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just would not learn.'
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The Ceiling
Q: Can you give me an example, in parallel or parable terms,
of the area in which Sufi teaching operates, and how it is done?
A: Our teaching speaks of, and exists partly in, 'another world',
a 'higher realm', a 'different dimension'.
Here is a parallel of what this means, in one significant way, and
what the object of the Teaching is.
THE UNKNOWN CEILING
Suppose we have a house with walls, ceilings, floors, and we are
inside that house. Let us say that through long-established custom,
people can touch and deal with only the floors and walls. If
someone were to walk in and say: 'Look at the ceiling,' the
people would be incapable of doing so-rather like a child which
often cannot see something, certainly cannot observe it, unless it
has been demonstrated to it.
Suppose, further, that the custom of generations was to hang
things on walls and not to have anything on the ceilings. Objects
on the ceilings might then be 'invisible' to the people at large.
So it is with our teaching. We frequently and abundantly assert
that people do not think things through, that they make assump-
tions (such as 'there is no ceiling') which they do not attempt to
verify. But, like the intelligent man who would be trying to point
out the existence of the ceilings, we do more than constantly draw
attention back to the theoretical postulate ('there may be ceilings').
We provide, in instructional courses, meetings, contact with
teachers, observation materials, exercises, call them what you like,
the practical means to establish and maintain for the community
which is being addressed the experience of the existence of
'ceilings'.
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WHERE TO FIND TRUTH
Careful preparation is necessary before people can perceive some-
thing which is there all the time. Saadi of Shiraz rightly referred
to this in poetic terms when he said: 'The Adept sees that same
thing in a camel/as in the beautiful ones of China or Chagil.'
Again, by the application of a certain concentration capacity,
some people induce others to externalise their inner thoughts, as a
teaching method. These thoughts betray the character and opera-
tion of the secondary self, the false personality which, although
enabling people to handle many of the circumstances of life, has
as its objective the maintenance of itself: and not the progress of
the individual beyond quite narrow and shallow limits.
WORKING ON THE 'COMMANDING SELF'
This Commanding Self (in Sufi classical literature styled the
Nafs-i-Ammara), is manifested by reactions, hopes and fears and
various opinions and preoccupations.
By bringing its operation into view, its limitations, distortions
and peculiarities can be observed, both by the individual himself
and by observers. This 'self is actually largely what most people
imagine to be their own personalities, their own and only selves;
and it is interposed between objective reality and the real self, the
essence, of the individual, whose realisation is the purpose of Sufi
study.
Sometimes the manifestation of this self is characterised by
ideas or behaviour attributed to other people, as can happen in a
dream. One modern technician with knowledge of such things has
remarked: 'It is as if the mental computer has been induced
electronically to repeat a part of its programming...'
The reverse effect is also possible, when the Teacher [Murshid]
imparts to the mind of the disciple [Murid] concepts which can
reach the essence and which therefore cannot be conveyed by the
ordinary methods employed in communicating with the conven-
tional self.
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THE PRECIOUS PEARL
People have tried to cultivate this capacity for purposes of per-
sonal ambition and, since this is indeed partially possible, its
methodology is carefully protected.
Such works as Ibn Arabi's Durrat al-Fakhira, 'Precious Pearl'
give numerous instances both of this mechanism and of how it
tends to be independent of what people customarily regard as
systematic operation. It can, for example, arise unbidden. It works
in people whom one would not immediately suspect of possessing
it-because of our usual assumptions about any such capacity. It
may not operate at all. Sometimes it is willed, sometimes not. On
occasions it functions whether the faculty is being used for 'good'
(socially acceptable) purposes or not. Traditionally, it can also work
for what seem to be trivial purposes, as has been noted with similar
extrasensory activity in more recent Western studies. These facts
can make it all the more interesting, since such characteristics are
not in accord with the usual folkloric beliefs about such matters
and tend to lack inherent relationships with occultism, more
directly resembling more modern communications phenomena,
though in a very refined form.
UNDERSTANDING WITH THE HEART
'The Sufis,' runs the saying, 'understand with their hearts what the
most learned scholars cannot understand with their minds.'
The results of the encounter with the Sufi may or may not be
at the time or place desired by the learner. They may or may not
follow immediately. Other things may have to happen before the
full benefit of the meeting can be perceived.
One of the more obvious factors at work in such relationships
is pointed out in the tale in my book The Dermis Probe, entitled
'Pomegranates'.
WORK AND WORK
Q: Why do Sufis expect people to do physical and mental [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]