PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN

By, Rev. Patrick J. Harbula

The Western Head of the Sufi Order speaks on…
Spiritual Unity…
Spiritual Counseling
…Life

 

MM: It’s been said that Sufism is a religion of the heart. Would you describe it in that way?

PV: Well, first of all, I would like to call it a religion. I do agree that emotion plays a very important part in Sufism but I would call it the emotion of the soul rather than the emotion of the heart. I like to call Sufism the metaphysics of ecstasy.

There is a metaphysical way of looking at things which is quite the opposite of the usual one in which everything is looked at from one vantage point. Everything can be seen from the Divine vantage point, in which we are the object of the Divine knowledge rather than thinking of God as an object of our knowledge. That shifting vantage point triggers off ecstasy.

MM: You have said that the individual is both transient and Divine, which could be illustrated by the image in one of your books of an invested cone representing the relationship between the Divine (above) and the individual (below at the apex).

PV: Yes. It’s just an image, but it says that we’re both a fraction of the totality and also, potentially, the totality.

We attach a lot of importance to the words of Christ, “Be perfect as your Father.” We carry in our beings the inheritance of many splendid divine qualities. If we are not aware of that inheritance, of course we can’t claim it. Christ could claim it because he was aware of it. He was saying that we all can be perfect as our father is. We all have the same inheritance.

MM: In most Eastern traditions there is emphasis on devotion to a spiritual teacher, a guru. I understand it’s somewhat different in Sufism.

PV: Yes. Sufism developed under the aegis of Islam where they don’t like idolatry in any way. Swami Darumi, for example, says emotion is the destroyer of the idol that people make of him.

Whereas the idea of superman is very prominent in Hinduism, in Sufism, no. There is no such thing as a superman, but it’s true that the love and devotion that the mureeds have for their murshid tends to resemble that of the chelah for the guru. The teacher is always to make it clear that one is not supposed to be attached to the outer personbut to the attunement. There are two words to use, one is tasawuri mirshid: which means that picture of the murshid. The other is tawaje: meaning the attunement to the consciousness of murshid. Rather than the image, attunement is sought, which destroys the image. In Islam, one isn’t allowed to have the picture of the teacher. My father didn’t observe that but, as I say, we’ve gone beyond those traditional roots.

MM: How did you go beyond?

PV: Well, we went beyond by realizing that one has to break into new horizons. Ramon Punnaker is a Catholic priest, also Hindu, half Spanish and half Indian. He’s rather like me in many ways. He said one should have one’s roots in one’s tradition and the branches of the tree into space intermeshed with the branches of other things. Very nice picture.

MM: That’s beautiful. You teach that there is a spiritual hierarchy. How does that reconcile with the idea that we’re all created one and that we’re all created equal?

PV: We all have the divinity in our being but the degree to which we make it manifest does vary from person to person. What we really mean by the hierarchy is that there are some beings who, first of all by their dedication and secondly by their wisdom, tend to take responsibility for more and more people or have an influence on more and more. Ghandi, for example, had an influence over masses of people not just in India. Someone like that I would consider as a member of the hierarchy–in a sense that he or she was charge of lots of human beings, helping them unfold and servicing them. There must be a kind of government in the universe, some organized guidance, let’s say. The remarkable thing is that people who are dedicated to having charge of other people seem to recognize each other; there seems to be a sense of belonging to the same government — which we like to call the government of the world.

MM: What is the Sufi teaching on desire and how is it different from other traditions?

PV: Most of the teachings that have been improted from the east, the Hindu tradition or the Buddhist tradition, were intended for mendicants, a world for hermits and anchorites, for people who have left the world, sanyasins, bhikus, monks. According to the Indian tradition, people are supposed to earn their living, raise a family up to such an age when their sons are grown up and can take over their land. Then they are supposed to dedicate themselves to the spiritual life and become initiated in an order. Eventually they become sanyansin, saddhu. If they develop to a very advanced degree, they become like a rishi: a great master living in a cave. The teaching is geared towards attaining freedom and awakening from the ordinary vantage point, let’s call it the existential vantage point. That’s what is called awakening.

Everything can be seen from the Divine vantage point, in which we are the object of the Divine knowledge rather than thinking of God as an object of our knowledge. That shifting vantage point triggers off ecstasy.

My father, however, very clearly speaks about two awakenings. The first one is Samadhi, where one awakes in the physical world as though in a dream. Obviously the physical world is not the way we think it is; one can shift one’s consciousness in such a way that it becomes very clear it is an illusion. The way my father described the second awakening is to say one becomes aware that one’s consciousness is the divine consciousness looking into the universe and the universe is the excitation of the reality that does not have form. Instead of being illusion, life is seen as a very wonderful projection of a reality that one couldn’t grasp in its original state. For example pure splendor is only experienced as beauty. Beauty gives splendor form and concreteness.

MM: So, then the Sufi teaching on desire is not non-desire?

PV: Exactly. Because according to Sufis, the whole universe is the fulfillment of the divine wish. I would like to translate the word wish is nostalgia instead of desire — the divine nostalgia. Therefore the universe is by means of, “I desired to be known, I desired to know myself.” Not known by others, because there’s no other but God. Sufi metaphysics is rather subtle.

Desire is the means of knowing what is latent within the divine being by making it happen, by making it actuate.

MM: So, then all desire stems from a divine impulse?

PV: Those are exactly my father’s words. He wrote that all desires originate within divine desire, but they get distorted and limited passing through humans, because the human himself is a distortion of the divine. There is an old adage of the French which says, “One has the defects of one’s qualities.” It’s no use always trying to figure out what one’s defects are. All we have to know is what our qualities are, then you know what your defects are because they are distortions of the quality.

MM: How does meditation relate to the teachings on the seven planes of existence?

PV: That’s a very good question, yes. Well, first of all I think one needs to make clear that we mustn’t think of planes as being somewhere else. My father said the other world and this world are both here — it is not a question of space but of attunement.

I’ve tried to see what these planes mean instead of just teaching them as theory. Some of them become a little clearer in time, for example metaphor. The world of metaphor is a reality different from the existential world — we are the observer of the existential world — is given, let’s say. Whereas at the level of creative imagination we are both a spectator and also the midwife of what we create. And so we are talking of a different level of reality and one can think of oneself as a reality in the world of imagination in contrast to one’s body for example, so we are really talking about a different plane.

Another is the plane of light, the aura, for example. Now it’s true that the aura does have some physical reality — for example, some measurable amount of photons, called bioluminescence, are radiated by the body. It is well possible to think of the body as a formation within the aura, and to think of the aura as a ball in which the body is being formed. Interestingly enough, Dr. David Bohm, a physicist I have worked with at conferences and, I think, one of the greatest physicists of our time, has a theory that what we know of physical matter is a ripple on the ocean of reality. Light is considered to be matter — but the physicists are talking about just one dimension of light. Dr. Bohm suggests that instead of thinking of light as traveling through space at a speed of 186 thousand miles per second, imagine that light is stationary and that it is the electrons that are moving — a very challenging way of looking at things.

Sufis speak about aqil-an-nur, which is luminous intelligence. And, of course, the ancient’s uncreated light. For physicists that doesn’t make sense — uncreated light, what can it mean? If one is very perspicacious, one can see the difference between one’s aura and an aspect of one’s being that is pure light but is not the aura. The aura is just an aspect of one’s expression of something much deeper.

One can interpret the various planes in different ways. The Sufis speak about imagination, and then malakut, which is the plane of light. Beyond that is jabarut, which I would say is the plane of splendor, that’s beyond form.

So, reality is perhaps even more subtle than imagination. Imagination is a means of giving form to something that does not have a form originally. The plane of creative imagination is a transitional one, which feed from a higher one called jabarut, the plane of splendor. Even beyond that they speak about nahut which is the plane of the archetypes of all things, or the qualities. Beyond that, then, is the plane of unity.

MM: There seems to be a great deal of teaching these days on freeing oneself from restrictions and I’m wondering how does that balance with discipline?

PV: We’re living in a world of permissiveness. Discipline is exactly the opposite in Yoga, for example, which is the way of mastery.

There has been a rebellion against the idea that it is bad to desire. My father has said that if one harnesses an impulse, it can be used in a constructive way. A very good example is anger — one can just explode in anger and lose all one’s power, or there’s implosion, which uses the energy in a constructive way.

I was mentioning the difference between a quality and its distortions. I think hatred is a distortion of anger. Anger is a very good thing. One would be spineless if one were not to experience wrath and outrage at the tortures inflicted upon people in concentration camps and by crimes. One would be condoning acts which revolt our sense of dignity and accord. But, when anger becomes hatred, that’s the distortion of it. There is a theory that people who give into their anger all the time are just disagreeable people.

MM: Is anger a healthy emotion?

PV: A healthy emotion as long as it is harnessed, as with many of the emotions, fear for example. If it weren’t for fear, we would be doing more stupid things than we’re doing now.

MM: Would that also be true of pain or suffering?

PV: Sufis have a very definite attitude about that. In Buddhism, particularly, there is a sense of detachment. The Hindus have a word, vairagya, detachment from attachment. All pain is due to attachment; one can confirm that to some extent.

When I was young — younger — I tried having a tooth pulled out by a dentist, saying, “Well, you don’t have to give me an anesthetic.” He was horrified, “Professionally I can’t do that.” I said, “Well, try it out, it’s just an experiment.” He said, “What is it? Yoga?” I agreed, “Yes, it’s yoga.” As long as one does not identify with the body, then it’s okay. (“You can do what you like with the body — it’s not me.”) I can corroborate the fact that one does not suffer pain if one is able to be totally detached — that must be true at the psychological level too. But, one is losing out on something. There’s a refusal of life — anesthetizing oneself against suffering.

Some cancer patients prefer not to take drugs unless the pain becomes really excruciating because they don’t want to be doped. The person who is indifferent and detached is not living deeply, not involving him or herself deeply, which is the way of the ascetic, the monk. I’ve spoken to a lot of monks and ascetics, of course, and very often I’ve found that they are people who have been hurt in life, don’t want to be hurt anymore, and are trying to protect themselves from something. It’s a person of courage that will go right into something.

I used to think that surely one should be able to transmute suffering into joy. The more I think about it — it’s okay to suffer. And one can be happy at the same time, one doesn’t have to transmute it.

MM: You said that there is a need for introducing spirituality into psychology. Do you feel there is also a need to bring psychology into the ancient wisdom teachings?

PV: Yes. Spiritualists have been accused of spiritual by-pass, which is lulling people into a kind of euphoria and a world of make-believe. It’s very tempting because people get disenchanted with life. Deep down there is an idealism in people that is strengthened, reinforced by their spiritual work. The consequence is they can’t deal with their problems. And I think the reason is — well, the clue to it is what I call the “guru syndrome.”

Jung impressed me very deeply when he said that if one does not confront one’s shadow, it will appear over and over again in one’s fate.

When one feels that one embodies an ideal in the minds of people and that one needs to uphold an ideal that people are looking for, consequently one does not confront one’s own faults. There is always a way of justifying faults, not only to other people, but also to one’s self. The consequences are that one will never be able to progress, for one thing, and it also leads to a terrible hypocrisy, of which one is almost unconscious.

Jung impressed me very deeply when he said that if one does not confront one’s shadow, it will appear over and over again in one’s fate. One will always find oneself confronted with the same problem, because one is always calling that problem. As a guru, one may entertain the defect that one has always justified, and then induce other people into that error. They, in turn, will not confront themselves with their own defects because they will try to live up to this make-believe idolizing a special person. It is a very dangerous trip to get into.

MM: There must be thousands and thousands of people who put on a pedestal. How do you deal with that?

PV: I’m very human, make jokes and also I do quite a few things that shock people. My appetite is not conventional and I don’t hide it. I do outrageous things — like hang-gliding at 70. People don’t idolize me very long. I don’t care about that.

On the other hand, one must admit that psychology ought to give some nourishment to the need of people for a special ideal. This is particularly true in dealing with the greatest of all psychological trauma: bad self-image, which is due to the fact that people identify themselves with their personality. My father gave the clue to that when he said that our personality is like a plant, but behind that plant the reality of our being is, of course, the seed of our personality. A plant is the unfolding of the seed, but only very little of the original seed appears in the plant. If we identify ourselves with our personality, we are limiting our self-image. As soon as we become aware of the potentials of the seed of our personality then our self-image changes. Then we have difficulty reconciling the pride, let’s say, of our divine inheritance with the sense of inadequacy of our personal image. That’s what I call reconciling the irreconciables. My father deals with that, again very wonderfully, when he speaks about the aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the ego.

MM: Wow, that’s powerful. I really like the analogy. In your father’s words, then, the seed also shows itself in the blossom.

            I understand that Roberto Assagioli, founder of Psychosynthesis, was a friend of and interpreter for your father. What type of exchange was there between them?

PV: Yes, I wish I knew myself, but I just suspect that synthesis was an idea of my father’s, because he didn’t like analysis. I can understand that.

The ordinary, middle-range way of thinking is conceptional — dividing things in categories, either this or that. When I was at university studying philosophy, I was taught logic: “Men are mortal; Socrates was a man; therefore, Socrates was mortal.” That’s thinking in terms of categories. In fact, man is both mortal and immortal at the same time — the reconciliation of irreconcilables. The ancients understood this; St. Augustine was one and St. Thomas Aquinas. “Conjunctus oppositorum,” the conjunction of the opposites represented the higher modes of thinking.

Thinking in terms of categories evidences the limitation of the mind to deal with the wholistic way of looking at things. It’s only now that we have begun to understand what that mode of thinking is.

Most people are grappling with the concepts of their problems. Their concepts are categories, you see, and they get bogged into the limitation of the mind and can’t understand the big issues behind their problems.

MM: So, what’s needed is a broader picture?

PV: That’s right! That’s synthesis!

MM: Your latest book, Introducing Spirituality into Counseling and Therapy, is on introducing spirituality into counselling and therapy. What is the most important focus for therapists and counselors?

PV: Therapists need to be a kind of mirror from which people are able to get feedback about themselves: they mustn’t start interfering and telling people what to do. So, what kind of a mirror should they be? That’s the thing!

There is a practice we have been working with which consists in casting one’s eyes at infinity and then opening one’s eyes, thinking of them as headlamps — headlamps of a car, for example — rather rather than organs of perception. Instead of being perceptive one is casting light upon a situation. The consequence is that if you’ve done that for say, months and months, you start bringing your glance a little bit closer to a person; then you begin to see the eternal face of the person behind the physical face. The Sufis call this that which transpires behind that which appears. The eternal face is very beautiful. If people look in a mirror, they see just what appears, not that which transpires.

Thinking in terms of categories evidences the limitation of the mind to deal with the wholistic way of looking at things.

If psychologists could see that which transpires, patients would be able to see themselves through the mirror of the psychologist’s soul. That would be more meaningful than all the work with the mind that is done at purely intellectual levels.

One danger I see in psychology is in confirming that people have been damaged — as in the case of women who have been raped, for example. People justify the failures in their lives on the grounds that they have been damaged. It’s a very easy excuse. They feel a need for therapy because of that damage. Therapists then even strengthen that feeling. In fact, the damage is just in the mind.

MM: You’re describing a counsellor/client relationship which could be defined as an impersonal “I – it” rather than a more personal “I – thou.”

PV: Yes, that’s the mirror. There are really two modes of cognizance. The first one is experience, where you have a dichotomy: subject/object. And then you have the second mode, which perhaps one could call resonance: resonating by dint of affinity rather than otherness.

Experiences of otherness — me, you, other than me, the object of my knowledge, and so on and so forth — are the usual mode of experience for most people. But in the second mode one discovers oneself in that which is being experienced: resonance self-discovery.

The Upanishads say, “I am you.” The Sufis use these words: “I see myself through your eyes.” First of all they say, “I see you through your eyes,” and then, “I see myself through your eyes.” That works on both sides, of course.

MM: What is the greatest obstacle for someone in the Western world who is choosing the spiritual path?

PV: I think the greatest obstacle is idolatry for the guru. Another obstacle is sanctimoniousness: to think one is very special because one is spiritual. The consequence is judgment — of other people — which goes against love. Another is living in a world of make-believe. I think it’s important to strive for a better world and to be inspired by an ideal, but one has to somehow make it real instead of just living on those highfalutin thoughts.

For example, I remember reading and studying a comparison between pathological states and mystical states. There’s no doubt that in a mystical state there’s a certain euphoria, an excited state that is not the usual attunement but, let’s say, paranormal. The difference between the mystic and the pathological person is the pathological person does not make any use of that euphoria, doesn’t know how to make any use, doesn’t relate it to the earth. Whereas Mother Theresa of Calcutta was able to make her ideals manifest in her activities.

MM: Your father prophesied a new era, when governments would come together; there would be a new world religion; and peace would be the cry of the times. How would you feel that’s manifesting? How near are we to that?

PV: It doesn’t look as though we’re all that near! Perhaps there has to be a breakdown before there can be a breakthrough.

In one way it is happening. I was in Assisi at a great meeting to which the Pope invited representatives of all religions — a historical event. I, myself, am organizing congresses of religions in Paris every year; many people are arranging similar events these days. But this was organized on a spectacular scale by the Catholic church which has been so conservative all these years. What a great breakthrough! That’s progress.

World events are getting exaggerated at both ends: more crime, more violence, more tortures than before, and more dishonesty in politics. On the other hand, there’s more idealism, more orderliness, more caution and wisdom, I think, than ever before.

It’s just a little more difficult now. If you have rats in a compound they behave okay as long as there aren’t too many. If there are too many, they start killing each other. Over-population in the world is partly responsible for adversity. Something will have to happen; if it’s not a war, it might turn out to be even worse — an epidemic or plague. Nature has a way of adjusting itself.

MM: Do you think these events are helping to open people’s eyes?

PV: If one doesn’t learn one way, one learns the hard way.

MM: Sufism has been very involved in the efforts of uniting the faiths, different philosophies, humanities. Would you like to speak on that?

PV: Yes, you see, just proclaiming the unity of all religions is too facetious. One has to go deeply into seeing what the differences are, why there are differences, where there can be integration and so on. I’ve spent my life studying comparative religion. The differences are in the belief systems and they seem to be very considerable — for those caught up in a particular belief.

I was a pupil of Professor Massignon in Paris, a great specialist in the study of Sufism who wrote his masterpieces on Al-Hallaj, the Sufi who was crucified. He told me, “You know, after all these years I have realized that I am a Christian and a Muslim at the same time.” As a student, I didn’t know how one could justify those two things.

Since then I’ve been working out in my mind, how could one possibly reconcile those beliefs, which are so absolutely contradictory. If you’re a Christian, you believe that Christ is the Son of God. If you’re a Muslim, there’s no such thing as a Son of God. So how can you reconcile them?

Of course it took my father to say, “If you’re conscious of your divine inheritance you can claim it.”

I’m presenting a congress in which members of different religions are presenting their views generally in what one might call a dialogue of deaf people: each one doing propaganda for their own religion. They still stay in their own compartments. Whereas the Pope was wise because there were no talks, except his own, of course. A prayer meeting, you see — everyone came up with their prayers. And it’s true, in that respect one can find unity. As soon as we discuss beliefs, then there’s no way.

MM: I was present once when you conducted a meeting bringing together clergy from different religions at the Unity Church in Santa Monica, California. All the clergy spoke on the subject of light and they all said basically the same thing.

PV: Yes, well that’s right. Wonderful things happen at those congresses.

MM: Is there anything else that you’d like to say to our readers?

PV: Yes. Ideally speaking, people want to build a beautiful world with beautiful people. I think there’s a kind of collective suicide that takes place when people hold their ideals very high and get disenchanted. I think those who build the world of the future are those that believe in a better world and see how it can actually happen.

The human being is evolving. The evolution in our thinking is the wholistic paradigm of our time. Its application day-to-day would mean that each one of us is aware of being not just a fraction of the other person, but of carrying within himself or herself the totality of the universe. That realization will mark a definite step forward in the evolution of humanity.

We’re all in this together. We’re all a part of each other.

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