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You will decide how much you wish to give and do. The path is one of surrender. What is it that you surrender? You give up your identification of your small self. You give up your limited attitudes, attachments, and perceptions. You unlearn. You give up yourself to become Yourself. In letting go of the lesser, you grow toward that greater - that you are. You and your Ideal become as one.
The path is one of remembrance. You remember what you really are. The only end of the Path is that it grows to the Way; and continues more and more. There is no end to learning - to becoming and being the real student. You become the "student of life". What is called enlightenment and realization are not the end. They are the beginning. You will make those choices that limit yourself or that continue to point yourself to the being you really are, doing the real work that is yours to do. Keep looking for what you need to do, what you can do within you capabilities to serve. You decide if you wish to place yourself to be guided and lead by the Real to do what you should do, at the time you should do it, in the way it should be done.
If you are seeking a guide or "teacher" is important to be aware that this is not always appropriate. Being able to benefit from one is another matter. It is of value to understand that even though you may desire this, you may not be in the conditon to gain from this association. Assuming that you "can" learn, and that it is appropriate, it is possible that you may be led to or drawn to, and eventually accepted by a real guide. Here is a little story. It is repeated a little later in this work.
A seeker came to a person who really knew and asked that person what he could look for in finding a real teacher. The one who knew responded by saying something like: "It is difficult and subtle to discern and for me to tell you how to find a real guide. But I can tell you how to find one who is not". "How", replied the "seeker". The man then said, "If you find someone who will accept you now, in your current condition, then you will know that person is not a real teacher or guide."
Now, IF you are able to learn; and should it be appropriate for you to seek a guide; and should you be able also to place yourself in the process of correctly and sincerely seeking, you may find yourself being drawn to one. At this point people sometimes ask if having a guide is necessary, and the only way, to progress. The answer is no, it is not absolutely necessary and the only way. However, it is very difficult without one. The reason for this is because it is so simple.
Remembering is remembering. Being IT is just BEING IT. The thing is you ARE IT. Remember, Feel, love, be. When you are all through with going around the barn and tired of all the words, and thoughts, and approaches, and practices, just BE and Love. It is this that the Real guide helps point you toward. Being yourself. The guide helps you Taste it. Like I just said, it is so simple. Because of that you get rid of all your confusions and all the things, attitudes, expectations, conditioning, and attachments you may have. You simplify. Be. And then Do; doing what you need to do.
In a sense, forgetting about legalities, it is like asking if one has to study all the prerequisites and go through all the schooling and training to become a person able to act as a physician. For the spiritual seeker, a repeated story is that the one who has reached a certain point and seeks without guidance is like a person trying to cross the ocean without knowing what an ocean really is, how to get across, what a boat is and how to use it, or what they are looking for one the other side. Another metaphor is one seeks to hit a target with an arrow but does not know where it is, how to use a bow, and cannot see the target. Again, it is possible to hit the target. So, do you absolutely need a guide? No and Yes.
There is section much later in the writing titled "10 Thoughts". They are used for deep consideration. A few of them might be useful here.
This may include an expansion of awareness or abilities beyond the physical. There are many areas, levels or "worlds" which can become apparent as one goes further. Each one has the potential to be a trap. Even though they may be unusual or even extraordinary, they are not important in and of themselves. They are potentially useful for further action when it is needed for a person to work there. Some of the growing includes learning how to function in these arenas. In addition to possible problems caused by your own attitudes and approaches, there is always the question of the so-called teacher or guide; if that person is acting correctly; not holding another; being that true guide, assistor, and conduit; knows what he or she is doing - what is really needed for the "student" to take the next step and can provide it.
If this guide is a knowing Real Person and you are accepted in the process of learning that is provided, that person almost always is part of and included in a Real transmission. Sometimes this is called a school, sometimes an order, sometimes a teaching, although it does not have to be called any of those. You also become connected to and part of that transmission - even though you may not be at all or very aware of it at the time. This is what I call being in the stream of that guidance. Through attunement to and through the guide that more real "teaching" and work becomes more recognized and present in your life.
It does take everything to become yourself. The limitation is what you choose to hold on to; grasp, seize, If you are sincere, then the question becomes if you want to try and place yourself toward the Real and to Know. If you do, the next step is to move toward it. Become. It is better to wash the dishes than spend hours mentally exhausting theory. Taste it. Here are some appropriate phrases from various traditions. Only don't know; Not this, Not this; Doing by not doing, Knowing by not knowing; Empty yourself; The Great Givaway; Only don't know; Let go and Let God; Die before dying. While you give all to progress the path and way, don't forget to laugh.
Sometimes it is hard - although in reality it is the easiest life of all. I have said and heard others say something like "by living this way, I don't have to figure out what to do". It actually does become apparent and one knows and feels it is correct. Try to love, enjoy, have fun. The Real is good. The world is wonderful. It is a great place to be. So don't take yourself and the means so seriously you forget to enjoy it. Instead, along the way, why not immerse yourself in all the Joy and Love, and Peace you can - and do what you can?
You might consider the following approach: in your own words, thoughts, and feelings, turn to the Universe, The Real, your Ideal, or whatever you call this; and request, ask, feel, to be guided to do what you really need to do, in the way it really needs to be done, in the time and place it truly needs to be. Then place yourself in this process. You will likely find it extremely interesting.
By following the guidance you will also have the opportunities to be led into situations you would usually not find yourself. It will almost always give you the chances to find, through experience, what is Real guidance, and discern what is personal thought, desire, or conditioned action. You will have many chances to learn to feel and sense the differences. This usually is shown through the outcomes; but is also shown through the process. This becomes finer and finer, giving you the opportunities to then become aware of and deal with your more refined and subtle limited personal aspects. Then you can, if you wish, pay attention to and lessen those associated with your limited person and strengthen those that come from the Real. There are many ways to do this.
1. The problem is not the words. It is the application.
2. When something enters the world it tends to crystallize. This is true for all "Teachings" and organizations.
3. Words are not experience.
4. "Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water."
5. Reading about enlightenment is like trying to scratch an itch through a shoe.
6. Examine what you really desire.
7. A Real Teaching is found in no set course.
8. A study course laid down by the Guide for his student may have degenerated into conformism and automatism.
9. To be a Real Person is to detach from fixed ideas and from preconceptions; and not to try to avoid what is your lot.
10. The Real is truth without form.
11. He who tastes knows.
12. We are being constantly bombarded by the "spiritual impulse", the "source of being".
13. The Real path is concerned with the attunement of the individual to perceive this impulse.
14. The Guides' role is to render himself superfluous to the learner.
15. The Guide needs to Know the goal. Without this it is blind leading blind.
16. The Guide must be one who has gone beyond appearances and has realized his innermost self, after transcending the barriers imposed
by attachment to secondary factors. He really exists and is aware of this existence.
17. The Guide needs to know the next step for the learner.
18. The role of the Guide is like the role of the wet nurse, who has to cease suckling the infant when it is able to eat solid food. When secondary and
low level attachments have vanished, the Seeker goes into a relationship with objective Reality. At this point there is no further need
of the disciple relationship.
19. The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn.
20. The Real Persons understand with their hearts what the most learned scholars cannot understand with their minds.
21. The Path is not other than the service of the people: It is not in the rosary, the prayer rug and the dervish robe.
22. The student seldom realizes that he can learn only under the conditions which make this learning possible. He cannot make real progress until he has undergone a
preparation for learning.
23. The most important thing, therefore, is to get the student into an alignment in which his progress can be effective and continuous.
24. This can only be directed by someone who knows the whole picture, and who knows what is possible and what is not, with an individual and a given group of people.
25. This guidance has two main objectives: to show the man himself as he really is; and to help him develop his real, inner self, his permanent part.
You might feel that this is a strange way to begin a new section. Instead of a written introduction laying the groundwork for future reading and possible consideration; you are thrown into a series of items to consider. And not only just to consider them but also to work with them in depth. Of course you can always bypass that process. You simply won't get the value from doing it. Should you really pay attention to these statements you would need to work with them over a much longer period of time. You can get some benefit now from starting. It is possible you can may want to set up some sort of program for yourself to use them as tools for meditation and contemplation. The important aspect is to gain some sort of understanding and feeling for what is behind them and toward which they point. In this way you can apply them in approaching learning and discriminating. If you do work with them, you may find it useful to go back and consider them again after some time; especially if your condition changes and grows.
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Where you place your attention you are.
What you place your attention on you become
It is extremely important that your intention be clear and single-minded. Without that there is confusion at the least and contradiction at the worst. With clear and single-minded intention clear action may follow. Some might say that that is being sincere. However, most times a person's intention is not clear and not single-minded. It is usually mixed, with some things pointing in one direction while others point in a different direction. The end result is that a person is drawn to something other than their original thought or stated goal. The reason for this is that the final real intention is a mix or composite of all the various intentions a person may have. These are all those that are stated or unstated. It includes all the persons thoughts, desires, aversions, hopes, fears, aspirations, and many other qualities. This includes a person conditioning.
One may think of this like a vector in physics. A vector is pictured as an arrow. It shows forces. The stronger the force, the longer the arrow. If the direction of the force is straight ahead, then the arrow points straight ahead. If something modifies the force, the arrow will be changed. If the force is strengthened then the arrow will be longer. If something weakens the force or contradicts it, then the arrow will be shorter. If the force is applied in a different direction that would change where the arrow would point. So too this is the situation with intentions. For example a person desires a certain goal. However the person also fears reaching that goal. The desire and the fear interact. If they are equal in strength then they would counteract each other and the end result would be no movement at all. If one is stronger than the other that there will be movement in the direction of the stronger. If a person examines and feels all the various factors in the personality that are acting upon or influencing their stated intention then it will become apparent that the end result may not be in the direction of their intended words and thoughts. This might be called insincerity.
There are several ways to deal with this. One is from the outer in; another is from the inner out; a third is through attunement and natural change and growth. The "outer in" includes paying attention to and becoming aware of all your thoughts, attitudes, fears, worries, desires, and so forth. After examining and becoming aware of them you then work with each one strengthening, weakening, accepting, rejecting, or modifying it. There are all sorts of psychological methods for doing this. These are beyond the scope of this particular writing. The "inner out" includes applying any number of spiritual practices. These are best used as suggested by a Real Guide. This might include concentrations, meditations, recitations, walks, and any number of other practices. It is most beneficial to be able to control one's thinking to be able to focus on one thing and one process. Eventually being able to still and to control your thinking mind becomes essential. There are many approaches and methods to do that. One is through attunement. Attunement can be to and though the guide; to your Ideal; and/or to focus on the Real. When one does this, anything else naturally falls away and comes into harmony and balance toward that. An example of this would be applying the attention, mind, breath, heart, using something as a focus. For example, one person brought forth and established a phrase considered as an "invocation". It provides a means for words to grow through feeling, awareness, breath, and heart toward a goal. In this case, the invocation used the words "Toward the One" .... and so forth. It has been (and sometimes is now) used a practice/attunement through heart and breath toward becoming. Much more often is has become a meaningless statement before a writing or recitation without much attention or intention at the start of a meeting.
Toward The One indicates direction, movement, and intention. Toward The One indicates going toward union. The experience of union is not different from living in the everyday moment; in life, conscious of one being, one life, one way, one truth, one heart, and one soul; and being as both part of that - in ever increasing capacity - and as that, as much as one can.
It is the blending, the melding, the union of perceiver, perceived, and perceiving as one: love, lover, and beloved not separately, but rather intertwined, upon and returning to itself. This is done - sought to be done - in and through every day living.
Too often, people seeking the path of realization forget that everyday life is not only the testing point or school, but also completes the means of creation and fulfills the journey of the soul. Then it is up to the "person" to regain the knowing from which it came and always is. This finally then is manifested, shown, lived in every day, as and through being a person as well as one can - including the personality - body, mind, and heart. Too often we forget to keep in the moment and fulfill the needs of the day, to the detriment of activity and the reducing of "soul" to person. Too often do we neglect the opportunities that are ever present that open the way toward the one. It is here that one falls away from the path, and here also that one has the opportunity to grow and move toward the way.
And how is this accomplished? How does one move from the more limited self to the expansion of self, to knowing, to being? This is the process of spiritual realization. Some people have said this is "dying before one dies". What dies is the attachment and identification to the false. By doing so, this opens the way for real living. It is this that we turn to in all aspects of life.
Breath, heart, being. This is what we move toward - the One. But the first step is toward this. One consciously makes the decision, the choice, the commitment not to stop until one reaches it. And upon doing so, the way is opened for the successful completion of this journey. One may say that in truth the way is always open - and it is - but it takes the commitment and step toward the one for it to be practically active. As one does this, more and more consciously, does one move toward the goal - toward the one. The means are opened up in direct relation to the sincerity and capacity of the person. This capacity grows through doing. And so as a person, one puts himself or herself in the process of becoming again, (more a remembering than becoming, realizing what one is). Then the means work out within the daily life of that personality.
The life may, and does, extend to many planes or levels, but it always is fulfilled - still - through daily life. So it is here that we start and continue. What is it that needs to be done within the life to come closer to the goal - toward the one? An approach: Toward your own heart, and toward your Ideal, or the Universe, or whatever, "guide me and lead me to do what I need to do, how it needs to be done, and in the way it is needed."
This can be expressed in many ways: seeking realization, the path of attainment, the way, the process of life, but in this manner all moves toward the one.
Here is an Affirmation You may want to use:
One Being
One Body
One Light
One Love
I place myself toward This;
and when there is no difference
I place all the worlds
within my heart
and my heart as
as the worlds.
Intention is the key to capacity.
Sincerity is clear intention put into practice - on any level. It can be spoken, thought, activity, or a combination. When one acts with sincerity, one follows through on that intention. It is clarity that is the key. Beyond that, it can be expressed in any way. It is needed to progress along the path; and is needed for attunement.
Sincerity grows from aligned intention.
When one puts into action that clear intention there is also the creation of need. That is, one seeks to reach a certain goal. In order to do that the person also draws to himself or herself those things to fulfill the intended goal. That is a need to be filled. In the spiritual real, the higher and greater the aspiration the more that is drawn to that person and that person also is drawn to.
As you need, so is it filled. Increase your need.
This can be a very profound practice. It is something that anyone can do. It is very simple. By attuning to it and following it, you can be led and assisted toward being and becoming. Allow yourself to be guided by feeling, inspiration, and the ever-refining inner qualities of breath.
Start with anything that inspires the feeling of love. It can be an event, a person, a situation - anything at all. You start with where you are. Breathe this feeling, this love. Let it intensify and feel yourself being drawn into it and it filling you. Sit there with it a bit. Let thoughts or distractions slowly fade. Fill yourself with the interest of experience.
Then, upon the mind and thought put a sense of your highest conception/feeling/sense of the your ideal of That Which IS; that which supports all things, all form, all being; that which gives of itself all life. It is that which you now put your attention on and toward. As you do, you let go of the element(s) which initially assisted you in feeling love. You continue and deepen the breathing of Love, but you replace the smaller with the larger Ideal. It is this that you love. And, as you do so, and as you breathe love, you let yourself be filled on the in-breath with all this Love of The Being, the One From Which All Comes. It fills and becomes you. And on the out-breath you feel yourself dissolve into this Being as much as you can. It is that which you breathe and are breathed by - breath, breather, and breathed, losing yourself in Oneself of Love; Being lifted, supported, carried, supplied, filled, and led to what is needed; becoming yourself in Oneself.
Breathe with and through your whole body with the heart as the center. Feel your breath filling, radiating, filling, radiating. Forget your body, feel the Love and Your ideal ... becoming ... larger ... and ... more ... refined .......
And so as "you" grow more into the love that is, and toward that Ideal that IS "you" and as "your" Ideal stronger becomes, let flip the "I" the sense of two and One becomes what is and was always. And from the point of view and being, - as much as possible - let loose the bonds of little, let go of self-defined.
| Do not be in forms now
nor seek replication of experience past or told by another if planets are organs they are so small go further the heart/sun one becoming be-comes let loose of these steps/stages perspective grows more the heart/love/breath is one and not stopping yet form looses loses - flowing in river - ocean no less the breathelove love breathes and is-breath the is/love i-am/amnot loses and looses and be comes and is .. i dentity changes ... re-members - and knows |
OM
Hari
OM
Feel.
Experience.
Be.
After a while, ...., still tasting/being/including/connecting to smaller and being in denser - as much as you can live extended in "person" ... if you have considerations, questions, concerns, let the intuition - the guidance of the Real - fill you or tend you toward the realization and understanding - the filling of your need. It is always according to your capacity and intent. Let it be part of your practice that this increases and that blocks be lifted and dissolved, and that you get what you need to in order to make the next step. It is then up to you to discern it and to decide to follow it - or not.
It should be emphasized that this is not another psychological tool to use to feel better. It is also not a means whereby you then apply it primarily for the purpose of secondary purposes, divination, or problem solving. Its primary emphasis is on remembering and becoming. However, while you are in the state of being that this practice assists one toward, you can then turn to the That which Is, the Ideal, the One in a more real way, with increased attention, receptivity, and from a higher point of view. In this way you may be guided toward resolution, and the door opened for further growth. Keep in mind that as you progress, part of the intention and function of this practice is to allow you to move beyond the separateness of breather and breathed, lover and love, being and becoming - to be - if you can consider it, desire it, and allow it.
If you do this breathing it will deepen and guide you "home"; and if you do this once, you can then contact it - to where it has grown - at any time, through the breath and feeling. In the course of the day, let it fill you in spare moments. Put you attention on it in the 15 seconds of time walking down a hallway; in the car waiting for the light to change; in the laundry as the clothes dry; in the restaurant waiting to be served. Let it lead you and guide you, and rest upon it with the opening of heart, and the blessings and guidance of the Ideal - increasing both capacity and intent.
This then becomes the breath of love. The way of living follows.
This can be a very profound practice. It is something that anyone can do. It is very simple; yet by attuning to it and following it, you can be led and assisted toward being and becoming. Allow yourself to be guided by feeling, inspiration, and the ever-refining inner qualities of breath.
An admonition: Because this is simple do not deceive yourself that it is easy. Because anyone can do it, do not deceive yourself that you can rely only upon your own actions. Because there is guidance and intuition, do not think that it is only from "you". Leave open the possibilities that all can take place; that you can be led eventually to really learn; that you will find that dependence and reliance that goes beyond your person; and that you may be asked to do more than you think now. It is by waiting upon the table that one becomes a waiter; by writing that one learns the art of the novelist; and by association that one finds the keys to the tuning of the heart. It is not the doctor who prescribes for himself who also sees the disease clearly. Let yourself be led to what is needed. Breath Love.
If you need some additional basic assistance on meditation, you might want to read this introduction to meditation article.
Many people say "original" is most important. However, placing your heart and breath, with true intention, sincerity, contemplation, and correct action, will lead to that which is Real - the Only Source toward which one fulfills all prayers by becoming. Find that taste yourself. That is more important than quibbling about what is original or not. Your experience has the potential to reach that from which the words came and toward which they point. They are symbols and connections - links that can be utilized and realized. Small mindedness leads nowhere. The open heart and mind, together with applying your experience and realization leads to All. Do not be deceived by misplaced literalism, statements made for limited circumstances, or equating emotional religion with the search for ultimate Truth. It is better for you, means more, and can help this world and all within it much more.
As a fellow I knew said many times, "You get more stinkin' from thinkin' than you do from drinkin', but when you feel, you know it's real".
There are even psychological and psychiatric conditions explaining this. It is spoken about in the major religions and mystic teachings. You yearn for what is more. Remembering, far away, that there is something. It draws you. You feel yourself moving toward it. You feel yourself as something greater than just your body. You begin to associate with others who feel similarly - drawn inexplicably together or sought our deliberately. You find books, writings, readings, sayings, all of which motivate more.
Your priorities begin to change. What is important now is not so much being successful or wealthy or accomplished in outer endeavors. Questions of "What am I?", "What does it mean?", "Who am I?", "Where do I fit in?" replace "How can I make more money, or be famous, have fun, or acquire the next thing?" They move toward "What is important?", "What is lasting?", "Is there more?" Then inklings grow. Experiences happen which lead you to consider more what you are doing. Some may be violent upheavals in your life. Some may be soothing revelations and understandings. You begin to hear about and take more seriously the possibility that others may know about what you are experiencing and can assist you in finding out more. You start to pay attention to outer processes with names like ESP, Psychic, Life-Progression, Tarot, Mysticism, Occultism, Magic, Spiritualism, and a host of psychological and other named arenas.
You eventually discard them as being too shallow or limited. The heart begins to yearn for something Real. The lost avenues and alleys with ends do not suffice. The spiritual path beckons. You commence and continue your seeking. You hear about teachers, paths, processes of enlightenment and realization. It strikes a chord. You want to take part in that. Maybe this holds your answers. You start looking for a teacher, or path, or process, or group to help. You are on the stepping stones which will eventually lead you to your answers; and might possibly lead you to them sooner rather than later. The journey begins now. The journey continues. You seek a Teacher: To Learn.
The problem you face now is how to find the Real Teacher and Teaching; and if you do find it, how to recognize and evaluate it. You can't do this only with the outer senses and criteria; and the other tools at your disposal are either unused, not developed, missing, or covered with filters, needs, and desires.
The problem is compounded by the fact that many, if not most, of the people who put themselves out there as teachers, or who are placed in that position by others in various groups or organizations, ARE NOT. This includes many who are learning to teach, in whole or in part, through groups which resulted from a real inspiration and transmission, but have now degenerated. So what you are faced with can seem like an insurmountable difficulty. How can you find something that is a real Teaching and a person who is a real Teacher without either the tools to evaluate it fully or the ways to determine if a group has deteriorated - when its current function may still be beyond your present development?
The short of it is that you will get what you deserve. That is primarily determined by you, and secondarily, by the teachings and teacher you encounter.
You get what you deserve as a response to your intentions, desires, and needs. As a precursor to real learning, you must have the capacity to do so. This is determined in part by openness to instruction, and in part by an understanding of the signposts of a true teaching and teacher, and a clarifying of your wants and desires. It also in part is determined by how much you have satisfied the outer circumstances of living. That is, how well you have adjusted to and are able to handle the day-to-day aspects of life. If these are not in at least some rudimentary balance, they will have to be dealt with first.
That is why - but only one of the reasons why - a person is given rudimentary outer jobs in a living group; and more importantly, and to this case, why a teacher will generally not accept an aspirant until he or she can demonstrate a minimal competence in living in the world. The other side of this is that when you have aspirations for success, advancement, experiences, or other worldly desires that are not satisfied, then they will get in the way of further learning. They will have to be satisfied, let go, or transmuted to proceed. The real Teacher will assist you in that process first before guiding you further. That immediate, outer work essentially then also becomes the highest spiritual work that can be done.
As you read through these sections you may want to note a few things. One is the use of the "teacher". I am using it as a convenience. What can be taught? That is a good question to consider. As you already exist and have the understanding, awareness, and answers to your questions available to and as a part of you; then a far more accurate word to use would be "Guide or Assistor" rather than teacher. As the spiritual path is one of remembrance and re-assimilation, then it is not an external process of one person "teaching" another. A person can show you how to make candy, or cook a roast, or weave a tapestry; but for you to do it, you must catch it yourself. When you do, there will be a little difference in that food or cloth - certainly showing your own nature - which is something to celebrate. When this is applied to spiritual "teaching" it is far more subtle, and more far-reaching. You will find those answers and more as part of the realness that is within you and IS you; and all the worlds will celebrate along with you each step of the way. There is a saying that when a person takes one step toward the "Divine One" - it takes 10 steps to the person. An assistance, welcoming home of glad heart, and the songs of the Angels are both present and await.
Are there some qualities or characteristics which can be seen in "Real" teachers? The answer to that is generally "yes", but those attributes may be different than what you expect them to be; and may or may not be shown, depending upon the qualities that the teacher needs to manifest in a certain situation.
Another question of some value is "Are there some general characteristics which show up in all real teaching settings?" A corollary to that question is "Are there some things you can generally expect to see in most situations with Real Teachings?" The answer to both these questions is "yes and no". Before we go into more detail here, it would be beneficial to consider how people become teachers, what kinds of teachers there are, and what they do.
First, I will say that most people who are considered as teachers or who consider themselves so, are not. They are not true spiritual teachers in a larger sense. For the sake of ease I will refer to them as "teachers" - with a small "t". There are some people who are Real Teachers. I will refer to them as "Teachers". There is also the larger Universal Teacher/Teaching. It is this that the Teacher becomes a part of and that expresses through the Teacher with the person aware. It expresses in other ways also without that specific personal awareness. This I will refer to as the TEACHER or TEACHING.
We find that the vast majority of people who are called a spiritual teacher, or who call themselves that, have a limited viewpoint through which to express limited information or experience. In general they work through structures which are dead or dying; cultish in function; and are either very misleading in the material that is presented, are severely curtailed in the capacity to reach toward the truth, or both. Within this category we also find the spiritual professional. He or she can be paid in money, power, fame, control, or any combination of the above - these being for the primary satisfaction of the person. (To read in-depth examples and discussion of teachers, teachings, and the ways in which people approach them, I would direct you to "Learning How to Learn", by Idries Shah.)
These people work in groups or organizations which at one time may have had real inspiration and/or a true source. They could be traditional religions, bastardized forms, splinter groups, cults, groups formed around personalities, or groups formed to espouse a certain belief, code of conduct, experience, method of seeking, effect or manifestation.
If the group was set up by one person without the proper training and authority, then that person generally sets himself or herself as that authority. He (I will refer to the person as "he" regardless of gender) may indicate that a greater unseen authority has anointed or appointed him as the earthly representative and invested him with authority.
For the one seeking guidance, it will be a test of faith. That one should be very careful to apply some of the criteria for the True Teacher that are found later in these writings - and compare them the best one can in both an outer sense, and by feeling and heart. The validity of this claim can generally be tested. Some of these are brought out in writings about the qualities and functions of the Teacher. They can also be verified or judged false by those who are Real Teachers directly. In the main, claims like this are false; but it should be noted that they CAN be true.
There are some situations where a person does have Real Guidance and authority to bring forth a teaching. So in these - much fewer cases - it actually could be true, but one has to be very careful here. The person bringing this must have clear, unambiguous, impersonal guidance and direction for this; and must NOT in any case be driven by personal gain or greed. In the case of the Real Teacher, this person will also not have any individual desire or satisfaction from this position. If he is still seeking, looking for something, not in balance, has areas still to be assimilated, or is unsure; then he is "over his head"; and at the very least, is premature for this work.
More prevalent than the one personality driven group are groups which have deteriorated or never had a transmission. In this category, most of the people within it will receive some degree of instruction along with little actual direct spiritual experience and realization. The bulk of their instruction is intellectual. In cases where there is some broader experience, it is generally shallow and misinterpreted as to its value and applicability. However, at least it is experience instead of talk.
These persons, upon completion of a set of studies, are certified as teachers. They may be teachers in the sense that they can further instruct or convey information and shallow experience within the confines and structure of their field of study, but this is not spiritual teaching, and they are not Teachers. You will find, if you spend any length of time in their system, that the end is reached rather rapidly, and it is not universal.
There is another group of teachers. These are associated with real Teachings and may have as their source a spiritual Teacher with realization and transmission. As part of the learning process for his students, the Teacher may start (more properly assist) one along the path or work of teaching. It should be noted that this is a very tenuous situation. The Teacher must be extremely clear that indeed the student is to follow that path, rather than simply using him as an available vehicle to further his own work. There must be inspiration and guidance both for the Teacher and student to set one this way. It must also be understood that the student is not a Teacher in the real sense, even though he may take on some of the duties. That work tends to be more outer than inspirationally driven. The hope is that through this process the student will grow into a more full position. It is very important that the person be monitored closely to assure that the people he is working with are getting correct guidance. This person then starting out we can call a Teacher-in-Training.
In many cases you will come in contact with one or more of these people in the initial stages of contact with a group rather than the real Teacher. It is still difficult to evaluate the Teaching - if not impossible with traditional educational criteria - and this difficulty is compounded when the teaching goes through the very active and present filters of this student Teacher. (In fact, for a full evaluation you would generally need to either go through the teaching or have the perspective of the goal to really know it). You can hope, though, that he is trying to do his best by following his intuitive guidance and expression; and by adhering to the training, attunement, and transmission through his Teacher. You will find that in these situations, the Teaching may not be so limited as the previous grouping; and the end may be more universal and experience based, but that it is limited through the channel of the student Teacher and takes on the characteristics of his filter. You will have to deal with it on that basis.
When the student Teacher has progressed to a certain point, he is then many times given a title representing him as a Teacher. In reality this is generally just a starting position waiting to be fulfilled rather than the end of a prior instruction or course of study. It is like being given a name to grow into. But in this case, both the Teaching and Hierarchical Guidance accept and pass on the authority to this person to act in that capacity. The student Teacher should in the process also have gotten guidance and inspiration that he is to do this work and that this timing is now appropriate. It must also be added that if any of these criteria are missing, the student Teacher should not be elevated higher by an earthly Teacher, nor should he accept such a position if offered - no matter how tempting.
The final grouping we will now consider for the purposes of this writing is the real Teacher. He has gone through what amounts to all these previous stages and more - much more. It also should be noted here that this is not the end of the Teaching ladder; nor is it the end of the growth and learning of the Teacher. In reality, when a person really reaches this level he is also able to continue learning from that One TEACHER, as part of himself, and he as part of IT. From this point of view, ALL beings and things - including all people and nature - are sources of learning. They are welcomed, and appreciated as such.
The first thing to recognize is that this person is Real. The second thing is that he can show himself in many forms, but is always part of the same being. He must, if he has reached this position of function, have certain experiences common with those of a similar rank, and those who have come before or will come after. He may take the form of Guru, Sage, Murshid, or other un-named person, but in all cases re-presents the one true TEACHER. Depending upon his functions he will be readily seen - showing himself openly or hidden deeply, working as needs be.
This person will generally have gone through training and teaching by one or more Teachers; both on the physical and/or unseen levels. He will have been accepted by the Hierarchy and is recognized by others of his kind. He will be initiated in the greater path or ways, and will have attained and grown to the larger Universal path or Way.
He will be illumined and realize his true nature and being. He transcends the boundaries of space and time within himself. And he will know himself as one working unit. Within this framework and base, he will continue to grow, deepen in realization and function, and become more of what he is - without any worry, doubt, or inadequacy that there is more. And he will not want to be more - "want" to be a teacher. That is, he will not have personal desires to be a Teacher, rather than being one, and he will not have satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment in his station. If he is not of this level as a minimum, then he is still a student Teacher - from the Universal point of view. He may well be a teacher within a partial system, method, path, or tradition, however; and well capable of instructing a person within that more limited framework; or as a Teacher, if utilizing that path, tradition, or method as a framework, will also make clear the universality of the greater goal and function.
He will not claim to be a Teacher to justify function. Indeed, claims are meaningless. The real proof of a person is in his function, not his claims. The individual who claims to be a Teacher without first having both the background and experiences as indicated above - at a minimum as a base - is not worthy to be considered as such. All such claims are spurious, are false. This person is an imposter. The proof of the Teacher is in his works, and the proof of his transmission is found in his students - in their light and realization.
Part 1, Section 2
Now that we have considered what kinds of teachers there are and how they become what they are called, let us turn our attention to how a real Teaching would look. In addition we will consider what a Teacher may do or not do; a little of why it would or would not be done; and what the point of view of the Teacher is in that process. We can also consider how a teacher may convey what is needed in a given setting.
By putting attention in these areas, you may begin to get a sense of how a Teacher may appear when you approach him, what his work may look like, how to differentiate between a real learning situation and not, and what common qualities and characteristics one can usually find in a Teacher and the Teaching.
First, having said all these things about how a Teacher may look or act, etc., it is equally possible he may do anything or everything differently, and not act at all like we say here. The final decisions are up to the person working, not someone writing in generalities; and certainly not because of the expectations of anyone else. As illustrations, I will give you the following examples.
There are stories of Teachers who have asked great sums for their work. They were generally negatively criticized and later it may or may not have been found that they were using the money for a needed service. On the other hand, there are some charlatans passing as Teachers that make a very good living from fleecing people who come to them. Along that line there are some Teachers who would not charge any money or ask for donations, and others who would require minimal giving or payment. Sometimes any of these teachers may even do one thing in one setting or with one person and something quite different with another.
The reason a person would do that is because that approach is what is needed in that particular situation. Given another, the approach may be quite different. At one time, years ago, in a class someone was giving, that person requested that people give a donation each time they came. He laid out certain guidelines for doing so. He did this because it was a means or a tool to use for those attending to focus through, and as a result gain or strengthen certain attributes. They could then apply these attributes to other situations.
However, in that class were two people who objected strongly to making any donations. To one potential student, the person said he must pay a certain amount each time or he could not attend. This was done to motivate those attitudes which were causing this particular set of blocks. The other potential student felt less inclined to work and give of himself than to give money. So if he were "forced" into either paying or not attending; even though he had shallow philosophical reasons for thinking paying was not right, he would have reluctantly done so. However, the money was not that important to him, so for him it was required that in addition to a smaller payment than generally requested, he would have to work a few hours each week as a precondition to attend a class. This bothered him much more, and roused attitudes in him that were blocking progress far better than requiring him to pay more money.
Now this person also had a penchant for wanting to discuss spiritual things. He, if left to his desires, would talk and talk incessantly about them. So, as an additional requirement of his work, he was not permitted to discuss or bring up anything of a spiritual nature. All conversation had to be strictly related to the work he was doing or common physical things. He was very ungrounded, and this combination of work/payment and focus on the "mundane" was the best thing for him right then.
There was another person who also attended those classes who had almost no money, yet worked very hard, was in need of money, and not only had no reluctance to give, but tried to give more than what was asked - to his own detriment. He needed balance in the other direction; so for him it was required that he give, but it was modified that he was to give that amount to himself. This of course raised other blocks for him to deal with.
Now if you had come in to that setting and seen only one of those actions or requirements, how would you determine if that was the "right" thing to do - especially because in some ways they were contradictory? And, if you had been aware only of one procedure, would you generalize from that and conclude that it was the overall approach or teaching; and if so was "right" or "wrong"?
The only way through this is by feeling. You would need to put aside your intellect for evaluation and sense if there was something behind the outer action. Even if it was not seen fully, the point is that you would have needed to be open to multiple approaches with the possibility that all were right. Just because a person sets certain guidelines or requirements in general and then acts counter to them in a contradictory manner, it does not necessarily mean that person is acting wrongly.
From the point of view of a Teacher, the most important thing is to provide the appropriate impetus in the right settings that has the potential to act upon the person or group in the right way at that time. He is unconcerned how it is taken by outer eyes or evaluation. Sometimes he will use this as a tool to "drive away" the person who is not ready, or let a person self-select his own leaving. Many times he will also give the means to attune to him or find the path to understanding when encountering opposites or contradictions on one level, but complementary actions on another. The point is that you cannot just generalize from one action or approach. Do you remember the story of the elephant?
In the reference above to the two students in a class, would the person leading it and prescribing the correctives have done the same thing in another situation with another group of students? Doubtful, although possible. Speculation is absolutely worthless here. One really would not know what he would do until faced with the particular situation and people. If another Teacher came in to the same setting, would he have taken a similar approach? Possible, but also doubtful. Again, speculation is worthless. There are many approaches that can achieve the same end result; and that is what we are after - results, not the method to get them. In fact, a person could have taken almost the exact opposite approach and potentially get similar results.
In this case, we have discussed only one small aspect of a teaching and how it can be applied in different ways. It is an outer aspect, that of paying money or making a donation for a class. It does not have to be that; it could be anything. The point is that for every activity or process, there is a potential lesson or learning situation that can take place; and that can be done in many ways, some of which might seem contradictory. If we were to multiply this one activity, of which only a few elementary examples are given, by the variety of situations that could take place, and for each one add many different potential actions depending upon the need, we will not be able to generalize very well that a certain approach or method is the way to distinguish a real Teacher from one who is not.
At times a Teacher will take on the attribute of the student that he wishes to bring to that person's attention. By being a mirror and projecting the qualities that are in the way of the student, the result is that it motivates a response, usually negative, and brings those attitudes to the surface. In this way it gives the student the opportunity to become aware that what bothers him are actually his own qualities. This gives him the opportunity to then work on and adjust them.
So in the case of the student who was barred from discussing spiritual things, another Teacher might do just the opposite, and respond to everything, excessively in that manner. There are other approaches, all of which may be equally valid - such as giving concentrations, meditations, recitation, stories, koans, walks, work, and more - any of which could bring about the desired effect. So in evaluating a Teacher, outer process is not a good indicator of what is going on.
(*) These examples can be found as appendices A and B. They are for reference only, and were applicable in those limited situations. If they are applicable for other uses now, that is fine. Appendix A is titled Fee Schedule; while Appendix B is Some Guidelines for Donations.
Part 1, Section 3
I know of a situation in which people coming to a class were having difficulty in getting a working sense of levels within levels. They were practicing quiet attention. Rather than pursue that more, a Teacher took the opposite approach. He put on several noise-making appliances at the same time. In one room were several radios, a tv, a stereo, and an alarm clock. The volume of each one was set so that only the loudest and most active could be heard. Attention therefore went to that. When that item was turned down, another came in to awareness, and so forth, until there was nothing on. The end result was the excess noise helped convey the lesson of quietness, the tricks the outer attention and the active mind play, and a better sense or feeling for moving from one level to the next more refined one.
A similar approach was taken at another time. Here the example was to feel getting larger - more than the identification with and attachment to one's body as one's self. The exercise was to concentrate all one's attention in the tip of the little finger and identify oneself with and as that. Then to slowly move back into the fingers, hand, arm, etc., identifying and focusing on larger and larger parts of the physical body until the person reached the whole body. Then the next step became apparent. In letting go of the identification with the body to that which is more, and so forth, identification could go beyond the body and one could then become more in ever refined and larger steps. If you were to have come in to either setting without the background and understanding of what was being done and why, it would be easy to miss the lesson, or have it work less effectively than for those who were in the processes of gaining those understandings and functions.
Therefore, pay attention to the outer work and lessons to evaluate the Teaching, but also remember from your own experiences how to learn a skill going step by step. You will find some parallels.
Will there be some underlying qualities, attributes, or approaches that are constant and present in the approach of Teachers? Yes. These tend more toward their Real personalities and things they emphasize. You will find some common qualities in those Real Teachers.
First, they tend to be freeing rather than controlling. If a setting, teaching, or person wants to control you - it is usually time to go. The Teacher will be a person of joy. If he is sour, sad, morose, complaining, and negative, it is likely he is a fraud. Again, the outer appearances can be misleading, but by careful observation you should be able to determine if it is a mask put on for a purpose or that person's active personality.
There should be a feeling of joy, peace, and love through the teacher. It should be apparent and inspirational. The heart should feel all encompassing. Giving, rather than taking is the rule. The Teacher will never depend upon the student for support - money, ego, gratification, status, or otherwise. No matter how much is given to him, nor how much he accepts, he will not accept it for personal gain.
The Teacher will speak from the heart. He will not bow to niceties when they are not warranted, nor will he offend and be harsh when kindness or consideration is needed. He will shield what needs shielding, hide something that needs hiding, and be stridently outspoken and blunt when that is needed.
In speaking from the heart, the Teacher becomes the pipe or flute. This only comes from long reliance on the intuition and Guidance that eventually becomes part of his process and he part of it. In this manner he is able to express whatever is needed at the given time.
The same is true of his level of consciousness. It will change and both go to and include the level(s) that are needed at the time to convey what is appropriate. Part of the work of the Teacher is to have developed that function. It comes from trial and error, until that reliance and trust is to the greater Spirit of Guidance, and it has grown from "permission" to allow it to manifest as and through oneself until it is total, unassuming, and natural. This is part of a base the Teacher needs to function. What starts as intuitive and seemingly external guidance and inflow, develops with attunement and a shift of identification to being a part of oneself.
The Teacher will not think of himself as anything special. Rather he will be aware of how small the person is in comparison to all that is and that can be. He will be aware of how special everything and every one is - not only as "others", but also as himself.
He would not cause harm to another, as much as he would not harm himself. But he will remove the splinter from his body if it should not be there. He will not exceed his limits of authority or position, nor impose himself on someone's free will. He will try to assist one to expand ones own scope.
He will not have anger or bitter words outside of himself. That is, he may express what seems like those feelings, but they will be controlled, not ruling - it will be appropriate. He will be sincere; will have a sense of humor, and not take himself too seriously.
He will assist rather than do, and can take the position of the lowest without feeling put upon. He will accept that which is provided and that which comes as sufficient, embracing each thankfully and equally. He will be a friend, a guide, and an assistant.
These are some of the qualities to see and feel in the Teacher. If they are missing, you would be wise to look elsewhere; or certainly consider why you do not see them. If they show up also in the disciples or students, you may feel you are probably in the right place.
Part 1, Section 4
I am now inserting a section of a book written by a Guide. It is clearly written and pertains to the subject. However, it IS NOT in the same form as printed, nor with the same line breaks, punctuation, type sizes, etc. There are 449 pages before this and 200 after, so it is taken out of context and process. I am using it without specific permission.
..........
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 the 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 psychis converging from all our ancestry 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.
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. 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.
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 realized, 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. 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.
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 seem to 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 axe 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.
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.
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 that 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 counter 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". A Real Guide, when asked "How do I attain liberation?", answered "Who is it in you that wants liberation?"
"The answer that uproots the question" (A Real One).
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. 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.
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 should do anyway.
Once you have become conversant with his handling of paradoxes and gained confidence in his guidance knowing that no perplexity will befuddle you any more he will double his zeal in your guidance and point out to you hidden ways that you, however, have to discover as he turns your attention 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." (A Real One).
You think you have discovered a reason but there is a further reason hidden behind it. And no sooner this has flashed upon you than you intuit a further one each more incomprehensible than the former.
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." (A Real One).
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 respond to that which is placed before him?
"The greater the teacher the better he can play with children." (A Real One).
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!"
By spiritual enlightenment I mean a man's becoming conscious through personal experience of the ultimate nature of his inner being. This insight breaks as it were the wall of intellectual limitation and brings us to a region which has been hitherto concealed from our view. The horizon is now so widened as to enable our spiritual vision to survey the totality of existence. As long as we groped in the darkness of ignorance, we could not go beyond the threshold of individuation; we could not recognize the presence of a light whose most penetrating rays reveal all the mysteries of nature and mind. The spirit has found that the light is shining within itself even in its fullest glory, that it even partakes something of this universal light, that it blundered miserably in seeking its own ground outside of itself, that "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, which is, and which was, and which is to come," is no more nor less than itself. And it is through this kind of enlightenment only that we fully satisfy our inmost spiritual yearnings and groanings. Without this, religion loses its significance, becoming merely an applied philosophy or system of metaphysics.
The enlightenment which thus constitutes the basis of the religious life is altogether spiritual and not intellectual. The intellect in its very nature is relative and cannot transcend its own limitations. It is dualistic no matter how high it may take a flight. It always needs an object with which to deal, and it never identifies itself with it, for it cannot do so without destroying itself. There must be the "I" and the "not-I" whenever intellection takes place. Self-alienation or keeping itself aloof from the object on which it exercises itself is the raison d'etre of intellect, being its strongest as well as its weakest point. Its strongest point is seen in science and philosophy, while its weakest point is revealed in religion. For religion needs a synthetic faculty by which it can comprehend the realm of particulars, the realm of constant strivings and eternal contradictions. Religion wants to understand and preserve life as it is found, and not to "dissect and murder" it as is done by the intellect. Religion wants to see and not to demonstrate; to grasp directly with her own hands and not to rely upon a medium; to see intuitively and not discursively. What is therefore asked for by a religious spirit is fact and not representation, enlightenment and not reflection; and this will be supplied by no amount of speculation and imagination. We must advance one step further beyond the limits and boldly plunge into the abysmal depths of the Unknowable.
Can a mortal being with his limited consciousness have an insight into a field without its ken? No; as long as he relies solely upon his intellectual faculty, he is forever barred from so doing. For the intellect is really superficial and cannot penetrate through spatial and temporal relations, nor can she free herself from the bondage of logical sequence; and therefore the inner life of our being is altogether unknown to the intellect. We cannot be said to know an object thoroughly by merely becoming familiar with all its attributes, qualities, potentialities, and what not.
All these can be understood through the senses and the reasoning faculty. There yet remains a certain feature of the object, the knowledge of which alone completes our understanding of it. Philosophy and science have done a great deal for the advancement of our knowledge of the universe, and there is a fair prospect of their further service for this end. But they are constitutionally incapable of giving rest, bliss, joy, and faith to a troubled spirit; for they do not provide us with a complete knowledge of existence, and are unable to lay bare the secrets of life.. What they teach concerns the shell and husk of reality. In order to satisfy fully our religious yearnings we must not stop short at this; we must appeal to a different faculty, which will reveal to us the inmost life of the universe.
Fortunately, we are in possession of this peculiar faculty which might be called the religious sense, and through the exercise of which we come to realize the significance of our existence. How unbearable life would be, if we were not allowed to have this religious faculty and yet we had to raise those spirit-harassing questions which could not be solved by logic!
The faculty seems to have all the essential characteristics of the feeling. It is intuitive and does not analyze; it is direct and refuses a medium of any form. It allows no argument, it merely states, and its statement is absolute. When it says "yes," the affirmation has such a convincing force as to remove all doubts, and even skeptically disposed intellectual minds have to admit it as a fact and not a whim. It speaks as one with authority. True, it has only a subjective value, which, however, is just as ultimate and actual as sense-perception. Being immediate, there is no other way to test its validity than that each experience it personally, individually, and inwardly. The sun is risen on the horizon and all that have eyes see it and harbor not the shadow of a doubt as to its presence there. The inner sense which I have called religious faculty makes us feel the inmost life that is running through every vein and every artery of nature; and we are completely free from skepticism, unrest, dissatisfaction, and vexation of spirit. We never try to raise a doubt about the true nature of the feeling and ask ourselves whether it is merely a phenomenon of mental aberration or due to a calenture of the brain. We simply feel, and nothing more or less is to be asserted or denied. And this is what constitutes spiritual enlightenment.
Mere talking about or mere believing in the existence of God and his infinite love is nonsense as far as religion is concerned. Talking and arguing belong to philosophy, and believing in its ordinary sense is a sort of hypothesis, not necessarily supported by facts. Religion, however, wants above everything else solid facts and actual personal experience. If God exists, he must be felt. If he is love, it must be experienced and become the fact of one's inmost life. Without spiritual enlightenment, all is an idle talk, like a bubble which vanishes under the least pressure. Without the awakening of the religious sense or faculty, God is a shadow, the soul a ghost, and life a dream. In Buddhism this faculty is known as Prajna.
If we distinguish faith from knowledge, the latter can be understood as simply intellectual, while the former is intuition gained through the exercise of the Prajna. In knowledge subject and object coexist and condition each other; in faith they become one, there is identity only and no mutuality. Transcending the reciprocity of the "I" and the "not-I," the Prajna beholds the universe in its ultimate oneness and feels all forms of life in their essential sameness. It knows that the impulse it feels is the quickening spirit of all existence, and that the pulsation of sympathy which beats in response to ooutside stimuli is the source of universal animation. Why? Because the Prajna feels so by reason of its own constitution.
The dictates of the Prajna are final and there is no higher faculty in our consciousness to annul them. Faith is absolute within its own limits and the office of the intellect is to explain or interpret it objectively. Speaking religiously, faith is fact and has to be reckoned with as such. It is only when it wants to express itself that intellection comes in, and individual culture or personal equation makes itself felt. To a great extent, I feel that differences or quarrels among the so-called religionists concerning their confession of faith are due to personal differences in esthetic taste, intellectual calibre, and the influence of environment, while the fact of faith as such remains fundamentally the same with Christians, Buddhists, or Taoists. As everybody endowed with sentiency feels the ice cold and the fire warm, so what the Prajna sees or feels in its inmost being must be universally the same. God, Allah, Dharmakaya, Tao, Holy Ghost, Brahma, and what not, are a mere verbal quibbling over the same fact which is felt in the deepest depths of our being. The inner reason of things which creates or destroys the three thousand worlds in the same breath must be smiling at the human trifling over naught.
Spiritual enlightenment must not be confused with trance, a state of consciousness in which there is nothing but blankness. Those who have had no spiritual experience or who have not come to recognize in the awakening of Prajna something altogether unique in our subjective life-phenomena frequently speak of enlightenment as an abnormal psychical condition, and try to explain it under the same category as hallucination, somnambulism, selfsuggestion, and the like. But the fact is that enlightenment is not a special psychic state which excludes or suppresses the ordinary exercise of other mental faculties. Enlightenment goes and must go along with all psychological phenomena. If enlightenment is to be gained through the suspension of mentation, religion is false and faith is barren. Enlightenment is enlightenment because it enlightens all our motives, desires, whims, determinations, impulses, thoughts, etc. It does not stand separate from other states of consciousness, sending its commands from a certain vantage ground. In an enlightened mind a feeling or thought as it occurs is purified and free from the taints of ignorance and egotism. Enlightenment is constant and not sporadic. It permeates every mental fibre and works without rest. It is not something extraordinary that takes place by fits and starts. Spiritual enlightenment sheds light on the very reason of consciousness, for it is not a particular event of our psychical life.
When a Buddhist scholar was asked what was the Path, he answered, "The normal state of mind." In other words, spiritual enlightenment consists in following the natural course of human activity, for the enlightened find the ultimate reason of existence in their desire to drink or to eat according to their natural appetite, in their sympathy for the misery and suffering which are endured by the ignorant masses, in their aspiration to fathom the mysteries of nature and life, in their ever-assiduous attempt to realize the ideals of lovingkindness and universal brotherhood on this earth, in their ever-varying devices to let each creation fulfill its inherent mission and rest in its reason of existence. The religiously ignorant behave outwardly just as the enlightened, for as far as intellect and morals go there is no manifested difference between the ignorant and the enlightened. But, spiritually speaking, there is a wide gap dividing them, because one knows what he is striving after while the other is blindly feeling his way, and again because one finds an unspeakable bliss in all his doings and thinkings and feelings, while the other labors under a peculiar sensation of uneasiness and compulsion which he cannot well define but feels at the bottom of his heart.
A person may be very learned in all things, and his philosophical knowledge may be very profound. He has studied all the ancient lore of wisdom, and has even formulated his own system of metaphysics in which he has incorporated all the results of his erudition and speculation. But from the religious point of view he is yet far from enlightenment, for his study is like that of the artist who has painted a dragon and forgot to put the eyes in. His elaborate delineation and coloring in various hues of this huge mystic animal have miserably failed to produce the effect desired and attempted, for the eyes are blank and show no trace of the fiery animation which is possessed by the monster. The scholar has neglected the most important factor that is absolutely necessary in making up the complete knowledge of the universe. He thought that he knew everything under the sun when he exercised his intellectual power to its full extent and considered existence from all the possible standpoints which his understanding could grasp. But, as I stated before, the knowledge of an object is not complete unless its inner life or reason is felt; in other words, unless the duality of a knowing mind and a known object vanishes, and life is comprehended as it is and not in its intellectual mutilation. Buddhism says that even a blade of grass trembling in the evening breeze cannot be known so long as we cling to this form of individuation and are unable to merge our particular selves with the self of grass. Buddha, it is reported, once brought a flower before an assemblage of his disciples and showed it to them without any comments whatever, and the entire congregation was bewildered what to make of this strange behavior on the part of their master, except Kashyapa, who, thoroughly understanding the import of this incident, softly smiled and nodded. Thereupon the Buddha solemnly proclaimed, "I am in possession of the Eye which penetrates into the depths of the Dharma and the mysteries of Nirvana. I now give it to thee, 0 Kashyapa, that thou mayest guard it well." What sort of eye could it have been which was transmitted from Buddha to Kashyapa and which made the latter comprehend something incomprehensible in the flower in Buddha's hand?
In this we see the discrepancy between philosophy and religion more and more accentuated. It is sufficient for philosophy to know, but religion demands more than that. When the existence or non-existence of God is proved, philosophers are satisfied, for they have made the utmost use of the intellect, which is their sole weapon of attack and defense. In fact, they sometimes show a disposition to deride those who disagree with them. But as long as there is some unutterable yearning in the human heart for something more real, more vital, more tangible than mere abstraction, mere knowing, and mere "proving," we must conclude that our consciousness, however fractional, is capable of coming in touch with the inmost life of things in another way than intellection. The existence of Prajna, the organ of spiritual insight, therefore, is admitted by Buddhism, and their religious discipline is directed towards the awakening of this faculty, which is rightly designated "the mother of all Buddhas," and "the sharpest sword that cuts ignorance and egotism."
But one must not imagine that there is consciousness, there is Prajna, and there is enlightenment. In point of fact, they are all one simultaneous act of the universal reason. We speak of them as if they were three different things: the sentient being is endowed with consciousness, and this consciousness has the faculty to become acquainted with its own reason of existence, and the resultant mental state constitutes what is called spiritual enlightenment. Intellectually, this distinction of course is inevitable, but as a man actually experiences it, the only fact he is conscious of is that he is, not as a particular being separate from others, but as simply existing and living. Buddhist scholars call this exalted state of spirituality cunyata = emptiness, or canti = tranquillity, or samadhi = contemplation.
A few words may not be amiss here to explain these terms, which have been frequently misunderstood by the outsider. "Emptiness" may suggest a deprivation of all mental operations as in the trance, and "tranquillity" a dormant, sleeping, or "not-yet-awakened" state of mentality, while "contemplation" tends to indicate a withdrawal or suspension of all psychical functions; thus making spiritual enlightenment a synonym of death or annihilation. Such misinterpretations as these, however, ever prove the inherent onesidedness of the understanding and consequently its inability to lead us to the final abode of eternal reason which has really "noabode." Buddhists use the term "emptiness" to describe the "deep things of Gods' which are absolute and not relative. For when we say, "he is," it may be taken as meaning that he is as we individuals are.
By "All is empty, quiet, and abiding in eternal contemplation," Buddhists understand that the ultimate reason of the universe as manifested in all forms of animation and intelligence knows no disturbance, no commotion, no transgression, in the midst of all the stirring-up and moving-on of this phenomenal world. This, again, I have to state, guarding against misapprehension, does not mean that there is something within each existence which like the axle of a wheel or like the kernel of a seed forms its central part and remains quiet or alive even when the peripheral parts are whirling around or going to decay. Buddhism most emphatically condemns this sort of dualism as heretical and evil-breeding. The ultimate reason is absolutely quiet when it is moving on; it is perfectly empty when it is filled to the brim; it is eternally one when it is differentiating itself into myriads; it has no abode whatever where it finds itself located, housed, and roomed. And there is nothing paradoxical or enigmatic in this statement; it is plain as daylight and simple as the logical axiom a = a. But to realize its truth one must be spiritually enlightened, must go beyond the narrow limits of intellection, must drink directly from the well of eternal vitality and find out personally how it tastes, bitter or sweet.
Let philosophers and theologians say whatever they wish concerning the existence, nature, and activity of God; let them speculate as much as they wish on the theology of the universe and the destiny of mankind and many other abstruse problems of metaphysics; but let you who earnestly aspire to know what this life really means turn away from those wise men and reflect within, or look around yourselves with an open heart which watches and receives, and all the mysteries of the world will be revealed to you in the awakening of your Prajna.
We are adjured constantly to study and make ourselves familiar with the lives, doings and sayings of the Wise because a link of understanding exists between these factors and the potentiality in ourselves.
But if, as have the literalists, we soak ourselves in these elements from motives of greed or marveling at wonders, we will transform ourselves indeed; but the transformation will be animal into lesser animal, instead of animal into man.
The test which is placed in man's way is to separate the real Seekers from the imitation ones by this very method. If man has not addressed himself to this study through his simplest and most sincere self he will be in peril. It is therefore better, did man but know it, to avoid all metaphysical entanglements rather than to allow himself to be acted upon by the supreme force which will amplify, magnify, his faults if he lacks the knowledge of how to cure the fault, or of how to approach the teaching so that his faults are not involved in the procedure.
It is for this reason that we say that there are many different spheres, levels, of experience of the truth.
The Wise have always concentrated upon making sure that their disciples understand that the first stage towards knowledge is to familiarize themselves with the outward, factual, appearance of that knowledge, so that, preventing it from rushing into the wrong area of their minds, it might await development when the possibilities exist.
This is the analogy of a man taking a pomegranate and keeping it until his stomach is in a condition to digest it correctly. If a man eats a pomegranate when there is something wrong with his stomach, it will make the ailment worse.
One manifestation of man's ailment is to want to eat the pomegranate at once. Should he do this, he will be in serious difficulties.
Now you have the explanation as to why the Wise continually supply materials to be stored in the heart, as grain is stored, with a view to the making of bread. Because this is experience and not grain, man in his crudity does not customarily feel able to understand this great truth and secret. The man to whom we speak is, therefore, a specially attuned sort of man - "The Generous Miser" - that is, the man who can hoard when hoarding is indicated, and who will make available that which there is as and when it is able to exercise its optimum effect.
I was mystified for many months by my esteemed mentor's giving me things to speak, to think and do which did not seem to satisfy my craving for the spiritual life. He told me many times that the craving which I felt was not for spirituality at all, and that the materials which he was giving me were the nutritions which I needed. It was only when I was able to still my maniac desires that I was able to listen to him at all. At other times I said to myself, 'I have heard all this before, and it is highly doubtful', or else, 'This is no spiritual man', or, further, 'I want to experience, not to listen or to read.'
The wonderful thing was this, that my teacher continually reminded me that this was my state of mind, and although I was outwardly trusting him and serving him in everything. I was not able to trust him to the necessary extent, nor in the vital direction. Looking back, I realized later that I was willing at that time to yield far more far-reaching parts of my sovereignty than were needed; but I was not prepared to yield the minor ones which alone were the pathways to my understanding.
I refer to this because it is by rehearsal of the experience of others that people at a similar stage in the Path may be able to recognize their own state and profit by it.
I remember that I was always magnetized, transfixed by the dramatic, and became attentive whenever anything of great stimulation was said or done, but that the significant factors in my association with my teacher were the ones which I missed, sometimes almost entirely. Because of this, in spite of being continually employed in the work, I wasted as much as eight years of my life.
Then it must be remembered that there are the two kinds of everything. This is something which we normally do not imagine as existing, but it is fundamental. There is the keeping of company with a wise man and learning from him, in the right way, which is productive of human progress. Then there is the counterfeit, which is destructive. What makes us completely confused in this matter is that the feeling which accompanies the false discipleship or the ordinary keeping company, as well as its external manifestations in courtesy and seeming humility, is so able to make us imagine that we are religious or dedicated people that it is possible to say that this is due to what has been called the entry of a demonic, counterfeiting power, which persuades most of the very distinguished and compelling spiritually reputed people and also their followers, even down the generations, that they are dealing in spirituality. It even enables them to communicate this belief to those who are not of their number, so that their reputation gains credibility through the very people who misguidedly say, 'I do not follow his path, but I do not deny that he is a spiritual and a good man...'
The only corrective to this is the making use of the special-occasion timing by the Master who alone is able to say as to when and where and in what manner the exercises and other activities, even those which do not appear to have the smallest connection with spirituality, may be carried on. There is a confusion here because this is sometimes taken to mean that one must never read books or carry out processes without the direct supervision of the Master. But this common and shallow mistake is seen to be absurd when we realize that the Master may specify courses or reading or action for a number of people or for an individual, and that he may find it necessary from time to time for these to take what seems a conventional, indeed, a seemingly scholastic course. But what is vital here is not how things appear to the student, but that the Master has prescribed them and that he will intervene as and when there is a need for a change. All manifestations of opposition to this curriculum or any other disharmony with the Master are manifestations of the rawness of the pupil, and may not be taken into consideration by the Master or any of his intermediaries (deputies) since the student can either follow the course dutifully or he cannot. If he cannot, he ceases at that moment to be a student, and hence has no right even of comment. Only true students have the right of comment, and those who draw attention to themselves by questioning the course itself are not in the condition of being students at all.
Failure to observe this is common among scholastic emotionalists who have adopted Sufi procedures, because they do not realize that the curriculum is already erected on the basis of all the possible contingencies which include any and all feelings of the pupils. What is aimed at here is the operation of the teaching through the capacity. If he is disturbing the progress of the session or the work of the deputy, he is the opposite of a student, and this should be observed as a lesson by the company.
I am well aware that the principles are far from the accepted ones in the shallow world which is balanced on the basis of what people think of one another, including the problem which false teachers continually feel, which is the question of what other people think of them. But the central factor is whether the Teaching is operating, not whether people feel through their ordinary senses that they are being fulfilled.
In the latter case, you may be sure that nothing of real worth is happening at all.
This is the end of the first section of the Testimony of Bahaudin Naqshband. the Designer.
Counsels of Bahaudin
You want to be filled. But something which is full has first to be emptied. Empty yourself so that you will fill properly, by observing these counsels, which you can do as duties to your self:
FIRST
Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.
SECOND
Never rely upon what you believe to be inner experiences because it is only when you get beyond them that you will reach knowledge. They are there to deceive you.
THIRD
Never travel in search of knowledge unless you are sent. The desire to travel for learning is a test, not a command.
FOURTH
Never trust a belief that a man or a community is the supreme one, because this feeling is a conviction, not a fact. You must progress beyond conviction, to fact.
FIFTH
Never allow yourself to be hurt by what you imagine to be criticism by a teacher, nor allow yourself to remain elated be cause of praise. These feelings are barriers in your way, not conductors of it.
SIXTH
Never imitate or follow a man of humility who is also mean in material things, for such a man is being proud in material things. If you are mean, practice generosity as a corrective, not as a virtue.
SEVENTH
Be prepared to realize that all beliefs which were due to your surroundings were minor ones, even though they were once of much use to you. They may become useless and, indeed, pit falls.
EIGHTH
Be prepared to find that certain beliefs are correct, but that their meaning and interpretation may vary in accordance with your stage of journey, making them seem contradictory to those who are not on the Path.
NINTH
Remember that perception and illumination will not at first be of such a character that you can say of them 'This is perception' or 'This is illumination.'
TENTH
Never allow yourself to measure everything by means of the same time measurement. One thing must come before another.
ELEVENTH
If you think too much of the man, you will think in a disproportionate manner about the activity. If you think too much about yourself, you will think wrongly about the man. If you think too much about the books, you will not be thinking correctly about other things. Use one as a corrective for the others.
TWELFTH
Do not rely upon your own opinion when you think you need books and not exercises. Rely less upon your belief when you think you need exercises and not books.
THIRTEENTH
When you regard yourself as a disciple, remember that this is a stage which you take up in order to discover what your true distance is from your teacher. It is not a stage which you can measure, like how far you stand from a building.
FOURTEENTH
When you feel least interested in following the Way which you have entered, this may be the time when it is most appropriate for you. If you imagine that you should not go on, it is not because you are not convinced or have doubts. It is because you are failing the test. You will always have doubts, but only discover them at a useful time for your weakness to point them out.
FIFTEENTH
Banish doubt you cannot. Doubt goes when doubt and belief as you have been taught them go. If you forsake a path, it is because you were hoping for conviction from it. You seek conviction, not self-knowledge.
SIXTEENTH
Do not dwell upon whether you will put yourself into the hands of a teacher. You are always in his hands. It is a question of whether he can help you to help yourself, for you have too little means to do so. Debating whether one trusts or not is a sign that one does not want to trust at all, and therefore is still incapable of it. Believing that one can trust is a false belief. If you wonder, 'Can I trust?' you are really wondering, 'Can I develop a strong enough opinion to please me?'
SEVENTEENTH
Never mistake training for ability. If you cannot help being what people call 'good' or 'abstemious', you are like the sharpened reed which cannot help writing if it is pushed.
EIGHTEENTH
When you have observed or felt emotion, correct this by remembering that emotions are felt just as strongly by people with completely different beliefs. If you imagine that this experience - emotion - is therefore noble or sublime, why do you not believe that stomach ache is an elevated state?
NINETEENTH
If a teacher encourages you, he is not trying to attach you to him. He is trying, rather, to show you how easily you can be attracted. If he discourages you, the lesson is that you are at the mercy of discouragement.
TWENTIETH
Understanding and knowledge are completely different sensations in the realm of Truth than they are in the realm of society. Anything which you understand in an ordinary manner about the Path is not understanding within the Path, but exterior assumption about the Path, common among unconscious imitators.
If you have a true heart you will be led to it. Intention is the key to capacity and will lead you to the next step. If you desire flash - you will get it; quietness - you will go toward that; phenomena - you will be inundated; justification - it will be yours. If you have a real opening of the heart, a repentance and acceptance, an honest prayer of feeling and seeking for true guidance in whatever form or manner, through whatever means or person - that will come into your life and you to it. It will then be up to you to recognize that situation for what it is, and take the next conscious step toward it.
When you ask for true guidance it can come in the most unexpected way. Trust it, follow your heart, and breathe love in thankfulness to the One, The All. If you rely on that and let it lead you, you will find the Real TEACHER and TEACHING.
When you find yourself in the presence of a Real Teacher and Teaching, what will come next? This will be determined by the work the teacher is doing; the type of contact you have made; the intentions of you, the teaching, and the teacher; and most of all by your true desires for spiritual advancement and realization.
The teacher is there to assist you in that process. If you "ring the bell hard it makes a loud sound; softly a quiet sound". This zen saying reflects how the teacher will act toward you. However, it should be mentioned that just being loud or ostentatious is not necessarily "ringing the bell hard". The primary purpose of the teacher is to assist you in realizing - on many levels - what is there already. It is not to satisfy your ideas or concepts of what spiritual development or realization is. These are generally impediments to learning.
In the learning situation where you find yourself, there will almost certainly be some period of adjustment during which time you will have an opportunity to assimilate and gain a sense of the work being done there. In all likelihood, it will be of an introductory or intermediate nature. You would certainly not expect to enter a class at the end. If in the middle, you will need to be assimilated into the process; and you will need to attune yourself to what is going on. You will probably be given some sort of information or material to assist in that. However, all that I have written here, and will write on this subject, may have little or no bearing on your actual situation. That, as I have said, is dependent upon the teacher, his approach to you personally and in general, and many other factors - some of which I have mentioned.
The primary purpose of material given at this time will be to assist you to understand more intellectually, and to satisfy some of the outer curiosity and questions you may have. After that, it is to provide the beginning of a basic framework for you to move into. There will, or should be, some sense of parameters and goals beginning to form at this point. At the same time there may be practices given to do which will correspond to your immediate level. You may attend outer "classes" or a loose grouping for some time at this stage. You may also get direct instruction to read some things or follow some practice. It will be enough to start. You can then proceed from there.
I will direct you now to a writing by Paul Reps in "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones". In it he explains some teaching methods. You will find these in the preliminary to the main sections on pages 3-4, 85-88, 133-134, and 159-160. I will also direct you to read Philip Kapleau's book "The Three Pillars of Zen", pages 29-67. In this section Roshi Yasutani explains to a group of neophytes the process and procedure he generally uses. It is a very good illustration of one person's approach.
Regardless of what takes place at this point, there is an assessment made by the teacher of where you are and what you need to go further. While he will certainly consider your outer actions and expressions, the real assessment will be on an inner basis and through actually looking from your point of view and your Real needs; through breath, attunement, and personal awareness. He will be able to assess you far better than you can explain to him what you seek. Yet he may well ask you to do so.
It is fairly safe to say that at some time, if you stay around and are persistent enough, that he will have an interview with you - or you with him. It is said that the teacher already knows you better than you know yourself, but still this will take place so you can begin to know that also. He may want to know how you state your aspirations or goals, what kind of questions you ask, or any other number of things. He may not say anything to you of a "spiritual" nature or may question you directly about it and say many things along that line himself. It is more likely that he will not be too discursive or drawn into your own conversational wants.
The purposes, from a teacher's point of view, are many in this type of meeting. He will verify his assessment of you and your station and wants; get a direct feeling through you of your point of view; bring in to focus what your next steps should be; find out specifically from you if you are willing to take them and more of what kind of resistance and blocks are to be met and removed; and start you on a course of action. In addition, it will be an opportunity for him to provide a direct communication of breath, heart, and glance - should he decide to due so - whether that is apparent to you or not.
You may find that all of those things are discussed and presented in a straightforward way, or that none are. But rather there may be a very oblique or pointed approach. That will depend upon both you and what the teacher feels is needed - not what you would like to hear or expect. It can even result in dismissal or being sent away. Whatever is the outer result, it will reflect what the teacher sees and knows is best for you to take your next step. So be prepared for anything, but expect nothing. That is about all you do - except to be as honest as you possibly can in the encounter. That degree of honesty and true intention will be instrumental motivating factors in determining your next steps.
Beyond that, the teacher may give you an opportunity to learn right there. But the lesson also may not be straightforward or outright in the form you might expect. Take any time that is offered gratefully and try to attune to and sense what is there. You will gain most from putting away your own expectations and desires, and putting yourself into his hands and the process with trust.
Part 2, Section 2
Here now are excerpts taken from a paper guiding some of the disciples of Hazrat Inayat Khan in regard to teaching and discipleship. Since he was expressing this in terms of the Sufi work he was bringing, he uses the terms "Murshid" and "Mureed" for Guide and Guided; and also expresses his point of view as from that of the Sufi. It is related in such a way as to show these people some of the considerations of the path. In the course of this writing, I have woven some connections; which are indicated by being in brackets [like these].
Because of the intention and the audience toward which that paper was directed; for the purposes of this writing we will reverse the intention and point it toward the use of the seeker.
As you read through this, each of these statements is something to consider as it relates to your own approach and intention. In addition, these statements point out some of the qualities of the Real Teacher. By paying attention to them and to his or her actions (and what is behind them if you can) you will better be able to discern if you are in that presence. You may also wish to consider IF you are able to even discern his point of view, and whether what you think you "want" is important or has any relation to real learning.
[When a potential student approaches,] his first intention is to see if his thoughts fit in with mine and if my thoughts fit in with his.
It seems that thousands of people are every day in the spiritual pursuit. One day they go to one thing, another day to another. Just like one goes to many different theatres, everything new and sensational.
Among dogs, there are some who follow anyone, whoever gives them a bone is their master, and if another gives them meat, they leave the first one and follow the other. And there are some who follow only one master, who obey only one, and even sometimes sacrifice their life for him. It depends upon the breed, the heredity.
It is better to give pupils no tendency to discuss our sacred teachings. The pupil has to give up all preconceived ideas before starting on the spiritual path under the guidance of a teacher.
A child must therefore be taught from the beginning, that it is not as he sees just now, but when he will see differently, he will find the same thing different. All that one can do for another is to give him one's own experience. If a person happens to know a road, he can tell the other man that it is the road that leads to the place he wishes to find.
The one who asks a question becomes stronger than the one who is put in the position of answering the question. There are many clever people who will ask you a cross question to get out of you a certain answer which they expect to come from you. Then they hit against it, for in this way, they prepare a ground for a battle. They question in order to cover the restlessness of their minds, scratching their own hearts. Since many of them believe in themselves, they cannot believe in another, so their question remains always unanswered.
If he is very intelligent and materialistic to excess, he will have an influence even on your self-confidence [he warns the growing Teachers-in-training]. An unbeliever has the power to shake the belief of the believers.
[There are kinds of people who seek, many are not really seeking learning. Of them,] there is one of the wrong kinds who is only following the teacher for the satisfaction of his intellectual craving, and so long as the teacher has the food for his intellect he will be content; the day when the teacher's idea does not fit in with his intellectual ideas, he will have difficulties. There is no other side of the teacher that will appeal to him except one, and that is the teacher's intellectuality.
And there is another of the same kind who is curious, who wants to find out what phenomena can be traced in the doings or in the life of the teacher, if there is anything wonderful, if there is anything curious. If he can satisfy his curiosity, so long he will stay, and the day when his curiosity is not satisfied he will become discontented.
And the third kind is a victim to the teacher's influence. The teacher's influence is so strong that he is attracted to that influence as something is attracted to the magnet. He himself does not know why he is drawn to the teacher, yet he cannot help being drawn, because he is a poor victim.
And there is a fourth kind who wants to be a mureed because it is a good pastime to be able to get somebody's advice in trouble. That is all he is concerned with. Neither is he for God nor for Truth nor for evolution.
[But when there is a real seeker, the scope and extent of guidance is broad.] Never think therefore that a spiritual teacher is too superior to interest himself in the material needs of his pupils. One may not think that by helping in a mureed's worldly affair, nothing spiritual is accomplished; for once in the spiritual path, every material and spiritual thing one does, only leads him to the spiritual goal. Wise parents pay serious attention to their children's little demands.
[The teacher] should not make the pupil uncomfortable when he is at fault but allow him to notice his mistake himself. The teacher will not tell him that he is wrong, but show him what is right. The teacher will bring up the good side of the pupil's nature and deny and ignore the weak side of the pupil's nature. But the good side must not be brought before him in the form of flattery. When he realizes that there is something lacking, that is the occasion for the teacher to add that which is lacking.
When the child tries to move about by its own free will, and tries to keep away, then the attention of the mother to some extent becomes released. This does not mean that the mother entirely gives up the care of the child; it only means that she allows the child to have its way to some extent, and feels sorry when the child falls and hurts itself. If the child falls, it will try her; but she does not prevent its falling.
If he cannot walk, then if someone gives him a hand, it is making him dependent, but it is helping him.
With every goodwill to help the pupil, one must not spoil him by making him too dependent.
The more man depends upon his own effort, the less God holds himself responsible for him.
Every person must answer your purpose according to the position you take before him. If you are a teacher to him, he will be your pupil, if you are his friend, he will become your chum, if you are his rival, he will become your competitor. Decide, therefore, fully well beforehand in what relation that person should be to you, and act accordingly to him. He should be closely attached, and yet detached, near and yet far.
If there be a distance, it must not be for the vanity of the initiator, it must be only if it were for the benefit of the pupil.
[A teacher] may need with certain pupils to keep an outer distance, but in order make up for the outer distance, he must come inwardly close.
[But of the things that he does,] Nevertheless, the teacher must not expect service and reverence. [From the point of view of the continuity of guidance]Do not do anything for your spiritual guide for what you may receive from him, nor must he do anything for you as a return for what you do for him.
[As a guide] If you are dependent upon others, some will try to make you more dependent.
[Some potential students may try to gain] The upper hand on a spiritual person who is kind and gentle and tolerant, enduring and forgiving, if he finds the least little opportunity of handling him.
[But this is part of the process to consider in a person who is starting out. One looks toward other more real actions for a real start. In this] A personality is first put to melt by the initiator, and it is only after the melting of the personality that something can be made out of it.
The way of the Sufi esoteric training is not only in prescribing different meditations and in giving philosophical studies, but it is in trying and testing a pupil, his sincerity, his faithfulness, his trust, his courage, his intelligence, his patience. It is weighing and measuring his sense of justice, his faculty of reasoning, probing into the depth of his heart. The confidence is tested when the mureed's patience is tried.
The initiator must see if the thread on the side of the initiated is thin and cannot endure the weight of the sacredness which belongs to initiation. Very often the thinness of the thread has a discouraging effect upon the initiator, and it demands a great deal of consideration and interest and sympathy on the part of the initiator to hold up something which is dropping.
One must not try the patience of the pupil by asking him to do too much. Sometimes I wait days, months, years to tell something I would have liked to tell a mureed, waiting for the time to come, waiting for the spirit of the mureed to have become ripened.
Thus to the pupil the teacher may often appear to be very unreasonable, very odd, very meaningless, very unkind, very cold and unjust. And during these tests, if the faith and the trust of the pupil do not endure, he will step back.
He will wonder why, when Murshid has always given me a hot cup of tea, why does he give me a cold drink. It is not that Murshid's sympathy is lacking, it is because you need at that time a cold drink; it is better for you. The method of Murshid is most subtle and fine and deep. It cannot be put in gross words of explanation. It is not like the religious path where the clergy or authority says "This is wicked according to this or the other law." With Murshid there is the delicacy of conscientiousness keeping the delicate feeling alive. The delicate feeling is this, that you may not allow the teacher to tell you something in words. You must understand his pleasure before he says it.
Even if Murshid appears to be displeased, it is not so in truth. [Once, after a silence, a mureed thought Inayat Khan had looked at her harshly.] "Imagine," he said, "how could I be angry at that time!"
Mureeds can come to me and talk to me, and behave in a way that they should not behave. Never for one moment do I allow myself to think that their devotion, their love, their sympathy is less. The parents never allow the relationship to be broken, even if their children happen to prove unworthy.
This link between Murshid and mureed is more delicate than a thin thread and at the same time much stronger than a steel wire. And the only way to preserve it is to keep that delicate feeling about one's teacher living in one's heart.
The teacher has two responsibilities: to look after his fragile spirit, and to look after the spirit of the mureed, which very often is asleep. And sometimes a conflict arises, so that the teacher is very often on the point of breaking his own spirit while wanting to maintain the spirit of his mureed. Very often it is that the mureed, without knowing, is holding the glass-like spirit of his teacher, and unconsciously is on the point of throwing it against the rock. [And so the teacher must be careful not to reach the] moment [when he] says: "Please do not throw it," [for then] the teacher has lost his spirit as well as the spirit of the mureed. Why has the teacher lost his spirit? Because the moment the mureed knows that the teacher's spirit is in his hand, and he can throw it in a moment, no more the teacher is a teacher in the eyes of the mureed. The mureed thinks that the teacher's spirit is stronger than the rock. But he does not know that in spite of the strength that the teacher has, it is more fragile than the glass.
[For example] The greater the teacher, the more delicate his temperament. The more transparent the heart, the more fragile. What I mean to say, is that by hurting a fly you might hurt Murshid, and that is the thing that many cannot understand.
In the path of discipleship the whole beauty of the way is fineness of manner between the teacher and the pupil. If one does not learn delicacy with one's teacher, with whom will one learn it?
There is never a possibility on the part of Murshid to remove a mureed from the current he receives, unless he himself turns his back to it. There is a stage where the teacher arrives at a point where not only he loves, but he becomes love, he turns into love. Then love alone can he stand.
No matter how undesirable my mureed be, no matter how opposed, I would never turn my back. I would not call myself a murshid if I would. If the connection can be separated, it is on the part of the mureed himself. And the day when the mureed will come in focus, he will find the same thing there as has always been, perhaps a little more, because the love that does not grow is dead.
[Not everything needs to be said.] It has been inconceivable to me to see to what extent some people in the western world could be outspoken. If it was honesty, I could not think for one moment it could be wisdom. What I found missing in the West is the tendency to keep veiled all that is beautiful.
[The teachers] goodwill and blessing must reach each and every one whose hand [was] once held in the sacred initiation.
The teacher must care: the teacher is born to care, it is his work. For the teacher lives for mureeds, his only object is to see their spiritual evolution. There must be no limit to the teacher's compassion, because that is the teacher's test. God is testing the teacher by giving him a difficult pupil. The greater the initiator, the more he will risk difficult mureeds.
[The teacher is careful what he says and does, for] The pupil must not be given a handle by which he could dispute and make the teacher commit an error, for once the pupil holds a mistake of the teacher, he loses his regard for his teacher. No word may be said that may be taken amiss by another person.
[Yet there are some false, or devilish teachers] The tendency of a devilish person is to rule. He wants to get a grip on any person in whom he feels interested. And he gets control of another most frequently by taking advantage of his faults. He draws the one he wishes to control into a ditch; and when he finds that his victim is dependent, then he stretches out to him his helping hand. But instead of lifting a person from the ditch, he would rather keep him there by the strength of his helping hand. If he lifted him up from there, it would be in order to make of him a horse and ride on his back, or a donkey to bear his load.
If people speak against [a teacher, he should] take notice of it, judge it, and weigh it in himself impartially, and correct himself. You may not partake of their poison by returning the same to them or even by keeping some memory of it in your heart.
The spiritual path is the balance of democracy and aristocracy. The aristocratic part is that the initiator sits on the teacher's throne and the initiated one stands in his place in all humility. And the democracy of the spiritual path is that the teacher raises him also to the same throne upon which he himself is sitting, and even higher if he can; for in raising the initiated one the initiator himself is raised high. Verily the greatness of God is brought to Him by the greatness of man.
[As a student one is] Trying every moment of one's life to think as Murshid thinks, to see as Murshid sees, to feel as Murshid feels and to act as Murshid acts.
It is hopeless when one says: "The teacher is a teacher, and I am what I am."
The pupil learns to give everything that he has so far given to the teacher: devotion, sacrifice, service, respect, to all, because he has learned to see his teacher in all.
[And when the student does this,] Do you know what Murshid feels: "Myself is coming before me"? His atmosphere becomes Murshid's atmosphere, his word Murshid's word, his glance Murshid's glance.
The teacher is much closer and much higher than all relations and connections in this world.
The times when I received were when through my devotion the heart of my murshid was moved, and those moments when the heart is open are like the key.
A teacher can elevate a soul much more by silent than by oral teaching. It is simply a reflection of the teacher's spirit fallen on the heart of the pupil.
There are two stages of advancement in the life of a mureed. One is that the mureed knows and understands what the Murshid says. Second, that the mureed knows what Murshid means.
Murshidship and mureedship is a journeying of two persons, one who knows he path, the other a stranger taken through the mist by the Murshid until they arrive at a stage where neither Murshid is a Murshid nor mureed is a mureed, though the happy memory of the journey through the path remains in the consciousness of the grateful mureed.
For the mystical teacher is not the player of the instrument; he is the tuner. When he has tuned it, he gives into the hands of the Player whose instrument it is to play.
From the point of view of the teacher, this preliminary period - after you have been around for a while, attended outer classes and initial general instruction; and then also had an interview with him - is used, among other things, to determine if you will self-select to continue and how you will handle and react to both obstacles and possibilities placed in your way. This is in addition to any other work he may do. These and other outer functions will help him determine if you are ready to proceed, and how best to approach it. You need to remember that his goal is to assist you in your greater quest and goal to realize - actualize - your own being potential, and to assist you in becoming the productive, active, and aware embodiment that fulfills your point of being here. He is not interested in making you happy or feeling good - from a lower or personal point of view. He does not really care if you are blissful or high. He wants what is best for you and only wishes to assist you in being able to take that next step. That is enough.
The teacher will assess your actions and thoughts on an outer level. But more importantly, will put attention on and be aware of your needs, potentials, blocks, and path on an inner level; based upon his understanding, vision, and completeness of consciousness. It will be from this point of view, together with any assistance and/or guidance from the Hierarchy that will lead him to his next steps in dealing with you.
Should you both continue from here in parallel and converging paths, eventually you will come to the point of asking for initiation and acceptance as a student. The teacher may react immediately to your request or take any length of time he feels is right before responding. And in some cases, it may be he who starts this conversation in the first place, rather that waiting for you. The most important thing here is that he be clear if it is appropriate, and also how the timing should work out. He may use this as another means of assessment or "test" to see how true your intentions are, or for any other number of learning/teaching means. It is very important that he do what is "right" here.
The taking on of a student and initiation in a path is not done lightly. There are karmic implications in both. Just as for you, when there is an acceptance of the teacher, so too is there an acceptance by the teacher of you. He actually makes a connection to you and is present with you at all times thereafter - unless it is cut by him, by you through rejection, or by the hierarchy through intervention.
So too is initiation important, real, and active. Initiation is the beginning, as the word is defined. There is an actual link to the universal made, through the path and beings making up the "oversoul" of the group, or part of the way. This remains even though the link to a teacher may be severed. It also can be removed, altered, or enlarged or reduced, depending upon the greater needs in combination with your own true intentions and conscious function.
That is enough now said about these processes. The rest will come from your real interactions.
There is a saying: Knowledge can be neither bought or sold. The aspect of "what to charge" has bothered many. Sometimes a small fee is asked, sometimes none. It has been said that a truly, "spiritual" man will never ask for money. Sometimes that is true.
Here is the beginning of a story: A man spent half of his life in seeking truth. He read all the books on ancient wisdom he could find. He traveled to every country to hear spiritual teachers. He spent his days working and nights contemplating the Great Mysteries.
One day he heard of the poet Ansari, who lived in Herat. Going there, he arrived at the door of the sage. On it he saw written, contrary to his expectation: "Knowledge is Sold Here".
"This must be a mistake, or else a deliberate attempt to dissuade the idle curiosity seeker", he thought to himself, "for I have never before heard it said that knowledge can be bought or sold". He went into the house. Sitting in the courtyard was Ansari, who asked, "have you come to buy knowledge?" The man nodded. Ansari told him to produce all the money he had. It came to 100 silver pieces.
"For this much you can have three pieces of advice", said Ansari.
"Do you really mean that"? asked the seeker. "Why do you need money if you are a humble and dedicated man??" YOU FINISH THE STORY ............
If you are able to fulfill this practice you will receive benefit. How great or little it is will depend upon your capacity and ability to give and receive.
Some Guidelines for Giving.
(As a practice in certain specified and limited situations)
1. Don't worry about what to give. Make sure it is appropriate.
2. The amount is not important: the quality of the giving is.
3. If the giving is out of personal desire it is not appropriate.
4. The giving "should" be from an intuitive sense of what you need to give at that time - plus what is "really" needed.
5. Because you give one thing at one time is no indication that you should give the same thing the next time. Needs change.
6. If you receive personal satisfaction from the gift you have gotten your "payment".
7. Do not give something because you think it would be "nice", or "spiritual", or is something that will be appreciated.
8. Do not give something you don't want to give.
9. Give when you don't want to give something if you know it is what should be given.
10. Do not give out of a sense of "obligation".
11. You are "obliged" to give something.
12. Material does not mean "good wishes" it is something "tangible".
13. What is given should not be for the personal benefit of the "teacher" or to bring fame or fortune to that person.
14. Look for a donation that will aid the "work". Thus begin to be aware of what the work "is".
15. Do not give something just for the sake of giving.
16. Give for giving's sake.
17. If you feel as though you haven't given enough you probably haven't.
18. If you feel imposed upon, give more than you want to.
19. If you feel satisfied through your donation, find out what is the satisfaction. It may be less than you think.
20. Do not give out of gratitude, a sense of thanks, for payment, in trade, or with any expectation - even expectation of thanks, and especially any sense of special treatment.
21. Consider carefully what to give. If you simply give, you may not be "giving" at all.
22.You receive according to the quality of your giving. This is a very important practice and should be approached thus.
1. BECOME AWARE OF CONDITIONING AND HOW IT WORKS. Read appropriate scientific materials. Examine ways in which groups perpetuate themselves. Look at the tenets of religious organizations. Examine the tribal beliefs and customs of societies. More. See how this influences you.
2. EXAMINE YOUR OWN ASSUMPTIONS. Pay attention to each and every thought, idea, sense, method of approach, etc., and determine its source, its relative value, and extent of function. Find out if you have gained or taken on an attitude or "fact" from your own experience or from what another (through any medium) has said. Determine just what you can rely on through your own experience and qualify it. Find out what the limits of your physical senses are and how much you can rely on them and under what circumstances.
3. DO NOT GENERALIZE WHEN IT IS NOT WARRANTED. Consider each act, teaching, or situation as complete in itself in addition to being part of a greater whole. Do not consider a path or approach to be the "only" way. Do not get caught in habits. Pay attention to the particulars of the situation. See what is different when any variable changes. Consider time, place, people, materials, needs, etc. as variables. Open the way for spontaneity.
4. SUSPEND JUDGEMENT. Wait for experience to clarify the matter. Seek it. Do not try to "figure it out" - let it "come to you". Do not grasp onto what someone else says (no matter who) as being necessarily correct: find out for yourself. Do not reject something because it seems to conflict with everything you know.
5. SEEK EXPERIENCE, NOT PHILOSOPHY. Recognize what are words and what is experience. Do not be hasty in evaluating experience. Become aware of what experience really is. Find out how that experience fits into a larger picture.
6. LOOK BEHIND EVENTS OR ACTS. Pay attention to factors not on the surface. Become aware of "cause and effect" on many levels. Look behind apparent "blocks" or "openings" as to what is really going on. Look behind "coincidence".
7. CONTROL YOUR MIND. Become aware of your thoughts and their effects. Learn to discern your thoughts from your feelings. Learn to discern your thoughts from others. Be able to stop all thought yet still retain an active mind. Learn how to listen. Learn how to be a "fertile field" for the seeds of experience. Learn to focus your attention.
8. EXAMINE YOUR FEELINGS. Find out where they come from. Deal with any fears or desires which keep you from spontaneous action. Do not accept limitations. Learn to love.
9. DEVELOP YOUR INTUITION. Pay attention to the little feelings that you can rely on. Sort out when thought or feelings interfere with intuition. Find out what "filters" you put up through which experience comes.
NOTE; THERE ARE MANY MORE APPROACHES. THESE ARE ONLY SOME OF THEM.
Following are some samples of a very small part of his writings that apply in this theme. I may give some short information on each and possibly edit them slightly for this overall writing.
General Statements to Consider in Approaching Spiritual Learning
1. Truth has no form.
2. The means through which people may perceive Truth have forms.
3. All forms are limited. Some of the limitations are time, place, culture, language.
4. Different forms are not necessarily antagonistic, for the above reasons.
5. Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to the external world to which all forms belong.
6. When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form.
7. Forms are vehicles and instruments, and vehicles and instruments cannot be called good or bad without context.
8. Forms outlive their usefulness, increase or diminish in usefulness.
9. These statements are abundantly to be found in the writings of Real teachers. They were written down in order to be read and remembered. They are seldom
so energetically stated or so strongly maintained elsewhere, which may account for the fact that they have not been sufficiently heeded by people who have
not given Real materials the study they deserve.
Here is a story that reflects some of the situations regarding the forms of the Teaching.
There was once a man who opened a restaurant, with a
good kitchen, attractive tables and an excellent menu.
One of his friends came along soon afterwards, and said:
'Why have you not got a sign, like all the other eatingplaces?
I suggest that you put on it "RESTAURANT: FINEST
FOOD"'
When the sign was painted and put up, another enquirer
asked: 'you have to be more specific - you might mean any old
restaurant. Add the words "SERVED HERE"and your sign
will be complete.'
The owner thought that this was a good idea, and he had
the signboard duly altered.
Not long afterwards, someone else came along and said:
'Why do you put "HERE"Surely anyone can see where
the place is?'
So the restaurateur had the sign changed.
Presently a further curious member of the public wanted
to know:
'you not know that the word "SERVED" is redundant?
All restaurants and shops serve. Why not take it out?'
So that word was taken out.
Now another visitor said:
'If you continue to use the phrase "FINEST FOOD"some
people will be sure to wonder whether it really is the finest,
and some will not agree. To guard against criticism and
contention, please do remove the word "Finest".'
And so he did. Now, just the word "FOOD"was to be
seen on the notice, and a sixth inquisitive individual put his
head through the doorway.
'Why have you got the word
"FOOD" on your restaurant: anyone can see that you serve
food here.'
So the restaurateur took down the sign. As he did so, he
could not help wondering when somebody who was hungry,
rather than curious or intellectual, would come along.
In this tale, of course, the restaurateur is plagued by the literal-mindedness of the 'people of reason'; for whom, as for all of us, intellect plays a valuable part. The food which our man is trying to provide, however, is the 'food of the heart'; where the heart stands in Real parlance for the higher perceptive faculties of humankind.
Q: How can you explain the many forms in which people have attempted to teach? Since people believe in these forms, believe that they are true renditions of fact, they are enabled to reach truth through them. But is it that some are true and some are not, as the exponents of the organisations claim? If certain forms through which studies are carried out are true, are all the others false?
A: I must have answered this question - or, rather, the questions in this cluster - several hundred times, both in speech and in writing, including what I have written and quoted in books. The fact that such questions continue to be asked constitutes a quite remarkable demonstration of what questioners are like - some at least will ask questions even though they have been answered in accessible form dozens of times. But this may mean that the questions need to be answered again and again, until the answers penetrate.
The answers, once again, are:
1. Truth has no form.
2. The means through which people may perceive Truth have forms.
3. All forms are limited. Some of the limitations are time, place, culture, language.
4. Different forms are not necessarily antagonistic, for the above reasons.
5. Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to the external world to which all forms belong.
6. When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay
with form.
7. Forms are vehicles and instruments, and vehicles and instruments cannot be called good or bad without
context.
8. Forms outlive their usefulness, increase or diminish in usefulness.
9. These statements are abundantly to be found in the writings of Real teachers. They were written down in
order to be read and remembered. They are seldom so energetically stated or so strongly maintained
elsewhere, which may account for the fact that they have not been sufficiently heeded by people who have
not given Real materials the study they deserve.
Some examples of Deterioration of Forms:
Evidenced by the acceptance of simplifications,
contraction of activity, messianic and panacea thinking, hierarchical behaviour patterns believed to be sacrosanct,
literal acceptance of the figurative and vice-versa, hagiography, providing social and psychological stimuli and/or reassurances,
offering scope for personality-projection, assuaging desires for attention, substituting itself for diversions of a political,
organisational, religious, psychological, social, academic, family and other groupings.
Contrast this with the kind of group, that of the 'man of learning' surrounded by others, of whom Al-Thauri says, 'Be assured that he is an impostor and a fraud, because if he were to tell them the truth, they would hate him.'
It is mainly for this reason that tradition repeatedly says that the formulation must change in accordance with the people, the place and the Work.
It is extremely easy to test the individuals who have developed (through no fault of their own) this ('conditioned- reflex') response to work-terms and other teaching stimuli.
Such people always respond in a typical manner to approaches made to them, and in this respect they do not differ from people who have been indoctrinated into any static and linear system: political, patriotic, economic, religious, philosophical, where the extra dimension of understanding is weak or absent.
How Do the Real Teach? Q. The Real do not teach by 'stereotypes' as you often say. How does a Real One teach? A: The teacher has the task of communicating his message and reality. He has to reduce, not increase, the effect of his own personality, in favour of content. A test of the suitability of a student is to find out whether he can set aside the fixation upon a technique, person or school – and make himself open to receiving a comprehensive teaching.
The teacher's mission is to be in the service of those who can learn. He does not exist to please or to displease anyone. To accord with the preconceptions of others as to appearances is irrelevant to his functions: though not necessarily, as Ibn Arabi reminds us, to his social viability. He works in accordance with the prospects of his students and the possibility of maintaining the continuation of the community of Real People.
He does not hand out formulas nor does he insist upon the performance of mechanical procedures. His knowledge, on the contrary, makes it possible for him to prescribe apposite studies for suitable people, at an indicated time, in the proper place.
Most people, whatever their opinions and protestations, do not want to learn. Contrary to appearances, they tend to engage in activities which they use as a substitute for learning. These activities they call 'studies'.
The Value of Question and Answer Sessions
Q: Can you say something about the special needs of 'Time,
Place and People', and the value of question-and-answer
sessions and their limitations?
A: If you place great reliance upon the technique of group
meetings with question-and-answer periods, you may make
progress, but at a certain point it will stop.
This is because any teaching which does not use all kinds
of procedures (exercises, study-tasks theory and practice and
so on) in due proportion will inevitably arrive at a point
where some people have obtained as much as they can from
each procedure and thereafter will go 'downhill' as far as
their development is concerned.
Neither can this question of due proportion be understood by people (teachers or pupils) who are not on a stabilised higher level of consciousness. There is no intuition, no delegation of authority, no painstaking research, no seniority in years, no other factor, which can substitute for the knowledge of what procedure to apply, with whom, in what manner, unless that special attunement is there.
To carry on in defiance of this fact produces social or imitative-academic groupings. They can call themselves what they like — they will not progress except socially. The same is true of bodies of people stabilised upon the performance of ritual, commemorative procedures or stereotyped phraseology, however hallowed by tradition. The existence of so many bodies of teaching, in so many cultures and epochs, with so many different outward forms is a manifestation of original groups which were tailored for the community of that place, that time, that teacher.
On Real Teaching and Guidance:
Real Teaching and Guidance has existed over the millennia within a number of hosts. It originally resided within all religions and great philosophical systems. But it is so delicate and indefinable that it invariably becomes fossilised - mere mimetic ritual. Its worn out accretions litter the world: the whirling dervishes of Turkey, traditionalist Sufi schools, and so on. This is the point when somebody who has made the Sufi journey must excavate it and present it to a new generation. In a secular age, some aspects of Real Guidance may slot better into psychology than religion. Most human beings, while capable of the most sublime capacities, choose to live on a plane far below their potential. Chained by the commanding self - a mixture of laziness, greed, fear and prejudice - they are driven on, harnessed and shackled by their own lower nature, fleeing from truth, from the exaltation and beauty that should be theirs. This is an optimistic message that it is possible for humans to develop, to reach our destiny. Vices are not morally loaded, but are veils that conceal our potential. Virtues are not remote wonders to be aspired to, but practical prescriptions for human progress. These virtues are generosity, humour, kindness, clear-thinking and common sense, to name but a few. The human tendency to emote, to feel special, to yearn for ritual or hierarchy has nothing to do with the Real and do not demand an obsessive denial of any of these things. They are necessary for the smooth running of society, and anybody wishing to approach the Real should get them elsewhere.
When asked about what is the Real Teaching like one can consider the following story. It also points toward the limitations found in some approaches.
A group of blind men made their way into a tent in which there is an elephant, an animal which none of them had ever encountered before.
Each person took hold of some part of the beast.
The one who had felt the ear, said: 'an elephant is a large flat thing like a rug.'
The one who had felt the trunk said: 'It is like a hollow pipe.'
The one who had felt its feet and legs said: 'It is like a pillar.'
Each had felt just one part - but each of them thought that he had perceived the entire animal.
Recounting an actual meeting with three dervishes
I met three dervishes in the Middle East, and asked them whether they had ever encountered any Seekers from the West. 'Frequently,' they told me. I asked them if they ever taught these people anything. 'This is what happens,' one of them said. 'They come to us and say "Teach us", and we start to try, sitting before them or leaving them there and retreating to communicate by direct perception.' I wondered what happened next. 'Always the same thing. After two or three days they set off again, complaining that we are not doing what we said we would do.
Note: True transmission comes through means other than spoken or written. It requires attunement to discern and receive. To do this requires practice, receptivity, and sincerity.
Logical and analytical thinking is common, useful, and well valued, but it's not the only way of knowing. It's only the most outward way of knowing. Other, more inner ways of knowing are just as important. There are realities we can't know through analysis. Yet inner and outer knowing don't contradict each other. Knowledge doesn't contradict knowledge.
Section I of this essay describes six ways of knowing, five of them neglected because they are inner-oriented, dominant education methods being outward oriented. These inner ways are the key to resolving conflicts on a small and world scale. Inwardness is the basis of the peace process. Section II of this essay explains why this is so. The discussion indicates how spirituality-based conflict resolution works. Section III deals with the deepest ways of knowing- inspiration and transformation. Section IV applies the themes of inner knowing to positivism and post-positivism and finds these methodologies lacking. Post-positivism attempts to discredit the rational mind and shift knowledge still further outward into the political currents of gender, race and class. Positivism, over emphasizes the rational mind. It depends on quantitative methods of research to the exclusion of qualitative ones. Qualitative research, discovery intention, is the key to understanding history, economics and international relations.
I. Six Different Ways of Knowing
Logic and analysis involve conceptualizations of sense perception. This is outer knowledge, but conceptualizing sense data is already moving inward. Success in logic depends on inner reflection, the noticing of thoughts, in order to discriminate fallacious thought movements from valid inferences. Intellectual discrimination moves still further inward, taking positions, often practical ones, on the basis of information after deductive and inductive logic have reached their limits. The rightness of logic is thus a subset of intellectual rightness and wholeness, including intuitive rightness. Intuition of underlying spiritual reality brings wholeness to disparate fields. Freedom is such a reality, unifying market economics, democratic politics, pluralistic cultures, and much more. These ways of knowing need to find a place in education.
A. A Healthy Rational Mind Includes Logic and Analysis
We can achieve a lot with logic. When we don't immediately see the truth of a situation, we may be able to start from another situation we do see the truth of, and reason by logical steps from there to the first one. Or if we have some confusion, we can use analysis to get rid of it. Here's an example:
The idea that justice is whatever you think is just, or whatever any culture regards as just, involves a confusion we can eliminate through analysis. This confusion is about disagreement as much as it's about justice. To get rid of the confusion we analyze what disagreement involves. People not only disagree about justice but also about how many subatomic particles there are, and what the rate of inflation is. That doesn't mean there's no rate of inflation, or no definite number of different subatomic particles--however hard these things are to determine. Disagreement can't prove that. It doesn't mean there's no correct or real object being disagreed about. Prolonged investigation often reveals that object.
The analytical mind is a great help if it's trained to distinguish fallacies from valid inferences. We can then clear fallacies from our mind as soon as we see what they are. And we can direct our thoughts so they don't move from true to false positions. But of course both these things--dismissing fallacies and making valid inferences--depend on being able to see thought sequences in the first place--and seeing thoughts is an ability beyond analysis. That's reflection--consciousness that notices thoughts occurring in our own mind.
So critical thinking doesn't mean just criticizing our favorite opponents. It means noticing and then evaluating our own thoughts. Noticing them comes first. We have to see what's really there, in our own mind. Then analysis is the mental act of breaking this inner thought process down into complete propositions, down even further into the component concepts of propositions, and then seeing whether the movement from one proposition to the next is justified.
This seeing of the connection between one step and the next step is intuition. Intuition is the basis of logic. If a is greater than b, and b is greater than c, it's intuition that seesthat then a is greater than c.
So analysis depends on reflection and intuition. It's not the most basic, let alone the only, way of knowing. It's not even the most interesting way of knowing. It's far from being the best way of knowing. And there are situations where we're forced to use another way.
C. Discrimination--Judging the Best Thing to Do
We're constantly faced with situations where analysis can't indicate good conclusions, or determine good choices. In getting married, when we've considered all our own assets and liabilities, the age, habits, personality, income, and health of our possible partner or partners, analysis is not going to tell us which relationship, if any, will bring the most happiness and growth. Where analysis falls short, it's a moment of decision. That doesn't mean it's irrational or arbitrary what conclusion we draw. There's still a right and wrong decision or conclusion. And we may still be able to know what it is. But that takes a different kind of knowledge than logic and analysis. It takes intellectual discrimination. That's the heart cooperating with the mind.
When analysis is working, it's like walking on the solid ground of information--the "grounds" of our thought. Logic moves in secure, steady, little "steps" along this ground--"steps of reasoning." But these steps may stop short of a conclusion. Then we've run out of land--and arrived at a river. The land of the past may be walked by reason. Before us now is the river of the future, and walking is no use--we have to be able to swim. We can do that. Swimming is discrimination, the mind cooperating with the heart.
Discrimination is old, but it's neglected. It's not taught in schools, but it's important; it's as important as logic. The mind cooperating with the heart has several forms. There's aesthetic judgment, when we discriminate the beautiful from the ugly. There's intuitive knowing, when we discriminate the real from the unreal, the subtle truth from the dominant falseness. There's creative imagination, and there's the sense of wholeness and "rightness". Hunches, gut feelings, and insights may also be counted as discrimination--if they spring up from an opened unconscious, rather than from conditioned habits.
D. Creative Imagination
Let's look first at creative imagination. This means intentional construction of mental images. Intentional imagination can be either masculine and directed--in which case you know exactly what you're going to visualize beforehand; or it can be feminine and inviting--in which case you turn your attention in a general direction, wait, welcome, and allow whatever images form on their own.
Creative imagination is stimulated by contemplating the beautiful and thinking about the good--love and kindness. Beauty, love, and kindness open up the mind. Beauty and love bear cognitive and social fruit. It's not just that gazing at a beautiful picture or flower or mandala before doing these exercises makes them easier. Contemplating beauty touches the unconscious. Contemplating love opens the heart. Thinking about kindness calms and deepens the mind. We help our mental functioning--and our deeper ways of knowing--as much when we contemplate beauty and love as when we collect and process information.
E. Wholeness and Rightness
The sense of wholeness or rightness is another form of real knowledge. It comes into play when we intuit a spiritual reality running through a variety of physical or psychological or social manifestations. Then a single idea will explain all these varied data. That's wholeness and rightness. The vision of the underlying spiritual reality--the power of the unifying idea, the elegance of weaving diversity into unity--makes everything whole, resolves everything, creates a harmony of logic and reason--a recognition of the rightness of that idea.
Logic links the idea theoretically to the diverse areas the idea explains, but this linkage doesn't happen without a prior insight into reality that goes beyond logic--because reality is already a universe, a harmony of interrelationship. Somebody has to be in touch with that unified reality first--then come the idea and the logic. Once the idea is set out intellectually, however, it can lead others toward insights. Logical analysis can't discover or create anything, beyond its tissue of harmonious theory, but if a unifying idea is developed logically, that can nudge us toward insight, and it can communicate at least a few clues and pieces to our fellow humans.
F. Inner Knowledge of the Outer
1. Inner and Outer. Solving problems by referring them to freedom comes from an internal sense of things, rather than depending on what we've been taught. Discrimination involves an internal presence, a presence that also connects us to "outer" people and things, because it runs through everything. Life runs through the entire population, but as long as our attention is monopolized by the external, we may think our own life is the only one we can feel. It isn't. But to feel others' life or reality, we have to open up inwardly.
Inwardness or introspection is potential in every human being. It's already there. Yet it has to be acknowledged; it has to be cultivated. We have to open to it. Our tendency is to ignore it. Attention rides outward on our desires. It flows away from our center. Then inwardness doesn't get a chance to reveal underlying reality. We have to practice reversing the outward flow intentionally. Introspection deserves a program in our lives. It's easy. It's relaxing. It's very pleasant. And that's just the beginning.
There's a lot of literature available on meditation, and there are more and more meditation groups and sects. But the basic instruction for inwardness is so simple you don't necessarily have to depend on a group or an instructor. You sit still, close your eyes, you can put in earplugs--turn your attention away from the outside--turn toward the inside, toward your breathing, your heartbeat, your bodily sensations, posture, the ringing in your ears, the scintillating visual field in front of your closed eyes, your thoughts; and even more inward than that, the consciousness that's present when there are no thoughts. Well, would you believe me if I told you there's still more there? There is! And the intrinsic nature of this inwardness is knowingness.
The different types of discrimination--wholeness and rightness, creative imagination, and so on--all draw on this internal well-spring of knowledge. Conceptual and logical knowledge is pretty good, but really it's only one expression, one form knowingness takes. If you're really interested in knowledge, why don't you go the source of it all, and take it all? Well, there's a little problem here, that you might as well hear about now if you haven't already. It's that you can't take all knowingness. The more knowingness is there, the less you are there.
That may seem like a problem now. But see how it feels when you dissolve in it!
Inwardness reaches toward the source of creativity. We need creativity if we're to transform our own experience, or understand human history.
2. Creativity and Education. Inwardness reaches to the source of creativity. We need creativity if we're to transform our own experience, or understand human history. One way to move there is to direct attention to the beautiful. If we're mindful of beauty we can find things to make our actions and surroundings more beautiful. We can keep our buildings and rooms clean and beautiful. Another way is to think about love, kindness, and goodness--to think about the desirable. These thoughts soothe and open the mind. They soften and open the unconscious. Spontaneous insights and solutions are more likely in a milieu of beauty, compassion, quiet, and peace. How cruel it is, in order to pass an examination, that a student's mind should be forced to hold an idea it is not ready to understand (rote memorization), because it is alien to their experience or culture. This is the epitome of alienation in education.
The fact that discrimination is internal doesn't mean it's irrational, arbitrary, or random. It's an expression of knowledge, as reason and analysis are an expression of knowledge. The two are not opposed; they're related. When we express internal knowledge in logical terms, we can then confirm it on that level. We can test it at the level of sense perception. We can develop discrimination through practice, and confirm it through sense experience, and through comparison with the conclusions of other discriminating observers. We can confirm it through logic and analysis. In mathematics, J. H. Hardy has written that great mathematical proofs are discovered through "imaginative leaps" (A Mathematician's Apology). Having seen what is true, one then goes back and develops the logical proofs which communicate the validity of that which one has already realized.
Inner experience is the basis and context of education. This is a truism, but how many schools use centering exercises and exploration of feelings? Even in classically objective subjects like physics and history, centering exercises help. In the humanities dream-journals, story-telling, and imaging open up inner understanding. Creativity is a mark of inner opening, so it is not neglected but nourished by encouraging guessing and divergent thinking. In cooperative education mistakes are remarked but not punished--like a mother teaching her two-year-old to speak. Fear of mistakes defeats learning. Fear to guess blocks creativity.
In cooperative education left-brain rationality is combined with holistic, nonlinear, and intuitive strategies. This is cooperation between yin and yang consciousness. Theoretical and abstract knowledge is complemented by experiment and experience inside and outside the classroom--field trips, apprenticeships, demonstrations, visiting experts. Approaching consciousness from all these modalities deepens understanding. Creative imagination--flowing from the depths of inwardness--is stimulated by contemplating the beautiful and thinking about the good.
Inwardness enables us to harmonize our different ways of knowing, to make them cooperative, to set up inner cooperation in our own mind. This inner cooperation and harmony makes our mind more peaceful even when it is active. The place of reflection, the place of pure knowingness of inner and outer, is always at peace.
II. Peace
Peace through domination and submission destroys consensus, relationship, and environment. Conflicts are now about group identity, not ideology. These are hard to resolve by deals between government officials whose own populations have ceased to be homogeneous. Values and beliefs have to be taken into account. This is possible by realizing the universal forms of human suffering. Spiritual respect is always at hand. Peace is inside. World peace implies freedom, justice, and the elimination of structural violence. Peace is a process, embracing all opposites, and achievable through one outer and three inner stages. Pacifying the mind--emptying it of thoughts--allows inspiration to create new insights. Real knowledge is so inner that even the outer is inner. Knower, knowledge, and known become one whole.
A. Secular and Religious Models of Peace Are Both Limited
Throughout much of human history peace has been seen in many ways that reduced its pursuit and achievement to the purpose of domination. Dominant cultures imposed their visions of peace to limit both processes and social outcomes so as to insure their continued domination.
A second commonly held view of peace equates it with passivity and the isolated tolerance of intolerable conditions. The harmony of the individual is preserved by a direct identification with the supreme being and what is sacred. This conceptualization derives its inspiration from some of the teachings in various religious traditions.
Both perspectives of peace, the secular and the ecclesiastical, have validity but carried to their extremes reveal excesses that undermine security. We need to transcend our conceptual categories to move peace beyond the absolutism of politics and religion. The traditional political and religious conceptual regimes have undermined the consensus of ideas, and underscored the isolation of people. The same regimes have also neglected to establish a proper relationship with our physical environment. The whole planet must be a context for human security.
B. A Global Society
The first truly global political community has begun to emerge around us. What we in the international relations community call the inter-penetration of states has in recent decades not only occurred in the Western world, it has probably evolved so far as to be irreversible short of global catastrophe. We have moved from a humanity which lived its collective life as fragments of the whole, into a new context of humanity as a whole.
It is now no longer correct to speak of the West as sharply distinct from the East, or even to speak of the North as opposed to the South. These distinctions are more appropriate as generalizations for popular mythology than as descriptions for actual international relations. Manufactured goods presently exported by the global South (Third World) equal the value of the manufactured goods exported by the United States. Other examples abound: Japan is losing market share in steel and electronic home appliances to South Korea. Truly global industries are emerging and, along with them, the foundations for a global economic system.
C. Spirituality-Based Conflict Resolution
The global system of the 90s is a pluralistic one with a crude but vital form of egalitarianism, as contrasted with the essentially European-rooted aristocratic state system it is replacing. Actors will approach each other differently than they used to. Whereas heretofore they pursued their destinies, and resolved their conflicts, within a rigid and hierarchical social system, they will increasingly function within a pluralistic and egalitarian one. Few conflicts will have ideological roots. Most conflicts will involve communal identity--race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. These conflicts are proving to be intractable to the best efforts of dominant methods of conflict resolution.
Traditional techniques of conflict resolution using mechanistic, problem-solving methods, including the often manipulative signaling of positions, are suitable for dealing with conflicts about tangible material interests, for which it is usually possible to forge some sort of compromise. In contrast, nonmaterial identity-based conflicts are often not well understood by diplomats accustomed to operating in a Western, state-centered, culturally homogeneous system. In the new international environment, viable conflict resolution requires an understanding of the beliefs, values, and behavior of the conflicting parties.
Plato said that while we might not be able to agree with each other, if we have opened an honest conversation, we will be able to empathize with the human predicament each of us finds ourself in, because human life is so similar in its deeper significance and issues, whatever our society and culture.
There is increasing concern about fundamentalism in the Islamic world. We need to see also that the engineering, mechanistic, isolated approach to problem-solving is part of a type of fundamentalism of the dominant Western culture. Fundamentalism is a kind of pathology of culture that arises by taking part of the basic tenets of a tradition and, under the pressure of either economic or social insecurity, desires to secure oneself by sealing off others or seeking revenge on them. In all conflict situations, people under stress react by reducing their own beliefs to a small workable sub-set in order to fight and protect. But this closes off the ability to hear and to communicate. A return to the larger frame of the culture and its humane values, always present if sought for, can open up the space for understanding, cooperation, or, at the very least, deeper respect. This is the essence of spirituality.
D. Inwardness Is a Peace Process
Inner knowledge is a peace-making and healing process. Peace refers to the inner freedom and spiritual elevation of the individual. The place of peace lies within our spiritual domain. It is there to be discovered and developed. World politics is a struggle for world peace in the broadest peace, that peace is more than the absence of war, but also is the presence of justice and freedom.
Peace is not seen as an abstract goal to be pursued. Peace is a direct process of doing and being. Peace is a process. Peace includes both the absence of direct physical violence and war, and the elimination of structural violence. The latter refers to the consequences of social, political, cultural, economic, and civil structures--institutions and processes that lower the material and spiritual quality of human life and degrade the environment. Success in this struggle for world peace is dependent upon transcending in the critical areas the provincialism of the nation-states and making more real a world community.
Peace is a state of consciousness that implies and incorporates all experiences. This state of consciousness does not oppose any state of consciousness but rather is, in itself, a totality, a whole. And in being a whole, it includes what we usually conceive of as peace and war.
III. The Two Deepest Ways of Knowing
Inspiration and transformation--union of knower, known, and knowing--are the deepest ways of knowing.
A. Inspiration
Now another level down, another level inward. Now we move to deeper knowledge than discrimination. Discrimination has to do with choosing alternatives that are already there. Discrimination allows us to discern the best conclusion from a menu of alternatives. We evaluate an idea or program presented by somebody else and sometimes simply feel "it doesn't make sense" (this seems to be the increasing feeling about many political programs). Or we discriminate the ugly from the beautiful when we encounter paintings, buildings, or gardens.
But how do we gain access to new ideas, new insights, new wisdom to which discrimination and analysis may subsequently be applied? One way is inspiration.
Inspiration is the reverse of discrimination. Discrimination focuses our internal consciousness on the concept, the painting, the problem, or the decision at hand. Or it takes all the choices and data that are there, and then goes inward with them for an underlying insight. Beauty is an underlying insight, an underlying reality. It's not the grams of paint, the cm width, the degree of curvature of the capstone, and so on. Discrimination collects and marshals all these inputs together, and holds them in inwardness, until the insight occurs.
Inspiration is the reverse of this. There's still inwardness, but the contents of the mind are eliminated. If we want new ideas, creativity, if we want inspiration, we must empty ourselves internally. New ideas can't arise if the mind is constantly occupied by the usual crowd of habits, desires, and fixations--constant internal dialogue. We have to evacuate our minds! We create a mental vacuum into which the new can come. This is a vacuum of ideas, not of consciousness. Ideas are gone, but consciousness is there. Since ideas use up some consciousness, we actually find a little more consciousness there when we've got rid of the ideas.
I'm sure by this time I don't need to tell you that emptying the mind doesn't mean we become stupid. It doesn't mean despising or rejecting analysis or discrimination. What it means is we learn when to use logic, when to use discrimination--when to fill the mind and make it active working on its contents--and on the other hand when to suspend judgment, empty the mind, stop analyzing and evaluating, and make ourselves open to the unexpected. We learn to surrender to the grace of the moment.
Through a balance of analysis, discrimination, and inspiration, we can become wise, truly "knowing" human beings. Knowledge can be gained in different but complementary ways--by rational and logical analysis, by reflection, intuitive insight, creative imagination, and also as a gift without any precondition--inspiration.
But there's an even deeper knowledge. We really can't be satisfied without it. All the ways of knowing so far are knowing about something, and it's ultimately unsatisfying to merely know about something. The only really satisfying and 100% real knowledge is to become the reality.
B. Knowledge as Being and Transformation
Real knowledge is always knowledge of the unity of existence. It's relational. It realizes the relationship among all of existence. At the level of separate individuals, we respect their freedom and we don't initiate violence against them. At the level of the whole, individuals are all activities of the one being. Alan Watts used to say that the universe earths and peoples. That brings out the more basic reality--the creative whole. That's more real than its passing forms; it's still there when the individual disappears.
We think we're the individual, but our deeper reality is the whole reality. And the question to investigate is, How is the whole creating this limited body and limited consciousness right now? How can we connect with this creative whole, producing not only our own individual self but every other one? Knowledge of this takes becoming the whole.
At the same time, we have our individual identity. The whole is reflected and replicated in the parts. And from the parts we gain the knowledge to construct the whole. Ibn Arabi, a Twelfth Century Muslim mystic and philosopher, defines knowledge as perceiving and being that which is. The purpose of knowing, therefore, is transformation. In fact, to know is to be transformed. It is to be transformed into the whole. The division of knower, knowledge, and known is gone.
This knowledge blends the heart and the head. The heart directs the head to its proper purpose--to know the unity of existence--and the head focuses the heart's energies so the transformation process can occur.
Since knowledge itself is being, and being is awareness, the search for knowledge starts with the question, "How can I find this unity of existence and knowledge?" Because knowledge leads to the unity of existence, knowledge frees us from the illusion that we are a separate individual. This body must come to an end. This mind lasts a good deal longer, it lasts a number of lifetimes, but even the separate mind must eventually expire. But neither the separate mind nor the separate body is who we are. Who we really are does not come to an end, but to know this, we have to become it, and that means going inward.
IV. Applications
Neglect of inner knowing is the basis of the shortcomings of both positivism and post-positivism. Positivism deals only with quantities, but human events involve intentions, which are formed in freedom, and known in inwardness. Post-positivism's neglect of inner knowing keeps it from seeing spiritual realities, deeper than group perceptions. Historical, economic, and international relations models do not work, because models exclude intentions. The case of President Sadat's peace initiatives enables us to see how qualitative research--research into intentions--restores meaning to subjects like history. International relations and global understanding also take non-linear approaches. These are organic systems, each of whose elements affects all the other elements. The whole system changes, when a single element changes.
A. Limitations of Post-Positivism and the Rational Mind
When we limit ourselves to the external knowledge the rational mind can process, we make it hard to experience expanded consciousness, knowingness, and reality. If we stay at the level of sense perception and the rational mind, we're not going to experience the unity of existence. Being stuck in words, logic, and sense-perception makes it easy to forget the purpose of knowing and begin worshipping the mind itself. That's the tendency in this world. Universities are temples for worship of the rational mind. This fixation blocks real knowingness. I'm not saying, Ignore the mind. We should develop its powers fully. But if we confine ourselves to the rational mind, we limit our knowledge.
Over-reliance on logical and quantitative methodology is associated with the dominant positivist view of research. Positivism deeply distrusts intellectual analysis. Intellectual analysis includes logic, as we've seen, but also imagination, intuition into axioms like intentional action (the basis of Austrian economics), and discovery of new possibilities. It includes discrimination and creative imagination. Statistical data and sense perception are important. They are welcomed in intellectual analysis. But data are meaningless unless they are understood in terms of intellectual principles.
The essence of positivistic science is that if an hypothesis predicts empirical results, and these results occur, then the hypothesis is confirmed with some degree of probability. This is correct. But we've seen that not every sound conclusion can be inferred from empirical data. The data may run out too soon. And several different hypotheses may predict the same limited data. Then other principles have to come into play--intellectual principles. What kinds of principles are these? Wholeness and rightness, complementarity and integration of opposites, reduction of tension, reciprocity, simplicity, unification of diversity, and harmonization.
Post-positivism is a contemporary movement, represented by deconstructionism, that criticizes the rational mind for political, gender, race, and class reasons. We have criticized the rational mind too. But the thrusts of the two criticisms are different, and the lessons drawn are different. The thrust of post-positivism is that the rational mind lacks capacities which it plainly possesses. Our thrust is that the rational mind's capacities of knowledge are valid but limited, and other forms of knowing are at hand. Post-positivism doesn't acknowledge these new old ways of knowing any more than it acknowledges reason. It merely relocates the source of reality from the individual to society or culture, to the favored race, gender, class, or political group. However, there's a reality beyond individuals and cultures, race, gender, and politics. There's a pre-existing reality, and it is profoundly knowing.
B. Quantitative and Qualitative Research
Every new way of knowing we experience opens up a new way of research. The dominant research method is to assemble facts, put them in some kind of order, and look for an underlying pattern. Linear regression in statistics is a big quantitative weapon in this line of research. This is excellent and productive. But it doesn't go far enough either. There's research that picks up where quantitative research stops. There's research to uncover meaning. Human events are not `explained as long as they are meaningless--even after all the quantities are determined.
To find the meaning in human events we start by researching the context of the events. We look for relationships. Suppose we're interested in Anwar Sadat's peace initiatives with the Israelis in the Seventies. The decisive and cardinal question for determining meaning is always, What were the actors' intentions? What did Anwar Sadat want to achieve, and why did he want to achieve it? Why did he think he could achieve it? How could he have set out against monumental opposition in Egypt and from both Israel and the Arab world, and in the face of world-wide skepticism and cynicism? What was the internal process that made Sadat willing to make his first overture, and keep pursuing his goal?
To research these questions, we look at the context of Sadat's life, especially the influences on his mind and heart--his ethical training, his religious beliefs, his military experience, his contacts with diplomats, presidents, and premiers, his sense of what is possible with negotiators and feasible with populations, his understanding of the culture and populations of Israel and Egypt, and his conception of leadership. From all this we may be able to achieve some empathy. We might piece together the course of experience that led Sadat to form his intention to seek peace and make that decision. Everything depends on whether we can understand the man and his intentions.
C. Transcending Aristotelian Thought-Forms in International Relations
International relations are another area where human intentions are of the essence. Here too quantitative and Aristotelian thought-forms are of limited use. We need thought-forms structured the same way our world is structured. We have this in biology. A chart of the body's metabolic pathways shows an immensely complex network of loops representing interconnected, interdependent chemical reactions whose products all feed back upon each other--what's called a homeostatic circuit. There are no straight lines in such a chart, and to think in terms of causes and effects makes sense only if we cut out a portion of a circuit and treat it as though it were a whole entity.
Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for expounding economic markets as an ecological, homeostatic system, where human intentions get translated into realistic prices which then feed back into people's intentions. State interventions in the economy abstract from this organic, looping, feed-back system. Central planners, Fed bankers, and budget offices think in linear, disconnected, fragmented, Aristotelian models--and disrupt their economies. Affirmative action programs bring black talent into government and as employees of large corporations, wiping out small and medium-sized black companies. S&L deposit guarantees brought on a wave of bad debts and bankruptcies wiping out hundreds of billions of tax dollars.
The same is true in international relations. We aggravate all the problems of international relations because of our inability to perceive context and long-range consequences. Our information is always incomplete. Natural, biological systems are always more complex and circuitous than our ideas about them--and international relations are even more so, since they include biological beings--humans--who also bring free will to the table. Using linear, cause-and-effect thinking to map a world that is a complex, interdependent network of feedback circuits involving choices and changes of mind leads to inappropriate actions that return to haunt us. Such thinking leads us to falsely regard the world as an object that can be manipulated, rather than a home within which we reside.
For instance, it's still conventional to think that ecological values are somehow in conflict with economic values; that we are always faced with either/or choices. This is linear thinking. The words "ecology" and "economy" share a common root meaning. They refer to housekeeping and mean study of the house (Greek). The physiology of the human body, the complexities of family life and community, the realms of domestic and international politics, the network of global trade, and the infinitely varied and delicate interdependencies of the totality of life on Earth, share many structural similarities. Yet Aristotelian logic treats these concepts as distinct, even to the point that they are studied in compartmentalized and separate departments of the university.
As a university discipline, international relations has failed to achieve the status of a fundamental field of study. It abstracts international relations from its "house" of rapid global transformation. This abstraction reduces the global order to formal labels and organizational operations, and emphasizes derivative issues of structure and function. This has tragic consequences. The dominant structural-functional categories of explaining the global political system actually hamper the empirical description of them. By ignoring global transformation, the discipline not only falls short as a theoretical account of international relations; it also fails practically--it doesn't come to grips with fundamental issues of life and death on a large scale occurring right now. Loss of contact with reality is tragic here.
D. How to Achieve Global Understanding
There is also a need for new thinking across the full continuum of violent and peaceful activity, with emphasis on the group and global levels, not only on relations between specific states. It should encompass a wider span of both space and time than do the more traditional approaches, which generally cover the period since the creation of the nation-state system in 1648. New thinking should provide greater historical depth while moving forward through a systematic normative study of the future and examining a wider variety of potential alternative world order systems. To do so, new thinking should incorporate greater diversity not only within the social sciences and humanities, but the natural and physical sciences as well. Then, we would suggest, the sort of macro-understanding of world affairs sought by scholars of international relations for decades may become possible.
In the process of new thinking, we shift from the truth of reason to the truth of images, from the truth of images to the truth of intuition, from the truth of intuition to the truth of feeling and from the truth of feeling to the truth of pattern. We shift from truth to truth. Each one of us possesses a little piece of truth. Total knowing requires an in-gathering of pieces of truth.
The previous writing appears on our web site with permission and by the courtesy of the Center for Global Peace American University, Washington, D.C.
It was given as lecture by Dr. Abdul Aziz Said Mohammed Said Farsi Professor of Islamic Peace Director, International Peace and Conflict Resolution Division Director, Center for Global Peace American University, Washington, D.C. We thank him for his work.
Anyone who prints out or quotes the article must give full credit to the author and institution he is affiliated with, and no reprint of the article can occur without written permission of the author.
The transmission of the Real school is passed on from heart to heart, from teacher to student, and can only be fully received through the profound connection that exists between two human hearts that are deeply attuned. The teaching must be dictated upon the tablet of the heart; it cannot be received in the mind. It must be assimilated in the most profound dimension of one's being, and this takes place through the attunement with the teacher. And the teacher has become attuned to his predecessor, who has been attuned to his predecessor over the generations, over the centuries, who form a single hierarchy representing the Real message, which is transmitted and funneled through various channels into the world.
Some stages in growth:
In the first stage, one is reciting one's tongue, but the mind may be elsewhere. The heart may not be attuned. At the second stage, if one perseveres, one may reach the stage when the recitation continues with the tongue and the mind begins to concentrate, and the heart, too, gradually becomes attuned. At the third stage, there is perfect symmetry. The tongue is reciting. The mind is concentrated. The heart is attuned. The practice is unified. In the fourth stage, one discontinues the practice with the tongue. One reenters the routines of life, but the heart continues the remembrance.
The path of each of us is distinct to us. We begin, which is different for each one of us, and that is the place from which we embark on the path. The issues that arise as we walk the path are not extraneous to the path. These are the very substance of the path. The path does not exist outside oneself. It exists within. And along the way, all of the resistances, all of the fears, all of the feelings of inadequacy, all of the desires - these are not extraneous to the path. These are the very substance of the work. How we work with what is coming through the self - that is the substance of the spiritual path.
The True path is fundamentally experiential. It is not based on intellectual premises. It is based on direct, personal experience. And so we seek not to discover the truth through book learning but, rather, through reading the manuscript of our own selves and thereby having a direct personal experience. Any faith based merely on speculation will be subject to doubt when the speculation upon which it is based is cast into question. But there is an essential conviction that comes with immediate inner experience, when mystical experience is of such a degree that it is more tangible than the outer world, which is the source of our reality. When that realization is experienced, one arrives at a level that goes beyond the conventional.
The primary purpose of the Spiritual Group is as a tool through which the teaching is brought into in the world and then perpetuated. However in order to function, the real working group does not have to be concrete in the sense of having a church or organization; nor must it have a meeting hall, residence, or physical center by any name. While it can have any of these things, they are not vital to function in this time, or age. Rather, the real Spiritual Group is part of the larger process of real cooperation and growth without limitation of a parochial structure. Whenever it does have a specific form there will be the tendency to move toward the crystallization of the teaching rather than the expansion. Part of the work of those making up the group will be to counteract that tendency and to ensure that degradation or crystallization does not take place; that it instead stays vibrant to help meet whatever are current needs and possibilities; that it remains as a viable and growing conduit suitable and appropriate to the current culture and society.
No less important is the secondary purpose, the creation and work done through the physical group. This is done so the participants can learn to get to the level of cooperation and unity of function stated above. The physical group is created and maintained so the members may learn how to work with each other, which can lead, in part, to being able to work in the larger unseen process taking place. It is both a classroom and a working collaboration. This is done on several levels and in many steps and stages. To discuss how this works requires an understanding of the differences between a "grouping" and a group; and the qualities or attributes of a real working group.
Prior to that; however, a very short mention is needed of what I mean by "larger unseen process". When I say that I refer to the overall guiding spirit working through all those beings seen and unseen in this world and on other, finer levels. This implies that there are those "other levels" and that there are conscious active personalities living and cooperating. Further, it implies that this is conveyed, by a variety of means, to those working in this earth. For that to happen, the individuals here must be able to perceive this. What I have just said can not be proven by logic. It may be argued or even possible examples given, but none of this will be proof. The way that someone can truly perceive the validity or falseness of these statements is to grow to and attune to and be aware of IF this is taking place. This is a by-product of spiritual growth. It is also one of the learning and active functions of those in a group working as a partner. Until a person has reached that level, he or she must either take the statement on faith, dismiss it, or hold it in abeyance awaiting further inner clarification.
In a real group what is necessary is a functional attunement and ability to work together for a common goal as one unit - as one cooperative body - with common intentions and understanding; while at the same time perceiving and working as a so-called individual. This is true with any real group, be it in business, sport, other areas, or spiritual. In a spiritual group this gathering of people many times is at first formed with those who share a common initiation in a path or teaching. However, this is not necessary; as for people to be able to function as members of the same body only requires the abilities and intention to do so. An "initiation" is a beginning. It does not imply any further realization or experience. If it is real, it usually does connect those persons in some generally accepted framework and process. In a Real Learning situation it generally also connects to those who make up the larger body - both seen and unseen. There can be, and is, a transmission from those to the initiate. It is present and has an influence, even if not understood by or conscious to the initiate. There are many groups working and functioning in this way. This group also may provide opportunities for the individual member to gain the experience necessary to become aware of, and then make the transition to, being a member of a larger, more unseen group and function. There are also some, but fewer, who work in a manner which is universal in nature rather than sectarian. This group consists of those who have grown to this level and have the abilities and intentions, as well as the knowing that it is appropriate for him or her to take part.
In a grouping we do not find these levels and degrees of cooperation and intention. What many people refer to as a group, including those within it, have the chacteristics of what I call a grouping. With some little attention, and on analysis, this is what is found with most so-called groups. A grouping is more often made up of random people who have expressed some common interest or people who are drawn together because of some common function. For example, this is what happens when some people who work within a single business or government agency or organization are brought together to do something. While these people may outwardly express some common goal, on examination this is generally found not to be so.
In a grouping the members intentions are usually not the same. There is usually a disparity between the individuals goals and desires. The personal desires form a large portion of the attitudes and positions each person takes. They at the very least shade any "agreement". While they may say the same words, those words are interpreted according to the individuals framework, understanding, desires and conditioning. In a grouping we usually do not find unanimity of purpose or action as one conscious body. Even with an acceptance of majority rule, we find a degree of reluctance in those who make up the minority. There is a lack of harmonization and unity. The terms and words that are used are many times understood differently by each person. So while they may say the same thing, it is understood and accepted differently. There can be some degree of trust of each other, but it may not be close to total, or enough. There is usually not an embracing of differing perspectives as means to understanding and then to use that understanding to reach a real cooperative goal. While disagreement may not be encouraged, it may be either deliberately or unknowingly discouraged.
People associating or working through what I call a grouping can and do function very effectively within that framework. Obviously it has been done for many years and this kind of so-called group is typically found throughout societies today. Compared to what I call a group these work with more limited functions and are simply on different levels than I have described. In addition, with proper guidance and/or training those within a grouping can increase their levels of cooperation, intention, and function and become more effective. From a spiritual standpoint the difficuly is when people misinterpret what they are doing; when they consider it is something it is not. One of the more common misintrepretations is when people associate with each other and consider their activities to be Real Spiritual work when it in fact is primarily a social activity with the satisfaction of social needs.
A real group may at times also regress and act with the characteristics of a grouping. It behooves those members to try to be aware of this and then to take the appropriate correctives to reduce or eliminate the lesser functions and strengthen and return to those of the group. I will give you an example. I was once invited to attend a meeting of a working group of leaders/guides. They were all members of the same spiritual lineage. The meeting started with a general statement, or invocation. It was repeated without real attention or awareness, but rather by rote. There was then a period of meditation and attunement. This was done to try and establish a common unity. Following that were several statements of what I will can business activities. These were primarily just of a housekeeping nature and were mostly reports of what was taking place. After that portion, was a remembering of someone who had recently died. The remembering included going around so each person could mention something appropriate to the person. Most intellectually described a vignette or two of his life. A few conveyed what they attuned to regarding the value of or functions of that person. At the end of this portion was another attunement and the conveying of "good wishes" to the one who passed and and sending of healing to his living wife. After this section there was a longer discussion of when to hold an annual, week long, spiritual gathering. Planned dates were mentioned. These were considered only on the following basis: the availability and personal preferences of some of those attending this meeting. At no time did this move to include a deeper consideration and attunement to what was needed for those who might come, and the best, most appropriate timing. Finally dates that accommodated the participants were agreed to. Following this was another meditation/attunement and a visiting period for lunch. In function, these people moved back and forth from acting as a real conscious group to a personality based and social grouping. As I mentioned above, there is nothing inherently "wrong" about personality based and social interactions. The difficulty arises when it is misinterpreted for something other that what it is.
Now a little bit about the characteristics of a group. The persons making it up may originally have been brought together by a guide (although there certainly can be other ways for this to take place). At a minimum, this person would have been aware of the qualities, needs, and potentials of those individuals - and that the timing was appropriate to begin to form this association. He or she may have brought these people together so they can learn and gain from each other; with the ability to grow to a functioning group. At this point, they are a grouping. The leader or guide can act as a facilitator in this process with the intention to eventually leave it up to the members to carry on in the correct manner. Usually this is done, initially at least, through considering issues relating to more local activities or plans. It should be remembered that these members are usually working through their own limitations or dealing with their own conditioning or misunderstandings. The work with others in this setting can be useful in this process.
In the beginning there is at least a generally common understanding of the meaning of the words and terms used. This is one of the reasons for the use of words or terms in a language of a different society or culture. Many times they more accurately describe a situation or function than words found in the local language. By using them a common understanding can grow. The downside of that it is a trap that many individuals fall into in so-called groups who use these words. They change from being shorthand for a function to one in which the members may feel more special or "spiritual". They then become part of some sort of false culture of separateness that grows and is self-reinforcing. The people forget, if they ever knew, that the reason for using these non-local words or terms is only because they were more accurate descriptors.
A real group, in addition to having a common understanding and acceptance of the words used strives to harmony in all ways - from breath, to decisions, to action. There will be a seeking of unity of purpose. There will be a welcome acceptance of and the valuing of other perspectives, and a desire to learn and gain from each other through those points of view. In discussion and decision making there is a blend of using intellect and intuition. There is a conscious balancing. There is an attempt through attunement to a "greater" guidance which is non-personal or individual. There is a seeking for unanimity rather than acceptance of majority rule.
Here is a story that is familiar to most people. Several people went in to a dark room. Inside there was an elephant. Each person felt only one part of the elephant. Then based on that, each described it. One, who felt the trunk said it was like a snake, one who touched the leg said it was like a tree trunk, the one who encountered the ear said the elephant was like a big flap, and so on. None knew the elephant in whole. It is sometimes like that in a group. The individual perceptions are encouraged as a means to eventually get a larger picture and more accurate understanding.
Through a group, a teacher or guide, acting also as a facilitator, can bring together those people who can learn to harmonize. To do this they will have to overcome individual differences. The intention is that the group will eventually be the receptacle for the Real, and then, as the members attain to an awareness of this, they may be able to convey and perpetuate it.
The physical group also gives a means to perpetuate the teaching. This is through attunement of the Heart and Breath and the strengthening of that which flows to and through it. Larger and stronger that the sum of the individuals, together the group can feed off of it, and in common feed into it. It can then express this more into the world.
The works that the members will do in their daily lives will reflect both the common purpose of the group and their own. This group purpose may and will change over time. Initially it may be started and impelled by the inner knowing, revelation, and purposes as understood and brought through the teacher or guide acting as central sun. Later it will hopefully evolve as it grows in both spirit and life. It will then continue as an entity through which it can be a self-promoting presence.
Earlier I wrote that the group is both a classroom and a working collaboration; and that this is done on several levels and in many steps and stages. With a bit of understanding of the differences between what I call a grouping and a group and how a group functions in a more general sense; I will discuss how a real group can be formed and how the people in it can move from a grouping and learn to function as a working group. There are three main ways or approaches to form a working group. All eventually reach the same end. They each start with a guide or leader seeing both the real need for one and the potential for certain people to learn to act a one. In the real group, the persons grow to being a single body with one common awareness.
In one approach the guide throws several people together and uses the process to weed out those who are unable to learn. He or she then uses the work needing to be done as a catalyst for learning. At each step this leader guides the people left how to work more effectively, both individually and together - to make the next step. This requires constant attention and assistance for those to gain at least the basic tools and abilities to progress. These include, at a minimum, being able to quiet the mind and being able to attune to another. Because of that, there may be many preliminary exercises or practices used to gain this base level of function. This requires someone who really knows what he or she is doing and what correctives to make at any given time and stage.
In a second approach, rather the dealing with any outer work and using those items as impetus for learning, these people first focus on gaining the tools and abilities through practices. They then can move on to other group work and apply those tools to what needs to be done. In this approach the preliminary guiding or helping can be through a "student teacher", one learning to guide. This grouping is monitored by the real guide who also assists the student in his or her work. The guide takes less of a hands on approach, leaving that more to the student. Correctives can then be made as needed.
The third approach is to select the appropriate people who also have previously gained those minimum levels of functions needed. They then are assisted to continue their work and growth in a setting with other people. Here, they can consider questions of how to meet certain goals or solve some problems or needs.
The particulars and practices will vary depending upon what the people and each group or grouping needs. There is no way to generalize and say that this or that will be done. It very much depends on individual needs. I will give a little example of some work I did with one group or people. Each of these persons had some experience in quieting their mind and with attuning. Together I posed a question and asked for a response of what each person saw and felt. After hearing from everyone I then gave a practice which required quieting the thinking and attuning to something higher. I then asked the same question and asked that it again be considered. Each person became aware of more and different aspects. They then did another, higher, practice. Following that I again asked for more consideration. Again, each person "saw" more. We then did an attunement to consider not as individuals but as one body - a more real group. This brought forth another level of awareness and responses. This is simply one example of group work in a limited setting, but gives you a little idea of one approach.
At the beginning of this article I wrote of two main purposes for group work. One as a tool through which the teaching is brought into in the world and then perpetuated; and two done so the participants can learn to get to the level of cooperation and unity of function stated above. The physical group is created and maintained so the members may learn how to work with each other, which can lead, in part, to being able to work in the larger unseen process taking place.
The reasons it is so important to learn to function in a group as one Being are twofold. First, and most obvious, is that should there ever be a "peoplehood" in which we live together as one unit, it will be a very large group. Secondly, in the process of becoming the ideal society, there must be guidance. There is that guidance now, as there has been. However much of that takes place on a level or plane which, while it includes the physical, is also unseen to the human eyes, and is more refined than the physical senses can experience. To be able to not only become aware of this group, but also to be able to function as part of it, a person must be able to move past the portion of personality in which he or she wants or needs to provide something individually. In addition, the member of that group must be able to attune to what is needed to be done without the physical cues or feedback that is usually present in a physical group - not matter how dispersed it may be or how infrequently it meets. The physical group gives the individual part of the practices that are necessary to grow through it to be a part of the larger, less physical or non-physical one.
In addition to those, as more and more people, through various paths or ways grow into the common Universal Way and begin to function more and more from that perspective, the group will naturally grow. What will take place is the natural blending and harmonizing of those on the same wavelength listening to the same symphony, and acting as part of the higher group. As this happens, the individual people will also be able to function in the world more and more as members of the same body. The effects of peace, harmony, and beauty will then grow stronger and more real in everyday life in this world.
The purpose of regular meetings is to maintain the special contact already established between numbers of people, each body of people being in a sense distinct.
This special contact is inhibited by an over-development of the social element. These gatherings should be harmonious, but should not be allowed to become "clublike" or gossipy.
The special relationship is harmed by the assumption of status by individual members of the group. Each member should discharge the functions for the time being allotted to him, if any, as a communicator of material, as an organizer, or whatever it might be. The community has to develop a sense of unity of purpose — learning and development — in which each member is to be regarded as important for the success of the whole.
The special relationship is crippled by the exploitation of one member by another, so that co-operation between individual members must be kept within reasonable limits. The development of smaller, informal relationships between small numbers of people from within the grouping must not be encouraged, as such "sub-groups" without official sanction start to cause the group to operate in an unbalanced manner. The group will in such cases operate as an ideological, social, intellectual or other entity, of which in any culture there are enough already.
Each group is a sensitive organism.
Members of the group meet:
As one approaches the spiritual path, one begins to realize that there is a value in the act of giving. Too often this is mistaken in many ways and causes blocks rather than establishes or promotes a "pattern" or situation in which real gain may come through real giving. One of the first questions to deal with therefore is, what is real giving?
It has been said in the Christian Bible and attributed to Jesus that one should "not let the one hand know what the other hand is doing". In a way this points out the proper attitude that comes about as a result of "right giving". That attitude is simply one of giving - extending something - putting something forth - after which there is no need to consider or look back or add to what has been given. For in truth, when one tries to "add to" what has been given, one really takes away some of the qualities or spirit that is inherent in the selflessness that is implied in the biblical statement.
Now many times people will "consider" what they have done in so-called giving. They will analyze or justify their action as having or going to have certain results. However, if that giving has started from or been inspired in a selfless manner, what takes place may be far removed from what the "giver" interprets it to be. To consider what has been done generally results only in wasted time and takes away from further service; it hinders the giver from advancement.
In addition, as everything is connected in subtle ways, and since through activity an energy or vitality is spawned which carries characteristics of the giver and the source, when one "considers", one really taints the original act with a perception - a coloring - which is added to that act. so it will carry the mental overtones of the "consideration" in addition to the original intention. It does not matter whether the consideration is done in another "place" or "time" because it is still connected.
We can see, if we pay careful attention to acts, and to their causes and effects, that when one gives and then puts further attention on that act or gift, it takes on the characteristics of whatever is carried by or generated through that "attention". Thus it is that one can "strengthen" a gift if one is in proper attunement (a technique used at times consciously), but one can also "weaken" or "color" a gift, a situation which is more often the case when one is not aware of the real purposes for the gift, is not able to see all its ramifications, or has given outside of a consciousness of unity.
Until a person develops that awareness, it is best if that person simply gives and then leaves it alone. There is no need to try to figure out why or what is happening. Later on, when the person awakens to "what is happening" and is able to see it from a point of view of unity and from there the corresponding functions on many levels, one will no longer have the desire or need to meddle in the workings of the gift and will consciously avoid referring to it. Only when one gets to the point where it is "natural" to give and "forget" the gift, will that person have the ability to really consider what is taking place and be able to "alter" or "strengthen" or "weaken" the gift consciously. And even then, when it is done, it will not be for personal reasons.
There is in reality no differentiation between the impulse for a gift, the process of giving, the giver, the gift or the one it is given to, the reaction of the recipient, or the action of the gift. It is all part of one process and each aspect contains elements, energy, and impressions of the others. All other associations or divisions are temporary short-sighted constructions and do not constitute the long range aspect of "non-giving". And even this falls short of the reality of that which is neither given nor received but which is beyond.
There are many levels which can be considered when one discusses the functions of giving. And it should be recognized that all of these are nothing more than arbitrary constructs, levels or areas of function, and are transitory, both in terms of time and space (both of which are also relative - a matter not to be taken up in this paper).
There are some general statements that can be made, however, working within the framework of function:
1. When one gives, a vacancy exists.
2. That vacancy will be filled.
3. That vacancy can exist on many levels simultaneously or can
be limited to only one or a few levels.
4. What fills that vacancy will depend on the depth of the vacancy (which may be considered a "negative" pole or field) and the screen or filter through which the "filler" must come.
5. One determines the degree of vacancy and the filters through intention.
6. What fills is in proportion to what is given.
7. As soon as the vacancy is filled no more will come until more is given.
8. Giving is the creation of a capacity.
9. Capacity or vacancy will be filled by the grossest field
first and then work toward the more rarified.
10. When one feels satisfied, that capacity or vacancy has been
filled.
ll. What one determines to be one's need determines what fills
that need and when it is that one is satisfied.
12. Intention is linked with this process. Thus if one desires
to impress, the act of impression will fill the capacity; if
one wishes to feel good, then feeling good will satisfy the
function of filling the vacancy. As this happens on all
levels, for one to get beyond the mundane "paybacks" for
giving, one must not desire lower level satisfactions.
13. Higher level gain comes from higher level capacity.
14. Higher level capacity comes through higher level intention.
15. Higher level intention is linked with need in an actual sense
rather than personal interpretations of what is needed. Thus
higher level intention and understanding of need must come
through intuition rather than thought.
16. What one desires is what determines one's filter of
receptivity.
17. The more one desires to receive what one really needs, the
more one will understand what and how to give.
18. The more one gives what is really needed, the more one will
get what is really needed.
19. The less one thinks about giving and simply gives, the more
one will get.
20. When one no longer thinks about giving, and no longer gets
any personal satisfaction from it, one can then truly begin
to receive.
21. There are levels of giving beyond this. One will only find
out about them when one has reached the starting point of
giving with no thought of receiving.
The single attribute without which one can not proceed far on the path to spiritual realization is service. Put another way, it is impossible to fully realize one's place in the greater scheme without active service.
This service can come in many fashions. From the prayers of the Hermit to the social activism of the politician. From the nameless service of the unknown to the much publicized and heralded teachings of the sage. The service that is most important; however, is that which is given in the appropriate way, an the appropriate time. That is the truly correct action, which has the potential for the fruit of true benefit to bloom and grow.
Through service one unblocks the dam of selfishness. By putting one's attention on what can be done for another, one opens the door to receiving what is needed for himself or herself. It is not too much to say that service is an indispensable part of spiritual growth.
One only has to look at nature to see the cycle of life. The giving of one part yields the growth of another. It is not until the flower gives of its nectar that its pollen can be carried on. While the process repeats itself in many forms throughout the natural kingdom, it is only when it gets to man that the conscious choice to give reaches its culmination. And here, it is through the appropriate giving of service that it reaches its highest level.
For each person on the spiritual path there is a potential to serve. That is one of the reasons why a neophyte is often given a job to do. By giving, not through greed of receiving something in return, but through right action of service, that person gains in return.
The key here is to focus on what "should" be done in any given situation. If the task is to do the dishes or to dig a hole, to tend the flowers, or to teach a class; then the focus should be upon that, not the result of doing the work - not that others will think more highly or that it satisfies an obligation, not that one feels better for doing so, and not for the creation of a capacity to receive. For all of these limiting actions bring their own fulfillment; and that satisfies any capacity or vacuum in itself. Therefore there is no need or space for a higher, more refined filling to take place.
Thus the first thought in service is what can I do, not what can I get. Then, "what should be done"? Lord, make me an instrument through which all things can come. Show me the way to give, and give me the highest service I may do now - for the best purpose of All. And when one follows that, the means to provide that service will be there as needed. Intention is the key to capacity.
"Q: Could you give us a view of the curriculum of a School, from 'inside the School' so to speak?" "
"A: In our teaching, we must group correctly these elements: the pupils, the teacher and the circumstances of study. Only at the right time and place, with the teacher suitable to these, and with the right body of students, can our studies be said to be capable of coherent development."
"Does this sound difficult or unreasonable? Let us compare these requirements with an analogy of our needs: the ordinary educational institution."
"If we are learning, say, physics, we must have a man skilled in physics [having successfully completed his own training; able also to teach; and with a mandate to teach]; students who want to learn and who have capacity and some background for the study; and adequate laboratories and other facilities for the studies to take place."
"A physics teacher could not make any real progress with a class of idiots, or people who primarily wanted power or fame or gain through physics. These factors would be getting in the way of the teaching. A class of brilliant students, faced with a man who knew no physics, or who only had a smattering, would make little progress. A good teacher, with a student body, could do little unless the instruments and equipment, the building and so on, were available as and when needed."
"Yet this principle, so well established in conventional studies of all kinds, is largely passed over and has fallen into disuse, among esotericists. Why? Because they have a primitive and unenlightened attitude towards teaching. Like an oaf who has just heard of physics or only seen some of its manifestations, the would-be student wants it all *now*. He does not care about the necessary presence of other students. He wants to skip the curriculum and he sees no connection between the building and the subject of physics. So he does not want a laboratory."
"Just observe what happens when people try to carry on learning or teaching without the correct grouping of the three essentials:"
"Would-be students always try to operate their studies with only one, or at the most two, of the three factors. Teachers try to teach those who are unsuitable, because of the difficulties of finding enough people to form a class. Students who have no teacher try to teach themselves. Transpose this into a group of people trying to learn physics, and you will see some of their problems. Others group themselves around the literature and methodology of older schools, trying to make the scrap material of someone else's physics laboratory work. They formalize rituals, become obsessed by principles and slogans, assign disproportionate importance to the elements which are only tools, but which they regard as a more significant heritage."
"Anyone can think of several schools, cults, religions, systems of psychology or philosophy which fall into the above classifications."
"We must categorically affirm that it is impossible to increase human knowledge in the higher field by these methods. The statistical possibility of useful gains within a reasonable time is so remote as to be excluded from one's calculations."
"Why, then, do people insist on raking over the embers and looking for truth when they have little chance of finding it? Simply because they are using their conditioning propensity, not their capacity for higher perception, to try to follow the path. There is intellectual stimulus and emotional attraction in the mere effort to plumb the unknown. When the ordinary human mind encounters evidences of a higher state of being, of even when it conceives the possibility of them, it will invariably conclude that there is some possibility of progress for that mind without the application of the factors of teaching-teacher-students-time-and-place which are essentials."
"Man has few alternatives in his search for truth. He may rely upon his unaided intellect, and gamble that he is capable of perceiving truth or even the way to truth. This is a poor, but an attractive, gamble. Or he can gamble upon the claims of an individual or institution which claims to have such a way. This gamble, too, is a poor one. Aside from a very few, wo/men in general lack a sufficiently developed perception to tell them:"
"There are, in consequence, two main schools of thought in this matter. Some say 'Follow your own promptings'; the other says: 'Trust this or that intuition'. Each is really useless to the ordinary wo/man. Each will help him use up his time."
"The bitter truth is that before man can know his own inadequacy, or the competence of another man or institution, he must first learn something which will enable him to perceive both. Note well that his perception itself is a product of right study; not of instinct or emotional attraction to the individual, nor yet of desiring to 'go it alone'. This is 'Learning How To Learn."
"All this means, of course, that we are postulating here the need for preparatory study before school work takes place. We deny that a man can study and properly benefit from school work until he is equipped for it: any more than a person can study space-navigation unless he has a grasp of mathematics."
"This is not to say that a man (or a woman) cannot have a sensation of truth. But the unorganized and fragmented mind which is most people's heritage tends to distort the quality and quantity of this sensation, leading to almost completely false conclusions about what can or should be done."
"This is not to say, either, that man cannot take part in studies and activities which impinge upon that portion of him which is connected with a higher life and cognition. But the mere application of special techniques [often to everyone, regardless of their current state and requirements] will not transform that man's consciousness. It will only feed into, and disturb, more or less permanently, centers of thought and feeling where it does not belong. Thus it is that something which should be a blessing becomes a curse. Sugar, shall we say, for a normal person is nutritionally useful. To a diabetic, it can be poison."
"Therefore, before the techniques of study and development are made available to the student, he must be enabled to profit by them in the direction in which they are supposed to lead, not in short-term indulgence."
"Thus our curriculum takes two parts: the first is in the providing of materials of a preparatory nature, in order to equip the individual to become a student. The second is the development itself."
"If we, or anybody else, supply such study or preparatory material prematurely, it will only operate on a lower level than it could. The result will be harmless at best. At worst, it will condition, train, the mind of the individual to think and behave in patterns which are nothing less than automatic. In this latter way one can make what seem to be converts, unwittingly play upon emotions, on lesser desires and the conditioning propensity; train people to loyalty to individuals, found and maintain institutions which seem more or less serious or constructive. But no real progress towards knowledge of the human being and the other dimension in which he partly lives will in fact be made... ... ...."
I will liken the Universal Path and the Way as to a garden and gardener. The gardener in the field grows food as the means to supply nutrition to the body. The concern is that the food be available to satisfy the needs and desires of the physical. The Gardener in the Way of the Universal provides for the nutrition of the soul. It is here that he conveys the food of eternal life.
The gardener in concerned about the result of nutrition to the body. This leads to concern over the methods used to grow it, and the seeds and plants, and types of tools, fertilizers, and ground - among many other considerations. But it is not for the tools, the ground, the fertilizer, or the plants that the gardener plies his trade or work. It is for the purpose of bringing forth food - which then can be used to satisfy the functions of the needs of the body.
So too does the Gardener of the Spirit follow and pay attention to the needs of the Garden in order to feed the soul - and to assist it to approach the Garden of Delight from which it comes, and to which and in which it resides. The Gardener of the Spirit is not so concerned as to the method of production for reaching that level, that Garden, than he is in providing and making the nutrition available so the recipient can grow toward itself naturally.
The gardener in earth will adapt his or her methods to the elements, the growing season, the type of ground, the sunshine, rain, fertilizer, space, and time. It would be foolish to plant a seed that needs long days to grow in a climate or land of a short growing season.
So too does the Gardener of the Spirit attune to the needs of the soul and the means available to bring it forward; or assist it in its journey to the Greater Garden from which it comes. And if the soul, like the person, is in need of the soil or earth at one time, and then the rain or sun, then the Gardener adapts what is the situation or circumstances - the field - to those needs. This is done in attending to the true needs, not the desires, of the growing one. It is not so much providing the same nutrition or fertilizer in the same way to all beings; just as the gardener varies the amount or type of nutrients for the plant, the ground, and the needs.
The gardener in the earth may find one or more methods of supplying the means to grow a plant. He may, through tendency or interest or attraction or circumstances be drawn to plant in heavy clay or loam or sand or water; to use a raised bed or hydroponics. He may find that he is drawn to organic planting or that he uses chemical fertilizer, but is all cases he is primarily interested in the food, not the method or tools. Yet he may find that in order to produce the food one method or approach works better or is more suited to the situation than another.
This then reflects the methods and ways, or paths, of the Gardener of the Spirit. He may find that one method works better or is more suited to the locale or people than another. One can also liken the different paths or processes or religions as limitations fitted to those various needs. It is still the nutrition of the soul that one seeks, not the method or approach.
The problem - the limitation - and much of the cause of discord that comes between gardeners or proponents of one type of growing over another, is a result of the "gardener" clinging to one approach or means to the exclusion of the others, and considering it to be the only or better way. It may work in one situation but not in others.
So the Spiritual Gardener look toward the results not the means. Otherwise he becomes confused, isolated, and limited when he considers the method or approach as being more important than the end result. So we have differentiation and conflict as to which way is the best or "real" one. For the True Provider of food they are all tools to be used to reach the nutrition of the soul or the body. That is the prime result sought.
So the gardener who puts the means above the end separates himself from other gardeners and builds himself up over the other; whereas the one who remembers the need for and function of food embraces all other food producers as equal to the task of providing for the needs.
So too does the Spiritual Gardener remember the needs of the soul and its nutrition is the goal; and that another Gardener may try a varied or different approach - that is all; but if he provides that nutrient is accepted as equal to the task and being. The Gardener is the one who gardens, not the one who puts himself in the promotion of the process or means.
The complete gardener knows the food and the means to get it produced, and uses the seed, plant, and methods that work best for the specific situation; and thus is greater than the one who is limited to one means. But the gardener is not always accepted as the food provider, for from the point of view of the one attached to the method he is not of "them" and thus not doing it "right".
The true Gardener is the food grower and bringer and knows the tools and ways and means and may therefore utilize any of the methods as appropriate. He is Of the Garden - and as such is of all the methods or ways and they of him - for they are all the ways of food production. And while this is seen and known, understood and accepted by all those others of the many methods who do not cling to their way and have also become a food giver, that is not always the case for those others with a more limited view.
The Gardener, the True Gardener, may then, for the purposes of reminding others of the paths and their True goal, become a member of their "garden club" and with a larger perspective and knowing and awareness, assist them to reach the true goal of their own method and to reach toward the Universal Garden of Love, Harmony, Beauty, and Being. One Garden, One Way, Many paths. One Being, Many bodies.
One of the Real masters was asked:
"While your beliefs and school are known, your teachings are secret, given only to those whom you desire, and nobody is allowed to be present as an observer at your meetings, unlike the practices of the philosophers, who allow, indeed welcome, hearers of all kinds. What is the explanation of this?"
He said: "Light of my eyes! Teaching is like charity: it is to be given secretly for the reason that the public display of charity is bad for the giver, for the receiver and for the observer.
Teaching is like a nutrition, and its effects are not visible at the time it is being given, so there is no point in there being an observer except of the fruit of the nutrition.
Teaching, again, is not to be considered as separated from the circumstances in which it is given. Therefore, if there are observers, their presence changes the circumstances and also therefore the effect of the teaching. If the effect of the presence of an audience were to increase the beneficial effect of teaching, then I and everyone else would have welcomed and demanded such an audience.
And, fourthly, teaching varies with the Sufi dictum of the necessity for "right time, right place, right people". To ask even for information about knowledge is like throwing a lifeless carcass into fresh water: the intention may be good, but the result will be poisonous."
The inquirer said: "I understand what you say, but I wish to remark that this is not the manner in which ordinary teaching is carried out."
The teacher replied: "God grant that ordinary teaching may indeed one day be carried out in this manner! When that comes to pass we shall have no need to see any division between Sufi and other teaching!"
| The following is adapted from The Message through Inayat Khan. This material was generally taken from talks in the early 1900's. As he was transmitting learning of the "sufi", to the west, some of his expression uses that term. |
One wonders, especially in the western part of the world, what the path of discipleship may really be. Although the path of discipleship was the path of those who followed Christ and all the other teachers, the modern trend of thought has taken away much of the ideal that existed in the past. It is not only that the ideal of discipleship seems to be little known; but even the ideal attitude towards motherhood and fatherhood, as well as towards the aged, seems to be less understood. This change in the ideal of the world has worked unwittingly to such an extent that world conflicts have been the result in our times. The troubles between nations and classes, in social and domestic life, all arise for one and the same reason. If someone were to ask me what is the cause of today’s world unrest, I would answer that it is the lack of idealism.
In ancient times, the path of discipleship was a lesson to be applied in every direction of life. Man is not only his body; he is his soul. When a child is born on earth, that is not the time that the soul is born. The soul is born from the moment that consideration is born. This birth of consideration is, in reality, the birth of the soul. Man shows his soul in his consideration. Some become considerate as children, others perhaps do not awaken to consideration throughout their whole life. Love is called a divine element, but love’s divine expression is nothing but consideration. It would not be very wrong to say that love without consideration is not fully divine. Love that has no consideration loses its fragrance.
Moreover, intelligence is not consideration. It is the balance of love and intelligence, it is the action and reaction of love and intelligence upon each other which produce consideration. Children who are considerate are more precious than jewels to their parents. The man who is considerate, the friend who has consideration, all those with whom we come into contact with who are considerate, we value the most.
Thus, it is the lesson of consideration given by the spiritual teachers which may be called the path of discipleship. This does not mean that the great teachers have wanted the discipleship, the devotion, or the respect of the pupils for themselves. If any teacher expects that, then he cannot be a teacher. How could he then be a spiritual teacher, as he must be above all of this in order to be above them? But respect, devotion and consideration are taught for the disciple’s own advantage, as an attribute that must be cultivated.
Until now, there has been a custom in India, which I myself experienced when young, that the first things the parents taught their children were respect for the teacher, consideration, and a kindly inclination. A modern child going to school has not the same idea. He thinks that the teacher is appointed to perform a certain duty. He hardly knows the teacher, nor does the teacher know him well. When he comes home, he has the same tendency towards his parents as he has at school. Most children grow up thinking that all the attention their parents give them is only part of their duty. At most, they will think, "Perhaps one day, if I am able, I shall repay it." The ancient idea was different. For instance, the Prophet Mohammad taught his disciples that the greatest debt every man had to pay was to his mother; and if he wished his sins to be forgiven, he must so act through life that at the end, his mother, before passing from this earth, would say, "I have forgiven you the debt." There was nothing a man could give or do, neither money nor service, which would enable him to say, "I have paid my debt." No, his mother must say, "I have forgiven you that debt." What does this teach? It teaches the value of that unselfish love which is above all earthly passion.
If we inquire of our self within for what purpose we have come to earth and why we have become human beings, wondering whether it would perhaps have been better to remain angels, the answer will certainly come to the wise, from his own heart, that we are here to experience a fuller life, to become fully human. For it is through being considerate that we become fully human. Every action done with consideration is valuable, every word said with consideration is precious.
The whole teaching of Christ — "Blessed are the meek...the poor in spirit" — teaches one thing: consideration. Although it seems simple, it is a hard lesson to learn. The more we wish to act according to this ideal, the more we realize that we fail. The farther we go on the path of consideration, the more delicate do the eyes of our perception become. We feel and regret the slightest mistake.
It is not every soul who takes the trouble to tread this path. Everyone is not a plant. There are many who are rocks, and these do not want to be considerate, they think it is too much trouble. Of course, the stone has no pain, it is the one who feels who has pain. Still, it is in feeling that there is life. Life’s joy is so great that even with pain, one would rather be a living being than a rock, for there is a joy in living, in feeling alive, which cannot be expressed in words. After how many millions of years has the life buried in stones and rocks risen to the human being! Even so, if a person wishes to stay a rock, he had better stay so, though the natural inclination in every person should be to develop the human qualities fully.
The first lesson that the pupil learns on the path of discipleship is what is called yaqin, which means confidence. This confidence he first gives to the one whom he considers to be his teacher, his spiritual guide. In the giving of confidence, three kinds of people can be distinguished. One gives a part of his confidence and cannot give another part. He is wobbling and thinking, "Yes, I believe that I have confidence; perhaps I have, perhaps I have not." And this sort of confidence puts him in a very difficult position. It would be better not to have it at all. It is like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold. In all things, this person will do the same, in business, in his profession. He trusts and doubts, he trusts and fears. He is not walking in the sky, he is not walking on the earth, he is in between the two. Then there is another kind, the one who gives his confidence to the teacher, but he is not sure about himself, he is not inwardly sure if he has given it. This person has no confidence in himself, he is not sure of himself; therefore, his confidence is of no value. And the third kind of person is the one who gives confidence because he feels confident. This confidence, alone, can rightfully be called yaqin.
Jesus Christ had people of all these categories around him. Thousands of people of the first category came, thronged round the Master, then left him. It did not take one moment for them to be attracted, nor one moment for them to leave the Master. In the second category are those who go on for some time, just as a drunken man goes on and on; but when they are sober again, things become clear to them and they ask themselves, "Where am I going? Not in the right direction." Thousands and thousands in this category followed the masters and prophets. However, those who stayed to the end of the test were those who, before giving their confidence to the teacher, first had confidence in their own heart.
It is they who, if the earth turned to water and the water turned to earth, if the sky came down and the earth rose up, would remain unshaken, firm in the belief that they had gained. It is by discipleship that a person learns the moral that in whatever position he is, as husband or wife, son or daughter, servant or friend, he will follow with confidence, firm and steady, wherever he goes.
After acquiring yaqin, there comes a test, and that is sacrifice. That is the ideal on the path of God. The most precious possession is not too valuable, nothing is too great to sacrifice. Not one of the disciples of the Prophet — the real disciples — thought even their life too great a sacrifice was needed. The story of Ali is very well known. A plot was discovered that one night, some enemies wanted to kill the Prophet, and Ali learned about it. He did not tell the Prophet, but persuaded him to leave home. He, himself, stayed, for he knew that if he went also, that the assassins would follow him and find out where the Prophet was. He slept in the same bed in place of the Prophet, so that the assassins might find him. However, at the same time, he did not intend to lose his life if he could fight them off. The consequence was that the plot failed, and the enemies could not touch either the Prophet nor Ali.
This is only one instance, but there are thousands of instances which show that the friendship formed in God and truth between the teacher and the disciple is for always, and that nothing in the world is able to break it. If the spiritual link cannot hold, then how can a material link keep intact? It will wear out, being only a worldly link. If spiritual thought cannot form a link between two souls, then what else can constitute such a strong tie that it can last both here and in the hereafter?
The third lesson on the path of discipleship is imitation. This means imitating the teacher in his every attitude, in his attitude towards the friend, towards the enemy, towards the foolish, and towards the wise. If the pupil acts as he wishes and the teacher acts as he wishes, then there is no benefit, however great the sacrifice and devotion. No teaching or meditation is as great or valuable as the imitation of the teacher on the path of truth. In the imitation of the teacher, the whole secret of the spiritual life is hidden. No doubt it is not only the imitation of his outward action, but also of his inner tendency.
The fourth lesson that the disciple learns is different again. This lesson is to turn the inward thought of the teacher outward until he grows to see his teacher in everyone and everything, in the wise, in the foolish, and in all forms.
Finally, by the fifth lesson, the disciple learns to give everything that he has so far given to his teacher — devotion, sacrifice, service, respect — to all, because he has learned to see his teacher in all.
One person will perhaps learn nothing all his life, whereas another will learn all five lessons in a short time. There is a story of a person who went to a teacher and said to him, "I would like to be your pupil, your disciple." The teacher said, "Yes, I shall be very glad." This man, conscious of so many faults, was surprised that the teacher was willing to accept him as a disciple. He said, "But I wonder if you know how many faults I have?" The teacher said, "Yes, I already know your faults, yet I accept you as my pupil." "But I have very bad faults," he said, "I am fond of gambling." The teacher said, "That does not matter much." "I am inclined to drink sometimes," he said. The teacher said, "That does not matter much." "Well," he said, "there are many other faults." The teacher said, "I do not mind. But now that I have accepted all your faults, you must accept one condition from your teacher." "Yes, most willingly," he said. "What is it?" The teacher said, "You may indulge in your faults, but not in my presence. Only that much respect you must reserve for your teacher."
The teacher knew that all five attributes of discipleship were natural to him, and he made him an initiate. As soon as he went out and had an inclination to gamble or to drink, he saw the face of his murshid before him. When, after some time, he returned to the teacher, the teacher smilingly asked, "Did you commit any faults?" He answered, "Oh, no, the great difficulty is that whenever I wanted to commit any of my usual faults, my murshid pursued me!"
Do not think that this spirit is only cultivated; this spirit may be found in an innocent child. When I once asked a little child of four years, "Have you been naughty?" The child answered, "I would like to be naughty, but my goodness will not let me." This shows us that the spirit of discipleship is in us. However, we should always remember that he who is a teacher is a disciple himself.
In reality, there is no such thing as a teacher. God, alone, is Teacher, and we are all his disciples. The lesson we all have to learn is that of discipleship. Discipleship is the first and the last lesson.
There are four kinds of disciples, of whom only one can be described as a real disciple. One kind is the disciple of modern times, who comes and says to his teacher, "We will study this book together," or, "Have you read that book? It is most interesting," or, "I have learned from someone else before, and now I would like to learn what I can from you, and then I will pass on to something which is still more interesting." Such a person may be called a student, but not yet a disciple. His spirit is not that of a disciple; it is the spirit of a student who goes from one university, from one college, to another, from one professor he passes into the hands of another. He may be well-suited for such intellectual pursuits, but the spirit of the disciple is different.
Then there is another type who thinks, "What I can get out of him I will get. And when I have collected it, then I shall use it in the way I think best." Well, his way is that of a thief who says, "I will take what I can from the purse of this person, and then I shall spend it for my own purpose." This is a wrong attitude because spiritual inspiration and power cannot be stolen. A thief cannot take them. If he has this attitude, such a disciple may remain with a teacher for a hundred years and still leave empty-handed. There are many in this world today who make intellectual theft their occupation; anything intellectual they find, they take it and use it. But they do not know what harm they do by this attitude. They paralyze their minds and they close their own spirit.
Then there is a third wrong tendency of a disciple — to hold back something which is most essential, namely, confidence. He will say, "Tell me all you can teach me, all I can learn, give me all that you have." However, in his mind he says, "I will not give you my confidence, for I do not yet know if this road is right or wrong for me. When you have taught me, I shall judge; then I shall see what it is; but until then, I do not give you my confidence, though my ears are tuned to your words." This is a third wrong tendency. As long as a disciple will not give his confidence to his spiritual guide, he will not get the full benefit of his teaching.
The fourth kind is the right kind of discipleship. This does not come by just thinking that one would like to go on the spiritual path, or that one would like to be a disciple, a mureed, a chela. There comes a time in every person’s life when circumstances have tried him so much that he begins to feel the wish to find a word of enlightenment, some counsel, some guidance, a direction on the path of truth. When the values of all things and beings are changing in his eyes, that is the time he begins to feel hungry for spiritual guidance. Bread is meant for the hungry, not for those who are quite satisfied.
If a person like this goes in search of a teacher, then he takes the right step. However, there is a difficulty. If he wants to test the teacher first, then there is no end to the testing. He can go from one teacher to another, from the earthly being to the heavenly being, testing everyone, and in the end, what will he find? Imperfection. He is looking for it, and he will find it. Man is an imperfect being, a human being, a limited being. If he wants to find perfection in a limited being, he will always end up being disappointed with whoever he meets, whether it is an angel or a human being. If he were simple enough to accept any teacher that came his way and said, "I will be your mureed," then it would be easier, although this is perhaps not always practicable.
Someone asked a Brahmin, "Why do you worship a god of rock, an idol of stone? Look, here I am, a worshipper of the God who is in heaven. This rock does not listen to you, it has no ears." And the Brahmin said, "If you have no faith, even the God in heaven will not hear you; and if you have faith, this rock will have ears to hear."
The middle way and the best way is to consult one’s own intuition and inspiration. One’s intuition may say, "I will seek guidance from this teacher, whether he is raised high by the whole of humanity, or whether he is looked at with contempt and prejudice by thousands, I do not care." Then one follows the principle of constancy in adhering to that one teacher. But if a person is not constant on the spiritual path, he will naturally have difficulty in the end. For what is constancy? Constancy is the reflection of eternity. And what is truth? Truth is eternity; and so in seeking for truth, one must learn the principle of constancy.
The disciple has to have full confidence in the teacher’s guidance, in the direction that is given to him by the teacher. The Buddhists who regard a spiritual teacher with great reverence say, "We do not care whether he is well-known or not. Even if he is, we do not know if he will accept our reverence. If he receives it, we are not sure he needs it." Worship can only be given to those whose presence we are conscious of; and it is especially intended for the spiritual teacher, for he shows us the only path that frees us from all the pains of this life. That is why amongst all other obligations involving earthly gain and benefit, the obligation to the spiritual teacher is the greatest, for it is concerned with the liberation of the soul on its journey towards Nirvana, which is the only desire of every soul.
The teacher does not always teach in plain words. The spiritual teacher has a thousand ways. It may be that by his prayers, he can guide his disciple. It may be that by his thought, his feeling, or his sympathy, even at a distance, he may guide him. Therefore, when a disciple thinks that he can be taught only by words or teachings, by practices or exercises, it is a great mistake.
In order to get the right disciples and the right people to come to him, a Sufi who lived in Hyderabad made a wonderful arrangement. He got a grumpy woman to sit just near his house; and to anyone who came to see the great teacher, she would say all kinds of things against the teacher about how unkind he was, how cruel, how neglectful, how lazy. There was nothing she would leave unsaid. As a result, out of 100, 95 would turn back, they would not dare to come near him. Perhaps only five would come wanting to form their own opinion about him. The teacher was very pleased that the 95 went away, for what they had come to find was not there, it was somewhere else.
There is another side to this question. The first thing the teacher does is to find out what the pressing need of his disciple is. Certainly, the disciple has come to seek after truth and to be guided to the path of God; but at the same time, it is the psychological task of the teacher to give his thought first to the pressing need of his disciple, whether the disciple speaks of it or not. The teacher’s effort is directed towards removing that first difficulty because he knows it to be an obstacle in the disciple’s way. It is easy for a soul to tread the spiritual path because it is the spiritual path that the soul is looking for. God is the seeking of every soul, and every soul will make its way naturally, providing that there is nothing to obstruct it. So ,the most pressing need is the removal of any obstruction. Thus, a desire can be fulfilled, it can be conquered, or it can be removed. If it is fulfilled, so much the better. If it is not right to fulfill it, then it should be conquered or removed in order to clear the way. The teacher never thinks that he is concerned with his disciple only in his spiritual progress, in his attainment of God. For, if there is something blocking the way of the disciple, it will not be easy for the teacher to help him.
There are three faculties which the teacher considers essential to develop in the disciple: deepening the sympathy, showing the way to harmony and awakening the spirit of beauty. One often sees that without being taught any particular formula or receiving any particular lesson on these three subjects, the soul of a sincere disciple will grow under the guidance of the right teacher, like a plant that is carefully reared and watered every day, every month, and every year. Without knowing it himself, he will begin to show these three qualities: the ever-growing sympathy; the harmonizing quality increasing every day more and more; and the expression, understanding and appreciation of beauty in all of its forms.
One may ask, is there no going backwards? Well, sometimes there is a sensation of going backwards, just as when one is at sea and the ship may move in such a way that one sometimes has the feeling that one is going backwards, although one is really going forwards. One can have the same sensation when riding on an elephant or a camel. When in the lives of some disciples this sensation is felt, it is nothing but a proof of life. Nevertheless, a disciple will often feel that since he became a disciple he finds many more faults in himself than he had ever seen before. This may be so, but it does not mean that his faults have increased; it only means that now his eyes have opened wider so that every day he sees many more faults than before.
There is always a great danger on the spiritual path that the disciple has to overcome — he may develop a feeling of being exalted, of knowing more than other people, of being better than other people. As soon as a person thinks, "I am more," the doors of knowledge are closed. He will no more be able to widen his knowledge because automatically, the doors of his heart are closed the moment he says, "I know." Spiritual knowledge, the knowledge of life, is so intoxicating, so exalting, it gives such a great joy, that one begins to pour out one’s knowledge before anyone who comes along as soon as this knowledge springs up. But if at that time the disciple could realize that he should conserve that kindling of the light, reserve it, keep it within himself and let it deepen, then his words would not be necessary and his presence would enlighten people. As soon as the spring rises and he pours forth what comes out of that spring in words, although on the one side his vanity will be satisfied, on the other side his energy will be exhausted. The little spring that had risen, he has poured out before others and he remains without power. This is why reserve is taught to the true disciple, the conserving of inspiration and power. The one who speaks is not always wise; it is the one who listens who is wise.
During discipleship, the first period may be called the period of observation. In this, the disciple, with a respectful attitude, observes everything good and bad, right and wrong, without expressing any opinion about them. Every day this reveals to the disciple a new idea on the subject. Today he thinks it is wrong, but does not say so; tomorrow he wonders how it can be wrong. The day after tomorrow he thinks, "But can this really be wrong?" On the fourth day, he may think that it is not wrong, and on the fifth day he may think that it is right. He may follow the same process with what is right, if only he does not express himself on the first day. It is the foolish who always readily express their opinions; the wise hold their opinions to themselves. By holding their opinions back, they become wiser every day; by expressing their opinions, they continually become less wise.
The second thing that is most important for the disciple is learning. How is he to learn? Every word the disciple hears coming from the lips of the teacher is a whole sacred book. Instead of reading a sacred book of any religion from beginning to end, he has taken in one word of the teacher, and that is the same. By meditating upon it, by thinking about it, by pondering upon it, he makes that word a plant from which fruit and flowers come. A book is one thing, and a living word is another. Perhaps a whole book could be written by the inspiration of one living word of the teacher. Besides, the disciple practices all the meditations given to him, and by these exercises, he develops within him that inspiration, that power which is meant to be developed in the disciple.
The third step forward for the disciple lies in testing the inspiration, the power that he has received. One might ask, how can one test it? Life can give a thousand examples of every idea that one has thought about. If one has learned from within that a certain idea is wrong or right, then life itself is an example that shows why it is wrong or why it is right.
If a person does not become enlightened, then one can find the explanation by watching the rain. It falls upon all trees, but it is according to the response of those trees that they grow and bear fruit. The sun shines upon all the trees, it makes no distinction between them. However, it is according to the response that the trees give to the sun that they profit by its sunshine. At the same time, a mureed is very often an inspiration to the murshid. It is not the murshid who teaches, it is God who teaches. The murshid is only a medium, and as high as the response of the mureed reaches, so strongly does it attract the message of God.
The mureed can be inspired, but he can also cease to inspire. If there is no response on his side, or if there is antagonism or lack of interest, then the inspiration of the murshid is shut off; just like the clouds which cannot produce a shower when they are above the desert. The desert affects them; but when the same clouds are above the forest, the trees attract them and the rain falls.
The attributes of the disciple are reserve, thoughtfulness, consideration, balance and sincerity. Special care should be taken that during the time of discipleship, one does not become a teacher; for very often, a growing soul is so eager to become a teacher that before he has finished the period of discipleship he becomes impatient. It should be remembered that all the great teachers of humanity, such as Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammad and Zarathushtra, have been great pupils; they have learned from the innocent child, they have learned from everyone, from every person that came near them. They have learned from every situation and every condition of the world. They have understood and they have learned. It is the desire to learn continually that makes one a teacher, and not the desire to become a teacher. As soon as a person thinks, "I am something of a teacher," he has lost ground. For there is only one teacher — God, alone, is the Teacher, and all others are His pupils. We all learn from life what life teaches us. When a soul begins to think that he has learned all he had to learn and that now he is a teacher, he is very much mistaken. The greatest teachers of humanity have learned from humanity more than they have taught.
A mureed’s attitude towards life must be hopeful; towards his motives, courageous; towards his murshid, faithful; towards the cause, sincere; towards that object which he has to accomplish, earnest without the slightest doubt. In every aspect of life, it is our attitude that counts and which, in the end, proves to be creative of all kinds of phenomena. Both success and failure depend upon it, as in the Hindu saying, "If the attitude is right, then all will come right."
There is a natural tendency for the seeker on the spiritual path to wonder if he is really progressing. Very often, he begins to wonder from the day he sets foot on the path. It is like asking, "Shall I be able to digest?" while one is still eating. The spiritual path leads to selflessness. The more we worry about ourselves, the less progress we make because our whole striving should be to forget the self. It is mostly the self which obstructs the path. The path is made for the soul, and it is natural and easy for the soul to find it. Therefore, when a person is wondering about his progress, he is wasting his time. It is like standing still on the path on which one must go forward.
Can anyone distinguish how his face and body change day by day? No, for one cannot point out distinct signs of change from one day to another. If one cannot properly distinguish any change in the external self, then how can one expect to distinguish change in the inner process? It is not something that can be weighed on the scales as one weighs oneself on coming back from a holiday and sees that one has gained or lost several pounds. There is no such gain in spiritual progress.
Then there are some who imagine that they have progressed for a certain time, but they are then going backward. They are discouraged and say, "I thought I had arrived somewhere, but surely it must have been an illusion." But life is like the sea, and the sea is not always calm. There are times when the sea is rough, and then the boat naturally moves up and down. To think while the boat is moving downward that it will sink is a mistake. It is going down in order to go up. This is its movement, and this is natural. A mureed is subject to such experiences on the path of life. Life will take its own course. The one who sails will many times meet with a rough sea, and he has to be prepared for this and not be frightened or discouraged. He still has to go on through life. If life’s journey were soft and smooth, then there would be no need for spiritual development. He has to have control of the rudder to be able to go through both calm seas and storms.
Sometimes the mureed wonders what others are saying and if they are displeased or pleased. If they are displeased, then he thinks he is not progressing. However, this has nothing to do with progress. Those who are displeased would be displeased even with Jesus Christ. At the same time, they might be pleased with the worst person. The displeasure of others does not mean that one is not progressing.
If conditions are adverse, then the mureed thinks that he is not on the right path. Does this mean that the ship is not on its right course if a storm meets it? Neither the murshid nor God are responsible if the conditions are adverse. The best thing is to meet them, to be more brave and courageous and to make one’s way through them. Ghazali, the great Sufi writer of Persia, says that spiritual progress is like shooting at a target in the dark. We do not know where the target is, we do not see it, but we shoot just the same.
The true ideal of the spiritual person is not great power, nor a great amount of knowledge. His true ideal stands beyond power and knowledge; it is that which is limitless, incomprehensible, nameless and formless. There are no milestones to count. One cannot say, "I have gone so many miles, and there are so many still before me." This does not belong to a spiritual journey. The pursuit of the limitless is limitless. The pursuit of the formless, is formless. One cannot make it tangible. So, then, what is it that assures progress, what evidence have we to go on? There is only one evidence, and that is our belief. There is one assurance, and that is our faith. If we believe we can go on, if we are convinced we will, then we must reach our goal.
There are innumerable outer signs of one’s progress, but one need not think in the absence of these signs that one is not progressing. What are these signs of progress? The first is that one feels inspiration, and that things which one could not understand yesterday are easy today. Yet, if there are things which one is not ready to understand, then one should have patience until tomorrow. Agitating against lack of inspiration means closing the doors to inspiration. Agitation is not allowed on this path. Agitation disturbs our rhythm and paralyzes us, and then we prove in the end to be our own worst enemy. However, people will generally not admit this, and they will blame others instead. Or, if they have kind feelings towards others, then they blame the circumstances, although very often it is their own lack of patience rather than other people or the conditions.
The next sign of progress is that one begins to feel power. To some extent, it may manifest physically and also mentally. Later, the power may manifest in one’s affairs in life. As spiritual pursuit is endless, so power has no end.
The third sign of progress is that one begins to feel a joy, a happiness. In spite of that feeling, however, it is possible that clouds of depression and despair may come from without, and one might think at that moment that all the happiness and joy which one had gained spiritually was snatched away. But that is not so. If spiritual joy could be snatched away, it wouldn’t be spiritual joy. It is not like material comforts. When these are taken away from us, we have lost them; but spiritual joy is ours, it is our property, and no death or decay can take it away from us. Changing clouds like those which surround the sun might surround our joy; but when they are scattered, we will find our property still there in our own heart. It is something we can depend upon, something nobody can take away from us.
There is another sign of progress, and that is that one becomes fearless. Whatever the situation is in life, nothing seems to frighten one anymore, even death. Then one becomes fearless in all that might seem frightening and a brave spirit develops, a spirit that gives one patience and strength to struggle against all adverse conditions, however terrible they may seem. It can even develop to such an extent that one would like to fight with death. To such a person, nothing seems so horrible that he would feel helpless before it.
Still another sign of progress is that, at times, one begins to feel peaceful. This may increase so much that a restful feeling comes in the heart. One might be in the solitude; but even if one is in a crowd, one still feels restful. Life in the world is most exciting; it has a tiring effect upon a sensitive person. When one is restless, the conditions in life can make one experience the greatest discomfort, for there is no greater pain than restlessness. If there is any remedy for the lack of peace, it is spiritual progress. Once peace is developed in a soul, that soul feels such a great power and has such a great influence upon those who approach it and upon all upsetting conditions and jarring influences coming from all sides. Just as water makes the dust settle down, so all jarring influences settle down under the feet of the peaceful.
What do we learn from the story told in the Bible of Daniel, who was thrown into the lion’s den? What does this story suggest? Was it Daniel’s hypnotism which calmed the lions? If it was hypnotism, then let the hypnotists of today go to the lions and try the experience! No, it was his inner peace. The influence of that peace acts so powerfully upon all passions that it even calms lions and makes them sleep.
One may make the excuse that one’s surroundings are worrying one, that one’s friends are troublesome, or that one’s enemies are horrible. However, nothing can withstand that peace that is awakened in the heart. All must calm down, all must settle down, like dust after water has been sprinkled on it.
If this power does not come immediately to a mureed, then let him not be disappointed. Can one expect this whole journey to be made in a week? I would not be surprised if many mureeds do expect this; but it is a lifelong journey, and those who have really accomplished it are the ones who have never doubted that they would progress. They have never allowed this doubt to enter their minds to hinder them. They do not even concern themselves with this question. They only know that they must reach the goal, that they will reach it, and that if they do not reach it today, that they will reach it tomorrow. The right attitude is never to let one’s mind feel, after one has taken some steps, that one must go to the right or to the left. If a man has that one strength, of faith, then that is all the power that he needs on the path. He can go forward and nothing will hinder him. In the end, he will accomplish his purpose.
There are two aspects of individual harmony: the harmony between body and soul, and the harmony between individuals.
The soul rejoices in the comforts experienced by the external self, yet man becomes so engrossed in them that the soul's true comfort is neglected. This keeps man dissatisfied through all the momentary comforts he may enjoy, but not understanding this he attributes the cause of his dissatisfaction to some unsatisfied desire in his life.
The outlet of all earthly passions gives a momentary satisfaction, yet creates a tendency for more. In this struggle the satisfaction of the soul is overlooked by man who is constantly busied in the pursuit of its true bliss. The true delight of the soul lies in love, harmony, and beauty, the outcome of which is wisdom, calm, peace. The more constant they are the greater is the satisfaction of the soul.
If man in his daily life would examine every action which has reflected a disagreeable picture of himself upon his soul and caused darkness and dissatisfaction; and if on the other hand he would consciously watch every thought, word, and deed which had produced any inward love, harmony, and beauty; and each feeling which had brought him wisdom, calm, and peace; then the way of harmony between soul and body would be easily understood, and both aspects of life would he satisfied, the inner as well as the outer.
The soul's satisfaction is much more important than that of the body, for it is more lasting. In this way the thought, speech, and action can be adjusted, so that harmony may be established first in the self by attunement of the body and soul.
The next aspect of individual harmony is practiced in one's contact with another. Every being has an individual ego produced from his own illusion. This limits his view which is led in the direction of his own interest, and he judges of good and bad, high or low, right or wrong in relation to himself and others, through his limited view, which is generally partial and imaginary rather than true.
This darkness is caused by the overshadowing of the soul by the external self. Thus a person becomes blind to his own infirmities as well as to the merits of another, and the right action of another becomes wrong in his eyes and the fault of the self seems right. This is the case with mankind in general, until the veil of darkness is lifted from his eyes.
In order to lift the part of the veil of darkness that man might help with, one must begin by attempting to see from the point of view of the other person. Jesus said to "love another as thy self". It is only when one has reached that point of view that he may truly be able to say he can see from the others point of view. But until then, one attempts to have sympathy for another. One puts ones own view in abeyance and holds that the other may also have a validity, even though the others point of view also may be limited. Thus one begins to consider that that may be more than simply one's own point of view.
In addition, as this happens, one begins to turn to the feelings of the heart to guide one in judgement. The ideal is expresses in the statement by Jesus, "Judge not, lest thee also be judged". Whenever one considers or judges another's actions, one can begin to put away that feeling of right or wrong, good, or bad, high or low, and begin to feel love from the heart, that this too might be valid also from another point of view.
In this way a person begins to cease judgement of another and opens the way for greater harmony with himself. This also opens the way for a greater harmony between individuals, for as they can begin to accept each others point of view as having merit, this will decrease the amount of friction and conflict, and promote greater cooperation.
On Service
Service is the performing of duty without either reluctance or delight. The dutiful is neither an exploited slave nor one who seeks reward. People will get out of the performing of duty what they can get out of it. If they put aside immediate enjoyment of duty and also immediate reluctance to duty, they are in a position to benefit from the other content in service. This it is which refines their perceptions.
On Seeking
Seeking truth is the first stage towards finding it. After the seeking comes the realization that Truth is also seeking the Seeker himself. The third stage, which is the one in which the Real Person is learning from the Way, is when learning reaches a special stage: when the Seeker realizes that he is acquiring knowledge in a range beyond 'seeking' and 'finding', or 'being sought'.
On Effort
Effort and work have many different forms. One reason for the institution of a Guide is that he knows when to direct the disciple's effort and work, and when not to direct it. He also knows the kind of effort and work which each individual should do. Only the ignorant mistake any work for useful work, or extra effort at any time they wish for even little effort at a right time.
On Idolatry
'Idolatry' is when attention is fixed upon some intermediary person or thing at a time and by a person when this should not take place. It is mistaking the vehicle for the content. Most institutions are, knowingly or otherwise, encouragers of idolatry. It is for this reason that potential Real Persons require the constant attention of a mentor to direct their attention according to possibilities.
On Discipleship
In the Way of true learning discipleship is an essential requirement. But the distinction must be made between the people who only imagine that they should be disciples - those whose greed has been aroused in disguise - and those who actually can become disciples, and where and when this stage can take place profitably.
On Mastership
The way in which a Master teaches is often incomprehensible to the students. This is generally because they are trying to understand the workings of something when in reality they are in urgent need of its benefits. Without its benefits they will never be able to understand its working.
On Companionship
There is the companionship of humanity and the companionship of transmission. Those who lack family or other forms of companionship will seek them even at times and places where associating together with others is useful for transmission. Few people know about this, partly because the one word (companionship) is generally used to denote two states, each of them quite different.
On Literature
Remarks of local application are often taken as being of general or universal application. When a Teacher says: 'Shun literature' he is speaking about a certain audience and a certain time. It is the failures among his students who misunderstand and preserve literature as a key to understanding, or else do the reverse, saying: 'The Master denied literature, therefore we will all, and always, deny it.'
On Exercises
Greed is the dominant, though well concealed, characteristic of those who imagine that exercises are the entry to knowledge. They are as important, and as independently irrelevant, as the use of a hand without one or two of the fingers.
On Appearances
The ordinary man judges a person not by his inner attainments but by his apparent actions and what he looks like superficially, and by what people say about him. This method is suitable, however, only for some kinds of judgment, not for others. What a person seems to be like will depend upon what one knows of him. As an example, a man carrying a spiked stick is not necessarily a murderer, he may be an elephant driver. The elect often violate the superficial canons of appearance in order not to be affected by the behavior of the mass with its artificial criteria, and also at times in order to demonstrate, to those who can see it, that conduct alone does not demonstrate interior worth.
On Faith and Religion
Those who are regarded as believers or religious people, and who are incapable because of habit from behaving in any other manner, may be called religious but cannot be regarded as having faith. If, on the other hand, this is faith, then some other word should be used to convey the kind of faith which is not produced by the parents or surroundings of a person.
On Love
What is generally called love can be harmful to the lover and the object of the love. If this is the result, the cause cannot be called love by a Real Person, but must be called 'attachment' in which the attached is incapable of any other conduct. Love not only has different intensities, but it also has different levels. If man thinks that love only signifies what he has so far felt, he will veil himself thereby from any experience of real love. If, however, he has actually felt real love, he will not make the mistake of generalizing about it so as to identify it only with physical love or the love of attraction.
On Study in the World
Becoming a Real Person is a study which is not scholastic. Its materials are taken from almost every form of human experience. Its books and pens are in the environment and resemble nothing that the scholastic or enthusiast even dreams about. It is because recitations, effort and books are included in this kind of study, and because True teachers are called 'Teacher', that the fact of a specialized communication has become confused with academic or imitative study. There is, therefore, 'Real Study' and 'ordinary study', and the two are different. The position is as if 'mouse' and 'elephant' had both been given the same name. Up to a point (being quadrupeds, being grey, having tails) this inexactitude is of no moment. After that, it becomes necessary to distinguish between the two. This distinguishing takes place in a Real circle.
On Assemblies of Real Persons
Superficial students imagine that when Real Persons meet they are all of a similar rank, or that any of the Real can attend the meetings of any other, the difference being only in degree. In fact, it is the composition of the circle which is as important as the circle itself. Similarly, rank in the Way may hold good in one assembly and not in another. This is why teachers in one circle become pupils in another. Collections of interested parties, religious enthusiasts and would-be learners grouped together are often mistakenly called 'Learning Circles'. These may or may not be preliminary to such circles, but they are not circles.
On Difference between Schools
Many things are said and written about differences in opinion and writings between Real Persons. Externally there may be differences, dictated by the environment, but essentially there is no difference. To wrangle about the differences of the Real is as stupid as to wrangle as to whether a coat should be spun from the bud of this or that cotton plant. That is the extent of its significance.
Parable, Idiom and Metaphor
If your teacher is speaking to you in your native tongue, you will have to regard the idioms which he uses as idiomatic, and not intended to be analyzed literally. When he gives you a parable, you will have to know it before you can apply it. When a thing is said metaphorically, it is meant metaphorically. Literal things are not to be taken as metaphorical.
On Higher Levels of Understanding
If you use ordinary intellect to try to unravel something which you do not understand in Real Learning, you will go astray, because the intellect is too elusive within your mental grip. Many a test has been failed because it was too subtle. Be aware of subtleties.
On Annoyance and Unconcernedness
Nobody is annoyed unless there is a reason. If you annoy others it may be because they imagine you to be annoying, or it may be that you annoy them because of your speech or conduct. If you are, or anyone else is, unconcerned by a source of annoyance, this may be either laudable or deprecable. You cannot judge by annoyance.
On 'States'
'States' are basically three: counterfeit or imagined, genuine and irrelevant. Like the physician, it is the Guide who knows which is which, knows the ailment or state of health by the symptom. He also knows the desirability of the induction or otherwise of states. The height of folly is to assume that the presence or absence of a 'state' is in itself indicative of something good or bad.
On Reading, Hearing, Being Present
The materials of study may constitute only the action of being present, without intense reactions, at an assembly of the Wise. It may at one time mean reading, at another, audition. Sometimes the reader or instrumentalist may be one of the initiated. At other times he should on no account be such. This science has been verified and only blunderers experiment with it.
On Repentance
Repentance means turning back or giving up completely something that was of powerful attraction. Pleasure gained though repentance is in most cases as bad as the original offence, and no permanent improvement can be expected by those who pride themselves in reformation. The repentance of the ignorant is when people feel strong reactions to giving something up, or seek forgiveness for something. There is a higher form, the repentance of the Wise, which leads to greater knowledge and love.
On Hope and Fear
Being moved between hope and fear (the fear of God and the hope of His forgiveness) is the earliest state of Real Learning. Those who stay in this state are like the ball played from one part of the field to the other. After a time this experience has its benefit and after that it has its disadvantages. Following the Path without the lower qualities of hope and fear is the objective. A higher objective is when there is neither bribe nor stick. Some need hope and fear; they are those who have had it prescribed for them.
There are a vast number of things called "spiritual practices". They are found in all the different paths and schools, and are done for different purposes and effects. A person could spend his or her entire life seeking them, learning about them, trying them out; and end up with nothing but confusion and very little gain. On the other hand, there are many instances where a person was given or followed only one practice, or a few, and reached spiritual realization or enlightenment.
The most important point to remember here, is that it is the "right" practice, at the right time, in the right way that is appropriate for a person. Unfortunately, that is generally not what that person does or is given to do.
First, take the situation in which someone gives a practice for someone else to do. In most cases, the giver of the practice is tied to dogma and personal qualities that limit his or her awareness of what the recipient really needs. That "teacher" does not have the realization or understanding necessary to dispense the practice. However, that does not stop the person from doing so. That leaves the recipient, most of the time, with something that is either ineffective, partially effective, or detrimental.
Next, take the situation in which a person self-prescribes a practice. In most cases it will be something the individual is "drawn to". This generally means that the person has an affinity or like for the particular practice. That also generally results in doing something for the wrong reason(s) with results that are not beneficial.
Here we could take the example of 2 individuals. One of them is very sensitive and is drawn to things of beauty and refinement. The other is very coarse and likes rough, harsh things. For example our first person might like chamber music and art museums, while our second person might prefer wrestling and stock car racing. If each of these people was presented with a choice of 2 things to do, each of which was called a "practice" we would expect that they would choose differently. For example, if the two so-called practices were 1. to go to the ballet, or 2. to play football in the mud, we would usually find the first person drawn to #1, while the second would prefer #2. That would result in the strengthening of the qualities that each now has.
But in much of spiritual teaching, it is just those qualities which must be balanced before the individual can go much further. Thus the role of the teacher is to look at the current state of the student and the goal, and to determine a way to get there. This will generally be done in a step by step manner - with small (or larger) revelations interspersed (with the exception of some sort of huge revelation and transformation).
The teacher, or guide, needs to provide that most important thing for the student; and that is what the person needs to make the next step. Thus, using our example above, the teacher might also suggest those two activities as practices, but applied to the other persons. In this way they could start to gain a degree of balance.
This doing things, acting "silly" or obnoxiously, taking on the qualities of the student as a mirror, making statements, assigning work, giving practices, and many many more approaches, all can be considered as methods to assist to students to become more aware of what they are doing or thinking, how they are approaching life, tasting what the next step is, and then making it. All these approaches are part of what a teacher does to help the seeker. In the course of this process, there is almost always a swinging back of forth of the pendulum from one corrective and its excess to the other side. Eventually, the swing of the pendulum becomes less and less, and finally comes to the center. This is the process, and it is most effectively applied by someone with the knowing to do so, rather that the individual to himself or herself.
If we consider the story of the person who sets out to cross the ocean without having done it before, in an unfamiliar boat, and with limited and obscure direction, we can start to approach the situation that is existent in most self-application of practices and spiritual learning. That problem is also most of the time compounded with the additional difficulty that the limited instruction or information that the sailor has comes from a so called "teacher" has not crossed that ocean either. Because of that, we can see that it is more likely for the sailors not to get to their goal than reach it. And we can also see that the better and easier way would be for our sailor/seeker to follow the guidance of the mariner who has made the trip before and who knows the waters well.
The first thing that is done when you seek a guide is for that person to assess your suitability to the path or approach he or she is offering. To do this one can act in an inner and direct manner by means of perception that is deeper than outward, ask questions, do a combination of both, assign duties or work, allow you to associate to some degree and sort yourself out, provide tests or obstacles for you to overcome, or any combination of these or other methods.
For you, certainly, it could be important and valuable to understand the methods or approaches to a certain degree, but really this is not necessary at all. More valuable is for you to understand what it is that you want, that you are seeking. In this manner, through being aware of that, you may more readily access those things or situations. It is, therefore, one of the first areas in which a guide may be of assistance. That is, to help point you toward what you are seeking or to provide the preliminaries so you may sort this out for yourself. This may mean you are rejected outwardly or subtly from the guidance until you are more ready and it is more appropriate. Or you could be pointed in the direction of others with whom you might associate and learn enough to go further. Or it also could mean not doing either but let you find your own way. In any case, it will be up to the guide to decide how to handle it. Just because you show up at the door does not mean you are ready to become part of the "household". There may be more preparation needed first.
Here is another approach to this process. It also many times should be or is a second major stage in assistance prior to guidance. This is to give you an opportunity to learn more about what is being offered and something about the approaches taken. This may be through a combination of readings, discussions, association, or work. Here you will find yourself sorting out your applicability to the process.
Yet all these stages of association with a real teaching are dependent upon you being in the presence of a true "teacher" or guide. How and what you get first depends upon you: your capacity and your real intention. So first, before you try to associate with a spiritual guide, would it not make sense to find - really assess - what you are seeking and what you want to give to reach that goal? In addition, would it not be reasonable for you to find out more about what so-called spiritual realization is all about?
There are many groups and organizations and so-called teachers and assistors, by all sorts of names. Most would welcome you with open arms in "their" processes, what "they" do and how they do it. The assumption is that you have gotten to the door, so you know about what they are doing and how they do it. And further, that you are ready for the "truth" as they see it.
A story of some relevance comes to mind. A seeker came to a person who really knew and asked that person what he could look for in finding a real teacher. The one who knew responded by saying something like: "It is difficult and subtle to discern and for me to tell you how to find a real guide. But I can tell you how to find one who is not". "How", replied the "seeker". The man then said, "If you find someone who will accept you now, in your current condition, then you will know that person is not a real teacher or guide."
Here is another perspective to consider. "Spiritual" has nothing to do with organizations, people telling you how to do something, or even religions. It has to do with learning to live again as you really are. It is about unfolding the potential of yourself as a person, not learning anything new. Further, it is more about remembering and regaining the capacity to be what you already truly are but simply have forgotten. There in nothing "new" to learn but how to reconnect with, perceive, and act knowingly with what already exists, what you already have "come from" and where you already are "going". In addition, it is mostly recognizing and remembering what you already have gone through, and Truth, being That Which Is, of which you also are. Then it is to application, so you become assisted in how to go further in life and do what you intended to do in fulfilment of yourself - not a trip for someone else. It would be very wise indeed for you to explore more of what is real and what is called the spiritual path and realization prior to becoming associated with some group, organization, or teaching simply because it is there, or feels good, or satisfies superficial desires.
The teacher is like a host in his own house. His guests are those who are trying to study the Way. These are people who have never been in a house before, and they only have vague ideas as to what a house may be like. It exists, nevertheless.
When the guests enter the house and see the place set aside for sitting in, they ask: "What is this?" They are told: "This is a place where we sit." So they sit down on chairs, only dimly conscious of the function of the chair.
The host entertains them, but they continue to ask questions, some irrelevant. Like a good host, he does not blame them for this. They want to know, for instance, where and when they are going to eat. They do not know that nobody is alone, and that at that very moment there are other people who are cooking the food, and that there is another room in which they will sit down and have a meal. Because they cannot see the meal or its preparation, they are confused, perhaps doubtful, sometimes ill at ease.
The good host, knowing the problems of the guests, has to put them at their ease, so that they will be able to enjoy the food when it comes. At the outset they are in no state to approach the food.
Some of the guests are quicker to understand and relate one thing about the house to another. These are the ones who can communicate to their slower friends. The host, meanwhile, gives each guest an answer in accordance with his capacity to perceive the unity and function of the house.
It is not enough for a house to exist - for it to be made ready to receive guests - for the host to be present. Someone must actively exercise the function of host, in order that the strangers who are the guests, and for whom the host has responsibility, may becomes accustomed to the house. At the beginning, many of them are not aware that they are guests, or rather exactly what guesthood means: what they can bring to it, what it can give them.
The experienced guest, who has learned about houses and hospitality, is at length at ease in his guesthood, and he is then in a position to understand more about houses and about many facets of living in them. While he is still trying to understand what a house is, or trying to remember rules of etiquette, his attention is too much taken up by these factors to be able to observe, say, the beauty, value or function of the furniture.
One day a man went to a Real Teacher and described how a certain false teacher was prescribing exercises for his followers.
"The man is obviously a fraud. He asks his disciples to "think of nothing". It is easy enough to say that, because it impresses some people. But it is impossible to think of nothing."
The master asked him: "Why have you come to see me?"
"To point out the absurdity of this man, and also to discuss mysticism."
"Not just to gain support for your decision that this man is an impostor?"
"No, I know that already."
"Not to show those of us who are sitting here that you know more than the ordinary, gullible man?"
"No. In fact, I want you to give me guidance."
"Very well. The best guidance I can give you is to advise you to - think of nothing."
This man immediately withdrew from the company, convinced that the master was a fraud.
But a stranger, who had missed the beginning of these events, and had entered the assembly at the exact moment when the sage was saying "The best guidance I can give you is to advise you to think of nothing", was profoundly impressed.
"To think of nothing: what a sublime conception!" he said to himself.
And he went away after that day's session, having heard nothing to contradict the idea of thinking of nothing.
The following day one of the students asked the master which of the men had been correct.
"Neither," he said. "They still have to learn that their greed is a veil, a barrier. Their answer is not in one word, one visit, one easy solution. Only by continuous contact with a teaching does the pupil absorb, little by little, that which gradually accumulates into an understanding of truth. Thus does the seeker become a finder."
"The Master Rumi said: "Two men come to you, one having dreamt of heaven, the other of hell. They ask which is reality. What is the answer?" The answer is to attend the discourses of a master until you are in harmony."
A friend, from the 1960's, Joe Miller, when he was alive, used to say "It can't be taught; it's got to be caught". This is the case, and points to the reality of guidance, assistance, "learning", unlearning, knowing, and the path.
No matter how many words are here, or that you hear or read, none are more valuable than that which already exists and speaks constantly to you - through your heart, your knowing, intuition, nature, and the guidance of The Only, The Real.
The value of all the assistance and guidance is as a stepping stone, to help point you in the direction of Truth - That Which Is - The Real, and to assist you to recognize and realize your own true being; and from this to work and express as you are called, inspired, guided, and know to be true and real.
Assistance is just that; and a working of apprenticeship in mystic living is the guidance that is given and attunement toward which and through which one "catches it". One does not "learn" so much as "unlearn". One becomes aware of and then moves to realization of - which is actually becoming of - all that already, now exists, including the greatness of oneself.
To do that one must give away all lesser - including limited ideas, attachments, and identificaiton of that which is lesser. This is part of the work of assistance and guidance - that is, to help one reach that, and become again who one truly is; and to assist in the promotion of The Work, as it is needed for this time, with these people, in this life and world and conditions.
RUDBARI: Heart to heart is an essential means of passing on the secrets of the Path.
MAGHRIBI: Learning is in activity. Learning though words alone is minor activity.
KHURQANI: At a certain time, more can be conveyed by distracting useless attention than by attracting it.
GURGANI: The teacher and the taught together produce the teaching.
PARMADHI: Experience of extremes is the only way towards the proper working of the mean in study.
HAMADANI: Service of humanity is not only helpful to correct living. By its means the inner knowledge can be preserved, concentrated and transmitted.
YASAVI: Local activity is the keynote of the Dervish Path.
BARQI: Aesthetics is only the lowest form of perception of the Real.
ANDAKI: Effort is not effort without zaman, makan, ikhwan (right time, right place, right people).
GHAJDAWANI: We work in all places and at all times. People believe that a man is important if he is famous. The converse may equally well be true.
AHMAD SADIQ: The mark of the Man who has Attained is when he does not mistake figurative for specific, or literal for symbolic.
FAGHNAVI: Our science is not of the world, it is of the worlds.
REWGARI: Stupidity is to look for something in a place where untutored imagination expects to find it. It is, in fact, everywhere that you can extract it.
RAMITANI: Information becomes fragmented, knowledge does not. What causes fragmentation in information is scholasticism.
SAMASI: Man thinks many things. He thinks he is One. He is usually several. Until he becomes One, he cannot have a fair idea of what he is at all.
SOKHARI: We send a thought to China, and it becomes Chinese, they say, because they cannot see the man who sent it. We send a man to India, and they say that he is only a Turkestani.
NAQSHBAND: When people say "weep", they do not mean "weep always". When they say "do not cry", they do not mean you to he a permanent buffoon.
ATTAR: A true document may contain seven layers of truth. A writing or speech which appears to have no significance may have as many layers of truth.
KHAMOSH: It is not a matter of whether you can learn by silence, by speech, by effort, by submission. It is a matter of how this is done, not "that it is done".
KASHGARI: If you still ask: "Why did such-and-such a person teach in this or that manner, and how does it apply to me?" - you are incapable of understanding the answer deeply enough.
CHARKHI: No matter where the truth is in your case, your teacher can help you find it. If he applies only one series of method to everyone, he is not a teacher, let alone yours.
SAMARQANDI (KEWAJA AHRAR): For every trick or imagination there is a reality of which it is a counterfeit.
AL-LAHI: We do not live in the East or West; we do not study in the North, nor do we teach in the South. We are not bound in this way, but we may be compelled to talk in this way.
AL-BOKHARI: The Way may be though a drop of water. It may, equally, be through a complex prescription (ordering).
ZAHID: When you see a Sufi studying or teaching something which seems to belong to a field other than spirituality you should know that there is the spirituality of the age.
DERVISH: When it is time for stillness, stillness; in the time of companionship, companionship; at the place of effort, effort. In the time and place of anything, anything.
SAMARQANDI AMINI(K)I: Pass from time and place to timelessness and placelessness, to the other worlds. There is our origin.
SIMAQI: If you take what is relative to be what is absolute, you may be lost. Take nothing, rather than risk this.
SIRHINDI: Do not talk only of the Four Ways, or of the Seventy-two Paths, or of the "Paths as numerous as the souls of Men". Talk instead of the Path and the attaining. All is subordinated to that.
MASUM: Essence (Dhat) manifests only in understanding.
ARIF: But it may develop independently of this. These men called daravish (dervishes) are not what you think them to be. Think, therefore, of the Real. It is something like what you think it to be.
BADAUNI: You cannot destroy us if you are against us. But you can make things difficult for us even if you think you are helping.
JAN-I-JANAN: Man can partake of the Perpetual. He does not do this by thinking he can think about it.
DEHLAVI: We spend a space in a place. Do not put up a sign to mark the place. Take rather of the material which adheres to the place, while it is still there.
QANDAHARI: You hear my words. Hear, too, that there are words other than mine. These are not meant for hearing with the physical ear. Because you see only me, you think there is no Sufism apart from me. You are here to learn, not to collect historical information.
JAN-FISHAN: You may follow one stream. Realize that it leads to the Ocean. Do not mistake the stream for the Ocean.
Consider that we are in the midst of a vast ocean, a sea of many levels and frequencies. Some are seen and some are not. Like an ocean which may have salt layers in different concentrations, impurities dissipated in some others, water flowing in internal rivers, fresh water interspersed, and an oil slick on top; this ocean we are in has many different progressively refined intertwined and emmeshed layers.
Consider also that this ocean is alive in function and aware in consciousness. Add to that, that it is "pressing upon" everything within it, trying to move through all forms. This is much like an ocean which presses upon the dikes or rocks that are barriers to its movement - only this ocean is not different than those rock, the sand, or even the waves.
The natural course of the water is to penetrate anything with an opening, and to flow into any recess. So too with the teachings. It also flows into and through the openings and presses upon that which it contacts. As weaknesses develop or the resistance thins, its presence can be more strongly felt. In other words, the teaching is always pressing to express itself through whatever channel is available. It flows according to the size of the "pipe" and the coarseness of the filter or screen over the opening. The finer the mesh the more it allows through the more refined, with less coarse parts not able to filter through. Such is the overall progress and movement of the teaching. It is into the consciousness of the receptacle that it flows; and through the filter of the mind, breath, and heart it is refined.
The teaching thus continues in all ages and in all ways available to it, taking on the characteristics of the vessels through which it flows. From time to time there are vessels which open more than others and are able to focus and attune to the higher levels of the "sea". These become the seers. At other times, some of those people go further and actually bring a part of the teaching through them. They become the guides, or teachers. They are able to maintain an opening or channel through which the teaching can flow. As they become more used to working in that capacity they are able to widen the pipe or transmission line and allow more to flow through it. Their capacity increases. As they refine and eliminate the filters of smaller personality, together with its desires, the teaching flows clearer, with less to taint of color it. Eventually it flows unimpeded, through the person who then becomes part of it. As this process happens there is also a corresponding change of point of view. So instead of looking, seeing, or experiencing from the perspective of the observed person it moves toward that of the teaching and its source. In other words, "I" becomes more inclusive, connected, and a single active unit - through which it uses the focus, enlarged body, personality, and mind as a tool for expression.
This person then becomes the personification of the teaching. And through him or her,the expression can be tailored to the needs of those with whom it comes in contact. That person also establishes a connection to the teaching which can flow from him or her to the next vessel, or person. The recipient is usually call a student. The teacher, more properly in function "the guide", being the one through which the Spirit of Guidance flows. That one is also able to make another more direct connection between the student and the teaching. This expandable pipe or tube is established through the process of acceptance and attunement. The pattern of this is begun through initiation. It is filtered and tempered by the degree of universality or provincialism in which it is structured. Eventually, through time, practice, and attunement of heart and breath, the student becomes aware of both the source of the flow through the teacher, and the other teachers in the "pipeline" through which it comes; and also the direct link or pipe to the guidance through his or her own expanding "pipe" of and within the One Heart. Both of these act in concert.
The teaching is brought through the person of the so-called teacher, and is also tailored to the audience, be that the group or individuals. The primary point is that whatever is given is appropriate at the time. It is enough, and most satisfactory to provide the student(s) with that which they can use to take the next step. More than that is not needed other than to lay the foundation or framework for future steps. This is determined by the needs and potentials of the people and situation. The key here is to do what is appropriate, at the right time, with the correct people or person, in the right way.
That teaching then can take any of many forms. The only one process that eventually must be included is the transference through heart and breath. All others either lead up to that, reinforce it, or are for other purposes. The teaching can take the form of lectures, meetings, practices, lessons, writings, service, or nothing at all. It can be silent or aloud. The method is not so important as is the conveyance or transmission; which can then unfold within the student and be applied by that person through his or her own life. The means to open the way for that transmission then is the outer more recognizable work or "teaching", but the more real one is the underlying and overshadowing communication through Heart and Breath of the Universal Spirit of Guidance.
The purpose of life is found through living. It is neither found nor fulfilled through the creation, perpetuation, or membership in an order or organization. Nor is it found through following a person's teaching or by following rituals that one can claim to be a Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Christian, or other religious person. These religions and teachings are however fulfilled when one completes the reattachment, reassimilation, and re-memberance of being what is one's own birthright - a member of All, an expression of All, and as one with All. It is fulfilled in daily life through and by Love and Awareness. For there is already an existing Order, Organization, and Teaching - and no more is needed to either supplement or support it. That is you in your greatness, and it is yours to be realized and lived. The inner teaching of each path point toward that; and the ones who Know in each organization are aware of this.
As far as we know, what some people call "God" did not reach down into the world and decree that someone should "make an order for everyone to follow its teaching as the only way to know life". The Prophets and Great Teachers did not establish orders for people to only become Jews or Christians or Buddhists or Moslems. There is however a spiritual impulse and guiding spirit that is continuing taking place. There are times in which an individual is guided by and through this to form a teaching or organization. Sometimes the person so guided is aware of the limitations inherent in it or aware a greater purpose for bringing something like this into the world. Sometimes the whole framework is apparent. But sometimes the person is not aware and follows faith only. And sometimes there is a blending of the two. The only real problems that takes place is when an order or organization has fulfilled its purpose and is then continued, or it is needed to change and grow into something else. At that point there may be clinging to the original form(s) or purpose(s), when they are no longer needed and are superceded.
There have also been times or situations in which a someones guide or Teacher instructs that person to bring a teaching into another area. According to Inayat Khan this is what happened to him. While he does not specifically state his reaction to this guidance, he does speak to some of his own interests and guidance and how these meshed with the instruction. He was then left with the difficulty of how to do that. He worked to bring Sufi teachings to the West. Today there are several branches of that work. It now is left to those who follow and guide through them to ensure they are vibrant, living, and appropriate for the current people and time.
The way of life is to experience and know the fullness of oneself; and it is in doing so consciously that the fulfillment takes place. Yet the Real, The One has given guideposts and signs for It to return to this consciousness should creations of Itself lose its way or sense of being. It is found in the innermost rememberance and continuous Presence Which Never Forgets, is always unwavering, and is part of and in all at all times. It is there, and rememberance takes place. It is natural through evolution that this continues, and by this process all is known.
There is no instruction in the 10 Commandments to form religious orders. Buddha did not say the Pure Land is made up solely of Buddhists and to be a member of a Sangha. Jesus did not say that all people should be Christians and attend churches. Mohammed did not say that everyone should always do all the ritual and activities of Islamic law. The Law and the Prophets are fulfilled through living in awareness of our own true nature and being, and orders are nothing more than tools to do so.
They are part of - some - of the vehicles used to assist people to rememberance, reconnection, and expression. They are not made to last forever, nor are they necessarily the only ways or means. They need to be viewed as temporary constructions to achieve intermediate goals or ends.
The Great Teaching is that which percolates and makes itself known through all of life. It raises and leads all things to the next higher stage. It is present, existing, and ever dynamic, and extends through all. As progression takes place through the various stages of mineral, vegetable, animal, and finds its culmination in human; so too does the expression of that from which the Teaching stems and its parts become known. Known, Knowing, and Knower - Together.
It would be a very strange world indeed if in order to function properly, all people would have to live in spiritual or religious communities. It would be odd for everyone to have to attend the same kind of services every day or week or month; or wear the same clothes, or think the same thoughts. But it is not too much to say that all can progress and express themselves as being a part of the True One. For it is the nature of being to do so.
The forms will vary. The teachings will vary. They will go away. What is needed at one time is no longer of value or need at another. Like a school for living, all any order or teaching does is to bring forward a step for living. It does not need to be continued after its usefulness is done.
The teaching, orders, forms, organizations, structures, by-laws, tenets, decrees, inviolable laws, patterns, buildings, methods, approaches, practices, sayings, and hierarchy are limited in time and usefulness. They are only good to be used to make the next step, and are both temporarily applicable and changing. Only under the right conditions are they useful.
They are for the right people, the right time, and the right place. They are changeable - only valid until they need to be replaced. It is the clinging to these outer forms, methods, and means that causes many problems and keeps people from advancing as quickly or cleanly as they might - toward the One realizing itself and living and expressing Itself that way. Fortunately, behind and through it all, no matter how much people get in the way or muddle it up, or cling to the unusable and dead; the living Word and Being always bubbles to its surface.
That is the Real Teaching. That is through the True Ordering. It is from That basis that the transitory orders and teaching springs.
The above writing is the introduction to a larger writing. That is found in the archive. Here is the link to it.