Curriculum of the Sufi Order, Lesson 10 -- The Universel

Title

Curriculum of the Sufi Order, Lesson 10 -- The Universel

Date

March 2001

Decade

2000s

Sequence

10

Description

Envisioning the spirituality for the future, Pir o Murshid could see that it was more important to overarch our understanding of the traditional transmissions with the all-encompassing vision of the Message of our time. This clearly defines the Universel: it is orienting our insight in an exciting outreach looking into the future while ranging through the perennial revelation of the divine guidance by the Prophets of all religions as it proceeded step by step historically in the great civilizations.

Topic(s)

Consciousness

Meditation Practice

Religions

Sufi Path

Wazifa/Wazaif

Subtopic(s)

Spirituality of the Future, Self-image, Masters, Saints, Prophets, Revealed Knowledge, Yoga, Buddhism

Type of Publication

Curriculum of the Sufi Order

Media

Writing

Pages

10

Identifier

CSO10

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 TEN

THE UNIVERSEL


[Note: This lesson is similar to Lesson One of the Universel Curriculum.]

When Siraj Baron Sirdar van Tuyll suggested to Hazrat Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan in 1925 to set up a school of comparative religion for cherags, Murshid rejected the proposition. Sirdar was confounded: it seemed logical that, since we read the scriptures of all religions at the altar of the Universal Worship, the cherags selecting these texts should be cognizant of the world religions and compare them. The answer is that simply presenting them as initially rendered in the chronicles of history does not suffice. Endeavoring to compare them, one soon realizes to what extent they are fraught with contradictions, customs owing to the thinking and social structures of the time when they were announced, political concerns obsolete in our advancing civilizations, historical data and biographies. Within the framework of our ordinary reasoning, trying to reconcile dogmas proves counterproductive, albeit its study has some academic relevance. It is in the testimonies of the mystics of those religions that a common ground is found.

Most importantly, traditional transmissions need to be seen in the perspective in which we think today.

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
Not knowing the condition of that particular time nor the psychology of the people at the time when the prophet existed, man is ready to judge that personality by the standard of ideas which he knows today; this does not do that personality justice.

The prophet brings the message of the day, a reform for that particular period in which he is born.

The whole universe has contributed to the way humanity thinks today. (Spiritual Liberty.) The collective working of many minds as one single idea and the activity of the whole world are governed by the intelligence of the planet. The thought of any person is the thought of the entire human race and so the intelligence of the whole planet has an effect upon all those living on the planet….It is the Message of spiritual liberty.

PRACTICE:

Wazaif: ya Wasi – ya Alim

Ponder upon the degree to which your thinking is influenced and shaped by current trends. In fact grasp the thought that your thinking is an expression of the way the universe thinks as it evolves in the evolutionary process.

Envisioning the spirituality for the future, Pir o Murshid could see that it was more important to overarch our understanding of the traditional transmissions with the all-encompassing vision of the Message of our time. This clearly defines the Universel: it is orienting our insight in an exciting outreach looking into the future while ranging through the perennial revelation of the divine guidance by the Prophets of all religions as it proceeded step by step historically in the great civilizations.

Wazaif: ya Fattah (open the door to) – ya Akhir (the future)

The Universel is the perfume emerging out of distilling the gist of the sacred yield of the world religions honored in the Universal Worship; it is also the leaven quickening the dough of the conventional perusal of sacred texts in the Universal Worship. It operates as an encompassing embrace, integrating religious lore beyond apparent differences. It spans the old and the new.

By unveiling radically revolutionary perspectives spelling the advance of human thinking, Pir o Murshid throws new light on earlier beliefs, adjusting them to the trend of our modern thinking.

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
Divinity resides in humanity; it is also the outcome of humanity….The planet has culminated into human beings. (Philosophy, Psychology, Mysticism/ Philosophy/ Intelligence.) The soul is God, but man has a body and mind of his own.

Wazaif: ya Mawjud (existentiation) – Dhu’l Jelali wa’l Ikram (perfect being)

We are living at a time when personal problems have been enhanced by our availing ourselves of more and more freedom. Our concerns for the purpose of our lives has become increasingly daunting and our need to discover ‘who we are’ desperately crucial, rather than the somewhat speculative metaphysical enquiries of theologians, the antiquated reliance on belief systems, mandatory prescriptions and role models.

Pir o Murshid saw that, to reach clarity in facing these needs, one had to unmask the hoax of our self-image, modulate our consciousness beyond its normally limited range, and explore unfamiliar propensities of our thinking, while trying to reconnoiter the issues enacted behind our life situations.

Wazaif: ya Qabid (the constrainer) – ya Mani (the restrainer)

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
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 false self. (The Alchemy of Happiness: The Inner Life and Self Realization)

The false ego is what does not belong to the real ego, and what that ego has wrongly conceived to be its own being. (The Mysticism of Sound and Music.) It is not his true self which is limited; what is limited is what he holds, not himself. (The Alchemy of Happiness)

Wazifa: ya Warith (the inheritor)

PRACTICE:

Try to get a clear sense of your image of yourself: the idiosyncrasies that are characteristic of you as you imagine yourself to be: qualities, defects, skills, ideals, strivings, fears, misgivings, doubts about yourself, self-assurance, resentment, guilt, anger, hope, expectations, disappointments, degree of freedom, courage, incentive, dependence, independence, detachment.

Now take for granted that many of these evaluations of yourself are incomplete, subjective, liable of bias, even risk being deceptive, self-deceptive – parading vainglory, and, perhaps, wishful thinking.

Now try to capture the potentialities lying in wait in the cosmic underpinning of your being. You will discover that they are inexhaustible and sublime.

Wazifa: ya Musawwir (the fashioner)

We have a catalogue of archetypal qualities in the Ism Ilahi (which we call Wazaif). All these qualities are latent in what one might call the seed of which your personality is the plant.

Earmark a quality which is of compelling consequence to you, and try to spot it deep in your being waiting to be aroused and awakened.

In a further step, explore what would be the effect if you developed this quality upon how you deal with one of you problems.

BUILDING A BRIDGE WITH THE PROPHETS, MASTERS AND SAINTS FOR GUIDANCE IN OUR PROBLEMS

While in earlier schools initiates were focused upon the prophet of their religion or their personal guru, in announcing the Message of our time, Pir o Murshid opened up a vast outreach embracing all prophets, masters and saints of all religions. By contemplating them, we build a bridge with our thoughts and our hearts through which they can inspire us, thereby guiding us.

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
People in the world, through their intoxication, even in following or accepting these wise men, have monopolized one of them as his prophet or teacher. The Sufi message is a reminder to humanity - not to any one nation, but to all; not to one, but to every creed - of the truth taught by all the great teachers of humanity.

This broad view was in incubation only among the greater Sufi teachers.

Ibn ‘Arabi:
He describes Himself to you by yourself. Since the form in which He discloses Himself in a faith is the form of that faith, the theophany takes the dimension of the receptacle that receives it, the receptacle in which He discloses Himself. That is why there are many different faiths. To each believer, the Divine Being is He who is disclosed to him in the form of his faith. If God manifests Himself in a different form, the believer rejects Him, and that is why the dogmatic faiths combat one another. (cf. H. Corbin, 1969, p. 197)

Imagine that you consult an illuminated being looking at what you see as your problem in the light of his or her insight into its programming!

Here we hit upon the crucial issue. Rather than assessing or trying to solve our problems by looking at them from our personal vantage point, which is counterproductive, we will gain an illuminative insight by learning from great beings how they faced and dealt with similar issues.

Wazaif: ya Wali (masterful) - ya Hakim (wise)

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
The great thinkers who contemplate the flow of that divine consciousness, rise in their contemplation above the boundaries which must limit the view of average men at any and every stage of civilization.

Wazaif: ya Rafi (the exalter) - ya Mu’izz (the honorer)

There is no being in the Universe whose consciousness we cannot consult; albeit, admittedly, to really communicate, we would have to be up to their level of thinking and up to the contribution the pitch of their emotional attunement gives to their realization.

Wazaif: ya Qayyum (self-subsisting) - ya Hadi (the guide)

PRACTICE:

Instead of cogitating thoughts, contemplate the beings who incorporate these thoughts, for thoughts live in beings. Where is the thinking of the universe to be found if not in beings?

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
In reality, there are no things. They are all beings. It is simply a gradual awakening from the witnessing aspect to the recognizing aspect. (Gatha I, Insight, The Glance)

When a person witnesses an event or a thought, it has not yet been embodied in their being. But if he or she recognizes in his or her person or that of another the idiosyncrasy that matches that thought, and thereby arouses it, awakening it, then that thought becomes a living reality.

Wazaif: Dhu’l Jelali wa’l Ikram (the perfect being)
The same applies at the macroscopic scale.

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
People ask: "If all is God, then God is not a person." The answer: though the seed does not show the flower in it, yet the seed culminates in the flower; and therefore the flower already existed in the seed."

No doubt it would be a great mistake to call God a personality, but it is a still greater mistake when man denies the personality of God…. Man in the flowering of his personality expresses the personality of God.

And if the world has been able to believe in God and to recognize God in a being, it is in the godly, it is in the soul which reflects God. It is in man that divinity is awakened, that God is awakened, that God can be seen.

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. (The Unity of Religious Ideals)

The Creator is hidden in His creation.

Wazaif: ya Khabir (the aware) - ya Alim (the knower)

Man thinks and speaks according to the pitch of his soul.

One’s grade of evolution depends upon the pitch one has attained that makes one conscious of a certain phase of life….

It is not his form, it is not his appearance, it is not what he says. It is his atmosphere, it is what his presence conveys to you, it is what his atmosphere tells you. (Supplementary Papers, The son of the Murshid in Delhi)

For example, if your thoughts wandered to Mount Kailas to visit Shiva sitting in samadhi for having mastered physical and mental functions, and you were still encumbered with addictions, you could not attune to his consciousness, but the impact of his powerful being might help you overcome these addictions.

You would not be welcomed to discuss with Dr. Ilya Prigogine his theory of near equilibrium unless you understood a whole range of sophisticated physics, but reading his books may lead to entering his thinking.

If you long to attune to the ecstasy of dervishes, you would have to let go of being uptight or low key. You would not be able to communicate with Shihabuddin Suhrawardhi, unless you removed the bushel (if there is one) of selfishness masking the light of your soul. Counter wise, the light in his eyes would prove worthwhile eschewing greed to share its effulgence. To look into the eyes of Hazrat Babajan, you would have to abandon any guile, deception or self-deception. Counter wise, looking into her eyes would clear any vestige of divisiveness.

To be granted an audience with the President, unless you were a buddy of a celebrity, whatever be your skills or spiritual status they would not carry much weight!
To appreciate Beethoven’s or Brahms’s music more profoundly, you would have to know something of their life’s struggles which may lead to getting into their consciousness and see how they turned the tables on their most painful problem by harnessing its energy creatively. This method could be used in transforming one’s person.

Christ? You would have to forgive those who have abused you – even love your enemy! That is a very challenging mandate! It is more difficult to forgive those who have harmed or tortured others than those who have betrayed or demeaned one’s self! Would letting them off the hook be interpreted or rightly condemned as condoning or irresponsible tolerance?

As for Buddha, reaching into his consciousness would make you free since he has himself found freedom, but he is uncompromising, so you would have to not only give up your wishes, but wishing for anything.

To access these perspectives of ubiquitous beings, one has to carry
one’s thinking beyond its confinement to the perceptual or conceptual mode of thinking.

PRACTICE:

Thinking of a prophet, master or saint has the effect of turning your attention to and attuning you to levels in yourself in which he or she ranges. Choose a prophet, master or saint to whom you feel particularly attuned, envision him or her as described in the annals of history, then, inspired by this vision, hoist your sense of identity into its higher levels so as to establish some degree of concordance. Now try to shift your consciousness into his or her consciousness and, knowing something of his or her pronouncements when incarnated, try to glimpse how he or she thinks and feels in considering your problems from his or her point of view.

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
Illumination is obtained by rising above one’s earthly condition at the command of one’s will and realizing one’s immortal self which is God….

Ibn ‘Arabi:
When God moves any servant through his spiritual states, in order to show him His signs, He moves him through His states. (Futuhat)

It is helpful at this stage to realize that, while our thinking moves within the framework of space-time, it can take flight notwithstanding this constraint.

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
The soul manifesting as a body has diminished its power considerably, even to the extent that it is not capable of imagining for one moment the great power, life and light it has in itself. Once the soul realizes itself by becoming independent of the body that surrounds it, then the soul naturally begins to see in itself the being of the spirit. (Philosophy, Psychology, Mysticism)

However you need not leave behind your body, you can also become aware of your higher bodies.

Wazifa: ya Mu’id (the preserver)

Our mind can contemplate ‘pure thoughts’ while transmuting its conceptualization of the existential condition of reality within the space-time frame. Therefore it is irrelevant whether these beings are disincarnated.

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
This process takes place in two directions: outwardly by being one with all we see, and inwardly by being in touch with that one Life which is everlasting.

The soul manifests in the world in order that it may experience the different phases of manifestation, and yet not lose its way, but regain its original freedom, in addition to the experience and knowledge it has gained in the world. (The Sayings of Hazrat Inayat Khan.) True exaltation of the spirit resides in the fact that it has come to Earth and has realized there its spiritual being. (The Alchemy of Happiness.) Illumination is obtained by rising above one’s earthly condition at the command of one’s will and thereby realizing one’s immortal self which is God within…. Perfect realization can only be gained by passing through all the stages between man, the manifestation of God, the only Being, knowing ourselves from the lowest to the highest point of existence, and thus accomplishing the heavenly journey.

Pir o Murshid showed that the emerging spirituality throws light on human issues and can transform one’s being. How can we achieve this? We know from experience that learning consists in replacing our view by availing ourselves of the grasp of the question at stake by a wise being endowed with a more informed know-how, or extrapolating between our point of view and that of another, or overarching our view by the encompassing overview of an illuminated being. Pir o Murshid calls this ‘the reason behind reason.’

The mystic touches the reason of reason, the cause behind the cause, the purpose beyond the purpose.

Wazifa: ya Khabir

So it is with the assessment of our problems. Let us distinguish here two dimensions. We learn to see them in their context rather than in their content. Moreover we learn to see them from the antipodal vantage point to our personal (obviously biased) vantage point.

To this end, in a first step, we train our consciousness to see things from the point of view of another in a grasp including both our point of view and that of another. One discovers that one can actually shunt one’s consciousness into that of another and witness how thing appear to them. One discovers that one is able to extrapolate between these views (just as our eyes are able, by dint of parallax, to extrapolate between two different two-dimensional perspectives into a three dimensional one).


Hazrat Inayat Khan:
The first sign one notices after the awakening of the soul, is that one begins to see from two points of view. (Social Gathekas)

PRACTICE:

Think of a person you know. Imagine that you are that person. Imagine that you are in the circumstances, the situation, in which this person is. Imagine how that person feels and sees things. Imagine what are his or her aspirations, motivations, concerns, precariousness, and overcoming.

Next proceed likewise with a person who is inimical to you, or has harmed you. See that they needed to boost their self-esteem by trying to exercise power over you.

Next, combining more and more differing views from more and more people, arrive at a multidimensional, all-encompassing grasp.

In a second step, try to see how you appear, or your standpoint appears, from the point of view of another, or more people.

St. Francis:
I thought I was looking at the world, but the world is looking at me.

In an ultimate step, try to grasp some tenuous clues as to the meaningfulness of the programming - the code ordering your life’s situation. This is not a knowledge that one acquires by figuring things out with one’s mind, but it may be gradually revealed to you as you evolve in your realization. Where are the clues to the programming of life hidden in the particular circumstances in which you find yourself?

Ibn ‘Arabi:
Since the ephemeral being manifests the form of the eternal, it is by the contemplation of the ephemeral that God communicates to us the knowledge of Himself. (1975, p 15)

To Him we attribute no quality without ourselves having that quality. (1975, p 16)

However, any attempt at making sense of this strategy proves perplexing to our understanding, and yet dawns upon one, providing that one forfeits one’s reliance upon acquired knowledge. The Sufis endeavor to make this revealed knowledge prevail upon acquired knowledge.

Ibn ‘Arabi:
At an advanced stage, one learns to grasp God as He is in Himself, rather than the knowledge gleaned of Him. (cf. Valsan Et. 4/5, 1962)

Then thou understandeth that thou knowest God by God, not by thyself. (1976, p 16)

Wazaif: ya Ahad (the One) – ya Samad (the eternal)
So, let us recall that our objective is:

(i) to ascertain clearly our assessment of our problems or life situations;

(ii) to caution ourselves as to personal bias, denial, self-justification, self-deception, ego trips;

(iii) to shift your consciousness into the consciousness of the persons involved with you in your problem or life situation so as to see the same situation from complementary vantage points;

(iv) to try to reach into the consciousness of a prophet, master, saint or wise being and try to imagine how that being would deal with this situation. Note that one needs to proceed in two steps:
imagine to oneself that being as described in the annals of history (in some cases his or her face or demeanor in an environment );
now in a second step, try to transfer your consciousness into the transcendent perspective of that honored being, and see how the situation looks from his or her point of view, while resonating with his or her attunement.

(v) Now try to match our standpoint with that of this being, endeavoring to value the wisdom of his or her stance, while acquiescing to the limitations in one’s ability to conform and the compulsion of one’s psychological needs. At first one might only be able to toggle between one’s view and the challenging superlative one of that being - permutate to and fro to see the complementarity of their relevances. Can one extrapolate while honoring one’s own stance as relatively valid if not as an all-encompassing, overarching evaluation?

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
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 the knowledge of the earth, then the knowledge from outer life and the light from within make a perfect wisdom.

Wazaif: ya Khabir - ya Alim

Ibn ‘Arabi:
The world of the unseen is perceived through 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.

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
Insofar as man is capable of seeing the seen world, to that extent he is also capable of observing the unseen world on condition that he first sees and observes his own unseen world.

The method to reach into the cyber space-time of ubiquitous beings, or even beyond, consists in shifting one’s mode of thinking and the pitch of one’s attunement from one perspective to another, step by step through the gamut of levels of consciousness in a sequel of developmental stages delineated in the transmissions of the classical esoteric school of the world religions. It is indeed gratifying to notice how they parallel, as follows.

YOGA SUFISM BUDDHISM

7 Asamprajnata Hahut Cessation of determined

6 Sarbija Lahut Beyond existence and non-
existence

5 Ananda nugata Malakut Beyond consciousness

4 Nirvekara Jabarut Beyond existence

3 Savikara Mithal Consciousness

2 Nirvetarka Khayal

1 Savitarka Nasut


It is now clear that, to avail ourselves of the wisdom and example of hallowed beings, we will have to lift our consciousness to those levels latent within ourselves at which they are operating.

We will be proposing in the next installments a few basic guidelines to navigate the meditator through these levels (sometimes called planes or spheres) based upon a comparative study of the methods of meditation of some of the esoteric schools. They are here labeled in the Sufi terminology in a mapping of topographical perspectives which have their parallels in other schools (as listed above). They will however need to be elaborated further as we proceed in the installments.