104 - The Test of Authenticity

It is significant that mainly amongst contemplatives do we find people who are in a high state of attunement. We ourselves may also spark a spell of ecstasy in our meditations. Also, the prayers of glorification of the devout may lift their souls to a state of exaltation.

Man thinks, speaks, and acts according to the pitch to which his soul is tuned.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

People, particularly initiates, lament that they fail to maintain that "high" in everyday life. The social environment, particularly the trauma of pain, exercises a compelling impact upon the setting of our consciousness, coercing it into our ego, which devises strategies for our self-defense. Projections, denials, pretensions are strategies which parade a useful though deceptive image of our real self to safeguard our self-image, which is not by any means what we really are. By the same token our concern about adapting ourselves to the challenge of the environment has the effect of constraining us in our self-image, which is not what we are but what we think we are.

Accomplished contemplatives are able to maintain their "high", by observing a combination of two complementary outlooks:

I. the doubt that their assessment of situations, including their self image, is reliable (this is applying the theory of 'maya' - unmasking the personal bias) and

II. continually (with unrelenting diligence and observation) maintaining the alternate perspectives (the wide embrace, looking out from inside, and the overview) which need to be examined here in more detail.

The reason contemplatives, or devouts are able to escape from the commonplace conditioning, and thereby maintain (or recapture) their high, is because of an enhanced sensitivity to the grossness and greed and guile that they ascribe to "the ways of the world." And there is a passion for the "sacred" to which they give priority beyond their "earthly" needs (which in our day and age need to be met in the appropriate proportion). All depends how either figures in our list of values.

The trouble is that to attune to the "sacred", it is helpful (or easier) if we find ourselves in an environment, both physical and social, which favors that attunement. That is our fragile attunement seeks to lean upon a support system. Inevitably, owing to the flaws in our human nature, this support system may prove manipulative, may be administered in the form of a "display" of spirituality whereby the adherent ascribes sacredness to the device rather than what it represents, (hence the destruction of idols in Islam). The same may apply to ascribing sacredness to the personal dimension of role models, instead of their cosmic or transcendent dimension. This is idolatry. The Sufis replace tassawuri Murshid, the image of the Murshid with tawwajeh - to resonate to the pitch to which the teacher is attuned at the crest of his/her conscious reach, rather than envision his/her face.

Since the Sufis were conversant with the nomadic life, they could not rely upon having a temple or church, or mosque or synagogue as a support system (albeit the prayer carpet introduced an extraterritorial space in the profane environment). Consequently they had to construct the temple out of their own body, and a temple of light out of their own aura, finally discovering that what they thought was a temple averred itself to be the priest (or priestess) in themselves and in others.

If the altar which embodies our projections as being a sacred object, (a totem) avers itself to be made of gilded cardboard boxes (as in Bernstein's Mass) and the guru a phantasmagoria of make-believe, (as has often proven to be the case amongst self-styled role models, on further inspection) then our faith which is vested in them collapses in dismay, outrage, offense, indignation.

When the hoax is unveiled, the feeling of having allowed ourselves to be fooled reeks of betrayal, and proves demeaning to our very self-esteem which was riding high on the "spell" sparked by the "display".

What is the sign that one is ready to awaken from sleep? It is when a person begins to think, "All that I have dreamed and understood seems so unreal; there are some realities of which I am vaguely aware, and yet compared with them all I have studied and done seems to be of no account." As the dawn comes after the night of darkness, so he sees light appearing; but he has not yet seen the sun; he is only beginning to awaken.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

It is our concern for authenticity, together with our realization, that triggers off our doubt, which in turn unmasks the hoax of our belief in wishful thinking, and eschews reliance upon a support system for our "high." This has the effect of opening the door to genuine experience and the ensuing realization. It was the wise man (not the heckler) in the Bernstein Mass who pointed out that the wonderful scenario was in fact a sortilege, an enchanting display. How judicious it is to thrash people's simple faith-when their only way to uphold it is through belief-is of course questionable, as is illustrated in the famous story of Moses and the shepherd.

It is only safe to let go of the support system if one can replace it by genuine spiritual experience, as indeed is the problem in withdrawal symptoms after addiction. Otherwise one falls in a hole which is the dark night. One cannot exit from that dark night by the same door through which one entered. That can only occur if the fictitious display, and the role model parading sanctimoniously to exercise dominance over the believers, is replaced by a clear sense of the immaculate and germane sacredness inherent in its very distortion in real life. That transit is personified in the Bernstein Mass by the transfer of leadership (or rather the metamorphosis) from the high priest to the redeeming child with the candle, chanting, followed by the crowd who had been stymied in the dark night.

The art of so doing consists of being able to keep riding the tide of doubt in an ongoing way while promoting the progressive transformation without allowing ourselves to be bogged in by it.

This is precisely the process that any spiritual group needs to go through to respond to its own need for authenticity, and you may have noticed precisely the transforming journey that we have shared in the Sufi Order.

This is why Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan beckons upon us to self-generate the "sacred" in ourselves by "awakening (arousing) the God within."

All genuine spiritual groups embody a transmission equipped with a support system that needs to be updated to meet the process that their adherents go through.

The risk, however, is that unless we are sharply perspicacious, when we are bereft of the sacred support system, our doubt may induce us to slip back into our trite personal self-image, our middle range vantage point, and our commonplace thinking.

The soul manifests in the world in order that it may experience the different phases of manifestation, and yet not lose its way, that it may regain its original freedom, in addition to the experience and knowledge it has gained in the world.

The doubts of pupils prove troubling to their teachers. The teachers themselves need to honor the truthfulness of their own doubts rather than denying them, or circumventing them. It is by making that journey, passing though the dark night of doubt while clearly seeing the way out by themselves-negotiating that transit from the "apparent" to the real-that those leading may give a helping hand to those floundering.

When the teacher wants to offer his/her hand, the teacher must know that s/he is in the water at the same time. It is not that the one who is sinking is sinking, but the teacher also is in the water. The sinking people might drag him/her down with them and make him/her sink. S/he must be moving his/her legs and hands to stay afloat while at the same time holding the mureed from sinking down.

For this the teacher needs to spot where the incongruity in his/her own thinking, and that of others, causes the bottleneck.

There comes a time when a mureed gets an idea which does not fit in with the teacher's idea. It does not mean that it does not fit in with the teacher's idea, but s/he does not allow the teachers idea to fit in.

The clue resides in the fact that, unless we are clearly self aware, we tend to confuse our real being with our self-image which is only the notion that we make of "who we are". Indeed the personal dimension of our total being carries within it the potentialities of our total being (this is the holistic paradigm), and therefore opens a door to the extensive being somnolent within us (the Creator buried in His creation, H.I.K), and of which our personal being is a "relative and temporary sub-whole." If we can envision this fragment of our total being in its relation to our total being as carrying within it the potential of our whole being, then through its door we can arouse its bountiful potential, but not if we identify with our self-image which proves misleading. This is the criterion of discernment. The awakening that we seek hangs upon this "discernment" - our ability and acuity in spotting this disparity.

If someone asks us how we feel, unless we are very perspicacious, we tend to fall unawares upon the "I" with whom we identify, not the "I" that we are. Here lies the conundrum.

This requires us to have explored in meditation the wider areas of our being, beyond the personal nexus of our psyche (and body) and consequently see for ourselves how constraining and deceptive our self-image is in our assessment of our problems and our validation of ourselves.

We occupy as much horizon as is within our consciousness, or as much as we are conscious of. We are as great as our spirit, we are as wide as our spirit, we are as low as our spirit, we are as small as our spirit.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Having seen this, we are now able to see the personal dimension of our being in its context - in its relation with the whole. This will save us from confusing our self-image with the personal dimension of our total self.

Then we reverse our perspective.

When I open my eyes to the outer world I feel myself as a drop in the sea; but when I close my eyes and look within, I see the whole universe as a bubble raised in the ocean of my heart. The one who tunes himself not only to the external but to the inner being and to the essence of all things gets an insight into the essence of the whole being; and therefore he can, to the same extent, find and enjoy even in the seed the fragrance and beauty that delights him in a rose. He, so to speak, touches the soul of the thought.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Now we can see how our personal bias in our representation of occurrences perceived as "outside" load our psyche with misrepresentations which undermine our self esteem. Consequently we seem to reach what we thought to be "outside" from "inside" and moreover capture the budding of our recurrently renewed being as it surfaces from inside.

In the person who participates actively in his/her own creativity, God can gain a greater degree of perfection.

Then we need to reconnoiter the psychological gravity pull exercised upon our psyche by our concupiscence-which enlists "the way of the world", with its trail of unkindness, manipulation, and suffering-and give vent to our bewondering at the splendor and meaningfulness, which we ascribe at first to God as "other" in an awakening "beyond life", and then in an overview we see it coming through real life - awakening in life.

How is higher consciousness attained? By closing our eyes to our limited self and by opening our heart to God who is all perfection. . . Illumination is obtained by rising above one's earthly condition at the command of one's will and realizing one's immortal self which is God within.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

There is a stage where, by touching a particular phase of existence, one feels raised above the limitations of life, and given that power and peace and freedom, that light and life which belongs to the source of all beings. In that moment of supreme exaltation, one is not only united with the source of all beings, but dissolved in it, for the source is one's self.

Now only can we zero in on the personal dimension of our being, envisioning it in its relation (in its context) with the totality (in the cosmic outreach and transcendent mystery crowning our being) without slipping back into our trite self-image.

True exaltation of the spirit resides in the fact that it has come to earth and has realized there his spiritual being.

In man is awakened that spirit by which the whole universe was created.

The key to spiritual attainment is to be conscious of the perfect One who is formed in the heart.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
