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Awakening
by
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Inspired by the vision of
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Awakening is seeing things from a different point of view to the one that has been effused so far. Then the previous view is obsolete.—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, Feb. 29, 2004
Hazrat Inayat Khan:
Once a soul is awakened to the reality of life, all other things matter little.
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"If the soul is awakened, how does it awake, and who awakens it?" We see that the time for nature to awake is the spring. It is asleep all winter and it awakes in the spring. There is a time for the sea, when the wind blows and brings good tidings, as if it awakes from sleep; then the waves rise. All this shows struggle, it shows that something has touched it and makes it uneasy, restless; it makes it want liberation, release. Every atom, every object, every condition and every living being has a time of awakening.
When his soul is awakened, he becomes in one moment a different person.
Sometimes after one has made a mistake, by the loss that mistake has caused, the outlook becomes quite different. In business, in one's profession, in worldly life, a certain experience just like a blow has broken something in a person and with that breaking a light has come, a new light.
One's heart is where one's treasure is. If it values a treasure it is awakened to it. If it is not awakened to a treasure it may be awakened to some misery. If its treasure is on earth the heart is awakened rather to the earth than to something else.
When the veil of immediate reason is lifted, then one reaches the cause, then one is not awakened to the surface but to what is behind the surface. There comes another step in awakening when a man does not even see the cause, but comes to the realization of the adjustment of things: how every activity of life, whether it appears to be wrong or right, adjusts itself. By the time he arrives at this condition he has lost much of his false self. That is what brings him there, for the more one is conscious of the false self, the further one is removed from reality.
There is something in the whole creation which is like an alarm-clock set for a certain time to make a sound, so that one may awaken. That clock sounds through all the activity of evolution, and when a certain point of evolution is touched man is awakened by the alarm: that is the word that was lost. It has its echo in the longing.
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| That word rises from one's own heart, re-echoing in everything in this universe. If it does not rise from one's own heart it cannot be heard in the outer world.
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| If a spiritual wakening is not so precious, then what is the use of seeking it in life? A treasure that nobody can take away from you, a light that will always keep and never will be extinguished, that is called spiritual awakening, which is the fulfillment of life's purpose.
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| The sign of that awakening is that upon every person and upon every object the wakened person throws a light, a light of his soul, and sees that object, that condition, in that light. It is his own soul that becomes a torch in his hand, it is his own light that illuminates his path. It is just like throwing a searchlight upon dark corners which one did not see before, and the corners become clear and illuminated again. It is like throwing light upon problems that one did not understand first, it is like seeing with x-rays persons who were a riddle before.
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| Sometimes there is a gradual awakening, and sometimes there is a sudden awakening. To some persons it comes in a moment's time—by a blow, by a disappointment, or because their heart has broken through something that happened suddenly.
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| The soul of some persons awake oftener than the souls of others, but in the life of every soul there are times when such awakening comes.
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| The first sign of the soul's awakening is just like the birth of an infant. That the infant from the time of its birth is interested to hear something, any sound that comes; and to see something, if it is a color or light, whatever it may be, attracts. And therefore, a person whose soul has wakened becomes awake to everything that he sees and to everything that he hears. Compared to that person, everyone else seems to be with open eyes and yet not to see, seems to be with open ears and yet not to hear.
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| Just as one's own sub-consciousness would awaken one at a certain time, if previously warned, in the same way the consciousness of God is the agency for awakening His manifestation, projecting itself through different names and forms to accomplish His desire of being known. All these causes of wisdom are the manifestation of the one cause, Haq.
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| There is a gradual awakening of matter to become conscious and through the awakening to consciousness matter becomes fully intelligent in man.
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| One sees that there is an awakening from childhood to youth, and from youth to a mature age; and in this development one's point of view is changing, one's outlook on life is changing.
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| In reality there are no things; they are all beings. It is simply a gradual awakening from the witnessing aspect to the recognizing aspect.
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| Sa'adi has a very instructive verse: "Every soul that comes on earth comes with a light already kindled in him for his work on earth."
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| He discovers that there is some knowledge in the light of which everything appears the opposite to its previous appearance. In fact, everything is different. He is like a person who admired the theatrical performance, and finds how different everything is next morning. On wakening to the day, how different the view of the world! Before the awakening, the person with his little knowledge thinks he knows so much, but now his pride is finished. He finds that all he has hitherto known is useless. He has to begin all over again. But this is the very time when inspiration and power both come.
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| It is again awakening the mind to the light within.
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| The dervish answered, 'That is why I have come to awaken you. Wake up and pursue your duty with courage. You will be successful.'
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| This awakening is brought about by meditation, the meditation which makes one forget one's false or limited self. The more one is able to forget it, the more the real self awakens.
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| This old world is seen by the child as a new world. As soon as the point of view is changed by the help of meditation, one sees the whole world, which is before everybody and which everybody is seeing, quite differently. One begins to see reason behind reason, cause behind cause, and one's point of view also changes in regard to religion.
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Another form of awakening is the awakening of the self. One begins to wonder, "What does my thought mean, what does my feeling mean, what does wrong and what does right mean? What is it after all?" A man then begins to weigh and measure all that springs within himself. The further he goes the more he sees behind all things, not only living on the surface of life, but attached to all planes of existence. This is a new awakening. Then a person has only to be awakened to the other world; he need not go there. He need not experience what is death, but he can bring about a condition where he rises above life. This brings him to the conclusion that there are many worlds in one world. He closes his eyes to the dimensions of the outer world and finds within his own self: "You are the center of all worlds." And the only thing necessary is turning; not awakening, but turning.
Man has become motionless, stagnant by fixing himself to this world in which he is born, in which he has become interested. If he makes his soul more subtle in order to turn away from this world he can experience all that is said of the different worlds, of the different planes of consciousness. He will find the whole mystery within himself only by being able to make his soul so subtle that it can turn and move.
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| In order to have an ideal one must first awaken to an ideal. Not everyone possesses an ideal; many people do not know of it.
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| The moment a person rises above his mind and awakens in the light of the soul, he becomes spiritual.
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| Very often warning is given in the voice of the fire quality. The use of the words 'tongues of flame' in the Old Testament is narrative of that voice and word which were warning of coming dangers. It was alarming for the people to awaken from their sleep, to awaken to a greater consciousness, to a higher consciousness.
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| They must not be awakened before their sleep is over; they have not had enough, they will feel inclined to awake some other time. It would be like taking a child to a dangerous electric machine.
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| It is no use trying to awake everybody; everyone is awakening to something—if not to higher truth, then to lesser. The one who has the privilege of being awake can give a hand to the one who is trying to awake—to whatever plane it may be. In the language of the mystic giving a hand is called initiation.
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| When a person is dreaming, does he think that he is in a dream? Does he think that it is unimportant? At that moment does he give it less importance than his everyday life? He looks at it as a dream when he is awakened to the other sphere, but while in the dream sphere he will not call it a dream.
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| In the person whose heart is not awakened, God is not yet awakened.
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| And then we come to another stage that develops after the awakening of the soul, and that is the desire for freedom.
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| It is the awakening of certain centers, which make one sensitive, not only externally but also mentally.
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| No doubt some are sleeping, some are half awake, and some on the point of awaking. It is those on the point of awaking who must be helped. Those who are half awake, let them awake; they will see. Those who sleep, after their sleep is over they will wake up and look for it.
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| And in the end perhaps man awakes and finds that all his life he has given his thoughts to something which does not last, which does not even exist and is only an illusion.
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| One night I awoke in the middle of the night feeling a wish to look out of the window into our courtyard at the beautiful moonlight shining there. I went to the window, and looking out I saw some way off a man of saintly appearance, clothed in a long white robe, with long snow-white hair and beard. I saw him as plainly as in full daylight. I was amazed at the sight of him, wondering how it had been possible for him to enter our courtyard, all the doors being locked. But for his saintly appearance I might have supposed him to be a thief, but the nearer he came the taller he grew. At each step his height increased, until I could no longer see his head, and as he came forward his figure became a mist, until at last he was like a shadow, and in a moment he vanished from my sight. My hair stood on end and I was completely overcome by bewilderment.
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| There is a poem of our great poet Rumi where he says, "O sleep, every night thou freest the prisoner from his bonds!" The prisoner, when he is asleep, does not know that he is in prison, he is free. The soul does not feel the misery of the body and the mind, but when a person awakes then the soul thinks that it is in pain and wretched. All this shows us the great bliss of sleep.
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| The real mystic is as wide-awake in this world as in the other. A mystic is not someone who does not possess intellect; a mystic is not someone who dreams. A mystic is wide-awake, yet capable of dreaming when others are not and capable of keeping awake when the rest cannot keep awake.
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| For some it is good to sleep, for others it is good to awake. It is no virtue to awake everybody; it is the greatest crime to awake those who ought to sleep. To make everyone spiritual is not a right mission.
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| There is a long life before us and when the time comes that I must awake I shall awake. But the mystic says, "That is the one thing I must attend to-all other things come after that." It is of the greatest importance in the mystic's life.
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| Vision is a spiritual dream, which is witnessed either when awake or asleep. It is called a dream because the radiance of the vision brings about a semi-sleep to the seer, even when awake.
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| The difference is that of the particular sphere which man is conscious of when he is awake: in one sphere he thinks, 'I am awake', and when that sphere is not before his consciousness he thinks, 'I am asleep.' In reality sleep and the wakeful state are nothing but the turning of the consciousness from one side to the other, from one sphere or plane to another.
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| That is why there have always been some, the chosen ones of God, who have said, 'Awake, awake, while there is time.'
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| Moreover, whilst anyone may experience this blessing during sleep, the person who follows the path of spiritual development will experience it while awake.
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| They see visions even while awake, because their consciousness is not bound to this earthly plane. It is awake upon the higher planes.
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| When we are awake we are covering ourselves from another world, which is in fact more real. The difference between the sleeping and waking state is that when we cover ourselves from what is real we say, "I am awake," and when we cover ourselves from what is unreal, and illusion, we say we are asleep. It is the self that is covered.
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| They are afraid to lose themselves, and they forget that it is only the false conception of themselves that they lose.
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| If they awake too soon they will be confused, they will act wrongly, speak wrongly. It is therefore that an untimely education of the philosophy of truth always proves to be undesirable.
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| There are many in this world who work and do things and yet they are asleep; they seem awake externally, but inwardly they are asleep.
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| Many seem wide-awake to the life without, but asleep to the life within; and though the chamber of their heart is continually visited by the hosts of heaven, they do not know their own heart; they are not there.
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| Malakut, which is experienced in dreams, the world of mind, of thought and imagination; and Jabarut, the state of deep sleep when even the mind is still. … That state of Malakut is reached while in the waking state by the great thinkers, the great inventive minds and the gifted artists; and it is experienced by the seers and sages… Still another experience is Hahut, a further stage, which is experienced by souls who have reached the most high spiritual attainment, which is called Samadhi in Vedantic terms. In this experience a person is conscious of Jabarut while awake; and this state he brings about at will. Now there is the question if a soul by rising to all these spheres becomes conscious of the sphere of the jinn and of the angelic heavens, or if it only sees within itself its self-made world of mind, and the spheres of joy and peace within itself. The answer is, first it sees its own world by rising to the sphere called Malakut… The perpendicular line shows a progress straight within from Nasut to Jabarut, experiencing one's own world within oneself; but that which the horizontal line denotes is expansion. 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 will become God-conscious and all embracing. The man who shuts himself up from all men, however high spiritually he may be, will not be free in Malakut, in the higher sphere. He will have a wall around him, keeping away the jinns and even the angels of the angelic heavens; and so his journey will be exclusive.
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| A person may be intelligent, clever, learned, good or pious, and yet his sense of perception may not be fully awake. It must be remembered as the first principle of life that manifestation was destined for keener observation of life within and without.
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| When we awake we find a house; that, therefore, is reality. The palaces which are built in that world are as much our own, are really much more our own. When the body dies, these remain; they will always be there.
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| The only difference is that one takes a shorter way and the other takes a longer way; one goes round about and the other takes a straight path. There is no difference in the destination; the only difference is in the journey, whether one goes on foot or whether one drives, whether one is awake or whether one is asleep and is taken blindly to the destination, not knowing the beauties of the way.
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| I recognized that the world was neither a stage set up for our amusement nor a bazaar to satisfy our vanity and hunger, but a school wherein to learn a hard lesson....
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| The king is never conscious of his kingship and all its attributes of luxury and might, unless his imagination is reflected in them and thus proves his true sovereignty.
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According to the ideas of the mystics there are five stages of consciousness which make one asleep to one stage and awake to another. One state of consciousness is our experience through the senses.
We all live in the same world, and each has his own world. Man's world is that of which he is conscious and in this way every person has his heaven and his hell made by himself. He need not wait for heaven and hell afterwards, he has already there what he has made for himself, what he is conscious of. If he is conscious of sorrow and depression, tortures and sufferings, pains and agitations, he lives in all that. He has made a fire for himself and is standing in it; he need not wait till death comes, he is already there. The one who lives in beauty, compassion, affection, forgiveness, appreciation for all that is good and beautiful, has heaven here; he need not wait for afterwards. This again shows that we are in the world to which we are awake, and to the world to which we are not awake we are asleep. We are asleep to that part of life which we do not know… and that is a world too. It is a separate world,.. the third stage of consciousness—this stage lies between spirit and matter. It is this state of consciousness which we experience as the condition of sleep which we call fast sleep, deep sleep, when we do not even dream…. It stands as a barrier between two experiences: one in this world and one which is reached by spiritual attainment…. These three stages of consciousness, physical, dream and deep sleep, are each nothing but an experience of the soul in an awakened state. For instance, when a person is awake outwardly he is conscious of the outer world; when he is fast asleep he is awakened to that particular plane while asleep to both dream-land and the physical state.
Now you may ask, “If a person who sleeps deeply is awakened to a certain consciousness, why does he not remember it? We think that he is asleep, for if he was awake he should know something about it; if he remembers nothing it means that he was asleep and certainly not awake. To be awake means experiencing something; during deep sleep one does not experience.” In order to understand deep sleep we have nothing in the physical existence to compare it with and therefore that experience of deep sleep remains only as a great satisfaction, joy and upliftment, as something that has vitalized us and has created energy and enthusiasm in life.
There is a still higher plane or experience of consciousness, different from these three experiences which everybody knows more or less, and this fourth experience is that of the mystic. It is an experience of seeing without the help of the eyes, of hearing without the help of the ears, and experiencing a plane without the help of the physical body—an experience similar to that of the physical body and at the same time independent of it… the soul still remains-independent of the physical body and capable of seeing, living and experiencing even more freely and fully…
The experience of this consciousness is of a similar kind to that of a person in deep sleep. But in the deep sleep one is asleep outwardly, which means in the physical and in the mental body, while in the condition of nirvana, or highest consciousness, a person is conscious all through: he is conscious of the body as much as of the soul.
The body's awakening means to feel sensation. The mind's awakening means to think and to feel. The soul's awakening means for the soul to become conscious of itself. Everyone is conscious of his affairs, of his conditions of life, of his body, of his mind, but not of his soul. In order to become conscious of the soul one has to work in a certain way, because the soul has become unconscious of itself, by working through its vehicles—body and mind—it has become unaware of its own freedom, of its own beauty.
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| Be just so much awake as is needed to carry out your responsibilities in life, and not to allow yourself to be quite trodden upon, and so much in the dream as you can without neglecting your life's responsibilities.
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| God lost in the manifestation is the state which we call waking. The manifestation lost in God is realization. In my language I would call that awakening and this a dream.
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