Taking Responsibility

Titre

En Taking Responsibility

Date

En 1990-Feb-11

Decade

En 1990s

Sequence

En 7

City, State

En New Lebanon, NY

Lieu

En Abode

Description

En Second day of a weekend retreat. Following the morning session on building the temple, this session explores our roles in the temple–priest, bishop, leader, knight, saint–and the wazaif that portray them (Azim, Alim, Aziz), references alchemical processes as guides for personal transformation, and explores the responsibilities of living these roles.

Topic(s)

En Awakening

Meditation Practice

Personality

Retreat Process

Subtopic(s)

En Temple|Roles|Responsibilities

Type of event

En Retreat

Type of publication

En Recording

Media

En Audio

Transcript

Importance matérielle

En 1:30:36

Identifiant

En R90007

File Format

En mp3

PDF

Langue

En English

Digitizing Team

En Abad

TajAli Keith

Author(s)

En Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Full Text

En As we are on a retreat--a totally different attunement to the attunement of everyday life--and it could be typified by being turned within and being in a state of a very high attunement. And this attunement gets higher every day. What helps to bring about this attunement--because we couldn't attain it by our own will--is the sense of sacredness. And so, particularly during this retreat, we have been very conscious of the need to protect this sacredness from the vulgarity and profanity of the world, and even from those emotions in our own person that are in defiance of the sacred status of our being. And, we are increasingly aware of the fact that this sense of sacredness is something which we are most aware of at those times when we are being slighted or humiliated or abused.

What sometimes is considered to be just resentment goes much, much deeper than the psychological level. It's deep down in one's spirit that one feels that there's been a violation of one's divine status. And consequently, one needs to protect oneself from this violation and one of the ways of doing it is one builds a temple, but, that is, it's not of one's own body and not of one's aura and of one's higher bodies and so on.

But the temple itself can never be totally watertight because we don't want to isolate ourselves from all the beauty of the world. And therefore, somehow the temple needs to have windows giving access to the bounty, the many splendored bounty of the universe.

And of course, as soon as you have a membrane that is permeable, then there has to be some kind of screening or selectivity, so at least it is easier to protect the inside of the temple if the apertures are controlled. We have been working with starting, of course, with the physical aura, the aura of light--well, first of all, the magnetic field and then the aura--and then it's been followed up by discovering the subtle bodies that form the higher temple. So it's almost as though there were several temples inside one another, like Chinese boxes. But that's not a very apt description, because when you get into the very high bodies, then of course the sense of space has been totally altered. In fact, it is inverted, as we saw this morning. So, the temple is not made of partitions but it's more like a vortex with areas. As one draws closer to the center, then one comes across the finer aspect of one's being and at the periphery the grosser.

And, as you remember, we have this faculty of, first of all, selecting those impressions that we like to access and secondly, we also have the faculty of transmuting the impressions, so that it is only the very gist, which is called the quintessentia by the alchemist, which is then admitted right into the deepest depth of the temple, which is the altar. And that is also the place where not only the gist of the many splendored bounty of the world, or that our civilizations has afforded, is incorporated--after it's been processed and become very refined and sublimated--but it is also the place where we experience the descent of pure spirit. We have been working with the breath, working with the two serpents that represent the jelal and jamal, or positive and negative earth currents that are polarized and get coordinated around the central axis of the caduceus. And the central axis represents the descent of the Holy Spirit which coordinates the two antagonistic poles of telluric energy, earth energy.

This morning we were reaching beyond the temple because, somehow, our thought of needing to be protected tended to enclose us too much. And so, it was necessary to fly above the temple until we realized that the top of the temple, the dome, is so subtle, so fine, that it really opens up into a whole celestial space. So that one doesn't have to be outside the temple. Now, we want to discover our role in the temple, because we are both the temple and also we are the priest. And we're many other things. There are many functions in the temple. And so, if we are able to identify with functions that we fulfill within the temple, then we will discover attributes of our being which manifest as idiosyncrasies in our personality, that we did not know we had.

As I said right in the beginning, we are working with transformation. We're trying to encourage the transformation of our being, we've been following the model of the alchemical process. And I think it's become clear to us that we cannot change ourselves by trying to develop a quality or another quality or even trying to overcome defects. The only way in which we can work is to ... if you remember what we did in the first day, that was yesterday, seems ages ago, the first thing we did was, we called it the dry method, which was to--it's called calcinatio in alchemy--it consists in fusing the metal that is our personality so that the aspects that we don't like of ourselves are drained off, in a very drastic way. So it is true that we can eliminate aspects of ourselves that we don't like, and we have to rely upon our sensitivity about those aspects of ourselves that we like and we don't like, instead of listening to somebody who tells you to do this or that. So, it is true that by ... well, not just the act of will, but as one exhales one is aware of the descent of Mercury, that is, the Holy Spirit, in the temple, and somehow the power of --it's like the power of Saint George with the dragon--is able to somehow chase away those aspects of ourselves that we don't like. The most drastic form of this is asceticism, of course. But if I may say so, it is sometimes rather like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. One is not ... one is segregating oneself from the world.

And therefore, there is the wet method rather than the dry method, which consists in distillation, that is, in becoming like a vapor and be able to sublimate. Well, first of all, to identify with those aspects of ourselves that correspond to the subtle bodies, and that are not therefore, heavy, like the physical aspects of ourselves. And the other one is, of course, transmuting, those things that we dislike in ourselves--instead of rejecting them--transmuting them so that we draw the gist of them into our being. I'll give an example. For example, laziness would be something that we dislike, and peacefulness is the very essence, it's the same thing. Laziness is like the shadow of peacefulness. And so on. You could illustrate this by lots of examples: being on an ego trip, for example. And that's one of the reasons why we have difficulty in being masterful, because we don't like that person who's become like a dictator, who therefore is on an ego trip. And so, that is then the shadow of mastery. Now as I said, having built this marvelous structure--I mean, it's already there--but having elaborated this structure, so that all of the aspects of one's being contribute towards the building of the temple. And it is not just the temple of the physical body. It's the temple of the aura, which is a physical reality, but it's also the temple of celestial light. And when you're on retreat, then you enjoy being protected, even just the fact of being in silence. You enjoy that ability to work with yourselves without being continually disturbed by the impressions from outside. That is not the format of everyday life, it's something that we enjoy during those few days that we are able to consecrate towards a retreat.
So now we've come to a stage when we enjoy that protection and that attunement. And now we need to discover our role in the temple. Or, rather, our roles, because we perform several roles in that temple. And you will probably recognize that each one of those roles corresponds to one or two of the wazaif that we've been working with. So, first of all, we have a need, I think we all feel that need to find the priest in us. I mean, if you're here it's because you are looking for the fulfillment of the purpose of your life. And because you don't find that fulfillment in your job, nor in your family, but somehow unconsciously, you feel a call to be a priest. But one does not always have the opportunity of fulfilling that role, at least in its external form, in its formal manner. But there are qualities in one's being that will give one--by developing these--they will give one the opportunity of fulfilling that role of a priest, but in life, not in an institution or organization like a church or something like that. And so, that one is clearly ... of course, the priest is the one who is celebrating the mass and therefore is participating in the act of glorification. And so what is happening in each of those temples that we are, is a replica of what is happening on an enormous scale in the cosmic celebration in the heavens. So we're trying to enact on earth what ... somehow we have a hunch of that great celebration in the heavens, and we're trying in our limited way to try and exercise this function and of course, this function is exercised every time that we are moved by an act of glorification. And it starts with just being very moved by beauty. Like the poet or the musician. That is the way in which the divine glory and splendor comes through the physical support system that's, somehow, what the Sufis call "that what transpires behind that which appears."

So obviously the words, the wazaif that portray the priest or the priestess, of course, are Ya Azim, Ya Alim. And even Ya Aziz. So there are three of them. Ya Azim is like the Magnificat. It's the sense of the grandeur, of the Divine splendor, the vastness. I think even just reaching out into the stars, as we did this morning, will give you that sense of the vastness of the divine glory. You feel it sometimes in the mountains, the sense of vastness that you gain. So, that translates in the term Magnificat: Azim. The word Alim represents the transcendental rather than the cosmic dimension, it is God Most High. So that one feels that ... one needs to ... one isn't simply adoring the beauty that comes through, that transpires through that which appears, but what is behind that beauty. We call it splendor. And behind that, and behind that, and so on, as we said, the physical world is just like the reflection of a reality that one cannot grasp with one's consciousness. That is why the only way to do this is to let oneself be carried upwards. Lessons have been inspired by the ... it's the realisation of God not as the God who manifests in the beauty of the world, but the unknown aspect of God, the transcendental aspect of God. Beyond The Beyond; as Hindus call it, Parat Param. That's Ya Alim, so that's a Gloriam instead of a Magnificat. And then we have Aziz, which is ... in Christianity, you find it in the Hail Mary, it's the ... having looked for God into the vastness and on high, one discovers God right in the depths of one's being: Ya Aziz. Closer than your jugular vein, says Mohammed. So, it is in these three aspects that we fulfill our need to play our role as the priest or priestess.

Now, of course, in a cathedral you have not just priests but you also have the bishops and cardinals and so on, VIPs, and that represents a status that certain people ... I'm not talking about the institution of course, I'm talking about you, an aspect of your being that doesn't have to correspond to any kind of function in an institution. And that is taking responsibility. One really has to be ready for it and one's being tested, and one can never sit on a place very long that one doesn't deserve. One is soon pushed up on a throne, or there's a sense of really caring, taking responsibility. A lot of people don't want to take responsibility, are very glad to have a guru who tells them what to do. Those are not the people who come here, because it's not something that we encourage here. We encourage people to take responsibility. But you must realize what that does mean in practice. Even in politics, supposing that you are president--would you like to be President of the United States and have to take those big decisions? And decisions that have to do with the spiritual government of the world are enormous responsibilities, there are choices that have to be made. So, that is Ya Qahr, that is, affirming the divine sovereignty, and perhaps you know that that word is used in order to help us to recollect our eternal divine inheritance. Because it is only when one identifies with that dimension of one's being that one is able to assume authority. If one assumes authority while identifying with the personal aspect of one's being, one becomes a dictator. Ultimately, of course, in the view of Plato and Plato's Republic, he felt that the political functions in the government of the world should be assumed by people who have high rank in the spiritual hierarchy. But of course, that's very difficult, very rare that that ever happens.

And it is something that we can very easily demonstrate to ourselves, that we can prove to ourselves, those moments when we are aware of the Divine inheritance of our being. It gives us an immediate authority, a nobility. And as soon as we fall back into our personal individual trips, we lose that authority. It's a matter of experience. And therefore we could consider wazifa as a kind of reminder. Repeating it, one is reminding oneself--that's why the word dhikr means recollection--reminds oneself that there is this calling but, as I say, this calling is ... well, it's very challenging. It's easier to be a priest than to be a bishop, but we're all called to the very highest that we can give of ourselves. The best Popes are always those who were so surprised that they were elected and said I don't feel worthy of it at all.

So that's Qahr. Now, Qahr ... if one simply identifies with one's divine inheritance--that is, one discovers the features of the Divine being that is the Sifat, the divine qualities that are laying latent within one's being because they constitute one's inheritance--it's very difficult to function in the world. And therefore, one has to build a bridge between Ya Qahr and Ya Qadr. That sovereignty manifests as authority. And that's where of course there's such a danger of being on an ego trip. Now, unfortunately, most of the priests of our time turn out in the end to have to become bureaucrats. That's a complaint that a Catholic priest made to me. And I remember being told: What do you want to do? Do you want to give illumination to people or do you want to be the administrator of a world organization? And I realize that I'm pulled all the time into administrative things. Because if one assumes responsibility, one has to take the consequences of it.

So, the only way in which the priest can be able to maintain his/her attunement is to take a sabbatical from the computer and go on retreat, that is, become a hermit. A lot of priests experience that need of getting away from their responsibility and renewing their dedication, in the solitude. So that's again one of the rules that is, in some way, attached to the temple. In Mount Athos, in Greece, when I visited a long time ago, there were the priests, of course, who were chanting and celebrating in the churches, Orthodox priests. And then there were some hermits who were living in the caves, or built themselves a little hut with wood and so on. And those were the real ones, they were very powerful beings. So there's a little departure from the church. Having found that protection now only in the church, now they move out of the church, but in nature, not in the world. In nature. And that's where they find that the whole of nature is the temple--very deeply connected with nature spirits and the forces of nature, like Ziraat in the Sufi Order: Ziraat--there are many activities.

So, it is that aspect of ourselves that we are experiencing during this retreat. And being the hermit. It's a totally different attitude. It means, for one thing, turning within, and that's the reason why the appropriate wazifa for that is Ya Batin. And also Ya Wahedo, which is the solitude of the Divine unity. So there's no doubt that in that role or that function, the protection of the temple is most important. When one is on retreat, one enjoys being in a cell, for example, or in a cave away; one finds that one doesn't have to pay attention to the environment and one's able to discover the same reality that was manifesting outside, but within oneself, as space is inverted. Another aspect of the hermit is the peacefulness. The word for that is Ya Salam. So that nothing can disturb one. And of course, you realize that when one is stressed psychologically, it's so important to be able to find this attunement, whereby one feels that nothing can really disturb one in the depth of one's being. One has found a kind of immunity against any disturbance. I often talk about this woman who was lynched, who was beaten to death in the southern states and who said, You can do what you like with my body, you can't touch my soul. That's what I mean by that kind of immunity against abuse and against being humiliated or attacked or slighted, or whatever. Then nothing can touch one. Something that would give you a lot of resilience, it's like an immune system of the psyche.

In India they call it vairagya--detachment, indifference--which seems to go counter to our sense of responsibility, love, involvement with people and situations and so on. And of course, it's good to be able to balance these things and there are moments when one needs to emphasize that aspect of oneself. Because this aspect of oneself that is vairagya, that is, detachment, is the one that leads one to becoming a healer. And that is again one of the functions on the priesthood, of the temple. Some priests specialize as healers. The healer is someone who healed himself or herself first. You find that a lot of psychotherapists are people who were patients and they wanted to sort out what their problems were and they felt there was a lot of expertise they needed to learn about. You find that amongst many Jungian psychologists.

So that is working with energy. We talked about this yesterday, because if you remember, the basis of all that I'm saying during this weekend ... it's based upon the alchemical process. And in order to bring about transformation, one needs to apply energy, to accelerate the process of transformation that, in the athanor, it is heat and at the level of the psyche, it is ecstasy. The ultimate energy of the psyche is ecstasy. It is energy. It's psychic energy. Now, of course, there's always interaction between psyche and body. So, of course, one is working with energy, like the breathing practices and so on. So, if you want to develop healing power, then there's no doubt that you have to start with the body, which is the temple, which is the grossest of the temples. And, so many of the practices that we have been doing were ways of enhancing the flow of energy within the temple, and not only enhancing the flow, but transmuting the energy, earth energy, and also allowing oneself to be quickened by that highest of all energies that is the Holy Spirit. It starts by not identifying with the body, but just identifying with the etheric body or the subtle body. And it's a wonderful feeling to feel like a body of energy, you know, and even if your body is unable to keep up with the energy of your subtle body ... Well, never mind. That's where you are at, and it's in your subtle body.

You shlep your physical body as much as you can, but that's ... all your power is in your subtle body. Now, we touched upon this subject, but I feel one needs to know much more about it than we know, but we are really very inefficient in working with our healing powers. For one thing, as simple a thing as what we eat [chuckles], it makes all the difference. It's so important that the way people eat, I mean, the way that the industries impose their menus upon us is incredible. The way that we condescend to be exploited by these firms in order to ... because, you know, for easy packaging, you have no idea what we're damaging, how we're damaging our bodies. And then there's the work with the chakras and, well, with the endocrine glands and the impact of our thinking upon the secretion of the endocrine glands and how they can rejuvenate the body and make it a more useful instrument in order to foster illumination. These are things that we need to go into much more than we have so far. It wasn't a subject of this retreat but it's something that I hope we'll be able to go into more detail in the course of the healing retreat next June.

But, anyway, let us say that the cells of the body are endowed with the capacity of rejuvenation. But that capacity is also hindered by the fact that nature programs our death, the death of the, I shouldn't say the death of, let's say, the dissolution of the present setup of the body. There's a change of state, let's say, death is like a change of state of the body itself, like a change of state from liquid to vapor, for example, or ice to water. Something like that, a change of state. It's not death. But now, there are three secrets to this which are to be found in the wazifa, again. There's, for one thing, the dichotomy between Ya Hayy and Ya Quddus. It would be perhaps oversimplifying, if I were to say that those two serpents ... that form the ouroboros, that is, the vicious circle, the bottom of the spine, chaos, that they represent the telluric forces, that is the force of the earth, that needs to be ordered into a meaningful pattern like the caduceus. And so Ya Hayy represents that, how can I say, a very elementary force, let's say, a force of nature, which can be very cruel, very hard.

The sea can be very cruel: the tempest, the sea, hurricane, mountains and storm--very powerful things. Ya Hayy, Hayy is where you find the same power, manifesting in the sap in the trees, and breaking forth in the blossoming of the flowers and so on. Everywhere you see this force coming through, that's Hayy. But this force needs to be cultivated or ordered actually, to be given order by Quddus, which represents pure spirit. That is why there is some danger in allowing oneself to be healed by simply what they call a magnetizar ... or someone who has a lot of magnetism. And that magnetism may well have a very strong influence upon one's body and bring about transformation. But it could be that type of magnetism is too dense for a finer body. And so it's not always safe to allow oneself to be healed by people. In fact, the most spectacular healings are done by people who heal in the name of the Holy Spirit, by Christ. It's not the magnetic force. A totally different level of energy than magnetic force. And there's a reason why the healer is a function of the priest, of the person who is dedicated to
maintaining the sacredness.

Now there's a further word which is Muhyi--M U H Y I--and which represents just that power of regeneration that I talked about, which is born out of the intermission between Ya Quddus and Ya Hayy--that power, the inherent power of nature to redress itself. You find that even in certain metals: you distort them and they fall back into place again. It's kind of the ability to restore order that has been disturbed. It's called inertia in nature. If it weren't for that, there would not be any healing. That's what healing is about. One has to, of course, facilitate the action of this restorative power by--not saying it's weak--by letting it ... one has to facilitate it, help it along, but to not try to take its place, of course. In the name of Ibn Arabi, Muhyi would be ... Ibn Arabi, the rejuvenator of the tradition of the Sufis. [pause]

I've already said this, but I'll say it again because it's so relevant to what we're talking about now. I keep on referring to the voice of Caruso, that is still to be found in the distorted recordings. So that our pristine nature can never be damaged. It's very important to know that: the damage was only at the surface. It's always there, in all its purity. An example from physics would be like the wave front that crosses another wave front and becomes a wave interference pattern so you don't know which is which but somehow or other, they can cross each other and come out of that encounter absolutely unscathed. I would say that this assurance is vital to healing, in that knowledge that ultimately there isn't damage is important. If one identifies oneself with the damage, then of course there's no way.

So one must never think of oneself as a patient. The opposite is even true. And that is, that some of the people who are the most handicapped have overcompensated and proven to excel all other people, like blind Helmut (?) Stuness (?) for example, or the best example is, of course, Dr. [Steven] Hawking in Cambridge, who was one of the most brilliant minds of our time, and he can't speak and can't move his hands and legs. What he went through and somehow his determination was so great that he was able to manage to function by some extraordinary miracle. So that what I'm saying is that there was damage, on one hand, but there was a faculty there that was enhanced by the damage even at the brain level, because simple mathematical operations that one knows at school, he can't do [chuckles]. He's forgotten his early mathematics in order to do the more advanced mathematics. And, of course, the ultimate healing is self-healing. That's discovery and trust in one's power of rejuvenation. Like my cello teacher said: You know, ultimately we're all self-taught.

Now, another function of the priest is the knight. So the knight goes forth having pledged himself or herself to service and his whole purpose in life is to redress injustice, and to enforce the sovereignty of the spiritual government of the world. And I think that we all have that need very strongly in us. We're all very conscious of the problems of the world, of the problems around us, of our own problems, and we all feel that if indeed we have a purpose to fulfill, then it must consist in being able to stand for what we believe to be right. And to protect those who are the victims of injustice. Forces of Knighthood have broken through in Eastern Europe [chuckles] where they are the great miracles of our century.
Eventually they win against tyranny. So, the knight is always on the warpath against injustice, and particularly to protect the weak against the strong, take people under their protective wing. So the password, let's say, of the knight is then Ya Haqq, which is of course the truth, and Ya Fattah, which is open the door. There's this medieval French song, “Mon ami Pierrot ouvre-moi la porte pour l'amour de Dieu.” Open the door. That is the connotation of the word Ya Fattah, which was used during the Crusades. When, at the end of the Crusades, the Christians and Muslims formed the Confraternity, and they met in that building that's still there, opposite the Dome of the Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and in order to have access to that meeting, one had to know the password, and the password was Ya Fattah, open the door. That's a word that's unfortunately abused by some terrorist organizations these days, so, be careful of using it in public. But the meaning of it is very deep. It is … one is only allowed to know that which one needs to know. Those are the words that my sister told me, the last words before she went on her mission: one is only allowed to know that which one needs to know because of one's dedication. So, we would like to know more, but it is not good for us to know more than we know, unless we can make use of that knowledge for service. So it's ... I remember very well when somebody had come from the States to Paris to my father and said, I've come to learn meditation. And he said, there's work to do. And then later on she realized that, in fact, it was in order to be able to do the work that she was given the knowledge that she needed to do the work. Well, that's a knowledge that one gains by doing. So there you have those two very powerful words that make the knight: Ya Haqq, and Ya Fattah.

So, whenever you are troubled ... I think we all have those moments, when we ask ourselves: What am I doing in life? And perhaps the greatest despair is that feeling, Well, I could very well be dispensed of. I'm not really doing anything like ... The consequence of that is lack of motivation and eventually, of course, pessimism and self-denigration and self-defeatism. And that's why it's so important to be able to make a retreat in which one is able to ask oneself that question, to be able to look at one's life, make a fresh look at one's life, and ask oneself: Well, now I have all these highfalutin ideas, but what is the practical way of making these ideas real? It's not good enough just to pay lip service to a high cause, you have to do something about it.

At the beginning of the Second World War, my sister Noor and myself, we met together, and the question was: Are we going to participate in it or not? And we were brought up in the Gandhian idea of non-violence. And then we said: Well, so far we have been paying lip service to, you know, the respect to all people and unity and not making differences between people, whatever their race, religion or color or whatever. Are we just going to just let, now that things have come to a real challenge, are we going to let this pass and not do anything about it? Are we going to participate? And how can we participate?
And that's led Noor to what she did [pause]. Which ended up by her lying in a concentration camp at night on the cement floor and being kicked by the boots of the Nazi, then being dragged up and shot and thrown into the furnace while she was still alive. All that because of that way of thinking of: What are we to do in our lives? Are we to let things pass or are we to stand for our highest ideal, whatever the consequences? So that's Ya Fattah. It's a pledge. It's a pledge of fealty to the spiritual government in the world.

Now of course, there's the saint. And the Sufis, and Murshid in particular, of course, distinguishes three paths that one might have to choose from: the path of the Master, the path of the Saint, and the path of the Prophet. It's a very classical teaching in Sufism. There is often a conflict between the path of the master and the path of the saint, because the master has to take control of situations. As I say, the knight is really the master, whereas the saint is so aware of the sufferings of people. You see, in Islam, Prophet Muhammad is supposed to be a prophet, whereas Christ is supposed to be a saint. He is the khatm al-awliya: he is the prototype of sainthood, because his message is for the downtrodden and for those who are broken in life. And for his message to be real, of course, he had to be crucified. He had to be broken himself and give courage to those who are broken in their lives. Not just being crucified but his ... you know that the same people who hailed him atop the Mount of Olives betrayed him in the end. A total fiasco.

So that's Ya Rahman Ya Rahim. So there again, it's one of our functions in the temple. And honoring that aspect of ourselves that is the saint. Rahim is perhaps easier to deal with and that is, I think most decent people, I'd say, are in contact with suffering. One's heart goes out to them, one feels like helping out. That's Ya Rahim. It's sharing in the sufferings of people. That is the most accessible aspect of the saintlihood. The more difficult aspect is Rahman, which is having room in one's heart for people who are obnoxious. In fact, loving people one dislikes. That is perhaps where most of us are tested. It's easy to feel sorry for people who're hurt and so on. But people who are impertinent and violent and, as I say, really obnoxious, and who are hurting other people and so on, to have room in one's heart for them, that is really very difficult. That's the way of the saint. As I said, yesterday, I was quoting Christ who said, They do not know what they do. And that applies to us, too, of course, each one of us. We don't know what we do. I mean, we feel that we are wronged by other people and we just think it's the other people who don't know what they do. But that applies to us too, of course, [laughter] that's how other people think about us. And of course, that's the pity of it all, it's that, indeed, we do things and we don't realize what the consequences are. And then when we do, then we feel very sorry. But that is the best way of dealing with resentment, it's to think, Well, he or she didn't know what he did. The best way of dealing with it … get them off the hook. Maybe it's not true, but what the Sufis say is--as the Muslims say--Allah 'alam, which means, God knows. They say: Did you hear what that person did? God knows. [laughter] And then you change the subject and talk about the weather [laughter]. You just don't go on harping about, you know, [softly mouths syllables], maligning people in the back. It's one of the ... you know, we have that one opportunity every year on New Year's Eve, to make a vow. And there are many vows that one could do, but perhaps the best vow is to vow not to talk evil about a person in their back. It's a very difficult one to hold, but a good one. So, if somebody talks about somebody, then you have three options. One is to say, I made a vow not to talk evil about a person so let's change the subject. Or the other one is Allah 'alam, it means God knows. Or the third one is: Well, Lucy, I belong to the Sufi Order [laughter] and in the the Sufi Order people are not supposed to talk evil about each other [laughter]. However, sometimes there is some point in warning a person against the activities of a person that could be harmful to other people. That's why one needs to bring it to the notice of people in authority, or there's some justice, there's some recourse. So, that is Ya Rachman.

Of course I could go on, but perhaps we need a little break, don't we? Yea? [laughter] Pass the vote? No? No. Well, this is a very important, very exciting subject.

So, as I say, if we want to find fulfilment in our lives, then we need to fulfill all of these rules. And we have every opportunity of discovering that particular function that we are being challenged in, in our life. At every moment, we're challenged in different functions. For example, if we find that our attunement has got either low key or rather vulgar, then the remembrance of one's role, as the priest, will help one to overcome that gravity pull, the emotion down to the lowest level, and so on and so forth. and so the qualities we've been talking about we're being challenged in them. And I find that, I don't know, whether it's helpful to you to, instead of just thinking of a quality in an abstract way, as a concept, to think of it in terms of a role that one plays in life. I'm sure that Sofia [?] will appreciate that, in a theater, the importance of finding one's role in life. So, the next one is, let us say, the theologian [chuckles] or the metaphysician. We don't realize to what extent we harbor assumptions about God and about life and about things, and so on and so forth. One is trapped by dogma. I hope I won't be burnt on the stake for saying this--many have been burned on the stake for saying just this--that is, a dogma can be a trap, a kind of cliche that's been imposed by authority: You've got to believe this! And that's why Pir-o-Murshid used the word, [?] freedom. And I think we feel that need for freedom in ... shall we say, understanding? Buddha calls it freedom of opinion.

I think of a person's case, it was the case of ... There was a flood in Holland. And it was on Sunday, of course, and fisher people were supposed to read the Bible, and the rescue parties came and they refused to be rescued because they had to read the Bible. And there was this young rescue man who ... there was a teenager there, and he said to the teenager, "Why do you read that? Do want to lose your life because of, why do you sit there reading the Bible?" "That's what we were told, we've got to do it. So, he, "Who tells you?" "Well, the priest." "Well, the priest .. is it God? Yes, but he knows." So he said, "Why do you assume he knows?" And so on and so forth. It's written by [unclear words], you see. And eventually, all of a sudden, he realized that he was free. He realized that that trap was in the mind, he was caught in a bind in the mind. And therefore, somehow, many of the things that I'm saying are simply ways and means of freeing us from our assumptions with regard to spirituality or religion, of God, which may be useful at a certain stage, when one still needs some kind of support. But at a certain moment one throws away one's crutches. The great ones went through that crisis, like St. John of the Cross, he calls it the dark night. And the dark night was really because he was wondering whether all the things that he was being taught were to be relied upon. And he was left with his own sense of meaningfulness.

And there's the story of Joan of Arc, who heard these voices and, just imagine what she did. And then she was countered by the authorities who proved to her that it was a devil who was talking, and she began to believe that, indeed, she was wrong. And she recanted. And then she heard the voice again. And she realized that all those authorities were wrong. It was very difficult because she was a very simple girl, and in those days one had so much respect for the theologians, who knew everything. So we are faced with this in our lives, all of us. We see around us people who are trapped by beliefs, that's why Murshid says, Our concepts of God tend in the way of our experience of God. We talk about God and what we're talking about are concepts. We think that we're talking about God and we're talking about a concept of God. It stands in the way. And the only way to get to the truth is that experience of God--as I said yesterday--and also discovering the divine traces of the Divine inheritance in one's own being. And then awakening the God within. Those are real things. So, you see, the role of the theologian may be either confining or revealing. Now, you have of course, the great ones are able to overcome the limitation of the mind. You find that, of course in St. John of the Cross, but you find it in Thomas Aquinas, for example, Meister Eckhart and so on. And amongst Muslims, of course, you find it amongst the Sufis.

All they're saying is: My understanding stands in the way of the divine revelation. It's God who reveals his knowledge. I can't. If I were to try and codify the eternal dogma, I would be blocking the revelation of the divine knowledge. And that's the reason why of course the mystics are always in difficulty with the orthodoxy. So we have this role, but you see that it's so ... One really has to sort out one's belief system, to be able to fulfill that role in helping people to come to what one calls realization. Because a lot of assumptions stand in the way of our realization.

There's one of the purposes of yoga, it's to unmask the hoax of our thinking. Patanjali's Yoga Sutras its all the ways of unmasking the illusion of our way of thinking. And Buddha of course, followed that up. And then, having freed oneself from that, then one is open to ... the Divine sense of meaning comes through then, spontaneously, without being hindered by our thinking. So that's the meaning of Ya Alim. And here we have two words, Ya Alim and Ya Khabir. Alim is ... talk, about thinking. Actually, you see, of course, there are different interpretation that are made of these two wazifas, so, it might be debatable--my view on it might be debatable. But you remember the words of Pir-o-Murshid when he said that wisdom is born of the encounter between the divine knowledge and the human knowledge. In other words, a kind of knowledge that is inherent in our being and which is continually revealed to us, which we call intuition. But intuition can be distorted by our interpretation, and then the knowledge that we gain by life, by the experience of life--it's Sophia, the meaning of the word Sophia, which is the origin of the word Sufism--and the encounter between those two. Now, I think that Alim stands for the wisdom that we gain through our experience of the earth. It's like when Ibn Arabi says, By discovering the divine consciousness as the ground of your consciousness you confer upon God a mode of knowing that's a knowledge of the earth. And then Al-Hallaj counters Ibn Arabi--although he lived long before him--and says, How do you think that you can confer any knowledge upon God! In one sweep of his understandings He shatters your understanding and replaces it by the revelation of His intention, knowledge. So that's Khabir, it's the divine revelation. The word used is often Kashp [?], Kashp i Nur, the unveiling of the light of divine intelligence. The revealing. [pause]

Now, that knowledge that is revealed has often been found amongst people who dedicate themselves to be the Pythia, that is, the person who communicates oracles, the thaumaturge, as they call them in old language, and the Pythia, in the oracles of Delphi. That is what one calls a psychic or the Alkha 't [?], the person who somehow has this faculty or mission of communicating a message to people. It could be very often charlatans, of course, and it could be genuine people who somehow fulfill this function ... are called upon to fulfill this function. It's a very strange function--property of ... Pir-o-Murshid describes it in his very simple language. He wrote this. I mean, he said this when he was in London when, before the First World War, there were still horses and carts, and the milkman came with a horse and cart--those are the good old days--at your doorstep. And so he said, You are in a disturbed mood. And within a few minutes you'll see a horse and cart. The horse has slid on the snow and the wheel of the cart is broken. There's a connection between those two. In those days of course one didn't know the word synchronicity. Now, that's what, of course, Jung talked about, like, you dreamt that there was a butterfly and on the way to your work you see an advert, Madame Butterfly, an opera. And then you'll find there's somewhere an advert about butterfly cheese or something like that [laughter] ... somehow. It's what he calls meaningful connections, which cannot be accounted [tape ends here]