TOWARD THE ONE THE PERFECTION OF LOVE, HARMONY AND BEAUTY, THE ONLY BEING UNITED WITH ALL THE ILLUMINATED SOULS WHO FORM THE EMBODIMENT OF THE MASTER THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE.
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The Inner Life

CHAPTER III: The Fulfillment of The Obligations of Human Life

Gatheka: The position of the person leading the inner life becomes like that of a grown-up living among many children. At the same time there seems outwardly no such difference as is apparent in the ages of the children and the grown person, the difference lying in the size of his outlook, which is not always apparent.

Tassawuf: GAYAN posited the wide horizon, but the philosophy, the words have no import unless there is a wide horizon. And in the teaching of the evolution of love from the Sufi standpoint it is not always an intensity which is involved; it is the ability and capacity to enlarge the sphere of operation until the love can encompass the world, all peoples, and also all ages and all races.

The growth of the heart may be compared to that of a tree also, that it grows in all directions and is an actuality and not merely an imagination.

Gatheka: One who lives the inner life becomes much older than those around him, and yet outwardly he is the same as every other person. Therefore the man who has arrived at the fullness of the inner life adopts quite a different policy from the one who is just beginning to tread the path, and also a different one to that of the man who knows intellectually something about the inner life, but who really does not live it.

Tassawuf: There are many people who write books about yoga, the inner life and similar subjects. But they do not fulfill the poetic vision of Edna St. Vincent Millay: ?The world stands out on every side, no wider than the heart is wide.? The real wide outlook is the extended and extending heart-outlook. Those people feel at home with all, are strangers to none. And they are older in the sense that they take the attitude of an older person, not of a child; in their relations with others, they will be serious and take on responsibilities. Those who do not take on the responsibilities, whatever else be true about them, can hardly be considered as full grown adults.

Gatheka: The action again is different in the world, for the latter will criticize others who do not know what he thinks he knows, and will look upon them with pride and conceit, or with contempt, to think that they have not raised to the mystery, to the height, to which he has risen, and which he understands.

Tassawuf: This is the position of the false esotericist. Those who enter some secret cult, whether they learn or not so often fall into the traps of conceit and contempt. Instead of their capacity for empathy growing sometimes it disappears altogether, and what they thought was an initiation, instead of helping them forward to self-fulfillment, actually throws them back. So if they progress it is in some other direction than that to self-fulfillment.

They may be called ?pseudo-mystics.? One may meet many of them and they use words in ways strange to the mystic. But also they do not express the full heart-love which is the sign of development in the inner life.

Gatheka: He wishes to disconnect himself with people, saying that they are backward in their evolution, and that he cannot go with them. He says, ?I am more advanced; I cannot join them in anything; they are different, I am different.? He laughs at the petty ideas of those who surround him, and looks upon them as human beings with whom he must not associate, with whom he must not join in all things they do, because he is much more advanced than they are.

Tassawuf: No doubt there was a time for secret societies; a time when the ruling powers, generally the ecclesiastics, did not wish the generality to have any knowledge which was not under their control. This forced a good deal of knowledge and research underground. It made knowledge secret and thus occult.

No doubt there are two very different meanings of the word occult. One is that the knowledge was kept hidden lest it endanger society and even humankind. The other is that it deals with the worlds beyond the immediately seen. There is no need today for the first but many organizations continue and instead of increasing the moral standard and sympathy, they even diminish it. In the true occult sciences the magus also must learn to extend his heart-sway.

Gatheka: But for the one who comes to the fullness of the inner life it is a great joy to mingle with his fellow-man, just as it is for parents to play with their little children. The best moments of their lives are when they feel as a child with their children and when they join in their play.

Tassawuf: If one could associate with living teachers, they would find these people human and humane although in their disciplines they often behave strangely. The Bodhisattvic vow is one to help all humankind toward perfection. This also involves an assumption that one has, in some way, reached perfection. But to be perfect is to be all-rounded, not superior in everything.

One can learn to distinguish the true teacher from the false one. The true teacher does not consider himself separate from humanity. Some day when the life of Mohammed is presented without either the sanctimonious awe of some of his followers; or the unhallowed criticism of non-believers, we shall see an example of an extraordinary man who was also extraordinary in being ordinary, fulfilling all his life?s requirements also in being a true husband, father and grandfather. It is in the records, but among Muslims few outside the Sufis themselves have actually adopted these standards to be pursued in life. So Mohammed stands as a remarkable example.

While there are many ways to differentiate the true teacher from the false one, people intoxicated with life, easily fall prey to the false teachers. These false teachers often have some pretense, they maintain an attitude of superiority and aloofness. They do not join in games, they do not mingle as does everybody else. The true teacher would never behave in such a way. It is only when he is functioning that he must fulfill the obligations of life and duty.

Gatheka: Parents who are kind and loving, if a child brings to them a doll?s cup, will pretend that they are drinking tea, and that they are enjoying it; they do not let the child think that they are superior, or that this is something in which they must not join. They play with the child, and they are happy with it, because the happiness of children is theirs also.

Tassawuf: Jesus has said that the kingdom of God belongs to the children and organized religion teaches otherwise. Even many Sufis who hold that the way to wisdom is to associate with the mature were not entirely right. You do not always find human wisdom among the mature. And you always find a natural wisdom among the young so that Mohammed proclaimed that every child is born a Muslim and in the sense of innate surrender, feeling the propinquity of God, and expressing the wisdom of ?God this is often so. And so by playing with children occasionally and getting into their atmosphere we throw off many of the weights of life which are not important but which older people imagine to be important.

Gatheka: That is the action of the man who lives the inner life, and it is for this reason that he agrees and harmonizes with people of all grades of evolution, whatever be their ideas, their thoughts, their belief, or their faith; in whatever form they worship or show their religious enthusiasm. He does not say; ?I am much more advanced than you are, and to join you would be going backward.?

Tassawuf: The tuning of the heart, the process of unlearning and the slight suggestions given to candidates and to disciples in their early period of studying contain all the seeds for further moral, occult, and mystical development. It may not seem so but it is so.

In the GAYAN, it says of the holy ones and divine messengers that they were sent to be examples. And for some they have been examples. But there is also the element of spontaneity and naturalness; if one is always keeping a code-standard before one he can be an imitator (which is not wrong) but he will not radiate the full goodness, the full God-ness which is in him. When one has the manner of God, he behaves toward humanity even as he wishes God would behave.

Gatheka: The one who has gone so far forward can never go backward, but by joining them he takes them along with him, onward. If he went on alone he would consider that he avoided his duty toward his fellow-man, which he should perform.

Tassawuf: This is also the difference between the two aspects of Buddhism called Theravada and Mahayana. In Theravada it is thought that the humanity benefits by helping the aspirant, who is a monk, on toward the completion of his evolution. And in Mahayana the emphasis is the opposite, that the devotee believes the fulfillment of his mission is in helping others onward instead of them helping him. But both accept the Lord Buddha?s ?Work out thy salvation with diligence? although they give a very different interpretation to it.

Then there is another point in the discussion of backwards trends. When we accept that God alone exists; that the path to Him is also a path of Him, and with Him; that God is the only being, we shall not be led astray by foolish notions of the half-learned.

Gatheka: It is the empty pitcher that makes the noise when you knock upon it, but the pitcher which is full of water does not make any sound; it is silent, speechless.

Tassawuf: There may be no way to measure feeling. There is something that radiates outward. It is in the atmosphere. Nothing can be substituted for atmosphere and its companions, the radiant light of the eyes and the smiling forehead. These are the signs of development. For speech, even in its most wonderful aspects, cannot convey so much.

Gatheka: So the wise live among all the people of this world, and they are not unhappy. The one who loves all is not unhappy. Unhappy is he who looks with contempt at the world, who hates human beings, and thinks he is superior to them; the one who loves them thinks only that they are going through the same process that he has gone through.

Tassawuf: Jesus has said, ?I am the Vine and ye are the branches thereof.? Sufism teaches that teacher and pupil are one. And again, ?It is the mureed who make the teacher.? Older people who were originally attracted to the Sufi Message were not able to accept this and so there is another generation which can accept and it is through these, who are the children of the New Age that the Message will spread because in a certain sense, they are the Message.

Gatheka: It is from the darkness that he has to come into the light. It is just a difference of moments; and he, with great patience, passes these moments while his fellowmen are still in darkness, not making them know they are in darkness, not letting them feel hurt about it, not looking upon them with contempt; only thinking that for every soul there is childhood, there is youth and maturity. So it is natural for every human being to go through this process.

Tassawuf: It is only a first step for a teacher to feel, ?I am the Vine and ye are the branches thereof.? Many have written about Sufism without having mingled with Sufis. They write about them as exotic, strange people. They cannot know what the insight, the foresight of the wise is. And when the phrase, ?Beloved Ones of God?, is used, it sounds like an honorific whereas to the Sufi it is reality. For God loves all His creatures.

Brotherhood will not come while some emphasize their elder brotherhood position, or while there is separation of any kind. People who talk brotherhood but manifest separation are obviously not so advanced on the path. On the path, hearts beat together; on the path, the whole humanity is as if a single personage. And the wise follow what is also found in the Christian scriptures but bypassed, that the whole humanity is as if a single body, all of us being cells and organs, tubes and veins of that single body.

Gatheka: I have seen with my own eyes souls who have attained saintliness, and who have reached to great perfection; and yet such a soul would stand before the idol of stone with another, with a fellow-man, and worship, not letting him know that he was in any way more advanced than other men, keeping himself in a humble guise, not making any pretense that he had gone further in his spiritual evolution.

Tassawuf: The commentator used to worship with all sorts of people in all sort of ways. Once he was in the city of Bombay and the story came out that he was some sort of holy man. A simple working man came to him, signaled and took him off to an unknown shrine to which he had the key. He opened the place and there was a beautiful idol there and the Indian asked the commentator to perform puja. The commentator had never seen such an idol and did not know how to perform the puja and yet he did know and he did it and did it exactly right. This made the Indian present very happy, he performed the same puja and then embraced his American visitor.

There are many Sufis who have gone to Indian temples and sometimes many non-Sufis of different faiths also go to the Sufi shrines of saints and to sanctuaries. Then one throws off all pretense and joins the generality in whatever form of worship they perform.

Gatheka: The further souls go, the more humble they become; the greater the mystery they have realized, the less they speak about it.

Tassawuf: It is not necessary to speak. Some people are offended when they speak. They are not always understood. Besides the maintenance of secrets, especially such secrets, help to store up the spiritual magnetism. And it is this rather than ?merit? which helps the soul in the inner life.

Gatheka: You would scarcely believe it if I were to tell you that during four years of the presence of my Murshid, hardly more than once or twice I had a conversation on spiritual matters. Usually the conversation was on worldly things, like everybody else?s; nobody would perceive that here was a God-realized man, who was always absorbed in God. His conversation was like the conversation of every other person; he spoke on everything belonging to this world, never a spiritual conversation, nor any special show of piety or spirituality; and yet his atmosphere, voice of his soul and his presence revealed all that was hidden in his heart.

Tassawuf: No doubt one can write about many masters one has visited and there are all sorts of them. For instance one Sheikh of the Rifai was a great football enthusiast. And a Chisti Murshid was an expert on fly-casting and an excellent athlete. And there were others who delighted in card playing. They would play games but would not discuss news or politics or anything small. They could play with children and they would play with adults and never make any differences.

Gatheka: Those who are God-realized and those who have touched wisdom speak very little on the subject. It is they who do not know who try to discuss it, not because they know, but because they themselves have doubts.

Tassawuf: In the western world the greatest obstacles have not come from the ignorant nor from those who are opposed to mysticism or strange (to them) religions, but from the person who thinks they are either God-realized or near it, and so more evolved than others. It is they who expect more from other people and less from themselves and are quick to excuse themselves for their incapacities to adhere to standards and norms.

Gatheka: When there is knowledge, there is satisfaction, there is no tendency towards dispute. When one disputes, it is because something is not satisfied.

Tassawuf: The wise regard their opponents in debate as also God?s children. Once when Swami Ram Das came to San Francisco, many wanted to dispute with him on the platform. And some assumed they were on his side but when he was away they did not accept him, only when he was there. But there was one man who said he would be glad to dispute with the Swami and he prepared all kinds of questions and dualistic arguments.

It was only five minutes when the Swami not only answered all questions but considered the disputant as one who favored him by asking challenging questions and also tried to please his inward being with the answers. True, the disputant did not gain, but the whole audience was attracted by the Swami, who had the God-realization and saw God in everything and everybody.

Gatheka: There is nothing in this world, wealth, rank, position, power, or learning, that can give such conceit as the slightest little amount of spiritual knowledge; and once a person has that conceit, then he cannot take a further step, he is nailed down to that place where he stands; because the very idea of spiritual realization is in selflessness.

Tassawuf: That is why it has taken so many years to introduce properly the teachings of the Orient. And not only the religions and spiritual philosophies but much of the knowledge of Asian lands in so many directions has been kept from the public by the men of self-conceit. And unfortunately only too often they have been accepted as authorities. So the people of the West who have learned so much on so many things, have not really learned about the people of lands who think different, behave different and worship different.

One of the best ways to learn is to mingle with such people, ask them questions, join in their meals, their devotions, their games. Then one does not only become popular, one learns much more than by other efforts. This is one of the easiest and best ways to learn and this is the humility in action, the real humility.

Gatheka: Man has either to realize himself as something or as nothing. In this realization of nothingness there is spirituality. If one has any little knowledge of the inner laws of nature and is proud of it, or if one has any sense of thinking, ?How good I am, how kind I am, how generous, how well-mannered, how influential, or how attractive?, the slightest ideas of anything of this kind coming into the mind closes the doors which lead into the spiritual world.

Tassawuf: There is a whole Buddhist scripture called the ?DIAMOND SUTRA? which gives out this teaching. And yet there has been a class of people with this conceit to give out what they call instructions, and they prove at every step that they do not understand it. They do not behave in accord with the scripture. And yet there are others who make no pretense, and they have had the spiritual realization which is latent in this Sutra.

There is no value in negation. And those who wish to tread the path must accept that there is a way in which, by denying self, one comes to the real fulfillment.

Gatheka: It is such an easy path to tread, and yet so difficult. Pride is most natural to a human being. Man may deny a virtue a thousand times in words, but he cannot help admitting it with his feelings, for the ego itself is pride. Pride is the ego; man cannot live without it.

Tassawuf: Nor need we be surprised that many make a show of something they call humility. There is no pompousness in it, no show, yet it is a pride, often a great self-conceit. Because this type of person, while pretending to deny himself, does not see the good in others, admit the superiority of others.

Gatheka: In order to attain to spiritual knowledge, in order to become conscious of the inner life, a person does not need to learn very much, because here he has to know what he already knows; only he has to discover it himself. For his understanding of spiritual knowledge he does not need the knowledge of anything except himself. He acquires the knowledge of the self which is himself, so near and yet so far.

Tassawuf: There is a teaching in the UPANISHADS that all knowledge is none other than knowledge of the self. And the celebrated British philosopher Bertrand Russell, whose outlooks are so different, has admitted we cannot prove logically that there is any knowledge other than that of self.

Yet there is also what is called ?common sense,? that there is an assumption of space and time without and that we are different. And it is not wrong to live and work with that assumption, for it is most common and we have to meet the humanity on the level where it is, not where we should like it to be.

Gatheka: Another thing the lover of God shows is the same tendency as the human lover?s: he does not talk about his love to anybody; he cannot talk about it.

Tassawuf: And often when a person talks about it, others are attracted for a short while. But such a one who talks about love for God, does not show the love for mankind. That person does not know it may be a conceit, and that the abstraction is nothing but an extended form of one?s own ego.

And the lover of God may show it in the eyes, the forehead, the attitude and manner, in being most gracious to others. Yet there are Madzubs who are among the greatest lovers of God who often choose to act otherwise.

Gatheka: Man cannot say how much he loves his beloved; no words can express it; and besides, he does not feel like talking about it to anybody. Even if he could, in the presence of his beloved he would close his lips. How then could the lover of God make a profession, ?I love God??

Tassawuf: Yes, there are many who make this profession. When one comes close there is nothing but a claim, there is no love. There are none of the signs which one expects in the lover. And, if anything, the lover of God would show more of these real love-signs if he really loved.

Gatheka: The true lover of God keeps his love silently hidden in his heart, like a seed sown in the ground; and if the seedling grows, it grows in his actions towards his fellow-man.

Tassawuf: This is the teaching of the Great Ones, and the non-practice of those who have used religions as sources of power-expressions. No wonder then that we find it more among the monks and nuns of Christianity and not among the laity, because the rituals and sermons do not emphasize it. They seek to exploit the masses to promote some ideals and do not give the masses the opportunity to grow, or even to know.

Therefore Mohammed said there should be no monkery in Islam, that the virtues of the heart belong to everybody and are not to be confined to a few special persons. Nor is it necessary to return from society in order to express the love, human or divine.

Gatheka: He cannot act except with kindness, he cannot feel anything but forgiveness; every movement he makes, everything he does, speaks of his love, but not his lips.

Tassawuf: Therefore Sufis and lovers of God may express themselves in various ways. It was Jelal-ed-din Rumi who has given so much poetry, so much poetry that many are not aware of his prose. And yet always there was this central theme of love, a divine love which did not exclude anything human. And he left his work, both a work of erudition and an encyclopedia for the lovers. And it is possible today to work in the same spirit using music, dancing and all the arts to affect the awakening of the human heart and to bring to the surface the latent powers of everybody.

Gatheka: This shows that in the inner life the greatest principle that one should observe is to be unassuming and quiet, without any show of wisdom, without any manifestation of learning, without any desire to let anyone know how far one has advanced, not even letting oneself know how far one has gone.

Tassawuf: Actually this is impossible. Though there are grades and though we may even know how much these grades differ from one another, they do not have common denominators; you cannot always express the awareness of one grade in the language of another. You can make others feel it. And therefore sometimes there is the practice of Tawajjeh or Darshan to enable others to learn by feeling. But in this there is no speech communication. When speech is used, it is for quite another purpose.

Gatheka: The task to be accomplished is the entire forgetting of oneself and harmonizing with one?s fellow-man; acting in agreement with all, meeting everyone on his own plane, speaking to everyone in his own tongue, answering the laughter of one?s friends with a smile, and the pain of another with tears, standing by one?s friends in their joy and their sorrow, whatever be one?s own grade of evolution.

Tassawuf: The adept is taught methods of meditation to tune in on audiences, and especially when he is to be a speaker or performer. After a while he may become so proficient and full of understanding that it may not be necessary to tune in. He will become sensitive to the atmospheres. Then he can deal with each and all according to their understanding.

He may be taken as a wit or good company but it is all part of the spiritual development so one can see in each and all the manifestation of the Divine Love.

Gatheka: If a man through his life became like an angel he would accomplish very little; the accomplishment which is most desirable for man is to fulfill the obligations of human life.

Tassawuf: That is why the wise say that the fulfillment comes with the ordinary things often necessary for one?s daily achievement. And when a disciple looked for the teachers of the celebrated Gurdjieff, he found them often ordinary men doing the simplest of tasks yet in tune with the divinity.


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