84 - A New Impulse on the Dhikr

            When you do the dhikr you are participating in an assembly of dervishes. If you take a magnet and move it in a circle then the energy of the magnet will be enormously enhanced so that it becomes a dynamo. So that's one way of looking at the first step in the dhikr, working with energy and as our energy field develops so will our intuitive faculties. To start with simply make a circle with your whole body, irrespective of your breath. Experience what it does to you. See that it tends to pull you out from the center of the circle so that your magnetic field is developing centrifugal forces. Think of your body as partaking in some way in the nature of the stars and planets and galaxies that continuously rotate. Imagine the flesh of your body having began at the beginning of time, being born out of stardust. Since that first impulse of life, billions of molecules have continued to live and proliferate to eventually form your body. The memory of the symphony of the spheres, of the choreography of the heavens, is right in the very cells of your body and you rediscover it when you do this motion. Even if you are not conscious of it, your body is.

            When you identify with your magnetic field instead of your body you realize that it does not have a boundary. When you identify with your aura, in a more advanced stage of the dhikr, you are doing the dhikr of light. Experience your aura as being interspersed with the planets, the galaxies, the stars, and the whole universe so that the universe is not other than you or out there somewhere but you are intermeshed with it. You could think of the wazaif Ya Kabir or Ya Mutakabir, God is very, very great. This sense of vastness and greatness will enhance your sense of identity and you discover that your personality is endowed with a dimension of greatness. That's why one is seeking for vast horizons, one doesn't like to be trapped in a small space. I find that it is that sense of honoring the greatness of God invested in one's being that makes it possible to forgive a person. Are you big enough to forgive? That's greatness. A puny person has difficulty in forgiving. Immediately your self-esteem is greatly enhanced.

            Now try and see if while you are doing this and you are experiencing centrifugal forces reaching out, if you can experience the opposite which is a pull towards the center. We call these centripetal forces. These forces are felt most as you interrupt the circling. You interrupt the motion when you are in the most precarious of all conditions which is when your head has turned towards the zenith. This is a state of unstable equilibrium, and in Sufi terminology it is a kamal state. So take advantage of the labile state to let your head bend forward and inhale. Exhale in the circle and inhale as your head descends. It seems very strange to inhale as one's head comes down but it is very powerful. Immediately you feel that the energy mounts up right away but you want to capture that moment when you turn within.

            The reason why people circumambulate a temple is because it strengthens the concentration on the center of the temple. So that concentration has been growing as you were encircling and now you are giving vent to that tendency to reach the center. In Sufi terminology it's Batin, the center of your being which is a void but it is also that area of your being which is most sacred. This is evidenced by the fact that there are things that one finds that there are no words that could possible express them. For instance, one might find it's a kind of misnomer to say, 'I love you'. Love is a very deep feeling in your soul and you find there is no way of expressing it in words. One shows love by loving. Somehow by formulating it in words one betrays its sacredness. That is perhaps the great secret of meditation when you get in touch with your deeper self and you don't have to talk about it. It's something you feel but you can't say. The Sufis call it the secret of the heart.

            When you turn your head towards your solar plexus, which is like the gravity center of your body, all of a sudden it is as though you had plunged into the depth of life and everything that you used to think was the universe seems to be right there at the surface. It's as though you were swimming under the water and somehow you can reach the universe from underneath. So you are not encapsulating yourself in your psyche, you are reaching the universe much better from inside then you could ever from outside. When you experience a vast panorama of nature or look into the starry sky at night it seems to be endless but somehow from inside you can reach the unreachable, you can reach in the hearts and thoughts and souls of humans, of angels, of animals, or plants. So when your head descends try and sustain that moment for as long as you can.

            For a moment don't bring your head up, just keep maintaining your concentration on the center but instead of thinking of it in terms of a circle think of it in terms of a vortex or as a spiral getting larger and larger. So you are experiencing what the Sufis call the ecstasy of the vastness and in that we see the majesty of God. For the Sufis this is a state of revelation: God reveals to you the secret of your soul. In our ordinary consciousness we tend to deny the feelings of our soul even though we may be in touch with the feelings of our heart. The Sufis call it Sirr as-Sirr, the secret of secrets, which is the secret of God, the divine intention behind the universe. Somehow you are in sync with the deep Ishq Allah, the deep nostalgia that moves the universe that you experience as your own personal nostalgia. If you go into this very deeply you realize that you can never formulate that secret in words. One is betraying the secret by trying to voice it and yet there is still that longing to do so. The power that moves the universe is that nostalgia for the unknown to become known and for this the great mystics have endangered their lives. Al Hallaj was accused of revealing the divine secret which was his love relationship with God and in doing so lost his life. In fact it is love which is the secret behind the universe rather than understanding. The terminology of the Sufis say it better than one could in the European languages. The Sufis would express it as Ya Kabir or Ya Mutakabir followed by Ya Batin and Ishq Allah Ma'abud Lillah (God is love, God is the adored one).

            So while you are inside, look at the universe as though you were looking at it from under water and you realize that only a semblance of the beauty that is to be found inside ever breaks through the surface. That is why the Sufis say the physical universe provides clues as to the divine nature behind all life. But these clues can easily be distorted by one's lack of understanding. So you learn not to rely on what appears at the surface any more unless you able to understand that which transpires behind that which appears. Now in regards to what affect these practices have on your daily life, they give you a kind of depth. When you are with another person you are able to grasp what is behind what they say or do or the issues behind any problems that you may have in respect to them. So it helps you go deeper, never relying upon apparent facts.

            After having hit the solar plexus, let your head come up gradually, shifting your concentration upwards. It's like kundalini but you're not starting at the bottom of the spine, you are starting in the solar plexus. Prolong your inhaling as your head rises. Inhale as your head comes down and continue to inhale as your head reaches upwards again but not very high, just up to the horizontal. Try to maintain concentration in the solar plexus for some time and then rise. So it's not just a matter of transferring your attention from one chakra to the next, we are ascending through the spheres as the head comes up and so it's very useful to know the different levels. Words will help a little but it is your intuition that bespeaks of the glory of the heavens that will lift your consciousness up from the earth sphere. The important thing is the sense of deja vu or rather deja commune, a sense of something that is familiar to you but you can't quite pinpoint it. Looking into the eyes of a child, looking into a beautiful sunrise, listening to some beautiful music, somehow triggers off the memory of something sublime which we have alienated ourselves so much from that most people don't believe it, they think it's just imagination. The world can be so vulgar so let yourself be enthused by beauty. Feel your need for beauty, your need to live in a beautiful world, and your need to manifest beauty. Without giving your soul this kind of nourishment, life can be unbearable.

            How are you responding to the challenges of life? One tends to take on the kind of attunement of the commonality which is low-key or even vulgar and one gets so used to it. So give yourself this luxury of enjoying beauty and beauty will act as a stepping stone towards the splendor beyond beauty. And imagination is a stepping stone towards beauty. The magic of imagination is that it pictures the formless as having form and that form is beautiful and bespeaks of the splendor behind it. One recognizes beauty because it is latent within one. So this is a new form of ecstasy. It is the ecstasy of turning within. Ibn 'Arabi said, 'one discovers beauty when one grasps that which transpires behind that which appears.' So that attunement puts you in a very high state and you find yourself in a transfigured world. This makes you beautiful.

            As our head rises we experience awakenings at the level of mithal, or metaphor, the way that a thought can be illustrated as an image. These awakenings correspond to the chakras. We call the solar plexus, alam al anwar, the world of subtle beings like beings who have died and exist as subtle bodies and the thinking that goes with it mithal, the world of metaphor. Malakut, the heart center, is the level of the angelic spheres, the world of celestial beings, your angelic counterparts which are still there. The throat center is Jabarut, the world of pure splendor beyond the personification of angels. Your link with the angelic spheres is strengthened by your glorification of God; it's not tangible but something you can experience in your own attunement. The third eye, Lahut, is the plane of the archetypes, the divine attributes, the seeds of your personality, and Hahut is the crown center. Murshid said that the seed that is the origin of the plant reappears at the end of the cycle of the plant. As you evolve the divine inheritance emerges out of the features of your personality and this is the birth of God, according to Pir-o-Murshid , the awakening of God in you.

            So these levels lead to samadhi. It's as though you had freed yourself from your incarnate state until you reach the level whereby you are the being of God and that's what al Hallaj was talking about. That's why Ibn 'Arabi said: know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God. You experience the unity behind all things. One sees that it's all one reality, the physical world, the angelic planes, everything. From a certain vantage point people appear as different but at that level it's all One Being. And for the Sufis that is the divine revelation. God reveals to the mystic that he or she is His/Her Being. So it starts with duality and in the end it's unity. But that is very short-lived in the dhikr and that's why you hold your breath after the inhalation so you have the experience of eternity. But the Sufis don't want to linger in a samadhi state because that is not honoring the purpose of life which is to be awake in life rather than awake beyond life. And that's why when you hold your breath, you concentrate on your heart center instead of on the crown center which you would have done if you had been in samadhi.

            So this is just a very brief touch of samadhi, unity. In Sufi terminology unity is Ahad, but when you awaken in life it's Ahadaniat, multiplicity in unity. When you awaken beyond life there is a kind of memory of your existence on the planet but somehow this memory is enshrouded into a sense of having been under an illusion, being caught in a perspective. That's what one means by maya. So that's awakening beyond life, that's samadhi. It's knowing that you thought that things were the way you thought they were but now you realize that is was just the way you saw things. When you reach a state of immunity against your perspective of the world, you experience the most utter freedom.

            So this gives you some clues as to what happens when you hold your breath but for the Sufis the purpose of life is to awaken in life. So now you are aware of the physical world, you are aware of your personality, of your thoughts, of your emotions, of your relationships with people and so on but somehow you never slip into your personal vantage point, somehow you are always seeing the different expressions of the Being of God. It is much more difficult to describe awakening in life than awakening beyond life.

            Murshid said, "God discovers His perfection through our imperfection.' The whole universe is the means whereby God discovers Him/Herself and you are part of this. According to the Hadith: God became in my consciousness the subject of His self-discovery and became in my personality the object of His self-discovery. Can you see the unity behind the duality? That's looking at things from high up and you realize that most people have the worms eye-view and this is the eagles eye-view. Pir-o-Murshid  describes this as what it's like to be awakened in life. Imagine that you are the only person awake among a lot of people who are sleeping or a lot of people who are caught in an illusion. It's like going to a play and getting caught up in the illusion of the scenery and costumes but now you see the play in the eyes of the producer. That's samadhi in life.

            So go into a very wide circle as you exhale. Then inhale as the head comes down and suddenly everything is reversed, you are seeing things from the inside out. And lift your consciousness to the heavenly spheres and discover the divine inheritance, the seed of your being, yourself as the plant or the flower. And then as you reach higher you don't identify with your personality anymore, or the archetype of your personality, but something much more fundamental which you could call beingness and you awaken! All of a sudden you awaken, freeing yourself from your trips, your vantage point, your involvement, everything. You find yourself free and awake as you hold your breath. And now you look at the world again but this time maintain your freedom, do not descend into your personal vantage point until you start exhaling and then you get back into your vantage point again, back into the circle. Exhale deeply in order to take in more oxygen on the inhalation and you will be able to hold your breath longer. Don't do it fast, do it very, very slowly. You can't do it much to start with, it's only when you get used to it every day that eventually you can maintain your concentration a long time. So this is a new impulse on the dhikr.

Did I not leave the unseen world in Thy pursuit?
Have I not come to this world of limitations in search of Thee?
Have I not followed Thy footprints on this earth?
Have I not looked for Thy light in the heavens?
But where did I find Thee, Beloved, at last?
Hiding in my heart.
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

             The Sufi dhikr, La Ilaha Illa 'Lla Hu: there is no God but God. La on the exhalation while describing a circular motion of the head, third eye facing left shoulder, solar plexus, right shoulder. Ilaha as one reaches upwards to the apex of the circle. Illa on the inhalation while thrusting the head downwards, the third eye striking the solar plexus. 'Llah (Allah), the great proclamation sounded in the heart center as the head rises. Hu as one holds one's breath.
