80 - Turning Within - Part II

Practices Based On Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan's Teaching

APPLYING MEDITATION TO DEVELOPING INSIGHT INTO PROBLEMS

            One must learn how to apply the teaching of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan in everyday life, and how to see the beauty and complexity that one will find in life, by taking the roads leading to the desired goal.

            Insight in one's problems will lead to unfurling one's potentials.

            In the complete unfoldment of human nature is the fulfillment of life's purpose.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            1) Choose a thought connected with a current problem and earmark an event in the past that bears some similarity. Toggle between them to ascertain which features they have in common and in which features they differ.

            2) See how the experience of the past throws a light on your present problem: maybe the same pattern keeps repeating itself until you no longer slip into that groove. Now see if the present picture throws light on something about the past you had never perceived before, and therefore the complete knowledge of the past will be a knowledge of the whole.

            By turning within, we free ourselves of the constraint of the 'here and now', and therefore can retrieve the knowledge of the whole past bequeathed to us by the universe, subliminally latent within.

            An illustration might be helpful here: peering into a hologram, carrying the double exposure of two three-dimensional pictures, you can toggle between both pictures by oscillating the perspective of your glance; now try rather than toggling to extrapolate between both pictures. If you succeed, or in the measure in which you succeed, you are capturing a double exposure of two interspersed three-dimensional pictures. This would prove almost impossible, at least confusing. However, if there were some resemblance between these, it would be easier.

            Having thus trained your mind, step by step increasing your integrative faculty, you will now suddenly grasp meaningfulness where you had not seen a relevance in situations. Thereby, you will develop great wisdom.

            For the mystic, everything is connected: there is no condition that is detached from another condition. A mechanism is always running in relation to another mechanism, however different and disconnected they may seem. To gain insight, the mystic enters into the depths of the whole mechanism of the universe.

            Another illustration: with two video cameras, film simultaneously the fish swimming in an aquarium from both sides of the aquarium. If you were able to view both films simultaneously, you would grasp a connection between both films although different from each other. These perspectives would be linked by dint of complementarity. Here you are not just extrapolating between two pictures, but between two vantage points (simultaneously or in a different time frame) and extrapolate between them.

            3) Practice this by viewing your problems from one perspective; then another. Now view your problems from your personal perspective, then that of a person connected with or involved in the problem. Ask yourself how all you see affects you and what is your reaction to it all. First, how does your spirit react to the objects or the conditions you encounter, to the sounds you hear, to the words that people speak to you? Secondly, see what affect you have on others, conditions and individuals when you come in contact with them.

            4) See how your point of view may be complementary to that of the other person. Even reconcile two complementary points of view in your own mind.

            5) Try to shift your consciousness into that of another person and imagine how things would look from that person's vantage point. Now try to earmark which are the points you have in common and which contradict or do not tally.

            If one is able to expand oneself to the consciousness of another person, one's consciousness becomes as large as two persons; and so it can become as large as a thousand persons when one accustoms oneself to try and see what others think. It is the understanding of two points of view: the one and its opposite that give a fuller insight into life.

            The progressive steps we have taken illustrate what we mean by shifting consciousness from the commonplace diurnal focus (explicate) to the state of reverie, anticipating the state of consciousness experienced in meditation when turning within.

            6) Now see how the problem looks when you are in your ordinary consciousness; then how it looks when you turn within.

            The external life is but the shadow of the inner reality.

            The manifested life comes from the unmanifested.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            But this can be illustrated better still by the following models.

            You are watching an eclipse (sun/moon). Note that they are only in alignment from the vantage point of the earth. At times other than when they appear to be aligned, their spatial relationship does not appear to most people to have any significance - only in that relatively rare conjunction.

            This example confirms that ordinarily we only see things from our personal vantage point in which we are entrapped and, moreover, what is important to us at the time. For example, the problem only exists in relationship with our particular attachment or concern. If you were free from that attachment, the problem would have no relevance and vanish. Regarding one's concerns, they are based upon one's scale of values and change as these evolve.

            7) This could be further illustrated: if you were to shift your vantage point to any location in space, there is always one point in which the sun and moon are aligned (called a syzygy in Astronomy). This ability occurs when turned within in meditation we are able to imagine what it would feel like to see things from an inexhaustible assortment of vantage points. Consequently, one would be weary of judgments taken on face value. You will realize that a defeat may turn out to be a victory and a victory a defeat.

            8) A still further stage of shifting consciousness would be reached if, rather than envisioning that your consciousness is dispersed in space as represented outside you, you imagine that everything is connected like a network of radio waves. Therefore at any point in space you could access the whole scale of frequencies simultaneously. This could, of course, occur inside. To illustrate what we mean by the space inside, imagine a piece of paper so crumpled that every fragment is continuous with every other.

            This space of three dimensions is reflected in the space that is in the inner dimension. The inner dimension is different; it does not belong to the objective world, but what exists in the inner dimension is also reflected in three-dimensional space. In reality what the mystics see in space is something that is within, but when they open their eyes, they see it before them.

            9) The way to achieve this is to reach that which seems outside from inside, instead of exploring your psyche as you turn inside. Then you will find yourself in a totally different relationship with the world. You are not the subject perceiving or imagining other than yourself, nor are you observing your psyche in contradistinction to that in you that is the Spectator, but you resonate with the outer world by dint of affinity because that which seems in you is the same as that outside. The world within you is reflected in the world without; and it is the action and reaction of the two upon one another that constitutes your life.

            10) To achieve this, shift your self-image into identifying yourself with the quintessence of your being, shedding all that is the result of the spill-over with the environment or the mask you are wearing or the role you are playing that has not yet been really digested in the core of your being.

            You will find that your true being is immaculate and somewhat of the nature of a mirror that epitomizes clarity. This will give you an insight into yourself and others you never had before.

            The one who tunes him/herself 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. Therefore, one can to the same extent find and enjoy even in the seed the fragrance and beauty that delights him/her in a rose. One, so to speak, touches the soul of the thought. It is just as by seeing the plant one may get an idea of the root. In this way things unknown are known, and things unseen are perceived by the mystics; and he/she calls it revelation.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            By doing these practices, you will develop your intuition. Here is the key: identify with the seed of which your being is the unfurling. You will not find it in your mind, but in your heart unless you will accept that mind and heart are the two sides of the same coin. Therefore, all mental activities need to be turned inside-out. To do this, you will first have to unmask your mind trips and, what is more, deal with them. If you succeed, you will touch upon the divinity of your being in the silence of thought.

            Divinity is like the seed that grows in the heart of the flower. It is the same seed that was the origin of the plant, and it comes again in the heart of the flower.

 Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            The clue to realization is to grasp God realizing Him/Herself in and through our realization of God. It is by realizing the God within that God is manifested without. But once God is realized, God is no longer only within: God is within and without and in all.
