TOWARD THE ONE

by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan












Copyright (c) 1974 By the Sufi Order USA
Harper & Row
New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London
NOTES:
	Material for this book was compiled and edited from lectures given by Pir Vilayat in North America and Europe during the years of 1970-1973. 

	The original edition contained many pages of graphics, omitted in this version.  Page numbers for scholarly purposes match the original.  They may be toggled into view and out of view by choosing View Menu / Hidden.









 
Dedication
This Book is dedicated with love and reverence to my sister 

NOOR INAYAT KHAN
George Cross
Croix Militaire

who gave her life for her ideal. She is herewith proclaimed as the first Sufi saint in the Sufi Order in the West.







Invocation
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Toward the One, 
the Perfection of Love, Harmony, and Beauty, 
the Only Being 
United with all the Illuminated Souls 
Who form the Embodiment of the Master, 
the Spirit of Guidance.








Prologos
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Across the eons of time irresistibly, undauntedly, by some uncanny internal forward thrust, the consciousness of the creature in its advance through evolution strives to touch the absolute, to soar into further dimensions.
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Scrutinize the mystery underlying all things.  Seek in higher dimensions of understanding a meaning behind all our sufferings.  Unmask what appears to be the caprice of human destiny -- how we long to become that which we hardly believe we are!
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Contemplate the archetype of which you are the image.  Dis-cover yourself in an other yourself in whom you are the object.  
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At rapt moments how we long to join the company of those who have left the shores of life behind at the cost of the most incredible hardship, sailing close to death in quest of the most precious of all boons -- the knowledge that spells omniscience.
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We are told there is a place one cannot reach by going anywhere, that the farewell to outer circumstances does not by the sheer act confer the bliss of inner freedom, of celestial insight.  We know the real journey occurs in the internal spaces of the soul.
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Where does one go from here?  What are our sailing orders?  By what azimuth do we set our course?  What are the landmarks?  The perils?  The methods?  The clues?

Fortunate the wayfarer who is briefed by those rare pioneers who chart the uncharted, who brave the depths and spaces of being and offer future generations the topology of internal states and further spheres.
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One must pass through the portal of detachment into new horizons, leaving something of the old self behind.  Seen from this perspective life looks like a never-ending pilgrimage toward the ever-reaching horizons of awakening.
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A mystery or a secret?
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Are we not all on the move in quest of the unknown in familiar and strange places?
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Up and down, in and out the trodden and untrodden ways of being in our investigation further on the quest.
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Sometimes one's search leads one back into the distant past to rediscover our legacy; the testimony of lives, of visions, of experiences, signatures on the surface of the earth.
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One may have to brave hardship inside and outside: overcome fear, exhausting escapades, places protected by eerie foreboding on our pilgrimage to remote places, in our exploration of the reaches within.  Sometimes the quest ushers one into places of learning where men philosophize and contemplate serenity, the meaning of life, indulge in lovely constructions of the mind that lull us to sleep and complacency. 
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At times the unswerving quest leads into the womb of earth, dark recesses in the night of the soul where re-birth takes place protected by darkness from the notice of all created beings, protected by our own sense of unknowing against the fallibility of our own judgment, led by some inner prompting to rescue the light hidden in the bush, fire in the stone, the shadows of our soul that strayed.
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One may find oneself in a great emptiness overwhelmed by the enormity of the cosmos, shattered by one's own insignificance, feeling the glances of the crowd.  One may seek the cave of the hermit, the cell of the recluse.  There is a promise every time that one rises into higher realms of awareness where dreamers build temples of dawn out of visions of perfection.
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The adept may reach one of those rare moments that spell illumination, aware of the light of that consciousness that illumines our consciousness as the sun dawns on the sleeping earth and bathes it in effulgence, as we go into the world transfigured by a mysterious light.


Foreword 
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by Jamshed Tillinghast

Listening to the sacred music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier, one experiences the disappearance of the baser emotions, a sense of life transformed into "the perfection of love, harmony, and beauty." This is the gift and message of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan.  You are about to begin his book, an unprecedentedly specific, full, and revealing guide to the inner life by a master of meditation.  The amazing thing, for those who have for the past several years been trying to capture fragments of this teaching in notebooks and tape-recorders, is that now so much of it is easily available in one place.

Many people are of the opinion that all schools of spiritual aspiration lead to the one goal; here is the unique teacher who has actually studied and practiced the methods of the different schools and can attest to their unity.  A story is told of the young Inayat Khan when he was with his murshid Abu Hashin Madani in Hyderabad.  A fellow mureed complained to the murshid: "Inayat has been seen with the yogis, the idolators.  He is constantly reading the Bhagavad Gita.  He keeps a bible by his bed.  Only yesterday I saw him conversing with a rabbi. He is well
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known among the Parsis, the worshippers of fire.  Will you not make him renounce his heretical ways?" The murshid replied: "Leave him alone.  It is not for you to understand the mission he is being prepared for." His mission was to harmonize East and West with the music of his Sufi Message.  Tolerance and mutual enrichment have often been part of the spiritual atmosphere in India, where Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Parsis, Jews, and Christians have lived together peacefully except when, as recently, their differences have been exploited for political reasons.  Perhaps the most beautiful expression of this spirit was the spiritual and aesthetic synthesis prevailing at the court of the Moghul Emperor Akbar.  The spirit of Akbar's court was a precursor to the kind of Sufism given by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan to Europeans and Americans in the 1910's and 1920's, with its emphasis on "The unity of religious ideals."

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan has given concrete expression to the goals outlined by his father, adding to the Eastern schools the austere and serene flavor of medieval Christian mysticism, as well as integrative insights derived from sources as seemingly diverse as modern physics and the Greek mystery cults.  He shows how the incarnation of Christ is the cosmic counterpoint to the parinirvana, of Buddha.  He allows one to see the world religions not as mutually exclusive dogmas competing with one another for the claim of absolute truth, but rather as a divine symphony of different tones -- or as the same story told in varying ways to fit varying mentalities.  This synthesis of esoteric schools may serve as a key to the coming evolutionary jump in consciousness towards which humanity seems to be moving, the New Age glimpsed by prophets ranging from William Blake to Arthur C. Clarke to Teilhard de Chardin.
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The doctrine of evolution of consciousness, particularly stressed by Rumi, is an integral part of Sufi thought.  Development of intuition, trust in the heart, the move towards group consciousness, thinking in global terms -- these are signs pointing in the direction of man's continuing evolution.  These are also characteristics of the esoteric brotherhoods which have traditionally been at the center of the world religions.  What were jealously guarded secrets of the few are now being made known to more and more people, and the seeds of the new consciousness are being gathered from the decaying flowers of the old.  Thus it would probably be a mistake to see the new spirituality as a "religious" movement.  In going to the heart of the old traditions one is seeking their universal core, and leaving behind the residue of dogma, mere belief, and social conventions.  In returning to the origin of the established religions -- living experience of the spirit -we may also be entering a period where religion as understood in the past will be superseded.  Toward the One aims at carrying consciousness beyond its ordinary limitations imposed by "human nature," conditioning, habit, despair, so as to experience the limitless dimensions of reality.  In the words of William Blake:

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.
(The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

Reading this book is to experience at times that extraordinary transforming presence that Pir Vilayat emanates in person.  These pages, these sentences themselves serve to disorient one,-- to blow one's ordinary habits of .
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.thought -- "The mind forged manacles" to quote Blake once again.

  If this happens to you as you read then perhaps you get glimpses, or hints of the being behind the words.  From a meditation retreat in the Chiricahua.  Mountains of Arizona comes an uncannily vivid picture of Pir Vilayat meditating in a tent: the sharp smell of heat-struck canvas, surrounded by the brilliant glare of desert sunlight, his body seemingly translucent a clear molecular field open to the light that was pouring through him.  Another memory is of him at the Camp des Aigles in the French Alps, leading a group of people in a fiercely sublime rendition of the Hallelujah chorus while an awe-inspiring mountain thunderstorm was roaring away outside, the big army tent tugging at the ropes and careening like a clipper ship on the high seas, just on the verge of flying off the mountain.

He somehow defies the description of "person." His archaic fineness and nobility are qualities associated in my mind with the Persian Sufis and with the court of the late Nizam of Hyderabad where Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan was a renowned singer.  Parts of this book have the atmosphere of a certain night-blooming flower in the Persian gardens of Shiraz, home of Hafiz and Sa'adi, "City of Nightingales." Yet this refinement is combined with a sort of sternness and absolute devotion to his work.  Such a being may be seen as a product of adamantly refusing to accept conditioning and of adhering uncompromisingly to an ideal: this is the essence of his teachings on everyday life.  Yet the mystery, the special fragrance of the man somehow--happily--eludes description.  The words used by one of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan's disciples described one's encounter with Pir Vilayat Khan: "I had heard about the soul before, but never before actually experienced my soul."

Beyond the Dream
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Beyond the dream of the fleeting me
I watch
In the silence of all created things
The traces of my self
Voiding themselves in the roots of all existence
Pure virtuality
Yet looking down from that timeless selfless place
Outside space
I watch the immutable archetype of me
Sprouting into what I think is me
Finally emerging out of its immersion
In the fabric of the planet
Speeding to the everlastingness in resurrection 
Of a me beyond recognition.



Intuition of the Self

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Now let consciousness be whisked beyond the point where the seeds of all living things lurk on the horizon of our knowing.  Imagine that you have extracted consciousness from all created things, uprooting their causes to the point that you merely remember having been a creature.

You have now awakened into your real being beyond the ego.  You have been witnessing the disappearance of your ego, a liberation from illness.  You are catapulted beyond existence into the mystery of being -- called the self.
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The key to achieving this: liberate the mind from the seeming necessity of objectivizing experience.  It will be remembered: when we passed the previous threshold we transcended time.  We are now suspended in a state of 'ego loss' beyond the causal realm, beyond the seeds of multiplicity.
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You now realize that your consciousness was feeding upon appearance like a flame upon fuel.  With the cessation of the process of combustion, physical and mental consciousness cease to function, with the result that the basic consciousness of being emerges with greater clearness.

Our mind lurches when its very function, i.e. categorization, is pulled out from under it.  No sooner is it pressed to transcend its own limits than one awakens with alarming lucidity to discover the ground of one's being to be the very same ground as that of all beings.  Although one may well in this condition distinguish beings from one another and from oneself in their created natures, one clearly envisions one's self as the "that" which one is when stripped of all that man is not one anyway.

The Hindus use the word "that" as in Tat Twam Asi: "That Thou Art", the same "that" as the only "that" there is which we sometimes call him or her or the One.
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How is this achieved?  

If having dismissed the supports of consciousness -- perception and representation -- one is able to maintain a continuity of flow between the levels of consciousness without losing the Ariadnean thread that fosters the sense of individuality, yet projecting beyond it where it fuses with all the Ariadnean threads that crisscross in weaving the meshes of the universe, one reaches a point where consciousness is no longer the consciousness of a single individual.
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Buddha's 'celestial eye' zeroed in upon the point: it is experiencing the life of one's life by disengaging the central principle of one's being from the cause of becoming, by focusing at the causal level, one is able to grasp -- beyond the limits of one's present existence -- the whole chain of which it is a link, as the continuation of a whole group of being, yet knowing that it is never the same person who is reborn.
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At a second stage one's consciousness is no longer tied to a particular being.  Consequently one extends one's consciousness from the cause of one's being to that of all beings!  One watches the moving scene of life, the appearance and disappearance of beings seeing  their causal relationships to one another, worlds in becoming and worlds being dissolved on a vast scale.
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At a third stage, having hoisted oneself from the causal level to the one we are now describing, one grasps with crystalline clarity the laws governing all happening.  Such is the view of the illuminated mind that comprehends all things, that encompasses all things in a jnana darshana ("vision of knowledge"), the ability to see the causal law of conditioned genesis.  This state is what we have been aiming at all the time: panna, transcendental knowledge.
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Undoubtedly our grasp of the panoramic sweep of phenomena in their interrelationship, scanned at a breathtaking scale, is generally so overcast by perception and representation of the immediate vicinity that it is confined to what psychologists call twilight areas of consciousness whose content only rarely flashes through to everyday consciousness.  Yet if consciousness is conducted beyond the point where it operates from an individuated center, perception of the immediate vicinity falls out of focus and one discovers not only the laws governing the autonomous functions of atoms, cells, or even the reflex action of the whole organism of the creature, but the enlightened intention of an overriding yet compassionate will.  Some psychologists distinguish a super-conscious from a sub-conscious.
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Should one identify one's self with all created things, these enhanced dimensions of awareness only transpire thanks to a shift in the focus of consciousness.  Consciousness recedes into subliminal states -- trance conditions -- unless one knows how to maintain the continuity of consciousness by relating one's focalised center of consciousness to the ocean of cosmic consciousness of which it is a wave.  Enabling one to identify with the self of all selves which can only be perceived by consciousness in its unindividuated state.

The secret of distinguishing these two states is to be found by applying introspectively the method of 'discrimination' (viveka) taught in the Samkhya school: discriminate between that in which one is subject to change and dissolution whether physical, psychological or mental: prakriti; and that in which one remains unchanged beyond substance, form or quality: purusha.

Yes, a merging there is, but not the undifferentiated and indiscriminate hodgepodge of all living things coalesced into indistinctiveness, such as the universe appears to a consciousness that has sunk below the threshold of the unconscious.
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But here dawns breathtakingly the ground of one's being as the sun might dawn upon an atom, if only one could experience it!
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It is difficult to discern the intertwining vectors of our being when we are overwhelmed by our sprawling dimensions contrasting with our abject ignorance of ourselves.  The blinding evidence of reality appears as darkness to us, the ever-'receding horizon of understanding as we advance into the unknown. In our haziness we think we have reached the ground of our being or even of 'being' -- calling it the 'self'. 
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The further one advances beyond the trodden paths of common experience hedged with concepts and landmarked by hypotheses the thicker the cloud of unknowing, for we are protected by our very ignorance against the realization to which we have not grown.  No sooner we think we have reached an outpost even as we wall it in by trying to make sense of the realization we are afraid of losing recasting our entire 'imago mundi', he shatters our vanity by revealing an entirely new perspective (hints the Biihadaranyaka Upanishad) "Brahman has already departed before thought reaches where it thought it was."
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As we advance from beyond to beyond in an effort to attain the 'that' which we intuit, whose horizon recedes disconcertingly, more and more impersonal layers of awareness seem to take over from one another in progressive substitution.  The self that cognizes dream images and imaginary representation seems more cosmic, less individuated, than the self that perceives physical phenomena; and the self that grasps Archetypes behind contingencies seems to extend beyond the notion of a personal self.  In the ultimate state, 'turiya', described in Shankaracharya's commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad, that which is experienced is the self, the only reality.  And it is the unlimited consciousness in you, Atman, that takes over from Jiva, individuated consciousness limited by the appearance of things, maya, which is all that originated by causality.

Yet obviously Buddha saw a danger in that the very conceptualization of an ultimate reality might act as a limit to a vector that is infinite, and therefore singled out further horizons in the no-man's land of the soul that never ends: beyond the non-manifest, that which lies beyond the dichotomy 'manifest and nonmanifest', and still beyond the unlimited, where all determination or origination ceases.  That which the Chandogya Upanishad had coined the self, taken up inexhaustibly by the subsequent Upanishads, Buddha called non-existence. The actual ability to envision one's self as that reality is a staggering discovery that remains with one, once the mind has been opened, irreversibly about-turning one's entire life.
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Dying consciously and surviving as the principle of the exemplar one thought one was always remembering having passed through the portals of death.  
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What continuity is there in life if one forgets what one was?  If survival consists in remembering pre-natal and postmortem states the knowledge of what one is and always has been and always will be confers immortality.  Man's desperate struggle for the absolute may well be his desperate scramble for immortality. 

In the light of the new awareness, the ego game - - both of the everyday scene and of the phantasmagoria of both night-and-day-dreaming -- now appears, as Shankaracharya calls it, a false apprehension of reality.  Even the archetypes of earthly forms, looming within the focus of the causal setting of consciousness, aver themselves as not being reality, but merely account for the cosmic hoax whereby the rope looks like a snake. The dance of Shiva and the travesty of Maya -with what guile does Indra protect us from the vision of reality that shatters the one unprepared to face its stark devastating all-revealing glare.

While the discovery of the causal supra-individual principle, of which one's individuality in this incarnation is but one manifestation, transported one into pre-natal states, the attainment of the awareness of being opens up the perspective of a fathomless beyond, that has always intrigued the soul of man in quest of the absolute.  Absolute beyond eternity, beyond the beyond, paratparam.
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The vertigo of the bottomless depths and boundless heights, not of space not of time, not even a perfection or quality idealized in the archetype but some other impalpable dimension, reality, the ultimate obsession of man, no doubt what our non-mind means when we say God.

Buddha/Christ
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At this stage we might be confused by the dichotomy of the ways explored and advocated by our great pathfinders.  Buddha, in the wake of his-mighty predecessors, the rishis, points the way to disincarnation, by systematically unraveling the knots that, by individuating consciousness, have involved us into the limiting circumstances that spell suffering.
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Christ sets the perfect example for incarnation, stressing the works of the Father in vouchsafing the Kingdom of the heavens upon the earth.
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The path enjoined upon us by the Indian sages seems to lead consciousness back to the condition beyond becoming in the clear light of illumination, cutting to the very roots of reincarnation, dismantling the mechanism which conjoins desire to the wherewithal of its fulfillment: the physical.

Among the Sufis, Junaid advocates "returning to the condition in which one was before one became when one was a thought in the mind of God." This is the experience we encounter of the causal archetype of our human existence.  Conversely, resurrection, announced by Christ, points to the end-product of human experience in its upward sweep: transfiguration.
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Indeed Zoroastrianism, probably Mazdaism, or even Zurvanism, had anticipated this eschatology in 'Frashkart'; the restoration of all things in their pristine glory.  An Avestan prayer says: "May I contribute towards the transfiguration of the world." The Sufis of the Sheikhi school of Kirman take into account the transfer of consciousness from the physical body to the etheric or astral, then upwards through the celestial body to the supracelestial or soul.  The etheric may for some time be alienated from the soul after death, undergoing the conditions of Hades and Paradise, finally to interfuse with the soul after completion of this catharsis at a critical point in time: the moment of resurrection.
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We learn in our meditation to discern the difference between experiencing our causal nature whose eternity stretches out into the past indefinitely and experiencing the eternalization in the future through transmutation of that which one has acquired by incarnation; that is, by the interfusion of all the outcome of one's personal causality with the outcome of the causality of all the beings of whom one is the product in the course of the unfoldment of the universe.

We are pulled in two opposite directions which complete one-another.  The one who grasps the law of the conditioning of existence knows that one may free oneself from the necessity of perpetually returning into the cycle of rebirth on earth by avoiding performing those actions and nurturing those desires that bind one either by the incumbence of paying a debt or by emotional attachment.  Such a one wields in his hand the sword of Moksha: the coveted aim of the rishis: liberation from existence.
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Admittedly, when one has experienced the bliss and the freedom, the glory and the supreme understanding of the level beyond existence wherein the self is rooted one does not wish to be coerced into returning into the limiting circumstances of incarnate existence by a whole chain of causality whose very forces one has unwittingly set into motion by sheer ignorance of the mechanics of life.  On the other hand, it is obvious that something must be achieved by incarnation in the universe as in ourselves.  Life leads so surely towards ever greater unfoldment that we can hardly doubt that there must be some provision whereby the values acquired by what Rev.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called "The homonization of the transcendent" might be resorbed in the cosmos at every level step by step.

One does not wish to be coerced by a whole chain of causality whose very forces one has unwittingly set into motion by sheer ignorance of the mechanics of life into returning to the limiting circumstances of incarnate existence.  Do we have to opt between freeing ourselves from the conditions of existence and transmuting all that has been elaborated in the cauldron of life?
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We can best give expression to the divine perfection we are pledged to manifest if we freely incarnate, if every involvement in life is a free determination rather than the result of forces already set into motion to which we are implacable subjected.
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Resurrection is the measure of our freedom, the eternalization of what has been achieved through incarnation.  It alone transmutes the incarnate into the transcendental by riding the wave of all that is subject to dissolution, all the desires and manias and emotions that lure the soul into existence.

If the planning of the universe has to reckon with the interventions of the (relatively) free wills conferred by the One and Only Knower upon each particle of Himself that they may progress toward that Omniscience and Perfection, happenings within certain given limits cannot always conform to God's Own Will in singular oneness.  But in resurrecting we free God from the crucifixion of cosmic suffering: The price of your free will. Therefore we first have to find the way of freedom from involvement before we can introduce freedom in involvement.  
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Suddenly there is a breakthrough of joy: one is free!  One is lifted higher and higher by a mighty outbreak of all the forces of glorification of the cosmos, the eternal high mass celebrated on the altar of the stars. 
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One is playing one's part in the symphony of the spheres, intoning in one's soul one's particular note in one cosmic hallelujah: the cry of glory of all created beings on earth as in heaven.


The Quest -- for the Self and the Search for God
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How can we reconcile our experience of identification with the ground of our being merging into that of all beings with the shattering experience of the encounter with the Ineffable Presence?  When the individuated center of consciousness is exploded we discover ourselves as 'that', but when we seek the mystery of 'that' through the individuated lens of the I, it appears as the One.

Intuition warns us to repudiate the sense of otherness of a too facile anthropomorphic projection of our concept of perfection as a being, yet we are abashed and overwhelmed when faced with the glory of the Divine Visitor.  For that which the faithful of all faiths reverently invoke is not just the whole of which we are a part nor the archetype whose image we discover ourselves to be, nor the intelligence that gazes through our eyes -- the consciousness of our consciousness -- but the Presence born our midst more real than ourselves as the solidarity behind our diversity consolidated by the convergence of all our vantage points and animated by the breath of our love.  For that One is the One Who is loved in every loved one.
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Once having discovered oneself always to have been the Loved One before the beginning of the world as the son was loved by the father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, the purusha, the self of all selves.  As revealed in the Hadith "He created you as a means of knowing the latencies within himself." The Sufi Darvish Abd el Jabbar Niffari responded "It was out of His love for you that He departed from the solitude of His unity."

To reach out beyond all, reach into transcendence, we have to surrender the individuated focus of consciousness, for who can think "that" if not "that"?  This is a unique form of knowledge called prajna, referred to in the Brihadarankaya Upanishad:	"Where all has become One, who can know the Knower?" except by losing himself.
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As we turn about in meditation, as our glance is again directed towards created things, if we avoid limiting our consciousness to the individuated focus, the 'that' will become more present as "the unseen seer and the unheard hearer." Meister Eckhardt saw this when he said "these eyes through which I hoped to see God are the eyes through which God sees me." Yet this presence is experienced still more intimately when one realizes that it is not only that which sees but also that which is seen.  That is why Ibn L' Arabi says "these are the eyes through which God sees Himself." For it is His Presence that becomes in us "the created Creator and the Creating Creature."
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There is a story of this sanyasin or faqir.  You know that in the East a lot of these sanyasins, men who have left the world, will just sit by the roadside meditating and everything, and their policy is: it doesn't matter.  So it doesn't matter if people walk on them or throw mud at them, it doesn't matter, if they're too hot in the sun or too cold, it doesn't matter, there they sit.  So he was sitting there and they said that the king was coming by, and first of all the police came and said, get out from here, his majesty is passing.  And the sanyasin said, that is why, and kept on sitting there with his legs outstretched, you see, and then an officer came and said, we have a rule that when his majesty the king passes, one is supposed to stand up as a sign of respect, you're not allowed to sit like this with your legs outstretched.  And so he said, that is why.  And then came the procession and the emperor on his elephant, and the minister came first on his elephant and he thought, hmmm, who's that sitting there?, so he went down to him and said, out of courtesy for the king maybe it would be better if you just put your legs back.  And then he said, that is why.

Then came the king, he looked at him and came down from his elephant and said, since when have you been stretching your legs like that?  And he said, since I have folded my arms, which means, since I do not request anything from life I do not have to show respect for outer authority, like Diogenes, you know.  And then he said: that is why.  It's because the policeman thought the way he did that he was a policeman; it's because the officer thought the way he did that he thought of laws, it was a rule, you see, that's why he was an officer; it's because the minister thought the way he did that he thought of courtesy, something more than rules, that he said what he did, and it's because the king thought the way he did, trying to understand the way of thinking of that man, that he was a king.  That's why he said, that is why.


Preparation
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It is important to set aside definite times for meditation every day, say one short session in the morning and one in the evening, with a short break midday, and keep to those times, adjusting one's life accordingly.  One should also lay down a definite schedule of practices for each session, note it down carefully, and abide by it.  If, however, you are led into a state of ecstasy, then follow your inner guidance, which manifests in the form of intuition, and let yourself be carried wherever it leads you until the energy is exhausted, then revert back to your schedule, time permitting.  

Give yourself an autosuggestion as to the time you are scheduled to terminate your meditation; it will work like clockwork, once you have trained yourself to do it.  Always precede a session with physical relaxation exercises or yoga asanas and bandas.  If you find it difficult to sit cross-legged, you may help yourself by resting your seat on a pillow or a meditation cushion which will raise your seat from two to three inches off the floor.  Once a balanced position has been found, avoid all movement of the body, as it will draw consciousness back into body consciousness. The immobility of the body, contrasting with the motion outside, will imprint immobility on the mind, promoting concentration.
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The initial step in meditation consists in withdrawing one's attention from the ambient world, in order to free consciousness from outside impressions, so first of all you withdraw your consciousness from the impressions of your senses by an attitude of detachment and indifference.  If somebody is hammering, for example, you don't allow yourself to be drawn into it; you withdraw from it, and the sound seems to come from further and further away, until it seems unreal, the physical world around you seems to be unreal . . . and that is when you discover that it is maya, it is an illusion.

This is not philosophy, it is something that happens, that you experience.
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The way of detaching yourself from physical reality is by toning down your emotions.  The link that holds one in subjection to the impressions of the physical world is our emotional attachment to experience: we want excitement, stimulation, a lot of things happening and going on and so forth.  So long as we are craving or experiencing these things we cannot experience any higher reality.

Experience the way that whatever you hear and whatever you see draws your consciousness down into the physical body, draws consciousness into the center, which gives the sense of ego identity.  Listen for sound and watch the way your consciousness is brought down into your ears and right over into the source of the sound, the way consciousness is pulled down by perception.  Now sense the effect of buoyancy upon your consciousness as it refuses to give in to the gravity pull of perception, decentering itself from its focal center, wherein lies the sense of physical I-ness.
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The key enabling one to withdraw from physical perception and the mental regurgitation of perception lies in the realm of emotions: the hold of physical impressions on consciousness is due to our emotional attachment to or involvement with physical experience, with a result that we are delivered unto the conditioning of the ambient world.  Withdraw yourself with this thought: "I don't want to be called upon here and there by all these impressions.  I want to be free.  I want to be free."

Refuse to be conditioned: our desire to free ourselves from all conditioning will have the immediate effect of cooling down our emotional conditioning, passing from joy to peace.  Buddhist monks speak of enshrouding oneself with a zone of silence and placing a sentinel at the doors of perception.  


Detachment

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You reach a state of timelessness.  The sound of the physical world seems to belong to the realm of time -- something that is going on -- you are conscious of your stillness, which is timeless, so that that which is going on doesn't seem important, because you are living in your timelessness.  The physical world seems to be moving further and further away, so that you don't feel any more that you are there, that is, you overcome the idea of being in a particular place in space.  What is happening on the physical plane is in a different place than the space where you are.
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In closing the door of one's room, one bids farewell to body consciousness and mental consciousness, that is, not only does one abandon the body to the care of the autonomic nervous system that takes care of its physiological functions, but one abandons the mind, that wonderful computer, to its infallible automation.

You can see that all those things that were taking place on the physical plane have left their mark on the mind and you re-experience it all again in the mind, and so here again your consciousness is drawn into the miasma of images, and you want to be free of those images.  And therefore you adopt the same attitude of detachment towards the mind that you did towards the physical world.

Be aware of the gravity pull of thoughts upon your consciousness and the emotions that bind your  consciousness to these impressions.  You have to become emotionally attached by enjoying that wonderful feeling of freedom, detachment, indifference beyond the beyond, beyond all created things.
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Do not try to arrest the flow of thought which is a force of life endowed with its own purpose and fulfillment. but let the unconscious take care of the thoughts gleaned by ego consciousness, out of focus of your present field of awareness.  You are vaguely aware of the continuous impinging of thoughts and images from the unknown depths into the twilight area of your present focus, even as you-are remotely aware of the quakings of the physical scene, to shift your focus which must be fixed by the full thrust of your aspiration, enthusiasm and nostalgia.
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Allow your consciousness to be drawn higher and higher.  Feel the buoyancy of the higher spheres lifting your consciousness away from the gravity of the earth that holds down the body, the gravity of ego identity that coerces thoughts and emotions.  Surrender to the longing of your soul, the yearning for perfection in ecstasy, in rapture.  Feel yourself floating away on your breath.  You may feel as though you were a kite and your breath is the wind that is blowing against the sails, bearing up your wings.  You become very light and free and break away from the moorings.
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Experience yourself in your reality.  Experience yourself being created.  Experience yourself being formed.  Experience reality becoming yourself, and then lose yourself becoming reality.  Become crystal clear, a mountain stream of crystal clear water flowing out of its source, glistening in the sun, a downrush of divine potentiality flowing through you, in you, into you, out of you.  Thoughts, emotions, words, deeds -- look at all beings from that vantage point.  They all seem like streams flowing from the source of the water of life, the luminous reality of which the physical world is but a dim reflection.
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The secret of maintaining yourself in equipoise, in suspension above becoming, is an emotion that has become absolutely sublime, impersonal, cosmic.  Imagine the emotion that sets the stars in motion, that molds the matter of the chains of light into temples of light, that gathers the clouds into patterns of sheer splendor at sunrise . . . a cosmic emotion you pick up from outer space, you vibrate in resonance with it.

Consciousness becomes vaster and vaster, encompassing wider and wider fields.  You are part of the blue sky and the sap rising in the trees and the motion of the planets around the sun, the electrons around the nuclei of the atoms of the molecules.  The tidal waves of the emotion of the pleorama play upon the Aeolian harp of your being ... all being ... 
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You are the cosmos.


Theory
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Our objective in meditation is unfoldment, incorporating ever further richness of the universe into our beings.  To incorporate this richness we have to experience it, and we cannot experience it so long as we are snowed under by the invasion of indiscriminate perceptions from all sides-, subjected to the fanciful constructions of the uncontrolled mind, our hearts churned by the emotions they arouse, if not protected by detachment.

We ordinarily intuit these higher dimensions of reality we aim at experiencing, and then dismiss them, as our minds are not. unless trained, geared to accommodate them.  To experience them fully we must work with consciousness, shifting its focus, its center, even decentering it, and must have the courage to question the very concepts and nations we most take for granted: 'I am my consciousness', 'seeing is believing', 'the object is there'.
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At first we protect consciousness in its grasp of twilight areas of awareness from the full glare of physical reality, only to incorporate the latter into a wider picture of the world, once the experience of the values that lie beyond physical reality have been sufficiently secured to subsist in our consciousness alongside the physical stratum that now seems like its projection.
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The physical scene now looks somewhat like the ground scene observed from an airplane through the lattice-work of the clouds: super-imposed images of the same thing like ice, water, steam captured at different levels of density ... a symphony of light petrified into a crystal where one sees simultaneously the dynamic and static state of the same thing.
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What we generally experience is the way reality appears to consciousness individuated, focused by the notion of the 'self.' A rope in a certain focus looks like a snake.  Should we take ourselves to be a consciousness. we believe that what we see and hear is reality.  If we are able to sense that what we take to be our consciousness is but a temporary and changing eddy in the sea of consciousness, we will no longer be taken in by the way things appear, with the result that we shall indeed see the rope, yet we will still see how it could and indeed did and what is more still does look like a snake.  We can now see both the rope and the snake in the same take; we withdraw consciousness from physical reality only to reintegrate it later.

Even atoms and electrons and cells behave as though endowed with some elementary consciousness.  When the cells of the body are organized into an interrelated organism by the centralizing action of that complex network of communications, the nervous system, consciousness functions as body consciousness; when the forward procession of consciousness breaks through to the mental level, there is mind consciousness; and the same forward march proceeds further from level to level.

What we assume to be our consciousness is a coordination of all levels with emphasis of focus on one in particular together with a certain overlap.  
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Thus, even as cell consciousness is overridden by body consciousness, body consciousness is thrown out of focus when one concentrates intensely on mental activity.  Similarly, mental consciousness peters out when one focuses one's attention upon infinity or perfection, transcendental values.  A continuity can be maintained, although gradually each level of consciousness passes out of focus to give way to the next, each is linked to every other by the Ariadnean thread of memory.
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In meditation you remember having thought of yourself as the personality you thought you were, now to discover the frontiers of your being seem to merge more and more into the totality. 
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Meditation consists in conducting consciousness beyond the point where it is the consciousness of a finite body or a finite mind, transferring the focus from level to level without losing or form.  Since it is that which is experienced that holds overall consciousness to a focal center, as a sound draws consciousness to the ear drums, should one deprive consciousness of its object of experience by withdrawing it, the ego center would dissolve.  Consequently, whatever is experienced by consciousness lifted to lofty levels could not be recollected by ego consciousness -- in the event that the latter should be recalled into focus by the impinging of a fresh objective experience -- unless one maintained the lines of communication open by avoiding losing sight of the ego center altogether.
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One has to substitute successively ever subtler objects to the previous ones while consciousness assumes ever more cosmic dimensions, thus maintaining a continuity of consciousness passing from level to level into the absolute.  Consequently, the methods used in meditation will consist in replacing concentration on a physical object by concentration on an image projected creatively through one, as it were, from the intuition of cosmic archetypes, then replacing the contemplation of an attribute or quality by that of its archetype, then replacing one's meditation on existence by that of being, and so on.  The consequence will be that at each stage a higher stratum of consciousness takes over.

At this stage it is opportune to consolidate the internal shift by locking the autonomic nervous system into its anabolic setting, in contrast to the catabolic setting that promotes action and concrete thought governed by the optics of the subject - object dichotomy Buddha likens consciousness to a flame passing from one log to another.


New Age Practices in Meditation
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Whatever the New Age means, it certainly carries in its inevitable forward march a breeze of hopefulness.  The conquest of outer space is a symptom of something that is happening to our consciousness.

The pressing advance of the consciousness of mankind, that composite being we all are, having emerged from its geological and biological wellsprings, seems to have broken through a further threshold of maturity into new dimensions of the mind. From the moment we set foot upon the moon, a new vantage point from which to see the earth, we were unwittingly faced with a new way of thinking of the planet and consequently of ourselves: that is, with the perspective of objectivity.
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Whenever, at rapt moments, our nostalgia for wide horizons redeems our thinking from the narrowness of our immediate surroundings, our heart leaps as we envision ourselves, not only as a cell in that composite body that is the-planet, but as indissolubly immeshed in the galaxies.  More so: a stage, and further, a contributing factor in the growth, not only of planet earth, but of the universe, Staggering thoughts rock our minds' understanding!

That understanding that we had always taken to be so self-evident now shows itself to vary according to the vantage point, setting, and orientation of that intangible consciousness.  Some difference, indeed, between the worm's eye view and the eagle's!  But what must the difference be between the atom's purview and the sun's mighty optical take of the sidereal drama.
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That very same consciousness which shines through these eyes upon all creatures within their reach has been handed down from one creature to another like a flame from log to log since the early stirrings of the atoms inside the rocks right back in the pre-Cambrian Age, long before the planet sprouted its sheath of green vegetation.  That very same consciousness is in our age threaded through the giant telescope and the highly sensitized scientific equipment.  It is catapulted on dextrous human antennae -- lunar, planetary, and solar probes -- into the long body of the solar system, which is our spiral movement through the whirling ecstasy of the universe.

The stars will seem to the untrained but a sprinkling of spots of light scattered over wide stretches of space, except when that internal instrument, the usually coarsely conditioned mind, is subjected to elaborate training in view of adapting it to the wider horizons of awareness.  Consider what skillful discipline of thought has led the world's most brilliant minds to glean the harmonic laws governing the orbiting, velocity, density, composition and radiation of the heavenly bodies!  Now gauge what all-encompassing and all-integrating vision, what incisive penetration, what  aesthetic sensitivity, what genial intelligence it would take for a superhuman consciousness to compute these millionfold harmonic data in the light of Pythagoran cosmic mathematical guidelines into an inner experience of the symphony of the spheres!
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That very self-same consciousness which has wound its way into outer space has equally gained access, through the microscope and the oscilloscope, into the harmonic gyrations of the electrons and protons within the atom and the seething proliferations of the living cells growing within the body, all obeying the same law and displaying the same harmony as the choreography at the macroscopic scale!  The outcome of this inexorable advance of consciousness is shattering our infantile everyday concepts of what we mean by me and you, forcing our minds to awaken to the message of unity.

How can something so awe-inspiringly cosmic, so inalienable from its milieu as this body, let alone this mind, a phase in a growth process, be labeled me?  Imagine: the concept of I'ness, the axis of all our syllogistic logic of the ages, upon which we have unquestionably relied from time immemorial and which has served us in such good stead, proves itself, as consciousness widens, to be valid only within a very narrow scale.
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New Dimensions of Consciousness

The horizon of I-ness invariably recedes before the evolutionary procession of awareness: as human consciousness passes the threshold of reflection, it turns upon itself, looking upon the body, the mind, and its own individuation no longer as the subject, but as the object.  As consciousness awakens into those wider horizons of awareness towards which it is irretrievably advancing, one looks upon all that one naturally assumed to be the self with the objectivity of one who has shaken off a narrow scale of values and envisions what one thought to be that entity.  One experiences oneself being an integral part of the unfoldment of the planet and the inter-galactic reality.  The attribution of I-ness makes no sense whatsoever.
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What is here is elsewhere.  What is not here is nowhere.  
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In fact, consciousness, or rather the consciousness of the planet through its point omega, the consciousness of mankind as a totality, is beginning to take stock of itself as the breakthrough of some imponderable sensitivity, breaking into eddies of individuated awareness, dimly detected in the mind in the alignment of molecules into structures, obeying cosmic laws as in the crystal; awakening in the plant, observable in the uncanny sensitivity of the rudimentary electrochemical nervous systems of plants; finally to emerge in beings equipped with elaborately cerebrated nervous systems; and arising high and bright and paramount in the adamantine perspicacity of that much coveted state, rarely attained by human beings, called enlightenment.
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What do we know of elusive, intangible consciousness?  We have displaced its center in space, we have applied to it a telescope, and a microscopic lens.  We shall now equip it with a parabolic and a panoramic lens enabling it to see 360 -- or even pulverize its center into a legion of vantage points.

Consciousness operates perception in the human being by centering itself in a highly convergent focal point, but from this setting can only perceive the surface appearance.  When pitting our power of concentration against reality, we are baffled to discover how little of the multi-dimensional richness of reality is actually registered by our ordinary experience.

In our usual way we only gloss a thin veneer of these things or rather beings -- there are only beings -- we continually cross like ships in the night.  

Consciousness is equipped with a screen protecting one from a plethora of impressions we could not assimilate by filtering through the more obvious filters.  Yet techniques are available which enable one to increase one's power of concentration to the extent of being able to discover greater richness in reality in those areas one pre-selects, while cutting out unwanted perception.  What a difference exists between just looking at a flower and the experience of scanning every minute detail of structure in the flower, including inner structures within outline structures and so on into infinitesimal details!
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Conversely, consciousness can decentralize itself, scattering its center in the cosmos.  The sense of localization can become so transformed one feels as though one's center were everywhere, one's circumference nowhere.  Imagine what it must be like to walk upon the starry cosmos, to arrive at several multi-dimensional vantage points simultaneously programmed by the mind.  The "otherness" of the universe is due to our tendency to objectivize and contrast the object with our preconceived idea of our person as a subject.  But when the interchange between our person and the universe  becomes transformed into an inflow of the universe in us and a projection of ourselves into the universe, 
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then the abyss between subject and object begins to be bridged over: experience is transformed into communion.

What seems to have been the object of our cognizance is transfigured.  Forms allow their inside linking to transpire, situations allow a hidden meaning to transpire through them.

Such is the transformation of the object by the light flowing from the subject, discovering the depth rather than stopping at the appearance. On the other hand, what seemed to be the subject also undergoes transformation, so that that which at first we identified as ourselves allows the greater self to come through.
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It is a matter of modulating the setting of our consciousness.  When we no more limit our notion of ourselves within the reaches of an individual consciousness, then the experience of I-it is transformed into the communion of an I-thou relationship with the divine Presence.  By merging one's ego into the ego of other beings, their richness accrues to one's personality, so that one discovers oneself in them and them in oneself in an exciting interplay of creatures whereby God meets himself in the encounter of each part of himself with each other part.

The experience in which consciousness identifies itself with the mind is conception.  If one can extend one's awareness to the extent of identifying oneself with a greater reality of which the mind is a part, one ceases to limit oneself to the conceptual thinking of the individuated part of the mind and allows the higher strata of the mind, whose dimensions are cosmic, to take over.  Thus one is able to bring into action higher mental functions which are generally inhibited because one is used to thinking of oneself in terms of a limited individual being.

It was Teilhard de Chardin who pointed out that that which triggered the leap between the animal stage in the process of evolution to the human stage was that, while the animal is simply aware of being, man is able to extend his awareness to the point of cognizing himself as a being who is part of a greater Being.  A cell of the body may be aware of itself as a cell yet not be aware of the kinesthetics of the body. Suppose that a body cell should intuit within itself the general feeling of the body.  It would then pass from the dimension of cell consciousness to the dimension of body consciousness.
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It is this intuition which is spiritual.  It was spiritual experience which drew the animal upwards into the ranks of the human.  It is this experience which may link man at his present stage of evolution to New Age consciousness.
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The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.  
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This sudden onrush of luminous consciousness breaks through the mist which hems our minds into preconceived prisons and opens up an intense osmosis between what we thought was ourselves and what we thought was the universe suddenly enriching our personality, which-identifies itself with the cosmos and integrates more and more of the cosmos into itself.

In order to be able to introduce such a rarefied form of consciousness into the complex of our personality, we must first be able to isolate consciousness from its various identifications which weigh it down.  This can only be done by bringing into action the forces of detachment, which enable one to apprehend reality objectively, instead of losing oneself to the point of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

This is meditation.
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Call a halt and take stock.  Proceed to free consciousness from its trappings: free consciousness from identification with the body, identification with the mind, identification with the emotions.  When consciousness is emptied of objective content, it butts up against the root of concept,. which is the ego.  This is a ceiling which must be transformed into a threshold if one is to avoid being trapped in the impasse of tautology.

One can only ascend from one level of awareness to the next by abandoning the vantage point of the previous level. When consciousness cognizes itself as the object of its knowledge, the form of consciousness which is functioning identifies itself with the unity of one's act of existence beyond the variety of the attributes of one's personality.  This unity may often be taken to be the ultimate unity behind the diversity of personalities, which it is not.  Therefore one can only rise above the limiting level of consciousness which is our usual one, by allowing the consciousness which is aware of itself as being the consciousness of all beings to take over.  This can only be achieved by considering the consciousness of one's individuality to be a part of the total consciousness.  

It follows that ascension to higher dimensions of thought requires our individual consciousness to forego its identification with the concept of individuality and allow this wider consciousness to function through it.  Consciousness in its full cosmic breadth functions differently from consciousness limited by the concept of the individual in that it does not apprehend physical reality as such but rather as a mode through which the greater reality appears: and it apprehends this greater reality directly.
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Extend consciousness beyond the here and now to envision the flower in its genesis from its bud to its fading in one sweep -- and so all creatures in the entire procession of their growth -- instead of circumscribing our vision to their present appearance.  One gathers together the past and the future of the flower in one all-embracing vision, including transformation in the unreeling of time.

Life is seen as a kaleidoscope continually changing formations and disintegrations; a current in which, as Buddha said, the only continuity is that of yearning, a chain in which there is no such thing as an entity or individuality.  There are moments when one lifts consciousness above its everyday setting.  It seems as though consciousness were poised above or beyond the body.  One is aware of the gravity of bodiness, yet a flick of consciousness resisting identification with the solid state will make one aware of the buoyancy of the subtler strata of one's being, and a mere switch of one's emotional tonus, from egoistic interest in the neighborhood into sublime indifference to sense data, will displace the center of consciousness from the body to a setting where consciousness operates from one's non-spatial components.  It seems as though one had awakened form a dream. one sees the course of one's life as a part of the great moving scene of the universe, marching inexorably towards some monument at the end of time, bemisted beyond the horizon of one's understanding.
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All things seem to be infused with radiant life force.  What used to seem like objects now appear like the crystallization of that radiance which one might have thought emanated from them.  Time relations have suddenly changed.  It becomes exceedingly clear that in our ordinary perception we only saw a cross-section in time of the reality of those things we now view dynamically, instead of statically, as a process or a stream, instead of as an entity or an object.'
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Reality is unfurling, unraveling from the seed, not calcified into one stage of its progress like a frozen waterfall.
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At this stage one may have grandiose visions of the evolutionary procession of the planet Earth as it unfolds across the eons of time, or extend this vision to the mighty empyrean of the celestial spheres: worlds in becoming, worlds blasted into utter destruction, beings rising and beings falling -- all parts of the cosmic dream.

There are psychological moods of the soul that stir one into capturing that state of timelessness which most of us have experienced at rapt moments.  A discerning mind will earmark four states:

1.	Sarvitarka samadhi -- being aware of one's unfoldment throughout the course of evolution, rediscovered and relieved retrospectively through one's ancestry right back into the mineral stage;
2.	Nirvitarka samadhi -- identifying oneself with the eternity of one's being unchanged, thus having become what one always was, and linking the two levels of consciousness; the ability to grasp continuity in change.
3.	Sarvikara samadhi -- beyond the causal plane, at which point one discovers the origin of consciousness and one is pure consciousness beyond time.
4.	Nirvikara samadhi -- consciousness of the plane of the eternal archetypes of all soul structures before they fashion matter or flesh to conform to their inner pattern.
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We are so engrossed in our personal lives that we allow ourselves to be programmed by our conditioned minds and let ourselves in for the game of those who are likewise lost in the ego play, until we awaken with a traumatic start and make time for our timeless values by resisting the agitation in our minds that spurs us on to activity and diversion.

We mistake activity for action. Action is always giving expression to the timeless state by manifesting it in the cycle of becoming. It is opening the door between two worlds. It is initiating a chain of causality drawn from the causal plane, as opposed to reacting to the effects of the causal chain.
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Part of what we mean by ourselves unfolds in time: it is the plant. Part of us remains unchanged:  that is the seed. They are not actually parts but rather poles of ourselves. We use the same pronoun for both.

We may consider our personality as a plant which unfolds in time and may even have to disintegrate so as to regenerate. As it unfolds, it gives expression to something which was already in the seed but which may not necessarily have manifested to view. When using introspection we are working with the plant, trying to prune the undesirable growths and foster the desirable ones. 

In introspection there is identification of oneself with the personality which one is trying to correct. In meditation, however, one is working with the seed and therefore one identifies with the seed, with the potential of one's being, rather than what has developed from this seed. It is dynamic rather than static. Whereas the plant is subject to rapid change and rapid decay, the transformations in the seed are much slower but affect all the plants issuing from it and are therefore much more fundamental. 

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It is a matter of introducing factors into the seed which will create mutation. These factors are new perspectives of awareness which have their immediate repercussion on the inner structure of the seed. 
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There is a stage in meditation where our awareness extends to the point of cognizing the reality of our being, which is the seed, instead of the indosyncracies of our personality, which is the plant. Since the time factor is different in the seed than in the plant, we are under the impression that we are experiencing our eternal being. "I was always in the far unknown and I have become all that I ever was," said Meister Eckhart.

Actually, the eternity of the seed of our being is relative.  It also undergoes transformation, passing from pre-eternity to post-eternity enriched by osmosis with other beings.  That which cognizes this deeper root of our being is the cosmic dimensional consciousness which functions as soon as one frees oneself from identification with one's individual consciousness.
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Consequently, the recessive memory in the deeper strata that I might try to unearth retrospectively -- in order to rediscover and recover my primal state before I was involved in the process of becoming -- is the same state in which I still am in my eternal being, and which I can reach, not by displacing my consciousness along the vector of time following the Ariadnean thread of continuity in change, but by displacing my consciousness along the vector of transcendence, linking the cycle of time with the timeless, the temporal with the eternal.
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One may discern further dimensions of consciousness strung as it were between the extremes of concreteness and abstractness.  Gauge the difference between the grasp of a mind that merely registers factors and one which senses meaning in their relationships.
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Let time stand still and remain suspended in ever-widening frontiers of awareness: the mind will yield new potentialities, as if transfixed by the effigy of the flower or the person you are communing with standing motionless across the gulf of time flitting unceasingly by, the flower or the person will stand out in its or his transcendence, as a genus instead of a specimen.  The person will loom unique and unchanged beyond the ever-changing pattern of all the idiosyncrasies you have ascribed to him, all the personalities that he or she has shod and shed in an unbroken chain of existence as a prototype, rather than as an individual, a blend of qualities.
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In order to promote the growth of the human person, involving both the plant and the seed, one incorporates the very principle of regeneration, which is consciousness.  And this can only be done if the consciousness which one instills is freed from its earlier limitations and identifications.

This is the secret of alchemy: to isolate mercury from the aggregate of the material which one is working with, the prima materia, then prevent it from volatilizing itself into thin air, fixing it by means of sulfur, in order to produce the philosopher's stone which is the catalyst of gold.  Similarly, consciousness, symbolized by mercury, must be freed from its identifications when it identifies itself with its cosmic dimensions.  There would be a loss of a sense of personality, in fact a disintegration not only of the plant but of the seed, unless consciousness were projected into the seed, or through the seed, and it is this new amalgamate which will act as a catalyst to transform the personality into the model of perfection, symbolized by gold.
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In fact, the experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion and as emotion, etc.  This is how consciousness, which has identified itself with matter, is able to experience spirit in matter in a way in which it could not experience spirit without matter. The personality becomes greatly enriched when one is aware of the spirit in one which is experiencing oneself in one's personality.


Light
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In order to pass from consciousness of the magnetic field to the body of light one has to be aware of burning with a bright flame that one has the feeling of being incandescent, transparent, a crystal.  One has the feeling of being porous as a magnetic field, crystalline or translucent as an aura.  The body of light extends -- there's no skin on it, no edges, no frontier; it exudes rays; it radiates.
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When we say light, we don't mean the electric light or the light of the sun.  We speak about people and say: this person has a lot of light in him, she has a radiant smile.  We know what we mean by that, we are working with the notion of light.  And you yourself know what it is to have light within you, there are moments when you feel it very strongly, and then the dark clouds of gloom come along and there is resentment and despondency and this is wrong and that is not right and this person is unfair to me and why is fate so cruel to me and so on and on... The sun has left.

Our chief problem in these practices is to avoid sidetracking into a phantasmagoria of pure fiction.  How can one experience one's light field, unless one channels this fine faculty of inner perception in such a manner as to promote its activity?  And is not creative imagination or representation pre-structured?  Mathematics is pure representation, yet has practical application, because it consists in the perception of the structure inherent in physical reality, sensed in transcendent areas of the mind, transcendent planes of being.
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Is it possible that the soul projects its internal structure and nature in the nearest possible tangible way: as an image which can only be the shadow of what is?  Could we hypothesize that, as our intuition grasps evanescent values, reaching further and further beyond the physical, creative imagination projects these into forms which they are not, yet which approximate these just as the outline of the face approximates its countenance.  When we let ourselves be caught up in the features, we miss out on the countenance.  Similarly our representations of light may betray real experience, yet if we are able to realize ourselves in our light nature, instead of indulging in the hallucinatory forms that may arise in our practices, then we proceed from imagination to experience.

The aim of the practices with light is to envision oneself as a pure light, part of the world of light.  By becoming sensitive to one's natural luminosity, to discover within oneself a sense of transparency within the spaces between the atoms or cells of the body.
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The method we adopt will be to recapture real experiences that trigger off similar experiences within, rather than imagining these inner experiences.  We have all been exposed at one time or another to the sheer thrill of being lit up intensely, by the headlights of a car, the flash of a strobe, powerful spots', blazing arcs: the atomic flash.  It is such a traumatic experience because it makes one suddenly aware of an aspect of one's being that most times remains unconscious: our luminosity.  That is what is called in esoteric schools auric consciousness, consciousness of the aura.

Here our exercise begins.
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Recollect and relive an experience in which you were flooded by the glare of a light.  Recall how you felt when lighted up, the emergence of your feeling of effulgence, as though you were discovering yourself as something you have always been: a luminous being-radiating, radiating, like a radio-active substance.  The force of the experience is in the blinding intensity of the light relived, and the contemplative's courage in facing it: more so, going right into it, like a moth into the flame, letting yourself be bathed, nay, burned with light.  The important thing is that you become flooded with light, blinded with light, experience that wonderful joy of being drunken, stoned by light.

As Plotinus said: only eyes that have become like unto the sun can look into the sun.  The more traumatic the experience the more it will act as a catalyst bringing to the fore the awareness of a luminous field, sometimes called by the esotericists the mantle of glory, the body of resurrection which not only enshrouds the body and the etheric body but also interpenetrates it.
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Sunyata, the void.  

Become like a crystal. crystal clear, totally receptive to the passage of light.  In the crystal the molecules have aligned themselves in such a manner as to enable light waves to pass.  Matter has adapted itself to becoming transparent to light.  Instead of visualizing translucent angels, discover your own ability to let light pass through your physical body.  Become non-solid.  Let the breeze blow through you, the light pass through you.  Become pure spirit.
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At this stage one may feel a sense of effulgence throughout, somewhat like the ring of light broken up into flames around the sun.  So long as one still identifies oneself with one's body it will appear that the body is surrounded by a sheath or shroud of luminescence.  This is the moment to identify unconditionally with the luminous body.  Concentrate on both the light outside and inside the body as a continuous whole, and liken the body to a translucent crystal which the light interpenetrates and outreaches.

Experience the penetration of the rays of light that are reaching into the body like X-rays.  Discover the transparency of your body, its porousness, as though there were spaces between the cells, between the atoms.  This will strengthen you in the conviction that you are a being of light and will bring back the memory of those planes of light through which you passed, not only on the way down towards incarnation, but in which you still are.

Experience yourself as being created out of this splendor -- it is the being of God looking through your eyes, not looking down upon the physical plane, but looking into a certain level where the forms of all beings are born and emerge.  Don't fall back on it, just go right into it, go right into the picture and give free expression to the angel in you.  Do not stay behind like the spectator that is on the earth looking into the sky, lei yourself be drawn into the picture, not as a body, but as a being of light.
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The relevant practices at this stage are a kind of psychological catharsis: to bring about a sense of crystalline clearness by eliminating darkness and opacity.  The strength of your light can look into the light, it opens up all the dark recesses, there is no reason to hide anything any more.  It's all open.

You are coming into the open from the darkness.  It's not imagination but a transformation of your being.  It doesn't have to take any time, you can do away with any darkness right now.  Everything is coming to light now very clearly.  This is the moment to see things clearly.
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Wash the eyes with light, feel the clarifying action of light upon eyes that may have become dulled by ego strife or evil and ugly impressions.  Wash the eyes with light until they become completely clean, completely pure, the eyes of a child, the glance of innocence.

Wash the heart center with light, feel the effect of light upon this center, which opens up like a sunflower when exposed to light.  Experience the extension of the rays forward through the shoulders, the shoulder blades, depicted by artists as the wings of angels.  Flood the crown center with light; it should react by flashing more intensely than usual.  Concentration should be focalized 5 1/2 inches above the skull.

The washing of the chakras with light is part of a greater experience, which is washing the emotions from anything that is not totally beautiful, making our emotions luminous, subjecting them to the test of authenticity.  Anything that falls short of total authenticity just has to be removed.
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It is as though one were looking through a round door into a world of light which in turn seems like a door opening onto a still subtler world of light.  One's attention may shift to the third eye.  One will notice that it is connected with the crown center as though it might be its extension.  It appears like a beam generally purported to flash forward from the pineal gland.  Rotate your eyeballs upwards, slightly converging them towards the fontanelle, and orient the beam right through the coronary cavity upwards.
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Sometimes it seems that we are focused to a higher plane, yet see nothing because we do not have the training, just as a child has to learn to realize what he sees, which for a baby may appear a blur.  Yet we may learn to discern the profiles, modes and colorations of higher planes by training to awaken from our everyday consciousness, wrongly called the waking state.  Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly, and when he awoke he did not know whether he was a man who had dreamt that he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that he was a man. If we could remember in diurnal consciousness what our diurnal consciousness appeared like to us when we were dreaming, we would remember when in diurnal consciousness that we had the impression in our so-called dream consciousness of awakening from diurnal consciousness as from a dream.

Attention will tend to travel from one area of the aura to the other, bringing its detailed structure more particularly into view: the radiation from shoulders and shoulder blades linked with the heart center (anahata), counterweighted by the siphoning effect of the solar plexus (manipura) as a sea of fire within, reaching right. down into the center at the base of the spire (muladhara).  And contrasting with these: the superior pole, the crown center (sahasrara) gushing upwards from the fontanelle like a fountain of bright light and falling back into a spray of multicolored droplets effusing the centrifugal radiation from the heart and falling around the shoulders with a fine mantilla of luminous fluid of amazing hues.  This center seems to be multidimensional, so that should one displace one's focus upwards, one discovers at each further level, like the reflex of the previous luminary, ever more subtle and remote worlds of splendor.
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 Some of us may remember how in the morning we could shift our consciousness over the threshold from dream 
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to diurnal consciousness and vice-versa under the impulse of a semi-unconscious will.  We seem to assume a different personality in dream consciousness, freer, more daring, emancipated from the sense of impossibility which hems us into fossilized patterns of thinking and behavior.  We make things happen by wishing them, because here we are not only the observer of what we experience but also the creator.  In our creativity we prolong the magic action of the creator of maya in the overflow of his imagination, which is all that reality is, was, and ever will be: the dance of Shiva.  Here we affirm a nobler dimension of being than in perceiving, for we are no more a puppet reacting to 'outsideness', but actively instrumental in projecting 'outside' what is gleaned inside.

In order to effect this propensity we have to apply a different setting of consciousness onto the unconscious borderline areas where the richness of creation is held in abeyance before it may find a physical configuration to foster its existentiation as a physical reality.  And we must also apply a different will than the conscious will, which is ineffective as soon as one crosses the threshold between conscious and unconscious.  The reason is that the figurations of the creative forms of the unconscious are governed by a higher will and conform to the laws of a higher order than is allocated to the very limited scope of action of our conscious will.  While fantasy is the outcome of the capricious play of our human diurnal will within the limits of its field of action, creative imagination sparks the creative flow in its womb, in its incomparably wider dimensions, forcing a way for it into the synapses of our conscious mind, which has to readapt itself in order to accommodate it, giving birth to clearer representations than our human will could ever foster.
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We carry within us dim and shifting intuitions of these greater perfections beyond those normally seen or experienced on earth.  We try to grasp them while remaining in our everyday consciousness, and attribute our failure to the assumption that they must have been pure conjecture, astral fantasy or wishful thinking, and suffer for want of giving them expression in ourselves, for they are knocking at our door, offering to fertilize us with their bounty, and our feeling of slipping failure is nature's way of reminding us of the urgency of fulfilling this imperative human need.

Undoubtedly a part of ourselves is continually acting consciously at these levels working backstage of our personality, and if we could integrate its experience into our everyday awareness, as is our mental consciousness with our body consciousness, we would become more and more creative of ever greater beauty, richness and luminosity right down into our personality.
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It is then a matter of neutralizing the critical resistance of the conscious mind in order to make accommodation in it for the universal dimensions of creative imagination, and then reach up and flow out into the place where the cosmic patterns of all created things arise on the horizons of one's vision.

The imagination of the unconscious and the unconscious will has much more courage than the individual will because it has a vision of immensity as opposed to the vision of narrowness of the individual will.  If you trust the action of the transcendental forces in you to project vision into your conscious mind, and then if you have the courage to believe in the impossible, you will bring the visions of your soul right down onto the screen of your mind and see it all with perfect clarity.  You will become what you see, that is the secret of becoming, you become what you think may be your vision, but it is the vision of God within you.

"There are only two things to be done: the necessary and the impossible." 
(Ibn L 'Arabi)
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Clearly now it is a matter of keeping the door open between unconscious and conscious, so that the elusive patterns of the collective unconscious may flow into the conscious.  As the conscious will cannot operate beyond the threshold between these, one has to trust oneself to an unconscious will which can only be triggered off by an autosuggestion of the conscious will, after which the conscious will must retire, abstaining from any further intervention.  Once the conscious will of a pianist has trained his fingers, an automation takes place, transferring control of the playing to the unconscious will.  Should he then interfere with his conscious will, he would disturb the course of the built-up pattern of action which the unconscious will can now perform much better than the conscious will.  Yet the conscious, ceasing to will, can act passively by observing or listening, can even exercise an action at a different level altogether, on an overall scale.  For example, it can control accentuation and punctuation, or musical interpretation in general.
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Precisely the same applies here to the contemplative: you must maintain your consciousness at the threshold between conscious and unconscious.  Obviously if you shift toward the unconscious, the conscious becomes unconscious, you cannot bring your experience through to your diurnal memory, and consequently fall into the state of sleep.  Should you shift too far towards the conscious, which happens if you regain identification, you lose hold on the patterns of the unconscious.

By suspending oneself at the threshold one keeps the door open between the two.  By trying to introduce consciousness into the unconscious, the setting shifts immediately toward the conscious.  By losing a hold of the conscious, the door is closed irretrievably.  There must be a conscious control over the unconscious will, training it to glean archetypal patterns in the unconscious and project them into images in the conscious.  To perform this orientating action, the conscious will has no other means within its grasp than to catalyze the flow of archetypes by musing upon the images with which it is familiar, selecting images which tend to conjure infinite elusive and inspirational reminiscences of other dimensions.
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You begin to experience wider ranges of the universe which are all within your reach, wider ranges of your self.  Remember the Bardo Thodol.  If you do not have the courage to face the clear light then you will be removed to whatever plane corresponds to your aspirations, and if those planes are planes of splendor you will be led into experiencing the incredible luminous beings of the higher realms of the heavens; and if you are looking for something a little more spicy, then you may start finding yourself on planes where you experience through the senses; and if even that is not quite enough, you might find yourself in demonic worlds ... after all, some of us seek this in the movies.

You will always land on the level that corresponds to your being.  It all depends on what you want.  If you are seeking for the way of illumination, then this is the way, the way is open to you by becoming aware of yourself as a being of light.

Immediately your whole behavior will begin to change, you will begin to correct things that are not in keeping with the being of light that you know you are.  One may forget it and then reiterate the experience again and again until it becomes so deeply imbued that one has to readjust one's whole life in keeping with one's experience.  This is an essentially creative process.
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Visions of light, colors and landscapes of light, temples of light illuminated faces-all kinds of visions of that kind that may or may not arise, whether they arise or not is not in any way an indication as to whether you are illuminated or not.  The key is not to see images; the key is to become luminous in your being.

This will no doubt open up an awareness of the angelic planes; the reason being, as Buddha said, that if you reach the state of consciousness corresponding to a plane, you experience what is on that plane.  If you become totally luminous, you begin to experience the condition of those angels that are called angels of light.  If you become totally immaculate, beyond emotion, you experience the condition of the angels of peace.
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Stay suspended at the threshold.  These visions of beauty start rushing through you -- clouds from off the ocean.  You are rapt in a contemplation of pure splendor.  Typical examples of images to conjure would be those wondrous panoramic scenes of a breathtaking sunrise or sunset where the sky breaks into a flurry of the most amazing multicolored hues of infinite shades and patterns.  Why do they affect us so profoundly, if not that they revive in us an experience preserved in the unconscious strata of memory for so long suddenly emerging at the spectacle of their likeness in the physical world.

As one hovers over the threshold, the conscious representation of the sunrise or sunset will trigger off the unconscious patterns of a landscape of the soul which will flow through to our awareness, providing we abandon any further conscious action and cease identifying ourselves with our body or mind consciousness.  It is the acceptance of the unlikely, unreal and idealistic, even idyllic, which the critical mind will ensure if one shifts the setting back to the conscious.
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Maintain yourself above the threshold, contiguous to it.  Surveying body and mind from this vantage point instead of introducing diurnal consciousness into dream consciousness, one introduces dream consciousness into diurnal consciousness.  After the conscious has trained the unconscious into skirting the borderline, the unconscious trains the conscious to superimpose its deeper vision upon its own.  It is as though the inner eye were able to contemplate a transfigured landscape of light while vaguely perceiving the earthly panorama, which looks like its petrifaction in a diminished dimensionality, like a three-dimensional world to be the projection of a four-dimensional one at a dimension you can only grasp in dream consciousness.  Being in one's dream consciousness one is not conscious of being situated at any point of physical space and therefore can displace one's center within the landscape.
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Such is the way of access to the heavenly spheres of celestial splendor.  They can be reached by a keen contemplative at the price of unsparing training and indomitable perseverance, using the will to neutralize that very will and let a more cosmic one take over.  It seems at first as though one were reviving memories of pristine conditions of the soul stored in the deeper strata of the unconscious, until one realizes that parts of one's composite being still function at these levels, it is just a matter of finding the corresponding state of consciousness.

Discover yourself as a being of light, not as an aura but as a pure luminous consciousness which lights up all things as it turns towards them.  All the rest is just the lamp, the scaffolding, the outside, the wrapping, the lamp through which God sees.

It has to be just as luminous as the eyes which see through it.  It is a state in which you feel that wherever you walk you are bringing a light that shines, that thrusts a light upon your path, and wherever you turn your face you are casting the floodlight of your consciousness upon things.  And everything becomes crystal clear.  You see right into the inside of things, right into the depths of matter, into the souls of beings.


Breath
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You have to build the centers of perception in the higher bodies.  They are there but they are still asleep.  A baby born on the earth plane has to start learning to use his eyes and ears to try to relate what he experiences to the pattern of time and space.  A baby will reach out to the moon: he doesn't realize that it is beyond the reach of his hands.  And so we have to prepare ourselves for meditation.
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There is a facet of our will which enables us to intervene intentionally in the balance between the anabolic and the catabolic settings, which govern the scope of physical, mental and emotional activity.  By slowing down the breath the heart beat slows down, and the balance between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems is shifted toward the anabolic rate: the body becomes inert, insensitive, the autonomic functions take over increasingly, it escapes the action of the will, tending toward the cataleptic state.

Peripheral consciousness is suspended and consciousness sinks into deeper and deeper layers, one perceives archetypes, one envisions causal relationships, abstractions, rather thank thinking concrete or contingent thought patterns or images.  By the sheer fact of doing consciously what is normally done unconsciously, particularly with regard to this most important of human functions regulating the flow of energy at all levels, one shifts the threshold between conscious and unconscious further into areas that fell under the darkness of the unconscious, reaching consciously now into the roots of our ordinary thinking: from the particular to the universal.
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Furthermore, the control of the breath may be directed towards enhancing the magnetic field, transforming or orienting its energy as desired.  As the physical body draws oxygen into the blood and expels toxic gases, the prana mayakosha, the etheric body, sometimes called the magnetic field, replenishes and recharges itself with cosmic energy, then digests or transmutes this energy, circulating and distributing it through the complex systems of chakras (corresponding to the plexi of the autonomic nervous system) then radiates it, in energy patterns according to the nature of each radiating center.  One cannot otherwise account for the energy accrued during the hours of sleep.  This process of recharging can be intensified during the so-called waking hours by doing consciously what is done unconsciously during one's daily occupations.  Should one withdraw consciousness from the body and its perception, tone down one's emotional vibration and mental activity, and identify oneself with one's magnetic field, consciousness shifts of itself from body consciousness to etheric consciousness. Everything is energy in motion.

However, identification with the etheric or astral presents the danger of a loss of the sense of reality in everyday life, and in extreme cases uncontrolled or even obsessive astral projection, should one lose the Ariadnean thread maintaining a remote awareness of the physical body simultaneous with one's identification with the energy field.  Consequently, we prefer leading the breathing practices into those connected with light, as no harm can come to one by entering into one's consciousness of one's luminous nature.  The body is its crystallization.
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Here our practices with breath begin.

Slow down your breath, slow down your heart beat, the vibrations of the blood, slow down the tonus of your emotions, clear your breath, clear the mind of thoughts, refine your breath, surround yourself with a zone of silence, simply be intensely aware of breathing.

Become conscious of contraction as you inhale, expansion as you exhale, concentration as you inhale, radiation as you exhale.  With-the exhalation expel all the polluted magnetism from your being.  Reach out as far as you can go and draw in cosmic energy as you inhale.

Be conscious of the convergence of the whole universe into the center of your being, your solar plexus, as you inhale.  Consciousness is just a focal center in the totality, an eddy in the sea of cosmic consciousness, an egg in the totality.  Concentrate the totality in the center, as you inhale.

The solar plexus is a receptive center, it is the depth of your being, almost like a pit, a deep sea, a sea of fire.  Inhale deep within the solar plexus, suck magnetism into the vortex of the solar plexus, imagine that you are rolled within and that you discover a new dimension of space within.  Imagine that you are walled in, so that there is no exit to the outside, and then you discover this vast empty space, an infinity of space within.

The heart center is a center of expression, of radiation, in fact it is very much like the sun, it is the center of the etheric body.  As you breathe out you go out from the center, radiating into the totality, broadcasting magnetism, warmth, love, understanding, energy, like the sun.
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So you breathe deep into the solar plexus, the sea of fire, and then breathe out, radiating light, from the heart center.  
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You begin to be conscious of an emanation, which you feel very precisely around the shoulders, a mantle of light ... but to start with simply a magnetic field that seems to be carrying light at its edges. 

A magnetic field can give out light, light is an electromagnetic phenomenon, and in fact the aura is born.  It emanates from the magnetic body.  Experience expansion, to the point of merging with the totality.  Disidentify with the denseness of the physical body.  Experience yourself as empty and light, indeed etheric, like steam.  The physical body seems to be the condensation and crystallization of that steam, static and fossilized as compared with the pulsation of the magnetic field, which is breathing all the time: as it breathes in it contracts, as it breathes out it expands.  And the same thing with the light which issues forth: it is like a pulsating star.
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Let us add a few factors to this breath.  Stand up and hold your hands out in front of you.  As you inhale draw energy in through the solar plexus, through the soles of the feet, and through the cavity at the top of the head; so we have three inlets for energy: earth energy, the energy of the magnetic field of the earth, through the soles of the feet, prana or cosmic energy through the solar plexus, celestial energy through the crown.  And as you exhale you radiate from the heart center, but you also feel the dilation of the magnetic field through your shoulders and send out energy through the palms of your hands.

Work with this energy now, so as to be able to replenish ourselves with magnetism, to build up magnetism, to hold it and direct it and most especially to purify ourselves with it.  There is a pollution problem with human beings.  It helps to know just how to cleanse oneself.
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There are actually four different phases: purification with earth, with water, with fire, and with air.  And these are only the old-fashioned terms; in the new age we would say: the solid. fluid, igneous, and volatile elements.
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The first practice is purification with the earth element.  

Standing up, you become conscious of the gravitational pull of the earth on your feet, through the soles of your feet, you feel the way that your body is being pulled down to the earth.  You experience the gravity pull of the magnetic field of the earth upon the magnetic field of your body, not the physical body, as though the lower part of the magnetic field of your body were being sucked into the magnetic field of the earth.  As you exhale, feel the way that the magnetic field of the earth draws the magnetic field of your body towards it, and as you inhale, be conscious of the way in which the magnetic field of your body draws the magnetic field of the earth into itself, just like the plant that draws the earth and the water into itself.  Be aware of yourself as a magnetic field which surrounds and penetrates the physical body.  

Be aware of the ebb and flow of magnetism through your soles.

As you breathe in, draw the energy upwards through the body.  As it passes through the different chakras, it has to be filtered or sublimated: the lower earth energy cannot or should not enter into the finer centers, they must be protected.  It's a chain reaction, a billiard ball effect, as the energy rises along your spine It releases the latent energy in the different centers, one after another, each chakra in turn energizes the next chakra which energizes the next chakra and so on, until you hit the top and break through the barrier at the top of the head.  And then you hold your breath in a state of suspense, and as you exhale you become like a channel through which the transcendental energy from above descends, so that you can let it flow out through the heart center.  You have to let the cavity at the top of the head remain open so that the energy from above may descend.
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You feel the buoyancy, your consciousness is drawn upwards as the energy rises, just as a rubber ball on top of a fountain would keep on being lifted upwards.  Be aware of the way in which the magnetic field of your body is purified and replenished by the earth.  The way the earth draws the denser aspects of your magnetic field into itself.

If you can become aware of the opposite pole to the magnetic field of the earth, i.e. the magnetic pole of the heavenly spheres, you will find that as you breathe out your magnetic field is pulled downwards by the magnetic field of the earth and upwards by the magnetic pull of the celestial pole, and as you inhale you draw the magnetism of the heavens and the magnetism of the earth into your magnetic field.  There is an accordion effect, the denser aspects of your magnetic field are drawn downwards and the lighter aspects raised upwards: it is a kind of ordering, a kind of filtering.  Filtering is the principle of purification with the earth element.
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The second baptism is purification with water.  

You experience your magnetic field in its fluid state.  The fluid component of your magnetic field is like a lake through which a river flows, like a kind of fluid magnetism that is continually circulating throughout the atmosphere, which has the effect of washing you clear, cleansing you by a flow, taking into itself any of the impurities in your magnetic field.  You feel porous, like a sieve, with lots of little holes in your solidity.  Imagine the spaces between the cells in your body, the enormous spaces between the particles, the spaces between the stars.  

Let the energy flow throughout your body, not just around your body as though you were immersed in the Jordan, but all through your fluid body.  Stand on your tiptoes, let your hands just hang in the air as if in still water, and shake your hands as healers do when they clear themselves of polluted magnetism in their fingers.  Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, closing the lips so that the breath is blown through the lips.  Just feel completely relaxed, and let the energy flow through you from upwards downwards.  As the energy flows through you it dissolves any impurities and carries away all the pollution.

You are being washed clean, you feel as though you were soaking wet, as though you were having a shower, you are having a shower inside.  You can even feel the flow of magnetism through your hair.
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St. John the Baptist said, "I will baptize you with water, but one comes after me who will baptize you with fire and with the holy spirit." Baptism with fire, with the igneous state, is a more radical form of purification, We are in a continual state of combustion, even the heat of our bodies is a product of this burning process.  It is a perpetual holocaust in the temple, which is called in the Vedas the eternal sacrifice of purusha, the spirit, in which all created beings participate.  We are continually undergoing this process of combustion.

We can even enhance this burning process.  Yogis are able to enhance the heat production of their bodies by immersing themselves in the cold waters of the Ganges 14,000 feet up in the Himalayas, then wrapping themselves in a wet towel in this cold, and drying the towel by the heat of their bodies.
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Even emotion can enhance the body temperature.  When one gets into a temper, one burns more intensely, one is burning for the truth, like Joan of Arc, one will stand up for one's ideal at the cost of whatever sacrifice it might mean, like many of the Jews who were burnt by the Gestapo.  The fire of truth produces light and illumination.  We are able to bring about illumination by burning more intensely in our lives, by bearing the cosmic cross, by offering our self as a joyful sacrifice.

Decrepitude and old age are a sign of the process of combustion which has transformed the physical body at its own expense into a subtle body, into the body of resurrection.  Our sufferings are a sign of being burned, of being annihilated in our ego.  The more we are shattered the more our consciousness rises with greater brightness, greater incandescence.  We glow; we become transparent to light.  This is the passage from fire to light.
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Abraham turned the sword, which was supposed to have sacrificed Isaac, upwards, and it became the flaming sword which breaks through all planes, resulting in the production of light.  All this makes possible, in the Hekaloth of the Jews, the passage of souls from the fourth plane, the plane of the seraphim, who are angels of fire, to the fifth plane, the plane of the cherubim, who are beings of light.  Everything seems to tend to make us pure consciousness.  The fire is one's vibration to the truth, and it is that which transforms one into a being of light.

It is a matter of becoming aware of the process of combustion in ourselves by fanning the fire in the solar plexus with the breath, thereby realizing the purifying igneous element in our magnetic field.  In a certain sense we are like a flame.  The Buddhists have the image of the flame that passes from log to log, burning through log after log; for the flame to persist there always has to be another log, otherwise the flame is extinguished.  The lower aspect of our consciousness is like a flame which depends on what it can burn.  In a certain sense this flame is our desires. our cravings, we are a continuity of cravings: the craving of one being is continued through another being, the whole of life is tensioned toward the fulfillment of desire.

Resurrection is the overcoming of desire.  We are fire which is burning not only our bodies but our personalities until they are purified and illuminated.  Purification happens when there is just cold light.
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In the heart center there is heat and light, in the throat center there is heat and no light, and in the higher centers there is just this cold and no heat.  By hammering the fire in the solar plexus we unleash a chain reaction which will ignite the light of the sun in the heart center, which will then be sublimated into the cold light of the crown center, a very cool transcendental light corresponding to the light of very high altitudes, almost frozen, immaculate and diaphanous, rising like a fountain of light above the top of the head.
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Breathe in through the mouth and out through the nose.  As you breathe in through the mouth you fan the fire in the solar plexus, and then as you hold your breath you draw your consciousness up through the heart center, there is a sudden explosion of light in the heart center, which rises up to the fountain of light of the crown.  When you breathe in through the mouth you keep your lips closed, so you have a current of air running through your lips directly to the solar plexus.  

As you breathe out through the nose the heart center opens up and radiates like the sun, radiates also backwards through the shoulder blades, forming a mantle of light, rising also upwards through the crown like a fountain of light that breaks the light up into all the colors of the spectrum, all scintillating little sparks of different colored lights falling like a shroud around the aura.  You feel luminous, you begin to experience yourself as a being of light.

Inhale through the mouth, fanning the fire in the solar plexus.  Exhale through the nose, radiating light from the heart center.  Keep your lips closed, so you have a current of air running through your lips directly into the solar plexus.  Inhale fire, exhale light.
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The last and most refined purification is the baptism with air.  It is best experienced standing up, ideally out of doors in the wind.  

Breathe in through the mouth and out through the mouth, mouth almost closed, breath very refined.  And as you breathe in you feel like an eagle ruffling his feathers, letting the air flow through them.  Breathe in through the pores of the skin, feel the wind blow through you, passing through the spaces between the cells, the atoms of your body.  Feel the spaciousness of your body: you have no edges, no frontier.  As you breathe out you dissolve in the air currents, the circulation of the breath of the world.  

The breath is a fishing net: the outbreath is the net and the inbreath is the knot, but the net and the knot are not separate, they are one.  

Stay in the space between your breath.  Feel the air of the world blow through the throat chakra like a flute.  Keep the breath light, almost imperceptible, in through the mouth and out through the mouth.  Allow the fluid motion of the wind to take you where it will.  You may feel it sway you, spin you, lift you up like a bird, on the tips of your toes, your arms are wings, you are flying.  All density, all gravity is left behind.  You are totally receptive to the ever-flowing currents of the breath of light, the holy spirit.



Pranayama
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Breathe in four beats, hold the breath eight beats.  Breathe out four beats.  Breathe in through the left nostril and out through the right, then breathe in through the right nostril and out through the left.  

In kundalini yoga, you alternate the currents in the nadis, the ida and the pingala, the solar and lunar nerve currents which crisscross up the spine and meet in the third eye, as in the Caduceus of Mercury.
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There is something in us that is continually striving toward the future, and as you breathe in through the left nostril and out through the right you will feel the whole forward thrust of consciousness that is moving you along the horizontal axis of linear time, you become future-oriented.  

Then as you breathe in through the right nostril and out through the left you will be moving back in time, if you are conscious of it you will be looking right back into past lifetimes, unreeling the wheel of becoming and going right back into previous states.
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Now we shall move consciousness along the second axis, which is vertical infinite time eternity.  

As you breathe in through both nostrils transfer your attention from the solar plexus to the heart center, up through the throat center, third eye, crown center, to the center above the head.  At the end of the in-breathing you hold your breath, and then as you breathe out the look down from that high point and radiate through the third eye, throat center, heart center. 

 This is the vertical axis of transcendence, the line of communication between human consciousness and divine consciousness.

Now if you combine these two practices you will co-ordinate both axes, vertical and horizontal, of the cosmic cross.  

Breathe in through the left nostril, hold the breath, breathe out through the right nostril.  Breathe in through the right nostril, hold the breath, breathe out through the left nostril.  Breathe in through the solar plexus, transfer your attention upwards.  Hold your breath above your head, and then do not bring your consciousness down but look down from that vantage point and radiate energy through the third eye, throat center, heart center.



Sound
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From the standpoint of our diurnal consciousness, the world appears as a network of physical objects; but if we were able to maintain our consciousness on one of those levels from which we sometimes see flashes of intuition, we would find that reality appears under the form of vibrations; that one is oneself a network of vibrations.

One has the impression of bathing in a world of sounds-in which each vibration has its scope, its direction, its significance, its own particular duration of life, and even its own individuality.  We discover the interferences, interrelations and interactions between different vibrations.  A bewildering way of considering the universe opens up: every human being seems to be a note in a symphony, nay, a symphony within a multi-dimensional symphony which may be part of that still vaster symphony -- the symphony of the spheres.

If we are able to attune our consciousness to the level called by the Hindus the akasha we shall. touch upon the origin of all things, all actions; a place where reality remains eternally unchanged in the pereternity of an archetypal vibratory structure.
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The esoteric traditions have handed down to us the key to tuning in to this plane.  It is the mantram of the Hindus, the 'nembutsu' of the Buddhists, the repetitions of kyrie eleison of the Hesychasts, Orthodox hermit monks, the 'wazifa' of the Sufis.  Such techniques derive from an experiential know-how that teaches one how to attune the frequency of human consciousness in such a manner as to enable one to be receptive to vibrations of a different order from those generally perceived by the ears.

There are mantrams in Sanskrit, in Pali, in Tibetan, in Japanese, in Hebrew, in Arabic.  The wazifas are probably Arabic and possibly even pre-Arabic, of that ancient Semitic language prior to Aramaic which is the common root of Hebrew and Arabic.  And although the historical source of these currents seems to be far removed from one another, the sounds seem to correspond.
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For example, in 'aum' you have the 'a' in the heart center, the 'u' in the throat center, and the 'm' at the top of the head, which is very similar to 'allah hu', with the difference that the 'm' is directed upwards through the crown whereas the 'hu' is directed outwards through the throat: and in Hinduism the whole trend is toward unity, the experience of oneness, whereas in Sufism it is towards becoming a channel through which God may manifest himself in man.

We are dealing with an area which science has not yet explored, but I am convinced that within thirty or forty years these phenomena will enter the purview of science which in no way need be limited to phenomena which we define in our present views as physical. This may then possibly help esotericists to elaborate more precise methods than those rather pragmatic ones based on trial and error practiced so far.
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Let us bear in mind that our purpose is not the curiosity of experience, but the resultant transformation of ourselves.  If the unfoldment of our being is measured by the degree to which we incorporate the richness of the universe, experience is essentially an interpenetration and interfusion between the different components of the same thing.  How much do we know about our sensitivity to solar rays or to vibrations beyond the known range of the eardrums?
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If sound can be used as a language, it is a means of communicating physical or psychic or even spiritual energy: likewise, super-sonic vibrations communicate their energy and messages to the unconscious or super-conscious.  What do we know of the overtones in our voices that are picked up by the unconscious of our hearers, communicating a far greater richness than our oft inadequate words . . . the voice of silence.
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One might call the significance of a word the non-physical reality. By vibrating sympathetically with the resonance of the corresponding sounds, one discovers the real significance beyond the concept of the mind: the signature, ayat, the imprint, sign, the significance of that reality of which matter carries the impress, that reality that strives to manifest itself in and through matter.

We have little idea how we have been marked by the concepts of the mind standing in the way of transcendental experience, for at higher levels all concepts must disappear in order to place us face to face with reality in all its nudity and nakedness.
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When one practices' the mantram or wazifa, one becomes the subtle instrument communicating divine significance to one's consciousness trickling over the threshold of the unconscious through those overtones that one is taught to bring into relief.  Unlike ordinary language, where words are linked to their significance by pure convention, the mantram or wazifa have been handed down from archaic languages where each sound is the vibratory counterpart of a transcendental significance.  On the physical plane every object has a specific rate of vibration, which might include several frequencies running parallel.
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At times one is highly conscious of the imperfection of the means with which one communicates with others; we are limited by words, conditioned by the concepts attached to words by our education.  This Is why Zen Buddhists and the Sufi Ibn 'Arabi play with words in order to destroy the concepts.  Paradox in no way betrays a desire to shine by one's wit, but to explode confining concepts breaking through beyond.

The mantram has the advantage of not binding us to a concept.  There is of course a danger in attaching a concept to a mantram.  If your teacher prescribes a mantram to you, you are likely to ask him for its significance.  Should he tell you its meaning, and should you attach yourself to its significance such as your mind conceives it, your concept of it would stand in the way of your discovering its deeper significance.
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The teacher, therefore, encourages one to discover the meaning of one's self in reference to one's self in the course of the repetition of the mantram.  Maybe one is at first perplexed as to why the teacher has to be so mysterious about it, until one understands that he is opening one to the multi-dimensional connotation catalyzed by that particular word, so that, at every fresh stage,, one discovers further meaning in what at first appeared as an evident concept.

The advantage of a mantram is that it does not have a mental significance therefore it forces one to supersede the mental concept.  Although one has to pass through the mental concept to start with to give one a sense of direction.
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In the West it sounds brutal to say: the purpose of the mantram is to destroy the mind; it is to bypass conceptualization in order to break through the rationalizing strata of the mind, to reach out to those mental levels usually referred to as intuition.  The curious thing about it is that one has recourse to the body to detract consciousness from the seizure of the conceptual strata of the mind by focusing consciousness on the overtones, bypassing this stratum to reach out to the archetypal one.

A reason for not repeating mantram more often than prescribed. The drawback of the physical repetition is obviously its hypnotic effect which, by destroying the individual center of conscious will, through the take-over of automation, brings one to the fringe of trance, unless one stimulates consciousness by checking on the quality of the sound produced and flashing on the overtones, or, at a further state, concentrating on the meaning.
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The focus of consciousness thus acquired will lift one onto a level of awareness usually called reverie, because as one does not generally know how to operate consciously at this level, it seems nebulous.  When one is able to do this one wakens from the reverie threshold into a state of intense lucidity where what seemed unreal now assumes its full reality and what seemed real now falls out of focus and seems illusory.  A world of vibrations comes into focus such as you had always believed in desperately and then given up as make-believe.
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At first you think you are producing the sounds.  Then you feel like the organist who hears the music he triggers off at the other end of the cathedral and finds it difficult to believe that he is producing it, in fact, you now envision yourself as the instrument through which the sound passes and the instrument through which it is heard.  This is brought about by listening to the overtones instead of the base sound, then using the scale of overtones as a Jacobs ladder to climb.

Jacob's ladder
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It is like listening to the echo of the echo of an echo zooming in on the reflex image of the reflex of a reflex.  One must be silent in one's soul to listen to the sounds one splashes into the ether that are reverberated from one stratum of the ether field to the other.  Through that subtle transformer one is connecting with all planes of the universe.
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The technique of the mantram then consists in following the overtones of the sound beyond the limits of the range of the ear, into the supersonic range picked up by those areas of consciousness usually referred to as the unconscious.  One continues to listen, but not with the ear.  Thus consciousness is induced to extend beyond its span, shifting its threshold with the unconscious, proving that the conscious can pick up stimuli beyond the accepted range of the senses.

The classical techniques require one to repeat the prescribed mantram a given number of times: 21, 33, 101, 1001, etc.; but it is better to interrupt the sequence if one is not entirely satisfied with the sound produced.  There is no point in repeating the same mistake or perpetrating the same imperfection over and over again.  Do not content yourself with the sound produced.

In fact, one is like the Indian musician who, in guise of tuning his instrument, is actually tuning himself to the right pitch.  An Indian musician mat take hours to tune his vina.  It looks as though he is tuning his vina, but actually he is tuning the soul.

You say the sound, and 'Oh, no, that's not it.' so you do it again and again and again, and you gradually get your soul into a condition which enables you to produce the desired sound in the chakra.  One feels things in one's self that one doesn't like in the sound that one produces: it's too personal or it's too harsh or there's too much ego in it or it's too inharmonious or there's something in it that you don't like: all those things which you suffer from in your sense of beauty, which cause despair in the minds and hearts of man.
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You keep on tuning into the sound, turning into the sound.  You become more and more harmonious, more and more impersonal, until you become like the Aeolian harp that the Greeks used to expose to the high winds on the hills: the winds would blow into the harp and produce celestial harmonies. work with the sound until you are absolutely amazed that you could produce such a sound and it seems to you that you are just the instrument through which the Divine Pied Piper blows the whisper of the incantations of His magic spell.

In the advanced techniques, one should repeat the prescribed word once, twice, three times, or a few times more, until one strikes the right note, then listen to the echo produced, then launch the sound again, but internally, so to speak, without saying it aloud.  You have thus used the body as a springboard to pass from physical sound to etheric sound.

Now follow up this sound in the ether, thus strengthening your thought forms, because, even as one can produce a physical sound by thinking it and willing it, even so one can produce a sound in the ether.  Then you listen to it. 
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You are simultaneously the creator and the witness of the sound. 

One is actually working with that magical instrument, creative imagination, in the realm of sound, fashioning sounds rather than forms.  One actually tunes one's body of vibration like a violin or a cello by modulating the sympathetic resonance of the vocal chords.  Should you place a harp and a piano in the same room and attune them to the same pitch, the percussion of a chord on one of these instruments will set the corresponding chord in the other instrument resounding sympathetically.  In the human being nature has devised a more subtle device: imagine that by tuning the piano, the harp would fall into tune automatically.
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In this connection the mantram acts as a feed-back system ostensibly bringing particularly to one's notice those aspects of one's self that one does not like, thus enjoining upon one to operate an internal readjustment which is immediately heard in the voice and has a consequent repercussion in the vibratory sheath.

The master in the art knows how to make use of all sounds, operate on all vibratory levels, play on all scales.  In one's schooling, one is given in the course of years different sounds to work with corresponding to specific characteristics, in order to enable one to extend one's scope.  This is a very valuable science preserved as a closely guarded secret throughout the ages in the esoteric and initiatic traditions of the world, and revealed to a disciple as he advances in order to preclude the misuse of the secret words for personal gain or the prescription of the wrong mantram.
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Become yourself, pure vibration, beyond space.  If the sound generated by the vocal chords into the vibratory network of the universe has the faculty of tuning one, it is because it links one with the cosmic symphony.  The repetition of a physical sound sets off a sound current, a vibratory tidal wave in the ether, by building up energy.  Thus sublimated, the sound current functions like a silver chord which carries all our Vibratory impulses on all levels to and fro.

Consider the way the energy of a falling stone hitting the surface of the water or a seismic convulsion will set up a ripple which may extend across the entire stretch from shore to shore unless overcome by the inertia of the water.  Likewise, the sound of the mantram sets up an undulation in the neighboring air, voiding itself into infinity, unteemed undulations in less and less dense substance, until one reaches the inertia zero point where the waves should be deathless.
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The same must hold good of our vibratory network.  At a certain stage it seems as though you are picking up not only the overtones, or even the echo of the vibration launched into the ether, but the response, reaction or rejoinder of the beings whose particular wave lengths one has stirred and quickened by resounding their very specific vibrational rate, like the harp and the piano.  As their numbers maybe legion, one is awed by the billions of sounds that one has set into motion by one's own sound that now appears miserably dwarfed!
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According to the Sufis, the angels seek a means of expressing their glorification--light, vibration--and we are born of these.  By our acts of glorification we commune and hence communicate with them at their level.

At first it sounds like an electric machine, or ventilator fan, or some electronic music -- maybe the best example is the sound of the Aeolian harp.  It may sound a little humdrum and monotonous at first, like a continuous hum, then one discovers more and more richness within this sound, new horizons of harmony, many say like a choir of angels.  It would be a mistake to try to describe it because it has no earthly equivalent.

One runs the risk of inducing people into the wrong expectation.  Some will recognize familiar harmonies forgotten all this time, yet consigned all the while in the registry of unconscious memory.  If a perception (probably prenatal) stirs one, it is because it revives a known impression which suddenly is quickened: a baby does not know what he perceives until he has perceived something similar beforehand.  Thus the repetition of a mantram is opening a door to the heavenly spheres.  It focuses one's sensitivity to planes which one then incorporates into one's personality, thus enriching one's incarnate nature with the attributes of one's soul which may not have found their way down into everyday reality yet.  One acquires a notion of one's real identity which had been reduced in one's mind to one's earthly counterpart.
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This is where one's affinity with the angelic becomes meaningful. and exhilarating, by the spell of the recognition of prenatal identity.
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Imagine you are strolling in a wonderfull spot.  The grass is green, the sky is blue.  

Now imagine that you are high through religious or meditative experience, or because you are in love, in a state of euphoria, you will have the impression of being caught up in a transfigured world, lured into the cosmic dance of Shiva.  It is the same countryside, and you are the self same person, yet something is changed: suddenly you are able to perceive what you had not been able to perceive before.  It is as though a landscape of the soul had superimposed itself upon an earthly scene.  Such is the attunement to celestial sensitivity.
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We live on several planes at the same time.
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It is said in the Hakhaloth, the Book of the Heavenly Spheres of the Jews, that each time a new soul descends in the ocean of the manifested realm, crossing the threshold from yonder into the seventh heaven, it generates a vibration which is communicated to the entire cosmic ocean, which means all created realms, earthly and heavenly, physical and super-physical.  As each of these vibrations bring into resonance a host of consonant ones throughout the universe, their unimaginable interferences produce globally the symphony of the spheres referred to by Pythagoras.  Each creature and every so-called thing (one should say being) is a crystallization of a part of this symphony of vibrations.  Thus we are like a sound petrified in solid matter and which continues indefinitely to resound in this matter.

And the Word became flesh and the Word became flesh, and the Word became flesh and ... In the mantram practices one actually kneads the very flesh of our bodies with sound.  The delicate cells of these elaborate bundles of nerve fibers that are the plexi or ganglia of the autonomic nervous system, such as the solar plexus or the cardiac plexus, are subjected to a consistent hammering, which undoubtedly has a transforming effect upon these.  There is a kind of seizure of the flesh by the vibrations and an adaptation of the flesh to the forceful sway of the vibrations.  Although we do not know much about the reciprocal transference of physiological and psychological factors, the extent of the transformation is certainly visible in a person on completion of a forty day retreat.  This adaptation of flesh to sound is remotely reminiscent of the adaptation of physical matter to the passage of intense light rays, of which we have an example in the phenomenon of crystallization.
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This knowledge requires very much practice and concentration indeed.  Moreover, it is thankless, because, after repeating mantram every day for weeks, months, years, one might ask oneself: what good has it done me?  Has my consciousness been lifted in the least?  Little does one know what a bad judge one is of oneself, that one cannot detect changes in oneself as well as others can.  Curiously enough, these practices can bear their fruit a long time afterwards, even after having given up the practice.  It takes a long time for a process to mature once started.
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Practically speaking the mantrams open the centers called chakras in Hatha or kundalini yoga, and there is an art in knowing which chakras to develop according to the idiosyncrasies of each individual.

There is hardly any danger in developing the anahata chakra or heart center, which is a radiant, solar and warmly vibrant center communicating life, energy, expanding sympathy.  Many highly sensitive people protect it instinctively from the harshness of human egos with a hard shell that blurs its radiance, whereas the initiate is taught to protect himself with inner indifference while radiating love.

When this center develops it unfolds like a bud in the sun.  This can be seen by perceptive initiates.  People who are hemmed into themselves will benefit by the opening of this center.  An Egyptian papyrus shows a Heirophant opening his neophyte's heart chakra with a beam thrust forward from his third eye.  One can effect this opening oneself with the third eye or with the use of the appropriate sound.
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The heart chakra is particularly sensitive to an expansive sound like the sound "Ah." It is then a matter of knowing how to place the sound "Ah" through concentration on that particular spot in the body.  

Concentrate on the heart as you repeat the sound "ah".  There is a convergence of one's entire organism on this spot.  This is how voice teachers teach their pupils to place their voice high or low.  The result is a clearly concentrated physical effect: an audible resonance is introduced into your chest originating in your vocal chords exactly as the vibrations of the chords of a violin or cello are communicated to the resonance box. This resonance becomes more and more vibrant until your whole being becomes vibrant.  

If this practice is practiced every day, your whole being will become highly vibrant with life and enhance energy, because the "ah" has a cosmicising effect, expanding consciousness to cosmic dimensions.
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The "U" or the soft "oo" have a transcending effect, in contrast to the cosmicising effect of the "ah", and resound in the throat chakra or laryngeal plexus (which is not to be confused with the vocal chords).  The sound "U" places one in a very subtle frame of mind, attuning one to higher spheres.  It is a hum like that of the bee, the one heard in a shell picked up from the seashore, or the murmur of the wind in the trees, or the flapping of the wings of a dove.  As one produces the sound, one lets oneself be sensitized and lulled by it, then permeated by it until one is carried upon its wings into yonder horizons.

It is difficult to produce.  Many pupils mistakenly resound it in the heart, which often results from singing it.  

It should be placed forward between closed lips, allowing the overflow of compressed air to cause a vibration in the palate.  Sometimes it is strategic to make a nasal sound, then let the sound settle down into the palate.
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The sound "I" or "ee" is placed in the pineal gland, above the palate, known as the third eye.  But it should be observed that a number of rishis refer to at least two further centers placed harmonically above the first one at a respective distance of two feet above the crown and the second one six feet.  Others speak of a whole chain of chakras.

It's a matter of concentration.  The third eye is the point that goes out, that beams forward, just like a needle or a nail, that if you put the slightest pressure behind it has a tremendous penetrating power.  You go out into it, eeeee.  Don't think about producing a beautiful sound.  Don't sing it.  It's supersonic, it's like the hissing of a serpent, when you catch yourself doing it right you suddenly feel as though you were hearing the sound of the planet Mercury.
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The higher your concentration point, the higher you will be listed, to the extent that one does not know any more whether the instructions apply to a specific distance above one's physical body or whether it is above the etheric, astral or mental, because the body seems now way down there somewhere!  While your whole being is concentrated (ekagrata) in a single dot, without surface or volume, 'the fine edge of the soul,' -- the lance of Parsifal that rises higher and higher as a filament, is reduced to one's simplest expression, as in the Buddhist Nirvana, that on account of its sharpness passes through all obstacles, leading beyond the angelic and archangelic planes into the absolute.

We are all fired by this thirst-for the absolute, this nostalgia for a breakthrough into a beyond; however high one reaches, one would long for further horizons, if it were not for one's fear of not being able to return, obviously the same thing as the fear of death, which is nothing less than an instinct of self-preservation which nature saw useful for ordinary purposes. But this has  
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to be superseded if one seeks for spiritual realization to the extent that the ultimate spiritual experience is that of a death that avers itself to be resurrection; but one passes through a black-out, like a pilot oppressed by the G forces.

The "I" properly resounded and directed upwards through the cavity at the top of the crown center when concentrated on a point receding further and further upwards, will draw you beyond the black-out, into the akashic realms, providing you maintain just enough body consciousness to give you confidence you will not get lost, your body acting as an anchor.
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The "M" in the yogic "aum" functions as a protection saving one from disintegration by holding one within the vibrational field of the sahasrara chakra.  Another way of countering the danger of disintegration by flying out of hand too high into a void is to strengthen the vibrational capacity of the solar plexus, manipura chakra, or even the swadhisthana chakra, called in Zen 'hara'.  

The "E" of illa 'Ila' in the Islamic dhikr, pronounced somewhere between "I" and "E", grounds one deep down in the entrails.  

The solar plexus is basically a receptive center and the seat of acute sensitivity in most people, often disturbed under emotional stress, when its vibrations fall out of step.  The harmony of the whole instrument depends upon the attunement of every chord.

One has the impression of reaching into the depths of one's being, passing over a threshold from outside to inside in an inverted space; therefore the sound "E" triggers off strange harmonic triads or even series into an inverted space that opens up inside.  The sound is difficult to produce because while being low it should be vibrant like a gong.
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The "O" as the Japanese pronounce it reaches right down into the swadisthana in the abdomen.  

It certainly strengthens the ego will and is fairly dense, but has the advantage of giving one stability and therefore is recommended for hysterical people and those who try to fly before they can walk.
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Having mastered the vowels, one discovers the value, meaning, and effect of the consonants.  This is part of the science of the Word of which clues may be gleaned in the Hebrew Kabbalah and the Jafr of the Muslims.  See the mysterious letters found prefacing some of the Suras of Rapt Conjecture since the onset of the Hejira, particularly by the Sufis.
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N is feminine in contrast to M, in a sense an echo of it, as in the word man (Sanskrit manas); although contrasted to more male tones like P, the M avers itself to be negative (like Pa and Ma).  The contrast is even stronger when confronted with highly male tones like R in Ram.  The K is the most male of consonants (qadem, qadir, qahr), generally prescribed to men, fortifying the vowel it precedes and usually connoting the incorporation of power or life, i.e., the Egyptian ka which translates meaning into created form.  The R protracts the resonance of the K, while S that of water and T that of fire, as in the word, 'astrology' originating in the Atlantean word 'Asatar'.  T always drills a channel through any obstacle, as in fatah: in its softer form, as in Ishtar, its effect is insidious, like water wending its way across the rocks; and finally in its purest form, as S in salam or salim, it is peaceful, i.e., to give solace to the dying.
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'L' features the gravitational movement of the planets, the unfoldment of the wheel of life, the Dance of Shiva.  In Islamic calligraphy it figures as the arc of a circle, a circulatory motion, always gravitating around the 'A' acting as a radiant center: the concentric and the centrifugal.

This is the fundamental principle underlying the dhikr: La illaha illa '11a 'hu.  La is negative, al affirmative, completing one another as action and passion in an eternal couple.  The divine manifestation 'A' floats on the tidal wave of the perennial 'L' in harmonic sonic conditions, breaking off on a tangent in the W (Hamza), which signifies the transcendence beyond all created aspects and stands for Hu.  It is the least consonant of the consonants, resounding like the hush hum heard in a shell placed against one's ear.  Without the adjoining vowel one cannot hear it.
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After practicing the wazifas listen to the harmonics in the atmosphere.  Climb the ladder of the harmonics.  Become your self: pure vibration beyond space.  You hear in each vibration the harmonics of that vibration, and the harmonics of the harmonics of that vibration float on the sea of vibrations you are in.  Shabd Nahd absolute inner sound.
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You can do it only if you identify yourself with pure vibration, because if you think of yourself as your body, if you think of yourself as your mind, if you even think of yourself as consciousness, you can't do it.

Consciousness is born at the level of the archetypes, the causal plane, where the causes of all created things arise, the intention behind all manifestation emerges and beyond that level there is no consciousness: just pure intelligence.

Wazifas have their existence on the causal plane, but they are also vibratory channels to the plane beyond where there is just pure intelligence. So you must become pure vibration and pass on through 
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to the other side.



The Causal Plane
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Spiritual guidance is the art of making a being become what he is.  The pupil senses beyond his personality that divine model which he is, yet of which he is only vaguely aware.  The teacher is supposed to make him see what he is rather than tell him what he should be.
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This means grasping incomparably vaster dimensions than the ones usually experienced.  One cannot know oneself if one reduces oneself to the qualities in the condition in which they appear in one's present degree of unfoldment.  We so easily let ourselves be drawn deeper and deeper into the limitations of our environment and our concepts, and be exiled in our human consciousness, consequently suffering-from an unbearable feeling of limitation, frustration and inadequacy.  We can only overcome this be re-experiencing ourselves as part of the Divine Nature, our homeland.

If man is urged on from stage to stage towards an inexorable advance, opening up vaster and vaster horizons of perfection, it is because somewhere in his soul he has a launch about a purpose being served by his existence beyond anything he could do or achieve.  This is nothing less than manifesting a portion of the not-yet-manifest allotted to his eternal being, which, though thus apportioned, is however so inextricably mingled with the total richness of the non-manifest that, whereas on earth his personality seems to contrast clearly from that of others, at the seed level it seems to dove-tail and overlap and interfuse with the whole fabric of the plane of archetypes.
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The efficacy of the use of the wazifa as a method of spiritual unfoldment lies in the fact that, by invoking the particular archetype it stands for, one extends one's consciousness beyond the corresponding quality in one's soul (or in a person, or in nature).  There is a kind of elasticity in consciousness that knows that it can always grasp a greater number than the greatest number one has so far imagined, a wider space, a greater perfection.  "Humanity, divine limitation; divinity, human perfection." (Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan)

In order to grasp the perfection of a quality we may observe in its limited exemplification in us, we have to shift the focus of consciousness.  Our limited nature falls out of focus.  Our eternal being comes into focus.  This is the point of ingress into the causal plane: the plane where all reality is still in the archetypal state.
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At first all we experience is the particular quality we-were dwelling upon in the repetition of the wazifa, but as each quality implies its neighbors ad infinitum, as love implies compassion, and power majesty, and spirit purity, so does one extend from this port of entry into wider and wider stretches of this plane, increasing one's realization, as one proceeds from bafflement to bafflement.

One experiences one's self in one's eternity: as a package, a network of attributes characteristic of one's eternal orientation.  From this vantage point watch the way these 'seminal principles' have been carried through in the idiosyncrasies or bents of one's personality in the course of one's many reincarnations.
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Now concentrate on the archetype you have invoked in the wazifa, watch the corresponding quality in your personality without descending into personality consciousness, consider your personality as an aspect, a projection of your self, not as your self, Maintain yourself in focus on the causal plane.  Identify your self with the being you have always been since the beginning of time, are and always will be.

It must be noted, however, that at the causal level the past or future only apply to the outcome of what one is, which is involved in becoming, so that one cannot think one has been in the past while one is focused up here.  No sooner does one pass the threshold into transient consciousness, than immediately one's eternal being is contemplated from the human vantage point through the memory one has of it, and this is where one feels as though one's real self, of which one now has a reminiscence, has always been and always will be.
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Maintain yourself at the vantage point of your eternal being, see what your personality looks like from this angle, "One can only know as much of one's self as He sees of one's self."

In the light of your causal being, the personality enters into its perspective as a projection or exemplification.  If you are able to perceive power in your personality, it is because your soul carries the seeds of divine power.  Nor could you judge whether a person is peaceful or not unless peace were known to you in the impalpable depths of being.  The sight of the exemplar: your power or your peace or your kindness, eclipses the archetype.  By shattering the personality confronted with its ground, the wazifa reforms the personality out of the primeval principle in you, according to a new pattern.
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In almost every case the initial encounter with the magic of vibration may be undertaken with the wazifa Faz'l which means blessing.  The sound 'A' placed in the heart chakra made vibrant by transforming one's whole being into a gong struck by the hand of God every fresh impulse in the cosmic rhythm, thus captured and reached to.
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The name of God which gives unlimited scope to one's being is "ya Wahhabo", the outpouring of divine potentialities into creation, and in particular to yourself like a stream rushing from its source with great force.  If you listen to the purr of a mountain stream, you may discern a low sound created by the friction of the water against the river bed, and a high sound created by the friction of the water against the surface air.  These are produced in the sound 'ah' of wahha and 'O' of bo, creating in their inter-reactions numerous echoes and overtones.  The use of this name indicates motion, progress into one's being or upon the environing circumstances, should they become stagnant.
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While Wahhabo refers to the outpouring and existentiation, the totality of archetypes carried by the forward march of structures refining themselves in their intricacies in the course of evolution, Ya Hayyo is the ever changing and transforming flow of life energy in all its forms to ever farther shores beyond our understanding in the cycle of becoming ... often contrasted with Ya Qayyum, that which is not transient, therefore everlasting, and consequently surviving the falling curve of disintegration all the components of the flow of life as it passes like a flame from log to log, a current from cathode to anode, eventually wearing out simultaneously recreating everything it touches.
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Hayyo, the sap rising in the trees.  The force of life sprouting in the buds in spring, the power that propels the planets, orbits around the sun, the whole motion of the heavenly spheres, the heaving power of the waves of the sea and the crash of the thunder the mystery of life in the birth of the child, the whole unfoldment of life, life bubbling over and sprouting.  Hayyo is everything in your being which is subject to change, leaves on the trees and the clouds in the sky, thoughts in the minds of men, everything that passes: your bodily states, your emotions, your consciousness, consciousness continually flowing, continually changing, the Dance of Shiva.
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When one says Ya Hayyo one experiences bewonderment, like a kind of nostalgia, as one watches one's life flowing faster, seeing it in a panoramic vision.  Pondering upon the different events one may wonder why things happened the way they did, watch their sequence, discern the lessons, grasp the law of causation.  The emotion experienced when one is confronted with the passage of time having displaced the center of consciousness.  One feels oneself carried in that flow irretrievably, as one detaches the center of one's being from that flow, watching it, as it were, objectively, one becomes aware of that something in oneself which is eternal and survives the flow.  This is the moment of triumph over death.
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Ya Qayyum, life everlasting, not the life that flows, continually renewing itself but that which remains unchanged behind all change, eternal through the passage of time, that which life becomes when the essence of the essence of the essence has been extracted derived from the flow and gleaned for survival in everlastingness.
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From the human vantage point, what you were eternally in the mind of God, unbecome, unformed, you have become, while still remaining in your eternal self, that which you were and always will be.  From the higher vantage point, transformation is the unreeling of what already is.  Qayyum is the victory of the everlasting, the victory of resurrection over death, the proclamation of Easter Day: 'You are risen into eternal life by the victory of resurrection over your fragile transiency.' This is what Seraphiel announces as he blows the trumpet on the Day or Resurrection.  The Quranic words corresponding to this wazifa are "Everything passes except for His Face."

The one who discovers the mystery Ya Hayyo Ya Qayyum becomes intoxicated, Ya Hayyo, the renewal of life, implies death.  There is no greater intoxication than surviving death.  God undergoes a thousand deaths in every death, not only of our bodies but of our personalities, so that we may be resurrected by the survival of His Essence in us every time that our limitation gives way to His Perfection.
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Another wazifa associated with the water of life is Ya Quddus (both vowels in the throat chakra).  Ya Wahhabo refers to the stream of formations and flows in the time vector; Ya Quddus refers to the source and is timeless and formless.

In Hindu terms one would say Wahhabo is prakriti, Quddus is purusha.  Know the state where, having lifted yourself on the wings of detachment above all the emotions associated with forms and the well-being of the ego, you re-experience the state prior to causation.  The state is reached by purification until one reaches the immaculate condition typified by the diaphene light of the moon or the clarity of the diamond.
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Meditation image: a clear fountainhead of water gushing out of a crystal cave, glistening in sidereal light.
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Find yourself back in a certain place which is familiar to you in your unconscious, a place beyond time and space where everything is effervescent with light.  If you can find that certain place inside, you re-establish contact with your source.  We are all suffering for having been torn away from our source.  We nurture the need for a pilgrimage to our origin.  Therefore it is not good enough simply to meditate on the image: one must find the corresponding image within one's soul.  To do this one has to take a spiritual bath, return to a state of original innocence.
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Having shed all earthiness, one becomes pure spirit.  Quddus is attributed to the archangels, to the Holy Spirit, and to the source of the water of life where Elijah quenched his thirst.  Quddus a jet of super-charged energy that breathes life into all things, vitalizing all things: quite a different type of creative force than the power that creates and perpetrates forms.  It infuses forms with a new lease of vital energy.
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Ya Rahman (Divine Compassion) is described as a breath (nafas ar rahmani) freeing the archetypes from the solitude of unknowing, launching them into creation.  This fulfillment of the nostalgia for causal existence inevitably carries suffering in its wake which is the price of sensitivity and therefore awareness.  Rahman Is followed by Rahim: compassion for the creatures who have suffered for being the bearers of the Divine Attributes into manifestation.

Rahman (the male aspect), emanating from the divine heart center, is an extension of love becoming all prevailing.  Rahim (the female aspect) is all-encompassing.  
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The heart having become an accommodation, it stretches to the horizon of the universe.
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Love reaches the quality of compassion in its fullness in the mother.  The mother of the world incorporates all suffering beings in her heart.  Rahim is sharing suffering with those who suffer.  Rahman is enjoying the fact that another is happy, even at your cost.  It is the opposite of jealousy or covetousness.  This is joy in being a channel of divine bounty.  When one says Rahman, one enjoys the joy that beings have in manifesting the divine attributes.  When one says Rahim, one suffers in solidarity with them in the karmic load they are carrying, preferring to carry it oneself.  Think of those persons who are difficult to love because of their strong egos or their unpleasant actions towards you, think of them with love made complete by sharing in whatever suffering they have and enjoying whatever joy they enjoy.  This is the path of sainthood.

"If you wish to follow the path of saints, learn to forgive." 
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

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You cannot follow the path of the master without having started on the path of sainthood, which ultimately proves to be the greatest mastery, because to love one's enemy one has to overcome oneself.  Overcome all that resentment and intolerance and bitterness.  Be free.

One cannot be free when one is nurturing a grudge in one's heart.  Your ability to forgive is the measure of your greatness.  Your ability to love is the measure of your capacity for the greatness of God.  The measure of your love is the extent of your forgiveness.  If you cannot extend your love, then experience His Love passing through YOU towards that being: the greatness of His love, the tremendous power.  Be free.  
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If you wish to follow the path of saints, learn to forgive.
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Ya Alim is supreme understanding, the understanding behind our understanding, the eyes behind our eyes, pure intelligence beyond consciousness, that is beyond where there is perception or cognition.  This is the knowledge that confers illumination, where all becomes clear.

Ya Alim, consciousness of the Divine Awareness, being aware of being aware.  Al Jili describes three degrees of awareness: You see the intention behind a situation (1) after it has happened, (2) as it happens, (3) before it happens.  It implies scanning beyond the surface, grasping the intention behind things, the purpose behind the intention.  If one fails to see the intention one wonders why things happen the way they do, things do not seem to make sense.  The ignoramus says, how can you believe in God, look at all the chaos in the world, all the suffering.  Obviously the Planner does not schedule things to fit with our plans.  If you hypothesize that the objective proposed by the Planner is to test us that we may reach realization, everything makes sense.
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Ya Alim is often balanced by Ya Qader: Divine Omniscience by Divine Omnipotence, the 'I' in the third eye with the 'A' in the heart.  Ya Alim. marks the incorporation of Divine Power into the body, converged into and then radiated from the heart center.  When one abandons one's own measure of appropriated personal power, there is a sense of the investiture of a power far beyond what one would ever be able to yield out of one's own initiative.  One knows one is at grips with it by its overwhelmingness.  We have no idea what Divine Power is.  We may have come across this power in the thunder or an earthquake or a mad elephant, but obviously Divine Power is beyond any of its manifestations.  
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To encounter it is to be shattered.
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There are people who shun power because they have suffered from its abuse for personal ends.  Yet the absence of this quality in a person leaves a lacuna which may hamper their natural enfoldment.  This is particularly true of a sensitive person.
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It is not good enough for things to be planned.  They still have to be done: for the intention to become a reality, energy has to be launched into operation.  The one channeling this power in the Divine Service makes things happen and gives strength to the weak and dis-spirited.  It is a matter of opening the chakra of the heart by the expansive effect of the vibration of the letter 'A' when one has freed it of all personal limitations.  This can be heard in the voice when the chest becomes a perfect resonance box and the vibrations produced are perfectly clear.
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Ishq allah ma'abud lillah: God is Love, God is the One Beloved, God is the Act of Love.  
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Ishq Allah ma'abud lillah: God is Love, God is the Adored One.

This is one of the ways in which the dervishes or madzubs, the God-intoxicated ones, greet one another.  It was not in order to know Himself that God created the universe, but it was out of love for you as a part of Himself, before you were thrust into existence, that he created you.  Experience being born as an expression of Divine Love for the Beauty within Him which is seeking to manifest through the qualities inherent in this particular projection of Himself.  Then manifest the beauty of that soul you call your soul which has been covered under a bushel basket.

The realization that God's Love has made one His Beloved stirs one into the only possible response: one's adoration of Him.  For there is no common measure between man and God.  Do you recall the act of adoration, the primeval high mass celebrated in the heavens in which galaxies of heavenly beings manifest their glorification?  Your soul is the very language they use to express their magnification.
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There is no greater intoxication than that of love when it transcends the human object and is directed towards the Divine Being.  If one does not experience this love, it may however be communicated by the God-intoxicated.

One cannot experience love for God until one experiences His Presence.  This is called by the Sufis 'the station of intimacy' which is reached when one undergoes the trauma of the death of one's person after having been burning intensely in the fire of love.

It takes a strong love protected by the freeing quality of forgiveness to encompass the egos of all people including the insults of those who do not understand.  It is easier to glorify God than love His creatures, easier to glorify God than to love God.  The realization of being the object of God's love unleashes one's capacity for love.


Dhikr
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La illaha illa 'Ila' hu: there is no God but God.

Once when on a retreat in Ajmer, the center of the Chishti Sufis in India, for forty days repeating the wazifas (names of God), I was feeling so high, experiencing all the divine qualities, when a murshid came to me and said, "The time has now come for you to meditate solely upon-the Divine Presence." I said, "Here I am, meditating all the day on the Divine Attributes, it's so rich and wonderful.  Do you mean the Divine Being beyond qualities?" 

"Yes," he said, "No qualities, just the Divine Presence." "Well, I couldn't do that," said I, "my mind would have no patterns to weave upon." "You'll do it, you'll do it," he said.  "How can I do it?" "By repeating dhikr." "How can just repeating dhikr do that?" "You'll see, you'll see, but only on the condition that you are prepared to be completely shattered in your sense of the self, otherwise you can't do it." "Yes," I said, "That's exactly what I'd like to do." So I proceeded on a new retreat solely practicing the dhikr.
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"Yes, no qualities, just the Divine Presence."
"I couldn't do it."
"You'll do it, you'll do it."
"How can I do it?"
"You'll see, you'll. see."

No qualities, just essence.
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One can love human beings and plants and animals, one can love beauty in all its forms, one can love the Divine Qualities -- mercy and compassion and joy and peace and light -- but how can one love just the Being of God?  At first it seems just impossible, and yet that's what happens.  But it's a very strange kind of love, it's a love beyond love, always going beyond, always going beyond.
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When you repeat dhikr, unless it is a total experience, you will find it terribly boring, you will wonder just how long you can go on saying these words.  The only ultimate experience is the experience of death and resurrection.  Dhikr gives one no scope for images, it is transcendent, beyond any forms, it's arid, it's austere, really it's very high.

The Hesychasts, the hermits of the desert, advocated not to use words to pray, because they evoke images which will hold one on the plane of created forms.  Those very attributes whose contemplation is so enriching belong to the magic realm of imagery, the plane of maya, God's imagination which manifests in the forms of all created things, that which is beyond all form.

As long as one Is involved with the formal, one will never come into contact with that Ultimate Reality which is behind it.  Sufis call form the veil upon the face of the contemplative, veiling the Light of God that would shatter him.  Abu Yezid Bistami calls it a lure, a veil, and a hoax ... "The one who is invited to the Divine Betrothal will not suffice himself with the Veil of the Beloved."
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There comes a time when one experiences such a need for the absolute, for that cold remote emotionless beyond where nothing stirs, where there is no agitation, there is just that very immaculate, almost unreachable height of the aloneness of God.  This is where the last syllable of the dhikr leads.  Dhikr expresses the absolutely highest point that one could ever attain, one never does attain it, because in order to get anywhere near it one has to die and resurrect in God.  The practice of dhikr is living that mystery to the extent of total involvement... it is more than enjoying and admiring all the beautiful aspects of God, which is glorification.  It is sharing that state whereby God withdraws from the multifarious spectrum of His many-splendored attributes into the aloneness of His Unity.  Man experiences His Eternal Principle.

Dhikr is not of the nature of vision, which always implies duality, always the subject which is me contemplating that object which is God, which I see manifesting through all living things.  Where there is duality, one tries to reach beyond this manifestation into the original archetypes.  Where all is one, the very archetypes fall out of focus.
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"Oh you who have been removed from God in His Solitude by the abyss of time, how can you expect to reach Him without dying?" 
al Hallaj

How can the outpouring of the Divine Essence flowing out of the essence give you the experience of the essence?...

"Henceforth there is no need for proof in order to grasp Thy Reality." 
al Hallaj
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The attributes are called by the Sufis ayat, which means the signs.  But the very sign which manifests God is itself a veil.  There are moments when one cannot stand oneself because all one knows of oneself seems like a veil.  Everything around one seems sham, deceptive, disappointing, and one feels the call for the solitude, for retirement.  

There is a need to free oneself from the emotions associated with the qualities and experience serenity, yet to isolate oneself out of one's own volition would be isolating oneself in the poverty of one's own ego, the ivory tower of splendid isolation, giving vent to the desire for the absolute.  Therefore the death that spells life can only result from the encounter with the overwhelming Divine Life that shatters.

Give up isolation, then God marks you with the stamp of His Unity.  The higher stages in meditation cannot be reached by one's own action, but solely by Grace.
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To become the instrument through which God becomes a Reality one has to die to one's sense of autonomy in order to survive in the consciousness of His Unity.  This is not the death that brings one back to the origin (azaliat) but the death that takes one into eternal life (qiamat).

Such is the meaning of the dhikr.  Not the dismantling and the dissolution of the ego center but the integration of the ego center into the total unity.  The relinquishing of one's own qualities to make room for pure being, which may then manifest its qualities at will, irrespective of whatever qualities one had appropriated as being one's personality.  Therefore the dhikr is not simply returning to the state in which you were in the beginning.  The contemplation of divine attributes or qualities tends to orient one back to the state in which one was in the beginning, but the dhikr means that God has become through us a reality so that through the death of our ego He may proclaim His Unity.

It is a contradiction in terms, says al Hallaj, to proclaim His unity if you are conscious of being the one who proclaims it.  It is only when your consciousness of yourself has disappeared altogether by eliminating the very roots of your personality that you may serve as an instrument in which God proclaims His unity.  The Sufis always use both terms fana and baqa together.  It is not so much the dissolution of the ego as the overcoming of its isolation which marks the dhikr: therefore, it is the ultimate practice.
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Should one repeat the dhikr willfully one defeats the whole purpose of the dhikr.  The formula is very powerful and one is easily tempted to say it forcefully.  The dhikr can strengthen the ego in a very dangerous way unless it is done in such a manner that one lets the Divine Power take over.  It is very subtle, one gets very easily caught up in one's emotions.  It expresses the highest of emotions and therefore the most impersonal.

The whole art of life is to know how to channel power while being fragile and selfless in order to be receptive.  The man of God is a king in a beggar's garb, a palace in a ruin.  The collapse of human endeavor before the overwhelming greatness and the sense of immensity.  It is when one allows the Divine madness to inflate one's ego that the worldly manifest their disapproval, scorn, for an ego resents another ego.

Having experienced being carried beyond the consciousness of ourselves as separate beings, we are brought back into our limited consciousness of ourselves, this time however transformed by that vision, because one can never be the same after one has had that vision.  Maybe the next time one will be strengthened a little more until one is able to maintain the Divine Consciousness continuously, and the vision of the self does not take anything away from the vision of Oneness.

Al Hallaj reached that stage when he said, 
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"The light of the Divine Awareness has risen in my heart like the sun over the horizon, and it will never set."
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It is God who recites the dhikr through you.  This is when the practice really becomes effective.  The sheiks amongst the Sufis are required to undergo very exacting tests ... repeating the dhikr twenty two thousand times a day for forty days.  Eventually you become the dhikr.  Your body is just like a flute on which the dhikr is being played, and nothing is important, you are not important, no one else is important, only the Divine Presence is important.  Then it comes through with tremendous force.  You are just in it and it is not you who is saying it.  You don't have to shout it.  In fact, if you really had it in you, then you could whisper it or breathe it and it would be just as powerful.

In the highest dhikr you overcome all negation, there is nothing to negate; you can only negate illusion if you are still immersed in it.  The two basic phases are now: (1) you become the immensity, the totality; (2) your being becomes the incorporation of that immensity that is God.  
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"Hearken to the sound of the reed: Ever since I was taken from my bed my cry has set to tears all the women, all the men.  I want a heart torn by separation that T may fully declare the agony of yearning of every one far from his true love who remembers the joy of union and I have sung this song with all kinds of beings, miserable and happy.  I seek the friend who knows the sign; one who will mingle his soul with mind.  The secret of my song is near who can see who can hear.  Body is not veiled from soul, nor soul from body, yet who is given leave to see the soul?  The cry of the reed is fire, not wind.  Whoever holds not this fire let him be nothing.  The fire of love sets the reed to flame.  It is the surge of love.  It is the true companion of every one parted from a true friend and lover.  The song has torn the veils which shroud our heart.  It tells the history of the blood-spattered way." (Jelaluddin Rumi)
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The classical formula of the dhikr is La illaha illa 'lla' hu.  In its exoteric sense it means: there are not several deities, there is only one God.  Esoterically it means: there are not several beings, there is only One Being.

It will be observed that the intonation of the formula oscillates from the 'A' to the 'L' and vice versa, showing an intrinsic polarization.  La is negative, al affirmative, completing one another as action and passion in an eternal couple.  The W, Divine Manifestation, floats on the tidal wave of the perennial 'L' in harmonic sonic undulations.  In the Arabic 'A' (alif) is written like a straight line, and the 'L' is a curve like the arc of a circle, and so one goes from the vertical principle, which is always the line of communication between heaven and earth, between transcendence and polarity on the earth, to the circle, which is always the principle of creation, the wheel of becoming, of transformation, the circle of life, the vortices of the galaxies, the storms of stars in the heavens, the Galganim or beings of light depicted in the Sephiroth of the Jews, as in the wheels of the vision of Ezekial.
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We have two principles: the vertical line descending from above, forming a bridge between God and man, two poles of the same thing, and then the circular principle, which gravitates around a center.  The word allah therefore starts from the point at the top of the line going down and then movies into the circle, coming back to the origin again, thus evoking the whole principle of life.

Now at the end of the word Allah there is an 'H' (hamza), which is then followed by a 'U', reminiscent of the 'H' that stands for the highest name of God in the Kabbala: just the 'H' alone, never pronounced because without a supporting vowel.  The word 'ehie' being the nearest approximation to it - a word whispered in the Holy of Holies.  
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The 'H' represents a totally different principle to the 'A' and the 'L', it is the tangent leading one out of the vicious circle of the 'L' perpetrated by the 'A'.

The word 'hu' stands for the non-manifest, the person not present, that part of God that has not appeared in creation, beyond the realms that manifest Him either in form or in time and space or even through consciousness.  Indeed, it is even beyond consciousness.  We are referring to the arupa planes of the Buddhists, the planes beyond form.  The consciousness of man is a veil concealing the reality of God in the state of non-manifestation.  We are ourselves the veil covering God's reality.
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On a pilgrimage to Ajmer about a hundred thousand people had converged on the tomb of Khwaja Moin-ud-din Chishti, some of them Sufis from places like Mongolia and Lybia and China.  At night listening to the musicians extemporizing on the verses of the Sufi poets, some darvish carried beyond themselves beyond themselves began to show their reverence, a gesture that soon became a gyration.  This is the darvish dance which may go on until dawn; everybody gets very high.  When the murshids leave, the dervishes continue their dhikr conversing in song and gesture, communicating their ecstasy to each other, their souls soaring higher and higher.  One of the songs they sang was Allah Hu, they went on and on and on, and the whole company was in a state of rapt intoxication.  A breath of God was blowing upon our souls.
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The mode of recitation of the dhikr varies from school to school.  Here is the method followed by the Chishti Sufis.  There are actually four stages.  Number one: 'La illaha,' there is no divinity.  The 'la' is intoned while describing a circular motion of the head: third eye facing left shoulder, solar plexus, right shoulder.  'Illaha' is intoned as one reaches upwards to the apex of the circle.  All the while one is denying that things are the way this they look, unmasking the hoax of maya.  

The darvish says ( most categorically and uncompromisingly):  It is important to learn how to say "no."
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Number two: 'Illa', except, a significant word because it marks exclusiveness: the exception confirms the rule.  There is subtle metaphysical semantics behind the whole formula.  The sound of the 'I' in 'illa' produced by the darvish is quite incredible: like the sound of a crystal glass that has been hammered by a spoon.  This is intonated while thrusting the head downwards like an arrow, the third eye facing the solar plexus, all the while denying the assumption of being what one believes the self to be.  Bombarding the solar plexus with the third eye has a transforming effect upon the chakra, opening it up like a lotus.

This is the position in which the Essenes were buried.  Some of the Hesychhst contemplatives used the meditate breathing their breath into their entrails.  The Sufis call this part of the dhikr the destruction of the idol, that idol that you have made of yourself.  For example, you think, "Ah, Vilayat is dead, long live Pir!" That is the impersonal vehicle or chalice for God's presence.  The annihilation of the self is more traumatic if one experiences the shattering effect upon one's person of the encounter with the Divine Immensity.  It is the confrontation with God that obliterates the sense of ego-ness, rather than any effort to dissolve one's ego into the void.
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Number three: 'Allah' ('lla').  The meaning of Allah is "the worshipped One." According to Arabic grammar, when the first 'A' of a word follows the last 'A' of a previous one, one eliminates the 'A' in the second word.  As it is considered by the pious disrespectful to eradicate any letter of the word Allah, the first 'A' is uttered inaudibly, carrying a slight break into the formula which is aesthetically harmonious.  This is the great proclamation, the pronouncement of the great name of God: the supreme moment of glorification.. one's participation in the cosmic Hallalujah which originated all forms.  It in said by the darvish with great emphasis.  In glorification man attains his fulfillment, especially in its ultimate form in affirming unity, where one in no more there to affirm it'. one discovers oneself as that one and only being, being lost in the vision of oneness.
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Being lost in the vision of oneness.  Such is the ultimate affirmation, unacceptable to those who are still conscious of themselves.  That is why al Hallaj was crucified.  There comes a time, says Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, when the Godly soul cries, 'Ana'l-haqq,' I am the truth.  When you make the ultimate affirmation,, you are a knight, or the trumpet through which God makes His proclamation, that is where you can declare it with great force, and this accounts for the power of the darvish.  In fact, one of the greatest moments in the life of a human being is when he says "So be it" or "I will." This is quite different from saying "It may be," "I am not sure," "It looks as though" . . . .	

The credo in the Catholic mass affirms the faith that does not have to rest on reason: one stands for what one believes beyond even the proof of the contrary.
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According to the Hakaloth of the Jews, each time a new soul impinges upon the surface of the ocean of life it produces a vibration in the great symphony of the spheres that is reverberating throughout the cosmos.  Dhikr means recollection, to reinstate the promise made at the beginning of time at the moment of the birth of one's soul in pre-eternity when one said "I Will."

Recollect, rediscover In the deep layers of the unconscious the primeval covenant where one made the great proclamation that invests one with one's measure of relative autonomy.  The solemn promise whereby one pledges oneself to suzerainty to the divine sovereignty to fulfill the divine will, yet answer for it oneself.  That is why Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan says, "Let Thy wish became my desire."
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Number four: The 'H' at the end of Allah attended with a 'U' -- God's reply to one's invocation comes in the form of the pronoun in the third person: Him, person not present.  The non-manifest, freeing one from the circle of becoming on a tangent.  Through us He becomes 'anal, the subject that experiences, when we invoke Him beyond His attributes we focus on the person not present here and now, and His answer, instead of being I am that I am, is He is that He is: 'Huwa', the most impersonal mode of expression. 'Hu' is that He who weaves the Ariadnean thread that you thought was you into His unity. You crane your neck, your whole being is in the highest possible state of suspense, the doors between the manifest and the non-manifest are open, and you are transfigured even as you are pulverized by the sudden flash of imponderable lightning.  How can you experience the non-manifest except by it manifesting to you?  Only if you are not there to experience it.
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'Huwa' is very much what the Upanishads call 'Paratparam', beyond the beyond.  The threshold moves forward, like the horizon, the further you advance the further it recedes, you never reach it, the frontier, ('barzaq') destroys itself as you advance.  There is no more manifest or non-manifest or God and me, but all is One.
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When the dhakir reaches the state of realization he watches, as it were., from above how the spirit stirs that lump of flesh called the body into a motion swinging the head as high as it can go catapulting the indwelling consciousness beyond the threshold of body consciousness into the immensity and how again that very flesh is imprinted with the impression of the bounty grasped by consciousness.  Then it is clear that what is ultimately gained is realization of the Divine intention, become a reality in the person.
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The dhikr should not be practiced without being prescribed by an authorized Sufi in the tradition of the silsila (the chain of transmission).  There are numerous forms which may not be given here.
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After mastering the intoned formula it may be repeated internally on the rhythm of the breath:  one breathes out 'La Illaha' and in 'Allah 'lla'. Holding the breath as one thinks 'HU', think the words, not intoning them. This is called Fikr-Dhikr. When you have accustomed the various parts of your bodies to be exposed to certain sounds, you will find that they stir to the internal sound current thus set into motion, acting even more effectively than the spoken word. In this form it is easier to concentrate on the meaning of the different phases given above. One's whole being begins to oscillate on a cosmic impulse that touches upon the axiomatic significance of the entire life process. Launching as it were a sound current into one's very circulatory system. 
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The practice attains its ultimate expression when one ceases to think of the words, only concentrating on the meaning, while performing the motion of the head, perhaps less amply, more internally. This is called Fikr As-Sirr, the secret of the Fikr of the Khikr. Behind one significance one discovers a deeper significance, then a yet deeper one, diving deeper into the divine intention, "Ma'ana," the concealed secret, Sirr Al Ghayb, the consternation of intelligences. 

One may reach a point in the realization of the dhikr where to negate illusion is superfluous because it has fallen out of focus. In the first phase there is a sense of immensity as one extends into outer space, coextensive with the totality; in the second phase one incorporates the bounty of the universe as a point of convergence. At this stage the practice becomes cosmically powerful, accounting for the incredible majesty of the darvish the king in beggar's garb, a palace in a ruin, the living dead who gives eternal life. 

The Chain of the Sufis
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At a time when the breaking down of religious, intellectual and cultural barriers between East and West fosters rich fermentation of ideas, and a re-evaluation of ideals, the age-old tradition of Sufi esoteric philosophy and its contribution to the perennial unfoldment of human thought remains but little known except to a few specialists and enthusiasts.  Yet an exploration of its teachings throws a revealing light on the problems that the West has usually tried to fathom with the measuring-rod of speculative thought; and it may yet have an important contribution to make to today's spiritual renaissance.

A Message in Our Time  

Our appreciation of the universal value of human thought has been greatly hampered so far by our acquired habits of pigeon-holing knowledge into schools of thought and water-tight religious groups; we distinguish Greek philosophy from Vedanta and the Egyptian mysteries from the Kabbala or Zoroastrianism, or Christianity, overlooking the currents and the cross-currents that have run from one system (as we call it) to the other, or that part played by those powerful thoughts, acting as pollen, ferments or catalysts that have thrown these groups into blossom, enriched their concepts, or operated the sudden and profound transformations that have at times galvanized civilizations to the point of taking the lead for a time.  

Furthermore, one must not overlook the personal stamps of those who have revealed new beliefs upon the surface of the same old problems through their own Individual outlook, or shall we say, their mettle.
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When the torch of mystery teaching that illuminated Greek thought was in danger of being extinguished by the closing down of the school of Athens under Justinian in the year 529, it was rescued and revived by the awakening Arab world which inherited the "Falsafa" (Arabic for philosophy) from the hands of the Neo-Platonists, Damascus and his brethren, at the court of their royal Persian host, Nurshivan, who had given them asylum.  The philosophical controversies of the Khorassan schools were dominated by the cross-currents between the Platonists called Ishrakin, or illuminated, because they regarded intuition, or the introspective light of consciousness as the source of knowledge, and the peripateticians, or Mashain, who attributed knowledge to dialectics and the intellect. 

 No doubt, not only the neo-Platonic Gnosis but even its terminology can be traced back to the writings of the Sufis.  But the sweeping and categorical nature of the Islamic Shahada that is the affirmation of the sole existence of God, together with the denial of any other existence, inevitably called for a tearing re-examination of the "imago mundi" of the neo-Platonists, that hypostatic procession from the One as Plotinus had outlined in the Enneads.  The conclusions reached in this soul-searching of that most intrepid of thinkers are far-reaching and cannot leave us indifferent.

Similarly the Zoroastrian background where the new conquerors of Persia established themselves, steeped in the age-old wisdom of the Magi whose work had been destroyed by the pillage of Alexander's troops, challenged the more enlightened of the faith to re-examine it in the light of their sweeping outlook.  So much so that Shihab-ud-din Yahya-as Suhrawardi who was put to death in Aleppo at the age of thirty-six referred to himself as the spiritual successor of such Persian Magi as Khosrau, Zoroaster, Jamasp, Frashaoshtra, Buzurgmehr.
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But he included in this chain of torchbearers of the esoteric tradition Empedocles, Plato, Pythagoras, Plotinue, Proclus and Hermes, who form a prophetic family, whose mission is "the close safeguard of the divine proofs upon the earth." The breathtaking perspectives opened up on the cosmology of the heavenly orbs by Avicenna in his "Kitab al Shifa" and Suhrawardi in his "Hikmat al Ishraq" (philosophy of light) reinstate the angelology of the Zoroastrians, which is the most detailed system known, even more so than that of the Kabala, whose angelological system has entered Sufism by the door of Ismailism.  Curiously enough the ancients considered Plato as the disciple of the Persians through a leakage trickling through the Dardanelles or across Asia Minor; conversely, the foundations of the Zoroastrian angelology were later shaken in the mind of Avicenna by the theology of Aristotle, that Apocryphal manuscript attributed by the Arabs to Aristotle which was nothing but an edited translation of the Enneads IV and VI and a fragment of Porphry. Suhravardi went yet further, corroborating and enriching this "interpretatio mundi" by the fruit of his meditations on the essential nature of knowledge to meet the challenge of Islam.
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The old mystery schools of Egypt, superseded and corrupt as they were, also left a ferment that has fertilized the soil of Sufism.  They had given rise to the tremendous research in metaphysics, arithmetic, algebra, syllogistics, medicine, alchemy, astrology, that has radiated from the third to the sixth centuries from the schools of Alexandria, the so-called schools of Oriental Syncretism.  Here the esoteric heritage of Egypt, as borne by Hermes and others, that of the Hellenistic culture by Proclus and the Manicheans, and that of Israel by Denis and the Nestorians amalgamated into a "corpus hermetics".  This corpus bolstered the growth of the exact sciences in their formative stages in both East and West and gave alchemy its richness and power to the extent that psychologists today still feel the need to grope into its mysteries in order to enable them to make an exact science of psychology.

Throughout the progress of secularization of philosophy in East and West, the belief in an hermetic knowledge available only to the initiated and communicated by a sage, successor In the secret tradition to Hermes and further back to Thoth, has never completely disappeared.  In Islam the figure of Hermes was assumed by Khidr or better still in the esoteric tradition by Idris, that ineffable master of the hermetic mystery known only to the few, who remains the hidden (batin) initiator behind the outer (Zahir) pir's teaching.  This esoteric science together with its exoteric discipline was spread in Aramaic Assyria and Mesopotamia.
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One of the Sufi heirs to the Egyptian mystery cults and Hermetic wisdom was the Egyptian Dhul Nun Misri, (by his real name, Abu Faye Thauban Ibrahim Misri) 798-856, who is passed down in the history of Sufism as all near legendary figure for his knowledge of the then almost forgotten hieroglyphics, which he deciphered from Egyptian temples, his mastery in the art of alchemy and Kabala, and his erudition in Hermetic wisdom.  By accumulating initiations in these esoteric disciplines he was able to combine their doctrines in an overriding gnosis -- or vision of unity broadened yet by his own mystical experience.
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During the ninth and tenth centuries, the Ismailis injected Islam with the ideal of inter-religious reconciliation and diffused the fruits of the findings of the school of Alexandria.  An indication of the encyclopedic character of Ismailism may be traced in the Ikhwan al Safa, which gives an all-embracing panoramic view of human knowledge in the tenth century.  This mysterious sect, which sought to establish the Fatimid Immamat, was founded by Maymoun al Wuaddah and reached a depth of introspective analysis as yet unsurpassed in the annals of metaphysics under the impulse of Nazir Khusarau E Jami al Hikmatain (The Book Linking the two wisdoms).  It was the influence of Ismailism that introduced elements of Sufi esotericism into the West through the contacts made with the Crusaders.  Thus the Cathars, who introduced the Rosicrucian secret order into the medieval Christian milieu, branched off from the stem of the Sufi tradition.

The legends of Parsifal that penetrated Germanic folklore through the Druids, the Celtic one in Crestien de Troyes fables, and the Saxon one, through the King Arthur legends, reveals the trace of an encounter between Islamic and Christian initiates.  According to the tradition, Parsifal's father was an Arab, and the word Parsifa betrays a Persian etymology -'pareh-fal' means: "le fol pur' or "le fou d'amour" (in Arabic 'pars' means pure and 'wal' or 'wali', saint, or friend of God).  The Grail legend brought back from Palestine by the Order of the Templars introduced the mystery tradition into Christianity.  The correspondence between terminology: knights of purity and Ikhwan al Safa, which means: "brotherhood of the pure", was fostered during the Crusades.


There are more examples of the influence of Sufi thought upon Christian mysticism through the Spanish school that flourished during the four centuries from the
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 thirteenth century onwards.  

Ramon Lull (1235-1315), who may be considered as the initiator of this Golden Age of Christian mysticism, wrote in the "book of the lover and the beloved", which was framed in typical Sufi terminology, of his meeting with "certain men called Sufis who set down words of love and brief examples which gave us great devotion, and these words which demanded exposition and by the exposition there of the understanding soars aloft, the will likewise soars and is increased in devotion." The distinguished contemporary Spanish Arabic scholar and writer, Professor Miguel Asin Palacios, has attempted to prove in "Islam and the Divine Comedy" the influence of the esoteric doctrines of Islam on Dante's "Divine Comedy." He has also shown the influence of Averroes on St. Thomas Aquinas and of Ibn 'Arabi on Ramon Lull.

The converse is equally true: Hassan Basri (D. 728), who is claimed as the first after Hazrat All in the "Isnads and Silsils" or "chains of spiritual affiliation", attributed to David and Jesus the austere practices upon which he modelled his life.  As a matter of fact the word Sufi is often attributed to the precedent he set by wearing a robe of wool (Sufi in Arabic), following thereby the example of Jesus, for which He was criticized by Ibn Sirin, a 
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contemporary scholar who "preferred to follow the example of our Prophet who clothed himself in cotton." The Khirka or robe marked already at that time the cleavage between the non-conservative Sufis and the dogmatics of the faith.  Abu Hashim Othman Ibn Sharik of Kufa, who is credited with having set up the first true Sufi Khankah or monastery, is said to have followed, in so doing, the example of a Christian Amir who founded the first monastic edifice in Ramleh in Palestine.  Abu Hashim was attacked for this by the Immamites on the strength of the Hadith "Ya rabanih fil Islam" (no monkery in Islam).  This was to be followed by the Khankah Si Ribat, built by the disciples of Ibn Kharram at Jerusalem in 855.

Sufis may be traced down to Ibrahim Ben Adham, who learned the true Marifat or Gnosis from Father Simeon and a group of Christian Anchorites who gave him asylum and covered his hiding when his life was in danger in the Syrian desert.  It was through him that Buddhist influences are said to have penetrated into the Moslem world.  Following the example of Prince Siddhartha, the Buddha, Ibn Adham, who was Prince of Khorassan, left his palace to don the pauper's robe and take up the beggar's bowl (kashkoul) after having heard a voice beckoning with the words "it was not for this that thou wast created." Roaming as a mendicant he learned, then taught, a system of self-discipline (zuhd) which was then in its formative stage and was further developed by his pupil Shaqiq who advocated "tawaqhul", abandon in God.  He gave his pupils the first precepts in methods of contemplation (muraqabah) known to the Sufis and practiced the presence of God through "friendship with God" (kholla).
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The phenomenon of osmosis between Islamic and Hindu thought can also be traced back by following cross-currents.  The port of Basra on the Red Sea conducted during the seventh century the flow of Indian culture into the Islamic world.  A study of astronomical and astrological tables, together with mathematical methods (the sinews instead of the chord in trigonometry) and medicine used at the time proves this.  But a crosscurrent flowing now from the schools of Basra, Baghdad and Khorassan soon turned the tide in the opposite direction when the gnostic sciences developed beyond those of India.  The challenge of its single divinity set before the minds of many Indian thinkers a new problem of integration which had far-reaching effects.  It galvanized the then decadent Indian culture into renewed soul-searching, forcing it to outreach itself, and it catalyzed a new form of syncretism, or a spiritual synthesis, surpassing in its universal character even that of the school of Alexandria.

From the earlier massive conversions that were effected by the power of the word rather than the sword in India one may judge of the spiritual ascendancy of Malik ben Dinar among the Moplars or Hallaj among the Dudwalars the Pinjaras of Gujrat, or Yusuf al din Sindhi among the Monans, of Kutch, of Abdallah Harazi among the Boharas of Gujrat, of Nasir E Khosrau amongst the tribes of Wakhan and the Afridis, and Nour Stagar and Sadral din amongst the highness Aga Khan is the leader today. 
 
The Moghul invasion of Northern India fostered the exodus into India of many Sufi fraternities and orders that played the leading role in conversions: Moin-ud-din Chishti (634 A.H.) who was the founder of the Chistia Order in Ajmer from which Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan descends in spiritual affiliation, played an important role in setting the ideal 
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of universal religion, followed by the Moghul emperor Akbar, who convened the first inter-religious congress in the world at his court. Qutb Khaki was also a center of spiritual radiation that drew thousands in Delhi.
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It was during this dynamic period between the latter half of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries in India that the Sanskrit sacred texts were translated into Persian and the Arab texts into the Indian dialects.  It was at this time that Bircumi translated the Yoga Butra of Patanjali from Sanskrit into Arabic and left numerous studies on Indian philosophy of a comparative nature that were widely spread in the Arab world., and Prince Darashikh was encouraging mutual comprehension through the exchange of culture.  The profounder minds of the time were seeking a reconciliation between the metaphysical doctrines that were thus confronted.  

This meant a complete and utter re-evaluation of all the problems and concurrently the establishing of a table of correspondence between the terminologies not only of Vedanta and Sufism, but also of Jainism, Mahayana, Samkhya, Hinayana, Tantra, and the school of Shankara on the one hand, and on the other hand, the whole complex we have examined so far.

Kabir (1518) found a happy compromise in his poems.  A Muslim, though the disciple of a Hindu guru, Ramananda, he taught his disciples the Islamic ideal of the unity of God, together with the Vedanta metaphysics.  Similarly, the movement that gave rise to the Sikhs under Guru Nanak (1539) was a further effort towards a reconciliation, and more: a sweeping overbridging.  The Adigranth, or sacred text of the Sikhs, contains many hymns by Sufis amongst whom is Shankarganj (664 A.H.) of Pakpattan.
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Whatever be the undercurrents of exchange, it is gratifying and exciting for the student of comparative religion to see Vedanta, Id am and Christianity converging upon Advaita and Monism (ahadiat); indeed just as the diversity of the Olympian Gods was later seen as the manifold aspects of the single Zeus, who became the deus of the Christians.  One may compare the currents that lead the pre-Aryan, dualistic, realistic Jain philosophy of mind-versus-substance to the Vedanta of Shankaryacharya, or the ethical dualism of Zoroastrianism or the metaphysical dualism of the peripatetics to the integration of the Ismailis and the monism of Ibn 'Arabi, or the formalism of St. Augustine through St. Thomas Aquinas' idealism to Meister Eckhardt's mysticism.  This gives-evidence of the inevitable march of the human soul faced with the task of assimilating points of view at first so confusingly contradictory and yet fundamentally unifying.  "God is the reconciliation of opposites" says the Sufi Karras.
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What interests particularly those drawn to the esoteric learning is not the theoretical or historical aspects of this problem, but the fact that the philosophical cogitations meeting the problems have lead to a psychological discovery of our fundamental nature, which is none other than the nature of God.  Thus the great progression of Sufism is nothing less than an experimental adventure into the psyche.

But the era of glowing, burning divine love, foreshadowing great strides in mystical achievement, was opened by a lady Sufi Saint of Basra, Rabia (801).  The "Grace of love," as Margaret Smith has called her.  Like St. Theresa she forsook marriage, saying, "the contract should be asked of Him, not of me, for I live in the shadow of His command." Like St. Theresa she prayed to be spared the grace of the experience of heaven, that must needs be a further temptation withholding the yearning soul from complete union.  Like St. Theresa she set up an example of love and self-annihilation to be followed by Sufi mystics for generations to come, rather than the quest for perfection or nostalgia for liberation through self-discipline. 

In a famous quatrain she distinguished human and divine love, or rather perfect and imperfect: "I love Thee with two loves, a love that is passion, and one which decides Thou hast earned as Thy due.  The passionate love is the thought which forgetting all else is of you, aye, forever of you.  Thou earnest the other by rendering asunder all veils and disclosing Thyself to my view.  Not mine be the praise for the one or the other, the praise and the thanks are all Thine for the two."
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The glossary of technical terms and the foundations of the doctrine were established by a penetrating and systematic mind: Abdul Wahid Ibn Zaid (D. 793), who codified, as it were, mystical experience.  He was the first to perceive the role played by isolation in mysticism and he baptized the term 'ifrad' -- thus preparing the way for the subtle psychological analyses of mystical experience made by al Hallaj.  At the same time he was able to follow the work 'ittisaf' (deification) to its ultimate conclusions, thus foreshadowing the philosophy of the intrinsic unity of all existence which al Hallaj elucidated with such skill, opposing it to Hullul, the ideal of incarnation, which is forbidden in Islam, as it is assumed that it implies the duality of spirit and matter and the existence of divinities other than God.  It was he also who distinguished 'ishraq', or the desire of God, from 'muhabba', which marks the consumation.

But it was al Muhasibi (856) who was the great forerunner of the Sufi doctrine.  This role he fulfilled by introspective analysis (as his name indicates).  Scrupulous and methodical, his work assumes the form of a philosophical confession in which the technical vocabulary of his predecessors is arranged and systematized.  His style reveals at times a striking conclusion; for instance: "endurance is to offer oneself as a target for the arrows of pain."
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While maintaining the forms consecrated by dogma, he yet passes from formalism to the corresponding experience, as for instance in his description of the Muslim after-life, from the last judgment to the beatific vision in Kitab al Tawahhum, where he makes use of the dogma to describe the mystical states which he experiences.  In his exegesis of the "stations" (maqmat) and "states" (awhal) he was  precursor of Dhul Nun.  According to Muhasibi, reason need not set itself up as judge when man Is passively open to divine intuition; it is therefore not necessary to judge in order to decide -- an attitude strangely foreshadowing the thesis of Krishnamurti in our time.

With Bastami, Sufism enters into the phase of the great mystical introspection.  He tested himself to the very brink of death in an intense soul-searching and introspective experimentation.  This Anchorite, who lived in the caves of Northern Iran, was an uncompromising stickler for unbiased truth, discarding all theorization, and stripping his soul naked of all thoughts and emotions in order to reach the depth.  

For years his soul struggled to free itself from the non-self by the death-ray of negation and annihilation, suffering nothing unreal around him or in himself.
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Rather than believe in the unity of all being, he preferred realizing it; and this he found could only be achieved by reducing himself to unity.  The this end he endured the most terrible privations.  He was one of the first to graft his meditation upon the night journey of the Prophet to Jerusalem and his ascension to the foot of the throne of God.  To wit, the itinerary to the seat of God depicted in Avicenna's Hayibn Yaqzan, or in the "flutter of Gabriel's wings' of Suhrawardi, and the "conference of the birds" (mantiq al tair) of Farid-ud-din Attar.

It will be remembered here that al Hallaj had nailed the imperfection of Mohammed's experience for having failed to penetrate within the divine sanctuary, remaining within a distance of "two darts of an arrow".  Could Bastami have secretly striven to emulate or even supersede this experience and attempted to pass the threshold of the mystery?  No doubt he thought it was the mission of the mystics and of the Sufis in particular to tread the path already broken by the Prophet and lead his first attempt to culmination.  

Did he succeed?  This is difficult to ascertain, for how can one overlook the contradiction between those exclamations -- "so near did he bring me that I became nearer unto him than the spirit to the body" -- and his disabused vituperations against the hoax of creation -- "Ah, God misleads thee in the market-place of this world and in the next you will also find yourself in the market-place and discover that you we forever the slave of the market"?  Or was his rebellion against dupery not a reaction against the compensations promised by the faithful in the paradise of after-life, which he denounces as a vast hoax keeping one yet longer away from the ultimate reunion in the essence which is the aspiration of every soul.
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Bastami desired ardently to be transformed into the divine "I", for he thought that man's aim was to incorporate God in His perfection: "He ravished me and placed me before him and he said: 0 Abu Yazid, my creatures wish to see you, and I told Him: beautify me with Thy unity, adorn me with Thy wonders and enrapture me with.  Thy unifying nature, so that when your creatures see me, they shall say: we have seen You.  May You be that and may I not be there."

It was Bastami who first used the metaphor of the mirror; seen from a certain standpoint, man is the mirror reflecting God's attributes; but as man is, in his essence, God, God is the Mirror.  This play on words, jumping from the particular to the general, is exemplified as follows: "I am Thy mirror, but I become myself the mirror." Here lies the hoax of creation.  This austere hermity, who calls himself "the smith of His ego", saw in the destruction of idols in Birumi's translation of the Patanjali Yoga Sutras a parallel to his own indomitable quest for the absolute.  Is not this the equivalent of the negative half of the great Muslim shahada "La illaha illa 'llah hu" (nothing exists, God alone is).  

The destruction of idols is pursued by repeated negations and annihilations, by the negation of thought and emotion and even of those concepts of God's attributes that are idealized, even idolized in meditation. These utterances show to what extent the logic of the mystic outreaches even the laws of ordinary grammar.  
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The mystic union "tawhid" follows only when the process of negation is completed and the ego is completely absent, when the human being has reduced himself to unity.  Then only can the real "I" predicate its being, as in an exclamation that has since run down the generations of Sufis as an electrifying impulse ejaculated at a moment when his very notion of I or me was transfigured into the eternal I: ("Glory be to me, how great is my power").  "But let there not be only me", he continued in his ecstasy; how pregnant an implication of God's generous desire to share His being or consciousness by repeating it ad infinitum by the magnanimous outpouring (fayd al aqdas al rahman) as al Jili outlined it!

It was Junaid's circumspect but penetrating analysis in "dawa al arwah" that revealed the doctrinal foundation of Hallaj's experiment with the self, without any pretense of having attained union himself.  A contemporary of Hallaj (he died in 922), he took the two terms "fana" and "baqa" -annihilation and survival -- which Kharras had already brought to light as typifying the two aspects of the Sufi meditations, and drew up a relation between the second one, that is survival, and the idea of eternity, or even pre-eternity.  This he did by elaboration in a meditation on what is now commonly known as the "pre-eternal covenant" alluded to in the Qu'ran.  According to Junaid, God spoke to men at a time when they did not exist in the measure in which they were in Him.  It was a type of existence different from that generally attributed to creatures, such as God only knows.  God knows of their existence.  He sees them in the beginning when they are non-existent and unconscious of their future life.  This God spoke to them in their unformed existence.
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Seen in this light, meditation on the shahada is a process whereby the contingent is sifted from the eternal, and the soul thus purified returns to its original condition (bidayah) beyond time and as a pure thought, a mere possibility in God's consciousness.  This Bastami has already foreseen.  "I concerned myself to remember God", he said, "To know Him, to love Him, to seek Him.  When I had come to the end I saw that He had remembered me before I had remembered Him, that His knowledge of me had preceded my knowledge of Him, His love towards me had existed before my love of Him, and He had sought me before I had sought Him."

Junaid's analysis proceeds further into the meditations on the divine attributes, showing how the attributes of the lover are changed into those of the beloved in an overbearing identification "though from my gaze profound deep awe hath hid Thy face, in wonder and ecstatic grace I feel Thee touch my inmost ground."

The name of Ibn Mansur al Hallaj awakens a deep resonance in the heart of every Sufi, for his was the living example of the essential truth underlying Sufi doctrine. This "Qu'ranic Christ" as Professor Massignon has called him, was condemned for heresy, excommunicated, tortured and crucified for having publicly given voice to an expression which shocked the orthodox Moslems of his time.  And yet that assertion which expressed the final culmination of his inner experience and the fruit of his mystical experience was simply the conclusion at which the very logic of the Islamic doctrine must inevitably arrive; It was the coronation of that faith in a single God through the traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
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What then is that prodigious saying whose mere pronouncement set in motion the tremendous trial in Baghdad on a raised platform, somewhat resembling that of Joan of Are?  The trial lasted nine years.  What was the human utterance that, owing to the importance of the doctrinal positions it opposed and the vehemence of the passions involved, almost split Islam and in fact dealt the Khalifat a blow from which it never recovered?  It was nothing other than the Muslim Advaita -- or rather, the very essence of Sufism, which begins where the other ends, just as the Advaita transcends and outreaches the Vedanta without being foreign to it: the one is the necessary and logical conclusion of the other.  The dangerous and fatal ejaculation of al Hallaj -- "Anall Haq" (I am the truth) which goes still further than the 'Ina az ma shani" of Bastami; yet essentially they are the natural and inevitable conclusion of the Islamic shahada -- i.e., the affirmation of the divine unity.

Only One.  

That if God alone exists, all things, and man in particular, must necessarily exist in God: they are therefore in their essence God, or truth -- the Arabic name for truth being merely a privileged name for God.  If Hallaj had said ""Allah al Haq -- God (in His transcendental aspect) is the truth, or "huwa al haq" (He is the truth) it would have been a common statement.  However al Hallaj declared that God alone exists: therefore He is the one subject and thus He alone can witness His existence.
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Once the mystic has understood this, God in His immanent aspect cannot be referred to in the third person.  And it is precisely the immanence of God that is referred to in the shahada.  But the layman presumes to declare that God is unity, whereas for Hallaj, all the mystic seeks is that part of him which is God should declare its unity with God.  The illusion of the personal self interposes itself as an obstacle to God's affirmation of His unity, even in unification.  Al Hallaj did not want any vestige of this act of identification to remain.

'O Lord, remove by Thy Self, my 'It is I' which torments me," he cries, longing for mystical union and exasperated by the persistence of the feeling 'it is I.
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According to Muslim tradition, it was the refusal of Satan to recognize the divine in man that caused his downfall -- a truth which al Hallaj did not fail to emphasize at the trial. In a dream Junaid had seen Satan justify himself by pointing out that in so doing he had merely obeyed and respected the shahada in recognizing no other God but God.  But Hallaj reproached Satan with having taken refuge in the unity of God without allowing himself to be carried away by the mystery of his unity.  And it is within this context that al Hallaj attacks the all-excluding solitude of a mystic such as Bastami, in whose attitude there would be some danger of being satisfied with inner solitude and of isolation in an ivory tower from which, by dint of excluding all, one might finally exclude God Himself.

That is why Hallaj replaces the terms "tajrid" and "tafrid" used by Bastami, with the terms "ifrad" and Ilinfidad" -- to outstrip the oneness of isolation by allowing God to proclaim His oneness through you.  These are the two phases through which St. John passed: "Because thou hast lost all, all shalt be given back to thee transfigured and all shall be thine-" The first step towards the "tawhid" (mystical union) is the suppression of "tafrid" that is, the solitude of isolation.  The "tajrid" has been compared by Massignon to the sarvikalpa samadhi of the Vedanta -- that is, absorption in a divine attribute, contemplation with seed -- and the "tafrid" to nirvekalpa samadhi, which is the abolition of all forms and detachment of the self from every act.  It is with the renunciation of action that the renunciation of isolation begins.  This is the "fana al fana" or "paranirvana".

"Mystical union," says al Hallaj, "consists in this: that you reduce yourself to your unity in proclaiming the unity of God -- and thus God makes you the witness of yourself." This is truly an aspiration of the soul to its source (the source of its being), towards its primordial act of existence.
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Those who judged al Hallaj accused him of 'hulul" -- i.e., of having affirmed the infusion of the spirit into a human being (i.e., what Islam repudiated in the Christian conception of Christ's incarnation); even though Hallaj specified that this infusion (or insufflation, to refer to the tradition according to which God breathed life into Adam through his nostril) is only complete when, after the transformation of his attributes, he becomes transubstantiated and a definite personality.  This saint, who with all his strength called for death in order to live, is indeed a strange figure.

"Therefore kill me, my faithful comrades," he says, "for me, survival is death and to die means life.  I feel that the abolition of myself is the noblest gift I could make and my survival as I am, the greatest wrong." Do not these words remind us of St. Theresa's saying: "I die for the want of dying"?

If we follow the development of Hallaj's thought we see him rushing towards a philosophical suicide by a sort of ontological necessity similar to that of Socrates and Pythagoras.  He literally forces his judges to condemn him.  There is an anecdote which illustrates his haste for the final consummation.  Hearing the New Year trumpets he remarked: "And when will our New Year's Day come?  When my body is annihilated, I shall be close to God." Thirteen years later, while he was on the pillory for three days, a disciple asked him ironically: "Hast thou received thy New Year's gifts?" Hallaj replied, "Yes, and I am abashed, for I had not wished to hasten towards my joy"-- referring to a verse of the Qu'ran (XLII, 17) "They cry out, let her come, those who do not believe in man, but those who believe await her coming with a lover's trepidation, for they know that she is the truth."
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But it was his words at the execution, when his hands and feet were cut off and he was exposed on the cross for three days, that move us the most deeply by their nobility, which echoes the plea of Jesus Christ, his example: "Oh Lord, I entreat Thee give me to be thankful for Thy Grace which You have bestowed on me -- the glories of Thy shining countenance.  You have made it lawful for me to behold the mysteries of Thy inner consciousness and made it unlawful for others.  As for these others, Thy servants, zealous of religion, desirous of Thy favor, who have gathered to kill me, forgive and have mercy on them for if Thou hadst revealed what Thou hast hid I should not suffer this.  All praise belongs to Thee in whatsoever Thou dost decree."
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Although Avicenna (1037) never admitted any initiation into a Sufi Order, his contribution to the evolution of Sufi thought has left an important imprint, for his academic knowledge was crowned by inspired intuitional visionary allegories in which the flame of personal awareness breaks through the raft of his metaphysical construction.  Such is the allegory called by Ibn Yaqzan in which he recounts his meeting with the angel who describes to him the layout of the regions beyond.

Avicenna's cosmogony is not the dead picture of our modern mechanical "imago mundi" but a living and moving scene in which the great cosmic drama is played, and which is inhabited by beings in the form of pure intelligences (aql) working their way to materialization.  It is a step beyond, after the Aristotelian cosmogony which it inherits in part.  But the universe of Avicenna is moved and inhabited and illumined by souls, angels of light (maleika) incorporating the primary intelligence, and therefore having proceeded from the one (according to the neo-Platonic conception).

It is the nostalgia of these 'souls, souls of the planets and stars to manifest the unmanifested and at the same time to reunite at their source, which explains their restless energy that manifests itself as movement.  Thought is the genesis of being.  From the first intelligence (the "one" of Plotinus), proceeds an archangel generating its own angel, materializing its own orb and defining its own orbit or sphere, until the advent of the last archangel, Gabriel, who generates a multitude of angels, the souls of men.  He is the holy spirit who breathes life.  But the shadow, Lucifer, is generated from the very first stage in the procession of Hypostases, whereby, according to the Pythagorean principle, "when from the cause emanates the one, then is emanated likewise the non-one." -- In other words, the shadow is dissociated from its light at the inception of manifestation. Therefore the human soul is spurred to movement  
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and strife by its nostalgia to meet its archangel and return from whence it is exiled; and it is the hierarchy of light beings who turn the souls in the direction of the dawning light and draw the souls toward the source of light, the Orient, from their exile in the Occident (hence the term "Oriental philosophy", the "aurora consurgens" of Jacob Boehme, and hence the nostalgia for freedom from the frustration of exile that is felt by most souls.  The culmination of life is reached when one meets one's angel: this is the reuniting of the self (nafs) with the higher self (aql) after their fight in the shadow of illusion like the battle of Jacob with the angel.
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Shihab-ud-din Yahya-as Suhrawardi's (D. 1191) analysis of the problem of intuitive knowledge and his cosmogony surpasses everything that was reached before him.  This young initiate and martyr, who was referred to earlier as the successor of the Zoroastrian, Greek and Gnostic traditions, had Bastami's thirst for self-made discovery together with an erudition in metaphysics surpassing that of Avicenna.  His knowledge and initiation into the Zoroastrian mysteries and in particular its angelology, enabled him to overhaul Avicenna's system and push it much further.  This he does in a remarkable book called "Hiqmat al Ishraq" (the Wisdom of Light) written, as he describes, during a memorable day after having received a vision of Zoroaster and Hermes and having been inspired by the holy spirit a day when all the seven planets were in conjunction in the sign of the balance (Libra).  Each hypostase of light emerging from the source, the "flamboyant majesty" or Orient of light (the Xvarnah of the Zoroastrians) proceeds further into materialization, multiplying the source indefinitely and communicating its properties to the next hypostase.

Proceeding from Ahura Mazda, light therefore manifests through the seven archangels or dominating lights, through the archetypes of the species (such as the eternal ideas of Plato) of which the first is Gabriel, the holy ghost or Paraclete, to the governing lights of souls through which the archangels govern the universe.  One may distinguish amongst the latter the motor energies or souls of the orbs and planets, the soul conducting  each type of earthly existence or similar forms of existence, on other planets, and finally the soul of each individual human being.
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Behind the scene of manifestation is a great drama, and the great battle is fought between the forces of light and darkness wherein the archangel Michael -- the angelus Victor -- plays the leading role.  Man also is involved in this battle and can be awarded a decoration for his gallantry in the form of a robe of light, the royal xvarnah of the Zoroastrians that is the aura.  The battle for light is the exodus from exile in the Occident typified in the tradition by the flight from Egypt.  It is the confinement in space that is exile.  So space must be overcome by reaching the "place of nowhere" (nakuja abad) by reaching beyond the space limited by the categories of the body.

This exile had its purpose, for it was here that light was able to burst out.  Suhrawardi calls this "the great breakdown", referring no doubt to the tradition according to which the Prophet causes the moon to split on the sacred words "ana al shams" (I am the sun).  The breaking of the receptacle of light is symbolical of the passage from the exterior (zahir) the interior (batin) it is the freeing of light, reminiscent of the Ismailian tradition of the bursting of the column of light, or the trembling of the columns of the temple seen by Isaiah in his vision, or again the tearing of the veil in the sanctuary at the time of the crucifixion.

I want to be free.  It is the mission of the prophets and magi to free the light imprisoned in men at their exile and to turn them towards the dawning light at its source.  This mission started with Adam and is continued by those who work for the archangel of the human species, Gabriel, who inspired the prophets and sages -- "the guardians of the divine proofs upon the earth." "Deliver the people 'of light and lead light to the light" he exclaimed in prayer.
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But perhaps it was in the sphere of contemplation that Suhrawardi's life proved the most revealing, for here he shook to their core all our preconceived ideas about knowledge, In the first stage, in meditation, we think we are a consciousness concentrating upon an object, something tangible, objective, unaware that we are being duped by an anthropocentric mirage: for what we think we know is only a reflection of reality; this is speculative knowledge, knowledge of the mirror (speculum.)

Secondly you realize that everything in the universe is to be found within you in yourself, reflected as in a mirror so that you discover that what you are contemplating is the reflection of the universe in yourself and that you are the mirror.  Thirdly you realize that it is not your consciousness that is aware, but that it is only a channel of the divine consciousness and that you are only a witness of this phenomenon.  Finally you understand that there is no room for another presence or subject than the one and only being; and you realize that He is the Only Knower.  This analysis reminds one very much of Bastami.

"For thirty years God most high was my mirror, now I am my own mirror and that which I was I am no more, for "I and God" represent polytheism, a denial of His unity.  Since I am no more, God most high is His own mirror.  Behold now I say that God is the mirror of myself, for with my tongue He speaks and I have passed away."
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According to Suhrawardi, there is no knowledge of God as object (marifa).  Contemplation of the Shahada or affirmation of the unity of God brought Suhrawardi to a breathtaking conclusion, around which his whole theory of knowledge gravitates.  The generality amongst the faithful says there is no God but God, not realizing that by so asserting they testify to their own separate existence as the one who makes the statement, as al Hallaj had pointed out.  Some however affirm "there is no He (huwa) but He," referring to God in the third person, as a personal reality; but this again likewise testifies to the existence of the subject.  The mystic however who enters into a personal relationship with God refers to Him in the second person as Thee, hoping for the merging of their "I" with this "Thee", but still preserving the duality they wish to overcome.

The final realization is, however: "There is no I except I," thus bringing knowledge from the objective to the subjective level.  If there is no other I than God, then every realization and affirmation is made by God and the tongue that pronounces it is the tongue of God.  Hence the logic of al Hallaj who cried out "Anall haq," for the only subject who can affirm a predicate is God.  Therefore the light of knowledge is not an object, a ray thrown upon phenomena; it is the subject Himself that illuminates Himself.  Knowledge and consciousness are not something that is added to the essence: they are the innate property of the essence, and it is this self-same light that is the subject that man appropriates as his-intelligence, or identifies as himself.

"To the lights of the light of God correspond lights in the hearts of men" writes Suhrawardi, "and to the secret in the secrets of loving hearts there is a divine secret." Hu allah anna, anna allah hu.



The Sufi Masters
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Sufism carries a perfume that strikes a note particularly in the New Age because the darvish lives intensely the glory of creation, lets himself be carried into its mystery by the transfiguring magic of love, rather than cogitating upon the nature of reality in the blind alley of opinion.  He loses himself thus in the ocean of Divine inebriation.

How else can one find oneself than by losing that which one thought one was?  This means total involvement in the supreme act of transformation - no half measures: "Until love has quickened a soul, it is like an unfledged bird," says Rumi, "enough of phrases and conceit and metaphores" "I want burning, burning."
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How can one face light without being blinded, how can one arrest the secret of secrets without being dumbfounded and perplexed, how can one undergo transformation without being shattered?

"When truth has overwhelmed a human heart, it empties it of all that is not truth.  When God loves a being, He kills everything that is not Him"
al Hallaj. 

"My attributes were annihilated in His, nor did He attribute to me any of His attributes, but that I attributed it to Him" 
Bastami.

"He annihilated me in recreating me, even as He created me in the beginning when I was no thing." 
Junaid

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For Hallaj pre-eternity is not envisioned in a time relationship, but in terms of the "dignity of ontological priority." -- Razi

"In their extinction creatures subsist, whereas in their essence they never existed on earth." 
Jili

"He pre-existed His creatures in pre-eternity, encompassing them witnessing them in the beginning when they were nothing, apart from their eternal being in which they were from all pre-eternity." 
Junaid
This process recurs continually through life.  

"Those who have placed themselves under Divine Guidance are overwhelmed and obliterated of all their attributes . Did He not obliterate every trace of me by His attribute?" 
Bastami
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Bastami describes the cycle of annihilation and reinstatement as a recurrent test followed by rebirth, rendered in his austere language almost in terms of a transcendental algebra.  He said, 'Oh I.' "Do not beguile me in my ego." Retorted Bastami, thinking it was a test, and apostrophizing Him '0 Thou.' God then replies 'Oh Thou.' Obviously he had not yet died sufficiently in his ego to withstand the challenge of the desired realization.  "He looked upon me for a moment with His eye of power, and annihilated me in His being, and became manifest to me in His essence.  I saw without soul or body like one who is dead . . . then did He revive me with His life . . . then He said to me 'Oh Thou', and I said 'Oh P. Whereupon God said 'Thou art thee alone'," God's vision of the world in the view point of His unity.
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"Thou didst contrive this 'I' and 'we' in order to play the game of worship with thyself, that all 'I's and 'Thou's might become one soul and at last be submerged in the Beloved." 
Rumi

But there is a limit to the ecstasy one can take.  Junaid says: ."Having obliterated every trace of me by His attribute, God makes the souls again present to their egos, causing them to find their specific nature whereupon they are removed from their communion with Him and Him with them."

"Sometimes He makes the believer in the divine immanence a witness of His unity, and sometimes He diverts the believer in the divine transcendence from His all-exclusiveness by revealing His multifarious forms." Our very ignorance is the way He protects us from the knowledge that overwhelms, our blindness His shield from the light that burns the eyes, our ego, His prop for the delicate plants of our personalities until we know how to survive death.
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"I am the wine of the holy sacrament, my very being is intoxication: those who drink of my cup and yet keep sober will certainly be illuminated: but those who do not assimilate it, will be beside themselves and exposed to the ridicule of the world." 
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan.
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Those effigies taken for real by those who would be annihilated by the 'reality of realities' are a protection against the 'consternation of intelligences' experienced by the darvish an inebriation.  The very veil that is deemed to enshroud the Divine Countenance is the mist in the eyes of the novice which itself, however, betrays the contours of the Divine Face: therefore in all things, one discerning may read the 'signs' of the nature of the loved one, and indeed there is ecstasy in the contemplation of that diaphanous fabric 'in which a draft of heavenly beauty is mixed'.

Yet "How can you become free without the wine of Him, 0 ye who are content with the sign of Him." -- Rumi.  How much greater is the rapture of the one invited to the Divine betrothal?  For his is the privilege of rending the veil asunder if he dare confront the presence of the King of kings face to face.  "For those who cannot stand the brightness of the light of my intelligence I have created the world of objects as a screen," (Hears Gilani) "And for those who cannot stand the solitude of my unity, I have created the realms of light as a screen."
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Hallaj, however, reached the point of no return:

 "The sun of the One I love has risen in the night, resplendent, and there will be no more sunset . . . I saw my Lord with the eye of the heart, and I said 'Who art Thou' and He said, 'Yourself'."
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Was it the experience of God that Bastami sought rather than loving God?  Truly enough there was in Hallaj a struggle with himself to overcome his ego.  "O take away this 'I am' from between you and me." But he did not challenge the Divine Order with his will. Bastami did: "I sloughed myself of my ego as a snake of his skin and lo I was Him . . . "I reached the threshold of nonbeing and soared within it, passing from denial to denial . . . then I attained the reaches of deprivation the threshold of union, and soared within it by dint of denial in utter destitution until I was bereft of deprivation in my abandonment and was deprived even of my destitution by the sheer denial of denial and the deprivation of deprivation.  
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Then I attained union 
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by the severing of creation from the initiate and the severing of the initiate from creation."

This was obviously 'the way of liberation' away from creation.  Not the way of lending oneself to God's ever renewed recreation of one as an act of love.  Therefore Hallaj lets God annihilate him and earmark him for his creative providence rather than force the portals of the absolute by dint of personal will.

I God says to Bastami, "You are not strong enough to stand the solitude of my unity." And Bastami answers, "That is exactly what I want," Junaid, too, advocated "Annihilation of the existent, and returning to the state in which one was before one was involved in the process of becoming," while Hallaj is eternally conscious of God's presence and operation within him, right down into the flesh.

Is not the purpose of creation 'to make God a reality in one's being'?
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"Thou art there as the tears between my eyelids, the walls within my heart . . . Thy image in my eyes, Thy recollection on my lips.  There is nothing in my heart and entrails through which I do not commune with Thee . . . Thy image in my eyes, Thy recollection on my lips, Thy abode in my heart, but where dost Thou abide? . . . Is it me?  Is it Thee?  That would be two gods; far from me the affirmation of two there is a personal being which is Thine at the bottom of that negativity I call me, always to add to plenitude to the plenum would be hypocrisy.  Where is Thy essence separated from mine?"
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Once one realizes the holiness and purposefulness of God's infiltration into those precarious constructions building up a perfect model, one cannot think of the person as a transient effigy in the play of maya, but as a reality come to stay, on condition that He perpetually transmutes Himself by being ground and kneaded in the cycle of death and rebirth, as the fabric of the universe is transmuted in the process of evolution.

"Godness, having become God"
Eckhardt  

"O Thou Who art absent there, we have found Thee here" 
Jili

God, absent (Ghayb) in His pre-eternal occultation, when He contemplates the attributes, becomes present by conversing with and within the souls of the infinite images of Himself, more present than those present, by the sheer act of thinking about Him.  Being eager to fulfill God's purpose in Him, rather than give vent to His nostalgia for beyond, Hallaj concerns himself with the transformation taking place in man thus recreated after the annihilation (fana) of the individuality that had isolated itself in its own egotism that he may subsist (baqa) eternally in God in post-eternity 
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by his very consciousness of the union of his being with that of God, eternally in God.

He saw in his death, accepted as a gift, even as that of life, the promise of eternal life. Of course, faced with the verdict of death with its unknown implications, there is a moment of soul searching.  "How is it possible that, having taken my essence in the beginning to serve Thee as a symbol, Thou should now with that this Thy essence in me, Thou shouldst now wish that this Thy essence in me, my body, should be torn asunder, hung upon a cross, my ashes scattered to the winds?"

The triumph over the anguish of dissolution . . . as an incense, bearing the promise of my resurrection." Yes, death accepted as a gift, the ultimate victory, the overcoming, because it forestalls eternalisation of the essence.  First "O take away this chalice," familiar words typifying the cruel preliminary to every authentic initiation including the coronation of the King of the world upon the cross "". . . why has Thou abandoned me?" The supreme test arranges events.  We are abandoned precisely when we need God most.
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"Beloved, since Thou has made me smile, turn not away Thine eyes, once Thou hast poured the wine of Thy magic glance into the cup of my heart."
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

The acceptance of the chalice of poison, the price of resurrection, accepting the unacceptable because its dimension suddenly reveals cosmic intention.  "He Who invites me to the divine banquet has offered me to drink from the cup which He Himself drinks, as a Host treats an honored guest." How could he refuse?  This was the moment of overcoming the supreme victory on earth as in heaven.  

"Those who are given liberty to act freely in heaven are nailed on the earth; those who are free to act as they choose on the earth, will be nailed in the heavens." 
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan  

"Thy abandonment of me is a sign of Thy love." 
al Hallaj 

Do you know the state of abandon, after having been unfolded by the Divine Lover?  "Turn me not aside, Beloved, turn me not aside, once Thou hast granted me Thy favor.  Starve me not of a kiss after Thou hast enfolded me: grieve me not."
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One would expect one suffering such ordeal to long for death to come hastily as a welcome relief; but no, he wished to partake deeply in its experience, dragging his body into the very testimony of divine unity.  "He who knows the meaning of death waits for it reverently, for it is the moment of truth."

Here his spiritual odyssey reaches its highest fulfillment; to live in extremus the threshold of realization: that which says me, I, is the uncreated, in Sufi terms, truth instead of reality.  'Anal Haqq' and that is what I mean by God.  
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"Lo I am nigh" (Qu'ran). "It suffices to the supplicant if God alone proclaims unity." That is when one has lost all consciousness of oneself.  

Muslims are enjoined upon to reiterate the promise made in pre-eternity by affirming the unity of God.  La illaha illa 'llah. Yet to pronounce this, while you are still conscious of yourself as the one proclaiming is a contradiction in terms. 

 "The proposition attesting unity circulates within the multiplicity of apparent subjects." 
Hallaj

"God alone can make us pronounce a real testimony by making us conscious of His unity, by His very operation within us of the act whereby He makes us deny our self in our heart, and by affirming Himself by His presence." 
Hallaj

"When the Divine Essence reveals itself through the name truth, the created nature of the cortemplative vanishes.  All that remains is his holy and transcendental essence." 
Jili
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It is then God resurrecting out of our death Who proclaims His unity, the unique subject behind all objects and the unique object behind all subjects.  Through us at the threshold where we merge into His unity.  "Where the units are erased, Thou art that unity." For, in order to testify to His existence, He has to exist through us, to survive perennially the falling curve of time by resurrecting through our resurrecting beyond the threshold of transiency of each manifestation of Himself, through us: His proclamation of His unity in His creatures, His very creative power, and when man is being recreated after eliminating any notion of self-sufficiency or separateness then God consciousness arises.  "When God effaces the name of the servant replacing it with Allah so that if anybody calls 'Ahhal', He will answer 'here am I'." This is the ultimate fulfillment.
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 After realizing oneself to be the eyes through which God sees, one is the divine glance, one's 'I' now looked upon from this vantage point, no more as oneself but as the window through which the Divine Glance scans the moving scene of life.  To share this experience, it is useful at this stage to discriminate between two levels of awareness or types of experience.  Firstly the experience that God has of Himself through us as both the object in which He sees Himself and the subject through whom He sees Himself.  In us He can only see as much of Himself as we are able to manifest of Him through ourselves, which is the measure of what we have realized of Him in us at a given moment.
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As Ibn 'Arabi says, "Such is the knowledge of the image which we discover ourselves to be," in which He creates Himself in a manner that is limited by the very contingencies of existence, so that in manifesting increasingly the bounty of qualities within this image, we confer upon God, the Absolute Essence, a mode of being, in which He is mirrored.  We are thus the 'secret' of His sovereignty that is the implementation of us that expresses itself as our manifestation of Him, therefore He is the 'secret of secrets,' says Ibn 'Arabi.  This is speculative knowledge, says Suhrawardhi: Hallaj grasped the danger of reducing one's experience of God which perforce is limited by our very limitation as creatures.
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"Confronted with the divine essence, the one who speaks becomes dumb, the one who is agitated becomes motionless, the one who sees becomes blinded. It is too noble to be grasped by intelligences, too lofty for thoughts to reach it . . . the one who breaks the seal is with God in His Essence," says Jili. Ayat, the signs of His Presence.  Discovering the footprints in the snow is not the same as seeing the being who wandered there in fleeting time. 	

"Henceforth, there is no more between Thou and me my elucidation, or demonstration, or sign serving as proof.  The proof is His, from Him, towards Him."
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"Speculative knowledge is relative to God's overflowing beyond His essence," says Hallaj, "but how does whatever quits the essence know the essence, 0 ye who are removed from His transcendence by the abyss of time." The final science (the intuitive grasp of the divine intention) which gives us at the very moment of its realization the simple understanding of the real relations between perishable things, their divine allocations, linking us constantly beyond the network of events to the intention of God by a participation to the life of His essence.

"Henceforth, sometimes He looks upon me, and sometimes I look upon Him.  If He wishes, he can swoop down upon us from His high pinnacle, one discovers Fir inside in His 'intention'."
Suhrawardi
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And as response to the nostalgia of God wrapped in the beginning of time in the solitude of His unity, in the dark cloud of unknowing for another Himself through whom His Love may manifest in the form of a Beloved, man makes Him the Adored One.  Ishq allah ma'abud 'lillah.

Whereas man's longing for the seclusion of the eternal principle of his being of whom he discovers himself to be the image or whose image he discovers in himself is his response to God's withdrawal whereby he resorbs the essence out of the essence of the essence of all created things into unity where no attributes, no forms, no multiplicity, no individuation appear anymore.  "God was and there was no thing with Him." (Hadith)
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We are pulled in two opposite directions, our nostalgia to contemplate the image in the world of exile, of shadows, and our yearning to orient ourselves towards the dawning of the light of our consciousness, the light of lights: 'nur al anwar'.  Like the planets we are equilibrated between the centrifugal force due to the weight of the density of our materiality and the centripetal force of our affinity with the light, which illuminates our intelligence.  The balance between these two determines our place our rank in the hierarchy of the beings of light, the celestial pleiades of souls or intelligences, archangel, cherubs, seraphs, angels, effulgent beings.  

Each light being is related to each other light being in that each light being draws its being, and consequently its light from the being who is hierarchically above him, and is thus linked up through a whole chain of intermediaries to the source of all light: 'nur al anwar', the flamboyant Zoroastrian xvarnah, the crown of glory of the Divine King, the one who dispenses the sovereignty of light.  Each being is endowed with his dimension of substantiality which he contemplates together with that of all other beings in that world of effigies which we take for real where as they are mere shadows of the worlds of light. Yet the light that is thrust upon one, giving the knowledge of oneself, emanates from a being whose light surpasses the light we can wield.
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He in turn draws his light from the being hierarchically above him.  Thus our human consciousness derives its light from the archangel of the earth who derives his light through the archangels of suns and galaxies (anwar modabbira) ruling over ever increasing domains to those supreme sovereign lights (anwar qahira al qawahir) the Divine Majesty.

When, like the heliotrope, we turn towards the Orient from which the light of the archangel of the planet dawns upon us, it may come to pass that we discover ourselves in him as a being of light as he is and lose ourselves in farther and farther reaches of pure luminescence.  Then again, casting our gaze upon the horizon of the west letting ever higher grades of light pass through, we shall discover the archangel-archetypes of all created things, the eternal models of all living things, the species as light beings (arbab al anwa), and envision physical objects as shadows of the world of pure images and forms (alam al mithal, the world of myths).  In suspense, just like the images are suspended in a mirror, this is the horizon (barzaq) between the worlds of pure intelligence and matter. such is the image in which God contemplated Himself in eternity before this image became the ever recurrent forms in which He existentiates His love.
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"Lo, the angels of God advance towards the wanderers who knock at the gate of the high vestibules of light, luring them towards the orient of light ... when the divine luminaries have converged upon a human being, they invest him with robes of light, he is given sovereignty and held in esteem." Each adept experiences that which is programmed for him at this stage ('maqqam') of development.

Some may envision God as the perfection of qualities underlying all created things, his footprints in creation.  Some may discover themselves as the image of God in which God sees Himself projected. Some may grasp God as the Witness countenancing Himself in them and all things through His eyes.  "He is-at the same time the One who Knows and the One in Whom He is known." (Ibn 'Arabi).

Some see manifestation as a revelation of knowledge, some as a fulfillment of love. 

 "God wished to contemplate His essence in a global object, which being endowed with existence, resumes the Divine Order, with a view to manifesting His mastery to Himself." 
Ibn 'Arabi
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The darvish Niffari answers:

 "It was in order to know Himself that God created you, it was out of His love for you, that He emerged from His solitude of unknowing."

Hallaj leads us into a transcendental experience of these two phases.  He fashions a form by the creative force of his glance which structures a shape out of the formless attributes of creation in pre-eternity: secondly, he hands himself over in us as our very consciousness as an act of love: he said that through love made into reality he would make everything visible (which implies polarizing original unity into subject and object).  He looked into pre-eternity, and created a picture.  This picture is the mirror of that countenance; when God beholds anything, He creates His picture in it for all eternity."

Now comes the second and decisive step: "Then He conversed with it, conversed it, glorified it, and loved it." In this conversation in pre-eternity he not only established us as an image but endowed us with the greatest of gifts: free will.  Our words 'I will' in the eternal covenant "when we were still in the loins of Adam," sheer virtualities, were our first act of free-will, establishing our identity-for all time.
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The promise in eternity, reiterated over and over again in our life.  Not simply the fulfillment of His desire to know Himself even if latent, establishing man in the dignity of a partner in colloquy of love, making him the beloved, Man in turn responds to God's love by making Him the object of his glorification.  'Ishq allah ma'abud 'lillah'.

The ecstasy of discovering the Divine Attributes in one is great indeed, but what of the one of discovering oneself as the 'thou' to whom God speaks in His love dialogue?  "It is as though I were a 'thou' to whom the word of God was addressed, beyond the thoughts that come to me referring to my attributes."
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What is ecstasy?  It is an incitement, then a glance of God that grows and glows in the secret of hearts . . . here I am, 0 my trust, here I am, 0 my being, 0 my meaning'  I called Thee, no it was Thee who beckoned upon me.  How could I have deemed to ask 'is it Thou', if Thou hadst not already whispered 'it is me'. 0 end and aim of my destiny, 0 my language and my stammering." He was accused of revealing the secrets of lovers. "Had we not forbidden you to welcome guest?" That guest was God.

"He became Noah and went into the ark when at his prayer, the world was flooded.  He became Abraham and appeared in the midst of the fire which bloomed with roses for his sake . . then he became Jesus and ascended to heaven and glorified God.  It was He that was coming and going in every generation thou hast known, until at last He appeared in the form of an Arab  and gained the empire of the world . . . No, no, 'twas even he that cried in human shape 'ana' l haqq'. 'Anal L Haqq'.  The one who mounted the scaffold was not Mansur (al Hallaj) as the foolish imagined."
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Rumi's soul outstripped appurtenance to a particular religion:

 "I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Garr, nor Muslim.  I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea, I am not of nature's mint, nor of the circling heavens.  I am not of earth, nor of water, nor of air, nor of fire.  I am not of the empyrean, nor of the dust, nor of existence, nor of entity.  I am not of India, nor of China, nor of Bulgaria nor of Saqsin.  I am not of this world nor of the next, nor of paradise nor of hell.  I am not of Adam, nor of Eve, nor of Eden and Rizwan.  My place is the placeless, my trace is the traceless; 'tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.  I have put duality away, -- I have seen that the two worlds are one.  One I seek, one I know, one I see, one I call.  He is the first, He is the last, He is the outward, He is the inward; I know none other except 'ya hu' and 'ya man hu'". 
Jelal ud din Rumi

A Message in Our Time
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In that laboratory of spiritual experiments that is India, Sufism came to be accepted in the course of the centuries as a holy feature of the community, even by the Orthodox, as it became integrated into the "shariat" (the observance of the rules of Muslim religious life).  Ghazali had explained the rules away and most gave up the heresy of their early predecessors like Bastami, Hallaj, and Sarmad, becoming so integrated into orthodox life that they have been hailed as "the proof of Islam."

In India, the impact of Sufism made history.  While al Hallaj and Abu Yazid Bastami are said to have visited India, and al Hujwiri is said to have had a following, the breakthrough came with Khwaja Moin-ud-din Chishti.  Coming from northern Iran, he brought the Chishti order to Ajmeer. and it soon had ramifications in Delhi with Khwaja Qutub-ud-din Bhakhtiar Kaki, his successor.  It is said that a great section of Delhi took "bayat" (initiation) into the Sufi Order.  Many a Moghul king sought guidance at the feet of a Sufi Pir-o-Murshid, who would be living in the most austere simplicity even while handling large sums of money used for the community kitchen.
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The Sufis undogmatic recognition of genuine spirituality, wherever it was lived, fostered a climate of more than religious tolerance: a real spiritual communion between Hindus and Muslims many a scholarly mind toyed with the idea of bridging these two currents- Prince Darah Shiku, the heir to the throne to the empire, wrote a treatise on the confluence of the oceans, "Mamuah al Bahrein", and Emperor Akbar founded what was probably the first council of religions in the history of the world at Fatehpur Sikri.

This communion was systematically upset when politics fell into bigoted hands, and these bold attempts at bridging religious differences were overturned.  The reactions that brought Aurangzeb (who killed his brother Darah Shiku) to the throne swept Sufism from the capitol, and the Sufis sought the distant but relative security of Aurangabad.  A few pirs distinguished themselves through their writings: Gesuderaz.  Shah Imullah Jehan Abadi, etc.  Prayers, recitations, auditions (sama) have been held and are still held at the tombs of Sufi saints throughout India and Pakistan.

Hazrat Khwaja Abu Hashim Madani (see silsila p. 677), a very fine scholar from the Hedjaz (Arabia), on a visit to the Nizam of Hyderabad, had received his initiation and succession from a great darvish of Hyderabad, Shah Hasan Qibla Kalimi Dahlevi (the spiritual successor of Maulana Nasir-ud-din Dale Miyan Sahib).  The scholar Madani was at a loss to find an answer to his metaphysical questions that would satisfy his brilliant mind from the darvish in patched robes, lost in divine contemplation.  At last, one night, while he was doing his practices, the darvish came in and said: "I am the answer to your question." Indeed what more eloquent an answer than a being transfigured by ecstasy?
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Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan was enjoined by his murshid, Hazrat Abu Hashim Madani (who intimated that he had received the order, hukm, from Khwaja Moin-ud-din Chishti, the founder of the Order in India), to bring the Message of Sufism to the West.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan was criticized by those who considered Sufism to be exclusively Islamic.  Yet al Hallaj was crucified, Shihabudin Suhrawardi executed, Abu Yazid Bastami let off on grounds of presumed insanity, and Ibn 'Arabi was always on the move.  On the other hand some of the Sufi orders today include quite large percentages of Hindus and Sikhs, viz Abdul Latif in Sind.
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When Hazrat Inayat was criticized by fellow disciples for his interest in all religions, the murshid took his defense, saying that he had been earmarked for a great world mission.

Quite a considerable amount of research has proven the influence of various spiritual currents of religious thought upon Sufis: Hinduism on Bastami, Christianity on Hallaj Hermetism on al Misri, Zoroastrianism on Suhrawardi, Buddhism on Balki. (see chapter: Chain of the Sufis).  Many seem to have ignored Prophet Muhammad's religious tolerance and all encompassing religious grasp or the instructions in the Qu'ran respecting all prophets.

Undoubtedly Islam fostered an unquestionably overwhelming  influence on the growth of Sufism, so that some take the view that it is just this breadth of view, condemned by the orthodoxy, that is the real Islam.  The Prophet said, "The real Islam is exiled, expatriated," and so have Sufis always been.  It is not surprising, therefore, that out of this all-encompassing and converging trend, a message of unity should have emerged in our time.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, a successor to the silsilah (lineage) of Sufi pirs in the Chishti Order, was enjoined by his murshid to cross to the United States and Europe and bring the Sufi message to the west.  His message of spiritual unity brought a breath of fresh air in a world emerging out. of sectarianism and dogmatism, clamoring for a new world ideal that would link together the aspirations of all religions.  He founded a ceremony called the Universal Worship in which the texts of the world's religions are read and revered on the same altar, naming all the prophets of all time, known and unknown.
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One of Inayat Khan's last acts in the midst of his western disciples before he passed away was to lay a foundation stone in the center of a circle he had drawn on the green slopes of Mont Valerian, near Paris, for what he called "The Universel." This was to be the meeting place of the New Age: a temple to house the Universal Worship, where all people would find their traditions honored and where the One Omnipresent God might be worshipped in harmony with the basic beliefs of all the world's religious and spiritual understanding.

Unlike temples, mosques, and churches of the past which were based on animal, vegetable or geometric motifs and patterns, this center would planned to be based on the form of the human in a cosmic cardinal dimension: four seated figures gazing out across the four directions in a blend between sculpture and architecture.
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Toward the One, the perfection of Love, Harmony, and Beauty, the Only Being, united with all the illuminated souls who form the Embodiment of the Master, the Spirit of Guidance 

. . . we recognize Thee as Rama, as Krishna, as Shiva, as Buddha, as Abraham, as Solomon, as Zoroaster, as Moses, as Jesus, as Mohammed, and in many other names and forms known and unknown to the world . . . May the Message of God reach far and wide, illuminating and making the whole of humanity as one single family in the love of God.

"Beloved ones of God, you may belong to any race, caste, creed or nation, you are all impartially beloved by God.  You may be a believer or an unbeliever in the Supreme Being, God cares not.  Mercy and grace flow through all of God's power without distinction of friend or foe." 

(Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, "The Sufi Message", vol. 5 - A Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty)

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In Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan we find the synthesis actually the culmination of the mystic teaching of the East as applied to modern conditions of living: the light of higher awareness shining against the background of materialism.  He was a master of divine wisdom in everyday life.  Here was one who was his teaching.

His whole objective was to make God a reality in one's most mundane activities, which gave him an acute sense of the realness of concrete human problems.  Facing these in the light of higher understanding confers upon one a quality of truthfulness which is the ultimate power mustered by man in the name of his divine investiture.

It is scarcely possible to describe the impact his presence had on those who came into contact with him: a majesty such as one had learned to associate with the stories of the prophets combined with a deeply moving gentleness that spoke of one having deep concern for the problems of all beings.  A heart expanded by the power of divine love to become a cosmic accommodation such as to encompass all beings whether sympathetically disposed or antagonistic.
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He seemed to see behind conditions, to carry an atmosphere of other planes and worlds of existence and charge people with a new life, a life of the spirit, by the tremendous magnetism he radiates which was so truly selfless of those who met him concur significantly:

"When he entered the lecture hall, here was someone I had always known probably in the plane of the soul."

"I had long since given up believing that such a being could walk the earth.  Here he was."

"The dark stranger of the East has come into my heart as a permanent guest to stay forever."

"When he looked at me I was conscious that he was looking into my soul.  I had heard about the soul before but never before actually experienced my soul."
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Such are the attributes of being that most sensitive people seek to find in a teacher. Many believe that such as these may be acquired in the solitude of austere seclusion under highly exacting training.  But that these may be developed and foreborn in the midst of everyday life rouses hopes of great cheer in the minds and hearts of those whose sense of responsibility keeps them in the world.  This was the message that Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan came to bear: there is a way of living the inner life in the midst of the-world.  It is the rarest of knowledges, the science of the New Age.

For Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan man is the most valuable masterpiece achieved in creation at least on the planet.  "The human personality is the fruit, the end product of the tree of life." Therefore, far from following his inclination for solitude ("In solitude I hear the voice of silence . . .") he seizes the great opportunity that life offers to cultivate that beautiful rose garden: the human being.
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For humanity to be oriented toward the azimuth which makes for ever vaster awareness there must be some connection between the random consciousness of men pursuing personal ends and an overall guidance enacted by beings incarnated or not forming the government of the universe.  It is this connection that Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan calls the Message.

The Hebrew prophets, Manu and many others, strived to make men hearken to this guidance and they implemented it by setting up laws and giving men directions sometimes transforming the life of a community like the influence the Prophet Mohammed had on the Arab tribes sometimes lifting the consciousness of untold numbers of men by the power of divine love as Christ did.  There can be no doubt in the minds of discerning beings in our time that what the Divine Guidance is trying to bring home to us is breadth of consciousness manifesting itself at the physical level as enhanced awareness of the breathtaking dimensions of outer space at a space-age scale but also of the all-encompassing breadth of divine guidance administered step by step in the course of the ages in all its different aspects.
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"Sufism is not a religion, for it is beyond the limitations of faiths and beliefs which make the diversity of religions in the world.  Sufism, in short, is a change of outlook on life.  It is like viewing from an airplane a town, the streets of which one has known and walked through, and yet one has never before seen the whole town at a glance."

This means that if we follow our programming our consciousness must extend beyond parochial attachment to one particular religion or being and gain awareness of the whole hierarchy of guiding beings masters, saints and prophets.  What the Message has particularly to reveal to us in order to enable us to leap forward to the next stage in our evolution is. as Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan says, to become aware of the divine perfection in our being instead of closing ourselves up in the consciousness of our separateness or limitation.  The perennial message of all prophets is "May the Message of God reach far and wide." "God is human perfection, man divine limitation."

Coming Back Into Life
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When consciousness emerges in man from its physical and mental scaffolding as a still moving point, a spearhead bursting the limits of one's personal involvement into the immediate environment, and scans the wide horizons-of an awareness become cosmic to grasp a purpose which seems to be the incorporation of perfect values into a sublime masterpiece: man realizes himself to be the end product the intended object of the whole cosmic drama enacted on planet earth so far.  It seems that some men, having freed themselves from the usual circumstances in which most people find themselves caught up are possessed of just those values that make for the perfection here sought.  Most ostensible among these is the particular quality of emotion they exhibit: and foremost amongst these is the ecstasy that arises in a person when he has overcome himself because he has ceased to covet anything for himself neither position nor regard.  This happens to a person who has renounced not just the world but himself.
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He is unaffected by the emotions of personal enjoyment or even repulsion, so that, for example, insulting him would not stir any emotion of resentment.  Nor would any esteem rob him of his humility.  The very freeing from emotions affecting the ego manifests itself in him and through him as the most subtle and intense emotion: ecstasy which introduces the quality of peace into joy.

God experiences cosmic emotion at the discovery of his own perfection through him so the best one can say is: there is participation in divine ecstasy. Overcoming the self gives a wonderful sense of freedom to a person which has a freeing effect upon those who approach him, a healing way for the wounds of those who have lost or failed to attain a coveted object or purpose they so hoped to possess or attain. 
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One can watch the purifying effect that selflessness has upon a person as it uproots the components that arise out of the emotion of covetousness which had left unbeautiful blemishes in the personality, as it eradicates those emotions that arose out of the bitterness of frustration or resentment against injustice, leaving the person with a diaphanous quality that makes the eyes luminous and innocent.
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A further paramount quality is the incredible power manifesting as majesty blended with the noblest of gentleness; the absence of personal motivation, crowned by the awareness of divine perfection; a sense of sovereignty, or rather suzerainty to the divine sovereignty that imposes respect and carries the harmony of the divine order, in its wake.  The power invested in the one who has died to himself arrests people by its forthrightness Opens doors where situations are blocked and surprisingly transforms circumstances and transfigures people.
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While personal power degrades those who become subservient to it the divine power gives self-pride and self-confidence.  The ultimate quality exhibited by these men is a clarity of insight that never fails to clarify the issue behind the sometimes confusing cluster of events and detect the intention behind the issue unraveling the intertwined meshes of karmic involvement by the scrutiny of truth.

Their perception is a short cut and has a quality of light which makes sense of the word illumination.  These qualities manifesting in a human being are the most precious treasures to be found on the planet.  It appears that where men struggle for survival and dominance these qualities rarely transpire.  How can we manifest the divine qualities in their wide compass if we pursue our own purported purpose?
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Contemplatives have adopted radical methods of meeting the problem: unconditional renunciation of life in the world giving up possessions relinquishing, family ties and the love relationship of man and woman living precariously by subjecting themselves to charity or disconcern or even by shunning the established people.  Yet a new and challenging perspective seems to be opening up in the New Age: Dare you to be in the world and not of the world?  Dare you have possessions without being possessed?  Have a position as a duty rather than a right serving a higher purpose than your own?  Give love rather than seeking to receive it and sublimate it into divine love extending to all?  Free people while involving yourself.  This is the crux of the issue: How can one introduce uncompromisingly the most sublime or spiritual values into everyday life?
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Let us detect the cosmic laws governing the accruing of those rare qualities to the holy man and check whether these qualities could be achieved in everyday life.

The secret seems to lie in the objective sought.  It is the emotions aroused by the worldly things that stand in the way of divine rapture with its consequent effect upon freedom, quietude, power and insight.  Can one live in the world without coveting better housing, better feeding, better neighborhood, better work, or amenities, music, art?  Are these not the material circumstances that arouse concupiscence?

Here lies the challenge: one inadvertently slips into covering amenities, position, culture envisaged from the vantage point of an ego center that has isolated its sense of itself from the awareness for the totality.  Instead of keeping the well-being of the whole in view, instead of trying to understand the planner's superior wisdom, one has isolated one's will from the cosmic harmony.  One has appropriated such qualities as one has been endowed with, offering oneself as an instrument of the inexhaustible downpour of divine qualities, the price being those precious values.
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Yet that darvish who is the hand of God knocking at our door all the time in our awareness of our own limitation points to us that we are caught in an impasse so long as we maintain the adopted perspective or rather our assumption of being the limited beings we make ourselves by our own alienation.  The precariousness and collapse of our willful and oft-times stubborn endeavors places us face to face with the inexorable force of what in our little faith we call destiny instead of God.

We call it destiny when we fail to see the sense it makes and God when we intuit a higher wisdom than our understanding can grasp.  More and more people are aware of a psychological collapse when facing personal inadequacies.  Seeking to manifest in all persons centering one upon a momentous supply of personal values begins to be ignited.  How can one introduce the spiritual way of life into everyday living without compromising?
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This is where saintliness is allied with power.  It takes an indomitable will on the part of man where one's mettle is pitted beyond the most ruthless exertions marshaled in the mastery of matter to refuse to let himself fall into his individual consciousness when dealing with material problems: to maintain the sovereign quality of one who is imbued with the consciousness of divine power.  He is the master of life says Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan.

Physical amenities are offerings that we receive at the hands of the whole universe.  If they pass into our hands we have the responsibility of their care and maintenance.  Any thought of possessing them draws us from the kingship of heaven to the mentality of a puny chieftain on earth at war with our competitors and even friends committed to respect bonds of allegiance for mutual interest or security at the cost of our freedom to act according to our higher consciousness or judgment by this causal chain man inevitably walls himself in away from the vast reaches of spiritual awareness that rest on unmitigated inner freedom.  Here is the grind.  There is no compromise.
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The spiritual king guards his inner freedom against the slightest alienation.  One fails to see the links in the chain that shackles one proceeding from one situation involving another etc.  The sadhana or practice of meditation in everyday life is initiated by an axiomatic pledge or undertaking or resolve or better, one's heart's dearest wish: to renounce the world while meeting one's commitments in the world.

One must be aware that one is continually being tested in what one wishes most in order to make clear whether one's heart is on earth or in heaven.  
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The first check in the sadhana is to watch the emotions experienced in respect to what is ordinarily called one's possessions especially something one is considering acquiring.  This is where the causal chain of involvement starts leading to alienation of spiritual freedom.  It is insidious and should be checked at this stage if one wishes to be an initiate though in the world.

It is easier to give up possessions factually than to continue to possess them nominally.  Consider oneself as the caretaker.  The difference lies in the emotion of concupiscence regarding what is coveted as against the serene detachment of one who would not regret in the least if it were taken away whose joy is independent of conditions or circumstances.  This is what makes the king in beggar's robes.

One has to be very honest with oneself.  Covetousness is always there as the natural instinct. covetousness holds sway unless checked by indifference to the point where it is even eradicated from the unconscious.  One develops a nausea for possessions because consciousness is trained to see right away the psychological involvement of which they are the embodiment.  One reaches a point quite compatible with modern living where amenities are considered functionally as practical shortcuts to problems of ordinary physical living, the important point being what one does with the time and efforts saved.
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There is of course the problem of aesthetic sensitivity.  The soul needs beauty as much as the body needs food.  Some aesthetically need to be surrounded by beauty.  Aesthetic valuation varies with the quality of emotion reached by the person in his spiritual sensitivity as he evolves.  In the more evolved stages the aesthetic taste becomes very austere to the point of aridity.  Furthermore the beauty of the person is the final issue of evolution not the collection of beautiful objects he substitutes for the exertion of subjecting the personality as clay to the hands of the Divine Artist.
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Do not pick flowers on the way.  What one covets in all creation, including creation through the medicacy of man is values that are latently inherent in oneself otherwise one would have no means of valuing them.  Seeing them stimulates the corresponding quality of oneself.  Yet having seen them, one carries them in oneself, being thus enriched.

Attachment to the object through which the particular value or impression accrued to one may stand in the way of the value per se.  One does not realize to What a state of dependency one has subjected oneself by the cluster of cherished objects.  The same applies to depending upon going to church to pray or for the presence of the-loved one to love.  This is the reason why the Divine Planner has separated lovers in most the the great love stories.  Majnun says to Leila, "You must needs leave so that I may love you for your real being."
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A conjoining problem lies in the personal sense of power we develop by reaping the success of our enterprises.  It takes a fatal hitch for us to realize the precariousness of our constructions and when one's most persevering struggles aver themselves of no avail one may realize that one has to adjust one's endeavors to a higher planning.  It might happen that one ponders upon events afterwards and realizes how lucky it is that things did not happen the way one had planned.  

If one assumes that these things are accidental and unaccountable one has failed to see the connection.  Surprising!  Because a study of physics reveals what good planning there is.

If we fail to see it in our own affairs it is because we are looking at things from a personal bias, Assuming that if things were well planned they would be favoring one personally.  If one posits that planning aims at awakening us to a realization of the Divine Intention everything makes sense.  This is where the sense of personal power stands in the way not only of the investiture of Divine Power but of the higher understanding.
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The darvish develops a sense of the dependence of his or another's planning upon higher planning, "tawakkul", embodied in the proverbial "man proposes and God disposes," consequently farseeing the success or otherwise of a project.  If one places oneself in a state of obligation or dependence upon another person a situation might arise in which there is a conflict between this dependence and adjustment to Divine Planning.  One's hands are bound.

Therefore the secret of the freedom essential for spiritual unfoldment is to follow a rule never to build a scheme in which one places oneself in a state of dependence upon another person whatever the advantage.  Colloquially, the darvish prefers starving to being a courtier.  Here lies the condition for becoming an instrument of Divine Power.

There is no possible compromise.  Once one has alienated one's freedom one can only recover it by renouncing the advantage one has derived from jeopardizing it.  This is what gives the man of God his positive spirit and sovereign resolve.
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Admittedly, all human endeavors are a matter of corporate action involving interdependency.  No person should be so bold as to claim he can do without another's help.  But wherever an advantage can only be gained by humiliating one's spirit one should relinquish the advantage if one wishes to manifest the Divine Power with great force.  The crux of the issue lies in the emotional dependence upon the advantage: depending for one's joy upon a situation controlled by a person whose will stands in the way of one's acting according to one's higher conscience.  This is where the spirit is humiliated for not living up to its ideal with the consequence that one's entire spiritual development is jeopardized unless one breaks free.

Subservience to a person makes one a slave.  Allegiance to the Divine Will makes one a king or queen.  This is why Sufism is the tradition of the king in patched robes which is the remarkable allegiance of sovereignty with saintliness or blend of supreme will with unassuming selflessness.  If the purpose of creation on the planet aims at incorporating the many-splendored attributes of the cosmos in a being: man.  It attains its fulfillment in a man who exemplifies the Divine Sovereignty: the king.  Yet such is the nature of the created status that the survival of what one has achieved internally in life rests upon the falling curve of one's stale personal idiosyncrasies.  

Therefore one's power can only rest upon complete reliance upon the power one has learned to unmask behind events.  It is the might invested in the powers that be and ensures the progress of all created things towards greater perfection.  That power functioning in man or in the angel could lead to monstrous exploitation of the weaker for personal ends which would defeat its purpose. If it were not for the ruthless overcoming of the tendency towards the formation of autonomous centers of power.
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The darvish robe is the symbol of the destruction of the sense of personal autonomy.  It is the combination of the unflinchingly independent and sovereign spirit with the renunciation of covetousness for possession or personal advantage or reputation or personal joy that makes for the ideal man.  For instead of seeking personal joy he takes upon himself the sufferings of men transmuting them into joy.
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By his very example he reveals to people how their tribulations are a gift, the overcoming of which leads to the sovereignty of the world.  This is then the basic problem that we face in building up that complex and delicate masterpiece on planet earth: the human personality.

To bring about transformation one has to apply force, to prevent dallying in the complacency of self-satisfaction.  Will power, resolve, and forbearance are vital parameters of the human person, yet in the ordinary person they simply swell the ego.  

The ordinary reaction to the very mention of the king is an ego trip.  That is where the patched robes and the crown of thorns come in. Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan said, "The aristocracy of the soul and the democracy of the ego." It takes a great man to wield tremendous force and remain humble, keep the human touch.  It takes someone who has surrendered his will completely to the Divine Will.  This is the real meaning of Islam.
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Here lies the sadhana or practice of the initiate in everyday action: Wherever you exercise will, apply freedom from the self, slaughter mercilessly any personal satisfaction you may derive from it.  And should any personal satisfaction arise, immediately cease applying your will in that particular connection: you are not yet ready for it.
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There is a curious relation of interdependence between surrender and sovereignty.  Man's inclination to surrender is nature's way of freeing him from his ego.  That ego stands in the way of the divine sovereignty in him.  Yet if he surrenders to anyone but God he jeopardizes that very freedom that nature sought to achieve through his surrender.  Not only is one's bondage by one's ego but also by another's ego.  One is only free when one is fulfilling the divine will.

Whereas most people bind those who surrender themselves to them God, by definition, frees the one who surrenders to him and so: those rare souls who are free of themselves for having surrendered their will to God:	the kings in darvish robes.  His crown is of thorns.
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The sadhana here is: not only never allow yourself to be bound by another's will but watch the action of your will upon another and never allow yourself to bind another by your will.  Should he bind himself willingly you are responsible for a disregard of the law of spiritual freedom.  The lives of almost all beings are intertwined in the inextricable web of interrelationships.  The darvish severs every bond systematically except the friend: the most precious treasure on earth.
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"O for a friend to mingle all his soul with mine." 
Rumi
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Holy men attach great value to the sacred bond of spiritual communion with one who has become a temple in which the divine qualities may be worshipped, the one to whom one can entrust the secrets of one's heart.  All that is sacred that cannot be disclosed to whomsoever would not understand and cherish it.  
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"Only mix with men of God" is a darvish motto because one is responsible for safeguarding the divine secret and consequently shuns most men. 
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Ordinary social relationships detract from maintaining constant divine consciousness.  The initiate in the world though not of the world has to introduce an ineffable dimension of freedom into the bonds of relationship.  Ramana Maharshi, having severed all relationships, said to his mother, "You are not my mother." If he had considered her in that bond, he would have returned home.  Acting as he did, she became the loved and revered Mataji of the ashram.

Parsifal converted Kundry by refusing to enter into a personal relationship.  Buddha's wife became the founder of the first nun's order in Buddhism.  This principle of freedom introduced into relationship has an uncanny transfiguring effect upon people.  If one is free, one frees people in relationships.  "Give up the world before it gives you up.

"Let me be the instrument through which the heavens are reflected on the earth." It means being the wayfarer (salik) through life instead of the denizen of the world.  The wayfarer cannot advance without leaving things behind realizing that the less he carries, the more easily he can advance.  For him giving up is no sacrifice, it is the wage of freedom.
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It means being impervious to unfavorable conditions so that no reverse can take away one's exuberant joy: giving indiscriminately, giving joy, giving life for having renounced life, indeed the greatest thing one can give a person is the power to live.  It is the living dead who give life.

In every life, in addition to the inner relinquishing of possessions, it means playing with the children of the earth without any show of wisdom or assumption of personality while seeing the purpose behind the purpose of the human drama, rather than seeking for the solitude which is his soul's longing.  The darvish in the world will be happy in the most appalling circumstances.  Example: Bahaullah, the victim of the gravest injustices.  Hallaj: 

"God tests those He loves the most."

In the midst of the din and Hustle of modern life he maintains and radiates his peace amongst the relentless agitation, his sublime atmosphere among those who have no idea of his sensitivity.  If there is no trace of ego left in you, the voracious will pounce on you.  If wealth is not yours to give, nor position yours to invest, nor the know-how of the world yours to instruct, those having a sense of value will covet your wisdom not knowing that it has to be discovered rather than acquired, wrought at the cost of the death of one's person at a time when one had ceased seeking for it.
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In fact one could never have known the power and insight and jubilation of the living dead without having undergone the indescribable death that it entails.  And one cannot attain these by trying to experience that death until one ceases to covet these: then only is one ready for it!  

"The bringers of joy have always been the children of sorrow." 
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
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It is a maturity that is reached in its right time.  When there is nothing in the world that one wishes for oneself all appears as shadows, beautiful and unbeautiful, that have lost their value.  As sensitive as a deer, as courageous as a lion, one does not give into one's yearning for solitude but stands, right in the thick of things showing genuine concern for the problems and soul-searchings of one's fellow men.  If you can do this, you will be the dispenser of life, you will be the rock on which people will build their lives, you are the living dead.  Otherwise you are a man of the world.

Can you "bear all and do nothing, hear all and say nothing, give all and take nothing?" The darvish builds up a power in his silence that the man of the world expends in vain.  If you are a darvish in  the world you will guard your tongue rather than practicing silence indiscriminately as a sadhana for the essentials where your word has a useful contribution to make to people's understanding in a conversation.  Make a minimal concession to politeness if such is the current coin to avoid unnecessary offense or drawing attention.
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If you are endowed with the disposition, you may take up the challenge against the injustices, the ego-dominance, the Hypocrisy rampant in this world provided that you are moved by Godly power and are wise enough to avoid getting splashed, besmeared by the impressions of evil or succumbing to the temptations of using your opponents weapons which are the materialization of the very evil you are trying to overcome

If you are free enough in yourself to rise above emotions of righteousness, of indignation and perspicacious enough to idealize the role played in the divine planning by that particular manifestation: evil.  Learn how to receive divine guidance in your efforts instead of stubbornly sticking to your theories about just causes.  "Reason is a flower with a thousand petals, one covered by another." The divine intention always lies beyond the horizon of our understanding.
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Yet you may be the chivalrous hand through whom God strikes the malignant one.  

Your refusal to condone evil may be the manifestation of the law of Divine perfection.  Remember, that you can only bring as much power to bear as the breadth of your consciousness of the Divine Presence in you, and that your whole role in the battle of life is detailed by that very measure.  The Darvish's power derives from his sense of the Divine greatness, the sense of immensity.

When one is concerned with one's ego, one is as small as that little particle that it is.  
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To the man of god, doors open, miracles happen.  Having overcome the frontiers of his being, he incorporates Divine Power.  Likewise, the darvish in the world will have to proceed on two fronts: to overcome every incitement to which the world exposes him of conceptualizing himself as a person, and secondly, overcome the conceptual image that others make of him to which most people react.

It is not by their power, but by their godliness that the men of God have been held in esteem.  It is the honor in which he is held that constitutes the sovereignty of the king, and the secret of the king is not to forget one instant the Divine Sovereignty invested in him, thus overcoming consciousness of himself.  No doubt truth is the greatest power there is "All situations in life are tests to bring out the truth from falsehood," and we are all part of that great scheme, but the laws of karmic causality escape our understanding.

All that is clear is that if the battle has been won inside, then one is ready to be used as an instrument for the battle outside.  Otherwise one is putting the cart before the horse, confusing the issues, and finally loses confidence in oneself.  One has failed to see the clue.
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"You must have the courage to shatter your ideals upon the rock of Truth." (Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan) See the issue of the battle in yourself.  Action is improving circumstances: Because one's sense of perfection is violated by witnessing prevailing conditions that challenge one to pit one's potentialities against the inertia so that one masters outer conditions by calling the Divine Attribute dormant in one into operation.

The secret of secrets is meditation in action: 
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Consequently, accomplishment awakens realization.  The darvish in the world practices his meditation in the course of action, watching the transformation of outer circumstances in respect to his own realization, and in so doing, introduces into the concrete structure he builds on earth, the Divine qualities he gleans out of the intuition of immensity, his grasp of the bounty of the heavens stretching ever wider as he senses the urgency of a change on the earth in the measure in which he is aware of our crucifixion on the earth plane.

Earmark the Divine attributes working their way out in conditions.  Experiment with the effect that the introduction of a larger dose of a certain quality may have on a situation.

First, borrow the quality, then realize that it was always in you.  Find it right back in the genesis of your soul, enshrouded or entombed by the strata of impressions of the world.  Giving up the world internally will have as immediate consequence the dissolution of these layers, which are invariably associated with some brand of selfishness.
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The Horizon is Clear.  One begins to reflect heavenly qualities.  The Darvish is a stranger to the world, a bird to the earth, swooping down for the few grains necessary for the subsistence of the body.  The darvish in the world is stretching out into the heavens, soul floating, soaring above the earth plane, raptured with the Divine beauty he sees behind the veil, guarding himself continually from the ugly and limiting impressions of the worldly which would rob him of his vision, as it does most people caught unawares in the turmoil of ordinary living.

He applies the method of continual meditation rather than putting off meditation for more congenial circumstances.  In fact, he meditates the more intensely the more he could be tempted to retire into the security of his ego consciousness.  At the slightest such inclination, he sweeps up into the clear sky of outer space, exposed to the inexhaustible richness of the immensity, for his home is beyond time and space.  He may never settle in the confines of ordinary men.  
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Yet bird that he is, he comes amongst men as a lion, with the force of Cod.  Such are the contradictions in the nature of that mystery, that the darvish, for his purpose, does not conform to the patters of most.

How then, can he be assessed by current norms?  There are those who follow the path of light.  For these, no one less than a master of light could be the right guide.  The darvish becomes so inebriated with light that, as Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan says, 'wherever he casts his glance, a new sun arises." He never allows himself to be alienated from the heavenly spheres, even if the body is in exile.

The sadhana consists in cleansing one's glance from the impressions of the world, by the purifying power of the light of the soul.  It is seeing, yet not allowing the impressions to conjure like shadows from the fund of latencies Inside, for all beings have, all propensities virtually.  It means keeping constantly in mind the luminous archetypes of which earthly objects or forms are derivations or deviations.
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Do not look at the world from your consciousness, but consider the eyes as "The windows through which the soul looks out." (Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan) Become a sparkling soul.  It means continually reaching out to the heavens so as never to be captivated by the impressions of the earth.

The sadhana. extends inside by cleansing one's thoughts of all emotions where the slightest touch of selfishness or egotism come in, so as to be a channel for heavenly thoughts and heavenly emotions.  When the darvish identifies himself totally with the purpose of manifestation, his heart expands so as to accommodate the whole cosmos.  He becomes cosmic.  It is no longer a matter of how far out he can reach, but how much of the Divine perfection he can incorporate.  This is in function of his awareness of the Divine, that pole of his being that is the Divine perfection.  And the way the limitations of this perfection seeking expression in his being may be exploded.

"Let my imperfect self advance towards Thy perfect Being, Lord, As the crescent rises to fullness." 
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
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Quite obviously, the ultimate realization lies beyond one's reach.  Unless one has reached the state of the perfect man, Al-insanu'l-Kamil, at times on the way it is good to check the azimuth towards which to set one's compass, particularly if deviated, or in a case, one has lost one's bearings in a storm.

Man reaches the ideal of manhood which is the state of prophethood, says Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, when he becomes the temple in which God experiences His Divine perfection-the center of convergence of God's consciousness on earth.  This is, of course, an extreme case.  Yet thinking of oneself as the crossroads rather than entity, experiencing the Divine perfection wending it's way in the maze of one's idiosyncrasies, substituting itself for oneself, witnessing in oneself, "The interaction of every atom of the universe", "Making one's doctrines fuel for the Divine intelligence" and letting God show Himself to oneself through oneself."
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This gives the darvish in the world a sense of purpose in life.  None but the one's practicing this can have the slightest idea of the exaltation of the spirit thus experienced.  There may be many sources of joy, but the most rarefied quality of ecstasy streams from the soul having sensed the touch of the Divine presence.  This is the wine of the Holy Sacrament.  The madzub lost in this intoxication cannot face life.  The darvish in the world is so deeply moved, that all who come in touch with him become in love with love Divine.

He dare not tell the secret of his heart, because it would set the hearts of men on fire.  It would instill dismay in the fragile construction of the minds of men.  

"One atom of the plane where he functions would shatter the world", says Ibn L'Arabi.
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"I have not come to teach what you know not: I have come to deepen in you that wisdom which is yours already." "I am a tide in the ocean of life bearing all souls to the farther shore." 
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan


The Search for the Teacher
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The new age is witnessing an exodus of young people of all ages, leaving the security of their various civilizations for the unknown shores of spirituality, of which India is reputed to be the seat.  Of course, the quest may include other eastern countries: Iran, Afghanistan, Japan, Turkey, the Holy Land, North Africa.  Throngs of hearty idealists comb sometimes inaccessible outposts in far lands.  As a matter of fact, many of the well-known spiritual teachers are to be found both in the West and in the United States.
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On the "Guru Hunt".  Some have abdicated in their preconceived ideas of the desired guru, or settled in some average ashram situation.  One imagines that for them the satisfaction of experiencing the unfamiliar must be worth putting up with a discomfort that would not have been tolerated in the homeland, including the risk to one's health.  Some, after a few disappointments, soon jumped to the conclusion, the whole thing is a hoax, a thing of the past, simply legendary, and were diverted from any further quest by the nice things in the shops, the excitement of visiting outlandish temples.

Very few are persevering, accepting nothing less than the highest representation of what a master could be.  No doubt one finds today in the East, the remains of a spirituality facing the advance of the tidal wave of coveted material values of our time.

We should be able to visit all the gurus and teachers as the Buddha did.  He visited all. the authentic schools of his time.  He spent time at the ashrams (wilderness retreats) until he felt he had learned what he could.  And then he left by the same door that he cam in.  
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He observed that mostly they were either judging one's thoughts, or inducing a trance state, which is not an answer, while the problem was the suffering of people in his time.  That was the real thing.

What were they doing for these people?  He wanted to find a way of illumination without having to get into a trance state. so finally he just had to find his own way.

It should be possible for an earnest pupil to learn what he can from the different schools, but the situation unfortunately, is not that simple.  There is a teacher in India who had a pupil in Paris who was given the condition for visiting his teacher in India, that he would have to be accompanied to and from the plane and not visit any other teacher in India; Should he negate the teaching of any other teacher?  Is Buddha wrong and Christ wrong and everybody wrong?  Is he the only one who is right?  That's literally a terror. With a few rare exceptions, spirituality both in the East and in the West is doubtless decadent, reduced to formalism, superstition, show, position, exploitation, etc.
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However, there are beings of real spiritual caliber to be found, and there is a great harvest of valuable spiritual knowledge to be reaped. I But where and how?  Obviously, one won't find the mighty souls in the bazaar where more people have access to the begging bowls.  And it is to the spectacle of the beggars, not just in the streets, but behind the more sophisticated walls of the-shrewd "spiritual professional".  Not surprising that the average visitor draws a hasty conclusion.
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As a guarantee for the authenticity of their intention, the tradition requires of those invested with the office of the spiritual guidance or elevation of their fellow men, to have given up the world.  While admittedly in the new age we are seeking a way of being in the world without being of the world, in which case it takes a judicious appreciation of the activities in the life of a person professing spirituality to asses whether his heart is on earth or in heaven.
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In the orthodox tradition the staunch-hearted rishi is supposed to shun the villages and live in the jungles in a cave, seeking food amongst the leaves, roots and fruits of the trees, continually exposed to the attacks of tigers, leopards and wild elephants.  You will not find him walking the streets, and it may take five or six days on a wild goose chase through dense jungles, at the same risk of wild animals, to find that he has just left his cave to dive deeper into the jungle because people had started discovering his whereabouts, or alternately, having reached him, you might wonder what all his asceticism has done for him.  Maybe he wasn't ready for the tremendous challenge of solitude, or the inadequate diet.
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Sometimes a true rishi or dervish leaves the mountain vastness to settle near or amongst the abodes of men.  Like Ramana Maharshi or the Sufi Hazrat Khwaja Farid Ud-Din Gang El Shaker Chisti, he may have come to be meaningful, useful and helpful to people.  Staunch disciples will build a township around him.  These beings will never handle a single cent or participate in the management of their ashram in the least. Men who have abandoned the world are held in the most reverent esteem.  
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Some, however, more prepared to come to terms with the world, will organize themselves an ashram, monastery, khanaqah, or institution of learning.  They are then called swami, bhikku, or murshid, and if genuine, will devote themselves solely and selflessly to the spiritual guidance of disciples.  The richness of the world may pass through their hands, and they will, as Hazrat Nizim Ud-Din Auliya did, distribute these in accordance to the needs of each, without appropriating anything more than mere morsels to themselves.
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Here is the precious pearl.  The teeming millions mass-produced on a gigantic scale, each having his own idiosyncrasies, apparently with a view to produce a few masterpieces: more valuable, more exquisite, more fascinating than the rarest Stradivarius violin or Mona Lisa or the Chartres cathedral.

That such men as Jesus should have walked the earth is the greatest miracle on earth.  It is more important than any other thing sought after in the world, and this is why sensitive people nurture an idyllic picture of an ideal state of being.  The whole forward march of evolution tends toward this ideal.

Man, that wonder, molded and burnished through ages of deep searching, and all the seeming trials and errors, to produce that mixture of physis and phychis, converging from all our ancestors and predecessors on the planet (mixed with a draught of the heavens), inspired by the heroism of archaic legends.  Yet in the course of repeated disappointment through life, many begin to wonder whether such ponderous musings are not pure fiction of the imagination.
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What is it then that is so desperately, so consistently sought after by such large numbers of people, some highly discriminating?  It is the most valuable treasure in the world, and possibly hence the rarest: a perfect human being.  Man in search of his ideal of perfection.  Nothing less.
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But the hope surges up again and again, every time one meets a person whose qualities one admires.  Naturally one nurtures the wish to contemplate such a being with one's own eyes, and when told that they are to be found at some outpost of civilization, some will cross the widest stretches, suffer the most ignoble ills, take the most foolhardy risks for that moment of encounter that can change a lifetime.
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Has the course of your life ever been completely turned-about by the encounter with a being?  A being who incorporates those values that you have always worshipped in your soul?  If this happens: it is because that being was already in you.  Confrontation with the qualities of his soul triggers off the like in you -- the most wonderful thing that can happen, until one realizes, as Buddha said, there is a place one cannot reach by going anywhere. -- or the rishi high up in the Himalayas who said to me, "Why have you come so far to see what you should be?" To see what you should be!

We wish to see in another what we should be ourselves, and we would wish for another to inspire us to be so.  Yes, the time comes when one realizes that: The guru cannot do it for you, but can only catalyze like properties.  The time comes when one has to make the effort oneself to be what one wishes to see.
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The guru, instead of helping you, will stand in your way if he allows you to become dependent upon him.  Unless he is empty of himself, he will root you still deeper in the core of your limitations.  

"His exterior is an idol, but his interior is an idol-breaker."  
Rumi.
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If his action upon you is traumatic it is because his being overwhelms you, shattering your old self to make place for a fresh blossoming of qualities.  It is because his being grafted upon your being produces a fruit of a brand heretofore unknown.  You may have seen him once, or shared in many an episode of your life in his company.  
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You may have been perplexed by some of his actions or words, whatever.  If he is your guru, he will live in you by day and be present in your dreams, in your life, in every moment the heart and core of your being.
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But beware of the obsessive quality of the being who exercises coercion upon your will, robs you of your freedom, places you in a position where your conscience is in a quandary; he who is the master of men while being the slave of his ego is the most pernicious leader astray.

Many innocent or candid souls have fallen victim to these, either by becoming hybrid examples of a strange spirituality blended with sanctimonious contempt for others, or an insufferable sense of righteousness, or blind materialism concealed under the guise of holiness.  Many do not have the measuring rod to distinguish the genuine from the false, sometimes to a disconcerting degree!

What criteria can one offer to the pilgrim on the search for the teacher?  Quite apart from the considerations given earlier about the real purpose pursued in his actual living, if he or she has no ax to grind he will be bubbling over with the joy of an inner freedom even though greatly sensitive to pain connected with the problems surrounding him.  This you can ascertain if you feel inspired after seeing him.  
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Like walking on air.

If he feels that you are an earnest wayfarer relentlessly pointing to the azimuth, he will guide you from perplexity to perplexity.
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A crucial criterion is to see how he reacts to personal insults.  If he handles the matter soberly, without taking personal offense, he is most likely to be the master you are seeking.  The slightest mark of a lack of charity tells a long story, because the characteristics of a person spring to light when he is off guard.  You will also watch for any show of importance other than the natural sovereignty and dignity of his being at all times.  He would rather underplay his power than preen his feathers, screen you from his power than burn you by it, walk gently by your side rather than crush you from an upraised throne, enlist your approval by his wisdom rather than impose his opinion by force of will.

The Divine power passing through him will give you a sense of optimism regarding your problems rather than coercing you into subservience.  If he is endowed with superior wisdom he may not your arguments by arguments which might give vent to further debate or pass his mind behind the quandary.  "He has passed before you had time to see him."
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Ramana Maharshi, when asked.  "How do I attain liberation?", answered "Who is it in you that wants liberation?" 

"The answer that uproots the question" (Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan).

Rather than allow you to juggle with theories, he will test you in your life, in your life, in the reality of what you are trying to work out theoretically, revealing you to yourself.  You have come with a question on your mind. You are now saddled with a challenge in your life, for that is where it all works out in practice. Dare you wage war upon your shadow?  Dare you cast the torchlight of truth in your soul?  This is the issue.  
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You did not think that was the reason you came with a question, and there it is, staring you in the eyes.  He may inspire you to give up that whose giving up will make you free.
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And if he asks you to do it it is because he knows how glad you will be to have had the courage to give it up, and you will realize that you have given a pebble for a pearl.

He is strong, he is showing you the way he followed himself.  If he is a real guru, he will never ask you to do anything against your conscience, but just give you that extra push to do what you know you should do anyway.
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Once you have become conversant with his handling of paradoxes and gained confidence in his guidance, knowing that no perplexity will befuddle you anymore, he will double his zeal in your guidance and point out to you hidden ways that you, however, have to discover as your attention turns towards them.

For the ways of the Lord are mysterious.  

"He will caress you with the hand of your worst enemy and He will admonish you with the hand of your dearest friend." 
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

You think you have discovered a reason, but there is a further reason hidden behind it and no sooner has this one flashed upon you than you intuit a further one, each more incomprehensible than the former.  
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The one in command never reveals his plans even to his forces.  They are ever concealed, misleading those who would foil it.  Each officer is entitled to know as much as he needs to know to fulfill his part in the strategy.  As he rises in rank, more of the plan is revealed to him.  In fact, spiritual vision is awareness of the Divine plan.  This only happens if one identifies with it beyond any personal consideration.  

Of course, if you understood what the teacher grasps, you would not need a teacher, and even if he told you what he grasps you would not be able to grasp it.  Unless you had developed his caliber.  Therefore, he does not try to teach, but to promote your growth and expand your being that you may see what he sees, and understand what he understands, and have the wisdom to react to what he sees the way he does.  His purpose is to conduct you to the point where you do not need him any more.  

"With a sweep of his arm he will lift your consciousness way above his own." 
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
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You will recognize him by his sense of truth. He will keep faith with you, and you will strive to keep faith with him.  If you love him, you can say what you have on your mind and he will never take offense.  You can, in any case, never conceal a thought from him because he reads you as an open book, not from curiosity, but how can a sensitive being fail to responds to that which is placed before him?  "The greater the teacher the better he can play with children."

Murshid would even scandalize people to prevent them from taking themselves too seriously.  People were serving cakes, and he would take three.  He really did it spiritually.  People think to be holy you have to be so very serious.  It had a wonderful freeing effect upon them.

There was a madzub who was looking at people as though he was laughing. Why are you laughing like that?" he was asked.  "I am not laughing, I am smiling, because each manifests God in a different way: as an elephant a giraffe, a dove.... if only they could see themselves they would smile too!



Initiation
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When one observes how intelligently the structures of life and their unfoldment are planned, it becomes obvious that we show unmistakable lack of objectivity when we believe that in our own lives and those of our loved ones, destiny strikes blindly and unfairly.  It takes the insight of one who has been up on the mountain, who has lifted himself above the subjective assessment of himself and his own wishes and whims, to see the reason behind the reason behind the reason for the way things "happen" "to him." The causal relationships between events transpire before his inner eye in the form of immutable laws, and behind these is a highly deliberated guidance.
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The "Powers that be" take receptivity into consideration, and respect our freedom, sometimes seemingly unfortunately so, witnessing the breakdown of communication between the spheres as a dialogue of deaf and dumb, with the exception of urgent communications.

As we advance we seek guidance owing to the difficulty in reaching the celestial guides directly.  One looks for one who is sufficiently in harmony with the hierarchy of the masters, or sensitive to their wishes, to act as a go-between or even lift the consciousness of the pupil to the point that he is able to reach some measure of guidance directly.  If such a master is authentic, he will refer to the one hierarchically above his own position for his briefing (whether incarnated or not), and the latter refers to the spiritual superior beyond that position.  

This is the chain of transmission which reaches to the source of all initiation.  The One beyond, of whom naught can be said.  The interrelationship existing between the masters is firmly and solemnly established, ratified by a covenant that has karmic implications.  This is what is called initiation, ordination, consecration, baptism.  

The covenant with Noah and Isaiah, the new Covenant and the most ancient one.
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Such a master will generally link the one who asks him for counsel finally to the hierarchy by the same contractual grounds that he himself has solemnly taken on, which includes the karmic responsibility for the growth of the initiate, whom he, of course, does not take solely upon his own shoulders, but shares with the hierarchy in perfect measure to which he refers to them for the guidance of the pupil.  The very incidence of this act may precipitate a transformation in the initiate, if its timing corresponds to a real threshold that the initiate is passing through in the natural unfoldment of the path before him.  

In these circumstances the initiation acts as a catalyst, accelerating a slow process.  One's progress along the path proceeds through certain stages, stations and states, Maqqam.  Each new station corresponds to a cosmic initiation whether or not by an acknowledged master in a consecrated order.  Each time a being stumbles on a new realization that gives further dimension of freedom, untold numbers of beings are thereby affected and express their joy in jubilation.  The higher the initiation, the more beings involved in that jubilation, attaining the apotheosis in the resurrection of Christ, the Paranivana of Sakyamuni, the Mahapralaya.
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Initiation is the reiteration of the covenant which was made at the birth of one's soul, while, according to Qu'ran, we were "in the loins of Adam," the vow to proclaim the Divine sovereignty, and therefore our proclamation that establishes our relationship to the source as individuals gifted with a relative free will.  According to the Zoroastrian Gathas, when we were still in the angelic state, we vowed to incarnate upon earth in order that we might become channels for the transfiguration of the world, to insure the victory of light over darkness.  Our struggle on earth is the enactment of this pledge, the Bayat, the renewal of the pledge we made in eternity.
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Initiation corresponds to the lifting of the veil of ignorance.  Further awakening is always preceded by a purification which may assume the form of a test or a trial.  One may be forced to make a choice "whether one's heart is on earth or in heaven," says Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan.  One's life may break down and familiar worlds crumble.  One may suffer incredible injustice and lose confidence in one's ability , undergo terrible buffeting.  One is called upon to forgive, overcome recriminations, give love instead of receiving it.  The initiation takes place on completion of the test when the lesson has been learned.  It is always a victory over limitation and ignorance.  The end is celebration.
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Depending on the nature and grade of initiation, different strata of beings may be called upon or involved.  When initiation is connected with service rather than personal progress it is ordination, passing from the aegis of Elijah to that of Melchisedek.  When it involves the teaching of the mysteries, it passes into the realm of Enoch or Hermes.  When it involves militant social action it is under the jurisdiction of Archangel Michael; healing, that of Raphael; and when it is prophetic it is in the realm of the Archangel Gabriel.  Thus particular initiation may effect one of one's multi-dimensional aspects connected with a particular cosmic principle, such as planetary, lunar, solar, galactic and even universal initiation.
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What can one give in thankfulness for so much joy, if not to pledge oneself more consciously than ever?  If anyone was instrumental in bringing this process to fruition one is indissolubly linked with him or her karmically beyond the wheel of becoming.  Such is the bond linking the masters in the hierarchy and these with their pupils.  "And the glory which Thou gave me I give them that they may be one as we are one." John 17:22.

Friendship here reaches its zenith.  The pupil is present in the heart of the teacher as a grain of sand becomes a pearl in the flesh of the oyster.  The teacher says to the pupil, "You are the master I learn from, for our bond is the noblest and purest love, leading to that love beyond all love, the love of God."

Love means that one lives in one another sharing joy and suffering, feeling oneself responsible in one another in God, linked by the same magic of love to the whole hierarchy of masters, saints and prophets who form the spiritual hierarchy of the government of the world, the embodiment of the master, the spirit of guidance.


Counseling
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Counseling is very fashionable these days.  We all think we know better how to run other people's lives than they do, like the backseat driver.  Yet something may be ignited in a soul through intercommunication with others.  When one is on tenderhooks about just those very things that are desperately meaningful to him at the time, if he meets with loving concern and sharing from another himself in whom he may see aspects of himself reflected in that stupendous mirroring process whereby each fraction of the universe communicates with the whole by communicating with each other.  It is only the love generated in finding oneself in each other or each other in oneself that makes for the kind of understanding that can alter a life.
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Example:	When once the scholar Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi left his class surrounded by disciples he was apostrophized by a mysterious darvish dressed in rags.  Shams snatched from his leads the manuscript which he had been working on for years and threw it in the well.  When Jelaluddin, and more so the pupils, showed understandable dismay Sham Tabriz said, "Shall I retrieve it from the well?  I promise it will be dry." Jelaluddin said, "No." This was the no that changed his life from a very erudite scholar to one of the greatest poets and mystics amongst the Sufis.

Such is counseling: A traumatic insight into the clue that will bring about change by lifting the hang-up to the release of pent-up potentialities unknown to the counseled one, or at least which he does not believe in.  Shams saw Jelaluddin's soul which he loved for its beauty in the flash of the first meeting transcending time and place.  
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"Happy the moment when we are seated in the palace, Thou and I, with two forms and with two figures but with one soul, Thou and I, this is the greatest wonder: that Thou and I, sitting here in the same nook are at this moment both in 'Iraq and Khorassan Thou and I."

It is only out of one's love for that which one sees in a person and which lies beyond his or her personality in place and time that it is at all possible to Understand another.  Love is a very powerful thing!  Yet how intractable!  One can be stoned with love to the extent that life becomes unlivable.  
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When one has been quickened by the Divine touch of beauty it becomes irksome to vie with the shoddy mater-of-factness of humdrum existence and to be contented with the shallowness of common or garden mentality, and many persons will show in their counseling the wounds their soul has incurred from the slight of those who deride the sacredness of their reverence of beauty.  This is the cause of the lack of self-confidence lying hidden behind a flurry of bravado in most sensitive people. causing many to tone down their euphoria to ply with the generality.  

It is the deterioration of sublime emotion triggered off in a flash of insight which when spreading to more personal strata of one's being may deviate into forms of sentimental hysteria that people scoff at whereas a very high emotion strengthened and ennobled by self control imposes respect.  Perhaps the greatest of human arts consists in knowing how to play upon the divine lyre of emotions from the human to the divine, keeping the secret of one's love for the few who can value it, yet revealing to each as much of the draught of divine beauty as he can take instead of swinging over to the other extreme from euphoria to despondency.
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When it is obvious what a mistake the counseled is making it is tantalizingly tempting to tell him simply what "you" think he should do.  But not only is there a danger that you should be applying your own standpoint or personal reaction which though it may throw light from a different angle on the problem is not necessarily the point of view of the planners: you will preclude him from fulfilling the very purpose that the problem was all about, namely to take a decision upon himself for which he is answerable.  The aim of spiritual guidance is to make a person free from his own limitations not dependent upon another's judgment and still less another's will.  
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The guru therefore lifts the consciousness of the chela to the mountain top so that he might see the issues himself in their intricate inter-involvement rather than tell him himself what he sees in his higher wisdom 
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and thus distinguishes himself from the clairvoyant or so-called psychic

The prerequisite of counseling is to be attuned to a high pitch by meditation, and if there are several present, group counseling must be preceded by a meditation until all present have freed themselves of their individual consciousness and are consequently not influenced by the personality before them so that they may see the unmanifested potentialities together with the personal obstructions to their unfoldment and more: the divine intention in the particular configuration of circumstances that block the unfoldment and the particular point that has to give to make progress possible.
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Obviously if the counseled has not been able to help himself it is because he as yet has not been able to grasp or handle all the intricate and complex inter-involvements and inter-connections of the issues regarding him with adjoining issues such as they may be scanned from the mountain top so different from the valley.  
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It is in order to protect one from confusion that the planners allow one to see only as much of the situation in which one is involved as one is capable of encompassing and then the more one gains in maturity the wider is the field of the implications of one's situation that one is allowed to scan.  Obviously there is no limit to the interactions of even the slightest atom to the whole universe so there is no limit to the extension of one's understanding of the divine planning.  

It is healthy to stretch one's understanding a little beyond its limits acquired so far. This is precisely what the guru does for the chela: open up the span of his compass gradually sometimes traumatically in his higher wisdom but hopefully within the critical threshold beyond which the mind falters and the soul is perplexed.  The measure of the span of one's grasp is one's ability to see oneself impersonally as part of the whole.  The counselor has to be careful lest he interfere with this gentle protective mechanism and confront the counseled with aspects of himself that he is unable to handle in everyday reality.  For example, he might think he is too gifted to take an ordinary job.  When dealing with such a complex thing as the interrelation between a human being and his environment it is advisable to start with clear guidelines.
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There are always several problems that are interconnected and the counseled vary in how much they disclose of these or of themselves by word.  To unravel the maze the counseled one generally thinks he is facing an intractable outer situation that is there irrespective of any action of his and as a matter of fact obstructs his well-being.
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The first line of approach is to ascertain exactly what qualities the planners are aiming at developing in him by facing him with this situation.  Or what idiosyncrasies would come to light if he did not find himself burdened with that particular challenge.  Let him work out himself what qualities would develop in him by adopting such and such a course in the given situation and what qualities or defects would develop if he adopted an alternative course.
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"Keep it high and let it flow" 

The work of the counselor is to know how to work with emotions to spark the flash of understanding.  People struggling to uphold their values exposed to the cynicism of those who were not able to maintain theirs in the rat race where idealism is deemed naivet and the self-sacrificing ones exploited will naturally close themselves like a shell against psychological investigation.  "Psychologitis) the illness of our time is the enemy of the counselor.  If, instead of starting with a diagnosis in order to bring about a transformation you bring about the transformation the diagnosis will suddenly spring to view.  You have touched upon a vital point.  Counselors easily fall to the bent of flattering the ego of the counseled in the hope of boosting up their self-confidence which is often lulling them into a sense of false security
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 until they once more come up against their problems.

The counseled ones endowed with the strongest egos will sometimes browbeat the counselor into telling them how wonderful they are and even blackmail him into a guilty feeling if he does not do so.  A strong-willed one will maneuver the counselor into his trip unless the latter avoids being caught up.  Here lies the secret of the guru.  If the counseled cannot see the solution to his problem it is because he is viewing it from his limited angle.  The help of the guru comes from his vision that includes, in addition to the present personality of the counseled, all his latent potentials that have not yet manifested; and, in addition to apparent circumstances, the interaction between the present character of the person and his contribution to bringing about these circumstances upon the person's character; and further, what the higher planning wishes to draw to the attention of the counseled by challenging him with the prevailing circumstances; and ultimately, earmarking precisely the blind spot in the person which prevents him from seeing the next move on the chessboard.
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What does the candidate for counseling expect of you?  He would wish you to reveal to him what he is seeking for himself.  He would like you to help unfold his potentialities still dimly felt.  He wishes you to understand "why things happen the way they do ." He would like you to tell him what to do in a particular case he is involved in at present and in general in planning his life.  He expects you to give him self-confidence, and to increase his ability to be what he feels he could become "if only" he looks to you to make him high.  He is yearning for his freedom with all of his being yet would bind himself to you if you would set him free from the prison of himself.  He looks for the breadth of your soul to help his soul reach out into immensity, into eternity, into bliss in its nostalgia for fusion with god while the walls of the mind trap his fragile and yet unborn being caught back in the sense of personality.  The counseled wears a costumed facade yet the prospect of being helped by you turns him on but he will only trust you to counsel him if you prove to him that "you" can see behind the wall so carefully erected.  This is a very crucial and tenuous place of confidence.  Most people are standing before what they consider to be "burning Issues" and some may be in a quandary as to what decision to opt for.  
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Others are not sure the course they have taken is the best one and are playing with various alternatives but cannot muster enough drive and endurance to put up with the circumstances--the strains, the upsets, the wreckage these alternatives entail.  Anything "you" may say can tip the oft precarious scales of a whole life.

Are "you" able to figure out the best course?  Are "you" in possession of all the facts, all the intricate circumstances?  What makes "you" think that you can see?  Will you take upon yourself the burden and onus of decision?  Anything you say tilts the balance beyond the person's own deliberate will.  Can you "actually" foresee what the extent of the implications or circumstances will be?  How many third parties would be involved?  The relationship between the decision and what the higher planning is seeking in placing the person before the necessity of that decision?  We are all "back seat counselors" carrying-out our benevolent counseling wherever a person may take us in his or her deep confidence.  Little do we know in the hundreds of conversations we have what damage we may do.  
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Yet sometimes we are the lips through which the spirit of guidance speaks preferring succor and release to those in need of advice often in utter darkness and despair.  At a complete loss as to which road to take.  In this case the only issue is: How genuine is our intuition?  How clearly can we discriminate between intuition and wishful thinking?  The only criterion is our sense of truthfulness.  The slightest fantasy would give one a feeling of insecurity because it would be deriving from self satisfaction, even ascendancy over the other at the cost of another person's well-being.  A serious offense a bad conscience makes one insecure.  This is the voice to listen to, the criterion.  One should never make a "guess" gambling with another human being's life.
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Most stalemates in making a decision are due to a failure to see the issues.  The counselor's job is to face the counseled with himself and to face him with the reality of the issues standing before him.  Firstly he must understand that he is being tested and not just shabbily handled by an inimical or whimsical fate.  Secondly he must understand the relationship between the choice he makes and the unfoldment of the potentialities of his being.

Lift him to the awareness of his real being in eternity; if you're able to flash on his real being he will see himself through your being.  Let him perceive and mark one by one the attributes of his higher being those that will come into operation and manifestation and the defects that would be intensified.  Follow the possible path ways that the decision confronting him could or would produce.  Figure out one decision and figure out a second decision and figure out a third decision and so on until the full scope of what lies before him becomes more clear.  Applying this method you will set him to work in that exercise of self-discovery, realization.  This will benefit him infinitely more than tendering advice.  
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The counseled may not find himself at the crossroads between decisions, but simply have no idea as to what to undertake.  One has every right to feel that surely there must be some guidance at hand by those who are endowed with more insight as to the purpose of life.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan gave certain guidelines: The purpose is like the horizon, the further one advances, the further it recedes.  However, the first purpose one is able to grasp is accomplishment even though one may fully intuit its futility as seen, as one advances in realization, since realization seems more important than all one does.  However, it becomes clear that realization is gained in the course of accomplishment because in order to meet the challenge of the imperfection of outer circumstances one must put one's potential into operation, thereby discovering one's eternal being which one might seek in meditation but fail fully to perceive and apprehend without the challenge and abrasion of outer circumstances.  If one seeks to return to the state in which one was at the beginning of time, accomplishment does not seem to make sense, but if one realizes that something is attained by incorporating the archetypes of being into the personality and the body which will then be carried over into post eternity by resurrection. 
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One clearly sees that manifestation makes reality more real.

There is a. complimentary orientation of meditation to the quest for the absolute illuminating consciousness from on high while enriching the material life with the bounty drawn from that illumination.  This should lift many a stumbling block, keeping new age people from entering the arena on the ground of contempt for accomplishment.  Ultimately it is this realization that is gained from it when Jamshed's kingdom is fallen in the dust of oblivion lost in the tides of time.  It doesn't matter "what" is accomplished it matters how one deals with all the phases that one participates in, in the course of the accomplishment, for here lies the food of realization.  It is important that one should have it under control and use it for meditation upon the descent of the divine attributes through one to meet problems as they arise.



Meditation And Psychedelics
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Murshid Sam Lewis once said,

 "The drug culture is connected with the minor mysteries--the major mysteries are yet to come."

There is no telling how widespread the impact of the "holy herb" in all its variations has been in the cultural trend in our time.  No doubt is has led to a search for further dimensions of awareness.  Many have felt that it has yielded its harvest and we are now heading for a yet more momentous break-through into the extension of human perception and grasp into vaster perspective by sheer dint of the human faculties unaided, heralded by the growing interest in meditation and extrasensory perception.  Admittedly, many would have had no idea what meditation is about but for having been traumatically thrown out of focus by succumbing to the curiosity of sharing a joint at a party.  Consequently, the incessantly reiterated question asked me: "What is the difference in the experience ?"
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New age men and women are the spearheads of the foreword thrust of the evolution of the entire planet as it launches by leaps and bounds into new horizons of awareness and may even recklessly storm across the barriers, propelled by the impinging urge of the entire planet to see beyond and ever beyond.  This is of course the objective pursued since time immemorial by the ascetics and saviors of all religious backgrounds, but these are always concerned with protecting aspirants against being shattered or burned by being exposed to the overwhelming force of the experience of that which one cannot encompass, should one lift the veil of maya too suddenly.  And consequently they apply the more natural though laborious methods of meditation to lift the veil gradually and methodically.  For one has to be able to enlarge experience gradually increasing the pupil's capacity to assimilate it, avoiding disturbing psychic indigestion which might manifest itself in confusion.  It is pointed out that fasting, breathing practices, Yoga postures, promoting the shift of the setting of the autonomous nervous system from the catabolic towards the anabolic, exude mind-expanding secretions, switching the focus of consciousness into fields of 
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subliminal awareness sometimes vaguely recollected in dreams and not unlike the drug.

These do release prenatal memories consigned to the deep strata of the unconscious which are then super-imposed upon physical perception or even upon the conscious memory of phenomena even as a perfume might conjure the memory of a person and even to some a whole meta-physical construction indeed, a narcotic was administered to the mystics at Eleusis and the neophytes in the Egyptian mysteries in order to help recall the memory of primordial states restricted to the Magi in Persia under the word Haoma and used ritually by the mayan cults and some American Indians in order to "open" the mind to overcome the blockage of the mind unable to accept the unfamiliar or reconcile the irreconciliables it is sometimes applied in psychotherapy to relieve a mind bind.
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The way reality appears to us depends upon the extent of our capacity to encompass it, (like the aperture of a camera through which the light of the object enters).  The traditional teacher calls this the degree of realization, which does become more and more encompassing as one progresses.  However, for a given aperture of the camera, one can, by shifting the tens, either enhance the detail of the foreground leaving the background blurred or throw the perspective into infinity at the cost of the foreground either seeing more and more of less and less or less and less of more and more: or again one could by trying to compress a wide horizon through a convex lens, either distort the extremities or the middle or one could focus oneself so as to take the reflection in a mirror to be reality.  And if one used a weird contraption, one might even show reality inside out or outside in or portray anti-matter together with matter, super-impose images from offset vantage points simultaneously be exposed to several dimensions of reality crisscrossing converging and diverging; one may indulge in abstractions, having forgotten what the abstractions were about, lose oneself in unreal numbers, having lost track whether the equation was reversed or upsided.

What chance does an average consciousness have or ordering these coherently without being overwhelmed and confused or burnt like Icarus who flew too near the sun?  
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No doubt what we ordinarily see of reality is only a limited projection or reflection of it.  The foreign agent acting like a lens, throws consciousness beyond the capacity of the mind as it is to encompass.  Like Alice in Wonderland's looking glass divesting her of the protection afforded by the usual perspectives in the hope that having now unlocked her mind, she would be able to see reality the right side up without the mirror.  Whether a mirror or a lens is interposed, clearly the distortion is due to the fact that when a crowded field has to pass through an aperture, (the limitation imposed by the narrowness of that aperture, which is the measure of our capacity) it is inversed.  But supposing now that your focus should be so thrown out of perspective, that instead of restricting the distinctiveness of your view at infinity, the now displaced aperture should throw the near-by into perspective so that you cannot reach it clearly, although you may think at the time that you do.  
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However, it must be pointed out that the after-effect of a heightening of sensitization is a lowering of the sensitized threshold, for which reason there is a tendency to resort to the sensitizer again and again.  Of course we do not know as yet how far this is compensated by the adaptability and training of the neurons thus challenged providing they are not subjected to overloading.

If meditation is the way of freedom, it teaches to make the body independent of all stimulants.
Through the drugs there is an enhancing of sensitivity so that the amount that is experienced is increased, and if we don't increase our capacity then we are trying to crowd this increased field, which may include several planes, into the same capacity.  The consequence is similar to what happens with a convex lens: the capacity is not as large as the scene, the rays cannot remain parallel, and therefore they are distorted.  
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The foreign agent has an action: (and that is obviously why it is taken) which imposes a stress which determines a focus according to the pilot's skill to cope with it.  The subject may be advanced enough to integrate the experience of everyday life in the wider dimension encountered or coordinate the wide perspectives into everyday living by readjusting his entire imago mundi, are you strong enough to look at reality in all dimensions, together with untold reflections and distortions simultaneously?

Otherwise he may find himself imprisoned within a certain perspective without being able to extricate himself from it.  He can but ,he does not know that he can, like the man who hung the whole night on the branch of a tree, not knowing that he was a few inches from the ground.  The very words "freaking out" imply limitation upon the freedom of the focus of consciousness: one cannot focus at will, otherwise he faces distortion due to the crowding in of impressions upon the encumbered space of a human consciousness which of necessity imposes limitation upon the limitless experience that cannot be countenanced in its multi-dimensional immensity by a finite mind.
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If, unable to experience physical objects superimposed with their magnetic fields and auras and causal archetypes and even the divine intention, we try to pack these into our narrow capacity as the beams of light are squeezed together by a convex lens, the image we would see, by its very compression, would not have the dimensions of the original, just as the focalized image of a convex lens is not situated where the object is; that is why it is called an image.

It is the disproportion between the capacity and the loading that forces consciousness to function as a lens, so that what one sees is an image of that multi-dimensional bounty of reality one is unable to encompass.  

If you are practicing carrying weights, you soon notice your limits beyond which there is overloading, because you are building up your capacity by your own efforts.  But the psychedelic imposes its stress; who knows how to apportion it?  Mahadeva Shiva is said to have increased his portion of snake venom daily, thus increasing his capacity to cope with what it did to him.  The overloading is due to resorting to the action of a foreign agent instead of growing a wider span by one's own efforts unaided.  It is this overloading which makes the experience that of an image instead of reality.

The image in Alice's mirror looked so much more like what our intuition tells us that reality must look like than the ordinary scene of maya, that one would be inclined to try and seize it behind the mirror, only to discover that one is looking at it the wrong way in and that to reach reality, one has to pass back through the mirror the other way.  That is meditation.
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Forever and ever we are one we are gone.



The Relationship of Love
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A whole life is not too much for a flash of heavenly perfection on earth.  Many a lifetime of suffering has been offered by the world's greatest lovers.

We are so perplexed by that mysterious thing called love.  It need not be restricted to the romantic feeling that draws one to the ideal life partner, or idyllic Beatrice or Apollo figure, it may be just a wonderful person, or the master who inspires one to unearthly joy.  Love experienced in the human being seems to be the self-same force that stirs inorganic matter to form a crystal or the sap in the plant to focalize its untiring flow in the flower, or causes the planets to gyrate and trace the inextricable orbits of their choreography in a desperate effort to approach the sun in the measure that their mass allows.  

If we could only hearken to the sound they produce in their anguish to fuse into their luminary as they are weighed down by their density, we would hear that cosmic paean of joy and sorrow called the music of ,the spheres that echoes the high mass in the heavens.  Do you remember being born of that mass as an expression of glorification, out of the effort of an angel to express his emotion of glorification?  From here a draught of love is carried down to the physical plane.

Every atom, every aggregate of the universe is seeking its ideal and every encounter between one being and another releases a spectrum of the divine perfection in that palace of mirrors composed of the minds of men.  Imagine all that has gone into the formation of a human being. 
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All the factors that have interfused and intertwined from all corners of the physical and heavenly latitudes of the universe, suddenly confronted with another like formation.  If an encounter is traumatic it is because all life is the unfurling of dormant qualities by the discovery of their like in another.  Having found in another some esteemed quality, one carries that being in one's being to the extent that one discovers oneself as a polarized unit.

As a selfless love between two human beings tends to draw all beings into its compass, as the love for one's being ignites love in another, one discovers oneself eventually as a composite being and counterwise the completion through another of their particular brand in one's own idiosyncrasies.  Hence, the desperate need to see the one in whom one recognizes oneself until such a time as one is able to contemplate the model of which one is the image.  Man in search of his soul!

Human love reaches its apotheosis in divine love.  Having espied in another some esteemed quality one carries that being in one's being, one finds the loved one inside reachable in one's unconscious to the extent that one experiences oneself as a polarized unit.  
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As a selfless love between two human beings will always tend to draw all beings into its compass, one experiences all beings within one's being until one realizes that it is God who experiences all beings through one.  

"The fragments of the Universe seeking each other." 
Teilhard de Chardin
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If it were not for one's displacing one's center by flowing into another oneself thereby discovering the interdependence and interpenetration of all beings co-extensive with each other as with the totality one might easily become a monster of self-centeredness and self-sufficiency.  Therefore, love raises us above our egos once we have been ground by it.  At every touch of beauty we are spurred to spot in the imponderable superstructure of our being the eternal face, yet at the thought of our earthly self it falls out of focus.  Once one has tasted of that vision one has an unquenchable nostalgia for it because it is the image of God particularized in one's soul.  Should one meet a being in whom one recognizes this image one prefigures that great moment in the elliptic curve of one's life situated by the Zoroastrians at the aftermath of death: "I walk towards my image and that one walks into my being." (Manichean text).
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"I am the one I love and that one is me ... far from me the thought of two." 
Al-Hallaj
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We may catch ourselves in these musings when the censorship of the mind is off-guard.  No wonder the idealists among us are vulnerable to the sting of love and the mystics of divine ecstasy.  Yet little do we know most of the time that what we think is happening to us is the way we experience divine love throw our individuality.  This we discover every time we catch a glance of that which we love in the beloved one instead of attributing it to his or her person.  The Sufis call it that which manifests through the manifested.  We listen to the Divine music, but do we ever flash on the Divine musician?
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In order for that Divine quality which is love to become a reality there has to be the polarization between lover and beloved: God makes us his beloved and in turn we make him into our beloved, the one we think we love in fellow creatures is the re-echo of the love whereby He created us as the ones in whom His love might manifest, departing from the solitude of His unity into the enchantment of we and Thou.

"It is God who is the one loved in every loved one and it is He who loves through each lover the infinite reflections of the attributes of the attributes of His perfection." 
Ibn L'Arabi

We are all caught up in the Divine inebriation, the ecstasy of the beauty, the eternal models of all things, the delight of love in all created beings.  Therefore it is rare that one can experience Divine love unless one has experienced human love.  Sometimes, as in the case of Rabia Al Adawiya, the Sufi woman mystic, one has to choose between the two, which causes her to gloss upon the words of the Qur'an: "I (God) choose you for me."
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The exclusiveness of the ascetic way (Brahmacharya) advocated for those who shun the world in order to reach liberation from the human condition will in the new age', be reversed by walking together in completeness by the complimentarity of both partners in spiritual life in order to make Divine love a reality, thereby, fulfilling our purpose of being a human being.  There are, of course, those loners who are directed to follow the path of loneness, it may be a phase one has to go through.  
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Can human love stand in the way of Divine love?  Of course, yes, if the personal vector has not been sublimated or transcended.  Sometimes one has to lose one's love in order to find it. The friction of two wills squeezed close together by the force of love, the merging of two beings into one often segregates itself from the greater unity and even the Divine dimension that inspired their love, even as the human ego can alienate itself from its Divine ground and finally challenge the Divine will.. Furthermore, the friction of the two wills compressed close together by the lure of love may stifle the development of one or more of the partners, preventing him or her from receiving fresh leases of Divine mana the dispensation of further attributes which always results from relationship with the Divine dimension of our being.

"Let the wind of the spirit blow between your shores.  The great oaks in the forest do not grow in each other's shade." 
Kahlil Gibran
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For a love to grow through the tests of everyday living one must respect that zone of privacy where one retires inside, or relates mutually inside instead of outside.  
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It all starts as we well know by that moment of enchantment where every fiber of one's being has been stirred by another being in the mirage of self-discovery.  

"O Thou wouldst not be searching for me if thou hadst not already found me." (Pascal).

Of course the person you are seeking for is already inside you, but the very emotion triggered off by the encounter is so creative because it shatters and dynamizes the quest for values long since thrown into oblivion.  You are milled and battered, drained, exasperated, turned inside out.  There is nothing more grueling and at the same time so transfiguring as love, until you have sublimated it at all levels you will be buffeted, milled and bettered, drained and-exasperated by all those unbearably intense emotions and at the same time ravished, euphorized, enchanted and inspired.  The reason for this is because at first it is all wonderful and romantic, the whole town seems to be painted fresh.  The whole world is transfigured and there is sunshine everywhere . . . one feels like dancing.
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Presently comes the first test: one begins to discover the human person.  One hadn't realized that one had been flashing upon the real eternal self of the person because love raises consciousness to the eternal spheres, but the pressure of everyday reality forces consciousness down to earth with a vengeance.  And then one begins to wonder whether one had perhaps been mistaken and the idealized, the person whose real self is the one one now criticizes.  

This is the critical stage: it is judgment that transforms the I-Thou relationship where one isolates oneself in the seat of the earthly judge creating an abyss between oneself and the other oneself who is not another.  Love dies with criticism.  No doubt if love is the all-involving power it is, it enlists all the human vectors including the ego: in fact, it plays havoc with the ego.  There is first the satisfaction or pride at being loved by that wonderful person but it is soon compensated by the fear of not being worthy of his or her love.  
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Again judgment.  This time self-judgment.  Then one is drawn into the dread of losing the person one loves as he or she becomes more critical one loses more and more self-confidence and tries to be on one's best behavior, dreading that one might eventually be found out for what one is, which is of course what must inevitably happen.  This is where love would run the risk of becoming a frantic ego-trip if it were not for the fact that one tires of showing off, and anyway, cannot keep it up very long.  

The trouble is that the game takes place entirely on the ego level, swelling and at the same time shattering the ego, creating one by the effort of surpassing one's common measure and destroying one by making one lose one's self-confidence, whereas the Divine operation within one annihilates one's reliance on the ego by giving one confidence in the unlimited dimensions of one's being.  Whereas when faced with criticism of the loved one the ego is on the defensive, which strengthens its inveterate cussedness.  Aggression being the best form of defense, one turns the tables on the loved attacker by criticizing him or her and so both are involved in the inextricable vicious circle.
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There is only one way out: Remember, it is the height of selfishness to love a person because they're a wonderful person and as bad for the ego of the person thus loved as for the ego of the person who thus loves.  Of course love starts with the glorification of the attributes one sees through the person, but as it deepens it extends to the frail instrument that makes these transpire.  Love is not just receiving but giving.  It is creative of the personality of the person loved by helping one to be what one is.  If love does not serve a purpose it will die of its own redundancy.  The real love is where one loves a person for his endearing defects (and even unendearing) and if one cannot do that, one does not really know how to love humanly.  In this sense, it is easier to love God than man.
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For love to find completion in human beings by entering the dense strata of the earth and transfiguring us, it has to extend to the breadth of compassion: the creativeness of love makes the mistress become the mother, the lover, the father.  God's love manifests itself by an act of compassion: freeing souls from the solitude of unknowing into manifestation, having mercy upon those who suffer as a result of their incarnation by revealing the way of freedom.  One must never confuse compassion with pity where there is judgment and sanctimony.  In its creativity, love becomes selfless.  By being possessive, one kills the love of one's partner unless he or she is of a slavish disposition.  On the other hand, the selfless person runs the risk of finding his self-sacrifice taken advantage of by the ruthless.
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Love cannot grow if it remains stagnant, and for it to survive it has to gain higher zones of the beings involved in its enchantment.  It is an extraordinary achievement for two wills to be able to synchronize and harmonize in a durable way while leaving room for individual freedom, which means giving up loving the way one used to in order to relove again in a completely new way.  It means destroying the image one had made of the loved one for a more real one.  This does not mean assessing the person at the personality level, but simply passing from the idyllic envisioning of the qualities that he unleashed in one's soul to a more authentic appraisal of his or her being in all its dimensions.  
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It is like passing, as a youth does, from the allegorical state to the mythical, peering into the collective unconscious to glean meaning instead of projecting one's own ideas upon a person one assesses under the light one has projected upon him.  In so doing, one runs the risk of losing one's love which one is bound to lose some time or other anyway if it is based on an illusion, or finding it, this time made golden and having gained a solidity it never had before: losing one's love in order to find it, This is where a further dimension comes into one's love which seems to represent a tendency in the opposite direction: Unattachment-Detachment.

There is something of the hermit and something of the knight in each and every sensitive person.  The detachment of the hermit gives freedom of action to the knight in us, which offsets the stalemate in which life can paralyze one in its grip.  One is called upon to be prepared to accept that the one whom one thought loved one does not really love one, or has ceased to love one whether this is so or not: 
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accept the unacceptable.  

It is the satisfaction of being loved that one has to give up, for this inner independence is the saving grace that will relieve the one who loves one from the unbearable encumbrance of having to love one because one depends upon it.  And then both can love again in splendid freedom.  You no more depend upon the love of the other person for your joy, but you give love.  It must, however, be borne in mind that love is a grace, it is a gift of God that one should be placed in the custody of that person.  It is also a test, and if one is not up to coping with handling this delicate instrument, puts it out of tune or causes damage to its fragile chords, it is clear that one was biting off more than one could chew.  There is a cosmic law that one cannot hold that which one does not enrich by one's being, except by violence.
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Many retire in themselves thus resisting being the object of one's usurpation or desperately trying to get away which leaves pangs of frustration.  This is where a love relationship is a tremendous challenge to one's understanding, and spurs one on to greater understanding.  In every heart to heart conversation one hands oneself in confidence into the hands of the person in whom one life confided and loves the ability to open one's heart unreservedly to another which includes being able to lay bare one's emotions.  

If there is the slightest feeling that there is something of which one cannot speak, exchange, talk over one's love is not total.  If there should be a person in the world to whom one can open one's heart, it must be one's loved one.  And if this is not so, it is a matter that must be straightened out if one wishes to live a real love relationship for the slightest cleft will grow surely enough and eventually form a gulf.  When one finds oneself out of step it may seem that one has gone too long a way in one's own azimuth to be able to retrace one's steps.  Never allow the slightest grudge or hurt to go past unheeded.  
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Talk it over right away.  If he or she has slighted you, do not think I would rather not upset him or cause a row, make a mountain out of a molehill.  He may not have meant it or even noticed it, and your relationship will suffer much more from your being emotionally bottled up, hung up on recriminations than by bringing matters to a head.  This is where one has to learn to apply detachment, because if it involves one emotionally it will rouse one's partner in the same vein, so one has to practice pointing it out dispassionately.  

For example, you can say, don't you realize how painful it can be for me?  Did you really wish to cause me pain?  You are not attacking or criticizing him and if he loves you he cannot fail to say darling, I'm sorry I never saw it that way.  Or: You know you hurt me the other day.  Then it is over.  'One often kills the one lone loves.' One wonders by what perverse twist the ego tends to depreciate a person to maintain him or her in one's hold.  Yet when faced with it, no person will admit to willful cruelty and if the person's love is failing then inevitably the relationship is out.
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People in the new age are ceasing to try to maintain loveless relationships.  One of the gravest causes for failure in a relationship arises where love has not been allowed to gain the spiritual zones of the persons involved.  Both partners may be so engrossed in the daily chores shopping, baby sitting, the job, cleaning, etc., that there is no room in the relationship for communion at the spiritual level.  
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A relationship can only grow by involving the beings in it in wider and vaster dimensions of their being, and becomes stale in routine and familiarity.  

What had drawn one to the person in the beginning was feeling high through mutual contact, then one came closer together and if you behold a picture from too close you cannot see it properly any longer.  The spell of the early days can only be continued by inspiring one's partner by one's continual discovery of vaster fields of spiritual delight: Spiritual ecstasy -- the greatest treasure there is.  

"It is God whom every lover loves in every beloved."
 Ibn 'Arabi
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Love is being high in the presence of the loved one.  The lover looks for the presence of the beloved to make him high, yet when weighed down by the beloved's personality he feels depressed and the love relationship becomes a prison and he tends to seek the precious gift of ecstasy in another because he may suffer a terrible loneliness in his soul with the very one he loves, but which love he has not fulfilled.  Actually ecstasy is always bewonderment of the Divine dimension appearing in the beloved, consequently his personality may be standing in the way of your love for him.  Therefore it is wonderful for a couple to give time in their busy lives to relate with one another spiritually by exchanging their ideals in conversation and by meditating together.  
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Admittedly there is always some discrepancy in the spiritual status and also the spiritual idiosyncrasies of the partners.  It is sometimes good for each to meditate alone to re-establish the vertical relationship with God.  But if both can strengthen and complete their relationship by and in the horizontal relationship-love sublime--and it is to this ideal that all evolved persons tend.  In addition to acting creatively upon the partner the love relationship also fosters the coordination and eventually the merging of the two into one being which is the first step in that process of convergence where all beings merge in point Omega.
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The opposite is equally true: out of the original- unity of being there is a fragmentation and dispersal of beings, the last stage being the splitting of one soul into two.  And consequently love is the search by each half for the other half, on earth or in heaven. search that can become desperate and really painful.  There is a second kind of affinity: not only our bodies, but our souls also have parents.  Thus the children of the same soul parents will experience a compelling feeling of affinity.  These might be called brother or sister souls and then there are also cousin souls and souls originating from the same village or community or landscape.  

As twin souls are so alike to start with it seems necessary for them to go their different ways before they can complete one another.  Identity and complementarity are the two driving forces and axes of love.  The more human the person, the more complementarity is sought after in love, the more angelic, the more identity.  For the complete being there must be a blending of the two.  It is therefore in order to develop complementarity that twin souls may be prevented by the powers that be from meeting until they are ready for each other, 
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  and also why if they do meet, it may be so difficult for them to live together.

Then the Divine planning often makes the outer circumstances an obstacle causing them by the very frustration they are subjected to contrasting with the desperate longing to be together, to evolve in consonance by finding their polarity on earth.  Contrariwise, if the angelic consciousness becomes covered over by ego consciousness, which happens in the course of the rat race of life, one becomes alienated from one's original condition and then the law of affinity does not apply any longer, in which case one would not even recognize one's twin soul if one met him or her, and the planning generally prevents one from meeting at all.  The feeling of having known and loved a person in a previous incarnation is quite strong but that of having known and loved a person in heaven is stronger still.  The hunch of having merged together over a period of incarnations interrupted by heavenly sojourns together is overwhelmingly strong: These are soul mates.  
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But the discovery of belonging to each other from all eternity is so devastatingly compelling that it shatters the sense of identity and upsets everything on the way and can cause tremendous suffering to both and many others.  These are twin souls.  If they are able to meet one another on the higher planes that is their salvation because it completes their love in higher dimensions.  These rare forms of relationship generally happen when one has given up every hope of finding him or her.  But remember it is a gift carrying with it the tremendous responsibility of being able to face up to the greatest challenge to which any two human beings could be subjected and whereby they are graced.  
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Relationship is placing one's heart and soul in the hands of another and taking charge of another in one's soul and in one's heart, and in the case of-the love relationship even bodily.  It is the highest trust and reaches its fullness in friendship, which is the extension of love beyond the specific couple relationship.  In the case of that particularly transcendental relationship that is the Guru-chela or Murshid-mureed relationship, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan said, "I place my soul like a fragile crystal in the hands of my mureeds." 
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At the slightest discord or grievance most fall into the temptation of entrusting their grudge to another at the cost of the sacred trust one has undertaken in friendship or in the love relationship.  In betraying the confidence of the other one has thrown the crystal shattering it on the ground, One has spoken critically of a loved one or friend to another, the trust is broken!  We have done violence to the most sacred thing in the world: The confidential trust linking two people by that invisible thread Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan calls the bridge uniting God in one person to God in the other.  And once one has betrayed one's love or one's friend, he or she inevitably feels it: there is estrangement--it cannot possibly be the same any longer.  Do we know how much harm and pain we cause another person by blotting his Name?  One can irresponsibly ruin a person's life.  People are doing it all the time--even about the people they are related to in that special relationship called love.  
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One may retort: "Well, of course my friend or love has this quality and this defect and when another tells me about these, I have to be frank.  Besides, should I take the defense of the absent friend the friend who criticizes him will say that I am not objective." There is one way out: Make a rule: you are an initiate--you have taken a vow never to criticize anyone under any circumstances, so you are bound by your rule.  

By so doing you will have freed yourself from the painful situation in which people will try to maneuver you for whatever their ends are.  Of course your friend or mate is by duty bound to clear things with you.  "Did you do that?  How do you explain it?" You owe them the chance of an explanation instead of complaining about them behind their backs.  If they take offense at your frankness they are not yet ready for your trust or friendship which means that the friendship had not reached its completion between you.
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The love relationship on earth reaches its fullness when one incorporates into one's love the glorification in the heavens so that it is part of the cosmic high mass wherein all beings celebrate the Divine Glory by creating the expression of their worship in beings as a model on which all created beings are molded.  If you can recall the memory of being created out of this cosmic act of glory you will unleash by the creative power of your glorification of God in that person all the beauty of which he or she is born.  If you remember having been created by a being in the beginning you can understand how one can create another by one's glorification, which is the greatest love there is.  So you are the guru of your loved one and your lover is your guru in that you have discovered God to be each and both of you in manifold oneness.


The Meeting of the Ways
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"Man only progresses by slowly elaborating from age to age the essence and the totality of a universe deposited within him... in order to culminate in man at the stage of reflection, life must have been preparing a whole group of factors for a long time and simultaneously -- though nothing at first sight could have given grounds for supposing that they would be linked together 'providentially.' "Evolution is gaining the psychic zones of the world ... life, being an ascent of consciousness, could not continue to advance indefinitely along its line without transforming itself in depth... the being who is the object of his own reflection, in consequence of that very doubling back upon himself, becomes in a flash able to raise himself to a new sphere.

"However immense the sphere of the world may be, it only exists and is finally perceptible in the direction in which its radii meet ... the more immense this sphere, the richer and deeper and hence the more conscious is the point at which the 'volume of being' that it embraces is concentrated . . . consequently, to think it, undergo it, and make it act, it is beyond our souls that we must look . . . it is by definition in Omega that--in its flower and its integrity--the quota of consciousness liberated little by little on earth by noogenesis adds itself together and accumulates." Pere Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man.
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Here we have the entire picture of the phenomenon of the transformation of the universe into man and man's fulfillment of himself by contributing to the hyperpersonal pool the very realization that he could only have attained by fertilizing the fragment of the universe into (body and mind) in his temporary custody molded and refined by the entire universe, by the flashes of understanding showered upon him by that very same pool as it moves from Alpha to Omega.  In other words, for man to move beyond the stage at which he concentrates the universe into himself.  He must himself converge upon the center of centers--Dhat.  

It is the intuition of this which has spurred terrestrial beings, minerals, plants, animals and man, to whom was entrusted the glow of awareness which at first buried under the physical structure, has been gradually emerging to progress towards some unknown fulfillment dimly anticipated as the state of illumination.  And it is this self-same intuition which has urged men since time immemorial to seek a communication with that center of centers they call God and integrate themselves with it or into it.  Hence the feeling of losing oneself to oneself in order to find oneself in God.  Or assume a passive attitude whereby one invites or facilitates the integrating transforming action of the center upon oneself.  This is why religion and-meditation have played the part they have in the lives of the teeming millions, including the world's great minds.
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An inflow of the universe in us.  No wonder then that if we probe deeply enough the various religious approaches to this experience of spiritual integration, besides the numerous schools or methods of meditation handed down to us by the many-sided initiatic tradition of the world, we shall witness how amazingly they complement each other.  It is as though, by dint of trial and error, in different spots of the planer in the course of history, every possible type of procedure has been experimented and carefully worked out.  And we in our time are the lucky heirs to all this precious know-how, thanks to the extensive bounty of mass communication in our age.

What use are we making of it?  Many enclose themselves in one approach.  No doubt this is less confusing than mixing up several methods without grasping their interrelationship.  Yet as evolution advances in man his soul. becomes all-embracing, and if we are the citizens of the world, overcoming parochial sectarianism, then we are the heirs of the entire spiritual realization of the planet.  For the more it unfolds its many-splendored richness, the more it centers itself upon itself: from the one it originated and toward the one it moves.
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KABALA:	The Yoga of the west, provides one with an index card system of symbols giving one clues to the level of consciousness at which one is focused--the topography of the planes of being--so that one may orient oneself accordingly.  A way of approaching Kabala is to investigate to what state of realization in life are brought the abstract principles represented by the Sephiroth of the inverted tree of life.

One can rise to Yesod by thinking of the body as part of the fabric of the planet, rise to Hod by giving up the image of the self and reach Netsach by abandoning the mind to its own devices, and reach Tiphereth by emotional sublimation, giving up the notion of self and reach Geburah by abandoning the notion of contingency or entities and reach Chesed by overcoming Karma by love and reach Bina by giving up actuity and reach Chokma. by realizing that the causes of all events are intended to conceal reality and one reaches Kether in the consternation of intelligence in the noughting of unity one reaches Ain Soph by ceasing to be.
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The consciousness of most people functions at four levels simultaneously--the level of physical reality: Malkuth, the level of form: Yesod, the level of thought or mental activity: Hod, the level of emotion: Netsach.

On each of the corresponding planes, reality manifests in a specific way gifted with a particular quality of realness: for some only the tangible is considered real.  For the artist, form has a reality of its own independent of substance; for the contemplative there is a plane inhabited by beings endowed with an outline yet without the solid texture we ascribe to matter. (this is the etheric plane.  The field of energy of our being belongs to this sphere.  Prana Mayakosha).  Seen philosophically, thoughts have a reality independent of the thinker, who simply grasps variants out of the plane eidos.

The creativity of the contemplative is his ability to project archetypes.  This is the plane of the mind; the Sufi calls it the Djinn plane, and humans function more intensely at this level than at the physical level, while etheric consciousness is mostly thrown out of focus, as its activities are generally taken care of by the unconscious.  
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Little do most people realize the part played by the emotional lining behind all thought.  The Yogi refers to the Kamamayakosh: the body of joy.  This is the "Netzach" of Kabala.  In its extreme it is a participation in cosmic ecstasy in all of its many moods going from despair to serenity passing through joviality and jubilation and beatitude.  The artist or highly sensitive person raises consciousness to cosmic emotion experiencing vast symphony of emotion.

The Sufis may provoke the initiation of Madhzubiat in which they are totally transfigured by the ecstasy of the divine touch. 
Hal
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The initiate may be sufficiently advanced to pass over the threshold into the plane corresponding to the cosmic superstructures of the individual.  The corresponding realization is at the cost of a drastic test: only through the disintegration of the notion of the personal ego center is it possible to become aware of the cosmic dimensions of being; here one is at the critical point of conversion between divine perfection and human limitation if one wishes to pass upwards the ego must be placed on the altar of the holocaust and entirely annihilated, integrated into a higher dimension of reality. 

This can be done either by unmasking the ego and realizing that it is indeed the self, the only and ultimate self, appearing as one of an infinite number of pinpointed focalized centers of ego, or by subjecting it to or surrendering to the divine will.  The shattering of the ego is always a painful process whether brought about by the circumstances of life or by the nostalgia and yearning of the mystic to experience resurrection from earthly bondage through annihilation in an act of love for the divine.  There is a natural drive in man spurring him toward perfection however great the cost.
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To promote resurrection by accepting death -- disintegration of all that is perishable.  Here is the tabernacle where the cosmic sacrifice is incarnated.  God into man -- humanity into divinity.  The meaning of the mass and all ritual of all religion.  The result of initiation the adept becomes impersonal, Tathagatha; the one who has become "that".  
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At one increment higher the contemplative grasps laws behind phenomena, the interrelationships between events that escape the scrutiny of the mind, the concordance between what has been happening to him and the way he has unfolded through happenings and the way the run of events was determined by the change in his being.  

One is consternated by the irrevocability and mercilessness of the law; this is the sephire of Din or Geburah: severity corresponding to our straight jacket karmic structure -- the Egyptian "Ka" which can only be transfigured by the realization reached at the next level.  Chesed or Gedula: love warmed to compassion or generosity or munificence magnanimity, the plane from whence all the beauty of divine attributes emanates, the causal plane, the seeds God creates out of generosity; Rahmaniyat the level of the lord in patched robes, the lord in the burning palace, the being who has attained the real sovereignty of the soul without having to assert his power by force or coercion, but by love.  The king with the crown of thorns and scepter of reed, Jupiter rather than mars.  According to the tradition, we are endowed with a body composed of the nature of this plane -- the corresponding beings are called angels of mercy:  Elohim.
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At the next level the contemplative grasps the reason behind the trend of things, the reason of the reason of the reason, the programming concealed behind the archetypes of causality, beyond the grasp of the mind.  The Sephira: Bina, knowledge through higher consciousness and understanding.  A switch of focus of Consciousness one increment higher lifts one to Chokma, a yet higher understanding because it is beyond even the loftiest metaphysical contemplation, the knowledge of the-divine intention behind all planning and all happenings.  The understanding termed "Panna," (transcendental knowledge) by the Buddha referred to in the Brihadaranhyaka Upanishad; 
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"By what mode of knowledge can the one know itself?" or as Al-Hallaj put it, "But how does whatever quits the essence know the essence 0 you who are removed from the essence by the abyss of time?"

Hence the final science (the intuitive grasp of the divine intention) which gives us at the very moment of its realization the simple understanding of the real relations between perishable things the divine allocations, linking us constantly beyond the network of events to the intention of God by participation in the life of his essence.  It does not seem possible to reach beyond this yet there is a vantage point where multiplicity disappears out of the focus of awareness, the Isa Upanishad says: "you experience yourself as all things arid all beings." "The oneness circulates in the multiplicity of I's." This is the vantage point of Kether: the crown.  Beyond it lies the non-manifest, the unknown; Ain Soph.  Wrapped in the mystery of nonbeing.  
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Many attempts have been made to find a parallel between the Sephiroth and the chakras.  Certain comparisons seem to tally --

Kether:		Sahasrara, 
Chokma: 	Ajna, 
Bina: 		Vishuda, 
Chesed: 	Anahata,
Tiphereth:	Manipura, 

but where can we assign Had and Netsach?  How about the mysterious Daath?  Each system has its idiosyncrasies.  We would lose ourselves in speculation by succumbing to the temptation of mental curiosity of limiting specific experiences to water-tight systems.  The practices of the Kaballist consist in discovering the key enabling one to enter the paths leading from one Sephira to another the Jacob's ladder may be climbed zig-zag as illustrated: This is the way of Ida and Pingala of Kundalini , crisscrossed like the caduceus of Mercury.  One may of course try the direct path: Malakuth, Yesod, Tiphereth, Kether bypassing mental constructions, emotions, compassion, understanding and wisdom, losing oneself in unity.  But one would be missing the breadth of reality enclosing oneself in an ivory tower of abstraction.
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Modern man has a great need for the concrete, the practical, the workable.  How can we reconcile the different techniques of meditation we have encountered along the precipitous road we have been following together so Far?

We have learned to differentiate two pleases in meditation: one moving out of everyday life into a beyond, the other looking down upon concrete reality from an elevated and therefore wider embracing vantage point.  The first phase requires the dissolution of the focal center of personal consciousness so that cosmic consciousness may act unfragmented by the galaxies of foci of individual consciousness.  

Should the last vestige of individuation of consciousness be wiped away, the experience of cosmic consciousness cannot be communicated to personal awareness at the moment of recovery of everyday consciousness.  Therefore the methods applied aim at reducing the at any race relative autonomy of the personal center by integrating it more and more with its ground and training oneself to maintain an Ariadnean thread of continuity between the various levels of consciousness: something like introducing consciousness into sleep and grasping that one is the same person, yet how different!

For various reasons (climatic? national genius?) the first phase seems to have been particularly intensely investigated by the Hindus and Buddhists.
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Having discovered that personal center is built out of the convergence of the nerves of the body upon themselves, upon which the superstructure of the mind rests, the early searchings of the Samkhya school dissolve it by identifying the self with that vector in man that is imperishable, differentiating it from that which is perishable.  Namely body and mind.

In their early searchings the sanyasins of the Samkhya schools discovered that one could free consciousness from the conditioning of perception and conception by clearly discriminating between those aspects of oneself that are perishable: Prakriti, including body, mind and even personal consciousness of the same, from that vector that is imperishable: Purusha, spirit, which is impersonal or rather superpersonal.

The techniques were alter greatly perfected and refined by the Yoga schools, whose best known exponent Patanjali outlines the stages.  First, numerous preparations: restraints (yama), nonviolence, continence, equanimity, truthfulness, consistency, noncovetousness; and disciplines: cleanliness, (physical and mental), asceticism, learning.

Then the impotence of the impersonal sense of immobility, contrasting with and opposed to the personal sense of mobility which, by being inculcated in the body, spreads to the mind, hence the efficacy of "Asan", stance, and the more subtle "mudra" posture.  The role of breath, "pranayama", switching the attunement of the body and hence the mind from the catabolic to the anabolic setting, to the point of catalepsy.
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Now the cessation of mental activity and consequently agitation by casting the entire thrust of the dynamism of the mind upon a point, "egagrata," then, as a next step, concentration (dharana) upon a structure or composite image.  It is a lesson in selectivity, a matter of cutting out every impression or thought association other than the given representation.  An elementary form of concentration may consist in looking at an object, then closing the eyes and reproducing the image on the screen of the mind.  Deeper scrutiny of the object will reveal further detail of structure or color or relief, the interrelationship between the parts and the whole, even structures within structures.
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At a further stage, one uses the creativity of the imagination without an immediate (tangible) model.  The purpose of this practice is to free oneself from the conditioning action of the physical perceptions upon the mind and the coercive action of the mind upon consciousness, maintaining it at the peripheral level of reality.

It has however the disadvantage of maintaining, possibly strengthening, the dichotomy between subject and object, i.e., consciousness focalized into a sense of I-ness contrasting with the "otherness" or "othersideness" of the universe as it appears from this vantage point.

To overcome this, one's consciousness extends from the apparent features to the "feeling" of the object.  Here the emotion of rapture of the encounter with the essential reality of the object, which now appears as a being, enters into account.  

This happens when something in oneself flows into the "being" and one reabsorbs something of the essence of the being into oneself.  The frontiers between "insideness" and "outsideness" have been removed.  One experiences one's body as commensurate with all bodies, one's mind with all minds, and so one's consciousness.  It starts by seeing like qualities in the object as in yourself, recognizing yourself in another yourself, but reaches a point where one displaces the center of one's consciousness into the vortex of the consciousness of the being contemplated.  

One experiences what it must be like to be that being: crystal, flower, person: how one looks from the angle of that being: and is reshaped by the creative image flowing into one.

No doubt the ability to decenter consciousness by interfusing with all beings has the advantage of destroying the exclusiveness and self-centeredness of the personal consciousness, which is the proposed aim we have in view. 
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But if I experience the conscious thoughts of a person I am only flashing on a very limited fraction of the totality of his being, and what is more, continually enrobing my experience with a whole network of mental associations leading my mind into untold and inextricable tangents.  This, in the extreme case where quite out of control, accounts for the thinking of the so-called pathological cases.  The aim of the "samadhi" techniques is to grasp reality in its nudity.  Furthermore, what we mean by a being or an object (crystal, flower, or man) is simply an artificially isolated cross-section of a growing process and therefore can give no idea of the reality of the process.  What is more, it is a pure view of the mind, and this is the kind of pseudo-reality we are living with every day which we take to be reality!

The training of Yoga, therefore, conducts the contemplative to the point called Sarvitarka Samadhi, where he does not stop at the intersection in time that affects the senses, adorning it with the emotional and judgmental values which our psyche projects upon it, but grasps the entire process of which the appearance of the being in time is an ephemeral stage.  One thinks dynamically instead of statically.
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If the ordinary mind fails to see the continuity, it is because of the narrowness of its capacity, so that it can only accommodate one scene after the other.  But there is a stratum of the mind subjacent or possibly ontologically prior to the ordinary mind which envisions the whole continuity of which the apparent being in time and space is simply a stage.  The layman visiting a factory, may see a number of detached parts in diverse stages of readiness or advancement, while the engineer can envision not only the intended car, but the entire process through which the molten ore was subjected, including all the details of processing,  and even the stress of the metals in given unforeseen emergencies.  

So your consciousness extends to your entire past including previous incarnations, and what in the ordinary setting of consciousness seemed your future now looks like a series of causal chains gently played upon by what seemed to be your free will , which now appears like the divine will acting within the limits of your understanding.  The same applies to the flash of intuition you are given about others when in that state.  In Sarvitarka samadhi one sees the continuity in change.  In respect of oneself, one no more identifies oneself with those changing idiosyncrasies we call me, but grasps oneself as the continuity behind the falling curve of transformation, in Nirvetarka samadhi, one does not have to shift memory to past episodes in their sequence but has a panoramic view showing the entire process in a simultaneous take: one has overcome becoming.  
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Having decentered consciousness this far, it is necessary to gear it to a higher octave.  The personal idiosyncrasies of a being and their unfoldment in time only represent one of his dimensions.  He is a person yet he is a gender, a legion, just as each animal in Noah's ark contained within himself the archetypes including the possible mutations within the whole species of which he was the specimen, just as every seed of a tree contains a whole forest.  Higher thinking, including higher mathematics, always passes from the particular to the general, from the contingent to the archetypal.  So in meditation.  Sarvikara samadhi consists in the grasp of the "tanmatra", infinitesimal nuclei of energy, actually the essence of all apparent reality: the archetype.


Hermeticism
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In its frequent references to contemplation, the Ars Regia of the hermetic tradition, vying with alchemy includes both the phase we called disincarnation and the reverse: incarnation.  Its aim is the transformation of the person rather than liberation from human nature.

By applying to man the selfsame methods used by nature in the slow incubation process of metals in the womb of the earth, it aims, at promoting the growth of man as a person.  But it discovered that to regenerate life one must first curb the effects of fossilization that set in the growth of a person.  Then when the person has reached the malleable, a new lease of factors are inculcated into the person and later consolidated.

The work in the first phase of dismantling the components of a person is comparable to Buddhism, granted that this first phase is followed by a second one: reshaping, regenerating, infusing greater richness.  The two phases; corresponding to the minor and major mysteries in Greece and Egypt, are coined Solve Et Coagule.

The opus or operation starts by unclutching the cynamic from the static principle of being, just as in Samkhya and the samadhis of yoga and Buddhist practice.  This is the most elementary operation of chemistry: separation: filtering: in the psyche, an action of the discriminating faculty of the mind.  
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Consciousness, likened to Mercury, is fixed in its support, the body.  One has to separate and free the conscious vector from the stilting influence of bodiness gradually and carefully lest the mercury vapors be lost.  Having extracted the quintessence of one's being from its petrifaction in the aggregate in which it is coagulated, the latter becomes highly ductile.  Alchemists say it is restored to its primal state of all possibility: the seed state.

Most times there are reliquae to which the person's ego consciousness clings and which have to be forced to release their grip on our being by more drastic methods than filtering: calcinatio-experiencing the death of that which is perishable in anticipation, and enjoying the dissolution of the aggregates of the personality that resist vaporization as a condition of affirming--the life of one's life that resuscitates life.  The result is the ability to envision oneself in the principle of one's being, precisely as in Yoga and Buddhism, by recalling in the unconscious memory a pre-individual state.  Indian alchemy requires the adept to retrace the genesis of each component that has come into the formation of what he seems to be at present: environment, education, parental heritage, previous incarnations, the inheritance of angelic beings, etc. until one is able to see oneself as the interfusion of all these, and more, besides being the incorporation of a transcendental principle: a particular blend of undefinable divine attributes.
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The collapse of the sense of individuality and even the awareness of the many-personed person that one discovers oneself to be skirts schizophrenia dangerously.  The understanding receives a traumatic shock and realizes its inability to make sense of one's life rationally.  Truly enough this is the dark night.  This can of course only be done if one believes beyond proof of the contrary that one is being tested, so that the test avers itself to be a grace.  Faith is here at stake: that there is an ultimate victory in the breakdown of human affairs and the dissolution of the image of the personality.  The important thing is to maintain the contents of consciousness by insuring that it accompanies all the phases of dissolution and regeneration, which means that every time that ones losses one's sense of identity as one component of one's being, one replaces it by identifying with a higher component.  Meditation is the practice that will assure this control Consciousness has to be carried over the period of change by recognizing oneself as being the same being: a continuity in change, like snow becoming water.
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1.	
One envisions oneself as a process instead of an entity.

2.	
At the second stage, the severing of the impersonal "I" from the personal has been secured.  The impersonal component, likened to ether by the alchemists, starts to affirm its "relative" autonomy.  At first it is like the flame passing from log to log, yet dependent upon the process of combustion for its maintenance.  At a further stage one envisions the supports of the flame of consciousness as being increasingly subtle: consciousness rising in the course of the forward thrust of evolution through the inorganic, organic, biological, psychic, and now emerging clearer beyond its scaffolding..... as it rises it gears earlier narrow focal centers into orbiting vaster ones and gradually becomes overall encompassing and cosmic. one acquires a mode of beings that no more rests upon bodiness and mindness.  The images of the mind the-mind's untiring phantasmagoria, are replaced by formless light, sheer splendor, a feeling of burning with an intense glow, rather than the unrelenting specter of shapes and forms.  One affirms the luminosity of one's spirit, as against the hallucinatory action of after-images, the play of maya.
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3.	
The dismantling process, typifying the minor mysteries, reaches its apogee when consciousness, disconnected from its physical and mental support, is carried into its ground: Cosmis consciousness.  There is no vestige of embodiment, in fact a feeling of estrangement from the earth, of spacelessness and timelessness.  One is aware of being pure spirit. which gives a sense of the immaculate, crystallized, diaphanous.  The basis of the ego consciousness having been slipped away from under one's feet, one is no longer aware of being a person or the person one thought one was or even would have liked to be, which seems to belong to an irretrievable past, therefore one enjoys a state of desirelessness and innocence that makes one a perfect lump of clay to be used by the divine potter for whatever design he has in mind.

4.	
Lo and behold, suddenly the miracle of rebirth takes place: the doors of communication between what was the receptacle, now reduced to a quintessence, and the infinite beauty of the bounty of the universe, are wide open, between the fabric of the planet kneaded through the ages in the forward march of evolution and the "visitor from outer space", For there to be interfusion, one must needs lose oneself in the ecstasy of divine love, responding to the creativity of cosmic love in one and through one.  
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Capture the archetypal forces that create body organization as they flow before being petrified into forms, that is, as they are released in the nuptial chamber in preeternity: for they have to pass through an undifferentiated stage in order to be transmitted from heavenly creatures to human creatures.  Undergo consciously every stage of the interfusion triggering off your second birth, according to a different pattern from that of ordinary birth and hence called "the immaculate conception." You can distinguish the type of energy here at work from the creative force that perpetrates form in body and personality by sheer proliferation of itself by the fact that it does not crystallize as a structure but blows as a zephyr of formless life energy permeating all matter, including subtle matter, quickening with life.  This is referred to as the Holy Spirit.  It may assume alarming intensity with great suddenness and then is likened to lightning (Vajra: the thunderbolt) You are aware of your immortality by maintains the Ariadnean thread of memory across the threshold of voidness we have passed through, where there is a condition of all possibilities, just as a stream may pass through a lake and find itself totally altered, yet in some way maintaining the continuity with the upstream current.
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5.	
One is now confronted with a new problem: the new being is out of step with the old one, and one has to overcome habits and routines to which one easily reverts if one is off guard.  Even the body has had to adjust itself, while the psychological qualities act as transformers of transcendental values into physical receptacles.  One has to consolidate, fix, incorporate what would otherwise turn out-to be mere fugitive outbreaks of higher awareness flaring upon consciousness or evanescent ripples on the surface of the personality, or precarious peeps into heavenly horizons.  Alchemists call this making a substance adamant, subjecting the new personality to the acid test, the test of fire, holding fast to those sublime indwellings against all passing impressions.  This is where power comes in--sovereignty.  One imposes the new order upon the previous status quo, particularly with friends and acquaintances who still think of one as one was.  The sense of victory, triumph, heroism, the order in the heavens upsets the balance of the earth forces that interlock and stalemate.  One acquires here the ability lost in the second stage of operating through the individual self without losing one's sense of transcendence.  One places oneself voluntarily in the service of the hierarchy of beings who form the spiritual government of the universe.
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6.	
The purpose of the opus is achieved: incorporate the spirit so that you may spiritualize the body, which means your support envisions the body as its own act and function and sees its own projection in it, and the body experiences and lives the spirit in its very molecules.  When the formless richness of the heavens assumes a form that survives in resurrection the transiency of the substance in which it was engraved, its many-splendored attributes are enriched in turn by the innumerable interminglings and compositions that they have undergone on earth.  The soul of the universe is born out of our love for God's beauty in each other.  Obviously then hermetism carries the mark of the genius of the west and also of the Arab middle east, which is prone to apply the-higher vision to the transformation of man, right down into this very psyche and physis.
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Yet owing to the persistence of the sense of I-ness one wishes to know it or him or unify oneself with it or him.  This nostalgia may stand in the way of one discovering oneself as being "it" or "him" in one's higher dimensions.  In our efforts to associate both methods we might apply the former attitude to the first phase of meditation, lifting oneself above personal consciousness into the absolute, and the second to promote the reintegration of personal consciousness.  
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Doubtless no sooner is there a flicker of awareness of the person in its sense of limitation than there arises a feeling of awe and reverence for the higher self now envisioned as other than oneself and therefore called God.  This is obviously the way nature preserves us from the temptation of attributing the dimensions experienced to one's ego-self.  This accounts for the "Christ have mercy upon me" of the Hesychast prayer of the heart and the inaccessible transcendence of God in the Jewish and Islamic religions.  We encountered these two phases in the Hermetic Ars Regia according to Valentinus where the dissolution of the notion of the self in the first phase reaches into the deep strata of the personality and leads to the awareness of one's primeval condition in eternity while the recovery of individuality is associated with a regenerated sense of being recreated anew and the vantage point gained by the extirpation of personal consciousness from its physical and mental abstract is utilized so that spirit may encounter itself as matter while the descent of consciousness into matter enables matter to experience in itself the spirit.
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As we advance in the new age, we are fortunate to have easy access to the teachings of the main esoteric schools of the great world religions, either through their institutions, or through printed matter.  If we unfold our minds to their treat variety, we cannot but give scope to the perspectives they open as they converge upon us.  At first it seems as though we were confronted with an irreconcilable dichotomy: on the one hand the identification with the self that takes place when one has dissolved the personal consciousness--generally associated with Yogic, Vedantic and Buddhist methods of meditation; on the other hand a living and conscious confrontation with what is probably this self-same self.  How could it possibly be anyone or anything else?  Yet experienced from the vantage point of the individual it seems an other and outside oneself, which is the usual connotation of God one gathers from Judaism, Christianity and Islam, until one realizes that it is the whole of which one is the part, the archetype of which one is the exemplar, the consciousness of which one is the glance.

In the new age we are busy finding a know-how combining all methods used heretofore and knitting the two phases into a whole.  It must be clear that, for a given compass, if a person throws his consciousness into perspective by meditation he will grasp less and less of more and more and as he advances from abstraction to abstraction lose himself into a vague void which marks his ceiling beyond which he cannot reach.  
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Our compass is the measure of our capacity of understanding the totality which one has to reckon with as it is also the measure of protection that nature offers us against that which would shatter us.  One can only progress by enlarging the aperture rather than by throwing consciousness out of perspective, and admittedly every widening of the capacity entails a shattering and a complete breakdown of all one's preconceived ideas but it must be operated progressively.  

When we know that the measure of the aperture is the notion of the self then it is clear that if the personalized consciousness cannot encompass the Divine one has to turn about one's thinking and identify with the Divine Glance functioning through one's eyes rather than referring experience to the personal self.  This opens the aperture by integrating the self into a higher center.  This explains why Patanjali, formulating Yogic methods of meditation, feels that one reaches a ceiling where one cannot reach any further without referring to Ishta Devatta even if it is our concept of God, turning about one's attitude to being receptive towards the action in and through one of a higher consciousness.
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Would it, however, be conceivable to intertwine these two phases?  And are not both polarities to be found in each and every esoteric school irrespective of religion?

Admittedly in the first phase one loses all sense of identity accounting for the "all is Brahman" of the Upanishads or the Buddhist state of Nirvana, but St. John of the Cross speaks in the same vein in the living flame of love.  And as the personal center is recovered it must needs establish its relationship with that higher center that the Semitic religions call God and.  Hinduism "Atman or "Ishwara" depending upon whether the aspect of consciousness or that of supremacy is stressed.  While the Mahayana Adi Buddha looks very much like a personal concept of God the Theravadans no doubt avoid the slightest slant of anthropomorphism by looking down upon the operations and mind and body and even volition from an impersonal vantage point, seeing these objectively as part of the fabric of the universe without ascribing a sense of I'ness to these, yet being aware of concrete facts and consequently more able to handle earthly problems thanks to accrued objectivity, unhampered by the specter of the self.
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It's a matter of incorporating higher dimensions of awareness into a total picture without blacking out the lower levels.
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Thus, for example, instead of withdrawing consciousness from the physical body, one looks upon what one thought of as one's body now as a short-lived phase in the continual flow of bodiness to the extent that one's own body seems to lose its frontiers in the inexorable advance of tile impersonal forces of nature.  This is then just another way of looking at the physical which corresponds to an awakening above the identification that imprisons one in the appearance of things.

The same applies to the next phase: One can awaken to the consciousness of the energy body (Pranamayakosha).  Most people have a vague awareness of their magnetic flow, a sensation of which most people are afraid because it makes them dizzy, as the etheric body seems unstable, buoyant as compared with the solidity of the physical body.  This sensation is the springboard to meditation as it opens up the ability to think of oneself as other than just physical, yet the same person as one experienced in his physical manifestation -- a continuity in its different states, like ice becoming water and then steam -- in addition to being a continuity in its various phases, as a child becomes an adult, or a person gains awareness of his phantom after death.  

Should one apply the same principles to the continuity between the physical body and the etheric, one would remain entrapped in one's personal consciousness, whereas, if one experiences one's energy patterns as part of the ebb and flow of the ocean of cosmic energy, one's consciousness will be hoisted to the next plane: the sphere of pure luminescence.  And here again, if one identifies oneself with one's aura one will be entrapped into Luciferian abuse of a noble thing appropriated and abused for personal aggrandizement.  Therefore, in adopting a passive attitude towards the flow of Divine intelligence in the form of one's consciousness, if one tries 
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to see the light, one may promote a hallucination. 

One might will oneself to experience it for the sheer enjoyment of the experience, finally to find oneself immersed in the dark night of the soul.  Eventually one realizes that light is not that which is seen but that which sees.

As soon as one envisions oneself as not only the eyes through which God sees but the very glance that zooms down from the source of all light, one discovers the creativeness of the glance that manifests in the form of images that which originally is pure archetype: a non-spatial structure called the Divine Attributes.  When one realizes how limited these attributes are by being projected as phantasmagoria into three-dimensional space, consciousness is hoisted to the next plane: the sphere of attributes or causal plane.  One may experience one's eternal self as a unique composition of divine attributes by using samadhi techniques: 
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First ponder unemotionally the various episodes of your lives considering their sequence earmarking the causal links between the episodes rather than dallying in self-pity or recriminations then watch your unfoldment as a personality owing to realization gained by the experiences then watch the deployment of characters in the course of your progress and eventually discover your real being out of which the personality grows as a plant.  One is now suspended beyond time in the causal.  

Should one confine one's consciousness to one's own eternal being one will be entrapped on the causal level.  Therefore it is incumbent upon one to experience one's eternal being as part of the total bounty of divine archetypes flashing into (creation and to experience oneself in the course of being created out of the fabric of the divine archetypes and pouring them into one's personality and even body.  Here again one can rise by looking down rather than by looking up.  Ramakrishna calls out Samadhi!  With open eyes.  

One reaches the ultimate degree of realization when one watches the descent of Divine Qualities in one and recognizes these in all beings, sees the links behind all phenomena behind the chain of cause and effect, the divine intention, when one experiences God experiencing himself through one and through all beings. 
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Yet one experiences oneself as being annihilated by the magnitude of the significance of the whole cosmic drama and in one's annihilation drawn into the solitude of the divine unity where God knows the principle of being without having to use those focalized centers of rational experience that fail to see the whole.  Such is the message of our time... Toward The One, United With All.
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When we examine the testimonies of the experiences of those who have ventured beyond the charted reaches of the mind, we are confronted by two contrasting types of experience: on the one hand, a merging with all created things, accompanied by a gradual disappearance of the sense of "I'-ness; and on the other hand, an experience of confrontation with the archetype of which one is the image, the discovery of the overwhelming "I" whose vehicle our individual "I" now transpires to be, and the desperate love relationship with the divine visitor.

The first orientation in meditation may lead one into an experience of awakening upon the dreaded passage over the threshold of death, lived when still able to return and recount it, and seems to follow upon a systematic and methodical disentanglement from all attachments and involvements and illusions that make for incarnation.  To achieve this, Eastern methods, particularly Hindu and Buddhist, advocate freeing one's self from all conditioning with the consequent disaggregation of the personality and the notion of the self.  

One ceases to create conditions that bind one.  This state may be experienced by a regression into the deeper strata of the memory concealed in the unconscious, leading to an appraisal of one's eternal being as an archetype beyond the becoming of one's personality, and even beyond this into a merging in the ground of existence beyond the beyond.
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The heavens are mine
The earth is mine
The nations are mine
The just ones and the sinners are mine
The mother of God is mine
And all the creatures:
God Himself is mine
And for me
Because the Christ is mine
And altogether for me.

St. Juan De La Crus
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One Experiences one's Pre-eternity, the state in which one was in the beginning.  Before one was involved in the process of becoming by going backwards, dismantling the wheel of becoming, unraveling the whole process that has led to incarnation.  One experiences what one is and always has been in eternity, in the mind of God.  One experiences a state beyond incarnation which is the world of the archetypes, out of which all has proceeded, the tremendous wealth of qualities in the causal plane, the plane of glory.

The first orientation in meditation leads one to Moksha, liberation.  We all want to awaken from this dream, to free ourselves from conditioning to reach a stage of omniscience where all things are seen in their unity, and attain liberation.  But is there not some reason for all of this?  Isn't there some reason for life in its incarnate form?  Why do we seek to go away from it?  Why are we always departing?

Once you have been able to find out what are the forces that have drawn you into individual consciousness, then you are able to undo one link after the other and free yourself from all those forces that have-conditioned you into being a personality, and consciousness becomes cosmic.  But if we are born at all upon the planet, our purpose cannot be to dismantle the whole show, to undo what is being done.  We must know what the laws are, but, knowing the laws, our purpose is to become wholly human.

In the second orientation in meditation there is concern for the meaning of life and charity for all beings.  Surely, if creation was devised in the ingenious way it has been by the "planning", something must be gained by that convergence of the universe into a center which is called incarnation.
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The plant draws the earth into itself and transforms the earth into a plant, draws the water into itself and transforms the water into a plant, draws the air into itself and transforms the air into a plant, draws the sun into itself and transforms the sun into a plant, draws the stars and the heavenly spheres into itself and transforms them into a plant -- all of which you can see by the beauty of the flowers, lithe angels of the earth. The Hesychasts, the orthodox monks, the hermit monks of the desert, on Mt. Sinai and Mt. Athos and in Russia, experienced in their meditations the descent of the Holy Spirit into the very flesh, dispensing light upon matter, transforming matter by this power of light.  Theosis.

If the accent is upon that which God has become in you, you will not want to destroy your individual consciousness but to enrich it, to draw all things into your consciousness, to realize cosmic human perfection, and this is the accent in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Theosis.
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"What is the work of human works if it is not the formation in each one of us of a unique center in which the universe manifests each time in a unique way." 
Pere Teilhard de Chardin

The crossroads in which the universe meets.  Life is a network of relationships, and each one of us is a knot in the network, but that knot doesn't stop anywhere: it includes the whole network.  Man is born of convergence, an infinite multitude of threads, all converging towards a point, the convergence of parents, ancestors, the human race, all the animals, plants and minerals, the convergence of heaven and earth.

The dream of consciousness: the visitor from outer space, having collected on his way the fabric of all the different planes, fuses with the fabric of the planet.  The fabric of the planet is infused by that unknown entity which we call the soul or "consciousness" or better still "intelligence having become consciousness."

"Consciousness is what happens to intelligence when it is confronted with an object." 
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
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When we void our self of all notion of solidity or materiality, .physicalness and mindness, we lose the notion of the self.  Self seems to emerge all of a sudden as it becomes enmeshed in matter and then peters out when all notion of matter has been eliminated, just as rays of light are only visible when there is dust in the sky.  "God becomes and unbecomes." (Meister Eckhardt).  If we are all God, our incarnation is a change that is taking place within He who is eternally unchanged beyond the beyond.  It's just like the unfoldment of a film!  The film does not change for having been unfolded.  We like to try to use the fireworks of our mind to try to unravel these mysteries: it's enchanting to our intelligence.  Why not have joy in our intelligence?

But we must give up trying to explain things.  God becomes a reality.  "Why do you look for God up there?  He is here!" (Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan).  Up there He is non-existent: He is, but He does not exist.  Down here He exists.  Something is gained through incarnation.  "God did not distribute to his servants any thing more esteemed than intelligence." (Ali).

But if that which has been gained has really been gained then it must be eternalized, if it's just something that is transient, what has been gained by it?  The thought of the transiency of life will tend to make you want to return to the source.  In India one is very aware of the transiency of life: the fragile villages at the mercy of the seasons and the rain, disease and starvation, all the outer conditions of life are conducive to fleeing from already fleeting life and returning to primeval unity.
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As Rudolph Steiner said, the genius of the west is in the formation of the ego center.  We function as transformers of energy, as centers of centripetal power.  We draw the universe into our self.  If you destroy that center you fail to fulfill your purpose as such.  For these centers must eventually contribute toward a grand apotheosis at the end of time when all these centers converge into one ultimate center which Teilhard de Chardin calls Point Omega, the end of the universe.  But if this ultimate center of consciousness is to be built, it must be built out of centers that are already strongly formed.  "We ask for nothing less than the impossible impossibility: Infinity present in a finite fact, and eternity present in a temporal act." The living Christ.

It is not only that this tremendous glory in the heavens that you experience in meditation should become a reality here in the flesh.  What has been gained by incarnation can only really have been gained if it has been eternalized: if it survives the transiency of our fragile existence, if the essence of the essence of the essence is drawn from all those aspects of creation which are subject to change and decay, just as the essence of the flower is drawn by the bees for honey. 
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The essential part of our being can only survive if the transient part dissolves.  Death is a condition of survival.  That which has been gained must be eternalized, and can only be eternalized by being transmuted by passing through death into eternal life.  This is the meaning of resurrection.  Surrexit Christus Hodie.  Christ is Risen Today!
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This is a very real experience in meditation, which is just as much meditation as the eastern forms of meditation, though it is not generally included in what one thinks is meditation.  It is the real experience of the Catholic Mass.  When Teilhard de Chardin was in China, he was supposed to celebrate Mass, and there was no wherewithal for him to use: no altar, no bread, nothing with which to make the Hostia; and then he realized that in fact the whole fabric of the universe is the Hostia, which is continually being transubstantiated continually passing from matter to spirit.  The whole process of life is one grand transmutation or transubstantiation: the passage from geo-Genesis to bio-Genesis to psycho-Genesis, from matter to Spirit, it is all happening within you.  The Mass is celebrating what is continually happening within and around one.  And in order for that transubstantiation to take place, one has to transfigure suffering into joy.

This transubstantiation is very painful, it really means suffering: it means giving up a lot of things that one would like, in fact, giving up one's self.  One is never so strong as when one is broken.  One never knows so much as when one realizes one doesn't know a thing.  One is never so much one's self as when one has lost one's self.  One really has to have the courage to lose one's personality, which is all that one thinks one is.  This is an aspect of meditation that is not generally taught.  It is one of the secrets of the esoteric schools: Amongst the Jews (The Hassidim), amongst the Christians (The Hesychasts, Meister Eckhardt, St. John of the Cross), amongst the Alchemists, and amongst the Sufis who speak about being shattered by being created, or re-created.  Second birth.
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In order to be born anew one is shattered by the very act of being re-created.  One passes through the pangs of agony of the dissolution of personality.  This may be a very traumatic experience, it is what a lot of very highly sensitive people are experiencing very often interpreted by psychiatrists as being pathological, when actually it is a natural process that one has to undergo in order to unfold.  The great art of the alchemists was based on two processes that take place in matter and in men: Solve et Coagule.  Dissolve and coagulate.

If there is to be growth or transformation then there must be dissolution of what is, until it reaches a state of total malleability or-adaptability, and then it can be consolidated again, and the end result of this whole process is gold.  This is a cyclical process it is continually being repeated: However solid one thinks one is or has become, one undergoes a new turmoil and then is disintegrated even more profoundly than ever before, and then reconstructed once again.

The first phase of the alchemical process is Nigredo, which is total disintegration, a state of darkness when that which seemed so intelligible doesn't make sense any more.  In fact, one could say that when one is facing the light, the light may be so strong it appears to be darkness: one is blinded by it.  So it doesn't mean that you are in darkness, it simply means that you are passing through a dark night of the soul, passing through a transformation.  Enjoy your death.
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When you recover your sense of your individual consciousness, you recover the sense of God as a being, which you lose when you lose your individual consciousness and merge with the totality.  There is a sense of otherness in the experience of God.  And if you don't have that sense of otherness, then you enter into a state that is called pantheism, in which all is experienced from the vantage point of the unconscious, a subliminal state in which, for example, you lie on the earth and look into the sky and you feel one with all things.  And you're not really conscious: consciousness is sunk below the threshold.  You experience yourself as Prakriti, not Purusha.  There is no sense of God as such, there's just a sense of physical reality, though you may say that is what you mean by God.
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As soon as you emerge from that state, it's difficult to say that God is all the things that you experience, because from the moment that you act from your conscious will you have a picture of God as perfect; and when you see things that are imperfect, you cannot imagine that this should be God, or there's evil, or everything is changing, and you don't think that Cod could be changing.  God is beyond anything we can conceive. He may be the totality, and yet at the same time he is beyond the beyond, paratparam.  From the vantage point of the individualized consciousness there is a notion of otherness, and it is that sense of that totality, that supreme perfection, as compared with your imperfection, that gives you a sense of God.

Something is gained by incarnation, by the fact that this glorious reality becomes a physical reality.  Something is gained by the fact that our consciousness has converged: by the fact of our existence divine consciousness has converged into a global consciousness that is born in our midst.  What we mean by God is that which is born in our midst by the integration of our beings in a sense of oneness.

When you are experiencing yourself as the totality of being, as when you were lying on the earth, God reveals to you his transcendence, and you realize that it is beyond all of this.  And when you are lost in the vision of His transcendence, you are brought right back into consciousness of the here and now, the Divine Immanence.
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"God in His Oneness Wished for the joy that he experienced in contemplating the latencies within himself to be shared with all those parts of himself which were still latencies.  Therefore God projected Himself in another Himself in which He was able to contemplate Himself." 
al Hallaj

"It was not in order to see Himself that He created you, it was out of love for you that He wished to depart from the solitude of His state of unknowing." 
Jabbar Niffari

He is the one who is loved by every lover in every beloved. He has made you into His beloved, and you in turn make Him into your beloved.  Love creates in the beloved something that was not there before.  You create in God by loving Him something that was not there before.  In fact, you create Him as a presence.

"For those who have been lost in the contemplation of the Divine Immanence, God reveals His transcendence.  And for those who are lost in the contemplation of God's transcendence, God reveals His Immanence." 
Jelalludin Rumi


The Cosmic Mass
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Among the forces that have urged the planet to bring forth myriad beings for but an evanescent breath of life, maybe none has galvanized evolution onwards as urgently as an uncanny dimly-felt need in the creature to find a relationship with the totality, and more specifically with a Presence.

When we are moved by the discovery of beauty, enraptured by the breath of splendor transpiring through the appearance of matter, raised up by the dawning of meaning unsensed heretofore, we are often spurred to express our reverence in an outburst of glorification.  And it is this orientation of our whole being which forces the threshold of the memories, consigned to the unconscious, of our pristine heavenly condition.  A sudden breakthrough of a vast realization, the Divine Presence.
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It was no doubt this intuition, dimly felt as intelligence grew-from stage to stage, of being the exemplar of an archetype, rather than the part of the whole (an entirely new dimension of thinking), that caused the mutations in the species to skip across the gap between the animal and the human condition.

As much as our ancestors were aware of having been hatched out of the fabric of the planet earth, so too were they aware of being born out of the starry depths of the skies.  One can well imagine them with their newly fashioned intelligence wondering things are like in that deep and holy space.

As they could not reach there with their feet and were deprived of the wings they remembered having had, they tried to reach up there with their thoughts and aspirations.
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Today, psychologists are only just beginning to uncover deeper strata of the unconscious which aver themselves to be more impersonal as one moves deeper inside of oneself.  The so-called "collective unconscious" carries the memory of archetypes representing far wider dimensions of reality than our individual span of thinking normally encompasses, including images of heavenly conditions, processions of angels, etc. in fact, it is the cosmic mass in the heavens that, since time immemorial, inspired men have restored from the remoter archives of their unconscious memory or projected from their visions directly, and endeavored to bring within the sight of their fellow men in the form of festive religious celebrations on a large scale.

Sumerians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Brahmins, Mazdeans, Helenes, Hebrews, Christians, Muslims, and how many other religious communities have left a staggering plethora of liturgy and legend, all enacting a great cosmic event taking place in the heavens and affecting beings on Earth and invariably gravitations around a process of transmutation from-transiency to everlastingness, involving a sacrifice. often portrayed as a feast, in which all participate, if nothing else, by the surrender of personal will to a transcendental law which when personalized becomes love.
How much have the visionaries been able to capture of the grandeur, splendor, and scope of the cosmic High Mass?  How far have they been able to convey the feeling of holiness, the sentiment of glory, the emotion of jubilation, the sheer triumph of the coronation, the tremendum around the Holy of Holies: The Throne?  Do they recall correctly the order of the ceremony?  If "Above, so Below," maybe this might give a clue to the psychological states undergone by a human being in a process of transmutation.
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How revealing it is to discover the resemblance between the sequence in the liturgies of religious ceremonies: The jubilant procession to the temple or basilica of the Collect, or introit, the ablutions or supplications for absolution, the litanies of praise the scriptural readings or epistles, the exhortations or sermons, the profession of faith or credo, the offering or offertory (which may be a procession), the consecration, then the partaking of the consecration, or Holy Communion, the sanctification, the thanksgiving.

Our ancestors tried to formulate words of prayer to express in human language the glorification of that Cosmic Mass.  They felt that maybe states which they went through in their struggles to unfold on the earth corresponded to the order of the ceremonies governing the festivities of the Mass in the heavens.  It occurred to them that if they tried to display these on the Earth, they might remind themselves more of the way things are in the heavens.  They knew no one could portray the being on the Throne, but they built an imitation throne called an altar that might act as a pivot around which to gravitate, or act as a center toward which they might converge because they had a need to center themselves with reference to a pole.

As there were no beings who could portray the angels, our ancestors placed lights on the altar to represent the luminous angelic nature in the hope that the sight of these lights might make them, by analogy, feel more radiant, and they played music in order to communicate some of the joy of the heavenly spheres which they remembered.
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And it is that remembrance which causes a human being to design a little altar (which he may deem big), as a focalizing reference point for his aspirations.  Little does he know bow he is, in so doing, teleguided by an uncanny memory of a point of convergence of the worship of all creatures, visible as the Throne of God.  Although our sense of the incomparable greatness of the happening celebrated tells us rather to see the altar in the starry sky at a cosmic scale, enacting the Mass on Earth with our limited human media tends to catalyze our memory of the way things are in heaven and therefore has an elevating effect, however inadequate and even paltry.

It is psychological need for a person to center himself around a focal point; otherwise one becomes a law unto himself, possibly a monster of self-centeredness.  Of course progress consists in integrating oneself into ever larger gravitational fields towards the center of centers.

Those remembering the Mass converged in processions towards The Throne, now an altar, as on a pilgrimage, even as they remembered pleiades of beings of all states of consciousness converging from all parts of the universe to the big Cosmic reunion around the Throne of the Supreme King of Kings.  They left their ordinary lives behind, full of joyous anticipation.  What a lift to feel free for a moment of the cares and concerns of everyday life; and participate in an act that carries one beyond oneself into a familiar state long since forgotten and remembered.
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As they advanced they felt such awe and reverence for the greatness of that towards which they were going to pay homage, that they began to deem themselves unworthy of proceeding without cleansing themselves of all the pollution that had accumulated upon them from ordinary life.  So they made ablutions, or purified themselves with Holy Water, or were Baptized, each according to his custom.
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Obviously, the first reaction one has when facing the prospect of the end encounter with lofty beings, perhaps the very Being of God, is one of becoming suddenly aware of a feeling of impurity or unworthiness.  Take off your shoes, wash your feet, receive the Baptism, perform ablutions under the aegis of Elijah-Khidr.  Elijah, the patron of the waters of life, supervises the ablution rights of the Jewish Mikva.  St. John the Baptist, who is his counterpart, gives the baptism of water in anticipation of the one who will baptize with fire and spirit.  The Muslims perform their ablutions, "Wusu", under the aegis of Khidr, who is the same person as Elijah and is considered by the Sufis to be present at any authentic initiation.  The Hindus perform their ablutions in the Ganges before Puja.  The American Indians purify themselves in the sweat lodge.  Crossing our self with Holy Water we enter the sanctuary.

Ablutions were external rites, a reminder perhaps, but what of the heart?  The feelings?  That fundamental dishonesty one had even thought one had managed to conceal from one's conscience and which now crops up into the daylight?  Of what use confession without repentance? Of what use repentance, if the resolve to abandon a coveted desire is too feebly made to carry conviction.

We were seeking God, and we came up against Truth unavoidably.
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Hence the faithful, having completed the purification, still felt that their hearts were harboring ugly feelings, and could proceed no further.  How now could they rid themselves of these?  They felt helpless before the insidiousness of these blemishes.  If only God would cleanse their with mercy and compassion The Sufis call it the scrutiny of the heart, the purification of intention.  For this, our own will is not sufficient.  There is strength in admitting a power greater than one's power, welcoming its action, in and through us--allegiance to the spiritual government of the world.  

What greater power is there than the munificence that released beings from the solitude of non-existence and then bent a glance of compassion upon those who suffered by the abuse of the free will with which they were endowed or by ignorance of the greater will or intention?  Ya Rahman, Ya Rahim in the Muslim invocation (Fatihah) is the equivalent of the Jewish Rachman Rachim, and the Christian Confiteor.

At this point in the inner experience of the faithful, an act of contrition and a pledge of redeems having been made, consciousness being freed from the ordinary limiting conditions, the stage is set for the lifting of the veil of oblivion between the heavenly spheres and the Earth.
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Ekeziel saw the wheel way up in the middle of the air:

The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel
Chapter 1
Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. 
2  In the fifth day of the month, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin's captivity,
3  The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the Lord was there upon him.
4  And I looked and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire enfolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire.
5 Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man.
6  And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.
7 And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot; and they sparkled like the color of burnished brass.
8  And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings.
9  Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went everyone straight forward.
10  As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.
11 Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies.
12  And they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not when they went.
13  As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.
14 And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning.
15  Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces.
16  The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.
17  When they went, they went the four wheels; the glory of God upon their four sides:  and they turned not when they went.
18  As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four.
19  And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.
20  Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. 
22  And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the color of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above.
23  And under the firmament were their wings straight, the one toward the other: every one had two, which covered on this side, and every one had two, which covered on that side, their bodies.
24  And when they went, I hear the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host: when they stood, they let down their wings.
25  And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads, when they stood, and had let down their wings.
26.  And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.
27  And I saw as the color of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.
Chapter 2
And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon they feet, and I will speak unto thee.
2  And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me.
3  And he said unto me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me: they and their fathers have transgressed against me, even unto this very day.
4  For they are impudent children and stiffhearted. I do send thee unto them; and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord god.
5  And they, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, (for they are a rebellious house,) yet shall know that there hath been a prophet among them.
6  And thou, son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid . . .

Faced with the conviction of those who have witnessed the wonder of the heavens, how can we doubt now?
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Like the Zoroastrian Gathas, the Gloria is the hymn of praise of the angels especially linked with the manger at Bethlehem visited by the Mazdean Magi.  The mind muses upon the visitations of humans by angels: the annunciation, the visit of the three archangels, Gabriel, Michael and Ophiel, to Abranahm at Mamre, and Gabriel's visit to the Prophet Mohammed.

The encounter with the angelic counterpart: Do you remember having been born out of the act whereby an angel tried to give expression to his sentiment of glorification?  Do you remember the heralds descending from the heavens with trumpets and drum declaring Urbi Et Orbi, their allegiance to the King of Kings, making one aware of the sovereignty of the government of the world?
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This is a time to reiterate the promise made in pre-eternity.  To offer one's allegiance and declare one's belief:

"I  believe in One God"
"Credo Unum Deo"
"Ashadu La Illaha Illa 'llah"
"Shima Yisroal, Yahuva Elohenu, Yahuva Echod"
"Tat Twam Asi"
"Om Mani Padme Hum"
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The whole purpose in celebrating the Cosmic Mass, unbeknown to most, is of course to participate consciously and deliberately in the very raison D'etre of the basic event of life, whereby the contingent aspects of all created beings undergo destruction in order that their essence may survive the falling curve of transiency into everlastingness, just as wine survives the perishable nature of the grape.

Osiris returned from death -- a symbol of resurrection -- so do Dyonysus, Orpheus and Tanmuz, and so does the phoenix, and so does purusha, the eternally sacrificed person (of the Purusha Shukta of the Veda).  In practically every religion, a sacrifice is enacted.  In the phrygien cult of Asia Minor the sacrifice of God under the name Attis was celebrated at the Spring Equinox with blood, until the Day of Hilaria, when the effigy of the God was carried in precession as they hailed: "Attis is saved; for us there shall also be salvation."

The Jews celebrate the Pesach (Passover) around the Spring Equinox, commemorating the deliverance of Israel from captivity in Egypt.  It will be remembered that when the first born sons of the Egyptians were beset by a plague considered to be a revenge of Jahweh upon the pharoh for having refused to free the Jews, the houses of the Jews were spared by being smeared by the blood of a lamb.

St. John the Baptist hails Jesus as the Lamb of God.  At the Last Supper, Christ and his disciples were celebrating Passover, the eve of this Jewish feast which was the origin of the Catholic Mass (The Catholic church still uses unleavened bread for the host).  According to John the Divine, Christ was crucified precisely at the time that the Paschal lamb was sacrificed in the temple.
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According to the Qur'an the heart of the prophet was opened and the last vestige of impurity removed.  In the Purrusha Shokta of the Vedas, Purusha: the eternal person (Brahman: the impersonal manifesting as the person) is continually sacrificed so that men may have Moksa: Liberation, (Life eternal).  Siva drank the poison of the world, likewise Osiris is eternally fragmented in the Egyptian iniatic rites.  And Christ did command take, eat: This is my body.  Drink of this cup it is my blood of the new testament which is shed for you and many unto the remission of sin.

Here are the magical words that operate the transubstantiation: Hoc Est Enim Corpus Meum; Hic Est Enim Calix Sanguinis Mei. The Cosmic Mass celebrates our passion as part of the total being who sacrificed His will that we may enjoy free will.
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It is our free gift of ourselves and readiness to take upon ourselves the suffering of the world or accept the suffering bestowed upon us that constitutes our measure of participation in the sacrifice.  So that what we receive from the altar is only a catalyst for what we give, like the Philosopher's Stone.  It is this inner act which sanctifies, and the "Sanctus" originating in Isaiah's initiation with the burning coals at the hands of the Seraphim, exemplifies readiness to take upon oneself the onus of service to the spiritual government of the world.

The real significance hidden behind the crucifixion is the coronation in the heavens, while we acclaim the chosen one with "Hosanna" reminiscent of Palm Sunday: "Hail to the one who has been sent in the name of the Lord." One Earth, the King was crowned with a crown of thorns and he rode on a donkey.  But the service on Earth, having ended "Ite Mise Est,"

The real celebration starts as the souls of the celebrants, following the resurrected one, ascend from heaven to heaven: Beyond the etheric and Astral, through the planes of the Devas or Djinns, where men inherit their talents, the realm of Indra, Lord of Maya, through the angelic spheres of sublime beauty and splendor, then past the judgment scene of the plane of those beings of fire, the Seraphim, to the pure radiance and holy prayerfulness of the Cherubim, to the sovereignty of the Archangels in the immaculate landscapes of high altitude, right up into the multidimensional spheres of the Hayoth, the cardinal forces of the cosmos, and beyond into the Ain Soph, the cloud of unknowing, Al Lama, Nirvana, the planes of non existence, when all strife, all conditioning, all illusion has been overcome in peace beyond understanding: "Dona Nobis Pacem."
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Is not suffering due to the fact that it is forced upon us?  Supposing we would do consciously what nature does unconsciously?  Supposing we could offer ourselves willingly to be molded and buffeted by life?  Is that not participating in the offortorium of the Cosmic Mass?  We are the offering placed on the altar of the world.  'There is a key here.  If we would sacrifice what we wish most, we would gain a tremendous freedom.  

And this is what life asks of us, the greatest gift of all, always what we care for most, or ourselves, or the innermost of ourselves, our own heart.  When one knows how long Abraham waited for a son and how miraculously, what overcoming it took to sacrifice him... it was acceptance of the unacceptable that was asked of him.  So we are tested.  We each have our Ishmael and Isaac, to make evident whether our heart's treasure is earthly or heavenly.
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Christ had to show the way to eternal life by accepting the verdict "Crucify him" cried by the very crowd which had acclaimed him on Palm Sunday... If I wished to defend myself, I could muster an army of angels... it is the physical fabric of the planet, nay the universe, which is bread undergoing transmutation.  The body of the Archangel of the Earth and the sufferings of men transfigured into joy are the wine of the grape transformed into the blood of the soul of the universe transformed into the wine of the Holy Sacrament!  Hoc Est Enim Corpum Meum!  Hic Est Enim Calix Sanguinis Mei.

According to the Qur'an the heart of the Prophet was opened and the last vestige of impurity removed.  In the Purusha Shokta of the Vedas, Purusha, the eternal person is continually sacrificed so that men may have Moksa, Liberation, Life eternal.  Siva drank the poison of the world; Osiris is eternally fragmented in the Egyptian Initiatic Rites.  Dionysus (lagreus) was devoured by the Titans and men were born of his ashes, the ashes of the Son of God, the eternal person who -- dies that we may live.  Our Self.

There is no Good Friday without an Easter and no Dark Night without a dawn and no oppression without a release and the sacrifice is followed by an outburst of such moment that it shakes the very heavens: the veil of the temple is slit: there is a tremor on the Earth . . . Christ has resurrected.
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Which means: You are resurrecting always, every time you overcome yourself.  It is the moment of truth, says the Qur'an.  According to the Sephira Yetzira, the Nem or the body of resurrection is freed.  The Zoroastrian's Fete, the Frashkart, celebrates the restoration of all beings to their pristine glory: "May we work for the transfiguration of the world to insure the victory of light over darkness."


The Man of God
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The man of God sees all things beyond what can be seen by the eyes of man without being caught up in what he sees.  The man of God hears the voice of silence speaking to the heart of the believer which men of little faith doubt.  The man of God allows his heart to be lifted high above the spheres of Earth by his infinite joy at the discovery of Divine Beauty.  The man of God allows his ego to be shattered in the perplexity in which he finds himself when he realizes that there is only God.
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The man of God walks upon the sea of life unmoved by its waves.  "The man of God has wings the wings of detachment and Independence which free him from the self-imposed limitations whereby men enclose themselves in the cages of illusion." The man of God transforms all evil into good, transforms despair into jubilation, transforms darkness into light, death into everlasting life.  "The hands and feet of the man of God are nailed on earth and free in the heavens.  The hands and feet of most are free on earth and nailed in the heavens." Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan.
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The man of God transforms defeat into success, changes the face of the adversary into a friend, transforms sorrow into joy, for the man of God there is no darkness, there is no loneliness, there is no infirmity, there is no distress, for all is God.  The one who does not see this will never understand the man of God.  He seems to be striving when he's at peace.  He seems to be tranquil when his heart is burning.  He dies a thousand deaths in the storms of the hearts of men so that he may resurrect them by his death even as he has been resurrected by the death of his ego.  

The non-manifest is for him the manifest.  The manifest is a protection screening the eyes of those who cannot see.  In one sweep of his glance he can tear away the illusion from the eyes of the one who has the courage to look upon the face of God.  In one sweep of his hand of beneficence he will enshroud the minds of those who cannot stand the solitude of the Divine Unity.  He will shield you from the pain of God because of the nails we cast into his hands and play with the children of the Earth like a child.
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Then, at an unexpected moment, catching you completely unawares he will stop the forward march of time and carry you into worlds so familiar and yet so perplexing, closer to you than your very self yet so far when you are not conscious of your self.  He will carry you in the warmth of his heart on the higher planes, nurture your soul, dress your wounds, and nurse you back to health.  And meeting your personality again he might treat you with a strange indifference for he does not wish to bring you back into your personality.  And then he may draw you into his heart so that you may share in the mystery of Di-vine Love.  For no one wishes to be alone before the magic of Divine Love.
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Give up what you wish to be, follow the path of the saints.  

"Bear all and do nothing, hear all and say nothing, abandon all and be nothing." 
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan  

Until he gently lifts you from the ground and gives you back to yourself as a gift from him so that you may be his temple on the Earth plane.  You are born for the greatest cause that there is, and one opportunity is lost after another.  What a shame, what a sorrow, what a disappointment.  You could be radiant, but you are concerned about the little things that give you self-pity.  You could be free but you say no, I cannot, I cannot because you are not aware that you are free.  

There are no limits to your being, only those you ascribe to yourself.  There are no limits to your understanding, only those that are due to trying to understand with the mind.  There is no limit to your light except the dark shadows of the ego cast upon the sky which we call the self, a play of shadows, shake your soul!  Awaken from slumber!  It is the call from the minaret in the New Age; Awaken!  The time has come!  Awaken to your Divine Being!
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Sometimes the wind of the Spirit will quicken him so that everywhere he casts his glance a sun will arise and every heart is kindled by his glance.
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And then he will soar into hose unknown worlds beyond the sun and stars and throw those forms that we relish and cherish in the security of our limitations out of focus into the vastness of the unknown.  If you can go along with him a little, as far as you can go, he will rejoice but he will want to shield you from the strong winds and the coldness of loneliness, the rigors of asceticism, until you are strong enough to walk away from the haunts of men into the far reaches of your soul.

Yes, he will lure you farther and farther from your limitations, nearer and nearer to where you belong, he will remind you of planes long since forgotten, of beings long loved, cherished and worshipped, of a freedom long since coveted, of a beauty that one desperately seeks to find on the Earth plane, proving how one can overcome Karma by love, rest in the hand of destiny by the gifts of one's own being.  If you wish to reach the ideal of your soul you have to leave where you are.
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God -- not up there, not far beyond.  God -- human perfection, your very perfection an extension beyond the limitation in space, in time, in the order of perfection, unlimited, ineffable, imponderable.  Then where one feels limitation imagine the pain of God being limited.  We impose our limitation on Him.  Feel the pain and then break the limitation.  Break the walls of your being.  Shatter them so that the Divine perfection can be manifest.  Nothing less than the Divine perfection.  "I will accept no refusal from Heaven, no refusal from the Earth, no refusal from any being." (Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan).  His spirit is amongst us, circulating in our minds, encountering our hearts, awakening our souls, quickening our spirits, closer to us than ourselves, more present than those present.  We are here now.  He will create you by showing you the image of yourself which you are seeking in him.
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All of a sudden you will be stupefied to flash upon the resemblance until you realize that when God looks through you upon a being he creates your image in that very being who reciprocally creates you.  And then by yet a further leap he will unleash all the creativity within your soul so that you will in turn be the creator instead of the perceiver to the extent that wherever you turn you will create a world in which the being of God will manifest through you further and further by using all that deployment of inventiveness and creative imagination which make the artist.
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Having carried you back into what you think is your past, or disclosed to you the vision of what your future progress is aiming at, he will slide you out of time and awaken you to the image that God has of your eternal face beyond past and future.  And show you how you can only survive by ceasing to limit yourself to your transient personality and gaining awareness of eternal perfection.
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He will shatter your personality until you lose all reliance upon it, and then anchor you into your new personality against the backwaters of past regrets by revealing to you your transcendental dimensions as you see them in him.  Through his vision of you you will see God existing through and surviving in your transiency by resurrecting through the death of your being which is your absorption in His unity . And when you are so thrilled by the touch of God's beauty that you feel a nostalgia-for the Divine, he will make you feel as though you were a "Thou" to whom he addresses himself.  The overwhelming consciousness may cognize the cosmic archetype through your eyes in the fleeting crystallization of these as the fabric of the planet unfurls its latent potentialities by manifesting the no-yet-manifest through you.  But you, the fraction, can only cognize the intention behind all events and phenomena when the action of the overwhelming consciousness overwhelms your sense of autonomy so that you are flooded by the sense of oneness.
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Thus you experience your individual frame as a limitation in which the whole is trying to condense itself -- which condensation merges with that of all beings.  And as he snatches the last veil from your eyes you will suddenly grasp the victory concealed behind every worldly fiasco.  He takes you from perplexity to perplexity.  When you are utterly thrilled by seeing your ideals in him he will reveal you to yourself so that you do not know anymore whether you are reflecting him or if he is revealing to you his vision of what you are so that you may manifest it.  Presently, he will throw your perception utterly out of focus so that you realize that he could only reveal you to your-self by revealing God to you under your own features and that you can only behold his nature in the light of his glance cast upon you,
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Finally, in a mighty sweep of blinding consciousness, you discover that the man of God is creating you by offering himself as the instrument of the Divine Glance and that he can only manifest as much of God as is your capacity of encompassing his being, and that God's vision in you through him is limited to the amount that you reflect of his being, until you become him.



Gayatri   (Prayers)		

SAUM
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Praise be to Thee, Most Supreme God,
Omnipotent, Omnipresent, All-pervading,
the Only Being. 
Take us in Thy Parental Arms,
Raise us from the denseness of the earth. 
Thy Beauty do we worship,
To Thee do we give willing surrender, 
Most Merciful and Compassionate God, 
The Idealized Lord of the whole humanity.
Thee only do we worship; 
and towards Thee alone we aspire. 
Open our hearts towards Thy Beauty, 
Illuminate our souls with Divine Light,
O Thou, the Perfection of Love, Harmony 
and Beauty! 
All-powerful Creator, Sustainer, Judge 
and Forgiver of our shortcomings, 
Lord God of the East and of the West, 
of the worlds above and below, 
And of the seen and unseen beings, 
Pour upon us Thy Love and Thy Light,
Give sustenance to our bodies, hearts and souls. 
Use us for the purpose that 
Thy Wisdom chooseth, 
And guide us on the path of Thine Own Goodness. 
Draw us closer to Thee every moment of our life,
Until in us be reflected
Thy Grace, Thy Glory, 
Thy Wisdom, Thy Joy and Thy Peace.

    Amen.

SALAT
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Most gracious Lord, Master, Messiah, and 
Savior of humanity, 
We greet Thee with all humility.
Thou art the First Cause and the Last Effect, 
the Divine Light and the Spirit of Guidance, 
Alpha and Omega.
Thy Light is in all forms, Thy Love in all beings: 
in a loving mother, in a kind father,
in an innocent child, in a helpful friend,
in an inspiring teacher. 
Allow us to recognize Thee
in all Thy holy names and forms; 
as Rama, as Krishna, as Shiva, as Buddha. 
Let us know Thee as Abraham, 
as Solomon, as Zarathushtra, as Moses, 
as Jesus, as Mohammed, 
and in many other names and forms, 
known and unknown to the world.
We adore Thy past; Thy presence deeply 
enlighteneth our being, 
and we look for Thy blessing in the future.
O Messenger, Christ, Nabi, 
the Rasul of God!
Thou Whose heart constantly reacheth upward, 
Thou comest on earth with a message, 
as a dove from above 
when Dharma decayeth, and speakest 
the Word that is put into Thy mouth, 
as the light filleth the crescent moon. 
Let the star of the Divine Light 
shining in Thy heart 
be reflected in the hearts of Thy devotees.
May the Message of God reach far and wide, 
illuminating and making the whole humanity 
as one single Brotherhood 
in the Fatherhood of God.
    
Amen.
	 
PIR
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		Inspirer of my mind, consoler of my heart, 
healer of my spirit, 
Thy presence lifteth me from earth to heaven, 
Thy words flow as the sacred river, 
Thy thought riseth as a divine spring,
Thy tender feelings waken sympathy 
in my heart. 
Beloved Teacher, thy very being is forgiveness.
The clouds of doubt and fear are scattered 
by thy piercing glance;
All ignorance vanishes 
in thy illuminating presence;
A new hope is born in my heart 
by breathing thy peaceful atmosphere.
O inspiring Guide through life's puzzling ways,
In thee I feel abundance of blessing.


NABI
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A torch in the darkness, a staff during my weakness, 
A rock in the weariness of life,  
Thou, my Master, makest earth a paradise. 
Thy thought giveth me unearthly joy, 
Thy light illuminateth my life's path, 
Thy words inspire me with divine wisdom, 
I follow in thy footsteps, which lead me to the eternal goal 
Comforter of the broken-hearted, 
Support of those in need, 
Friend of the lovers of truth, 
Blessed Master, thou art the Prophet of God.

KHATUM
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O Thou, Who art the Perfection of Love, 
Harmony, and Beauty,
The Lord of heaven and earth,
Open our hearts, that we may hear 
Thy Voice, 
which constantly cometh from within. 
Disclose to us Thy Divine Light, 
which is hidden in our souls,
that we may know and understand life better. 
Most Merciful and Compassionate God, 
give us Thy great Goodness; 
Teach us Thy loving Forgiveness;
Raise us above the distinctions 
and differences which divide men; 
Send us the Peace of Thy Divine Spirit, 
And unite us all in Thy Perfect Being.

Amen.

RASUL
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Warner of coming dangers, 
Wakener of the world from sleep, 
Deliverer of the Message of God, 
Thou art our Savior.
The sun at the dawn of creation,
 The light of the whole universe, 
The fulfillment of God's purpose,
Thou the life eternal, we seek refuge in thy loving enfoldment. 
Spirit of Guidance, 
Source of all beauty, and Creator of harmony, 
Love, Lover, and Beloved Lord. 
Thou art our divine ideal.

NAZAR
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O Thou, the Sustainer of our bodies, hearts, 
and souls, 
Bless all that we receive in thankfulness.

     Amen.
	 
	 
NAYAZ
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Beloved Lord, Almighty God! 
Through the rays of the sun, 
Through the waves of the air. 
Through the All-pervading Life in space, 
Purify and revivify me, and, I pray, 
Heal my body, heart, and soul. 

Amen.


UNIVERSEL
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O thou
the maker, moulder and builder
of the universe,
build with thine own hands 
the universel
our temple for the divine message
of love, harmony and beauty.

Amen.		
		
	


Afterword
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"I am concerned with orienting lovers of truth toward God."

Entering the long tube of the tunnel connecting the waiting room of the Albuquerque sunport to the incoming flight gates I saw, at the other end, a being strangely familiar, one whom I had known through-out time, seemingly for all eternity.  "Who" he is I do not know, "what" I see I am never sure, nor do the words I hear when he speaks or writes ever really mean "any thing" to me. if "any thing," the voice, the words, the visage, the being evokes something in my being now in the heart of the burning palace when the bird has become a crust of ash
TTO Page 647

breathing in 

Love Joy Compassion

breathing out

Peace

die before death & live forever.


The ways to God are numberless as the grains of sand unceasing as the rain of Dharma on the ocean of compassion Beloved one of God everything betrays the presence of the lover all is revealed in the holy book of nature the universe is one song we learn through spiritual experience to sing the song to read the book the living message of the sacred heart voice of silence breathe out & breathe in feel divine love suffuse our being a certain point of perspective.

Our being is one being surrender the heart cannot be divided this is where East & West are joined the rainbow bridge merges in our being. Each time we breathe we breathe that love so let us breathe together now & for ever more connected as pearls on a single string

Nakujabad - spring 73                    

a friend & lover



Glossary

A
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Advaita - non-dualistic school of Vedantic teaching founded by Shankaracharya.

Ain Aoph - the transcendent "beyond" aspect of the creator God.  The plenum of absolute emptiness, the void. [lit.: without (ain) end (soph).]

Ajna - sixth chakra; pineal gland, third eye.

Akasha - lit., accommodation: the world of archetypes.  the Akashic realm is said to hold world records.

Alam Al Mitha - the world of pure images and forms, intermediate between the material and the spiritual: the world of myth.

Ya Alim - divine omniscience or awareness.

Allah Ho Akbar - God is the greatest.  there is no strength or might save in allah.

Anahata - the heart  center or chakra.

Ana'l Haqq - "I am the truth": the utterance for which al Hallaj was crucified.

Ananda - joy: subtle and exquisite feelings of bliss.

Anwar Qahira al Qawahir - supreme sovereign lights.

Arbab al Anwa - the archangel -- archetypes of all beings.

Ariadnean thread - from Greek legend, a safeguard such as memory enabling consciousness to pass through various planes while maintaining a link between them without loss of consciousness.

Ars Regia - the royal art, alchemy, hermeticism.

Arupa -beyond form.

Asana - yogic posture, physical prayer.

Asaprajnata - see 'Samadhi'.

Ashram - a monastic center for retreat.

Atman - spirit, real self.  the impersonal Godhead & source.

Ayat - the 'signs' of the divine presence, as footprints in the snow.

Azaliat - the death that takes one back to the origin. (see also Qlamat'.)

Ya Azim - "O most high, a darvish greeting meaning "how beautifully does God manifest through you."

B
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Baqa -eternal subsistence in God.

Bardo Thodol - the Tibetan book of the dead.

Barzaq - horizon, the threshold between two planes, as an isthmus between two bodies of water.

Bhakti - devotion.

Bikkhu - a Buddhist monk.

Binah - understanding: unfolding of that which is hidden.

C
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Calcination - (alchem.) heating, burning, cooking: state of initial focus, tapasiya.

Chakras - lit., wheels: subtle centers corresponding to the plexi of the automatic nervous system joining the physical and subtle bodies.

Chela - disciple.

Cherubim - angels around the throne.

Chesed - mercy: level of impersonal love.

Coagulation - (alchem.) solidification of the new state.
 
Chokma - wisdom: level of archetypal comprehension.

D
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Darshan - lit., seeing: audience, being in the presence. 

Darvish or dervish - lit., a poor man, "the sill of the door." 

Dharma - universal law.

Dharana - a practice to increase one's capacity of observation by
the sheer act of concentration.

Drat (or Zat) - that from which all springs, the basis of all phenomena.

Dhayana - contemplation, merging consciousness with an object: the end of subject/object dichotomy.

Dhikr (or Zikr) - remembrance.  reiteration of the recollection ofGod.
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Distillation - (alchem.) abstracting the essence & purification.

Djinn (jinn or genius) - a being from the sphere of mind, loving art, knowledge, beauty; closer to man than the angel.

E
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Eidos - image

Elohim - one of the names of God (heb.).

Ekagrata - one-pointedness; centering the whole thrust of one's consciousness.

F
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Fana - annihilation of the nafs or false ego.

Faqir - lit., a poor man: an ascetic.

Fikr-as-sirr - the secret of the indwelling of the thought concerning the feeling: the secret Zikr.

Fikr-zikr - silent internal zikr, remembrance on the breath.

G
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Galganim - beings of light.

Gebura - power, strength: level of will.

Ghayb - hidden, absent.

Guru - spiritual teacher.

H
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Hadith - aphorisms traditionally attributed to the prophet Mohammed. (p.b.u.h.)

Hal - state: something that descends from God into one's heart equivalent to grace or gift.

Hara - the center of gravity of the body, situated between the swadhistana & manipura chakras.

ya Hayyo - everflowing ongoing life.
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Hekaloth - a Hebrew esoteric book on the heavenly spheres.

Hesychasts - hermit monks of the desert, of a school originating in the 4th or 5th century in the Byzantine desert, principally in Palestine, Syria and Egypt.  Later spread to mount Athos, Rumania, Russia, etc.

Hod - glory: level of mental activity.

Hulul - the infusion of the spirit into flesh; the doctrine of incarnation held by Christians.

Huwa - "he is" (that he is): allah beyond attributes.

I
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Ida - the left nerve or nadi of kundalini (fem.).

Imago Mundi - world picture.

Iinsan al'Kamil - the perfect man.

Inshallah - God willing.

Ishq allah - God is love.

Isa Upanishad - one of the mystical doctrines attached to the Brahmans (ritualistic precepts) of the Vedas.

Iishraqiyun - Persian Sufi mystical & philosophical school of illumination based on (Hikmat al Iishraq) theosophy of light propounded by S.Y. Suhrawardi (1155-1191 a.d.)

Ishwara - the personalized deity (Hindu).

J
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Jelal - power: active.

Jemal - beauty: passive.

Jiva - soul.

Jnana - a degree of absorption beginning with one-pointed concentration on an object to the exclusion of all other thoughts or awareness of externals and ending in a state of ultra-subtle residual perception.

K
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Ka - spirit (egyp.).

Kabala - esoteric metaphysical system or (lit.: tradition) of Jewish mysticism.

Kemal - perfection beyond polarization.
 
Karma - lit., action: the law of cause and effect.

Kashf - insight, spiritual discernment.

Kether - crown: primordial point, first impulse toward manifestation.

Khallf -vice-regent.

Khidr - the green man, a transhistorical guide present at all true Sufi initiations, identified with Elijah and the water of life.

Kkun - "be": the fiat that existentiates.

M
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Ma'ana - the divine intention.

Madzub - a God-intoxicated one.

Malkuth - kingdom: level of physical reality.

Manipura - chakra of the solar plexus.

Mantram - certain sounds repeated affecting the various chakras in specific ways, giving an attunement to the soul and standing for various aspects of divinity.

Maqam - station: category of acts performed out of an individual's will in the path toward God.

Ma'rifat - knowledge.

Maya - the appearance of things, the magical illusory play of phenomena.

Mazdanism - religion of ancient Persia possibly prior to Zarathustra.

Miraj - the night journey of the prophet to the throne (arsh) of God.

Moksha - liberation.

Muladhara - root chakra.

Mureed - disciple.

Murshid - teacher.

N
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Nabi - prophet, bearer of a particular message for a particular time. 

Namaste - Hindu greeting meaning "I honor the light within you." 

Netsach - victory: level of emotion.

Nigredo - state of darkness, disintegration: Christ descending into sheol (hell) -- necessary step in alchemical process prefiguring resurrection.

Nirvana - the unconditioned state, at-one-ment with everything and nothing, beyond karma.  the four stages in attainment of nirvana:
1.	Sotapanna - lit., stream-enterer.
2.	Sakadgami - lit., once-returner.
3.	Anagami - lit., non-returner.
4.	Arahant - lit., saint, the point at which the last vestige of selfish motivation has disappeared.

Noogenesis - birth & evolutionary process of the spirit.

Nur al Anwar - the light of lights.

P
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Panna - unique or transcendental form of knowledge: subject/object dichotomy is abolished.

Parat Param - beyond the beyond.

Pingala - the right nerve or nadi of kundalini (masc.).

Pir - elder spiritual guide.

Point Omega - the grand apotheosis, the convergence of all individuations in a single point at the end of time.

Prajna - supreme intuitive wisdom.

Prakriti - whatever is subject to change, nature.

Prana - life force.

Pranamaya Kosha - the etheric body, sometimes called the magnetic field.

Pranayama - control of prana through control of breath.

Purusha - whatever is beyond change, the spirit.

Putrefaction - (alchem.) the decomposition of the material corresponding to nigredo (dark night): presage of raising it beyond what it could be if left in original state.

Q
TTO Page 654
Ya Qader - divine power.

Ya Qayyum - everlasting life.

Qiamat - the death that takes one into eternal life.

Ya Quddus - spiritus sanctus vivecantus, the holy spirit.

Qu'ran - the message of God revealed through Mohammed (P.B.U.H.).

R
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Ya Rahman - divine creative love.

Ya Rahim - all-encompassing mercy and compassion.

Rasul - messenger, bearer of a universal message.

Resurrexit Christe, Resurrexit Hodie - Christ is risen, he is risen
today.

Rishis - forest dwellers.  sages of Vedic times, still found in Bharat.

S
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Sadhana - spiritual work or exercise.

Sadhu - one engaged in sadhana.

Sahasrara - the crown chakra or fontanelle.

As Salaam - the peace.

Samadhi - undistracted union of subject and object.
1.	Sarvitarka Samadhi - the realization of oneself as the total flow in a process of transformation beyond being in durational time but still conscious of the continuity of consciousness.
2.	Nirvitarka Samadhi - to experience oneself in the essence of what one has always been, being conscious of the attributes in their perfection, to the point where any sense of 'I'ness disappears.
3.	Sarvikara Samadhi - beyond the causal plane, at which point one discovers the origin of consciousness and one is pure consciousness beyond time.
TTO Page 655
4.	Nirvikara Samadhi - consciousness of the plane of the eternal archetypes of all soul structures before they fashion matter or flesh to conform to their inner pattern.
5.	Asaprajnata Samadhi - where all sense of being an individual consciousness is gone and one enters into eternal consciousness.

Samkhya School - an early school of Indian thought, propounding the advaita doctrine of non-dualism & unity.

Samsara - the vicious repetitious cycle of birth and death and rebirth. 

Sanyasin - a renunciate.

Satipatthana - lit., mindfulness: constant bare attention to all sensory perceptions and thoughts so that the mind is not stimulated by them.

Satori - sudden enlightenment.

Seraphim - archangels of fire.

Sephiroth - in Kabalistic terms, spheres which represent stages on the way from noumenal existence to the building of a physical vehicle in the phenomenal world.  The ten lights referred to in the Sefer Yetsirah (book of splendor) which form the Tree of Life. 

Shabd Nahd - absolute inner sound.

Shahada - the affirmation of the existence of God & the negation of any other than God: La Illaha Illa 'llah.

Shekinah - earthly presence of God, the transcendent.

Shiva - the dancing destroyer, forms passing, forms evanescent. 

Sifat - he attributes.

Sila - lit., virtue: practice of moral precepts for the purpose of clearing the mind of distractions from one's spiritual practices.

Silsilah - the chain of transmission of the sums.

Sirr al Ghayb - the concealed secret.

Solution - (alchem.) homogenizing the constituent discreet elements into a unified field or state.

Solve et Coagule - dissolve and coagulate. 

Sublimination - (alchem.) refining, raising.
  
Sunyata - emptiness, the void.

Sutra - a literary form used for most Hindu and Buddhist scriptures.

Svaohishthana - sexual chakra.

T
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Tafrid - annihilation of separation. 

Tajrid - detachment from the world. 

Tanmatra - subtle reality.

Tariqa - path, way.

Tat Twam Asi - that thou art.

Tathagata - name given Sakyamuni Buddha (hist.) signifying the being of that which is being.  lit.: one who is like the coming.

Tauhid or Tawhild - mystical union.

Tawakkul - dependence upon God.

Theosis - the drawing in of all into one's consciousness.

Tincture - (alchem.) the imbuing of the being with the qualities refined through the alchemical process.

Tipereth - beauty: the mediation between mercy & judgment; unifying factor.

Transubstantiation - the mystery of the sacrifice of the mass whereby ordinary unleavened bread & wine become the actual body & blood of Christ.

Turya - stage beyond ego-limited consciousness where transcendental consciousness takes over: "plane of the omniscient ones."

U
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Upanishads - ancient teachings of the forest dwellers (Rishis).

V
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Vairagaya - the falling away of worldly desires as a result of spiritual growth.

Vedas - the most ancient Aryan teachings and hymns.

Vedanta - mystical system for interpretation of the secret meaning of the Upanishads.  Begun by Vyasa, the compiler of the Vedas (circa 1400 B.C.).
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Vipassana - lit., seeing things as they are: where attention is turned to constant scrutiny of each successive unit in the thought continuum.

Vikara - images of the mind.

Vishuddha - throat chakra.

Viveka - discrimination.

W
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Ya Wahhabo - the descent of the divine attributes into form.

al Wali - the nearest friend.

Wazifa - divine attributes often used in connection with their audible repetition.

Ya Wehdo - withdrawal into the solitude of unity.

X
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Xvarnah - the crown of glory.

Y
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Yesod - foundation: level of creative power.

Yoga - yoke, union.

Z
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Zat (or dhat) - that from which all springs, the basis of all phenomena.

Zikr (or dhikr) - remembrance.



Bibliography
TTO Page 658
FURTHER READINGS

1.	ARASTEH, A. REZA.  RUMI, THE PERSIAN, THE SUFI: REBIRTH IN CREATIVITY AND LOVE.  TUCSON: OMEN PRESS, 1972.

2.	ARBERRY, A.J. SUFISM: AN ACCOUNT OF THE MYSTICS OF ISLAM.  NEW YORK: HARPER & ROW, 1970.

3.	ARNOLD, EDWIN.  PEARLS OF THE FAITH.  LAHORE: ASHRAF PUBLICATIONS, 1972.

4.	ATTAR, FARIDUDDIN.  THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS (MANTIQ UT-TAIR).
BERKELEY: SHAMBALA, 1971.

5.	_____. MUSLIM SAINTS AND MYSTICS (EPISODES FROM TADHKIRAT ALAULIYA), TR.  A.J. ARBERRY.  CHICAGO: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 1966.

6.	BERNARD, THEOS.  HATHA YOGA: THE REPORT OF A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.  NEW YORK: S. WEISER, 1970.

7.	_____.  LAND OF A THOUSAND BUDDHAS: A PILGRIMAGE INTO THE HEART OF TIBET AND THE SACRED CITY OF LHASA.  LONDON: RIDER, 1957.

8.	BROWN, JOHN P. THE DARVISHES OR ORIENTAL SPIRITUALISM.  LONDON: FRANK CASS & CO., 1968.

9.	BSTAN-'DZIN-RGYA-MTSHO, DALAI LAMA XIV.  THE OPENING OF THE WISDOM EYE, AND THE HISTORY OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF BUDDHADHARMA IN TIBET, TR.  T.K. RIMPOCHE ET AL.  WHEATON, ILLINOIS: THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE, 1972.

10.	BUBER, MARTIN.  I AND THOU, TR.  W. KAUFMAN.  NEW YORK: SCRIBNERS, 1970.
EDINBOROUGH:	T. & T. CLARK, 1971.

11.	  BURCKHARDT, TITUS.  ALCHEMY: SCIENCE OF THE COSMOS, SCIENCE OF THE SOUL, TR.  W. STODDART.  LONDON: STUART & WATKINS, 1967.

12.	  _____.  AN INTRODUCTION TO SUFI DOCTRINE.  LAHORE: ASHRAF PUBLICA-
TIONS, 1971.

13.	   THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING, TR.  C. WOLTERS.  BALTIMORE: PENGUIN, 1961. HAMMONDSWORTH:  PENGUIN, 1961.

14.	   CORBIN, HENRY.  CREATIVE IMAGINATION IN THE SUFISM OF IBN L'ARABI, TR. R. MANHEIM.  PRINCETON: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS (BOLLINGEN SERIES XCI), 1969.

15.	    _____.  TERRE CELESTE ET CORPS DE RESURRECTION, DE L'IRAN MAZDEEN A L'IRAN SHI'ITE.  PARIS: BUCHET-CHASTEL, 1961.

16.	    DE LUBICZ, SCHWALLER.  HERBAK: CHICK-PEA, EGYPTIAN INITIATE, VOLS.  I & 2. LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTEN, 1967.
TTO Page 659
17.	   ECKHART, MEISTER: MEISTER ECKHART: A MODERN TRANSLATION, ED.  R.B. BLAKNEY.  NEW YORK: HARPER & ROW.

18.	  _____.  SELECTED TREATISES AND SERMONS, TR.  J.M. CLARK AND J.V. SKINNER.  LONDON: COLLINS, 1963.

19.	  EDDINGTON, ARTHUR: THE NATURE OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD.  ANN ARBOR: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS, 1958.

20.	  ELIADE, MIRCEA.  YOGA: IMMORTALITY AND FREEDOM, TR.  W.R. TRASK. PRINCETON:  PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1970.  LONDON: ROUTLEDGE.

21.	  EVOLA, GIULIO CESARE ANDREA.  LA TRADITION HERMETIQUE, LES SYMBOLES ET LA DOCTRINE, L'ART ROYALE HERMETIQUE, TR.  Y. TORTAT.  PARIS: ED. TRADITIONNELLES, 1968.

22.	  _____.  THE DOCTRINE OF AWAKENING: A STUDY ON THE BUDDHIST ASCESIS, TR.  H.E. MUSSON.  LONDON: LUZAC, 1951.  NOT IN PRINT.

23.	  _____.  LA DOCTRINE DE L'EVEIL: ESSAI SUR L'ASCESE BOUDDHISTE, TR.  P. PASCAL.  PARIS: ADYAR, 1956.

24.	  FULLER, JEAN.  NOOR-UN-ISSA: STORY OF MADELEINE.  ROTTERDAM: EASTWEST PUBLICATIONS, 1971.

25.	  AL-GHAZALI.  THE ALCHEMY OF HAPPINESS.  LAHORE: ASHRAF PUBLICATIONS, 1953.

26.	  GOVINDA, ANAGARIKA.  THE WAY OF THE WHITE CLOUD: A BUDDHIST PILGRIM IN TIBET.  BERKELEY: SHAMBALA, 1971.  LONDON: HUTCHINSON, 1968.

27.	  _____.  FOUNDATIONS OF TIBETAN MYSTICISM, ACCORDING TO THE ESOTERIC TEACHINGS OF THE GREAT MANTRA, OM MANI PADME HUM.  NEW YORK:  S. WEISER, 1970.  LONDON: RIDER, 1969.

28.	  GUENON, RENE.  LE SYMBOLISME DE LA CROIX.  PARIS: UNION GENERALE D'EDITIONS, 1970.

29.	  HALL, MANLEY.  SECRET TEACHINGS OF ALL AGES.  LOS ANGELES: PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH SOC.

30.	  AL-HUJWIRI.  KASHF AL-MAHJUB.  TR.  R.A. NICHOLSON.  LONDON: LUZAK & CO.

31.	  JUAN DE AL CRUZ, SAINT.  DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, ED.  E. A. PEERS. GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY, 1959.

32.	  _____.  ASCENT OF MT.  CARMEL.  GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK: IMAGE BOOKS, 1958.

33.	  _____.  LIVING FLAME OF LOVE.  GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK: IMAGE BOOKS, 1962.

34	.         JUNG, CARL GUSTAV.  PSYCHOLOGY AND ALCHEMY, TR.  R.F.C. HULL.  PRINCETON:	PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1968.  LONDON: ROUTLEDGE AND K. PAUL, 1953.
TTO Page 660
35.	KHAN, HAZRAT INAYAT.  THE SUFL MESSAGE OF PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN, VOLS.  I-XII.  LONDON: BARRIE & JENKINS, 1970.

36.	GAYAN, VADAN, NIRTAN.  LONDON: BARRIE & JENKINS, 1970.

37.	THE SMILING FOREHEAD.  SAN FRANCISCO: RAINBOW BRIDGE, 1974.

38.	KHAN, MISHARAFF MOULAMIA.  PAGES IN THE LIFE OF A SUFI - REFLECTIONS AND REMINISCENCES.  LONDON: RIDER & CO.

39.	KHAN, PIR VILAYAT INAYAT.  PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN: A MESSAGE IN OUR TIME.NEW YORK: HARPER & ROW, 1974.(IN PREPARATION).

40.	SUFI MASTERS.  PARIS: SUFI ORDER, 1971.

41.	MEDITATION MANUAL.  PARIS: SUFI ORDER, 1970.

42.	KRISHNABAI, MOTHER.  GURU'S GRACE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MOTHER KRISHNABAI, TR.  BY SWAMI RAMDASS.  KANHANGAD: ANANDASHRAM PUB., 1964.

43.	KRISHNAMURTI, JIDDU.  COMMENTARIES ON LIVING, ED.  D. RAJAGOPAL.  WHEATON, ILLINOIS: THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE, 1967.

44.	LAMA FOUNDATION.  BE HERE NOW.  SAN CRISTOBAL, N.M.: LAMA FOUNDATION, 1970.

45.	THE BOUNTIFUL LORD'S DELIVERY SERVICE.

46.	THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM.  WHEATON, ILLINOIS: THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE, 1968.  LONDON: GOLANCZ, 1954.

47.	LEFORT, RAFAEL.  THE TEACHINGS OF GURDJIEFF.  LONDON: VICTOR GOLLANCZ, 1960.

48.	LEVY, ISIDORE.  LA LEGENDE DE PYTHAGORE DE GRECE EN PALESTIVE. PARIS: CHAMPION.

49.	LINGS, MARTIN.  A SUFI SAINT OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: SHAIKH ALLMAD AL-'ALAWI.  BERKELEY: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 1971.

50.	LIONEL, FREDERIC.  VASTROLOGIE SACREE. (NO FURTHER INFORMATION AVAILABLE).

51. 	_____.  L'HERMETISME, LA PHILOSOPHIE DES NOMBRES ET LES PROBLEMES  '  DE NOTRE TEMPS. (NO FURTHER INFORMATION AVAILABLE.)

52.	MANDUKYA UPANISHAD, COMMENTARIES BY GAUDAPADA AND SANKARACARYA.  NEW YORK: VEDANTA SOCIETY.

53.	MEAD, G.R.S. THRICE GREATEST HERMES, A TRANSLATION OF THE EXTANT SERMONS AND FRAGMENTS OF THE TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE.  LONDON: THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING CO., 1906.

54.	MEHER BABA.  DISCOURSES.  MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.: SHERIAR PRESS. 3 VOLS.

55.	THE GOD MAN.  MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.: SHERIAR PRESS.

56.	GOD SPEAKS.  MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.: SHERIAR PRESS.
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57.	MERTON, THOMAS.  CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER.  GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY, 1971.

58.	_____.  NEW SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION.  NORFOLK, CONN.: NEW DIRECTIONS, 1972.

59.	MONOD-HERZEN, GABRIEL E. L'ALCHIMIE MEDITERRANENE.  PARIS: ADYAR, 1962.

60.	MUKTANANDA PARAMHAMSA, SWAMI.  GURU: CHITSHAKTIVILAS, THE PLAY OF CONSCIOUSNESS.  NEW YORK: HARPER & ROW, 1971.

61.	MURCHIE, GUY.  THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES: THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE FROM ATOM TO QUASAR, SIMPLY EXPLAINED.  NEW YORK: DOVER, 1967. 2 VOLS.

62.	NEUMANN, ERICH.  THE GREAT MOTHER: AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARCHETYPE, TR. R. MANHEIM.  PRINCETON: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1972.

63.	_____.  THE ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, TR.  R.F.C. HULL.
PRINCETON:	PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1970.

64.	NICHOLSON, R.A. STUDIES IN ISLAMIC MYSTICISM.  CAMBRIDGE: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1967.

65.	ORAGE, ALFRED RICHARD.  ON LOVE, WITH SOME APHORISMS AND OTHER ESSAYS.  NEW YORK: S. WEISER, 1969.

66.	_____.  PSYCHOLOGICAL EXERCISES AND ESSAYS.  NEW YORK: S. WEISER.

67.	PATANJALL YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALL LONDON: STUART & WATKINS, 1970.

68. _____.  HOW TO KNOW GOD: THE YOGA APHORISMS OF PATANJALI, TR. SWAMI PRABBAVANANDA & CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD.  HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA:	VEDANTA PRESS, 1962.

69.	PLATO, SYMPOSIUM.

70.	RAM ANA MAHARSHI TEACHINGS OF SRI BHAGAVAN RAMANA MAHARISHI, ED. ARTHUR OSBORNE.

71.	RICE, CYPRIAN.  THE PERSIAN SUFIS.  LONDON: ALLEN & UNWIN, 1961.

72.	RUMI, JELALUDDIN.  DIWAN SHAMS TABRIZ, CAMBRIDGE: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1952.

73.	_____.  MATHNAWI.  VOLS.  I-IV, TR.  R.A. NICHOLSON.  LONDON: LUZAK & CO., 1968.

74.	SCHAYA, LEO.  THE UNIVERSAL MEANING OF THE KABBALAH, TR.  N. PEARSON.  NEW YORK: UNIVERSITY BOOKS, 1972.  LONDON: ALLEN & UNWIN, 1971.

75.	SCHUON, FRITHJOF.  DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM.  LONDON: ALLEN & UNWIN, 1970.

76.	_____.  UNDERSTANDING ISLAM.  BALTIMORE: PENGUIN BOOKS, 1972.

77.	THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, A CHINESE BOOK OF LIFE, TR. FROM THE GERMAN BY C.F. BAYNES.  NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE, JAVANOVICH, 1970.  LONDON: ROUTLEDGE A. & K. PAUL, 1962.
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78.	SGAM PO PA.  JEWEL ORNAMENT OF LIBERATION, TR.  H.V. GUNTHER.  LONDON:  RIDER, 1971.  BERKELEY: SHAMBALA, 1971.

79. SHABISTARI, MAHMUD.  THE SECRET GARDEN, TR.  JOHNSON PASHA.  LONDON: OCTAGON.

80.	SHAH, IDRIES.  THE SUFIS.  NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY, 1964.

81.	SHAH, SIRDAR IKBAL ALI.  ISLAMIC SUFISM.  NEW YORK: S. EISER, 1971.

82. 	SINAI, HAKIM.  THE WALLED GARDEN OF TRUTH, TR.  MAOR STEVENSON. NEW YORK: S. WEISER, 1968.

83.	SNELLGROVE, DAVID L. HIMALAYAN PILGRIMAGE: A STUDY OF THE TIBETAN RELIGION BY A TRAVELER THROUGH WESTERN NEPAL.  OXFORD: CASSIRER, 1961.  MYSTIC, CONN.: VERRY, 1961.

84.	SONGS OF ZARATHUSTRA.  THE GATHAS.  TR.  D.F.A. BODE AND P. NANAVUTTY.  NEW YORK: FERNHILL HOUSE, 1952.

85.	SUBHAN, JOHN A. SUFISM: ITS SAINTS AND SHRINES.  NEW YORK: S. WEISER, 1970.

86.	SWEDENBORG, EMANUEL.  HEAVEN AND HELL.  NEW YORK: SWEDENBORG, 1971.

87.	THOMAS A KEMPIS.  THE IMITATION OF CHRIST, TR.  L. SHIRLEY-PRICE.  BALTIMORE: PENGUIN.

88.	VALLUDDIN, MIR.  THE LOVE OF GOD.  FARNHAM: SUM PUBLISHING CO., 1972.

89.	VAN BEEK, W. THE DIVINE MESSENGER AND THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE. WASSENAAR, HOLLAND: EAST-WEST PUBLICATIONS, 1967.

90.	_____.  PRAYER AS A SOURCE OF STRENGTH - THREE SUFI PRAYERS.  WASSENAAR, HOLLAND: EAST-WEST PUBLICATIONS, 1960.

91.	VAN STOLK, SIRKAR.  MEMORIES OF A SUFI SAGE, PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN. WASSENAAR, HOLLAND: EAST-WEST PUBLICATIONS, 1967.

92.	THE WAY OF A PILGRIM AND THE PILGRIM CONTINUES HIS WAY, TR.  R.M. FRENCH.  NEW YORK: SEABURY.

93.	ZAEHNER, ROBERT CHARLES.  THE DAWN AND TWILIGHT OF ZOROASTRIANISM.  LONDON: WEIDENFIELD AND NICHOLSON, 1961.  NOT IN PRINT.  NEW YORK: PUTNAM, 1961.  NOT IN PRINT.

94.	HINDU AND MUSLIM MYSTICISM.  NEW YORK: SCHOCKEN, 1969.

95.	MYSTICISM, SACRED AND PROFANE: AN INQUIRY INTO SOME VARIETIES OF PRAETER-NATURAL EXISTENCE.  NEW YORK: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1961.

96.	KHAN, HAZRAT INAYAT.  THE PURPOSE OF LIFE.  SAN FRANCISCO: RAINBOW BRIDGE, 1973.
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97.	AFLAKI.  THE WHILRLING ECSTASY.  NOVATO: PROPHECY PRESSWORKS, 1973.

98.	LEWIS, SAMUEL.  TOWARD SPIRITUAL BROTHERHOOD.  NOVATO: PROPHECY PRESSWORKS, 1972.

99.	RUMI, JELALUDDIN.  THE DIVANI SHEMS-I-TABRIZ.  SAN FRANCISCO: RAINBOW BRIDGE, 1973. ANOTHER EXCELLENT BIBLIOGRAPHY MAY BE FOUND IN "PAINTED CAKES DO NOT SATISFY HUNGER," THE SECTION OF SUGGESTED READINGS IN BE HERE NOW (SEE ABOVE).



Basic Practices

Preparation
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Set a definite schedule for meditation and follow it every day.  Before each session relax the body with exercises, find your seat, still your body and mind.  Withdraw your attention from the impressions of the outside world.  Detach yourself from the sensory world by toning down your emotions, by indifference.

Refused to be conditioned.  Surround yourself with a zone of silence.  Place a sentinel at the doors of perception: detachment.  Abandon your mind as well as your body.  Experience the gravity pull of your thoughts and emotions.  Adopt the non-emotion of indifference and detachment.  Leave the mind to its flow.  Allow consciousness to be drawn higher and higher...

Practices with Light
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Flooding and interpenetrating.  Recollect and relive an experience in which you were flooded by the beams of a light.  Through this become aware of a luminous field which surrounds and interpenetrate your physical and magnetic body.  Identify unconditionally with your body of light.  Discover the transparency of your body, its receptivity to the passage of light.

Washing 
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Wash the eyes with light.  Wash the heart with light.  Wash the Chakras with light.  Flood the crown center with light.  Purify the emotions and make them luminous.  

Exploration  
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Explore the topography of your aura: the heart radiations through the shoulder blades, the sea of fire in the solar plexus, the base of the spine; and the superior pole, the third eye beaming upwards, the crown center gushing upwards like a fountain of light.

Threshold  
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Keep the door open between the conscious and the unconscious, suspend consciousness at the threshold between the two, watch the flow of archetypes and images rushing past.  The key is not to see images.  The key is to become luminous in your being.  Discover yourself as a being of light.

Practices with Breath
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Refine your breath.  Simply be aware of breathing.  Be conscious of contraction as you inhale, expansion as you exhale, concentration as you inhale, radiation as you exhale.  As you inhale, draw energy into the solar plexus, the sea of  fire deep within, The fire is transmuted into light in the heart center.  As you exhale radiate light from the heart center.  Inhale fire, exhale light.
As you inhale, draw energy in through the solar plexus, through the soles of the feet, and through the fontanelle at the top of the head.  As you exhale, radiate from the heart center, through your shoulder blades, through the palms of your hands.  

Pranayama 
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Breathe in four beats, hold the breath eight beats, breathe out four beats.  Repeat five times each side: In right nostril, hold, out left.  In left nostril, hold, out right. in both nostrils, hold, out both.


Purification with the Earth Element: Filtering
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Breathe in through the nose and out through the nose.  As you exhale, feel the magnetic field of the Earth draw the magnetic field of your body towards it, drawing off the denser magnetism.  As you inhale, feel the magnetic field of your body draw the magnetic field of the Earth into itself, replenishing itself with fresh magnetism.  As the energy rises upwards through your body, feel the filtering effect of the different chakras.

Purification with the Water Element: Washing
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Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.  Feel the fluid magnetism that is continually circulating in the atmosphere, feel it washing you clear, cleansing you of all impurities by its flowing.  Stand on your tip toes, let your hands hang in the air as if in still water, feel the magnetism dripping from them.

Purification with the Fire Element:  Burning
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Breathe in through the mouth and out through the nose.  Breathe into the fire in the solar plexus, breathe out radiating light from the heart center, through the shoulder blades, like a fountain of light through the crown.  Inhale fire, exhale light.

Purification with the Air Element: Spacing
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Breathe in through the mouth an out through the mouth.  Let the wind blow through you, taking you where it will, blowing through the spaces between tie cells of your body.

Practices with Sound
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Sound AH in the heart center, Using Faz'l, Ya Qadir, Ar Rahman.  Sound U in the throat center, using Ya Hu, Ya Quddus.  Sound I in the pineal gland, the third eye, Using Ya Alim, Ya Azim, go out through the crown on I. Practice AUM, sounding A in the heart center, the U in the throat center, go out through the crown on M.

Practices with Wazaif
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FAZ'L:  Blessing.  The outpouring of Divine potentialities into creation.

YA HAYYO:  The ever changing and transforming flow of life energy: life ongoing, every flowing.

YA QAYYUM:  Life everlasting, eternal, unchanged behind all change: the victory of resurrection over death.

YA QUDDUS:  The flow of the water of life at the source, the origin, the Holy Spirit.

YA RAHMAN:  Divine creative love breathing creatures into existence.  

YA RAHIM:  All-encompassing Divine compassion for creatures suffering existence.

YA ALIM:  Divine awareness, knowledge: Pure intelligence beyond consciousness.

YA QADER:  Divine Power, omnipotence.

ISHQ ALLAH MA'ABUD L'ILLAH:  God is love, God is the adored one.  "Love, lover, beloved: Allah."  It's all open.

The Ultimate Practice: Dhikr
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La Illaha Illa 'lla Hu:  There is no God but God.

LA ILLAHA:  There is no Divinity,

LA:  is intoned while describing a circular motion of the head, third eye facing left shoulder, solar plexus, right shoulder;

ILLAHA:  As one reaches upwards to the apex of the circle, the whole circle denying the reality of the external world.

ILLA:  Except:  is intoned while thrusting the head downwards like an arrow, the third eye striking the solar plexus, destroying one's picture of one's self.

ALLAH ('Lla'):  The great proclamation, sounded in the heart center, head raised.  

HU.

Fikr-Dhikr:  internal Dhikr on the rhythm of the breath, breathing out La Illaha Breathing in Illa 'La' Holding the breath Hu.

Fikr As-sirr, the secret of the fikr of the Dhikr:  Cease to think of the words and concentrate solely on the meaning while performing the motion of the head.


Couples Practices
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1.	Sit facing each other, cross-legged or kneeling, not quite touching physically.  The first place to meet is in your breathing, the woman breathing in as the man breathes out.  Synchronize breathing by the man tapping the knee of the woman as he exhales (that is the only time he takes the initiative) and then the woman tapping the knee of the man as she exhales.  Alternate that way.

	Now associate breathing with wazifa.  The man exhales, radiating ya Qader from his heart chakra to her heart chakra.  The woman exhales, radiating ya Alim from ajna to ajna.  With her eyes the woman looks into his third-eye, and the man looks into her heart chakra. Don't look into each other's eyes.

2.	Sit back to back, spinal cords touching all the way up.  Find a position where you are not weighing on each other, conjoining magnetic fields, auras, souls.  Breathe in at the same time.  Whoever wants to breathe in first backs his head lightly against his partner, then separate the heads slightly.  Hold the breath, hold heads against one another, then whoever wants to start exhaling first separates from his partner.

	When the heat and power of the spines get too much, edge away, a little bit from one another.  You'll find the right distance.  Then you'll start experiencing a current of magnetism rising from the bottom of the spine to the top of the head.  Then you've got it.

	Be conscious of being one aura.  When you separate heads, that one aura is radiating in two directions.  The stronger the power the more distance you will have to hold from each other.
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	The woman's crown is like a chalice, the man's is like a fountain.  You will find this feeling of this junction within one aura like an eagle with two heads.  It must be very harmonious, the two rhythms making one.  When this happens lift your consciousness together above the body.

	You may get the experience of high flight.

3.	Sitting facing each other, the man says dhikr: and the woman says Ishq allah ma'abud l'illah, aloud, each with the head movements of dhikr.  Since you are facing, the currents of the two circles move against one another. After 33 times stop, experience the polarity or interconnection between you.

a)	Sitting facing, the man says la illaha, then the woman illa 'lla' hu. 33 times.  Both do the complete head movement but speak in sequence.

b)	The man says illa, the woman 'lla'hu. 33 times.  Omit circular motion, throw heads down, bring up.

c)	The man allah, the woman hu. 33 times.  No motion.


Practices from "'The Meeting of the Ways'"

Hermetic Practices: Solve et Coagule
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1. 	One envisions one's self as a process instead of an entity

2. 	One affirms the luminosity of one's consciousness: identification with the higher self

3. 	Consciousness is carried into its ground: identification with pure spirit

4. 	Rebirth in creativity and love: one experiences the regenerating action of the spirit operating a mutation of one's created being

5. 	Incorporate the spirit: consolidation and fixation of the transcendental self in one's personality

6. 	Spiritualize the body: the body is the material projection and action of the spirit: materialize the spirit through the body


	Experience the body as a phase in a flow

	Experience the magnetic body, the etheric body

	Experience the body of light, the aura

	Disidentify with all of these bodies and experience your energy patterns as part of the ebb and flow of cosmic energy

	Ponder the various ages and stations of your life and discover the continuity behind all change: your real being
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	Experience your eternal being as a flash of the total bounty of divine archetypes: experience your own creation

	Experience the divine intention behind all things experience God experiencing himself through all beings

Hindu and Buddhist Practices

	Dissolution of identification with the personal center (prakriti: body, mind, personality) and identification with transcendental spirit (purusha).
	
	Cessation of mental activity by concentration (dharana) upon a single point (ekagrata).
	
	Contemplation (dhayana) of an object (a rose, a crystal, etc.) and feeling at one with its essence: overcoming subject-object dichotomy by at-one-ment in essence: sarvitarka samadhi

	Contemplation of the process of becoming in time, the continual transformations of life ever flowing, on-going and growing: grasping one's self as the continuity behind change: nirvitarka samadhi

	Grasping the tanmatra, the subtle reality, the essence of all apparent reality in a state of mutation: sarvikara samadhi; and beyond, the seed, nirvekara samadhi.


Silsila  Sufian
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HAZRAT KHWAJA ALI

HASSAN BASRI

ABUL FAZL ABDUL WAHID BIN ZAID

ABUL FAIZ FUSAIL BIN AYAZ

SULTAN IBRAHIM ADHAM AL BALKHI

SAADIDUDDIN HAZEIFA TU'L MA'RASHI

AMINUDDIN ABU HABEIRA BASRI 

MAMSHED ULU DINWARI BU ISHAQ SHAMI CHISHTI 

SHAIKH-UL-MA SHAIKH ABU AHMED BIN FARUSNAQAH TU'L CHISHTI

ABU YOUSUF CHISHTI

MOUDUD CHISHTI

HADJI SHERIF ZINDANI CHISHTI

USMAN HAROONI CHISHTI

MOINUDDIN CHISHTI

QUTUB UDDIN BAKHTIAR KAKI CHISHTI 

FARID UL HAQ MASAUD GANG I SHAKAR CHISHTI 

NIZAM UL HAQ WALDIN MOHAMMAD BIN SAYED AHMAD BADAONI BOKHARI CHISHTI

NAZIR UD DIN WALDIN MAHMUD CHERAG DEHLVI CHISHTI

SHEIKH KAMAL UL HAQ WALDIN MASHUR BA ALAMA CHISHTI 

SIRAJ UL HAQ WALDIN CHISHTI

ALIMA UL HAQ CHISHTI

MAHMUD URF RAJEN CHISHTI

JEMAL UL HAQ CHISHTI

JAMAN CHISHTI

MOHAMMED HASSAN CHISHTI

MOHAMMED SAHIB CHISHTI

YAHIA ALMADANI CHISHTI

KALIMULLAH JEHAN ABADI CHISHTI 

NIZAM UL HAQ WALDIN AURANGABADI CHISHTI 

AKHR UL HAQ WALDIN AURANGABADI JEHAN ABADI CHISHTI

MAULANA MOHAMMED QUTUBUDIN CHISHTI 

MAULANA MOHAMMED NASIRUDDIN URF KALE MYAN SAHIB CHISHTI 

SAYED MOHAMMED QIBLA KALIMI DELEVI CHISHTI 

SAYED MOHAMMED ABU HASHIM MADANI CHISHTI 

PIR 0 MURSHID PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN CHISHTI 

SHAIKH-UL-MA SHAIKH MAHBOOB KHAN CHISHTI 

PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN CHISHTI





