just like signals to keep your mind focused, otherwise you will be thinking about a lot of things.  And you know, random thoughts will surge in your mind. 

So, we need guidelines. 

Now I think that one could already, in the beginning of the journey, one could almost anticipate... 

side 2 

...negative, although, it's like the horizon, the further you advance, the further it recedes. So, you can't yet, you don't know what it is going to be like, because it recedes. You are discovering it as you advance. But, I don't think it is good to stay, well, one is a maquam, that is, the maquam represents the limits to one's realization. That's where one is at. Everyone is in life according to their realization. And then, one has a kind of intuition about the next maquam, and therefor, it is good for us to have some sense of them, even though one is not yet there. Like for example, if you are playing..., you know, you start practising music, you start working with your scales. And then, it is good, however, to play a little bit of Chopin, even though you play it badly, because it is just very boring just to keep on with your scales. Or, I remember my cello teacher saying, "Well, yes, you have being working on the Suites of Bach, but you can play a little bit of Schumman now." It's like, something else.  

So, then, the next maquam is different. And then, it is true, that it is not good to mix up all the maquams, and I think that one has to first deal with the first stage before one gets to the second stage. But, that is what we have been doing in the seminars. It's outlining all those different stages. So, if you are looking at a map, perhaps you are looking at the next city, but then it is good to know that there is that city right far away then that is there on the map. So, at least you know that it is there. So, it will be an incentive, because you know that the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. 

The future will lure you forward, whereas if you think of the past, then you are thinking of the conditioning of the past.  That is one of the flaws in the old way of therapy. Now of course, there are new vistas in therapy. So, it is not true anymore, at least amongst the most progressive psycho therapists.  but, by emphasizing that one has been damaged in one's psyche,  no, rather by reviving the past, one emphasized that one has been damaged. and so now, what we are introducing in psycho therapy is creativity, which frees one form the conditioning of the past.  There is always one's own incentive, and that is the pull of the future. And, it doesn't mean that the future is already there, you create it as you advance. So, that is the reason why I have already say this, where we will be working with it perhaps next session, and that is, if you are meditating, unless you know how to meditate, you will be overcome by all these random..., and don't know how to deal with them, and try to control them. You are fighting a loosing battle, so that doesn't work. 

So, knowing that one's assessment of one's problems is biased and not totally adequate, will help you to not discount, but at least downplay those thoughts that have so much power on your mind.  But, it's not good enough, that's negative to say that it is not the way it is. What is positive is, is well, "What is it?" You see, and therefor, the way of understanding one's problems better is of course, to first understand..., not only understand one's self better, but unfurl one's potentialities. You see, it's a different thing. It's like, for example, a sculptor discovering his/her statue while making it, instead of thinking that you have to first know what you want to do until you make the statue.  Well, both are important. Then we shift in the opposite direction, and are working with what are the emergent thoughts that emerge, not as a reaction to the thoughts that have accrued from one's interface with the environment, but the thoughts that emerge spontaneously, and that are telling us something about ourselves. Telling something about the nostalgia of our potential being that wants to come through in us, and manifest in a concrete way. Now, that's a next step. And, that's what we are going to examine tomorrow. 

I better stop here. So, we will continue with the same thing tomorrow, and then the second session at eleven o'clock, I'll be doing each of those sessions, and there are only four. I will be trying to bring my input into the different activities. We call it concentrations. And, the first one is the Universal Worship, that's today, and tomorrow it will be healing. And then, after that zira'at, and after that kinship. 

So, now, remember this, that we are doing something rather challenging, because this meeting is part retreat, and part training. As i say, one has to experience it oneself, before one can really bring it to other people. And therefor, the morning, at least up to 11 o'clock is dedicated to the retreat concentration, that means that you are on silence. And, I'll you the reason for that is because, normally one is used to explaining, or expressing one's thoughts by means of language. and, as a consequence, what one implies is inadequately rendered by what one explains. And, what is much more serious, is that one begins to believe in one's explanation, and forgets what one means, then implies. And, in the course of a retreat in silence, then you loose the habit, because one even thinks in terms of words, even if one isn't speaking. But, in the course of a retreat, you loose, well of course, it takes more than five days, you loose your habit of thinking in terms of words, and then you get in touch with your deeper thoughts. And, that is a source of creativity. So, it's very important. 

So now, the format is... You know, Aziza has the great gift of bringing everything into focus. I bring in a plethora of thoughts, sparkling on all sides, flashing, and so on. And then, Aziza can bring it all into focus. So, what I am doing now will be followed by the guidelines that Aziza will be giving. And, it is very important, because when you are out there in the field, you will have forgotten all the things that I have said, that's for sure. But, if you have a few clear points to rally your thoughts, so instead of remembering me, you will remember Aziza. 

God Bless you.3 

AUG 21, 1997		Tape 04 

So, let us start with an analogy. It is Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan's representation of the diffused light of the universe that is converged in each star. So, in a sense, the stars are a vortex of light. And you know, for example, in the example of a whirlpool or whirlwind. In a whirlpool, the water of the whole lake gets drawn into that axis that represents the epi-center of the whirlpool, and the same is true of the hurricane. 

And, that is a void. And then, the void gets shifted into a radiating center. So then now, let us imagine that we are..., our aura is converging the light of the stars. So that, instead of thinking that your body is absorbing the light of the stars, you identify with your aura. And now, the aura itself is simply a convergence of the light of the stars. 

So, the light of the stars is drawn into a vacuum. So that, we don't quite understand this in physics, but light is converted into, I suppose, minus-like, I mean a potential, a subliminal state of light. As you hold your breath. And now, as you exhale, there is a vision that I have often had, and it is very appropriate in this weather (it's raining), it is a rain of light upon the surface of a lake, and each drop creates eddies, which keep on expanding further and further, and eventually compose within another forming, what one calls a wave interference pattern. 

So, you do that first, and then at some point, you have the three pictures as you inhale, hold your breath, and exhale. But, for the time being, regardless of your breath, just concentrate on those three images. 

And of course, you concentrate on the solar plexis as you converge the light of the stars, of the galaxies. And you go right deep into the void as you hold your breath. And then, as you exhale, instead of you just thinking of your aura as an effulgent area, you think of it as sparkling. 

And, perhaps, as you hold your breath, you could still have the image of a kaleidoscope, where all the colors are giggling, intermeshing with each other. 

And now, I think of this grandiose vision of Jelaluddin Rumi, when he says, "The galaxies are but a foam in the ocean of reality, so that light is like a foam in its reality, becomes manifest." And then he said, "We come whirling out of nothing, just like that foam comes out of reality, which does not have a form. And, in this choreography, we dance. And it is all God dancing around himself." 

So, this will give you a dynamic rather than static vision of your aura as being part of the choreography of the heavens, so that when you turn within, the light is diaphanous, but when you reach out, the light is sparkling, scintillating. 

Now, there's another analogy. And that is that you are a theme in the symphony of the spheres. Just like the violinist, or the cellist, or trumpeter, is playing a theme, or many themes that are not just part of the whole symphony, but customizes the symphony in an individuated way. And in turn, the voice of each of these instruments contributes towards the symphony as a whole. 

And therefor, you will see your individuality in the context of the totality. So that you will see that your uniqueness is a way that you customize the total reality in all it's bounty, and in turn, it contributes towards the totality. 

And now, the curious thing is that as you turn within, in order to customize the richness, the bounty of that symphony, it has to go through a process of collapse, or annihilation. So that you can draw a further dispensation, not from outside, but from inside, from actually..., if you think of the universe as like a cross section of a multidimensional universe, you see that we are continually drawing bounty not from within that three dimensional cross section, but form the total universe. That is what we draw from within, instead of from without. 

So, that is where inspiration comes, spontaneous thoughts that are not the result of previous thoughts or conditioning. And the emergence of something new in you. So, instead of imagining a symphony, imagine a group of musicians who are now improvising, and so they are drawing their inspiration from inside, instead of outside. 

And so, what is coming through is novel, and is going to enrich the manifested universe, the universe existentiated, actuated in the existential state. 

So, perhaps if you are very sensitive, and very quiet and very still, you'd be aware of a lot of vibrations in you, the pulsing of your blood, which corresponds to your heart beat, your breath that represents a different rhythm than the pulsing of your blood or your heartbeat. And, if you are very sensitive, you can somehow, bring these in sync. For example, you could breathe in at the rhythm, four heartbeats, and hold your breath eight heartbeats, and exhale four heartbeats. 

You could increase this, but I do not advise you to over stress yourself. You could have 5, 10, 5, or 6, 12, 6, or whatever, but it must be absolutely effortless. It is just a matter of synchronizing two rhythms. It gives you a sense of a very harmonious state. 

And then of course, there is the rhythms of the encephalogram.  So, there's alpha and beta and delta.  

So, if you think of a waltz that is three beats, that give you a sense of the alpha wave. And of course, we are not very aware of that, but by our concentration, we will alter our brain waves to perhaps even reach into the delta state in deep sleep. 

And, it has been found that yogis have been able to match the rhythm of the brain waves with their breath, and their heartbeat.  So, it is very much like tuning an instrument.  

Now, let us translate all of this in terms of our thinking. As I said, in order to enhance our aura, we need to entertain luminous thoughts. And perhaps, I would say synchronized thoughts. That means that the thoughts are governed by definite rhythm, a pulsing in an orderly fashion, whereas thoughts are very often mixed up, confused, ambiguous, higelty-pigelty, as one says. 

So, if you come back to the analogy of light, to entertain luminous thoughts, then just think that you are converging a lot of thoughts, a plethora of thoughts accruing to you from the psychological environment, and you are weaving them into a coherent tapestry for example, coherent and cohesive and meaningful. And, that tapestry is not simply a copy of the environment, but enlists your own creativity. So, you are making something meaningful out of a lot of elements that are separate, until they are connected in a meaningful way. 

So, that is your contribution to that which accrues to you from outside. It is just like, for example, if you are a painter, availing yourself of a palate of a lot colors. The important thing is what you do with those colors. So, if you just dwell upon those colors, you are not making a painting. If you are meditating and simply regurgitating impressions from outside, it's all very disorderly, and consequently, you can't see meaningfulness. But then, it is you own, well, it is the way that the universe self organizes itself in each one of us that is going to bring order into that chaos. So, when you are meditating, you need to see the importance of your impact upon the incoming thoughts. That is what everyone calls creativity. 

Now, so far, I have been talking about thoughts that emerge impromptu, ex-milo, as one says, spontaneously from inside. And, don't seem to be causally related with the impressions accruing from outside. They are related in a non-causal way, an accusal way as one says now in physics, not as a cause that brings about an effect, but as a catalyst that unleashes potentials that are latent. 

And then, these spontaneous thoughts that however have been catalyzed, have been unleashed, will alter you assessment of your problems, just like the enzymes of our food will alter the composition of the amino acids of the foods that we ingest.  

So, this is enlisting your uniqueness. Your uniqueness.  

And, it revives a very strong sense of who you are, as we were saying. And of course, we have a need to adapt ourselves to the psychological environment. But in so doing, we tend to lose our identity. And so, the opposite would be adapting the environment to one's own sense of purpose. 

And of course, there is a balance between the two. 

So, could we do the practise of shagall again now, and work with, first of all, the analogy of light, the model of the light that is converged and then is radiated. And, in-between the two, there's the light in it's implicate state, which in physics is called the light field. And even below that, there's a state which in physics is called the scaler level, subliminal level, which could be described as the state of two teams of people who are pulling a cord on either side, and if their force is equal, then the energy present there is potential, rather than active.  

So, when you are turning within, that is what the Sufis call kemal, but when you turn within, just think that there's this potential energy there that just needs just that little pull on one side or the other to break loose into a tremendous burst of energy. 

side 2 

So, when I say an outburst of energy of your thoughts, which are sparkling, and becomes crystal clear, just like when light is fragmented into sparks, it becomes very distinct, in contrast with the all pervading light where everything is intermeshed with everything else. 

And, the clarity of those thoughts is the measure of your realization. 

Walter Chappell calls this active thinking, instead of passive thinking, so that you are impacting the environment with the power of your thought. And, the power comes by the distinctiveness of each thought.  

Now, if you remember, there are two stages in the practises of Shagall. The first one in which you concentrate on the solar plexis as you inhale, and then access this all pervading light from inside, and then radiate it forth from you heart center as you exhale. Now, the second stage n shagall, is that one..., as one turns within, one draws light through one's eyes. That light builds up in the brain, and as one exhales, one is conscious of the light that one threads..., the light inside the brain that one threads through the optic nerves and which impinges upon outer space, passing through the retina and the cornea. The cornea is like a lens.  

So, we have already learned to do this. Consciously draw light through your eyes. You can do it with your eyelids closed, because if your eyelids are closed, the light that you will be drawing..., you will be filtering the light, so the light that you'll be drawing into your brain is of ultra violet frequency. 

So, instead of thinking of the light of the stars, you may think of cosmic rays, or neutrinos, or light that is not visible. The light that passes between the electrons and neutrons in the cell.  So it has got to be very fine, very high frequency. 

And then, when you exhale, then we have already done this. Well, first of all, if you hold your breath after inhaling, then you make that quantum leap into identifying with the light of intelligence. And, you remember that one's whole aura begins to burn more brightly under the impact of, well, realization. That "Aha!" sense of meaningfulness. Well, the same applies to one's glance. So, now you are conscious of the impact of the, what one calls illumination, that is, the light of intelligence upon the light of your glance, that is the light that you are broadcasting through your eyes, that is passing through the optic nerves as your glance. Now, you are thinking of your glance as being like two.., the headlamps of a car, for example. But, you see what is important here, what we are doing now, is we are threading a light through the light of the glance. It's a light within the light. Like, as I said yesterday, the river Rhone passing through the lake of Geneva. 

This is what the Sufis call, "Noor al Anwar", the light of light. 

And so, you must think that this light is incisive, and reveals that which one's ordinary, passive operation of the eyes, which is receptive cannot see, cannot grasp. So, it is like casting a searchlight in the dark corners of the world. 

So, now we are going to do the practise of shagall again, and then, instead of concentrating on the solar plexis, you concentrate on the, well, actually it's the pituitary gland as you turn within, instead of the solar plexis, and then you radiate from that point. 

Actually, I represent to myself violet light, passing through a stream of blue light. A light within a light. Like an x-ray, the ultra violet acts like an x-ray. You could take your fingers away when you are exhale, your indexes, because it's easier to imagine that light is now reaching out. Your fingers seem to be in the way, but of course ultra violet light would pass through your fingers. 

Now, there is a further point which, is a very fine point. And that is the function of the pineal gland as compared with the pituitary gland. You know, both of these are very important in yoga. Well, we know that the pineal gland is not just a hormonal gland, an endocrine gland, but it is light sensitive, so it is also an organ of perception. Very fine tuned. It governs light, the day and night rhythm of our planets and of our selves. But, it is sensitive to very high frequency light. And so, the question in my mind certainly, is whether it links us to the light at the center of our galaxy. The light that is converged by the sun, for example, whether you could consider the whole galaxy as being a sun. Because, you know, we think that the sun is up there somewhere, but the sun does not have a boundary, so that we are, the planet earth is really in the sun. And, the sun, (that means also the planet earth), is within the light of the galaxy, within the center of the galaxy which acts like a sun in comparison to a planetary system. So that, whether we're not be derived for a lot of energy from the sun, as you know, but whether there is not another finer energy that we derive from the center of the galaxy. 

So that our days are..., we are beginning to become aware of what one calls, instead of just planetary consciousness, galactic consciousness. 

And os, we realize that our thoughts monitor the thinking of the universe, get distorted by our self image, which is not what we are. Just like the rays of the sun get distorted by the gravity pull of the earth. 

But that our thinking is the thinking of the universe, but distorted. It is not our thinking, it's somehow cosmic. 

And, when we do away with that distortion, then thoughts become crystal clear. 

end of tape

AUG 21, 1997		Tape 05

Some Iranian music, Sufi music sung by Sharran Nasari, who is a well known Iranian singer, and Incidentally, we are planning, the Iranian community in Boston is planning a Sufi meeting, where I will be talking about the Sufis, and with the assistance of Coleman Barks, and Nasari, and Zuleikha. We have already planned it for November, but I think it will be next spring. 

So, now, we want to have an experience of the wazifas, instead of just saying what they mean. So, what they mean to us, what they can mean in our relationship with other people, what they can mean in general.  

And, as I have already said, there are several levels of thinking, and consequently, there are different levels of understanding a wazifa. So, if you try to translate it in ordinary language, then you get a very perfunctory sense of what it means for the intellect. And, the higher levels, of course, it has a far greater significance. 

So, you remember that yesterday, and also in the previous camp, we started with the practise of muhassabi, which is looking at yourself objectively, matching your activities with your objective, working out what would be the steps in order to make your objectives real. And so, that is like a kind of confrontation, between your conscience and your psyche, rather than your consciousness. 

So, that means that you have to very clearly distinguish between the witness in you, and that which is observed. And, then we need to be very clear about this, some kind of overlap between the two. And so, if you are following, as we have done, the developmental stages, the maquamat, according to the Sufis, then the clear identification with the subject, Shahid, the subject, Ya Shahid, is arrived at after a whole process of clearing within one's psyche. Otherwise, one isn't that clear about..., to be the witness, you see, that means the spectator. And, as in Buddhism, it comes out very clearly in what is called the "un- coupling" , like un-clutching of your consciousness as being a reality, so that you can unmask the hoax of the psyche. Because, as you know, when one is trying to examine oneself, the mind provides a justification, so one is self-deceiving one's self.  And, the mind does that in order to preserve one's self esteem, which is very vulnerable.  

And so, of course it is, that 's why one has difficulty in being very clear as to what one's motivations are. And in fact, if one starts doing that, then the chances are that we will discover some kind of dishonesty, that we are purporting to stand by an ideal. And when it comes to action, then we are not really doing it, so there is some disparity there, discrepancy. 

So, you remember that we said what is required of us is being totally upfront through the power of truth. And that was a wazifa, Ya Haqq. And, if you remember, then we said that will give you a very clear judgement, a clear insight into situations, thrusting the light of truth upon problems.  

So, there are several wazifas here, and one was Haqq/Hakkim.  Haqq means the power of truth, which is the power of the dervish, and which, as I say, unmasks the hoax of the psyche. And the consequence is, is that a wisdom arises in one, one reaches a state of maturity from adolescence, and so there is no ambiguity.  One is clearing the ambiguity in one's psyche. 

Now, there are two words that one can use. Hakkim, which means the judge. So now, what I would like us to do, is to rather than my giving a talk, is for us to really experience that. So, first of all, how do you feel when you are absolutely up front? 

Now, there is the power of the word, and that is the reason for the wazifas, is because it is not just an abstract thought, but the word serves as an underpinning. And so, there's is a dhikr of the dervishes, the dervishes dhikr, which is, "Haqq Allah illaha illa 'lla hu". Now, you see haw powerful that is. That is the power of truth, you see. That's what makes the dervish, that's why the dervish can sometimes be very scary. The dervish will say, "Don't come near me, I'll burn you because you are lying. 

Now, I don't advise you to do that to your pupils. So, it's a different format all together. There's the dervish in you, but you are on the line of the pirs, rather than on the line of the dervishes. You are a teacher, or prospective teacher. But, one can learn something from the dervish. And in fact, for representatives, or coordinators, or people who are acting as cherags, or healing conductors in the Sufi Order, I think that, that dhikr is, after having practiced the dhikr, then there is a point at which you start doing that dervish's dhikr. 

So that Haqq, that word has a lot of connotations in Sufism, because it is often contrasted with Halk, which is the created.  And so, Haqq is the uncreated, that's why Meister Eckart said something in me which is (increat ou set increabile?), which is not subject to creation. So, it's something that is not of the existential, it's of the nature of that which is born and dies.  And so, that is that extra-samsaric element that Buddha speaks about. 

And so, when you say Haqq, if you are in your personal consciousness, then you might simply be ruthless. You'll say, "Well this is truth, and I don't care what happens". That is what the Vice-President of Shell said, "I don't care if I step on peoples corns." That's ruthlessness. That's not exactly truthfulness. You have to be true to your own being, so that you are not deceiving yourself. 

So, Haqq is really identifying with something in one that is inalterable, like adamant, like, gold for example. Not subject to change, to decay, to birth, to death, and so on. It's the deathless state. And so, you are really affirming what is understood by God, and that is why Al Hallaj said, "An al Haqq", I am the truth. And, when he said I am the truth, he was not saying I'm truthful, of course he was truthful, but what he was saying is that there is something in me which is of the divine nature, and which is utter truth, it is uncreated. It is not subject to the tribulations of the existential state. That is why, as I say, wazifas, one could interpret them at the level of commonplace thinking, but that is totally inadequate.  

And consequently, Haqq, one can associate it with several wazifas. In fact, it would be good to try them out and see how it works with you. One is Haqq/Ally, Ally means the most high.  So, that gives you a sense of that high level of what is meant by Haqq instead of saying, well, I'm truthful, so, that's it. No, Haqq is beyond that, it's expression at the human level. That's why Pileate asked Christ, you know, he thought, well, I can't see any wrong in this person, but anyway, I'll try t get something out of this. So he asked, what is the truth. He thought, here's a wise man, maybe he will tell me what is the truth. And he said, I am the truth. That is exactly what Al Hallaj said. And, that is why he was condemned to be crucified. 

So, it is, when you are hoisted above your human consciousness, that you can identify with that uncreated aspect of your being, which is the source of all truthfulness. 

Now, we will say that the power of the dervish is in Haqq, and therefor, you could do the wazifa, Ya Haqq/Ya Qaher. Well, Qaher means more than power, it is really what is meant by spiritual power. That is a word that is used by the Sufis. Perhaps you have had that experience in the course of a retreat that you, all of a sudden, you feel as though you are invested by a divine power, and it has nothing to do with ego at all. 

It is that kind of divine power that will help you to meet confrontation with people who are trying to draw you in the battle field. I mean, this is something that you must know. I'm sure that you must have had an experience, that you find, in a marriage situation, for example, or in a situation between a boss and employee, or in many other respects in your life, in your problems in your life, you circumstances, you find that there is a person who is trying to put you down with their will. And, you don't have that kind of ego, gross ego to be able to counter them. And so, you are demeaned by them, and don't know how to protect yourself, and get hurt in your self esteem. And, the more you counter them with your power, the more they will sit on their hight horse, and then they will start insulting then. It is at that point..., and then, you feel even worse, and you feel frustration, which means that you cannot give vent to the feelings that arise that are damaging you. So you are being damaged without being able to do anything about it. So, it is a very critical situation, and I am sure that many of you have found yourself in that situation. 

But now, there is a power that is, that one calls, to predominate. It is of a different nature, it's of, I'll try to illustrate it by this woman who was lynched in the South, and she said, "You can do what you like with my body, but you can't touch my soul". It's in that sense of a greater power than the power that is challenging one. But, it is not great in, it's not at the same level. It is a different kind of power. 

And, the person who is attacking you doesn't know how to deal with that. They only know what it means by ego power. That is what they know, and they are trying to draw you onto the battle field, as I say, where they are successful. They know they can get the best of you on that battle field. And, the fact is, you don't allow yourself to be drawn onto that battle field. 

And of course, your anger seems to be an asset, but in fact, it makes you very vulnerable. 

Now, I have said this before, and I have said it over and over again, and that is that the elephants in India don't let themselves be bugged by the chickens. So, it's a sense of, well there are two things. One is, I think the prime one is a sense of dignity that you find in the elephant, a sense of dignity that you don't find in the chickens, So, it is a kind of dignity. 

So, that sense of dignity predominates, you see, so that you don't allow yourself to lose your dignity, because, I mean the elephant would be losing it's dignity if it was chasing away the chickens. So it tolerates the chickens. (laughter) 

So, the word for that is Mawjud, which is, well it really means the divine splendor. Now, I am very wary of saying things that I don't know, so I don't want to say, you know, behind what we perceive as beauty is splendor. That would be a metaphysical statement, or a belief, and that is not what I'm into. I'm into experience rather than beliefs or intellectual metaphysical statements.  

So, its a whole process that you need to go through. So, what I am saying here is really concentrated, because there are a lot of stages corresponding to each wazifa that we would have to work with in the course of years and years of work in the Sufi Order, and so I am trying to bring it all together. 

So Majid, that is a sense of majesty, and I'm saying, I'm not speaking about something abstract, because when I was a child, I watched my father Pir-O-Murshid walk down the steps of Fazil Manzil, the house in Surrennes, and cross the road, with great poise, and at the cost of causing traffic jams. Cars would stop in awe before the appearance of this being, who was like a prophet at the time of the old testament. And then, he would walk up that path to that little, rather simple hall there which he filled with his being, and we as children would lie in the high grass watching him, very impressed by that majesty. 

And, of course, if you put on a show of majesty, it would be ludicrous. But, this was real. And so, it must become a deep sense, of what he calls the divinity within your being, instead of the rather simplistic identity of being what one calls a 'discrete person", that is, one identifies with one's qualities and defects and so on, and the personality, and has no idea about what is behind it all. So, that is Majid, which means majesty. Which is of course, contrasts with the kind of slovenliness that has developed in our time. A lack of self respect.  

And, that self respect comes by the sense of the divine investment in one's being. Because, if it were based upon one's own personal value, one would probably be very precarious in one's self respect. One would be wary of the, what one calls the dark side, of one's shadow. And, if one is being very true to one's self, then one has to admit that there are aspects of one's self that one cannot really endorse. And, it makes one very unsure of one's self in one's self esteem, which is of course, that makes one self respect. 

So, I talked about that yesterday, Mudsill, which is like one has to become aware of the way that one dishonors oneself and is dishonored by, in the action or activity or behavior that is not in tune with one's highest ideal. And so, there is some dishonesty that triggers off this state of being dishonored, and from the time that one sees how bad one feels by being dishonored, then one realizes the value of being honored, which is Ya Mu'iz. And so, that is that which gives one majesty.  Majid is the result of that concern. 

And so, of course there is some relationship between Ya Haqq and Ya Majid, because the observance of truth will give you that status. Of course, Majid. Now, I use two words. One is splendor, and the other is majesty, and they are both very close of course, the word splendor is somehow, we have in our self, we have an inherent sense of aesthetics. It is not always developed, something that needs to be cultivated. It is there, but it needs to be cultivated. Like, if you go to a music school, and you learn how to appreciate music. A lot of people have not that sense of, you know, the difference between Bach and Rossini, for example. 

So, when I was studying at university, we were having a test, making rectangles which were pleasing to our sense of aesthetics.  And, we found ultimately, that those rectangles that gave us the greatest sense of aesthetic harmony, observed the golden rule.  So, there is a kind of mathematic principle there that enlists the cosmic harmony, the symphony of the spheres. 

And so, we have it in us, but as I say, it can be awakened, it can be cultivated. And the consequence is that one sees splendor hidden behind ugliness even, because we know that splendor becomes manifest and activated as beauty. We could translate this in terms of waziif. So, Majid, and Jemil, beauty. 

But, the Sufis always include both, what they call, the masculine and the feminine. So, it is beauty and majesty. 


Majesty more like kingly, and beauty, queenly, something like that. And, when we are talking about beauty, we are not talking about, for example, the beauty of an action, or the majesty of..., well, majesty would be like the way that orderliness prevails over disorder. Majesty is like maintaining a certain standard which reflects the divinity of one's being. 

So, you see that all these waziif have their significance in our personality, and by earmarking one particular quality rather than another, hopefully it will make a difference in our personality, to awaken a potentiality in our personality that matches that archetype. And then, it will start unfurling and flowering in our personality. 

Now, as you know, truth, well, there is a difference between Haqq and Haqqiqa or Haqqi'ik, and then, Halk. Halk would be the created state, and Haqq the truth, the reality behind the created state, and then between them there is Haqqiqa, or Haqqi'ik. It is not a wazifa, it is just the way that truth becomes activated, for example, in one's speech. Because, if you told everybody what you thought of them, you would not only be unpopular, but you might really be crashed. It is not the best way of helping people. I have already said that, because they will stand on their high horse and tell you, "Well you don't know me, you don't understand me." Of course, they will turn the tables on you, and you will look ridiculous. So, it is not the best way to go about it. You have to be true for yourself. 

And, that truthfulness is going to enhance the truthfulness in the person who will themselves, will begin to confront their shadow, in the light of your truthfulness. 

side 2 

You have to be true for yourself. And, that truthfulness is going to enhance the truthfulness in the person who will themselves begin to confront their shadow, in the light of your truthfulness. That is the method that we are using in the Sufi Order. As I have already said, you have to offer some containment for the self esteem of a person, by holding them in your heart, and being aware of their fragility and their susceptibilities. So, the wazifa for that is, Ya Muhaimin.  Muhaimin means protection. So, you are protecting, in the American anthem, it is guard each mans pride. So, you are holding that person's self esteem, you are upholding that person's self esteem, by your reverence for who that person is, regardless of any judgement about their shadow. 

Now, something comes in here which is very subtle, and that is that of course, if you are on the path of sainthood, instead of the path of mastery, then you have compassion for people, that means, compassion means to suffer with. And so, the consequence, not only, you don't step on the corns of people, but you try to protect them from pain. And so, there can be a conflict between protecting them from pain, and exposing them to the truth, because the truth can be very, very painful. 

So, that is a very subtle point, and that is something that you are going to encounter, not only with the people you are working with, if you are acting as a representative or guide in the Sufi Order, but as a cherag or healer or whatever function you are in.  So, that one would like to spare a person pain, but one must be very careful that, that does not mean that one is condoning actions that one cannot subscribe to. 

And, they might look to you to endorse their actions, and you would be untruthful if you do it. So, that is the kind of spot that you get into. 

So, it is very subtle. So, you are holding this persons self esteem, you are not criticizing them overtly, but you mirror in yourself their defects, because you have the same defects yourself.  

So, judgement is like not owning to one's own defects and just ascribing them to another person. Whereas here, it is a mirroring effect, so that you recognize..., the only way to identify those defect is, of course, because you have them in yourself, otherwise you would not know what they are. 

And, it is amazing how this mirroring effect, how effective this mirroring effect is, because then while you are upholding their self esteem, you are helping them to confront their shadows. So, your compassion is, you know, when a person suffers from abuse, or having been badly treated and so on, or the parents didn't give them the love that they needed as a child, then they have resentment. And so, what they need is, as psychologists say, to find themselves in a safe place, a safe containment. Just like you give a dressing to a wound, you provide a dressing. That's compassion, you see, they are not alone in their suffering. So, perhaps you are not sparing their suffering, you are just giving them that feeling that you are suffering with their suffering.  You are not indifferent to their suffering. 

That is what Mother Teresa is doing, she is suffering with the people who are suffering, which is quite another thing to administering help to people. There was a word of Saint Vincent de Paul who said the one thing that people who are helped will resent most, is being beholding to the person who helps them.  So, one has to be rather careful about this thought that one is, of course, one is providing help, but, it's taken for granted.  But, the deeper thing is that one is really protecting that person while they are going through that process of self inquiry, which they wouldn't do, as I said, they didn't do or would not do, because they felt that it was demeaning to their self esteem.  Whereas, if you make them feel that it does not alter your esteem for them, then they feel emboldened to face their shadow, and know that they are not going to sink into distress by it. 

And so, that is what Pir-O-Murshid means by this paradox, which is the greatest pride together with the greatest humility. You see, otherwise, our assessment of our self esteem, of our self is just based upon one's evaluation of one's qualities or defects.  But, here you have two things at the same time. You have pride together with humility, not just humility. Humility is..., we pride ourselves in our humility. It's an inverted pride.  Whereas here, what Pir-O-Murshid puts it this way, he says, "The aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the ego."  That is priding ourselves in our divine inheritance, and being humble about what we have done with that inheritance. But, that inheritance is still there. 

And. there is a word of a Sufi, I forget who said, by denigrating one's self, one is insulting one's creator. 

It's a very dangerous, blind alley that one goes into, and one prides one's self of it, of denigrating one's self. And, it leads to a kind of negativity, which spreads, which becomes contagious. And you know, who can be the most humble amongst us, and are forgetting the divine inheritance. 

So, it is not one without the other. It's not being megalomaniac, and discounting one's foibles. And, it is not just identifying with one's foibles, and denying one's divine inheritance. It is both at the same time. So, it is very powerful. 

o here..., there are two wazifas I can think of. One is Warith, which means the divine inheritance, and the other is Ya Mussi. Mussi means, well it means the reckoner. It means accountability. Accountability. So that one feels accountable. 

So, it is like you have been endowed with this wonderful inheritance, and now you are accountable for what you did with it. You find that in that typical weighing event in the Egyptian hieroglyphs where Thoth is weighing the weight of the..., I think it's the bar, what they call the bar, which is not the personality, but still it is the gist of the personality, against Ma'at which is the feather. So, it has got to be as light as a feather. 

So, you see without the concept of God, accountability is too..., the way that the government is accountable to the senate, but in the Sufi view, it is accountability to God. 

That is Mussi.  

So, that awakens your conscience. And, the beauty is that one can do something about it. If you are just thinking of the past, then it is guilt, but the way to meet guilt is by making a pledge. "I will not do this anymore, I will ask forgiveness of the person I harmed". Whatever, some action that is retroactive, has a retroactive effect upon the past so that the present does have a retroactive action upon the past. 

There are two things, one is to repair.... (tape goes out) 

....You say, I won't do this anymore but I will do that. So, one has its effect upon the past and the other has its repercussions upon the future, which one is building up by one's endeavor. 

I am quoting a very wonderful scientist whose name is Euler, and who said, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past." Now, your guilt refers to the past, and to be quite objective, it makes it easier, let's say, I don't think it is justification, it is really, it is true, that there is some conditioning, that results in one's guilt, in an action of which one feels guilty. I am not saying that it takes you off the hook, but it makes you able to face your guilt with truthfulness without sinking into total despair. There is some conditioning there. But, the beauty of the future is that you are totally free. You are free from conditioning. At least you are, perhaps you don't know that you are, but that's why the Sufis say, "Oh man, if only you knew that you are free, it is you ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity". So it is discovering one's freedom that is going to..., well, one cannot say that one is going to be exonerated of one's guilt, but still, that will do something. 

I don't know to what extent, it depends upon the degree of your endeavor in the future, for the future. Your prefiguration for the future, your planning, if it is followed up, of course, that gives you some kind of absolution. Perhaps it's too strong a word, but that is why I say 'some' kind of absolution from the guilt of the past. And, you see that it is your free will that does it. That triggers off that passage from the past into the future, that threshold state, which is the instant of time, according to Hougveri, one of the Sufis in India. Actually, he was the first Sufi who settled in India long before Hazrat Moinuddin Chisti. His tomb is in Lahore. 

And then, one has to be prepared to give up one's planning, because one sees that it doesn't totally elicit one's objective.  Or, one needs to be prepared if one's planning breaks down, and sometimes one will find that what occurs, thanks to the breakdown of one's planning, is better than what one has planned before. 

And, if it is the opposite, if it seems the opposite, one has to be aware that, as Pir-O-Murshid says that defeat can aver itself to be a victory. 

And that was the message of Christ. 

So, we are going to have to end here, I think. 

God Bless you now. 

AUG 22, 1997		Tape 07

This is music that I recommend for you to precede your morning meditations.  One of the pieces, anyway.  It is particularly conducive to a meditative state.  I think this is Firoz Dastur.  It is tuning the soul, instead of the heart.  The heart is there, but it is aiming at the soul.

So, I'd like to introduce what we have to do today with a picture.  It is a rishi who is sitting the whole day in a cave, and at five o'clock in the  morning, he comes out of that cave, - this is a true story, - and thousands of people come to be there while he comes in the lime light.  And he doesn't speak, but his being is so overwhelming, so powerful, so beautiful, so majestic, so peaceful, that people are drawn like a magnet, thousands of pilgrims who have travelled miles and miles, and left the world, in order to pick up the attunement of this being.

And, he doesn't speak, but there are priests who are chanting the vedic chants.  And somehow, he seems to be deeply moved by those chants.  And somehow, there is a communication of his attunement to the crowd, or let's say, his attunement is communicated to the crowd.  So, it becomes a collective experience of oneness with this being.

And, there is another picture of the rishi who is sitting there on the top of the mountain.  And, people come and people go.  Children are born, and they grow up, and people get ill, and people die, and then other people replace them.  So, that goes on and on and on.  And, while that goes on, the rishi sits there, unmoved, unchanged, in the middle of all that turnover.

So now, these two images, that of the rishi and that of the people, are both illustrations of your own being.  If you are here at all, it is because there is something in you which is of the nature of that rishi.  And, at the same time, you are in the world, but not of the world.  And so, somewhere in the depth of your soul, you entertain a very deep nostalgia for something which you cannot exactly pin down.  Like, I am talking about the real experience of the rishi.  But, that being whom you want to commune with in order to find your own self is in you, and you can project it into a rishi if you like, but it is in you.  And so, it is like, how would you like to be?

So, you would like to be radiant, that means effulgent, radiating light, smiling.  And of course, our involvement in life is painful, and so, it is very difficult to reconcile this ideal of bliss, and the reality of the stress of, well, our relationship with the people.  And, the thing that arises out of human involvement.  And so, I have another image, and that is that of a dervish, Hadji Sherif Zendani Chisti, who in my vision, is dancing on thorns.  The cosmic dance, which Jelaluddin Rumi speaks, with a crown of thorns on his head, but with glee and joy and alacrity, having actually found freedom within the tribulation of the drama on the earth.

So, maybe you could think that you have not only landed on planet earth, and borrowed the fabric of the planet, in fact, of the galaxies in order to be able to function, in order to discover what is happening at the existential state, and perhaps even leave a mark there.  But somehow, in so doing, you have involved yourself in that drama, so you are not just the observer, or spectator, you are an actor in that scene.  And of course, there is a tendency to forget who one is.  And then, that part of yourself which is forgotten is knocking at the door, trying to remind you of who you are.  And, I think it is important to see that our involvement was in good faith, we hope to, at least (be absolved?) of our differences between people.  People who have just a purely selfish pursuit, but I think that in a case of the initiates, there's a very clear sense of responsibility, of decency, of commitment.  So, that one's involvement is motivated by a strong desire to be of service.  So, one finds oneself involved with people, with circumstances.  In this, they are trying to build a beautiful world of beautiful people despite all the disparagement and also the way that one's efforts are sabotaged, and sometimes seem counter productive.  And still, there's that sense of something that is gained by life, by the (prowess?) of people who have built cathedrals, composed this wonderful music, who have developed the technology that is serving us as the underpinning of the evolution of humanity.  So, that involvement is multi (?), many facetted.

On the other hand, there is of course, a temptation for personal satisfaction, which is due to having allowed one's consciousness to be funnelled down into the sense of being an individual, and consequently, there's a need for personal gratification, covetousness, concupiscence, a need to possess, ambition, a need to exercise power, and so on and so forth, a need of recognition.  And consequently, dependence upon situations which robs one of one's freedom of course.  And on the other hand, a great need for freedom.  And so, one is pulled in two directions.

And so, in order to be able to radiate this light of radiant being, and to have the smile of one who has found freedom, and have the magnetism of that rishi who draws thousands of people by the very energy that he is communicating to people.  And, the deep love and compassion of St Francis, Mother Theresa.  Well then, one needs to be able to avail oneself of the breeze of the zephyr, of freedom, of which Kalil Gibran speaks, the big trees in the forest do not grow in each others shadow.  A need for aloofness, independence, instead of dependence, unconditional love instead of selfish love.  So, we are introducing what one might call the life of life into life.  A dimension which might appear as another dimension, and that which carries us into our involvement in life.  That very precious, I call it the edelweiss, that very special, precious value, which made the rishi whom he is or was, and the dervish, and makes you what you could be, or what you are maybe, but you would even be better.  All of us, myself included.

It's, in the case of the edelweiss, it requires risking, maybe, risking one's life.  Climbing to the high mountain peaks, leaving the lush world behind, with all its comfort, and our pleasure and well being.  And, exposing oneself to the storm, and also to failure, but the pursuit of the ideal.  Maybe at the cost of one's life,  Because, it's a question of evaluation, that one is placed sometimes before choice.  Between what Pir-O-Murshid calls, pearls or pebbles, or diamonds and pebbles.  It depends on what one likes, or what one values.

A choice that doesn't mean to leave the world, but then, it is a whole different attitude towards the world and people, towards the dependence upon this marvelous underpinning that we have built up with all our technologies.  One, as I have often said, Shahabuddin used to say, the support system takes over.  It's like you were wanting to climb the Himalayas, and in order to do so, you built a team of people, built some base camps, and so much money and energy went into the base camp that thee was hardly energy remaining to climb to the top.  That's what most of us are doing.

And so, there is no doubt that in order to achieve our highest ideal, we need to find some kind of aloofness, together with love.  And that's the paradoxical thing.  The rishi, I don't feel that love element so strongly in the rishi as in the dervish.  So, of course, the great art is, of course, it's unconditional love.  To be able to love without depending upon being loved.

And also, to be very clear as to how the temptations of life make one dependant, and consequently, if one has a great need for freedom, then one finds a kind of aloofness, and of course, particularly in meditation.  But, we don't want to open one drawer and close the other and then the opposite.  So that, meditation is a rehearsal for life, so we want to continue maintaining that concentration as we discover our freedom, and see how it applies in our involvement.  But of course, in the course of the meditation, you can do it more easily.  For example, the tribulation of your human problems is going to stand in the way of your bliss.  One gets bogged in by them.  And so, in the course of meditation, one has to work with this, and find that however much one considered oneself to be responsible and therefor accountable in one's rapport with people, and therefore one's involvement in the world, at the same time, one can still find joy.  It's a little bit like, for example, a duck not getting wet by swimming in the water, kind of an immunity that is written right into our being, which you find, of course you find in the rishi.  You feel his, or her of course, quest for freedom has reached a point when he has found immunity from earthly conditions.  Now, that's the rishi of course, but now, the dervish is right in the middle of the market.  So that immunity which is called vayragya is a shield.  You know, Buddha spoke about, said, surround yourself with a zone of silence.  So, while you are meditating, you can place a buffer between the world and between, as I call, the tribulation, the stress, even also the defilement of the world.  You are surrounded by a zone of silence.

That is withdrawing from the world.  You place a buffer there between the challenge, the worldliness, the selfishness, the greed, dishonesty, the violence, all those things that hurt our souls so terribly.

So, it is a withdrawal from involvement which of course, is going to enhance your freedom.  But then, the dervish is right there, but to the derision and attacks of the world as you are in your very fragile being.  Your fragility is delivered in the hands of people who are going to take advantage of it, to hurt you, and try to push you away to get into your plate.  All that kind of struggle you find in life.  And so, in that case, aloofness won't do, it's not enough.  So, the dervish has a shield.  You know the word for the shield is aegis, aegis is the shield.

And, Alexander 1 had a shield made of gold.  And, he placed it in such a way that he reflected the light of the sun towards his enemies who were blinded and couldn't attack him.  That's the shield.

So, you need that shield.  Because, I've highlighted the child who is defenseless, and the only way in which a child can remain a real child is if the child is protected.  Whereas, as the child grows up, then the child needs to mature, and so that innocence needs to be safeguarded by a shield.  That's aegis, a shield.

And, that shield is power, is divine power.  The divine, the godly power of the dervish.  And, it's the power that comes from God, it's the power that comes from God consciousness, from being aware of the divinity of one's being.  So, it's the opposite of escape from life.  Because, if one is in one's personal consciousness, one seeks for escape, but if one is in the divine consciousness, then one is aware of the act whereby God descends into creation in order to actuate the potentialities of splendor, and (that authority?) that are majesty and beauty that are present within his/her being.

So, what we are doing in this meditation is rather paradoxical, because on one hand, we are orientated as the rishi who finds aloofness in the middle of the world.  You remember those words of Murshid, indifference and independence are the two wings that enable the soul to fly.  Those are the two wings of the sufi emblem.

Indifference, that's not the best translation of the word vayragaya.  I'd say immunity and independence, that is, you have to look at your life.  Of course first of all, let's not go too quickly, indifference we called immunity.  That is, if you can somehow, maintain your composure when faced with terrible suffering.  I would say, maintain your dignity, like, I talked about the elephant.  Maintain your dignity when bugged by all the agitation and the guile of people around you.  And so, there is a sense of our divine status which will give us that sense of dignity.  If we are encapsulated in our personal consciousness, we don't have enough strength in our individuality to maintain that nobility.  

It's because of the gift of the divine investiture.  So, that's the way of the dervish.  


And then, independence, look at your life, and see how dependant you have become upon things, and then ask yourself what it is, well, the difference between need and greed.  That is, what it is that is the minimum that you need to function.  As one says, a good workman needs good tools.  So, you need the where with all for your activity.  Or, is there some kind of complacency in enjoying the comfort.  It depends.  You must do whatever you like of course, it just depends on what you value.

But, in order to pick the edelweiss, you will have to give up some of the security.  That is why Jelaluddin Rumi says, destroy your house, and you might find a treasure underneath it.  That's the secret, the hidden treasure that desired to be known of the sufis.

Now, what it says is that we are carrying a secret treasure in our being, and we have built walls and a structure in the world which is hiding this, just like the light under the bushel.  And consequently, we are not aware of it.  And, the only way to become aware of it, is to free ourselves from our dependence upon that support system.  Our dependence.  I don't say blow your, destroy you house, but your dependence upon it, yes, yes.  Your dependence upon the circumstances, upon being loved, upon being cared for, upon money, upon a lot of things.

You will find that you..., Murshid calls that self sufficiency, instead of dependence upon acquisition.  That is, discovering the richness that is in your own being instead of trying to get it from outside, from people, from your interfacing with people, circumstances.

That is, discovering and Honoring the divine investiture of your own being.

So, if you do that now, then, can you smile, instead of entertaining self pity?

side 2

 sails, the sails of your soul?  From dependence, and attachment?  And, find the rishi in you?  The most wonderful rishi that I met, after walking for three days in the drizzle and snow, without proper clothes, catching pneumonia, that wonderful rishi said to me, "Why have you come to see what you should be?"

So, we like to project this ideal upon another person, and doubt that we have it in ourselves.  And, the fact is that we do have it in ourselves.  But, if we don't believe it, then of course it doesn't work.  It remains latent.

So, it is that aloofness that will enable your consciousness to take flight from its commonplace perspective in the here and now.  So, the discovery of, how can I say, the wide perspective of reality, let's consider the reality is being many tiered, and the lowest level being the existential level.  And, perhaps you could say, it depends what one means by these words of course.  There is a shift from reality to the real, whatever that means.  Or, what reality means.  But, a shift.  It's not the same thing.  Although, reality is to be found in the real.

Let's say that you are taking flight.  And, in order to take flight, you have to let go.  Obviously, otherwise you can't take flight.  So, you are going to have to let go of a perspective, the perspective of the existential world.  So, as long as you are attached to it, and conditioned by it, then of course, you can't take flight.  And so, the first step, is then that, that perspective falls out of focus.  The Hindus use rather drastic methods.  For example, they say, it's all maya, you see.  It's not a philosophical statement, it is a method which is pragmatic.  It's's effective, and freeing you from a perspective, from the impact of that perspective upon your consciousness.  Just like the physical world exercises an impact upon your glance.

So, if you can do that with me now.  So, if you consider the physical, let's say, just the physical world is not what you think it is.  So, you're caught in a perspective. And, from the moment that you realize that it is not what you think it is, you are free from the perspective.

And, that's reinforced by your problems.  If you realize that your problems are not what you think they were, your assessment of them, then they don't bug you in your meditation, because you have devalidated your assessment.  So, you might think, well, if I let go of my problems, well then, I am shirking my responsibility.   It's in fact, that you can assume better responsibility if you have a clearer sense what your problems are.  And, you cannot see them if you are caught in your commonplace perspective.  So, you let go of your assessment of your problems, and of course, your perception of the physical world.  So, the physical world seems to be rather remote, you can't reach it, it's there you know, but you can't reach it.  And, those people whom you thought of as real people, you know, in your ordinary way of looking at things, well, you are reaching them from inside.  If you are to go and visit them, and hug them, you wouldn't have the same kind of communion with them that you would have, if you were able to get into their consciousness.  So now, as you turn within, you can reach them without having to pay a ticket to go and visit them.

Just like the rishi who is in contact with..., and of course, the dervish, and the Pir-O-Murshid, who is contact with all beings without having to travel.

So, you are turning within, because you have freed yourself from the impact of the outer world that was pulling your consciousness towards outside.  And now, your consciousness is turning within.  And, as soon as you do that, then you see how everything is interconnected with everything else.  Like, for example, the roots of those lotus flowers that you see floating on the surface of the lake.  They seem like individual flowers, but the roots are a whole network.  So, that's the reality that emerges in those flowers.  

So, you are looking at life from inside now, but you are not looking at life from inside, because you are not the spectator anymore.  The spectator is part of the network, instead of being a separate entity, and an antimony between subject and object.

And, there's all that work of course, of discovery of oneself by creating one's self, by creativity, and so on.  And, of the work of imagination.  We have been doing that.  But, now let us proceed further.

And, that means that you let go once more of a particular perspective, which is the way that, that which doesn't have a form manifests as a form.  Creativity.  And so, as Ib'n Arabi says, "Give up imagination".  And, give up, that means give up the image.  That is, any sense of form whatsoever.  Including your own.  So, discover yourself beyond form.  And, the existential world without form.  for example, splendor rather than beauty.  In beauty there is form, splendor is the reality which manifests through the form that is beautiful.  Pure splendor.  Meaningfulness, beyond form.  You have to give up your will, which you used in the previous state in order to create yourself, to customize the divine creativity according to your own uniqueness.  And now, you are beginning to realize the universality of your being which is customized as your uniqueness.  But now, you are reaching to this more universal level.  And, the clue is, of course, is to realize that you can exist without a body.  As Jelaluddin Rumi says, "You can walk without feet, and fly without wings, and think without a brain, see without eyes, and hear without ears."

It's freedom from the underpinning.  And the consequence is that you realize your deathlessness.  That is, only that in you which is subject to birth, is subject to death.  But, that is only true of the underpinning of your being.  But, the reality of your being is not limited by the existential state, that is, conception, and birth and death.  It's everlasting.  Just like a river that is always the..., it's the same river, although it's never the same water.  It passes under the bridge.

So, the power of the rishi and of the dervish is because both of them identify with their deathless state.  People come, people go, and they are still in their evanescent identity.  And, these beings have unmasked the hoax of their personal identity, in order to discover their deathless identity, which is called the divine identity.  And, you can do the same.

And, as you, now you know your will doesn't help you to reach that point.  Nor your logic, of course, you'd realize that your logic would be standing in the way.  That ordinary logic doesn't do it.  It's totally inadequate to reach the higher planes.  And, the whole notion of time and space is a framework within which your mind works, finds, is able to function.  So, all those notions have to fall apart, because it's a framework within which you are limited.  You are constrained.  And so, the consequence is that you have a sense of eternity, and non locality in space.  And, the notion of light too, is no more the physical light, but getting into a more real sense of what light really is until you reach that point when you identify with the light that sees rather than the light that can be seen.  So now, the witness, emerges as the reality, as long as you see it as the divine witness, and you are not just the instrument of the divine witness.  You are that witness.  All be it, funnelled down as I say, focalized, limited, but still, you are that witness.

And now, you can look at life, just as God is looking at his/her body, which is the existential state.  You don't have to identify with your body, you can look at it.  And so, you can look at the whole existential state with an overview, and see how you had got so inveigled into it that you had lost a sense of who you are.  I say you, I think it would be more true to say, we.  

And so, there's a sudden flash of realization, that shatters your understanding, and therefor, that's what the sufis call, revelation rather than acquired knowledge.  Or, revealed knowledge rather than acquired knowledge.  As though that knowledge was in you, but it is only corroborated by experience, but limited by that corroboration.

And so, of course, it's the only way to be able to reach this level, is to accept a paradox, that you are an individuality, and yet, at the same time, universal.  And, you know, you are free, and at the same time, there is the existential which represents a fulfilment of the divine purpose.  It's a paradox you see, all the time.

Now, at this point, if you are really experiencing what I am talking about, you should be absolutely radiant.  You should be absolutely blissful.  You should be absolutely peaceful.  You should be absolutely noble, sovereign.  Life giving.  In fact, you could be embodying your ideal.  Or rather, you would be discovering your ideal by embodying it, and you would be embodying it by discovering it.

And realize that your ideal is a reality.  And everything else in life is just devices that may or may not enlist that ideal.

This is the breakthrough of awakening.  So, you have awakened, that means, awakening means shifting from one perspective to another.  You have awakened from the existential perspective.  You see that it is a perspective.  You can free yourself from that perspective.

And then...  So, this is awakening beyond life, and so once you have seen beyond the curtain, you will never be the same.  And now, you can awaken in life, which is never losing sight of this perspective.  And, realizing that the existential perspective, is just a perspective, it is a limited one.  So, this is illustrated by Chankaracharya, when he said, "You are walking in the forest, and you think you see a snake, at night time, you think you see a snake.  And then, next day, you pass by the same path, and you see that it is a rope.  And then, the next night, you pass through the same path again, and you see that, indeed, it does look like a snake, but you know that it's a rope.  You are awake in life.

Are you smiling? It's called the smiling forehead.

God Bless you now.

AUG 22, 1997		Tape 08

NOV 23, 1997  Tape 08

Boston 11/23/97 Tape #8 Shaghal

There are three principle practices that we're doing, the wasaif, the Zikre and now the shaghal.

You see it is, for example, to see the stars, you can't see the stars when the sun is in the sky. And so if you're still perceiving the physical world, then it is very difficult to grasp what is transpiring behind what appears. And so the shaghal consists in putting blinds upon your senses which will encourage you to turn within. And it does have that effect immediately. So that one is able to grasp that which was emerging from inside. Until such a time as one is able to do this without putting one's fingers on one's senses. That is the objective of shaghal. So to start with, we are protecting ourselves from the rather overt experience of the senses. Now there are five modes of perception, of inner perception that one comes upon as one does the shaghal as one holds the breath. And the first is what Pir O Murshid calls the all pervading light. So it's not radiant light. And what does it mean? Well if you've studied Dr. David Boehm, then you understand what he means by the implicate state where everything is interrelated in a rather perplexing manner. Especially if it's followed up by the Einstein - Pedolski - Rosen experiment which has shown that everything is connected although they can't send messages to each other. So it's perplexing. There is no doubt about it. 

Physics is, I would say, the door to Sufism because it's perplexity. You can't study physics without being perplexed. So it doesn't correspond with what you think is logical at all. There is no way for the mind to understand it. So it could be illustrated by radio waves. They form a wave interference pattern so you've lost the sense of individual waves. So light in its original state is all pervading. Dr. David Boehm calls it the implicate state. And what we experience is the explicate state. That is we experience the way that wave interference pattern is processed by the radio into sound. So that's what we experience, the explicate state. Behind that there is the implicate state that we can't experience. However, if when we turn within, then somehow we need to also alter our mode of experience. Instead of being the subject experiencing other than ourselves, our consciousness has to not expand, but has to get into the implicate state. So what used to be perception is now resonance. Perception is otherness. Resonance is affinity. Two gongs attune to the same pitch. You sound one gong and the other sounds. So resonance. It's a mode of experience that we're not used to. In shaghal we learn to have that experience. 

Perhaps the word experience is not the right way of saying it. Maybe it's experience but it's not perception. And that is going to enable us to be better able to arouse the potentials in our being. Because those potentials are of the same nature as the all pervading light. They are not located in space. So it's, as I said, perhaps you've experienced that when you've found yourself in a transfigured world. All of a sudden it's a very strange state that is familiar. And if you get used to it in your meditation, you can click onto it. All of a sudden you click something then you find yourself in that transfigured world. So that's what the shaghal helps you to get into that transfigured state. Now what Murshid says is very pertinent here. What he says is he gives the example of the sun. Of course he didn't know anything about physics. But he had this kind of intuition that the sun is like the point, well there are several suns of course. But a sun is a point of convergence of the light of the Universe. I don't know enough physics to say whether it's the light field that is explicated into a radiant light. But the important thing is the way that all pervading light gets processed into radiant light. So when you're doing the shaghal, you turn within, you have that grasp, that sense of the all pervading light. Then as you exhale, you are the transducer that is translating that all pervading light into radiant light in your heart. Now I find that when putting my fingers in place and inhale and, I concentrate on the solar plexus. 

And that itself is helpful to turn within and to get into that sense of, you don't perceive. That would be hallucinations if you were to perceive light. No, I say I feel light. That's perhaps not the right word. But I don't know how to say it. You have a sense of the way light is all pervading. And you can see the difference between that and light that is radiant. Because it's radiating from a point in space whereas radio waves are spread out throughout space. So now as you exhale, you consciously transmute that all pervading light into radiant light. Therefore, then I have been doing something which was not in the indications given by Murshid. I open my eyes when exhaling after doing the shaghal. So I close my eyes when inhaling and hold the breath. Get into the consciousness of the all pervading light. Then as I exhale, I open my eyes and radiate light. The trouble is that when one does that, one tends to radiate light through one's eyes. And what we're trying to do is to radiate light through one's heart. So if it works for you, it's alright. Otherwise keep your eyes closed and consciously radiate light from your heart. But then there is a further shaghal in which I concentrate on the pituitary and even above the head. Start first with the pituitary and then above the head, the fontanel then beyond the fontanel. Then when I exhale, that is when I radiate light through my eyes instead of through the heart, through the whole aura, through the glance. That is again a practice of the Sufis. 

Because the glance then serves as the support system for your insight. That's the reason why the Sufis are talking about the light of intelligence, as I said the light that sees instead of the light that can be seen. We did these practices yesterday. So there is no point in my repeating them. You can get the tape. What is important is that the reason, or the difference between concentrating on the solar plexus and radiating light through one's heart or then concentrating on the pituitary gland and radiating light through one's glance. And radiating light through one's glance, you think of, well I gave the example of the river Rhone that passes through the lake of Geneva. You have a light that is threaded through a light. The Rho    ne passes through the lake of Geneva. There again one definitely opens one's eyes as one exhales. The trouble is that if you open your eyes, normally your glance is going to be forced into focus by the objects in the room. So that's why we prepare ourselves by working with the glance very strongly so that when we open our eyes, we don't allow our cornea to be forced into focus by the objects. Then you can really thread the light. Well that is the light upon a light. That's the meaning of the Koranic verse light upon a light. Light of intelligence. The light of your glance. This incidentally is to be found in the teachings of Ibn Arabi. All of this, the teaching of Murshid, I don't know why there are so many books on Sufism that never mention Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan. But the teaching of Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan is a further development of the teachings of his predecessors. So it's about time that that should be brought through. 

Perhaps Zia would make that clear. Now there are also, one can hear, well again one must be careful think that you hear optical illusions. For example, if you're pressing your index on your cornea, that means that you are pressing your retina, then you will have a reactions in the brain that will seem like flashes of light. You will think that you're seeing light. In fact it's just an optical illusion. That's the reason why one has to place one's fingers under the retina. I mean one has to turn one's eyes upwards so that one isn't pressing upon one's retina. Then be very careful. It's got to be a very gentle touch. The same is true with the ears. One places the thumbs in one's ears. And if you downplay the sound of the environment, then what you would hear is what is called the (etmosaic) effect which is the sound produced by the Brownian movement of the liquid in the semi circular canals. And you think that you are hearing the symphony of the spheres. So we don't want to delude you when you're doing the shaghal into thinking, "I'm illuminated now. I see light. And I hear the voice of God". So we have to be very careful. I've been pondering that for a long time. All of a sudden it occurred to me that maybe the vibrations of the intermosaic effect do reflect something of the nature of the symphony of the spheres. And maybe physical light does manifest something of the nature of the light of intelligence. So as long as you know that, you can proceed with shaghal. 

The Sufis distinguish several different sounds that you might be able to identify. And again be careful. You know if you hear buzzing in your ears, they say it's because somebody is thinking of you. It might be a purely physical effect. But it's interesting to see if you can distinguish these different sounds. One is like a sound described as like the rushing of the wind. Like in Whethering Heights. And the other is like the fluttering of the leaves of the trees. Not quite the same thing as the rushing of the wind. And the other one is like the gurgling of water. And the other could be like the sound of gongs. That's why you can use gongs to get into ecstasy. And then the other is the clashing of symbols. You think of the Jewish tradition, temple dance and the symbols. And the other is the crashing of thunder. And the other is a more harmonious, a more metallic sound like the sound of the vina. Then there is the sound of the choirs of the angels. And that has been described by Victoria for example, what we were saying yesterday, and Bach of course, and Montiverdi, Allegri. Then there is the sound of the symphony of the spheres. Now how real is that? And how much is that imagination? Well that depends upon how scrupulous you are about authenticity. There are certain clues that will help us to understand that better. 

I don't know whether you know that there are some cases, very exceptional cases, of people who are deaf and are still able to hear radio waves. It's a scientific fact. So those are latent faculties that we have and we don't use them because we are using our perceptive organs. And these give one clues. The important thing is not just the satisfaction of hearing the symphony of the spheres, but gives us clues about what one might call fate. For example, my great grand uncle was a dervish who lived on an island in Lahore, in the river. He used to pronounce the oracles. People used to come like you go to a psychic to ask for your fate. Apparently he never said anything wrong. It was always right on. He would simply look at the waves on the water. That was an iyat, a clue to the divine intention. As I said before, I don't think that you can predict the future. It depends on your free will. It's not that clear. What I'm trying to say is that the symphony of the spheres in the sense of Pythagoras is not really sound. It can be interpreted as sound. But it is vibrations. In physics vibrations are vibrations of energy. They are not vibrations of air, that's sound. I mean you perceive it as sound. What you are really perceiving is vibrations of energy. That's what the Sufis mean by sota sarmad, the silent music. So if you think you want to hear the music of the spheres, you are deluding yourself. But if you think there is a kind of impending harmony that is trying to come through the chaos, well if you are interested in physics as I am, read that book called The Symphony of the Spheres by Merchant a physicist. 

The laws of physics all correspond with a certain basic harmony. And so what you're really picking up through shaghal is that harmony rather than listening to sounds. Now the other sense is a sense of like a perfume. Well, let us refer to the other one which is taste first. As Pir O Murshid says, we have the taste of the tongue, for example, bitter or sour for food. But he says, "Are you aware of the taste of your stomach or your pancreas or your liver or duodenum or the enzymes that are working to process the amino acid chains of food?" Normally one is not. But of course, if one has an indigestion, then one begins to feel the kind of a taste that happens in your bowels or duodenum. So we have that sensitivity but we don't use it. But those are very fine faculties that can be awakened so that one is able to know what is going on with one's body before it materializes in an illness. So that one is really tasting the world in it's subtle, one could say subtle chemistry. Like the tea tasters or wine tasters develop a very fine sense of values through taste. Now this is related with a very strange thing that happens in samadhi. You have a taste of nectar. You know there are all kinds of mythical ( ) interpretations of it. But really it is the endorphins that are, you've been concentrating on the pituitary gland which begins to exude much more endorphins than normally. And it's in the blood. And you taste it on the tongue. So it's not that mysterious thing. It's really tangible. That taste. 

Now perfume is something again that lends itself to a lot of mystification. But you see, I often illustrate it by the flowers are very smart. Although that they have very precarious foothold on the planet, they are able to survive their demise by transforming themselves into perfume. So that is really the definition of resurrection. So that is an example. But you can in your meditation, if you are aware of your subtle body, it's already much more subtle than your physical body. It has some kind of construction there. You can work with that and transmute it further. And that is the way in which one can prepare oneself for life after life. There is a whole. Oh, I forgot, I can go up to 5:30. i don't know whether I want to. Well I'd love to but I think it's too much for everyone. So that is something I'd like you to do when you are doing the shaghal to see if you can pursue that more subtle body than what we call the etheric body that could be exemplified by perfume. So it's not just your deathlessness. It's really your resurrection rather than your deathlessness. It's a whole alchemical process of transmutation. People are now very aware of the need to prepare oneself for death. There are books on Buddhism. Sufism has something to say there. So that will be the fifth book I have in store. I already have four I'm working on. So then there is a further sense which is very difficult to define. Sometimes people think it's an ecstasy of the body. It's a very rarefied ecstasy of the body. 

But maybe that is that kind of thing when I was talking about that woman who was beaten in a concentration camp. And who was able to, you know what she said, of course, is that one does astral travel and one doesn't feel the pain. One looks at the goliters and says, "You think you can hurt me? You can't touch me." Now that is a very great thing to learn if you are in pain, to learn how to make that shift in your astral body that you are able to free yourself from body consciousness. Now people in concentration camps did that when they were beaten. Thank God. Now that I know that, it helps me to, otherwise when I think of the ordeal of my sister, it's unbearable. I don't teach that. You see the trouble of it is that if you develop that faculty, then you could have an astral projection while you are driving your car and have an accident. And generally one loses one's sense of what one calls reality. Generally I don't teach it as a method. I do it. But I don't teach it. If you were in personal pain, of course, it would be a wonderful anesthetic to be able to do that. We have a feeling that you are floating above your body. Some of you have that experience maybe in a dream. And there is some connection with the physical body through the umbilical cord. And you can move about. For those who like flying it's wonderful. It's even better than hang gliding. Nurses do that, especially the nuns who are also nurses. 

They think of their patients in the hospital and are so watchful they want to sense if there is anything going wrong with their patients. They are able to make that astral projection to see what's happening to their patient. Wish to be somewhere else than where you are. And especially freedom. Prisoners have that. Because of the constraint of being in prison, there is a longing to get out into freedom. You start flying outside the prison. So you see all the possibilities that are in shaghal. We have to end here. Well I feel that there has been all of a sudden a real blossoming in the Sufi Order. People were overwhelmed by their first contact with the Sufi teaching. And one doesn't quite grasp what it is. One finds it very difficult to reconcile it with one's daily life, one's family, one's problems, one's job and so on. So a lot of people, after that first impact, felt that they had to get on with their life. So there was a fast turn over in the Sufi Order. At first I thought to myself it means we are not really doing it for people. Otherwise they wouldn't leave. Now I think, no they got as much as they could. And when I'm walking in the corridors of airports, people often stop and say, "Oh, are you Pir Vilayat? Well you had a much bigger beard when you when you initiated me twenty years ago".

Tape ends 

AUG 22, 1997		Tape 09

PVK: Ziraat. I'll tell you this story. There are a lot of stories, of course. First of all, there's a story of a man who was a very famous lawyer, who was fighting the British to free India from the British, and he was called the Lion of India and on his way back from a talk, passing through, well, on his way back, he, there was a leper who asked if he could carry him to the water. And he thought, he refused because he was afraid of catching leprosy. And then on his way he thought to himself, "Just imagine, I'm supposed to be the most, one of the most courageous men in India and I'm afraid of touching my brother." So he went back and carried him to the water. And then, when he went back to his home, he told his wife, he said, "I'm going to give up my job, my profession, and I want to start a home for those lepers." And the government offered, there was a piece of land that one could offer [unintelligible bird land?] infested with rats and the rats used to come and nibble at the feet of those lepers, and their fingers, and the reason why that land was infested with rats was because the previous owners had killed all the cobras. And so he made a contract with a cobra, a couple of king cobras, a king and queen cobra, a covenant, by a special ceremony (which I'd like to know what that ceremony was like). But lo and behold, and this is a true story, a little child of four was playing with the cobra and a visitor who said, however was panicking and said, " I mean, it's terribly dangerous," and he said, "No, it's okay, it's okay we have a contract, that cobras will not kill cobras as long as humans don't kill cobras." 

And that contract, you find it also true, in, for example, the American Indians used to have a contract with the bears, for example. They wouldn't kill the bears as long as the bears wouldn't kill them. So, it's a kind of a, it's magical ceremony, I don't think, I wish I knew how it's done, but of course the intention is of course clear, it's a contract. Ziraat is a contract, it's a covenant, between us and the forces of nature, of honoring each other rather than exploiting the earth for our own convenience, and so there's a give and take. So that we agree that we will, or rather, nature agrees to give us her bounty but then we have to return, we have to give something in return. So as you see, we, in the industrial revolution, which we're still in, we've done exactly the opposite. We've been exploiting nature for the sake of what we think is our well-being, to the point where now our being is in danger. In fact we're endangering the whole planet, so it's quite crazy what we've been doing. 

Murshid had that sort of intuition that there is another step rather than freemasonry. Freemasonry, perhaps you know that the Freemasons' symbol is on the dollar notes, which represents a whole breakthrough of, explosion let's say, of industry as opposed to agriculture. And it has, well it has distorted agriculture because the consequence is that farmers need to use artificial fertilizers and that food is processed to such a point that we are in danger of our health because food that we get, and so on and so forth. 

So Murshid felt that and consequently he created a mystery, because freemasonry is something of the nature of the mysteries, the great mysteries or the mysteries you find in the middle east. And what makes a mystery is that its staple food is a ceremony, and ceremonies have a kind of magic. You just look at the, well for example there are ceremonies, rituals in Africa for example, in Austrailia and so on, you can see that those ceremonies do have some really tangible consequences. Like for example the American Indians, I mean the native Americans are able sometimes to pray for rain for example, so that, by using a ceremony, so that's what we call magic, that's what we mean by magic. We mustn't discount it as being a hoax. It is really true, that in some, in certain cases it works. So that I'm sure that the ceremony of the Freemasons did have consequences in terms of the growth of industry, not only in the United States but throughout the world, a whole new concept of life which was not based on agriculture. And Pir-o-Murshid saw the value of ceremony. And of course you know that the Catholic mass is a ceremony, it's a ritual, and, it's a magical ritual actually. It has consequences, for the good of course. But there are such things as black magic too that can be utilized in a deleterious way. 

So Murshid felt that so in the last years of life, I remember his consulting with I think there were two or three Freemasons whom he consulted to find out a little more about how that ritual was elaborated and finally he created his own ritual for agriculture and that's what Ziraat is. 

And Ziraat means a bridge, a bridge between heaven and hearth, so that's another sense of Ziraat so we'll have to deal with perhaps those two senses and maybe there there are further senses. 

So I'll tell you a story, another story. I was on a plane on the way, I forget now, maybe it was on the way to Boston from New York and there was, you know in those days I used to wear long robes, and so this man was rather intrigued, they, people are intrigued when they see me, they ask, "Who are you?" So this man was sitting next to me and was burning with curiosity, and so he couldn't stop asking me well, who are you, so he started by talking about the weather or something and then gradually got into what he really wanted to know. Here was this very strange man, you know, sitting next to him. I had a long beard at the time. And so I didn't know how to, you know he was so earthly, let's say, I didn't know quite how to answer, you know, do I say, "I'm a guru?" So I said, "Well I have a community in upstate New York, where." So he said, "Well what's the purpose of this community." "So I said, well one of the things is that we are cultivating a farm -- the Abode -- and we are using organic methods of cultivating the farm. For example we're not using artificial fertilizers." So he said, "Why not, artificial fertilizers are so much better than anything else." So I said, "Well I understand that artificial fertilizers are really, they have a bad effect upon the food." So he says, "Nonsense, not at all! You know it's amino acids, so why do you think that?" So I thought to myself, "Good God, I've really started a row." I don't have the expertise to know the answer, you see, so anyway towards the end of the conversation I asked him, "Well what is your profession.?" So he said, "Well I'm selling artificial fertilizer!" 

So in those days the director of the Abode was, his name was Arifs Reichshoffam (??). He was a doctor, a medical doctor, and so I asked him. I said, "Look I was rather embarrassed because I was going back here saying artificial fertilizers are bad for the food but, I mean here, he said it wasn't so I mean, I didn't know what to answer." And he said, "You see the amino, organic amino acids rotate to the right, dextarochi [french/latin?] and the artificial ones rotate to the left, which is levarochi ??" So I mean what does it mean rotate, so of course you know I'm interested in physics so I went into it and found some idea about what that could mean. So that artificial fertilizers do not have the same effect as, for example, if you have a, what do you call it, well if you have organic fertilizer. So I was so sorry that I didn't know the answer when I was talking to him, so he'll keep on convincing people that artificial fertilizers are good. Now you're going to say, well if you didn't use artificial fertilizers you wouldn't be able to nourish the population of the world as a matter of fact. And the answer is well you've got to cut down the population because we're outstripping our [leave ?]. 

So Murshid pointed out the importance of respect of nature which of course you find in the older traditions, for example the Native Americans. And we find it would be very difficult to observe the ultimate observations of ecology. For example you'd have to, for example, never use plastic bags, except now there are some plastic bags that can decompose in nature. But then you wouldn't be able to run your car because you're polluting the environment. So we'd have to use the electric car which is coming on the market now. And then really speaking, you know, you should use solar energy or aeolian (?) energy for, to run your computer which is one thing that I'm doing now, in the Pyrenees. I want to prove that I can run my computer on solar energy. And so it depends on technology. So it would, it's very difficult for us to do the practical side, to be able to really not pollute nature and really observe its authenticity which, we are violating the authenticity of nature, and by so doing of course we can expect cataclysms which is exactly what is happening and will be happening more and more if we go on doing that. So ecologists are telling you this but people still don't listen because of greed, personal interest. And at some time, well there's already been a confrontation and it's getting worse and sometime we'll realize how important it is; but the other aspect of it is, as I say, a real personal covenant with nature. 

For example the Zoroastrians before bathing in the river they asked the permission of Ardivsura Anahita, who is the archangel of water and so on. When cultivating the earth they asked the permission of Zamyat who is the archangel of the earth, and so on. They were always very conscious that the physical aspect of water or whatever is only one, the way that it is actuated in, at the existential state but that they are real beings, the planet is a being, now we've come to that idea now, the Gaia. There's a whole movement toward recognizing the earth and Pir-o-Murshid said if planet earth didn't have intelligence it wouldn't have intelligent beings on it. So that intelligence is right written into the earth. So it's not like a body returns to the earth becomes like dust. No, there's a, if you look, if you able to see the cells of your body in an electron microscope you will see that it's not dust, it's very fantastic the life that is present within each cell of the body, each atom within the cell, each molecule and so on, each proton, electron, photon. 

So we live in a fantastic time; we're living in a time when we're beginning to recognize the life and that means the consciousness of that which we used to call simply inert matter, that word inert matter doesn't, isn't acceptable any more. It's an old fashioned, you know life matter and inert matter, no that's not true anymore. So if that is true, then we can really enter into communion with matter instead of denigrating it and exploiting it. That means really entering into the consciousness of matter, so the ritual is just simply a catalyst in order to do that important thing which is really penetrating into the being of matter, whatever it is. And that includes our bodies and the bodies of other people and of animals and plants and so on and so forth. So it is really, as was the title of that book, Kinship for all Nature, I think it was [prompting from audience], with all life, Kinship with all Life. Now I read that book and much to my glee because it confirms something I had done before. You remember that he was really getting into the consciousness of his dog and I'm sure that horse riders get into the consciousness of their horse so that they don't really have to even move the bridle because the horse picks up their intention right away, very delicately, and so on. It's a marvelous contact. I have the same contact with eagles because I train eagles to fly free and come back to me, so I call them from a distance. 

Of course eagles are very intelligent beings. But I did that once with a fly. So it was a rather cheeky fly that settled on my finger and I couldn't shoo it off, it came back all the time. And it looked as if it were interested in this giant. I think it was very courageous. And I thought well, it's interesting because since I'm used to falconry then maybe we can establish some contact. So I noticed that it started to gingerly clean its wings with its legs. And I think there was something coquettish about it, as though it were trying to draw my attention, so I thought it must be a female fly. And so, I thought well that's very, there's come kind of contact there. So I'll try what I'm doing with falconry. So I flew him away and then I, as I do with falconry I tried to ask him to come back, or her to come back in my hand. But then he was hurt in his feelings so I thought I'm sure I've hurt his feelings. So then I did as I do with falcons. I got a bit closer and said, it's okay, and of course sure enough it came back on my knuckle. But then you know that's very time consuming, just like falconry is very time consuming. So in the end I shooed her off for good, and then she really kept on coming back. You know, if you turn your, if you pursue the bluebird it will escape you and if you turn your back the bluebird will follow you. 

So you establish contact. So you can do that with your body, you see. I thought to myself, you know if Shiva came back today perhaps he would give seminars onto how you can get into the consciousness of the cells of your body and heal yourself. If you can do it with a fly you can do it with your own, with the cells of your own body. So maybe there's some overlap between Ziraat and healing. Actually, of course, we're healing the earth and we are part of the earth so we're being healed in our act of healing the earth. 

Well the other aspect of Ziraat which has developed, was developed by Zia, my son. Incidentally there was a time when I thought it would be good to get Zia into training in the different activities, and so I earmarked Ziraat. I thought that's a good start. And so there's this question of, you know what his official function is and how it compares with Shahabbuddin, but you know these are not important. 

S - I actually thought we, right from the beginning we were just called leaders. 

Pir - Yes, that's right, so it doesn't matter. But the important thing is that he introduced a whole new dimension of Ziraat and it makes sense to me, which is related with the old Sufi tradition, actually it is really, again it's not Zoroastrian, but (?) Mazdian tradition that was inherited by the Sufis and which is chivalry and I can see how it relates to this work of taking care of the Earth. Perhaps you know that if you study the chivalry of the Middle Ages, well, particularly through the legends of Parsival, the Parsival legends, then you will find a few Parsi words in the legends of Parsival. For example Parsi-Val, Parsi, Parsi, which means "pure" and "val," "vali," which means master, master of purity. And Parsival was put through the test of purity in the beginning, you see. And if you remember his half brother was Fara-fiz (?)and Fara-fiz had, let me see, they had the same father and they had a different mother, I think? Yes, his mother was Haz-lite (?), I think, if I remember, pain of the heart, and their common father had a Zoroastrian name and the name of the castle also had a Zoroastrian, or Mazdian etymology. And actually it is true that chivalry that originated in Iran was communicated to the west through Hohenschaufen, who was the king of Sicily. And so, the crusaders used to pass through his palace and the troubadours used to chant the tales of the [indecipherable word - flu-asses] of the knights. And as a matter of fact there was a moment when the knights, the Christian knights and the Muslim knights met for a truce and formed a confraternity. And they met in a palace which is still there next to the Dome of the Rock on the top of that hill in the center of Jerusalem, and the password was Ya Fatah. Open the door. And you find that in the French song, "Mon ami pirot, ouvre-ma la porte pour l'amour du Dio," "Open the door, for the love of God, ouvre-ma la porte pour l'amour du Dio." So it all ties up you see. So the knights pledged themselves in a covenant and that covenant is written right into Islam because it's, or it's found in Islam, the covenant between man and God that the Dhikr is a reiteration of that covenant. So what the knights pledged themselves to do is to support the weak against the strong, against the bullies, let's say. And so we have the care of the planet earth that is being bullied by the, shall we say the industrialists. So anyway we need to take care of planet Earth that is crying for help. You see the connection there. 

That's an aspect that has not been developed nearly as much as I would have liked, but I think Zia has an input in that and I think that you will feel at one in that, you will feel a resonance with that. 

Shah- It's worked very well. 

Pir - It works very well, yeah. So the ceremony, you see Murshid used to, as in the universal worship as a matter of fact. He used to have the sort of vision, as a pioneer, he saw into the future, like there will be a time when pure water and pure earth will be the perhaps most valuable thing in the world, perhaps even more valuable than gold, because we've polluted the Earth it takes sometimes many centuries to, so that the Earth is able to clear itself from all the pollution. 


So the ceremony starts will, well there are different phases, I don't remember exactly which, but, well at one phase one is invoking the presence of the, well actually just exactly what the Zoroastrians are doing, the presence. of those archangels whose bodies are the earth, and the water, and the fire and the air. And he even gave a gesture for each one of them, the earth --, and then water--, and then fire-- and air--. And then afterwards ether, those are the five elements. 

One invokes the presence of the owner of the farm and one considers that God is the owner of the farm, and then there's a whole hierarchy of statuses. There's the great farmer and then the farmers, and so on, ploughers, and all kinds, I forget now all the different functions in the hierarchy. And so one is first of all connected with Ziraat by a kind of ordination or initiation, and, where one pledges oneself to do all those things that I've been talking about, respect the Earth and also establish some connection with those beings, whose bodies are those elements. 

Now the, Murshid's vision, Murshid as I say, he used to have these great visions of a pioneer, and then he used to put that vision into the hands of someone who he felt was conversant with the way that one can make, organize it, to make it happen in practice. So for example with the universal worship he asked Murshida Green, who was the, I think she was the, I think she was the niece, I forget now, of the archbishop of, I don't know if it was Canterbury or Norfolk but anyway, it was high church, and rather Victorian. And in the case of Ziraat, I think it was also Murshida Green, you know, because she was one of the Freemasons that Murshid consulted. And so sometimes one feels that Murshid's inspiration was a little bit damped by the, sort of the, what came afterwards, the way that it was being handed over to the mureeds. So when I read some of those, you know I knew, of course I knew Mursida Green. She was a very remarkable woman; she was actually the right hand to Anna Besant of the Theosophical Society. 

I can tell you a story. Murshid was, is that boring for you? It's all very, for me it's very interesting because Murshid was, you know he'd go back, well he was in London and for various reasons, we moved to France and then, so whole continent was opening up, and so he, you know, Murshid and my mother both of them came from wealthy families, but left their families and so Murshid started with absolutely no money at all, and .... [tape change] 

SIDE TWO 

.... on faith, you see. So there he was. He managed to get to Geneva, and in those days I don't think there was hitchhiking, so somehow he got a train to Geneva. There he was sitting on a bench, a wonderful place, on a bench on which I've sat myself many times, meditating, it's a wonderful bench. And you can imagine for an Indian of course water, and of course especially for the rishis of course, water is very important and here is this fantastic water running through the Lake of Geneva, the river Rhone and you can see it, you sprouting, so, fountain of life, of water. There he was sitting meditating and actually during those days he was planning the whole Sufi Movement, within a few days, in detail. And there came Murshida Goodenough?? who was one of, actually she was really the closest to Murshid's teaching, esoteric teaching. She couldn't stand the Universal Worship. She was esoteric, you know, she was a real, like a hermit, you know, she, like an ascetic. And healing, well, didn't mean much to her, but she was esoteric, so there she was with her friends and there she saw Murshid sitting on that bench. Now there's a, so she said, Murshid, you are here in Geneva! You know, she has been part of those meetings in London during the war when they met every evening in a small group of people, who were just carried in ecstasy, they used to meditate in the presence of Murshid. Sometimes silent, he said a few words, and they were in silence, during the bombing of London by the German Zeppelins. That was the time when I was born in 1916 in London, so you know my age now, and I still remember the, everybody rushing to the shelter because of the bombs that were thrown by the Zepelins. And Murshid would just sit there. And those who had faith in Murshid stayed with him and the others rushed to the cellar. And I still remember the call, because then the bugles used to, when the Zeppelins had left, the bugles used to sound all clear. So that melody was pam pam, pam pa pam, pa pam pa pam pa pum pa pum. So they used to translate that in, "All gone, far away, gone away to Germany." I still remember that, you know I was, maybe I was two years old when I heard that. 

So all right, well now I'll catch up with the story. So then Murshid said, yes there's another aspect of the story, that is of course Murshid was meditating that whole day on the bench. And people were passing by and thought you know seeing this great Indian master sitting there on the bench, I mean, they'd double looked and then pass by and then walk back to see if they really saw right. They were intrigued by this being, this strange being who was sitting there. And then there was a lady who kept on walking to and fro and so then she embolded herself to greet Murshid and say "do you speak English?" and he said "Yes I speak English." So she said, "Well may I introduce myself? It's, is it your first visit," I don't know how one speaks, "Is it your first visit to Geneva?" Something like that. And then she said, "Well you've been sitting on this bench for a long time. Can I bring you something to drink, or?" And he said, "Yes, if you like, you an bring me half water and half milk." And then evening came and he was still sitting on the bench. So she said, "Well, I would like to welcome you in my flat, but, you know, it means perhaps I could offer you to sleep on the sofa in the drawing room." He said, "of course fine," and then he was back on the bench the next morning and that's when Murshida Goodenough contacted him. 

And then, so Murshida Goodenough organized a meeting at the Theosophical Society. Now Theosophists were expecting the coming of the messenger. And they were talking about all the great masters of the East. There were a lot of phony books by people who'd never gone to India, about all the masters in the Himalayas, and people were turned on by that, but it was all myth, you see. And here was a master, right there. And so practically all the people there took, asked to take initiation with Murshid, and recognized him as the person that they were waiting for. And of course it was very confusing for Annie Besant, so she too came to Murshid and bowed to him and she then was rather confused because they were expecting that Krishnamurti would be the prophet, you know, the, and then, so then after having visited Murshid she found our that Murshid was married and ate meat, and so then she decided that he couldn't be that world master that she was expecting. So that was it, you see. 

So then as I say a number of people who are really the pioneers of the Sufi Movement joined Murshid. Oh yes, yes, quite right [aside]. So I think he gave several lectures and on one of these occasions, there was a man who was, didn't want to, you see a lot of people wanted to meet Murshid and there was one man who stood at a distance. He didn't want to disturb Murshid, and Murshid asked him to come and said, "I'd like to appoint you as the Secretary General of the Sufi Movement," not knowing him, you know. At that time he was the Ambassador of Cuba I think it was, in Geneva, so he said, "Well that's a great honor, but, you know," so Murshid said, "Where do you live?" And he lived in the house behind that bench, which is called Mesa Royale, which became the headquarters of the Sufi Movement. So wonders do happen sometimes, miracles happen. I wonder led me to this story, do you remember? I've gone far away. 

Shahabb - Yes I do. You were going to talk about Murshida Goodenough and the Ziraat ceremony. 

Pir - Ah yes, well, so then Murshida Goodenough-- 

Shaha - Pir Vilayat tells stories like I do, lot of tangents. 

Pir - Sufis tell a lot of stories. So Murshida Sophia (?), Green, was one of the Theosophists and she was, as I say I think the niece of the archbishop of, well in the high church, and Murshid used to think that, you know he was a foreigner in the West and these, people in the West know more how to do things locally than he did, so he put her in charge of working out the whole system of Ziraat as he did the Universal Worship. So when I read some of the formulae in the Ziraat, and I remember Murshida Green very well and I can see her stamp, her particular stamp. And of course for now, particularly in America, it seems like it's really Victorian, like I say. 

But of course Murshid passed away very soon after founding the Ziraat and consequently he did not give a lot of teaching that pertains particularly to Ziraat. And so of course it is our job to try and find out which are the teachings that would, can fit into that whole activity, concentration. And of course there's a lot in Murshid's teachings, nature meditations, there are a lot of things can be introduced. And I find that, you know amongst the last words of Murshid were, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, my father, were, "I have handed the Message into your hands." And so we need to see how we interpret that because, for example, I'm very aware of that, in fact my whole life is just doing exactly that. And, but you know Murshid really encouraged creativity in people, and so I think that we need to flower the, to nurture the seeds that he sowed, to make plants out of them, but sometimes I feel that we need to mutate these plants also. And if Murshid lived in our time maybe he would have presented things in the way that we are now presenting. And sometimes I think that I embody Mursid to some degree. I have his blood in my veins and somehow some of his being comes through me, and not only me but all of us, so that we, he said, "I have handed the message into your hands," your hands, in the plural, so it means all of us. And therefore Ziraat needs to be cultivated as a field, and it needs to be nurtured, and even needs to be mutated. And I think that is what you have been doing and also Zia and other people who also participate in the work of developing Ziraat. 

Now I'm handing the microphone to you, I've used fifty minutes of that precious time and I'm only giving you ten minutes, it's very unfair. 

Sh - Well I didn't know we were having a debate, so for ten minutes or fifteen minutes, it's all relative. 

Pir - Not a debate, but an exchange, yes. 

Sh - I actually find that there's another aspect of Ziraat in the five lessons that are at the end, where Murshid uses the symbology of the field and of farming to offer some lessons, he says, almost directly about the human mind as well. 

Pir - Ah yes. 

Sh - So what I've been concentrating on are those five, well the first four lessons actually, which are about the mind, where he says one must remove basically all impressions, not just bad impressions, from the mind, and leave it empty and pure and let the winds and rains of God do with it what it will for a while and then slowly re-sow the seeds. It's almost like reprogramming the computer, that you speak of. There are only those four lessons. And he also in those four lessons intertwines the workings of the breath, the different elements of the breath, the Jelal and Jemal of the breath and how to work with those on the mind. 

Pir -- And also the earth breath, and water, and fire, and air. 

Sh - So even though the teaching quantitatively is very small, the, certainly the quality is there and it's been a blessing not to have a lot of teaching that Murshid gave. In a certain way I wish we did, but in another way it's forced those of us who work with the Ziraat to really pull out from this little bit that which we need to make alive, I mean it's all alive, but which we need to make real, and I think myself before we change the teaching we ought to know it first. 

The nice thing about Ziraat is that the teaching is very limited, so it gives us very clearly things to focus upon, things to meditate upon and recognize what is hidden there. I mean, personally I believe that everything Murshid said was said on so many levels. And almost in code some of the things, and the Ziraat, even though it's small it has many many levels of meaning. Just the teachings on the mind, the teachings on ecology, and certainly the teachings on chivalry, those three aspects are a lifetime full. And the last lesson says just what you were speaking of. He said, "To a little band of sowers has been given a handful of living grain. Certainly [sic] it must be sowed, surely it will be reaped, but the reaping thereof will be for other hands." Not for us. And in a way it relieves such a burden, because he's saying, well just, your generation just sow the seeds and you won't be around for the reaping thereof. And he said it quite clearly and it was at the end of his life. And the direction, the directive is so precise. This is the Message, not the Ziraat, but this is the Message, sow it, don't worry about the reaping thereof; it's not for us. And I've always found that to be such a relief, because it's given, personally given me such a clear direction. I just could sow the seeds and have faith enough in the future that they'll come up and they'll be harvested at the right time. 

The other thing, I wanted to ask you a question. I know you were finished speaking, but just for a few moments. There's another level of the ceremony, regardless of the outer form that it takes. There's a kind of psychospriritual level, that occurs in the unseen world, when the ceremony is done. And I wonder if you would comment on your impressions of that, Pir Vilayat. 

Pir - Yes, I think that's the bridge, the bridge between the unseen and the seen. That's what magic is about, is to establish that bridge and that's why Ziraat means the bridge. That is, as I say, that's what magic is about. For example, Murshid said, well he was talking about a personal experience. He said, "For example, you are in in a troubled state. You are walking in the street, and there's a horsecart." In those days they had horsecarts in London that were delivering milk." And a horse slips and the milk is spilled and somehow there's a relationship between your thought and what happened to that cart." And it doesn't mean that your thought created that. It's what we call synchronicity. There's, everything is related in some mysterious way. It's what Jung (?) means by synchronicity. So for example that is the kind of thing that governs astrology for example, or tarot reading, or things like that, which is not scientific, but still there's some meaning in it. 

You know my great-grandfather was a dervish living in, on an island in a river that passes though Lahore as far as I know and people used to come to him to ask for the reading, the presage, like you know you come to a psychic. And apparently he always gave the right answer. And all he did was to look in the waves of the water and he would read in those waves the answer and the reason is because everything is related to everything else. It's the holistic principle, everything is related to everything else. It's very strange. 

So that one is establishing a connection with, by one's ritual. One is establishing a connection with what Pir-o-Murshid called the higher spheres. You know, that Murshid said that "what I'm doing" -- Yes for example, he visited Sweden I think it was, and the lecture was very badly organized, so there was hardly anybody there and ___ Stolak (?) who was the man who organized it said, "Oh, I'm so sorry that there are so little response, I'm mean there so few people," and he said, "Do you think I came to Sweden to give a lecture?" And then at another time he said "the work I'm doing with mureeds in my talking to them is a very small part of what I'm doing. I'm working on the higher spheres with the mureeds. 

So I think that, of course you know, especially if we're talking about a ritual that has magical effects upon the earth. There's a saying of the Zoroastrians that says, "We are working, we commit ourselves to work for the transfiguration of the earth." That's a prayer, a prayer, of the Zoroastrians. "We are working for the transfiguration of the Earth." Well if that is so, then the ceremony, you know if you're just doing the ceremony, I find it's very boring. I would, I feel rather depressed if I go to a ceremony and I find that people are doing all the right things, like they've got the right book at the right time and lighting the right candle and all that kind of thing, wearing the right robe and walking as though they were in a funeral march, and then that all of that is in the name of holiness. So I think that if a ceremony is at all tolerable for me, and I must say I have trouble with ceremonies, is if behind it there is a very high attunement. 

For example, I remember I used to, when I was making a retreat in a monastery in Spain, Monserrat, there was a, I used to go to Mass very early in the morning, 5 o'clock, I think and there was a young priest who was in ecstasy and there were a few people there. A lot of people came to the big mass with the priests and all that but here was someone, he was in ecstasy and that ecstasy communicated itself to the people there. And so it wasn't important if he had the right host in his, in the chalice, or what it, you know it could have been rotten bread. It didn't really matter. What mattered was that he was bringing through, he was bridging the heavens and the earth, he was bringing that attunement through. And so that's the same thing with Ziraat. If you're doing it, but then it doesn't matter what the ceremony is, what you're bringing through is, you're communicating life. In fact the word Murshid said is the Holy Sacrament. You're communicating the Holy Sac, that is the Holy Sacrament. 

Sh - And I think that's really what the Ziraat is more than anything is becoming the window, becoming the opening for that blessing to descend on the earth. The earth desperately needs it. And there are not so many windows. 

Pir - And the beauty is that, there's no, you said right when you said it's just as well there is not so much teaching because otherwise one tries to interpret the teaching and chew it up, you know digest it and so there's a kind of intellectual work that takes place, whereas you are bypassing the mind by the ceremony. 

Sha - And from my experience, I've done the ceremony three times a day for, or five times a day for a month straight just to see what would happen, and more actually, but it's an experience, it becomes a living experience. People kind of look at it at first and say, oh it's such a funny little ceremony, you know, with the gestures, and I know it was never Pir Vilayat's favorite, the ceremony. And I hope this is not talking out of school but I once went to him way, many years ago and I said, "I'd like to take on the Ziraat." And he said, "Well why would you want to do that?" So... 

Pir - ... and you did. 

Sh - Yes, I did. I said, "I have a feeling that this is my direction," and he said, "Well I trust you." 

Pir - It's all built on trust. 

Sh - But I think the ceremony comes alive. I remember, I was looking for Prajapati. I remember once doing the Universal Worship with Shamshir and he said, "If you don't see the prophets standing behind their candles, don't bother doing the ceremony." 

Pir - So if you don't see the archangels behind the ceremony, then 

Sh - then why bother? 

Pir - It is more important if there are more angels in the room than people. 

Sh - And the ceremony is, for me is like a tuning fork that just puts me in the right vibration to experience what's already there waiting for me, not me trying to invoke that. 

Pir - Well we have to end here, I'm glad you have the last word. Well this is wonderful. What a joy to communicate. 

Sh - Thank you, Pir Vilayat. 


AUG 23, 1997		Tape 10

So, there is a state in which one feels a lot of magnetism, a lot of power coming through one, and sometimes life drains one from that power.  And consequently, one needs to, as Buddha says, "surround oneself with a zone of silence to protect oneself from that (vamporizing?) effect of people around one.  Circumstances, technology, matter, so, one is able to muster that power.  So, can you sort of feel a kind of power in your being.  The sufis call it...  And could you distinguish the personal power, a kind of despotic ego trip, and then a divine power, the power of the dervish.  And, it's very clear that the despotic power is when you identify yourself with your person, and this special power is when you are conscious of the other pole of your being which is divine being.  It is not other than your self, it's another pole of your being, which is not impersonal, it's a kind of crowning, maybe over riding.

The power comes through you.  And, you experience it as a kind of emanation, even at the body level, it's a kind of, well, what we call the electromagnetic field, it doesn't matter.  But, you just feel that exuding power so that, for example, if you sit in nature, you are aware of the enormous magnetism that is exuded from the trees and the flowers and all of nature.  But, you may also emanate power so that, imagine that the buds of the flowers begin to unfurl, everything starts flourishing. (pause)

And, as I say, you get into the habit of wherever you go, of bringing this life energy with you.  It is that power that Christ talked about when he said to the samaritan woman, "I can give you the waters of the life eternal". (pause)  So, it's something that you are giving, that you are communicating, that you are donating.  And, you might find also, a kind of magnetism of your mind which Pir-O-Murshid says is linked with your deep conviction.  And, is lost by doubt.  So, it's the power of the mind to overcome, to override perfunctory thinking, (pause) which can induce doubt.

And so, it gives a kind of clarity of the mind.  But, for the time being, we are just talking about the very magnetism of the mind which you find in a great orator, for example, and communicating energy from one mind to the other by the power of the magnetism of the mind.  I hope you can feel that.

Thoughts have power.  And, it's the power of conviction.  As Pir-O-Murshid calls it, "The reason of reasons gives you ecstasy.  So, that magnetism is always associated with a kind of ecstasy.  Every form of magnetism, the magnetism of the body, the wonderful feeling of well being in the body, the ecstasy of the body, and then the ecstasy of the mind. (pause)

Now, can you feel the magnetism of the heart.  Like, somebody comes in the room, and you feel welcomed, you feel drawn to that person, you feel as though you are basking in the sunshine of that person.  And, that is because that person has a wonderful heart, an all encompassing heart.  And so, you can have it too. The magnetism of the heart.

It's a giving magnetism.  Giving love, instead of wanting love for oneself.  And of course, compassion, that is suffering with those who are suffering.  So it has a wonderful soothing effect upon the pain of the heart. 

So, you can feel that in you, and Pir-O-Murshid says, this magnetism is lost by wanting something for oneself.  A kind of selflessness that makes for giving, a celebration of giving, like Christmastide.  Christmastide is a celebration of giving.  In the case of Christmas of course, it is thanksgiving.  It is giving, because one is thankful for the promise of the increase in the increments of light everyday.  Or, one would do anything to express one's thankfulness by giving.  Embracing, holding, caring, providing a safe place for people who are floundering in life. (pause)

But of course, there's some price, and the more one id dedicated to service, the more magnetism of the heart one has.

I once went to a conference at the United Nations, and there were a lot of speakers, and there came Mother Teresa.  And, the speakers were brilliant and sparkling, but when Mother Teresa came, the hearts of everyone were open, like a totally different atmosphere.  Beauty, harmony, love, lifted above the mind.  The ecstasy of the heart is the ecstasy of love, it is being in love.  Being in love with love.  You could say being in love with God.  It's a concept, whereas being in love with love, it's being moved in the depths of one's heart by the divine beauty coming through, the divine splendor coming through beauty. (pause)

And then, now we come to the magnetism of the soul.  And Pir-O-Murshid does make a difference there between the attunement of the heart and the attunement of the soul. 

If you can feel that difference, I think it is being shattered and overwhelmed in the depths of one's being.  A far deeper place than one's heart.  One can be shattered by the meaningfulness of life.  One can be shattered by discovering the inadequacy of one's thinking, the insufficiency of one's love.  Just considering life without any kind of intellectual judgement, but just a kind of a all encompassing grasp of, "What does life mean?  What is my life?  What is it?  What is all of this?"  Somehow, it is a thought that is shattering to the mind.  And so, we try to evade it, because we can't deal with it.  And, if we do, then we are shattered, and in that shattering, there is a... somehow out of that shattering comes an ecstasy, an ecstasy surfaces.  Ecstasy of the soul.

And here, it is very clear that it is God consciousness rather than individual consciousness that triggers off that power of the magnetism of the soul. (pause)

Perhaps some of you have experienced it in the course of a retreat, quite impromptu, unexpectedly.  You are walking afterwards, having done a practise, for example, the dhikr.  And somehow, you are moved by a great power.  And, it is not just the power of the body, you feel it in your body, but it's a different kind of power. (pause) Divine power.

And of course, it is always associated with ecstasy.  But, it is not the ecstasy of the heart.  It is the ecstasy of the soul.  Or, it's not the ecstasy of the body, or the mind, (pause)  It is..., imagine discovering what one glorifies as God, one imagines other than oneself.  Discovering that in one's own self. The word of Al Hallaj, who says, "there is not one tear between my eyelids, or a drop of blood in the cockles of my heart that is not conscious of thy presence."  So, there is no use just thinking that, well, of the meaning of the word God consciousness, that's still a concept.  As Pir-O-Murshid says, "It starts with a concept, and then there's the experience of God, and then there's identification with God". (pause)

It is like being touched by something magical that shatters one and transforms one totally so that one's whole way of walking, one's way of thinking, one's way of speaking, one's way of feeling is totally altered.  And, the requirement here, according to Pir-O-Murshid, is to be continually God conscious.  And, at the very instant that one ceases to be conscious of the divinity of one's being, that is what Pir-O-Murshid says, awakening to the divinity of one's being, then that power is lost.  One has other forms of magnetism which we have described, but this one is lost.

I hope you can feel it.  And, as I say, it is really of course, it's not being encapsulated in one's personal "I", but perhaps one could say, being aware that the whole universe is funnelled down in each fragment of itself, but that bounty is latent until one is aware of it.  So, this power is in some ways, related with awakening.

So, lets just examine the different steps in awakening. At the bottom, at the start, can you just shake yourself and be very, very alert, very alert.  Alert of being here and now.  The people in the room, your body, all the nitty gritty, but, very alert.  Not just half asleep, but really, very, very alert. (pause) And then, there is awakening of the mind.  You can be very, very concentrated in your thoughts instead of a little bit ambiguous and nebulous.  Clear. (pause)

And then, there's the awakening of the heart, for example, one suddenly realized how insensitive one was towards a person who was suffering.  How callous.  And I must say, the awakening of the heart is the awakening of conscience rather than consciousness, (pause) with the result that the heart is broken, but alive. (pause)  As Shams Tabriz says, "The man of God is a palace in a ruin."  (pause)

And now, we come to the awakening of the soul.  It's the awakening from the notion of the individuality.  That's what one means by God consciousness.  It's, well, at one end.  The other end is, if you can think of a surface, bipolar, so one pole is individual, the other is God, and it comes by not thinking of God as other, but as being the very pinnacle of your own being.  (pause)  Of course, I have seen that in Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan, continually God conscious, because it is all one being.  It is all one being.

So, now.  There are two words of Pir-O-Murshid, one is, one awakens a passion for the unattainable.  So, that means, somehow, there is an ecstasy that will always reach beyond one's limits.  Otherwise, one is encapsulated and constrained within the limits of one's individuality.  So, it is unending, the deathless state.  And, the counterpart is, I have come on earth in order to discover my spirit.  So, let us do that now.  Let us imagine that we have descended from a sort of eternal and perfect state in order to land on planet earth.  Now, that's a simplified way of looking at it, because if you look at if from the divine point of view, then you can understand that word of (Kalabadi), "As God exhales, or in the divine exhaling, God descends from the solitude of unknowing, in order to actuate the latent potentialities in his/her being.  And, the power that causes this descent into the existential state is Ishq Allah, which is the divine nostalgia.  

It's not love, it's the divine nostalgia.  It's kind of the ecstasy of discovering him/herself in all the various facets of him/herself.  In that which arises when one, for example, brings out that which is latent, for example, variations on a theme in music.  One is bringing out something that is already in the theme, but it adds something.  So, that God descends from the solitude of unknowing, moved by the Ishq Allah, the nostalgia to experience.  So, that is expressed in the metaphor of the souls who didn't want to incarnate.  And then, God asked the soul that refused to incarnate, and then God asked the angels to play their music.  So, it was music that caused them to want to descend, that means to experience that which is beyond sound, coming through sound.  Something is gained by it.  So, just think of that.  So, when one descends into the existential state in order to discover what one is, which one can't discover unless it is projected as the object, known.  So, there is an extrapolation between subject and object.

And, as God inhales, God draws the quintessence of that which has been experienced into the unity, so it's kind of an integration into, as I call it, the programming.  And, the power that makes this happen, is the nostalgia for freedom, instead of the nostalgia for experience or involvement.  And so, you can see those two things in your own self.  A nostalgia for experience, for involvement, for putting oneself on the line.  The need for the interface with other than oneself in order to find oneself with the price to pay, of course for the ...

side 2

...encounter and the enrichment of that encounter, but at the cost of pain and maybe agony.  And then, the longing for freedom.  Awakening becomes more and more intense, enhanced as one awakens, as one evolves, and one awakens.  At first, one isn't very much aware.  One thinks it's a need for freedom from circumstances.  And then, at a certain point, it is freedom from opinion, and then freedom from the notion of the personal self.  Freedom from conditioning, and ultimately freedom.  Those are the last words of my sister, Noor-un-Nisa, beaten to death.  And, her last words were, "Viva la liberte," hail to freedom.

So, you could do this, as you exhale, you think that your breath is a component of the divine breath, or the out breath of the whole universe, moving into the existential state.  So, that will justify, let's say, in your mind, your need to involve yourself with the people, to improve the comfort of our life, to enjoy the culture, and build, as I say, a beautiful world of beautiful people.

And then, can you see how this involvement does curtail your freedom, existentially, at all levels, opinions, emotion, at all levels?  There is a tendency to lose one's freedom.  Or, let's say, there is a very good chance that one should lose one's freedom by one's involvement. And then, can you see as you inhale, you give vent for your need for freedom?  And, can you see how, at first, we think that we want to be free from the circumstances of our lives?  And, that is why people leave the world in order to become ascetics.  And then, at a further stage of realization, one realizes that it is not the circumstances that curtail one's freedom, so one can be free in prison, for example.  Whereas, the vagabond is not free under the bridge.

And then, you can see how your mind, your thinking, your opinion curtails your freedom?  You are caught in a point of view, and so you can see that you can free yourself, if you have a very strong wish for freedom.  So, that is in yourself.  And then, freedom from your self image.  You see that it is very constraining, and misleading.  And then, even free yourself from the personal emotions, in order to be able to experience the ecstasy of the soul.  It has found itself in freedom.

Then, can you see that of course, it is not only our self image, but our sense of "I" which is a false assumption.  Because, if one doesn't see it as part of the totally, then it is alienated from its totality, then it is misleading.  So, this is the big fana, this is the crucial fana.

The dark night of the soul of St John of the Cross.

And then, the sudden outburst when one realizes that this notions of the ego self was masking whom one really is which is the divinity of the one and only being.  So, that marks a sudden breakthrough, an awakening, and the consequence is the magnetism of the soul.  So, you have to do that in the quiet of your retreat, in a meditation, make that quantum leap.  Go through the blackout, and then finally, because you can't reach it, it has to be revealed to your.  So, you are totally in the hands of the divine revelation.

That you cannot acquire.  So, instead of thinking of awakening, that is down playing a perspective and highlighting another.  At this point, the awakening is thrust upon you, you cannot reach it, you cannot hoist yourself on your bootstraps.

As I say, it is the action of the universe upon the individuality, rather than the action of the individuality upon the universe.

And so, can you feel that the ecstasy of that awakening.  It's not, at first it seems that.  Well, one is not aware of the physical world, or one's physical body, or the circumstances, or one's thoughts, or even one's personal emotion.  Well, that's a first step.

But, at this stage, it is really, you see, that is untying the balloon from its tether.  But, now the balloon has to soar, or lets itself soar upon the wings of ecstasy.

So, you need to give vent to your, of course, your nostalgia for freedom.  But also, a kind of impending bliss, which is restrained by one's personal emotions.

So, it means just giving vent to your bliss.  Follow your bliss, he said, follow your bliss. You will find it is like discovering a whole new freedom, endless freedom, boundless freedom.  So, don't let yourself be held back by whatever, custom, mind, whatever, just let yourself be drawn into that freedom, that ecstasy.

Be kind to your soul.

Pir-O-Murshid say's, "Loosen the ties."  So, he didn't say cut the ties.  Well, it's very close to that fetters of the balloon, they are really cut so that the balloon can soar.  But, maybe that is just an analogy.  You see, this is a perfunctory approach.  The more advanced one is to shlepp the lower self into the higher self in its ascent.  That is by transmutation and transfiguration.  So, instead of leaving your body and the earth behind, you are transmuting it in your being, because the existential world, well, even the physical world continues to live in your psyche, and that is where you can transmute it.  So, it's like becoming a perfume, where you thought you were a flower.

But, there is no doubt that it is your nostalgia for freedom that will trigger off that transmutation of your..., even in your bodiness.  It is almost like prefiguring life after life, which we call erroneously death.  Even at the body level, the electrons are transmuted into photons. So, you are carrying your existential being upwards in you flight.

I must admit that there is a point at which Belafron, I mean Pegasus cannot carry Belafron any further towards the Olympus.  But, Pegasus has imparted a momentum upon the body of Belafron.  So, there is a point at which this process of transmutation, this underpinning that has become a winged steed has reached, which is enlisting the feedback of the existential state into the programming.  That cannot go any further.  That's the Lahut stage. 

And now, the next step is the magnetism of the spirit, rather than the magnetism of the soul.  That's even more difficult to describe.

We are familiar with the word, the quickening of the spirit.  So, can you try to experience what that means, to be quickened. I think of, for example, have you ever blown upon a fire that was smoldering, or the ashes that were smoldering, and all of a sudden, it burst into a flame?  That would be something like the quickening of the spirit, by the power of breath.

So, it is experiencing yourself as pure spirit.  I mean, identifying yourself as pure spirit, instead of the soul. It's often described as lightening, vagra, lightening.  Like high voltage and not much wattage. And of course, lightening shatters, and brings about a quantum leap, a sudden change of state from one state to another.  It's uncompromising. One could say that it is the life of life.

So, this level of awakening is different from that of the soul, it is the oneness...  You see, at the soul level, you still have the unity in multiplicity, and the multiplicity in unity.  All the different qualities, for example, the archetypes.  But, at this level, there is no sense of multiplicity, therefor, there is no sense of the qualities.  There is no sense of the fragmentation of the one into the many.  To use that word, we say, "That person has a lot of spirit".  And we even use that word for spirits.  The quintessence.  The magical elixir of the alchemists. That's what Christ meant by the life of life.  Eternal life. And so, what you are doing, is communicating life,  Communicating eternal life.  Like we have the understanding about the light upon light in the Koran (Sharif?)  So, this is the light of intelligence upon the light of the aura.  So, this is the life of life cast upon life.

So, you see, we have come a long way from counselling people, working with minds, even working with the emotions.  Giving magnetism, that is, communicating life.  Now you are triggering the catalyst of life.  Or, you are triggering of life by the catalyst of life.  And, that is the holy sacrament.  And, Pir-O-Murshid says, "Those who cannot withstand it will be beyond themselves and exposed to the derision of the world.  And those who can drink of this nectar will be illuminated".  And, that is why Al Hallaj said, dying on the cross said, "I have been invited to the divine banquet, and God has offered me to drink from his chalice, and it is poison.  How can I refuse?"  So, that is the wine of the divine sacrament that will either destroy you, because one cannot contend with it, or then will transfigure you, or operate that quantum from the existential state into the state of eternity.

You will find that people are in search of that wine.  And then, they cannot..., they become drunken by it, they cannot digest it.  But, that is what people are longing for.  And so, you need to provide some kind of wine that people can digest, and meet out that wine according to what they can digest.  The wine of divine ecstasy.

God Bless you now.

AUG 23, 1997		Tape 11

music played, Pie Jesus  This was a fragment from Lloyd Webber's Requiem, sung by that little boy of twelve years old, I forget his name, Demetrius, I think.  And, he's singing Qui toris pecata Mundi, which means, Christ who is paying for the sins of the world.  And of course, that is the child in us that is defiled by our not Honoring the child in us.  So the child suffers.

I have been describing wazifas rather fast, because we had so little time, and the purpose of this meeting, was the training of representatives, coordinators, cherags and healing conductors, and zira'at, and even kinship.  And of course, for all of these activities, they have a particular attunement that we are seeking for in the Sufi Order is relevant.  But, I can imagine that you get a little bit confused and overwhelmed with all these practises, so today, I think we need to just, perhaps even choose less practises, but go more deeply into them.

The previous days, sometimes, I have said why I thought that it was pertinent to use, to prescribe a practise.  For example, when I said when people tend to be covert instead of overt, then it is good to balance turning within by learning how to express oneself, and trusting being able to give some expression to one's inner realization.  So, Batin, Zahir.

Batin, if you read the translation, it means the hidden, the veiled one, like the mother of the world is described as being veiled.  There's a very vulnerable, deep core of your being that you are vary of exposing to the derision, or the lack of holiness, the sacrilege of people.  And so, one is, to a certain extent, one is enshrouded by a veil.  Besides, I said when one is on retreat, if one is observing silence, then one gets in touch with one's, the deep soul searchings of the depths of one's mind, which one tries to articulate sometimes in one's words, and one feels an inadequacy of being able to express in words.  So, if you are silent, even if you are silent for a short time, then you are still thinking in terms of words.  If you have been observing silence for a long time, then you lose that tendency to interpret your implicit thoughts in words, and then at that time, you are much more aware of your deep thoughts.

So, that means that you have a veil, you are carrying a veil.  And, that is not only true with regard to thoughts, but also with regard to even the form of your subtle body, as compared with the form of your face for example, or your body, your physical body.  It's the template behind..., it's the secondary effect of the template, it's a mold, it's actuation.

So, for those who are looking at a person, there is, if one is able to look in depth, one can see that the expression coming through the face.  So, the sufis express that by saying that, that veil reveals and conceals at the same time.  So, the veil is concealing your real being, and on the other hand it exposes the form of that being.  Just like the veil of the Moslem lady exposes the form of her face.  That's why Farid'uddin Attar says, "Glory to the one who conceals himself by the same veil that reveals him, and reveals himself by the same veil that conceals him".  That means that somehow, we are called upon to express the inexpressible.  And, it can be at the cost of our life.  Like, Al Hallaj.  Or, to unveil the veiled, like the case of that Iranian poetess, who was very famous.  She was in a meeting of mullas, and she suddenly took away the veil from her face, and the mullas came and killed her right away.  

The unveiling of that which is hidden is at great risk.  And yet, it is answering a call.  And so, you are sometimes called upon to try to express the very depths of your being.  And consequently, you feel extremely vulnerable, and yet you have the courage to do it.  Or, that's what we are trying to do, is to learn to have the courage to do this.  And, that is because one is part of what is happening at the cosmic scale, and that is that the whole of the physical world is the manifestation, tajaliat, the manifestation of the non manifest.  So you have that in you.  The non manifest, which is trying to reveal, which calls upon itself to reveal itself, and so, unveil the veil, remove that veil.  That is of course, the eternal feminine, removing the veil, and that is felt very strongly in our time.  That is our sensitivity which tends to be undermined by authority, even in ourselves, our own authority.  And however, it's in the nature of life that it should be known.  It is that hidden treasure that desired to be known of Islam.  So, that word is Zahir.  Zahir is the lifting, or removal of the veil, and the absolute equivalent of that word, the Epiphany.  The day when the shepherds met the child Jesus, came to honor him, and to pay him homage.  So, it is the outburst of light.  The epi phanos.

So, let us do that.  So, as you inhale, think of the word batin, which means turning within, the seedbed of your personality, the seedbed of the whole of the existential state.  Like, the networks of roots that are submerged behind the water lilies at the surface.  So, you become very sensitive, and of course, you are aware of your fragility.  That's where you find your soul searchings, your nostalgia, the whole nostalgia of the, the divine nostalgia welling up from the depth of your being.

And the gift of creativity has the effect that you like to express it, and are afraid that you will betray the sacredness of it, and also you will express it inadequately.  So, there is a blockage there somewhere.  That's the veil.

And, you know that you cannot observe your thoughts from within, as one observes one's thoughts when one doesn't know how to meditate.  So, one is interfacing with one's thoughts, and you call it introspection.  No, when you go into the depth, when you peer into the depth, then you lose any sense of being the observer, because, the observer distorts the observed.

And when you do that, you find that you can't really distinguish thoughts, well actually, thinking, because there is no such thing as thoughts.  Thoughts are the fragmentation of thinking.  The thinking is the reality behind the thoughts.  But, you'll find that there's a silver lining to your thinking, and that is emotion.  And, when you turn within, you can't distinguish the two.

So, on one hand, you are veiled, that is, you know the veil has some transparency so it's not like a complete barrier.  You are veiled from outside, but from inside, you are absolutely open so that the whole of the universe is welling up in you.  Like the ocean is welling up in a wave.  And, it is a very deep emotion.  It's nostalgia.  That is what is meant by Ishq Allah.  Deep nostalgia.  And, one doesn't know how to interpret it in words. It's impersonal, it's personal, there is no way.  But it's very impelling.

So, this is what some psychotherapists are talking about when they say a lot of people have difficulty in getting in touch with their feelings.  It's not just the personal feelings, it's something much deeper.

So, because there is some containment by the veil, you can turn away from the veil in the opposite direction, and reach within. You can even think of your personality as the trunk of a tree with all the branches and leaves and fruit.  And now, you are getting right down into the roots.  And, as Murshid says, "One comes to the state in which one can see in the roots.  One can, how can I say, aspire in the roots.  And already, the trunk and the branches and the leaves and the flowers and the fruit is all kind of impending within the roots. The seed.

Now, perhaps it will dispense a kind of power in it.  You know the way that the seed begins to open up and unfurl, and become a plant.  It's a kind of force within the root, the bulb of a tulip for example.  To manifest. So, then you alternate between inhaling and exhaling, and as you exhale, then you think of the word Zahir, the outburst of light of course, it's all really outbursts of reality manifesting in a tangible way. It's a kind of release of that impending energy.  As the sufis say, "From release from the solitude of unknowing, the hidden treasure that desired to be known."

So, the practises that we do with our aura are helpful to give expression to Zahir, to that need for the Epiphany.  But of course, this is in the form of light. Now, there are many other ways of giving expression to this veiled reality.  For example, the expression behind your face comes through as your countenance.  So, it's not the form, but somehow, because it doesn't have a boundary, but it is still a configuration, and it still does come through.  "That which transpires behind that which appears."  That's Zahir.  "That which transpires behind that which appears."

And of course, it works in all ways, every way, for example, emotion, the ability to express emotion.  Especially the emotion of the soul, rather than the emotion of the heart.

Now, what comes through is bountiful.  The sufis then draw attention to, for example Majid, which is the splendor that is coming through Jamil, which is beauty.  Or, coming through Khabir, which is, after Majid coming through Khabir which is like the greatness.  Well, we sometimes (associate) it by majesty.  Let's say the splendor that manifests as majesty.  And the first one is the splendor that manifests as beauty.

So, these are words.  But, I wonder whether you could just see that the splendor that has been defiled, tarnished in the world.  You could think of, for example the world as a flower that has been tarnished.  So, it's still a flower, but if you look at it from the point of view of how it appears, it looks tarnished.  But, if you see the reality behind it, then that can never be tarnished.  It's rather paradoxical.  But, you see, it's the ability to see splendor where normally one wouldn't see it.  Splendor transpiring, as I said.  For example, there's a poem.  I think it's Verlaine who talks about two prisoners.  He was in prison, you see.  And, he say's, "One sees the stars, and the other the bars".  So, if we see the bars, we can't see the stars.

So, that's looking out.  But, now we want to do the same thing inside, to realize that there is splendor covered by the defilement, the tarnishing in the surface, but it does not take away the splendor in your being.  And, that this splendor does transpire through the veil.  It's like the form of the face of the Islamic women, the veil exposes the configuration of the face of the Islamic woman.

And, for the sufis, it's a kind of a mission that we have to manifest the non manifest.  That's the purpose of life.  That means to help the splendor within to manifest externally in whatever way it is able to transpire.  I would say through a smile.  The smiling forehead.

Because, the stress in our faces is expressive of our disappointment in life, or disappointment in ourselves.  And consequently, our looking at things from the individual dimension of one's being, and not acknowledging the divinity of our being.  And it's also, of course, suffering, self pity, or of course, suffering for the suffering of other people.  But, not recognizing that one can be full of joy while suffering.  And, well, I think of my sister all of the time.  My sister Noor, and if I'm in my individual consciousness, there's a scene of horror where she's exposed through the night, in chains, in the concentration camp.  And then, I see that I can't find her if I think of that.  But, I can find her, as she is now, in the meditation that we had this morning, because that is where she is.  So, it's just the ability to see, for example, the bliss of Christ on the cross.  It's beyond our understanding.  And, that's the only way to smile, and therefore to give vent to the splendor in one's being.

I remember a statue of a Chinese monk or ascetic in the museum in San Francisco.  And, he is transported.  He's transported.  His whole face is an expression, like, he is looking into heaven.  That's what one means by the smiling forehead.

So, you can use a wazifa, Majid and Jamil.  But, the wazifa itself won't do it for you, it's just that it's a label which is supposed to act as a catalyst to trigger off what it means which is an attunement, rather than a mind trip.  It means doing it yourself, like, letting yourself give expression to the joy in you, not withstanding the pain.  It's a kind of victory.  Otherwise, you couldn't do it, you could never do it, because that's what is holding you back.

And, I think that this division between Jamil and Majid, between beauty and majesty is a little bit artificial.  Men are supposed to be majestic and women are supposed to be beautiful.  I think that, that is, sort of, an old fashion way of looking at things.  So, there is beauty in majesty, and there is dignity in beauty.  (pause)

Maybe we should use the word dignity, which is ...

side 2

... So, you see how one wazifa leads to another.  You could even go further.  And, it would be Ya Mu'iz, which is to be honorable, or to be honored, rather than Mudsill, which means to be dishonored.  So, one sees how it is all connected with manifesting the splendor. (pause)

Now, let us make a further step, and consider another two wazifas, waziif.  One is Ya Azim, and the other is Ya Ali.  Which are the waziif that are used in the Moslem prayers.  (Subban Allah Rabb Allah Azim.  Subban Allah Rab Allah?). So, Azim is like the magnificat, and Allah, or Ali is the Gloria.  So, the first one is the cosmic dimension of ecstasy and of glorification.  So, it's bountiful, it's wide, it gives a sense of immensity.  And of course, in some ways associated with our sense of space, immensity of space, infinity of space.  Azim.  Endless.

And, Ya Allah, or Ali, is the transcendental dimension.  It's always higher, always higher, in infinite regress.  That's why it's a passion for the unattainable.  It means God most high, you see, instead of all encompassing, bountiful, it's another dimension, you see. (pause) And, it is that thought which helps us to shift our sense of identity, and also the focus of our consciousness from the basic existential state into, well, into, ultimately the state of oneness, Hahut, the state of oneness beyond multiplicity.  It is what is experienced in samadhi.

So, see if we can do that now. (pause)

You see, Azim is, it starts by, let's say, as one says, never ceasing to be amazed you see, like, bewondering, like, you know, to start with, just looking at a flower, looking at a crystal, dawn in the mountains, or the storm, the lightening, the thunder.  One never ceases to be amazed by the extraordinary majesty and beauty that comes through where ever we look.  Looking into the eyes of a baby with beautiful light.  That miracles do happen.  Unbelievable.  The scientists say the same thing.  They say they never cease to be amazed by the elegance with which the whole programming is made.  Not just the intelligence.  So, it's just something that has to do with your emotion, instead of your mind. In fact, at the level of the mind, Ab'dul (Kamilajai?), says, he calls it the consternation of the mind.  Because, it's beyond anything the mind could ever encompass, I mean grasp.  It's shattering and fulfilling. (pause)

And, if you go about in the streets, in ice cream parlors, you find that people are kind of low key.  There is a kind of gravity pull upon our attunement which is due to, of course, being encapsulated in one's personal ego consciousness, or self image.  And, I would say more generally, being of the world.  There is a difference between being in the world and of the world.  I think that is really the break through in one's realization.  In the words of Christ, "They are in the world, but not of the world."  Whereas, the sanyasins in India are not in the world and not of the world.  But, now, Christ's message was being in the world, but not being of the world.  It's a different.  Seeking another kingdom, that kingdom is right there in the world.  But, one has to see it. (pause)

And so, the values, the sacredness of that kingdom is continually flashing through the experience of the world.  It comes through in a great work of art, in a cathedral, in a piece of music.  It comes in a heroic gesture.  It's continually trying to make itself known thus.  And, if we pick it up, then we are high.  Not low key but high. (pause)

It's very boring to be low key.  It's counterproductive. (pause) And you can see that a lot of people are bored. (laughter). So, the dervishes say, "Come and drink wine with us".  They mean of course, the wine of the divine ecstasy.  Guaranteed you won't be bored if you come and drink that wine.  It's participating in something very, very excellent, most excellent. (pause)

So, as we saw this morning, there are different levels of ecstasy.  There's even the ecstasy of the body.  There is an ecstasy of the mind, and so on, of the heart, the soul.  So, it requires a lot of discernment on your part.  Just saying Ya Allah, or Ya Ali will not do it, but you have to shirt your identity.  And, if you think that I'm not of the world, then that will help you to shift your identity.  If you think "I'm a visitor on the planet, a tourist on planet earth.  I don't really belong here, but having come here, I am able to incorporate some of the fabric of the planet, and transmute it so that I will come back enriched by the experience of the planet.  That sense of really finding yourself, seeing yourself in a kind of overview, instead of being right down into your personal consciousness.  Like, walking in the streets of a town, you haven't seen, you don't know the lie of the land, if you are walking the streets.  You'd have to fly in a helicopter.  So, the ecstasy of flying, of hang gliding.  The ecstasy of a space walk.  Can you imagine?  A space walk?  We see it, but do we know what is the ecstasy of those astronauts in the space walk, looking down on that planet?

I remember the first astronaut, American astronaut who landed on the moon.  He gave us a seiner at Omega Institute, and he tried to let us feel what he felt when he was hurtling down, back to planet earth, and thinking, well, looking forward to get back home again, but on the other hand, he was so afraid that he might lose what he calls his cosmic consciousness.  And, that's why Pir-O-Murshid says, what we are trying to do is to walk on the earth, but not forget who we are. (pause)


That gives ecstasy. Imagine the denizen from another planet, if there is such a thing, extraterrestrial beings landing on planet earth and thinking, those are rather strange people here.  It's funny, they have no idea what it is like on my planet. 

So, think of yourself as a visitor on planet earth.  And then, if you do that, then you remember, you recollect.  If you think that you are a denizen of the earth, then of course, you have lost your memory.  But then, that memory is recovered.  You remember a celestial condition.  So, it's not just wishful thinking.  You see it sometimes coming through on the earth, but you say, well this is where I belong.  I'm in exile, but still I bring something of the heavens down with me if I remember, otherwise I don't, otherwise I will get totally immersed on the earth.  So, that's a kind of thinking, because, as I say, you can't hoist yourself upwards.  So, it's rather the other way around.  It's like the higher levels of your being awakening, and throwing the light on the lower elements of your being.  That's the meaning of Ya Allah, Ya Ali.

There's a word of Nifari who says, "You think of God as being the other side of the veil, but what if you were the other side of the veil, and you were looking at yourself? So, instead of thinking God most high, you might think, the physical world most low, as seen from on high.  It's just another perspective.  For example, when Rabia al-Adwaiyya says, "I'm eating the bread of this world, and doing the work of that world", I can see her saying, "I'm eating the bread of that world, and doing the work of this world".  Because, if she is saying, this world, then she id identifying with this world, and she isn't identifying with this world.  I even wonder whether those words were taken down properly. (pause)

So, it's a rather strange thing, but you can hoist yourself up by looking down.  (pause)  And, you can't hoist yourself up by trying to reach up. (pause)

Now, there's a, sometimes, some of these wazifas, the wazifas are superlatives anyway, but sometimes, one adds a Mu before a wazifa.  For example, Muta Khabir, for example, or Muta Ali.  Or, Muqadam.  So, that's a superlative.  So, it means like, beyond the beyond.  Beyond whatever one values, and could ascribe to that word.  So, it means, let's say, instead of God high, it means God most high.  And, there is no end.  So, that's the meaning of Muta.  Or, Muta Khabir means, endlessly great.  Endlessly great.  So well, these are words.  Right, but now, can you experience in yourself, like, you know, you could consider the growth of the human being from the developmental stages.  Let's say, from babyhood, childhood, and so on, to maturity as becoming greater and greater, instead of being puny.  Becoming great.  The word is Buzurg.  Great. 

So, you know what I mean.  Perhaps on TV, or perhaps even in the street, in some way, you come across someone you think, ya, that's a great being.  Their stature of that being is great.  We use the word great in America all the time.  It's a great, what ever it is.  A great cake. (laugher)  But, it's, I mean, really what great means.  So, it's maturity.  Like you imagine Abraham, a great being.

And so, you could think that we are evolving towards that.  Towards becoming, as we get more mature, becoming more and more great beings.  And, For example, if you want to choose a President, well there are several factors, I don't want to enter into politics, but, let's say, well, as, say for example, when a herd of elephants want to choose their leader, they choose a greater... (laughter)  So, that's how maturity is leading towards that sense of greatness.  You don't want to have a wimp as a leader.

So, that's greatness.

So, there's a kind of unwritten view in Sufism.  And, that is that it is God who is becoming as us what he is, on the way of becoming.  God is becoming as us what he is on the way of becoming.  So, a kind of anticipation of how we could be if we would be what we could be.  That's our view, like, how could I be what I could be if I would be as I might be.  That's my view, you see.   It's a vision, you see, of anticipation, a prefiguring of the future.  But then, from the Sufi point of view, it is how God would be, if he could be, as he might be through us, as us.  Not through us, as us.  Because, if you say, La Illaha, that means it is all one.  So, you can't say God in us, but God as us. 

It's a vision, an anticipated vision.  And as you know, the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past.  So, that is the meaning of D'hul Jelal W'hal Ikram.  D'hul means the Lord.  D'zul Jelal, means of might, well, of majesty I think.  And Ikram, excellence.  The pursuit of excellence.  And of course, the early predecessors never thought of women of course, it only applied to men.  So, then I had to bring in, Hanun Jamil W'hal Ikram, which means the queen of, well, Jamil, beauty.  But, as I say, that doesn't mean what one generally understands by beauty, but let's say dignity, nobility.  And Ikram, that means excellence.  To excel means always to, it's always greater, always more wonderful.  It's again a superlative. 

So, this corresponds to that view expressed by Ib'n Arabi, when he said, "God discovers himself in the very form, through the very form through which he reveals himself to us".  Yes, in the very form in which we discover him through the way that he reveals himself to us.  We discover himself as us, through, in a form through which he reveals himself to us.  So there is reciprocity on both sides.  And, that's the only way in which you can understand Sufism.  It's always bipolar, the permutation of the two terms, Man and God if you like, one and infinity.  So that your vision of your growth, of how you could be, is really God's vision of how he is becoming in the course of evolution.  God dynamic instead of static.  And, that lures you forward, and makes for the advance and the developmental stages towards an objective that is like the horizon, it advances in infinite regress as you advance towards it. 

So, you see that Ya Azim and Ya Ali, they are two dimensions, latitudinal and longitudinal, which will lead towards something very concrete, something that is how you as a person unfolds.  And, you could never promote your unfoldment by trying to wish to promote your unfoldment.  Perhaps you would become a despot.  Yes, of course, you'd be on an ego trip.  But, we are thinking of those values of excellence that you find in Melchizedek, for example.  Melchizedek, instead of Abraham represents that ultimate value that is sacredness rather than power. 

Now, that word Quddus, does represent sacredness, while it represents also spirit.  It is the same word as Quddosh in the Hebrew language.  Quddosh, and Sanctus.  Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus in the Mass.  The holiness.

Ok, God Bless you now.

music played Pie Jesus

AUG 30, 1997		Tape 01

We have the privilege of being able to share in the attunement and perhaps even the  realization of those hermits who have found themselves in the solitude and the peace of  the forest. So we are trying to create conditions which are favorable to your being able to  make a sabbatical from your humdrum life with all its stress and, excitement, and  disappointments and sadness and joy into a state which a condition that would favor the  unfurling of your potentialities, the ability to look at your life with a certain detachment so  that you are able to see what are the issues being enacted by the situations instead of just  assessing the situations by yourself one's personal vantage point. Therefore there is quite a  lot of work to do. I would say that, I think of a retreat as really a rehearsal for life rather  than retiring from life. Take advantage of this unique opportunity to call a halt in your life,  so that you are, does they say in France "reculler pour me sauter" that means that you  step back in order to be able launch forward better than ever before. So sometimes there is  a point in turning a page in one's life in make a real break from one condition to another.  

You can consider meditation as then the art of developing skills in order to do what I think  we all want to do, that is we want to improve. I mean if you are a carpenter, you want to  make better whatever you do, you want to make it better, if you are a cabinetmaker, you  want to make better furniture, or whatever if you are a violinist you want to play Bach  better and so on. And so it is with us human beings, we spend so much time in building the  underpinning of our lives the support system, that we have very little time to fulfill the  longing of our soul. It's like, imagine that you would be spending so much money and so  much time and putting in so much energy into building the base camp of a Himalayan  expedition that there's not enough energy to reach the top. And that's what it was all for.  That's why of course Christ said, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and God what  belong to God. So now you have three, I think it's three hundred and, I don't know,  maybe 325, maybe 330 days in the year to give to Caesar and three days to God. Or two  days and one half. The clue is to find in yourself that which Christ mentions when he said  they are in the world but not of the world. 

That is, the clue is to find, actually the what in  India ones calls the sannyasin, the acetic that is the person who is not the householder but  is in quest of what Pir-o-Murshid, my father calls the unattainable I say that precious jewel  at the top of the mountain, the edelweiss. It's maybe a force beyond life or maybe it is life  of life. If you look at the evolution of plants for example, you'll see that of course they  simply recycle themselves. And the only way they in which they can evolve is to mutate  that's to bring about a change. And that's what we're trying to do, we are trying to bring  in an element different from the kind of commonplace factors that we encounter in our  daily lives And it is very difficult to talk about, because it's not rational. It's, in fact I think  in the course of this retreat what we are going to discover that the ordinary logic of our  minds stands in the way of our understanding what our soul is really seeking for, longing  for. 

So we are going to work at several levels of our being at the same time. And I think at  this point it is good to point out what we have in mind because these days are going to  pass very quickly. So I think we need to see our objective right from the start.     So let's us, just, you know I don't, I believe in experience rather than metaphysical  thought so why don't you just watch your breath, because if you watch your breath it will  slow down, and pay particular attention to your exhaling. See if you can extend your  exhaling. And then you inhale without effort, and of course if you do this you will find that  you will be evacuating a lot of polluted gases in your lungs and therefore pollution in your  body and you'll be able to avail yourself of more oxygen than you would ordinarily. You  don't have to try to draw oxygen as you inhale because the body will look after that. What  you have to do is squeeze the polluted gases out of your lungs so first of all contract your  abdomen and then your chest, and then as you inhale dilate your abdomen and then your  chest. 

Which is rather strange because as one inhales one is drawing energy towards  oneself, as one exhales one is exuding polluted energy so it seems the other way around.  And the fact is, the reason that I am starting with breath, is because our breath is like a  metronome or rather the rhythm of our breath is like a metronome gives us a sense of the  passage of time. And most of our lives we are reacting that is we are living at a rather fast  rate a catabolic state with a lot of expenditure of energy and when we are in if we slow  down our breath we are in the anabolic state and consequently we are able to rebuild our  energy rather than being caught in this circular rhythm which gets faster and faster. This is  also going to affect our thinking because we tend to react rather than act. There's a built-in strategy of the ego that short circuits the brain, at least the brain doesn't function  holographically, I mean holistically anymore, like for example if you cross the road, there's  a car, then your whole brain doesn't need to be fired, but when it comes to decisions  concerning your whole life, then of course that holistic activities of the brain are fired.  

And so for that one needs to place some buffer between the challenge of the world and  one's real self . That is one's real self includes not only one's personality but the seed of  one's personality that is like the latent potentialities that are lying in wait waiting to come  through in our personality. So if you place a buffer between the challenge of the world and  yourself, then those potentialities are beginning be able to take over so to give you the  wherewith all to deal with the challenges beyond the limits of the reactive process. So  what we want to do is to, see the firs that will happen when you try to meditate is that  you'll start thinking about your problems, your situations, your concerns. So I think that's  where meditation starts and we have to and I think it's good to deal with it first So in what  one calls real life situations, one is right in the middle of it all, one is, one can't see the  wood for the trees, or if you are walking in the streets of New York, for example, you  cannot see the lay of the land you would have to fly in a helicopter. So that is the usual  situation in which we are. 

And therefore it is good sometimes to be able to look at things  with a certain perspective and the consequence is that you need to withdraw your notion  of yourself from midst of, being intermeshed with the circumstances so that you are able  to see the circumstances a little bit more clearly. And this is particularly true of emotional  involvement. So the secret of doing that is to surround yourself with a zone of silence.  These are the words of Buddha. Imagine Buddha, sitting, as a matter of fact sitting in the  middle of the storm. where he sat, in fact everything was peaceful because in fact, at least  figuratively he was sitting in the center of the vortex which is a vacuum. Anyways this is a  metaphor. I think that everywhere there are demands upon your person. And if you are a  responsible person then you need to take responsibility, take charge of situations as best  you can, according to the best of your judgement. And now you can question that  judgement and think "Well, if I am right in the middle of it all, then perhaps I can't see  the wood for the trees, maybe I have to just look at things as in a helicopter for example,  with a certain sort of detachment". And therefore that zone of silence is going to give you  some freedom in your thinking, from the, coercion, actually, it is really the coercion  exercised by our assessment of our problems. 

You see, we are convinced our problems are  the way we think they are. According to Yoga, they are not what we think they are.  According to Sufis, we maybe entertaining a perfunctory assessment which has some  validity but is only which only represents a vantage point. ..problem, if you looked at it  from several vantage points, you would understand it better. For example, if you look at  Notre Dame from one vantage point, you have not seen Notre Dame. So a kind of  caution, about being as convinced as we normally are about our problems, and that means,  as Buddha calls, freedom from opinion. Freedom from opinion is freedom from the  personal vantage point. Because you understand that we are looking at our problems from  our personal bias that is what they mean to you. And so of course, one's assessment is  limited by that particular bias. Now supposing that you look at the problem form the point  of other people who are involved in that problem with you. Supposing that you have a  problem with a particular person. And you got into the consciousness of that person,  which is very possible, you can really transfer your consciousness into that of another  person. Imagine what it's like to be that person, and now you understand better the way of  handling that problem that involves both of you. 

Whereas before, you had just considered  it from your vantage point. And now there is a third party, and a fourth, and so on, and  more and more people are involved, because in fact what we think is our problem is really  our sharing in the drama of the cosmos. There is no boundary to our problems. It's like a  wave in the sea. There is boundary between the wave in the sea. And so you see, right  from the start, you see how we get caught up in our, first of all our assessment of our  situations, not necessarily problems, but our situations, and perhaps you will have noticed  that you are thwarted in your need for freedom. Have you noticed that you are being   pulled in two opposite directions, one is the wish to involve oneself with people,  circumstances, achieve, gain mastery, and so on, improve one's the comfort in which one  is living and so on, takes responsibility. And on the other hand, there is such a need for  freedom.And at first we think, " well, if only I did not have these problems it would be  wonderful, be free and intact". 

That's the kind of thinking that has determined quite a  number of people to leave the world and become ascetics, nuns, monks. Whereas one can  find freedom in involvement because the, that which limits the constraint upon our  freedom is in our thinking. So you can be in prison in outer circumstances, and free inside  or you could be free outside and imprisoned in your mind.And I think the prison in our  mind, at least one of the aspects of that prison is being convinced that our problems are  the way we think they are. And perhaps the worse prison is our being convinced that we  are the person that we think we are, that is our self-image, that is the most constraining  prison. So our objective then in meditation is what is called awakening which is  downplaying a perspective in order to highlight another one. Downplaying that is not, is  not dismissing. Downplaying is simply, just like in a hologram, if you have two pictures,  for example, superimposed you can highlight one picture and the only way to highlight one  picture is to downplay the other one. 

You could toggle between the two. It would take a  very advanced mind to be able to extrapolate between the two. That's of course our  ultimate objective. We have to work step by step. So the only way to downplay a  representation whether it' a set of circumstances or your self-image is to question it. And  that does not mean to dismiss it. That just means to downplay it as I say. For example, if  you are sitting meditating, all kinds of random thoughts are going to surface in you mind  And there is no use in trying to fight them you are fighting a losing battle unless you  develop the kind of mastery of a. sannyasin or a rishi in the Himalayas, you can't do it, you  can't expect to do it. But you can think, " well ,these thoughts are functioning at the edge  of my psyche. There is a kind of overlap between the environment, the psychological  environment, and my own psyche. There is an overlap. At the jagged ends of my psyche,  the psychological environment is present, and at the same time my own being is present.  You know like, for example, you think of a person well, people are present in our own  psyche, they are not just out there. 

Sometimes if we concentrate very much on a person,  we start talking as them or thinking as they do. So there is an osmosis between the  psychological environment, even of course the physical environment, but that  psychological environment and our own psyche. That is a rather grey area that is not very  clearly defined, as I say there is an overlap. And since normally in our daily life our  consciousness is perceiving the physical world and our psyche is interpreting  circumstances, and consequently, so our consciousness is turned outside. And therefore  when we start meditating, our consciousness is again turned, maybe not outside the  physical world, but outside, towards the physical world, but towards the way the physical  world continues to live in own's psyche. And it's redundant, it keeps on turning in circles,  and these thoughts represent the way that the way the psyche is trying to digest the  environment. Cause we are always, it's just like food, we are always enriching ourselves  by our interface with the environment. Now supposing you, you thought to yourself, "I am  playing a role in life. 

And I am wearing a mask". Think, for example, that your face is a  mask . And if you look in the mirror you identify with it. But it's just a mask. And that's  not your real being. Something of your real being transpires though it but it's, it's the most  deceptive of all, it is due to our reaction to one the most deceptive, cheapest of all  feedback systems which is the mirror. So just think, well, my real being is hidden behind  the mask and I am role-playing. And normally I do not really know my real being because  I am identifying with the mask. And I am identifying with the role playing. The role that I  am playing, I am acting as whatever doctor or carpenter or business person or father or  mother or sister or brother or daughter or son and so on. Whatever that one is playing the  role. And behind that is my real being. And my real being is somehow masked by my  identification with the role that I am playing. And then regarding thoughts, just consider  that we are continually called upon to articulate what we mean. 

We are using words that  communicate something of what we imply but not all that we imply. In fact we have to  count upon people to know what we mean by what we say because we imply a lot of  things. For example, if one says my grandfather is an irate person one is implying that  people understand what it could be like to be an old person or what it is like to be irate.  So there are implications. Now the beauty of being in silence, is that you don't have to.....    

SIDE 2    try to articulate what you imply and consequently you can get in touch with your deeper  thoughts and deeper emotions. And that is particularly true with emotions. Like our  mastery or the way that life is calling upon our mastery. And if we don't use mastery we  are dropouts out of life. It is almost compelling, life forces us to, it demands us such that  we need to exercise mastery of our emotions. And the consequences are that we are not  aware of our emotions because we are suppressing them and sometimes at one point they  may erupt in real crisis situations, and breakdown our psyche because we had not  previously owned our emotions. And now you notice that a whole variety of emotions  that, starting from the more primitive ones. For example, when we feel that we have been  abused or badly treated unfairly treated or let down, now in the primitive state the animal  simply gives vent to his/her anger and hits back. 

And that gives a certain satisfaction to the  ego that it was able to defend itself by reacting. Now as we evolve our societies do not  allow ourselves to react violently. One gets had-up for the law. And of course by reacting  violently one is causing pain to not just one person but a lot of people that is the cause of  wars. Consequently we are frustrated and there are a lot of hurt feelings that we entertain  we are stoic which is what life acts us to be we don't recognize that pain. Now this is what  of course psychologists are telling you. Now recognizing that pain is, well I would say, is  a perfunctory solution. It does not get us very far therapy.. There are kinds of emotions in  you need for beauty of music beautiful people, house needs to be beautiful. We aren't  totally aware that we it gives us an aesthetic satisfaction to deal with an ugly situation  beautifully. As people might act in a despicable way but if we can act in a beautiful way  then it will give vent nostalgia for beauty. An then there is emotions that you could classify   more excellent nature. For example, use that word impersonal emotions. unconditioned  love that would be cosmic emotion instead of personal emotion. 

That means its a word of  course unless we see how it applies in our lives. For example it would mean child, if you  tell a child that "If you are not here I won't love you" that's not unconditional love. So  that unconditional love would like be loving a person that makes themselves unlovable.  And that's a challenge and that kind of emotion extends beyond the personal, an  impersonal emotion. And it has enormous consequences because, as I said, in order to  evolve, I have not actually said that as yet, in order to evolve not to keep on turning in  circles, like the samsaric wheel, Buddha. It needs to incorporate elements beyond its  circular motion, its cosmic, the word used by Buddhists is extra-samsaric. That is beyond  the hum-drum repetitive process. That's the only way that you can evolve. And by  evolving you will incorporate qualities in your being that are lying in wait and which can  only come through if you are prepared to incorporate elements in your being that have not  so far materialized in your personality. 

Otherwise you would be the same, and not only  would you be the same but unless one improves one deteriorates. And I see that around  me.When gets caught in the rat race, there's a battle of egos, one gets caught in that  battle. It very difficult to love one's enemy. And yet fight one's enemy. Those are the ?? of  the knights. So you see that our unfoldment is somehow related with our having problems.  And our readiness to invite impersonal or transpersonal elements in one's being, instead of  being encapsulated in one's self-image or assessment of one's situation in life. And that's  what spirituality is about.     So the very powerful attractor, let's say that frees our attention from the samsaric wheel  the receptiveness, like you know, not improving, always doing the same old thing, reacting,  is what my father, Pir-o-Murshid, calls a "passion for the unattainable". 

We are somehow  invested with an ability to reach beyond limitation. For example, even our mind is able to  imagine a greater number than the largest number that we have imagined so far or further  locations in space than the furthest that we could ever imagine or further time in history  the most farthest we can imagine, the future, and so on. So, and we are able to imagine a  greater perfection than for example a quality, how this quality would be if it were more  perfect, for example, we have compassion, a certain measure of compassion, but there are  limits to our compassion and therefore we like to ascribe to God, for example, perfect  compassion, and that is a feature of our thinking that is always able to imagine something  beyond what we have imagined so far. And this kind of ability lures us beyond the limits of  our person and makes for an illusion. The beauty of that word, the "passion of the  unattainable", "unattainable" is because we can never put it in our pocket. We can never  say "I'm illuminated" or we can never say that we've got it. It's like the horizon: the  further that you advance, the further the horizon advances. 

It's the lure of the  transpersonal. Now, that would account for the word God. We have concepts we try to  imagine what we mean. If we say God what do we mean by it? And our representation of  God are a far cry from what we are really trying to say, but we don't know how to  describe it, so we project upon God, actually our own qualities but in a superlative way.  Like what would be, imagine a being whose compassion is unending and whose power is  not cannot be limited, and so forth. Which is very good because in so doing, in order to  project qualities we are aware in our own personality, upon God as we imagine in his/her  perfection, then we are calling these qualities from the seedbed of our personality and  making them more real in our personality. So it's, prayer is a very powerful way of being  creative. So now as you see, if you have two poles the personal and the impersonal or  what one calls the divine pole, then you have a dynamic situation which you can, it's much  more, it's much richer than if you just have one pole, if you just think of yourself as being  that pole and you try to expand that pole, for example, expand yourself, try to improve  yourself, it doesn't work. For example, think about the action of the universe acting upon  each fragment of itself. 

Now that will give you further dimensions in your thinking then if  you just thought, "I wish to improve myself". You bring in the antipodal pole of your  own being which has some impact on what upon what we think of ourselves as being a  fragment of the totality. In fact, we are, in the holistic paradigm, every fragment carries  within it the totality, potentially. And that accounts for the accent in Sufism on God. And I  must point out here that we are making a retreat in the framework of Sufism or in the  perspective of Sufism so perhaps it's necessary right in the beginning to understand what  we mean by this because Sufism does present a surprising paradigm for those who are not  used to thinking as the dervishes do. Because I think that a lot of us have been brought up  with some kind of religious background or then atheist background so that this whole  religious belief system is questioned. As humanity advances, we are much more free  thinkers and we don't like to be told what we are supposed to believe. And I think there is  rebellion in our mind against that dogma according to which you think of God up there as  the reality which is, an intangible reality and the human being ourselves down here,  miserable worms, that's the kind of, those are the words used by one of the religious  authorities of the Catholic church. 

They don't say that anymore but, so it's like a dualistic  way of thinking, God and man, and I must say that Sufism does, has emerged within the  context, let's say, of Islam, which is where there is an affirmation of unity, it's all one. So  you can't say anymore, God up there and me down here. That's a dualistic way of  thinking. And the same thing is true of Vedanta as opposed to ..?. yoga there's duality,  but in vedanta, it's all one, you know. And that being so, then we need to think of  ourselves, for example, as a pyramid. There are two ways of doing it. One way is  imagining that all these pyramids have a common pinnacle, our pinnacle is in common and  we, of course, you could think the other way around, you could think that we have a  common base and our pinnacles are separate. Whatever you think, it doesn't matter, it's  just that, there's no way show this in a proper illustration. Just think that at one pole of  your being you are the totality and the other pole of your being you are a unique person, a  discrete person. That is the totality has fragmented itself and yet within each fragment the  totality is present, potentially, but the beauty of this fragmentation is that out of this  totality there is a large variety of expressions that are unique in their way. 

And so, one  needs to be able to reconcile the irreconcilable which is, represents a more advanced  thinking, or mode of thinking, from the usual mode of thinking. And you'll find that if you  are seeking to awaken, that is to reach greater realization, your ordinary mode of thinking  will prove to be an obstacle. Physicists are saying that now that the only obstacle in the  advance of science is in our way of thinking, we have to learn new modes of thinking, and  one of them is reconciling the irreconcilables, is accepting, as Ibn Arabi says that we are  God and that we are not God. So that is a very challenging way of thinking, but of course  if you are able to become aware of that what the Sufis call the divinity of your being,  together with your humanness, that's reconciling the irreconcilable. Then it will give you  an element in your self-image, a dimension in your self-image, a transpersonal dimension,  that will enlist your self-esteem, and you know that that is where we are most precarious,  in our self-esteem, the most vulnerable, and if our self-esteem is based, which is most of  the time true, if our self-esteem is based on our self-image then you can understand that it  is totally inadequate because our self-image is not reliable, it's just a notion we that make  of ourselves. 

It's not what we are, it's what we think we are. And that is the crux of the  whole question. In a retreat, the critical issue is being able to grasp who you really are and  consequently question your self-image because its your self image which is going to hold  you back. Now we are cutting into the crucial issue and that is that if we look upon  ourselves and look upon other people we become judgmental, of course, that is if we are  really honest with ourselves. There are aspects of ourselves that we denigrate and maybe  aspects of ourselves that we lord, but if we are very honest, there are maybe more aspects  that we denigrate. If we are really honest. So I hope you are doing that while I am talking.  Now the consequence is that we feel that we have been defiled, by our guilt by our actions  which incurred our guilt, and therefore we can never really be illuminated because we have  really blown it by our bad actions. So that's a rather counter-productive way of thinking.  

And it is due to the fact that and that is a way of thinking that will inevitably occur if we  thinking the usual causal way that we think, the way we are is the consequence of the way  we were, and so on and so forth. What you've sown is what you reap, and this is a very  simplistic way of thinking which the scientists, the way in which scientists used to think,  and now scientists have overcome that way of thinking because they realize that it's very  limited, it does not account for other factors. Now the crux of the whole issue is illustrated  by what I have often talked about, the voice of Caruso that can be recovered in the bad  recordings of the time. That is, it's glorious quality, excellence, is present within its  distortion, is present within its distortion. Which means that our true being while defiled is  still present within its defilement. Now that's is not a logical way of thinking, and so you  see that our ordinary logic is totally inadequate, for here we have a case that is very clear  that the you can have a situation that there is defilement and at the same time the  immaculate state within its defilement.    

So I hope that that gives you a sigh of relief from your self-criticism or the despair that we  incur in our lives. It's the safety buoy. And of course a way of recovering that voice is to  reverse the distortion. That's one of the things that we are going to do in the course of this  retreat, is, for example, every quality has its shadow for example, the shadow of joy would  be facetiousness or the shadow of power would be ruthlessness or the shadow of  compassion would be accommodation and so on. So, every, peace, the shadow of peace  would be indolence or laziness. So every quality has its defect, and sometimes the, we are  weary of the shadow of the quality and therefore we have difficulty developing that  quality, for example, we are weary of ruthlessness, we have seen too much of it around us,  and therefore we have difficulty in exercising mastery or authority or sovereignty. Or we  have seen how compassion could encourage people to hurt one, damage one, and  consequently, there are limits to our compassion and so on. And so we need to counter  our compassion with power so we are going to need to work with qualities in our person  and see what are the obstacles in housing these qualities in our personality. So, we were  just touching upon some of the objectives in the course of our retreat. So we will continue  at nine o'clock, then. Bless you now.    
END TAPE      

AUG 30, 1997		Tape 02

...it is the mass of Victoria, a Spanish composer, who was a monk, and it's a requiem that  was written for the death of a wonderful Queen whom he admired. And we went to sing  exactly this part on Monday morning at the Cosmic Celebration, the choir at the Abode  farm. 

Well now, it is good to keep on reminding oneself, `I'm on retreat.' And asking oneself,  `Well, what is my motivation? Because I'm calling a sabbatical from ordinary life, because,  well, I want to see more clearly something about myself and my situation in life. And  that's what's called to come to realization.' And, I understand that thousands of adepts  have sat in the woods in the past, and, made what one might call `experiments' in the  thinking of the mind, in the no-man's reaches of the mind which is not possible if you're  right in the middle of life. And so, I have the tremendous privilege of being able to avail  myself of all the researches that have been done by these people in very extraordinary  conditions as a matter in the tremendous strain in which they were living, putting up with  heat and cold, and, dangerous animals, and, not to mention fasting. And somehow the  mind has extraordinary faculties and we only use very small fraction of those faculties in  our mind, of our mind. 

And also, the energy of our body and so on. And so there are a few  secrets there, skills that will trigger off an improvement in our being. And so you know  how, for example, if you were a secretary for example, you would like to take some  period off to do some more training in becoming a better secretary. Or, if you're a cellist  you would like to go to a Master class in order to improve your playing. And so this, you  can consider this as a way of trying to see if you can, how, what are the methods whereby  you can improve yourself. And as I said before, if one does not improve oneself, one goes  back. And what is more, what is that state, but I'm saying what I said already this morning  is that one's self confidence and self-esteem is at stake. And that is what one needs in  order to be able to accomplish something in life. So we're cutting right into the crucial  issue in our lives.

So my job is of course to find out what are the skills that will bring about the change in  this training. So I said a few things that I would like you to work with because the format  that you're using now is that we have that training period when I'm here and then, or then  some of the retreat guides will be, take over when I'm not here. But, there are times when  you are on your own and, you know to, if you want to learn how to pilot a plane you have  to, your instructor has to give you the stick so you're learning to do it yourself, so you  can't depend upon me. 

On the other hand I have, I've lived as a (unknown) and that  means as a hermit in the caves of the Himalayas, and as a dervish in (unknown - sounds  like Hachmere?) and in Iran and so I must say that if I'm able to meditate it is not just  because of the instructions that I'm giving myself but because of the kind of transmission.  And I think it's really an emotional attunement so that whatever we do with our will  doesn't quite do it. Or whatever we think or understand doesn't quite do it. It's really like,  for example, a composer can only be meaningful to you if he/she is communicating to you  his/her ecstasy, another dimension of emotion to the common-place, I would say low-key  emotion that most people are into. Except that most people are looking for, for excitement  or entertainment to get out of their low-key emotion. Whereas we're talking about  sublime emotion that just transforms your being.

So we started, so what we're doing is really very, I think is very interesting because what  we're doing is, we're interfacing two things. On one hand the nitty-gritty of problems in  life, of knowing how to take decisions that involve our life, knowing to take responsibility,  so on, knowing how to handle one's interface with other people and so on. And then on  the other hand, somehow, as I said this morning the action of the universe upon each  fragment of itself, that is us, but then we mustn't think of it as Other, because that a, the  universe is another dimension of ourselves, so, it's not Other. But somehow, as I said  before it's like the wheel keeps on being repetitive and the only way for it to evolve is to  go off on a tangent, that is being drawn by something beyond the wheel, an attractor. So,  those are the two factors. 

Now you remember that in the first step, now we're going to do  it, try to see what other steps do we have to go through in the course of the retreat. Or  that are helpful if we go through (unknown) the course of a retreat. The first one is that  normally we are reacting to a challenge of the world, as I said before and in so doing we  are not enlisting all the faculties of our being. It's a short circuit. So what I would like you  to do, or us to do, because I'm in this retreat with you. I've done it lots of times and each  time I try to do it better. Is asking yourself some questions that one doesn't normally dare  to ask oneself. First of all, what are the things that I value in life? And you could really  write it down, you could make a catalogue of priority, a priority list of things that you  value. And of course it varies from one person to another. 

For example, some people  commit suicide if they lose their, if they're broke and Buddha left his palace for something  that he valued more. So it just depends what you value. And it's different for each person.  You have to know what you value. And then there's a priority list because, well, we're  not ready to, most people are not ready to give up everything for, for that ideal. It seems  Utopian and intangible, so, we have needs you know, physical needs, and human needs and  so on. Oh, pleasure can come from that but still, ask ourselves, `Well, what is it ultimately  that I value?' and you, I know that one can't say it in words. It's more like feeling. Like,  `Ah yes there were those high moments in my life when I was...' Well one says, `I was, I  was high. And I didn't know what it was, but, yes I was carried beyond..' Actually what  happened is that one was carried beyond one's notion of one's limited self. By what,  perhaps one didn't know that, but.

So, you could formulate it in all kinds of words. You could say, `Well, the ultimate value  is awakening, or, is a new nation, and so on and so forth. Those are words, but, in terms  of experience we have high moments and low moments, peak experiences. And so that is  something that gives you a sense of, that there are different values. And perhaps you know  that there may be, and no offense, but, there may be things that you did, which you think,  which you found made you lose your self esteem or your sense of honor. And so then  that's a very clear indication that those are values which one may entertain but which do,  have a damaging effect upon one's self-esteem, so, our self-esteem is now the measure of  what you are seeking in life. 

And it's clear that we do make some kind of compromise, as  I say, give to Caesar what belongs to God, and what God, what belongs to Caesar, and  God, and what belongs to God. But there is, I think we do have to make choices  sometimes. And that is, the choices we make is going to determine how we develop in life.  And so this, what is it called, they call it Mohasibi (? sp) in Sufism, it's a self-examination,  or examination of one's conscience, not one's consciousness but one's conscience. Is  accompanied by a pledge. And that pledge is not to do this and to do that. It's always the  two. I won't do this anymore but I will do that, or something very concrete. But of course  one has to be very careful not to make a pledge that one doesn't keep so it's better not to  make the pledge than to, than to violate it. So, can you do that?

So, what are the things that I really value? And then ask yourself, `What am I doing in  life?'

Now there are many reasons for what I do in life. As I said, there's a support system that  one has to build up, like the base camps in the Himalayas. So, yes, one needs to, a means  to live otherwise one is a burden on other people and so on and so forth. So a  responsibility for one's family, or on one. One can't live as a, a, well one, I mean, it's not  desirable to live in a slum when there are better conditions in a house. All of that is totally  valid, but now then, I have these high objectives, so, is there any way in which I can make  those objectives real in my daily life? So then you ask that, yourself that question. Then  you ask yourself, and then think more particularly about your relationship with the person.  And then you will, you may reach some clarity, for example, you may find that, well at  first you may think, `That person kind of, exercises a kind of gravity pull on my  consciousness and draws me right down to the worldly, selfish, aggressive, battle, rat-race.  And so, and yet, well, I'm involved with this person, there's a way in which I can, can, I  mean if I were to free myself from this person.' It could be your boss of course, it could be  in a marriage situation, could be in any situation, like, I, given my life circumstances I'm  stuck with this situation now. So somewhere there's... and what is more I don't like what  this person does to me, like, rather, I don't like things in myself that seem to only surface  in my interaction with this person. And so if only I didn't have to do with it, then I would  be wonderful, but.

So that's a way of thinking that is, I would say, perfunctory. The fact is, it is just thanks to  this situation that one can improve. Because a prison is not the circumstances. A prison is  in it's own way of thinking.

So the first thing is then to see how we are reacting. Like when I say `I don't like what  that person does to me because things surface in my character which I don't like.' Well,  you're reacting. And on the other hand one wants to be free, and in order to be free one  must not react. One must act not react. So what's important to attach to that freedom?  And that can become so impelling. Like, `Ah this is, ah if only, ah I can find freedom.' And  it's not circumstances. I say freedom. Well, sometimes of course it's not bad for  something that has been smoldering in one's unconscious to come to light so that one can  deal with it. But, so, as I said this morning, we are tested in our love. That is are we able  to love that person who is... If one does not love that person, that person can damage one.  There's no doubt about it. So it's the only solution is to be able to love a person who is  preposterous, - laughter - obnoxious. But really love them, I mean you know, how can  you love a person who is obnoxious? You can actually, you really can. And that was the  message of Christ.

And as if you go, and if you get into their consciousness and you see that they are  reacting. They are reacting perhaps to somebody else who has hurt them. And now they  are taking it on you. That `s the reactive mechanism. And you're doing the same and so it  escalates and goes further and that makes wars. And what's the point? It's counter- productive. 

So now something comes out from you towards outside. From inside toward outside  whereas reacting is just that which comes from outside towards inside. And that's the  reason for a retreat. Because now you're placing a buffer between the challenge of the  world and yourself so that you're able, being protected by this buffer, you don't have to  react. If you're in life, in real life situations then of course sometimes you, you know  you're in a situation where you, where it's very difficult not to react. Of course the ideal  thing to do would be to say, `Just let me think it over.' Of course when someone is angry  with you, and all of a sudden you say, `OK, do you mind if I just close my eyes.' And why  would you... `Well, I need to meditate.' 


The person is rather nonplussed. But then you know sometimes it's good to be a little bit  challenging oneself too you know. And even at the price of  thinking that you're a fool, I  mean, it doesn't matter what people think of you, what's important is what you are. So  you don't, you know, you, the point is that if you don't rely upon your personal opinion, if  you're free from personal opinion then you're free from the opinion of others. So what  I'm saying then, is that when you're sitting in meditation, the usual way of proceeding is  that one is regurgitating the impressions of the environment. But what I'm saying is that  meditation starts when you downplay that whole assessment and start getting in touch  with what is emerging from within, within you. 

That's creativity. And a very good  example of it is a composer, for example a composer, well, I suppose there are some  composer's who are just simply describing the outer world. Honager(?) described a  locomotive, or, Beethoven described a thunderstorm, in the sixth symphony. But, most  compositions are, come from absolutely impromptu, from inside, they're not reactions. And  if you start, well, what it means, turning within, as I say, is first of all, well, I use the word  downplaying, and I know in yoga you definitely dismiss thoughts that reverberate from  outside, that are reactive. It's rather a radical method. It doesn't, it's a little bit like the  ostrich putting their head in the sand. It's not, it's not owning to something that is by  dismissing it. 

Therefore the Sufi's are not, do not use that method. I, you see, that zone of  silence with which you surround yourself, there's a kind of transparency. So that, you  know the word used by Buddha is `one places a sentinel at the doors of perception.' The  sentinel allows some impressions to come through and others not. But I think that that's,  doesn't say it well enough. I would say that the impressions then are looked upon from a  different, let's say a wider vantage point than your personal vantage point so that there's a  kind of filtering process, not just a filtering process but even transmuted, a process of  transmutation that takes place as these impressions get ingested into your psyche. You  don't just let them just affect your psyche without incurring something that comes from  you. There's like for the example of food, if you eat food there's the enzymes are going to  transform the food. So there's something that goes out from you towards the food instead  of your just being the victim of the food. Otherwise, you'd, you'd be poisoned very  quickly.

So, so the same. You see we, actually we're suffering from psychological indigestion. No  that's a fact, I mean, I mean just imagine people watching TV the whole day, the amount  of indigestion taking place. So, curiosity killed the cat. So, I suppose it's a matter of  balance, of proportion, you see. So we want to, we don't want to close ourselves from the  environment. No. So let's say like for example like in a cathedral you have these glass  windows that, these colored windows, or, you know, I don't know what's the best  example. But, let's say that the impressions from outside are then, then passed through  two phases I would say. The first one... And these are phases that you find in the  alchemical process if you study it. 

The first one is sifting. That is you reject impressions  that are not, that are, well, that are destructive, damaging. Well you could say, `Well how  do, how can I do that?' Well, if you know something about the immune system of the  body, you'll find that the body is able to reject an organ that you are trying to transplant,  or, even you reject food that is, that is  detrimental. And that discernment is based upon  `me or not-me'. The body has a, for example the DNA of the body has its own sense of  identity and will reject anything that doesn't correspond with its DNA. And the same thing  is true at the level of the psyche. We would like to reject impressions that are damaging,  but... Now we have a second immune system, otherwise we would never be able to eat.  So we can ingest elements that do not correspond with who we are, but, then we transform  them by the enzymes of the DNA. So, we transform them.

Now, I, we could do, we don't do, what we, we're learning to do in meditation is to do  exactly that same, the same but with our psyche. So first of all, if, and, it all depends upon  your sense of who you are, you see. If you have a very strong sense of who you are then  you can reject things that do not correspond with who you are. For example, I feel  uncomfortable with heavy metal. I must say I prefer Bach. I suppose I'm a little bit old  fashioned. But that's me, you see. Now that's not perhaps some of you who have a  different sense of taste. It's just, you have to be true to who you are, you see. And that's  the first thing. Very clear this is. And that's why we started by saying, `What are the things  I value?' So those are so im... if they're so important for you then you will make sacrifices  because they are just very important. 

Now that's the first thing then. So then, one is really, just like one rejects food that is not  digestible, so you know, you say, `Well, sorry, but I... you know. It's maybe I'm not big  enough to be able to digest this. It's for the moment I don't want to, you know overstress  my digestive system.'

So, and then the second one is transmuting the impressions. And that is much more  difficult. It's very, we would have to go into it very deeply and the trouble is the mind  comes in and interferes with the process. But, let us say that, for example, a very good  illustration of what we mean by transmuting would be, for example, perfume. The flowers,  extracting the perfume of the flowers, or flowers themselves have that ability to survive  their precarious foothold on the planet. And by becoming perfume and then they, they  continue to live as perfume, eternally. That's resurrection. So that ability to see, get to the  essence of those impressions. Like when you, you know memory, is a process where an  event is, leaves an impression, a mark in your psyche with, now this depends, but, as one  gets more mature one does not remember the nitty-gritty anymore. One does not  remember, for example, there was an accident and one doesn't remember what time of the  day and which day, which year it was and the color of  the car or you know. That, those  are things that are, let's say, are contingent. But what one remembers is the expression on  the face of that woman who was hurt, or the expression on the face of that man who made  the, who was responsible for the accident. That's the gist. So you are encumbering, we are  encumbering our memory with a lot of things that are unnecessary. And we have the  ability to just maintain the gist of it.

I'll give you an example. Do this. Try to remember your events in your life. From the  time that you were even a baby. I remember being pushed in a pram by my mother, so, I  still, that was quite early on. In fact it was before, it was less, I was less than two years old  because I still remember the Zeplins coming over London and dropping bombs on  London. So, that was before two years old. So one has these memories, right. So you can,  then childhood, then teenage, and youth, well, some people might still be teenagers. And  what you remember then is you remember events. This happened and that happened and  so on. Some good things, some bad things. And you get used to, it's a practice I've done  many times, so you get used to thinking of them and recollecting them in sequence. 

At  first it's difficult but then you get to, and you can even move backwards. But that's a  whole gymnastics of the mind to be able to do that. Move back. Now then can you  remember your, how you have changed in the course of time, how you, you have matured.  Hopefully you think differently, you feel differently. You've changed. You're not the same  person as you were when you were a child, or you're, and yet you're the same person.  You are continue (unknown) in change. So now can you see the connection between the  two? 

After that happened I was a different person. Either one might think one has been  been damaged, for example, if it was a case of abuse, or then, one has been enlightened.  That is all of a sudden one had that Aha feeling and suddenly one saw, or realized  something that one hadn't realized before. So that the situation has triggered off a change  in your being. Now after all that is said and done, the events have passed. But you remain.  And that is the quintessence. The contingent is that which has passed, which is passed.  That, as Buddha says, that which is subject to birth is subject to death. But there is some  continuity in that which is what the Sufis call everlasting. It's not the same thing as eternal.  That's a gist. The gist, there is no way of saying it in words, whether it is your wisdom,  your realization, maturity. Whatever it is. What you are, that is what I mean by whom you  are. 

And whom you are is not either your body or the idiosyncrasies of your personality. It's  something much deeper that is quite indescribable. But that clear sense of me, that will  give you a sense of me. So you see that there has been over the course of the years a  transmutation of the nitty-gritty into realization. That's what happened.

So now, in that perspective now you realize that the events are only devices that convey a  message to you. So they are catalysts, but it is the message that is important. And so here  we come to a thought that we find in Sufism and which differs from yoga. Because  according to yoga the physical world is not what it is, what we think it is. Which is true, of  course. But it's maya,  illusory. Well it's not maya, it is a way of thinking of it that is  maya, that is illusory. But according to some interprets of yoga, they think the world is  maya, which is not what yoga really means. But, and the same is true, for example, your  interpretation of your problems. It's maya, it is deluding because it's not real, it's not the  way it is. That is rather a radical way of dismissing what I call a point of view that is  relative, that has some kind of personal validity, although it's not absolute. But what the  Sufis are saying is that events in the world and idiosyncrasies in your personality are  devices in which the intention in the programming of the universe is trying to make itself  known to you. Now that sounds like metaphysics, but just apply it and see. 

That would mean that this event in your life, for example, which you might lament, is  trying to draw your attention to what is intended. What is, what is enacted behind the  drama? There are cases which are clear, there are other cases which are more difficult to  understand. For example, this whole, well, for example if you consider a novel, a crime  novel, you find that the whole novel really turned around, the essential pivot of the whole  story was, we wanted to what is the truth. So consider that, for example, that event in  your life is there as a devise so that eventually truth will become known to you or to other  people. So that's the gist. 

The event, that's the support system, that's the nitty-gritty, but  the gist of that situation, well think of a situation in your life, and think, `Ya, that event,  but now what is it that it's trying to convey to me?' And you can only, at least in your  mind, you can only interpret that in terms of qualities. You can say, `Well this situation is  testing me, challenging me, in becoming truthful. This situation is challenging me in  becoming compassionate. And this situation is challenging me in loving someone who is  very difficult to love. This situation is challenging me to take control. Responsibility. This  situation is challenging me to learn how to look at things from another point of view to my  own. This situation has challenged me to be peaceful in the middle of agitation.' And then  the most difficult one of all of them is, what makes the hermit in India or everywhere of  course, in Mount (unknown) for example. And it's a difficult word, it's in India they call it  vyragia (?)  and the translation in English is, could be, has a (unknown) sense, indifference.  It's, we don't like that, indifferent.

But what we're really talking about is immunity. To find immunity. Now, the best way to  illus... it, I'm beginning to be more and more wary of, I'm getting more and more wary of  words and metaphysics, or, I enjoy myself but people don't. So, so in terms of a concrete  practical example, it's a kind of adage in India. It's below the dignity of the elephants to  get agitated by the chickens around them. So that's what I mean by indifference. There are  situations where your indifference is a protection to keep your dignity you see. And that's  very important because we get so het up with people who wronged us, and humiliated us,  and we're angry. And frustrated because we can't get at them. But, imagine that you can  treat them with the contempt that they deserve. Well, I went a bit too far in saying that.  But still you maintain your poise. But I think that indifference has got to always be  balanced by love. 

I can think of a case, a very typical case that I've often referred to. It was this lady in the  Southern states who was being lynched. And she said, `You can do what you like with my  body, but you can't touch my soul.' That's what I mean. That sense of, it's a dignity of  one's status, the divinity of one's being that cannot be affected. It cannot be tarnished in  any way, either by one's own actions or by the actions of other people. It's a great  protection. Now that's as far as she went. Now, of course Christ went much further  because he, well, he didn't just forgive the people who were torturing him, I believe that  he really loved the people who were torturing him. As you would perhaps a child who's  been, well, been hurt and who hits you and you, you don't hit back. That child is, is hurt  and so you love that child. Perhaps you love that child even more because it's been hurt.  So you see that this is something which, this is the message of spirituality. And I think it  has some relevance in psychotherapy but I don't know. I think there is a difference  between therapy or the old, let's say the party line in psychotherapy, and then the new line  which is creativity. Not the same thing.

Therapy would be like repairing a damage so that one returns to the way one was before  one was damaged if at all possible, or desirable. I keep on repeating that story of Laura  who was being interrogated when I was at university. I was studying psychology and there  was a, I studied psychiatry, at an institution and there was this woman, Laura, who said,  `The doctors are trying to bring me back, are trying to bring me to where they are. They  have no idea where I am. And what is more I can't come back by the same door that I  came out of , I can only come back by another door.' So therapy to repair damage, I think  it is better to think that one is turning tables on the illness, or rather using the illness in  order to become better after the illness than one was before. 

So that is, you see therapy, you are concerned about the effect of the past upon the  present. But creativity is the effect of the present upon the future. 

And so the secret is, well, it's a non-Sufi mantra which is `what if'. That's the mantra for  the next millennium is `What if.'. What if I were what I could be if I would what I might be.  Instead of `I am a result of the past.' So that's creativity. So when you're meditating,  there will be a tendency to regurgitate the past. And all these thoughts are totally  incoherent and very disturbing and so on, and you think, `Well I can't meditate. I can't  control these thoughts.' No, it's not a good method to try and control them. The thing to  do is to.....

END SIDE 1.
SIDE 2

See if you can pick up something that is coming through you at this moment because the  universe is trying to, it's always yourself organizing itself in us, in everyone. Self- organizing itself that is, and we resist that creative action by, by identifying ourselves with  our self image. This is who I am. So that's not what you are, it's what you think you are.  So for example, at this moment something is coming through me, and more imperatively  than ever before, so, it was always there, but, now it's come through much more strongly  than ever before, for example, the tremendous hoopla about authenticity. All of a sudden,  yes I've been trying to be truthful and so on, but still, I didn't realize that I was  manipulating people after all. 

And I didn't know it and so on. And I mean you know we  deceive ourselves. All of a sudden, now that's the most important thing in my life now,  and that's to be absolutely honest. Honest to myself, but that doesn't mean you tell people  what you think of them because not only it would make you unpopular, but you would be  damaging people. You'd be damaging people to tell them what you think of them. And  what you think they are is probably wrong anyway. So, no, being truthful like actually  being true to what one values. And the extraordinary thing is this that perhaps you wanted  to become more realized, I mean a more realized person, more, more, clearer in your  understanding. You tried to strive with the mind and well it didn't give any yield at all.  And all of a sudden you find that the quest for authenticity is going to clear away the  ambiguity in your thinking so that your thoughts become crystal clear. And you didn't  realize that the reason why you had difficulty in understanding is because there was some  ambiguity in your intentions, in one's intentions. One was fooling oneself and was fooling  other people. And all of a sudden one's thoughts become crystal clear. 

Or then for example you might think, `Yes, well at this moment something is coming  through me that I never had before. Before I, well, I enjoyed life and yes and I passed on  the buck, and now somehow I can see that if I don't take on responsibility people suffer.'  And so all of a sudden there is that sense of mastery, the need for mastery. And if it  weren't for that it would be an ego trip, like you know in India you see sometimes, very  rarely, but you see now a days, but you see (unknown) who is standing on one leg for  weeks and weeks on end just to show that he can do it. Now that's an ego trip. Under the  name of mastery, but you know. But it's like getting up at four o'clock, at four thirty in  the morning in order to come to the meditation at six thirty, mastery you know. And I can  advertise it as a good medicine to, for longevity. So mastery, it pays off in the end you  know. But it has to come from inside. 

Like, `Yes, all of a sudden I realize how important  it is.' Some, because we have all these potential qualities are trying to come through us  into our personality. Because our personality is made up of qualities. And these are, it is  like a seed bed in which all the, these qualities are, how can I say, ultimately they are the  qualities of the universe. And somehow they are being funnelled down and they are  coming through us. They have to be funnelled. So they, we can't be perfectly, I think  there's, maybe there's some limit to our honesty. Or at least, some limit to our mastery  and so on. They, they are perfect in the way that maybe we assume that they are perfect in  their archetypal forms but they are being funnelled down and passing through us in a  limited way. 

For example, what are the limits to our authenticity. I mean, perhaps we wouldn't always  say I'm so happy to see you again. Maybe there are limits to our honesty. So can you, you  know I don't want to lecture to you. I mean, we're trying to see how we can, what are the  skills that can be helpful in order to bring about transformation in our being. So, what I'm,  you remember the two points that I made. One was that, the first one is that if you place a  buffer between the challenge of the world and yourself then you don't react and then you  get more conscious of what is emerging from within. And the second one was that the  reactive strategy of the ego countering whatever hurt we've received from impact of the  ego of somebody else, countering it with our ego is a perfunctory reactive strategy of the  ego that is OK in the primitive stages of evolution, but, causes vendettas and wars and so  on. Now since we cannot, we cannot resort to that kind of strategy, we have to be able to  call qualities in our being that are latent and therefore wean our psyche from that  perfunctory reactive strategy, and, learn more, more noble strategies, like that of the  elephant for example. More noble strategies. And the consequence is that qualities will  develop in us and we will become beautiful people. More and more beautiful people, and  build a beautiful world of beautiful people.

So that is our objective. So we need to learn how to turn within. There are methods that  were used by the hermits in the forest. Starting with working with the physical  environment. You see consciousness is used to turning without, turning outside. And so,  and we are continually exposed to impressions emerging from within but they are less, less  effective in drawing our attention to the impressions from outside. For example, you know  the stars are always in the sky but we can't see them because in the sun, when the sun is in  the sky we, so, in the same way those impressions of  the outside world are so strong that  we are not very sensitive to the impressions coming from within. So a practical way of  being able to be more aware of what is coming through is to really try to blot out the  impressions from outside. 

It's a rather radical method. Eventually we'll learn to be able to  do it without blotting out those impressions altogether. But to start with it's a very useful  technique. So this practice, if you'll just do it with me now. Turn your eyeballs upwards  and press the indexes of your fingers on your eyelids at the bottom of your eyeballs so that  you don't exercise any pressure on your cornea that means on your retina  which will  cause optical illusion so you might think that you see sort of celestial light and actually it's  just optical illusion. And then place your fourth/ fifth finger on your lips. And now place  the middle fingers on your nostrils but do not press them yet. Now, well, yes you could  press your middle finger of your left hand. Now first exhale through your right nostril.  And then inhale through the right nostril. Now hold your breath. Exhale through the right  nostril, inhale through the right nostril. Hold your breath. Exhale through the right nostril.  Inhale through the right nostril. Hold your breath. Now, three breaths inhaling/ exhaling or  exhaling/ inhaling. Three breaths only. And afterwards you take your fingers off your  senses and now you can place your thumbs in your ears. (pause)

And take your fingers away. Keep your eyes closed. (pause)

Now, I don't know whether you react as I do, but, the physical environment seems to be  rather remote, or, at least difficult to reach. Consciousness is offset from its usual setting.  And of course one feels a lot of things welling up inside. But at first one does not know  what is happening inside because one isn't used to it. The fact is that there is energy and  qualities and even a kind of intuitive consciousness that surfaces from inside. That takes  quite allot of discernment to be a little more clear as to what is happening. But it feels good  to have a little respite from the coercive impact of the environment. Now of course this is  only the first step, the second step would be instead of thinking of the physical  environment the circumstances in your life seem to be less intrusive. You don't dismiss  them, and that's what I've said, is that it's true that if you place your fingers on your eyes,  index on your eyes, and thumbs on your ears it's true that you are blotting out the  physical, impressions of the physical world to some extent. Of course you can even,  perhaps even hear the sounds of the cars if you were in the city. But in a more advanced  stage instead of blocking out the senses you don't place your fingers there but you think of  it as a big, as a sort of a filter or as Buddha says, a sentinel that allows certain impressions  to pass through and others not, or even as I said transmuting the impressions. 

And then you have this very curious thing, but it will take you some time to match the  qualities in yourself that are trying to emerge and the qualities that represent the  quintessence of the events. At first it's not clear, it's not clear but I just want to draw your  attention to the fact that there's some, a relationship there, but one doesn't see it at first. 

So remember that thoughts do emerge impromptu, that is not as a reaction to occurrences  from without, but as far as we can see, totally unaccountably impromptu, as I've said.  Those are the creative thoughts. One cannot try to enhance them, and as a matter of fact  by even trying to capture them they will shy away. Besides which one is distorting them by  the active consciousness, exactly like deep sea fish are distorted if you bring them to the  surface of the water. So you never know what deep sea fish are like in the depths and the  same thing is true of our qualities. So I would say that at first you need to let the universal  self organize itself in you without intervening with your will or your consciousness. 

Just  like a seed that is sprouting under the earth. And then at a certain moment when it begins  to break through the surface, like the crocuses in the snow, at that time you have some  onus to take responsibility in, in first of all giving some protection to that new sprouting,  otherwise it will be stillborn, and giving it some support. Like one does sometime with a  young tree for example. So you give it some support by your acquiescence, your  concentration on it. You reinforce it for example. `Yes it's true, that's a quality that is  coming through me, OK. Yes I feel it's important now, it's telling me something about  myself.' So you give it your support and so the next time you find yourself in a situation  which that quality is at stake you, you remember, `That quality is coming through now and  I want to really reinforce it by my action.' 

So what I'm saying is that if you concentrate on the thoughts that emerge spontaneously,  they won't. And that is where our will is going to stand in our way in meditation. Except  that as I say, at a certain point your will takes over, but, at the initial stage no. And  perhaps you know, creativity is always taught with emotion. And then thought comes in to  try and structure it and then eventually it manifests as a form. Your quality in your being  is, in personality, it is a form according to the Sufis. So the answer is that you get into, get  in touch with your emergent emotions, your nostalgia. 

There are reactive emotions. For example, you've seen an accident and you feel so sorry  for the victims. That's reactive. Can that sense of compassion arise without it being  reactive. Now this is metaphysics and so it might be difficult but let us say that the event  acts as a catalyst, you're not reacting but it does trigger off qualities that are already  present within you. 

Remember those words, `follow your bliss'. So get in touch with, actually, I know it  sounds like metaphysics, it's like really the emotion of the universe. The Sufis call it  Divine Emotion. Which frees you from your personal vantage point or self-image. So it  starts with, well, you can encourage it. For example, there are thoughts that will enlist  emotion. For example, meditating at night in the open under the stars and just thinking  that your body is made out of the fabric of the planet which is part of the, not just the  planetary system, but the galaxies. And that it all started with the Big Bang as a  breakthrough of light that crystalized in order to be called matter. So just think that your  body is really, it's the whole universe is, the cosmos is somehow, come through in this  fantastic organism, organization of devices that make consciousness possible. Think of  that, what that means, and that will enlist a state of bewondering, the miracle of life, it will  make your high. Because this is, this relates you to that, to the universe instead of just  being encapsulated in your personal ego, per view. And then of course at the level of the  mind, I know one, if one tries to sort out things, events in, with one's mind, of course this,  events are totally incongruous. Just don't make sense. So it's difficult to bypass the  commonplace thinking of the mind.

Hence my father, Pir `O Murshid, calls the reason of reasons. It takes a certain freedom  from the, well, the habitation that we're used to thinking in logical sequences. But then  just think of the scientist who say, `I am not just, I never, not only I never cease to be  amazed by the extraordinary intelligence of the planning of the universe it just  absolutely...' Physicists are beginning to be just absolutely amazed by the extraordinary  intelligence. Everything has been so carefully planned, and within this programming it's all  so, something that is not planned, the possibility of what we call randomness. And that  may be that's the way in which the planning can break down so that new, it's replaced by  new planning. So the whole thing is so amazing. But the scientists also say, not only we're  never ceased to be amazed by the extraordinary intelligence, but we never cease to be  amazed by the elegance.

Now that's an emotional evaluation, not an intellectual. And so if you can be touched by  that, fired by that in your soul, that is where you get into that state which you call being  high, emotion, aroused in what we call is your soul. And that will have the effect of  encouraging the emergence of spontaneous thoughts, creative thoughts. 

And of course, if you say creative, well then you are talking about the future. You're  talking about the vision of how things could be. There's ecstasy in that capacity which we  have to project a vision into the future. Of ourselves, or how things could be in the world.  Whereas if were just remain encapsulated in our personal purview we are low key. Now  that is the state of those I have meditated with in the caves of the Himalayas, and amongst  the dervishes, and the paths of banana peels in the market place. And amongst the  hermits in Mount (unknown) who are living in a little mud hut in the wilderness. Ecstasy.  The greatest power there is. The power of ecstasy.

 And of course the ultimate ecstasy, is being able to discover one's, what the Sufis call the  Divinity of one's being, which is that which one projected as God. Is a reality in oneself.  And so you're going about being conscious of that identity and not being limited by your  personal identity which is very restrictive. That's what, that is the state of the dervishes.  And as you know the dervishes are in real life, they're not like in a cave somewhere in the  Himalayas. They're right there in the middle of the market place. It's a great power, and  you can just try to develop power by you know, I remember a method that was used by a  very early psychotherapist, Kouai (spelling?), Dr Kouai, who taught his people who were  wimps when they came to him, to become a little more strong, `just think, I'm strong, I'm  strong, I'm strong.' Well it makes them a little stronger but never as strong as a dervish  because well that's a bit artificial because the strength is in your Divinity. That's where  your strength is. Otherwise, you're into an ego trip. 

So these are things that you can now work with. I'm sure I've gone way beyond the time.  So you have a half hour, and it's not raining and you can walk in the woods and perhaps  sit down and really do it. Not try and remember what I said but to actually do it.

Yaquin (I think): I think it's important that people go off on their own but just to sort of  summarize. Yes, sitting in certain places has a real interesting effect. So remember what  Pir said. Really try to take some time before you come back to eleven o'clock. There's a  tendency just to drift out there into the camp. But go off and ask yourself really deeply  `What do I value, what...' and even making a list can be good. We're used to seeing things  and training our mind so really making a list. And that practice that Pir referred to as  Mohasabi, of examination of conscience what those qualities in yourself of sincerity and  integrity, of really looking, examining the practice of scanning your life, really taking time,  you know, where did I live, what was I involved in, and then the practice of shagal, the  breathing, placing the fingers, not on the eyes, I like to press them more on the bone right  here below the eye so that you don't press on the eye. Breathing in and out three times.  

Repeat that practice. And this idea of placing a buffer between yourself and the world, you  can use your breath there. Either as you exhale, a sense that you're surrounded like with a  membrane that's somewhat porous. You can inhale like you're drawing in energy but not  indiscriminately. And then you can go deeper and exhale and feel that you don't draw  energy from outside you come, it comes from within from your own inner creativity. And  just sit and become aware of your breath and do that over and over. I think if you just go  through this and then come back to it, and just try and  feel, and just sit. And you can just  sometimes just turn your eyes upward, and there is with shagal this practice, Pir Vilayat  usually only recommends people to do it while they're on retreat. Because there is a  tendency to be what we might call you get spacy if you do it too much. And so next week  if you have something to do at eight AM and you didn't get a good night's sleep and  you're driving down the expressway it's not the time to do shagal. So there's a time and  place for things. But go back to these different things, of scanning your life, asking  yourself, and really, it's like turning within to that thoughtful, your own, the real depth of  your being, what do you value? what do I want? What is my intention behind these things  that I'm doing? What is the real, behind that layer what's the deeper layer. And then doing  the shagal and we'll meet back here at eleven. Thank-you. 


AUG 30, 1997		Tape 03

This was Indian music and I see that this music is very favorable to a kind of mystical state. It's a kind of state that you find if you, that you get into if you are walking in the woods, and the sun is filtering through the trees, and its such a, so different from stamping about in the streets of New York. In fact, you realize that you can actually shift the focus of your consciousness. You see, just exactly as for example, your glance.  You can change the focus of your glance to look at a book, for example, or to look at a panorama. You do the same thing with your consciousness.  So you can expand you consciousness and it give you a whole other dimension in your experience of life. Just imagine, for example Saint Francis of Assisi walking in the woods. 

Now, people walk in the woods. You've been walking in the woods. And what did you see. The (inaudible) of the trees, or you saw the sun coming through the leaves of the trees. Saw the leaves and the trunks? But Saint Francis was getting into the consciousness of the trees.  So that he was experiencing the trees looking at him, instead of him looking at the trees. 

And, if you do that, then you have a totally different, much richer, of course, dimensionality of your experience than if you just see the (inaudible) of the trees, and as (Majdrachti) said, I though that I was look at the universe, but the universe was looking at me.  The different view. It's a view that will enrich your view, your personal view. Further perspective. Now, this has practical applications.  Because, now let's just think of a person whom you know. And, at first maybe you're thinking that that person is over there somewhere, that you'll have to perhaps take a plane in order to go and sit and talk to that person, or even hug that person. But then you can (inaudible get into) the consciousness of that person, and see how see how things look from the vantage point of that person. So I hope that you are doing it as I am talking about it.

Now, if it is a person who is in sync with your being, then it is very enriching to your being to imagine what it is like to be another being, because we're continually trying to discover ourselves in another being who is better able to actuate what we are than ourselves, a kind of measuring effect. And so that's one way of improving. You can't do it by trying to improve your qualities in your being. But, if you get into the consciousness of a being whom you admire, in fact the only way you could ever get into the consciousness of a being whom you admire, is because you have the same qualities in yourself, but you find that they are much more developed in that person and therefore it is a way of discovering yourself, discovering that indeed those qualities are in you and that you can expand them and enhance them. 

So that's one way. That's the reason why people are looking for gurus and one has to be careful.  First of all, because of the problem of the guru himself or herself which is role-playing. And one can easily be fooled, so but however, it is very wonderful to discover features of one's being that are latent or not very well developed. To experience them in another person, it gives one courage for one can, perhaps we can do that oneself.  But there is another dimension that I'd like to mention right away now, and that is imagine how you could be if you would be as you might be. So that in a sense, the guru is your own self as you could be. And to have someone else who after all is different from your self and has different problems than your problems and there is no point in aping someone who is other than one's self. One need to be truthful in one's authenticity. That's the trouble about the guru/(chala) relationship. One tends to mold oneself according to a person who has to follow his own or her own bliss.  So that's something that we will be working with later, trying to project how you could be if you would be if you might be.  You're you forward,  because you know there is a saying of (Kosipski), oh no it's not (Kosipski), it's (Ahler) who said that the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past.

However, to come back to this being able to get into the consciousness of another person. Now that person could be that person who is harming you.  And, it's a very good exercise, to get into the consciousness of the person who is harming you. And then you understand where their action comes from, because I'm sure they justify themselves and the mind is a marvelous reservoir of self justification. And who knows, maybe they are criticizing you and you can learn something from their criticism. Every person is a mirror in which you see yourself. 

So, this is the second step. So instead of just getting into the consciousness of that person, well, after having got into the consciousness of that person, the second step, can you visualize how you look from the perspective of that person? I don't mean physically, but what kind of impression that person has about you. And you can see how very different the picture they have of you is from your own self image. And, doesn't it follow that their view is right and yours is wrong, or that theirs is wrong and yours is right. We've already said that our self image is not reliable. But sometimes, there is a light shone upon us from another perspective than one's own, is going to reveal something about one's self.  In fact, I don't know whether you know that book called (Jesus the Man, Khalida Brown) in which you see Christ is looked at from very different perspectives, they are all contradictory, but somehow together they build a picture and you see how inadequate those different perspectives are, but out of that totality emerges this being. So, think of yourself not to, as I said, our self image can be a prison, is a prison. So to free ourselves from the constraint of that prison, you can imagine how you look from the point of view of several people, like how Saint Francis looked from the point of view of the trees, several trees.

o hopefully that will enlarge, expand your self image, to realize that the aspect of yourself, without being judgmental, the good and bad, beyond what you thought of yourself, and in fact, if you were to include the whole universe, instead of just a few people, then you would discover that you carry in yourself potentially the whole universe and that your self image really represents refusal to honor the many splendored bounty of your being. We pride ourselves in our humility and our humility is failure to honor the beauty of our being because we are caught up in our personal vantage point. So that is the beauty of the transpersonal point of view which will give us a sense of the transpersonal bounty of our being.

Of course if you could, we could follow this up a little bit and you could get into the consciousness of the person who has harmed you, you might find that they have been hurt and the only way that they can uphold their self esteem is by hurting you. Because that's a very primitive, as we say perfunctory strategy of the ego, so you are the scapegoat in which they are making their self esteem. They don't feel happy about having been pinpointed as the victim, but if you love a person then I say, OK, well you need your self esteem. And, it can go very far, it can go very, very far.

 For example the (gauliter) who beat my sister to death in a concentration camp, was a psychopath. They choose psychopaths, in the Nazi regime they choose psychopaths. So he had a grudge, and he was beating that grudge out of somebody else. And so you just have to look at it, send that thought, to the people who are harming you and if you see that they are hurt and getting back on you and they are justifying it by all kinds of judgments, well then you know, you feel happy about it. They have a need, and, ah, no, I find it much more difficult to forgive the woman who gave her away for $100,000 francs, yes, that's inexcusable. That's what one calls treason. So treason, yes, is unforgivable. Acting out of pain, that I think you can forgive. 

Just think of that, because you know it is that kind of self pity that is going to stand in the way of our spiritual progress, enlightenment, because somehow we are faced with the real problem of being able to be happy while at the same time being sad at the same time. Now you mustn't think that you can just be, spirituality is just being happy. No, (we can) be terribly selfish and terribly unconscious, terribly callous. How can you be happy when there is so much suffering in the world? You are walking upon the bodies of bodies of homeless people in the underground. No, but the rainbow comes when there is both rain and sunshine at the same time. I always have this vision of a dervish actually it's (Hadi sin dani Chisti) who is dancing on thorns with a crown of thorns on his head. He makes you very alive to suffer, make you alive. I don't justify it, you know, why should it happen in order to evolve? Fact is, that their suffering is written right into life.

So if you look around you, you find people who are able to maintain that bliss while suffering agony. A marvelous comic who suffered terribly in his body but he was giving joy to children. Give joy, while yourself you have to take the toll of the pain, and if you can do that, then you are ready to follow what is called a special path, too, follow your prayers.  So it's not indifference exactly, it's, I suppose it's a word that I've always found difficult to accept, and that is surrender. Surrender to one's suffering and that, as long as it doesn't take away one's joy.  Again, a paradox.  

OK, so now if we follow this up, then we'll do a practice, a very simple practice. You see, well there's a Tibetan adage that says the mind rides the wind, that is there's some action of energy upon our thinking, some influence of one's energy upon one's way of thinking, and you know there are different modes of thinking. So, we'll just be experimenting with this. For example, can you feel the magnetism of your body, I often compare it to it's like the magnetic field of a magnet, for example. 

And feel that, like you can feel it around your shoulders, and your chest and maybe above your head and perhaps even in your shoulder blades, say a kind of energy.  And it doesn't have a boundary, like the feel of a magnet doesn't have a boundary, so it overlaps with the energy fields of the planet, and eventually, of course the whole universe and the whole cosmos.  And the thing is, there is such a thing as mind over body so that if you just even feel a little bit of energy, like even visualize it as a kind of field, but visualizing is not enough, you really have to feel that energy around you, and of course, not just around you, but it's within the cells of your body, like the energy that is moving the cells to the point of mitosis, the division of the cells, you feel that energy.

Now, the whole universe, I mean the whole cosmos, sorry. The cosmos is a body of the universe, so the whole cosmos, it appears to us as being made of optics, like that planet is here and that planet is there and that tree is here, but behind it all, there's an incredible template of energy, which Pythagoras called the symphony of the spheres. But (inaudible)-like energy field, within which there is all kinds of currents of energy, transmutation of energy, and so on, a real energy field, and it's the template, in fact it has been proven by Dr. Decker who was working with, he noticed that legs of salamanders grew again if you amputate them and the (rat doesn't) and so he discovered that there's a template behind the configuration of the cells. So he put an electromagnetic coil around the stump of a rat and it grew a limb. 

So, if you can feel that electromagnetic field which is the template which configures the cells of your body into the structure of the body, that is perhaps a deeper reality than the body. So that is once you're aware of energy, you can work with it. For example you could feel how, just think of the magnetic forces and they're not the only ones in (inaudible) cells, at least (inaudible) forces, but they're more, that are moving the galaxies and say, moving the sap in the trees and so on, and you know, there's a sort of vital energy there now, and so and that your magnetic field is part of that field. And that there's no boundary. It's just a way of thinking, right, that you can try to feel it. That cosmic field is continually converging as your magnetic field. Just like, for example, a whirlpool, in water or a lake that gets converged into this whirlpool. And if you think that way, you will find that you'll, your magnetic field will increase. You will feel more magnetic. Magnetism is very strong in certain people, and in people who are really magnetic you say that they are magnetic. You don't know what it means, but one could actually, nowadays, of course one could measure it in a laboratory. And, they are the reason why people go to gurus, it's not because of what they teach but because of their magnetism. It's like a source of energy.

So now, you can develop that your magnetism will keep on expanding and gets intermeshed with the magnetic field of the environment. So now as you inhale, just imagine that you are converging the magnetic field of the earth and so your magnetic field is enhanced. Feel a lot of strength, a lot of energy, a lot of life energy, one can say your life field, instead of your force field, for example, or magnetic field.

And now, as you exhale, just imagine this force is expanding and there for example, if you were healing a person, and (whose) magnetism was going to convey an extra transmission of life to that person. The secret of healing.  Now this is, you can carry this even further, for example, if you're sitting in the woods, you may enjoy the calm and the serenity and the beauty of nature, but just imagine that wherever you sit, everything starts flourishing, I mean that you are communicating energy to the environment. You know that (bacher) of Handel wherever you go, the blushing flowers shall rise and all things shall flourish. A sense that, it is a kind of sense that you have that wherever you go, and it starts by sitting in nature. For example, you could imagine (inaudible) purely imagination, but you could imagine that, imagine a bud of a flower that starts unfolding and becoming a beautiful flower, for example, and that your energy is going into that. Now, that's imagination.  But still, it will get you in touch with that kind of magnetic power in yourself.  And then you'll practice the same thing with people. Wherever you go, you give energy.

So as you, I've already said, as you exhale and inhale. Now what happens to your identity?

As you exhale, your sense of being a discrete entity, like a skin-bound person, seems to extend beyond your skin. For example, if you identify with your magnetic field, which is part of the body, then of course it extends beyond your skin. And if it's intermeshed with the environment, then of course there's no frontier to your being, no boundary to your being. So that if we think that way, then as we exhale we will for one thing, lose our sense of being an individual and reciprocally, we will identify with the cosmos. Now that's very difficult, but it's what happens to the great contemplatives, they are able to lose their personal identity totally and the consequence is that they develop an enormous power, to the point that Al-Hallaj, for example, said Allah Huk which means I am God in the sense of the Ultimate Reality, which of course is anathema for people who are still in their personal identity.

Now, the beauty of this practice is that as you inhale, you become aware of your individual uniqueness again. That is you are converging the universe so that your personal bounty, and then somehow, it is customized as you in a unique way, and that is very good because otherwise you would lose yourself in a kind of trance state. And as a matter of fact, it is a sense of who we are, of our individuality, that will give us the ability to select those energies from the environment that we can ingest and those which are harmful, as I said previously. So it is our sense of individuality, and so we don't want to lose that sense of individuality as we expand into the vastness. And that's why it's good to alternate so that we can toggle between the two and perhaps eventually extrapolate between the two dimensions of our being.

And, it's a feature of our freedom that we can modulate the outreach of our consciousness, or then turn it within. Or then turn it towards one's ego, personal identity. Eventually you are able to extrapolate between the two.  But that's very difficult. It's easier just to simply alternate.  Now my father, Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Kahn, saw danger in expanding the consciousness at the cost of losing the sense of one's individuality.  Which is to be found in the Eastern traditions. In fact, it is very possible that we are not aware of the fact that we have some kind of psychological suicidal tendency in us, we like to lose ourselves because there's something in us that we don't like. It's unconscious, but really, so it's sometimes people who are discontent with themselves who seek samadhi. But that's not the way of the Sufis. 

So, what Pir-O-Murshid did was to, instead of losing one's self in infinity, one has lost a sense of one's individuality, to consider the outreach of one's influence. That is, one's kingdom, one's area of responsibility. For example, you think yes, well I have responsibility for my family. But then I do also have responsibility for well, what I see.  For example, if I give advice to someone, well then I am responsible for it. And it might have very serious consequences if I have given them the wrong advice and so that's my kingdom, that of which I have, I am assuming the responsibility. And, eventually you find that the greater you become, the wider the expanse of this kingdom. 

The more people you reach, the more people you exercise some kind of impact upon, although, as I say, you have to respect the freedom of people, but somehow hope that it is an influence for the good. Like, for example, when Ghandi died, there was a lady who was a householder in Oxford. One would say (inaudible woman) but she was crying and I said well, why does it mean, why are you so sad? She said well there you see, Ghandi changed my life. But she never met Ghandi. So you see that was the impact of the thought of Ghandi on masses and masses of people. (To let) the outreach of your kingdom. How far does it go?  And, consequently, that would have the effect of expanding your consciousness, without losing yourself in the void, in the totality.

Maybe in the course of this retreat we'll be outlining, we will be pinpointing certain mantrams as they're used by the Sufis. As we call wazaif. And the beauty of that is that they are labels so you associate a word with, a foreign word, that doesn't have the conventional meaning we have in our conventional language, with an archetypal thought. It's not just an ordinary thought, like compassion or power, I mean mastery, or so on.  And so, amongst these we have the difference between the word Basit and the word Wazi. And Basit means expansion without any limit, and Wazi means to encompass, so there is containment in encompassing instead of expanding, there's no containment. It's wide but it's somehow vast. And this is very important, because you see if we evolve, I mean if we, how can I say, pursue what I think is the purpose of life, is that life evolves, then we make the journey from being a puny person to being a great person.  

If we are encapsulated in our self image, we are a puny person. Or then a dictator. Puny but with an exalted ego. Whereas a great person like, perhaps you've come across people you feel, well, there's a great being. I have come across some very great beings. It's the opposite of what WIsdom inaudible) says by a wimp. It's a great being, it's a great being. He has stature, great stature, cosmic, something cosmic coming through this person. So this is a practice that gives you a sense of the outreach of your being and I think that it is linked with a sense of responsibility, of human control and of course I realize that that presents a problem because I remember when I was a child, I asked my father, I said, since you can't always be sure that your decision is right, well, then, one would never do anything. And he said well, life proceeds by trial and error and you learn by your mistakes. (inaudible) I said well, then other people suffer from them. Then he said yes, but they learn from your mistakes also.  So that's taking responsibility. 

So there's another wazaifa for that, Ya Wali, take responsibility. And so that's a very good meditation in the morning, do every morning, think of those situations of which you have taken, well where you have exercised some impact, and that impact has to be followed up by your taking responsibility. Or then if you feel you can't take responsibility, then you have to hand it over to someone else. Be very clear about it. And you'll find that the more responsibility you take, the more you will grow. And, in fact, the more people will pile responsibility upon you, of course. In an office it's always the same people who get all of the files to work with and the others are sitting back relaxing.  It (a bit does appear as) what you want, well, this is the key.

So, there's some relationship between energy and wisdom, or insight, and of course, we don't want to take responsibility unless we are able to see the wisdom of our decisions and that's where we feel very fallible, and consequently, in the retreat process, we need to somehow associate energy with modes of thinking. And as we are going to examine, I say this, there are different modes of thinking, but we need to see what that means. I mean, to experience it. So, let us say that our most elementary mode of thinking is interpreting experience from our personal vantage point.  And surreptitiously, and unconsciously we are aware, or at least we pay attention to the impact of circumstances upon our person. How it affects you personally. But this morning we are learning how to see the impact of your person upon circumstances. That's what we are going to do in meditation, so it's a different mode of thinking than the mode of thinking in which we are interpreting events, no, assessing situations. It's a creative mode of thinking.

So, we could do this for example, as you breathe in, you can think about the way that circumstances affect you, for example you're distraught because things went wrong, or you're elated because you got a new car, so that you breathe in. And as you exhale, and just try to see, what is the impact of your person, your personality, for example, upon the situations.  Because that's what we generally fail to see. For example, I remember when I was very young, and well, and then I think of time now, and I think well, if I had been then the way I am now, that wouldn't have happened. There you see the impact of your personality on the circumstances. Lest we think that we're the victims of the circumstances, or fate, we've been let down by God. Jung said this, he said if you don't deal with your shadow it will come back to you in the form of your fate. That shook me, that really shook me. 

It still does, when I think of it. I think it's not always true, because there are several elements in what we call our fate, so it's not just that, but, for example you can't say that those who are maimed in Bosnia, you know deserved what they, you know, it was because they didn't deal with their shadow. No, you can't say that. But still, there is some relationship, some synchronistic relationship, not causal but synchronistic, so, you see, if you study science, physics. Now the new, called bootstrap theories are that there are several causes you see, not just one, and there is free will and so on, many different elements.  

Because a concatenation of causes, but at least one of them could be the impact of your self upon the circumstances, or you could at least think to your self that supposing that, for example, this person keeps on undermining me. I don't know what it is, but I always feel uncomfortable when I talk to that person, or meet that person or even look at that person or that person looks at me and I will, it's a very unpleasant situation and I don't know how to deal with it. And then you think to yourself, well, I wonder whether there's something in me that that person resists, or doesn't like or some, and actually, that person is in some way instrumental in circumstances in your life, for example, so now that means there's something in you that is determining those circumstances in your life. So there you see the impact of your being upon circumstances.

For example, you see, if I were the way I could be, I would be what I might be, then circumstances would be different. Well, you can do that in meditation. I think, yes. Imagine that I talked to that person.  Meditation is a rehearsal for life. OK, I say to that person "I really have to open my heart to you. I don't know what it is, but I just feel that you don't like me. It makes me feel very uncomfortable to say it."  You are running a risk, if it's your boss then of course you are running a very great risk, otherwise you can do it, say, to most people, and, I've done it of course, many times, and that person says, "Oh, I wasn't aware of that." Now the other thing is of course, can't you think of a situation in which there's your self and the circumstances and there's always the same pattern, always coming back again and you think to yourself, now supposing that I were all truthful, how would it affect the circumstances? Supposing that I were more masterly, that is I had proven that I can take responsibility, I would be given more responsibility in life, in my job.  So you see the impact of your self upon circumstances.

So I would say the second mode of thinking is the way that your thinking affects your circumstances. And your thinking is now not about circumstances, but about qualities. Whereas at first, your thinking was about circumstances. Now, your thinking is about qualities. That is, the mind is able to grasp qualities.  So this makes us, this draws our attention to the importance of developing qualities, that is, of encouraging the surfacing of latent qualities, latent potentialities, so that they might become a reality in our personality. And so that we don't have to resort to the primitive, reactive strategy of the ego. Now that's what we want to do in the course of this retreat. And you'll find that to bring about a change in yourself under the circumstances, you need energy.  So just realization is not good enough, you need energy. So we're speaking about the energy reaching out and turning within. And we'll do that again.  We'll work with that again, further. But then there's another dimension of energy which you could call vertical instead of horizontal. 

So as you're breathing in, instead of reaching from outside inside, and as you're exhaling, instead of reaching from inside outside, as you're breathing in, you can just imagine the energy of the earth, we'll call it telluric energy, let's say, as compared with the energy we imagine is the energy of pure spirit. So the comparison would be like an electric current which has a lot of wattage, but very little voltage. Or then a current that has a lot of voltage, but not much wattage. For example, lightening, there's a lot of volts, and comparatively less wattage, then, another example would be a heavy river that is running on a very gentle slope, as compared with, for example, cascaded water that is rushing doesn't it, not so much water, but it's energy is, it has a very high sort of intensity as one says. 

A spray, for example. So, can you feel that difference, the very sort of heavy, but rather stable kind of energy of your magnetic field in its relationship with the planet earth, so that really that energy seems to rise in your spinal cord as you inhale, and then as you inhale, in the course of your inhaling, you pass and review each one of the chakras and then turn your eyeballs upwards, press, curl your tongue and press your tongue against the palate, hold your breath, and then can you feel that very fine, but very intense, very sharp kind of energy that one ascribes to the Holy Spirit? The Sufis call it Quduus. The Jewish Hebrew term is Kadosh. Quduus/Kadosh. In the Catholic Mass it is Sanctus. It's the kind of energy that quickens you. One imagines it descending from above as one exhales.

So now we have a different dimension of energy than the expanding/converging mode. And it corresponds to the same kind of thing matching at the, in our consciousness. Earth consciousness and then Celestial consciousness, a different level of consciousness, that's what we're going to work with because I say this right away, because well, we don't have so much time. (inaudible) it's (inaudible) sometimes good to anticipate what we are going to do. And that is to enhance our personality, it is not good enough just to arouse and awaken potentials that are lying in wait in the subliminal levels of our being. But somehow, it is necessary to enlist qualities in the perfect state, in the archetypal state and that is what Christ calls Your Divine Inheritance, be perfect as your Father. Divine Inheritance. That's what Saint Francis means when he said to his father, "I have another Father." It's another dimension of your being. To that which is lying as a potential. And, so to enlist these qualities, you need to learn how to shift your consciousness into what one calls the Transcendental Dimension. So that's what we have in store for the course of this retreat, so we have a lot to work with. And I have to end here. End of Tape. 



AUG 30, 1997		Tape 04

Miserere of Allegre. That's a composition that originally was only allowed to sung once a year on Good Friday in the Sistine Chapel in Rome at the Vatican. And anybody giving the notes away would be excommunicated. Then Mozart went there. And when he got back home, he wrote the whole thing down by heart. Thanks to him we have this celestial music composed by a monk.    

I'm sure that there are moments that you feel pained and saddened and distressed by the conditions of the world. Not just the conditions, but the people, the greed, the callousness, the selfishness, the dishonesty, the cruelty. And, well it spills over in yourself too. There is something in yourself that you don't like. And there is a kind of a feeling of being suffocated and longing for another dimension. One doesn't know exactly what it means. But like when in the play of my father when the king said, "I am seeking for another kingdom." That's what Christ calls the Kingdom of God. A kind of need for the sacred. A way of defining it. We look for it disparately if we hear the calling of the heavens as one might say. We go to church hoping to find it in a mass. Maybe you come back and find that it was too much of a ceremony. Or then, as I have done sometimes, I went to the mass in the very early morning in Mont Zurat. And there was a young monk who was in ecstasy. It made all the difference. That was real.  

Or then you feel a sacredness if you go on a pilgrimage in the temples in the Himalayas. The very sense of sacredness, the awe before the mystery of the unknown. The chants and the temple bells and the symbols. People have come from a long distance to dedicate all the little money they could have spared all their life just for that moment when they are able to communicate with God at the top of the mountain.  

Or then if you watch Moslems praying, if you just see bottoms up, you think, "Well this is really rather unfamiliar". But if you watch their faces after prayer, it's amazing. Some of them are totally transfigured. And if you ask yourself why, it's because somehow they have this sense of something unfathomable beyond what we can perceive, the unattainable, as my father says. And somehow we have it in us to always imagine something beyond anything we have imagined so far. As I say, a larger number, or larger distance, or earlier time, or an earlier time in space, or greater perfection.  

The reason they are transfigured is because in their zest in giving vent to their need for the sacred, they are projecting upon this imaginary representation that they make of God, of the way they would like God to be. And that's not the way God is. Qualities in their own being. And in so doing they are awakening and arousing those very qualities in their own being.  

So that prayer is a creative act. Well let us say glorification. One doesn't have to use words. I'm not trying to convert people to any religion. It's just that there are moments when it starts by bewondering, seeking for this in a dawn in the mountains, or in wonderful music, or in a person, the beauty, the splendor that can come through a person, or a beautiful act, an act of heroism, or lofty quests for challenges or limitation. We are seeking it wherever we can seek it because there is some surreptitious sense that we think logically there must be a reality behind all this. But we don't know how or what that means. But it comes through to me very strongly when I look in the eyes of a baby, the light in the eyes of a baby. And I think, "Ah, what a pity they grow up. And they start becoming bitter and angry. And here the beauty of that light". It's only if you're really innocent that you can let that splendor come through. For me, as far as one can demonstrate that intuition of celestial levels of reality, it's not just wishful thinking. You have it right there before your eyes.  

Perhaps you know the story of the Cave of Plato. Actually he was just recounting one of the Greek mysteries. The neophytes were invited to partake in a choir. And they were dressed in white robes. They had wings. Their robes were made with wings on their robes. And then people came and pulled their robes off and dragged them into a cave and chained them to the cave. And in time they forgot what the heavens were like. Then people came and said, "The sun is shining, __ and the grass is green, and the leaves of the trees are green. In fact there are some blue flowers and red flowers and yellow flowers". And they said, "I don't know what you're talking about. All that I know is shadows". Perhaps those people could have said, "Don't you remember when you were singing in that choir of angles?" "No, we don't remember now. Well we do, but that seemed like a dream. It doesn't seem real". Then somebody took off the fetters of the prisoners so that they could go out into the light. And they couldn't see anything. They were blinded by the light. And then so they preferred going back into the cave because at least there they could see shadows.  

And that's exactly what we are like. We are experiencing the shadows of a splendor that would be too great for us to be able to encompass. We would be shattered by that splendor. Except for those who have the courage to go out into the open and destroy their house. That's a word of Shams Tabriz. You know Shams Tabriz was the mentor of Jalaluddin Rumi who has all of a sudden become popular overnight. Really his inspiration was from Tabriz. He was a far out Dervish. I don't know. I have met dervishes and they are very forceful. They say, "You there". In that moment you are shaken to the core. And you awaken. They come in the early morning and they say, "Get up. Awaken." Or they say, "Don't you come near me. I will burn you because you are lying. You can come back if you tell the truth". That's the dervish. So Shams Tabriz said, "Destroy your house and underneath the rubble you will find a hidden treasure." I don't advise you to do that because there might not be a treasure there. But still behind all our constructs that we have become dependent upon is something so valuable. We are satisfying ourselves with pebbles instead of looking for the pearls. We're picking up the crumbs instead of partaking in the divine banquet, as the Sufis say.  

Behind all that there is this certain sense of being suffocated. A sense of, "What am I doing? What's this all about? What's the point? Making money in order to live. And living in order to make money. What sense does it make?" It's a kind of intuition. There is no way of reasoning. Like one could say, "Yes, behind all this there is splendor". Either you believe it or you don't. There is a kind of intuition that, "Yes, what I'm experiencing is just a cross section of something which I could never encompass or never represent to myself, but which is really sort of daunting me". So that is the theory, theoria means the vision of the Sufis. That is that the features of the physical world, and also the features of your own personality are just devices which give a clue to what is behind it. If you just take the device for real, then you have missed out on what was behind it. And so they are always in search of that which transpires from behind that which appears.  

For example, it's not Maya. It's not the Hindu theory that the physical world is not real and so on. No. But if you imagine that the world is multidimensional, indimensional. We can only extrapolate between three dimensions. So that all that we're experiencing is a cross section of reality. And we think that that's reality. Somehow when there is a way of eschewing the framework, the limitation in the way in which we reduce reality within the commonplace purview, then one has a feeling as though one is awakening from a perspective and all of a sudden seeing into reality. That's what is called awakening, a sudden change of perspective. And until one has done that, then it doesn't, you know people talk about it. It doesn't seem to make sense. So it's no sense my saying, "There is another reality behind this physical world". I might say that. But I don't go by opinion. I go by experience.  

A further aspect of this is that there is a knowledge that is acquired. And that is the only knowledge that most people understand. For example, I develop a know-how. And if I'm doing research in medicine, then I develop an acquired knowledge. It is an acquired knowledge _. I acquire knowledge about certain phenomena which is very useful. And all of our life is acquiring through one's action. One is interpreting experiences. That is if you think of yourself as a discrete entity and refer everything to that one point of reference. But if you have a dipole system in which there are two poles, the personal and the impersonal which we call God, then you have a whole different kind of architecteny.  

And so you can imagine that there is a knowledge that the Universe has of itself that is revealed to you instead of your acquiring it. Perhaps you noticed that I used the word Universe instead of God because the word God has all kind of connotations. But when I'm quoting the Sufis, I use the word God. The beauty of that word Universe is that it does away with a lot of our projections. And perhaps you know verso el uno. Towards the one. The universe. Or the universel. I'm using the word cosmos like the body. Imagine that it's all one being. And of course, we could never have any sense of that being because it's too far beyond our imagination. But the physical world is the body of one being. And we are part of it. And our mind is part of the thinking of this being. And also our emotions and so on and so forth.  

Well then, as I said before, you have to account for the action of the Universe upon us as fragments of itself. And also the action of each fragment of itself on the Universe. And so what is called inspiration is opening us up to the action of the Universe upon us. That's what Bach is doing as he is writing his music. Impossible for, if a person were a discrete entity, it would not be possible for that person to write the music of Bach. It's like the Universe is coming through him. So that is the clue to meditation, the Sufi meditation. It's not like you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps. You're hoisted up by something beyond yourself. Not within your will. The Sufis call it the divine revelation. 

A more practical clue is this, that let's say intelligence becomes consciousness when faced with an object. And so consciousness is passive with regard to the object. Whereas intelligence thrusts its light upon all things. There is a difference between, let's say, when consciousness is voided of its content, Buddha says that. He says, "There is a flame as long as there are logs of wood. If there are no more logs of wood, then there is no more flame." So he compares consciousness with a flame. So in the samadhi meditations, you empty your consciousness of a content. You're not aware of the physical world. You're not aware of your thoughts. You're not aware of your emotions. You're not aware of your individuality as an individuality. And consequently consciousness is voided of its content. And is then resorbed in its ground which is intelligence. 


Now that sounds like metaphysics. But you'll find that your understanding stands in the way of the way that the Universe reveals its meaning to you. That's why great beings like St. John of the Cross, for example, went through what is called the dark night of the mind. That means that all that one thought that one understood or believed in collapses. You don't have any crutches anymore in the level of the mind. And you go through a dark night. And you know that doubt is the dark night. So doubt is the way towards realization. Instead of thinking of it as negative, it's the way of freedom from the limitations of the mind. So you have every right to doubt what you think, what you think you understand, and also my opinion.  

So that without the help of crutches, you are delivered in the hands of the Universe. And then all of a sudden you find what is called an Aha situation which all of a sudden you see something that you hadn't seen before, and that you could have never figured out with your mind.  

For example, think of a situation in your life where there is a challenge in the world. The world is challenging you. And you try to figure out, what is the quality that you need in order to meet that challenge. You're trying to figure it out with our mind. And you're convinced that indeed that is what is being asked of you from life, by life. And then you find that it doesn't really work when you try to figure it out with your mind.  

Now the second thing would be there are qualities that begin to come through us, begin to emerge unaccountably. So it's not our concern to adapt ourselves to the environment. So somehow we don't know, we like to imagine that God is manipulating us to give us the qualities that we need in order to meet our problems. That's again a limitation in our thinking. But the Universe is self organizing itself in us. There comes a time when you give up trying to figure this out with your mind. And somehow you have that Oaha' feeling. All of a sudden the penny drops. All of a sudden you think to yourself, "All this time I thought to myself as long as the situation is the way it is, I will never reach illumination". Then all of a sudden you realize that it's thanks to this very situation that there is a chance for me to evolve. You couldn't have figured it our with your mind. All of a sudden it's revealed to you. Quite the opposite as you've always assumed. That's what one means by revelation.  

And between one Oaha' breakthrough and another, there is a period of waiting. Those are the lows between the highs. During that time, one can't take any initiative. And it's very frustrating not to be able to do anything about it. And really to expect that at some point something will start breaking through. But we don't know how that happens. 

So now, when we left off this morning, I was talking about the way that you can discover levels of energy. For example the difference between the telluric energy of the earth and this energy we call pure spirit which is undefinable which is, somehow can shatter you like lightening.  

So all that I've said represents a kind of nostalgia. And maybe I'm preaching to the choir. Maybe you've all had this nostalgia and I'm just articulating it. It is this nostalgia that will carry you. The practices are only a support system. They don't do it for you. If they enlist your nostalgia, then they are helpful.  

So let's do this practice now. From time to time it's good to do a practice and see how it affects you. So when you breathe in, could you pass and review each one of your chakras. I hope I don't have to describe what is meant by the chakras. Let's say that they are the subtle counterpart of the plexi of the autonomic nervous system including the pituitary gland at the center of the brain.  

So starting with the bottom of the spine. Then the second chakra, the reproductive glands. Then the solar plexus that you feel in the pit of your stomach where the pancreas is. Then what is called the heart chakra. It's not the heart. It's called the cardiac plexus. Then what is called the throat chakra is really the atlas, the point at the back of the head where the skull is detached from the backbone. So there is a soft area there that you can press with your thumb. That is really the root of what is called the throat chakra. Incidentally each one of these so called chakra, or these plexi, are related with endocrine glands, thyroid and parathyroid. And then the pineal gland. Then the pituitary gland. So give you some sense of what those chakras are. Now you can at least with your imagination, you can pinpoint those areas in your body and pass them in review as you are inhaling.  

And what I suggest is that toward the end of the inhaling you turn your eyeballs upwards and curl your tongue and press it against the pallet which has a physiological effect, affecting the flow of the spinal rashidic fluid in the fourth ventricles of the brain. And probably pressing against the hypothalamus must have some consequences on the pituitary gland. And perhaps you know that during sleep with dreams, one has rapid eye movements. If you turn your eyeballs upwards, you immobilize them. And that affects your thinking. You cannot think in a linear fashion any longer. This is one of the secrets of yoga meditation.  

Now you know that we have three nerve trunks, one inside the spinal cord and then two lateral ones. And the lateral ones govern the autonomic nervous system and the central one governs the central nervous system, the motor sensory. And there are afferent and efferent nerves linking the lateral trunks with the central trunk. Now put the thumb of your right hand under your chin. And place the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand. Now place the middle finger of your right hand against your right nostril. And the thumb of your left hand against your left nostril. So first of all exhale. And how as you inhale, press the middle of your right hand. So inhale through your left nostril. Hold your breath by pressing the thumb. Then exhale through the right nostril. Now inhale through the right nostril. Hold your breath. Exhale through the left nostril. Now inhale through both nostrils. Hold your breath. Exhale through both nostrils. Then breathe normally. Now you turn your eyeballs upwards toward the end of your inhaling. Then you curl and press the tongue against the pallet. Then your eyes get back into normal position when you exhale, your tongue also.  

Now what I suggest is that you imagine, this is a yogi practice, you imagine a current that arises in the left trunk of the nervous system telluric energy, earth energy. And it get's transmuted as it moves from one chakra to the next. So that at first it is gross energy. But at the end it becomes very fine energy like that high voltage, low wattage. Then you close your nostrils.  

Now what I want to say is this. Energy is used as a lift to hoist your consciousness into the higher planes. That is, as the Tibetans say, " The mind rides the wind". At first we don't know what we mean by the higher planes. But you have a sense of having freed yourself from the limitation of the existential condition that is constraining. A kind of freedom and also awakening from one's usual vantage point. Then when you exhale through the right nostril, you imagine that that very fine energy is descending through the right trunk of the nervous system. It's called the quickening of the Holy Spirit.  

Now you do the opposite. Inhale though the right nostril. The energy is rising in the right channel. Hold your breath. And somehow just think of the story of Pegasus and Bellorphon. Pegasus was the winged steed. And Bellerophon was the rider. And he was trying to reach the Olympus and found that Pegasus could only fly to a certain height. Therefore he had to continue on his own, but on the momentum that was imparted upon him by Pegasus. So imagine that that energy that you have set into motion has hoisted your consciousness. And now as you hold your breath, your consciousness continues to rise even though that energy can't help you any further. 


Now you inhale through both nostrils. Now you find that those two currents crisscross starting from the bottom of the spine. You'll find that they crisscross in front of your second chakra, the back of the solar plexus, the front of your heart center, the back of your throat center, the atlas, then in front of the third eye and then meet in the pituitary gland. It's called Bindu.  

If you do this for some time, you'll notice that it's the energy as it rises is pulled towards the central channel of the spinal cord. So those are the afferent nerves that link the lateral trunks with the central. It's like a vortex. So there is a whirl pool. And the energy is whirling instead of going up straight. And being pulled towards the center. Then as you exhale, you'll find it's the other way around. The energy descends through the central channel and gets bifurcated left and right. So extends. 

Now at first you don't quite understand what one means by celestial spheres and higher planes. But a sense of wanting to find freedom from the fetters that tie one to earthly conditions, the limitations, constraint upon one's freedom. And we started this morning by making a catalog of values. Now you are beginning to see that you have all kinds of wishes and desires. Some of them inspire you and some of them pull you down. So you give vent to those values to which you aspire. Then it is possible, I don't know whether it happens to you, but it has happened to me. That is there is a kind of memory or déjà vu. Like looking into the eyes of a child or baby especially. It reminds me of something that I had forgotten. That's what they call déjà vu.  

So that one comes to the conclusion, it's a reminder of a state that one experienced and was summarily interrupted at the moment of conception or birth. That's what Buddha says. But it's still there. It's buried under a bushel and can be recovered. That is due to the fact that we think in terms of a one dimensional time moving from the past to the future. If we accept that there are at least two dimensions of time, in fact there are an infinite number, then we remember the word of Dr. Stanaslov Grof who used the word perinatal. That's not prenatal but perinatal. That is we're still in that condition. It's not in the past but we don't know it. Discovering who one is by trying to remember who one was. One still is that but one had forgotten. The Greeks call that memosis which is the origin the word memory. Memosis, remembering, recollection. And the practice of the Zikre of the Sufis is called remembering, remembrance, recollection. And so do you know who you are?  

So now can we, although at first it's all rather nebulous. Let me say something before I go into the next step. Buddha said, "There was a time when there was no smoke on the earth". He didn't use the word planet earth. How did he know it? That means that there were no humans. It was the 19th century they were beginning to think about evolution. There was a time when there were no humans on the earth. At the time people didn't know that. There was a time when planet earth didn't exist. How could he have known that? It's only quite recently that we've started, astrophysicists are beginning to know that. There was a time when the physical Universe did not exist, cosmos did not exist. Buddha said that. How did he know? And what he is saying is that when consciousness extends beyond the limit of the individual limits of consciousness, the memory of the Universe which is hidden in the unconscious surfaces. So that's the moment of awakening. All of a sudden that memory surfaces. So that's memosis. That is memory. 

So now what are those stages? You say the higher stages. What do we mean by that? Well if you'll remember, the method that we were using was first of all to downplay our cogitations about situations around us so that we would be able to arouse and awaken the potentials in our being. In other words, we were fostering a rebirthing, creative thoughts that are impromptu and not related causally by the events. And as a matter of fact, we were discovering our real being behind what we think we are.  

Let's do this again. Imagine that you are wearing a mask and that your real being is hidden behind that mask. And that _E you're playing a role. And that your real being is masked by that role. So you'd like to know who you really are. We find it very difficult to answer that question, "Who am I?", because it's too vague. It's not concrete enough. But if you try to envision the countenance behind your face which comes through as your expression. That expression of when you're happy or sad or surprised or angry or whatever, that countenance changes. So it is not sclerosed into a real effigy. But it's a continually changing effigy, many faceted. But can you just, if you can do that, you'll find it's an extraordinary experience. "This is me. Now I know this is me. And I thought I knew who I am. But now this is me." You know that people will force you into their picture of you, their representation of you. It exercises some impact on your self image, what people think of you. And here your free from all these constructs. All of a sudden you think, "Yes, this is me". No concern about adapting yourself to the environment, about being successful or proving your worth to others or to yourself, validating yourself. "This is me." 

So when we turn within, we discover something more real about ourselves than what we come about when we are in our usual state of consciousness, consciousness turned outside. Now the fact is that although this countenance does not have a profile, it still does have some kind of a configuration. For example, the Kirlian corona, if you place your fingers on a place to have a Kirlian photograph. And you'll find that you see that corona around what you thought was your finger. It doesn't have a profile. Maybe it has spikes or something like that. But it doesn't have a profile. So this effigy of your real being does have some kind of a configuration. Therefore it is more tangible than if you asked yourself, "Who am I?" And you couldn't have any sense of what that means.  

So that was the, you remember the first step was turning within, that is eschewing the thoughts regarding the environment. Now the emerging dispensation, rebirthing, manifests itself in forms that do not have contours, that do not have a profile. Sufis call that forms in the intermediary world, etheric because they don't have any substance. They are kind of ghostly forms. And evanescent, illusive, evanescent, ephemeral like a picture in a mirror that will disappear if you turn the mirror. This is creativity, the way that whatever is emerging begins to become known to you through a form although it doesn't have a profile. And as a matter of fact, you could work with that form like an artist is working with a statue, for example, a sculpture is working with a statue. except it's much more subtle of course. But you could imagine this form in the fabric of light. You can't do it with your will, with your hands of course like a statue. But with your attunement.  

Well let's try this. For example, imagine that you're in a state of reverie, that is daydreaming. You're not sleeping but you're not awake. You're just in between the two. And you are representing to yourself a scene at midnight along side the lake illuminated by the full moon. And you see the light of the moon flashing upon the little eddies on the water. And the whole landscape seems transfigured. And you yourself are transfigured. Instead of stomping about, you're kind of floating, very light and eerie, like in astral flight. And somehow you have a different sense. You discover your dream entity. You're a different person when you're dreaming than you are in day consciousness. So now you see that you're attunement determines the countenance of your etheric body. The countenance now, if you could see your face now, it's very peaceful.  

Now counterwise if you were to be climbing the mountains and rocks, and there were abyss below you. And you have to be very careful. Every move has got to be very masterly. Now your countenance would be very different from that peaceful state. So this is the way that our etheric body is being fashioned by our attunement, by our thoughts, changing all the time. And just like a statue, it can become more and more perfect as you work with it, more rich. So you become a being endowed with many splendid features. Your personality gets enriched and beautified like a beautiful work of art. So that would be the next stage.  

As we always said, this embellishment of your personality is going to affect the outer circumstances. So it's better not to think of the outer circumstances while you are working with this. Then you'll find that it will alter the circumstances. For example, Buddha said to his disciples after he had reached illumination under the tree, "Have I ever spoken to you thus before?" Now he wanted people to know that he is different now.  

OK So now something is emerging in you. The Universe is self organizing itself. And somehow for this work of art which you are, to be wholistic, it's got to incorporate all levels of your being. Therefore you have to honor your nostalgia for the sublime.  

If you're writing a music composition or making a statue, of course it can be vulgar. Some of them are vulgar. But if you want it to inspire people, then you have to enlist those dimensions of your being that represent that splendor that we've been trying to sense, that splendor that manifests as beauty. So this is the time when be kind to your soul. We are kind to our bodies and kind to our minds. Be kind to your soul. It has a great need for splendor which will reflect on your self esteem and self image.  

So this is where there is a sense of eschewing the constraint upon your identity of existential conditions and thinking of yourself as a being beyond the existential state regardless of the existential state. For example, it's only our body that is located in space. Your being is not limited by your body. Discovering that one could think without a brain. There are the words of Shams Tabriz, "I walk without feet, and I fly without wings, and I see without eyes, and I hear without ears." And I would add, I think without a brain. As a _Πmatter of fact like brain specialists like Carl Priberum will tell you that our brain reduces our thinking to make it more tangible. But in meditation one is able to discover modes of thoughts that are not limited by the functions of the brain. These are states to which Buddha describes and the Sufis describe where you realize that your sense of space is a kind of framework that you impose upon reality. 

Tape Ends 

AUG 30, 1997		Tape 05

And that it's only valid for your body. Or any mental representation that is linked with bodiness.  

It's a wonderful feeling to realize that my mind is able to think in terms of forms. Or rather when my mind thinks in terms of forms, then I'm trying to bring the formless into the limits of the existential world which is limited by space. But if I do not think in terms of images, then my thoughts do not involve the notion of space. That's why Ibn Arabi says, "At a certain point in the Zikre you eschew imagination".  

So we were working with imagination to be creative. And at a certain point you realize the limits of imagination and you're reaching beyond it. No more images. Now when you're talking, you could ask yourself, to what extent are you thinking in terms of images? For example, you're talking about an airplane crash. There is an image. Or you're talking about a meeting someone. There is a picture of that person. You're always referring to images. Then the philosopher is not talking about images. Or if you're doing some of the practices of the Sufis, the wazifa, you're talking about qualities. They can manifest as a face, an expression on your face. But they are themselves are not limited to form. Can you do that, do you think? Your thoughts that are not in any way related to forms. For example, just qualities.  

So once more remind your self. There was a theory of Ospensky that there are some, one imagines that some insects can only extrapolate between two dimensions. So that they know that they are going up hill or downhill. _ And maybe they're, well if they were turning right or left, they would have a sense of three dimensions. Anyway just imagine that there are insects that can only represent one dimension or two dimensions and that we humans can represent three. So for an animal who can only conceive of two dimensions, the world is like a sheet of paper. So anything in the three dimensional world will cut across that paper. So that paper is only the cross section of the three dimensional world. Think that you are a three dimensional being, at least can only conceive of three dimensions, and the world is multidimensional. So all that you know of the world is just the cross section in the three dimensional world in a reality that is far beyond these limits of space.  

So that's a realization, a realization that contemplatives have. And we have that ability to free ourselves of the limitations of our commonplace thinking. And the consequence is that Oaha' feeling of awakening. Like, "Aha, yes. Just imagine all this time I thought differently. I thought that I was limited. Now all of a sudden I'm free of a lot of assumptions".  

And now there is our sense of time. Supposing you are in a train. And you look out the window. And you see a scene. Then you'd see another scene, and another scene. So the scene that you had seen and you don't see any more belongs to the past. Now if you were sitting on the top of the train which they do in India, what seemed before to be the past is still there. So our sense of time is like the window upon reality. Now this is very important because, this is very advanced meditation, at a certain point you discover your deathless state which challenges all our ideas about death and life and all that we think about, and the way that time moves and so _£ on in the process of becoming.  

One of the clues to it is we say it's a river. But it's never the same water that passes under the bridge. So there is a continuity in change. That's one way of thinking, "I'm a continuity in change. I don't have the same cells as I had when I was a child. I have a different personality. And yet I'm the same person". That will give you some sense of freedom from the commonplace sense of being constrained by time.  

The other is more like an intuitive sense. It could be illustrated by a pendulum because it swings to one extreme then to the other. So that gives a sense of time. But the point where it's suspended remains unchanged. So you could think that we identify ourselves with the bottom of the pendulum, the weighted end that is moving in time and space. But then we are the whole pendulum, not just that end. And you can reach a point that you identify with that point that remains unchanged.  

That is called the deathless state. The sense that whatever happens to my body or my mind, my individuality will never take away the very crux of my being which is eternal. It's not survival. I think it's called sempi eternal. It's that continuity in change.  

And I would say that this, one is touching upon one's longing for freedom. Because you see our real freedom is freedom from conditioning. If you look around you, you find that people are conditioned. You yourself are conditioned. You're brought up in a certain way. You're used to a certain way of thinking _% and so on. You're conditioned. Buddha was seeking for, his words after his moment of illumination were,"I have found freedom from conditioning". It's a different level of identity than one's usual sense of identity. I am free.  

It's just as though one was awakening from a perspective in which one thought that one was transient and suddenly discovered one's eternity. One was so convinced that one was transient. It's like looking out the window of a train. You are so convinced that what you saw has past. Somehow that gives you the ultimate immunity from despair. Like that woman who said, "You can do what you want with my body, but you can't touch my soul". Or the Muslims say, "They think they got Christ. They only got his body. They couldn't touch his soul". It gives you immunity. Overcoming the fear of death which is maybe the ultimate fear, fear of pain, fear of death. It's not a question of belief. It's really being able to identify yourself with that dimension of your being that is not subject to change.  

One has to make a distinction, this is rather subtle, between everlastingness and eternity. I hope you can follow me because this is getting rather difficult. There is a word of Jalaluddin Rumi who said," Tonight night the umteen stars give birth to the life eternal". Now that was badly translated, the life everlasting one should say. That is that which was transient has become eternalized. Just like the life of the flowers are eternalized by their perfume. That's one sense. It's not quite eternity. It's like the essence of your being will survive whatever the conditions are like the perfume of the flowers. That means that experience is never lost. It will all be reprogrammed into the, or fed back into the programming of the Universe. Otherwise life doesn't make sense if experience got lost.  

But we're talking about a point beyond that which has no beginning and no end. I know that is beyond our understanding. But when you are faced with the fear of death. And particularly if you think of those dear ones. You're so distraught. You think you'll never see them again. And perhaps you hope you that when you die you will see them again. You don't know. Well when you say you'd like to see them again, you think of them as they were. And you think of yourself as you think you are. So those assumptions have to disappear. So it's like meeting someone again in time in space. Like for example, Jalaluddin Rumi and Shams Tabriz. Rumi says, " Isn't it extraordinary that you and me are meeting here. And your body is whatever it is. My body is elsewhere. And yet we are meeting again in time and space". So all the people you think have died, you can meet them again but at a different level. You can meet Abraham and Christ, Mohammed, and Chrishna.   

I must say I admire you patience. I'm asking a lot of you to sit still. Is that all right because there is still more to come? I'm a task master. But now I'm coming into something more concrete because this was all very metaphysical so I imagine you think, "Well Pir Vilayat, I don't understand a word of what he is saying. He's talking". I'm talking from experience. I'm also talking from my experience corroborated by people who have done this. It's like an old Oxford University professor talking to kindergarten, teaching physics to kindergarten. And he's trying to say it. But there's no way. But now let's get with something concrete. The practice of the Ziker. 

You know that the Sufis were nomads. That means that they could not have a mosque or a temple. They had to create a temple out of their own body. And not only just their body. But of course their magnetic field and aura and so on. That being of course in this quest for an ideal which is beyond their understanding. They were trying to project what they imagined God to be out of their own idiosyncrasies. They were creating a reality in the course of their act of glorification. And it's just the act of glorification that will lift your consciousness beyond your commonplace attunement. In order to do this, they were putting to motion the very choreography of the stars. If you were wandering in the desert at night time. In the day it's impossible. It's too hot. So you travel by night. And you are navigating by the stars. So you are very conscious of the choreograph of the heavens, of the stars. That's why Rumi came back from his retreat and started teaching people to whirl.  

Because by whirling you find in yourself the movement of the stars. It's in your own body. So that motion links you with the motion of the galaxies and the planets and the stars. Whereas if you seek samadhi and you sit still. So the Sufis are not seeking samadhi. It's like Shiva becoming Nataraja beginning to dancing the cosmic dance. So your body is, there are different ways of whirling. I hope that we will be doing that, learning that whirling that tonight. But there is a way of whirling your body when you are sitting. You turn your head toward your left shoulder, toward you left knee, your right knee and your right shoulder. So you're making a circle. So just do that. See how you feel. Moving first to the left, then to the right. Left down, right up. 

Now you know what is a centrifuge. You place something in the centrifuge. You find that the gross material is drawn towards the periphery and the finer material is drawn towards the center. You find those two forces, centrifugal, centripetal. So something, this whirling would make your consciousness expand as we did in the beginning of the seminar, expanding consciousness. And then there is the other thing which is turning within, centripetal.  

So your solar plexus is the center of that circle. And you'll find that when your head is turned towards the zenith, that is the situation in which you are precarious. That is when you feel the pull in your solar plexus, of the void in the center of that vortex that you are. And so you move your head down towards the solar plexus.  

I think it's like the Greek sign psi. You make three a quarter circle reaching right up. And then down. So the sequel of the circle as you exhale and head down as you inhale. Then the head rebounds again upwards. So as you exhale in the circle, you could think of the stars and the galaxies. So you're reaching into the vastness. So freeing yourself from the limitation of yourself. Then you reach the zenith. Then you hit your solar plexus. You're touching the center of the circle, of the vortex. And that's where you're inviting the emergence of new qualities that we were working with earlier this afternoon. The new qualities that are emerging as you turn within. So the Zikre incorporates that we've talking about so far and the things that we'll still be encountering in the course of this retreat.  

So at first then, expansion, then turning within, then the emergence of those new qualities that emerge from your solar plexus as the center of the vortex, and enrich your whole being. So our whole being starts flowering. You transfer your attention to your heart center. At that point, concentrate on the celestial spheres, your longing for splendor and beauty and freedom from, you see it's freedom from the samsaric wheel. 

And now you proceed upwards. Your head keeps on moving upwards. And that itself has some effect upon your consciousness rising above earth sphere, being freed from the constraint of earthly conditions. Although one doesn't know exactly what one is discovering because it's being revealed to one in the measure of one's understanding, still there is a sense of something is being revealed to one. One is beginning to grasp a way of looking at things that one could not have seen before. Anyway, if you don't have that, at least enjoy being inspired and uplifted. 

Now the thing about Sufis is that they are not seeking samadhi, that is awakening beyond life. But they are seeking awakening in life. And consequently, after your head arises, you turn your head towards your heart center because that is where you feel that you're seeing, that realization that was revealed to you, you see it working in life instead of beyond life. Awakening in life. So that's a practice that you should be doing. And it's one of the practices that one does on a retreat. It's very powerful. 


The words are very powerful too, the words themselves. The sound of the word __s. La illaha illa Olla hu. La illaha illa Olla hu. La illaha illa Olla hu. (...) So that's something that you could do on your own. Perhaps you could be reminded of the words. It is not La illaha illa alla hu. It's Olla hu. The first Oa' of alla is not pronounced. As we say the words have power. You get into the consciousness of a dervish, divine power coming through. You'll find that if you do this practice a lot, you'll find that divine power comes through you. It's really very extraordinary.  

I remember when I was in Ajmere, I was doing it 22,000 times a day. In the morning I had to do the morning prayers. Then I was walking up to the cave where Hazrat Moinidin Chisti used to do his retreats. On the way there was a guru there with his disciples. And I was just dressed like an ordinary Indian, incognito. But that guru, every time he saw me pass, he greeted me. And his disciples said, "What's happening". It wasn't me. It was like there was a power coming through. And we need power to be able to deal with the challenge of life. It's not good enough to reach realization. We need strength. Now that strength comes from God consciousness. 

Now Pir O Murshid embodied this whole view of the Sufis. We find it in Ibn Arabi and Al Halaj. But I must say the Murshid articulated it in the language of the West when he said, "The human being is the purpose of creation". The divine purpose. Now I think, I'm not sure who it was. I think it was Nafiri. I can't quite remember. But one of the Sufis said, "Why are you looking for God up there? He is here, in you, as you". As the Koran says," Closer to you than your jugular vein". So it's like the sense that I'm carrying this divinity in my being. Very powerful. Like the Catholics do after Communion. The being of Christ is in their being through the Host, sacredness of being in charge of that most valuable of all realities. Now you'll notice that the words remind you of Alleluia, La illaha illa Olla hu. And Jehovah, Ya Hu. There is some value in the sounds themselves.  

Perhaps we could just repeat the word "Hu" and see how it works on you as compared with La illaha. Hu, Hu, Hu, (...) Do you hear the overtones? That's the art of the Sufi wazifa is to produce overtones. You can imagine hearing the overtones. Imagine the prophets of the desert. If you've walked in the desert particularly at night time, everything is very quiet. And the slightest breeze is like the voice of God speaking to you. And it will sound just like this Hu.  

And that's the origin of the word human, hu man. Manas means mind in Sanskrit, manas, mind. And that is the divinity of your being. Oluhia in Arabic, oluhia. It's not Alla. It's oluhia. Like you are a wave of the sea. It doesn't mean that you are the sea. But still it is of the nature of the sea. That consciousness will give you spiritual power in contrast to power of the ego, the ego trips in the rat race. It's really demeaning that we allow ourselves to be drawn into the rat race when we are offered that spiritual power of the dervish.  

So I think I have to end here. I've gone far beyond the time at our disposal. And I must say I admire you for not complaining, sitting there in a very awkward position. 

God Bless you now. Tape ends 

AUG 31, 1997		Tape 06

As our understanding advances in the course of evolution, we're beginning to value more and more the miracle of our bodies. The ancients used to think that the body is dust that returns to dust to the earth. And now one is looking at the cells in electron microscopes and measuring the bioluminescence of the cells. We discover the miracle of life right there in the living cell. And also the impact of our realization upon our bodies and the impact of our bodies on our realization.

You know when I was living in the caves in the Himalayas, we used to sit and meditate in the night looking at the stars and then closing our eyes and reaching right out into the starry Universe and seeing our bodies as part of the starry sky, or rather of the galaxies. And we used to sit in the early morning before dawn and pick up the very strange kind of light before the sun rises above the horizon. A lot of ultraviolet light in that light. And we used to look into the sun sometimes for hours, fix our gaze at the sun. Unless you have practiced this, being very careful of practicing it, you could burn your eyes in the retinas within a few seconds. Here we were looking in the sun for hours. There is a word of Plotinus. So I expect that Plotinus would have done these practices. He said, "To look into the sun, I have to have eyes like the sun". 

So the secret was to discover the light in your own body. And now of course we know that we're not just speaking metaphorically. But that in fact that the cells of our body... Well let's look at it this way. Imagine that originally our bodies were part of what they call the big bang. An incredible explosion of light. In the course of time those photons crystallized and became like crystals as a matter of fact. They became electrons and photons and so on. But somehow there is a continual conversion of photons into electrons and the opposite. And I'll tell you that after death, the electrons continue to live. So our ideas about death are nonsensical. And what is more they are converted into photons so that eventually ( and this is not speaking metaphorically but scientifically) we live as a being of light. We continue to live as a being of light.

And maybe you have memories of having existed as a being of light. If you draw your consciousness right back, or if you are able to retrieve a deep memory in the unconscious, then all of a sudden you'll will remember being a being of light. And this will just change one's life altogether. You know of course there are people who come in the room and bring a lot of light. And there are those who bring dark clouds. I'm sure you like those who bring a lot of light. And you want to belong to that gang of people. So how does one do it? 

Well perhaps the miracle of life is mind over body as we're discovering more and more which of course insures the impact of the universe upon each fragment of itself. So the impact of the Universe, that is the thinking of the Universe upon our bodies and the thinking of our bodies on the universe. Now physicists are beginning to ask questions that one wouldn't have dared to ask before. Like in the split light experiment, how does the photon know that it should go to the left slit instead of the right one? How does it know? So we're assuming something, that there is consciousness in the very photon itself. 

So you could think of your body as an ant nest. All the cells have their own little, well it's all one, but at the same time each ant has its own particularity. And that the cells of your body are sometimes stationary. But anyway nerve cells are moving, traveling. Maybe some cells are more intelligent than others. We mentioned the brain. And what do the cells of the brain know about our thinking? These are thoughts that will help us to enlist the impact of our intelligence upon our body. And the consequence is that it will awaken faculties in our body which we have not been using so far.

Now one of the ways of doing it is to do what we've already done. That is to cut out the impact of the environment such as it appears. That means if we have our eyes open, our ears, we're listening, then what we experience is a very small sliver of the Universe. You know there are trees around you and insects. It's very little in comparison with the Universe. And also it is the way that it appears to us. 

So the impact of these impressions of our perception are so strong that we find it difficult to pick up, to espy the reality of the Universe in all its magnificence. So if we place a sentinel at the doors of perception, of course we will tend to turn within. I think we've done that practice yesterday. And there is always a danger that we will let ourselves be encapsulated in our thoughts. If we don't know how to meditate, then that's what is going to happen. So we're enclosed, we're limited in our very perfunctory commonplace way of thinking. 

Now what I am suggesting is that when you put your indexes on your eyes and thumbs on your ears and so on, instead of turning within, you reach out into the starry sky from inside. And maybe you will discover a very remarkable phenomena which Pir O Murshid drew attention to and all the Sufis along the way. And that is that what we see as the stars in the sky, seem to be pinpointed. It's really the light of the Universe seems to be converged through gravitational forces. So that the star is really the center of a vortex. The light comes through each star. So you think of each star as a separate entity. But it's really like a wave in the sea.

So what we experience through our senses as light, is only the way that light appears at the surface. But if you consider that light is a reality beyond what we perceive. It's a reality regardless of what we perceive. Then when you reach into the starry sky from inside, you are able to have some sense of what I call the reality of life, physicists call it the light field, which is a million times more splendid than what we perceive of the stars. So what I'm talking about is when we are working with light, do not limit your conception, your representation of light to the physical light you perceive with the senses. Because that's only, as Dr. David Boehm says, that's only a sliver of the overall reality of light.

So now what you could do is this. You will be doing this practice putting the indexes in the eyes and so on. Called Yuni mudra. When you inhale, could you think of yourself as a star or as the sun that is drawing the light, not just the physical light of the Universe, but this subliminal light, into a center? And then as you hold your breath, then can you reach out into the starry sky, into the galaxies? But don't imagine the physical light of the stars. But what Pir O Murshid calls the all pervading light comes through the stars. And now you can see that you are of the same nature, that deep down in your being you are a being a light. That's the important thing. And this being of light is part of this all pervading light in the stars. Now as you exhale, you are converting the all pervading light into radiant light and radiating that light like the sun. So the light of the Universe is then converged into a center which becomes a source of light which radiates. So to start with it is not radiant. It is all pervading, let's say diffused. So we are lake the transducer that is able to transmute all pervading light into radiant light. And this happens through our bodies.

OK So now we, you remember the practice. We only breathe through the right nostril and hold your breath between the inhaling and exhaling. And only three breaths. And afterword we take away our hands. And we place the indexes on the eyelids. You turn the eyeballs upwards and the thumbs in our ears, and the forth and fifth fingers on the lips and the middle fingers on the nostrils. And you keep pressing the left middle finger and release the right one in order to inhale and to exhale.

Now in a second step. I forgot to say that in the first step we radiate from our heart center which is the center of our aura. And the second step we consciously draw the all pervading the light, subliminal to the physical light, through our retina, that means through our eyes. So imagine that as you're breathing in and out, without putting your hands in position, imagine that you are absorbing light through your eyes. 

Now this is what the sanyasins were doing, what we were doing in India, drawing the light of the stars through our eyes, threading the light of the sun through our eyes. And it seems to pervade every cell of the body. It reaches into the brain, then radiates from the brain down throughout the whole body. So as you hold your breath, the light pervades the whole body. 

Then as you exhale, be aware that a lot of light has been registered in the brain. The nerve cells absorb more light than the bones or the muscles in your body for example. So there is a tremendous accumulation of light in your brain. And as you exhale, imagine that you are threading that light down through the optic nerves. And it's passing through the retina and the cornea and then out into outer space. 

Now of course you could do this, to start with you could open your eyes as you exhale as long as you are able to maintain your concentration on those two beams of light and not allow your eyes to be conditioned by the environment. If they are conditioned by the environment, then you see the objects. If you maintain your concentration on those two beams then you'll not see the objects. It will look like a blur.

OK So now we'll do exactly the same practice with the fingers on the senses. And again only three breaths. And it doesn't matter if your fingers are on your eyes because the ultraviolet light will pass through your fingers.

So imagine ultraviolet light, your glance, ultraviolet light. It has an x raying effect. If you continue working in this way, you'll begin to downplay your perception of the physical world and begin to really live in a world of light. It becomes much more real to you. The physical world seems to be just the appearance of something much more real that is a world of light. 

Now there is method in order to be able to grasp what we mean by non physical light, or at least not the kind of light that we perceive through our senses or that can be detected in a laboratory and measured. It's a practice of Buddha called Casina. You start with, you prepare first of all. Imagine that your spinal cord is like a chimney. And there is a flame rising in that chimney. And if you watch the flame very carefully, you will have noticed that there are are different hues corresponding with the colors of light in the spectrum. So at the bottom there is red, then a kind of orange, then a kind of golden rather than yellow, then you have green, you have blue, sky blue, and you have violet. Beyond that we don't perceive it as a color, but there is ultraviolet. And below that there is infrared. 

So if you can represent that flame and imagine those colors. Colors are just frequencies of light the way we perceive them corresponding with each chakra. So the bottom of the spine, red. Then the second chakra something like a terra   ì cotta. Then the solar plexus a beautiful madera orange like you see sometimes in the sky at sunset. And gold in the heart center. Then green like the green of fresh leaves or petals, beautiful young green before it gets darker in the throat center. Then the eyes blue. The third eye violet. The crown center like a diamond. With the diamond you've got all kinds of sparkling lights of various colors, flashes. 

Now some of you may be able to do that. If you can just think that your intelligence is of the nature of light. It's not physical light of course but it illuminates all things like Alladin's Lamp. As you inhale you pass in review each chakra. And as you hold your breath, you make that quantum leap and just identify yourself with pure luminous intelligence and consider your aura as underpinning, scaffolding for this light of intelligence. And as you exhale, then consider the way that that light of intelligence burns very brightly and one is very highly aware. The way that it affects one's aura, the aura begins to burn more brightly under the impact of the alacrity of the light of intelligence. That is what is meant in the Koran by a light in a light. You see very clearly the phenomena mind over body because the aura is part of the physical body. The physical aura.

OK Now we're going to do the next practice. This will be the Casina practice of Buddha. Supposing that you cut out a disc of cardboard and you painted it red. When you close your eyes, you see a green reflex. Now you don't have to do that. With you just with closed eyes you could imagine a red disc. I would say perhaps the best thing to do would be to imagine it as you exhale. Then as you inhale, somehow you'll pick up a green reflex image. I told you this but maybe it would have happened even if I hadn't told you. 

Now the skill of Buddha consisted in capturing the reflex of the reflex. I think it's orange. If you imagine the green disc, the green reflects to be a disc, then you're not getting anywhere. What you have to do is as you exhale keep on thinking of the red disc. Now as you inhale, you divide your inhaling into two halves. So that at first you grasp the reflex which is green. Then the second half of the inhaling, you grasp the reflex of the reflex which is orange. You can do this of course at home. If you follow this up further...... tape turns now you could divide your inhaling into four parts. So you're reaching from one reflex into the other until you get into, well you get into violet after the orange. And eventually you'll get into all those areas of the spectrum that are not visible to the ordinary sight. And it will give you a sense of what we might imagine to be non physical light.

Whether it's non physical or not,that's not important. The important thing is that you're reaching beyond the ordinary perception of light. And as a matter of fact you are, for one thing you are injecting your aura with this very high frequency light, eventually perhaps non physical light. But what is more you develop the ability to transmute the infrared energy of your body into the light spectrum and then ultraviolet light. 

Perhaps you know that deep sea fish and bats in caves and fire flies are able to burn their body to produce light. We do that also. Our temperature is a feature of the combustion of our body. But the interesting thing is to be able to convert that infrared light into physical light. That's what some of the Yogis do.

OK Now of course the important thing is to be able to do the opposite. That is to illuminate your body, the physical photons of your body with this very high frequency light and eventually of course the impact of the light of intelligence upon the aura. I know that that sounds complicated. But if you can just do it, you will find that you are becoming more and more radiant at the physical level. Now the most tangible way of insuring that one is being more radiant is the radiance of the eyes. While you're conscious of your heart is like a source of a very intense light like a sun, your aura is an emanation of that intense source of light, effulgence. Now while you're being aware of your aura you can still concentrate on your glance. 

Now there is a psychological factor that comes in. So far we have been doing the visualizations. But they do not suffice. You cannot become illuminated, as one says, unless you are able to overcome grudges against people, resentment, hatred, jealousy, intolerance. If your emotions are powerful emotions of love and compassion and generous thoughts, that is going to make you radiant. 

One of the practices that one does in the more advanced stages is to consider your aura as a kind of container in which you invite people. And you embrace them in the light of your aura. And in so doing, you heal them and transform them. 

This is a Hindu adage in India. The guru is an oyster and his/her disciples are grains of sand that he transforms into pearls. So you can do that. Just feel that those people whom you know and some you love and of them you don't like too much. But somehow you are embracing them in your aura. And they are being transformed within this container. In fact you can represent to yourself the auras of people. And in the same way as your realization is going to transform your own aura, it will also transform the auras of other people. And eventually the whole being of another person.

Now you have to entertain luminous thoughts. That means absolutely no ambiguity. Ambiguity is like a kind of compromise, sort of not taking a clear decision, dithering. It's in fact a kind of mental dishonesty. You see the Sufis metaphorically, consider light, they call it the light of truth. So this very up front truthfulness is going to affect your thinking so it becomes crystal clear, even sparkling. And now there is a last thing. And that's what the Sufis call the smiling forehead. Somehow illumination is always linked with a kind of smile, the smile of the Buddha for example. 

I remember having visited a museum in San Francisco. There was a little statue of a Chinese monk. That monk was absolutely carried away by I think an experience of light. Just imagine that you find yourself in a world of light. Somehow you are able to lift yourself above the tribulations of the earthly conditions that manifest themselves a kind of prison. So it manifested itself as a kind of smile of bliss. We don't know of course. But maybe he had a lot of suffering. But it peaked into this state of bliss. Because our suffering does tend to pull one down into our individual self image. It's a kind of heroic overcoming of limitation. 

It's overcoming self pity. And you know that if you are visiting a patient in a hospital, you tend to commiserate with that patients suffering, you can't help that patient. If you're too flippant, the patient can't stand it. If you know how to deal with suffering yourself and still find joy, then you can help the patient by the power of the smile. Because light flashes through your glance when you smile.

So there comes a time when you are sitting in a room with someone talking. And while you are communicating at the mental level by exchanging thoughts, and perhaps there is some kind of exchange of attunement between the two of you, emotional attunement, you can at the same time really commune in light. That is you are aware of the aura of that person. There is a way of looking at a person where you are not really looking at the features of the face. You're looking at say the expression. So you're looking at something less tangible, less material than the features of the face or the body. If you are used to working with light. If you have done a lot of retreats with light and are so used to being aware of your aura and working with your aura and making it more radiant, then you will always be conscious of the auras of people. And it's a wonderful way of communicating with people. Maybe they don't quite realize that that's what you're doing, but somehow it helps them to feel somehow comfortable about themselves. You are honoring them. And you will find that at least some people react spontaneously right away. They don't know what's happening, but their being begins to come through in the light of your aura, interfaced with the light of your aura. 

So the art of doing it is what we, maybe we haven't been doing it during this seminar. Maybe we have been doing it. It is closing your eyes and thinking of your glance as being made up of two beams of light. Then when you open your eyes, you know that the objects in the room are going to force your eyes into focus. So you loose your concentration. You'll becomes passive, receptive, instead of casting the light of your being upon the objects. Now if you have the strength to maintain your concentration on those two beams of light, then of course, the world looks like a blur. Everything is intermeshed with everything else. But if you continue working with this, and it takes months and months of hard work, you begin to bring your glance a little more into focus. Let's say you look at a flower. You're not modulating your glance from looking at one petal then the other. But you look at the flower as a whole. And eventually you will see the aura of the flower. And if you don't see it, you'll have some sense of the reality. The perception of the flower is only a signal telling you something about the reality of that flower. It can never be limited to your perception of it. Then you do it with a person. Imagine that, I think it was in Scientology that they were pairing up and staring at each other. That's a very dangerous thing. The glance of a person can be very damaging, especially if there is anything sensual in that glance. 

There was this rishi in India next to the ashram of Shivinanda. Everybody went to Shivinanda. It was very popular. I went there too. He asked me to give a talk. Then next to it there was a small ashram. There was a little rishi there. Hardly anybody went there. He was really illuminated. He never spoke. He could, you know a rishi is always 108 years old. They are never younger or older. They are always 108. So he was 108 years old. And he could hardly walk but he could dance. And he was just pure spirit, far beyond the mind. It wasn't just that he didn't speak. If you asked him a question and he could speak, he would think it so ridiculous to try to communicate at the mental level. It just doesn't make sense. All that one does is to sit there and look into his eyes. How long can you look into the eyes of a person? At first I thought, well what am I supposed to do look into the eyes of this man? The next day I came back and looked a little longer and eventually looked into his eyes for hours. I came our transformed by the light that was coming through this being. That's all that happened. 

The miracle of light. But the reason for that is his glance was impersonal, or transpersonal. And consequently through his glance he was revealing your real being to you. And you realize that our self image is totally inadequate. It just is nothing in comparison to what we are. And realizing it is going to make all the difference. It's going to transform your body and give you energy in later age, and give you joy in the middle of your suffering and give you sight into the guile of people. You see the selfishness of people, and you see their greed, and you see their dishonesty. And somehow you are awake. That's why the Tibetans call it the clear light of bliss. The relationship between bliss and light. So you know you can awaken. You can switch on something and all of a sudden you find yourself awake. 

One of the methods used by Pir O Murshid is to turn your eyeballs upwards and identify with the light of intelligence. Then open your eyes and turn your eyes forward and represent to yourself the light threaded through the light of your glance, that is the light that reaches out from your brain. And that's called a light within a light. It's not the light upon a light but a light within a light. And this is not samadhi. It's being awake in life. Samadhi is with closed eyes. This is with open eyes. You can see the mind in matter. You can see meaningfulness where the ordinary mind wouldn't see it.

God bless you now.

Tape ends


AUG 31, 1997		Tape 07

Yes, a moment of delight in your retreat. Thank you Mikial. Your intuition is improving a lot with the years because that's exactly what I wanted to have on today. And I assure you, I guarantee I didn't tell you, did I? He just picked it up. Also I feel very proud that I've converted you to Bach after some resistance. Personally I prefer it to Rock and Roll. But I don't want to be judgmental. You see Bach says it better than I can say it. That's exactly what I wanted I'm trying to say. But I couldn't say it with that magnificence. I think I recognize that tone of Milstein, it that right? Yes, the best interpreter of this piece of Bach. There are many others, but Milstein is the perfectionist. I think one can still have those CDs. They are still available. 

Yes, you know the Sufis use music to prepare themselves for meditation, as a prelude to meditation. It just depends what music you choose of course. I think it's a wonderful example of what we are trying to do in meditation. It's a model. Therefore it's good to try to see if we can learn something from what Bach is teaching us, or any musician.  

For example Beethoven. Remember I said we need to place a buffer between the challenge of the world and ourselves. Well, Beethoven teaches us that in the Fourth Piano Concerto when he describes the world as the orchestra when it comes with a bum pa bum bum bum. Instead of countering, that's the reactive strategy of the ego, he represents himself as a pianist. Dum um ... Total contrast. He is not reacting. He is coming from a deep place in himself. As if to say, "I'm not playing ball with you. I want to first consult my deeper self". And out of that comes a fantastic dialogue between the piano and the orchestra. Finally the orchestra recedes in the background and he wins. So that's a very good lesson. In fact that's one of the things I want us to work with this morning.  

Creativity. You know Bach said these words which I read somewhere. And I must say I've been asked several times where I found it and I forget the reference. But I can show you the words. He said, "The science of my art nobody knows but myself. I'm trying to create a model for a human commonwealth". That is a model for society, a human commonwealth. And he said, "It is not the imposition of one theme upon another". Like for example if you have a melody and accompaniment. "Each theme contributing to the whole. For each theme an instrument and for each instrument a theme. And each one contributing by their initiative to the whole. And yet each one trimming their initiative in the interest the whole". And then finally he said,"Such is the symphony of the stars". In other words his music was based on the choreography of the heavens.  

So this is a model for us in our meditation. If you remember the different stages we've gone through, we were first looking very clearly at interpretations of our situations and realizing that they are biased by personal vantage point. Then we were downplaying anything that accrues to us from outside so that we are able to get in touch with what emerges from inside if you remember. And we were saying we enlist the potentialities of our being to win ourselves from the reactive strategy of the ego. Therefore we are enhancing our self esteem and our self image. Consequently we are able to better deal with the challenges of the world.  

That's what we're doing here. That's perhaps the crux of what we are doing here in our retreat. And as a matter of fact I was thinking this is such a unique opportunity. You've come from far, some of you from the cities. What an opportunity it is for you to really sit back and ask yourself some questions about your life and see your life with a larger perspective than when you are involved in situations from day to day. So I'm going to try and make it short today so that, this morning at least, so that you can really experience what it's like to be on your own in the woods in peaceful circumstances. It's really quite different from your everyday life with all the rush and so on. And have a kind of review with a certain perspective over your life in general.  

So if you were, to start with, I think most people would do this as one is able to figure out things from one's personal point of view. That would be totally unsatisfactory. Perfunctory let's say. The commonplace way of thinking doesn't get you anywhere. So one would start by that. For example, you'd start by saying, "Well I see me, my qualities, my defects. Then the world, the circumstances. Then if I look at the past, there's guilt, there's resentment.. There is a feeling that I can't change it." Then if you look at the situations around you, you think, "Well I wish I could change them but I can't see how could change them". Of course the only way to change them is to change myself. So then you start progressing yourself.  

All this would be looking at things from your personal vantage point. And that's just not satisfactory. It's not enough. For example, you'd ask yourself, "What are the qualities I need in order to meet my problems?" So there is the interface between you and your problems. They seem like two different things although I've said there is an overlap between the two. So this would be the first question you'd ask yourself. For example, "I have a problem with someone who keeps on trying to push me down, humiliate me, denigrate me,... so on, judgmental. What is the quality that I should develop in order to meet that person? Should I have more power?" If you have more power, that person will get more power. So that's not the solution. "Should I have compassion for that person? That person would take advantage of that compassion and think I'm weak." Insight. If for example you try and get into the consciousness of that person, that would help. But I do need power. It's not good enough to understand. I need power. But it's not the kind of power that person has because that person is going to draw me on his or her battle field. That's where he or she knows he or she wins.  

So it's a totally different value. And that you can't figure out with your mind. Now what is Sufism teaching us is that actually at first one could say that you have to take account of, well in the language of the Sufis it's the action of God on you. But in my present way of talking, let's say the action of the Universe on each fragment of itself and of course the action of each fragment on the Universe. Now we bring in another dimension than your personal one. That makes all the difference.  

So now you ask yourself the second question. So there is some action of the Universe upon me. If you apply the adage La illaha illa, that all is one, then you would say, "I am at the same time a discrete person and at the same time the totality is also present in me potentially. So I mustn't think of the Universe as other than myself". So that's a very different way of looking at things to thinking of God up there. 

So that means that I need to give vent to a transforming action that functions within me where my own initiative seems to have to stay in abeyance for some time. So the action of the Universe can take over from my personal will because my personal will can't do it. You see?  

So my first question was my concern about adapting myself to the environment. My second question is the way that I can adapt the environment to my own sense of purpose. So the first one is the Darwinian theory that you very well. That is the species evolving by adapting themselves to the environment. That's an imperfect theory. It's been shown that that's only one aspect of it. Because the more advanced animals are able to adapt the environment to their own sense of purpose instead of adapting themselves to the environment. And the more you evolve, the more you are able to adapt the environment to your own sense of purpose.  

And if you ask yourself, what is a seed? A seed is a program which is powered by energy. That's what it is, a program. It's a program powered by energy that transforms the earth into a plant, and transforms the air into a plant, and transforms the sun into a plant. That's what we are. In other words you are transforming the environment to fit into your purpose, or rather to fit into the way the purpose of the Universe is working through you. So you're seeing things very differently than adapting yourself to the environment. So you see the kind of perfunctory way of thinking, "What should I do? What is the quality that I need to develop in order to meet the problem?" It doesn't work. It's not good enough. 

So then you ask the question, "Well there are qualities that are coming through me now. Let us try to listen into what those qualities are instead of my trying to figure out what qualities I need to develop." And eventually, hopefully these qualities will be the solution to this problem rather than whatever you figure out with your mind.  

So now I'm going to try and interpret what I am saying in the language of the Sufis. You know just like the mathematicians have their language, xyz, pi and so on. These are words that are not in our current language. And consequently they don't they don't have all the projections that we place on our language. So let's say they are labels.  

There are two words. There are several of course. One is that in order to be able to pick up what are the qualities that are trying to come through, I need to be able to turn within. So we've done practices turning within. And the wazifa, that is the word corresponding with that is Batin, Ya Batin. And instead of thinking of these labels as an intellectual concept, they can express themselves in a form. So each wazifa not only has a concept you could translate in English, but has a form. So the form for Ya Batin is the veiled one. Like the veiled woman in Islam. Even the men are veiled in the desert. And that is that somehow the secret of your soul is holy in fact sacred. You know the word sacred and secret has the same etymology. So somehow one does not want to expose the sacredness of one's soul to the derision of the crowd. So one is veiled.  

So how can you reconcile that with this idea of being up front and not manipulative or having guile. That yes, absolutely honest. But somehow guard one's very delicate soul from being damaged by people who do not honor it.  

And the same is true of what you imply behind what you express in words, as we said yesterday. And the same is true of the countenance of your face. The face is the veil. And according to the Sufis referring to the Islamic woman who has a veil. The very veil that conceals espouses the form of the face and therefore does reveal the form to some extent. That's the veiled beauty. Now if you think of that metaphor, the veil, that will help you to protect yourself from the thoughts of people, or the opinions of people, or the way the situations appear at the surface. So you can really get in touch with your deeper self. That's Batin. 

On the other hand there is a balance in us between concealing the secret treasure in Islam. I would say the whole point of departure in Sufism is a word, a Hadith where Mohammed says, "I was a secret treasure. And I desired to be known. And therefore I created the Universe". Actually the cosmos. Actually it's man if you like. I was a secret treasure and desired to be known. One could interpret it several different ways. I desired to know myself through those beings in whom that treasure became manifest. You know Sufism is very subtle. So you see in the language of the Sufis they would say, "Get into the divine consciousness".  

Now what I'm, and people have a problem with that word God due to Buddhism because Buddhism has made it very difficult to use the word God anymore. So I would say the action of the totality upon each part of the totality. So that the bounty that is concealed in the hidden treasure, the secret treasure, is trying to come through me as my potentials. Instead of thinking those are my potentials, it is the secret of the Universe, the secret of God. It's called 'surabobia', the secret of God. That is concealed in my heart. And the whole purpose of life is the manifesting of the non manifest. That is always at the cost of one's life. I'm saying too much.  

I can think of a lot of cases. For example, there was that lady, Iranian poetess, was very well known and very popular. And at a public meeting she took off her veil. And the mullahs came and killed her within a few minutes. So it's revealing the secret. And Al Hallaj was crucified for having said, "An al haqq", which means there is something in me which is of the divine nature. Same word that Mister Ekcart said. He was warned by his so called friend Shibling not to reveal the secret of his love relationship with God. It was the cost of his life. And of course the same was true of Christ. So that's Zahir. It's the epiphany, manifesting that which was concealed. And the whole of life is exactly that. The non manifest becomes more and more manifest in the course of life. So you can consider yourself as being the transducer through which that which is non manifest and which is therefore that which lies as potentials in your being, is longing to come through. You feel the nostalgia of that. And that is the meaning of Ishq Allah, the secret desire behind the whole of creation.  

So you see Sufism is very different from Hinduism and particularly Buddhism because in Buddhism one sees that the cause of all suffering is desire. And the Sufis would say, "Well I'm prepared to suffer in order to have joy. I'm prepared to suffer by involving myself in life rather than being anesthetized. Like a cancer patient might have the choice between taking drugs and then becoming a vegetable or then suffering and being alive or continuing to be lively, aware.  

So Zahir is like that moment when you are handing your soul into the hands of people. As my father said, those are the most poignant words I think in the last year when he said, "My heart is like glass, and I hand it over to my disciples. And once they have it in their hands they say, "If you don't do what I want, I'll break it"." You'd be surprised. That's my experience in life too, power play. If you are a very sensitive person, you'll find that you are very vulnerable. If you open your heart, you're vulnerable. People know that. Some people would just take advantage. So that's Zahir. Zahir is the epiphany. And you know epi phanos means the appearance of light, like the manifestation of light. Like for example, the three wise men who visited Christ on the day of Epiphany, that's the Epiphany. So that is Zahir.  

All what we were doing this morning was Zahir, manifesting light through our body. There is a point that was really basic. Maybe I didn't say it quite clearly this morning. That is, well we already said that light crystallizes as a crystal. That's the course of time. But the extraordinary thing about a crystal, and the cells of your body act like what they call liquid crystals, is that the electrons within a crystal are giggling, vibrating all the time. So it's alive, incredible. And you know that an electron is like, imagine the seed of a prune in a big lecture hall. So the proton would be at the center of that lecture hall. And the electron is rushing about the walls. That's our body, mainly empty. Mainly just energy, you see. But it seems like a particle. Anyway that's science.  

But the interesting thing is that the crystal does not simply reflect light like a mirror. The very structure of the atoms are transformed by light. It feeds on light. And then the extraordinary thing is that the electrons, having availed themselves of the energy, they begin to dance. They begin to free themselves from the constraint of their orbital. That's the dance of Shiva. And so free themselves from constraint. So that light is a mode of energy that gives you freedom in your body.  

So the extraordinary thing is that the crystal is able to process light and be transformed by it. So we also (I was just saying that because I'm anticipating a little bit all the next steps). One of the next steps is the celestial spheres. If I speak of angels, you could ask me if I still believe in Santa Clause. You know you can't do that these days anymore. So they have all these pictures of angels with wings and playing harps and things like that. Of course people don't believe that anymore. Heaven is up there and us down here on the earth. But the light of our aura if you think of light as different levels of light, that's where the heavens are to be found.  

So somehow that thought will give us a sense of the many tiered dimensions of our being. Otherwise, as I say, if you're sitting there in the forest and you just identify yourself with your mind and your body and your will and so on, it doesn't do anything for you. You might as well just watch TV or something. There is no point.  

So the second step is to try and capture, if you think I want to, like a cat waiting for the mouse, to capture the new potentials. Perhaps it rings a bell. I doesn't work that way. As a matter  __ of fact, in science of course you never know what an electron is like because to observe it you're using photons. So the electron is altered. So you can never know what the electron is like itself. So you never know what those potentials are by casting the light of consciousness upon them. It doesn't work that way. The only way that it will work is to adopt an attitude of receptivity or responsiveness.  

So we have two words, two wasifas so we'll have a sense of what we're doing. There is Ya Hadi and Ya Wali. Wali means mastery and there are so many cases where it is important for us to take responsibility. So that's Ya Wali. But Hadi means listening to guidance. There is some relationship between the two. It is a state of waiting. For an impatient person like myself, it is very difficult to wait. You find it in the teaching of this wonderful dervish Nafari who was a dervish. And he used to live in the desert. And he would come to visit his daughter from time to time and say very extraordinary things that are very difficult to understand.  

So we talk about that period, that threshold situation in your life where you're between two what they call makum, two stations. And you're in a sort of blank period where you don't know where you   _ are going. It's not yet good to take a decision because you're not yet able to. So you have to wait. Hopefully you don't have to wait too long. Hopefully the answer will come. So there's that sort of intermediary threshold state.  

Now I could illustrate this. It will make it a little more clear. I was an officer in the British Navy during the Second World War watching for German submarines in the dark. We were taught not to scan the horizon. Because if you're scanning the horizon, you're using your will. So your glance has got to be totally blank. If there is a little shadow on the horizon, that shadow is going to draw your attention toward it. Whereas if you're deciding where you're glance is going, you would miss it. So that's what I mean. And that's Hadi.  

Hadi means guidance. It's not being stubborn. Be prepared to question your decision about something. Otherwise you'll be pig headed and follow a course because of what you think it's right. And everybody will have to suffer because   __you made the wrong decision. So it's very important to be able to do that.  

It's also linked with intuition. Now I say that that shadow was attracting my glance. But maybe there is something deeper than that. Maybe it was touching something deeper self than a glance and then manifests in the glance, but drew my glance in that direction. That is intuition, the secret of intuition. Because Hadi is the secret of intuition.  

Now my father's teacher Abu Hashi Modini, his Murshid, said to him, "Intuition is the revelation of your own spirit." So we have in us a kind of barometer I think. A very sensitive instrument. And it does not work on the principle of I - it, of subject - object. It works on the principle of affinity. Like for example two gongs. Actually if you have two pianos that are tuned. All the chords are tuned the same way as the other, then if you play one, the chords of the other will start resounding in what is called sympathetic resonance. So that's the secret of intuition. It is because we have in ourselves the same as other people but maybe we haven't given expression to it the same way as the other person, that we can understand that person intuitively. So we're not the judge. It's not what Martin Buber calls an I - it relationship, but it's an I - thou relationship.  

Now I can illustrate it. There was somewhere in the United States a young man who came to me and asked if I could give him a wazifa to help him because he was being unjustly accused of having set fire to a hospital. And he was a lovely young man and radiant and looked at me in the eyes. So I thought well I'm sure he is innocent. Then somehow I remembered these words of my father. So I said, "Do you mind if I just close my eyes and meditate?" I opened my eyes and I said, "I know you did it". Now you would never dare say a thing like that unless you are sure. And he broke down and admitted that he had. I told that to a judge once. Because that's the problem of judges. And he said said, "Oh that's exactly what I've been looking for. I want to learn to develop my intuition". So you see that turning within that's the only way. If can't judge,you have to learn to turn within.  

Therefore it's very interesting to link with Ya Batin with Ya Hadi. You're turning within and you receive guidance. And then Wali of course, mastery. And be very careful of mastery because it can be an ego trip proving yourself to yourself or to other people. And you know psychologists are very cautious about shoulding oneself and not getting in touch with one's feelings. 

Now Pir O Murshid has a very novel view on Wali, on mastery, that I've never found anywhere else. He says it is harnessing an impulse but giving it a direction instead of shunning or thwarting it. For example it is really recognizing that our, you see, it is really the opposite of Buddhism in a sense because it's honoring our desires. But they get distorted. But our desires in their original state are the divine impulse. Ishq Allah, the desire to manifest.  

So for example, what is happening in the world is that, for example, is that for the divine splendor to be experienced it needs to translate itself as beauty. So you see the need for us to build a beautiful world of beautiful people. But you don't have to be an ascetic to be spiritual. So it's the opposite of the way of the ascetic. Because our desires are an expression of the divine impulse because there is fulfillment in the existential state. But when that desire of the Universe gets distorted in our personal vantage point. That's where it gets distorted. So then while you're meditating you just see how there has been a distortion in a very deep need to make, well the word used by Murshid is to make God a reality. So it's not just the action of the totality on the part. It's the action, maybe the action of mind over body.  

So now we have therefore as we are turning within, we cannot scan our qualities and say, "Yes I would like to develop this quality, or I want to concentrate on those qualities". So your teacher gives you a wazifa and you concentrate on that quality. No, you have to be in a state of waiting. There is a wazifa which is Wajid, means to find. You know control F on your computer.  

Now there was an amazing statement by a physicist in the Scientific Amer  _yican some time ago. And that is for an electron to exist you have to create favorable circumstances. So for God to exist, you have to create favorable circumstances in yourself. So find God by making God a reality in you.  


Yes, there is a joke I've already said. But you're not the same people. In India Mary was in an airport. And there was one of these Jehovah Witnesses who came up and said, "Have you found God?" And she said. "Have you lost Him?" You imagine a Jehovah Witness.  

I must say that Wajid is extremely important for me, extremely meaningful. In science there is what they call an attractor. Like there is something that is drawing your attention and eventually got it. That's the OAha" moment. You've found it. You have to create circumstance in order to find it. I must say that you can't just do it with your mind. Actually I must say that you can only find whatever it is if you create the favorable circumstances, that is an atmosphere of sacredness. That is the secret is only revealed in an atmosphere of sacredness.  

So it's no use just sitting in the woods trying to improve yourself, working rationally with yourself. It doesn't work that way. Looking at you life. There needs to be an about turn where you let something come through. Then let's say the Universe self organizes itself as us, not in us but as us. And at a certain moment you take over.  

And that's the secret of creativity. For example that (..) of Bach that we were listening to. But how is it possible for the human mind to compose something like that? How is it possible? Our of your personal vantage point you could never create something that's cosmic. If it's meaningful to us, it's because the Universe is telling us something through this language which is music, telling us something about itself, passed through the mind of Bach. So you can imagine that he was, I don't want to use the word lost, he found himself rather in the choreography of the heavens. He was right there in the relationship with the planets. Each one has a certain measure of freedom but still there is some constraint for the sake of the harmony of the whole. How he could see that. How our thoughts are also, there is some kind of constraint in our thoughts and at the same time freedom. And how that works. it's extraordinary how that works. It's exactly the same thing. I didn't say this but sometimes when an electron is able to absorb enough light, that's energy, to free itself from its orbit, then it's called a free electron. So that's freedom. That's what Buddha did. He found freedom. 

So in our thinking there is a need for freedom and there is constraint. Maybe what I am saying here is a bit difficult to follow. But is you are conversant with the theories of Cannon I think, what they call artificial intelligence, you'll find the same thing applies here, that there is some kind of constraint in our way of thinking, and then what they call redundancy, conditioning, then somehow a need for freedom from accepted norms.  

For example, Einstein. You know he didn't pass his examination because his teacher didn't agree with what he said. And the reason his teacher didn't agree with what he said was that he didn't agree with what his teacher said. And so he was asking the question, what if my teacher is wrong? Of course the teacher didn't like that.  

Well the same thing is true of yourself. You can ask yourself, "What if all that I've been thinking is wrong?" That's the dark night of the mind. So that's what if, what if. How would light look if I were traveling at the speed of light? It's the universe that's moving, not the light. So everything depends upon how you look at things. 

So you see you've got quite a program to when you're sitting in nature. Otherwise you won't get very far. The Sufis call it revealed knowledge. Tajali, revealed knowledge. It's the knowledge that we acquire is very limited. In fact our knowledge is limited by its object as Pir O Murshid says. And therefore if you do not have an objective like, I want to improve myself, some agenda let's say when you're meditating, then you'll find that a different type of knowledge comes through. The strange thing is that when it does, one has the feeling that one has always known this but somehow it wasn't clear. All of a sudden it becomes clear. It's like the word used in philosophy is protocritic knowledge, that is knowledge that is born within us, inherent within us. And you see, in our experience in life, all that is happening is that our experience confirms what we know. For example, how do you know that a table is round? Because roundness is written in our intelligence. And you see what is already in you confirmed in the round table.  

What I'm saying is that if you really want to meditate and therefore work with yourself so that it will have a transforming effect on yourself, you will need to eschew totally figuring things out with your mind. And maybe since you are used to these crutches, you will get into a void. There won't be any realization there at all. You've given up one thing and you're in between two chairs because you don't have the other realization. So that's the waiting. But I think that it is accepting that this knowledge, this realization is revealed to you if you don't stand in its way.  

You could say,"Well how do you know if your intuition is real or not? If it's just wishful thinking?" One has to be very careful, God told me to do this and that. It's very dangerous. And the answer is that if you're very scrupled about truthfulness, you won't fool yourself. Or let's say if you're very scrupled about not fooling others, you won't fool yourself. So your scruple about authenticity is going to dismiss any wishful thinking because you can see that it's not true, it's not honest. 

I'm wondering, it's an idea that came to me all of a sudden. Well all my ideas come to me all of a sudden. All of a sudden I thought to myself, "Yes I wonder whether the power of truth could help pathological patients". You know there is a word of Dr. David Boehm who was a physicist. But the last part of his life he became a philosopher. And what he said is, "Be not surprised if a new understanding will alter the circuits of your brain". Maybe that's the secret of psychiatry. One is using a drug. It won't quite do it. It will protect you but it's in one's way of thinking that there is an anomaly or an incongruence. As I said, if you are very authentic, then ambiguous ideas get into sync, get into order. It's taking control of the mind.  

Of course you know, that's the great art of the Yogis. They start by putting up with incredible hardships. They're sitting in the cold. If you're sitting in the cold and you can't meditate because it's cold. Well forget it. Well if you just think of those sanyasins sitting in the ice cold. I've done it myself, sitting in the ice cold so the body is like almost desensitized altogether. That's perhaps the best guarantee for longevity is to harden your body against heat and cold and all kinds of hardships, fear.  

I'm very tempted to tell you a story. I'm far beyond the time. I said I was going to be short. Well it's the story of this woman in India. You know in India when the husband dies, the woman at least in the old days, the woman is supposed to be burnt on the stake with the body of her husband. Women die younger than men because they are in purdat so they develop TB. Of course the milk is not sterilized. So there is a lot of TB. So men marry younger women. So here was a young princess and her old husband died. So she was to die, be burned on the stake. So imagine, you would be scared wouldn't you? Somebody said there was a guruess and she should go and visit that guess. So she visited her. And the guruess, that means the lady guru had a pet cobra. And she said, "yes I can help you not to have to go on the stake, but you'll have to pet this cobra. And if you're afraid, this cobra will bite you". So she had to think it over. And there was a choice between certain death and death that was not quite certain because perhaps she could overcome her fear. So she petted the cobra. The test of courage.  

And I must say that we are building a protection against hazards. Our house is one of them. Sham Tabriz said, "Destroy your house and you'll find a treasure". So destroy all the things that you depend upon, you think you depend upon. So there is a fear of loosing those things that one depends upon. For example, if the bank crashes, what's going to happen now, how can I survive? That kind of fear of the unknown. We're so used to depending upon circumstances. Fear of illness, fear of death. If you, fear is really somehow connected with dependence.  

What we're trying to do is to be able to introduce into our daily life wisdom that has been gained by men and women who have gone beyond life into the high mountains, beyond life. I would say that as long as one depends mentally upon conditions, the whole power of your being will not come through. That means the potential qualities in your being will not come through if you're addicted to the wherewithal, the support system that we need in order to live. So it's become very difficult for people living in our civilizations to develop what the Sufis call spiritual power, divine power. So you can't counter the person who is going to try to draw you on that battlefield if you don't have divine power. And you can't have that power if you're in a state of dependence upon circumstances.  

I can say that when I was a young man I went on a pilgrimage, what they call a guru hunt. And so I, being brought up in the West, I had a nice back pack and a tent and a cooker and all those kinds of things. And then I found that they were rather heavy to carry. So I dumped the cooker at least because I thought I could find wood on the way to heat my can. But then higher up there was no heat any more. So then the tent was too heavy. So I left that also. Sleeping bag was rather essential. Then I thought of those sanyasins who were able to sleep in the cold without sleeping bags. So I thought well I'll do away with the sleeping bag. That wonderful feeling that I can do away with all these things. That gives you a sense of freedom. Now you can only know that if you have done it. And it starts with cigarettes. To find that you can do without cigarettes, it's a wonderful experience. It's what's called addiction. Or watching TV.  

So what I'm trying to do is awaken or enlighten the zest in you, the hidden ascetic in you that's looking for freedom. Then you'll have to see how you can reconcile that with the day to day living that we are all involved with in our civilization. Introduce, dare you introduce freedom within conditioning. 

So those are the thoughts that I would like you to dwell upon as you're sitting in the woods now. And maybe something will happen to you. If you expect it to happen, then it won't because then you're in a state of dependence upon the expectation. 

OK Bless you now. 

Tape ends 

AUG 31, 1997		Tape 08

 ...a coeur as one says in French, feeling of the heart. When one comes on retreat, one hopes to take a sabbatical from life. And I even said try downplay the thoughts that accrue from outside so that you can become more aware of what is coming from inside. But thoughts concerning, when one becomes, when one unwinds a machine so one is not any more so rushed and forced into action by the challenge of circumstances, then ones whole life surfaces before one, inevitably. You don't have to do it. It just does it. Of course the beauty of it is that you see your whole life in its context in the relationship of the events instead of thinking of each event as separate. It will give you a kind of overview. The reason for that is that there are unresolved issues that are drawing our attention. So you need to listen to what they have to say. Because much as we would like to use, for example, wasifas in order to improve our being, our personalities, there are obstacles. And we have to remove those obstacles. And those obstacles don't only refer to ourselves but also to other people. We are all related to each other.  

So for example, there is a practice of the Sufis Ya Ghani. Now it's a practice of the Sufis when they are walking along the street or a road to remove the obstacles. If it's a branch of a tree or a stone, to remove the obstacles. If you are on a street in America, well it's rather difficult along a highway because the cars are going so fast, but if there is something on the road that could cause an accident, then you're responsible for not taking it away or removing it. That's Ghani. It's very significant because are you removing obstacles just for yourself, or are you removing obstacles for other people? In fact by removing obstacles for other people, one is removing obstacles for oneself.  

So maybe one of the preliminaries in a retreat is to deal with those thoughts that keep on bugging one and are reminding oneself that there is something that one needs to do to deal with them. One is guilt. The other is resentment. The other is the trauma of pain, the loss of someone one loved And thinking of the suffering of other people and victims of brutality. So there are things in one's conscience that need to be dealt with. There is even a kind of concern like there are so many people now who are homeless. Well they are victims of our greed to a large extent. The drugs. There are a lot of things, a lot of elements that come in. Computers, the technologies of our time that require skill. There are a lot of things. Somehow we pass them by. People are rushing to their office. There is a man lying on the way in the subway. And we walk around him and think it's somebody else's job to deal with him. And nobody does. Our conscience suffers very much.  

So it's no use bypassing these thoughts and trying to develop qualities in oneself. You go to your spiritual guide and say, "Which wazifa should I do?". And he says, "Well do this. You need to have more power or you need to have more insight". And so on. One has to clear the ground. Like if you want to cultivate the field, you have to clear away the stones and obstacles. So that word Ghani is very, it draws your attention to something you need to deal with. 

Now you remember I said consider what are your objectives in life, your values. And see whether you are carrying out. Now this is a compliment to what we did when considering, looking at our lives a kind of asking ourselves what our objectives are. It is really, first of all it does consist of looking in your life in retrospect. Pir O Murshid said in the book called In Life says, "If you want to engage on the spiritual path, you first have to pay your debts". And those debts are any action towards another person where it has caused harm or damage to that other person. So that's where guilt comes in.  

There are two dangers. One is to justify oneself which is not owning one's guilt. The other one is perhaps overdoing it and feeling guilty for something that was beyond one's control. We have to be careful to be very balanced in one's judgment about it.  


So how can you deal with this, with guilt first then resentment? The first thing is, let me just mention a practice, a practice based on a practice that Hujwiri mentioned. Hujwiri was a Sufi who settled in India long before Moinidin Chisti in Lahore. His darga, his tomb is in Lahore. There are a lot of dervishes there. He said vaqt, that is time. You find that in Arab countries instead of "stop". There is "vaqt" which means wait. We talked about waiting. What is a sharp sword, these are the words of Hujwiri, that cuts the quilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future. Now that's a psychological statement.  

Now what does he mean by that word? It is the instant of time rather than a moment of time. We have to clearly distinguish those two. If you're listening to music, then the note that you just heard continues to resonate in your ears while you're hearing the next note. It's an overlap of the past and the future. But the instant of time cuts the continuity of time and therefore the causal chain. And you can see that that therefore has an effect on our guilt because we think in terms of causality. We think that what we sow we reap. So there is some logical inference from the cause to the effect.  

Well how is that so? Do you mean to say that one can really be absolved of one's guilt? That would be just too easy. Or asking to be taken off the hook by asking for divine forgiveness. That's not really dealing with it. The key to this is that in the instant of time is when there is this apostrophe, this break in continuity, we make a pledge. The pledge is made in the instant of time. It's that pledge that breaks the continuity and opens up the emergence of potentialities. So these potentialities can only emerge if you open up your life by breaking the causal chain by making a pledge.  

So now let's do this practice. You inhale through the left nostril. You hold your breath and you exhale through the right nostril. As you inhale through the left nostril, you think of the past and particularly those things that make you feel uncomfortable when you think of the past. Then when you hold your breath, you think, "I thought I can't change the past. But actually if I make a pledge, is that going to alter the past?" And the secondly is that going to have an affect on the prefiguration future?  

Now there are practical ways of looking at this. If you were to write to a person whom you feel you had wronged even many years ago. If you write to them, you might heal them of their resentment. But you can only ask forgiveness if you make a pledge you will never do it again. This has damaged that person. If I continue, it will damage other people. So I make a pledge I will never do it again. So there are two aspects of a pledge. One thing is I will not and the other thing is I will. So the first thing if I will. So that in fact it is true that your decision has had a retrospective effect on the past. Now maybe that person has died and you can't contact them. But you can contact them anyway. The fact is that you have changed yourself. That's going to have a retroactive effect upon the past. 

Now there is such a thing as retribution instead of just absolution. So the pledge needs to be two fold, I will not do this again but I will do this. So the the pledge is also positive for the future. So that one does seek absolution by doing something for other people. I don't know whether you saw that film where that man was carrying this terrible load up hill. So he was punishing himself, seeking absolution by punishing himself. That didn't quite do it. But then he decided to help the people. And that did it. And there was a man who raped a woman. And finally he became a monk and he was a very saintly person. So he was overcoming his guilt by some action. It could be really doing things for people in a positive day. That's the whole karmic law in Hinduism. We need to do something.  

Does that absolve us totally? I don't know. (no that's not good for me. Cold. The doctor says it's not a cold.) You can make a pledge. You've got to do something. (Then I can't speak very well. Thank you. ) Yes, if you look around you there is so much to do. There is so much suffering. There is so much to do. It will help you compensate for your guilt. A gratuitous act. Otherwise what we are doing to do is we're trying to make money for ourselves, to improve our comfort and so on. I know it's difficult to survive in this world. So it's just that little plus that one does that will help deal with, because as I say our guilt is really standing in the way of the unfurling of our being. And therefore the word of Hujwiri, that it doesn't only cut the guilt of the past but the prefiguration of the future. It's going to alter your planning because now you have to take into account how you are going to compensate for the harm that you did.  

And then there is this saying which is really shattering. It's a saying of I think he was a mathematician who was also a biologist. I don't know much about him. His name was Euler. And he said, "The pull of the future is stronger than the pull of the past". Because our perfunctory way of thinking is in terms of causality. This happened and this has this consequence and so on. 

In science there is such a thing as what they call retrocausality. The cause in the future, so the pull of the future. So it is your motivations that are the pull that draws you out of the guilt of the past. It consists in two things. One is one's planning for what one intends to do. The other one is the way one could be if one would be what one might be. That's the second way is the way that you can pull yourself out of the past if you think that the consequence of the past is to prefigure how you could be. 

Now resentment is always connected with the past. I have been damaged. Someone has abused me, humiliated me, done me harm. And I said this already, but I can say it again. In the primitive state amongst the animals for example, there is a short circuit. You've been damaged and you hurt the person who damaged you. That's a circuit. But in our civilizations it's not allowed to hurt a person who has hurt you.  

In fact there was a case of this man who a man came in his house and was about to rape his wife. This man was a plumber. And he took a big tube and hit the man who tried to rape his wife. The question came to court. It was the man who slaughtered the other who was responsible. The other went scott free. That's human justice.  

So you see, we are not allowed to react in our society. We are not allowed to hit back. Consequently we are frustrated. And that is resentment. If we were able to hit back, we wouldn't have resentment. So we need to deal with resentment in a different way. We have to deal with that sense of having been humiliated and damaged. How does one, it's damaging to one's self esteem. If you can hit back it gives you a sense of, you restore your self esteem. If you can't hit back, well then you feel that you're a wimp.  

So these are the problems of psychologists. Because in our thinking there is damage to our psyche. Now the method which is generally used is called therapy which is to dress the wounds, and find oneself in a safe environment so the woun  __ds can heal. The fact is that not only does nature self organize itself in us, but it also has the ability to restore damage. For example, the rain forest will grow again. Those asphalt roads won't last very long. It will grow again. If you displace a branch of a tree it's going to get back into place somehow. We have this restorative faculty. We have a wazifa for that, Muid. Muid means to call on an innate faculty to restore wholeness where there has been damage to that wholeness.  

Now there is, one can compensate a handicap by an advantage. For example, a lot of handicapped people have developed capacities that other people don't have. Dr. Hawkins for example. One of the greatest mind of our time and he can't even move his hands. I've already mentioned piano tuners who are blind. So that's turning tables on the damage that one has.  

One could consider it as stress because stress has some role to play in our life. If you don't overstress your body, if you just stress it a little bit, then that will tonify your body. Rather than thinking that we've been damaged, could you think that we are incurring some stress, and then compensate it in a creative way? You know the most creative people have suffered a terrible trauma and compensated by being creative.  

Beethoven, you know that Beethoven wrote his nephew and said, "I must apologize for not having looked after you. When your father died, I should have taken care of you as your uncle. But I couldn't say it. Now I can say it. You see I have  __ become increasingly deaf. I didn't want to admit it because it is terrible for a musician to admit that he is deaf. So I isolated myself." Here is the heroic Beethoven with all the fan fare of the 9th symphony.  

So remember that our vulnerability is in a sense a catalyst of compensating it by power. That is why Christ said, you know that word, "Blessed are the poor in spirit". It's badly translated. It is, "Be of good cheer, you who are floundering in life". It's not the same thing. And I think of a word of my father which is I think really the answer when he said, "Defeat can aver itself to be a victory". Don't go by ordinary judgment, only badness about the badness of a situation. There might be something about it that is really good. Like the crucifixion of Christ was really a coronation. It's in one's way of thinking. If one thinks that one is damaged, then of course one is damaged.  

Now I think that in psychotherapy at least the new visions in psychotherapy are more towards creativity than therapy. It's no more therapy. It's more like creativity. For example, I don't know whether you know the case of this psychotherapist, I don't remember her name now. She invites disturbed children to come and play with I think it's clay to make forms. They make all kinds of forms, fantasizing and so forth. And she is watching what they are doing. And she can see that this child has, in the way that child has configured that form, she can see that child has resolved a problem. As a matter of fact the child says, "I don't have to come any more". Somehow it was all unconscious. The child didn't know. She knew. She saw what was happening. So there is an ability of our unconscious to right the wrong, to recover damage. If we intervene we can put off, impair this faculty in us. But only intervention can be creative. Not thinking of the past, but thinking of the future.  

So therefore we want to try to understand a little more how do you enhance, how do you cultivate, how do you encourage creativity? Well you know that creativity always starts by an emotion, not a thought, an emotion. So the emotion of trauma can trigger off a whole creative process. I've often said this. Beethoven was walking in the storm and fell in the mud. When he got back, his girlfriend scolded him and gave him a slap. And out of that came a symphony. So it's a traumatic emotion has got to manifest in some way. So it will manifest in a formative process, a creative process in your psyche. So consider the trauma in your life as the best things that can happened to you because that is going to trigger off creativity. But you have to follow it up by creativity. Otherwise it will get lost. And of all works of art of course your personality is the most wonderful work of art.  

Maybe one of the great of creative people is to transform suffering into joy. Brahms did that because he fell in love with the wife of Schumann who was a very wonderful composer. In those days people didn't divorce. He suffered all his life. He never married. Somehow you can feel that personal pain and then how he transformed it into joy. So somehow he found a kind of therapy through his music. He was projecting in his music what was happening inside him. It's heroic. It's not wallowing in pain but somehow turning the tables on it. So trauma is a very intense emotion.  

Now coming back to resentment. We have learned how to get into the consciousness of other people. So you can get into the consciousness of a person who has harmed you. Or you can get into the consciousness of somebody who is opposing you and understand from what place that comes. We have also learned how we look from the point of view of another person. So that person has an image of you and is acting on the strength of that image. And that image is misconstrued. They are of good faith. They are acting according to the image they have of you. Now the other thing is that you feel that they have a grudge and they are taking it out on you. And you are in the position of scape goat. You'd rather it would be someone else. I don't say that you take them off the hook or that condone that action. But you understand it better. That is a way of helping one to overcome one's resentment. 

Now the other one is the thing I mentioned the other day. That is that the elephants in India don't allow themselves to be bugged by the chickens. So if a person is trying to get at you, we have a kind of immunity in us. But we lose that immunity if we identify with our self image. We lose our self esteem unless we suffer from megalomania. That is where I think that the saving grace is in what Pir O Murshid calls God consciousness, is really honoring the divine status of our being.  

There is a tendency in our time of people to be slovenly and slap happy and everything goes. That kind of mentality which is typical of the degeneration of our times because we are in a decadent time, karma yoga, the dark ages. Decadence in our time, deterioration, sloppiness and so on. The way to have self respect is to be aware of your divine inheritance. It must be real, I mean not just ideas. St. Francis said, "I have another father". Or Christ said, "Be perfect as your father". Then in the play of my father the king said, I'm looking for another kingdom".  

Well still, I think that if you are following a spiritual path whether initiated or not because that's a formality, there is a kind of commitment to let's say give onto God what belongs to God and to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. That sense of another kingdom, another value than the hum drum worldly value. Something different. And it's not up there somewhere or just an ideal, but in your own being.  

There is a wazifa for this and it's Ya Warith is if you look at your personality, you may think, "Yes I can recognize traits of my mother or father or grandfathers. Or then the idiosyncrasies that I have that are a spilt over from my schooling from the environment and so on. And then maybe there is something in me that I can't account for by inheritance from my parents or ancestors at least so far as I know. There are other ancestors of course. And that's me".  

There comes a time when one is able to distinguish these different elements in one. They are there. One is able to earmark something that is very special that can not be to accounted for by ordinary inheritance. That's why St. Francis said, "I have another father".  

So that will give you self respect. And dignity. And I think that we're living at a time when we pride ourselves of our humility. We denigrate ourselves. That is what is called false humility. One is damaging oneself by denigrating oneself. One is not acquiescing to the divine inheritance. And that makes all the difference. I could see that in the being of Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan. What makes an ordinary person into a being like Pir O Murshid. If you knew Pir O Murshid, you wouldn't believe it possible to be like that. It was incredible the majesty and the sovereignty of that being. And there was no pretense. It was there, real. That's God consciousness. Conscious of the divine presence, the divine inheritance. This manifests in making one a great being rather than a puny being. A great being.  

So we have wasifas. Again a wazifa is a word, a label. But you associate it with a whole attunement. So there is the word Kabir. Kabir means great the opposite of puny. That is the kind of thing if you look at it in the future, imagine that you are evolving in your life, because we're not always evolving. Sometimes we're going backwards. If you think,"My purpose in life is to evolve", then you are evolving from a puny being into a great being, the pull of the future. That's Kabir. How you could be if you were a great being. If you were a great being, then you wouldn't take offense at actions of people who were trying to bug you. It's below your dignity. Let it pass. They don't know what they as Christ said. Kabir gives you that sense of dignity. And maturity, like thinking that one is going through different developmental phases in one's life. They call that makum, stations. At the end of that whole, there is no end it's an infinite regress, but still one is lured like the horizon keeps on advancing. And that word is Dhul Jelal wa'l Ikram. That means the lord of splendor and excellence. And they didn't think of women in those days. It was just men. Now I have to add Khanoon Jamil Wa'l Ikram. That is the queen of beauty, jamil beauty, and ikram excellence. (You usually translate it as splendor) Splendor, yes. Excels. Ikram. It is very difficult to translate these words. But I think that maybe splendor is. You see amongst the dervishes, there are jemali and jelali dervishes.   _˜Jelali dervishes are very powerful, very strong. What they are seeking is majesty, Majid, divine majesty.  

Now we're living in a democratic country and most European countries have become democratic. So when you use the word aristocracy, it doesn't seem to be in sync with the trend. Pir O Murshid talks about aristocracy of the soul and the democracy of the ego. But our self esteem makes all the difference in our, in the fulfillment of our life's purpose.  

So you're denigrating yourself is just going to prove to be counterproductive. Hence the importance of these wasifas because they are drawing your attention to aspects that you wouldn't have thought about otherwise. Like you don't think that you need to be majestic or then beautiful. I'm not talking about physical beauty but a beautiful person. A beautiful person, there is something about their manner that is beautiful. Handling an ugly situation beautifully, that's jamil. So you've got these two qualities. One is jelal and the other is jemal  __ or jamil, majesty and beauty. 

So all of these attributes are having to do with discovering in oneself a quality that one would normally ascribe to God. So I dare now quote Ibn Arabi because that's metaphysics. But it really governs our whole process. I translate it in terms of the action of the Universe on each part of itself. So what Ibn Arabi is saying is, "God knows Himself in the principles of His being, but discovers the potentiality that lies in those principles by discovering Himself in us, as us". And then he goes on to say, "In the very form in which He reveals Himself to us". It's rather complicated. You see the importance is that word the form. Because creativity is the process whereby an emotion gets configured in a form whether it's a musical form or whatever, it's a form.  

So the Sufis attach a lot of importance to the form of your etheric body or your aura because that's where creativity is configured. So here again wasifas. Wasifas are like reminders. One is Khaliq. So you remind yourself of being creative all the time. And the other is Musawwer which means to fashion. Like a sculptor is fashioning something.  

So to bring this into focus when you are doing a retreat, instead of working with qualities like majesty or power whatever, love, compassion, so on, you're working with your own etheric body. That means a kind of let's say a form within your magnetic field. It's a template of your body. Then you're working with your aura. That is you are fashioning the fabric of your aura, which is light, into forms that do not have contours, that do not have a boundary.  

So for example, peace. You imagine a landscape, a lake if you remember. Then you imagine how your etheric body would be if it expressed peace, like peaceful thought coming through your face in contrast to the form that would come through your face, the expression that would come through your face if you were climbing rocks and had to exercise a lot of mastery. A totally different expression. Now this is something tangible. You can really work with your aura. But you can't do it with our will. You can only do it by getting into the attunement of mastery. Then you can see how it changes the form of your aura. Then you work with the attunement of peace and see how it configures your aura. Then you can work with joy and see how it configures the face of your aura, of light or whatever, the smiling forehead as I said. Now you have something very concrete to work with.  

So when we say we have those inheritances in us, the divine inheritance, yes. But they are what one calls recessive. And you make them dominant. You know those words in biology, the recessive and dominant. For example, in the code of our DNA, there is the code of our whole body. But most of those genes are recessive. Only some are active. If they were all active, then all our cells would be the same. So we have to restrict the possibilities to make the differences between the cells. So in ourselves the same thing applies. We have the whole code of of the whole Universe in our divine inheritance. And they can't all come through at the same time since we are working with some then another one. And each one of us is unique in our way. Majesty.  

I remember there is a group in San Francisco called Rahaniat. In the early days I remember Murshid Sam who was the initiate of that group. I remember coming back from India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. I met this group of young people who were all on drugs. So much to the dismay of all the straight people with whom I'd been dealing up to that time. And I remember that first lecture when I said, "I'm a wanderer, Sidik, a wanderer. And I've come to greet you. There was something which impressed me very much in the Sema of the Sufis, and that is that those dervishes get into, they get very high without drugs". So I was telling them that they could be high without drugs. That was my message. And then they start giving expression to their high by dancing. So when I say you configure those qualities in a creative way as a statue, that statue is rather static whereas the dancing is dynamic. And so low and behold very soon they had Sufi dancing. That's how it started.  

What I liked the most was what they called the walks. So you took a wazifa like Ya Majid which means majesty. And you'd walk expressing that majesty. Then joy and you'd walk in a totally different way than majesty. Or then truthfulness, haqq, ya haqq. Then you'd walk with the power of truth. So it worked it right down into your body. As I said this morning, the importance we now see in bodiness, incorporating it.  

What I'm talking about now is the template of your body, your etheric body and your aura. And all that we were doing was instead of trying to be majestic which is like a ploy. It doesn't ring true. And it's even rather ridiculous to walk as though one was majestic and it doesn't correspond with something real in you. All that we were doing was to discover the divine majesty right in our own being. That's the only way you can do it. Like a dancer, a ballerina. She needs to be totally in attunement to a certain type of emotion. And then that emotion manifests as her body movement. But if she tried to control her body movement, it wouldn't ring true.  

So that's something you can do in a retreat. In the course of a retreat, it's not good to just sit still all the time. It will lead to samadhi. You can walk. There are walks in which you concentrate on a wazifa. So your body begins to express that particular attunement. Just exactly what I've been describing. So this is called the fikre of the wazifa. You don't say the wazifa out loud. You just think it on your breath. For example, on your left foot then on your right foot. And there is no Ya. So it's wali on your left foot. Or wahabo, wahabo, wahabo. You get into that rhythm. And it's really extraordinary how it works because you're really grounding it. It's not up there somewhere in your imagination. Your grounding it right into your body. So that's the next step in our retreat. 

God bless you. Tape ends 

AUG 31, 1997		Tape 09

Monteverdi. Yes so we are on retreat. We are looking at our lives, ourselves. We are told that, actually we would like to unfurl our being. But we are told that there are obstacles. And we need to remove those obstacles. And one of those obstacles, well dealt with one of them. We we referred to one of them this morning or two. Guilt, resentment and so on. Actually, we are told or I've been saying that we have a faulty assessment of our situation or our problems. And to say that is not good enough. If it is wrong, then what is it? 

So now we've reached a stage in our meditation, you see at first we were considering situations. And we were considering our personality, our idiosyncrasies, even the seed bed of our personality, the potentialities. But now at this stage it is our thinking that is the object of our cognizance. Instead of observing the outer world or thinking of the circumstances or your self image and so on, you're scrutinizing your thinking. And the thoughts are very illusive because our thoughts are conditioned to a very large extent so they don't let one easily unmask the hoax of our thinking. And it requires a lot of perspicacity and skill to how to see the way that our thoughts carry conviction. And the consequence is that they can stand in the way of our work with ourselves in order to unfurl our being.

So that's the reason why. As I already said, the outer world, not just the physical world, but the circumstances particularly continue to live in your psyche. They were out there. And when you turn within, you find them inside. The physical world continues to live at the psychological level. What I'm saying is that now we are carrying a false assessment of our problems, schlepping it through our lives without realizing that it is in ourselves, in our thinking that we are carrying a faulty assessment which is standing in the way of the unfurling of our being. And furthermore a faulty assessment of our own self image. But for the moment let's concentrate on our cognizance, our mode of thinking.

Now you remember this late morning we were looking at how we, the conclusion our mind would come to if we tried to prescribe to ourselves a quality that we would need to develop in order to meet a problem. So that was, I think the conclusion we arrived to is that we can't count upon our decision as to the kind of quality we need in order to meet the problem because of the limitation of our thinking and because it's seen from our ego point of view. And remember these words of Hazrat Inayat Khan because they are very important, "What we call the ego is a faulty assessment of who we are." Actually he says the real ego is God. So he is not using the ego in a pejorative sense in the least. It's just that it's distorted in our own self image. 

So now if we stayed in that format, thinking of ourselves as a subject that is observing situations and even observing our personality, our qualities from the personal vantage point, we can be sure that we are looking at things from our personal bias. So that's how you start. Normally that's how you start if you're meditating. 

Now we started to turn within. Then we came across a very different mode of thinking. Because while when we consider outside, everything seems to be made of discrete entities, our thoughts. We think in categories. If you know Emanuel Kant, categories of reason, we think in categories. Even our words are, most of our words are static words instead of dynamic words. For example, thoughts. There is no such a thing as thoughts. There is such a thing thinking. So we cut up the process of thinking into categories. When we turn within, we find a new mode of thinking that we're not familiar with. 

This is the implicit mode of thinking according to Dr. David Boehm. And so every thought is connected with every other. In fact, you can say every thought, every stream of thinking is interwoven with every other stream of thinking. And we get lost. Exactly like if you were to watch the radio waves on the screen, you'd never make sense of them. The radio, the TV is somehow reducing the amount of waves so you can make sense of them. So it acts as a transducer. So that's what our mind does. Our mind reduces our thinking to satisfy the simplistic mind. But if you meditate, you want to learn how to think. So you are learning modes of thinking you are not familiar with.

Now the danger in meditating as you turn within is to continue thinking of yourself as a subject observing an object other than yourself. Like observe your thoughts inside because we are used to observing thoughts. We think of our self as subject - object antinomy. 

What we haven't said so far is that as we turn within, the subject...you see so far we have been talking about expanding the consciousness. But we haven't been talking about the consciousness can be expanded from within instead of from without. That is reaching out instead of encompassing without. I don't know whether you understand me there. And consequently what we need to do when we turn within is to alter our sense as the subject, as the knower, as the spectator. And the wazifa for that is Shahid. Shahid means the witness. You remember my quoting the words of St. Francis of Assisi, "I thought I was looking at the world, but the world was looking at me". So he is saying then that the witness now is not the ego sense of my personal self as a witness. But it is the Universe that is looking at itself through me. St. Francis said, "The world is looking at me". Ibn Arabi would say, I think he lived at the same time, about the same time in Spain. He said, "God is discovering Himself through my eyes". So it's not just that the Universe is just looking at itself, but it's discovering itself through me. It's a much more dynamic way of looking at things.

So what we are introducing here is a notion of God. What I'm saying, if you just keep the notion of being the Shahid, that means the witness, then you can't get anywhere. Now we have two dimensions, two poles of the Shahid, the witness. So at first we expand. Sometimes I think it's useful to use wazifa because then you have a word which says in a word or two words what you could say in a whole sentence. So it's like short hand. So you could say Shahid/ Basit, consciousness expanding. Or you could say Shahid/Wasi which means consciousness being all encompassing. Then when you're turning within, you could say Shahid/Batin that is consciousness working from within. 

The thing about this is that while you observe the physical world, you can see a clear distinction between yourself as a subject and what you're experiencing. When you turn within, the antinomy between subject and object is not that clear anymore. Because you are at the same time the spectator and at the same time that which you are observing. So the first thing to do is, as one says in psychology, to get in touch with one's feelings. A lot of people, particularly men, have a problem getting in touch with their feelings. It's below their dignity to be too sentimental about their feelings. So to acquiesce those feelings color one's assessment of problems and one's self and so on. So it's not that the mind is deceiving us so much as our feelings are hurt to accept that we feel bad about something. So we try to hide it, mask it. So it's really casting the light of truth within the dark unconscious. Bringing the unconscious to the surface so one can deal with it. But as I said, if you bring a deep sea fish to the surface, it all bloated. It's not the same as a deep sea fish. So there is some fallacy there. I remember talking about this to Dr. Grof. 

So what Yoga is doing and what Buddhism is doing and what Sufism is doing is casting the light of awareness into the unconscious instead of retrieving elements from the unconscious and bringing them to the surface. That's like Persephone descending under the earth or Eurodes. So that really what we are doing when we are turning within is plunging into the unconscious. And we have to lose ourselves as the witness. Otherwise there is some incongruity. Somehow the witness is diluted in the unconscious instead of being able to watch the unconscious. 

I must say that some of the things I say are, well behind my thinking is Buddha's 'satupatama'. I wonder sometimes whether Buddha's ideas were misrepresented by his followers. For example, he says' "watch your thoughts". And you realize that your thoughts are conditioned". Well not always. Well partly. We would be very hurt if we were told that our thoughts were not original, they're conditioned. And I'm sure that there's creativity thoughts that are not conditioned. So I'm sorry Buddha, but I can't agree there. The thing is there is a catch 22 because what he says in the 4th satipanana is that when consciousness has been carried beyond the personal ego consciousness, then you have a totally different way of understanding things. That you find in the 4 Janas after the Satipananas. So there of course we meet. Sufism and Buddhism meet there. I think that maybe one should start by, well maybe Buddha is right. Maybe one has to start with working with the personal consciousness and then reach into this deeper sense of consciousness that is not personal but allows the consciousness of the whole Universe to come through. So that would be Shahid/Batin. 

Now psychotherapists know that there are very deep needs which account for one's assessment of one's problems. One is the need, dependence. It's very complicated. Not just dependence upon a house or food or a job. But dependence upon people, or the opinion or people, or the support of people. It's that one hasn't been weaned totally from one's parents. So one hasn't brown up yet. Pir O Murshid makes a very clear distinction between being self sufficient and being, well the words we use now is needy, the need for acquisition. Like we are enriching our being by our interface with the environment physiologically, psychologically enriching our self. So we are needy We are in a state dependence. And there is psychological dependence. We talked this morning about addiction. 

So in a way it is very gratifying to be able to discover one's freedom from dependence upon whatever. Consequently that's one of the practices of the Yogis. They are systematically freeing themselves from dependence upon heat or putting up with the cold, or not having a shelter, or dependence upon the safety of not being attacked by animals and so on. It gives you a power that you couldn't possibly have if you were still dependent. Of course it is true that if one is dependent upon whatever, one needs to wean oneself from that dependence. And I think that that's the reason that people come to a psychotherapist is they may have lost somebody upon whom they had placed their parents. It could be a parent of course, but it could be a loved one. And that person abandoned one and then one seeks in a guru the parent, somebody whom one can depend. And of course the guru's job is to free you from him/her. But it's got to be done in slow stages. That's what's called weaning.

So these concepts of self sufficiency, the mature person is self sufficient, you see. We're moving from infancy into maturity. In a state of infancy we are dependent, then gradually we become self sufficient. The weaning is painful. The word for self sufficiency is Mughni. Not that that word will do anything for you. You know like this is the final revelation, this is the word. No. But as I say, it's a language. It's a convenient language to use. So when I say Mughni, I think to myself Mu means the magi, the magus. So there is a sense that those are beings who have found self sufficiency. And I must say that when I was doing a retreat in Shiraz at the tomb of Al Koli, then at the end of the retreat, I went into the cellar where they had those photos of dervishes of the old days, of the early days of photography. And I must say it was really extraordinary. The faces of were like those of the magi, they were like the kings of old. So that's Mughni. I must say that Mughni, well you know of course that the words Magi and magic are the same. And imagination is the same. It all has the same etymology. And so miracles do happen. And the magi makes miracles happen. Perhaps the greatest miracle is that the human being can be transformed.

So you know we have several terms dependence, independence, codependence, a notion that has got really out of hand. It leads to utter selfishness, I don't want to help anybody because I would be codependent. You know if they need their whiskey, they need their whiskey. They've become dependent upon it. So you'd like to wean them from it. Give them a little less every day. But keep giving them a little bit. So codependence is very dangerous notion that leads to utter selfishness. I don't want to be codependent upon that person. 

But then there is the notion of interdependence. That is a much more acceptable one than independence. It's rather presumptuous to think that one can be independent. In interdependence, you are dependent upon that person and that person depends upon you. And you are helping each other. That's a much more satisfactory notion I think. 

Therefore if you are suffering from bereavement which can lead to a sense of loneliness, (it's not the same thing as aloneness, loneliness), then you need to give to another person instead of just wanting to receive from another person. People who are lonely are people who want to receive. If you give, then there is interdependence. 

There again that magical word is Muqit which is, I think that is the meaning of charity. That's giving, giving a smile. That a person feels like one cares from them. Of course that gets into this very personal question. That is the need to be loved or the need to love. And there again if you just have a need to be loved, you are demanding something of a person. If you have a need to love, then you are not demanding anything of anybody. That's a self sufficiency. And that will make you independent. That will make you at least free from your dependence. 

So if you turn within, instead of being the Shahid, the personal witness, because in order become aware of your feelings, it's not the same thing as your thoughts. To become aware of your feelings, you need a different kind of Shahid, a different kind of witness. I could say perhaps the heart is the witness now instead of the mind. 

You know we all have, I'm sure we meet people and somehow we like that person or we don't like them. There is a sign of, it's not judgment. It's much deeper than judgment, it's a has to do with emotional attunement. There is something about this person that I don't like. I don't know what it is but after shaking hands with that person, I want to wash my hands. A feeling, it's in the realm, maybe their hands were perfectly clean. It just has to do with a kind of emotion. So if you have that sensitivity, I know I'm giving you too many wasifas. The wazifa Mujib means to be sensitive. So if you are very sensitive, there are emotions in yourself that you don't like. So it's not just in others. So the same kind of feeling you have about others, you have about yourself. 

So I think that if we want to progress at all in meditation, instead of going into those very high celestial spheres, we need to do some mopping up or sweeping inside ourselves and some cleansing of our emotions. I think that the clue is selfishness. And I think that is the opposite of what we mean by saintliness. Therefore any notion of God, it can't be intellectual, it's got to have something to do with, it's not just the concept of the ego. It's more like the selfishness of our ego which is alien to the notion of the divinity of our being. That's a thing one feels in other people. I feel that person is selfish. But we have it in ourselves. 

This is the kind of thing that you do in a retreat. You try to cleans your inner motivations with the light of truth. You know that the truth is like a light. That which is dishonest will always try to escape in the dark. Like you know, Bear Mountain, Musorski. You get up at nighttime. You hear a noise in your room. You think it's a mouse. You know it's a mouse or you assume it's a mouse. Sure enough, it is a mouse. You if put the light of truth onto that mouse, it will leap into the darkness. So that's what happens to us when we try to corner our intention. We try to escape in the dark. So the only power that will cleans the inside is absolute authenticity. That's the value of Haqq, truth. And that is the word of the dervish. 

The dervish says, "Don't you come near me because you're lying. I will burn you". And Hazarat Babijan was a woman dervish who lived in India in a little hut. There was a little road. Or they built a hut for her actually. And she said, "You can't reach your destination without looking into my eyes. And you can't look into my eyes is you are lying. So you have to decide what you want to do". Some people made a detour. That's what we're doing. We don't want to face truth. So it's very powerful, the most powerful of all practices. That is, there is dervish Zikr that I didn't talk about yesterday. That's Haqq illaha illa 'lla hu, Haqq illaha illa 'lla hu. It starts with truth. And that was a word of Al Hallaj when he was crucified because he said. "An al haqq. I am the truth".

So you can't have a better vacuum cleaner than Haqq. You know we are doing visualizations with the aura and so on. But the visualizations won't do it for you. And we're talking about fashioning the light of our aura in order to unfold our being, to have something substantial. But, as I've often said, the visualizations won't do it for you. You have to entertain luminous thoughts. That is each thought is clear. There is no ambiguity. And that's Haqq. 

OK Now. What we're saying is that I think that this kind of cleansing is therapy. There has been damage to the ambiguity in one's thinking, as I mentioned, a kind of dishonesty. One accuses the other people of it, or having abused one. But there is also something in oneself that has caused that damage in one's psyche. And we want to cure it. And that means to dissolve it. Like for example, a canker can be dissolved. Even in some cases a cancerous growth can be dissolved. 

Here again I will refer to the Zikre because the Zikre is a very important thing. So when you say,"La",expansion, instead of just thinking that your consciousness is expanding, you think that you are dissolving things in yourself that are standing in the way. You are removing them, Ghagni, you are removing them. And even as the physical world is very kind in taking our pollution up to a point. So maybe at the psychological level, God is kind enough to take our mucky psychological stuff. So we've got to put it out somewhere. So think of Fana, a word used by the Sufis, the extinction and then the rebirthing. It's not that. It's as Ibn Arabi says, it is the fana, the extinctions of the notion of ourselves. It's not ourselves that gets extinguished. It's the notion of ourselves, the false notion of ourselves.

Now we come to another dimension of consciousness that is very interesting. And I can only illustrate it thus. I was in search of a great rishi high up in the Himalayas. And one had to pass though a very dangerous forest where there were leopards and tigers and wild elephants, cobras, very dangerous   ‹. So we had to be a group of people. Otherwise, well sometimes I've walked through jungles alone. But I can tell you it's very scary. They won't attack a group. And wild bears are the worst, they are very dangerous. So we were a group of people. And there was this rishi. We found him. It was rather amazing, I must say, because at first we couldn't find that cave. I must say that I saw a light and that directed us towards him. But I must say that there wasn't a light. Maybe it was his aura. I don't know. But anyway we were directed towards him. And then we were sitting there. And it was very rare because most rishis never speak. They are what they call munis. But one of our members asked him what I would consider a silly question. And he descended from his pinnacle of glory. It was such an effort of his to try and understand how one could think that way. I forget what answer he gave. It must have been a koan, you know a rather paradoxical answer that the man didn't understand anyway. 

But what I'm trying to illustrate that there are ways of thinking that are not the logical way of our common place thinking, nor even the conscious way of thinking that I have described as you turn within. There is still another way of thinking. The kind of thinking that I'm talking about now, I think perhaps you might call it reconciliation of the irreconcilables. It's being able to extrapolate. For example the two eyes. Each eye sees differently. But our brain extrapolates between those two visions. So you can do the same thing with your mind. You can consider to thoughts that seem antinomous and somehow relate them by extrapolating them. First you toggle between the two, then you extrapolate them. So that would be the kind of thinking as you turn within. But now we are reaching upwards. 

Now maybe before we go any further, I should give you a sense of the lie of the land. Behind what appear my random statements, there is a method. As one says, a method in my madness. Now I'm giving my secret away. So I wanted to spare you these Oriental terms. As you know they are just terms. There is a word of Korsipski who says the map is not the territory. I went all the way to India overland without a map. But it's useful to have a map. So this is the map that we've been following. These are the developmental stages, the mukamat, of the Sufis. I tried to spare you the metaphysics because I wanted you to experience. But now it's good to see where we are. 

So it starts with Nazut which is the common place way in which people find themselves. They think of themselves as the subject observing the world is the object, or even observing their thoughts. No, just the physical world actually. One is in a state of dependence. And as I say, one is carrying a grudge. One misinterprets situations and so on. That's the bottom line or station. 

The second state is Hayal. Yes that's a kind of thinking that goes together with watching your thoughts. If we were meditating, watching the thoughts. And you get confused. And thoughts are random. And you don't get anywhere. 

Then there was Arwha, Arwha Rhu, in the Hebrew language, the Roi. Well that's the subtle, for example the etheric body, what the Yogis call Tanmajtra, the subtle reality behind physical reality like the template behind the physical world, that which transpires behind that which appears. 

So we learn to, what we do when we turn within, the first thing we do is alter out identity and start identifying with this subtle body. And the consequence is that our thinking is altered. As I've often said, the step that you need to do in meditation is to downplay your thoughts regarding the outer world and highlight the emergent thoughts within you. That's what I've been saying all the time. That's a level called Mithal. You could just think of the word mythology, metaphor if you like. Thoughts ex nilo, out of nothing, that is not conditioned by causality. I've been emphasizing the need to be creative. 

Perhaps you remember I referred to the word Muid for therapy to recover damage, Muid. Now there is another word which is Muhyi which is not just to recover but to invite new energy, a new dispensation of energy. Actually it's translated by to regenerate the energy. Now I want to point out just a reference to Tibetan thought. The Tibetans talk about the gross body. The first thing they say is the mind rides the wind. We have different bodies, bodies are forms of energy. Gross body, what we think is our physical body. Then the thinking when one is identified with the physical body, the mode of thinking that is called gross thinking, that is interpreting situations as we do. Then they are talking about the subtle wind. And what they are saying is that the subtle mind rides the subtle wind. So what they are talking about is if we identify with the subtle body, then our mind thinks differently. And that is what is the subtle mind instead of the gross mind. So the subtle mind is the creative mind.

So when you're doing the Zikre, three quarters of a circle, you are still... There are several ways of doing that. You could think of the starry skies, the body as part of the totality. Then you can think of sketching those skories in your psyche. Then the head comes up, La illaha. Then when the head comes down turning toward your solar plexus, that is Arwha, that is when we turn within. And so you identify with your subtle body. The consequence is that your thoughts are creative because they emerge from within. Not only that but even the energy according to Islam we are continually reborn with every breath, recurrently reborn. Fana, baqa. 

So that it is in that state of suspense, that instant of time that we talked about this morning. There is an interruption in the causal chain and a new dispensation emerges and reaches into the existential level. I don't know whether you understand what I mean. We think we are living in a world that's three dimensional but it is multidimensional. So when I say subliminal, it means all the reality that only breaks through, intercepts this cross section of reality that we call our three dimensional world. So there is a continual emergence of reality outside the scope, the embrace of our consciousness that is surfacing. That includes not just thoughts but energy. 


That energy is Muhyi. Muid is the energy that heals. But Muhyi is a new dispensation of energy. One could call it regenerative energy. And the consequence is that it will enhance creative thoughts. The mind rides the wind. So thoughts need to have this support in the realm of energy. And so when you're doing the Zikre, it is illa, that 'a' represents Mithal, that is the creative thoughts. In that moment you think, "I'm reborn or God is reborn as me". Because you always take in to account the divine point of view. It's not me but the Universe is emerging as me. You can think of a wave in the sea because the wave is not only the continuation of the previous wave, but the whole ocean emerges as each new wave. So there is both at the same time. That cuts the sequence of causality.

Now we have the vertical, the ascension. If you study Buddhism, you'll find that Buddha makes a very clear distinction between what he says, "That which is become is of the nature of becoming. And that which is not subject to becoming. This becoming does not lead to this non become." Those are the phrases or sentences of Buddha himself. So we're talking about another dimension of time that is not the horizontal dimension of time that goes from the past into the future. But is a vertical dimension of time that goes from the transient into the eternal. 

And that is the only thing that will give satisfaction to your thinking because the only way to lift your consciousness into the higher spheres is to overcome the sense of death, that is to discover the deathless state. Otherwise if you think you're transient, you're still thinking in the horizontal line. I don't know whether Buddha himself said him. It was Avala who was the best interpreter I know of Buddhism. He said, "It is of an entirely vertical nature that transcends the passage of time". 

Now we think that we are moving up the planes. That's of course a geographical representation. Up there and down here, that doesn't make sense. But transcendent, yes, transcending that which is subject to decay. As Buddha says himself, "That which is subject to birth is subject to decay". There is something in you which is extra samsaric, that is not of the nature of the will of becoming. And if you identify with that non become, that gives you access to the higher planes. Otherwise there is no access. Then we can talk about angels with flutes and harps and wings and so on, and look rather naive. It's just a very fetched representation at all of what one could possibly mean by the celestial spheres. 

The thing that marks the next step is called Malakut. Malak means angel, the celestial spheres. I don't know if you remember that I said that simply enlisting the potentials of our being so they will unfurl is not good enough because the divine bounty gets funneled down so that it may emerge in our psyche. So there is another dimension which is an immediate contact, relationship between the archetype and the exemplar. 

Now I have to substantiate it. Otherwise what does it mean? We have already spoken a lot about the celestial sphere. There are times when doing practices with light or looking into the eyes of a baby that you have a sense of déjà vu. Your emotion, not your personal emotion, has been sublimated that somehow you have a sense of celestial condition, immaculate condition which is within the defilement in your being. 

Now I'll just move a little bit faster so we can anticipate what's coming now. The next step is Jabarut which is the level of intelligence rather than consciousness. That is not the kind of knowledge that you acquire but the kind of knowledge that is written right into your intelligence. That's Jabarut. It's, if you'd like to know, it's rather subtle. The word Jaber is the bone setter, like a chiropractor that puts your bone back into place rather forcefully. 

There is a surprising saying of Pir O Murshid that I've quoted in my works where he says, "In an initial condition", he doesn't use this word higgeldy piggeldy. I don't know whether Murshid ever used this word but generally use it when your bed hasn't been tidied up, higgeldy piggeldy. Now that condition is now described in science as chaos. In the course of evolution, everything hopefully gets into place. Scientists call it the order out of disorder principle. 

So if you look at things around you, you see that things are out of place. Like there is the wrong person in that job and you'd like to be in that job. But that 's the way it is. That person is there, the wrong person. The right person is in the wrong job and everything seems wrong. So it takes a lot of faith to believe that it will all settle into order. So our faith is being tested. 

The same think is true of our minds. That's the reason why our thoughts are random when we are meditating, they are higgeldy piggeldy. We think,"I'll never be able to meditate because these thoughts are, they don't make sense. And I can't make them make sense by my will or in my usual mode of thinking. The only thing that can make sense of these random thoughts is if I change the notion of the spectator in me." 

There is a key word, delightful word actually, which substantiates what I say about this guru. That is a word of a Sufi called Najmoddin Kobra who said this, he talked about the witness in the heavens. So what does that suggest to you? How would an angel look at you? Instead of considering the view that a person has of you or even the world is looking at me, as St. Francis said, imagine if you were able to look at yourself through the eyes of an angel, how would you look? 

I suppose that one would say that is is looking at things through the understanding of the heart instead of the understanding of the mind. Or let's say if one is moved by a very noble feeling, the feeling of the angel, then the way that they would look at you would be those standards of nobility. That would be the criterion. 

I would say that that is the key to that next plane, that Malakut plane, is to judge things from the point of view of the angel. And think that the attitude that one ascribes to the angel is innocence, which mustn't be confused as nativity. We have a lot to learn from our children until they go to school. As they say, truth comes from the mouth of a child. There is no guile there. So they just say it. That's where we learn authenticity. 

You see in our ordinary way of thinking, we think that we are a spectator and that what we are experiencing is other than ourselves. Now we are reaching into higher levels of cognizance which are based on affinity rather than otherness. So the angel will see the angel in you. As a matter of fact, in the description made in the Koran of the angels. They aren't judgmental. There have to be two kinds of angels, one that judges your goodness and one that judges your badness. They can't be the same person because an angel doesn't have discrimination. Children don't have it of course. 

There are people who have this angelic disposition. And you see that their judgment is really very bad. They let themselves be caught by demonic people who know that that's the kind of person they can have as a victim is an angelic person, have under their power. I see that all around me, lovely people who get in the hands of somebody who is exploiting them. And they are right under the power of this person. Perhaps I shouldn't say this but I'll say it all the same. That's the case of some gurus surrounded by angelic beings. If you knew the filth behind it, you can't believe that these beautiful beings would be attracted to that demonic being. 

So I'm talking about a way of judgment that is not based upon the rational. That is based more on a heart quality or a sense of values or a sense of sacredness. That is the kind of thing that will lift your consciousness, as Pir O Murshid says, beyond the earth plane. One has a feeling as though one was in exile, or one was in prison, or kind of constraint of earthly conditions. One must be careful not to denigrate all those wonderful things that are to be found in the world. Beautiful music, there are many marvelous things in the world. One has to be careful about having this contempt for the world. 

There is a tendency amongst the ascetics that have contempt for the world. I remember speaking with one monk on Mt. Athos. He had contempt for the world. I tried to tell him, "Well you know there are lovely people there too. And there's lovely things", and so on. For him that was bad, the world was bad. That's the reason why our objective is Sufism is awakening in life and not samadhi, not away from life. It's seeing beauty in life.


AUG 31, 1997		Tape 10

So now we're at that stage, makum, where one is in a state of ecstasy. And people don't quite understand one's ecstasy. They think there is something wrong with you because you keep on smiling. Or there was a woman in dancing in the streets of Amsterdam. People were laughing and thought she was crazy. Maybe she was but I don't think it's crazy to dance in the street of Amsterdam if you feel like it. It's terrible to think that you can't dance in the street because people will think you're crazy.

So giving vent to the need of your soul for ecstasy.  Even if people think you're crazy. It doesn't matter what people think of you anyway. So that is, Murshid, my father says this in one of the most poignant sayings. I think it was. He was speaking like a dervish. And he said, "I am the wine of the divine sacrament. And those who drink of this wine who cannot digest it will be exposed to the derision of the world. And those who can assimilate it will be illuminated". So it's a very dangerous kind of champagne. You've got to be up to it. Wine of the holy sacrament. The mass, I think that the blood of Christ, that is what it meant. It's the wine of the holy sacrament. When Al Hallaj was being crucified and said, "I have been invited to the holy banquet and the host has invited me to drink from his chalice. And it's poison. How can I refuse?" You remember the words of Christ, "Take away this chalice". 

So when you're in that state, your mind thinks very differently than in your usual assessment. So it shatters the usual mind. You know, you don't have to combat your faulty assessment of your problems with your rational mind. That doesn't work. But when you're in ecstasy you see how futile these thoughts are. They have no value. So you're cleansing your mind not just by the power of truth, but by the power of ecstasy. Of course truth does give ecstasy.

Now we come to the next point, Jabarut, as I said. Now I'm quoting the Sufis. To understand this we have to have a few reference points. What the Koran is saying is that everywhere you see signs. All the physical world is devices in which God is revealing His being through the traces of his being. Like if you see the pug marks of a bear you haven't seen the bear. We see these beautiful flowers and trees and mountains. And it's all, these are signs that gives a clue of what is behind that. That's why we say, that which transpires behind that which appears. And then those signs are to be found in your character also, in your nature. So the qualities of your being are signs that give a clue as to the reality behind them which we call God. 

Now at this level, Ibn Arabi says, "God reveals Himself to you not through signs, but through His being". And therefore, at this point, you have overcome images, forms. We were talking about creative form. Now Ibn Arabi says forget the form now. At the angelic level, there is no more form. So we think we would like to see an angel because we think in terms of form. But it's a question of encountering our real being beyond the form. We don't know how to do that. There are subterfuges. 

There is this wonderful story of Shibuddin Suhrawardhi. Suhrawardhi does say this, but it's said even better by I think it is a Manicheistic mystic. You know Manicheism was a rather unknown religion which believed in all the prophets and magi. So this is it. He says, "I found myself in a dream. I found myself in a world of light, but I didn't know what was there." You know it's like a baby. It doesn't know what's happening in the physical world. You have to get used to it. So he found himself in that world of light. "Then low and behold in the midst of mist, beings seemed to be walking towards me. And this being was so magnificent that I was overwhelmed". So you think that this being has a form. But maybe that's the only way to say it. Then he said, "At a certain point, I could see that I resemble this being. How could I resemble this being? It's not possible." Then there was what they call coincidence. That's a word that's used in astral flight. When you get back into your body, then there is a coincidence. And all of a sudden it occurred to him that that was his celestial counterpart. So his celestial counterpart was disclosing itself to him. At first he couldn't accept that that was him. He thought it was other than himself. 

So that is a vision that belongs to the level of Malakut. And many of the Sufis are into that level. Shibuddin Suhrawardhi, for example, the whole book is on light. Hikman Ali Shaq, Najmoddin Kobra. It's all about light. That's why I said this morning that when we get into the reflexes of light, then we have some sense of what we mean by the heavens. Because light is very subtle, not just subtle but very subtle. So that corresponds to what the Buddhists mean, the Tibetans mean by the very subtle energy and the very subtle mind. 

So how does the very subtle mind think? Well now first of all there is a clue. It's something you can do in a retreat. I've done it myself. You see for example, you're walking in the woods. You think, "Isn't it lovely, a bit of sunshine trickling through the trees. It's very peaceful. It's so much nicer than stumbling about in the streets of New York. And I've found a peaceful state because I'm not under stress". You see you're still in your personal consciousness. You think it's lovely and are enjoying it and so on. Now then if you want this to be a retreat and not just be in your personal consciousness but reach beyond, what I did was to think, "I am the eyes through which God sees". So imagine that God is discovering His/Her body through my eyes. The physical world is the body through which He discovers Himself. And Ibn Arabi says that God discovers Himself in the form in which he reveals Himself to you. In a form. So you're really thinking, "I've got it now. I'm the eyes through which God sees". Then you do the Zikre, La illaha illa 'lla. Then you think, "No what we're saying in the Zikre is that it's all one. Then when I'm the instrument through which God sees, then I'm thinking of God as other". 

So that's where you've reached that Jabarut stage. And you realize that my glance is the divine glance that's been funneled down, distorted, all you like. But it is the divine glance. And now you see everything very differently. That's how the God reveals Himself directly without device, the physical world or your own character. That's the Jabarut stage.

Now in the Zikre, after saying La illaha illa, and the 'a' is Mithal, the creative, then you say 'lla. You don't say the first 'a' but you say the second 'a'. And in between there is two 'l's . The 'a' that you don't say represents the celestial sphere. Then there are two 'l's between the two 'a's. So let's say the last 'a' is what they call Lahut, the next point after Jabarut. Malakut, Jabarut, Lahut. For the moment let's say that it's the plane of the archetypes. And what we experience is the exemplars of the archetypes. The 'l's between the two are exemplified in the Hadith. No it's in the Koran itself. 

It's the story of the mirage. Mohammed was making a journey in a metaphorical world. And he was at a distance of two throws from the Lotus of the Limit which is God. Well I think it is what Ezekiel means by the bottom of the robe of God, Metatron, God. Then all he saw was the bottom of the robe. So that's the Lotus of the Limit. You can't go beyond that. But    ƒhe was two throws of an arrow from that. And the Arabs used to measure distance by, well actually we say throws of an arrow. But it is the, you have the bow and you have the cord linking the two ends of the bow. And you have the arrow. And you are pulling that cord, you have the arrow in your hand. So the distance between your hand and that cord, well it's not your cord actually. it's, I see. Wait a minute. I always thought it would be a line between the two ends of the bow but maybe it is the distance with the bow itself. The bow and your hand. That's what they call kab. That's a measure of a distance. But it varies from one person to another. So it's not a very scientific measuring rod. So two throws of an arrow. That's one distance then another distance. There are two 'l's. 

Because if you know Arabic then the 'a' is a vertical line and the 'l' is an arc of a circle. And if you're doing the Zikre, you're doing the arc of a circle. La illaha, you're pulling the bow. Then illa, you're reaching out into your target. There are various interpretations of this. They could be the two wings of Gabriel, the 'l's. It doesn't matter how you interpret it. 

So Jabarut would mean that one is thinking in terms of what Ospenski would term super logic. That is a vertical line. So we think differently,different logic to the causal way of thinking. Can you follow me, or am I talking incomprehensively? Because my mind is always keeping ideas that become associated with it. Because Ibn Arabi is talking about another causal relationship than the temporal one. The cause effect in the process of becoming that Buddha talks about. The process of becoming. He is talking about another causal chain. This is exactly what Buddha means by 'patika samupada'. That is what were the causes that determined the existential state. Like in he reversed the sequence of causes to get to the original cause which was desire what is just exactly what we call Ishq Allah, nostalgia actually rather than desire.

So when you reach the Jabarut state, you're beginning to see the cause of situations not in terms of their prior cause, their cause in the process of becoming, but the divine intention. And the point is that there is no way in which we can understand our problems unless we can have some sense of the programming that is behind them. And we can't understand that programming by using our ordinary logic. And we can't infer that programming from this hardware. For example, if you took a computer to pieces, I don't think that would give you any sense of what the programming is. 

So this is a direct grasp of the programming. And the Sufis call it 'unc' . And unc is often being interpreted as being invited to the court of the king. That is being privy to the intention. That's what the Sufis are trying to say in the story of 'frederoich' which I dislike immensely. You know that man mustn't rescue that man who was drowning because that was the divine intention. I have difficulty with that. But I still see the divine intention. A totally different look at your problem. And one is wasting one's time trying to sort out with one's mind why things happen the way they do. It's totally counterproductive. 

According to the Sufis, this intention can only be revealed to one. One can't acquire it. Therefore the Sufis make a difference between acquired knowledge and revealed knowledge. Jabarut represents revealed knowledge. And Ibn Arabi says, "God reveals Himself to you not through devices". Or God reveals His intention directly without the aid of devices. So that is really getting into the divine consciousness.

Now we come to the next stage which is called Lahut. That represents the second 'a, the second a' if you said Allah. La illaha illa 'lla. Now you are reaching up into the Lahut level. I said it's the level of archetypes. The Sufis say the divine names. Well there is a clue to this. There is a word of Ibn Arabi who says, "God describes Himself to you through yourself". That's the first thing. So that means that you know the qualities through their exemplification in you. In other words, you know the archetype through the exemplar. 

What we're doing with the wasifas is exactly that. We're trying to, there is no way in which we can improve the qualities in our being by trying. You say a wazifa, Ya Qader, Ya Qader. You want to be a little more strong. It'll never happen. The only way to do it is if you see that there is an antipolar point of view, the way that God is discovering His power as exemplified in you. 

So you discover yourself through God and you discover God through yourself. Those are the two words of Ibn Arabi. You discover God through yourself. That is you discover the archetype through the exemplar. Then you discover the exemplar through the archetype. That's what we're doing in the wazifa. You see that's the only way that these can ever work. And if you don't do that, well then you're right into a kind of ego trip trying to improve yourself and it doesn't work. And so when people don't repeat their wasifas, I don't blame them because they are not doing it right. If it doesn't work, then you stop doing it. So there is a word, I forget now, it might be Jami, "You know the eternal through the ephemeral. So it is in yourself that you discover the perfection, the divine perfection". And the word of Pir O Murshid who says, "God discovers His perfection through our imperfection". 

So this is a very high level. Because you find that the only way to know yourself is to get into the consciousness whereby God knows Himself through you. In other words, you can't know yourself. And when you say God, it's another dimension of yourself. So it's very paradoxical. The reason what I been saying now for nearly two hours. I'm surprised that you're sitting here still listening. You know that's the reason why Sufism is so popular is that it's very difficult to follow. Yoga is much easier. And Buddhism is easier until you go into the depths of Buddhism. The Buddhism of Buddha is very rare these days. It's what they've made of Buddhism.

Now may I say something even a little more difficult? That is, for example, you have the programming of a computer. But the programming is devised according to the intention of the programmer. So behind the programming there is still the intention. So if you see the programming, you have to know the intention. And so the Lahut level is the programming. Beyond that there another level. And that is the Hahut level and that is the intention. That's, that is being invited to the court of the king.

Now there are words of Ibn Arabi that really blow your mind. Well all of them blow you mind. But this one perhaps more than any. And that is, " Knowledge is availed upon the known". Think about that. Knowledge is availed upon the known. So let us not fetter ourselves about our knowledge because it has no value at all. In fact it's deceptive. 

But I'm moving rather fast because I don't know how you can take all of this in. I don't know how I can say it all. But it just happens. But there is always something further, you see. And that's a word of Naffari. Naffari was that dervish who lived in the desert and came occasionally to his home and said things that nobody could understand. But it's published. And I can assure you that I find it difficult to understand. But there are things that, well it's meant to blow one's mind. And he said,"We are seeking for knowledge. But do we know the knower?". Now you are listening to Beethoven, but do you know Beethoven? Or you are listening to Brahms. But do you Brahms. Or you're listening to Bach. Do you know Bach? If you knew Beethoven you'd understand Beethoven's music much better. And if you knew Brahms, you'd understand Brahms' music much better. And so Chopin or Schubert or Schumann or Monteverdi, Bach of course. They suffered a lot. I told you about Beethoven who wrote this letter to his nephew. 

Then you'd understand your life much better if you could get into the consciousness of the knower instead of thinking that you want to be the knower who understands your life, then you'd understand your life. 

You know that they operated Bach of cataracts. And they made him drunk because they didn't have anesthetics. And they did a horrible operation and Bach was blind. Beethoven was deaf. And Tchaikovski became crazy. 

So knowing, you see there is a word, well of course this is the basis of Christianity. That knower who you'd like to know has crucified himself from the beginning of time so that you would know him. That's Christianity. Or so that you could know. Because that's what knowing is about. So it's all like quite paradoxical. Because ultimately it's knowing God as you. It's all very paradoxical. It just doesn't make sense to the ordinary mind. 

But you see these are the thoughts that will eschew the kind of thinking that one starts with in one's meditation. Because one is wasting so much time. Just struggling with the mind. Meditation is a great art. It's like music. If you don't know how to do it, you're wasting time. And you're even damaging yourself. I find that there are people who are damaged by a retreat. Some people are begin helped, other people are being damaged. It's a very great art to know how to lead a retreat, how to go into a retreat, how to meditate. And you see by the things I've said how very intricate it is. 

I'm seeking a word of Murshid but I can't quite remember it now. "My spirit came on earth in order to discover itself". 

I know this is all very disconcerting for our thinking so it's better to proceed by stages. Somaybe it's not good to destroy the first stages even though we know that they are not ultimate. Like if you go to school and you learn Euclidian geometry. Then after you go to University you learn non Euclidian geometry. But I don't think you could learn non Euclidian geometry without first learning Euclidian geometry. So that's why they are developmental stages. Sometimes it is good to see what is ahead. like beyond one's understanding but one still has to go through those stages. That's why I tried to make those stages clear. I have outlined these stages in a series of talks at the leaders retreat. And even articulated them, written them down so it's a little more clear. So that will appear. The Secretariat is going to release that sometime. You have something you can work with. God Bless you.


OCT 25, 1997		Tape 01

TA  I must say I am very deeply moved to see familiar faces.  Can you hear me?  I feel I am surrounded by friends.  We just have a few hours together and what we did do is go through a process together.

The far reaches are a word which has only meaning when it really happens to us and that is Enlightenment and Awakening.  There are several steps and I should be, it will be, the whole process will be based upon the teachings and the experiences of the Sufis.  So we are going to start from scratch and then move step by step.  As a preliminary I would like us to work with light because Awakening is always connected with light.  So first of all, could you just with your eyes open draw light into your eyes from the environment, you could even think of the stars, distant environment, as you inhale and then hold your breath and identify yourself with being a luminous intelligence rather than aura, luminous intelligence, at that time you could close your eyes and turn your eyeballs upwards and then open your eyes again, exhale. 

Now we can do something very interesting and that is, well imagine the light filtered through a light, or passing through a light like the Light of Intelligence passing through the light of your glance, a light passing through a light, that's what's meant in the Qur'an by The Light Upon A Light.  Okay, so let's do it just a few times, you open your eyes as you exhale.  As you inhale the doors open, but your eyes are set at infinity so that you are unable to see anything, just light.  And when you hold your breath and think of yourself as a luminous intelligence and not, and think of your body and your mind and psyche and so on as a support system for what you really are.  And even your consciousness derived from your intelligence which is the intelligence of the Universe.  Close your eyes when you hold your breath.  

Now when you open your eyes, you exhale, you will of course if you open your eyes, the objects in the environment will try to force your eyes into focus so, if you just think of your eyes as two beams of light, concentrate on those two beams then you will not succumb to the impact of the environment, or the environment will look like a blur but you will feel as though you were illuminating the environment with your glance.  Now keep on doing it.  Turn your eyeballs upwards and as a matter of fact you could curl your tongue and press it bottom up against the palate as you hold your breath.  Open your eyes again as you exhale.

Now you could if you like imagine for example something I do myself, imagine a flower as you exhale, and the light of your glance causes the petals of the flower to unfurl.  Now in a further step, as you exhale you could imagine the face of a person and then their countenance being made of a body of light, the aura, which is  transpiring through their face and you could, if you cast your glance upon that countenance it will start radiating, start flickering.  Now of course you could, perhaps you could feel your aura, seems to extend beyond the skin and also is interspersed within the cells of your body and once you felt it you could identify with it.  Now of course, think of your aura as a temple in which your body is being formed. 

Now in as much you are aware of your body, or identify with your body, you could think that the body is absorbing light from the environment which it does, as you inhale, and hold your breath after inhaling, you find that if you concentrate on, by turning inside, you will have the feeling as though the cells of your body are jiggling and sparkling and enjoying the ecstasy of light.  That's the Dance of Siva.  Because light is of course energy and so the cells are beginning to dance and as a matter of fact start dividing in what is called mitosis.  And so now when you exhale you are emitting light, it's not the same thing as reflecting light, you are emitting light from the cells of your body.  Of course your aura is just one level of your being and there are other levels of light of your being beyond what we call the aura, beyond the ability of the cells to absorb light from the environment.  I should be going into that a little later.

So now we'll start the process now, those were the preliminaries; now we are going to start the process.  Well we'll start from scratch.  In the ordinary consciousness, in our ordinary consciousness, we think of ourselves as subject, and we think of the physical world as the object, and our bodies as the object, and as a matter of fact circumstances as the object, even our thoughts as the object of our cognizance, and I suppose you realize that our understanding of what's happening is limited by the fact that we are operating from a very limited vantage point.  And what we want to do is to start discovering further dimensions of who we are, including our body, our psyche, our thoughts, our emotions, and including our consciousness; that's what we want to do so we realize that we will have to shift our way of thinking and our way of identifying so there are a few breakthroughs. 

Now first of all, you know very well that if your start to meditate, all kind of random thoughts will start surfacing and they have to do with the way that you are digesting the circumstances in your life, the way that your psyche is digesting.  Just like when we digest food.  So you would be thinking of your problems, or we would be thinking of our problems and you know that we are looking at our problems from the personal bias, what will they mean to us personally, to me personally, to you personally, and so obviously we can't have an objective sense of what is being enacted in our problems if we continue doing this.  So now we are going to start shifting our way of looking at things.  Now I would say the first thing to do would be to earmark a particular problem that is bugging you and now try to see this problem from the point of view of another person, in fact the person who is most involved in the problem with you.  So if you do that, you see right away that their assessment of the same problem that you assess your way is totally different from what is your assessment. 

And so at this point I think that you have to accept that both your assessment and the assessment of that person are both fallible, and it's only if you accept that your point of view is fallible or questionable that you can at all try to see things from the point of view of the other person.  Now try to include a third person.  A fourth person.  More people.  Now there are two ways of doing this, one is "what is that person, or what are those persons' points of view about that particular problem or assessment?", the second one is "their assessment of you, the image they make of you" which is of course totally different from your own self-image.  And I don't say that your self-image is right and theirs is wrong, or  that theirs is right and yours is wrong.  But now you can understand why people treat you the way that they do, because they are convinced that the image that they ascribe to you is correct.

So that is obviously based upon a mistake, an error of judgement, and so the question is does that make it easier now for you to accept, well let's say to understand the way people behave towards you who are not quite ready to forgive maybe, but still we couldn't condone the actions of the people concerned, but still are beginning to see things a little more clearly.  Incidentally, there may be reasons behind reasons, so that what does not make sense to you could make sense if you, if your realization had reached beyond the limitation of your personal identity.  

When I say "your" I mean "ours", I include myself.  Now supposing that you extend the amount of people who are involved in what you think is your problem, in fact there's no such thing as our problem, every problem involves the whole world.  And could you eventually do what St. Francis did and that is St. Francis said "I thought I was looking at the world, but in fact the world is looking at me."  So could you, see what it amounts to is that we have been learning to extend the notion of the subject in us, "the witness", Shahid is the witness, beyond our personal sense of identity, personal identity, our individuality, until it reached into the consciousness of the Cosmos or the Universe, or what you might call God.  So think of the Universe as being endowed with awareness, consciousness, intention and so on, that's what we mean by God.

So if you want to understand Sufism, the secret of Sufism is looking at things from two antipolar standpoints, the Personal and what is called the Divine point of view, the antipolar point of view to one's personal one.  Not just the Divine point of view, the Cosmic point of view, because our point of view is part of the Divine point of view, it's not opposed to it but in a certain respect it looks as though it is.  And so a moment ago we were enjoying the light of the environment through our glance, through our eyes, and then casting a glance upon the environment, and then we identified with luminous intelligence.  So there's some difference between the Cosmos looking at you, at each part ot itself, each fragment of itself, and then, I call that the Cosmic Dimension, and then the Transcendent Dimension which is probably much more what we mean by God, call it Universe, a timeless, eternal, formless, indivisible reality.  So those are two different dimensions.  So that will always be there somehow as an attractor throughout the whole process so though we could never touch it, we can never reach it, but it's somehow it's there in our picture.

Now let's come back to your self-examination, Sufis call it Muhasiba.  As the first thing you ask yourself, "what am I trying to achieve in life, what is my purpose, what are my values?", do you want to just do the same kind of thing that everybody does or has done and it's like a plant that keeps on recycling itself, people die and other people are born, and they keep on doing the same kind of things, especially with new technologies, but still "what is the objective there?"  Well, there's concupiscence, that is the desire to acquire; then well I'm not being judgmental about it, just we need, maybe we'd say that the Cosmos provides us, well say the Cosmos consists in an underpinning for the evolution of its intelligence.

Or for the evolution of the intelligence of the Universe.  So that underpinning, we find it in our lives, our need for a house and a car, and so on and so forth, the question is whether we consider these as tools in order to achieve our objective, and that's what we have to ask ourselves, and that's what we have to ask ourselves - what that objective is.  Or then they become ends in themselves you see.  And that is really the crucial issue that makes the difference between the initiate and the man or woman of the world.  And that's what Christ meant by "We are in the world, but not of the world."  So I am not preaching asceticism, no, but what is it that you really want.  Now of course it's useless to say that concupiscence, well there's a difference between need and greed, and if it reaches a point of greed then, let's just say it takes away our beauty, our beauty; can lead towards terrible cruelty, wars, violence, and no end to it.  Well once again, what is the objective?

Well I suppose you do feel that there are potentials in your being that are yearning for expression to manifest themselves in your personality, think of your personality as a plant and the root of that plant, the seed of that plant is infinite, like the whole Universe, the whole Cosmos, it's trying to come through.  And we are selling it away by our self-image.  Well, our self-image is somehow related with what our motivations are, so that's a question, "what are your motivations?"  Now we do entertain in our meditations, we entertain sometimes utopian ideas, but there's some power behind them, like "I am seeking illumination', "I would like to be dancing with joy," "I  would like to understand the meaning of life," "I would like to understand the meaning of my life," "I would like to exercise enough mastery in order to achieve something valuable." 

And the question "is this to feather my nest?", or is it something that is a token to humanity that will improve the conditions on the planet, to build a better world, and therefore I think that it's true that the intelligence of the Universe does need an underpinning in order to be able to awaken, so I see a need for achievement, but if you can see what you are doing in life in terms of a general sense of purposefulness, "in what way does it contribute towards humanity, toward the planet, in what way does it harm or damage the planet, humanity?"  You want to be very clear, definitely, "Why am I doing this, why am I doing that, what is the motivation behind my relationship with this person or that person or the other person?"  Very clear.  So we have said that the underpinning is important, but as Shahabudin used to say "the support system takes over", so it's like building a very strong basecamp, and putting allot of money and energy into it, and there's not enough money to reach the top of the Himalyas.  That's what we are doing.

So as you're still in meditation, instead of  regurgitating the impressions of the environment, you do the opposite, you downplay any concern about the environment, you don't dismiss it, you downplay it.  And you turn your attention towards thoughts that emerge from within unaccountably, not conditioned by the environment, not boomeranging back the situation in the environment.  This is creativity, and what does it mean?  To be creative, you know there is a saying of a wonderful scientist, Mueller, who says "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past."  Creativity is a feature of the pull of the future, so if you are just regurgitating your problems, your thinking of your problems, you are thinking of the past and you can't be creative at the same time.  And so to be creative you have to have vision, imagine "how could one/I be?". 

And you will find that this vision is going to call into existence potentials that are lying in wait, and which are unable to actuate themselves in your personality because you are barring them by your identifying yourself with your self-image.  We are imprisoned by our self-image!  So you see, the secret is to question your self-image, so it's not saying the way of the emergence of the potentials in your being.  Now the other thing is of course I am saying these are potentials in your being.  Well, I think we have to look at it from the point of view of the holistic paradigm, that is then as much as one could fraction the totality, every fraction carries within it the potentiality of the totality.  That means that each one of us has within ourselves the bounty of the whole universe.  Now, on the other hand, the beauty of life is the diversity, is that, for example, the cells of your body, each cell of your body carries within in the DNA of the whole body, but if the genes of the whole of the code of your body, the DNA were all activated in each cell, there wouldn't be any diversity, so the body couldn't function.

It's only, and so it is with humanity - the beauty is that each one of us is different, and that's a little difficult to understand that we customize the totality in an individual way.  And so when I say your potentials, you see there's a bigger, it's difficult to be able to do these two things, to reconcile these two thoughts at the same time.  You see, the Sufi view is very challenging, it's very different from the views that most people have learned at school about God, God is not considered as "other"- you know the old-fashioned view:  "God up there, and us miserable worms down here."  And more so, but I could be burned at the stake for saying this, and that is as "God as a virtuality becoming a reality in us."  Now does that shock you?  That's Sufism.  God as a virtuality.  

So God as potentialities in your being that are longing, the secret treasure that is longing to be known.  That's what Sufism is - the secret treasure that is longing to be known.  So you feel that nostalgia in your being for all those potentialities that are longing to be known by manifesting.  So for the Sufi's, well there's a word of Niferi who says "I'm not allowed to reveal to you the whereabouts of the key of the treasury."  That is, we cannot unveil that deep secret in our being, which is the Divine Potentialities, by our will - much as we'd like to.  And so the only way to do is to reverse things and look at it the other way around and that is God disclosing his/her being, actually intention, by actuating him/herself as us. 

Now I know that it sounds very metaphysical so I'll put it this way, so far we've been sitting, meditating, identifying with ourselves as the subject thinking of the world, thinking of our bodies, thinking of the circumstances, thinking even of our subtle body, our thoughts as the object, and we started to question the validity of our personal point of view, and we extended our consciousness beyond the personal vantage point, and according to Sufi's that would mean starting to look at things from the Divine point of view instead of the personal point of view.  Now, then we got to a point when we felt the need to unfurl what one might call the God within, what we might call our potentialities, to be creative as we said.  And you see, to be creative you have to invite the action of the whole universe into your being - you have to customize the creativity of the universe.  In other words, you can't just sit there and try to create things while being limited in your own personal identity or personal vantage point.

So now what we are going to do then is, well in order to be able to unfurl the potentialities of our being, could we now try to see how this whole process would look from the Divine point of view.  God trying to become a reality by disclosing him/herself and using to that end form, the form of our subtle body, and also according to the Sufi's the qualities of our personality are considered by the Sufi's to be forms, subtle forms.  So let me say this once more, maybe it's a little difficult to follow, see for the Sufi's the world and ourselves and our qualities, and so on, is not illusion, is not Maya, no, they are devices which give clues as to the reality behind them.  And I would like to use the word intention rather than reality - reality is a very metaphysical word, whereas the intention, that gives us the sense of what we mean when we use the word Awakening, the intention. 

For example, here I am sure that most of you have seen the film, E.T., and I hope that you cried, and that you rejoiced sometimes; and you mean to say that you cried and rejoiced because you saw shadows on the screen?  Well those shadows were devices.  And well, you can say "well I got into the consciousness of that little boy," yes that was again a device.  And E.T. was made, well he had the face of a turtle, the voice of an old woman, so you know I got fooled didn't I?  Yes, true.  Well as Bestami says, "God fools you in bazaars of the world."  It's true, it's delightful folly, but actually behind it all Spielberg was figuring out devices to communicate his intention.  And if you think of that, think of yourself as being a device in which the Divine Intention is trying to reveal itself.  

So that's what Awakening is - to see meaningfulness in your life, instead of being caught by the devices.  So the devices are that which appears and the meaning is that which transpires behind that which appears.  So Awakening, that's our purpose now, it's the right hope up there far away, but it's what they call in science - an attractor, it is drawing us towards it.  The pull of the future.  And now we see that to Awaken, we need to actuate the potentials of our being.  See the relationship between doing and knowing, one discovers by doing, it's just like making a statue, discovering the statue by making it, a sculpture, discovering the statue by making it.  So we can only discover ourselves or discover the divine potentials in ourselves by making them happen, and that's the reason for the accent on the working with Wazifa amongst the Sufi's.  It's not just, I think it's a mistake just to repeat a word, you always have to translate the the word in terms of form, for example where you translated the Wazifa Qahar which means "mastery", or I mean "power", "Divine Power" by a form in our body.  So that's the way that God becomes a reality, as a form.  Music is a form.  An intention, an emotion, and then it materializes in a concrete form that's communicated from one person to another.

Okay, well now let's work a little more with it.  So now, you are sitting there in meditation and you remember Pir Vilayat said don't think of your problems because your assessment is wrong anyway.  No point in wasting time, you're turning around in circles.  So okay, so now he said you should be creative, and nothing happens.  Creative thoughts can come to you, but they don't come, so what, am I to wait eternally?  Well, there's a very subtle answer to that.  You see, the lower forms of art are simply reproducing something that one has experienced.  Creative art is something different, it's the events or the circumstances, the prevailing circumstances act as catalysts, that trigger off potentialities.  It's not the same thing as reacting. 

If you downplay your assessment of your problems, your thoughts, concerns, about your problems, that is, I would say, I would simply downplay your assessment of them.  So that the reality that is enacted behind them is still in your unconscious and will come forward in your creativity.  Now let's try and see if we can do this.  So, think of a situation which is very distressing, not difficult to find out situations that are distressing, and see how you feel about it.  I don't want you to feel bad, but I think you already feel bad, so ...  And now instead of reacting, that is short-circuiting, that is instead of trying to figure out a strategy to deal with it, because we are all people of action in the world so we quite automatically try to figure out some kind of "how can I cope with", of course you know when pain is too great one can't think of it, people just can't think of it.  When I heard about what happened to my sister Nur, I couldn't think of it, it was just impossible. 

If somebody says so-and-so has died, you say "No, no," you can't accept it.   So then it's pushed into the unconscious and it's there and somehow we are endowed with the ability to transmute suffering into a creative expression of joy.  You find that amongst the great musicians, Brahms for example, Beethoven of course, and so on.  Bach, we have no idea what Bach had to put up with in his life.  Well somehow, it's like the person who is, the old-fashioned word was "handicapped", can sometime beat his/her records.  For example Dr. Hawkins, if you are impeded suffering is, does operate a constraint upon us, our ego, our psyche.  Frustration, it's more than frustration, it's dismay, being stymied.  And somehow I think the programming of the universe is such that, it's a force, you see suffering is a force.  It can break through in a creative way in us.  We can't figure it out with our minds, and that's where, you see we have a problem with our minds.  You see it's very difficult to accept to wish for this to happen.  That's where you know our simplistic minds can't figure that out.  We are touching upon something very deep.  

The Cosmic Drama, we partake in the Cosmic Drama.  We think we have this problem, but it's not our problem, it's our participation in the Cosmic Drama.  I don't quite understand, it's very difficult to accept that suffering is a condition of creativity, it doesn't make sense, but it looks though that's the way it is.  It can make you bitter, and it can make you beautiful.  If you react with your ego, it will make you bitter.  If you think that maybe there is something very great that results from what seems like a tragedy.  I hope you don't mind, I'll give you a personal example because I'm thinking of course of my sister all the time.  You know she was beaten to death by the Nazis, laid for 48 hours in the cold without eating, being kicked by the Nazis and then eventually shot.  Now if you look at that from it's face appearance, it's just the worse thing that can happen to a human being and you think, "well we are talking about God, merciful and compassionate," well where is it?  

And I think to myself, "imagine what she has become through that?"  "Imagine the force of a person standing there facing the Nazis, having lived up to her ideal, imagine what it does to you to live up to your ideal, faced with suffering."  So when I think of people complaining that life is hard and people are mean, I think of that and I think it's very puny to have self-pity.  Does it help you, it helps me.  Yes, every time, every time I have a tendency to have self-pity and then I think of that, and of course you can't have self-pity after that.  And if you don't have self-pity, you don't have resentment against people.  They don't know what to do.  And it gives you a tremendous strength, Divine Power.  Not the power of the ego, but Divine Power.

Okay, we'll stop talking to you more.  Now if you just think of your problems now, and think of your idiosyncrasies, of your self-image and potentialities that are trying to come through, how you can encourage this nostalgia of the God Within.  Whereas if you were to try to figure it out with your mind, you could not.  As you know, creativity is born out of ecstasy, and ecstasy is not the same thing as joy, ecstasy is being shattered in one's emotions and overwhelmed.  If you think of the Divine Action upon you, or the action of the universe upon this fragment of itself, which is you, then you realize that in it's extreme form, this shattering is like being burned by the Power of Truth.  Being burned by the Power of Truth, it will burn you.  And we have to be very careful not to confuse truth, well there are two words in Islam, Huk and Hakika or Hakaik, and when you use the word truth, there is some ambiguity, sometimes we don't understand that we think it is being truthful, which is of course...


OCT 25, 1997		Tape 02

That's beautiful, to love the person you dislike.  Pir-O-Murshid said we are tested in our love.  You know that to be in love gives you ecstasy, but this, of course the Sufis would say "being in love with God", I would say "being in love with love."

Can you see that creativity is fostered in that attunement, the attunement of love, and the ecstasy of love, of splendor, so the splendor comes through the work of art and you are the work of art, so that splendor comes through you, and you discover it by working with yourself.  So we have to be consistent now because we, I am talking in a way that is idyllic, maybe utopian, and so can we reflect upon what this means in terms of our day to day lives, the people we are dealing with and so on.  Handling ugly situations beautifully, and truthfully at the same time, beautifully and truthfully.  You see, if that is our objective, then we will be inviting the qualities that are pertinent in order to be able to carry out that action as we project.  That's the only way.  You can't just try and develop a quality by thinking about that quality, by repeating a wazifa and thinking of a quality, it doesn't work.  

You have to think of an action, a behavior, a way of handling a situation in your life which calls upon a quality and know that that quality is knocking at the door as it were, lying in wait in your being and that it is your self-image that's standing in the way.  So, dismiss your self-image, imagine how you could be if you would be as you might be.  Then how you handle that situation if you were as you would be if you could be as you might be.  We'll start with one quality.  You see at first one tries to figure out what is the quality that one needs in order to be able to meet the problem, and I think the choice of that quality that one figures out with the mind is determined by concern about adapting oneself to the environment.  But you know that as one advances one adapts the environment to one's own sense of purpose.  And so, just depending upon the way you figure it out with your mind is not good enough.

Well now, what could be the alternative?  Have you noticed that certain qualities come through at different periods in you life, you could ask yourself "what is the particular quality that is coming through at this moment in my life, at this stage in my life.  Is it a need to understand, is it a need for mastery, is it a need for love, a need for love, for peace," whatever?  And of course you would say, "of course there are several qualities."  No, but there may be one that is predominant.  And there are other qualities that are connected with this quality.  For example, truthfulness would be connected with mastery, you can see that connection right away.  So just mastery without truthfulness is self-destructive.  Now if you like you could just review a few qualities that are important for you.  You might find it difficult to ascertain which is the quality in particular that is coming through in this moment of your life.  You might say there are several.  Well, okay, pass in review with those qualities, might be three, might be four, might be five.  For the moment irrespective of any concern as to the application in dealing with your life.  Just think that indeed this quality is coming through.  Or is trying to come through, you can feel it's trying to come through.  So there's a difference between, you know, utopian sort of misrepresentation of values that you value, like I value truthfulness, or I value beauty, or I value compassion, that's still as I say platonic.

Question is, in yourself, see these qualities in yourself that are trying to come through.  And ask yourself, where is the obstacle, what is the obstacle?  And you see the obstacle is very often in one's way of thinking, in an assessment of a situation that is mistaken and which one is convinced of, there's the obstacle.  "I can't do this because..." so and so.  So if you question the validity of your argument, then you have removed the obstacle standing in the way of this quality coming through.  So consider several qualities, if you like I could suggest some. One would be truth as I said, the other, one uses the word compassion - I would say magnanimity, there are two words: Rahman and Rahim, Rahman - magnanimity, that is to be big enough to house some unpleasant people in your soul.  There's a saying of, I think it's a Hindu saying, you become like an oyster that, there's a grain of sand in the oyster and you transform the grain of sand into a pearl and then it doesn't hurt you anymore, and what is more it's quite beautiful.  So that's a nice way of thinking about the people you dislike, if you have the courage to incorporate them in your psyche instead of dismissing them.  So that's magnanimity, that's Rahman.  But the reason why we have difficulty in doing that is because one is afraid that one is going to take advantage of one's kindness, and so it's good to combine Rahman with Wali which means mastery, so that they know that we're not simply tolerating their misbehavior.  So there you combine two qualities.  

So think of situations in your life, people, are you able to, big enough to, you know it's the puny person that rejects people like a dictator, the greater your being, the more embracing your psyche.  So it's a gauge of your greatness.  It doesn't mean tolerating, it means incorporating, embracing, and yet with some kind of distance, no it's not distance, well power, will power, the more powerful you are the more people you can incorporate in your being who are distasteful.  So, it's a question, so I'm talking about greatness, Kabir, greatness, and if one continues to identify oneself with one's self-image, then of course that goes in the opposite direction, we stand in the way of a sense of greatness.  Greatness comes by way of being able to discover the Divine Greatness, stature, in each fragment of him/herself.  You see, that's, I know it's paradoxical, it's not logical, in fact the only way to be able to meditate is to question the ordinary logic.  

That's why Ibn Arabi says "Know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God."  Buddhism does the same thing, a person has died and has not yet, still not died, being able to reconcile these irreconcilables.  There's no other way, otherwise you would be suffering from megalomania if you identified with God.  The beauty is to be able to see the diversity in the unity, and the unity in the diversity.  That's the meaning of the wazifa Allah Ho Akbar, greatness, instead of being puny.  You know, that's what you feel when you look around yourself you find a lot of puniness in people.  The Dervish, the greatness of God is what God consciousness does to you, it transforms you. 

So one more quality, joy.  You see, every quality has a shadow, so the, first off the shadow of power would be ruthlessness, and of compassion or magnanimity would be being over tolerant, and of joy would be facetiousness.  Joy only makes sense in its relationship with suffering, you can't experience real joy if you're not aware of the sufferings of people.  And somehow this kind of ability to find freedom in oneself, not freedom from circumstances, leaving the world and living as an ascetic, that's not finding freedom, no.  Maybe it's freedom from opinion, of course as Buddha says.  Freedom from one's identity, freedom from the emotions that are tied up with one's personal identity somehow, or rather transmuting those emotions.  For example, the joy of having acquired a new car, that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that, but still somehow finding joy in having overcome, let's say, an instinct, somehow one's humanness, is a very great challenge, to find freedom in oneself.  

Freedom from opinion, and of course that will, the only way to awaken is to free yourself from your opinion of course.  See how freedom is very closely related with joy, the breakthrough of joy.  Perhaps, let's just think of these as the implications for you.  In these words of a Sufi who said "Oh man (well I would say "Oh man and woman" of course now), if only you knew that you were free, but you are so ignorant of your freedom that is your captivity."  It is your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity.  If only you knew you were free.  Now just think of this in your life, in your experience of yourself, what does it mean to be free, not just from opinion, to find freedom in yourself.  If you can really say "I'm free!"  And of course you see the relationship between freedom and awakening.  See, for example, I used to entertain all these thoughts and these concerns and conflicts and things, idiosyncrasies and so on, convention, conditioning, and I'm free.  I think of that woman in the south who was beaten, and was lynched, and she said "you can do what you like with my body, but you can't touch my soul."  That's freedom.  That will give you an answer to resentment.  I'm free.  No more resentment, I'm free.

Well I've been going on for a long time.  I'm sorry.  I should have given you a break, but I was very much in it with you and I think that some of you were with me, so perhaps we need to take a little break anyway.  So let's take a maximum of 20 minutes because after that we only have half an hour before the lunch break.  Let's chant a few chants of the world religions.  First, Ohm Nama Shivaya....  Now Buddhist, Namo Amida Butsu....  Sema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai E Hod....  Kyrie Eleison Kyrie Eleison....Kriste Eleison....

And that to make it real, instead of it remaining utopian, so real in the situations, it's very possible that if you do something with regard to a person for example you are able to handle as I say an ugly situation beautifully.  It's possible that just by doing that, when you meditate it will open the door to qualities coming through you which otherwise would not come through.  You see the connection.  So just sitting there repeating the wazifa in order to develop a quality won't work, and that's why people don't repeat the wazifas, I'm not at all surprised, because it doesn't work that way.  You have to relate it to real life situations.

Now, that's another example in terms of music.  I was a pupil of Nadia Bulonge, who was a teacher, a musical teacher of teachers of music at the Columbine de Musik in Paris.  That was long before most of you were born, that was in 1936.  And so we had to, Stravinsky used to come and visit us sometimes and Stravinsky used to say "Never listen to Brahms, or Shuman, or Chopin, especially Beethoven, but you could, yes, don't listen to music after Bach.  Monteverde is okay and so on, but Vivalde, no.  But before Bach is better of course.  Gregorian chant and so on.  Because you are conditioned.  Because that music does reflect the society of the times, like Mozart for example, and we want to find new dimensions in music.  You can't compose the way that your forefathers were composing.  And the same way in your own personality.  You, there's no point in repeating what has happened, or the way people were in the past.  We are living in a different time, we have different personalities and so don't model yourself by gurus because gurus are still living in the past. 

 In fact, the new spirituality for the millennium I would say without the institutionalization of spirituality, you know what I mean by the institutionalization of spirituality, like the Sufi Order for example, without mentioning any other isms.  And then dogma, that is "you've got to believe this" because somebody said it; however much highly you regard this person you must believe it.  Freedom from "inaudible.  I know I could be burned at the stake for saying it.  Freedom from prescriptions, do's and don't's, so that you take responsibility yourself for your actions instead of somebody telling you what you are supposed to do.  And the other one is freedom from gurus, and I don't if you know that adage amongst the Sufis, I think that it's Jellaludin Rumi who said "the Pir is the destroyer of the idol that his pupils make of him."  

The destruction of the idol, so no.  Now you can have someone guiding you, someone who has experience, like if you went to climb the mountains, you choose a guide and if you go to Chamanee you might have a choice between five alpine guides and you decide "I like the face of this one, so I choose him."  And then he's testing you and you are testing him too, so you can test your guru, and so he says "Oh yes, okay I'll try and challenge him a little further."  You're hanging on a rope on a rock and the precipice is underneath you, and have your fingers in a crevice in the rock and a good foothold on your left foot and he says "okay, well let go of your left foot and find another place."  You'd never do it, you'd never trust yourself to do it, but you think "well he must know what he's talking about" and so you do it.  That's what I mean by a guide who has experience.  If he says you can do it, it's because he knows that he can do it, but not only that he knows that he can do it, but he knows that you could do it too.  But he's got to show you that you, he's got to convince you that you can do it.

Now my job is to convince you that you can be creative of yourself.  Now I'll give you another example at Nadia Bulonge.  So we had to come to class with compositions, so she looked at the composition, didn't have to play it on the piano because she would just imagine it by just watching the notes, the script.  So she said, ah, I see you composed, I bet you composed this last part at five o'clock this morning.  I said, yes.  So it's, you think that you had to compose it because you'd get a bad mark by me.  I wouldn't have given you a bad mark.  In fact I would have given you a bad mark because you tried to do it out of your own will without being inspired.  And then she said, this part here, well yes you are expressing something, an emotion, but it's not, it doesn't compare with the emotion that is in you, but you are not recognizing it in yourself, and then you can't express it in your music.  

So it is a process of self-discovering oneself by composing.  And that's what I'm saying, is that you can only, we like to know who we are but we can only know who we are by making this happen, making that which is potentially present within us happen within our personality.  But it's not as simple as that, because as I say it's really the inviting the impact of the Universe upon this fragment of itself, and the fact is that it's not like the Universe was other than ourselves because it's a further dimension of ourselves.  So it's very difficult for us to understand how that works.  So it's not like thinking "I need to be inspired by other than myself, the Universe other than myself."  And then it's not either these potentialities are in me.  So it's neither one nor the other, it's both at the same time.  Understand, it's a little bit difficult to, somehow in our way of thinking, our way of thinking stands in the way of our creativity.

The other thing is to be innovative, that is to overcome any kind of conditioning and Stravinsky was right about that.  To overcome conditioning.  That is to have the courage to imagine how you could be instead of how you have to be.  Because our civilizations exercise impact upon our personalities.  To be acceptable to society we need to fit in with the norms that are required by our society, otherwise we are freaks or bums or whatever.  So it's very difficult for us to be able to maintain the originality of our being while at the same time not being a drop out of society.  That's been the problem of the 60's as you know, and now we don't want to just fall back into the commonplace mentality.  So, now my concern, I mentioned it but I think we could elaborate on it a little bit.  You see, what Buddha means by the Wheel is repetitiveness.  You find in nature for example a plant keeps on repeating itself indefinitely unless it mutates.  There's no point in continuing to repeat what one has always been or what one's ancestors have been.  Well what is it that makes a plant mutate?  What is it that makes for evolution? 

Well the Wheel starts moving instead of turning around its axis, it's moving into the future which is not there.  It's making the future as it turns.  But behind it all there's another factor, and Buddha calls it, well I don't know whether it's Buddhists who calls it, I don't what Buddha calls it himself, an extrasamsaric element, that is samsaric means the Wheel, and this is an element that is not of the nature of time.  A timeless element, and you can only bring this into your creativity if you are able to think of yourself as a pendulum.  The bottom of the pendulum is moving in time, and the pendulum is suspended on a point that is unchanged.  If you can try to reconcile those two poles of your being, the one that is transient and the one that is eternal.  And if you just identify with the transient aspect of your being, you are in the Wheel, and you will continue to turn the Wheel.  The only way to be creative is to get out of the Wheel on a tangent, and so then that extrasamsaric element that I'm talking about is exactly what I mentioned at the end of what we were doing this morning when I said "discover God not through the clues, but know God as God is in himself beyond any clues whereby he or she manifests to your view."  

So that's a whole further dimension.  And spirituality represents a whole other dimension to the commonplace dimension, and that acts as an attractor, transforms your being.  So the only way to be creative is not just letting the pull of the, the pull of the future will only pull you forward if somehow there's a transcendental pull there that gives it direction.  I don't know whether that makes sense, it's very difficult for me to say it in words.  And what Pir-O-Murshid says is what happens in our meditation is "discovering that you could exist without a body."  In other words overcome the fear of death.  I'm not talking about belief, I'm talking about experience.  Jellaludin Rumi says it when he says "I walk without feet and I fly without wings" and I think one could add "I see without eyes and I hear without ears," and I would add "and I think without a mind".  That is the only that will help you to meditate, to get out of that Wheel that is the conditioning of your mind.

Another dimension that is not of the nature of time, a timeless dimension, and a curious thing, is that this dimension, how can I say it, it opens up to you, it becomes, let's say it reveals itself to you in the instant of time instead of the moment of time.  Now this is very intricate, and we'll pull it out this afternoon a little further.  It's a word of Hujwiri, one of the Sufis who coaching the Dervishes and he says "Vacht time is a sharp sword that cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future."  The instant of time is a break in the continuity of the conditioned existence, it's a break, and if there weren't a break there couldn't be anything new coming in, it would all be the result of the past.  But this, I know, this is metaphysics but we are going to try and see how we can bring this into our meditation this afternoon.

Okay well thank you for your attention now.


OCT 25, 1997		Tape 03

Dear ones, please come sit down.  We only have two hours and a half now and the encounter is over and we are moving back into the tradition.  

Now, what I suggest for this afternoon is an in depth study of the Sufi dhikr.  You know, there are many different ways and interpretations of the dhikr so this is one interpretation.  But I think in order to get ourselves together it would be good to start with just simply repeating the dhikr, just simply repeating the dhikr a few times to get into the attunement.  Now, you see, it's not just sitting there repeating words.  That won't do it.  

So when I did my training in Sirkandarabad in India I was told to get into the consciousness of my murshid, who was my father.  Any you have to literally forget who you are and think that you are that murshid who is saying the dhikr.  And that's a very powerful way to free yourself from your limited self image.  Then, of course, there is a point where you mirror each other.  You discover each other in each other.  That's a further point.  So if you want to repeat the dhikr you've got to become a dervish and there's a budding dervish in all of you, otherwise you wouldn't have come here at all.  It's the power of divine consciousness.

So the words themselves carry a lot of power and after that we will go into the meaning more deeply.  Those of you who are not familiar, you will just take the plunge and go into it and you'llfind--I hope that you will find it rewarding.  So it is La Illaha Illa "Lla Hu.  La Illaha Illa 'Lla Hu.  Hu in the heart.  (repeats)  Alright, let's just stop here, because we really want to get into the meaning of each stage.

So you notice that it is--first of all, that one makes a motion with one's head 3/4 of a circle, so let's say it's an arc of a circle, and so that corresponds with the Arabic letter Lam which is an L, and that's a samsaric wheel.  And then you have the vertical line: Illa 'Lla Hu.  The vertical descending--ascending, as corresponds to the Aliff, the "A" in the Arabic, and you'll find the word Allah with the "A" and two "LL's" and then another "A" and then "H" at the end.  It corresponds to the Hu.  Well, now we are experiencing our involvement in the cycles of existence and then direct contact with the divine dispensation in the vertical line.

As I said before, I see it corresponds with Buddhism because I mentioned the (exor) samsaric, this other dimension which is timeless.  OK, so when you go into the circle, of course you're making a centrifugal motion not just with your body but with your electromagnetic field and even your aura and that results in the dispersal of your being in the totality, the fana, and as Ibn' Arabi says, it does not mean that you cease to exist.  You could think, to start with, to think that it is your notion of yourself, your self image that is dispersed--scattered.  

But then there is always a positive aspect of the negative, and the positive aspect is embodied in those words of Jelalludin Rumi when he says, "The millions of galaxies are just like foam on the endless sea..." I forget exactly the words, "and we came whirling out of the unknown.." I forget exactly the words, "and it is all God dancing around himself."  So that's a very beautiful description of the zikr because as you go into the circle you're not just dispersing but you are becoming aware of your appurtenance to the galaxies with your body as part of the galaxies and even your mind, and so on.  You are overcoming the sense of "Me" and "Other than Me."  So it's a dissolution.  

It's fana on one hand and baka on the other.  On the one hand dissolution and on the other hand really a discovery of your real identity thanks to your divine identity, or the enormous compass of your identity.  You know, there is a form of alchemy, solve et coagulae, you have to first dissolve before you can rebuild, you see, so it's a process that we go through and  I don't like to lead people at the first stage when they are breaking down or going through a Dark Night.  They call it Negrido, dark night, and sometimes one has to do that and I think some of you know what it means to be in the Dark Night.  

As I said--I tried to say this morning, all that you believed in, all that you counted upon, all that you are sure about, your logic, your everything.  Your emotions, your sense of meaningfulness and so on--everything breaks down.  Now you could divide this 3/4 of a circle into an arc of 180 degrees and then an arc of 45.  So it's La Illaha.  So the Illa lasts throughout that whole half a circle which is like a crescent moon, Illa.  And illa means no.  Now, so you could say it is not what I think it is, or it (?mayat) not what they think it is.  Now, it's followed by (Illa ha) and of course there are many different ways of interpreting that but let's say that particular meaning of ha, the particular meaning of ha: La Illa ha Illa 'Lla Hu--Ha, Hu.

That is that everything that is achieved in our lives, for example, is eternalized.  Eternalized.  That is, transmuted so that it may be reabsorbed in the divine consciousness so from the personal point of view one is experiencing one's resurrection but it is not one's personal resurrection because we're not a person anyway, we're part of the totality.  So speaking the language of the 20th Century or 21st Century one could say that nothing is ever lost and that the gist of our experience is fed back into the divine programming, the top of the circle, and then recycled again.

Now, actually we have two fanas, two dissolutions.  One is at the jagged ends of our being, La Illa ha, and the other is, rather than a dispersal, it is an absorption or resorption into the essence of our being, the vacuum in the center of the vortex. Now behind that there are a lot of thoughts that are very important when you are doing the zikr because it is very difficult for us to overcome our self image, especially if it's bad, and in most cases it is bad.  And so we are saying that we are a part of the Divine Being that is splendid and all omnipotent and all knowing and so on, and omniscient, and on the other hand, well, how can we reconcile that with our own imperfections and so on.  Or, then of course, unless you wallow in megalomania.  

So, this is really very subtle but the fact is that as you say Illa, as you turn within concentrating on your solar plexus which is the center of the vortex of your whole being, you discover the immaculate core of your being that is absolutely pure, and it's very strange because you say, well it has been defiled by all the badness in one's being.  And it's very difficult for our minds to reconcile these two thoughts.  And the only thing that will make sense of this is that the voice of Caruso can be retrieved nowadays in its bad recordings.  That means that the authenticity of our being is present within its distortion in our personality.

Now, it would be simplistic to think that this is the core of our being on the inside and the outside is somehow sullied, tarnished by the osmosis of the environment.  There is a spill-over with the environment, there's no doubt about it, so there are several layers of our being and you could say the external layers are somehow damaged by the spill-over with the environment.  I think that it's because we have it in us that there is any way in which the environment can affect us but somehow there is a mutual recognition, let's say, at the jagged ends of our being you see. So when you're saying La Illaha you're getting into the edge of your being where there is an overlap with the environment. And somehow it is transmuted because there is not only defilement but something is gained by maturity and consequently what is gained is then fed back into the totality.  So what I suggest is if we do just this first part and then we're going to a second part and third part and so on.

"La Illaha, La."  So you see that this is--the dispersal is a kind of a mode of purification and we find it very difficult to get rid of aspects of our being that we don't like but if we allow this process of dispersal to take place then it will definitely help us to free ourselves from aspects of ourselves that we don't like whereas if we tried to do it with our will we would be in conflict with ourselves and it would be counter-productive. Alright, now let's add the "Illa"  so, "La illa ha, illa." So now there's a resorption in the void, al ama, the void. And somehow, according to Islam we are recurrently reborn and in fact some say at every breath, so if you are doing the zikr then at every breath you are reborn.  But it is God that is reborn as you, and so on.  

So it's not the same as that dispersal.  It's really getting back to--I don't say the initial state in time--it's getting back to the state of the root of the plant where the potentialities are present. Now, this morning I said something which could be easily misconstrued when I said, "God: think of God as a virtuality." Let's say the word that is used by the Sufis is Haqq, which means reality in a very special sense.  When Murshid says, "Make God a reality and he will make you the truth I would have translated it differently.  I would have said, make God an actuality and he will make you aware of the reality of your being.  The words of al Hallaj: "Ana'l Haqq", I am the truth.  The ultimate realization, I am the truth.  And the truth doesn't mean I tell the truth.  Of course it means that one has to tell the truth but it means much more than that.  It means the ultimate reality. So it's like recontacting the source from which our life springs and being reborn recurrently.  So this is where creativity starts.  You start from scratch.

Now, I mentioned this morning the words of Hujwiri, "Waqt", which he used in a particular sense, the sense of--the (**? incidental**?) of time that breaks the continuity of becoming that is conditioning, and I said before, if we were just subject to conditioning there would never be any change.  The past would continue to live.  So there has to be somehow a break in that continuity so that something new can emerge.  And that is the instant of time instead of the moment of time.

An example of a moment of time, for example if you'd been listening to music the sounds that you heard continue to reverberate in your ears while you are listening to the next note.  There is an over-lap.  Whereas in music sometimes you can have a real apostrophe break, and in Indian music particularly, the dead-beat.  And that's where you interrupt--how can you say--the vortex of becoming, time in the process of becoming; and that is your chance to bring something new in.  So just think of it that way.  Let's just think of it that way without doing the practice itself.  Just think to yourself, well, I would say, just hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling and think to yourself, "I am given a reprieve from the past.  I want to free myself from conditioning.  

So you have to ask yourself, "Am I conditioned?"  And most people wouldn't quite realize the extent to which we are conditioned by our upbringing, the society in which we live, our beliefs, our opinions are conditioned, are not free.  That is, if I've done something that I disapprove of myself in the past that has conditioned, that has effects in the present and in the future, one would imagine that there is no way in which I could free myself from the deleterious effects of bad action and here we have a very curious insight, and that is that it's true the past continues to live but transformed.  And it's transformed in us and in the people, of course, we were involved with at that time.

The past is not the way it was.  Like that was a seed but now it's a forest, so it's not the same; or it might have transformed itself into a different kind of plant so it doesn't live the way it was.  But the important thing is, let's call it (?Blanche ____).  It's your impact upon the universe versus the impact of the universe on you.  Impact of the part on the whole.  Perhaps you don't think you have an impact on the whole, but we do.Everything that we do has its consequences far and wide out beyond our reach.  

We could even ask another question.  First of all, what do we know of the universe, of the cosmos?  Physicists are beginning to discover a lot of amazing things.  It is very little in comparison with what one would like to know.  Does our knowledge of the universe have any contribution to the way that the universe knows itself?  Does the universe know itself through its parts?  Does a tree know itself through its branches or leaves or fruit or flowers?  God discovering him/herself as us.  If you think that way then you'll find that instant of time, the break in the continuity of time, links you with eternity. 

Now I don't know, this may sound too metaphysical to you, but the Sufis have the knack of putting it in an artistic way, in a poetic way.  For example in the Qur'an (?**Shariff??) said, "There's nothing in the world that does not have its treasure in the divine treasury."  And Nifari said, "I'm not allowed to give you the key to the treasury." And Ibn' Arabi says, yes, well, actually I think it's in the Qur'an _______, there are tenuities, fine threads connecting that treasury, the eternal model with ourselves and it means also correspondence and even likeness or semblance.  And that's why we say we're on the image of God, that every face is his face, and so on.  

And of course, Ibn' Arabi says, "And the angels build a ladder between the treasury and down here."  But this is very important.  I know you could say, ask, Pir Vilayat, do you still believe in Santa Claus?  You're talking about angels, what do you know about angels?  It sounds very lyrical.  Well, if you discover the immaculate core of your being you'll find the angel.  Now, if you want to know how to define it, it's defenseless.  So your ego is out there, you know, you are fighting, repelling the enemy, but somehow in the depths of your being, it's just like a child, it's the child in you and it's defenseless.  And what is more, it is innocent.  That is, it is unable to devise any form of guile whatsoever.  That's why it's defenseless.  And the wonderful thing about that is that it's the only way to find a relationship with the divine splendor.  It's the angel in us that glorifies.  It's not our humanness.  

Now, there's a very important way of looking at, I would say, Islam:  the meaning of prayer.  That is, in order to, what one calls glorify God, one is projecting upon God what one imagines God to be like, but in a superlative way so that one is always imagining that he is more merciful than we are merciful and more powerful than we are powerful and so on and so forth.  And somehow we have to draw out of the depth of our being the potentialities that lie in wait in order to project them upon God and so prayer is a mode of not just self discovery but of creating ourselves.  

Now that's, you know, we're living at a time when meditation has been reduced to stress reduction.  It's a far cry from the transmission.  Just imagine what it does to you to project upon--and you know that it's not God.  I mean, perhaps one doesn't know it, but if one is wise one realizes that it's what one imagines God to be.  But that, itself, has the effect of making us, of transforming us.  Now, again once more, I referred to God as a virtuality.  That is, according to Sufis, no.  It's Haqq, reality, but in existence is a virtuality.  That is, the potentialities (?*in Kant), the  potentialities are virtualities that become a reality, and those are, how can I say, predicates of the divine being.  

So This is very important because now we have turned ourselves towards--we have really inverted right back into the womb, into the seed bed out of which our being sprouts, or the way the divine being comes through us as us and now one's head moves upwards again, so after we were doing the circle and then down, the head moves up, and at that moment think of that ladder. Think of those tenuities between the divine treasury and the world, a kind of, if I might say it, a kind of divine umbilical cord.  And the tenuity about it is the likeness, that we discover the likeness of the essence of one's being: the divine being, some connection there mirroring--it's difficult to say that in words.  

So we had La Illaha, you remember, it was a resurrecting and then (*Qayoom*? sp.?) Qayoom, Qayoom, resurrecting, and then Illa "Lla.  Now the "A" of Illa, that is the moment when out of the void emerges ex nilo, out of nothing, a new dispensation in the form of your creativity; and so that is really the moment--you see, it's Illa, you see your head just moves up a little bit after Ill after turning towards the solar plexus and this "A" then represents what in Sufism is called mithal.  That is the realm of metaphor that we are building, or creative imagination.  We are building in our imagination a mould of reality, of Haqq, of reality in a form and that is the form of our subtle body.  

Now I'm saying this it sounds too metaphysical so let's try and do this in practice and that is, imagine that in order to--well, let's say perhaps one of our greatest needs, although we don't always know it, is the need of the sacred.  It's not just a need to understand, it's a need of the sacred and you know, the word secret and sacred are entomologically the same.  And so the sacred is to discover the divine secret hidden in our being.  You see, what Pir-O-Murshid says, God is hidden in his creation.  And we can't discover it.  It's disclosed to us but we have to do something and so for the Sufis our act of Glorification is really our response to the divine act whereby God salutes himself as us. I'm using the language of the Sufis.  It's always very subtle. I am referring to a meditation of Al Hallaj called (*?sp.? Aketetable*? eshk) in which he describes a state of God, the original state in his essence where the attributes have not yet emerged or have not yet appeared.  

Let's say a state of saturation, for example the chemical state of saturation.  The chemicals are there but they haven't appeared yet.  And then God turning his attention towards each sephat, each quality, and those are the wazaif that we were working with, and as he turns his glance towards a particular quality, sephat, it materializes. It's followed up by its materialization into a form and eventually into a being, so that we are the materialization of the divine vision whereby God discovered Himself.  Is that too difficult to follow?  It's a whole different way of thinking in an America that is so used to psychology; it's a very strange kind of language.  It's no wonder that Sufism is so little known or so little followed.  You see the connection between God and man, both poles of the same thing.

Ah, yes, well I'll follow this epitome of Al Hallaj.  And then he goes on to say, having projected this attribute in the form of a man, let's say a human being, he salutes it.  You see, it was presumptuous in Sufism, in the language of Sufism, to think that we glorify God.  We respond to the divine act whereby God--we can't say God glorifies himself--but God experiences the joy of self discovery.  It's difficult to say this in words.  But those are the tenuities.  You see, there is a connection.  There is a word of Al Hallaj, and I think later on it was picked up by Pascal when Al Hallaj said, "I would not have said 'Art Thou there?' if thou had not already whispered in my ears, 'It is Me.'"  It is always the Divine act that precedes the human act and the human act is just a response.  As in Latin it is called significa surpasiba,  being a thought of God or being thought of by God instead of thinking God--a whole different way of thinking.  

So the extraordinary thing is--so when you say the "A" after Illa, the "A" of Illa, you find yourself in Allah Al Mithal: in the world of metaphor, of imagination, and everything that has ever materialized starts as an imagination.  That's the template.

And in order to find yourself in that level you have to get in the state of reverie which is not slumber but it's not being in the ordinary existential condition, what one calls being awake, but in the state or reverie because in that state one's will is not up, or is on hold, and consequently the creative act takes place without ever interfering with it or distorting it by their will.  That's the secret of creativity.  So you're inviting the creative act of the universe by your glorification and generation takes place in the state of ecstasy.  Illa.  Now we have our head--the head comes up again after saying Illa. You say Allah.  You don't repeat the first word--the first letter of Allah.  There are just two "LL's" and "A" but the first "A" is much more important, maybe gains in importance by not saying it aloud because one is so overwhelmed by what it means.  Because it represents the angelic level of our being: Malakut, the angelic level of our being.  

Now as I say, the immaculate core of our being, now we see the connection with that level of our being which is Cosmos, the angel.  And so there is a very supreme act of glorification there because you daren't start glorifying unless you have purified yourself.  Unless you have found the angel in yourself you are not entitled to enter into the church.  That's why you have to first do the ablutions, for example, before you enter the church or the temple and those ablutions are, actually it is really, I would say essentially giving up any kind of hatred whatsoever for people, any hatred.  Otherwise there is no way of glorifying God if you have hatred in you.   

So that would have a very significant effect upon resentment.  It's a very powerful method to overcome resentment.  So maybe the psychotherapists of the future will be including prayer in their therapy.  Now there is a statement of a wonderful Sufi, Nazruddin (*?Koura) who is all light.  His whole being is light.  His whole teaching is all Light.  It's just Light.  and he refers to what he calls the witness in the heavens and he said, "You thought you were the witness and suddenly you discover that you are not the witness. The real witness is the witness in the heavens."  


Now, what would be like the vantage point of an angel about you or about any person?  Imagine that we are an angel here.  What would that angel think about us?  How would that angel perceive us?  That's the witness in the heavens.  Well, it's the angelic in you that is (bored/gored) by guile, dishonesty, it hurts the angel in you.  It's something you can't stand, that's painful to the angel in you, damaging to the angel in you.  Or power trip people, being on a power trip and abusing people for their sake and all that kind of thing.  So let's say that there's the witness in you, the body witness that is witnessing the physical world and then there's the witness in your psyche that is analyzing and assessing situations, problems and so on or even your own self image and then there's the witness corresponding to the angelic level of your being and that witness sees things differently to the way that your psyche sees things.  In fact, that witness exudes and is a state of ecstasy exalted by the encounter with the angelic in you or in others, a kind of mirroring effect.  

So you know that when you meet a person there's perhaps something in that person that you don't like and then there's something that inspires you and we don't know how to call it but that's the way that the Sufis put it.  It's the angelic in you that resonates with the angelic in another person and helps you and that other person by mutual recognition to validate what you really are.  It's a kind of knowledge that is not based upon logic.  It's a knowledge that is, they call it he knowledge of the heart, a knowledge that is based on a very subtle emotion and that emotion is love but it's a selfless love.  It's unconditional love.  So that's the first "A" that you don't pronounce.  Illa 'Lla.  So you could think that it is the angel in you that is glorifying and your body is saying the words or the gestures or whatever.  

And then we have this very curious transit between the first "A" of Allah and the second.  And the second "A" of Allah corresponds with what is called Lahut.  It's the level of the eternal models, that is the treasury.  The eternal models.  And somehow instead of thinking that they are up there somewhere out of reach the model is inherent in the exemplar, just like roundness is inherent in a round table, or roseness in the rose or somehow we exist at several levels.  And at this level we could say is impersonal but manifests in a personal way in our nature.  Those are tenuities.  So the angel in us is that umbilical cord, is that ladder that Ibn' Arabi talks about linking us through the two "LL's" to the last "A" which represents that impersonal level. 

And those two "LL's" represent--called Jabarut--represent a level which is beyond the subject/object relationship, let's say experience: beyond experience.  Because, as I said, experience: one is experiencing, when there is experience there's always a subject and an object; there's duality and what one is experiencing is just the Ayat, just the signs in which God is disclosing His/Her intention and now we reach beyond those clues.  That is, we don't need those clues any more.  You're talking now, to speed back.  You don't have to see the film.  Oh yes, speaking with the architect.  You don't have to see the building.  Well, then the architect accompanies you to see the building and then you understand the building in a way that you could never understand if you had not got into the thinking of the architect. And that's what Ibn' Arabi calls "You know God by God and not by any sign through which He manifests Himself."  Pir-O-Murshid calls that--he says, "Consciousness is resorbed in its ground which is intelligence.  Can you see that?  We are conscious of what's happening.  That's the way that intelligence functions when it is faced with an object but when there is no object then consciousness is resorbed in its ground.  And so that is a Samadhi state.  It's exactly what is meant by a ___________of Samadhi.  

Now, I'm saying this, so let's see if we can do it.      There's more to it than this, but anyway. So now, instead of saying the whole dhikr we'll say just "Illa 'Lla; Illa 'Lla; Illa 'Lla.  Now, can you think of what I've said while you're doing it?  Don't say it too fast.  "Illa 'Lla."  See, the two "A's" and the then the "ll" between the two.  "Illa 'Lla." So remember, the second "A" is a Samadhi state: there's no more experience of yourself as a subject experiencing or as the object that is experienced so it's just--that is the moment of the break-through where one is able to identify with the Divine Intelligence rather than the Divine Consciousness.  Let's do it again now. "Illa 'Lla; Illa 'Lla.  So let's just do the 'Lla.  In this case you say the first "A" but there's an apostrophe to it.  And there are two "LL's." 'Lla a'lla a'lla a'lla. And there are two "ll's".  And it gives you a tremendous momentum, the two "ll's."  Illa      a'lla; a'lla;  a 'lla; a'lla; a'lla.  So you are reaching from the angelic, from being the witness in the heavens, you are reaching into, by being privy to the divine intention, you're beginning to see the models (those are what we design, what are the sephat, and we call them wazifa.  It's really sephat. Like a sense of eternity, that is that extra-samsaric level that I talked about--beyond the wheel, immutable, and it's very confusing because not totally immutable. 

There is a fantastic word of Jelalludin Rumi who says, "Tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal."  It's a very amazing statement.  Just think it over.  Instead of saying the life eternal gives birth to the stars, the stars give birth to the life eternal.  And Pir-O-Murshid once said, "God first creates the physical world and then the heavens." And there was a philosopher there and he said, "Pir-O-Murshid, do you mean that or did you perhaps--" "Yes, yes, I really mean that."  But, I mean, that's not what we generally understand, that God first created the heavens and the earth.  No, no no, our angelic condition is embryonic.  It reaches its maturity through our earthly experience.  "Tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal."  So then that means that the life eternal is not that eternal so there's some kind of relative eternity about it. 

In fact, we have these ideas about eternity but if you know, in Latin, (?? separo secalovum), I used to think it was a century of centuries. It's not.  It is the centuries of centuries.  So it's infinite.  You can't say this is it.  It's always further.  So it is an amazing experience to be drawn beyond one's earthly support system and have some kind of a whiff of one's relative eternity and then reach even beyond that and that is the great mystery--but before I say that, the two "LL's", if you study Islam you find that it's said that Mohammad was separated from the lotus tree or the lotuf tree actually by the distance of two throws of an arc and those are the two "ll's" you see, the "L" is an arc and that's why there are two "L's."  

But how can one account for two realizations?  Is it getting too difficult for you?  I'm very excited about it but maybe you're not.  I know it's also serious, and paradoxical.  Actually the Sufis, just like the Zen, delight in paradox because it blows your mind and it's a wonderful relief.  Like your mind has been holding you all this time and all of a sudden you throw your mind and the freedom of all this gives you, well to accept incongruity.  Freedom from the mind, you see.  So anyway, in short, it's too metaphysical for most of you but it's the unity in multiplicity and the multiplicity in unity.  (Vadatan vadanayat).  It's getting a little bit too difficult now.  

So what I'd like you to do is to try to grasp your deathless state, that is what is called parenity, your ability to continue to be without a body, but it also means to not be involved by the process of becoming.  That is, at some level your body is subjected to decay and so on, the mind is dispersed and so on, and somehow you shift your identity so that you identify with a level of your being that is deathless.  And in which the know-how that you've experienced in the course of your life has been fed back so it's not eternal, it's deathless.  

Pir-O-Murshid used the word everlasting instead of eternal.  There is a difference between eternal and everlasting because something that is everlasting had a start but doesn't have an end whereas eternity doesn't have either a start or an end.  This is like a kind of a samadhi practice.  I said that you are involved in the existential state and yet somehow not involved.  The word parenity is used for example in a river, it's never the same water that passes under the bridge but one says it's the same river so that's the meaning of parenity.  

The concept was brought by Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan, but of course it has its source in Sufism and in transmission is self-sufficiency instead of being needy.  And that's the word: Ya Ghani.  Ya Ghani.  You see, there is a part of us that is dependent upon circumstances, it takes away our freedom, and a spark in us that wants to be free from its dependence upon circumstances and we discover our self-sufficiency.   In fact one could say that maturity from the baby to the mature person is a process whereby one moves from dependence to independence.  

What does that mean? Dependence.  Well, there are so many things we take for granted.  If you climb the Himalayas and you have a heavy back-pack with a tent and cooker and so on you soon find out that you'd rather go without the tent and just have the sleeping bag and it's too heavy to carry and you gain independence.  And the Yogis harden themselves by sleeping in the cold and putting up with terrible heat and going without food and so on just to try to gain a sense of independence from the support system because that dependence takes away our power and that's the reason for the power of the dervish and the rishis, of course, independence from prevailing circumstances.  

And there is also emotional dependence, being in love and  depending on the love that that person reciprocates and if that person doesn't reciprocate one's love one is in despair, that's dependence.  If you seek for beauty it will evade you.  And if you find beauty in yourself people will be drawn to that source of beauty.  That's independence.  So can you just experience this in your life, see how it works in your circumstances and how you feel when you are dependent upon someone who might let you down, especially when the emotions are very deeply involved, and then be able to love without depending upon being loved.  It doesn't mean not to love to be independent, and see how you feel.  You thought you were dependent upon something and then you find that it's OK.  So you don't have to really leave your palace, if you have a palace, but if your palace leaves you then it's OK, you're not in despair.  See what it does to you, the kind of strength that it gives you to not be dependent upon things.  And you see it's very important in validating our lives because we have such a need to achieve, and to achieve it's not good enough to understand.  One needs power.  One needs strength.  And your dependence takes away your strength.

Now the Hu.  Hu is a very paradoxical word because you could translate it literally by Him as opposed to (Anwar) which means Me, or Anta which means Thou.  So that means that one is referring to God as other, at least the simplistic way of translating that would be Him, God, and beyond that (H (??). For example if you're in a group of people and you're speaking about somebody who is not in the room you say him or her, so it means a person who is absent.  And Al Hallaj says, "If several people are in the room talking about a person who is not in that room the person is more present than the people in the room."  So that the important thing about that is that one is making God present.  

And that is a word that is very difficult to fathom: what does it mean.  For example, a person is present, like "are you present at court?"  In the court you have to be present.  That person is present.  But then isn't it true that there are people who are present within your heart?  You don't have to meet them.  They are present, they're always there.  So it's not the same thing as actuating God, making God a reality or an actuality in one's being, in one's idiosyncrasies, in the form of the subtle body, but we are talking about a whole different dimension here: Presence.  And at first it seems like one is thinking of God as other, but present, until one reaches the ultimate realization where one realizes that one is oneself that presence.  That's the ultimate.  That's what happened to Al Hallaj or even Abu (Yazid)_Bastami.  

The story is that Abu ____Bastami was a very rough dervish who lived in the desert and he said, "God fools you in the markets of the world so instead of thinking there is Ayat these veils are fooling you and if you are invited to the divine betrothal you don't have to suffice yourself with the veil of the bride." If you are a man, and if you are a woman, then I don't know what happens.  There are women are dervishes too.  And then, God said to them--to him, "Oh Thou." And he said -- no, God said to him, Oh I, and he said, "Doest thou beguile me in my ego?" And then God says to you, Oh I, it means something, right?  So then God said, Oh Thou.  He hadn't passed the test.  And then he said, "God annihilated me with his power--with his presence, with his Hu, that is, his presence, not his power, his presence, and then Abu Yazid Bastami said to God, "Oh I." You see, that's Sufism in those short words.  You see the whole connection there like that would be at the end of the horizon. The further you advance the further it recedes.  Somehow that discovery of unity, when Pir-O-Murshid said, when you're awake everything seems different now.  Where you saw multiplicity you see unity.  Where you saw no connection you see everything connected. Where you thought you were the subject you are not the subject.  And where you thought you saw an object there is no object. There is a totally different, wholly different way of looking at things.  So you see how powerful the Dhikr is.

Now what I suggest is, if you remember all the stages now--I hope you remember--you could do it without saying it aloud.  It's much easier because then you exhale as you go into the circle, La Illaha, exhale.   Then, inhale as the head comes down: Illa, and continue to inhale as your head comes up again (that's samadhi).  And then your head turns towards your heart center, not your solar plexus, and you think the word Hu.  It's the Divine Presence.  That is, it is a presence without any qualities, I mean, irrespective of qualities, that is, beyond the wazaif, beyond the sephat.  And just imagine that you're a dervish.  

Now just think that you are awakening and you are going through the stages of awakening and so as we go around the circle, that is the first awakening into the thinking of the Cosmos and then the thinking of the universe and then the Divine Intention your head comes down so you are awakening, suddenly realizing something you hadn't seen before and hadn't realized before and awakening beyond the existential state in a samadhi state, and they call it awakening beyond life, and then when you turn your head towards your heart with the thought of Hu it is awakening in life.  It's not you awakening in the Divine Consciousness, it is God awakening in you by awakening your consciousness to the Divine Consciousness.  

The slower you do it the more you are able to make yourself the different awakenings. And remember, at the end of the "A", the second "A" of Allah, there is an "H" which represents the samadhi state as is awakening beyond life, and that "H" becomes Hu, awakening in life. ((A)'Lla(h) Hu.  'Llah, Hu.) Now you don't have to move your head anymore, you can just think of the stages without saying the words or you can think the words.  But you see that the motion helps you concentrate on the different awakenings.  

OK, this is something you can do on your if you have the courage to take the time to do it and you will find that it makes all the difference in your life. Now, we'll take a little break now.  Perhaps to change the very serious mood in which we are in I can tell you what I think is a joke and that was, it was in Delhi,  one of these Jehovah's Witnesses, and she came up to Mary and she said, "Have you found God?" And Mary said, "Why, have you lost Him?"  

OCT 25, 1997		Tape 04

Would you kindly sit down now? Yes, so we could--there are several things I want to do during this very short time.  

One is to carry a little bit further what we started doing by experiencing the instant of time.  It has no duration and that is, as you inhale through the left nostril you think of-you can look at your whole life with a kind of perspective, like a  birds-eye view.  As one gets older that's what one does.  One sees one's whole life and all the bad, the mistakes one did and chances one lost and so on and you can say exactly why you did them and you can see the whole thing.  Without being judgmental you just understand how it all came about and then you think to yourself, well, yes, my situation is the result of the way I played the game of chess.  That is true.  But your realization is not limited by your circumstances.  That's the only way for you to awaken, is for awakening your realization to not be in any way connected with the actual de facto situations in which you find yourself.  

So you stop that--in fact it takes some doing to go through each phase in your life in a chronological order and, or in an opposite, and a reverse chronological order, go back and back and back.  So it takes a lot of work.

The important thing is--you see two things: one is the events and how they connect up and then you see the way that your personality has changed as a consequence of the events but what one doesn't see is the way the events are a result from one's realization, or where one is at.  So that's what you need to do. You start by seeing how, you know, after having an accident you were more cautious and so on so forth, how circumstances resulted in a change in your personality, but then that's reasonably easy.  The much more difficult thing is to see, "yes, if I had been then the way I am now I would not have done what I did then and so I would be in different circumstances now.  So you see the impact of your personality or your realization or your maturity upon events.  That's very important because  I think there are a lot of us who think we are victims of the circumstances.  That's very cruel to believe we caused those circumstances, and sometimes it's true and sometimes it's not. 

Now then the important thing is to be able to somehow free yourself from the thought that the past view will have to incur the consequences of the past.  There is a way of abating that and that's by a pledge.  And that's the only way you can do it, is by a pledge.  For example, "I will never do this again," or "I will do this," or whatever pledge, like the pledge of a knight.  That's the only thing.  And somehow that has a retroactive effect upon the past.  

Now those appear in Sufism, of course the pledge is a very important thing.  The pledge is a commitment like the commitment of a knight towards the lord, a pledge of fealty.  And so somehow that calling helps you to overcome your dependence on conditions, because as Shabistari says, you are the secret of the divine sovereignty so you establish that connection so you're not a person anymore, you are an initiate, you're a person who is committed to a purpose and so you feel different and you act differently if you are committed to a purpose.  And that frees you somehow to some degree--I don't know to what degree--from the repercussions of the past.  

The other thing is your freedom from your pre-figurations of the future.  Now it's true that it is with a lot of trepidation that we make any plan these days and then, we still have to make them but we have to be prepared to find that our plans break down and in fact our plans do limit us.  I know because my planning to come here today stands in the way of my book.  So there's a limitation, we are limiting ourselves by planning.  Now we still have to plan but be prepared to find that your planning breaks down and it might be for the best but you don't know that.  At the time you think it's terrible, what's happened is really terrible. "I've had all these projects and now it's all fallen apart and here I am totally stymied."

OK, so you hold your breath after inhaling: that's a moment when you experience, like instead of things coming to you from the past they are emerging from within in a timeless state, and what I would do is to--you see, this is what we are doing in the Dhikr when we say Illa.  But what I am saying now is when you say Illa you could already think about Hu.  Somehow you are connecting the eternal state with the instant.  Maybe it's too difficult to understand that.  It would take too much time to explain it. Let's say, "What is the impact on our destiny?  Is our destiny written out for us?  Preordained?  Or are we part of that?"  

And so on and so forth.  So it's no use saying it in words but somehow you experience, how can I say, the overwhelming power of destiny and your own power to change it and you are measuring your power with this enormous power and you realize you need  enormous power in order to be able to overcome it.  If you develop that power you would be amazed because your wishes come true.  You know those words of Emerson: "Be careful what you wish because it might come true."  I'm sure you've had experiences of having wished for something and when all of a sudden it happened you can't believe how is it possible.  It seemed like utopian.  So it teaches one to believe in miracles.

Now, as I say, there are a lot of things I want to say in this very short time.  The dhikr of light.  See, you identify yourself with your aura instead of your body and also your magnetic field and at first it's like whirling.  It's like a circle, but the circle becomes a spiral just like a galaxy and it becomes intertwined with the galaxies of the worlds of light.  It's an incredible experience.  You see, you think of the stars out there, you see.  I'll give you an example.  

You know, we think of the sun as out there but do you realize that the sun doesn't have a skin and therefore we are in the sun and you think that the stars are out there but we are in the stars and so a more advanced way of working with light is instead of thinking "I'm my body and I'm absorbing light from the environment, think that I am a being of light that is pulsing or pulsating as I breathe in and out, so that the light of the universe gets converged as my aura and my aura gets dispersed in the world of light.  Just and ebb and flow, and my body is like a crystallization of the world of light.

Now the next thing is that there are several levels of light. There is a Buddhist practice called (?kasima?) which consists in imagining a light--well it's a short-cut because we don't have time--and then we imagine the reflex of that light as you would imagine the reflex of a color, for example, and then the reflex of the reflex.  And then you get a notion of the levels of light of your being beyond what we understand as physical light and as a matter of fact you, in the dhikr then you start then with this spiral in the galaxies of light but then when you are moving upwards then you are moving upwards in the worlds of light and discovering the counterpart in yourself corresponding to the planes of light.  Ibn'Arabi says, "God invites you into worlds of light, (Allah Malla??) worlds of light, but the only way you can follow that tour is to give up your attachment to the plane that you leave behind.  

Now the real breakthrough comes when you look upon your aura as being just a support system for what you are ultimately beyond your consciousness you are luminous intelligence.  Now, can you do that?  Can you just imagine that my body is just a support system.  My psyche, my thoughts are all more subtle supports, underpinnings, and my consciousness, yes, that enables me to pick up the way the intention is, there are clues, the intention in the physical world for example or the world of my thoughts or my psyche but somehow I can have a direct knowledge of meaningfulness without it being based on experience, a kind of inherent knowledge.  How do you know that a table is round unless roundness were already present within your intelligence.  It's recognition.  You are recognizing something that is already there.  So it is that ability, and that corresponds with the deathless state, to be able to realize without experience.  And that is called intuition and that's what the Sufis mean by knowing God through God, not through any signs that he gives to disclose himself, through your being.

Now this is a very high state and I wonder whether you could just try and see.  You know, one thinks I'm speaking about it and it's just in the world of ideas but I can't do it.  And you'd be surprised to find that you can do it.  You see, Newton said, "I think as God thinks."  And I forget now who--a physicist said, "If we have any understanding of what makes the universe tick it's because we think like the universe thinks: less well, I mean like a hologram, the smaller the hologram, the smaller the fragment of the hologram the less it acts like the whole hologram but it still acts like the whole hologram but less well.  See that?  So can you trust your intuition now, not based upon experience?  I find it's very helpful then just to think that you are luminous intelligence and you thrust the light of luminous intelligence through your glance.  

Now there's a word of David Boehm who says be not surprised if a change of meaningfulness that you hadn't seen before is going to change the circuits in the brain. (____)_account of mental pathology for example, you can cure a person by working with their thinking instead of working at the physical level.  But then it's not just true of the circuits in the brain, it's true of your whole, not only your nervous system but even your body, your subtle body and so on.  

So now imagine that you had relied upon your experience for your understanding and now you trust that you can reach a sense of meaningfulness and without resting upon your experience.  All of a sudden, you know, like that Ah Ha feeling, "Ah, yes, I've got it!  A penny dropped.  I see something I hadn't seen before." Now it has its application in experience but experience but experience didn't lead to that realization.  That realization will make you look at things in terms of your experience differently to the way you did before.  

So now imagine that you are awakening.  Imagine that you are awakening.  That is, you are letting go of a perspective and the perspective that you have is more meaningful than the one you were caught up with before.  So awakening is not based upon experience.  It's not know how.  It's a kind of, like a kind of overview.  Like for example you are looking at your life with an eagle's eye view, now you don't have to look at your life anymore.  You look upon life, not your life but life.

The word light is always related to the experience of physical light so perhaps we could use the word clarity, crystal clear clarity beyond the misleading ambiguity of the mind. So you see that your assessment of your problems would deter you from awakening because they're based upon logical inferences.  This is what Pir-O-Murshid calls the reason of reasons and then there's a further reason beyond reason of reason and so on.  Now we are going to do our last practice.  We have a few minutes.  This is a secret practice.  It's a present I'm giving to you because you've been so attentive.  

You place the indexes of your fingers on your eyelids but you must turn your eyeballs upwards.  You don't press the retina, or, well, the cornea.  And then both the 5th finger and the ring finger on your lips and your middle fingers on your nostrils but just press the left nostril, so you can breathe through the right nostril.  And so you breathe in through the right nostril, hold the breath, and exhale through the right nostril.  So you don't breathe through the left nostril at all.  As you hold your breath turn your attention towards your solar plexus and in fact think of the Illa in the dhikr; you are reaching into the void, and then as you exhale a new dispensation of life surfaces from within.  

 away at the exhaling, and then (__ing) putting my hands in position again as I inhale. And you do it three times.  Now you can place your thumbs in your ears.  Three times, not more. So that will help you to turn within but in a more advanced stage you don't have to put your fingers on your senses because you imagine that, because your fingers block your senses whereas you imagine that it's the impressions of the world that are filtered  instead of blocked and not only filtered but transmuted.  

Now the next step is instead of concentrating on the solar plexus concentrate above your head, and so this will help you--it's not turning within now, it's reaching upwards in the transcendental dimension and that leads to samadhi.  And now take away your hands as you exhale and then you are looking down from that state of samadhi into life.  Again, three breaths.  Turn your eyeballs upwards as you inhale, and then hold your breath and take your hands away as you exhale and look down upon life from a high pinnacle and put your hands in position again as you inhale.  

Now you can do it without putting your hands on your senses because what you are doing is you are awakening faculties that we don't generally use because we rely upon our senses.  So as you turn within you discover what Pir-O-Murshid calls the all pervading light which is the state of light when it is not polarized, let's say it is not radiated for a source of light.  It is all pervading.  To use the words of Dr. Bohme, it's the implicate state of light.  And as you exhale you are transforming that implicate light into explicate light, into radiating light.

Pir-O-Murshid illustrates this, imagine that the sun converges the light of space and then radiates it out from there.  So the light from space is not polarized, it's operating, and it is made into radiant light by the sun.  The sun is a transducer transforming all pervading light into radiant light.  Now think of yourself as a transducer.  You're able then as you turn within, you're in a state in which everything is intermeshed with everything else: radio waves for example, so light is all pervading, it's not localized.  It's spread out.  So as you exhale you radiate it out through your heart center, our solar plexus heart. 

Now in the second part of this practice you are transmuting the physical light just as we were doing, as reflex, until you reach the light of intelligence and you never reach it because it's always further.  And as you open your eyes that is where you are experiencing exactly what is written in the Qur'an, "a light upon the light."  You see, your realization is going to spark your aura, just like for example the child sees something, like for example the mother says, "and you see the little pixie in the tree," and the child says, "No, mummy, I can't see it."  "Look again." "I can't see it." "Look again." "I can't see it"  "Look again." "Ah!  Yes!"  You see what happens to the face of that child!  All of a sudden beams with joy, luminous radiant joy! The face of the child radiates light, and that's the meaning of light upon light.  The Light of Intelligence enhances the light of our aura.

Now it's no use working with light if one still entertains hatred and anger, jealousy, all those feelings.  It's no use.  I don't know why I'm wasting my time and your time.  In fact, it's worth the while giving up hatred for the joy of being illuminated. Now there was a story that (? Ibn'Adim)  was a king and he gave up his throne and he met some dervishes and he asked those dervishes "How much did you pay for your(____ity?)  They didn't understand.  They said, "I didn't have any money to pay for it.  He said, I paid my kingdom and believe me I got it cheap.  Give up your hatred for illumination.  It's worthwhile. And now as a last remark which is inspired by Nifari, I translate it in the language of our time and say, "You've enjoyed the music but you know the composer."  That's the Divine Presence.  

And you know Beethoven?  If you know Beethoven you understand his music much better.  Because you're looking at if from your point of view but if you look at it from the point of view of  Beethoven, I don't know whether you know the story that he wrote a letter to his nephew and said, "I'm sorry I couldn't say this before but I didn't want to admit it.  I feel so bad that -- you know, the father of his nephew died -- I feel so sad that I didn't look after you.  I felt conscience stricken, but now I can tell you the truth and that is that I have become increasingly deaf.  And you could imagine what it is like for a composer to be deaf.  I didn't want to admit it and so I have had to isolate myself from the world."  Beethoven.  The powerful Beethoven.

You see the power that comes from being handicapped or -- I don't know the word -- disabilitated?  I don't like the word disability.  I prefer handicapped, actually.  I don't know what it means to be handicapped, somehow, the entomology of this word, cap in your hands?  Or what?  I don't know what it means.  But anyway, the fact you know, of not being able to do something and then still overcoming it and doing it, the power that it gives.  I mean, if you could imagine how inadequate I feel talking to you.  What have I got to say, and forcing oneself to do something that one doesn't feel that one is up to and then all of a sudden you discover that you are able to overcome your impediment.  And I'm saying that by experience because I like to speak from experience instead of preaching.  

But you can find it in yourself too.  Don't think "I can't reach my goal.  It's beyond my reach and some people can, maybe you have to be born as Buddha but I don't have it in me.  That's a bad excuse.  There is no limit to what we can do.  It's in the mind.  And I suppose that is faith.  So belief is belief in God but faith is in the fact that in the universe -- that the composer is present in the composition; the universe is present within you.  And that is the secret treasure. 

So this will be the -- we are going in our different ways, the parting of the ways, but there are moments that can live eternally.  I hope that we have experienced some of these moments together and that they will change your life.  You just have to have a kind of objective instead of that objective that is the sign, you know, on that green paper called the American dollar.  That's not your objective.  Your objective is being illuminated.  

It's--you picture yourself dancing with joy.  Now why don't we dance with joy?  You know, I don't know whether it would be frowned upon to dance in the streets.  Would it?  The woman in Amsterdam was dancing and the people thought she was crazy.  One isn't even allowed to dance. It's terrible.   And we have all kinds of excuses, not only that "It's not done," but "Your people are so mean," and "My life is so hard," and "How do you expect me to be happy." All these thoughts are in the mind.  So imagine that you could dance with joy.  And at least your soul could dance, and perhaps physically too.  

Why not?  And you have the divine power in you but you, it's your self image that stands in the way of your power and so the dervish becomes God conscious and that gives tremendous, what do you call, spiritual power and then you can convey that power to people who are looking for immediate power to be able to face up to their lives.  That's a combination of power and insight and beauty and wonder and perplexity.  That is what makes life worthwhile living.  

Good bless you now.

OCT 31, 1997		Tape 01

Yes this is Feros Dastor Singing an Indian Raga, very mystical.   So we would like to follow up what I introduced this morning and do practices that hopefully will help us to become more capable of administrating healing to those people who are in need of succor. So I would suggest starting by simply thinking of the galaxies and just for one moment if you can feel how your body is a further extension of the big bang, the star dust, how it keeps on being mounded and remolded, and keeps on being further fashioned as your body, and the way that it is, the tremendous intelligence behind it all has made it possible for your awareness, your consciousness to emerge. Having this matter of your body as the support system. And so that's the first thing.  

So if you don't think of your body anymore as a discrete entity like a fragment of or portion of an orange. But it is the whole Universe is somehow converged as your body, not only converged, but is evolving as your body. It's an extraordinary thought. And that evolution of your body, the very cells of your body is in some way a function of your realization, the impact of your understanding upon the very cells of the body. 

Now can you think of the cells of your body as endowed with some measure of intelligence, perhaps even some kind of emotion, and even some kind of thinking? And how they connect with each other by coordinating their activities so that they cooperate. And that cooperation is only possible by the diversification of the genes, those that are active and those that are recessive.  

So you can establish that connection, you know exactly like a horse rider can establish connection with his or her horse. So the horse is able to read his/her mind. Or your dog for example, or a falconer with a falcon. There is a thought connection. If the cells are aware that you are aware of them, they will connect up with you. You cannot order them about like in a military situation. But your awareness of them is going to _£confer upon them delight. And the consequence is that they will start dividing up.  

Of course it is true that having arisen out of the big bang and the star dust and the galaxies, we now each fragment of the totality, we are able to enrich ourselves by the environment, the physical environment the psychological environment, just like feeding food, at the psychological level. Not just at the psychological level, but at the level of pure energy and at the level of light which is matter, we are enriching ourselves.  

Therefore as you inhale, to start with, just imagine that there is a kind of magnetism that moves everything, that is the dynamic force behind everything that is all life. Consciously draw it into yourself at least as a first step. But if you do that, then of course then you imagine that you are other than the environment.  

Then the second step would be to consider yourself as a vortex within the, like a whirlpool within a lake. So that eventually the whole lake gets whirled into the _ vortex. So in the same way you could say you don't have a boundary. So you can't say, "I'm absorbing the environment". That was the first step. The second step, there is a kind of convergence of the Universe, the cosmos, as me. Not into me, but as me. It is converging as me.  

Can you see that gives you a different connection with physical matter, not just physical matter of the planet and the cosmos but the energy field? Because somehow we started our life by being impressed by our image in a mirror. And that gave us a sense of having a boundary, our skin. And in order to evolve, we have to overcome that, bypass that image. So instead of thinking of me connected with the totality, think of you as really incorporating the totality. The word is _¤convergence or confluence. 

Then as you hold you breath, can you feel the tingling, certainly the giggling, of the cells of the body? We have the faculty of downplaying the interface with the environment and highlighting what's happening within. At first we don't quite realize what's happening. I draw your attention to the fact that you can really switch your attention from the normal interface with the environment. The way to do it is to give vent to your need for freedom. It's a very deep need. We are somehow torn in the horns of a dilemma between our need for involvement in life with other people and our need for freedom. To turn within, you need to at least for the time being find in yourself that need to not depend upon external ci __rcumstances so that you can rely upon the power that emerges from within. That's the secret of the dervish and also the sanyasin and the Buddhist monk. Independence gives you great power.  

So as you turn within, the first thing to do is to try to see if you can be aware of the giggling of the cells of your body. You're giving them, supplying them with a further energy by becoming aware of them. As I say, it's just communicating with your horse or your dog or your cat. 

Now as you exhale, now, there are again two steps. The first step would be to think that you are radiating energy from your body, even from the pores of your skin. That's just the first step. The second one is to think that there is an ebb and flow of energy. So now you're reversing the ebb and shifti _,ng into the flow. Alright, if we were to, we could pass to the next phase which would be working with light instead of magnetism or the electromagnetic field. So let's do that.  

Well, I missed a step. As you hold your breath, you are aware of the giggling of the cells and the energy that you are giving to them by your act of consciousness. But I think that there is a template which organizes the cells of the body. And that template is, actually it is your electromagnetic field. You know there has been a lot of scientific research in that connection.  

So now instead of identifying with your body, you are a force field or a life field. And your body is a formation within this field. Therefore, this field is pulsing as you exhale and inhale, and is intermeshed with the field of the Universe just like a wave gets so intermeshed with the wave interference pattern that you've lost _- sight of the wave. But it's still there.  

OK Now if we pass on to the light field, then we'll have something more concrete to work with because the cells of the body are able to absorb light from the environment. That's a scientific fact. So you know how you feel when you're sun bathing. Something like that. You're opening up the pores of your skin. Imagine that indeed the pores of the skin, actually this is just an image, they are opening up. And they allow light to get absorbed into the cells of the body. And the cells of the body are now exalting because of the fresh dispensation of energy.  

So as you hold your breath, if you can once more, you're not just experiencing the giggling of the cells, but you're experiencing the sparkling of the light of the cells which are exalting in glee because light is energy. So this is a scientific fact, observation. The electrons within the cell have t _o tow the line, a certain constraint upon their freedom. They have to conform to a certain pattern of orbitals. But as soon as they acquire a further dispensation of energy by absorbing more light, they are able to jump their orbital. So that's called the dance of the cells. It's the meaning of the dance of Shiva, the dance of the cells.  

Now if you are sorry for yourself, it's difficult to acknowledge the joy of your body. So our psyche takes a part in this. I know it's very difficult to be happy and sad. But one can be happy and sad at the same time. Just like there can be sun in the sky and rain at the same time. Then you have a rainbow. It's not at the psychological level. It's in your very body. A kind of a tingling. It's more than a tingling. It's a real r rejoicing of the cells. The ecstasy of light. 

And then, of course, when they have absorbed as much energy as they could within their capacity, then unfortunately they fall back to where they were before. Of course this is happening all the time. It's as though you inherited money from your aunt. Then when you came back from you world trip, you had to get back to your job again. But you had a good time. So it's like that.  

Whatever little bit of energy remains, like you have a few foreign coins, that energy is radiated out as light. Therefore as you exhale, be aware of the light that you emit. It's not light that you reflect as in a mirror. That light has been processed by the very cells of your body. So it's a different kind of light that is radiate __ed. This is something that you can enhance, the radiation of your aura, consciously. In Tokyo there is a cell that you can sit in. If you are able to radiate enough light, then you switch on an electric eye. Then the whole thing lights up. So you just try to radiate as much light as you can so that you set the whole system into working.  

Now one thing you can do is imagine a flower as a bud. As you become more aware of the light that is emitted from your heart center, try to imagine that the pedals of tha _t bud up, are unfurling and becoming a beautiful flower. Now this is a practice that you could do with a patient. Imagine the patient. I'll tell you what I do myself. I represent to myself mainly the face of the patient. If I know what the illness is, then the body, in blue. Like a blue picture. Then I represent to myself that person as they might be if they were well in violet. So those two pictures are superimposed. Then I try to imagine how the blue image would gradually get transformed in order to conform to the violet.  

Could you do that? Think of a patient. To start with simply think of the face. You can see from that face that they are suffering pain or they are depleted. That's the blue. Now in order to be able to do this, what you have to do is to be able __ to grasp the countenance of the face. That's what the Sufis call that which transpires behind that which appears. So if you don't mind, we're going to do this. Then we'll do another practice. Then we'll come back into the practice of the two images.  

Can you imagine that your face is a mask. And that your personality is a model of a role. It is a role that you're playing in life, that life expects you to play and that that's not you. Now as one turns within, one holds one's breath after inhaling, you drop the mask. At least you downplay it. And I think we have a kind of inborn intuition of our countenance. And the reason why we don't validate that is because we are so convinced, we identify so much with the image that we see in the mirror which is __ as you know the cheapest and most deceiving and rather disappointing of all feedback systems in the world. If you are able to question what you see in the mirror, I think a lot of people would be relieved to hear that including myself, then you downplay it. You disidentify with your physical image altogether. Then all of a sudden this, it's almost like a projection of a picture of what you really are, the countenance behind that mask. It clicks. And you know, "This is me."  

Now of course, it's a little bit more complex than that because you'll find when you try to espy it a little further, that it does change according to your thoughts and your attunement. And maybe it is many faceted and many tiered. So that you can see defilement in it and at the same tIme the immaculate core. Like several superimposed images of for example a baby and the grown up person. You could have in a hologram, for example, you can have several images that are superimposed. And of course these are various perspectives on the same complex reality which is you, or the Universe as you. So for our logic, it's very difficult to reconcile the fact that there is defilement, things that we don't like in ourselves that we don't like, and at the same time there is splendor and purity. So you get used to doing that exactly as you can get used to shifting your perspective if you looking at a holograph. For example, you see the image of Christ of Turin. Then you can look at a painting of Christ. Then you can toggle your glance from one image to the other. So you can do the same thing here with yourself. But of course the important thing is to be able to extrapolate between those two images _'rather than toggle.  

Now the fact is that if you discover those facets of your image which give you delight, they have a way of taking precedence over the aspects that are defiled. And if you like, you could just think that those aspects that are defiled are due to the spill over of the environment, or perhaps even in one's ancestry. Even then one's ancestors have incurred the defilement of the spill over of the environment, psychological environment. I say it's a spill over, but I suppose it does arouse something that is similar in ourselves otherwise it would not affect us. But it is your sense of values that will help you give precedence to those aspects of yourself that give you delight. That will not just downplay those other aspects, but eventually eradicate them somehow.  

This is precisely what you do with a patient. So this time instead of thinking of the psychological qualities, defects of the patient, you think of the body configure _‹tion. And there has been some distortion and some wear and tear. There has been distortion because of extraneous elements like viruses or bacteria or whatever. Then there has been some wear and tear of course. If you can see for example the palace in it's ruin. That's a word of Shams Tabriz who said, "The man of God is palace in a ruin". If you can envision Percepolis as a palace while all that you eyes can observe is the ruin. This is an extreme of course. But you could do this with a person. You could imagine that person in their integrity. Then where there has been some damage, I don't like the word damage because it can't be reversed. There has been some deterioration, let's say. It can be restored. To start with, you concentrate on the face of that person. And you try to grasp the countenance behind that face. That's where you find a multifaceted image.  

This is only possible if you are able to question your commonplace logic and develop the ability to reconcile the irr _öeconcilables. In simplistic language it would mean that that person is ill and well at the same time. It's not just that that person is ill. From one point of view that person is ill. From the other point of view that, that integrity is still there. Like if you cut the leaf of a plant and photograph it in Kirlian photography, that leaf is still there.  

I do admit that this is where faith comes in. And that's not belief. It's faith. There is a difference between belief because it's written in a scripture or somebody tells you. Belief is like the ability to believe in the integrity of that persons body despite proof of the contrary, a kind of act of faith. You know that many of the miraculous healings were a miracle of faith. Because you become the mirror in which that person is contemplating them selves. If you just reflect their illness, you're going to strengthen them in their conviction that they are ill. If you contended that they weren't ill, that wouldn't be truthful. The parad _"ox is that they are well and ill at the same time. 

So now we're working with that restorative force that I referred to this morning, Muid. A kind of resilience or inertia that restores things to their pristine state if disturbed. And if you remember, I said it's a force that seems to emerge from below, some kind of grounding like the roots of a tree, very solid resilience. In fact it does counterbalance the effect of change by maintaining some kind of continuity. Otherwise one would be all over the place. One needs to have that solid foundation. So that is in realizing that somewhere that, as I say that leaf of a tree is still there, or that template of that leaf is still there if the tree is still there. If a person's leg has been amputated, they still feel the leg. Somewhere within the nervous system the leg is still there. So this would be an anticipation for the experience of death. Something of the configuration of the body continues to be while the substance is not there or has be _"come dispersed. Like a symphony of Beethoven exists if you have never played it or a partition has been lost. Like a lot of music of Bach as been lost. But it's there somewhere in the cosmos. That is faith beyond our commonplace understanding. 

Now the next force that we're going to work with is a power of regeneration. In a sense it's a counterpart of that resilience because regeneration requires a breakdown and a breakthrough. It means change. It's not restoring the body to the way it was before. Perhaps even turning the tables on the illness to become better after the illness than one was before. As you know, the body is breaking down all the time. If it were not so, there could be no evolution. There could never be any change. Everything would be the result of the past. So t think of the emergence of something new. That is your new person, your new being. If you are attached to your being as it was, then you're stuck. Generally if one doesn't progress, one goes backwards. Now that is called the self organizing faculty of the Universe, of the cosmos to restructure itself.  

If you think of the Buddhist samsaric wheel, you realize that unless one evolves, one is rather like a plant that there is a seed and it unfurls as a plant. And the seed comes. And it recycles itself and so on. That's a wheel that is turning upon itself. Then you have the image of the wheel that is advancing. To advance it needs to break that pattern of recycling. And that requires a vision. Vision means the ability to see how something could be if it _" would be as it might be. Euler says, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past". The future is not there. We create it. That is our victory over our conditioning, our freedom. And that represents our ability to overcome to some extent, but to quite an extent, the forces of dissolution or disruption or disintegration by imagining how one could be. The power of imagination. 

So we have to be careful about our concept therapy because therapy seems to mean to restore the body or mind, psyche to the way it was before. I remember that patient in that psychiatric clinic in Paris when I was a student who said, " ... tape turns 

...turn the tables on it and become better. But of course one has to encourage this self organizing faculty.  

So this is a one of the pra _'ctices that we do. So we're going to do a practice or several. So as you inhale, you do what we've already done. You experience the convergence of the force of the Universe as your being, as the force of your being. Let's say as the force field of your being.  

And then when you hold your breath, well I would say towards the end of the inhaling, start concentrating more and more on the solar plexus and imagine it to be like a gate into the unknown, into what is called the void. It's not really the void. It's called the void because it represents a subliminal level of reality that represents potentialities, possibilities that have not yet existentiated themselves, actuated themselves in an existential manner. So just think of, you see this is creativity. You think of the incredible possibilities that your realistic mind considers to be utopian. But the fact is that the whole Universe is potent _1/2ially present within your being. So it's not, if one can see that, it's not utopian at all. It's very realistic. 

For example, envision yourself as dancing with joy. Well, "Why don't I dance with joy? Well life is hard. People are mean. I don't feel well", and so on. There is always an excuse. "I could be radiant. Why am I not radiant? Well, because I have a low self image", and so on. Always a reason. Those are the potentialities, possibilities. I could beat my record. Today I could walk one mile but it was strenuous. Tomorrow I'll walk a mile and a half. In the afternoon, I'll walk three miles. The idea of increasing your capacity by envisioning yourself doing it.  

When you exhale now, that is when you make the transit from the possible into the actual. That's where you need to translate an emotion or an emotional impulse or even a thought into a form. That is creativity. Creativity is the ability to translate an emotiona __l attunement or thought into a form. And the form being the form of your body or the form of the cells of your body or the configuration of the cells of your body and the organs of your body. That's a form.  

So now you're calling upon a kind of inborn faculty that we have to rebirth ourselves, or to let the recurring rebirthing of the Universe, to facilitate it in ourselves. And it really a matter of capturing the new dispensation as it emerges. It's like looking at the crocuses as they break through the snow. Or let's say the fresh petals in a flower that are not yet unfurled. And for them to unfurl first of all the jaded petals have to fall apart. Furthermore in this particular case, you have to pay attention to the forth coming fresh petals in your _y being. That is how you could be. Those are the fresh petals. You have to give them support. And your faith is the support that you give them, your faith in their ability to actuate themselves in your personality, in your body. And protect them, protect them from the little faith of other people and from your own tendency to doubt which is counterproductive.  

So I don't know whether you can feel that force coming through as you exhale. If you hold your breath you're in a state of suspense. You don't know what's happening in the deep waters of seed bed of your being. But now as you exhale, something new is emerging in me. And it is not the consequence of the past. It challenges determinism, conditioning. It is a feature of my freedom from my c conditioning. So just think of a flower that unfurls. And you are protecting it and encouraging it.  

Now you concentrate on the solar plexus of your patient. And imagine that something is emerging from the depth. And it unfurls in the heart center of that patient with a transit from the solar plexus to the heart. Now creativity becomes even more concrete when having started as an emotional attunement or a thought, it becomes a form, let's say an etheric form without substance. Like for example, music as it is being composed, not yet played. It's a form without substance. And eventually it will manifest as a substance that will have an impact in the physical world. One has to make that transit.  

Now I take an example. Well I suppose a mo _|st pertinent example would be a case of cancer. Now if you are aware of the cells of your being, now see if you can start very simply. Are you aware of the taste in the mucus of your tongue or pallet, salt or sweet or succulent. Wholesome food as against fast food, junk food. Now when you swallow that food, this is something you can do at your leisure, see if you can feel that food in your stomach. And feel how your stomach has the same ability as your tongue to sense food. And its ability to absorb that food is going to be in some way related with its sensitivity. So there is a conflict between that which one likes and dislikes. So there you have a clue of cancer, forcing oneself to imbibe things purely at the physical level, things that are not wholesome.  

Now let's go a little further. Can you feel your pancreas? It's somewhere between your stomach and your spine, _€a little bit on the left. And your pancreas has a terrible job to do because that's where the enzymes of your body are encountering the food, those chemical chains, the amino acids. And somehow your whole system including the liver, gall bladder, is all having to process that food so the amino acids chains corresponds with the DNA of the body. Just imagine the amount of work that is taking place. Now at the psychological level we are doing the same thing. We're processing circumstances and we suffer because they don't correspond to what we wish. Our sense of self esteem is at stake. And so somehow we get over stressed. So we can have an indigestion in the body. Also we can have an indigestion at the level of the psyche. And both, there is some interference between the two.  

Now, let us go further than that. Can you feel the drainage system in your body, the lymph glands. Not just the evacuation of urine and feces but the way a lot of toxin _ s are drained. It's just like a bathroom, like a toilet drainage system that eventually gets shunted in your kidneys. And eventually it gets expelled. Now imagine that one is cramped and one is blocking that flow. Exactly as you can have ulcers in your stomach or you can have a cramp in your intestines the same way. Now you can encourage that evacuation by visualizing it. It's a flow downwards. So there are several ways of doing it. But I suggest that you imagine that there is an aperture at the top of your crown and there is energy flowing downwards. And it keeps on pushing down all the toxins. It's a kind of, you see, mind over body, our sense of purity which is linked with the descent of the Holy Spirit, quickening of the holy spirit like a dove coming down through the aperture at the top of the head. Now it seems to be pushing the toxins, repelling them downwards.  

So as you inhale, think of the descent of the Holy Spirit. And as you hold your breath you are just shattered just like lighteni __ng. In some way one is dissolved. It is good to encourage the disintegration of the body. Otherwise you get sclerosed. That's the way illness sets in. Let it flow. It's good to encourage that sense of, imagine the cells of your body being scattered in space. It's a sort of prefiguration of death. There is motto of the Sufis, "Die before death and resurrect now". So instead of hanging on to the cells of your body, enjoy their disintegration because now they can be replaced with new ones. So the whol _ e drainage system is part of this effect of the disintegration of the body starting with the toxins.  

I like to do this together with work at the psychological level. To think of thoughts that are not appropriate like hatred for someone, or jealousy, or even resentment, or any thoughts or emotions connected with the body that are inappropriate. The sense of one's self esteem is somehow based on one's observing one's highest ideal. That has the faculty of repelling those toxins in one's psyche that are detrimental and tend to draw one's attunement downwards instead of allowing oneself to be inspired and elated. So both together. I think they are related in some way. I don't know exactly how.  

Now we could pursue this further. There was a radio film _ that was produced by the American Cancer Society where you can actually see the macrophages attacking the sarcoma cells. And they literally absorb them. And you can actually see them do it. It's not the best film. I'm sure one could do better. Maybe there are better films than the one I saw. If you are a cancer patient or you have cancer patients, then you could teach them to visualize the macrophages in the area of the sarcoma. One has to have a very clear picture of how they look and how they function. That's why I think it's really necessary to know these things and to go into them. For example, if you lift your arm, it's because somehow you are able to visualize your arm being lifted. That will release certain chemicals and neurotransmitters in __the body. That's mind over body. So if you can visualize the macrophages, then you will be impacting the body with your thoughts, and giving them support with your thoughts, and perhaps even encouraging their action. That's just an example. There are many more.  

Now if you're a very good healer, you can do the same thing with your patient. You can imagine that whole process happening with your patient. The best thing to do is to invite them to meditate on that exactly at the same time that you are doin __g it so that you are reinforcing each other. Now that's getting very much into the detail.  

But there is a deeper perspective. The whole body, wholistic paradigm instead of just looking at the detail. And that is restructuring the body in line with one's highest attunement which involves one's self esteem and self image. Now in order to do that, one has to, well there are several things one should do that would be leading to that, certain practices.  

Here we touch upon the very essence of Sufism. And that is always to see things from two complimentary vantage points, one's personal and the divine vantage point. Because one's own vantage point. Because one's own vantage point is only a very limited view. And we do have the ability to look at things _Øfrom the anti polar point of view. This applies to healing because the idiosyncrasies of our personality have their effect in the template of the body. The template, electromagnetic field, aura and so forth. There are many different factors coming in here. And so in our meditation, a very high meditation, we can work with the subtle body or the aura. It's easier to work with the aura. Perhaps I mentioned earlier that your aura has a shape, or rather configuration. It doesn't have a boundary, it doesn't have contours but it has some kind of an inner structure. What we did a moment ago in discovering our countenance, our countenance is a fabric of light. Somehow you could extend it to your whole body, not just the face of course. You can't really know what it's like. We did make an effort to capture what we really are in our real being beyond the mask. But that was as seen from a _,personal vantage point. Now to do the opposite, to see it from the divine vantage point, is difficult. But that's what meditation is all about. So we're getting into a whole very advanced chapter in meditation which has been very developed by the Sufis. I'm trying to avoid just making metaphysical statements. The Sufis would say, even Ibn Arabi says, " It is God discovering Himself through our discovering of God". So it is a metaphysical statement. God discovering Him/Herself in the very form in which He/She manifests Him/Herself to Him/Herself though you. And your representation of that archetype contributes the image that God has of Him/Herself. That's metaphysics. But what is important is to be able to envision the subtle form of your aura as it would be seen from the anti podal point from your own.  

Now that seems difficult I know, almost impossible. But curiously enough _ in the course of meditation you can do it. There are several methods. We'll do it now just as a preparation. For example, as you inhale now, could you pass in review each of your chakras starting by the bottom chakra, moving up to the second chakra, solar plexus, heart chakra, throat chakra, they physical eyes, third eye, and above the crown all in one inhaling. Now could you think of yourself as a pendulum. The bottom of the pendulum is moving in time and space. But the point at which the pendulum is suspended is eternal and unchanged. So you're the whole pendulum.  

So as you transfer your attention from one chakra to the next, you shift your identity from being an individual, a continuity in change, to being, well discover your deathless state. That is the quintessence of your being. No it's beyond the quintessence of your being. The quintessence of your being is like perfume. It's the way that one continues to live after death. But it's even beyond that. It's like the reality of your being __which is deathless and unchanged. And which is contiguous with all other beings so it's impersonal. It's like a lot of pyramids that all have the same apex. And this requires the ability to realize that you could exist without a body. As Jalaluddin Rumi says, "I walk without feet and I fly without wings, and I see without eyes, and I hear without ears", and I would add I think without a brain. So if you consider your body as a support system for your self as pure intelligence.  

And then you hold your bre _1ath and you're in that samadhi state beyond time and space. And then as you exhale, then you experience the impact of that intelligence upon it's support system. So it is rather like looking at things from a bird's eye view. Instead of aspiring to ascend upwards, you are looking down from a high pinnacle. As you inhale, you're aspiring high. When you hold your breath, you're in samadhi. When you're exhaling, that's when you're looking down and impacting your body with the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Now of course there are two dimensions. One is cal _8led the arrow of time, evolution. There is another dimension. It is represented by resurrection. That is like the perfume of the flowers. So that the flowers do have to fall apart so the perfume will carry them further into eternity. So it's accepting death as a promise of resurrection.  

We'll need to go into this further. We'll have to have a break now. It's the ability of matter to be transformed into spirit. And as a matter of fact, the electrons can be transformed into photons. And they live into eternity. I would say just a quarter of an hour because this time is very precious. 

Tape ends. 

NOV 01, 1997		Tape 02 

Yes. So there are some further practices to do which I anticipated in the last things I said a moment ago. 

You see for there to be evolution, there has to be a fast turn over of people. Otherwise things wouldn't change. And I don't know why people think that death is a bad thing. We have to keep people on the planet at all cost. It's much better to undergo a process of resurrection while one is on the planet. Then death is just a transit. So I don't know why we think we need to cure people absolutely so that they can keep on living as long as possible. We have to accept that there is a natural disintegration of the body. But at least take advantage of those fantastic regenerative faculties that we talked about in order to promote resurrection instead of longevity. So Sufis have a lot of teaching about that. In practice, if I translate it in terms of science, then the electrons are transformed into photons which is extraordinary if you think that we were born out of an explosion of light, and that we end up being beings of light. So it's very interesting to see how one can promote that transformation of our magnetic field into an aura, and also the different levels the aura, of light. Because that's resurrection, passing from one level of light to the next in what is called the celestial spheres. 

So we did start with magnetism. As you know there are four different forces that we're using in healing. Now we want to try and pursue the practices of light which I started. But there are further practices to do.  

So once more, as you inhale and you think of, you remember there were two stages of light. At first you thought that you were a body that was absorbing light and eventually radiating light. And in between. When you were exhaling, you were radiating light. And when you were holding your breath, you were conscious of the effervescence.  

Then at the second step if you remember, we identified ourselves with our aura which was a template in which our electromagnetic field is formed. Then we experienced this pulsing, this ebb and flow of the light of the stars as a matter of fact converged as your aura yet radiating in the Universe. Eventually the photons of your aura hit the stars because they are traveling at a speed of 186,000 miles a second. So that's a good thought that your aura is really the light of the stars. That there is no discontinuity between them. It's all one fantastic dance as Jalaluddin Rumi says. So I would say that's the first vision. Instead of thinking that you body is emerging out of the fabric of the star dust, think that your aura is an integral part of the light of the stars and that there are several levels of light. 

So as you inhale, then think of the way that the light of the stars converges as your aura. But now as you hold your breath, instead of concentrating on the sparkling, well first of all the giggling of the cells then the sparkling of the auras of the cells, concentrate on what Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan, my father, calls the all pervading light. And of course you find if amongst the old Sufis. Ibn Arabi says the same thing. Najmoddin Kobra and Semnani say the same thing. It's what Dr. David Boehm would call the implicate state of light. That is like radio waves, for example, they are spread out in space. They are not located in space. A radiant light is emitted from a radiant source of light that is localized in space. But all pervading light is everywhere, what we call a wave interference pattern. So that is something we have difficulty imaging. We imagine we are an aura. But if we can think that this all pervading light is the subliminal state out of which our aura emerges in a definite form. So this is how we can work with... You remember talking about the energy that emerges from within and eventually you can use as magnetism to heal a patient? Well the same is true of light.  

If you hold your breath, you can imagine that the underpinning, no it's not the underpinning, the seed bed of your aura is an emergent light. That is it is not localized in space and time. But as it emerges, it becomes radiant light. So then as you exhale, you are conscious of radiating light as we did earlier on. The important thing is that passage from the emergent light, if you hold your breath, to radiant light. And think that you are a transducer of energy, of light energy that is able to transform this emergent all pervading light into radiant light. As a matter of fact, as you inhale now, you could simply imagine this state of light where everything is everywhere. And then, as you hold your breath, it's beginning to impinge upon your consciousness. And then as you exhale, you are radiating it. And you make a transit from your solar plexus to your heart center. All pervading light, solar plexus. Then it transforms into radiant light in your heart center. Pir O Murshid gives us an example, the all pervading light that becomes radiant light in the sun. So you think of your heart as a small sun, a micro sun. 

Now we're going to try and explore the levels of light. We made a start by transferring our attention from one chakra to the next as we inhaled. So the first thing to do is of course to really feel the light. To start with you feel light around your skin and inside your body. It's not a matter of visualizing or imagining it, but feeling it. You can actually feel it.  

Now we're going to do some work with that light because if you are aware of your aura, you may distinguish colors. They're not really colors. They are just different frequencies of light. But you could, for example this is mind over body, you could imagine your aura to be yellow, golden. You could imagine it to be blue, like the sky blue. And you see that there is a totally different emotional attunement corresponding with each color. So the yellow is like a very radiant. Blue is celestial. Imagine the color red, which is active and could be aggressive. And so on. Green, life giving. These are not just ideas but you can literally do this. And I sure that your aura will change it's color according to your emotional attunement and also your visualization.  

Now what we want to do is explore the different levels of light. After all proceeding in a perfunctory way using skills. So to start with, if you represent to yourself your aura as the spectrum like you see in a rainbow with red at the bottom and violet at the top. And in between you have all these different colors. Red at the bottom of the spine, vermilion in the second chakra, orange in the solar plexus, gold in the heart center, green in the throat center, blue in the eyes, and violet in the third eye, and something like colorless light, like a diamond with flashes all the different colors. So you pass in review each chakra in turn. Now that has a wonderful effect on your aura. Because it's just like tuning a harpsichord and brings you in a state of harmony. If you do that every day, you find that you start the day in a state of a beautiful sense of orderliness.  

Now I have to proceed rather fast because we have so little time. Now you hold your breath and instead of representing to yourself physical light, identify with the light of intelligence. Nur Akle, the light of intelligence. The Sufis say it is the light that sees rather than the light that can be seen. And it's what the Tibetans call the clear light of bliss. So you've reached the pinnacle of your being which is pure luminous intelligence rather than consciousness. When we say luminous, it's just metaphor and we don't mean physical light.  


Now this is, in order to, it's not good enough just to visualize this. In fact you can't do it by just trying to imagine it. How can one imagine nonphysical light? The only way to do it is to represent to yourself that you are awakening from your ordinary state of consciousness. Or if you like, it is something like shifting one's perspective when looking at a holograph. So one downplays one perspective and highlights another. So now you downplay the perspective of the physical world. The only way to do it is to consider that it is a perspective. But it's not ultimate reality. It's the way that things appear. And then there is a sense if you downplay, that is if you question the absoluteness of your experience of the physical world, then somehow you have a sense of awakening. Can you do that? Just like one awakens from sleep.  

It's also connected with our assessment of our problems, for example. If you question the validity of your assessment, you consider that it is relative, that will free you from the gravity pull of existential perspective. So it's letting go of a perspective. So it's not letting go of your body. But it's actually realizing, identifying with the different templates of your body, the different levels, not just the physical body or the substantial body.  

And you realize that there is a mode of thinking corresponding to our body identity. That's the common place way of thinking of most people. As you shift your sense of identity, your mode of thinking changes. For example, you can see things in their context instead their content and you can reconcile the irreconcilables. There are different modes of thinking of the higher mind beyond the commonplace mind. So in a sense you are liberated from your commonplace logic. And that's the way to awaken, to question your ordinary logic.  

Now it's a intensification of your perspicacity. So it's like being very aware, highly aware, intensely aware, but not necessarily aware of the physical world. Like consider your body and your mind, your psyche as Murshid Inayat Khan says as a condition of God, like a wave is a condition of the sea. Can you do that? Consider that your existence on the planet is like a wave in the sea, a condition of the sea that is passing. But the sea doesn't pass of course. But that is not a total vision because in fact, I'm sorry to talk metaphysics, but you see the know-how which we have gained by experience is shunted into the programming of the Universe. That's why Jalaluddin Rumi says, "Tonight the umteen stars give birth to the life eternal". So that's a way to awaken.  

To awaken is parallel to resurrecting. Changing your identity and experiencing yourself, because that which is reprogrammed into the programming is the quintessence of your know-how. So to be part of it, you'll have to think of yourself as the perfume of that flower that you are. Think that the jaded petals are going to fall apart. But the perfume is going to live forever. The word is everlastingness. And everlastingness is not eternity. It's not the same thing. So if you can do that, you will awaken. And you will discover that you are pure luminous intelligence. And you look at your life and you look at life. And you see that one gets caught in a hoax. One is so sure that things are the way things are the way you think they are. And suddenly you've awakened. You can only awaken if you question your assessment of what you experience.  

Now the Sufis and many other esoteric schools speak about different planes and spheres and I don't want to go into systems. But how do we experience them? Well the clue is light.  

There is a Buddhist practice given by Buddha himself called Casina. I think it parallels some of the practices given by the Sufis. So I'll try to describe it if you'll just do it while I'm talking about it. If you were to cut a cardboard into a disc and paint it red and look at it then close your eyes, you would see a green reflex wouldn't you? Now you don't have to do that. You could imagine the color red as you exhale. As you inhale, don't try to imagine green. But I think that you will see a green disc. Now the next one would be to as you exhale imagine red. But divide your inhaling into two parts. So the first you see green and then second you see I think orange. So you see the reflex of the reflex. Then you can go on. Divide your inhaling in three. Then you see violet. And so on. Then it's beyond one's sense of colors. But you could go on and just imagine frequencies of light. But that's difficult because our imagination is somehow limited by our perception. But now the real practice consists in imagining light, colorless light as you exhale. And as you inhale, imagine the reflex of light without any color. It's not use, I can't evoke it by talking about perception. So it's beyond perception. And then you train yourself to divide your inhaling in two, and imagine the reflex of the reflex and so on.  

Now that is however, I mean you're imagining light which would be perceiving. And then eventually beyond perception. But it still is the object. But now we want to do the same thing with the subject in us. For that there is no use of my talking about principles. We have to know how to do it. So the practice would consist in, you can do it first of all. With closed eyelids you can represent to yourself the beams of your glance. Now normally we are not aware of the beams of our glance because our eyes are instruments of perception. And consequently the retina through the cornea absorbs light. And that light is threaded along the optic nerves into a certain area of the brain. In fact eventually it infuses the whole brain. So that's, we're aware of the light impinging on your eyes. Just think of this light as being threaded up the optic nerve and reaching right up in your brain as you inhale. Now as you exhale, the opposite happens, or at least imagine the opposite, and that is that the light in your brain is threaded through the optic nerves and passes through the retina and cornea and reaches out into outer space.  

Now normally we're not aware of this light because you know when the sun is in the sky you can't see the stars although the stars are much brighter. So one is not aware of it. But if you close your eyes and concentrate upon those two beams, you will be aware of them. What you could do is as you open your eyes, imagine the light of the environment impinging on your retina and reaching up into your brain. And as you exhale, then open, I would say hold your breath and represent to yourself those two beams of light. Now as you exhale, see if you can open your eyes without letting your eyes be forced into focus by the way that objects look. It looks like a blur you see. Just concentrate very intensely on those two beams of light.  

OK Now the next step. Well you have to do this for months and months. You can't hold it very long. When you start opening your eyes, you try to see if you can keep on concentrating on the beams of light. And eventually when you start seeing the objects, then you close your eyes and start again. Eventually you're able to do this with your eyes open. Then if you look in the direction of a person, you don't see the features of the face, but you see the features of the aura of the face. And you can do the same thing with a flower.  

OK Now let's do the next step. That is we introduce a period of retention of the breath between inhaling and exhaling. And as you hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upwards. Press your tongue against your pallet. Curl your tongue and press the bottom of the tongue against the pallet. Now hold your breath. At this time represent to yourself that your aura is just the support system and that your real being is pure luminous intelligence. So make a quantum leap from identifying with your aura to identifying with the light of intelligence. And   __now when you exhale, can you imagine that the light of intelligence is somehow passing through your glance just the river Rhone passes through the lake of Geneva. And that is the way in which looking at a person, you don't see just see the countenance behind their being, but you look right into their soul. And that is what Najmoddin Kobra means by the witness in the heavens. Because now instead of working with light as the object, we're working with light as a subject. Shahid, the witness. 

Now can we have a little more clues as to how to really identify with the light of intelligence? Well, again we have the picture of the pendulum. So you think that your body is changing and moving in time and space and eventually disintegrating and being reborn again and all of that recycling. But I spoke about the samsaric wheel. So the body recycles itself and so does our psyche and so on unless we evolve. But to evolve, there has to be an attractor that causes the wheel to advance. Now this is metaphysics. I'm sorry but it is metaphysics. The attractor is not in the future. It's eternal. It's very difficult to understand that. There is an element in our being that is not of the nature of becoming. That's what Buddha says when he says, "This becoming does not lead to the non become". So you need to make a total quantum leap from those aspects of yourself that are subject to becoming, to change and really find that point in your being that remains unchanged. And that is the greatest power that there is. That's the power of quddus, the Holy Spirit. It's not the emergent power that we talked about. It's not hayy, the energy of the environment.  

So could we do that? Just consider your body as a condition of the cosmos and your mind as a condition of the divine mind, and your personality is a condition of the divine nature. It's all moving and hopefully evolving and deteriorating and reborn again. It's a continuity in change. Just like it's never the same water that passes under the bridge but it's the same river. You could think that way. So the consequence is that you develop a kind of detachment with regard to those things which used to be so important for one. It's all passing. So if you could see your life from a higher perspective, life on the planet is like a very short episod  __e in eternity. You'd see things, one is caught in a perspective. One is so convinced about those ideas that one has, and assessment of one's problems, one's self image, and one's logic, and so on so forth. One becomes dependent upon one's understanding. Ultimately freedom is freedom from opinion, freedom from dependence, freedom from one's self image, and freedom from one's notion of one's individuality. It's all formations. And life is an opportunity yes, to achieve transform circumstances, yes, to unfurl potentialities of one's being, but ultimately to awaken. That's called a state of illumination, the ultimate value. 

Now this is going to impact your aura and will help you to heal with light. In the Koran it is a light upon a light. That's the meani  _1ng of a light upon a light. The light of intelligence that acts as a thunderbolt upon the aura and causes it to spark and fluoresce. You can see that connection.  

You see this is what Christ means by being in the world but not of the world. So it's not like the ascetic who is not in the world. You are in the world but not of the world. Then you are very sensitive to the worldliness, to the games of the egos, to the ploys, to the manipulations, to the machinations, to the hoax that you find all around you because you are awake. You don't let yourself be fooled any more.  

So that if the disintegration of the body has lent to illumination, then it was worth while. That's why Jalaluddin Rumi says, "Take a pick axe and destroy your house and you might find a treasure underneath". And I suppose our s  __implest minds would say, "Supposing I don't find a treasure?" That's a secret treasure. As the Sufis say, "It is the treasure that desired to be known, and which we cannot know but which is revealed to us." Now we come across the real crux of Sufism which is that to know we have to open ourselves knowledge being disclosed to us instead of thinking that we can acquire it. That's where the role of God is absolutely essential. Otherwise how can you know something that is disclosed to you if you...in the programming of your life, just imagine He/She is discovering Him/Herself by disclosing Him/Herself to you. That's paradoxical. That's why the Sufis say, "Perplexity, perplexity". The dervish is always perplex. Pir O Murshid says, "God Himself is perplex". The best thing that can happen is to be perplexed. The consequence is a very deep emotion, the emotion of perplexity. Because all those crutches that you depend upon in your logical thinking, are so convinced of, fall apart.  

Now perhaps we could terminate with what I might call the staple food of the Sufis which is the practice of the Zikre. There are many ways of thinking of it and doing it. If you could just make a circle with your head, just the samsaric wheel actually. Turn you head toward your left shoulder then hour solar plexus, no actually your left knee and you right knee and your right shoulder and then right up to the zenith, three quarters of a circle. Then continue. Then, now again the circle toward your left shoulder. Imagine a wheel. You can think of the whirling of the galaxies and the planets and of course the dervish whirling. That's the samsaric wheel.  

Now there are two forces that are generated in the wheel. That is centripetal and centrifugal. Centrifugal first. So perhaps you can experience the dispersal of your being into the starry sky. That's the experience of death, disintegration as condition for rebirth of course. You will also feel a centripedal force as something that keeps on drawing you toward your solar plexus. Somehow your solar plexus is the center of the vortex of your magnetic field and your aura is a void. The center of a whirl wind is a vacuum. Somehow your being dispersed at the jagged ends. So now when you, this time as you exhale, you're going into the circle. And when your head turns up towards the zenith, you can feel that pull of the solar plexus, the centripedal force. At that time you are in the most labile, the most vulnerable state, the Sufis call it the Kamal state. So you let you head bow towards the solar plexus.  

So it's three quarters of a circle. Then you have the vertical line. So you have these two principles in life the recycling then the tangent that frees you from the vicious circle. So when you head comes down, you inhale and hit the solar plexus then rebound, then continue inhaling as your head rebounds upwards. Now if you can think of it as a circle of light, and then an arrow of light descends upon your solar plexus. And when it rebounds as a heart center starts exploding, the light sparkles radiating from the heart center. Keep on moving up because the higher chakras are radiating a more subtle light than the heart center.  

Now as you, of course your attention is drawn to your heart center as you move from the solar plexus to the crown center. And you transfer your attention from one chakra to the next. So at the time when you concentrate on your heart center, that is the time when, if you are a healer, you radiate, you send, you broadcast light to your patients from your heart center. It's only if you really love your patients that you can do it. If you really, however difficult they are, you still love them, your heart opens up and you can radiate light into the heart of the patient. So you think of the heart of the patient at that moment. It's very short because after that your head is further up as you continue to inhale.  

So remember, instead of a circle, it is a spiral of light which reaches further and further. And then you hit the center of that spiral, the solar plexus. Then the heart, actually it's a little more complicated than I say because the solar plexus really does represent the center of the electromagnetic field and the heart the center of the aura of light. There you have that transit from magnetism to light, from the solar plexus to the heart.  

As we said, resurrection, I tried to illustrate resurrection by the reflex of one light then another light. So that that's what we do after concentrating on the heart center, then as your head moves upward, you think of different reflexes of colorless light. But now the clue is this. It's a word of Ibn Arabi but I think Jami says the same thing. He says," At a certain point, you have to overcome any sense of form". That means any sense of color or any sense of physical light somehow. That gives you access to the higher spheres. No more imagination. No more images. Therefore nothing that has any relevance to physical reality. 

Now at the end of the ascent, as you remember, you inhale as the head comes down and reaches up again, you hold your breath at the end of the ascent. You hold your breath. Turn your eyeballs upwards. Curl you tongue. And remember what we said about the light of pure intelligence. So at that point you have reached beyond the wheel. The wheel recycles itself, evolves. That's everlastingness. But eternity is beyond. It's outside the wheel. That's what Buddha means by saying that the process of becoming does not lead to eternity. It's another dimension altogether. That's a state of samadhi.  

The words of the Zikre are La illaha Oill Olla hu. So you have La then il. In Arabic the Oa' is a vertical line and the Ol' is the arc of a circle. Then you have the Oh' which represents a totally different dimension at the end of the word " Olla". That's a state of samadhi. But the purpose of the Sufis is not samadhi. That is it's not awakening beyond life. It's awakening in life. Awakening beyond life, that's for the ascetics in the Himalayas. But the dervish is right there in the market place for you, not in a cave. He or she is there for you. That's awakening in life.  

What could that mean? So when you, the Oh' is followed by a Ou', La illaha illa Olla hu. So you touch upon the Oh' for just a split second, sliver of a second. Then your head turns towards your heart center, in act towards your physical heart, not the heart center, but the physical heart. Of course I've pondered upon why the physical heart instead of the ahahata chakra. And the reason is because that is where the impulse of the new circulation of the blood starts, just like the locomotive, the point at which the piston communicates it's energy to the wheel is not at the center of the wheel but offset from the center of the wheel. That's life. 

So awakening in life would be something like having been privy to the divine strategy. The Sufis call it unc, having been privy to the divine strategy that is understanding the divine intention which our minds can never grasp somehow sets up the divine intention and then seeing it work in life. Like having visited a beautiful building and then you visit the architect. And now you visit the building again, but now being accompanied by the architect. And now you understand what it's all about. That's awakening in life.  

When you awaken in life, then of course you'd like to heal a person, but what is the intention in this health situation? Is there something that went wrong or is there some intention so that eventually the body needs to be disintegrated? But the only positive thing in the disintegration of the body is if it is transformed into light. And if our understanding is transfigured into realization. That's the only thing that makes sense. You look at your life. And you think, "What am I doing with my life? And how can I help people?" One must not think that what one thinks is best for people is the best for them. We have our concepts of what we think is the best for people.  

So that eventually the healing of the spirit is more important than the healing of the body. That's why people suffer, despair. What the Sufis say is that you communicate with the divine ecstasy through your being. It helps a person to acknowledge the need for the disintegration of the body. It's not just the disintegration, but the transmutation of the body into light, ultimately not just physical light, but the light of pure intelligence. 

So I need to end here. So I hope that you will be able to carry something of this with you. One of the higher forms of healing of the Sufis is healing with the glance. Not with the laying on of hands, but with the glance. But only if your glance becomes as pure as the light of a crystal. 

So God bless you now. 


NOV 02, 1997		Tape 03

They're suffering. One would some much like to help people who are suffering. And of course we know that that is the job of the medical profession. And to start with, I would like to warn people against ever claiming to be able to heal people and asking them not to have medical care. For one it is illegal. And secondly it is very well possible to combine spiritual healing with medical care. And also medicine has improved tremendously in the course of the last decades. And what is more, doctors are beginning to look into alternatives of meditation, medication. I think that does include meditation as a matter of fact. There is no reason that it shouldn't go together. But I think it's got to be totally up front. And I think one needs to have the approval of the doctor too because doctors have become a little wiser in the course of history and don't think they have all the answers. 

There is no doubt about it that really miraculous cures have happened. As you know, I come from a country, at least my father, where there are many cases of extraordinary unbelievable cures. The Mizama Hajabad was able to cure people with cobra bites who would die within a few minutes. Quite a number of cases of remission of cancer and so on. There are so many cases that are unaccountable by the norms of science. 

So what we want to do is to learn how to cure. How to use our healing. I think we all have an inborn capacity for life and communicating life to people. That's what healing is about, communicating further energy in order to combat whatever is harmful to the body, the infection or whatever, strengthen the immune system for example. So basically we are working with energy. And the energy of the human being is just the way in which the energy of the Universe is customized through the person and limited by the self image of the person. 

And also I would say the secret of being able to shunt that energy that moves the Universe into your healing through your person is to connect up with the Universe. I must admit that those who are the most successful healers that I know of in India are people who are living the life of a recluse. That's true. People who life in caves, in mountains. I've lived amongst the sanyasins in the Himalayas. Or then the dervishes who live amongst the ruins of the tombs of the great saints in Ajmere for example, and in Afghanistan and Iran have extraordinary healing powers. 

So my question of course is how can we combine this with living a normal life. I think that the life of a recluse is one that is not validating all the values that have been achieved by our great civilizations, building of cathedrals and space craft and computers and all those wonderful things that have made our life more convenient on one hand and more hassle, if I can use that word, on the other. We have built a wonderful support system for the progress of intelligence on the planet. You know that actually we can say that the star dust after the big bang has fashioned itself in the course of evolution into human beings who are able to carry the intelligence of the Universe steps further all the time. And we're right in the middle of that process. We're half way, maybe a quarter of the way. I don't know. The important thing is that we gain a sense of what we are in the Universe. Instead of thinking of ourselves as an individual, thinking, "How do I connect up with the totality that has come through me?" So it is that expansion of consciousness or that realization that will give you access to the power that moves the Universe. Otherwise you are using your own power. And that's limited, very limited. In fact it doesn't work. 

The trouble is that our civilizations do tend to bring us into our personal sense of identity which is not what we are. But that's what we are conditioned by the environment. And as you know the support system takes over. Imagine that we are like a team of alchemists who are trying to climb the high mountains and we spend so much energy in the base camps that there's hardly any energy to reach the top. And that's what we're doing. We are giving priority to that which is urgent rather than that which is important. And the consequence is that we lose our self esteem or we have low self esteem, or in any case we have inadequate self esteem. Ultimately our self esteem if we become God conscious, then we would be humiliating our divine status. We would be hurting the divine being by denigrating ourselves. And very often people, patients, feel sorry for themselves. In some way it is connected with one's self image. Therefore we need to have a whole new vision of who we are. 

So there are two ways of healing. I think there are many factors. At least I'm trying to highlight two. One is working with energy and secondly one might call it realization. Now I would like of course for this to be an experience rather than just my talking at you. So I would like you to feel, if you could just think of the forces that move the galaxies and eventually the sap in the trees. A kind of cosmic power which the Sufis call the divine power. And you see how we limit it by our self image. 

I think we are challenged in our way of thinking. The only way to do this is to apply the holistic paradigm in science. And that is to realize that every fraction of the totality carries within it the potential of the totality. So that we are not just fragments of the totality. But within that fragment of the totality, the totality is potentially present. That will teach one not to use one's personal power or will to heal a person, but become totally aware of the enormous power of reality coming through. So you see working with power, power yes, but it's always limited in some way with our sense of identity. 

Perhaps you know that the our immune system is based upon our sense of identity, our physical identity. For example, it's exactly the same in the body as it is in the psyche. As you know, if you transplant an organ, the body is going to reject that organ if it doesn't have the same DNA as the body. So there is a kind of recognition of the identity. 

Of course, the second form of activity of the immune system which it adapts itself to the environment. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to eat. So somehow we have the ability to imbibe elements of the environment which are foreign to ourselves. That's a question of adaptation. The greater you are the more room you have in your being for other beings. The smaller you are the more intolerant you are for other beings. And in order to be able to cure, one has to love. One has to love people who make themselves difficult to love. In fact, one has to love people one condemns and love them at the same time, support them. One is challenging one's love. 

So if I say, "Can you feel that power coming in?" I'm rather wary of the danger that one's ego would come up and one would confuse it with divine power. Of course that's happening all the time. So one has to be careful. And on the other hand one has to be powerful to heal instead of meek. So how can you combine these two things at the same time? Think of Christ who was very powerful and very gentle at the same time. 

Well it is a matter of what the Sufis call God consciousness. That is of course something one learns in meditation is to try to have some kind of sense of the anti polar stand point from one's own stand point, the divine point of view. Now there are ways of doing it. And we shall be doing it in the course of the work shop this afternoon. How do you reach beyond your personal identity or the vantage point of your personal consciousness. For example, try to think of yourself as seen by God instead of your trying, you'd like to know more about God. We don't understand what we really mean by God. 

I'm sure you have moments when something that comes through in you which is totally unexpected and shatters you and you feel as though you are invested with an incredible power. It happens in a flash. I'm sure some of you have had that experience. On one hand the shattering and on the other being absolutely overwhelmed. 

You see, we are using only a sliver of our faculties. The kind of faculties that allow us to cross the road without being hit by a car, or go to the super market, the kind of faculties that allow us to be able to survive in our very challenging civilization. These are faculties that some of us who are functional in life have been able to muster. People who are homeless are people who have not been able to live up to that challenge. And I'll tell you that my heart goes out to them. They are the victims of our greed. 

There is another thing. In order to heal, one doesn't only have to have compassion for the sufferings of people, but one has to be very scrupulous about being truthful. That's the power of the dervish is that the dervish actually cannot stand a ploy a dishonesty, manipulating. It all starts by asking oneself, "What am I doing in life? What are my values?" I know one has to survive. But it seems that one becomes dependent upon that underpinning. One takes it for granted. These are things that we need. You know, you have to shower. And you have to have a car. We have to eat and so on. One takes that for granted. 

The trouble is that the strategy of the ego, you see the strategy of the ego is reactive. That is we build a defense system to deal with the egos of the other people. So that strengthens us in our ego consciousness. And by so doing we're not using all the potentials of our being. It takes a lot to be able to wean ourselves from our dependence upon our aggressive ego strategies and trust the potentials, the power of our being, the divine power of our being, trust it instead of relying upon our ego power. That's the secret of healing. 

It could be illustrated in India. They say that it's below the dignity of the elephants to be bugged by the agitations of the chickens. So if you think of that like divine power in you, then you don't get upset. You don't use your ego to fight people because you have divine power. You don't need it. You can tolerate the stupidity of people. As Christ said, "They don't know what they do". So you don't judge people anymore because they are what they are. Why be upset about what they are doing to you. That takes away your power. You want to do something for them instead of being sorry for yourself. 

Now there is another thing that is very important for healing. That is that at the core of our being you can find what one calls an immaculate state. I think that that's the meaning of the immaculate state of the Virgin Mary. And of course it's very difficult for us to reconcile that with the defilement in our being. We feel, if we have any conscience, we feel ashamed about the things that we did wrong and we hurt people. So that takes away our power. We have to be truthful about our misdeeds. But if you face them, then you will be, no offense, some of you I'm sure are perfect and don't have these problems, but I do myself. 

The thing is that on one hand, one has to acknowledge, own them with the power of truth. And on the other hand one has to accept this paradox which is illustrated in the voice of Caruso. That is the voice of Caruso can be retrieved in the bad recordings of the time. The voice of Caruso in it's pristine glory can be recovered in its bad recordings. That means that the immaculate nature of your being is present within its distortions. That's the only way one can validate oneself when faced with guilt and one's conscience. 

So the divine power is really a celestial power. It's the child in you that is more powerful than the ego in you. You know we learn from our children. They learn to tell lies. But at first they don't know how to tell lies. That's the beauty of the child is that they have something to teach us, the power of innocence instead of the power of manipulation and dishonesty. That's the power that heals. 

The healing power starts by almost like the embryonic state, the state of the embryo which is not differentiated yet. So you have all the initial forces there, budding. So you have to start there. The kind of power that you are using is the kind of power that fashioned this embryo which is somehow behind the embryo itself. A level of energy which, maybe there are physicists among you, it's called the scaler level below the electromagnetic field. 

You know there have been a lot of experiments with healers that have shown that the emanations of the hand produce something like a magnetic field. But the curious thing is that it happens at a distance. So it can't be reduced to an electromagnetic field. Of course, for researchers it's very paradoxical. One doesn't understand how on earth this power works. 

But for the Sufis we're talking about a level of energy that is subliminal to the electromagnetic field. And it's energy at its inception before it emerges as power. I think that the best description of it is the power of the Holy Spirit. And it emerges in the alter. For the Sufis the body of the human being is the temple and the heart is the alter. And then you have that tabernacle behind the alter or below the alter, the solar plexus where you are in contact with the void. The void is a fullness but not yet existentiated. So the emergence of spiritual power as pure spirit before it becomes modified into electromagnetic field or some power that one can measure at all. 

And that means that one needs, if you think of yourself as a temple, then one needs to discover the sacred in one. You know that's the rarest thing in the world, the sacred. People have been talking about all kinds of things, psychology and resentment, and healing the planet and so on. But in the depth what we're looking for is the sacred. That's why people go to church or don't go to church. Because if they don't find it in a church then, curiously enough we are looking for something outside ourselves which is within us. That's the reason for meditation, really turning within and discovering this sacred immaculate place in the depth of your being out of which new dispensations of life emerge continually, recurrently. 

So the Sufis recognize four different forces that are combined in healing. One is called Muid. It's a kind of resilience. Somehow, if you're walking in the forest and you move a branch of a tree, it will go back to its initial state unless you've damaged it. The rain forest, well they will grow again. many species will die. But then there will be other species. But somehow there is that basic resilience, an ability of nature to self organize itself, the body to self organize itself. 

You know that the electromagnetic field is the template in which the body is configured, the cells of the body. Actually the aura of light is a template in which the electromagnetic field is configured. Then one can even reach a kind of level of reality beyond light. Or at least you could think that the light that we normally experience is only a sliver of the reality of light. It's only one dimension of light. There are a lot of dimensions of light. Eventually we will learn to heal with light. That's a lovely word. You people are using it all the time. But how do you do it? That's the important thing. That's what we're going to do in some practices this afternoon working with light. 

Resilience, it is immune system which represents the resilience of our physical body. And of course, if it is impaired, it is somehow linked with our self image. Cancer is a very clear case where the immune system has collapsed or it isn't effective enough because of a bad transcription from the DNA to the RNA by the enzymes that operate this transcriptions. It's like making a mistake on the typewriter or the computer. Bad transcription. Somehow it's linked, somehow it's not functioning properly because one's whole sense of who one is has somehow been impaired by the grossness of our civilization. It's damaging to our soul. 

I remember Dr. David Boehm saying one day, "Be not surprised at a change of a sense of meaningfulness". All of a sudden seeing something you hadn't seen before. All of a sudden the penny dropped. And that will immediately alter the circuits in your brain. Actually it will alter your whole body. Now we're very clear about the mind/body axis. But that's not the only element. 

The second power is the one that I mentioned before. It's the power that emerges from within recurrently because the Universe is continually reborn. And we are continually reborn. That means that we have to do away with the tarnished, jagged ends of ourselves in order to invite the new. That's again with our identity. If we keep on identifying with what we always have been, then there is not hope for us. Then we have to give up. That is Fana. (Tape Turns)


...functional. So my father came into the room and he said, "You asked me to come and heal you. Are you prepared to do what I ask you to do?" He said, "Yes". So he said, "OK well get up and we'll have a walk. I'll come back in ten minutes and we'll have a walk". "Oh but Pir O Murshid, I can't walk." " Do what I say". And sure enough he was cured. Self image. So somehow mind over body. 

In the case of cancer, the difficulty in digesting the social environmental circumstances. Difficulty in digesting them. Bad replication. Resistance to dealing with things because they are just too difficult. 

The stress gives us strength. Over stress is not good but you can push yourself up to a point. And with that power that you've got by doing that you can push yourself a little bit further. I'm evidence of that because I'm 81 now. I've pushed myself all my life. Don't overdo it, but up to a certain point.

So the other force is called Hayy which is the kind of force that you find everywhere. Like if you're in a big store, there is a lot of energy flying about. That's hayy. Everywhere, it's the force that moves the stars and planets and so on. It's a very tangible force. But we can only take so much. That's why you get so depleted if you stay too long in a store. Just go in quick and run away. Collect all that energy with you and one gets an indigestion. That's Hayy.That force works centrifugally and centripetally. 

I'll give you a story. It's a story of a prince who was condemned by his father for unfounded reasons. He was supposed to be killed. And the policeman couldn't do it. And finally he became a sanyasin and sat in the garden in the palace. And from the moment that he sat in the garden, everything started to flourish. That's the sense that wherever you go things flourish. That's Hayy. A kind of energy that you give to people to flowers. Watch them flower. Imagine a bud. And the bud opens up and starts unfurling. That is the power that makes the potential of people unfurl in their personality. It's a wonderful power.

And the other one is quddus a power that descends like lightening. One has the impression of it descends on one through the top of one's head. And it shatters you totally. They call it the quickening of the Holy Spirit. Quddus. Kados in the Jewish language. Samtus, samtus is a feeling of holiness, other worldliness. This is the challenge I'm presenting to you today. How can you, are you able to maintain that sense of sacredness without becoming an ascetic, right in the middle of the world? How can you do that? That's the challenge of our time. 

I've exceeded the time. I haven't? I have another bonus. Ten minutes.

Yes, working with light. There are many practices. We'll be doing them this afternoon. But essentially, can you be aware of the radiance around your shoulders and your arms, light? We're so used to thinking of our body as bounded by the skin. But if you can just feel the area of magnetism. Then you feel an area of light. 

Now all kind of practices we can do. Somehow light is connected, the only way to be able to muster all the potentials of light in our being is to well, I know it's rather bold to say this, but to recognize the angel in us. Perhaps you might say, "Pir Vilayat, do you still believe in angels? Like do you still believe in Santa Clause?" Well let us say, if you look into the eyes of a child, a baby, I never cease to be absolutely shattered by the beauty of the light coming through the eyes of a child. And I think, "What a pity that people grow up". 

One looses that light. One has to defend oneself, otherwise people will walk over our dead body. And people are mean. And there is a strategy. And you have to survive. All those kind of shoulding oneself trying to find ourselves in our lives. And we loose our light. 

There is a word of a Sufi Najmoddin Kobra who talks about, he says, "You thought you were the witness. But the real witness is the angel in you." What does it mean? Obviously we think that we're the witness. What would be the vision of an angel? How would you look at things if you were an angel instead of a human. 

It could be illustrated by a story I heard once climbing the Himalayas. This time we were a group of people and had to go through a dangerous jungle with a lot of dangerous animals. There was this rishi sitting in a state of samadhi in a cave. Fortunately he spoke whereas most of them don't speak. So this man in our party asked him what I would call a stupid question. Most questions are stupid anyway. And I could see him trying to descend from his pinnacle of ecstasy, trying to think, "How could one think that way?" Trying to get into the perspective of that person. 

So maybe that would be an illustration of what I mean by, "How would you look at things if you would use, if you would identify with the angel in you instead of the human". I think you would be rather wary of certainly dishonesty. You couldn't stand it. I hope you don't mind my using the word filth, psychological filth. I think an angel would find it very difficult to deal with it. And the only way that one can meet dishonesty is bringing it into the light. You know that devils always work in the dark. What is it the bare mountain of Mosorski. As soon as the light comes they go and hid. That power. 

It is possible that, I can't say that absolutely, but I see some relationship between illness and a kind of shadow that comes upon us, a spill over from the environment. Some kind of deterioration, defilement from the spill over. And the power of light will dispel that darkness.

So of course we have to, it's not good enough just to work with physical light. We can work with physical light. The body does absorb light and emit light. And we can increase the amount of light that we absorb and emit by mind over body, by visualization. But that's not good enough. The Sufis speak about the light of divine intelligence. 

Consciousness is picking up information. But intelligence is thrusting itself upon things. It's active instead of passive. That's what we learn to do in mediation. But the only way to be able to do it is to downplay your assumption of being the spectator, the witness. The consciousness of the angel is one step toward what is called divine consciousness.

St. Francis said, "I thought I was looking at the world, but in fact the world is looking at me". So that's the clue, to be able to think of yourself as thought of by God instead of thinking, and known instead of knowing. Finally you get into a totally different vantage point. I don't know whether it's happened to you. You know St. Francis walking in the woods, he used to get into the consciousness of the trees and also the animals. So he imagined how he looked from the point of view of the trees and¸ how the trees feel. So imagine that you are in that state when you are in contact with nature, that you get absolutely into the consciousness of all that reality around you instead of that being the object of your cognizance. The consequence is that you find yourself in a transfigured world. We have that ability to get into that state where, a state which is familiar and seems to be different from the ordinary state of consciousness. And that's where creative forces come through.

So this was really an introduction to the work that we shall be doing in the course of this conference. I'd like to thank Himayat for being the ex machina who triggered off this conference.

Tape ends.


NOV 14, 1997		Tape 01

Can you hear me at the back now? Let us start with the invocation. We invoke the one whose body is the cosmos of the galaxies and our own bodies, whose mind courses through our thinking, and whose ecstasy arouses our acts of glorification, whose personality is customized as our personalities, whose presence is always there, whose conscious is focalized as our consciousness and whose reality is beyond our reach. 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.

I would like to start by a kind of overview of our lives, what we're doing, what our motivations are. I think it's very important at times to call a halt from the hum drum of the routine of every day life and ask ourselves these pertinent question. Well what is it that I wish to do in my life? What are the values that I value above all others? A kind of overview of our life. We have involved ourselves by taking decisions that have their consequences. It's not always easy to change tack. But however, there is a time when one needs to make a survey and have the courage to ask oneself those questions. Now what are those things that I consider of the utmost importance? And what I'm doing in my life, does that actuate that which I value? And are there things in my life that go counter to my fulfilling those motivations? And then what would be the positive steps that I would need to take in order to make my life fulfill those objectives? They must be realistic objectives rather than lip service to ideals which are not realistic. That's why Pir O Murshid says,"Rack your ideals on the rock of truth". Sometimes we entertain some fantasies. There is a kind of dishonesty in us. We don't really mean it, or we do mean it and so on. Some inconsistency. 

Now there are some ideas that I would like to highlight. I would like to speak from my own point of view of course. I'm sure that it mirrors your own point of view. That is on one hand, I see that life is, the whole the Universe is trying to come through each one of us so that some of its bounty and splendor can become actuated in our personality. So Pir O Murshid says the personality is the fruit in the tree of life. So that seems to be an objective. 

I look at people. At my age of course, I've known people for a long time. I've seen some people evolve and become wonderful being. And other people seem to have even deteriorated. I think that the reason for that is that there is a spill over from the environment. But also I don't think that that spill over could have an effect upon one unless one had in oneself a kind of resonance with that which one is taking on from the environment. I also think that the challenge of life is so hard. It's very difficult to reconcile our ideal of beauty with - I'm using the language of the Sufis now - beauty with majesty. Those are the two aspects. 

On one hand I think somehow - in my meditations particularly, but in real life also - I'm always on the look out for the sublime manifesting as beauty. For me I see it in the countenance of people. Not in the faces but in the countenance. And I see hatred sometimes, bitterness, disenchantment, aggressivity. Those kind of things that stand in the way of our evolution and certainly stand in the way of that ideal that I see in life which is that the sublime nature that we ascribe to God should manifest as a reality in the human being. That's why Pir O Murshid says, "Make God a reality". So it's not in the mind. It's something very tangible even right into the very form of your subtle body. So that as tangible as you can get. That's why one of the things we're going to is work with the confection or the fashioning of the subtle body. 

The other thing that I see particularly after all these years is such a yearning to make sense of life. One might say to know. But it's not as simple as that. But somehow a sense that we are, that we don't know. We can't make sense of life. And our ordinary commonplace thinking will never make sense of life. In fact, that more we try, the more perplexed we are. It doesn't, because our common place minds are totally inadequate to make sense, understand the meaningfulness. So that's again something that we need to work with, with our thinking, our opinion, transform it. Discover new modes of thinking That's one of the things we have in mind for today's work.

This is called illumination. But I'm very wary of words. I want to see how it works, what it does to people. I don't think one can ever say that one has attained illumination. There are flashes. I'm sure all of you have those flashes. All of a sudden the penny drops as one says. All of a sudden you can see something you hadn't seen before. And of course what we want to do is to study is how we can foster those flashes of realization so that they can transform our being. 

The other need is to achieve something in life. And of course we're faced with, I think we give priority to that which is urgent rather than that which is important. I think that, I remember of Sahabuddin when he said, "The support system takes over". So it's like we have a very efficient base camp in order to climb to the top of the mountain. But we put so much energy into the underpinnings that we need in order to survive that there is no energy and no time and perhaps no impulse, or the impulse is not strong enough to reach the top which is what it was all about. 

What strikes me very much is that what Buddha means by the samsaric wheel. It's that there is a tendency of life to be repetitive, to recycle itself, like the seed and then the plant, then the flowers and then the seed again. And it recycles itself. So that's the samsaric wheel. So the wheel turns around its axis. 

The next step would be evolution. So the wheel is advancing. Unless we advance, I think on some cases we go back. I don't think we can really stay still. We get sclerosed in any case. In any case it's counterproductive. Life doesn't seem to make sense if we just stay the way we are. And of course our self esteem is at stake. And plays a very important part in making sense of our lives and of course in our achievements. 

Coming back to achievement. Well we are all part of a gigantic effort to build a wonderful world. And in the course of our making life more comfortable and better underpinning for the evolution of consciousness on the planet. That's what's happening is that the stardust that has fashioned itself into us humans has become more and more a wonderful underpinning for the awakening of consciousness. That's what's happening. And so it is a pity if catering for the underpinning is going to deter us from the awakening. Because that's what it's all about. 

Now I think that to progress one has to be of service. I think that that's the only, you see there are two ways of looking at life. One is the way of the world, in the East it's called the way of the world. And that is, "Well I want to earn a lot of money. I want to have comfort. I want to enjoy myself". You see that everywhere. And the consequence is one does not mind stepping on the corns of other people and pushing other people aside. And I see that kind of selfishness. I'm talking about something very tangible. I see it in the countenance of people. I can see gross selfishness. Sorry to use that word. But that's what I see. And I see other beings who are what I call heroes. They have no pretense of spirituality, you know firemen, doctors, teachers. Wonderful people who have made up their mind at some point in their life, probably at an early age, that they want to serve. They are conscious of the sufferings of people. 

Well one can serve by building a beautiful world. But the trouble one is that one is tempted to, in the course of building our material world one is tempted to pursue one's personal greed instead of need. Where does need become greed? That is a very difficult point. It's different for each person. You have to know exactly where that is. In the East there is a word that is used in the spirituality of the East. That is dunya which means the world. So that's the way of the world. 

You have to choose if you want to be in the world and of the world. Or do you want to be in the world and not of the world? Those are the words of Christ. That does not mean that one has to leave the world to become an ascetic. Perhaps that is the challenge of our time. You see I have met such wonderful beings in the caves of the Himalayas, and amongst dervishes, and amongst the Catholic monks and orthodox monks in Mt. Athos and sometimes amongst the Hassidm. Of course it is much easier to follow that ideal of spirituality, let's say it's easier to be in ecstasy. Emotion is very important. It's easier to be in ecstasy when one doesn't have to deal with the egos of people. You know we are tested in our love. That's a word of Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan. We are tested in our love." That means that we are tested in being to love people who make themselves difficult to love. I didn't use the word obnoxious but I could have. It's very hard. It's easy to say. I'm trying to do it. I don't say I can do it. It seems that stress is written right into life in order to be able to evolve. 

So what I started to say by saying we were talking about the wheel. To advance, the wheel needs to be pulled forth by an attractor. There is a word of a wonderful physicist and mathematician who is Euler who said, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past". But it's rather paradoxical because the future is not there. So we have to create the future. Somehow in our thinking we have to realize that the programming of the Universe is delegated into our hands. Now that's a Sufi view. At least it's a more progressive view than you'll find in Sufism. Not always to be found in all Sufis. The delegation. 

What is more the Sufi view is that we are continually, recurrently reborn. If it were not that we were continually reborn, we would be conditioned by the past. So it's like there is a possibility of renewal, of something new that emerges and is not the consequence of the past. That's very important especially when we suffer from our guilt, to realize that although we can't totally reverse what we did, we can invite a new dispensation in our being. 

Now there's one more factor. It's very difficult to understand. We're going to do the practices now. This is just an introduction. But there still is another factor. That is a vertical one instead of horizontal one. The wheel advances horizontally into the future. But the attractor is not in the future. It is transcendent. It's a different level altogether. That's why Buddha says, "This become does not lead to the non become". That is the only way in which this attractor, if I may call it so, can have impact on our being is if we are able to reverse our consciousness and try to look at things from the antipodal point of view to our own point of view, which is what the Sufis call the divine point of view. In other words without the notion of God, I don't see how it can be done. 

But we must be very careful about what we imagine God to be. Because we project an image of what we would like God to be like and we confuse that with that reality which can never conform to our projections. 

But there is some beauty in that and some value in it. That is I would say it starts by simply bewonderment. Bewondering. Scientists for example are now using the word elegance, saying that the Universe is not just super intelligent but it is elegant. So there is a sense of bewondering. The wonder of life, the miracle of life. That can lead towards something beyond bewondering which we call glorification which is the religious emotion. 


In order to glorify, one projects upon God those qualities that are latent within oneself, or have unfolded to some extent in one's personality. By doing so, one arouses those qualities in oneself. And also one perfects these qualities in oneself. Therefore for the Sufis glorification is the most creative of all acts. In fact it is the creative act par excellence. 

So in our meditation, a prayer is always going to be somewhere as the most powerful impulse in everything we do. We must be very careful when meditating not to just think in terms of I want to be better, I want to improve, I want to change and so on. That is we are limiting our experience by our identity. In fact it's our identity that stands in the way of our experiencing in meditation. In fact meditation I would say is essentially a transformation of one's sense of identity. 

So now I suggest that we start doing some practices. And what I'd like to do is to build it up in the course of these few hours at our disposal. So to start with consider that your meditations are a rehearsal for life rather than a retreat from life. Consider that in our common place way of going about life, we are reacting to the challenge of circumstances rather than acting. That is we are reacting. That's a short circuit. I could illustrate it by the 4th Piano Concerto of Beethoven as he describes the world as the orchestra and himself as the pianist. And the world comes with a Wha pu pu pum. And he reacts, hum hum hum hum hum.... Like saying I can't play ball with you because I want to first consult my deeper self. That's what meditation is all about. 

You place a buffer between the challenge of the world and your inner self so that you're able to muster the potentialities in your being rather than just proceed by what is called the strategy of the ego which is reactive. My point. But we're used to in fact that strategy represents a kind of defense. Normally we don't know any other mode of defense. So we count upon this to protect ourselves when we are abused or humiliated. That's what wars are about. (Is it hot. Thank you.) 

I would say we need to wean ourselves from that strategy gradually. If we don't wean ourselves, then we are going to have psychological withdrawn symptoms. We'll feel sorry for ourselves because we've become weak instead of strong. And we don't know how to deal with the challenge of the world. 

But anyway the answer is this. When you meditate, unless you know how to meditate, all kind of random thoughts are going to impinge on your consciousness randomly, in a disorderly way. You'll think, "I can't meditate. I can't control these thoughts". What you are doing is you're simply beginning to be aware of that process of digestion of our psyche in which we are digesting the occurrences, the situations in the environment. 

There is of course, an osmosis between the environment and our psyche, the physical body of course, but our psyche. And yet, we are so used to think of that which is experienced as the object and ourselves as the subject. So when you start meditating, then you have to begin to realize that that world that you think is outside, circumstances could be quite traumatic, have become imbibed in your own being, in your own psyche. So there is an osmosis. 

One is trying to, well one is interpreting those events. One is assessing situations in order to decide what one is going to do. And consequently one is imbibing in oneself, ingesting in oneself, a distorted view of the situations. Let's say a biased view of the situations because one is looking at them from a personal point of view which is only one point of view. 

So I would say that the first thing to do when one meditates, is to try and see the problem or the problems from the point of view of oneself and the point of view of a person, then more people who are involved in the problem. So that's one way of eschewing looking at things from a personal vantage point, as I say, relative. If you look at Notra Dame from one vantage point, you haven't seen Notra Dame in Paris. 

So could you do that first? Think of a difficult problem, a personal problem where you have difficulty with another person. And try to get into the skin of that other person and try and see what it feels like to be that other person. And you, of course, one tends to be judgmental if one is looking at that person from one's own point of view. But when you start looking from their point of view, you see at least they are justifying it. You can see their motivations. Or you can see how their mind is deceiving them because one has to be very truthful to avoid the distortion of a justification. So that would be the first step. 

The second would be to include more people who are involved in the problem. So your vantage point is only one vantage point. And now you are looking at the problem from several vantage points at the same time. And it's not necessarily true that your's right and the others are wrong. Or that the others are right and yours wrong. Something is gained by that expansion of your consciousness into what you consider to be the consciousness of other people.

Now there is a further step. Start again with one person. Can you see yourself through the eyes of that person? So you can see that the way that person sees you, their perspective on you is quite different to your self image. And it's not necessarily true that your self image is right. In fact it's one of the most deceptive aspects of our thinking, of our identity. It's not necessarily true that their perspective of you is better than yours. But, in any case, you are certainly enriching your perspective. And what is more you are better able    ¡to understand why they are doing what they are doing. You can see that their action upon you is based upon a false assessment of your being. So I think that helps one to some extent, I don't say it's a solution, but it does help one to deal with resentment. As Christ said, "They don't know what they do". 

Now one could carry this. I have to move rather fast because I have only a few hours to do a lot of important things. But the next step would be to expand the object of your consciousness to include more and more beings. For example you could do this. I've done this myself on retreats. Walking in nature in the forest for example. Just try and become not as the objects of your cognizance but as really living beings who are also involved in some kind of consciousness. So you really get into the consciousness of the trees. And if you do that, you'll suddenly find yourself in a transfigured world. I don't know whether that's happened to you sometimes. 

It's just like if you're looking at a holograph. There was an image in that holograph and you've shifted your glance, or the perspective of your glance. And all of a sudden you see the same thing but in another perspective. So it's the same forest but somehow it's alternate perspective because you are seeing it from the point of view of the trees instead of just from your limited vantage point. Of course the emotion is a wonderful sense of resonance with, kinship really with all created things. Now one could extend this further. But that is something...well we'll try to be able to do it in our meditation. St. Francis said that when he said, "I thought I was looking at the world, but the world was looking at me".

You see that's very important. Because if you start meditating, you'll think that you are the observer or the spectator of the subject, the knowing subject. Your problems or your thoughts, or your memory of the physical world are the objects of your cognizance. Now you've reversed that. In fact, the whole Universe is looking at itself through your eyes. 

Now of course you can do the same thing talking with another person while you are paying attention to what they are saying and what you are saying, you can still communicate with them at a deep soul level. And you see that what they are saying is very inadequate in comparison with what they imply behind what they say. And the same with what you say, what you imply behind what you said. 

So if meditation is a rehearsal for life, think of a person with whom you've had difficulty communicating. And maybe there is a way of obviating the obvious by communicating with them at a deeper level. Because in any case, there is no way in which we can explain what we imply. And that's the same for that person. 

OK Now we are going to pass on to the next phase. We call that turning within. And the reason for that is, I would say this is the quantum leap, I would say it is at that point at which one's meditation really starts. Because if you are limiting yourself to the input of the environment, you're not validating the impact of your being upon the environment. And consequently you are determined, you are conditioned. You're trying to interpret what is happening with a very inadequate mind or mode of thinking. 

It's exactly the same thing with our food. In order to digest our food, we produce enzymes. The enzymes are going to act on the food, proteins, and fats, and hydrocarbons in order to transform them into amino acid chains that we can incorporate in ourselves. So there is an action of us upon the environment or the way that the environment has been ingested. And in fact, this is the key to unfurling the potentialities of our being. Therefore it is important in terms of our self esteem. 

I find that the only way to do this is to downplay thoughts regarding the environment, the physical environment, or the social environment ,or the psychological environment, or even the emotion of the psychological environment. In fact the emotion plays a very important part here. In order to downplay that impact, and I'm not saying to irradicate it altogether, simply to downplay it. It's just like in a holograph you downplay one perspective in order to highlight another. Downplaying that thoughts or concerns, environmental circumstances. Of course you can't do it with your will. 

Whether simply turning your attention towards what emerges from within is going to help in downplaying the environment, or whether you have to start with downplaying the environment. I think probably both at the same time. You'll find what is the best for yourself. But I find that in order to downplay the environment, one needs to discover in oneself, or rather arouse in oneself the need for freedom. The word used in India is viaragia which means indifference. But I wouldn't call it indifference. I would say it's a kind of imperviousness that safeguards the integrity of your being from being caught up in the hoax of the way things appear. In a sense it's calling the bluff. 

So I find that it is one's sense, I think that we are pulled two directions. On the one hand we need to involve ourselves with, people, with circumstances of life, with what has been achieved by our civilization (tape turns) not fulfill that great need to accomplish, to participate in these great achievements. On the other hand we realize that our involvement is always at the cost of our freedom. 

Then you have to be very clear that freedom, in a perfunctory way we think that it is the circumstances that curtail our freedom. And in fact one can be free in one's opinion and in one's emotion and in one's identity while being extremely constrained by circumstances. So the vagabond is not necessarily free. Somehow there is a misconception. We need to find our freedom. First of all with regard to opinion. From the moment that we realize that our opinion is not absolute, is relative. I don't say it's not valid. It's relative. Then we find some kind of freedom from our obstinacy. In other words obstinate in our opinion. We question our opinion. So that's a kind of thing that will help you to downplay the impact of the memory of the environment. If you close your eyes to the memory of the environment, you're still hearing sounds. 

It's a kind of emotion. You can't do this with your will. The emotion of peace rather than joy. What it feels like to find oneself at peace with oneself and with people and with life. It is really independence. And we know how dependent we have become in the world. That's why of course a sanyasin finds or the dervish finds freedom more easily. Because he or she is much less dependent upon those things that we in our civilizations are dependent upon, the comfort, our facilities. Life has become much more comfortable than for the people living in the caves in the Himalayas for example. So we depend upon these things. 

That dependence can lead to addiction which is much more serious than dependence. Addiction. Not necessarily addiction on drugs. But all kind of things, TV, chatting, being loved instead of loving. A lot of addictions. There is not doubt those addictions certainly diminish our sense, ...impair our self esteem because perhaps the reason for the extraordinary power of those sanyasin and rishis. There are a lot of false sanyasin and dervishes too. But the reason for their divine power is, well for the sanyasin is because they have found freedom from dependence upon anything. The dervishes it's the divine power. So freedom is still negative. It's not yet quite, that's the reason I've found greater power amongst the dervishes than amongst the rishis in the Himalayas. And because of the sense of the divine investiture in their being. The majesty of the divine being that they've inherited, that we've all inherited. 

So we're touching upon something very important. I'm not saying that we cannot, let's say it would be counterproductive to leave the world and seek our freedom. As I say, the challenge is to find freedom within these constraining circumstances. But it's a question as to how you feel whether you really feel absolutely dependent upon circumstances or if you feel that they are convenient enable you to fulfill your service in life. But they are not the end that you pursue in your motivations. That what Christ means by being in the world but not of the world. I think that defines what one means by being on the spiritual path. What do we mean by being on the spiritual path. We using words all the time. I want to be very clear as to what we mean by them. 

Now you know that when the sun is in the sky, you can't see the stars. In fact, there is a practice that I was doing. That is to keep on trying to see the stars for as long as you can after the sun rises. And you can increase your capacity of doing that. What I'm saying, the stars are much brighter but further away. See if you are aware of the physical world, it is very difficult to be aware of that which is transpiring behind that which appears, a deeper reality. 

Maybe I should define that to explain a little more clearly what I mean. For example, your countenance behind your face. The configuration of your subtle body or of the aura and behind the physical body. Because the aura and the electromagnetic field are the template in which our body is fashioned, configured. So it's a deeper reality. It's a subtle reality because it does not have contour. It doesn't have a profile. 

As you turn within, you discover a very different world. It's not made of objects that are discrete entities, that have frontiers, boundaries. Everything is intermeshed. Yet, just like the waves if you throw sand on the surface of a lake, you have eddies. If there were a lot of eddies, then you lose sight of the eddies. And all you see is what they call a wave interference pattern. But those waves are still there. So as you turn within, you might think that you are being resorbed in the void and have lost the sense of your personal identity. And we have to be very wary of doing that. Our thinking, we have to adapt our thinking to outer experience. And that means in our minds so we'll be able to reconcile that fact that our identity is both personal and impersonal at the same time. It's difficult to reconcile the irreconcilables. So the best example is the wave in the wave interference pattern. It's still there. But you can see it in it's context. So our being is part of the totality. It's not just a fraction of the totality because the totality is potentially within it. So as you turn within you are plunging into the world of potentialities. Sufis call it imkan, potentialities. The potentialities of the Universe as you that are lying in wait and are really calling to be actuated in existence. 

Now you see that the impact of the environment enriches you. You can have indigestion of course. You can't assimilate all those things, challenging. But in order to meet that challenge, you need to call upon your potentials. You can really feel what the Sufis call Ishq Allah, the nostalgia of God as a potentiality of your being. God is a virtuality. At least that aspect of God which is a virtuality that is a secret treasure, according to the Sufis, which is longing to be known. And to be known, it has to manifest as your being. You have to know it by manifesting it. And you can't know it before you manifest it. It's like a sculptor who is able to manifest his/her statue by making it. 

So that's the word of a esoteric school. When you're meditating, you start by doing what we did. Trying to extend your understanding of what's happening in the world and what it's doing to you. We did that. 

The second step which is absolutely essential is giving vent to the recurrent birthing in your being which requires your attention. It's like fresh petals in the center of a flower. For one thing, one has to let the jaded petals fall apart. That is that detachment, indifference. It's not just detachment, independence from the circumstances, but independence with regard to those aspects of yourself that you consider to be yourself and which you validate, those aspects of your self that you esteem. You have to. They get sclerosed, you see. Our vanity, counting upon our charm. All those aspects that have, it's like something that has emerged at some point in our being that has become jaded. It has to fall apart so a new dispensation can emerge from within. So it's just like you have to protect a little sappling. So you have to protect this new dispensation, something in your being that is emerging now. 

And what I invite you to do now is to try to feel if you can sense a quality, or just highlight a particular quality that is emerging at this time. Many qualities are emerging. But there is one that is particularly pertinent at this particular moment in your life. It could be amongst many different things. It could be a need for truthfulness. It could be a need for mastery. It could be a need for joy. It could be a need for compassion. It could be a need for love. It could be a need for understanding. So there are many qualities that are already in us. And they are continually being renewed and highlighted, enhanced. It's like the blossoms on a treeˆ. It can't all happen at the same time. So at this particular juncture, let's try to capture this rebirthing that is taking place within you. 

Now those of you who are initiates of the Sufi Order know that these are labeled by what we call the wasaif. In fact that's the wrong word. These are the sifat. And it is the ( ) the divine names that are what we call the wazifa. Wazifa means repeating, or recollection, or confirmation, a process. But you are aware that one cannot force upon oneself to develop a quality thinking, "I need to have this quality. I need to have more power. I need to have more love, or I need to have more compassion, or I need to have more joy". No, the Universe self organizes itself in us. We do have a part to play, it's true. Customize that universal, cosmic self organization. That's the beauty of the fact that each one of us is different. So there is a lot of diversity. Each one of us is unique. But we are unfurling. 

Our qualities can unfurl. They don't always unfurl. And it depends upon our concentration, the kind of empowerment we give this quality to actuate itself in our personality. It's nurturing a sapling. Not just protecting it. But nurturing it with out attention. So every day you concentrate on that quality. And think that, "Yes I do have this quality. But now it is being refurbished and renewed and enhanced". There is a new dispensation. This quality may have become faded. This is a mixed metaphor. Like the shadow. Joy has become factiousness. So it's become. Or peacefulness has become laziness. That's the way a quality can become deteriorated and become it's shadow. So it's good then to be able to drink at the source of the new dispensations of life. Freshness and purity and vitality. 

And what is more. You see at first it's more an emotion. Our concept of a quality is very inadequate. That's why the translations of the names of God are totally inadequate. What is the emotion of mastery? What is the emotion of truthfulness? What is the emotion of love, unconditional love? What is the emotion of compassion? What is the emotion of peace? I know we want to have all of these. But it's better to work with one at a time, maybe two. For example, compassion with firmness so that one's compassion is not taken advantage of to abuse one. Joy with mastery so it doesn't rush all over the place, go off the rails. And peace not as withdrawal from life, but peace as a source of action or as a catalyst of action. 

So I've been talking about different qualities. It's good that there different people here with different problems and different needs. This is just a few of the qualities that we might evoke. Divine majesty. Pure spirit. Life. There are so many qualities. But rather than imposing qualities on yourself thinking, "I must develop these qualities", shoulding yourself, just try to feel, you know the whole of life, there is a kind of synchronisity that happens. The whole of life is pointing towards a quality. Trying to draw your attention to that quality that is emerging at this moment in your nature. Now eventually you'll be able to bridge the gap between the situations in the world and your personality. You'll be able to see the impact of your personality upon the circumstances. Otherwise one just sees the impact of the circumstances upon one's personality. Now this is creativity. 

Perhaps you know that creativity starts with an emotion. You can not sit there and make a statue or painting or whatever. There is an emotion that manifests and gets shunted into a form, fashioned into a form. At first don't think of the quality as one conceives of a quality. Just think of the emotion, the emotion of divine power, majesty, peace, all those qualities that we talked about. And one develops a kind of sensitivity about the quality of one's emotion. 

There is a difference between the emotion of the heart and the emotion of the soul. The emotion of the heart is of course personal, very important. In the music of Brahms for example, the emotion of the heart. Emotion of the soul, Bach of course, Beethoven sometimes. It's not different categories. The emotion of the soul can come through in your personal emotion. I think that personal emotion, I may be wrong, my impression is emotion of the heart has to do with, it's not like the emotion of the body. But personal love. To be loved. It can develop into compassion. Compassion can be sentimental. One isn't necessarily helping a person. One has to know how to help them to help themselves. So there is a deeper impulse than the emotion of the heart. In fact the emotion of the soul is what the Sufis call divine emotion. That's what we felt, and some of us feel still in the being of Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan, the emotion of the soul rather than the emotion of the heart.

So we're learning to turn within. It's true that supposing we're doing a breathing practice. Now as we exhale, our consciousness tends to expand. And our sense of identity tends to expand. We are aware of our magnetic field and our aura as we identify with it. So somehow there is a spillover from our being into the environment. Then when we inhale - I'm stepping right back to where we were - we experience the way the Universe crowds into us, gets converged into us as us rather than into us. But then in a further step, while we expand, the jaded petals of the flower begin to fall apart. So there is a sense of fana, of extinction in this expansion, dissolution, dissolving, in alchemy for example. 

There is a danger that we enjoy losing ourselves. Psychologists are very aware of it because they are trying to build a sense of who you are. So that is why some of the practices of the spiritual schools seem to go counter to what is sought after by psychotherapists. That is why Pir O Murshid replaces basit, that's a wazifa of the Sufis, with wasi. That is instead of expanding and losing yourself, of course you have to accept that one needs to lose those jaded petals, but rather than just losing your identity completely, merging with the totality. I said the wave is present within the wave interference pattern.

Murshid introduces the idea of a sense of the outreach of your being. Instead of losing yourself, the outreach of your being. Your realm, your domain. The greater the being, the greater his/her outreach. That's your responsibility, your domain. That certainly has the effect of enlarging, expanding your being instead of losing your being. It's both at the same time, but still not just lose your being. As you turn within, then you have both things happening at the same time. One does tend to be resorbed in the void in the center. One loses oneself, one disintegrates oneself at the jagged ends. And one gets resorbed in the void. Because for thereto be a new dispensation, there has to be recurrent rebirthing. That's one of the principles of Islam. And that is a reason for fana, for the extinction of a formation so that a new formation can take place. You see the parallel with Buddhism there, the formations that are continually replaced with new formations. Otherwise one gets sclerosed. 

It's a certain quality that Pir O Murshid outlines and draws our attention to. For example, the sea has the ability to absorb our pollution up to a point. So that's a sense of the void. It is rather different from the disintegration at the jagged ends because what one discovers as one lets oneself be resorbed in that, what the Sufis call ama, which is not a vacuum exactly. It's a fullness. It's a potentiality. What we discover there is the immaculate core of your being which cannot be defiled by whatever you do by your guilt and by the impressions of the world. 

It's very difficult to accept that we are defiled. I hope there is no offense. And at the same time absolutely immaculate. It's very difficult for the mind. That's why meditation requires us to operate differently, to think differently to the way that we think in our commonplace thinking. And of course I illustrate this by the voice of Caruso that can be retrieved now in the bad recordings that were made. But it's present within its distortion. So our purity is present within its distortion. That's again something that's difficult for our minds to understand. But here we have the proof. We have a demonstration of it. Somehow that is the child within. And the particular characteristic of that child is innocence. It's something that one tends to lose. I see the beautiful light in the eyes of babies. Then I see people becoming hardened and the shadow of the earth upon them. And gross and selfish and aggressive and so on. Resentment, and cantankerous. What a pity. The child is still there but has been buried. 

So the way to do it is of course when you turn within, it's almost like reversing one's whole growth and returning to the origin. Pir O Murshid mentions that in the book called "The Inner Life". The return to that original state of purity. Even the embryo, undifferentiated state before there has been differentiation in the different qualities. Just the pure reality, the basic reality of one's being. That is open, that is innocent. The virgin. The CD plate that hasn't been recorded on yet. So it's like starting from scratch. Because you cannot build on something that is crumbling. You have to get back to the roots again and start from there. The access to this purity is absolute truthfulness, absolute authenticity. Not just not telling a lie, but it's being very scrupulous about one's motivations. Asking oneself all the time, "Why are you doing this? Are you manipulating people? Do you think the ends justify the means?" They don't justify the means. The means build the end as Gandhi said. 

So just imagine the delight of the baby. I don't say it's a desirable condition to be in. It is a condition that one needs to discover in oneself. And then start going through the developmental stages from the angel to the human. Because the angel has no discrimination and it's likely to fall in the victim of those who manipulation them. So that's not a desirable state to be in in the world. But if you can keep that there in the depth of your being, then your creativity will start from there. And you'll be going through the process of birthing one stage after the other in the course of a meditation. 

And then you'll see how our creativity starts as an emotional attunement and then reaches into one's thinking. For example, the composition of a composer starts with an emotion. All compositions start with an emotion. And then if you study the preludes or Chopin for example, you see that it's extremely intelligent. So the mind plays a very important part in trying to actuate that impulse at the source of their inspiration. And then the next step is that emotion and that thinking is fashioned into a shape. A composition is a shape. It really is a language which communicates an emotional to other people. It's like words. But it's better than words. 

So that's what we want to again work with is how we translate an emotion to shape. At first it is the shape of our subtle body and our aura. And eventually it can at least manifest in one's countenance. Not necessarily in one's face because you know that one has inherited a lot of things from one's ancestors and so on. So you can't rely upon the outer aspect of things. It's what comes through, what transpires behind what appears rather than what appears that is important.

I think we need a break now. But I ask you to make it short because we have so much to do and so little time. So one quarter of an hour.


NOV 14, 1997		Tape 02

...the other thing is I'm trying not to be on a guru trip. I'm trying. It's not easy because people project things on me. I wear these strange clothes and one thing and another. But I'm here to help you. And I'm really not interested in laying my trip on you at all. And what I'm giving you, I never say something that I haven't experienced myself. 

There are three things for the, characteristics of the spirituality of the millennium which is first of all wariness of the institutionalization of spirituality, although we have a very efficient organization. And wariness about prescriptions, the do's and don'ts. You have to use your own conscience to become free people rather than under the impact of some person who is imposing his/her will upon you. And the third one is be wary of belief systems. I make a difference between belief and faith. Belief because it's written in a scripture or an authority figure has said it, or a role model. But experience is of course interpreted and therefore distorted. So we have to be careful just studying experience. And ultimately faith rather than belief. Faith that there is a meaningfulness in life even though we can't understand it. And that that there is splendor behind all the ugliness. It's always paradoxical and perplexing.

So we started working with the way that the initial emotion, impulse of creativity is followed by a very clear understanding. Therefore the mind has to adapt itself to the new vision then, of course, translate it into shape. As I said before, the electromagnetic field and the aura is simply the template in which the body has been configured. I'm saying that not just as an idea. At least for the electromagnetic field it can be demonstrated in laboratory experiments. But I find it more useful, easier to work with the aura, work with light rather than with the magnetic field. In healing we're working with magnetism. I like to work with the aura.

Now what I'd like to do is to pass in review the practices and the ( ) in their sequence. So to start with we assume that we are a mind and body, consciousness, personality, psyche. So that is what one calls our personal identity. So in the first step in as much as you identify with your physical body, can you be aware of the fact that the cells of your body absorb light from the environment? I can confirm that this has been observed in laboratory experiments. So it's not just my idea. It is a matter of instead of envisioning light, to literally feel light. I can't say it any differently. 

For one thing, well maybe we might start by seeing if we can feel magnetism around your shoulders and your arms and your chest. If you can feel, emanating from palms of your hands, you can feel something that is beyond your skin. A kind of force power or field, whatever. The fact is that by being aware of it, you strengthen it. That's mind over body. That's of course the secret of healers. 

Now can you feel light all around you, just like a mantel of light? It doesn't have a contour, a profile. So it's not quite like a mantel of light. But it's the same idea, being enshrouded with light. Also above your head. OK, now can you just feel the way that you're, when you're sun bathing you quite unconsciously open up the pores of your skin to receive the rays of the sun? But without being in the sun, even if you are in the shade, the body has the ability to absorb the light of the environment. The molecules in the cells of the body, the atoms, the electrons in the atoms absorb light and are transformed by the light. The electrons begin to spin beyond their orbital and find another orbital. That is a further dimension of freedom. So light is energy. And it will give them a further dimension of freedom. Eventually the electrons can even free themselves totally from their orbitals and they become what they call free electrons. So that's what happens to our body cells. 

So you definitely can make a conscious effort to absorb light even just imagine through your skin as you inhale. And then as you hold your breath, then try to see if you can feel the giggling of the cells. Maybe at first you'll find it difficult. So one has to accustom oneself to become aware of the miracle of one's body. For example, you're aware of your fingers and your tongue maybe. Are you aware of your stomach? Are you aware of your lungs? Are you aware of your nerves? Your arms for example? Are you aware of the nerves in your spinal cord? And so on. Are you aware of the lymph glands in the right and left of your throat, and your arm pits, and in the groin? And so on. So one can be aware. You can develop this further. You can be aware of your heart beat. You can be aware of the pancreas. Duodenum, liver. You can even be aware of the cells in your brain. You can even be aware of the pituitary gland, the hypothalamus. 

So we have that sensitivity. It is warped by the fact that our senses are turned without. So if you downplay the impressions from outside, then you can be much more conscious of what's happening within your own body. And so maybe, I don't know whether you can reach a point where you can actually feel, well at first it's a kind of tingling within your body. It's not just in your skin. But inside your body a kind of tingling. Even a kind of very quick vibration, pulsing but very very fast, something like 10 to the power of 20. You can't really distinguish the beats. It's just a felling of the tingling, the giggling of the cells. Actually, they are sparkling, not just giggling. That is they are emitting photons. So the light that has been absorbed is now processed in the very cells of your body. And is then emitted as radiant light. That's what we call our aura, fluorescence. 

So inhale. Try to feel the way that your body is absorbing light. Then hold your breath and concentrate on the sparking, well the giggling first and then the sparkling. It is of the cells. But of course one can't feel the individual cells individually. So it's an overall feeling of flashes, sparkling. Actually a lot of colors like a kaleidoscope. Now as you exhale, you're not just aware of radiating light, not just your skin, the surface of your body. But all the cells are radiating light. And here again mind over body. You can enhance the radiation of your body, called bioluminescence, by simply visualizing and willing it. 

Now I have been doing these practices at night time under the stars. Then it becomes very realistic. Because then you can sense the way that the light of the stars has been traveling through space at a speed of 86,000 miles a second and literally hits your body, bombards your body with light. And the cells of the body are picking up that light. They don't reflect. It's not like a mirror. They are transformed by that light. Therefore they process that light. The light that they radiate is something that they make themselves. It's not just boomeranged back the light that accrued to them from outside.

Now there is a further practice. Turning within. Because so far when we held our breath, we were just aware of the cells of our body that are the outer expression of a deeper reality that we call virtual or latent. So when you hold your breath now, just see if you can, you see, I think we have to overcome our mental representations of what we imagine life to be. Because the‚ light that we know, we are familiar with, is light that is emitted from a source of light that is located in space. Headlamps of a car, the sun, a candle whatever. But you know that that which we perceive, all that we perceive is only the surface of reality as it appears at the surface. Below that there is a reality that we do not, cannot be the object of our experience. And we cannot represent it the way that we represent the outer world. The best example of it would be radio waves where everything is intermeshed with everything else. 

A very good example of what I'm saying is if you are swimming at the surface of a lake. And you see water lilies. Now if you would swim under the surface, you would see that it is really a network of roots that emerge as flowers. So that's what I mean by what Dr. David Boehm calls the implicate state behind the explicate state. And that is what we are doing as we turn within. And the Sufis say that it is that which transpires behind that which appears. 

So think that what you experience is just the surface. And now you are shifting your perspective, vantage point so that you cannot perceive that which is at the surface. Then hopefully you don't perceive that which is below the surface. You are part of it. It's really a resonance like a harp and a piano that have been tuned to the same pitch. And if you play one the other starts resounding by sympathetic resonance. That's what it is. So it's a different mode of cognizance than perception. 

So that means that you have to alter your sense of being the witness, witnessing other than yourself and submerge your vantage point, that is the focal point of your consciousness, into the totality. I suppose the best way of thinking of it is that the totality of the Universe keeps on emerging as each one of us. So you are getting in touch with the subliminal reality of your being which is in resonance and consonance and harmony with all other beings, with the whole Universe.

So that is, in terms of light, that's what Pir O Murshid calls the all pervading light. And in terms of sound, it's what the Sufis call the Sota Sarmad, which is the unheard music and perhaps you know that sounds is only the way that we perceive vibrations of energy. The reality is the vibration. So as you turn within, you discover the kind of the ground tone of the whole Universe that becomes perceptible when it impinges above the threshold between the explicate state and the implicate state.

So I've been talking about that which transpires behind that which appears. So we're going to try to do it. Now concentrate on your eyes. And perhaps you realize that the retina of your eyes are very sensitive to light. And the light passes through the cornea. The cornea is a lens. Then the light gets threaded up through the optic nerves and fills the brain. So exactly as we absorb light through our skin, we absorb light through our eyes. And that light gets collected in the brain. That is the cells of the brain absorb that light and giggle and sparkle of course. Then it's shunted down through the spinal cord, the whole body. So the light in the cells of the body is also enhanced by the light that is shunted down from the brain.

So as you inhale, if you could just represent the way that light from the environment - it could be electric light, it could be the light of a candle, it could be the light of the sun or the stars - you can feel how it gets absorbed in your retina. The retina is simply an extension of the brain and of the whole optic nerves. Perhaps you could also feel the delight of light, the ecstasy enjoyed by your eyes at being receptive to light.

Now the opposite is also true. That is that our eyes, the retina, projects light into the environment. Of course, the light that we absorb is so much stronger than the light that we emit that we are not aware of the light that we emit. Now one can enhance the light that one emits through one's eyes simply by the mind/body axis. One simply concentrates on the beams of light that cast forward from one's brain through the optic nerves, through the retina and the cornea, right out into outer space. So you can do that with closed eyelids. As you inhale, so there is a ( ). As you inhale, absorbing light and as you exhale radiating light, just two beams of light. 

As you hold your breath after inhaling, what I suggest is there are two steps. One would be be aware of not just the light within the brain, but you know that high frequency light passes through the skull. And so that's the reason for what they call the corona, or the crown of the mystics and saints. Light becomes very effective above the head. And it's ultraviolet colorless light. That's what you do when you hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upwards. You already prepare yourself when you are inhaling, but particularly as you hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upwards. And curl your tongue and press the bottom of your tongue against the pallet only during the holding of the breath. When you exhale, you're eyes get focused in their normal position and the tongue in its normal position. 

In a sense one could say that the light that one has absorbed through the eyes is transmuted or filtered. I don't know whether it's both or what. I'm not quite sure. It could filtered or transmuted. So above the head it's very high frequency light. However, it's more like colorless light. It's like a diamond. The light is sparkling in different colors. OK

So the interesting thing is now as you exhale, not just shunting the light in your brain through the optic nerves and through the retina and out into outer space, but the light above your head. The view of Ibn Arabi and well Najmoddin Kobra particularly,Ibn Arabi of course and Semnani is that the light, well that there are several levels of light. Let us say that is a higher level of light which now passes through the light of your glance. I think I said that yesterday. The river Rhone passing through the Lake of Geneva. A light passing through a light. Now that will give you, ultimately it will give you the ability to grasp the countenance behind the face and the auras of flowers and crystals and things like that. 

Now if you were to open your eyes, you would lose the concentration on those two beams of light. It's most likely that you'd lose it. However, if you have practiced this a lot, for months I would say, you get to the point where you can open your eyes and not let your eyes be forced into focus by the objects in front of you. Everything will look like a blur. But you just concentrate on those two beams of light and the way that those beams illuminate all things. Open your eyes just at the moment of exhaling. Then as soon as you start seeing objects, then you close your eyes again. 

Now this is something that will need months and months of practice. And eventually you turn your glance towards a person, or start with a flower or a crystal. Then gradually you trust yourself to look at a person. And you don't see the features of the face of that person any more. But you grasp their celestial face. You have to experience it to realize what it is. It's the reality behind that which appears in the face. Well this will take you some time to do.

There is another practice done by the Zen Buddhists. That's to take an object, particularly a crystal. Instead of scanning it, that is instead of passing in review of the different facets of the crystal, you grasp it as a unit. Don't move your eyes, displace your glance. And you hold it for twenty minutes. Then you open your eyes. And you see the objects in the room. But that crystal now seems to be floating in space. So we'll get used to working with the glance. 

Now of course there is a further step. So we'll prepare that further step. I don't know whether you are aware of the light of your aura. But are you aware of the colors? There is colored light in it. But there is also all kinds of colors. So if you could start practicing simply by imagining the color yellow. Then imagine that your aura is yellow and see how it feels. Like the yellow robe of some of the sanyasins. Or then you could imagine the color blue. Imagine for example, the Virgin Mary as always dressed in the blue color. Her aura is blue, light blue. And you see how different it is from the yellow. It represents an immaculate state. The yellow a much more radiant state. You have orange which is much warmer. All the different colors. Green very vital. So you can imagine different colors. Red, passion, anger, mastery, suffering, crucifixion, resurrection. So you can will your aura by your imagination exactly as you can will your arm to rise, to be raised. The same way you can will your aura to vibrate at that speed, at that rate which is experienced as yellow or as blue or whatever. 

Now can you, I would say again that this is something that will take many months of practicing. What I suggest is that you have a book. And you write in the different stages over a period of a year. So that at a certain date you pass to the next stage. So you don't do it all at once.

So the next stage would be you spend some time representing the color red at the bottom of the spine. Actually one is enhancing the infrared. Actually the body is in a continual state of combustion. That is it's burning. That's why we have temperature. And it emits infrared rays. You can enhance the intensity of those rays by your visualization. That's what the Tibetans do in the snow. They imagine the body being a source of heat, a furnace. And they are able to dry wet towels on their back. There are even competitions to see how quickly they can dry the towels on their back. That's called tumo. It's a function that is not extremely active in the human being but can be enhanced. There are rishis who sit in a dark cave. And their whole body becomes radiant, just like a bat. Bats in a cave and deep sea fish and fireflies are able to produce light out of the combustion of their body. 

Now the interesting thing, what we want to do now is to transmute that infrared light into ultraviolet light. The way of doing that is to pass in review the light of each chakra in turn. At first you concentrate on each chakra in turn and the corresponding color. Then eventually you are able to pass the whole gamut of chakras in review in one inhaling. So red at the bottom of the spine. And a kind of vermilion or terra cotta in the second chakra. Then orange in the solar plexus. And gold in the heart. And green in the throat center. And blue in the eyes. And violet in the third eye. And colorless light in above the head. It's rather like a diamond, sparkling with all colors of light, all kinds of colors.

Now we're going to do something very dramatic. That is as you hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upward and curl your tongue and press it against the pallet. And instead of representing that colorless light above your head, you represent your intelligence as luminous. The body is now the underpinning, the infrastructure. And it is serving your intelligence, or rather the intelligence of the Universe in you, as you. The way to do that is to think that you have awakened from the perspective of the physical world. That is you've shifted your perspective, your vantage point. So you can't see it anymore. It's like in a hologram. And shifted your perspective from the light of the aura. 

Then passing in review different levels of light as we did yesterday, the reflexes of light. And finally, it's a real quantum leap. You have to really give up any kind of sense of your aura at least for a short instant and think that your body, all these things, your mind is only a support system for intelligence. That intelligence is luminous. That is consciousness is picking up information. Intelligence is thrusting its own inborn knowledge on all things, recognizing things because they match something that is already written into intelligence.

The way to do it is to wake up very intensely. Like you're waking up from sleep. Now you're waking up from day consciousness. Remember you turn your eyeballs upwards and your tongue. Now this is where you lose the sense of being the witness, Shahid. And you realize that what you think is your own intelligence is the divine intelligence, (tape turns) a fraction of it. It's not different from it. It is the divine thinking but limited, just like a fraction of a hologram is limited. It represents the hologram but in a limited way. So you have to give up any idea of being the witness, or even being passive to the divine witness. It's just that the witness has shifted to a point now where it is impersonal.

Now as you inhale, there are two steps. One is to thrust the light of your intelligence upon your aura. I'm not saying it very well. I think it's better to say the clarity of your insight has the effect of enhancing the radiation of your aura. That is what is meant in the Koran by a light upon a light. I often give the example of a little child. The mother is showing the little child a puzzle. And she says, "Can you see the pixie in the tree?" The child says,"No, Mummie. I can't see it." "Look again." "No, Mummie. Can't see it." "Look again." Then all of a sudden the child sees it and the whole face of the child lights up. That's what I mean. It's an 'aha' moment. That's what awakening is like. It's like, "Yes, I see. How different from how I always thought". And the I that is seeing this is understanding it's not the personal. So when you say "I see", you don't mean me my personal me, but the whole Universe awakening as your personal insight. One can of course, thread the light down along the chakras. Do the opposite of what we were doing as we were inhaling, passing the chakras in the descent instead of the ascent. 

But now there is a further step. And that is once more, infusing, perhaps that's the word. Infusing your glance with the light of intelligence. Now we've already had the light of the brain threaded through the optic nerves. And we've already had the corona above the head. The very fine light of the glance passing through the glance just like the water of the Rhone passing through the Lake of Geneva. 

Now this is something else. The light upon the light is a different type of light. It's what the Sufis call the light that sees rather than the light that can be seen. It cannot be the object of your perception. So imagine your intelligence is the light that sees. And your glance is the instrument for this light that sees. 

Now these practices are intended to lead us to us to other work that we are doing, the creative work that we're doing with fashioning our aura. So that's a whole chapter between the two, trying to explore this afternoon because it's 12 o'clock. I have to obey orders and conform to the time table. I also have to conform to the demands of my body which are to have a nap after lunch. There are a few doctors here who know something about it. You know, I'm 81. So I won't be able to come before three. So you have time to go and have a meal somewhere and refresh yourselves and meet people.

Tape ends 

NOV 14, 1997		Tape 03


Sensitive to classical music instead of hard rock, heavy metal. I just want to say that the music that we just heard was ( ) played by Harro, the master of vibrato on the cello. It's not available, not for sale. You can't get it. It's obsolete. And it's irreplaceable. You can't replace it. 

Alright to get ourselves together again, a kind of rule of thumb when you want to meditate. Just start becoming aware of your breath. By the sheer fact that you are aware of it, it will slow down. And always think that you are starting with exhaling. And that's where you put your effort and try to extend your exhaling each time a little longer. And you inhale without effort. And as you exhale, you start on the beginning of the exhaling, you contract your abdomen and then your chest. And you inhale, you dilate your abdomen and then your chest. And it seems strange because as one is exhaling, one is expelling. And of course one's magnetic field is, one's aura is extending. So you're contracting your body and extending your etheric body or aura. And as you inhale, you are converging the light field of the Universe and the magnetic field of the Universe as your electromagnetic field. So it's very strange because you are dilating your abdomen and then your chest.  

And now see what happens if you hold your breath after inhaling, between inhaling and exhaling. I say it's just like a metronome, for example. At first it was swinging. Now you realize that there are two points at which the metronome or pendulum stands still. Time has been suspended. That's what the Sufis call the instant of time. So you've lost the sense of becoming, of advancing in time, what they call the arrow of time. And that instant is not measurable in time although you think there is a holding your breath for a period of time. But time is suspended. And as I said, that is the time when something new can emerge in a state of suspense, when everything is in a state of readiness to change. I said before, if it were not so, then everything in life would be the consequence of what precedes, determinism, causality, whereas here it's only possible for there to be a new dispensation if somehow there is a break in continuity. That is the moment when we experience freedom. 

So as you inhale, you could experience the way that the past has its consequences in your life, in your being, what you've done, your ancestry. We're conditioned. In that moment when you're holding your breath just think that you've found some reprieve from conditioning. As a matter of fact, you can take whatever direction you want. That is in the instant of time, all possibilities are at hand. Like a crisis situation arises, when one goes through a crisis. And it seems like there is a transit from one state to another. One deplores that situation. But perhaps it's the most desirable one because that's where one can bring about a change. 

So there's a breathing practice that you could do. If you place the thumb of your right hand under your chin, and the middle finger in the proximity of your right nostril. And the palm of your left hand against the back of your right hand. And the thumb of your left hand in the proximity of your left nostril. And don't press yet. Now just simply again watch your breath. Every time you exhale a little longer. And inhale. And you'll find that after having exhaled a little longer, you're able to take in more oxygen when you inhale. And you're able to hold your breath longer. So as you inhale, press both your thumb and your middle finger. And just consider that you're in a state of suspense. And it's not just the time that is suspended but also your sense of location in space and your sense of your self image and your consciousness of your body and ultimately your sense of individuality. 

Now if you remember, that is a state in which everything is everywhere, all intermeshed like radio waves. And so to be creative, that is the moment when one considers how you could be if you would be as you might be. Just sense possibilities. Instead of having been constrained by the way situations are, you have that sense of what if. All possibilities are available. It's just a matter of your picking one and making it really happen. The future isn't there but it's bountiful and within you as a latency. What you make of it is the future. Then exhale.

Now what you could do is inhale through the left nostril by pressing the middle finger of your right hand on the right nostril. Hold your breath. Suddenly just think, "I'm free. I don't have to tow the line. I don't have to continue being what I have been so far. I've found freedom. Freedom from my opinion. Freedom from my self image. I can be what I want to be". And you could even in this instant of time which is timeless, always have a flash like, "Well I could be dancing with joy. I could be radiant. I could be fully in control". Just imagine all the things you'd like to be. 

Now after that moment of suspense, you exhale through the right nostril and sense that all that you have collected, experienced, all the enrichment that's taken place in the course of your life is transmuted. That's the experience of not just transfiguration but resurrection. So that nothing gets lost. So the motion, somehow imagine that you have this momentum of your head like a pendulum. Now there is an invisible momentum that continues the upward swing. So that the know-how that you've gained by these experiences is recycled into that program. If the swing were to reach the zenith, then you could see how the pendulum is going to turn over to the left. It's going to swing past the zenith to the left. That's how what we've experienced is going to be recycled. So there is a reprogramming. The program of the Universe keeps on improving, being upgraded. 

Now as you inhale through the right. It's true that after exhaling, then you inhale through the right nostril. And this is where you experience the pull of the future. Like, this is how things could be. When you are in a state of suspense, you are experiencing the potentialities. Now you are experiencing a very concrete picture, vision how circumstances would be affected by the way you have changed. That's how you are building the future. So you experience the pull of the future. Now you can see the retroactive of the future on the past as you inhale through the right nostril. 

Now you have another period of suspense, state of suspense, the instant of time. And that is somehow you get back to well the way the way that you're programming seem to have been initiated before, well before you influenced, you impacted it by your will. So it's like, it's not quite your fate. It's the way that things were in their original state before they took shape. So if you remember that, see if you can do that now. 

It's as though the pendulum reaches a certain point at the right. And then the force that was generated, the momentum continues to rise during that suspense is extended as you exhale. And as you inhale, the pendulum starts moving down again and returns to its original point. It's not, of course, the pendulum swings higher and higher. And eventually you get to the end point is the same as the starting point. That's why I say, it's not quite your fate. It's just the way, well as far as you can feel the way things started, return to the start source as they say. 

Now inhale through both nostrils. Hold your breath. Exhale through both nostrils. Now this is where you experience that attractor that is not in time, beyond time. As you inhale, after inhaling through both nostrils, you reach a samadhi state. The way to do it is to consciously transfer your attention from one chakra to the next. And consider that you're working with energy. And that energy acts as a lift which is hoisting your consciousness aloft. As you hold your breath, those are conditions that are favorable to a flash of a state of samadhi. Turn your eyeballs upwards and your tongue pressed against your pallet. Here is another suspense. So there are three states of suspense in the pendulum. That state of suspense, well it's not a temporary state of suspense. It's a state where time and space are suspended eternally. So it is really the original state. There is a difference between everlastingness and eternity. 

Now transferring your attention from one chakra to the next, I think that one needs to at the same time be aware of the quantum leaps in one's mode of thinking. At each level, there is a further level of thinking and also one's sense of identity. So that when you start with, of course, you identify with your physical body. Then you identify with that template, in Kabbala it is isod, template which is the electromagnetic field. And the solar plexus, that is where you come in contact with the all possibilities in the Universe, that is God in His/Her aspect of virtuality and all possibility in the void. That is the unknown, the hidden treasure. Then move up to the heart center. That's where you identify with your aura of light. And you realize that your thinking has changed now. And Najmoddin Kobra calls that the witness in the heavens. You are beginning to have some sense of how things would look from the vantage point of the angel, the celestial nature, your celestial counterpart. 

Then you reach a very extraordinary level corresponding with the throat center, the "vishuda" chakra. That is, well it's a transformation of the witness in you. The witness in you is the divine witness in you that is seeing things from the divine point of view. And that is always seeing how the programming is worked out, let's say how the software is worked out in the hardware. So in a sense, your fate, it's very perplexing because you have so much freedom. And somehow there is still some sense of programming, not the same thing as conditioning. It's at the archetypal level. And if you reach beyond that in the third eye, that's where you reach a point in which you are aware of the archetypes behind the exemplars. For example, if a person is peaceful, now in that state you would say, "I see peace coming through that person", instead of saying, "That person is peaceful". So you're seeing the archetype instead of the exemplar. You're seeing the archetype in the exemplar. That's the point of Lahut in Sufi terminology. Now you have one more quantum leap beyond any sense of bodiness. So maybe the pituitary gland is the stepping stone. But somehow you overstep it. You disregard it, it's a stepping stone. You kick the ladder somehow. And I suppose one goes through a black out. 

All that one thought and thought one knew and conceptions of life and one's self image, a sense of oneself as a subject. All that vanishes altogether. So you're not the subject anymore seeing an object. That's past. Now one does black out. But it is important to maintain a kind of distant memory of the physical scenario. But vaguely familiar so that one does remember all those experiences that one had. There is still some, I suppose one could say that our memory is transmuted into its quintessence. And at some point, even that last ultimate crutch vanishes from under your feet. So you have nothing to hold on to. 

Now it's not a state that you can hold. So what the Upanishad says is that it passes before you know it. Then you try to capture it again but you can't. So let it go. But you will be awed and perplexed and shattered and overwhelmed. And when I say you, one says I, and one doesn't mean me any more. There is not way of saying it in our language. Now of course every time you arrest your inhaling as you hold your breath, you peak. So these are like flashes that you can't hold. So like an aha' feeling, a sudden feeling of awakening. 

Now as you exhale, you have an overview. It's amazing as if one were flying very high and you have an overview of the planet, even being in outer space, even beyond, outside the planetary system or the galaxy. It's very difficult to describe. Somehow you see your life in a very broad panorama. And you are aware of the fact that you had somehow landed on the planet earth. That's not quite the correct way of saying it. But somehow that you had always existed and will always exist. But it's not you anymore. It's impersonal but still the seed of your individuality was there. 

So when you look at your earthly condition, you can see it as a condition of earth. Instead of thinking that you landed, you think that, well you think two things. One is that somehow your consciousness shifted to the existential level. So you are the witness. The other one is that somehow your eternal being is unique. It's very strange this idea of multiplicity in unity amongst the Sufis. ( Ahadinet) Somehow beyond qualities. We're not talking about qualities at this level. But just being. So how that diversity comes in I don't understand. These are things we can't understand. 

But somehow what I mean is that your being has impregnated the features that you inherited from your ancestors and eventually impregnated the configuration of the stardust into your body, as you body. That's an amazing thing that your body does not only inherit the features of your ancestors, but somehow the uniqueness of your being is imprinted upon your body. As a matter of fact, at all levels in the course of your descent. 

So it's a descent of consciousness, states of consciousness. You become more and more aware of the existential levels of reality. But there is also a concretization of what you are and still continue to be. Not what you were, but what what you were, what you are, continue to be, always will be, always have been, somehow concretized right down into the features of your body. Somehow the whole Universe, cosmos has enfolded itself as you. So not just your ancestry. So now you can see that as though you are looking at things from a bird's eye view. 

Then you can see how you took decisions and consequently determined the course of your life and then perhaps changed you mind which is difficult or impossible because you had determined a whole set of circumstances. You can see the whole thing. See your involvement with people. 

And now you can see how the social, physical and psychological environment has now also imprinted itself on your being. So you're a product of your culture, your education, standard of life and all kinds of things that accrue to what you were in your pristine state. So you may consider yourself as a role of a tourist on planet earth. But then having been a tourist, you have really started to impact the planet with your being. You've transformed things, even materially. So you're not the tourist anymore. But you remember having not yet existed on the planet.

Now of course from this point of view, one sees all the mistakes one did. And the way one had to go through one's trip and make one's way through life really with very little knowledge of what was involved. Very much a child in error. And of course, each one of us has hopefully attained some measure of realization through our experience on earth. And that has enriched our being. 

And you can also see how the original state, well I would say at the state of the celestial sphere, I mean beyond that. The original state is beyond that. But still, at that level, you can see how there has been a defilement in the course of the descent but an enrichment. And the enrichment, I suppose the disadvantage of the advantage, the price that one paid somehow. As I say, you can't stay an angel. Somehow we forgot who we were. Now we're starting to remember. 

So it is really a matter of extrapolating between levels of one's being instead of toggling. That's called awakening in life instead of awakening beyond life. To awaken beyond life in samadhi, you have to definitely downplay one level and highlight another. Whereas in the descent the most wonderful thing you could do is to be able to extrapolate between levels of your being and see how they interconnect. And as I say, realize that the child in you is still there. But there have been other elements that come in. But it's still there and can be recovered. And at the same time you can develop power, majesty, mastery. You could also see yourself as a flower that unfurls. 

So we're going to do another practice now. That is as you inhale now just be aware of the way that the impressions of the world get ingested in your psyche. You're really not only eating the planet because our food is the havoc of the planet, but also at the psychological level one is being continually enriched by elements that have accrued to one from outside and are digested. 

Perhaps you know that the immune system rejects elements that are foreign. That's the first immune system. That is based upon a sense of identity. The body has a sense of identity. And we reject any element that does not have the same DNA as the cells of the body. Now if we were to, if that were the only immune system, of course we would not be able to eat food. So the immune system is able to adapt itself to elements that are foreign to itself. But, so the sense of me can be enriched and is enriched. 

However, if one is over indulgent, accommodating, then one suffers a kind of indigestion. And one loses one's sense of identity. And that Is what a lot of us are doing. We're losing our sense of identity. So as you are meditating, you have the ability to reject elements that are too foreign to your being and are therefore indigestible, detrimental to your being. And the method of doing that is something that we can learn...from the sanyasins of India. That is that you surround yourself with a zone of silence, a kind of protective zone. And surround yourself with the guardians who will reject that which is undesirable. And so it is your sense, of who you are, your uniqueness, that is going to help you reject impressions that you feel are deleterious, damaging. 

Now there is a second function, a further function which is assimilation. That is that the impressions are transformed in your psyche. To be digested, to become part of your being, they are transmuted. That is something that when you are meditating, instead of just thinking of the impressions of the social or psychological environment which one does if one doesn't know how to meditate, try to see what is enacted behind the events, behind the occurrences. What is enacted. The clue to that is in what we call the wasaif, the wazifa. Actually it's the (Isme ilahe), the names of God. For example, what is enacted in this situation is compassion. That is that which is at stake in this situation, what we are tested in is compassion. It might be our truthfulness, peacefulness or mastery, whatever. So that will give you a sense of, you see the occurrence is just the outer expression of an inner reality. And that is that quality. That's why we are working in the Sufi Order with wasaif, what we call the qualities. That's a deeper reality. So the impressions from the outside are somehow transmuted. And it's when you turn within that you experience the way that (tape turns)

...as you inhale you are drawing on the impressions of the environment. You're filtering them, transmuting them. Hold your breath. And now you're beginning to capture the emergent potentialities in your being. As I said, it's better to earmark one quality. And see how it unfurls in your personality. Just like a flower, the fresh petals in the center begin to unfurl as you exhale. 

Now if you just take the outside circumstances as the object of your cognition or actually your assessment, and you interpret them according to your personal bias, then you are going to carry in your psyche a false assessment of your circumstances. Just imagine that one carries in one's psyche a false assessment of one's situation throughout one's life. It's most important to correct that. That means that you have to question your assessment. 

That's what happens when people go to psychotherapists. Of course, they are caught in a perspective. They assess situations, they are convinced that situations are the way they assess them, not realizing that they are looking at things from a personal bias. So there has been damage to their psyche because they think they have been damaged. The psychotherapist is supposed to heal that wound because there is emotion in it. In the spiritual field, we are working with questioning our assessment and then encouraging the creativity of our being so that we want to highlight our impact on the environment rather than the impact of the environment upon us. 

Now when you do this, remember what we said about the lake, and the lotus flowers or the water lilies at the surface and the roots. So now we're alternating between what we call in our Sufi language Ya Zahir and Ya Batin. Zahir is like reaching out. Batin turned within, the veiled one. 

So now perhaps we can see another feature of this. Imagine that your face is a mask. And behind the mask is the shape or the features, we call it the countenance, but you could say it's the features of your aura. Let's say your aura, like a statue that has a configuration in the fabric of light. And normally we identify with the outside, what we see in the mirror, what we think people see. So that only the outer expression which is very misleading if one does not see that which transpires behind that which appears. When you turn within, you just think that all this time you've been identifying with this form of your body. Although you realize that it was just the way that it appears at the surface, that's not really what you are. 

And the other thing that one does when one turns within is that one is playing a role. And one doesn't normally quite realize it. I'm a business man or business woman, or I'm a cook or I'm a carpenter, policeman, philosopher, musician, whatever. Or the king thinks he is a king because he is sitting on a throne and people say, "Your majesty". If that were not so then he would have difficulty in thinking that he is a king. So we allow ourselves to be deceived by the role that the world exacts from us. The guru thinks he's a guru because he or she centers into the image that people project upon him/her. And that can lead to terrible dishonesty when one is trying to live up to something that one is not. So you eject somehow your role. And that's how you discover who you really are. 

The other thing is our thinking. We are so used to expressing what we think in language. And we know very well that what explain is very inadequate in comparison to what we imply. But somehow we are so used to explaining. And even when we are silent, we are still are explaining things, our thoughts in our minds. And consequently we are not in touch with what we imply. 

So if you are making a retreat and you observe silence, you get used to not only not speaking. But you get used to converting your thoughts into an explanation, something that can be explicated. Consequently you are conscious of the emergence of what one might call the implicit rather than the explicit. That is the meaning of Batin. That is the hidden treasure of the Sufi dervishes. It is sacred and therefore secret. It's very important for our self esteem to validate the sacredness of the deep core of our being which is continually being humiliated by people who deride us, or ignore us, or undermine us, or betray us. 

Now furthermore as you turn within, you begin to understand, to grasp what could be a form without contours, without profile. If you've seen the photographs that were made by Walter Chapelle of flowers, you'll understand what I mean. You can see the edge of the petals. But beyond that you see what is called a corona, like in Kirlian photography. And that doesn't have an edge. So it gives you a sense of what I call a configuration that is not a gestalt, that is not a form. It is the origin of form. It is that which jells in a form. 

So we've done this before. You can do this. If you think that you are caring a mask, and you eject the mask, so that you don't have that, the mask is a defense also, you don't have that crutch let's say that is protecting you. So now you are faced with absolute authenticity. This is what you really are. And it comes through, at first I think we have some sense of the features of our countenance. It clicks, "This is me. It's quite different from what I see when I look in a mirror, what I think I am". That's the break through. 

But if you start investigating further, exploring further, then you'll find that it is many faceted. And as a matter of fact, it's more like a hologram, holograph actually. So that the images are interspersed and not quite distinct. The setting of your consciousness can be very clear from one image to the other. But there is a sort of gray area between them sometimes where there is a mix. So the word many faceted is not quite correct. And it's also many tiered. So there are different levels. So it's more complex than you think at first. And what is more, it is dynamic instead of static. That is it's changing all the time. First of all it's renewing itself. Well it's disintegrating and renewing itself. 

And it's also, now this is what we want to do. We want to see, to witness the impact of our attunement and our thinking upon the shape of our aura. Let's work with the aura. So now how can we do that? Remember what we did with light. Now you can feel your aura. At first it's kind of vague. It's like the photographs of Walter Chappel. It doesn't have an edge. And we can't really distinguish a shape. We start working with the colors. 

Now you might recognize somehow a countenance in that aura. And perhaps, they change so quickly depending upon our attunement, what I suggest is that you concentrate on a quality, like for example compassion. And you imagine a situation in which your compassion is called upon, is aroused. A person who is suffering, pain or a person in a concentration camp, a person who is dejected, been abused, a person who has lost their self esteem. Somehow your heart goes out to them. That's the practice of Ya Rahim. But just the word doesn't do it for you. You have to not just experience the emotion of compassion but the kind of way that it fashions your subtle body and particularly your aura. This is called making states of consciousness corporeal. Because that's what life is about. That which is pure thought and pure emotion becomes concretized as form. That's the creativity of the cosmos. So now think of that. Think of what is the expression of that countenance of your aura in the fabric of light because your heart has been deeply shattered by the pain of another person. So your compassion, your love goes out to that person. 

You see this is one of the methods whereby we can unfurl the potentialities of our being by envisioning the actualization in real life situations instead of in an abstract way. That's why repeating a wazifa will not do it for you unless you really experience the emotion and also what I'm suggesting is how that particular wazifa, Illahe or sifat, configures itself, fashions itself into the configuration of your aura. That's the way one becomes a beautiful being by unfurling one's potentialities. 

Now another example, a situation requires a lot of control. You can think of a lot of examples, skiing, even a sport of course, piloting a plane, hang gliding, I think of conducting an orchestra. It requires a lot of control. So think of your life as a challenge which calls upon your ability to take responsibility. And there are features that are latent in your being that will only unfurl if you do take responsibility. And then see how it imprints the configuration of your countenance in fact the fabric of your aura. And once it does that, it becomes adamant. Otherwise it's still a potentiality. It comes and goes. Whereas now you've made it adamant. That is what is gained by life. God becomes a reality right into your body. So see how very different this shape, this configuration is from that when you think of a person who is suffering. 

And now you could think of joy. I remember seeing a statue of a Chinese monk in the Golden Gate Museum in San Francisco. And his whole expression is pure delight, such joy. It's, well like you can have moments of glee. For example, watching the beautiful sunrise from a high mountain amidst the clouds when there thunder down below you. There are situations that are absolutely exalting. Being in love. Being absolutely in admiration before a hero who gave his/her life for an ideal like there are some wonderful people like that. Or just thinking of the miracle of life. Isn't that extraordinary that you are here, that we are here together? The miracle of life.

So that would affect the fashioning of your aura. A state of I call it bewondering. It starts by bewondering and eventually it culminates in prayer and glorification. The word used by the Sufis is the splendor. Splendor that manifests as beauty on the earth. And the Sufis always highlight two polar aspects of God. One is splendor and the other is majesty. So splendor manifests as beauty on the earth, heaven on earth, and majesty as the sovereignty, or rather sovereignty as majesty. That is in terms of the wazifa, because there are many mureeds here, it is Majid that manifests a Qaher. That is majesty that manifests as sovereignty. Or then sovereignty, Qaher, that manifests as majesty, Majid. And the sublime. There are different words, Ikram, excellence that manifests as Jamil, as beauty. 

So now you see that we started by trying to capture the emergent potentialities in our being having turned within. Now we're working with another dimension. It's not the dimension that emerges from within recurrently. But it is the transcendent dimension that one represents as descending from above. It doesn't descend from above. But it's convenient to think of it as descending. The exemplar that exemplifies the archetype. Somehow we have that ability to always imagine a quality more wonderful, more perfect than we have been able to imagine so far. That is a sense of the archetype as compared with the way that quality has actuated itself in our character as an idiosyncrasy. So that is the quest of the absolute. A word of Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan, "A passion for the unattainable". Divine perfection is always beyond what one could ever imagine. And it lures one beyond one's limitations. That's the reason for the wasifas. Because we have the capacity of imagining a quality more wonderful than we had imagined so far. And eventually there is that attractor, they call it, that is the divine being.

So in order to resume what we've been doing, let's say that we were in the pendulum moving from right to left and left to right. That is exactly what happens in the zikre. In fact there is a zikre in which one swings to the right then to the left and then the descent vertically. That's a different zikre to the one we studied so far. 

Now what we're doing is we are trying to explore the forces that are pulling us towards the outside of the wheel and those that are pulling us towards the inside. So the centrifugal and the centripedal. That you find also in the zikre. Because after doing the circle, you feel the pull of your solar plexus, so the pull towards the center of the wheel. First of all, the way that you are, fana, resorbed in the void. Then the emergence of something new from the void as your head reaches up from the solar plexus to the heart center then right up to the zenith.

Now we have a very important step. And that is that so far we have been trying to foster the unfoldment of our being or even the actualization of our being by our own free will. For example, I said imagine a situation in which a person is suffering. And your heart goes out to them and so on. That was our initiative. Of course creativity is really the way that the divine initiative, divine will is customized in each one of us in a unique way. So now we encounter I would say what is the ultimate objective of the Sufis. That is embodied in this motto, if I can call it so, this motto that I invoked yesterday. If you look at things from the antipodal point of view to your personal point of view. We learned that already. Because we started to get into the consciousness of more and more people, as St. Frances said that the Universe is looking at you instead of you are looking at the Universe. So that's the way that you start reaching into an antipodal vantage point to your personal vantage point. That is what I call a cosmic dimension. 

Now we want to reach into an antipodal point of view but transcendent rather than cosmic. And that's what we did when we got into Samadhi and we had this overview. And of course, you descended very rapidly when we started to look at the world from this overview. But now one can stay in this vantage point while extrapolating it with the personal one. That's what Sufism is about. It's not just loosing oneself in the divine point, but also seeing how that divine point of view is customized in the personal point of view. Two poles, one infinite and the other finite.

So this is the motto. It sounds like metaphysics. We have to try and really do it. Well maybe I'll approach it by experience rather than metaphysically. So the first thing is, well let me quote Ibn Arabi who says, "Since the ephemeral manifests the eternal, by the knowledge of the eternal, you can have cognizance of the ephemeral". That is you can know yourself by knowing God. Now you would have thought that you can know God by knowing yourself. Maybe both are true. But for example, what do you know of roundness if it is not in round objects? So you don't know roundness except through round objects. Ibn Arabi has sometimes been misquoted, and perhaps it is the knowledge of the ephemeral that will give you a sense of the eternity. So that was said particularly in the prayers of the Moslems. 

One is starting by, one is arousing the qualities, idiosyncrasies which are imperfect. And somehow one is perfecting them by imagining them more and more perfect in order to project them upon what they imagine God to be. So this is the first thing. You can't really know yourself. Remember a moment ago I said you know who you are. But actually you can't really know who you are. And because you can only know who you are through the way which God discovers Him/Herself as you. It doesn't work otherwise. It's bipolar. That's the reason we turn in circles when we meditation if we don't include that divine perspective, then we're caught up in our own little trip. We think we're experiencing ecstasy and that's purely deceptive. 

So how can one look at things from the divine point of view? Well you start by having an overview of our lives. But that isn't quite it yet. It's helpful. Well we can't do it with our will. That is the reason why there is a stage in one's development in which one, a level which is called Malakut, celestial level. That is a stepping stone towards getting into the divine consciousness. It's looking at things, let's say you change your vantage point by identifying with your celestial counterpart. As I said this morning, the child in you and so on. I don't know some of you were there day before yesterday when I was talking about the rishi who was trying to get into the consciousness of that man who was asking a silly question. Like how can one think that way. Then the celestial vantage point is the way that your heart senses situations instead of your mind. The word of Najmoddin Kobra is, "You thought that you were the spectator, but the real spectator is your celestial counterpart". That's a higher level of perception. 

So how would you see things from the vantage point of the angel? Well you would be very sensitive to dishonesty in other people and particularly in yourself. You would be very wary of manipulating people which is of course dishonesty. You would be rather disgusted by the, excuse the term, but psychological filth that you see around you. The angels can't stand filth. And you would be defenseless. You see that's the trouble, the angel is defenseless. So you can't count upon the defense system any more. So it's very special condition. But that's the gateway to get to the divine consciousness, how things look from the divine point of view. 

So I'll repeat this motto again. Then we'll have to have a break. After that we'll see if we can explore that further experientially. This is the real action around which the whole of Sufism gravitates. That is, "I know God through the knowledge that God has of Him/Herself through me. I know God through the knowledge that God has of Him/Herself through my knowledge of Him/Her". And you can go further. Then you say, "God knows Him/Herself through discovering his potentialities in the your form through which He reveals Him/Herself to you". And by discovering God exemplified in the subtle form of your body, that's why we're working with it, you are able to discover the meaning of God beyond form.

So that's enough metaphysics for today. So we'll have our break now and continue in 20 minutes. We'll have to start at 5 o'clock


NOV 14, 1997		Tape 04

Sorry we have to cut it short. Because we had announced that the seminar was going to end at five. Then we changed it which is not a good idea. Just that point when there is just that little bit that we want to do now which is ineffable. How we can do it.


Well I think that to start with, one need to get into one's emotions. Because as I said, it is only the emotion of the soul that will make a transit from the personal way of looking at things and the divine vantage point. So you find that in the stages of Samadhi. It's called Ananda. And in Sufism there is an absolute parallel between the levels and those in Yoga Sutra Patanjali. And it's called Malakut, the attunement of the angelic spheres. So if you observe, you see there is a way of what one can call self examination. That is getting again back into the subject object format. Consider your body as a formation that is molded by the whole Universe. So somehow, if you do that, you are able to disidentify with your body. That's not the objective. But, but still to not be so confined to your body consciousness that you are not aware of the other levels of your being. In the course of meditation, you can do the same thing with your mind. You can observe your thoughts objectively and realize that your thoughts have been conditioned to a very large extent by your civilization, your culture, your environment, your education, and so on. 

So somehow if you are able to look at your thoughts without being right in them, with a certain distance, that's where freedom comes in and detachment. Being able to look at them. Then you can see how they are generated, how they emerge. And so they don't have the same kind of impact on your identity as when you identify them totally.

Now you can do the same thing with your personality. You can observe that you have certain idiosyncrasies which might have been inherited from your father or mother or grandparents or ancestors. So it's something that one needs to life with exactly the way that one needs to live with one's body except that - what I've been saying so far is Buddhism - but in Sufism, having washed your body, you realize that it is not just a formation of the Cosmos regardless of yourself. But as I said earlier on, it carries the hallmark of your being. So instead of discarding it, you do all the things that we've been doing to try and transform it. There is a word of Dr. David Boehm who says, "Be not surprised if a change of meaningfulness is going to alter the circuits in your brain", and eventually alter your whole body. That's what we call the mind/body axis. 


So now think of your body, not just as an instrument, but as something that has accrued to your being in the course of time, course of your descent to the existential state. Consequently it has now become part of you. It's not just something you can unclothe your self with and leave on the planet as you die. In fact it will continue to live after, I mean the electrons are transformed into photons for one thing. And the electrons themselves live forever. Our concepts of death are totally off, not reliable. 


So now if you do that with your mind, your thinking, then you can see how very inadequate our logical thinking is. And consequently you are not caught in it. You see we are interpreting our problems with our inadequate minds. So you realize that there are different levels of thinking. We've already talked about what we imply behind what we explain. That's another level of thinking. There is a level of thinking in which we are able to extrapolate between two thoughts and more thoughts in a concatenation. That's what is called reconciling the irreconcilables. 

There is a way of thinking about one's identity so that you can see that you are a condition of the Universe just like a wave is a condition of the sea. Now you can distinguish emotions. You can distinguish the emotions of the body from the emotions of the mind. For example, if you come across an interesting idea, there is an emotion in it. Now you could consider the emotions of your heart. There you will distinguish an enormous variety of emotions ranging from satisfaction, acquiring something one wanted to have, or being successful, or buying a new car, or if one's love is reciprocated in a personal way. That's the kind of emotion that can quicken the heart and does make one dependent on the situations that arouse emotion. So if you want to get into the divine consciousness, you need to feel very clearly what are the emotions that are affecting you and what level. 

This is particularly true in your relationship with people. You'll find that there are people whose emotions tend to pull you down. Of course you adapt yourself to those people because that's the only way to relate. And if you are too aloof, you don't have a living exchange of relationship, you aren't communicate. So it's very difficult to be able to. In one way one is objective being able to assess the kind of emotion that certain people have the effect of inspiring one, lifting one's emotion, making one high. Others are the depressed or simple you feel the egotism in their emotion that may even call upon the same kind of egotism in yourself. So you have to become, as you evolve, you become very sensitive about the emotions around you. This is still being objective, observing. 

That's the Hindu way and Buddhist. But the Sufi way is to live one's emotions very deeply instead of observing them. For example, the emotion of bodily pain is something that can even lead to ecstasy as Christ on the Cross. I was talking to this woman who was just like my sister. She was tortured in a concentration camp and thrown in a dungeon for dead. She had lost her sight and fractured and so on. There she was smiling at 73 full of joy. What a constellation when I think of my sister. She said that the Nazis used to enjoy your screaming. So you decided not to scream. And she said, "You see if you do it for a cause, there is a kind of ecstasy". And just think of Christ on the Cross, the ecstasy of Christ on the Cross. So instead of that kind of aloofness that you find amongst the sanyasins, even discarding the body, you recognize the way that the cosmic celebration in the heavens is worked out right in our bodies, in the drama of the cosmos. We partake of that drama right in our own bodies. 

And the same thing of the mind. We are not perhaps always aware of the despair of our minds, in our frustration because we have such difficulty understanding the meaningfulness of our life. And the tremendous breakthrough of joy when suddenly the penny drops and we are able to grasp something we never had seen before. For example, think to yourself, "Well as long as I live in these circumstances, I'll never attain illumination". All of a sudden you have that Aha feeling. That's just the circumstances in which you could attain illumination. Because if you are stressed, stress is going to strengthen you. And if you try to evade life, then you're not in the race. So the emotion of the mind. 

Talking with physicists. You think that they are all intellectual. But they experience the ecstasy of the mind. Even just looking at the stars and realizing that, isn't that extraordinary that your glance can reach that distance? The stars that you're looking at don't exist any more, many of them. The Sufis call that perplexity, blowing you mind, as one say in America. You see, the incongruity of it all. Reconciling the irreconcilables. Beating the ordinary logic of the mind will give you a great sense of freedom, freedom from the constraint of logic. The Sufis call it the consternation of the mind, faced with meaningfulness beyond what we could normally grasp in our minds. So we all have that longing. And if meditation can trigger of that breakthrough, then you will meditate. And if it doesn't, you won't. The skill consists in not just questioning your grasp of your mind, understanding, but looking at things from the antipodal standpoint, the divine standpoint. We have that ability.

Now it starts with a practice that you can do on a retreat. It's looking, walking in nature. You think,"Oh how beautiful. It's wonderful". And so there is a kind of ecstasy there, exhalation. And then you think, "Well I was thinking that I was seeing all of this, I was a spectator, but it's really God who is looking through my eyes." That's a further step. There you are walking in nature and thinking, "Ah, I am the eyes through which God sees. Isn't that extraordinary? I am the eyes through which God sees His own body". But if you think that way, you are thinking in terms of duality, God and myself, two different beings. But they are the two poles of the same being. 

So there is a third step, "My glance is the divine glance". That's one of the skills that will enable you to start reversing your vantage point and seeing things from the divine vantage point. So it is working with the Shahid, with the subject instead of the object. When we're meditating we tend to think in terms of the object. Now we're working with the subject. And it's very perplexing because my glance is the divine glance that has been focalized, that has been converged, that has been distorted maybe. But it still is the divine glance.

So I'm saying this now. Could you just see if you can try and do that? We started by being aware of the light in our eyes that we emit, that the eyes emit. Then we talked about the luminous intelligence. Let's think of it as divine intelligence. Then we said that intelligence, the light of the brain is threaded through the glance. Then we said that the light of intelligence infuses the light of the glance. It's not threaded through it, it infuses it. It overarches it. 

So you see the condition for that is to question not just your self image, but your sense of individuality. At the same time. That's a difficult thing. Let's say that the seed of the individuality is still there. It's just because it's difficult to imagine that we are, as Ibn Arabi says, "We are God but, know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God". It's paradoxical. Anyway if you think of God as other, you'll never make it. That's why the Sufis say, "Why do you seek for God up there. He is here".


Now I find that all this is quite difficult. It sometimes flashes in the course of meditation without your knowing how it happened. You have incorporated it for a long time. And all of a sudden it breaks through. There are skills. And so let's say that the clue to the divine being being beyond qualities is through the qualities. Say the wazifa are the clue to the Zikre. You have to start with the qualities. Then you reach beyond the qualities. The Zikre is beyond the qualities. 

You see, according to the Sufis, instead of saying the physical world is Maya, the physical world is made of clues. That is God revealing Him/Herself by means of signals, iyat, signals which give some sense of the reality behind those clues. Like if you've seen the film of ET, perhaps you laughed and cried. Was it because you saw shadows on the screen? I don't think you'd accept that. Was it because you saw ET through the eyes of that lovely child? Yes, that's more so. But actually Spielberg was using those devices. Actually the face of ET was a turtle and the voice was that of an old lady. Spielberg had used those devices in order to communicate to you. 

Think of God as communicating His/Her intention by using devices. And you take those devices to be real instead of just clues. That's the reason why the Sufis are speaking about that which transpires behind that which appears. That which appears is the clue. What transpires is the meaning. That's why we use the wazifa Ya Batin. And that's what we are talking about. So every time that you grasp the clue instead of taking the clue for granted, grasp what the clue stands for, there is a breakthrough of ecstasy. 

That's a thing to do in your meditation. You look at everything like situations in your life. You pinpoint a particular situation. "Ya, I've been judging that situation de facto. And actually that is a clue to what is enacted behind the situation". That is, as I said earlier on, it is a quality. For example the clue in a political ploy is truth. Calling the bluff. You know what I mean. That's a clue. If we just say that situation is terrible, of course it is. But the clue is that that's the only way in which we can grasp what is enacted behind the drama of life. If we are able to see that we're being tested in our ability to grasp what is being enacted. 

Now a further clue is in our own nature. That is the idiosyncrasies in our being are clues as to the divine nature. So the wasifas that we use, Ismelahe, the names of God. They are labels for qualities which are exemplified in our idiosyncrasies. But our idiosyncrasies are just clues that will give us a sense of the divine nature. So God discovering Him/Herself through our personality and through the way that our personality unfurls. Discovering Him/Herself, that is discovering a further aspect of Him/Herself than the aspect of Him/Herself which descends from the Lahut level which is the archetypes that qualify His/Her being. But if His/Her being is far beyond those qualities. Again that's where the clues start at the level of the archetypes. 

So if you look at it that way. And instead of thinking, "I want to understand", you think to yourself, "God is trying to reveal His/Her intention in the circumstances of my life, also in my being. And I can only avail myself of this disclosure if I cease trying to understand and open myself to what is being revealed to me". That's Sufism. That's the meaning of Zahir. We gave the meaning of Batin, turning within. And Zahir. The real translation of the word Zahir is the epiphany. That is the appearance of light actually. That's used in a Christian story, the three kings, wise men who came to see the appearance of light emanating form the baby Jesus. You know everything is the appearance of light because matter is crystallized light. Light is considered to be matter, a special form of matter. So just think that the whole Universe is the manifestation of the divine intention coming through as light. 

For example, a crystal, just imagine a crystal. That could be a subject of your meditation. Now consider that, of course, a crystal does absorb light and emit light exactly as our bodies do. But that crystal is really light that has jelled into what we think is substance. So having jelled as such, is still able to absorb light. Now, think of your body as such. So that is one way in which you could say that the being of God is revealed to you through the light of your aura and the shape of the light of your aura as we've been working with it. 

So instead of thinking, "I want to perfect myself and become a better person", you see you can't do it like that. You can't sit at the table and compose. You have to be shattered to compose. There has to be a strong emotion. It can't be the result of your will. That's why instead of watching your emotions, you need to go very deep into them. There are a lot of people who find it difficult, particularly men find it difficult to get in touch with their emotions. Women find it easier. At least that's the assumption. It's not always true. But that doesn't mean being sloppy either, mushy. There is a kind of mushy spirituality about. Look around, you'll see it. We can be aware of the emotion of the heart. I think psychotherapists are trying to make us aware of the emotion of the heart. But spiritualists are trying to make us aware of the emotion of our soul. And that is not mushy. That's very deep.

I must say that what they call wasaif, these qualities do to you is to pinpoint aspects of yourself by the fact that they have been disclosed to you. They are being disclosed to you all the time. Then they you will play a part in your world view. For example, the wazifa Ya Majid which is - as I said before the Sufis are Jelali and Jemali - majesty. What Hujwiri said is that if you lend yourself to the divine ecstasy, you are burnt by the fire of the divine majesty or you are illuminated by the light of the divine splendor. Those are not necessarily alternatives. Maybe they can be combined. So what I'm saying is that the emotion of the soul, in order for it to be genuine, authentic and not the emotion of the heart - although they are not separate. The emotion of the soul can work in the heart - requires a sense of majesty which you find in the great masters and saints and prophets, great majesty. I saw it in my father Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan.  

It's a kind of a sense of your spiritual status. It's a very important message of our time because it's become slovenly. Everything goes. Gross and vulgar. Loss of the sense of dignity. Sufis use the word adab, dignity, nobility. Buddha also talks about even the stance that corresponds to your state of realization. The more realized you are, the more noble you are. Everybody is in a place in life according to their degree of realization. 

So you see that particular wazifa draws our attention to an aspect of ourselves which will make us get in touch with the emotion of our soul. For example we would like to have more authority. We would like to be more successful in life. We find that people who are more successful have more authority. Of course the catch 22 in it all is that if we try to develop more authority, we are on an ego trip. So this is a great secret to be able to embody the divine sovereignty without it being an ego trip. And that is an emotion of your soul rather than the emotion of a person. 

So that's where the practices with the wazifa will give you access to - what I'm trying to do as you probably noticed, is to try to explore the skills that will enable us to make this quantum leap to see from the divine point of view. The wazifa are just exactly that bridge. 

So what Pir O Murshid says is that he calls it the divine inheritance. That these are qualities that we inherit. And they will remain latent unless we arouse them, call them forth and actuate them in our personality. So instead of thinking, "I want to develop this quality". It's better to think, "I inherit this quality, but it is still recessive", as one says in biology instead of dominant, instead of active. "But it can be called into action by my concentrating on it, treasuring it, valuing it, and by my realizing that it is God who is disclosing His/Her sovereignty to me in as much as I exhibit it in my personal idiosyncrasies". That is that's the link. It's got to be like when I'm walking or when I'm talking, I'm really making that divine sovereignty a reality in my being. That's what Pir O Murshid means by making a God a reality. That's what life is about. 

Of course we are still thinking in duality. We're saying, "God is disclosing Him/Herself to me". The curious thing is we start by thinking in terms of duality. It's very difficult to think that it's all one. One could say, "It is my higher self that is disclosing itself to my lower self". It doesn't matter what terms you use. But it is true that in the course of our spiritual journey, we discover levels of our being. That's what we mean by our higher self. I mentioned this, talking about the way we are in the world, we are of the world. So maybe that's what we mean by the higher self is the divine qualities before they are distorted in our personality. That's what the wazifa is about. One is trying to imagine the perfection of a quality. 

But the way to do it according to the Sufis is to think of - well it's illustrated by a word of Pir O Murshid when he says, "God discovers His perfection in our imperfection". That's a very challenging thought. The voice of Caruso present within its distortion. The archetype present within exemplar. Roundness present in round objects. Rosehood present in roses and so on. The archetype present right there in the exemplar. Not up there, but right there. So you see that there is this kind of interplay of my knowing God by the knowledge that God has of Him/Herself as me and God knowing Him/Herself by disclosing Him/Herself in the very form in which I discover God in myself. That's Sufism.

Now there are wasaif that will help us to reach into the higher emotions instead of the lower emotions. Rejoicing because you have been elected as the present of your club. Higher emotions. So there are two wazifa that I think are of great importance. First of all Ya Azim which is one could call it magnificat. Then there is Ali which is Gloria. So the difference between magnificat and Gloria, to magnify the Lord. A sense of amplitude, of vastness, the cosmic dimension. One thinks of the galaxies, the marvel of the universe. Your consciousness exalts in that sense of bounty. The richness that is coming through. I call this bewondering. One never ceases to be amazed by the wonder of life. If you withdraw from life, then you can't quite. Because that marvel includes the bad things too. 

For example, I used to have difficulty in some of the bad wasifas, like one is being dishonored. So I would call it bad wazifa. But that's a misnomer, of course, because I think it was a word of Jalaluddin Rumi who said, "God discloses Himself also through blame, not just through virtue". So if you know what it's like to be dishonored, then you try to arrange your life so that you don't get dishonored any more. 

So you see how this works in life in the drama of the cosmos. So Azim is somehow related with the sense of being honored that's Muiz. So somehow your exaltation in the marvel of life will confer upon you honorability which is of course a divine quality. And it will uphold your emotions into that high level. For a moment it's cosmic. Then you have the high level which is Ya Ali. That's the Gloria instead of the magnificat. Somehow it is always imagining a greater perfection than you've imagined so far. So therefore in your act of glorification, you are projecting on God those qualities that you're familiar with, but imagining them ever more perfect than you've imagined them so far. So you are uplifted. Instead of exalted, you are uplifted and inspired. 

(tape turns)

An epistle of Al Hallaj was crucified when he was trying to communicate his experience in a very high meditation. Trying to get into the divine consciousness of God discovering Him/Herself in the very first stage in those qualities. Discovering not Himself, but an aspect of Him/Herself which can be predicated in the qualities. And exalting in that discovery of those quality. But then in order for those qualities to become real, He had to project them into beings. So we are the incorporation of those qualities. So instead of your thinking of yourself as a person, you think that I am these qualities that have materialized, actuated themselves as my nature. So just imagine that's a totally different way of looking at things. That's the way of looking at things as a dervish. Instead of thinking, "I am me. I am a body", "I am the embodiment of all these great qualities which I invoke in those wasaif. And then according to Al Hallaj, he says, "Then God salutes the human being and complements him on his good looks". There you see the "importance of the form. What's happened is that a reality that has no form assumes a form. 

And that's the reason for our quest for beauty. That's why we like flowers. We like to have a beautiful house. We like to have things beautiful. So we mustn't think it's selfish. It is that somehow we are actuating the Ishq Allah, the divine impulse. So it's building a beautiful world of beautiful people. So what are we doing with this world? Just the other way around. We're blowing it up in fact. Very very close to blowing it up. This beautiful planet. If it was inhabited by beautiful people, we wouldn't blow it up. I forget now who said this. Perhaps it will come back to me. Because you know we have the power to melt that metal of the canons as Uri Geller. Or can we melt the hearts of people? 

I remember a rishi telling me that in the mountains, the world is in such a danger. But that was many years ago. It's even more true. He said, "Violence is not going to help. It will just beget violence". The only answer is the exaltation of the human spirit. If you are here, it's probably because you feel a call to do that. Because that's the only thing that will save the planet. 

So it's not because we want to become better, that's a selfish motive, but we want to fulfill a purpose. We want our lives to be meaningful in a bigger context than ourselves. So what we are trying to do here is to explore ways of doing it. Instead of samadhi, thinking of it as awakening beyond life, think of it as your emotions get transfigured into higher and higher emotions. And it's true that's Ananda Samadhi in the Sutras of Patanjali. According to the Sufis too, it is that which will give you access to the next level which is seeing things from the divine point of view. Malakut will lead to Jabarut. 

I was trying to avoid referring to these terms because we get loaded with too many terms. So I haven't used many Sufi terms. But sometimes it's good to have some sense of the lie of the land, an index system. So I'll end it by telling what they are. To start with Nazut which is a purely existential level and particularly the physical one. Then Arwha which is the level of, the etheric level, the subtle body. Arwha, Rhu, Roha in the Jewish language, spirit. Then Mithal which is the world of metaphor. That's what we worked with, creativity, Mithal. The myth if you like. Then the next one is Malakut, which is the celestial sphere. 

And the thing is that to be creative, it's not good enough just to enlist the spontaneous thoughts that are emerging ex nilo from within. One has to include all the levels of one's being. That's the reason for the Zikre. That's why, you see one can be creative in a way that is not holistic. You know that there are compositions which are very compelling, which do not exalt you but are very exciting and so on. But a great composition, even Beethoven of course, is able to bring something of the divine into the human. And so that is not something that emerges from within. That is where access to the heavenly spheres is the next phase. It's celestial emotion. So Ya Ali will give you that sense of celestial emotion, the glorification of the angels. 

Then the next level is Jabarut which is the same thing from the divine point of view. That's where we're working with the subject instead of the object. The subject in us is the divine knower, the divine spectator, Shahid. After that is the level of Lahut which is the level of the archetypes which is what we exemplify in the wasifas, in the qualities. After that there is Ha-hut which is beyond all qualities. That is the attractor beyond the wheel. It is the eternal level of our being.

So I have to end here. It's 6 o'clock. I hope that I've given you a few clues that will help you in your meditations. I don't expect you to be able to remember everything I said. Even if there are just a few things that are meaningful to you, work with them. Then perhaps there will be something else that will trigger off further insights and help you to fulfill the purpose of your life. It has been very wonderful for me to be sharing with you. I know it would have been wonderful for you if you had been able to be more interactive. But then I wouldn't have been able to bring all this through. It would have taken up more time. But somehow I have been picking up your thoughts and the call of your soul. So we have been sharing bread at the same table. 

God bless you now.

NOV 15, 1997		Tape 05

So we would like to follow up what I introduced this morning and do practices that hopefully will help us to become more capable of administrating healing to those people who are in need of (sekura). So I would suggest starting by simply thinking of the galaxies and just for one moment if you can feel how your body is a further extension of the big bang, the star dust, how it kept on being molded and remolded and it keeps on being further fashioned as your body and the way that it is the tremendous (encouragements) behind it all has made it possible for your awareness, your consciousness to emerge.  Having this matter of your body as the support system and so that's the first thing.

So if you don't think of your body anymore as what they call a discrete entity like a fragment of a, like a for example a portion of an orange for example but its the whole universe is somehow converged as your body and not only converged but as evolving as your body.  It's an extraordinary thought and that evolution of your body, of the very cells of your body is in someway a function of your realization, in fact of your understanding upon the very cells of the body.  Now can you think of the cells of the body, of your body as endowed with some measure of intelligence perhaps even some kind of emotion and even some kind of thinking and how they connect with each other by coordinating their activities so that they co-operate and that co-operation is only possible by the diversification of the genes.  Those that are active and those that are recessive.  So you can establish that connection you know exactly like a horse rider can establish a connection with his or her horse.  So the horse is able to read his/her mind or your dog for example or a falconer with a falcon.  

There's a thought connection and so the cells are if you if the cells are aware that you are aware of them they will connect up with you.  You cannot order them about like in a military situation, no but your awareness of them is going to confer upon them a delight and the consequences is that they will start dividing.  Now of course it is true that having arisen out of the big bang and as I say the star dust and the galaxies, we now each fragment of the totality, we are able to enrich ourselves by the environment, the physical environment, the psychological environment just like feeling food of course at the psychological level.  We are imbibing, not just at the psychological level at the level of pure energy and at the level of light.  Light which is matter.  We are enriching ourselves and therefore as you inhale just imagine to start with let's say let's imagine that the there's a kind of magnetism that moves everything that is the dynamic force behind everything that is all life and consciously draw it into yourself.  At least that's the first step but if you do that then of course you imagine that you are other than the environment.  

The second step would be to consider yourself as a vortex within the, like a whirlpool in a lake for example.  So it's a whole lake eventually gets whirled into the vortex and so in the same way you could say you don't have a boundary.  So you can't say I'm absorbing the environment.  That was the first step, but of the second step, there is a kind of convergence of the universe or the cosmos into, as me not into me, but as me.  It is converging as me. Now can you see that that gives you a different connection with, well the physical matter.  Not just the physical matter of the planet and the cosmos but the energy field, because we, somehow we started our life by being impressed by our image in the mirror and though that gave us the sense of having a boundary, our skin, and now in order to evolve we have to overcome that bypass, that image. So instead of thinking of me connected with the totality.  Think of you as really incorporating the totality.  The word is convergence or confluence.  

And then as you hold your breath can you feel the, I would say even the tingling.  Certainly the jiggling of the cells of your body.  We have that faculty of down playing the interface with the environment and highlighting what's happening within. First we don't quiet realize what's happening, but I draw your attention to the fact that you can really switch your attention from the normal interface with the environment and the way to do it is to, I must say to, well to give vent to your need for freedom.  It's a very deep need.  We are somehow torn in the horns of a dilemma between our need for involvement in life with people and our need for freedom.  To turn within you need to at least for the time being while your turning within you need to as I say find in yourself that need to not depend upon external circumstances so that you can rely upon the power that emerges from within.  

That's the secret of the dervish and also the sanyasin and the Buddhist monk: independence.  It gives you great power. So if you turn within, you at first thing to do is to try to see if you can be aware of the cells of the trickling of the cells in your body.  You are giving them, your supplying them with a further energy by becoming aware of them.  As I say, it's just like communicating with your horse or your dog or your cat. Now as you exhale, now there are again two steps.  The first step would be to think that you are radiating energy from your body, from even, from the pores of the skin, but that's just the first step. The second one is to think there's a kind of ebb and flow of energy.  So now your reversing the ebb and shifting into the flow. Alright now if we were to, if we could pass as next phase which would be working with light instead of magnetic or magnetism or electro magnetic field.  So let's do that.  If you can.  

Well I missed a step, I must say and that is, that as you hold your breath you're aware of the jiggling of your cells and the energy that you are giving to them by your act of consciousness, but I think of that, there is a template which organizes the cells of the body, and that template is actually it is your electro magnetic field. You know there has been a lot of scientific research, that connection.  So that instead of identifying with your body now, you are a force field or a life field and your body is a formation within this field and therefore this field is pulsing as you exhale and inhale and is, how can I say, intermeshed with the field of the universe.  Just like a wave gets so intermeshed with the wave interference pattern that you've lost sight of the wave.  It's still there. Okay now if we should, we pass on to the light field then we have something perhaps even more concrete to work with because the cells of the body are able to absorb light from the environment.  That's a scientific fact.  

So you know how you feel when you're sunbathing.  Something like that.  You're opening the pores of your skin. So imagine that indeed the pores of the skin, actually this is just imagery, they are opening up and they allow light to get absorbed into the cells of the body.  The cells of the body are now exalting because of the fresh dispensation of energy.  So as you hold your breath.  If you can once more, you're not just experiencing the jiggling of the cells but your experiencing the sparkling of the light of the cells and what you're exalting in glee because, you know light is energy and so. This is a scientific fact, but I mean observation, but the electrons within the cell have to tow the line to a certain constraint upon their freedom.  They have to conform to a certain pattern of orbitals, but as soon as they acquire more energy, by further (dispention? dispensation) of energy by absorbing light then they're able to jump their orbital and reach the next one.  So that's called the dance of the cells and that's the meaning of the dance of Shiva.  The dance of the cells.

Now if you are sorry for yourself, it's difficult to acknowledge the joy of your body.  So our psyche played a part in this and I know it's very difficult to be happy and sad, if you are sad also, but one can be happy and sad at the same time.  Just like there can be sun in the sky and rain at the same time and then you have a rainbow. It's not at the psychological level now.  It's in your very body.  A kind of a sort of tingling.  It's more than a tingling.  It's a real rejoicing of the cells and the ecstasy of light.  And then of course once they have absorbed all that, as much energy as they could within their capacity then unfortunately they fall back to where they were before and then of course it's happening all the time. So you know it's as though you inherited money from your Aunt and you went on a world trip and then when you came back you had to get back to your job again.  But you had a good time.  So it's like that.  

So whatever little bit of energy remains, like you have a few foreign coins, well that energy is radiated out as light.  And therefore as you exhale be aware of the light that you emit.  And it's not the light that you, it's not light that you reflect, as in the mirror for example.  That light has been processed by the very cells of your body and so it was a different kind of light that is radiated. Now you can, this is something that you can, you can enhance the radiation of your aura consciously.  In Tokyo there's a cell, that you can sit in a cell and if you're able to radiate enough light you'll switch on an electric eye and then the whole thing lights up.  So you just try to radiate as much light as you can so that you set the whole system into working. Now one thing you can do is imagine a flower.  That's something I do myself.  Imagine a flower as a bud and as you become more aware of the light of your, that is emitted from your heart center.  Try to imagine that the (pit) of that bud are opening up, unfurling or it becomes a beautiful flower.  

Now this is a practice that you could do with a patient.  Imagine the patient with, I'll tell you what I do myself.  I represent to myself mainly the face of the patient, but if I know what the illness is, then the body, in blue.  Like a blue picture.  And then I represent to myself that person as they might be if they were well in violet.  And those two images are superimposed and then somehow I try to imagine how the blue image would gradually get transformed in order to conform to the violet.  Could you do that?  Now think of a patient.  Now to start with simply think of the face.  You can see on the face of the patient that they are suffering pain and all that, depleted, at the blue. Now you ought to be able to do this, what you have to do is to be able to grasp the countenance behind the face.  That's what the Sufi's call 'that which transpires behind that which appears.'  

So if you (and Menur) are going to do this and then we'll do another practice then we'll come back into a practice with two images. So can you imagine that your face is a mask and that your personality is a model of a role.  It is a role that your playing in life that life expects of you to play and that that's not you. Now as one turns within, one holds one's breath after inhaling.  Well you drop the mask, at least you down play.  And I think we have a kind of inborn intuition of our countenance and the reason why we don't validate that is because we are so convinced about, we identify so much with the image that we see in the mirror, which is as you know, the cheapest and most deceiving and rather disappointing of all feedback systems in the world.

If you are able to question what you see in the mirror and I think a lot of people would be relieved to hear that including myself, then you down play it you see.  You disidentify with your physical image altogether.  And then all of a sudden this, it's almost like a projection of a picture of what you really are, the countenance behind that mask.  And you know it clicks and you know 'this is me.'    Now of course, it's a little more complex than that, because you'll find when you try to aspire to a little further that it does change according to your thoughts and your attunement and maybe it is many faceted or many tiered.  So that you can see defilement in it and at the same time the immaculate core.  Like several super imposed images of, for example the baby and the grown up person or something like that.  You can have a hologram for example.  You can have several images that are super-imposed.  And of course these are various perspectives on the same complex reality which is you or which is the universe as you.  

So as I say, for our logic it's very difficult to reconcile the fact that there's defilement.  Things in ourselves that we don't like.  And at the same time this fantastic, well splendor and purity.  So you get used to doing that.  Exactly as you can get used to shifting your perspective if you're looking at a holograph. For example you see the image of Christ at Turin and then a painting of Christ and then you can toggle your glance from one image to the other.  So you can do the same thing here with yourself.  But of course, the important thing is to be able to extrapolate between those two images rather than toggle. Now the fact is that if you discover, let's say those facets of your image which give you delight.  And they have a way of taking precedence over the aspects that are defiled.  And if you like you could just think that those aspects that are defiled are due to the the spill over of the environment.  Or then perhaps even in one's ancestry, but even then in one's ancestors have also incurred the defilement of the, the spill over of the environment: psychological environment.  

I say the spill over, but I suppose that it does arouse something that is similar in ourselves otherwise it would not affect us, but as I say it is your sense of values that will help you to give precedence to those aspects of yourself that give you delight and that will not just down play the other aspects but eventually even eradicate them somehow. So now this is precisely what you do with the patient.  But this time instead of thinking of the psychological qualities, the defects of the patient, you think of the body configuration and there's been some distortion and some wear and tear.  There's been distortion because of, well extraneous elements like viruses or bacteria or whatever and then there's been some wear and tear of course.  So you can see, if you can see for example if you can see the palace in it's ruin.  

It's a word of Shams (Sabriz) who said, "The man of God is a palace in the ruin."  If you can see, if you can visit (Percepulis) and envision (Percepulis) as a palace while all that your eyes can observe is the ruins, you see.  So this is an extreme example of course, but you could do that with a person.  Or you could imagine that person, their integrity and then where there has been some damage or I don't like the word damage, because it can't be reversed.  So there's been some deterioration, let's say.  Can be restored.  

Now start with your, concentrate on the face of that person and then as I said before, you try to grasp the countenance behind the face and that's where you find a multi-faceted image. You see this is only possible if you're able to question your ordinary logic, your commonplace logic and think of the ability or develop the ability to reconcile the irreconcilables.  That means  in simplistic language it would mean that person is well and ill at the same time.  It's not just that the person is ill.  From one point of view it seems that person is ill.  The other point of view, that integrity is still there.  It's like if you cut the leaf of a plant of, and photograph it in (kirlian) photography that leaf is still there.  

I do admit that this is where faith comes in and that's not belief, it's faith.  There's a difference between belief because it's written in a scripture or somebody tells you, belief is like the ability to believe in the integrity of that person's body despite proof of the contrary.  A kind of act of faith.   And you know that many of the miraculous healings were a miracle of faith because you become the mirror in which that person's contemplating themselves.  And if you just reflect their illness then their going to, you're going to strengthen them in their conviction they're ill.  And if you contended that they weren't ill then that wouldn't be truthful.

You see the paradox is that they're ill and well at the same time. So now we're working with that restorative force that I referred to this morning.  Called it Muid.  A kind of resilience or inertia that restores things to their pristine state if disturbed.  And if you remember I said it's a force that seems to emerge from below.  Some kind of grounding like the roots of a tree for example.  Some, it's very solid, resilience you see. In fact, it does balance, counterbalance a change, the effect of change.  Maintains some kind of continuity.  Otherwise one would be everywhere or one would be all over the place.  One needs to have that solid foundation. So that is in the realizing that somewhere that, as I say that leaf of the tree is still there or somehow that template of the leaf of the tree is still there and if a person's leg has been amputated they still feel their leg.  So somewhere within the nervous system that leg is still there.  

So think of, this would be an anticipation for the experience of death.  That something of the configuration of the body continues to be while the substance is not there or has become dispersed. Like for example the symphony of Beethoven exists if you've never played it or it's not, the partition has been lost or a lot of the music of Bach has been lost, but it's there in the cosmos somehow. That is faith beyond our commonplace understanding. Now the next force that we're going to work with is a power of regeneration.  In a sense it's the counterpart of that resilience because regeneration requires a break down and a break through.  It means change.  It's not restoring the body to the way it was before, but perhaps even turning the tables on the illness to become better after the illness than one was before.  

Then as you know the body is breaking down all the time and if it were not so then there could be no evolution.  There could never be any change.  Everything would be the result of the past. So you think of the emergence of something new.  That is your new person, your new being.  If you are attached to your being as it was, then you're stuck.  Then generally if one doesn't progress then one goes backwards. Now that is called the self organizing faculty of the universe to restructure itself. If you think of, for example the Buddhist Samsadic wheel you  realize that unless one evolves one is rather like a plant that there's a seed and then it unfurls as a plant and then the seed comes and then its recycle itself and so on.  Then that's a wheel that is turning upon itself.

And then you have the image of the wheel that is advancing.  And so to advance it needs to break that pattern of recycling and that requires a vision.  A vision means the ability to see how something could be if it would be as it might be.  That's a vision.  You see, as (Oiler) says, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past." But the future is not there.  We create it.  That is our victory over our condition.  Our freedom.  And that is, represents our ability to overcome the - to some extent, but quiet an extent - the forces of dissolution or disruption or disintegration by imagining how one could be; the part of imagination.  

So we have to be rather careful about the concept of therapy, because therapy seems to me to restore the body or the mind, or the psyche to the way it was before, but I remember that a patient in a psychological, a psychiatric clinic in Paris - when I was a student, who said, ". . .

(END OF SIDE)

. . .turn the tables on it and become better.  But of course one has to encourage this self organizing faculty and so this one of the practices that we do.  And so we're going to do a practice now or several.  So as you inhale you do what we've already done, you experience the convergence of the forces of the universe as your being as the force of your being, let's say the force field of your being.  And then when you hold your breath, well I would say towards the end of the inhaling, start concentrating more and more on the solar plexus and imagine it to be like a gate into the unknown; into what is called the void.  

It's not really the void, but it's the void because we don't know, because it represents a subliminal level of reality that is a represents potentialities, possibilities that have not yet existentiated themselves, activated themselves in an existential manner.  

So just think of, you see this is creativity, you see.  You think of the incredible possibilities that your realistic mind considers to be utopian, but the fact is that the whole universe is potentially present within your being.  And so it's not, if one can see that then it's not utopian at all.  It's very realistic.

For example, envision yourself as dancing with joy and, "Well, why don't I dance with joy?  Well life is hard and people are mean and so on."  There's always, "and I don't feel well and so on."  There's always an excuse.  "I could be radiant.  Why am I not radiant?  Well because I have a low self image and so on."  Always a reason.  Those are the potentialities, possibilities.  "I could beat my record.  Today I could walk one mile, but it was strenuous, but tomorrow I'll walk a mile and a half and day after tomorrow I'll walk three miles and so on."  The idea of increasing your capacity by envisioning yourself doing it.  

So that, when you exhale now, that is when you make the transit from the possible into the actual.  That's where you need to translate an emotion or an emotional impulse or even a thought into a form.  That is creativity.  Creativity is the ability to translate an emotional attunement or thought into a form. And the form being the form of your body or the form of the cells of your body or the configuration of the cells of your body and the organs of your body.  That's a form. So now you're calling upon a kind of inborn faculty that we have to rebirth ourselves or to let the recurring rebirthing of the universe, to facilitate it in ourselves.  And it's a matter of really capturing the new dispensation as it emerges.  It's like, you know looking at the crocuses as they break through the snow.   Or for example, let's say that there are fresh pedals in a flower that are not yet unfurled and for them to unfurl, first of all the jaded petals have to fall apart, but furthermore - in this particular case - you have to pay attention to the forth coming fresh petals in your being.  That is how you could be.  Those are the fresh petals.  

You have to give them a support and also a support and your faith is the support that you give them.  Your faith and their ability to actuate themselves in your personality and your body.  And protect them.  Protect them from the little faith of other people and from your own tendency to have, to doubt.  It's counter productive.  

So I don't know whether you can feel that force coming through as you exhale.  If you hold your breath you're in a state of a suspense.  You don't know what's happening in the deep waters, seed bed of your being, but now as you exhale something new is emerging in me.  And it is not the consequence of the past.  It challenges  determinism conditioning.  It is a feature of my freedom from my condition.  

So just think of a flower that unfurls and you are protecting it and encouraging it. Now you concentrate on the solar plexus of your patient and imagine that something is emerging from the depth and it unfurls in the heart center of that patient, with a transit from the solar plexus of the heart. Now creativity becomes even more concrete when having started by being an emotion or an emotional attunement or a thought, it becomes a form.  One might say an etheric form.  A form without substance and like for example, music.  Music as it's being composed, not yet played.  It's a form without substance and eventually it will manifest as substance.  It will have an impact in the physical world.  One has to make that transit.  Now I take an example.  Will I suppose the most pertinent example would be a case of cancer.  Now if you can, if you are aware of your cells, the cells of your being.  Now see if you can.  See if you can, one can start with very simply, simply are you aware of the taste in your, the mucus of your, the tongue of your palate: salt or sweet or bitter or whatever, succulent.  Wholesome food as against fast food, junk food.  

Now when you swallow that food, this is something you can do at your leisure.  See if you can feel that food in your stomach and feel how your stomach has the same ability as your tongue to sense food and its ability to absorb that food is going to be in someway related with its sensitivity. So there is conflict between that which one likes and one dislikes and so there you have immediately a clue to cancer.  Forcing oneself to imbibe things which, well purely at the physical level, things that are most wholesome. But now lets go a little further.  Can you feel your pancreas?  It's somewhere between your stomach and your spine.  A little bit on the left and your pancreas has a terrible job to do because its, that's where the enzymes of your body are encountering that food, those chemical chains the amino acids and somehow your whole system then with, including the liver and so on gall bladder.  Its all having to process that food.  So that the amino acid chains corresponds with the DNA of your body.   Just imagine the amount of work that they're taking place.  

Now at the psychological level we're doing the same thing.  We're processing circumstances and where we suffer because they do not correspond to what we wish and then there's some sense of self esteem is at stake and so somehow we get over stressed and so we can have an indigestion in the body.  We can also have an indigestion at the level of the psyche.  And both, there's some interference between the two. Now let us go further than that.  Can you feel the drainage system in your body, the lymph glands?  Not just the evacuation of urine, feces, but the actual, the way that a lot of toxins are drained.  It's just like a bathroom, like a toilet, a drainage system that eventually gets shunted in your kidneys and eventually it's expelled.  Now that, imagine that one is cramped and one is blocking that flow.  Exactly you see you can have ulcers in your stomach or you can have a cramp in your intestines.  Same way.  We are.  

Now you can encourage that evacuation by visualizing it.  It's a flow downwards so, there are several ways of doing it, but I suggest that you imagine that there's an aperture at the top of your crown.  And there is energy flowing downwards and it keeps on pushing down all the toxins.  It's a kind of a, you see mind over body.  This our sense of purity you know, which is linked with our concept of the holy spirit, the descent of the holy spirit, quickening of the holy spirit.  Like a dove, but coming down through the aperture at the top of the head.  Now it seems to be pushing the toxins, repelling them downwards.  So as you inhale think of the descent of the holy spirit.  And then as you hold your breath you are just shattered, shattered by the, it's like lightening.  In some way one is dissolved.  So it is good to encourage the disintegration of the body because otherwise you get sclerosed, otherwise that's where illness sets in.  So let it flow you see.  

So its good to encourage that sense of imagine the cells of your body being scattered in space.  It's a sort of pre-figuration of death.  There's a motto of the Sufis, "Die before death and resurrect now."  So instead of hanging onto the cells of your body, enjoy the disintegration, because now they can be replace by new ones. And so the whole drainage system is part of this whole effect of disintegration of the body.  Starting with, of course, the toxins. Now at a, I'd like to do this together with, work at the psychological level, to think of thoughts or emotions that are not appropriate.  Like hatred for someone or jealousy or even resentment or any thoughts or emotions connected with the body that are  ?inappropriate?). The sense of one's self esteem is somehow based upon one's observing one's highest ideal.  And that has the faculty of repelling those toxins in one's psyche that are detrimental.  And do tend to draw one's attunement downwards instead of allowing yourself to be inspired and elated.  So that both together you see.

Then I think they are related in some way.  I don't know exactly how. Now we could pursue this further.  There was a video film that was produced by the American Cancer Society where you can actually see the (microphages) attacking the carcinoma cells and they literally absorb them.  And you can actually see them do it.  It's not the best film.  I'm sure that one could do better and maybe there are better films than the one I saw. And now if you are a cancer patient or if you have cancer patients then you could teach them to visualize the microphage in the area of the (carcinoma).  Now one has a very clear sense of how they look and how they function and so on. So that's why I think its really necessary for us to know these things and go into them and really work. 

You see for example if your lift your arm it's because somehow you are able to visualize your arm being lifted and that will release certain chemicals and nerve transmitters in your body and so when you say 'that's mind over body.'  So if you can visualize the microphages then you will be affecting them.  You will be impacting them with your thoughts and giving them support with your thoughts and perhaps even encouraging their action.  And that's just an example because there are many more. Now if you're a very good healer, you can do the same with your patient.  You can image that whole process happening in your patient.  And the best thing to do of course would be to have them meditate on that at the same time that you are doing it so that you are reinforcing each other. Now that's getting very much into the detail, but there's a deeper, there's a deeper perspective.  The whole body the wholistic with a 'w' paradigm  instead of just working the detail.  And that is restructuring the body lined with one's highest attunement which involves one's self esteem and self image and there are things.  

Now after you do that one would have to, well there are several things one should do would be leading toward that, certain practices. Well here we touch upon the very essence of Sufism and that is always to see things from two complimentary vantage points: one's personal and the Divine vantage point.  Because one's own vantage point is only a very limited view.  And we do have the ability to, as I said this morning, to look at things from the anti-podal point of view. And this applies to healing because the idiosyncrasies of our personality have their effect in the template of the body.  The template, electro magnetic field, the aura and so.  There are many different factors coming in here.  And so in our meditations, very high meditations, we can work with that what they call the subtle body or the aura.  It's easier to work with the aura.  

For example imagine that your aura has a shape or rather a configuration.  It doesn't have a boundary.  It doesn't have contours, but it has some kind of an inner structure.  And so your countenance, what we did a moment ago when discovering our countenance, is made of light, the fabric of light.  And somehow you could extend it to your whole body, not just your face of course.  And now you can't really know what it's like.  I mean we did make an effort to try to capture what we really are in our real being beyond the mask, if you remember, but that was a scene from a personal vantage point.  Now to do the opposite, to see it from the Divine vantage point is of course much more difficult, but of course that's what meditation is about.  

So we're getting into a whole very advanced chapter in meditation which has been very developed by the Sufis.  It's, I'm trying to avoid just making metaphysical statements because that's also you know, but the Sufis would say, Ib'n Arbi says, "It is God discovering himself through our discovery of God."  You know, it's the metaphysical statement.  God discovering him/herself in the very form in which he/she manifests him/herself to him/herself through you and your representation of that archetype contributes towards the knowledge that God has of him/herself.  So to complete this, so that's metaphysics. But what is important is to be able to see if you can envision the subtle form of your aura as it would be seen by the anti-podal standpoint to your own point of view.  Now that sounds difficult, I know and almost impossible, but curiously enough in the course of meditation you can do it.  

There are several methods, one is a, if you could do it now just as a preparation.  For example as you inhale now, could you pass in review each of your chakras, starting by the bottom chakra and moving up second chakra so it effects this heart chakra, throat chakra, the physical eyes, third eye and above the crown, in one inhaling. Now as you, could you think of yourself as a pendulum and the bottom of the pendulum is moving in time/space, but the point at which the pendulum is suspended is eternal and unchanged.  So that  you're the whole pendulum.  So as you lift, as you transfer your attention from one chakra to the next you shift your sense of identity from being an individual, let's say a continuity in change, to being - well discover your deathless state.  That is the quintessence of your being.  No, it's beyond the quintessence of your being.  Quintessence of your being is like perfume, it's the way that one continues to live after death, but it's even beyond that.  It's like the reality of your being, which is deathless and unchanged.  And which is contiguous with all other beings so that it's impersonal.  

It's like a lot of pyramids that all have the same apex.  And so this requires the ability to realize that you could exist without a body, as Jalaluddin Rumi says, "I walk without feet and I fly without wings and I see without eyes and I hear without ears."  And I would add, "I think without a brain."  So if you consider your body as a support system for yourself as pure intelligence.  And then, well as you inhale as soon as you ex, well then you hold your breath and your in that Samadhi state, beyond time and space and then as you exhale you experience the impact of that intelligence upon it's support system. And so it is rather like looking at things from a birds eye view instead of aspiring to ascend upwards, you are looking down from a high pinnacle.  That is as you inhale you are aspiring high and as you exhale then your looking, well when you hold your breath your looking down.  I know, sorry.  No when you hold your breath you're in Samadhi state.  When you're exhaling then that's when your looking down.  And impacting your body with the power of the holy spirit.

Now of course there are two dimensions.  One is called the (error?) of time, evolution.  There's another dimension that's represented by resurrection and that is like the perfume of the flowers.  So that the flowers do have to fall apart so that the perfume will carry them further into eternity.  So it's accepting death as a promise of resurrection. We'll need to go into this further.  We have to have a little break now. But, it's the ability of matter to be transformed into spirit and as a matter of fact the electrons can be transformed into photons and then they live eternally.

Could we say just a quarter of an hour?  Because this time is very precious.

NOV 15, 1997		Tape 06

Yes, so there are some further practices to do as for what we try and anticipated in the last things I said a moment ago. You see for there to be evolution there has to be a fast turnover of people.  Otherwise things wouldn't change.  And I don't know why people think that death is a bad thing.  That we have to keep people on the planet at all costs.  

It's much better to undergo a process of resurrection while one is on the planet and then death is just a transit.  So I don't know why we think that we need to cure people absolutely, so they can keep on living as long as possible.  We have to accept that there's a natural disintegration of the body, but at least take advantage of those fantastic regenerative factors that we talked about in order to be able to promote resurrection instead of longevity.  So the Sufis have of caused a lot of teaching about that.  

See in practice, if I translate in terms of science, then of course the, as I said the electrons are transformed into photons.  It's just extraordinary when you think that we were born out of an explosion of light and that we end up being beings of light. So it's very interesting to see how one can promote that transformation of the, our magnetic field into an aura and also the different levels of the aura, of light.  Cause that's resurrection passing from one level of light to the next, in what is called  celestial spheres. So we did start with working with magnetism as you know.  There are four different forces that we're using in healing.  And now we want to try and pursue the practices of light which I started, but there are further practices to do.  

So once more as you inhale you think of, you remember there were two stages of light.  At first you thought that you were a body that was absorbing light and eventually radiating light and then between when you're exhaling radiating light and when your holding your breath and you were conscious of the effervescence within your cells. 

Then at the second step/stage, if you remember, we identified ourselves with our aura, which was a template in which our electro magnetic field is formed.  And then we experienced this pulsing, this ebb and flow of the light of the stars, as a matter of fact, converge as your aura and radiating in the universe.  Eventually the photons of your aura hit the stars ( ) the stars, because they're traveling the speed of 186,000 miles a second.  

So that's a good thought like that your aura is really is the light of the stars.  That there's no discontinuity between them.  "It's all one fantastic dance," as Jalaluddin Rumi says. So that, I would say that's the first vision.  Instead of thinking that your body has emerged out of the fabric of the star dust, think that your aura is part of, an integral part of the light of the stars and that there are several levels of light. So as you inhale then you think of the, the way that the light of the stars converges as your aura. But now as you hold your breath, instead of concentrating on the sparkling, well first of all the jiggling of the cells and then the sparkling of the auras of the cells.  Concentrate on, what Pir-O- Murshid Inayat Khan my Father calls, the all pervading light.  And of course you find this amongst the old Sufis, Ib'n Arbi says the same thing and (Nasrah din Kubla) and (Serbn Arbi) say the same thing.  

It's what Dr. David Boehm would call the implicate state of light.  That is instead, like radio waves for example, they are not located in space.  They are spread out throughout space.  So the difference be, a radiant light is emitted from a source of light that is localized in space, but all pervading light is everywhere, always.  It's what we call wave interference pattern. So that's something that we have difficulty in imagining.  We imagine we are an aura, but if we think that the, this all pervading light is the subliminal state out of which our aura emerges in a definite form. So this is how we can work with, you remember I was talking about the energy that emerges from within?  And that eventually you can use this magnetism to heal a patient?  Well the same thing is true of light.  

So as you hold your breath, if you can imagine that the, how can I say, the underpinning?  No, it's not the underpinning; the seed bed of your aura, is an emergent light.  That is not localized in space and time, but as it emerges it becomes radiant light. And so as you exhale, then you (count) yourself radiating light as we did earlier on.  So the important thing is that passage from the emergent light as you hold your breath to radiant light.  And think that you are translucent energy, of light energy that is able to transform this emergent (offerating) light into radiant light. And as a matter of fact you could as you inhale now you could simply imagine this state of light where everything is everywhere and then as you hold your breath it's beginning to impinge upon your consciousness and then as you exhale you're radiating it.  And you make the transit from your solar plexus to your heart center.  The all pervading light, solar plexus; and then it transforms into radiant light in your heart center.

Pir-O-Murshid gives the example of the all pervading light of the universe that becomes radiant light in the sun, for example.  So you think of your heart as a small sun, a micro sun. Now we're going to try and explore the levels of light.  We made a start by transferring our attention from one chakra to the next as we inhaled.  So the first thing to do is of course to really feel the light.  To start with you feel light around your skin and inside your body.  It's not a matter of visualizing it of imagining it but of really feeling it, feeling the light.  You can actually feel it. Now we're going to do some work with that light because if you are aware of your aura you may distinguish colors.  They're not really colors.  They're just different frequencies of light, but you could for example.  

This is mind over body, you can imagine your aura to be yellow, golden.  You can imagine it to be blue, like sky blue and you see that there's a totally different emotional attunement corresponding with each color.  So the yellow is like a radiant and blue is celestial.  Imagine the color red which is active and could be aggressive and green: life giving. Well, these are not just ideas but you can literally do this and I'm sure that your aura will change it's color according to the attunement of your, your emotional attunement and also your visualization.  

Now what we want to do is to, as I say, to explore the different levels of light and so we're proceeding in a perfunctory way using skills.  So to start with if you represent to yourself your aura as a spectrum that you see for example in a rainbow, that's red at the bottom and violet at the top and in between you have all these different colors: vermillion, red at the bottom of the spine, vermillion in the second chakra, orange in the solar plexus, gold in the heart center, green in the throat center, blue in the eyes, violet in the third eye and something like the color of, well the colorless light.  Like a diamond for example with flashes of all different colors.  

So you pass in review each chakra in turn.  Now that has a wonderful effect upon your aura, because it's just like tuning a harpsichord and brings you in a state of harmony.  If you do that every day you'll find that you start the day in a state of, a beautiful sense of orderliness. Now, I have to proceed rather fast because we have so little time.  As you hold your breath, instead of representing yourself as physical light, identify with the light of intelligence, (no wal ocli), the light of intelligence. The Sufis say, "It is the light that sees rather than the light that can be seen."  And it's what the Tibetans call the clear light of bliss. So you've reached the pinnacle of your being, which is pure luminous intelligence rather than consciousness and when you say luminous we don't, we're just, it's metaphor.  We don't mean physical light. Now this is in order to, it's not good enough to visualize this.  In fact you can't do it just by trying to imagine.  How can one imagine non-physical light?  

The only way to do it is to represent to yourself that you are awakening from your ordinary state of consciousness or if you like it is something like shifting one's perspective when one is looking at a holograph.  So one down plays one perspective and highlights another.  So now you down play your, the perspective of the physical world.  And the only way to do it is to consider that it is a perspective, but that's not ultimate reality.  That's a way that things appear.  And then there's a sense that if you down play, that is if you, well even question the absoluteness of your physical experience, experience of the physical world, then somehow you have a sense of awakening.  Can you do that?  Just like one awakens from sleep.  

It's also connected with our assessment of our problems, for example.  If you question the validity of your assessment you consider that it's relative, that will free you from the gravity pull lets say of the existential perspective.  So it's letting go of a perspective. So it's not letting go of your body, but it's actually realizing, identifying with let's call it a template, a different templates of your body, different levels.  So not just the physical body or substantial body and you realize that there's a mode of thinking corresponding to our body identity.  That's the common place way of thinking of most people, but as you shift your sense of identity your thinking changes.  Your mode of thinking changes.  For example you can see things in their context instead of their content and you can reconcile the irreconcilables and so on.  

There are different modes of thinking of the higher mind, beyond the common place mind.  So in a sense you're liberated from your common place logic.  And that's the way to awaken, to question your ordinary logic. Now it's a very, it's an (inconsification) of your (perspicacity).  So it's like being very aware, highly aware, intensely aware but not necessarily aware of the physical world.  It's like consider your body and your mind, your psyche, as Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan says, ". . .as a condition of God like the wave is a condition of the sea."  Can you do that? Consider that your existence on the planet is like a wave in the sea, a condition of the sea, that is passing but the sea doesn't pass of course, but that is not a total ( ition) but in fact, I'm sorry to talk metaphysics but you see that which we have, the know how that we've gained by experience is shunted into the program of the universe.  

That's why Jalalludin Rumi says, "Tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal."  So that's a way to awaken is very close, well is parallel to resurrecting. It's changing your identity and experiencing yourself because that which is reprogrammed into the programming is the quintessence of your know how and so to be part of it you'll have to think of yourself as a perfume of that flower that you are and I think that that flower is going to, the jaded petals are going to fall apart and so on, but the perfume is going to live forever.

The word is everlastingness and everlastingness is not eternity, not the same thing.  So if you can do that you'll awaken and you'll discover that you are pure (illuminous) intelligence and you'll look at your life and you'll look at your life and you'll see that one gets caught in a hoax.  One is so sure that things are the way one thinks they are and suddenly you've awakened.  So you can only awaken if you question your assessment of what you experience. Now the Sufis and of course many other esoteric schools speak about different planes and spheres and I don't know you're going into systems, but how do we experience them?  Well the clue is of course light. Now there's a Buddhist practice given by Buddha himself called (Casina) and I think it parallels some of the practices given by the Sufis.  So I'll try to describe it, if you would just do it while I'm talking about it.  

If you were to cut a disk, a cardboard into a disc and you paint it red and you look at it and then you close your eyes.  You would see a green reflex, wouldn't you?  Now you don't have to do that.  You could imagine the color red as you exhale and as you inhale, don't try to imagine green, but I think that you will see a green disk. Now the next one would be to, as you exhale imagine red, but divide your inhaling into two parts and so the first you see green and then the second you'll see, I think orange.  So you're seeing the reflex of a reflex and then you can go on. You can divide your inhaling in three and then you'll see violet and so on and then it's beyond one's sense of colors, but you could go on and just imagine frequencies of light but that's difficult because our imagination is somehow limited by our perception.  But now the real practice consists in imagining light, colorless light as you exhale and as you inhale imagine the reflex of light without any color.  It's just, well there's no use, I can't evoke it by talking about perception.  So it's beyond perception.  

And then you train yourself to imagine, to divide your inhaling in two and imagine the reflex of the reflex and so on. Now that is however, I mean you're imagining light which you would be perceiving and then eventually beyond perception, but it still is the object. But now we want to do the same thing with the subject in us and for that I think there's no use my you know, saying, talking about principles.  We have to know how to do it.  So the practice would consist in, if you can do it first of all, with closed eyelids.  You represent to yourself the beams of your glance. Now ordinarily we're not aware of the beams of our glance because our eyes are instruments of perception and consequently the retina, well through the cornea, the retina absorbs light and that light is shunted as threaded along the optical nerves and reaches into a certain area in the brain.  In fact eventually it infuses the whole brain.  

Now that's, we are aware, I think you're aware of the light impinging upon your eyes and of course we're not aware.  Just think of this light as being threaded up the optical nerve and reaching right into your brain as you inhale. Now as you exhale, the opposite happens or at least imagine the opposite and that is that the light in your brain is threaded through the optic nerves and passes through the retina and the cornea and reaches out into outer space. Now normally we're not aware of this light, because you know when the sun is in the sky you can't see the stars although the stars are much brighter.  So one is not aware of it.  But if you close your eyes and concentrate on those two beams.  You will be aware of them.    What you could do is, as you open your eyes imagine the light of the environment impinging upon your retina and reaching up into your brain and as you exhale then open, well if you, no.  Well if you can.  I would say hold your breath and represent yourself those two beams of light.  

Now as you exhale see if you can open your eyes without letting your eyes being forced into focus by the, the way the objects look  or just, it looks like a blur, you see?  Just concentrate very intensely on those two beams of light. Okay, now the next step.  Well you have to do this for months and months.  You can't hold it very long.  So you, when you start opening your eyes you try to see if you can keep on concentrating on the beams of light.  And eventually when you start seeing the objects then you close your eyes and start again. Now eventually you're able to do this with your eyes open and then if you look in the direction of the person you don't see the features of the face but you see the features of the aura of the face.  And you can do the same thing with a flower, for example.

Okay, now let's do the next step and that is we introduce a period of retention of breath between inhaling and exhaling.  And as you hold your breath turn your eyeballs upwards.  Press your tongue against your palate.  I mean curl your tongue and press the bottom of the tongue against your palate.  Hold your breath.  Now at this time then represent to yourself that your aura is just the support system and your real being is pure luminous intelligence. So you make a quantum leap from identifying with your aura to identifying with the light of intelligence.  And now when you exhale, can you imagine that the light of intelligence is somehow passing through your glance.  Just like the River Rhone passes through the Lake of Geneva. And that is the way in which, looking at a person you don't just see their, the countenance behind their being but you look right into their soul.  And that is, I think that is what (Najma din Kubla) means by 'the witness in the heavens', because now instead of working with light as the object, we're looking, we're working with light as the subject: the witness, Shahid the witness.  

Now can we have a little more clues as to how to really identify with the light of intelligence?  Well again you have that picture of the pendulum.  So that we think that your body is changing and moving in time/space and eventually disintegrating and being reborn again and all the (pet) recycling, but I spoke about the samsadic wheel.  So the body recycles itself, so does the psyche and so on unless we evolve.  But to evolve there has to be an attracter that causes the wheel to advance. Now this is metaphysics, but I'm sorry, but it is metaphysics and that is that the attracter is not in the future.  It's eternal.  It's very difficult to understand that.  There is an element in our being that is not of the nature of becoming and that's what Buddha says when he says, "This becoming does not lead to the non-become." 

So that you need to make a total quantum leap from those aspects of yourself that are subject to becoming to change and really find that point in your being that remains unchanged.  And that is the greatest power that there is.  And that's the power of Qaddus, the Holy Spirit.  It's not the emergent power that we talked about.  It's not Hayy, the energy of the environment. So could we do that.  We just consider your body as a condition of the cosmos and your mind as a condition of the Divine Mind and your personality as a condition of the Divine Nature and it's all moving and hopefully evolving and deteriorating and reborn again.  It is a continuity in change.  Just like it's never the same water that passes under the bridge, but it's the same river.  If you could think that way.  So the consequence is that you develop a kind of detachment with regard to those things which used to be so important for one.  It's all passing.  

Now if you could see your life in a, from a high perspective.  You know life on the planet is like a very short episode in eternity.  And you see things, one is caught in a perspective.  And one is so convinced about all those ideas one has and assessment of one's problems and one's self image and one's logic and so on and so forth.  And one becomes dependent upon one's understanding.  Ultimately freedom is freedom from opinion, freedom from dependence, freedom from one's self image and freedom from one's notion of one's individuality.  It's all in (formations). And life is an opportunity, yes to achieve, transform circumstances.  Yes to unfurl the potentialities of one's being, but ultimately to awaken.  And that's called the state of illumination, the ultimate value.  

Now this is going to impact your aura and will help you to heal with light.  In the Qoran it is 'A Light upon a light.'  That's the meaning of a light upon a light.  The light of intelligence that, how can I say, acts as a thunderbolt upon the aura and causes it to spark and fluoresce.  You can see that, see that connection.  You see this is what Christ means by being in the world but not of the world.  So it's not the ascetic.  It's not the ascetic who's not in the world.  You are in the world, but not of the world. And then you're very sensitive to worldliness: to the games of the egos, to the ploys, to the manipulations, to the machinations, to all the hoax that you find all around you.  Cause you're awake.  You don't let yourself be fooled anymore.  

So that if the disintegration of the body has linked to illumination then it was worthwhile. And that's why Jalaluddin Rumi says, "Take a pick ax and destroy your house and you might find a treasure underneath."  And I suppose our simplistic minds would say, "Well, but supposing I don't find a treasure?"  That's a secret treasure.  As the Sufi's say, "It's the treasure that desired to be known."  That's what we mean by God.  And which we cannot know but which is revealed to us. So now we come across the real, how can I say the crux of Sufism, which is, 'that to know we have to open ourselves to the knowledge being disclosed to us instead of thinking that we can acquire it.'  And that's where the role of God is absolutely essential,  because otherwise how can you know if you?  How can you know something that is disclosed to you, if you?

(End of side)

. . .in the programming of your life.  Just imagine, he/she is discovering him/herself by disclosing him/herself to you.  That's paradoxical. And that's why the Sufis say, "Perplexity, perplexity."  The dervish is always perplexed and Pir-O-Murshid says, "God himself is perplexed.  The best thing that can happen to you is to be perplexed." And the consequence is a very deep emotion, the emotion of perplexity.  Because all those crutches that you depend upon in your logical thinking, are so convinced of, fall apart you know? Now perhaps we have, we could terminate with what one might call the staple food of the Sufis, which is the practice of the Zikr.  

There are many ways of thinking of it and of doing it.  If you could just make a circle with your head.  That's the samsadic wheel actually.  If your head, you turn your head toward your left shoulder and then your solar plexus and then.  Well no, actually your left knee and your right knee and your right shoulder and then right up to the zenith, that would be a three-quarter of a circle, but then continue then now and again circle towards your left shoulder and so on.  Like keep on like imagine a wheel.  So you can think of the whirling of the galaxies and the planets and of course the dervish whirling.  That's the samsadic wheel.  

So now there are two forces that are generated in the wheel and that is centripetal and centrifugal.  So centrifugal first.  So perhaps you can experience like the dispersal of your being into the starry sky.  That's, you know it's the experience of death, disintegration and as a condition for rebirthing of course. Then you will also feel a centripetal force.  As something that keeps on drawing you toward your solar plexus.  Somehow your solar plexus is the center of the vortex of your magnetic field and your aura.  It's a void.  It's the center of a whirlwind for example is a vacuum.  You feel that somehow you're being dispersed in, at the jagged ends and you're being.  So now when you, this time now as you exhale you go into the circle and when your head reaches the, turns up towards the zenith, now if you, you can feel that pull of the solar plexus, the centripetal force and so at that, and your head you are in the most (labil), the most vulnerable state.  The Sufis call (kamal) state and so you let your head bow towards the solar plexus.  So it's a (swicle/swivel?) of circle and then you have the vertical lines.  


So you have these two principals in life the recycling and then the (tension) that frees you from the vicious circle.  So when your head comes down you inhale and hit the solar plexus and then rebound and continue inhaling as your head rebounds upwards. So if you can think of it as a circle of light and then an arrow of light descends upon your solar plexus and when it rebounds the heart center starts exploding.  The light sparkles, radiating from the heart center and you keep on moving up because the high chakras are radiating a more subtle light than the heart center.

Now as you, you see that of course your attention is drawn to your heart center as you move from the solar plexus up to your crown center.  I mean you transfer your attention from one chakra to the next.  So at the time when you concentrate on your heart center, that is the time when, if you're a healer, you radiate, you send, you broadcast light to your patients - from your heart center - and it's only if you really love your patient that you can do it.  If you really, however difficult they are, you still love them.  Your heart opens up and you can radiate light into the heart of the patient.  So you think of the heart of the patient, that moment.  It's very short, because then after that your head reaches further up as you continue to inhale.  So remember the, instead of a circle it is a spiral of light that reaches further and further and then you hit the center of that spiral, which is the solar plexus and then the heart.  

Well actually it's a little more complicated than I said, because the solar plexus really does represent the center of the electro magnetic field and the heart the center of the aura of light.  And there you have that transit from magnetism to light, from the solar plexus to the heart. And now as we said, resurrection is, I tried to illustrate the resurrection by the reflex of light, of one light and then another light.  So that's what you do after concentrating your heart center, then you, as your head moves upwards you think of the different reflexes of a colored slide. But now the clue is this and it's the word of I'bn Arbi, but I think (Jami) says the same thing, he says, or they say, "At a certain point you have to overcome any sense of form."  And that means any sense of color or any sense of physical light somehow.  And that gives you access to the highest spheres.  No more imagination.  No more images and therefore nothing that has any relevance to physical reality.

Now at the end of the ascent, as you remember, you inhale as your head comes down and reaches up again, you hold your breath.  At the end of the ascent you hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upwards, curl your tongue and remember what we said about the light of pure intelligence. So at that point you have reached beyond the wheel.  The wheel recycles itself, evolves.  Right that's everlastingness, but eternity is beyond.  It's outside the wheel and that's what Buddha means by saying the process of becoming does not lead to eternity.  It's a total, another dimension altogether.  And that's the state of samadhi. That corresponds, the words of the Zikr are: la illaha illa 'lla hu.  So you have "la" and then "ill".  So you have in Arabic the "a" is a vertical line and the "l" is the arc of a circle.  But then you have the "h" which is, represents a totally different dimension at the end of the word "'lla".  That's a state of samadhi.  

But the purpose of the Sufis is not samadhi.  That is it's not awakening beyond life.  It's awakening in life.  Awakening beyond life, that's for the ascetics in the Himalayas, yes.  But the dervish is right there in the marketplace for you.  Not in the cave.  He or she is there for you.  That's awakening in life. Well what could that mean.  So when you, the "h" is followed by a "u".  La illaha illa 'lla hu.  And so you touch upon the "h" for just a split second, a slither of a second, and then your head turns towards your heart center, in fact towards your physical heart.  Not the heart center but the physical heart. Of course I have pondered upon why the physical heart instead of (al ha) the chakra.  And the reason is because that is where the impulse of the new circulation of the blood starts.   Just like a locomotive, the point at which the piston communicates it's energy to the wheel, it's not at the center of the wheel but offset from the wheel.  That's life.  

So awakening in life would be something like having, being privy to the Divine Strategy, the Sufis call it "(Uns)".  Having been privy to the Divine Strategy, that is understanding the Divine Intention, which our minds can never grasp, somehow a sense of the Divine Intention and then seeing it work in life. It's like having visited a beautiful building and then you visit the architect and now you visit the building again but now accompanied by the architect and now you understand what it's all about.  That's awakening in life. And now when you awaken in life then, well of course you'd like to heal a person, but what is the intention in this health situation.  Is there something that went wrong or is there some intentions so that eventually the body needs to be disintegrated?  

But the only positive thing in the disintegration of the body is if it's transformed into light.  And if our understanding is transfigured into realization.  That's the only thing that makes sense. When you look at your life and you think well, what am I doing in my life and how can I help people?"  And one must not think that what one think is the best for people is the best for them.  We have our concepts of what we think is best for people. So that eventually the healing of the spirit is more important the healing of the body.  And that's why people suffer despair. And what the Sufis say is of course you communicate the Divine Ecstasy through your being and it helps a person to acknowledge the need for the disintegration of the body. It's not just disintegration, but the transmutation of the body into light and ultimately not just physical light but the light of pure intelligence. So I need to end here.  So I hope that you'll be able to carry something of this with you.  

One of the higher forms of healing of the Sufis is healing with the glance, not with the laying of hands, but with a glance.  But only if your glance becomes as pure as the light of a crystal.

Now, God bless you.

NOV 17, 1997		Tape 07

One would so much like to help people who are suffering and of course we know that that is the job of the medical profession and at the start of this I would like to warn people against ever claiming to be able to heal people and asking them not to have the medical care.  

For one thing it's (sil vi co) and secondly it is very well possible to combine the spiritual healing with the medical care and also medicine has improved tremendously in the course of the last decades and what is more doctors are beginning to look into alternative methods of meditation, of medication.  I think that does include meditation as a matter of fact, and there's no reason why it shouldn't go together, but I think its got to be totally up front and I think one needs to have the approval of the doctor too because doctors have become a little wiser in the course of history and don't think they have all the answers.  

Now there's no doubt about it that very, really miraculous cures have happened.  I know, as you know I come from a country where at least my Father from where the many cases of extraordinary, unbelievable cures.  The (Mizram Hydrabad) who was able to cure people with snake bite, copperhead bite who would die within a few minutes.  Quiet a number of cases of remission of cancer and so on.

There are so many cases that are unaccountable by the norms of science.  So what we want to is to know, to learn how, how to cure, how to use our healing.  I think we all have an inborn capacity for, let's say life and communicating life to people and that's what healing is about: communicating further energy in order to combat whatever is harmful to the body.  Could be infection or whatever.  Strengthen the immune system for example. 

So basically we are working with energy and the energy of the human being is just the way in which the enemy, the energy let's say of the universe is customized through the person and limited by the self image of the person and also I would say the secret of being able to shunt that, the energy that moves the universe into your healing through your person is to connect up with the universe. 

Now I must admit that those who are the most successful healers in India, that I know of, are people who are living the life of a recluse.  It's true.  People who live in caves in the mountains.  I've lived amongst the sanyasins in the Himalayas.  Or then the dervishes who live in the ruins of the tombs of the great saints and in Adjmir for example and in Afghanistan and Iran, have extraordinary powers of healing power.  

So my question of course is, "How can we combine this with living a normal life?"  I think that the life of a recluse is, one is not validating all the values that have been achieved by our great  civilizations.  The building of cathedrals and space craft and computers and all those wonderful things that have made our life more convenient on one hand and more hassled, if I can use that word, on the other.  We have built a wonderful support system for, let's say the progress of intelligence on the planet. 

You know that actually we can say that the star dust at the beginning after the big bang has fashioned itself in the course of evolution into human beings who are able to carry the intelligence behind the universe steps further all the time and we are right in the middle of that process.  We  have not, we are half way or maybe a quarter of the way.  I don't know but we the important thing is that we have gained a sense of what we are in the world, in the universe.  Instead of thinking of ourselves as an individual, think of ourselves, "How do I connect up with the totality that has come through me?"  And so it is that expansion of consciousness or that realization that will give you access to the power that moves the universe and otherwise you are using your own power and that's limited, very limited.  In fact it doesn't work.   

(The trouble of it) is that our civilizations do tend to bring us into our personal sense of identity, which is not what we are, but that's what we are conditioned by the environment and as you know the support system takes over.  That is imagine that we're like a team of (alpanists) who are trying to climb the high mountains and we spend so much energy in the base camps that's there's hardly energy remaining to reach the top and that's what we're doing.  

We are giving priority to that which is urgent rather than that which is important.  And the consequence is that we loose our self esteem or we have a lower self esteem or in any case, inadequate self esteem.  Ultimately our self esteem if we become God conscious then we would be humiliating our Divine status, we would be hurting the Divine Being by denigrating ourself.  And very often people, patients are, feel sorry for themselves and there's, in someway it is connected with one's self image and therefore we need to have a whole new vision of who we are.

So there are two ways of healing.  I think there are many factors, but at least I'm trying to highlight two.  One is working with energy and secondly one might call it realization. 

Now I would like of course for this to be an experience rather than just my talking at you.  So I would like you to feel, if you could just think of the forces that move the galaxies and eventually the sap in the trees.  A kind of cosmic power which the Sufis call the Divine Power.  And you see how we limit it by our self image.  

Now, I know that, actually I think that we are challenged in our way of thinking because the only way to do this is to, well is to apply the holistic paradigm in science and that is to realize that every fraction of the totality carries within it, potentially, the totality.  So that we are not just fragments of the totality, but within that fragment the totality is potentially present.  And that will teach one not to use one's personal will to, or power to heal a person, but become totally, well aware of the enormous power of reality coming through.  

So you see that it's, working with power yes, but it's always linked in some way with our sense of identity.  And perhaps you know that immune system is based upon our sense of identity, our physical identity.  

For example, it's exactly the same in the body as it is in the psyche.  As you know, if you transplant an organ then the body is going to reject that organ if it's not, doesn't have the same DNA as the body.  So there's a kind of recognition of the identity.  

And of course the second form of activity of the immune system which adapts itself to the environment.  Otherwise we wouldn't be able to eat.  So somehow we have the ability to imbibe elements from the environment which are foreign to ourselves and that's a question of adaptation. 

And the greater you are the more room you have in your being for other beings.  

The smaller you are the more intolerant you are for other beings and in order of course to be able to cure one has to love.  

And one has to love people who make themselves difficult to love.  In fact one has to love people one condemns.  We have to love them at the same time, support them somehow.  One is challenged in one's love.  

So if I say can you feel that power coming in, then of course I'm rather wary of the danger that one's ego would come up you see and then one would confuse it with the Divine power and that of course happening all the time.  So one has to be very careful. 

And on the other hand one has to be powerful to heal instead of meek.  So how can you combine these two things and at the same time.  

You know I think of Christ who was very powerful and the same time very gentle at the same time.  Well it is a matter of what the Sufi's call God Consciousness.  That is of course something one learns in meditation is to try to have some kind of sense of the anti-podal standpoint from one's own standpoint.  The Divine point of view.  

Now there are ways of doing it and we should be doing it in the course of the workshop this afternoon.  How do you reach beyond your personal identity or the vantage point of your personal consciousness?  

For example try to think of yourself as seen by God instead of your trying, you'd like to know more about God or what, you know we don't understand what we really mean by God.  And I'm sure that you have moments when something comes through in you which is totally unexpectedly and shatters you and you feel as though you're invested with an incredible power that it can happen in a flash.  I'm sure that some of you have that experience, together on one hand the shattering and on the other hand being absolutely overwhelmed.  

You see we are using only a slither of our faculties.  The kind of faculties that enable us to cross the road without being hit by a car or go to the supermarket.  The kind of faculties that we need to be able to survive in our very challenging civilization.  

These are faculties that some of us who are functioning in life have been able to muster and there are people on the homeless people are those who have not been able to live up to that challenge and I tell you that my heart goes out to them.  They are the victims of our greed.  

And that's another thing, in order to heal one doesn't only have to have compassion for the sufferings of people but one has to be very scrupulous about being truthful.  That's the power of the dervishes that the dervish actually cannot stand a ploy, a dishonesty, manipulating.  

It all starts by one asking oneself, "What am I doing in life?  What are my values?"  Is it, I know, one has to survive, but somehow it seems that one becomes dependent upon that underpinning.

One takes it for granted.  These are things that we need, you know you have to have a shower, and you have to have a car and you know we have to eat and so on. 

So one becomes, one takes that for granted but the trouble is that one's that the strategy of the ego, you see the strategy of the ego is reactive.  That is we build a defense system because to deal with the egos of other people and so that strengthens us in our ego consciousness and by so doing we're not utilizing all the potentials of our being.  And of course it takes a lot of, it takes a lot to be able to wean ourselves from our dependence upon our aggressive ego strategy and trust the potentials, the power of our being, the divine power of our being.  Trust it instead of relying upon our ego power and that's the secret of healing.

This could be illustrated in India what they say the elephants.  It's below the dignity of the elephants to be bugged by the, agitation of the chickens.  So if you think of that like Divine Power in you, is you don't get upset or you don't use your ego to fight people because you have the divine power.  You don't need it.

You can even tolerate the stupidity of people because that's, you know, as Christ said, "They don't know what they do."  So you don't judge people anymore because, you know they're what they are.  So, what might be upset about what they're doing to you, that takes away your power.  You want to do something for them instead of being sorry for yourself.  

Now there's another thing which is very important for healing and that is that at the core of our being we can find what one calls the immaculate state.  I think that's the meaning of the immaculate state of the Virgin Mary.  And of course it's very difficult for us to reconcile that with the defilement in our, in our being.  

We feel, if we have any conscience we feel ashamed about the things that we did wrong and we hurt people and so on and so forth.  And so that takes away our power of course, if we I think we have to be truthful about our misdeeds, but if you face them, then you will be, I don't know, maybe that, no offense.  I mean there are some of you I'm sure that are perfect and so you don't have these problems, but I do myself.  So the thing is that on one hand one has to acknowledge them with the power of truth and on the other hand one has to accept this paradox that is illustrated by the voice of Caruso.  

That is you know the voice of Caruso can be retrieved in the bad recordings of the time.  The voice of Caruso in it's pristine glory can be re-recovered in those bad recordings and that means that the immaculate nature of your being is present within  it's distortions.  

So that's the only way in which one can validate oneself faced with the guilt and faced with one's conscience and so on.  And so the power, the Divine Power is really a celestial power.  

It's the child in you that is more powerful than the ego in you and you know that we learn from our children in a lot of things, because at first they learn to tell lies but at first they don't know how to tell lies and that's the beauty of the child is that they have something to teach us.  The power of innocence instead of the power of manipulation and dishonesty, that's the power that heals, because you know the healing power starts by, almost like the embryonic state, like the state of the embryo which is not differentiated yet.  

So you have all the initial forces there and then budding and so you have to start by that.  The power that you're using is the kind of power that fashioned this embryo which is somehow behind that, behind the embryo itself a level of energy, which Incidentally if there are physicists amongst you, it's called the (scaler) level and below the (electro) magnetic field.  

So you mustn't think that, you know healing is of course you know there have been a lot of experiments with healers that have shown that the emanations of the hand produce something like an electro magnetic field, but the curious thing is that it happens at a distance.  So it can't be reduced to an electro magnetic field.  So of course for researchers of course it's very paradoxical, you know it doesn't understand how on earth this healing power works. 

But for the Sufis we're talking about a level of energy that is supplemental to the electro magnetic field and it's let's say energy at its inception before it emerges as power.  I think that perhaps the best description of it is the power of the holy spirit and it emerges in the alter you see for the Sufis the body of the human being is like a temple and the heart is the alter and then you have that the tabernacle behind the alter or below the alter, your solar plexus where you're in contact with the void.  The void which is a fullness, but it's not yet existentiated.  So the emergence of spiritual power as pure spirit, before it becomes modified into a electro magnetic field or whatever, some power that one can measure.  And that means that one needs, if you think of yourself as a temple, then one needs to discover the sacred in one.

And you know that's the rarest thing in the world, the sacred. 

People are talking about all kinds of things psychology, resentment, healing the planet and so on, but in the depth what people are looking for is the sacred.  And that's why people go to church and or don't go to church, is because if they don't find it in the church then curiously enough we're always looking for something outside ourselves which is within us.  That's the reason for meditation, is returning within and discovering this sacred immaculate place in the depth of your being out of which new dispensations of life emerge continually, recurrently.  

So the Sufis recognize four different forces that are combined in healing.  One is called Muid, it's a kind of resilience.  Somehow, for example if you're walking in the forest and you move a branch of a tree it will go back to its original state unless you've damaged it of course.  The rain forest, well they will grow again.  Many species will die but then there will be other species and so on, but somehow there's this, that basic resilience: an ability of nature to self organize itself, the body to self organize itself. 

You know that of course electro magnetic field is the template in which the body is configured, the cells of the body and actually the aura of light is the template in which the electro magnetic field is configured and then one can even reach a kind of level of reality beyond light.  Or at least you could think of the light that we normally experience as only a slither of the reality of light.  It's only one dimension of light and there's lots of different dimensions of light.  

So eventually of course we will learn how to heal with light.  But then that's a lovely word, you people are using it all the time, but how do you do it?  That's what's the important thing, of course and that's what we're going to do in some practices this afternoon working with light. 

But anyway resilience, of course it is the immune system which is  represents the resilience of our physical body and of course if it is impaired and as I said before it is somehow linked with our self image. 

That's why the cancer is a very clear case of where the immune system has collapsed or is not effective enough because a bad transcription from the DNA to the RNA by the enzymes that operate this transcription.  It's like making a mistake on your typewriter or the computer; a bad transcription.  Somehow it's linked, somehow it's not functioning properly because one's whole sense of who one is has somehow been impaired by the, may I say the grossness of our civilization.  It's damaging to our soul.  

I remember Dr. David (Boehm) saying one day, "Be not surprised if a change of a sense of meaningfulness, all of a sudden seeing something that you hadn't seen before, something you know the opinion dropped and that will immediately alter the circuits in your brain. Well actually it will alter your whole body.  

So now we're very clear about the mind body axis, but that's not the only element.  Then the other, the second powers the one I've mentioned before it is a power that emerges from within recurrently because the universe is continually reborn and we are continually reborn and that means that we have to accept to do away with the tarnished, jagged ends of ourself in order to invite the new and that's again with our identity.  If we keep on identifying with what we always have been then of course, there's no hope for us, we have to give up, that is for now. . .

                         end of side one (The sound ended long before the tape ended.  Do we have a bad copy or is the original missing some of the session?  There is sort of a squawking - mild - like a tape that is not turning.)

. . .functional and so he came, my father came in the room and said, "Yes, you asked me to come to heal you, are you prepared to do what I ask you to do?"  So he said, "Yes."  He said, "Okay, well get up and we'll have a walk.  I'll go, I'll come back in ten minutes and we'll have a walk."  

"Oh, but Pir-O-Murshid, I can't walk."  

"Well, do what I say" and sure enough, he was cured: self image.

So somehow, mind over body.  In case of cancer, the difficulty in digesting the, in social environmental circumstances; difficulty in digesting the bad (replication).  Resistance to dealing with things because they're just too difficult.  

The stress is, gives us strength.  Over stress is not good but you can push yourself up to a point and then with that, the power that you've got by doing that, then you can push yourself a little further.  I'm evidence of that because I'm 81 now and I've pushed myself all my life.  So don't over do it, but still somehow to some point.  

So the other force is called Hayy, which is the kind of force that you find everywhere like if you're in a big store there's a lot of energy flying about.  That's Hayy you see and everywhere it's a force that moves the stars and the planets and so on.  It's a very sort of tangible force but we can only take so much of it so that's why you get so depleted in your, if you stay too long in a store.  Just go there quick and run away and draw, collect all that energy with you that one gets an indigestion; that's Hayy.  Now that force works, centripetally and centrifugally.  

For example, well I'll give you, illustrated by a story.  It's a story of a Prince who was condemned by his father for unfounded reasons and he was supposed to be killed and that policeman couldn't do it and finally he became a sanyasin, a dervish and sat in the garden of the palace and from the moment that he sat in the garden everything started to flourish.  That (sends) that where ever you go things flourish.  It's a kind of, that's Hayy, you see.

A kind of energy that you give to people, to flowers, to everything.  You can watch a flower and imagine this, a bud and imagine this bud opens up and starts unfurling and so on and that is of course the power that makes the potential of people unfurl in their personality, which is a wonderful power.

And the other one is Qaddus, is a power that descends like lightening through one has the impression it descends upon one like lightening through the top of one's head and it shatters you totally.  That's what they call the quickening of the Holy Spirit.  Qaddus, you see; Qadosh in the Jewish language.  

(Santuse, Santuse, Santuse) it's a holy, a feeling of holiness, other worldliness and this is the challenge that I'm presenting to you today is how do you, are you able to maintain that sense of sacredness without becoming an ascetic?  Right in the middle of the world, how can you do that?  That's the challenge of our time.

I know and I've gone beyond the time.  No, I haven't?  I haven't exceeded the time?  Good, I have another bonus of ten minutes. 

Yes, well if you liked. Of course there are many practices.  We'll be doing them this afternoon, some of them, but essentially can you be aware of the radiance around your shoulders and your arms: light.  

You see we are so used to thinking of our body as bounded by the skin, but if you can just feel the area of magnetism and then you feel an area of light.  

Now of course, all kind of practices we can do but somehow light is connected, I mean the only way to be able to muster all the potentials of light in our being is to, well I know it's sort of the gall to say this but to recognize the angel in us.  I know perhaps you might say, "Pir Vilayat, do you still believe in angels?  Do you still believe in Santa Claus?

Well let us say, if you look into the eyes of a child, a baby.  I never cease to be, absolutely shattered by the beauty of the light coming through the eyes of a child and I think, "What a pity that people grow up."  

One looses that light.  Because one has to defend oneself, otherwise people will walk over your dead body and people are mean and the strategy and you have to survive and all those kind of 'shoulding' oneself trying to find ourselves in our lives and we loose our light.

Now there's a word of a Sufi (Gunodge Wunda Kubla) who talks about, he says, "You thought you were the witness, but the real witness is the angel in you."  

So what does it mean?  I mean obviously we think that we're the witness.  What would be like the vision of an angel if, how would you look at things if you were an angel instead of a human?

Well, I could be, it could be illustrated by a story, because I remember once climbing in the Himalayas, well I climb in the Himalayas a lot, but this time there were a group of people visiting a, had to go through a dangerous jungle with a lot of dangerous animals and there was this Rishi who was sitting in a state of Samadhi in a cave, but fortunately he spoke.  Whereas most of them don't speak and so this man, one of the men in our party, asked him what I would call a stupid question.  Most questions are stupid anyway and I could see him trying to descend from his pinnacle of ecstasy to try to think, "How can one think that way?", Try to get into the perspective of that person.  

So maybe that would be an illustration of what I mean by, "How would you look at things if you would use the, if you would identify with the angel in you instead of the human."  I think you would be rather wary of certainly dishonesty.  That's one thing that you would just, you couldn't stand it.  

I hope you don't mind my using the word 'filth', psychological filth.  I think that an angel would find it very difficult to deal with it and the only way that one can meet dishonesty is bringing things to the light.  You know that of course the devils always work in the dark.  Like you know the what is it, the bad (mountain) of (Muzaurski)?  As soon as the light comes, he'd go and hide you see.  So the power of that power, the power. 

You know I think it is possible that I can't say that absolutely, but I see some relationship between illness and the kind of shadow of, that comes upon us.  A spill over from the environment.  Somehow, there's some kind of deterioration that takes place, defilement that takes place by the spill over, somehow I think.  And the power of light will dispel that darkness.  

So of course we have to, it's not good enough just to work with physical light.  Of course, we can work with physical light.  The body can absorb light, does absorb light and emit light and we can increase the amount of light that we absorb and we emit by our mind over body, by visualization, but that's not good enough.  

The Sufis speak about the Light of Divine Intelligence.  Consciousness is picking up information, but intelligence is thrusting it's light upon things.  It's active instead of passive.  That's what we learn to do in meditation.  But of course the only way to do it is to be able to down play your assumption of being the spectator, the witness and getting in the consciousness of the angel is one step towards what is called Divine Consciousness.

(I said, I don't know otherwise who said it), St Francis said, "I thought I was looking at the world, but in fact the world is looking at me."  So that's the clue.  To be able to think of yourself as thought of by God instead of thinking and known instead of the knowing and so finally you get into a totally different vantage point.  

In fact, I don't know if it's happened to you, you know St. Francis walking in the woods, he used to get into the consciousness of the trees and also the animals and so he imagined how he looked from the point of view of the trees and how the trees feel and so imagine that you are in that state when you're in contact with nature that you get absolutely into the consciousness of all that reality around you instead of that being the object of your cognizance and the consequence is that you find yourself in a transfigures world and somehow we have that ability to get into that state where, a state which is familiar and seems to be different from the ordinary state of consciousness and that's where creative forces come through.  

So this was really an introduction to the work that we shall be doing in the, in the course of this conference and I'd like to thank Himayat for being the (ghos esmarchina) who set this, who triggered off this conference.     END OF TAPE  


AUG 14, 1998		Tape 08


AUG 14, 1998		Tape 09

..the litanies. I'm glad that Mikhail has it; I heard it on the radio once, and I was absolutely shattered by it. Arvo Part is a contemporary composer who lives in Berlin. I think he's Astonian or Lithuanian. And he's perhaps the one composer who can render religious music in modern form. And he was inspired by Victoria. He recognizes the influence of Victoria. The sounds are unbelievable. How one can find these sounds in the cosmos and bring it in music is incredible.

Well I feel very sorry that the retreat is coming to an end, because we're just about ready to start. And one of the reasons why we make it short is because a lot of people don't have that much time to get away from their jobs and responsibilities. And of course there are many other meetings that are going to take place. It's a little bit difficult for me, because at first I thought it was just for representatives, and then I saw a number of faces who didn't seem to, that were not familiar, and I, in fact I saw people walking out. So I thought well maybe, I mean people have to have some preparation for this. You can't just jump in like that. And then I thought, well after all it was for representatives, so then we caught up in the end. So if people don't understand, well it's too bad, but they're not supposed to come here if they're not, if they're not of that, they haven't had all that formation, that preparation. It might even put people off.

So at a time when the retreat would end I'd like to go more deeply into the retreat. And with the hope that when you get back home you'll be able to do it further, carry it further. Now I must say that of all the retreats I made, the most wonderful was the retreat that I made doing the second Dhikr. It is really the practice of a hermit. It's got to be done in a cell or of course in a cave, that is without any kind of disturbance from outside, and when you're protected against anyone coming in and visiting you, or any telephone calls or e-mail. So it requires very special conditions, because otherwise you're just repeating words, and you know Christ's warning about vain repetitions. The body participates in the ultimate act of first of all of renunciation, and then of glorification. So all things that we've done so far are a kind of preparation for this. 

And one needs to do it kneeling, and I'm not sure that I can do it myself now because of my age. I'll try, but my old bones don't always lend themselves to the Dhikr. But I'll try. But if I look rather awkward that's because of all the kind of things that will happen to you when you get 82. And of course you don't have to kneel, you can do it sitting if you want, but then you won't have the same benefit. And you can sit on a chair and then bow, you have to prostrate. And the whole thing is that one, the ultimate prostration is when you place your forehead on the ground. One has to do it to realize what it does to one. For one thing one, there's a kind of polarization, because the north pole of that magnet of our body is in touch with the, it's short circuiting with the south pole as I say. And because the body, as I say, participates in the experience of well, surrender. That means passing the control to God so that one will be able to act in the name of God. There's a word of Saint (Arani), he's an orthodox monk who said: "God becomes man so that man may become God." The descent and ascent. I, of course, there's a sense of extinction, that's the word fana, a kind of collapse of all that one, certainly all that one thought one was, and of course of one's mind, one's thinking. 

So it's a dark night of the mind, and a dark night of the soul--of St. John of the Cross. But one must be careful, well Ibn Arabi warns one that you mustn't think that it is your existence that is extinguished; it's your notion of yourself. And Pir-o-Murshid would say it's your false self, which as we've already said is the false notion that we make of ourselves. It's part of our defense system. But somehow one is surrendering that--so one doesn't have any crutches anymore--to one's higher self. Now it also means that by dispersing, dismantling one's personality, that is the exemplars of the archetypes in what the Sufis call the divine treasury, there can be a fresh descent of the, of one's divine inheritance. Otherwise that inheritance is being communicated to us through one's ancestors. But now it is communicated directly. And that's why St. Francis of Assisi, who was brought before the judge by his father because he wasn't working in the shop for his father, he was working for the poor. And so his father said, "but even the clothes you wear are from my shop," and took away his clothes. And he said, "I have another Father." He didn't say you are not my father, he said "I have another father." So it's giving prevalence to another inheritance than that which has come through one's ancestry. 

And that of course represents the samsaric wheel, whereas this is beyond the samsaric wheel, beyond conditioning. And so that is what you feel as you turn toward your heart center at the end when you say "illa 'llah hu." You say 'hu' then you are conscious of the direct dispensation of the divine inheritance that invests your being with a totally new inheritance; it takes over from the jaded one. And remember these words of, well the words in the Qur'an: "there's nothing on earth that doesn't have its archetype in the treasury, the divine treasury." And then there's the words of Ibn Arabi who says "and the angels build a ladder between the two." That's why I said the celestial spheres represent that transit, that ladder. And therefore to start with, what I was doing was I was repeating it a thousand (times). I realized that if one was just repeating it, one gets into a state of trance, and that's exactly what one wants to avoid. And so the only way to avoid getting into a state of trance is to emphasize the uplift, when your head, your body gets upright again. It's a sense of, the act of glorification will free you from the collapse. Because you know fana has always got to be followed by baqa, that is reinstatement. Otherwise if you just go into the collapse you, as I say, you get into a kind of unconscious state which is a state of trance.

Now keep in mind these words which I've already referred to--it's a formula in Islam: (Allah fil maluk itikalat(sp?)), "the God created in your prayers." So that one is, says, God who is recreated as one through one's act of glorification. Now one is going through a very deep transformation. And that transformation is really the way that the perfect qualities, what we invoke in our wazaif, what Pir-O-Murshid calls the divine perfection, the archetypes, that one is, somehow we don't know these archetypes, but in the act of glorification one is projecting upon God the same qualities that one is familiar with in one's own person or in other people, but imagine them ever more perfect. And they're in infinite regress, because one never reaches the ultimate. And in so doing, one is awakening those qualities, or enhancing them. They are already present in one, but one is enhancing them by arousing their potentialities that are lying in wait in one's being. So that's the uplift. So when one surrenders one's old personality, now then there is room for renewal. And otherwise there's not. If you hang on to yourself as you imagine the false self, then there's no way.

So we're going to do it now. As I say, I'll try to do it. So do as I say, but don't do as I do. For one thing one has to sit on one's heels, and I am not sitting on my heels. Well, yes, perhaps it might be a good idea, yes. No. No. As I say, it doesn't matter. You are doing it. Most of you are younger than me, much younger than me. And so it is...illa 'llah hu. illa 'llah hu...

Now, yes, I mustn't do it too much too often because of my blood pressure too; but, it does enhance the blood pressure. But I just wanted you to have a taste of it. But, it's not really something to do in a group. It's to do alone, totally isolated, in the solitude, in the conditions that are favorable to living as an ascetic, as a hermit: far away from the world. And after having done it say 100 times then you pause, and maybe you say a wazifa, and then you do it again. And depending upon the instructions that you get, you could do it just 100 times, but you could do it 1,000 times, that's 10 times 100. And of course, I was doing it 22,000 times a day. As Murshid says, it bypasses the mind. There's no way of thinking of anything while you're doing that. And you're establishing contact, one says the heavens, it's actually, in the first stage, when I'm thinking of my nostalgia for the heavens, but one goes even further into the plane of Jabarut which is Divine Intelligence. And the way that, you know the orderliness behind the chaos, meaningfulness, that's what sets up orderliness, then the treasury, the secret treasure. And then finally beyond multiplicity, beyond the programming into just the unity. And that is of course, so don't try and reach that at first. But, if you look at Murshid's teachings he says that of course, at a certain point you discover your eternity. 

And that is absolutely, that corroborates what Buddhism says, what Buddha says. Because, you know, it's beyond existence, beyond non-existence, and then the point where time is overcome. Now what you can do is say it 100 times and then, as a fikr--that is silently--say for 33 times for example, or 100 times, it just depends on what kind of retreat you're doing and what your guide is suggesting, because one has to be very careful doing these practices; they're very effective. So if you do it as a fikr, that is as you, on your breath without saying it aloud, then: 'illa' exhaling, ''llah' inhaling, and 'hu' holding the breath. 'illa' exhaling, ''llah' inhaling, and 'hu' holding your breath. The beauty of doing it as a fikr is that you can get much more into the experience than if you are saying it aloud, for one thing one is doing it much slower. But it's necessary to have done it aloud first, because you're awakening your chakras, all the things that we've already talked about when we talked about sound. You are establishing some kind of connection with the symphony of the spheres, which is the language of the programming of the universe. And so and as you can't think the usual way you overcome your reason, understanding. Then somehow all of the sudden meaningfulnesses are revealed to you, things that you could have never thought of, all of the sudden revealed to you, totally unexpectedly. 

Now if you are, for one thing you lose your sense of identity, your name, that's what Bastami is saying. Now, what I was taught to do in my training was to get into the consciousness of my teacher, who was Hazrat Inayat Khan. And so you're doing this practice while getting so much into his consciousness--or if it is a woman who is your teacher, then her consciousness-- that you have lost your sense of identity, your personal identity. And it is only if you lose your personal identity that you can get rid of your personality so that a new personality can come through. So it's very very effective. It's perhaps the most effective of all practices. If you just think of Murshid's words: the false ego, and that's what you are surrendering, that's what is disintegrating. But you must not stay there with that negativity. It must always be replaced by a renewal of descent of qualities. And that happens, first of all you lift your consciousness up in 'llah, and then the descent of the qualities, hu. Remember there's an 'h' at the end of 'llah, so that's a Samadhi state. And then hu in the heart; the 'h' is followed by a 'u.'

So let's do that now, each one of you in your own rhythm. You see if you've done it aloud, then the sounds, let's say the vibrations that you triggered off in your solar plexus, and heart center and throat center are going to resound further. So they carry you. So you must just think that they are, it's not totally silent, because those, they are, those vibrations continue. And sometimes it's good to shorten the fikr and get back to the sounds, and then do the fikr again. And then you find that the sounds are much more effective. You can bow your, actually one can bow one's subtle body. And now you can do it very slowly, on your breath. And really experience that disintegration of the idiosyncrasies of your personality, the good and the bad, and then the trust in the renewal by your act of glorification. Glorification opens up the access to the treasury...

..the void. So your jaded personality is now resorbed in the void. And there's a new dispensation that is emerging. And the interesting thing is that, is the difference between what emerges, which is: the qualities of one's personality are perfected let's say as one projects one's representation of God. One projects these qualities upon God and in the course of that one is imagining Him perfect. But that is not the same thing as the descent, because the recurrent renewal of idiosyncrasies from within is somehow subject to a time factor, whereas the treasury is eternal. Well actually it is everlasting. It is not eternal, it is everlasting.

And eventually you stop the motion, or the mental repetition and just concentrate on the 'hu' in the heart. Because, you see these qualities are qualities of being. They predicate a being, the Divine Being. God as a Being Who one is inviting in one's heart. Because when you are doing the first Dhikr, you're building a temple. And in the second one you are in the temple. You're the high priest. And you're inviting the Divine Presence in your heart. It's a saying of the Qur'an: "Nothing can contain me except the heart of the faithful." So it's like the Beloved is felt in your heart. The One whom you worship becomes the worshipped One. Becomes a Reality. Becomes a human reality. So when you hold your breath your thoughts are very still. I think of the words of al-Hallaj when he said: "Is it Thou? I wouldn't have presumed to call Thee if Thou had not already whispered in my ear, it is Me." So you mustn't think that you can call the Divine Presence. You create the circumstances that are conducive to that Presence manifesting. So this is the mystery of Divine Love.

Now as I said you can introduce a wazifa either I would say after having repeated the second Dhikr a certain amount of times, then you can repeat a wazifa and then continue the Dhikr. Or then you could, of course if you do this then the thought of that wazifa continues when you return to the repetition of the Dhikr. Because remember that when we are saying 'llah after saying illa, the collapse, then we say 'llah: an apostrophe--an 'a' that we don't say aloud--and then 'l-l-a-h.' And so when you are doing that, as I said, you are projecting qualities upon, that you ascribed to, as you imagine God to be in His perfection. So that is stretching your imagination beyond the existential to imagine always a greater perfection. So you could select some very special qualities that you are highlighting.

So amongst the wazaif there are some that are intended to help a person in their psychological problems. And then there are some that are intended to unfold the personality. And then there is a third category of those that are supposed to inspire one not withstanding any concern about improving one's personality, but eventually it will effect one's personality. So one could list a few of these, rather at random, a little bit arbitrary. Khabir, which is the same as Akbar, it means very great--and as you know, the wazifas are always, are not just concepts, but are essentially attunements--then it gives you a sense of greatness as compared with the personal dimension of oneself. And eventually it will reflect upon the personal dimension of oneself. But if one tried to be great by one's will it wouldn't work. The other one is Majid which means majestic, splendid, majestic I think is the right word. So it confers a majesty upon the king, the queen, a sense of the highness of God. So we have Ya Ali, which is very high, most high. And Muta Ali which is a superlative: even more high. So a sense of, if you are repeating the Dhikr, then as you lift your body then of course there's a sense of God most high.

Another wazifa is Qaher, which one must be very careful not to use because it lends itself to abuse or misuse. It means to prevail. And of course ultimately it means that God's will prevails, and that's where the buck stops. Prevalence. But unfortunately people have used it to prevail in the wars over the enemy. And that's the origin of the word Cairo--Qahira, Cairo. Qahira doesn't want to prevail any longer now, so she's Qalbi. It's a sign of what they call adab, which is good manners. So the trouble is that Qaher can enhance your ego, and so it is an attribute of God that is predicated to God not to oneself. But it does help one to prevail against the trips of the false ego. And it, you see, in urgent cases where a person is suffering from abuse, or a person is always deprecating one and putting one down, and consequently one has lost one's self-esteem, then of course Qaher is a way of safe-guarding one's self-esteem in the face of abuse. It's like: God will always prevail. So you can think this, and you know like this woman who was lynched in the south, and she said "you can do what you like with my body, but you can't touch my soul." That's this, prevailing. Prevalence.

The other word is Baqi, which means that it is always reinstated. It's very close to Mu'id. Mu'id is like for example if you are walking in the forest and you displace a branch of a tree it will, unless you really damage the tree it will, the branch, it will come back into place again. Even in rather serious situations, for example the rain forests, they will grow again, of course it's quite a battle to keep the roads, the asphalt from rotting, and so the forest starts growing again. So that is Mu'id, reinstatement. It's, Mu'id, it's not reinstatement, that is resilience. So like, however much one has been damaged, somehow there's that deep resilience in one's being. Which is, it's called inertia, it's a Divine quality that maintains orderliness when subjected to chaotic forces. As compared with Baqi. Well Baqi is, you see it's Baqa, it's Fana Baqa. After the dispersal, the disintegration of one's qualities, those idiosyncrasies, then somehow the essence of one's being cannot be thereby annihilated. Somehow the dispersal is superficial. That's why Ibn Arabi says "do not think that by the fana you cease to exist, or you can overcome the state of existence. It is your notion of yourself that is disintegrated." The false, what Pir-O-Murshid calls the false self. So that's Fana Baqa, Baqa.


And then you have this very advanced experience which might suddenly dawn upon you in the course of a long retreat--otherwise it's just a concept; it's no use; it's not real. This is something that can happen to you after a long retreat, at the end of a long retreat: you discover your immortality. So that's prevailing you see, but it's not the same thing. It's a notion of eternity so that you can see that you are moving in time, that one pole of your being is moving in time-space, but at the top it remains unchanged. So the qualities are not of, are not eternal, no. They belong to Lahut which is everlasting, everlastingness, but not Hahut. Hahut is eternal. That's why when Jelaludin Rumi says: "The umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal." It's not the life eternal, the life everlasting. So that's Baqa. Or Ya Baqi. And then, Sarmad: eternal. And that doesn't mean that you've always been. It's a sense of, a memory of having existed before your birth, or prefiguring life after death, and that is of the level of everlastingness. It's not the same thing as becoming, but it's not quite eternity. It's somewhere in between.

So those are the very high wazaif. You could add Warith which means the inheritor. Let's say: God as my Father that I inherit from. That's of course a word of Christ: "Be ye perfect as YOUR Father." So he didn't say I'm the only one who is the son, he says as YOUR Father. So that's Warith. And that is a very strong safeguard against despair. To remind oneself, because despair can be associated with a bad self image or failure in life and so on. And somehow the thought that however much, or even guilt of course can, but however much one's inheritance has been defiled, it's still there. So there are other wazifas. One could say Quddus for example, pure spirit. But I'm just confining myself to a few wazifas that are of that third category: the wazaif that are intended to enhance your spiritual dimension, but not necessarily work with your personality or deal with your problems.

So you find that there are three, if you, now I'm talking to those of you who are representatives, because of course it's a great concern as to what practices one needs to give to one's Mureeds. And so it's unending; the amount of training that one needs in order to be able to train Mureeds, help Mureeds is practically unending, inexhaustible. So you can't expect to deal with it in a few hours. You would need a real school of training for the Sufi Order--at the Abode. If the Abodeans will allow it. And even it they don't allow it. Sorry, that was a gun shot.

So let's get down to some basics now. We'll have to get down to the nitty-gritty eventually at six o'clock. So the wazifas to deal with our problems, which always involve, maybe I'm saying too much, but I think it involves our inadequacy. Perhaps that's not quite so, but still there's some reference to ourselves in our problems. We are part of our problems. But it's not always so, for example if you have a retarded child, or if you're in Rawanda, or if you're in Bosnia, and so on. So you can't always say that your problems are your own, have to do with your personality. But in many cases they do. And so, I think that one needs to start with the bad wazifas which are those that I haven't been using so far. I was prejudiced. As many of us are. And now I find them the most useful of all the wazifas. So I have them here because as I say... One is Munzil, which is the Dishonorer, and one is Mu'iz which is the Honorer. 

No, I think it's very good to be aware of the way in which one's actions can dishonor one, because it keeps one on the straight and narrow path. And you can see the effect immediately in the reaction of people. And so (thank you) it's a kind of warning. So that's Munzil: M-u-n-z-i-l. God dishonors one if one is acting in a way that is not without propriety. And then one calls upon, how can I say, a safety buoy, a kind of final release from that terrible state of being dishonored. One asks God to be able to recover one's honorability. So it acts very strongly. So that is, you know one should never give a practice unless one has done it oneself. And the first thing is of course Muhasibi which is confrontation with oneself in truth, and acquiesce to the things one has done wrong rather than try to gloss it over. Because then you will be able to understand people better, and understand what their needs are. 

I talked about this earlier this morning when I said that of course we are dealing with some very basic instincts, because we inherit from a lot of levels in our being. And so life is a kind of process in which one is trying to sublimate instincts which are very basic, like the instinct of reproduction, or the need of status, or concupiscence, to have possessions. And there are many other things which are the way that our false ego tries to validate itself awkwardly, until one is, can see very clearly how the false ego works. And then there's that conversion that can take place. So I think this is very important. The, let's see, yes, the other one is Qabid and Rafi, no, no sorry, Khafid, K-h-a-f-i-d. And Rafi, upraiser. And so Khafid, abaser, and Rafi, upraiser. So those are very similar to Munzil and Mu'iz. So I, my point is, it's a little bit difficult to see the difference. I think it's, the first two are better because it's more clear.

Then we have this dichotomy between Qabid and Basit. Qabid, Q-a-b-i-d, which is constraint, of course it could be convergence, the convergence of the universe in each one of us, so let's say our ego. And it could of course be limitation of course, and in psychological terms, frustration. Qabid. A sense of being frustrated in one's wants or one's need or one's aspirations or one's nostalgia. Circumstances are constraining, or one's own instincts are constraining one's uplift, or whatever it is. Or someone is constraining one. Some sense of frustration there, constraint. Then Basit is expansion, so it's the opposite. So for example one is breathing in and out. As one inhales, a sense of the convergence of the universe into that point, in the center of the vortex that one is. And as one exhales, it is the opposite: consciousness is expanded. 

And together with that of course one's sense of identity can be expanded and become cosmic, and so on. So that's Basit. But there is a difference between Basit and Wasi. And Wasi is, you remember I made a difference between expanding your consciousness from your center, the center of your ego as I say, and then the way in which consciousness can be encompassing. Because if you get into the consciousness of other people, now your consciousness is not centered in your person. So you are, your consciousness has become encompassing. Whereas to start with you are expanding your consciousness from the, as opposed to the constriction. So that comes into getting into the consciousness of people. And this is, in terms of psychotherapy, I would say it's very important to be able to get into the consciousness of the person who's done one harm, and understand from what place it came. It doesn't mean that one is condoning it, but it means that one is able to see that person where they're at, and then you understand. I mean, as I said, you don't blame a tiger for biting you; it's the nature of the tiger. 

So you, can you have resentment against a tiger? It's just following its nature. So resentment doesn't make sense. And if you get into the consciousness of a person, then you understand that they are acting, you might be the victim of their need to validate themselves at you cost, validate their sense of self-esteem at your cost. So I don't think it's good to facilitate that by being accommodating to them, that goes a little bit too far. That's why there has to be some balance between Rahman and Wali. Rahman, magnanimity. It's not the same thing as Rahim. Rahim is suffering with, is compassion. Whereas Rahman is magnanimity, is being big enough to not allow oneself to be bugged by people. Like for example in India, the elephant does not allow itself to be bugged by the agitation of the chickens. So it's a question of your dignity. You don't get upset if people act in a bad way because it's below your dignity to be upset. So that's Rahman you see, magnanimity. You know, you don't hold a grudge against a person who has done you harm. That's Rahman. You still invite them for a cup of tea. But of course, try to not give them the key to your heart.

So these are wazifas that help people in dealing with their problems. These are the basic ones. Then of course there's Mukhit, Mukhit and Reza. Mukhit, to provide, or even more than that, it is affluence. Mukhit is affluence, like enhancing your achievement so that you will become more successful in your--achievement because Pir-o-Murshid believes our way is not the way of the ascetic--so that we need to achieve something, and so we have an enterprise, or whatever we are undertaking. So it would be to provide well, and we can provide for other people and not just for oneself. Whereas Reza is really like what they call bread and butter. Like it's people who really can't make it in life, the homeless you know, have somehow the need for sustenance, for very substantial subsistence. So Pir-o-Murshid said you are like the father or mother for your Mureeds. And in the east sometimes a Pir will go out of his way to find a job for one of his disciples, to that extent. So that is Reza. It's really: God provides, but you have to help God to provide--by doing something.

Now the other thing is, you come across people whom you feel are very fragile, and, or are in trouble. And what is more, you sometimes come across a person whom you feel is being taken advantage of by another person. You know Murshid said that, he said, well he's using rather strong terms, I don't know whether, I think we all have the angel in us and the demon, so you mustn't say 'this person is angelic, and this person is demonic.' But, still people, let's say where the balance is more on the demonic side will always just choose an innocent person, an angelic person as a victim. And you see that around you. And their ploy is 'nobody loves me but you, you have this wonderful heart.' You know, and then you become kind of a, the angelic person is very happy to serve. And then gradually the demonic person pulls you further and further down into their hell. And you see that. And well, you can't tell a Mureed you mustn't do this you know, and you're not supposed to give advice about how a person is to run their life. 

So the thing about a Wazifa is that it is drawing attention to a quality, which, it's a Divine quality. And we have these qualities in us, but there are times when we have to call upon that Divine quality even though we have it in us. But we don't have it sufficiently enough, and so we... So the word is Muhaimin, M-u-h-a-i-m-i-n, which is asking for help, for protection. A person who's very fragile and can't really make it themselves, and really needs protection. Now the other thing is that you can send protective thoughts to your Mureed. And the Mureed picks it up. And you know, one needs, everyone is precarious to some extent, and one needs to feel like a safe support. One calls it in psychotherapy a safe support system. And so the teacher is supposed to provide that support for people who feel very fragile. And so Muhaimin draws your attention to the need of protecting. In fact there's a Sufi belief that there are advanced beings who are able to provide a protection for the, a community for example, or a city. For example if you go to Jerusalem, there's a Sufi, the tomb of a Sufi, hardly anybody knows about it, who was, who is considered by the Sufis to be the protector of the city. 

I remember asking the way to that, and actually nobody knew, but then I came across a man who looked like a Sufi, and he told me "oh yes, this is where it is, you're right here." It's like a little hole in the wall, and you see the tomb through a little skylight. So that's Muhaimin. And there's a difference between Muhaimin and Vakil. Because, Vakil means an intercessor; like a lawyer is called a Vakil. So if you imagine God the Judge, he has so many cases so there has to be a lawyer who comes and says, "God, look, I draw your attention to this problem." And it's true that one is, actually one is taking some kind of karma upon oneself. One takes some of the karma of the Mureed upon oneself. Because one has promised to help them, and if you can't help them then woe upon you. That's the reason why one has to think twice before becoming a Representative: that there's an expectation. When when we give the initiation we say we promise to supervise their training, spiritual training. And if we don't, well then we're letting them down. And therefore it is important to make a point in asking your Mureed to come I would say every month, for a short time, but to review their Wazifas.

Unfortunately we can't go any further because of the time. But, I hope that this, I think this retreat has been a very special one, and I hope that it will open new perspectives for you. And that you'll have an opportunity of doing these practices when you get back home. And in any case, our representatives and coordinators and guides need to make retreats. It makes all the difference. I know it's very difficult when you have a busy life, and you stop everything, and you feel that you are shirking your responsibilities. Somehow, hopefully then one is better able to deal with one's responsibilities. You could, well it's not easy either to do a retreat on a Sunday, because that's when one is the most busy. And it's no good to make a retreat in one's home. One has to go somewhere else. It's not good to stay in one's home.

Ok, well I'm sorry to end this retreat just at the moment when we are really getting into it very deeply. But we'll have more such opportunities. Sometimes I take the liberty of asking the same question that Buddha asked his, that the disciples of Buddha asked Buddha, and Buddha answered: "Have I ever spoken thus before?" So something new is happening. And it carries the promise of a whole flurry in the Sufi Order. It's, something has changed. So it's very encouraging. It's a kind of vision of let's say, the bounty that is in this teaching is so incredible. And we just have not known how to, I'm using a word, I don't like that word, exploit it, but we haven't known how to make it flourish. Actually what we are doing is we are rendering a service. That's the whole, I don't use the word spreading the message. What I say is we are, the message is a whole new way of looking at things, right, but what we are doing is we are rendering a service to people who want what we want, and that is awakening and illumination. And also we see that this breakthrough of awakening is going to make all the difference in the unfurling of one's personality, and therefore in one's achievement in life.

So, God bless you now.


NOV 20, 1997		Tape 01

..and fell, of course, a lot of expectation.  

Good, well, now, if it's working, yeah okay.  At some time we will have a break, and we will listen to that music that I have chosen.

Well, we have only one evening, and we want this to be an experience and not just talking, and I'm more and more for experience, but of course experience is interpreted so one has to look very carefully at what one is experiencing.  So that is what we are going to do today, this evening.

What I suggest is that we start with a Sufi practice which is called muhasabi, and that means examining one's conscience.  So we're not working with consciousness so much as conscience.  And so the question is, you ask yourself:  what am I doing in life?  What am I doing in life?  Why am I doing what I'm doing? And what are the values that I really value?  And am I pursuing those values, or are they just sort of an ideal which isn't real?  So it's really a test of authenticity.  

The fact is that unless one progresses one goes backwards.  And what is more, well the whole universe is crying out to awaken in each one of us.  The Sufis would say God is awakening in each one of us.  And so I don't know whether you feel as I feel, but at the age of 81 after having gone through a long path I'm beginning to try to earmark the ultimate values.

And so I don't know whether they are the same as yours, but for me I must say that the thing that has the ultimate value is to attain illumination.  But I'm very wary of words, so, illumination.  What does it mean?  There are two words one uses:  awakening and illumination.  And of course they are very nice because they are connected with light, you see.  So to become luminous would be one step but it doesn't mean that one has attained illumination.  And I don't think that one can ever say that one attains illumination.  I'm sure that you've had flashes of illumination, and then it's just, if one tries to capture it then it will not hold.

And it happens at those moments when you expect it least.  And as a (inaudible) it passes before you notice it, and it's gone.  And it's like a bluebird, if you try to follow it, it will escape you, but if you walk the other way it might follow you.

The other thing is being of service to people, and I must say that unless one entertains that objective, well I see the faces of people becoming very selfish and cantankerous and disappointed in themselves and disenchanted with life and so on and so forth.  Everyone in their own trip, and of course if awakening means really getting into the consciousness of the universe because that, for me the word universe is practically almost equivalent to what we mean by God.

Let's say I make a difference between universe and cosmos.  Cosmos would be like galaxies and so on would be like the body of that being we call the universe, and for those who are initiated in the Sufi Order, the word universel is of course very important.  And if you, I'm not sure if it's Spanish or Italian but, (ver so el uno), towards the one, universe.

So it has a very special meaning.  Whereas cosmos, well that's the galaxies and so on.  So for the Sufis, I think, I need to say here that the Sufis have a very different sense of what we mean by God than the kind of thing that most of us have learned at school:  God as other.  Because for the Sufis, God is here.  This is, God is a reality that is existential, but there is a possibility.  On the other hand, there is that aspect of God that is a virtuality that becomes a reality.  

For the Sufis, inkan, that means possibilities, possibilities that are absolutely unending.  And the question is you see these possibilities, that means the divine potentialities are lying in wait in our being and trying to come through.  And if we feel what the Sufis call ishq allah, which means the divine nostalgia to become a reality as us then those potentialities will grow.  Will unfurl.  And if we try to develop qualities that we would like to develop it doesn't work.  

So you see how important the notion of God is, and that is the reason why, of course, we are living at the time when a lot of people find it easier not to have to believe in God.  But in Sufism one doesn't have to believe in God, it is a matter of experience.  It is quite another thing.

You see, in the Islamic prayer, one is projecting upon what one would like God to be, qualities which are present within one's own being, and by evoking these qualities and by projecting them upon what one imagines God to be, one unfolds one's being.  And as a matter of fact those qualities are then made more and more perfect because in order to project them upon what one imagines God to be like one has to imagine them to be perfect.  And somehow we have within us the capacity to always imagine something greater or more perfect than anything that we have imagined so far.  So you see the meaning of prayer in meditation instead of limiting meditation to stress reduction.  

So, right, glorification as a creative act, as perhaps the ultimate creative act.  And that is why in the zikr for example, and the zikr is a prayer of course and one prostrates and in so doing one downplays one's personal image and as one glorifies, as one's head moves upwards one is inviting those qualities, let's say the divine qualities (inaudible), the divine qualities to manifest and become actuated in one's personality.  And so as I say it is a very creative act.  

The other thing that I think is very important is of course, well I said to be of service.  But to be of service one needs to be able to take responsibility.  And that is what my father calls mastery through achievement.  So achievement is a means of developing a quality which is particularly important for the Sufis because according to Islam we are the representatives of God on earth.  And therefore, the representative, the ambassador, is not just the postman, or postperson, but is actually, is supposed to embody the being of the king.  So not just as I say, that mastery.  

I think of a word of hujaverie, a Sufi, in fact he was the first Sufi teacher to settle in India, long before hadramohva Chisti was the founder of our Order, and he was talking about, well he was quoting the dervishes and he said, there are the jelali dervishes and the jemali dervishes.  Jelali means the powerful ones and jemali are the beautiful ones.  And he said the jelali dervishes are burned by the fire of the divine majesty, and so they manifest majesty.  And the jemali are illuminated by the light of the divine splendor.  

So I don't know whether we just have to decide between those two.  Maybe there is some way of doing both.  So that is one of my models in life.  These are words, so how do we do them, do it?  Well, I do think that meditation is a rehearsal for life rather than an escape from life.  I think it is very clear that, you know, living in a cave in the Himalayas, as I always wanted to do, doesn't make sense.  It's an escape.

So that is awakening beyond life and there are skills, meditation skills, that will lead you to awakening beyond life, and when I say awakening one might think it means awakening beyond the perspective of everyday.  

There is another way of looking, or another form of awakening, it's called awakening in life and which is, consists in being very highly aware of course and somehow sensing the divine purpose in everything that is happening.  So that is being very aware and very awake but it is not simply reducing one's knowledge through that which occurs to the events, confining one's knowledge to the events, but seeing what my father Pir-o-Murshid calls the reason behind the reason.  

For example, if you think of a situation in your life you might think, try to figure it out with your mind and say, well that person is an obnoxious person and is a bad pig, and I'm the victim, and so on, and you know how one thinks.  And one goes to a psychotherapist.  Actually it is one's assessment of the problem that one is caught up in one's assessment of the problem instead of grappling with the real problem.  And the problem is always, according to the Sufis, it is always that which transpires behind that which appears.  So there's always based upon some very deep principles I find in Sufism and that is that, well it all starts by Hadith the prophet (inaudible) said, God speaking, I was or am a secret treasure and desire to be known.  

And so that is that which transpires.  Let's put it this way, that what we are experiencing is just the ayat the signs through which the secret treasure is beginning to reveal itself to us.  So if we take the signs to be the reality of course then we can't see what it is all about.  And so this is what we are trying to do, now how does one do it?  That is the thing that  I am interested in, and therefore I don't want to speak anymore, but I would like us simply to do some practices together.

I don't know how long I'll be able to stand, but I must say that I love being able to look at your faces even if you close your eyes.  I won't be able to look at your faces if I close my eyes.  So I don't know, but occasionally I will open them again.  And you will too probably.

So, alright.  Now to start with, what I will say is this.  Let's start with basics, like how do we meditate.  You are sitting still and you are trying to concentrate and all these random thoughts come into your mind, and you think oh, I can't meditate.  I don't know how people meditate.  It's just impossible.  I don't have it in me.

Well, it's because you're not doing the right thing, of course, obviously.  So the, well, let's do some basic practices first.  You see, we have inherited a lot a things, of course, even prior to our birth, and at the moment of our birth, but we are continually enriched by the environment, not only the physical environment like our food, but of course, our psyche is being enriched by what we are experiencing, but what we are experiencing needs to be digested and therefore, it is interpreted.  

And so when you are sitting there to meditate you will, quite naturally, quite understandably, think of all those situations that are uppermost in your mind, and we project a kind of personal bias upon our experience.  So our assessment of the problems is a distortion of the problems but of course it is true that we do that with our food.  The enzymes of our digestive system certainly distort the food that we ingest, the proteins or the hydrocarbons or fats.  

So now that means that we are carrying mistaken interpretation of our situation throughout the rest of our life.  That's right.  And so I think the first thing to do is to question your assessment of the problems.  That's the first thing.  But that 's still negative, so that's not good enough.  It's just half, half the problem.  

The other one is, well, ok, let's go a little further.  Now, you know that we have a faculty for example of rejecting food that is not digestible.  We also have the faculty of rejecting thoughts or emotions or impressions that are deleterious but the trouble is that we have adapted ourselves overly and consequently we are, we suffer from a psychological indigestion.  And so you know that the power that enables the body to reject elements that are not compatible with its DNA is the immune system, and you know the immune system is based upon me or not me.  

For example, the body rejects all (inaudible) that does not correspond, does not have the same DNA as the body.  We have the same thing in our psyche.  We have the ability to reject impressions that are not me.  And that capacity is particularly highlighted by the hermits and the dervishes.  And that particular non-emotion, if I may say, which is called vairagya which translates by indifference.  Well, it's not the right word, indifference, but it is like being, I feel the best way of illustrating it would be the story in India, the elephants that don't allow themselves to be bugged by the chickens because it is below their dignity.  

So I know it helps you that person keeps on wanting to bug me, but I'm not going to let myself by bugged.  So that gives you a certain amount, it's not exactly indifference, maybe its some kind of snobbism about it, but I suppose even snobbism has its part to play in life, but more so of course, the elephant represents the divine power.  But it is not the kind of aggressive power, as we think.  It is power that deals with big issues instead of fussing with the little ones.  

You know we are spending so much time on that which is urgent rather than on that which is important.  You know, it is like, for example, imagine a Himalayan team of mountaineers who spend so much time and put so much energy into building the base camps that they never reach the top.  That's what we're doing.  Your life is so demanding just even, just to survive that, well, we'd like to be able to dedicate our lives to the spiritual life, but well one doesn't know what it means, but anyway one has some idea that this is something I'm missing out on.  

And yet how can you do it?  How can you fit into the terrible rush of getting breakfast and rushing to one's job and seeing that the children are looked after and coming back and finding that one hasn't paid one's car insurance, all those kinds of problems?  

So of course, I understand, you know amongst the people I have met, amongst the dervishes and amongst the rishis in the Himalayas, I can't tell you what fantastic people I have met.  Of course, there are a lot of charlatans now more than ever before.  They are very high up in the mountains, and the dervishes, well, you know they say, don't come near me because you are lying.  I burn you.  So you keep away.  That's a test of authenticity.  

But then, one can do it in life.  Why not?  But then one has to be very clear.  Why am I doing this?  And I suppose there is what one calls need, like one needs a good car if one is, well, one has a job and one has a status one has to keep up with the Jones'.  So and one's apartment has to be in a proper part of New York and so on.  I understand that.  But there is just that shift between need and greed.  I, I don't think that is, I don't feel that very present here but I've been at those big world conferences, state of the world (inaudible) in San Francisco and that fantastic hotel, and I must say well the need had become a little more than need.  It had really become greed.  And I must say it breaks my heart when I walked out of that hotel and I saw the homeless and I thought to myself, well, what are we doing.  The victims of our greed.  

Ok.  I don't know whether you want to talk.  Let me just continue with this.  Well, some of us are doing something about it.  And there are wonderful people who are really doing something to help.  People who find it difficult to help themselves.  

Ok.  Well so now let's meditate again.  Now you're thinking of your problems obviously.  Now it's not good enough to simply reject, what you could do well, in Buddhism one places a sentinel at the doors of perception so that one only, one filters the impressions and rejects impressions that one can't deal with.  It's not, there's no judgment about them.  It's just that one has enough to deal with as it is, so it's an overload.  But the second process is transmuting the impressions, so that's exactly what we're doing with our food.  That means gathering the gist of the impression, and that is of course rather difficult.  

But now we are going to try to learn how to do this.  As I say we are limited by our vantage point and therefore our interpretation of our problems.  So now let's do the opposite.  Let's as you meditate see if you can see the problem you might have with a person from the point of view of that person, if you can get into the consciousness of that person.  There's a word of Ibn Arabi, I see him through his face, I mean through his eyes.  I would say I see him/her through his/her eyes.  

So now you have two vantage points, your own and that of another person.  And I don't say that yours is right and that person is wrong, or the other way around.  But perhaps you could toggle and eventually extrapolate between those two points of view.  Now increase, I'm sorry we have to move rather fast.  You could think of, include more people, three people, four people involving a problem, and so you have a more composite view.  

Now there is a further stage in the teaching of Ibn Arabi, and that is just imagine how do I look from the vantage point of that person.  So instead of considering how that person looks, how do I look.  You see for the Sufis what is, how do I look, we're not talking about the face.  The face is considered to be a mask.  There's always that which transpires, that is the countenance which transpires behind the face. The face is you know what we assess by using the cheapest of all feedback systems which is the mirror, but if you can look behind the mirror and see what is coming through then you would see the reality.  

Now we go further.  And we're getting into the words of St. Francis.  Well, this is something you could do like when you're walking down the street.  Well don't do it when you're walking in the street in New York, but in a, well, of course its not the same kind of thing to say in New York.  If you're in nature, but really nature, not in Central Park, and then if you just imagine, try to get into the consciousness of the trees, and imagine that they're, they are beings, and the elements of course, and they are looking at you.  And so that is rather shattering to our sense of being the shahid, the witness.  And eventually, of course, St. Francis says, I thought I was looking at the world, but the world is looking at me.  

You see how meditation alters your point of view, totally.  Otherwise, one is caught up in one's own vantage point and we can't get any further.  So that is a first step.  

Now the second step would be turning within.  And the trouble is, of course, is that we think that what it means to turn within is introspection.  We just  have a cup of tea and think about our problems and that's turning within.  No, that's not turning within.  

No, the way to do it is to think that well, let's do it instead of too much theory, let's do it in practice.  Again, imagine that your face is a mask and that you discover your real countenance behind your face.  You can do it, and if you do it then it clicks, like aah, this is me, aah, that's strange I always had a sense of it but I never really, I never saw it so clearly.  I don't know whether you know, I'm sure it has happened to you sometimes in meditation that you find yourself in a situation where one could say that it's as though the world was in, that you're in an altered state, the world is in a transfigured state.  It's like walking in the forest, for example, and it's like a mystery.  It's like it's not real.  Or you're talking to a person and you're watching your words and what that person is saying and all of a sudden you find yourself meeting that person beyond time and space.  A whole different relationship, there's not a one to one relationship or subject-object, it's more a resonance or affinity.  

So now here we come to the real issue.  The real criterion in our meditation.  And that is that I would say that meditation really starts when, instead of being concerned with what is outside you, you are concerned with what emerges within you, and I said emerges, not is, but emerges.  You see when I said in a flash you can have a sense of your real face, I mean your real countenance which transpires behind your face, that is a form of your subtle body that doesn't have contours, doesn't have a profile, but it's more complicated than that because it's not static.  It keeps on, not only, its multi-tiered and also multifaceted, that is we can just experiment with this now and you'll see, for example think of a situation which requires a lot of mastery on your part, like climbing a mountain or rope climbing or hang gliding or whatever, even just playing a piano or typing or working on a computer, a lot of situations require a lot of mastery.  

Now could you just imagine what would be the expression on your face if you were really, felt you were really in control, watching every detail that you, of that which you are controlling, and contrast with the way your countenance would appear if you, your heart felt so deeply moved by the suffering of someone.  The difference in the expression, a totally different expression.  Or what would be the expression in your countenance if you were (inaudible) or what would be your expression if you were peaceful instead of joyous.  You see that each one is different.  You can actually see it in the features of the face, but what we are talking about is that which is coming through from within, which transpires from within.  

Ok.  Now if we move deeper still, well already at this level you probably, there is something that baffles you, and that is everything seems to be intermeshed with everything else, like radio waves for example, so your problems are all connected with the problems of other people and with other people and with yourself, and you are connected with your problems and so on.  You can't say this is me and these are my problems.  It is what Dr. David Boehm calls the implicate state.  Now just think of the way you think.  We were taught a language at school, maybe several, and we do not quite realize that we translate our thinking into words.  And words are static instead of dynamic and a lot of them for example my thoughts or my emotions, those are static words.  My thinking, that would be dynamic, or my feelings or my feeling, that would be dynamic.  

So it's evident that the language limits our thinking.  Even if you are not explaining what you imply you are still, in your house when you're alone, you're still translating your thoughts in words.  Now if you are on retreat for a long time, like 40 days, for example, you would be asked to observe silence and consequently you've become unaccustomed to translating your thoughts into words.  In fact, a day into it you would have very much difficulty in talking at all.  And then, you grasp what you imply behind what you explain.  

But there again I'm still talking of the language of the individual.  And this is very perplexing because it is really the divine thinking coming through as your thinking, not coming through your thinking, but coming through as your thinking, distorted of course, but still the divine thinking, and I come back to what I said at the beginning, well this is illustrated in Buddhism by the samsaric wheel, like the seed that becomes a plant and becomes a seed, and becomes a plant, it's recycling.  What's the point?   One thing that is better than that is evolving.  So the wheel is advancing.   

So how does the wheel advance?  I mean how do you become different from what you have been so far.  Otherwise, one continues to be what one was.  Well, this is creativity.  So that when you are meditating, instead of concerning yourself with the problems, I would say downplay your concern about the problems and highlight what is coming through your being at this time.  Because there is a continual upsurge of potentials in your being, and for the Sufis that is the way in which God reveals him/her self to him/her self and to you as being part of him/her self in the very form of your being. These are words of Ibn Arabi, the Sufi, the great Sufi Shaik Ibn Arabi.  God revealing, you see, we, if you start from your vantage point you want to figure things out with your mind and at some point you realize there is no way.  

So then we take the opposite point of view.  That is what is called the antipodal point of view.  How would things look from the divine point of view?  Now of course, we can't know what things would look like from the divine point of view, but if you start getting into the consciousness of another person that is already the first step.  

Now then of course if you could get into the consciousness of a great being, like the Sufis, we say the masters, saints, and prophets, well then you're learning to see things from not just the point of view of another person, but a point of view that is probably better than your own, in fact most certainly better than your own if it's a real genuine teacher.  

Now I remember, in climbing in the Himalayas, climbing to visit a rishi, a great rishi in a cave, with a group of people, it was a rather dangerous trip, with wild animals.  And then one of the men, and he was sitting in samadhi, in a state of ecstasy, it was incredible, the light of his being, consciousness, and the smile on his face, it was just incredible, the power that was coming through his being, compassion.  It was very real, because most of them don't speak, so you just sit there.  I've done that a lot, and then you leave and you're walking on air you're just transformed.  So but this time this man asked what I would consider a stupid question.   He didn't think it was stupid, I'm sure, and you could see this rishi descending from his ecstasy trying to get into the consciousness of this man and thinking, gosh, how can one see things that way.  It was so strange for him.  

So imagine that a teacher is looking into your thinking, gosh, how can I think this way.  And you don't know it because you think, I mean the way I think, what is wrong with it.  So it's another level.  So we're going to examine that a little further, but lets pursue this.  

You see according to Sufis, God is revealing him/her self to him/her self. That is, God knows himself eternally in the principles of his whole being but there is further knowledge which is required which accrues to the divine being by actuating him/her self as you and me.  And that knowledge is knowledge which accrues to the divine being through us or rather, actually it is a very difficult, that is why there are very few people who can follow Sufism, and they go to Buddhism or yoga or whatever.  

It is very difficult, because what it means is that I know God through the knowledge that God has of him/her self through my knowledge of him/her.  Now try to figure that out.  That 's not logic, is it? Although it is superlogic.  But then you know what the Sufis say, it's the more you awaken the more you are perplexed.  And that perplexity is not just at the level of mind, you know the scientists are perplexed.  They use the word elegance now instead of just saying they never cease to be amazed by the extraordinary intelligence of the programming but now they are saying, and the elegance.  So it is in the realm of emotion.  

So one is not only perplexed but one is shattered in one's emotion, which is, well, much more exciting than to be low-key.  This is a state that most people are in.  So that's, you know, like when nature moves very strong and this storm and there is lightening and there's sunshine and there's a rainbow and there's rain and you know then that something is really happening.  

Otherwise, you know, life has become rather humdrum, and rather bourgeois.   You know, it doesn't seem to get anywhere, you know.  And going to the Himalayas is not an answer either.  The path, yes.  And perhaps you know that if you climb the Himalayas, you start walking on paths, and eventually there is no path anymore.  You make a path.  

So this only thing when you turn within, so just think, instead of thinking, I would like to capture the qualities that are trying to come through at this moment, and think they are being revealed to me.  

Now, curiously enough, there are clues.  In fact, that's a word that is used by the Sufis, ayat, the clues, devices to communicate the divine intention.  You see this could be very well illustrated by the film E.T.  I'm sure that you've seen it.  Have you?  Do you mean to say you laughed or cried because you saw shadows on the screen?  Well, you saw E.T. through the eyes of that lovely child.  Yes, so that was more real.  So that was very clever of Spielberg.  But actually, of course, when you hear that the face was a turtle and the voice was that of an old woman, and you think to yourself, gosh, I've been fooled.  

But actually what was happening is that Spielberg was using devices in order to communicate to you his idea, his vision.  So think of God as being, Spielberg as being God.  I'm sure that he would like that, and he is trying to communicate his intention, his/her intention in this case.  And you don't get it.  And all you see is the ayat, the signs.  So one has to see what is transpiring behind the signs, but it is not just that.  They are, the signs are dynamic instead of static.  So that something is coming through.  And I don't know whether you've noticed that, you know, what is synchronicity like you haven't figured out which quality it is.  

I mean, you know, we want to develop all qualities, but they can't come through all at the same time.  So there is some sequence.  So there is one quality, in fact, I can open the brackets here and say, if I were to ask you what is the quality that you feel you would like to work with at this time.  There are three answers you could give.  The first one would be the quality that would help me to meet my problems.  

So you figured out that you know you are being tested in the qualities in your being and so your concern is about adapting yourself to the environment.  Now, supposing that you turned within and didn't try to figure it out with your mind, then you would find that the quality that is coming through is not the same one that would make you adapt to the environment because...

(end of side 1)

...for musicians of course very interesting, if people are improvising, then how do you listen to the whole, and yet leave the mark of your own individuality.  That's a beautiful balance, and that really is the way things are.  

So once more we are turning within.  You've downplayed the impressions from outside.  So your concern is not, how I can adapt myself to the environment, and you're just feeling this incredible, what the Sufis call ishq allah, divine nostalgia, to manifest, to reveal itself, by dint of all these qualities that are trying to come through.  

And now you see, we place obstacles to our transformation, because we are attached to our personality, or our self-image, to where our, it is counterproductive, we are our own enemies.  But it means that we have to accept, to give up the way we are.  And that's the meaning of fana. To give up what we are.  

That's not what we really are, but what we, our self-image, well, to give up our personality.  To, like to disintegrate the whole thing and build it up again.  You know about situations like that.  The Buddhist lama sometimes, they take weeks and weeks of hard work to build a mandala, a beautiful mandala, and then they destroy it bit by bit, and then they build another one.  So think of yourself.  There is no way of building a cathedral, I hope there is no offense, on a ruin.  

That is why Jelaluddin Rumi says, take a pickaxe and destroy your house, bit by bit.  And then you will find a secret treasure, he didn't say you might, he said you will.  But of course, what if you don't.  Well, there is a treasure but of course it is well it is a matter of whether we under stand the value of it but it is a matter of what we are, values in life.  

There's no accounting for taste as you know.  But now the thing is that, you see, if you just concentrate on what is happening within, what's emerging, you're not enlisting all the levels of your being.  And that's the reason why in the zikr, you know, all that I'm saying is really a description of the zikr, the Sufis.  Because you know you go into a circle, that's where consciousness is expanding, as we did in the beginning of this evening, and then illa, you're turning within, and then the first a of allah is like the God emerging as you, so that's, yeah, well, that's what happens as these qualities emerge, but then.  No, I spoke too fast.  I'm sorry.  Illa, the last a of illa is God emerging from within.  And then the first a of allah, that's meaningful to those of you conversant in the zikr, is what they call mithal, which is the world of metaphor.  I'm so sorry.  I've got that all wrong.  No.  The first a of allah represents the plane of malakut which is the celestial sphere.  

Now, this is something which is being very popular these days, the touch of the angel.  And there was a survey to see how many Americans believe in angels, and apparently it was 60%, surprising, because I always think that when I talk about celestial sphere, people ask me if I still believe in Santa Claus.  No, this is very important, because you see, the deep central core of our being is immaculate. 

And so when we try to discover who we are, I said it is many tiered.  It is not just many faceted.  Then it is very difficult because there are so many contradictions.  Because on one hand there is defilement.  I hope there is no offense in that.  And on the other hand, there is purity, and how can we reconcile the two.  One needs another logic than the ordinary logic, and this could be illustrated by the voice of Caruso which can be retrieved from its bad recordings, that means it is present within its distortions.  

So it is still there.  So that is a wonderful thought.  When you try to validate yourself against guilt, or a bad self-image, and you realize that, yes, there has been defilement, there's been a spillover from the environment and also you know from one's ancestry.  At some point it was monkeys.  I don't know whether I'm hurting the belief of people.  But there's a scientific fact, anyway.  

So there is some inheritance there, that we can't be proud of, and there is the spillover from the environment, but still the beautiful thing is there is the child in you.  The child that is still there and that is your access to the celestial spheres, and for the Sufis, creativity is only wholistic , w h, wholistic, not holistic, w h, if it includes all levels of your being.  

And that is why in the zikr one is lifting oneself from one level to the other after doing the, after reaching out and turning within, and that is a way to be creative so that one is creative on all levels of one's being.  And of course, there is no way in which one can hoist oneself out of one's own will and that is why maybe it is a good thought that there is an attractor.  That's a word used in physics, an attractor, that God is the attractor. 

So that there is the divine action upon us rather than our action upon the environment.  That is the important thing for the Sufis.    But it is not as though God is other.    You see, so again, it is very difficult for our logic.  Because God is not other.  So, you could think of ourselves as a pendulum, the bottom is moving in time and space, and time is not reversible, not complementary to space.   

I'm sorry Einstein, but it is very useful for calculations of speed, but that's all.  You can't say that, but the weighted, the weighted piece of lead at the bottom of the pendulum, but at the top it is suspended at a point that never moves.  It doesn't move, you see.  And you are the whole pendulum.  That means that at some level of your being you are subject to change and decay and death and so on, although death is a misnomer because our concept of death is totally off, we just have no idea what it means.  One couldn't, obviously one couldn't unless one had died.  Unless, well, in meditation one learns to die before death, and resurrect now.  These are words of the Sufis.  

So that is the, it is a very important quantum leap, and if you are in your meditation when you, having turned within and had espied somehow some sense of the purity in your being and then somehow it triggered off in you a kind of memory, a sense of déjà vu, of the celestial spheres.  Now if you, I don't know whether you react as I do, but when I see the light in the eyes of a baby, it reminds me, I feel as though, it reminds me of the celestial spheres.  And I think what a pity that people grow up and the shadow of the earth comes and hides this light.  It is there, but it is hidden.  

And so for me, one of the secrets, the different secrets, to get into the, we live on several levels, at several levels of our being, and one of them is the celestial level, and of which we are not generally aware.  And if you are aware of it then for one thing it makes you very scrupulous about authenticity, very scrupulous, then you can't lie anymore.  Because the clue to the malakut, to the celestial level, is innocence.  And the trouble about innocence is that one is defenseless. 

So how can you reconcile it with your need to be strong to be able to survive in life?  You see, there are a lot of contradictions in spirituality.  But these are the big issues.  I'm sure you are aware of them in your own life.  How can one be vulnerable and strong at the same time?  It is something I've been working with personally myself, trying to work with.    That is to take responsibility without hatred.  I mean the clue was really to be able to forgive while still upholding one's anger, because if you lose your anger, you lose your backbone, you lose your authenticity.   Yeah.  Outrage for the behavior, but you forgive the person, because as Christ said, they don't know what they do. 

It is difficult to believe that they don't know what they do, when you think of a few cases.  You probably think of the same cases as me, but it is true. They really don't know what they do.  It is really amazing.  You know that Brody in that sequel of the book called, AFTER LIFE, he had made an experiment with people who were, I'm not sure, they were Nazi's in that case, who had tortured people or given people away, and then at that time in that period, you know, when their heart wasn't beating so they weren't aware anymore, they had a vision, they got into the consciousness of the people whom they had victimized and then when they came they felt so sorry.  

So they didn't know what they were doing.  So doesn't it make it easier to forgive, no it doesn't.  Well, I don't blame you.  I mean I find it very difficult, there is someone I find very difficult to forgive, and that is that woman who gave my sister away to the Nazis for 100,000 francs.  And then she was tortured to death by the Nazis.  It is very difficult for me to forgive her.  The (inaudible) yes, I understand that he was, he was a psychopath, he was ill, but to do it for money, for greed, that's difficult.  

And of course, it means loving people who make themselves difficult to love.  That is where we are tested, to love a lovely person is easy.  So that is where we are tested.  So but these are the conditions for access to the celestial sphere.  And as I say, to be a complete person we need to evolve.  We need to be able to function at all levels of our being at the same time.  So how do you do it?  Just trying to lift yourself up, no, that doesn't do it.  Downplaying your physical body consciousness, well, you see in yoga one simply one considers the physical body, well, the physical world, as totally an illusion.  No, it is not that, no, it is, you just consider that it is not what you think it is.  So it is not an illusion, but it is not what you think it is.  So that is a way of downplaying the impact of the physical world.  

Now I must say there is a moment and I hope that you are doing it and not just listening to me speaking, when somehow you realize that it is only your body that needs to be located in space.  Your mind doesn't, is not necessarily located in space, well your thoughts with regard to spatial location of course, but when you are thinking about a quality for example your thoughts are not located in space.  And the other thing is our notion of time is totally, well, is inadequate also.  

So, that's one of the things you do to meditate, you and this happens perhaps you could do it with me.  You place the thumb of your right hand under your chin and the middle finger of your right hand against your right nostril but don't press it yet, and then the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand and the thumb of your left hand in the proximity of your left nostril and now you just simply breathe normally to start with but try to extend your exhaling as long as you can, each time a little longer, and now the next thing is you hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling so you press both nostrils when you hold your breath and then release them and now you inhale through the left nostril by, you press the right nostril and then hold your breath, press both fingers.  

So think of a pendulum that is swinging from the left to the right and then it reaches a point of suspense when you hold your breath, and as you exhale think that you have set a momentum in motion so that the pendulum in, during that period of suspense, there is a force that reaches upwards and might even reach the zenith and might even be fed back into the circle again.  

Now as you exhale, no now you inhale right, so imagine the pendulum is now moving down from the top right to the left, and it reaches a point of suspense, and now the momentum of the pendulum is going to continue reaching upwards, moving upwards during a state of suspense, and then you go down again, right.  

Now, you breathe in through both nostrils and hold your breath, and while you are holding your breath, you pass and review each one of your chakras in turn.  Well, you can already do it when you're inhaling, when you're inhaling you can already pass and review all of your chakras.  When you hold your breath, then imagine that you find yourself at the point of the pendulum where it is suspended and it doesn't move, you see.  So that is eternity.  It is as though we are all like pyramids, or cones, that all had the apex of our being in common.  So you reach that point.  And that is the point of samadhi.  The Sufis call it hahut.  

And now as you exhale, that is the extraordinary thing, because just think that you have descended from that eternal state, passing through different spheres and have adopted the mode of being of those different spheres and your in the course of your descent and so you can think really that you are a denizen of the highest spheres.  If it was, landed on the planet earth and adopted a body that was offered by the whole cosmos in order to awaken your consciousness.  Now there are more practices I want to do and we can't make it too long.  

So my favorite practices, working with light.  You know the body has the ability to absorb light, just like a crystal it can absorb light.  So think of your body.  If you are sunbathing, perhaps one doesn't realize it, but one is opening the pores of one's skin in order to receive the rays of the sun.  So if you can do that, you will do it if you just think that you are being receptive to the light, not just the light of the environment, but the light of the stars.  In fact, there is a practice I have done sitting on the stars.  It is a wonderful thing to do at nighttime.  

And then as you hold your breath, well turn your attention towards the cells of your body.  I wonder if you can feel the cells of your body.  You know, one can feel one's heart, one's heartbeat.  One can feel ones stomach to some extent, particularly when one has indigestion.  You can feel a lot of things (inaudible) but whether, you can't feel your cells individually, but I wonder whether you could feel the way that your cells exalt in the gift of light, whether they start jiggling, they start sparkling, they start communicating, they start dividing.  So something is really happening within your body.  And as you exhale, then you are not boomeranging back the light that you absorb but you are emitting light because you have processed that light, the very cells of your body have processed that light.  

Ok.  Now the next phase would be when you hold your breath, well perhaps we could do it like this.  The next thing would be to, instead of identifying yourself with your body and thinking that your body is being enriched by the light of the environment, or illuminated by it, identify with your aura.  Can you identify with your aura?  No? And you feel light around your shoulders, and it is feeling, it is not seeing and not imagining, it is really feeling light around your shoulders.  I'm not telling, this is a fact, it can be demonstrated in the laboratory.  The body absorbs light and radiates light.  

So there is no doubt about that.  That is what you call the aura, (inaudible) and physics.  But you can actually feel it.  I'll tell you a way of doing it.  It is a skill.  In Japan, I'm sure it is to be found also in the States, there is a man called, I forget, Hiroshima, I think.  He has a laboratory in which are cells that are light-proof so you can sit in the cell in total darkness, and there are the senses there that will pick up light.  And if you are able to radiate enough light, the whole system will start lighting up.  

So meditators can make light, can make that happen.  And non-meditators find difficult.  So there is the proof that meditation does something to you.  So you sit there and think I've got to, my ego is at stake, now I've got to prove that I can.  So you try to radiate a lot of light.  Can you do that?  Just imagine that you are radiating a lot of light, like the sun.  

Well that would be interesting.  I don't promise that next time I'll bring one of those photoelectric cells here.  We would need just ourselves.  Was that helpful to try to just radiate a lot of light?  It's not good enough to, just to think I am radiating light.  It has something to do with one's thoughts and one's emotions.  If you entertain hatred, you can't radiate light.  And it is very difficult not to entertain hatred, because there are so many obnoxious people in the world.  It is really very difficult.  But it is very difficult to forgive.  But that is a condition.  

So now you see, that would be the preliminary to, instead of identifying with your body which we do all the time, identifying with your aura, but you know that your aura does not have a boundary.  So if you identify with your aura, it reaches right out into the stars, or rather, it is the light of the stars.  And so then you can toggle between, as you inhale, the way the light of the stars gets converged as your aura, and as you exhale, the way that your aura extends into the stars.  You know your aura is traveling at a speed of 186,000 miles a second.  

So now we hold our breath between inhaling and exhaling and then instead of thinking of the sparkling of the cells of your body, you are experiencing a state of light which is absolutely, exactly what Dr. David Boehm means by the implicate state and which my father calls the all-pervading light, and it is not radiant light because the light that we normally experience is radiant, it radiates from a particular source which is located in space.  But here this is light that is not located in space.  So what does, it doesn't make sense to our ordinary perception, but scientifically, of course, physically, it is a reality.  We call it a light field.  

And then think, instead of you know absorbing light from the environment, the light is emerging from within.  So there is both, you see.  As you inhale light from outside, as you hold your breath, light is emerging from within, and as you exhale, then you are radiating light.  Now I'm sorry that I'm moving so fast but I have this, just very few minutes to bring in a lot of things.  

So I hope that it will inspire you to go and meditate on your own, do it further.  Now the other further practice would be the levels of light.  First of all, let us be aware that physical light is only one slither of light.  We are used to thinking that that is light.  But the other levels of light are not, cannot be detected by instruments, at least so far as we know.  But you know, there is a limit to the range of our sight, and perhaps a lot of instruments, the ultraviolet.  

Ok.  Now if you could, I can't comment too much, if you would just imagine that your aura is like the spectrum of light of a rainbow.  So at the bottom you have red, at the top you have ultraviolet, and between well you have, the second chakra you have sort of vermilion color, and then you have orange in the solar plexus, gold in the heart center, green in the throat center, blue in the eyes, violet in the third eye, and something like a diamond above your head, (inaudible), with all kinds of reflections of light, colors of light. 

So you pass and review, at first you concentrate on each chakra separately and after a few months you are able to do this, as you inhale you pass and review all your chakras at the light.  It is like bobsledding up, and then you hold your breath, and when you hold your breath you make a quantum leap and just think of yourself as luminous intelligence and think of your aura as the support system in the chakra for your luminous intelligence.  So it's not the same thing as consciousness.  Consciousness is, intelligence becomes consciousness when faced with an object.  Consciousness is picking up information, impressions, whereas intelligence is radiating light upon all things.  It is insight upon all things.  Because we have an inborn knowledge of meaningfulness that is confirmed by our experience.  

So now one further practice and that is as you exhale now, after holding your breath, you imagine that the light of intelligence is, illuminates your whole aura, or rather, triggers off, let's say the light of your aura so that your aura all of a sudden starts ablazing by the impact of your insight upon your aura.  For example, a mother asks her child if he or she is able to see that pixie in the tree in a puzzle and the child says, no mummy I can't see it.  Look again, no mummy, can't see it.  Look again, YES, and at that moment the whole face of the child lights up.  

That's what I mean, the impact of intelligence upon the aura, the aha moment.  That is what is meant in the sura of the Koran, a light upon a light.  

Now there is just one further practice.  And that is, now you do this with your eyes.  Well I lost my watch, I don't know what time it is.  I have no idea.  I see.  Ok.  We have 5 minutes.  I'll do it 5.  So with closed eyelids, just imagine that your eyes, aware of the light that impinges upon our retina, the cornea, but we are not, emotionally not aware that our eyes also do give out light, broadcast light, image light.  

So as you inhale you just think that the light of the environment is threaded through, well the cornea and retina and then along the thread, along the optic nerve and fills your brain.  Your brain is very, very full of light, and as you exhale just imagine that that light is now threaded through, back down the opposite way, through the optic nerve and is cast forward through your glance, two beams of light, like the headlamps of a car.  

Now if you were to open your eyes you know you would start to see the objects in the room so you would lose your concentration on those beams of light.  Now if you keep on working with this, for months maybe months, eventually, you can open your eyes and the environment will look like a blur but you just have this very strong concentration on those two beams of light.  Now eventually after a lot of, more months, you are able to take a flower, or crystal, or even ask a person to sit in front of you, and then you will find that you are able to grasp, what I call the countenance behind the face of that person.  So that what I am saying is real.  It is not just philosophy.  It is real.  You have to do it to know that it is real.  And that is why I enjoy being with you because I am always looking at the face of your aura, and it is so beautiful that I'm always amazed.  

Right.  Now one last practice.   And that is that, as you, instead of simply thinking of the light in your brain that is cast forward through your glance, just imagine that the light of intelligence is threaded through your glance.  So you have a kind of an insight into all things.  And it does not mean necessarily seeing the, what I call a subtle face or the countenance, but it means seeing the meaningfulness behind what doesn't make sense.  

That is what we call awakening.  In fact, facing proof of the contrary.  And that is faith.  It is not belief.  It is faith.  It is not the same thing.  They are two things.  And meaningfulness and also in splendor.  There is splendor in a garbage heap, in a can, a beer can.  The photons that are reflected by the beer can are as beautiful as the photons of the stars.  And you can find it in a garbage heap.

God bless you, now. 

So, I will try to sing for you a song of my father, the words that my father composed by my uncle (inaudible) Every step in thy path, every step in thy path, draw me nearer to thee, draw me nearer to thee.  Every breath in thy thought, every breath in thy thought, (inaudible)  Every glimpse of thy smile, ever inspiring to my soul.  Every tear in thy love, in thy love (inaudible).

(end of tape)


NOV 22, 1997		Tape 01

...composition by my nephew, David.So let us start with the Invocation. Towards the One whose body is the cosmos, and whose mind curses through our thoughts, and whose emotion arouses our glorification, whose presence is always there, and whose reality is beyond our reach.

Well greetings to you. I must say, I can't tell you how moved I am to see all these familiar and radiant faces. I would like this to be a transforming experience rather than my talking at you. It's a pity that we can't be a little more interactive. There are too many people. But I am trying to respond to the call of your hearts and your minds and your souls. And I am sure that I feel the way that you feel. If you have come here, it's because I think we all have a concern as to the meaningfulness of our lives.

So I'd like to start, in fact the whole day we should be doing practices. I believe more and more in experience than in talking. But it's true that experience is interpreted by our very limited minds and therefore distorted. Consequently there needs to be some commentary about our experience. 

So I would like us to start with one of my favorite meditations. Could you just become aware of the light of your glance? Just imagine that your eyes are radiating two beams of light like two head lamps of a car. 

We'll start with a typical Sufi practice called Muhasibi. That's called the examination of conscience. Instead of consciousness, we're working with conscience. So we ask ourselves, "What are the values that I pursue in my life that I feel are really worth the while?" The first question. And the second one is, "What I'm doing in life, is that going to help actuate those ideals, or is that just lip service to something that is not real but still I value?" And thirdly, "What are the practical steps in order to make this really happen so that my life will really achieve a fulfillment?"

So what are these values? Is there some way of saying them in words? Well, for one thing we have a need to build a convenient, efficient, effective underpinning for the awakening of our consciousness, awareness. So for that we need to build a solid foundation, an underpinning which is not the same thing as leaving the world and going into a cave in the Himalayas. But we build in our society the kind of underpinning that is going to make it possible for one to achieve what I might call the awakening consciousness or our awareness in the course of a tremendous evolution of the star dust which was the origin of our bodies. It's quite extraordinary what evolution means, the advance of consciousness, of awareness, by means or supported by this underpinning which is also evolving. So that we must think that a human being is half way or is on the way to a more advanced state of evolution. We're still not quite there yet. 

Now it looks as though as Shabuddin says that the support system takes over. Imagine that you have spent a lot of money and energy in building base camps for a Himalayan venture. And somehow you've put so much money and energy in base camps, that there is not enough energy to reach the top. It seems that is what is happening to us. We have these ideals, but how do we really make them happen. And as I say, escape in a cave, which I've always wanted in my life, is not the answer. Although I have met some incredible people living in caves and so on. But it's just too easy. It's much more difficult to do it having to deal with money and obnoxious people, and a very dangerous environment, and an explosive planet and all those things that we are aware of now. How do we do it?

So that would be our quest for what we call awakening or illumination. And I'm rather wary of words. What do we mean by that? We want to see how do we do it? I don't think you can say, "I've got it now". We have flashes of illumination. As it says in the Upanishads, they pass before you realize them. 

Now the other thing is a real need to unfurl the potentialities of our being. And you know our self esteem is at stake. And as a matter of fact, our achievement in life is a function of our self image or self esteem. And the trouble is that we identify without self image. In fact, we are quite convinced that we are what we think we are. And of course, we are not that at all. But that that's the way our rather finite inadequate minds function. And so there is work to do in order to eschew that barrier that is standing in the way of our become whom we are. So what we want to discover is what the Sufis call THat which transpires behind that which appears'. 

It has to do with a whole way of looking at life as though, well we can extend this to our concept of God. I think I need to say that right in the beginning. Although I don't want to talk too much metaphysics, but still. The Sufi concept of God I think has a very particular meaning for our time. It's not God up there and us miserable worms down here. But somehow at different levels of Godness if one might say. And if one could make a difference between, I would say one of the nicest ways of thinking what we mean by God is Universe, and hence Universel. I'm not sure if it's Italian or Spanish.  But it would be like Ôverso el uno', Universel. So for me that's a name of God for the millennium because it doesn't have all those connotations that we project upon the idea of God. As you know, we're living in a time that Buddhism is very popular because one doesn't have to believe in God. But I'm not asking you to believe. I'm inviting you to experience with me. And then a conviction may come out of that rather than a belief in something that you've heard or been shoulded into believing. 

In fact it is the freedom from three things. I think the spirituality of the future will be first of all freedom from role models. So that we can be ourselves, who we are and not try to ape our master. And then freedom from do's and don'ts so that we may be self motivated and take responsibility. And then some kind of freedom, maybe not a lot of freedom, from what I call the institutionalization of spirituality. So we are announcing a quantum leap into the millennium. 

So if I use the word God, which is often used amongst the Sufis, perhaps you should mark that it is not the idea of God up there somewhere. It is a reality that is to be found at all levels. For that I have a pet theory. That is think of yourself as a pendulum. And the bottom of the pendulum is moving in time and space. And the top is unchanged, eternal. We are the whole pendulum. It's not true that the soul is eternal and that the body is transient. The whole being ranges between those two poles. So God as the antipodal pole of our being in comparison to what we think we are from the point of view of our personal vantage point. So it's a rather revolutionary thinking. 

Further more, at least a rather important aspect of God for the Sufis, is God as a virtuality. Not thinking of virtual reality exactly. So I'm rather wary of using that word. But a potentiality. the Sufis use the word Imkan, which means possibility. So just imagine that you carry within you the infinite potentialities of the Universe. So that in the DNA of our body the genes, actually the code of the whole Universe, not just of our body, in each cell of our body. It's an extraordinary realization. So actually we are normally only using only a small fraction of our faculties. 

So what we want to do is to awaken faculties that we don't usually use. Perhaps one of the reasons why we do not is because we're programmed to deal interactively with the environment. Our programming is a little bit simplistic at first. As we evolve, we start discovering faculties that we didn't realize that we had before. That's what we want to do in the course of these few hours. It's very short to be able to do all that we have in mind. But I'm thinking of a very good example. Meditation instead of withdrawal from life or an escape from life or a retreat, I prefer the word treat rather than retreat. Think of it as a rehearsal for life, that is stepping back in order to see things more clearly so that one can program one's life more effectively.

This was illustrated by Beethoven who was not only a very good composer but a very wise man. I would say in eastern terminology, a master. He illustrated in the Forth Piano Concerto. I don't know whether you know it. But he describes the world as the orchestra and himself as the pianist. So the orchestra is coming with a wallop like ba bum bum bum. And he reacts, hum hum hum hum. And the orchestra comes again. And it's as though he said, "I'm not ready to play ball with you now". In other words I don't want to react. I want to consult my deeper self.  That's what we're doing. We're reacting. And consequently, we are not enlisting all the potentialities of our beings. So consider meditation as a buffer that enables you to just hold back on quick reaction and find out much more about yourself. 

This is the clue to the first steps in meditation because if you sit in meditation and try to meditate, you find that all kinds of random thoughts start creeping into your mind. And you find that you can't control them. You think, "Well I don't have it in me to meditate. I need more will to control". It's a bad method. It doesn't work. You're fighting a losing battle. 

The thing to do is to downplay your response to the environment. I did not say eradicate it, but downplay it so that you're able to highlight what is coming through. Your impact upon the environment is much more important that the impact of the environment upon you. But it is true that we need to be first very clear what that impact is. That is why that the first method of meditation that I suggest is placing sentinels at the doors of perception. In stead of downplaying the environment, placing sentinels at the doors of perception so that you are able to reject impressions that are damaging. I think that we suffer in our society from indigestion of impressions particularly TV and all kinds of things that we are exposed to. So the ability to protect yourself against impressions that are damaging. 

You know that this is an immune system. Our psyche has an immune system just like our body. The body, there are two immune systems. The first one is based upon me or not me. Like you body recognizes an organ that has been transplanted if it has the same DNA. If it does not, then it's rejected. There is a second immune system that adapts itself to the environment. Otherwise we would never be able to eat food. And that is based upon our need to enrich ourselves by the environment. So be careful as you meditate. If you cut our the impact of the environment then you are limiting yourself. You are not honoring, enlisting all the values, the richness that is accruing to you from outside. So we first reject those things that we feel are damaging to us.  I may be old fashioned, but I feel hard rock is damaging to the psyche. I prefer Bach. Then as I say I am a little bit old fashioned. I don't belong to our time. But there are laboratory experiments that have demonstrated that it is damaging to our psyche. So I would say turn a blind eye if it's possible. It's very difficult of course.

Now, so the second principle that I would suggest following as you start meditating is to transmute the impressions from outside. And that's exactly what the body does with food. Not only it rejects those parts of the food that are indigestible, but it also transmutes those elements that are useful. But in order to be incorporated into the body, they have to be transmuted. Proteins, for example, have to be transmuted into amino acid chains and so on. Enzymes of the body are doing that work. So we have the ability to somehow incorporate not just the physical but also the psychological environment in our being through the process of digestion. 

And that means that we project upon the environment something of ourselves. Now, at first what we project upon the environment is our self image. For example, we are always assessing our problems. We convince ourselves that our assessment is correct. The fact is that you can take for granted that our assessment is wrong. So that we are carrying. Maybe I shouldn't say that. I should say relative. But then it takes freedom from opinion, that's a word of Buddha, to question one's assessment of one's problems. Because one is convinced that they are the way one thinks. And to help you overcome that, you just have to think that our minds in their commonplace functioning are limited. Otherwise we would understand meaningfulness. The whole purpose in life is to understand meaningfulness. The whole mind has a kind of elasticity about it. So it is capable of grasping meaningfulness beyond the commonplace reach. But that's what meditation is about. So it's a question of how we do that.

So it's not good enough to say, "My problems are not what I think they are". Now we want to see,"What are they?". So if they are limited by our personal vantage point, that is we are looking from a personal angle. For example, if you look at Notra Dame from one angle, you haven't seen Notra Dame. That being so, then in order to understand our problems, we would have to see them from several of vantage points at the same time. But how can we do it? Because normally you're limited to your own personal vantage point. 

Sufi methods consist in trying - I hope you'll be trying this while I'm talking about it - think of your problems. I'm sure we all have problems. If you don't have problems, I don't think you belong here. It's the point of being here. Think of your worst problem. Just assume that your assessment of that problem is, I wouldn't say totally invalid, but it is relative to your personal vantage point. And I think it's good to realize that one is schlepping this assessment of one's problems throughout one's life. Just imagine that throughout your life you're carrying this false assessment of your problem. It's very damaging. And it's really worth while trying to see if one can look at an alternative point of view to one's own. 

So try and see if you can get into the consciousness of the person who is involved mostly with you in this problem. It could be your opponent of course. And I don't say that that point of view is more valid than your's. I don't say that Saddam Hussin's point of view is more valid than the American one. I would rather think the contrary. So it's not true that everybodies point of view is valid. It's only valid if it is a truth. If it is a ploy and of bad faith, then it's not valid. So if you get into the consciousness of another person, you have to be wary whether that point of view is really honest, or whether they are trying to deceive you, or whether they are deceiving themselves. And you have to ask yourselves if you are deceiving yourself because we are always justifying our position. The mind is an expert at justification.

So the test of Muhasibi, which is self examination, is absolute authenticity., absolute truthfulness. You don't lie to others and you don't lie to yourself. You try to call the bluff of your own mind not just of other people. That is the power of the dervish. That is the reason the dervishes are so very powerful, overwhelming. And they can transform your life in an instant of time by the power of truth. That's muhasibi.

Now having gotten into the consciousness of another person, you can get into the consciousness of more people of course. Now, what is very interesting is the Sufis say, "I see him (I would say him/her) through his/her eyes". Then they go on to say, "I see myself through his/her eyes". Can you see yourself from the point of view of another person? And now you increase the amount of people, more and more people involved in the problem. 

I don't know whether you know the book "Jesus the Man" by Kahlil Gibran in which he portrays Jesus as seen from the point of view from different people who knew him at the time. And they are all totally different and contradictory. But together it builds a very real picture of Jesus. So that's the way to see yourself through the vantage point of many people and eventually more and more people. 

And eventually you get into what one calls cosmic consciousness. There is a word of St. Francis of Assisi who said, "I thought I was looking at the world, but the world was looking at me. I thought I was looking at God but God was looking at me". Now the Sufis go further. They say, "God discovers Himself by revealing Himself as me". And a further one, I always say Him/Herself. So that's a modern paraphrasing of the Sufis. "God discovers Him/Herself by my discovery of Him/Her through the way that He/She manifests Him/Herself as me." Is that too complicated? It's the ultimate breakthrough of realization. We want to examine the steps leading up to that point. So I shot a shot in the dark there.

So St. Francis was walking in the forest sometime in the nighttime. And somehow he got into the consciousness of the trees and of the animals. So he was aware that the trees were beings and that they were looking at him and so were the flowers. If you do that, you'll find yourself in a transfigured world. I don't know whether you've had those flashes of an alternate state, without drugs of course, where you just all of a sudden get into a state which is familiar. It's different from our usual state, but it's familiar. You know it. And it's wonderful. What the Sufis would say is that what you're experiencing is that which transpires behind that which appears. So that is what we're trying - well the Sufis would go further by saying that this is a secret treasure that desired to be known, or loved to be known. That's the word used. Not desired but loved to be known. Love and understanding at the same time. 

Let us say that instead of acquiring knowledge, the complimentary view is knowledge being revealed to you instead of you acquiring it, and both at the same time. But to start with now we are going to highlight one and downplay one and highlight the other. That's the secret of turning within is to think that you cannot acquire understanding by your will. So in a sense you are passive toward the divine action upon you, revealing His/Her intention upon you. 

As my father says, Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan says,"There is a reason behind reason". So when you are in your ordinary state, you can see the reason that your mind is able to encompass. Then as you turn within, you see there is a deeper reason behind that. At first you didn't see it because you were using your mind. Now it's being revealed. And of course in order to do that, to start with you have to downplay your opinion. Buddha says freedom from opinion. I would say downplay it in order to highlight a whole different level of realization. It's the impact of the Universe on each fragment of itself instead of the impact of each fragment upon the Universe.

OK. Now there is just one further point that needs to be made before we turn within or we really go deeper into turning within. That is that our reactive faculty is of course our defenses. We are endowed with a defense mechanism so that when we are assaulted or attacked or abused, we react with anger and hatred, jealousy, violence and cruelty and so forth. It's an interactive defense mechanism. I mean a reactive defense mechanism, maybe it's interactive. It's a kind of short circuit. As I showed in the case of Beethoven, it's useful. In order to cross the road, you don't have to use your whole will. But when it comes to dealing with problems, we are bypassing our potential. So it's very important for us to be able to call upon our potentials. It's very difficult for us to wean ourselves from this reactive strategy of the ego. In fact the ego is the way that we alienate ourselves form the totality and assume that we are a discrete entity. We have boundaries. We are a separate fragment of the totality instead of seeing that each fragment of the totality carries within it the totality, potentially the totality. 

OK so we need to wean ourselves from that. And the only way to wean ourselves from that reactive tendency is to of course start becoming more aware of our potentials. How do you do that? Because we can't thrust the light of our consciousness upon our potentials. In fact we can only discover our potentials by actuating them. Like for example, a sculptor can only discover his/her statue by making it. You can't just think of it and then make it. Well both actually. In the course of making it you discover it. So in the course of seeing very clearly how we could be if we would be as we might be. 

So when you're meditating, imagine a situation in which you are confronted with a person who is making life very difficult for you. And you think to yourself, "I don't know quite how to deal with this situation". That's because one does not identify with all the capacities, potentialities of one's being. Just think, "Well what if I were as I imagine I could be?" So there is the role of creative imagination. So in the second step in meditation, instead of concerning yourself with the impact of the environment, now you're concerning yourself with your impact on the environment, as I said. Remember that is what we mean by creativity. It is purely spontaneous. 

One wonders just what is the role of the impact of the environment upon your creativity, your personal creativity. For example, Beethoven. Maybe this wonderful melody that emerged in the course of the Fourth Piano Concerto would not have emerged if it had not have been for the challenge of the environment. And on the other hand, if he had reacted, it wouldn't have happened either. So think of the environment simply as a catalyst. But the important thing is it triggers of faculties. 

So the important thing is now to turn within. How do you turn within? Well you can't do it with your will. If fact it is much more in the realm of emotion than the will. Or rather what I'd call non emotion which in the East is called Viaragia. It's wrongly translated by indifference. I think it is our quest for freedom. You have a need to involve yourself with circumstances with people and situations and so on to achieve something in life. On the other hand you have a need for freedom. One thinks that it is the circumstances are curtailing one's freedom when in fact one can be free and bound externally. And you could be not free and free externally. So a vagabond is not necessarily free. That's not the way to be free. 

That need for freedom is extremely strong. I would say that that's the only way to discover who you are is by being free, free from role playing, free from the feeling that you need to adapt yourself to the environment - it's better to adapt the environment to your own sense of purpose - freedom from opinion, freedom from the emotions that are constraining - that's very difficult. For example being able to love without depending upon being loved, or unconditional love instead of selfish love. That's freedom in the realm of emotion. And then freedom from the self image. So to turn within, you need to free yourself from your self image. And we are so convinced that we are what we think we are. I don't know whether you can do that.  There is a moment when you say, "I'm free". 

Now there are several ways of doing it. Curiously enough, our self image started to be elaborated when we were babies when we first looked into a mirror, the cheapest and most misleading of all feedback systems in the world - unless you can see what transpires behind that which appears. And then of course you see the reality. Maybe that's a relief for some people if you don't have to identify with what you see in the mirror. There are a lot if elements in one's inheritance, one's parents and ancestors. Just imagine, our earlier ancestors were monkeys and dinosaurs and so on. And ultimately star dust of course. So there is a lot of stuff that we've inherited. But don't go b, you see it's there. Somehow we are able to bring in something new.

So, imagine now, this is a meditation so I hope that you will be doing it. Think that you've identified with the your role you play. Like I'm a doctor, or I'm business person, or I'm an artist, or I'm a musician, or whatever, carpenter or mechanic. Or I'm a guru. And realize that it's just a hoax. To think you're a guru, it's just a hoax. Just because people think you're a guru, you're reflecting the expectations of people. You're not free. So try to reject the role you play. Think, "Well those are the conditions in which I'm functioning in life. But that's not me. That's a superficial aspect of myself. I've adapted myself to the requirements of the environment.  At the jagged ends of my being, there is a spill over with the environment. So I want to know who is me." 

Now the next step is much more radical. That is think that your face is a mask and cast away the mask, without that protection. If you really do this radically, all of a sudden you discover your real countenance which says in the language of form what you really are. You might be surprised that it looks very different to your face. Might not have a beard. Might be a man instead of a woman. Might not have any gender at all. The extraordinary thing is that it doesn't have a boundary, that is a profile. It's difficult for us because we are used to thinking of forms having a boundary, having a profile. 

So if you are familiar of the corona of your fingers of the Kirlian photograph, you can see that it doesn't have a boundary. You see flashes of light all around your fingers. Or the photographs made by Walter Chapel of flowers in ultraviolet light. You can see the edge of the petals. Beyond the edge of the petals you can see the radiation. And it peters out at some point. But you know in infinite regress. There is no point at which it stops radiating. In fact the radiation goes on, crosses outer space at a speed of 186,000 miles a second. So that's a very surprising representation of yourself as not having a boundary because we are so used to our skin as a boundary.

Now can you imagine a form without substance? That's what the Greeks used to do in the mysteries of Illussis. The neophytes used to pass through a test. They went through a labyrinth. And at the end there was a statue of Appolo. And the more advanced stage, there was no statue. They had to imagine the statue without substance. Then of course in the advanced stages they had to imagine the qualities without the form. But for the moment we are working with form. 

Now let's expand that a little bit. Because this form is very bewildering. We think that it is the way it looks. But we'll soon find out that it is many tiered and many faceted. So let's expand it.  Just think of a situation that requires a lot of mastery.  For example most of the skills that we develop up in life require a lot of mastery. It could be skiing. It could be hang gliding. It could be conducting an orchestra. It could be mastering computers. There are a lot of things that require a lot of skills, a lot of mastery. So just see how the expression of your countenance now seems to express that particular quality which is mastery. 

Now try to contrast it with another thought. Imagine a person who has been very terribly badly damaged, for example, beaten in a concentration camp. And somehow your heart does out toward that person. See the difference it does to the configuration of your subtle body. You could think of a lot of things. You are in a peaceful state. What would be the expression of your face, of your countenance if you're in a peaceful state? These are practices that you can do in order to develop potentialities that are lying in wait in your being.

One could carry this further. For example, imagine you are walking along side a lake on a moonlit night. You have this lovely diaphanous light shimmering at the surface of the lake. And then in a state of revere you discover that you an effigy rather than a person, rather unreal. And you realize that you are not stumbling about as one does in the city. But you are almost floating. Your body is like subtle matter. So your body manifests something of the nature of the lake. The lake is a projection of your own attunement in a form. 

There is another aspect of our subtle body. Remember that our subtle body, you could call it, I call it a light field or the electromagnetic field. But it doesn't matter what you call it. The important thing is to realize that it is a template in which your physical body is configured. This has been confirmed by Dr. Becker in Columbia University, that there is an electromagnetic field behind our physical cells that determines the configuration of the cells. So there is a deeper reality than the physical body. So that's very interesting. If you can think of your body as being the outer expression, a secondary reality as compared with something deeper which is, you could call it an electromagnetic field. But it doesn't matter what you call it, subtle body, etheric body, whatever. And it's different in the sense that it does not have a boundary, although it definitely does have a structure. 

Now the important thing is that, you see what we've been doing so far, we've been working with the impact of qualities upon that configuration. But now we need to think of this form, this effigy as dynamic rather than static. Because that's where creativity comes in. You'll see it unfolding. Instead of just trying to get into the attunement of a quality, think that this quality is emerging as you call it forth and really assuming a form in your subtle body. 

You feel a whole nostalgia. That's a word that is used by the Sufis, Ishq Allah, the whole nostalgia. divine nostalgia. The way that the Universe is forming itself as you. And you're inviting this instead of standing in the way by identifying yourself with your self image, the sclerosis of what you really are. So let it flow. 

You can't know what it's like until it emerges over the threshold between potentiality and actuality. You can't. But you can somehow draw your attention towards it. You can protect it. For example, fresh petals in a flower or a sapling needs to be protected. The fresh petals will unfurl if the jaded petals start falling apart. That's fana in Sufism. Somehow you have to give up aspects of yourself that you were hanging on to in order to invite a fresh dispensation, totally impromptu, unexpectedly. 

The important thing here is you see our personality is to a very large extent conditioned by the past. But the beauty about what's happening in creativity is that it is not determined. It's purely spontaneous.  And so for the Sufis, the way to be able to have access to this emergent dispensation of new life in your being is to interrupt, in your mind to interrupt the flow of becoming. You see in our mind we think of time as moving steadily from the past into the future. 

As you meditate, you realize that time is more like the swing of a pendulum. And that at a certain point, for example, at the end of the swing to the right, time is suspended. The Sufis call that the instant of time that breaks the continuity of time. So it's another dimension of time. Or it's the breakthrough of another dimension of time into the process of becoming. And if it were not so, there would never be anything new. Everything would be determined by the past. Creativity is always new, unexpected.

Think of a wave of the sea for example. You look at the waves. You realize that there is a wave. And then it's followed by another wave. It seems like each wave is the continuation of the previous one. But the whole sea emerges as each wave, also. There are two things at the same time. Determinism and on the other hand spontaneity. What we want to do, if we let ourselves be determined, we never progress. If you don't progress, you go backwards. You deteriorate. That's a thing that struck me when I was younger. I thought to myself, "I see the pictures of these young people, so full of ideals. And I see the picture of the same person thirty years later, disenchanted, bitter, aggressive, cantankerous", and I think,"What a pity".  Can't we honor the child in us that is always fresh and spontaneous and at the same time get wise? But we don't have to deteriorate to get wise. Of course maturity. We gain more wisdom as time goes on and yet keep that beautiful spark of our innocence actually.

So now we're going to do a practice. It's a practice that the Sufis do. But you know the Sufis in India came into contact with the Yogis and they adopted some of the practices of the Yogis. In Yoga it's called paranayama. But the Sufis do it a little bit differently. So if you would place the thumb of your right hand under your chin and the middle finger of your right hand against your right nostril. But don't press against it. And then place the thumb of your left hand against the left nostril, but don't press, and the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand. Now, simply try to exhale, extend your exhaling a little bit longer. Inhale without effort. Once more a little bit longer. Inhale without effort a third time. Inhale without effort. After completing your inhaling, hold your breath by pressing both fingers. And exhale. Once more. 

OK Now just press the middle finger of the right hand, breathe in through the left nostril. And imagine a pendulum that is moving from the top left, say 11 o'clock down and up again again. Now it's reached the end of its swing. So you hold your breath. And imagine that the momentum that has been set into motion by the pendulum continues up or completes a circle during that state of suspense. After the state of suspense you exhale. The energy rises further as you exhale through the right nostril. 

Now inhale through the right nostril and think that the pendulum is now descending, moving towards the left. Now it reaches the end of its swing, so you hold your breath. And now exhale, and you're conscious of the momentum that continues upwards to the zenith. 

Now supposing that you were to do it again and instead of swinging up to a certain point, the pendulum would swing right over, or complete the circle. You'd have a feedback of whatever you've experienced in life into the programming of the Universe. Do you see that? That's the meaning of resurrection. So when it's swung over the pendulum, now you inhale again through the left. You don't inhale now through the right. So you see that your experience is fed back into the programming. The programming is enriched. So something has been gained by it as you get back into real life situations.

And you can do that several times. Inhaling through the left nostril, hold your breath when you get to the end of the swing on the right, at the moment when something new emerges in your being. As you exhale, you are aware that not only what you have experienced but that new dispensation is now somehow reaching right into, or feeding right into the programming of the Universe.

OK Now having done that, you do the opposite.  You inhale through the right nostril. Again you think of a pendulum. And now think of this word of Euler who is a very distinguished mathematician and also physicist and also a biologist who said, "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. So we are not just determined by the past but somehow by the possibilities that lie at hand in the future. So they are pulling you beyond where you are and enriching your being as the pendulum descends right into the personality of your body. And somehow the future affects the past, the present and the past. We'll have to comment on that a little bit later.

All right not breathe through both nostrils. Hold your breath. And exhale through both nostrils. As you breath through both nostrils, if you can do that, pass in review of the chakras of your subtle body, one to the other. Transfer your attention from one to the other in the course of your inhaling. And think that you're working with energy of course. But the energy is like a lift that is hoisting your consciousness upwards beyond existence. So when you hold your breath you are in a samadhi state, beyond existence, beyond time and space, matter. The ultimate suspense.

And then as you exhale, now just think that you are - there are several thoughts. One is that you a denizen from outer space who landed on the planet and borrowed a body in order to experience conditions on the planet. That's one way of doing it. So you have a kind of overview of your life. You are able to look at your life as though you were flying above the city in a helicopter. You can see the lie of the land. Let's continue doing this.

Turn you eyeballs upwards and curl you tongue and press the bottom of your pallet as you hold your breath. And just think of the top of the pendulum which is eternal. It does not move but moves everything, moves the pendulum but itself does not move. And of course if the weighted end of the pendulum reaches right up to the zenith, then it is like the center, like the center of the wheel for example which does not move but which moves the wheel.

Now there are further thoughts as you descend. If you able to maintain your samadhi consciousness, that is your consciousness of your deathless state, then you consider that your body or your mind or your psyche, are conditions of reality like a wave is a condition of the sea. That will enable you to maintain your identity which is eternal and universal and at the same time extrapolate between that and your temporal human condition. Hazarat Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan said that the existential state is a condition of God. That's not exactly God, but a condition of God like a wave is a condition of the sea.

Now if you do that once more and instead of thinking that your consciousness is hoisted like on a lift by an upsurge of energy, think that at the moment when you hold your breath, just imagine that you have awakened from your personal vantage point. That does not, well it's true that there is a blackout so that for a while one has lost any sense of the physical world. That's true. There was some memory of the physical world. Then it seems remote. Then there was a blackout. Then at a certain point one sees meaningfulness in the world. So it looks very different. It's like the way that meaningfulness has materialized itself, concretized itself as a physical reality. 

The important thing is that awakening is like a sudden breakthrough. There is a sense of having let go of a vantage point, human vantage point, and not having any support whatsoever in your mind, in your thoughts, in your emotions. You burn your boat actually. But a very intense sense of meaningfulness. One doesn't know how it applies. There is just a sense of meaningfulness. And as one descends and one begins to see how that meaningfulness makes sense in the existential state.

So here you have two awakenings. One is as you hold your breath. We call Samadhi, a state in which you are not aware of the existential state. But I don't think it is a desirable state to be in. I think it's good to awaken beyond life and then afterwards awaken in life. So when you're exhaling, then there is a second awakening. You're awakening in life. So could we describe that a little more. 

Well maybe one of the clues is to realize that there is the reason behind reason. Because it's not good enough just to give up your point of view. That's negative. It has to be replaced by grasping meaningfulness that you hadn't grasped before. It's like an aha state. Aha, I hadn't seen that. There are just flashes of realization that take place. 

There is of course, as Pir O Murshid says, a longing for the unattainable. It's a wonderful word because you can't say I've attained it. You can't put it in your pocket. It's not something that you can acquire. So it's unattainable. It's in infinite regress. So on one hand there is this nostalgia on our part. He calls it a passion for the unattainable. So it's very strong. A real need to awaken. He said the whole cosmos is trying to awaken. That's what evolution is about. And this is happening to you in your microcosm. So in a sense there is a sense of very intense awareness, not like going into a trance state. It's the other way around. It's being very highly aware but not aware of physical reality except that it is a condition, as I say, of reality. What we call actuality, a condition of reality.

But the other side is that it is being revealed. That meaningfulness is being revealed instead of your acquiring it. So that means that you have to think that your consciousness is like a pendulum. It ranges from the personal pole to the antipodal point, which we call the divine point of view. And it's being revealed to you. 

Now there is a further clue here. That is the difference between consciousness and intelligence. Consciousness is passive with regard to the information it picks up. And intelligence is active. Intelligence is inborn. It's a knowledge that we have but we are not aware of it. And our experience is simply confirming that knowledge that is written in us. For example, how do we know that the table is round? Because roundness is written into our intelligence. It's confirmed when we see a table that is round. 

When you are meditating, at first you are operating from your consciousness. Then there is a point at which you are working with your mind.  And as you turn within you will discover a whole new mode of experience. That is that you begin to grasp what you imply by what you explain. Now if you're doing a retreat, the reason why one is invited to maintain silence during a retreat is because the mind is always translating its realization in a language. And that language is a perfunctory language which is useful for everyday living. But it doesn't give you a sense of meaningfulness. And even if you are not talking to people, one is so used to translating one's thoughts into language and consequently limiting one's thinking and also distorting it. So the clue is what you imply behind what you explain. If you don't have to explain, then you'll begin to discover what you imply. So that's turning within.

The next one is turning upwards as we've been doing now. That is you realize that if a physicist, for example, has any clue as to let's say the thinking that governs physical phenomena, it's because his/her thinking is of the same nature as the divine thinking or the thinking of the Universe. Otherwise one wouldn't understand how the Universe ticks. That's why Newton said, "I think as God thinks". That's samadhi.

Now a last thing before a break. That is that as we exhale, awaken in life, the way I would illustrate it is you've been visiting a wonderful building or cathedral. And you think, "Oh, it's beautiful. I love it", and so on so forth. Now imagine that you are visiting it in the company of the architect. And the architect is showing you what was in his mind in structuring that monument. Now you see it quite differently to the way you did at first. That's awakening in life. I think having awakened beyond life, now you can see more clearly what is being enacted in life. That's means enacted in your problems. 

So I think we need, well there are a lot of people. I would like it to be 20 minutes but I think it will be a little longer. In the meantime we will be playing music.

Tape ends


NOV 22, 1997		Tape 02

I like to do some chanting while we have a chance. So first of all starting with a mantra then eventually it becomes a chant. Huuum...nama Shiva. Now a Buddist chant, Nam omeda Butu, nom omeda butu. You see much more beautiful, besides being modern. So a Jewish chant. (Chant Shama Israel). Christian Kyrie Eleison - Christi Eleison. Sufi Chant.

Right well so far we've been working with the form of the subtle body. It doesn't have contours. But it does express something of the nature of our  thought and our attunement. To make it tangible we wanted to learn how to call our potentials in order to deal with our problems. And if you just think of your potentials in an abstract way, they are not real enough. What we are trying to do is to express them in a form or through the means of a form. According to the Sufis, well it's basically in Islam, God is revealing His/Her intention through what they call iyat which means signals. So the form is a signal that stands for a reality that does not have a form. So it's a device. Just like Spielberg was using devices in order to communicate to you his intention in the film ET.

So think of God as trying to communicate to you His/Her intention by means of forms in which He reveals Him/Herself to Him/Herself and to you in your very form. And our potentials are not just, there are several forms according to the Sufis the more tangible form although it doesn't have a contour. Then as I said the form of Kirlian photography. And then the other form is the subtle form of our qualities, they are called sifat, our qualities. So one reaches this subtler reality through the more tangible reality which the form which doesn't have a form, a subtle form of etheric body as it were. You know that which is gained by life is form. That's what's gained by life. Because it manifest the unmanifest. The whole of life is the manifestation of the unmanifest.

All right now, our nest step is working with light. It's again tangible in comparison with samadhi. So let's start doing the practices and see how one will lead to the next and so on. It will eventually lead towards awakening, illumination. These are practices that we should do, it's useful to do every day if you want to attain illumination. There is a saying in India, "Don't you dare die before you attain illumination". So one has to work hard. As one gets older, one has to work doubly hard. Well really it is working with the transmutation of one's body into photons. 

Well now these are the practices I suggest. To start with, one identifies oneself with one's body. Now it is a scientific fact that the body absorbs light. The molecules of the cells, the atoms within the molecules absorb light. The electrons within the atoms absorb light and start dancing, start availing themselves of this energy to reach out to the next orbital beyond that in which they in before. 

So now, you know how you feel if you are sunbathing. You definitely open up the pores of your skin to receive the sun light. It's something like that. Feel as though you are in a receptive state because there is an action we bind to our bodies. So if we represent to ourselves clearly what's happening to our body, the body will absorb much more light than in its usual way. So do that as you inhale. Now as you hold your breath, can you actually feel the cells of your body as they, actually they start giggling and sparking, utilizing this extra dispensation of light that you have given them. So of course one can't imagine each separate cell. But can you feel that kind of effervescence within your body as you hold your breath? A lot of vibrating. A lot of sparkling, giggling. And now as you exhale, just try to imagine that your whole body radiates light, the cells of your body, not just the skin, the whole of your body. Your whole body. And this light is rushing through space at a speed of 186,000 miles a second. But eventually the light radiating from your body hits the stars.

Now this is a wonderful practice to do at night. And so as you inhale, it's even more wonderful. Instead of drawing in the light of the environment - could be the sun, could be a candle, could be electricity - now at night time you really have a sense of absorbing the light of the stars or the light of the whole Universe. Stars are only the way that the light of the neutrinos is pinpointed. And of course the beauty is that it brings you in contact with the totality of which you an integral part. 

Now as you turn within, perhaps you could also get in touch with what I call the ecstasy of light, with your emotions. It's not just an extra dispensation of life, but the very experience of light has the effect of exalting our spirit, sparking our spirit with delight. And as you exhale, just enjoy radiating light. And of course after a meditation, wherever you go, you'll feel as though you're radiating light.

Now so far we have been imagining a phenomena which can be demonstrated in a laboratory. But I'd like you to pass to the next stage which is really feeling it, feeling light around you, feeling the light inside your body, feeling the light that you're radiating. It's a sort of sixth sense that one has.

Now if you find it difficult, then I'd like to illustrate it by a fact in Japan. In Tokyo, Dr. Motoyama has a laboratory which has cells which are light proof. So you can sit in that cell and there is a photoelectric cell within the cell. And if you're a good meditator, then you can produce enough photons to set the photoelectric cell in motion. And then they have a system, so it lights up the whole cell. So you've made it. So you sit there and hope that you'll be able to radiate enough light to set it in motion. So you keep on forcing yourself to radiate a little bit more. Haven't quite made it yet, now a little more. There it's got it. I wish we had these things here because perhaps we'll ask Puran to do that. But there you have a definite proof instead of just imagining things. I don't want to induce you into fantasizing. But can you feel that? "Yes I'd like to give a lot of light wherever I go. I just enjoy light. I enjoy people that have a lot of light. And I'd like to have a lot of light myself. And how do I do it? Yes, I'm sure I can just radiate light". 

Now there is a catch 22 in it. That is that it just doesn't work by imagining light. You need to have a bath, a catharsis of light. If one entertains feelings of, I must say the word, resentment. It's difficult not to have resentment, it does stand in the way of one's light. And of course hatred. One can have anger without resentment. Because anger is one's backbone, one's outrage at the abuse of people, of dishonesty, one's outrage of dishonesty. So that you have to keep. And yet you can still forgive while honoring your anger. It gives you power. 

There is another aspect of it which is illustrated by a story in India. You see in India the elephants don't allow themselves to be bugged by the chickens. It's below their dignity. So if you think, "Well those people, they are doing their thing. It gives them a kind of satisfaction. But I'm not going to let myself be bugged by them". It's a bit snobby. But if you think of the divine status of your being, to maintain that splendor, you have to not allow yourself to be disturbed by personal things. A kind of sovereignty comes over you. What Sufis call Ya Majid, the divine splendor.

There are things, I'm opening a parenthesis here. But there is a saying of Hujwiri describes dervishes. He says there are two kinds of dervishes. There are those who are burned by the fire of the divine majesty and those who are illuminated by the light of the divine splendor. Those who are illuminated by the light of the divine splendor. And the first one, those who are burnt by the fire of the divine majesty. So majesty and splendor.

So these are thoughts which we are entertaining while we are doing these practices instead of just trying to produce light or concentrate on light. Our whole being has to be involved in it instead of just our body, particularly at the level of the psyche to entertain luminous thoughts and luminous emotions. That is if one is really dedicated to one's highest ideal, then one does not like to entertain thoughts that are dark and detrimental. Luminous thoughts. In some way it is related with our sense of our etheric body because what we feel is that our etheric body is translucid and transparent, and then when we become aware of our aura when we turn within is diaphanous. And as we reach outside it is radiant. 

So now we are working at a different level. And to do this the next step would consist in identifying yourself with your aura and consider your aura as a template of your etheric body and the etheric body as a template of your physical body. So that's one further. So eventually we are going to work with our aura in order to shape it in the way that we want to unfold. 

So let's do this practice now. Now identify with, if you identify yourself with your aura, then your aura does not have a boundary. Therefore it really is the light of the stars which gets converged into what you think is your aura and then the other way around. Then it radiates from that point of convergence. It's like the light of the whole cosmos is converged in the sun and then eventually it's radiated out. So we are like a transducer of light. So we're able to somehow converge the light of the cosmos into a point, a source of light. And from that source of light it's radiated. So that means that we have to be able to have a sense of what Hazrat Inayat Khan calls all pervading light. Ibn Arabi also calls it the light that is not located in space. 

So as you hold your breath after inhaling - as you inhale, identify with the light of the stars. It's all one complex of light. Within this light there are formations like waves in the sea. And what you think is your aura is a formation within this symphony of light, ocean of light. As you inhale. Now as you hold your breath, switch over totally from converging the light that accrues from outside. And become aware of the light that emerges from within. And that light that emerges from within is not radiant. It becomes radiant. But it is not radiant. It becomes radiant as it is radiated out through your heart center as you exhale. That's of course very difficult to have any sense of what we mean by all pervading light, infused light, not radiant, that is it does not radiate from a point within space. Because if you turn within, you've lost your sense of the objects occupying different locations in space. Everything is interspersed. Like for example radio waves. And then as you exhale, you converge that light, that inner light as it emerges. And now your heart becomes like a source of light that radiates light in the whole Universe.

Now we are going to move, we're going to move rather fast because we have so little time to do lot of very important things in the hope that it will have a transforming effect upon us. Now we're going to work in the transcendent instead of the cosmic dimension. That is we think of it as upwards. 

So there are several methods. We'll start with a simple one. That is if you could imagine - to start with imagine, but eventually you will experience it - the condition of light at the bottom of your spine is infrared. So that's what you call heat. And as a matter of fact the Tibetans work with this so they are able to have a competitions to see how many wet towels they can dry on their back in the snow by just imagining. It's a fact, in fact Dr. Schwartz demonstrates that if you imagine that you have a hot cup of tea in your right hand and an ice cream in the left, Hoggendas, then actually you imagine it, then it has been demonstrated that they can test the temperature of your your right hand and of your left hand. The temperature of your right hand will be higher than that of your left hand. It's been demonstrated. The power of imagination. 

So if you imagine at the bottom of your spine energy, infrared, that means imagine a hot iron, for example, that has become or assumes a red color, molten iron. You know that we do have temperature and that temperature is evidence that our body is burning at a slow rate. And the art of the meditator is to transmute infrared light into ultraviolet light. The way to do it is to transfer your attention from one chakra to the next in one inhaling. But to start with you'll have to concentrate on each chakra for some time. Then eventually after many months, you'll be able to do it in one inhaling. 

So you transfer your attention from the red color at the bottom of your spine to a kind of vermilion in the second chakra, and orange in the solar plexus, and gold in the heart center, and green in the throat center, and blue in the eyes, light blue, violet in the, actually it corresponds with the pituitary gland which is the center of the crown chakra, then above your head something like a colorless light, like a diamond that sparkles all kinds of hues but it itself is basically colorless. Now could you do that? Just concentrate on the inhaling for the time being. And you don't have to represent anything as you exhale.

Now what we want to do is - I'm moving rather fast. Perhaps when you get home you'll be able to do it more leisurely. Now hold your breath   Ã after inhaling and make a quantum leap in your thinking and identify yourself with luminous intelligence rather than the light of your aura. That is intelligence as a light, not a physical light. The Sufis talk about, Ibn Arabi makes a difference between the light that can be seen and the light that sees. So the light of intelligence is the light that sees. And your aura is the light that could be seen. So it's a real quantum leap after inhaling. All of a sudden you awaken and you discover yourself as luminous intelligence as you hold your breath. 

Now we have two things. To start with the first step imagine that as you exhale, imagine that you are infusing your aura with the light of intelligence. Now what does that mean in practice. It could be illustrated by a mother showing her child a riddle. There is a pixie in the tree. The mother asks the child, "Can you see the Pixie?" "No I can't see it." "Try again." "No Mom, I can't see it." "Try again." And all of a sudden the child sees the pixie. And when the child sees the pixie, his or her face illuminates, lights up. So that is what is meant in the Koran by a light upon a light. A famous surat of the Koran. So this is really making it happen instead of just reading it in one's prayers. There is a flash of awakening that immediately impacts your aura so your whole aura begins to burst into light more intensely than ever before. So there is an explosion in your aura as you exhale.

I remind you to turn your eyeballs upwards and to curl your tongue and press the bottom of your tongue against your pallet as you hold your breath. And then bring your eyes and tongue into normal position as you exhale.

OK now a further step. I apologize for going so fast. And that is imagine that the light of intelligence is threaded through your glance. Now to do this there are preparatory steps. So let's do these preparatory steps. So can you be aware that the light of the environment impinges upon the light of your retina through your cornea and is threaded along your optic nerves and reaches into the brain. Just think of that. And if you think of that, you will increase the amount of light that you draw in through, or you absorb through your retina. And of course the cells of the nerves of the matter of your brain, those cells are much more capable of absorbing light than your muscles or your hair. So they sparkle. So what's happening in your brain. It's incredible. The dance in your brain cells is just unbelievable. Normally one isn't aware of it. But just try it. As you hold your breath, you can place your attention in your brain. Just like you can place your attention in your arm or in your stomach, you can place it in your brain. And then as you exhale, this is a fact of course that the light of the brain gets channeled through the optical nerves and then are radiated into outer space through your retina. It's a fact and can be measured in a laboratory. So you can imagine, for example, the river Rhone passing through the lake of Geneva. That's a light within a light, a good illustration of a light within a light, threaded through. 

Now this is the next step. The light of intelligence threaded through the light of your brain as it's threaded through the optic nerves and abuts in the retina and then reaches out into outer space, into the stars. In fact if you do this at night time looking at the time of course, it's a wonderful practice. You can visualize the photons that are sparkling through your eyes and traveling through space at an incredible speed and hitting the stars. So of course you feel linked with the stars. It's not just your physical aura. The relevance of the awakening of your consciousness as intelligence upon your aura. That's the interesting thing, how it affects your aura and particularly your glance. 

So this is the practice that leads towards illumination, towards enlightenment. It's a practice that was given by Ibn Arabi, one of the great ( ) amongst the Sufis, perhaps the greatest.

Now let us continue this a little bit bit further. With closed eyes, you simply represent your glance as made up of two beams like the headlamps of a car. And as a matter of fact, you could test yourself by seeing if you can turn them to the right or to the left, or turn them up or down. And you can imagine how those beams are passing through the environment. Now you know that if you were to open your eyes, you would lose the consciousness, the awareness of those beams of light and just see the objects because the objects have the ability to force your glance into focus. Actually the cornea acts as a lens and is malleabe and is sensitive to the objects that you're looking at. So that's a feed back. 

So what you do is only open your eyes very shortly as you start exhaling. And then if you see the objects, close your eyes again because there is no point in doing that. What we want to do is to be able to maintain our awareness of our glance with our eyes open. The objects seem like a blur. But if you do this over and over for many months, eventually you could have a flower in front of your eyes, then you'll be able to see the aura of the flower. And then the face of the flower. Then you ask a person to sit in front of you and you're able to see that inner face that I was talking about earlier on this morning. 

Now what I did not say this morning - we were working with the inner aspects of that inner face - but it is also many tiered. That means there are several levels in it. They are like in a hologram. You can have two superimposed pictures and they don't occupy different space but you can change the focus of your consciousness then you see one image or the other, you can toggle between one and the other. Of course its' very difficult to extrapolate between the two. It's the same thing with your aura or the aura of the person you are looking at now. It is many tiered. So it just depends upon the focus of your consciousness. 

Now there is something here that requires us to revise our perfunctory thinking because. Well let's just illustrate it by the voice of Caruso. You know the voice of Caruso can be retrieved out of it's distortions due to the bad recordings of his time. That means that pristine voice of Caruso is present within its distortions. In the same way you can think that the immaculate state of your being is present within its defilement in your personality, not only in your personality but in that internal image of yourself. It is present within it. It's a different way of thinking to our usual way of thinking. And what is more, that immaculate state has a cathartic effect upon the distortions or defilement in our subtle image. Actually the image of our aura. 

So our aura has not only all these different colors, but it has a shape less tangible than that of our subtle body. But still it has a shape just like the corona in the Kirlian photographs of your fingers, for example. So now we're working with the shape of our aura instead of working with the shape of our subtle body. 

Now this is much more advanced because well I wonder whether I could illustrate this by Sufism. I wonder whether it's helpful to you. I'll just try anyway because it's very difficult to describe what I want to describe. For the Sufis the whole of creation, the existential state is the way in which the ultimate reality which we call God is trying to make itself known by means of devices. And those devices are in forms in which the reality that does not have a form manifests. That's what the Sufis call Nazut stage, existentialism level. And then the subtle level is what they call Arwha. That means level of spirit, rhu in the Jewish language. Then we talked about Mithal which is the creative level, creative imagination. And the way that our creative imagination is able to fashion the form, not just like a form of art, but the form of our subtle body. That's Mithal. 

Then there is another level. And you see to be really creative, you have to be functioning at all levels and not just enlist that which emerges from within. But that which emerges from within needs to incorporate all levels of our being. That's the reason why in our meditations we learn to lift our consciousness above earthly conditions in what we did earlier this morning. And the next step is the celestial sphere. 

Now I'm talking form experience. I'm not talking from book knowledge. But of course it is confirmed in the teachings of the Sufis. I'm asking you if you have a moment of ecstasy looking into the eyes of a baby. I do. The light of the eyes of a baby triggers off a sense of déjà vu, that is a memory of having, it's familiar. It's like that world of light is known. It's hidden by, covered by a lot of things in our memory. But it's still there. It takes something like that to retrieve that memory. 

And the next thing is if you can realize that you have the same effulgence of light in your being, in your aura. But it is covered by a lot of shrouds, veils. So that when we think of our aura, we're not always aware of that immaculate core of our aura which is absolutely immaculate. It's the child in us, or even embryonic. And it is present within its defilement. It's defilement is due to it's inheritance and also to the spill over of the environment at the jagged ends of our being. But at the center of our being seems to remain unaffected just like a mirror remains unaffected if you, it seems to reflect the environment. But if you turn the mirror, then that reflection is gone. So that is something that illustrates the immaculate core of our being. Now think of it as diaphanous light as compared with radiant light or infrared, molten metal. 

Now these are practices that lead towards illumination. What I am saying is that we are only functioning at some of the lower levels of our being like the physical body and the mind, and psyche, emotions. But there is whole gamut of levels of our being that come across, they are there but they come across exceptionally. That's what we want to do in meditation because we want to evolve. We don't want to stay the way we are unless you're happy the way you are. But then there is no point in coming here at all. So how we bring about that change?

Now I'll give you another example that might throw another perspective on this whole thing. That is you know traditionally in many of the schools, that includes Hinduism, Buddhism and of course Sufism and also Kabbala, one learns to represent to oneself a sage or master, saint or prophets of the past. And of course I invite you to choose a saint or master or prophet of your own choice with whom you feel very much attuned. Now we are talking about someone who was incarnated on the physical plane at some point in time and space. But there is a kind of tacit assumption that that person still lives otherwise you are just moving back into the past. 

You see the point at the top of the pendulum doesn't change, I mean remains, there is a level of our being is permanent, that is eternal. And that's what we are trying to reach in that prophet or master. And that's the only way in which he or she can help us to discover our real being. Because you know we are always trying to discover ourselves in another ourselves who is better able to manifest what we are than ourselves. That's why one represents a teacher, a prophet. It's better to represent someone who has passed away and proved throughout time and become a kind of an archetype. But it's not just an archetype. It's a real being. 

To reach that being, you have to touch upon levels of your being beyond your usual self image. That means you have to imagine that you are a being of light, not the aura that has absorbed light from the environment. So we are talking about levels of light beyond physical light. You know that physical light is only a sliver of what is really light. It's only that which can be perceived by the senses and so on. 

So there is no point in just representing the body or the bodily appearance of that master because that still holds you right back. That's why the Sufis make a difference between tassawiri murshid and tawaje. Tassawiri means a picture. And you know in Islam there is a destruction of idols. So you destroy the picture in order to reach the reality behind the picture. And that's the attunement. Tawaje is the attunement. So to really reach a master, it could be a woman master, you have to find that level of your being in which you can really resonate with his/her being beyond time, beyond the existential level. 

One of the ways of doing it is to imagine that master, saint or prophet as a being of light rather than as a physical body and yourself as a being of light. And that's where you'll begin to find a connection, a kind of mirroring effect. We're still talking about form, but form in a very advanced stage beyond even subtle form. But still the form is still the object experienced. 

So now we need to work with the subject instead of the object. There is a very famous word of Najmoddin Kobra who is one of the Sufis who worked with illumination. His whole teaching is illumination. A famous word, " You thought you were the witness, (that's the subject) but the real witness is the witness in the heavens". So how can we interpret that? What would be the vantage point of an angel concerning you as a person? How would an angel perceive you? How does the angel in you perceive yourself? 

I'll try to illustrate this because it seems all sort of tenuous. That is an experience of mine. I was climbing the Himalayas in search of a Rishi, what's called a guru trip. With a group of people because it was very dangerous to cross the jungle. And here was this man in Samadhi. But he did speak. He tried to reach us which is very rare. And one of the men in the group asked him what I considered a silly question. And you could see he was trying to descend into the thinking of that person saying, "I can't quite see how one could think that way". He was trying to descend into the thinking of that person. So just imagine that the angel in you is trying to get into your thinking and finds it difficult. So that's the witness in the heavens. 

So we're not just working with form but with the light of intelligence, the subject rather than the object, Shahid. The witness. So the witness is able to see the way that the form is just a device and not an end reality in itself. It's just a secondary reality. So we've gotten to a point of working with the shape of the aura only makes sense in terms of your realization. Every being is in the world according to their degree of realization.

I've gone beyond the time. It's a pity because I have many wonderful practices to carry this further. We'll be doing them this afternoon. But we have very little time this afternoon. We'll have to move fast. We have so little time and there are such very important practices for us to do. I hope it's been helpful to you. But it's only helpful if you try and do it back at home. Make a point of meditating every day. It makes all the difference. I'm afraid I have to have a nap after lunch. I don't know whether you know that I'm 81. I'll be coming back at 2:30. I'll have to try and sleep fast. So what I'm suggesting is that you try to do some dancing, what they call Dances for Universal Peace. It's a wonderful thing to do.

God bless you now.
Tape ends

NOV 22, 1997		Tape 03

...a different vantage point to the usual one. And we've found that we've encountered so far the vantage point from whereby we see ourselves from the vantage point of the cosmos. And we turned inside and we found the vantage point of something that is emerging in us. Then there was the transcendent vantage point when the subject in us was beyond the person. It was impersonal, transpersonal, transcendental. We call it samadhi. Then there was the vantage point from which we look at things with an overview. So there were four different vantage points. 

And our second objective was to unfurl the capacities of our being. And what we said is that we can't try to develop qualities by our will. So we have to use skills. 

So here I could ask you three questions. If you can answer silently. What is the quality that you feel you need to develop in order to meet your problems, or a particular problem? I'm sure there are several. But it's easier if you just pinpoint one particular quality. So now it is taken for granted that the problem is calling upon a quality in you. So your concern is adapting your personality to the situations of the environment, social and psychological. Now I think one tends to figure that out with one's mind because it's based upon one's assessment of the problem, one's assessment of one's own self. What we mean by a self image and trying to match the two.

The second question is do you feel that there is a certain quality that is emerging in you at this time regardless of whether it is the kind of quality you need in order to meet your problems?  And everything seems to point to that. That's what we mean by synchronisity. Wherever you go, some kind of clue, some kind of signal. So it means that it is not something that you figure out with your mind. But it is revealed to you. And when you turn within, and therefore you give up trying to determine things by your personal will, you lose your usual self image. And consciousness is kind of internalized. It's no more pinpointed as it is generally in relationship with the outer world. In these circumstances, you are much more sensitive to what is emerging from within than when you are experiencing the world and dealing with the world from your personal vantage point, your what we call intuition.

Now you see that the qualities are not, you cannot have any sense of the qualities until they emerge at the surface or the threshold. Now there's just that point at which you become aware that there is something that is budding in you,will be flowering in your personality.

Now the qualities, we have to be very careful about our conceptualization of the qualities. You know that all creativity starts with emotion. So there is an emotion for each quality. For example the emotion of mastery, the emotion of peace, the emotion of glorification, the emotion of truth. So each quality has its particular emotion. Creativity always start by being very deeply moved by an emotion. Then it begins to make some kind of sense to our mind. That's where it be comes a little more specific, a little more diversified. 

And then at some point, one needs to connect up this quality with the circumstances. You can only do that by envisioning how you are going to be now when you meet a person with whom you have a problem. Now it's this particular quality, mastery, compassion, peace, whatever. That has become more intense in your being, then imagine meeting that person. But you are a different person now. By trying to actuate the quality, you discover it.  I said that this morning, it's like a sculptor discovers his/her statue by making it. So the quality, you can't just grasp a quality. Of course we do have our representations of qualities. But unfortunately they are intellectual. So if you listing to the wasaif (Isme illa ), names of God, it's still at the conceptual level. So it's not very helpful. It might even, your concept of the quality might stand in your way. So it's much better if you just feel it and see it coming through. 

There is a motto of my father, Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan. He said, for example talking about power, divine power. And he said, "Discover in yourself the same power that moves the Universe". The same power that moves the stars. The same power that moves a storm and wind. And the same power that moves the sap in the trees. You have it in you. That's the whole idea. It's not something you are developing, but it is there potentially. And then you can feel the Ishq Allah, the nostalgia, the whole cosmos yearning to manifest and actuate itself as you. You see the difference between that and wishing to develop a quality to improve your being. 

And finally at the other end it is a concern because we always have to link the quality with action. So concern about being of service. That is one of the questions that I asked this morning. Perhaps you could ask it a little more clearly. Why do I want to achieve? Why am I doing things I am doing? Survival of course, it's a necessity. But it only makes sense if I am cooperating with other beings in building a beautiful world with beautiful people. Otherwise it doesn't make sense. Otherwise it's purely selfish. So if you can see your action as service then you are given the wherewithal to live up to your challenge, to meet the challenge. 

Now a third question. "How would you like to be? So it's not the quality that you feel that you need to develop in order to meet the challenge of the circumstances. And it is not the quality that is coming through at this moment. But the quality that you would like yourself. 

I think this is the ultimate answer because creativity is the way in which the creative act of the Universe is customized in a unique way in each one of us. So instead of thinking the Universe is doing what it needs to do through me, you think, "Yes but I have a choice", to customize. A musical theme for example, then the composer learns how to make variations on the theme. 

So you think of a quality as being like, as you experience it in yourself and in other people. Like compassion in your being or compassion in other people, or power in your being or power in other people. That's what we represent to ourselves a quality. But if you see this quality as being different in each person, different in you to that of another person. The beauty of diversity. 

Now we have one further step here. That is the role of prayer. Otherwise whether we know it or not, we are using our will. And there is some selfishness in it. So there is some limitation owing to our selfishness. Now the beauty of prayer is that one is projecting what one would like God to be, not what God is, but what one would like God to be, qualities by imagining these qualities in their superlative state, that is in their perfect state. So imagine God to be all compassionate whereas we encounter some degree of compassion in ourselves and other people, but never totally perfect. 

So in order to glorify, you know glorification starts very simply by never ceasing to be amazed by the wonder of life. That's where is starts at all levels, mental, emotional, everything. Miracles happen. It's just fantastic. Life's extraordinary. Now physicist are using now a word. They say we never cease to be amazed by the extraordinary intelligence behind the functioning of the Universe. We never cease to be amazed by the elegance, that's the word used, elegance. So it's a kind of esthetic sense that we have. 

If you instead of just being caught up in your own trip, you see that's the beauty of prayer. It frees you from your own trip, as they call it in England, storm in your teacups. So it brings you in touch with the totality will all it's bounty. 

So in order to be able to project these qualities upon what you want God to be, you are awakening these qualities in yourself. That's the role of prayer. It is the ultimate creative act. You don't do it in order to develop qualities. You do it in an emotion of glorification. But the consequence is that it transforms your being. 

And what is more, it enhances our capacity to always imagine a quality more perfect than we had imagined before. That's the principle of infinity, for example. As Poincare the mathematician says it, "Infinity is the faculty to always imagine a larger number than one has imagined so far". So you can always imagine a greater and more wonderful feature of that quality than one had ever imagined so far. Somehow one is uplifted by one's own ecstasy, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. 

So be kind to your soul. And of course a secret is never be sorry for yourself, never. Never think you have been damaged by people, because that reduces your self esteem. 

Of course that's looking at things from one's own personal point of view. In Islamic prayer, there is always a dialogue between the person and God. So there is always the action of the fragment on the totality and the action of the totality upon the fragment.

Now somehow, what it means is by the act of glorification, one is inviting the revealing, the action whereby God reveals Him/Herself to us through ourselves. So there is our act projecting on God qualities. And there is the opposite, the divine action on us whereby God is discovering Him/Herself. The way the archetypal qualities predicate His/Her being are exemplified in the diversification of beings. According to Sufis, God knows Him/Herself eternally in the principles of His being, but discovers a further richness by discovering Himself as exemplified as us. And the curious thing is that we respond by discovering ourselves through the way that God actuates Him/Herself as us. It's reciprocal, both sides. You see you can only have that if you have a concept of God. Otherwise, if you just think of yourself as a person, it doesn't work.

Now that which will help you to lift yourself is as I say give vent to bewonderment, amazement and bewonderment culminates into glorification. For example, it's easier to be exalted if you're sitting on top of a mountain and watching a wonderful sunrise after a storm, or even when there is thunder in the valley. And there you are part of the sky with all of its radiant colors. That is a state of bewonderment. But if one could only discover what is really coming through these iyat, these signs which are let's say the colors of the clouds and so on, this whole scene, is simply a device whereby the divine splendor is coming through. 

And when you know that, of course it's very difficult to reconcile that with the horrible things that happen on the planet or the horrible things that we do to the planet, the ugliness, the tarnishing of that splendor. And yet it's still there. It's like a fruit that's become rotten but it's still fruit. It's like well that's not a good example. Well supposing a beer can on a garbage heap. And the photons that are radiated from the beer can are as beautiful as those of the stars. So it's seeing beauty where one can't normally see it. If you don't, then you get disenchanted. It's the only way to not to be disenchanted is you see that which transpires behind that which appears. And we'll learn to do that with our glance, with our eyes. But that's only a first step. The next thing is our insight that sees reason behind reason.

Now you could look at your problems and say, "Right, my assessment is due to the fact I'm looking at these problems from my personal vantage point. And I'm thrusting my personal bias upon the problem. And therefore I am only seeing it in a distorted way." Now what would be that which transpires behind that which appears? Well of course it's the intention. But all we see at first is the signs not the intention. But we surmise the intention. And that's where we fool ourselves.


I would say the next stage would be to ask ourselves what are the qualities that are being enacted in this tussle. For example our present political crisis at (  ) what is the issue? The issue is honesty. It's truth. That's the issue. And if you face dishonesty, a ploy, with the truth, it gives you power. Even that is the only power that is justifiable is to stand for the truth. What are the consequences? It's to call the bluff, the bad faith.

So you see how one would like to develop power. And if one tries to develop power, one is on an ego trip. One becomes a despot. And if one is dedicated to service and very scrupulous about the truth, not to justify oneself and fool oneself, then one develops the power of the dervish. If you had the power of Abraham, your boss wouldn't bully you. Divine power. So power, well three things actually, power, splendor and awakening, luminous intelligence. Those are the things we've been working with. 

Now as you know insight is somehow connected with, let us say to start with it is good to connect light with insight or insight with light. Then at a certain point you're beyond the concept of light. So that's why sometimes we use the word awakening and sometimes we use the word illumination. 

So now we're going to do some practices as a sequel to those that we did this morning. These are Buddhist practices, practices given by Buddha himself, that he did himself under the, well in the cave. He made a retreat in a cave. So I'm going to pass in review rather fast. 

So start by imagining that you cut a cardboard into a disk and you paint it red. And as you exhale, you look at that cardboard disk. And as you inhale, you're going to see a green disk. That's what one calls a reflex. Now let's, we don't want to just imagine green and the reflex of green. What we want to do is to go back to the red as you exhale. And when you inhale, the first part of your inhaling you see the reflex, And the second part of the inhaling, you see the reflex of the reflex. So that would be orange. The next one would be dividing the inhaling into three. So you go back to the red disk as you exhale. As you inhale now you go into the reflex which is green, and the reflex of the reflex which is orange, and then the reflex of the reflex of the reflex which is violet. Now if you would continue this, you would get to a point when you have lost any sense of color. And that's probably what one means by the ultraviolet. 

But now we're going to do another practice, further practice. Imagine a colorless, not a disk now, but a colorless light. I must say that I for myself imagine the light of a diamond, of course a crystal. But a diamond is a perfect form of a crystal. And as a matter of fact, I imagine myself to be like a diamond. It's again imagination of course. But it does something to you. Truth comes into it, being absolutely authentic, transparent, translucid. Because you know crystals are, originally they're a state of light has become crystallized, that has become jelled. Then it has the faculty of absorbing light. It's quite amazing. 

Think of those crystals that are dug up and have been under ground for a long time. And they have that faculty of absorbing and emitting light. When they were in the dark places in the ground or in the rocks, well they were absorbing ultraviolet light but not light in the physical range. 

So just imagine that, that you are like a crystal that was embedded in the rock.  And finally you got cleared from that. And finally you emerged in that wonderful state of transparency and translucency. So you went through a process of incandescence. You know that a crystal has been burned at a tremendous rate in order to become, I mean the mineral matter has been subjected to enormous heat in order be able to become clear like a crystal. And of course that light is colorless. That's a very good example of what one means by colorless light. So it is effulgent, it is flashing all kinds of light of different colors. But basically it is itself colorless. 

So as you exhale, just represent to yourself that crystal. And now as you inhale, you do the same things you've been doing with the colored lights. If you can grasp the reflex of colorless light. And it's not another color. It's a different level of light. There are different levels of light. And the same as we've done so far. So you divide your inhaling in two. So imagine the reflex of the reflex. Then in three and so on. 

And if you do this, it will give you a sense that there are planes of light, levels of light. It fits into the law of quantum mechanics. There are definite quantum leaps as one says. There are forbidden zones. It's a condition of the diversification of the Universe that there should be forbidden zones. And so the important thing now is to try to reconnoiter levels of your own being corresponding to each of these reflexes of colorless light.

So now you are discovering further levels of reality to the physical world, or to the world of metaphor, forms. It's beyond form. That's why Ibn Arabi said, "Now you have to stop using your imagination". So instead of seeing light, representing light, imagining light, you discover your own light and the different levels of your own light. 

Now I want to point out that this is quite a part from practices that are conducive to illumination. These are practices which will prefigure your resurrection after death. As the Sufis say, "Die before death and resurrect now". It's no more so much a question of your vantage point as really transmuting your being. 

Now if you know something about physics, you know that sometimes electrons escape from their orbitals and become what they call free electrons. And then you might know that electrons are transformed into photons, that is without mass. But what physicists don't say is that of course there are different levels of light. Light is considered as matter. It's very remarkable that this is matter without mass. A different level of light. 

So think that after death, the electrons of your body continue to live. They continue to function but they are scattered in such a way that they are unable to communicate by sending messages to each other, messages of light because of the limitation of the speed of light. But they are still related by a paradoxical relationship that is beyond our understanding. So it's a terrible mistake, an error to think that the body dies. It doesn't. It just get's transformed even if it's burnt. But that's the support system. 

The important thing is how that support system gets transformed. That's what the alchemists were trying to discover. And then the important thing is that then, if you identify with a higher level of your being, if I may use the word higher, then you are able to communicate with beings at that level. Otherwise you'll find yourself at the level that you have been able to become aware of on the physical plane. But in meditation you are able to discover these levels in preparation for that big jump.

Now Hildegard of Bingen who has become very popular now in America, that German woman mystic says, "I was meditating on light and I found myself absolutely flooded with light. Then all of a sudden this light seemed to open up like a door. And the door opened up onto a still finer light and even more blinding. And that itself opened up into a still further one". 

So that is what Buddha is doing is lifting from one level to the other. Now the words used by Buddha are beyond existence. So that's the first thing. So you can consider existence as a state, as a condition as I said earlier on. So it is like the wave is a condition of the sea. So beyond existence. So it's not elsewhere. But it's a state we are perceiving reality through a window, time and space and matter and so on. So let's say regardless of that window. So regardless of time and space. So‚ you feel that you've lost the sense of moving in time like the pendulum and of being located in space. Being located in space is only meaningful for matter. If you're conscious of your body, it seems to be located in space. But if you're conscious of your magnetic field, then you realize that it's not that located in space. Because it's more like radio waves. And then your aura, it's even less located. Then finally you lose any sense of being located in space. 

Then you discover something really shattering. Expressed in the words of Jalaluddin Rumi, I hope I'm quoting him correctly. But maybe I'm paraphrasing him. He said, "I walk without feet, and I fly without wings, and I see without eyes, and I hear without ears". And I add, "And I think without a brain". Now that last thing is the most important if you can realize that your thinking gets serviced by the brain. But the service does limit your understanding. But of course the only way that you to do it is to realize that you can exist, I mean you can be without existing. That is that you can be without having that body such as it is. You can transfigure the body. Then you'll have a more subtle underpinning for your consciousness. So that's beyond existence. 

And the next step is beyond consciousness. You see that consciousness is limiting one. So it's beyond consciousness. So that's intelligence. So what's beyond existence. We have let's say the code of the Universe, the software of the computer instead of the hardware. That's beyond existence, or rather the rom. Because the code has a deeper reality beyond the rom. So that would be beyond existence and non-existence, the words of Buddha. And then beyond consciousness and non-consciousness. Then he says the cessation of the determined. That is one has freed oneself from the determinism from our conditioning. That was the teaching of Krishna Murti, to free yourself from conditioning. I remember asking him, "Do you not think that it was your conditioning that led you to try to free yourself from conditioning?" 

The quest for freedom, ultimate freedom. Just feel what it's like to be free, to awaken. According to the Sufis it's dropping one veil after another. That's Fana. There's always a counterpart and that's Baqa. That is discovering reality in the next veil. Then there is the next veil and so on. There is no end to the veils. But gradually they become more and more tenuous. 

Now that is a very important word that you find in Ibn Arabi. You see in the Koran it said, "There is nothing in the world that does not (tape turns) in our treasury". So that's a hidden treasure where the archetypes behind all things is stored. And Naffari says, "I am not permitted to give you the key to that treasure". You have to discover it yourself. But Ibn Arabi goes on t   ÷o say, "And the angels build a ladder between the treasury and the likeness on the earth". Those are called tenuities, something that is hardly graspable. Tenuities. Look it up in your dictionary. 

That's what we've been doing. Something that is illusive and ephemeral and evanescent but always there. It's always there. If you think you've got it, then it will escape you. Like an umbilical cord that links you with the ultimate reality. You see the clue is to realize that what we think is reality is actuality. It's not reality. On the other hand, and that's so paradoxical, instead of following the theory of maya, it's all illusion, it's the other way around. It is in the actuality that that divine virtuality becomes a reality, perplexity. The Sufis are always using that word, perplexity. As I said, one never ceases to be amazed as Ajili says, the consternation of intelligence. Reconciling the irreconcilables, reaching down beyond your logic. It's always perplexing. And Pir O Murshid himself says, "Do not be surprised if God Himself is perplexed." 

So do you see the ecstasy of perplexity? It's not just the mind that is blown. It's the soul also that is blown. The emotion of ecstasy is related with the perplexity of the mind, the consternation of the mind.  As the Upanishad says, it's like a flash it passes before you realize it was there. And if you try to hold on, it will disappear. But of course if you keep at it every day for years and years, it becomes so evident. 

But one has to learn how to awaken in life. That is what Pir O Muhsi is working with when he says, " What you call creation is the divine purpose. Thus it is your purpose to make God a reality." It's not to discover God, but to make God a reality in your being. That's why there is a Sufi dervish who says, "Why do you look for God up there? He is here as you". 

So that's the counterpart, the opposite. Awakening in life without losing sight of the insight when you have freed yourself from the vantage point the physical world. Now we return back having been transformed. Just like the first astronaut who landed on the moon. And he gave us a seminar at the Omega Institute. And he said, "When I was there, of course I was full of expectation of returning back home again. But I was so afraid that when I returned back home, I would lose my cosmic consciousness". And he said, "I never lost it." That is awakening in life. 

So we have already tried to awaken beyond one vantage point and another and so on. Now can you awaken in life without limiting yourself to your personal vantage point? That's awakening in life. That means can you grasp the everywhere and always in the here and now? Instead of having feed yourself from the notion of time and space, can you have a new look at time and space and see the way that everywhere and always is present in the here and now? That is embodied in the words of the American poet, "What I ask for is no less than the impossible impossibility. Infinity in a finite fact and eternity in a temporal act". If that doesn't make sense to you, never mind. It's no sense just listening to my words. I'm trying to do is to trigger off an experience in you. And that can not happen overnight like that. But maybe I'm trying to give you some skills which will enable you to experience it yourself. 

Now we descend back into the nitty gritty. Move your fingers and be quite sure you are back into your body again. I see that some people are not. And whatever you do don't drive your car until you are right back into the nitty gritty because meditation is not conducive to good driving. Yes, well yes. It looks we've done as much as we can in this time. We have the Universal Worship at 4 o'clock. Is that right? Do we have a little more time.? One more practice? Uncle. Well this is really the ultimate one. I'm not supposed to give it to you but I will all the same. I'll have to take the karma for it like Prometheus. 

It's a Hindu practice that Sufis do. And it's called Shaghal. Yogis call it Yurmi Mudra. You down play the experience of the experience of physical world in order to be able to highlight what's coming through. Because you can't see what's in the mirror and see the mirror at the same time. So you have to down play one and highlight the other. Like for example, in a hologram, one image and then another. And you can't see both at the same time. You can toggle between them. Now of course it would be, our objective would be to extrapolate between those two images. But that's very difficult. 

To start with, you down play. That is you turn a blind eye towards the physical world. And so there is a practical way of doing it. That is you place your indexes on your eyelids but turn your eyeballs upwards. You don't press upon the cornea, that means the retina. Then you place the forth and fifth finger on your lips to keep them closed. And middle fingers in the proximity of the nostrils. Well you just press your left nostril and breathe in through your right nostril and exhale through the right nostril. Now hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling. To start with concentrate on your solar plexus. Three breaths, no more. Now put your thumbs in your ears. Three breaths, then take your hands away. 

Things are accruing from outside. The chances are you will be sensitive to those things emerging from within which are much more subtle. That's why you turn towards your solar plexus. Now we're going to do the same thing again. But this time instead of concentrating on the solar plexus, concentrate on the point Bindu which corresponds with the pituitary gland. And you may even in a further stage concentrate on the light above the head. Well the light of the crown center and above that the light of pure intelligence. So there are really four stages. You can do it with four breaths rather than three. So this is a practice that one should not do overly because it will make you otherworldly. And our purpose is not to make you otherworldly. Of course, the best thing to do is to do it without placing your fingers on the senses. That you can do whenever you want. So you're always seeing meaningfulness and splendor behind the most ugly and disturbing circumstances. So it has a consequence in terms of our handling our problems because the consequence is that you can handle ugly situations beautifully. Never mind what people do. The way you handle the situation. That's the important thing.

So God bless you now.
Tape ends.

NOV 22, 1997		Tape 04

I think it's happening all over the world. But the initial inspiration came from Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan who founded the Universal Worship. The principle on which it's based is unity is not uniformity. So we welcome the diversity of the different religion. At the same time embrace the wide compass and the friendship and the kinship between all the religions.

To the glory of the omnipresent God we kindle this light symbolically representing the Hindu religion. To the glory of the omnipresent God we kindle this light symbolically representing the Buddhist religion. To the glory of the omnipresent God we kindle this light symbolically representing the Zoroastrian religion. To the glory of the omnipresent God we kindle this light symbolically representing tradition of the Great Mother. To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light symbolically representing the Jewish religion. To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light symbolically representing the Christian religion. To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light symbolically representing the religion of Islam. To the glory of the omnipresent God, we kindle this light symbolically representing all those whether known to the world we have held aloft the light of truth amidst the darkness of human ignorance.

Praise be to thee most supreme God omnipotent, omnipresent, all pervading. The only being. Take us in thy parental arms. Raise us from the denseness of the earth. Thy beauty do we worship. To thee do we willing surrender. Most merciful and compassionate God, the idealized Lord of the whole humanity.  Thee only do we worship. And towards thee alone do we aspire. Open our hearts towards thy beauty. Illuminate our souls with thy divine light. Oh Thou, perfection of love, harmony and beauty. All powerful creator, sustainer and forgiver of our short comings. Lord God of the East and of the West, of the worlds above and below, of the seen and unseen beings. Pour upon us thy love and thy light. Give sustenance to our bodies, hearts and souls. Use us for the purpose Thy wisdom chooses. And guide us on the path of Thine own goodness. Draw us closer to thee every moment of our lives until in us be reflected Thy Grace, Thy Glory, Thy Wisdom, Thy Joy and Thy Light.

I begin with the Hindu tradition. This is a chant that's sung in the ashram of the Mother in India. The feeling that comes to me is the sense of living one's life in the arms of the beloved. So that every moment one is held in the arms of God - the sense of the power and the strength and support. Sri Rama Je Rama

Reading from the Hindu Scriptures. It is the spirit of man who sees, hears, feels perfumes, touches and tastes, thinks and acts and has all consciousness. The spirit of man finds peace in the spirit supreme and eternal. He who knows, oh my son, that eternal spirit incorporal and shadowless, luminous and everlasting, attains the eternal spirit. He knows the all and becomes the all. A verse there is that says, "He who knows, oh my beloved, that eternal spirit wherein consciousness and senses the powers of life and the elements are at final peace, knows the all and has gone into the all".

We offer to the omniscient God our reverence, our homage and our gratitude for the light of the divine. 

For the Buddhist tradition Mikael is here to chant with us. This is a chant from the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. It means going beyond, beyond, beyond the illusion entering the enlightened mind which dwells within all of us.

This over truth is an noble truth concerning the origin of suffering. Verily it is the destruction in which no passion remains of this very thirst. It is the laying aside of being free from the dwelling no longer upon this thirst. This then obiquos is the noble truth concerning the destruction of suffering. Now ibiquos is the noble truth which leads the way to the destruction of sorrow. Verily this noble eightfold path. That is to say right views, right aspiration, right speech, right behavior, right livelihood, right effort, right thoughts, and right contemplation. This then obiquos is the noble truth concerning the destruction of sorrow. By the practice of loving kindness, I have attained liberation of heart. Thus I am assured that I shall never return under new births and even now attain nirvana.

We offer to the omniscient God our reverence, our homage, and our gratitude for the light of divine compassion.

For the Zoroastrian tradition there is a chant that honors the elements, earth, air, fire and water. In the tradition of Ahura Mazda.

Reading from the Zoroastrian scripture: As divine indeed O Mazda I have recognized the O hura. When through ( ) divine love good entered onto me and asked to me, "Who art thou. To whom doesth thou belong? What path does thou point out daily to thy doubts as between thy surroundings and thine own self?" Indeed in the first place, I consider myself to be Zarathustra, dedicated to the good, the inveterate adversary of the followers of untruth as far as I am able. But to the righteous, I shall be the joy of inner life. Thus my I share for all time Thy infinite power. So long as I am dedicated to Thee O Mazda and leave my hymns to thee.

We offer to the omniscient God our reverence, our homage, and our gratitude for the light of divine purity.

On our alter to celebrate the traditions of the Great Mother, where upon time there are not written scriptures from the earliest times, we use the fern as one of the oldest living plants that we have to symbolize what was really worshiped throughout those ancient times. However the tradition of the Great Mother that began so long ago has come through many forms throughout history and throughout different cultures. So today we're going to share through an ancient chant that in doing a lot of research on the ( ) mysteries in Greece, Jean Houston discovered these words that we believe is part of the ancient chant. The ( ) mysteries were referred to in Hazrat Inayat Khan's teachings as a Sufi initiation. 

The ritual that this comes from happened as the initiates were coming into the temple, crossing the threshold, essentially crossing from death to life trying to relive the fear that happened in birth, and discovering that healing that ancient fear that everyone has, by facing the fear and allowing it to go away. The words are "Maga", that's the ancient name of the Mother. Maga comes from the Maji comes from the same root. Then the three Greek words are Bolon, Boveron Apotrophe. Which means leaving go or leaving behind your worst fears. So I would like us to invite ourselves to just really invoke whatever that fear is that we're in touch now and let it go as the chant proceeds. So we will chant together "Maga" and when I go like this just do it very   ý softly and I'll do the Greek. If you feel like you can join in that part, great. (Chant)

We offer to the omniscient God our reverence, or homage, and our gratitude for the light of divine love.

For the Jewish tradition we're going to sing (Hashi Velu). Yes, we'll sing it in two voices. God spoke all these words saying, "I am God your Lord who brought you out of Egypt and the place of slavery. Do not have any other gods before me. Do not represent such gods by any carved statue or picture of anything in heaven above, on the earth below or in the water below the land. Do not bow down to such gods or worship them. I am God your Lord who demands exclusive worship. Where my enemies are concerned, I keep in mind the sins of the fathers for those descending to three and four generations. But for those who love me and keep my commandments, I shall love for thousands of generations.

We offer to the omniscient God our reverence, or homage, and our gratitude for the light of divine covenant.

Hymn

NOV 23, 1997		Tape 05

Let us start with he invocation.  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."

Well, what a wonderful opportunity to share for one day together.

There is no doubt that our greatest need is training to prepare ourselves for our task.  I say that because initiation means that one has decided to dedicate oneself to a spiritual cause.  I'm very cautious about words to I'm using the word spiritual, so that one is not only receptive, one is not only a pupil, one is preparing oneself to be a guide so that one's purpose is not one's own personal unfoldment so much as being of service.  And I think of the Sufi Order as an organism rather than an organization that is rendering a service to people who are in quest of that dimension of their being which one calls a spiritual one and I must say that having attended this rather tough meeting of the state of the world organized by Gorbachev in San Francisco and talking to business people who are handling millions of dollars, they all said their highest ideal is spirituality although they haven't the foggiest idea what that means but somehow they think there's something there they don't have and they have so many things in their pockets so they'd like to have spirituality in their pocket too.  And so they were hoping I would be able to give it to them in a few easy painless sessions and of course it doesn't work.  You know how very hard it is because it means really training oneself in everyday life. To be a musician you really have to keep on practicing your scales, for example, every day, 4 hours a day.  Four hours a day is a minimum to even just keep it up.  Some of these musicians are playing 12 hours a day for weeks and months on end in order to give a concert that lasts an hour to an hour and a half.

Now, it's true that if our meditations do not make any difference then of course we abandon them and of course I feel responsible  for not having given enough directions as to how to maximize one's meditations and as you know, we have gone through many phases.  We have come a long way since we started 6 years ago, well 40 years ago, and it's wonderful because I see some people who have stood with me in thick and thin through all those changes.  The trouble is that we have to reconcile our humanness with our divinity and our humility or I would say even false modesty tends to make one, well, perhaps not quite believe in one's spiritual status.  It's a question of belief, of faith really in something in oneself.

Perhaps you have noticed that some of the practices I have been giving throughout the years have been in an effort to try to make one aware of what Pir-O-Murshid calls our Divine Inheritance instead of our human inheritance.  And of course that's embodied in the words of Christ, "Be perfect as your Father." 

And of course you know the story of St. Francis who was arraigned before the judge by his father because he wasn't selling the cloth of his father's shop and he was giving any money that came to him to he poor and building a church.  And the father said, "The very clothes you wear, they are from my shop."  And so he took off his clothes and he said, "I have another father." That's a clue.  You may have a personal human father and mother--I mean, I'm sure you have.  And I think it's 4 grandparents and so on, and many more and I think it's probably 16, anyway as you go back one inherits a tremendous amount of people, eventually monkeys and dinosaurs.  So it's not surprising that there are features in oneself that one isn't proud of. 

But if you can then become aware of that special inheritance--I know it's very difficult; I know from experience because if one is honest then one does tend to dislike aspects in oneself that one cannot really feel proud of and would like to get rid of them, and one doesn't know how to do it, and there's a conflict in one's being you know, and it's difficult to believe in the spiritual dimension of one's being  if--to reconcile those two, you know, what I call reconciling the irreconcilables somehow.  So it's in our mind that there's some difficulty we have to overcome in our mind. You know, I've been accused of being an intellectual actually and talking over the heads of most people but actually I'm all emotion.  It's coming out more now, it's a kind of discretion about ecstasy, some kind of discretion about it, but what I'm saying is that if I do give explanations it's just because our mind does stand in the way of our experience.  

So I would say that--of course, as you know, our teaching originated in the oral tradition of the sufis and beyond that the esoteric schools of the world and in sufism there has been a lot of--how can I say--osmosis with other traditions, Hindu, Buddhist, particularly Christian, and of course the role of Islam in the whole advent of sufism, but the important thing is that Murshid has given, let's say a focus to that tradition that is meaningful for people in our time and therefore he calls it a message.  He really has a contribution to the needs of people for spirituality, let's say, in preparation for the millennium.  

Consequently, while we have our roots in that tradition, our purpose--certainly my purpose--is not to promote sufism or to build a sufi order with a lot of members or anything like that.  No.  It is to meet the needs of people who are looking for help in their spiritual life and I realize that one can only do that if one is talking from a place of personal experience.  So whatever knowledge one has of the past, which is wonderful if you've studied the sufis, they are really fantastic.  I've studied, of course, I've lived as a Sannyasin in the caves of the Himalayas and also as a dervish in Ajmir and in Iran and also as a Catholic as a matter of fact in Monserrat in Spain with the monks, and I must say that it's all wonderful.  I mean, each one of these traditions has something so wonderful to offer.  So that we don't want to put a label on ourselves and say, you know, "I'm a sufi," you know; however, I realize that most of the traditions in India were intended for people who leave the world--for senior citizens.  

It's true that there's a problem in America and that is people who are pensioned off now, who are retired.  They find themselves in a kind of hole because those are the people who really need direction in their spiritual life and we haven't got that together but that's one of the things that I have in mind and perhaps the Abode might be just the place.  But anyway, what I'm saying is that spirituality is really so important.  But the question is, how do we make it possible in the middle of life because it's easier for people who have left the world.  But let us remember these words of Christ when he said, "They are in the world but not of the world."  So I am starting with that.  I don't like the words "on the path," you know, because when you get high up in the Himalayas there are no paths.  So a path is restricting.  An airplane, you know, doesn't have a path but it makes its own path.  

But to start with I think we need to have a certain, adopt a  certain way of looking at our lives and consider that we are initiates, that the reason for taking initiation is that we are not just ordinary citizens.  I don't want to say that we are special people but it's like we have a purpose but it is not that most people have although they could have it and they would like to have it but they don't know quite how to do it.  Our purpose is really to bring--well, could I say this in words? Bring the ecstasy of the heavens into our human emotions and the divine vantage point in our personal vantage point and the  divine sense of meaningfulness into our limited understanding. So it's like a continual concentration.  What am I doing?  One loses one's way.  One forgets what it's all about.  It's not just meditating.  In fact in the end the whole of one's life is-- well, it's supposed--we are trying to make it a meditation but as I said yesterday, your high in meditation is not conducive to your driving safely; so how one reconciles these two things, that's the whole problem.  

Anyway, think of yourself as preparing yourself for a task.  You know, a concert pianist starts with playing scales.  They would never have believed that one day they would be able to sit before thousands of people and play a concerto of Rachmaninoff with such brilliance.  I think that's how most of us feel.  There are these great masters, you know, but how could I compete; how could I even start doing anything of that kind?  But one has to start somewhere.

Let us say that meditations are skills, just like playing the piano or playing the cello or whatever it is:  skiing, or whatever the skills.  And if one does not know the skills then one is rather amateurish.   One isn't--if you are inspired to improvise the melody on the piano it's easier, it's better if you've got your fingers together, you've got your skills as a support system.  

And that we will begin to do.  We want to build a support system for our spiritual life.  In the middle of our activities, and I realize, of course, how difficult it is, for one thing because, well, there's a sort of gravity pull of the world around one and that spills over so one tends to not want to be different from other people and it's true that one has to be very discreet and not uppish about one's being a special being or anything of that kind so the consequence is one's humility in a way does stand in one's way, I must say, what one calls false humility.  And it's very difficult to maintain as Murshid said, our pride in the aristocracy of the soul together with humility for the democracy of one's ego.  That's reconciling the irreconcilables.  So that's a kind of motto.  

One gets to a point when one is very aware of what the attunement of people does to one's own attunement.  You see, there are people who make one high and others, it's the other way round. They tend to pull one down and one doesn't want to be, as I say, oafish, and think that makes a kind of judgement about people, about oneself.  So that's the difficulty.  But I think it's important to realize that those very people that are pulling one down in emotional attunement are seeking for just the attunement that one is upholding oneself and it all happens unconsciously.  One doesn't really know what's happening.  

But I think that is a very essential thing to be aware of and the other is a spill-over of, well I think the thing that strikes me the most that is standing in the way of our spirituality is where need becomes greed.  And where that dividing line is, that's very difficult to see.  We have needs in order to be able to fulfill our purpose in life living in our civilizations, and those needs are becoming heavier and heavier.  You know, to be a successful business person you have to have a good car and you have to live is a good part of New York.  Otherwise, if you are living in the suburbs people won't have contracts with you.  I mean, it's that kind of thing that we are drawn into.  One could say those are needs, and so it's not like in India where you could be a Sannyasin and then you don't have those needs.  You have very few needs. You  have almost no needs, in fact.  It's incredible.  You know, the Sannyasins train themselves to put up with extreme cold and extreme heat and thirst and pain and as a consequence they develop a tremendous power.  And if you coddle yourself too much then you don't have that kind of resilience and of course the challenge of our life is different so we don't have it easy either in our modern civilizations, it's just different.   


But somehow the kind of emotion that one sees by people who have that kind of concupiscence, who want to have some things for themselves, that kind of very gross emotion you see everywhere around you does stand in the way of spirituality. I don't see how one can reconcile those two, and of course you see the suffering it causes to the victims of their greed.  We are living in a civilization where there are more and more victims on our streets now, the victims of our greed, and our system is based on greed.  

So it's really like, I think the only way to do it I think is to really be aware at every level of our being, identify ourselves with every level of our being and that includes the celestial. And the trouble is that level of our being, the child in us, is defenseless you see.  And in our lives, unless we can defend ourselves people will walk over our dead bodies.  We really have to have strength and at the same time innocence.  That's so very difficult to do. 

And so Pir-O-Murshid--this is one of the fundamental teachings of Pir-O-Murshid, what he calls the false ego.  I've looked into it very carefully and I see that what he means is that the ego is a dimension of our being that is reactive; it is part of our defence system.  It is that aspect of our being that is programmed into us, into our personality in order to defend ourselves against assault and abuse and so on until we get angry and defensive and it can lead to(?? ______??_ ) of course can lead to violence and cruelty and torture and all the things that were found amongst the Nazis and many other places now in the world.  

And it is true that if we wean ourselves, that we have to wean ourselves gradually from that ego, what Pir-O-Murshid calls the false ego, because as Pir-O-Murshid says, the real ego is the ego of God so we don't use the word ego in a pejorative sense but it's the false notion of ourselves which is an entity regardless of the totality, I would say, and it is that that is the false ego.  It's a sense of identity that we have developed in order to defend ourselves and of course that does stand in the way of  identifying ourselves with our real ego.  But on the other hand we need it, just like people become addicted to cigarettes for example.  One does not know how to live without it so one becomes dependent upon it and addicted and so we are addicted to our ego. So to wean ourselves from our ego we have to do it gradually because otherwise we become spineless and very easily abused by people and so that's why some of our practices are consisting--for example, Ya Qadr, which is power and at the same time Ya Rahim which is compassion, for example.  And as I said yesterday, today we are going much more into how we are developing these qualities.  And if one weans oneself too fast one gets what one calls withdrawal symptoms.  We have to be very careful.  

So the only way is to increase one's inner power and it's a  different power than the power of the ego so that's really the clue, is how does one develop divine power rather than developing one's personal power.  Of course, that is God Consciousness.  And that is the only way.  There is no other way except God consciousness.  Now, I would say the axiom of sufism is that one is always trying to see things from the antipodal standpoint but (?__?no one??) is the Divine standpoint.  

So now in the perspective that I've just drawn for you perhaps you can see better the reason why we do the practices that we do. Because the wazifa, for example, is a practice in which one identifies with one's divine inheritance.  If one does it correctly, of course.  Maybe one of the reasons why in so many  cases it doesn't work is that one continues to think of oneself as one does, and tries to develop a quality; and then you can be sure it won't work.  And that's why a lot of people give up repeating the wazifa, because it doesn't work if you just stay in your consciousness and think, "I want to develop this quality and that quality," and perhaps there is a hope that that wazifa is a magical word that will do it or you.  It doesn't.  So don't be disappointed with the Sufi Order if it doesn't work. It's on yourself if it doesn't work.  It's because that's the wrong way to go about it.  

I suppose some of you were not here yesterday, because what I did yesterday was really a preparation for today.   So what I was trying to do was try to explore the steps in order to get into that antipodal consciousness.   There is no point in my saying the axiom of sufism is getting into the Divine Consciousness.  Those are words but how do we do it?  And so there are stages and skills and therefore what we are doing is first of all I used to say expanding your consciousness and now I say just transferring your consciousness into that of other people, especially those who are involved in your problem with you, in more and more people, and eventually you get to the point of what St. Francis of Assisi said when he said, "I thought I was looking at the world but the world is looking at me."  

You can't do that at first so you have to do it slowly, carefully.  Now the practices for that--you see, there are two practices, because that's what I wanted to do now, is to share  with you, well, perspectives on the practices that will make more sense than just translating the wazifa in English or in American.  It's not enough.  So there are two practices here:  Ya Basit, which is a sense of expansion, and that's what I used to teach--the expansion of consciousness.  So you exhale, think of your glance; for example, or you could look at a panorama and eventually perhaps, I don't known, in infinite regress, infinity, lets you look into the starry sky at nighttime and of course the expansion of consciousness, it's fantastic that our glance is able to reach right out there into stars that don't even exist any more--a million light years ago and we see them now.  Quite extraordinary.  

That is Basit.  The trouble is, with this practice, is that one tends to lose one's center and any psychotherapist will tell you that.  That has been one of the drawbacks of the kind of teaching that has been introduced in the West and America particularly by  swamis coming from India.  One tends to eschew--one tends to neglect the importance of the diversity, of the uniqueness of each person; and I must say that if one is not happy with oneself one would like to lose oneself in the totality.  It's almost the kind of instinct of a kind of suicide which, if you get support in that by the sufi teaching like fana, that means, you know, annihilation and you enjoy annihilating yourself, it's confirming your denigration of yourself and so on.  

Well, it's true that we do have to--there's a process whereby we have to dissolve in order to be reborn but then we have to put the accent on rebirthing instead of dissolving.  Fana is always given together with Baa but if you just do Fana itself, well then of course it's very destructive.  And that is, I mean that is really very strong--you see, there's a kind of misconstruction of sufism that I find in India.  I remember being asked to lead the Dhikr in a gathering of sufis in Delhi, and all of a sudden this man went into a state of extinction as they call it and collapsed on the ground.  And you know, if it were in the West you'd call an ambulance but here everybody continues doing the Dhikr.  It's taken for granted it's the kind of thing that happens.  And then finally he rallied to but I didn't find him any better after that than before so I thought, "Well, what's the point?"  So, that's not the way.  

And therefore this is one of the points that I made yesterday.  I don't know how clearly it was marked.  And that is that when you are meditating the first thing you are doing is to think about your--well, rambling thoughts will cross your mind and invade your mind as a matter of fact and you will find that you're more concerned about your problems than ever and also about yourself and so on and so forth and you just don't know how to meditate.  And so if you remember the thing that we did at first was to try and see how you can, first of all, call the bluff of the mind by seeing the way that you are casting your personal bias upon your problems.  So it's not your problems that you are regurgitating, it is your concept of your problems.  And that was the first thing if you remember. 

But then the second one was to try and draw the gist of --out a situation and of course I know it's too conceptual to say that. One doesn't know how to transmute a thought or an emotion.  So today I want to be a little more specific and say, you see, what is enacted behind the problems are qualities in yourself and in the people involved in the problem.  So the problem is the outer aspect of something much deeper; and so there's no use just regurgitating the problems when you are meditating, so the first thing to do is then to see what is behind them and one needs some kind of clues and therefore what I suggested is that you try to see what are the qualities involved in this conflict.   

For example--I don't want, I'm not supposed to talk about politics here, but the case of Saddam Hussein, I mean, you know, conflict resolution.  Are you going to make a compromise?  I mean the issue is honesty.  That's the issue.  You are dealing with bad faith.  So when you look at the problems, just think, "now the issue in this problem is kindness"; "the issue in this problem is truthfulness"; "the issue in this problem is freedom, finding freedom"; "the issue in this problem is peacefulness," and so on.  

So now, most of those of you who are mureeds of course are familiar with some of the wazifas and you know, it's been the rule in the Sufi Order that one is given a wazifa by one's guide.  I think the guide needs as much, even more training of course than the mureeds so I think it's important to hear from me what is the real import of these qualities.  

So I started by saying Basit which is expansion of consciousness but I think that it is--I would like to replace that by Ya Wasi, because Ya Wasi means grasp--encompassing the compass of your being, because the compass of your being, not just your electromagnetic field and your aura but it's your problems, your domain.  And that's very strong in Murshid's teaching because your domain represents your kingdom or your queendom, represents those responsibilities that you have toward people around you.  And the greater the being the greater this domain, and as a matter of fact you will also become greater; that is, your being will expand by taking responsibility, and to start with being aware of what those responsibilities are.  So you see, this is a more concrete way of meditating than just losing yourself in the vastness.  So that's the reason I suggest using the wazifa Ya  Wasi.  Of course they often give wazifas in tandem because Wasi represents a certain focus of consciousness but I think it's important to see what it does to our understanding.  

Now, to our understanding.  So in that case I would say Ya Wasi, Ya Alim, because Alim means wisdom.  It's a word which Pir-O- Murshid uses in a very special sense, or rather he's very clear about what he means by wisdom.  He says it is the conjunction--the words that he uses is the knowledge of the heavens and the knowledge of the earth.  Let's say the knowledge of the earth is like the know-how that you've gained by your experience.  The knowledge of the heavens is that inborn protocritic knowledge that I talked about yesterday and I often talk about it.  The kind of inborn knowledge that is inherent within your being and which you cannot acquire, although it's there, but you cannot acquire it.  It is a secret treasure and so it can only be awakened if you learn to look at things from the antipodal point of view to your own: the divine point of view.  

So as I said, I started by trying to see what are the steps which will enable us to get into the antipodal point of view.  That was as expansion first and now there is another dimension which is the vertical instead of the horizontal.  Now, that word--you see, the knowledge of the heavens as Murshid calls it, what does it mean? These are very beautiful words but what does it mean? So I tried to point out a clue that could give us the sense of what it means by quoting Najmuddin Kubra who talks about the witness in the heavens.  So that's a fantastic word.  So remember that.  The witness in the heavens.  That is, "You thought you were the witness," he says, "But the real witness is the witness in the heavens." 

Now, so for those who weren't here yesterday , I said, well, what would be the judgement of an angel upon you or upon other people?  And then, what is the judgement of the angel in you upon other people?  That is a kind of sensitivity, I think it is a knowledge that is based upon conscience rather than consciousness.  The kind of sensitivity I imagine that angels would like to wash their hands shaking hands with most people.  That kind of sensitivity about the kind of filth that you find in the egos of people.  I know it sounds judgmental but it's sensitivity.  So it's a sensitivity that develops in you so it's not the understanding of the mind and sometimes one says it's the understanding of the heart.  That's the popular way of saying it. I would say it is the understanding of the soul.  

I make a distinction between the emotion of the heart and the emotion of the soul.  The emotion of the heart tends to be sentimental and certainly very human, very personal whereas the emotion of the soul is sublime.  It's a different level of emotion and you see how emotion is linked with understanding.  So the knowledge of the heavens, or the knowledge of the witness in the heavens, that is why-- the clue of course to divine consciousness but they are stepping stones  and one of them is to really become aware of the angelic dimension of your being but of course in order to do that one has to cleanse it.  One has to cleanse one's personality from a lot of stuff that is really dark and goes counter to--in fact on has to become clear like a diamond, absolutely no flaws, no shadow.  Now yesterday we were working with--of course, the ideal way of doing it is to work with light.  Those are wonderful practices and I think are the practices of many people.  But just the visualizations are not even enough.  So it means one has to really take a bath of light and, or a shower of light.  And, well, it's not easy because it's not easy to be truthful.  You know, even when one says, "I'm glad to see you again," is one really glad?  There's a lie there, right away, so that's why the English say, "How do you do?" Then after meeting them one is supposed to say, "I enjoyed meeting you."  But then again it could be a lie, of course.  So even right there, you see.  

And the other thing is that people will take advantage of your sincerity, of your confession, to work against you, to pull you down.  I remember in the Sufi Movement, they said "Oh, Pir Vilayat, he admitted that he wasn't quite up to the level      I expected of him and there you are, it's proof."  So our modesty can be used against us.  That's why Pir-O-Murshid speaks about this kind of pride in the divinity of our being and at the same time cautions about the humility of one's ego, the democracy of one's ego.  So you see it's difficult.  To live the spiritual life is really very difficult.  On the other hand, you see, if our objective is the results, then we tend to compromise for the result.  That's what they call "The end justifies the means." And so then we know if we were to confess our world would collapse and so we don't confess and the thing is, it's much better to confess and let your world collapse and then you can build again on solid ground.  

So that's why--the lifting--I talked about the expansion of  consciousness, of course, about Wasi, I mean the compass of consciousness; but now the other dimension, the word that we use is Khabir.  K h a b i r.  Not Kabir but Khabir.  Now, Sufi's are not always agreed about the meanings of the wazifa because, well, one of the translations is "an expert."  And you know what experts are like.  Specialists.  Like people  who know more and more about less and less, instead of "Jack of all trades and master of none" would be Khabir.  But I don't know, that's --  a real specialist is endowed with a kind of divine understanding or divine intuition  -

Yes, for example you can't that say he was just a specialist, I mean he spent all his time, he would never do anything else than  making violins but he -- I think he was guided by a divine understanding in able to do this.  So we mustn't reduce Khabir  to that--that's the trouble about translating the wazifa in an English word because there's a much deeper meaning than one could ever describe in our limited language.  So there you have  it: right of way.  

Then you, expansion of consciousness is not good enough.  One also needs to--I was going to say hoist consciousness but one needs to let one's consciousness be illuminated by the light of one's intelligence and that's the reason why we attach so much importance to the light of intelligence instead of the light of the aura, and that's a different thing.  And so, Noor means the light of intelligence so it is what the sufis call the light that sees instead of the light that could be seen.

So yesterday we did a lot of practices, perhaps you could get the tapes because there's no point in my repeating the same practices that we did yesterday, but what I want you to know is why we did those practices.  It's because if you look at your life and ask yourself, "well, what am I doing?" then you are inquiring into the purpose of your life and the purpose of your life generally, and of course there are several things, conclusions you can come to:  "I want to achieve something in life.  "I want to be of service." There are perfunctory purposes, "I need to have a family,""I need to have a nice house," and so on, so forth.   "I need to be good in my profession."  Those are all valid reasons, it's not the way of the ascetics, so yes. 

But then I think myself that the two purposes that I would like to highlight, one is the unfurling of the potentials of my being. And it's not because I want to do it or you want to do it or we want to do it but it's like the call of the whole universe.  That's the meaning of Ishk Allah, wanting to actualize or actuate itself as us, not in us but as us.  And so if you feel that nostalgia, and that's why that's so important in sufism, the secret treasure that desired to be known.  Actually, the word is loved to be known.  I always thought it was desired to be known and that was holding me back from writing my conference on the sufis but I asked Zia and he said no it wasn't desire.  Ishk would be desire.  It was I loved to be known.  And so there's  love and not just knowing, you see.  And that's why--you see when we're working with understanding we also have to work with emotion and that's why I say the Witness in the heavens is in the realm of the understanding of the emotions rather than the understanding of the mind.  Musicians understand that:  the understanding of emotions (**? with) the understanding of the mind.

And therefore I would like to suggest then that when--you can do of course Ya Khabir/Ya Wasi.  Yes.  You can do Ya Wasi/Ya Alim and Ya Khabir/Ya Wasi.  But then I would add Ya Azzim which is a sense of bewonderment and I would add Ya Ali which is a sense of  glorification.  Yesterday I was showing that glorification is the ultimate creative act because it starts with bewondering.  It starts by never ceasing to be amazed by the marvel of life.  Despite all of the terrible things that happen nowadays I was of the opinion that, well, our civilization is decadent and at least more and more aware of the decadence in manners and in demeanor and in values and so on and I think we all are rather dismayed by the terrible defilement that has set in in all our societies  including in the East, in the West, everywhere.  But I was reminded that it's always been so in the past.  It's just that there are more people.  But on the other hand there is a fantastic upsurge of values, of honesty, of valiance.  It's not just technology but technology at the service of the awakening of consciousness in the course of evolution, so something very positive is happening.  

So as I say, it requires, let's say, something in us that is seeking.  You see, if you seek beauty you will find it.  If you do not seek it you won't find it, you see.   That word, there's a wazifa for that, Ya Wajid, which means to find, your control-F on your computer.  So it's very important that you are always on the lookout for beauty in the midst of so much ugliness.  And one of the ways of doing it is to see what transpires behind that which appears.  Otherwise you can't.  At the surface things may look horrible but if you go deeper you can find beauty that is unbelievable beauty and you wouldn't believe it.  I was just talking on the way about Noor.  The man who interrogated her was very deeply moved by her being and he was a Nazi, a convinced Nazi whose job it was to arrest people.  So that somehow there is behind these obnoxious people--the people are not obnoxious but at the surface they may be and behind that there may be a wounded soul and if you can see that then it's easier to forgive.  One can't condone but one can forgive.  One can't condone the action but one can forgive the person.

So somehow our realization is linked so much with our way of  handling problems.  So you see, it's no use sitting there and saying, "Ya Alim; Ya Alim; Ya Alim" and then hoping that you  understand life better.  It doesn't work.  But if you think of  well, it is in the way I handle problems, now how can I handle an ugly situation beautifully?  And then, that purpose, that's the motivation, is going to act as a lead, "Ya Wajid," gives you a lead like, "How can I do that?"  And it becomes easier if you can see the good hidden behind the bad of a person.  It becomes easier then to handle a person--a situation beautifully.  Otherwise, you are just confronting the surface of that person instead of dealing with the real person, the whole person.  

That's why meditation is for me--meditation is of course just a rehearsal for action.  It's not a retreat.  I don't like the word retreat, you see, because for the sufis God will--you see, one has to be really clear.  You know, when I say God becomes a reality in man (Murshid says make God a reality) it's an aspect of God that is virtual and that becomes an actuality as us.  So if you see that as the purpose, then you can develop understanding.  So, in other words, your understanding is linked with how you handle things rather than just thinking, "I need to have more understanding."  It doesn't work that way.  And so one's meditation is like pondering about one's way of handling one's problems, you see.  And it's not pondering upon one's problems, it's pondering upon how one is handling one's problems.   

That's why, as I said, the first stage of meditation is, of course, when you tried, at least at first you, as I say, call a bluff, you see that you have a biased interpretation of your problem but that's still negative.  The positive one is, of  course, to see the impact of your being upon your problems. And that's why one turns within because that's where one can  see one's real being: who one is, who we are; and then you see how--actually it's not always true that our being attracts our problems, it could be and it is very often the case; it is our being that attracts the problems.  But it's not always so.  But at least what I would like to highlight is that when you're  meditating instead of just being drowned by the--overwhelmed by all your concerns about your problems, get in touch, well at first get in touch with your real being: that is that which transpires behind that which appears.  And then after that get in touch with the way that your being is unfurling, because if you just get in touch with your being it will be a static image of yourself and your real being is dynamic.  It's always evolving.  It's emerging. And so it's rather counterproductive to say, "Yes, I know who I am."  You know, as I said yesterday, you take away the mask, you realize that you're carrying and are playing a role and finally there is something that really clicks and all of a sudden, "Ah, yes.  This is me."  That's preliminary.  That's a wonderful breakthrough.  

But then--and you even, it's an image which doesn't have contours, which doesn't have a profile, so it's like, as I said, like kirlian photography.  So you see that form is very important.  In fact, it is that which is gained by existence: is form.  At (?*last/least?) that's the nitty gritty, right down there.  

And that's why the sufis say God is continually discovering, let's say a further knowledge of Him/herself which is the way that the archetypical qualities are exemplified in the diversity of beings and the interaction between these beings adds the  knowledge that God may have of Himself in the principles of His/Her being.  So it's a further mode of knowledge in which  the sufis say God discovers Him--well, let's say Himself (I would say Him/Herself) through the form, which is your form or the form that he assumes as you, in which He/She reveals Him/Herself to  Himself by revealing Him/Herself to you through this form.  

And therefore it is very important when you are working with the wazifas is to work with form instead of just working with concepts because a concept doesn't do it and the clue to it is, of course, to imagine the form that would correspond to the attunement and also the conceptualization of the qualities.  

For example, this is something we did yesterday; for example think of something that requires a lot of mastery.  So instead of just repeating "Ya Wali, Ya Wali," to bring out mastery, you think of--yes, of course you might say that word, but it's better to say it after you have just imagined a situation which requires a lot of mastery like, well, of course, I'm thinking of conducting a choir and an orchestra and that requires a lot of mastery.  

Mastery means that you are--it means two things really: Because you're aware of every note and the way that people are playing that note or singing that or the mistakes they are making, and you've got  the whole picture very clearly and you really--you control it.  That is, you stop and say, "Do it again, you did this wrong."  That's mastery.  Or you're playing the piano and you stop and (I saw that when I was sitting there and Pablo Casals was practicing) and he would stop himself all the time.  And he would be angry with himself and say, "No that won't do.  No, no, that won't do."  Like that.  With the orchestra he was terrible.  He would do it 20 times and people would be doing it worse and worse every time because they were fed up with his saying it's not good enough.  Mastery is really never allowing something wrong to happen.  Never.  It's taking responsibility.  As least as far as you're concerned.  You can't answer for other people but as far as you're concerned you never allow--when there is something where you could intervene and you haven't intervened, that's a lack of mastery.  

So, now, think of what it does to your face if you--well, of course you can take up the masters who exemplify mastery and see the expression on their face.  So you could--now what we did yesterday, but there were two phases:  One was your subtle body and therefore the expression, the countenance of your, well, the face of your subtle body or even the whole demeanor, the whole subtle body and the other was your aura.  And I admit that it is easier to work with the aura, to think of the aura as a fabric in which you liken to a statue, but still, I think we have to start with basics.  It's like, you know, it's nice to be able to play the piano but you have to do your scales first.  So you do it.  You work with your subtle body.  

So that's why one turns within.  You remember that Batin means turning within.  Batin is that which is hidden and is veiled but also transpires behind the veil or in the veil; not behind the veil but in the veil.  The veil itself does manifest the unmanifest.  I'm using a word, a typical sufi word.  There's a wonderful slogan, I would say, of Jami, a Sufi, who said -- he said, "Glory to the one who manifests himself by the same veil that conceals him and conceals himself by the same veil that manifests him."  Sufism.  I know, I think all sufis must have been Gemini's at some point.  I'm trying to find out what is the birthdate of Ibn' Arabi!  

So, you see, I'm talking about some basic, well, you might call it metaphysical principles but see how it applies in your practices because you see, what the sufis are saying is that the knowledge that is acquired is inadequate so the knowledge that is acquired needs to be complimented, supplemented, by the knowledge that is revealed to you.  And so, for the sufis, the physical world and also your personality, these are clues and devices whereby God reveals his--Him/Herself and that means also His plan, His programming and that means also His/Her nature to you.   So to add to the knowledge that is acquired you would have to consider the form of the world and the form of your own subtle body as a clue that is pointing out to something that is as its archetype in the Divine Nature and is exemplified in your body or in your personality.  And there's a link between the body and the personality so you see how your personality is configured right away.  

I say right away because if you shift, for example, and started to concentrate on mastery, and then we see how it changes the expression of our countenance, now we think of compassion, not the concept of compassion but we think of a person who has been beaten in a concentration camp and our heart goes out to them and you see what it does to the expression on your face or the countenance of your subtle body and so on.  

For example, truth.  It's not the same thing as mastery.  Truth.  Once more.  So it's not just good enough to think truth, you know, that's a translation of the word Haqq.  No, that's not good enough. So think of a situation where you have, say, been economic with truth and now you think of a dervish who doesn't care but just says the truth because that's the divine power, it comes in the truth.  So he will tell you, "Don't come near me, I shall burn you, because you're lying."  That's what he tells you.  So if you think of that, then that means that you--that it's very, it's really concrete.  You think of a situation in which you have been economic with truth and you're going to meet that person and you're going to tell him, and you know, it could really blow things but you're just--you're going to do it and you see what it does to you.  

Emotionally it gives power and in the very countenance of your subtle body.  And the thing about the countenance of your subtle body is that it makes an emotion and a thought adamant.  If you know something about alchemy then you know that the materia prima, that is the matter that one starts working with, goes through all kinds of processes; and of course those processes are dissolution (they call it solve) and then reforming again (coagulum) so fana baka all the time, you see.  So that you have to go through a breakdown before there can be a break-through.  And after that, then the break-through is consolidated into what one calls the adamant state, for example you know, the glass that has been put in the oven, or whatever, ceramics, or the color of ceramics is made adamant by being put in the oven so that's the way that that quality is concretized in your being, by the form.  And that is what is gained by life, is the form; is the face of God as in the Koran.  Everywhere is the face of God.  

That's what we mean and that face keeps on being formed and it's multi-tiered and also multi-faceted.  And so is your form also.  So that form that is, your subtle body assumes, is one of the facets of the total image of your being which is many faceted, like those Hindu Gods that have different faces, you see.  But then what I mentioned yesterday is that it is also, well, I said many tiered; but it's also, let's say, like a vortex so the center of it is the immaculate state.  Purity.  The child, the innocent child  within.  That's where you have access to the celestial spheres.  That's your ticket to the celestial spheres, is your innocence.  And therefore that's very difficult, to reconcile the immaculate core in our being that is always there, however bad the defilement, with the defilement.  How can one reconcile these two?  I've often illustrated by the voice of Caruso that can be recovered now in its bad recordings.  It's there within its distortions, you see.  So instead of saying my soul is pure and my mind and personality are defiled, no. Your whole being incorporates both purity and defilement at the same time.  

Now, in the past I have always tried to avoid or eschew what I call the "bad" wazifas; like "He is the dishonorer," and one doesn't like to hear that, or "He's the leader astray" which is even worse, and I would call them the bad wazifas so I haven't been using them.  And all of a sudden I realized how important they are because it is acknowledging the defects that are  standing in the way of your qualities.  So once you know what it  is to be dishonored then you try to be honorable.  That's why Rumi says, "God discloses himself not only by the sublime qualities but also the qualities of blame."    

So the first one that is approachable at all is Qabid which is the opposite of Basit.  Basit, expansion, if you remember, and Qabid, constriction.  And one doesn't feel happy in constraint; we want to be free, but you see, well, scientifically of course you know that the DNA of every cell is the same but so anyway every cell of the body has the code of the whole body, not only that but the whole universe but if they were all the same then  you wouldn't have a body.  You'd have to have constraint so that some of the cells can only enlist some of the genes and others other genes so they can cooperate.  So that's constraint, you see.  And so the same thing is true, we would like to have all the qualities in our being but diversification means that each of us is unique in our way and so you need a composition of qualities and some qualities are foremost and that's why we don't give all the qualities at the same time.  We give one quality and then the other.  So that is -- first of all, it is accepting the limitation in which we function and trying to maximize what is possible within this limitation.  

For example, the circumstances are limited but what you can do with the circumstances is infinite.  For example, in the Indian ragas, very constraining; you can't do, there are certain sequences of notes you have to observe but then the possibilities of inventiveness are enormous whereas if you try to compose and everything goes, then it's very difficult because there's no constraint, you see.  So that's Qabid.  Q a b i d.  You can do Qabid with Basit, but then, well, I'm giving you a lot of practices now.  

Ya Wasi, the compass of your outreach, there must be a center and so Batin will give you a sense of who you are and that is your center behind the veil.  That's what you really are.  At least, you think you are, I mean, because what you are is of course beyond what you could think you are but at least there is a need to honor who one is instead of trying to be universal.  So the word Batin is associated with the veil, the veiled one.  That is, there is something in you that maybe out of modesty you can't reveal.  Not only out of modesty but you know how in school, at school, you are derided if you open up who you really are, you're real soul, the secret of your soul you can't confide to anybody ultimately.  

Something, something of your being you can confide but people--the trouble is that other people will deride you and even put you down because they take advantage of your confession.  But what is more, it seems to be bragging that you are priding yourself in the spiritual values of your being.  There's some kind of discretion about it.  And that's the reason for Batin.  The secret of your soul is buried.  

Al Hallaj was crucified for his love relationship with God.  So it's true that life is the revelation of the non-manifest and it is at a price.  You're victimized by it.  The extreme case was Al Hallaj.  And yet somehow it's a gift that you make and you are a victim of having given that gift to other people, yet you need to do it.  And so Zahir is the revelation of that which is veiled.  And the exact translation of Zahir is in the word epiphany which means the manifestation of light, like the Day of the Epiphany celebrated in the Christian religion--the appearance of light, in the child Christ, the child Jesus.  So somehow it is the way that the veil itself reveals, like the veil of the Moslem woman reveals the features of her face.

It looks as though I'll really have to make a break here so try to make it as short as possible if you could.  I'd say a quarter of an hour. 

NOV 23, 1997		Tape 06

Now, as a preamble to what's coming, perhaps you know that  maybe one of the reasons that you feel this connection with the Sufi Order, and many people do, is because of the absolute all encompassing honoring of all the world religions and that manifests itself very clearly in our way of working with our teacher and our teachers because if you were to attend an ashram in India you would be given a picture of your guru and you would have flowers in it, incense and so on and you would be told that he or she is a role model that you are supposed to try to ape.  And of course it makes you subjected to the personality of that particular teacher and you know that the trouble about having a teacher is that a teacher can only teach you about what he or she knows and also his/her path which might not be your path.

So the beauty of the message of Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan  was to include all teachers.  And that means that you can choose amongst all the teachers you have ever heard about a teacher with whom you feel very much in resonance and the fact is that just by even just thinking of that teacher it establishes a kind of a mind connection or heart connection or soul connection so that that teacher is really able to inspire you and guide you, so we have our mentor on the physical plane which is our guide or representative in the Sufi Order but you're not limited by that  person if that person is your mentor, and that includes myself, but you are really invited to select amongst all the prophets, masters and saints that we know of, one who is particularly inspiring and meaningful to you. 

Now, the question is, how does one get in touch with him, or her and the other one of course is, Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan himself.  Somehow he did embody an enormous compass of masters, saints and prophets and that is based upon a principle that is very basic in our training.  I remember that on Tuesday evenings when Pir-O-Murshid was on the planet, it was 1924, before most of you were born, Murshid every evening would give a talk on one of the prophets and after his passing some of the mureeds said to me, well, you know, it was as though that prophet was coming right through, as if they are really here.  You mustn't think that they have died or they belong to the past. 

Well, for various reasons I can confirm that people don't really die.   It's a misconceptions that we have.  People continue to live on different planes but  can be reached on different planes.  So it's a first stepping stone of course to see (_______)  as he was, Buddha as he was, Christ as he was.  But the clue is to try and get into their being as they are now and that means of course at all levels, so it is much more difficult than just trying to remember your teacher.  

Of course Murshid's whole teaching was embodying God as embodied by the masters, saints and prophets.  That's what we say in our invocation, "Towards the One, united with all the illuminated souls."  It's a very important feature of what we're doing. So that means two things: one is--I'll try to be a little more specific and illustrate what I was doing when I was in  training for my function as a Pir in Hyderabad, with the grand-son of the grand-murshid of murshid.  He was an old man at the time and I was sitting at the tomb of his grandfather who was the murshid of the murshid of murshid.  So the murshid of Murshid was Abul Hashim Madani and his murshid was (Khalil a Devi??) who was a dervish.  And here was his grandson who said, "I'm monitoring you, you're teacher is Murshid, Hazrat Inayat Khan, and I always respect that."  So there I was repeating the dhikr at the tomb 22,000 times a day for 40 days, fasting, and he would come and call me for the prayers five times a day.  And he said, "You start by imagining Pir-O-Murshid standing in front of you and breathe"--and so it's a form, you see, the picture.  That's  Tassawuf, the picture.  And then he said, "You have to get into the consciousness of Pir-O-Murshid."  So it's not like you are here and he is there but you are there in him looking at yourself.  And you know, it's difficult to do it with your will. One is supposed to do it but one doesn't see how one can do it. How can you get into the consciousness of another person.  Well, we already started to get into the consciousness of the people around us and that was the first stage in our meditations but  this is carried further.

So the next step is,  you see, if you get into the consciousness of a person then it's not the picture any more and that's why Ibn' Arabi says you have to leave the imagination behind now.  And that means really getting into the attunement instead of the picture and the picture is just the consolidation of the attunement so now the accent is on the attunement.  So the attunement of Pir-O-Murshid is so overwhelming, so incredible.  Of course, it's Cosmic.  

Now, of course each way is different.  The way of Buddha is  different, the way of Christ, the way of Zoroastrianism, the  Cabala; there are a lot of similarities of course. So it is the tradition of the dervishes and to give you some idea of what that means I'm quoting (??_____________) who said--He was quoting the dervishes--and he said there are two types of dervishes, the jelali and the jemali.  The jelali are burned by the fire of the divine majesty and the jemali are illuminated by the light of the divine splendor.  It would be rather simplistic to say that that's the male and the female, masculine and feminine, so jelal means very positive and jemali means much more receptive.   But the thing is, of course, is to be able to  (collate/correlate?) those two aspect that are present in one's being.  The fana of the dhikr is being burned by the majesty, by the fire, the divine majesty.  

So somehow there is a capacity that we have to project upon God those qualities that we know in our own being and in other people--you know, in order to glorify one is always projecting an image, even an image.  There are two things: One is an image that is a form and secondly, of course, beyond the form the qualities upon what one would like God to be.  It's not what God is but what one would imagine God to be.  And of course it is always superlative so it's always more perfect than one could ever imagine the qualities, so we imagine, for example, God as majestic and God as all powerful and God as glorious, and God as patient and as peaceful and as joyous and so on, and truthful.  

So in order to be able to project upon what one imagines God to be or let's say one's representation of God these qualities, one has to evoke them.  One is evoking them, and therefore one is arousing them in one's being.  And that's the secret.  So you cannot develop a quality by wanting to develop it with your will but only through the act of glorification which is the ultimate creative act. 

So it's not my purpose to convert you to Islam but I must say that prostrating--what I mean to say is not the conventional, repeating the words, but I must say that prostrating gives you a sense of, well, dissolving, at least dissolving your self image.  That's at least.  But it goes deeper than that, as you know, for there to be transformation.  There has to be a breakdown before there's a breakthrough so there has to be an act of disintegration, but it's got to be followed afterwards by an act of restructuring and then a new way.  So that is done and, I mean, if your body participates in that by prostrating and then rising again, somehow the body motion enhances your experience enormously. 

And of course the fact is that what we know of these qualities is only what we perceive in ourselves and other beings.  We have  a certain degree of compassion, majesty, nobility, and so on, but it is limited.  But we do have a capacity to imagine a capacity to imagine a quality more perfect that we have imagined it so far.  That is,________________'s principle of mathematics, the sense of infinity represents a capacity that the human being has.  That's to always imagine something greater, more perfect.  So we are perfecting our qualities.  We're not just arousing them, we are perfecting them.  So you see, the wazifa is linked with prayer and so it's not just sitting there trying to be better.  It doesn't work that way.  So the dhikr is of course an expression of that type of prayer.  We'll be coming to that a little bit later.

So, you know, one is getting into the consciousness of the teacher and that enables the teacher to inspire one because one sees in the teacher a more human, a more tangible embodiment of those qualities than in God that seems to be like in infinite regress, beyond one's--unattainable as Murshid says, beyond one's reach.  That's the reason for concentration on the teacher instead of direct contact with God, or rather God coming through the teacher or whatever.  It's a stepping stone.  

 Now, if that is so, if the teacher is a stepping stone, that's not where the buck ends.  Then, one has to reach then beyond the personality of the teacher into that in the teacher which is not his/her personality but is really the Divine Inheritance.  So one is gradually discovering one's Divine Inheritance through the Divine Inheritance that one sees in the teacher.  That's why Christ said, "I am the way."  Yes.  Because the teacher is not just Christ but the teacher par excellence is of course the way to reaching beyond the personal.  

So if that is so, I can talk about my own experience because I was really getting into the attunement of Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan.  And of course, if you get into the attunement of Pir-O- Murshid Inayat Khan then you if you were to be him meditation then you would realize that he is meditating on his teacher who is Abul Hashim Madani, so I was getting into the consciousness of Abul Hashim Madani. And one then one step further and I was getting into the consciousness of Kalimi _________ and his  grandson came in to call me to the prayer and at first  he said, "Vilayat," a  and then he said, "You see him."  

So he saw in the expression on my face that I had got into--well, at first Abul Hashim Madani would have envisioned the face of his murshid who was Kilimi _____________ but then afterwards get into the consciousness of Kilimi ------------.  So at that stage I had seen the face which I had never seen before.  There were no photos and no paintings, you know.  It's not allowed in Islam. So here was the grandson, but he didn't resemble that much his grandfather.   So I'm just saying that so you have a proof that we are doing something real instead of just imagining things.  

So when you are doing a wazifa, repeating a wazifa, then--I've already said you work with that, you know, the configuration of your subtle body and eventually the fabric of light, of your aura, but there is another further dimension of it which is related to it, and that is, imagine a master who incorporates that quality and get into the consciousness of that master. And now you will find that the wazifa works.  It really works. If you do all that it works.  It makes all the difference.  

You get into the attunement and you see that quality  being  actuated in the personality of the master and then you can see  how it could become actuated in your personality and then you think of the problems.  Right away you have to think of your problems, so that I even suggest sometimes interrupting  repeating a wazifa because if you've got it now you've all of a sudden got that attunement.  Now you think of a problem or rather you think of a person who is involved in the problem.  You have a conflict with that person, maybe.  And now you think, "Yes, I have more compassion now and I have more strength."  

So those are two qualities that I think are very essential to help us deal with those who oppose us:  One is Rahim, and the other is Qadr.  Qadr is the divine--well, it's the divine, well, it's the divine strength.  There is Qahr which is superlative.  It's sovereignty. But I think that, you know, to commit oneself, to authorize oneself to work with a wazifa one has to really be up to it.  

For example, one shouldn't say, "Ya Wali" if one cannot overcome the addiction to smoking cigarettes.  Then don't say Ya Wali. Because you would think the other way around, like mastery will help you to overcome the addiction but if you continue with the addiction then you're not qualified to invoke that quality if it's not real in you.  So one has to live up to the qualities just like one has to live up to one's spiritual quest.  So it's challenging and it's always good to be challenged.  

So before repeating a wazifa one says, "Are you being honest?  You are saying Haqq but are you honest?" So then you mustn't say Haqq because it's deceitful.  Then you say "Ann al Haqq" , which means I am the truth.  So then it's good because then you can give yourself a period of preparation in your activities in life before you can qualify to say the wazifa.  As I say, just repeating the wazifa won't do it for you.  You know that.  That's why a lot of people don't say their wazifas.  

So that means you think of a situation which is calling upon you to develop that quality and from the moment that you have handled a situation in terms of that quality, then the wazifa works.  Now, in sequence to this, to reach the teacher--I already said it's not good enough just to imagine the form that is tassawuri, murshid, you have to get into the attunement, that's tawajai. But there are levels between Tassawuri and Tawajai.  It's not two different things.  The attunement manifests in the form, of course, and the form manifests the attunement so it's important to be able to reach the teacher at high levels rather than the physical or the mental level, which one can do, but then I think one really needs to know something about - how can I say, the lie of the land, no, the topography of states of consciousness.  Therefore I've been avoiding introducing systems and names and foreign words, and things, you know, but still I think that we need to--for the mureeds, I think that it really needs to have a clear sense of what those levels are.  So the name of the level is just a label, that's all, like an index card system, but it's what's written on the cards that's important.  

So the picture that, if  you had, for example the image on the shroud of Turin, I think that is really a photograph of Christ. I believe so.  Whatever the Vatican says, we really have the real imprint of the features of that face.  I defy any artist to be  able to paint anything like that.  So that is, of course, that's right in the physical body and I think we have to acknowledge that.  That's a reality at the physical level.  That's called Nasut in Sufi terminology.

Then the next level is called Arwah, which is the word(Rouuugth) in Jewish, but of course there are so many different interpretations of its meaning but it's the level of the subtle form, at least in sufism and in metaphysics of the sufis.  So working with the subtle bodies, that's what we're doing and as I said, the subtle body is really the template in which the physical body is being formed, and so that's why we're working with our countenance behind our face and so on, try to get a sense of, so the countenance of Jesus, if that is the master that you have chosen, or Buddha, or Mohammed, or whoever it is you've chosen as your guide, the countenance behind his or her face.   Now that's a reality.  It has, as I say, a shape without contours  but it still is very tangible as a form, like the form of the kirlian corona of kirlian photography.  It doesn't have an edge but it still has a structure.  

There are many statues of Buddha. I remember once visiting in Lahore, I visited a museum in which there is that fantastic statue of Buddha.  It's called the Bodhisattva, the quality of illumination, you just see the witness and the power that comes through that being sitting there, fantastic.  Incredible.  The wisdom, the nobility, it's incredible; so you see that the form is a great help.  But then, so I stood there.  People were coming and crying.  And I tried to get into the form behind the form, the expression coming through the face, or subtle body, and that was just even more overwhelming.  And you can do it with the shroud of Turin.  You can do the same thing.  You can see the being of Christ coming through that picture.  It's amazing.  So these are the initial steps and before we get into the attunement.  They lead to the attunement.

But then the next stage is what is called (alamara) Mithal.  Just think of the word mythology, I don't know whether there is any entomological connection there, mythology.  The world of metaphor.  And metaphor is, of course, imagination, creative imagination; the way that creative imagination translates an attunement into a form.  That's what music is about.  It's-- the composer is translating an attunement into a form.   The melody is a form, so it's really all a form.


So that is where you see the recurrent rebirthing taking place in yourself and actually in the master also, though be careful, one gets kind of encapsulated in that form that transpires behind that which appears, but remember that that form is continually recurrently reborn and is evolving.  The masters are evolving. It would deprive them of a faculty to consider them as being static, as being gelled into what we think they are.  For example, if Buddha were to come on the planet today he would be living quite differently.  He wouldn't be sitting under trees, he would probably be giving seminars in New York.  Things have changed you see and so we are still thinking of the past.  And so the clue is to think dynamically instead of statically, to think that everything is emerging.  In Islam there is a very definite principle what is called recurrent rebirthing so that we are  continually reborn instead of thinking that we are being created  some time in the beginning of time.  

We are continually reborn. It's a different way of thinking.  And so if you think of the master as evolving or even leading the process of evolution or guiding that process like Moses in the desert, then it will encourage the unfurling of your qualities from their virtual state and instead of--so that's where the pull of the future comes in.  That's what I said yesterday.  The pull of the future  is--the future isn't there, so how can it pull you?  It's--you create it.  So it's very puzzling but then of course, as the  Sufi's say, one never ceases to be amazed of course.  Perplexity. So it's because the future contains infinite possibilities.  Those possibilities are there but they are still just possibilities and you choose.  You make a selection.  Well, it's more than that.  It's more like musicians writing variations on a theme so it's not just those possibilities are there.  They are virtual.  

They're not there.  They are virtual.  And therefore if you consider a wazifa dynamically instead of statically with reference to the master and also with reference to yourself, then you can think: "how i could be if I would be as I might be." That's what you're always--"Yes!  I could be dancing with joy.  Why am I always so grumpy?  I would be dancing with joy!"  You know, that's a possibility.  Yes.  The answer is, "well, people are so mean and I've suffered so much."  Well, I mean, that's the past.  That's not enlisting the pull of the future.  As one goes to a psychotherapist to be healed from the past and some psycho- therapists are now being much more creative because it's not just therapy.  It's not the right word.  Therapy is like reinstating oneself how one was before one was ill instead of using illness, turning the tables on illness to become better than one was  before.  So here I'm opening the parenthesis but it's really very relevant at this state and that is the four wazifas that are used working with energy.  

So the first one is Ya Muid and Muid is inertia, actually.  It is the ability of things to return to the status quo, a kind of resilience.  If you move a branch of a tree you don't break it, well then it will move back to where it was before.  And I think the concept of therapy is something like that.  Returning to the way one was before one was ill.  That's what a lot of people understand by therapy and it's only one of the four principles at the psychological level I can illustrate its inadequacy because when I was studying psychiatry at the Paris University there was this professor who was introducing patients and the patient who was called Laura said, "The doctor has no idea where I am and he's trying to bring me back to where he is and I could never come back through the same door that I came out.  I can only come back through another door.  I couldn't come back.  I could come forward into another door but the doctor doesn't know how to open that door for me because he's thinking of therapy."     So the other dimension is Muyhee which is often translated by the word regenerating, and that is an energy that is moving forward.  There's a kind of potentiality in the very cells of our body to  improve.  It's evolution, actually.  It's  the pull of the future.  It's evolution instead of the determinism of the past. In fact, nowadays I think it's translated by that concept of the ability to self organize.  The universe has an ability to self organize itself.  You find that capacity at the level of the psyche.  


I don't know you know there's a psychotherapist who helps children who have problems.  She gives them clay to work--I think it's sand, I forget now.  Anyway, some material that they can work with to make forms or a kind of shapes and of course there's a lot of fantasizing there and they enjoy it and so on, and children enjoy to be creative.  But what she, as a psychotherapist sees is that actually they are really trying to solve their problems in the form, in the formations that they are molding and the curious thing is that when the child has found the solution the child says, "I don't have to come anymore."

So that enlists the self organizing faculty in the psyche and the cells of our body also have that faculty of self organizing themselves.  In fact, the whole universe is continually self organizing itself from chaos into order.  Those are the chaos theories although orderliness is somehow inherent but it's like the tractor that is moving the chaos into more order.  

Now the other wazifa and quality is Hayy which is, as you know, the American greeting, and it's very relevant because--it's  extraordinary because it is a very vitalizing sound.  You see in the East--in the Middle East you see these people like pulling a barge, you know.  They have these ropes and they are about a team of ten people pulling a barge and they say, "Hayy!  Hayy! Hayy!"  And so as soon as somebody says "Hayy" it sort of vivifies you, so it's a vivifying quality and it's very, how can I say, it has an impetus about it, a momentum about it.  So I think of Hayy as a quality that you can acquire or I mean a power that you can acquire where there's a lot of activity going on.  For example if you go in a super market there's all that energy floating about so you know how you're exhausted if you stay there too long, you just have to do what you have to do and then run out quick.  But all of that energy, take that energy with you because there's only so much energy that we can handle and otherwise we can deplete it.  So we have to know "that's enough now, out.  I forgot the Haagen Das but it doesn't matter but  I've got all that energy now."  


So it's illustrated and now the opposite is also true.  Hayy is like conveying energy to the environment.  So it's illustrated by Prince Puran who was abandoned by his--well, he was condemned by his father under false premises and the policemen were supposed to kill him but they couldn't bring themselves to kill him so he became a sannyasin, a hermit, and he returned to the garden of the palace and as soon as he was in the garden all the flowers started blooming.   So that's a very good illustration of what Hayy means.  It's something that you can do yourself.  You can be aware that--I mean, you can consciously communicate energy wherever you go, like in a shop for example, and that man is grumpy and every time you keep smiling and he's still grumpy and so you think, well, he's got a problem, but then after a week he just has a little smile and perhaps after two weeks a little more and he's opening up a little bit and then after a month he said, "Well, there's something about you.  I wonder what it is?  I feel better when you're there and so on."  And you mustn't say, "Well, it's because I am a sufi," but you could say, "Well," --but then you really, it's because you've been working with energy. You've been communicating energy and the extraordinary thing is, the more energy that you give out the more energy you gain.  There is a break point of course.  You can't over-stress yourself but stress is a very useful thing.   If we don't stress ourselves we get impaired in our bodies.  We need to stress ourselves.  


OK, so that's Hayy.  So there's the receptive, you're drawing energy from the environment and then the active, you're radiating energy.  Now there are practices.  When you are doing the practice Hayy in your meditation imagine a flower, a bud, and imagine it opening up, you see, and your energy is making, is causing the flower to unfurl.  And then you imagine, if you're in the Healing Order, then you imagine a person who is ill and you  imagine them getting better.  So you're communicating energy to them by your thoughts and those thoughts will reach the person and will help them overcome the illness.  You know, it's an uphill struggle, factors that are pulling one down, so it takes a lot of energy to reverse that downward effect. 

SIDE 2 OF TAPE 6:


The other one is Quddus, which is pure spirit: the descent of the spirit, the quickening of the holy spirit.   Kiddush in the Jewish language and of course Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus in the mass.  

And the visualization that can help you, in particular of course in the dhikr, you imagine that your body is a temple and there's a cavity in the roof of the temple at the top of your head and energy --it's a very high frequency energy that is flowing downwards and infusing the energy field of your body with this very high frequency energy.  

Of course the only way to enlist this extraordinary, very strident energy--it's called something like lightening sometimes: vajra, lightening--is by attuning yourself to the immaculate state.  That's the only way because pure spirit is absolutely immaculate; so that's the only way.  The immaculate in you is inviting the divine immaculate to come through you somehow.  It has a clearing effect and rather dramatic effect like lightening.  You can be shattered by the descent of lightening and it will transform your being.       So it's not good enough just to identify yourself with your body and think that pure spirit is descending upon you or even identifying with your magnetic field.  It means that it calls upon likeness.  So it's only if you, yourself, are aware of the immaculate state in your being that you will experience the descent of the pure spirit in your being.  

Now, of course, it is the most incredible form of healing and you know that you remember the words of Christ when he said to his disciples: "Go into the villages and heal with the power of the Holy Spirit."  And they said: "Master, we don't know how to heal with the power of the Holy Spirit."  And he said, well, do it and you'll find--and so he said, if people don't welcome you then shake the dust from your clothes and go to the next village.  But remember that you are healing not with your power but with the power of the Holy Spirit.  And then miracles happened.  That's the only way that miracles can happen.  

But of course it means that one has to organize one's life so that one gives priority to the spirit rather than to one's material gain.  When you see the grossness of people who are following their selfish purpose then you realize that our participating in that kind of selfishness does stand in the way of the descent of the spirit in our being.  There is a sense of holiness that will make it possible.  You see it around you.  Look around you at people.  

I remember that man who was a vice president of Shell and he said, "I don't mind walking on the corns of people."  That kind of insensitive callousness that makes a lot of dollars but then, as Christ said, what point if you win the world and you lose your soul.  So visualization is not good enough.  So it's something like taking off one's shoes or like being rather wary of soiling the snow with the mud on one's shoes, something like that: a sense of great respect for the purity, the divine purity of the soul. 

OK, now I wonder whether we could just do a practice that will-- well, with this in mind, yeah, well in preparation for -- because this afternoon we are going to work with the dhikr. In preparation we could already think of these wazifas.  

It's not quite the dhikr.  It's a preparation for the dhikr.  So think of forces that are centrifugal and centripetal.  If you're in a centrifuge, for example, if you're moving, whirling in a circle for example, dervish dancing, or in the dhikr, well, the first part of the dhikr; then you are generating centripetal and centrifugal forces.  So you think of your subtle body as a vortex like a whirlpool or whirlwind.  Then you see that it does not have a boundary and that the energy of the totality gets converged towards center and then the energy built up from the center keeps on expanding into the totality.  And it sometimes is expressed and actuated in an ebb and flow, that is, a movement from the centripetal movement from the totality into the center and then a centrifugal movement from the center into the totality.  So ebb and flow; right?  So think of Hayy, the energy from the environment that gets converged in your being and then again it gets expanded, radiated into the environment.  That's working with Hayy. 

And now you see, in the dhikr you have these two different principles.  There's a circular principle and then the vertical axis; so the circular will give you a sense of your relationship with the totality in its vastness and then with what emerges from the center like the new dispensation that emerges from within.  That's what I call the cosmic dimension.  

Now in the dhikr you have then the vertical, the axis.  So it's not circular.  The circular motion is like the motion of the galaxies and the stars and so on and when we do the whirling then we rekindle, we relive our relationship with the galaxies and the planets which we tend to lose.  But now we have the vertical and so consider that Muid is represented in the soles of your feet, that is, you think of your magnetic field and even of your aura as many tiered, so many levels and the bottom level, which is represented by your feet is inertia, that capacity to balance change in order to maintain continuity.  Otherwise if there is just change and change then of course you know, you'd go off the rail so there has to be some continuity.  Parenity is insured by that balance between change and then inertia.  So that's Muid.

And then as you concentrate on the solar plexus then you think of Muyhee which is the new energy that keeps on emerging from within and that is the center of that circle that we did in the dhikr. The solar plexus is the center of the circle, that is, it's the center of the circle to start with, and then as you move upwards then the center of the circle is your heart, see.  So there's a shift from the solar plexus to the heart.  So when you say Illa you are contacting the center of the circle, of the first circle, and then 'lla, then the center now is your heart which is radiant.  

So 'Illa, when you turn within, think of Muyhee: a new dispensation of energy that is emerging from your solar plexus and is now going to enhance the Hayy energy from your heart center and of course from the whole aura and your whole inner body, but your heart is the center of that radiant dispensation of your being. 

And now you turn your head gradually, you move your head gradually upwards, and when you reach the "H" of Allah, that is Hu.  Quddus.  Well, Hu means Him.  That is, a person not present that is divine transcendence.  Now for the moment we're not doing the dhikr, we're working with the wazifa so you think of Quddus. You're reached by transmuting your being and also lifting your consciousness from one plane to the next, you are getting into an attunement which is of the nature of Quddus which is the nature of pure spirit and that's in the "H" of Allah, yes in dhikr.  And then you know that after turning one's head up during the dhikr then one has to turn one's head towards one's physical heart as a matter of fact, not the Anahata chakra when one says Hu.  So the "H" that is the transcendent God, the aspect of God that is transcendent, becomes Hu: that means God as a reality, becomes a reality in your heart.  So if you think of that then when you're working with Quddus and as your head--then your head descends turned toward your heart center and that's where you bring, you invite the descent of the Holy Spirit.  

Now, for this to be real and not just imagination but to be real you have to be familiar with the different levels of your being so I started by describing three levels.  It was Nasut and then Arwah and then Mithal if you remember.  Mithal, that which emerges at the level of your personality.  By the power of creative imagination you're unfurling virtual potentials and now the next ones.  

The next ones are Malakut, Malak means angel, celestial level. I've already talked about it so much.  The light in the eyes of a baby, the immaculate state, defenseless, so on, which invites the descent of the Holy Spirit.  So instead of thinking that the holy spirit is descending in your body, well, eventually.  But in the initial state is your Malakut body.  That is your, the angel, the celestial counterpart of your being is being continually quickened by the holy spirit.  

That's the relationship there that Sufis talk about.  They call it tenuities, you know that word, tenuity?  Like a very fine thread that communicates, that links the Holy Spirit with the celestial counterpart of your being.  So for this to be real you have to, in your meditation, you have to consider your body as like a support system for your spirit that carries the whole mark of your spirit but still is not your spirit, and your psyche also, and the sense of having existed before the formation of the body.  I said already you can consider your magnetic field as the template of your physical body and the aura as the template of that template. And so your awareness of your light being is going to give you access into the celestial sphere but only on condition that you realize that there are different levels of light so that the light of the aura, the physical light that is still part of the Nazut world, the world of existential physical reality.  

Now you, if you can do that.  We will be doing these practices if we have time.  We did them yesterday, getting into the awareness of the higher levels of light, and then you think of yourself as a temple of light instead of your body as a physical temple.  And now think of the holy spirit descending within this temple of light.  There's really a sense of, well descent, but mainly of infusion of the light by the light of the Holy Spirit.  That's the light upon the light. 

Now what I--maybe I omitted to say is that access to this level is Hayy, that I hope you can do, when you think of Hayy, you experience the tingling of the cells of your body.  Tingling.   You know, that--the word, but at a certain point you identify with your subtle body and there's a word that I was looking for yesterday and now I've got it.  It is gossamer.  You see, the subtle body is like gossamer.  And your aura is, at that level   the light is diaphanous.  So think of those two words: gossamer; diaphanous.  The wazifa for that is Latif.  Latif is subtle. Latif.  Ya Batin, Ya Latif.  You turn within, you become aware of your subtle body.  So there's that energy field that is tingling. You can actually feel it.  The cells are really tingling. 

There's no way of ever imagining, representing to yourself the rate of vibration because it's something like 22 to the power 10; something like that.  So fast that you could never imagine.  But somehow they are, how can I say, interference patterns and wave interference patterns and somehow all you feel is like "haaaaahhh," an intense tingling of energy and then at the level of pure spirit, then of course you don't feel that tingling any more.  It's much more subtle.  It's like--I don't know how to describe it anymore.  Does it ever happen to you to find yourself in the transfigured world like--it's very strange, like walking in a forest, in the woods, or even talking to a person and it's as though you switch to a state which is familiar.  You know it's familiar but you remember that state but you can't quite see what it is but it's different from the ordinary state.  Well, that is the kind of state that will give you access into the descent of the Holy Spirit upon you.  Ya Quddus in the temple of light.

That word, Malakut, is the equivalent of Ananda; Ananda in samadhi and those are one of the stages in samadhi and it's the realm of cosmic emotion.  So you can't reach it by your will but by being high.  By being deeply moved in your emotion.  That's the only way.  

So the perplexity of the mind will trigger off the ecstasy of the soul.  I know we like to be uplifted but our lives seem to be pulling us in the opposite direction and it's not really satisfactory to open up one drawer and close another and so you know, that toggling, instead of extrapolating.  So how can one do that.  So I'll tell you a story.  We're going to  have to end this morning's meeting. 

I met a woman who was tortured by the Nazis who knew my sister, actually.  She was a little younger than my sister and they met in a party of Resistance people and my sister said to her, "You're so young to do this."  And my sister was young too, but she was younger.  Well, this woman was tortured brutally.  She had a fracture of the skull.  Her stomach was kind of all bleeding and she was thrown into a dungeon for dead.  Her bones were broken.  Put in a dungeon for dead.  And there she was talking to me and smiling.  You can't believe what she went through after that.  Because when the Allies were approaching the Nazis didn't want their shame to be seen so they took the inmates of the concentration camps in chains filled like sardines without water, without food, of course in the terrible sun and the cold at night and one person was dying after the other and she was amongst them and there she said that perhaps only five per cent of them survived.  And one after the other they would throw the body out the window but, to spare you a grueling detail, they were so hungry that they would feed on the liver of the people who had died.  And here she was smiling.  And she'd been through something that you could imagine no human being could ever come out of that smiling.  And she said, "You see, when you are living to your ideal, you are living up to your ideal, then somehow your suffering arouses ecstasy.  And that was the thing that saved us, was our ecstasy."    

So when you think, well, you need to create conditions in your life, and meditations where everything is hunky-dory, so that you can experience ecstasy, well maybe it might be the other way round.  It might be just in the hardships of life that we can find ecstasy.  She's there.  She's in the Pyrenees.  You can visit her.  She'll tell you the whole story.  She's fat.  She's blind in one eye and you can see her wounds and you know, but there she is.  

NOV 23, 1977		Tape 07

So as you know, a very important part of our training is the Dhikr, and the fact is that of course by repeating it one tends to not concentrate on what he means, one is just repeating the words.  And it can even lead to a kind of trance state, or even a state of euphoria as often the case in the east. And I have sometimes been absolutely dismayed by what people have made of the Dhikr.  I remember once at a camp someone was really turned on to repeat the Dhikr, like what he thought was a Dervish, and so I was trying to sleep and it was about eleven at nighttime and I heard this  voice saying, "La ilaha illa 'llah hu."  

And I thought, well of course, it's very satisfying to his male ego to say that, but that's not exactly what is the, the power of the Dervish is not, no it's different, it's not so personal. Now I don't mean to say that the Dhikr needs to be meek, but anyway, that kind of emotion can lead to all kinds of aberrations, and I think the reason why the Khanqha in Konia was closed, was because it led to popular euphoria, just masses of people who would just run amuck in the streets. And (inaudible) was rather, well I think a lot of people were shocked by that.  I've seen this happen on a, I remember traveling as a deck passenger from (Basra?) to (Curachi?), and they had the Dhikr one evening and everybody went crazy.  I mean this man would have jumped overboard if he hadn't been restrained.  So that's not exactly  what I understand by spirituality, and I hope that's not what you understand by spirituality.

My father, no my father's Murshid, Abu Hashim Madani, there was one Thursday evening, they always have the Dhikr, Sama, Ceremony in the Khanqahs, and so when he went to one, wherever he found that they were getting too excited let's say, too euphoric, that's the word--instead of ecstatic, euphoric--then he would stand up and walk out.  Now I must say that I myself am in a rather embarrassing situation when I attend a Dhikr that has been directed by one of the Sheiks of Islam, because in their coming to the States, because I find that many of them are very very euphoric.

Now that is not always the case, because I remember there was a, I accompanied, I forget her name now, a lady who was making films on different spiritual groups, so she wanted to make a film on Sufism.  Mrs. Hartley, that's right.  And so, then I introduced her to one of the most closed of all Khanqahs, in Shiraz, where you know normally they would never allow any foreigner in, I mean they allowed me as a Sufi, and I did a retreat there.  And she came in with her American style, and so I already felt embarrassed when she made her first step in.  In fact before that she met Dr. Nurbash who was then Sheik of the (inaudible) order and she said, "I would like to, yes, I would like to photograph you," or something like that, and as she said, "and I would like to photograph you in your costume."  

So she said, "Ah, Madame, you're looking for a star, well you've knocked at the wrong door."  So then afterwards she went to the (Rahabi?) and then the first thing she said was "could you take, open the curtains because we need more light."  And actually those curtains had probably not be opened for a hundred years.  And they kind of agreed because, I think because of me, because they valued me, so I didn't like them to take away the curtains because of me.  And then she said "well, could you stand there?"  So that was already bad, to ask them to stand where she wanted them to stand.  But even they agreed; I was surprised.  And then she said, "well, could you do the Dhikr a little more motion of your body?"  So then, one of them said, the Sheik said: "Madame, our Dhikr is internal."  And then I said, "you see, the expression on their faces speaks much more than the motion of their bodies."  And  then she said, "oh you don't understand anything about photography."  So I said, "would you kindly take my face away from this film."  So, I've never seen the film, but I understand that my back is there, but I think that sometimes my face just kind of passes by in a rather discreet way.  So, anyway, I really wasn't very happy about that whole thing.

(May I ask you something very quickly?)  What?  (You're drawing a difference between ecstatic and euphoric?)  Yes.  I think ecstatic could be even bodily, and certainly the heart, emotion, you know there are kind of gross emotions of the heart, and fine emotions of the heart.  And, I mean, that's euphoria.  And ecstatic would be the emotion of the soul that I talked about this morning.  So it's the God-consciousness you see; it's quite a different thing.

So, our attunement when saying the Dhikr is extremely important.  A further thing is when I was repeating the Dhikr 22,000 times a day, well I've done that many times, I used to, it occurred to me that if I keep on saying, La ilaha illa 'llah, La ilaha illa 'llah, then I'll get into a kind of trance state.  And so I thought, well to avoid getting into a trance state, when my head moves upwards, I must think that I'm in a state of a glorification; I'm participating in the cosmic celebration.  And then of course made all the difference, then I was high instead of just getting into a trance state.

There is something else I want to say.  So, now, it's not good enough therefore to just repeat the Dhikr, now, so what are the things one needs to be aware of if, when one is repeating the Dhikr?  So, the meaning of, one goes through different phases, each corresponding to the motion of one's head and to the words one is saying.  So, at first you are going into the circle, and if you just keep on whirling in a circle, you will indeed feel that centripetal force that is expanding and expanding.  And sometimes I imagine a spiral, and even a spiral of light reaching further and further.  Now there are many thoughts, which could occur at the same time, or then each one in turn.  One is, as I said, like enjoying the disintegration of your being, of that formation, as I said providing that it is followed by a rebirthing as your head turns toward the solar plexus. Ib'n Arabi said that somewhere, he said "it is not an extinction of yourself, it is an extinction of whom you think you are."  Of your self-image.  So I think for psycho-therapists of course, it's very very relevant.  One is caught up in this picture of oneself, so in the realm of psychology it has a lot of relevance to learn to disintegrate that false notion of oneself that is one's self-image.  

Now, the other thing is that you see at the jagged ends of your psyche, there's an overlap with the environment; so it's less and less you as you get further towards the periphery of your being.  And the more you turn within yourself, the more you discover your real being that keeps on emerging new from inside.  So, one is, as I call it, one is downplaying the impact of the environment upon one's psyche.  So all the things that we've been doing in our meditations like learning how to, well, first of all, expose the hoax of one's, the bias that one thrusts upon one's problems and one's interpretations of one's problems, and then, thinking the problems are as they seem, and getting into as I said, transmuting the problems as one incorporates them in one's psyche instead of simply just schlepping in one's psyche a false interpretation of one's problems.  So all that comes in the Dhikr you see, and that's why many of the meditations that we've been doing are good preparation for the Dhikr.  In fact, I would say all of them are somehow incorporated in the Dhikr.

Now, I've been doing the Dhikr very often at nighttime looking into the stars.  And that is a very wonderful experience.  I think of those words of Jelaludin Rumi, something about all the planets, the galaxies are just like foam on the sea of existence, I forget exactly the words, or it is, and we came whirling out of nothing and, we dance, and actually it is really God whirling around himself.  That's the fantastic saying of Jelaludin Rumi. So I think of that as I am doing the first part of the Dhikr.  And so if you do that then you start discovering your inheritance from the stardust of the galaxies.  That is returning to a very early stage in your unfoldment, because you know that our bodies originated in the stardust, and so that's still in us.  We still have the monkey, the dinosaur; we have the fish; we have the whole past in us somehow.  And so recontacting that past gives us, well it does free us from our notion of being who we think we are, a discreet entity, it links us with the totality.  And of course, that's what the Dhikr, that's the first stage in the Dhikr.

So it's not just dissolving I've found; it's very much more finding one's relationship with the galaxies.  And the consequence is that of course it gives you that kind of power, cause I'm always thinking of that now, see, well the example of the dervishes.  The power coming through the real dervishes is incredible.  Divine power.  And perhaps you've  noticed that when looking at the pictures of Pir-O-Murshid.  There's an incredible power coming through his being.  How is it possible for human beings to be so completely transformed to become like Pir-O-Murshid was?  I mean, you know, people couldn't believe what they saw.  When he entered the room his whole being filled the room with his, with the Divine Presence.  It wasn't his presence, it was Divine Presence.  And that's because he was continually conscious of God.  So that is, that first part of the Dhikr, the galaxies, is a stepping stone, but eventually it is really getting into God consciousness in its immensity.  A sense of immensity.  And that sense of immensity is really a dimension of your own being.  It's not like saying God other than myself.  But discovering the dimension of immensity in your own being.  That's Sufism, you see, and it's very different from the way we think generally.

Now, that is when you say: "la."  l-a.  Now that goes, it's like a crescent moon, it goes from the left shoulder down really through the left knee, the right knee, and then the right shoulder.  And you imagine that your solar plexus is the center of that half moon, crescent moon.  Now after that you say, so it's, "la ilaha."  And the ilaha is precisely, well of course those who were here yesterday will remember what I said, and as I say it would be good if you could get the tapes because of what I said, I don't want to repeat what I said yesterday.  But we were doing the practice of Qasab, breathing, Pranayama breathing, in left, hold, right, right, hold, left, and then both nostrils, hold, and out both nostrils.  And then if you remember what I said, that it's like a pendulum, so you're breathing in through your left nostril, you're moving down just like in the Dhikr, see, in the crescent moon, and then when the pendulum reaches the end of its swing on the right, that's a state of suspense.  

And after that normally the pendulum swings back to the left.  But that state of suspense, yes, remember these words of Hujwiri which are very important to remember, and that is, that is the instant of time that breaks the continuity, the process of becoming, so that is where something new can emerge in you--in the instant of time.  So it intercepts the process of becoming.  So if you think of that, that is the instant at which you are recurrently reborn. You are reborn again.  So it's a very precious state to be in, la.  And then the ilaha, it's a very strange thing because the motion, although the pendulum itself, I mean the weighted end of the pendulum, stands still just for a very short instant, the momentum continues upwards, you see.  And so after holding the breath, as you exhale right, you think of the way that, well it's really the process of resurrection, you think how all that you've gained in life is fed back into the programming of the universe.  So it's I can never get lost, quintessence.  

If the pendulum were to not just stop at a certain point, and  swing right up to the zenith, then of course it would turn back again to the circle you see, and so that's how what has been gained in the programming is then recycled back into existence again.  Like the seed that becomes plant, and then the seed comes, recycled.  So now of course in the Dhikr you do not do what we do in Qasab which is breathing in through the right and holding the breath and exhaling through the left, that is in the Chisti Dhikr.  Well, in the Dhikr that Pir-O-Murshid has given to the Mureeds.  But if you study (Khali Mula Jahabudi?) who is the person, the dervish that Zia is writing a Doctor's thesis on, (Khali Mula Jahabudi).  And the Dhikr, it's a more advance Dhikr of course, one is turning toward the right, and then one is turning towards the left.  So there are several Dhikrs.

So anyway let's stick with this Dhikr.  So, now then what happens is that as I say, the momentum, ilaha, you see, is it too difficult what I'm saying?    'ha' is everlastingness and HUe is eternity.  Cause everlastingness is something that has started at some point, but doesn't ever end.  Whereas eternity neither has a beginning nor an end.  Now if you think of the pendulum then that is the point at which the pendulum would pass the zenith if it were to spring right over.  So that's what Jelaludin Rumi means when he said: "tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal."  So, well it's wrongly translated, it should be to the life everlasting.  See?  Because that's (ahad?).   Because then let's say, I didn't mention that, but you know I mentioned Malakut, that's where we stopped this morning, and there's still Jabarut and Lahut.  

And Lahut represents the level of the archetypes, and when we're doing, repeating the Wazifas, we are linking ourselves with the qualities in their perfection. That's what Pir-O-Murshid called the Divine Perfection.  And establishing a link between those qualities in their perfection, which is like the models, the archetypes, and then the qualities such as they are exemplified in our being, in an imperfect way.  And there's a link between the two.  And that's what in the Qur'an is called 'tenuities', no, sorry, it's Ib'n Arabi who's using the word tenuities.  In the Qur'an what's said is that there's nothing on earth that doesn't have its treasury in, its treasure in our treasury.  So the treasury is Lahut, the level, the archetypal level.  And then, the likeness in the exemplars, which is the qualities in us.  And between the two, Ib'n Arabi says there are tenuities, there are very fine threads.  And the beauty in, of Ib'n Arabi, in what he says, is that "and the angel builds a bridge between the two."  

And it's true because Malakut is exactly between, is between Lahut and Nasut.  So it's, I find it a very useful thought, because when you say 'ilaha' you're reaching the point at which let's say the programming of the universe, all of the qualities in their perfection, in the Divine consciousness, and now as your head comes down, you're making, you're actuating these qualities.  But actually there are two poles of your being, there's that high pole of the archetypes, and then the other pole, there are several poles of course, but the other pole is in your solar plexus, it is the way that those qualities emerge as you. So on the top there are the qualities in their perfection, and in the solar plexus the qualities are virtual and unfurl as your personality, there's what you call our potentialities.  So that's very important.  

So when you, after having hit, well the zenith: "la ilaha illa" and that's where plunge, almost, into the vacuum of the center of your being, of the vortex of your being, and it's like at that moment you don't know what is there.  And it's like there was a (inaudible) who said once, "imagine that life is rather like for example a flying fish in muddy water so that you don't know what happens when they're under the water, but you only know happens when they fly above the surface."  So it's like that, you plunge into that unknown, and it takes a kind of faith to know that it's not the void, it's a fullness, but it's virtual.  It's not yet real.  And then you remember what I said, that it is our act of glorification which calls forth, which awakens, arouses those virtual, those qualities in their virtual state, so that they become a reality in our personality.  And so that's what you have to think as your head moves up; it is your act of glorification, your head moves up.  And doing so those qualities begin to emerge as your head goes up.  So it is prayer, but not the conventional words, it's prayer, essence.

Now, I know that you know the Dhikr is more advanced then the wazifa, one is dealing with the Divine Presence instead of the Divine Qualities, although they say the Divine Qualities are somewhere present within the Dhikr.  But I, what I have been doing, and what I suggest doing is at that moment just think of the quality which you are working with in order to unfold your being.  It could be the wazifa that your teacher has given you, or a guide has given to you.  But I think there has to be some interactive interaction with the guide, so that you are able to tell the guide, well I feel that there is a quality I need to develop, then there is another quality that seems to becoming through, and then there's a quality that I'd like for my sake, that I'd prefer for it be who I would like to be.  You have the right to talk to your guide, and it helps your guide to decide what kind of wazifa he or she thinks that is helpful to you.  But this quality is really the quality that is emerging at this time.  

Later you can work with the quality that you want to be, because that's a feature of your freedom, to be what you want.  But at the same time there is some programming taking place in us.  So, everything seems to point to that quality.  It's strange if you just observe things.  That is what Jung means by synchronicity:  everything, you come across this all the time.  You know the story of the butterfly, you keep on coming across butterflies all the time, like on the same day, that it's all telling you something about, it's difficult to understand, but your attention is being drawn towards butterflies.  You know that story, otherwise I would repeat it, but as one gets older one tends to repeat stories too often, so I won't repeat it anymore.  

But anyway, that's synchronicity, that everything seems to point to that quality.  That quality all of the sudden assumes a meaningfulness that it  didn't have before.  So then think of that quality.  And the wazifa, what we call the wazifa, it's not the wazifa.  Wazifa means more like concentration or contemplation, it is called 'sifat' which means a quality.  Or then, asma ilahi which is a Divine Name, it is a label, a label.  Think of it as a label.  So then of course that's the reason why one should repeat the Dhikr very slowly, because then you have time to concentrate on those qualities, or that particular quality.  So it's like: la ilaha illa 'llah hu.  See, it's very slow motion.  Now we have time to think of each of the phases.  If you just say la ilaha illa 'llah hu, you don't.  It's too quick.

Now if you remember, that's where I think that you need to remember those different levels that I started describing this morning.  I'll repeat some of the things I said and then continue upwards.  So you remember that at the basic level it was Nasut which is the physical world.  So how can I say, chakra-wise, it's your feet.  And then, the next one is Asma, Arwah. And Asma, yes a form, but Arwah a spirit.  That is  a signal you see, as you turn within, so when you say "illa" it's not Nasut, it's Arwah: the subtle body.  And your whole, you mustn't identify yourself anymore with your body, but identify yourself with what I call your electromagnetic field.  So, a force field.  It will give you a lot of magnetism.  Murshid tried to enhance the magnetism of the Mureeds by dint of his own magnetism. 

He had tremendous magnetism.  Magnetism, not just healing, but a kind of energy that is communicated to people.  And there are different types of energy as I described earlier on.  But the only way in which the latent qualities are going to unfurl, and upward surface is by giving them a push with your magnetism.  That's where I must say sometimes when I'm doing the Dhikr, although you're not supposed to say wazifas of course as you say the Dhikr, but you can think of qualities.  So that is the time when I am thinking of all those different four forces that I described this morning. There are different forms of energy.  I don't know whether you can feel that incredible energy that comes through the Dhikr?  In fact the Dhikr is a fantastic practice to whip up your energy, enhance your energy.  You can understand why the Dervishes have such incredible energy.  In fact the motion itself, you know that if you have a magnet, and you start whirling that magnet it becomes a dynamo.  And so the energy is greatly enhance by inculcating motion upon a magnet.  

So your magnetic field is increased tremendously by the circular motion.  And what is more, you remember us saying yesterday that to, that's where you're creative.  You see, that's where your creativity emerges when the upsurging qualities pass the threshold as it were, and you become aware of them.  That's the moment when your creative imagination is able to translate them into shapes.  So at that moment you think of the shape of your subtle body which we worked on, we have been working with.  And if you remember, that it is the form in which God discloses himself, well reveals himself, an aspect of himself, to himself, through that form, and the same form in which he discloses himself to you through your form.  That's ayat, the sign.  So you see how one has to think of so many things when doing the Dhikr.  

So illa, you see the 'il' is right down in the depths.  And what I haven't said yet is that you know we don't only disintegrate at the jagged ends as we're saying la, but we are resorbed in the void as we say il.  So there's disintegration at both ends, at the jagged ends and inside.  But it's different inside, it's absorption in the void.  There's a certain quality of absorption which Murshid describes very often, no sometimes.  He says for example, the sea has the faculty of absorbing the ink that you throw in it.  There's some limit to the amount that the sea can take your pollution.  But that's a sense of somehow there are qualities, idiosyncrasies that could be rejected at the jagged ends, but then there are deeper things in one's being that need to be resorbed in the void.  And the other thing is, I don't know whether it's a good simile, but the immaculate state as a state that absorbs impurities, like a scavenger somehow, something like that. The purity of one's being that spreads and cleanses one's whole being from that internal source.

So that's as you see, there are several meanings of illa, but interesting is that the 'la' of illa, illa there are two l's, and illa.  The 'a' represents mithal which is the level at which you are translating emotion into form, you see.  So illa:  'il'--you plunge into the depth, so that's the void.  And then 'la'--that is where the qualities are beginning to assume forms.  Illa.  Incidentally, I hope you don't mind but I'll be referring to wazifas as I'm proceeding.  So the wazifa for creativity is Khaliq.  K-h-a-l-i-q.  Ya Khaliq.  And there are, actually there are three wazifas, one is Khaliq, the other is Bahri, B-a-h-r-i, and the other is Musawwir.  Musawwir.   So Musawwir is something like fashioning, like a sculptor fashioning his/her statue, that's Musawwir.  And Bahri is more like building.  And Khaliq is just the creative power.  So again, those are wazifas that you can think of at that moment, because those are, I think one could say that there are wazifas corresponding to each of these planes you see.  And that's what I have in mind, it's one of the things that Abi'l-Khayr asked me to do, is to describe the wazifas in terms of planes, and in terms of the Dhikr, so I'm exploring that a little with you now.

And if you remember what I said is that to be creative you have to involve your whole person.  So the qualities that are coming through in you, upsurging from within, are limited by your own notion of yourself.  And that's why it is necessary to be aware of all the levels of your being, cause your notion of yourself is going to limit the quality, the nature of the qualities, the compass of the qualities that are coming through.  And that's why as one's head rises one passes and reviews the different planes. So the first, the last 'a' of illa represents the plane of mithal which is the creative world of metaphors as I said.

And now you transfer your attention to your heart center.  The first 'A' of Allah, you don't say it aloud.  You don't say La ilaha illa Allah hu.  No, illa 'llah hu.  And maybe it's, some Sufis have said well it's because the discovery of the celestial level of one's being is so awe inspiring that one just can't say it aloud.  It's too wonderful.  One is overwhelmed by it.  You don't say it aloud.  So in order to do that you really have to, when you say the first 'A' of Allah, you really have to let's say downplay your consciousness of your physical body.  It's there, and it's not Maya, no it's there.  It's a reality as a matter-of-fact, but you know, one can't see the sun while the stars are in the sky, so you have to downplay one so that you can highlight the other.  So this is where all those things I've been saying about looking into the eyes of a baby, and the cathedrals, and the High Mass, and all those things that uplift us all, and composers have been able to bring something of the nature of the heavenly spheres through their music, and that's why we choose that music.  

So that is as I said, malakut level is matched by Ananda, (Mayakosha?) which means the plane of celestial ecstasy.  Ananda: celestial ecstasy.  It's not euphoria, it's ecstasy.  So the only access, and the curious thing is that the next plane is Jabarut, which is the kind of knowledge that I often referred to, the knowledge that is inborn in us, the knowledge of our intelligence rather than acquired by consciousness.  I can understand now that certain Sufis place Jabarut after Malakut, and some even place Jabarut before Malakut. Does the mind lead to, let's say, does the perplexity of the mind lead to the ecstasy of the soul?  Or does the ecstasy of the soul lead to the perplexity of the mind?  So that maybe in this case one could do like in the sephiratic tree of the Kabbalah where you have two qualities that are paired you see, like gebura and gedula for example, or (inaudible).  So yes, well, I don't have the answer, but if you consider the Dhikr then there's a very, the (End of side 1).

...if you're doing it, because I don't want this to be too much theory, like it must be something that you're experiencing, and if you're doing the Dhikr then you have that moment of uplift of your soul because of discovering the celestial dimension of your being, and so at that time the center of your being is not your solar plexus.  The solar plexus is the center of the vortex of subtle matter, but the center of the aura of light is your heart.  So there's a shift of the center from the solar plexus to the heart center.  Illa 'llah, you see, from the solar plexus to the heart. So that's where all of our practices of light make all the difference.  So you have to, well, to start with one identifies with one's being as a being of light, and then of course, remember yesterday we were working with all of the different levels of light.  So it's like you can't, the celestial plane, there are several levels of the celestial plane.  So that's why Hildegard of Bingen speaks about those different levels, celestial levels of light, instead of just one level.

Now the curious thing is that the transit, that Jabarut is in Dhikr the transit between the celestial level and the level of the archetypes of all qualities, Lahut.  You see, so we have: Malakut, Jabarut, Lahut.  So Malakut is the celestial level, and then you have that transit into the level of the programming, let's say the programming, of the universe.  That is to get a sense of the Divine Intention.  It's not just the programming, it's if you know something about programming of computers, then there's a difference between the ROM and then the way that you do the programming. The ROM serves your programming, but the programming is the intention.  So that's why, maybe that's why there are two l's between the first a and the second.  The first A of Allah is the celestial level, and the second a is the archetypal level, and between the two is the two l's.  And there is, you can see some relevance with the, with again something in the Qur'an, that is in the Mirage, and  especially in the ascent from the temple of Jerusalem to the celestial temple, Mohammad finds himself distant from God by two throws of an arrow, of a bow, two throws of a bow.  And so what does that mean?  

Because the Arabs used to measure distance by the throw of an arrow.  And the throw of an arrow was determined by the distance between the string of the bow and the way you pull your arrow backwards.  So that's called Kaf I think, I forget now.  So that is a measure of the distance, so it's just saying that Mohammad got very close to what they call the lotus of the limit, but you can never reach God, because God is beyond one's reach.  So the two l's represent then, that distance, that, let's say the bridge, the bridging between the celestial sphere  and then the archetypal level, Lahut.  And there are two l's you see.  And so as I say, the first l is probably like the ROM of your computer, and the second l is the Divine programming or the Divine Intention.  Divine Intention rather than the programming.  So Jabarut means, Jabar is a very strange word if you know what it means etymologically.  It's rather disappointing, because Jabar is the man who fixes your bones if they've been displaced.  It's what you call a Chiropractor?  So it means that the Divine meaningfulness fixes your understanding.  It imposes itself.  Jabarut imposes itself you see.  Al Jabar means preposessive.  So it's like: I thought this, and all of the sudden I see that my thinking was totally off.  I see the Divine point of view, you see.  And so it's like fixing something that was wrong.  So that is the moment when you would say the l between the two l's, between the Allah; that's when you would have this 'aha' moment, that you just see something that you hadn't seen before.  And it's the, the clue to it is perplexity.  One is perplexed.  It comes very often in the words of the Sufis, talking about being perplexed.

I forgot of course to say, yes there is one thing that I need to say because I forgot it, and that is, well I referred to it already this morning, it's the witness in the heavens.  You see when you're at the level, the first A of Allah, the witness.  You're not working with the object that you want to know, you're working with the subject who knows. And so that is the witness in the heavens.  That is as I say that particular quality of knowledge that is linked in some way with your attunement: the understanding of the heart, but I call it the understanding of the soul.  OK, so now we have that moment when all of the sudden, you see the only way to do this is to really shift totally from yourself as thinking of yourself as the subject, the knower, the witness, and think that it is God that is the witness. It is not just the witness in the heavens, that is that aspect of you that is judging things from the point of view of your attunement, but it is really the antipodal point of view to your own.

Now there is a word of Ib'n Arabi and it says, "Since the ephemeral discloses the eternal, or reveals the nature of the eternal, it is by the knowledge of the eternal that you know the ephemeral."  And I was rather surprised because when I tried to quote his words by memory, I thought no, and therefore the ephemeral will give you some clues as to the eternal. But he says the other way around.  And it's true, that if you see a lot of round tables it will give you some sense of roundness, but it doesn't quite give you the sense of roundness.  Roundness is a reality regardless of whether there are round tables or not.  So it's a kind of grasp of meaningfulness, irrespective of how this meaningfulness is actuated at the existential level.  So in order to do this you have to get into the deathless state.  And the deathless state at first is simply everlastingness, and it's only much higher up that you get into the eternal state.  So it's, there are levels of eternity let's say.   And that's why you know:  "Saeculor, Saeculorum."  

I always thought it meant the Century of Centuries, but apparently it says, the Centuries of Centuries.  So that's a superlative, let's say.  See so we're reaching very high up now, so let's come back to this sense of deathlessness which Murshid works with a lot.  It's, instead of dismissing your body, and saying well it's only my body and it will return to the earth, no your being has left a mark, a hallmark in your body, but still your body is a transient support system for the eternity of your being.  Imagine a lot of waves that are moving, and your ship is some how using the energy of these waves to move forward. So somehow you don't dismiss your body, but you see it, and this is the clue, I said it yesterday, but I want to emphasize it if we're doing the Dhikr, it's one of the most important maxims of Pir-O-Murshid, when he said, "we are a condition of God."  So it's not we are God, we are a condition of God.  

Just like the waves are a condition of the sea.  And a condition is temporal, but the sea is eternal.  But the wave is the sea, but I mean is of the nature of the sea.  So it is a way of looking at ourselves.  If you can do that, then you can see that your condition is ephemeral, evanescent, and then you tend to shift towards something more permanent in your being then that aspect which is changing.  And that is called perenity, the perenity of your being.  I think that is baqa, the word baqa, instead of fana, baqa.  Baqa means the perenity of our being which survives the change, the transiency.  So that is a step toward the deathless state, that you are able to, well, they say you know it is never the same water that runs under the bridge, but it's the same river.  Or, for example, most of, as far as I know, most of the cells of our body are not the same as they were, the same cells as they were before, but we say it is our body.  So there's some kind of permanence within the change.  So that's the word perenity.  So that's the first step toward the deathless state, that you experience that continuity.  You're the same person, but you're not the same person as you were when you were a child, and so on.

Now the next thing is to be able, but this really, I mean there's no use saying it, it's got to be a real experience, that you could exist without a body.  Now we don't know that, unless if you've done astral travel then of course you do know that you can be without having a body.  You can see without eyes.  You can, actually as Jelaludin Rumi says: "you can walk without feet, and you can fly without wings, and you can see without eyes, and hear without ears."  And I add, and you can think without a brain.  And I think that's a key, that you can think without a brain, and the brain limits our thinking.  Those are steps towards the deathless state.  And that is to find freedom from the need of our support system.  Because one depends upon the support system.  And that's why the Sanyasins leave the world, and live in the caves.  

I'm not saying that that's what we need to do.  It's much more subtle.  It's in the mind, to be able to find freedom from all those things upon which we have become dependent.  And that word is, again Murshid brings it out very strongly, he called 'self-sufficiency.'  Instead of, in the America one says, being needy.  So it's the opposite of being needy.  Being self-sufficient.  Because that is the only way in which you can be free.  Now the wazifa for that, self-sufficiency, is Mughni.  Mughni.  And it's often been translated, wrongly translated, by being rich.  It doesn't mean that.  If you're rich it doesn't mean that you're self-sufficient.  But it's, well rich so that you're not dependent upon anybody or your circumstances, or whatever.  So it's very close, but it's not exactly what we mean by it.  It's the sense of, well, it's freedom.  We have that need for freedom.  So at this level we discover that freedom from our dependence upon existential conditions. And that will, from the moment that you, in your mind you're not dependent upon those aspects of yourself that are transient, you discover your deathless state.

So you see that that, well that is what you do on your side, but on the other side there is the Divine disclosing him/herself, I mean his/her reality to your understanding.  And that knowledge of course does not depend upon it's object.  So you see, it matches with what you've found in your own thinking.  Freedom.  Buddha calls it freedom from opinion.  So that's Jabarut you see.  So those are the two l's of Allah.

And then we reach the last a, then you've got, well then you are really, well then you understand the words of Murshid when he says, "God discovers His Perfection in our imperfection."  The voice of Caruso is present within it's bad, within it's distortions.  Or you can see a palace in the ruin. And there are some artists, Japanese art in particular, that just give you a few clues, and you have to reconstruct the whole image in your mind.  So at that point you see the Divine Intention, or you have the feeling as though the Divine Intention is revealed to you--in the words of Murshid. But of course you have to be very careful that it's not wishful thinking, and called intuition. And so that's something that happens all of the sudden.  All of the sudden.  I thought this, and all of the sudden, ah, now I see why it happened.  And I couldn't believe it, and I, in fact it doesn't make sense to my mind, but now I see it.  

That's what Murshid called the reason behind the reason.  And I think Jabarut is the reason behind the reason.  And that leads to you to Lahut where you are experiencing the Divine Intention.  What I call the programming.  And we must understand that the Divine Program is not static, it keeps on being enriched by the feedback, that's everlastingness.  It gets recycled, and that's the way that evolution takes place, because the programming is always enriched.  But the most, much more difficult thing to understand is that the Divine Will is customized in our will, instead of thinking that it's all programmed. That's a simplistic way of thinking: everything is programmed, you know, fate is there, and so on and so forth.  I'll give you an example, I hope it's not too intellectual.  Supposing you're in a train, and so you see a scene through the window.  And then the scene that you saw in the window before seems to be passed.  And you don't know what the next scene is going to be.  But if you were flying in a helicopter then you would see what you didn't see when you were in the train.  

You can see what seemed to be the future, but it's not the future, it was there but you didn't see it.  But if you're flying in a helicopter and you see two cars on what one calls collision stations, but they haven't collided yet, but you know that if they continue that way they're going to collide, then you're seeing the future, the possibility of the future.  And you see that the free will of the drivers is going to alter the future, alter the possibilities of the future.  So instead of thinking that everything is programmed, you see that that programming is customized by our will.  And that's why instead of saying "may Thy Will be done,"  Murshid said, "let Thy Wish become my desire."  It's important that I take responsibility instead of saying it was the Divine Intention, or the Divine Planning.  So the Divine Planning is in the realm of potentialities, possibilities.  The word used by the Sufis is imkan, possibilities.  The possibilities of mutation of a flower for example, or a plant, is infinite.  There are possibilities, but which is the particular feature of the plant that is going to be determined, that is, depends upon, well it can be altered by the person who is rearing the plant.  So that's where free will comes in. See these are new ways of thinking.  So that is a very beautiful way of saying it:  Let Thy Wish become my desire.

Now at the end of the upsurge, your head turns upward, well you've been moving your head upwards, but the end, after the second 'a' of Allah, you have the 'h.'  And of course you notice that the Dhikr is la and al, and la and illa, but then h is like a totally different thing altogether, a totally different dimension you see.  And the h represents transcendence, because so far I've been saying, well, we've been saying like Jelaludin Rumi: "the umpteen stars give birth to the life everlasting."  So, that's the programming, that is not eternal, it keeps on changing, being enriched. But beyond that, there's that point that never changes, and that's eternity.  And that is what is experienced in Samadhi.  There are no qualities.  Of course, it's impossible to describe it.  But there is no doubt that the h of Allah represents the breakthrough of Samadhi.  

When you are, you pass through a kind of blackout, so you're not, you don't remember the physical world or the circumstances, or you don't even remember your self as a person.  And you don't remember any knowledge that you had.  And even it is beyond knowledge, beyond the light of intelligence.  So it's really, you can't, I mean it's the very summit.  And it's represented by Ahad, which means a sense of oneness.  And then the Sufis make a difference between Ahad and Wahdat or Wahdaniat which is multiplicity in unity, unity in multiplicity.  So let's say, you consider liquid that is in a state of saturation so you can't see the crystals, but they're there, so that's unity, and then you start seeing the multiplicity that is inherent within the unity.  Ahad and Wahdat and Wahdaniat.  So when you are doing the Dhikr then, as I say, when you have done la ilaha, you've reached that point of the zenith that represents the programming, Lahut, and the recycled.  And then you hit the solar plexus where there's emergence of the new dispensation of life, and then your head rises and reaches beyond everlastingness into eternity.  If you consider the samsaric wheel of Buddhism then that, the Buddhists  are talking about what they call, well you know the words of Buddha, when he says, "this become does not lead to this non-become."  So there seems to be a gap between the process of becoming, the circle, and then this other dimension that seems to be acting upon that which is in motion, but itself is still.  And it's very short lived, so it's not like you stay in Samadhi with the Dhikr, no you just, it's as the Upanishads says, "It passes by before you realize it was there."

And then you say Hu.  The H becomes Hu.  So it's: illa 'llah hu. 'llah hhu. The 'h.'  Illa 'llahhh hu.  So there's an h which is hardly perceptible, and your head turns toward the zenith, and then your head turns toward your heart center, I mean your physical heart.  And that's always been for me very difficult to understand, that it should be the physical heart instead of the anahata chakra, the plexus.  Well I can tell you a story.  I was repeating the Dhikr in Ajmer, the tomb, the dargha of Hazrat Muin-ud-Din Chisti in Ajmer.  An incredible scene: like a lot of people sleeping on the marble floor,  and some people praying in the Mosque, and then there were musicians chanting.  And then there was this wonderful singer who was chanting himself into ecstasy.  And there I was sitting there at the tomb, repeating the Dhikr.  And I was so inspired by his being that I, I didn't even dare look at him because I thought well I don't know, it's too unbelievable.  Is it real?  And then at a certain moment I did take, I thought to myself it's strange, but he has, his voice reminds me of my father.  

And then I turned towards him, and he looked like my father.  And then lo and behold, he stopped playing and he came to me and he said: "I have a message from your father.  You're doing the Dhikr wrong.  You end up by turning your head upwards, la ilaha illa 'llah hu.  No, no, no, h and then hu in the heart."  And then of course, I reflected upon that over for many months of course and years.  And I discovered that of course, for Sufism the objective is not awakening beyond life, it is awakening in life. And Pir-O-Murshid speaks about these two awakenings.  And I personally believe that one needs to awaken beyond life before one awakes in life, but that's my view, and it may not be the case for everyone.  But if you look in Murshid's teaching, it's all awakening in life.  And that is really the way of spirituality in our day and age.    And whereas the Aesthetics in India, they were, you know it's something for people who are retired, who leave the world and get into Samadhi.  But this is for people over 80 who are active in life.

So, why the physical heart?  I'm pondering that, upon that a lot, because when you think of it, is it, the center of the wheel represents the eternal, that point which doesn't move, you see.  The top of the wheel, you know, the programming, the state of everlastingness is recycled.  But the center represents the eternal.  But does the center that does not move move the wheel?  No.  If you would think of a locomotive, you find that the impulse of the cylinder or whatever is cast, is exocentric to the center, it is not in the center of the wheel, that's the only way to make the wheel turn.  And therefore to awaken you have to see how you can bring a new pulse of life into life.  One calls it the life of life.  Now it's linked with body functions, and these body functions of course do reflect, how can I say, the eternal principles of life.  

And so the rotational phase of the Dhikr is linked with the circulation of blood in the body, is linked with the heart which is exocentric.  And then the breath is linked with the principle which is some way connected with the anahata chakra, the heart, the plexus, the cardiac plexus.  And then there's a third principle which is the nervous system.  So you have three systems, well you have many more. But, so you have the circulation of the blood: circulation.  And then you have the breathing, that is in and out, that's the centripetal-centrifugal. And then you have the nervous system which is ascending and descending. See you have three principles.  There's a word of the Buddhists, but I think it applies very much to Sufism.  It is making states of consciousness corporeal; that is embodying them right in one's body.  So that's the reason for it.  And one could even say that one is awakening physical faculties that are dormant unless one awakens them.

So I think we have to, I have to, I don't know, we are supposed to end at five, aren't we, or what?    Yeah, now it's four-thirty, so if we have a break of half an hour then we won't be able to meet again.  So are you, is it ok to continue, now we are going to do another practice so I won't be talking too much anymore.

NOV 23, 1977		Tape 08

There are three principle practices that we're doing, the wasaif, the Zikre and now the shaghal.

You see it is, for example, to see the stars, you can't see the stars when the sun is in the sky. And so if you're still perceiving the physical world, then it is very difficult to grasp what is transpiring behind what appears. And so the shaghal consists in putting blinds upon your senses which will encourage you to turn within. And it does have that effect immediately. So that one is able to grasp that which was emerging from inside. Until such a time as one is able to do this without putting one's fingers on one's senses. That is the objective of shaghal. So to start with, we are protecting ourselves from the rather overt experience of the senses. Now there are five modes of perception, of inner perception that one comes upon as one does the shaghal as one holds the breath. And the first is what Pir O Murshid calls the all pervading light. So it's not radiant light. And what does it mean? Well if you've studied Dr. David Boehm, then you understand what he means by the implicate state where everything is interrelated in a rather perplexing manner. Especially if it's followed up by the Einstein - Pedolski - Rosen experiment which has shown that everything is connected although they can't send messages to each other. 

So it's perplexing. There is no doubt about it. Physics is, I would say, the door to Sufism because it's perplexity. You can't study physics without being perplexed. So it doesn't correspond with what you think is logical at all. There is no way for the mind to understand it. So it could be illustrated by radio waves. They form a wave interference pattern so you've lost the sense of individual waves. So light in its original state is all pervading. Dr. David Boehm calls it the implicate state. And what we experience is the explicate state. That is we experience the way that wave interference pattern is processed by the radio into sound. So that's what we experience, the explicate state. Behind that there is the implicate state that we can't experience. However, if when we turn within, then somehow we need to also alter our mode of experience. Instead of being the subject experiencing other than ourselves, our consciousness has to not expand, but has to get into the implicate state. So what used to be perception is now resonance. 

Perception is otherness. Resonance is affinity. Two gongs attune to the same pitch. You sound one gong and the other sounds. So resonance. It's a mode of experience that we're not used to. In shaghal we learn to have that experience. Perhaps the word experience is not the right way of saying it. Maybe it's experience but it's not perception. And that is going to enable us to be better able to arouse the potentials in our being. Because those potentials are of the same nature as the all pervading light. They are not located in space. So it's, as I said, perhaps you've experienced that when you've found yourself in a transfigured world. All of a sudden it's a very strange state that is familiar. And if you get used to it in your meditation, you can click onto it. All of a sudden you click something then you find yourself in that transfigured world. So that's what the shaghal helps you to get into that transfigured state. Now what Murshid says is very pertinent here. What he says is he gives the example of the sun. Of course he didn't know anything about physics. But he had this kind of intuition that the sun is like the point, well there are several suns of course. But a sun is a point of convergence of the light of the Universe. I don't know enough physics to say whether it's the light field that is explicated into a radiant light. But the important thing is the way that all pervading light gets processed into radiant light. So when you're doing the shaghal, you turn within, you have that grasp, that sense of the all pervading light. 

Then as you exhale, you are the transducer that is translating that all pervading light into radiant light in your heart. Now I find that when putting my fingers in place and inhale and, I concentrate on the solar plexus. And that itself is helpful to turn within and to get into that sense of, you don't perceive. That would be hallucinations if you were to perceive light. No, I say I feel light. That's perhaps not the right word. But I don't know how to say it. You have a sense of the way light is all pervading. And you can see the difference between that and light that is radiant. Because it's radiating from a point in space whereas radio waves are spread out throughout space. So now as you exhale, you consciously transmute that all pervading light into radiant light. Therefore, then I have been doing something which was not in the indications given by Murshid. I open my eyes when exhaling after doing the shaghal. So I close my eyes when inhaling and hold the breath. Get into the consciousness of the all pervading light. Then as I exhale, I open my eyes and radiate light. The trouble is that when one does that, one tends to radiate light through one's eyes. And what we're trying to do is to radiate light through one's heart. So if it works for you, it's alright. Otherwise keep your eyes closed and consciously radiate light from your heart. But then there is a further shaghal in which I concentrate on the pituitary and even above the head. Start first with the pituitary and then above the head, the fontanel then beyond the fontanel. 

Then when I exhale, that is when I radiate light through my eyes instead of through the heart, through the whole aura, through the glance. That is again a practice of the Sufis. Because the glance then serves as the support system for your insight. That's the reason why the Sufis are talking about the light of intelligence, as I said the light that sees instead of the light that can be seen. We did these practices yesterday. So there is no point in my repeating them. You can get the tape. What is important is that the reason, or the difference between concentrating on the solar plexus and radiating light through one's heart or then concentrating on the pituitary gland and radiating light through one's glance. And radiating light through one's glance, you think of, well I gave the example of the river Rhone that passes through the lake of Geneva. You have a light that is threaded through a light. The Rho    ne passes through the lake of Geneva. There again one definitely opens one's eyes as one exhales. The trouble is that if you open your eyes, normally your glance is going to be forced into focus by the objects in the room. So that's why we prepare ourselves by working with the glance very strongly so that when we open our eyes, we don't allow our cornea to be forced into focus by the objects. Then you can really thread the light. 

Well that is the light upon a light. That's the meaning of the Koranic verse light upon a light. Light of intelligence. The light of your glance. This incidentally is to be found in the teachings of Ibn Arabi. All of this, the teaching of Murshid, I don't know why there are so many books on Sufism that never mention Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan. But the teaching of Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan is a further development of the teachings of his predecessors. So it's about time that that should be brought through. Perhaps Zia would make that clear. Now there are also, one can hear, well again one must be careful think that you hear optical illusions. For example, if you're pressing your index on your cornea, that means that you are pressing your retina, then you will have a reactions in the brain that will seem like flashes of light. You will think that you're seeing light. In fact it's just an optical illusion. That's the reason why one has to place one's fingers under the retina. I mean one has to turn one's eyes upwards so that one isn't pressing upon one's retina. Then be very careful. It's got to be a very gentle touch. The same is true with the ears. One places the thumbs in one's ears. And if you downplay the sound of the environment, then what you would hear is what is called the (etmosaic) effect which is the sound produced by the brownian movement of the liquid in the semi circular canals. And you think that you are hearing the symphony of the spheres. So we don't want to delude you when you're doing the shaghal into thinking, "I'm illuminated now. I see light. 

And I hear the voice of God". So we have to be very careful. I've been pondering that for a long time. All of a sudden it occurred to me that maybe the vibrations of the intermosaic effect do reflect something of the nature of the symphony of the spheres. And maybe physical light does manifest something of the nature of the light of intelligence. So as long as you know that, you can proceed with shaghal. The Sufis distinguish several different sounds that you might be able to identify. And again be careful. You know if you hear buzzing in your ears, they say it's because somebody is thinking of you. It might be a purely physical effect. But it's interesting to see if you can distinguish these different sounds. One is like a sound described as like the rushing of the wind. Like in Whethering Heights. And the other is like the fluttering of the leaves of the trees. Not quite the same thing as the rushing of the wind. And the other one is like the gurgling of water. And the other could be like the sound of gongs. That's why you can use gongs to get into ecstasy. And then the other is the clashing of symbols. You think of the Jewish tradition, temple dance and the symbols. 

And the other is the crashing of thunder. And the other is a more harmonious, a more metallic sound like the sound of the vina. Then there is the sound of the choirs of the angels. And that has been described by Victoria for example, what we were saying yesterday, and Bach of course, and Montiverdi, Allegri. Then there is the sound of the symphony of the spheres. Now how real is that? And how much is that imagination? Well that depends upon how scrupulous you are about authenticity. There are certain clues that will help us to understand that better. I don't know whether you know that there are some cases, very exceptional cases, of people who are deaf and are still able to hear radio waves. It's a scientific fact. So those are latent faculties that we have and we don't use them because we are using our perceptive organs. And these give one clues. The important thing is not just the satisfaction of hearing the symphony of the spheres, but gives us clues about what one might call fate. For example, my great grand uncle was a dervish who lived on an island in Lahore, in the river. He used to pronounce the oracles. People used to come like you go to a psychic to ask for your fate. Apparently he never said anything wrong. It was always right on. He would simply look at the waves on the water. That was an iyat, a clue to the divine intention. As I said before, I don't think that you can predict the future. It depends on your free will. It's not that clear. 

What I'm trying to say is that the symphony of the spheres in the sense of Pythagoras is not really sound. It can be interpreted as sound. But it is vibrations. In physics vibrations are vibrations of energy. They are not vibrations of air, that's sound. I mean you perceive it as sound. What you are really perceiving is vibrations of energy. That's what the Sufis mean by sota sarmad, the silent music. So if you think you want to hear the music of the spheres, you are deluding yourself. But if you think there is a kind of impending harmony that is trying to come through the chaos, well if you are interested in physics as I am, read that book called The Symphony of the Spheres by Merchant a physicist. The laws of physics all correspond with a certain basic harmony. And so what you're really picking up through shaghal is that harmony rather than listening to sounds. Now the other sense is a sense of like a perfume. Well, let us refer to the other one which is taste first. As Pir O Murshid says, we have the taste of the tongue, for example, bitter or sour for food. But he says, "Are you aware of the taste of your stomach or your pancreas or your liver or duodenum or the enzymes that are working to process the amino acid chains of food?" Normally one is not. But of course, if one has an indigestion, then one begins to feel the kind of a taste that happens in your bowels or duodenum. So we have that sensitivity but we don't use it. But those are very fine faculties that can be awakened so that one is able to know what is going on with one's body before it materializes in an illness. So that one is really tasting the world in it's subtle, one could say subtle chemistry. 

Like the tea tasters or wine tasters develop a very fine sense of values through taste. Now this is related with a very strange thing that happens in samadhi. You have a taste of nectar. You know there are all kinds of mythical ( ) interpretations of it. But really it is the endorphins that are, you've been concentrating on the pituitary gland which begins to exude much more endorphines than normally. And it's in the blood. And you taste it on the tongue. So it's not that mysterious thing. It's really tangible. That taste. Now perfume is something again that lends itself to a lot of mystification. But you see, I often illustrate it by the flowers are very smart. Although that they have very precarious foothold on the planet, they are able to survive their demise by transforming themselves into perfume. So that is really the definition of resurrection. So that is an example. But you can in your meditation, if you are aware of your subtle body, it's already much more subtle than your physical body. It has some kind of construction there. You can work with that and transmute it further. And that is the way in which one can prepare oneself for life after life. There is a whole. Oh, I forgot, I can go up to 5:30. i don't know whether I want to. Well I'd love to but I think it's too much for everyone. So that is something I'd like you to do when you are doing the shaghal to see if you can pursue that more subtle body than what we call the etheric body that could be exemplified by perfume. 

So it's not just your deathlessness. It's really your resurrection rather than your deathlessness. It's a whole alchemical process of transmutation. People are now very aware of the need to prepare oneself for death. There are books on Buddhism. Sufism has something to say there. So that will be the fifth book I have in store. I already have four I'm working on. So then there is a further sense which is very difficult to define. Sometimes people think it's an ecstasy of the body. It's a very rarefied ecstasy of the body. But maybe that is that kind of thing when I was talking about that woman who was beaten in a concentration camp. And who was able to, you know what she said, of course, is that one does astral travel and one doesn't feel the pain. One looks at the goliters and says, "You think you can hurt me? You can't touch me." Now that is a very great thing to learn if you are in pain, to learn how to make that shift in your astral body that you are able to free yourself from body consciousness. Now people in concentration camps did that when they were beaten. Thank God. Now that I know that, it helps me to, otherwise when I think of the ordeal of my sister, it's unbearable. I don't teach that. 

You see the trouble of it is that if you develop that faculty, then you could have an astral projection while you are driving your car and have an accident. And generally one loses one's sense of what one calls reality. Generally I don't teach it as a method. I do it. But I don't teach it. If you were in personal pain, of course, it would be a wonderful anesthetic to be able to do that. We have a feeling that you are floating above your body. Some of you have that experience maybe in a dream. And there is some connection with the physical body through the umbilical cord. And you can move about. For those who like flying it's wonderful. It's even better than hang gliding. Nurses do that, especially the nuns who are also nurses. They think of their patients in the hospital and are so watchful they want to sense if there is anything going wrong with their patients. They are able to make that astral projection to see what's happening to their patient. Wish to be somewhere else than where you are. And especially freedom. 

Prisoners have that. Because of the constraint of being in prison, there is a longing to get out into freedom. You start flying outside the prison. So you see all the possibilities that are in shaghal. We have to end here. Well I feel that there has been all of a sudden a real blossoming in the Sufi Order. People were overwhelmed by their first contact with the Sufi teaching. And one doesn't quite grasp what it is. One finds it very difficult to reconcile it with one's daily life, one's family, one's problems, one's job and so on. So a lot of people, after that first impact, felt that they had to get on with their life. So there was a fast turn over in the Sufi Order. At first I thought to myself it means we are not really doing it for people. Otherwise they wouldn't leave. Now I think, no they got as much as they could. And when I'm walking in the corridors of airports, people often stop and say, "Oh, are you Pir Vilayat? Well you had a much bigger beard when you when you initiated me twenty years ago".

1998


AUG 08, 1998		Tape 03

We have so many stages to go through that I hope we will be able to make it by the end of these four days. Otherwise, it will have to continue during the retreat.  In fact, we have already anticipated on the retreat.  Himayat, quite rightly, suggested that we deal with, or rather in response to his question,  I felt it would be good for us to work with awakening with light in parallel.  Whereas at first I had intended to do the practices with light on a special session.  In fact, it would take more than one session anyway.  And I think it is a good idea to do both in parallel to say the connection.

So every time that we do practices or do a series of practices we are going to just see how it effects  what it involves in terms of working towards illumination.  Our level of awakening.  So as I said awakening is a sudden change in perspective, that is downplaying a perspective and opening another, highlighting another.  And that is the clue to illumination, being able to shift your focus from one level of light to another level of light.  And so of course we have to overcome many of our commonplace representations of light, what we understand by light.  Because we generally when we say light we generally mean physical light.

And I remember I was queried by some physicists some many years ago because I was referring to light and he said well for us light is a physical phenomena and you're talking about light in a way that would not by acceptable if you consider it as a physical phenomena, and so I really had to think that over very carefully because I don't want to induce people into error, and it is only recently that the views of science are beginning to shift.  And I will try to explain why.  And perhaps you have noticed that in the practices that we're doing we're working with, we start with working with physical light and then we're working with what I call non-physical light, and so one needs to be clear by what does one mean by non-physical light.  So, let's say the views of physicists, at least the avaunt guard physicist has shifted now a little bit. 

You see what we know what we experience of light in our commonplace experience is the way it effects our retina or the cells of our body, and laboratory experiments, or the operations that have been devised in order to be able to check on the phenomena of light.  But we don't know what happens to light when we're not experiencing it.  And physicists don't know how light is behaving when it is not being measured.  And so what we are doing is really stalking light, beyond its physical manifestation.  Now I know this is about physics, and every time I talk about physics people get bored and some people stand up and walk out, but I think that our concepts stand in the way of our experience and that we have to be very clear.  

So imagine that, well first of all, you know scientists use models so for example imagine that there are some insects that can only conceive of two dimensions and so they don't understand the three-dimensional world so their world is like a sheet of paper.  it could be curved but they don't know that it is curved.  Now we're only capable of extrapolating three dimensions but imagine that our three dimensional world is only a cross section of an unidimensional world.  And we are convinced that that is reality.  

And so if you apply this to light, then what we are experiencing of light in our senses is that which falls within the purview of, in the framework of space time, three dimensional space and one dimensional time, whereas now physicists are beginning to acknowledge not only other dimensions of space but also other dimensions of time.  So I'm saying that really it is like trying to convince the believers who already believe, but if you have had the tough time facing the public I have had, I can assure you, really, I can see people coming to see this strange kind of phenomena that they call Pir Vilayat like you would visit a bear, a new panda in the zoo.  And it is generally the wife who pulls her husband to come and visit Pir Vilayat and they look terribly bored.  Watching it.  And of course, sometimes I think it is all imagination, you know fantasizing and  this is, perhaps he is hallucinating.  And so I don't want to induce people into hallucinations. so I want to be very authentic.. how do we stalk light beyond that which is perceived within the framework of our three dimensional space, one dimensional time framework.  

Murshid has the answer actually, and that is that one can develop faculties that are dormant.  And as a matter of fact it is the practice of shaghal that does open up centers which are otherwise not active.  And as a matter of fact, well this is metaphysics again, but still I hope you will forgive me if I talk metaphysics.  There is a word of Murshid who says consciousness, from the beginning of time,  I have the paper somewhere.  Consciousness buried in matter is awakened in the course of evolution.  Consciousness buried in matter is awakened in the course of evolution.  That means the consciousness in our body is awakened or rather we can awaken the consciousness in our body by awakening faculties in our body which we don't generally use.  

How do we do it.  These are skills of course.  And these are things we are going to try to explore in the next days.  But for the time being, I'm trying to see a parallel between this first awakening that we explored this morning that was moving down from beyond space and time, to limitation.  Pir-o-Murshid would say , moving down, let's say, descent through the spheres.  Lets say God in the beginning, that is the superior pole of our being, and then gradually the descent and limitation, that is limiting our understanding by  affirming our individuality and forgetting who we are.  What Murshid is saying is that we lose ourselves by forgetting who we are, and what we are doing in awakening is to remember who we are.  Rediscover who we are.  

I don't know whether you know the story of the cave of Plato.  The, you know, actually it was part of a tradition, a practice in the mysteries of Ulysses, they had  a choir, and the members of the choir had white clothes and white wings and then they came and pulled off their clothes and their wings and chained them inside a cave.  So it was like a ritual to try to remember who you were.  And you see how you got chained and all you are experiencing is the world of shadows.  And you find that in Sufism, that's what Bistami says all that you see is effigies, shadows, you see.  So then imagine that someone comes and says the sky is blue and the grass is green and the flowers are beautiful, red and yellow and so on.  And they say I don't know what you mean.  All I see is shadows. 

So that is a model.  Plato was trying to describe the state in which we are and we don't realize it.  And then he said, suppose that those people then take away their chains and take them out into the open to show them that the grass is green and the sun is blue, the sky is blue.  and they are so dazzled by the light that they can't see anything.  and they prefer to return to the cave because at least they can see something.  So that's the state of many of us.  We are not familiar with reality, and therefore, we feel more secure in our little space.  the condition of most people.  But then Plato goes on to say that, now of course, if they were to get used to the light of the sun gradually they would see that it is much better than the shadows.  

And that's what we are doing.  We're working with light.  So what we are doing this morning,we are descending from, let's say there are two poles of our being, what we call God let's say we are coexistensive with the divine being, and then the personal pole of our being.  and we are trying to experience the descent and how our consciousness is being limited by our notion of our individual self, in order to be able to adapt ourselves to our existential condition of course.  So how does that translate in terms of light.  Well now the Sufis have a concept which well says exactly what (inaudible ) but they wouldn't use the same words.  They distinguish the light that sees from the light that can be seen.  

And so what we know of light is what we call the light that can be seen, but we are not aware of the light whereby we can see what can be seen.  And the Sufis call it the light of intelligence.  So there's that transit between the light of our aura , and that's the kind of practice we were doing all these years, working with the aura, drawing in light from the environment, emitting light and so on.  Then, if you remember we started getting in touch with the light from within, that emerges from within, and which Pir-o-Murshid calls the all-pervading light.  Which is a different concept of light than the one that we generally have.  Most people don't understand what does Pir-o-Murshid mean by the all-pervading light. 

so its just a word until one has experienced that.  now in terms of physics, I think, I don't know, you see, I think it's probably what physicists call the light field.  Because in the field everything is inside everything else, it's all intermingled.   that's what all-pervading light is.  It's not radiant light.   and Ibn Arabi says that very clearly.  the Sufis make a difference between radiant light which is radiated from a source which is located in space, and then all-pervading light.  and we are going to work with those different types of light. 

but for the time being I'm trying to stick to what we have in mind, and that is if you can experience, you remember that I said this morning that our memory has been interrupted at the moment of birth and conception.  and yet it is still there in the unconscious, and so if you can try and recover the memory of not having a body, not even having an aura, but being a pure light intelligence.  And that light intelligence is so impersonal or nonindividuated, that universal, let's say, that that's what we mean by the light of God. and then in the descent then the light of intelligence begins to manifest in a physical way.  you see when Pir-o-Murshid says consciousness awakening in matter, well its intelligence, which is the light, the light of intelligence.  It's nonphysical light.  so that, you see, if you can, of course, we have to do this, this is very advanced.  

This is Murshid's teaching.  intelligence becomes consciousness when facing an object.  And what we know of intelligence is when it is functioning as consciousness, because we are picking up information that is acquired knowledge, but intelligence is not acquired.  it is inborn.  And therefore, it is revealed rather than acquired. it is revealed.  it is under a veil.  it is inherent.  it is under a veil, and then one can awaken it,   unveil it, but you can't actually, I'm sorry, you can't really unveil it.  it is unveiled to you in the measure in which you cannot rely upon your consciousness.  And the measure in which you cannot rely upon  acquired knowledge, then that higher knowledge will be revealed to you.  

And so Murshid says intelligence casts its light upon things and describes it as the lamp of Alladin because what we are experiencing, acquired knowledge, to start with, it is, we are perceiving objects in the world that are illuminated by the sun or whatever, a candle or whatever, electricity.  We are not aware of the light of our glance.  Our glance.  And so the secret of having some sense of what is meant by the light of intelligence is by working with our glance.  And that is the practice that we have been doing, and I've been teaching.  

Let's do it now.  You see, with your eyes open, now you're picking up information that rays of light of the environment are passing, are effecting your retina, right through the cornea, and then along the optic nerves, and beginning to build up in your brain cells.  So that is how we proceed.  now if you close your eyes, so as Pir-o-Murshid says, when consciousness is generally directed outwards, but if you put something that blocks consciousness from turning outside then it will about turn and turn within.  And then you will notice that there is a light that emerges from within, and that you cast forward, but that light is much weaker than the light that you, that glows, the light that you pick up from the environment.  

So normally one isn't aware of it.  But you can make that light, you can intensify  it.  In fact there is a word of Plotinus who says, to look into the sun, the light of your eyes has to be stronger than the light of the sun.  now one can, well actually he says you have to have eyes like the sun, but a Sufi says the light in your eyes has to be stronger than the sun.  so, that is a practice that I recommend everyone to do every day.  Even if it is for five minutes. It's just a matter of thinking of it.  

Close your eyes.  now think that there is a light that is emerging from within that Murshid calls the all-pervading light and which is cast forward through your retina and, well its not, because otherwise you would, our body cells are simply boomeranging back the light that we picked up from the environment and we call the aura, and now this is self-generated, and of course it is a new dispensation of light that will add itself to the light that you absorb from the environment.  It's a different light, and what Ibn Arabi is saying, and it confirms what Murshid means, that light, the all-pervading light passes through the radiant light.  Just like the River Rhone passes through the Lake of Geneva.  The light that passes through light.  

And the way to do it, it is a method, a skill.  That is to imagine that the all-pervading light is threaded through your optic nerves and your retina as violet light.  Ultraviolet. Lets say high frequency.  And as you know, high-frequency light can pass through walls and so on.  So it can pass through, you're the light that you pick up from the environment, imagine that the light that you pick up from the environment through your eyes is blue and so the violet light emerging from within, the all-pervading light, passes through your glance.  That violet light grasps that which transpires behind that which appears, so as though you had two superimposed photographs for example, or in a hologram you could have two images, and you could toggle between the two.  so you could do that.  I've done that.  It's very interesting to toggle between the two.   

So, for example you open your eyes and if you keep concentrating on the beams of light, violet light, actually it's really a beam of the third eye that is divided, passing through the beams, the blue beams of the eyes.  Ok, so if you concentrate on those two beams of light, you can't see objects at all.  You just, your glance is just cast forward.  You can't see anything.  Everything seems like a blur.  

And now you can shift your glance so that you just use your eyes in the ordinary way.  so now you have the blue light coming through your eyes and now and again you shift, and now you project violet light, and so you have two images, when you have blue, for example if you had a person in front of you or a flower or, yeah, a flower, if you are using, if your functioning, if it is your consciousness that is functioning,  then you would see the flower, you would see the colors of the flower, you would see the contours of the petals, and so on, and if you shift and think of your glance as being cast upon the flower instead of picking up the light from the flower, then you see another image behind the flower and that is that which transpires behind that which appears.  Now if you do that with a person, then you can see the real countenance of that person behind their face, and it is much more real than the face.  The face doesn't always allow very much of the expression to come through.  

Now that is only a preparation because one has a feeling that the all-pervading light emerges from the solar plexus.   It is very difficult then to see how it can go through the glance, but now the next stage is the light of intelligence.  And the light of intelligence is not the same thing as the all-pervading light.  There's no color, there's no rays.   you see, what Pir-o-Murshid is saying is that we are instrumental in transforming the all-pervading light into radiant light.  We are instrumental in transforming the all-pervading light into radiant light.  And he says that is what the stars are doing, and that is confirmed by the physicists today, of course.  They are transposing the light of let's say the light as a wave interference pattern into light which one could call a string of photons.  

I'm talking physics.  You understand that that's what baffles the scientists, is that depending upon the experiment a light acts as though it were made of particles, photons, and then in (inaudible) experiments it functions as waves, as radio waves.   And it shows that we can't really get to the bottom of it because we are limited by our views.  We stalk light beyond those expressions implicate/explicate as Dr. David Boehm says.  then you get into the light of intelligence. if you stalk light beyond its physical expression you have a grasp of what we mean by the light of intelligence.  

And that is the secret of that sura of the Koran, a light upon a light.  A light upon a light.  The light of intelligence will brighten your aura.  The light of intelligence will brighten your aura.  And we have a very good example of it.  For example, a mother shows her child a little puzzle and she says, can you see the pixie in the tree?  no mommy I can't see it.  look again.  no mommy, I can't see it.  Look again.  All of a sudden the child sees it, and the whole face of the child begins to radiate light.  You can see the effect of the light of intelligence upon the aura.  So it is the light of intelligence that will give you insight into problems, whereas what we are doing with our problems is that we are trying to sort them out with our consciousness instead of our intelligence.  That is we are perceiving them instead of unveiling them.  The light of intelligence has the effect of unveiling.  

So lets do that.  Lets imagine that at the beginning of time that you are pure luminous intelligence and it is no use just trying to imagine it.  The thing is, could you just now, because you are still now what you were then.  Now, you see the way to do it is to think that you are your realization.  You are, everyone is according to their realization.  so that is the light of intelligence.  Your insight into things.  So some people's intelligence is rather blunted, and in others it is awakened, and awakening, one could say awakening, illumination is the awakening of the light of intelligence.  And that is you cast your light upon things, you are not receptive to impressions.  You cast your light upon  the light of intelligence, just exactly as we cast the light of our glance upon things, now we cast the light of intelligence upon things.  

And now you see what is enacted behind the appearance.  And let us say that the whole universe is awakening in your intelligence.  In the existential state.  So actually I said your intelligence but that is the most impersonal aspect of one's being.  It's so coexistensive with the intelligence of all beings and with the intelligence of the universe that you can't say it's my intelligence,  you can say my consciousness because consciousness is being focalized in individual concepts of ourselves in self-image.  But intelligence cannot be fragmented.  So that, you see, if you acquire knowledge you are in your personal identity.  

And there is no way to touch upon intelligence until you see yourself as a condition of God, as Pir-o-Murshid says, and then intelligence will start burning bright and as I said you don't rely upon consciousness anymore because your insight is so vivid that you don't need that.  But on the other hand, in order to be able to make use of that insight then as Murshid says you have to ally or combine the acquired knowledge with revealed knowledge.  That is what Pir-o-Murshid calls wisdom.  So in that case you are thinking of knowledge that you have acquired but you don't rely totally upon it, because you can see further.  You can see what transpires beyond that which appears.  

We are used to of course relying upon our consciousness, upon acquired knowledge and if you meditate that is what you are going to be into. you are going to be thinking about circumstances and perhaps even assessing circumstances and therefore it is acquired knowledge,  and if one does that one is turning around in circles.  It is totally counterproductive.  You keep on thinking the same old things.  So it means really downplaying what you know.  That's what St John of the Cross called the dark night of the soul, of course.  That's why Ibn Arabi says knowledge is a veil, no, the known is a veil on knowledge, the known, no it is the other way around.  Knowledge is a veil upon the known.  So it is like getting rid of your crutches and applying yourself without any support for your understanding and depending upon knowledge being revealed to you.  

And you can't bargain with God, so you gave up your knowledge and it is not revealed to you.  Because it is only revealed according to one's measure of understanding.  So there you are waiting and that is the condition of Niffari.  Niffari is a wonderful dervish who speaks about waiting.  Waiting on the threshold.  Waiting.  This is a very difficult thing, to have patience and wait.  But it is because one feels like bargaining.  I'm prepared to give up my applied knowledge  as long as you God will reveal it to me.  And of course you can't bargain with God and so it doesn't happen that way.  

Now perhaps at this stage, we still have a little time, perhaps we could branch off to a continuation of what we did this morning, working with awakening.  I suppose you very will know that it is our objective to awaken in life, and Murshid describes it wonderfully.  I have a passage here where he says it is like being awake amongst people who are asleep, and you can see they are asleep, they have no idea what is happening and you are awake and you see it, awakening in life.  

But how do you awaken in life.  And so it is true that it is easier to awaken beyond life before one awakens in life, and it is true that we would like to be able to enjoy circumstances favorable to awakening, like if you have to answer the phone, and people are coming to visit you, and babies screaming, and you haven't paid your car insurance, then it is very difficult to meditate.  So Pir-o-Murshid does say you need to create peaceful circumstances.  At least it is easier. Otherwise it really is very difficult.  And it is not just the outer circumstances.  Much more important is finding peace within ourselves, because I say that if you meditate then the impression of the daily circumstances keep on repeating on you on your psyche, so you're not in peace anyway.  So its not by going somewhere and sitting in peace.  in a situation that is favorable to peace it doesn't follow that you are going to find peace.  

So we are pulled in two directions.  One is our need to involve ourselves with life, with people, with circumstances, to achieve something to fulfill something in life, and the other one is our need for freedom.  And so now we are opening up a whole new chapter in our work, in our process, that we might call, the Buddhists call it (nana daschana) and it means observing yourself objectively.  Now of course in Buddhism it starts by observing the body, and observing the mind , observing the emotions, and so on , observing your personality.  Pir-o-Murshid says its observing your motivations.  So we call that muhasabi.  why am I doing what I am doing.  Actually it is a test of truth.  You have to be very truthful with yourself.  Why am I doing what I am doing.  Does that lead to what I value in my life.  There is some kind of inconsistency and of course its true that by the force of circumstance one has to have a job, and a family, and there is all that life involves in our modern civilizations.  

The Hindus, the yogis solve these questions by simply saying right well you have to decide.  Either you are a householder and then you have all the responsibility and the hassle of life or then you become a sannyasin and then you can devote your life towards awakening.  But the people who are grinding the mill can never attain illumination, or that is the assumption.  Now we are living in a world in which we need to attain illumination in life.  It is much more difficult, but still we need to have those moments in our life that we call meditation where we are able to shift into a different dimension, a totally different attunement at will.  It is very difficult because of our condition.  so one thing is that we suffer from being conditioned and we need freedom.  We long for freedom.  It is not, we think it is freedom from circumstance, it is much more freedom from our way of thinking and freedom from our emotional dependence upon people, freedom from our self-image, freedom from our consciousness,...

(end of side one)


(beginning of side two)
...motive, freedom, areas in which we can develop freedom.  But we are pulled in two directions.  If we pursue involvement, then we will expect joy and pain.  If we pursue freedom, we will experience freedom.  We will experience peace.  So it is a question of deciding whether we value peace more or the excitement of joy and pain, the price of pain.  Or is it possible to reconcile these two?  Well if you shift into the meditative mode, then of course, it is true that the attunement of peace is the only thing that will enable you to have a perspective upon your person.  Otherwise, one is so involved in things that one can't see oneself, one has lost sight of what is happening.  So it is better to call a halt.  

So there's a, Buddha gives a very wonderful illustration of this.  I think sometimes it is good to have a model.  He is sitting in the middle of a storm, and where he sits, he sits in the middle of a storm, and you know the middle of a hurricane is the core of a hurricane is a vacuum.  So he is sitting in that peaceful state in the middle of a storm, that's a wonderful model if you are meditating.  Like you are meditating in an apartment in New York.  There's a lot of hustle and bustle in the streets.  You can hear police cars and ambulances and people shooting each other.  All kinds of things happening.  Telephone.  People shouting.  And there you are sitting in peace in the middle of it all, because it is just too great a luxury to come to the Abode and make a retreat in the forest.  So you have to do it right there.  And that's a way of thinking.  So the impressions of the world are trying to grab your attention, and you want to be peaceful, but they are stronger than you, and so how can you be peaceful.  

Now the method used in yoga is to simply to consider the impressions of the world are simply maya, illusion, and so they are not important, because they are illusion, they are deluding.  That, I think that is really putting one's head in the sand.  It is not recognizing all the tremendous values that are achieved in life.  So the only way to do it is to, well, two methods, or rather, two stages.  The first one is that you, and they call upon the alchemical process.  The first one is that you reject impressions that are damaging to you.  Now you know that the body will reject an organ that is transplanted if it doesn't correspond to the DNA of the body.  The immune system is based upon me or not me.  A sense of me or not me that the body has.  Our psyche.  

Now there is a second immune system.  Which adapts itself to the environment otherwise we wouldn't be able to eat.  And of course, you know that we are enriching ourselves all the time by the impressions from the outside world, but we suffer from indigestion.  The second immune system takes over and seems to decrease the faculty of rejecting impressions.  So it is a clear sense of who you are that is going to help you reject the impressions that you can't digest.  

Now that is very important because you know that Rudolph Steiner accused eastern mystics of highlighting the impersonal dimension of one's being and at the cost of one's individuality.  And in psychotherapy for example one has to have a strong sense of one's self before one can reach into the higher dimensions of one's self.  In fact there is a word of Murshid's here that says, he is talking about renunciation.  He said, what can you face if you don't have something to face.  You have to have a strong personality to start with.  

That is something that you find in Sufism, the importance of our idiosyncrasies.  And even there is a saying of Murshid that says this poignantly when he says, yes it is all one being, unity behind it all but still man has a mind of his own.  A contradiction.  I know, and the fact is the only things that are really true are contradictory.  It's a further development, mode of thinking, reconciling the irreconciliables.  In fact, Hallaj, who's a Sufi, who was asked how can we define Sufism, and he says by reconciling the irreconciliables.  For example, Ibn Arabi says, know whereby you are God, and know whereby you are not God, and so how can you reconcile those two things.  It is a different mode of thinking.  

So what we want to do now is have a clear sense of who we are.  For example, I prefer Bach to rock'n'roll. Now some people prefer rock'n'roll to Bach.  So I have a clear sense of who I am with regard to music and the stronger you have a sense of yourself the more you are protected against invasive, intrusive impressions from the outside world which can be damaging to you.  Now on the other hand, the second immune system represents a further evolution and that is the ability to digest impressions that otherwise would be indigestible.  And how does one do it?  By transmuting impressions, so that is the second stage in the alchemical process which is called distillation.  

To transmute.  So you have a gross impression and you transmute it, and that is what the body is doing with food.  The body rejects the food that can't be digested and the rest of the food is passed through a  process of transmutation.  you know the food is ordained into amino acid chains that correspond to the DNA of the body.  So there is the action of the body upon the food.  And so when you are meditating, think of the action of your being upon the impressions rather than simply being subjected to the impressions.  

Because it is your being that sets order in the impressions.  Otherwise, the impressions will take a hold of you and your lost, you've lost the sense of who you are.  Now the sense of who one is is based upon what your values are.  So this first meditation consists in, let's do that now.

Ask yourself, if you could just make a priority list of things that you value, think well I value this and that, but then I value this more and oh yeah there is something that I value even more, that is much more important.  And so on.  Those are things that you value.

So the things that you value are where you are at.  Each person according to their level of evolution.  And now if you will try to match your values with your motivations in life and ask yourself if your motivations to doing what you are doing match the values that you pay lip-service to.  And here we have the real challenge.  Because it is true that awakening is transpersonal.  So if one is still pursuing, you know Pir-o-Murshid makes a difference between need and greed.  And if one is pursuing with what we might call concupiscence then one isn't free to attain awakening.  

Now that is a very ambiguous question that Murshid answers very clearly.  And it is important for us to very clear as to what Murshid says about it.  It's a question some of the young adults are asking.  Does it mean that one has to sort of give up life if one wants to follow the spiritual path.  You know that is the kind of question that people ask, especially young people.  They have their life before them, and what am I going to do with my life?  And so on.  And you can see that if one has a sense that one is lacking in insight, I mean, that one would like to know more.  To understand the meaning of life more.  And if just grinding the mill is not going to help you understand the meaning of life, then the need for understanding it becomes so urgent, you think, well what does it mean, does it mean that I give up life in the world.  And the simplistic solutions that you find amongst the sannyasins in India.  As I said it is a little more difficult in our modern civilization.  So Murshid is very clear about it.

Well that is the problem with time.  You have these texts but I've chosen them particularly.  he who arrives at the state of indifference without experiencing interest in life is incomplete, and apt to be tempted by interest in any moment, but he who arrives at the state of indifference by going through interest really attains the blessed state.  Indifference gives great power, but the whole manifestation is a phenomena of interest.  All this world that man has made.  Where does it come from.  Does it come from the power of interest.  The whole creation, all that is in it, are the products of the creator's interest.  At the same time, the power of indifference is a greater one still.  You can achieve something more challenging so your motivation is helpful to you to help you achieve something but the thing is to be able to introduce freedom in involvement.  That is another dimension, and it doesn't seem possible, but of course, it is.

Murshid says it very clearly.  I think we will just have to tide this over to the next meeting.  You have those texts but I think we have to look into them, and I want to respect the timetable.  So a few interesting things.  You know, Rumi says the thousands of wines that can take over our minds, be a connoisseur.  And Hafiz says be careful of counterfeit coins.  Pir-o-Murshid, unhappy is he who looks with contempt on the world, who hates human beings and thinks he is a superior to them.  The one who loves them thinks only that they are going through the same process that he is going through himself.  When he cannot put up with conditions around him he may think he is a superior person, but in reality the circumstances are stronger than him, so he must be careful about this thought of having contempt for this rather degenerate person.  Perhaps well we could pursue this further.  I forget now what it was, whether it was Jami or (inaudible) who said this, dare you possess without being possessed by what you possess.  

Now it is very important in terms of our emotional dependence because that is where people come to grief all the time and end up in the consultation room of psychotherapist.  It is a very trite saying of Murshid,  all that produces longing in the heart deprives it of its freedom.  It is a hard one.  Of course, it is true.  So it depends upon how much you value freedom and how much you value whatever you are longing for, and I think it is just a process of maturation,  one goes through developmental stages and gradually one finds if one does, of course, one finds freedom, and those are the only conditions in which one can attain awakening.  So it just depends upon how important awakening is for you.  For me it is the most important thing in the world.  That is what it is all about.  

So in our worldly life, I think this word indifference is not quite the right translation, but, of the word vairagya in India, but I think that, no, it is a safety or safeguard in one's emotional involvement with people to be able to find some kind of detachment, and I don't want to use, I think the word is independence rather than indifference, independence, not being addicted, that is what independence means.  And what Pir-o-Murshid is saying is that all the great sages have sought independence.  So I think we will have to follow this up a little bit, because now we are running out of time.  

God bless you.

AUG 10, 1998  Tape 09



AUG 09, 1998		Tape 04


As you know, the method that we are following is that the basis of our experience is meditation. Then we try to throw light on what's happening by calling upon the teachings. 

So let's start by a silent meditation for just two or three minutes and see what's happening. So you see that unless one is applying the teaching, in fact the skills that enable one to shift one's consciousness from the middle range, all kind of random thoughts are going to crowd into your mind uncontrollably and impromptu without any seeming connection. And one is going to be conscious of oneself sitting there trying to meditate, some body consciousness and some conscious of the environment. And then there is an emotional background, an attunement. And there you are stuck in a perspective. Trapped in a perspective. 

So what we want to do is to free ourselves from what Pir O Murshid calls the limitation which we looked at yesterday morning. You might say we made a few first steps. One would be like rejecting impressions that are deleterious to your being. That was the first stage in alchemy. It's called filtering. So one places sentinels at the doors of perception. And one rejects certain impressions. And of course, you can't reject them with your will. The only way you can do it is to have a very strong sense of "who I am, of me". What do we mean by "who I am"? Your sense of values will give you a sense of who you are. And see how your motivations tally with your values. 

Now there is a very concrete way of dealing with this sense of "who I am". That is by dent of form. The form of that transpires behind that which appears. That means the form of your countenance behind your face. In fact, it is let's say the continuity in change in the depths of your being, the (Arian thread). It's that which you, it's very difficult to define it because it's not one's eternal being. It's one's everlasting being. 

So what I suggest is this. To get a sense of who you are. That's what we're working with now. It's only a first step. There are further steps. That is to realize that in fact one is playing a role in life. And one is so much into it that one forgets who one is. As Murshid says, the king thinks he is a king because people call him Majesty. Or a guru thinks he is a guru because people have reverence for him or her. It's a role. It's not really what you are. It's a role you're playing. A business man with his top hat thinks he is a business man. The artist thinks he is an artist and so on. That's part of that quest for freedom, freedom from the image. 

To be more concrete try to grasp your countenance behind your face. That's what I said yesterday you could see if you cast your glance forth instead of being receptive to the impressions. So it's something that you can do if you just think that you are wearing a mask. And that mask is made from the fabric of the planet. It has been molded in the course of time by your ancestors, and which is something that has accrued to your being. But it's not really you. What we want to do is to get into the depth of our being below that surface, and also the environment. There is some osmosis with the environment. It does effect our face, as a matter of fact our form. So it is a periphery of our psyche in which is a spillover with the environment. If you go into the depth you find the real "me". And it is that sense of me that is going to help you to reject the unwanted impressions. 

So can you do that? Try to grasp your real countenance. It's an evanescent form which does change according to your thoughts and your attunement. But there is some (arien) thread running through those changes. And when you come upon it, it's like a shock. You say, "Ah this is me. This is my real being". 

Be careful about wishful thinking or modeling yourself on a guru or teacher, master saint or prophet. It's you irrespective of your inheritance that has been handed down through your ancestors and irrespective of the environment. And it changes according to your attunement. There is something basic in it that is you. Maybe one could say that it is many tiered. In the depths it is immaculate. It can never be sullied by the impressions of the environment or one's actions. The defilement due to one's actions leaves a mark at the surface, but at the depths everything is resorbed into the purity of the void, the essence. So you distinguish that deep core of your being that is say the child in you that is innocent and represents the celestial spheres. 

And at the surface there is spillover with the environment, there is resentment, there is dissatisfaction, there's a cantankerous nature, there is anger and so on, suffering again. In between you have many layers. Actually what we're doing is turning within. So if you place sentinels at the doors of perception, then you are eliminating the spillover from the environment so that you are able to get into your genuine self. Then you still have those areas that have been damaged. The damage can be reversed. Then you get into a sense of 'who is me' not the essence. It is really, actually we're talking about form. But we're talking    About two things because according to the Sufis qualities, our idiosyncrasies are also forms. For the time being we are talking about the countenance. That means a physical subtle form which does not have boundary, does not have a profile. But still it's a kind of configuration like the photos of Walter Chappell. Then superimposed upon that we have our personality which is a composition of qualities, like a musical composition with different themes which is also a form, a more subtle form. But it is definitely a configuration. And you see the reciprocal action of the two upon each other. So that's the first step.

And the second step we do to enforce the impact of your real being upon your apparent being and eventually upon the situations in which you find yourself in life. To identify with that deeper subtle image of yourself instead of identifying with the apparent, your face or your body or your apparent personality which is not reliable. It's just secondary. It's just the way that things are manifesting at the surface. It is that which appears not that which transpires. From the moment that you identify with your real being, your whole personality changes. And it reflects immediately upon the circumstances, upon your relationship with people. That is what establishes the circumstance or sets up the circumstances.

So this is what we said yesterday, the breakthrough in meditation is when instead of regurgitating the impressions from the environment, your problems, you about turn and get in touch with spontaneous creative thoughts that emerge from within. But that needs to have some kind of support, underpinning. So this real picture of yourself will open up a whole new vision, a whole new field of realization. As a consequence these creative thoughts will start surfacing, in fact erupting. Then you can see how they alter the environment. 

In the past we've been working with turning within. And it was downplaying the environment. The danger is finding yourself encapsulated inside. Now we have to think of reaching out from inside. As Dr. David Boehm says, the implicate state is the primary reality. The explicate state is secondary. 

You see, that is evidence of one's freedom from conditioning. When you are meditating and thinking about your problems, you are still conditioned. You are not free. And here that clear sense of yourself is absolutely free. Remember the words of Murshid when talking about unity. And he said, "Yes, man has a mind of his own". 

That is what is gained by the existential state is that the divine reality has proliferated to the extent that it has become enriched. It's like a musical theme when musicians compose variations on the theme. So there is something gained by it. Better still if you have a theme and you have musicians improvising. So each musician is making something out of the theme with his own personal initiative which carries the hallmark of their being. That's freedom. 

If you're regurgitating the problems of the past such as they are manifest in the present, you're living in the past. And if you're turning from within towards outside, you're anticipating the future. This is to be found in the words of a physicist called Euler who said, "The pull of the future is stronger than the pull of the past". That is the clue in meditation. Otherwise you're in the samsaric wheel. One is always doing the same old thing. One doesn't know why but one is conditioned. One suffers because one feels that one is not free. There is such a need for freedom. And so freedom is to be found in creativity, in imagining how things could be if they would be as they might be. Always looking into the future. Not being tied up in the past. 

OK. Remember the words of Murshid, "When you're looking outside, then you're like a bubble in the sea. But when you turn within, the sea is in the bubble". When we're turning within it's not introspection. It's really getting in touch with the totality from inside, the inner lining where everything is interrelated, intermeshed. If you introspect and try to observe your thoughts, then you're stuck in a vicious circle. And the clue to that is to be found in the words of St. Francis of Assisi who said, "I thought I was looking at the world, but the world was looking at me". That's a clue. The cosmic dimension is not expanding your consciousness as we have done in the past. It starts by that. Eventually it is seeing yourself from the vantage point of other people and eventually the whole Universe. 

So you know the steps towards this. First of all you try to get into the consciousness of person. Start by trying to get into the consciousness of a person who is close to you. It's not telepathy. It's not trying to read their thoughts. It's really trying to experience what it would be like to be that person. As you know the attunement of that person varies. It keeps on changing. So we have that ability. Then get in the consciousness of a person who is inimical to you. That's a very good skill to be used in psychotherapy. Get into the consciousness of a person who has done you harm. It doesn't mean you condone what they did. But you understand it better. People are as they are. You can't blame them for what they are. If a tiger bites you, you don't blame the tiger. That's the nature of a tiger to bite you. You don't have resentment. It would be stupid to have resentment against a tiger who bites you. So that's part of your freedom. You're able to see,"That's where they're at. I'm sorry they chose me as a victim. I would rather they had chosen someone else". So turning within, you reach out instead of being encapsulated. You reach out from within. Then you can reach into the consciousness of animals and plants and well masters, saints and prophets, and angels. 

The thing is that when one turns within, it's a totally different mode of experiencing than when you're turned without. If you're turned without, then you're the subject experiencing other than yourself. When you turned within, you are discovering yourself within another. In fact it is based upon resonance rather than otherness. Like a piano and a harp when tuned to the same pitch. When you play the cords of one, the other ones resonate in sympathy. Affinity resonates. You have affinity with a person that you harm. That's where you meet. So you understand them because you have the same in you. 

Eventually you've reached that point which St. Francis talked about. I missed a point. That is if you get into the consciousness of another yourself, then you can see how you look from the point of view of that person. If it's your enemy, of course you are convinced that they are misassessing who you are. But you're missassessing yourself anyway. So perhaps there is some truth in both of them. It's better to have two eyes than one. People who he presumes knew him at the time, each one had a totally different impression which together built a picture. The impressions that people have of you do give you some clue as to your being and frees you from the limited self image that you make of yourself. 

So let's say that that is cosmic consciousness. Pir O Murshid says one is as wide as ones consciousness, that consciousness can be as limited as a lentil as wide as the horizon. In fact the horizon is God. We started by that. However we got limited. And now we are trying to recover the whole gamut of the extent of our being. Now here we come across a paradox. In fact, we keep on coming across paradoxes. That is that on one hand we think I said the Universe. You say God. God and us. So God looks at himself and so on. On the other hand we are saying that that is a dimension of our being. It's the ultimate dimension of our being. So that is paradoxical. The reason for the paradox is that it just depends upon your perspective or your realization. 

These were preparatory steps to try to get you out of the rut of sitting there and being bugged by all these random thoughts and also being devastated by emotions that can become very imperative, very compelling. 

Now this is really the breakthrough. That is that we cannot understand things from our own point of view. What I mean is that that pole of our being that we call an individual. That is the secret of Sufism that we have to include the antipodal point of view to our personal point of view. Call it divine point of view. So the two ends of the pendulum. That is a breakthrough. And that is the difference between what Sufism has to offer and what we find in at least the early Yoga. In that sense Sufism and Vedanta are the same. Because if you try to reach samadhi, that is to awaken beyond your own personal vantage point, you're using your individual will which limits your outreach. So you can't reach beyond yourself by trying to do it with your will. That's a conundrum in the whole thing. And if you do it, then you get into a state of trance. That's what Buddha accused his teachers of was in the name of samadhi just getting into a state of trance. And developing (cidis) which means powers and so on, which is really astral flight, or ability to influence people by one's will which is a very dangerous thing. 

So this is a breakthrough. How can you see things from the divine point of view? There are steps. This is what we want to investigate, what those steps are, what those skills are, how we get to that point. It seems like impossible. Well we already have prepared our minds for that because what the Sufis are saying is the existential world is made of devices or clues as to the reality behind it. For example, you consider your problems, you can consider your problems as being clues. It gives you a sense as to what is being enacted behind those problems. Otherwise if you're just considering the facts of the problems, you're just turning around in circles. That's where most people are at. That's why psychotherapists are meeting people turning around in circles, caught in their minds. What they call a vicious circle. 

Let's try a sequence of thoughts here. First of all the world is not Maya but is made of clues which give you a sense of what is behind the clues. The pug marks of a bear lead you to the bear. Tawill, leads you to the bear. Devices. Like Speilberg used devices in the film ET. They were devices in order to convey his intention. Imagine God using devices in order to reveal to you His/Her intention. And if you just get stuck in what is happening, then you don't see what the intention is behind it. Of course that intention is beyond our understanding. Very paradoxical. How do you get to it? Because how can we think otherwise than using our understanding? 

Remember the next thought was that these clues are transparent. That is that something transpires behind that which appears. So the countenance transpires behind the face. And what transpires behind your problems is that which is enacted in the problem. To be more concrete it is maybe - I'm using simplistic language - God is trying to draw your attention to something that you didn't see. Your problem is just drawing your attention to something that by seeing would unfurl your qualities, would trigger off the unfurling of your qualities. So you're stuck there. Then if you see that there was some intention behind that problem, then at least it served a purpose. Otherwise it's counterproductive. That clue is really a quality. Your attention is drawn to a certain quality that you have not developed sufficiently. And the quality is the key to meeting the problem. 

A very typical thought that we've all had and I've had it for a long time, I tend to have it when I'm rather tired. That is to think that if only circumstances would be more favorable, I could attain illumination. The fact is, yes if the circumstances were more favorable, you could get into samadhi. But you couldn't awaken into life. So maybe it's good to have to deal with stress because stress makes you strong. There could be over stress I agree. That's what we're complaining about. A little more favorable because it really is very hard. As Shahabuddin says, it's a famous saying that I keep on repeating, "The support system takes over". It's like when you're trying to climb a high peak, Anapurana, in the Himalayas. And you've spent so much energy in the base camps that there is not enough energy to reach the top. That's what we're doing in our lives. Maybe you have to have some base but not to such an extent that you don't have enough energy to reach the top. OK well that was a diversion. 

Now the next thought is that in fact if you try to look at things from the antipodal point of view, then you touch upon this idea. It's not yet very clear. You see the idea of the archetype and the exemplar. Let's say that you discover first of all the objects in the world. And exemplars of the archetype behind them, let's say the software behind the hardware. For example, flowers that you admire are the exemplars of that archetype which is the splendor behind the form. The archetype does not have a form. The reality behind everything is formless. 

But there is a difference between the reality and the real. Sometimes one confuses those two words. The reality is beyond form. But the very wonder of creation is that that which does not have a form does manifest as a form. Let's say that that form serves as a clue which is a device. So what is the clue now? In the words of Ibn Arabi, "God describes Himself to us as our selves". So if you look at it from the antipodal point of view instead of your own point of view, try to see from the divine point of view, God is disclosing His being, which is beyond from by the only kind of device that is meaningful to you in the beginning, and that is by form. First there is the form of your subtle body. Then the form of your personality. Those forms are exemplars of archetypes. And those archetypes are exactly what we're invoking in our wasifas. Those are the Isma Illahe. The names of God. 

So if you see it from that point of view, you don't know God but God is describing Him/Herself through yourself, well through the world but also through yourself. What's much more interesting for us is in our idiosyncrasies are somehow the exemplars of the divine archetype which we invoke by invoking the names of God at that level we call Lahut. So let's say the archetype is known to some extent through the exemplar. Splendor is known through beauty. That's the only way at first that we can have any sense of what we mean by splendor is that at least here you have an exemplification of it in a beautiful flower or crystal or beautiful person, whatever. 

Then what defines this, what Hallaj said is that Sufism is the reconciliation of antinomic affirmations so that you always have the two opposite. I don't know whether Ibn Arabi was a Gemini because he always saw things from two vantage points at the same time. You could ask yourself well how could you know God? Well some clue is given to you through the exemplars. 

Then you have the opposite which is a real quantum leap. Ibn Arabi says, "Since the ephemeral manifests the eternal, it is by the knowledge of the eternal that you understand the ephemeral". So it's all of a sudden a quantum leap. You turn around and try and see things from the divine point of view. Then we have a whole series of views that if you try to see the other way around to your personal vantage point, there are several stages there. The antinomy between the reality and the real, between the archetype and the exemplar, behind the divine intention and manifestation. 

So if you try and look at things from the divine point of view, God is disclosing Him/Herself to you by you. So it's not just God who is describing Him/Herself to you by your nature and you body. But He is disclosing Him/Herself to you through your personality, you body, subtle body. 

Yesterday we talked about revealed knowledge instead of acquired knowledge. So if you're in your personal consciousness you try to accumulate knowledge. Now we're talking about another dimension in which knowledge is revealed to you by that which is tenable within you which is the form of your body or that which transpires behind the form of your face, your countenance, and of course your personality. 

Can we do that? Can you try and see that the whole of life is a kind of disclosure? And it's because we can't grasp things in the first place. We need to go through that process of disclosure. Like a child, a baby doesn't understand what's happening. Life reveals itself to that child as it grows up. Can you just imagine that if you're stuck in your personal vantage point you can't reach very much understanding. But just imagine that the whole universe is disclosing its marvel to you. That is called the lifting of the veil. So it is veiled. That's Ya Batin. It is veiled. And there is an action of God or the Universe upon you instead of thinking of your action upon the Universe. 

According to the Sufis, we are protected by that veil, by our ignorance. I think it was Nafari who said, "If He were to reveal His being, you would be so shattered that you wouldn't be able to stand it". So He is protecting by what Bastami calls those effigies or shadows. But the shadow does convey the shape of that which it is the shadow and therefore does give clues. In fact your shadow is inseparable of your being. So it's not other than you. That's important in psychotherapy. The word shadow is used by Jung. If you don't face your shadow, it will come to you in the form of your fate. So it is a part of you. It changes as you change. According to Islam, the Prophet didn't have a shadow. If the sun is at the zenith, then you don't have a shadow. Now as I said before, that is the secret of intuition. But you have to be very careful that you're not indulging in wishful thinking. God revealed this to me and that to me and so on. Therefore Ibn Arabi says, "God reveals Himself to you in the measure of your capacity". And you're protected by the veil. 

There is a word of al-Julani who said, "For those who cannot stand the brightness of my light, I've created shadows as a protection. And for those who cannot stand the solitude of my unity, I've created the world of light as a protection". I think if was Faridoddin Attar who had the story of the kind whose splendor was so great that people were passing out. So he veiled himself in to protect people against the power of his being. I remember my mother saying that my father protected her against the power that came through his being. 

That's what happens especially when you're traveling in the East or Middle East, occasionally you'll have a dervish coming up to you and saying curious things that you can't always understand even if you could understand Persian or Arabic. And what he is doing is he is trying to awaken you and he is using his power. It's a kind of divine power. Because the only way to awaken is to go through the annihilation of that individual pole of one's being because it's very difficult to extrapolate between two poles. So you have to downplay one pole in order to be able to highlight the divine one. Eventually you have to be able to extrapolate between the two. But it's very difficult. 

That's the reason Pir O Murshid says, "Rise above your limitation". And he says, "Loosen the ties with the world". He doesn't say break the ties. If you are a sanyasin in India, then you break the ties with the world. If you become a Monk or a Nun, then you are breaking the ties with the world. In fact you have another name. You're not married any more. You even don't recognize your parents anymore. That's breaking the ties. Pir O Murshid said, "Loosen the ties". That's of course for people in the world. You have to respect your commitments in the world, your engagements with people so you loosen the ties. Perhaps you know the story of the Gordian knot. There was a knot in the village that was so intricately intertwined that there was a legend that if anybody could undo that knot, then they would conquer the world. Alexander went there to try and undo it and he didn't manage. He cut it. And therefore he never conquered the world. That's what we would like to do sometimes, to cut our relationships with people. And if you do that you're losing an opportunity to just unfurl those links very gently. By freeing the person themselves and freeing yourself at the same time. By cutting them there is pain and resentment and all that kind of thing, a sense of abandonment. All those kind of things that lead people to the consultation rooms of psychotherapists. So I have to end here. I don't have a sense of time. It's good for us to break here.

End tape.


AUG 09, 1998		Tape 06

Yes, the practice of the Zikre embodies all the things that we've been working with up to the present. You notice as you go into the circle, the expansion of consciousness. First of all I've got to say this, that there is not much point of simply just repeating the words over and over again. It does something to you. I've done it 22,000 a day sometimes. And it makes you spaced out. But it doesn't necessarily give you awakening unless you really are experiencing the stages that one goes through in the process of awakening. 

The Zikre represents at least four different awakenings. As we've already said, there are several awakenings, in fact more because as you lift your head up, as you go through the different planes you go through another awakening, a further awakening. So, basically to start with as you go into the circle, you do experience an expansion of your being. You do remember that it's not just your consciousness is expanding from your vantage point to a panoramic vantage point. But you are really reaching outside from inside. But at the same time, somehow you are getting into the consciousness of people around you, the masters, saints and prophets, the whole cosmos. We've already said this. And consequently you are being looked at by the God, by the cosmos. These are different ways of looking at the cosmic dimension to what I used to teach in the past. 

Now as you turn within, the head moves towards the solar plexus, then there is a sense of being resorbed in the vacuum. That's fana. And in fact, according to Murshid but I forget exactly what the passage is, when he said that there are two fanas,two annihilations, one in the vastness and the other in the resorption in the center, in the void. And so it's a preliminary condition to rebirthing. According to Islam we are continually reborn at every breath. We are recurrently reborn. And therefore to be a rebirthing, there has to be first a dissolution and then a reinstatement or reconstruction. 

Whether it is just cyclic or not, that is the question. I don't know whether you know, there is a plant. It looks like a very beautiful flower. If you blow    'on it, it disperses. All the little elements fly all over the place. Then if you wait some time and are very still, all those elements will come back and agglomerate again into the flower. It's rather a freak phenomena in nature. So that would be dissolving and rebuilding again. 

But that's not good enough. We need to evolve. That means become better than we were before the dissolution and not just return to the way we were before. That's why the pull of the future is somehow stronger than the push of the past. That's why I consider the motion of the Zikre to be a spiral instead of a circle. So you're describing wider and wider circles in your mind. As long as you're still identifying with your body, you do have an experience. But if you identify with your subtle, or magnetic field or life field, then particularly if you identify with your aura, then the Zikre becomes much more meaningful and revealing to you. So as we've said in the beginning of this   ë course, we place awakening and illumination in tandem. So we want to see how whatever we are doing can be translated in terms of light. And how it will trigger off illumination. 

When we turn within, remember what Murshid said that we will be able to see in the essence. Well he talked about when you turn within, that's where you discover the essence. Whereas outside the periphery, the attributes, the forms and so on. Inside pure essence. That's what we mean by pure spirit. And you remember what he said is that you reach a point when you discover in the seed all the perfume that you will find in the flower. 

So there is a lot of teaching of Murshid regarding the seed. Man is the seed of God in which God can be recreated. Only in man resides that intelligence in which the whole cosmos has been created. So that's what you do. 

Just turning within is not good enough. It would be like withdrawing from the environment and of course withdrawing from circumstances. And that's what we'd like to do. We'd like to find some peace within ourselves. But that is not good enough. What is important is to grasp this condition, fana which is called annihilation or extinction to be able to set forth a new birthing, to trigger off a new birthing. I think that in most people there is a continual emergence of something new, a new dispensation in us. Unless we become aware of what is trying to come through in us, and unless we protect it, and unless we really give it the support of our whole being, it will be stillborn. That's happening all the time. 

So as you know, the next stage after turning within is al - mithal, is where you grasp this little growth, this little seed that's growing now at it's inception just it pokes it head above the snow as the crocuses do. It's very subtle. That's where it is, OK give it all your support. And that support is by the act of imagination. Because creativity is triggered off by imagination. And imagination is the most powerful thing in the world. But we have to make a distinction between the imagination and fantasy or wishful thinking. 

So that's a great secret and it's very important in Sufism, the role of imagination. because it is through imagination that thoughts are configured as forms. And for the Sufis, that which is gained by life is forms. Whereas in the original Yoga, the forms are maya or illusion. But you might notice that the word maya has the same etymology as imagination. Maya, the magi, imagination, image. On one hand we said the forms of the world, well all existential things and also the forms of qualities in our personalities are clues that will give us a sense of what transpires behind what appears. So if we follow the clues, then we start touching upon the reality that can never be a form. I mean reality in itself does not have a form. But it does manifest through us as a form. Or to use a word of the Sufis, "God reveals Him/Herself to us through our own form". And the form is that what transpires behind your face for example. There is a word in the Koran, "All faces are His face. And wherever you turn, you find His face. And everything parishes except His face". So all our faces are the different faces of the one face, the different facets of the one face which is the divine face which is transpiring through our face. In fact, for the Sufis, something is gained by form instead of turning away from it. If you seek samadhi, you want to rise above your consciousness above imagination because imagination is going to construct forms. 

In fact, that is a state. Ibn Arabi talks about a stage in which you wipe out the phantasmal gorea of imagination, of images and then reality will appear. Haqq. God as a reality will appear in the Zikre. So you start with this expansion of consciousness into all the forms of the world including your own. And you turn within and you get into the subtle forms that transpire behind those outer forms. Then you begin to play some part in your creativity. And that's a very important thing that Pir O Murshid says, "God can attain a great degree in his creation. But where the creature participates in His/Her creativity, God can create a greater measure of perfection". I repeat again the Murshid says that man has a mind of his own. So somehow there is Unity but there is diversity within this unity. So one must not underestimate the importance of the individual. 

Of course fana, one thinks that it's the annihilation of one's ego, whatever one means by the ego. It might be one's self image. Or it might be what one means by I the subject. There are two things. It might mean more than one's self image. As I say, it might mean the subject in us, the Shahid as one one says in Islam that says I. But what Murshid says is that it is the shattering of the false ego. I use the word false ego. To comment on it, I think one would have to say it is the false representation that we make of ourselves because ultimately the real ego, as Murshid says, is God. So we're destroying a false notion. That's something that Ibn Arabi says is that in the Zikre that's what you're doing is that you're not annihilating yourself. And if you think you are, you're making a very serious mistake. I think there is some kind of psychological suicide. People have a tendency, one calls it self hate. It is something one doesn't like about oneself. And one would like to get rid of it by a process of annihilation. Whereas in fact it's only the self image that is annihilated not the real self.

So the next stage is of course Malakut. Then as your head starts rising, then one is beginning to grasp one's celestial counterpart rather than one's aura. And that is where one can stalk light beyond its physical expression. And that gives you a clue to what is meant by the celestial spheres. Because we're not talking about the aura. We're not talking about physical light. We're talking about a whole different dimension of light. 

Yesterday I gave a model. Physicists always give models and try to illustrate what they mean. The model was a three dimensional world, space time as framework and   å that what we know as generally is within that framework. So we have very little sense of what is beyond that framework, space time framework. 

But it is not just that. That illustration is not complete. Because space only has meaningfulness where there is matter. Time has meaningfulness for the psyche and and also for matter matter, but space only where there is matter. If you are able to stalk matter beyond how it can be observed by your eyes or the instruments of the laboratory, then you're reaching beyond matter. And that's where one has access to the celestial spheres. So that is the next step as your head moves up. 

There you have, as you remember this morning we were trying to have a sense of our subtle face, our countenance behind the physical face beyond the outer form. It doesn't have a profile. If you remember, I used to use the word electromagnetic field. It's a field like the photographs of Walter Chappell. But at the celestial level, we're just at the frontier between form and no form. Arupaja according to Buddhism. Arupa beyond form. We're just at the frontier where you can hardly talk about form anymore. And yet the celestial counterpart has some kind of a structure, let's say a configuration without a profile. Not just only without profile. It's something that is beyond our understanding because we are so used to thinking in terms of concrete matter that we can perceive and represent in our imagination. So actually it lies beyond imagination. It's at the threshold. It's a threshold condition. Because imagination always represents something spatial. Or then, it could also represent a quality. One can imagine a person who has a lot of compassion or truthfulness or majesty or whatever these qualities are. It still is a form. According to the Sufis, our personality is a composition of subtle forms. 

If you remember, this morning we opened a whole new chapter in our understanding of Sufism and of course the steps that lead towards awakening. And that was to look at things from the divine vantage point. So as long as you're thinking that you're sitting there thinking that you're repeating the Zikre, then you're not really doing it. It's counterproductive. So, I already said that when I was in Ajerbad doing a retreat, the monitor or guide who was guiding me asked me to get into the consciousness of Murshid. So saying the Zikre. That leads towards eventually getting into the divine consciousness. Al Hallaj said that when you say La illaha, when you say I witness that God is one, if when you say 'I', you mean your personal self, then it's a contradiction in terms because then there is God and me. The only way in which you can ever say that is when your sense of 'I' as a separate entity has been totally annihilated. That's a wonderful definition of what one means by fana. Of course we can say these things but it's very difficult to do when we are doing the Zikre. Just by repeating it won't do it. I think the clue is in the words of Murshid when he says it's the annihilation of the false self is a help. It's a false conception that we make of ourself that stands in the way of our awakening. 

And as you remember, you can't do it, how can I say, you can't kill the self with the will of the self. You can't do it by trying to get into the divine consciousness. We forestalled that this morning already. So it can only happen if your whole being goes through - I think it does mean surrender. Surrender is a word that I've often found difficult. But I think that that is what it does amount to. At this point you allow the divine action take over from your action. It's a surrender of your will. That is where the motion of the Zikre is important because the body participates in that act. 

If you want to experience samadhi, then you have to sit in an asana. That's a position, static position. Then you are not aware of your body, or your mind or even your consciousness. You're not even aware of not being aware. I think it was Jami who said that. If you want to awaken in life, then your body has to participate in the experience. That which was static becomes dynamic. 

You have the same thing in the Jewish tradition because the throne becomes the chariot (merkaba). It was the throne in the beginning. That's what Ezekiel saw. The throne was a chariot. So it's in motion. There is a faulty translation of the original text in the Bible, "I am that I am". It is, "I am that I become". Because it would be confining God to force Him not to evolve. In fact Aquinas saw that. He said, "God is dynamic not static". And Mister Eckhart saw that also, ("Vert unt intvert) He becomes and unbecomes in old German. 

The body is participating in the motion of one's soul of one's realization. One is going through stages in one's realization. Therefore one must not sit still. In fact, the motion of the body is rather of the same nature as the motion of the galaxies the planets and the stars. Somehow it is a very deep condition that is generally relegated to the unconscious. When we start gyrating in the Zikre, then the whole Cosmic rhythm, choreography surfaces in our consciousness. And we establish a connection with the galaxies. Hence the importance of the whirling of the dervishes and of course the dance of Shiva. Hindus have the same sense. Instead of Shiva right at the top of Mt. Kilas sitting there statically, he is dancing. He's participating in the motion of the Cosmos. Another aspect of that is awakening in life. 

In order to see things form the divine point of view, one has to downplay one's own point of view. You can't do it if you're still into your own personal point of view. That is rather dramatic in fact traumatic because there is a kind of basic instinct of survival which is associated with 'me' as an entity. And we've already said that our individuality is important in the process. It's very subtle. The a basic contradiction. It is really the reconciliation of the irreconcilables. Perplexity as Ibn Arabi says. How is it possible? I cannot grasp Thee. And how is it possible that I cannot not grasp Thee because Thou reveals Thyself to me all the time? So a contradiction. But you can only think that way if you think that it's not me who is trying to experience or who is trying to awaken. But it is God awakening in me or as me. A whole different way of looking at things. 

So we have now several stages before we start working with the ascent. In the first place when you're doing the Zikre 'La illaha illa' then you turn towards the solar plexus. But in the second Zikre. In the first Zikre you sit cross legged because you're moving left to right. So it gives you a certain balance to sit cross legged. But in the second Zikre, you are kneeling. So when you kneel, you don't say "La illaha". You only say, " illa 'lla". So when you kneel, it's a prayer as we said this morning. When you say, "illa", you touch the ground with your forehead. If you've never done it, try it and see what happens. It's an extraordinary experience. Even in physics or physiology, one could try to explore what that does to the body. The two poles of the body are in contact. Generally the north pole is the head or the superior pole is not in touch with the feet. Here you have that extraordinary polarity when the two poles are connected. As I said, those poles are not just, that is what is perplexing because on one hand it's like the universal pole of our being and the personal pole of our being. But that universal pole is God whom we think is other. God is not other. But we think it's other. It's very difficult to acquiesce because as Ibn Arabi said at the same time you're God and you're not God. How can you be God and not God? You have to know whereby you're God and whereby you're not God. It's a contradiction. That's why Sufism like Zen is perplexing. 

As you know if you fragment a magnet, every fragment has a north pole and a south pole. In as much as we are fragments of the totality, each fragment has the divine pole and the personal pole. So Ibn Arabi says very clearly fana is not the annihilation of your self. It's the annihilation of your notion of yourself. We have to be careful because it could lead toward some kind of psychological suicide. Some people like to get rid of themselves because they don't like themselves. Sometimes I don't blame them. It happens to me too. To be reborn again. There is of course a very deep psychological significance to what we are doing.

Supposing that you are able to have that flash of a kind of collapse of all the assumptions that you made. It's not just like the dark night of the mind of St. John of the Cross, but the deep dark night of the self where everything collapses. All that one assumed breaks down totally. That means for me that all the things that I say, the whole thing just breaks down. It's just words. Our self image, our assessment of our problems, our emotional dependence, our consciousness as the knowing subject. Everything collapses totally. 

As I say, that collapse must be compensated by the opposite. There one always associates fana with baqa which means reinstatement. As I said, it's not good enough to just be back to where you were before. When I was studying psychiatry at Paris University, there was a woman, I think her name was Laura, who said, "This professor is trying to bring me back to where I was before. He has no idea where I am. I don't want to get back to where I was before. I can only come out of the state in which I am by another door". 

So fana and baqa, don't think of it as cyclic. Think of it as a spiral but not as cyclic. Cyclic would be the samsaric wheel that Buddha sees as the conundrum in which most people are caught. The wheel turning around itself and not getting anywhere. A lot of people are just like that. They are doing the things their parents do and the things that are done in our society. They have no idea what it's all about. No evolution. They can't see that there has to be an attractor that draws you out of the vicious circle into the future. That's creativity. 

If you think that way, then when your head comes up, it comes up in a tangent. You're breaking the circle. That's the whole thing. If you just do the circle, then you're moving from the explicate to the implicate state which are the words of Dr. David Boehm. But now you're moving out of the circle. The circle is determined whereas creativity is not determined. It's impromptu. As you know, creativity is seeing things as they could be if they would be as they might be. So you're looking into the future. It's the pull of the future stronger than the pull of the past. But the future is not there. You make it. So that's again a contradiction. You're making the future. Ibn Arabi says you watch what he calls engendering - I don't know whether that's an English word - of the possibilities into the existential realm. And you can shift the frontier, the boundary between the possible and the impossible by making the impossible possible in the existential world. That's what creativity is. Making what you think impossible possible. 

The moment of creativity is the moment your head starts moving up on the tangent out of the circle. That's where you're freeing yourself from determinism, from conditioning. In that instant of time, you have to prefigure the future. Somehow your new being is going to create a new situation. Those are both related. If you think how you could be, then the consequence is how conditions could be.

We go through that process. We only think we are annihilating ourselves if we are in our personal consciousness. If you're in the divine consciousness, you're not annihilating yourself. It's the other way around. That's why as I said this morning, that is the breakthrough in Sufism, trying to see things from the divine point of view. As I mentioned this morning and we have to follow this up. We said qualities are forms. So actually what one is doing as one's head rises is one is glorifying God. Therefore it's a prayer. We are being created by our act of glorification. More our act of glorification creates God as us. It's a fantastic thought, a shattering thought. Our act of glorification creates God as us because God is not other. God as a potentiality, or as a virtuality that becomes a reality as us. That's very different from the old fashioned view that we had of God up there manipulating us miserable worms down here. Quite a different way of looking at things. God becoming God as us through us. 

Now there are further stages here. So I'll recapitulate the stages we've been through. The first stage is to be found in those words of Ibn Arabi, "He describes Himself to you through yourself". So you don't know the archetype. But you know the archetype through the exemplar. For example, you don't know roundness. But you know something about roundness by coming across round objects. So you know the archetype through the exemplar. If you look at it from the divine point of view, God is not just describing Him/Herself to you through yourself, but is revealing Himself to you through yourself. The whole of life is disclosure of the secret treasure. That's behind it all, the secret treasure that desired to be known. That secret treasure is not something you can't capture.

Perhaps you know that poem of Rumi to be found in Coleman Barks' translation. He said, "Tear you house down and you might find a glint in the foundations. And that's the secret treasure". And you could say, "Well do I have a guarantee that I'll find it?". There is no guarantee. So you might find yourself stuck there. You've destroyed your house and there is nothing there. Can't bargain with God. 

I must say that we rely upon a lot of things and become dependent upon them, addicted to them. For example, the experience of the war was significant because all of a sudden we had to leave our house and everything. The Nazis would come in. One realizes how dependent one is on things that prove to be unreliable. If you don't destroy your house, it might be destroyed for you. Buddha left his palace. It depends on what you value. If you value illumination above having possessions or the other way around. We've been through this all ready before.

That moment when you say, "illa". To surrender means that you can't make any reservations, if you're making a surrender, whatever is asked of you. It all depends how much you value it. "That's what I want." That's a word of Bistami when he said, "The bridegroom invited to the betrothal doesn't have to be limited by the veil of the beloved of the bride." Then God said, "You are not strong enough to stand the solitude of my unity". And Bistami said, "That's exactly what I want". He went through all these tests. God said "Oh, I". And Bastami said, "Oh don't beguile me in my I". Then God said, "Oh thou". Then he went through this whole fana process. Then finally he said to God, "Oh, I". It's a very deep mystical experience. 

I know I'm talking words. The question is what is happening to us when we're saying the Zikre. As I say, just being spaced out is not good enough. So how do you do it? I think that the teachings draw your attention to a way of thinking or perspective that you hadn't seen before. The experience of your predecessors on the path is helpful to you. Otherwise one would have to explore it all oneself. We benefit a tremendous amount by help by all that has been transmitted to us by our spiritual predecessors. That's what we're doing here is trying to see what they did and whether it helps us to do it.

You remember the first stage was God describes Himself or reveals Himself to you by yourself. That is because you see in your qualities a clue to what the divine qualities are. That's how, if you look at it from the other side, God reveals Himself to you through your qualities which are the exemplars of that archetype. Then the opposite is also true. That is you know the exemplars by the archetype. So you know the archetype through the exemplar and the exemplar through the archetype. That's why we always try to imagine a greater perfection. That's what the wazifa is about. It's not just trying to develop a quality in you. But trying to imagine a greater perfection of that quality you have in you and you ascribe to God. That helps you to awaken that quality. While you're doing the wazifa you're thinking, "God is revealing Him/Herself to me through those qualities or attributes which I'm invoking in my repetition of the wasifa". So it is really a communication with God. The curious thing is that God is your higher self. It's rather perplexing. Your higher self is revealing itself to your lower self. One doesn't use those words in psychology now. 

You remember that the next stage was - So you know yourself through God the archetype. The next stage is that God is discovering Him/Herself through you. You might say, "Well doesn't God know Himself?". There's a word of Al Hallaj who says, "How can you assume that you can add anything to the knowledge that God has of Himself?". So one could say that there are two levels of knowledge. The knowledge that God has in the principles of his being and the knowledge that is acquired by applying these principles in the existential world. It's like the composer knows the theme, but something is gained by the fact that the composer makes variations on the theme. So something is gained. That's a further knowledge that is gained through existence. From one point of view God reveals Himself through those clues. On the other hand those clues are the ways in which God discovers Himself. There are two sides to the same question. 

Seeing things from the divine point of view. The whole of Murshid was about that - seeing things from the divine point of view. That's what made Pir o Murshid Pir O Murshid. That Murshid says is, "God discovers His perfection in our imperfection". I have often illustrated by the voice of Caruso that can be retrieved now by reversing the distortion of the bad technology of the time. It was Hamadani who said, "God reveals Himself not only in His perfect qualities, but also by the attributes of blame". We referred to that yesterday. God discovers His perfection in our imperfection. On the other hand, by perfecting ourselves, we become better instruments through which God discovers Himself. That is the reason for working with the wasifas. 

To quote Ibn Arabi again, four propositions. Listen to it attentively because it has a significance in the Zikre. The first one is by actuating the divine nature in my nature, I confer upon God a mode of being. And by discovering the divine consciousness as the ground of my consciousness, I confer upon God a mode of knowing. I'll say this again - by actuating the divine nature in my nature, I confer upon God a mode of being. And by discovering the divine consciousness as the ground of my consciousness, I confer upon God a mode of knowledge, knowing. Therefore I do something. It is important from me to do something not just be passive to the divine action. The divine action is reciprocated by my action towards God. I'm not just passive. 

Then we have the other two propositions which are a little more complicated than that. By conferring on God a mode of being as me I confer upon Him a mode of knowledge. And by conferring upon God a mode of knowledge, I confer upon him a mode of being. Four propositions.

It was (Anjili Selicious) who said, "God needs man". Of course the Church was upset by it. Of course the same is in Islam. There is a saying in the Koran, "God is independent of existence". So how can you reconcile that with the fact that the existential state confers something upon the being God. There are a lot of contradictions. It's always beyond our understanding.

I have to end here. There is another stage. But I think it's better if we go into that next stage tomorrow because it's a very radical stage. That's the unveiling. There's one unveiling and then another unveiling and so on so forth. So God discovers Himself by projecting Himself as a form which is our form. And in revealing Himself to us, He reveals Himself to us by discovering Himself in us. That might all sound very high falluting metaphysics. But if you think of that while you're doing the Zikre, then the Zikre becomes incredibly rich. You're totally transformed by that way of looking at things. So I suggest that you do that when you do the Zikre again and see what difference it makes. We're only half or one quarter through.

God bless you.

AUG 10, 1998		Tape 07

Yes, I know it, it will come as a shock;  but if we want the wheel to advance rather than rotate around itself, then we have to be very careful with routine.  And try to get into what is the real spirit of Murshid's teaching, rather than the word.  And that makes it clear.  Now as you know I've been very cautious about use of the word God, which I use when I am quoting the Sufis, simply because there's all these anthropomorphic projections on that word.  When we use the word God, and Murshid warned us against it when he said we use the word God, we are, we don't realize that what we are talking about is what we think God is, or what we would like God to be.  So that these kinds of projections can stand in the way of our experience of that reality which we call God.  Also, somehow it's taken for granted that we mean some, another being than ourselves, and it's very difficult to accept it, the superior pole of our being is the being of God.   But, so I've been using the word universe, but then cosmos, of course.  

And it's particularly pertinent at this time when Buddhism has had so much impact  upon the thoughts in the west.  And, as you know, Buddha's concern is simply because he is very careful not to say anything that he does not know, and so all experience.  And, what is more, there is no dogma in Buddhism, and there's no dogma in Sufism.  Not I, I know there's dogma in Islam.  I believe that Ashadullah "La Illaha Illa 'llah".  Sufism is  "inaudible" based upon, it's the esoteric, it's not the exoteric "inaudible".  So you can't have a dogma in the esoteric.  It's for the exoteric that you have the dogma.  But talking to Rabia this morning, who is my guardian angel, helping me out, there's a lot of wonderful people helping me, all of a sudden she came, she came across a word that struck me.  Like that, this is the, this is right on, and that is the Only Being.  Instead of using the word God, it's the Only Being.  Because if you say universe, it's too impersonal.  I don't mean it impersonally, but that's the connotation.  The Only Being, that is very powerful.  I know a lot of people are scandalized by my innovative impulse.  In fact, I've been banned by some organization because of that.  Not just banned, but banished, exiled.

But still we're, we're, we're at the leading edge now.  We have to explore the new horizons for the millennium.  So, what we're doing now has, will have consequences  for the future of the Sufi Order, when I'm hovering over the planet, without walking on the planet.  So now what we're doing is, we're exploring.  Because it's always good before, you know that's a principle in Sufism.  One always gets one's mind very clear before meditation.  One says: what is it about, what am I aiming at, and so on.  So let's be very clear now.  We're exploring the steps leading to awakening.  We realize that there's not, that awakening is just like the horizon that's always further, and also we realize that there are several awakenings, and what we've been doing recently is to avail ourselves of the dhikr, in order to, to trigger off these different awakenings, and I don't want to start with a principle and say that these are the awakenings.  I think what we want to try to do is go along with it and see how it affects you.

There's no point in simply repeating the dhikr, over and over again "La Illaha Illa 'llah Hu".  I don't say, maybe I shouldn't say there's no point, but it, it will make you spaced out.  And that's all that it will do.  And maybe being spaced out you are able to see things you hadn't been able to see before, but it's not quite the same as, as awakening.  Awakening is, you have clarity.  So the beauty of the dhikr is that, well, there are a lot of aspects that are wonderful about it.  One is that it embodies the four different dimensions that I started with in my teaching, the "inaudible", the cosmic, turning within, reaching upwards, and the overview, that I call self-transcendence.  And the further one is that, by the fact of going through a condition that is called extinction or annihilation, which is called Fana in Sufism, somehow one is able to shift one's consciousness in the antipodal point of view, the Divine point of view.  And as I've repeated, I shall repeat this over and again, over and over again, and that is that, that is that you cannot lift your consciousness by your will.  It's just like pulling your boots up, on, up with the bootstraps.  It doesn't work that way.  And if you try to do it you get into samadhi.  And so you're not aware of what's happening in the world, and it's an escape from.  You know the Sufis make a difference between the real and, and reality.  So it's an escape from the real, but reality is to be found in the real.  So it's not other.  So, so there's some mistake in our thinking there.  And I've indulged in samadhi a lot.  In fact I was addicted to samadhi.  It's a wonderful feeling, because, you know life can be quite a hassle.  So you get out "inaudible" by getting into samadhi, and you feel peaceful, and so on.  So it's wonderful, but it doesn't quite correspond to developing insight into the meaningfulness of life.

I used to say it's a, it's a first stage, like you first awaken beyond life, then awaken in life.  But you know Murshid described these two awakenings.  He said the first one is God awakening, no, man awakening in God consciousness, and the other is God awakening in man consciousness, in human consciousness.  Yes, so the beauty of the dhikr is that you do have that, can one say, instant of awakening, that real breakthrough of awakening beyond life.  But it's short-lived you see, and that's right, because the Upanishad says, (Supana Preyanuk) Upanishad says "It passes before you notice it".  And if you try to hang on to it you're in a state of trance, you see.  And that's what Buddha accused his teachers of, inducing people into a state of  trance, and not dealing with life.  And of course that's what psychologists are saying now about spiritual, spiritual people, the spiritual path, the spiritual bypass.  Of course there's such a thing as psychological bypasses, you know.  And sometimes, in heart condition, a bypass is very useful.

So the beauty of the dhikr is then that you, that in the "H" of Allah which is, it's very extraordinary if you consider the, if you know the Arabic, of course, you have two letters alif and lam, "A" and "L".  And the "L" is written as, it's the arc of a circle.  So when you're moving into the circle, that is, you're participating, as I said yesterday, in the, in the cosmic dance of the stars, of the galaxies, so on.  All cosmic and turning within, implicate, explicate.  Now as I said before, I would rather think of it as a spiral, rather than a, than a circle, because if it's a circle, then it becomes like a vicious circle.  It becomes cyclic and we want to (revolve) the wheel, to start to move.  But the "A" then represents, is a vertical line.  And, as I said yesterday, it's the tangent of, I said, out of the circle, which is really a tangent out of the spiral.  So it represents the transcend, transcendental dimension, instead of the cosmic dimension.  A completely different, a different dimension altogether.  And it is very difficult to describe, but when we talked about the difference between the archetype and the exemplar, then that's what we're talking about.  We're talking about the transcendental dimension.  The difference between the software and the hardware of the universe.  

So the dhikr includes, first of all, the cosmic, and then turning within, and then reaching upward.  As I say, the, the "H" at the end of the word Allah is a total, totally different from the letters that (were), we've used so far.  It's a, that represents the tangent that you're (working).  You're freeing yourself from the, from determinism, from conditioning, from the prison, what Pir-o-Murshid calls the prison, and as I've already said, the prison is in our mind, in our way of thinking, in our, in our self-image.  It's not the circumstances.  That's a rather simplistic way of looking at things.

But the real, the great moment in the dhikr is when one's head turns towards the heart center, well, towards the heart.  And, of course, one tends to turn towards the, the cardio plexus chakra, anahata chakra.  I  hope "inaudible", because otherwise you could, you would stay in samadhi.  I can tell you a story about that because I was repeating the dhikr in, in Ajmer, and at night time.  It's an enchanted scene.  Lot's of people sleeping on the marble floor, and people praying in the mosque, and people chanting, and the whole atmosphere is just otherworldly, it's out of this world.  It's incredible.  And there I was repeating the dhikr as I used to, and there was a musician there, whose voice was. Ah!  It reminded me of the voice of Murshid.  And so I, I was in ecstasy, because while repeating the dhikr I heard this voice, totally in sync, you know.  And somehow, you know you're supposed to, not to turn your attention elsewhere when you're saying the dhikr.  Just like you're not supposed to turn your head right or left when you're doing the prayers.  So I didn't look at him.  And somehow, when I finished a bout of the dhikr, then I looked at him.  And he stopped his music, and he came straight and  walked towards me.  And he said:  "I have a message from your father".  How could he know?  

How could he know?  "I have a message from your father.  Don't turn your head up at the end of the dhikr.  Turn it toward your heart".  Because, as I say, I was addicted to samadhi, and I was using dhikr for samadhi, whereas, in fact, it's awakening in life, you see.  And that's the reason for the "Hu", you see.  And, of course, there's a difference between the Moslem dhikr and the Sufi dhikr.  Because the Moslem dhikr is "La Illaha Illah 'llah" and the Sufi dhikr is "La Illaha Illah 'llah Hu".  Because for the Sufis, God is present in your heart, whereas for the orthodox, God is up there somewhere.  So I tried it out and I can tell you it worked.  But then I went to Myhyderabad and Segunderabad.  I was doing the dhikr under the supervision of the grandson of the grand murshid of Murshid, at the tomb of his grandfather, sitting there repeating the dhikr.  And he said, you know, he said, I mean your, your murshid is, is your father.  I, I am not acting as your murshid.  I am just wanting to convey what Murshid would have conveyed if he, to train you to become a pir, if he had lived long enough.  

But he said, why are you turning your head towards your heart center, it's the heart on the left, the physical heart.  And then I was rather flummoxed because, well, the physical heart, it's a, the cardioplexus seems to be much more important.  In Hinduism, of course, it's a chakra, and you work with the chakras.  Then I read Massignon, who was, of course, paraphrasing Al Hallaj, and he said, you see, the first part of the dhikr is related to the circulatory system in the body, which is circular, and if, imagine if you have a locomotive.  The way that you apply the power of the cylinder is eccentric, it's not in the center of the wheel, it's off from, offset from the center of the wheel.  And so then, of course, if you do that you'll see that it, it the circulation of your blood has something to do with the motion of the stars.  So you see that it's, it gets, it affects one right into one's body.  (thank you, thank you)  It affects one right into one's body. 

And then the second part of the dhikr is somehow represented by the nervous system.  The three nerve trunks, the one in the center of the spinal cord, and the ones right and left.  And so what you're doing actually is, you are concentrating on the upward flow of energy from the bottom of the spine to the top of the head, which is kundalini.  As the head comes up, moving up through the different planes, and then as you descend, then what you are doing is, you see, really to be a little more complete, I would say that in the upward movement, motion, there is motion from, there's an upward motion together with the convergence of the lateral trunks towards the central trunks, trunk.  So cosmic, turning within, moving up, you see.  And then in the descent it's the other way around.  It is the descent through the spinal cord, but then bifurcating left and right, expanding.  Because that's awakening in life.  So that the body participates actively in the, in the practice of the dhikr.  Whereas if you want to experience samadhi then you, your body has to sit still.  That makes all the difference.

So "H", the "H" at the end of the word "Allah" represents a whole different dimension.  The, I mean the "U", "Hu".  The "H" is a letter which, well both the "H" and the "Hu", the "H" represents, is a letter that is used in, in Judaism.  The ultimate, the highest name of God, which is only the "H",  you have it in (Ahee) of course, but the "H" alone is only used, or is supposed to be only used by the high priest.  And you see we use that word God, but I've been emphasizing that God is the Only Being, you see.  But as Murshid says, that is, let's say the existential dimension of God, but there's still, you mustn't limit God to His/Her existential existence.  And so God is beyond what we would like to imprison Him into, our sense of existence.  So it's always, and that's the meaning of transcendence, beyond, always beyond.  You see.  So "H" is that aspect of God, you know.  

Yesterday, you remember that yesterday I talked about the difference between Al Hallaj and, and, and Ib'n Arabi, where Ib'n Arabi says, well you remember, we conferred upon God a mode of reality and so on, a mode of existence.  And Al Hallaj who said:  "How do you think that you can add anything to the knowledge that God has of Himself?"  So you have these two antinomic affirmations.  But Al Hallaj says, but He does, He springs down in a, unpredictably from that pinnacle of transcendence, in order to convey meaningfulness to you.  So somehow, and that's why Murshid says that wisdom is made of the alliance between the the wisdom of the earth and, he calls it, the wisdom of the heaven.  I, I call it acquired knowledge and also, and revealed knowledge.  So that revealed knowledge is like, God stoops down from the pinnacle and conveys something of the ineffable.  And that's what happens when you say the "Hu", you see.

Now to say what I would like to say, still it would have to go through further stages, which we will do in the next two days, but we have to go through one stage at a time.  So what we want to do is to be very clear, because, I've been speaking rather fast, moving rather fast, but we want to be very clear that we really do use the dhikr as a trigger for our, as a catalyst for our, for awakening.  And so we want to be very clear.  So, at the cost of repeating something that I said yesterday.  So, first of all, if you could just move your head in a circle, the way that you do in the dhikr, with the turn to the left and so on.  And, of course, you remember that the word is "La".  And at first you have the impression that you are expanding your consciousness, as Murshid says, or the difference between people, some the people, the consciousness is like a lentil, and that of others is like a vast horizon.  

So a sense of Ah, the vastness, and it's not the vastness of the universe, it's the vastness of your being, which is like a wave, in a wave interference pattern, which is totally, how can I say, part of that cosmic expanse, totally integrated into it.  So it's another, it's a, the cosmic dimension of your being.  Now, so that will give you a sense of  centrifugal forces, like centrifuge, or centrifugal forces.  There are two things that, two phenomena that are happening at the same time.  On the one hand there's an expansion, now on the other hand there's a dispersal, and as Murshid says, you know, there are two forms of annihilation.  The one into the vastness, and the other into the void in the center.  So this is the first, one could call it a purification.  Getting rid of idiosyncrasies that are, one is not happy with, catharsis.  

But now, you do remember that I said there's another aspect of the cosmic dimension, which is the universe looking at you, or look, actually to use that word of Saint Francis, but  the words of a Sufi would be:  "God looking at Himself through you, your eyes".  So it is the opposite of expanding.  It's like, it's the whole universe that has jelled itself into you, as your physical body, for example, as we did in the first day, and your personality, and so on.  The whole thing is like the totality converged in each fragment of the totality, and potentially present in each fragment of the totality.  So that happens when, after saying "La Illaha", oh, after saying "La" your head turns up from the right shoulder to the zenith, and you say "Illaha".  "La Illaha".  And the word "Illaha" means Divinity, which is that aspect of God that has become human.  So that is where you can see, experience the convergence of the Universe or God, or the One Being, as you.  So, first expansion, and then the convergence.  "inaudible".  

That is the convergence of God in, in the existential dimension of His/Her Being.  "La Illaha".  Now, you realize that when your head is turned toward the zenith, yes, well, while you're doing this motion, perhaps you feel the centrifugal forces of expansion, and so on. But, you know the reason why people circumambulate a temple is because by so doing you strengthen the centripetal forces that draw you towards the center.  And those centripetal forces are most, how can I say, effect you most, when you are in the most labile state.  It is when your head is turned upwards like, you know, a, for example, a pail of water that you've turned up, you've rotated.  So when it's upside down, well, that's of course, when the water would, if you're not very fast, the water would fall down.  So that's the time when the, you feel the pull of the center, you see.  So "La Illaha".  It's when you say "-ha", you see, you reach the top of the, of the circle.  "La Illaha".  And at that time you feel the pull of your, you feel it in your solar plexus.  And so the descent into the solar plexus is rather rapid, and quite, it's awakened.  That is, the potentials that lie in wait in the solar plexus are awakened by the shock of the descent of all that energy.  In fact, you think it's like the descent of the, of pure spirit.  You know, the quickening of the spirit, of the Holy Spirit.  "La Illaha Illa", and if you remember what Murshid says, one is awakening faculties.  So the faculty is dormant in the chakras, and in the solar plexus, that you're awakening.  

And that faculty is the creative faculty, ex nilo, out of nothing, out of the void, spontaneous, not determined.  So that is the second Fana, the second annihilation, re-absorption in the void, which is followed by a rebirthing, as I said yesterday, a recurrent rebirthing.  We're recurrently reborn.  And that means that one is given a, recurrently a chance of being different.  But if one doesn't avail oneself of that, then one remains in the circle.  But as you see, we are moving out of the circle.  Well, there are several aspects of this, the, the way that life, let's say the building blocks of the cosmos fall apart, and then are reformed anew.  You remember I gave you the, I illustrated that yesterday by that flower that you think is a flower, but I don't know whether it's a flower, but it's insects, but it gets dispersed, and then it, it finds, it configures itself again.  Whether it's exactly the same insects, or whatever it is, there are elements that get in exactly the same place, or then there's a new configuration, that is not, we don't know, at least I don't know.  Hopefully it was a new configuration.  So it wouldn't be a new configuration unless it had been dispersed.  And therefore your only chance to change is to accept a collapse.  And that is true, of course, (of) the meaning of death, and that is true of our lives, when things are hunky dory we don't progress.  It's only when in a crisis situation that you have to take the decision that is going to open up a new chapter in your life.  So welcome the breakdown that will aver itself to be a breakthrough.

Now, it is really absorption.  Well, from our point of view it looks as though we're, we're absorbed in the void, and you know, if you look at a simile in the realm of physics, (Rotahomme), a physicist in French, in France, describes something like that in physics.  It's like, imagine a flying fish that you can measure their speed when they're above the water, but when they're immersed in murky water you can't, you don't know what happens.  So you can say that the void is not something, is not nil.  It's something that's happening there that is subliminal, and one doesn't know what is happening.  That's all that one can say.  There's a restructuring that is taking place in the unconscious, which we, is outside the frame, spatial temporal frame of our familiar world.  So we cannot act during, in that state, but. we cannot intervene.  But at the inception of that, the new dispensation as it breaks through the threshold, that's where we can have some impact on, on the creativity of our being, the configuration of our being as it is.  We have some contribution to make, as I said already, Pir-o-Murshid said that.  And so that happens when you start turning your head upwards.  And so you're moving your head from the solar plexus to the, I mean your attention from the solar plexus to the heart center.  And you remember that's the state that the Sufis call Mithal.  I see "inaudible", well I don't know, I don't think there's a, an entomological link between that word and mythology, but it's helpful to think of, let's say the world of metaphor.  

All right, now can we just suspend the practice of the dhikr for the time being in order to examine this state a little better.  Because, you know, as I said, there's no point in just repeating the dhikr fast, and so on, you miss all the points.  You have to do each stage for some time and then eventually, then do the whole thing together, and then that's much more thorough.  Otherwise we, we bypass it.  Now, in France, in French, one calls it "inaudible".  So here we have a whole world of thoughts "inaudible" that make all the difference in your, in fact that's, leads towards awakening.  A whole new way of looking at things, because now we, it is, well, we're reaching out from the wheel on a tangent.  And if you look at Buddhism, what Buddha says is that this becoming does not lead to the non-become.  So then you're in a circle.  So it's another dimension.  That's what we mean by transcendence.  And, what is more, moreover, for the wheel to start moving in the march, forward march of evolution, instead of turning around its axis, simply turning around its axis, there has to be, what is called in physics, an attractor.  And that attractor is, well, manifests in the dimension of time, as the pull of the future, as opposed to the push of the past.  But it has its, how can I say, its point of application in, in transcendence.  "inaudible"  It's difficult for me to say.

So you can think that the "H" there is pulling you upwards, that is, you're not pulling yourself upwards.  It is pulling you.  I can see a simile with what we do when we are visiting a dargah.  For example, Pir O Murshid's dargah in Delhi, Nizamudin.  You're supposed to prostrate, but then the hadim pulls you up.  You're not supposed to lift yourself up, yourself.  And so, if you do so, you get into samadhi.  But if you, you, you feel the pull of, we think it's up there, but, of course, it's just outside the wheel, of course.  And that is why, that is the moment when our reversing our way of thinking, and trying to see things from the Divine point of view, that's where, that's where the pull can exercise its effect.  You understand, otherwise you're still in the circle.  The only way is to...  So that is the moment, all of a sudden.  I would say that when you have touched rock bottom, when "Illa", then that's where you reverse your consciousness, and you, you think, well, my consciousness is just a very, is the result of the Divine consciousness, not just the way the Divine consciousness got bogged into a narrow, like a, through a lens, a narrow purview.  

And so now you just, you so, go through that state of Fana which is, well it's,  well we already said it's the deep night, dark night.  It's letting go of any crutches whatsoever.  That's why we use the word surrender.  It's, let's say it would be illustrated by overcoming addiction.  Like you thought you couldn't live without cigarettes, and all of a sudden you find that you can.  Like that.  Something like that.  All of a sudden giving up something that you thought you depended upon, which is the gauge of freedom.  That's the only way to be free.  To give up something that you thought you couldn't do away with.  Because you know the dervish will always test you in what you find difficult to do.  He'll always choose just the thing you can't do.  You think you can't do, and you say no, no, please don't ask me to do that.  I can't do it.  Okay then stay the way you are, Sufi, it's your choice.  So, it's, it's a painful process.  That's what (hap-), and the ultimate way, of course, is what happened to Christ on the cross.  He, even reliance upon the Divine help.  He, he had to give up that.  

So you know what we're doing is, it's, it is really a tour de force.  And that's why I don't know whether we're all ready for that.  I don't know it's useful just to say these things.  And perhaps there's a reason why, in the East, this teaching is not really given like this, like in a lecture.  It's given individually, and according to the degree that a person, the person's readiness to go through that very painful process.  But so, I think that it might, it might resonate in you in some way.  Giving up circumstances, that's, can be quite difficult, but giving up your notion of yourself is, one doesn't  quite know how one could continue to live if one doesn't know oneself.  "inaudible"  It's kind of difficult, you know.  It means a lot of things.  It means giving up your consciousness, for example, as the knower, as the spectator, so on.  So, but as we're saying this is the condition of, of turning about and looking at things from the Divine point of view.  Otherwise, it's words, like what I was saying yesterday.  Ib'n Arabi said this or that, but it's words, but, and it's very exciting, I mean it's fantastic, but, does one do it.

Well, what are the clues then, I mean, what are the skills that one could, would help one?  So we already practiced getting into the consciousness of people, and then, getting into the consciousness of, well, friends, and then perhaps one's, people who are inimical to one, and then eventually more and more people, even animals, and so on.  And eventually getting into, for example, walking into the forest, and as, as Saint Francis did, and instead of looking at the trees, and thinking that the trees are looking at you.  You see.  Really getting into the consciousness of the trees, instead of just being the spectator.  So that was the first step.  Now if we can do that, then the next step would be, for example, could one get into the consciousness of a, of a master, saint or prophet.  I said, I say master, but there could be, could be a woman, of course.  Getting into the consciousness of celestial beings.  Now, I think one has to be very realistic and try to be clear as to what one means by that.  I often say this, of course, is, you know, one entertains an ideal that tends to uplift one, and keep one from sinking into despair.  That somehow, behind this world in which there has been so much corruption, there's splendor.  But that's an assumption.  It's almost, it's not a dogma, but it's an assumption.  And that will keep you from despair.  

That, but then, I mean, so easy just to say that.  Can you, are there indications of that splendor?  And it's true, there are, but you have to watch for them.  For example, as I say, when I look into the eyes of  a beautiful baby, particularly then I see light in their eyes, and I think, now, that reminds me of something, so, a sense of déjà vu.  But that splendor comes through if you listen to wonderful music, or you think of a hero who's done, some of those firemen are fantastic heroes.  And you know, when you think of the way that the splendor comes through in many ways, it transpires through that which appears.  So, if, so there you have a, I don't know whether you can say it's a proof, but a kind of indication, that helps you sustain your, your trust in the splendor which is veiled, that's the secret treasure that's veiled.  Now, so if you get, if it gives you a sense of déjà vu, you're resonating with it.  It means that there's something of you which is of the nature of what you, that life that you see in the, in the eyes of the baby, something in you.  

And that means that, one's angelic counterpart is still there, but buried.  And one can get in touch with it, but the cost is rather heavy, because it means that one becomes defenseless, because the angels are defenseless, like a child, until they go to school.  So it's the innocence of a child.  It must not be confused with being naive.  It's being very truthful, at the cost of whatever.  It's just being very truthful.  They don't know, don't know how to intrigue, and so its price, at the cost of being laughed at,  and mocked at, and not being able to defend oneself, and you know that's, that's the price.  Why I'm saying this, because I said, we're talking about, we're seeking for experience, but that experience does involve one's life in the world.  I mean, it's, you can't just take, open one draw and close the other, and open the other.  So somehow it involves our whole relationship with people and circumstances, and things like that.

So there's no doubt that the price of that is a very severe catharsis, in oneself, what one calls muhasibi in Sufism.  That is you are continually asking yourself:  "Have I been unfair to that person?"  "Am I using that person for my own purpose?"  Or is there, and of course, you know in psychology:  "Is there such a thing as codependence?"  I think if you just look at things from that point of view it's very selfish.  I think you have to think interdependence.  That is you're helping each other.  Not codependence, that's just one-sided. So there's a whole process that, so it's not just saying "La Illaha Illa 'llah Hu" or do it.  That won't do it for you.  Every word corresponds to a stage in your unfoldment, and the upward motion is freedom, of course, the stages leading to freedom.  So it's not just the freedom from self-image, and so on, it's also freedom from inconsistent motivations that do not match our scale of values.  So these are the, it's important to see where the obstacles are.  So just to say:  "Well I get into the Divine consciousness."  

Well, is it real, is it really so?  Now, however, I think that one needs to be very clear as to what that means.  And that you find in the teachings of the Sufis.  That is, that the, that aspect of God which is of the One Being.  (That's right.)  That you call the software, or the Divine intention, is discovering Him/Herself as you.  That is, that is a very important point because you, you remember the stages we went through.  There were two stages.  One was :  "We have no idea of the, of the archetypes, of the software."  But still the exemplar does give some clue.  For example, round tables will give you some sense of roundness.  If we have a sense of roundness, it's possible that it's because we have, we have seen a lot of round objects.  Or it might be the other way around.  It might be because we have an inherent sense of roundness that we make round tables.  So those are the two antinomic affirmations of which (Haras) speaks.  One is discovering the archetype through the exemplar.  And the other is discovering  the exemplar through the archetype.  In Sufi terminology, Nasut and Lahut.  When Al Hallaj says, for example:  "O God, do away with my Nasutiat and replace it by thy Lahutiat", what he's saying is, well, Thy qualities have become tarnished in me, let's make a tabla rosa, let's say make a, an, let's wipe them out altogether, so that I can have new dispensation of Thy Lahutiat.  So that, that the way that the archetype is able to come through now in the exemplar, without all the, the distortions that have, the defilement that has taken place in the course of our lives.

So that was the first thing.  So if you remember when we are in our consciousness, we're trying to grasp the archetype and think of ourselves as the exemplar.  And that the exemplar is, it's more complicated than that, because really, the archetype does not have a form.  But it is configured as form, as the form of our subtle body, and the form of our, of our personality.  The idiosyncrasies of our personalities are forms.  They're not forms, spatial forms, but they are forms.  They are structures.  Shahabudin Suhrawadi calls it forms in suspense, like forms in the mirror.  You turn the mirror and the, the form is gone, as Pir-o-Murshid says.  And those forms can be distorted.  If the mirror is not clear, then the forms can be distorted.  So, and a word of Ib'n Arabi:  "God is the mirror in which He sees Himself."  So it's very, you know, these are effan-, effan-, evanescent forms.  That's why they're called forms in suspense.  So you can say that the form of your subtle body is evanescent.  It is, that's why I said if you try to grasp the countenance behind your face, you'll find that it keeps on shifting, according to our attunement.  

So it's not something like you can hold in your hand, something concrete.  Like forms in suspense, in the mirror.  There's a word of Ib'n Arabi who says:  "O God is there a mirror in which Thy Portrait is not seen?"  And because, all faces are His Face.  So, I mean, but it's that which transpires behind that which appears.  So if you shift, all of a sudden, about turn your consciousness, seeing it from the Divine point of view, then, as I said, we have a few aids, like a few helps, on the way, in getting into the celestial consciousness of angels, for example.  It will give you a sense of what, what would it, would be like to look at the world from the point of view of the angels.  How would it be to look at life from the point of view of an angel?  You'd be very shocked, of course, very hurt, and, or even looking at yourself from the point of view of your angelic counterpart.  Like, you think:  "Gosh, I can understand that they'd say that man is a fall, a fallen angel, I can understand that."  What's it like to, one has defiled the child in one, and the child suffers.  The angel in one suffers.

So, then you can look at yourself with an overview, and that is the, that is the key to getting into the Divine consciousness, is looking at oneself with an overview.  In Buddhism it's called (Chachala) Darshana.  And Murshid, there are passages of Murshid which I have here somewhere, which, in which he said very clearly watch yourself very clearly, and ask yourself:  "Why am I doing this?  What is my relationship with this person?  What am I trying to get out of it?"  And you think of your ideal, and you think, well:  "What am I doing?  Does it, is it, is it conducive to my ideal, or why am I doing it, and how do I affect people?"  "inaudible"  Loving people who let them, who make themselves difficult to love.  That's where we're tested, in our love.

So that's, you see, that's, that's self-transcendence, and so that will give you already a sense of the, help you, like a stepping stone toward Divine consciousness.  It's like you're able to look at thing with an overview, like flying in a helicopter over the landscape.  It gives you an overview.  (Gosh I'm way beyond the time.)  Because, you see, we must be careful, if we're just, they're just words.  But are they real?  How real are we?  Are we, how do we get into Divine consciousness?  What are the skills, "inaudible", the steps.  That is Buddhism, sattipatana.  You watch your body, and then you watch your mind.  We don't have time to go into that, but, and then, you watch your personality, and then the breakthrough is you, you, whatever you means, watch your consciousness, watching an object.  And so, in the course of doing so, your sense of who you mean by you shifts back and back and back from what you thought you were as an individual.  So  Buddha doesn't say God is watching an object through your consciousness.  No.  He's saying you watch your consciousness.  So those are the steps, the practical steps, that lead towards what we call God consciousness.  Of course, there are conditions,  pre-conditions, and that is, as Ib'n Arabi says, never look at, you know if all faces are My Face, are the Divine Face, then never look at an object as a discrete entity.  Always think it, of it, as a device through which reality is trying to transpire.  Never look at a person as that person.  That person is a means whereby the Divinity is coming through.  Okay.  Well, these are some of the first steps, but there are of course further steps.  So.


AUG 10, 1998		Tape 09

 ...for the chairs now.....conscience.....and so I have an apology to make to Murshid....because I left out "Love, Harmony and Beauty" from the Invocation, and I think that in good English it is called a Freudian slip.   It was just that I had intended to  put it at the end, talking about The Message, it was going to be "....the message,  Love, Harmony and Beauty" and somehow I had a hole in my memory  -  a blankout in my memory  -  but that belongs to it. So, I hope I'm rehabilitated with Murshid for....( this omission. 

Now we have been speaking a lot about "knowing".  And it is true that the Hadith around which much of Sufism gravitates is "I was a hidden treasure that desired to be known and I created the world in order to know myself".  All that is gravitates around t hat very basic hadith and when I started writing my book on the Sufiis then I was not careful about checking all my references and I based myself on my memory of what the Sufis say, so I said "...it was not out of a wish to KNOW that I created the world,  but out of a LOVE FOR YOU..."  

And then when the publisher said "...we'd like to have the references...." (and it's an enormous amount of work to check all the references) so I looked everywhere and I couldn't find it (well actually it said "I descended from the solitude of unknowing ou t of love for you......") So I consulted all the specialists:  Anna-Maria Chissel (sp?), Dr. Nasser,.....all the specialists and I went to a conference on Sufism at London University with Zia, and I said "no"  (and you know if you contradict The Prophet y ou can have your head cut off!).    So I decided not to write the book because I like to live a little longer!   Or, I thought, well the book can be published after my death -  that would be OK  -  well there is plenty of time for that, so I'm working on  another book.   

And then, in a conversation with Zia I found that the Hadith does not say "I desired to be known" but "I LOVE to be known".    And then there was further another hadith which says (it might be in the Koran) in which it says "I emanated a powerful force of  love so that you may be created by my glance".    

"I emanated a force of love so that you may be created by my glance".    And then at last I came across Rumi, and going through a lot of  Rumi (you know he's one of the most popular poets in the United States at present) I came across the saying which  -   well, there are two things  -  one of which confirms what I said.   One is " If it were not for love of the flower, would the gardener have planted the tree".   

And then there is that further saying of Jelalluddin Rumi:    " God said to that love: if not for that beauty, how should I pay attention to the mirror of  existence?"     So, we have been talking about the mirror of existence, but if it were  not for t hy beauty how should I pay attention to the mirror of existence?   Well, but for pure love, how should I have given existence to the heavenly spheres?   And behold, but for thee, I would not have created the world.      So that confirms what I said in m y language.   And it opens a whole new chapter because we are now in the developmental stage of the Dhikr   -  of the stage of the celestial spheres  -  so he says  "but for pure love, how should I have given existence to the heavenly spheres?"   And so  that's Love, Harmony and Beauty  -  that's the beauty that comes out of the love.   And he even says "Where do angels find their food?  From the beauty of God's presence."   

So that access to the celestial spheres is NOT by one's will  -  of course, and not by wanting to KNOW.  And if it is getting to the divine consciousness it is getting into the ecstasy of the divine consciousness instead of  just to the consciousness that  is the subject, the knowing subject.     

So of course, one gets transported in the enchantment of Love.   

And somehow we've been working form, and we've been saying that what appears at the surface is not what  -  that reality is not what it appears  -  that which transpires behind that which appears.   And if you, so the subtle body, some beauty there that i s not to be found in the physical body, and you can work with it, but the beauty of the celestial body is our greatest still.   And in fact, the Sufis do make  -  observe  -  the dichotomy between Beauty and Majesty.   There are the Jelalli Dervishes and  the Jemalli Dervishes, so majesty is a form of beauty.

And that tailles with what the Upanishads say, yes, well with what Yoga says, that it's one of the stages of awakening.   I could recap to you what ....savistaskas (?)samadhi and nirvitaskas (?) samahdi and the sarikara (?) and the nirvikara (?) (those tha t correspond with all that we've been doing) and there are different planes in Sufism and there is a parallel with those in Yoga.  And then there is Mithal which is sarvikaras samadhi, and then there is Ananda, and Ananda represents ecstasy.   And that re presents a whole breakthrough in the quest for samadhi.   You cannot reach further in your quest for getting into the consciousness of God unless you are In Love with God.   

And so you could say, well, How can one be in love with God?   Some people are, for example, Al Hallaj said  "there is not one tear between my eyelids, or one drop of blood in the cockles of my heart that does not proclaim Thy glory.   The word used, in s ufism one uses the work Glory, one glorifies God and God Loves man.  In the language of Sufism one doesn't say one Loves God, God Loves man but man Glorifies God so there's a difference of statures..... stages.  

So, glorification of course is the supreme expression of Love.  And maybe we could say that that is what unconditional love means.   

You know, Rabia talked about 2 loves and one in which she has some love for God and one in which she has Some satisfaction, and the other is for God Alone.   She's carried in her exaltation and in divine glory.   So these are very powerful  (they're not t houghts  -   how can I say) springboards in our soul which carry us beyond the earthly spheres.  Well I don't think the heavens are  up there and we are right down here, (no I think that is a misnomer) I think that one can see that Glory in the middle of  the world in the middle of all it's defilement so it's a question of seeing beauty beyond form.   And that's what the heavenly spheres represent.   It's a level which is so far beyond what we understand by form, of course there is absolutely no profile bu t still there it can't be defined, of course.   But it's perhaps the most powerful thing.   

So it is that power that inspires the artists and musicians and the mystics and which elevates us  -  gives us exaltation in the middle of life.   And so it will lead us beyond what would be a trite relationship into a sublime relationship.  And that's w hy Jelal Ru says it is God who is the Loved One,  the One that every lover loves, every Beloved.   He was able to transcend the limitation of the commonplace love where there's ego, there's dependance, there's emotional dependance and so on.   So when Lo ve (I suppose we all know what it means to be in Love   -  it's wonderful)   but when that Love becomes sublimated into that level of course it even more wonderful!    That's why when Jelal Ru says.....

Actually Shams Tabriz is the one who says "What is Love like?   It is to soar heavenwards, to fly without wings and to walk without feet and so on...."    Something that lifts you beyond your limitation.  

And the things is of course it is Beauty that enlists one in Love.   It does not necessarily mean the beauty of  form, but the ability to see beauty where others don't see it.   The beauty of seeing that which transpires behind that which appears.  I thi nk it was Ibn Arabi that said;  If you look in the mirror and you see an ugly face, or you see a beautiful face, both are you!  It's.... ..Beauty is in action, for example, in the action of a hero.   Beauty, for example, as I've often said, the beauty of  the light of a beer can the photons of a beer can emitted by a beer can in the sunlight are as beautiful as the photons of the stars,,,but you see it in a garbage heap!    So we have to be careful about what we mean by beauty.  When Jelalluddin Rumi saw  Shams Tabriz he said "the one whom I have always adored appeared to me in the form of man".

So, there's that correspondence.   That has it's basis actually in the Koran, actually.    All the forms in the world have their archetype in the Divine Treasury  (I don't know exactly the words).    The Divine Treasury that is Lahut what I call the arche types, the world of archetypes.   For the Sufis that's the divine treasury.   And the Sufis are in quest of the secret treasure. And you can never lay hold of it because it's at the level of archetypes.   You can only reach it through the way that it com es through at the existential level, through form, or then if you can reach beyond form and those forms that Surawardi calls in suspense -  in the mirror for example,  and then now we are having still more subtle forms which are the forms of our celestial l countenance.  

Well, what does beauty do to your countenance?  

Because that gives you access to the celestial spheres.  You know there is a word of  Ib'n Arabi who says "...all that we know of God is through the attributes".   So the forms are the ways that attributes - which are what we call the wazifa  -  configure  forms....configure themselves as forms. So the form would be the stepping stone which would enable you to get into the attribute.  

That represents a further level in the Dhikr  -  lifting your consciousness to the plane of Lahut.   Though if you just say the plane of archetypes it sounds metaphysical but if you see like....if you prostrate yourself in the Dhikr and as you rise you as cribe to God those qualities that you are familiar with but as you imagine them in their perfection.  

That's why Pir o Murshid said "the perfection of Love...." you see.  If you imagine these qualities in........by imagining these qualities in their perfection you are lifted beyond the limitation of ones ordinary purview of the world.   And that enlists a  sense of -  well I use the word splendor, because somehow when one uses the word beauty one thinks of form whereas splendor is beyond form.  So you could say that the forms of the world  - all faces are His face, you see  -  so the forms of the world try  to bring through something of the splendor by translating that splendor into form. 

So there are some practices we can do.  (I remember a word of Pir O Murshid:  "There comes a time in ones evolution that every touch of beauty moves the heart to tears.   It is at that time that the beloved of heavens is brought to earth.")   That is, the  beloved of heaven is brought to earth in you, as you, by your encounter with the divine splendor coming through beauty.   

And then there is this word of Ib'n Arabi who says:  (this is experience, of course)  It is your,.... the fact that you are deeply moved in your soul, even beyond your heart, in your soul by what I  will call the divine splendor which you discover by dint  of trying to glorify God and then somehow the sense of splendor begins to come through and then..... Remember the role of imagination:   Because imagination translates.... well thoughts and emotions into form and so those effigies that you may come across s in the high state of exaltation when you think you are experiencing Heavenly Beings, is the way that your imagination is able to project them into forms.   You are not seeing Beings as such, but your imagination is projecting the reality of the way that  reality manifests  in the celestial spheres in the way of forms.   

Now, the Koran says there is a likeness behind the archetypes and the exemplars.  There is a likeness.  That is a likeness, a resemblance, yes?   And Ib'n Arabi says there are tenuities linking the archetypes with the exemplars.   There are tenuities.  No w you know what it means.... something that is tenuous....there is a very fine relationship there.   Or that there is a very subtle.....between that high level (Lahut), that Treasury, and then the forms.  There is a likeness.  Yhe likensee is in that, the  tenuities.  The very fine bridging between the two, which is very fine.   And so then, we are talking about experience now.

It is in a text from the Mazdians, (but of course it is very much in the spirit of the Sufis)  it's an anonymous text and it says.... it's the experience of someone....., touching upon the celestial spheres...well, rather than just reciting the text, I t hink it's better to paraphrase it and say......you are walking in a world of  metaphor, in a state of reverie, you're walking in a landscape of the soul.....which is made of the power of your imagining, (and remember that for the Sufis God imagines the fo rms.   And so your imagination is part of the divine imagination which is part of your imagination which is imagining the forms!)   So it is purely subjective, you see, it's not objective.   

And as you are wandering in this sphere, you find yourself....you seem to perceive a Being whose splendor is so magnificent that you are absolutely shattered by it.  You know, it is like an ideal that one had always thought was impossible  -  just purely  wishful thinking  -  there it is, right there, coming through in a form.   And then you get closer to that Being and that Being comes closer to you and you discover, you see it is very strange, you see, I resemble that Being  -  how is that possible?  And  then finally there is what one calls a coincidence and you realize that that Being is your higher self.  That's what happened with Jacob and the angels.   Jacob refused to recognize that it was his higher self, so he didn't fight the angel , he just foug ht against the thought of how could this be me?    So it is discovering oneself in another oneself that it is better able to manifest what one is than oneself.

And we are all in search of ourselves.   Trying to find ourselves mirrored in another being who is better able to manifest what we are than we are aware of ourselves.   So that's a supreme encounter.  

So this corresponds to that level in the stages....of that stage in the  practices (....unclear....) that's called Malakut.   

So, are there practices leading up to it?  Yes, and that's what I'd like us to try to explore.   

The thing you need to do is get into a state of reverie.  So, you can't just do it by your will.  It's something that can happen if you're in a transfigured world, you see.  I had mentioned this, maybe, I don't remember, maybe I did  -  because I've had s o many camps!  But for example like St. Francis:  If you are walking in the forest and you get into the consciousness of the trees, then you will get into a transfigured state.   You'll find yourself in a transfigured world.   And I don't know what's happ ened to you  -  it's strange you think "this is familiar, I know this state, it's strange yet I know it".    So the secret of doing it is to shift your consciousness into that which you are observing so that it observes you (as we have said before).   

That transfigured state is apparently  -  it's a state which women experience shortly before the birth of a child, we hear.    And that's no doubt because the consciousness of the child is coming through the consciousness of the mother because they are co nnected and the child still has a memory of the Heavenly Spheres!   Still into that transfigured world.   And so somehow, it is communicated to the earth between that contact between the child and the mother.

And actually one learns to be able to switch over into that state.   That's what Pir O Murshid says that you develop the ability to shift your consciousness into an exalted state at will.   But it's not the will really that does it  -  you know some of th e methods we were using were, you remember.....  using your glance and you know closing your eyes and thinking of your glance as made up of the two headlamps of a car and then you open your eyes and if you can still maintain your concentration on those tw o beams then you see a blur and you don't see the objects.   Then that is a preliminary and eventually you get to the stage when you see the aura (or let's say the emanation) around a person and then you see the countenance of a person....and so on.....th at's the way you get into a transfigured state.

Now, you know that state of reverie.   One gets it, it's a kind of twilight state that you get in when  (I'm sure it has happened to you in bed)  all kind of images come up upon the screen of your mind, you're not creating them consciously, you're not c reating them and at the same time you can still hear the cars in the street  -  so you're not sleeping,   -  and you're still conscious of your body and you're conscious of  the furniture in the room and so on.   So it's like two superimposed impressions   -  worlds, let's say  -  the transfigured world somehow transposes itself upon what we call the physical world.

Then you can't really do much with your will, that's the whole thing.   That is, if you try to use your will you get back into day consciousness and if you lose your will all together then you fall asleep!   So it's in some ways a threshold state  -  you  learn to maintain that threshold state.  

Now of  course as I say, these images will arise without your having done anything about them and as ZIA would say they have a message to give you.  Because they are not just scenes they are also scenarios.   A scene is like a landscape  -  Oh like a skys cape  -  but a scenario is an occurrence like a drama.   It could be one or the other.   

Well there are conditions which induce that state.   You see you can (...) your unconscious by your conscious act.   

I give you an example of this.   There was a lady who suffered from epileptic fits.    The doctor (who wanted to remain anonymous  well actually she had bad dreams, nightmares, and I don't know wether epileptic fits are always linked with nightmares but , maybe.   Anyway, she had nightmares.    And what the doctor said was:   before you go to sleep, you imagine landscapes and situations that were nice, that are pleasant for you and see what it does.   And the epileptic fits stopped.   Now that doctor wan ts to remain anonymous, I can't say who it is, but it's a pity  -   but I suppose he might come in difficulty with the party line of medicine  -   and maybe he wasn't a psychiatrist, he was a doctor, and psychiatrists can allow themselves to do this kind  of thing...but anyway.

The important thing is that one can prefigure what's going to happen in one's state of reverie by the conscious mind and then drift into a state of reverie.  Now you have to be very careful with that state of reverie because the unconscious can surface an d erupt with great violence because there's a lot of suffering in the unconscious and you are off guard.   And then of course these impressions will come through in a dream.   They come through as nightmares,  but they will be even more traumatic if one i s in a state of reverie.   Therefore I think  it needs to be controlled to some extent.   

And that's the reason for programming your  dreams, as a matter of fact, you can program your dreams!   

You know that one dreams about things that are very much on ones mind.   Fears, or an unconscious event that took place, for example you are walking in the street and you saw a dead dog but you didn't really look at it  -  you just pass it by  -  and then  afterwards you think: well maybe it was just wounded, maybe I should have done something about it, but I was in such a hurry,  and so on and so forth, but somehow you discard it and in your dream the effigy of that dog comes back again.   Somehow the dre am is telling you something that you neglected but the  unconscious has registered it.   

So, now of course one can draw some conclusions from this that the kind of impressions that children get by the rather stupid videos that they're looking at, whereas when we were children we were brought up with the beautiful legends of the chivalry of th e past and the lovely legends, Russian stories....  fairy stories and so on.   And I think it was those stories that made Noor do what she did.   That sense somehow of an ideal coming through.   And what we are doing now to our children is really terrible ! 

So this is work in preparation for accessing the heavenly spheres because it's not that easy to access the heavenly spheres!    These are devices, skills that can lead to it.   So I would like to suggest a few myself and then you can do it yourself.   Yo u see I did it once with mureeds, well very early on,  and I left it to them to monitor their own scene.   So I said, for example, a scene of water, a water scene and then all of a sudden a woman starts screaming that she's shipwrecked and you see there i s some danger in doing that.   It has to be monitored in some way by some guidance.    There needs to be some guidance there.

Talking about water, so as I say, you can't really get into a state of reverie by your will but I think you are getting into it now, anyway!    Of course, we are very much in sync!   

Another way of doing it is if you try to recall your childhood and your babyhood.   That is rather disorienting for one's identity!   How I thought when I was 10 year old,  when I was 6 years old, when I was 4 years old.    Then as a baby.   So that now  you're not thinking of yourself in your present identity but as a continuity in change.   So you are freeing yourself from your present identity,  and also perhaps you remember that when one was a child one was full of bewonderment.   For the marvel of ex sistence revealing itself to one and one entertains a lot of ideals and then as people grow up (a lot of people) they lose their ideals and become cynical.    so if you can reverse that by trying to remember your state of mind as a baby.    I recall event s when I was 14 months old.   

It's possible that a child is able to see something that gets blunted afterwards because one gets more concrete, but one misses out on what the child is able to see.   OK, so of course one has to be very relaxed.....  to go to sleep one has to be very rel axed.   You have to really be rather blaisse (spell?) to the outer world to go to sleep.   If you're worrying about your problems you can't go to sleep.   You think:   well, forget it, and then you can go to sleep!And then you have to avoid sinking fully  into sleep.   You have to keep the door open between the diurnal state and the state of sleep with dreams. 

Now before you plunge into a state of reverie try to think to yourself:   "Now this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to try to imagine a landscape of midnight in the Claire du Lune and the moonlight.   I'm walking along a lake in very peaceful condition s and there's hardly any breeze, just a zephyr upon the water.  And the lovely eddies on surface of the water are picked up by the lovely moonshine.  And the world seems to be very far away and I'm out of my reach.   But in this state I find something tha t I've been longing for.    Peace at last from all the turmoil of the world.    And also the purity of the water and the whole scene is SO pure."

SIDE TWO

You are kind of floating.   Very light on your feet.   Almost, perhaps, even not quite flying.   And then you'll notice that your body now seems very different.   It's not solid.   It's now etheric.   And somehow, even the texture  -  the fabric  -  of yo ur body seems to reflect that peaceful state.    So, I'm sure it effects body functions, blood circulation and heartbeat, all sorts of things  -  blood surface tension, all kinds of functions, adrenal gland all kinds.   Somehow, you discover yourself, thanks to the landscape.   The landscape in an extension of your being.   

So, you know, this would be  -  suppose you were repeating the wazifa Ya Salaam.   It wouldn't do that to you.   This is really much more real!   You are really experiencing peace.   You are uncovering peace in you by the power of your projecting this lan dscape  -  which is really a projection of some particular attunement of your being  -  in a tangible form.   So you are discovering yourself in other than yourself, which is that landscape which is really an extension of yourself.

Now lets choose another landscape.    It's a very lush kind of countryside  -  it's lighted up by the sun  -  and there's a lot of activity, butterflies, bees, and the whole environment is absolutely enchanted.    Life seems to be oozing out in that lands cape.    And you are exalting in the ecstasy of the thrill of life.   And everything seems to be exalting in that ecstasy, the bees and the butterflies and even the flowers, of course.   The wind and everything carries that thrill of the ecstasy behind c reation.    And you are in Love.    You are in love with life; you are in love with love!   

So, you're awakening something in yourself because now your being is of the same nature as what you are experiencing in the landscape.    The landscape is a projection of something in your being that you're awakening and which you could call the ecstasy o f life.   So that would be the wazifa Ya Hayy.   And of course, Ya Hayy  -  even the sound of Ya Hayy is a very enlivening, dynamic sound   -  it does something to your being.   But now you experience yourself as pure energy rather than a body.   So you'r e dancing  -  you're dancing instead of walking, instead of floating  -  you're dancing in this wonderful milieux of life energy exalting in the sunshine.

And so you are awakening that quality in yourself that you could never do just by repeating Ya Hayy. 

Now then, let's imagine a scenario rather than a scene  -  although the scene is part of it    For example, you're mountain climbing and you're overcoming  -   you are trying to overcome  -  your fear.   And you are hanging onto a cliff by your fingertips  and you know you have to have a lot of courage to have to believe in your ability to do that.   Or, it could be all kinds of things  -  it could be skiing, it could be hang gliding, it could be playing the piano in public!   It could be whatever.   Even  mastering a computer.   Whatever.   It's mastery!    

The important thing is that you are envisioning conditions that are favorable to enlisting your mastery.   Instead of just trying to increase your mastery, you're thinking of circumstances which call upon that particular quality in you, and you offer a ch allenge.    And of course you enjoy  -  if you are heroic  -  you enjoy a challenge because that challenge is going to release the mastery in you and if you're afraid, of course, you won't develop mastery.

Now it is controlling yourself, and therefore controlling the situation.   So there's the landscape there... the mountains are there  -  I say it could be skiing or whatever  -  so that's a landscape.   But the important thing now is the scenario is somet hing which has to do with your being.   How does that landscape tally with your being,   There's an action here.   

Now there could be another scenario:  well, of course, a very extreme would be imagine going to Bosnia and being the victims of violence.   Or Rwanda, of course we mentioned.   Or visiting a concentration camp  (because there are still concentration camps  in the world).   And just imagine those people who you know at the end of the 2nd World War, the Nazis removed people from the camps because the allies were advancing and so they were shoved in trains like sardines and were exposed to terrible heat and t hirst and hunger and so on (and no toilet) you can imagine.   And so about 90% died, and only 10% survived.    And somehow, finally, as the Allies advanced and the Nazis left the camps and the Allies were able to get there and see the victims.   And so yo u imagine the compassion that comes out of seeing that suffering.    

So it takes suffering to enlist compassion in you.   You can't develop compassion just by wanting to be more compassionate.     It's the sight of suffering.   And it's because YOU have suffered  -  you know something about suffering  -  and you see someon e who is suffering much more than you could ever imagine.   If you had not suffered perhaps you could not understand compassion.    So when people ask why does God create suffering in the world, well maybe that's the answer.

So, now this will awaken what the Sufis call the Bleeding Heart much better than if you said Ya Rahman and Ya Rahim.   And so you could say, well so now there's this scenario and then you're discovering  -  you're unleashing  -  something in yourself whic h is mastered by the scenario.    It is much deeper than what we have done previously.    

So you could ask yourself:   Well, how does that help us to access the heavenly Spheres?    

Well, what I'm saying  -  I can't prove it, but  -  evil continues in the higher spheres.    There are disincarnated beings who are trying to kill the souls of people  -  not just their bodies!   Can you imagine!   Well, of course, that's what torture is.   It's not just physical, it's trying to destroy the soul of a person.   And it continues in other spheres.

So somehow, one has to pass through that terrible nightmare of despair in order to reach the heavens.  And that's why Christ had to be crucified, you know, in order to reach into the heavens.   So after that you can't complain about your problems anymore.   

So now if we could pass a threshold then from that terrible nightmare of despair and suffering then.   It's like a gate opening up into glory, and maybe the only access to glory is through that despair otherwise it is wishful thinking  -  but this is real .   

So there are thoughts which are helpful to make that transit.   One is the word of Pir `O Murshid which says  "A defeat can aver itself to be a victory".   A defeat can aver itself to be a victory.   So the whole message of Christ is there.   The message  is first of all for those who are forlorn.   When he said "Blessed are the poor in spirit" what he meant was:  Be of good cheer, you who are broken in life.   That's what he meant.  In fact it was wrongly translated.   

Of course, that is the passage from crucifixion to resurrection  -  from death into resurrection.    It's a death  before one dies (in fact, one is dying all the time) the clue then is... it could be a theme of meditation....you know there's a church in  Paris, in which there's a picture of Christ dancing on the cross!   

And if I remember the impression I had visiting the Holy sepulchre in Jerusalem,  people you know you have to walk down some steps to go to the sepulchre down there and I was sitting behind there  -   meditating  -   and I looked up and above that door th at goes down there was a picture of Christ  -  you know I was in my state of meditation  -  but somehow the impression that I had was of Christ exalting in ecstasy instead of the sad Christ hanging on the cross!   

And you know that when Al Hallaj was taken to the cross when he was being crucified, he danced.   He was in chains and he danced in his chains!  And I'm told that people who are tortured go through a process where they suddenly experience exaltation, a ki nd of freedom  -  I think what they do is they make an astral travel so that they are not conscious of their body anymore and the fact of being released from that terrible situation being able to reach beyond it would give one the most  ultimate exaltatio n.   I think of Noor doing that, of course.    

I met a lady once who was tortured by the....who was in the same Resistance as my sister, and she met my sister in the early days of the Resistance, and she was a little younger than my sister, and my sister said to her "You're too young to do this."   An d there she was: captured, tortured, her skull was fractured and the bones of her legs were broken and she was thrown against the room, left in a cell for dead.   And there she was talking to me!    She had come out of that!   And she'd come out of those  chains.    I don't know how she had survived.   

I've never met such a happy person in my life!   There she was smiling!   Oh, well that gave me some solace when I think of my sister  -  that smiling  -  you know, you have to go through that, like the pain of birth.   That's a terrible thing to put one 's wife through  -  to give birth to a child.   So, somehow when the mother says yes, it's terribly painful  -  but it's OK.   The joy of giving birth is so great that the pain is just  -  well you forget it.   Is that true?   Not quite?

So, these are the pangs of rebirthing.    Rebirthing.    We make that transit into the heavens.   And just think, yes, when I've made that step then I am moving towards discovering my real self, and I encounter this self  -   at first it seems different t o me   -  and I can't believe that I could be so beautiful.  And eventually, I discover this: it's myself.  

That's the access into the heavens.

So once more I've gone beyond the time, I'm sorry.   Well, I'm NOT sorry, really!    I think it was important to go through this.   So, that's all.


AUG 11, 1998		Tape 10


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 Spirit of Guidance in the message for humanity.

Yes, so once more we want to remind ourselves of what we are aiming at.  We're trying to explore devices that are intended to lead towards awakening and illumination.  And those two things are like in tandem.  We are, as I said, we are exploring.  That is that, it's not like "we've got it", we're just, keep on trying to find more effective ways of, let's say, skills that will trigger off a state of consciousness.  We know that practice itself will not do it for you, but it is a catalyst that may set off a whole new attunement and perspective. 

So we're going to, now, remember where we are at present in the course of the Zikr.  We are trying to explore those devices that will give us access to, what we call the heavenly spheres.  And we mustn't think of the heavenly spheres as 'up there somewhere' other than here.  It's, how can I say, interspersed within that reality that we call the existential reality.  It's just a matter of being able to highlight that perspective and that means downplay the usual common place perspective. We also know that we are awakening faculties which are not normally active and which give us a fine perception of a level of reality that one could say is in suspense, like in a mirror for example.  I've said before, the image in the mirror is actually a construct of light, just like a hologram is.  It's  evanescent and can, much more malleable than a physical piece of wood or whatever.  That is much more, as I say, much more stable and it does, the beauty of it is that it effects our attunement.  And so we have an immediate effect of mind over body, if one could say, or soul over the mind or whatever, all those different levels.  

And so we come across the great secret and power of imagination which is the ability to transport something which was started as in the mind, as a realization and will work right down into one's body and awaken body functions which otherwise would not be active and also develop idiosyncrasies in our being which are lying dormant and make all the difference in our achievement in life.  (Showing how) it's all somehow interconnected. Now there's no doubt that the secret of accessing the heavenly spheres is, and that means also become - having a sense of our identity at that level, is through light.  And that's where the practices leading to illumination are the ones which will help us to get in touch with the heavenly spheres.  

And I think that it's good to pass in review all the different stages, instead of jumping the gun too much.  So let's review them very, very fast so that you, because we've done that before, but it's good to remind you of those steps. The first one is purely physical.  One is consciously absorbing light from the environment and that could include the stars and even cosmic rays, which are invisible.  And that's where I find that some kind of basic knowledge of physics is helpful, because then you can.  What I do of course, is to meditate at nighttime   Looking at the stars to start with and close my eyes and then I have a sense of like I'm absorbing the light from the whole universe and not just from the environment.  And also that my aura reaches right into the stars and so the sense of the confines of my body, like skin bound, is totally out.  And so the consequence is that, now the stars are not 'other than me' because the stars are, the light of the stars.  

You know it might take thousands of light years for the light of a star that has vanished a long time ago to reach you, to reach
your body.  And so your, that, let's say the light of the stars is being converged as your aura.  And there's no converged but there's no boundary to your aura.  So you are the light of the stars.  It's a whole different way of thinking.  Like you know we have faulty ways of thinking.  Like for example we think 'outer space'.  We are in outer space.  It's just a matter of the way you think.  Or example, for example an eclipse where its only true for where the planet earth is in comparison with the sun and the moon, but there are other places in space where there could be an eclipse, but we don't know.  Its just a more, a question of the vantage point.  

And as for the sun, we think the sun is over there, but actually the sun is not, it doesn't have a skin and consequently we are bathing in the sun.  We are, the planet earth is in the sun.  Faulty, sort of commonplace notion is we have, which are misleading. Okay, so you remember we started by, where one starts with the rock bottom one identifies with one's body and the body is absorbing light from the environment and then eventually you know that the body, you know that the body does not.  Well it does reflect light to some extent, but it's like the leaves of the trees.  But that's how we see.  What we see is reflected light.  But the body absorbs light.  That means that the light is transformed by the cells and re-emitted having been transformed.  So that imagine that we are transforming the light of the stars in our bodies.  So we're not just boomeranging back the light of the stars.  We are transforming it. 

Now we, that is our bodies.  I  mean I say 'we' but I mean our bodies, the cells of our bodies.  And then you hold your breath between the two and you become aware of the jiggling of the cells and the sparkling of the cells when they have absorbed light. Light is energy.  It's like food.  And so consequently they loose this, use this energy to, well as, it gives them actually to, it enhances the, what they call (nitosis?), which is the division of the cells. And of course, this process is happening all the time.  But by the fact that we are conscious of it, that's mind over body, we enhance that activity.  And consequently this would be a clue to self healing by light.  If one is able to absorb the light in the cells of the body that are not functioning well.  You give it, give those cells an extra dispensation of light and as a consequence you're able to.  Actually to start with one has to really try to see if you can experience the cells of your body.  As you hold your breath you see if you can cells in, well in your arms or your chakra, the heart chakra for example, I mean your cardio-plexus these are nerves or the brain for example.  

I know that one.  Of course, we don't know.  Actually it's something that's being investigated.  The effect of light on the cells is being investigated in laboratories.  And there's a Rumanian team that has been working with it very intensely.  And now with electronic microscopes one can actually see the cells and see how they are affected by light.  You can even see the way that the cells are affected by the, are being attacked by the macrophages.  And how you could perhaps enhance the activity of the immune system, the lymph nodes for example, (thymus?), by trying to concentrate on the absorption of light in those cells.  

Now there's a whole new development.  Meditation for the next millennium, that's what the, that's exactly what Shiva would be doing if he were living (at present) further element.  Mind over body, we know that. Okay, so now then you remember the next, well I suppose you know that what happens is that the electrons caught in what they call their orbitals.  It's not like orbits of the planets, for example, they call it orbitals - a certain level of energy - and then, but they get more energy.  Then they free start freeing themselves from the constraint of those orbitals and start dancing and that's the dance of Shiva.  So the cells of your body are dancing in light.

But I must say for this to happen one has to smile.  In fact, I remember a hard lesson I learned when I was a young man and I was very angry because the Sufi Movement wouldn't recognize me as the successor of Murshid, and this Mureed of my Father's said, "It doesn't matter if they recognize you or not.  The only thing that's important is whether you're (radiant?) or not."  And how right he was.  Of course, it took all this time to realize how wise that was. So it's true that psychological attunement would make all the difference in that, the way that we absorb light.  So it can't, visualization is okay but it's got to be backed by a whole attunement.  One could call it the ecstasy of light, being drunken with light, take a shower of light. 

Now the next step as we know is, was to - when you turn within instead of concentrating on the cells, as though you were observing the cells, you really get into the consciousness of the cells or it's not the same thing. And that is where you get into, you start grasping what is meant by all-pervading light.  It's light that emerges from within. It's not the light that we boomerang back from, that our bodies boomerang back from outside, but it really emerges from within.  And of course we imagine that it emerges from the solar plexus, but it emerges in every cell.  Like now, new stars born in a, emerging out of a white hole (  ) in space.  Something like that.  

There's a continual, not just a recurrence of light, of life, of light, well of life actually, but even a new outburst of light in the Universe.  It's not just the big bang that happened at the beginning of time, but there's a continual big bangs or small bangs happening throughout the Universe.  They happen in us too. And what, as I've already said that about our personality, if we don't draw attention towards it, let's say feed it that process with our attention to back it up with our whole being and protect it against our doubts.  Like a small tree that you protect against. And unless we orient it, by our incentive, it will be still born.  And that's true of our personality and it's also true of that light that is emerging from within.  That means we have to give that light an orientation.  

And what Pir-O-Murshid says is that a practice of (Shagal), is a practice in which you learn how to transform all-pervading light into radiant light.  That's one of the aspects of (Shagal).  And he illustrates by the fact, and I think he's right, that what the sun is doing is transforming all-pervading light of the Universe into radiant light.  And so we're doing the same thing.  And the cells of our body are doing the same thing too.  So it's very difficult to be aware of that activity ourselves, but we can by our imagination.  Imagine light emerging from the solar plexus and becoming radiant from the heart, in the heart.  So one opening up one gate and then another gate.  Those two chakras are both like the positive poll and the negative poll of the same thing.  

Now if we imagine all-pervading light we have to understand.  Well there are pictures like, for example, the wave-like aspect of light instead of particle like aspect of light.You know, the light behaves according to the practice and the experiment that you subject it too.  It behaves like a wave or it behaves like a particle.  And it's both.  So it's very perplexing for scientists, of course.  How can it be both, you know?  But in fact is a solution, because there's such a thing as a standing wave that, so that the vibrations reinforce each other and then act as particles.  Have a kind of, you know the particles repel other particles, where the wave composes other waves. So the all-pervading light is that condition of light in which it's all intermeshed, you see, like radio waves.  We're not used to thinking of it like that.  We think of the world made of discrete entities.  So it's very difficult trying to, just try to imagine it's all intermeshed and inter-related.   

And like I think that is the scientific concept of the light field.  The light field you see, and thinking in terms of fields instead of entities, and it's that field that links the entities with the totality.  Whereas the entities are interacting, but in the depth they are united in their roots you see, and in (Shagal) one is touching upon the roots of one's being. So then as you exhale and you're radiating, not only, the you're not just re-emitting the light that you, boomeranging back the light that you absorb from the environment, but your also in addition to that radiating the light which emerged from within.  So one has to do that consciously.

Now the next practice is, in the transcendence, in the access of transcendence rather than cosmic internal.  And the way to do it is to first of all try.  Well the way to say it squarely is to think of a flame that rises in your spine.  And so that's where, it's a great secret, because what you're doing is your transforming infrared into ultra-violet.  And that will reach beyond what we understand by visible light into what we call the light of intelligence.  So that's where the transit takes place. So we start by becoming even aware of the, what one calls the phosphorescence of the body.  The first thing is re-emitting light. That's call florescence.  And now this is called phosphorescence.  The ability of fire-flies, for example, to produce light out of the combustion of their body or bats in the, or then deep sea fish, that don't have access to light and produce light out of their own body.

So I met a rishi who was sitting in a dark cave.  There was no light there.  And there he was producing light out of his own, light of his aura out of his, the combustion of his body.  So it's a faculty that one don't have to use and therefore, but as I say, you can enhance that faculty.  (Tu mo) practiced used by the Tibetans.  They dry sheets on their backs in the ice.  There's a competition who can dry their sheets the fastest. So I find that meditating in a sensor heated room is not the best way.  I've meditated in terrible cold, terrible.  And you know, you build a fire, but then I can't understand how one can reach samadhi if one keeps on tending the fire.  And anyway one's front is hot and one's back is cold.  So it doesn't make sense.  

So I just went out in the cold in the source of the Ganges and sat there and yes, it was wonderful.   In the point at which the body does, I think that junction of the body does begin to function and to be activated and so you are producing heat out of the combustion of your body.  It's the best guarantee against cold, instead of taking antibiotics.  It's one emergency, because we have lost that faculty. So you can do that.  You can of course, the best thing to do is to think of something that makes you feel outraged and then your body gets terribly hot.  There's a difference between anger, between rage and outrage.  So rage, you feel resentment.  That's not what I'm recommending, but outrage at the terrible things that are happening for example in the case of Rwanda.  Well there are lots of cases, terrible things happening.  You are outraged.  That's fire.  That will give you power actually.  Fire will give you power.  The dervish says don't come near me.  I will burn you, because you're lying.  You can come to see me when you've stopped lying.  There's the power of the truth.  Fire always, fire related to truth always, Hukk.  Shams Sabriz, light of the sun, power of the sun.  So you can do that.  

Actually, there is a way of drawing the telluric energy through the bottom of the spine and that's one of the principles of kundalini.  One has to do this consciously, of course, telluric energy - earth energy.  One of the clues of doing it is to imagine a, that your magnetic field, identify with your magnetic field, of course instead of identifying with your body.  So your body is, your magnetic field is the template in which your body is being formed. And it's not just a template, because a template is static, but it's dynamic. So there's a flow of energy and think that your, well it's an artificial image that you make.  That you imagine your magnetic field as a tree with the roots in the earth.  And so the energy of the roots impinges upon the bottom of your spine, the chakra at the bottom of the spine, (mula da ra chakra), which means the root chakra.  And now of course, it's easier to visualize this flame. It is a flame.  But that's, well yes, it's one aspect of it, of course.  It is a flame.  It's like a flame.  It has the similitude of the flame.

So you know I've given the practice, those practices in which you imagine the color of each chakra.  Now that is only a preparatory practice.  But for the advanced, then you think of a flame that keeps on, well as you move up you transfer your glance from the bottom of the flame up to the top and then you go through the different colors of the spectrum.  So imagine that energy is low frequency and then it becomes higher and higher frequency as you rise.  So do it in one sweep.  Don't stop by each chakra.  Don't do the, one sweep of a flame that assumes different that assumes different colors as it rises.  

And of course a great secret is what happens at the top because you, according to the yoga, of course, that flame reaches a summit, culminates in the pituitary gland which they call (bendu).  Which is a, actually it's good to look at books on anatomy and see how the, it's like a flower that hangs under the thalamus.  Thalamus governing the unconscious and of course autonomic nervous system and (get u  tree) transit between the conscious and the unconscious.  So the Hindus were using the nervous system as a support system for the waking of consciousness, of the unconscious into the conscious.  That is the conscious taking over functions which normally are taken care of by the unconscious.  That's the whole, that's what Shiva's method of yoga is, all functions.   

So that's the, I think it's the afferent nerves, moving from the periphery, from the two trunks on the side to the center.  That's what we did yesterday.   So you, the way to do it, actually the way to do this is really to practice.  The practice that is called, we call (qasab).  The Sufis call (qasab) and the Hindus call (pranayama) and that is you breathe.  Well let's do it then. Put the thumb of your right hand under your chin and middle finger on your right nostril and then pile your left hand on the back of your right hand and place the left thumb in the proximity of the, you don't press your - either the middle finger or thumb - your left nostril.  And now just breathe normally without doing anything with your fingers.  You exhale, extend your exhaling a little longer.  Keep on, each time exhaling, extend it a little longer.  

And now when you inhale, press the middle finger of the right hand inhale through your left nostril.  Hold your breath by pressing both fingers, exhale through your right nostril.  Inhale through right nostril.  Hold the breath.  Exhale the left nostril.  Now inhale through both nostrils, hold your breath and exhale through both nostrils.  Okay now breathe normally. Now the first step is that as one inhales through the left nostril, one concentrates on the current of energy that rises from the bottom of the spine in the left channel, the lateral channel of the spinal cord, autonomic nervous system.  Used to be called sympathetic and parasympathetic.  

And when you hold your breathe, you concentrate on the bendu point.  Bendu which is the, which means that you turn your eyeballs upwards and curl your tongue and press the bottom of your tongue against your pallet.  And then when you exhale and you concentrate on the energy that descends.  Actually it descends through the fontanelle and they call it -  well you can think of it as descent of pure spirit.  In the Jewish tradition it is the shekinah.  Now it descends through the right channel of the spinal cord.  So you're breathing out through the right nostril.  Then you do the opposite.  You breathe in through the right nostril, hold your breath exit left.  

And then you breathe through both nostrils and when you breathe through both nostrils.  Let's say to start with, you are lifting the energy in both lateral channels, hold your breath and as you exhale you concentrate on the central channel.  So now you're giving.  Let's say you're highlighting the energy of the central nervous system where you started the autonomic system.  Now of course, that's not good enough, because what we're going to do is to enhance the links between the autonomic system and the central nervous system, which are the afferent and efferent nerves, which link the lateral channels with the central channel, at each chakra.  

So the way to do this is, you know energy always circulates in a circular fashion.  If you watch smoke, it doesn't rise like that, it spirals up.  So if you are inhaling through the left nostril, the energy that impinges upon the bottom chakra is now drawn towards the left and then it will spiral up by moving in front of you, your right and so on.  So it will be moving up clockwise.  Clockwise if you are looking at your body from above, like a corkscrew action. I don't know whether you've seen the latest developments in physics.  It's (kind of?) a corkscrew action of, well a certain what they call (charetic?), I think, principles - the universe.  We are, there's right handedness or left handedness, but ultimately in the universe, both at the same time - but in a human being it's either one or the other. So now so you are lifting the energy, spiraling the energy upwards in a clockwise and then as you exhale.  So it's like a spiral staircase and as you exhale you are spiraling the energy down clockwise also, but if you think about it you realize that it is as spiraling down in another spiral staircase as the one you came up on.  Can't you take time when you get home and think (you'll) figure it out. 

Now if you inhale through the right nostril, you're spiraling energy up the same spiral staircase on which you came down.  And if you exhale through the left nostril, you're spiraling energy down through the same staircase from which you came up.  And if you inhale through both nostrils, then you are forming two spirals that crisscross, just like the caduceus.  So it's not the same structure as the DNA.  It's a different structure, caduceus.  And that means that the spirals are going to the energy that flows in the form of spirals.  Those two flows of energy are going to crisscross in the front of the second chakra and in the back of the solar-plexus; in the front of the heart chakra; in the back of the throat chakra, which is called the (authus?) the back of your skull; in the front of the third eye and meet in the pituitary gland.

So this is going to enhance the, I think it's called the afferent nerves, the nerves that reach from the autonomic nervous system to the central nervous system, from the lateral trunks of the spinal cord to the inside of the spinal cord.  So it's going to encourage convergence from the, as you move upwards convergence toward the center.  Or rather convergence toward the center as you rise.  So let's say, turning within and lifting your consciousness up at the same time.

You hold your breath.  And now you are concentrating with a totally different type of energy.  If you like to compare with, imagine it as something like the energy of the Holy Spirit.  And now if you concentrate on the descent, if you, how can you say, emphasis or give priority, prioritized the energy in the central nervous system that bifurcates, right and left, at each chakra, two spirals that crisscross.  So now you have the ascendancy of the central nervous system of the autonomic nervous system.  That's what the yogis were aiming at.  So at first you are, the central nervous system is taking over from the autonomic nervous system - as it rises, as it converges the universe - and then the nervous system, the central nervous system, takes over and has (synesy?) over the autonomic nervous system that holds the (  ) shiva. 

So, should we do that now?  Then we'll go farther. (Practice) Okay, so with just this one breath, but you can do it three breaths each side in three breaths, in both nostrils. So now we can do the same practice, you see, we can do the same practice concentrating on light; translated in terms of light.  And so there was a practice that leads to illumination. The way I do it, but there may be other ways of doing it, is to think of the spirals as spirals of energy.  And think of breath as the way that energy is monitored.  And so it's your breath that is spiraling.  That breath, in the sense of prana in yoga, that's pure energy, because that's what breath is eventually.  And so think of the wind.  In fact, that's the way I do it, to imagine a current of air that enhances the flame in the spinal cord.  So the breathing left and right you're still working with the let's say, magnetic field, with the magnetism - energy, but when you're breathing through both nostrils then that's the important thing then,

END OF SIDE ONE

. . .and so imagine the colors of the flame as your doing that practice, the spectrum.  And perhaps you remember that, at the end of the upward motion, you concentrate on the pituitary gland, the bendu.  And your eyes are turned upwards and your tongue is pressed against the palate and at that time you concentrate on the diamond.  That is, colorless light with a lot of reflections of all kinds of hues, sparkling. But, so give yourself time to, if you breathe in slowly then you can extend toward the end of the inhaling.  So that you can concentrate on that wonderful pure light of colorless light absolutely no heat.  It's just pure light.   

And when you hold your breath, then you concentrate on the light of intelligence, let's say.  Obviously, I mean, what I'm trying to get at is when you hold your breath you concentrate on the light of pure intelligence, but what I'm interested is to make that transit and that happens. It's got to be clear in our minds.  And that is you are stalking light beyond where light is perceptible.  That is within the visible range and even beyond the visible range because ultra-violet, that means beyond what one can perceive, and that does not have any boundaries.  So there's no limit to where that reaches, you see.  

So you're getting into light as the reality which manifests as physical light and it is essentially intelligence.  Intelligence as light that makes all things clear.  And if you think that way, then when you are exhaling then you're experiencing light upon light, which is that famous saying in the Koran, ". . .light upon light. . .".  The way that light of intelligence is going to activate the light of your chakras. So it's not a flame anymore.  It's a different phenomenon.  And therefore it is compared with lightening by the Tibetans, compared with lightening: Satori, a sudden descent.  And therefore, I must say that I've been practicing trying to exhale very fast, because somehow that energy is sprightly energy of pure spirit.  Does not take time; it's a sudden outburst.

A light upon a light and that's where your psychological state has an effect upon your body.  That's where awakening is going to manifest as illumination. As you know, "Intelligence becomes consciousness", says Murshid.  And quite rightly so, of course, when intelligence is not faced with an object, it is intelligence, and as soon as it's faced with an object, it becomes consciousness.  So in the course of the descent, intelligence becomes consciousness in the course of the ascent.  You are distancing yourself more and more from the existential state into a state, which Sufis call azaliat, which translates as pre-eternity, but that's a rather nonsensical term.  But let's say trans-temporality.  Where, as I already said, matter looses significance.  Where there's, I mean, time/space looses its significance.  Where there's, where you're not talking about matter and the psyche looses it's significance.  I mean time looses it's significance when we're not talking about the psyche.  And eventually you're beyond time and space.  But, as I said, it's not another dimension of space.  It's not like indimensional space or indimensional time, but it's just a different dimension.  It's transcendent instead of cosmic.  

So think of the flame as simply the way that the energy that is transmuted manifests in the body as a flame or in the physical world, in the existential world, as a flame.  But it's the energy that is important rather than the flames.  That transmutation of energy as you rise, which is what we call Kundalini.  And so you must think that kundalini is the (garuda?) or the Pegasus that carries (Bellafron), carries the rider beyond earthly conditions.  Or let's say, shifts his/her perspective from the existential phenomena into reality beyond form and space and time of course, and beyond imagination.  

And that's pure intelligence.  That's what happens when you hold your breath.  It's a, one could illustrate it as though you had taken a space craft and reached outside the cosmos and were able to contemplate the cosmos and think to yourself, "Gosh, I was right down in there and now I am, I can see that I went through a trip.  It wasn't a journey.  I mean I wasn't displacing myself.  It's just my consciousness shifted into the existential perspective and now I've awakened from that perspective and can see that I am not really incorporated in the, let's say tucked into the existential state.  It's just a condition that I went through, but I'm free from turning my perspective towards the existential world; the ultimate freedom.  And Buddha calls it freedom from conditioning, because that's what freedom is.  A conditioning in the existential world can however be (eschewed) by creativity, to some extent, but this is beyond creativity.  

And so you ask yourself perplexing questions like, "What have I been doing?  Just imagine and what, who I thought I was and it's all, I was caught in a bind, I was caught in a perspective and forgotten.  I lost my way and forgot who I was.  And I was so convinced that what I was experiencing was the way things are.  I was getting upset and angry, struggling. What a difference in what one means by 'me'.  There's a word of Jallaladin Rumi who says, "God plays the game of hide and seek between the I's and you's so that eventually they realize the oneness behind that diversity, that dichotomy." And Al Hallaj said, "There is a superlative (I) beyond my (I?) that saves me beyond the illusion of myself, from the illusion of myself. So now intelligence is then focused just like we transformed the (ovulating) light into a brilliant light.  Now one can transform the light of intelligence into the light of one's glance.  It becomes like an x-ray. 

So we already practiced this.  The eyes function as, in a passive way as (omens) of perception, but they do emit light.  But that light is much weaker than the normally much weaker than the light that the eyes absorbs, but if you could concentrate on the light that you emit through your eyes and then think light upon light. So intelligence is enhancing that light and the all-pervading light is threaded through that light in the same time, light of your glance then it becomes, as Pir-O-Murshid said, like the light of Aladdin that lights everything up wherever it turns.  So that's intelligence.  Consciousness is picking up information.  Intelligence lights up all things wherever it turns.  Makes things clear.  That is awakening in life.

So after doing the practice of the flame now you, of course you have already trained yourself to, to turn the light of intelligence upon your aura in the descent, but now you, you could concentrate on each of the chakras in the descent.  As the energy is, reaches out and particularly your glance and also your heart. Now, the secret of the advanced Zikr is that instead of casting the glance out, you direct it towards your heart, and as we've already seen, it's the heart on the left. So you see, it's quite different from absorbing light from the environment, because this is the way that the light of intelligence - it's not the all-pervading light, it's the light of intelligence - is able to awaken the light of the heart. So, I don't think you want to go out in the rain.  So we can stay a little longer.  Is that all right?  So then, so now, okay, so the next step the Zikr of light.  

So now, as you're going into the circle, you imagine it as a spiral of light.  You are chasing a spiral of light with your glance.  That, so, what Murshid says, is for it to be a spiral, the circle is turned into an oval, you see?  Otherwise it's a samsadic wheel, in terms of an oval, and so it reaches higher, keeps on reaching higher while expanding.  And remember that your glance is, the way that the, let's say has been illuminated by the light of intelligence.  So it's not just the light that emits from your brain, for example, but the light of intelligence has enhanced your glance.  And then at some point then your glance turns towards, let's say it's not really the heart and the heart at (flection), but let's say the left pole of your heart of chakra of your heart center.  And from there it reaches into your heart center. 

Now what you can imagine is that there are several spirals.  It would be simple to imagine several circles, because then you have a definite center.  In an oval you have two centers.  So those two centers are the heart and the head, maybe the third eye. So the power of your glance sets a current rising, a current of rise raising a light rising from your heart chakra up along your spine for even from your solar plexus up to your spine.  That's what the Tibetans do.  The, unlike yoga where one works with the energy at the bottom of the spine rising in kundalini, the Tibetan's are working with the energy that emerges from the solar plexus.  

Now think that the light that rises acts as a lift which carries your consciousness beyond the earth spheres, earth spheres.   So we have the faculty of shifting our consciousness from the earth plane into the higher planes. But remember that Pegasus could not reach the Olympus.  He was only able to reach a certain altitude and (Bellefron) had to proceed on his own, thanks to the momentum conferred upon him by Pegasus.  So if Pegasus is the breath or even is the flame, at the certain point, or is energy rising, at a certain point that energy is transmuted into a different type of energy, which is what happens if your flying in a plane for example, you turn off the engines and the plane continues because that momentum starts forward thrusts continues now for some time until it abates.  

So that's that sort of impulse you get or that's carrying you and it's not your breath anymore it's, maybe it's your aspiration.  It's a different level of, it's not energy anymore.  Energy as we understand it, unless we do the same thing with energy as we did with light and think that all that we know of energy is only what can affect our laboratory instruments. You know you could have E to the power minus infinity.  Well you know, some of these have their limitations, of  course.  Because actually you are not just lifting your consciousness, but you are transmuting the world or transmuting the light and actually one is really transmuting matter and that's what the alchemists where trying to do, so that you don't leave your body behind, that would be an astral projection.  Now you carry with you the quintessence of your bodiness.  

And that's what Jallaldin Rumi means by 'tonight the (umpteen) stars skip birth of the life everlasting'.  And so you think of for one thing some of the cells of our body are more gross than others.  Some are most subtle, like enzymes for example.  Or the enzymes that promote the transcription of DNA into RNA.  So think that there is a kind of subtle, let's say sublimation of matter that takes place in our body.  And of course, so you know protons can be transformed into photons, I mean electrons can be transformed into photons.  So that ultimately, in the beginning of time we were a being of light and it has crystalized as what you call a body and now we are able to retrieve that light having passed through the body condition.  So levels of light instead of just light, levels of light, more and more subtle.  

In fact, Hildegard of (Bigen?) says, 'what I experience as light avers itself to be a gate that opens up into the perspective of a world of still more subtle light'. And that's how you give a sense, get a sense of the light of intelligence. There's a practical practice to develop the light in your glance,  in addition to all the things that we've said.  It is, imagine the bud of a flower and imagine that you are casting energy upon that bud by casting your glance upon it, and as a consequence the bud begins to unfurl and become a beautiful flower.  Or you can even imagine a sunflower, a very good example.

Okay, I think that is probably the maximum that we can take for this morning.  And I don't think it's raining so you could go out and so we'll start at eleven o'clock then. 


AUG 13, 1998  Tape 04


So I think at this point, we're at - it's a - would be helpful to get down to basics.  Yesterday we were doing very advanced meditations but it's always good to get back to headquarters again,  as one says, and establishes a very strong basis.  Then from there we can branch out.  

So. We are on retreat, together, in silence, in conditions that are as favorable as one can make them, in the United States, and we are getting to the state of mind, the attunement of the contemplatives of all times, of all religions, and we're tuning ourselves.  And so it's good to remind oneself to maintain a high attunement. 

There are thoughts, which are conducive to that attunement.  For example, finding peace, of course, in oneself.  Peace is always tantamount to freedom, so sometimes these thoughts need to be illustrated by an image. And that is, that you are sitting in the center of a hurricane, for example, as in the case of Buddha, and everything is turbulent outside and we think of your life.  

In the world there's always a certain amount of stress and turbulence and agitation.  But where you are, everything is peaceful.  And to be more precise, as Buddha says, you surround yourself with a zone of silence.  

Now, as you know, the turbulence, and the stress, and also the kind of concupiscence of the world, spills over in most psyche and continues to live, if one doesn't deal with one's psyche and that's what we're doing in meditation.  And that the periphery of one's psyche, of one's body too, but we're working with the psyche for the time being.  The periphery is, that's where there's a spillover with (the) environment, and in the depth we can find our real  being, and we're not used to being aware of a real being because we're so concerned with dealing with the emergencies and problems that arise.  

Now that skills, of course,  meditation, in order to make that transit from a state of turmoil to the state of peace, and that is to slow down your breath;  watch your breath, as they say in Yoga and in Buddhism, "Watch your breath".  And you will fine that if you try to extend your exhaling, as long as you can, you (will) find that you are able to inhale much more.  For, for one thing, you're avoiding the lungs of a lot of polluted gases, and normally one only uses one fifth of the capacity of the lungs.  And, secondly, you're able to take in much more oxygen as you inhale, and the consequence is that you are able to hold your breath much longer, which is a condition which is favorable to turning within, and also to lifting one's consciousness upward.  So it's a very precious situation, when, let's say, the pendulum has stopped;  (It's in) suspense.  Think of breath as a pendulum, and the pendulum slows down.  (At) a certain moment it stops, and then moves again.  But as I say, you slow down the rhythm.  So let's do that. 

Well, I always think that I'm exhaling before I'm inhaling.  It's a way of thinking.  And, you know when in Yoga, you have to first draw in your abdomen, then your chest, and then as you inhale, you dilate your abdomen, and then your chest. So, it's the opposite of one's consciousness.  As one exhales, consciousness expands, while the body contracts.  And as one inhales, consciousness dilates, while being centered.  And enjoy that state of a time of (being) suspended because that will give you a sense of not being rushed by the onrush of time.  In fact, that is the, a condition where there's - nothing is changing - and consequently it is favorable to finding oneself in a peaceful condition.  


Now, there's a, I find it useful to use music to induce states that are conducive to meditation.  And because if you are, if you've had a very busy day and you'd like to fine some solace in meditation at last, and you sit down, and all of those thoughts, and all the nervous impulses in the body are still wired, and not only one doesn't know how to slow down, but a, and find peace, but even one resists them.  The body itself, and the mind, resists being withheld, music is constrained, like a restive horse.  And, as you know, music has, the thing about music is, that the, it's not just melodies, but rhythm.  

There was a story that Yogananda with, with his teacher, Sri Yukteswar, and a cobra entered the room.  And Yogananda, was a young man at the time; he wanted to run away.  And Yukteswar said, "No, No, No, don't do that!", just leave it to me.  And he started beating his hand, and then the cobra starting to dance, and then slower, slower, slower; and eventually the cobra slithered away.  And if he had, he had run away, the cobra would have pursued them.  

So that's a great lesson about, actually, how you deal with your thoughts.  Your thoughts are the cobra.  You can't control them and you can't escape them.  But you have to meet them, with great inner calm.  It's more in the realm of emotion than in the realm of will. So, I don't know whether you know this music, but we have music that illustrates this, Michael, and it's called, "The Progress of a cat", who is a, it wasn't given to you then? oh, Azimut, are you there?  No, oh; it wasn't given to you.  It's the wrong cover; it was a mistake.  It wasn't mine; it was a mistake.  

But, anyway, I recommend it very strongly.  It's a, but I've done it myself, and I know that one worries about not just one's own problems, but the problems of other people.  One does what one can do and one tries to meditate about it but if one doesn't know how to meditate, one doesn't find a solution.  And the reason is because one is short, one's mind is short -circuiting; that is, one is reacting, instead of availing oneself of all the resourcefulness in one's being.  And consequently, one is misassessing the problem and also one's solutions are ineffective, and the problem remains.  And there one is sitting and trying to meditate and there is all that worry about how one could help that person, and of course there is a worry about what one is going to do oneself.  One has one's own problems, and they can be quite traumatic and one also suffers from guilt if one is, has a very highly sensitized conscience, then one thinks about situations in which one feels one wasn't fair, and also one is concerned whether one is doing the right thing in life with, a, what a, when it's doing is going to be conducive in any way to fulfilling the purpose of one's life.  And so time is going on and one is missing out and, just to say, well the purpose is awakening; that's still not, not clear enough.  One doesn't see how that, what implications it has in one's daily life, until one is actually doing it.  

Now this is what Pir-O-Murshid says, in a teaching.  It's called, the Buddhists call it, (Shauna - dah- Shauna).  That is, you look at things with an overview instead of being right in the middle of them.  And therefore, you can see them in their context. So, that would require one to, curiously enough, one is looking at things with and overview, but that is not good enough, because one is still the spectator.  Even though his consciousness has expanded, one can expand the outreach of one's consciousness while consciousness is still centered in one's notion of oneself.  

Now the (Atum) meditation consists in knowing how to expand the compass of consciousness, not just extend the outreach, but the compass.  And the key of doing that is to get into the consciousness of other people.  First of all, People you are involved with, (then) people you like or love, feel close to you, and then eventually (more) all people.  Now you start including people who are inimical to you, and get into their consciousness.  It's not thought reading; it's not telepathy.  It's really seeing things as they see and eventually seeing how you appear to them.  And then you will understand, sometimes, why they treat you the way they do, because they have a notion of you, which is not the notion you have of yourself.  And you think their notion is faulty and yours is right.  But maybe both are wrong.  In fact, both are wrong. (    ) But, here we're dealing,  we're handling, our lives in a state of ignorance, and making all the wrong, doing all the wrong things.  So, one needs to see more into it. 

So that's what meditation is all about.  Meditation, you could say, is placing a buffer between the challenge of the environment, and the pool of resourcefulness in your being, to stop it, and then eventually confronting those two.

To start with you have to place a buffer, because you know as well as I do, that if one doesn't know how to meditate, one finds that all kind of random thoughts surface in one's mind and also very powerful emotions.  One can be stymied by these, by the power of these emotions and be very distraught and feel that, well, I don't know, I can't meditate, because one's; normally one's thoughts are conditioned by the environment, by the situation, the challenge of the environment, and so one isn't used to one reaching one's thoughts oneself.  As soon as you start, if you meditate, then you're called upon to monotone, monitor your thoughts yourself, and one doesn't know how to do that.  

And remember that these impressions are really a, they're a digestive process, it's, of the psyche.  It's a, the regurgitation impressions of the, of the environment that have been digested by the psyche, just like our food, and the unconscious does it far better than we could ever do in our conscious mind.  But when you meditate, those unconscious thoughts erupt.  And it's true that they are trying to say something to you, but it's very difficult to discern what they are trying to say because, because the tremendous platter of impressions.  So you can't, one can't deal with it.  It's just like an indigestion.  And so, the key to  meditation is to, as a first step, to shift your attention upon your real being, your identity.  Discover your real identity, rather than pay your attention to the circumstances,  One is placing a buffer between the challenge of the circumstance and one's deeper self, in order to enlist the pool of resources, that are lying in wait in one's being.

Now we have a very beautiful example of this in Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto.  Perhaps some of you are familiar with it.  You see, first of all, the work he describes the world as the orchestra; come to the challenge, and he describes himself as the pianist.  And you notice that the world comes with a whollup, and he, instead of, most people react, you see, then they would get angry.  But he is very calm and (proceed)(you see) and very calm and very peaceful, as though to say, "I'm not playing ball with you".  Don't try to talk me into playing ball with you because I need to consult my deeper self.  And then the world comes again with a whollop.  And this time he's a little more emphatic.  He said, "I told you, I'm not playing ball with you".  And then there's a real dialog between the two.  And eventually the world, the challenge of the world, recedes in the background, becomes more and more pianissimo, and he triumphs.  And out of that comes this wonderful melody; one of the most wonderful melodies that he's ever composed.  And one could say that this melody would have never emerged if he had reacted.  On the other hand, this melody would have never emerged, if he hadn't been challenged.  

So the challenge act as a catalyst which triggered off resourcefulness in his being, instead of, if you react you're short-circuiting, and in this case you are enlisting creativity.  So we have the, a lovely example of this.  Remember it when you are meditating. You see, it was me. Now, you noticed that, at first he refused to play ball.  And then after that, there was a dialog.  And there was a kind of reconciliation; that he made the world understand how he felt, and he was listening to what the world had to say.  So the buffer was just as a first mode of protection.  And after that it  became, one could say, a filter, (as) let's say, there was some kind of exchange that took place; acapelluable  membranes between your psyche and the psyche of the world.  So there's some kind of interaction there.  

So, this is a very good, you see, when we are meditating; you see, when we think of our problems we can be very distraught, need I say, and sometimes for very good reasons.  And, as a consequence, one loses one's hold; one loses one's ability to know how to deal with it at all.  And one needs to be; the only way to be able to go through life in a way that is fulfilling, is to be inspired.  And so, finding peace in oneself, in the middle of turmoil, will have an inspiring effect upon one; that it is at all possible to find this piece.  And it isn't really discarding the world, it's a; you see, there's a piece that is a withdrawal from active duty, and there's a piece that expands into the turmoil.  And so it is an active piece, and that is the kind of piece that gives you a sense of, one can't say controlling, exactly, but dealing with the situation as it, one had given up being able to deal with them because they are just too challenging. 

So let's a, I hope that you are meditating while I'm talking, because it's not a talk.  This is a, we are on retreat.  We are meditating together.  We find that our problems do surface, and the emotions (happeting)(that are pertaining to)(happening) to these, and we need to see how we can maintain what we call the attunement of the meditation which is supposed to be peaceful.  And just discarding these problems will not do it.  It's like turning the blind eye. Now there is a, of course in Yoga, one considers one's assessment of one's problems is totally off, and consequently, it's my eye, you see, and as I say, you can take it for granted that one makes, one miss-assesses one's problems because one is looking at them from the personal vantage point.   One isn't seeing them from all vantage points.    It would be, when (they) (we) look at  them, there's a certain bias.  

So, I won't say that the problems are not what we think they are.  I would, I, yes, I would say that the problems are not illusory .  They are not what we think  they are.  And the consequence is that we are carrying in our psyche a faulty assessment of our problems, without questioning it and it is festering in our psyche, as a wound.  Oh it's very serious, actually important, to be able to deal with this situation, and meditation.,  let's say, if we could take, use meditation as a means of dealing with this. So, as we've seen, just discarding the problem as being misassessed;  well,  that's what they say in India (Netyi Netyi or Neti Neti), that's negative.  That's not good enough.  What is the positive aspect?  

So I would say, that you're not discarding the way things look at the surface.  You're down-playing that perspective, in order to highlight, a deeper perspective, because there's no way of being able to; well, eventually one is able to integrate these two perspectives, but that first one has to toggle, between one or the other because there's no way of integrating them.   We learn, to, from our birth we learn how to see the world with two eyes.  But we are educated and conditioning, conditioned to only see things from one vantage point.  It's a whole apprenticeship.  You have to learn how to do it.  

So now, how do you turn within, so that you are able to, to grasp; well we say that which transpires behind that which appears, or is trying to transpire behind that which appears, or the problem solve that which appears.  But what transpires is what one might call, that which is enacted behind the problem.  That is, what are the issues?  And the issues are really in us.  Or at least, let's say that we are so invegaled in the whole problem, intermeshed with the, with the outside, the actual aspect of the problem, that we can't quite see what role our being plays in the, plays in the problem.  So, the only way to see it is to down play the fact for a while; not discard them, but shift your perspective. And so the way to do it, is, of course, to turn your attention towards yourself; your real self, and that's what we want to discover.  

Now that several methods; one is, of course, the method you find in Yoga, and that is simply to place a, not just a buffer, but a real blockage, or an obstacle, between the outer world and yourself, you see. As I say, that's something like the famous ostrich, with his head in the sand.  It's a not; it's a, in fact it can lead to total selfishness; escape, not facing responsibility.  That's a spiritual bypass.  That's a; psychotherapists are accusing the contemplatives of.. Now, the other one is, placing the sentinel at the doors of perception. So, can you do that?  Can you; you are meditating, and (throwing themselves)(For all you/me know) are occurring all the time, surfacing, but now we know that it's a, the unconscious is erupting, but so if you know that you think, well, O.K., well it, those thoughts, let those thoughts circulate in the twilight of your consciousness, so that you don't pay all your attention to it.

Now, you see we can place a sentinel at the doors of perception.  So that means lets, now, while you're meditating, the impressions that are true; for example, the other day we heard about the terrible atrocities in Uranda, for example, and you read, if you watch television or you read the papers, and you have impressions of terrible things happening in Bosnia, crime, terrible crimes in Belgium and everywhere, you, problems everywhere, - everywhere in the world.

And so these impressions are, it's like eating stinging nettles, that affect your digestion.  So, it's not very wise to do that; why hurt yourself.  I mean, it's true.  It you can do something about it, yes.  Yeah. And it's true, we (did) need to know what's happening.  We don't want to turn a blind eye; but still, must see how we could, well, I think that, in any case, in any case, meditation is not enough.  I think I think that action is important too.  I think that, in any case, I think that one needs to do something in the world, which will ease one's concern that one isn't helping.  One can't help everybody, but at least if one chooses an area where one can, for example, participate in Amnesty International or whatever, you'll have, give soup to the homeless or something that you can do.  

Being able to give them shelter; that's much more difficult, but soup, yes.  You can do that and talk to them.  And talk to them; you can do that.  And clothes; yes; sleeping bags, whatever.  There's something you can do.  But, so, that will make you, feel more comfortable about meditating.  Otherwise, meditating is; you know, it's luxury, that one.  Well, there's so much suffering in the world, one has to, as Pir-O-Murshid says, if you start going on this path, you have to pay your debts.  And we do have a debt, in the sense that it's happening over there, but somehow the whole of humanity is involved in everything that is happening.  (Or) we can't say, it's not my problem.  

Or, that's the first thing that sets you, can, feel comfortable in your conscience that you're dealing with these things.  Guilt, for example, you write to the person whom you have offended, and ask for forgiveness.  Somehow, or other, you're a clear slate, and not totally clear.  There's always some residue of guilt, but still, you're dealing with it.  And now we have your problems and our problems of other people.  So, as I said, we are part of those problems, as in osmosis between the outside and the inside looking outside key, and the environmental situation.  And so, at first it's not - you can't quite see your role there, because it's so deeply intermeshed with the problem.  So it's and because of our judging things from our personal point of view, which is not complete, of course, there's a personal bias.  So the first thing to do is, however, to make some; (Oh) in alchemy it is called filtering.  You place a sentinel at doors of perception.  So you reject certain impressions, and you can ask, well how can you reject impressions?  With your will?  It doesn't work with your will.

Well. we can learn something from the immune system of the body.  And the body rejects organs, the transplanted organs that do not have the same DNA , as the body.  So it is a sense of me, as opposed to non me, not me, that gives you that protection. So, when you think of music that you find is disturbing then your protection is; "well it's not me".  And when you find that a person is rather obnoxious, you think, "well...- .

End of Side 1

So you do not allow people to take away your sense of me.  See, that's what happening.  I mean, people in couples, say to me, or one of the members of the couple says, "the trouble with my relationship is that person always brings out the worst in me", you see, so that means that they were able to get at you.  And if you think, well, there, I'm, it's not a buffer, it's a filter now, and that, that person is where they are at and - .  Now, on the other hand, I think that's very good, if those, if that person has helped you to discover, aspects of yourself that you didn't like; it's just as well that it came to the surface. But this is part of meditation; it is part of really being very very clear.  As Pir-O-Murshid says:  "Watch yourself", just "(Je'ana del Shauna)".  You watch yourself, watch your thoughts, those emotions, and see how they come;  your relationship with people, with situations, and you have a protection.  And that is, you can make a selection.  We have the opportunity in life of selecting that which is in snyc with our being, and rejecting that which is not, or let, keeping it at some distance.  

For example, the choice of things that you have in your room.  That says something about your being; the kind of music you choose, the kind of clothes you wear. Everything, says something  about you, me, or not me.  If you have a very strong sense of me, then you will have a contribution to make in the world.  You will not over-adapt yourself to the environment, and if you over-adapt yourself to the environment, then you suffer from frustration, because for one thing, you're conditioned by circumstances, and we have a great need for freedom.  

Now you find that involvement does draw one into a situation where one get's conditioned, and at the price of one's freedom. And so, no doubt that one needs to involve oneself.  One enriches oneself by one's interface with the environment, but one needs to see whether it is just the constraint; that one is constrained by the circumstances.  One can maintain, find freedom in one thinking.  But if one's thinking has been, has been somehow, brainwashed by the situation, then, of course, one has lost their freedom, or preeminent thinking, rather than seeking freedom from circumstances.  And that's very important when you're meditating.  Because they are sitting there and your whole life is there, right in front of you. 

Whereas, you, when you are rushing to catch a bus or train or you're or have to go to your office, and so on, that you're into that thing that you're doing, but your whole life is not in front of you.  But when you're meditating, your whole life is there.  And it's no use just saying, "well I'm meditating. I don't want to think about my life".  No it's there.  It's part of the, you're meditation.  We're not giving you artificial themes to think of, and so on.  No, it's your problems are your themes; your meditation themes.  

(No) you know there's a second (immune) system which enables you to adapt yourself to elements that are foreign to you; because otherwise, one wouldn't be able to digest food, for example.  So, adaptation, yes.  And that is, you see the only way to do that is to transmute the rather indigestible impressions, though let's say, relatively indigestible impressions that are not you, but you still are able to digest them.  So that's the second principle in alchemy.  And it's called, "distillation". (Oh) you start with facts and you try to extract the essence of what is involved in this situation.  Now let's try and see into this a little more clearly.  

Maybe it's good to simplify things at this stage and say, "the problem calls upon qualities, dormant qualities in you; calls upon the unfurling of dormant qualities".  So that is what is being enacted behind the problem. So while you are on retreat, you ask yourself, now what is a quality that I am, well, what is a quality that is enacted in this problem, apart from, you know, my being?  But what is the quality, how can I say it, it's a cosmic level.  For example, the issue of this particular problem is truthfulness.  That's what holding everything back.  So it might be your truthfulness; it might be the truthfulness of the person you're dealing with.  But the problem is truthfulness.  So, and the , another situation could be like the problem is compassion. Or, another situation is, the problems is, being able to, I mean the issue behind the problem is being peaceful.  The more excited you get, the more the conflict gets worse.

So, that's where I find that the language of the Wazifas is very helpful.  It's a language.  It doesn't mean that you have to repeat a wazifa, as long as you have really entered into the outreach of that wazifa. Now, we're touching upon a critical point here, because we are turning within and we are looking at things as an overview.  So there are two things; two different dimensions of consciousness. So, as we turn within, we look at ourselves in overview.  So we're looking at, no we're not looking at the problems, we're looking at what is behind the problems.  And we're looking at, as I say, the outer sources; potentials that are, lie in wait.  So, now, just bear with me, now, because each of our problems are different.  

So, now, so, you see, if you are in your personal, limited in your personal identity, what I mean by one's personal identity is for example, your self-image, not only we are convinced that our problems are what we think they are, but we are convinced that we are our self-image.  For example, one thinks, well I'm a little intelligent, but not very; and I have some compassion but I really get very upset with people and then I really hate them.  And so, you know, this is our self-image, you see, and my, I have a certain amount of patience, but my patience can be exhausted and I have a certain amount of joy, but not much.  And so, these are, that's your self-image.  It's; your self-image is a composition of qualities.  And what we're working in, in Sufism, is we're working with these qualities, which we call- well, the wazifa are, like the - (how can I ) archetypes, and their qualities are the exemplars.  

And there, so you have the problems out there, and you have your self-image here, and both are wrong.  I mean, both are missassessed.  Now how do you expect to make sense of life like that, at all?  No wonder that we goof.  So, now, we really, meditation is a unique opportunity to see clearly.  So how do we do it?   - Well, these are several approaches, and so I don't know whether which is the first one to deal with, but let's say it doesn't matter. You could look at things from, instead of turning within, you could start emerging from within.  I don't know if I'm saying that very well.  Instead of withdrawing from the environment, you simply about-turn and try to grasp the qualities that are trying to knock at the door, as it were from inside, that are trying to emerge from inside toward, emerge to the surface, in your being.  So, you see, if you try to figure out, what is the quality that you need to meet your problem, you are going to select that quality from, with a personal bias, from the point of view of your self-image of your assessment of the problem, and so on.  So the likelihood is that that's not rally the quality that is at stake.  It's the think, the quality that you think is at stake.  And so there one can fool oneself further.  And that's why we advise not to prescribe Wazifas to ourselves.  So, one has to learn how to turn, within, of course.  

And so, rather than placing a buffer, said it's a, it's a, it's as a filter;  it's a filter.  And so you are placing sentinels at the doors of perception.  That means the, the, well you're meditating now and you know how, when you're meditating you need to downplay the impressions of the physical environment.  And that's very difficult, when the physical environment is very beautiful, and beautiful sunrise or so on so.  It's difficult to close your eyes and discard the physical setting.  But, anyway you do close your eyes and somehow, In (chahawrl) we, we really place a blind upon our eyes and our ears, and so on, so we really sort of a, discarding the physical environment, light, sound, smell, taste, and so on.  But then, having done that, you, as I say now, you place a real, that was buffer, but now you place a real sentinel.  It's not really at the doors of perception.  It's a sentinel at the doors of your psyche.  So that, it's like, for example, when you're very busy and you, you're trying to deal with a problem, another ten, twenty problems that you have to deal with, and you give a priority, and say, well for the time being I don't have time to deal with those other things.  So, so that's the way that your, downplay problems that you can't deal with, or thought that you can't deal with while you're meditating, because you can't deal with everything.  

So you're prioritizing what is really, enhances the delight of discovering your real being that was hidden in the problem.  In other words, there's emotion behind it.  It's not that selectivity is based upon emotion, it's not just your will, as I said.  First of all, finding that you can find silence and freedom in the middle of a turbulent world will give you an outburst of glee and will help to heist your consciousness upwards which you couldn't do if your, (really) by your will. Now we want to have something concrete to give us a clearer sense of ourselves, because, I say that, I mean it's your sense of yourself, (who am I )  that and, that's not your self-image, that will give you that protection, and enhance the unfurling of your qualities.  But that's sort of ache, like my real self, what is my real self, who am I?;  one doesn't really know it.  

So we want to be as concrete as possible.  And so the best way to do it is to start with rock bottom in the realm, let's say, the existential realm, and then (par) ultimately will reach  beyond it but, that is what we did yesterday.  But to start with,  -  form.  That which is gained by existence is form.  A thought configures itself as a form.  You are a form, not just a physical form, (fit, fall on your) your face or your body.  Form (is) a subtlebody.  It's also a geographical form.  But that's (    ) a form of your psyche.  It is for the Sufi's the qualities; the idiosyncrasies of our psyche's are forms.  And these forms are effervescent; while even the form of your body, to some extent, is patterned by your thoughts and your emotions and does vary, it, especially your face varies, according to your attunement and your thoughts, and so on.  But your subtlebody, it varies much, is much more malleable and therefore varies much more.

So, let's try to do that for the time, for the moment.  For example, we'll select different qualities and see how they affect our subtle body.  For example, a situation which requires a lot of mastery, could be skiing, it could be hang gliding, it could be figuring out a problem, mathematical problem, it could be playing the piano, it could be a lot of things.  Mastering; take control, take control. Now, see what happens to even the features of, let's say that, let's say your countenance; that which transpires behind your face.  You can see that expression coming through and; people in the world who have taken a lot of responsibility and who are really in control, taken over control, because otherwise things get out of hand.  So that's a quality that you have, each one of us in a certain measure.  Some people have it stronger than others.  But what I'm trying to, what we're trying to do is get to know ourselves through the form of our subtle body and particularly our, the countenance, let's say the face of our subtle body.  

Now the way to do it is to think that your physical face is a mask, but that's not quite good enough.  It's more like; it's allowed something to transpire, but not, you can't get as much information as you are doing now, as you turn within, and you try to sense the configuration of your subtle, of the face of your subtle body.  You remember we, yesterday we tried to experience our subtle body like a magnetic field and at, but then, which was out, out, outside your skin.  Now it's inside, you see?  Well it's both inside and outside.

So the more you concentrate on the, taking control, the more that subtle face, face of your subtle body is going to get fastened into form.  The more it will gel, let's say.  It's like, if you keep on walking through the, through. through the meadow or as on, in the same way then it becomes a path.  So it's like reinforcing, and that's the reason why we repeat the wazifa because, keep on so the wazifa is Ya Wali, so keep on repeating Ya Wali, Ya Wali.  But it's not good enough, just to repeat the wazifa.  You have to think of the form, the human form, that corresponds to that particular wazifa.  And, if you like, would think of a master who, could be a woman, of course, who is, who typifies this particular quality in your mind, and therefore inspires you, because we, we have difficulty in arousing this quality that is dormant in each one of us, of course, because it can lead towards ruthlessness and cruelty, and unkindness, and so on;  so, a dictator, as a dictator, so a despot.  

And so that is what's holding us back.  There's always the shadow quality.  So, the only way, so now we're going to get right, a little bit deeper into working with wazifas.  One, that's the reason why we give wazifa's in tandem, so that the while working with control, you're working with compassion, for example.  And sometimes it's more, it more compassionate for another person if you, you take control.  You, that person is suffering from a lack of discipline and somehow you, you have an influence on that person, which give them a sense of themselves taking control.  So, giving in, indulgence, accommodating, is not always the best way of helping a person.  So compassion can be misconstrued; even, for example, a doctor has to operate sometimes.  So it's, someone has to use methods that might imply some kind of suffering, but for the sake of a better good.  

But that combination, you see, if you just work on one Wazifa then you tend to incur, the danger that the shadow will begin to be re-enforced together with the quality.  Where as, if you are dealing with two, then you are able to balance it, and find a way of controlling without reinforcing your ego, at the cost of other people.  That's a great art.  So, now what would be the expression on your face, or your countenance, if you feel a lot of suffering for the, let's say, compassion means, passion, com-passion, that means suffering with, a person who is suffering, and your heart goes out to them.  And if you've known what suffering is yourself, then it's, it's easier to get in sync with the suffering of another person. So it's a totally different impression, expression, and, and, and the countenance in the countenance of your innerbody.  So actually what we are doing is really; we are configuring our innerbody by high-lighting certain qualities.  So there's always a correspondence between quality and the form. 

And now let's just take one more.  Purity, the immaculate state, which was described, yesterday.  Well, actually we could again choose a tandem.  So, you know, compassion that was Rahim, Ya Rahim. Rahman, Rahim.  Rahman is more like magnanimity; being big enough to forgive people.  Not bearing a grudge; that's Rahman.  Where as Rahim is really suffering with the person.  That's not the same thing.  So now let us work with the Immaculate State, because, you see, if your face is a mask, but it's not totally a mask, because  it allows something to transpire.  But if you want to try to grasp what is behind it, then what transpires, then you see forms.  So it is really many-faceted.  So one form emerges if you think of the quality corresponding to it, and then another form emerges. 

And so they're all there, but they can surface if you concentrate on one or the other.  But now, if you get to the fine care of your being, of your psyche; well not just of your psyche, of your subtlebody, you will fine the immaculate state.  It's the Virgin Mary; the immaculate state of the Virgin Mary.  It's the core of your being that can never be defiled.  That's why we played that song the other day, that song of Weber and the Requiem of Weber (Pio Di Jesus).  That's the core of your being.  It can never be defiled, and, let's say at the surface it's distorted, but it's real true authentic nature is present within it's distortion.  Just like the voice of Caruso, as, I've mentioned many times.  So, can you, what happens to the form of your countenance, when you are able to touch upon the very core of your being? 

Now you may find that this is your real being;  this is your real being, this is me.  All those qualities have been inherited from, through one's ancestors,have been, there's been a spillover from the environment and so on so forth.  But this, is me.! And it's totally peaceful.  In fact, if you want to find peace in your retreat, identify with this core of your being.  Because then you can move amongst the clouds and that purity will always help you to validate yourself and not allow the spillover to devalidate your self-esteem.  It's very powerful.  And also it's a solace for one's quilt, to know, that a, however one, much one has been tarnished;  in the depth of one's being one is still absolutely unsullied, undefiled.   And now the extraordinary  thing is that this pure, imagine it white, like snow, and this very pure core is able to , gain ground in your psyche and cleanse the psyche as it, as it expands.  Cause as I said, at the  surface there's an osmosis with the world so there are a lot of things   that are, not so good, but somehow that core is able to reverse the distortion, as it gains ground.  And if you know they (that) can rely upon it;  it's there. 

And now the extraordinary thing is that when you are working with the different qualities; yes, they were different facets of your being, facets of your being.  But if you want to, if you think that your face is a mask, and you're playing a role in life, and you, your self-image is, there's a role involved in your self-image, your profession or whatever it is, your; that's a role.  But, all of a sudden, you have a sense of having discovered your real being, and you know; this is me.  Now all of these other things have been, have accrued to me, but this is my real being. Now need I say, that this gives ineffable ecstasy.  Discover your real being, having removed all the illusion, will, will explode, as a, as the ultimate ecstasy. So you go through your retreat, maintaining your identity of your real being, and so it acts as a kind of safeguard against the way that impressions will start (whaling) one from one's true identity and so one plunges in the world of illusion.  

That's very important, even if you're walking, for example.  During a retreat, you can walk.  Of course you have to be aware of the physical world when you are walking, but you can maintain that sense of identity and find oneself in the physical environment, almost like you feel as though you were a visitor on planet earth.  You didn't quite belong here, but you adapted yourself.  But as Pir-O-Murshid says, one tends to lose oneself; forget who one is, and that's where one suffers from a sense of confusion and estrangement, banishment, and exile.  

So, the (weather) (way )(that is) fine now so you can go and perhaps even walk, (as) it's rather cold to sit, but, and a, you know, you find yourself in a transfigured world and you, while you are on retreat, and you find your identity and all those things that have accrued to you, and which, which one identified, and which are not really you.  And you can look at them and say, yes, it's a useful adjunct to my being but they're not really me.  

So, it's much later than I thought, but a, so, I think you need; well maybe you need to sleep quarter of an hour.  We can meet at a quarter past eleven.  


AUG 13, 1998  Tape 05

(The first part of the tape is a music presentation to which Pir briefly refers in his discourse)

So, it ends in peace. And to get to that point you have to deal with struggle, nostalgia, the uncertainty, turbulence and despair and eventually passing through all of this you found peace. You can't find peace right away by trying to do it. It's a gradual process and eventually you find it at the end, if you encounter your nostalgia. Be kind to your nostalgia. Striving for what one believes, that sacrifice, struggling, going through the dark nights of despair and still knowing that at the end of the whole process there's a state of peace. It's a piece of music you can use as an introduction to a meditation if you come home after a busy day and your mind is agitated. Just listen to the music and go through it and get into the kind of attunement that it's telling you and find, find Peace.

OK, so what we're seeing then is that the themes of our meditation, not just our problems, and ourselves, are really interconnection and interaction with the cosmos that presents itself in occurrences or situations, and which involved, are interfacing with these occurrences, given the realization of whom we are. And that at, at first if we identify with what we think we are and our consciousness is functioning as a focal point and we find ourselves in the middle of that whole scenario, then of course we can't see clearly, there's no doubt about that. And consequently we make mistakes and suffer from our mistakes and we're caught in the Samsaric wheel.

So, what we want to do is to awaken; and that has immediate consequences in unfurling potentials in our being that cannot unfurl if we are in a state of ignorance. If we're not clear. We, we saw that it requires us to expand our identity and therefore the compass of the consciousness in four different dimensions. The first one was cosmic, the second one turned within, the third one turning upward and the fourth one, self, the overview, self transcendance. So, this is like, it's good to have a clear sense of what we're doing in our meditations. So at first, well, what I, if you know what I said, is our assessment of problems, I don't say it's false, I say it is one way of looking at them that's relative. And so it is incomplete, and if we act upon it then, of course, we will be acting a faulty way and it will have enormous consequences. And of course hopefully we learn, but of course we don't always learn.

So the first thing that we did was to, in the cosmic dimension, to see the problem in it's context, because it's not just your problem, it involves the people involved in it and more and more people and eventually the whole of humanity and perhaps even the whole cosmos. So, that, that gives us wider sense of the problem, we see the problem in it's, it's not just a problem, as I say, the situation, we see it in it's, in it's context. And the clue to that is getting to the consciousness of people. Instead of widening our consciousness, if you remember, the outreach of consciousness, it is the compass of consciousness. All encompassing.

Then, then we turn within and that's where we highlight our person as in comparison with the occurrence. But as you know those two are so inextricably intermeshed, that there's no way of separating them totally. But we can only say we highlight the idiosyncrasies of our being, and we start to see some kind of interconnections with the situations. Jung said this, when he said, "if you don't meet your shadow it will appear to you in the form of your fate." So, since it's very difficult to distinguish our contribution to the problem, it's good to start with by making clear cleavage. And so that means, as I said, you can't highlight two images in a hologram at the same time, so you have to downplay one and upgrade the other, up...highlight the other. So, this is a clue then, this is a turning point in meditation, you are for the time being not drawing your attention toward your problems but toward your self, whatever that means.

So far, we have tried to grasp the subtle reality of our being behind the more apparent one, because that will enable us to grasp the issues behind the problems, instead of the problems in their factual dimension. The issue that is what is enacted behind the problems, so they are all, that those, what is enacted is not always in terms of quality, so now we are beginning to match those qualities with the qualities in our personality. And we found in order to do that, we, it is good to configure these qualities in our subtle bodies, there's a correspondence there. And, so far we are trying to discover our real self, let's say, behind our self image, but we found that our real self is not that stable as a body, for example, it is evanescent, it is dynamic, instead of static, and therefore, it, it is emerging as we create it, it's very strange, it's like a sculptor discovering his/her statue by making it. So, while you're working with your, configuring your subtle body, you, the qualities, that don't, the latent qualities in the seat of your being, let's say, are beginning to emerge, but now we remember, remember that this is one dimension, you see, it's moving from the inner to the outer. It's not good enough, it does not include the transcendental dimension.

Let's say those idio.., qualities that are trying to come through in our personality are imperfect,...the seed is not perfect, it's a, it's an expression of the DNA of the whole universe, but it's limited. So, what is trying to come through is not, I mean, it's got to be completed by the, what one might call the archetype. And that's the reason why it is helpful to see problems with an overview. That is with an overview, that is not just consciousness operating with a kind of an overview, but our sense of identity needs to shift from the exemplar to the, to the archetype. And the whole thing is, now the clue here, the criterion, is in our thinking, because if you assume that God is up there and has all of these perfect qualities and we are down here and are only exemplifying these qualities in a very inadequate way, then we will never see the link between those two poles. And so it really involves our concept of God.

And so our thinking can stand in the way of our experience and of our unfoldment and that's why it's necessary to clarify up our thinking. Simplistically speaking it means not thinking of God as other. We could illustrate this with a magnet, North Pole and South Pole, whatever, positive, negative. So think of your being as being the whole magnet, or if you like a pendulum, for example, on the top is, remains stable and the bottom is moving in time-space. So, we identify with, normally, we identify with the, the bottom of the pendulum, that is of the, the pendulum, yes that is moving in time-space, that is subject to change and decay and so on, perishable. And we fail to see that we're the whole pendulum including the top. Because we think that the top is God and the point is that the top is coextensive with all other beings and therefore that is what we mean by the transcendental dimension of God, but God is the whole pendulum and so are we. and what is more, we could think of God as a virtuality that becomes a reality as us. Now that's an extreme view, and sometimes it's good to question our concepts of God. And even that view is not complete, but still, at least it frees us from a rather faulty concept of God.

So, now how do we, therefore, grasp the archetype which those qualities are to be found in our being. As I said before, we have a certain amount of intelligence or compassion or mercy or whatever, that is the Exemplar. And Exemplar is incomplete, but of course, somehow we have the propensity to represent to ourselves the perfect compassion or perfect mastery or, and that's what we ascribe to God.

So now, what we're going to do is, what I suggest doing is, referring to some of the thoughts of the great sufis and seeing how it applies to our dealing with our problems and our self image. So these are the steps. Ibn Arabi says, God, you, well first of all let us keep in mind, keep in mind, that what we think is a reality, is that which appears a reality. So the world is made of devices, in which the divine intention is trying to reveal itself. Like the film, E.T., was, Speilberg was using devices in order to communicate his thinking and those devices were rather phony, but still they, we bought them, because somehow what we were doing we didn't realize it, we were getting into the thinking of Speilberg. It's very smart. so God is smart. And, we can never grasp His/Her intention, but it is communicated through signs, indications, clues. And so not only physical world is made of clues, but your personality is made of clues. That is why Ibn Arabi said, "God describes Himself to you through yourself". Exemplar gives you some sense of the archetype. But, we have this propensity in ourselves, say for example as Poncare said, "infinity consists in the ability that humans have of always imaging a large number than the number, the largest number they've imagined so far." So we have this propensity to reach beyond the imperfect quality to try to sense how it could be in it's perfection, but at infinite regress, there's no way of grasping it ever, it always escapes our grasp.

And the thing is that really speaking to able to understand the meaningfulness of our lives, we'd have to see things from the antipolar point of view than our own point of view. Which we call the Divine Point of View. But at first we can not. But is it true that we can never, well we approach it more and more. So what we're trying to do now is to develop skills, it will help us to try to see things from the opposite point of view to our own; the complimentary, or the antipolar point of view. Well, we already learned how to get into the consciousness of other people, Cosmic Dimension. And then if we get into the consciousness of Masters, Saints and Prophets it, it will give us a greater sense of what we mean by a more perfect archetypal description of qualities that we find in ourselves, or to inspire us. So, I'd like you to use this opportunity to just think of the Master, Saint or Prophet of your choice. And see that what you're doing is, your ascribing to him or her, qualities which are known to you in yourself or in other people. But you imagine that, that the particular being is able to manifest this quality much better than you could ever imagine yourself, (rather) ever actuate yourself, or have actuated so far, yourself.

The very thought of a wonderful Being is going to challenge you in a sense to follow suit. To develop those qualities which you, which were simply mental representations in which you now see actuated in beings, and so it gives you confidence that you're not your Utopia, it is something very real. That is called Admiration. And of course, we are, we never cease to be amazed by the marvels of life, and that is what we mean by the Admiration: Bewondering. And that of course triggers off Ecstasy. And so it is that, that emotion that will, be called being 'high' that emotion that will somehow help us to improve the qualities in ourselves, which we couldn't do by trying to do it with our will. Now of course, ultimately, if you were to follow this up, you would see that how powerful the act of Glorification is. Which is again a human propensity beyond Admiration.

That in projecting Them one imagines them more and more perfect, in fact one thinks one imagines them totally perfect, but one can never imagine them totally perfect, but certainly much more perfect than in one's person. And so that has, that act of Glorification, has the effect of awakening those qualities that one is projecting upon God. And consequently Glorification is the most creative act there is. So meditation is not just taking control of your thoughts, in fact, I think we've already seen that. The most powerful springboard in meditation is, is that high emotion. Ecstacy, ex starces, are beyond the normal state.

And you can gage the different modes of emotion in your being or in other people, from the bottom would be, well it would be very ugly, and/or well then, evil of course, or simply gross, vulgar. And then at the top you have those noble emotions that inspire you. And then human emotions, concupiscence, ambition, all those things, that, in the middle range in which most people function. So, if you, you can, it's again, it is a question of attunement. You can, of course, one, well, there are two things, one could there be, you can give vent to one's noble emotions. The other that, that one, by in the act of glorification, one's emotions are hoisted into the noble ones. And that itself is going to lift your consciousness above the commonplace worldly conditions and worldly concerns. And then you'll see that your assessment of your problems depends upon your vantage point. That the soul assessment are all relatively valid, your problems look very different when you are in a high state.

In fact, I remember that rishi in a cave was, in a group of people there, there was a man who asked what I thought were a very stupid question. And he was in a state of ecstasy and he did accept to speak, and you could see that he was trying to descend into the mind of that person and he was, it was very difficult for him, to imagine how could one think the way that person thought in order to ask that question. So, think of it in your own case, how your mind can be bumped into a certain perspective and then you can free yourself from that perspective and look at it with an overview and think, well, how was it possible that I thought that way; I didn't see. I just saw things from, with a certain bias.

Now how do we do this? Well, again there are skills. Metaphysically, one could say the ability of transmuting thought into more quintessential modes of thinking, but this is metaphysics. But we would like to have a very concrete education as to how one can do it. And illustrate by something that is more tangible. So this is going to open a whole new chapter which we'll have to deal with this afternoon. I see that we're running out of time.

It's, if you consider these clues. ... If your consider not only the physical world, of course, but if your circumstances, and your qualities and idiosyncrasies as clues, in which, if you'd like to say, God is revealing Him/Herself in a veiled way by these devices, because One ultimately trying to invite you into His/Her Intention, but if one is caught up in one's personal perspective, then one can't understand that intention. That's why we can't make sense of life because we using our ordinary (ornery) understanding. So, how do we hoist our thinking to the Divine thinking. We can't do it with our will. But better think that God is trying to reveal His/Her intention. And that, by clues, but the clues are veiled, I mean they, but somehow those clues themselves can be transmuted. This is metaphysics, so we're going to really do it, and so that's what I suggest we this afternoon at 5 o'clock. Perhaps, we can just have five minutes silent meditation before we leave here. .... So Bless you now.

AUG 14, 1998  Tape 07

So, let us just start with the practice of Shagall.  Three breaths.  Notice that it has an instantaneous effect, and that it helps one to turn within.  And the reason is that as Pir-O-Murshid said was placing an obstacle in the way of consciousness perceiving through the senses and when consciousness is faced with a closed door, it turns in the opposite direction.  It about turns.  So that it helps us in our concentration because it's not that easy to turn within.  And if you noticed, see if you turn within, you are dealing with your thoughts, you are trying to grasp them, as I said, the thoughts that emerge from within, and otherwise you would be submerged by random thoughts.  But here we have a basis, the experience of the existential world, while we know that it is made of devices, still we have something concrete there, and it's not limited to form.  Form is, of course the way light is configured or gels into what one thinks is subsent.  Whereas at the level of sound, it is, it's not form anymore, it's the language of the cosmos, it's, yes you could say it's a kind of structure, but it's not the same kind of structure.  It's the way that the programming of the Universe is conveyed to our understanding in a much more direct way than by the device of form.  

Now you notice that, we've already explored to some extent of course the effect of the light, and of sound, but you notice that when you place all five fingers on, upon the senses, and consequently another three modes of perception that are effected by the Shagall, the sense of taste, the sense of smell, and the sense of touch, the kinesthetic sense.  The sense of taste and of smell are very closely related of course, but let us just go into this and see what is our objective in concentrating on say, for example, taste to start with, while doing the Shagall.  Well, it is our sensitivity to beneficial or damaging elements that gives us a sense of what to assimilate and what to not to assimilate, or what to reject in our interface with the environment.  Bad taste, we are gifted with that sensitivity so that if something tastes bad we tend to reject it, and this tallies with what I said about the impressions as you are turning within that we have that selective faculty of rejecting impressions that are deleterious.  And admitting, giving access to those impressions which will enrich our being - that's how we eat our food for example.  

Now that sense of taste is extended at the level of the psyche, and when, as one evolves one becomes more and more sensitive to the kind of attunement of people, so much so that one can be able to understand hermits who leave the world because they can't stand the gross impressions, the gross attunements that one comes across in people.  First of all, of course, one can't stand it in oneself, then of course as soon as one is sensitive to that, one tends to be very careful to not give access to emotions that are gross because one becomes very delicate, and therefore one becomes very easily, one's psyche becomes very, is very fragile, can easily become damaged.  There is some connection of course between the psychological and the physiological level, and perhaps you know that in the case of cancer, there is an enzyme in the pancreas that is missing, and consequently there's a problem in digesting the situations in life that one doesn't accept.  There's an example of the influence of the mind over body.

So we are talking about digesting impressions.  If you remember, there are two processes, one is rejecting, filtering in the alchemical process, and the other is distillation, which is pursued further of course in the sense of a smell or fragrance of perfume.  So, what that means is that impressions, such as they are, are then, go through a process of transformation.  Before they can be incorporated into the body first of all at the level of the food, the food goes through a whole process, very complex, but ultimately it is the enzymes of the DNA that are able to ensure the transcription of the code of the DNA and the RNA that governs the formation of the amino acids out of the gross material.  So that means is that what one assimilates, in order for it to be, what one ingests, in order for it to assimilated it needs to be configured in accordance with one's being.  And in cancer, there's mistakes in transcription of the DNA and RNA.  So there's a, somehow one is overloading the system and over stressed, but in practice, with inadequate sense of oneself, and what I said before, what we want to do in the Sufi work is to reinforce our uniqueness instead of just going into the unity and forgetting our uniqueness.  That is what is gained by life.  And in Eastern philosophy it is very often the other way around.  It is to lose one's individuality into the unity.  Both are important, but to start with, one has to have a very strong sense of who I am.  As Pir-O-Murshid said when talking about Fana, "If you don't have anything to efface, then what's the point of Fana at all."

So, in the process of distillation, the dross is rejected.  That is, one could say at the level of the psyche, contingencies that are not ultimately necessary once one has extracted their essence, they are not necessary in one's, to one's realization.  For example, as I said yesterday, what was the name of the street where that accident happened, or the color of the car, that's not important for one's realization.  Those are the things that memory starts effacing.  So what is means in terms of the psyche, is ridding ourselves of aspects of ourselves that are not essential, and which bog us down into the nitty-gritty, it's like if you climb a mountain, if your backpack is too heavy you can't reach the top, so it's something like that, you have to jettison things on the way.  And that goes very far because, and it is really a process of purification, and we have a whole support system, not only in the outer world, but in ourselves, of instincts, needs, our psychological needs, physical needs and that have been built in, let's say the support system of our consciousness, which is bodyness, psyche, and so on, all those levels of our being, even at the celestial level are support systems - infrastructures.  

And so one needs to go very consciously, see how these instincts originate in one's ancestry, the need for reproduction for example can lead to impelling impulses that or course affect one's psyche.  The need to have a status, yet again something that might, one might try to gain status at the cost of another person.  The need for possession, yet again a need that will lead to, that's concupiscence, it can lead towards terrible cruelty, first of all manipulation of other people, disregard of other people, their feelings, their needs, pure selfishness, ruthlessness, cruelty, terrible cruelty.  Now the victims of our greed.  So those are our thoughts, the only way we can perform this process of assimilation of the environment is to work with ourselves.  So we are rejecting elements from the environment, that's the first step.  The second one is rejecting elements in ourselves that are feeding our contact with the environment.  One could say an act of purification.  It's a matter of seeing very clearly into it, how it affects one, and draws one down into bodyness instead of lifting oneself up into pure spirit.  It bogs one down and it subjects it to criticism of course and enlists envy and jealousy and anger and dishonor, so it's, we are going through a process you see, a psychological process.

So the sense of taste is the sense of what one might call propriety at the level of the psyche.  And it does have to do with attunement, an emotional attunement of how does one keep high, how does one get high, how does one keep high.  It's a matter of attunement.  Every time that one has freed oneself from a compelling instinct, there's a breakthrough of ecstasy; and that's because it's freedom and as we know, we are, as Pir-O-Murshid said "We want freedom and we seek captivity."  There's something incongruous in human nature, but it's natural because we have all these different inheritances in us from our ancestors, and we have angelic parents, and all that up to what we call Divine Inheritance, different legacies, and they're all, sometimes they can end up in conflict.  There's a choice, as Pir-O-Murshid said, like you are faced with a choice, whether you prefer the heavens to the earth or whatever, it's a metaphor.  

You see in Buddhism, it is a path of asceticism so in that case, well it, you just, you master those instincts and you live a secluded life away from the world, very hard upon yourself.  And of course, in modern psychology one would say, well one becomes very frustrated if one does that.  And in Sufism, one goes through that, one faces it and transforms those instincts, and that is what Murshid says, I think what Murshid said here is rather unique, I've never seen it anywhere else, well Pir-O-Murshid says "All impulses are the Divine impulses, but they get sort of distorted in the course of ascent."  So what we don't want to simply discard them, but we want to harness them, just like a yachts person harnesses the wind by, but doesn't allow the wind to push them where they want, where the wind wants, where the wind listeth, but wherever one would like to orient the sailboat by using the impulse, but by harnessing it, and turning it in the way that one wants.  So that's the way to do it.

For example, love becomes golden when it is a friendship.  And if one can possess without being possessed by what one possesses.  Consider that you need tools for your work - a good car, or a good apartment, or whatever.  So it's not the way of the ascetic, but still one isn't sort of simply wallowing in one's ego at the cost of others.  It goes further of course, because as one develops this sensitivity, one feels the ego in the people one meets, or one is dealing with, it's a kind of taste that you just reconnoiter, something people that you haven't quite seen before; it irked you but you didn't quite see exactly how that works.  And of course you see that people are really fighting for self-esteem, feel very inadequate, very precarious, and a status will be like a support system like crutches, will give you a sense of being somebody, a VIP, and so on.  Even a love relationship, the ego comes in, there's the satisfaction of being loved, trying to live up to the expectation of the person you love, trying to make the person you love live up to what one hopes that they are, and so on, the ego comes in there.

Really speaking, this particular faculty, taste, leads us to the ultimate issue which is, how does one deal with what one calls, commonly calls the false ego; or actually one says, calls the ego, and Pir-O-Murshid used the word false ego because that's not what we really are, that's what we think we are.  So that is our need to present a superlative figure.  For example, some animals get bloated when they face the enemy in order to frighten the enemy, or something like that, it's part of our defense system.  And then we invite response and anger on the part of the person, the opponent, we find ourself in that situation where there's conflict.  In the end it ends in cruelty.  It's a kind of vicious circle.  So it's not necessarily what we think we are, it's what we think we that we need to be in order to be able to stand  our own in life.  It's a bloated sense of self.  

Sometimes, it's a crutch, and there are all kinds of crutches, drugs for example are a crutch, or smoking cigarettes, you feel good with a cigarette like you are on top of the world, but it's a crutch, alcohol, a lot of things.  You know, and speaking with a kind of high-faluted voice, or facetiousness, these are ploys that we use as a defense system because we are so precarious that we need to have that support; but it's false, it's not what we are.  That's why Pir-O-Murshid calls it the false ego.  And he says the real ego is God, that is if we are able to identify with the top pole of our being, well of course that's the real ego.  And what we mean by the ego is the sense I am that I am.  Therefore Murshid, God develops a sense of I am in the creature.  In Sufism it is called Ana instead of Hu.  Hu means him, grammatically in Arabic, and Al Hallaj says "If several people are in the room, invoking somebody who is not in the room, him, that person is more present in the room than the people who are invoking him."  So then Hu becomes Ana.

So the whole mystery of life is in discovering one's true identity.  Now the thing is that we have to be very careful not to wean the ego, the false ego, which we rely upon for our self-esteem, our defense; because then we have withdrawal symptoms and it then can make one meek and one deprecates power.  Whereas very often in spiritual groups whereas it's just the guru has the power and all the others don't have any power.  Whereas the Sufis encourage the Divine power in all people.  It's not the way of the meek, and for those who thought Christ was meek, well if you look at the Shroud of Turin, it's not that of a weak blue-eyed guy, but that of a Master.  As I said before, there's beauty and majesty ________.  So if you rely on a crutch, supposing the crutch breaks down, and you are let down very badly.  So it's an unreliable fixture of your being, and what is more, it makes for dishonesty and the only thing that will give you strength is honesty.  It will give you power, Divine power.  

So there's an alchemy, a form of alchemy, which we find in Paracelsius, but, Paracelsius, and to be found in the East, in India, particularly; it's not trying to make gold out of metal, but the elixir of life, and sounds like metaphor until one is able to look into it more deeply.  Perhaps you know that one of the reasons why in Yoga one curls ones tongue and presses the tongue against the palette is that one is exercising pressure on one's pituitary gland and the consequence is that many yogis have a taste in their mouth they call nectar and it's simply the betaendocrines that are secreted by the pineal gland.  Endorphin is a morphine produced by the body itself.  It's quite another thing if the body produces the morphine than if you take it as a drug.  Hopefully, I am not too sure about this myself, but, because, what the yogis are seeking for is samadhi.  

And, you know that Buddha criticized his teachers and said that all they were looking for was samadhi which is a state of trance, and how far does this help people who are suffering.  It's purely selfish.  And that's why he left one teacher after the other and had to find his own way, because his whole purpose was service.  And that I think we have to always bear in mind when on retreat, that we are trying to prepare ourselves to be a better instrument of service rather than we want illumination or we want awakening.  But we must not pride ourselves on being do-gooders either.  So there's some sense of, we have needs and this is, perhaps the ultimate need is awakening.  But as Pir-O-Murshid said, it's not just we who are awakening, it's the whole universe is awakening as us.  And what is more, of course, the Message calls it the awakening of humanity and not just the individual.  And that's the way that will lead to service.

So can we look into this a little more - the nectar.  Quintessence.  If you consider the cells of the body, there are grosser cells and finer cells.  For example, the enzymes of the pancreas are endowed with a sensitivity that the muscles, the muscle of the heart doesn't have, for example, the muscles of the arm.  So, the cells are evolving.  And of course the hormones, the conductors , no the conductors are, in the sense of the brain are more intelligent and more evolved than those of the muscles of the body, of the arm, or the bone or whatever.  So let's say that the whole process of distillation takes place in the body; and at the psychological level if we can see that, and if we participate in that, we'll find that in our meditations we are arousing this, let's say, those functions - for example we are enhancing the secretion of the pituitary for example, or we are enhancing the secretion of the pancreas when you concentrate on the solar plexus, and so on.  The adrenal glands and so on.  I don't know enough about it to be able to, I'd like to be able to explore that more.  

But let us say in general what we are doing is we are not just awakening, actually we are  awakening, we are not just awakening the psyche, we are awakening the body.  Body consciousness.  Because in the process of resurrection, I don't know, you know I'm rather wary of talking science although I'm talking science all the time.  But perhaps you know that the electrons and the protons and photons live forever as far as we know; so the body gets dispersed, it doesn't mean that it, it no more functions as it did before death, but they, each of the electron carries a certain amount, a byte of memory.  And they can send messages to each other because of imitation of speed of light, but still they are all interrelated in some deep way like in a big web. Like imagine lotus flowers, water lilies at the surface of the water, perhaps they are not communicating, but they are communicating through their roots.  

So maybe the electrons and photons in the very evolved hormone cells and hormones and so on, maybe they are able to prevail; and you see that's the, that is what distillation is - it's allowing the essence to prevail over the dross so that one can do away with the dross and then just hang onto the quintessence, just like the perfume of flowers.  So, say, how does one do this?  Working with the different chakras, that certainly, those are the skills that will help one to enlist this process of distillation in the body.  But at the level of the mind, I mentioned this yesterday, the know-how that one has gained, that one has acquired, has accrued to one because of one's experience, is transmuted into realization.  So can you just think of this, can you just think, as you would meditate now, think I am my realization.  There's all that infrastructure there, but really what prevails in me is my realization.

So now can you see the difference between doing this, and the way that thoughts will be compelling, will act in a compelling way if one doesn't know how to meditate; because if one doesn't know how to meditate then one's thoughts are oriented towards facts or know-how, but now we see that, that infrastructure  and we are extracting the quintessence of that.  And now if we are able to have a sense of our realization then the infrastructure is still there, but it doesn't seem to be as important anymore because the essence is much more important.  So it prevails over the infrastructure.  It doesn't mean that we discard it, the infrastructure, just like it doesn't mean we discard the body.  But we see that it's a device that has led to this wonderful sense of meaningfulness.  And perhaps now you can see the relationship between realization and attunement.  If you're fine-tuned, then you have a great sensitivity to atmospheres, attitudes, egos and so on; and that's where your realization rests upon your attunement instead of your thinking.

Now taste is not limited to the mouth or the tongue of course.  For example, the pancreas and duodenum and the liver of course have a sense of taste; so we are aware of the tastes in the mouth because that's where we can easily reject things, foods that are unpalatable.  But we are not aware of the taste of the pancreas or the liver or the duodenum or the stomach of course, well the stomach is more like a muscle, but every cell is endowed with some measure of sense of taste.  And you see that assimilation is something like the way that things are resorbed in the void from the surface - they get refined as they move towards the center.  That's why the solar plexus is so sensitive, it's really the center of what we might call taste, not taste of the digestive system, but one's sense of taste of assessing attunement.  That's why we experience pain, psychological pain, in a kind of tension in the solar plexus.  

In fact now scientists are exploring gravitational waves used as communication between animals at great distances, and apparently it is the solar plexus which registers the information.  Gravity is the result of the landscape of matter, you know matter's more dense in some places and less in some others, and that the solar plexus being the center of gravity of the body is very sensitive to gravity; well let's say, gravity is not the same thing as, to gravitation.  That is matter.  Because transmutation is always the shift from matter to spirit, in terms of science one would say matter to energy.  In Kabalah it is Tifereth, which always represents the altar in the temple, and it always represents the passage from the human to the Divine by the act of glorification.  Overcoming matter, overcoming gravity.  It will give you a sense of levity - being free from gravity.  And that's the kind of sense that you have when you are becoming pure spirit instead of being weighted down in your material body, a sense of overcoming gravity somehow - overcoming time and space, constraint, freedom.

So let us do the practice of Shagall again, but now I'll draw your attention towards the whole process of digestion, not just physical but at the level of the psyche and transmutation so that you get, you become like pure essence.  So you can use a wazifa when doing the practice of Shagall.  And so as you inhale, you are moving from Maujud to Quddus.  Maujud means to existentuate existence, and Quddus - pure spirit.  And then while you are holding your breath - pure spirit, Quddus, it gives you a sense of the quintessence, pure spirit.  And then as you exhale, Muhyi, so Muhyi is the regenerative force, because as I've often said therapy is not good enough; therapy returning to the way you were before you were ill, that's not good enough.  You are going to be better than you were before you were ill.  Turn the table on your illness to help you to improve.  So Muhyi is power that regenerates, so it's like the descent of the spirit upon matter, a kind of new dispensation of the spirit, like it's often described as lightening.  Satori.  So could you do it again now and think of those wazifas that you did.

Now you may ask yourself why one only breathes in and out through the right nostril.  Now if you know the law of Gose in physics, perhaps you learned it at school, perhaps you've forgotten it.  If you gyrate it to the left, if the dynamo gyrates to the left, you induce a current upwards.  Your hand, your right hand, gyrate your right hand towards your fingers, you are inducing a current.  That's why when we are doing the dervish dancing, whirling, you always whirl to the left - you are inducing a current that rises.  So while you are doing this practice you become aware, because you are breathing through the right nostril as you inhale, you are becoming aware of the ascending forces in you that gives you a sense of transmutation, of transmutation, distillation - you know the materia prima and process of alchemy becomes volatile, liquid and then volatile.  That's a sense, becoming volatile.  And then if you exhale through the right, then you are inducing a force downwards, and that's why we said Muhyi because it's like pure spirit that descends now and revivifies your being.

So we're going to have a pause now.  It's nice weather so you can either sit outside or go and walk in nature.  It's better, of course, if you can sit because now if you can remember the practices that we did, it's not just the practice, it's the thought that goes with it, the experience that goes with it, then it will really have a transforming effect upon you.  You see, a transforming effect is in the revivifying.

And so let's meet again at 11:00. 

AUG 14, 1998  Tape 08

 (Aziza at beginning of tape (not transcribed here).)

I'll catch up with it, I think it's been recorded. So it's nice to see you laugh. I'm not very good at making people laugh. Sometimes I do, yes. It's part of the retreat process.

Well, now by earmarking taste, we are working with transmutation of matter into energy. But if one is working with the sense of smell, fragrance, one is transmuting gross energy into fine energy. And both have their consequences in terms of our thinking. So, we're going to try to earmark now the work that we do transmuting energy. And for this I quote the Tibetans who say, "the mind rides the wind." So, the wind is energy and the mind, I suppose we don't know very much about what the mind is. But, so it's, can be illustrated by Bellerophon who was riding Pegasus. And as I said there's a point at which Pegasus cannot fly any higher and then Bellerophon has to proceed on his own, but he is aided by the impulse, the momentum that was imprinted upon him by Pegasus. So it's simply (inaudible) Pegasus the breath, and so the rider is your consciousness. So, your consciousness rides the breath which can lift you up. It's a matter of knowing how to work with energy. Let's say it's not just the breath, it's transmuting the breath that will lift you up. That is transmuting energy. And so of course the question is: how does one transmute energy? Well, first of all can you just feel, I often talk about the electromagnetic field, but that's not totally, doesn't illustrate totally, perhaps the life-field is a better word, I don't know, these are things that require a lot of very careful investigation. But let's say, can you feel a sort of energy field, it's a field like the field of a magnet, around your body? I've already asked that before. And in fact, can you identify with it, just feel like you're a being of energy. The body is like the hard core within it. 

And then can you feel the vivacity of this energy, the tremendous power, life-power in it? And can you feel, well first of all the polarity between the kind of energy at the top of your head, and the kind of energy at the bottom of your spine? You feel that? The energy below your spine, or impinging upon your spine is called telluric energy, that's earth energy. And then above your head it's called pure spirit. And you feel like the energy at the top of the head is like for example a current with a lot of volt but not many amps or oms, I don't know. Or then the bottom of the spine: a lot of amps but not so much volts. Or it's often illustrate by, bottom of the spine, the kind of energy would be like a heavy river that is moving on a gentle slope. And the kind of energy, that of the head, would be like a spray of water, like a spray of water, very fine, a jet of water that is very sprightly. So if you can perhaps feel that contrast there, and you can try to feel sprightly, and then you still have the sense of a kind of stability at the bottom of the spine. So it's inertia. And the wazifa for that is Mu'id. Mu'id: inertia, resilience. So resistance to change, because otherwise everything would be scattered all over the place. So, there has to be some balance between change and then stability to keep a certain continuity in change. That's Mu'id. And then all the way along of course between those two poles are different levels of energy.

And then can you feel, so at the top of the head, Quddus, as we already said, and at the bottom, Mu'id. And then, a kind of energy that you absorb from the environment, and that you emit again in the environment, (that's Hayy). And then Muhyi which we've already encountered, is a kind of energy that emerges from within. So Quddus, Muhyi, pure energy is now arousing, pure energy from the top of the head is arousing the energy which emerges from the solar plexus and radiates from the heart as Hayy.

Now these are the, this is a polarity, but can you try to sense the circulation of energy? Feel it circulating. Now of course if you are doing the Dhikr then you feel that circulation very strongly. And in fact, that's one of the things about the Dhikr, is that one is enhancing the flow of energy. And that's why after doing the Dhikr you feel like 10,000 dollars; it gives you a lot of energy. You overcome the static nature, the sclerosis. Where people, one tends to get into a sort of rut in one's life, especially as one gets older, sclerosis sets in. You have to keep on fighting that by bringing in new energy all the time. So one of the ways of doing it is--I've already said, well perhaps it wasn't during the retreat--the thing about whirling and the Dhikr is that one is, and also the motion of the Dhikr is that one is arousing a very basic sense of the choreography of the stars that is still there in the unconscious, and in the body, in the body cells itself. So when you're moving the body the cells themselves are beginning to find some kind of a, rediscover a kind of, relive a kind of relationship with that primary motion of the stars. And hence, that's the reason for the dance of Shiva, Nataraja, the dance of Shiva. And as I said in (?Kabbala?kamala?) that is (makabar?) instead of the throne, the chariot.

So, and then you feel another type of energy that is, when you are doing the Dhikr, that is ascending and descending. So at first when you're in the circle, La ilaha, circulation, the 'l' of the word Allah, it's an arc of a circle. Then illa 'llah, then you have the vertical, ascending-descending energy. So both energies, one after the other. One is 'al', the 'a' that descends, the first 'a' of Allah, alif, descends. And then you have the circular motion, the l's, two l's, the two bows of an arrow, in the mirage of the Prophet, and then the last 'a' that is ascending from humanity to Divinity. So let's just try to feel that now as we just repeat the Dhikr, just a little bit, all together. La ilaha illa 'llah hu...OK, I just wanted you to feel this, and of course it was wonderful to repeat the Dhikr together. You see that it must be done slowly. One tends to bring one's agitation into doing the Dhikr fast, and then you miss out. You can't think of each stage if you're doing it too fast. Eventually you get used to it, but to start with it must be done very slowly. And you must concentrate on each of the phases.

Well, now let us do another practice which gives one a very clear sense, or a clearer sense of the circulation of energy, and the ascending and descending energy. So first of all let's work with the ascending and descending energy. There are nerve impulses which rise in the central channel of the spinal cord, which serves sensory-motor, central nervous system. And then you have impulses ascending and descending in the lateral channels which serve the autonomic nervous system--which used to be called sympathetic and parasympathetic. Now by sensing, by concentrating on the upsurge of energy either in the lateral channels or in the central channel one is enhancing their activity. One is arousing them from a state of well, semi-somnolence to really very very active. And that is the secret of Kundalini because the energy will serve as a lift to lift your consciousness into Samadhi. That's a basic principle of yoga. So this practice which is called pranayama is, has been, is practiced by the Sufis in India, in the Chisti order particularly.

So as you, so could you place the thumb of your right hand under your chin, and the middle finger on the right nostril, and then the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand, and the thumb of your left hand in the proximity of the left nostril, but you don't press your fingers yet on the nostril. Now breathe, exhale first. Inhale through both nostrils. Hold your breath, press both fingers. Exhale again. Alright now, press the middle finger of the right hand, and breathe in through the left nostril. Hold your breath. Exhale through the right nostril by lifting the middle finger. Now inhale through the right nostril. Press both fingers as you hold your breath. Exhale through the left nostril. Now breath in through both nostrils. Hold your breath. Exhale through both nostrils.

OK, now we're going to concentrate on the flow of energy. So, as you breathe in through the left nostril, concentrate on the flow of energy that is rising in the left lateral channel of the spinal cord. And then as you hold your breath you concentrate on pure spirit, the kind of energy at the upper pole of your being, of your body. And then as you exhale, concentrate on the descent of that pure energy of pure spirit down the right channel of the spinal cord. So what I didn't say is that as you lift your, as you inhale, you lift telluric energy, that is energy that emerges upwards through the bottom of the spine, and now you're threading it into the left channel of the spinal cord. Can you just do that first? And then you reverse it, so then you inhale through the right nostril, and hold your breath, and exhale through the left. Always start by exhaling through both nostrils, and then you start...

OK, now the rhythm could be, it depends if you're doing yoga, or if you're doing what they call kasab which is a sufi practice. In yoga you inhale four beats, hold your breath sixteen, and exhale eight. That means that you're holding your breath a long time. And that is only ok if you have developed the muscles in your diaphragm and your throat, which is a yoga practice. Because if you do not do so, then if you over stress your lungs by dilating them too much, pressing against the diaphragm, and then perhaps you'll damage your pancreas, and heart of course. And also if you don't place a kind of block in your throat you'll be damaging your endocrine glands in the throat, thyroid and parathyroid. So that's why the Sufis have adopted this practice, but they don't do all the asanas and so on, because they concentrate on more like the sacred aspect of the practice. So therefore, for the Sufis it's four-eight-four, and the beat should be synchronized with the heartbeat. I think we did that in the course of these days, to synchronize your breath with your heartbeat. In four, and then eight, hold, and exhale four, then the opposite. Now of course if you, you can increase it to five-ten, or six-twelve, or whatever, you could go to seven-fourteen, or eight-sixteen, or so on. What I do is I start with, well I generally start with six-twelve, and then I increase it, every breath, next breath would be thirteen, and six, and so you increase it. I mean it would be twelve, what am I saying, yes it is, that's right, it would be seven-fourteen-seven and then so you increase it like that. So could you just try that now for the moment...

Don't force yourself too much. Practice it over a period of months, and eventually you'll find that you can hold your breath much longer than you could at the start. I would say four seems to be rather short, but if you start with six-twelve-six, and then seven-fourteen-seven, and then eight-sixteen-eight. And then beyond that nine is, it depends, it depends what your state of health is of course. You know that to be, pass the test to become a pilot in the RAF, you have to be able to hold your breath for sixty seconds. So that's sixty instead of sixteen, so, and maintain a certain pressure, I forget now what the pressure is. And yogis are able to hold their breath for several minutes. So it's something, a capacity you can develop. But that's, it's almost like gymnastics.

But now the interesting thing is, alright, now we make the next step. And that is, breathe in through both nostrils. And as you breathe in through both nostrils then concentrate on the upsurge of energy ascending in both lateral channels. Wait a moment, wait a moment, because there are two ways of doing it, so we'll do both ways. One is, the energy ascending in the central channel, and then hold your breath, and then the energy descends in both lateral channels. And then again, inhale, and the energy rises in the middle channel. Hold your breath. So it is telluric energy that ascends in the middle channel, that energy does have to be transmuted, and therefore become finer, as it rises, because otherwise you're going to damage your chakras. Hold your breath and at that point the energy is pure spirit. And then as you exhale the descent of energy, really speaking it is through the central channel, but it bifurcates left and right, in the lateral channels. So what happens then is that the energy that has descended in the lateral channels conjoins at the bottom of the spine, and then is lifted up in the central channel. So it's like positive and negative energy, electric energy. There's a kind of shock at the time of the encounter between those two forms of energy at the bottom of the spine, and that energy then rises, that new energy which results from the combination of those two, rises in the spinal cord. And then as it, now that energy then bifurcates, it begins to divide in two right immediately after the descent from the top of the head and then you have the two lateral channels.

Now, we know that, for one thing that energy always, smoke for example, always rises, swirls upwards in a spiral. And so if you inhale through your left nostril, telluric energy is going to rise in a spiral, is going to swirl upwards in a spiral. And since you are breathing in through the left nostril, that energy that impinges at the bottom of the spine is going to be, is going to move clockwise if you look at your body from the top. And of course, the opposite, if you breathe in through the right nostril. And now if you exhale through the right nostril, the energy is going to swirl down clockwise also. But if you figure it out with your mind, and perhaps you do that when you're on your own, you'll find it's descending on a different spiral staircase than it came up. And when you inhale through the right nostril, you are ascending the same staircase you just came down on. And you hold your breath and exhale on the left side, and now you are exhaling through the same spiral staircase on which you came up when you breathed in through the left nostril. You can figure that out for yourself. Ok, so let's just do that for the time being...

So you have a corkscrew action, left-handedness alternating with right-handedness. And as you know, the electrons spin left-handed right (inaudible). And even the energy in the body is left-handed. The planet spins only in one direction. But dual-handedness is to be found in nature; that's one of the latest discoveries of science. And that's what we're doing when we breathe in through both nostrils, because now you have two spirals that are crisscrossing. And so the energy impinging from the bottom of the spine is going to rise to the left and to the right, is going to bifurcate then and swirl into two opposite directions and will cross in the front of the second chakra, the back of the solar plexus, the front of the heart center, the back of the throat center, and then meet, according to yoga in the third eye, but I think they meet in what's called bindu, which is the pituitary gland. And when you exhale then those two spirals are swirling downwards. But you have, while this is happening there is energy that is flowing upwards and downwards in the central channel of the spinal cord. So you see, you can see the caduceus there can't you. The caduceus. And it's not the same thing as the structure of the DNA. The DNA structure is not the caduceus.

Well now, perhaps you know that there's a communication between the central nervous system and the autonomic nervous system, so that certain functions that are conscious can become unconscious, can become autonomic, automatic, can be automatized. For example, you are playing the piano and you would do it consciously, and then eventually you don't have to think of the motion of your fingers, so the unconscious, the autonomic nervous system has taken over. And then, yogis of course try to take control of functions that are autonomic: heartbeat, and digestion, all kinds of functions. That's mastery. Yoga is mastery. Mastery is made possible by the central nervous system taking over from the autonomic nervous system. So you have afferent and efferent nerves linking the two lateral channels with the central channel. So now, do this again, but as you inhale, try to experience the way that those two spirals, that the energy of these two spirals tends to move towards the central channel while ascending, like a convergence. So the autonomic functions now converge into the central, sensory motor, nervous system. Let's do that... Hold your breath. Now as you exhale, you experience the opposite, the energy flowing down through the central channel is beginning to reach out in the lateral channels. And so the spirals are moving, the energy is moving the spirals from the center to the periphery, to the outside. So that is, conscious energy is becoming automatized.

And now the next step. And that is one is using energy to lift one's consciousness into the higher spheres. And so while you're inhaling through both nostrils, you can feel that energy in the two spirals that are swirling together and enhancing the lifting of the energy in the central spinal cord, well, in the spinal cord. Just think that that energy is carrying your consciousness beyond the earthly spheres into a state of, through the, into the celestial spheres, and beyond the celestial spheres into the absolute. And when you are exhaling then you re-experience your birthing, your descent through the spheres, without losing your way. So you can see how the, let's say the divine programming is now actuated in the existential world. So just do this now for some time... And you have to notice that the energy is being transmuted as it rises, from energy with a lot of amps and not much voltage to energy with very much volt and less amps. And eventually you, it's as though the energy has done it's work, and your consciousness is soaring high without the support of the energy. So you are awakening beyond the existential plane. And this gives one a sense of immortality. Because the whole of one's being is not subject to time, well to becoming, and therefore to change.

But one could say that, you know, the metaphor of Pegasus is not complete, because he is really transmuted as he takes flight. And when he can't fly higher, he reaches the level of everlastingness. But, Bellerophon reaches the level of eternity. So if we evolve in the course of our, or by dint of our descent through the spheres, we are able to transmute our support system, the support system for our consciousness. And thanks to this transmutation, our consciousness can retrieve its original state. So we don't leave the world behind, somehow we're able to carry the quintessence of this whole support system right up to that point which is called everlastingness. But then beyond that of course, is, there's no more programming, it's beyond the programming, that's total freedom. And as Buddha calls it, he calls it "the cessation of the determined."

So if you remember now, so what we're doing is we are shifting our, say our purview from existence into beyond existence. And then we're shifting our consciousness to beyond consciousness. And then we find ourselves beyond existence and non-existence. And in the end there's no more consciousness, but just intelligence, and we are reminded of our eternity, which we had lost a sense of. Now for those who'd like to know a little more about how this functions: You see the motor, sensory-motor functions are regulated by the brain and with the service by the central nervous system. Whereas the secret of Kundalini is that the impulses are initiated at the bottom of the spine. As one is working with those two snakes, like in the caduceus. And so one could say that one is enlisting the (inaudible) process which is, means, let's say the action of the cosmos upon us. Whereas with the nervous system one is enlisting the action of one's personal will on the cosmos. So it's a far greater power that is coming through than one's personal will. And that's called kindling.

And the trouble is that once you've done that then you tend to lose the incentive of your personal will. And that's what happens to the Rishis in the Himalayas. The action, the whole cosmos is activated, and consequently they have difficulty in getting back to only consciousness again. So be careful of Kundalini, because perhaps you have heard reports of people who were practicing Kundalini and came to grief. And that's because they were doing the opposite to the way nature does things. They were activating the energy at the bottom of the spine at the cost of the energy at the top of the head, or in the brain, and the consequence is that they lost control. They were trying to get control, and. So you have to really be very aware, and I think that eventually one is able to reconcile those two, but it's a very challenging thing. 

So be very careful. I remember in fact, I met a man who was a Yogi who had got to a point when he heard terrible sounds, and flashes of light, and so on. He was unable to sleep, and so on. He just couldn't deal with life at all. He didn't quite know what he'd done, but he had read a few books of Hatha Yoga. And he kept on consulting doctors, and psychotherapists, and Yogis, and nobody seemed to have an answer. And then there was a little unknown Yogi who said to him, "well, try just breathing through the left nostril when you're doing pranayama, but don't breathe through the right, just the left." So, one-handedness. And he was cured, because a human being is one-handed. And now we, in science they have discovered that in nature, in the cosmos there are situations that are, they call it (caratic) I think, both-handedness at the same time. But we can't handle that in our humanness. And that's why when we're breathing through both nostrils, it's enhancing this (caratic), I think it's called (caratic), double-handedness, which is a higher function than the one-handedness.

So that's why Pir-o-Murshid used to sometimes give people Kasab just breathing through just one nostril, or then another, but not both. It just depends, you know, some cases. So you'd have to know which ones to prescribe. But what you can do is to just do the practice as in the first steps, just breathing through one nostril then out the other, and see how it affects you. And then the opposite. Or then you can do a Tibetan practice which consists in breathing in one nostril and out the same nostril. And then the opposite one. And see how it affects you. And I would say that we have enough sensitivity to see which is the one that is the best for us.

So we have to end here. Bless you.

AUG 14, 1998  Tape 09

 ..the litanies.  I'm glad that Mikhail has it;  I heard it on the radio once, and I was absolutely shattered by it.  Arvo Part is a contemporary composer who lives in Berlin.  I think he's Astonian or Lithuanian.  And he's perhaps the one composer who can render religious music in modern form.  And he was inspired by Victoria.  He recognizes the influence of Victoria.  The sounds are unbelievable.  How one can find these sounds in the cosmos and bring it in music is incredible.

Well I feel very sorry that the retreat is coming to an end, because we're just about ready to start.  And one of the reasons why we make it short is because a lot of people don't have that much time to get away from their jobs and responsibilities.  And of course there are many other meetings that are going to take place.  It's a little bit difficult for me, because at first I thought it was just for representatives,  and then I saw a number of faces who didn't seem to, that were not familiar, and I, in fact I saw people walking out.  So I thought well maybe, I mean people have to have some preparation for this.  You can't just jump in like that.  And then I thought, well after all it was for representatives, so then we caught up in the end.  So if people don't understand, well it's too bad, but they're not supposed to come here if they're not, if they're not of that, they haven't had all that formation, that preparation.  It might even put people off.

So at a time when the retreat would end I'd like to go more deeply into the retreat.  And with the hope that when you get back home you'll be able to do it further, carry it further.  Now I must say that of all the retreats I made, the most wonderful was the retreat that I made doing the second Dhikr.  It is really the practice of a hermit.  It's got to be done in a cell or of course in a cave, that is without any kind of disturbance from outside, and when you're protected against anyone coming in and visiting you, or any telephone calls or e-mail.  So it requires very special conditions, because otherwise you're just repeating words, and you know Christ's warning about vain repetitions.  The  body participates in the ultimate act of first of all of renunciation, and then of glorification. So all things that we've done so far are a kind of preparation for this. And one needs to do it kneeling, and I'm not sure that I can do it myself now because of my age.  I'll try, but my old bones don't always lend themselves to the Dhikr.  But I'll try.  But if I look rather awkward that's because of all the kind of things that will happen to you when you get 82.  And of course you don't have to kneel, you can do it sitting if you want, but then you won't have the same benefit.  And you can sit on a chair and then bow, you have to prostrate.  And the whole thing is that one, the ultimate prostration is when you place your forehead on the ground.  One has to do it to realize what it does to one.  For one thing one, there's a kind of polarization, because the north pole of that magnet of our body is in touch with the, it's short circuiting with the south pole as I say.  

And because the body, as I say, participates in the experience of well, surrender.  That means passing the control to God so that one will be able to act in the name of God.  There's a word of Saint (Arani), he's an orthodox monk who said: "God becomes man so that man may become God." The descent and ascent.  I, of course, there's a sense of extinction, that's the word fana, a kind of collapse of all that one, certainly all that one thought one was, and of course of one's mind, one's thinking.  So it's a dark night of the mind, and a dark night of the soul--of St. John of the Cross.  But one must be careful, well Ibn Arabi warns one that you mustn't think that it is your existence that is extinguished; it's your notion of yourself.  And Pir-O-Murshid would say it's your false self, which as we've already said is the false notion that we make of ourselves. It's part of our defense system.  But somehow one is surrendering that--so one doesn't have any crutches anymore--to one's higher self.  Now it also means that by dispersing, dismantling one's personality, that is the exemplars of the archetypes in what the Sufis call the divine treasury, there can be a fresh descent of the, of one's divine inheritance. Otherwise that inheritance is being communicated to us through one's ancestors.  But now it is communicated directly.  And that's why St. Francis of Assisi, who was brought before the judge by his father because he wasn't working in the shop for his father, he was working for the poor. And so his father said, "but even the clothes you wear are from my shop," and took away his clothes.  

And he said, "I have another Father."  He didn't say you are not my father, he said "I have another father."  So it's giving prevalence to another inheritance than that which has come through one's ancestry.  And that of course represents the samsaric wheel, whereas this is beyond the samsaric wheel, beyond conditioning.  And so that is what you feel as you turn toward your heart center at the end when you say "illa 'llah hu."  You say 'hu' then you are conscious of the direct dispensation of the divine inheritance that invests your being with a totally new inheritance; it takes over from the jaded one.  And remember these words of, well the words in the Qur'an: "there's nothing on earth that doesn't have its archetype in the treasury, the divine treasury."  And then there's the words of Ibn Arabi who says "and the angels build a ladder between the two."  That's why I said the celestial spheres represent that transit, that ladder.  And therefore to start with, what I was doing was I was repeating it a thousand (times).  I realized that if one was just repeating it, one gets into a state of trance, and that's exactly what one wants to avoid.  And so the only way to avoid getting into a state of trance is to emphasize the uplift, when your head, your body gets upright again.  It's a sense of, the act of glorification will free you from the collapse.  Because you know fana has always got to be followed by baqa, that is reinstatement.  Otherwise if you just go into the collapse you, as I say, you get into a kind of unconscious state which is a state of trance.

Now keep in mind these words which I've already referred to--it's a formula in Islam: (Allah fil maluk itikalat(sp?)), "the God created in your prayers."  So that one is, says, God who is recreated as one through one's act of glorification.  Now one is going through a very deep transformation. And that transformation is really the way that the perfect qualities, what we invoke in our wazaif, what Pir-O-Murshid calls the divine perfection, the archetypes, that one is, somehow we don't know these archetypes, but in the act of glorification one is projecting upon God the same qualities that one is familiar with in one's own person or in other people, but imagine them ever more perfect.  And they're in infinite regress, because one never reaches the ultimate.  And in so doing, one is awakening those qualities, or enhancing them.  They are already present in one, but one is enhancing them by arousing their potentialities that are lying in wait in one's being.  So that's the uplift.  So when one surrenders one's old personality, now then there is room for renewal.  And otherwise there's not.  If you hang on to yourself as you imagine the false self, then there's no way.

So we're going to do it now.  As I say, I'll try to do it.  So do as I say, but don't do as I do.  For one thing one has to sit on one's heels, and I am not sitting on my heels.  Well, yes, perhaps it might be a good idea, yes.  No.  No.  As I say, it doesn't matter.  You are doing it.  Most of you are younger than me, much younger than me.  And so it is...illa 'llah hu.  illa 'llah hu...

Now, yes, I mustn't do it too much too often because of my blood pressure too; but, it does enhance the blood pressure.  But I just wanted you to have a taste of it.  But, it's not really something to do in a group.  It's to do alone, totally isolated, in the solitude, in the conditions that are favorable to living as an ascetic, as a hermit: far away from the world. And after having done it say 100 times then you pause, and maybe you say a wazifa, and then you do it again.  And depending upon the instructions that you get, you could do it just 100 times, but you could do it 1,000 times, that's 10 times 100.  And of course, I was doing it 22,000 times a day.  As Murshid says, it bypasses the mind.  There's no way of thinking of anything while you're doing that.  And you're establishing contact, one says the heavens, it's actually, in the first stage, when I'm thinking of my nostalgia for the heavens, but one goes even further into the plane of Jabarut which is Divine Intelligence.  And the way that, you know the orderliness behind the chaos, meaningfulness, that's what sets up orderliness, then the treasury, the secret treasure.  And then finally beyond multiplicity, beyond the programming into just the unity.  And that is of course, so don't try and reach that at first.  But, if you look at Murshid's teachings he says that of course, at a certain point you discover your eternity.  

And that is absolutely, that corroborates what Buddhism says, what Buddha says.  Because, you know, it's beyond existence, beyond non-existence, and then the point where time is overcome.  Now what you can do is say it 100 times and then, as a fikr--that is silently--say for 33 times for example, or 100 times, it just depends on what kind of retreat you're doing and what your guide is suggesting, because one has to be very careful doing these practices; they're very effective.  So if you do it as a fikr, that is as you, on your breath without saying it aloud, then: 'illa' exhaling, ''llah' inhaling, and 'hu' holding the breath.  'illa' exhaling, ''llah' inhaling, and 'hu' holding your breath.  The beauty of doing it as a fikr is that you can get much more into the experience than if you are saying it aloud, for one thing one is doing it much slower.  But it's necessary to have done it aloud first, because you're awakening your chakras, all the things that we've already talked about when we talked about sound.  You are establishing some kind of connection with the symphony of the spheres, which is the language of the programming of the universe.  And so and as you can't think the usual way you overcome your reason, understanding.  

Then somehow all of the sudden meaningfulnesses are revealed to you, things that you could have never thought of, all of the sudden revealed to you, totally unexpectedly.  Now if you are, for one thing you lose your sense of identity, your name, that's what Bastami is saying.  Now, what I was taught to do in my training was to get into the consciousness of my teacher, who was Hazrat Inayat Khan.  And so you're doing this practice while getting so much into his consciousness--or if it is a woman who is your teacher, then her consciousness-- that you have lost your sense of identity, your personal identity.  And it is only if you lose your personal identity that you can get rid of your personality so that a new personality can come through.  So it's very very effective.  It's perhaps the most effective of all practices.  If you just think of Murshid's words: the false ego, and that's what you are surrendering, that's what is disintegrating.  But you must not stay there with that negativity.  It must always be replaced by a renewal of descent of qualities.  And that happens, first of all you lift your consciousness up in 'llah, and then the descent of the qualities, hu.  Remember there's an 'h' at the end of 'llah, so that's a Samadhi state.  And then hu in the heart; the 'h' is followed by a 'u.'

So let's do that now, each one of you in your own rhythm.  You see if you've done it aloud, then the sounds, let's say the vibrations that you tri ggered off in your solar plexus, and heart center and throat center are going to resound further.  So they carry you.  So you must just think that they are, it's not totally silent, because those, they are, those vibrations continue.  And sometimes it's good to shorten the fikr and get back to the sounds, and then do the fikr again.  And then you find that the sounds are much more effective.  You can bow your, actually one can bow one's subtle body.  And now you can do it very slowly, on your breath.  And really experience that disintegration of the idiosyncrasies of your personality, the good and the bad, and then the trust in the renewal by your act of glorification.  Glorification opens up the access to the treasury...

...the void.  So your jaded personality is now resorbed in the void.  And there's a new dispensation that is emerging.  And the interesting thing is that, is the difference between what emerges, which is: the qualities of one's personality are perfected let's say as one projects one's representation of God.  One projects these qualities upon God and in the course of that one is imagining Him perfect.  But that is not the same thing as the descent, because the recurrent renewal of idiosynchrocies from within is somehow subject to a time factor, whereas the treasury is eternal.  Well actually it is everlasting.  It is not eternal, it is everlasting.

And eventually you stop the motion, or the mental repetition and just concentrate on the 'hu' in the heart.  Because, you see these qualities are qualities of being.  They predicate a being, the Divine Being.  God as a Being Who one is inviting in one's heart.  Because when you are doing the first Dhikr, you're building a temple.  And in the second one you are in the temple.  You're the high priest.  And you're inviting the Divine Presence in your heart.  It's a saying of the Qur'an:  "Nothing can contain me except the heart of the faithful."  So it's like the Beloved is felt in your heart.  The One whom you worship becomes the worshipped One.  Becomes a Reality.  Becomes a human reality.  So when you hold your breath your thoughts are very still.  I think of the words of al-Hallaj when he said: "Is it Thou?  I wouldn't have presumed to call Thee if Thou had not already whispered in my ear, it is Me."  So you mustn't think that you can call the Divine Presence.  You create the circumstances that are conducive to that Presence manifesting.  So this is the mystery of Divine Love.

Now as I said you can introduce a wazifa either I would say after having repeated the second Dhikr a certain amount of times, then you can repeat a wazifa and then continue the Dhikr.  Or then you could, of course if you do this then the thought of that wazifa continues when you return to the repetition of the Dhikr.  Because remember that when we are saying 'llah after saying illa, the collapse, then we say 'llah: an apostrophe--an 'a' that we don't say aloud--and then 'l-l-a-h.'  And so when you are doing that, as I said, you are projecting qualities upon, that you ascribed to, as you imagine God to be in His perfection.  So that is stretching your imagination beyond the existential to imagine always a greater perfection. So you could select some very special qualities that you are highlighting.

So amongst the wazaif there are some that are intended to help a person in their psychological problems.  And then there are some that are intended to unfold the personality.  And then there is a third category of those that are supposed to inspire one not withstanding any concern about improving one's personality, but eventually it will effect one's personality.  So one could list a few of these, rather at random, a little bit arbitrary. Khabir, which is the same as Akbar, it means very great--and as you know, the wazifas are always, are not just concepts, but are essentially attunements--then it gives you a sense of greatness as compared with the personal dimension of oneself.  And eventually it will reflect upon the personal dimension of oneself.  But if one tried to be great by one's will it wouldn't work.  The other one is Majid which means majestic, splendid, majestic I think is the right word.  So it confers a majesty upon the king, the queen, a sense of the highness of God.  So we have Ya Ali, which is very high, most high.  And Muta Ali which is a superlative: even more high. So a sense of, if you are repeating the Dhikr, then as you lift your body then of course there's a sense of God most high.

Another wazifa is Qaher, which one must be very careful not to use because it lends itself to abuse or misuse.  It means to prevail.  And of course ultimately it means that God's will prevails, and that's where the buck stops.  Prevalence.   But unfortunately people have used it to prevail in the wars over the enemy.  And that's the origin of the word Cairo--Qahira, Cairo.  Qahira doesn't want to prevail any longer now, so she's Qalbi. It's a sign of what they call adab, which is good manners.  So the trouble is that Qaher can enhance your ego, and so it is an attribute of God that is predicated to God not to oneself.  But it does help one to prevail against the trips of the false ego.  And it, you see, in urgent cases where a person is suffering from abuse, or a person is always deprecating one and putting one down, and consequently one has lost one's self-esteem, then of course Qaher is a way of safe-guarding one's self-esteem in the face of abuse.  It's like: God will always prevail.  So you can think this, and you know like this woman who was lynched in the south, and she said "you can do what you like with my body, but you can't touch my soul."  That's this, prevailing.  Prevalence.

The other word is Baqi, which means that it is always reinstated.  It's very close to Mu'id.  Mu'id is like for example if you are walking in the forest and you displace a branch of a tree it will, unless you really damage the tree it will, the branch, it will come back into place again. Even in rather serious situations, for example the rain forests, they will grow again, of course it's quite a battle to keep the roads, the asphalt from rotting, and so the forest starts growing again.  So that is Mu'id, reinstatement.  It's, Mu'id, it's not reinstatement, that is resilience. So like, however much one has been damaged, somehow there's that deep resilience in one's being.  Which is, it's called inertia, it's a Divine quality that maintains orderliness when subjected to chaotic forces.  As compared with Baqi.  Well Baqi is, you see it's Baqa, it's Fana Baqa. After the dispersal, the disintegration of one's qualities, those idiosynchrocies, then somehow the essence of one's being cannot be thereby annihilated.  Somehow the dispersal is superficial.  That's why Ibn Arabi says "do not think that by the fana you cease to exist, or you can overcome the state of existence.  It is your notion of yourself that is disintegrated."  The false, what Pir-O-Murshid calls the false self.  So that's Fana Baqa, Baqa.

And then you have this very advanced experience which might suddenly dawn upon you in the course of a long retreat--otherwise it's just a concept; it's no use; it's not real. This is something that can happen to you after a long retreat, at the end of a long retreat:  you discover your immortality.  So that's prevailing you see, but it's not the same thing. It's a notion of eternity so that you can see that you are moving in time, that one pole of your being is moving in time-space, but at the top it remains unchanged.  So the qualities are not of, are not eternal, no.  They belong to Lahut which is everlasting, everlastingness, but not Hahut. Hahut is eternal.  That's why when Jelaludin Rumi says: "The umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal."  It's not the life eternal, the life everlasting.    So that's Baqa.  Or Ya Baqi.  And then, Sarmad: eternal. And that doesn't mean that you've always been.  It's a sense of, a memory of having existed before your birth, or prefiguring life after death, and that is of the level of everlastingness.  It's not the same thing as becoming, but it's not quiteeternity.  It's somewhere in between.

So those are the very high wazaif.  You could add Warith which means the inheritor.  Let's say: God as my Father that I inherit from.  That's of course a word of Christ:  "Be ye perfect as YOUR Father."  So he didn't say I'm the only one who is the son, he says as YOUR Father.  So that's Warith. And that is a very strong safeguard against despair.  To remind oneself, because despair can be associated with a bad self image or failure in life and so on.  And somehow the thought that however much, or even guilt of course can, but however much one's inheritance has been defiled,  it's still there.  So there are other wazifas.  One could say Quddus for example, pure spirit.  But I'm just confining myself to a few wazifas that are of that third category: the wazaif that are intended to enhance your spiritual dimension, but not necessarily work with your personality or deal with your problems.

So you find that there are three, if you, now I'm talking to those of you who are representatives, because of course it's a great concern as to what practices one needs to give to one's Mureeds.  And so it's unending; the amount of training that one needs in order to be able to train Mureeds, help Mureeds is practically unending, inexhaustible.   So you can't expect to deal with it in a few hours.  You would need a real school of training for the Sufi Order--at the Abode.  If the Abodeans will allow it.  And even it they don't allow it.  Sorry, that was a gun shot.

So let's get down to some basics now.   We'll have to get down to the nitty-gritty eventually at six o'clock.  So the wazifas to deal with our problems, which always involve, maybe I'm saying too much, but I think it involves our inadequacy.  Perhaps that's not quite so, but still there's some reference to ourselves in our problems.  We are part of our problems. But it's not always so, for example if you have a retarded child, or if you're in Rawanda, or if you're in Bosnia, and so on.  So you can't always say that your problems are your own, have to do with your personality.  But in many cases they do.  And so, I think that one needs to start with the bad wazifas which are those that I haven't been using so far.  I was prejudiced.  As many of us are.  And now I find them the most useful of all the wazifas.  So I have them here because as I say...  One is Munzil, which is the Dishonorer, and one is Mu'iz which is the Honorer.  No, I think it's very good to be aware of the way in which one's actions can dishonor one, because it keeps one on the straight and narrow path.  And you can see the effect immediately in the reaction of people.   And so (thank you) it's a kind of warning.  So that's Munzil: M-u-n-z-i-l.  God dishonors one if one is acting in a way that is not without propriety.  And then one calls upon, how can I say, a safety buoy, a kind of final release from that terrible state of being dishonored.  One asks God to be able to recover one's honorability.  So it acts very strongly.   

So that is, you know one should never give a practice unless one has done it oneself.  And the first thing is of course Muhasibi which is confrontation with oneself in truth, and acquiesce to the things one has done wrong rather than try to gloss it over.  Because then you will be able to understand people better, and understand what their needs are.  I talked about this earlier this morning when I said that of course we are dealing with some very basic instincts, because we inherit from a lot of levels in our being.  And so life is a kind of process in which one is trying to sublimate instincts which are very basic, like the instinct of reproduction, or the need of status, or concupiscence, to have possessions.  And there are many other things which are the way that our false ego tries to validate itself awkwardly, until one is, can see very clearly how the false ego works.  And then there's that conversion that can take place.  So I think this is very important. The, let's see, yes, the other one is Qabid and Rafi, no, no sorry, Khafid, K-h-a-f-i-d.  And Rafi, upraiser.  And so Khafid, abaser, and Rafi, upraiser.  So those are very similar to Munzil and Mu'iz.  So I, my point is, it's a little bit difficult to see the difference.  I think it's, the first two are better because it's more clear.

Then we have this dichotomy between Qabid and Basit.  Qabid, Q-a-b-i-d, which is constraint, of course it could be convergence, the convergence of the universe in each one of us, so let's say our ego.  And it could of course be limitation of course, and in psychological terms, frustration. Qabid.  A sense of being frustrated in one's wants or one's need or one's aspirations or one's nostalgia.  Circumstances are constraining, or one's own instincts are constraining one's uplift, or whatever it is.  Or someone is constraining one.  Some sense of frustration there, constraint.  Then Basit is expansion, so it's the opposite.  So for example one is breathing in and out.  As one inhales, a sense of the convergence of the universe into that point, in the center of the vortex that one is.  And as one exhales, it is the opposite: consciousness is expanded.  And together with that of course one's sense of identity can be expanded and become cosmic, and so on.  So that's Basit.  But there is a difference between Basit and Wasi.  And Wasi is, you remember I made a difference between expanding your consciousness from your center, the center of your ego as I say, and then the way in which consciousness can be encompassing.  Because if you get into the consciousness of other people, now your consciousness is not centered in your person.  So you are, your consciousness has become encompassing.  Whereas to start with you are expanding your consciousness from the, as opposed to the constriction.  

So that comes into getting into the consciousness of people.  And this is, in terms of  psychotherapy, I would say it's very important to be able to get into the consciousness of the person who's done one harm, and understand from what place it came.  It doesn't mean that one is condoning it, but it means that one is able to see that person where they're at, and then you understand.  I mean, as I said, you don't blame a tiger for biting you; it's the nature of the tiger.  So you, can you have resentment against a tiger?  It's just following its nature.  So resentment doesn't make sense.  And if you get into the consciousness of a person, then you understand that they are acting, you might be the victim of their need to validate themselves at you cost, validate their sense of self-esteem at your cost.  So I don't think it's good to facilitate that by being accommodating to them, that goes a little bit too far.  That's why there has to be some balance between Rahman and Wali.  Rahman, magnanimity.  It's not the same thing as Rahim.  Rahim is suffering with, is compassion.  Whereas Rahman is magnanimity, is being big enough to not allow oneself to be bugged by people.  Like for example in India, the elephant does not allow itself to be bugged by the agitation of the chickens.  So it's a question of your dignity.  You don't get upset if people act in a bad way because it's below your dignity to be upset.  So that's Rahman you see, magnanimity.  You know, you don't hold a grudge against a person who has done you harm.  That's Rahman.  You still invite them for a cup of tea.  But of course, try to not give them the key to your heart.

So these are wazifas that help people in dealing with their problems. These are the basic ones.  Then of course there's Mukhit, Mukhit and Reza. Mukhit, to provide, or even more than that, it is affluence.  Mukhit is affluence, like enhancing your achievement so that you will become more successful in your--achievement because Pir-O-Murshid believes our way is not the way of the ascetic--so that we need to achieve something, and so we have an enterprise, or whatever we are undertaking.  So it would be to provide well, and we can provide for other people and not just for oneself. Whereas Reza is really like what they call bread and butter.  Like it's peoplewho really can't make it in life, the homeless you know, have somehow the need for sustenance, for very substantial subsistence.  So Pir-O-Murshid said you are like the father or mother for  your Mureeds. And in the east sometimes a Pir will go out of his way to find a job for one of his disciples, to that extent.  So that is Reza.  It's really: God provides, but you have to help God to provide--by doing something.

Now the other thing is, you come across people whom you feel are very fragile, and, or are in trouble.  And what is more, you sometimes come across a person whom you feel is being taken advantage of by another person.  You know Murshid said that, he said, well he's using rather strong terms, I don't know whether, I think we all have the angel in us and the demon, so you mustn't say 'this person is angelic, and this person is demonic.'  But, still people, let's say where the balance is more on the demonic side will always just choose an innocent person, an angelic person as a victim.  And you see that around you.  And their ploy is 'nobody loves me  but you, you have this wonderful heart.'   You know, and then you become kind of a, the angelic person is very happy to serve.  And then gradually the demonic person pulls you further and further down into their hell.  

And you see that.  And well, you can't tell a Mureed you mustn't do this you know, and you're not supposed to give advice about how a person is to run their life.  So the thing about a Wazifa is that it is drawing attention to a quality, which, it's a Divine quality.  And we have these qualities in us, but there are times when we have to call upon that Divine quality even though we have it in us.  But we don't have it sufficiently enough, and so we...  So the word is Muhaimin, M-u-h-a-i-m-i-n, which is asking for help, for protection.  A person who's very fragile and can't really make it themselves, and really needs protection.  Now the other thing is that you can send protective thoughts to your Mureed.  And the Mureed picks it up.  And you know, one needs, everyone is precarious to some extent, and one needs to feel like a safe support.  One calls it in psychotherapy a safe support system.  And so the teacher is supposed to provide that support for people who feel very fragile.  

And so Muhaimin draws your attention to the need of protecting.  In fact there's a Sufi belief that there are advanced beings who are able to provide a protection for the, a community for example, or a city.  For example if you go to Jerusalem, there's a Sufi, the tomb of a Sufi, hardly anybody knows about it, who was, who is considered by the Sufis to be the protector of the city.  I remember asking the way to that, and actually nobody knew, but then I came across a man who looked like a Sufi, and he told me "oh yes, this is where it is, you're right here."  It's like a little hole in the wall, and you see the tomb through a little skylight.  So that's Muhaimin. And there's a difference between Muhaimin and Vakil.  Because, Vakil means an intercessor; like a lawyer is called a Vakil.  So if you imagine God the Judge, he has so many cases so there has to be a lawyer who comes and says, "God, look, I draw your attention to this problem."  And it's true that one is, actually one is taking some kind of karma upon oneself.  One takes some of the karma of the Mureed upon oneself.  Because one has promised to help them, and if you can't help them then woe upon you.  That's the reason why one has to think twice before becoming a Representative: that there's an expectation.  When when we give the initiation we say we promise to supervise their training, spiritual training.  And if we don't, well then we're letting them down.  And therefore it is important to make a point in asking your Mureed to come I would say every month, for a short time, but to review their Wazifas.

Unfortunately we can't go any further because of the time.  But, I hope that this, I think this retreat has been a very special one, and I hope that it will open new perspectives for you.  And that you'll have an opportunity of doing these practices when you get back home.  And in any case,  our representatives and coordinators and guides need to make retreats.  It makes all the difference.  I know it's very difficult when you have a busy life, and you stop everything, and you feel that you are shirking your responsibilities.  Somehow, hopefully then one is better able to deal with one's responsibilities.  You could, well it's not easy either to do a retreat on a Sunday, because that's when one is the most busy.  And it's no good to make a retreat in one's home.  One has to go somewhere else.  It's not good to stay in one's home.

Ok, well I'm sorry to end this retreat just at the moment when we are really getting into it very deeply.  But we'll have more such opportunities.  Sometimes I take the liberty of asking the same question that Buddha asked his, that the disciples of Buddha asked Buddha, and Buddha answered:  "Have I ever spoken thus before?"  So something new is happening.  And it carries the promise of a whole flurry in the Sufi Order. It's, something has changed.  So it's very encouraging.  It's a kind of vision of let's say, the bounty that is in this teaching is so incredible. And we just have not known how to, I'm using a word, I don't like that word, exploit it, but we haven't known how to make it flourish.  Actually what we are doing is we are rendering a service.   That's the whole, I don't use the word spreading the message.  What I say is we are, the message is a whole new way of looking at things, right, but what we are doing is we are rendering a service to people who want what we want, and that is awakening and illumination.  And also we see that this breakthrough of awakening is going to make all the difference in the unfurling of one's personality, and therefore in one's achievement in life.

So, God bless you now.

AUG 16, 1998  Tape 03

Yes, could we start by just concentrating on a master, prophet or saint of each one of you according to your own choice? Must be some being whom you feel very much in resonance with. It could be one of the ancient Sufis. Tomorrow we'll be doing the, starting the concentration on Pir-o-Murshid. But today, one of the prophets and master's of the past, or saints. And of course, as you know, it could be a woman. It doesn't have to be a man. 

As you know these meetings have been announced as training in the different concentrations. And so, I don't know whether esoteric school is considered one of the concentrations, because actually most of the representatives are the leader of a center, and also Cherag or in the Ziraat or one of the active, one of the activities. And what we decided yesterday was that, we could change that of course, but what we decided is that Cherags need not necessarily be officially initiated in the Sufi Order, but the teaching that is given to them is basically well, yes is basically grounded in the teaching of the Sufi Order. And the same is true of the Healing activity and Ziraat and of course Kinship. And so therefore, this afternoon perhaps we'll be going into Ziraat but, oh and of course Healing and Ziraat, but I just, something tells me that we need to broach this subject of you as representatives. 

You see mureeds, first of all we have promised, when we give an initiation, we have promised that we are going to undertake the training of the mureed, the initiate, of going through an ongoing process, training and if we don't do it of course they are disappointed and in fact we have let them down. We've made a false promise. So it's very serious. Now the demands of the mureeds are infinite, as you know. One needs to be a doctor whose a heart specialist, and a neurologist and a gastro-(interologist) and a homeopath, everything. You have to really know everything. There are two things, of course. There's the personal training and then there's the classes. For the moment I would like to highlight just the personal training. 

Well mureeds are, they're looking for a Murshid. I used to think, well a wise man is good enough or a wise woman, but no they want a guru. They really want a guru. I don't want to be a guru, but they want a guru. And I can understand that, because when I was young I wanted a guru. I was on the guru hunt after my father died. And so somehow, willy-nilly one feels that one needs to live up to their needs. And there's no doubt that it is at the cost of one's private life. The demands can be incredible. I mean people can telephone you in the middle of the night and say, 'Look, SOS, I'm in despair. You know, I feel like committing suicide or something." Really, and they really expect you to solve all their problems. They think you have all the answers. And even though we claim not to have all the answers. They still expect you to have all the answers. 

So the thing is that of course you have to go through, have gone through, the same process that they're going through. Otherwise, you don't know how to help them. You don't understand their problems. If you live in a cave in the Himalayas and people come and are uplifted by the presence of the Rishi. But that's not the only thing that they expect. They do expect to be uplifted, yes. And that means that you have to observe your attunement all the time. And there's a kind of gravity pull. One tends to be pulled down into one's puny self and so it's very difficult to get used to the fact that one is not just that limited self, but there's that other dimension there. So it's as though, as I said yesterday, as though you're adumbrated by this higher being which is you, which is also you. Not God up there, but it's you in your higher being. And at the same time there's this puny being. I'm sorry for using that word. Perhaps you, I hope there's no offense, which is really inadequate. 

You feel, well you know, what can I do? I'm an only person, how can I help these people? Well as long as you think that way of course you can't help them. So that means that you have to go through the process, have gone through the process that they are going through. And that means that one has to, how can I say, sublimate one's humanness. And of course, it's a departure from the commonplace. We're involved in life in, as the things were to Shahabadin, not Surawardi, but Shahabadin Less. The support system takes over. That's almost a (led) motive now. The support system takes over. So it's like you want to climb the Himalayas, but you've spent so much money and efforts in building the base camps that you have no energy to reach the top. And so we're dealing with the urgent things, but not the important things. And so, but it's not that simple. It's not like there's these two values. There's all that work that needs to be done with ourselves. So basically, we have the same needs as our mureeds. 

There's a need to earn money. To validate oneself in order to be able to earn money. Therefore, one has to be on the par with what is expected. There's a lot of competition in life. And you know if one can't make money then one is dependent upon other people, welfare and so on. So all that kind of trip that a lot of people, is devastating for a lot of people who end up on the streets because they can't make it. They're the victims of our greed. So that basically there's a question of self-esteem,. That I'm able to make it. So you find that many of your mureeds have a problem just simply being able to survive. And would very much like to spend their life in the spiritual quest and not have to go through the hassle of earning their living. Which is a wonderful luxury, but most people can't afford that luxury. Now that's why it's, in India they solved that question by saying, well okay, we'll leave the world and become sanyasins and we become beggars. But that's not the way that we recommend in the West. And somehow, one's ability to make way in life is in someway function of one's self esteem and of one's capacities. In fact of one's personality. 

And so to start with more people think that they are the victims of circumstances or the challenge of circumstances. Whereas one does not always see the impact of one's personality upon the situations. If you see that, then of course you can do something. You can't change your situations, but you can change yourself. And then the situations will change. And that's why the meditations that I've been teaching during the retreats and all this. There's so much training has taken place here at the Abode.is the breakthrough in meditation. You sit there in meditation or your pupil are sitting there in meditation and they don't know how to deal with their random thoughts and they think, "What am I doing here? I'm sitting here and all these random thoughts come." And of course, it's true that the circumstances in life monitor our minds. In a certain way give a certain orderliness to our minds, our thinking, but if you sit there and you don't have the challenge of the immediate challenge of the situation, then you don't know how to monitor your thoughts. And so your thoughts are monitored by actually the impressions of the environment, just not the physical environment especially, but the psychological environment that keep on bugging you. And you can't master it. There's no use trying to master it. 

And therefore, what I suggest is switching your consciousness. Making that real quantum leap to what are the thoughts that are emerging from inside. And maybe they will appear random at first, but eventually you will see that they are the way that you are being recurrently recreated. Now of course to avoid that they should be too random, we suggest that you concentrate on a particular quality. Because now you are reinforcing that quality that is trying to come through. And you're giving it all your support. And as a matter of fact you are continually currently being reborn. 

That's a motto in Islam, the recurrent rebirth. But if we don't give our attention towards it. And if we don't protect this new flowering and if we don't give it all our support. It will be stillborn. And that's happening all the time. There always something new is trying to emerge and we haven't given it our entire attention and we've lost the chance to. So another chance given to us, but you know, we keep on loosing chances. So that's the reason for the wazifa. Well, there are new people here but I've been, we've been speaking about wazifas this year, also, but let us say that just repeating the word won't do it for you. That's for sure. It will make you spaced out, yes, and if that's, if you think that means being high. Well but it isn't being high. It's being spaced out. It isn't the same thing. So the wazifa is to be in some way is a, well it's a late motive. It's a thought which becomes impelling. So it's like a word is associated with thoughts in our language. We associate words with thoughts and consequently if you use the word it triggers off a thought. So if you're thinking of the word, somehow the thought is there. Or quality, it's a quality. 

Now, I won't go into all the things I've been doing in the past, because we really, this is really training for representatives. We have to, but of course, you remember that I made a difference between the qualities that you feel, that you need to develop in order to. Well let's say, you're the (sea trap) and you're pupil comes to you and you are asking yourself, what wazifa should I give that pupil?. And if you give the wrong wazifa, you will be not only not helping the pupil, but you might even damage the pupil or put the pupil off. For example, there's a case of someone who found it very difficult to be enthusiastic in life and was rather depressed and disillusioned and disenchanted and the, they went on a retreat and the retreat guide gave him, 'Ya Azim", which means being enchanted, being in a state of bewonderment and obviously he couldn't do it. It went counter to the way he felt and the consequence was that he left. He was disappointed in the training in the Sufi Order.

So we have to be very careful that we don't try to compensate with what we think is a defect by what we think is a quality. And particularly that we don't play (pigmalion). Try to think how this person should be in our estimation. So, in fact, I remember Pir-o-Murshid, who visited Dr. Burbanks, I think. Who was a (Horticologist) in those days and he said to Murshid, "You see I always encourage plants to grow their natural way. So if it's a drooping plant, I won't try to make them climb" and so on and so forth, you see? And so we have to be very careful not to try to force a mureed to be different to what is in his own inclinations. And that corroborates that word of Ibn Arbi, who said that, "In his creativity God has to take into consideration the will of the individual person." You know that's very surprising. I mean surprising in the context of the old traditions, you know, that God has to take into consideration man's will. We think man, God wishes and man disposes, maybe God has to dispose too. 

So it's a very ( ). So that would be the first thing. You would think, well this mureed comes with a problem. That's the first thing. And of course, you are there as a counselor and so people are only to happy to speak about their problems to their friends. So when they have someone whom they regard as their teacher, then of course, they jump to the occasion of presenting all their problems. And you can sit there for hours listening to all their problems. And you can ford all kind of solutions and next day they come with exactly where they were before. So you wonder what on earth you're doing. You're spending your time. You can do better things than that. So, it's got to be regulated very carefully. Representatives are generally, people are very busy in their life. Those are people who know how to take responsibility and therefore have what it takes to become a leader. So the first concern is, well what could be the problems. As I said finding a job, that's all, being able to. It's not just finding a job, but being in a job that corresponds with one's ability, because one is generally underemployed and not recognized for what one thinks one is. That's one. So that has to do with self-esteem, of course. And with encouraging the new birthing, of course. 

The other one is finding it very difficult to find oneself attuned to the people one is working with in the work place. If one is inclined to, what they call a spiritual path, then one becomes very sensitive. And one suffers from the grossness and sometimes vulgarity of the people that one has to deal with and the one can stand it up to a certain point. And at a certain point one starts thinking, well this is just too bad. I just can't go on like this. It's just impossible. And you find yourself bogged into a situation that you can't change. So that, one of the problems. There are many other problems. You can see that problem. And so, how can you advise your pupil. So, if I think you know it all amounts to the fact that what we are trying to emphasis on the spiritual path is to have a very strong sense of yourself. And that's not the case with the teachings of other schools, in Buddhism, Hinduism. There's a sense of the oneness. I mean beyond the, the impersonal level of being. And that's the reason why psychotherapists are rather concerned, because spiritual gurus tend to make people loose their sense of their idiosyncrasies. Their individuality, to merge in the totality. And that's what they call, of course the, as you know the spiritual bypass. The consequence is that people don't have what it takes to be able to compete with other strong egos in life. So they are disfavored and they might suffer in their job, as a matter of fact, because of their spiritual alliance. 

Now that is not the case in the Sufi training. That's why, what I said yesterday. We do work for the (rup ma shmal) the different religions. And as I said, we don't want to make a miss mash of all the religions, collated together, but I do think the message has a, is opening new perspectives. There's a background and then still we have to go ahead. So this is one of those things that I think is very special about the Sufi work is that we reinforce the individuality of each person. And you see, when you're subject to random thoughts. If you don't know how to meditate. Then as I say one doesn't know how to stop them. How to give them some kind of orientation. And so what happens, is that one suffers from a kind of psychological indigestion, because the impressions of the outer world. And that means ones relationship with people, of course, at the psychological level. They continue to live in one's memory. In the depth of one's unconscious. And so actually, the psyche is digesting impressions just like our body is digesting food. And when you meditate, you start meditating, those are the impressions that are bugging you, you see. And the unconscious can deal with it much better than your conscious can. But if you're not, if you're consciousness is not oriented in a very definite way, then of course the unconsciousness will start invading the conscious. 

So the first, what does the body do? So that will give us a good basis. The body rejects food that isn't digestible and transmutes food that can be dealt with, that one is able to deal with. So when you think in terms of the psyche, there are impressions that we can't digest and that are damaging to our psyche. And as a matter of fact, quiet a number of cases of cancer are due to the fact that one is dealing with impressions that one can't digest. There's mind over body in the case of cancer, as you know. So you see that, you see that in people. People are sometimes very courageous facing problems that are really so stressful that they are over stressed. They can't deal with it. So how does one reject impressions that are damaging and that are compelling? They're not just damaging. They are really compelling. You can't, you don't want to think about them, but they keep on bugging you all the time. 

Now of course the method in the east is indifference, which is like not really acknowledging them even. The word is turning the blind eye. That's a word, you know it was Nelson who the police was, (armada) was advancing and his officers said, "Look the Spanish fleet is, they are advancing." And he had two eyes and one was blind and he turned his telescope on the blind eye. So that's called, of course, putting one's head in the sand, like the Ostrich. I don't know whether it's true of the Ostrich. And Murshid even uses that word. But we must be very clear about it, because what he really means is that one is down playing an impression in order to highlight another. For example, if you're in a, you're looking at a hologram. You have two superimposed images. Well then you can't see both at the same time. So you downplay one image to see the other. But that doesn't mean that you are discarding it. It just means that for the moment you are highlighting another impression. But however it's true that we have in us a kind of need for freedom. In fact, it's a very imperative need. And it is that need which gives us a sense of, I don't like the word indifference, but the word in India it's called (viragia). We would rather emphasize independence. 

Not being dependent emotionally upon a person, upon a situation emotionally. And, well need I say of course. I think you all know that. We are pulled in two directions. On the one hand a need to involve ourselves in life and that means with people and on the other hand a need for freedom. You know there's a practice of (kill a body) you consider you're breath as the extension of the Divine Breath. And so as you exhale you think that, my exhaling is the extension of the Divine Exhaling whereby God descends from the solitude of unknowing into the existential state where the principles of His/Her being are being activated. And then when God inhales. When I inhale I participate in the act whereby God withdraws, extracts the quintessence of that which has been gained in the existential state back into, recycled back into the programming. And so that's where freedom comes in, because you, to distill a product. Program (to) alchemy. One needs to reject the (draughts) and keep the essence. 

There are two things: first of all reject the impressions that are, that you find are not in keeping with your being. And therefore you can't deal with. At least at the stage in which you are, and maybe as you progress you'll be able to deal with them, but for the moment you can't deal with them. Now you know that this ability is based upon, is of the same nature as the immune system. There are two immune systems. The first one the body rejects, for example an organ that has been transplanted, because it doesn't correspond to the DNA of the body, right? So translate that in terms of the psyche. This is something which is just too foreign to me. I can't deal with it. 

Like for me, for example, heavy metal is for me is, I'm not talking chemistry, is - I can't deal with it. Some people can. I congratulate them, but I can't. I prefer Bach. I am perhaps rather old-fashioned, but whatever you think, but I can't deal with it. So you find that there are situations that you can't deal with and that's because they are too different from whom you are.Now there's another immune system which adapts itself to the environment. So, in other words, the first immune system is based upon 'me or not me'. And therefore, it is only if you have a very strong sense of yourself that you can reject impressions that are deleterious. 

So the mureed who's coming to you, maybe does not have a very strong sense of themselves. In fact doubts themselves. Has a bad self image. And consequently they are very open to the disturbing influences of the psychological environment. And if you make them still less grounded in their being, in their idiosyncrasies by lifting their consciousness into the oneness, then of course, they are still less adapted to the environment and eventually they break down and you're responsible. So you see how important it is. Actually that is why I think that we're living at a time when both psychotherapy and spirituality, we see them now as complimentary. And really if you're, particularly if you're leading somebody in a retreat, you really have to know something about psychotherapy. In fact, know something, you have to know a lot about psychotherapy, because, yes, especially those who have been working it for the last decades and who, you see when a person is on a retreat, not only thoughts emerge, of course, random thoughts, but emotions surface, erupt, to the point that a person becomes absolutely, gets totally shattered by the power of these emotions. And if you, you have to know how to deal with these emotions. How can you, If you just make them, try to inspire him, that's not going to help them deal with those emotions. In fact, it will make them even more sensitive. And that's one of the reasons why when people are mentally deranged, we do not advise them to come to our retreats. In fact, we advise them to leave. For one thing they can disturb it terribly. This one person, you know, you're in silent meditation all of a sudden somebody starts screaming and then the whole thing is spoiled. And your the one that is considered to be responsible and what's more you're blamed if you ask them to leave. You can't win. 

We would like to find an easy solution. Psychotherapists know that there isn't an easy solution. That it requires care and time and a real safe support system in which they can feel safe to deal with their problems and that they are understood and the psychotherapist is not judgmental about them and they're supportive and so on and so forth.

But in the course of a retreat you might jump to the conclusion this person needs this wazifa or that wazifa, but that doesn't do it. It doesn't work just like that. You have to know something about the background. The background of the, well the psychology of people and of course the background of the wazifas. 

You see, if one has self-esteem, one is less vulnerable. It sounds like a platitude, but that's the reason why we are reinforcing people's self-esteem. 

You know there's a famous saying in India, the elephants don't allow themselves to be bugged by the agitation of the chickens. So it's like because the elephant has, we assume, has a great sense of self-esteem that protects him or her from the agitation of the chickens. So if you consider that people are trying to bug you. They are like the chickens. They are trying to take away your self confidence. If you stand on your high horse and say well, I'm not going to let myself bugged. You know they can't change their nature if that's the way they are. So why should I be bugged by them. You don't even blame them. If that's the way they are. No judgement about them. It's just that you're standing by your high calling.

Now there's a, as I say there's a second immune system which adapts itself to an environment. Otherwise we'd never be able to eat food or anything. I mean imbibe anything. 

So that is because we are, our being is continually being enriched by the impressions of the environment. Just like our body is enriched by the food. So we have to be able to develop qualities other than those that have developed so far in ourselves by our interface with the psychological environment. But the trouble is that we tend to overdo this. To adapt ourselves, to the point of loosing our own uniqueness. So we suffer from an indigestion, psychological indigestion. 

And that's why meditation is important if one is able to make a person discover their real self And when you discover your real self, it gives you such assurance, because we're precarious because of our faulty assessment of ourselves. And if you are able to make a person realize who they really are, it's a tremendous protection.

Well, one of the practices that I've been doing is, suggesting is to imagine that one's face is a mask. Because, you know what one sees in the mirror is sometimes very deceptive and deluding. And so somehow, even from very early childhood one begins to identify with what one sees in the mirror. Of course, if you could see what transpires behind that which appears, then it would be okay, but otherwise you have to be very careful. But, so lets say that our face is a mask and behind that there's our real face. But it's more complex than that because that real face, well we'll call our countenance, doesn't have a profile. It changes. It's very evanescent. It changes from one moment to the next according to our thoughts and our attunements and it's continually refurbished and reborn unfurling and it is also damaged by the environment, but just like the voice of Caruso, it's present within it's defilement. So that's the face or let's say the countenance behind the face, behind the mask. 

Second thing is the role. We identify with the role. The guru thinks he's a guru because, or she, because people think he's a guru. So he thinks a guru. Just like the elephant. Or then the business person thinks they're a business person or the artist thinks he's an artist and so on and so forth. And that's the role that we're playing, but that's not what we are. It's sort of our way of fulfilling our purpose in life, adapting ourselves to the environment. So that's an adaptation. Once you discover your real being behind that role playing, it gives you a very strong assurance that nobody can take away. 

And that's the only way you can help your mureed is to disclose to them who they really are. And they don't believe it themselves. It's only because you can see them as they really are. Then somehow they, reluctantly with all a lot of hesitation, they have some inclination to - well not quite believe it - but it helps them to overcome their bad self image. So that is one of the problems of our people is their self-image of course. Which is not them, but when they're so convinced that one is one's self-image, that's what you're dealing with. Actually we're dealing with the ideal, identity, one's sense of identity. 

One of the ways of doing it is to ask the mureed to question themselves and ask themselves, "What are the values that they esteem in life, that they value? What are the values? And then to match those values with what they're doing and ask themselves, "Is what I doing going to help me to fulfill my scale of values?" First of all in a scale of values, there's a priority list. So there are a lot of things that we value. And so then we make a priority and we say, well yes, I value this, but this other thing I value even more. And so then I place it a little bit higher up in the list and then one thinks about it again and says, well, yes it's true, I like this very much and so on and so forth. You have that sense of what you value. 

And then you ask yourself, what am I doing in life? And why am I doing what I'm doing? Is that going to in any way fulfill, give expression to my values? And of course there's a reason why they avoid this because well one has to go on living, one has a family, one has responsibilities and also one has to deal with one's personal needs. And those personal needs that do limit one in one's flight, let's say, one's upward flight. 

For example there's the instinct of free production, which can be very impelling. And which one has to deal with otherwise one can be terribly frustrated that's

*** DEAD SPOT IN TAPE ***

expression of instincts until the (other) find. Now that's a process of distillation and I said the second process, first of all you reject the impressions that are really destructive, but then you distill, you distill that is you transmute, those impressions or those instincts in yourself that you can deal with but which do require distillation. They need to be sublimated. So that, for example, a love relationship can end up by being just a sublime friendship.

Then, of course, there's the need of validating oneself, that manifests as the need for status. And we're running right into that in the different grades in the Sufi Order. Status, what initiation do you have? Oh, I've got a high one. Actually, it lends itself to manipulation, which - as you know - is very dangerous. On the other hand, well if you go to school, you are assessed whether you can go in the fourth grade class or the fifth grade. It just depends upon your capacity. So it's not a question of status. It's really are you able to deal with this? And if you overstretch yourself, well then you collapse. So I understand that and I don't think that we should just discard the need to have a status, but at a certain point it can be further refined. And so it's no more a question of the outer expression of it. Like, you have a title or, you know, nobody can make you what you're not and nobody can take away what you've got. And every one is in life according to their realization. So that's the real stages,. So it's not the outer thing. The outer recognition is not important. I find that our initiation in the Sufi Order is simply confirmations of something that has happened in one, because one does somehow, sometimes one goes through a quantum leap. One has gone through a test and one has made that, gone through that. One has made the grade and now one is a different person. So it's true where one, perhaps even one discovers that one is a different person, oneself, and what we're doing in the initiation is to confirm that indeed you've made that grade.

So as I say, so we as representatives have to go through that process of transmutation in our nature. Otherwise our advice is dishonest. Not only that it doesn't jell. It doesn't impress people if we're saying something that is not us. Then it falls on deaf ears. One can fool people, that's true, but then eventually that will turn against you. As Pir-o-Murshidsaid, one can try to take a place, but one can't keep the place unless on is up to it That's a status. Somehow the forces in life remove you from a place to which you claim, to which you're not up to it. 

So that's the problem of representatives, for all of us. We're all tested in our ability to deal with the demands of the mureeds. 

You know that of course in an orchestra, if a new conductor comes, they test, the instrumentalists test the conductor. They play it wrong in order to see if he noticed it. They test you and they throw you like a horse will throw you. If you're not a good rider your horse knows it right away and they'll throw you. So the mureeds will throw you too. And it's very disheartening when the mureeds throw you Perhaps they try to be polite so they don't tell you. They just don't come anymore. It would be better if they would come to you and say, 'Pir Vilayat I'm sorry, but really I was expecting this and that and well it didn't fulfill my expectations. So I go and become a Buddhist or whatever, or join Rashnesh or whatever. That's what happens. 

So it's better to underplay one's status than over play it. So say, well I have some knowledge of the teaching, but of course not very much. So I don't really claim to have all the answers, but unfortunately, you're stuck with me because otherwise if there was someone else whom I could recommend, well then of course I would rather that you would go to that person, but that's the way it is. It's much better to do that. At least it's honest. But people don't always appreciate that. They want someone who really knows it all. Has all the answers. And it's very dangerous to try to live up to the expectations, if it's not real, because in the end it will show. First of all it's bad for you because it's dishonest and eventually it will show up in the end, eventually. 

And your, the mureed is then spoiled in some way. They have lost their trust. And if they go to another teacher, they still, they've lost their trust. And actually they've lost their trust in the possibility of being helped at all. It's a terrible situation if you think that there's nobody that can help you. It's very, very serious what I'm talking about now. It's very, very serious And that's why we're exercising a lot of caution in screening those who are candidates to become representatives or even coordinators and in the higher grades, of course, much more than before.

So that means that you as a representative can never say, 'I've got it." That means that you have to keep on learning. And I'm learning to, I keep on learning all the time. And I don't think I've got it. And it has to do. It is not just learning, That would be much simpler. It's really dealing with oneself. As I say dealing with those basic instincts that are gross to start with that needs refinement. It means being honest with oneself and seeing where one is not up to par with what one would like to be and then asking oneself, well how can I improve so that I am able to live up not just to up an they are expecting of me, but what I'm expecting of myself for my self esteem and the criterion is your self-esteem. That's the criterion.

Well I have to end here. We'll continue.


AUG 17, 1998  Tape 05

So now let us try and get into the consciousness of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan. Now it's easier for me because I remember him.  I was ten years old when he passed away and because I have his dreams, but that is an advantage, but you can also get in contact with his attunement.  

You attune to his attunement as we did with thinking of a person or our Mureeds.  And the photos or film, there's a film of him made in 1926 when he conferred the succession to me under, in the presence of the corner stone of the Universel.  Those picture convey something, although very little in comparison with what he really was, and sometimes you see something coming through these pictures or the picture is like a device, a medium, which would give you access into, because that's what we would do if we were sitting with somebody and looking at that person. But it would give access to this next step which is (tawajah?), which is really getting into his consciousness, well his attunement and then you would feel the kind of thing that we felt or that, well we didn't really know it, but all the Mureeds I talked to after Murshid passing confirmed the same thing.

The only way I could describe it is like an ocean of emotion.  Like the emotion that comes from discovering what Pir-O-Murshid calls the Divinity of one's being.  That is, instead of identifying with one's personal image, the communication with the, with God as the Universe, as the enormous outreach of, compass of God as the Universe, as a Being.  And the ecstasy of discovering that one is part of that Being and yet at the same time one is able to love that being although one is part of it.  It's more than to love, it's to be overwhelmed with a sense of glorification. So this would say something about the particular attunement of, that Pir-O-Murshid conveyed to his mureeds, whatever were the walks of his life.  Whether he was sitting at a table having invited a representative to, a leader to his table; with my mother, who was so frail and noble and subdued and (supine?).  

And Murshida Goodenough who, who knew, already new Persian and knew about the Sufis before she met Murshid and who was the one who really understood his teaching more than anybody else, and whom he trained in very strict, very strict disciplined training and retreats. And then Murshida (Fazal Meier?), the wonderful hearted Grandmother of us all who had offered her house to the family and who, by contact with Pir-O-Murshid, became much more successful in her life. And Murshida Green, who was Sofia Green, who was the, as I said a vestige of the British aristocracy of the Victorian days, but very, how can I say, very noble lady; who was, who had a tremendous knowledge of the esoteric traditions and particularly of the, of course, the church, the high church and when she met Murshid.

You see there's story.  After the first World War, I was born in 1916 during the first World War and I still remember the fear when the Zeppelins were throwing bombs on the town and people rushed to shelter and Pir-o-Murshid sat there and said, "It's alright, it's alright.",   Some people still left and some people trusted Murshid and so they just stayed there.  Now I still remember.  That was, I suppose I was maximum of two years old.  So I was under two years old.  I still remember the screeching of the bombs and the fear and people rushing in the (support?) shelter.  And I remember the sovereign serenity of Murshid who sat there, like beyond all the turbulence and nothing could disturb the Divine Peace coming through his being, the power coming through that peaceful state, Divine Power and here he, at some point, there was.  

Every evening Pir-O-Murshid used to meet with a few of his (elevation) (mureeds) but (all of them,) was rather outstanding people.  And they used to go and sit there and sometimes Murshid would stay in silence and everyone would sit there in awe, just in the presence of this being who was inspiring them. Sometimes they would do the Zikr together and sometimes he would speak out of his, a deep sort of knowledge of the soul.  And some of these words are still to be found, but there was no shorthand at that time.  Our people didn't know shorthand.  So they were conveyed.  We don't know just how, how authentic the transcriptions are, but those words always came from the depth.  They were never explaining things or something with the mind.  No, it was always like words that only made sense to the soul.

Remember that Murshid was, of course, imbued?) with transmission of the Sufis and he brought this to the West that was totally unfamiliar with that kind of attunement. In those days, of course, the Theosophical Society had introduced some ideas about Hindu thought and I'm afraid that many of these ideas were rather phony.  There was, I remember there was a book called, "The Masters of the East", written by a man who had never been to the East and it was all wishful thinking.  But it sold like hotcakes.  And Murshid thought, "Well, that's the kind of thing that people are looking for".  But of course, it expressed a very deep need to come in contact with a Master.  And so they had this idea about the great Masters, high (faluting) ideas.  They were rather unrealistic.  

And then Murshid moved to, and the family moved to, the continent.  And as I say those original days, the teaching in those original days was really the traditional Sufi, teachings of the Sufis.  And it's not intellectual, as I say.  So he was conveying something that had been communicated through what they call the silsila, the chain of the Pirs in the Chishti Order, in which he was initiated by his initiator, Abu Hashim Madani, his Pir-O-Murshid. Now I met (Mar i ev) Abu Hashim Madani when I first visited in India.   He was a very old man and he said, you see Abu Hashim Madani had very few Mureeds and he didn't like to talk metaphysics, but every evening, every night they used to sit and repeat the Zikr for hours and as dawn came they would return to their homes absolutely transfigured. And so I think the word, the teachings of Sufis is, well it represents something rather than superficial aspect of the reality, which is a very deep inner transmission, from heart to heart or from soul to soul.  And a very good illustration of this is what happened when Murshid met his Murshid, Abu Hashim Madani.  

You know Pir-O-Murshid bound to a musical family that was very famous.  His grandfather was the first musician who introduced notation in music.  And at his court, you could say, because you know he married the grand daughter of the (Aftu ) of Sudan, the Sultan of, the last Sultan of (Mxxxx) of India.  He had this kind of sense of kingliness which it goes with the tradition of the Magis.  The Magi are Kings and Queens, of course.  So Pir-O-Murshid inherited this sense of the kingliness of the status when one has become conscious of one's Divine Inheritance.  I know that it's a contrast with democracy in politics, but it's a question of a very high attunement of one's emotion, the emotion of the soul instead of the emotion of the body. So perhaps you know the story.  Murshid used to, as I say he was a musician a very.  He was invited to the court of the Maharajahs, of course to sing, and acclaimed as one of the leading musicians of his time.  And so he went to Hyderabad because there was the great patron of art and music, the Nizam of Hyderabad.  

And so of course the court musicians were trying to keep their positions.  So they wouldn't allow any new musician to come in to take their place.  And so on the way Pir-O-Murshid was, there was a dervish woman who was eating from a bowl and she ask him to come.  She said, "Today your wish will be fulfilled, but on one condition and that is that you eat from my bowl."  And I must say Murshid was rather, well rather arrogant in his manners and was a stickler to hygiene.  And so he did hesitate a little and his friend said, "No, you know that's going to, it will open the door for you.  She has a, she's
a spiritual being.  So take it."  So he took that food.  And then when he arrived in Hyderabad he met a friend who knew a friend, who knew a friend, who knew a friend and who knew of course the Prime Minister Kishan Pershad, the Maharaj). Kishan Pershad, who was a Hindu Sufi.  That's something you usually wouldn't find in Morocco, of course, but a Hindu Sufi.  Had a most marvelous library of Sufi works.  I guess it's still there, in Hyderabad.  And so he asked Pir-O-Murshid if he could sing to him and so he did.  And he was so impressed that he said, "Well wait, I want to introduce you to the Nizam."  

And there Pir-O-Murshid describes that scene where the bugles were announcing the approach of the Nizam, who was coming from Secunderabad .  And there was all that festive atmosphere there and the great expectation, and then the elephants, and the guards, the ministers and so on, the generals, (na mo zin) and of course the Maharajah, I mean the Nizam.  And everybody stand and Nizam saw Kishan Pershad, whispered to the ears of the Nizam and so the Nizam asked Pir-O-Murshid to sing.  And when he sang, the Nizam stood up, which never, never happens and Nizam was in tears and he gave his emerald ring to him, which we still have in Fazal Manzil, and appointed him as the Tansen of India, which is the highest title that a musician can get.  And then the same evening, Nizam asked Murshid to come and sing to him.  And that's where he was without all his regalia.  He sat on the floor with Murshid sat on the floor and he was talking about, let's say the, what were the mystical emotions behind that music, instead of just enjoying the music.  A very deep contact, he was almost a very wonderful being.

Curiously enough that meeting marked the end, let's say the culmination, of Pir-O-Murshid's career as a musician.  Although when he came to Europe he did start by bringing music because that was the only way in which he could establish some kind of contact with people.  And he had all this background and was quiet sensational because it was the first time in history of America or Europe.   There was a group of Indian musicians who had come to render the Indian music to the West.  And of course people had no idea about it and just couldn't understand it.  And so there was all this, a sense that, well - you know - what's the point? Murshid composed music and he composed an opera on Omar Kayyam, the words of Omar Kayyam:

"Awake for morning, the noose of the night has cast the stone that sent the stars to flight and lo the hunter of  the night has caught, the (hum) the noose, the noose, the noose of light."  Murshid sung.   "(Hum Hummmm)  You know how little time we have to stay and once departed, once departed ne'er return, return no more."  That's what, okay.Well now at that moment, at that point Murshid had dreams.  He kept on seeing a very high spiritual being who kept on coming in his dream all the time.  And so he spoke to his friends and his friends said, "You know, you have seen the picture of a Sufi Pir-O-Murshid.  You have to find him."    And so he knocked at the doors of the Pir-O-Murshids of that time in  Hyderabad.  

And each of those Pir-O-Murshids said, "No, I wouldn't be able to guide you.  No, I wouldn't be up to guiding you." So then he knocked at the door of Khair-ul-Mubin who was a very famous lecturer.  He was a kind of, well, as we always say, a professional Sufi.  So lots of people came, even a Nizam came to his talks.  And one day a dervish came to the  meeting and since that dervish came he couldn't speak anymore, because he realized: it's just words. It's almost what's happening to me now.  What's the point in just communicating words, explanations, mind trip, what's the point?    And so then he became a really high, realized being, higher being.  And that is (son) his successor, who invited me to a big gathering of Sufi, Pirs.  

nd so he knocked at the door of Khair-ul-Mubin and said, "Could you be my Murshid?:  And Khair-ul-Mubin said, "Not me, but wait until you see who's coming through the door."  And there was the very person whose picture Murshid had seen in his dreams.  And that's where the initiation takes place.  And the words of Abu Hashim Madani said was, "I have waited for you so long." You see that's just to convey something of that special thing that has been transmitted through the Sufis and it's quite, it's not something that fits into our common place way of thinking.  It's something very special. Now Abu Hashim Madani was from (Ha Jas?).  He was an Arab.  He was invited by the Nizam of Hyderabad.  And very scholarly person and, but now to continue the story how he met his Murshid.   His Murshid was Kalimi Delevi, who was a dervish.  

Now I don't know whether you've ever come across a dervish, but I can assure you they're really far out.   Really, I mean you can't believe it.  Sometimes they have an old mattress on their back and plaited hair and a lot of rings on their fingers and on their toes and a raucous voice, "You there."  So they awaken and they say the most incongruous things that you don't understand.  And you're not suppose to understand them, because it's a koan.  They're suppose to reveal the meaning behind the word.  So it's a different message than university teaching and than what we learn at schools. So every evening the Sufis meet, every Thursday evening the Sufis meet in what they call Sama.  The dervishes are, well you have the picture.  You have the Pir, of course, and the VIPs around the Pir and then at the other end of the hall you have the musicians surrounded by the dervishes and then you have the notables who have the front seats and then the rebel.  Sorry, I hope there's no offense.  

And then the dervishes, I mean the musicians, who are also practically dervishes, are improvising music on the words of the Sufis.  And amongst those are some fantastic words, like for example (" ab durj").  (Abdu Kajalani) who said, "Those who can't stand, God speaking, for those who can't stand the light of my being, I have created the world of shadows as a protection, and for those cannot stand the solitude of my oneness, I've created the world of light."  (Abdu Kajala) who was an ascetic who lived a solitude. And then Al Halaj who was crucified and who said, "Thy abandonment of me is the proof of Thy love because Thou testest most those Thou lovest most." Shihab-al-din Suhrawardi who said, "Hail to the beings of light who kindle your  hearts with their light. . ." and so on,.  You know the whole background of the Sufis is quite incredible.

Al Halaj who said, "I will not have dared, I would not have deemed to say, 'Is it Thou?' if Thou hadst not already whispered in my ears, 'This is me.' " Well, they're talking about something very deep and very sacred, beyond words.  And here you have the musicians improvising music on it and somehow communicating with the dervishes who are picking up those thoughts and seeing behind those thoughts, all the emotion that it involves.  And it's already emotionally charged situation where everyone gets into a state of ecstasy.  And then all of a sudden someone starts standing up and dancing, whirling.  

I remember going to one of these meetings, of course, and there was a very fat man, very heavy and he started whirling.  He became just like, as light as a feather in the wind.  It was incredible.  He was totally transformed.  And then, at a certain moment he became conscious of his body.  He thought, "Good God, what am I doing here?"  And then of course, he fell to the ground and collapsed like a bag of potatoes.  And then they came and rescued him and
brought him before the Pir, who brought him back to life again.   That's a classical thing.

It happened to me once at the Durgah when (   ?) were asked to lead the Zikr and there was a dervish there who got into a state of ecstasy and (all of a sudden?, said to me?) a terrible scream and collapsed on the ground.  And, you know in the West you would have called for an ambulance, but no, I went to him with the Zikr and everyone thought it was quite natural.  It's okay.  And after sometime he came to again and it was alright.  I think he was very glad that we didn't make too much fuss about him.

END OF SIDE ONE

On one of the occasions that dervish Kalimi Delevi was at a Sama meeting and Abu Hashim Madani was there and the dervish kept on looking at Abu Hashim Madani, staring at him.  And you know one feels very embarrassed when someone keeps on staring at one.  So he looked the other way and, no, he's staring.  And he stood right up and came to him and said, "I have a hoakum"  That means an order to initiate you.  And he said, "Well, you know I've been, there's an agreement that I'll be initiated by my father's Murshid when I return to Arabia.  He said, "No, but I have an order to initiate you."   He said, "I'm sorry.  You know Abu Hashim Madani was a very distinguished person and this dervish was, let's say rather gruff.  So then, you know, that in the evening they always repeat the Zikr, and then in the morning and so that night Abu Hashim Madini dreamt that his father's Murshid had told him that you've got to be initiated by Kalimi Delevi.  And the next morning Kalimi Delevi knocked at the door and said, "I've come to initiate you."  And he said, "But I told you I didn't want to be initiated. I'll be initiated by my father's Murshid."  So he said, "Have you forgotten your dream already?"  So he had no alternative but to let himself be initiated.  

But then he asked him metaphysical questions like, you know, like I would ask Ibn Arbi if he were here today.  And he didn't know how to answer.  The dervish didn't know how to answer.  And so he thought, "What kind of Murshid have I got myself stuck with now?" And you know in India you can't change Murshid like you do in America.  So you're not stuck with me.  You're free, but you know.  They even curse you if you leave them.  

So, but you don't have to afraid of any curse if you leave me.  I sometimes even welcome it.  Well, I wont say the English word.  Well perhaps I will say it, just 'good riddance'.  So it's better to have few disciples, but who really attuned to you all together. But anyway, then so Abu Hashim Madani was really thinking to himself, "Well maybe, I don't know what to do.  Maybe I should go back to Arabia, because at least the Murshid of my father, he really would be able to answer these questions."   And so while he was doing the Zikr in the middle of the night, the dervish knocks at the door.  Transported and he said, "I am the answer to your question."  And then he bowed and recognized, that's a realistic teacher.  

And I think that is the crux of actually what's happening now.  And because I say, as you know throughout my life, I've always tried to explain things.  I thought that's what people need and I have this kind of university background and have studied so much of my life.  And so I thought that that's answering the needs of people, but perhaps you've noticed now that something else is coming through.  And I see that explanations are not only not useful, but they even stand in the way. So that's that very deep contact, communication.  And so if we loose that, then we've lost everything.  And that's why we are so keen on maintaining the tradition, I mean the transmission.   

Now on the other hand when Pir-O-Murshid came to the continent, without any means whatsoever, and was sitting on  a bench.  And I know that bench.  I've sat on that bench myself.  Next to the, facing the, that lake, the Lake of Geneva with all that water rushing down.  And you can imagine that Easterners are very keen on water, when they see water like that.  And the energy of water is tremendous.  And there he sat.  And behind him was this building with an eagle at the top, called Maison Royale, Royal House.  And so he sat there meditating and people passed by and thought, "Very strange being here sitting on that bench.  Well, anyway they passed by.

And there must have been a woman who lived on an apartment at perhaps in Maison Royale.  I'm not sure.  And who watched, who thought, "Well that's strange.  He's sitting there.  He's kept on sitting there for hours.  He didn't seem to eat and night is coming on and what is he, where's he going to be?"  So she walked by him and looked at him and walked by and then she walked again and then looked at them and then walked by again and then next time she sort of greeted him and he greeted her.  And then she said, "Do you speak English?"  And he said, "Yes."  So she said, "Well is there anything I can do for you?"  So he said, 'Well you could give me a glass of half milk, half water."  Because he was on the retreat and he was just, that's all he was taking.  So she went and brought him a glass of half milk and half water.  And it was getting dark, and she said, "Well, do you have a place to stay tonight?", he said,
"No, it's all right."  So she said, "Well, you know I only have a, I have a, the only thing I could do is I could invite you to sleep on the sofa in my waiting room.  He said, "Yes, well, thank you."  And the next day he was back on the bench.  And during those days he envisioned the whole unfoldment of the Sufi Movement.   

And then, one of these days, I don't know how many days it was, Mureeds from England were passing by.  There was Murshida Goodenough.  I don't remember, I'm not quite sure, or Murshida Green, I'm not quite sure, but they were so awestruck by just, by seeing Murshid there.  They said, "Murshid, are you here?  What can we do for you?"  He said, "Well, if you'd like to organize a lecture for me."  And so they organized a lecture at the Theosophical Society.  

That was the real thing in those days.  And there was, (Annie Van Zant?) and probably (Ned Beater?), I don't know.  Prabably all the big wigs of the Theosophical Society.  And when they saw Murshid coming, they couldn't believe their eyes because they had been focusing on a master and here was a Master right here.   And so they, one after the other, they said, "Well, I'd like to join you."  Even (Annie Van Zant?) herself and, but you know, that was a time when they were expecting a new Messenger and that was Krishnamurti.   

And then (Annie Van Zant?) discovered that Murshid had children, was married and had children and ate meat.  So she thought, "Well, he can't be The Messenger of this time."  So she went and apologized to him and said, "I'm sorry,  but I made a mistake."  And probably just as well, because you know its you can't like even that was a problem with Krishnamurti.  He couldn't re, he couldn't change the Theosophical Society.  You can't, it's no, there wasn't any point in Pir-O-Murshid being a part of the Theosophical Society.  He was far beyond that.  So maybe it was a blessing in disguise.   

So that was a real breakthrough.  And at that time then there were the few, what I call the pillars of the message, who brought, just so overwhelmed by the being of Murshid who followed him.  There were the summer schools in Katwijk, in Holland, and then in Sureness, and more and more people came.  And amongst them, rather strong personalities who saw something in Murshid, which one can't find in any other being. And so what I want to say, is that, that juncture, well the transmission was, as my son Pirzade Zia says, embedded in the message.  What was coming through was the message.   

I said the other day, if Christ had renamed an Essene there wouldn't have been Christianity.  Now somehow I'd rather he was reaching out, beyond The Sufi Order.  Now, I say that because, you know, I've been very much into The Sufi Order.  And I don't know rather you know what the tradition that is that, they call it (Arisalot) then, and then Valayat.  (Arisalot) is the way of the Message and Valayat is the way of the Master. And so traditionally, the coming of the Message is always followed, or the Messenger actually is always succeeded by a Master who teaches, who continues that Message but in the line of the Masters.

And I don't know whether you know that passage in The Unity of Religious Ideals where Pir-O-Murshid talks about those three aspects the Master, the Saint and the Prophet, or the Prophet, the Master and the Saint.  It's a tradition. In Islam you have (Alif Min Sin) you know.  Ali Mohammed (sin a sa sin a pas sin ma pa).  So I have been fulfilling my father's (injunction?). I can even tell you a story.  You see the last, well a lot of stories.  One was: that last year, 1926, there was just a feeling that Murshid would never come back again.  He went to India.  He was going to India and would never come back. And my sister Nur had a dream that the baker had gone in an airplane and would never come back.  And so she told Murshid that dream and Murshid had tears in his eyes and it was confirmed that.  We all felt that Murshid would never come back.  

And of course, when we heard that he'd died, we couldn't believe it.  I mean he was forty-four.  And we never thought that we would be able to live without him.  He was like the Father of us all.  I mean not just the family, everyone. So I dreamt that, you see we used to go and take our father to the train station in those days.  There weren't any planes or any large airlines.  So we took him to the train to say good-by and then we'd go and fetch him again when he came back.  And he always brought us some toys.  But this time I dreamt that I had missed the car that was taking us to the train and so I screamed in the middle of the night.  And so I was sleeping in the room next to where Murshid was and so he said, "(By Jon), it's alright", and (By Jon) means, 'dear brother'.  That was my name.  So then, I was terribly worried.  And I thought, "He says it's alright, but I don't think it's alright."   I want to know.

And so, my mother used to take us to the Universal Worship on Sundays.  And this time I must say that I tried to miss, to not be there for the meeting so that I would be able to see Murshid.  I'm not sure whether I told my Mother or not that I wanted to see Murshid.  Maybe I did, but I don't remember.  But I can only say that I knew, as children are very smart, as you know.  I knew that that is the only time that Murshid was alone.  And I never had an opportunity, hardly ever had an opportunity to meet him.  So I thought, "This is my chance." and so I knocked at the door and there was Murshid looking out of the window and he seemed very sad.  He was looking at my Mother and the children.  So I said, a stupid question, I asked him a stupid question, of course and said, "Why don't you go to the Universal Worship?"  And he said, "It's time for the Mureeds to look after themselves."  And that shocked me, because that confirmed all my fears.  So I said, "But they'll never be able to do without you."  He said, "They will learn."  But he seemed very,very sad.  And then he walked away from the window and me too of course.  And then he looked at me and he said, "You see giving the teaching, that was wonderful.  But the problem was the organization."  And I think we can confirm that, the problem is the organization.  Then he sat on the sofa and I sat next to him and his shoes were on the side of the sofa and he said, "You'll follow in my footsteps."  

And I remember that, in those days, when my mother had, when my father asked my mother to ask me to come to him.  There, he was standing there, majesty, a king.  His presence was unbelievable and I was 10 years old.  So I went there and he said, "I have a metal for you."  So I said, "Well I haven't been very good at school."  And he said, "No, it has nothing to do with the school.", and I could see my Mother crying.  And so then I went to my Mother and said, "Well, why are you crying?"  And she said, "Look, can you go back to your father, to Aba, and ask him if he wouldn't also give a metal to, my brother, Hidayat?"  So I went back and Murshid said, "No, it's for you."

And then, of course, that confirmed my Mother's fears, because my Mother felt that he was communicating.  He was indicating that he wanted me to be the successor.  And that is something that one does at the end of ones life.  So there's the feeling well, you know, she was in terrible distress. And then there was this big ceremony of the, where it's on film.  I don't know whether you've seen it.  You have seen it, yes?  There's Murshid, all his greatness there and mureeds.  The reverence of the mureeds passing and asking for his blessing, the whole atmosphere.  But then there was the, how can I say, the gaudy aspect of the whole thing, the black robes of the Cherags and the stone that seemed like a tomb and the whole feeling of distress.  Perhaps this is the last time that we'll see Murshid. 

And I remember, there was, somebody had drawn a circle, in fact it was Ali Khan (Bahkr?) drawn a circle where Pir-O-Murshid was supposed to stand in front of the stone.  And Pir-O-Murshid looked at it and then with resignation he walked into the circle.  It was in that moment of relenting.  And then he asked the representatives of different centers or different countries to place gold under the, money of their country, gold under the stone.  And then somebody, I don't know, maybe it was Murshida Goodenough, to place the Gayan, Vayan, Nirtan and then he asked my Mother, if I remember, to place the Shajara.  The Shajara is the list of all the previous Sufis and the name of the successor at the end.  And so then, my Mother placed it under the stone and then the stone was covered.  And then Murshid called me and initiated me in The Confraternity.  

And so initiation of The Confraternity, at least at it's face value, it seemed to me, that one has decided, one makes a vow, a pledge that one is going to say the three prayers, three times a day and not just Saum, Salat and Khatum, but also Pir, Nabi and Rasul and also say "Oh Thou, the Sustainer of the, Oh Thou the Maker, Molder and Builder of the Universe, build with thine own hands, the Universel, our temple for the Divine message of Love, Harmony and Beauty.  So, it seemed like that was a subset of the Universal Worship. And after that, well I, if I would tell you all the stories.  It's quite unbelievable the stories that has happened after that. Anyway, at time Hidayat, my brother, came to me and said, "Well, I'm going to open the stone to see what is on that paper.   And so I said, "No, that's secret.  Don't touch it.  Don't please."  "Oh, no, no, no, no, I'm going to "  So you know what Hidayat's likely, "Okay, I'm going to."  

So they discovered, so it was rather sudden and (Net Baknunah) was there.  She took care to take it out very carefully so that it wouldn't be damaged because it was in pieces.  And then took it to the University of (Nibagon) I think, I forget now, in order to, the archeological department to have it examined.  And the name at the end was missing.  And there was evidence that the stone had been tampered.  So I can tell you many more stories, but I'll leave it to that. So anyway, so my succession was questioned by the Sufi Movement, as you know.  "It's no proof.  Do you have a proof? You don't have a proof, okay.  Well then you don't have a proof?  We'll have an election."  And when I look at it now, i think, "Well, just as well, because I have to prove myself."

Well, now, in the perspective, after you know - at my age and the perspective and with the forthcoming how can you say the outburst of energy that has developed in the formation of which we call the Council of the Message, which has met for the last few months I think and now is coming forth with great power.  It comes, I mean the evidence is so strong, that  Murshid started in the perspective of Sufism, but flurried in the dimension of the cosmic dimension of
the Message of our time.  

And it was Himayat who pointed out the other day, and which, it struck a note, because that initiation - Confraternity - was to announce the next phase, not just a subset of The Universal Worship.  And it's not just succession in the Sufi Order.  It's a whole new dispensation, that it's the Message.  Far beyond the Sufi Order, far beyond the transmissions.  And that's what we're discovering now: the dimensions of the Message.  

And I understand that some people have some reservations about being initiated in the Sufi Order.  They think, some people think, "Well, it's Islam.  We don't want, you know, we're Christians", or whatever, which is not quite true, but still.  But I think that people will be so, feel it so right to be part of this tremendous, how can I say, outburst of the Universal Spirit in the millennium.  

So I think with the eve of the whole new unfoldment.  And the Sufi Order will remain the school, the esoteric school, where we're learning that transmission, because that new Message came out of that transmission exactly like Christianity came out of the transmission of the Essenes.  

So one does not deter one from the other one.  There's still that background which is very important and I must say that I'm very happy to hear that Zia, my son Pirzade Zia, is carrying that transmission already with great knowledge and dedication and attunement, which enables me to go ahead with the spreading the Message.  

And I want to take this opportunity to announce that I shall be handing over the succession in the Sufi Order to my son, Pirzade Zia in the year 2000, which is pretty close now.  I'll continue to be active.  I'm not resigning, by any means from my activities, but lets say, "to hold that aryan threat of that transmission further, and I must say, I am very happy to hear that most of the representatives that I have talked to so far have welcome him in that position, because he will be spared the ordeal that I went through in my life.

So it, you see it's good to have one's roots.  I'll repeat this, I've already said that, this wonderful priest, who is a Catholic Priest and at the same time a Hindu.  And who says, he's called (Ramone Ahnica), he said, "You see, you have to have your roots in your tradition and the branches of your tree mingled with the branches of other traditions.  So that being my motto.  So we have to, it's good to maintain one's roots in that wonderful transmission of the Sufis.  I can't tell you.  I've been discovering it more and more.  

You know I've practically terminated a book on the Sufis and I must say every, I'm awestruck at every step by what comes through.  It's unbelievable.  But that's the transmission that, but we're moving into new times.  Now we have to overcome the fragmentation of humanity in different religions and races and categories and so on.  We have to find unity.  We have to show it.  We have to explore how it can be done and so on and that's what we're going to do.  So I hope that you have, I have your assent and approval for this outburst of energy that's coming through.

				                             END OF TAPE 

AUG 22, 1998  Tape 01

My objective is to try to practice with skills that enable us to expand our consciousness so that we are able to see aspects of our problems that we have missed out because we are looking at things from a personal vantage point.  For example if you look at Notre Dame in Paris - that's where I lived - from one vantage point you haven't seen Notre Dame.  And so we're looking at our problems with a personal bias, because  what we want to do is develop the skills that will enable us to expand our consciousness and I hope that will help us to have different insights into--or see different aspects of our problems that we hadn't seen before.

The second thing that we have in view is to try to unfurl the latent qualities in our being.  You could consider yourself as a masterpiece that needs to be developed so we want to foster personal creativity potentials. The third one is a kind of nostalgia that I think many of us feel to reach beyond the limits of conditioning, to find freedom and I think it corresponds with some kind of idealism.  It's difficult to express it in words but somehow - let's say the need to be high without drugs.  

The next dimension, let's say of our consciousness, is to have an over-view of things so that one is able to see things in their  context instead of being caught in what in England one calls one's storms in one's teacups.  So those are amongst the objectives.  So perhaps I'll try to detail each one of these objectives and then we'll go into them much more deeply; but this whole workshop is going to be experiential so your part - it's important what you do -  is more important than what I do.  I'm  just going to perhaps suggest that you do certain practices and see how it affects you.

So this is a thought.  We're talking about expanding consciousness.  Now, how do we do it?  Well, can you feel a kind of magnetism around your body like, actually like the feel of a magnet.  It's a kind of energy, it's an energy field and you feel it around your shoulders and your chest and perhaps even your back so that you see we generally assume that we are, let's say, skin bound.  Actually our bodies extend beyond our skin because the electromagnetic field is matter.  It's a physical phenomenon, so our concept of ourselves as being limited within our skin is a mistake, is an error.  And somehow our sense of being the subject perceiving other than ourselves is again a certain perspective and one can be caught in that perspective.  Now if we start changing our sense of identify with our body, if we think of our body as a vortex that does not have a profile, or at least does not have boundary - can you do that?  Your skin is a boundary but beyond your skin there is a whole area that is you that is your physical body, and it's energy instead of matter and, it's life energy; and there is such a thing as mind over body so that if you become aware of it, it is going to be highly enhanced so that the magnetic field is going to become more powerful; and I can say the scientific experiments in laboratories that have shown the effect of your imagination upon that field, or we could call it a life field, it can be measured an a laboratory and you can see how you are representing it in your mind is going to make  it--well, enhance it, make it more intense, intensify it.  

Now it's very difficult for us to imagine that we're out there beyond our skin and secondly because it doesn't have a boundary so it overlaps with, for example, the magnetic field of other people, so we're not used to that kind of sense of identity but it has an effect upon one's consciousness. Now let's try just a little experiment with consciousness.  Could you, for example, just mention that you are a person whom you know and instead of going to visit that person could you imagine that you are that person.  Imagine what it would be like to be that person.  It's not thought reading.  It's not telepathy.  We have that ability to extend our consciousness into the consciousness of other people and that is again a sense that can be developed.  Now think of another person.  It's going to develop your intuition so that you may be able to receive an SOS from that person who is in trouble and you know people are thinking of you just like you are thinking of them.  And perhaps it is true to say that there is a kind of osmosis between people so that the people you love, and the people who are close to your are very much a part of your being.  It's not a very clear frontier between you and other people.  Let's say other people are other yourselves.  That's a way of looking at things.  And so this goes beyond the body.  Now we are talking about the psyche and we are talking about thoughts.  

Now could you get into the consciousness of somebody who is   inimical to you or perhaps somebody who has done you harm, or even abused you, and see what their outlook is.  I mean, you don't see it, but feel their attunement.  In fact, to be more precise, could you try to represent yourself how you look from the vantage point of another person, and particularly from the point of view of a person who doesn't like you and perhaps you see that their assessment of you is certainly not the assessment that you have of yourself and that's probably why they are acting the way they do.  So it might help us to deal with  resentment.  I don't say you are condoning what they are doing. It's just that you see from which place their action comes. The way that the Sufis formulate it is: "I see him/her through his/her eyes.  I see myself through his/her eyes."  So it gives you a further perspective to your own personal perspective and of course this could be increased ad infinitum.  In fact there is a word of St. Francis of Assisi who said, "I thought I was looking at the world but the world is looking at me."

Of course there's an emotion linked with this way of thinking.  It's very difficult to describe that emotion but you feel a  sense of power, a sense of vastness instead of being shrunken or compressed into your personal assessment of yourself.  A kind of relief from the constraint of one's personal self image which is not what we are.  That's what we think we are.  It's a notion, and of course we all have a need for freedom: so freedom from the boundaries of what one imagines the body to be; freedom from the limitation in our assessment of ourselves, which is our self image; and freedom from the personal vantage point or rather  enriching the personal vantage point with alternative vantage points that will enrich our personal purview. 

OK, lets just pass on to the second step.  And that is, as I said, how do we unfurl the latent qualities in our being.  Perhaps you feel that there are a lot of potentials in your being that have not yet manifested in your personality.  It's like, for example, there's much more in the seed than that ever manifests   to you in the plant.  I mean, there are more genes, there are more possibility potentials that have not had a chance of manifesting, expressing themselves; and what we want to do is try to encourage the unfurling of these qualities.  So how do we do it?  And of course there is no doubt that our personality has a great impact upon the way we handle our problems, so I think a lot of people think they are the victims of their problems but on the other hand we do have an impact upon those problems so that if we enrich our personality the problems are going to change.  

So I would say the first step - actually, we are developing skills that are called meditation.  Well, the first step here would be to be able to realize that the world, that is, the external, not only the physical world but the circumstances, psychological circumstances, exercise and impact on our being, and calling upon our attention and our action.  So can you feel that?  Just think of the circumstances in your life which are  continually calling upon you to do something or to deal with them or they are bugging you as someone might say.  Now what we tend  to do is to react.  For example, somebody attacks you, you attack them.  Somebody insults you, you insult them.  Somebody is angry with you, you are angry with them and so on.  We react.  And that is short circuiting.  And if you short circuit you are not enlisting all the faculties of your being.  

A very good example of this would be the circuits in the brain. The brain functions in two parallel manners.  One is through  circuits, what becomes circuiting.  The other is in holistic mode, so when you are crossing the road and there is a car coming or whatever, or an obstacle, then we don't have to weigh all our notions of philosophy.  You know, we short circuit.  The whole brain is not involved in our short circuiting.  But when we have to decide what we are going to do in a given situation then of course that is where our decision calls upon all our faculties and all our wisdom and intelligence and insight and intuition and so on, and emotions.  Therefore the only way to avoid that we should react without enlisting all the faculties in our being is to place a buffer between the challenge of the world and ourselves.  So you could consider meditation as a technique that enables you to find a way of, let's say, holding back the impact  of the situations that might overwhelm you so that you are not  able to use all your capacities in order to deal with them.  And we have that faculty but we're not always using it.  Perhaps we don't always know how to use it.  

In the East, whether it's amongst the Hindus or the Sufis it's called vairagya which means - well, the word is translated by indifference.  I don't like that word but I prefer the word independence, to not be dependent upon those conditions.  You find in yourself a kind of freedom from your dependence upon those circumstances that are forcing you to react.  

Well, how does one develop this faculty?  Well here again I think we have to call upon very deep emotional springheads in our being, the need for peace.  Now I know that we can't force ourselves to be peaceful.  In fact, the more you try to force yourself to be peaceful the more disturbed you are, and the reason is very simple, because normally our thoughts are somehow organized by the environment, by the circumstances, monitored by them so you that don't have to orient your thoughts because the  circumstances do it for you.  But if you close your eyes, and try to withdraw from the impact of the environment, then you'll find that the environment and both the physical and the psychological environment continue to live in your psyche.  They are transposed in your psyche and so the psyche acts rather like a body.  It is digesting those impressions.  Normally this happens without your paying any attention to it but if you are meditating and you're not able to orient your thoughts then that process of digestion is going to surface, perhaps even erupt in your consciousness, and you say, "I can't meditate, in fact I get more nervous when I meditate than in everyday life."  

Now sometimes one needs a model or an image.   I can tell you what I do myself, because I represent to myself Buddha sitting in the middle of a storm, and where he sat everything was peaceful.  Now the fact is that the center of a hurricane is a vacuum so that in fact it might have been the case but it's an image that might be useful if you think "there's a lot of turmoil around me; somehow I have the capacity to withdraw from the conditioning," let's say; "that the impact the environment affects upon me, so that I might find freedom."  And I think that is the key. You see, we involve ourselves in life.  We involve ourselves with people, with situations, with matter, all kinds of things, bodiness, and somehow that involvement is always at the cost of our freedom.  On the other hand we have a real need for freedom and we think that the way we would be free, if we would find ourselves in different circumstances from the way of the circumstances in which we are, that's not freedom.  You can be extremely constrained in the circumstances and find freedom in your thinking and freedom in your self image and so on.  So that's what we are seeking for.  And you might even find that the circumstances that seem so unfavorable to you are just exactly the circumstances in which you can develop because you know that we need stress in order to develop.  We mustn't be over-stressed but a certain amount of stress.  I'm sure that some of us think that our circumstances are not just stressful but over-stressful.   So that image helps me.  I can say that.  Of course I've meditated a lot in my life so I've meditated with wonderful beings who were so peaceful that you couldn't not be peaceful when you were in their presence; so maybe that's helpful, more helpful than if you were trying to do it yourself.

Well, now, you see, according to the Sufis, they would not say that you place a buffer between the environment and yourself; They would say you place sentinels at the doors of perception.  That means the sentinels allow certain impressions through and others not.  Now if you know something about alchemy that's the first process in alchemy which is called filtering.  That means that we have the capacity to reject impressions that are unwanted.  Now you might think, "well, no.  I think that these impressions are compelling.  I try to get rid of them but I don't have the power to do that."  Well, there's a skill in meditation, and it's based upon the immune system.  

Perhaps you know that the immune system in the body has a faculty of rejecting an organ that one transplants, for example, which doesn't have the same DNA as the body, so we have the same thing in our psyche and in order to - there are two immune systems.  The first immune system is based upon me or not me, so it is your sense of who you are that gives you the power to reject impressions that are not you.  So what we want to do is to have a better sense of who we are.  And you will find that that will help you to overcome those impressions that are disturbing and which it's not helpful to be exposed to, because you can't do anything about them anyway.  If you could then it would be good.

Now the second immune system represents the ability of the body to adapt itself to impressions that are not you.  Otherwise you  wouldn't be able to eat food, and so our psyche has the ability to adapt itself to impressions that are strange to one, not familiar, but by so-doing we are enriching ourselves.  Otherwise we would remain the same.  We would not be enriching ourselves.   We enrich ourselves in the same way that we enrich ourselves with food, our bodies with food.  

So now, how do we get a clear sense of who we are?  Of course there are several methods.  Let's try something really concrete. I hope you find that it's helpful to you.  Now can you accept that your face is a mask and the reality behind your face is  your countenance and in your face you are inheriting features of your parents, ancestors and so on.  That's the mask.  But you will have noticed how a person's expression changes according to their attunement, according to their thoughts; so can you try to grasp - well, if you could try to imagine by your power of imagination what your real countenance is behind your face - can you do that?  (pause for practice)  So if you really captured that countenance you'll have the sense, "Yes, this is me!" That's really - but with such assurance, you know, "This is me."  Of course you notice its features are changing all the time according to your thoughts and your emotions so it's not like, well, even the face does change but this changes much more.  But there is something, there is a kind of continuity in change there which is you.  Now the countenance trans--this is a word of the Sufis-- transpires through that which appears.  Now maybe that sounds metaphysical  and I know metaphysics is useful to help understand what we're doing, so I'll refer to basic teaching to be found in Hinduism and yoga.  

According to yoga, the physical world is maya.  That means an illusion.  That is a rather simplistic way of interpreting yoga.  What it really says is that the physical world is not what one thinks it is.  That means that it is illusion but it's not what you think it is and if you talk to a physicist you know that the physicist knows very well that the physical world is not at all what we think it is.  If they see a trace on the screen they might think it's an electron and if they think it over they may think well, it's a combination of electrons.  There's no way of saying this is it, you see, so reality escapes one as one tries to grasp it.  So that is the view of the Hindus.  

Now let's transpose this in terms of our problems.  Our problems are not what we think they are.  So I would say that the mantrum for the millennium is "What if."  What if our problems are not what we think they are.  And we are so convinced that they are what we think they are and we go through life schlepping this  misassessment of our problems and acting on the basis of this misassessment.  So you see how important meditation is, because what we are trying to do is see what is enacted behind our problems instead of just judging them by their face value, and that's what we are trying to learn.  

Well, now another aspect of this would be one's self-image.  That is who I think I am, who you think you are, who we think we are. It is a notion one says.  It is a notion that is something that one imagines.  It's not a reality.  And we are so convinced that we are our personality, our self image is not the same as our personality, but still we are so convinced that we are our self image that we limit ourselves.  We identify with it and consequently the potentialities  that are waiting to unfurl in our personality are blocked by our identification with our self image so according to yoga, then our self image is maya.  It is a faulty representation of what we are.  

Now what does sufism say?  You see, if you say, "It is not so," in India one says "Netti netti." It is not so.  Well that's negative, so what is it?  It doesn't say anything of what it is, it just says it's not.  That's not good enough.  So we want to know, OK, physical matter is not what we think it is so what is it?  So that's what the physicists would do.  OK, so one tries to see what's behind it, you know, and we can't go into physics here.  Well, the same thing is true of our problems.  It's not good enough to say they are not what we think they are, but what are they?  And secondly, with regard to our personality or rather our self image, our self image is not what we are - but what are we?  And what our countenance says to us is, it gives us some indication, but of course we'd have to go through that a little more deeply.  

Well, there's another dimension to this, to the mask, and that is role playing.  We play a role and we get so imbued in this role  playing that we think that we are that.  For example, the king  thinks he's a king because they say, "Your majesty," and if he's not sitting on a throne and if he's been rejected he doesn't think he's a king any more.  And a guru thinks he's a guru because they have reverence for him and/or her, and that's role playing.  The business person thinks they are a business person and the artist thinks they are an artist.  It is a condition of our being but it's not what we really are.   

So there's a story in India, there's a story of - you know, elephants go mad every now and again.  I'm afraid it's the male who goes mad, and so it kills its keeper and breaks its chains and runs amok and causes havoc everywhere.  And then there was a king.  They called the king and the king said, "Sit down."  And the elephant sat down.  Everyone thought, "How is it possible? the elephant obeys the king!" And of course the joke is that the king thinks he is God and the elephant believed it.  And that might apply to some gurus also.  

So the point of view of the Sufis is that the circumstances -  well, first of all the physical objects and then the circumstances in our life and then our personality are devices in which, let's  say the intelligence of the world is trying to reveal its intention.  I'll try to illustrate this because, perhaps it sounds too metaphysical.  I suppose you did see the  film ET, and I hope you cried and you laughed.  You mean that you cried and you laughed because you saw shadows on the screen?  Yes, well, you saw ET through the eyes of that lovely child.  So you know, the face of ET was a turtle and the voice was that of an old lady.  Actually, behind it all, Speilburg was using  devices in which to communicate his thought, his intention. And so I'm not using the word God anymore.  At least I do sometimes when I'm quoting the Sufis, but say, the universe.

The intelligence of the universe is using devices in order to reveal its way of thinking or its intention, and in meditation we are trying to grasp that intention.  And those are just devices, and if we take those devices for being at their face value then we would never see what the intention is.  For example, if you take a computer and take it to pieces you won't thereby understand what the software is.  If you knew the software (?inhabit) technology you (?could create) a computer.  

So that's what we want to do in meditation, is to grasp the meaningfulness of your lives, the meaningfulness of life.  It's beyond our understanding and therefore what we are trying to do is to extend our understanding beyond its limits, exactly as our sense of identity with our body we try to extend it beyond it limits which is the skin.  We do the same with intelligence.  How would we do it?  That's what interests me and I hope it will interest you.  What are the skills that will enable us to try to make sense of our lives and make sense of life?  

OK, so the key to meditation is if you sit there and try to meditate you will find that all of these thoughts will start bugging you, coming from all sides, random thoughts that you can't control.  That's not the way to meditate.  Try to place a buffer between you and the circumstances.  Well, it depends upon, as I said, your very strong sense of who you are.  

Now, the story about the elephant.  Now, in India the elephants don't like the agitation of chickens but somehow they don't allow themselves to be bugged by that agitation because it's below their dignity.  So if you think of that yourself, you don't allow yourself to be bugged by those thoughts because it's below your dignity.  If you have a very strong sense of yourself then you  don't let yourself be affected by those people who are trying to bug you.  It's not their fault if they bug you.  I mean, it's not the fault of the tiger if it bites you.  You don't blame, I hope you don't blame the tiger. It's not his fault, it's in his nature. If people are nasty to you, well it's their problem, it's not yours.  So it's a sense of self esteem, how we develop self esteem, a strong sense of who you are.  And if we depend upon our self image we can't have very much self esteem.  We only have self esteem if we realize who we really are.  

OK, so how can we find out who we are?  Well, just imagine that our psyche is rather like a vortex, because our body is a vortex also.  A vortex doesn't have a boundary therefore at the edges, at the periphery, there is an overlap between the environment and ourselves.  And in fact, there is always - the degree to which one adapts oneself to the environment and the degree to which one adapts the environment to ones own sense of purpose, have you got that clear?  The difference 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; there's an overlap.  Well, now, at the periphery then, that whole peripheral area of our being is not quite us.  There is an overlap with the environment, your culture, all kinds of things.  To find who you are you have to turn within.  And now the question is, how do you learn to turn within?  

Well, of course, the first thing is filtering, as we said. That is, you see, i'll give you an illustration.  For example, 

Side 2 Tape 4

......and not turn within.  You cannot grasp that reality which transpires behind that which appears, that which is hidden within yourself.  And therefore in order to do that you will have to -- you see, the method used by yoga is to simply question - that's what I've already said -  you simply question that the physical world is what you think it is and the circumstances.  That gives you a sense of freedom from the impact of the environment upon you so that it is easier to turn within.  But the key to it is, you see, this is really the breakthrough in meditation, is instead of thinking about what accrues to you for outside, you are concentrating on what emerges from within.  So let us say that we are continually being reborn and new qualities are trying to  come through and somehow it's just like, for example, a fresh growth that is trying to break through, for example, a crocus that is trying to break through the snow in early January,  and so these are very gentle growths that need our care, our attention, and our protection.  And if we don't give it that protection and that care and that attention it will be stillborn.  And so this is happening to us all the time. New qualities are continually trying to emerge in us and we don't take care of them.  We don't give them our thoughts and our attention and our support and the consequence is that we lose our chance, but of course the chance comes again.  Now what we want to do is to learn how to capture these new growths that are calling, so now let's make an experiment.

OK, we're going to use strong methods now.  A very strong method. That is, I'm not supposed to give you this practice but I'll give it to you all the same.  It's a very strong practice.  So you place your index fingers on your eyelids and turn your eyeballs upwards so you don't press on the retina.  Now place the  middle fingers on your nostrils, don't press your nostrils and breathe normally.  But I think, I always think that I am exhaling first and then I'm inhaling afterwards, so first think you're exhaling and now you inhale, exhale, inhale, and now  press both fingers and hold your breath.  Exhale again.  Inhale. Hold your breath.  Now place the fourth and fifth fingers on your lips and your thumbs in your ears, and only three breaths.  Three breaths inhaling through the right nostril, holding your breath,  exhaling through the right nostril, and then take your hands away and keep your eyes closed.  

That just does the same to you as it does to me, a feeling of having isolated oneself from the external world, because consciousness is generally turned towards outside, so the eyes, the ears, and so on.  And now consciousness finds an obstacle in the way of its perceiving outside and consequently turns within.   And this is particularly true as you hold your breath.  So now what we want to do, this is the next practice, and the last one that we'll do this evening, and that is, do it again, but this time when you hold your breath you'll see that there are thoughts that emerge from within, random, but which are not generated by the outside world, which are not reactions to situations or so on, they are totally spontaneous thoughts and those are the creative thoughts and that's what we want to encourage.  The creativity.  That's how creative people work.  That's how composers work, artists and so on, they get in touch with something that is emerging from within that has not been causated by the environment, by the circumstances, purely spontaneous.  That's why we say, ex nilo, out of nothing.

OK, shall we do that?  This shall be our last practice.  See if you can capture thoughts as they emerge from within.  You see, these thoughts will surface and perhaps explode in the -- they are emotionally charged, of course; they'll surface and erupt from the center of your being and at first they are not thoughts, really.  Well, maybe they are more emotions than thoughts and gradually they take form and they might even assume a geometrical form, I mean a form as we understand form in space.  But it doesn't matter.  It's only a device in which that thought is trying to make itself known to you in a concrete way. So you may, it might be a clue if you consider that these ephemeral, these evanescent thoughts are trying to tell you  something, trying to tell you something about the new you that is trying to emerge from within and if you don't listen to them then nothing happens.  You've lost a chance.  And that's why Jung  attached so much importance to interpreting dreams because you are off guard and at that moment impressions are trying to come through and tell you something and if you can remember the dream then perhaps it will give you a clue as to what is trying to come through that your consciousness would have stopped or would have blocked.  So that's what we're working with now.  It's very subtle.  And if we follow this during the next few days I hope you will notice that it will make things a little clearer to you in your mind and you'll understand a little bit more your place in life and how it all works.  God bless you now.


AUG 22, 1998  Tape 02

"Om, Namah Shivaya".  "Alright, a Jewish chant.  Hashe venu, hashe venu, ah do noi alaichem.  Vena, shuba,  etc. Kadesh, kadesh,  ...... etc,  Very few of you know it and we'll do it several times in the next few days, and then you'll know it.  ... Kyrie Elision.....Christe Elision..........

Now what I have in mind for this morning is practices of light.  It's wonderful because most people love light.  I hope you do. Children do.  Babies do, and sometimes they have a lot of light in their eyes, which we tend to lose with dark clouds of - you know what. I'd like to prelude what we're going to do.  First of all, give the example of a group of young people who went to a Christian monastery in Nigeria and who spent two weeks simply meditating on light.  Nothing else.  Just light.  And who came out of that radiant.  So this is mind over body.  Somehow the power of imagination has the ability to transform body functions to make one more radiant.   

Now the second bit of information is that the body does produce light and this can be measured in the laboratory.  It's called  bioluminescence and that it has been ascertained that one's imagination has the effect of, if one imagines light, it has the effect of making one radiate more light, the cells of the body  radiating more light.  In fact, if you think that this is just wishful thinking and you need some guarantee that we are really talking something real instead of just imagining things with wishful thinking, there is a laboratory in Tokyo, the laboratory of Dr. (?Motoyama) where there's a kind of cell like a telephone cell and it's kind of light proof so that there's very little light that can come in, and inside there is a photoelectric cell and you can go in and try and see if you can produce enough light to make that photoelectric cell, that (???) or whatever, and as a consequence a light lights up so you know that you have made the grade.  

Now most people just can't do it.  Very few people can do it and there are meditators who can do it and people who are used to working with imagination and representing a light, the light around their body, so we don't have such a machine here.  It would be good, let's say it's a recommendation for Omega, if we could invest in such a machine.  Or you could each take your turn, but I can assure you, it is really hard.  I've done it myself.  One has to keep on trying to radiate a lot of light and it's not that easy and you have to really smile, you have to be happy, otherwise you can't do it.  And since people are so mean it's very difficult to smile so one mustn't be too loyal to one's sadness. So there are further things that I'd like to say about what's behind this whole practice but let's just do it and in the course of time instead of trying to explain things further.  

Well, now first of all, the body has the ability to absorb light but everything, the leaves of the trees absorb light, all the objects  in the world, even the trunks of the trees, everything absorbs light, and images light, or rather re-emits light and that does not mean the light is reflected as in a mirror but, well, the physics behind it is a bit complicated, but I'm terribly interested because I want to know what we are doing.  Instead of saying "Do it," I want to know how it works.  So actually, if it doesn't bore you too much, the electrons within the atoms and molecules of the cells, let's say, absorb light.  What does it mean, absorb light?  Well, light is energy and consequently they use this energy in order to free themselves from the  constraint of their orbital, like for example, imagine a planet like **_______ for example which has to obey a certain orbit around the sun.  Now, supposing that it were possible for the planet earth to get enough energy from some distant star to    free itself from its orbit and become a comet!  Well, let's  hope  that this won't happen in our lifetime because planet earth would become a comet.  But anyway, that's energy.  

So think of light as energy.  But then when  they've spent all that energy that they absorbed in freeing themselves from the  constraint of their, one says orbital in physics, instead of orbit, then they fall back to where they were before.  So          each cell is doing - each electron is doing it all the time.       So there's always a little bit of extra, like for example supposing that you inherited from an Aunt a lot of money, you wouldn't be walking into your office anymore, you'd make a         world tour probably,  or if you were intelligent you'd take a course to get a better job.  But when you've used all that energy then you might fall back right where you were in your job before.  That's what the cells do - the electrons do.  But there's a little energy remaining so if you come back from, say, whatever - say you've come back from Romania, and you have some extra money you are not going to be able to do much with that money.  So that is exactly what our aura is.  Our aura is made of the light that remains after the cells have utilized all the energy that they were drawing from the environment.  

OK.  That's a bit of amateurish physics.  OK.  So now we're going to start the practice.  So if you have accepted that the cells of our body are really able to absorb light and that secondly there is an effect of mind over body, now see if you can imagine that you are absorbing light from, well, from the environment, from the sun, of course; electric light.  At night time you could do this practice and think that you are absorbing light from the stars or the moon.  So you know what you do when you are sunbathing.  Or perhaps one doesn't know, but one is actually      opening the pores of one's skin to receive the light, to absorb the light.  So just imagine that you are doing that.  You are absorbing light as you inhale and then as you hold your breath, if you could just turn your attention toward the cells of your body and if you're very, very sensitive you will experience the fact that the cells are (jiggling/giggling), and, well, they are sparking, but of course one can imagine it, but I don't know whether you can feel it,  you can feel them giggling.  At least I do.    

There is a kind of a joy of the cells that are enjoying the light, that extra bit of energy that they are able to absorb and as a matter of fact they divide much faster than before.      And then when you exhale, now imagine that the cells of your body are radiating light and that light is traveling through space at a speed of 180,000 miles a second.  Can you measure 180,000 miles a second? So eventually your aura hits the stars.  And that will send your consciousness (careening) into outer space. (pause for practice)   Now if you stop concentrating on those three different orientations and just try to, so you aren't conscious of your breath anymore but are just aware of the, if you can feel the light around your body.  It doesn't have a profile or a boundary  but still you can feel light around your body.  You don't see it. (pause for practice)  

Now I'm sure that some of you have seen the Kirlian  photographs,   fingers, for example, and you see that there's a  hard core in the center, and then around there is what is called a corona which is a whole area which radiates.  Now, what one is-- I don't want to mislead you for what appears on the film is not light.  Actually, It's what is called a cold emission of  that (      ) but still it's a wonderful image of the light around your body and as a matter of fact, one of the practices that you could do walking in this wonderful land is to walk while being sort of concentrating on the light around your body, but I must agree that simply the mental representation is not good enough. I think that one needs to really find a kind of inner joy so there are a lot of things to overcome in one's psyche in order to be able to find - I think the secret is to be able to be happy while being sad at the same time.  I think that's the only  way one can ever be happy, is to accept to be sad at the same time and that one can be both at the same time.   I think that you will find that if you can smile then it will be easier to radiate light.  In fact, people who smile - in fact, a child who is just full of fun and joy, they don't have the kind of problems yet,   most of the children that we have, and so they radiate a lot of light in their smile and then we have poker faces and find it difficult to smile.  And we can't force ourselves to smile.  Its an inner process we have to go through.  OK.  

Now if you are ready for the next step, our eyes are a particularly important part of our body.  They have far greater ability to absorb light than our arms, for example, the muscles of our arms.  In fact, we are continually absorbing light that impinges upon the cornea and the cornea is like a lens and then it passes through the cornea to the retina, and the light is then threaded up the optic nerves and reaches the brain and replenishes the brain with a lot of light so the cells of the brain are absorbing a lot of light and keeping a lot of light in their, well, actually in the orbits of the spin of their electrons.  

So if you can just be aware of - or think, for example, I think the best way to do this is imagine that you are looking into a bright light like the head lamps of a car.  Instead of turning away imagine the amount of energy that  comes through the headlights of a car if you have the courage to just face it.  You mustn't over-stress yourself but in India the dervishes and yogis sit and watch the sun for hours after the sunrise without blinking their eyes.  Now that's a tremendous challenge.  You can just ruin your eyes if you try to do that unless you know how to do it but if you've done it, believe me you come out of that radiant like the sun.  

OK, so now we'll just do it by our imagination.  Imagine then that you are looking into a bright light, that you just enjoy the glow of that light.  I mean you feel the glow of that light upon your whole body and the particular impact of that light upon your retina, let's say, and could you follow this light up as you inhale and try to imagine that  indeed, inside your skull, your brain, is absolutely full of light, which is a fact.  You see, light is stored in the brain.  And the brain cells are utilizing this light to communicate with one another and so on.  This whole tremendous factory of energy, of communication, is happening within the brain, and needs to be powered and it is powered by light.

Now, as you exhale, could you just try to represent to yourself that some of that light is threaded down through the optic nerves and now is broadcast into the environment through your retina so that your eyes are now rather like the headlights of a car. (pause for practice) Actually, to test yourself you could turn your eyes to the right and left as Indian dancers do sometimes, or even up and down, and it gives you the impression that you are just like a lighthouse that  is orienting its beam at will, changing its orientation, revolving, and you can do it without moving the head, of course you could move your head but I think it's much more effective if you keep your head stable and just shift the orientation of your eyes.  In fact, it's a very good eye exercise.  (pause for practice).  

Don't forget to concentrate on drawing in light through your eyes as you inhale and perhaps you could hold your breath and as you hold your breath imagine that your brain is full of light and as you exhale now consciously radiate that light and two beams, like the head lamps of a car.  (pause for practice).   If you practice every day you'll get more and more light in your eyes.  

Now there's a further practice. It is a little bit more difficult, and that is that as you exhale you open your eyelids but of course you know that if you open your eyelids the impressions of the outside world are going to condition your glance and you will be able to see things but you won't be able to maintain your concentration on those two beams of light.  Now if you have a very strong will you can just keep your concentration on those two beams of light and refuse to allow your eyes to be forced into focus by the objects around you. And the consequence is that you will - of course you won't see the objects.  You wont see the objects at all.  It will all be a blur. It doesn't matter.  You just keep your concentration on those two beams of light.  Now as soon as you can't do it any more then close your eyes again as you continue to exhale.   (pause for practice.) You could keep your eyes open as you inhale where you are consciously drawing in light from the environment and then as you, for example if you are in the sun, then of course it's easier, and when you hold your breath you close your eyes and as you exhale then open your eyes again but try not to. If you are highly concentrated on the two beams of light you won't see the objects.  (pause for practice).

Can you feel that you have more light in your eyes than before?  It makes a little difference and if you did that every day it would make a lot of difference.  Now of course, this is only the first step.  The second step consists in, it's more  difficult of course, it consists in being able to - well, you start by sitting in front of a flower unless you have cut a flower, but I prefer not cutting flowers.  And so instead of the flower coming to you, you could go to the flower.  You sit in front of the flower and now see if - you do this practice now and if you, when you open your eyes now, as you exhale, well, your eyes are, you focus your eyes a little bit more towards the flower, but your glance is still offset, and now you do not see the petals of the flower but you see the radiance of the flower; and once you do that you are enchanted by light and you are so enchanted that, actually, in America, you're High.  And that's one way of getting high, is to see that which transpires behind that which appears.  


Now, then the flowers will appear exactly like Kirlian photographs.  Exactly.  In fact, I don't know whether you know Walter Chapelle who lives in Santa Fe, has photographed flowers in ultra violet light and so you can see the profile of the petals and then you can see the radiance around the petals and of course there is no profile to the radiance, you know, it phases out, and so on.   So that's a very good example of ourselves and that flower that you are looking at.  And at first you think you are looking at the flower with its petals and its contours and its profile and then at some point you discover that what one sees ordinarily is only a sliver of reality and so you find yourself in a transfigured world and you can imagine St. Francis walking in the forest totally transfigured because he finds himself in a transfigured world whereas most people are just walking in the forest.  They see the trunks of the trees or the surface of the leaves of the trees but what he was doing was getting into the consciousness of the trees looking at him and then that's the secret of being high, finding yourself, as I say, in a transfigured world. And once you've done that it's like you've always wanted to do that because the middle commonplace way of living seems to be so boring.  

Alright. Now, then, after that, now that's another step but we can't do it right away. It will take some time but it is months and months and months of practice and then you sit in front of a person and, I don't believe in staring at people, some schools do that, no, but there's a way of not looking at the face, at the traits of the face, and drawing your attention to what transpires, let's say, to the area around the face, to the aura, and eventually what transpires through the face, which I call the countenance, and somehow you discover the real person and you see, as I said yesterday, that normally what one sees is a mask but this is the reality.  So from that moment on you see beauty where other people don't see it.  And that's why Hafiz, the Sufi, says, "If you only knew how beautiful you are you would be much happier than you are." And actually it's because you have to have eyes to see and this is the way of doing it.  

OK.  Now there are more steps.  Yeah.  We have time.  If at any time you feel you need a rest let me know and if it's just too much for you walk out.  It doesn't matter, it doesn't bother me.  I can say in the early days I was very vulnerable.  I don't know if you imagine what it's like to stand here with all these wonderful people and so to pretend that one knows more than all these wonderful people.  I mean, I'm sure that perhaps some of you know much more than I do so it is pretentious to, but anyway, one is paranoid as you can imagine.  

So then you see, well, since I'm talking now, I don't know - oh, it was Maslow, the psychologist, who talks about a peak experience so sometimes people have what they call a peak experience, like all of a sudden they're high and wake up in a transcendental state.  Now I don't know if it's happened to you but it can happen in the course of meditation if you keep on working with it and at a certain moment - whew! the fuse! - there's a takeoff, as they say.  He said the world was divided into peakers and non-peakers.  And if you're a peaker you try to convince people what it's like to peak but of course they can't know what it's like to peak unless they have peaked themselves and so consequently you are paranoid.  

Well, at any rate, so the next step is more difficult of course.  It's more difficult.  And that is that one does not just boomerang light, - - yes, if you have a problem sitting (    )       ....there are a few chairs that you can sit on. I know, myself, I can't sit cross-legged anymore.  I used to of course.  So if you're uncomfortable there's an alterative  of sitting in a chair.  

Yeah.  You see, we don't just boomerang the light we absorb from the environment and transmit or retransmit and in between, of course, the cells are loaded and charged with light but there is light emerging from within.  Now that, we say, "Is that a scientific fact?" and "Can we prove it?" and, "What do we mean by light emerging from within," and so on, and I'm very careful not to say something that I can't be sure that it is really so.  So I don't want to induce you into error by my assumptions.  What we're doing now is not based on faith at all.  It's based upon experience, but of course, the interpretation of experience.  So therefore, before we do this practice I think you need to be convinced that indeed we are talking about something real and therefore I will refer once more to physics.  Dr. David Boehm, for example, the theory of the implicate state, he's one of, he was one of the leading scientists of our time (he worked with Einstein). That is that there is a difference between, for example, well, I don't think he would agree with my simplistic  interpretation of what he is saying; in fact I've talked to him about it.  

But it would be easier to understand if we would think there is difference between radio waves and objects because that tree is there and that other tree is there and your body seems here and so on and so forth, but radio waves are everywhere.  So you say that is the implicate state according to Dr. David Boehm where what we know of the world is the explicate state and what your radio does is to translate those radio waves into sounds that are localized in space.  And what we're doing, what we don't know is that we are continually awakening reality that emerges from within and gels in our body and our personality. And I think in terms of physics, I've talked to physicists about it, it may be what physicists understand by the light field instead of particle-like or wave-like aspects of light.  You see -- I hope I'm not boring you again with physics but you know, I really feel that in the millennium we'll have to take a little course of physics before we start meditating to understand what we are doing.  

So, now, it's a little hint about light.  You see, we always assume that light is what we see, what we feel.  For example sunbathing, it could even burn us because light in the infrared form aspect or frequency; but actually all that we know of light is not what light is, it's only what we know of it.  And from the point of view of the physicists, all that we know about light is  the way it affects the machines, I mean the instruments in the laboratory.  But we don't know what happens to light when we're not measuring it.  In fact, there is a theory of____________, a French physicist who says it's just like imagining flying fish and you can measure their speed when they are flying but we don't know what is happening to them in murky water.  So I say that as a prelude to what we are doing because now what we are doing is trying to grasp, to stalk light beyond its tangible expression.  Another clue to this would be, for example, it's rather mind boggling but actually, you know that, well, imagine insects for example, that are only able to imagine two dimensions.  They are not intelligent to extrapolate between three dimensions, and they would live in a world which would be like a sheet of paper and they wouldn't know, they only know what the reality of a three dimensional world does when it intersects a piece of paper.  Now imagine that our three dimensional world is only a cross-section of endimensional world and we're convinced that this is reality but it's only an intersection.  So that's, to tell you the truth, that is not a satisfactory model in physics but it's a model and physicists use models to convey something that one can't convey otherwise. But it's not, well, anyway it gives you some sense of what I mean.  So I always do make sure that I'm not inducing you into error. 

So now, when you inhale, now, you withdraw your attention from the periphery of your being to the center, and when you exhale  you shift your attention from the center to the periphery. Now one of the ways of doing it is to imagine that your being is - well, I suppose, to identify with your aura, and your aura instead of your body and to think that your body is a hard core within your aura and you know what is a vortex, like a whirlpool in the water, or a hurricane; first of all it's a field, an energy field.  It does not have an outer boundary so whether it peters out at the jagged ends we don't know but they imagined that it doesn't.  It just goes on in infinite regress by dissolving further and it also dissolves itself in the center.  The center of a vortex is a vacuum.  

There was a picture that I painted yesterday of Buddha sitting in a storm in the middle of the storm in a state of peacefulness.  So imagine there is a void, there is a vacuum that is absorbing your life field into an area that we don't know, like a dark hole, like a black hole in space, an area that is very rich but we don't know it.  We call it the void, where everything is intermeshed with everything else, that's the implicate state. And now as you exhale, a new dispensation arises from this void, what seems to be a void.  So the rebirthing is not just boomeranging back that which has been absorbed as we did when we absorbing light from the environment, but the beauty is that every time it re-emerges, your being re-emerges, it is renewed.  So Imagine now that as you exhale, well first of all, as you hold your breath imagine that you are in a state of suspense.  You are not conscious of being localized, located in space.  You are not conscious of being involved in the process of becoming.  Let's say your sense of time and space is suspended.  You're holding your breath.  Everything stops.  

And how you cannot plunge into this void.  You don't know what's happening but somehow you trust that the forces of life are reorganizing themselves to promote renewal of your being. Let's say that the light you have absorbed from the environment gets resorbed in the void so that you've lost any sense of -  you're not conscious of what we were conscious of, the way if affects our cells, but now we are not conscious of anything at all, we don't know what's happening, but somehow life knows how to organize itself.  And now a new dispensation of light emerges from within and eventually radiates as your aura or let's say renews your aura or regenerates your aura as you exhale.  (pause).  

But new stars are born and maybe galaxies also out of what they call a white hole, now.  So light emerging from a subliminal level of the universe, of the cosmos, and if it were not so then there would never be any renewal, there would just be a recycling. (pause). Of course this has all kinds of ramifications because it gives us a sense that we don't have to remain the way we are, that we can always change, that we can be renewed totally, even totally. So it's, this light, my father calls it the all pervading light, all pervading light in contrast with radiant light.  So light radiated from a source of light, that source is located in space, so when you are exhaling your body is radiating light but when you turn within you discover the all pervading light that is not located in space and what you are doing is being instrumental  to transforming this non-radiant light or all pervading light or implicate light into radiant light.  And maybe that's what the sun is doing.  The sun is converging the all pervading light in the universe and radiating it out.  And that's what we're doing. So you become like the sun.  

OK, I think this is the maximum that you can concentrate if you're not used to meditating, so I think we need to move a little bit and find freedom in our bodies instead of being constrained to sitting down and towing the line.  Could we listen to just a little bit of music?  You know what I chose, and if you want, just stand up and start relaxing a little bit, stretch out.

Tape 5 Side 2

Down a little bit, reverse the machine. So the way to do it is to breathe the normal way and then if you are conscious of your breath you'll gradually slow down. so emphasize the exhaling and then inhale without effort.  Now exhale longer, and inhale.  The consequence of exhaling a little longer is that you will inhale longer without effort. And now once more: exhale, and evacuate your lungs of all the pollutants.  Keep on exhaling.  (pause for practice)

OK, you see that that has the immediate effect of slowing us down and getting more concentrated and more attuned.  Now I expect that quite a number of people came here to learn something about sufism and perhaps you've noticed that I have not been using the Sufi jargon, words that are not familiar to you, and also I am not presenting a theory or even a belief but what we are doing is to translate the teachings and the experiences of the dervishes, the Sufi dervishes, in terms of our own experience.  So you might not always recognize, if you are cognizant of sufism, might not always recognize behind it all is, of course, is the teaching of the dervishes.  

For example, when I said in Hinduism, in yoga, the world is considered to be maya and in sufism the world is made of devices in which the divine intention is made known, so in terms of the Sufis, behind it all is the secret treasure that desired to be known and we are gradually unearthing the secret treasure and that is that which transpires behind that which appears, and the practices on light we were doing this morning were all based upon the teachings of Shahabuddin Surawardi,________, of Ibn Arabi, of  ________ , and Nazamudi Kubrin?_.  But what's the point knowing all that?  The important thing is if it does something to you.  But I'm just doing it to reassure people who thought they would be learning about sufism, you are learning about sufism but it's the gist of the experience.  It's much more important than the theories.  

Now we're going to engage in a further series of practices with light which might lead us into something intangible.  It is rather difficult to grasp with our minds at the edge of our understanding.  Well, to start with, I don't know whether you know that obviously the body produces temperature, produces heat, and therefore it has temperature and therefore the cells of the body are in a state of combustion and that's called phosphorescence.  And what we were working with this morning - earlier this morning - was fluorescence and this is phosphorescence.  For example, fireflies are continually burning their fabric in order to produce light.  And so are bats that are in the dark caves and deep sea fish  that don't have access to light so they can't use fluorescence as we did by they are using this process of phosphorescence.  Now that's a faculty that we have, but as we are not using it very much we don't know how to transmute that energy into what one calls light, let's say the middle range of light and especially ultraviolet light.  

Now there's a way of doing it and that is, if you can once more try to feel your aura.  At first you may feel light around your  arms and shoulders and in front of your chest and your back and as I said, think of it as the template in which your body is being formed.  Actually, what I am saying has some very substantial backing.  Actually it has been ascertained by Doctor Becker that the magnetic field of the body has a kind of structure and acts as a template which configures the cells into their various positions in the body and so, as I say, the electromagnetic field is the template of your physical body or such as we imagine the physical body to be, and the aura is the template of the magnetic field.  So that means that your aura has a structure, not quite as definite as your body.  It is a template, a meaningful template, and so that's the first thing, that at least you feel this area of light around your skin and then inside your skin, inside your body, that you --  the next step is that you identify with it, so you are your aura and your body is hard core within the aura.  Can you just identify with your aura?  That means you are a being of light.  

Now if you try to examine your aura a bit more in depth you'll realize that it has different frequencies of light, like the spectrum of light, and you realize that the bottom of the spine gives you the impression of the color red and in the area of the third eye it gives you the impression of violet and in your heart center it gives you the impression of gold and in your throat center green, and so you may discover your aura to be something like a rainbow with the different frequencies of light in sequence, shifting from the infra-red to the ultra-violet.  So what you could do is just to imagine those colors as you pass in review what the Hindus call the chakras and the sufis call lataif, which means subtle centers.  And you find that for each color there is a different kind of, how can you say, emotional attunement.  

Red is very violent and strong, of course, it can be rather dramatic, and of course the blue, the color blue in the eyes gives you a sense of something heavenly, the celestial spheres, and then the ultra-violet, you really need to imagine a beam of light which one calls the third eye, which is ultra-violet.  So the ultra-violet light is able to pass through walls, for example, and therefore passes through the skull.  And according to Ibn 'Arabi, one can make this ultra-violet light, one can thread this ultra-violet light through the glance and that will give you a deep insight into - well, that will be a further help to discover the countenance behind the faces of people if you're using your third eye rather than just your physical eyes.  

So this is an introduction to this further step.  So, as you inhale, then pass in review each of the centers, perhaps some of you are familiar with the centers according to yoga.  The center at the bottom of the spine, the second chakra in the abdomen, so at the bottom of the spine red, abdomen something like carmine or terra cotta, like the color of the robes of the sannyasins in India.  And in the solar plexus a beautiful madeira orange; in the heart, gold, or what they call the cardiac plexus.  Each of these chakras corresponds to a plexus of the endocrine glands - of the nervous system, but this also corresponds with the endocrine glands.  And then you have the green in the throat center, the blue in the eyes, sky blue, and the violet in the third eye and then color slides above the head which is called the crown center which is just like a diamond with hues of all different colors sparkling above your skull.  I wonder if you can just, how can I say, earmark these different frequencies in your aura.  (pause )

And now as you exhale - well, you hold your breath.  At the end of the inhaling and the ascent hold your breath as you concentrate on the colorless light at the top of the crown center, at the top of your skull which is the crown center.  And as you exhale, then you pass in review those different centers and the colors corresponding to the centers as you, in the course of the descent.  (pause)  

You'll find that these different frequencies of light act as a kind of ladder for your consciousness, or a lift if you like, so just imagine that somehow your consciousness has been hoisted up by shifting your concentration upon one frequency to the next in the course of an upsurge and just like Belefron is hoisted towards the Olympus by riding Pegasus, in Islam it is Burak, the winged steed.  Now you may find that it gives you a sense of having an overview over the existential condition in which one has involved oneself, as if one were a denizen of the universe in the higher spheres and one had landed on the planet earth in order to experience conditions on the planet and borrowed a body made of the fabric of the planet, molded in the course of aeons of time; and somehow one had forgotten who one is in the course of the descent.  And what we want to do now is to try and retrieve the memory that is hidden in the unconscious of what one thinks to have been one's past condition prior to one's birth or conception, but in fact one is functioning on several levels but one is not aware of the higher levels so one is really only functioning in a conscious way on two levels, the physical level and the mental level.  So what we're trying to explore thanks to this device, which is light, we are trying to explore these  so-called higher spheres, but as I say, rather then theorizing about them we are trying to experience them.  (pause for practice)

So can you feel that you have involved yourself in constraining circumstances on the planet with people, with situations, with matter, working with wood or metal or whatever one has involved oneself somehow with the fabric of the planet and there has been a narrowing down of one's consciousness in the course of this ascent so that one has lost the sense of one's eternal being and of all the levels between the purely existential level and what one calls the transcendent level, which is beyond our mind, beyond the grasp of our mind.  So what we are trying to do is use some kind of device that will act as a primer to try and trigger off - we're not yet there.  We're just trying to build up that support system that will enable us to awaken from the perspective of the earthly conditions and I think we have an intuition that there must be another perspective than the one we are engaged in. I think we have a sense that our consciousness has been narrowed down and a kind of intuition of other levels of realization that make sense.  So think of this as a ladder.  Right?   So let's do the practice again, now.  Think of it as recollecting the condition that one has forgotten and using light as a ladder.

So, for example, to be more precise, at the bottom level, which is, let's say the grass roots, the infra-structure, one really identifies with one's body, one's body such as it appears, because it's not what the body is but still somehow one identifies with it.  And in that is a condition that the way we imagine the body to be is what in physics is called the particle- like aspect of matter and particles collide.  And consequently there is violence in our, the grossness of our way of identifying with our body, a kind of grossness about it, which generates   conflict, violence, with all the trail of suffering that it involves.  I'm not saying that we need to despise bodiness.      According to the Sufis, instead of thinking of the physical world and physical matter is maya, that is where the Divine Intelligence actualized itself in a tangible way and so there's a fulfillment in that descent instead of thinking of it as a rather deplorable condition; it's on the contrary, a sense of fulfillment.  And if you want to - I could refer to the Sufi  parlance - Ibn 'Arabi, for example, imagined that the Divine Intelligence descends from the solitude - it's a Sufi parlance - descends from the solitude of one-ness into the state where the possible state of potentiality is present in the one-ness becomes actuated in the existential world and so the power that enlists this descent is called Ishk Allah which you could say is the Divine Nostalgia for the marvel of life descending from the solitude of samadhi, let's say, and in so doing there is a tremendous enrichment that is happening.  The potentialities are actuated.  For example if you have a theme of music, musicians and composers learn how to make variations on a theme, so the theme is there, but out of that theme possibilities emerge that one cannot see in the theme.  One had to personalize the oneness into many individual views so that it may be enriched.  That's so as opposed to the Hindu, well not Hindu but the yogi, let's say mode, the ideal of yoga to depart from life in order to reach beyond life because life is considered to be deluding. There is a sense of the way that life makes the divine possibilities actual and so there's an enrichment in it and so there is no such a thing as monasticism in Islam.  You know, it's  "La (?********__) a Islam."  It's not the way of the ascetic. 

OK, so once more.  Let's try again to think of - transfer our attention from one center to the other and think of the color, represent the color, which is just a frequency.  The second chakra, the second center, (________) see the instinct of reproduction so it is something beyond our own individuality.  It's like the whole race of humanity, the whole of the cosmos continually reproducing itself as though to ensure its continuance.  And really, that which is being reproduced is not the body.  It is the structure, so it is  a template which is renewed, of course.  So it's a subtle reality, and so that according to yoga, of course, that center is in some way linked with your subtle body so your electromagnetic field, for example, is your subtle body.  So there's a way of identifying yourselves with your subtle body.  And you notice that it isn't solid        like the physical body, it's more like vapor.  (pause)  And you might even feel its vibration.  Many different, very high frequency vibrations, but that is why it gives a sense of  - the total vibration, the sum of the vibrations of the subtle body will give the sense of that ocher color.  

Now if you transfer your attention to the solar plexus, you remember what we said about the void, have a sense that it is just like a portal, like a threshold that plunges into the void or allows you to plunge into the void where you lose any sense of what's happening but what emerges from the void is so brilliant, so radiant, that it is, you can see that there is some correspondence between that and the color orange.  Like sometimes you see that color in the clouds at dawn and in the high mountains for example, you see this wonderful orange coming  through the gray with great intensity.  So let's say the  emergence of life out of the unknown.  So perhaps you can imagine an outburst of orange in your aura emerging from the solar plexus which takes over from the red and the vermillion or carmine or terra cotta.  And you notice that it is much more individual.  The second chakra was more of a reduction of the whole past of your ancestry and so on but this is really the renewal of your personal being, so God descending from the solitude of unity and proliferating into umpteen number of individuals, each having their own idiosyncrasies where something is gained by that, so think of your individuality a something that has accrued to the universe, each unique in their way.  

Now can you feel that emergence from the depth?  Emergence from a real, an eruption of life breaking through with great power and overcoming the sclerosis that sets in if one keeps on repeating the old things one has always done.  So it is spontaneous.  It is not determined.  It is not causated. It is not a reaction.  It is a spontaneous action.  You may feel a kind of nostalgia to assert the uniqueness of your being.  And you know that it is the  springboard of creativity.  Creativity is always based upon something different to the way things have been before.  What if - what if you were able to become a totally different person than the way you were before.  That's creativity.  So just  imagine that you are continually reborn, in Sufism we call it recurrent rebirth.  

Now we transfer our attention to the heart center and you know that these two centers are very closely linked, the heart and the solar plexus.  So the solar plexus, let's say there are two ways of course.  One is plunging into the void and the other is the  eruption of the new vitality from the unknown, so we have the orange color and then we have the gold which is very closer to the orange color and which is like the -- when new energy emerges from the solar plexus it radiates from the heart center.  And so it gives you an impression of a kind of all-encompassing attitude or emotion, the vastness of the outreach of the heart.  And you can really work, concentrate on the heart and work with that wonderful outgoing energy that is encompassing.  It's not only an outreach but it is also encompassing if you are able to love people who we find difficult to love.  That's a condition.  If you are able to love people who make themselves unlovable.  In sufism it's called Rahman, which is magnanimity.  That is, you are great enough to carry under your wings people who are difficult, who are obnoxious, who are harming you, and you are still able to have enough caring to forgive them and to encompass them and hopefully your love will transform them so the emotion of love is a kind of golden emotion.  I don't know whether I'm speaking metaphor.  Your love can become golden.  Somehow the sun gives you the impression of a golden color as opposed to the orange color that the clouds reflect of the sun at dawn or at sunset.  So you become like the sun.  That means you are conveying energy wherever you go; the blushing flower shall rise and all things shall flourish - that's the word in that opera of Handel.  The blushing flower shall arise and all things shall flourish by the power of your heart, the power of your love, unconditional love.  And that love has to - you have to be protected from any kind of abuse, misconstruction of this, it could be misconstrued, and therefore in sufism one needs to develop power together with love so that people will not abuse of your love and turn the tables on you.  That's a kind of divine power.  It's not a personal power, it's a divine power.  The power of the dervish.  


AUG 22, 1998  Tape 03

... center is latif, is the throat center.  Now what does the color green convey in terms of not your mild but emotion?  When one has traveled or wandered in the desert for days everything is yellow in the desert for days  everything is yellow and you come to an oasis and all of a sudden you see that green color and it gives you a sense of life flowering out of the desert because of the presence of water.  

This is the color where you see a sense in life.  It's not an energy but life as an expression or energy as an expression of meaningfulness.  And that's why green is, not only in Sufism but, or in Islam, and in the old hermetic tradition the (**?smarada davida smaradin) of the emerald table, it's an hermetic tradition.  It represents the wisdom, that level of our being that is beyond the body and the subtle body and even  the rebirthing, the re-structuring of our being body-wise, and the power of love that adumbrates the structure of our body and our mind; but this is the level where, let's say, one could call it the level of realization like seeing sense where other people don't see it.  Each person in life according to their degree of realization.  So I don't know whether the color green gives you that sense of intelligence, understanding of what life is about.  Perhaps it's a little bit more difficult to understand.  

The next color is blue, a light blue in the eyes.  The eyes are not in the chakras of the Hindus, of yoga, but  certainly corresponds to a very important level of our being which we could assign to what we call the celestial spheres.  Now I know that this is -- I don't want to speak too much theory so what do I mean?  What does one mean? What do the Sufis, Hindus, or Christians mean by the celestial spheres. Well, when I look in the eyes of a baby, and not all babies, but quite a few babies, I have a sense of what they call déjà vu.  I have a sense that this is familiar to me.  I have a sense the light that comes through the eyes, that's something for me that is so valuable.  I see people who lose that light by their egotism, by the dark clouds that gather around one's soul in the course of one's life on earth, the reaction to the meanness of people and so on.  The need to protect oneself, and so one develops a kind of ego which takes away that light.  

Why is it so meaningful to me?  Well, because I think that we all entertain -  I mean, if we are sensitive people, we all entertain some kind of idealism and some validation of what one calls the sublime and we are in search , not only of meaningfulness, but also the sublime.  And sometimes it's difficult to see.  You see ugliness, but you know that the photons in a beer can in a garbage heap are as beautiful as  the photons of the stars.  It's just that we don't see that.  We don't see that way.  So there's beauty in the soul of a person who has become, has floundered morally and become ______ , has lost the sense of the sublime.  It is that which transpires behind that which appears.  It is a secret treasure that is always trying to appear to our attention if we are able to see it covered behind the veil.   

So I don't know whether the color light blue gives you a sense of something very pure, like the immaculate state; for example, in Christianity it is ascribed to the Virgin Mary, the blue color, the immaculate state, the innocence that is -- it's very beautiful if one is able to reconcile the innocence of a child and the power and wisdom of an adult both together so that the child is still in you, is somewhere hidden behind the veil but is there; that is, the immaculate core of your being cannot be defiled by whatever you do.  The immaculate core of your being cannot be defiled, whatever you do, and whatever the influences of the environment are.  

And this can be illustrated by the voice of Caruso.  I don't know whether you know that now-a-days it is possible to retrieve the voice of Caruso, such as it was when it was registered in the early days.  The bad recordings of the time, one is able to        reverse the distortions in that voice and it means that that voice is present within its distortions and so this is a very wonderful thought when we realize that our real being can never be distorted.  Its only outside, the appearance, but in the depth it is immaculate.  

Now, that sense of being immaculate gives you a validation of your being because one suffers very much by a sense of one's guilt of having been defiled by one's life or one's actions,    by one's guilt.  Somehow that is the ultimate grace, to realize that whatever one has done, that core is still there and the child is still there in the depth of your being and can be retrieved.  And you know how important our self validation is, our self esteem. So the color blue does have the psychological effect, I think, of something very pure.  Now, I'm not saying there is such a thing as celestial spheres up there, you know, but it corresponds to a level of attunement that is very sensitive, very fragile as a matter of fact. The child in us is very fragile and suffers by our defilement.  

And the way it affects the eyes is one can see the greed or the dishonesty in the eyes of a person and you can see their innocence in the measure in which they are innocent, which is a scruple to be absolutely honest and never manipulate people for what one thinks is one's benefit at the cost of others. OK, now the color violet is a little more difficult.  It's outside of our ordinary reach, of course; ultraviolet.   There's a practice of the Sufis.  Ibn 'Arabi gives this practice.  You  thread the ultraviolet light of your third eye through the two beams of blue light of your eyes and imagine that for example, the lake of Geneva, for example, you have a river, the River Rhone passing through the lake.  So that is threading a stream, so in this case you are threading a stream of violet light through the blue light.  Can you see that and see how it affects you. (Pause for practice).  So it's like an x-ray.  As you know, the violet, the light that has been stored in the brain, you see, the ultraviolet light from the environment can pass through the    skull and so it doesn't have to be threaded through the eyes.  And then that light that has been -- very high frequency that has  been stored in the brain is able to break through the skull and since our glance is turned forward that light tends to be oriented forward also.  And that's the reason why the third eye is described as a beam of light that is oriented the way one's eyes are oriented, passing through one's forehead.  

Now, if you can imagine that instead of passing through one's forehead it is threaded through one's eyes; and so this would be a compliment to the practice we did early on.  So if we are looking at a flower, or looking at a crystal or looking at a person you are able to bring this violet light through your glance.  So you imagine there are two beams of blue light and the ultraviolet light is going to help you to grasp the countenance behind the face of a person, which reflects their attunement and thoughts and so on.  (Pause for practice.) Now I think we need to break now, so just very short.  You can stand up Please, now, unless you urgently need to go to the bathroom --I think it is very tedious to keep on sitting there so I'll try to give you a little break.

Now the next two stages, of course, are even more important and more difficult.  So first of all, referring back to the ultraviolet light, perhaps I've told you about Walter Chapelle  who had been photographing flowers in ultraviolet light and they look much more beautiful than in ordinary light, even more beautiful.  You can see the corona surrounding the petals and all the radiance, and perhaps you have never seen those pictures; they are really magnificent. Actually, there's a magazine of our healing order.   It's called, in England, called Caduceus and one of those numbers the photographs has been reproduced.  Oh, I think it's to be found in my book that I've never read.  I don't know if I can recommend it because I've never read it.  It's called, I think it's called, "That Which Transpires Behind That Which Appears", Ya, I forget now.  Well, anyway, what he did was, he was working with his own aura, and with exactly the practice we are doing with ultraviolet light, and he thought, let's make an experiment.  Instead of photographing these flowers in ultraviolet -- artificial ultraviolet light, how about if I were to radiate light from my aura onto the flowers.  And low and behold he got the same photographs!  

But the difference was that when he was in a cantankerous mood the flowers had spikes and when he was in a nice mood there were beautiful harmonious auras around the flowers.  So that's very, very significant.  It means that just translating in terms of      yourself, it means that the aura changes according to your mood and according to your attunement. And so the other day, yes, it was yesterday, we were trying to get some sense of our countenance, or our real being behind the mask, but that countenance is changing all the time according to our attunement and our thoughts.  We'll be going into that a little later.

So, now, the next stage, as I said, colorless light.  Now, you represent it above your head, and it's just like a diamond.  Can you just do it.  Just imagine colorless light above your head, like a crown, but just like a diamond it scintillates and you have all kinds of different colors emerging from the diamond.  (pause for practice). You remember the practice we were doing. We were passing in review each chakra, each center, as we inhaled, and then we     concentrated on colorless light at the top of the head as we held our breath and then we did the reverse as we exhaled.    

Now, I suggest a further practice, and this is the real break-through, but it is difficult.  And that is that you think or you imagine the colorless light at the top of your head at the end of your inhaling but when you hold your breath you consider your aura as a kind of support system for your intelligence and you identify with your intelligence rather than your aura.  The word used by the Sufis is luminous intelligence, intelligence as light.  And the Sufis make a difference between the light that can be seen and the light that sees.  

And the reason why I'm using the word intelligence rather than consciousness is that there is a difference.  Consciousness is  passive: picking up perception, picking up thoughts, picking up impressions.  It is reactive, whereas intelligence is active. If you are able to perceive anything or to conceive anything it is because it corroborates something that is potentially present that is inherent in your mind.  So let's say that we are endowed with pre-knowledge, it's called preconception knowledge.  In philosophy it is called protocritic knowledge.  We are endowed with this knowledge and our experience just confirms something what we already know.  Now that's the philosophy of it.  

Now the reason we were working with our glance the way we did  was because as you exhale your glance is thrusting light upon things whereas as you inhaled you are were absorbing light; so as you inhale it is your consciousness that is taking over and when you exhale it is your intelligence.  Now if you can see the difference between consciousness and intelligence; and so it will give you a kind of insight into things which you cannot have if you are trying to sort things out with your mind.  

Now that's the secret, is to try to see things from the antipodal point of view to your own point of view: antipodal, the opposite pole.  In our commonplace way of thinking, we are judging things from our personal point of view.  Now there is the opposite pole which the Sufis call the Divine point of view, and if you want to know the secret of Sufism it is to be able to extrapolate between one's personal point of view and what the Sufis call the Divine point of view which is the opposite point of view, the antipodal point of view.

Now I'll try to elaborate that further and I'm going to ask you a question.  Do you think that the universe is a global being?   Let's say that we are fragments of that global being but according to the holistic paradigm each fragment carries within it the totality, potentially the totality.  That's the holistic paradigm.  I hope you know that.  So do you think then that the cosmos is, let's say, the body of a global being whom we could call the universe and that the universe has a kind of global knowledge of itself?  Are you **_________??___* and perhaps you don't know the answer either, but anyway, that's a question.

The second question:  Do you think that our knowledge of the cosmos contributes toward the knowledge that the universe has of itself?  In other words, do you think that our consciousness contributes towards the global consciousness of the universe?  Well, that's exactly what the Sufis are meaning by the word God.  The universe.  I'm using the term for the millennium:  the universe.  Uni-verse: verso ed uno.  Toward the One.   The One-ness.  OK.  So is it possible that the universe knows itself through our knowledge of it?  So, OK, now we're going to translate this in the words of St. Francis of Assisi and then of Ibn 'Arabi.  

St. Francis said, "I thought I was looking at the world but the world is looking at me."  Ibn 'Arabi says, "God discovers Him/Herself through us."  But we are an extension of the being of God so we are not other than God according to the Sufis.  And then in a further proposition God discovers Him/Herself through our discovery of Him/Her.  Now this philosophy might sound a bit astounding, it's a whole new different way of looking at things because one generally thinks if one says the word God one thinks God is up there somewhere and so on, other than ourselves.  If you know the words of Pascal, God transcendent and us, miserable worms down here on the earth, whereas actually for the Sufis, in the words of Ibn 'Arabi, that says, "He is the seer and also that through which he sees." So it's a whole new way of looking at things and has enormous implication in terms of our understanding of ourselves and our lives and the universe.  

So now, what does it mean in terms of what we are doing meditation practice.  Well, could we look at ourselves without identifying with ourselves?  Could we say, assume the divine point of view, the antipodal point of view to our own point of view?  That would be using, reverting to intelligence rather than consciousness.  Let's say, the intelligence of the universe  narrowed down as if in a funnel into my consciousness and I lose sight of what it really is, which is the intelligence of the universe, which is the light of intelligence or which is intelligent light, or whatever, or luminous intelligence.   So can you think that you are intelligence?  You are not narrowed down intelligence that has been consciousness but you are         consciousness and beyond that, you are intelligence of the universe that has been narrowed down into your consciousness but you are not just your consciousness.  You are all of it.  And that intelligence is discovering itself by the experience of the existential state; of the existential state. (Pause for practice).  

OK, to revert back to our practice, as you inhale you transfer your attention from one center to the other.  At the end of the upsurge you are still inhaling and you concentrate on the colorless light at the top of your head.  Now, when you hold your breath, you make a quantum leap and now you identify with intelligence, the light of intelligence, rather than the light you could perceive.  The light that sees rather than the light that can be seen, as the Sufis say.  And now, as you exhale, just imagine that the light of intelligence is going to enhance the light of your aura.  And this is the meaning       of that surat in the Koran sheriff which is the light upon the light.  You know that surat, the lamp and the light upon the light.  That's the meaning of it.  That intelligence that illuminates, enhances the light of the aura.   

And an example would be, for example, a mother shows her child a puzzle and says, "Can you see the pixie in the tree?", and the child says, "No, mummy, I can't see it."    "Look again."  "No, mummy, I can't see it."  "Look again!"  And all of a sudden the child sees it and says, "Yes!"  And at that moment the whole face of the child is illuminated by light.  That's what I mean.  The effect of the light of intelligence upon the aura.   The light upon the light. (Pause.) Can you feel that?  Can you see how your aura is enhanced by the intensity of your realization?  In fact that is what one means by awakening beyond one's normal perspective of one's consciousness.  And in terms of light it is called illumination or enlightenment.  So this is a practice that can lead you very far if you would follow this.  In meditations imagine you are walking in the woods or sitting in a cell, whatever.  It doesn't matter, but somehow you are illuminated.  Somehow you identify with the light of intelligence and consider your aura as a support system, as an infrastructure, and then you have the sense of being illuminated, of seeing meaningfulness in your life that you could not see by sorting things out with your mind. (Pause for practice).  

So can you imagine that you are awake amongst people who are sleeping and you are awake to the intelligence of the universe. You can see meaningfulness behind what is happening and you used to be like everybody else, everybody caught in their trips, and you are now awake.  (Pause.) Could be present if you think they are like the remnants of the regurgitation of the impressions of the day, they won't bother you. It doesn't matter. Your thoughts emerge.  Let them circulate in the twilight of your consciousness and don't turn your attention towards them.  You could even think that they are misleading.  It doesn't matter, as long as you maintain that sense of being awake.  And luminous.  

OK.  I'm going to have to terminate this morning's session now.  We'll meet this afternoon.  God Bless you know.

TAPE 6, SIDE 2

This is what I conducted at the camp in Switzerland, in the Alps, and we had a plan to sing and produce the B Minor Mass of Bach in Europe, in France on the moment of the passage from the old into the new century, the year 2000.  So perhaps you accomplished musicians would like to participate in it.  It would be rather wonderful if you had a chance of coming over and participating in it. I already conducted the B Minor mass, at least part of it, at Dachau in the concentration camp in Germany where my sister was tortured to death.  So I hear echoes of initiation.  I don't want it to appear that my purpose is to try to enlist people in an institution.  In fact, I'm very much against the institutionalization of spirituality so I'm in a rather         ______ position as the head of the Sufi Order, but perhaps that's just as well.  I'm trying to introduce an entirely different spirit.  

It's true that religions produce their style and atmosphere and attunement and there is a transmission that is being carried over right into this century.  There are several representatives of these different traditions and they all have great validity and have a contribution to make to our time, and I like the Sufi tradition.  And the reason is because it's really to bring spirituality into life instead of making people ascetics and leaving the world and how one does that is interesting for me.  And I have lived like a sannyasin in the caves in the Himalayas.  I used to think that I would end my life there but I see that that's not where things are, actually.  

However, something is emerging in our time which is, time is moving ahead.  We mustn't be tied up by our past and so much as we value these traditions, who can build - it's not possible to build a Notre Damme of Paris anymore.  So it's not possible to compose in the style of Bach, and so on.  That's in the past.  It's present but we're moving ahead and that's a very broad spectrum and I must say that it turns, it has a propensity of making one feel, "This is it!  This is it." This wide spectrum,  let's say, try to correlate the quintessence of the experience of all the different ascetics who are from different religions, not be bound by one, and then see how they all fit in or are complimentary rather than contradictory, and then look ahead and see, where are we going into the future?  What would be the spirituality for the millennium.  And of course it's  breath-taking if you look at it because, well, I think some of the things I said were pointless to it, like thinking in terms of how the universe is enriched by our particular individuality instead of trying to down-play our individuality and just highlight the universe.  Something like that; the universe is enriched by each one of us and so on, we are part of the  universe, a whole new way of looking at things which is going to free us from a lot of misconceptions and I think it is easy for our misconceptions to get in the way of our experience and so we have to be very careful that we're not held back in our experience by all those things that we've been taught at school and by the environment. Let's say we have a need to be free from conditioning and yet at the same time we are never as free as when we are in line with the being of the totality.  It's a paradox but beyond our understanding.  

Actually, what I'm trying to introduce, but it's rather novel and I'm not sure I know how to do it.   It would be an initiation in the Sufi Order, in a traditional Sufi Order, well, a traditional Sufi order such as it has been developed under the guidance of the initiative of my father, Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan.  He was much more universal than the orthodox tradition of the past.  But then there's something else which my father also foresaw and I don't know how to say it but I would say initiation into what I would call the Universel.  I think one is limiting it by calling it a name but still the closest I can come to it is the sense of the  impact of the universe on each fragment of the universe or the contribution of each fragment of the universe to the universe, so it's something like that, but as I say it's very difficult to define but I must say that I've been at a camp of what is called Young Adults, 20-33 and they all feel, well,  that's where we are going to go.  That's it in the future.

So now let's get back to our practices.  So now supposing you are home and you want to meditate and you are sitting and trying to meditate and all kinds of thoughts are bugging you and you don't know how to meditate, so which are the basics. So what I would advise is to start with being aware of your breath and by being aware of your breath you slow it down.  Of course your will is going to come in at some stage, but in a second stage I think you just have to feel you are picking up or getting in sync with a kind of cosmic ebb and flow.  It's not your will but something beyond your  will that is taking over so that your breath becomes, let's say the rhythm of your breath to and fro becomes absolutely cosmic because we want to free ourselves from the narrowness of our personal will.  And what we mean by breathing is not just taking in oxygen and releasing the polluted gasses but it is really the ebb and flow of cosmic energy as it converges in each fragment of the universe and the cosmos and as it again scatters and dissolves in the universe.  And so you could feel that you are that sense of convergence of the whole - as I said,  each fragment of the totality carries within in it the totality.  That's a holistic view.  Think that the whole universe, well the whole cosmos, actually, the whole universe, tends to converge in its fragment of itself that is you as an individual.  And it  gets narrowed down by your sense of your individuality.  Now, if you could accept that you are both an individual and also the totality, and these are not two different things, then you'd find that your breath becomes, gives you a sense of being in sync with the rhythm of the cosmos.  

Now, I don't know whether you know that the rhythm of breath is something like a metronome, if it is fast it  puts you in an anabolic state, that is a state of an animal that is prepared to catch its prey and defend itself  - I mean catabolic.   And if you slow it down you'll get into the anabolic state as it's compared, you could compare it to the state of animals when they are in a cave digesting their food and they don't have to jump to attention, spring to attention.  So if you are in an office and having to answer telephone calls you are in a catabolic state but to meditate you need to be in the anabolic state and you'll find that the slowing down of your breath is going to make you much more peaceful and harmonious.  Maybe there's a balance between the impact of the environment that is also always, well, invigorating, dynamizing,  but could be disturbing, whereas the inside is peaceful.  And you could think that the impressions of the - well, somehow in your thoughts, your emotions, you want to involve yourself in life.  You want to be part of what's happening and achieve something, and relationship with people and so on, and then of course it will trigger off in you joy and pain.  And on the other hand you might feel a need to find freedom from the impact of the environment and it is that need of freedom that will help you to turn within.

Now turning within is not introspection.  It is not thinking of yourself as a subject that is observing your thoughts as you observe objects in the outer world.  That is, I would say, even could be rather dangerous.  It could lead one to a very, how can I say, a sense of not being able to deal with your thoughts, so a sense of inadequacy, or whatever.  So it's a totally different mode.  When you were considering the world and you thought of yourself as the subject and the world as the object and even if you were considering your body as the object that you are observing.  But when you turn within, experience is replaced by a resonance.  That is, there's not a sense of me and other me.  As I said, thoughts are intertwined, intermeshed like radio waves.  In fact, you see, the word thoughts or emotions is static.  It's an abstraction.  There is no such thing as thinking so somehow our mind granulates our thinking into thoughts whereas artificially, whereas the reality behind it is thinking.  And the same thing with emotions.  It is emoting rather than emotion.  So that's what you discover as you turn within; your mode of thinking is totally different because everything is related to everything else so let's say your thinking is in context.  Every thought implies every other thought.  So it's like a web of thoughts, whereas in one's ordinary way of thinking goes in a linear way.  It goes from one thought to another.  So it's a totally different mode.  If you can try to discover that, as you turn within.  Are you prepared to not try to think in terms of thoughts, but think in terms of thinking.  

Now, one could illustrate this because supposing that you were swimming on the lake and the_______________ and if you took a boat and you see water lilies.  Now if you'd realize that it's all one web.  One network of roots,  and then if you follow the roots upward and you find the water lily.  So what seems separate at the top is all intermeshed at the bottom.  The consequence is that while when you are considering your problems in the ordinary perspective you outline those problems.  You say, "these are my problems," and, "This is the problem, and so on.  You have an assessment of the problem, and so on.  But when you turn within you see that it's not your problem but it is that you're participating in the drama of the cosmos and so there are no limits to your problems; it involves other people and so on and so forth.  

Now what do we mean by resonance?  You know that if a harp and piano are attuned to the same pitch and they are in the same room, if you play the cord of one of the instruments the others resounds by what we call sympathetic resonance.  So now imagine that you are in resonance and that your thinking is in resonance with the thinking of the universe.  So there is no use in, no way to categorize it, to itemize it.  But somehow it is much more basic than what we think in our minds and that's why I quoted Dr. David Boehm who talks about the implicate and explicate state but in psychology it is what we imply behind what we explain.  What we imply is like a network.  What we explain is only some kind of clue, gives some kind of clue as to what we imply.  We don't know that but if you make a retreat in silence, 40 days, for example, you've lost the ability to speak.  That is, you've lost the ability to translate what you feel or what you grasp or what you realize in terms of the limitation of language.  And therefore your thinking is much more meaningful than if you tried to explain it in words.

Now, this is linked with out sense of identity so I say no, we've already done that.  When you turn within you are like a vortex, as we said. that doesn't have a boundary and that overlaps with other vortices of other people and as a matter of fact you have, the fabric that you identify with, which we call the subtle body, is like gossamer.  Perhaps you might think of a crystal, for example; so it's very luminous.  It's very fine.  You know, there's such a thing as liquid crystal too.  And so the consequence is that you become extremely sensitive and extremely intuitive and you're picking up thoughts that have not been causated by the environment or by circumstances whereas if you do not do this you will be caught up in your thoughts.  So this is the way to make the transit from day consciousness into that particular condition that one calls meditation.  

And the other thing is that your will, you can't use your will, so it's like really letting something like a cosmic nature enter your thought, your thinking, instead of your will.  And so you will discover emergent thoughts rather than thoughts that reflect the situations outside of yourself.  In fact, the  best way to do it is to try to think that the world is out of reach.  Somehow it's there but your consciousness is offset.  You can't quite reach it, all the noises and all the activity and so on and that kind of thing.  It's all going on there but - you're not -- maybe it's leaving some kind of impression at the periphery of your consciousness but it doesn't reach into the depth of your consciousness.  Can you do that?  (Pause for practice.)

The End of Tape 6


AUG 23, 1998		Tape 04

 PVK Omega August 1998 Tape #4

And consequently you'll find peace. And you're really in contact with the Universe from inside, emerging from within as we've already said. Now an example of this is when St. Francis was walking in the forest, he was getting into the consciousness of the trees. If you get into the consciousness of trees, then not only he says, "The trees are looking at me", but somehow you get into a transfigured state. 

That transfigured state, I don't know whether it's happened to you. It's not the same state as one's usual state. A transfigured state. In fact one is high as one says. Your emotions are very deeply even shattered, to the point of being shattered by the discovery of life speaking to you. And you're part of it by some dint some kind of of magic. You're not any more the spectator. And here again, instead of thinking of yourself as a spectator, you think that it is the Universe that is looking at itself through you as you. Discovering itself as you. 

You know what it's like when you're sitting in a room with somebody talking. Then somehow all of a sudden what you're saying is not important anymore. Some magic is happening between you and you're transported beyond that room by a kind of resonance. It's a familiar feeling. It's like, "I know this feeling but I forgot it". Perhaps you remember having had this experience when you were a child. And I understand that women have this experience before giving birth. I think it's due to the fact that the consciousness of the child is carrying some memory of conditions prior to the earthly condition. And somehow that is transferred into the consciousness of the mother. So we can say that the Universe is rebirthing itself in the child. And since one is recurrently reborn, one can find that condition back when one gets in touch with the rebirthing process that's taking place within. The center of the vortex, as I said the void at the center of one's being. 

Let's say that the possibilities present within this rebirthing free you from the constraint and even the sclerosis that has occurred in your personality. You see this is what Buddhism calls the samsaric wheel. That is being caught in a vicious circle. That is doing the same things as one's parents did and it goes on like it doesn't make sense. Ten thousand monkeys is not much more than ten monkeys. It's just more in number. Nothing is gained. But when the monkey becomes human, then something is gained. Let's say evolution continues in us. And it's arrested by the repetitiveness, by routine, by allowing oneself to be conditioned. So the only way to make sense of our lives is to evolve. In Buddhism, Buddha describes this situation. He says it is the samsaric wheel that keeps on turning around itself. So like you're bored. And you do all kind of things that children do. Then you grow up. Then you do all kind of things that teen agers do. And you get married and do what married people do. And so on. Then you become ill. Then you become old. Then you die. It goes on like that. It doesn't make sense. It makes a little sense but not very much. 

But now supposing that you evolve so that the samsaric wheel doesn't turn around its axis but it advances. Now for it to advance, there must be something that pulls it. Now remember this word of Euler who was a physicist who said, "The pull of the future is stronger of the past". So the push of the past, that is causality. So we are determined. What we called determinism. We are conditioned. If you are conditioned, you are not free. Buddha had this terrible longing freedom, a desperate longing for freedom. And if one accepts one prison, then one stays in one's prison. The moment one pushes the boards of the prison away so that one can be free, then of course one finds a whole other dimension of one's being. 

So what does it mean, the push of the past. The push of the past, that's causality. One has been conditioned by one's ancestry, by one's education, a lot of things. The pull of the future, it is a kind of a vision of how one could be if one would be as one might be. It's like something like a kind of vision. That's creativity. It's always seeing how things could be. So how do we translate this in terms of our meditation now. Well, just imagine, think of the qualities of your personality. Say for example, I have a certain amount of will power but not very much. And I have a certain amount of compassion, but perhaps not very much. And a little bit of joy, but not very much joy either, and so on, intelligent, but not very intelligent. All that is a kind of limited sense of my qualities. Now I'm truthful, but perhaps as Mrs. Thatcher said, "I'm economic with truth". So I'm not lying but I don't say all the things I have in my mind because I'd lose my job. OK. 

Now supposing that you thought to yourself, "I can't go on like this. I'm really not happy with myself. For one thing I have resentment against people who have hurt me". So it develops a kind of bitterness. Resentment gives bitterness. You're bitter. One has got to have room for people in one's unfolding who have done something mean. As I said before, you can't blame them because that's the way they are. So it's rather stupid if it has to affect your being. Let them be what they are. That gives you freedom. And when one is free, one feels like dancing with joy. It's a wonderful feeling to be free.

So truthfulness, well you see, I think of meditation sometimes as a rehearsal for life, instead of a retreat or withdrawal from life, a rehearsal for life. So you think of a situation. And you think of your personality. And you think, "Right, well". In a simplistic way one thinks that one is the victim of situations. But can you see how a change in you is going to change a situation? So then we need to work with our selves and hopefully it will change the situation. Even if it doesn't change the situation, a situation that seems lamentable might seem just exactly the right thing for you at the time. And you thought it was horrible. in fact, it was just as well because you are learning a hard lesson.

So now this is what we are going to do. So we take a quality like truthfulness and say, "Right, well as long as I'm holding back on my honesty, I will never develop into a beautiful person". Somehow it's holding you back. "And the pull     of the future is telling me that I've got to be better. There is a kind of nostalgia for perfection. But I'm being held back by this fact that I don't have the courage to tell that person what I think." So you're meditating and you think, "OK. I know that my whole castle will break down if I say it, but I'll say it. Whatever happens, I'll say it". It's better if you're house breaks down if it was built on something unsteady. Then you can build a better house on a solid foundation. So the rapport between what you do and the qualities of your being. There's a rapport. And one has to see that. 

Meditation is really like seeing things clearly that one hadn't seen before. Jung said that. He saw that very well. He said, "If you don't deal with your shadow, it will appear to you in the form of your fate". It will keep on appearing recurrently because you haven't done what it took to overcome that limitation. Now it's true in certain cases. I can't say that the people in Bosnia have the problem that is due to their not dealing with their fate. Some, yes, but not all the victims. You can't say that dying of hunger in some of the African countries, and in India, well all over the world, even in the states. To what extent can you say that it is due to their not meeting their shadow. It's a hard word. But there is a relation there which could be valid for you, or could be meaningful for you. So as you're meditating you think to yourself, "Well, right now I have not dealt with this shadow in me. I was afraid of the consequences". You know people don't say the truth because they are afraid. You know at school. I don't know whether it's like that in America. But in my day in France, if one of the children is naughty, then the teacher would call all the children and say, "Who did it?" And if you admitted that you did it, then you would get a punishment. So one gets a punishment for being truthful. So consequently people aren't truthful. So my father used to give us a present when we admitted that we'd done the wrong thing to encourage truthfulness.

I chose this particular quality, but you could do the same thing with all kinds of other qualities. So you're meditating, preparing yourself in your mind to deal with your problems. And you ask yourself, "Now supposing that ..". Now I talked about truthfulness. Take another example mastery, control. "Now am I in control of my life? No, there are people who are of stronger will than me. They are getting the best of me. I have addictions. For example, smoking cigarettes. Can you stop smoking cigarettes? No, I'd like to but I have withdrawal symptoms and so on". Well if you have the courage to face those symptoms, you develop a tremendous power just by stopping smoking cigarettes. It gives you strength. The fact of admitting that you can't do it makes you weak in a certain area. You can be strong in other areas.

Now I'll tell you another story. It's in India. I don't know whether you know that in the old days,when a husband dies, the wife is supposed to throw herself on the pyre, in the flame. And there are a lot of illness in India. And women are very dependent on men. So that old men would marry young women. So this old man died, then this young woman would have to throw herself on the pyre. And she was scared. You can imagine. So somebody said, "Go and see this guruess". It was a woman guru. So she went to see the guruess. And the guruess had a pet cobra. And she said, "If you can pet this cobra, you won't have to go on the pyre. But if you're afraid, the cobra will bite you". So I don't know what you would do in those circumstances. But it's a difficult choice. But you can't win if you go on the fire. So at least you have a chance if you are faced with the cobra. Whereas in the fire, that's definitely out. So she chose the better option. So she petted the cobra. A test of courage. 

I must say that our life does call upon our courage. There are situations which require a lot of courage. A woman whose husband has left her, for example, or a person who has cancer, AIDS, all kind of situations which are so disastrous. I've been through World War II. I was sweeping the mines. And our ships were being blown up by the Nazi U Boats. So I know what it is to face danger. Of course one is scared. Imagine how scared my sister was. Somehow one becomes very strong by facing danger. 

So what we're talking about is what the Sufis call Wali which is mastery. And if you develop, that you increase your self esteem. In fact one's self esteem is very badly eroded if one is afraid. So this is something that we learn how to work with. So you prepare your mind while you're meditating. So let's do that. Now each of you think of a situation of which you're afraid. One would be simply telling somebody how you feel about that person, telling them frankly. Try to earmark the quality of mastery as it's trying to emerge from the void in the depth of your being and cannot manifest itself unless it is supported by an action that enhances it. As soon as you meet that pledge, then the quality emerges. 

A word of Hujwiri who was a Sufi who actually the first Sufi to establish himself in India before Haj Moiniddin Chisti the founder of our order. He said, he was really stating the words of the dervishes, he said, "The instant of time cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future". Let's try and see what that means. 

You see a pledge. First of all there is a difference between a moment of time and an instant of time. For example, if you're listening to music, the note that you just heard may still resonate in your ears while you're hearing the next note. So there is an overlap between the past and the future. But sometimes, particularly in Indian music, you have what they call a dead beat, or an apostrophe. So you cut the continuity. And that which cuts the continuity, the conditioning, is a pledge. A pledge is done in an instant, not in a moment, in an instant of time. "I have decided that I'm not going to do this any more. I am going to do that." That's a pledge. 

And from that moment it gives you a certain kind of freedom. I don't guarantee that you can ever irradiate all together the guilt of the past. I think that's saying too much. But at least it will give you some reprieve. "Well, I'm not doing that any more." So it cuts something of the conditioning of the past. What you sow you reap. And it might change you whole life. And it cuts the prefiguration of the future. Because now, being a new person, your future is going to be different. So those are the great instants in our life when we make a pledge. 

So I don't know whether you'd like to do it now. I've done it many times in my life. All of a sudden there comes a situation. I say, "OK, Now that's enough with this". And I make a pledge just like a knight. Kneeling on one knee and saying, "OK This is it". Would you like to do that? Decide whatever you want but make a pledge. Be careful not to make a promise that you can't keep. Once you've made a pledge, it will turn against you if you don't hold it. So better not to make it. It's true that you have to take some time to decide what pledge. But once you've made up your mind, then that's it. If it's too premature now, you can make it some other time. But don't put it off too much. It could be just stopping to smoke cigarettes. That's what the surgeon general advises you. 

Now I think you've been sitting a long time. So we want a little movement. And I want to take advantage of this to introduce the whirling of the Whirling Dervishes. It might be interesting for you to learn to whirl. I'll try and describe it. Well just consider that the weight of your body is on your left foot. And the right foot, you lift your leg and turn the big toe of your right foot towards your left foot, pigeon toed like this. So now you're going to have to rotate your left foot. Then you lift your right foot again then place it on the ground. But you don't put your weight on your right foot. It's just to help you rotate. Your axis is actually between your big toe of your left foot and the next toe. In Konya what they do is place a nail in the floor. And you place the big toe of your left foot on one side of the nail and the other toe on the other side. And that's the axis around which you gravitate. So that's how one learns how to do it. 

So it's not like rock and roll. But a very steady motion. OK. Now your arms are outstretched just like an eagle. And your right hand is turned upwards and your left hand downwards. And of course you rotate to the left, anti clockwise. And of course you're going to be dizzy. That's taken for granted. The reason is because if you look at the around you, it's not where you think it is. So that's a very good lesson in Maya, in illusion. You know like if there are two trains. One train is moving and you think you're moving and it's the other train. So it's a kind of illusion. So don't rely upon the outside. The only thing that you can rely upon is the center. Because that's where it is. That's why if you are dizzy, you could place your finger close to your eyes because that's close to the center of your being. So that would give you, have a steadying effect. But of course that's not very elegant. The way one does it is concentrate one's attention on the knuckle of the index of your left hand. So you keep on watching that rotate. You don't look at the environment. You just look at that point. If you're dizzy, if you whirl a little faster, then you're less dizzy. It's just when you slow down. That's when you might have a feeling that the earth is coming to hit you in your face. That's again an optical illusion of course hopefully. 

One thing about it is you become just like a planet that is whirling in space. You mustn't look around you because you're a planet. And you're in outer space. And you're in a state of ecstasy. It gives you a wonderful feeling of freedom. Do it and you'll see what it does. 

Now, well I would like to have some kind of safety guards so that people don't start falling on the floor and hurting themselves. Fortunately there is a carpet here but still. I would like to have say five people who would volunteer to watch the others. And if you find that anybody does it wrong, then you put your hand on their shoulder as an indication, "Well you've got to stop not because it's really dangerous". For example if you would fall on your back, you would really hurt yourself. If you have an impediment of any kind or perhaps a problem with high pressure, don't do it. Or a heart condition, don't do it. The volunteers would have to be somebody who knows something about it. So hands up anybody who has some experience of Sufi whirling. Six that's wonderful. If you could distribute yourselves around the hall so that all the corners are invested with safeguards. And someone here in the center. Don't be annoyed if they put their hand on your shoulder because that's an indication that if you're getting out of control and you might hurt yourself. 

So it always starts by that beautiful dervish greeting that is like St. Andrew's Cross. One places the big toe of one's right foot on the big toe of one's left foot like this. When you're dizzy it would make you rather precarious to balance yourself like this, but actually your feet are where you think they are. So that gives you a sense of, you overcome the illusion of the environment. Actually, you start like that and you end like that. Just when you feel like stopping you slow down and stop. But as I say, when you slow down, you get rather dizzy. At some point you have to slow down anyway. 

As you know it is not a dance. It really should be done in the religious background of Islam because that's what it is. It's developed out of Islam. It developed as far as we know through Jalaludinn Rumi. The story is that he was a very scholarly person. He had students in what they call a Madrassa. He was like university professor. And then a crazy dervish came to him and took his manuscript and threw it in a well and said, "If you like I'll take it out of the well and it will be dry. Do you want me to do that?" And he said, "No". Now I don't know whether I would like to do that if somebody were to do that to my book on the Sufis forthcoming book. I don't think that I would be very glad if they took it and threw it in the well. But from that moment, Jalaluddin became one of the greatest poets and greatest mystics amongst the Sufis. And he spent so much time with his friend Shams Tabriz, the sun, Shams, the sun of Tabriz, that the disciples were angry with him that he would neglect them. There are other reasons, a long story. But at some point the disciples, the mureeds killed Shams Tabriz. And Rumi was so distraught that he couldn't see his disciples anyway. He made a retreat. And he was looking for his friend. 

If you could ever imagine the mentality of people in the desert. It's quite different to stumping about in New York. And there is the silence, the purity, contact with the force of the void. Nothing there at all. It's too hot to wander there in the daytime. So you travel by night. And then the stars become very real for you. That's why there were marvelous astrologers because they learned to navigate by the stars. There were no compasses at the time. What is more the stars become like real beings. And so there is a sense, you see if you meditate on light, at some point you realize that your body after death will eventually become light. In fact it's true. In science electrons become photons. So eventually you'd be a being of light. You'd be like a star. So Jalaluddin Rumi was looking for his friend amongst the planets, amongst the stars. He had this vision of the choreography of the heavens. 

So then he came back to his disciples and introduced the dervish whirling that you've seen coming form Turkey. He was in the center there. He considered himself as the sun. Each one of his disciples was to represent a particular planet. And that got lost. There was a different rhythm or melody for each planet. That got lost. 

In fact I was in Konya in 1952. At that time, it wasn't the museum that it is. It was almost forbidden to go there. It was very difficult to get in. I met a dervish who had been there at the time of Kamal Attaturk who had been in a cell for forty years, a cell six feet on six feet on six feet with a drain. There was a hole to bring the food in. Forty years. He said, "Well there are still some very dervishes who remember the instructions of Rumi. And they are to be found in Damascus. I don't know whether they are still living. And within a few years it's gone". 

Anyway, what you could do is to choose a planet that you would like to impersonate depending upon your nature. Like are you Mercurial, or are you like Mars, or are you like Venus, or like Saturn or whatever, like Jupiter, Neptune whatever. I suppose we have some kind of vague idea about what these planets represent in astrology. 

What we're going to do now is to listen to the composition based upon the words of Al Hallaj. Al Hallaj was the Sufi who was martyred, who was crucified actually because he said something which is not allowed in Islam. It could be interpreted as, "I am God", " An al haqq". But actually it's not really true. As Al Ghazali says if you say, "I am the slave of God", you are not saying that God is one. You are referring to yourself as the one who is talking about the unity. That's why Al Hallaj, when he died he said on the cross, "It is good enough if God alone is there to proclaim his unity and I'm not there to proclaim it". That's a very strong statement. Maybe listening to the words of Al Hallaj extemporized as a composition by Azrie who does that. You have that tape I hope. It's written Al Hallaj. Actually when you start, you don't unfurl your arms yet. You just whirl like this. Gradually you unfurl your arms. I used to be able to do it but now I can't as well. Can we have the music please. Let yourself go. Take off.

...Hanukkah in the East. So if you don't mind, it will take a lot of concentration. But then this occasion is unique. Perhaps it will repeat itself next year. I don't intend to die for quite some time yet. I have a lot to do. ( inaudible question from the audience) I would keep that Eastern flavor. There is a lot of dervish music of course in Konya and so on. To tell you the truth I find it rather dreary whereas this music is very alive whereas. It's music of the heart. Iranian music. Is really. Look, sound man, could we have just one minute of Iranian vowelizations? It's marked in red, 'vocalization'. It belongs to the Zikre. Actually we'll be going into the practice of the Zikre tomorrow. (vocalization) This is what you would hear if you were in Teheran from the Mosque. That gives you a taste of where all of this comes from. Can you imagine singing like that. The emotion behind it is quite extraordinary. And that's w   Žhat happens to people who are so dedicated to prayer that their heart needs to sing to the glory of God in a way that one could never sing if one was just doing one's own trip.

Well now we want to move further in our practices with meditation. What we want to do now, we've been turning within. Now we want to learn how to hoist ourselves up into the transcendental dimensions of our being. It's much more difficult. As I say, it's like the software of a computer instead of the hardware. A sense of meaningfulness behind the nitty gritty of life. What are the techniques? What are the skills that will enable us to do this. It's a matter of awakening. If you remember just before lunch we were practicing awakening. And what awakening means is really a change of perspective. Actually, we don't realize it but we are caught in a perspective. People taking drugs are caught in a perspective. And we are caught in perhaps a different perspective. But we are caught in a perspective. And we want to be free. If you want to free yourself from that perspective and therefore downplay this perspective in order to upgrade another perspective. That's what we're doing.

So the skills consist in being able to develop a kind of overview over yourself. That's a first step. Later there is not a difference between your consciousness and yourself. But this is the first step. In Sufism it's called Muhasabi. It is asking yourself questions. It is examination of conscience instead of working with consciousness, you're working with conscience. 

And so I think the way to do it is to ask yourself, "What is it that I want to achieve in life? What are the values that I value? " Of course there are many values. So you could make a list. You could say, "Well, for me music has a tremendous value. I prefer Bach to rock and roll or heavy metal." Or you could say, "What I value in life is dedication. Being of service. That's what I value". Or you could say,"Yes somehow I feel a need for compassion for people who are suffering. So that is the ultimate value". Or you could say, "Somehow I suffer from the grossness around me. Somehow I wish to create beauty. Not only visual beauty but beauty in my actions. And I wish to build a beautiful world with beautiful people in this ugly degenerate world". Or then you could say, "Yes somehow I value the majesty noble people who are able to manifest a very high standard". Or then you could say, "Somehow I am in search of a sense of sacredness in my life. I suffer so much from the desacrilization of our lives. I'm looking for just that attunement of the sacred". And so on. You could list a whole list of values that you are dear to, that you acclaim, that you proclaim, stand for. Then ask yourself, "What am I doing with my life? And does that match what my ideals are, or is it just lip service, just utopia?" Now you'll find all kinds of excuses for not honoring your ideals. "Well I'm caught in a bind in life. Circumstances don't allow me to pursue that ideal". Or then it might be, "That ideal is not so overwhelming that I would do anything to pursue it, so it's not that compelling." Perhaps by just articulating that ideal it will help you to explore how you could really make it happen.

...is dilemma which I've voiced several times now. That is that on one hand one wishes to involve oneself in life in situations and with people. And that represents a kind of constraint, not only on circumstances but in one's thinking and in one's emotions. Therefore one needs to see very clearly if the constraint is circumstantial or if the limitation is in one's emotions and in one's thinking. One isn't free. Maybe one can't free oneself from circumstances but one can find freedom in oneself. Ask yourself that question.

There is a story of the jailer who having freed the prisoners was taken to jail who said he has never been so free in his life. That's what I mean by internal freedom. You could ask yourself several questions. "Have I become dependent upon upon the dependence of people upon me? Can I free people from their dependence on my dependence upon them? Maybe they don't want to be free. But I want to be free. So how can I loosen the ties. That's a word of my father, "Loosen the ties". He doesn't say cut the ties. If you cut the ties, you become an ascetic. You go to the Himalayas. That's not the answer. Perhaps you know the story of the Gordion Knot. There was a knot in a village in Greece. There was a saying that if any body would ever untie that knot they would conquer the world. Alexander I went there. And of course he couldn't untie the knot. Therefore he cut it and never conquered the world. So loosen the ties. Don't cut them. The only way to loosen the ties is to find freedom yourself. Eventually you will help people because everyone has a need for freedom. They do not know it. One longs for freedom but one pursues captivity. A word of my father. Can you see that situation now? You involve yourself. There is constraint in the involvement. You long for freedom. And freeing yourself from circumstances doesn't give you freedom. So to what extent is your thinking conditioned? Are you emotions conditioned? Is you sense of identity conditioned, self image and so on? So how does one do this?

This is where I am going to venture a comparison between the teaching of the Buddhists and of the. It's very pertinent at a time when Buddhism has had such impact on the spirituality of our time. So we'll be comparing the thoughts and attitudes of Buddhism and Sufism in parallel. In those practices that lead to self transcendence. That is the overview, watching yourself. So it would start by watching your body and thinking to yourself, now this is Buddhism, "Why do I think this is me? It's a formation that has resulted for eons of time. The ancestors have molded this body which I now think I am. And it happened without any reference to my wish. I didn't decide what body I was going to have". So that will give a certain detachment from your identification with your body. And identification with your body traps you into a very narrow outreach. So this is the overview. 

Now the Sufis would not say that. They would say, "Yes, but my thoughts transform the expression of my face, even my demeanor. It isn't true that I am simply the product of my ancestors. There is something in me that is unique. I can be quite different from my parents and my ancestors". So we wouldn't go along with the thought that considers the body as not you. I think the body is part of us. Let's say that our being has molded the fabric of the planet to fit in with our thoughts and our sense of identity and our emotions instead of saying we're just the victims of a process that has happened without our will. 

Of course we're living in a different time. In the time of Buddha, one thought that the body returns to dust, it becomes dust at the end of life. I think that a lot of people think that. Especially if it cremates, then it becomes smoke. We think, "Well OK, there is a little bit of cinders and smoke. That's all that remains of the body". In fact if you know a little bit about science, you know that protons and electrons and photons live forever. They cannot communicate because of the limitation of the speed of light. But they are in some kind of intrinsic contact which has been proven by what they call a (denk) experiment by Einstein, Prodolski and Rosen. Electrons lives as couples. If one spins to the right, the other spins to the left. The three of them were thinking, "Now supposing that you alter the spin of one, would the spin of the other alter if they cannot communicate like billiard balls because they are too far away? They can't communicate because of the limitation of the speed of light". So that experiment was made by Professor Aspect in Paris about 15 years ago. And it's been made again to confirm. And indeed, you change the spin of one and you change the spin of the other. That means that the protons and electrons of our bodies are in contact after death. But still basically they form a web. That's paradoxical of course, that confirms the theories of Dr. David Boehm, the implicate state. What they call the non local theory in physics.

OK then we have a completely different way of looking at things as in the time of Buddha. This is science of course. But we know the electrons register a certain amount of bites in their spin. So at least the memory of one's life on earth continues, but it's not good enough. It would be rather boring to keep on rehashing one's life on earth. So I'm interested in whether one can be creative after death. So I can't guarantee that. But I think that if indeed life is continually recurrently reborn, then that must be true in that state also. So one isn't just bound by the past, but one is able to a be creative. Actually, being creative is the most exciting thing there is. In the old days, even now if you go to Morocco or anywhere in the East, less now than before. When you go to the bazaar, you see people working with metal trays, making beautiful things, making carpets, pottery, beautiful things. And now you have to go to a factory and the conveyor belt. And there is no chance to be creative in doing things except for a few people. But of course our personality is a work of art. And we can work with that. That's what we're doing in meditation.

All right the next step in Buddhism. You watch your mind. And you say, "Well these thoughts have been conditioned by the Universe. I am conditioned. My thinking is conditioned. Why do I think that these are my thoughts? It's they way that my thoughts are conditioned." 

Now the Sufis beg to differ. You mean to say that we don't have original thoughts? Of course, a lot of our thoughts are conditioned. But creative thoughts are not determined. So they do alter our thinking. You cannot say that our minds are conditioned by the way the Universe impacts our thinking. Meditation is the art of how to configure your thinking in a way that frees you from the conditioning of your mind. It gives you freedom, freedom from conditioning. 

You know these are the first steps in Buddhism. And I'm not sure that that is what has been taught by Buddha. All that's been said in the name of Buddha would make Buddha turn in his grave. Let's say that these are just the first steps. So it's not ultimate. It's just a method. 

I'll pursue this further. You watch your personality. You think, "This is my personality. It's something I've inherited from my parents and ancestors. I have to live with my personality just like I have to live with my body whether I like it or not". No. You can tell your personality, "Look here, you, behave yourself". You can have an impact on your personality. You can transform your personality. So it's very fatalistic to think that the personality is just a product of one's history. And perhaps you know that we have different levels of ancestry. 

You know that when St. Francis was arraigned before the judge by his father who had a shop selling cloth and he wanted his son to sell cloth. The son was building churches and helping the poor. It's possible he pilfered some of the things of his fathers house to give to the poor people who were starving. I don't know. It's just a supposition. And I don't blame him. Anyway he was arraigned before the court. And the father said, "And even your clothes. Those clothes came from my shop. They belong to me". He took off his clothes and he said, "I have another father". Now he didn't say, "You're not my father". He said, "I have another father". In other words he acknowledged his ancestry but there was another level of heritage. 

Now the way that Buddhism is presented I think is a departure from the original inspiration of Buddha. I'm sorry to say but because if you study Buddhism very deeply, you'll find that Buddha is talking about an extra samsari  inheritance that is outside the wheel. That is not of the nature of becoming, of the existential state. Another dimension outside the wheel. Extra samsaric. And in fact only the advanced Buddhists talk about extra samsaric line of inheritance. That's absolutely what the Sufis say and what the Christians say. Christ said, "Be perfect as your father". Somehow God discovers Him/Herself in those extensions of His/Her being that we are. So it's quite another thing to saying that we are limited by our ancestral inheritance.

OK Now the next stage is the real breakthrough in Buddhism. That is you watch your consciousness watching an object. Now who is watching what? You thought you were the knowing subject, the spectator. All of a sudden somehow you discover your ground of your consciousness. And you see that your consciousness is just the way the consciousness of the Universe has been narrowed down into a focal center. That's a breakthrough. Buddha would not say that this is cosmic consciousness. He never uses the word that he doesn't know There is no dogma in Buddhism. But it's the same experience that you find in Sufism. I quote Ibn Arabi who said, "In as much as I discover the divine consciousness as the ground of my consciousness, I confer upon God a mode of knowing. In as much as I actuate the divine nature which is the ground of my nature, my personality, I confer upon God a mode of being". I confer upon God a mode of knowledge and a mode of being because I am part of God. I know it's paradoxical. Sabastari said, "There is asarabobia. You are the secret of divine sovereignty". It's only if you recognize a king that he can be a king. But then he says, "You are asararobia". God is the secret of the secret. But that's too much metaphysics. I'm sorry. I'm taking off now. I love it but perhaps it's a bit difficult for you.

So this is the critical point now. I'll try to translate this in terms of experience. In order to do this I'll have to talk about personal experience. So, having done retreats in the Himalayas amongst the dervishes in Iran, Esfahan and particularly Sheraz, even in Afghanistan and of course the Alps and Mount Surat in Spain, I made a retreat in Paris. Walking along the Seine. It was a lovely day and I was in a very delightful state. The sky was blue. I don't know whether you've ever walked along the Seine in Paris, but it's really very charming. And I thought to myself, "I'm really enjoying myself. But this is not a retreat. You've got to make a retreat now. How can I make this into a retreat?". So I thought, "OK Well from the perspective of Sufism imagine that God is looking at his body through my eyes. His body is the physical world. And God is looking out as the subject. And my consciousness is just the lens through which God is discovering His body". It was a wonderful state to be in. And thought, "This is it. I am the eyes through which God sees". Then I thought to myself, "That doesn't correspond with La illa ha 'llah, it's all one being. I am God and the instrument through which God sees". Ibn Arabi says God is both the seer and that through which he sees. Then I thought to myself, "Well then my glance is the divine glance. It's not another thing than the divine glance. But it is the way that the divine glance has been narrowed down as in a funnel or in a focal center". That's a totally different perspective. 

So what I'm saying is that the secret of Sufism is to shift your sense of being the observer, the Shahid, the witness into the opposite, the divine point of view instead of your point of view. And of course you could say, "Well how do you know that it is the divine point of view?". I hope it's not too difficult for you. It might be totally novel, a whole different way of thinking than what you've learned in Yoga or Buddhism, totally different. One has to get used to it. We don't know what we mean by the divine consciousness. We know what our consciousness is. At least we think we know. This is metaphysics. We will try and express it in terms of experience. But behind it there is metaphysics. 

So the Sufis make a distinction between acquired knowledge and revealed knowledge. Acquired knowledge is knowledge that you acquire in your experience of life through the act of consciousness. But if you would consider the opposite antipodal standpoint, then the Universe, I'm using the word Universe instead of God, is revealing its intention through you. You are the device through which the Universe is revealing itself to you, its meaning to you. It's a kind of intuitive knowledge. It's not an acquired knowledge. The impact of the Universe on you. If we use the word Universe, it's easier than if we use the word God. There is sometimes a projection if we use the word God. As my father said, "If you say God, you don't realize that what you are saying is what you think God is. It's not what God is but what you think God is". So that's a way of deluding oneself. So one has to be very careful.

So we'll follow this up. I'm boring you with this metaphysics. You see we do not know the archetypes. What we know is the exemplar. For example, we know round objects but we don't know roundness. We know roses but we don't know rosehood. In other words we have no idea of the archetype. We know concrete things. And what Ibn Arabi is saying is that God makes Himself known through you. The word is God describes Himself to you through you. So you are the, like in the film of ET that I talked about yesterday, you are the devices in which revelation takes place. The Universe if revealing itself through those features of yourself that serve as a medium through which you discover what is behind it all. But then what we are saying is that the roses give you some indication as to what rosehood means. Or let's say round tables give you some idea of what one means by roundness. 

There is a secret here. That is that we have the capacity of always imagining something more perfect than we've imagined so far. That's why in infinite regress we can get into the divine consciousness. There is a word of Poincare, the French mathematician who said, " Infinity represents the capacity of people to always imagine a larger number than the largest number that they've imagined so far". So you imagine 8 billion. Then there is 9 billion. There is always a larger number. We have that capacity in us. In the same way we can imagine a quality more perfect than the one that we've imagined so far. 

Now one could go into this for hours. This is only just the beginning. We're running out of time and also out of patience with me. What I want to say is this, a surprising statement. That is that I think, I hope that we have this need to glorify. It starts by just being amazed, bewondering or bemusing, overwhelmed by beauty, by meaning of whatever one discovers. Scientists say not only that everything makes sense but trying to understand that sense, but they say the planning of the Universe is elegant. So somehow it's an emotional value. There is an emotion of a need for the sacred. That's of course, in the act of prayer. 

Now in prayer, one is projecting on God what one thinks is God or hopes is God the qualities that one knows in one's own person. Like I have a certain amount of compassion. But I imagine that God must be all compassionate and so on. In order to be able to project upon this imaginary God the qualities that are more perfect than what we know in ourselves or in other people, we awaken these qualities in ourselves. Therefore prayer is the most creative of all acts. And that is embodied in the word of I think it's a Hadith, ("Allah al mahruk fil ita kadat"), God created through your prayers as you. Your prayers are a way in which God is able to manifest a reality as you. And that's Sufism. We'll have to end here. We have another day, not even a day, tomorrow morning. We'll continue tomorrow morning. Bless you.


AUG 23, 1998		Tape 05

Ready to leave in a few hours. If you are and you enjoyed your friend and that's me, perhaps other friends too.

So we get so embroiled in what one calls the world and all the agitation, the flack, the challenge, the grossness, the violence, the dishonesty, selfishness, greed. Somehow, one has a need to find one's self. One loses oneself, it gets kind of dissolved in the environment. So every now and again it's good to make a retreat. That is to experience what it is like to be a hermit. You don't have to be a hermit, but to experience what it is like. And so we're organizing a retreat for people who wish to be able to spend a little time, call a halt, a break from life and experience what it is like to be a hermit. A totally way of experiencing, a totally different type of attunement and different thinking. Then when you get back to life, somehow you have a kind of protection against the onslaught of circumstances. And you are able perhaps to maintain a high in the middle of the gravity pull that tends to pull you down to the common place level in which one puts oneself. 

Of course it will take time. The first few days one has to reverse a machine. It's very difficult. So you can't expect results right away. Actually the maximum time in Sufism that one wishes to go on retreat is forty days. That's a lot. In order to become a Pir, one has to do at least one retreat of forty days of fasting and just repeating mantrums the whole time from morning to evening. So it's a kill or cure situation. Since in a situation like this one, there is no way in which we can go into a very deep retreat situation. But you can have a kind of foretaste of what it would be like. So I have some cliches that act as triggers that get us into a state of attunement. And I find them very helpful. I hope they are helpful to you.

The first one is really based upon Buddha. Imagine that you're walking in the gardens here, the land, but surrounded with a zone of silence. These are the words of Buddha. You're walking in a very peaceful gate. And somehow you've left the crowd behind. So the environment lends itself to a very peaceful attunement. And you're protected by a zone of silence around you. And you have placed sentinels at the doors of perception so that you're only taking in those impressions which are in harmony with your being and reject the others. So that would be our first cliche. 

The next one would be a kind of state of revere. I've often quoted St. Francis of Assisi who was walking in the forest with his brethren and sisters in Santa Clara. And they were in a transfigured state. That was due to the fact that they were getting into the consciousness of the trees and the animals and the sun and the moon and stars. So they were free from the constraint of their personal consciousness as the experiencing subject. So that's another state, a transfigured state.

Cliche. I don't know whether it happens to you. You're lying in bed. And all kinds of images flash on the screen of your mind totally impromptu. And yet you are conscious of the furniture in the room, and the sound of the cars in the street, and even you are conscious of your body to some extent or your being. Somehow you cannot control those images. If you were to control those images, you would get back to ordinary consciousness. And if you just plunge into those images, then you would fall to sleep. So you're on a threshold state. And in that threshold state, some of the collective unconscious attunements break through in the form of pictures or forms. So, now this is one of them. It's very important because what we want to do is find a peaceful state when we're meditating. It's very difficult to break away from all the turmoil of the environment. If you can maintain yourself at the threshold state without falling asleep and without getting back into usual consciousness, you may have a little impact on those images, not very much but you could orient them in some way. Or you could prefigure them before you get into that state. 

So imagine that you're walking along side a lake in the moonlight. And somehow you've left your life behind you. You're right there. There is a kind of misty haze. And at the same time it is a sort of diaphanous light passing through and reflected in ripples on the surface of the lake. There is hardly any wind on the surface of the lake. Somehow you discover peace through the whole environmental scene. Here you're walking and you discover in yourself something that is the same nature of that lake or of that whole scene. Now if you would identify with your subtle body which is like gossamer instead of the heavy physical body, you have a feeling of kind of floating, walking very lightly in a state of beautiful poise. 

So the very nature of your being is of the fabric of that subtle reality that you're beginning to discover outside yourself and inside yourself, both mirroring each other. And of course you realize that if you try to become peaceful, you never become peaceful. But that image, that whole situation is conducive to finding peace. 

Now I must say that in doing so, one is configuring one's subtle body which I've already talked about. It is the reality behind the physical body, magnetic field or whatever. It has a kind of structure but it doesn't have a profile. But it transpires through your face. So the expression on the physical face would reflect that beautiful peaceful state instead of the bitterness or stress, or sense of inadequacy that expresses on one's face if one is involved in the challenge of life. If one keeps on concentrating or configuring on this subtle form, it becomes adamant. Like if you keep on walking on the same orientation on a meadow, you make a path. By keep on walking there, you make a path. The same thing is true of the circuits of the brain and the holistic function of the brain. And the same is true of the subtle body. You're building your subtle body or strengthening it. You're configuring it maybe in a way that people don't see. But it doesn't matter whether they see it or not. But sometimes it can transpire through the expression of your face. 

That's something that one can do when one finds oneself so agitates by the situations in life and one doesn't know how to find peace in oneself. By slowing down your breath, you get into the anabolic state. And if you can just sink in a state which is very close to sleep. But don't fall asleep. You're in a threshold state. And in that state you can configure your subtle body because that is where rebirthing takes place. It takes place in the subtle body before it gets manifested in the physical body and in the personality.

Now one can think of other cliches. I think of the image of a person who has taken a tremendous amount of responsibility. Has to think of lots of details. Check on things, double check on things, make sure that things are happening in an orderly way, imposing order out of chaos, and therefore has a kind of overriding authority which is based upon taking responsibility for other people who themselves find it difficult to take responsibility. So one mustn't control other people, but help other people to assume their responsibility by taking responsibility oneself. 

There are many different models of this situation. There are simple models where you have to exercise control. For example if you are skiing, or hang gliding, or even just typing or working with your computer, or playing tennis, whatever, getting your trip together. Exercising control. 

Now there is no doubt that power corrupts. So it can lead towards a despotic attitude. One is undermining people, putting people down, and one has a bloated ego and so on. That's the danger. I think of a wonderful man whom I met many years ago. He came to my seminars in Germany after the the war. He lived just like a hermit, simple room with a broom, very simple. He was employing five thousand people, getting them all working for benefits, and the dental course of the teen agers. Responsibility in every domain. And yet he himself, he didn't want anything for himself. He wanted to be of service. He was a wonderful man. He wasn't a hermit. He was right there in life. But he was fulfilling exactly what we want, to find a way of bringing spirituality into life. 

So just look at your life and imagine could you follow that model. Because it's true that we involve yourselves in life. We want to get something out of it. And if we don't, we feel frustrated. That's true. So there is a certain amount of concupiscence in our behavior. And that would curtail the unfurling of our being. One can never become a beautiful being if one is motivated by our personal possession or well being at the cost of others or whatever. Or if one has feelings of animosity against people who one doesn't like or who are inimical to one or even have abused one. If one is able to overcome these things and really try to organize one's life in such a way that one is serving. In order to serve, one is really controlling. One develops authority by the sheer fact of taking responsibility. That means you have to think of every detail. Do not leave one detail out of your consideration. That will enhance your self esteem and a sense of fulfilling your purpose in life. Everyone according to their realization and their ability. As I say it's a cliche, a model that I find very helpful.

Now there is the model of the Sufi dervish. It's rather difficult to describe. It's rather mysterious. And that is due to such continual concentration on the divine being or let's say that aspect of the Universe that is sacred. So when I say the divine being, there are different levels of Godness. But that particular aspect which is very difficult to define. But we just heard music of the monks in an orthodox monastery in Bulgaria. And of course that was very short. But perhaps you felt the sense of sacredness. 

So here we have two things. We have the dervishes and we have the orthodox Christians. They are very similar. So let's take the model where you go to Mt. Athos in Greece. There are just monks living there in prayer and tending to daily needs, but totally absorbed in the divine presence. Some kind of a blessing comes through them. It's a different quality to that you find in life. It's called otherworldly. And so they would not be able to take responsibility as I described that man who had five thousand people working for him. No. It's a different model altogether. Somehow, when one is involved in life, it is very wonderful to be able to be a pilgrim and visit a place like that. 

So that reflects a certain aspect of one's being, a sense of sacredness. In fact, it's in some way related to one's sense of the celestial spheres. Of course if you listen to their chants, they are chanting heavenly things. Their music is heavenly music. Something of a very high level of reality comes through in attunement and in the way of thinking and so on. OK They are not adapted to life. But there is room for beings like that to awaken in us or in life a need which is quashed by our activity in life or our concerns about making our way in life and having possessions and pleasure and enjoyment, having power over other people and so on. After this we're going to work with building a temple out of our own body to experience the sacredness in the alter of the temple.

Now the Sufi dervishes are a very different kind of attunement to the Rishis in the Himalayas. The dervish is sitting in the middle of the market place on a heap of banana peals, garbage. I think you call it trash in America. There he is in a state of ecstasy. He doesn't have to flee the world in order to bring spirituality there. In fact I'll give an example. 

A real dervish who is not of the modern world who was a Ba'hi who was imprisoned in Haifa the last century. There was no toilet in that prison. So the stench of that prison you could smell from miles away. Here he was sitting there in ecstasy. We complain of our little problems and say, "Under these circumstances, I'll never be able to attain illumination". Here he was right in the middle of it. 

So it is something rather paradoxical that you find in the dervish. It is such a very strong concentration on what the Sufis call the hidden treasure, that desire to be known, an aspect of God which is hidden. Therefore it's mysterious. And which is trying to erupt, like God trying to manifest in our being. A kind of call from the depth of one's being. And the dervish becomes therefore very strong. For example, the dervish says, "Don't come near me because you're lying. When you've stopped lying, you can come to me". That's the dervish. Or there is a woman Hazrat Babajan, a woman dervish. She lives in a little hut on the main thoroughfare. And people pass by her. They are curious so they go and visit there. She says, "You can't go forward on this road unless you have the strength to look into my eyes. And if you lie, you can't look into my eyes. So you must decide what you want to do". That's Hazrat Babajan. For the Sufis the ultimate expression of God is al Haqq, which means truth. And of course i   ût gives great power. 

Well I can talk about a personal experience. I won't tell you the whole story. You know in India sometimes you're seeking, unless you're staying in a posh hotel, you might find yourself in a palace in ruin. You might call it a hovel. It was a palace, but now it's in ruin. So it's a palace in ruin. As a matter of fact, that's a word of Shams Tabriz when he says, "The man of God", that is a dervish, "is a palace in ruin". I prefer that to the casino of Monti Carlo. A palace in ruin. In Persepolis in Iran for example, it's a ruin, but it reflects a divine majesty.

It's always a kind of challenge. The dervish represents a challenge. A challenge of the higher self, of the lower self, the acceptance of limitation, even crucifixion in the case of Al Hallaj, that cannot take away anything of the divine glory coming through one. So you don't depend upon circumstances. It's the divine power in you that gives you that strength. So you don't depend upon favorable conditions.

So I was in I'd call it a hovel. You know what it's like in India. They say, "Sit there and I'll bring you a cup of tea". You wait hours and hours and no cup of tea emerges at all. Then the light comes on. And you sweep away the little beasties of God on the ground and place your sleeping bag there on the hard floor and say to yourself, "I'll go to sleep". And in the middle of the night you hear a raucous voice screeching at you and shaking the door. And you think, "Good God". So you put your sleeping bag over your head. And then the voice goes further back and recedes. Then you think, "I can go to sleep now". And in the morning the cup of tea comes of course. So you say, "Last night there was this voice. And he was really shaking the door". "Yes, that was the dervish who came to awaken you". So you came to India to be awakened, not that way but awakened and you missed your chance. I'm talking from personal experience. So the next day the same thing happened. I quickly dressed. When I got to the door he was gone. 

So the next day I went to the Darga of Hazrat Moiniddin Chisti in Ajmere. Oh, the enchantment of that area. It's incredible. The Darga, what they call a tomb, beautiful building. And marble floor. People sleeping there, people playing music, people praying in the mosque. The whole atmosphere is just out of this world. I sat there thinking, "What a pity I missed that dervish". Then all of a sudden I heard that same voice behind me. It's a terrifying voice. I must say I didn't have quite the courage to turn my head. Naturally he would come from behind me then all of a sudden turn and say, "You there". All of a sudden, one is awakened. That's a dervish. A totally different thing to the rishi. So somehow what the dervish is doing is trying to reveal to you what he or she calls the divine secret, which is the divine treasure which is trying to be known and is covered by all those rather stupid things that we are doing in life. And we're missing out on the real thing. So that's a different proposition altogether. 


Now, you see, the early Jews and the Moslems were nomads. They were wandering in the desert in caravans. Therefore they did not have a temple or synagogue on a mosque. Therefore they had to build their own temple themselves. It is true that we need an environment that is favorable to the sacred. For example, people go to churches. In the Catholic Church perhaps you see the people going to take the Host. The whole intent is that it's the body of Christ. They go back to their seat having a feeling, "I'm carrying something very sacred in my being". The Sufis say, "Ya Quddus", something sacred. (Quados) in Hebrew, something sacred. So they go to church, not because of the sermon, but the environment is something conducive to getting into the attunement, something deep in one's soul that one misses out in life. That's the secret one is looking for. It's not something palpable. 

So the Sufis therefore elaborated a way of building a temple out of their own body. And not in their physical body, but of course in the subtle body and the aura. And consequently the meditation of the Sufis is with motion. In Judaism it is like the Markaba instead of the Kabbala. The chariot, the throne becomes a chariot. The whole whirling of the stars, and the planets, and the galaxies, it's something very deep that is written deep right into the consciousness and even into the cells of our body. And when we start whirling like a planet, this cosmic attunement comes through. And the consequence is that one is really building a temple, an infrastructure as a container to invite the divine presence. That's what it is. The reason for that is that the walls of the temple represent a kind of protection against the sacrilege of the world. So there is a threshold you past by going from the profane to the sacred. That practice is called the Zikre. 

So I want to introduce the Zikre not in the conventional way but experiential. So you're actually doing it. You see the beauty here is that the body participates in the experience. It's a total experience. Whereas if you want to experience samadhi, you sit still in an an asana, in a pose like the Hindus do. You mustn't move. This is awakening in life rather than beyond life. 

So could you just turn your head and move it towards the left shoulder, the left knee, the right knee, your right shoulder. And keep on whirling your head, actually the top of your body. Now what you are doing is what happens in a centrifuge. So the grosser elements are drawn towards the outside, are pushed towards the outside. And the finer elements are drawn toward the center. That's what one calls centrifugal and centripedal, two forces. So you'll recognize two of the dimensions that we've practiced in the course of this short seminar. One was the cosmic, that sense of expansion. And the other was turning within, the vacuum in the center, "al ama", one says, the void. 

So now instead of identifying with your body, if you can identify as we have been practicing with your electromagnetic field. There is probably just one element in the life field. So you are like a magnet that becomes a dynamo when it rotates. I don't know if you remember learning at school the law of Goss. That is if your hand is a dynamo and it is rotating towards your fingers, then you're inducing a current in your thumb. Perhaps you remember that. So you're rotating this way. Consequently you're inducing a current that is moving towards the void, towards your solar plexus. 

Let's just do that now. Feel like a magnetic field that is rotated. Then you feel that sense of scattering as it rotates, dispersal. Then at the same time the sense of the pull towards the center. Now when your head has turned towards the zenith, that's upwards and is moving downwards again, that is the situation in which you're the most precarious, a state of unstable equilibrium. Like if you have a pale of water and you keep on rotating it, perhaps the water will stay in it if you keep on rotating it very fast. But if you stop or slow down when it's upside down, then the water would fall out. So you feel the pull of your solar plexus. Cosequently, what I'd like you to do is then move your head down towards the solar plexus after your head has reached the zenith. So you don't keep on describing a circle, but it's three quarters of a circle. Then when you reach the top, now your head descends with a certain momentum. So you exhale in the circle and inhale as your head comes down. So it's like circumambulating a temple. As you know that's a custom that one circumambulates a temple before going in the temple. So you have expanded your consciousness into the vastness. And now you're turning within. We'll keep on doing it a little bit.

Now could you identify with your aura of light, which we've done yesterday I think? Now try to just imagine that you're whirling your aura, rotating your aura. And instead of tracing a circle with your aura, it becomes like a spiral. So it's not the samsaric wheel of Buddhism, but you go off in a tangent. It frees you from the constraint of the vicious circle. And of course, the radiance of your aura is now reaching right into the ocean of light of the cosmos, into the star studded sky. And when you inhale and your head is turned towards your solar plexus, somehow the light that you generated is now resorbed in the void before it resurges again renewed in what one calls a recurring rebirthing. Now of course the energy that descends is now going to want to rebound again upwards. So after turning your head towards the solar plexus, now think that the energy is now reemerging from the void and moving upwards along your spine. That's one of the practices we did. You do that as you continue to inhale. So your inhaling is divided in two. 

So one is building a temple of light, (hikul al nur), a temple of light. But in the inside of the temple of light there is a light emerging from the depth and a light descending from above. So having drawn your consciousness upwards in the ascent, and perhaps you could think of the different colors of the chakras, now you hold your breath. You hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling. Now your head is turned upwards. If you do that, then you'll get into a samadhi state. But you remember that the Sufi way was for one thing identifying with intelligence rather than consciousness or luminous intelligence if you remember. And intelligence is thrusting its light into life, that's awakening in life. Consequently at the end of the upsurge, there is that moment when you have broken beyond the ceiling, let's say you've pierced the ceiling into a samadhi state. That's at the end of the inhaling. But immediately as you hold your breath, you turn your attention towards your heart center because that's the alter in the temple. And that is where one is awakening in life rather than beyond life. Try and see if you can do that now.

Sometimes that motion is described as tensing the bow as you go in the circle. Then shooting the arrow in the solar plexus. Then there is all that sparkling the erupts in the solar plexus and then reaches right up to the top like fireworks. And then it resolves in the wonderful radiance of your heart like a sun. The cosmos has given birth to the sun in your heart. 

So now just do it a few more times so you experience the emotion of the grandeur, the vastness of the light of your aura expanding into the starry skies. And then the impact as your head comes down like an arrow of light, the arrow of Percival. Then the outburst from the void, sparkling, scintillating and reaching right upwards. As the light gets transmuted, it becomes the light of intelligence. That is not individuated. Consciousness is individuated. The consciousness of the Universe is focalized in different focal centers. But the intelligence is unbroken. That's why it's called the divine intelligence. It is that which reveals meaningfulness to you. It's not your consciousness. The intelligence of the cosmos of which your intelligence is a part of, coextensive with, is revealing to you a sense of meaningfulness that you could not have acquired by sorting things out with your mind. So it's a sense of being open of the revelation at that sacred moment when the luminous intelligence is descending upon your heart. And as I said yesterday, that is the meaning of the sura of the Koran, a light upon a light. The light of intelligence upon your aura. Now your aura burns more brightly than ever before.

I'll just say a few things before we have our break.

So that's getting down to the basic experience. But one does say sounds as one is doing that practice. It is, "La illaha illa 'llah hu". This is Arabic. It probably has its origin in the pre Islamic language which is also the origin of the Hebrew language. Quddus, Quador, same thing. Halleluiah, Allah hu. So on. 

This is interesting at least for me because in that name Allah you have two things. You have the arc of a circle which is called lam in Arabic. It is like the arc of a circle so it gives you the sense of the choreography of the galaxies, the continual circular motion. Actually, that is the samsaric wheel of Buddhism. Then you have a lift which is the 'a' which is the vertical line. And it is that vertical line that rescues you from the vicious circle. And it represents, it's like an axis, the axis between the aspect of God that one might call transcendent and that aspect that one might call immanent. At the beginning of the 'Allah", you have the descent of the divine being to the existential state, manifestation into the circle. Then at the end you have the return back into the oneness again. In the very words that one proposes a very deep significance. 

There's that mysterious letter the 'h' at the end which is the exception to the rule. It is the tangent whereby you escape from the samsaric wheel. That's exactly the same thing in Buddhism. In the Jewish faith, the "h" is the one name that only the high priests are allowed to pronounce. It's to be found in the word ( ), but still just the 'h' of itself. So it is the sacred word. The Sufis follow the 'h' with a 'u'. It's again rather paradoxical because Hue means him or her. It designates a person who is not present. 'Ana' means me and Hue means him. Al Hallaj says when several people in the room are thinking of a being that is not in the room, that being becomes more present than the people in the room. The whole practice of the Zikre is to make God present. 

Instead of going to church or a religions building, temple, we build a temple of light out of our own body. We are also the priests in the temple, the imam in that temple. And curiously enough, then we discover the being of God in ourselves. That is, of course, paradoxical. Dervishes are always saying paradoxical things because reality is always beyond our simplistic logic. Reconciling the irreconcilables. 

So you have 'La' that is a circle. So you have the 'l' followed by the 'a'. Then moving half a circle left shoulder to right shoulder through your knees. Then you have ''illaha', moving from the right shoulder to the top of the head. That means divinity. There is no divinity except God. In other words, it's all God. As I say, this is a wholly different way of thinking of God rather than thinking of God up there. The question is what do you mean by God? Is it transcendent or not? There are different degrees. And the 'h' represents the transcendental level of what we mean by God. 

So you have La illaha, then illa. The sound 'il' resonates in your solar plexus. Of course one is able to produce a sound rather like striking glass, a rather strident sound, so incredible. I remember people were complaining I don't remember where it was in India that the dervish who was saying the Zikre was disturbing people from their sleep because they could hear his voice from many miles away because the 'il' was so loud. But the thing is it's a sound that shatters your solar plexus. Now you know the solar plexus is the area in which we are extremely vulnerable. That's where we feel pain, tension. So it's really like surgery in your solar plexus. You're releasing a lot of flack that is very painful. But sometimes you have to have a surgical operation. That is described in Islam that Mohammed had something taken out of his heart. Then he found himself totally transformed. So it's a process we go through. In Sufism it's called the purification of the heart. So think of that when you say 'illa'. It's not just getting into the void. It's wonderful to be able to free oneself from all that one doesn't like about oneself as one turns within into the void. 

That's called 'fana' which means annihilation. One has to go through a period of annihilation before one is reborn. Just like in alchemy, solve coagule. And that is a state that one resists because one is afraid of dying. Annihilation. So to trust that one can go through a state of annihilation and come out better than one was before. That's a kind of trust. And that is exemplified in an extreme degree in the case of mentally disturbed people. When I was at University, I was studying psychiatry. We had the professor there, and he would call the patients. And this lady said, "That professor has no idea where I am at. He is trying to bring me back to where I was before. I don't want to get back to where I was before. I can only come out from where I am from another door". Think of that. Think that there is a time in your life when there is a breakdown. Everything goes wrong. Your relationship has been broken. You have an accident. You've lost your job. Everything breaks down at the same time. So at that time it's good to know that a breakdown can aver itself to a breakthrough. There is a word of my father, Murshid Inayat who says, "A defeat can aver itself to be a victory". If you think of that when you are going through a crisis in your life. It might seem to be a defeat. In the end, perhaps you can see that it was a victory. But at the time you couldn't see it.

OK I think we really need to have a break. Wait a moment.

So La illaha illa, the breakdown. Then as one's head rises, one is really passing in review of the different centers, chakras, in Sufism it's called lataif. Each center represents a plane or a sphere. So our consciousness is rising from one sphere to the other in the course of the ascent. So La illaha illa 'llah. That's how you're moving upwards. I'll have to describe more in detail what those different spheres after the break. At the end if the upsurge there is the 'h' of the word 'llah. The 'h' at the end is at the top of the uprising. It's like Inayat yourself from the existential. That's samadhi, freeing oneself from the existential state. 

Then as you hold your breath, the Hue, you are turning your attention towards awakening in life. The heart is the instrument. I think it was (Agaude) who showed that the circular motion was associated with the circulation of blood in your body. The upward and descending motion is associated with the nervous system, transmission of the impulses from the bottom of the spine, kundalini. Then the opposite which is the descent. So that's what we're doing. That being so, when you say Hue, you do not turn your attention toward the cardiac plexus which the Yogis call anahata chakra, the heart center. You turn your attention toward the heart center. That seems rather strange. You would have thought that you turn your attention towards the chakra. But remember the way the piston confers energy to the wheel of a locomotive. The point of application is eccentric to the center. Otherwise it wouldn't turn. That's why you concentrate on your physical heart.

Now we need a break. I understand that a lot of people like moving. We'll have a little moving. After that you'll be able to go and get fresh air and whatever you want to do, go to the bathroom. Could we put on as I call it, my favorite Jewish tape? Now this is really danceable. I don't want to be a spectacle here. I just want to induce you into dancing. I don't know where you can get that tape. Perhaps you can get it at Sacred Music at the Abode.

Take a moment of fresh air. Let's make it 20 minutes. 


AUG 23, 1998		Tape 06

So that's Indian music. It's one of the (Bodas) who is singing. Perhaps you feel the nostalgia, an emotion that is very powerful.

So we just have a very few more minutes. But the question is what happens then as your head is moving up. What experiences are going through. As I said, you're trying to get into resonance with the different planes, the different spheres. So once again, I don't want to just describe the spheres in a theoretical way. I think we need to see what it means in terms of experience. So when you turn your head towards the solar plexus, you are going through a collapse. And then a breakdown that avers itself to be a breakthrough. And a renewal, the emergence of your new personality, of God appearing to you in the form of your personality. This is the creative moment. It's very important to grasp this very precious moment so that you make the bests of it. Take advantage of it because it's a very special moment when one is being reborn. So capture what's coming through at that moment.

I could illustrate it. There is what seems to be a flower, a very strange phenomena in nature. It's really a agglomeration of insects. But it looks like a flower. If you blow on it, they all fly away. Then if you wait for some time    , they come back and one assumes that they come back to where they were before. But that's what one assumes. One doesn't know. So the question is whether after the collapse, one returns to the way one was before or whether one is better. Hopefully one is better. There is a word amongst the illa he, the names of God that we repeat like mantrums, wasaif. That's Muhi. Muhi means to regenerate. Recurrent rebirthing. Every time one is reborn, something new needs to come through. 

So that called in the language of Sufism Al Methal. I don't know whether there is any any correspondence with the etymology of the the word mythology. But it doesn't matter. Anyway, it is the world of metaphor in which thoughts are translated into forms. And imagination is the instrument whereby thoughts are transformed into forms. One must not confuse meditation with fantasizing. The difference is that if your fantasizing, you're in your personal trip. And if you're imagining, then what you're doing is you're individualizing the divine imagination. The divine imagination is individuated through you in your own special way. Behind it all there is a sense of, "The whole cosmos is coming through me in a particular way", because that's what is happening. The individual contributes something very special to the totality. It's all one but as my father said, "Man has a mind of his own". Like a sense of the importance of the diversity of each being instead of just losing oneself in the totality. 

So that's the creative moment. I think that the clue to it is what I mentioned the other day. The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. One is projecting how one could be if one would be as one might be. It's 'what if?. What if I were different. How would things be if I were different? That is after the ' 'llah'. The 'a' after the ' 'llah'. That 'a' is the creative moment.

And then, according to the Sufis, the next plane is called Al Malakut which is the celestial sphere. I'm not going to tell you you've got to believe in angels. Someone could say, "Well do you still believe in Santa Clause?". It's something that one needs to get into the attunement of the child in one. Then you have a sense of what I mean by the celestial spheres. Otherwise it's something artificial. It's something very real. 

There are moments when something seems to break through the environment where you feel something celestial seems to transpire in an ugly situation. I talked about the lights in the eyes of a baby. I don't want to say anything that I can't prove. But is looks as though in a state of mediation one can recover the memory of one's state prior to one's birth. That's why when I see the light in the eyes of a baby, I have a sense of déjà vu. In other words a sense, "I've seen this before. I remember that". But it's prior to one's birth. 

Buddha says something when he said, "Our memory of the cosmos is interrupted at the moment of our birth", actually it was the moment of our conception. And he proved it. He said, "There was a time when there was no smoke on the planet earth". How could he know that there was a time when there weren't any humans? In those days, one didn't know about evolution. He said, "There was a time", he didn't use the word planet earth, "There was a time when the planet earth didn't exist." How could he have known? And the stars were decorations for people on earth. He said, "There was a time when the cosmos didn't exist". Now it's only in the last decade that astrophysicists are saying that. And he said, "There was a time when there were other cosmoses". Now that is one of the leading edge of views of physicists in our time. How could he have known? 

So what I'm saying is I'm trying to convince you that indeed one has a deep memory that is smothered by all the more recent events. If you uncover that memory, all of a sudden you have a sense of yourself as a celestial being who has descended into earthly conditions and lost the sense of who you are. 

Now there is a practice which you find in (Ilusis), the Greek mystery. The neophytes form a choir. They wear white robes and wings attached to their robes. And they are singing beautiful songs. People come and pull their wings away and their robes and take them away into a cave and chain them to the cave. They give them some kind of a drug so that they forget who they were. Then people come and say, "Oh, it's a lovely day. The sun is shining and the grass is green and the sky is blue". And they say, "I don't know what you're talking about. All I know is shadows". Then somebody takes their chains away and takes them out into the open. And they can't see anything. They prefer going back into the cave because at least they can discern shadows. Plato was describing our condition. We forgot who we are. We were so used to living in shadows that we thought that.s reality. And somehow or other when we are faced with reality, it's too blinding for us. We can't deal with it. That's a wonderful illustration. But the Plato goes on to say that in time they begin to become accustom to the light of day. Then they prefer being outside the cave to inside the cave. 

That's very descriptive of us. Awakening would be like all of a sudden finding yourself in a world of light and remembering that you're a being of light. And to think that you had forgotten that you were a being of light. That is a wonderful experience. It's not just wishful thinking. But you really remember. And you see that it's not the aura. That's why I said the other day that we think that light is what we perceive through our senses. Or then physicists, in the old days at least, used to think that was the way that it effects or instruments in laboratories. But the fact is that we don't know what light is beyond what we experience of it. That's why I'm talking about light. This is a view of a few physicists, the upper guard of physics, that light cannot be limited to what we think it is. So when I say, "One is a being of light", I'm not talking about physical light.

So it's a question of remembering, or rather the recollection triggers off a state of consciousness because we are still that. But we have forgotten who we are. So we remember it in the past. But it is difficult to realize that we are that also now. We're not functioning at that level. We're not conscious of that level. So this can happen in meditation.

I would say the clue is this. What we're talking about is a dimension of our being that is, well I can't say it's eternal, but it's not as transient as our physical body. We identify our self with our physical body. It's a practice that you can do. If you try to recollect all the events in your life and how you were when you were a child and so on, then you have a different sense of yourself. Because normally one identifies with one's present sense of self. But now you see yourself as a continuity in change. So that a first way of freeing yourself from the sense of mortality or transiency is to experience the continuity, the outer end thread. For example, it's never the same water that runs under the bridge, but it's the same river. The continuity in change. It's a different dimension in time than transiency. 

Yesterday we were talking about the instant of time that cuts the past and the future. And now we're talking about another two dimensions according to Sufism. One is everlastingness and the other is eternity. Now what is the difference? When you're meditating you remember the events, at least in the Sufi meditation. In Yoga sometimes you try to cut out your memory to know. But you remember the quintessence of your experience. Well, in Buddhism too, it's called a subtle memory. But the fact is that an event that took place at a certain moment is eternalized in our memory or at least becomes everlasting. There is a surprising word of Jalaluddin Rumi, "Tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life everlasting". What he is saying then is that there is a feedback from the experience at the existential level back into the programming. Imagine a computer that could reprogram itself by learning from the experiences it's had with its hardware. So let's say that nothing gets lost. It's the gist, the essence of what we experience that is reprogrammed back into the program, the software.

Now this, actually it's the process of distillation in alchemy. And it could be illustrated by the perfume of flowers. Can you imagine what it would be like to be a flower? It has a very short lived, precarious foothold on planet earth. Yet they are very smart because they are able to continue living as perfume. That's what is meant by resurrection. And that's what we're doing with our memory. We remember the events, the details. But in meditation you remember the quintessence, the know-how or wisdom that you gain by the experience instead of remembering the details. That's quintessentiation. If you do that when you're meditating, if you try and get into that very quintessential state that you're the essence like a perfume. It's not like you're discarding you body. It's just you are identifying with the essence of your bodiness. If you do that, then you're at a state which will trigger off the memory of that high level which is called Al Malakut, the celestial sphere. The reality of that level is like perfume. It's like essence.

So that's what you do in the Zikre when you lift your head, " 'llah'. And the first 'a' of 'allah' you don't say. You say, "illa 'llah". There is an apostrophe because the discovery of one's celestial counterpart is so breathtaking that you just can't say it at that aha moment. Of course there is a grammatical reason that you don't say two 'a's one after the other. But this is a deeper sense. That's the ineffable, the 'a' that you don't say. 

Then you have two 'l's. And 'l' always represents a transition and 'a' represents what they call a makam, a station. And you're going through a transitional state. Here you can recognize, this is really esoteric of Islam, the two throws of an arc in the story of the mirage. I don't know whether you know that story. According to that story Mohammed was transported from the mosque in Medina, India to Jerusalem, celestial Jerusalem so it's not the physical world. And he got within a distance of two throws of an arrow. Now two throws of an arrow, they call it (kab) in Arabic. It's like the (kab) is the distance of the distance if you're pulling the bow and you have the arrow, then just the distance between the bow and where your hand is. That's (kab). That measures the distance before the metric system. So it means very close. Those are two 'l's. Now that transit is the breakthrough in meditation.

This is of course, metaphysics. But if you know this, then it will be the background of your experience in meditation. And you can apply it. It will o   -pen new vistas in your meditation. So this is a breakthrough based upon Sufi metaphysics.

So let's say that according to Sufi metaphysics, all that one knows of reality is through devices. I talked about the film, ET, through devices. God describes Himself through you. So exemplars gives you a sense of the archetype. However, you can reach beyond the exemplar and have some sense of the archetype in infinite regress. Ibn Arabi comes with a new proposition. He says, "At an advanced stage God reveals Himself without using these clues, these ayat" , means clues, these signs, " in a sort of direct revelation. So does not reveal Himself through these forms of the world, through the forms of your personality, but a pure disclosure of the divine meaningfulness behind everything. That's a breakthrough in your meditation. All of a sudden you grasp meaningfulness beyond your understanding. Understanding things doesn't make sense. Here things make sense. They make sense the opposite to what we think in our minds. 

If something can happen to you, in fact it happened to St. John of the Cross when he went through what he called the dark night of the mind. All those things that he thought broke down. In fact it is the only way to awaken is to question all that you know and all that you think, a total breakdown. No more crutches in terms of what you think, opinion. As Buddha says freedom from opinion. Then out of the void of nothingness, all of a sudden you are open to the divine revelation. All of a sudden you see meaningfulness where you couldn't see it before. 

That's called Jabarut. It's a very curious word. It means the bone setter. The chiropractor. The one who sets your bones right. So that means set's your thinking right. Actually, it means compellingness. So it is a mode of cognizance which is compelling to your understanding. Or predominates over. Jabar means to predominate. Order predominating over chaos, something like the chaos theories in physics. Everything falls into place. 

It has an application. I remember a word of my father. He said, "Of course in the beginning everything is askew". That's chaos. People are not in their right place. And people do stupid things. We all do stupid things and things go wrong and it can be really disastrous, terrible. But in the course of evolution, things fall into place. Just imagine a puzzle. A very good picture of chaos is to imagine that you have all the pieces of a puzzle but they are all scattered all over the place. Now you've got to put them together. So you look at two pieces, "Yes I see that corresponds. But then I see another two pieces there. I'm looking for a third piece here. Yes, I've got it. But then I don't see how they correspond. But it's getting there." That's what he means. Things fall into place and you know it. There is a right person in the right place. Or you might be in the wrong place. One can't hold out very long if one is in the wrong place. Somehow or other something happens and you're forced to resign. It's very difficult to hold a place that you would like to hold because you've really got to be up to it. That's the sense of Jabarut. Ultimately everything is right, but to start with it's wrong. It's getting right. But it takes to the ends of time before everything gets right. Meaningfulness, that's Jabarut. So that's the 'l' of Allah, the two throws of an arc. You're getting very close to reality. 

Then you still have that level of Lahut which is the divine programming. Let's say it is the orderliness behind the chaos. It's the software. You could call it divine intention. If one doesn't see what that intention was, then one can't understand why things happen the way they do. Sometimes we are so perplexed because things don't make sense. It's really a challenge to our understanding. It's not an act of faith. It is really seeing that it had to be the way it was. It's very difficult to see that. Because with our understanding it doesn't make sense. That's a sense of programming behind the Universe. That's Lahut. 

That is according to Islam it's called the divine treasury. There is a word of Nafari who said, "I cannot give you the secret of the divine treasury. It will only be given to you if you're ready to receive it". In other words, there is no way of knowing what that intention is until you are ready for it. There is a saying in the Koran, "Everything has it's likeness to the divine treasury". So there is what they call tenuities between the archetypes and the exemplars. And Ibn Arabi says, "The angels build a ladder between the two". In fact Malakut is between the those two. This is metaphysics. 

In terms of experience, I quote Al Hallaj who said, "Oh God, take away my nazutiat and replace it by lahutiat". In other words nazutiat means my earthly inheritance. The qualities of my inheritance were originally perfect. But they have been handed down to me in their imperfect form through my ancestry and they have become jaded in the course of my failings, my flaws. That's the nazutia. There is a way that the program has become somehow defiled. Like in cancer for example. The transcription from DNA into RNA has somehow gone wrong. The program is defiled. Even on your computer. If you have a bug, then the program is defiled. What he is asking for is a fresh dispensation of the qualities in their perfect archetypal form. That's what we're doing in our practices of what we call the wasaif. We are trying to reach beyond the limits of our thinking in order to imagine how this quality could be in its perfection. There is a word of my father who says, "God is discovering His perfection through our imperfection, just like we can discover the voice of Caruso through it's distortion. That would be a very short explanation of what we mean by Lahut.

Then of course, after that there is Hahut which is the oneness behind the multiplicity. That's something that is just amazing. I don't know how to describe it. Again, experientially, I was making a retreat in Jerusalem. On the top of the Mount of Olives there is a cave. The access to that cave is through a mosque. You go down the steps. And that cave is called the Cave of the Ascension. Actually that is the cave in which Jesus spent the nights on the top of the Mount of Olives. There is a little skylight there and little recesses in the wall. They are all sitting there doing the Zikre. It's a fantastic cave. You can go there. Of course, you have to go through that mosque. And you have to ask if you can visit that cave. It's called the Cave of the Ascension. It's supposed to be where Christ ascended into heaven. There is a foot mark in the rock. And they think that is the foot mark of Christ on the way to heaven. Actually, if you know Jerusalem, under the Mount of Olives there is a slope. There are cemeteries. People used to think that they were first in line for resurrection if they get close to there. Since it was difficult in those days to     transport the whole corpse, they used to take the heart and bury it there so they would be the first in line for resurrection.

I was doing my retreat there. I was not allowed to stay there at night time. I would walk out of there. People came to fetch me. And I found myself in a busy city. A very strange thing to come out of that state of ecstasy and see all these people, everyone caught up in their trips. You're awake and you see everyone caught up in their trips. Somehow you see the unity. It's like an ant nest. Instead of looking at the ants, you see the nest. That would give you a sense of unity. It's called (ahadiat) or in Jewish language (perhod).

So those are the steps. That's the 'h' of the word 'Allah'. Again to make a parallel with Budd    hism, what Buddha says is that it is outside the wheel. He used words that perplexed me a lot because of the words of Jalaluddin Rumi who says,"The teeming stars give birth to the life eternal". What he says is that which was transient becomes eternalized, is quintessentiated and becomes eternalized. But Buddha says this becoming does not lead to the non become. So there is a break. And the clue is that it is not eternalized. It's everlasting. It's not the same thing. The clue to this is discovering your immortality, discovering your eternity. 

That is think of yourself as a pendulum, The bottom of the pendulum is moving in space and the top is eternal, not changing. Everlasting means that something that is transient has become everlasting. But eternal has nothing to do with any change. That's the 'h' of the word 'Allah". Having awakened beyond life now you awaken in life. To awaken beyond life, that's absolutely what the Yogi calls samadhi. At first you don't perceive the physical world but you remember it. Then you memory becomes quintessentiated. You remember your personality, but now your personality drops out of focus with the quintessence of your being. Your know-how is quintessentiated into wisdom, realization. You find yourself kind of distanced from the world. It's as though you are able to lift yourself beyond the existential world. You see how you had, you hadn't descended. Your consciousness had to focus itself right down into a physical existence. And now you are able to free yourself from that perspective. It's just freeing oneself from a perspective. You've found freedom. The freedom that one longs for. You can actually find it. That was the great proclamation of Buddha. At the end of his retreat under the Bodi tree he said, "It is the freedom from determinism, from causality. We are all conditioned and we have the ability to free ourselves from our conditioning". That's the ultimate freedom. Once you're free, you come back into the world and help people who are not free in the measure in which they can find freedom. That's the whole cycle.

The celestial sphere. As I said, I'm not asking you to believe that there is a celestial sphere somewhere up there. I remember events in my life. I remember one day there was the different gurus of different movements. It was in the seventies I think. They were invited in a monastery in Ohio, I think it was called the Monastery of the Sacred Heart. And we had all these gurus all celebrating together in a cosmic act of glorification. Incredible. Gurus who would normally never meet each other and were sometimes criticizing each other. And here they were all together participating in what I would call a cosmic celebration. And I thought this was the most wonderful thing. This was what I longed for. This was my dream. Something was coming through. It seemed like we were opening the doors between the physical world and the celestial spheres or the skylights, whatever. And I must say that what was coming through was the child. We can learn from the child what we've forgotten. 

I know I'm speaking a lot. I hope I'm not boring you. But I'll tell you another story. Well I was giving a seminar to the leaders at the Abode and I was supposed to lead a meditation or something that evening. I heard that there was at Tienkerton there was the Mass of Bernstein. Someone said, "Don't go there. It's horrible". Now if you say something like that, I'll go there especially to see it. So I played truant, had somebody take my place. And I went to see that Mass of Bernstein. 

It was fantastic. It started with a Greek bass singer who was singing the part of a great priest. People were dancing. Then he would say, "Let us pray". Then everybody would kneel and pray. There was a glorious alter. The whole thing was fabulous, fantastic. Then people would come to him and give him gifts and he would give them blessing. There was this wonderful rapport. That's ideal. This is the way it should be. 

Then there was a wise guy who said, "This is all a show you know". So people were a little bit put off. Then the priest would come again and said, "Let us pray". It was all in all again. Then there was someone who was wiser than the wise guy who convinced the people. His arguments were very convincing. He said, "Do you see that alter? Do you think it's holy? You see it's wood and those candles. Why do you think it's holy? It's in the mind." Then doubt began to corrode the hearts of people. Some of the lay priests started to resign and take off their robes. The the high priest came again and with a lot of courage said, "Let us pray". So people towed the line and they prayed willy nilly. Somehow he had power over them. 

That feeling of doubt began to spread. More lay priests were taking off their robes, divesting themselves. The high priest went behind the scene somewhere and disrobed himself. He came back in a fury and he broke the alter and threw the candles. Everybody collapsed and he collapsed too. It was like the most terrible despair that one could ever have thought. A total collapse. Then out of that darkness, there was a little boy with a candle, a boy of twelve years old who w    as singing a beautiful chant. People were standing up again and had the feeling this is the real thing. The child is bringing the real thing. No show. That's the real thing. Somehow the heavens were speaking to the people of doubt on the earth the language of the heavens. So we've got to listen to that voice because we've become so sophisticated that we've lost the sacredness of our being. 

So we have music here. Could you put on the Webber Requiem? It's a little boy of 12 years old singing the composition of Webber. (music) You see what I mean. There can be times when one is inspired, one is uplifted then something of the heavens comes through. Somehow it is associated with the deep immaculate core in one's own being that can never be defiled. And therefore is illustrated by the innocence of the child before the child goes to school of course. The great art of life is to be able to maintain the innocence of a child in one's heart and at the same time have mastery, power, control, divine power. A combination of the two is a great art.

There are some questions that were asked. One of them is about transcendence. I've been trying to be careful and use the word Universe instead of the word God. But I use the word God when I am quoting the Sufis because that's the word they use and Christians use it too. The reason is that when we use the word God, there are kind of anthropomorphic projections. As my father says,"We do not realize that what we're saying is what we think God is. It's not what God is but what we think God is". So it can be deluding. That's true when you're using the word Universe too. But somehow it's a less personal word. Let's say there are different degrees of Godness. That comes through in Sufism because different terms are used. 

You could compare that to a computer. A computer is also the software. It's the hardware and the software and the chips and everything. So what we mean by God in Sufism is not just the software. When you say transcendent, it's even beyond the software. It's all the different levels. One could illustrate it by a hologram. I don't know whether you've seen a hologram. It's several superimposed pictures. So you can alter your glance to pick up one picture rather than another. They are all superimposed. You have to downplay one image in order to highlight the other. So you're toggling between one and another. If you are able to extrapolate between two pictures, of course that would be fantastic. That's what our eyes do. But we're not able to do that in this particular case. That is what we're doing in meditation. We're downplaying one level in order to highlight another. Eventually we learn to extrapolate between those different levels. That's what we mean by awakening in life. 

Another example of awakening in life would be you visit a beautiful building and you're full of admiration for it. Then you go and visit the architect. And in fact, the architect will accompany you and visit the building the second time. Now when you see the building from the eyes of the architect, you can understand much better all that is to be present in the building. That's like awakening in life. Like being able to see how the software is reflected in the hardware. But there is no way of deriving the software from the hardware. If you were to take a computer to pieces, you wouldn't know the software because you've taken it to pieces. But if you know the software, if you have the technology, you can build a computer. What I mean is awakening in life is being able to see the programming working its way in the nitty gritty. That's awakening in life. 

Yes, some funky questions. I'm sure it could only be from a would be physicist. When visualizing light, why do you feel the sensations you experience have to do with anything other than the breath? Could you picture your brain filling with water or whipped cream and still feel the same heightened awareness because of intensified respiration? Well you know, what does one mean by the breath? I think it's rather a parody. I think there is another question that seems to make more sense to me. I wonder whether somebody is trying to trick me.

I remember the question vaguely. Yes, actually whether you see the different colors of the chakras. No, frankly not. I devised as I said at the beginning of this meeting, we are trying to devise skills that will trigger off experience. Those skills are just devices. I found that by trying to visualize the different colors of the spectrum, I found it helpful when I was transferring my attention from the bottom of the spine to the top of the head because it helped me to lift my attunement from one level to another. I found that ascribing a certain color to a certain chakra was helpful. What's more I'm never talking about seeing light. I'm always talking about feeling light instead of seeing light. 

Now you remember the first evening I gave you a practice which is a very advanced practice. As I said, I'm giving it to you because at least people want to do something that brings about experience. I thought,"well I'    ll give you a practice that is really operative". So you were putting your indexes on your eyes and your thumbs on your ears. And you cutting out the impressions from the environment. The fact is that if you exercise pressure on your retina through your cornea, you're going to have optical illusions. You think you see light. Actually you're deluding yourself. What is more, if you raise your thumbs in your ears, you are exercising pressure on your ear drum. And inside the ears there is what they call the semi circular canals where there is fluid that is circulating in those semi circular canals. And the motion of those molecules is called the Brownian Movement of the fluid in the semi circular canals. So it produces a certain sound. Maybe you're hearing that sound and you think you're hearing the music of the spheres of Pythogoras. Actually you're hearing the movement of the fluid in those semi circular canals. So that's an illusion. 

But there is something paradoxical about it because actually that Brownian Movement somehow reflects the harmony of the stars because everything is connected. It's called the (ent mosaic) effect. And Moses, music comes from the word moses, (mosahe) which means Moses, listen to the word of God, listen. It's the (entmosaic) effect. Everything is connected and it's possible that the light that you see by exercising presser on your retina is of the nature of light. It's not the light that you perceive but what comes through that is important. You stalk light beyond it's physical expression. I don't know about the cream in your brain. Maybe the question is, "Do you see the light?". Of course you don't see the light. It's in your brain. 

It's really based upon science, based upon the fact that the cells of the body absorb light and transmit light, and retain a certain store of light. Of all the cells of the body, the nerves absorb more light than the cells of the muscles or bones or whatever. You can be sure that the brain stores much more light that any other part of the body. That light is continually being drawn into the brain from the environment. The higher frequency passes through the scull. That we know. Light is transmitted through the eyes. Ultraviolet light can pass through the skull. This is based upon scientific knowledge. 

What I'm trying to do is to use that knowledge and see if it corroborates my own experience. So I find that if I'm concentrating on violet light, it gives me a kind of insight beyond the appearance of things. And I've often applied that to try and see the countenance behind a person. That enables me to see much more about a person than appears in their face. It's trying to confirm what scientists are saying. I've talked to a lot of scientists and worked with a lot of scientists, physicists particularly. They are interested in seeing if the experience of the contemplative corroborates their views. I don't know whether you know that the only obstacle, that which stands as an obstacle to a further development of science is the way of thinking. Working with the mind, we are finding new ways of thinking. If we think in a simplistic way, like in the time of Newton, we can't understand the Universe. We can understand something. So what physicists are doing in science is exactly what we're doing in meditation. That rapport is very interesting. If I live long enough, that's what I want to write a book on, meditation and science. 

Now the other thing is kundalini, a Yoga practice. It's too late to do that practice. The Yogis dissected cadavers, dead bodies. They discovered the plexi of the autonomic nervous system that they called chakras. Perhaps they realized that it wasn't just the physical body, but that there was a counterpart in the subtle body. And the whole principle of Yoga is the control of the will over the unconscious, therefore the control of the conscious actions of the body over the unconscious autonomic nervous system. They discovered that the control, that is the conscious action, the sensory motor activities are controlled by the central trunk of the nervous system, and that the autonomic nervous system is regulated by the two lateral trunks right and left of the central nervous system. There are afferent and efferent nerves between the two. So that a some information of the autonomic system ...is transferred to the central nervous system. And the central nervous system is able to take over or control actions that are determined by the autonomic nervous system. That's what Yoga started with. There are practices which allow you to transfer your attention from those two lateral trunks toward the center and the other way around. That's Hatha Yoga. 

In the course of that one is enlisting the upsurge of nervous impulses from the bottom of the spine to the top of the head. Normally, all the motor sensory impulses are governed by the brain. So you are doing the opposite. You are reversing the normal way in which the nervous system functions. If you're doing that you are violating the normal way in which the body functions. Consequently, you can expect a real upheaval and really a very dangerous situation can arise. 

For example, Gobi Krishna was a man who without really wanting to he aroused his kundalini. And he found himself in a state in which he was hearing terrible noises. Flashes of light. Life was becoming impossible. He kept on asking Yogis for a solution. He was rather an amateur. He really didn't really know kundalini. He was just practicing from books. Then there was an unknown Yogi whom he met. He said, "Very simple. You breathe paranayama". That is one closes one nostril and breathes through the other. Breath in through the left nostril and out through the right. Do not breathe alternatively through both. It stopped. Within a few minutes he was cured. It just shows how important the breath is. This is called kindling. It's a word used by physiologists. The way that the plexi at the bottom of the spinal cord can inhibit the action of the brain and take over. That's planing with fire. 

What the Sufis do is there is always the ascending and the descending. So if you work with what one calls in Christianity the descent of the Holy Spirit, then you are counteracting the upsurge of the telluric earth forces. That's why I've been giving priority to the celestial, higher levels of our being rather than the lower ones.

I'm afraid that we have to end here. However, there is a little music that I'd like to end with. First of all a composition of my uncle sung by my nephew, originally sung by another uncle, of the words of my father. Perhaps I might permit myself to sing one of those songs for you. (Pir sings) That's the way that the Sufi music has come into our modern age in a way that is in keeping with our time. Now we have my nephew, David Hopper, who is a much better singer than me, and who is going to sing for on a tape of course. Before you judge my actions, Lord, I pray you will forgive. It's the last poem that my father wrote before he died. (song)

This is a time that we shall be going our different ways back to where we were before we came here, I hope with adifference. I hope that you'll be carrying something of the atmosphere, the vibration, the attunement that was much deeper than the words can ever say. I hope that some of the skills will be helpful to you. But the skills are only there as a ladder in order to get into the essential what our ultimate objective is which is awakening. Not only the awakening of consciousness, but the awakening of conscience so that we will be able to better fulfill the purpose of our lives and unfurl the potentialities of our being. And as you know the ultimate objective is enlightenment. There was a message of light behind all that. That will help you. If you are going through the dark night, remember that it's because you're not aware of your own light. That light will show you the way. 

I want to thank you all for your patience and staying here with me. Sometimes people just leave. I'm trying to be your voice piece. I'm trying to say what you're trying to say. But I'm saying it in a way that is perhaps helpful to you. I'm mirroring your beings. I'm feeling what you deep aspiration is. I think that i f one is relatively sensitive, one is seeking an ideal and to make it a reality. Also I want to thank all those who are behind the scene who have been organizing this and made it possible. 

And of course I hope we maintain some contact on the higher spheres as we say. Perhaps even a more realistic contact. The Abode for example or all the activities in Europe. We have a camp in Switzerland in the mountains. There you'll meet your European friends and discover people who are just like you, but they are European. Germans, French, Italians, Spanish, all kinds. Something happens there. 

Also I remind you that I have a plan to conduct the B Minor Mass of Bach, which I did at Dacau to celebrate my 80th birthday in honor of my     sister Nur. We're going to do it again at the passage of the millennium. It's going to be very difficult because one expects a lot of breakdown. The computer bug, airlines breaking down, the banks closing down. You'll find that you're stuck in Europe and can't get back to the States. So I warn you. Don't allow your enthusiasm to get the best of you. I warn you, we're trying to be realistic. Actually that's a very arbitrary date because that's not even the date of the birth of Christ. It was really on the 21st of December and not on the 1st of January. So it's just an artificial date. And it doesn't really correspond with the passage from the point of view of astrology, from Pisces to the Aquarian age. Where is exactly that date is the date of the dawning of the sun on the day of equinox of spring which is 21st of March. We don't know which yet. Somehow we've created it in our mind as a very important threshold. So we go along with it. It's good to be together when one is going through a very important transition. We like to look to the future with a great amount of hope. 

Let's all stand up and say," Goodbye" to each other. I'm going to play some glorious music which is what I mean by the Cosmic Celebration. Yes the Magnificat of Bach. So if you'll keep a little space in your heart for me so that I can live a little longer. I'll remember some of your faces. So you'll also be in my heart. Bless you.

AUG 25, 1998		Tape 01

I hope I'm not wasting time by saying how sorry I am that I have not participated more in your meetings. But if you only knew the load that I'm carrying every minute, busy busy. This camp embodies the spirit of Hazrat Inayat Khan. As you know his Murshid, when he initiated him before he died and nominated him as his successor, he said, "Go to the West and attune the hearts of people to the music of the soul". Of course Pir O Murshid was a great musician himself. And that's what he did. Behind all that teaching there is that attunement. And he even said, "Be not surprised if the message of the future is given in the form of music". So what we are doing here, we're pioneering for very important work for the future. That's to be able to use this very important language to communicate a universal message. Beyond the Sufi Order, beyond the transmissions, a whole new way of introducing the spirituality into every day life. That's what we're trying to do.

The purpose of this meeting is meditation. I need to make a short preamble. That is that we get so bogged in by our lives that we lose our sense of who we are. There is a tendency, a spill over from the environment. Also we tend to react instead of acting. And if we react, we're not using all the resourcefulness of our being. Now that was illustrated by Beethoven in the 4th Piano Concerto that I often refer to. In the beginning, he describes the pianist as himself and the orchestra as the world. The world comes with a pa pum pum pum. Instead of reacting, hum hum hum hum...That's not reacting. In other words he is saying, "For the moment, I must consult my deeper self". 

Meditation is placing a buffer between the challenge of the world and yourself so that you can really enlist the faculties of your being. Let's see if we can translate this in terms of how we proceed in our meditation. I think I have to add that it's not just a buffer. A temporary buffer of course, but I think it is more a filter, so that one is allowing certain impressions through and rejecting others. Exactly what we're doing with our food. We are rejecting things that we can't assimilate. We have to learn to do that. We don't have that in our will, the ability to do it. How to do it? Can't do it with our will. Well this is an introduction to the stages in meditation. 

You know that if you sit to meditate wherever you are, you'll find that a lot of random impressions keep on hitting you from all sides. They are emotionally charged. You wanted to be peaceful and you find that you are more agitated than in every day life because those thoughts are uncontrollable. And as much as you try to control them, you can't with your will. Therefore you think you can't meditate. Therefore there are skills that enable one to try to face this situation. 

I would say the first thing to do is to reverse that machine. Let's say slow down one's rhythm. There are skills to do it. Because when is set in a certain rhythm, one tends to go on in that rhythm. So it's very difficult to work. I don't know whether you know, there are two settings of metabolism. And of course it has implications in the psyche. One is they call the catabolic state where the animal is in a state in which it can deal with it's enemies and catch it's prey. So it's in a state of alert. Then there is the anobolic state in which the animal is able to sit in its cave and digest its food and it's secure. It doesn't have to protect itself. So it is in the anabolic state that you can get in touch with yourself and you don't have to jump to attention. In the anabolic state the rhythm is much slower. So the breath is a key to shifting the anabolic state to the cataabolic state. The emotions play a leading role there. 

One thing that I suggest especially since this is a music camp, is a piece of music by Alvo Pert called Fratress. It's a violin and piano. It starts rather agitated and energetic. It tries to break the rhythm but it doesn't succeed at first. Then sometimes it gets a little more peaceful. You know that our character resists getting peaceful. Somehow we're in a rhythm and we resist being peaceful. It's something in us. We want to and somehow it stands in the way. He gets again in to a very fast rhythm. And even into a kind of crie de coeur. After having gotten a little bit more peaceful, then there's all of a sudden this outbreak of deep emotions that erupt when you try to meditate. Normally our thoughts are monitored by the circumstance. We have to deal with this and that. Our mind thinks in a way that is helpful to deal with the problems. But when we try to monitor our thoughts, we don't know how to do that. Consequently, our thoughts are random. 

What happens is that the thoughts that are coming through are the flack that we get from the digestive process that is taking place in the psyche. The psyche digests impressions of the psychological level of reality, circumstances and so on. Just as we digest our food. So it's a process of digestion. It's erupts into our consciousness. The unconscious can deal with it much better than our conscious can. So there is no point in trying to deal with it. But we can't reject the thoughts and emotions while the body can. We want to learn how to do this. 

The clue is to be found in the immune system because the psyche has it's immune system, on the same principle as the body. That is the body rejects an implanted organ that doesn't have the same DNA. What is it that makes the body reject that organ? It's the sense of 'me' as opposed to 'not me'. So it's a sense of who we are that will help us to reject impressions that are disturbing. What is more, not who we are but who we are in the course of becoming which is much more important than what we are. Therefore for me the secret of meditation is to downplay the impressions coming from the outside. The only way to downplay them is to highlight those that are coming from from within. So that's a clue to meditation. You can't really reject those impressions. But if you have a strong sense of who you are, that will have prevalence over the impressions coming form the outside. 

Of course there is a second immune system in the body. Because if it were just for the first immune system, we wouldn't be able to take in food. We wouldn't be able to take in anything. In fact, we are continually enriching ourselves by the impressions that are useful. Others that are deleterious. Let us say that in our lives we suffer from an indigestion of impressions, TV, walking in the street, all kinds of things we come across. Very disturbing impressions. No doubt that we can't meditate. The trouble is that it effects our self esteem. And our self esteem is essential for our fulfilling our purpose in life. So we see the tremendous importance of meditation.

So how can we get a sense of not only who we are but how we are unfurling? It occurs to me that this is where we need something concrete. Ideas remain very abstract. But we need to have something tangible, who we are. Something that gives a very clear sense of who we are. That is where Sufism has a very clear contribution to the spirituality of our time. If you look at Yoga and Buddhism, one tends to try to grasp the nonperson dimensions of one's being. In Sufism, particularly in the teaching of Murshid, very clear sense of the uniqueness of each one of us. The importance of our personality and even of our body. The importance of the way that our personality reflects in our body. In other words acknowledging the body which is rejected by some of the older traditions. So there are skill for that. 

The principle behind that, this is a view of the Sufis, is what is gained by life is form. Thoughts and emotions are configured as form. That's what's gained. And the form of your face is not the ultimate. It is that which transpires through that which appears that is your real form. So the technique would be to consider your face as a mask that allows something to transpire but the mast doesn't always let itself be totally configured by your being. It's just like a sculptor working with recalcitrant matter that doesn't lend itself very much to being shaped. Things that we've inherited from our ancestors. A lot of elements have come into the formation of this face. But what we learn to do is to grasp our real countenance behind our real face and eventually our subtle body behind our physical body. 

So that's the real breakthrough in meditation. Now this is so exciting that you can downplay, you don't discard, but you downplay the impressions of the outer world because you are important. Eventually you see that you have impact on the environment. Whereas if one does not realize who one is, one thinks that one is the victim of the circumstances. There is always a degree to which one adapts oneself to the environment and to which one adapts the environment to one's own sense of purpose. The more evolved one is, the more one adapts the environment to one's sense of purpose and therefore to one's being. You build your world. Whether people like it or not you build your world. And they will have to fit into your world instead of trying to fit into theirs. Because then you're lost.

So our first meditation would be consider your face as a mask. And consider that your personality carries features of your role playing. That is the outer, external aspect of your being where there is a kind of spill over with the environment. Now try and grasp the real countenance behind your face. And your real being behind your role playing. Remember that the countenance does not have a profile whereas the face does. It's very difficult for us to imagine a face that doesn't have a profile. But if you have seen Kirlian photographs, you'll see the corona behind your figure. For example, if you've been photographed with the Kirlian process, you can see a kind of outline of your finger. Outside it is an area that is radiant. It doesn't have a definite profile. But it is structured in some way. If you were to see the photographs of Walter Chappell who photographed flowers in ultraviolet light, you can see vaguely the profile of the petals. But you also see the whole radiance around the petals. The flowers look much more beautiful than they do in ordinary light. 

If you think that is what your countenance is like now. And I would say that the best way of doing it is thinking that your countenance is configured in the fabric of light. That you're a being of light and your body is a hard core within this being of light. Or let's say the being of light is a template from which your body is being formed. It's not a matter of seeing light. The only way of seeing it is like feeling the light of your being. To be more concrete you could feel the light around your shoulders and in front of your heart, your chest and even in your back. You can feel light. 

You might say, "Isn't this wishful thinking?". I can assure that there have been laboratory experiments that have not only shown that the body cells absorb light and re emit light, but the body is surrounded by a permanent, like the Kirlian photography, a corona of light which we call the aura that peters out in space. More importantly there is a phenomena of mind over body. So that if we concentrate very strongly on this area of light, it will burn more brightly and extend further in space. You can do that. Concentrate very strongly on this. 

At first it's a zone of light that seems rather amorphous. It doesn't seem to have much of a shape at first. It's just that there is a lot of radiance around your body, your shoulders and even above your head. Then if you think that the cells of the body absorb and emit light, and therefore that radiance which we call the aura, does espouse the aura of your body just like the corona of Kirlian photography. In some way it's an extension of the finger, but it's much more subtle. In other words, your aura is a kind of effigy which reflects your being. 

You could reach a point when you are really convinced, this is the real me. My physical body and my face is derivative. But this is the real me. It's very exciting when you have discovered yourself. And you say, "Ah, just imagine, I never knew that this is me.". Something clicks and you know it is you. 

Now you may be perplexed because it changes. So you might ask yourself, "How do I know it is me?". But you know we are a continuity in change. Just like it's never the same river that flows under the bridge, but it's always the same river. So there is a continuity in there. The face does change according to our thoughts and our emotions. But the aura manifests that change much more than the face. It transpires through the face. But if you can identify with that effigy, then we can make an experiment. Like think of peace. Or think of taking control over situations. Or think of a situation that calls upon your compassion or a situation that calls upon your truthfulness. Those are all qualities that we work on with the wazifa in the Sufi Order. That's what we're going to do. We're going to see how the expression of our countenance changes according to our attunement. And then there is even a further piece to that. In the deep core of that, it's almost like a many tiered effigy. So it's not that simple. One could say many faceted. The deep core is immaculate. It's rather perplexing. At the depth it is immaculate. There are all these different layers. So this is what we're going to work with in the next few days. We have to end here.

...where one is passive towards the impressions in the environment and also the psychological environment. One turns one's attention to who one is, who you are. And to do this we needed to have a clear sense of something concrete. Therefore the form of one's countenance behind one's face, that was a form although it doesn't have a profile. That was configured in that fabric of light. Remember that I said while it gives an impression of ' this is me' instead of one's face or one's personality. We think that we're wearing a mask. And our personality is role playing. Now we've come to what we really are behind the mask. If I remember, we came to a point when we began to see that this form although it doesn't have a profile, it keeps on shifting according to our attunement and to our thoughts. Therefore, it will certainly force us to overcome the idea of 'this is me' as a static thing. But 'this is me' as a dynamic reality that keeps on evolving. That is really what one is instead of thinking of oneself as static. I don't know whether you know that the Jewish translation of the Old Testament from the Aramaic, "I am that I've become", not "I am that I am". So our real being is dynamic. It's in the flow, evolving. That is also very helpful because one would be limited if one thought, "This is me". Then one would be sclerosed in that image and wouldn't be able to change. It's wonderful that one is part of this forward march of evolution. 

So of course, what we'd like to do is to foster that rebirthing of qualities. Concurrently, together with that the new kind of configurations of our subtle body especially our body of light, our aura as it keeps on emerging anew every time that we are able to move from the past into the future. And I quoted the word of Euler who said, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past". That's where we left off. 

That being so, we need to work with the aura, work with light. It's one of the most wonderful practices to work with light. In fact I can't tell you have enchanted I am because I spend my mornings now on retreat from 6 o'clock until 12. Most of my meditations are simply working with light. I know of a group of young people who went to a Catholic monastery in Algeria in the desert and spent the whole time just meditating on light. They came out of that radiant. It' makes all the difference. It's mind over body. Imagination, yes. But the fact is that the body does emit light. It absorbs light. It emits light. And if you consciously try to feel that light, but even if you can't feel it but can imagine that light, a whole radiant area around your body. We did that yesterday. I talked about Kirlian photography. And you could see the radiance beyond the profile of the finger if you photograph the finger with Kirlian photography. If you can't feel that light, and it's feeling not seeing, around your shoulders and in front of your chest and even your shoulder blades and above your head, then it's OK to imagine it because in fact it is there. It has been checked in laboratory experiments. And what is more, laboratory experiments have shown the impact of our imagination upon the radiance of this aura. We're doing something very concrete. 

What I suggest is now working with light now. It would be good if we go through the different stages in the practices leading towards illumination. The first thing is as you inhale, can you think that the star studded sky is really an ocean of light? And that the sun is part of the ocean of light. It's a star. Even our bodies originated in the big bang in the beginning of time which was a burst of light. And that light coagulated into what we think is matter. Light is also matter according to physicists. So that let's say having coagulated, the atoms and molecules of your body are still able to draw in light, absorb light, and emit light. It's not the same as reflecting light. Something happens to the electrons of the atoms. They feed themselves on light. Consequently they free themselves from the constraint of their orbital and start dancing, actually jumping away from the orbital into the next orbital where there is a higher degree of freedom. Then when they have expended all that energy, they fall back into the orbital where they were before. Any extra light is radiated through the aura. 

That's what your aura is. The way that the light of the starry sky has converged into your body cells and enhanced the radiance of your body cells to the extent that they get further energy and start dividing. Of course with mitosis they start dividing much more rapidly then ever before. It's a wonderful indication that light can be used for therapy, to cure people from diseases. It's something that we need to work with. It's a matter of, to start with, imagining it. And you get to a point when you really can feel that light energy particularly of the cells, all that tremendous energy that is being unleashed in the body owing to the light that one absorbs from the environment.

So as you inhale, just imagine that you're, you know when you're sunbathing, your pores open up. So you're in a state of readiness to take in the rays of the sun. Just imagine, it doesn't have to be the sun. It could be the stars. You could do that at night. But you could do that just by your mental representation. I'm sure that it does something to even the pores of your skin. Of course the light penetrates right down into the flesh, into the cells of the body. So think of it as an infusion of energy. Light is energy. Then when you hold your breath after inhaling, just concentrate on the giggling of the cells and sparkling and scintillating of the body cells. Like in a kaleidoscope or fireworks. 

I must say that I find that just working with imagination, trying to pay attention, we call mind over body, I don't think that is good enough, what we call visualizations. I think that it needs to correspond to an emotional attunement. It's a very difficult one because one really needs to smile. One's soul needs to smile. It's very difficult to be happy when we ourselves are involved in so much suffering. And also there is so much suffering all around the world. So it's very difficult to feel at ease smiling when there is so much suffering in the world. So I think that one has to meet rather than just visualizing light. 

I think that one can be joyful and sad at the same time. We mustn't think that one can overcome sadness by being joyous. No, you could be both at the same time. That's why I always represented to myself this dervish dancing on thorns. He has a crown of thorns on his head. And he's dancing with the most utter glee, joy, in fact, ecstasy. The fact is if you are able to conjoin, to join together suffering and joy, and while you're doing it, if you're able to think that at one end of your being you are an individual person with all the trips and hassles and limitations of one's individual condition. At the other end your being is coextensive with the cosmos. So it' is impersonal. Actually it's a matter of transmuting, just like in alchemy. This is transmuting - I don't say this is transmuting suffering into joy - no, I'm transmuting suffering and joy into ecstasy because ecstasy is beyond joy. It's the most wonderful state in the world to be in the state of ecstasy. Then you can smile even though you have all kind of problems, frustrated, things go badly in your life and so on. 

Somehow there is that saving grace which is to be found in this higher dimension of our being which is much more cosmic. Some of that cosmic nature comes through into the personal dimension. But still the only way for this to happen is to first distill, that is transmute, emotion. It's really working with emotion to transmute it. Let's say that the cosmos is born out of ecstasy. Then there is that antinomy that emerges out of ecstasy between joy and pain. And a short cut for this is you don't have to loyal to your sadness. You're not hurting people who are suffering by being happy. In fact you can give them some of your joy. 

There is a kind of paradigm in Sufism. It's called a smiling forehead. It's not one's cheeks that are smiling, it's one's forehead. I don't know exactly what that means. Perhaps it's one's third eye. But it's very high up in one's. It's not one's heart. It's not one's cheeks. It's probably connected with that experience we are all looking for which is awakening. So now we're going to work with that. 

So now we were breathing in. Consciously, we started by identifying ourselves with our body. However we remember that this body was originally a being of light. It developed out of the big bang. In as much as you are identifying with your body, you are absorbing light. It is a fact. It's not a fantasy of mine. It's been measured in the laboratories. You can imagine something that is real. As a consequence, you are enhancing that function of being able to absorb light in the cells of your body. 

As you exhale, then be aware of the radiance that starts in your heart center. It expands and reaches out. I feel it around my shoulders and in front of my heart center. On top of my head it's like a higher kind of light. This is radiant light like that light of a lamp. You could think of yourself as a lamp. I often represent to myself a wonderful picture of Jesus. His heart is a lamp. In the middle of this lamp is a flame. And he is protecting this lamp from the wind and storm. He's walking in a storm. A sense of holding this light, consciously holding this light in your heart wherever you go. It's something I've been doing during my retreat. 

So if you know something about science, you know that the photons radiated by the body or whatever, that they travel through space at 186 thousand miles a second. Which means that your aura eventually hits the stars. This very thought helps you to stop identifying yourself with your skin bound body, that is a body that is enclosed in a skin, because according to science, light is matter. Your body is not here. It is in outer space and it's inter meshed with the stars. So that very thought, of course it blows your mind, does give you a totally different sense of yourself. In fact, much as one would try to expand one's consciousness into making it more and more cosmic, this will do it for you. It is not your will. It's just envisioning the outreach of your being as light as so humongous that there is no way of limiting it. 

Now once you've done that, then the next step. The next step is that you identify with your aura instead of identifying with your body. And since your aura extends into outer space and is inter meshed with auras of other beings and even the light of the stars, you now have a new self image which is absolutely cosmic. 

For one thing, think that the aura is the template in which your electro magnetic, subtle body is being formed. And you subtle body is the template in which your body is being formed, in which the cells of your body are configured. So it is the template of the template. If instead of identifying with the body, which you now consider as a secondary thing as the hard core within this template, from this moment onwards instead of thinking that your body is absorbing and emitting light, you'll think that that light that you are, that cosmic light that you are, is oscillating between converging towards the axis of your body. It's like a vortex. A vortex doesn't have a boundary, for example a whirlpool. Somehow the whole lake gets drawn into the vortex. You can imagine an invisible axis that draws the whole lake in turn - it doesn't all happen at once - into a spiral that whirls around that axis. So what you are really is a cosmic light that is also becoming more and more converged into a very intense light that you think is the aura. 

As you exhale and think that this very intense converged light is now radiating and therefore becoming wider and wider, more and more extensive. So it's like an ebb and flow of light. And the center of gravity of all this is the axis of your body and is a void. The center of a vortex is a void. Which means then that the light of the stars that you are is resorbed in the void and remerges out of the void again but totally new. I shouldn't say re emerges. Let's look at it this way that one doesn't know what happens to the light when it is plunged into the void. All that one knows is that indeed there is an emergence of light from the void. And that's what astrophysicists call a white hole in space where new stars are born. 

This is a totally new way of thinking of it. It means that when you hold your breath, instead of concentrating as you did on the giggling of the cells of your body, you find yourself in a state of suspense which one calls the void. The void is a fullness. But since one doesn't know what's happening, one thinks it's an emptiness, a void. And you are kind of readiness to receive the new emergence of light emerging from the void. 

The Sufis, and Hazrat Inayat Khan in particular, make a difference between radiant light and what my father calls all pervading light. This is born out by the modern theories, David Boehm for example. Because light can be in an explicate state, that is it is radiating from a source that is located in space. But light can also be in the implicate state, like radio waves, that is not located in any particular point in space because it is spread out in space. That is what Murshid calls the all pervading light. So that is the kind of light that emerges in your solar plexus as you're holding your breath. As you exhale, you transform this all pervading light into radiant light that you radiate from your heart center. 

So once more again. You identify with your aura which is coextensive with the light of the cosmos. That as you inhale, you turn your attention, instead of doing what we did previously which was converging that light as you inhale, as you hold your breath you are in a state of expectancy, you might just capture a new dispensation of light that is emerging from within that is not at all the light that you absorbed from the environment. And when you exhale, you transform this all pervading light into radiant light, like the light of a lamp, which you radiate from your heart center. So that one could say that as you exhale, you radiate not only the light that you had boomeranged back from the environment, but in addition to that, this further dispensation of light that has emerged from within.

I have to end here.There's much more to do. And we have tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. We only have two more days. At least we will have done something in detail working with light which I think is the most important thing.

Tape ends 


AUG 27, 1998		Tape 02

Meditations at the Music Camp are very short. So will need to move rather fast. This is the last session and there are things that need to be made clear. These are reflection around what I would say is food of the dervishes called the Zikre. There is no way that I could start introducing it, the circular motion of the head and the head moving up with the sense of awakening beyond life, and then back into life again. 

Since I myself am spending my mornings in a retreat, I'd like to share something of well I would say the perspective opened up by the Sufi dervishes in contrast with other traditions perhaps. You see, if you are able to just think that what you perceive through your senses is only that which appears and that reality is trying to transpire.  And if you try to grasp that which transpires which you can't perceive, that is you can't experience in the usual mode subject - object, where there is a sense of otherness. So you also have to alter your notion of yourself. Generally it is simply confined to one's body consciousness and the consciousness of one's psyche, one's mind and so on. Because the usual formalities that one identifies with one's body, one identifies with one's consciousness as a spectator. And the physical world seems to be other than one's self. 

Now if you could identify with your subtle body, and better still your aura, that also we were doing yesterday, as an emergent reality that keeps on changing. Particularly it changes according to your attunement and your thoughts. It feels like gossamer, a very fine field as scientists call it, a field instead of a substance. Therefore it's more like a vortex. It doesn't have a profile. It intermeshes with the other fields, other beings. You don't have that sense of me as opposed to the world outside. 

A further outlook is to be found in St. Francis of Assisi who says, "I thought I was looking at the world, but the world is looking at me". If you encounter animals like a horse, a dog, a cat of course, they are looking at you. But we find it difficult to have the sense that a flower is looking at you or the leaves of a tree or a tree is looking at you or the world is looking at you. It's just a matter of being able to shift your consciousness into the antipodal standpoint to your own personal standpoint. And then you have a sense of vastness because, ultimately according to Sufis, that which is looking at you is also you. So the sense of is altered in higher consciousness.  

Those are two things. You are always on the look out for you are thinking, "Something is transpiring through this", instead of thinking, "This is it". A flower, a crystal, whatever. Something is transpiring. This is true of one's problems. Something is transpiring through one's problems or that's what is enacted through the problem. One might say that in order to have more precise sense of what transpires one should say that that which transpires is one's qualities. Because one's qualities are so intermeshed with the problems that the problems are not just outside. One generally thinks that one is the victim of the situations. But actually it's good to see the rapport between you and the problem. So maybe the issue is developing qualities or allowing qualities to unfurl in your being which are precisely that which is enacted in your problem. A problem is a challenge. It calls for something else. So there is an interface between ourselves and our problems. 

And if you think that way, you have a sense of awakening from your personal perspective. In the cosmic dimension, the whole Universe is awakening in your awakening. When this happens, of course, on exalts in a state of exaltation. Because when one is free form a perspective. Awakening is freedom from a perspective. It's downplaying a perspective and highlighting another. Every time there is awakening from a perspective, there is a breakthrough of joy. Actually it's because one has grasped something that has freed one from the perspective in which one allows.  

So when you're meditating, this is a clue. Remember that the random thoughts are due to being caught in a perspective. And you can never get rid of those random thoughts. What you need to do is change your perspective. That's what we're doing by sensing that which is coming through everything around you, whether it's the physical world , whether it's circumstances, whether it's in your body, whether it's even in your personality. Something is coming through. So it's dynamic. Otherwise one tends to think as something static whereas you must think of as the whole Universe that keeps on converging and unfurling in a unique way. So it's not just in that sense. And also it's dynamic and not static.  If you think of yourself as the way one get's encapsulated in one's personal self image, it becomes a prison. Every time that you free yourself form that prison, there is a breakthrough of joy, a breakthrough of ecstasy. 

So the prison is a perspective. It's not the circumstances. It's one is caught in a perspective. Like people on drugs can be caught in a perspective. That's what's called freaking out. They cant' get out of it. It's exactly the same thing.  Of course you can't free yourself from a perspective unless you are able to at least prefigure the alternate perspective. For example, if you prefigure that all this is a reality that is trying to manifest. The metaphysics of the Sufis, for the Sufis the existential world is simply the place where the divine intelligence is configured as forms thereby making that intelligence discover its potentialities in a concrete way. To quote the Sufis, Ibn Arabi, for example, God discovers Him/Herself through our discovery of Him/Her through us. It sounds rather complicated, metaphysical. 

But if you pursue that in a retreat or during a meditation, all of a sudden you can see that. Everywhere you look there are just devices, devices that tell something about what they stand for. Just like in the film ET. ET was a face of a turtle and the voice of an old woman. These were devices in which Spielberg was communicating to us his intention. So in the same way, you can think that God is disclosing His/Her intention by means of devices because we would not be able to grasp that intention except in an advanced stage. 

In fact it is an advanced stage where one's intelligence is awakening into the divine intelligence. That's seeing things from the antipodal point of view, not the cosmic but the transcendental. Now that might be difficult for you to follow. We started by the cosmic, right? The world is looking at me. And that's what you do in the first part of the Zikre, La illaha. It's like a circle or like a spiral. There is a certain point when that circle becomes like a vicious circle. That's what Buddha means by the samsaric wheel. So you get caught. It's not a prison so much as a vicious circle. And you get caught in it. And we have such longing for freedom. The only way to free ourselves, to escape from the vicious circle is on a tangent. Because if the circle becomes a spiral, then you're gradually getting out of it. 

Now that is a very dramatic change in one's outlook. Because now, and this is what we're trying to do in retreats, is trying to look at things from the divine point of view instead of the personal point of view. And you could say, "Well, how do you know? What do you know about the divine point of view?". The Sufis have answers to that. It is that the archetypes are known through the exemplars. For example, roundness is known through round objects or rosehood are known through roses.  You could say that seeing things form the divine point of view would be like seeing the archetypes, and furthermore seeing how those archetypes are exemplified in exemplars. 

So our psyche is an exemplar of the divine archetypes. That's why we're repeating the wazifa. What we're doing is we're trying to, starting by the qualities that we know are in ourselves like compassion and truthfulness and joy and whatever, nobility, majesty and so on. Start with qualities as you can assess in your own person, "I have a certain amount of compassion but not much. And I have a certain amount of joy, but not much". There is some limitation in these qualities that we have. Somehow we have that capacity to imagine a quality more wonderful than we've imagined so far. And that bears out with the word of Henri Poincare, the French mathematician, who says, "Infinity represents the ability of the human being to imagine a larger number than the largest number that you've imagined'.  So we have that ability to imagine a quality more wonderful than we are exercising in our own personality. 

And I must say that the springboard behind that ability is emotion. Of course there is a mental ability that is triggered off by it. But it is glorification.  That's why people go to a church, a synagogue, a mosque and so on. A need for the sacred. Somehow or other, one has a kind of intuition that what we experience in the world is like the exemplification or actualization of a sublime level of reality which we ascribe to God. It gives us great exaltation to try to project how these qualities could be in their perfection.  Therefore we ascribe them to God. As Pir O Murshid said, "When we say God, what we don't know is what we're talking about is what we think God is, but is not God". But still the fact is that by projecting these qualities as one imagines them to be perfect upon God as one would like God to be, one is awakening those qualities in one's self, or arousing those qualities in oneself. 

Therefore there is not doubt that prayer is the most creative act. And yet most people don't see that. That's outlined in the word I think it's in the Koran otherwise it's in the Hadith, "Allah al Malulk fil ita kadat", that is God created through your prayers as you, God created as you through your prayers. The consequence is that those qualities are beginning to unfurl in you because somehow you've been exalted by imagining how they would be in their perfection. It's a very creative act. So Meditation is not just stress reduction. Meditation is ultimately prayer. Even if you think that what I think is God is not what God is, somehow one is orienting oneself towards a dimension which frees one from the limitation of the worldly life and one's own self image. And it carries in it a transforming emotion that totally transforms your being. Otherwise one is low key. So it's like the most precious jewel that there is is to be able to nurture this divine splendor. 

And ultimately divine meaningfulness, not just divine splendor, as on projects it upon God up there. But you see, for Sufism we are bipolar. At the bottom pole of our being, we are an individual. And at the top pole, we are all coextensive with, we are one being whom we call God. So it's rather paradoxical. One isn't used to thinking that way. It's like reconciling the irreconcilables. But that's the way it is. If one is able to do that, it frees oneself from one's sense of identity which is one's prison. There are many prisons. But perhaps the ultimate prison is one's sense of identity. That's not one's self image. One's self image is a prison. Butone's sense of being an individual is perhaps the ultimate prison. 

You see how very different these ideas are to the ones in which we've learned God up there inaccessible and us down here miserable worms. As Pascal said, "That's passe". It's a very deceptive way of thinking. It gives power to the Church to be the intercessors between God and man, or the gurus of course. So I know it sounds metaphysical, but you can actually do it in your practices. I think it's the emotion. It's not just your will. It's the incredible emotion exhalation of trying to have a sense of splendor so that beauty is only the way that splendor is configured in forms.  It could also be the beauty of a person's character. That is also form according to Sufis. But that's the way in which you're always conjoining the archetype with the exemplar. There is a word of the Sufi, no it's in the Koran, "There is nothing in the heavens that does not have it's likeness on the earth". There is a link between these two, that's called a tenuous link, tenuities. That means a very fine link. There is a word of Ibn Arabi who says, "And the angels build a bridge between the two". 

I know it sound poetic. But if you are meditating, your access to the celestial spheres which is the ladder between the two, requires of you to return or retrieve the child in you. You can't just imagine it. You have to do it. It's got to have it's application in daily life. One can't bear resentment any more. I'm talking about the baby in you, children lose that celestial attunement very quickly especially when you go to school. One develops an ego in order to protect oneself.  The trouble is that angelic attunement doesn't offer any protection. It's the other way around. You're defenseless. If you wean yourself of your ego, then people take advantage of you. That's the price you pay. That's the only way to have access to the celestial spheres.

In terms of light, because that's what we were working with yesterday, to start with you instead of identifying with your subtle body which is like gossamer, you can identify yourself with your aura of light. Now I tried to convince people that this is not wishful thinking. This is not just imagining things or hallucinating. One really does emanate light. That's the first thing.  While you're meditating, if you're able to identify yourself with your aura, the emotion is so great that you find that it's rather boring to think about your problems. Otherwise problems force themselves upon you.  You think, "I have plenty of time to think about them, but now I'm into something fantastic".    In the Zikre, that is when you're whirling. That is when you're whirling your aura. First of all you're whirling your electromagnetic field. Then at a certain advanced stage, you're whirling your aura. Then as you head comes down in the Zikre, you're interfacing the void in the center of that vortex that you are. 

The condition of light in that state, which is a vacuum, is quite different from radiant light. That is what my father, Hazrat Inayat Khan calls all pervading light. Ibn Arabi amongst the Sufis recognizes these two different types of light, the radiant light and what one calls the unseen light. In terms of science, it could be what one calls the light field. I'm not sure. But in terms of Dr. David Boehm it is the implicate state of light instead of the explicate state of light. That is explicative light would be light that is emitted by a source which is located in space. Like that tree is here and the other tree is there. That's a kind of explicative state. But in the implicate state, everything is intertwined like radio waves. Light is not then radiant but all pervading. 

So you think of this all pervading light as emerging in the center of the vortex instead of just boomeranging back the light that you absorb form the the environment. So it's a new dispensation of light that is emerging from within and accrues to the light that you emanate, radiate as you exhale. Then there is that, you see you had started with the cosmic dimension, then you returned inside what one might call the internal dimension. Now one wants to lift oneself up through the planes. You cannot do it with your will. The clue is you is the first plane that you discover is the celestial plane. I can't say you've got to believe in angels. I can say that when I look into the light of the eyes of babies particularly, sometimes grownups, in particular those I've meditated with amongst the holy beings I've met in the world. I must say it is reminiscent. It gives me a sense of déjà vu. It makes me feel, "I know this. It's familiar". Somehow we have gotten it. 

I see the eyes of people being covered by the shadows of the world, selfishness, resentment, hatred, jealousy, of course it can lead toward cruelty, ruthlessness. And the light is gone. What a pity. And you can't find it back again. That condition is rather heavy. It means that one has to confront one's guilt with absolute honesty because honesty is the key to the celestial sphere. You can't justify yourself anymore. You can't justify yourself to other people or to yourself. So you're defenseless.  It's got to be accompanied by a pledge not to do it any more. That will free you to some extent, give you remission from guilt but not altogether. It's called the divine grace. Then overcoming resentment, well it means that you have room in your heart for people who make it difficult for you to love them. That's the angelic, the angel. That's a transit. 

Now you discover a different kind of light to both the physical light and the light that emerged from within which we called the all pervading light. It's a different kind of light. They call it celestial light. It doesn't matter. To do this you have to transmute your bodiness. That would take us very far to exactly say how it is. But it's like a kind of alchemy. Now I'm going a little bit too much in detail now. But you identify with your nervous system rather than your muscles, or the hormones of your endocrine glands, or the enzymes that do the replication of the RNA from DNA. That very subtle chemistry of the of the body represents the way that the cells evolve in order to become better instruments of divine intelligence in you. Somehow as you move up though the planes, you are really schlepping this transmuted form of your bodiness upwards instead of leaving it behind. Same thing is true of your mind getting to the higher levels of thinking.  So it's a different type of light. 

As I said yesterday, you can stalk light beyond the way it can be perceived. You are reaching upwards into that which I wanted to bring in at the end of our work yesterday. That is that light is divine intelligence, luminous intelligence, intelligence as the ultimate form of light. This is where we have to end. That moment is what the Tibetans call the clear light of bliss. That is what is meant by awakening into intelligence rather than consciousness. 

Tape ends


SEP 05, 1998		Tape 01

I see quite a number of new faces.  We are dedicating these few hours, days together, to fulfill I think one of the greatest needs of sensitive people.  It's very difficult to define it in words but somehow there's a --as one's thoughts evolve one has a feeling that one is caught in a perspective.  It was like people under drugs -- can find themselves caught in a perspective and "freak out" as one says.  So we are also caught in a perspective in our daily way of thinking and acting and (inaudible).  

And when one realizes that one begins to suffocate where there's a feeling, well I'm missing out on something so important in my life, how can I get it?  And, of course, I would like to define what that is and words that are used to define it like awakening or illumination, but I'm very wary of words. I've become wary of words.  What we want is experience.  Now to achieve this goal this is a very, how can I say, far goal difficult to  reach.  And so it's almost like  (inaudible) or you know like the kind of skills that are required to obtain this objective.  Enormous, its like, you know, to be able to conduct an orchestra or a choir, or like hang-gliding, or I don't know, skiing or what whatever, rock climbing you know to play the (inaudible) of Bach so on.  The kind of skills that are required to attain illumination is enormous. 

You can't expect that in a few minutes by, you know, the guru says, puts his hand on your forehead and you fall on the ground and you bought ecstasy and it cost you a hundred dollars.  Well, so what we want to, we have in mind for this session is to explore the skills and practice the skills that would lead eventually towards our goal which is in infinite regress, we can never attain that goal because it is always further.  You can't say I'm illuminated, I've got that in my pocket now.  No, it's just always further.  

So were going to start with very basic steps, however, I would make a note of caution here, because, of course, what we are doing is very challenging to commonplace minds and emotions.  In fact it does impact us in our emotions very deeply and consequently my note of caution is that if you feel that this is getting too much for you, your are getting too spaced out, then I think the best thing you can do is to just stand up and walk out.  I don't have any objection to that.  I'd rather that than you feel that you've got to out of politeness stay there and you're watching the time because you are very bored with what that old man is saying.  So simply walk out it's OK.  There's no harm in that.  The worst thing that could happen is something that has happened sometimes and that is all of a sudden in the middle of a silent retreat somebody starts screaming and then I get the blame, of course.  and everything is like you shouldn't have done this, you've opened doors now and so I would say if there is anybody here who has a history of pathological mental condition then, I mean I know, I don't know what the definition of normality is.  I think it's probably the most boring thing to be normal, but still there are kind of limits, you know, so anyway for my sake, you know, I mean for all of our sake, if you feel like  screaming go far away and then scream all you like and  even you could even shatter the trees if you like but spare us because we want to get in a peaceful state.

You see the themes of our meditation are our problems.  And so I'm very aware of the criticism given that is given to  spiritual groups called the spiritual bypass.  One is high in a euphoric state and spaced out as one says and consequently not able to deal with ones problems.  It takes responsibility in life -- kind of evasion from life but of course, and I think, probably quite a number of psychotherapists here there always are, but there is also a such a thing such as a psychological bypass.  Not dealing with one of the most deeply engaging impulses or needs of the human being (we could) place at the soul level and which is, of course, is very difficult to find. but this is exactly what we are trying to meet.

The format of this meeting, it depends upon you, I'm here for you.  I'm here to serve you.  I want to know what you need what you expect and if you if there's something that you feel is not being addressed then please leave a note here.  We have a basket here so that you can leave a note so that I'll be able to listen to the to you what your feedback is.

If we really want to derived the greatest benefit from this then I think its got to be a silent retreat.  And I think a lot of people are expecting that and hoping that we will have a silent retreat.  On the other hand I find that it can be awkward when you want somebody to pass the salt at the table and you have to write it down.  It's very awkward and sometimes you are bubbling over with thoughts and you want to talk to somebody and there's a rule you're not to talk and so it makes it very difficult.  I would say if you feel a desperate need to talk, then perhaps you might get in, find a place where you can talk with someone, a little bit away from where people are on silence.

We want to give you every kind of assistance we can because, as I say, it is very challenging, very challenging, if you're not used  to it.  And consequently we will have explanations for those who have no idea what we are talking about but those who don't need these explanations need not listen to those explanations so you can just go and meditate on your own so at the break, in the morning, and in the afternoon have a break so that you can go and sit somewhere in nature.  Fortunately the weather is nice, it's a bit cold but still if you can, I think it sometimes very,  I think when I find it my, meditate better in the cold than in the heat.  So you can find a place and do the practices which we were doing during the session so that you can do it yourself.  Otherwise,  I don't want to make you depend upon me I want you to become independent so you can (monitor) your own.  

So at, during those session when these explanations, and I suppose you have to stop.  There's no other way.  Anyway, it's not the kind of talking that one does when one is chatting about the weather or politics or whatever.  So there's a saying in India  "one tends to bring the world the ashram.".  So keep the world out of the ashram.  There's you have how many days now in the year, three hundred and something -- sixty.  Well I don't know exactly how many days are in the year but anyway you have a lot of days in the year to listen to TV, to worry about politics, and all kind of things. -- to listen to rock-and-roll but here let us make and exception.  Let's say that this is kind of an oasis of, I don't like to use the work spirituality because nobody knows what it means but let's say to be high -- to be high -- to find a natural height which is calling to manifest itself in you and which seems to be doing everything to not be high somehow, and you know how miserable one is when one doesn't feel high, but most of the time one is miserable because very rarely one is high.  So people ask me, "Pir Vilayat how do  you keep high"?  And I must say that I would like to give the answer in a few words but I see that if requires all that skill that were, we've been talking about.  But in short, I would say, to accept to live with pain, and to be heroic enough to find joy while one is suffering.  It a kind of a, the hero in you, the (pending) hero in you is called upon and that's the way to be high.  Well there are other ways, I mean this is one aspect.  

OK, so what we would like to do is let us start making a trial test, especially for those who have never meditated, so I'm sorry, I apologize for those who are advanced meditators.  We'll have to start from scratch but eventually you'll find that it's on par with what you are doing.  And so especially for, and anyway it's good, even if one is an advanced meditator it's sometimes good to start from tabula rasa, as one says, and start from scratch, as one says.  And then we can build from that in two-and-a-half, two-and-a-quarter days, and we're going to have to build rather fast.

So now imagine that you, OK you are sitting and you've had a very busy day and you're kind of very upset by -- somebody insulted you and you're really angry.  You're heartbeat has gone up and your blood pressure's gone up and you'd like to punch him in the face but it's not done these days so then you feel resentment and so on and so forth.  Now you want to meditate.  So what do you do?  OK,  Well, you see one can't force oneself to slow down because, you know,  the machine is already set at a certain pace and it has all kind of implications in the body, for example.  One is in the catabolic state which is a state of (anxiety), catch prey and so it'll protect themselves or one is a state of alarm.  (telephone ) deal with one problem after another all at once.  You know the kind of thing one can find oneself in life.  

So, you find that your mind and body resist slowing down.  So it's got to be done gradually.  I find personally that I can get help from music.  There's a piece of music that I recommend to get yourself in a more peaceful state.  A piece of Arvo Part called Fratres Tabula Rasa.  It starts in the rather excited rhythm in which we find ourselves in daily life.  It's a, with the violin's playing rather, not erratically but fast.  Then he slows down and then.  Then you see there's a kind of resistance to slowing down and there's a sort of (cree de cour) as one might say, that, well, I can't stand this piece, you know I'm used to activity.  So, and you start again he starts again and then he goes on like that and eventually at the end it's slow down, slow down, slow down, and then you find yourself in the place of peace.  And the music does it for you.

There's a story of Sri Yukteswar, who was a great yogi, of course, a teacher of Yogananda, and Yogananda was a young man at the time and they were sitting in a room somewhere and there was -- a cobra came in.  And Yogananda wanted to run-away and Yukteswar said no, no, no you stay there.  And then Yukteswar beat a rather fast beat with his hands and the cobra started dancing and then he slowed it down and slowed down and slowed down and eventually it was very slow and the cobra slithered away.  If Yogananda, if they had fled the cobra would have chased them.  

The same thing with life -- life is challenging you and if you try to run away from it, it will eventually get you.  And if you try to face it with force then there's a conflict and it's a no win situation.  So there's a wise way of dealing with this.  Now the secret of -- maybe we'll play that at some point, but it's rather long so, but the secret of getting into a rhythm which is conducive to meditating.  In physiology it's called the anabolic state and the catabolic state.  The state where the animal is in it's nest or in its cave and able to digest its food without being a state of readiness to meet attacks.  So when you are meditating that is the kind of situation which is conducive to meditating.  And that is the reason why most meditations start with breathing practices.  And the technique consists, of course, in slowing down the breath, gradually slowing it down but don't want to force it.  You get to a point when you're totally in harmony with, let's say you consider your breath as part of the ebb and flow of energy in the universe, which is exactly what it is.  Like a wave within the sea.  Eventually you get in, it is the universe that is breathing, the cosmos which is breathing in you instead of you imposing you're worries upon the breath, but to start with you have to take control and eventually the cosmos takes over.  

So let's start with this very simple practice.  Now it's just a matter of being conscious of your exhaling and what you need to do is to contract your abdomen and the eventually  your chest as you exhale.  And then dilate your abdomen, then your chest as you inhale.  Now the secret is to evacuate all the polluted gasses as you exhale and   therefore continue to exhale a little longer next time.  And then you find you inhale without effort.  Now once more now you're going to use your will to try and evacuate all the polluted gas because no one even only uses one-fifth the capacity of one's lungs.  Now there are thoughts that could be associated with the breath.  For example, as you exhale, although your body is contracting, your consciousness is expanding and your magnetic fields are expanding.  And as you inhale you're turning within.  Now at first turning within seems to be like being aware of your thoughts or your emotions instead of being aware of -- instead of  targeting the problems and the environment, the  psychological environment.  But later we'll see that one has not yet reached the depth of one's being by introspection.  But there's a wonderful sense of expansion, the sense of expansion of your being is very gratifying because one feels so confined to one's -- the general outreach of one's consciousness.  In fact, confined by one's sense of identity because one thinks of oneself as skin-bound.  Skin-bound: that is me up to my skin and outside that other than me.  

That's the usual rather simplistic way of thinking.  So what I'm suggesting now is that you -- can you just do this:  Now see if you can feel a kind of an area around your, let's say your shoulders and arms and chest.  Like a kind of magnetic field  -- like a kind of power field, force field -- like for example the magnetic field around a magnet..  It's a field, it's called a field because it doesn't have a boundary, it doesn't have a profile and it's very, it's of a different nature to what one assumes as substance.  Because its like radio waves,  everything is everywhere, so it's not located in space the same way.  So if you can just feel that.  It's a very wonderful feeling too, it gives you power.  You're conscious of a lot of power, a lot of power around your body.  Normally that's what all one knows about, the magnetic field.  There's the way that it fashions for example.  

Metal filings in a kind of pattern, you know, perhaps you've done that you've had a magnet and you've thrown metal filings around it and then you find that it -- there's a kind of pattern around the magnet.  So that's all that one normally knows of a magnet.  But now, so just think of that -- think that this power field does have some configuration but at first one isn't very much aware of it.  One is just aware  -- one feels it -- in fact, I feel it vibrating very fast, very fast.  So too fast to have any sense of the individual oscillations but I find that by being aware of it, it vibrates more intensely.  In fact, I think of my breath as the stick that hits a gong because the molecules in a gong are vibrating but we don't know it yet but if we hit it then we are giving it energy and consequently then it begins to resonate in a way that we can hear.  So I find that if I can direct the breath I can think of that field as I exhale.  It seems to vibrate more intensely.  Just like a gong and in fact one of the things that I would suggest you do is to listen to a tape with gongs -- we have a tape here with gongs or bells or whatever or wind harp -- of course the wonderful sounds of the Rudra Vina in India, just a lot of vibration with overtones.  

Now the beauty of this is that it doesn't have a boundary, that field does not have a boundary.  It peters our, it seems to peter out at least the jagged ends, but there's no way of knowing where it peters out.  In fact, it probably never does peter out but it just keeps on reverberating in the cosmos. So that your breath is enhancing the power of your being, the power of your body.  You're arousing latent forces by simply connecting or exhaling with being conscious of highlighting, let's say your -- what I call the magnetic field.  Actually, it's probably a life field, it's more than just a magnetic field. Now that will give you a certain amount of joy, as a matter of fact.  It gives you a certain amount of joy.  We don't know -- maybe one of the reasons is because you are -- it frees you from the confinement of your self-image of your body as being,  bound by your skin.  Because we all have such a need for freedom and this is a very tangible experience of freedom from one's concept of one's bodiness.  

Now as you inhale, you see as I said, all that we know working with -- demonstrating magnetic field of a magnet, the pattern around the magnet.  Of course, in scientific laboratories one discovers the tremendous flow of energy within the magnet -- the ionization of the electrons and so on, positive and negative charges.  So that, of course, escapes the knowledge of most of us but, however, as you turn -- as you inhale.  We said that we turn within, well you can try and feel -- you know that the cells of the body are jiggling and, in fact, the electrons within the atoms of the molecules of the cells are actually vibrating at a very fast rate.  So one doesn't know exactly -- maybe one can't feel that but, however, I think that if you turn within and try to get into the consciousness of the cells of your body, and one can really do this, you'll feel the vibrations of the cells.  At least if you don't feel (inaudible) it's so fast that you can't feel the individual oscillations but you can feel a kind of effervescence within your body.  And you know there's such a thing as mind over body so that by the fact of throwing your attention to your cells in your body,  you'll arouse their activity and consequently they'll vibrate more intensely and this very wall may be a secret for healing -- self-healing, to enhance the activity of the cells because if you arouse their energy they will start dividing off rapidly and it is that which is the secret, let's say -- eternal youth is probably an exaggeration, but say remaining fairly young as one gets older.  It's a secret.  

So you feel the wonderful effervescence of energy within your body that is very exhilarating.  And so once more it gives you a thrill and so it contributes to making you feel high.  Now shall we carry this a little further because, you know one can hold one's breath between inhaling and exhaling.  So try to do that.  In my mind I always think I'm exhaling first before inhaling and then holding the breath after that because one has to first evacuate the polluted gasses, but not only the polluted gasses, but just think that you are ridding yourself of a lot of emotional tension as you exhale -- you're diffusing it in the cosmos.  Therefore, when you inhale you are taking new energy into your magnetic field from the cosmos, from the environment -- which is not polluted, you see the physical environment is so kind as to resolve one's pollution but one mustn't overdo it.  So then think that when you are inhaling now you rid yourself of a lot of tensions and consequently you're able to take in a fresh dispensation of energy from the cosmos, from the environment, that is not polluted to replenish your being.  And as you -- since you're turning within you'll find that it is as though you had,  you had, as I say replenished your magnetic field and the field inside your body with new energy.   And consequently the cells are going to start to jiggling more intensely and as I say dividing themselves in the process.  It's a primitive form of reproduction which is called mitosis; the cells divide -- proliferate.

Now, if you hold your breath after inhaling, then there's a whole new pattern that comes into your imagination.  You see our body has imagined it as a frontier, that is a boundary that is, as a skin but we're discovering something deeper, a deeper reality which one might call the subtle body and which is much more the nature of radio waves for example than trees, for example. or billiard balls.  So it's of a different nature -- everything is everywhere, like a totally different kind, condition of matter which Dr. David Boehm calls the implicate state.  So that you're life field, or subtle body, or magnetic field or whatever you'd like to call it is really something like a vortex.   So a very good illustration of a vortex is for example, a hurricane for example.  For example a situation in water with the whole -- the water of the lake gets drawn into the center, the axis, and then eventually the other way around, that water starts expanding, diffusing into the lake and then more water gets drawn into -- that's a vortex.  So that's what we're like -- that is what our subtle body is like.  That means that there's not only, the energy is not only diffused as you exhale in the environment but as also resorbed in the void in the center.

So think of your solar plexus as a void or let us say as a threshold leading into the void.  And all that we mean by the void is a situation that  where we don't know what is happening.  (inaudible) was illustrated by Dr. (Ch?) by Professor (Ch?) in France, who is a physicist and who said that imagine that you can measure the velocity of flying fish when they're above the water but if the water is murky you can't measure what happens to them when they're under the water.  So, that's what we means by the void; it's an area that escapes our consciousness but where something is happening, a process is happening that not only escapes our consciousness but which escapes our will -- where the cosmos is conforming itself within us without participation of our will and eventually, then at some point, the new dispensation emerges over the threshold between the unconscious and the conscious and now we can use our will to customize the new dispensation according to what we would like it to be.

I hope you understand what I said.  So, hold your breath after inhaling and at that time think: well there is not way in which I can be aware of what's happening -- the cosmos takes over from my will and my consciousness and I've lost my sense of location in space so I don't think, I'm not aware that I'm sitting here, whatever that means, and I've lost my sense of time.  So, one is in a state of suspense. And you see the beauty is that if you have exhaled, taken a long time for exhale, then you find that you are able to imbibe, to inhale much more oxygen as you inhale and the consequences is that you will be able to hold your breath much longer.  And that's a very valuable condition to be in where you are in a state of suspense.  It's just like the metronome that has stopped its beat at the end of its swing on one side before it swings to the other side.  It's the state of suspense.  And it is in that condition, in that situation, that you can be reborn again, that you can be renewed.  It's in that condition that creativity takes place -- in the passage from the unconscious to the conscious at the moment passing through the threshold.

So don't try to understand what is happening there but the beauty there is that you can find yourself in a peaceful state without being disturbed by your thoughts.  I often think of an image that given in Buddhism -- Buddha who sits in the middle of a storm and everything is rushing about around him but where he sits is peaceful -- perfectly peaceful.  And perhaps you know that the center of a hurricane is a vacuum -- totally peaceful.Now it's not a condition to perpetuate, in fact we couldn't because it only happens while you're holding your breath but still it's a skill that enables you to find peace while all around you there's all kinds of thoughts, activities, and emotions that are disturbing.  It's not an escape, it's just a level of your being that is subject to level where there's a lot of agitation.  Like for example, one assumes that the depth of the sea is peaceful and those waves are only at the surface. So you can do that now.

o you may think that the thoughts and emotions that have become sclerosed and therefore are disturbing to your being -- they get scattered into the vastness of the cosmos as you exhale and that in fact it's more like your personality, or something deeper than the actual thoughts and emotions that gets resolved in the void in the center.  So there's two conditions in which there's a scattering of energy.  One is scattering as you exhale and the other is at the end of the inhaling -- being resorbed in the void.  And as I say, the beauty is that the cosmos takes over is able to deal with things that one isn't able to deal with oneself so that as exhales again, if we are very aware -- you'll discover that you're reborn.  You see one has to really die before...  

END OF SIDE ONE
SIDE 2

..the wisdom of the cosmos to rebuild your being better than you were before.  And you will comes in at the moment when there's no dispensation passes over the threshold from the unconscious to the conscious.  That is when you can determine how you want to be.  You're not totally in the hands of, let's say fate but let's say the action of the cosmos but as you know the will of the cosmos is customized in each our free wills.  But I call it customizing -- it's something that is cosmic and becomes homonized, that's a word of Tellhard de Chardin,  through your own personal incentive.  And that's what creativity is about.

Let us say as you exhale you rid yourself of what you want to rid yourself of.  That does not mean that you are being dissolved into the cosmos.  One might think it is so because you know that, for example if you throw a (inaudible) on the surface of a lake and then you have eddies and you can see the individual eddies, of course, but eventually the eddies compose together, so that you've lost the sense of each individual eddy in what in science is called a wave-interference-pattern.  Now, however, in physics one knows that one can retrieve those eddies -- they haven't been lost.  They composed without losing somehow their specific identity.  So it's when you expand your consciousness in the cosmos you haven't really lost yourself.  It's just that you've lost your awareness of your individuality but it's still there.

Whereas what takes place when you turn within is different because here you are -- it's really a whole being that is passing through a very deep process of change.  It is being resorbed so it's not the same thing  but still I -- you know illustrations are never perfect but I have an illustration in my mind that is -- I find very helpful.  I don't know whether you know this kind of situation in which you think it's a flower, in nature you think it's a flower and you blow on it and all of the sudden all of the little bits and pieces start scattering in the wind and then if you sit there and wait very patiently without blowing again they come back and form themselves into the flower again.  It's an amazing case.  So now do they get back exactly in the position in which they were before?  We don't know but it is possible in order to be able to evolve one needs to accept collapse and trust that the cosmos will build us up again.

So this will help us to perhaps now deal with our problems because so far what we've been doing is in the nature of therapy.  For what we've been doing is "healing" like getting rid of thoughts that are disturbing and emotions that are disturbing, not only as they diffuse in the environment but also as we turn within.  So maybe we have to start by therapy.  But we have not been dealing with our problems, really trying to free ourselves from the stress of these problems.  Now I think we need to deal with our problems.

So, would you like to stretch a moment?  Stretch your arms and just relax.  Some of you are tired from the journey coming over.  Yes you can sigh.  It's a very good thing to sigh.  Ok, please sit down again, you don't need much time to relax.  

So now, as I said, we'll make an experiment.  So now, OK, now you don't know how to meditate, supposing you don't know how to meditate and you sit there and try to meditate and so what happens?  We can experiment.  Well, I suppose that you find that a lot of random thoughts start hitting your consciousness.  The don't seem to have any coherence and you can't get a (inaudible) and they're mostly charged and you think well, I don't know how to meditate because I'm not getting anywhere.  Your are quite right, there's no point in continuing that.  And you don't have, one does not have the kind of will to control these thoughts.  You must not think that you can develop the kind of will to control these thoughts.  It's like when a -- if you venture to sit on a race horse it's starts running away with you all you can do is hold on.  You cant expect to hold back all you can do is hold on.  That's not going to help you.    So what do we do?  Well you see the reason for that is because you're consciousness is turning towards the outside -- towards the circumstances in your life and towards the environment, physical environment, the psychological environment and that continues to live in your psyche because when one turns within then the world, such as we experience it, ordinarily continues to live inside you in your psyche.  And so it's just like one was eating food and now the body is digesting that food.  So only impressions and the thoughts and the emotions of one's encounter with the environment are being digested in the psyche and it seems absolutely chaotic and normally one isn't conscious of it but if you meditate you become conscious of it.  

Normally one is monitoring one's -- one doesn't have to monitor one's thoughts by one's will because one's -- the problems in one's life force one to -- one's thoughts in a certain direction.  But now when you turn within you don't have -- the circumstances are not monitoring your thoughts and you find that you can't monitor them yourself, so you're lost.  So the skill, let's say meditating is to downplay your concern about your problems -- downplay, that is you don't push them aside, you downplay them and to highlight the qualities of your being.  Let's say try to get to know yourself instead of being concerned with outside.  First, know yourself.  Eventually you'll see the impact of yourself upon the circumstances but if you don't know yourself then you don't know what the impact you can have on the circumstances.  So for the moment you downplay.  That doesn't mean that you throw them aside -- you downplay them.  It's just like in a hologram, for example, you have two images, for example, you can highlight one and downplay the other or then you can do the opposite.  It's just like that.  So you downplay it and now you just think of qualities in you.

That's incidentally for those mureeds, of course those initiates -- that's the reason we attach so much importance to what we call the wazifa.  Because now you're dealing with yourself in (inaudible) circumstances and eventually it will alter the circumstances but you're dealing with yourself.

Now there are different ways of doing it -- different levels of oneself, so let's start with -- well I'll start with an image.  Let us -- you see perhaps we are not aware of the fact that most of the time we are reacting instead of acting.   And if you react, you short-circuit.  You're not using all the capacities in your being.  The brain chakra is -- there are two functions in the brain, one is circuits and other is holographic -- holistic.  So the first one is circuits, (inaudible) if you're crossing the road then there's a car coming then you don't have to use all your know-how, or your wisdom -- kind of short-circuit your body reacts.  But when you have to deal with your life, then you have to use all your faculties.

Now this is illustrated marvelously with Beethoven, I've said this many times, of course, but I can't say how important it is.  The fourth piano concerto he's describing the orchestra is the world and he is describing himself as the pianist, as a pianist.  And so the world comes with a "bum" "ba ba ba bum bum ba"  And only if somebody comes to you and attacks you you're going to defend yourself you know.  I want to sing you:  Now that's a great lesson.  He's saying to the world, "I'm not ready to play ball with you now". (inaudible) and says what do you mean?  "I'm asking you to deal with this problem"  Then he says again, well I told you I have to consult my deeper self, I can't just act like this fortuitously,"  I mean there's a dialog.  In the course of the dialog they begin to hear each other -- to hear each other.  He hears the world the world hears him and they understand each other.  And eventually the orchestra recedes in the background and the pianist wins.  If he had reacted that wonderful melody would have never occurred.  Now I must add that if it had not been for the challenge of the world that wonderful melody would not have emerged either.  But what happened was that that whole challenge was processed in the unconscious in that peaceful state and as a consequence it acted as a catalyst to arouse and actualize those qualities that were dormant in him and that is the secret of creativity.

You have the music, I think, Mikhail so let's indulge in listening to a little bit of music now.

END OF TAPE  


SEP 05, 1998		Tape 02


In our experience, when people go on retreat they go through terrible, terribly difficult state when the pain that they were not very much aware of erupts and they are totally stymied by the tremendous onslaught of memories of, situation that were distressful, were humiliating, were degrading, were so painful that one had forgotten it, one had not thought of it anymore -- because one is dealing with one's problems and when one is meditating and then, of course, all of these impressions come back, with a vengeance.  The matter has been (inaudible).  And so the pain is telling you something about yourself, about life and it's reminding you that you need to deal with it..  It's just like,  it is fulfilling a very important function -- pain if fulfilling a vary important function.  Like, for example if you have a toothache then it's telling you that you have to go the dentist -- you have to deal with it.  And, of course, there are different ways of dealing with pain.  Psychotherapist are -- have developed great skills in helping people to deal with pain, so it is not something that you can deal with in a dilatory way.  Actually, you know if you (inaudible) and you have a toothache they might simply pull out your tooth.  So it's doesn't always deal with the problem to just try to push it away.  So meditation is a very fine way of -- we have to explore in how we deal with pain in meditation -- by the methods we use in meditation.  

Well you know that it is situations that have become unbearable, and which we cannot change.  That terrible sense of constraint upon one's freedom, frustration, of course.  And then in our personal self-esteem -- our personal self-esteem has been eroded by having been humiliated.   It is one's mainstay in life, well one's self-esteem is the only thing that we can count upon to make a success of one's life.  And so this is a very serious situation that we have to know how to deal with.  Well, it's like, for example, a virus that has set in your body and which is getting worse as time goes on.  So we're carrying wounds in our psyche which may be festering and which we ignore because we have to get on with the work, and which, however, stand in our way of being successful in our work and we don't know how to reject them. You see the immune system, the body is of course endowed with what you call an immune system faculties which reject transplanted tissue, for example.  Well, so that is based upon "me" or "not me".  The body knows that this is a tissue that does not have the same DNA and therefore the body rejects it.  So that faculty is based on a very strong sense of me -- my identity.  And so in the psyche it's the same thing; we are continually invaded by impressions that are not in harmony with our being.  

And if we only had that one immune system and of course we would be able to reject it.  But there is a second immune system whereby the body adapts itself to elements that are not in keeping with its being by transmuting them.  And so we have to learn in our meditation how to transmute emotion that is stressful so that it can be -- kind of go through a process of transformation -- the whole of alchemy is based upon that.  How do you get the essence out of the flowers, for  example so that it becomes perfume.  So one is able to reject the dross because one is able to draw the quintessence or there's some beauty in one's suffering, that's what I'm saying, instead of condemning it.  And what is more it is part of our participation in the whole process of life.  So instead of lamenting, it -- you see what we think is our problem is really our participation in the drama -- the cosmos.  We think of it as our problem.  And what is more it is really part of the process of the labor of rebirthing; because that labor takes place in suffering and joy -- in both and how we're able to deal with these -- I would say heroically.

Well once more, the first immune system is based upon a very strong sense of identity: "this is me" and "this is not me".  Now we are subjected to all kinds of impressions; radio, television, newspapers, conversation -- everywhere, all kinds of impressions that are really very alarming -- distressful and which, of course, (inaudible) anxiety, of course about our survival -- survival of the planet.  Actions, criminal actions which disgust us.  And those impressions -- well maybe we are not -- we saw a television show and we have forgotten it but it's certainly in the unconscious.  And when you are meditating then, of course, all these impressions will surface, as I say, with a vengeance and that is because they haven't been processed.  It's like food that you haven't digested properly.  The body hasn't rejected because the body has the capacity to reject food that is unpalatable and also to -- and of course the body functions, uses the second immune system -- namely transforms the food so that it gets ordinated into what we call the amino acid chains.  In other words, the body imposes its format upon the impressions from outside -- about the food -- well the same thing, the psyche.  The body imposes its order upon the impressions from outside, but we are overstressed with impressions so that our psyche is not able to deal with all of these impressions.  It is just like a -- in digestion.  And so the only way, in order to be able to start dealing with -- and it's only the first step, of course, dealing with pain, is to face it.  But to face it you have to be very aware of your real identity, but most of us have no idea of who we are.  And, as I say, it's a strong sense of who you are that is the function that enables the immune system to reject the elements that are unfavorable to the body.

So, I'd like to start with working with discovering one's real self because that's the thing that will give you the power to face impressions that -- of which you would think yourself to be the victim because one doesn't have the power to meet them.  So that is, of course, turning within -- one would suppose that one becomes -- that's a way of discovering who one is by turning within -- that's what we think meditation consists in -- downplaying the environment and highlighting what's happening within.  But, of course, it's a skill, as I said.  

At first we don't know what those -- how to turn within.  So what we are doing is simply cogitating -- introspection.  That is we're looking at our thoughts -- that's one method of meditation used in Buddhism, for example.  That is now it's not the circumstances that are the object of your cognition's but it is your thoughts so you are there -- you think you are the subject and your thoughts are the object.  That is not a satisfactory way of turning within because, you know, controlling your thoughts -- you're just observing your thoughts and your thoughts are not really -- I mean what you observe or what you are aware of is not really a thought.  It's just the way your thoughts appear to you and more so -- and remember this because it's very important: it's because those thoughts are based upon a faulty assessment of our problems.  This is very serious because we are schlepping in our life a faulty interpretation of our problems -- throughout our life -- very serious.  And so we're acting on false assumptions and those false assumptions are due to the fact that we are looking at our problems with a personal bias.  

And so the first thing to do is -- first of look at a particular problem.  In fact, I hope you are doing it while I'm talking about it.  Well just look at -- choose one of your millions of problems -- whichever the worst one, of course.  And now think of it.  Can you (inaudible) without being too upset?  So, you'll find that that problem is always, most of the time with regard to your relationship with the person and you're judging that situation from your vantage point.  

Now see if you can get into the vantage point of that person.  You can do that.  See if you do it.  Well how do you get into the vantage point of another person?  So, imagine that you're that person.  Imagine that you have their body, imagine that you are living where they are living, imagine that you are in their circumstances, imagine that you get into their attunement.  It might be high, it might be low.  It you start getting into the consciousness of another person, you see a lot of things.  For one thing you see a lot of pain. That's the first thing you see is a lot of pain.  You see there's a struggle to validate themselves and they picked on you as the guinea pig to give them validation for themselves.  If they can get an advantage over you it gives them a better self-esteem, so it's a pity they chose you instead of somebody else but anyway it's just that's the way it is.  And its possible they chose you because you are a sweet person.  If you were tough maybe they would choose somebody else.  So they're paying you a compliment anyway.  

But now just think -- you see you are assessing that person, so they are assessing you.  So, for example, you're thinking -- if you think of a person you think, well I don't know about that person I -- yes, I tried to like that person but I find it difficult.  This person makes it difficult for me to love him or her -- somehow.  There's something about his nature, so there's immediately a judgment about that person.  So, in fact, surreptitiously what you're doing is -- you're projecting certain qualities upon this person, you see.  Well, this person is selfish or this person is ruthless or this person is -- or then(inaudible) perhaps so bad but this person is not together or this person has a lack of compassion, or this person not truthful or whatever.  Somehow there's a judgment about that person.  They're doing the same to you.  

Now if you got to know that person you might find that your assessment was wrong.  You might find that what you think was selfishness was their only way that they could survive.  And you find that their compassion, lack of compassion -- well because they had been -- their compassion has been abused by people and so there's a limit (inaudible) with compassion and so on.  So they're looking at you as you're looking at them and their assessment of you is just as wrong as your assessment you make of them.  And they are acting on the strength of what they think you are.  On the other hand, you're assessment of yourself is wrong too.  And so if we have two eyes we can see better than one eye.  So, there is some validity in their opinion of you.  Harken to it because it's saying something to you.  And so imagine that your pain is due to the fact -- an action on their part which is their reaction to something in you -- and you're blaming them.

So the problem comes back to: well how can we work with ourselves?  So that person is a mirror in which you see something about yourself which you hadn't seen before.  And now how can we work with ourselves?  Well, we have a fantastic feedback system.  That is through form.  You know that the cheapest and most deceptive feedback system in the world is the mirror.  And it's so convincing that one is absolutely convinced the one is what appears in the mirror.  Well if one would would see what transpires behind what appears then the mirror would tell you something about yourself but normally one only sees what appears.  Now we have that mirror in ourselves too.  You see form is extremely important.  I would even say that what is gained by existence is form -- is that thought and emotion is transformed -- is configured as form.  That is what is gained by life is that thought and emotion is configured as form.  And, of course, that is creativity.  A composer -- what is the composer doing?  He or she is -- starts with an emotion and that emotion becomes a little more concretized as thoughts and eventually those thoughts are jelled into form -- the themes and the rhythm and so on.

And the same with yourself -- you're just like a piece of music.  Your body is the form of your thoughts and of your emotions -- there's some raw material in it which is -- has been transmitted through your ancestors but then that raw material it's just like clay -- that's the raw material but how it's formed -- it depends upon how you think and how you feel. However, as I said, it is -- that which appears is deceptive.  The reality of your form is that which transpires -- not what appears.  And so, as you turn within if you can discover your real face, your countenance behind your physical face.  Now just do that for few minutes.  See if you can grasp your real face and you know when it's your real face.  It's like, yes, this is me!  All of a sudden, I always thought I was what I saw in the mirror or what people think and so on but now this is me -- a strong sense of me.  That's what is important.

Now we'll go into this a little deeper.  Perhaps you were able to do it right away.  Otherwise, of course, you might try in your meditation to see if you can -- it's something that is so convincing like you know -- I know this is me.  You know it might not have a beard -- it might be quite different -- absolutely different but that's you.  However, there's another side to this and that is role-playing.  We identify ourselves with the role that we're playing.  The guru thinks he's a guru because people think he's a guru.  The king thinks he's a king because the people call him "majesty" and so on.  The business man thinks he's a business man and so on.  It's a role, we're playing a role but that's not what we are.  That's something that has accrued to us through function in life and so on.  But the true (inaudible) is being is behind that -- it's not limited to the role that we're playing in life.

So what we're doing now is dealing with our identity and I would say that meditation is discovering one's identity.  So come back to the (inaudible) now.  It is much more complicated than we think at first.  At first we have a sense "yes this is me" but the let's follow this up.  Think of a particular thought, for example, you think of somebody whose done something mean to you and see what happens to your face -- your countenance.  If you develop resentment, and anger, and jealousy or whatever, see that your inner face is now configured in a different way than supposing you were thinking of person who had just been wounded in an accident and your heart goes out to them. and you see what difference it makes in your face -- in your countenance.  So you see that your countenance is (many ?).  It's not that simple and you see how it varies according to your moods and your thoughts.  You might even think about, for example, how you have evolved since you were a child, for example.  You might think of the wisdom you have gained in life and see how that affects your countenance.

You might think of a situation that requires a lot of mastery -- skiing as an example, as I said, conducting an orchestra, hang-gliding, all kind of things which require -- even just working, figuring out your computer -- anything that requires a lot of mastery, playing tennis or whatever -- anything that requires mastery.  So you will notice how your countenance changes when you concentrate upon that particular quality instead of compassion, for example.  And then notice how your countenance changes with your -- if you think of being absolutely honest, absolutely truthful, authentic.  See what it does to your countenance.  You see it's just like a picture which has very clear edges instead of being ambiguous.

So these are ways of discovering who you are by dint of your inner form  but that's not good enough who you are.  It is how you become because we're not static and therefore do not think that this is my real eternal being and so on.  It's my being in the process of becoming.  You know that word in the Bible, "I am that I am" was wrongly translated.  It is, "I am that I become" -- dynamic instead of static.  Because if you think of yourself, "that's me" it will stand in the way of your progress. So now there is a further dimension to this and that is "how I could be".  "How I could be", that's the future because when we're thinking about our problems we're thinking about the past.  And now, we're thinking about the future because therapy is trying to cure something that occurred in the past but creativity is thinking how one could be if one would be as one might be -- (inaudible) into the future.  The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past.  That's a word of (inaudible) physicist -- the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past.  The pull of the future -- that's creativity; the push of the past -- that's where we wallow in our pain.  The pain holds you back into the past -- your creativity frees you from the past.  That's what we want to work with; not just therapy but creativity of our personality.

So we're trying to go about it in a very concrete way.  So now take an example, for example, mastery or truthfulness -- say mastery.  So, instead of just saying, well I see how my countenance changes when I concentrate on that quality "mastery" and try to develop it.  I have a certain amount of mastery but not much.  Now, that's not good enough that's still static.  Question is now: "how can I develop that mastery"?  And this is where you make the interface between yourself and the environment -- the psychological environment.  Because at first -- now we were turning -- if you remember the process that we were following; at first we were wallowing in the situation -- in our pain and the situations.  Then we were turning within and we had downplayed the situations and now we're confronting the two.  That's what Beethoven was doing during in that fourth piano concerto.

So just try to earmark a situation where you are not in control.  And, of course, the typical situation where one isn't in control is what one calls, "addiction".  I could pick on one, of course, that's smoking cigarettes -- if you think you can't stop it well then -- well that means there's a question a mastery there.  Of course, I know that their are withdrawal symptoms and all that of course.  It's more than that -- it's  not just the physical withdrawal symptoms but it gives you a sense of security having that cigarette in your hand -- you know it's psychological -- it's a crutch and one doesn't know how one can do without that crutch.  But you see life is asking of us to be courageous because that's the only way to develop.  Stress is exactly what we need in order to develop.  There is such a thing as overstress maybe, you know you have to be careful with the withdrawal symptoms -- you have to do it gradually, but still do it.  Eventually, you're happy you're not addicted to cigarettes any more -- good riddance.  But at first you suffer -- such sweet sorrow.

So, OK, so now look just imagine that you're concentrating now -- you're thinking about a situation which you're not controlling and so you feel kind of helpless.  And there's a constraint in it -- a constraint in one's helplessness -- an inadequacy, frustration -- "I can't deal with it".  So if there is a situation that one is not dealing with then it will keep on dragging you down and will stand in the way of your being high and we will be dissatisfied with ourselves -- you can't be high if you are dissatisfied with yourself.  Perhaps if you take drugs, maybe but then I don't guarantee what it does to your brain.  In fact, I do guarantee.  So how to be high without drugs -- right.  Well deal with your problems.  So if meditation is evasion from your problems forget is because it's not doing it.  It's inducing yourself into a kind of illusion and people think they are in Samadhi and so on and they are not dealing with their problems.

So now, again think a situation that you're not really -- actually you're not dealing with it -- with all the consequences that it has.  So like the toothache -- well you're not going to the dentist.  Well (inaudible) have to deal with it.  And the way to deal with it is to think of how you could operate in real life by exercising more mastery.  So now you're interfacing yourself with the situation outside.So you can't develop a quality just by trying to develop a quality.  Like something that has happened very much in the Sufi Order -- repeating a wazifa to think that you are going to develop a quality by doing that.  It won't develop a quality.  That's why people don't repeat their wazifas because it doesn't help if you just think by repeating a word you're going to develop a quality.  It's not going to develop a quality.  

You have to link it with real life situations.  In fact, the repetition of a wazifa is always linked with a pledge.  It is chivalry -- it's the way on the knights.  And Sufism originated in what they call "Espabad", which was the original Iranian knighthood.  And it is that which will give you self-esteem -- it's making a pledge.  And the extraordinary thing is that while a pledge seems to me like "yes I will not do this anymore, I will do that" -- so it seems like a constraint.  The curious thing is that it gives you freedom.  It's paradoxical but that's the way it is. 

So now this is what we're doing in our meditation.  Our meditation is not evasion from life.  Our meditation is like a rehearsal for life.  So think of -- instead of starting with problems and then getting to your deeper self, downplay the problems -- work with yourself and now interface yourself with the problems. So we started working with mastery -- I think one of the aspects of mastery is truthfulness.  That is, for example, to tell a person how you think requires courage and very often if one hasn't been truthful it's because one lacks courage.  One is afraid of the consequences of saying what one believes.  And so it impairs one's self-esteem.  To feel that one doesn't have courage it impairs one's self-esteem.  That's where one is being tested.

Now you know that the most -- greatest people are people who are terribly scared and they did it all the same.  My sister was terribly scared by the cruelty of the Nazi's and she did it all the same.  I can tell you a story.  You know in India in the old days, and perhaps even in some of the tribes, if the husband dies, the wife is supposed to throw herself on the funeral pyre and burn alive and if she doesn't do it people push her there.  And you can imagine how scared they are and well what happens is that -- a lot of (TB), and women and living in Purda, women die, of course.  Men survive and marry a younger woman.  And so it's very often very young women who have to throw themselves on the pyre.  

So there was this young woman who was facing that situation -- scared stiff.  And so she heard that there was -- somebody told her -- well consult -- there's a guru-ess, a woman guru who has a pet cobra.  So go and see her and she'll help you.  So she went to see her, she said well, "if you can pet this cobra you won't have to throw yourself on the pyre, but if you're afraid it will bite you".  So she was faced with a very difficult decision but in the first case she was certainly bound to die and in the second case there was chance that she would survive.  So it was a better choice but still she had to have the courage to pet this cobra.  And once she petted this cobra then the guru said, "well now you won't have to throw yourself on the pyre but you will have to become a sannyasin -- you'll have to become a dedicated person -- leave the world the way that the sannyasins are supposed to live.  And she became a very wonderful person and it was just that moment of courage that transformed her being -- totally from what she was before to what she became.

So I think that pain is inviting us to be courageous, instead of lamenting it and trying to escape it.  And by so doing you can transform it, by facing it you can transform it.

END OF SIDE ONE

(Inaudible).  I'll illustrate this again.  In India there's a kind of saying, you know that (inaudible) saying you know that, "The elephants don't like the agitation of the chickens".  But it is below their dignity to allow themselves to be bugged by the chickens.  In other words, there is something in me that is -- has too great of value to allow themselves to be bugged by those people who are mean to you.  I mean why let yourself be disturbed because people are mean to you.  It's bad enough -- what they are doing is bad but it's a pity you're disturbed by it.  If you have a kind of sense of self-esteem you don't allow yourself to be bugged by those people -- they are what they are.  And they can't act differently to the way they are.  I mean if a tiger bites you we don't blame the tiger.  It's the nature of the tiger to attack you.  There's some kind of incongruity in our way of thinking.  We consider ourselves to be victimized whereas, in fact, we don't have to be victimized.  And, of course a clue is to discover who you are.  If you discover who you are then you don't allow yourself to be bugged by circumstances.  You're a real person.

So, what I'm saying is that our self-image is not what we are.  We have incredible resources in our being that we are not using because we don't know about them and we're trying to do a meditation to discover them. So now we're talking about another dimension to the one that we encounter when we're turning within and that is -- one call's it "transcendent dimension".  In a simplistic way we could say our "higher self" as opposed to our "lower self".  I know that that is a term that's not used in psychology  to talk about the shadow and so on but let's call it a higher self and lower self.

Now the reason why we're not aware of a higher self is because of the importance of our defense system -- of our defenses.  What we  call the ego is part of our defenses.  It's not what we are but it's part of our defenses because if we were afraid that people would take advantage of us unless we have that defense.  And that defense is somehow linked with a faulty representation of ourselves that we call our ego.  (inaudible) we are but that's what we identify ourselves with.  And you know, violence begets violence and so we get caught in a viscous circle -- we can't get out of it.

So, how do we discover our real self? Now I'm talking about a higher self.  You see if we wean ourselves from our egos we will encounter withdrawal symptoms -- we need those defenses.  Or we can wean ourselves wean ourselves gradually by discovering our higher self and then we won't need those defenses.  It'll give us a kind of authority -- kind of dignity, self-esteem, so that we don't have to allow ourselves to be drawn on the battlefield of our enemies.  In fact, they will be disarmed by our dignity.  It's a whole different way of looking at things -- whole different way.  And I think that is what is meant by spirituality.  

Now, so this is, as I say, the transcendent dimension of meditation.  So how do we do this?  Well there is a way but it does have to do with our way of thinking.  I would say, most of our ordinary thinking is, I would say inadequate -- maybe even faulty.  And that is because our thinking is -- rotates around our emotion of ourselves as a person -- as an individual person.  And that (inaudible) of a person is only function of a totality.  And so if we just judge everything from our personal point of view we're limited.  It's just like, for example, if you look at Notre Dame from one angle you haven't seen Notre Dame in Paris.  So we are judging things from a vantage point.  Now that's the cosmic dimension, of course to be able to see things from different points of view.  I'll give you an indication of that.  What I'm talking about is, well it's the antipodal point of view to your own point of view -- the antipodal -- the other pole, your opposite pole.  That is that which going to free you from the constraint of your personal pole.

Now we started doing that by getting into the consciousness of another person and there's another pole there -- another vantage point there.  This could go further -- you get into the consciousness of more and more people and eventually get to that point which is that state of consciousness which is described by St. Francis.  And he called it, he said "I thought I was looking at the world but the world is looking at me".  That's the antipodal point of view. So let us do that.  Just think, I thought I was looking at the circumstances -- I thought I was looking at these people -- I thought I was looking at these trees.  I'm walking in the woods and I see that the trees are looking at me.  The whole cosmos, the stars are looking at me.  My light is their light -- my consciousness is their consciousness.

So that's the antithesis.  The ancients used to call it (significato???).  I mean the ancient Christians -- the passive (pas???) passive significance.  The cosmos is active and I am passive -- receptive towards its action.  Now the Sufi's go further, of course.  Ib'n Arabi, for example says god is discovering himself in you -- as you -- as customized in you -- as you.  That's the antipodal point of view.  We never think of that.  We, think I would like to know god, I would like to understand things better -- it's the other way around -- god discovering himself as you.  I would say him/herself as you. But Ib'n Arabi goes further.  Now I hope you don't mind if we get into it a littler more advanced ways of thinking.  God discovers himself by your discovery of him as you.  That's the more advanced way of looking at it.

Well what does this mean?  This is metaphysics but how (inaudible).  You discover, for example a (   ) of a quality, like for example compassion.  So, you know there are different connotations of what we mean by god -- different ways of imagining god to be like...  But let's say, insofar as you're imagining god to be the perfection -- let's say the perfect archetype and ourselves as the (e???).  Then let us say that if you take a quality like compassion, for example.  You say, I have a certain amount of compassion but not very much or have a certain (inaudible) up to a point as Mrs. Thatcher said, (economic with truth?).  Or I have some mastery but not very much and so on -- all these different qualities.  So let's say that those archetypes are actuated in me as exemplars.  The exemplars have their (?)   in the archetype of course.  

It's like the reproduction of a wonderful painting and it's not as quite as good as the original.  So, however, somehow if I'm able at all to represent -- to understand what it means to be truthful, what it means to be masterful, or what it means to be joyous.  It's because somehow I had a kind of sense of the archetype -- somehow the perfection of compassion, somehow it's written right into my way of thinking, although one doesn't always realize it.  And it was (French name) who was was a French mathematician who said, 'Infinity resides in the faculty that we have to always imagine a larger number than we can imagine so far".  And so the same thing is true of compassion -- we can imagine that their people who have more compassion than we have and there are persons whose compassion is so enormous that -- well you never reach what we understand by divine compassion but still somehow we have the capacity of extending our sense of what we mean by compassion beyond what we are exercising ourselves in our own being.  So that's what when we inspire the antipodal point of view -- trying to imagine compassion such as it would be in a divine nature.

This is foregone conclusion to what I'm saying --the meaning of prayer.  You see we started by wanting to understand, wanting to deal with our problems, our personal egos and idiosyncrasies and so on.  But perhaps our greatest need is a sense of sacredness and where are you going to find that? -- go to church or mosque or synagogue.  Well, they're trying to create circumstances that are favorable to the experience of the sacred.  In other words, we're depending upon a support system to find the sacred because we fail to find it in ourselves.

Now there's a little piece of what we did earlier on in working with our countenance -- our self-image, our countenance behind our self-image and that is that we were talking about all different qualities how they affect out countenance but if you go deeper you find the depth of your countenance the immaculate state.  That is --  that's the core of your being is our real -- the child in you -- the child in you.  And you might think that you've defiled that child and I've said this many times; the voice of Caruso can be now be retrieved in bad recordings of the time.  At least the immaculate state of your being is present within (inaudible).  It's illogical, I mean unless one is (???) you find that something is true And that immaculate core has the faculty of extending and transforming the qualities in you being.  So that is really the secret of transformation -- remember when I said that the secret of creativity is to get right down to the core and then from that rebuild again.  So the core is the immaculate state -- it's the child without -- before even the blastema before child, before the embryo -- the first cell.  Well, there's no differentiation yet, no qualities yet -- just pure -- purity -- immaculate state.  Hence, the importance of the immaculate state, for example in Christianity -- virgin Mary.

Now, prayer -- one is projecting on whom one thinks is god.  It's not god but whom one thinks god to whom one would like god to be -- qualities.  And what -- those qualities, the only sense we have of qualities are the qualities that we know in ourselves.  So somehow we are imagining how these qualities could be if they were more perfect, in fact if they were perfect -- projecting them upon what you think is god.  And in consequence we are arousing these qualities in ourselves and we are perfecting these qualities in ourselves.  And therefore, prayer is the most creative act there is in the world.  And hence our need for the sacred.

So you see meditation is not simply reduced to stress reduction.  Prayer is perhaps the very quintessence of meditation.  And it is that (?) of your sense of dignity and that (?) will overcome all the feeling of having been badly treated by people.  The dignity of your person will give you the strength to overcome those feelings in yourself which are reactions, so that you are acting instead of reacting.  So we have to end here. 


SEP 05, 1998		Tape 03

I feel that we were dealing rather perfunctorily with our pain.  It's very painful to recognize one's pain.  And consequently, when, in a meeting like this you're listening to what I'm saying, but one is still conceptualizing. And so the Sufis have a way of feeling their emotions which they call the broken heart.  It's owning one's pain and realizing that it's a reality, but it represents only one dimension of one's being.  So, perhaps to say it in a simplistic way, one could recognize that there are two poles of one's being, what we call the lower self and the higher self, and that one's pain does tend to drag one into one's lower self.  Lower self, well personal self.  The personal--it's not necessarily lower, no it's not a good idea. No, it's just one's, the personal dimension of one's being, where there's a sense of constraint and limitation and frustration, and inadequacy.  And it's a kind of prison.  

We think that the circumstances exercise a constraint upon us, are our prison, but the real prison is our own self image.  And so what we want to do is to really experience what we mean by the higher self.  I mean we can use that word, but how do we experience it? And there again there are skills that unleash something that is already there.  Like for example, if you are practicing the violin or the piano or whatever, the cello, you are unleashing faculties that are already there. You are using scales or whatever as the techniques, as skills, which release something that is already potentially there.  I remember I think it was Platinus who said what the sculptor is doing is releasing a form that is already in the piece of wood.  So it's already there.  But of course, you have to awaken it.  So I think that it really means awakening one's higher self.

So what is the principle, what are the guidelines that help us do that? Well, there are two ways.  And so there's the way of Yoga which is downplaying one's personal self, and highlighting one's higher self.  So one has no idea what one's higher self is as long as one is still, as one identifies oneself with one's lower self, with one's personal self.  Let's say the personal self is like for example, the way that, well of course, the best illustration would be, for example, in music,  would be a theme, and then the composer makes variations on a theme.  So you have a theme, and then, that would be our higher self, and then our personal self would be the way that it is customized.  I'm using the word customized.  

The word used by Rev. Pere Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is hominisation  to, hominisation.  God becomes man.  Now it's a concept that is unacceptable in Islam.  But, and maybe in Judaism too.   But the fact that it is all one being.  La ilaha illa 'llah.  It's all one being.  And somehow that being is customized by fragmenting itself into a variety of beings, who are like variations on a theme.  And so the secret of finding one's real being, one's higher being, is to discover one's immortality.  Now that sounds like a word, and I would like it to be an experience.  So there are ways, I think our ways of thinking are very important here.  And then the practices are very important of course, they will confirm, they will perhaps consolidate new ways of thinking.


So could you think that you are like a pendulum.  So that one pole of your being is transient and evanescent, is evanescent and transient. Evanescent, that means that it is continually renewed.  And transient, that means that it does change, and hopefully evolve.  So for example, you could take the example of a river:  it's never the same water that passes under the bridge, but it's the same river.  So a continuity in change.  So if you think of that, you are a continuity in change.  That means that there is some thing--there is an[  ] thread let's say that remains unchanged, and at the same time there's change.  So that's a different way of thinking to our ordinary way of thinking.   Because we think in categories, but now we're reconciling the irreconcilables.  So if you think of a pendulum.  At the bottom of the pendulum it's moving in time-space. At the top it remains stationary.  So, you can identify with that pole of your being that is moving in time-space and changing.  And not only changing, but ever-renewed, recurrently reborn.  But then can you, you're the whole pendulum, not just one pole and the other.  So, can you shift your sense of identity up to the fulcrum.  

And realize that despite the change, there is something in you that is everlasting.  Not eternal, it's everlasting.  And you see, if you, Yoga of course leads to that because if you sit still in an asana, what they call an asana, in a position, a posture, the immobility of the body affects your way of thinking.  And finally your thinking will start simmering down until you get to a point when you--you see what you do in yoga is to consider that your thinking is maya.  That is, you know the word maya has the same etymology as imagination, image, imagination, and even the magi, magic.  So just think that you are imagining things and that is really the God, one's thinking, one's imagination is the way that the Divine imagination is being customized in each one of us.  And these images are flashes on the screen, let's say, and unfortunately they replicate the input from the environment unless we are really creative, and in that case they are purely spontaneous and real.  But otherwise, they are just a replication of, we are reacting as I said this morning.  

So, according to yoga, first of all the physical world is not the way it appears--any physicist will tell you that.  But what is more important is that your problems are not what you think they are.  And that means that your thoughts are faulty, and compulsive of course, and so if you question the validity of your thinking, you begin to find a deeper level of thinking which is not perfunctory, which is not subject to flaws, to maya.  You see if the physical world is not the way it appears, then your psyche is not what you think it is.  So it's very dangerous if you turn within and you do the same thing that you are doing in the outside world, you're convinced that your psyche is what it appears to you to be, your self image for example, and in fact it is just as deceptive as the physical world.  Now perhaps you might question whether it is true that the physical world is not the way it appears, but if you were to study physics then you would see that one tries to scan matter.  In our usual way of thinking we think it's solid.  But if you look at matter through a, well if you start experimenting with matter, then you find that an atom is like a little peach in the center of a concert hall, and there are peas circulating, rotating around the walls, and that's an atom. That's a picture of what we call solid matter.

And the same things are true of our problems.  So I must say that it is very helpful if one questions one's assumptions about one's problems.  And you see one's pain is related with one's assessment of one's problems.  So I don't say that they're not, it's not the way we think it is, it's relative.  It is from one point of view that's the way it is, but everything depends upon your vantage point, so you just free yourself from the conviction that it is the way it seems.  And it will give you a sense of freedom.  Just imagine all this time I thought that, and all of the sudden, what if all that I thought was wrong.  Isn't that fantastic?  You see the wazifa for the new--for the millennium let's say, it's not the new age anymore, it's the millennium--is 'what if?'  What if all that I thought was wrong?  What if it was wrong.  And I've been, the whole of my life I was so convinced.  That's freedom.  Freedom of the mind.  And so, that's, the first thing is when you are meditating thoughts emerge as we've already seen in your mind, erupt in your mind, emotionally charged.  And you see, if you question the validity of these thoughts, then they lose their ground.  They depend upon your trust in them, and if you don't trust them then they don't have any impact on your being.  And you find freedom.  Now that is what in India one calls [neti, neti], that means "it is not so, it is not so."

But sufism wants to know what it is rather than what it's not.  So it's not good enough to say it's not.  What is it?  And that leads us towards, it's again a skill, a skill.  Now I'll try to describe it.  I hope you'll follow this,  and you're doing it as I'm saying it.  You see when we're speaking we are trying to articulate our thoughts by using language.  And those words are conventional and reflect the commonality, the commonplace thinking of most people, which is a sliver of cosmic thinking, which is a very, extremely inadequate way of thinking.  And that is the reason for maintaining silence in a retreat.  Because even if one is not speaking, but one can speak, I mean if one is sitting in one's room but one had had a conversation with someone but now one is in one's room, even then one is still used to thinking in terms of words.  I don't know whether you realize that you think in terms of words.  I often ask myself if I'm thinking, if I talk in English I think in English words.  But if I'm talking German then I'm thinking in terms of German words.  

Or French, I'm thinking in French words.  So if you're silent for a long time, and two or three days is not long enough, but if you were to maintain silence for forty days for example, then you don't know how to speak as a matter of fact.  And you realize that your thinking has been limited by your concern of expressing it in words. And then you get in touch with your real thinking in the depth.  And in , you know, I refer to Dr. David Boehm, the implicate state, the explicate state.  Like explicate state: it looks like there are different trees here.  And the implicate state:  you see that it's all one forest.  And the same thing with thinking:  what you imply behind what you explain.  We imply a lot of things.  We assume that people understand what we imply when we're using words.  But when you're in silence then you're not limited by the words, and then you discover a way of thinking that is not faulty, like maya, like the thoughts that we have encountered.  And you'll find that these thoughts are creative.  That is, they're spontaneous, they're not reactive.  And that they're telling you something of how things could be.  Let's say that they're future oriented.  And therefore they free you from the past, from the prison of the past that has got sclerosed into the present.

So can you do that?  Can you just see if you, what you imply, you see thoughts are going to arise in your mind, but there's a lot of assumptions. And when one says something, there are assumptions.  When I say 'my father' then one assumes that people know what it means, I have a father. When I say I am suffering, then people think they understand what you mean by the word suffering.  But that's not really, your father is not a person, your father is a relationship that is meaningful to you.  And your suffering is a relationship with situations.  Now there is a deeper suffering than that that I referred to this morning, and that is our sense of inadequacy.  Our sense of inadequacy.  It is a terrible suffering.  And we don't acknowledge it most of the time.  Yes it is true, we don't feel adequate, but we don't realize just to what extent it makes us suffer.  To what extent, as you develop more insight you think, 'oh, I'm losing my time.  I'm getting older.  And I've missed my chance.  I still have a few days to live more, or months, or years, or whatever, but let's make the best of it, because really time is going by.'  So a real need to understand one's life, and to understand the meaningfulness of one's life.  

To understand one's suffering.  So now I'm speaking about the suffering of feeling not able to do things, or not up to the challenge of life, or denigrating oneself, or of course, one's guilt will make one feel like there's nothing I can do to ever repair that.  And of course there is terrible suffering in one's resentment, and one doesn't know how to overcome one's resentment.  I mentioned this morning that the only way to overcome it, if one can overcome it at all, it is by discovering your real being.  And then you find it is below your dignity to hold a grudge against people. That's the way that you overcome resentment.  And when you know that resentment is the cause of wars you realize how very serious it is. Can't force yourself to forgive a person.  You can forgive a person if you identify yourself with your higher being, not if you identify yourself with your personal being.  And therefore we want to find out, we want to know more about our higher being.

Well, I would say one of the first steps is to be defenseless.  Because our ego is our defense, a part of our defense system.  So, you can think of Christ, who couldn't defend himself when he was faced, before, by Pileate. Pileate realized it, Pileate just realized it, Christ was disarmed.  He said: "You said it."  And you know if you are disarmed, it does disarm other people.  Because your aggressivity is going to engender aggressivity in another person.  So it's again finding the child within.

However, now, we're going to try, as I say it's not that easy, we're going to try and grasp our higher self.  It's already good if you question your thoughts, you question your assessments of your problems and so on, that's the negative side, that's the first step.  But now we want to somehow hoist our self image beyond the middle range.  That is move on the pendulum upwards from the point which is moving in time-space, to the point which remains stationary.  So there's a practice to do this.  So if you just do this with me now.  You place the thumb of your right hand under your chin. And the middle finger of your right hand next to the right nostril, but you don't press it.  And place the palm of your left hand against the back of your right hand.  And the thumb of your left hand against your, the, left nostril, but you don't press it.  And just at first start exhaling.  And then inhale.  Now exhale a little longer.  Inhale without effort.  Press both fingers, hold your breath.  Exhale both nostrils.  

And start again. Inhale both nostrils.  Hold your breath a little longer.  Exhale through both nostrils.  Now, press the middle finger of the right hand, but release the thumb of your left hand, and inhale through your left nostril.  Hold your breath; press both fingers.  Exhale through right nostril.  Inhale through right nostril.  Hold your breath.  Exhale through left nostril. Now once more, inhale through left nostril.  And as you hold your breath turn your eyeballs upwards, and curl your tongue and press the bottom of your tongue against your palate.  And as you exhale you exhale through your right nostril.  Then your glance is horizontal again, turned toward the front of you, and your tongue is relaxed.  And then do the opposite: inhale through right nostril.  Hold your breath, eyes turned upwards, and the tongue curled and pressed against the palate.  And exhale through the left nostril.  Now, alright now, let's just stop for a moment.

So it's like a pendulum.  The energy is swinging from the left to the right, and then swings from the right to left.  And then you notice that there's a moment when the swing is in a state of suspense.  Just like the pendulum.  Time stands still, and then you're moving in the opposite direction.  So when you hold your breath, you have freed yourself from the to and fro motion of the pendulum.  And so you're discovering a totally different time-space relationship then when you're moving as the pendulum. So it's a very valuable moment when you hold your breath.  The Sufis call it (?).  And there's a word of Hujwiri who was one of the, who was the first Sufi who visited India, before Hazrat Moinuddin Chisti.  And who said: "time is a sharp sword that cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future."  In other words, you're enjoying an apostrophe in life.  Just like in music you can have an apostrophe; everything stops for a moment.  Suspense.  So enjoy that suspense, and see what happens.  You can just, when you hold your breath, there's no movement anymore.  Try and see how you experience it.

Now the traditional way of thinking is that when you inhale through the left, you recollect the past.  It is very difficult to do it in one inhaling, but you practice beforehand.  Do a practice, and we can do that now.  Think of the events in your life, in their sequence, in chronological order.  And in parallel with that, think of how you have changed, how you have evolved in the course of time.  And of course you will remember the major, and perhaps the most traumatic events.  And now try to see if you can see the impact of the event upon  your personality.  For example after an accident you became more cautious.  Or after a disappointment you began to discover pain.  And having been let down, you are a little more wary. So you see how the events have certainly had an impact on our personality. That is fairly easy, but try now to see the impact of your personality upon the event.  

You remember how you were when a certain thing happened.  And now you know how you are now.  And you realize that if you had been then as you are now, that situation would not have occurred.  Well now you see the impact of yourself on the circumstances.  There's a word of Jung, who says: "if you do not meet your shadow, it will come to you in the form of your fate."   So now we're considering now, when we think, normally  we think of, that we're the victims of circumstances.  We think of the impact of circumstances upon us.  That's easy.  But what we need to do is think of the impact of our being upon circumstances.  If you do this everyday, you'll get a kind of retrospective insight into yourself.  Everyday.  You do it everyday.  Just five minutes, it doesn't have to be very long, but regularly.  Everyday.  And now, this is what in Buddhism is called: [shnala darshana]--observing the self.  Get to know the self.  And you see the tricks that the self plays on you.  And that leads to awakening.  It's part of awakening.  Insight into just exactly that.

Now there is a further thought here, and that is, could you, Sufism calls it Muhasibi, it's called examination of conscience.  You're scanning your deeper motivations, and you're asking yourself, 'what were my motivations in doing that?'  And that requires one to be extremely honest with oneself. And that's the only way to discover one's real self, because one's mind produces justifications.  It's very good at producing justifications.  So don't go along with the tricks that the mind plays on you.  You must really be hard on yourself, and ask yourself, truthfully, what were your motivations.  And now you can see your whole past.  Truthfulness gives you clarity.

Now then, there's a passage from the past to the future.  That's that moment of suspense.  And that is what Hujwiri calls (vacht?), which is an apostrophe, suspense, a state of suspense in the continuity.  And now project into the future.  As you exhale you'll be projecting into the future.  When you exhale through the right nostril, you're projecting into the future.   Well, the future is made up of your dreams, is what you'd like to be, what you'd like circumstances to be.  And then there's a fear that they won't be what you'd like them to be.  There's all of that, how can I say, precariousness in our, in visioning the future either with hope or with fear, with some kind of reservations.  But you see, just think that the future is pulling you out of the past.  But that which pulls you out of the past is the pledge that you make at the time of suspense.  At that moment you make a pledge.  

And that changes your life.  From the moment that you have seen, in Buddhism one says that when you have reconnoitered the enemy, then he can't act anymore.  So you've reconnoitered in yourself motivations which you did not admit, and from the moment that you've seen that you can make a pledge that you won't do that anymore. Or you'll do whatever you decide to do in a positive way.  That is the breakthrough. From that moment a new horizon opens up.  From the moment you've made a pledge it's freed things that were in abeyance, and all of the sudden there will be a flowering of your being.  Situations in your life will open up, and you will be dancing with joy.  That is the way to find joy together with your suffering.  Suffering is always connected with the past, and the joy is connected with the future.

So that this practice, it could be called calibrating the left and the right, the past and the future, seeing the connection between the two with great insight.  But however, we are still in what we might call the horizontal dimension.  But now we want to investigate the vertical dimension.  Because to discover your higher being you have to move in the vertical instead of the horizontal.  So now breath in through both nostrils, hold your breath, eyeballs upwards, tongue curled and pressed against the palate, hold your breath, exhale.  Once more, inhale, hold your breath, eyeballs turned upwards, exhale.  OK.  Now we're going to pursue this a little further.  We started this morning by feeling the energy field around our arms, you remember?  Our arms and our chest.  Now could you notice the difference between the energy at the bottom of your spine and the top of your head?  It would be like the difference between an electric current with a lot of wattage and not much voltage, or then with a lot of voltage and not much wattage.  So like a heavy kind of telluric, what one calls telluric energy, at the bottom of the spine.  And then a very fine energy that's called pure spirit on top of your head.  You can feel the difference.

Now the art of, there are two ways of course, there's the way that I find rather unsatisfactory, and that is to let go of the physical world, you know to try reach up into the heights.  I don't find that, I think you're splitting yourself.  I think that what one needs to do is to transmute the gross energy into fine energy.  So now, what does that mean?  Well, if you can sense the difference between the energy at the bottom of the spine and the energy at the top of your head.  You can feel the difference?  Gross energy, fine energy.  Now energy can be transmuted, and that is something that we have to learn.  In fact that's what alchemy was about.  To transmute.  And what alchemists were doing was to illustrate what is happening to the soul.  Illustrating it in matter.  For example, matter in its grosser form, like lead for example, or then in its finer form like gold for example.  Or then, matter in its grosser form like solid, and then its finer form like vapor.    So those are just examples of aids that will help us to really do it, to see if we can transmute that gross energy.  

As we inhale we transfer our attention from one chakra to  the other, from one center to the other.  Energy gets refined, gets sublimated.  Just imagine for example, extracting the perfume from flowers, that's a very good example.  In fact that was an alchemical process in the beginning.  So let us say that your higher self could be illustrated by the perfume, and your lower self with the gross materia prima as they call it in alchemy,  the gross energy.  Now I don't know if you have had, I'm sure some of you have had that experience, especially during a retreat:  one feels as though one were light.  As one is walking, one feels as though one were light on one's feet.  Like instead of stomping about in the streets of New York, a sense of being volatile, being 'airy-fairy'--it's a marvelous feeling.  Overcome gravity.  It's something that one does in the Dhikr, the turning, you get to a point when you feel light on your feet.  A sense of levity.  The reason for doing this?  We want to discover our higher self.  And energy acts as a lift for your consciousness.  There's an added

(END OF SIDE ONE)

And the mind well, let's say consciousness, is uplifted by the fact that your energy keeps on being sublimated as you inhale.  So, shall we do this and see how it works?  So, breathe in through both nostrils.  Ok, well, you know, a practice is a skill as I said, it doesn't quite do it for you unless it is accompanied with a way of thinking and of feeling.  So let's do it again, but now, as you start inhaling then you are aware of your personal emotions: dependence, attachment, resentment, hatred, and so on, inadequacy, all those things that are very limiting to our self-esteem. And then as you inhale,what you are doing you remember, you are not leaving your body behind, that is a very dangerous way of meditating.  It will get you in a state of trance if you think well I am spirit, and I leave my body in the earth and become pure spirit: that's a dangerous way of thinking. And it will lead you towards astral flight for example.  It's not what we want to do, that's splitting your being.  No you have to schlep your body up, transform your body as you schlep it upwards.  You understand a little bit of Hebrew, don't you.  So, you have to transmute your body as you shift your sense of identity.  And the way to do it is to first of all think, you remember the practice that we did when we started experiencing energy around our arms, as I said before.  So now, as soon as, you know, perhaps you know what these different chakras are.  

The second chakra, well they correspond to plexi of the autonomic nervous system, and of course to the endocrine glands.  So what is called the second chakra, there is a kind of identity corresponding to each one of these, and each one of them corresponds to a certain plane.  So the second chakra, your subtle body. So as you shift your attention from the bottom of the spine, as you're inhaling, shift your attention from the bottom of the spine to the second chakra.  You identify yourself with your subtle body.  And now you shift your attention toward the solar plexus.  And there's something very special about the solar plexus, as I said, it's like the threshold between the existential realm and subliminal levels.  I hope I'm not talking, saying something too difficult to understand.  You see, imagine that our three dimensional world, at least the world that we are able to experience is limited by the fact that we can only extrapolate between three dimensions of space.  So that's our three dimensional world.  

But that is only, it's only a cut in the in-dimensional world.  The real world is not limited to three dimensions.  So, it's a cross-section.  Just like the cross-section of a volume is a surface, so it's like that.  So just imagine that we're limited within this very small purview, and that reality is beyond that frame, but when it crosses that frame then we experience it the way that we do.  And so what we call the void is really when you're able to free yourself from that frame, but then you don't know what's happening.  But, things are happening in the in-dimensional world.  Now, I don't know if this is even more difficult to understand, but the solar plexus connects us with the universe in terms of gravity.  This is physics of course, gravity waves.  And some animals communicate by gravity waves, but that's beyond this, it is physics, so it's rather difficult to understand.  But let us say that somehow when you hit your solar plexus, you're at the threshold that connects you with the universe.  It's like an umbilical cord that connects you with the universe.  With the cosmos.

So, what do we mean by gravity?  You see, where matter accumulates, space is contracted, space is landscaped.  And so it is in our sense of identity as an individual, so that is the threshold.  It's the point where you are able to overcome the limitation in your self-image.  And pain, you feel pain in your solar plexus.  That's where there's a kind of shrinking of your being, in the solar plexus.  Now that's a little bit difficult to understand.

Now if you shift your attention to your heart center, identify with your aura of light instead of your subtle body.  I say this, well can you feel the light around you, again your shoulders and your chest, just like you did with your subtle body.  Can you feel light around you?  You don't see it, and you don't imagine it, you actually really feel it.  Tomorrow morning we are going to do practices with light, but so maybe it's rather premature to do this.   But still, that's the only way to lift your consciousness is by shifting your sense of identity as you transfer your attention from one chakra to the next.  Well, let us think of it this way. You know that the fabric of your body is the fabric of the planet.  It has to be molded in eons of time into a human body.  The fabric of the planet earth was part of the enormous outbreak of light at the time of the  big bang, that coagulated into what we think is matter, solid matter.  

So that really speaking, you are a being of light that has coagulated into what we think is solid matter.  And the light is still there.  So one of the ways of really identifying with your aura is to meditate at night looking into the starry sky, and realizing that your light, the light of your aura is really the light of the sun, that means the stars and the galaxies, that has, how can I say, formed itself around that axis which one calls one's individual self.  I don't know whether I make myself understood.  But let's say that we are a vortex within the ocean of light.  We are a vortex of light.  We are a whirlpool of light let's say, in the ocean of light of the universe.  So light is a form of energy.  So we started with the telluric energy at the bottom of the spine.  And now, the subtle body; it's also energy, magnetic field.  And now it is the aura, which is a much finer form of energy.  We'll be working more in detail with it tomorrow.

And now transfer your attention to your throat center, vishuddha chakra in yoga.  Well, it is a center that is sensitive to we say sound, but it is really vibration.  We interpret vibration as sound.  The air is vibrating, and therefore there is a how can I say, energy, a wave of energy that effects air, and we here it as sound.  We interpret it as sound, but it's really vibration.  So think of, that you are like a note in a symphony.  Or more than a note, you are a melody in a symphony.  What one calls one's signature tune.  So we're talking about a higher form of energy even than light, because light is wave-like and particle-like, whereas vibration is purely wavelike, there is no mass.  Well there's no mass in light either actually, but it's very difficult to follow that in detail.  But in the case of vibration, it's just pure energy, wavelike like the waves of the sea, enormous, infinite number of frequencies.  And so you can get into the, it's just like music, you can get into an attunement.  Let's say our emotions are expressions of the vibrational rate of our being.  

Or the vibrational rate of our being is triggered off by our emotion.  So earlier on this morning, I, remember we started to feel the vibrations of our magnetic field?  Well, now forget the magnetic field, but just the vibration.  And you can delight in the tremendous bounty of these frequencies.  And it is really, it's the language of the cosmos.  The language of the cosmos in terms of vibration, and that's why music is so important.  Our speaking takes place, originates in our vocal chords.  Now think that you are not just an aura, but you are also an audio entity.  I don't know how to say it, part of the audio-sphere.   Like you know, the symphony of the spheres of Pythagoras.  And it's a frequency which varies, it's not like a gong which is sclerosed, but the frequency changes according to your mood.  And it can be harmonious, it can be disharmonious, it can be uplifting, it can be gross.  It just depends upon your emotion, and you can tune it to the symphony of the spheres.  That's a very interesting thing, how one does that.  Perhaps you know these words of Johann Sebastian Bach, when he said, "the art of my music nobody knows but myself."He said, "I'm trying to create a model for the commonwealth of human beings based upon the harmony of the spheres."  He said "for each theme an instrument, for each instrument a theme.  

Not the imposition of one theme upon the others; each one enjoying a certain freedom, and each one limiting their freedom in the interest of the whole.  And such is the harmony of the stars."  So just imagine that you are improvising, in a group of musicians who are improvising.  And somehow you're picking up the trend, and somehow you are creating the trend.  But whatever initiative you take, you're still in touch with how the rest of the people feel.  And sometimes you're customizing the feeling of the group, and sometimes you're giving a direction to the feeling of the group.  So this is a great lesson how one is able to function at that level of very high energy which is just purely frequencies, vibration.  The Sufis even use a word: "[  ? ?  ]" which means vibrations that are not audible.  So it is, as Pir-O-Murshid, my father, would say, it is hearing without ears.  Just as he said, seeing without eyes, hearing without ears.  So just think that your melody is somehow part of the symphony of the spheres.  And you know to produce a beautiful melody you have to be inspired.  And as soon as you have a sense of what we mean by the symphony of the spheres, you grasp  something which is very difficult to grasp if one is in one's ordinary consciousness.  And that is that behind the whole cosmos is splendor.  And that splendor is trying to come through as beauty.  

Well, the Sufis say as beauty and majesty--there are two ways in which the Divine splendor is trying to come through.  And that thought is going to uplift you.  Because if you just observe the way that splendor seems to be distorted, and although sometimes it breaks through on the earth plane, you can be discouraged.  You can say what is all this belief in splendor?  I don't see splendor, I can just see a lot of ugliness around me.  You have failed to see what is trying to come through, that is trying to transpire behind that which appears.  And that is the only thought that mitigates your very precarious soul when you're meeting all the ugliness and bad faith of people around you.  Somehow you feel that somewhere, it's not up there, splendor, it's really trying to come through on the earth.  And the more you are inspired by, well, the more you're turned on by your grasp of splendor, the more beautiful the melody you compose.  And the more beautiful is your being.  So we're discovering levels of one's being that we're not generally aware of.

And now we transfer our attention to two things: one is the third eye, and the other is our physical eyes.  And there again, we're going to work with it tomorrow.  It's a whole subject that requires a lot of careful work. But let's just say that one's glance is an expression of one's intelligence rather than just consciousness that is receptive.  So one is thrusting one's insight upon all things.  One's glance is just the instrument through which this insight is monitored.  Is vehicled.  So, could you just, this is of course a very high state, but could you think that your body-ness, and your subtle body, and your aura, and even your gravitational being whatever that is, and even the energy of how can I say, your sound body, your signature tune let's say, that all of those are support systems for your realization.  Well, let us put it this way:  do you realize that what you are essentially is your realization?  That's what you are.  It's not your body, not your mind, not your consciousness, not your personality.  What you really are is your realization.  Each person according to their realization.

So now we're getting very close to what we mean by awakening.  Now let's just make that next quantum leap now into awakening.  So, can you, well, can you shake yourself, shake yourself.  And become free like, you know one becomes so sclerosed.  I see people, they're not quite snoring yet, but still they're subsiding into the dream world.  So, just you know, become very aware.  Yes, very aware.  And you ask yourself questions that you could never answer.  Like, what am I doing on earth?  And what is all this, what is life?  And, I can't understand this.  And, is this real?  And you know, those questions that you know that really blow your mind when you think of it.  I remember when I was a child of ten, I asked myself, well, who am I, and what am I doing here, and what is all of this, and is it real?  You know, those very basic questions.  One doesn't dare ask oneself that, because it blows your mind completely.  But, somehow, all of the sudden there's a sense of awakening beyond one's personal perspective.  


And all of the sudden you have this sense that all this time I have been caught in a perspective.  My personal perspective.  I mean caught in a perspective.  And you watch people like, it's as though you had awakened in the middle, amidst people who are asleep.  And you think to yourself, I used to be asleep too.  And you see then people going about just like ants in an ant nest, or bees in a beehive.  They have no idea what they're doing, they're just doing what has been conditioned.  And what we want is to free ourselves from conditioning.  And awakening is freedom from conditioning.  The whole of Buddhism is exactly that.  That is Buddhism. It is awakening--it is freedom from conditioning, and that is going to lead you towards awakening.  So the way to do it is, it's not good enough to say well all that I've thought of is maya, is wrong, and faulty; we've already said that.  It's relatively true.  But let's say was the way things looked from a perspective.  Now I've freed myself from that perspective, because I'm searching for freedom, and I awaken from a perspective.  Now do you know what it means to awaken from a perspective?  For example, in the morning you awaken from the perspective of the dream.  And when you start dreaming then you awaken from the diurnal perspective, the perspective of every day.  

So it's a shift in perspective.  Now awakening is a shift of perspective.  And you can trigger it off, like you can really trigger it off.  Like for example if you're looking at a hologram, and there are two images superimposed, and you can see one or the other, you can toggle between one and the other.  So that means, in order to highlight one you have to downplay the other.  You can't see both at the same time, unless you're really very advanced, and then you can extrapolate between the two. Just like the eyes are able to extrapolate between two visions.  Now that's of course very advanced.  That's very difficult.  So the first one, this is awakening beyond life, before one awakens in life.  So, it's not good enough to downplay your personal perspective.  Be careful, because then you find yourself in the dark night--that's what St. John was doing until he saw the, what he called the bright flame of love.  So be very careful.  In India, in Sanskrit one says ("neti, neti") it is not so, it is not so. That's negative.  

All of the sudden you see meaningfulness where you hadn't seen it before.  In fact, it's quite the opposite of what you thought. Quite the opposite.  For example, an example of it, for example you might think well as long as I live the kind of life I'm living, I'll never attain illumination.  Is that a familiar thought?  Well I've thought that a long time, until I realized that it's just in this situation that one can find illumination.  Because stress will challenge you into how can I say, into a tremendous heroism, and overcoming.  But I would say this that it is true that in order to awaken beyond life, one has to make a break from everyday life.  And then one can awaken in life.  And I think one has to awaken beyond life before awakening in life.  And therefore, even though our objective is not awakening beyond life, as in Samadhi for example, I still think that in the course of a retreat we need to do the practices that lead to awakening beyond life.  So if I do that it doesn't mean that this is our objective, it's just the first step before we awaken in life.  I hope you understand what I am saying.

So now, let us just make a pre-experiment in what would that mean, to awaken beyond life.  And what it means to awaken in life.  So as I say, it's not good enough to question your judgment of course, your point of view,  your opinion, your assessment.  That's negative.  But, one does have to do it, because otherwise one will not be able to grasp the real perspective.  It's like for example, as long as the sun is in the sky you can't see the stars.  So, the everyday perspective is so compelling that you can't see the reality, because it strikes you so strongly.  And so it's true that one has to downplay it.   And it is your longing for freedom that helps you to downplay it.  And in fact, to be more precise, it is realizing that one is conditioned.  It's a very unpleasant thought.  But, just think that the way I think is due to my education,  or to well the way that people think, and so on.  It's not really free.  That's a terrible thought, but it's very important to realize that.  That's conditioning.  I am doing what my parents have done, and my grandparents have done and so on.  That's what the Buddha calls the Samsaric wheel.  You're caught in a wheel; it keeps on repeating itself, turning in circles around its axis.  What's the point?  Now of course, if the wheel turns and advances, it's better.  And that's called evolution.   

But you know there are times when one needs to be able to free oneself from the wheel to see the wheel.  To have a perspective, like an overview.  So imagine that now you are flying in a helicopter instead of walking in the streets of a city.  And so you have an overview.  So that would be one way of, that would be a first step in awakening beyond life, is to, it's not yet beyond life, but you're looking at your life, at life in general, with an overview.  And you realize that you were down there walking in the streets, and now you're looking at people walking in the streets.  And you can see that they can't see what you see.  Consequently you see meaningfulness where they can't see it.  And you were in the same condition as they were, before.  But now you have awakened.  So you remember how you thought when you were down there.  

When you are meditating, you remember how things appeared when you were caught in a perspective.  And the only way to not allow that memory to draw you right down again is to think well, that was a perspective and I've freed myself from that perspective now.  And that perspective was due to my thinking that I was an individual.   Now I see that I'm so much part of the totality that I can't say anymore that I'm an individual.  I am an individual and also so much part of the totality.  So that, that is the top of the pendulum.  So that I'm let's say I've overcome my identity as an individual, and yet it's the way that the totality is customized, as I've already said.  If you can do that then you discover your immortality.  That is not only the cells of the body are dying all the time and new cells are being born, but maybe one's body dies, and there are other bodies...it's the same thing, if there's a continuity after death.  So you are that continuity.  That is how you discover your immortality.  Now this is the first step.  It's not quite awakening, it's not Samadhi yet, but it's on the way.

Now in the practice that we did, just think that your breath as you breathe in, your being, the energy of the cosmos is like an updraft, like an eagle soars on an updraft of air, hot air, and frees you from the gravity pull that holds you  into the prison of the individual perception,  perspective. And so if you can feel that energy lifting your consciousness, just like a lift.  Or let's say a childhood dream which is flying on the back of an eagle.  Or Bellerophon flying on the winged steed, which is Pegasus.  So Pegasus is the energy, and Bellerophon is your consciousness.  And that energy is carrying you, beyond the gravity pull, beyond the constraint of conditioning.  But really speaking, at well,at a certain point Pegasus can't fly at a higher altitude, and consequently Bellerophon has to proceed on his own to the Olympus.  So consider that at a certain point you can't just rely upon the energy, the updraft of energy.  And now it is your nostalgia for the Olympus that is going to help you.  It is the pull of the future, it's there, it's your nostalgia that is going to lift you to the Olympus.  

And that is, my father says it very beautifully.  He says it's 'a passion for the unattainable.'  A passion for the unattainable.  That is you can't ever put it in your pocket.  It is always in infinite regress, it's always like the horizon, it's always a little bit further.  But somehow it pulls you, it lures you, it doesn't lure you, it pulls you, it draws you into reaching beyond yourself.  It is that which makes the great mountaineers.  The mountaineers are taking up a challenge.  It seems unattainable, and somehow, sometimes they make it.  It's that which makes great beings.  Never accepting impossible as the answer.  The word impossible is not in the divine dictionary.  There's a word of Ibn Arabi which is really wonderful, when he says, "by the fact the possible becomes actual, the extent of possibility moves into the area of the impossible." I don't know whether that makes sense to you.  By making what's possible actual, that is already something.  But then greater still is to make that which seems impossible actual.  That's a challenge.

So we've come to the, in fact I've gone beyond the time again.  But I admire you for sitting here without falling to sleep.  Some of you did, but, and for putting up with a very awkward position of sitting cross legged, that's not, it's something one has to develop in time, but it's very strenuous, so I must say I admire you for that.  It's good to be tough in life.  Now you're learning how to put up with pain in your legs now. Not just pain in your heart, but pain in your legs.  OK, well thank you for your attention.  So we'll meet again tomorrow.  So tomorrow we'll be working with light, and then, well I have a few things in my shirt sleeve for you for tomorrow.  OK, God bless you.

SEP 06, 1998		Tape 04

Now, curiously enough as it encounters the answer that I have to one of the questions which was how does one avoid trance when meditating?  And, even going to sleep when the teacher is talking.  It might not be a real state of sleep, but a kind of hypnosis, nothing that I want less than to hypnotize you, I can assure you.

Well, the thing is that as you have noticed, I have tried to be very clear about practices, skills, because, unless one has very clear guidelines, one tends to get into a sort of an amorphous state, being kind of high but dreary and sleepy and unclear.  So, it's like, for example if your are to improvise on the piano and haven't done your scales properly and it's just random you know.  You can make random quite nice too, it doesn't have to be horrible, but it is still vague, it's ambiguous.  And, the way to avoid that is to have very clear practices.  So, keep your mind clearly focused.

And of course, we have these quide-lines are becoming more and more clear in the course of the years.  A trance state is a state in which one has not just down played an attunement, but has definitely expelled, I mean, rejected and attunement, and even denigrated it.  I'm talking about the attunement of the world, and consequently there is a split in your personality.  And, the consequence is an astral projection.  I've done it myself, I know what that astral projection is.  It's marvelous, I mean, for someone who likes flying. (laughter) You take off.

But, the consequence is that you have a split at a certain point and you can never reach samadhi.  You can never awaken, because you are a split personality, and that's not what we want to know.  And, that's a reason why I was very clear.  I hope that you have noticed that we need to...  I'm not going to use the word schlepp anymore.  You know, it's not a Jewish word of course, but it's been implanted in the American vocabulary, but it is really German.  Schleppen means to tow, tow a cow for example. Anyway, I won't use that word anymore, but what I mean is that instead of..., you see, this is really a preparation for what we are going to do today, and I really want to go deep today, so I don't want to talk to much.

But, we have to correct certain faulty ways of thinking that stand in our way of experience, and one is the Descartesian idea that there is spirit in matter and so, I'm a spirit, I'm a body, so I discard the body to become a spirit.  Because, I'm talking about transmuting your bodiness as you reach up into Samadhi instead of discarding it. So, these are new concepts, and you don't even..., in yoga one definitely does discard one's body, but Suffism has this particular contribution to the spirituality of our time, when we recognize the validity of the body,and also of life, what is achieved by life, instead of becoming just ascetics.  On the other hand, we learn how detachment is going to help us to involve ourselves in life without being the victims of our involvement.

So, that is one way of avoiding trance.  It is avoiding that split.  The other one is thinking of God as other than ourselves.  We have all been educated in our spiritual education, whatever religion, We are thinking, Well, God up there, and we other than God.  And so, there again, we have to correct our way of thinking and realize that there are, let's say, on one hand, there are several degrees of Godness, and that is typical of Sufism, like unity at the top, but then, multiplicity in unity, so there are several degrees of Godness, up to matter, right into matter. There is a word of Murshid that is really..., it struck me very deeply, and that is through man, through the human being, matter becomes more intelligent, and we are instrumental to transforming our body so that our body participates in our experience rather than rejecting it.

And so if you think that way, then you can understand what one means by discovering your immortality.  It's because if you think that everything is God, "La illaha illa, means everything is God, then that means there are different degrees of Godness, and at one level of your being, you are co-extensive with that aspect of God that is unity beyond multiplicity and at the other end, something is gained by the proliferation of the one into the many, and there is an osmosis that takes place, a contribution that takes place by each fragment of the totality to each other fragment of the totality, something is gained.  So, that's enough of metaphysics for today.

So now, we start our practices.  Well, it's a policy of the Sufis, always to start one's meditations by being very clear as to what is one's objectives.  So, one thinks now, what am I doing?  Well, for one thing, of course, I have my involvement in life, but I am an initiate.  You don't have to be an initiate of the Sufi order, or whatever, but I'm somehow a person..., I'm in the world, but not of the world, as Jesus said.  Somehow there is something n me that is dedicated to another dimension to the kind of the greed and violence that you find in the world.  So, it's a different goal for oneself and so on.  Really, the sanyasin in me, I don't have to leave the world to become a sanyasin.  There is something in me that is dedicated to what I consider to be the greatest value in the world.

So, that's the first thing.  One is very clear as to what one's objective is.  And now, what I am looking for specifically, there are many things I am looking for, but one is perhaps the paramount one is awakening.  I feel that I am caught in a perspective, and I'm uncomfortable in that constraint, and I'd like to know how to awaken.  And, I'm looking through Pir of course to the know-how that has been..., dawned upon us by the great masters and saints of the past, and prophets of the past who have given us guidelines, and they are there, but I'm like the bee that makes honey out of the pollen.  I mean, if you had to study all that I have studied all my life of the different traditions, you wouldn't be able to have a job, and a family and so on.  I have dedicated my life to it, and at age 83, I've come to a point when I am beginning to just earmark the special things that lead towards awakening and illumination.  So, sifted, because there is a lot of other material, but there are other things that we want to unfold our being and we want to know how to deal with our problems and so on.  But, let's start with this, because from the time that you see things differently to the way you saw them, that is you awaken, then the qualities in your being that have been with held, because of your self image, will all of a sudden, surface, and you will be transformed.  Whereas if you try to work with your qualities, to try to develop qualities, it doesn't work.  So, this is really the key, and it will have consequences in terms of your achievement in life, and so on and so forth.  So, wea re dealing with really the crux of the question.

And then, I want to make it clear.  I said it already yesterday, that we want to first awaken beyond life before we awaken in life.  Now, that is my private opinion.  I could be wrong.  I can only say that I am convinced, for me, that is the only way.  And that means that at sometimes, one really has to call a halt form one's daily life, and if possible, make a retreat, because we are talking about another dimension and I think that Buddha was right when he said that this becoming does not lead to that non-become.  Or somehow, the time is here.  OK, I'll make a break, and I want to awaken from all this."  And then, after that, "Then, can I remain awake when I am back into life again."  So, that is a second awakening.  That's what we want to do.

Now, the word in India, one uses sometimes the word, "awakening", and sometimes the word, "illumination", or enlightenment, and sometimes there is some confusion between those words, and it doesn't matter, but still the beauty of the word illumination is that one is referring to light.  And you see, there you have something concrete, you see.  Just awakening in Samadhi it's not concrete enough, you know, then you lose your touch with the "real".  You know the Sufis make a difference between reality and the real.  I would make a difference between reality and actuality.  

So, the beauty of light, now this is just very short and then we will do our practices.  But, this is physics of course, but physics has helped me a lot to understand what I am doing in meditation.  It is that you see all that we know of light is how it affect our retina or our nervous system and our bodies as a matter of fact, or laboratory experiments, aparati.  But, we don't know how light behaves when we don't perceive it.  And, what we are doing in meditation is to stalk light beyond its physical expression.  And, that's why we use words like a non physical light, and you know, I've had physicists tell me, "Well, what do you mean by non-physical light?  Light is physical.  But, the fact is that, fortunately, the more advanced physicists in our time are beginning to say exactly this, that all that you know is just a slither of reality.  So, when we talk about light, don't confine it to what you perceive as light.  If you accept that, then the extraordinary thing is that if you stalk light beyond its physical expression, you discover levels of your being that you never thought were possible.  Your aura is not just a physical phenomenon.

And, ultimately, you discover the light of intelligence, which is light too, but not the kind of light that one perceives. And so, light is like a ladder that will help you to lift your consciousness beyond the middle range.  And hence, the tremendous importance of light.  So, what we are going to do now is a practice of light, and from time to time we will try to see what kind of implications this has in terms of awakening ones consciousness. First of all, with your eyelids closed, just be aware of the light or your glance.  You see, normally when one has ones eyes open, one's eyes are receptive to the light of the environment, passes through the retina and is threaded along the optic nerves into the brain.  But, what we don't know is that our eye's also emit light.  That means that the light in the brain is threaded along the optic nerves and reaches out into the environment through our glance.  And so, that is what we want to start experiencing, discovering.  So, with closed eyes, just think that your eyes are like two head lamps of a car.

And concentrate very intensly on those two beams of light that are so powerful that they actually pass through your eye lids. Now you know that if you open your eyes, your eyes are going to be conditioned by the environment, and therefor forced into focus in order to be able to pick up the objects that you are locking at, and then you lose your concentration on those two beams of light.  So, it takes very much concentration and intent on maintaining your concentration on those two beams of light when you open your eyes.  And, if you can't hold that concentration, close your eyes again, and go to the beginning of the exhaling.  The thing is that the objects will look like a blur, and then it's ok.  As long as the objects look like a blur, you can maintain your concentration.  If you start seeing objects, then close your eyes.

Now, there is a little more to it than that, because you have to really love light.  It's not just a practice of the will, but you have to experience the ecstasy of light so that your whole being is deeply moved by what light means to you.  And, as a matter of fact, there are shadows in our glance, they are are shadows of the world that stand in the way.  And, therefor the only way..., it's not good enough just to practice skills, it involves a very deep transformation in ourselves if there is intolerance, impatience with people, of course, resentment, anger, cruelty, greed, your glance will not be luminous.  It's no use trying to imagine this luminous, it's Luciferian light actually, but it's not real light.

So, this does require of us a very deep catharsis of our being, so there is love in our eyes instead of just light. And you know, love is really associated with beauty, actually it is really splendor.  Beauty is the way that splendor manifests as form, but splendor on its own does not have form, it's beyond form. Somehow you have to be enamored by the marvel of life.  So, your glance reflects that ecstasy of the soul, to find yourself here on planet earth, discovering the miracle of life. Now a further development of that is that your glance..., if your glance is stronger than the impact of the light of the environment upon your retina, then you'll be able to x-ray life and see what transpires behind that which appears.  

Now, you can do that, for example, if you were to either pick a flower, which I don't like to do, or then sit in front of a flower, or you can chose a crystal for example, eventually a person, and do not focus your eyes on the appearance of the flower, the petals, or the crystal or the face of the person, but somehow, keep your glance offset.  In fact, your consciousness offset.  And then, all of a sudden, it's amazing, you get into the spirit of the flower.  All of a sudden, you see that the petals are just an outer expression of the reality of that flower, and of course, the same thing with the crystal, there you get into the light of the crystal rather than the matter of the crystal.  Just imagine that matter becomes so transparent that it allows light to come through.  And then of course, you get into the countenance of the person, and you see such beauty.  There is a word of Hafiz when he said, "If only you could see yourself through my eyes, you'd realize how beautiful you are."  And, that's my privilege here to sit here and watch you.

But, you can do it.  Don't go by the appearance.  That's the way to do it. What you see is..., you see, the face if fairly sclerosed, one uses the word, "the poker face", well, it's not that sclerosed of course, if we laughed, something comes through, and if we are angry.  But still, that which comes through is much more significant than what appears.  So, you see a lot of things.  If you look in the countenance of people, you see suffering, despair, longing for beauty, longing to validate one's self, condemnation of one's self, judgmentally, precarity, all kinds of things.  All that is all there.  The drama of life right there in the form that transpires and that is evanescent, and ephemeral, and you there, transfixed by the discovery of the universe in each person, in each person in a different way.

Now, that is an experience, transforming your being.  It enables you to love people who make themselves difficult to love, because you see beauty where you didn't see before. The Sufis speak about the smiling forehead, it's true, one has to find joy in one's glance, but there is suffering too, otherwise one's joy would be frivolous.  So, it's got to be, let's say, the whole process of transforming..., you see, it has to do with the transformation of..., I don't know whether to use the word transformation, let's say the transmutation of your personal dimension into it's cosmic dimension.  Because, in the personal dimension, there is joy and suffering, in the impersonal dimension, there is ecstasy.  See the difference?  Ecstasy is more than joy.

So somehow, both pain and joy have been transmuted into that wonderful state that is impossible to describe, which we call ecstasy. Now of course, as I say, our realization does have an impact on our body functions, and here we are dealing with the brain and the eyes.  And consequently, one is able to resorb much more light through the eyes from the environment, so that is physical light to start with, physical light.  And, then emit more light through one's eyes, that's what happens.  So, the light gets accumulated in the cells of the brain, which stores that light.  Now, that is purely matter of fact.  So, I'm suggesting a practice now.  Well, first of all I would say. Place the middle fingers of your hands upon your nostrils, and keep your left nostril closed by pressing the middle finger of your left hand, and just breathe through your right nostril.

Now there is a reason for this, but I don't have to get into that at present. And now, slow down your breath so that you extend your exhaling as long as you can. Now after inhaling, hold your breath, that means close both nostrils. Exhale through both nostrils. I don't know how long you can hold your breath.  If you practice a lot, you can hold your breath a long time.  In fact, if you are young and healthy, you can hold your breath for sixty seconds.  That's something like sixty half-beats. Now, what I suggest you are doing, is close your eyelids of course, and place the indexes on your eyelids, but do not press.  You must turn your eyeballs upwards so you don't press your fingers on your retina, I mean on the cornea, the retina, through the eyelids, because then you have optical illusions.  And then, place the forth and fifth fingers on your lips, and now eventually of co8urse, you place your thumbs in your ears, but before you do that, I want to say this.  What I suggest you are doing now is when you inhale, you take your indexes off of your eyes.  So you inhale through your eyes, open.  And then you close your eyes when you hold your breath, and then take your indexes again off when you exhale, so that you radiate light through your eyes.

So, there are three breaths, not more.  Three breaths and then take your fingers away. Now you can put your thumbs in your ears. (Pause.  Group does practice)   Take you hands away now. So, what you are doing then is breathing in light through your eyes, concentrating on the accumulation of light in you brain, and then radiating light into the environment as you exhale. Not only radiating light, but scanning a bit over the surface, so that you are able to, not only your glance becomes like headlamps of a car or a flashlight that is turning it's light, not only physical reality, but also the psychological problems.  So, you are not just passive, but active. Pir-O-Murshid says, "The light of the glance does not only uncover reality that is hidden, but it also unlocks the conditions and unfurls them."  So, it is creative, your glance is creative.  Not just observing, but it is really creative.

Now, we are going to do a further practice.  Now we are going to do the same thing, but with the whole body.  So, in as much as you identify with your body, every pore of your body is kind of sensitive, like when you are sun bathing for example, to light, and opens itself in order to receive the light from the environment, and this light penetrates into the cells of the body so that, as you inhale, you become very receptive to the light of the environment, and in fact, I would say, I have done this practice at night time under the stars, and I find that it is more, it's even more shattering to discover that one is actually absorbing the light of the stars into one's body.  Some of these stars don't exist anymore, it's paradoxical.

But there light is here, there photons are here. And so, it's like such a gift of the light, the gift of the light of the universe, and the light of the cosmos.  That our bodies have the ability to absorb this light.  And, there is a mind body function here, because if you are conscious of it, of course, it enhances the ability of the cells of the body to absorb light.  And then, you hold your breath, and as you hold your breath, you see if you can sense the tremendous effervescence that happens within the cells of your body.  They are delighted in the dispensation of light that has occurred, and they are really dancing with joy.  And, if I were to quote physics, I could say how this happens.  The electrons free themselves from their orbitals.  They are using the energy of light, because light is energy, to free themselves from constraint.  So, you see that even the cells of our body have a great nostalgia for freedom.  And then, they fall back into place again, and what remains is a light that is emanated by your body.

So, as you exhale, you are conscious of radiating light.  And, the more you are conscious of radiating light, the more you can radiate light.  And of course, it's absolutely baffling, because, you know the photons of light are traveling through space a a speed of 186 thousand miles a second, which means they hit the stars.  And since your aura is part of your body, according to physics, light is matter, your body is right there is the stars, it is not confined to your skin.  What an experience!  What a discovery! So, the stars are not other than yourself that you are observing, you are the stars that has converged into that vortex that one calls one's aura.  The vortex, like a whirlpool.

Ok, let's do that now. You can do it with closed eyes. (Pause.  Group does practice.) So, I hope that you can feel the radiance of light around your body, and you can feel the ebb and flow of that light of your aura with your breath.  It tends to converge, contract, build up as you inhale.  There is no boundary between your body and the light of the environment.  Let's say, it's just like a whirlpool.  The waters tend to accumulate, let's say, towards the axis of the whirlpool.  That's what happens, the light of the stars is now converging as your aura, not into your aura, but as your aura.  So, it's more personal since it is contracting around the axis of your being, your personal being, and then as you exhale, then, that 's the other way around, your being extends.  Not that you are radiating into the environment, your whole aura extends into the starry sky.

Now you know that the cells don't only giggle under the impact of the energy of light, and dance as I say, well, actually the electrons are dancing, but they proliferate in what is called mitosis.  That means that they renew themselves by the power of light, and hence the ability to heal one's self with light.  And, as a matter of fact, energize one's self with light.  Because, unless you renew the body, it tends to peter out as you get older.  There is a way of reversing that process, and I'm a living proof of it.  So, now you know my secret.  But, you have to do it.  It's not good enough just to listen to my talking.  You have to do it.  So, let's say, as you hold your breath, be conscious of that tremendous upsurge of energy within the cells of your body.

The joy of the cells of our body.  The ecstasy of the cells of your body.  Their encounter with light. The cells of the body are a light that has become, I don't use the word coagulated, but let's say, concretized.  They are light, and then they have the faculty of drawing light from the environment, but they were light before.  And, that's the paradox. Can you experience that?  The cells of your body are not just matter.  Or, if you would like to put it this way, you would say, our aura is the template in which our cells are configured.  It's a deeper reality than the material aspect of the cells.

Side 2

The further step. And that is that somehow, the reason why, let's say, the springhead that enables you to draw energy from the environment, is that the core of the vortex is a void.  So, the whole, let's say the lake for example, get's drawn into the void in the center of the vortex, and then, from the void it emerges again renewed.  So, life is continually renewed.  And, if it were not so, then life would not be renewed.  So, it has to pass through a total collapse before it is renewed, and that is what we mean by fana and baqa in Sufi terms.  

So, that means that the light of the environment is resorbed in the void that is in a state which is not open to your consciousness or your will, we call a subliminal state, and you remember yesterday, I described it by saying that we only live in a cross section, even of the physical universe.  So, there are subliminal levels of the physical world which escape our grasp or discovery, our explorations. So, you get into a state of suspension.  When you are holding your breath, now you don't know anymore what is happening to the light.  You experienced what happened to the cells, but now you are going deeper, and somehow, light goes through a process..., it's not diffusion, diffusion at the jagged ends.  No, it's resorption, the opposite of diffusion, and then, out of that state that has often been pure chaos, but it is not chaotic, but is out of that state of the unknown, a new dispensation emerges from within.  A new dispensation emerges from within.

In other words, our aura is not only formed by the convergence of the light of the stars, but there's light emerging from, let's say, like a white hole.  You know that in the cosmos there are white holes where energy emerges from subliminal levels of reality, new stars are born out of the white holes.  So, just the same thing is happening in you.  So, you are not just boomeranging back the light of the stars, but you are sending out to the stars a new light.  Just imagine what we are doing!  What are functions are in the universe.

So, Pir-O-Murshid said, "We are contributing to the process whereby the all prevading light becomes radiant light. Now, that is something you have to understand, or we have to understand.  The light that we generally experience through our eyes and even through our body is a radiant light.  That means it radiates from a source of light, like a lamp or star or whatever, which is located in space.  But you know, the representation that we make of the physical world made of building blocks, let's say, like that tree here and that tree there, this person's body here, and that is what Dr Boehm calls the explicate condition of matter.  It's rather the explicate mode of focus of our consciousness.  It sees matter that way.  But, behind it there is a deeper reality that is called the implicate, where everything is interconnected with everything else, like in that work.  And, this could be illustrated, for example, if you are swimming on the surface of a lake and you see lotus flowers, or water lilies, and then is you swim under the lake, you see that it is all a network.  It's not individual flowers it's the network that emerges individual flowers.  Now, that's a deeper reality.  That's what Dr David Boehm calls the implicate state.

So, when you turn within, eventually if you don't stop on the way with introspection, then eventually, you discover that very deep level.  You can't be the observer.observing it.  No, you sort of sink into that very deep state where everything is everywhere, and the mode of light in that state, Pir-O-Murshid calls it, "all prevading".  Like radio waves.  And, you are instrumental in transforming these radio waves, these light waves into radiant light in your aura. Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan gives the example of the sun that converges the light of the cosmos, and then radiates it from a point in space.  And that's true of all the stars of course, and that's true of ourselves.

So, you have discovered another mode of light than the one that we usually know or experience.  So, it is physical light, but it is implicate.  It's like radio are physical but they are implicate. Now we are going to discover further levels of light. So now, of course you are aware of the temperature of your body.  So, your body produces heat, and that heat is partly due to the fact that your cells are in a state of combustion, just like a fire.  And, the kind of light that results from this combustion is called the infra red, in the infra red range of the spectrum which you can see in metal that has become incandescent for example, it has been heated and become red.  Actually infra red, you can't see infra red, but when it becomes red, then you see it.  So, that is true of the body. 

Now this is a function that you find in fire flies that are able to produce light out of burning their body at night time, and bats in caves and deep sea fish and so on that don't have access to a source of light from outside. Now there is a great art in esoteric schools in the hermetic tradition, and that is to transmute the infra red into ultra violet, into visible light and also into the ultra violet.  And, it's a faculty that we don't usually use.  And, what Pir-O-Murshid said is that in meditating, we are awakening faculties, even body faculties that have tremendous consequences in terms of our realization, that  open doors to our realization.

So, to start with, what I suggest is that you simply, as you inhale, this is an image, but images are relative, but still helpful.  So, imaging that your spinal chord is like a chimney and that there is a flame rising in this chimney and if you have watched a flame very carefully, you can see that at the bottom it is red, and then it gets into a kind of carmine color, and then orange and then gold and then yellow and then green and then blue and violet and ultimately, ultraviolet.  So, the colors of the spectrum.  So, you are familiar with these colors aren't you, when you look at a rainbow for example.  So, imagine now, that by your mind over body, by that function, you are able to transmute, make use of that energy that would be wasted, well, it's not wasted but would just go towards maintaining the temperature of your body, you can use the surplus of that energy to enhance your aura.

So, the way to do it is to, mind over body again, to imagine, the power of imagination, to imagine that the flame inside you spinal chord is red at the bottom of your spine, and becomes, kind of terra cotta, kind of something like the color of the robes of the sannyasins in India, in the second chakra.  And in the third chakra, the solar plexis, it's called manipourna, it's orange, a wonderful madeira orange, like you see in the clouds sometimes at dawn or at sunset.  And then, it becomes a beautiful gold in your heart center, anahata chakra, heart center, gold.  Then it becomes green in the throat center,    center.  A color that is very important for the nomads because you go through desert which is golden and then all of a sudden, you come to an oasis which is green, where life has attained a higher degree of evolution.

And then, transfer you attention to your eyes, your physical eyes which are linked with your third eye somehow, and the radiance of your eyes, at least you are not radiating at this moment, you are into the root from which the light is set forth through your glance, so that root is somewhere in the brain in the cortex. So, imagine the frequency of that light is..., we experience it as blue.  You know that the colors are just the way that we experience frequencies of light.  Light doesn't have colors, but we experience them, those different frequencies as colors.  So, blue, light blue, like the light of the sky.  And then you have that, rather paradoxical relationship between the eyes and the third eye.  And, let's say, in as much as one can talk about a location of a third eye, let's say the root of the third eye would be in the pineal gland, but it's not confined to the pineal gland, but the extraordinary thing about the pineal gland is that it is sensitive to the light of the center of the galaxy.

For example, whereas our bodies are sensitive to the light of the sun, or even to the stars, but this is the galaxy. So that in fact, evolution takes place by an action of the center of the galaxy upon the denizens of planet earth. And now, you transfer your attention to the crown center, saraswara, and the crown center is really like a kind of a rainbow above your head, but the vortexes, the vertex from which it fans out is in a point which the Hindus call, "bindu", and which is obviously the pituitary gland. Now, it's useful if you would look in your encyclopedia, and see exactly where the pineal gland is and where the pituitary gland is, but the reason why we turn our eyeballs upwards and press the tip ot our tongue against our palate is because, well for one thing, one is pressing upon.., the palate will exercise pressure upon the temporal lobes of the brain and also the forth ventricle fo the brain, but that is beyond what most people know.  But, the importance is that you are concentrating your attention on a point in your brain which is above the soft point, you know in your palate, there is cartilage, and then behind that there is a soft area there.  You could almost, if you press on it you could damage your brain.

So, your reach into the medulla oblongata, pons and then eventually, the pituitary gland is like a flower that is hanging upside down from the thalamus.  But, the important thing is that, I'm trying to say why we are doing..., what these skills do.  They have the effect of awakening the action of the pituitary gland, which is the master gland of the whole endocrine body, the functions of the body. And consequently, the subtle chemistry of your body is now serving as a support system for your realization, and that's why this is a secret of awakening, is to transform your body, so that the gross cells of your body give birth to those finer cells which are like the neuro- transmitters, or the enzymes, or the hormones, and now it it that high level of your bodiness which is now the support system for your realization.

That's what happens behind the scenes, so perhaps it might help some people to help you be convinced that this is the way that one can eventually, let's say, favor the experience of samadhi. Ok, let's do that now.  As you inhale, pass in review each of those chakras, and of course the answer is that you must first exhale, and you must keep on exhaling, inhaling and extending your exhaling before you do anything.  So, that when you are able to exhale very long, then you will be able to accumulate much more oxygen as you inhale, and consequently you will be able to hold your breath much longer.  And of course, as you are inhaling, you will be able to inhale longer. So as you inhale, you pass in review each one of the chakras.  You imagine a flame in your spinal chord. 

And, as you hold your breath at this stage, then just imagine a rainbow above your head. Eyeballs turned upwards and tongue pressed against the palate. 
 And now, I will say something further, because we are working with light.  And so far, we have described light in its physical form, in its physical dimension.  And, you will remember yesterday, I was describing the different chakras, and when concentrating on the heart center, I said that it is  connected with the aura of light, and of course the heavenly sphere.  So, there are different levels of light, beyond the physical level.

And so, as you transfer your attention from your heart center, the throat center of course, it has to do with your audio body, let's say, your signature tune, but having passed that threshold, you get into a whole new level of light which is not physical, and that is the light that now is being radiated through your third eye.  So your third eye brings you in contact with very high levels of light, which we described as the heavenly spheres.

So, I hope that you understand what I am saying, because up to the present we were transmuting light from infra red to ultra violet, and now we are really transmuting the light from the visible to the invisible, beyond the visible. Now, there is a secret here.  This is really the secret of illumination, leading to illumination.  And that is to stalk light beyond it's physical expression.  So far, passing through the levels of light, we call the celestial spheres.  So far, to a point where we can't speak about light far from its physical expression.  We cannot speak about light that might be visible.  And that's why the Sufis make a difference between the light that can be seen and the light that sees.  

So now we are reaching the light that sees, instead of the light that can be seen.  And so, it's beyond the heavenly spheres.  And the Sufis call it the clear light of intelligence.  Intelligence as light.  Obviously not physical light.  You are making that quantum leap from the existential, beyond the existential to the level of pure realization and that's where your practices of light are going to trigger off, are going to spark awakening and illumination.  It's a quantum leap.  And therefor, and you hold your breath now, this is the next step, instead of concentrating on the rainbow above your head, concentrate on the light of intelligence that is beyond time and space, beyond existence.  The light that sees.

All of a sudden, you have a feeling of awakening.  You see the secret is, in a word of Ib'n Arabi, he says, "Wipe away the phantasmagoria of imagination."  So, so far we have been working with imagination.  We have been representing light, colors and so on.  Anyway, using the physical model with our imagination.  Now you lay aside your imagination, wipe away the phantasmagoria of imagination." And so, any kind of visualizations, or visual representations is now replaced by realization.

So now you are not picking up information through your consciousness by perceiving light in the world, or even being aware of your aura, you are not perceiving, you are not passive.  So,it is the light of intelligence that is now threaded through your glance.  At first we worked with the light that has accumulated in our brain, but that was a first step, a very elementary step.  But let us say that it is, "a light upon a light."  And, that's the meaning of that sura in the Koran, "A light upon a light."  The light of intelligence is riding the tide of the light of your glance, a light upon a light.

Now, this may sound theoretical until you actually do it, but I think we need to have a concrete example.  And , the example that I often give is a mother who has her young child with her.  He or she can see the pixie in the tree and the child says, "No mommy, I can't see it."  "Look again."  "No mommy, I can't see it."  "Look again."  And, all of a sudden, "Yes!".  And, all of a sudden, you see the whole face of that child light up.  So, the light of intelligence effects the light of the body, effects the aura.  That's the light upon a light.  That's the meaning of that sura.

So, as you exhale now, now think that the light of intelligence, let's say the light of your realization.  It's what we mean by that..., we have to be very clear about this.  What we mean by realization, is the knowledge that is already written into our soul, and which has been kept in obeisance because we relied upon the knowledge that we acquired from the circumstances, from the existential state.  But actually, if we ever acquired any knowledge in the existential state, it was because it matched the pre-knowledge that we already had.  But now, what we are doing is to, by trying to match them, we limit that pre-knowledge. 



SEP 06, 1998		Tape 05

Ok, can we do this now.  As I said, the only way to do this is to somehow, to carry your body with you, to honor your body as it is transmuted.  And somehow, the quintessence, like the perfume of the flower is now drawn into the totality.  Let's say the contribution of each fragment of the universe, to the universe, the feedback, the recycling into the programming.  So, just think of yourself as a perfume now, as you...  We have done this of course, as we were passing in review each of the chakras, eventually the quintessence of light, because we were working with light, instead of physical light, the quintessence of light, like the perfume.

The mind rides the wind, so the wind now is subtle energy, very subtle energy as the Tibetans say.  It's not your body, your gross body, but it's the quintessence of it, and that is the support system, that is the Pegasus, that is the wind that your mind is riding.  And, your mind is stretching itself beyond its individual boundaries to encompass the thinking of the universe.

Now think that the universe is awake, and that realization got narrowed down in your personal realization, and now you are doing the reverse journey.  It's like remembering the state of awakening of the universe that is still there in the higher levels of your being by uncovering it from the veils that..., like the bushel that has covered the light. Buddha says, "Leave the launching platform."  So, the launching platform is our personal vantage point, personal self image, acquired knowledge, act of consciousness.  It is not our body, that is what it is.  So, everything that is not true, everything that is just a notion, your leave behind.

And, perhaps the most important thing is, well, these are the last words of Buddha under the tree when he said, "I have overcome determinism."  In other words, I have overcome conditioning.  In other words, the ultimate freedom.  So, awakening is the ultimate freedom from all the things that we have habituated ourselves to think and we act and so on.  Freedom, absolute freedom from the support system. So, you are free to let the universe awaken in your awakening, in your realization.

Freedom from opinion.  Freedom from self image.  Freedom from assessments.  Freedom from the notion of one's individuality as separate from the totality of which it is apart. All those things that are standing in the way. You leave the launching platform in your quest for freedom. Now, one should always follow awakening beyond life by awakening in life.  Always. So, that would be like, now, you are turning your attention towards the existential state.  At first, a kind of overview, as though you are flying over a city in a helicopter, a kind of overview.  And you think, well, what is all this about?  And, you can see that the oneness has multiplied, proliferated into multiplicity.  There is a gift of incentive to each individual from the one being.  So, it is like the ultimate act of generosity.  That's the reason why (?) Rahman is the first wazifa in Islam.  The gift of freedom.  Just imagine what that means.

And, you see an intention behind it all.  You can't quite see it in the facts, in the detail, but you see behind it all an intention.  One intention is this of course, the tremendous act of magnanimity, whereby, to use simplistic language, God gives freedom to each individual, or leases his or her freedom, with the risk that of course, things will go awry.  And you see, that through this, each fragment becomes more like the totality through the act of freedom, but it can go wrong of course.  But, that is the only way that the universe can be dynamic.  If it is just a puppet show, then there is nothing gained.  But, if each individual has a contribution to the whole, then of course, something is gained.

And, can you see that the consequence is that there is no way in which the programming can be applied.  That means that everything can be foreseen or foreplanned, because if is so, then there would be no freedom.  So, the only way is that things go wrong, and through that, one learns.  And so what Murshid is saying, and I hope you can see that, that as you awaken in life, you see what Murshid means when he says it's as if there were a lot of pieces of a puzzle, and they are all over the place.  And now you see two.  And now you see those two pieces, at least you can see a correspondence.  And Ah! There's another third piece there.  And then, over there, I can see there are two pieces there, but I can't see how they relate with these.  Still, gradually, everything falls into place.

And the cause of the suffering in the world is that things are out of place.  Wrong people in the wrong places.  People have no idea what it is all about.   People in authority abusing people by their power.  That kind of thing you see everywhere, and you ask yourself, Oh God, why do you allow these things to happen?  Act of freedom.

So that eventually, each fragment of the totality can take responsibility.  And our realization will give us guidelines in our taking responsibility, otherwise we are taking the wrong action.  That is why it is so important to awaken beyond life, and then awaken in life.  The best way to illustrate it would be like you have visited a marvelous building, and you are absolutely enchanted by it, and now you visit the architect.  And, the architect now accompanies you in the building and now you see what was intended.  You see much more than you saw before.  That's awakening in life.  You see the programming working its way, and you understand things that you would never understand if you just were based upon your own vantage point.  It could be further illustrated.  You have been listening to the music, but you know the composer.  Do you know Beethoven?  Heroic, full of self confidence behind that fragile soul, broken by life, and yet courageous to believe in the utmost, the splendor, the victory behind defeat.  Now you understand Beethoven better.

Brahms transformed terrible psychological suffering into joy, right in the human heart, not just the soul level as in Bach, but right in the human heart. Handel, the sacredness, the glory, the sense of glory, right in the middle of the drama of life, the divine glory, because of discovering the sacredness that is being violated by the sacrilege of the world, and so on.  If you go into the thinking of these composers, you understand their music better, and that is what we are doing.  So you see, samadhi beyond life, that's not good enough.  It's awakening in life. So, we have to terminate here. (15 minute break) You see that in our lives we are deeply involved in our emotions.  So, we are talking about awakening our consciousness, but there is always the awakening of conscience, which has to do with emotions, and in fact, it is emotions that are the driving force behind all that we do, and behind our realization.  There is a kind of a realization of the heart, instead of the realization of the mind, that the Sufis talk about.

So, can you see how emotions are put through a terrible stress of course.  We start with an ideal which remains a little bit idyllic, and then young people then find that, that was Utopian, and they lose their trust in the marvel of life.  As soon as they go to school, as a matter of fact.  And, that is one of the reasons why I started as a young man, organizing youth camps, to warn young people just keep your spirit, whatever, the circumstances.  But, you see that emotions are wrought into the tremendous wrangle of life, with all the stress.  And there is incongruity, and there's violence, and the quest to try to survive it all, and survive one's soul.  So, this is where the drama of life is enacted. And, so our insight is really not just at the level of understanding, but at the level of how we can resonate with suffering and joy, and how we can make sense of something which does not make sense.

Now, emotions can become dried up.  One's heart can be burnt out by too much stress.  And innately, certainly one's resentment of people, and anger, and jealousy and whatever, and hatred and of course eventually, cruelty, that comes from it.  It will make one's emotion gross, let's say.  Not noble.  And so, there is a whole dimension of Buddha's teaching which is in the realm of the ambiguity of emotions.  That is why they are using the words, "The Noble Truths."  A kind of a high sensitivity to the heart.  And so, it starts by being able to earmark different kinds of emotion.  Watch yourself.  In fact, this is part of awakening in life.  There is a word of Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan, and that is, "you cannot know God unless you know yourself."  And so, watch yourself, and watch your emotions and see how your emotions..., there are emotions of the environment spill over and arouse emotions in yourself.  For example, I heard someone say the other day, "Well, you see that my relationship with this person brings out the worst in me."  So, there is a spillover you see.  Well, the fact is that it was there in you, otherwise it wouldn't have brought it up, and it is probably good that it came to the surface.  But still, the fact is that the first step is the sensitivity, is to be able to sense whether a person's attunement pulls you down or inspires you and lifts you up.  That's the first thing.

So, what would that mean exactly?  Well, there are extremes of course, like the extremes would be vulgar emotions, where there is full of vulgar emotions in the world, you just walk in the streets and there are vulgar emotions.  It's gross, it's gross as you can get.  And then, the sacred that you can feel in a church or in a synagogue or in a mosque or a Hindu temple, or you can find in yourself.  If you do the dhikr, you can find that sacred emotion, so you are creating the temple out of your own body.  And between them, there are all kinds of levels of emotion.  Personal love, divine love, emotion of the heart, emotion of the soul.  It's not different, I mean, it's different levels, but do we know the emotion of the soul?  Perhaps there are moments when, somehow, we are touched in a deeper place than our heart.  And sometimes, there is a confusion.  You know, in ordinary parlance we say, well the emotion of the heart.  But, there is the emotion of the soul.

There is no way of saying it, but it's exaltation.  It's a use of a word, but what's the use of a word, but it starts by admiration, admiring music for example, admiring architecture, poetry, something beautiful, beautiful art and so on.  Admiring intelligence.  I think it is admirable.  I mean the intelligence that made computers.  I think it is wonderful.  One can be full of admiration, the way that intelligence is able to manifest in such a concrete way.  At's admirable.

There is an emotion that one could call be wondering.  Like, life itself is nothing short of a miracle.  So, one is bemused by discovering, well, the pulse of life, beating right there in your neighborhood, particularly if you find yourself in a transfigured world.  Now, that is something that we can do, because now when you were low key, if you just look around you, go to the shops or the ice cream parlors.  I remember going to an ice cream parlor once with my two sons, and I was feeling around, like the kind of attunement of people.  And I thought, well that is very different from what I am experiencing in meditation.  People have no idea, they are caught each in their little trip there.  It's ok, they are happy, but they are suffering and they are happy, but they are contented with it.  But, it's a bit of a short change.  I mean, When you have a chance of tasting of the ecstasy of life, and then sufficing yourself with something so trite, it's really sad.  But, it's something that, it's not good to be judgmental about it, it's just that it is something that is awakened.  Just like when one awakens a taste.  You can awaken a taste for tea for example, or mushrooms, whatever.  So, you can awaken a taste for music for example.  I find that's what we have been doing lately is exposing people to music that they have never heard before.  They have been used to Rock and Roll, and all of a sudden they see, Oh well, yes, it is beautiful after all.  It's not that old fashioned.  Maybe it's old fashioned but it's still beautiful.  So, one can develop a taste.

So, you can develop a taste for the sublime.  You know one says, there is no accounting for taste.  It's quite true.  But eventually, one develops a finer sense of taste.  Musicians of course develop a sense of value in music.  And those values are not relative, there is something about absolute values.  There are opinions of course, but a good cello is a good cello.  It is not just a matter of opinion.

So, there are values, you see.  And the thing is to sensitize one's heart, because one's heart gets bruised, not only bruised but kind of hardened and unable to resonate deeply with the tremendous emotional spring heads of light.  And, when you do, you never cease to be amazed and you are sort of overwhelmed with be wonderment, And, even scientists are beginning to say the cosmos is not only the planning.  It's just fantastic and incredibly intelligent, trying to match the intelligence with the planning of the cosmos.  But, they say it is elegant.  It is a word used now in science.  It is elegant.  And, that is an emotional value, it is not an intellectual value.  So, the scientists themselves never cease to be amazed by the elegance of the programming.

And so, there is a point where you are so deeply moved by what you discover, and it's something..., as one says, it's that one discovers that which transpires behind that which appears.  So, there are ways of doing it.  For example, the practices that we did a little bit earlier, being able to offset your glance, so that you are able to see the countenance behind a face.  That is a method that is going to help you to find ecstasy, to be high. Another one is as I say, finding yourself in a transfigured world.  Now, I don't know whether it happens to you, it happens to me very often.  It is typified by St Francis when he was walking in the forest.  And you see, if you walk in a forest, you see the leaves of the trees and the bark of the trees and so on, the mosquitoes or whatever, and perhaps a deer, and perhaps you hear the owls at night at the Abode.  But, what St Francis was doing was to get into the consciousness of the trees. 

Now, if you do that, as I said, the world is looking at me.  If you do that then you are not limited to your vantage point.  And, your vantage point is very little in comparison to the vantage points of the universe.  So, from that moment, you are freed from the limitations in your emotions, because you get into the emotion of the trees.  Instead of my emotions, like I'm angry and I'm happy, you know, those are my personal emotions but this is the emotions of the universe.  So, that's the way of being high, of getting into the emotions of the universe.

Now of course, those emotions are of all kinds, and I dare say, that even the vulgar emotions are part of the universe, part of the emotions of the cosmos.  But then, you kind of attune to, you pick up those emotions that are in resonance with your being, or even in resonance with what you are seeking for in your being, because there are all kinds of different emotions in each one of us.  So, first of all, you discern the emotions in your being, you say, I see there is in me ego.  That's true, I get angry if people humiliate me, I dislike people who I feel are offensive.  It's true, I don't like people stealing my things.  So, I like to possess things, I have concupiscence.  And, I have ambition.  Like, if people belittle me, I don't like it, and if I don't have the right initiation, I'm not recognized, then I feel that Pir Vilayat is not recognizing me and so I feel bad.  So, that's a sense of ambition or statues.  All kinds of things like that.  Those are emotions.

I wish recognition, empowerment, and if I don't have it, it's painful.  We have all of these emotions you see.  And, you know, there is some joy in participating in the masquerade ball, and reveling on New Year's Eve, and so, all kinds of emotions.  And so of course, I like Bach, but then of course, I like perhaps, I don't know, I'm not speaking for myself, but perhaps I like some of those lovely popular French songs that are kind of, "emotional heart."  One likes to wallow in one's heart feelings.  So, all that is there.  We have all of that.

But then, if you can recognize that amongst the emotions that beset you, are emotions that exalt you.  And, they are rare, but not just going to a church or whatever, but of course doing practices will do  it for you.  Not just walking in the woods, but I must say, if you are in a high state, then you can get more easily into the consciousness of the trees.  And, what I am trying to is to explore how one can get high of course.

There is a clue to this.  It struck me very much and that is that some women say that before giving birth, they get into a transfigured state.  And all of a sudden it occurred to me that it is because they are so much into the consciousness of the baby that is in it's higher consciousness, is bringing something down from the higher level, and the mother is able to feel that and bring it through.  So, she is picking up that attunement.  So, the clue is that it is the child in us that gives us a high attunement.

And, that is a kind of memory of the heavenly spheres, a sense of déjà vu.  Now, that's what happens to me when I look into he eyes of a baby.  Not all babies, but most babies.  Somehow I am so deeply moved, I can't tell you, I think, Oh, this is the most precious moment in my life, to look into those eyes.  And, the reason why is because it reminds me of something that I had forgotten in me, or it corroborates something that, maybe I haven't forgotten it.  Otherwise, if I had forgotten it, then it won't remind me of it, but it is there somewhere in the deeper unconscious. So, Murshid says, "When one has being disappointed in what the world has to offer, one's eyes turn towards the heavens.   And then, it seems that, that lost vision becomes a reality again."

Buddha says our memory has been interrupted at our birth and at our conception.  Our memory has been interrupted.  But, it's there in the unconscious, like deep memory in your computer, and  you can't retrieve.it.  And, Buddha proved it, because he said there was a time when there was no smoke on planet earth.  Of course he didn't use the word planet earth, but that means that there were no humans.  How could he know?  In those days, people had no idea about evolution.  He said there was a time when planet earth didn't exist.  How could he have known?  It is only quite recently that physicists are saying that.

He said there was a time when the cosmos didn't exist.  It's only quite recently that physicists are saying that.  There was a time when other cosmoses existed, and they collapsed, and then the new cosmos...  You know these are just the leading edge in science these days.  That means we have a deep memory.  So, in meditation, you can, if you downplay your recent memory, the memory of the physical environment, which is that which hits you in the face when you start meditating.  We started by saying, if you start meditating then all these random thoughts come.  That's the world that keeps on living in you.  But, if you can remember a state in which you were, and you still are, that you were before your birth, and you still are although other things have accrued to your being, like, the body and the mind, ten you will see the heavens hidden in the earth.  It is not up there, it is hidden right here, but you have to see it.  You have to be able to see it.  For example, as I often say, the photons in a beer can are as beautiful as the photons of the stars, but you have to see it.  The beer can in a garbage heap.  The beauty is right there.  Heavenly emotion.

So, as I said, you have to return to the state of the child in you, that is to them.  And that means to guile, no manipulation, no intrigues, no trying to deceive.  You never deceive another person for what you think is your own good.  The child.  The child, very often, is very smart of course, as soon as they start growing up, but in the initial stage, they don't know how to deceive, they learn it very quickly. So, to return to the child, you have to get to a point when you are unable to do that.  You just can't do it.  You can't deceive people, and so you are up front, and you are defenseless.  People will accuse you and you don't know how to defend yourself, because that is something that one learns.  The ego is part of one's defense system, but one's higher being, there is no ego, it is beyond the ego.

And, I would say that the clue to your higher being, is being in a state of exaltation.  The exaltation of the child.  The joy of the child discovering little things, like the things that we never notice, and the child notices it.  And, the joy in the face of the child when he discovered something, a very simple thing, like a snail or whatever, anything.  They are still open to the marvel of life, and we have become blasé to it.  So, these are the ways of being high.  And, that is the most precious gift that can ever happen.  To always remain high. Another thing is practical, a practical method.  Well, let's do some practices now.

Now, as you breathe in, instead of thinking that you are breathing in through your eyes, think that you are breathing in through the top of your head, and you are breathing in light that is descending from the top of your head into your brain.  You turn your eyeballs upwards as you inhale. Now, what you think of is that the light of intelligence is descending upon you from above.  That's what many mystics experience as the descent of the Holy Spirit.  The quickening of the Holy Spirit.

And then, as you breathe out, then think of that sura, "the light upon a light".  And so, think that the light of intelligence is now threaded through your glance.  "A light upon a light."  So, you are able to see meaningfulness, not just see the countenance of the face of the person, but you are able to see meaningfulness in your problems, for example, which you couldn't see by being passive to the experience, but now you are casting the light of intelligence upon the situation.  So, you can do that.

Side 2

....at the top of the head, like a kind of aperture. To start with you keep your eyes closed, but eventually, you open your eyes as you exhale. Even as you inhale.  But, to start with, you do it with your eyes closed. Can you see that you have not just involved your self factorially in the problems, but you have invested you emotions into your problems and the problems of others. In fact, you have handed you heart into the hands of people who might challenge you and say, "If you don't do what I want, I'll break it."  You are vulnerable.  You have made a gift of yourself out of love.

Be not surprised if people take advantage of it and turn the tables on you, but the child is trusting. Never mind how many times you get hit.  You keep on trusting.  And then, people will learn that they have been trusted.  They will have a safe feeling with you. Now, in the course of the inhaling, really, this afternoon we are going to be practicing the dhikr, so we will go into this in a little more detail.  But, you can divide inhaling into two halves.  And, in the first half of the inhaling, you're transferring your attention from your heart center, all the way up, beyond your skull, through the fontanel.  And, as you do it, you are shifting your attention, or your attunement from one level of light to the other until you reach that point which is called the light of intelligence. 

And now, in the second half of the inhaling, you bring that light down in your brain, so that it can manifest through your glance as you exhale.  But in a further step, you bring it right down into your heart. And now, it is the power of your heart rather than the power of your glance that reaches into the souls of people. And you know that it is your suffering that gives you insight into the hearts of people.  It's your broken heart that gives you insight, not your mind. One is never so alive as when one is shattered. So, it is your compassion that gives you insight, and compassion means suffering with.  It doesn't mean having pity.  It means sharing in the suffering yourself. It gives you insight.

Not just into the suffering of the person, but into the whole meaningfulness of their lives that you can't fathom with you mind. And the extraordinary thing is that, that insight of the heart is not just the insight of the glance.  It's going to unleash potentialities in that being that have been kept in abeyance because of their suffering. And now, end with two mottos.  One is a word of Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan who said remember a defeat can aver itself to be a victory.  And what you think is a victory can aver itself to be a defeat. So, if you look at your life, don't judge things by how successful you have been.  Don't denigrate yourself.  You cannot expect justice in the world.  And, you cannot always be picked to be placed in the place that is due to you.  And, the opinion of other people of you has no value whatsoever.  So, don't make your self esteem depend on the opinion people have of you.  That is you freedom from the opinions of others, not just from your own opinion.

And, a deeper one is the word of Shams Tabriz, who said, "The man of God is a palace in a ruin."  So, the broken heart is a ruin.  So, it's not like, you know, the wise guy who is always successful, You are broken somehow.  But, you know, there are the old violins and cellos of the 18th century have fissures in them, have breaks have flaws, but they sound much better than the new Japanese ones.  And, there is a French word for that.  (Ils ont un blaiser allum.?)  They have a wound in their soul.  The soul is a post. And the reason why a clarinet and the oboe has a different tone, is because they have flaws.  If they were perfect, it wouldn't be interesting.  It would be electronic music. So, if you think that you are handicapped, you will find that you can compensate it by a quality that you wouldn't have if it wasn't for that flaw. Now personally of course, I prefer the ruins of Persepolis.  I don't know whether you have ever visited Persepolis in Iran, but the grandeur of that ruin is just fantastic.  I prefer it to the Casino of Monte Carlo.  So, you can see the value of being a palace in a ruin. 

And so, one is never so strong as when one is broken.  That's why Christ said, "Be of good cheer, you who have gone forlorn in your life."  He didn't say blessed are the weak in spirit.  He said, "Be of good cheer you who are broken in life."  That was his message. God Bless you now.

SEP 06, 1998		Tape 06

. . .Christian Arab living, comes from Syria or Lebanon, I'm not sure, and he's singing to the courage of a hero who laid his life down for his ideal and he said, "I kiss the feet under his ground, the ground under his feet.", a very deep motion.  Now it comes from the, he's a Sufi, at the same time a Christian Sufi.  Lives in Paris. This afternoon we're going to study the staple food of the Dervishes: namely the practice of the Zikr.  Now just a few  words of introduction.  

You see both the Arabs and the Jews were at least nomads and consequently they could not count upon a temple or a mosque and therefore they had to build their own temple out of their own body.  And, of course, it's convenient if the institution builds a church for you with all the trappings of the candles and the organ music and everything and the  beautiful costumes of the priests, to create a kind of a support system for your spiritual attunement, but here one has to create all that oneself out of one's own self.  And the consequence is that Dervishes become very strong because  they're not dependent upon a support system, but they find the temple in themselves.

Now this is part of a sacred and secret, you know that's the same etymology, tradition which is, in some ways related to ('Hydr') , who is, that's the Muslim name of Elijah.  At least it's the same person, but in a different tradition. And you know if you've wondered through the desert, as I have, for days and you come to an oasis and everything is green.  And you know the story of Elijah, that he found the source of water when there was a terrible draught in the country.  And I have been actually to the place where that water is, to that source of water in the holy land, but it's been, there's water it's running in the street and women are washing their clothes in it at least were in those days.

So somehow, that tradition is associated with the waters of life.  And you know how Christ said, "I will give you eternal life."  So in the Zikr, one is drinking from the source of life, the fountain head of life.  Since one is both the temple and also the priest in the temple, one uses one's body, in fact one, how can I say, one devotes one's body to being the support system for one's glorification.  And therefore the body is considered as the temple of God. That means that one is using very deep faculties in the body which are not always, which one is not always conscious.  For example if you were to do the whirling of the dervishes, which we will do sometime before you leave, you'll find that you are arousing very deep, how can I say, (mishtinct?) in you, a very deep faculty in you, which is basically linked with the rotation of the stars and the planets, the galaxies.  Somehow we have it in us and we awaken it.  

So that is a way of allowing, shunting let's say the cosmos into us as the place where the cosmos is converged.  And of course you know if you're seeking Samadhi then you sit still and then asana and discard your body, but here the body participates in your experience and also the objective is to awaken in life rather than beyond life.  So let's say that this is complimentary to the tradition of yoga.  So the way to do it is to rotate your body. Now, first of all, just imagine now, if you, perhaps you know what is a dynamo?  A dynamo is a magnet that is put into a motion of rotation.  And the consequence is that the energy of the magnet is enormously increased by the fact that it is rotated.  So that's what we do, we are energizing well we start with the body and then we work with other levels of our being. Now I'd like you just to experience what it is to move your head in a circular fashion and of course top off, top out of your body towards your left shoulder, left knee, right knee, right shoulder, up to the zenith again, then down again.  Keep rotating.  

So as I say, one is arousing that very deep, how can I say, dimension in one's being that is part of the rotation of the galaxies.  Now can you feel, as you're doing this can you feel two forces: one is what we call centrifugal, that is you feel you're magnetic field.  We already felt it when we're sitting statically, now I hope you feel it even stronger, a tremendous emanation of your field extends around you farther and farther as you rotate.  And just think that your consciousness is riding the tide of that energy and so your consciousness is expanding into the starry sky, into the cosmos.  You're just like a star, just like a planet, a galaxy, or even an atom.  And so instead of it being a circle, think of it as being a spiral, that extends from you into the entire cosmos.  

Now can you feel the opposite, a centripetal force that tends to draw you to the center, which is your solar plexus, the center of the vortex.  As you know if you circumambulate the temple that gives you concentration on the temple.  And if you had the centrifuge then the gross elements would be shunted towards the periphery and the finer elements would be drawn towards the center. Now the time that the pull of the center is the strongest is when you're the most labil, that means the most precarious, that is when your head is turned towards the zenith.  And so if you feel the pull of your solar plexus then your head turns, descends in a vertical line to face you solar plexus.  So as you exhale, you're in the circle and as you inhale your head is turned towards the solar plexus.

And that (centricpedal) force is so strong that you find that your head descends with a certain amount of momentum and will rebound, just like a ball that will hit the ground and come up again.  So you inhale when your head comes down and continue inhaling as your head rises up again. Now identify with your magnetic field instead of your body.  That is your magnetic field, right out there you know.  And your rotating your magnetic field.  So that will give great power to the rotational forces that are set in motion.  And if you remember, the law (of Goss?), I hope you studied it at school.  If your right hand is a dynamo and is rotating towards your fingers, then your inducing a current in your thumb and so consequently was inducing a force that reaches inside and hence the tremendous power of 'illa' when your head hits the solar plexus or tends to face the solar plexus and then it rebounds and so it sets off a whole current of energy that rises along the spine.  Okay.

Now let us identify with our aura of light, for this is the Zikr of light, and so your tracing a spiral of light that reaches right into the stars and then there's a current of light that ascends from your solar plexus upwards.  Now at the summit of the upward surge, that is where - you remember what we did this morning where you discovered the light of intelligence instead of your aura.  So that corresponds to the 'H' in La illaha illa 'lla, 'H'.  And which is, conditions is favorable to Samadhi, but that Samadhi is very short lived, awakening beyond life, very short lived, because now your head turns towards the heart center and you add a "u" to the 'H', HUE turning towards the heart center and that is where you awaken in life.  And that is done while you are holding your breath so that you, holding your breath is again divided in two parts with the 'H' and then the HUE.  'H' above the head and HUE in the heart, the two awakenings.

You inhale as your head descends and you turn your head towards the solar plexus and you continue to inhale as your head moves upwards, hold your breathe with the 'H' at the end of 'Allah' and then the 'H' is extended to HUE as you face your heart center. Now if you like you could call it a mantram and the words that I used are "La illaha illa 'lla Hu". Now you noticed that there are two letters, particularly there's the 'A', aliph in Arabic, which is a vertical line, the axis.  This represents the contact between God and man or man/God.  The two poles of your being that we've talked about. And then the 'L' is the arc of a circle and of course it is the samsadic wheel of course and it represents the passage from one state to another, the dynamic state, evolution, the wheel is advancing and that's why it is, think of it as a spiral rather than a circle and then there's the mysterious 'H' which is like an exception and that is exactly what (  ) means by outside the wheel, outside the Samsadic wheel the (none) become.

'H' is the name, the highest name of God in the Jewish tradition that is only mentioned by the high priest.  I don't know what it's like now, but in early days only the High Priest was allowed to make the, repeat the mantram 'hhhh'/'H'; beyond existence, that's Samadhi.  And what one is doing is then with the HUE is bringing that state into existence. So let's try it now.  Let's try and remember the words now.  First of all as you go into the, it's a half a circle, an (alcove??) circle.  'La', that is your head moves from your left shoulder through your solar plexus, well sorry, through the left knee and the right knee and the right shoulder.  That's a half a circle, 'La', and then it's followed by 'Allah' as you move your head from the right shoulder to the zenith, 'La illaha.  Well now, 'illaha' means its a negation.  So it's like Maya.  It's like, it means, 'the world is not what I think it is, I'm not what I think I am' and so it starts by negation and then it becomes an affirmation.     The advanced Zikr is more, is positive and  they say, you think as you do this you think, 'Yes, but God is transpiring through that which appears.'  So somehow there's a sense of something manifesting by reaching out, something that's hidden in the heart, in the solar plexus and then is reaching out, is manifesting.  That word is Zahir, to manifest.  Tajalia, the whole world is the manifestation of the non-manifest.

So somehow you have a sense, a feeling that the whole cosmos is a manifestation of God.  So that which started negative is now positive.  'La', it's all, it's all God.  It's not, nothing else than God.  It's all God.  'La illaha illa' , it is 'illa' except it's all, it's nothing else but God. Now after you say 'La', then you think of the words or you say the words 'illaha' as you move your head from your right shoulder to the zenith and 'illaha' means Divinity.  There is no Divinity except God.  Well then, in its (exertertic) sense, it means you know that you have no Divinity, is like idols and so on and so forth, that's how most people understand it, but what it means is that 'illaha'  really means the Divinity of God as you.  It's not the same thing as the 'H' of Allah, it's God as, has become, the Divinity of God is present within you.  

So actually when you say 'La', you are thinking of the physical cosmos that is the manifestation of God, but then as you say La illaha, your head moves upwards through the spheres and so you consider all the spheres are also the manifestation of God, not just the physical world. And there's a motto there that one could, that is very useful to think of in embodied in the words of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and that is 'You raise your consciousness above worldly conditions.'  So already at that stage you, he says, '. . .you loosen the ties with the world and somehow you. . .', loosen the ties, doesn't say break the ties, loosen the ties, and somehow you have a kind of (prefiguration) of the spheres like: all the spheres, it's all the manifestation of God.  And the higher you go, of course, the more genuine this manifestation is.

So La illaha.  So the accent is on the La and then illaha, La illaha You know that in Sufism, I've already said this of course, that is that God reveals him/herself through what appears, the forms for example.  So wherever you look you see the face of God.  That's a (surat) of the Koran.  Wherever you look you see the face of God. So all that, this is all the face of God.  If you can see what is transpiring behind what appears. But then as you say illa then you find that God is revealing his/her being to you in your own nature, not just the world outside.  So that's where you're turning within.  La illaha illa, now you're turning within.  And so now you find God revealing him/herself to you in the idiosyncrasies of your own character, which are the exemplification of the Divine Archetypes.  So God discovers himself through you.  That's what you already said, La illaha illa.  

Now of course, we've already encountered the void as we turn within.  And so at this moment one, you see one's whole character is now at stake and in order to be reborn one needs to accept a collapse.  And so that is a collapse, that is (fin'ah) means a real collapse of your being and it means really abandoning yourself totally to the Divine action or if you like the action of the universe upon you.  For example accept that the idiosyncrasies of your personality are a breakdown, let's say, by the Divine power and then reshaped again and so illa the first 'i' 'l' is like the breakdown (fin'ah) and then immediately after the breakdown comes the rebirthing, in the la.  So illa, you see so the first 'i' 'l' is the breakdown and la is the breakthrough.  So the breakdown that averred itself to be a breakthrough. 

So that's a moment when the, your new being is emerging after collapsing and it can only emerge new if you accept that it should collapse, without holding back on anything and trusting that it will be better after it's collapsed.  Now you can't bargain with God, as one says.  Even Einstein said that. So perhaps this is the most profound thing that can ever happen to a person and the Sufis call it dying before death and resurrecting before dying, well before, while you're still living. So it's rather nice because if there's something in yourself that you don't like that's a chance of getting rid of it. Now we have already said that we encourage free will in Sufism but your will is only free you when you have given it up.  So before that you think it's your free will but it's your condition, so that you're not free anyway. So the interesting thing here is that the rebirthing is, let's say programmed, I don't say conditioned, but it's programmed by the universe and you capture this new seedling just as it emerges into your consciousness and now this is where your will can make it what you want.  

It's like, for example, if you're composing music somehow the cosmos is telling you something and then as it begins to emerge into your consciousness, now this is where you fashion it according to your own will.  So that's a variation on a theme.  That's a variation.  The theme is the cosmos.  That is the programming, but somehow you customize this theme in your own manner.  That's were your free will comes in.  So that's very important.  That transit from the Divine will to the free will, coming right there. That level of our being in Sufism is called Mithal, Alam al Mithal.  The reason why I mention this is because now as we move upwards, we're going to pass from one sphere to the other.  So those are labels.  Let's say Mithal.  So I think of the word mythology.

So it is the level of creative imagination.  It is the level where God is discovering him/herself by imagining him/herself as you.  God is discovering him/herself by imagining him/herself as you and your imagination is a further extension of the Divine Imagination.  And so that imagination is always linked with form.  So creativity starts in the forming of your being, in the reforming, recurrently reforming of your being.  One could call it rebirthing.  And that happens after turning within and you get collapsed into the void and then a new dispensation emerges as you say la after il, you say la illa.  And I must say that it is so, how can I say, so significant to allow to have the privilege of being reborn to really, to get rid of oneself and so that one can have a, start a new leaf, open a new chapter in one's life.  And that's the miracle that can happen.  When you say, "I'm a new person."  All of a sudden, from one moment to the next.  I've gone through a collapse.  I'm a new person.  And that's happened to me and I'm sure that's happened to many of you.  All of a sudden you've found that you're a new person.

I mentioned that the other day when, well it was yesterday of course, when we were doing the practice with alternating (radiating) to the left and right, and I said, "Time according to (which??) theory is an apostrophe that suspense.  It breaks the continuity of the past into the future, causality, because creativity is always overcoming causality.  It's always new, spontaneous.  So think of it as a break in the continuity of determinism that is causality or conditioning and that's a moment of freedom.  Free from us, free to go into the future.  That's a very significant moment. Now of course you could also say that there are potentials in our being that lie in wait in what one might call the virtuality of our being.  The subliminal level of our being that is like seedlings that are under the earth and that just need that extra push to come to the surface.  

Now I don't know whether, it's difficult to follow what I'm going to say now, because these potentialities, let's say the customizing of the Divine archetypes in their perfection.  And that's all I'll say because now we're going to start lifting ourselves up through the spheres. So as your head moves upwards now from the solar plexus, and therefore after this first inception of the rebirthing that  takes place recurrently, are you concentrating on your heart center? And now that represents a whole other level than the level of forms, imagining forms, creativity.  Because it's the world of light and light, you can hardly, it certainly doesn't have a profile.  It hasn't, it doesn't have a boundary.  So you can hardly call it a form.  It's just a, how can I say, midway between form and not form.  And so that is, you see for your rebirthing or your recurrent creativity to embody all the levels of your being, you have to target these levels.  You have to be aware of them otherwise your rebirthing is limited to just the physical or mental level.  So you have to include all the levels of your being in your rebirthing.  

So this is a moment when you have that sudden discovery of your heavenly counterpart.  And it comes as a shock, you see.  You know because up to the present one had identified oneself with one's physical body and one's mind and personality and so on.  And all of a sudden you discover the celestial dimension of your being, which I've spoken about a lot because. . ..  And, I don't know whether that's the reason, but there's a grammatical reason but because in Islam you don't, I mean in Arabic you don't say two 'A' s one after the other.  So if there are two 'A' s after the other you don't say the second 'A'.  So you don't say illa allah, but you say illa 'lla.  So you don't say the second 'A': illa 'lla, illa 'lla so there's an apostrophe and it's very difficult to say that.  You have to really keep on saying it until you are able to learn to do that.  It's an apostrophe.   

If you listen to Indian music, you'll find that sometimes, quiet different from Western music, before the first beat there's a '  ', before the first beat there's just a little edge there somewhere.  So that's the silent 'A' of Allah: La illaha illa 'lla.  Well that's, you would say one is so awed by discovering the celestial level of one's being that one is speechless.  It's  one can't say it anymore.  It's the realm of silence.  And Ibn Arbi says, "At this point, wipe away the (phantasmagoria) of imagination."  No form any more. So let us do that now so far:  La illaha illa 'lla. La illaha illa 'lla. La illaha illa 'lla.  La illaha illa 'lla.  La illaha illa 'lla.

Alright, now let's continue.  Then you have two 'L' s of the word Allah.  So, as I said the 'L' is an arc of a circle and always it means a transit, transit motion from one state to another.  And so here you're moving from the celestial sphere, where there's still - there's still a manifestation of the Divine Being - into the programming, which is like the software; called Lahut.  And between these two levels, 'cause I said the 'L' is always transit, you have. . ..  Perhaps I didn't say, the level of the - the celestial level - is called 'Malakut'.   Malak, which means angel, Malakut.   And then, so the next level is Jabarut, called Jabarut.  And that is a very curious word to really, its quiet paradoxical, because in its colloquial sense Jabarut is a chiropractor.  Is a person who puts your bones right, in other words he puts you right, too.  

So it's a, it's the level of the thinking of the universe.  So it has become disrupted in our thinking and that thinking now  is fixing your thinking.  It's very powerful, Jabarut is very powerful.  It's compelling.  It's, it has authority and that's why the Dervish develops a tremendous power, because it's putting things right and wherever you look everything is not right.  I mean most things are not right.  Everywhere, disorder, the wrong people in the wrong place as I said already.  Like a puzzle that's, all the pieces are (array), and you see the order, but how the order could be and the only way to see how the order could be, should be is to think as the Universe thinks, to think as God thinks.   

I know, this is very presumptuous  I mean how can you say a think like that.  Newton said that once.  He said, "I think as God thinks.".  That, one of the great scientists of any, of the past.  "I think as God thinks." because he got to a point.  Well I can translate it in simple terms and say, "If the physicist has any clue as to what makes the world tick, is because he thinks like the Universe thinks.  Otherwise, he couldn't understand what the system is about. So now we, now to understand this further.  You see according to the Sufis, the world is not Maya and your personality is not Maya and so on.  It is not illusion, no.  It perhaps is the other way around.  It's that in which God becomes a reality.  So it's the opposite of Maya.  

But these are devises in which God makes his intention known.  I don't know  whether I've said it, I've said it many times in the past.  If you've seen that film "E T" and you laughed and cried because there was shadows on the screen and actually the whole thing was that Speilberg was communicating his intention by using devices.  So consider the physical, the world and yourself as devices in which God is revealing his intention and you don't get it.  But at this point, the point  - at this point - what the Sufis say is that, at this point God does not use devices anymore.  So he reveals his intention directly.  And the clue to that is, I've already said, you know wipe away the (phantasmagoria) of images, now that's imagination, that's past.  I mean we've gone beyond that.  The clue is that you do not think of yourself as a spectator, but you think that God is the one and only spectator and that your consciousness is just an extension of. . . .up to the present we're working with the object.  Like the world as the object of our cognizance, nature as the object of our cognizance, but now we're working as a subject. 

The, I think it was Nafari who said, "Why spend time with the known, when you can know with the Knower?"  Or knowledge as available with the known.  So can you just try and see if you can all of a sudden at that point you can just think.  You don't', of course it's simpler to say, "God sees from my eyes.", of course but, 'my glance is the Divine  Glance, my - the me that is a spectator - is really an extension of the Divine Spectator.  So that is when you say the two 'L' s of Allah ('lla), the second, the two 'L' s of Allah ('lla) before you arrive at the last 'A'

So let's do the whole thing again and now you think of that as you say the two 'L' s of Allah ('lla).  La illaha illa 'lla.  La illaha illa 'lla.  La illaha illa 'lla.  La illaha illa 'lla.  There are two 'L' s.  La illaha illa 'lla.  La illaha illa 'lla.  So actually there are four 'L' s, illa 'lla, oh, there's a short a at the end of illa, illa 'lla, illa 'lla.  La illaha illa 'lla.  La illaha illa 'lla.  La illaha illa 'lla.  Now  you see, if you say it too quickly then of course you don't have a chance to concentrate on those different levels, because one is ascending through the spheres and so one has to be very clear that after, that the rebirthing requires or at least is perfected by the celestial, the influence of the celestial, of our celestial being and then that transit when you, you would just think of, you are not thinking of yourself anymore as a personality that is being fashioned, but as the subject that is tributary to the Divine Spectator.  

So I think what we could do now is to reach the next point, which is the last 'A' of Allah ('lla).  So, if you remember, the 'A' always represents the axis, like the two poles as I said, the anti-pole and your personal pole.  Kabbalah of course it's central, the trunk of the tree, of the (sevpherotic?) tree, between (Kat'tr) and Malakut. It's the axis and so therefore there's a relationship here between the software and the hardware, let's just say, between the Divine Intention, let's say the Divine Programming and then how this program is actuated in the existential world.  

So this is based upon a (surat) of the Koran again, which says, "There is nothing in the world that does not have it's archetype in the treasury, the Divine Treasury."  That's a fantastic word, the treasury.  There's a word of Nafari who says, "I cannot give you the key to the treasury.  You have to be ready for it.  You have to be worthy of it."  That is the access to the archetypes.  

And what we're doing in the wazifas is to try and reach the archetype, starting with the exemplar and then reaching for . . ..  As I said before, imagining how these qualities could be if they were perfect.  We know them in their imperfection.  There's a word of Hazrat Inayat Khan who said, "God discovers His perfection in our imperfection."  The archetype discovers itself in the exemplars.  So that's, the link now is between Lahut the level, the treasury, and our personal idiosyncrasies.  So that's Lahut, Nazut.  I didn't use that word Nazut, our personal level.  And that's a word of Al Halaj who says, "Oh God, please do away with my Nazutiat and replace it by Thy Lahutiat."  That's (fan'ah), you see.  

Do away with my jaded qualities, which were your qualities, but got rather corrupted in me.  So that there can be a fresh descent of qualities.  Now that's not the same thing as emergence of your new being from inside.  You see the  difference?  That's, those exemplars that are waiting to come through, but now there's a contact between the exemplar and the archetype.  It's a different level.  It's a transcendental level rather than the turning within, different level.  And Ibn Arbi says, ". . .and the angels build a bridge between the two."  And of course, the brain of Malakut, the celestial sphere, represents that transit, that bridge between Lahut and, between our higher self and our lower self.  The angelic sphere builds the bridge between our higher self and our lower s elf.  That is the door.

So you have the first 'A' of Allah ('lla) that you don't say,  which is the celestial sphere.  Now up to the present, God has revealed him/herself through qualities.  At this level, no more devices.  Well the device is so hardly a device at all, it's your celestial being.  And I don't know whether one can call it existential.  It's beyond existence.  It's a bridge.  And then you lift, and then you suddenly shift your attention from yourself.  That's the object of cognizance, to the subject.  The knower rather than the known. 

And just think of the words of Newton, because this is that revealed knowledge that I've been talking about.  Because up to the present our knowledge was acquired knowledge.  Which is acquired through our consciousness.  Through the act of consciousness, but now we're talking of revealed knowledge that is communicated through our intelligence rather than our consciousness.  It's beyond consciousness.  So when your doing the wazifas, that is what you're doing.  And as I've already said, when the Muslim prayer, you project upon God or what you would like God to be, the qualities that you are familiar with, but imagine them in their perfection.  And that is where somehow you get some clue as to the treasurer, treasury, as to the Divine Qualities.  That's the way to have some kind of clue.  Because as, like I said, one can always imagine the larger number than the one that one's imagined so far.  You can always imagine a more wonderful quality than the quality that you've imagined so far.  And that's where prayer is creative, as I said.

Now we come to the 'H' of Allah ('lla).  And that's beyond Lahut and it's called Hahut and that is literally, that is Samadhi.  That is awakening beyond existence.  So that one passes through a kind of dark night or let's say a black out.  So let's do it rather that my talking about it. So, while you're meditating, can you, this is rather difficult, rather challenging.  So if it's too difficult, don't do it.  So you're sitting there, meditating and your, you hear the cars in the street or whatever and you here the noise around you.  And then at a certain point you find yourself in a transfigured world.  So that the environment seemed to be rather (erie/airy) and even kind of difficult to reach, like you, it's remote.  The environment is remote.  Now you reach a point when you remember the environment, but you are not experiencing it.  And you remember the situations in your life, but your not experiencing them, so the memory.  So the world continues to live in your, as memory.  And then there's a point when you question the validity of that memory.  That is just the way things appeared and so somehow you have  even lost the memory of the physical world, of yourself, of circumstances.  Now that is where you're operating the passage from the existential level to beyond.  Now you still have the consciousness of the spectator.  And now there's a further level, you see and that level is the Divine Intention, the Divine Intention. It's as though you're trying to understand the ROM of your computer.  The software of your computer.  And the hardware is just a consequence, so it's not important anymore.  What is important is the intention, the program.  

So at this time the existential world, well it's there, but it's out of your reach, it's beyond your reach.  And now there comes a further level and that is embodied in the words that I already said, "You have heard the music, but do you know the composer?"  So it's not God anymore as the spectator, but as the One and only Being, behind the facade of multiplicity.  And it means of course, you can't be the one who is conscious of the One.  You have to loose your consciousness in the One.  So that's the 'H' of Allah ('lla) now that is, happens in an instant.  And that's what the Upanishads say.  They say, "It happened before you  realize it and before you realize it, it's gone.  And if you try to hold it, you can't.  So let it be a flash and that's why it's right at the end of Allah ('lla) and then immediately you turn towards your heart center and now you are seeing how the programming is working in the world.  You can see the intention working it's way (  ) and defies the logic of our ordinary minds.  Or that "Huuuu"  And you can just repeat the HUE as a kind of whisper on your breath. Huuuuuuuu, Huuuuuuuu, Huuuuuuuu, Huuuuuuuu, Huuuuuuuuu, Huuuuuuu,  Huuuuuuuuu, Huuuuuuuuu, Huuuuuuuuuu.  And you're thinking of the Divine presence.  And the Zikr is the practice in which one makes God present.  And if the person is present, you're not talking about the qualities of that person, you're just saying that person is present.  Goes beyond the attributes.  And of course, the ultimate is that you discover that that presence is yourself.  God is present in you as You, through you.  

I'll end up with a story and perhaps you know it.  The (Munda Quik Ti'er) the story of the birds. (Al Furija d'Atar) that there was a smart bird, which was, it was a female bird actually.  It was a queen, the (Hupu), who called a conference of birds because, she said, we should go and visit the King.  And so a lot of birds assembled and they went through terrible trials, through the desert and a lot were killed and oceans and a lot were drowned and finally they got to the door of the palace and the chamberlain said, "What do you want?"   So they said, "Well, we've come all this way to see the King?"  "Well the King doesn't have time to see you."  "Well" they said, "but, if you could ever imagine what we've gone through."  "Well, come and sit down."  Now they sat down.  And then one of the smart birds, I think it was again the Queen, sat on the throne and discovered that we are the person that we were looking for as the King.

So that's the Hu, that's the mystery of the Hu.  And Al Halaj says, "When several people are in the room talking about another person, that person is more present than the people in the room. And so Hu means Him.  And one makes Him present.  Him means the person who's absent and one makes Him present.  And that's the mystery of the Zikr and the consequence is the incredible power of the Dervish.  Conscious of manifesting the Divine Presence.  The greatest power that there is.  It's more than a question of qualities.  It's beyond qualities, the presence.  Now you don't depend upon the music of Beethoven, Beethoven is present.

Now we're only half way and I'm sure that you really need a break, but. . ..  So could you take a quarter of an hour break.and would we, would it be acceptable if we went on till six?  So it's a quarter past five now.  So if you take a quarter of an hour break and be there in time, then there's a second Zikr which is very Holy, very Holy.  So for a retreat that is the Zikr, the most powerful Zikr there is.  So perhaps you will come back in a quarter of an hour.

Yes, the second Zikr is done kneeling.  One is not making a circle with one's head.  And that, if you make a circle with your head you have to have your knees on either side to balance you.  But if you're doing the, your just doing illa 'lla Hu, then you don't have the circle and so you kneel.  Now of course, if you're sitting on a chair you can. . ..  I will have to sit on a chair, because I find it very difficult to, my legs aren't very supple any more.  So I can't kneel.  I go through terrible agony, if I try to do that.  But if you're sitting on a chair, you can do as I'm doing.  The, your head bows down, prostrates so that your forehead touches your knees.  Then if you're sitting on the floor then of course, if you're kneeling on the floor, then your head touches the ground.  Now that is a very, very incredibly, incredible experience.  That your head touches the ground where your feet are.  The utmost humility.  The utmost resignation to the Divine Presence.  Going through a total (schussing) of your whole being.  Your body participates in this collapse of your being.  It is much more powerful than if you'll just do it sitting.  It's much more powerful.  And of course, it is a practice to do during, in a retreat.  

So it is all that we've done so far.  Not the first part, not the La illaha, but illa 'lla Hu, illa 'lla Hu  (repeat) (repeated quietly). You can do it in your own rhythm.  So you don't have to do it as slowly as I am, but do it slowly. illa 'lla Hu (repeat). And then you don't have to say it aloud.  You can do it just on your thoughts. 

Now just let me just interrupt you for a minute.  It would be wonderful if I was able to ask each of you what you're experiencing although it's quiet impossible to say it in words.  But the fact of having surrendered one's being so totally to the, to the Divine Action seems to free oneself from a lot of obstacles and consequently when one's head comes up.  I don't know whether you experienced that.  It's as though the roof is, has opened up and you're reaching out into infinity.  There's no roof anymore and at that point you're in contact with beings, with the higher beings, with a. . . .  There's no way of defining it exactly, but that  sense of being released from the constraint of one's ego and of course there's a sense of participating in the cosmic celebration in the heavens.  But now when, so it is beyond awakening.  It's not just awakening.  And when you, you hold your breath, as you concentrate in your heart.  Remember that one has to concentrate on the physical heart instead of the chakra, the (anahata) chakra.  And the reason is because somehow, you know if you apply the power of the piston of a locomotive it's got to be eccentric, it's got to  be applied not in the center, but just off the center.  So you can do it of course, without the motion of the body, in your thoughts, but after doing it with the motion of the body, then it becomes more real than if you don't start with the motion of the body.   

So I  would have, never did give these practices to the public, which was only for the very advanced mureeds, but somehow I am very glad to see that even people who come for the first time can see the value of the importance of the sacredness instead of just working with the mind. So I must say, I thank you very much for being so very much attuned toward what we're doing.  It's a very great privilege, thank you.  God Bless you. So now we're not talking about awakening anymore.  We're talking about being creative, of sharing in the Divine Creativity, of unleashing the potentials in ourselves and beings so that humanity may become the living expression of the Divine Being.  So with that in mind, let us do it once more.

OCT 23, 1998		Tape 01

...of a contemplative, the attunement of a person who is on retreat, and those of you who have done retreats perhaps know what it feels like.  It's very, very different kind of attunement of everyday life. One becomes highly sensitive -- hopefully one gets high. One is in a peaceful condition rather than agitation, and anxiety, and struggling with life, and juggling with all these kind of problems that we're dealing with in our everyday life.  It was a very different attunement and for that, of course, there are skills as I call it -- techniques that I use in meditation in order to shift our -- well, actually our metabolic rate, I mean works right into the body -- into what is call the anabolic instead of the catabolic. That is a state in which, for example, animals are in a condition in which they can digest their food in their cave as compared with the situation in which the animals have to catch their prey and protects themselves against their enemy.  So in the same way we can -- normally we're in a catabolic state -- we're in the state which is always on the look-out for how we can deal with the challenge of our life.  Whereas, in meditation one has to -- one finds oneself in a protective situation in which one can turn within -- doesn't have to worry about -- concern ourselves about dealing with telephone calls and all kinds of distressed messages that we receive on TV -- stressful (?).

So, I hope you don't mind if we -- in my mind our problems are always there. I'm trying to explore practices that are going to help trigger off a change in our perspective on our problems. So perhaps you think that we're just doing practices -- the practices -- there's always behind it -- there's always a very clear objective in my mind and perhaps it'll all fall into place eventually by the end of the retreat.

So I would to say that to start with we need just to concentrate on our breath. By the fact of becoming conscious of it it will slow down. I don't think it's good to try to force oneself to slow one's breath down its a matter of -- it's really -- one way our attunement is going to slow down our breath -- on the other hand slowing down our breath is going to alter our attunement so either way -- both ways. But as I say, by just being conscious of as you exhale be conscious of the fact that you are clearing a lot of tension -- your consciousness is scattering it's no more contracted in your body. I think it's helpful as we do this to -- instead of identifying with our skin-bound body, let's say -- to identify with our force field or I call it electromagnetic field. It doesn't matter what we call it. You can call it the etheric body if you like. The important thing is: a sense of the kind of aura, corona around your body, which is also part of your body but we think its' other than a body and expand it as you exhale. You know in a way one is expanding it -- in the other sense it gets scattered. It gets not -- well it gets eventually it gets integrated in the energy field of the whole universe. So it's a -- one never knows it all together but it gets sort of intermeshed lets say. Just like eddies on a lake -- if you throw gravel or stones in a lake you have eddies and eventually you loose sight of the individual eddies -- they haven't got lost you just have lost sight of them.  Well the same thing.  Somehow you enjoy this (?) expansion and somehow intermeshing of your being with the totality. It's a very sort of -- it's a relaxation of the ego actually. 

Then there are two ways of doing this:  on one hand I'd say expansion and,  well I don't like the word disintegration but somehow -- dismantling and then the other way is a sense of disintoxication as the Buddhists would call it -- of clearing even ones body of a lot of pollution.  At the psychological level of course we suffer from a lot of pollution -- psychological pollution.  And so there are two ways so we're going to use one way and then the other. So the first thing is, as I say, as you exhale a sense of expansion and as you inhale a sense of replenishing yourself with the energy of the universe. Somehow we are continually incorporating the universe right into our bodies and of course at the psychological level -- in our minds, in our personality, and so on. So a sense of getting enriched by the input of the environment as you inhale. And if you think that way then you'll find the your breath will slow down -- because it's full of content.  Not just the physical breath but as an exchange of energy with the physical environment and also at the psychological level.

Now Yoga tells you to contract your abdomen and then after that your chest as you exhale. So curiously enough then your body is contracting and your subtle body and your mind is expanding. As you exhale -- in my mind always think I need to first exhale before inhaling. And now as you inhale you do the other way around. Of course again once you start expanding your abdomen and then your chest and in your mind of course you are converging the energy of the universe while your body is expanding, your abdomen is expanding and your chest is expanding. I always think of it as a, for example a balloon that is being blown up and so you -- there's an expansion and at the same time the energy is converging. 

Now once you've got into that rhythm you'll find that your mind becomes less agitated and this is soothing to the emotions. So this is peace rather than joy.  There's always joy and pain on the one hand or  then peace on the other. You'll find that you've set a rhythm which will maintain itself just as though, for example if you took you know one of these old fashioned clocks with a pendulum and then you just stopped its motion -- you took it in hand and gave it a new swing and once you've done that then its going to follow that up and maintain harmonious rhythm. So we can carry this further because eventually you'll find that your breath is somehow harmonically related to the ebb and flow of cosmic energy, if I may use that word. We don't exactly know what that means but somehow it's not just you sitting there breathing but somehow you're -- it establishes a contact with a overall sense of you know participation in the great marvel of the universe. There's a rhythm there that we don't -- it may be much more complex that we could ever think but somehow we establish some relationship with it because the whole thing about meditation is to eschew the alienation of oneself from the totality. To establish some kind of organic relationship.

Now once you've done that then you could do the second breathing practice which I would suggest -- well first of all let me complete what we did because I forgot to say that as you inhale you concentrate on the solar plexis -- as you exhale on the heart center. Or rather, as I say, I generally think the other way around, I think that one exhales first then one inhales. So first you expand from your heart and then as you exhale and then as you inhale you concentrate on the solar plexis. You're converging the energy of the universe -- the magnetic field -- whatever you'd like to call it. It doesn't really matter. And so a second breathing practice that I suggest is -- well in the first steps, the elementary steps in meditation would be the polarity between the top of your head and the bottom of your spine. That would be as you exhale think that the polluted energy in your body because it's subjected  to a lot of pollution. And of course in the mind and the emotions is (?) so we think of a bathroom as (?).  And mother earth is very kind to absorb a certain amount of pollution as long as we don't over do it.

The energy is moving down from the top of the head down to the bottom of the spine and you think of it as -- well as energy that moves down your spine.  Maybe it's not -- there's more to it than that but its good to think that the energy is moving down. Think of your -- actually there are three nerve trunks that's essential. One inside the spine and then there are two lateral ones but think of the one in the center which regulates the sensory-motor functions of the body.  Whereas the lateral ones govern the autonomic nervous system. So sometimes one thinks of it as a kind of a chimney or a pipe. The energy is then drained down and then is evacuated by the planet earth at the end of your exhaling; or in the course of the exhaling it's being drained. 

And as you inhale, curiously enough, you feel that you are drawing energy from the planet -- fresh energy. So that pollution is scattered. The planet has the ability to scatter that polluted energy and give you fresh energy as you inhale. And it's very interesting if you're really able to imagine that, for example you're like a plant and the bottom of the spine is the root of the plant and the plant has the fantastic ability to suck up from the earth a tremendous amount of water for example or the ability to replenish yourself by a fresh dispensation of energy - telluric energy that is earth energy. And if you can follow it up and see how it will pass from the bottom of the spine, and that's called Muladhara chakra to the second chakra, Svadhistana, and then solar plexis -- Manipura. But actually it is true that there's another chakra that was neglected by the yogi's and which the Buddhist concentrate on -- Hara, which is somewhere in between the solar plexis and the second chakra and which is really the center of the ego, of the personal ego -- of our defense system say. That's what the ego is its part of our defense system -- our need to protect ourselves from the aggressivity of other egos and so on.  It makes you centered somehow -- it gives you some kind of support but its a, how can I say, a very limited one.

Ok and then the solar plexis somehow it gives you the sense of being a gate leading into the void. So there's a sense of being resorbed in the void and on the other hand the other way around -- new energy emerging from the void -- ex nihlo, as I say in the Catholic church.  In the church -- ex nihlo -- out of nothing.  It's not true, I mean it's not out of nothing but still that's the sense that one has. Energy that one doesn't understand all of a sudden becomes ponderable where you can really sense this energy that is emerging from within. It's not the same thing as the energy that ascends from the bottom of the spine or from the soles of one's feet but it's -- because that's very tangible energy that's earth telluric energy whereas this is -- well if you like to have a little further explanation, it's like a tug of war if you have two teams of people pulling rope in opposite directions and so the energy is potential it's not active -- potential energy. But we don't know what that energy is until one of the teams is stronger than the other and pulls it and all of a sudden that potential energy becomes active.

So the heart center -- Anahata, well it's a wonderful warm, expanding energy -- empathy, generosity, magnanimity and so on. At the psychological level, at the physical level it's a kind of energy that healers use sometimes that -- because it then radiates through the arms and into the palms of the hands. And that's a very positive kind of energy.

And then the throat center, Vishudda -- it's a very strange kind of sense that we have of meaningfulness through the vibrations of energy, the frequencies of energy, the language of the universe, the symphony of the spheres of Pythagoras.  Somehow emergy is landscaped here, I don't know it it's the right word, in the form of different frequencies and that makes it possible to have diversity in -- for the diversity behind the unity in the universe to express itself in terms of energy. So that's a very extraordinary center. We call it the throat center but it's really has it's basis behind the skull, what they call the atlas. You know there's a cavity behind your head when you can put your finger there -- the atlas, that's the center of the Visshudda chakra and then of course the thyroid gland, and parathyroid and so on.  I wish I knew more about this but of course the thyroid is certainly associated with energy or the control of energy. But the beauty here is that it's not just energy it's energy that carries meaningfulness. Just like the telephone -- there's a current that carries meaning -- meaningfulness. So that's a very important center. How a sense of meaningfulness affects the energy of our body.  And it's very important because healing is perhaps the secret of healing is probably mind over body. The way that a sense of realization, a sense of meaningfulness can affect the energy of the body. That's a very extraordinary process.

And then you have the third eye which -- well of course we could go into it allot but let us say that -- well even our physical eyes, I think we really have to consider our physical eyes and the third eye somehow in the relationship. Physical eyes are vehicles, of course all the cells of the body are vehicles of light but the eye is our particularly, how can I say, program to be able to input light and radiate light and so on. We're going to work a lot of with light next few days.  So the third eye is really connected -- somehow it's an instrument of high frequency light. I would say beyond well, the ultraviolet so beyond the perceptual range. And incidentally, it connects us with the center of the galaxy instead of the Sun but somehow it also has some relationship with the circadian rhythm which as you know is interrupted if you made a long air trip -- as I have just been doing.

And then you have, of course the crown center which is the Sarasrara. In some way it's often described as a crown, fanning out above the skull -- ultraviolet light breaks over the skull, of course. So you have this fantastic array of light above your head at the crown. And somehow it is, from the point of view of the architect and of the subtle body it is related with the pituitary gland. The Hindus call it bindu -- bindu -- sanskrit, bindu.  And so you will find that when you are meditating if you can try to concentrate your attention on that point which is just above your palate, the soft part of the palate behind the cartilage there -- soft part -- just above that -- well the limbic brain, you have the medulla oblongata, pons, but just above that you have the pituitary gland which is just like a flower that is sort of hanging there. And so if you can concentrate  -- because that is the governing center of the whole endocrine system of the body and somehow by concentrating upon it you're producing in the body conditions that are favorable to awakening. To awakening beyond the existential level.  So there are several awakenings -- so this is just one awakening -- one dimension of awakening. So you musn't think that that is the ultimate awakening but it's what we call Samadhi That is the secret of doing it is to think of it as a -- well the way I would think of it is a cone upside down. I think of it -- there's a point called bindu which is situated in the pituitary gland and then it fans out into an infinity and it does not -- when I say that I don't mean that it expands -- just expands END OF SIDE ONE

SIDE TWO

....the energy gets transmuted. I don't know if that makes sense to you but, for example the difference between current which has a lot of voltage and not much amps, or then not much voltage and a lot of amps.  So there's a difference there. So maybe that's what I mean by -- maybe the word transmuting is not the right word but say that the energy gets very, very high -- I don't know how to -- very tenuous, tenuous as you reach upwards. So you're connecting that point there which gives you a reference point, let's say, with infinite dimension that has the effect of -- you have the impressions that lift your consciousness above the limitation of the world. You don't feel that -- by dint of our incarnation we have been squeezed into a constrained situation in our body, in our everyday life, in our involvement in life and so on. And somehow there's a counter reaction -- us longing for freedom from constraint and consequently from the existential condition -- that's what Samadhi is; awakening beyond the existential -- the contingent condition. That is what a lot of people call spirituality.  It's giving expression to this longing. Pir-O-Murshid calls -- the passion for the unattainable.

So it's very wonderful if you can go through these different centers in one breath -- it's difficult. At first I think it's better to concentrate on each center, one by one, give yourself time and then eventually you get to the point in -- that you're so aware of those different centers that you can just -- in one breath you can pass from one to the other as you inhale. Incidentally, since I didn't speak about the Hara, I think I should also mention the wheel of fire which is -- which Yoga doesn't mention but is to be found in Buddhism. And it's between the Anahata chakra, the heart center and the throat center and which governs the functions of the immune system. And, I don't know whether you know that, of course the immune system is based upon me or not me.  The body knows -- let's say recognizes if you do an implant the body recognizes if it's close to the DNA -- it's own DNA or not. So me or not me but the ego in the HARA is rather a (???trite) ego. It's rather, you know, it can be rather aggressive too. Whereas this is -- this gives you a higher sense of your identity. The immune system, as I say, is based upon ones identity.

So we'll go into this a little more tomorrow. Perhaps there's a difference between the word ego and the word identity. Anyway, it's good to know because you pass from the heart center which is outgoing to a higher level from which the expansion of the heart reaches. The expansion of the heart -- the energy of the heart originates, in the Wheel of Fire.

Now you keep on moving up -- you see at the throat level, I don't know whether you ever have that experience of very intense vibration but not gross vibration. The frequency is incredible, so it's a -- you know it's something like 10 to the power of 20 so you couldn't possibly sense the separate peaks and troughs. No it's just a very sort of unclear sense of energy vibrating at a tremendous rate. Of course you can't hear it because it's beyond perceptual range. I don't know whether you -- maybe what I'm saying is not clear. I wish I could be a little more clear about it. Somehow you awaken to a  sense of meaningfulness and that meaningfulness is now just at the level of the mind. Somehow the body participates in it as much as we can -- well the cells of the body are vibrating, of course. The electrons -- not just the (?), the atoms, molecules, the atoms, and of course the protons, and the electrons are all vibrating at a tremendous rate. So maybe -- what I'm really saying is that our body participates in our realization. And it's transformed by our realization.

So that's -- I mean just concentrating on that will trigger off at least one type of awakening. As I said there are different awakenings. We'll be going into that tomorrow. And then there's the awakening of -- that is called illumination or enlightenment which is associated with a sense of light instead of sense of sound.  And then, of course as I say,  the Samadhi which is beyond light or sound and beyond a sense of meaningfulness actually. So one doesn't know how to define it but let it not be a kind of trance state or kind of a void of the -- how can I say it? It's so difficult to say it. It's beyond understanding but it must not eschew understanding altogether.  I don't know how to say it -- it's very difficult to say it.... ..supposed to work on each of the chakras first and then eventually -- I say in one breath you'll pass from one to the other and then what I suggest is that you stop inhaling, hold your breath, and somehow you've imprinted momentum upon, well the energy and also your understanding. So that it's like (B????), you know the rider who rode Pegasus -- Pegasus' energy (B?????) represents our consciousness and somehow consciousness is carried by the energy. But at a certain point Pegasus couldn't fly any higher and so (B??????) had to proceed on his own but he was imprinted with a momentum which the energy had given him that was... So that's the sense that you have as you concentrate on the pituitary gland, that the energy has carried you -- your understanding up to a point and then somehow you have to reach beyond both energy and understanding.

You hold your breath and do not think that you are ascending, that you are moving upwards in space. That would trigger of a spark or astral projection. No, space has lost its significance, it is totally irrelevant.  Space is only relevant for the body -- where there's matter. But, well we're not talking about matter, space has no significance whatsoever. Even when taking about matter our sense of space is totally inadequate. As you know in physics there's an a local phenomena where say electrons are related with each other without being able to communicate because of the limitations of the speed of light. And still we are related, so in a way that is paradoxical, of course, but our sense of space -- or somehow

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CONTINUED WITH 24 Oct 1998, Tape 03, on =pvin9597e.txt, to be renamed =pv9598e.txt

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OCT 24, 1998		Tape 03

...for the chairs now.....conscience.....and so I have an appology to make to Murshid....because I left out "Love, Harmony and Beauty" from the Invocation, 
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