This is a philosophical and religious weekly reflection blog.
Friday, April 14, 2017
Ineluctable Turning: Returning Home in the Quran
The
code of this ‘turning’ and ‘returning’ is the intrinsic value of
everything: that there is no escape.
Everything we do, we do to ourselves, everything we do affects the other
and the world in its own minuscule way. Everything ‘turns’ and ‘returns’ back to us
and to the universe, to our genes and our cells. We can’t escape from our deeds, it comes back
“home”. “Home” is the great metaphor of
this ‘turning’ and ‘returning’. After
work we go back home, whatever it is, a shack or a house, after death we go
back home, to the earth, and in returning to the earth we return to God. And in the Day of Judgement we will be
recreated for the new abode based on our thoughts, words, deeds from which
there is no escape, and hence we go back to our Source. “Ineluctable returning home, the intrinsic value of life and deeds” is the code of turning and
returning back to God. And this is the
Truth and the Truth is God.
It is obvious that not only the Quran but all scriptures are a reminder
about the Day of Judgement, beside everything else. I couldn’t attune myself to this fact and
this non-attunement took me to disbelief and disconnection. Unfortunately, I completely understand what
it means that not only one can’t “hear” the message, but also one might feel
“offended” by the matter of fact divine tone in reminding us again and again
that the Day and Hour is coming and gives us some details about Hell and
Heaven. I used to think that this
“punishment” language is excessive. But now that I realize the depth of my
oblivion, how forgetful and lost I was, it makes sense to me why the Quran is a
reminder of the Hour of Judgement, and hence I am attuned to hear the message
and connect—God willing.
I am as well well-aware that I need to constantly remember that it is
all up to God and I ought to “remember” this fact. Why?
What is this need for double and triple and thousand-fold
remembering? If “God’s will” and the “Day
and Hour of Judgement” ought to be always remembered, it doesn’t mean we have
no will of our own, but we have the will to remember or to forget. In our constitution we have both, we are
forgetful and drawn to closest effect or impressions. We are prone to lose ourselves in our immediate
senses. Thousand years religions and
philosophies are an attempt to take us farther than our senses. To see the universe, to realize that our
senses deceive us when we think the earth is the center of the universe, we
take mirage and delusions as true, we are inclined to lose ourselves in
pleasures of senses and give a second place to the joy of connection and compassion,
meditation and contemplation.
It is eye opening to me that philosophy from Plato, Aristotle to Heidegger
is this endeavor to strike or craft a balance between our being-in-the-world
and “ontological difference” between this everyday senses, entities and
objects, this person and that person, and the horizon of all beings, Being as
such, and to reconnect the sensible to insensible. We have gone through a host of historical
oscillations to arrive at this simple point that to understand my feelings
about this very moment: to see the window, trees, to hear birds, to feel my
body, to smell my environment, to become aware of myself and others, in order
not to be deceived and go astray, I ought to remember that I am here and do all
these things, because of “that”—that universe, the whirlwind of galaxies, the
beginning of universe, the solar system, the biosphere. And in order not to fall into my delusion of
autonomy, absolute faith in “material evidence” and hence into disconnecting
the sensible from insensible, we ought to see universal imperceptible Being in
each particular being. So, scriptures
and sages remind us of the unseen, the origin, the Tao, God, what cannot be
attested by immediate senses in an empirical way, but can be experienced, felt,
and perceived through reason, intuition, meditation, prayers, spiritual
practices, and the “heart”.
Our whole history of religions, philosophies, and sciences is a reminder
that the universe within me is continuous and coextensive with the universe without
me. And if we want to talk about a
hierarchy, unlike what our senses say, the universe and the horizon of events,
the Tao and God come first. The concrete
invisible whole and the Source come first both in terms of the condition of possibility
of understanding myself and my world (epistemology) and in terms of my existence
(ontology).
Now, I am better attuned to understand why we need the reminder of
scriptures. I wish to briefly reflect on
the following passages from Surah Pilgrimage (22) in the Quran:
“In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy
People, be mindful of your Lord, for the earthquake of the Last Hour
will be a mighty thing: on the Day you see it, every nursing mother will think
no more of her baby, every pregnant female will miscarry, you will think people
are drunk when they are not, so severe will be God’s torment. Yet still there
are some who, with no knowledge, argue about God, who follow every devilish
rebel fated to lead astray those who take his side, and guide them to the suffering
of the blazing flame.” (22:1-4)
We might not be inclined to hear this and attach to our everyday
business and pleasures. But in the light
of what I mentioned above about our historical movement in religions,
philosophies, and sciences, it might become more sensible why the Quran constantly
reminds us about the Day of Judgement: transfiguration and recreation of the
whole universe will surely come though it is not in our immediate sight. This is not “unloving” to be reminded that we
should not take side with devilish powers and heed the light, goodness, and the
divine to be rescued from the blazing flame.
The blazing flame is an echo of our falling into the nearest and the
consequence of our own deeds.
“People, [remember,] if you doubt the Resurrection, that We created you
from dust, then a drop of fluid, then a clinging form, then a lump of flesh,
both shaped and unshaped: We mean to make Our power clear to you. Whatever We
choose We cause to remain in the womb for an appointed time, then We bring you
forth as infants and then you grow and reach maturity. Some die young and some
are left to live on to such an age that they forget all they once knew. You
sometimes see the earth lifeless, yet when We send down water it stirs and
swells and produces every kind of joyous growth: this is because God is the
Truth; He brings the dead back to life; He has power over everything.” (22:5-6)
The second passage takes us from the nearest: the dust to the unseen
creator. God created us from the dust
and stresses the fact that we are made from both “shaped and unshaped”, formed
and formless, sensible and insensible elements.
This is a reminder that we are not arbitrary conglomeration and a subclass
of dead particles. Don’ look at the
nearest, but the farthest, the creator: “We mean to make our power clear to
you.” No child is formed in the womb
without God’s choice and no one die, young or old, without God’s destiny. We forget that the possibility of
existence as such is given by God. This
forgetfulness can ruin us and hence we fall into worshipping the nearest and
our senses or thinking life is accidental and arbitrary.
Then we have a message for those who can hear, I couldn’t in the
past. God opened my heart and eyes to
see the poiesis (the making, poetry) of God in everything. If we can see the poetic codes in the
universe, we can “see” God. Everything
is an allusion to the great Poet, merging atoms and particles, sensible and
insensible, perceptible and imperceptible, the coming into being and fading out
of being is an allusion to the hidden Truth: the cycle of seasons, “[y]ou
sometimes see the earth lifeless, yet when We send down water it stirs and
swells and produces every kind of joyous growth: this is because God is the
Truth; He brings the dead back to life; He has power over everything.” Now, in our scientific discourse we think we “know”
how the alterations of seasons work; we know how the seeds grow and die; we
know how the spring comes after winter; we assume we know, however this
knowledge itself will reveal God as Truth if one pays attention to its poiesis:
it is not only in the material dimension but in all the domain of existence,
seen and unseen, we have the ‘turning’ and ‘returning’, a cycle of coming and
going back into the source. All spirals of galaxies and life allude to this poiesis,
the cycle of seasons is a stanza of this poetry, ecopoetic of our responsibility
to the world ("eco" derives from the root
"oikos" meaning "house, home, or hearth.” Ecopoetics explores how language can help
cultivate (or make) a sense of dwelling on the earth).
The code of this ‘turning’ and ‘returning’ is the intrinsic value of everything: that there is no escape. Everything we do, we do to ourselves, everything we do affects the other and the world in its own minuscule way. Everything ‘turns’ and ‘returns’ back to us and to the universe, to our genes and our cells. We can’t escape from our deeds, it comes back “home”. “Home” is the great metaphor of this ‘turning’ and ‘returning’. After work we go back home, whatever it is, a shack or a house, after death we go back home, to the earth, and in returning to the earth we return to God. And in the Day of Judgement we will be recreated for the new abode based on our thoughts, words, deeds from which there is no escape, and hence we go back to our Source. “Ineluctable returning home, the intrinsic value of life and deeds” is the code of turning and returning back to God. And this is the Truth and the Truth is God.
Monday, April 10, 2017
My
Self-Image Is Surely a Lie, But God Helps Me Not to Trample the Flowerbeds
“[T]he wonderful
thing about the heart is that it is able to ‘turn’. The heart can turn toward the nafs and
see a separation; and it can turn toward the ruh and see a total
union. Both nafs and ruh
have the meaning of the ‘soul’.
Sometimes they are called lower self (ego) and higher self, or lower
soul and higher soul, both words mean soul.
The beautiful
quality of the heart is it can simultaneously look at the separation and union
of the soul. It can see both working at the same time. The heart has the capacity to accept
simultaneously both your experience of separation from God and your feeling of
union with the source. That is why the heart is so important in Sufism—because
it has an almost infinite capacity.” (Physicians of the Heart, p.7)
“In each layer of
the psyche, human beings identify with an idea of self that they have
constructed themselves. This false idea
of the self configures and coalesces around an intense sense of being wounded,
an impression that is stored in the ego.” (Physicians of the Heart, p.12)
"What the self
now lacks is surely reality―so one would commonly say, as one says of a man
that he has become unreal. But upon closer inspection it is really necessity
the man lacks. For it is not true, as the philosophers explain, that necessity
is a unity of possibility and actuality; no, actuality is a unity of
possibility and necessity. Nor is it merely due to lack of strength when the
soul goes astray in possibility―at least this is not to be understood as people
commonly understand it. What really is lacking is the power to obey, to submit
to the necessary in oneself, to what may be called one's limit. Therefore, the
misfortune does not consist in the fact that such a self did not amount to
anything in the world; no, the misfortune is that the man did not become aware
of himself, aware that the self he is, is a perfectly definite something, and
so is the necessary. On the contrary, he lost himself, owing to the fact that
this self was seen fantastically reflected in the possible. Even in looking at
one's self in a mirror it is requisite to know oneself; for, if not, one does
not behold one's self but merely a man. But the mirror of possibility is not an
*ordinary* mirror, it must be used with the utmost precaution. For of this
mirror it is true in the highest sense that it is a false mirror. That the self
looks so and so in the possibility of itself is only half truth; for in the
possibility of itself the self is still far from itself, or only half itself.
So the question is how the necessity of the self determines it more precisely.
A case analogous to possibility is when a child is invited to participate in
some pleasure or another: the child is at once willing, but now it is a
question whether the parents will permit it―and as with the parents, so it is
with necessity.
In possibility, however, everything is possible. Hence in
possibility one can go astray in all possible ways, but essentially in two. One
form is the wishful, yearning form, the other is the melancholy fantastic―on
the one hand hope; on the other, fear or anguished dread. Fairy-tales and
legends so often relate that a knight suddenly perceived a rare bird, which he
continues to run after, since at the beginning it seemed as if it were so very
near―but then it flies off again, until at last night falls, and he has become
separated from his companions, being unable to find his way in the wilderness
where he now is. So it is with the possibility of the wish. Instead of
summoning back possibility into necessity, the man pursues the possibility―and
at last he cannot find his way back to himself.―In the melancholy form the
opposite result is reached in the same way. The individual pursues with
melancholy love a possibility of agonizing dread, which at last leads him away
from himself, so that he perishes in the dread, or perishes in that in which he
was in dread of perishing."
―Søren Kierkegaard, from Sickness Unto Death
Introduction
اموختن در سکوت Learning in Silence,
اموختن در مساعی یکسان Learning in common
endeavors,
اموختن با رفتن به انسوی الفاظ Learning by going
beyond words.
در دشواری این سنگلاخ— In the hardship of
this stony path—
ای دوست!
Oh friend!
هفت کفش اهنین گسیختیم I tore apart seven
iron shoes,
تا ز طلسم تصور خویشتن گریختیم. To escape from the spell of my self-image.
I wrote the above poem in
the last year of my seven years in prison.
Twenty-eight years later, I am now (4/5/17) at Sky Farm Hermitage
Retreat in Silence & Solitude in Sonoma, California. And as I reread this poem I think that it is
applicable until death.
I have been teaching a
Creativity course for a few years and while teaching this course I have learned
a lot and gone through some surprising revelations and insights about how
constructive creativity works. In our
class, we clearly see that creativity can be both destructive and constructive
and we investigate the psychological-spiritual working behind each one of
them. We realize how much constructive
creativity and spirituality have intimate relationships with each other. After going through the views of different
artists and craftspeople concerning creativity, we discuss the psychology and
neurobiology of creativity. In the next
step, we explore creativity in cinema and at some point, we move to the movies
of the genius auteur, Tarkovsky, as the converging point of aesthetic,
psychology, and spirituality of constructive creativity. We watch, analyze, and discuss two of his
major works: Stalker and Solaris.
I tell this personal
story about the first time I watched the movie Stalker: It was the summer of the same year (1989)
that I was discharged from prison and I didn’t know how to live or even how to
buy a sandwich. I had forgotten
everything. Spiritually also I was lost,
dispensing with my old Marxist-atheistic views during my own observation of
this movement and years of reflection in prison, I didn’t believe in
“scientific philosophy”—the buzzword we used for Marxism. However, I didn’t have any direction and
guidance. I had a fever that day and was
wondering the streets of Tehran in that sweltering summer. I passed by a movie theatre and entered so as
to enjoy the fresh air conditioner. The
movie was Stalker by Tarkovsky, a slow two and half hour movie. I just collapsed in my seat and lost myself
in this strange film in a state of delirium.
When the movie was almost over, I tell my students, I felt the rain in the
Room of Wishes was pouring upon me.
The name Stalker is
misleading, indeed it should be called “the Guide”. Students notice that the movie’s plot can be
told in a few lines but the creative work is in the detail of the work of art,
what Tarkovsky calls “sculpting time”. I
seek to show my students a multiple sense of creativity in Tarkovsky’s
works. His movies are not only subtle
works of art, in terms of cinematography, but - if watched in a right frame of
mind - Stalker and Solaris engender mystical experiences
themselves. This is difficult to prove to students, because some students
experience it and some don’t.
The story of Stalker
is about a Zone that constantly changes depending on “who” enters
it. There is a Room of Wishes in
the Zone, but the Zone doesn’t let anyone arbitrarily or directly
gets close to the Room. The
government sent tanks and soldiers to capture the Room and they all
died. The only way to get close to the
Room is through a Stalker (Guide).
The Stalker doesn’t have a map of the Zone, because the Zone
doesn’t remain the same; it adopts itself to the psyche of individuals who
enter it. The Stalker can feel
the path of pilgrimage and takes his passengers in a roundabout manner to the
Room. The Zone doesn’t accept
all who Stalker brings with him and some may die in the way. The only condition to be a Stalker is
that the Guide should not come to the Zone with any ulterior motive. The Stalker guides his passengers with
his “pure heart”.
The Stalker takes
a writer and a scientist to the Room.
They are lucky enough to survive the journey. However, at the end none of them enters the Room. After going through all these troubles, they
just sit in front of the Room watching it raining inside the Room. They don’t get inside the Room because
they learned that the Room of Wishes doesn’t fulfill conscious wishes,
the self-image that one has of oneself, but what one desires in one’s innermost
soul, the innermost image. We hear the
story of the previous Stalker a few times in the movie. This is a dialogue between the Stalker,
the Writer, and the Scientist as soon as they enter the Zone and the film
changes from sepia to colorful pictures of nature in the Zone:
Stalker: There was a
flower-bed nearby but Porcupine had trampled it down. The smell lingered for so many years
though.
Scientist: Why did he do
that?
Stalker: I don’t
know. I asked him why too. And he said, “you will understand
later.” I think he came to hate the Zone.
Scientist: Porcupine,
is this his name?
Stalker: a nickname, like
yours. He had been taking people to the Zone
for years and no one could stop him. He
was my teacher. He opened my eyes. He was called teacher then not Porcupine. Then something happened to him. Something broke in him. Though I think he was punished.
… [The Stalker leaves to
look around and get a feeling of surroundings and lets the Zone gets a
‘feeling’ of them and guides him.]
Writer: What about this Porcupine? What does it mean “was punished”? Or was it just a figure of speech?
Scientist: One day Porcupine
returned from here. And get rich
overnight. Fabulously rich.
Writer: You call it
punishment?
Scientist: A week later,
he hanged himself.
Writer: Why?
…..
During the movie, we
learn that Porcupine brought his own brother to the Zone and he
was killed there. Then he entered the
Room of Wishes to bring his own brother back to life. When he got home he found lots of money
there. He trampled down rose-beds and a
week later hanged himself.
I have been thinking why
the previous guide, Porcupine, trampled down the flower-beds, whose
smell lingered for so many years.
This question has
occupied my mind for some time now. He
went into the Room of Wishes. The
Room showed his innermost desire to him; in another word, the Room
showed him to himself. But then he
trampled down flowerbeds and killed himself.
Why? It is understandable. It is a reaction to disappointment about
one’s high expectations of oneself, or one’s self-image.
When I think about
myself, do I remember how I was deluded last time, when I lost myself in anger,
lust, gluttony, greed, self-complacency, lie, sluggishness, hatred, resentment,
and the like, do I depict them into the framework of my self-image? No, I need a nice self-image to proceed. I like to remember good feeling things and
repress the bad ones. This is the way
our psychology works, otherwise I might sink into chronic depression or
self-loathing, and everyone knows we can’t do our daily tasks this way. But are we really justified to live in a lie,
just because we want to function well?
And not this living in a false self-image in the long run ruins our
soul? I came to the conclusion that our
self-image is surely a lie and we are addicted to stick to it, because it is
difficult to see the “whole” truth and live with it. As a singer sings: we never know the truth
until it kicks our ass…umption. But I
found a middle way, or I think so, and I will let you know at the end of this
reflection.
I have been thinking why
our reaction in the face of disillusionment about our own self-image is losing
“niceties” and trampling down flower-beds.
By self-image, I don’t mean thinking about oneself as having a career,
though it is an important aspect of ‘who’ we are. By self-image, I mean the ethical-spiritual
picture of oneself. I have a self-image
with some good feeling, somehow narcissistic attachment to how wonderful I am. I might think I am a committed seer or
teacher, a guidance to my family, children, and the youth. I might think I am a sensitive artistic
person who has a knack for depicting discrimination, abuse, violations against
life—even though financially I am a failure (I don’t use the term ‘loser’). I might think I am sensitive to life in all its
manifestations, a truth teller beyond self-conceit, a lover who really cares,
an avid reader with deep knowledge of philosophy and sciences who genuinely
cares for the improvement of human beings and life on this planet. Like Marx or Chomsky, I may think I am
devoted to help the underprivileged and fighting for the values of community
and altruism. I might think I am a mystic, a gnostic, a light to human beings.
Imagine God freezes
everything momentarily and gives us a second chance, before the Day of
Judgement, and lets us know how much our self-image is real or true[2].
Imagine God tells me “you
have wounded deeply your divine essence and followed your whims and false-image
due to the fact that most of your life you were a disbeliever who wanted to
make the most in this one life and take pleasure in it at any price.” My devoted political activism in Iran in my
youth –God would remind me— was an echo of a lost spirit of time, one which sought
“scientific philosophy” and Marx’s dialectical materialism to answer the
complex dilemma’s of human life. Marxism
is a doctrine empty of spirituality, hedonistic, and nihilistic, that caused
the death and destruction of so many people spiritually and physically, in
different ways though no more than the extravagant capitalistic usury system. God would remind me that my self-image used
to think: you bravely spent seven years in prisons of the Islamic Republic
without collaborating with the guards or feigning to be a “repentant” to be
discharged from prison. While refusing to feign to be repentant while you were
not and refusing to collaborate with the regime so as to be discharged, God
would say, carry some value in terms of not making it doubly false by covering
up a lie with another lie, nonetheless this whole thing was absolutely wrong
and destructive to my own soul and to the people of Iran due to so many
political-spiritual facts. God would show me or as the Quran says, my body
shows it to me: “in your personal life also you haven’t served your family and
friends; you don’t want to remember that you always were a problem and in
constant crisis, you are an empty shell with an overblown self-image to feel
good about yourself, to bear your lies and barren life. You followed your lowest desires while
studying philosophy, divorcing your wife and making your son literally homeless
since you were an immigrant in the U.S. with no extended family.”
“It requires years of
soul searching and prayers to overcome this entrenched self-image,” God would
continue, “and now in one night you want your body-psyche to bypass years and
years of aberration and being misguided by Marx, Nietzsche, and Foucault. You don’t want to see that you had a lavish
and self-centered life style, pursuing the principle of pleasure, which has
configured the texture of your body/brain/soul.”
“Now that My Mercy has
come to help you,” God would say, “to be released from this darkness into
light, again arrogantly you think you are the chosen one, forgetting years of
oblivion. You have a picture of yourself
as an enlightened mystic and teacher though an ordinary illiterate garbage man
in Nepal, has a purer heart and feelings—sexually and emotionally purer and
more attuned to his family, friends, and strangers, and spiritually closer to
God. If it wasn’t for a mustard seed of
honesty and the desire to know yourself and to do some good, I wouldn’t let you
know all this and but let you continue this falsehood for the rest of your life
until the Day of Judgement, when you have no time and chance to change yourself.”
Imagine the Room of
Wishes tells you, “whatever you think you are, your self-image is a
selective collage of good feelings and omission of bad memories. You make an image for yourself with high
qualities and credits: a devoted mother or father, a sensitive musician, a
wonderful teacher, a lover of nature and animals, a spiritually advanced being,
a powerful man or woman of justice, wealth, honor, or fame, a beautiful and
sensational creature, a caring and loving daughter or son, or an authentic
person who questions dominant norms and is always exclusively true to oneself…Yes,
imagine that your own ethical-spiritual self-image - who you think you are and
take pride in it, like a peacock in its expanded colorful tail - is a lie and
an empty façade in deprivation of connection to the source and forgetful of
God, clinging to this earthly life and the principle of pleasure.”
What a disappointing
message! What should I do? What would you do? And I reckon that holding onto a fictitious
self-image to degrees is true for so many so-called religious people and every
secular or New Age spiritual person; it is equally applicable to your and my
life. What a sweet sorrow, what a bitter
sorrow, I finally became a “penitent-judge”![3]
The revealing fact
is that God has set an awareness of the self in each one of us in a way that I
am completely aware of my own duality and duplicity in each moment of my life
but constantly cover it up for fear of shame and guilt. Ask anyone, ask a
stranger on the street, sit and have an honest discussion with him or her and
she or he would come to this conclusion: I am well aware of my duplicity. In
the depth of my existence, at the unconscious level, I know I live a good
feeling lie. I turn a blind eye to my mistakes and flaws. I constantly fashion
myself. I know these all the way. This is the reason conversation can continue.
And, this is also a revealing fact that God has set an honest and true self in
each one of us who can observe and see one’s duplicity and lies. Each one of us
has a beautiful and wonderful light. Each one of us can overcome the deceit of
senses and lust and open up to the other. Each one of us has the capacity to
see the truth and yearns for a genuine love for the other and oneself—and most
importantly for the Source of existence. This is the reason the conversation
can continue. We can see ourselves, we can meet each other.
Self-Identification with
The Wound
If I realize that my
self-image covers up my shortcomings, the wounds that I have sought to repress will
come to my awareness. Before that I was
living in the conceit of forgetfulness and didn’t notice the bleeding. But suddenly, I see I have been bleeding for so
long. I can no longer staunch the flow. Immediately, I identify with my
wound. I have this narcissistic picture
of myself that energizes me to move on and deal with the difficulties in my
life. Now I know that my self-image was
a bubble. No matter how many good things
I did in my life which were real, whether they were only a few or numerous, the
tearing apart of my self-image is a scar on my soul and I can’t forget.
How can I forget that I
was a sham? I feel shame, shame of who I
have become. And my broken self-image
transfers to a narcissistic self-identification with the wound and I feel
excruciating pain that obsessively comes back to me in so many moments of my
life. It takes hold of my will and I
fall into deep depression, anxiety attck, or obsessive compulsive disorder. I become nonchalant and am not inclined to
perform my duties, to help others, my wife, my students or my sons and
daughter. I don’t care about animals and
flowers, see no more beauty in them. I
used to tell everyone how much I love them and how much love is important, but
now I know I was a shameful façade. I
lose myself in this self-loathing self-depreciating self-image and like Porcupine
would trample down rose-beds, in anger, or let them die without water. I may resort to alcohol or drugs, because I
am not audacious enough to kill myself.
Only God can save me.
[But one may say, well I
don’t believe in God and dispose of such an assumption and basically don’t care
if my self-image is a lie or real, as long as I have a good time in this one
life before I turn into dust, when no one remembers me in hundred years or
less.
But
this is my conclusion: You CANNOT.It
might be surprising to say that, but:]
In
the depth of their existence, human beings can’t forget that they have some
autonomy and freedom of the will, and they are partially responsible for their
choices, even if philosophically they have convinced themselves that
determinism is true and freedom of the will is a lie.
Human
beings can’t forget they EXIST and have an expiration date, even if in comparing
to all impermeant and living-dying beings they have seemingly convinced
themselves that this is the order of nature and the best possible world.
In
the depth of their unconscious and existential angst, human beings CANNOT
forget that they are aware about their existence in a way fundamentally
different from amebae, insects, animals, and plants.
After
naturalizing all emotions and secularizing all morality, human beings cannot
fully neutralize conscience and dispose with shame and guilt, even if they
drown themselves in atheistic existentialist theories, the materialism of
evolutionary theories, or atheistic and pragmatic care about community life, making
a god of social-political engagement, or in absolute apathy falling into the
loathing of shamelessness in nudism, orgies, excess in pleasures, alcohol, or
drugs.
Still
in the depth of their existence, they are aware of the shame of having wasted
away and betrayed the miracle of life in hedonism and gluttony—and they can’t
hide it behind the laughter of cynicism, nihilism, and scientism. We can’t, it is inside us; it is coextensive
with our consciousness, awareness, and conscience.
We are subconsciously
aware of the duality of our existence.
We understand our duplicity even if we can’t put our finger on it. And we can’t ignore or forget our existential
angsts and dilemmas.
********************************
During my years teaching the
Creativity course, what is amazing and revelatory to me is that after watching
and discussing Stalker, when I ask my students, and there are some
grandmothers among them, whether they are ready to get inside the Room of
Wishes, which would fulfill their innermost desires, not what they think
they want, almost all my students don’t want to get into the Room. I ask them why? And they can’t put their finger on it.
This shows that there is
a constant fear of what if my self-image is not true. And we need the self-image we make for
ourselves, even if it is surely partly fictitious, to bear our lives. As well, in the depth of our unconscious
existence we are aware of this duplicity and fearful of the shame of
encountering our wounds. We are inclined
to repress the wounds that might cause us shame and guilt and indeed our
partially fictitious self-image is a function of this repression. Physicians of the Heart puts it best:
We will explore
some aspects of the ego structure by examining the wounds that the ego bears,
and by considering some very central issues of self-value. As we see it, the ego bears two major
wounds. Because of the excruciating
sensitivity of these deep wounds, the ego sets out with great determination to
defend them from being touched and thereby activated. The way you defend your wounds from being
touched by the experiences of your life creates and reflects your specific
personality structures.
There is a major wound of humiliation, of shame. It is caused
by your overall relationship with humanity, and by your relationship with your
own family in particular. Children often
feel like failures because there was something the parents needed them to
fulfill, and it was something that the child could not do.
Confronting this failure, the child feels very unworthy and very
shamed. Your act of self-identifying with this shameful and
isolated condition is because of the intensity of your wound. It is a defensive act. However, self-identification with your own
perceived deficiency isolates
you. Configuring your sense of self in
this way disconnects
you from the joy of an ongoing relationship with the divine source, a
relationship that is the birthright of every soul.
The second wound, the deepest layer of wounding, is experienced as being
caused by your relationship with God. There
is a profound feeling that even God has abandoned you. In this place, you feel you have been
abandoned because you have failed to fulfill your divine destiny. You ask the question, “Why have you forsaken
me?” And the ego gives its answer:
“There must be something wrong with me for me to feel so abandoned.”
The ego is caught between two major obstacles. One obstacle is trying to fill the family
hole, and this leads to a sense of failure.
And the other obstacle is trying to fulfill the divine purpose, but
because the ego is trying to accomplish this goal from the place of fundamental
isolation, this quest also leads to a sense of failure. Since you cannot fulfill God’s wish, and you
cannot fulfill the family’s wish, you always feel like you are a failure, you
always feel deficient, and you narcissistically maintain yourself in
self-identification as “the lowest of the low.” [And I add, “but I cover it up with a rosy self-image of, possibly,
worldly beauties and successes. The only
way to see oneself is to tear apart this partially fallacious self-image. But this will open the wounds that one has
attempted to conceal from oneself and otherswith the self-image in the
first place. Hence, the rosy self-image
turns into self-identification with the wounds.”]
Once you get stuck in this
identification, it is very painful. But
to let go of the identification, to break its grip, may open up a nightmare for
you. As long as you identify with your
perceived deficiency, you don’t fully feel the pain. It is muted.
When you disengage from the identification, the pain hits you in a
massive way because now the protective layer of your defenses has been broken. Then you feel the shame, the
humiliation. You feel that everybody is
better than you, that you are lesser than all.”(p.14)
In this second cycle,
after meeting one’s shadows and dark side, the dark side will take control as
the wound is wide open and constantly on one’s mind. I feel shame and guilt and can’t forgive
myself and forget. As in the past when I
constantly tried to remember the rosy and sunny side of my life, the successes
and good times, and repressed the negative and painful memories, of
transgressions and excesses, of harms and abuses, and identified my selfhood
with those rosy memories, building up a fictitious self-image, now I also
identify with my open and revealed wounds and negative memories, the wrong
doings, the lustful behavior, the transgressions, the failures, and identify
with those memories and create another false self-image, but this time a
negative one.
The
psychological mechanism is obvious:
After the deconstruction of partially fallacious self-image, one brings
painful memories and wounds to the open and for its intensity, one obsessively
identifies with them and creates a negative self-image. One is wounded by one’s own disobedience to
God (Adam and Eve) and one is wounded by not fulfilling the wishes of father
and mother, or by violating ethical limits and taboos, such as indulgence or
illegitimate sexual desires, and then one identifies with that loss and
desire. One becomes what one hates to
be: in constant internal friction. So,
one brings about what one wants to escape from.
This creates soul exhaustion.
This is where fixation happens: being in the grip of something that one
doesn’t desire. Identification with the
pain is compulsive, because to acknowledge one’s shadow one has to let go of
one’s self-defense and come face to face with one’s flaws and experience shame
and humiliation. The remedy comes
next. How? By forgiving oneself. But will forgiving oneself, as a mental
practice, just resolve the problem? What
else do we need to do? To see the
mechanism helps but one is still under the compulsive obsession with “sin”,
“violation”, and “failure”. No
indulgence back into sin and violation, alcohol, drugs, workaholic, or
overeating, can help but makes the whole thing worse. So, what must be done?
Redemption Is Bearing the
Excruciating Pain of Seeing the Whole Picture in Awakening to Our Existential
Dilemma
In both Tarkovsky films, Stalker
and Solaris, we know that redemption resides in wholeheartedness, in
“oneness.” In Stalker, the one who would get inside the Room of Wishes
is the one who has dealt with their conscience and wounds. In Solaris, the Solaris-Ocean would cease materializing wounds of conscience, if only
one person could deal with the shame and pain of mistakes and flaws of one’s
life rather than sweeping them under the rug.
We are dealing with a complex dilemma: The divine human psyche as
being-in-the-world in responding to the calling of conscience and unity with
the Source. However, only
the planet Solaris-Ocean, only the Room of Wishes, only God can
heal the one who has come to the threshold of healing where they meet face to
face their fallen state, guilt, innermost desires and feelings, or better, with
their shame and transgression of divine limits.
Let’s recapitulate the
process once more: As long as I am living within my fictitious self-image, I am
identifying with my consciously made up pictures of success and victory—as
Leonard Cohen sings: “my little winning street.” I forget the graves that I have dug, I
repress my getting lost in hedonism, my adultery and orgies, I sweep under the
rug the fact that my children are spiritually lost and nihilist, and that I
don’t have and never have had a spiritual measure to give them. I repress the existential wound of not
knowing why I am here. I just keep on
keeping my face and having a good time, until I die, which some try to
accelerate with addictions, games, entertainments, parties, and social
gatherings.
When God or the Room
of Wishes showed me to myself when I realized that my self-image was fallacious
and fictitious, I turned to my wounds. I
noticed I have had an egotistic and hedonistic life and it has left its scars
on my body and psyche. Even with this
God-given new awareness about the truth of my existence, I can’t erase the
scars of my life in one night. They are
there and I had tried to repress them, to forget them. Now I can see my wounds and the second cycle
starts.
Now that I can see my
failures, now that God showed me to myself—as the Room of Wishes showed
to the Porcupine that his innermost wish was money not bringing his
brother back to life—I will trample down flowerbeds and hate the Room
that revealed the truth to me. I will
now narcissistically identify with my wounds, with my sex addiction, my
egocentrism, and experience unbearable excruciating pain that takes hold of me
in chronic depression, anxiety attacks, or obsessive-compulsive behavior. This was the reason I hid the truth from
myself and repressed my memories in the first place.
I am stuck and fixated at
obsessively remembering the hurt now, because I can’t forgive and forget myself.
What should be done? Should I escape to alcohol and drugs? Do therapy and psychiatric pills cure
me? I might be able to get some help
from therapy or meditative practices, but this doesn’t address the root of
problem. I have here the superimposition of a double loss and
dislocation: first, I have failed in my personal life and the hurt I caused or
suffered has taken over me; second, I feel hopeless and forlorn in the face of
my existential loss—why am I here? Why
do I die? Is this the only life? Is there God?
What is the answer to the dilemma of my existence?
I can choose like Porcupine
to trample down flowerbeds and hate my existence and the Zone and Room
of Wishes. But why? Why should I trample down flowers and kill
myself? Why should I become a cynic and
nihilist? Why is it that as soon as I
realize my self-image is a lie, I lose interest in what I thought were
important to me? Why is facing oneself
so difficult? If I don’t want to see my
negative and dark side, my shortcomings and flaws, as it revives shame and
guilt in me, so how can I become whole?
How can I get rid of lies and embrace my broken wholeness, as Parker
Palmer puts it, and respond to my existential quest?
On the other hand, if
seeing my negative and dark side locks me into depression and obsessive
compulsive behavior, fixates me into self-identification with loss and failure,
how can I liberate myself so that to embrace my broken wholeness?
Imagine it is the Day of
Judgement and now God will let me know who I have become. I am inside the Room of Wishes and the
Room will show my innermost desires to me. But I have no more time to fix anything and
change my destiny. It is my last
chance. Would I not give the whole world
to have a second chance to change myself and to rectify my mistakes after God
showed me to myself? Would I not be
ready to give the whole world if the Room of Wishes gave me a second
chance to change myself and enter the Room again? So, why should Porcupine trample down
the flowerbeds and kill himself? He had
a second chance. Are we ready to accept
the humility, depression, guilt, and shame and see who we have become?
We
need to learn how to forgive ourselves to retain our sense of self-worth. Every individual has something bright and
divine in them, even in the most murderous ones, to the extent that they are
ready to see their downfall and experience shame and proper guilt. The next
step is restoration. One can restore one’s self-worth by doing good and
forgiving oneself. But it is not easy and in so many cases one continues to
obsessively make mistakes and commit crimes, because one doesn’t think there is
any hope for healing and release from the wounds of secondary narcissism, and because one can’t see the
holistic relation of our familial-societal wounds to our existential dilemma
and quest, where the real healing resides. Our secular and atheist physicians think
there is no answer to this quest and are blind to the inner connection between
my family-societal wounds and my existential wound.
I need to digest and
forgive my wounds. The problem with dominant secular psychology is that it
stops at the level of personal forgiveness and can’t see that the sense of
forgiveness is a deep demand which goes to primary narcissism. In primary narcissism, one identifies with
the wound of disobedience and not pleasing God.
It is a genuine existential dilemma that one has not fulfilled one’s
calling. I don’t know why I am here and
materialistic and evolutionary theories cannot soothe the pain of
forlornness. Everyone has a divine
calling, but social and family norms constantly stop one from heeding the
call. So, one violates the calling of
conscience and feels guilt and shame in the face of this violation. In burying the divine voice, we also awaken
the dragon of cynicism and hedonism. The
compensation for this failure is usually seeking worldly success: name, fame,
wealth, honor, and pleasure. No worldly
success and immersion in pleasures can save us.
Deep in our psyche we experience a sense of unworthiness. And those like me who followed their lowest
desire for pleasure and got lost in wrong doings, fall into despair. If they are atheists, despair will swallow
them in cynicism and nihilism. They find
peace of mind in the transience and impermanence of life. They find the solution in death and oblivion,
that they won’t be remembered in a hundred years or so. That this will pass. That nothing matters.
The only healthy way to
get rid of self-identification with the false negative or positive images and
genuinely forgiving oneself is arriving at and implementing two interconnected
stages: mindfulness, and connecting to our Source.
Mindfulness
If
I face my conscience and feel my guilt, I will go through an excruciating
pain. The solution is to stay with pain
and NOT identify with the pain, not to judge one’s whole sense of self as the
loss and shame, to see shortcomings without identifying with the shortcomings, because the sheer fact that one
CAN see the shortcoming is the beginning of healing and a step forward. It means when the compulsive obsession
occurs, say in washing one’s hands constantly in feeling dirty, or thinking
Satan is deceiving and seducing one to transgress the limits, or losing
self-control and suffering in being imprisoned in low and forbidden
sexualization, one observes them and don’t try to escape or identify with them
(mindfulness). One brings the flaw about
by finding oneself falling helplessly into obsession. It is a kind of self-punishment. To realize that one ought not to identify
oneself with one’s obsession, that one is not essentially bad or a sinner to
the core is the first step in healing.
However, the violation turns into a curse. Even if one knows that one doesn’t desire the
sin and obsession and doesn’t identify with the flaw, still the fallen state
takes hold and controls the individual. There is no other way to jump out of
this moment, but to patiently observe it without escaping it or identifying
with it: in a word, the only solution is ‘mindfulness’ and
‘self-observation’.
But
how can I deal with this existential moment, the puzzle of my life that is
trapped in depression and pain? Suppose
I can heal myself from the pain, what about the moment? Is there not a genuine relationship between
my destruction of time—this moment, my ethical fallings, my life in depression
and obsession, in alcohol and drugs, in pleasure, entertainment, and acedia—
and my existential question: What is this moment? What is time?
Why am I alive? What kind of
relationship should I establish with time, with my life, with this moment? Is it not a fact that my sense of puzzlement
in experiencing this moment, this time, this existential dilemma, the universal
meaning of our life, not only “my life”— “why are we here?” “why is there Being
rather than nothing?”— is related to my wounds and failures?
Unity
in Body, Heart, Soul; Unity in Thoughts, Words, Deeds;Unity
with This Transcendental Moment—in Connecting to God
The fact is that I can’t
fix this problem by myself, or with only psychiatrists and therapy. I am not sufficient onto myself, nor is
anyone else. Human beings by themselves
cannot find their way out and about. As
successful and inventive as our reason is in so many frontiers, it can’t answer
our existential dilemma. I need to
cherish flowerbeds after awakening to my hurt and loss, but how? I need to come to terms with my existential
dilemma and forlornness, but how? I need
to break out of the false image of good feelings and temporary worldly
successes or the fixation on my depressive negative and dark image, but how? Nothing can help me, but constant absorption in the
prayer of the transcendental intrinsic value of the moment. The answer to these “hows” thus converges together
in my holistic experience of the moment in connecting to my Source.
Only when I realize that
this moment with all the hurt is the key, these rose-beds are the key,
this agonizing sense of existential loss shows a direction to the key,
and the Source and Teacher who shows me to myself is the key, only then
do all these problems unravel like a Gordian Knot. Heeding the calling of
conscience and reuniting with God in cherishing this very moment, whose very
Forgiving Name releases me from depressions and obsessive compulsions and
releases me from the agony of separation and forlornness in releasing this
moment from false thoughts, to experience Holy Spirit in this moment. Calling God, heeding God, turning towards
God, walking towards God, praying to God, all these are for my own release from
the prison of false self-images, seeing the truth of poverty of my existence, existential
connection to my Source, receiving guidance to endure the pain, and to learn to
forgive myself by naming the Code of forgiveness[4].
Physicians
of the Heart makes this clear:
The deepest narcissistic wound in the ego structure is this sense of
failure and worthlessness and shame.
Such a deep wound can ultimately only be healed by the God reality. Only
through the gracious touch of the all-compassionate and loving being of God can
there be a healing for your alienation from the divine source and for your shame
at having gotten stuck in the
lesser identity atthis
deepest layer of narcissism.
A wonderful thing occurs when you reach your deepest wound and, at the
same time, find the
courage not to defend against the intense feelings that are aroused by reaching
it. Then grace comes with a healing touch of love
and divine generosity. Then the layer of
ego containing the inner child feels that he or she is being loved all the
time. You experience constantly being
created by God. You are valued. (p.14)
The Porcupine has
to accept the suffering of understanding that his innermost self is cheap and
materialistic. But then he ought to
endure the attack of negative feelings, depressions, obsessive compulsions, and
anxiety attacks—with this simple mindfulness: I am oscillating from one extreme
to another, from seeing myself as the king to seeing myself as the beggar, from
exaggerated rosy self-image to excessive dark self-image. I am stuck and fixated at constantly
remembering the hurt and wound after repressing it for so long. The wound has taken me over; I feel hopeless
and experience extreme pain. But I have
to stay with the pain and know this point: I am moving backward and forward in
facing myself for a reason. I am
learning humility and spiritual awakening.
I had tried hard to forget my existential quest and the question “why I
am here” with the principle of pleasure, but the divine pang of truth shook me
and didn’t let me stay asleep. The pain
is speaking to me. The wound is hinting at
something. It hints to my
boundaries. It alludes to my death. It reminds me that I am here. What is this
moment in front of these flowerbeds? It
reminds me of my life story. It keeps me
awake at night, reminding me the effect of my deeds. I realize a source is
speaking to me through shame and pain embedded in me about a primordial
question: why am I here? Why should I suffer so much? How can I rid myself from my stony heart, if
not by shame and guilt and this excruciating pain? But then I gradually become aware that this
very excruciating pain is taking me to the answer. I understand that instead of escaping from
it, I ought to endure and embrace the pain, the Room of Wishes which
shows me to myself. God calls me from the depth of my conscience and asks me to
release this moment from depression and obsession through divine experience of
the transcendental intrinsic value of this moment, my life, and to connect to
my Source, the owner of Time. I am not
watching these flowerbeds, Time is watching them. I am not watching these flowerbeds, Being is
watching them. I am not watching these
flowerbeds, Life is watching them. I am
not watching these flowerbeds, God is holding the spectacle, the spectator, the
behold[5].
By staying with the pain
and being mindful of it, I cannot find my way out of the cycle of fixation and
getting lost in false images. In order
to leap out of this cycle I must heed the Source that has set the seed of
conscience in me to remember. I ought to
ask for help…. help from that Source.
Only by calling that Source, by asking forgiveness from that Source, by
listening carefully to that Source, who constantly teaches me that I am
forgiven but only when I attend the Forgiver and to repeat the Code of
Forgiveness so that by repeating it I can change my psyche to forgive myself. "Why did the ancient Masters esteem the Tao? Because, being one with the Tao, when you seek, you find, and when you make a mistake, you are forgiven, That is why everyday loves it." (Tao Te Ching)
By turning to the Source
of Forgiveness and saying the Name with all my heart and soul, I will leap out
of the cycle by forgiving myself because I know God is forgiving; God is the
Merciful, but only by remembering and filling the space of my psyche with the
Merciful can I break away from the fixation on the wound and
self-identification with the dark image.
By calling and repeating the Name, I gradually disentangle from the
trace of the past and gain control over my destiny. I am delivered. I am born into my connection to my Source through
the pain and shame of awakening.
Now I have gained three
things at the same time: I woke up from self-conceit and embraced my broken
wholeness; I dealt with the wounds of my soul and reconciled with myself and my
past; I am redeemed, I overcame the pain of forlornness and agony of
existential-spiritual separation from my Source. And looking back at how God has orchestrated
all these for finding my way out of deceit, defilement, and loss of separation
to awakening, liberation, and salvation, I prostate myself in absolute
gratitude and love to the Source who created me in love and now demonstrates to
me in practice how love works through this cycle of awakening. And I love my God with all my heart, all my
soul, and all my wit. "I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion, These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being, Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are, Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world." (Tao Te Ching)
Prayer:
Oy my God, Ya Allah, Ya Khoda
Ya Rahman, Ya Rahim,
Ya Ghaffar, Ya Ghaffar,
Ya Ghaffar, Ya Ghaffar, Ya Ghaffar
Ya Ghaffar, Ya Ghaffar,
Ya Ghaffar, Ya Ghaffar, Ya Ghaffar[6],
Give me back my fitrat
(divine essence and innocence),
I supplicate to you to
let me overcome my duplicity and conceit,
I supplicate to you to
purify my heart and soul,
I beg you to guide me
despite all my arrogance and wrongdoings,
I appeal to you from the
temptation of the evil Satan,
Ya Ghafur, Ya Ghafur, Ya
Ghafur, Ya Ghafur, Ya Ghafur,
Ya Ghafur, Ya Ghafur, Ya
Ghafur, Ya Ghafur, Ya Ghafur[7],
Don’t let me lose hope
and fall into Satan’s trap: despair[8],
That you are the
Merciful, the Forgiver,
Make me whole, my Lord,
Ya Tawaab, Ya Tawaab, Ya
Tawaab, Ya Tawaab, Ya Tawaab
Ya Tawaab, Ya Tawaab, Ya Tawaab,
Ya Tawaab, Ya Tawaab[9],
“That this insight into the nature of things and the origin
of good and evil is not confined exclusively to the saint, but is recognized
obscurely by every human being, is proved by the very structure of our
language. For language, as Richard Trench pointed out long ago, is often wiser,
not merely than the vulgar, but even than the wisest of those who speak it.
Sometimes it locks up truths which were once well known, but have been
forgotten. In other cases, it holds the germs of truths which, though they were
never plainly discerned, the genius of its framers caught a glimpse of in a
happy moment of divination.' For example, how significant it is that in the
Indo- European languages, as Darmsteter has pointed out, the root meaning ' two
' should connote badness. The Greek prefix dys- (as in dyspepsia) and the Latin
dis- (as in dishonorable) are both derived from 'duo.' The cognate bis- gives a
pejorative sense to such modern French words as bevue ('blunder/ literally
'two-sights’). Traces of that 'second which leads you astray' can be found in
'dubious,' 'doubt' and Zweifel for to doubt is to be double-minded. Bunyan has
his Mr. Facingboth- ways, and modern American slang its ' two-timers.'
Obscurely and unconsciously wise, our language confirms the findings of the
mystics and proclaims the essential badness of division a word, incidentally,
in which our old enemy *two* makes another decisive appearance.” (Perennial
Philosophy, by Aldous Huxley)
Imagine God comes to Marx and
Chomsky and visually scrolls down the effect of their behavior on humanity in
the course of history and how in the long run they created so much nihilism and
despair, despite their best intentions, due to their atheistic and materialistic
or physicalist views, in the case of Marx in addition to his hedonistic view,
and in the case of Chomsky, his spiritual nihilism and Cartesian
confusion.
In retrospection, I remember I loved Albert
Camus’s The Fall when I was 16 years old and could recite some parts of
this long monologue by heart. I have to admit it happened that I experienced
the same feeling of shame and dissatisfaction with myself as Jean-Baptiste
Clamence, the protagonist and the only narrator of the book. He was a lawyer
with a perfect self-image, who quit his job and became a “judge-penitent” after
he realized he was a pretentious mask, because of this event:
“That particular night in November, two or
three years before the evening when I thought I heard laughter behind me, I was
returning to the Left Bank and my home by way of the Pont Royal. It was an hour
past midnight, a fine rain was falling, a drizzle rather, that scattered the
few people on the streets. I had just left a mistress, who was surely already
asleep. I was enjoying that walk, a little numbed, my body calmed and irrigated
by a flow of blood gentle as the falling rain. On the bridge I passed behind a
figure leaning over the railing and seeming to stare at the river. On closer
view, I made out a slim young woman dressed in black. The back of her neck,
cool and damp between her dark hair and coat collar, stirred me. But I went on
after a moment’s hesitation. At the end of the bridge I followed the guys
toward Saint-Michel, where I lived. I had already gone some fifty yards when I
heard the sound—which, despite the distance, seemed dreadfully loud in the
midnight silence—of a body striking the water. I stopped short, but without
turning around. Almost at once I heard a cry, repeated several times, which was
going downstream; then it suddenly ceased. The silence that followed, as the
night suddenly stood still, seemed interminable. I wanted to run and yet didn’t
stir. I was trembling, I believe from cold and shock. I told myself that I had
to be quick and I felt an irresistible weakness steal over me. I have forgotten
what I thought then. “Too late, too far ...” or something of the sort. I was
still listening as I stood motionless. Then, slowly under the rain, I went
away. I informed no one.”
And in the final pages of the book, the
penitent-judge says:
“My idea is both simple and fertile. How to
get everyone involved in order to have the right to sit calmly on the outside
myself? Should I climb up to the pulpit, like many of my illustrious
contemporaries, and curse humanity? Very dangerous, that is! One day, or one
night, laughter bursts out without a warning. The judgment you are passing on
others eventually snaps back in your face, causing some damage. And so what?
you ask. Well, here’s the stroke of genius. I discovered that while waiting for
the masters with their rods, we should, like Copernicus, reverse the reasoning
to win out. Inasmuch as one couldn’t condemn others without immediately judging
oneself, one had to overwhelm oneself to have the right to judge others.
Inasmuch as every judge someday ends up as a penitent, one had to travel the
road in the opposite direction and practice the profession of penitent to be
able to end up as a judge. You follow me? Good. But to make myself even
clearer, I’ll tell you how I operate. First I closed my law office, left Paris,
traveled. I aimed to set up under another name in some place where I shouldn’t
lack for a practice. There are many in the world, but chance, convenience,
irony, and also the necessity for a certain mortification made me choose a
capital of waters and fogs, girdled by canals, particularly crowded, and
visited by men from all corners of the earth. I set up my office in a bar in
the sailors’ quarter. The clientele of a port-town is varied. The poor don’t go
into the luxury districts, whereas eventually the gentlefolk always wind up at
least once, as you have seen, in the disreputable places. I lie in wait
particularly for the bourgeois, and the straying bourgeois at that; it’s with
him that I get my best results. Like a virtuoso with a rare violin, I draw my
subtlest sounds from him. So I have been practicing my useful profession at
Mexico City for some time.
It consists to begin with, as you know from
experience, in indulging in public confession as often as possible. I accuse
myself up and down. It’s not hard, for I now have acquired a memory. But let me
point out that I don’t accuse myself crudely, beating my breast. No, I navigate
skillfully, multiplying distinctions and digressions, too—in short, I adapt my
words to my listener and lead him to go me one better. I mingle what concerns
me and what concerns others. I choose the features we have in common, the
experiences we have endured together, the failings we share—good form, in other
words, the man of the hour as he is rife in me and in others. With all that I
construct a portrait which is the image of all and of no one. A mask, in short,
rather like those carnival masks which are both lifelike and stylized, so that
they make people say: “Why, surely I’ve met him!” When the portrait is
finished, as it is this evening, I show it with great sorrow: “This, alas, is
what I am!” The prosecutor’s charge is finished. But at the same time the
portrait I hold out to my contemporaries becomes a mirror. Covered with ashes,
tearing my hair, my face scored by clawing, but with piercing eyes, I stand
before all humanity recapitulating my shames without losing sight of the effect
I am producing, and saying: “I was the lowest of the low.” Then imperceptibly I
pass from the “I” to the “we.” When I get to “This is what we are,” the trick
has been played and I can tell them off. I am like them, to be sure; we are in
the soup together. However, I have a superiority in that I know it and this
gives me the right to speak. You see the advantage, I am sure. The more I
accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you. Even better, I provoke you
into judging yourself, and this relieves me of that much of the burden. Ah, mon
cher we are odd, wretched creatures, and if we merely look back over our lives,
there’s no lack of occasions to amaze and horrify ourselves. Just try. I shall
listen, you may be sure, to your own confession with a great feeling of
fraternity.
Don’t laugh! Yes, you are a difficult client;
I saw that at once. But you’ll come to it inevitably. Most of the others are
more sentimental than intelligent; they are disconcerted at once. With the
intelligent ones it takes time. It is enough to explain the method fully to
them. They don’t forget it; they reflect. Sooner or later, half as a game and
half out of emotional upset, they give up and tell all. You are not only
intelligent, you look polished by use. Admit, however, that today you feel less
pleased with yourself than you felt five days ago? Now I shall wait for you to
write me or come back. For you will come back, I am sure! You’ll find me
unchanged. And why should I change, since I have found the happiness that suits
me? I have accepted duplicity instead of being upset about it. On the contrary,
I have settled into it and found there the comfort I was looking for throughout
life. I was wrong, after all, to tell you that the essential was to avoid
judgment. The essential is being able to permit oneself everything, even if,
from time to time, one has to profess vociferously one’s own infamy. I permit
myself everything again, and without the laughter this time. I haven’t changed
my way of life; I continue to love myself and to make use of others. Only, the
confession of my crimes allows me to begin again lighter in heart and to taste
a double enjoyment, first of my nature and secondly of a charming repentance.
Since finding my solution, I yield to everything, to women, to pride, to
boredom, to resentment, and even to the fever that I feel delightfully rising
at this moment. I dominate at last, but forever. Once more I have found a
height to which I am the only one to climb and from which I can judge
everybody. At long intervals, on a really beautiful night I occasionally hear a
distant laugh and again I doubt. But quickly I crush everything, people and
things, under the weight of my own infirmity, and at once I perk up.”
I am released now from being Albert Camus’
penitent-judge, of performing duplicity[3], as well I am released from
despair and laugh at Albert Camus’ absurdity theory, and sad for his Sisyphus
perception of life, though admiring his capacity to express such things in
plays and words. And thus, I said farewell to all despair and the fuzzy feeling
of disinterest and the nihilistic and hedonistic “let’s just enjoy this one
life in pleasure”. I said farewell even to a crude desire for immortality
without God. I cherish this one life, though I know now we are immortal, and
ready to die, ready to live, give, and deliver, until I become compatible with
the divine.
انسجام جنبه ها و قصه هاIntegration of Aspects
and Stories
این بستر گلهای سرخ This rose-bed,
هزار قصه پنهان است Narrates thousand
hidden stories:
قصه نگاه لغزش اب The story of the
vision of slip-falling water
قصه رقص افتاب The story of
dancing sunlight,
قصه زخم نفس کبود The story of the
wound of bruised ego,
قصه تجاوز داوود The story of
David’s rape,
قصه نور حق به جلا The story of the
light of Truth in shining,
قصه دفن عشق در اوهام The story of burying
love in illusions,
قصه پایمالی عشق The story of
trampling down the love,
قصه حضور وجد سروش The story of ecstatic
presence of the messenger,
قصه انعکاس تاریکی The story of the
reflection of darkness,
در درون ارزش پوچ Within futile
values,
من اگر دون، من گر
الوده If I am degraded, if I am
defiled,
میشویم تن در تعالی
بودن Will wash my body in the transcendence of Being,
وصل میشوم به یار
خدا Will connect to the
divine Friend,
از میان اشکهای گناه Through my sinful
tears.
در میان تجمع گلها In the
gathering of flowers
با حضور جمیع جمع
علا In the presence of Al-Jami*’s
grand synthesis,
رقص-گریان خواهم خواند: Dancing-weeping I will sing:
این بستر گلهای
سرخThis rose-bed,
وجد حضور جانان است IS the ecstasy of Jaanan*’s
presence
این لحظه بی در کجا This
no-when-no-where moment,
جان وجود جانان استIS the Jaan
of the Existence of Jaanan,
این نور مفتوح حیا
ت This opening light
of living
رمز وجود جانان استIS the mystery
of the Existence of Jaanan,
این رنگین کمان باران This rainbow rain,
زنگ وجود جانان استIS the ring of
the Existence of Jaanan,
این بوقلمون، این
درخت
This turkey, this tree,
منظر وجود جانان استIS the spectacle of the
Existence of Jaanan,
این برادر، این خواهر This brother, this
sister,
جان گل، نورتاب رحمان
استIS
the flower’s Jaan, the light of Merciful,
این پسر، این دختر This son, this
daughter,
شور عشق خدا، حکایت
اب استIS the
passion of God’s love, the story of Water.
این غریبه، این همسا
یه This stranger, this
neighbor,
نور حق در نگاه مهتاب
است IS the light of Truth in the
eyes of moonlight.
*Jaan (Plural “Jaanan”)
is not translatable. It might be
translated into “Life”, but it doesn’t convey the essence of divine endearment
of Life which is embedded in Life. So,
in translating Jaan-e Jaanan, to say the Life of Lives doesn’t reflect the
divine essence and the endearment.
*Al-Jami’ is one of
Allah’s name in the Quran. It means the
gatherer, to come back together, to bring all the parts into a whole. “A-Jami’ is to return home, to return to the
real self. It is a constant process of
becoming reconnected with wholeness. It
is sometimes called the grand synthesis, the joining of all joinings. Al-Quddus is an opposite of al-Jami’,
especially when viewed in the context of divine ecstasy.
[Al-Quddus is the ever-purifying
one. A variation of the root of this
Name means to return home to one’s village.
Al-Quddus is always purifying and always distancing, in the sense of
leaving behind the ephemeral to go fully into the eternal.” (p.39)]
Through al-Quddus, you are
continuously purifying yourself of remnants of the nafs. The two
pathways of realization complement each other.
Al-Quddus offers purification of nafs, while al-Jami’ offers
integration of the various aspects of nafs. Classically these paths would be called the via
negative and the via positive. When all the aspects of the nafs
begin to gather together, through the action of al-Jami’, a quality of ecstasy
enters.
As this continues, the nafs
begins to merge with the ruh, or soul.
It is an ecstatic union. Then,
varying aspects of the higher self or soul manifest into the lower self, or nafs,
and reintegrate. With al-Quddus,
sobriety enters after the ecstasy of union.
To receive great benefit from these Names, we recommend invoking Ya
Quddus and Ya Jami’ together. See Ya Quddus (4). See Chapter 13, the Arc of
Ascent and Descent, and Chapter 12, The Secret of Ecstasy.” (Physicians of
the Heart, p.70-71)
“The ground
floor in the forgiveness cluster of Names, the starting point, is
al-Ghaffar. It is appropriate to begin
with this divine quality as it relates to a low point in the human
process. People at this stage are
usually unable to even consider the possibility of forgiveness. They are caught up in disbelief, grief, and
judgment—often self-judgment. There is a
progression of forgiveness implied in the Quran. Do the big forgiveness, and if you can’t do
that, do a lesser forgiveness, and if you can’t do that, do a still lesser
forgiveness. This is similar to the progression
we are presenting in this chapter, but we are starting with the most basic
level of forgiveness and working up to the most profound.” (Physicians
of the Heart, p.126)
“Earlier we saw
that the sound code of Arabic makes al-Ghaffar repetitive and unending. Now we
see that the sound code places al-Ghafur in the group that carries the meaning
of “penetrating right into the essence of a thing.” It goes right into the deepest place in the
heart. Therefore al-Ghafur goes right to
the worst crime we have ever committed in our lives. It goes right to the worst thing that has
ever been done to us. Whether it is a
grudge of self-loathing or a grudge held against another, the depth of feeling
is the same. Allah’s forgiveness
reaches that deepest place. From a
medical point of view we might say that al-Ghaffar is a remedy for a chronic
condition and Al-Ghafur is for an acute condition.
Contemplation
on al-Ghafur is a profound and healing practice for anyone. It is even recommended for prisoners on death
row. It reaches the deepest wound. It goes right to the heart of the
matter. It penetrates to the essence. Divine forgiveness reaches that which we
imagined was unforgiveable. That is the
quality of al-Ghafur.” (Physicians of the Heart, p.127)
“God’s name:
Al-Ghaffar in the second code of Arabic grammar gives it a quality that is both
continuous and repetitive. You may make the same mistake over and over
again, a hundred or a thousand times a day.
But such repeated errors never place you outside the realm of divine
forgiveness. Repetitiveness is no
problem for al-Ghaffar. Al-Ghaffar’s
forgiveness is continuous and repetitive.
There
is a memorable hadith where a Bedouin says to the prophet, “what if I do this
really bad thing?” And the answer is,
“Allah forgives.” “But what if I do it
again and again and again?” “Allah
continues to forgive.” Then the Bedouin
says, “Doesn’t Allah ever get tired of forgiving?” And the prophet Muhammad says, “No, but you
might get tired of doing that same thing over and over again.”
….
“It
puts in mind the thought inscribed on Mevlana Rumi’s tomb—that even if you
have broken your vows a thousand times, you should always feel the invitation
to return again. God’s forgiveness is
inexhaustible, and it is continuous.” (Physicians of the Heart,
p.126-7)
“Going beyond
this, there is an inner stage called tawbah. Now you actually become able to turn away
from perceived defects and shadows and face directly toward the divine
perfection. At-Tawwab is both the divine
reality that you turn to in such a way and the activity of turning. The form in Arabic is wa taaba ‘ila-llah. We literally turn from the defect and toward
Allah. “From” and “toward” are expressed
simultaneously by the same verb in Arabic.
….
At-Tawwab is always turning
toward you without interruption. This is
very important to understand! It allows
you to overcome certain theological confusion that can arise in relation to our
usual understanding of the English word “repentance”. With the invocation of Ya Tawwab, you turn
from the defect that you perceive to the face of Allah, who always is facing
you. It allows you to let go of
the grudge you have been holding onto and to face toward the light.
Taaba’an literally means
to forgive someone by facing away from the defect toward Allah who is always
forgiving. That is a very high stage of
forgiveness. You are not stuck in the
rights and wrongs of your personal relationship. What is quite remarkable is that it is by
noticing the faults in the first place that you are impelled toward Allah,
toward the One. The process of truly
invoking Ya Tawwab is deeply healing, because negatively is transformed
into its opposite. This is spiritual
alchemy.” (Physicians of the Heart, p.128-9)
“The ultimate
stages of forgiveness is expressed by al-‘Afuw.
Let’s begin with a physical metaphor that is part of the word’s root
meaning: ‘Afat-ir-reehul-‘athar. This
is an image of the wind blowing across the desert vastness and completely
erasing all the tracks in the sand. It
is as if no one had ever walked there.
Such a fundamental image in the root of the word shows us that with
al-‘Afuw you do not even notice the fault.s
In
the first stages of forgiveness you definitely do notice the fault, but you
feel there is a possibility for forgiveness, a chance for some healing salve to
reach your wounded places. Then you find
the strength to overlook it. Eventually
you are moved to turn away from the fault toward Allah whenever awareness of
the fault arises, thus transforming negativity into a vision of the divine
face.
Finally
we come to al-‘Afuw, which means to completely forgive, with no trace of the
fault even subtly retained. There is not
even a trace of resentment or memory.
There are no footprints in the sand.
There are no impressions. Your
awareness is clean and incapable of being stained. Such is the highest stage of divine
forgiveness.
We
want to strongly emphasize that the state of “not seeing” we are referring to
here should not in any way be considered to be unconsciousness or lack of
awareness. Rather, it is that your
consciousness has been raised to the level of seeing in accordance with the divine
reality.
There’s
a story of a teacher who goes to a town, and when he comes back to his students
they ask him what he saw. He says, “It
is beautiful, but I don’t want any of you going there.” Nonetheless, one of them goes to the town;
however, he experiences it to be utterly ugly.
He comes back and says, “It’s a horrible place. What were you talking about?” The teacher replies, “Well, you’d have to be
able to see it through my eyes.”
With al-Ghaffar and al-Ghafur, you see
the shadows. You see the worst ugliness
when you look at the “unforgivable place” into which al-Ghafur penetrates. In at-Tawwab we notice patches of light and
shade, so to speak, because there is still awareness of that fault you are turning
from. But with al-‘Afuw, there is none
of that. You no longer have any negative
connotation about whatever events have happened to you. We want to make it emphatically clear to our
readers that this is not a stage that you should try and rush into. It is the culmination of lengthy inner
process. If the negative conditions are
not responded sufficiently, they become masked and remain active in the
unconscious.
Al-‘Afuw
is the doorway in the heart where all attachment to hurt and pain, and memories
regarding hurt and pain, are absolved from within. In that station, such impressions are gone
like the footprints in the desert after the wind. It is like they were never there. There is no sense of a mistake that needs to
be corrected.
If
you are graced to have this realization, you are with humanity, but you are not
caught up in it, because you
are beyond being touched in a reactive way. You leave the relative perspective, which
evaluates people and their limitations.
You merge in al-‘Afuw in the absolute state of the divine heart. There is forgetfulness of duality and of
separation. There is no such thing as
poison anymore. Divine forgiveness has
come.”
(Physicians of the Heart, p.129-130)
The
Sufi View of The Ninety-Nine Names of Allah: Physicians of the Heart, by
Wali Ali Meyer, Bilal Hyde, Faisal Muqaddam, Shabda Kahn: Sufi Ruhaniat
International, San Francisco, California.
Sufi
Ruhaniat international/ 410 Precita Avenue/ San Francisco, CA 94110/
www.ruhaniat.org
