CURRICULUM OF THE SUFI ORDER
The teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan
Presented and paraphrased by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Including parallels with the ancient Sufis
LESSON 12
IN PURSUIT OF THE SUBLIME
AND MEANINGFULNESS
IN REAL LIFE SITUATIONS

Many of us are bracing for the journey through the spheres (Nazut, Mithal, Malakut, etc.) whose dimensions we plan to explore in the Curriculum, concretized in practices. However, I feel that before we venture aloft, we need to make sure that we have a clear sense of what our ultimate objective is and to be wary of wishful thinking.

The acid test is to see in what way hoisting our consciousness beyond commonplace perspectives will ultimately help us to include alternate vantage points in an encompassing perspective. This is 'awakening in life' rather than 'beyond the beyond.' One might describe it as seeing back-stage together with seeing what is happening on the stage.  Hence Hazrat Inayat Khan distinguishes between waking and awakening:

God lost in the manifestation is the state which we call waking. The manifestation lost in God is realization. In my language I would call the latter awakening and the former a dream. (Sufi Teachings)

Therefore, rather than conducting the classical retreat, I have made an attempt at sustaining, yet adapting, the perspectives and attunements adopted in our prescribed retreats in the midst of the hustle-bustle of a real-life scene.  My objective was to put myself to a test and apply strictly the guidelines given by Hazrat Inayat Khan.

True exaltation of the spirit resides in the fact that it has come to Earth and has realized there its spiritual being. (The Alchemy of Happiness)

The soul manifests in the world in order that it may experience the different phases of manifestation, yet not lose its way, but regain its original freedom in addition to the experience and knowledge it has gained in the world....The purpose of life is fulfilled in rising to the greatest heights and in diving to the deepest depths of life, in widening one's horizons, in penetrating life in all its spheres, in losing oneself, and in finding oneself in the end.(The Way of Illumination, The Inner Life)

As I did this, it became increasingly clear that Hazrat Inayat Khan's teaching is about awakening in life but it requires including the perspectives of the higher levels in one's vantage point. Obviously this means not simply slipping into the commonplace 'here and now,' but not discounting it either, since it is here that the Divine programming of the Universe, is to be found, not 'up there.' It means

to live in heaven and to live on the earth at the same time. (The Unity of Religious Ideals, The Spiritual Hierarchy, Attunement of the Prophet)

The challenge was to maintain God-consciousness while observing the world.

It is in man that divinity is awakened, that God is awakened, that God can be seen. (The Unity of Religious Ideals, The Spiritual Hierarchy)

The power of the spiritual man lasts as long as he is conscious of the spiritual spheres.  No sooner does his consciousness become reflected with the earth than his power ceases to work and he falls flat on the ground. (Esoteric Papers, Sangitha II)

The purpose of every soul is that for which the whole creation has been striving; and it is the fulfillment of that purpose which is called God consciousness. (Esoteric Papers, Sangatha I)

Where are you to find God if not in the God-conscious. ... The Creator is hidden in His creation.

What does God-consciousness mean? Would it be helpful to see that we are the product of the proliferation of the One and only being?

Spiritual attainment is to be conscious of the Perfect One who is formed in the heart. (The Complete Sayings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, 591) 

It became clear that our sense of identity (whether personal or transpersonal) determines our insight. Therefore if I wished to observe the world from a transpersonal vantage point, I needed to explore further my identity and shift my identity from my ordinary self-image.

The spirit of limitation is always a hindrance to realizing the spirit of mastery and practicing it. The experience of being powerless is man's ignorance of the power within him. ... The outlook becomes wide, as wide as the divine eye. (Soul Whence and Whither, Manifestation)

It follows that if, to observe the world in an awakened stage, I need to be God-conscious, I need to discover my divine inheritance which neither means that I identify with God nor that I am a discrete individual observer. Rather, my consciousness could be likened to a beam of light in which the light of the cosmos has been focalized through a lens.

A person needs to analyze himself and see, "Where does 'I' stand? Does it stand as a remote exclusive being...." (Mysticism of Sound and Music, The Cosmic Language, The Ego)

What is meant by concentration is the change of identification of the soul, so that it may lose the false conception of identification and identify itself with the true self instead of the false self. (The Alchemy of Happiness)

When the soul goes further on the path of knowledge, it begins to recognize the feeling of 'I-ness' and see how it identifies with what is not itself. (The Soul Whence and Whither)

The thought of any person is the thought of the entire human race and so the intelligence of the whole planet has an effect upon all those living on the planet...(Spiritual Liberty)

Here lies the paradox, the test as to whether I am up to practicing Hazrat Inayat Khan's teaching in real-life rather than absconding in the ambiguity of a delusive would-be semblance of wishful thinking purported to be samadhi. It, however, certainly requires a different way of thinking to the usual one. Consequently, in order to grasp what is being enacted behind the enigmatic drama played by these unknown people passing each other (or in clusters) like ships in the night on the pavement of the Champs Elysees, I am called upon to apply the holistic view of scientists to my sense of identity.

Man is a condition of God like a wave is a condition of the sea.

To investigate this further I had to see that while the psychological genes that we inherit include those of the universe (what Christ calls our divine inheritance), some of these are active and others have been curbed (in biology: recessive and dominant) in the course of our inheritance from each of our ancestors. With the consequence that that divine perfection that we have inherited gets processed, hence limited, albeit it remains virtual and can be aroused by one's will.

The soul changes its own identity with the change of its constantly changing vision. (Spiritual Liberty)

One finds a kind of universe in oneself. (The Alchemy of Happiness)

Now I could see the advantage of this constraint upon our cosmic dimension, because, thanks to the interfacing and interaction between each of us as fragments of the Totality in which the bounty of the Totality is virtually present, we enrich each other reciprocally. And consequently the overall code is enriched by the feedback of its fragments, like variation on a theme of music.

There is a spirit that collects and accumulates all the knowledge that every living being has had. No knowledge or discovery that has ever been made is lost. It all accumulates and collects in that mind as an eternal reservoir - the divine mind. (Healing and the Mind World, Mental Purification)

So in this case we can willfully arouse these genes by overcoming that in our own self, which stands as an obstacle to activating the divine inheritance.

Divinity resides in humanity; it is also the outcome of humanity.

The smartness of the programming is evidenced in the delegation of responsibility; what is more, in the fact that the programming is elaborated in its implementation in existence; it is not 'up there.'

The divine mind is made of His own creation. The divine mind becomes completed after manifestation. (The Unity of Religious Ideals)

Sitting here on the Champs Elysees, trying to maintain Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan's consciousness, which could be described as a bird's eye view, one really does have some indication as to what people are motivating or motivated by. However, while this scenario offers us an alternative range to our 'storms in our tea-cups,' it is not an interactive situation (unless we involve ourselves in it, in which case the chances of losing our objectivity are at least as great as when confronting our ordinary problems). Consequently we are in the seat of the observer.

In spiritual awakening the first thing that comes to man is the lifting of a veil and this is the lifting of an apparent condition. Then a person does not see every condition as it appears to be, but sees behind every condition its deeper meaning.

So the daunting question prods one: what is it all about? Actually, one is not just the observer, but one seeks to grasp the divine programming behind what one observes.

It is simply a gradual awakening from the witnessing aspect to the recognizing aspect. (The Alchemy of Happiness, The Meaning of Life)

Awakening in life must signify trying to see purposefulness and meaningfulness in this lively scene deployed before my eyes.   

And the sign of that awakening is that upon every person and upon every object the wakened person throws a light, a light of his soul, and sees that object, that condition, in that light. It is his own soul that becomes a torch in his hand, it is his own light that illuminates his path. It is just like throwing a searchlight upon dark corners which one did not see before, and the corners become clear and illuminated again. It is like throwing light upon problems that one did not understand first. It is like seeing with x-rays persons who were a riddle before. (Social Gathekas, The Awakening of the Soul)

Wherever his glance falls - on nature, on characters - he reads their history, he sees their future. He sees the cause behind the faults people have. While an ordinary person can see the action of another, the seer can see the reason of the action also, and if his sight is still keener, he can see the reason of the person. He knows why an event comes, whence it comes, what is behind it, what is the cause of it, and behind the seeming cause, the hidden cause. And if he wishes to trace the cause behind the cause, he could trace it back to the primal cause, for the inner life is lived by living with the primal cause.

Every person he meets, he begins to communicate with his soul. Every person and every object stand before him as an open book.

What strikes me first is that most people seem to be caught in their own personal trips like puppets oblivious of the threads that move them.

It is ignorance when it takes this experience to be real. It does so because it cannot see itself; as the eye sees all things, but not itself. Therefore the soul identifies itself with all things that it sees, and changes its own identity with the change of its constantly changing vision. ... But as the soul cannot see itself, it thinks, by the help of the ego: I am sad, I am glad, I remember, I have forgotten. (Spiritual Liberty)

Most people seem so obviously convinced that they are what they think they are!

Striving in the spiritual path is breaking away from the false conception that we have made of ourselves, coming out of it, it is realizing our true being and becoming conscious of it. (Sufi Teachings, Health and Order of Body and Mind)

At the cost of being judgmental, the values pursued by so many seem trivial or trifle. It looks as though many are pursuing a furtive chimera, to be entertained by a moment of pleasure that can never be utterly satisfied - wanting more and more self-satisfaction.

To seek to do these things is to give pearls to buy pebbles. (In an Eastern Rose Garden)

When man has to choose between his spiritual and his material profit, then he shows whether his treasure is on earth or in heaven.

Whether to renounce things momentarily precious for everlasting things or everlasting things for things momentarily precious. (Social and Religious Gathekas, Social Gathekas, Renunciation)

What is more, getting into the consciousness of so many, one sees that obviously most people

...are acting with the idea in mind of what would be to their interest; what would bring them an advantage. (The Alchemy of Happiness)   

Moreover this selfishness will lead to being unjust and may escalate into cruelty, which can sometimes be detected in someone's face.

Immediately a note of caution struck my memory of Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan's words:

Unhappy is he who looks with contempt at the world, who hates human beings and thinks he is superior to them; the one who loves them thinks only that they are going through the same process that he has gone through. (The Way of Illumination, The Inner Life)

Besides:

Remember: we can never claim to be unselfish; but if we are selfish, it is just as well to be wisely selfish. The wise selfish person will obtain money in order that he can express his generosity with what he has collected.

Then my attention was drawn to take advantage of this opportunity of watching others, to see a likeness of these within myself. Furthermore,

...the world, busy with its selfish, unimportant occupations, will surely drag you towards itself. (Sufi Teachings)

You must find your ideal in yourself; no ideal in life will prove lasting and true except the one you yourself make. (The Sayings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, Gayan)     

Interestingly, no sooner than one ceases to be judgmental, one discovers oneself for having seen oneself in another. 

...and when this light is thrown within one's self, then the self will be revealed to a person; he will become enlightened as to his own nature and his own character. (The Mysticism of Sound and Music)

Looking at the moving scene of beings of all walks of life in their stupendous diversity, most people seem to be caught in their personal concerns regardless of the way that the overwhelming intention sparking life affects their personal life. Scanning their motivations from the transpersonal perspective rather than the personal vantage point, one sees splendor and meaningfulness trying to blossom and awaken in the midst of defilement and ignorance.

Love must be absolutely free from selfishness, otherwise it does not produce proper illumination. (Spiritual Liberty)

It appears as though only a few are aware of the force impelling people to socialize. People impelled by the attraction of the opposite sex seem to be oblivious of the cosmic programming behind their attraction, that they are fulfilling a cosmic intention to ensure the perpetuation of form - that is what has been gained by the configuration of thought into matter registered as form. Where this completion of one's being by the power of affinity occurs, the fulfillment of this cosmic magic is optimized. Otherwise one wonders to what confinement a fortuitous spell, fancy, fantasy or whimsical fad may lead. In general, one sees people unfolding, being enriched by the completion gained by the mutual enhancement of their psyches, wisdom, know-how, or attunement.

In fact ifone can be inspired and enriched by the wisdom and attunement of another person, it is because they have become incorporated in one's psyche so that we can find them in ourselves. There is an osmosis between beings at the level of the psyche. For this one must not think of them as located in space or just recall meeting them in time. Communication can be triggered off by simply reading the words of a person or seeing their portrait. As we have seen form has value because it configures a state of being. 

The persons whom we admire are our gurus. We can reach them in ourselves, because if we admire qualities in them it is because they resonate with latent qualities in ourselves that they thereby arouse.

Here again we encounter a paradox:

There are two aspects of fullness: completion and perfection. Every new experience, a thought, an imagination, a principle, an ideal add to one's knowledge that makes man complete. At the same time by trying to be self-sufficient within oneself, perfection is obtained. 

There comes another step in awakening when a man does not even see the cause, but comes to the realization of the adjustment of things: how every activity of life, whether it appears to be wrong or right, adjusts itself.

Amongst such diversity, in the moving scene, one espies in many people beauty, sensitivity, a sense of responsibility and concern, idealism, sparkling joy in the marvel of life, the sortilege of love.    

Jami:

From all eternity, the Beloved unveiled His beauty in the solitude of the unseen; He held up the mirror to His own Face, He displayed His loveliness to Himself, He was both the Spectator and the spectacle. ... Although He beheld His attributes and qualities as a perfect whole in His Essence, yet He desired that they should be displayed to Him in another mirror, and that each of His eternal attributes should become manifest accordingly in a diverse form. Therefore He created the verdant fields of time and space, and the life-giving garden of the world, that every branch and leaf and fruit might show forth His various perfections. (Nicholson, 1975, pp 80-81)    

The manifest beauty displays one's attunement.

One's grade of evolution depends upon the pitch one has attained that makes one conscious of a certain phase of life. ... There is a stage at which, by touching a particular phase of existence, one feels raised above the limitations of life. At that moment of supreme exaltation, one is not only united with the source of all being, but dissolved in it for one discovers that that source is one's very self. (Healing and the Mind World)

Consciousness has become so light and so liberated and free that it can raise itself and dive and touch the depth of one's being. (Healing and the Mind World)

All that man considers beautiful, precious and good is not necessarily in the thing or the being, it is in his ideal; the thing or being causes him to create the beauty, value and goodness in his own mind. (The Way of Illumination)

In rare instances one can perceive splendor breaking through in a flurry of superb beauty for an ephemeral outburst - a moment of glory as if suspended at the apex of the curve of evolution - then melt away. This could be illustrated by the life cycle of a desert succulent.  It can take years for the sugars from the environment to build up until that magical moment when it erupts in a supremely beautiful iridescent flower. Within a few hours, it has paled and faded yet not without having sown seeds that are the replica of the very seed in which it had been embedded.

You may think of yourself as a plant in which only a little bounty latent in the seed is manifest. Yet in you the seed that caused the whole existence - God - is to be found. The seed out of which the trunk, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit are made arises again at the end of the cycle. The same God so little of whose perfection manifested in the plant arises again and again in its pursuit of excellence trying to emerge as perfectly as possible in the midst of human imperfection.

It would prove ideal if that state would lead to further valuable attainments instead of being simply recycled in the seed. This repetitive recurrent rebirthing is precisely what Buddha illustrated by the samsaric wheel. To eschew this, one needs to call upon a peri-samsaric dimension of one's inheritance that is not of the nature of becoming. This precisely what Hazrat Inayat Khan means by honoring our divine inheritance.

Man is the product of all planes spiritual and material....in him alone shines forth that primal intelligence that caused the whole. (Sangatha I)

It would be a feature of simplistic thinking (evidenced by the commonplace mode of thinking in terms of duality) to assume that that beauty was pre-established - that the splendor of the heavens manifest as beauty on the earth already exists in the divine programming. In the way of thinking in the emergent paradigms announcing the spirituality of the future, and which corroborates the perspective arrived at by physics as it has been advancing over the decades, that congruity and 'elegance' (a term now current amongst physicists) is self-organized. For example, when all the niches in the orbitals of an atom are occupied by electrons, if a further electron is incorporated in the atom, that electron creates a new orbit.  In contrast, while a car follows an already existing pathway or road, an airplane blazes its own trail, one that was not pre-existent. 

While one might suppose that the seed needs an adequate environmental support system in which to unfurl, paradoxically, colorful flowers can sometimes bloom in the most unfriendly circumstances, as for example in a wedge in a rock. It looks as though, since the seed is transforming the environment into a plant, its success is a function of the degree to which the environment lends itself to be thus configured, as against the fact that the seed is meeting obstacles in the disposure of the environment to its transformation as a plant. An aware person needs therefore to modify psychological and physical circumstances in order that they may lend themselves to be processed in the person.   

But it is not only in the adequacy of environmental conditions that resistance to the self-organizing process is to be found, but also in one's own being. Persons differ in the degree to which they actualize this splendor and realization. It depends upon how important and significant it is for them.

To highlight crucial points already stated, I repeat these words of Pir o Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan:

Man is the product of all planes spiritual and material. In him alone shines forth that primal intelligence that caused the whole.

The divine mind is made of His own creation. The divine mind becomes completed after manifestation.

Man is a condition of God like a wave is a condition of the sea.

Divinity resides in humanity; it is also the outcome of humanity.
