a mountain is an
upside down
valley
today there are no words
poetry
knowing questions
unknowing answers
essays
beauty has two faces
reflections of love
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First published in 2008
Author and publisher:
Shabbir Banoobhai
All rights reserved. No
part of this collection may be
copied, reproduced,
stored, or transmitted in any form
without the prior written
approval of the publisher
© Shabbir Banoobhai
Email address: shabbir@iafrica.com
Website: www.veilsoflight.com
Designed by: Sumayya
Essack - Dizzy Blue Dezign
Email address:
sumayyaessack@gmail.com
Edited by:
Printed and bound by:
ISBN 000000000
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Preface
The book you are holding in your hands is a very precious book (at least to the author). It contains a volume of poetry, a set of essays, and a series of reflections of love. In essence, it is a collection of three books.
The reflections in beauty has two faces were written over several years. Most of the poems in today there are no words were written in a single month. The essays in knowing questions unknowing answers were written after the publication of if i could write – a book of philosophical meditative letters to my daughters. They complement the letters and it is conceivable that some day these two works will be published together.
I hope you find the collection interesting conceptually; and worthwhile reading. If you decide not to read any further, replace it gently wherever you found it: remember, it is precious to someone!
If you would like electronic access to the material, you will find it on my website: www.veilsoflight.com. Whatever you decide, may you find, within this book or outside it, what you were searching for when you first picked up a mountain is an upside down valley.
Shabbir Banoobhai
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today there are no words
poetry
for ruxanna, tazkiyah and
ilhaam
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contents
you slowed down time 1
he who has no name 2
such a day of love i seek 3
i have at last 4
recently in your company i found 5
if you can be 6
our memories are our fingerprints 7
the world exists for you through us 8
as much as 9
words sometimes 10
we see god in beauty 11
the whole of existence 12
our personalities 13
we are truly pathetic not because of a lack of grace 14
life has never heard of 15
recipe for mass destruction 16
when one bullet could have killed you 18
for na’eem 20
everything we know 22
today 23
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you slowed down time
stopped it as if it were a train
so this world could come aboard
and be taken on a journey through
an ordinary day of your life, see
your beauty field the attention
of the rampant sky, delighting
in its own impetuosity, its laughter
lassoing your heart, hear the cry
of wheels on the rails of submission
crossing the bridge of the morning
following the curve of the afternoon
winding like a river, until evening
flying from a mountain peak
plunges into the sea and the fist
of the sun is swathed in night
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he who has no name
i am his name
he who is silence
i am his voice
he who is light
i am his shadow
he who is love
i am his heart
he who is beauty
i am his face
he who is alone
i am his alone
he who is one
i am his none
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such a day of love i seek
that all my senses may be lost
in a crisis of loving, where anger
is love sleeping, crying is love
waking, forgetting to love is
loving, and loving, not caring
whether or how or who or why
i love, for all i do is love
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i have at last
no thought
of friend
or foe
no need that
creates clayless
idols anymore
just a love that
turns me inside
out like earth
being readied
for a gift
of life
or death
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recently in your company i found
myself starting to hide my smile
just in case you thought
what is he so happy about
i haven’t seen him do any good
and that’s true, i haven’t either
so please don’t be cross
but i have decided to set you free
of the heavy truth you are to me
it’s just my way of saying
dear god, i need to become a friend
who can laugh when things go bad
and not take on the task of varying
that which you keep rearranging
beyond my ability to track
and so you see, it’s time to say
it’s all too much for me, i missed
the point, misread the plot
tried too hard to be like you
when all you probably want is for me
to be me, and to smile occasionally
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if you can be
an empty tree
and yet be the rain
nourishing its roots
why must i desire
forever to be fruit
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our memories are our fingerprints
they reveal where we have been
when, and what we did there
whether the sun shone on the day
we arrived, and whether we left
lonely or with love tousling our hair
free to love again, or chained
forever to a past devoid of a future
like grains of rice they can
sustain us, like rolls of cotton
they can clothe us, or like acid
peel the skin of our humanity
or they can become gifts, like paint
without which there can be no art
remind us of the path taken by god
as he walked through our lives
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this world exists for you through us
a world apart yet not apart from you
the sky exists in our minds
the seas flow in our souls
through us you are able to fragment
your beauty, are able to see it shine
on mountaintops, in deep valleys
on clouds, and in drops of rain
hear birds sing, compare
the music of a flowing stream
with that of leaves stirring, look
into our eyes and find yourself in love
we are your eyes and ears, your hair
your skin, your hands, your very feet
in us, your beauty finds a living voice
as us, you are both knower and known
how strange then to believe that you live
in some far, inaccessible place, when you
have made your home in us, your heart
ours, and chosen us as your
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as much as
i hear your voice
in any sound
it becomes light
as much as i see
you outside me
i find you
inside me
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words sometimes
quench a thirst
become a dam
drown a land
or like my palms
open in prayer
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we see god in beauty
and beauty in ourselves
and in others
god everywhere
redeeming darkness
burying within it, light
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the whole of existence
fluctuates each moment
light becoming love
love revealing light
the quality of any state
of being or becoming
determines its beauty
caught in a net of time
and space, seeking the
ultimate, endless grace
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our personalities
are like clothes
we put on, mostly
chosen in the dark
there are times
we need to change
try something new
but first we have
to strip the soul
bare to its bones
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we are truly pathetic not because of a lack of grace
in our lives but because we have so little understanding
of its extent and depth; it is as if the sea were to say
‘enough, i am full’, when no more than a lake
or the sky were to say, ‘why are you lifting me so high
when i am really fine just above this mountain’
or the earth were to be so pleased with the first sign
of life in the darkness below, it stopped wondering
what would finally grow and said ‘no!’
to the sun and the rain waiting to follow
when we see beauty through the haziest of pictures
we think we are seeing paintings by michaelangelo
to continue might make things worse; stopping, at least
proves how easily we are satisfied with the little we know
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life has never heard of
the
prohibition of corporal
punishment
act
it hasn’t the time to read
the fancy stuff, it just
gets on with it
if you do anything wrong
it gives you a smack
and that’s that
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recipe for mass destruction
retreat to a sanctuary of lies
cleansed of truth
pour the threat of darkness
into a shimmering container
add enough spin, preferably
before television cameras
stir the madness now brewing
while monitoring the ratings
let the concern for security
boil, until fear dilutes reason
decorate with the ultimate
peril; serve with love
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it is not another light that has drowned
the light in your heart
not the ascent of night
that has walled in the darkness
but some fear suppressing love itself
that has made you abandon your home
the wind billowing the curtains
revealing an infant, asleep
a moses, or a muhammad, or a christ
who has not yet played with toys
or heard of a cross, or carried it with love
soon to be buried
amidst the uprooted olive trees
and thorns of barbed-wire fences
you trying to look for security
in your new home, the barrel of a gun
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
when
one bullet could have killed you
and
probably did
why
did your killer need four
did he instantly realize that he had
not only killed a child but destroyed himself
was he trying desperately to dislodge death
from the bullets that had gone before
when
one bullet could have killed you
and
probably did
why did your killer need four
that he could find no love for you
when
one bullet could have killed you
and
probably did
why
did your killer need four
was he ruled by some uncontrollable fear
or was it his training that overpowered him
rather than some personal hatred or rage
when
one bullet could have killed you
and
probably did
why
did your killer need four
was he unlike any killer who had killed before
were the second, third and fourth bullets
meant for those for whom he soldiered
who had ruined his life for evermore
when
one bullet could have killed you
and
probably did
why
did your killer need four
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for na’eem
just for you, for asking
he found the missing word
lost like a kite in the sky
trying to reach the sun
found last night the moon
looking pale, as if it had
just realised it was not
getting any brighter
despite years of trying
but reassured since that
as much as the darkness
of the night gives it its life
the sun too is known
by the darkness around it
found in the heart, the
source of a river flowing
from
ground zero
to
found you standing where
the land tilts to the sea
looking intently
at what seems like a kite
trying to reach the sun
just for you, for asking
he found, missing from
a world of words: love
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everything we know
has a day meaning
and a night meaning
its day meaning
we can see, or hear
night, a hidden love
fear; our thoughts
are as fluid as time
flowing over space
space, through time
existence appears
as light stitched with
darkness or darkness
with light; lying next
to each other, like
a child lying against
its mother’s breast
separate, yet one
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today
there
are
no
words
only
light
falling
in
love
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knowing questions
unknowing answers
essays
for those who know
or want to know
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Contents
Reflections on peace and compassion
31
Reflections on love, light, and lightness 35
Reflections on grace, destiny, difficulties with loving, and
happiness 42
Reflections on art and science
45
Reflections on the heart, the soul, and the spirit 52
Reflections on creation 57
Reflections on generosity, forgetfulness, and opposites 65
Reflections on the created world and consciousness 70
Reflections on the outer, the inner, and knowing the Divine 74
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Reflections on peace and
compassion
Why is peace so difficult to attain? We
all search for it endlessly, yet almost never find it, except fleetingly.
Though indispensable, peace remains unattainable unless we find it (first)
within ourselves. Believing that the world outside needs to be peaceful before
we know peace within ourselves, invariably results in a state of loss; and
unless we can find some hidden benefit in the loss, in the loss of peace
itself.
Loss itself (but not the loss of our
values) can strengthen us and prepare us for living as social or spiritual
activists in an ambiguous world with an uncertain future. A loss can become a
gift we would not have chosen for ourselves. It can engender within us a sense
of humility: the realization that the foundation of our strength is not just
(our) strength, even if it is impossible to create a solid foundation without
it.
Unless we are willing to pay the price,
and accept some tangible or defining loss – such as the loss of a friendship, a
job, a love that was not meant to be – we might not be able to realize a
compensating intangible gain of the spirit: insight, courage, nobility. And
unless the knowledge we have is both wide and deep, enabling us to explore the
outer world without fearing the loss of our inner sanctity, the peace we know
will disintegrate when we are challenged by fear – real or illusionary.
When we cause destruction in the physical
world for whatever reason – destroy a tree, a home, or life itself, or diminish
its capacity for joy – the destroyed landscape reflects, in some way, the state
of our hearts and minds. Preserving our existence by destroying that of another
diminishes our own spiritual essence, whether we realize it or not.
Therefore we should not relinquish our
innate sense of right and wrong, or sacrifice our compassion or love, because
of some visible or invisible (manipulative) pressure placed on us by those who
are destructive; and we should not succumb to emotional blackmail that abuses
our natural and wholesome instincts for self-preservation, or preys on our
perceptions of being persecuted, or on our fear of losing something we cherish,
and in the process of protecting us from some ‘loss’, causes loss to our spirit
itself.
Tragically, we often fall prey to such
fear, or to anger, or arrogance, or greed, or to an unbecoming desire for
physical or spiritual dominance, or to an unforgiving determination to exact
retribution for some past loss. Far more challenging (and rewarding) than the
destruction of another, is seeing others as equally human: believing that God
lies beneath the feet of an ‘other’. Only such courageous humility can confirm
our own Divine essence.
Failing our highest sense of love (and
justice), we effectively forego a life of compassion and integrity. Compassion
is active,
transformational love. When we are compassionate, we are devoid of anger. If we
live compassionately, we will find it impossible to ill-treat or hurt someone
knowingly, as compassion involves helping others who are in difficulty, even if
they hurt us while we are helping them.
In being compassionate, we distance
ourselves from the evil that may be present in others without separating
ourselves from the good in them, the same good that exists within us, that
makes us consider them worthy of our love. If love is the fruit of our being
Divine, the quality of our humanity can only be known by the quality of this
fruit – the quality of our compassion.
If we could be deeply generous, in
unexpected and creative ways, we could make our lives and our world more
wholesome – whether through sharing a physical possession, a land, or through
some intangible act of love or kindness: an acknowledgement of the humanity of
others. Sharing the joy and grief of others and allowing others to share our
own, making our own joy or grief universal, while not foregoing them as our
own, would encourage others to embrace us. It is only by regarding others as
uniquely human and displaying towards them a unique humanness, that we become
uniquely human ourselves.
In order to build bridges between
ourselves and others, it may help us to reflect on how many of our ‘friends’
(in reality) are strangers. And how, sometimes, strangers can become close
friends. Therefore, if we meet someone who might have something beneficial to
share with us, we must try and learn as much as we can – even from a stranger.
For what is the value of such an encounter, where a sharing of some truth or
understanding could take place, if it does not?
But meaningful learning can only take
place where there is a desire to learn, as well as knowledge of, compassion
for, and trust in the other. And we may need to close a door that leads to some
good, if it also leads to some harm; for a door that is of greater benefit to
us may only open when we close a door that is less beneficial to us. This
requires the ultimate courage: having faith in unseen and unknown goodness.
As individuals, we survive through love.
As societies, we survive through justice. But love and justice are two sides of
the same coin – integrity: the currency of peace, the price of happiness. If we
fail as individuals, we cannot succeed as societies. And if we fail as
societies, we destroy individuals.
Our search for justice is a search for the
measure of our worth. Our generosity towards others reflects our measure of
their worth, but it also reflects our own worth to others. What would be the
value of knowing our own worth if there was not a soul in the world to share
this knowledge with – to demonstrate that worth in our living?
This brings us to the search for answers
to the questions: who are we? Where have we come from? Why are we here? Who is
the unknown person walking besides us? Is he or she really a stranger, or a
friend in disguise? Can we afford not to know?
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Reflections
on love, light, and lightness
Love is God’s knowable light – light that has been ‘darkened’ (or softened) by God as an act of mercy, so that it can be known. Divine light would otherwise be too bright to be known. For love to become light once more, for us to become enlightened (through loving), this light has to shine through the veil that covers it; a veil that, paradoxically, helps in the unveiling of the light it covers. The outcome of enlightened loving (the fruit of the tree of an enlightened consciousness) is knowledge of the Divine (the source of light).
How does love (knowable light) come into existence? It is in or through the birth of our consciousness itself that love is born (light is darkened), and enlightenment becomes possible. God’s darkening of Divine light – that gives rise to (knowable) love – takes place within us. Ultimately, we ourselves are (God’s) love. We, ourselves, are proof of God’s existence.
Being reflections of the Divine, we essentially become Divine. Being reflections of Divine consciousness, we acquire consciousness of the Divine, and become not God, not lovers of God, but simply God’s love.
The ebb and flow of day-to-day love often depends on whether our awareness of (or need for) love at a particular moment in time is a ‘sun-awareness’ or a ‘moon-awareness’ – whether we need a ‘sun-love’ or a ‘moon-love’. Sometimes, when our need is for a sun-love and we see the ‘sun’ in someone, we think, ‘this is the ideal love – the only love worth having’. But human love can ebb and flow. And when love ebbs, and our sun-love becomes too harsh or too bright, our need for a gentler love may direct our attention to a moon-love.
But this love may also not satisfy us fully if in the process we lose the sun or our sun-love completely. It is only when we realize that all light is one that we finally pass the stage of loving others only because of our need to be loved, and see ourselves as love – as God’s knowable light.
One way to understand our changing needs is to give some attention to a trial faced by the Prophet Abraham. While he was still struggling to differentiate between the relevance of the sun and the moon, he initially considered that the sun itself might be God. But when the sun set and it became dark, he rejected this understanding. Then when the moon rose and lit the dark sky, he considered that the moon might be God. But at daybreak, the moon faded. And he realized that he had again been mistaken in his understanding.
So what are we to do when sometimes the moon seems infinitely more attractive than the sun, and at other times the sun seems infinitely more attractive than the moon, and we need or want both? One solution is to wear spiritual ‘dark glasses’ in the ‘sunlight’; another is to realize, when we are attached to a moon-love and need to see the sun, that it is the light of the sun that is being reflected by the moon. Prayer too, may be of assistance. It may not change our nature (our natural propensity to be attracted to all that is beautiful), but it may safeguard us from those experiences that expose the flaws in our nature and make us vulnerable.
Of course we are born with great wisdom too – and no mean ability to cajole our inner selves to adjust our rhythms (sun-moon cycles) to be in harmony with the rhythms or cycles of those with whom we need to be in harmony – or to influence them to some degree to adjust theirs. After all, we all have within us elements of both the ‘sun’ and the ‘moon’.
All human love is essentially a love of beauty. But love of beauty itself can become a form of idol-worship if love of an object of beauty becomes an end in itself. Knowable beauty should therefore always hint at or lead us to the beauty of the unknowable – for it is unknowable beauty that gives knowable beauty its beauty; if this were not so, all knowable beauty would lose its beauty immediately upon our knowing it.
True love of beauty leads us not only to appreciate the existence of a beautiful person or object, but leads us to an awareness of beauty beyond that reflected by the beautiful person or object; it gives life to beauty beyond that which generated the original love or appreciation.
The light within us is attracted to the light everywhere around us. If the ‘shadow’ in us did not focus purely on the object itself, our appreciation of all beauty would be similar to our appreciation of the beauty of the sky or the sea. We love their changing hues, their endlessness, and their different moods, without ever wanting to possess this beauty solely for ourselves. We do not try (at least I hope we do not) to prevent others from loving the sky or the sea in any way they choose! This generosity (or plain helplessness) allows us to be at ease with natural beauty that we cannot make exclusively our own.
Yet when it comes to a beautiful object we can possess, the shadow in us invariably desires this beauty solely for itself. Believing that its own beauty is reflected in the beautiful object, it views possession of the object as a way of affirming its own beauty. Knowing our strengths and weaknesses, it appeals to the giving dimension of our nature and (if necessary) subverts our generosity, to get us to possess the object by any means possible so that it can know, or love, its own beauty in a tangible way.
Not surprisingly, it fails to see the danger in becoming immersed in loving the object and forgetting the source of its beauty. If we are over-generous, we may agree to satisfy the shadow’s needs; but we may eventually have to pay a very high price for the beauty of a shadow.
What are we to do when faced with losing some intangible beauty as a result of our knowing or enjoying tangible beauty unwisely, or prematurely? It may not always help us to fight the shadow overtly, just as it is not wise to be overtly conscious of being spiritual; for then we face the possibility of living a life of perpetual conflict – overt spirituality locked in a life-and-death struggle with the shadow.
Caught in such a battle, even if we succeed in not giving in to the shadow’s demand to be fed at the table of love or beauty or knowledge, it might still succeed in distracting us sufficiently from appreciating or knowing or loving a beauty that is greater than its own. For the shadow is decidedly uninterested in any beauty but its own.
One way to subdue the shadow is to allow it to live ‘peacefully’ within us while not giving in to its demands – for the last thing it wants is to be ignored or forgotten. Its very existence (strength) is derived from conflict. Without conflict, it is stripped of its strength. If we give in to its demands, it simply places new demands on us.
Allowing it to live without conflict should only be considered when our higher consciousness is alive and healthy; and is only effective when we understand that the power of the shadow over us is ultimately very limited, and we know that if we stay within the current of grace, in the ocean of love, we are unlikely to be blown off course by something that is effectively nothing more than an unwelcome distraction.
For as long as we have not succumbed fully to a wayward shadow, there will be some healthy disturbance in our inmost being: an ongoing questioning of the rightness or wrongness of our actions, desires, or needs; an awareness of some inner unhappiness that lingers within us. So if we need to, we can always respond more vigorously, by increasing our remembrance of God, and asking Him or Her to help us avoid doing anything that will cause hurt to ourselves or others; reminding ourselves to change before we succumb completely.
Living gracefully means living with an inner lightness that allows the Divine to dwell within us in ways the shadow finds difficult to detect. By not being overtly conscious of our love for the Divine, we diminish any cause the shadow has to fight us; it has no way of fighting a battle it does not know is being fought. Ignored, it loses its power to distract us. The more the shadow is negated, the more serene the sky of love looks, and the more brightly the stars of enlightenment shine in it.
In approaching both human and Divine love – all wholesome love – wholesomely, we can do no better than to consider how two companions of the Prophet once responded to his call for support in providing much-needed assistance to a fledgling community. A close, greatly respected and generous companion brought along half his wealth – which deeply touched the Prophet. Another much-loved companion brought along all his wealth, and laid it at the Prophet’s feet.
Both are superlative examples of love, loyalty, and generosity. Yet if we could emulate one of these companions, we would naturally wish to emulate the companion who loved without reservation; although this is by no means to be regarded as a slight on the other, whose love could hardly be considered any less.
Regarding our understanding of God, consider the Prophet Moses, who was asked to take off his shoes before he was allowed to approach God at the site of the burning bush. ‘Taking off one’s shoes’ implies distancing oneself from material concerns in order to prepare for a spiritual encounter, but it can also be understood as taking off the shoes of our limited understanding of God before we can know God. Our very understanding of God invariably gets in the way of knowing God beyond that understanding!
We must be careful that like ‘the night [that] does not outstrip the day’ and ‘the day [that] does not outstrip the night’ (Qur’an), our spiritual leaning (desire) does not outstrip (nor lag behind) our spiritual bearing (potential).
And we must also be careful that our worship of God itself does not become a form of idol worship: that in worshipping God, we do not inadvertently construct a God who has our own limitations, for we would then be worshipping an object constructed by our ‘shadow’ – the very shadow we think we are containing through our worship. We must be careful too, not to create otherness in seeking oneness.
We are fortunate that through love we can acquire knowledge of God, through beauty we can know God’s heart, and through God’s heart we can know God’s mind. And yet our knowledge of God is rarely as it should be: of God as Integrity. Our understanding is often one of God as varying (and sometimes even of conflicting) shades of light.
To ensure that we do not become arrogant (and believe we are close to God when we may not be), it may be useful to consider that an atheist might have a greater capacity to be closer to God than we possess. For although an atheist may not know God because he or she is unknowing, it may be easier for an atheist to cross the bridge that leads someone from not knowing God at all, to knowing God unknowingly, than it is for us to cross the one from believing we know God knowingly (when we may not), to really knowing God, unknowingly.
Seeking God through loving others in a wholesome way is always beneficial. Even when an act of loving is flawed, we can still benefit in some way from such loving. But we must be careful not to initiate or pursue a love that will hurt us more than it will help us; not love others (only) because we want to be loved, but (also) because we want to be love.
As even flawed loving can lead to flawless love, we should not cut off a single root of love. But it is important to know how to use the water the different roots are accessing. The water of pure love alone is meant for us to drink when we are thirsty. The water of a love that is not intrinsically impure, but contains grains of fine sand (of some irresolvable doubt, perhaps), can be used to water a tree of goodness that will produce fruit that may quench a later thirst, or help nourish a surer love. The water of impure love is poisonous. And unless we can find a way to purify it, it should be avoided altogether.
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Reflections
on grace, destiny, difficulties with loving, and happiness
Everything that exists, exists through and reflects Divine grace. The stars shine through grace, birds fly through grace, flowers open through grace, and we find the real in the ‘unreal’ through grace.
Grace has both a pre-determined quality, as well as an elastic quality, of being drawn to emptiness. If we are ‘empty of ourselves’, we enhance the likelihood of grace flowing to us. Accepting gracefully that some grace may not be meant for us, may itself create the emptiness that grace is drawn to, and fills.
Although in some ways (but we can never know in which ways) our destiny is predetermined, this too is an act of grace. And in other ways (again an act of grace), we determine our own destiny. As we do not know exactly what is predetermined, we should always use our intellect to shape our destiny for the better.
An analogy that might help to explain the nature of grace (and the role of the intellect) in our lives is the following: we are all predestined to be different types of trees. Some of us are predestined to be apple trees, some orange trees, and some oak trees – and although different, all are equally valuable. But within this (limited) constraint, if we are apple trees, we can be any kind of apple tree we choose, producing as many, or as few, apples as we choose.
Blaming our fate for any failing is unlikely to be of much practical help. It is wiser to try to overcome a problem by changing what we need to change, particularly within ourselves.
Ultimately, our living itself should become an ongoing meditation that is continuously modified as our spiritual state changes, depending on our ability to bear the ‘weight’ of our self-consciousness; until finally, if we are successful in lessening this weight sufficiently, we arrive, whole and pure, in the presence of God.
The qualities of God’s presence are only to be found in those who are ‘absent from themselves’. It is a mistake to look for the qualities of God’s presence in those who are ‘present in themselves’. All we can hope to find in those who are present in themselves are the qualities of God’s absence, or the qualities absent in God.
Although we come to know God’s attributes primarily through someone’s positive behaviour, we can also gain insight into God’s attributes through someone’s negative behaviour: knowing what God must be, through knowing what God cannot be. Once we understand this, loving others (as a means of trying to know God) is easy; otherwise we can become easily disillusioned with those we love, and with love.
Enjoyment of loving is God’s gift to us for being love. But it comes at a price: the greater the purely sensory enjoyment, the greater the sacrifice of our knowledge of love’s spiritual essence. Our loving therefore, should be to fill a vacuum, as there should be no vacuum in the world of love in any of its facets, at any time; so that the world is made whole again: healed through our loving.
That is why, in loving one person, we heal the world, and in not loving one person, we wound the world; and why, when we love someone who is angry, or troubled, or despairing, we restore compassion to the world, balance to the world, hope to the world, courage to the world.
In everyday loving, we inevitably encounter light of varying degrees of clarity, as ultimately whatever we love is (only) a reflection of Divine light. Therefore, given that what we experience of everyday loving is often unsatisfactory, we should try to experience love not just through such loving, but by becoming love itself – effectively, not by loving in a way that permits conflict, or anger, or disappointment, as a result of some failing in an encounter with someone we love, but by knowing ourselves as God’s love – becoming pure reflections of Divine light.
Being truly happy is almost impossible while we have needs that are unfulfilled. In the real world, we are wounded again and again when our needs or expectations are not met, particularly when our friends or partners lack some understanding we would like them to have, or when religious leaders lack intellectual rigour, politicians lack integrity, scientists lack grace, art lacks mystery, compassion lacks depth, ignorance is compounded by arrogance, and fear consumes the spirit.
Perhaps the only way, therefore, to be consistently happy is to be ‘needlessly’ happy. Since our needs will never all be met, instead of remaining perpetually in need (and therefore, unhappy), why not be needlessly happy? If we consider how often we are needlessly unhappy, surely it is worth attempting to be needlessly happy, provided that we do not equate this with a self-deceiving happiness.
Once we have a deep understanding of what constitutes true happiness (founded on essential goodness), to secure our happiness and allow it to become deep-rooted and permanent, we need to be grateful for having found it. The best way to be grateful is by helping others; by practising kindness. Gratitude is the seal of happiness!
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Reflections
on art and science
Any act that relies on intellectual or mathematical discrimination, differentiation, disassociation, or separation in order to reveal light or to enlighten, is a scientific act. The act of creation is both a scientific act – an act of separation – as well as an act of love – an association, or re-association, or integration of that which has been separated. Only one of these two aspects of the created world can be known by science.
Creating separation or distinction is a fundamental scientific imperative. Science separates, reveals differences, uncovers, and makes visible the multiple facets of everything it studies. When associations or integrations are made within a scientific project, the acts of association and the thoughts that generate the associations are acts and thoughts of art, love, and faith.
Since the success of science depends as much on the artistic process, as on the scientific, a broad approach to understanding the universe is essential: an approach that would be akin to saying – at times – ‘there is no God here’, and at other times (or simultaneously) ‘there is only God here’. This would promote a deeper understanding of the light that veils (and unveils) the world and everything in it.
From a spiritual perspective there should be no problem with this approach. Whatever is scientifically known or proven, or exists as fact, can be considered – for the purpose of allowing scientific thought to develop unhindered by non-scientific considerations – as ‘the absence of God’ – even as it spiritually unveils ‘the presence of God’.
So when drinking a cup of tea, which we know as a combination of water and tea-leaves, we may say (before we think of it as more than a cup of tea), ‘there is no God here’; for God is a mystery, and a cup of tea is not. But do we really know everything about the cup of tea? No – there is always more to learn. Whatever ‘light’ (potential) is hidden in the cup of tea may be considered as the ‘Divine Presence’ concealed in that cup of tea. Therefore we may also truthfully say, ‘there is only God here’ – only mystery, only the unknown.
Taken apart in the search for some of its mysteries, the tea-leaf loses its value as a tea-leaf, just as, on its own, it has no value as a tea-leaf. Integrated with water, it sustains us all, scientists and artists alike.
The thought of integrating tea-leaf and water is not a scientific thought, but an artistic or spiritual thought, built on hope, optimism, desire; generated by the instinct for oneness – bringing things together to create new possibilities or meanings, new values and wholeness.
In every scientific project, this fundamental difference in (the nature of) each thought that contributes to a scientific understanding should be clearly understood. Failing to make this fine but essential distinction (regarding what is scientific, and what is artistic) leads to injustice – both to science and to art.
Scientists invariably work with the known to arrive at the unknown – an approach that gives science its inherent strength, but also highlights one of its limitations. If we were to use this approach in every aspect of our lives, there would be no spiritual life on earth. For the spirit often discovers the unknown regardless of what is known; regardless of what it knows.
Almost everything that science takes apart has no value until it is put together again in a new combination. But again, the putting-together is not intrinsically a scientific activity, but an artistic one.
Once something is known, it remains valuable (primarily) for what it can reveal of the darkness that still needs to be lit. And yet, paradoxically, every knowing simultaneously creates unknowing. This essential value of learning should fill all seekers of knowledge with humility.
All knowledge is born from light falling on darkness, or from light being dimmed by darkness. Effectively, the acquisition of knowledge is the outcome either of scientific enquiry, or artistic pursuit; most often, a combination of the two.
Scientific learning reveals light that already exists, but is not known and which needs to be discovered – it is revelation by unveiling. Art creates light that did not previously exist in the form in which it has now been created. Art is revelation by veiling, as much as it is by unveiling. In veiling the known, art unveils the unknown. When art unveils, that part of art that unveils is really its scientific essence; that part of science which integrates is its artistic essence.
If most of us are not scientists, and all of us are equally valuable, our value cannot come from science or from a scientific ability or affinity alone. Since most of our lives are (actively) lived outside science, despite our being (passively) totally dependent on science for every minute aspect of our day-to-day living, the artistic is at least as valuable for our overall existence and happiness as the scientific.
Since science discovers light that already exists, if God is considered light, it would be impossible for science to discover God (as light); as light already exists as light, and is already known to science (as light).
Science therefore, could now only discover God (as light) if it changed the nature of its search entirely; lost its memory of light, or refused to believe its own senses – and tried to discover God (as light) in what it currently sees as darkness. Then only could it arrive at a new understanding of God, or light, or darkness. But of course, such an approach is not feasible (unless the very nature of science changes).
Art reveals new light through veiling existing light – through omitting the detail; forcing new meaning to exist outside the reality of the thing that is its subject: creating a reality that goes beyond the subject itself, through the use of images and metaphor, through integrating the world (seeing through multiplicity to oneness), and being untrue to the senses if need be, in order to be true to the spirit – allowing the intellect to be freed of the confines of a purely rational mind.
Art, we said earlier, creates light that did not previously exist in the form in which it has now been created – although the possibility has to exist. It is this potential, which both art and science ultimately exploit, reveal, understand, create, or revere, that may be considered as the ‘existence of the Divine’ within everything.
We can give this potential any name – a scientific name or an artistic name – but what cannot be denied is its existence. How it got there, whether it is intrinsic or extrinsic, does not change the fact that it exists. And it is this potential to which both art and science ultimately bow.
When the scientist stays up night after night in search of a hidden beloved: a light that has travelled across the universe before he or she finally sees it, or a sound that leaving the distant past as thunder, finally reaches him or her as a soft drop of rain, awakening his or her senses to a profound insight that is later transformed into scientific knowledge, is this only the victory of science, or equally of art, love, and faith?
A scientifically-established conclusion can always be re-established with exactly the same variables as before; the same truth confirmed every time. With art, it is impossible to create exactly the same work twice, to capture exactly the same light again; whatever has been created can never be recreated exactly as before; if it can, it is not art.
The object of art is to generate insight. Poor art produces a feeble, emotional, non-differentiated reaction, a hazy light – a sentimental longing. Through good art we are informed (inwardly formed) anew, and know the unknown, or are known by the unknown instinctively, through or by a higher intellect.
When we place two objects in darkness, both disappear to the sense of sight and effectively lose their visual relationship to each other. They no longer exist to that sense, until we can prove that they exist by finding one or both – by shedding some light on them.
When we find one object, it creates a truth, but an incomplete truth, as the full truth (including that of its relationship to the hidden object) is still not known. When we find both objects, it adds to the first truth, and creates a further truth, as well as the possibility of other truths we have yet to realize.
But it can also create a lie – depending on the nature of the light that has been shone on the objects – or on the angle at which this light falls on the objects – as this determines what we see of the objects. When partial light falls on an object, it exists partially – exists in only one of the forms it can exist. Too much light falling on an object can blind us to it, make it no different, effectively, to an object placed in darkness – where the object loses its existence.
Even that which is scientifically true, therefore, is invariably a limited truth, even if it is an ‘absolute’ truth. If science finds or reveals something that is all-embracing, this revelation cannot be credited only to a scientific thought, process or enquiry – even though science may consider the entire process leading to this discovery as its own. Such a truth (and process) has to have an artistic element that gives rise to it.
Art arrives at truth through insight. Art’s truth is always relative truth; and yet by its very nature, it is often an ‘unlimited’ truth. It may be argued that this truth (by the very admission we have just made), cannot even be regarded as ‘truth’. But the truth of science is also absolute only for a particular set of variables used to establish that truth – based on the assumption that the physical senses themselves are speaking the truth. If they are not, science may well be proving the exact measure of the distortion we are seeing – the exact measure of a falsity, rather than the exact measure of a truth.
Both artistic and scientific truths form the foundation of our ethical existence, as well as the existence of a moral and humane society. Misinformation, ignorance, arrogance, and prejudice (of course) can, and do, lead to the creation of unethical and immoral societies; and scientific advances themselves are often used to oppress and to exploit.
Scientists may say that the abuse of the advances of science is no reflection on science – and this is true – but they would then have to accept that the good that results from scientific learning is not only a credit to science, but also to the ethical nature of those who use its advances for good. Science may be value-free. But humanity (in its artistic essence) is not. What this means is that art, love, and faith have to have a higher value than science, if science is to have value as well.
Science separates. Art integrates. Science creates multiplicity from oneness. Art creates oneness from multiplicity. Science reveals the inner wonder of each thing as an independent existence. Art creates relationships, and arrives at new insights, through taking things that have an independent existence, and forming new wholes.
There can be no scientific universe without there simultaneously being an artistic universe. Both science and art seek to transform the world by searching for the unknown and finding, in different ways, the hidden potential (or the soul) of all that exists.
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Reflections
on the heart, the soul, and the spirit
An individual’s soul (depending on its state) can be considered either as a ‘base’ soul that leads the individual astray, or as a ‘reproaching’ soul that leads the individual back to enlightenment, or as a ‘beatified’ soul that is finally at peace as a result of being truly enlightened.
The soul is sometimes regarded as an aspect of the ‘heart’ (when the term ‘heart’ is used to refer to both these elements). When the soul is considered as one of the heart’s components, it is this comprehensive heart’s inclinations that are seen to fluctuate between seeking enlightenment and seeking more temporal pleasures.
In this essay, the soul is separated from the heart – so the heart referred to is the ‘innermost heart’ that contains the clearest Divine light (as we have extracted the soul – whose base state can prevent us from knowing this light – from our definition of the heart).
The lower consciousness refers to the base soul that is incapable of knowing the Divine, as it is the epitome of self-consciousness – a barrier to deeper spiritual knowing. A soul with a high capacity for absence of self-consciousness becomes a beatified or enlightened soul; providing us with a sublime human experience (or knowing) of the Divine. In this state the soul becomes a mirror that reflects the light in the heart.
The soul may also be considered a band of consciousness that holds the individual’s potential for knowing Divine light. Or it may be considered a filter that either allows (knowable) light into the heart, or prevents it from entering.
It can succeed partially, or completely, in removing the barrier of self-consciousness. In the process it is imbued with the light it knows or reflects. The extent of its success depends on how subtle it is capable of becoming when guided by the intellect, and the heart’s innate grace.
The change can be an especially tangible one when the individual recites a sacred text, such as the Qur’an, or listens to a sacred text being recited. The (Divine) music inherent in the recitation generates a tremor that unnerves the soul, dispels its self-consciousness, and overwhelms it with Divine consciousness, in the process rendering the soul pure, so that it becomes a soul at peace.
It is God who places this desire for enlightenment in the heart, as the purpose of creation is to allow God to know Himself or Herself – for God says: ‘I was a Hidden Treasure and I desired to be known. Therefore I created the world in order that I might be known.’ God also says: ‘I cannot be contained by the entire universe, but I am contained in the heart of a believing servant.’
The ‘Hidden Treasure’ is a treasure of light, or knowledge. ‘Creating the world in order to be known’ is unveiling the already existing hidden potential of the treasure – so that God (and we) can be known (loved); become known (love).
In an instant, God’s light spreads, creating universe upon universe; the tide of time begins to ebb and flow; light becomes known; God is loved, and love became the means of returning to oneness.
As regards day-to-day living, individuals who are able to energize a specific attribute of God, such as the attribute of love, are able to become totally selfless, and capable of devoting themselves entirely to the service of humanity. Others, who may have a particular innate capacity and who are able to energize a related attribute, say the attribute of wealth (God ‘owns everything’), are able to become very wealthy, if this is what they consciously choose.
Therefore there is almost no limit to what any individual, who is able to energize any of the attributes of God, can do – through selecting, and letting into his or her consciousness, the quality or colour of light that can transform him or her into a desired state of being; the various hues (and combination of hues) of light bringing to life the grace-determined potential for knowing light within each unique being. ‘To energize’ means first to desire, and then to build that desire into love.
The base or self-conscious soul prefers its own light to the Divine light in the heart; and therefore forms a conscious barrier of ‘self’ or ‘darkness’ that prevents knowable light from entering the heart and knowing the Divine light within. Effectively, it prevents the Divine light in the heart from becoming knowable: from becoming love. Any act of remembrance of God can help to remove this barrier.
Paradoxically, this light is both present in the heart and not present in the heart at the same time; it may be thought of as continuously entering and leaving the (individual) human heart – actually, the individual’s consciousness of the Divine heart. Because the ‘entering and exiting’ happens so quickly, our consciousness is left with the impression that this light is permanently present in our heart, creating the illusion of a separate heart (that belongs to each individual).
This Divine light may also be considered the spirit. The tremor created by the pure light within the heart in its desire to be known – if its desire to be known is strong – frees the soul of its denseness, making it translucent. Knowable (external) light meets, recognizes, and becomes one with the Divine light inside: resulting in ‘light knowing light’.
The quality of the knowable light that is let into the heart by a soul at peace reflects the quality of the Divine light that already exists in that heart – or exists in that individual’s consciousness of Divine light in the Divine heart. This is how God sees or knows God. God sees or knows Himself or Herself through His or Her own light in His or Her own heart – with ‘our’ soul providing the mirror for this purpose.
When we are asleep, our self-consciousness is effectively suspended. So while we are asleep, the Divine light within ‘our’ heart to all intents and purposes stays or remains within the Divine heart. So in this sense we are closer to God when we are asleep than when we are awake. Because we are still alive the light is still ours, but because we are asleep, the light has no need to be within us and effectively remains within the Divine. In sleep, we cannot consciously create barriers between Divine light and knowable light. Without the barrier, in sleep, we actually ‘know’ God. But naturally, we are not conscious of this knowing.
With death, the loss of our ability to suspend our self-consciousness becomes permanent. For this reason we can be ‘Divine’ when our hearts are alive and our egos are dead, but once we are physically dead we can no longer be Divine in this special way unless we had already been ‘Divine’ before our physical death.
The spirit never dies because it is never ours. It is God’s light that has been allocated to us for a while; it is never permanently within our heart; in fact, it is never really within our heart, and hence never ours. That is why the ‘lamp’ of the heart is said (in the Qur’an) to be ‘lit from a blessed tree whose source is neither of the East nor of the West’.
What, we may ask next, happens to the soul? How does this critical spiritual element of our being fare after death? If the spirit returns to God, remains with God, or never really leaves God, what becomes of the soul? The soul, the potential for understanding God assigned to the individual, has the ‘scent’ of the spirit imprinted upon it at the moment of death – the quality of this scent of enlightenment depending on the quality of the light that the soul allowed into the heart – or reflected.
More enlightened souls will always remain brighter than less enlightened souls, and have less consciousness of the physical after death. If a soul fulfilled its potential during its earthly existence, its existence in eternity will be blissful. The pure soul will glow with Divine light, its potential for reflecting Divine light (becoming love) fully realized.
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Reflections
on creation
Preamble
This essay contains a number of assumptions that have
been treated as ‘facts’, for the purposes of developing certain insights.
Unlike a scientific approach, which tries to prove an hypothesis to establish a
fact that itself becomes the enlightenment being sought, this essay assumes
certain ‘facts’ to show how these, in a unique way, give us a glimpse of a
potentially deeper truth, which they either reveal or conceal.
The act of creation effectively scattered (Divine) light everywhere. If we consider ourselves to be this light, we are in everything ever created. If this light is considered to be Divine consciousness, everything ever created is within us.
A scattered self, seeking to know itself (its true self), can only do so by regaining its unity: by drawing everything back into itself, till nothing exists but the source that gave rise to it.
The more evolved we are as created beings, the more we are able to see infinite multiplicity within creation. The more evolved we are as spiritual beings, the more we are able to see the essence of ourselves in that multiplicity, and relate, spiritually and intellectually, to the essence of the most minute elements of creation.
Therefore, as much as it is essential that we grow in our ability to see differences – there would be no intellectual progress otherwise – the ultimate spiritual accomplishment is to hold all of creation in our hearts.
If the universe is a ‘strand of thought in the mind of God’ (as Rumi says), where does self-will, of the knowing or seeking self, come from? The answer to this can only be: from where else but the original thought itself. God’s thought is creative thought. When it manifests itself in (as) ‘us’, it becomes ‘our’ thought; ‘our’ thought itself ‘creates’ us.
The thought of love conceives life that is capable of knowing love; the thought of life creates each living particle of life; creates more and more complex forms of life. To God, all of this happens in an instant, as God is beyond time; but to us, creation unfolds over prolonged-time.
Although physical time, in all likelihood, expands and contracts – time can be compressed and decompressed – it seems to unfold across space, creating the illusion of passing in a linear fashion.
Regardless of what we have just said, ultimately, everything is timeless, as much as it may seem time-bound. Timelessness may seem like untold wealth to us but is ‘small change’ to God. A second (itself) is timeless. All existence is for a ‘second’ in reality; and yet timeless.
God Himself or Herself, says: ‘I am Time’ – effectively, ‘I am beyond (measurable) time’. As Time (beyond measurable time), God is ever-present in our higher consciousness; the notion of time exists in our lower consciousness. When we lose consciousness of measurable time, we move into the realm of timelessness.
God is light that unfolds as beauty, is felt as love, and subsists in knowledge. In form, God is beauty; in heart, God is love; in soul, God is knowledge. As Himself or Herself, God is Time (beyond knowable time). As us, God is (knowable) time. In God, we are timeless.
Being conscious of time (physical existence) and trying to understand God (or Reality), is like a drop in an ocean trying to understand the ocean. At best, all it can know is that it is part of the ocean. If it had insight, it might see the ocean in itself – see infinity in itself, and yet not be infinite.
God (as Time) is beyond any real understanding we can have of time. Even timelessness is merely a notion we have of time beyond time. Yet it is the umbilical cord that ties us to the Divine.
Timelessness is the meeting-place of the real and the ‘unreal’. It is in everything around us and within us. But timelessness itself exists within Time, within the Reality that we cannot fully know. Time enfolds timelessness. In Time (losing consciousness of time), we become timeless. Outside Time (losing consciousness of Time), we become conscious of (and create) physical existence (time).
Let us now see if we can gain some new insights into the nature of light, and how it brings the world into existence.
The world that we see is a mirror-image of an inner (spiritual) world, reflected on our consciousness as a (physical) knowable world. In this context therefore, the light that we see in the physical world, streaming across the universe, reflects – if we believe that a Divine light suffuses the universe – the awakening of our consciousness to the presence of a Divine light that exists in a spiritual world – an awakening that effectively (itself) brings the physical universe into existence.
If this is so, what is the nature of the light we cannot (physically) see (before it becomes visible light), as opposed to the visible light that we can see? Divine light has no need to travel anywhere because it has to be everywhere at the same time. But if it is everywhere at the same time, why does visible light appear to be moving through space in time? What does this tell us, not only about space and time, but about our consciousness, and the nature of the world?
Perhaps it is telling us that not only is there no space or time, but there is no world that continuously exists; that the very world and universe we know is flickering in and out of existence – so quickly that it is not evident to us considering our physical limitations. And because we are not subtle enough to detect this flickering, a continuous existence (an observable universe) comes alive (or is born) in our consciousness.
Our inability to
see (comprehend) a continuously renewing world creates the material world we
see; creates a universe existing in space, and with it, the illusion of time;
or a universe growing over time, and with it, the illusion of space. From the
premise of a belief in the existence of the Divine, the reality must be that
Divine consciousness pervades the entire universe – a timeless, spaceless
reality that comes into existence and dies to existence, again and again,
simultaneously and instantly.
Since the universe exists within God, as much as it is an ‘illusion’, it is (paradoxically) also reality – to God, for whom there can be nothing that is, or can be, an illusion. When our consciousness is focused on the material, what we see as reality is really an illusion, though even this vision of the universe which considers the material universe a reality is also indispensable and needed for a deeper spiritual understanding of the world and ourselves. When our focus is on the spiritual, the universe truly becomes real – but one that exists outside time as we know it.
Let us now try to gain some further insights by addressing the question: will the objective universe continue indefinitely, or will it disappear at some point in the future? We can begin by asking whether the question itself is a valid one, given the assumptions that the universe is being renewed every second; ended when it began; and yet is timeless – every aspect of this statement (seemingly) contradicting every other aspect. Yet bear in mind that a paradox can often (ultimately) assist our understanding.
If the universe has already ended, or if we consider that it is potentially capable of vanishing at some point in the future, we are faced with another seemingly insurmountable problem: of having to explain how something that ‘exists in the mind of God’ can vanish, or how the ‘cry of love’ that set creation in motion can be retracted. So if the universe will indeed vanish, we need to understand in what sense it will vanish; and if it will continue forever, in what sense it will continue.
If we are effectively the ‘creators’ of creation (if creation becomes alive in us), what will happen to the universe when we die – assuming we (all) die before the universe comes to an end? One way of trying to arrive at an answer that we can comprehend, is to ask: what happens to an individual’s conscious universe when that individual dies? If we can understand this, we may be able to extend that understanding to encompass the consequences for the existence of the whole universe – of every universe – as a result of the extinction of all life.
In order to develop a meaningful understanding, we also need to know the nature of our original self, as there seems little doubt from a spiritual perspective that we must return to being spirit, if that is where we started out from – in finally having arrived at a ‘material’ world.
Furthermore, both the inner and outer worlds have to be real to God, (outer and inner do not exist independently to Him or Her). And since it is unlikely that God can forget us, it seems we will always live on (in some form) in His or Her mind.
Even if we were to be ‘forgotten’ in some way, and the universe were to disappear in some way, its disappearance in a particular form, to whoever it appeared in that form, would only confirm that its original appearance in that form was illusory.
The state of our soul determines what happens to us when we die – as only the soul (in a nominal sense) is ‘ours’ – everything else is clearly God’s – actually, every reality is God’s, including the soul; the only difference being that the soul reflects the potential for knowing the knowable reality of an otherwise unknowable Mystery and Essence.
It seems natural to consider that souls that remained potential only (remained ‘earthed’ during their ‘earthly’ existence), will continue into eternity as unlit or unrealized potential – continue to live a material (spiritual) existence. Whereas previously, in giving rise to our earthly existence, the spiritual became material (the spirit existing as essence within the material), once this material existence ends, the material will revert to being spirit. But in those souls that remained earthed during their earthly existence, the material will survive and become the essence of their spiritual existence, the physical universe remaining embedded in their ongoing consciousness.
Of course, it will now be a spiritual (and therefore clearer) vision of the material, where previously, it was a material vision of the spiritual.
But this still does not completely answer the question we asked at the outset concerning what will eventually happen to the objective universe.
It may be helpful to go back to the beginning, and ask again whether this is indeed a valid question, before we continue our attempt to try and answer it. Is there really an ‘objective’ universe?
There are two possible answers to the question: No, not if we consider the universe as a spiritual phenomenon. Yes, certainly, if we can view it physically, and can confirm that view through our other physical senses.
To arrive at an understanding that is eventually meaningful to us as spiritual beings, we need to remember that:
·
God is beyond time, and
anything that can be viewed as existing within time has no corresponding
(limited) life within God; time is created by (or in) our consciousness of the
material world.
·
‘Creation is a strand of
thought in the mind of God’; it ended when it began, and yet is continuously
renewing itself; and is ultimately timeless – though our consciousness, when
‘earthed’, perceives creation as a time-centred observable universe.
·
God’s thought of us, creates
us; creation becomes alive in us – we are effectively the ‘creators’ of
creation; if there was no spiritual (consciousness of) creation (that existed
before creation became a physical reality), physical creation would not exist;
and if it did not exist, a knowable God (love) would not exist.
The answer, even if it is (ultimately) an instinctive one, still has to be an answer that is as likely to be correct, as it is to be wrong. And, in arriving at it, we need to consider too, whether everything on earth and in the skies, every blade of grass, every grain of sand, every star, is conscious of itself, and of its Divine spirit. Remember, we began with the underlying acceptance that there is a Divine Presence everywhere.
It seems logical, then, to conclude that whatever was capable of self- consciousness will remain, or exist forever, in some form, as the ‘scent’ of the spirit is imprinted on the soul at death and this scent imbues the soul with eternal life. Whatever does not retain its self-consciousness reverts to being Divine consciousness, although it can also remain in its (present) knowable form in someone else’s consciousness.
Nothing that is physical will live forever; and yet everything will live forever in some form; everything physical will die, and yet will remain forever (as an illusion), if it has become embedded in the ongoing consciousness of a materially inclined (or earthed) soul.
To conclude: although the physical universe will ultimately disappear as a physical universe, it will continue to exist forever in the mind of God as a spiritual universe; while remaining forever as a physical universe in the ongoing consciousness of those who remain eternally earthed to a physical existence.
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Reflections
on generosity, forgetfulness, and opposites
The world exists because of God’s generosity. Whatever exists in our (own) world exists because we acknowledge its existence; effectively, it exists because of our generosity towards it. A lack of generosity towards anyone or anything deserving our generosity diminishes the whole world, as what happens in our world affects the whole world.
If we can find out what constitutes our world – what makes us ‘us’, assuming we are on a journey of self-discovery – we can find a way to deconstitute that world, or ‘unmake’ us, before we are able to reconstitute our world anew, or create ourselves anew. Since generosity creates the world of multiplicity (in God’s ‘forgetting’ oneness), if we want to return to oneness, we need to be as generous, and forget multiplicity.
Forgetfulness therefore can be either a form of generosity, if akin to forgiveness, or a lack of generosity, if akin to not acknowledging what needs to be acknowledged. Between generosity and forgetfulness, in both their positive and negative dimensions, the world is found and is lost, is made whole and is diminished, is healed and is wounded, is born and dies.
A lack of generosity towards someone to whom we should be generous, is invariably caused by being wrongly generous towards someone to whom we should not be so generous. So the cure for our ungenerosity lies in correcting our wrongful generosity, so that we can return to being more generous to whoever we should be more generous.
The cure for wrongful generosity is (in) correct generosity. Just as the cure for wrongful forgetfulness is (in) forgetting that which really needs to be forgotten, so that what needs to be remembered is remembered.
Therefore we cannot (simply) say to someone who is being ungenerous to another: ‘be generous’. If that were possible (at that time), he or she would probably already be generous to the person concerned. Since ungenerosity is the prevailing condition, what we should say is this: ‘be less generous to whatever is preventing you from being more generous to the person to whom you should be more generous.’
How will we know if our generosity (or forgetfulness) is correct (as it should be) or good? Whatever is good should leave us feeling at peace. If we do not feel this peace, it could mean that we are not generous towards something – say, to a larger vision, because we are too generous to other things – say, to the detail, or to some pettiness.
Value-attributes come into being through a ‘veil’ filtering the light of integrity and creating knowable light of different levels and combinations of intensity. If this distribution of light changes, the nature of the attribute will change – its colour will change more and more until it becomes the opposite of what it originally was. Yet even when it becomes its opposite, it can still function as a positive value.
Essentially, there are no positive (or intrinsic) negatives. In mathematical terms, this would be the equivalent of saying that (ultimately) zero equals infinity, or all is infinity, and that if there is no infinity, there is nothing; alternatively, if there is nothing, there is everything.
If there are no positive negatives, there can be no evil that exists intrinsically. Evil becomes possible only because in the creation of the full spectrum of knowability – in making light knowable in all its shades or hues – there has to exist the possibility that we may darken or brighten light more, or less, than optimally. Any tendency towards evil is an individual affair. We ourselves create evil, to varying degrees.
There is no external evil, or creator of evil; no external creator of any spiritual misery. This means that no negative quality can be attributed to the Divine, or can exist if we live a Divine life. Our entire existence is one in which light and darkness are being continuously and subtly darkened or brightened. We create anger and hatred, either through wrongful generosity or wrongful forgetfulness. Too much light on (or generosity towards) ourselves creates arrogance. Too little light on ourselves (when we are forgotten) creates anger.
Jealousy is awe without generosity; injustice, remembrance without forgetfulness – as remembrance can lead both to justice and injustice. Generosity (or remembrance) leads to multiplicity – essentially, to justice, as it gives each facet of Divine integrity its independent existence, its due recognition. Therefore generosity and remembrance are good. But when they cause us to forget integrity (to become less generous to oneness), injustice arises from the same positive attributes.
Fear arises from forgetting the generosity of the Divine, and of others – and of the universe. Love arises from remembering this generosity. Joy, in other-than-ourselves, is the ultimate expression of our success in freeing ourselves from fear. Withholding the expression of such joy is the self’s last hold over us. It tries to deny us this joy as such joy means that it has lost its unilateral possession of us.
If we add too much darkness to oneness, we get possessiveness. If we add too much light to oneness, we get rampant multiplicity. When a negative value is created by adding even more light (being too generous) to a value that already possesses its correct intensity of light, then a lack of generosity, or forgetfulness, is required to correct the imbalance. When a negative value is created by adding more darkness, to a positive value that only exists as a positive value because it already possesses the correct level of ‘darkness’ (forgetfulness), then generosity (remembrance) is required to correct the imbalance.
The ultimate positive manifestation of the spirit is beauty. The correct balance between beauty and majesty produces sublime awe. Without this balance we get wrongful desire, immodesty, and ugliness.
Different degrees of intrinsic generosity or forgetfulness (in our nature) constitute our spiritual DNA, and determine the unique knowledge we each have of the Divine: determine what we each know of the different shades of integrity – such as mercy, grace, justice, and beauty.
Every spiritual illness is the result of either too much, or too little, generosity towards someone or something; and its cure lies in increasing or decreasing our generosity until it is correctly balanced. The cause of the illness is our not knowing how much light to shine on a positive attribute, or by how much to dim the light shining on a positive attribute, so that a new positive attribute or knowing becomes the outcome.
What this means is that the cure for every spiritual illness lies within the illness. In fact, not only is the cure for every spiritual illness in the illness, but the illness is itself (in a sense) the cure. Unknowing creates illness, knowing creates the cure; but knowing is only possible because of unknowing. Unknowing therefore (ultimately) cures itself. Effectively, no healing (being made whole) is possible without illness.
If it is true that the cure for every illness is to be found in the illness, the illness itself is the only hope of a cure; for we must already have some insight into (or inclination towards) the positive attribute we have treated negatively (which has led to the illness). We now need to become either more, or less, generous to that attribute for the balance to be restored; for us to be healed.
Light itself shines through love (‘darkness’) so that it may be known as light. So once more: the illness is the cure; the darkness is light. Love’s purpose is to deliver light to us. Light’s presence in love is what makes loving, enlightenment. But even knowable light (or love) can sometimes cast a distracting shadow, which might have to be overcome for light to function effectively as a revelation of the Divine.
Being silent is essential for knowing the Divine. Being silent is not ‘not speaking’; it is speaking in the purest language that can most clearly express the attribute of the Divine being revealed in our speaking. We can never know sublime awe if we are distracted.
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Reflections on the created world and consciousness
The physical world reflects knowable Divine light (or love) and therefore, essentially, it is itself Divine. As a manifestation of the Divine it reflects all we can know of God in created existence and confirms physically that God exists spiritually. Between the states of ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’ is their meeting-place; effectively, the meeting-place of Divine and Prophetic consciousness.
We may consider this meeting-place as The (metaphorical) Qur’an or The (unknowable) Word that contains pure Divine light in its unrevealed form – contains creation in its spiritual form. When this light is transformed into Prophetic consciousness, it reflects the purest meanings that can exist of ‘created’ or ‘unveiled’ existence. Prophetic consciousness alone can know these meanings without distortion.
Prophetic consciousness brings the knowledge of God into human consciousness as knowable Divine existence. What meaning filters down to us is always distorted to some degree by each of us – by the limitations of our own capacity for nearness to God – by the limitations of our own capacity for the self-absence that is needed to reflect this light, so that its meaning may be understood clearly.
If everything that we know, is Divine light (knowable as love) and if what becomes physical creation already exists spiritually within The (unknowable) Word, then the knowable word or physical creation, is really a ‘physical translation’ of the essentially untranslatable.
In reality, the spiritual remains spiritual, even as the physical is being born from it, or is being unveiled by it; the physical is spiritual, even when it is physical. The light that is being reflected on the mirror does not become the light in the mirror, even though the light in the mirror is none other than the light shining on it.
Creation (as revelation) contains and hides the mystery it is meant to reveal and to conceal. In fact, as love, it reveals when it conceals, and conceals when it reveals. But this concealing is also a form of revealing.
The only way to acquire knowledge of the Divine is through knowledge of love (knowable light); and the only way of being Divine while being conscious of physical existence, is through becoming love. The returning is only possible because of the journeying.
This translation (of spirit into creation or love), is the only physical means we have of accessing or understanding the pure light of the Divine; of being Divine while we remain conscious of physical existence.
Our understanding of God (in the physical world) can never completely be of God as He or She is (of God as Essence; Perfect Integrity). It is influenced by our perceptions, or knowledge, of God as love. For if God is only knowable to God as Perfect Integrity – a knowing that is beyond us – we have no option but to confine ourselves to knowing God as love.
Thought becomes meaning (the hidden becomes known) when Divine light falls on the ‘earth’ of ‘other-consciousness’ – the creative power of Divine light fusing with earthly darkness gives rise to knowable light, to life as we know it. The build-up of the creative tension necessary to produce life takes place in The (unknowable) Word that contains the potential that becomes creation – that causes or mirrors creation.
The only way
that the meanings that arise from this tension can become known is for the
spilled light to be absorbed by darkness, for light to be earthed, for its
power to ripple across an infinite number of universes in order to be stilled.
Physical creation therefore, is a barzakh
where the
Effectively, for meanings to come alive, objects have to come alive – creation has to be unveiled. Yet the objects can only appear (physically), if they carry both the meanings they are created to carry, as well as their opposites. They cannot carry the meaning of oneness unless they carry the meaning of multiplicity.
But the objects exist within the meanings, as much as the meanings exist within the objects. Moreover, as the meanings are ultimately only positive, the objects are only positive (are essentially spiritual) although they appear negative (appear physical).
In the previous essay we said that there is no positive negative (no intrinsic negative). If there is no positive negative, it means there is no physical world that exists independently (as a negative) outside a spiritual world (as a positive); effectively, it confirms that the spiritual world becomes a physical world while remaining a spiritual world. Another similar ‘becoming and remaining-itself’ is love becoming justice and remaining love, or justice becoming love and remaining justice.
The subtle world becomes unsubtle not only because we are created, but because we are also simultaneously the creators of the world; just as the child in the mother’s womb creates a mother while the mother is creating a child.
Most often, all that we know as the physical world is only the unsubtle knowing of the subtle; and all that we know of the spiritual world is only the subtle knowing of the physical. The unsubtle knows the unsubtle through things; and the subtle knows the unsubtle through images. Only the subtle knows the subtle – through being one: knower and known.
A spiritual world becomes possible for us to recognize only because a physical world exists; and a physical world exists only because a spiritual world exists. Outer meanings are required to contain the knowable form of the inner meanings of things: a tree is a knowable form of light; sight is created so that insight may become possible. The outer is created so that the inner may become known.
God’s generosity creates the world in acknowledging our potential, recognizing that we already exist within Him or Her as knowable light; allowing what has always existed as potential to materialize as reality.
In the same way that generosity becomes forgetfulness and remains itself, light becomes darkness and remains itself. As love contains light, all that ultimately materializes as existence, is light becoming known in all its facets. Its potential, which has always existed, is simply unveiled.
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Reflections
on the outer, the inner, and knowing the Divine
Everything in existence is an outer meaning created to hold an inner meaning. When the inner meaning of any aspect of physical creation is known, there is no longer any spiritual need for the container that holds that meaning. The meaning itself now becomes the container. The subject becomes the object; the object becomes the subject.
The physical cup can be thrown away once the inner meaning of the cup is known. Stated differently, once our physical lessons are learnt, we convert the material to the spiritual: create a higher existence – where the meaning supersedes the object, the object transforms into meaning.
Sometimes, the inner meanings of some cups are too profound to be contained in their (limited) cups, and spill over. We tend to pour all of these meanings, regardless of their context, into a convenient ‘one-stop’ new cup – of ‘faith’. Because the contents of this new cup are now full of confusing meanings, they can never transcend this (new) cup. The inner meanings that most need to be transcendental, as a result, become the most limited. It is essential therefore, if we want faith to resume its rightful place in our lives, that we rise above such limitations.
What we think of as human consciousness is really a capacity for reflecting Divine light, that varies from person to person – a consciousness that (ultimately) is really only needed for its capacity for self-absence (not self-presence), as the greater the capacity for absence of itself in any individual consciousness, the greater the ability of that individual consciousness to reflect Divine light with integrity.
Our own experiences of reflecting God’s light are effectively also God’s experiences of His or Her multi-faceted integrity. As there is no God as God per se in physical creation (when it is viewed purely as physical creation), a Divine experience of multi-faceted integrity is essentially that of each living thing that has a consciousness of the Divine, and therefore (itself) is Divine.
In our daily living we see God’s Presence in all its revealed forms – in the earth, the sky, the mountains, the streams, and in all creatures – especially when our living reflects Divine integrity, and reveals God’s attributes in a positive and unique fashion.
Primarily, we know God as knowable light or love, its highest form epitomized in the existence of the Prophets (culminating in the existence of the Prophet Muhammad) – may peace be upon them all. And yet we can also know God through His or Her Absence in the physical world (as God per se), seeing all physical existence as an ‘illusion’.
The very Presence we think of as God’s Presence in the physical world, is now nothing but a reflection of God’s Absence in this world – but an absence that at the same time confirms that only God exists in the spiritual world; and paradoxically, simultaneously confirms that only God exists in the physical world, if we now see the physical world as a spiritual world that cannot be known in any other way as a spiritual world while we remain conscious of physical existence.
All knowing that can be considered transcendental knowing, is a higher knowing of the higher, where the lower is sublimated: where sound becomes music, painting becomes art, and music and art combined become poetry, become elevated life. This knowing transcends physical knowing – transcends the restrictiveness of ‘other-consciousness’ – through love, humility, generosity and forgetfulness.
Most everyday loving retains some awareness of opposites, even as the opposites are being integrated or transcended, and therefore is either a spiritual experience of the physical, or a physical experience of the spiritual. Yet in every expression of love we become Divine in some way.
The ultimate experience of oneness can only be of a oneness we cannot consciously be aware of, as it can only result from a total loss of self-awareness that transcends the Word itself through Wordlessness – an experience of the Divine knowing the Divine.
The initial effort that is required for a deeper spiritual understanding of (or closeness to) the Divine must be made by us. God’s response enables the Divine within us to know the Divine everywhere. The steps we take can be considered as our ‘walking to God’. The steps God takes can be considered as His or Her ‘running towards us’ (Hadith).
The light that constitutes our beings can only become pure light again, after its attachment to us, through grace. While something we have created with a thought may be undone in some way with a thought, knowing Divine Reality ultimately depends on grace.
The steps that we need to take for a deeper spiritual understanding are: gradually forgetting to give the distracting aspects of creation prominence in our day-to-day living; forgetting to be attentive to the fractured vision of the universe (or of the Divine) which our senses unremittingly present to us; essentially becoming quiet – and finally, burying the dead (created) self in the grave of nothingness.
This is the part that requires our effort – where we try to ‘bring forth the dead from the living’ (Qur’an) in our day-to-day-living. What becomes of this effort depends entirely on God’s grace. The response of God, when it arrives, as we learn from the Prophet’s Miraj, is the following: grace elevates us into the realm of God’s Presence where we are completely transformed – when God ‘brings forth the living from the dead’ (Qur’an). We are reconstituted as a ‘new creation’, and return, as pure light, into the physical realm, to live out lives that are essentially Divine.
Returning to the soul, we need to ask: what kind of consciousness is earthly consciousness? And what kind of consciousness will we possess after our death? Earthly consciousness derives its life from the darkening of Divine light within us so that it can be known – from the coming into existence of our intellect. The consciousness we are likely to possess after death will be a purely spiritual consciousness.
Some time ago I wrote these lines:
the spirit is a bird
the sky, intellect
the heart, its song
the wind, its soul
The bird (spirit) is only visible against the sky (the intellect). The heart contains the spirit’s song (the song of enlightenment). The wind (or air) carries the bird, allows it to fly, and therefore allows it to be called a bird: effectively, it gives the bird its life. In much the same way, the soul gives life to the spirit, for without the soul, to all intents and purposes, there can be no human experience of the spirit.
Another way of visualizing this is as follows.
The universe is a landscape, the spirit is the painter, the soul is the canvas, the intellect is the paintbrush, and the heart is the paint. Initially, the intellect is needed to transfer the paint (the light of various hues in the heart) onto the canvas of the soul; the unseen painter is the spirit. But once the paint has been transferred onto the canvas, the canvas now contains the landscape, the paint, the paintbrush, and the painter: that now all live on (in essence) in a new creation – the painting on the canvas – on the soul.
So in one sense, everything has ended; in another, everything continues. If the painting has been done poorly, or has not been completed, we may see unsightly blotches of paint or blank spaces on the canvas. But if the painting has been done well, the canvas is transformed. It becomes alive in itself, and the painting becomes one with the original landscape.
The soul is the material equivalent of the spirit. It is the shadow of the spirit in one sense, but in another sense it is also the potential of the spirit, the only form through which the spirit can be known humanly.
We, ourselves, are the knowable light God creates when Divine Presence becomes Divine Absence so that Divine Presence may be known. In truly knowing ourselves, we know all that is knowable about God. The miracle of our lives is that we find the real through the ‘unreal’. In our original veiling is our unveiling. The painting is already present in the blank canvas before the painter goes to work on it. We can only know the painter through the painting: through our living, through the landscape we are painting and the spirit we are transferring onto the canvas.
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beauty has two faces
reflections
of love
for my friends
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in me there is you
in you there is me
i am all there is
say you, say you
in me there is me
in you there is me
i am all there is
say you, say you
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is it possible to love
beauty
without loving you
when it is impossible
to love you
without loving beauty
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the best defence
against arrogance
is a defenceless heart
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we measure civilization
by the height of its buildings
not by the depth of its foundations
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life’s a little different
you can choose your surfboard
but you can’t choose your wave
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tides erase the memory
of the sand
asserting the force of
life
over the sentiment of
man and land
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rain forest
green sea of land
becoming smaller
every day
disappearing
like noah’s ark
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sometimes, love is folded
as tenderly as the clothes
of the dead
are folded one last time
before being given away
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in the beginning
you love me
in between
i love you
in the end
who loves whom
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to know love
live with love
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falsehood promises joy
but delivers disillusionment
harshness promises clarity
and delivers emptiness
anger promises change
but delivers confusion
coldness promises nothing
and delivers nothing
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the truth can set us free
but first we must be free
to see the truth
that can set us free
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go on a journey
without yourself
to become
a new person
on reaching
your destination
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there is no more the pain of longing
there is no more the longing
there is no more the pain
there is no more
there is
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as much as we should seek love
we should trust it to find us
love knows more about finding
than we about seeking
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oceans create shores
not shores, oceans
love creates longing
not longing, love
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the quantum leap
is the leap of grace
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we
cannot lose love
even if
we cannot find it
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behold the mountain
that could not go
to the prophet
see how it cries
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beauty has two faces
living and dying
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