66 - Embodying States of Consciousness Reached in Meditation

The Celestial Celebration on Earth and the Human Drama

            There are moments when our minds are stirred by a compulsive need to explore uncanny levels of our being that inspire in us a sense of wonder. We touch precariously upon the unknown. At those magical moments we know that what we are experiencing is real. At least the nebulous scene was adumbrated with a tenuous sense of deja-vu that bears some semblance to what we ascribe to reality. Yet we do not know how to convey these impressions to others, let alone to ourselves in a lucid fashion.

            Such precious moments fill us with awe and delight. If we have qualms about what our civilizations have done to our beautiful planet, perhaps such moments confirm our hopes in the continuing possibility of a wondrous effulgent world. Unfortunately those fleeting impressions pass, leaving us with a double-take before we were able to secure a handle on what actually transpired. But we may perceive in this unusual encounter the answer to an imperative, in fact possibly desperate need for the most precious of all gems: the gift of the heavens in our otherwise trite lives.

            Much as we would feel moved to recount the experience from the roof-tops, it would be foolhardy to spell it out to those who may have even repulsed such an experience a hallucinatory and fanciful. If a zephyr of beauty has brushed across our world, let us not expose it to those who would besmear it with mediocre truism.

            Truly enough we have a valid argument for the scrutiny of our questioning mind: Yes, come to think about it, there was that 'deja-vu'! - a remote sense of something familiar - something to assuage my mind's doubtfulness. Yes, I have witnessed the likeness of the very same luster that gleamed across those heavenly landscapes in the eyes of that child whom I shall never forget.

            Why did it trigger off a memory of deja-vu? Because matching experiences set up association processes in the mind. Was that not a handle to cleave to in my temptation to demure to my skeptic leanings? A glimmer of a reminiscence of having witnessed on Planet earth something of the nature of the celestial realms flickered on the horizon of my mind.

            In similar vein, listening to a choir may have evoked a wisp of deja-vu. The composer was attempting to convey a feeling of the atmosphere of the heavens in a sacred celebration. Conversely lofty human emotions may open to the composer vistas of heavenly splendor. For example, in his soul-searchings triggered off by his love for Clara, Brahms touched upon an intangible level of his being. It came flooding in as a flurry of notes, melodies, and rhythms. In so doing, he built a bridge giving us access to unknown strata of ourselves. To make this miracle happen, one has to allow oneself to be uplifted, moved to the very core of one's being by an intuition that bespeaks of a splendor beyond the apparent world. Does it not seem ironical that we should let ourselves be confined to a slice of our being (the physical and mental) when our total being actually fans out in a vast spectrum?

            In their musings, people in a contemplative mood have sometimes culled clues as to the nature of these spheres. Then, in the wake of those who have trodden the no man's land come the philosophers who build systems to account for the testimonies of the mystics. In the scriptures of all religions, the references to celestial spheres are legion: often codified in intellectual cosmologies, angelologies, etc., to be stored in the archives of our minds. These may offer the advantage of providing us with a topography of the unchartered reaches, the landscapes of the soul. This has been particularly elaborated by the Sufis.

            The Sufi Sheikh Ahmed Ahsa'il points out to the existence of a level of our being he calls 'Jism A', our celestial body which communicates the nature of our Super-celestial being 'Jism B'  down to our subtle body (or effigy) 'Jasad B'.

            Can you identify with this template behind the structure of your mind, which he calls 'Jasad B' - an archetypal level of our understanding? Thus through the mediation of our higher bodies, the cosmic programing provides for a practical means of communicating something of the nature of the heavens to the earth.

            Conversely, our subtle mind/body (Jasad B) and celestial body (Jism A) ensure the feed-back of the know-how and wisdom we have gained by our interfacing with the physical and psychological environment encountered on earth will become part of the divine programming. We could well envision ourselves after death, distilling the impressions of the earth, transmitting their gist higher up to our Super celestial being. Imagine the prospect offered of being able to occupy oneself totally to being creative. Imagine creating out of the interface between the many splendored planes beautiful and meaningful structures like an artist or a musician!

            Important is that we learn to work with ourselves to translate the impressions transpiring through from lofty levels of our many-tiered being into our personality. These may eventually even gel into our physical atmosphere, perhaps even countenance.

Of course the ultimate work of art is the human personality.

Man's art is an extension of the divine art.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Here we are the artist, the fabric and the work of art.

            No sooner we pay attention to our deep need for this precious food for our soul, we awaken covert unconscious memory which suddenly erupts. We remember what seems to be our eternal being. At least it seems eternal in comparison with our personality that changes so rapidly. Can you remember the countenance of your eternal face?

            Reverting back to our physical body, we cannot fail to be devastated by the contrast. We have a feeling of having incurred defilement in the course of our descent through the spheres. On the other hand, in comparison with our existential frame, our celestial nature seems embryonic. Obviously owing to our incarnation, we have on the other hand matured and enriched ourselves through the interface and osmosis with the physical and psychological environment. Our latent qualities have unfurled and we have distilled wisdom out of the know-how gained by meeting the challenge of life.

            At this point, it is an ingratiating thought to realize that our celestial counterpart is still present within the very configuration of our physical frame, interspersed with its defilement just like the pristine voice of Caruso is still present within its distortions owing to the bad recordings of the time. Imagine a holographic slide in which two similar yet different images are superposed - one blue the other violet. You can toggle from one to the other. By dint of your will-power and creative imagination, you can correct, reverse the distortions in the blue one to approximate to the violet, while honoring the maturity evidenced in the blue one. You are able to confirm that you can ally wisdom with innocence.

            Having captured a hunch of the nature and even features of your angelic being, can you see how the attunement of the celestial spheres tends to configure your psyche, even your body (at least the expression of your face and your deportment).? To be creative, we need to customize consciously and willfully that which the universe is doing beyond our compass. This means that we need to be inspired by the splendor that is continually endeavoring to seep through the very shaping of things, and at the same time take into consideration the drama on earth.

            While acquiescing to the shocking accounts we are continually assailed with of the greed, the cruelty, the deceit, the grossness, the vulgarity, that comes through or tries to come through our humanness - the rape of the Planet, could we ever be appraising the incredible wealth and bounty gained by dint of incarnation - by the people, by our civilizations, by our cultures and our technologies, by the thoughts and emotions aroused in our encounters, interrelationships with others, with beings of all kens and at all levels? The nostalgia, tenderness, perseverance, faith, idealism, realism, loyalty, caring, sacrifice, imagination, compassion, generosity, honesty that breaks through in the human venture is overwhelming and warms us to the values gained on the Planet.

            Of course such a bounty cannot be achieved without conflicts, disruptions, disasters, chaos. Orderliness does not beget change, rather it encourages complacency. Change requires involvement, courage, venture, risk of a disaster, humiliation in defeat, deprivation, suffering to the point of being the victim of a terrible ordeal or calamity. Modern physics points to the fact that to evolve, which means to change, living systems have to 'fluctuate from equilibrium.'8 Our incentive shifts the software of the universe. Indeed free-will unleashes forces beyond one's control or knowledge.

            The dramatic fiasco on earth that we cannot fail to be involved with is due to the fact that, according to the Sufis, God's motivation in the whole process called creation is to bequeath His/Her ultimate asset: free incentive. To understand how this comes about, can we place ourselves in the antipodal perspective to our usual one? Suppose that you were to bequeath the best of your assets out of love. Since indeed the most treasured resource in life is free-will, the Sufis ascribe to God the foremost quality Rahmaniat - magnanimity. So let us consider our free incentive which is the very springhead of creativity as the ultimate divine gift.

            Unfortunately the price of that act of generosity is that, by the very fact that the totality gets funneled down into each fraction of the totality, the many-splendored bounty potentially present in the totality gets constrained, limited. Each expression of the totality (that is ourselves) sees and assesses things form his/her point of view. Consequently greed, rancor, conflict, hatred, violence, profanation crowd in; or alternately simply apathy, resignation, sardonic irony - being low-key. One needs to protect oneself against the abuse of that very free-will. Willy-nilly we are involved in the drama.

            How do we uphold the values that we inherit from our celestial inheritance in the middle of real life situations? We are at the cross-roads between heaven and earth. How does the celebration in the heavens of our souls interface with the drama in our psyche? How do they interact, inter-mesh, then gel in our personality? To what extent do they match or are they pulling us in opposite directions? Are we doomed to have to compromise in order to adapt ourselves to the commonplace, or can we uphold our ideals in the middle of it all, while still honoring all the values garnered by human endeavor, sometimes at the cost of hard strife? Can we remain high, radiant, aware joyous while meeting situations instead of escaping them? The clue is we touched upon in our discovery of our heavenly inheritance. In this perspective it is clear that in the handling of ugly situations (with selfish or unfair motivations of people around us) there is an option offered us between reacting in the same vein, giving vent to our resentment, concupiscence or gratification; or applying those values that we cherish as they come through us, such as magnanimity allied with sovereignty, truthfulness allied with compassion, beauty allied with rigor, wisdom allied with innocence, or alacrity with serenity.

            Or are we fooling ourselves? Are we justifying our own handling of situations on the misleading adage that the end justifies the means? It is the means that constructs the end. Recognizing our humanness without trying to justify it, yet honoring our celestial inheritance, can we get these two poles of our being to cross-pollinate? That is precisely what personal creativity is about.

            How do we celebrate the betrothal between heaven and earth in our personality? Dare you see things from two complementary perspectives at the same time? Have you ever, while climbing the high mountains, surrounded by evescient clouds lighted up by an array of most amazing hues, watched a storm raging in the valley? And hiking in the valley have you been shattered by an alarming outbreak of thunder and lightning while capturing evanescent blue patches of sky as the dark clouds rushed by, above? Both perspectives are complementary, depending on where you are - your vantage point.

            I am sure (or at least hope) that you experience moments when the forces of life are aroused with a vengeance and you give vent to the lightning and thunder bursting forth in your own being. One's frustration as one meets opposition to one's commitment in life will ignite anger. In this scenario all the forces of violence, unkindness, rancor, hatred are rife. To succumb to them is just too easy. Here is your chance to fulfill that covert wishful thinking that you may be entertaining: of being a knight. Violence is energy. It can be harnessed by catalyzing a creative act. This energy might just provide one with the push to achieve precisely that for which one had not been previously sufficiently motivated.

            We are endowed with the option of becoming a new person. We do not have to be what we have always been. We can even shake off the conditioning of the past and our forestalling of our future prospects.

            But evolution proceeds by leaps and bounds. It takes an outburst of energy to bring about a change - a quantum leap - a total departure from the past. It takes the pain and glee of the drama on the earth to pen a clearing in our sky revealing the splendor of the heavens, thus sparking that change.

            The power thus wrought will erupt in your will: in fact the clue, the clue to a radical change is in . . . resolve - making a binding pledge to change.
