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, 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 ommission). 

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 unkowing 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 gardner 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  exsistence?"  So, we have been talking about the mirror of exsistence, but if it were  not for t hy beauty how should I pay attention to the mirror of exsistence?  Well, but for pure love, how should I have given exsistence to the heavenly spheres?  And behold, but for thee, I would not have created the world.  So that confirms what I said in my 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 exsistence 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 majestey is a form of beauty.

And that tallys 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 an'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 exhaltation 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 likmitation 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 enlisist 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 emmitted 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 beacause it's at the level of archetypes.  You can only reach it through the way that it com es through at the exsistential level, through form, or then if you can reach beyond form and those forms that Surawardi calls in suspence -  in the mirror for example,  and then now we are having still more subtle forms which are the forms of our celestia l countenance. 

Well, what does beauty do to your countence?  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 splender, 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 acros 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 resemblence, 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 annonamous 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 twilinght state that you get in when  (I'm sure it has happended 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 occurance 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 annonomous)  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 annonamous, 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 reather 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 zephry 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 ia 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 exaltiing 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 th 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 crucifiction 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 iof 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.

OCT 25, 1998		Tape 09

Zikr. Sufi Zikr. It's a practice that gives a lot of power to the dervishes. In fact, that power of the dervishes could be accounted for by doing that practice. So already, yesterday we already started by making a circle with our head turning towards the left shoulder and then the left knee and the right knee and the right shoulder and then up to the zenith and then if you remember, the head descends down towards the solar plexus, and then rebounds upwards again. 

So you have the half circle and the axis. And so the circle, or the half circle, it's three-quarters of a circle actually. It's, as you exhale, and as you inhale your head comes down and reaches up again. And then you hold your breath and turn your head, your attention at least, towards your heart center. Now when the head comes down you concentrate on the solar plexus, the void. 

So, now we are going through the four stages that I described in the course of this retreat. First of all, the circle, the expansion of consciousness, so you experience not only just your consciousness, but even your body-ness, as part of the body-ness of the fabric of the planet and your subtle body, and your aura, beyond your skin-bound sense of what you mean by your body and so it has the effect of expanding your consciousness into the vastness. As I said, the vastness becomes encompassing. That is, if, instead of being in the center and you're expanding from the center, you reach out into the periphery, and now you can look at the center from the periphery instead of being enclosed in the center.

So a sense of immensity of vastness. Now this corresponds with the word la. La. Now then you move your head from your right shoulder to the zenith and the word that I use is la ilaha. La ilaha, which means divinity. La - no. there is no divinity except. So there is no la. Ilaha. So you're not just expanding into the physical cosmos, but now your expansion includes all the levels of reality beyond the physical level, even the angelic level and all the levels that we have been describing. So it's all encompassing. La ilaha. 

Now your head turns toward the solar plexus. As I have already said, you, when you are unleashing centrifugal forces, but at the same time, there is a centripetal force that starts manifesting and that is pulling you towards the center, it's a kind of counteraction, and so when you and the most labile, that is unstable, equilibrium when your head is turned upwards and that is where you feel the pull of your solar plexus. So you say illa. La ilaha illa. So this is exactly what we have been doing, learning how to turn within. Your subtle body, even you get into the void, and then the emergence of a new life after having been absolved in the void. La ilaha illa. Now the il is like you have thrown the ball towards the earth, and now it rebounds. So, illa. It rebounds. 

So, the head moves slightly upwards from the solar plexus, and that is a moment when you are visiting, let's say the plane of mithal, of metaphor, creative imagination, rebirthing. So after having voided yourself in the void, dismantled your being, gone through a dark night and so on, now you are being reborn, or rather the whole universe is reborn as you, and it is your active imagination that gives form to this impulse, this rebirthing impulse. So this is a time when you are really participating in your rebirthing.

You could, you can, the interesting thing is that on one hand you are discovering, like as I already said a quality that seems to be emerging at this time more than any other quality, and on the other hand, your ability to dispose of the qualities that are knocking at the door the way that you wish, so you don't have to simply toe the line and invite this quality through. You can say yes, I value this but I want to work with another quality.

Now, so that's, now illa 'llah, illa, the I is the void, the subliminal state. Then la, the rebirthing, illa, and now you have really allah, but you don't pronounce the first a. so it is not illa allah, but it is illa 'llah. So you don't say the first a. And of course, there are several ways of seeing this, but that first, of course, grammatically it doesn't sound good to say illa allah, so but there's a deeper meaning to it. And that is that the first a of allah represents in the zikr of course represents the celestial sphere. That is Malakut, and after mithal malakut the celestial sphere and you are so awed by what you discovered that you can't say the words aloud, so you can't say the a. illa, yeah all of a sudden the discovery of your celestial being.
It's too beautiful to be true. It, overwhelmed by it. La ilaha illa. And then you have the two ll's. between the first a of allah and the second . The second a is lahut, the treasury, the archetypes. And between them you have two ll's. Now there's a way of seeing this, of understanding this, if you know something about Islam.

It is said in the mirage that Mohammed approached the Divine presence, what is called the lotus of the limit by a distance of two throws of an arc. So in those days one measured distance by throws of an arc. But actually it is not always quite clear what is meant by that because that measurement is really the measurement between the string of the bow and where you place your hand, no not the string of the bow, 
Where the string would be if you didn't tense it and then where the string would be if you pulled it. So that is called cup, that distance. So that means very close in other words. La ilaha illa, illa, two ll's.

And that represents jabarut which is the level at which one overcomes, first of all, God reveals himself no more by devices so you know god as god not through any mode or manner in which he himself manifest, reveals, discloses himself, him/herself, and if you remember it is the point at which consciousness gives way to intelligence. So that you discover a sense of Always been in you, but is confirmed by your experience. But it was always in you but if you relied on experience then you don't know it.

That is jabbarut. The word jabbarut means forcefulness. So somehow it is an understanding that is imperative and has precedence over the sorting out of your mind. So I would say, although every stage is an awakening, this is the real breakthrough in awakening, awakening beyond your understanding,
Seeing things from the divine point of view. So as I say we are going through the four phases that we have described in the course of this retreat. First of all expansion and turning within, then turning upwards or reaching upwards and transcendence and the second a of the word allah is lahut, the treasury, the divine intention, the divine programming. Actually, you are going through the states leading to samadhi, at least the Sufi way of reaching samadhi, well, it's not just the Sufi way. The same thing is true in yoga, it is called (?) that is, bija means the seeds, the awareness of the seeds of existence.

Lahut. And now your head turns up further towards the zenith, really towards the zenith in the h. In the end of the word allah comes the h. and that represents transcendence. And it is exactly samadhi what we have been how can I say we haven't really experienced it but perhaps we have some sense of what that means the Samadhi state, and it is exactly what buddha means by beyond becoming, being beyond becoming, beyond the samsaric wheel. So somehow if you remember that I said there is a blackout at that point from any experience whatsoever, because you have already overcome the act of consciousness, and it's only if you've overcome the act of consciousness that you have any sense of what the intention is, what the program is behind the universe, and now you get into the unity. So it's the pinnacle (kata) and kaballah. It's unity, no, multiplicity, but it's very short-lived because the Sufis do not encourage people to remain in samadhi, because our purpose is to awaken in life rather than awakening beyond life, so immediately you add the u to the h, la ilaha illa 'llah, the h, hu. Now you turn to your heart center. And so let's say the h represents awakening beyond life, and the hu represents awakening in life. La ilaha illa 'llah hu.So could we just say it for some time, with me, rather not too extrovertedly, much more internally. La ilaha illa 'llah hu. La ilaha illa 'llah hu....

Now you see, there is a danger in what Christ calls the (range) repetition. And so I know that one is taught to repeat it one hundred times or three hundred times or 22,000 times, or whatever. I've done it but it is kill or cure. But what I suggest is even just saying it five times for example and stop. Because otherwise you just get into the routine, and then say it very slowly, and then once more, and then as you interrupt yourself then ask yourself, what am I doing? So then I'm getting into, I'm expanding my consciousness, and then I'm turning within, and then I'm lifting myself up, and then I'm reaching samadhi, and then I'm awakening in life. You repeat that to yourself. I see that's what I'm doing. And then once more. La ilaha illa. I see, I'm turning within. Illa, I'm lifting myself from that state. I'm passing through the spheres. So instead of, so think that it's good to be aware of the levels instead of just, I don't know how one says it in English. In French one says (bouleh laissez top). That is, you are bypassing the steps.

Instead of bypassing the steps, go from one step to the other clearly. So that takes time. You have to think about it. Just saying it won't do it for you. So imagine that you are lifting your consciousness through the spheres from one sphere to the other. The sphere of metaphor, the celestial sphere, the sphere of awakening in the intelligence of the universe, the sphere of the archetypes, and then finally into the unity. So there are different steps.

Now let's say the h is, the end of the, it's the pinnacle, it's the end of the ascent. Somehow, I must say that I do start holding my breath before awakening in life, before saying hu. That is when I'm not saying it, the hu. The one that we are doing now. That is saying it and not saying it. Not saying it aloud, and then thinking the words on your breath is called a fikr. So if you'd think it on your breath, you think la ilaha, as you exhale; illa inhale, and continue to inhale as your head comes up, and then hold your breath when you say hu. What I'm doing, I don't know if it is really acceptable but it seems right for me, and that is, I already start holding my breath in the samadhi state. And therefore the hu seems to follow naturally from the awakening beyond life into awakening in life. You see, what hu means is the person who is absent, so god who is absent, that is beyond your reach. You make god present in the zikr. That's what the Sufi's are saying. Now there is a way of looking at this. You have been listening to the music. Do you know the composer? You've been listening to Beethoven. Do you know Beethoven. And so the whole thing about the zikr is that you have been experiencing your life, but do you know the being of which this is the expression. do you know the composer.

Ibn arabi says you've been seeking for knowledge, but do you know the knower. So each of these phases, if you are clear about what these phases are, is an awakening, is also an attunement of your emotion. For example the emotion of vastness. Its an emotion. The emotion of the void, it is, perhaps you could call it a nonemotion. The experience of lifting one's consciousness up through the spheres, that is an emotion. And at each level, the emotion is different. At the celestial sphere the emotion is different from the world of imagination. In fact, Ibn Arabi says give up your imagination, at this stage, give up your imagination. That will lead you to the celestial sphere. So it is an emotional attunement. And even the understand, the grasp of the intention, the intention, according to Sufis, is rachman. That is generosity, magnanimity. It is giving, let's say the divine being wishing that every fragment of him/herself becomes as he is. Like a father who wishes for his son or daughter, or a mother who wishes for her son or daughter to become better than he is or she is. That's a very strange thought that god should wish. It is not static. God is dynamic. Therefore, the ishq allah is your ultimate magnanimity, the gift of love.

There's a word of Ibn Arabi which I will end with now. So we get to the end and it says god is the one that every lover loves in every beloved. So the zikr is really an expression of the power of love, the power. Jelaluddin Rumi says people come to me and they don't know why and that is that people are looking for the divine power, not just understanding, but the divine power. Now the dervish zikr is, there are many different zikrs of course. It is taught with the word haqq. Haqq allah ilaha illa 'llah. Very powerful. Haqq means truth. And you see al hallaj was crucified because he said ana l'aqq, I am the truth. That means that the essential I in me is uncreated, because haqq, there's the difference between haqq and haqq (?) that which is created, and this is reality beyond the created. And that is exactly what Buddha is talking about, beyond becoming.

And Meister Eckhart was condemned by the church for saying exactly the same thing. He said there's something in me which is (?) that is uncreated and not subject to creation. And for that he was placed (?) and that was the last we heard of him. We don't know how he died, but seriously we have our suspicions.

Now just, we have five minutes, and those five minutes are perhaps the most important in this whole retreat. You see I have been calling upon the skills and the methods of different esoteric schools in order to help us to awaken and to unfurl our being and therefore be better able to deal with our problems. Achieve. So somehow it was independent of confinement to a particular school. It's true that I could be accused of having a bias in favor of Sufism but I don't think it is a bias, but perhaps I could be accused of such, and maybe that accusation is correct. However, even Sufism needs to be bypassed to be outreached, overcome. Any kind of ism. And the worst is, of course, when spirituality which is a real experience is organized, is institutionalized in what one calls an, I call the institutionalization of spirituality, which is like the Sufi order for example. We try for it not to be so, but I think we have to watch it that it doesn't become another institution.

Now, I'm thinking of the words of a wonderful man who is a catholic priest and Hindu at the same time called ramon (?) who said something that has always remained with me. He said one always has to have one's roots in one's tradition, and the leaves of one's trees mingling with the leaves of other trees. That has been my motto. So we have loyalty to our grandmother or grandfather, the transmission, and somehow, we must not be stuck with it. We have to reach beyond. So when Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan came to America after India and then finally Europe, he had been sent by his predecessor Murshid (?) to communicate the message of Sufism to the west. He was the first one to do that. But as he developed into greater and greater maturity and greater, how can I say it, outreach, he was talking more and more about the universel instead of the word Sufi, because Sufi has some kind of connotation, well it is not a sect, you have seen that there are many different influences and religious influences, but still it's a transmission which developed out of Islam. It's not surprising because the koran is perhaps the one religious scripture in which prophets of different religions are mentioned. Christ is considered to be the ruh allah, the spirit of god. On the last day, when Pir-o-Murshid was amongst his disciples in suresnes, there was a big ceremony and he founded the universel which was to be the temple of all religions. So he placed the cornerstone of that building. 

So you would have thought that the whole purpose is a temple, like a temple of all religions, and he even made me the head of the confraternity when I was a child of ten years old, and all of a sudden it became the universel. It's not a temple of stone. It's a temple made of people. It's universal. It's not Buddhism, Sufism, Judaism, Christianity, and its not a mishmash either. Its not (inaudible). You must be careful because we are accused of that. Pir-o-Murshid said unity is not uniformity, especially when we're doing the universal worship . we must understand that we're not saying it's all one, we're saying the beauty is in the diversity. But somehow, you see at the time of Pir-o-Murshid there was a cherag called (?) who wanted to form a school of comparative religion for the training of cherags and Pir-o-Murshid said yes, of course we have to have a knowledge of the transmissions, but there's something, but the message is beyond just (?). there's something else. I don't know if you've noticed, I haven't been teaching Buddhism. I've been teaching Buddhism, what the contribution of Buddhism is in a whole new way of looking at things instead of saying Buddha said this and Buddha said that and even the same thing is true of the Sufis, and the same thing is true of the kaballah and Hinduism and so on.

By their interactions the esoteric schools are discovering new dimensions. So it's not as they used to be. So its not useful just to study those different religions as they used to be because even those religions are evolving. Christianity is evolving, Judaism is evolving, and Islam is trying to evolve, and so on, and Hinduism too certainly has gone through a lot of changes. So that the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. The vision of the future of spirituality, that's the universel. It's the joint vision. And that is what is emerging within our groups now. Something that is firing a lot of people, particularly the older representatives, I mean older who've been over a longer time representatives are beginning to see this new direction. We can't say we know it, we're just exploring it, but we see that this is the future, and it's possible that the passage to the millenium marks or emphasizes the need to find a new vision. It's not new, I mean it incorporates the old, but somehow we've upgraded updated somehow. Of course, it's very exciting, we don't have to stay in our old habits and old attachments and so on. We're free to move into a new vision and it is a joint vision. They can be pioneers. Pir-o-Murshid had that vision, had that insight but he said I have handed that message into your hands.

And so it is something that we are doing together. You know the passage of the year 2000 has no astrological significance whatsoever. And it's not even a celebration of the birth of Christ. So it is purely fictitious, but somehow we have made it a reality in our computers at least, and in our banking systems which is much more serious. Why not. We created it somehow and now its there.

(end side one)

Threshold, its like turning a new leaf, like sometimes we think well I'm opening a new chapter, a real threshold situation now something new. And so I don't know whether you've noticed that what we're doing now exploring, you see it's really experience. It's not dogma. Not you have to believe this or you have to believe that, or not do this or not do that, no prescriptions, no gurus. I'm not a guru. I'm a human being, like you are. Rather a strange concoction, let's say an enthusiast. I'm in a state of bewondering of exaltation, because I find life so exciting. It's happening to all of us. I mean if we only realize what a privilege it is to be a part of what is happening. So I am just communicating my enthusiasm and some experience of meditation, meditating many different religions. So something is happening, I'd like to call it the universel. Now I don't know whether you know Italian or Spanish or, I'm not sure what language, ev so el uno - toward the one - universel.

So I think (inaudible). 

End of Pir's Talk


OCT 26, 1998		Tape 02

We'll start with Ya Basit which means expanding our consciousness beyond our personal purview. So we start by our personal opinion but we extend it. If you'll remember during Saturday and Sunday, I was getting more specific because we were getting into the consciousness of the point of view of different people instead of just our own and extending it further and further. I would say that for the representative, you would get into the consciousness of masters, saints and prophets. So it starts by expanding your consciousness. That's Ya Basit. But the culmination of this expansion is that you start looking at things form the point of view of that person or the master, saint or prophet. And look at your point of view from their vantage point. That wazifa is Ya Wasi. So it starts with Ya Basit then Ya Wasi. So it starts by expanding your consciousness. Then what St. Francis said, "I thought I was looking at the world but the world was looking at me". 

If you get into the consciousness of a person, at first you experience what it's like to be that person. But at the second stage, you see how you look from the vantage point of that person. So that's Ya Wasi. Shift your vantage point into the cosmic vantage point. So  ' your mureed is, let's take it for granted maybe it's a false assumption, that that mureed, chances are that that mureed is caught in her grip or in her perspective. And you can't help him/her if you are caught in your perspective. So you have to get into the overall perspective and look into their perspective from the overall perspective or the divine perspective. I'm using the wazifa as a language which conveys different kinds of realizations, throws light on problems. 

Now you could... let's do another two wazifa Ya Alim/Ya Kabir. Well Alim is a kind of knowledge that one has acquired from experience. You could say wisdom. I quoted Ibn Arabi yesterday when he said, "Knowledge is a veil upon the known". So that Ya Alim represents a more learned point of view than the simplistic opinion, a certain maturity in one's understanding. But it's still in the realm of knowledge. And Kabir is awakening. Therefore you are awakening from that knowledge because that knowledge will encapsulate you into a certain vantage point. So when you're talking to a person, you have that person's opinion. And you're confronting that person with your opinion. And there can be a conflict between the two or a discrepancy. But then if you awaken from that knowledge, from the known, into the knowledge, into let us say more simply, if you awaken from your vantage point and that of that person, you're able to throw light upon that person's problem. Whereas if you just discuss your point of view with that person's point of view, then you're turning around in a vicious circle. Here you see the meaning of the importance of awakening. 

I'll try to illustrate this. Supposing a patient is consulting a psychotherapist. If the psychotherapist is enlightened psychotherapist, then he/she is able to see where that patient is blocked in their vantage point. There is no way in which the patient can see the vantage point of the therapist because they're caught in their vantage point. You know, a drunk person doesn't know they're drunk. Eventually they do. By the fact that you can see that that person is caught in their vantage point, somehow your insight tells them something although they can't quite understand it. Somehow it can free them is perhaps saying too much. But it helps them to perhaps question their vantage point. That's the first step before they can free them self from that bind. That's the difference between Alim and Kabir.

So I think we really have to have a break now. Can we make it just a quarter of an hour? It's really very important what we're trying to cover. Time will be going by very fast.So the personal training one is supposed to answer the need for the spiritual unfoldment. This need cannot be separated totally from the problems. Although some Sufis try to classify the wazifa into those that are solely for the spiritual unfoldment of the person and those that are supposed to help people to meet their problems. But I don't think we want to separate these very definitely. The fact is that the mureed becomes really part of your being. There is a wonderful saying that is to be found in India. The chela, the mureed is like a grain of sand in the heart of the guru who is the oyster, and transforms the grain of sand into a pearl. That really means that they are within you. You know the people one is close to are really present in oneself. You can really experience them in your psyche, part of your being. This very close relationship is the only way in which you can transform a person instead of just giving advice. Advice is not good enough. Either it makes people subservient or people don't agree with what you're advising them to do and so on. So it's not a good way. 

Their idiosyncrasies or qualities resonate with your qualities and your defects of course. You understand them because you have the same propensities. If you're able to help them at all, it's because you have met these problems yourself, or these flaws in your own being. Somehow you are able to overcome them. Then you can help them to overcome them also. If you haven't done it yourself, for one thing you're dishonest. You can't convince them. You can fool them. A lot of gurus fool their pupils but eventually they get found out. So it's not a very good method. It's not so much in the way of advice as a way of resonating with a pupil so the pupil really feels that they have become a part of your being, very present in your being. As they unfold within your being just like the embryo unfolds within the mother. Their problems are a concern for you. So it's very difficult to be able to have peace of mind while one has so much concern for the problems of people. In a sense, one is really taking on their problems and is better able to do it than they are. Without telling them what to do, one can sometimes show them a point of view which is different to their own which makes sense to them or turns them on. It helps them then to change things in themselves. 

In principle, what I do advise is for representatives to see their mureeds once a month. It just depends. If you have twenty mureeds, if you have some space on Saturday afternoon, then you'd be seeing five mureeds each Saturday. So in the course of a month it would be twenty mureeds. Ten is rather a lot to see ten mureeds one after the other, five them practices. I've done it of course. I've done much more. Twenty mureeds. If you have forty mureeds, then you have to devote two afternoons. Eight to ten is rather a lot. If you devote the whole day to it. We have things to do. We are very busy. Time is so precious that the efficiency in the way that you proceed makes all the difference. You could contract the interview. I've often suggested this. People sometimes don't agree. I'm a very person. And I find that it's the only way to do it. You have to have someone at the door. You have to have a place where people are sitting. What Pir O Murshid used to do is to write the wazifa down. In those days they had carbon paper. So there were two carbon copies of the wazifa that he gave. One he gave to the mureed. One he kept himself. And one he gave to headquarters, let's say to the secretary. It's supposed to be very confidential. That's a principle that Mureeds are not supposed to tell other people the wasifas they have received. So you know what wazifa you gave that person. As a matter of fact, at the end of your morning meditation, you should think of each of your mureeds in turn and look up the practice that you gave them so that while you're thinking of them, you're aware of the practice that you gave them. If you're intuitive, you might come to the conclusion that it wasn't the best wazifa that you've given them. Or you could come to the conclusion that you should change the wazifa now because they have gone through a change. But it has to be an ongoing relationship and not something that happens just once. This is a practical way of giving instructions to a mureed. 

So the mureed comes into the room. Of course the mureed has to be instructed before hand that it's not like an interview. It's not like a conversation, "How are your children growing up now?". "Oh he's in University now." "Oh, that's wonderful." Then the time's gone by. They come for a specific purpose. They are supposed to come in silence. You have to prepare yourself in advance. When I was running a center in Sursens, then I would have to meditate for an hour and a half before seeing the mureeds. In those days, I used to have a photo of each mureed and the lists of the wazifa I used to give them. Then I associated the face of that mureed with the practices that I gave them last. So I knew this was the practice I gave them last. Now of course, there are so many mureeds it's very difficult to remember. If you have up to forty mureeds, you can remember. If you have eighty mureeds, it's difficult to remember. But you have that there. I find it useful to have a photo of the mureed so you have some sense of, actually the art is to try to grasp what transpires behind that photo instead of just the photo. Because that's just the outer aspect. Then you see why you gave that practice. 

So the mureed comes in and you know their practice so don't have to say, "What was the last practice I gave you?". It depends how you do it. You could say, "How did this practice affect you?". If they haven't been doing their practice, they know that they are going to be in a very embarrassing position. So next time they do their practice because they know you're going to ask them, "How has it affected you?". Some people don't even remember what practice you gave them. In fact, most people don't do their practices. If you're studying a chela, as I say, you have to do your homework, otherwise you don't feel comfortable going to the class. So there is just that date line where the mureed has to confront their teacher with some kind of report. 

Of course, we would like to be able to ask a person something about their life in order to help us to prescribe what practice to give them. But once you ask a person about their life, it could go on for hours. They're used to talking all about their lives to their friends. So they'll do the same thing to you. You are listening to all their talks. The next time they come with the same problems. So that's not very constructive. On the other hand we're called upon to use our intuition. But our intuition might not be as good as it needs to be. Therefore if it's not authentic, we're giving the wrong practice. It's very serious because if a mureed takes a practice very seriously, then it can affect them considerably. It's like taking medicine. And you have a responsibility. So you have to know not just the meaning of the practices but the effect of the practices and of course what are the problems of people. Actually it's true that there are certain trends, certain criteria that you find in most mureeds, the same problems that you have your self. 

So you ask them. Of course they have to be briefed beforehand. They have to come in silence. You ask them a question. They answer that question. Their answer has to be brief. As a matter of fact, if you've already had it in your class and you've already given them homework and asked them to come with a question, then you already have a little insight into their problems and what practice you want to give them. You might find that that wazifa has opened a whole new perspective in their life, has left a mark and changed their life. It might be quite dramatically. That was you objective in giving that wazifa, it would have a real effect in their life. And in that case you might feel now they are ready for another practice. Or then you might feel the practice has not done what it was supposed to do. Then you might feel they must not do that practice again. Now in the second case, you say to them, "Yes, I wanted to know how this practice affected you. But you should know that there is another deeper meaning to this practice to what you have seen so far". Then you could start revealing to them that meaning. In the Sufi way, the secret treasure that desired to be known the whole of life is the manifestation of the non manifest. So it's revealing something. So you're revealing something to the mureed. But it depends upon their capacity to be ready for, as Nafari says, the treasures of the treasury. It's very subtle. But you think, "Maybe I need to throw light on this practice now because they didn't quite get it. It might help them". So you say, "Go back and repeat this practice, but keep in mind this new way of looking at it and see how it affects you. Then come next month". 

You could ask the mureed to repeat the practice before you. Some mureeds are very shy and nervous especially with they're being questioned by you. Consequently, you feel sorry for putting them on the carpet so you repeat the wazifa with them. Sometimes it's almost better not to ask them to repeat the practice. You repeat the practice and they pick it up. That's better than correcting them. Because they are bound not to have done it properly anyway. It's better to make a fresh start. So you say the practice with them. The practices is not just the wazifa. There is a Zikr, breathing practices, practices of light and so on, many different practices. Some of those practices are more general like the ones I give in my seminars or retreats. The wazifa is specific. There are different levels of the Zikr. That is something we'll have to study a little bit late on in these two days. For the moment just the wazifa.

Now that makes the interview short. Consequently, you're able to take ten or twelve. Perhaps you could take ten or twelve. If you're very succinct in your approach and really very well organized, then you'll find that the mureed is tempted to, although they are told to be silent, since you've broken the silence, they are tempted to say, "Do you mind if I ask you a question?". And that can last a long time. What is more important than asking the question is your grasp of what brought them to ask the question. That's more important because that's what is more important for them. It's not the intellectual answer. It could be that it gives you a clue as to a wazifa that you have not intuited at first. One can't rely one hundred percent on one's intuition. Maybe it isn't right. At the last minute, the person is saying something that you should listen to because it's a crie du coeur on their part. And you say, "Wait a moment, I'll give you another wazifa. You do that other wazifa with this one". 

So the door is knocking. I used to ask them to knock after three minutes. That's a little bit short. But the second time a little bit harder after five minutes. It goes on another seven minutes, then really hard. Then after ten minutes, then open the door. Somehow it has got to be disciplined. It's got to be controlled. It's good for people to know that there is some discipline. It's strange, people don't like to be disciplined and on the other hand they do. They're just like children. They like to know you can go so far no further. So it must be clear that people are not supposed to ask you any questions about yourself like, "How are you?", and "How's your health?", and "Are you well?", and so on. 

The time is very short for you to give them a wazifa. They would like to know the meaning. Of course one would like to give the meaning such as one understands it. But it is a concept. What you want them to do is to discover the meaning themselves. Actually I think both are true. The concept is like the catalyst or gives them a catalyst or an orientation. Then what you're asking them to do is how it affects them. So that gives the deeper meaning instead of the conceptualized meaning. The time is too short to be able to tell them what it means. 

In Paris now when I give wazifa to mureeds, there's eighty people or one hundred and twenty people in one afternoon. Either I do it in a very formal way. I ask somebody next to me to wright the wazifa down. Then there is a card system. So they pick out the card with the explanation of what the wazifa is. But it's not a very good way of doing it. It's the way of dealing with a lot of people. But it doesn't have a lot of that personal touch that you have if you have a little more time of interchange with mureeds. But whatever that time is, it's never good enough to give them a real sense of the wazifa. That is why I think that we need to introduce wasifas in our classes. In the old days, that was absolutely forbidden. Wasifas were secret. Now you have publications with wasifas. So it's not a secret anymore. As you must have noticed in the last years of my seminars, I keep on saying that just repeating the wazifa will not do it for you. That's why people don't repeat their wasifas. It's not effective. 

The wazifa has got to be accompanied by several things. One is a resolve. That is if you say Ya Wali, then you have to decide that you're going to stop smoking. Otherwise, don't say Ya Wali. That's an example. If you say Ya Haqq, that means you have to be very scrupulous about truthfulness. Otherwise, don't say Ya Haqq. There is some commitment. If the mureed is committing themselves to a pledge by taking on a wazifa. They have every right to say, "No, I'm not up to it". What I'm saying is rather drastic. We can say, "Well we hope that Ya Wali will help one to become more masterful". But there has to be a very definite application of the practice in one's daily life. Otherwise it's fictitious. That's why people don't take it seriously. It's a real commitment. 

Then of course, some wasifas have been associated with a picture. For example, Ya Wahabo, we have a stream of water that keeps on advancing, Ya Fata, a door that opens and so on. But not for all. In fact very few. You have to make the difference between what Jung calls a scene and a scenario. For example, water that is flowing, that would be a scene. Or a lake for Ya Salaam, peace. But it could be a scenario. For example, Ya Rahman would be imagining someone who is so magnanimous that people are harming him or her and he still maintains his friendship with them. That would be Ya Rahman. So you have a very definite concrete illustration of what means Ya Rahman instead of just saying it means magnanimity. Then you have to translate it in terms of your life, "Well there are people who have offended me and I don't want to talk to them". That's not Ya Rahman. Then what I have to say is, "What my representative or guide is trying to tell me is I have to be able to be, my heart has got to be wide enough, all embracing enough to accept this person who has been hurting me. That's my problem. If I'm able to overcome that, then I'll make progress spiritual. Otherwise, I'll stay where I am". So the wazifa is really significant for one's life instead of just repeating the wazifa that doesn't mean a thing to repeat the word. It doesn't mean a thing to just repeat a word. Some people think that these words are magical. They are not. 

So there is a pledge. There is a projection of a scene or scenario. And there is something much more complex. That is perhaps one of the deeper issues. That is incorporating that quality in not just one's personality but in one's subtle body. That is something that we have not developed in the Sufi order but is to be found in the transmissions of Sufis, Ibn Arabi, Kobra, Surawardi, all of them. It's something that I've been teaching lately. We are endowed with the most creative of all faculties which is creative imagination. It's not the same thing is wishful thinking or fantasizing. The only way in which that imagination can be authentic instead of wishful thinking is if we're able to, this is of course the great challenge of Sufism, is try and see things from the divine point of view. We're touching upon the very basics of Sufism here. That is that God is trying to disclose or reveal His/Her being by means of ayat, by signs, clues. And these clues are not only to be found in the physical world or even the form of the body actually. But they are also in your psyche. So the qualities of the idiosyncrasies of your being are clues in which God is disclosing His/Her nature to you and discovering Him/Herself through you and as you. And therefore discovering Him/Herself through your discovery of Him/Herself in you. I don't know whether that makes sense. But that's Sufism. 

You see that this disclosure of meaningfulness takes place by the fact that thought and emotion is configured as form. And the wazifa, you could say it's an archetypal thought which needs to be configured as a form in your subtle body. For example, what are the features of your countenance if you think Ya Haqq? What are the features of your countenance if you say Ya Rahman? What are the features of your countenance if you say Ya Rahim? Perhaps not just the face. You feel it in your heart. What are the features of your countenance if you say Ya Muhyi, if you say Ya Hayy, if you say Ya Quddus, Ya Muid, Ya Fattah? Each one of these, there is a certain emotional attunement that configures itself as a countenance which does not have a profile. And it is shaping your inner bodies, your subtle bodies. We have different subtle bodies. Eventually it will manifest in your physical body. But whether it does or not. That's secondary. It becomes adamant by the fact of repetition. If you keep on walking across a field always the same way, you'll form a path. That's the reason for the repetition of the wazifa. By dint of repetition that quality leaves a hallmark in your subtle bodies that are configured by that. You see, what is gained by life is form, is the thought, archetypal thought and emotion are concretized as form. Existence adds something to the divine program. The purpose of life as Pir O Murshid says. 

What you're doing is encouraging people to be creative of themselves instead of a painting or composition. We suffer in our present civilization from the lack of an opportunity to be creative. We have to work in an office or a factory. So there is very little opportunity to be creative. In the old days, people were doing work with their hands, artisans. Even now if you go to North Africa you see them in the bazaars working with copper trays and leather. They are really creative. Now we don't have that creativity. Very few people have the confidence to compose music or paint or sculpture statues. People don't have time. That need of creativity is so great. Here you're giving them that opportunity. Just imagine now of what happens to the form of your countenance when you think of Ya Wali. What happens with your countenance when you think of the word Ya Malik, or Ya Qadir, or Ya Qaher. 

The Tibetans do this. What they do, not all of them of course, but what they do is very advanced form of practice. What they do is sit in front of an idol to the extent that they think that they are this idol as them self. What they don't know is that they are configuring their subtle body upon the image of that idol. And that idol represents a certain quality. Then as they walk about in the street, they identify with that subtle body instead of the physical body. And they are convinced that they are that. The weakness about that is that one is conforming to a form that is already there, whereas here one is forming that form oneself, one is conforming that form oneself. So it really represents one instead of just aping a master or figurehead that one is copying. The reason is that in Sufism there is no idolatry. So you don't let yourself be caught in a sclerosed form. You create form. You can't say all to this to each mureed as they come. 

So in the classes you need to help people to work with different wasifas and invite them to do these things. Like what does it mean to make a pledge? What does it mean to project a form? Imaginary landscape in a state of revere? Or whatever it is. What does it mean to configure your own subtle body? And this is the last one, how is it going to change my rapport with other people? For example, so far I haven't been totally honest with that person. I haven't said exactly how I feel. The consequence is an ambiguous situation, conflict. We're in conflict. That person is suffering and I'm suffering and so on so forth. The answer is Ya Haqq. I'm saying the wazifa. That's not good enough. To be honest I have to go to that person and say, "Look here, there is something I have kept from you all this time. But I have to say it. I am devastated. I'm afraid that you will be too. But I have to say it". Your whole world might crash. Then you can build your life from a solid basis. The effect of the wazifa can be really dramatic. 

Now you really helping people. Otherwise they are just repeating the word 101 times. I've done that myself. So I'm talking form experience. That means that you have to know all the wasifas. There are some bad wasifas that I didn't want to repeat. But I realize that they are the most useful one's. For example, God is the dishonorer. When you know that, then you try to act in an honorable way because you don't like to be dishonored. Or God is the leader astray. Well, how can God mislead you? Well, I don't like that particular translation of that wazifa. I would say deluder. That is because if one knew reality in it's bare reality, then one would be shattered. So one is protected by the veil. That's what the Sufis are saying. The veil of ignorance protects one against being shattered by the power of reality. As one grows, one is able to face that reality more and more. Bistami says, "Oh God deceives you in the market places of the world and presents you with effigies of reality". So forms are, for him forms instead of conveying the meaningfulness, are standing in the way of the way of the reality behind them. So there are two opposite points of view because Bistami had a Hindu guru. He was into Maya. Life is Maya. So you're deceived. I think it's Jami who said, "Glory to the One who conceals Himself to the same veil that reveals Him and reveals Himself by the same veil that conceals Him". So there is that whole mysterious thing that you find in Sufism. Somehow, I know what I'm saying is very perplexing. Realization is perplexing. Pir O Murshid said, "God Himself is perplexed". So you mustn't be surprised if you are.

There is a time in the evolution of the mureed that the mureed needs to work with form, translating a thought into a form in their own body. Then there is a further phase in which one needs to discover what transpires behind that which appears and see that the form is only the outer expression of a deeper reality that does not have a form. Then there is a third stage which Ibn Arabi talks about when he says, "Do away with imagination then God will will reveal Himself to you without the devices, signs whereby he reveals Himself to you". 

So we have different phases. And you have to know just where the mureed is and whether they are ready for the next phase. If you introduce them to the next phase and they are not ready, then you are harming them because they are not ready for it.. They are confused. They can't deal with it. That's the reason there are grades in the Sufi Order. We have tried to define at the Jamiat these grades. I don't think we did it in an adequate way but we're trying to. It's very difficult to define them. Pir O Murshid does give some clues in I think it's called mental purification. He does speak about those different stations, makum. I think we need to define them a little more clearly. What is the criteria that helps you to ascertain whether the mureed is ready for the next initiation? What is the realization corresponding to each initiation? It's rather difficult to define. But that's something we need to do. We have a lot of work to do still.


Now for fault of knowing better, what we're doing as far as I can see and the feedback that I get, is that in our classes there are the readings and then the practices. The practices are mainly practices which I've given. So there is the reading then the practices. But no correspondence between them. What I always want to do is establish that correspondence. Which of the practices corresponds to this teaching and so forth. But I haven't done that so far. You have no idea how busy I am. But that is on my list of homework in the future, an enormous undertaking. So a more dynamic effective way of running a class would be to present a theme out of Murshid's teaching and do the practices corresponding to it. Then go to the next thing. For the themes to be graduated in courant sequence of themes, progressive. For example, I already sent out the curriculum such as I started it. If I remember, although I'm not sure I communicated it to the Secretariat, is I gave a sequence of themes rather than just presenting the themes ad hoc, impromptu as they presented themselves. So that the curriculum itself would form the basis of the graduation of the initiations. So there is all of that to do. 

I can tell you that I was rather concerned about this meeting of representatives because these are the core issues of our order. The whole effectiveness of our order depends upon our meeting with these issues. And so far we're still at the exploratory stage. One of the things that I felt was really imperative is to illustrate each of the wasifas by a saying of Pir O Murshid or several different sayings of Pir O Murshid and also that of the ancient Sufis. Of course I've been so busy. I'm working on three books. Publishers are asking another book. They want a book on wasifas. I don't want to write a book on wasifas without, it requires so much knowledge. I don't want to just, there are so many ad hoc books on wasifas that do not at all correspond with reality. It's very fanciful. So they thought that mine would be a little better. I don't think that it would be better unless, really what I want to do is to be thorough or not at all. So I'm holding that back. 

Last night I didn't sleep very well because I thought, "We have to be able to understand these wasifas. And what better way than to quote Murshid on this wasaif". So I got up at three o'clock and started working on something that I thought would take weeks and weeks to work on. I thought, "Well here we go". Of course I had to interrupt it by coming here. So it's still at the exploratory stage. We'll try and work with it this afternoon. I apologize that I haven't completed my homework before coming to this meeting. But, as I say, I'm overwhelmed with work. It's all very exciting. I'm going to try and enter into the spirit of each wazifa instead of defining it intellectually, conceptually. One is playing with words in which there is some latitude of interpretation. So there is differences in the way that those wasifas are interpreted by the authors of the books. And they don't always agree. In fact, there is sometimes really in contradiction. Then I think it's more important to see what light they throw upon our problems. They make much more sense if you have you have your problems as a criterion rather than a conceptualization. Pir O Murshid was very conscious of the problems of people. That's why his sayings illustrate the wazifa far better than you could ever conceptualize it. 

So that's the work that we're going to do this afternoon if you agree, if that's what you're looking for. I could just say repeat this wazifa and that wazifa and repeat the Zikr and so on. We've done that in the past. But I think we need to be a little clearer as to what we're doing. What I even suggested yesterday for the Zikre. You could say it four times. Well you could do it ten times, eleven times and stop. Ask yourself what does it mean, all these things that I've been talking about. Then say it again. It's not vain repetition. 

Well we have to end here. We'll start again this afternoon at the appointed time. I think it's three o'clock. 

End Tape



OCT 26, 1998		Tape 03

...somehow very deeply connected with your mureed. The mureed is deeply connected with you and feels it. Their problems are not different from your problems. Consequently you can see in yourself that which is needed in order to help them. 

We made an artificial separation between those wasifas, actually it's not the right term but we've got used to using it, that are for spiritual unfoldment and those that are to help dealing with problems. That is very artificial division. I would say that ultimately the reason mureeds come to you is for spiritual guidance. They don't always see the connection between that and their problems. They would like to have help with their problems. So it's not always very clear what the relationship is. 

I think that sometimes that one needs to take the bull by the horns. The big issue is our not knowing. I think we suffer from the fact that we would like to understand the purpose of our lives. We'd like to understand why things happen the way they do. And we would like to understand the purpose of life not just the purpose of our lives. 

There is some, Hidiger calls it metaphysical anxiety as to whether there is meaningfulness in life or whether their is randomness. These are metaphysical problems that we know we can never sort out with our minds. But there is a kind of anxiety that might develop in the course as you gain more awareness. That is the anxiety of not having fulfilled the purpose of your life. That is time is going on. The Hindus say, "Don't you dare die without attaining illumination". There is a kind of anxiety, "I haven't attained it yet and I'm eighty two. Maybe I have a few more years. But I've really got to get down to it now because time is running out". But you can force to become illuminated. 

In fact, I think that that is a misnomer anyway. I think that there are different modes of awakening. One needs to define what one means by illumination. Somehow awakening and illumination are connected. And it's very significant for me because of the role of light, not just in matter, but in our mind and in our concepts of ourselves and so on, understanding. 

So somehow the mureed has exactly that passion for the unattainable that Pir O Murshid talks about. I think all of us have that. Somehow the virtual hero in us would like to climb the Himalayas but somehow we don't have the courage to do it. What Pir O Murshid means by unattainable is that it is always further as once he said that the horizon is always further. We mustn't think, "I've got it in my pocket now because I'm illuminated. I can die now because I'm illuminated". It doesn't work that way. Actually one can fall right back and far worse than ever before. So one can never think that one's got it. 

So let us say that our suffering could be accounted for by a constraint of circumstances. The word is Qabid, limitation, a word that Pir O Murshid uses very often. Somehow one feels that as long as one has to put up with these conditions, one will never attain illumination. So you think that you have to change conditions otherwise you'll never reach it. Of course, it might be the other way a   round. It might be that these circumstances are challenging you to do something that you perhaps couldn't do unless you were challenged. 

You know that stress has a role to play even in our physical health. There is such a thing as overstress. That's true. For example, a plant requires favorable circumstances to unfurl, the right sun, and the right amount of water and so on and so forth. If it's exposed to too much wind, it will die. Some plants are better able to deal with the inclemency of nature than others. As they say the survival of the fittest. But if one over stresses oneself, then one loses heart. One loses one's confidence in one's self and the ability to do it. So it's not a good idea to oversteers yourself. I know that.

As you know, I am a falconer. I have been training a golden eagle. And it was in a cage for a year and a half. I released it from the cage. The first time it was free, the joy of that eagle. I can fly. But in the meantime, the training meant that it had to fly to my fist and increase the distance. If I increased it too fast, it would lose its confidence. Then I had to go right back, not quite back to the beginning. The same thing is true. You shouldn't be too hard a task master on your pupils including yourself, but just at the edge of your ability. It's good to, if you have difficulty walking, to keep on walking all the same as far as you can. That limitation. 

Pir O Murshid says, I don't know whether I have that passage here. But how do illuminated souls reach it? In the state of silence and peacefulness and so on. Somehow it is true that we need to create these favorable conditions to awakening if we can. Maybe circumstances don't allow us to. In that case, we have to think of Buddha sitting in the middle of a storm and where he sat everything was peaceful. He sat in the center or the epicenter of a storm or hurricane. And at the center, everything is peaceful. Maybe that's a good thought, "I can't get away from my situation. But maybe I can find peace in myself. However much agitation is around me, I still maintain my peace". It's very difficult I know. Somehow that's the only alternative. 

If you escape the outer situations, you'll find for one thing one has lacked courage. One has become indulgent with one's own lack of courage. It's not good for your self esteem to escape from a challenge. I hope you recognize that you recognize something in your own life. Qabid, constriction in circumstances is only one form of constriction. One of them is constriction in our own self image. You come across people who have a low profile. They go to psychotherapists who try and help them. I think that we have to give certainly contributes towards it. To boast one's self esteem. That's what we need ourselves. And we need to help others because we have all the same problems as other people have. It's only if we have confidence, self esteem, that we can help others to gain self esteem. 

That's where I must say that honorability is an issue. If one is doing things that are dishonorable, hurting people or lying, then one loses one's honorability. Consequently, it's very difficult to guide other people because there is a flaw in one's being, a weakness, a limitation. Consequently, Murshid highlights the contrast between perfection and limitation. The whole spiritual path is a path from limitation to perfection. The word perfection, I don't know why but it's not to be found in the books that I have consulted, the ninety nine names of God. But you know those. I don't know why the names have to be ninety nine. I think that's purely arbitrary why those have to be ninety nine. It mustn't be one hundred because it would be complete. It doesn't make sense to me. The fact is that I wonder how it all started. They were words that are used in the Koran. God is merciful, God is powerful and so on so forth. So we make a list of them. There have got to be ninety nine. If you look at lists of Isme Illahe, divine names which I've come across. And there are more than ninety nine. And I'm glad of this because I'd like to add a few. 

One of them is Murshid makes a difference between intelligence and consciousness. He says intelligence becomes consciousness when it's faced with an object. This whole idea about this dichotomy between intelligence and consciousness. You'll find that everywhere. Buddhism, satipatana, expanding consciousness beyond it's personal limits. Buddha says consciousness is like a flame, a combustible. Consciousness needs an object to be aware of. But if there is not object, there is no more consciousness. So consciousness is replaced by intelligence. Consciousness. I think sometimes one has to stretch the wazifa in order for them to make sense. I'm sorry to say that. For example, consciousness. Would you translate that by Raqib which means watchfulness? Or would you translate it by Shahid which means the spectator? I would probably say Shahid, the spectator. 

What then is intelligence? Would it be the word Khabir? Khabir is really the word 'to awaken'. It's generally translated 'to be aware'. And watchfulness is a very interesting word. Again I find that knowledge of the different religions is helpful. In Buddhism you have (Janananda shanada) that is you uncouple the spectator in you from your bodiness or your psyche. Therefore you can observe it objectively. There is a very clear dichotomy - subject/ object. That's watchfulness. If you watch the body which is a formation irrespective or your decision and even your mind and even your personality. This is very important in Pir O Murshid's teaching. He says, "It is important to know yourself, to know why you think the way you do, why you feel the way you do and so on". Self observation, self transcendence. That would be Raqib as opposed to Kabir which is to awaken. You see how those wasifas are connected. 

So I opened up a parenthesis here just to say that there are wasifas that have not been listed in the ninety nine. One of them is Akil which means intelligence. But I suppose if I prescribed Ya Akil, which I used to do, I would be condemned as, sometimes I've been condemned as being a traitor to Islam, so not towing the line. So I have been cautious about it. Actually, it makes sense to me. Akil. That word is used Nur Akli for example, the light of intelligence. I've often talked about it in my seminars. You shift from the notion of being your aura to being the intelligence, light upon light. That would be Nur Alki - light of intelligence. So that's not listed amongst the wazifa. 

What made me open this parenthesis was because you have the contrast between limitation, Qabid, and perfection. Often you find Murshid saying divine perfection and the purpose of life is fulfilling the need for perfection. That's Kamil. And it's not one of the ninety nine wasifas. You have Jamil and Jalal or Jalil. But you don't have Kamil. But Kamil is very known concept in Sufism. Insan al kamil, the perfect man - a word of Karim al Jali. So the word perfection comes in often in Murshid's works. 

Self esteem is balanced between a sense of inadequacy and a kind of idyllic wish of perfecting oneself. You find that people don't only suffer from the constraint of circumstances but suffer from the constraint of their own self image. the limitation in their own capacity. We haven't yet been able to unfurl all the bounty of the qualities of our being. That's why they come to you. "How can I unfurl all those latent qualities in me so that I can overcome this terrible sense of inadequacy?" There you are. You think, "Well I also have a sense of inadequacy, How can I help them if I don't deal with my own sense of inadequacy?". Where does that come form? 

At first I think one has to start with the sense of honorability. The word is Munsil which means that God dishonors you. And Muis, honors you. One is damaging one's self esteem by doing things that are dishonorable. So one feels happier when one is doing things that honorable. So if you have that very clear concept of honorability, I would say that's a (sin equa non) first step. I don't see how one can attain illumination if one has neglected that step, if one has bypassed it. I would say it's wishful thinking. And we have to be very careful. In spirituality there is a lot of wishful thinking. People who are smug think they have got it, especially gurus, phony gurus. If we play the role of being a guru, we expose ourselves to the same temptation that gurus are exposed to, role modeling, playing a role that doesn't correspond to reality.

So at some point, one needs to introduce the strongest power in the whole panoply of the wazifa. That is Haqq which means truth. Because that gives one a sense of honorability. And somehow it helps one to overcome one's inadequacy which means, of course, one's vulnerability. This is the ultimate word, the word that Al Hallaj used. That's why he was crucified because he said, "An al Haqq" which means I am the truth. It's the same thing that Christ answered when Pilot asked him, "What is the truth?". And he said, "I am the truth". Exactly the same words as Al Hallaj. 

In Sufism, the truth is really the ultimate reality because it is always paralleled with Halk or with Hakika which is, I suppose it is what one means by 'it's a fact'. That doesn't mean it's the truth but it's a fact. Hakika is created and Haqq is uncreated for the Sufis. That's why when Al Hallaj said, "An al Haqq", "I am the truth", then what he was doing was to say that he is not created. In the orthodox it was a claim to be God, God uncreated. A human being is created. So it's transgressing the law. But Meister Eckhart ran into the same problem because he said, " There is something in me which is increatos and increable", which is not created. He was placed on the index because of that. 

This word opens up a whole dimension in our being. Perhaps you remember the last words of Murshid when he said, "When the unreality of life strikes my heart, then it's reality appears". Somehow the created realm is a veil upon the real. It's very close to the theory of Maya. There comes a time when you are very disenchanted when you look around you because you see so much sham. People are indulging in unreality and caught up in their pursuit of things that have no value. As Pir O Murshid said, "One pays pearls for pebbles". That's a very important thought. It is that scruple for truth which will make one proceed in what one calls (janan a dashan). In Sufism it is called Muhasabi, the examination of conscience. That's a practice that I think one needs to give to all mureeds. And one needs to do it oneself all the time. 

There are two wasifas for that. One is Hasib and the other is Muhsi. I'm not quite clear as to the difference between those two. One means a reckoning. In fact, both are translated often by reckoning, like the reckoning of the day of judgment and so on. I think it's more like assessment, accounting. So you assess your motivations is what it amounts to. That means you ask yourself, "Why am I doing this? What am I trying to get in my relationship with that person? What are my motivations? Am I using that person for my purpose or is there interdependence between us, helping each other? Or then it's the other way around.". So see that very clearly. Consequently one sees that one's mind justifies oneself. One is fooling oneself by justifying. The mind is a master in self justification. The pursuit of Haqq is absolutely relentless. The consequence is that it makes one clear instead of ambiguous. In fact it makes one like a diamond, clear instead of an opal. These are practices that one needs, I do it every day. I think it's a practice that we need to do ourselves and then expect one's mureeds to do them. One cannot ask a mureed to do it unless one is absolutely scrupulous about authenticity oneself. 

Behind this is a deeper issue and that is one's sense of values. One could make a whole list of values, a scale of values. It's a good thing to do that in the course of a retreat particularly. You ask yourself, "What are the things that I want in life? Yes I'd like to do this. There is this also of value in my life. But there is something that I value more in my life. What is it? Am I sacrificing that which I value more for that which I value less? The consequence is that I am dissatisfied with myself.". So it's not as bad as dishonoring oneself. But it's still not quite living up to one's ideal. On the other hand, one sees that one has a lot of values in life. I think that it's Jelaluddin Rumi who says, "There are a lot of wines. But be a connoisseur". 

This leads one to something very fundamental in the pursuit of spirituality. That is this whole dichotomy between interest and indifference which you find in the teachings. It's very basic, not just in the teachings but in the whole Indian tradition rotates around this paradigm of becoming a sannyasin, leaving the world because one has contempt for the values that people pursue. And one is hoping to attain enlightenment. Actually it's not just enlightenment. The way towards enlightenment is freedom. 

So that is something that we are encountering all the time but we are not always clear about it in our minds. Murshid says it very clearly. He says, "What you desire", actually he says, "The longings of the heart", Buddha would say "desire", "robs you of your freedom". So it's a very hard thought. Murshid like the Sufis considers that our involvement in life, that is our interest in life, is the pursuit of the divine Ishq Allah, the divine nostalgia which is behind the whole of creation. We are actuating in our pursuit of achievement in life the original impulse that triggered off the whole Universe. So you could ask yourself. "What is the point of the Universe if you want to escape from it and free yourself from it?" So while in India one has this choice between being a sanyasin or being a householder, grinding the mill. So one is a second class citizen if one is just living a family life. One has a high status if one is a sannyasin because one has found freedom. That's a kind of social custom that has become rather inbred in India. I wonder whether it isn't the vain glory of being a sannyasin that makes one do that. And that's a desire to be somebody, a VIP. It's desire. So it's counterproductive. I hope that you recognize something that is happening to you, and each one of us and to everyone who is interested in the spiritual pursuit. There is a good chance that one is pulled in two directions. It's not just one's desire, but one's sense of fulfillment in involving oneself with people and with life in general, one's achievement in life, one's job family and so on. There is involvement. On the other hand, freedom. 

Freedom, what does that mean? The most simplistic way of pursuing freedom is freedom of involvement in circumstances. But that's a very simplistic way of freeing oneself. Buddha mentions freedom of opinion. That's freedom. I would say freedom from being trapped in a vantage point. That is freedom from the way that consciousness get focalized in a certain vantage point. Freedom from one's self image. That's also freedom. Freedom from one's notion of one's individuality, that's a very advanced form of freedom. 

So is it freedom from desire? What light does Pir O Murshid throw upon this? I hope that you know this very crucial, central statement that Pir O Murshid made when he said, "Interest gives power. Everything that has been achieved in life is a result of interest". He even says, "Do not pursue the path of freedom unless you have followed the path of interest". But he said, "Indifference gives an even greater power because your motive in achieving limits your power". So if your motivation is impersonal, your power is infinite. That's a very strong statement. It's so fundamental in our way of handling our problems. Because for the Sufis, interest originates in Ishq Allah, the divine nostalgia. 

Let's be a little more specific here in the language of the Sufis because that's behind everything that we're doing. You see as far as I understand it - and I hope I'm not misunderstanding Hinduism and Buddhism, even the Tibetans talk about the mirage appearance of the physical world- somehow the physical world is Maya. That's a rather simplistic interpretation. It's not what we think it is. Any physicist would agree that it's not what we think it is. But that's not that important for the mureed. What's important is their problems are not what they think they are. This is a very important thought because we carry this false assessment of our problems that we're convinced of throughout our lives and never learn and lose every opportunity. So this is extremely important. I hope I'm not making it too difficult to follow me if I say that in the first step in Patangali's Yoga Sutras is Savitarka samadhi then Nivatarka Samadhi. It is freeing yourself from your personal bias, from looking at things from your personal bias. What Murshid says is that it is our personal motivation that limits the divine power. So that is the basic thought that leads toward samadhi. If you question the physical world and question your thoughts and so on, in India one says, "Neti neti. It's not so. It's not so", then that will lead towards samadhi. I think it's not good enough to say, "It is not". It doesn't say what it is. So it's still negative. We want to know what it is. 

That's where Sufism comes in because Sufism says something that is complimentary. That is that the world is made up of signs, ayat, clues to the reality behind it. So it's not illusion. It's the other way around. It's giving you an indication. It's signaling to you. It's saying something about the reality behind it instead of just saying it's Maya which seems to be the contrary view. But of course if you take the signals to be what they signify, then you're lost. You haven't seen the bear if you've seen the pug marks in the snow. Perhaps one of the great contributions of the Sufi thought is embodied in the word tawil, that means you follow the clue to reach to the reality behind it instead of just thinking it's Maya. That sounds like metaphysics. 

But how does it apply to helping mureeds deal with their problems? You know that those problems are clues that are telling them something about themselves. And telling them something about the reality of life. If you want to help them, you have to reveal to them what these clues are telling them. What these clues are telling them and telling us is what is enacted behind the problem. The problem is a device whereby God, according to Sufis, pointing to a clue that is telling you something about what is being enacted behind the problem. What is being enacted behind the problem is qualities. That's exactly what what we're working with in the wazifa. What is being enacted in this situation is truthfulness. The problem is there just as a device. But the reality behind it is truthfulness. The issue enacted behind this problem is compassion. So the problem is telling you something, that you need to develop compassion. Or the problem is telling you something that you need clarity or you have to find joy instead of being miserable all the time and so on. 

There are all kinds of qualities. When we give a wazifa, we are drawing the attention of the pupil to the quality that is the issue in their problem. So you start by asking yourself, "What is the problem?" To know what is the problem, I think we have to say that the answer is to be found in the words of Pasteur. You know Pasteur who did the vaccine. He said, "I want to know what is your suffering". That was the whole concern of Buddha. That's why he left his palace. I want to see what we can do about suffering. 

Suffering is a clue, a warning telling you to do something. If you have a tooth ache, it means go to the dentist. It is possible that there is nothing that you can do except the unacceptable. Or then perhaps there is a way of looking at the problem, seeing it in a different light. That's not doing exactly. But it is changing their way of viewing the problem. Your suffering is telling you that there is something there that you have to deal with. We're talking about psychological distress not just physical suffering. That's why a lot of people go to a psychotherapist because they are under psychological distress. We are in that sense, we are psychotherapist. I don't say our methods are totally different from that of psychotherapists. Let's say they are complementary. We need to know a little more about the methods used by psychotherapists. Therefore it's very useful to be both a psychotherapist and a spiritual guide. Then you see how those two methods are coordinated. A lot of psychotherapists are interested in our methods because they add a further dimension to the party line in psychology. 

So you're trying to help your mureed. Your first concern is what is their pain, what is their problem? Their pain will give you a clue to their problem. At least you can distinguish their pain in that the conditions are unbearable and they can't get out of them. Or then their pain is because of their own sense of inadequacy. In a third case, their pain is because they have such a longing for awakening, for illumination and they don't know how to. They come to you for guidance to help them to awaken. How can you help them unless you are awake yourself? 

So you can distinguish these three categories of problems. Concerning the first ones, let us say that one's desire has trapped one in a situation that curtails one's freedom. One would cause too much pain by trying to free oneself from that prison. So the mureed would like your advice as to how they could get out of that circumstantial prison. But if you allow yourself to be caught in that hornet's nest, you will get into trouble. For example, you advise them to do something, then their family and friends will indite you for having interfered with their lives. You really get in trouble by telling them what to do. They ask you how you can help them to get out of that prison. You can't help them to get out of that factual circumstantial prison. What you can do is to help them see the issues enacted in that situation. If they change, because the prison is not just the circumstances, the prison is them, it's circumstances and themselves that both together are the prison, the interaction between the two. 

So if they change, it's going to shift the circumstances in some way. I don't say it's the solution but it's going to bring about some change. So that would be the first solution. You see that they think the problem is in the situation, but the problem is really in themselves. And they don't see it. Perhaps the problem is in what they were before and now they are suffering the consequences of it. Or maybe it's still there. It's still in them. There is a word of Jung who said, "If you don't deal with your shadow, it's going to come to you in the form of your fate". So he sees a synchronistic relationship between dealing with ourselves and dealing with our problems. That's your first concern is to prescribe a wazifa that represents exactly the quality in them which if they enhance it, is going to have some impact on the situation. For example, if they become more truthful, the situation is going to shift. If they have more patience or less anger or jealousy or whatever it is, then it's going to shift the situation and so on. 

So you look at the different wasifas. What are they? I mentioned a few. I mentioned Haqq, truthfulness. Compassion. Well there are two words. There are two totally different paradigms. One is Rahman which means that you are big enough to be able to stand the ego of a person. It is exactly the opposite of a dictator. The dictator's ego is so strong that he destroys every other ego around him. Magnanimity means that you're big enough to encompass the ego of that person instead of being bugged by it. 

This is illustrated in India by a popular saying. Elephants don't like the agitation of chickens. Elephants are very calm. Chickens are agitated all the time. It's below their dignity to allow themselves to be bugged by the chickens. That's a thought which could help people. It's below your dignity to allow that person to bug you. It's bolstering their self esteem. It's not good for you to lower your self esteem by allowing yourself to be bugged by these people who don't understand. 

In fact, there is a word of Pir O Murshid. He said, "Those who have contempt for the world, think that they are superior persons. Really it's because they are not strong enough to deal with it". He goes on to say, "If you consider the people that you might have contempt for as being the way you were before". So you understand how they are the way they are because you yourself have been like that. But now you have overcome this. So you don't have contempt for them anymore. You don't think that you you're a superior person. You just think that one goes through a process of transformation. Maybe those people have not yet gone through that process. So you have to invite them to go through that process. 

There is a wazifa called Karim which is often translated by forbearance. Like you're indulgent with this person because you feel that they need to exercise their ego. In fact, in the Sufi tradition, there is this whole theory of bringing the ego into submission. Our ego is a necessary element in our   äpsyche. For one thing it is part of our defense system. You're telling people, "This is my boundary. Don't go beyond that boundary." That's the ego saying that. Like animals have a territory. If you wean a person from the ego, then you're destroying their defenses. You have this word submission. I think it's very dangerous to make the ego of people submit to your ego. You find that a lot in the East amongst the Sufis also. If you have developed Rahman or forbearance, Karim, then there is room in your heart for the ego of that person. And if you're not judgmental about it, if you have understanding about it, then they don't need to use their defenses. If you struggle against them, then their ego gets stronger. So you're not destroying their ego, you're neutralizing it. To neutralize is a word. 

I don't know whether I can allow myself to tell you a personal story. But it is very pleasing to my ego. I was at a camp giving darsham. There was a young man who said, "How do you deal with a dictator?" Intuition was coming out. l couldn't work it out in my mind. I said, "Neutralize him". That person became one of the main political figures in Chile and neutralized Pinoche and saved him from being killed by the mob. And Pinoche was very grateful for his life because he was neutralized. And you know the recent story that finally he had to meet his fate. And he said, "Dictators have a bad ending". He admitted it. So when I visited Chile, that minister came to meet me at the airport. This is neutralizing the ego of a person if they feel they need to use that ego to try and counter your ego. It's not helpful to try and force them into submission with your ego. If you are forbearing and there is room in your heart for that person, they don't have to use their defenses. So they can overcome that need in their being for aggressivity or conflict. 

So that's not the same thing as Rahim. Rahim means sharing the pain, really suffering with the person. It's what one calls empathy. Somehow it helps people who are in distress to feel that there is someone who is sharing their pain. Their pain is too heavy and it's very difficult to carry this pain. It can be terrible. It's not a matter of magnanimity, having room in your heart for that person. It's a matter of really letting your heart be broken by that person. That's what one calls the broken heart. That's what is called (kabitas) in Christianity, a broken heart. So it's not a broken heart because of our own pain but because of the pain of other people. So that's Rahim. You will find people in pain causing pain for other people. It's a kind of chain reaction. Because they are pained, they react by causing pain. It's kind of human or animal instinct. Maybe the problem is where there is pain is that your mureed is causing pain to another person because that person is causing pain to them. So it's not good to prescribe the practice Ya Wali, mastery. That's not the issue. The issue is have compassion. 

You're prescribing the wazifa. Maybe the mureed is able to take the hint. Maybe they don't. Depends just how intelligent they are. When they come to see you, you ask them, "How has this wazifa affected you in your life?". Then you can see whether you have hit on the right wazifa. Just like an intelligent doctor will check on how the medicine affects you and not just give you the medicine. That's another reason why the training of the mureeds must be followed up. It's totally irresponsible to give a practice to someone then forget it. That person goes on with that practice. And maybe it wasn't the right practice. Or maybe they've changed and need another practice.

Now we have a little time. Do you want to have a little break? 

Tape ends.



OCT 26, 1998		Tape 04

...and really we are together in this. I hope that I've sometimes been your mouth piece. But still, I would like for this last part of today to be sharing between us. So it's an opportunity either to open your heart without it being a question. Or if you like, really asking a question if you feel there is something that needs to be asked. Don't hesitate to talk now because I'm not going to talk any more. If you talk, I am getting to be hard of hearing. I hear there is a Phillips hearing aid used by Clinton so it must be very good. Anybody like to open their heart?

What is the best practice to give a person who has been severely tortured in torture camps, prison camps?

Severely tortured? Well that's reaching in the very depth of my heart. Perhaps I'll tell you a story. Of course you know there is not one moment of the day when I'm not thinking of Nur my sister. Pir O Murshid had given instructions not to consult a psychic. I was straining on the lead to consult a psychic. But I was obeying Murshid's rules. Then I thought, "Why not go to a psychic and ask Murshid's permission to break his rule?" The fact is this was someone who knew nothing about me, nothing about Nur, had no idea who Murshid was and who described Murshid absolutely. So I got permission to contact Nur. You see I've been suffering agony at the thought of what she went through. So I'm thinking of her in past. The past is not there any more. Very briefly what happened was, this is just part of the conversation, is that she is continuing to struggle with evil spirits who are trying to destroy people and consequently is right in the fire of battle. I don't know whether you know that she was beaten to the point of near death and shot in the skull. She was half dead when she was placed in the oven at Dachau. The psychic said, "I feel a lot of fire". Here she was struggling. I said, "You have done their bit. There are people who are tougher than you. Why not leave it to them?" She said, "My problem has been to forgive the person who tortured me". And I said, "Yes that's been my problem. You know he was a psychopath. They used psychopaths. In ordinary life, he would have killed people. So it was his job. Perhaps it's easier to forgive him if you think it's a kind of illness. What I found difficult was to forgive the woman who had given you away". She said, "I suspected that someone had given me away but I didn't know that". So I said, "You see, you can transmute fire into light by forgiving". And all of a sudden she took off from that terrible place of struggle with evil spirits into a world of light. Maybe this answers your question. The clue is in resentment. It's a extreme case.

Pir Vilayat, I've heard that after hearing some of your predictions about events to come particularly in the year 2000 and also about future difficulties of the planet, people have been asking what can we do? Is there anything that we can do? And can you say anything about that?

I wish I knew. I've often been accused of having made doomsday prediction of earthquake on the west coast. People left on my war   ning. And nothing happened up to the present. So I have burnt my fingers there. And I'm not going to burn my fingers again in predicting doomsday in the year 2000. You know that we have a plan to produce a B Minor Mass in Europe. I will be conducting part of as we did at Dachau. God willing for me to live up to then. That would be, let's say I do not advise Americans to come over for that occasion because you might find yourself stuck and not be able to get back. It's not just a question of whether the computers are able to adjust themselves to that number 2 in the date. But apparently computer specialists have solved that. I would have thought that Bill Gates would have been able to do something about that on a large scale. But he has other preoccupations. The consequences are a little more serious. It's not just a computer issue but the danger of an economic crisis and even a bug on the computer. There are quite a few things that could be disturbing. People like to take advantage of a precarious situation. 

When you're crossing a threshold, then the situation is rather precarious. So I don't advise Americans to come over which is a pity because I wanted to take that opportunity to nominate Zia my son as my successor, at least as Present of the Sufi Order in the United States. I won't be able to do that. But I'm planning on doing it in on the 5th of July in Surens. By that time, I hope that things will have stabilized a bit. But the predictions are don't plan anything for at least two months after the passage of the millennium. You know the millennium has no significance astrologically. It doesn't even correspond to Christ's birth. We've created that in our thoughts. So it's a fictitious reality that somehow has become a existential one. There may be deeper reasons for that. Everyone knows that we're damaging the planet, overpopulation. There's no use saying all that. You know that very well. There is always the danger of an economic crash. I think there may be a time when we will appreciate the value of unpolluted water, unpolluted air and unpolluted earth. 

And we will realize how privileged our ancestors were when they had horses instead of trucks and candle light instead of electricity which can be the cause of cancer. It was a very privileged time when virtual reality had not entered into the mind of people through the computer. And when pornography could not be communicated on e-mail. There will be a time when the economic situation will require us to get back to basics. At that time perhaps we'll value the Abode, things like that. There is a lesson there. I don't want to predict doomsday. I know there are a lot of predictions, cautions like collect a lot of food and take your money out of the bank. If everybody did that, then there would be an economic crisis. Supposing that you collect food and there are people who don't have food. Are you going to just enjoy that food and let people starve? There are people in southern Spain who have access to water. There are masses of people who are going there to get the water from them. It's good to know that we need to learn how to value the simple things in life. That's all I want to say. I hope I'm wrong. But there is a note of caution there. 

We're running out of time. There is something I want to say. We are the parents of our mureeds. And they come to us with confidence that they will find themselves in a safe place with us. And as a matter of fact, one of the words that we use when we give the initiation is, "Will you consider this to be a sacred trust?" So it is a trust between the mureed and yourselves. If we expect them to trust us, it is necessary for us to honor that trust. On the other hand, we are humans and sometimes it's very difficult to reconcile our divine nature with our human nature. Need I say that if you're a real man, hopefully you're attracted to women. And if you're a real woman, you're attracted to men. And if you're not then there is something wrong somewhere. So it's quite understandable that there is that attraction. So we're all exposed to that. In the course of our work in the Order, we have learned to set boundaries. At first we didn't know how to set boundaries. Of course it's very deep communication with mureeds can enhance human emotions which is very natural. We cannot condemn it. But still one has to know how to maintain certain boundaries and for those boundaries to be set up very clearly. I'm talking from the point of view that we've come to in all these years of experience. I've done mistakes myself. Now it's become more and more clear how important for the sake of honoring our commitment that we respect those boundaries. 

There is such a thing as what we might call the Clinton syndrome that we're exposed to. Do you understand what I mean? I didn't say the Clinton sin but syndrome. We're all exposed to that. For this reason we have rules in the Sufi order. I must say that nobody likes rules. We're talking about freedom. It's for the sake of the whole, for the sake of the people involved, for the sake of the Order, the credibility of the Order. And from a legal point of view, we run a risk if we don't have these rules for one thing. And secondly whether we don't observe these rules. There's been more and more witch hunt in the United States. It's very different from Europe. I think it was Miterand who said, "If all the prime ministers in Europe observed that rule, there wouldn't be any prime ministers". Whatever the political issues are, that's beyond me, beyond most of us. Who is going to throw the first stone. As far is work is concerned, we need not only to be cognizant of these rules, but also to honor them. For this reason, we have an ethics committee. Whenever there is any transgression of these rules and the matter does come before the committee that has to exact a pledge on the part of the person who has transgressed the rule to abide by the rule. Then it's OK. Maybe they didn't know the rule or didn't take it seriously. But we are taking it seriously. They make a pledge. If they don't take a pledge, then we have to take disciplinary measures. So it's very painful for me to have to say this because it sounds so self righteous. But it's something that is in the interest of us all.

I've said my bit. If someone would like to say something but not on this subject unless you really feel that you just have to. Really I think that's enough.I know that we don't have much time. But I was wondering if you would speak, Pir Vilayat, about the way to do the practice of the Zikr and connecting with the silsila. Is there a way facilitate that process. Thinking of the masters of the silsila.

That's a very relevant question. Again I can tell you a story. When I was in India as a young man wanting to find out more about the Sufi Orders in India, I came across some very wonderful murshids. There was this Murshid who wanted to initiate me in his order. I refused because I said, "My murshid is Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan". He said, "Well he is not living. You have to have another Murshid". I said,"Maybe he is not living but for me he is living". Anyway my loyalty is to Murshid so I can't do this. He had a lot to teach and a lot of mureeds. He was a remarkable person and a great Murshid. Well it's a long story. If I could tell you the whole story of my life, it would be a lot. Anyway, I was sitting in Ajmere and doing a retreat. At the end of the retreat, I heard that - no the thought occurred to me that I should go to Hijerbad to contact the family of the Pir O Murshid of Murshid. So I went to Hijerbad. And I arrived there on the day when the son of Abu Hashin Modani the Pir O Murshid had died. So I went to his funeral. And there I met the grandson of the grand Murshid of Murshid. That is the Murshid of the Murshid of Murshid who was an old man at the time. He said,"I have a hokum, that is a message, an order, that I am to train you to become a Pir". I said, "My Murshid is Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan. I can't take instructions from another Pir". He said, "Your father is your Murshid and I'll always respect that. I am here just to instruct as to the methods that are used by the Sufis which your father could not tell you about because you were ten years old when he died. But I am not your Murshid". So I thought, "This is right. I can do this". 

He said, "What established the contact with the Murshid is that when you're doing the Zikr, you get into the consciousness of your Murshid". So I was sitting at the tomb of the grand Murshid of Murshid who was his father, in a kind of ruin. I had to repeat the Zikr 22,000 a day fasting. And to follow his instructions, I had to imagine that I was Murshid saying the Zikr. It seems very presumptuous to think that way. But somehow I got so much into the consciousness of Murshid that I forgot myself so much so that when they had to come to call me to prayer, the prayers are five times a day, I didn't quite understand when he said, "Vilayat". I didn't quite understand what he meant. Eventually I came to but at the time I was still in my thought. After doing that for some time, I got so much into the consciousness of Murshid that I got into the consciousness of his Murshid. If he was doing the Zikr, he would get into the consciousness of his Murshid. Then having gotten into the consciousness of Hashin Modani, I got into the consciousness of (Kalemidelevi) who was his Murshid and who was the grandfather of the man who was conducting me in the retreat. When he came into the room to call me for the prayers, he said, " You've seen my grandfather". So I must have had the expression on my face of his grandfather. So it was really happening. How could I have known his grandfather? There are no pictures of him. So that is the secret. There is a transmission that goes through the silsila from one Pir to the other. If we lose sight of that transmission, then we become like a club or society. As you know the Sufi movement doesn't acknowledge that silsila. So then it becomes a society that is registered with the bureau in Switzerland. Then you have elections. A Pir can be elected and all kinds of things like that. Then you've lost the transmission. So it's true that the Zikr is the occasion par excellence to connect up with the silsila.

No, don't concentrate on me. Concentrate directly on Murshid. Is that because you're only supposed to concentrate on the Murshids that have passed on?  No, even after I've passed on, don't concentrate on me. I don't want to suffer from false humility. I don't want to pride myself on false humility. I'm fulfilling a function. And to fulfill that function .... by a lot of people. There are a lot of people who want that title and continue to want that title. It's not mine to give. It doesn't mean to say that I claim to have attained that status. I'm trying to live up to that status. In the case of Pir O Murshid, there is no question about it that he did have that status. So I'm cautioning you. I still have flaws. Pir O Murshid himself was asked by his mureeds, "Do you have any flaws". He said, "Of course". However, in the case of Murshid, you can't go wrong. In my case, I would be a little bit careful.

Pir Vilayat, can I tell a story too? The story about the person that came to town. There was this big and famous guru that everybody thought was wonderful. I think you tell this story. Somebody came and said, "Come and sit with this fabulous Murshid. He can heal people. He can raise the dead. He can do everything. If you sit with him, you'll go to the highest heavens". The person who had come to town said, "I'd better not go because I'm devoted to my Murshid. I know that Murshid had faults and wonderful qualities. I'd just as soon go wherever he is". (PVK) No he said, "If my Murshid goes to Hell, I want to be with him". So that's loyalty. There is a story, you've heard it before. There was a Murshid who had a mureed who left for many years. When he left, he was a young man. When he came back, he was an old man. He dressed as a Sheppard to try and fool his Pir. When he came into the room, the Pir looked at him and said, "I see myself coming to myself in you".

There is another story. I was walking in the street in Ajmere. I met a mureed of Abu Hashim Modani who was a mureed at the time of Pir O Murshid. I even went to the (hanka) of Her Mubin who was, you know the story when Pir O Murshid kept on having the vision of a Pir O Murshid. He was a musician and he had this vision. And his friend said, "You have to find your Murshid". He kept on knocking at the doors of Murshids. And they all said, "No I'm not worthy of being your Murshid". Then he knocked on the door of Her Mubin who was a very famous speaker. He had masses of people coming to his talks. One day there was a dervish who came to his talk. Once he looked at that dervish, he couldn't speak anymore. Maybe that will happen to me once. One realized just how futile one's words are. So he couldn't speak anymore. Pir O Murshid knocked on the door and asked him, "Could you be my Murshid". And he said, "Not me. But wait until you see whose coming in the room". And that was Abu Hashim Modani. And that was the face that Pir O Murshid saw in his dreams. So he said, "Can you initiate me?" And he said, "I have waited for you so long". 

At that time, I was very much in tune with the Sufis. I visited Sufi ( hankas). There were a lot of (Hankas) and Semas, dervish whirling in Hijerbad at that time. I was walking in the street and there was someone of great dignity, obviously a Murshid. He was walking towards me and I was walking towards him. Somehow, I greeter him. Then he said, "Well what is your name?" I forgot to tell you. The whole point of the story is when I saw him coming I thought to myself, "Well he has the gait of my father. Here is someone who really reflects the being of my father". Then he asked my my name. I said, "Vilayat Inayat Khan". He said, "Are a relative of Murshid Inayat Khan?" I said, "Yes, I'm his son". He said, "He was my Murshid". Pir O Murshid had five mureeds in Deli in those last weeks of his life on earth. So the transmission is by discovering or developing an identity with one's Murshid. That's the reason why, perhaps you've noticed, if you identify with your own person, it's never that good. If you try to get into the consciousness of a master or saint or prophet, then it gives you a tremendous amount of power. Then something cosmic is coming through. So that's the real transmission. The transmission through the silsila is essential. But there is a transmission outside that chain by just getting so much into the consciousness of a Murshid that you are able to carry that transmission through. You don't have to be a Pir to do that.

Perhaps we have to end here unless there is someone who has something very urgent they have to say.

God bless you.


OCT 27, 1998		Tape 05

Think of each word. Like when one says, "Toward the One", then one thinks,, "Behind all of this there is a oneness". "The perfection of love harmony and beauty", those are particularly important wasaif because the beginning of all of this was love. Then harmony. What is achieved is beauty. Then if you say, "The only Being", then that means that we're all part of that one being. Then in addition to that, because this is really an invocation it's almost like saying, "We invoke the One". Then we invoke all the masters, saints and prophets who form the special hierarchy of the government of the world. That's very important because that is something unique about us. We're not like an ashram where there is a guru. But that ultimately we establish some communication with all the the masters and prophets of all the great world religions. That statement says it right away. The same thing is in the prayers. If you know the meanings of the wasaif, asme ilahi, you could translate the Saum in Arabic. It's all referring to qualities.

This morning we are going to share in advanced meditations in Shaghal. There is no point in just doing a practice. One needs to search out for what is aimed at in that practice. What I suggest we do is to do that practice in slow stages, emphasizing one aspect then the other and, of course, introduce it with Pir O Murshid's words which I've extracted the quintessence of the quintessence of the quintessence, the gist of what Pir O Murshid says about Shaghal. 

He says, "We shut the door to the outside world and we go into the inner chamber. We are awakening factors which have hitherto remained covered, hidden and unnurtured by the breath." So that these faculties are embodied in the body. By directing the breath, we are awakening or arousing them. And he says, "They begin to vibrate". When we are doing the shaghal, we need to be aware of the chakras and also we can begin to feel how they vibrate. You can really cast your attention on the heart chakra, for example. And you'll notice how it begins to vibrate, become really excited, activated. What he says is the normal shaghal is five breaths, and seven is the most, seven breaths. Nine is the limit beyond which one should not go. This morning we will have to do a different shaghal. Normally I would say seven is the maximum. 

Then he says, "When you are closing the doors to the outside world, consciousness finds an obstruction to its reaching out, then it forcibly turns within". One is discovering the inner world. There is more than that. He says, "One looses the thought of one's existence in the existence of the perfect life". One draws a blind over the senses. There is a remark which is very important. That is, "Consciousness is like a mirror. Generally the mirror reflects the outside. Now it's turned within so it's beginning to reflect what is coming through from inside". He goes on to say, "There is a difference between a mirror and a photographic plate". The impression in the mirror is a face. If you turn the mirror, the face is gone. Whereas on a photographic plate the impression remains constant, adamant. Therefore what he says is that it is the after effect of your practicing the shaghal that is important. Not just having an experience but the way that the afterglow affects your inner body. Inner body, well he says etheric double. And he says, I'm paraphrasing, it configures the etheric body that he calls a substance and yet not a substance. You become aware of it in day consciousness while sometimes one is aware of it in one sleep. Ultimately you have the experience of shaghal when you are not doing the practice.

What we're going to do now is concentrate on each of the five senses. The first one is light. We'll do the total shaghal, that is with the fingers on all the senses. But to start with, draw attention to light, then afterwards sound and so on. To start with as a preparation for the shaghal. With eyes closed you think that you are breathing light through your eyes. As you exhale, you are exhaling light through your eyes. Now you do it with open eyes. Instead of simply absorbing physical light, you're absorbing the light that transpires through that which appears. That means the inner light from outer space. 

In previous practices we were drawing light through the solar plexus. This time we're drawing light from outer space then radiating it out through the eyes. Now turn your eyeballs upwards with your eyes closed. When you inhale, think that it is what the Sufis call Nur al Anwar, the light of light that descends into your brain from above your head. As you exhale, open your eyes, turn your eyes forward and be aware of your glance as two beams of light. Think that the light that descended through the crown center is threaded through the light of your glance. If you can imagine your glance to be two beams of light, you could turn them to the left or to the right, up and down, and even make a circular motion. So you can actually visualize the beams, like the beam of a light house for example. Center your glance now and imagine that it is like an x-ray. So it has the power of penetrating through the surface like an x-ray. So you can see that which transpires behind that which appears. Now once more you inhale with your eyeballs turned upwards, thinking that the light descends upon you. When you exhale, open your eyes. Do not allow your eyes to be forced into focus by the objects in front of you. Think that you are casting your glance deeper, through the surface of things, getting behind that which lies behind the appearance. Pir O Murshid said 'the glance of the mystic', I would say the practitioner of shaghal, not only penetrates all objects but transforms them. Consequence, this may be the secret of healing by the glance. Because you imagine the subtle body of that person to be healed, to be whole. Now close your eyes and instead of thinking of beams of light, think of sparks, twinkle. So it's just like pinpointing the origin of light before it becomes radiant. So it's a spark without dimension. So think that all forms arise out of this formless spark, this spark that does not have a form. That's where they all originate. 

We're going to do the shaghal now. We'll do three breaths. In the first breath we concentrate on the convergence of light in a point between the eyebrows, the second on the bridge of the nose, and the third on the tip of the nose. The reason for that is to unify the beams of light of both eyes. Now you know how to do the shaghal. But one must be very careful not to press, of course you are going to press the fingers on the eyelids. But you have to turn the eyeballs upwards so the fingers do not exercise pressure upon the cornea and retina. If you do, the light that you are seeing is optical illusion. The same thing is true of the thumbs in the ears. Be very careful that you do not exercise too much pressure. Ultimately it will pressurize the ear drum. We breathe in through the right nostril and hold the breath. Breathe out through the right nostril. Three breaths. We are turning our attention upwards. Consequently, by turning the eyeballs upwards you are enhancing the effect of rising. You also curl your tongue towards the end of the inhaling and as you hold your breath. You curl your tongue and press the tip of your tongue against your pallet. The hands should be linked together instead of separated on the knees. The best way of doing this is when sitting cross legged. If you're sitting cross legged, then you sit on the heal of your left foot which will exercise pressure on the perineum. The way to do it well is to place the cord under the left knee between the big toe and second toe of the right foot. 

I would suggest before doing this practice simply prepare yourself by slowing down your breath particularly as you exhale. Then inhale without effort. Prolong your exhaling as long as you can. Inhale without effort. Then you'll be able to hold your breath quite long. Already at this point exercise yourself to turn your eyeballs upwards at the end of inhaling and curl your tongue and press the bottom of the tip of your tongue against the pallet. Toward the back of the pallet. You mustn't force it. Then relax your eyes and place your eyes back in horizontal position and relax your tongue as you exhale. Now practice converging your eyes as you exhale towards the center between the eyebrows, your nose and eventually the tip of your nose. Now let's do the practice of shaghal with the fingers in position. Even when you've taken your fingers away, you try to retain the light like an afterglow. You have a feeling that the cells of your brain are full of light, charged with light. Consequently, your glance is luminous.

Now we're going to do a second practice of shaghal with light. What Pir O Murshid says is that we are instrumental to making the all pervading light a radiant light. If one could illustrate it, the sun converges the light of the neutrinos or cosmic rays in outer space and converges them and radiates it out from a location in space. So the all pervading light has become radiant. As you inhale now, concentrate on the solar plexus. There is a way of doing this. In my seminars, I teach that you draw the light from the environment into the solar plexus. Now as you inhale, you think that you are inhaling from inside instead of from outside. You're drawing light from the depth and bringing it to the surface. As you hold your breath, instead of identifying with your aura, you identify with this subliminal light which Pir O Murshid calls the all pervading light. It's not radiant, like radio waves it's scattered. As you exhale, you are the transducer that is able to transform this all pervading light into radiant light which you radiate from your heart. You do not concentrate upwards, above your head. You have to turn your eyeballs upwards to some extent so you don't exercise pressure on the retina. But one concentrates on the solar plexus and then the heart center. Consequently, it's not necessary any more just to inhale through the right nostril. The reason one inhales through the right nostril is the law of ghosts. The fingers of your right hand are a dynamo. The hand is turning towards your fingers. Then you're inducing the current that rises in your thumb. Consequently, inhaling through the right nostril will give you a sense of levitation, lifting up. Then as you exhale you have the opposite. The light descends. But now this practice, we are working with the whole aura instead of just the glance. So you could inhale through the left nostril and hold your breath and exhale through the right. Then inhale through the right and exhale through the left. Then inhale through both and hold your breath and exhale through both nostrils. OK Let's do that now.

Now that you're conscious of the inner light and the light of your aura, that radiant light, now just do one breath of shaghal breathing with the right nostril concentrating on the light that descends through the top of your head. This time it does not just descending through the top of your head. It's descending upon your whole aura. And as you exhale, your glance. While at the same time you're aware of your whole aura and the all pervading light! emerging as your aura. Just one breath. Keep concentrated on your whole aura plus your glance.

Now the third practice you concentrate on the inner fire that rises in your spin and gets transmuted as it rises. We did that in a seminar, the different colors. If you're aware of the heat in your body, the temperature, it gives you a feeling of combustion. Think of your spine as a chimney. As you breathe in, transfer your attention from one chakra to the next. The fire, infra red is being transmuted into the different colors of the spectrum and ultimately ultraviolet light and even beyond ultraviolet light, colorless light, like a diamond at the top of your head. Now hold your breath. As you exhale, you think of this word, a light upon a light. I should have said that as you hold your breath, you identify with the light of intelligence rather than the light of your aura, colorless of course. In fact, it's not even colorless. There is no physical aspect in it at all. It can't be seen. It's not the light that can be seen. It's the light that sees. That breakthrough of the light of intelligence which is realization, is going to enhance the light of your chakras as you transfer your attention down your spinal cord. It's like light bulbs that start lighting up as you proceed down from the top of your head toward the bottom of your spine. That is the moment of the flash of illumination when you suddenly identify with the light that sees. 

The light of intelligence, that's the flash of enlightenment. At that time, you are oblivious of your body and even of your aura. You're pure intelligence. Then you flash back upon your aura as you exhale. You become aware of it again. So remember the words it is not the light that one sees that is important. It is the after effect like the photographic plate. It is as though you aroused something, light in your subtle body that was dormant. And now it remains there. Maybe it will peter out sometimes. One has to do this practice every day. Eventually, it becomes adamant. So that when you're walking, you are aware of your aura. And as Murshid says, you're instrumental in making the all pervading light, that is the subliminal light of the cosmos, radiant. Pir O Murshid says eventually one sees without eyes. That sounds like poetic lyrics. "I walk without feet, and I fly without wings, and I see without eyes and hear without ears." Shams Tabriz. It's not a metaphor. If you've done astral travel, then you know that you can see without eyes. This practice will reinforce one's consciousness, one's etheric body and the aura which is the glow of one's etheric body, the radiance of one's etheric body. And identify with it. Let's say that it is your etheric body that sees instead of your physical eyes. 

Now let us apply this with working with our mureeds. Now supposing that you have been doing the practice of shaghal as we've been doing. Now your mureed comes in for your instructions. You're not communicating at all at the level of the psyche, exchange of thoughts and so on. Your glance is filled with light. It has become like an x-ray. So that you begin to see the aura of your mureed and what is more, the countenance behind their face which seems to be fashioned in the fabric of light, that is the countenance of their aura. And you see in that countenance a lot of things. You see the effect of their lives, their problems, their motivations, their emotional attunements, their quandaries, their bitterness. You see it all somehow coming through the countenance. If they put on a poker face, it cannot deceive you. Your glance becomes an x-ray. Pir O Murshid says that it is not an x-ray that just observes. But it produces a transformation. The only way to do it is to see the immaculate core of the countenance and compare it with the way it gets distorted at the surface. 

Then you can somehow correct in your mind, in your visual representation you can correct the distortions by making them match the undistorted core behind the surface. As a conclusion, Pir O Murshid says it is like coming to the same room in the daytime which a soul had once visited in the darkness. It means that all of a sudden everything becomes clear which was ambiguous before. He says it's like Aladdin bringing his lamp into the dark storehouse which is in darkness and lighting up all that is there. We were saying that we arouse, awaken dormant faculties. We also illuminate, says Murshid, the planes which might be nebulous. We might not be very aware of the different planes of our being. But somehow they are illuminated by the practice of shaghal. They become clear. For example, your celestial counterpart which was nebulous now becomes clear. Just like supposing that there are a lot of clouds and clear areas in the sky. The cloud has been pushed by the wind and all of a sudden a whole landscape lights up. And you become like a luminous star.

So let's just remain silent for a few minutes before we break off. Effulgent, luminous sparkling, radiant. We'll start again at quarter to eleven.



OCT 27, 1998		Tape 06

So now we're going to work with sound. Really speaking, it is working with vibrations of energy which we interpret as sound. To awaken those unknown faculties which may not be just be embodied in the chakras, but the Sufis speak of different tubes in the body. So whatever they are, lines of communication, nerves whatever. The important thing is how we work with them so that our body is our underpinning for our awakening, our body and of course our subtle body. Let's just see what Pir O Murshid says as a preparation for what we're going to do. What he says is that there may be some sound coming through the ears even though one is pressing their thumbs against the ears blocking the sound. This probably also applies to the light. What Pir O Murshid is saying is that one interprets these many diverse sounds as the sound of Hu. In other words, the variety of sounds are resorbed in the unifying sound HUe. 

One is interpreting them, acting as a transducer, in some way one is transforming in one's mind, one's consciousness, the sounds that accrue from the Universe into that basic inner sound which is called HUe. The important thing is that he calls it the sound of the inner working of the whole Universe. That word, sequence of words, comes several times. The mechanism of the Universe, the working of the Universe and so on. So one gets in touch with a kind of deep underpinning of what appears at the surface as objects and maybe can be heard as sound. And my own paraphrasing or interpretation of it is that behind the perceived Universe is an energy field which is variegated into different frequencies. And that is what is meant by the symphony of the spheres of Pythagoras. It's not something that you can hear. It's not the audio sphere. But it is the basic energy behind what gets crystallized into forms and objects is landscaped as vibrations, is variegated as vibrations. And those vibrations are the language of the Universe. So they express meaningfulness in terms of vibrations. Perhaps one could even say that this is the original code of the Universe. Behind the whole programming of the Universe, this is a basic code which is like what the Sufis call the divine language. Language is articulated as sounds, actually vibrations. 

What we're trying to do is to somehow plug into this symphony of the spheres. Every chakra of our bodies and also what we call the tubes of our body, think of your body as an organ,or perhaps an instrument with cords and so on. In fact, all the molecules and atoms and electrons and protons are in a continual state of vibration. Of course, we're not aware of it, but what we are doing in this practice is to concentrate on these vibrations although we can't define them or even pinpoint them. But still by the fact of drawing our attention to them, we arouse them, we awaken them. And as a consequence, we awaken those faculties which are normally dormant in us and will give us intuition and insight and foster awakening. So remember these words, one is interpreting any sound that one hears and getting down to the basic sound which is HUe. Do not be surprised that it's HUe because you find it in Judaism also that the highest name of God is 'H'. And you have, this 'H' comes in in most of the names of God. It's just like all the different colors of light are resorbed in the colorless light of the diamond. Somehow they are inherent there. Sometimes they can flash all kinds of colors. So that's what we're doing. 

He says, "This Universal sound which apparently conveys no idea, in this Universal sound all ideas exist". So it's like very deep ground out of which the variety of sounds emerge. He says, "The voice of the spheres is made up of the collective sounds of the world are resorbed into one sound," which the adepts say is HUe. Therefore, in the practice of shaghal, the breath produces its vibrations within and awakens the senses within which may be called the root of all senses. Then we're not really just, to start with we think of light and sound and so on. But now we're getting down to something much more basic in which all the senses are various expressions. It's something much more fundamental. And Pir O Murshid is talking about the vibrations of breath. It is the breath which arouses these vibrations. If we think of our subtle body as an organ, then the breath is the air that pumped into the tubes to get them to start vibrating. 

When we're doing this practice, let us just think of breath as a very fundamental energy. And think of it as the ebb and flow of cosmic energy, not really air, what the Hindus call prana, basic energy which keeps on ebbing and flowing, alternating, oscillating. We start by just being aware of our breath. Don't hold the breath, just let it ebb and flow. Now just imagine that the breath is now penetrating, let's say flowing through the cells of your body or the nerve trunks or the spinal cord or whatever is meant by the tubes, cables, lines of communication. The consequence is that by concentrating on the breath and directing it towards the body and particularly your subtle body, you are causing those tubes or those components to start vibrating and consequently arousing faculties that you normally don't which triggers off awakening. 

You're not just an instrument in the symphony, but the whole symphony of the cosmos is inherent within each fragments of itself. That's what you call the symphony of the spheres. Pir O Murshid calls it the working of the Universe. Normally one has no idea about the working of the Universe. One is encapsulated in one's own personal trips. Here you start establishing some kind of communication and awareness. The whole cosmos working in your being. If you interrupt the ebb and flow by holding your breath, then you get into something even more basic, even deeper. And in this, all the variety of sounds are resorbed in the basic vibration like a ground tone. If you just think of the Zikr, one is prizing the sound HUe out of the void, out of the illa, illa becomes HUe. Jehovah, Ya Hu. It's the same etymology. 

Let us continue doing this now in the position of shaghal. Once more just inhaling through the right nostril and exhaling through the right nostril. Maybe you can distinguish different vibrations or frequencies of vibrations, or then you just are able to perceive one type of vibration, to zoom one type of vibration. Maybe you can identify the different types of vibrations which have been described in the tradition of Shiva. The buzzing of the bees - the sound could be rather like the buzzing of the bees. A very a high pitched sound, very monotonous. Bells ringing in your ears like church bells, for example. Could be like whistles - I would say that's a kind of shrill sound, most alarming. Or then the fluttering of the leaves of the trees in the wind. The running of water. Can you imagine water flowing in a little mountain stream or cascade? The cooing of the wind - may be very disturbing, a lot of energy surfacing. The crashing of thunder if you're familiar with the 6th symphony of Beethoven. The sound of the vina - a kind of twang, a metallic sound. Then you have the music of the spheres. And the song of the angels. It culminates in the song of the angels. 

So these sounds will trigger off ecstasy in you and raise your soul to cosmic spirit. Let's say that you become vibrant and highly sensitive. It's as though you are hearing a message in the sounds like Moses in the wilderness. If you wander in the desert there is hardly any noise. Of course there isn't any noise of our civilization. So you get into just the sound of the wind and somehow the sound of the wind, you could easily interpret it as conveying a message. Like the Universe is speaking to you through the language of pure vibration. The story goes that Moses heard a voice saying, "Hear Moses, Musare". That was the origin of the word music, "Musare, hear Moses". Like Shamal, Samal of the Sufis. 

Let's say the vibrations of energy at the basis of the Universe are raised into sounds that convey meaning that our intuition picks up. Pir O Murshid said, "One must contemplate on the idea that the Creator is constructing the world by the power of the word which conveys something of the working of the factory of the Universe". Consequently, by hearing this word, one gets closer to the higher planes. Consequently, one is drawn closer to the Creator. I'm thinking of the words of Nafari who said, "You have been listening to the music, but do you know the composer?". 

Now we have two things here. We have breath. Then we have the organs like the musical organ that the breath brings them into a state of vibration. What Murshid says is that one absorbs the essential magnetism or the life force of the Universe in one's breath. One attracts this magnetism from space. What did he mean by space? One is extracting the magnetism from space by the power of breath. So that as you are breathing in, you are not just breathing in air, you are drawing life energy from space which is the most basic of all the aspects of matter, like the matrix of matter. You are drawing it and you feel that magnetism. So now we're not talking with luminosity. We're talking about magnetism. In the course of a retreat, you get to a point where you feel that you have a tremendous amount of magnetism. Consequently, people are drawn to him because he or she becomes a source of life, a source of energy. Can you feel that magnetism by the shear fact that you have overcome being encapsulated by your person? You don't have any boundary anymore. Somehow you can feel the life force of the whole Universe as being converged as your magnetism. So one is working with energy. And that energy gets variegated into various frequencies, what we call sound. Let's do this again, the position of shaghal with these thoughts in our minds as we're doing it. Exhale through both nostrils also. 

So the next two senses are taste and smell, perfume. Then there is the basic kinesthetic sense that we have throughout the body. There are another three senses. Pir O Murshid says that we are aware of the taste of our tongue and pallet, mainly our tongue. For example, sweet or sour or salty or bitter or whatever. Are we aware of the taste in our stomach? And I would follow this up. Are we aware of the taste in our pancreas? Are we aware of the taste in our liver, in our duodenum? Are we aware of the sensitivity of the various cells in our body when they imbibe amino acids that are being conveyed to them through the blood stream? So we're talking about different levels of taste. Pleasant, unpleasant. Eventually one develops a great sensitivity to taste because one realized that it's not confined to the tongue. In fact, we have that faculty in our whole body. So we are really tasting the fabric of the planet which is the fabric of the cosmos. And we have that very fine sense of discernment about the different kinds of taste of matter, organic, inorganic. Because our body is absorbing matter from the environment and transforming that matter into food. And there are the deeper taste faculties. For example, there is the kind of sensitivity of the enzymes that make for the transcription of DNA into RNA or rather RNA into DNA. These are enzymes that have a very fine sense of discrimination of great sensitivity. More simplistically, as one evolves, one gets more sensitive to food. But we're talking about something deeper. 

Maybe we're talking about the esoteric chemistry of the body, the hormones, the enzymes, the neuro transmitters, a very fine advanced form of matter that has been sublimated in the body. If you press your tongue against your pallet, you are exercising pressure ultimately on the forth ventricle of the brain. Ultimately there is also the magnetism of the tongue that comes that affects the pituitary gland which secretes beta endorphines. Consequently, if you're doing the practice of shaghal, you might taste something on your tongue which is rather unfamiliar. It tastes like nectar. It's called nectar by the Yogis and Sufis, a kind of ambrosia. It seems like that very advanced matter that has reached this very sublimated form. There is a whole alchemy that is based upon, like that of ( ) that is based upon the elixir of life rather than metals by trying to make gold out of lead. The beta endorphines are a kind of morphine the body produces that gives you a high. But the body knows what it is doing. It's not the same if you took extraneous drug. I'm sure that there are more things that the Yogis did not talk about. All the endocrine glands produce hormones which the whole body tastes the endocrines. Perhaps you taste them on your tongue. But the whole body has the faculty of tasting these hormones which carry a message. That's an aspect of the shaghal that we need to explore. Let us say basically, as we're doing the practice, just think that you are enhancing a very highly sensitive faculty in you. It could be described in you as a very advanced sense of taste, what one might call transmutation of matter. So let's do the practice now and concentrate on taste rather than light or sound.

The sense of smell is related to that of taste. Perhaps you have often heard me refer to flowers that are able to survive their demise by transmuting themselves into perfume. That is a secret of resurrection. It's not just a thought. One can try to experience this as one is doing the shaghal. The way that one is really passing through a process of transmuting one's bodiness into something that is rather like a perfume, like quintessential, quintessence, a fragrance. In alchemy, one says one becomes pure spirit. Even the body is somehow transmuted. We are enhancing this esoteric chemistry in the body. So it means that you feel weightless. You're overcoming the sense of gravity of your body, just like a perfume. You feel very buoyant and light and airy, and of course, without boundary. Pir O Murshid and Buddhism refers to the deathless state. I would say that this is an operation that we're proceeding with in our body that leads towards discovering the deathless state. I've often quoted Jelaluddin Rumi who says, "Tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal". Actually it's the life everlasting. And Jami says, "That which is taxed by finitude will become infinite". Somehow the quintessence of all that one is at all the different levels of one's being, the quintessence of it, is extracted just like one extracts perfume from the dross. And that survives death. That's why the Sufis say, "Resurrect before you die". Prepare yourself for resurrection by becoming pure spirit.

As for the kinesthetic sense, the sense of touch, there is no joy in pain. Joy in the body and pain in the body. There is even the joy of reproduction which somehow links us with something more cosmic than ourselves. There is joy and pain at the psychological level, distress and joy. You cannot say that the psyche is a body. But let's say it's a counterpart of our being. If you move up from your sense of identity from your body to your psyche to what one calls your soul, you'll experience the ecstasy of your soul which is not to be confused with joy or pain. The ecstasy of the soul in it's awakening from earthly limitation. What Pir O Murshid says is that especially through shaghal, we develop the faculty of rising at will above earthly conditions. In the middle of a situation in life, whatever it is, you are able to lift your consciousness to rise above the limiting earthy conditions. This is the time when it is the soul in you that is awakening instead of the body or the mind or the psyche and gets intoxicated or exalted in a state which Sufis call (Heiral) which means ecstasy. It's just the thought of perfume, quintessence, that helps you to get a sense of your soul whatever one means by the soul, and eventually, the spirit in infinite regress.

Perhaps this would be a moment to just have a peep into the being of Hazrat Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan, the kind of attunement, vibration of his being which comes through these words. These words act sometimes as clues to getting in touch with his attunement. You can see how his attunement is related to what happens in the practice of shaghal and, of course, of the Zikr and of the wazifa. If one identifies with one's body, one thinks in terms of bodiness and of matter. If one identifies with one's mind, one thinks the way the mind thinks. But if one identifies with the soul, one's whole attunement is beyond the limitations of earthly conditions. If one is speaking from one's body, one can arouse people. If one is speaking from one's mind, one can interest people. But if one is speaking from the depth of one's soul, one voice seems to emerge from the depth and reach out into the Universe. That's the way the Pir O Murshid spoke. His voice always seemed to emerge from the depths. Facetious people can speak from the periphery of their being while the enlightened person speaks from the depth of their being.

So I'd like to take advantage of this moment to give an ordination to Taznim as a Serag. I know we normally do it in Universal Worship. But this is the most appropriate occasion to do it in this moment. Serag means a particularly bright lamp. The Universal Worship is a festival of light, of lighting the candles. As Pir O Murshid says, it gives one the sense of the light of the heavens. There is a ceremony in Ajmere at the darga of Moiniddin Chisti in which the hadims come with a lamp and illuminate the people by this light. That is the ritual of the ordination of a serag which is conferred to serag who have shown their dedication and ability to train serags for Universal worship. Oh Thou who art the perfection of love harmony and beauty, the only being, united with all the illuminated souls who for the embodiment of the master of spiritual guidance. So we invoke the divine presence. 

Now we invoke the presence the masters, saints and prophets of all the great religions. So I would like each one of you to select one prophet of one of the religions and concentrate on that prophet at this moment. You select that prophet because you feel particularly in sync, in resonance with his or her being. There are many other prophets that you may feel attuned to. On this occasion, choose one. Get into the attunement of that prophet instead of just thinking of him or her. Just think what it would be like to be into the conscious of that great being. Think of a master and a saint again of different religions. The consciousness of Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan who seemed to incorporate these attunement on Tuesday evenings when they gave what they called the message classes when he spoke about Abraham or Mohammed or Christ or Shiva, he seemed to impersonate them totally so that people had the feeling that this whole prophetic line was still living and still present right there in their midst. In the name of all these beings who we have invoked, I ordain you as a Serag ( ) with the hope that you will embody more and more the message of Universel and thus contribute to the awakening of humanity to the divinity of the human being. God bless you.


OCT 27, 1998		Tape 07

As you know, this is the fulfillment of an intention that I had a long time ago. That was to illustrate the wasifas by the sayings of Pir O Murshid. I've kept on putting it off. Two books. Then publishing a third book. Traveling in Europe. So at three o'clock in the morning yesterday I started doing it. Then of course I was interrupted because I had to come here. This morning I was working on the Sherag. Now we can come back to this again and completed it with the help of Avalon and Jyoti. This represents I would say a revolutionary approach to the wazifa, asme ilahi. Because instead of selecting a wazifa by looking in the books, which sometimes we don't all agree as to their interpretations is questionable. It's just a word like chanting in Arabic. Now we have a whole experience and even an attunement that throw a whole new life on the wazifa. In a sense when you're prescribing a wazifa, behind it all you have, there is a teaching of Murshid that you see is coming through. If you know that teaching while you're trying to decide what wazifa you're going to give to the mureed, somehow you have this knowledge of the curriculum. Incidentally, I thought the curriculum had been distributed a long time ago. But it will come to you through the mediumship of your regional Reps. That curriculum, these are the sayings of Murshid that I picked up under different categories. It's only a first attempt. They will be a second one and third one and so on. And there is a further stage. That is a sequence in the themes instead of random. So there is a lot of work to do yet. Eventually, there will be the wazifa for each of, all the sayings in the curriculum. So it's a much vaster task than what I did at three o'clock yesterday night.

So your mureed has come to you in the circumstance I proposed yesterday. You're sitting in silence. Your mureed comes. And you know you have very little time. You know exactly what wazifa you gave them because every day you've been concentrating on that mureed after your morning meditation. While concentrating on that mureed, you are thinking of that wazifa that  you gave. You could even write that wazifa down behind the photos so there's no mistake about it. Somehow you are in a high state. In fact, you have to be in a high state before you start this at all. You have to spend at least one hour meditating before you start seeing a mureed. In the background of your mind you have a very clear view of Murshid's teachings, the basic themes that you find in the curriculum. 

Now you see the problem of the mureed either because your intuition is telling you. If you do what we did this morning, working with light. Murshid said, "Your glance is like a flashlight, like an x-ray". Actually, it goes further than that. It's not your glance but it is your insight that is able to look and grasp what is trying to come through, that is what is what is trying to transpire behind what appears in that person's personality. You feel like all those qualities that are pushing at the door to try to manifest in their personality. And they are blocking it by first of all their self image, the representation they make of themselves, and by being absolutely convinced that the problem is what they think it is, and by not seeing the connection between themselves and their problem. So that's the situation ad hoc. It might not be exactly that, but basically. 

You see an evolving situation. You see potentialities knocking at the door that eventually will probably affect the problem or situation. You have to earmark what that quality or qualities are by prescribing them wasifas much like a doctor prescribing medicine. So you have tried all these wazifa yourself. You've seen how they have worked with you. Now you have the sayings of Murshid. They become much more clear. If they have the same curriculum and wazifa corresponding with the themes, then when you give them the wazifa, they will look up the curriculum and see which are Murshid's teachings corresponding with the themes. That is a much more efficient way of working than what we have ever done in the past. So let's say these are guidelines for the Representatives when prescribing practices.

Now these themes - the trouble with teachers, it's less today than it was, is that one tends to give the answers before asking the questions. Pir O Murshid was in his mind always trying to answer the needs of people. So it wasn't just pushing his ideas on people, but seeing exactly how this teaching can affect people in their needs. He said, "I hear a core from the depths of humanity", like the real core. That core is suffering. As Pasteur said, 'I want to know your suffering". When you see your mureed, the first thing you need to zoom upon is what is their suffering. Suffering could be in a situation that is frustrating like a prison. It could be a sense of inadequacy. It could be because they feel that they have been abused in the past and therefore impaired. And of course, it manifests as resentment. And it can turn to bitterness. Then there is also a kind of anxiety of life as very much a battle of egos. There is sometimes a feeling, "I don't know how to face these egos around me. This particular person is trying to demean me and try to pull me down". So there are all these concerns. 

Mureeds are generally idealists. They are people who are really looking to be high. Sometimes they think, "Well my day to day life, that's awful. I want to just close one door and get into another attunement in my meditations". But you have to see that one must not make a break between these two things. The two are connected. It is true that if they are in a high state, it's much more difficult for the ego of a person to humiliate them. If you are Abraham, your boss wouldn't bully you. Sometimes people, very often in partnership relationships, a marriage for instance, there is one ego that's trying to dominate the other. One can get pushed into a corner. Then one loses one's self esteem. One doesn't have much alternative between either fighting to preserve one's dignity or then losing one's self esteem. If one is fighting for one's dignity, then one is in a continual state of conflict. These are the kind of problems that people are having to put up with. 

If you have reached a state which Pir O Murshid calls lifting yourself above earthly conditions, and if you're aware of your divine inheritance instead of identifying yourself with your human inheritance, what Murshid is saying is that our problems come from limitation and failing to give room in one's being for the dimension of perfection that is always there as one's ideal. One has to be very conscious of that when one is talking to a person. "I see, this person is caught in their trip and seeking to be inspired". Of course, if that person were inspired, it would give them solace from the constraint in which they find themselves, not only in the situation but also in their self image. You have to be in a high state to be able to try and help them. If you simply try to get into their consciousness - that's what we're teaching, getting into the consciousness of another person - while losing your higher consciousness, then you're caught in their trip, then you're caught in their trip. They lay a trip on you. So we have to do two things at the same time, maintain our higher consciousness and at the same time see how things look from the point of view of that person, and build a bridge between the two. 

Pir O Murshid, you'll often find a dichotomy in Pir O Murshid's teachings. So he is associating two thoughts which are complementary. Consequently one gives two wasifas in tandem. By that you can see the purview of each wazifa better than if you just had one. 

The example now is perfection and limitation. Pir O Murshid always says it is our sense of limitation that stands in the way of our spiritual progress or spiritual enlightenment. So we start with that. Those two wasifas are Qabid which means constraint, contraction, limitation. If you think life is a prison, Qabid. If you realize that your self is limiting your sense of identity, then you are into Qabid. You could also say that Qabid represents the convergence of the bounty of the Universe as you, like a lens. A lighted area could pass through a lens and become pin pointed as a beam. That would again be a sense of Qabid. The individuality, that is the very uniqueness of each one of is a representation of the way that the totality has become limited. Pir O Murshid also says the consciousness of the Universe has become limited in our consciousness. I often use the word focalization. That's a word that one uses with a lens. One is caught in one's personal bias. That's Qabid. As opposed to that, you have Kamil which doesn't figure in any of the books that I've looked at. I don't understand why because it's a very important concept in Islam. Jalal, Jamil then Kamil. Kamil means Jalal, manly. Jamil, the feminine. Then Kamil is perfect, all encompassing. 

When Murshid is talking, he is translating these wasifas into English. When he says, "Man is divine limitation, and God is human perfection", well he's thinking of the word Qabid and Kamil. There is this concept of the perfect man, 'Insan al Kamil', that you find in the teaching of (Karim al Jili) in which he exposes this concept, representation of the perfect man. Of course it's a metaphor. But as one evolves, one evolves from limitation to perfection. 

I like to illustrate it in biology by imagining that each cell of the body carries the genes of the code of the whole body. But only certain genes are active. Most of them are recessive. By their diversity, they can cooperate. Otherwise it would be like wall paper. ( ) There are some cells that more genes are active than others. Those are the more advanced cells like they are coded in the chemistry of the body. So think that in as much as we are a fraction of the totality, each one of us carries the coding of the totality within ourselves but most of it is recessive. As we evolve, more and more of that perfection is able to manifest in our personality. That's the word Kamil. The idea would be in infinite regress God becomes the perfect man. Curiously enough, that's the basic concept of Christianity. It's condemned by Islam. How could there be two truths? It's taboo to talk about it. There is a word of St. Denis who said, "God became man so that man may become God". That's an incredible saying. Of course, you could never say that aloud in Islam. That's the whole thing about Al Hallaj. 

We are faced with our sense of inadequacy. It's not just the circumstance. But our sense of inadequacy, limitation is perhaps the most painful, frustrating thought. Of course, it's a matter of believing that the prospects of perfection are latent within us. It's very difficult to convince ourselves that that is so. Repeating the wazifa won't do it for you, as I've often said. That's why the sayings of Murshid are so important. For example, he says, "The person who identifies with his personal self is a man of the world. The one who is conscious of his divine inheritance is a son of God". Christ said, "Be perfect as your Father". 

This is again a word to help one in one's self esteem. It's Ya Warith. It means the divine inheritance. Particularly in a retreat one could do this practice. Ask yourself, "Well I can recognize features of my father and my mother in me". A lot of people don't like their parents. But I loved my parents, of course, I was very lucky. Say then your grandparents or ancestors. Especially in America one doesn't know, it used to be taboo to try to find out about one's ancestors but now it's acceptable. Still, it's very exciting and helps one understand a little more about oneself. You can understand. Just imagine that you had an irate grandfather and a very gentle grandmother. So you have those two opposite characteristics in your being. There must be a conflict in your personality between those two things. I have East and West in my character. So how does one, the Easterner says, "I can't speak about it, it's too deep". And the Americans  say "Of course, why can't you talk about it". So it's all the difference. Then you think to yourself, "Yes, I can distinguish idiosyncrasies of my parents or ancestors as much as I know them. But still there is something about me that cannot be accounted for by my human inheritance. You talk about the divine inheritance. But that is really so far fetched for me that really I can't grasp what that means. Still I can distinguish something in me which is not inherited." You can even see the influence of your education and environment and so on that has left a mark on your being. But still there is something essential in your being, a kind of arian thread that runs through, qualities. You personality changes a lot. But there is some kind of continuity in change. That is, I could be questioned about this interpretation of the wazifa. But for me it is Qayyum. 

Now the word Qayyum, let's say it is our individuality and not our personality. Personality is predicated by qualities. Individuality is irrespective of qualities. That is a distinction that the ancients used to make, Thomas of Aquinas, for example. In Latin essay and posse. You'll find it in the German language, Zine and Visen. Visen, qualities. Zine to be irrespective of qualities. Can you see that? Can you grasp that there is something about you that is not subject to changes in your personality and that is specific to you, that is your signature, your individuality. So the Sufis make the difference between Hayo, life which is continually changing and Qayyum which is the arian thread that remains stable throughout. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. But the word Qayyum has often been interpreted as resurrection. But the word for resurrection is Baiith it's not Qayyum. Warith - inheritance. Baiith - resurrection. Qayyum is not a deathless state. It represents our individuality. The deathless state is beyond that. It is Sarmad which means eternity. 

Perhaps you noticed that Pir O Murshid makes a difference between everlasting and eternal. The first time in my life I came across that in teaching in Murshid's teaching. And it made all the difference in my understanding of Buddhism because Buddhism makes a very clear distinction between this become and this non-become. The word says, "This become does not lead to the non-become". And Jelaluddin Rumi says, "The umpteen stars give birth to the life eternal". So he builds a bridge. At first I thought there was a contradiction between Buddhism and Sufism. Then I found that in fact it was wrongly translated. The umpteen stars give birth to the life everlasting not the life eternal. It's not the same thing. Whereas eternity is outside of the samsaric wheel. I know it sounds like metaphysics but it gives you - particularly in America you're always saying, "I want to know who I am". One doesn't really know what one means by that. Actually one has to distinguish between one's personality which is not really what one is but gives some clue. But this core of one's being. It's very interesting because if we identify with that part of ourself which is made up of qualities which is our personality, then our consciousness is the consciousness of the personality. But if you are able to shift your sense of identity to your individuality irrespective of your qualities, then you are able to develop a kind of freedom from the flaws of your personality which one gets imprisoned in, encapsulated in. In fact, I think that (Jhanana dashana), that is the ability to watch yourself by uncoupling the principle of your being from the contingent, I think that's exactly it. It's identifying with your individuality and watching your personality. And thinking that your personality is a formation. But your real being is not subject to change. 

Maybe I have to make it clear that I don't mean that the word Qayyum means everlastingness. Maybe the word is sempiternal. Everlastingness means that had a beginning in time but has no end in the future. That's everlastingness. The word for that is Baqa. When you're doing the Zikr, remember that we go through fana, baqa. That means that by the breakdown of the elements of our being, and you find that in Buddhism, there can be a new formation. It is the way in which one can bring about transmutation, distilling. There is a breakdown and a breakthrough. Somehow the quintessence of that which breaks down survives like the perfume of flowers. That's baqa. Fana is always followed by baqa. The breakdown needs to be followed by reinstatement. If it is not, it can lead to mental disorders. Very often that is what mental disorders are. The person was unable to cope with the breakdown. One could help a person by pointing to the quintessential aspect of their personality that is not subjected to dissaggration. That happens in alchemy. If you distill a fluid, it is transmuted into steam. What they say in alchemy is, "Be careful not to let the green spirit escape from the retort", because the steam will escape. What they want to do is to keep the steam because that is the transmuted being. Drawing the attention of your mureed upon their quintessential self, that sounds a little bit metaphysical. 

I would say that the practical way of doing it is to teach people to start becoming aware and eventually identifying with one's subtle body. Then with one's aura of light. Because they are in some ways similar to the body. They don't have a profile. But the radiance of the aura espouses the contours of the body. By doing that, you help a person to make that transit from their limited self identity. There is a further way of doing it which would be thoughts can be transmuted. The rational way of thinking is rather trite and simplistic. If you start identifying with your aura, your celestial being not just the physical aura, then your way of thinking is different. 

I mentioned that the other day. Najmoddin Kobra who talked about the witness in the heavens. That means your consciousness has become the consciousness of your celestial being. I illustrated it by saying, how does an angel look upon circumstances? In other words, how would you look, another person look, or a situation look if you are a child? A child has a kind of natural intuition that we've lost and can see things that you have forgotten. The child sees genuineness and something that is disturbing because it's not true, not authentic. So that's the witness in the heavens, the consciousness that is undefiled by the bias of our personal identity and sees the purity instead of the guile and doesn't know how to deal with guile as a matter of fact. 

Your mureed might be struggling with an ego in life and using guile, using manipulation, using all the methods that people use in battle in order to be able to survive and does not realize that their opponent is drawing them on his/her battlefield and is stronger than him/her on that battlefield. But if he or she would not allow him/herself to be drawn onto the battlefield but maintain his/her consciousness in his/her higher identity, then the opponent wouldn't know how to reach one. Embodied in the words of that woman who was lynched in the South who said, "You can do what you like with my body, but you can't touch my soul". 

It's not indifference. It's the ultimate power. It could be illustrated by Christ. He was there ( ) and he was accused of saying he was the son of God or whatever. In those days one said 'Aba' when they were talking about God. Anyway he was accused of some kind of claim. And he said to Pilot, "You said it". He didn't say, "I didn't say it". Pilot couldn't reach him. We come across people whom we feel are very vulnerable and are being used or abused or taken advantage of by a ruthless exploiting ego. And we feel that person needs protection. The wazifa for protection is Ya Muhaymin. They have the means of their own protection in their hands. They would like to rely on extraneous protection because they have difficulty in believing in their own strength. You could point out that that person who is attacking them thinks that they are not realistic, spaced out. They think, "You talk about God and light, nonsense. You must be under the spell of a guru. This is nonsense. This is life here and you're not with it". You know how a person can make a person lose their faith by making rational arguments. Those rational arguments are ultimately not valid. Unless you can see through it, you can get caught in them. 

Very close to Ya Muhaymin is Ya Vakil which is the intercessor. That means the advocate like the lawyer. It's as though, "Do you mean to say that God that the intercession of a person would have any influence on God's judgment?" Does a judge need lawyers? Well they do. You can intercess for a person. It's not the same as protecting a person. The whole idea of the wazifa is that God is going to do it for you, like God will protect you, God will intervene. Remember that for the Sufis God is not other than yourself. You are the way the totality has converged into fragments of itself. So you mustn't think of God as other. The real protector,Ya Muhaymin, is your higher self which protects you from the inroads of the egos. The real intercessor is your higher self. 

What is the cause of the limitation? Something is gained by the fragmentation of the totality, diversification. For there to be diversification there has to be on one hand constraint and on the other hand bounty. You'll find that in the information theories if you study information theories. That means Kamil and Qabid. This dichotomy manifests in our need for involvement and our need for freedom. We spoke about it yesterday. That is one of the most basic things for any person on the spiritual path is that they find it very difficult to reconcile their need for freedom with their need for involvement with people, with circumstances. It seems to rob them of their freedom. Perhaps it's only the way they think it is and so on. There is a constraint in one's sense of identity. 

That dichotomy is sometimes articulated as indifference and interest. That's the reason why in India a sannyasin leaves the world and is supposed to adopt an attitude of viragia, indifference, and passive indifference to all those things that people are enthused by. It results in a terrible coldness. Whereas Sufis are warm hearted because they consider the purpose of life as Ishq Allah, the divine nostalgia, to actuate the sublimity of his being into beauty, into majesty into the existential world into all that is achieved. 

Pir O Murshid goes much deeper into it. He sees the dichotomy as a difference between being self sufficient and being dependent. Instead of using the word indifference, he puts the accent on the word independence instead of being indifferent. It is our dependence that makes us vulnerable and limits us. Those words are, Murshid uses the word self subsisting. That is being able to find resources in oneself instead of calling upon those resources outside oneself. Pir O Murshid says that very clearly. He says that the sannyasins tried to make themselves independent so they know how to put up with cold and heat and hunger and thirst. They can even hold their breath a long time. So as independent as possible independent of food and breath and so on. Indepe  ndent to any kind of attachment to people and circumstances. 

The opposite is we are continually nurturing ourselves by the physical and psychological environment. Consequently, we become dependent on it. We become addicted to it. That is the extreme of dependence, addiction. So there is addiction to TV. There is addiction to one's fridge. One has an addiction to chatting, alcohol, drugs and so on, sex. The Buddhists would say (asava) a mania, becomes addicted. As you know , if one becomes addicted and one withdraws from that addiction, one has what they call withdrawal symptoms. If you stop smoking you have headaches and anxiety. One has become dependent on these crutches. What the sannyasins are seeking is to be independent from anything whatsoever that they can free themselves from. You can't stop breathing all together. Still some of them are buried under the ground and come out alive. That's as far as I think you can go. How wise it is or what is - I think that it's good that we weigh our resourcefulness as compared with the resources that we can acquire from outside. 

As you know normally we are reacting instead of acting. I often illustrate it with the 4th Piano Concerto of Beethoven. Reacting is short circuiting. For example, crossing the road you don't have to use your whole brain in order to step back, it's a short circuit. But when it come to a decision that involves your whole life, then you have to use your faculties. What we do very often is that we short circuit. We are so conditioned by the progrmming of our lives that we tend to simply counter an attack with an attack. Whereas what we are learning is to place a buffer between the challenge of the outside world and our selves in order to be able to discover the bounty, the resourcefulness in our being. That is something you can teach your mureed to do. You have to do it yourself first. That is stop reacting. Check your tendency to react. Anybody asks you if you 'd like to involve yourself in something very important, you say, "Let me think it over". Then meditate. Then you need to become aware of the resourcefulness in your being. 

Some of them have already been unfurled. Some of them are potentials, virtualities, latencies. It is true that the challenge will cause these potentialities to emerge in a personality. Consequently, it is good that we are challenged by life because by so doing we discover ourselves. So you find that your mureeds are exactly in that situation. And you yourself are in that situation. What you want to do is to draw their attention to a quality or another quality that will help them to meet that challenge, which they don't think they have. But it's always potential in them. I must say that the ultimate criterion is the faith that one has them. That's where we flounder is because we don't believe that we have these qualities in us. The word Warith, divine inheritance, would suggest that we carry all the bounty of all the qualities. When we're doing a wazifa, the worst thing that we can do is to think, "I need to develop a quality further". The only way that it works is that these are the divine qualities that are virtually present in me and which are trying to come through in their limited form. But still it is the divine perfection that is coming through the human limitation. 

The word self sufficiency is Mughni. Mughni is a magical word. Mugh is the root of, in Persian it means the magus, the magi. Those who are self subsisting, bountiful in their being. In the book is says 'the rich one'. It doesn't mean rich, money. People can't use it to try and win the lottery. It's reliance upon the divine gift. Of course, opposite to that is Qabid which is limitation. But Pir O Murshid makes a distinction between self sufficiency and completion. Like our qualities are completed by the qualities of other people. Sometimes in a partnership one is enriched by the qualities of one's partner. Perhaps the reason that people are drawn to one another is they complete one another. The purpose of the sannyasin is to find completion in himself or herself living as a celibate. In our relationships, not just one's partner, but all people, one is continually being enriched by the elements of the personalities of the people around one. And the thing to do is to recognize in that person qualities that match our own qualities. And that will strengthen us in our qualities. You see that it's not just a concept of a divine archetype. Here this is a person who is able to actuate this quality which we have in ourselves in a far greater manner than we could ever do. That makes us feel like, "Well what is it about him or her that I don't have? I could do it too". For example, if you hear about Mother Theresa of Calcutta, then you feel very bad about passing a beggar without helping him. The quality of compassion is strengthened by that other person. 

There is a flow from the psychological environment into our psyche. And that is Ghani. I've often translated the word Ghani by removing obstacles. That is true. The obstacles are in our own mind of course. We are able to enlist the gift of people and receive it in our own psyche. But Pir O Murshid says that our completion makes us dependent upon the world, on people, on extraneous situations. Whereas Ghani, self sufficiency will make one free. There is always that dichotomy between freedom and involvement. 

There are wasifas that are familiar with, for example, turning within is Batin. To be an introvert, Batin. And to be an extrovert, Zahir. Zahir really means the manifestation of the non manifest. Sometimes that which transpires behind that which appears, that which is coming through that which appears. The unveiling. The whole of evolution in the world represents a gradual unveiling. I spoke about the Iranian peotess who unveiled her face. The present women's lib movement is an expression of the progress of unveiling. That which was confined within. You'll find that a lot of mureeds are people who are rather exceptional. They find it difficult to life the life of the world just to be happy at a cocktail part and talk nonsense and show off. All the games that society plays. Vie with the Jones and all that kind of stuff that are sham. So they tend to turn within. There is no doubt that one needs to turn within in order to reach upwards. Remember this after the break. I don't know whether we'll have time. We're going to try to go into the Zikr. There you have these four dimensions, reaching out, then turning within, then reaching up, then looking down from above, an overview. 

But I think it's important to see the connection between Batin and Latif because Batin really means that which is veiled. That is which is not yet manifest or maybe on its way to manifestation, not overt. It's covered. It illustrates very well what we mean by our subtle body, what David Boehm meant by the implicate state. Pir O Murshid mentioned it this morning. It's not mind and it's not matter. It's something between the two. Shahabudin Suhrawardi calls it matter in suspense. And he illustrated it by the reflection in the mirror. I don't think it's a very good illustration myself because the form in the mirror is really light. It's not just... But maybe you could think of light as being somewhere half between body and mind or matter and spirit. Anyway, Latif means subtle. David Boehm has a very good definition of subtle. Implicate means closely knit. That means that everything is in contact with everything else. That's what he means by enfolding. If you would wrinkle a piece of paper - it's not conceivable that every part of the paper would be in contact with every other part - but that's what is implied by that word Latif, like radio waves. There are people who are subtle. Generally they are people who are vulnerable and who find it very difficult to express themselves, their thoughts and emotions. There are grosser people who have no problem in expressing their emotions. There is a kind of a discretion about noble feelings. I think its good to help people if you find that quality in them, it's good to give them that wazifa to strengthen their faith in that quality in them which is so beautiful.

Now samadhi is the state, we were describing it yesterday as the state in which one goes through a kind of blackout so that one has lost any sense of existence. That's why Buddha says that there is no bridge between the become and the non become. The wazifa for that level, there are two wasifas. One is Sarmad which means eternal. That's beyond everlasting. Everlastingness is like the recycling of what is gained by life into the programming. It keeps on being recycled. Whereas this is beyond that. 

I'm running out of time so I'm going from one thing to another.

When you're doing the practice of Kasab, when you swing to one side and the other, you think it's like a pendulum but it doesn't hit the top. It's suspended and then moves back in the opposite direction. That point of suspense represents everlastingness at least at the right. In the left I'll have to describe still. But at the point where the pendulum is suspended represents eternity because it's unchanged. That's Sarmad. The other word for that state of samadhi is Ahad which means unity as opposed to Wahid which means multiplicity in unity or unity in multiplicity. So there is a transit between the non become and the become. 

Then we have to distinguish between awakening beyond life, a kind of a blackout as we get into the state of samadhi. You are experiencing your deathless state and at the same time the unity. So that one has lost one's sense of diversity. Then awaken in life which happens in the Zikr. One turns to the heart with the word Hu. And the wazifa for that is Wajid and Maujud. Now I have not found Maujud in the books that I've looked at so far. But I know that it is a wazifa that is given. It is a further development of Wajid. I defined Wajid as being to find. In fact, in the books it is to find. And perhaps you understand better when we quote Pir O Murshid when he says, "Where can you find God if it is not in man?" So to find in the existential realm. Beyond you can't find it. It's in the existential world. That's where God can be found, in existence, not up there, not in samadhi, in existence. That's Maujud. That word is to be found in metaphysical dichotomy. In classical Sufism there is a very famous dichotomy between what they call (va dhat) Shahid and (va dhat) Maujud. Shahid - the spectator, the witness. Va dhat - the existential object. In our ordinary experience, we are both the witness and our body and psyche and all those things we have been talking about, even our celestial being. Then on the other hand, we are the witness. In Buddhism you have this very clear dichotomy. In sattipatana, you watch your body and so on objectively, and your mind and thoughts and so on. It is only in the Arupaja, already in the Jhanas, Buddha is...

Tape ends

OCT 27, 1998		Tape 08

...you're watching mindness instead of your mind and so on in the Jhanas. And then in the Arupajhanas you are naughting the object so that you are highlighting the subject, consciousness. First of all non existence. So you've naughted existence. Then you're concentrating on the subject. Then you naught consciousness and get into beyond consciousness and so on until you get to the last point which is called the ultimate freedom, the cessation of determinism. That's Buddhism. 

If you awaken in life, then you go in the opposite direction. For Sufism, it is instead of descending into your consciousness, you see the divine being discovering Him/Herself through your form and through your consciousness which are both aspects of Him/Herself. What I'm talking about is more relevant for the Zikr. I suppose we're running out of time. So I don't know whether we'll have time to go into the very advanced Zikr where they are talking about naughting the object and the subject, then the subject and the act and so on. This is all very advanced. I'm jumping the gun a little bit. 

You see, at a certain point it is important to ask your mureeds to watch themselves. This is not just to be found in Buddhism. You'll find it Sufism especially Pir O Murshid who says, "There is no way to awaken unless you are able to know yourself". To know yourself you have got to become aware of how you react to situations and to be particularly aware of your motivations, the test of authenticity, Muhasabi in Sufism. It's amazing to what extent that people have no idea about their motivations. They're just going about life ad hoc without realizing what is motivating their doing this or that or their relationship with a person. What are they trying to get out of it? So if you have a very strong sense of Shahid, of being the witness, otherwise there is a confusion between the witness and witnessed, between the knower and the known as the Sufis say. Now you have that very clear dichotomy between Shahid and Maujud, existence. And Wajid is like the pointer to find out what is happening in existence.

If we have to end at five, I don't think we'll have much time to have a break. Perhaps you could just stand up. Things that need to be clarified. For example, Murshid often talks about the difference between intelligence and consciousness. The word Shahid means spectator. There is also the word Raqib which means the one who is watchful. I think that when you are doing Jhana Darshana you are watching yourself Shahid becomes Raqib.

There is also two wasifas that have very close meaning. In fact, it seems to be the same meaning. One could say assessing. You are looking at yourself and assessing yourself or looking at another person and assessing or assessing a situation. That's Muhsi and Hasib. Perhaps you know the word of Murshid when he said, "Unhappy is he who looks with contempt on the world" and so on and thinks he is a superior person. He has gone through the same process that a person has gone through and he is criticizing. That's a very important statement especially for a Representative. One must be very careful not to think that one has a kind of status. The word used is (Hadil) which means to be fair and just. In one's assessment one has to be careful to be cautious to be just. Hadil. I didn't make it quite clear that contrast between intelligence and consciousness. Akil is intelligence but it's not a wazifa. It's a very important word used all the time by the Sufis, intelligence. Then Shahid consciousness. So Akil and Shahid. 

There are some very fundamental points that I should mention. When you're doing the Kasab, then you always think that the left is the past and the right is the future and in between in the present. So you have (awil) and (ahir) at the beginning and the end. What is much more interesting is purpose. Murshid talks about purpose, the purpose of life is, and so on. You come across it a lot. He also used the word seed. The purpose of life is that the seed should unfurl into a plant. So you have the seed as the origin and the plant as the fulfillment at the end. That concept of the seed, I mentioned it yesterday when I was talking about the secret treasure that desired to be known, that limits the purpose to knowing. Then you have Jelaluddin Rumi saying why would the gardener have planted the seed if it weren't for the beauty of the flower. So it's out of love rather than knowing. So maybe that Hadith passed through the minds of the people trying to remember the words of the Prophet. But there are several references to that in the Koran. What is interesting for me is that on one hand you have causality. I don't know whether you can say the seed is the cause in the beginning. You have the purpose of life at the end. Wajid is the purpose of life, Maujud is existence. If you go deeper into it , the purpose is Zul Jelal wal Ikram, that is - I daren't say this in Islam - but it is God has manifested as man, as the perfect man. That is Zul, the Lord of majesty and excellence. Zul Jelal wal Ikram. I've also translated it in the feminine. That would be Ghanon Jamil wal Ikram. Strange that our predecessors didn't think of that. 

When you're doing the Kasab and moving from the future back into the past, then you are able to relate the past and the future. So this is very important. It's rather difficult to follow. The cause as I said ( ). There is a very significant wazifa which is Muqaddim which I used to repeat a lot when I was in Ajmere. I think that is what Pir O Murshid means by the seed. I know this is translated in the books by the expediter. But it's a very bad translation. What is interesting is that it is the divine intention. And that divine intention reaches its fulfillment in a state which Pir O Murshid describes, and I must say it's one of the most extraordinary statements that Murshid ever said. I referred to it the other day. It's like he said, "In the beginning of the world, everything was in a state of chaos". So it's like a puzzle. The pieces are scattered all over the place and you're supposed to put them together. The objective is order. So that's the objective. What he said is that the trouble is that you have the wrong person in the wrong place. You have a situation in the world where everything is unorderly. So if you look about in your life, you wonder how could God allow this to happen. The purpose is for all this to get into shape. But it's on the way. So you see a mureed's life is disjointed and incongruous and chaotic. And you see how those pieces do not fit together. That person is trying to put them together. But it won't work. And you see how they could fit together but you're not supposed to tell them what to do. But if you draw your attention to the fact of the original (Muket) of the original intention has got distorted in the course of life, of existence. They have to find how this can all make sense. That's the reason for Wajid, to find. And the reason why Wajid has the same etymology as Maujud, to exist. To find an existence. That's the, as we say in France ( ), that's what one needs to grasp.

We have very little time. And I have to be part of the council. It's a pity we won't be able to have that sharing. We should have at least three days, in fact, we should have at least a week. So I'm going to have to be very brief. The four stages of the Zikr are the four stages that I have been outlining all these years. The cosmic - La illaha. Basit, you see, expansion. Illaha, one is reaching up. So the expansion is not just in the horizontal but includes all the levels. Then 'lla - turning within. Batin, Latif. Then remember when one says, "La illaha illa", then we go through the different stages which are outlined by the spheres as described by the Sufis. Now I have described them in many of the Keeping In Touch. I think there is a booklet. So there is no point in my taking the time to repeat those things. But you must be very clear about them. So when you're doing the Zikr, you don't just keep on repeating it one hundred times. But be very careful. The best thing is the Fikr of the Zikr when you are not saying it aloud. And be very cautious that you're very clear as to each of the steps as you're moving upwards. Because that is the secret of lifting your consciousness beyond earthly conditions into what Pir O Murshid calls the abstract. 

Then remember that the purpose of Sufism is not to awaken beyond life but to awaken in life. And I wish I had time to describe much better than I have done so far what that means awakening in life. Pir O Murshid says, "Man has come on earth in order to discover his spiritual existence". Then he says, "In man is invested the same spirit by which the whole Universe was created". That word 'created' is extremely important in Sufism. The only way in which God can discover Him/Herself is by creating Him/Herself, projecting Him/Herself as a form. Hence the importance of our creativity. Our personality is the masterpiece of our creativity. There are three words here. Khaliq which means creativity. Bari which means evolution of form. Then Musawwir which is fashioning like a sculptor. Those are important. People are in such need of being creative. A wazifa which is very good when you're working with the aura is Ya Musawwir, Ya Munawar. That is fashioning the aura, aura of light. 


The last thing I want to say, very short is that if you do the second Zikr, you'll find that it's a whole new state reveals itself. You think of yourself as though you were sitting in a cell away from the world in isolation. And you are prostrating. Then if you visit a Darga in India, you'll find that when you prostrate, then the Hadim lifts you up. So you don't lift yourself up. Somehow you feel that it's your act of glorification that lifts  you. So we say " 'lla la". That's one of the most transforming practices that you can do. So we have to end here. I hope it hasn't been too stressful or too hard to follow. But I've tried to bring the quintessence of Sufism right here in the few hours that we've shared together. 

I hope some of this material come out, first of all the curriculum. But this has thrust a whole new light on the curriculum because now the curriculum can be seen from the point of view of the wasifas and the wasifas can be seen from the point of view of the curriculum. If I'd had time, I'd have read all the texts of Murshid that correspond to the wasifas. I must say that Murshid says things a million times better than I can. But here you have it. Perhaps it might be issued by the Secretariat to the Representatives. This is not all the curriculum, It's those extracts that were particularly meaningful to me.

Let's hold hands and feel our unity. Tape Ends


NOV 01, 1998		Tape 05

Yes, this morning we're going to do more practices than we did yesterday. But we need to prepare our minds for these practices. So I'd like to start with working with light. Perhaps it's good to remember the different steps. Then we'll proceed further. 

If you remember, the first one was - well, I would say just prepare yourself first by extending your exhaling, inhaling, holding your breath. Exhaling, extending it further, inhaling, holding your breath, exhaling. Now as you exhale, expand your consciousness. You could think of meditating at night under the starry sky and see the vastness of space. Now as you inhale, you think that the whole Universe converges as you. Even your body, the big bang, your body is made of the outburst of light of the big bang that has gone through a lot of changes. So it's not just vastness in space but vastness in time. The totality is converged in each fragment of itself and therefore present potentially in that fragment. As you hold your breath, keep your concentration within as though, well one says, "Turn within". 

You remember you cannot be the subject observing what is happening because it is unconscious. It will emerge eventually in your conscious as you exhale. But as you hold your breath, time and space, everything is in a state of suspense. And everything is intermeshed with everything else like radio waves. That means the qualities in your being, let's say you're in touch with the root of your being in which all qualities are in a virtual state and are trying to break through and emerge and surface in your personality. Now as you exhale, you just imagine that the root is beginning to erupt through the surface in the threshold between the unconscious and the conscious and fan out, unfurl as a plant, and expand into the whole universe. Pir O Murshid calls that state that you reach as you turn within the essence. Like you're grasping the essence behind everything that unfurls in different objects. But this is the quintessence in the depth of your being, pure spirit. 

Now let us translate in terms of light. As you inhale, you're converging the light of the stars, galaxies. This is a wonderful practice to do at night time if you can just sit outside and see the stars. Then as you hold your breath, think of that state of light which Pir O Murshid calls all pervading. And then as you exhale, it fans out as your aura which is radiant and radiating from a center which is your heart center like the sun. Once more. In a further step, you inhale from inside instead of drawing energy from outer space. So there is a kind of inner space that is subliminal. And you're drawing the breath from your solar plexus from inside. So you are drawing the radiant light into your aura. As you hold your breath, you're conscious that your aura is now made of an admixture of the light that you draw in from outside and also the light that emerged from within. Now as you exhale, you're the transducer whereby both lights, the all pervading light and the light from the environment, is being radiated. The light of the environment is being boomeranged back and the light from inside keeps on emerging anew.

Now we want to start exploring the different levels of light in our being instead of just expanding and turning within. So the breathing practice as you inhale, think that you are drawing telluric energy, that is the energy of the earth, upwards through your spine. Just like a plant or a tree is drawing energy from the earth. And it gets sucked up into its trunk. That energy gets transformed as it moves up your spine from one chakra to the next. Then you make that quantum leap as you hold your breath moving from inhaling to exhaling. You make a quantum leap and you literally identify with pure spirit. That is a totally different energy from the telluric energy of the earth. You could call it heavenly energy if you like. But I think the correct word for it is pure spirit, Ya Quddus. 

Now as you exhale, that energy seems to descend. Like an outpour of energy that descends. That is called the quickening of the Holy Spirit. Imagine an aperture at the top of your head. That would be the fontanel at the top of your head. The energy descends through the spinal cord. But it's like lightening and lightening will never brook of the limitation of the cable or the device through which it descends to the earth. So actually one is actually shattered by the power of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon one. But you are both the being which is being shattered and you're also the Holy Spirit that is shattering you. At first one identifies with some personal being and thinks that the Holy Spirit is other than oneself. It's only at advanced stages that you see that the pinnacle of your being is pure spirit. It's not other than yourself. 

You may also notice that as pure spirit descends, it seems to clear a lot of stuff in the psyche, polluted energy, polluted elements. With its force it seems to act as a broom that cleanses one. The pollution gets resorbed by mother earth that is very kind to take our pollution as long as we don't abuse of it. The extraordinary thing is when you inhale, it is unpolluted energy which you absorb from the earth. So the earth has been very kind as to recycle your polluted energy and give you purified forms of energy now.

OK Now let us translate this in terms of light. As you inhale, think of your spinal cord as a chimney. Think of a flame that is rising in that chimney. Think of the different colors. Shift from one chakra to the next. At the top of the head you remember a diamond, clear light. Then as you hold your breath, you're not limited to the top of your head, to any location in space. This is where you make that quantum leap as I call it. You identify yourself now with the light of intelligence, what the Tibetans call the clear light of bliss. The Sufis call it Nur Akle. If you keep in mind the words of Pir O Murshid the difference between intelligence and consciousness, consciousness is passive. It's picking up information and enriching you with that input. Whereas intelligence is active, casting it's light upon all things. As you exhale, think that, well at first, you represent to yourself the light of intelligence descending and being refracted forward through the optic nerves and eventually breaking through the retina, the cornea and into outer space as your glance. So intelligence threaded through the light of the brain. The brain accumulates a lot of light. 

A way of doing it is identifying yourself with your aura and considering your physical body as a formation within the aura. Think that you are breathing in through the eyes, breathing in light through the eyes and exhaling light through the eyes. At the first half of your inhaling, let's say the light is moving in a horizontal direction. In the second part of the inhaling, you turn your eyeballs upwards and press the tongue against the pallet. And now you think that the light is being transmuted as it's moving upwards until you reach the end of your inhaling. Then you hold your breath and identify with the light of intelligence. Now you exhale through the eyes. The second stage is that instead of thinking that the light of intelligence is threaded through the eyes, it enhances the glance. It isn't threaded through it. It awakens it. It arouses it. Consequently as you exhale, concentrate very much on the intensity of the light of your glance. As we did yesterday, you can shift it from left to right, up and down, even in a circular motion just to have a very concrete sense of those two beams that are like, if you have a lighthouse, you have just one beam. But a car, imagine that the two beams are rotating. 

One of the practices I do is to thread a violet light through a blue light. If you think of the different colors of your aura, then you get blue in the eyes and violet in the third eye. Somehow the light of the third eye travels along the blue light of the glance. Of course if you think of it as ultra violet instead of just violet, then it gives a penetrating effect. That's why Pir O Murshid says a glance becomes like an x-ray. So that means that you are able to see the countenance of a face behind the face, that which transpires behind that which appears. Now when you have computed this you can shift again. We started working with just energy. Then we were working with light. Now we're working with consciousness. At this point, you identify with being the subject rather than the observed. That is your body or your mind or whatever. Suddenly zoom upon the spectator in you. As Pir O Murshid says, intelligence becomes consciousness when faced with an object. And if it is bereft of any object, it returns to its ground which is pure intelligence. 

Now you could do this with your breathing. You could think of the way that intelligence gets limited by our experience of the physical world. It's almost like a very vast light that gets focalized through a lens into a beam. So it's limited. On the other hand, I think that it is intensified by the fact that it is focalized, focused. As you inhale, you think, "I want to get back to headquarters, pure intelligence". There is a kind of yearning that we have to overcome limitation. These are words of Murshid, "Rise above limitations of earthly conditions at the command of your will". The way to do it is to think of the model of the pendulum, the bottom is moving in time and space and the top is stationary. 

So I think that the only way to make that shift from limitation to perfection is to earmark, zoom upon what Pir O Murshid call the deathless state. That means that there is one point in you. If someone took the fulcrum of the pendulum which is not subject to change therefore not subject to death, the deathless state. That is a very far reach. One can easily lose oneself in that sort of transcendent flight. Therefore what I suggest is that you become aware of the intermediary step where you discover yourself beyond your qualities. That is qualities are forms according to the Sufis. And forms are the way that one's realizations are configured into structures by the power of imagination. Ibn Arabi says that there is a point in the Zikr when you cease to use your imagination, eschew the active imagination. Therefore you have lifted yourself beyond the level in which forms can be detected. 

It's like a chemical product that's in the state of saturation then there is a crystallization that takes place. Then you get the form. Before it reaches that point of saturation, the forms are potential but they are not there. That's the level or reality beyond form. When we think of our identity, we generally identify with our form and with our body. I don't know whether we identify with our subtle body. That's what we're learning to do. We also identify with our qualities. Then you can't see or have any kind of action on your qualities if you identify with them. That's why Buddha was very clear when he said by seeing that dichotomy, that antinomy between subject and object. And by identifying yourself with the object, you are able to see the subject much better. So you can see your qualities better if you do not identify with them and simply identify with that (areadin) thread of your being. In Sufism it's called Qayyum. 

So that's not yet the deathless state. That is let's say your uniqueness. It is a continuity in change. If you could, it takes a tremendous amount of faith to lift your consciousness to the point which is called Samad which is your eternal being. It's not the same thing as continuity in change because there is no diversity there anymore. So it is Ahad - one. Ya Ahad, Ya Samad. It is one and also eternal. Now when we do that, we tend to lose contact with the earth. And these are the kind of skills that lead to samadhi. It is my opinion that it's easier to awaken in life if one has awakened beyond life. But still one must not lose the sight of the fact that the objective is awakening in life. 

So we have for me a wonderful paradigm in Sufism. It's embodied in the wasifas Ya Wahid - uniqueness. Uniqueness is of course Qayyum. But Wahid is like the first descent from unity. Qalabadi calls it the multiplicity that is inherent within unity. That diversification is beginning to take place, but you haven't lost the sense of unity. It's often translated by solitude, the divine solitude. Because if you pursue you longing for freedom, then you tend to isolate yourself, (tafrid), isolate yourself. But that is the great temptation of the ascetic. Whereas Al Hallaj says the first step toward tawhid - awakening in life - is giving up isolating yourself. Then God invites you to participate in the solitude of His unity. I'll say that again. You give up your wish to isolate yourself, that is your action, incentive, so that you allow the divine action to take place instead of yours. Then God invites you to participate in the solitude of His oneness. So you see how different this to samadi. Because in Yoga one is using one's will to lift oneself beyond the earth. Here you are enlisting the divine action upon you. So that is Wahid. ( ).

In the course of descent, you get into (vadanyat) which Qalabadi calls the unity inherent in multiplicity instead of the multiplicity inherent in unity. I think it's good to know how to descend. Because if you're learning to pilot a plane, you need to first learn how to land before you learn how to soar. Knowing how to descend will give you a better sense of how to take off. Of course one goes through all the planes. I will be trying to lead you into some kind of attunement on the different planes. We call them different planes. But they are really perspectives. 

But the paradigm I was talking about is for me very exciting. The antinomy Wahid/Wajid. So Wajid is generally translated by find, control F on your computer, to find. It's very significant because Pir O Murshid says, "How can you find God if it's not in the God conscious". So it's right down here. So you find God here. Why are you searching up there. I think it was Abdula Ansari who said, "I looked for myself and I found God. And I looked for God and I found myself". This is Sufism. It's very different that what we have learned about samadhi. So it is God who is lifting you beyond the limitation in which one has slipped. As Pir O Murshid has said, the purpose of meditation is to experience all the levels of existence without losing oneself. The fact is that we have lost ourselves in our common place condition. Now we find ourselves. All of this might be a little bit high faluted for you if you are not used to this very different way of looking at things to the usual way. That's because Sufism starts by looking at things from the antipolar point of view to the personal point of view. Even though it seems like a passion for the unattainable. 

But somehow we don't realize that when we see round tables, somehow we have very deep in ourselves a sense of roundness. Otherwise we would never recognize that tables are round. So one is really discovering reality in the existential state. So that's what is called the archetype. All that one is experiencing is the exemplars. The exemplars might give you some clue as to the archetype. But on the other hand, it's because the archetypes are somehow inherent in our intelligence that we can see the exemplars. We are at the human level, we are the exemplars at the human pole of our being. And at the divine pole of our being, the antipolar point of our being, we are the archetype. We are what the Sufis call the treasury. There is a saying that there is nothing on earth that does not have it's treasure with us. That treasure is the secret treasure that desired to be known and that is trying to reveal itself. And we are standing in the way by our own personal vantage point and opinion. So let's say the action of the totality on the person instead of the action of the person on the totality. And Ibn Arabi says, "The angels build a ladder between the two", between the treasury and the exemplars. So that's Wahid / Wajid.

Now let us backtrack a little bit. We we're starting to meditate as yesterday in a rather agitated, disrupted state. We want to try and move from the catabolic state to the anabolic state. The catabolic state like the animal that is ready to catch its prey and defend itself. The anabolic state in which the animal can digest its food quietly in its cave and it's protected. We have the same thing when we are listening to the telephone and answering the doorbell and people are coming to chat with us and we have all kinds of problems, then we are in the catabolic state. The heart beats faster and so on. When we are able to meditate, then we are in the anabolic state. We don't have to spring to action. So we can recover our decorum and penetrate into the depth of our being. Slowing down the breath you're meditating.

We're backtracking a little bit. At first you have all these random thoughts. The psyche is digesting impressions. Normally one is not conscious of that. But if you are not distracted by what is happening outside, you become aware of all this process of digesting. It's very disturbing. You don't get anywhere like that. What I'm suggesting is that you shift your attention from the input of the outer world to what is emerging from inside. As I said yesterday, if you are extremely enthused by a television show, then you are not going to turn your attention towards you cat. So the only way to meditate is to draw attention towards yourself. What's really there in the most elementary step is you and the environment. At first you don't even see that there is an intermeshing between the two. There are two different things.

In order to discover ourselves, we have to confection ourselves, fashion ourselves. It's just like a sculptor who discovers his/her statue by making it. Even though one has some kind of idea beforehand of where one is going. But the discovery of the statue is much more intense if you are making it and it somehow reveals itself to you. God is revealing Him/Herself to us by creating us and we participate in that creativity. So since we find it difficult at first to bring some clarity into our relationship with the situation, for the sake of methodology we start, as Pir O Murshid said, closing our eyes to one, actually I would say we downplay. We don't discard. We downplay the input from the outside for a time so that we can find ourselves. Then we will see the real impact of ourselves on the situation. 

There is a practice that one places one's indexes on one's eyes and thumbs on one's ears like the three monkeys. It's illustrated in fact by the three monkeys. What Pir O Murshid said is that you start by that. Then you do that practice without having your fingers in place. What I'm suggesting is that you think that you have a filter of light in your eyes and a filter of sound in your ears. That is what Buddha means by placing a sentinel at the doors of perceptions. If you remember what I said yesterday, that we suffer from indigestion of our psychological impressions. So we have to know how to reject impressions that are deleterious. It is a very strong notion of who we are or what we like or dislike or our motivations in life that help you reject impressions that otherwise become very compelling. You bring your world, your life wherever you go. You don't let yourself be dissolved in the environment to the extent that you lose yourself.

There is a second stage. That is that the input from the outside. Let's get to something more basic. Pir O Murshid makes a distinction between self subsistence and completion. So there is you, whatever that means. There is so much in it. You're not just your qualities that are changing all the time. You the continuity in change. You are all the potentialities that are coming through. You are the inheritance from your parents and ancestors. You are inheriting from the whole Universe and then what is called the divine inheritance. All that is you. So here is a pool of resourcefulness beyond what one could ever imagine. 

Now one is trying to complete oneself by elements from the environment. Basically, if you can match the qualities that you are inputting from the environment with those that are latent within yourself, then it will make it easier for you to digest the environment. As I often say, we are continually in search for ourself in another ourself who is better able to manifest what we are than ourselves. There is a kind of resonance. One is really desperately looking for oneself. Actually ideally one can find it in oneself. But it is true that also one needs to enhance what is already within one by the interfacing with other beings. When one sees a person who has more mastery than oneself, it awakens the mastery that lies dormant within one. It gives one confidence that what that person has I have also. 

The further point. Take the example food. The process of digestion of food. The food needs to be totally transformed in order to be able to be incorporated in the cells of your body. So it passes through the process of transformation which is the principle of alchemy. The first stage, calcination is rejecting, rejecting elements, filtering elements that are undesirable. The second stage is distilling. This is what is happening at the level of the psyche also. At the level of the body, you know that the ingredients of the food are transformed into amino acid chains which are coded by the DNA of the body or the way the DNA is transcribed by RNA. Enzymes recognize structures of molecules and atoms and are able to transform them so they fit into the overall pattern of the body. 

The same thing is true of our psyche. That's why you have to have a very strong sense of who you are because that is going to help you to find exactly the place in your being where the input from the outside fits in. If it doesn't fit in, then everything is askew in you. And that's the state that most of us are in. We haven't been able to digest the environment and we have no idea who we are. We are in a state of desperation because we feel we are not getting anywhere we're frustrated. We have a low self profile. We are trying to struggle with life and with people who are trying to undermine one. That's life.Meditation is a wonderful opportunity to work with all these things. It's very difficult to do this in real life. Of course it would be wonderful. But I find it very difficult.

What I say is not good enough. A strong sense of who you are has to include what you are becoming and not just what you are. To do this one needs to turn with because then one is inviting the surfacing of these potentialities. One cannot reconnoiter them because they are subconscious. There is a physicist who describes the experience of a physicist when he says it's like a flying fish in murky water. You can measure their speed when they are above the water. But you have no idea what is their speed when they are under the water. But you have no idea what is their speed when they are under the water. It's like light that escapes your grasp. Can you stalk light beyond where you can grasp it? The same thing with your self. You would like to find yourself but it escapes your grasp. So how can you do that? To find. Well, how does your computer do it? We don't know unless we are computer specialists. You know there is a lot of work that happens behind the scene. 

I can only tell you of my experience when I was an officer in the British Navy in the second World War trying to spot German submarines. Normally one would think that you've got to scan the horizon moving from left to right. The captain said, "Well, yes but it's better to keep a wide span of your glance. Anything that draws your attention, then you focus your glance toward that little speck on the horizon. Whereas if you scan, you'll miss it." 

So that will give us some indication of what that means, Wajid. To try and be open to what is going to strike you. Because your unconscious does emerge. But the trouble is it's like deep sea fish. If you bring them to the surface, they are no longer deep sea fish. They don't function. They are all bloated. You can't really know what they are like. The same thing with an electron. You'll never know an electron because you have to, the only way to know it is to react with it or it has to react with you. The consequence is that it is not what it is when it's not being observed. It's very paradoxical. How can you discover yourself when you can't discover yourself? Those surreptitious potentialities keep on knocking at the door, keep on trying to reveal themselves. And you have to capture them as they reveal themselves. At that moment. It's like crocuses in the snow begin to show their head. That's the time you have some sense that there is a crocus there. Otherwise you don't know it. 

I think that the power that will direct your attention to what is trying to emerge in your being from the unconscious is your nostalgia, it's emotion. You know there are thoughts which I find are very impelling. For example, just imagine what a privilege it is to be alive. Perhaps it's even better after life. I don't know. But still let's enjoy it while it's there. What a privilege it is to be part of the cosmos, to be able to be part of what's happening down here. It's incredible. You're not just a tourist on planet earth. Hopefully you'll leave a mark, contribute towards the well being and conditions. There is a kind of delight that emerges in one, that can be aroused in one if one just thinks of the wonderful privilege of being part of existence. That alone enlists a tremendous amount of joy...and pain. The fact is, well I remember when I was a child I cut my knee. I was a very little child perhaps three or four. I went to my dad and said, "Why does one have to suffer so much in life?". He said, "Would you rather be a stone?". That was a great answer. Suffering evidences our sensitivity and consequently the intensity of our consciousness. 

There is a word of Pir O Murshid which says, "Consciousness awakens itself in matter". In the past we used to think of matter as not being alive, not being conscious. There is a whole controversy as to whether the electrons make a choice passing through the two holes. Do they make a choice? That would mean they have some consciousness. We don't understand that. Let's say that the extraordinary thing is that our body participates in our experience and is transformed by our experience. That is not the case if you discard your body. The consequence is that one gets into a kind of void. One thinks that one has awakened in samadhi. But actually it's just a state of trance. Martin Buber saw that very clearly. He said, "One becomes aware of one's pre-biographical unity". Those are the words of Martin Buber.

Now we come to a very vital point because we have been learning how to turn within in order to invite the potentialities to emerge and unfurl so that we will be able to act upon the environment more effectively. But the fact is that we have to take into consideration two dimensions. One is turning within and the other is looking down from above. They call it self transcendence. I think that one leads to the other. But that's my opinion. So to know myself the qualities of my personality are not all of me. It's just one aspect of me, a dimension of my being that is my qualities that are evanescent and ephemery. But there are several levels of our being and that is what we want to investigate today, those different levels. 

Evula who is a wonderful exponent of Buddhism. In the name of Buddha he says, "One needs to leave the launching platform. If you think of what happened in Cape Canaveral yesterday, yes the rocket left the launching platform. Then the hydrogen engines were able to carry the module higher up so that let's say that one hasn't eschewed the earth by lifting oneself beyond it. Actually I don't know whether that's the best illustration of it. Let's say that instead of discarding the physical world as you take flight in meditation, you schlep it with you. But you've got to transform it as you rise. That is you have to transmute it as you rise. The secret is knowing how to transmute your body and also the image you have of your body, the representation you have of your body. Actually there are gradual steps from bodiness to spirit. It's not like there are two different entities. 

We can make a start now. We did make a start when we were working with telluric energy and we were transferring our attention from one chakra to the next. At the top you became pure spirit. And there was a transit from one to the other. That's a way in your thinking to transmute energy. I illustrate it sometimes by an electric current that has a lot of watts and not a lot of voltage or the other way around a lot of voltage and not much watts. Lightening has a lot of volts in comparison, of course, there is not so many watts. So a sense of becoming finer and finer and finer. Latif, fine. Pure spirit. The different colors help also. Maybe there are other techniques. In the past we've been using other techniques. We've already tried to explore our countenance when we're thinking of mastery or peace or joy or truthfulness or whatever. 

Now can you work a little more concretely with color. Color is just an indication of the frequency of light in your aura. But can you, it's something I do sometimes. If you are outraged, and I think there is plenty of reason to be outraged if you read the news. When you think of concentration camps and violence there is plenty of reason to be angry, outraged. Somehow, I hope I'm not imagining things, but my aura seems to become red. When I feel a lot of energy coming through and I think of the delight of life and the way that life is flowering everywhere, then it becomes green. When I'm very conscious of truthfulness, authenticity, purity, then it becomes blue, many different colors of blue. Just think of the Virgin Mary who is always represented as light blue. When I think of the wisdom or maturity when I think of my father Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan, then my aura becomes gold. I don't know whether this is personal or this means something to you. Could you make your aura white, colorless, immaculate? 

Yesterday we were talking the core of your being. The fact is that the qualities that are emerging emerge from the white light into the different colors. Therefore the clue to calling upon these qualities is to try to get back to the original state of innocence, the child within. Start from scratch. Every new quality has to emerge from its embryonic state as a blastema and then unfurl. Now we're working with the aura. And the aura gets configured in the likeness of the human form according to the quality that comes through. Configured. 

Now, this is the last practice before we have the break. So you identify with your aura of light. Then represent to yourself that your aura of light is getting crystallized into a crystal. And now it assumes a form. If that crystal is a diamond, then you see all kinds of flashes of different colors. And they are all various manifestations of colorless light. So you see how diversity is arising out of unity. Now we are experiencing existentiation. That is the way that the archetypes become concretized in the existential world, light that becomes crystal. Furthermore, the crystal now absorbs and emits light. So it becomes an instrument for light. And certain crystals are transformed by the action of light upon them. So they are not sclerosed but are open to the action of light . And by the same token, your body can be transformed by the light of your aura. 

If you remember the words of Murshid, think that in the crystal which is made up of molecules and atoms and so on, intelligence is awakened. So intelligence is awakened in your aura, in your body, in matter. Light is also considered as matter by physicists. So just think that your body is being awakened, not just your mind or your consciousness. Your body is being awakened. You know that the muscles of the violinist are awakened. The cells in his fingers and arms are awakened and become vibrant. One of the things that we learned to do, I'm using Murshid's words, is to awaken dormant faculties which we generally do not use in our commonplace life. You could even say that those faculties are asleep in the very cells of our bodies. We can arouse these cells by causing them to vibrate. 

I don't know whether that happens to your when you're meditating that you have a sense that an intense, at least you become aware of the - vibration doesn't mean that you start shaking yourself. It's like the molecules and atoms in a gong are continually giggling. One doesn't see it but they are in motion all the time. Of course if you add further energy to it by hitting it with a stick, then it becomes audible. It's there. Just think of yourself as a gong in which all that energy is latent and it can be aroused. So what I'm saying is that you don't discard the launching platform. But you transmute it and it is carried with you aloft but transmuted. Not just the physical body, but your subtle bodies, celestial body and so on. That's something we have to look into in the next few steps.


I think we need to have a break now. It's about twenty past ten. Could we start at twenty to eleven? That will be twenty minutes. Tape ends.

 


1999


MAR 07, 1999		Tape 05


The best time to meditate is in the early morning before dawn, and even to watch the sunrise.  So, we are going to do meditations with light.  To start with, really cosmic.  If you could just place yourself in the perspective of the begriming of time.  Now of course, we know that there wasn't a beginning of time, because prior to that there was still something.  But still, can you imagine that the all pervading light of the cosmos, all of a sudden pulled itself together, exploded in what is called the "big bang."  That even you body originated in that "big bang" as a being of light.

And that being of light gelled, crystallized into what we call a body of cells.  But, it's just a different form of the light that erupted and exploded at a particular second in the beginning of time.  Can you imagine then that you have passed through all the phases of evolution, as a mineral and a plant, an animal and a human, to the point when you have been able to have the privilege of embodying the thinking of the universe in this body.  Think of this body as a crystal that carries behind it the whole evolution of the past.  The forward march of civilization.


So, this would be like a horizontal line, now think of a vertical line.  Think that the primary intelligence of the whole universe has fragmented itself into full conciousnesses.  So, you could follow that route down from that state in which there is no fragmentation at all, that divine intelligence and then the way that you have emerged out of that intelligence as a consciousness, a luminous consciousness.  And now think that you have landed on planet earth at some point which we call conception and then birth and borrowed a body that was made out of the substance of light from your parents, ancestors.  Just imagine that you belong to other worlds, other planes and by some miracle you are able to awaken to conditions on planet earth, a very small speck, incredible, umpteen stars which may be inhabited by umpteen beings of whom we have no idea.

At first, as a baby, you didn't know what was happening on the planet, only conscious of the immediate environment, and little by little, your consciousness increased and increased and became more and more aware, and now you have reached a point in your life where you feel like there is no end to your awareness, that you need to awaken more and more to what is all about, what is being enacted in the full scene of life.  And you see that just relying upon what appears is totally inadequate, and realize that in fact, it is the whole universe that is awakening in your awakening.  In fact, the only way to awaken is to become aware of the way that the universe awakens as your consciousness, in the awakening of your consciousness, of your intelligence that has become consciousness when it is faced with objects.

All right, now lets so some further visualizations.  Imagine that you are in a ship on the sea and you don't know where you are, it's dark and the mist seems to lift and you see some light.  It's very far away and if you look at a map you realize that it is the light of the haven.  And so, now you turn your ship, you pilot it into such a way that it will direct itself towards that light.  And of course, as you approach that light becomes brighter and brighter and so you have found your destination.

Now another scene would be something that I have experienced myself.  The top of a mountain very high up and there's lightening and thunder underneath you, but you still see the stars and clouds are beneath you.  You have this kind of cosmic sense of the unending vastness.  Think of yourself in this infinite environment full of drama.  And now, the mist rises and the lightening and thunder reaches you and you have this sense of awe facing the enormous power of the cosmos of which you are a part.  But, so finite a part that on one hand you would like to seek shelter against the storm, on the other hand it is so exhilarating to be part of it, because you discover in the storm, something about yourself.  A kind of rebellion, a kind of tendency to break through barriers, a dedication to truth. 

And now the lightening and the thunder abates and you feel that it is very peaceful.  The sun has not risen yet, but the clouds begin to take on the most incredible hues, red and orange and gold, vermilion and green, yellow and dark brown, violet.  You are just entranced by the miracle whereby the light of the cosmos is able to show such beauty, such splendor, such majesty.  And then, all of a sudden it occurs to me, this is the world to which I belong.

And, I had forgotten this world, because I live in a environment where there are factories and pollution and crime and anxiety, and murder, violence.  So, I'm an exile from that world.  But, the only way to honor my being is to remember who I am, get back into my pristine attunement and then I can face the challenge of life better, because I'm not confined by and encapsulated in it.


And maybe I can bring some of that light into the darkness if I keep on remembering this light and also discovering this light in my very body.

Now there is another scene.  It is as though you were following the light.  Instead of the port as static, the haven as static, now that light is moving and luring you forward in the dark at breakneck speed.  I know this is beyond our ability to visualize it, but imagine that you are following a meteorite or you are following a comet in its vertiginous advance.  The only thing that was of any consequence for you was to follow this light.  So this light was drawing you out of the darkness into the world of light.

Now, a further scene.  You are looking into a very bright light like the headlamps of a TV station, a broadcasting station, the limelights I mean, or then the head lamps of a car.  Instead of trying to protect your eyes from the light, you keep your eyes open and enjoy the brightness of that light.  It is infusing your whole being, your chest and your face and your eyes.  Of course it makes you aware of your own light.  So it's a communion of light.  The discovery of light is making you discover your own light. 

Now let us imagine the vertical dimension of light.  Stalking the light beyond it's physical expression.  This is a practice of Hildgegaard of Bingen, as I mentioned the other day, yesterday.  So at first you are into what we have done so far, you feel the glow of light upon your body, and you are exalting in the ecstasy of light.  Now you turn you eyeballs upwards and even curl your tongue and press it against your palate.  It is as though a skylight were to open above your head into a world of light that is much more subtle and yet brighter.  And how can one say that?  It is more beautiful.  How can it be more beautiful?  But somehow it is like the light in the eyes of a wonderful child.  It can be so beautiful.

And so you feel that this is what you already believed was the light of the heavens, but now you are really experiencing it.  And of course it is very difficult to believe that something which is in you is of the same nature of that heavenly light, but one had forgotten it.  So, this is a meditation based upon the early Zoroastrian, Macedon transmission.  You are walking in a world, or rather flying, well anyway you are hovering in this world of heavenly light.  Your aura is your support system and we have already encountered the idea that your intelligence is luminous.  But in between those two, there is your heavenly body, your celestial body of light, which is not the same as your aura, your aura is even physical light.  And so, you identify with your celestial body of light, and you are aware of the light of your aura as the infrastructure of your being, not your body, but your aura.  You are highly aware, intensely aware, awake, and you can see that your intelligence is the intelligence of the whole universe.  And at first, just like a baby, you don't know what's going on around.  It's all full of light, but it's not clearly defined.  And somehow, in that state of reverie, you pinpoint a being of light.  It looks like a human being, but all luminous and radiant, and the crown of light above his head, and you just are so amazed by the discovery of such a being, by discovering such a being.  And, low and behold, this being is walking towards you and you are walking towards this being.  And so, you are full of awe and it appears, the thrill of the encounter with a being of light.  As you approach, you are amazed because you see some resemblance between this being and yourself, and how is that possible?

At a certain moment, there is a coincidence which means that the body of light of that being infuses the body of your being and you realize that this being is your real self whom you had thought of as other.

So, it is not really an infusion of two beings, it's like, simply the discovery that this being whom you thought was other than yourself, you had projected in front of you, but in fact it is your real being.  Now, that's the story of Jacob who was fighting with the angel until he discovered that he was the angel that he did not recognize.

Now this visualization has the effect of reminding you of a condition prior to your birth and conception.  They call it deja vu.  You think that, that was the past, that's what I was and now I've become a human being, and I have forgotten what that was and so on.  So, what is important now is to realize that your are still this being, but somehow you have shifted your identity into your body-ness, and consequently it is very difficult to believe that you are this being.

Now of course, in the desert, in the wild, the wilderness, one can meditate while walking, and of course you could as you walk, you could think that you are schlepping this aura wherever you go.  In fact, instead of identifying with your body, you identify with your aura, and of course the luminous intelligence.  The word that is used by Najbuddin Kobra, a sufi, is "the witness in the heavens."  So, you are the witness, let's say, if you identify with your body, your consciousness, the witness in you is somehow associated with the body.  But, if you identify not just with the aura but with that celestial body between the aura and the light of intelligence, then there is a mode of consciousness corresponding to that celestial body of yours, which Najbuddin Kobra calls the celestial witness or the witness in the heavens. 

And so, what would be the view, the assessment, the judgement, the opinion of the celestial witness in you instead of the earthly witness?  You would be judging everything that you experience on the bases of how gross or how subtle is the attunement.  For example, meeting a person, you would say. "Yes, I must say that, that person has really lost his or her dignity by being defiled by the selfishness and greed and violence, ego trips of the world.  And then you would say, "but in this person, I see something really heavenly in this person."  And actually, the heavenly dimensions of that first person was there all the time, but it has been so covered, as I say, under a bushel, that you can't see it anymore.  And somehow, you recognize in those who are able to honor their celestial light, you recognize your own light.

It would be like, what would be the view, the assessment of an angel coming on earth?  How an angel experiences the earth.  Quite differently to the way that a human experiences the earth.  It would recognize splendor and beauty and meaningfulness without guile, without manipulation.

This heavenly light comes through in a smile.

So, God bless you now.

End of tape.


MAR 07, 1999		Tape 06

So, our objective is awakening. There is no way of defining what it is, except, as I have said, that one is changing one's perspective and therefor seeing meaningfulness in a way one hadn't seen it before.  In order to shift one's perspective, one has to downplay one's previous perspective and therefor questioning its validity.  What I am saying is those perspectives are relative, not maya, but just relative.

Of course awakening cannot be reached by one's will and so it takes an emotional booster to take off from the ordinary purview.  Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan, my father calls it a passion for the unattainable.  What that means, of course it's a very strong emotion, a nostalgia that comes absolutely paramount in one's life.  It seems like just the most important thing in the world.  Unattainable is because one can't say, "I've got it.  I'll put it in my pocket and I've got it now."  It's always further and further in what they call "in infinite regress."  So, it lures one always further and further.  So it's like the target itself that lures one further instead of thinking the target is there.

So, this morning, we had this meditation with the haven, the port that was there, but then afterwards we had one in which we were following a light that kept on moving forward.  You see, and that is really what it is.  But, there's not much point in defining it of course, what we want to do is to see how it can be experienced and therefor what are the methods that trigger off that change in one's perspective so it really happens instead of just believing in it.  That's what we want to explore.

In that sense, of course, we have the tremendous advantage and privilege of being able to avail ourselves of the instructions in the world, the communications of contemplatives of the different world religions who have actually done it and therefor, I mean at least followed this path, and therefor that would be, let's say, our manual of meditation would be based upon all of these methods.  Actually, I have been writing a book on that subject.  And in doing so, of course, I can't tell you how overjoyed I have been to see the parallels between these methods.  At first they seemed so different and then when you go in the depth and you see that really, how could they be different anyway.  They are sometimes complementary, one gives priority to one perspective or another, or one method or another.

So, if I am presenting the Sufi perspective.  At the back of my mind I am still thinking of the different stages in the Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali for example, or in Buddhism or even in Kabala, but I don't want to enclose you in a system.  But, let's say, we want to have guidelines as to the itinerary that we are following that lead us into awakening.

So far we have studied, to a certain extent of course, turning within as opposed to reaching out.  One could say that the heavenly journey starts from within.  So that that first step consists in actually really withdrawing one's attention from the outer appearance of the world and I say withdrawing one's attention, that does not mean that one places a barrier, a blind so that one is totally oblivious of what is happening on planet earth as for example in samadhi.  So, our methods are different, because what we are trying to do is to awaken in life rather than awakening beyond life.  So, can you just feel that while you have the need to involve yourself in life with people and circumstances and so on, you find that you get into a small kind of bind, caught in a situation, even the environment.  Imagine we spend most of our time in houses and offices where the environment is confined whereas the rishis in the Himalayas and the dervishes, even the Hopis, of course search for the mountains, the wildest places.

And then one is caught in a social environment of one's friends and also psychological environment of one's problems and so of course, one's wish to involve oneself in live has made one into a prisoner and one would like to break the walls of this prison.  But the answer is not in simply, perfunctorily leaving, escaping from conditions in order to go into a cave in the Himalayas, but somehow a change in one's way of looking at it and one's emotional involvement with it rather than the actual fact of being in a marriage situation or a job or whatever that has its confinement.

So, one can be bound externally and free internally, or one could be both bound (internally and externally).  And so freeing yourself from external situations will not make you free.  It's in one's way of thinking and seeing things and one's emotions.  And then on the other hand you feel the tremendous longing for freedom.  We think that it is freedom from circumstances, it is really freedom from conditioning, freedom in one's thinking, freedom in one's self image, freedom in one's assessment on one's problems, freedom from one's identity, freedom from one's consciousness, at least the limited range of one's consciousness and so on.  So, perhaps you feel that tremendous, so overwhelming need for freedom and it is that non-emotion, if I may call it that, that will enable you to withdraw you attention to that which is more obvious, like the appearance of the world.  As I said, for example you are looking at a wonderful TV show and your cat comes into the room and you don't turn your attention towards your cat.  So, this is the first step in meditating, is keep your attention in front of you and do not allow your attention to be distracted by what strikes you from outside.  So, that's one of the principles of Salat the prayers of the Moslems.  One needs to keep one's glance straight ahead, not turn one's glance right or left, and of course one's head, naturally except right at the end of the prayer when one turns the head towards the east and west.

So, if you do this, then first of all the physical, at least the physical appearance of the world, of the physical world seems to be rather remote.  Like it's there, you know it's there, but you can't reach it.  You would have to turn towards it to reach it, but you don't want to so, a kind of sense of aloofness, the Hindus call it the viaragya.  It is badly translated by indifference.  It's a very blissful state.  Of course, we have attachments to worldly situations, people, and so Pir-O-Murshid said one loosens the ties, one doesn't break the ties, one loosens the ties.  As Khalil Gibran said, "The big trees in the forest do not grow in each others shadow."  There has to be a breeze in your relationships with people, freedom which enables you to appreciate and honor your partner more than if you made your partner dependent upon you or you became dependant upon him or her.  So, one loosens the ties.

You don't sever the Gordian knot as Alexander did and therefor he didn't conquer the world.

So, now there is a memory.  You are not experiencing the physical world, you are not in contact with people, you are in a state of isolation in the solitude of your soul.  And consequently, you are neither experiencing the physical environment nor are you experiencing your interconnection with people, but you have the memory of it.  So actually the world continues to live in your psyche as a memory.

What the Yogis are saying is that, that memory is distorted, the distortion of one's personal bias.  So one is carrying a distorted view of the world, or one's relationship with people of which one is convinced.  And consequently, in order to awaken, one needs to xray this picture that one makes of the world as one is meditating, and at least question its validity rather than discarding it all together, because what the Sufis are trying to see is what was behind it rather than just discarding it all together.  Now in yoga you discard it.  Although I am saying that, but in fact if you study yoga and deeply, the yoga sutras of Pantanjali, then you find that indeed the sarvikara level instead of sarvitarka, - that's the next level.  You identify yourself with the subtle body and consequently you are grasping what Sufis call, "That which transpires behind that which appears" in the situations, not only in the physical world, but even in the situations.  That which is enacted behind the situations.

So in other words, you are doing some work with your memory to correct your memory and eventually to earmark, pinpoint the more essential and discard the factual.  Like the essence.  So you are really making, - that's an alchemical process, in your memory of experience, you are distilling that "material prima" as they call it, the raw material of your memory and getting to the gist of it.  And, it is that which enables you to turn within, because what we call within, it's not within, it's just that which lies under the surface and which is of a subtle nature, and we already know it's all connected with everything else, like a network.

So now, curiously enough you feel that you are connected with the whole universe from inside and before you thought you were connected from outside through the environment and then, as we expand our consciousness we are reaching far and wide but outside, and now we are reaching far and wide from inside.

That is very important, otherwise if you think you are turning within, you tend to get encapsulated in your thoughts, it's what I call introspection.  It's when you identify with your subtle body.  Like your magnetic field, or rather that you find it doesn't have a boundary.  You see, the body has a boundary, the skin, so then that's where it is easier to interfuse, intermesh with all other beings and all the stars and so on, the whole environment from within.

So, you are reaching out from within, but not let's say for example, you saw the network of roots and then you surfaced from under the water and you saw the lotus flowers.  So now turning within, you are able to grasp the rebirthing that is taking place in you.  Because, that rebirthing breaks through from the void, at least that means a level that we are not aware of, that is unconscious.  Because, it eschews the relationship, subject - object, there is no more duality there.

And, if you try to explore it, you distort it.  And something that is important for a psychotherapist to know is that the unconscious, well it's like the depth of the sea, and if you were to try to bring a deep sea fish to the surface so that you can examine it, it no more functions as a deep sea fish.  It is bloated and it is totally distorted.  So, there is no way of knowing the unconscious.  It is only when the unconscious emerges across the barrier between the threshold in the unconscious and the conscious that it begins to be known.

But, it is true that to foster that rebirthing, you need to watch for its emergence over the threshold of the unconscious, be very alert to what is emerging and even breaking through.  Just like, for example if you watch the little shoots of the crocuses in the winter when they break through the snow, you are waiting for that moment and being very alert in a state of waiting, expectation, and unless you pay attention to this new birthing, it will be stillborn.  So, it's very serious, we are losing chances all of the time, because we are not observing, trying to capture what is emerging from within.  That's the advantage of turning within.

That is a reason why the Sufis attach so much importance to what we have been calling the wazifa or the wazaif, but it is not the right word of course, it's Ismilla Hi, the names of God.  It's a kind of technique that one develops.  One begins to earmark different qualities and familiarize one's self with what the implications of each one is and then one is able to identify a quality that is emerging at this particular point of time and space.  So, this is what I invite you to do now, is ask yourself, "Is there a quality - I've always had this quality, but it seems to be emerging now with much more strength than ever before.  Somehow the universe is telling me that I am at a point where I am ready for a further growth, but I have to become aware of what is happening, because it needs all of my support.  As a matter of fact, you find that the circumstances in your life seem to resonate with what is coming through now.  It is very strange, for example, you are in a situation where that which has been enacted as truth, truthfulness, authenticity, that is exactly the quality that is coming through at this moment in your being.  There is some relationship between the unfoldment of our being and our problems as Jung pointed out.

It's true that the qualities represented a kind of nomenclature that is very conceptualized in our idioms and of course there is no way of defining them.  So it is much more in the terms of the particular attunement that is coming through, whether it could be mastery, it could be compassion, it could be truthfulness, it could be joy, it could be peace, whatever, it could be being of service.  That's what is coming through.

Now, at this stage, what is coming through fashions your subtle body, and eventually it transpires into the expression of your face, but in its initial form, there is a configuration that takes place within your aura - your subtle (body).  Your aura is part of the subtle body.  So, that is why we did the practices that we did yesterday.  Try to visualize, envision how your countenance looks when you concentrate on a particular quality.  So now that quality is no more a concept, but is becoming very real, because it is configured as a form.  Now, as you know, if you walk across a field once, you might disturb a lot of grass, but it will grow again, there the track will be lost.  But, if you keep on crossing that field the same way every day, or several times a day, then you will be building a trail and eventually a path.  And, that's a reason for the repetition of the wazifa.

And, that is true in the circuits of the brain.  The brain takes on certain circuits, enlisted by our thinking and so the very structure of our body, in the cells of the brain is imprinted, is informed by your thinking.  And therefor, Dr David Bohm says, "Do not be surprised if your thinking could distort the circuits in your brain."  So, that accounts for mental disturbances.  The brain itself is effected by the way one thinks and so you can correct that distortion at the mental level.  That's the whole basis of psychotherapy of course, and eventually of course, the circuits in the brain - you build new circuits or they will be altered.  But, the brain doesn't only work in terms of circuits, it also works holistically, as a hologram.  So, there are two things at the same time that are happening.

So, that means that one's overall understanding of meaningfulness has an overriding effect upon the brain.  So, there is a parallel practice we do here and that is as you, well, there are several practices that we could do here.  One is, as you breathe in, breathe in light through your eyes and try to follow up this light as it is threaded through the optic nerve into the brain.  So your brain is really just absolutely full of light.  Because, as you know, nerve cells put out more light than muscle for example or bone.  And then as you exhale, then that light is threaded again through the optic nerves and reaches the retina and breaks through the cornea and shoots out into outer space.

Now, what we want to do is to hold the breath after inhaling.  And now turn your eyeballs upwards, and now instead of identifying with the physical light, you identify with the light of intelligence.  And now as you exhale, you are experiencing what is meant by the Sura in the Koran, "A light upon a light."  The light of intelligence brightens up your glance.  You can think of a situation where a mother is showing her child a puzzle, and she says, "Can you see the pixie in the tree?"  And the child says, "No mommy, I can't see it." "Look again." "No, no I can't see it."  Then, all of a sudden. "Yes mommy, I see it!"  All of a sudden, the whole face of the child lights up.  That's what I mean, that the aura will burn more brightly, because of the flash of your intelligence.

So, now think of a situation where you were so convinced.  For example you were so convinced that your problems were as you thought they were. "You know, the reason for my problem is that awful person, that mean person is ruining my life."  You are convinced about it.  Or, you were convinced that you live with this kind of life, "I'll never attain illumination.  I'll have to go to the Himalayas."  And you are convinced about it.  And all of a sudden the penny drops and you realize that it is just in these circumstances that you can be illuminated, that your problems are not at all what you thought and so on.  That person is not as mean as you thought and you understand where that person comes from.  All of a sudden the penny drops and you see something, and then all of a sudden there is a breakthrough of light in your being.

Ok, now something is emerging in you as you downplay the perspective of the physical world and psychological environment, a rebirthing, and many of you know that birthing takes place in pain, and extreme pain.  There is some joy in that pain I suppose, the anticipation of the miracle of life, breaking through, and of course you know that it is the pain of separation.  Well, I mean at the psychological level there is a pain of separation, because the mother is being split between herself and the child, because the child does not only have the genes of the mother, but also the father.  So that's where the split is.  And so, the new birthing does require, including other dimensions of one's being to those that one had enlisted up to the present, that of the father.

And this is where one really has to ponder upon one's situation in life, because it is the pain of that situation and occasionally, a little bit of joy, but generally there is more pain then joy.  I think it is that pain that keeps luring one's consciousness into a commonplace perspective, because pain is compulsive, it exercises a paramount pressure upon one's consciousness.  You want to meditate and if there is pain in your body, of course the pain prevails.

I have never met anyone who doesn't have pain.  Yes, it's true, the captain in my ship told me he didn't have any problems at all.  I thought it was very rare to meet someone who doesn't have problems.  So, anyway, the pain of some people is far greater than that of others of course.  Can you imagine the pain of a person in a concentration camp.  And there are people in concentration camps today.

Now in yoga and Buddhism I think, there is a tendency not to own one's pain, because since the pain exercise so much pressure upon our consciousness, forcing our consciousness into the ordinary focus.  Then it seems like that's a clue if you are able to discount your pain then or course you don't have that pull forcing you into your consciousness, into the environment.

One can anesthetize the body against pain, but the consequence is that one loses one's awareness, and so a lot of patients prefer pain than being drugged.  So, if you are awakening beyond life, then I understand that you tend to mask your pain.  And it's true that in a samadhi state, it doesn't matter what your body is feeling.  But, our objective is awakening in life, and therefor the body participates in one's experience. 

And so you remember when we were listening to the Piano Concerto of Beethoven yesterday, that at first Beethoven wanted to, let's say, downplay the challenge of the world, because he wanted to get in touch with the resourcefulness in his being.  But then, after that there was a dialogue and the world was saying, you know there is pain and really you have to consider that pain.  If you are just aloof, you are going to experience a state of peace, but that is an escape, that's not what life is about.

And then he processed that pain and eventually it became joy.  That's a great achievement.  In fact, that is the whole challenge of life.  The great composers did this.  Brahms did it, the 4th Symphony, fantastic, overcoming his pain.  And, Ode of Joy.  It's like the rainbow.  There is rain and there is sunshine at the same time, or dancing on thorns and the crown of thorns on your head when you are in a state of sheer exaltation.

Because pain is of course always associated with breakdown of all formations and the only way in which a new birthing can take place is because the earlier configuration had to break down so it can be replaced by another one in which the Sufis call fana.  But then it is followed by baqa, by a reinstatement of the essence of one's being.  So it is only the contingent aspect of one's being that needs to break down, just like, for example if you are making perfume out of the flowers, then the dross needs to be cast away and the essence remains, but that essence first is there in the flower so it is not other than the flower when you extract it.

So there is joy and pain at the same time. 

And also the pain that one has caused to other people.  One's guilt.  Not just one's resentment.  There is pain in one's resentment, there is pain in one's guilt.  This needs to be addressed and dealt with.(?)  It is very much sensitivity and respect for the self, of the individual self, instead of just ignoring the self for the totality.  You see, Bach says, "My music is a model for a commonwealth of humans.  It's based upon he harmony of the stars." Every star needs to have some incentive and yet limited incentive in the interest of the whole harmony.  So, there is pain and frustration in the fact that one's free will is being curtailed.  That means one's individuality, and yet it plays a part in the total picture.

Side 2

I reiterate again the words of Ib'n Arabi, "In creating us, God has to take into consideration our wish."  So, there may be different qualities trying to knock at the door and come through, not just one.  And if you are being manipulated by a super guru up there, then of course you wouldn't have any choice.  So, you can draw your attention to a particular quality that you want to develop, because you know, the most wonderful gift of God is the gift of freedom.  The gift of his own freedom, alienating his own freedom for the sake of giving it to us, at the cost of the orderliness of the universe.  The supreme gift.

It's relative autonomy, but still, some of the pieces of the works of Bach, for example in that moment in St John's Passion when she sings, "It has been fulfilled."  I think it's the alto voice, and then the viola de gamba, and each one is entertaining so much freedom that it is really very difficult to coordinate it.  They are listening to each other, but they are still honoring their own freedom in the context of that harmony.  So now you are really - I don't use the word co-creator.  That is a over simplification and terribly presumptuous to say that we are co-creators with God.  You can't say that in Sufism.  No, you can say that every fraction of the totality participates in the creativity of the totality.  It has some impact within the context of the whole.  So, if you can experience that, how, as Pir-O-Mursthid says, "a kind of dedication of the divine creativity delegated to you," But, perhaps one of the most significant views in Sufism is that you discover yourself by making yourself, by creating yourself just like a sculptor discovers his/her sculpture by making it.  In fact discovers him/herself by making the statue.  So, it's not the knowledge that supercedes the form, it is the configuration that reveals the meaning.

You are discovering yourself by configuring yourself and to be more precise, shaping your aura, the fabric of light of your aura into shapes, into shapes which are those countenances that represent the different facets of your being.  You can say this is my real being being shaped, emerging, taking form with all its different aspects.  One aspect comes through and then another and another.  It's just like a symphony, there are different tempos and themes and rhythms.  Now this level, one uses the word spheres, planes, as though the higher planes were up there some where.  No, we are talking about perspectives, levels of reality.  You don't think of them geometrically, they are inherent within matter, even in any case, within the existential realm.  So, this level, let's say, it's called "Allam el Mithal" by the Sufis.  Mithal - form, and somehow you could say, I like to translate by the level of metaphor.  Metaphor is the way that a thought is configured as a form.  And so, this is the groundwork, the spade work that we are doing.  But now we find that in order for our creativity to become as perfect as possible, we need to enlist the higher levels of our being.  So, the rebirthing from within involves all levels and not just what is coming through from within, from the deep unconscious, the void.  And therefor, if we draw our attention towards the next level, then we will find that it will enrich what is coming through.  I will give it a further dimension, and so on, and then after that there is a still further level, and so on.

So, that next level is exactly what we were doing this morning in the early meditation.  But, you remember how yesterday we were exploring the antimony between the light that can be seen and the light that sees and therefor the difference between our aura and the light of intelligence, and we are both.  And this morning we were introducing a kind of intermediary light, which you recall is the celestial light, which is not physical light and is not the light of luminous intelligence.  Although the aura does not have a boundary, however its configuration resembles very much that of the physical body.  But that of the celestial body is so evanescent, it's so unreal, so very different, so illusive into our grasp that it's very difficult to have any sense of it at all, except in terms of emotion.  Ib'n Arabi says this is where one is leaving imagination behind.  Imagination is, as I say, configuring our thoughts into forms, and so we have some idea as to forms which have a definite outline.  And then, we are beginning to sense what forms that are like the pictures of Walter Chappell.  Flowers photographed by ultra light, in ultra light, where you see the edge of the petals and then you see that there is a kind of emanation beyond them, that is called a corona.  You see the profile, but then the corona doesn't have a profile.  But now we are talking about a level which is where you can hardly talk about form at all.  So, I suppose the only way to have a sense of what it means is in terms of attunement, your attunement.  Is it gross?  Is it subtle?  Is it noble?  Is it personal emotion?  Is it impersonal?  It varies of course according to a lot of factors.  So, that is reality.

And, can you sense the attunement of people?  Not just their body or their thoughts or even their emotions.  Well, that's what we are talking about, emotions.  The emotional attunement of a person, their pitch.  That is the word used by Pir-O-Murshid, their pitch.  It varies, but of course when they are meditating, their pitch is much higher.  The kind of things that make them laugh or causes distress, vulgar emotions, or noble emotions.  Celebrating because one has bought a new car or then being exalted by listening to the B Minor Mass of Bach.  There is a difference.

And Buddha pays a lot of attention to the attunement.  In fact, if you get into Buddha's attunement, you see how sublime it is.  So, if we are working at this level, it will reflect upon the configuration of our aura and of course eventually even the physical body.  You know, you can fashion clay more easily than you can fashion rock.  So that the physical fabric of our body resists the fashioning of our soul to some extent and lends itself to some extent.  But, that's not important.  That is what the Tibetans say is that it is something that is visible for those who have eyes to see.  But, do not think, let's say it has consequences in terms of the configuration of the aura, but itself is not a configuration, it is an attunement.

And for that attunement, to get us into resonance with the celestial spheres, that attunement is not balanced between joy and pain.  It is in the realm of exaltation, of ecstasy.  It is not the same thing.  Ecstasy is not joy.  You can use the word bliss.


So, at the human level, a birthing takes place in pain and joy, but at this level, it is ecstasy that I referred to when I talked about the ecstasy of the mother giving birth to the child.  It is beyond pain and joy.

Now there are practices that will awaken us at this level and they were the practices that we did this morning.  You see all the illuminated beings are most of the time in a state of ecstasy, the dervishes, the rishis, the hermits are in a state of ecstasy.  If they are not in a state of ecstasy, then they are bored.  I have found some of the monks in Mt Athos to be just very bored.  But the ones who are in ecstasy were the ones who were not living in the community, were living in a little cave somewhere or a little hut they built themselves in nature.  So the great art is of course to maintain one's ecstasy while in the middle of people.  And if you feel the attunement of people, you can see exactly what that attunement does to your attunement and what your attunement does to them.  So if you are able to establish some kind of resonance, you are helping that person, because the most wonderful thing is ecstasy.  It's like the wine or the champagne of the mystic.

Most people are low key and they try to have a little emotion by drama, anything, entertainment, TV, all kinds of things, entertainment because they are bored.

It's contagious, it's true and if one is low key one can't force oneself to be in ecstasy, but it is contagious, and I must say I have had the privilege of sitting in the presence of very wonderful beings.  There was this rishi who was sitting in a cave the whole day, the whole night, very small, too small to lie down in, and he would come out in the early morning, about 5:00 o'clock and tons of people came just to be there.  He didn't speak.  I came there and when I was walking back, I was walking on air.  So, it's a kind of magic.  It's the philosophers stone that transforms gross matter into fine matter.  Lead into gold.  Or, the elixir of life of Paracelcus.  He was able to reach that very fine nectar.  And that is happening in our body, because the grosser cells, the cells of our finger nails or in our bones as compared with the cells of the brain for example, or the enzymes or the hormones, they represent, I would call it a very advanced chemistry of the body.  And in one's ecstasy, one is awakening these cells and therefor transforming one's body.  It might be the secret of longevity, to keep being in ecstasy.  That's why some of the rishis live more than a hundred years.

Well, this plane is called Malakut.  Malak means angel, and it is not a matter of do you still believe in angels, like you ask children if they still believe in Santa Clause.  It's more like are you shattered and overwhelmed by the light that comes through the eyes of a child.  That is what I mean by the celestial spheres.  It's not up there somewhere.  Can it come through you too, not just the child, the child in you?

Now, in yoga it is called ananda nogatta.  Ananda means ecstasy.  So that is the stage after savikara samadhi.  Now one has to pass through this very powerful emotional state in order to make the next step into a whole new way of understanding, meaningfulness, which is not based upon experience.  And no act of the will will ever help you to make that quantum leap.  So, it starts of course with the dark night of the understanding that St John talked about, so that you really can't make any sense of life at all.  You realize that you thought you made sense of life or some sense of life, and then you reach a point when you think it is just absolutely useless.  And all the things that you were convinced of fall flat, they collapse.  Some people go through this state which is a psychological breakdown, and unless they can cleave to the possibility of a totally new outlook on life, they get bogged into their despair and the whole psyche breaks down.  That's often to be found in very wonderful, idealistic people who did not know how to make the transit between the breakdown and the breakthrough.

I think we all have it in us.  You see doubt is the key to free ourselves from maya, to free ourselves from illusion.  So, It is good that one questions the teaching that is given to one is a school like the Sufi esoteric school for example, because knowledge that is based upon belief is vulnerable.  There is a difference between belief and faith.  Belief it is in a scripture or somebody told you, somebody who has authority, and there are basic beliefs like, I hope that when I sit on this chair it won't collapse.  So there is a basic belief there somewhere.  Or, that I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, it's not that sure, but still, so far it always has risen.  That's belief.

Faith is something else.  It is really insight that we have that is maybe smothered.  Insight that behind all the ugliness there is splendor and that's when it comes through as beauty.  Beauty is a form, but this is beyond form, splendor beyond form.  Belief that despite all the incongruity of events, there is an ultimate sense.  That is faith.  Belief in God, our minds are appreciating a picture, an interpretation that we make of God, but faith represents a knowledge inherent in us that is not limited by our mind.  You see, also our thinking is acquired.  We have gone to school, maybe university, you have read books, we have talked to people, we have acquired, the baby as it grows up has acquired more and more know-how, knowledge, understanding and some people who have developed a very encyclopedic mind.  Acquired knowledge.

And when this collapses then of course one is in a state of terrible anxiety, all the things that one has relied upon are now being questioned.  That is the dark night of the mind, well, of the understanding of St John of the Cross.  And, as I have already quoted, he was in prison and he managed to escape from prison thanks to the night.  And so he says, that it is thanks to that void of your understanding that you are able to find freedom from the prison. And of course, at that stage he didn't say this, but it was later on in that book called "Bright Flame of Love," that he said like this little flicker of light at the end of the tunnel, all of a sudden becomes very bright and you find yourself.  All of sudden, everything makes sense.  That's the quantum leap.

So, what I am saying is that it's true, that in order to make that quantum leap there has to be a breakdown, but in our experience of, for example managers have this problem.  Like they find that they get to a point when there is no point in continuing to doing what they did.  They must change the whole format of their enterprise.  And of course, in their pursuit of excellence, you find that if the breakdown gets too far, they can't rebuild.  And this is a breakdown they can't rebuild anyway.  So, what they have to maintain is the Ariadnian thread, the continuity in change rather than, let's say, it's the outer things that break down.  But the deep motivation, that needs to be carried through, otherwise you collapse altogether.  So, I would say we all are exposed to this breakdown, like, "What am I doing in life?"  Managers who have no idea about all these things that we are talking about, in their job, they are "business making machines," "money making machines" and at 45 - 55 they go through a mid-life crisis and they ask themselves is that what life is about?  I'm pretty good at making money, but then is that what life is about?

And what is more, they find that I am making money and then there are people who you think make money and are not pulling their weight, and you think, what's this all about?  So, maintain that continuity.

So, there is no way of figuring it out with your mind, what life is about.  And so I would say at this stage.., but you can do it before reaching rock bottom.  Ask yourself, "What are the values that I value in life?"  And make a priority list.  Say, "Yes, I like this and I like that and I enjoy this and so on, but now if I were exiled on an island, what would I prefer?  Is it my coffee making machine or is it a CD so I can listen to the music of Bach?"  So, a list of priorities.  These are all wonderful, very important and so on, but a list of priorities.

And then say, "Well, in what manner am I really walking as I talk.  In what manner am I really making my lip service to a high cause.  Am I making it a reality in my life, or is it just purely my idyllic imagination running lose?  But it is not real, because I am not doing it in my life.  But then, how can I do it in my life when the circumstances are so constraining.  I go to my job, I have my family, how can I bring my ideal into that life situation?"  Well, it depends what your priority list is.  But supposing that you feel like Mother Theresa of Calcutta and you say, "My ideal is helping people, so what am I doing in my life?  I am not helping people," but perhaps you are.  You don't have to leave the world in order to be able to help people.  We are building the world.  Each one of us in our way, we are building a world and our objective is to build a beautiful world of beautiful people.  But of course, it is true that if you come to your job radiating joy, it might help a lot of people who are depressed around you, and perhaps if you are full of optimism, it will help people who are in despair or who are disgruntled.  And if you love people it will help them to overcome their resentment.  So you can bring your ideals in your daily life.

But, that is what I am saying is that these ideals are not just concepts.  The background of them is our emotional attunement.  And so we had to get in touch with our deep emotions before we could understand our motivations.

Now in terms of thinking.  Where is a breakthrough?  So now I refer to Ib'n Arabi.  He says that you leave imagination behind.  You see the basics, let's say the contribution of Islam to Sufism is, you put it this way, is that as I have already said, the world is made of devices, ayat, signs, clues that are giving you a clue as to what the intention was.  So, what we are experiencing, our understanding is based upon these clues.  So, God reveals him/herself, discloses him/herself to you by these clues, with not just his/her intention but his/her being.  And so our consciousness is picking up these clues and our minds are trying to co-ordinate these elements together into some kind of sense of meaningfulness in life.  Now, the breakthrough comes, again in the word of Ib'n Arabi where he says, "God now reveals himself without clues."

So in other words, your understanding of what is being revealed to you cannot rest upon the clues.  And that is why Ib'n Arabi says knowledge is a veil upon the known.  So the known is not known because it is veiled by your knowledge and you can acquire as much knowledge as you like, but you can't figure it out with your mind.  But now you have insight into the programming behind the universe's software, and now you understand the hardware.  If you try to pick a computer to pieces, try to understand the software by picking a computer to pieces, you wouldn't.  You would never be able to grasp the software.  But, if you know the software and then you have the technology you can build a computer.

So, we are going about it in the wrong way to try and make sense of life with our minds.  And here the clue is to switch over your consciousness into the divine mind.  That is the antipodal pole of your being, of your own being.

And therefor, the Sufis call this revealed knowledge instead of acquired knowledge.  And so you cannot acquire it by your will.  You can only acquire it by being passive towards the divine thinking that is inherent in your thinking.  So an illustration of this is to be found in the words of Newton when he says, "I think as God thinks." which seems terribly presumptuous.  But you see, if a physicist has any clue as to what makes the world tick, it is because his/her thinking is of the same nature as the thinking of the universe.  That's what Newton said, I think as God thinks.  If I think as a human thinks to try and understand God.  No Way.  I have to think as God thinks to understand, to see meaningfulness. 

And so here you see the importance of the notion of God.  And up to the present, I said we are projecting upon God what we would like God to be, or imagine God to be.  Now we are beginning to realize the tremendous importance of God, but not as a projection.  And of course, if we think of God as other than ourselves, then we are still limited in our understanding and therefor the only way to do it is to shift your sense of identity into the pinnacle pole of your being which is God.  In other words, not to think of God as other than yourself.  But we are all, let's say, at the pinnacle of our being, we are God.  That superior pole of our being.  We have two poles.  It is like a pendulum, the lower pole is moving in time and space and the top pole remains stationary.  That is the higher pole of our being.

So of course this is theory, I know, but we have to really experience it.  So I suppose we have to have a break now.  So we are going to try and experience it after the break.  See how we can translate it in terms of practices that trigger off that change in our sense of identity.

End of tape.
MAR 07, 1999		Tape 07

We are longing for awakening, and if it is just a personal desire, our ego stands in the way.  And therefor, it has to be the way that the universe awakens as you, rather than the way that you want to awaken to the universe.  That is the reason for switching your consciousness in the antipodal point of view to the usual one.  And, the access to that is sacredness.  That's the reason why people go to church, that is the reason why people go to the Mosque.  Everybody during Ramadan, if you are in Cairo, everything stops, and carpets down and everyone is looking for the sacred.  People are transfigured by the sacred.  We are looking for circumstances that are favorable to experiencing the sacred.  The music, the beauty of a cathedral or a mosque or the temple, the temple bells, the chants, the costumes, the pageantry.  We are looking for circumstances that are favorable for getting into an attunement of sacredness.  But, as I said, the Sufis and the early Iranians and Jews, they had to find that sacredness in themselves without counting upon favorable circumstances.

So first it is wonderful to see..., I don't know whether it means what it means to me, but it is wonderful to be able to really participate in the cosmic celebration in the heavens right on earth.  Thanks to modern technology, it is quite amazing.  But, having done so, then we need to find that sacredness in ourselves.  And that is again the child within that is pure and cannot be defiled even though it seems to be distorted as it grows older, but the child is still there.

And that is what we call finding the God within.  Pir-O-Murshid says, "God is hidden in his creation."  I would say embedded.  So, then think of yourself as a condition of God.  That is again a word of Pir-O-Murshid, as a condition of God.  Like the waves are a condition of the sea.

So, there is of course a dichotomy between...  The whole of our being is the being of God, but there are levels.  At one end, one is so conscious of one's personal, individual identity that one has lost the identity of the whole, the divine God consciousness.  And then, at the other end you can be in a state where you are so immersed in the divine consciousness, that you lose your personal consciousness.  And somehow, we want to, of course, be able to travel along this pendulum, because it is like a pendulum.  The bottom is moving in time, the top is stationary.  So, that's where the practice is.  How can we use this image of the pendulum in order to awaken to what is called God consciousness.  Let's say it is the sacred that is the test and the conditioning for accessing that higher knowledge, which is what we mean by awakening.  And that's why Nifari says, he is a Sufi, he says, "I am not allowed to give you the key to the treasury.  You have to be ready for it."  So there is a sense that there are limits to what one can teach, or what I can teach.  But of course, you have to do it yourself.  But there are practices that might help you.  We have this view now, we have this paradigm that will help us from just finding ourselves in one pole and then the other.  The importance is to be able to extrapolate between these two poles of our being.  So, instead of thinking of God as Him up there somewhere, that it is really the pole of our being is coextensive with that of all other beings and that is probably what we mean by God.  But nevertheless, everything is God, even physical matter.

So, that's a way of thinking.  Now how can we incorporate it in our practices so we actually experience it.  Well, we have a practice here.  If you place your thumb of your right hand under you chin and then the middle finger of your right hand on your 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 your left nostril.  And now just keep on pressing the middle finger of your right hand, then inhale through the left nostril.  Now, hold your breath pressing both fingers on the nostrils, and exhale through the right by releasing your middle finger of your right hand.  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.

Now this is a practice of paranayama.  It's in its initial form developed by the yogis.  One is calibrating one's polarity left to right, high up and down.  The yogis wanted to understand the mystery of the functions of the human body, so they dissected cadavers and they discovered that there are three nerve trunks.  One is inside the spinal chord and then there are lateral ones, left and right.  And you know the purpose of the yogis was to enlist the control of the autonomic system by the central nervous system.  That is the will over automated functions of the body.  Now those two systems, the autonomic with the two lateral channels and then the central channel, I would say, governs perceptions and actions, like the way that one reacts to a situation that one has perceived by one's will.  And then there are other functions that are taken over by the autonomic nervous system, for example your heart beat, your digestion, a lot of functions.  However, there is some way in which the automated factions can be controlled by the central nervous system and also there is some way in which the central nervous system can be enriched by the flow from the autonomic function.  So, there are what they call afferent and efferent nerves.  Nerves that communicate between those lateral channels and the central channel.  And, they found that those nerves connect up into centers, plexus of the autonomic nervous system.  And so the chakras are those plexus, they are not just limited to the physical body.  They are stations in that whole network of nerve impulses or circuits.

So, in order to ensure the control of autonomic functions by the will.  What one is doing is to enhance to flow of nervous impulses from the lateral channels into the central channel.  So, this could be pictured as follows.  When you are breathing through the left nostril, you see, instead of thinking that the energy just moves up the left channel, you realize that energy really swirls up in a spiral, in fact, smoke does that too.  So, if you breathe in through the left nostril and concentrate on the way that earth energy, telluric energy impinges upon your bottom chakra on the left, then it will swirl upwards clockwise if you are looking down upon your body, then it would be clockwise.  So, that is described by the yogis as a snake that has been aroused and that spirals upwards so it will move in front of you and then on your right and then back and then your left and then in front and so on, it will spiral upwards.  So the time it moves in front of you it will move into your second chakra and then it will move into your solar plexus at your back, and then it will move into your heart center in front, and then it will move into your throat center behind, that's what they call the atlas, and then it will move into your third eye in front, and then it will reach a pinnacle in what is called a bindu, which corresponds with the pituitary gland, and from there fan out into the crown center.

Now the same is true when you breathe through the right nostril.  The energy is going to move again into your solar plexus moving from right to the center of your body and the left, and then behind and so on, and move up all of the chakras.

So, when you breathe in through both nostrils, those two spirals crisscross in front of your second chakra and then behind your solar plexus, in front of your heart center and so on.  So you are enhancing the afferent nerves that are moving from the lateral channels into the center when you breathe in through both nostrils.  Now then it is very clear that there are two spirals, but what is clear is that they are converging towards the center and that at the same time rising in the center, in the spinal chord.  And so, if you think in terms of this adage of the Tibetans, "the mind rides the wind."  So think that now you are working with energy, but this energy acts as Pegasus for example, a winged steed which is able to carry your conscious towards the Olympus.  Your consciousness is the rider of Pegasus who was Belafron.  But of course, according to the legend, Pegasus was not able to reach the Olympus himself and so Belafron had to precede further using the momentum that had been imprinted upon him by Pegasus in order to reach the Olympus.  So, energy will lift you up to a point and at a certain point you have to continue on your own steam.  But still, you have been given some momentum by the way that the energy ascended.

Now you must already remember that the energy is transmuted, so what you feel is a kind of energy at the bottom of your spine and compare it with the energy at the top of your head.  Well, even in the pituitary gland, you realize how different it is.  That the energy is gross energy at the bottom of the spine and becomes very, very fine in your pituitary gland and particularly above your head.  So, that's what one calls the Holy spirit.  The fine energy that you experience at the top most part of your body, and then when you exhale, through both nostrils, now you are bringing this very fine energy down into the body.  So it's the opposite of transmuting.  It is what the alchemists call the materialization of spirit, instead of the spiritualization of matter.

And so, you can really experience this, what a lot of contemplatives call "the quickening of the Holy spirit."  That infuses the very cells of your body.  So this is, of course, a wonderful practice.  So, I would invite you now to do it, instead of just thinking of your breath, thinking of the way that the energy ascends and balances itself and the way that it is not just spirals, but a real cone of energy.  And, the way that you inhale, the energy tends to converge at the center and as you exhale, it descends and it extends in the vastness.  And when you hold your breath, then you are like that state of Belafron who has eschewed any kind of support system by energy and let's say leaves the launching platform to experience samadhi.  Ok, let's do it now.

Turn your eyeballs upwards and curl your tongue and press it against the palate as you hold your breath.

And then as you exhale, of course, you place your eyeballs up in the normal position and your tongue in the normal position again.

Ok now, just relax for a moment.  Now we are going to make the next step.  Perhaps you realize at the bottom of this whole structure there is a motion from left to right, from right to left, but at the top it remains stationary.  So these illustrate the two poles of your being.  At the bottom your being is not only your body, but your mind and so on, everything, your personality is changing, is moving in time and space.  Now on the other hand, the other pole of you being you remain really at the pinnacle, there is a point of your being which does not change.  But, between these two points, these two poles there are a lot of very significant points.  And one is the transit between transiency and eternity which is everlastingness.  That means that whatever you have achieved in  your life or your realization never gets lost, recycled into the programming of the universe.  So there is a motion from the bottom towards the top, instead of just from the left to the right.  It's a cycle and of course, there is a feedback.  But, that is not eternity, that is everlastingness.

When Jelaluddin Rumi says, "Tonight the umpteen stars give birth to the life everlasting".  That is what he is saying, is that the divine programming is being enriched by the experience of the earth.  And that never gets lost.  That knowledge never gets lost.  So, God acquires a mode of cognizance by experiencing him/herself as us in the existential world.  But, there is a higher point, which is really the pinnacle of the pendulum, which represents unchanging eternity in fact.  It represents eternity.  It doesn't have a beginning.  Everlastingness has a beginning, there is some kind of a process there, an extraction of the essence from the contingent, but at the pinnacle, the pinnacle does not entertain qualities.  It is pure intelligence.

Now in terms of the experience, you could experience the everlastingness of your being.  If you think that your experiences of life is distilled into what one calls one's realization, and that is what  you are.  You are your realization.  Your body and your mind and so on, your psyche are support systems, but every person is in life according to their realization.  So that is the everlastingness.

The continuity in.., well it begins.  The continuity in change but it is not just continuity in change, because that is horizontal, but this is vertical.  The dichotomy between the software and the hardware.  Imagine a computer in which the software were continually transformed by the feedback from the hardware.  Transformed and enriched.  So your realization, I said your realization, but that is continually changing as you progress.  That is what Pir-O-Murshid calls experiencing the deathless state.  Somehow one continues to exist after death as pure realization without needing to have the support system of the body and the mind.  You can start experiencing something like that in astral projection, because you experience that you can see without eyes and hear without ears and move without feet or fly without wings and think without a brain.  So that is where you discover your deathless state while the body as it is gets disintegrated.  But there is still the gist of your being that survives in what is called resurrection, and that is your deathless state.

Now that is not to be confused with your eternal state where there is no sense of individuality remaining at all.  And that is the state of samadhi and probable what the Sufis mean by Tawhid.  And that is really in infinite regress.  You can never reach it.  That's why Pir-O-Murshid said "the unattainable."  But, somehow you know that there is a state which cannot be influenced by what happens on the earth.  And, perhaps that's the reason why Buddha says this becoming cannot lead to the non-become.  However much we evolve, it will not give you an awakening beyond the existential state.

So, how do you do this.  Of course the breathing practice helps you.  But now it will get back to real experience, like you are sitting there and the physical world seems to be rather remote and your problems are not what you thought they were.  You remember all that remains of the physical world and of your problems is the memory of them which you are correcting, because you see that it has been distorted, and now you are experiencing the rebirthing - we have done all this.  So, that means the configuration of your aura and then the attunement of ecstasy.  And now, all of a sudden the dark night of the mind and the sudden realization, like the whole universe is revealing its intention to you, God is revealing his intention to you.  So this realization has an everlasting quality to about it, it is not subjected to change.

But now, what you need to do, and these are the words of Buddha, at least the way they have been interpreted.  You leave the launching platform, because there is no continuity between everlastingness and eternity.  Let's say you leave the samsaric wheel on a tangent, and that's what we are doing in the dhikr.  When you say Hu, you are.., even the h of Allah, you are reaching beyond, you are leaving the wheel, the repetitiveness of life that keeps on turning around in circles, even if it evolves into that state which remains unchanged by the changes that happen in the infrastructure of your being.  So, it is not what one calls realization.  Realization is still in terms of understanding.  So how can we have any sense of now what that means, because we are talking about awakening and we think that awakening is a matter of understanding. 

Now, there is a key to this, and the key is in the words of Nifari, that dervish, that crazy dervish who was in the desert and he occasionally visited his daughter, who was married, and he said very strange things that she couldn't understand.  It has all been published.  And what he says is, "You have been seeking for knowledge, but do you know the knower?"  That is beyond knowledge.  You have been enjoying listening to the music of Beethoven or Brahms or Bach, but do you know Beethoven?  Do you know Brahms?  Do you know Bach?  The little one can know is if you read their biographies and then you understand Beethoven.  Yes, you understand when you start knowing something about his life.  Brahms, you understand his music if you understand his life.  And Bach, it is very difficult to understand the life of Bach.  Sixteen children, crawling around his knees while he was composing the toccatas and fugues for the organ.  You know how children really bring you down to earth again.

So, do you know God?  Of course, no way.  But God is revealing to you his/her being beyond his qualities.  Now, when you think of a person, you think of their qualities.  You think, well I like this person because he is jolly or he is nice or he is compassionate, or whatever.  Or she, has a lot of emotion and so on.  But, those are qualities that predicate the being, but the being itself is beyond the qualities that are predicated.  Perhaps this will explain those two further levels that I haven't described.  We have reached that point, if you remember, when after the dark night of understanding, we switched over into the divine mind that was revealing its thinking to our thinking.  It is called Jabarut in Arabic.  Jabar means the bone setter, the chiropractor.  Well, putting things right.  One distorted mind, and now it's putting things right.  That's the way the thinking of the universe is, instead of the way you think it is.  It's impelling, compulsive.  That's what the word Jabar is translated by.  Compelling-ness.  So the thinking of God is compelling.

Now, to see this more clearly, you have to distinguish the act of consciousness with the act of intelligence.  And what Pir-O-Murshid is saying is that intelligence becomes consciousness when it is faced with an object.  And when you empty consciousness of its content, then it is reversed back to its ground which is intelligence.  And so, samadhi is a state in which you eschew any, well the act of consciousness which is passive, which is picking up information by voiding consciousness of its content, and then you find that intelligence will emerge which is active instead of passive and it thrusts its light upon all things.  It is the light of Alladin.  And the compelling-ness of this sudden realization is so strong that it shatters your understanding totally.


Well you find that in yoga, and of course in Sufism, but I must say that Pir-O-Murshid was very conscious of the importance of life...

Side 2

...to just into a trance state which Buddha accused the yogis of simply getting into a trance state and also trying to develop powers like what they call siddhis.  And he said, "In what manner does this help people in their suffering?"  So, Pir-O-Murshid is very aware of it and that's why he doesn't like the idea of leaving the launching platform.  And as a matter of fact, if you think of a spacecraft, a spacecraft is carrying something of the matter of the planet out of the planet.  The launching platform is still there, the matter of the planet is still there as a support system.  So that as you rise do not make that split between your consciousness and your body, but think that you are transmuting your body-ness and schlepping that perfume of your being upwards into samadhi.

And what is more, and I haven't found it in anyone but Pir-O-Murshid's teaching, but maybe it is, what he says, his words are, "Wisdom is born of the integration of the knowledge of the earth and the knowledge of the heavens."  So, it's not one or the other, but somehow the way that those two can be related, integrated.  Now, that's Murshid's views and as I say, I haven't seen it anywhere.  That means, we were, how can I say, we were congratulating ourselves that we were able to overcome the personal vantage point in order to get into the divine vantage point, and now we are associating the two in what Pir-O-Murshid calls wisdom.  So, instead of just, I used to think one has to awaken beyond and then afterwards awaken in life, now I think one has to still be thinking of awakening in life by awakening beyond life.  One has to extrapolate between the two instead of just oscillating and then alternating between one and the other.

Now that is the conclusions I have come to after years, decades of experience, because of course, it's a wonderful thing to experience samadhi.  You feel as though you are awake beyond life and it is just as though you have flown beyond the galaxies, beyond the range of the stars, what we call the existential universe.  It's a wonderful feeling, but I think it is a perspective, just like one's personal perspective is also a perspective.  But, if you are able to extrapolate between that perspective and that of the individual, then of course that is awakening in life and that is exactly what we are trying to do.  We are not trying to awaken beyond life.  But, as you see, it is much more difficult.  But, that is a challenge of spirituality of the future.

So, now, let's just try to move up through these planes or levels, what Ib'n Arabi calls the 'heavenly journey."  So, you remember it starts by enlisting your need for freedom from being caught in your personal vantage point and consequently the scene of the physical world and events in your life, so that is remote.  You can't quite, you could of course turn your consciousness towards it, but your glance is straight in front of you and you don't allow your glance to turn right or left.

But, now instead of regurgitating the impressions of the day, you turn your attention to what is emerging from within.  Do eventually, of course, you see the impact of your person upon the events rather than the impact of the events upon your person.

So, this required us turning within, loosening the ties with the environment.  There is a consequence when you remember the existential state, but you are not experiencing it.  You are not experiencing your body either.  Not aware of your body, but you remember that you were caught in a perspective.  But, now you turn within and you see the rebirthing taking place and jelling into a physical structure.  But, you remember that, you see, ecstasy, I think it starts by be- wondering, bemusing, it's being so overwhelmed by the meaningfulness of life, with all its drama and its tremendous achievements of our great civilizations.  Even the extraordinary fact that you are able to be part of all of this, to see yourself as part of all this, it is the greatest privilege that one could ever imagine.  So, there is a kind of enthusiasm that goes with this realization.  And of course, the more one penetrates the mystery of life, the more one is amazed, and that is what triggers off ecstasy.  Physicists themselves say, they never cease to be amazed by the elegance, not just the meaningfulness, but the elegance of the universe.  So, elegance is a question of attunement rather than understanding.  So, that's where your admiration for the meaningfulness in the universe is superceded by the ecstasy of your attunement, by your state of be-wondering, and it reaches beyond that into glorification. 

Now there is an aspect of God that I did not mention, because I reserved it for this moment.  You see I said, we projected upon God what we imagine God to be or what we would like God to be, and somehow in doing this, and trying to do this, one is projecting upon what one imagines God to be the qualities of which one is familiar.  Qualities of one's personality, qualities of the personality of other people, qualities that you might find in an elephant for example, the great majesty of the elephant or in a falcon or an eagle, you find another quality, and so on, and in a horse.  So every where you look, in plants, in flowers, everywhere, in mountains, everywhere, in the desert, you find the way that these qualities have configured themselves into forms that tell you something about those qualities.  So now, you imagine that these qualities are the qualities of God, but in order to be able to project them upon your image of God, you have to try to imagine them as perfect as possible.  One is aware that one has a certain amount of compassion, and a certain amount of joy and peace, but you imagine that God's compassion must be absolutely infinite and his joy must be infinite.  So somehow, one is relating this quality in oneself, this exemplar to the archetype of which one is the exemplar.  And so, one is establishing a relationship with God which is not that of inheritance as in Christianity, you are the Son of God.  If you are the son or the daughter of your father or you mother, that means that you have the same qualities or rather similar qualities that have been spilt over.  But one's relationship with God is that of the exemplar in its connection with the archetype.  So, this is interesting for somebody who knows something about Islam, the word warith, which means the inheritance, or God is the inheritor. 

In fact, the sentence in the Koran is that God is the inheritor of the beings on earth.  And, that is very amazing.  But, if you understand it's all one, it makes sense.  But that word..., we are so used to the Christian concept of inheriting the divine qualities, not just Christ said, "Be perfect as your father", but of course in the Jewish religion, the mystics always use the word Abba the word father for God.  Even St John of the Cross when he was arraigned before the judge, he said, "I have another father."  He didn't say your not my father, he said I have another father.  But, you see that is in the light that was brought by Islam.  You see that it is like the way roundness manifests in round tables, or rose-ness manifests in roses and so on.  So, the relationship between the archetype and the exemplar, that's very important, because this is what gives us access into the next level after Jabaraut, which is Lahut.  That is the level of the divine archetypes, let's say the multiplicity at the highest level, at the level of the programming.  Let's say the code of the universe.  So, at this level in your awakening you discover, you are beginning to or rather the code of the universe is beginning to disclose itself through its exemplification in qualities in your being or the beings of other people.  I hope this is not too metaphysical, but there is no way of avoiding it, to make it more practical, imagine that somebody comes in the room who is very peaceful, and you say, "Isn't that wonderful to see this peaceful person."  But the dervish would say, "Isn't it wonderful to see the divine peace coming through this person."  So, that's the difference between attuning yourself to the Lahut level or attuning yourself to the Nazut level, which is the Human level.  Now, that's Lahut.

In Yoga it is called Sarbiga.  Biga means seeds.  So the level in which you are experiencing the seeds behind those plants that exist in the existential world.  That's what we are doing in our practices, what we call the wazifa.  We are trying to establish that connection with the archetype of the qualities in our being.

Then the next level is Hahut, which is beyond qualities, where you find unity instead of multiplicity.  And then in yoga it is called Nirbiga, no seeds, beyond the seeds.  In the German language, one makes a difference between Zeine und Vaisen.  To be or to exist one could say.  So, one says, what kind of a person is that when they are thinking about their qualities.  But one says the divine being beyond qualities.  And in Latin it is (...?) if you know Latin.

So now you have reached the stage which is called eternity.  Pure being without, beyond any of the qualities that are present in this total being, but latent and becoming manifest in the course of the descent.  So it is like, for example a liquid in which salt, for example which is in a saturated state, and then if you alter the temperature then the salt crystals begin to emerge out of a solution.  So, that is the descent into manifestation.

God bless you now.

MAR 07, 1999		Tape 08

...John Sebastian Bach played by Milstein.  Milstein, in my estimation, is the best exponent of Bach's partitas.

We are approaching the end of a very short seminar.  It would have been good if we had a whole week.  So, we must take the plunge in the last of the practices in the history of the world.  Namely the dhikr, the dhikr of the Sufis.  It embodies all the four dimensions that we have been exploring.  The cosmic, turning within, reaching upwards, looking downwards from above, awakening in life.

So, the beauty is that it is all embodied in one breath.  It is not just awakening beyond life, it is awakening in life.  The consequence is that it gives the dervish that incredible power which is absolutely unique and mainly to be found in the dervish.  The difference between the rishi and the dervish is that the rishi has left the world and is sitting in a cave in the Himalayas, and has probably not seen any human being for twelve years, from one kumbamayla to the other.  And the dervish is sitting there on a pile of banana peels, in the market place in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of life in ecstasy.  He is described as a king in robes (in lux?), and Shams Tabirz describes him as a palace in a ruin.

I think of, I prefer the palace of Persepolous, which is a ruin, than the Las Vegas Casino.  It is a ruin, but you see the beauty coming through.  It is a royal beauty.  So I think it is a consoling thought when you find that your body is starting to fall apart.  But, you are still a palace in the ruin.  But, behind this there is something that is not totally.., well, the common thing in America, and that is Aristocracy.  The aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the ego.  That comes from the sense of discovering God in one's self.  It is quite a different thing to thinking of God up there.  That word, the divine inheritance, as I said, it's speaking in the Christian language and the language is the way that God becomes us in order to discover him/herself as us and also to disclose him/herself to us.  But, that is the fundamental precept upon which the whole of Sufism is based, it's based on the Hadith.  God speaking, "I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be know, therefor I created the world in order to know myself."  Now, that is the way, the Hadith, - that means the saying of the prophet that has been given orally.  It wasn't written down and has been passed from one person to another in the course of history.  People ascertain that indeed, this is what the prophet said, which is quite different from the suras of the Koran which were written down right away, they were dictated.  So, Jelaluddin Rumi says something which sounds like a contradiction.  He said it wasn't in order to know himself that God created you.  It was out of love for you that he descended, for the possibility of you that he descended from the solitude of unknowing.  Why would the gardener have planted the seed if it weren't for the love of the plant.

So there you have understanding and love.

And so, you can say the dhikr is an expression of.., it starts by be wonderment, because of the tremendous polarization between man and God.  So, there is a sense of awe facing the greatness of that being that I call the universe.  But when one discovers that being as one's self, as another expression of one's self, but still not remote, absolute, up there, transcendent, then the relationship is the one of love.


There is a word of the Sufis, "God is the one whom every love loves in every beloved."  And so we think we love a person but what we love is the God ideal of the God that one sees coming through that person.  Those are the highest forms of love.  And maybe, you have discovered what it means to be in love with love.  That is why Al Hallaj, who was crucified for several political reasons, but one thing he said was, "An al Haqq", which means, well it means reality. "I am the truth.  But the truth is the name of God that is not created, and of course he was condemned.  You know there is the saying, I think it was (Ellis de Caselliae?) who said, "When there is a stupid judge in the court, there is a victim on the cross."  Al Hallaj was crucified because he said, "An al Haqq".  A stupid person would interpret it meaning, "I am God." and so that is a terrible presumption.  You have a verb in India that a lot of Swamis say, "I am God" and it is accepted, but now, of course, Islam, you don't want that kind of thing to happen.  But, what he said is, "There is not one tear between my eyelids and a drop of blood in the cockles of my heart that is not aware of thy presence."  So that one's whole being is shattered by the discovery of God.  It is not just knowing, it is far beyond knowing.

Discovering the beloved right in one's own being or through one's being.  It's paradoxical, there is no way of saying it in a logical way.  So the dhikr is, as I said, preparing a temple for the presence of God out of our own body.  One does not depend upon a temple, and as I said the Nomads have to build a temple themselves.  That presence is then held in one's heart.  So, we already started to practice the dhikr.  We started with the dhikr of light, building a circle of light and then a spiral with light, and then the axis.  You remember that there are three principles, a circular motion, that reflects the motion of the galaxies and the stars and the planets.  And then there is a vertical axis that represents the dichotomy, antimony, God - man.  And then there is a mysterious "H" at the end, which is exactly what Buddha meant when he is talking about outside the wheel, beyond the wheel.  You go off the samsaric wheel in the tangent.

And then it is followed by the "H" which represents that, it represents samadhi, is then followed by a "u", "Hu", which is awakening in life and discovering God in one's own heart.  So, now I think that we are ready to learn the words and see the significance of those words.  The words are "La illaha illa 'llah Hu".  So, "la" means no, and "ill" means affirmation, negation first before the affirmation.  So I have to first negate what is not, before I affirm what is.  So the dervish says, "La" that is very absolute, radical. "It is not".  During this whole seminar we have been talking about what is not.  So, the first thing that affirms the will of the child is when you say to the child, "Do this", and the child looks at you and says. "No!", "La", "No!". 

I saw once the secretary, actually it was the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Gulam Mohamed, and he said he had a Sufi murshid, and he heard about my father.  He said, "You see, my murshid taught me the dhikr in slow stages."  Yes of course, he was a finance minister before being Prime Minister, and he said, "My teacher taught me the dhikr in slow stages, so I was on "la" for a long time."  And you see, he died after that.  And that is why I didn't became Prime Minister, because I know how to say no.

So unless you know how to say no, you mustn't say yes.  First know how to say no.

Now, there is a kind of implicit affirmation in the "no", it is a conditional no.  It is saying it is not maya, BUT...  The world is not maya, no, but something comes through it.  That's the Sufi view.

The consequence is that your consciousness is extending cosmically.  When you say "La" your consciousness reaches the confines of the universe.  And then the head turns.  The head moves in a circle.  If you remember, the head comes down, or turns towards the solar plexus.  So, after saying "la", you are moving from the left shoulder, left knee, right knee, right shoulder.  You are moving up to the zenith.  So, "la" "illaha", from the right shoulder up.  And, "illaha" means divinity.

And actually, what we did when we were trying to experience the cosmic dimension, was we were extending our consciousness in the physical world.  But if you continue that, then you are extending it on all planes, and not just the physical world.  So it is not just horizontal.  It en-globes the whole of reality.  So, "illaha" means divinity.  So there is no divinity.  So, if you translate in simplistic terms, you know, divinities, Gods and Goddesses and idols and so on.  That's what he means, the destruction of the idols.  But that's the exoteric meaning.  The esoteric meaning is that..., it doesn't make sense until you say the next word.  The next word is "except".  There is no divinity except...  Except God.  Now again exoterically those idols, that's not God, there is only one God, and so on.  The God of Abraham.  That's the exoteric sense.  The inner sense is that in fact, there is a sense that is given in the Arabic. "Illaha", divinity is the aspect of God that is existential.  So there is no divinity except the divinity of God in existence.  That means the presence of God in man.  That is to say it in a simplistic way. "La illaha, illa"- except.  And so when you say "illa" you turn within.  That is what we learned to do.  And you even hit rock bottom, the solar plexus, maybe you reach right down to the lower chakras. "La illaha illa" and the head rebounds on "illa" and you do not say "Allah".  You don't say "La illaha illa Allah", you say "La illaha illa 'llah". 

There are two "ll's" and so we don't pronounce the first "A" of the word "Allah".  The reason for that is because grammatically, well, it doesn't sound very good if you say "illa Allah".  So you don't say the two "a's" one after the other.  But, there is a deeper meaning.  If you remember the stages that we have gone through.  At first there is the cosmic and even Nazut, that means the physical, and then we reach up to the planes and then we turn within.  Now as we turn within, if you remember that what was happening is that we were experiencing the rebirthing that is taking place and it happened by transforming thoughts into forms, or rather fashioning thoughts into forms.  We call it "Allah en Mithal".  If you remember, mythology, mithal - form, the world of metaphor.  So when you turn within then, you reach into the void, "illa" the "a" emerges out of the void and that's the moment when your new birthing impinges upon the existential world.  That is the moment when you emerge.  You are reborn.  So that "a", the last "a" of "illa", then you concentrate on the whole universe as being reborn as me, out of the void, and is recurrently reborn and therefor there is a possibility of change every time.  One isn't born just once, one keeps on being reborn at every second.  The word is recurrently.

And then we have the word "Allah", "'llah".  So there is that "A", the first "a" of "Allah" that you don't say.  My way of, maybe it is my own personal interpretation of it, it's because it is so breathtaking when you realize the heavenly spheres, because you remember the different stages.  There was Nazut, the world, and then there was Mithal, the creation out of the void.  And then if you remember, there was Malakut, there was the heavenly spheres.  You are so moved by, "The heavenly status is embedded in my being and is trying to reveal itself to me." 

Now if you remember, we followed this up with the condition of Jabarut which means awakening from acquired knowledge into revealed knowledge.  The "L" always represents a transit, a motion from one state to another.  The "a" represents the states.  So in the word "Allah" one is moving from the heavenly planes to the level which is called Lahut of the archetypes, and between these two there's a transit.  One awakens into the revealed mode of knowledge.  Why should it be two "L's".  There again, it is open to interpretation, but I can think of a very nice interpretation, and that is there is a tradition in the Koran, God make this nocturnal journey from Mecca to Jerusalem.  Actually, to the celestial Jerusalem and he came into the presence of God distant from two throws of an arrow.  Distant from what is called the lotus of the limit.  And so, the Arabs used to measure distance by the distance that it took when you pull your arrow back before you launch it.  So the distance between that, and let's say, the line that would normally be between the two ends of the bow.  That's called "kabb", that's the distance.  And so normally, that is as much as you could do.  One kabb, the whole strength, of your whole strength is drawing that arrow back against the tension of the string.  But, it's two arrows, so you have to have a mighty force to reach that point.  I'm paraphrasing, I'm not sure if whether this is an accepted view in Islam.  I don't think I could be condemned for this view. (laughter)  I must be very careful.


The two "L's" give you an extraordinary sense of moving forward, advancing at an tremendous rate.  After that celestial sphere now your point of view is changing so radically, until you reach the last "a" of "Allah", which is, let's say, back stage of the universe where you see the archetypes behind everything that manifests concretely of what I call the exemplars.

So, those are the planes or the stages or levels or whatever you want to call it that you find written right into the dhikr.  Until you get to the "h" of the word "Allah", and that is a total departure from the "L" and the "a".  And so, that is the state of samadhi.  So your head is now turned towards the zenith.  So, "la illaha", your head is turned towards the zenith, and then down and up again, "Illa 'llah".  There is an "h" at the end of "Allah".  You are reaching the pinnacle here. "Illa 'llah".  Now "h" in the Hebrew tradition, "H" is the name of God that one never says except the High Priest.  And you find it of course, in the Halleluia, you find in Yahveh, the "h".  And so you are in a state of suspense.  And so, if you are doing this on your breath, then "la illaha" is on the exhaling.  You don't say it.  You are exhaling.  Inhale when the head comes down, "illa 'llah".  So you inhale both when the head descends and when the head moves up.  So, your inhaling is divided into two.  Now the "h".  Now you hold your breath.  And now you continue the "h", you turn towards your heart, "Hu". "La illaha illa 'llah Hu.  Now, I can tell you a story, because when I was younger, I was in Ajmir repeating the dhikr in the nighttime. 

There was a dervish there.  It's a magical place, there are people praying and chanting, ecstatic, and some people just sleeping on the marble.  There was this dervish, a musician.  He was playing, I think it was a rudra vina.  There I was sitting repeating the dhikr and I was so moved by the music that was coming through him that I said the dhikr better than I have ever done before.  And, I didn't dare look at him somehow.  Of course, if you are saying the dhikr you are not supposed to be looking around, you are supposed to be concentrating.  And then at a certain moment, there was a break in the dhikr, and I dared to turn my head towards him.  I couldn't believe my eyes, because he looked just exactly like my father.  I couldn't believe it.  And, as soon as I looked at him, he stood up and came toward me.  And he said, "I have a message from your father."  He said, "You are turning you head up when you said Hu?  That's samadhi.  You have to awaken in life, not in samadhi."  And then, he left and he continued to sing.  So, of course I corrected my instruction.  So that was a real transit in my life, because in the beginning I was in the search of samadhi, and now I realized the value of awakening in life.

The extraordinary thing is that you turn your glance towards your physical heart on the left, instead of the anahata chakra, the heart chakra.  And so, that I had difficulty understanding, because I am always saying you radiate from your heart, the center of the chakra.  And then, all of a sudden, it occurred to me that if you have a locomotive for example, the place where you insert the impulse of the piston in the wheel is eccentric to the center of the wheel, otherwise it wouldn't make the wheel turn.  And then, I read in the Book of Louis Gardier who was a Catholic who was also a great specialist in Sufism, a professor on Sufism actually, that the dhikr is associated with the breathing, the respiratory function, and it is circulatory.  Whereas the nervous system is not circulatory. 

And so, it's a wheel, it's like the Merkabah of the Jewish faith, it's the wheel.  Or the samsaric wheel.  In the old days children used to play with hoops, that was before most of your time.  But then you used to give a new impulse to the hoop, so that is what you are doing.  The wheel gets moved again.  If you think of that while you are repeating the dhikr.

As I say, the dhikr is very, very powerful, but the secret of it is to get into the consciousness of a dervish.  And you say it very differently to if you were to say it yourself. 

So, I will try to demonstrate that if I can. (Pir demonstrates the dhikr from the consciousness of Pir-O-Murshid).

In the first case, I was what I thought was me, and in the second case I was reaching beyond me.  So this accounts for that word of Christ, vain repetition.  The danger of vain repetition of just repeating a wazifa just like that or the dhikr.  It won't lead you anywhere.  And so the great secret of Sufism, and that is when I was doing my retreat under the guidance of the grandson of the grand Murshid of Murshid, and he said, "Well, your teacher is your father and you have to get into the consciousness of your father."  That made all of the difference.  And then, if you don't mind my telling a story.  I got so much into the consciousness of Pir-O-Murshid, if I imagined him saying the dhikr then he would be getting into the consciousness of his Murshid, who said the dhikr, again, quite differently.  And then, from there, I got into the consciousness of the Murshid of the Murshid, at whose tomb I was sitting and whose grandson was leading me into the dhikr.  And when he came to call me for prayers, he looked and he said, "You have seen my grandfather."  And it was true.  He saw in my face that I had seen his grandfather.  That is a great secret.  At the end of the afternoon, we are going to do that in our discovery of the masters, saints and prophets of all religions which we call the universal.

Now, I talked about that state of suspense in the "h", and that is, there is a transit from the "h" to the "Hu".  This happens while you are holding your breath.  You see, I didn't complete what I had to say about the paranayama practice yesterday, but somehow I see it's connection with the dhikr.  So, I hope it doesn't become too difficult for you to understand my thought.  If you think of a pendulum, there are three points in the pendulum, there is the point when having swung to the right as a moment of suspense before it moves to the left, and then again it moves to the left.  So there are two points there, and there is one point at the top, which is always suspended.

Now when there is a suspense, the Sufis say that time stands still.  In fact it's the last word in the apocalypse, "And time will stand still."  Even Einstein thought of time as linear, and it is only recently that scientists are beginning to say that time also is warped just like space is landscaped by gravitation.  And so, it is true, it is not just a pendulum that stands still, it is because you have reached a point when time is in suspense.  There is a saying of Hujwiri who was the first Sufi who settled in India long before Hajra Moinuddin Chisti, his tomb is in Lahore.  And he said, "Time is a sharp sword that cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future."  So, when he said time, he said ("vaktin,"?) but I would say the instant of time when time stands still, cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future.

Well, if there was not and apostrophe in the process of becoming, the advance of time, there would never be anything new.  Everything would be the consequence of what happened before.  So something new happens when time stands still.  And, you remember that we are trying to find freedom against conditioning, and conditioning is the effect of the past upon the present and the future.  So, we are cutting the impact of the past upon the present and the future.  And think in terms of psychotherapy, what that means, because people feel that they have been damaged by the past.  That is their concern, the past.

Now the interesting thing is, at the psychological level, that which affirms the transit from the past into the future is a pledge.  And you see, Sufism originates in the Espabad, the chivalry of the Iranians.  Fotohut, the chivalry.  And the Zoroastrian name is Espabad.  That which makes initiation is a pledge.  A pledge to serve one's highest purpose.  Well, it's like the pledge of the vassal to the king, the pledge.  So, the greatest moments in your life, are when you made a pledge.  I think it must have happened to you.  It's happened to me of course, many times, but that moment when I say, "No, I'm not doing that any more, I'm doing this."  That's the pledge.  That makes all of the difference.  You have broken the causal link now by suspense.  And hence the importance of suspense. 

So, if you think of the pendulum and you are doing the practice of paranayama, then as you inhale you can see the causal chain, how past actions have the consequences, the causal chain.  And now when you hold your breath, you make a pledge.  And then as you exhale, now you prefigure your future, but you see how your prefiguration of the future is totally changed because of your pledge.

Now you breathe in through the right nostril and hold the breath and then out through the left, and now your discover the impact of the future, owing to your pledge upon the past.  Most people don't understand that, you can understand the past has a consequence in the future, but it is very difficult to accept that the future has an impact upon the past.  In science it is call retro-causality.  It is one of the new theories in science and it is embodied in these words of Oiger who said, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past."  In that article in "Scientific American" when they said the progress of chemistry on planet earth could not be explained if the advent of man had not already been foreseeable.  So, just think that your future is pulling you out of your past.  Now that is very important in terms of psychotherapy, because...

Side 2

..of guilt or one's resentment.  So it all has to do with the past.  Now, how can you say that it changes the past.  Because we think that the past can't be changed.  We would do anything to change it.  Well, you could illustrate it like this.  If you were India, if you were traveling in a train and you were looking out the window, you see a scene and then there is another scene.  So, that first scene is past.  But, in India, one can sit on the top of the train.  And there, what seemed to be the past for those who are inside, is still there, but it has changed.  So you would have to see how it is changed instead of thinking of it as still there.

Now, everything is interrelated.  It hasn't changed because.., it has changed, but your pledge has changed.  Everything is connected of course, the people whom you may have injured in the past.  Because you have changed, isn't that a consolation.  That's why he said it is a sharp that cuts the guilt of the past.  So, suspense, so in the dhikr, there are several moments of suspense. "Ha" is a moment of suspense when your head has reached up to the zenith. "Illa", you see there is a break. "Illa" there is a new start, a fresh start in your chapter.  And then, there is another break when you say "Hu".  You hold your breath in.  So the breaks are not left and right, they are up and down.

Now, when you breathe in paranayama, you are breathing into both nostrils.  That break, that state of suspense is at the moment when you experience the eternity of your being.  You are breathing in through both nostrils, and then there is a suspense before you exhale.  That is what we do in the dhikr, the moment of suspense.  And you will experience it as though...  You see, there is a difference between time that was interrupted, the flow of time was interrupted, it is an instant in time.  You know that an instant of time is different from a moment of time.  In a moment of time, the past overlaps the future.  For example you are listening...  The moment of time doesn't have an edge either in the past or the future.  So, there is an overlap.  If you are listening to music, the sound that you just heard is still resonating in your ears while you are listening to the next note.  But, when there is an apostrophe in music, there is a break, and that's the instant of time instead of the moment of time.  But, the suspense at the top, when you re breathing through both nostrils in the paranayama, or when your say "Hu", you are reaching the pinnacle state of suspense.  That is eternity, it is not the instant.  It is not the same thing.

As I said, it is not your deathless state, it is your eternal state.  It is the eternity of the divine in you, whereas your deathless state still refers to your individuality.  But your eternal state requires the total annihilation of your individuality.

I know, this sounds like metaphysics, but these are things that you discover when you are repeating the dhikr.  Sometimes, all of a sudden, you realize something that you hadn't realized before, because that is where the divine revelation takes place.

So, would you just like to repeat the dhikr, just a little bit to see what it is like.  The kind of power that you get repeating the dhikr.

(Group repeats dhikr)

If we had time, I would very much like if we could practice whirling dhikr.  I don't know best how to do this.  Perhaps we will do it in the second part of the afternoon, because we are getting into the consciousness of the prophets and masters of the different world religions, so when we talk about Islam then perhaps that would be the moment to do it.

Now, once more, let's just think that we are building a temple of light with our aura.  So you don't say the dhikr, but you think of the words with the breath in that you are building a temple of light.  That your heart is the altar in that temple, and you are inviting the Divine Presence.  And, somehow there is a metaphor here, and that is that it descends through the middle of your crown center and it is housed then on the altar.  Now, I know this is rather simplistic to say that, but still, there is that sense of a descent, what the contemplatives call the quickening of the Holy Spirit.  So, if you just do the dhikr now.  I will say the words so that we are all in the synchrony, but you just think on the breath.

(Group does dhikr)

When I say "Hu", think of the Presence.  It is not a person.  It doesn't have any qualities and so on.  You know like, a person is present, you don't know what that person is, but the person is present.  There is a word of Al Hallaj that says, "Is it thou?  I would not have presumed to ask is it thou if thou has not already whispered in my ear, 'It is me.'"  So, perhaps you would just do it without trying to synchronize with my recitation, now that you know how to do it.

You come into a cathedral, for example, and the atmosphere is very sacred.  And somehow, you feel a presence.  It's not the ceremony, you just feel a presence.

Now, there is one further aspect of it, I know it is rather muddily to reconcile all of these aspects, but you are the priest in the temple.  You are the cherag, which means a being of light.

You are all of these things at the same time.  You are the temple, you are the Presence, and you are the priest.

And now, I would like to add one further point, and that is the metaphor of the knight who is kneeling the whole night in prayer, and as dawn breaks, the window opens, or the French window opens into a new perspective.  He had pledged himself to be the ambassador of the divine power and now the doors open up.  That is the meaning of Ya Fattah.  A word that we use, perhaps you have heard it.  This is a word that Christ used when he healed a child that was blind, and all of a sudden the child began to see.  The word that he uses is Ya Fattah.  Open the door.  It is embodied in a poem that came through to the French from through their Cathars, from Iran actually, and then from the Holy Land, and it says, "Ouvrir moi la porte, pour l'amour de Dieu" Open the door for the love of God.  That is Ya Fattah.

It is a password, and it is a password that was used at the end of the crusades.  The Christian knights and the Muslim Knights started befriending one another, and established a Confraternity.  They met in a palace which is still there on the top of a mountain in Jerusalem, and the password was, Ya Fattah.  And out of that comes the word Fotohut, the chivalry.

So, we need to have a little break now, don't make it too long because we are going to share in a very deep experience of getting into the consciousness of the masters, saints and prophets of all religions as a culmination of this retreat.

(Break)

So the thinking of humanity keeps on advancing.  And some of us are in sync with that progression and some of us are still back into the past.  In many respects, although in the technological field, there have been a lot of advances, in the realm of religion for a lot of people, we are back in the 12th century.

So, it is a question of sensing what is coming through in the advance of human thinking as humanity is welding itself into a whole more and more, so that these differences appear as standing in the way.  If we try to reconcile the dogmas of the different religions, we meet in such contradictions that there is no way out.  But, as I said earlier, yesterday, when we think about it in terms of experience, there we find unity.

So, as you probable know, Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan was sent by his Murshid in 1910 to bring the message of Sufism to the west.  At first he was giving the teaching.  As he advanced, he made a whole journey from the transmission of the Sufis to this very wide, all encompassing approach which we call the Universal.  And on that fact, on the last day, when he was amongst us on 13th of September 1926, he founded the cornerstone of what was to be the Universal, the temple of all religions.  He said, "It's not really a temple that we are wanting, it is a temple made of human beings who feel united in this message of unity.  It came as a real strong affirmation, with all the resistance that you can imagine, all of the opposition.  So, he was really announcing the nest step.  And, it has taken all of this time, although we feel that the Universal was embedded in the Sufi Order, it has taken all this time to realize that that was what it was all about.  We are beginning to bring it to life.  To give it pre-eminence that we hadn't done before.  That realization has had a tremendous implication for people who had gone through their graduation in the Sufi Order.  The Sufi Order was a school to prepare ourselves for the message, which is a much wider issue, just like the Essenes were the school for Christianity.

So that establishes a very different relationship between us.  Instead of being the guru-chela, the teacher- pupil, it becomes like cooperating together for a great cause.

As I say this universal encompass was already present in the early Sufism, but downplayed a lot.  It burst through in Jelaluddin Rumi and Hafiz.  Jelaluddin Rumi said, it is in one of these preposterous declarations that would cause apoplexy to most of the Mulas when he said, "I'm not a Christian or a Jew or a Moslem or a (Jabar?), because I belong to the religion of the heart."  Just imagine that he managed to get away with that without having his head cut off.

And Hafiz of course is even more free.  There is a Hadith of the prophet which is, as I say, it is not being really substantiated, which said at the end of time, God will appear in the form that is not familiar and people will reject it.  And then when he appears in a form that is familiar then they will accept it."  So, that is, as I say, this universal approach was embedded in Sufism and now it has burst forth in the Universal.  A lot of people will say if it were not for that universal approach they would never have taken initiation in the Sufi Order.

As a matter of fact, some of the cautious Sufis, I mean the orthodox Sufis were watching us and thinking, I thought that wasn't Sufism, but there must be something in it.  So, they are trying to accept this universal view of Sufism which doesn't correspond to their view.  They are realizing that there is something there.

Of course in India, you see that the Sufism that has been brought to the west has been brought by sheiks who were Iranian or Middle Eastern, but in India the osmosis into Hinduism and Islam has reached wonderful peaks.  Kabir, for example, so much so that when he died, people were fighting as to whether he was a Hindu or Moslem, so they were going to bury him trying to pull his body in one tomb or another, and finally he woke up from his death and said, "I've decided not to die until you agree."

And Prince (Darashequ?), translated the Upanishads in Urdu.  There was that moment when the Hindus were adopting some of the (?) of the Sufis, and the Sufis adopting some of the (?) of the Moslems.  It is only because the British divided in rule, so they managed to make a political rift between the two.

So I am just saying this as a preamble for what we are doing now which is trying to follow up what we mean by the Universal.  It is not synchronism.  It is not a mish-mash of different religions.  And it is not a new religion.  It has nothing to do with comparative religion.  No.  It is much deeper than that.  It really is getting into the consciousness of Masters, Saints and Prophets. That is the originators, the inspirerers who have had followers and then there were the followers of the followers, and the followers of the followers of the followers, and somehow their inspiration got institutionalized.  So now we can get back to the sources.

So, this is going to be an effort in that direction.  You know now we are beginning to brainstorm to see how we can embody the Universal in a concrete way so that it really has a curriculum and a membership and all kinds of things.  But we have to be so careful.  If you start institutionalizing again, then you find yourself back into a box, exactly what we don't want, because it is going to be very difficult to see how we can do that.  Behind that there is all of your support.  There is a feeling, well yes, we are into something just so heartening for the future.  We are all in it together and we can embody it in a way that would link us together in a way that is not confining, then we would all be in it together.  It is wonderful, tremendous enthusiasm.

So. If the Sufi Order, there is a curriculum, there is training, there is something substantial there.  But the Universal, it is just an idea, so we need something concrete.  So I have been trying to extract from Murshid's teaching that which is so obviously, absolutely universal, even though so much is, but that which is typically universal.  And then as Pir-O-Murshid founded the Universal Worship which is a ceremony in which we read the texts of the different religions and light the candles.  For me it becomes too much of a ceremony.  I don't know if you feel like that, but I have a jade of ceremonies.  I know the value of it because it is a ritual, there is a sacrament, but still, well in our times, how can we do it in such a way that it is real, it is not performing something.  That's what I am trying to do.

Now, Pir-O-Murshid did say, I know it has been contradicted, but he did say that the label comes and then the representatives, the priests of different religions will come and celebrate together.  So, we have tried to do that and I have succeeded several times, but I find a lot of obstacles.  The Buddhists say that Buddhism is not a religion and the Jews are not allowed to partake in a ceremony other than their own, and Islam says that it is it, and so Christians are generally more open but still they feel that Christianity has the pride of place.  So we have all these differences.

The deep thing is really getting into the consciousness of the masters, saints and prophets, exactly as I did with the dhikr.  So, do the same thing now with getting into the consciousness of the Masters, Saints and Prophets.  When I give the more advanced initiations, 7th degree, I ask them to get into the consciousness of 3 prophets and 3 masters and 3 saints of different religions and then the dervishes of different Sufi Orders and then particularly Hazrat Inayat Khan.  That's what we are going to do.

In order to do that, we are going to try and visualize, let's say make a pilgrimage through the Holy places of all the different religions.  It is something you could do.  You could go to India and visit (Adyar, Rishikesh, Gangotri, Janotri, Badrinath, Gelanina.sp)  You could go to Bogdaya and visit the place of the shrine of Buddha, and so on.  You could make a pilgrimage.  And you find that every one of them is absolutely different, a totally different attunement, but each one is so beautiful in its way.  We don't want to flatten that out, that is the beauty of the symphony, that we have different themes.  So that's what we want is to honor the differences.  That's why Pir-O-Murshid said, "Unity is not uniformity."  And that is our motto.  Unity is no uniformity.

So we are going to honor the differences.

So there will be a minimum of ritual.  It's just, as I said, creating conditions that are favorable to the attunement of the sacred.  Lighting candles for example, well is that just a ritual or does it do something?  Is it, are we opening a skylight between earth and heaven by lighting a candle?  What is the significance of ritual.  I don't want to disdain ritual.  It has a very important place amongst the shamans and the Hopis.  A ritual, well, I can tell you a case of a ritual in India.  It was a man who was a very famous lawyer and he was called the lion of India, because he was fighting the British.  By law, he was a a brilliant lawyer.  He was walking back to his hone at nighttime and there was a leper lying on the road who begged him to take him to the water.  He thought, no I can't do that, I don't want to catch leprosy, and so he went on to his home. 

Then he turned back and went back to the leper and carried him to the water.  And he said, "Just imagine, I'm supposed to be that courageous, powerful man in India and I am afraid to touch my brother?"  When he got back, he told his wife, "I've decided to give up my career as a lawyer and to start a home for lepers.  The government of India offered them the most, what they call, scorched land, so it was practically impossible to cultivate.  What is more, it was infested with rats who were biting off the fingers and the toes of the lepers, and so they called him Dr Umptee.  He organized a ceremony with the king and queen cobra, because the reason why there were rats is because the previous owners had killed all of the cobras.  So he established a covenant with the king and queen cobra.  Can you imagine, a few years later his little boy who was about 3 years old was playing with the cobras.  People were visiting and saying, do you realize the danger?  No, there is an agreement between cobras and us, they won't attack us as long as we promise not to attack them.  That's a ritual, you see.  A ritual is a covenant.  That is what we are doing, we are establishing a covenant with God.  So it has a significance, it has a magic about it.

(End of tape)


Infobase Ends


Looks like this_here Infobase ends here.
So I'll cut and print.
But I'm still merely amidst =pvk9597e.txt
Heck, scarely begun it yet, just on page 88 of pp399
And then comes =pvk9597f.txt, =pv9597g.txt, =pv9597h.txt, and last =pv9597i.txt
So I'll have to slog through all those plug_uglies and confirm that they really is dups.
I must say - well, I might say - maybe - I found hauling out trash for Zenith more creative.
A kibbutznik does whatever work gotta be done.  Plato can take the rest.
================================================================================sa, Campra, 3 Nov '05 - 1 CheShvaN
================================================================================

HERE'S THE START OF THE REST OF THIS DOC, PRESUMABLY ONLY DUPS , of =pvk9597a.txt I assume, BUT I GOTTA CONFIRM ALL THAT.
The ReadMe doc for all this stuff is =pvin511*.txt

================================================================================

Raw Transcriptions

Seminar/Retreat Tapes
by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
CopyRight 1995-7 by the Sufi Order International
All Rights Reserved

1995


MAR 15, 1995		Tape 01

So let us start by simply concentrating on the light in your eyes.  Just imagine that your eyes are two beams of light and your whole concentration is on those 
=======================================================================