97 - Why the Wazifa?

            The effectiveness of our practice of the Wazifa presents us with a paradox: it depends entirely upon our realization, while on the other had it confers realization. It only works in the Sufi perspective of always looking at oneself from two complementary points of view: the personal and the way things look from the complementary (or opposite) point of view to one's own which the Sufis call the divine point of view. It requires us to push our point of view beyond its limitations in infinite regress and therefore spells emancipation from simplistic, commonplace thinking. This would be aptly illustrated by our mind's ability to always imagine a number greater than the number which we have envisioned so far. Without this dimension of vision, the Wazifa is not a Wazifa and therefore cannot be effective. If it is practiced as a method of boosting psychological idiosyncrasies, it cannot possibly work. It would be a simplistic view to assume that the Wazifa is a prescription to develop a certain quality. This would be missing out on the very seed bed out of which our personality may blossom.

            However, in Sufism, this complementarity honors our incentive in participating in our own creativity by opening ourselves to the revelation of the divine skill whereby the divine artist fashions us - each uniquely ... this requires of us to be sensitive to our intuition of a completely different way of thinking and emoting than our own. Here we recognize two factors in our creativity: unfurling latencies by the power of imagination (at the Mithal level) and actualizing impersonal or transcendent archetypes (at the Lahut level) into our personalities which are their exemplars. Such is spirituality, it represents a further dimension, complementary to the purely psychological one. It is always challenging, unforeseeable, perplexing and exhilarating!

            As we know, the Sufis seek the fulfillment of the purpose of life which requires cultivating that precious gift of the universe to us: our human personality. Hence the importance of, amongst all our spiritual practices: the Wazifa.

            While as we know, the prime orientation in Sufism is awakening in life. However in the Sufi sense, to awaken in life, one does need to unfurl one's potentialities and this requires integrating all levels of one's being (wholistically, rather than holistically).                              

ARTICULATING A REALIZATION BY MEANS OF AN IDIOM

            The Wazifa is the practice of invoking a divine name repetitively. The name Ism Ilahi or Asma'ul Husna is a label conveying a quality.

With us the name of everything is its outward form; with the Creator it's inward essence.

Rumi

The divine names are relations, not ontological realities, occasioned by the entities of the possible things.

Ibn 'Arabi

A mental association is established between the word and its archetypal meaning. By mentioning the "name", one evokes the meaning.

Then God makes him journey through His names in order to show him His signs. Thus the servant comes to know that he is designated by every name. It is through these names that God appears to the servant.

Ibn 'Arabi

            In our human understanding, we ascribe a quality to a person or ourselves, but if we envision this quality as God's quality manifesting in us, it will open up our personality to a totally different spectrum, magnitude and status. The Sufis consider the idiosyncrasies of our personality as the exemplars of the divine archetypal qualities. To unfurl these we need to refer back continually to their archetype. The exemplar is known by means of the archetype: for example if we know that a table is round, it is because roundness is inherently written into our sense of meaningfulness, and contrariwise, the archetype is known by means of the exemplar. For example, after having seen many roses, a child sees their difference with lilies.

            When practicing the Wazifa, it is important to assess at which stage you are, and assess the next step in order to progress. But one must never skip a stage, otherwise, one may have to backtrack. Following are the developmental stages of the Sufi initiate with regard to the Wazaif:

1) The Empirical Level:  Nazut

Typical Wazifa: Ya Zahir

            The dawning of the evolution or consciousness is evidenced by the rudimentary sensorial perceptual experience accompanied by the commonplace naive interpretation: 'I feel this object; it is hard, prickly, round ...I feel cold, hungry, angry', This represents a rudimentary stage of human thinking. Any physicist will confirm that matter is not the way it feels or looks. And by the same token, our emotions can lead us into subjective 'make-believe'. So our interpretation of experience could be understood as 'this is the way things look from a particular vantage point'. It represents therefore a limited opinion, bearing upon a slither of the situation - for example, 'Note Dame in Paris looks like this', neglecting that this is the way it is seen only from a certain angle and it looks totally different from another angle; or again a light-buoy should not be mistaken for the haven. Realization lies a long way ahead! and that is the objective of those who are seeking for greater understanding.

            The same applies to elementary subjective statements which bespeak that the person is caught in a personal, hence biased perspective for which the only therapy is to pull oneself out of that perspective and see things from alternate perspectives. And this applies pertinently to our perfunctory interpretation of events in which we are involved which we judge from our personal bias and take for granted.

            These are the trite modes of thinking that Yoga brands as illusory or rather deluding maya. The Sufi view highlights the way of avoiding being caught up in them: by considering them to be clues, (signposts) that should never be taken for granted as such, but could lead to the meaningfulness toward which they point. This is what awakening is about. The signpost has fulfilled its purpose when one has left it behind. Lingering in these perfunctory judgments is getting into a rut without issue.

We shall show them our signs at the horizons and in themselves.

Qur'an

            At the Nazut level: the adept recognizes in the many-splendored aspects of nature clues - ayat - matching qualities that are meaningful to him/her. For example a lake at moonlight: peace; a colorful dawn; splendor; etc. For the Sufis, at this stage God wrapped in mystery, reveals Him/Herself through these clues. Earmarking these clues will make the Wazaif that evoke them more meaningful.

2) The Psychological Level:  Khayal  

Typical Wazifa: Ya Alim

            At the Khayal level, we are on the lookout for clues whereby God reveals Him/Herself through the way a paramount model of excellence, which Sufis ascribe to the divine nature, is exemplified in our own personality. Once more, we will gain some sense of the Wazaif as we pinpoint the personality feature they evoke in ourselves.

Behold the world entirely comprised in yourself. The world is man and man is a world.

Mahmood Shabistari                

3) The Introspective Level:  Arwah 

 Typical Wazifa: Ya Batin

            At the Arwah level, we are trying to stalk the divine nature 'transpiring through that which appears,' making allowances for the fact that there is bound to be distortion and defilement in those very precarious and perishable signs, rather than relying upon our interpretation of events. Here we find the converse: rather than searching for the quality evoked by the Wazifa in our personality, such as it is, we capture it trying to surface in our personality as it unfolds.

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 of the flower.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            As we discover the more germane inner lining of our psyche, we will be aware of the need to debunk the hoax of our psychological projections upon our problems whereby we deceive ourselves by our own assessments of our problems. 

Thought grasps the form of the object directly without the help of categories; illusion and imagination; done away with impressions (samsara); all antecedent mental functions are destroyed.

Eliade

4) The Level of Metaphor (Creative Imagination):  Mithal           

 Typical Wazifa: Ya Khaliq

            At the Mithal level, (the level of metaphor), we consciously participate in the creativity of our personality by unfurling potentialities lying in wait, realizing that our creativity customizes the divine creativity.

The soul of man is the spirit of the Creator, and therefore has within it the same power of creating by the power of mind as his Creator has.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            At this level we capture the seeing sprouts of our personality as they are surfacing by translating reality in the mental and emotional mode into evanescent forms.

Thus the ascensions of saints are the ascensions of their spirit, triggering off the visions of their hearts whereby they perceive forms in the intermediary world of embodied spiritual realities.

Ibn 'Arabi

Here all the essential realities of being are manifested in real images. ... So what the soul shows to itself is precisely its own image, since the earth it projects directly reflects the image premeditated by the soul.

Vide Corbin

            At this stage, we realize that God is revealing His\Her qualities - sifat  - which we evoke in our Wazaif in the unfurling of His\Her nature as our personality, albeit restricted by the very limitations you wreak upon this process by your own assessment of what you think are your qualities or defects. Interestingly, these spontaneous thoughts that seems to arise from within and coalesce into images are clues as to 'how God is trying to manifest through me (and as me) by the qualities that I am awakening in myself'.

            This requires of us to reverse our vantage point in order to discover ourselves through the knowledge that God has of Him/Herself through us.

God describes Himself to us through ourselves.

I know God through the knowledge that God has of Himself through me.

Ibn 'Arabi

5) The Celestial Level:  Malakut  

Typical Wazifa: Ya Quddus

            At the Malakut level, the recollection of our celestial nature to which we attune ourselves, awakens qualities in our self-creativity which would not have arisen if we had continued to identify with our psychological self-image.

As man evolves, he ceases to look down on earth, but looks to the heavens. If one wants to seek the heavens, one must change the direction of looking.  

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            This is triggered of by our giving vent to our aspiration toward the sublime and the sacred.

Man's grade of evolution depends upon the pitch he has attained; it is a certain pitch that makes him conscious of a certain phase of life.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            This will awaken our memory of Deja vu prior to our birth.

God acquaints them with what corresponds to them in each world by passing with them through the different worlds.

Ibn 'Arabi

            However it does require of us to let go of our commonplace self-image.

Now their journey in God involves the dissolving of their composite nature and acquaints them with what corresponds to them in each world of being, by passing with them through the different sorts of worlds.

Ibn 'Arabi

 The soul's unfoldment comes from its power which ends in its breaking through the ties of the lower planes. 

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            At this point in our evolutionary development, we are living an active and effective reciprocity between ourselves and God - that is, between the qualities that have been actualized in our personality, and the many splendored potentialities that are still latent, the legacy of the divine archetypes manifest in our celestial counterpart, but somewhat defiled in those exemplars of the archetypes of our being that are our idiosyncrasies.

            It is only by glorification that our celestial nature reveals itself to us. Thus our celestial nature serves as a bridge in that reciprocal action between God and man or between the divine and human poles of our being.

Have Me present to your heart, I shall have you present in myself.

Qur'an

            Therefore according to the Sufis, 'we know God through the knowledge that God acquires by our discovering God's qualities in our idiosyncrasies'. This antinomy is found in Ibn 'Arabi's description of two fundamental spiritual developmental stages:

I know God through the knowledge that He has of Himself by my discovering Him.

6) The Level of the Divine Knower as Our Intelligence: Jabarut 

 Typical Wazifa: Ya Shahid

            At the Jabarut level, we can see that our realization of the full implications of each Wazifa changes dramatically, if we reverse our assumption of being the spectator and invite the Divine Witness to illuminate our point of view.

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

            The consequence is that, we can now see how our assessment of our self-image was based upon our perception of our personal idiosyncrasies, and how this perspective on our identity was standing in the way of and thwarting the actualizing of the bounty in store at the Lahut level of our being, those seminal qualities or attributes - Sifat - which we invoke in our Wazaif.

            Whereas if we let the divine Witness presiding over our consciousness prevail over our personal perspective, an inherent knowledge accessed through the act of intelligence rather than of consciousness that was being blocked by our judgment breaks through, liberating us from our self-image and flooding our awareness, "awakening the God within" (as Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan says).

            When consciousness is not conscious of anything, it is resorbed in its ground which is intelligence.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan  

Man attains insight into meaningfulness from the divine mind that confers form to material beings. Therefore, to obtain insight into meaningfulness, do not obstruct the gift from above, by excessive attachment to the perceptual reality.

Avicenna

8) The Archetypal Level: Lahut 

Typical Wazifa: Ya Kemal

            Lahut. This about-turn in our vantage point (trying to see things from the divine point of view will) open the way to our accessing the Lahut level of our being, where we discover the archetypes of which our idiosyncrasies are the exemplars.

Know that there is no form in the lower world without a likeness (mithl) in the higher world The forms in the higher world preserve the existence of their likeness in the lower worlds. Between the two worlds there are tenuities which extend from each form to its likeness. ... These are like ladders for the angels, while the meanings that descend in these tenuities are like angels.

Ibn 'Arabi 

            Therefore we now discover our idiosyncrasies and the potentialities of their being further deployed by grasping with our intelligence (rather than our consciousness) the archetypes of which they are the exemplars.

Since the ephemeral being manifests the form of the eternal, it is by the contemplation of the eternal that God communicates to us the knowledge of Himself. ... You know yourself with another knowledge, different from that which you had when you knew your Lord by the knowledge that you had of yourself, because it is through Him that you know yourself.

Ibn 'Arabi

            The unfurling of the seeds of our personality triggered off by the creative power of our imagination (at the Mithal level) would be reiteratively tautological and therefore would exclude the possibility for further improvement if it were not for that extra-temporal, (extra-samsaric), open ended, transcendent, archetypal matrix of our being at the Lahut level carrying the inexhaustive possibilities of what we mean by divinity - Ulluhiyat - (just as the repetitive recycling of the seed in the plant can only be relieved by mutation).

Possible things become qualified by existence from behind the veils of the divine attributes.

Ibn 'Arabi

             Here is the break-through.

The one who is conscious of his earthly origin is an earthly man, one who is conscious of his heavenly origin is the son of God.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            From the moment that we can see things from the divine point of view, we access dimensions of our being that transfigure our personality radically. Here lies the secret of the Wazifa. This is spirituality. While serving our creativity, imagining the qualities evoked in our Wazaif, as we have seen at the Mithal level, the level of creative imagination does limit the unfurling of these qualities unless we call upon the eternal models of which the seed-bed of our personality is an expression.

One must avoid looking for one's instructions in the realm of imagination...which only gives indirect indications regarding pure archetypes.

Ibn 'Arabi

            Here imagination is not proceeding from inwards outwards, but from upward downward.

Imagination causes archetypal notions to descend into perceptible forms.

Ibn 'Arabi

            Our being grows to its cosmic dimensions.

When the inner nature manifested by man's inclinations and faculties has become pure, he contemplates therein whatever is of the same nature as in the cosmos.

Shahabuddin Suhrawardi

            We participate in creating our being through our glorification. By our attunement to the sacred. We awaken sublime propensities in our being that would otherwise lie latent. We awaken the God within.

Allah al makhluk fi'l 'itiqadat: God creates Himself through your prayers.

Hadith Qudsi

8) The Unitive Level:  Hahut

Typical Wazifa: Ya Ahad

            The Hahut level of our being represents a whole different stratum. It is the reality that transcends the existential state even as it manifests as our being.

When the unreality of life fades away, its reality strikes my soul.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            We have risen beyond the conditions in which God can only be known by revealing Him/Herself through His/Her "signs" which requires the existential state (at different levels) 

At an advanced stage one learns to grasp God as He is in Himself rather than the knowledge gleaned of Him. ... The one who is immersed in the vision of multiplicity is in the world in the aspect of the divine names and the names of the world. The one who is immersed in the divine unity is with God in the grasp of His unity, irrespective of the worlds.

Ibn 'Arabi

            At this pinnacle, not only the existential state but the programming is by-passed and that means it is unaffected by the feed-back from the existential realm. That is why Buddha called it not only beyond existence, but beyond non-existence, in fact beyond conditioning. If you have a whiff of this state, you will experience the most utter freedom, in fact liberation.

The real Being is only and exclusively God in His essence dhat and principle 'ayn; not under the aspect of His names. ... In the station of unity, touching upon the unity, one accesses the Supreme knowledge whereby the grasp of the qualities falls away; indeed the qualities cannot add anything to the essence. ... If the names disappeared the Named One would appear.

Ibn 'Arabi

Do not confuse the perfection of the manifestation through existence where the essence is individuated (like the manifestation of the totality in the parts), with the manifestation of the essence to itself, in itself and for itself.

Jami

Every time that you focus on an object, He will have already escaped you.

Knowledge is a veil upon the known.

Ibn 'Arabi

            One feels called upon to forego one's sense of oneself as an individual, but Hallaj points out that this would be contradictory, because one would be availing oneself of one's self to annihilate oneself.

It is God who elects him and draws him into His state of isolation that he may participate in the mystery [of the divine solitude].

al Hallaj

            In this ultimate step, the switch-over occurs when we are no more concerned with our personality, and qualities generally, which are, according to the Sufis, the means whereby God manifests Him/Herself. Therefore it is of the resort of the dhikr rather than the Wazifa.

When we are face to face, Beloved, I do not know whether to call Thee me, or me Thee. I see myself when Thou art not before me; when I see Thee my self is lost to view. I consider it is good fortune when Thou art alone with me; but when I am not there at all, I think it is the greatest blessing.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

9) The Level of the Overview of the Existential State:  Tawhid  

Typical Wazifa: Ya Mawjud

            Tawhid. Having peered behind the curtain, back-stage of the universe, we make an about-turn into 'awakening in life', which we could call in Sufi terms 'Tawhid'.

            How do we awaken in life? Those veils that are the appearance of things are only veils concealing reality until one looks from behind the veils. Then we see the divine intention and its fulfillment and realize that instead of being an illusion (a veil) it was the drama and achievement of existence that was the objective behind all that we have encountered in our ascent through the spheres. The purpose of the blue-print of your house is your house. 

The fulfillment of this whole creation is to be found in man. And this object is only fulfilled when man has awakened that part of himself which represents the master, that is God Himself. It is man that the divine perfection can be seen. God knows Himself through His manifestation. Manifestation is the self of God, but a self that is limited  -  a self that makes His perfection known to Himself when He compares Himself with the limited self we call nature. Therefore the purpose of the whole creation is the realization that God gains by discovering His own Perfection through our imperfection.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            This is the real, whereas reality was the virtuality behind the real. It remains imponderable, bewildering, enrapturing, wrapped in mystery, however much one strives to decipher it. But if one switches over to look at real life situations from the other side of the curtain then one discovers the divine intentions in action.

When thou perceivest, thou seest limitation openly, and thou seest Me at the back of the unseen. ... And I considered the veils; and lo, they were everything that has appeared, and everything that has appeared in that which has appeared. ... Whoso knows the veil, is near to the unveiling.

Niffari

However it is the kind of knowledge that one can only achieve by doing rather than knowing in theory. ... by actuating the divine nature in my personality, I confer upon God a mode of existence.

Ibn 'Arabi

In order to gain God consciousness, the first condition is to make God a reality, so that He no longer is an imagination...At present there exists only in the world a belief in God; God exists in the imagination. It is such a soul which has touched upon divine perfection that brings to earth a living God who without him would remain on in the heavens. ...If there is any sign of God to be seen, it is in the God-conscious one.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            To make God a reality, we need to express the divine manner in our personality, hence the importance of the Wazifa.

            This is awakening in life. Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan points to the sudden realization that triggers off this dedication to our purpose in life.

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

True exaltation of the spirit resides in he fact that it has come to earth and has realized there its spiritual existence.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            The consequence is that, instead of loosing our individuality or trying to annihilate it, we revalidate it in its uniqueness.

The soul of every individual is God, but man has a mind and a body which contains God according to the accommodation.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            One is overwhelmed by the discovery that, by trying to see things from the divine point of view, one is conferring upon God a mode of reality, hence the value of our personal contribution to the total being of God, however small.

Divinity resides in humanity. It is also the outcome of humanity.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            At this stage, both our personal creativity at the Mithal level and the impersonal dimension of our creativity, attained by exemplifying the divinity of our being at the Lahut level, integrate:

You will observe the engendering of the possibilities lying in the spiritual plane into the corporeal world.

Thoughts shift from the perception of the senses to the imaginary ones; then the intelligible thoughts will descend upon you in the form of perceptions.

Ibn 'Arabi      

            It is typified by that state in which, seeing oneself mirrored in another, one recognizes that reality being distorted by lenses, blurring it to the extent that one has failed to see the underlying unity, which is what one means by God.  

He brought the cosmos into existence upon His own Form. Hence He is a mirror within which He sees His own Form. ...Thou art His Form and He is Thy spirit.

Ibn 'Arabi

I am the mirror of Thy face, through Thine own eyes, I look upon Thy countenance.

Semnani

            Of course, the ultimate secret is that rather than by cognizance, the very configuration of our being, rendering states of consciousness corporeal, is powered by divine love.

I emanated upon thee a force of love so that you might be fashioned according to my glance.

Qur'an

            In the course of this peregrination through the stages (maqqam) the Wazaif have revealed a meaningfulness that we could never have clinched in our commonplace thinking, but through our glorification. At first we were assessing values, now it is being rather than meaningfulness that is revealed. It has been a journey of us in God At first we were motivated by covetousness, then indifference, lastly interest, nostalgia, love - Ishq Allah.

Indifference gives great power; but the whole manifestation is a phenomenon of interest. All this world that man h as made, where has it come from? It has come from the power of interest. The whole creation and all that is in it are the products of the Creator's interest. But at the same time the power of indifference is a greater one still, because, although motive has a power, yet at the same time motive limits power. Yet it is motive that gives man the power to accomplish things. On the other hand, so long as a man has a longing to obtain any particular object, he cannot go further than that object.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
