113 - Practices Leading to Enlightenment

A light upon a light.

(Qr. 24:35)

I emanated upon Thee a force of love so that thou mayest be fashioned according to my glance.

 (Qr. 10:39)

To spark transformation in all the chords of one's being, one needs to be overwhelmed by something beyond, yet overarching one's personal dimension, so stupendous that one finds oneself carried beyond one's commonplace self-image in the far reaches of the splendor of the universe.

The magical spark that can ignite the fire of fervor in our core is the miracle of the phenomenon of light. Light lures us beyond its physical appearance into spheres which we call celestial, from which we unconsciously believe we have been exiled. More so, if we stalk light beyond its physical underpinning, as our human intelligence excels itself, we espy the intelligence of light and grasp in it a clue to our inadequate representation of what we mean by God.

As we know, the guiding principle upon which Sufism is based consists in envisioning ourselves as fragments of the Total Being, which is the universe, traditionally called God - each fragment containing and incorporating the totality holistically - in contrast with the old-fashioned representation of God as "other". On the other hand Pir o Murshid says,

Manifestation is the self of God, but a self that is limited.. It is in man that divinity can be awakened... The soul is a condition of God... The soul of each individual is God, but man has a mind and a body which contains God according to the accommodation.


Compare this with Ibn 'Arabi,

God reveals Himself to the potentialities of His being by projecting His shadow. This shadow is Him and also not Him.

The "divine genes", however, need to be aroused by awakening awareness. Such awakening calls upon us to shift our vantage point step by step from its personal setting into its cosmic dimension, which is in theory co-extensive with the Divine point of view. To upgrade our awareness we find that shifting our notion of light - from light perceived externally, to the light of our own aura, to more subtle levels of light, eventually touching upon the light of intelligence - triggers off a breakthrough in awakening at a cosmic scale.

Since spirituality means grasping and incorporating a further dimension of our being (which is co-extensive with the universe), it is essential to continually bear in mind that the object of our search is God emerging in (and as) ourselves, and the subject searching is God as the ultimate witness, focalized as our consciousness.

Learn, oh my friend, that the object of the search is God, and that the subject who seeks is a light coming from Him.

These last words were those of a very wonderful Sufi dervish, Najm ud-Din Kubra, whose whole life was dedicated to unraveling the mystery of light. For the Sufis, reality (the truth: al Haqq) is revealed to us through form, while being limited by this device whereby God reveals Him/Herself to us; hence God as "reality" transpires through the countenance of God-realized beings:

If God can be seen, it is in the God-realized beings.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Compare this with the words of another Sufi dervish, 'Ala ud-Daula Semnani, equally dazzled by the sortilege of light.

Through Thine own eyes, I look upon Thy countenance. 

Just like Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, Ibn 'Arabi distinguishes light radiating from a source located in space from what he calls "light that has no rays", which Pir-o-Murshid calls all-pervading light (like radio waves, intermeshed and spread everywhere).

Light is of two kinds: A light having no rays and radiant light.

Ibn 'Arabi

For Ibn 'Arabi, while perception takes place through sources of light located in space (radiant light), vision takes place through the light within the witness (all-pervading light). 

As for the light that has no rays, it is the light within which self-disclosure takes place without rays. Then its brightness does not go outside itself and the viewer perceives it with the utmost clarity and lucidity. 

For this, the light cast forward by the eyes needs to be stronger than ambient light. 

When ambient light is stronger than the light of sight, man perceives it but does not perceive through it. 

Ibn 'Arabi

Pir-o-Murshid points out that this insight is achieved by converging the all-pervading light as one turns within, and then focusing that light as a searchlight. 

First the all pervading light, second the light when concentrated on one point, and third the light illuminating all that can take its reflection... You are instrumental in making the all-pervading light allowed to manifest...The all-pervading light manifests as such when it finds a capacity where it can be concentrated. 

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Turning within, you will find yourself in a transfigured world; you will espy the subtle effigy behind the objects transpiring through their physical appearance. Now notice the affinity between the nature of the fabric of your subtle body and the etheric counterpart of the objects, then the effulgence of your aura (bioluminescence), and the imponderable luster of the auras of the objects thus viewed.

I saw myself through the lights which things carry in their essence, and which are given to them by their realities - not through an extraneous light.

Ibn 'Arabi

If you identify yourself with your subtle body, then you may discern the beam of your third eye as an extension of your subtle body.

Turn your eyes back into the space within. Then the same eyes that are able to see without are able to see within. In closing the eyes, still the eyes are looking forward. No, they must be turned inward in three centers, in the center between the eyebrows, on the bridge of the nose, and downwards towards the tip of the nose. As the sense of sight is situated in the brain and the sight so charged with the light from within when turned on to the life without see through more deeply. The aura affects the brain and the brain affects the eyes. Thus what the eyes take in effects the brain and the brain effects the aura. Sometimes the third eye sees through the two eyes.

The Sufis have ways of developing the eyes. They show you ways of looking into space that make the eyes capable of seeing what is reflected there. From these the past, the present and the future can be told, and all that surround a person. 

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Furthermore, Pir-o-Murshid taught his pupils to thrust their light forward through the breath. 

The light is thrown forward by the breath. When one has mastered the breath, then one is capable of drawing all the forces of life. And when they are drawn in, and focused in a center, then illumination comes. ... Then you begin to realize that you are like a searchlight, wherever you cast your glance.

Breath is then directed through the eyes or radiated from the heart. Inhale, so to speak, through the eyes and exhale, so to speak, through the eyes.

In the course of this practice, Najm ud-Din Kubra sees two orbs (circles) surrounding his eyes. 

Najm ud-Din Kubra (Sirr al Sayr 57. Cf. Corbin 1071, p83) 

At a certain point,
The Sufi sees beyond the eyes - or without eyes. 

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Compare with:

To rend every instant a hundred veils,
The first moment to renounce life,
The last step to fare without feet...
To look beyond the range of the eyes

Rumi  (Cf. Nicholson: Diwani Shamsi Tabriz, Selected Poems, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1898)

Light can be cast forth by the breath through the heart. Pir-o-Murshid considers this to be more powerful than that of the eyes.

This power is nothing as compared with the power of the heart.

In a further step, identify yourself with the witness in you - you as the spectator rather than your subtle body or your third eye. 

As the eyes cannot see themselves, so it is with the soul - it is sight itself.

The moment it closes its eyes, its own light manifests to its own view.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Compare with Ibn 'Arabi,

Let your state be similar to that of the dematerialized spirit of the Celestial Assembly.

Yet another dervish in search of illumination:

The source where these lights take place is the spiritual entity of the mystic himself. 

Najm ud-Din Razi (Cf. Corbin, 1978, p 110)

It is as though it returns to the root from which it became manifest. So nothing sees Him but He.

Ibn 'Arabi

The secret skill here consists in identifying with one's soul rather than one's consciousness as the witness, yet considering one's eyes as carrying this light.

In man there is a hidden light which is divine light. It is by the power of that light that his eyes can see further than the physical eyes can see.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Compare with,

Were it not for the light that belongs to the souls, there would be no witnessing, since witnessing only takes place when two lights come together.

Ibn 'Arabi

To perfect the skill leading to enlightenment, envision the light of your soul threaded through the light of your glance:

Hence light becomes included in light.

Ibn 'Arabi

This could be paralleled with,

Wisdom is born of the meeting of the knowledge of the heavens and the knowledge of the earth.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Yet, if one overrides one's tendency to ascribe one's glance to one's soul as envisioned as an individual entity, then one awakens into a yet further dimension of the witness.

All things and beings on the surface seem separate from one another, beneath the surface, they approach nearer to each other; and in the innermost plane, they all become one.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Then:

The light of dawn rises on the soul in such a way that that part of the paramount realities emanating from the celestial constellations and their angels who are their souls predominate in it... They are reflected on the bodily habitation.

This quotation is from Shihabuddin Suhrawardhi (maqtul), perhaps the most prominent advocate amongst the Sufis for working with light. He weaved the threads of the original Mazdean tradition (that of the Magi) into the corpus of Sufism.

An intriguing Zoroastrian, Azar Kaivan was a Sufi initiate stalking the light.

When I passed in rapid flight from material bodies, in every sphere and star, I beheld a spirit.

Azar Kaivan (Cf Dabistan, NY. 1937, p 55)

 As one puts this into practice, it becomes clear that the clue to insight into the meaningfulness of experience is found by spotting one's celestial identity.

Perfect realization can only be gained by passing through all the stages between man, the manifestation of God, and God as the only being; knowing and realizing ourselves from the lowest to the highest point of existence and so accomplishing the heavenly journey.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Compare again with Ibn 'Arabi,

God acquaints them with what corresponds to them in each world by passing with them through each world... The spirit in man is a heavenly subtle organ, the "himma." When it is lavished upon him, he is reunited with the heavens.

You thought that you were the Spectator, the witness (Shahid) of what you experience, but the real witness in you is your angelic counterpart - the witness in the heavens.

(Shahabuddin Suhrawardhi (Cf Corbin 1939)

The practice prescribed by Pir-o-Murshid consists in bridging the discontinuity between the physical plane of which we are generally conscious, and the celestial spheres by first toggling between the two intermittently, then eventually by correlating or extrapolating both.

The soul in its manifestation on the earth is not at all disconnected from the higher spheres, it lives on all spheres, though it is generally conscious of only one place... Only a veil separates us.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

To contact the celestial spheres, it is helpful to turn the eyes upwards.

As man evolves, he ceases to look down on earth; he looks to the heavens. If one wants to seek the heavens, one must change the direction of looking... Look up first, and when your eyes are once charged with divine light, then when you cast your glance on the world of facts, you will have a much clearer vision - the vision of reality.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

You will discover that your aura is many-tiered, ranging from infra-red to ultraviolet, as you shift your attention from one chakra to the next. To trigger off this upward thrust, feel the incandescence of your aura, (phosphorescence). Now represent to yourself a flame transmuted as it rises, ascending in your spinal cord envisioned as a chimney.

By closing all the senses one helps that fire to blaze and once the flame has risen, it lights up all the centers within, so all things within and without become clear... And the flame rising from it illuminates the globe  -  the head.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

As soon as you turn your attention to the source of the light of your being, then it seems to dawn upon you like the morning sun.

Each time a light rises up from you, a light comes down towards you. Light rises towards light and descends upon light - it is "light upon light". When the substance of light has grown in you, then it bears an affinity to what is of the same nature in Heaven. Then the substance of the light in heaven which yearns for you is attracted by your light and it descends towards you.

Najm ud-din Kubra, Sirr al-Sayr

The light of dawn has risen upon my soul and there will be no more sunset.

al Hallaj

As Suhrawardhi announces, it will affect the "body habitation."

The seer's own soul becomes a torch in his hand. It is his own light that illuminates his path. It is just like directing a searchlight into dark corners which one could not see before. It is like throwing light upon problems that one did not understand before, like seeing through people like with x-rays when they were a riddle before. He sees the cause behind the effect. He who looks at this marvel begins to see the divine evidence in every face as a person can see the painter in his painting... The glance of the seer opens, unlocks and unfolds all things. As it falls upon a thing, it makes that thing as it wants to make it. This is not actual creating but it is awakening that particular quality which was asleep.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

This cannot happen until I become a light. As long as I am not a light, I cannot perceive anything of this knowledge.

Ibn 'Arabi
