Curriculum of the Sufi Order, Lesson 6 -- Working With Light: Illumination
- Title
- Curriculum of the Sufi Order, Lesson 6 -- Working With Light: Illumination
- Date
- June 2000
- Decade
- 2000s
- Sequence
- 6
- Description
- If you concentrate intensely on light in the environment and then draw your attention to the light surrounding your body, you will discover yourself as an effigy of light of great beauty, and your physical face will now appear as a mask, through which albeit your real being is trying to transpire. It seems like a scintillating kaleidoscopic array of pure effulgence, or the glow of a flame, or the awakening from the perspective of the human dimension of your being.
- Topic(s)
- Consciousness
- Meditation Practices
- Sufi Path
- Subtopic(s)
- Concentration, Being of Light, Glance, Thinking of the Universe, Aura, Countenance, Subtle Body, Luminous Intelligence
- Type of Publication
- Curriculum of the Sufi Order
- Media
- Writing
- Pages
- 11
- Identifier
- CSO6
- File Format
- 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 SIX
WORKING WITH LIGHT - ILLUMINATION
Hail to the company of all who have become mad and drunk with desire for the world of Light, with their passionate love for the majesty of the Light of Lights, and who, in their ecstasy, have become like the Seven Poles of the world. (Corbin, 1977, 134). Shihab ud-Din Suhrawardi
We have now reached a point where we are ready to work with light, starting with our own body. Once more draw your attention around your body. Instead of focussing on the magnetic field of your body, or subtle body, can you sense the glow, the effulgence radiating all around you?
Imagine that you are looking into a gorgeous sunrise in the mountains. Now draw your attention to your eyes. Do you notice that as soon as you draw attention to the light in your eyes, your eyes sparkle?
1) Identify yourself with the light counterpart of the fabric of your body.
Our bodies draw light from the environmental light, resorb it into our body cells and radiate it out in the environment. By being aware of it, you will absorb more light.
PRACTICE:
A good technique in meditation consists in drawing in light as you inhale, concentrating on the way your body cells jiggle when nurtured with light as you hold your breath. Then willfully radiate a lot of light as you exhale. Think that that light hurtles through space at probably more than 186,000 miles a second into outer space; it might even bombard the stars.
If you meditate at night, you will become aware of your relationship with the stars. You will realize that our aura is the light of the cosmos converged as us. When you sense the light surrounding your body, think that, “What I call my aura is the same as the light of the stars.” Our body does absorb light whether of the sun, the stars, a candle or electric light. On the other hand, light crystallizes as matter – photons can convert into electrons and visa versa. A crystal absorbs light but it is itself light that has gelled. In physics waves can consolidate as ‘solitans.’ There are reasons to believe that the template configuring our embryo is a magnetic field. Light is of the nature of a magnetic field. Maybe we, already as embryos, draw the light of the stars in our mother’s womb.
Exalt in the captivating thought that this is the world to which you belong, that you are in exile on earth and that behind the image of your body, you are a being of light.
It is by this process that man becomes like a luminous star. Hazrat Inayat Khan
THE LIGHT WITHIN
2) Identify yourself with the light counterpart of (not your body) but your subtle body at all levels.
If you concentrate intensely on light in the environment and then draw your attention to the light surrounding your body, you will discover yourself as an effigy of light of great beauty, and your physical face will now appear as a mask, through which albeit your real being is trying to transpire. It seems like a scintillating kaleidoscopic array of pure effulgence, or the glow of a flame, or the awakening from the perspective of the human dimension of your being. One step will lead to a further one.
If you consider your consciousness as a focal point in space, light seems to radiate from a point located in space: the sun, the stars, a candle, an electric bulb. But when you turn within in your meditation, as your consciousness gets inverted, it is diffused, and consequently your representation of light has shifted; it is dispersed in an inverted space. Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan calls it “all-pervading light.” We need to clearly distinguish between the all-pervading nature of light as we turn within and the radiant light. We find the same in the words of Ibn ‘Arabi:
Remember that light is of two kinds: a light having no rays, and radiant light. As for the light that has no rays, it is the light within in which self-disclosure takes place. Ibn ‘Arabi
I saw the robe of light altogether in me and I was altogether in it. (Corbin, 1978, 23) Suhrawardi
When you turn within, notice that you sense what seems to be a different kind of light to the light you perceive through your eyes. It could be illustrated by the light in a white hole in outer space which surfaces from subliminal levels of physical reality (that we ordinarily call the void) as a new-born star.
You will have noticed that the inner light does not radiate like a lamp for example, but is like a web where everything is intermeshed with everything else, like radio waves.
Originally the all-pervading light pulled itself together in a center. Then it shoots its ray, dividing itself as it proceeds towards manifestation. Hazrat Inayat Kahn
PRACTICE:
As you inhale, draw your attention to yourself absorbing light from the stars. Then hold your breath, turn within, concentrating and identifying with the all-pervading light. As you exhale, think that you are converting the all-pervading light into radiant light as your aura.
By concentrating on that light, you can be instrumental to making this all-pervading light manifest as radiant light. Hazrat Inayat Khan
Concentrating on this inner light will enable you to discover yourself rather than perceive the environmental world. Ibn ‘Arabi calls this vision, to visualize, whereas perception is called witnessing.
It is its own light which shows it to us, and that light is its soul. (Akibat, Life after death) Hazrat Inayat Khan
I saw myself through the light which things carry in their essence – not through an extraneous light. Najm ud-Din Razi (cf. Corbin, The Man of Light)
GLANCE
3) Identify yourself with your glance.
After turning within, cast the inner light (all-pervading light) forward through your eyes.
As the sense of sight is situated in the head, it then perceives the light when it is turned within; the brain and the sight, so charged with the light from within, sees through life so deeply when turned on to the life without. Hazrat Inayat Khan
When ambient light is stronger than the light of sight, man perceives it but he does not perceive through it. Hence unveiling only takes place through a light which is the light of sight.
4) Envision yourself as being a luminous mind. Entertain luminous thoughts. This requires one to purify emotions from resentment.
It is not good enough to envision light, one needs to cleanse one’s psyche from its defilement owing to concupiscence, greed, resentment, guile. The key is to love people who make themselves difficult to love: clear the mirror of the soul by cleansing the mind with the light of the heavens.
The great obstacle to be overcome in meditation is the false ego or Nafs. For the light of the soul shines in the heart and is reflected in the mind. Hazrat Inayat Khan
And through His self-disclosure in radiant light, He makes manifest the incapacity for the eyes and the power of the rational faculties, preferring them over the eyes. Ibn ‘Arabi
The world of the unseen is perceived through the eyes of insight just as the world of the visible is perceived by sight. When these two lights come together, unseen things are unveiled as they are in themselves and as they are in existence. Ibn ‘Arabi
STALKING LIGHT BEYOND MATTER
The more deeply we study matter, the more proofs shall we find of Intelligence working through the whole process of continual unfoldment. Hazrat Inayat Khan (Philosophy)
5) Discover a whole hierarchy of the higher frequencies of light in the many-tiered areas of your aura.
Reality appears as a virtuality that becomes an actuality in the existential condition. Light is a particularly important factor in our lives because it acts as a bridge between matter and, beyond our perception, the ineffable. It furnishes us with clues giving vent to the unknown, enabling us to decode the paradoxes regarding the higher spheres and life after life that so baffle us. Perhaps we could already start preparing for this right away, now. It would mean trying to stalk light as far as we can reach beyond its perceptual existential condition.
PRACTICE:
To reconnoiter the higher levels of your aura, in your meditation, try to stalk light as far as you can reach and even further beyond your perceptual outreach.
Then the light of dawn rises on the soul in such a way that that part of the paramount realities emanating from the constellations and the angels, who are their prototypes, predominates in it. Najm ud-Din Razi
Each time a light rises up from you, a light descends upon you. When the substance of light has grown in you, then it is the substance of the light in Heaven which yearns for you, is attracted by your light and it descends towards you. Najm ud-Din Kubra
Now transmute your aura itself beyond what one commonly understands as physical light. Perhaps a clue to this world could be in representing to yourself higher frequencies of light, such as blue, then mauve, violet, then ultraviolet, and imagine that this continues beyond the visible range. Do not limit light to what you perceive.
Physicists never cease to be amazed by the paradoxical way in which light behaves when they try to track it down in laboratory experiments. They can only ascertain and measure what happens at the instant it interacts with their instruments, but light eschews giving any clues as to its behavior before, after or between the measurements. It seems a misnomer to call light matter, even though it is an electromagnetic phenomenon, because unlike any other form of matter, it does not have mass. It provides us with a useful model about the relationship between reality and actuality – the Universe and the cosmos. Reality escapes any efforts on our part to track it down beyond the existential, perceptual world we commonly know. This familiar world looks like the cross-section of a multiple, multi-dimensional and many-tiered Universe of which we only know what intersects it. We are baffled, stymied by the unknown, and ever wish to decipher the secret of the mysterious unknown that affects us in such uncanny ways when we stalk light beyond its physical appearance.
In its finer aspect the supreme Spirit is the light of intelligence, and in its dense aspect the radiance of all objects (Smiling Forehead). The expression of man’s countenance is the light of intelligence in its dense form (Philosophy). Hazrat Inayat Khan
THE HEAVENLY SPECTATOR
6) There is yet a further step: identify yourself with being a pure luminous intelligence and consider your aura is its infrastructure. Now envision luminous intelligence threaded through your glance.
The divine light has shone upon the mineral and vegetable kingdoms; and there too it has shown its phenomena, although its full radiance has been reached only in man. It can be seen in the developed intelligence. (Some aspects of Sufism). Hazrat Inayat Khan
PRACTICE:
Now, rather than identifying yourself with your aura, you will identify yourself with the light of intelligence. Imagine that the physical substance of your body subtle body and aura is just an infrastructure to sustain an altogether different - non-physical kind of light - which the Sufis call the Nur aqil, the “light of intelligence.”
The Sufis distinguish between the “light that sees” and the “light that is seen.”
One direction is the light that sees, the other is the light that is seen, and the third is the light that shows all things (The Smiling Forehead). Hazrat Inayat Khan
Identify yourself with your intelligence that adumbrates your aura and subtle body and physical body that are infrastructures. This is what is meant by the “light upon a light” in the Qur’an Sharif. Identify with luminous intelligence – the witness in the heavens – and illuminate your eyes with that non-physical light.
God is the light of the heavens and the earth,
He is likened to a niche in which a lamp is burning.
This lamp is in a crystal,
Likened unto a starry pearl,
Which hails from a blessed tree,
An olive tree that neither is of the East or the West
Whose oil burns without even touching the fire.
It is a light upon a light.
Qur’an
Were it not for the light that belongs to the souls, there could be no witnessing, since witnessing only takes place when two lights come together (Chittick, 1989, 226). The object of vision which is the Real, is light, while that through which the perceiver perceives Him is light. Hence light becomes included in light. It is as it returns to the root from which it became manifest (Ibid. 215). As long as I am not a light, I cannot perceive anything of this knowledge (Ibid. 225). Ibn’Arabi
7) Now envision luminous intelligence threaded through your glance. Represent the divine glance as passing through your glance – Imagine God sees through your eyes.
PRACTICE:
The key to doing this is instead of thinking that you are the spectator, imagine that the real spectator who is looking through your eyes is God.
You thought that you were the Spectator, the witness of what you experience, but the real witness in you is your angelic counterpart – the witness in the Heavens. Each time a light rises up from you, a light comes down towards you…when the substance of light has grown in you, then this becomes a Whole in relation to what is of the same nature in heaven: then it is the substance of light in Heaven which yearns for you, is attracted by your light and it descends toward you. Najm ud-Din Kubra (cf Corbin, 1978, 73)
If you want to find Him you will find Him in the higher intelligence. When intelligence manifests itself on the surface, that is God (In an Eastern Rose Garden). Hazrat Inayat Khan
The secret of realizing oneself as the light of intelligence is to overcome one’s conviction that one’s consciousness is the witness. If you identify with the light of intelligence, you can envision your glance as that of the divine glance, of which it is a focalization; then you will understand the Qur’an. Everywhere you look you will espy the Divine countenance trying to transpire through that which appears.
You are as the reflected eye of the Unseen Person. In that eye, His eye sees His own eye. Shabistari
8) Realize that your glance is the divine glance but focalized as through a concave lens.
It is in the intelligence of an individual; but the collective working of many minds as one single idea, and the activity of the whole world in a certain direction, are governed by the intelligence of the planet (Philosophy). Hazrat Inayat Khan
When you look for God, God is in the look in your eyes. Jami
When we look at the all-pervading intelligence as centralized intelligence we call it God, because it begins with centralizing; from this point manifestation begins. For manifestation there must first be centralization (Vision of God and Man). The Omnipotent Light by this tendency becomes concentrated. Hazrat Inayat Khan
It is intelligence when there is nothing before it to be conscious of, when there is something intelligible before it the same intelligence becomes consciousness. Intelligence confined to knowledge becomes limited, but when it is free from all knowledge then it experiences its own essence. Hazrat Inayat Khan
The pure consciousness has so to speak gradually limited itself more and more by entering into the external vehicles, such as the mind and the body, in order to be conscious of something. Consciousness must always be conscious of something; if it is not conscious of anything, it is Intelligence. Intelligence confined to phenomena becomes limited but when it is free from all knowledge then it experiences its own essence (Manifestation). Hazrat Inayat Khan
This is awakening or illumination: Suddenly everything becomes clear.
This light becomes a torch for the seer who is journeying towards the eternal goal. Wherever the light of pure intelligence is thrown, things become clear. Hazrat Inayat Khan
Doing this practice, you will find that your glance unveils the Real from the appearance we call reality.
There comes a time in the life of the prophet or of anyone who contemplates, when whatever object he casts his glance upon opens up and reveals to him what it has in its heart (Sufi Poetry). Hazrat Inayat Khan
9) According to the Sufis, God discovers His potential being through your personality. Furthermore His potential being becomes a personality through your personality and through the configuration of your countenance. This becomes revealed to you if you reverse your vantage point and try to see as God sees – represent your glance as the Divine glance.
When I looked with God’s eyes, only God I saw. Baba Kuhi (cf 1975, 59)
Be the One who looks at me, and hide Thyself from my glance. Ibn ‘Arabi (A metaphysical oration, cf Etudes Traditionelles)
Through Thine own eyes, may I look at Thy countenance! Ibn ‘Arabi
I contemplate Thee through Thy glance. Ibn ‘Arabi
I see God through the same gaze through which God sees me. Ibn ‘Arabi
When God discloses Himself…He discloses Himself to the manifest dimension of the soul and perception takes place through sensation in a form within the barzekh (threshold) of imagination. Self-disclosure also occurs through the name manifest (Zahir) to the non-manifest dimension of the soul. Then perception takes place through insight (Basira) in the world of realities and meanings disengaged from substrata…This only takes place within the meanings. Ibn ‘Arabi
Just stop to ponder upon the miracle whereby your thoughts or emotions configure the muscles of your face; more so, fashion the fabric of light of your aura into your countenance that transpires through your face.
10) According to the Sufis, God gains knowledge of Him/Herself through your knowledge of Him/Her manifesting in and as your mind.
As in order to make the eyes see themselves, one has to borrow a mirror to see the reflection of these eyes, so in order to make the real being manifest, God uses a mirror…Your soul is just like a mirror which shows the object reflected in it instead of its own existence. Hazrat Inayat Khan
God speaking: “I created perception in thee only that therein I might become the object of my perception.” Ibn ‘Arabi (cf Corbin, 1969, 174, The book of Epiphanies, tr. Osman Yahia)
O Thou whose picture confers splendor to the mirror.
Nobody has ever seen a mirror without Thy portrait,
No, no because thanks to Thy grace in all mirrors,
It is Thou Who appeareth, not Thy portrait. Jami (1982, 143)
For in all that which is beautiful is intelligence. (Social Gathekas) Hazrat Inayat Khan
He is a mirror within which He sees His own form. Ibn ‘Arabi (Futuhat II 326, 28 Ch 297)
My image looks at me with my glance. I look at it with its glance. Majriti, Ghayat al Hakim (cf Corbin, The Man of Light, 17)
11) Try to distinguish the way the intelligence of the universe (God) gets formulated in your thinking and the way that your thinking contributes towards the thinking of the universe.
The guidance from the outer knowledge and the guidance from the inner intelligence are both necessary. If the inner light were enough, then man would never have been created; he would have been an angel. Hazrat Inayat Khan (class for murids)
The soul of every individual is God, but man has a mind and a body which contain God according to the accommodation. When the light from within is thrown upon this knowledge, then the knowledge from outer life and the light coming from within make a perfect wisdom. Hazrat Inayat Khan
When God sent Himself down to the waystations of His servants, their properties exercised their influence over Him. Hence He only determines their properties through them. Ibn ‘Arabi
Wisdom is born out of the meeting of the knowledge of the heavens and the knowledge of the earth. When the light from within is thrown upon this knowledge, then the knowledge from outer life and the light coming from within make a perfect wisdom. Hazrat Inayat Khan
The divine mind becomes completed after manifestation. The creator’s mind is made of His own creation. The experience of every soul becomes the experience of the Divine mind. Hazrat Inayat Khan (Unity of Religious Ideals)
12) God’s potential being becomes an existential reality through your envisioning His/Her being as the archetype of which you are the exemplar.
The purpose of the whole creation is the realization that God Himself gains by discovering His own perfection through his manifestation.
Wisdom is the result of the meeting of the knowledge of the heavens and the knowledge of the earth. Hazrat Inayat Khan
When the blazing light lasts long, it obliterates the form – the figures are taken away and the individual visitation is effaced. At that point one understands that what is effaced is giving way to a higher order. Suhrwardi (cf Corbin, 1977, 124)
SCRUTINIZING GLANCE
PRACTICE:
Look up first and when your eyes are once charged with Divine light, then when you cast your glance on the world of facts you will have a much clearer vision, the vision of reality…when His glance meets their glance. Hazrat Inayat Khan
The glances do not reach Him; he reaches the glances. Qur’an (6: 103)
A personal remark: I remember as a child my sister Noor saying to me: “Have you seen Abbah’s eyes today?” We stood at the door of the oriental room. As he opened the door, his eyes were like two suns.
PRACTICE:
Practice looking at a flower, then at a person, and instead of focussing on the petals or the features of the face, concentrate on the countenance transpiring through the face.
The sign of that awakening is that upon every person and upon every object the awakened person throws a light, a light of his soul, and sees that object, that condition, in that light. It is his own soul that becomes a torch in his hand. It is his own light that illuminates his path. It is just like throwing a searchlight upon dark corners which one did not see before, and the corners become clear and illuminated again. It is like throwing light upon problems that one did not understand at first. It is like seeing with x-rays persons who were a riddle before. One whose every glance, wherever it is cast, invites them to reveal to him their secret. Hazrat Inayat Khan
The glance of a sage has the power to open every object and to see through it; in reality it is the light which the sage throws out from within that makes the same things clear to his vision which are only half seen by the ordinary man. Then a person begins to communicate with all things and all beings. Wherever his glance falls, on nature, on characters, he reads their history, he sees their future. Every person he meets, before he has spoken one word with him, he begins to communicate with his soul. Before he has asked any question, the soul begins to tell its own history. Every person and every object stand before him as an open book. The will power works through the glance…and when this light is thrown within one’s self, then the self will be revealed to a person; he will become enlightened as to his own nature and his own character. Hazrat Inayat Khan
One might add: “He also sees His own countenance.”
COMMUNICATIONS WITH BEYOND
You see and discern nothing whatsoever except by something that is its like (or which is a part of it): the precious stone sees only the mine from which it originated, it yearns and is homesick for that alone. Therefore when you envision a heaven, an earth, a sun, or stars, or a moon, know that this is because the particle in you which comes from that mine has become pure. Najm ud-Din Kubra (Corbin, 1975, 71)
Amongst these forms, you will recognize your own likeness. Ibn ‘Arabi
I go towards my likeness, and my likeness goes towards me. He embraces me and draws me close as if I had come out of prison. An anonymous Mazdean magus (Corbin, 1977, 103)
This high initiate had discovered his celestial counterpart. I realize that it requires a tremendous challenge to one’s ordinary sense of identity to recognize a likeness between one’s representation of oneself, myself, and one’s celestial counterpart. However, this quantum leap may be triggered off by imagining that one’s aura is not confined to its physical light, but includes higher levels of light.
When you envision a heaven, an earth, a sun or stars, or a moon, know that this is because the particle in you which comes from that mine has become pure. Najm ud-Din Kubra
The next world is the same as this, and this world is the same as the next. Only that which is veiled from our eyes, we call the unseen world. Hazrat Inayat Khan
Since our minds tend to represent the abstract in a concrete image, we imagine the angel in a perceptual form resembling familiar though outstanding faces.
A relation or a friend may appear and tell him something about the other side of life…One may see faces never seen before that have once existed in the world…a saint or sage may appear who may guide him further. An angel may appear as Gabriel did to Moses…As highly evolved a person is, so high is the vision. Sometimes the object of his vision wishes to manifest to him; sometimes he creates the object of his vision before him. Hazrat Inayat Khan
The experience of authentic raptures in the world of Hurkalya (the heavens of the “World of the Image”) depends on the magnificent prince, Hurakhsh…There are also visitations and communications from other princes. Sometimes the visitation consists of the manifestation of certain of these celestial princes in epiphanic forms or places appropriate to the moment…Sometimes it is the souls of the past which induce an awakening or an inner call. Sometimes the apparition takes on a human form (Corbin, 1977, 123)…They see human forms of extreme beauty who speak to them in the most beautiful words (Ibid 132). Shihab ud-Din Suhrawardi
Part of Curriculum of the Sufi Order, Lesson 6 -- Working With Light: Illumination