The Cosmic/Peri-Personal Dimension of our Identity
by
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Inspired by the vision of
Hazrat Inayat Khan
As we have seen in the previous lesson, our efficacy in achieving our purpose is precariously suspended upon our self-esteem, and our self-esteem is suspended upon our self-image, which is an insufficient estimation of who we are.
One's self-image is what is called the ego. The word ego means me, I, myself, who I am. Hazrat Inayat Khan considers that our usual notion of ourselves is a faulty representation of who we really are—our real ego. He calls this usual notion of ourselves the false ego.
Oneself, as one knows one's self, is a limited part of one's being.
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The false ego is what one has wrongly conceived as oneself.
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It is not one's true self that is limited; what is limited is what one holds oneself to be.
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| Practice |
Question yourself as to whether who you think you are (your self-image) is just a notion that does not include your whole being and gives you a sense of limitation, even inadequacy (what one calls a poor self-image).
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A poor self-image could likened to a two dimensional photograph which is a diminished representation of a three dimensional panorama. The lens of a camera reduces much of the detail of a landscape in order to figure it on to a two dimensional photograph. By the fact that the consciousness of the universe is focalized in our consciousness the grasp of our ordinary perfunctory consciousness is extremely poor and inadequate.
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The pure consciousness has gradually limited itself more and more by entering into the
external vehicles such as the mind and body in order to be conscious of something.
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Most men can only see the limitations of his human life, and can never probe
the heights of his divinity; comparatively few can do this.
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Everyone takes the limits of his own vision to be the limits of the world.—Schopenhauer
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We are as great as our spirit, we are as wide as our spirit, we are as low as our spirit, we are as small as our spirit.
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The world of one individual is as tiny as a grain of lentil, and that of another as large as the whole world.
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Having questioned the validity of your self-image, the chances are that you might try to grasp your wider self. The key to doing this is expanding your consciousness and lifting your consciousness.
The unitive world-view emerges when we shift our identity from our personal dimension to
its cosmic and transcendent dimension.
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Our self-image is a feature of slipping into a limited sense of our bountiful identity. If we identify with our personal nature, we fail to account for the fact that our being cannot be segregated from the totality which is its seedbed, and of which it is a manifestation and a unique actuation as each of us.
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If you dived deep enough in yourself, you would discover your real ego,
You would reach a point where your ego lives an unlimited life.
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The ego itself is never destroyed. It is the one thing that lives. And
this is the sign of the eternal life. In the knowledge of the ego there is the secret of immortality.
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How do you do this?
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By losing the false sense of identification and identify[ing] itself with its real self.
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How can one discover one's real ego?
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By attempting to make a definite change in oneself. And that change is a kind of struggle with one's false self.
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The way to achieve this is to create attunements that are favorable to discovering one's true self. This change in oneself would require one to overcome what may be ascribed to the false ego: one's selfishness, resentment, hatred, unkindness.
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We tend to justify attitudes in ourselves that are triggered off by our false ego.
(i) In a first step reconnoiter your false ego. To do this, confront your motivations and dismiss denial or justifications. But be careful not to denigrate yourself. Realize that if you really wish to change, you can.
(ii) In a second step, counter your false ego by realizing that it stands in the way of identifying yourself with who you really are.
(iii) In a third step, having removed the obstacle incurred by the non-comprehensive notion of yourself, make an attempt to identify with the bountiful potential of your being.
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By rising above this limited self, the false ego is broken and you will rise over the limitations of life on all planes of existence, and your soul will break all boundaries and will experience that freedom which its deepest longing.
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When broken the false ego needs to be replaced by the real ego. This is why, in Sufism,
fana, the annihilation of the false self, is always compensated by baqa, reinstatement.
It is not their existence that ceases but their notion of themselves.
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Consequently our being extends into its seed-bed. We need to consider this wider outreach of our being as the cosmic or peri-personal dimension of our being. Dr. Grof's word peri-personal does not mean around or outside; one might say it is the area of one's being that overlaps and is co-extensive with the universe. (Let us note: I am using the word universe instead of God, because the universe is that aspect of God that is existentiated and therefore God cannot be limited to that aspect alone).
The difficulty for most people is that our minds have been conditioned by the belief systems of exoteric religion to represent God as 'other.' Obviously, for our finite minds, the alternative: that we are God, is untenable.
Ibn 'Arabi juggles with this quandary. In a high state he says:
| You are not other than God. |
Then back into his ordinary perspective, he says
| Know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God. |
Hazrat Inayat Khan gives the key:
| Man is a condition of God like a wave is a condition of the sea. |
In our ordinary thinking even if we acquiesce that we are part of the totality of the universe, which is what we mean by God, we would think that being a part of it is like being a section of an orange. Whereas to understand the way mystics formulate their experience we need to call upon a more advanced mode of thinking—the holistic mode: each fraction of the whole (Dr. David Bohm uses the word sub-whole) carries, potentially, the whole.
| Is it not then drunkenness on the part of man when he claims to be an individual standing separate from all others thinking of himself as an individual being separate from all others. |
In fact meditation could be looked upon as the art of modulating consciousness from its usual local and middle-range setting.
This could be illustrated thus: each cell of our body is governed by the DNA of the whole body. (Paradoxically, it may be governed by the DNA of the universe.) Yet in each cell certain genes of the body's DNA are active while others are recessive. This makes for the diversity of the cells so that they may cooperate to serve our intelligence, rather than the uniformity that would result if they repeated each other like patterns on frescoes or wallpaper do. Likewise while the peri-personal dimension of our self is ultimately co-extensive with the universe, only a fraction of its bounty is actuated in our personality. These are the virtual resources of our being waiting to be awakened and aroused. The good news is the more we discover the qualities adorning this wider area of our being, the richer our personality becomes. The secret of discovering this is to acquiesce that it is 'me,' rather than thinking that it is 'other.' This is the way of thinking that we find in the esoteric rather than exoteric traditional religious thinking. It is based upon experience rather than belief and is to be found in the testimonies of the mystics of all the world religions.
For example, Meister Eckhart was placed on the index by saying, "There is something in me that is increatus (uncreated) and increabile (uncreatable)," which means not other than God.
Another example is that of a vortex. A whirlpool, for example, is a formation within the lake that does not have a boundary. All the water of the lake gets drawn into its swirl. It is likewise with our personality in which our total being converges. In the same vein our consciousness is the focalization of the consciousness of the universe like a light can be focused into a beam by a concave lens.
| Practice |
Think of your being as not having boundaries so that the divine qualities (the qualities of the universe) may flow, may converge, as it. Can you see that the personal dimension of your being merges into the peri-personal dimension of your being and that the personal dimension of your being converges your total being? They are not two separate realities but correlated. Just think that the whole universe emerges as you as the whole ocean erupts as a wave.
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The bubble is small as compared with the ocean, but it is not any other element than the ocean.
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God is the horizon, and one can neither touch the horizon, nor God. The horizon is as far as one can see, and even further, and so is God.
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The key to grasping this wider, cosmic dimension of our being is being God-conscious.
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The Sufi therefore tries to expand as he progresses; for it is the largeness of the soul which will accommodate all experiences and in the end become God conscious and all-embracing.
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Where are you to find God if not in the God-conscious?
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Divinity resides in humanity; it is also the outcome of humanity.
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The dervish is a king within a palace or in a shack.
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Hazrat Inayat Khan warns against megalomania or sanctimoniousness by reconciling the poles of the puzzling antinomy of our identity.
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The aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the ego.
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The greatest pride in one's divine inheritance (one's real ego) together with humility for one's iniquities (one's false ego); authority together with the unpretentious touch.
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At the end of your morning meditation, survey those areas in your life for which you are responsible. This will close in to the concrete things you need to do. The area for which you assume responsibility is a measure of the stature of your being.
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Every soul has a domain in life consisting of all it possesses and all who belong to it. This domain is as wide as the width of the soul's influence.
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Expanding the Notion of One's Identity by Expanding Consciousness
Our sense of identity is a function of the outreach of our consciousness. Therefore to encompass the vastness of your being, it is helpful to expand the outreach of your glance.
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We occupy as much horizon as is within our consciousness, or as much as we are conscious of.
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With this in mind, represent to yourself your glance.
As you inhale imagine that you are reading a text. In fact read this text!
Now as you exhale look through the window. Or with eyes closed imagine a vast panorama. Better still gaze at the stars at night or with closed eyes imagine the starry sky. Ponder upon how vast is the outreach of your glance—light years!
You will find that widening the outreach of your glance has the effect of expanding your consciousness, and expanding your consciousness has the effect of expanding your sense of identity.
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The eye is the representative of the soul. If the eye can accommodate so much space, how much more can the soul accommodate. It can accommodate the whole universe.
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You will thus confirm that widening the outreach of your glance has the effect of expanding your consciousness, and expanding your consciousness has the effect of expanding your sense of identity.
In a second step, reach outside from within.
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The soul of man who seems so small a being is incomparably great, its space being within.
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There are some beings who are in themselves the universe. Outwardly man sees their small earthly form, but within they are as vast as the universe.
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With closed eyes, as you inhale, turn within.
Now as you exhale, imagine that you can reach outside from within. So now you feel as though you are connected with the whole universe from within while before you thought that you were connected with outside.
For example, you were swimming amongst water lilies, each a separate flower. But now you swim under the surface and see the water lilies from underneath. They are manifestations of a single infrastructure: the network of roots. Multiplicity is emerging out of unity.
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Usually our consciousness is conditioned by our commonplace concerns; but when it comes to evaluating the implications of a situation or in general the meaningfulness of our lives in a wider context, our ordinary thinking fails to make sense of these.
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If you stretch your consciousness, you will find that you can assess situations in their implications in a wider context.
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Who We Are Becoming Rather Than Who We Are
There is a whole further dimension of our being that we need to account for. Who we are is only a static cross-section of a dynamic process: how our personality unfurls in time. Rather than identifying with who we are, we need to account for who we are becoming.
Actually the whole ocean emerges as each wave. Although they overlap, each wave displays its own specific configuration.
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As you exhale expand your consciousness with the effect of expanding your sense of identity beyond the personal dimension.
As you inhale, while still representing to yourself that the whole universe manifests itself as your being, draw your attention to the unique way it manifests itself in each of us - hence in yourself.
As you hold your breath reconnoiter the idiosyncrasies of your personality - the hallmark of your being.
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You are actually processing in your personality the infinite wealth of qualities, the potentialities, of the entire universe in a unique way. You are not just the convergence, confluence, conjugation of all those ingredients that have actuated themselves into the confection of your being, but you are the congruence of that whole process. You are the goal of the universe thus composing itself as you. You are not just the albeit unpredictable outcome of that inexorable process whereby the universe is exploring its potentialities, but the objective of that process.
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His knowledge is not a consequence of the things known…for His knowledge of things is the reason for their having being.
—Avicenna. (Avicenna on Theology, Arberry, 1951, P.35)
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What is more you act not only upon the environment, but upon the very formative process that configures you, affecting it as it forms you thus participating by your incentive in your creativity.
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God's creativity is perfected where man participates in his creativity.
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In man the Creator has finished, so to speak, nature, but at the same time the creative faculty is still working through man.
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The mind is not only the treasure-house of all one learns, but it is creative by nature. The mind improvises upon what it learns, and creates not only in imagination, but it finishes its task when the imagination becomes materialized.
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Therefore, while encompassing the cosmic dimension of our being, Hazrat Inayat Khan also draws our attention to our personal dimension.
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The soul of man is God, but man has a mind and body of his own.
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When God sent Himself down to the waystations of His servants, their properties exercised their influence over Him. Hence He only determines their properties through them. He does not determine our properties except through us; or rather we determine our own properties through ourselves though through Him. —Ibn 'Arabi (Chittick)
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For the Sufis the personal point of view is not to be discarded. It has a relative validity. Granted our personal assessment of situations is biased. If you look at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from one vantage point you get a limited representation of Notre Dame as compared with looking at it from all 360 angles simultaneously. But your partial view could not be questioned; it has a relative validity.
The confluence of vantage points in the universe, owing to the multiplication, proliferation, and diversification of the One Being in a plethora of 'sub-wholes,' by being integrated, contributes an enriched encompassing grasp to the Whole. To wit: the advantage in the cosmic programming of the individuation of the Totality we call God.
Shunting our Consciousness into the Vantage Point of Another
Having encompassed the peri-personal perspective, you can now, while being centered in your personal identity, shift your consciousness into that of another person. You will find that you can acquire some sense of how things look from the point of view of another person.
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If one is able to expand oneself to the consciousness of another person, one's consciousness becomes as large as two persons'. And so it can be as large as a thousand persons' when one accustoms oneself to try and see what others think.
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See how the same situation that you are involved in with that person is seen differently from the vantage point of that person. This will alter your assessment of the situation dramatically. You can now acknowledge that your assessment was limited by the personal bias of your vantage point (just like the inconclusive way in which Notre Dame looks from one angle alone).
One may distinguish two steps:
(i) I see that person through his/her eyes;
(ii) I see myself through the eyes of that person.
Now you can see that the chances are that that person's assessment of the situation was faulty, biased by, not only his/her vantage point, but his/her misassessment of who you are. This nevertheless does not imply that who you think you are is right or that his/her opinion is right. The reason why these views conflict is that both are biased. But if you include the opinions of more and more people, then you get a many-faceted outlook which approaches more and more to reality. (Incidentally we have been learning in the process which we have been going through in this lesson to evaluate in an all-encompassing perspective who we are). Now you understand better why that person is doing to you what you resent. You see this has a paramount contribution to psychotherapy. It is therapy for resentment through understanding rather just dressing the wounds.
There is a further stage: you do not have to shunt your consciousness into that of another because that person's psyche is somehow intermeshed within your psyche. There is osmosis amongst beings. We can find people who we thought were 'out there' within our own psyche. You learn to know yourself through others, and to know others through yourself.
You can discover yourself mirrored in another person and the other person mirrored in you.
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The reflection from his mind is mirrored upon their minds.
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The hearts are like mirrors and therefore the condition of another person is mirrored upon your soul.
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One needs however to bear in mind that if the mirror is distorted, the impression that has been mirrored is deceptive. Therefore the Sufis persistently enjoin upon one to clear the mirror of the soul.
Now we can reverse our vantage point. Saint Francis of Assisi said: "I thought I was looking at the world, but the world is looking at me."
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As you exhale, stretch your consciousness. That is let it be defocalized, decentered. Simultaneously you will acquire a sense of being impersonal, cosmic. Now imagine that you are looking at yourself from the vantage point of the stars and galaxies, through the immensity of space-time.
As you inhale envision that it is the universe that is looking at itself through your eyes.
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To do this, one needs to turn within.
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It is in this mirror that all that is before you is reflected. But when the eyes are looking outside, then one has turned his back to the mirror which is inside, but when the eyes are turned inside, then one sees in this mirror all that is outside reflected. Therefore all seeing by this process is so clear and manifests to such fullness that in comparison the vision that one has before one's eyes is a blurred or confused vision.
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Then more and more people are mirroring each other until you find yourself wandering in what the Sufis call Aina Khana, the palace of mirrors.
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This world is a house of mirrors, the reflection of one is mirrored upon another. In this world where so many things seem hidden, in reality nothing remains hidden; everything some time or other rises to the surface and manifests itself to view.
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