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Like a cosmic pull that exerts a force of its own over humanity,
the Universe is constantly compelling us to break free of the conditioning
of the past in order to transform and evolve. Just like the constant changes
and adaptations in nature that have been occurring for eons of time—resulting
in emerald rain forests, exotic animals, and complex, intelligent creatures
called people—this evolutionary force functions like a spiritual magnet to
draw humanity beyond its limitations into further dimensions of consciousness
and levels of perception. Indeed, the impetus to span the cleft from the past
to the future is part of an ongoing, billions-of-years-old process by which
the Universe has been fashioning its stardust into human beings.
The planning of the Universe is affected by humankind’s free, creative participation;
thus the goal for humans is to become conscious of their profound impact upon the
unfolding of creation. Should such a quantum shift in consciousness actually occur,
it would represent an heroic victory over determinism— not over nature, but over the
limitations of our own minds that prevent us from working in harmony with the Universe.
Conscious evolution is humankind’s final frontier, the ultimate freedom sought by humanity
since the dawn of time. Thus the challenge seems to be one of overcoming the fear of the
unexplored territory that lies ahead, and finding the courage and optimism to illuminate
the spiritual dimension hidden within our nature. For it is the intuitive, radar-like
quality of this transcendent faculty that will help to guide us through the darkness
of the unknown— illuminating our minds and awakening our hearts to the splendor of a
new consciousness.
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The premises on which our whole work can be based is the necessity for reaching out beyond
the limits of our personal vantage point into a wider consciousness.
... a transcendent awareness that can never be explained by the mind or constricted by the
personal vantage point: the sense of eternity and infinity. Our problem is how to reconcile
the saving grace of transcendent awareness -- the safety buoy in our lives -- with the personal
vantage point.
... we do experience eternity and infinity continually, but we tend to eliminate this experience
from our imago mundi -- our picutre of the world -- when we focus on our personal
consciousness.
Nature has made human beings in such a way as to equip us with the ability to surive physically,
and consequently the whole framework of our being is a compromise. Human beings normally function
within the middle ranges of the universe. At short distances, two parallel lines never meet, but
at long distances they do; the human being is made to function in the realm where two parallel lines
never meet -- a middle range that is superbly adapted to supermarket shopping or crossing the street,
but which gives no understanding of meaningfulness. Since the greatest use of our lives involves more
than space-time relationships, we must learn to modify consciousness at will in order to get into the
wider settings of consciousness.
Instead of expanding consciousness in the vastness of the cosmos, we should experience the divine
consciousness crowded into the personal focus.
"We want nothing but the impossible possibility." - Prentice Mulford
Every fraction of the totality contains the totality in it, at least implicitly or potentially.
There is no such thing as a fraction; whatever might be considered a fraction has the totality potentially within it.
It is impossible to know all the aspects of other people's problems, even if they are not masquerading, mystifying themselves,
or presenting a view of their problems that the listener might be impressed with, as is so often the case.
To understand the consciousness of the cosmos, through which we can bring out our intuition, we can make a comparison.
If we imagine the consciousness of a bee, we might find that the consciousness of the beehive is stronger in the individual
bee than its own personal consciousness. In the same way, when our own sense of identity spills over the border that we assign
to our person, we have access to the collective consciousness.
The inspiration of a musician or artist seems to come from a super-mind, or the planning behind the universe. The phrase
"the planning behind the universe" does not imply that everything has been predestined from the beginning of time; the planning
behind the universe is always spontaneous, inventive, and exploratory. That is why there is trial and error. What is truly
extraordinary is that we are part of that planning. In fact, because there are no boundaries to our being, we are that planning.
This is what endows us with creativity.
What the dervish does is to pick up the creative images and sort them out, bringing about order in reverie, following the principle of
"order out of disorder." The dervish is able to do this because he has lost his sense of identity -- his sense of time and space --
so that he is functioning in a way that is not what might be called conducive to life in the world. This raises the question of whether
it is possible to live very much in space and time and still develop intuition. In fact, I believe that we should have our feet on the earth,
our heads in the heavens, and our hearts beating with an excess of ecstasy... To determine whether we can do so while dealing with
everyday life, we have only to resolve the question of whether it is possible to function on several planes at the same time --
to be in what I call "stereoscopic consciousness." My answer is a resounding "Yes."
As the species Homo sapiens evolves, we will develop more and more the ability to combine many different types of settings of
consciousness at the same time. This is the objective of the holistic age.
The person who could be described as "uptight" is actually closing himself in to his own ego center and is, therefore, not enriching his being.
He become judgemental of other people, and he becomes judgemental because he sees the other person as an "It."
It is not possible to understand things from the vantage point of the personal self, the lens-like aspect of our consciousness, because that
image of the panorama is os terribly impoverished.
The best credo of all times is that of modern physics -- that everything is an unbroken, undivided wholeness.
It is our assumption that we are a fragment of the totality that stands in the way of experiencing the totality. From the moment we can
overcome that way of thinking, we have access to the thinking of the totality. That is intuition experiencing what is happening to another
person. One of the ways we can do this is to overcome the idea that we are located in space. That idea is a very basic assumption; in fact,
at one time people wondered where the soul was -- whether it was in the heart, the brain, or elsewhere -- as if the soul could be located anywhere.
People many no longer think about the location of th esoul, but there is still a tendency to think of ourselves in terms of occupying a location
in space. We can best overcome our sense of being encapsulated in a location in space by realizing that the totality of the universe emerges
in specific ways in specific locations -- but it is still the toality that emerges. From the moment we realize this, it become much easier to enter
into the consciousness of all people.
Nature does, of course, build in a limitation on our ability to "tune in" to the entire cosmos. We can imagine the confusion that would ensue
if our radios could not be tuned to a single station at a time, but were always open to all the frequencies. If consciousness were not
centered in the individual -- in the notion of self -- we would be exposed to too many impressions to be able to process them. This is why our
consciousness tends to be focused in the vantage point of the person.
What we would like to do is find a way to meditate in everyday life, so that we do not have to open one door only to close another. The only way
to do this is to increase our capacity, so that we can both maintain the focal center of the person and, at the same time, have an overall consciousness.
This overall consciousness is something that is always present in our consciousness, but we can increase it to a very large extent. It is this overall
consciousness that allows us to get into the consciousness of all beings.
The map is not the territory. The image we have of the circumstances is not the way things are, it is just the idea we have of the circumstances.
Farid ad-din Attar says, "O man, if only you knew that you are free. It is your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity."
Being exposed to the assessment of other people may not necessarily give us a true image of ourselves, but it will certainly add to the image
we make of ourselves. This is of utmost importance, because one of the ways in which we limit ourselves most is by creating a particular
notion of ourselves. This is our prison.
Cosmic consciousness: consciousness that is no longer centered in the person.
The flower is delighted by having an opportunity to manifest beauty, to display beauty; in fact, the beauty of the cosmos is coming through it.
You can feel how this beauty manifests as form and as shades of color, and you may also experience how precarious the flower feels: it is
short-lived, and it is delivered into the hands of the environment.
All the beauty, and also all the power, that are coming through are beyond its own personal consciousness, and where the personal consciousness
is not strong, then the divine consciousness comes through more strongly.
Very often the murshids, or Sufi teachers, call their pupils when they are in a very high state of meditation,
because they want to share it. When one experiences something very beautiful, one wants to share it,
particularly when it is an impersonal experience.
Anyone who loves another person can make that love creative by helping the person to be what he is.
The only way to do that is to discover the real person. Then that person will discover himself through
your eyes, and you will help him to become what he is.
What you are getting into is a cosmic or transcendent state that is coming through that person, right down
into his personality. At the time when you are reaching him, you are really reaching into the cosmic
dimensions behind the personality.
This is a practice that I recommend doing every day -- getting into the higher consciousness of all the
beings around one.
The sun embodies a life-giving, energy-giving disposition. So if you get into the consciousness of the sun,
you yourself become life-giving.
All the radio waves in the universe interpenetrate one another at every point in space, whereas the electrons
occupy separate spaces. The waves are all co-present at one point of space, which means that all reality
that appears in different locations in space is co-present in the inner space, irrespective of location.
You can find everything everywhere -- or, perhaps more accurately, nowhere, since this reality is not
found in the space that is outside. There is no being, no thought, no happening in the universe that you
cannot tune into, because it is all co-present in the inner space. You cannot reach it by going anywhere
or by turning outside through your senses; you can reach it only by turning inside and getting into the
divine consciousness.
What we mean by "looking for God" is, in fact, looking for sense. Today, the question is not whether God
exists or not, but whether everything ultimately makes sense, because God is the ultimate sense. Our minds
are continually destroying our intuition of meaningfulness, so we are constantly fighting against our reason.
The greatness of a human being manifests when he stands by what he knows in his higher realization even when
he is faced with proof of the opposite from the point of view of his mind. This is the strength of faith.
There are moments when we are aware of having always existed and aware that we will always exist. This
awareness is also part of the awareness that we have always been and will always be as a continuity within
change. It is not as if a part of our being were eternal and another part subject to change; our eternity
is like an Ariadnean threat that runs through beyond the episode that is this life on earth. The experience
of this eternity is one without which our whole sense of meaningfulness would collapse, because if it is
true that what we experience in the episode we call our life is perishable, life would not make sense;
and everything in life makes sense.
The word "eternity," like the word "infinity", is very misleading. Instead of thinking of infinity as a thing
we can grasp, we should perhaps consider it an infinite regress -- something that is never reached.
The preconceived ideas we have of eternity, infinity, and perfection (among other preconceived ideas) are
straightjackets in which the souls of human beings become imprisoned and suffer alienation, suffocation,
despair and agony; and much of our agony is in the soul.
The most wonderful thing that can happen is seeing into the meaningfulness of life. And the extraordinary
thing is that we not only participate in our bodiness in the fabric of the universe, but we also have
access into the thinking behind the universe. Indeed, we are that thinking: there is no frontier.
This is the redeeming grace.
... the development of the ability to look upon oneself objectively in the middle of action. Instead of
entering into the consciousness of other beings and seeing how we look to them, we can practice disassociation
of personality so that one dimension of our being is able to look upon another dimension of being.
Unmasking the hoax...
... considering your body very objectively... it is made of the same substance as the trees, the grass, the clouds,
the earth; in fact, it is a formation made out of the substance of the earth. It may have been elaborated in the course
of evolution into something wonderful, but it is not you. How can you say it is you? You could not make it, and,
anyway, what are "you"? What you mean by "me" could not be this extraordinary piece of machinery that has been worked
out in so much detail.
You can imagine walking in the forest and suddenly realizing that your body is made of the same substance as the
woods, and you can make it walk! At that moment you are caught in the magic of life -- of what life means.
You realize that there had been confusion because you had thought that the body was you. When you have reached
this degree of clarity, you can look upon the death of the body without fear, because it is not you anyway.
It is a temporary formation that has a certain purpose. In fact, there is nothing more liberating than what the monks
used to call contemplatio mortis -- contemplating death -- thinking of the body rotting under the earth
and letting go of it, because if it was formed then it must also be disintegrated.
"If I am not this body, what am I? Who am I?" What is a river? You imagine that it is the water, yet is it never
the same water. You are like a river: a continuity of transient things. It is a very perplexing thought. Whatever
you are is certainly not material, because the material aspect of the river is totally transient.
You look upon your mind and see that thoughts arise and thoughts call for other thoughts by a process of
association; thoughts vanish and new thoughts arise. So thoughts are formations. You realize that these thoughts
have been conditioned, just as your body has been programmed by the impersonal forces of evolution and is, in fact,
part of the whole flow of bodiness of the universe. In the same way, your thinking has been programmed: it is the
thinking of the universe.
You can catch yourself believing that these are my thoughts when in fact you could not think differently, because
it is the way your thinking has been programmed, and as long as you think it is your thinking you will be fooling
yourself.
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