●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●
First
Published 2002
Publisher:
All
rights reserved. No part of this book
may be
reproduced in any form without
written
permission from the author.
©
Shabbir Banoobhai 2002
Author’s
Website: www.veilsoflight.com
Author’s
Email Address:
Book
Design: Yusuf Patel
Cover
Design: Sumayya Essack
Printing
and Binding: Impress,
ISBN
0-620-28584-2
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CONTENTS
Introduction
– 5
Prayer
– 9
Suffering
and Love – 11
God,
Knowledge and Time – 13
Seed
and Fruit – 15
Then
Moses Saw the Burning Bush – 17
DNA
and the Spirit – 19
Moon
and Sun - 21
Peace
- 23
Sound
and Light – 25
Truth
- 27
When
We Love - 29
Do
Not Fade When I Fade - 31
In
the Holy Night of Power - 33
Light
and Shadows - 35
Killing
God - 39
Seek
To Be Lost Before Seeking To Be Found - 43
Some
Desire
Adding
Value - 47
Being
Like God and Being Divine - 51
O
Lord of Grace and Mercy – 53
The
Worship of God Does Not Require God – 57
Conclusion
– 59
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 21:37
To: Friends
Subject: Introduction
During Ramadan 1998-1999 I wrote a poem every day, invariably after the pre-dawn prayer. During Ramadan 1999-2000 I again wrote every day, this time mainly reflections of not more than a few lines. At the beginning of Ramadan 2001 I decided not to write anything, as I was afraid that I might write for the sake of writing. I wanted, moreover, to engage in ‘being’ rather than writing about being. But this was not to be.
The first few mornings I stayed away from my desk, reading the Qur’an. The third morning a thought struck me about being ambushed by God’s love and this line became the impetus for the ‘Prayer’ I wrote that morning. Having written it, I wanted to share it, so I scanned my mail, selected the addresses of friends who I thought might enjoy it and mailed it off within minutes of having written it. And so began a series of Ramadan reflections I tried not to force, being happy to have days when I could not think of anything worth sharing — invariably writing early in the morning and mailing the writing instantly to my friends.
I would
like to think of my Ramadan experience as one of spirit engaging with spirit —
sometimes trying to remove the veil of selfhood that covers our hearts, or that
of ignorance covering our faces. The reflections are about us, for us, about
how we see ourselves and how we see others, and about what we can be if we can
be other than we are. The reflections revolve around the themes of who we are,
who God is and the part played by love in our knowing ourselves as Divine. But
they are also reflections that have a social dimension — a spiritual commentary
on our social condition.
I have relied on earlier reflections to complete the rest of this
introduction — expanding my personal spiritual understanding — hoping that this
will help to make the rest of what I have written clearer.
My writing elsewhere of God knowing Himself and us, and our
knowing ourselves and God, has its basis in Islamic literature where God says:
“I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known. Therefore I created the
world in order to be known.” Rumi makes
a fascinating remark in one of his works where he says that the Universe is a
strand of thought in the mind of God. My writing is an attempt at understanding
these statements.
I
started with the understanding that we can only know something by knowing its
opposite. Light has no meaning without
darkness, good is irrelevant without bad.
How was God to know Himself if there was nothing other than Himself? How
could He know He was light, love, grace — when all that existed was Him and
nothing but Him? God therefore created
man as His ‘shadow’ with His qualities and their ‘opposites’. But in reality,
since there can be no opposite, man in essence is nothing but divine and the
opposite nothing but God’s imagination.
The highest
form of knowing is loving, and the highest form of loving, dying. Wanting to
know Himself, God loved ‘other than Himself’, ‘died’ in His imagination to live
in ‘man’. But ‘living’ in man, He ‘killed’ the object of His imagination; His
love became Him (again) — He became (remained) as He was before He was ‘other
than He was’. In this instant of living ‘other than He was’ He knew Himself as
He was and ‘man’ died as himself and became ‘other than himself’ forever.
The
other central theme of the reflections is love, but not love as we commonly
understand it — as it is impossible for the lower self, a lower level of
consciousness, to find or love (know) the higher self (a higher level of
consciousness). Only the higher self can
find a higher self. A high state of love
is marked by self-sacrifice. A low state
of love is marked by the desire of something from the person you love —
even of
love. The highest love is only possible in the highest realm. It cannot be a
physical love — it has to be a spiritual love, a love for the divine. This makes it possible for us to love beyond
time. Pure love is spiritual
oxygen.
The
physical self, when attracted to another physical self, attaches itself to the
other self yet physically remains itself and apart. The spiritual self, when
attracted to another spirit like itself, attaches itself to itself, and
dissolves. Love is necessary for the dissolving — an ‘other’ is necessary as
the dissolving agent. Without love for another we remain ourselves: limited,
finite, substance. Loving dissolves the
limited, makes the finite infinite and substance essence.
We often
believe we love others but what is our love really? Very often it is nothing more than self-love
or a limited love, a love of our own, excluding from this love what we perceive
as not our own. Yet to love someone
means to see the beauty of God in someone. Who then should we not love?
It is with this background that these reflections are being sent out to find homes in hearts that do not need them. One of the forty or so friends to whom they were initially sent suggested this book. The book is dedicated to him and to those who bore my almost daily intrusion into their lives for an entire month, unflinchingly. And of course it is dedicated to a Friend whose friends are numberless.
19 December 2001
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From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 06:59
To: Friends
Subject: Prayer
Prayer
O Lord
of Grace and Mercy
O
Dispenser of Love
O our
Protector
in this
age of war and waste
in this time
of lies laundered as truth
in this
day of mayhem and madness
ambush
us with your love at every turn
cluster-bomb
us with your grace and mercy
strike
us with your missiles of guidance
commit
us to the suicide of our egos
fill the
caves of our minds with emptiness
except
for the light of your presence
grant us
endless loss of our greed and anger
and in
the rubble of what we claim is true
help us
find ourselves besieged by you
19
November 2001
6.00-6.55am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 06:00
To: Friends
Subject: The
Divine and Our Imagination
The Divine and Our Imagination
The darkest that the divine can be is the brightest we can
imagine it to be.
22 November 2001
5.00-5.05am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 06:02
To: Friends
Subject: God, Knowledge and Time
God, Knowledge and Time
Wanting to know Himself — God says He was a
hidden treasure (of knowledge, love) and He desired to be known — therefore He
created the world (man) in order to be known (loved): God imagined ‘other than
Himself’. Imagining ‘other than Himself’ he visualised all of creation —
created every leaf, plant, animal and man —universe upon universe — in an
instant. And He saw Himself in everything. But being God this act of creation
did not result in the creation of a one-dimensional other. He created an other
that was real because He is real and His thoughts are real, but at the same
time an other that was only real to the extent that the other was Himself. Therefore
the other is both real and unreal — real to the extent that it reflects Him and
unreal to the extent that it does not.
Being God — God says: “I am time” — Time is
spiritual essence — He saw every kind of other than Himself in an instant. But
in creating a real-unreal other, time (spiritual essence) acquired a physical
dimension, befitting the unreal part of the other, while (in reality) remaining
spiritual essence. Thus we are ‘still’ existing —living in drawn-out time —
either real lives or unreal. To the extent that our living is spiritual or real
we live as spirit in spiritual time, to the extent that it is unreal, as
physical beings in physical time. Furthermore the choice whether we want to
live real or unreal lives is ours, as God allowed us that in order to know what
the ‘other’ was capable of being.
Our physical lives therefore are the physical
expression of a spiritual experience of a spiritual being who was all, wanted to
know everything about Himself, learnt what He wanted to know, and remained as
He was — all-powerful, timeless, spiritual, essence. We are living proof of His experience. In
living true to Him, we live in Him and He lives in us.
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 06:53
To: Friends
Subject: Seed and Fruit
Seed and Fruit
Before fruit is fruit, it is a thought in the mind of the seed. When the thought bears fruit in the heart of the seed, the seed becomes reality in the heart of the fruit. The fruit is in the seed and the seed is in the fruit.
Neither exists before it exists. Yet both exist when either exists. Neither is real until the other is real. Yet both are real when either is real and the cause of existence of the other. Both have to exist simultaneously as the other if they are to exist at all. Yet to be the other without being itself is as impossible as it is to be itself alone.
We too are seed and fruit: ourselves and other than ourselves, human and divine.
27 November 2001
5.30-6.30am
28 November 2001
4.30-5.30am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 07:03
To: Friends
Subject: Then Moses Saw the Burning Bush
The Americans are killing the Taliban in Afghanistan for protecting Al Qaeda who are killing Americans all over the world who are killing non-Americans all over the world who are killing one another for being black, white, brown, tall, short, Palestinian, Israeli, Bosnian, Serb, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jew, Atheist, or for being Afghans who are Americans in reality, who are Afghans in disguise, who could be anybody we know but do not, who could even be Tony Blair flying around the world changing the napkins of baby tyrants, wondering all the time if he should be carrying more deodorants in his bag but nevertheless glad he does not have to clean up the mess in Mazar-i-Sharif where the Americans have just bombed hundreds of prisoners of war to smithereens whom Rumsfeld had wanted dead and who obliged by revolting so that just days after they surrendered they could all get blown to pieces, with perhaps some of the bits landing in Pakistan on Musharraf’s star-studded uniform, assuming he was wearing one at the time and not dressed in his other attire, getting ready to parade Pakistan’s debt to the world, like a mother parading a disabled child, expecting to move passers-by into dropping a few coins into her starving hands, which some do of course but not Putin who has enough troubles of his own killing Chechnyans who are killing Russians who grew weary of killing Afghans when the Americans decided to help Afghans kill Russians so that they could concentrate on helping the Saudis spend their oil-wealth, supplying them with weapons and later a ready-made army when Iraq conveniently invaded Kuwait, the Americans overstaying their welcome in a holy land, which is why someone called Usama bin Laden says he decided to do some killing of his own, which is why the Americans are killing the Taliban, many of whom are defecting to the Northern Alliance as fast as they can so that they can become a United Front, a kind of United States or a regular United Nations all on their own, leaving one to wonder whether anyone other than Moses has ever seen light in a bush.
29 November 2001
4.30-5.30am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 07:04
To: Friends
Subject: DNA and the Spirit
DNA is the physical reproduction of the thought of God. A painting of how God sees us before He gives us the brush and encourages us to create ourselves. We are free to change His thoughts about us and to alter His artistic vision, even while we are compelled to surrender to the music at the heart of all the elements, that inspires our lives and gives meaning to our art.
When we realize that the material available to us is as limitless as our creativity, the futility of our limited art overwhelms us. Were it not for the music that never leaves us, we would be devastated. Surrendering to the music we merge with everything around us, finally realising that becoming part of a larger reality is the ultimate art and all our prior artistic endeavours were no more than an essential apprenticeship.
30 November 2001
5.00–7.00am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 05:57
To Friends
Subject: Moon and Sun
Moon and Sun
Hardness
and softness make up the sun-moon face of the universe.
How
often we mistake love for an ice cream.
As long as we can lick its face and satisfy a desire, we believe that to
be love. And how often we mistake
vengeance for justice, being no more affected by the murder of men, women and
children than we are when playing a computer war-game.
Looking
outside ourselves, everything seems different — other than us, more than us,
more often less than us. It is not easy,
perhaps not even possible, to love or to be just to someone we see as other
than ourselves. Yet the essence of everything that we see outside ourselves
that looks different is actually the same.
The soft moon-face of love is darker than the hard sun-face of justice — yet infinitely brighter — when we see only one set of images, only one image, only one presence, one divine principle, one sublime thought steeped in mercy.
1
December 2001
5.00-5.40am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 08:00
To: Friends
Subject: Peace
Whatever is growing cannot be at peace. No living thing is fully at peace. The universe is full of restlessness. When we seek to grow, the price of that desire is loss of peace.
How then can we live in peace with ourselves, with others and with the One who is Peace and from whom Peace emanates, if growing is the outcome of desire?
The answer lies in knowing what to desire, in knowing what constitutes the inner or essential self and encouraging the desire of its surrender to its higher nature so that growing in self-loss it becomes the heart of peace.
2 December 2001
5.20-7.20am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 06:17
To: Friends
Subject: Sound and Light
A personal reflection on Charan Singh’s
Light
at its brightest is lightless, neither light as we know it nor its opposite as
we know it. The heart of this light is
love.
The
cry of love becomes the purest sound. The purest sound becomes the physical
light we see. The physical light we see
is the brightest that physical light can be, but the darkest that lightless
light can be.
We
need to become the purest sound, before it becomes the brightest light, before
it merges in lightless light, before we return to the heart of love.
2
December 2001
10.00-11.00pm
3
December 2001
5.00-6.00am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 07:28
To: Friends
Subject: Truth
Our
understanding of truth is coloured by who we are. This very statement reveals the
particular understanding of a particular person with particular limitations.
The simplest statement: ‘The sky is blue’ can be questioned in the same way.
This does not mean that nothing is true.
It simply means that we may understand something as true when it is not,
or something as untrue when it is not. This is our right.
But our
right to be wrong does not give us the right to mislead others. In this age of
conflict, with the gulf between truth and untruth as wide as the gulf between
CNN and Al Jazeera, does the truth lie buried under the World Trade Centre, or
in the rubble of
Should
we as artists, writers and activists not rebel against what is presented to us
as truth when we believe it is not the truth?
Should we accept as truth the daily ration of packaged truth dropped
upon us like manna? Is the truth so obscure that some acts can be perceived by
half the world as concealing murderous intent and by the other half as
benevolence?
This
brings us back to the beginning: what we know as the truth is as much the truth
as we ourselves are true to the truth of who we are. None of us can know this unless we know it.
Does it matter? Of course it does. And yet perhaps it does not. Our truth
cannot be another’s truth. Ultimately the most we might be capable of is not to
compel our truth to become the truth for others and not to compel our untruths
to be accepted by others as the truth.
4
December 2001
4.30-6.00am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 06:43
To: Friends
Subject: Two Poems
when we love
he loves
when he loves
we love
we only love
him alone
when we love
all that lives
only he
is only love
only we
can love as he
5 December 2001
5.30-5.40am
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From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 06:43
To:
Friends
Subject: Two poems
do not fade when i fade
do not forget when i forget
say you cannot live without me
speak this untruth not to shame a friend
who claims he cannot live without you
though he knows his love is flawed
but ultimately all lies are true
when they stem from love for you
if what i desire cannot be
of what use is this life to me
5 December 2001
5.40-6.00am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date:
Thu, 6 Dec 2001
07:08
To: Friends
Subject: Poem
in the holy night of power
is the still-unfolding hour
when you cried as we do now
knew and yet knew not somehow
what it means to take as slaves
those who love you till their graves
open wide to let them in
hoping love is their only sin
5 December 2001
7.50-8.00am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 06:06
To: Friends
Subject: Light and Shadows
Light and Shadows
Our
eyes, while helping us to see, simultaneously veil our sight. We see in terms of ‘ourselves’ and ‘others’.
And the ‘other’ we see is perceived as not being, or (using an unscientific
expression) being illusion, not reality. Believing in the reality of ourselves,
we create the world in our own image, an image of light and shadow. We create with the light of that image that
which we love, and consider as shadows everything else — that which represents
to us what we ourselves have come to be by being who we are, rather than who
God wants us to be.
Our
illusions are endless. Each need exposes
us. Each breath destroys us, each act of
creativity reveals the poverty of our imagination. Even the best of what we are and what we
create is no more than a work of art — a combination of light and shadows that
veils and unveils, that veils as it unveils, and differentiates as it
integrates. We create illusions that
feed on themselves, leaving us hungry for more illusions. Being an ‘illusion’ is not easy to explain,
when everything we are, see, hear, feel and touch, says that we are real and
everything around us is real.
There is
reality, yes. But what we see as reality
is illusion compared to the reality we cannot see. How can we claim the existence of a reality
we cannot see? To illusion, illusion appears as reality. Yet scientifically
this statement is untenable. It may be
true if the illusion in “To illusion” can be proved to be illusion — which the
statement implies is impossible because, to illusion, illusion appears as
reality — so visible ‘reality’ at least exists, and appears to be the only reality
that exists.
Where
does the illusion come from? And is there a reality that cannot be seen? Where there is ultimate reality there can be
no other reality. The unreal cannot
exist side by side with the real.
Reality cannot create unreality.
Our own
reality as we think of it, as it appears to be, cannot be the ultimate reality
because the light we know creates the shadows we see. To light that is other
than light that creates other than light, the other than light it creates
appears as real as itself. Illusion is real to illusion as reality is real to
reality. Illusion appears real and the real appears illusion.
The
unreal can only be real if the real is unreal.
But the real can only be real. Therefore the unreal can only be unreal
to itself and as itself. And can only be
real to the real. As ourselves, we are
unreal in the light of the real. As
other than ourselves, we become real in the light of the real. When we cease to be shadows of the light of
the light of God — that have come into existence after ‘seventy thousand veils
of light and darkness’ were created by God between ourselves and Him before we
could exist as ourselves — we merge into the light of the light of God, till
there is no other light, where there are no shadows, when in the face of
reality illusion dies.
7
December 2001
3.00 -
6.00am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2001 06:38
To:
Friends
Subject: Killing God
A believer can have various understandings of who God is. Believers believe that God is Love, Light and Peace and that He is Merciful, Compassionate and Just. Disbelievers in a divine presence also believe in love, light, peace, mercy, compassion and justice. Believers believe in Prophets, Books, Guidance or that He died for their sins. Or that He lives in their Hearts, that they are Him and that He is them or that they are from Him and will return to Him or that theirs is a journey in various stages of development from Him to Him. Disbelievers can have as many interesting and yet different beliefs.
But both believers and disbelievers can also be vicious, murderous, totally destructive, and mad beyond belief. Can raze not just buildings to the ground but entire countries. Individuals can terrorise nations and the disturbed psyche of terrified nations can make them see the entire world as a killing field.
What is more disturbing than the killing is the justification believers find for it and the equally gruesome overt or quiet rejoicing at the killing of the ‘other’. Those who believe in a God of Mercy are as at home with war as those whose central vision of God is a God of Love or those whose central vision of God is a God of Justice. The technology-averse believer notches up his kills quietly on prayer beads, the technologically advanced believer displays his killing skills relentlessly on CNN. Yet even as they kill believers talk of love, even as they commit atrocity after atrocity they talk of justice, even as they oppress they continue to demand secure borders — as if there can ever be a secure border around oppression!
And everyone continues to believe in love, peace and justice. Those who believe He is Love and that He died for their sins so often give the impression that this frees them to commit any sin. Would it not be better to believe that He lived so that we do not sin? That every time we kill others we kill Him? Those who claim that Peace is the essence of the guidance given to them just as often display no peace within their hearts or in their lands to make their claim credible. And those who seek a state of Justice just as often resort to injustice to establish that state. What difference does it make to the victims of these atrocities whether their becoming victims is the outcome of some misguided act of Love, or misguided quest for Peace or Justice?
We may believe whatever we want, but it is not our beliefs that prove the value of our living but our living that proves the value of our beliefs. The clothes we wear are naturally different. And we wear different clothes in different seasons. Let us wear in the season of hate the clothes of love, in the season of disquiet the clothes of peace, in the season of oppression the clothes of justice. Warm clothes are worn in cold times. And cool clothes when it is hot.
We cannot say: We are hated, now is not the time for love. When is there a better time to love? Killing the world to save the world is still killing the world. Killing the world to save ourselves is still killing the world. Killing ourselves to save the world is still killing ourselves, and who are we but the world? Equally we cannot say this is not the time for Peace. Or this is not the time for Justice.
More than an age of killing, this is the age of deceit. Our killings are always right. Their killings are always wrong. Our God, we claim, is Merciful. Our God, we claim, is Just. Our God, we claim, is Love. But our God is dead. We killed Him the moment we became conscious of ourselves and lost consciousness of Him. He died when we began living other than as He conceived. He died so that we could live. But not in the way we believe.
8 December 2001
4.30-6.00am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2001 05:47
To: Friends
Subject: Seek To Be Lost
Unlike other journeys, the journey of love is not about gain but loss, the vehicle not self but selflessness, the path neither known nor unknown. Every path is different yet the same. The traveller relies not on hope but on hopelessness to help him in his task.
Nothing is worthy of his love, yet everything is worthy of his love. He may seek consciously but cannot find what he seeks consciously. He has to risk his heart to find his heart. Lose everything, to find everything. But first Love has to find him as nothing, before he finds himself in Love.
8 December 2001
7.00-7.45am
9 December 2001
4.30-5.20am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 08:23
To: Friends
Subject: Some Desire
some desire paradise
some desire higher
some desire domination
through unbridled power
some desire a life of
grace
and
death by friendly fire
10 December 2001
5.00-5.20am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:48
To: Friends
Subject: Adding Value
Adding
Value
I wondered what you were
doing amongst the pages of the Value Added Tax Act of 1991. This was no Bible or Qur’an. And there you were in the definition of
zero-rated supplies. I had quite a few
questions to ask, but as I learnt to my cost you are no slouch at asking
questions either.
“Do
you know what is happening in
“You
write very well” you said. “Who would
have thought that one day you would write so well. By the way there is a comma missing after…”
and before you could continue I exploded: “A comma missing! Half of
“What
are you doing here?” you asked. “Why are
you not in
“That
was a question of interpretation” I said.
“Men, women and children are dying in conflicts all over the world. That
is a fact. Suffering is a fact. Death is
a fact. What you are doing here, when you are needed elsewhere, is open to
interpretation.” The minute I said this,
I regretted it. You looked hurt. Immediately I understood how little I had
understood and you confirmed it with these words:
“Everything
you say is true. Suffering, disease and
death are facts. But not facts as you
see them. These are shadows that you
see. When you see shadows, see also the
light. Just yesterday you were reading
Rumi. The embryo in the mother’s womb,
when it was asked why it prefers to keep its eyes closed and live in a dark,
confined world when it could live in another world full of light replied: ‘This
is the only world I know. How can I
believe in a world I have not seen?’ Would
you say the embryo knew the facts? I did
not only give you physical sight. Where
is your insight? I admit suffering is
hard and death not easy to deal with.
But enlightenment is never easy to attain. To become light when you are a shadow of light
was not intended to be easy. I created
enlightenment as a possibility. I created life as a fact. I created you from
dust. You are turning my creation to
dust. And now you are angry with me!”
I
was taken aback, wondering why I had revealed my ignorance in this way. It’s not every day you get to meet the
captain. And I have not even met Mandela. I should have asked about zero-rated
supplies and whether it was possible to claim the Input Tax in respect of the
sale of shares to non-residents. Or I could have spoken about how just recently
we had succeeded in having the penalties waived on a late submission of
outstanding tax. That might have been much better.
11
December 2001
4.30-6.30am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 06:19
To: Friends
Subject: Being Like God and Being Divine
Being like God is not the same as living
within the divine. Being like God implies honouring the attributes of God such
as Love, Justice and Mercy in one’s being and in one’s living as that
being. Living within the Divine is the
result of loss of the self.
And this loss is only possible through love.
As much as God ’s love causes us to be, our love causes us not to be.
Effectively through love we become who we are and through love God remains who
He is.
●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●
From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 01:05
To: Friends
Subject: O Lord Of Grace and Mercy
O
Lord Of Grace and Mercy
O Purity, Peace and Love
O Dispenser of Justice
O Everlasting Light
Who
gives us the gift of Your names within which is the divine music of the
universe that sweeps us in waves onto vast shores of silence
Who
allows us to trap You with our guile and mislead You with our false promises of
love, remaining pure, forgiving and true
Who
brings forward the harvest of our goodness when storms threaten to destroy us
and stores it as Joseph stored the grain of
Who
ruins our capacity for evil and destruction by making us vulnerable to suffering
and by making death our constant companion
Who
protects the weak from the mighty, causing the mighty to self-destruct by
rendering them incapable of avoiding the abuse of their power
Who becomes a beggar to
remind us of poverty or a refugee to remind us of homelessness so that we may
become compassionate towards others
Who
teaches us that only with the thread of love and the needle of justice can we
sew the garments of earthly peace and who clothes the self-less with light
Who
makes excuses for our faults and accepts our repentance with alacrity, full of
grace and mercy, revealing our own love as love only of ourselves, not You
Who makes us worthy of being
loved by loving us despite our not being worthy of being loved, living within
us when we live within you
Grant us Grace that is veil-less, Mercy that is boundless
Purity that is seamless, Peace that is soundless
Love that is selfless, Justice that is fearless
and Light that is shadowless
12
December 2001
4.35
am-5.45 am
7.15
pm–7.45 pm
12-13
December 2001
10.30pm–12.30am
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From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 09:20
To: Friends
Subject: The Worship of God Does Not Require God
The Worship of God Does Not
Require God
God can be completely absent from our lives and yet be worshipped. We can create God out of our own thoughts, a frog, a prince, sex, money or power. We can even create a home for him, a temple, church, mosque or synagogue. We can dress Him (or Her) up as a man or woman, can create a Presence out of his absence, put Him to bed when He is naughty or if He disturbs us when we are naughty. He is blindfolded when we need to kill someone (we think He might just be squeamish), is given a make-over now and then (when we think He needs a fresher look or when we want Him to appear on television), and called Love, Mercy and Justice when we want to seduce Him to side with us in our conflicts and power struggles. He looks stunning on the ramp of our deceit, is paid in contributions that are used to espouse His causes, loves publicity and occasionally protests He is only human, seeming remarkably like us in every way.
To love God we need to be absent from ourselves. We cannot love Him by loving ourselves. When we cease to see ourselves as we are, we see Him as He is. He lives in our hearts when our hearts are not our hearts but His heart. He is light that we cannot know until we become blind to the light we can know. We cannot hear Him until we become deaf to everything we can hear. His Presence depends on our absence as much as His absence results from our presence. He is everything that needs nothing. We know Him by the most beautiful of names before we find that He is nameless, a sound, a sigh, a sea, a place of drowning where we cannot be to be. He is Essence of Essence, He is the Light within Light that gives Light to Light, He is Love that is Alive to Love that is Alive, The Generous Giver, the Map and the Treasure, the Seeker and the Finder, the One, the Sublime.
19 December 2001
6.30-8.30am
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From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 13:31
To: Friends
Subject: Conclusion: Saving Mankind
I had thought when I wrote
“The worship of God does not
require God” that it would serve as a very appropriate
conclusion to these Ramadan reflections but the spill-over effect of Ramadan is
still strong and this morning I woke up to the following thought: “There is so
much bloodshed all around the world — the angels seem to be dressed in red”. I
made a cup of tea and then went to my desk and began writing what has now
effectively become the conclusion.
Saving Mankind
so the angels will be a little late in coming i am afraid
but in the meantime we have instructed cnn
to ensure that you get the very brightest pictures
of our cruise missiles as they fill the skies
over
(Lines from a poem I wrote on the first day of Ramadan 1998–1999)
on 21 December 1998. It is 22 December 2001 today)
In the introduction I concentrated on trying to explain, through a combination of acquired, imbibed and instinctive or primordial knowledge, not necessarily correctly, how I saw (how we might see) God, ourselves and the part that can be played by love in helping us find ourselves and realize our divine inheritance, effectively saying: God cannot be found by seeking but by being divine.
It needs to be recorded that whatever I am saying is ultimately rooted in a tradition — the Islamic tradition — my sources of acquired knowledge are mainly Islamic, my spiritual fundamentals are Islamic — fundamentals that inspire me to see the world as I see it and drive me to write as I write.
I once read — “It is better to be alive
for a day on earth than to live a thousand years in Paradise” — a confirmation
that living in
Therefore it is important, not only to acquire knowledge of the self and self-less ness, but to live a life of service and sacrifice. This is why the extra day on earth is worth so much. It gives us more time to earn the pleasure of God! In the end our goodness must be expressed in tangible ways — easing someone’s hunger or pain or loneliness. If we abandon those in need, we shed our humanity.
Every Prophet of God tried to change the world. Imagine if all the Prophets who ever lived, were present today, around a table, trying to decide how to save the world, with the world still in the control of those who control it, put into those positions of power by us because of our fears, our greed, our selfishness or our mistaken piety — would they succeed in changing the world overnight? Would we allow them to? It is a question that is not wise to ask though I have asked it. But it is not a question I shall attempt to answer.
So how do those who love, change the world, controlled as it is by those who favour might? How do we deal with a world that has always been at war? How can we begin to ‘save’ mankind if indeed it needs to be ‘saved’?
The Qur’an says that if we save one person we will have saved the whole of mankind. So while we seek with the world to find solutions to the problems of the world that befit the highest of our natures, let us begin with a clearer understanding of the goals and the means.
Let us start with a hungry child that we
find on a street. If we can save one
child from hunger, illness, or loneliness we have saved the whole world. Saved the whole world — not just every child
in
Let us then save the world again and again by helping others in need — whoever they are, wherever they may be — those who are near as well as those who are distant. For it makes no difference in the end, if one is interested in saving the world, whether the person being helped is near or distant, one of ‘us’ or an ‘other’, for ultimately we are all one and there is no ‘other’.
And let us continue to develop a global vision for a better world — as no great achievement is possible without a great vision. But that vision should be based on a return to love!
Finally, since there are always dark times as well as times of
light, let us not forget:
for
darkness to triumph over light
all
light needs to be extinguished
for
light to triumph over darkness
a single
light that shines is sufficient
22
December 2001
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