Curriculum of the Sufi Order, Lesson 5 -- Turning Within: Part II

Title

Curriculum of the Sufi Order, Lesson 5 -- Turning Within: Part II

Date

May 2000

Decade

2000s

Sequence

5

Description

Our objective in this sequence to the previous study of turning within, is to explore Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan’s instructions against the background of the ancient Sufis as to how to apply the practice of turning within to gaining insight in our problems and by the same token awaken qualities in our personality lying in wait as potentialities unbeknown to us.

Topic(s)

Consciousness

Freedom

Meditation Practice

Personality

Wazifa/Wazaif

Subtopic(s)

Turning Within, Zahir, Batin, Qabid, Wasi, Basit, Self-Analysis, Self-Image, Fana, Revealed Knowledge

Type of Publication

Curriculum of the Sufi Order

Media

Writing

Pages

8

Identifier

CSO5

File Format

PDF

Language

English

Author(s)

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Courtesy Of

Amida Cary

Full Text

CURRICULUM OF THE SUFI ORDER

The teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan
Presented and paraphrased by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Including parallels with the ancient Sufis.

LESSON FIVE

TURNING WITHIN: PART II.

Man, with the maturity of his soul desires to probe the depth of life. He desires to discover the power latent within him. He longs to know the source and goal of his life. He yearns to know the meaning of his life. He wishes to understand the inner significance of things. And he wants to uncover all that is covered by form and name. He seeks for insight into cause and effect. He wants to touch the mystery of time and space. And he wishes to find the missing link between God and man – where man ends and God begins.
Hazrat Inayat Khan (The Unity of Religious Ideals)

Our objective in this sequence to the previous study of turning within, is to explore Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan’s instructions against the background of the ancient Sufis as to how to apply the practice of turning within to gaining insight in our problems and by the same token awaken qualities in our personality lying in wait as potentialities unbeknown to us.

For the secret of all knowledge that one acquires in the world, whether worldly knowledge or spiritual knowledge, is the knowledge of the self.

PRACTICE:

Observe that when we try to meditate we tend simply to regurgitate the impressions of the physical and psychological environment, assuming that this is what is meant by turning within.

It is the situation we are in that makes us believe we are this or that.

What man knows is generally the world he sees around himself. What he knows is to express outwardly and to receive from this same sphere as much as he can receive by himself.…He overlooks that there I something beyond that which he realizes around himself. (Mysticism of Sound)
The source of the realization of truth is within man; he himself is the object of his realization.

Wazaif: Ya Zahir – Ya Batin

The world continues to live in our psyche distorted by our personal bias reinforced by personal emotions.

Wazaif: Ya Batin – Ya Qabid

Try to earmark the impact of your being upon your situation rather than the situation upon your being.

How one wanders all one’s life in search of something which can only be found within oneself. (Gatheka 11) Instead of finding it within, he always wants to find it without. (Social Gatheka: Power of the Word)

Now downplay the impressions accruing from outside by highlighting those that emerge from within. This will throw new light on our assessment of our problems.

And by the study of human nature, one realizes the nature of life generally….

Wazaif: Ya Wasi – Ya Qabid, and Ya Batin – Ya Basit


SELF-ANALYSIS

Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan points to self-analysis as the first step in meditation:

One should learn one’s condition, the condition of one’s spirit, of one’s mind, of one’s body, one’s situation in life and one’s individual relationship with others.
A person asks himself how all he sees affects him and what is his reaction to it all. First how does his spirit react to the objects or the conditions he encounters, to the sounds he hears, to the words people speak to him. And the second thing is to see what effect he himself has on objects, on conditions, and on the individuals he comes in contact with.

Wazaif: Ya Raqib – Ya Quddus, and Ya Khabir – Ya Hasib

PRACTICE:

Close your eyes. Turn your attention away from the noise of the environment; also away from your memory, or concern about social or psychological circumstances, having acquiesced that your assessment is bound to be biased, and therefore is not reliable. Imagine that your eyes are turned within.

Wazaif: Ya Muhsi – Ya Batin

Close the eyes and the mind from the outer world and, instead of reaching out, try to reach within. (Mental Purification)

When the eyes are turned inside, then one sees in the mirror all that is outside reflected. (Social Gatheka) And when this light is thrown within oneself, then the self will be revealed to a person. He will become enlightened as to his own nature and character. (Mysticism of Sound)

If you now peer deeply into yourself, then your personality will appear to you as the outer manifestation of a deeper, more cosmic reality.

When the soul goes further on the path of knowledge, it begins to find: “Yes, there is something which feels the inclination to call itself ‘I’.” There is a feeling of “I-ness,” but at the same time, all that the soul identifies with is not itself.

Wazaif: Ya Latif – Ya Zahir


A UNIVERSE IN ONESELF

One finds a kind of universe in oneself. And by the study of the self, one comes to that spiritual knowledge for which one’s soul hungers.
Man is born in this world ignorant of the kingdom which is within himself.

No sooner we scrutinize ourselves, the question emerges, “Who am I?” One questions one’s previous notion of one’s identity and cannot identify oneself anymore as a ‘discrete entity’ because one sees oneself inextricably intermeshed with the whole reality.

A person needs to analyze himself, and see, “Where do I stand? Am I a remote, exclusive being?”

To know the self is the most difficult thing in the world, because what man can perceive first is a part only of the self, a limited part. When man asks himself, "What is it in me that is I?" he finds his body and his mind, and in both he finds himself limited and apart from others. And it is this conception of his being that makes man realize himself as an individual.

Wazaif: Ya Muhyi – Ya Shahid

PRACTICE:

Dive deep in yourself, and try to reconnoiter the cosmic roots emerging as your personality rather than identify with your self-image which is an inadequate - in fact, delusive - notion of whom we are.

But to declare that the world or one’s self-image is maya does not take one very far; it is not good enough to unmask the hoax of maya. This is a negative proposition; rather one would like to discern what one really is camouflaged by the self-image.

The world may be an illusion, but behind it reality appears. Jami

Wazaif: Ya Khada (the one who conceals) – Ya Haqq

This is where Islam advances a complementary view to the Yogic maya theory: what appears at the surface are clues through which the reality thus revealed may be inferred.

God shows His signs on the horizons and in the human psyche.
Qur’an 51:21 (my translation)

All that we know of Him is through ourselves.... Since we know Him by ourselves, we attribute to Him all that we attribute to ourselves.
Ibn ‘Arabi (Fusus al-Hikam)

Wazaif: Ya Shahid – Ya Qabid

Thus the features of our self-image, however deceptive, yield clues as to our true being.

Do you not see that the Absolute appears in the attributes of contingent beings and thus gives knowledge about Himself, and that He even appears in the attributes of imperfection and blame? Ibn ‘Arabi



Compare Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan:

Man does not know that there is nothing that is not in him. A person who says to himself: “I do not possess that faculty” shows his lack of understanding what he is.

Moreover it is our resentment that traps us in our self-image which is a faulty representation of whom we are. Ascertain that it is our identification with our self-image­ - our ego - that is victimized by the blows, unkindness and abuse from the egos of people. And therefore if we knew who we are, the arrows of our abusers would fall on the shield of our psychological immunity.

Anger is power, but the willpower is greater. Therefore the right to develop willpower is the right of the superior man.

Wazaif: Ya Wali – Ya Matin

What is standing in the way? Denial. The ploy that conceals our true being behind our self-image is indeed smart, albeit mostly unconscious: it is denial of one’s flaws. Our validation of ourselves is so precariously suspended upon our self-image, so that we are safeguarding it as best we know by either parading an inflated psychological demeanor or lying low to evade confrontation – humility as inverted tentative pride. Little does one know most times that one is not only deceiving others but oneself.

Once that smoke screen has melted away, one’s true being reveals itself. Therefore the method of what is traditionally called annihilating one’s ego (fana) is actually unmasking this ploy of the ego and correcting one’s self-image so that it may tally with one’s true being. Granted the real ego, of which our “false ego” is just a sliver, is what we mean by God, then it becomes clear that to discover who we are, we need to reverse our sense of identity to its antipodal pole (God) as the impersonal dimension of our being and therefore see our ephemeral image as a condition of the totality which is the ground of our being, and which we call God.

It is owing to our limitation that we cannot see the whole being.

Wazaif: Ya Qabid – Ya Wasi

PRACTICE:

Now dive deeper still. By turning inside you may come upon the immaculate core of your being. It is only if you touch upon non-being in the void of being that you may espy the secret treasure in you: your real self.

How dare man claim that he is God! Only the emptiness in which the echo is noise is found in a heart that can claim such greatness as that. The true emptiness is filled by the divine light, and such a heart it is which in humility is turned to nothingness, so that that light shines out. Man's ego is a globe, and the spirit of God is the light. "Poor" is said in the sense of thin; and when the ego is poor, or thin, the spirit of God shines out.
(Morals: Blessed are the poor in spirit)





THE EGO

Hence the importance of the light thrown by Pir o Murshid upon our representation of our ego. In our meditation, attention will be drawn to correcting our self-image by seeing it in its context with the totality of our being.

Wazaif: Ya Bari – Ya Jabbar

What is meant by concentration is the change of identification of the soul so that it may loose the false sense of identification and identify itself with the true self instead of the self-image.

Our self-image is an incomplete and hence deceptive notion of ourselves.

The false ego is what that ego has wrongly conceived to be its own being. It is not that the false ego is our ego and the true ego is the ego of God; it is that the true ego which is the ego of God has been reduced to a false ego in us.

On the other hand, clearly, our false ego is a device of the cosmic planning of our defense system – our boundaries.

Vanity is the power that can lead man to either good or bad.

Therefore it should only be weaned with sagacious care lest one incurs psychological withdrawal symptoms.

If you started in life with self-effacement you would never become a self. What would you efface? Effacing comes afterwards. First you must be a self, a real self that is worth being. He who arrives at the state of indifference without experiencing interest in life is incomplete and apt to be tempted by interest at any moment; but he who arrives at the state of indifference by going through interest really attains the blessed state. Indifference gives great power; but the whole manifestation is a phenomenon of interest. All this world that man has made, where has it come from? It has come from the power of interest. The whole creation and all that is in it are the products of the Creator’s interest. It is motive that gives man the power to accomplish things. But at the same time the power of indifference is a greater one still, because although motive has a power, at the same time motive limits power.


ANNIHILATION (FANA)

Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan points to a frequent error that has often been made in assuming that to find one’s real self (the real ego in one) hidden behind one’s self image (the false ego) one needs to annihilate the ego (fana). Indeed there is even a danger that one prides oneself by one’s “false humility.”

The soberness of the ego is divine vanity and the intoxication of the ego is the conceit of man. (Alchemy of Happiness)

The solution that Pir o Murshid advocates is:

If in anything divine origin is seen it is in the aristocracy of the human soul, it is in the democracy of the human ego. In the world we see that there is aristocracy and that there is democracy, but in spiritual unfoldment these two become one, culminating in real perfection.

Wazaif: Ya Majid – Ya Mawjud

By acquiescing to the virtual presence of the Totality (God) in each fragment thereof (one’s ego), one can see how the total Being gets squeezed and reduced yet exemplified in one in a unique way. The advantage of the individual dimension of the cosmic ego is that each ego, by communicating to each other the features in which the totality of the Universe (God) is homonized, is enriching the entire cosmos.

There is a spirit that collects and accumulates all the knowledge that every being has had.

Wazaif: Ya Jami – Ya Alim

PRACTICE:

Represent to yourself your ego as the tip of the iceberg and the divine ego as its foundation.

If man dived deep enough within himself he would reach a point of his ego where it lives an unlimited life. It is that realization which brings man to the real understanding of life, and as long as he has not realized his unlimited self he lives a life of limitation, a life of illusion. When man in this illusion, says “I,” in reality it is a false claim. Therefore everyone has a false claim of “I” except some who have arrived at a real understanding of the truth. This false claim is called in Sufic terms Nafs, and the annihilation of this false self is the aim of the sage. But no doubt to annihilate this false ego is more difficult than anything else in the world, and it is this path of annihilation that is the path of the saints and sages.

Wazaif: Ya Wahid – Ya Samad

By effacing oneself one does not annihilate oneself. It might seem so, but it is not so in reality. Really speaking, it is the finding of the self, a self which is perfect.… The ego itself is never destroyed, only the illusion is lost. It is the one thing that lives. In the knowledge of the ego is the secret of immortality.

Compare:

Most of those who seek to know God make a ceasing of existence and a ceasing of that ceasing as a condition of attaining the knowledge of God, and that is an error and a clear oversight.
It is not thy existence that ceases but thy ignorance.
Ibn ‘Arabi (Whoso knoweth himself….)


THE PARADOX: GOD IN MAN, MAN IN GOD

The difficulty is accepting in our minds that we are both a “discrete entity,” and at the same time the totality is potentially inherent within the fragments of the whole.

Wazaif: Ya Wahid – Ya Mawjud

There is no way of getting proof of God’s existence except by being acquainted with oneself, by experiencing the phenomena which are within one. (Mind World)

At some point Ibn ‘Arabi declares:

Thou art not thou; thou art He, without thou, not He entering into thee, nor thou entering into Him…thou never wast, nor wilt be, whether by thyself or through Him, or in Him, or along with Him….Then if thou knowest thine existence thus, then thou knowest God; and if not, then not. (Whoso knoweth himself.…)

Then he seems to contradict himself:

Know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God.

At an advanced stage, the human mind reaches into more sophisticated modes of cognizance: complementarity – the conciliation of irreconciliables.

God can only be known by the synthesis of antinomic affirmations.
al Kharraz

Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan advances the most understandable paradigm:

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

By identifying ourselves with the personal dimension of our being, we fail to realize the bounty of our potentials and ascribe this to God as “other.” If you think of God as “other,” then you can envision that the archetypes of our form are only present in God. If you consider that all is God, then of course the divine perfection is latent in us.

PRACTICE:

Try to imagine that, while you are used to thinking of yourself as a discrete entity in the immensity of the world, the whole world is potentially present within you.

The Creator is hidden within His creation.

Wazifa: Sirr al Khaliq

Compare:

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

Those to whom unity is revealed see the absolute whole in the parts. Yet each is in despair at its particularization from the whole.
Shabistari (The Mystic Rose Garden)

When the subtle nature, owing to man’s inclinations has become pure, he contemplates within himself whatever is of the same nature in the cosmos. ‘Ayn ul-Quzat Hamadhani

Wazaif: Ya Latif – Ya Safi


As we have seen in the previous lesson, Pir o Murshid shows that it depends upon one’s perspective:

When I open my eyes to the outer world I feel myself as a drop in the sea; but when I close my eyes and look within, I see the whole universe as a bubble raised in the ocean of my heart.

Wazaif: Ya Wahid – Ya Wasi


ACQUIRED KNOWLEDGE VERSUS REVEALED

Since to do this, the personal vantage point of our consciousness needs to be bypassed, this is not a mode of cognizance that can be acquired. If we cease to try to grasp it with our consciousness, it will gradually be revealed (revealed knowledge instead of acquired knowledge – the “significatio passiva” of Martin Luther).

No one knows what is within himself until it is unveiled to him. Ibn ’Arabi

Compare Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan:

Revelation is the disclosing of the inner self. The consciousness throughout manifestation, facing towards the surface, turns its back to the world within, the sight of which is therefore lost to it. But when it begins to look within, the world unseen is disclosed.

Wazaif: Ya Shahid – Ya Fattah