It is when we have lost the idea of separateness and feel ourselves at One with all Creation that our eyes are opened and we see the cause of all things.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Every being and object which is distinctly separate may be called an entity, but what one calls an individual [ ie ‘ego’, ‘I’ ] is a conception of our imagination; and the true meaning of that conception will be realized on the day when the Ultimate Truth throws Its Light upon Life. On that day no one will speak about individuality; one will say ‘God’ and no more. There are many beings, but at the same time there is One, the Only Being. Therefore objects such as streams and mountains are also living, but they only exist separately to our outer vision. When our inner vision opens then the separation is shown as a veil; then there is One Vision alone, and that is the immanence of God.
As soon as the soul begins to say ‘I’ it is exiled from heaven, for all blessings belong to the state which the soul experienced before it claimed to be ‘I’, a separate entity, separate from others. It is because of this that people, whatever their positions, whatever their situations in life, are not fully happy. The trouble of one may perhaps be greater than that of another, but both the one who resides in heavenly palaces and the inhabitant of a grass hut have their troubles; both have their pain. But they find the reason for all afflictions in the life outside themselves. The Sufi finds it in that one sin: that of having claimed to be ‘I’. With this claim came all the trouble, it continued, and it will always continue. This sin has such a hold upon the soul that it is just like the eclipse of the sun, when its light is covered and cannot shine.
[ MUIZ COMMENTARY: And just like the form or the body of the moon covering the form or body of the sun during an eclipse (from our perspective on Earth), which effectively veils, obscures, and blocks the sun’s light from reaching certain parts of the Earth; the form or body of the personality (of the ego, or the nafs, or the mind-mesh) covers, veils, and blocks the Light of the Soul from reaching that aspect of Soul, which is incarnate, embodied in human form. And just like the sun and its light aren’t really gone during an eclipse, but merely veiled temporarily, the Soul and its Light aren’t really gone or disconnected from us when we’re embodied. It is merely, temporarily veiled so that our personality consciousness isn’t aware of it.
The Soul is a Ray of the Creator, of the One and Only Being, and an Activity of that Only Being projecting into manifestation, but never separated from, never different than that One Being. And in turn, embodied human consciousness is a Ray of the Soul, an Activity of the Soul projected farther into denser matter, into human bodies, covered over, acting from within more layers of matter, from within the mental, emotional, and physical bodies. As part of that process of embodiment, of incarnation, of entering into a human form, the Ray of the Soul (which is always and forever a Ray of the Creator), falls asleep, so to speak.
Then after the birth process, it gradually wakes up inside the nafs, inside the structure, the ‘body’ of the personality, inside the mind-mesh. And when it begins to interact through the senses with the body and the outer world, it isn’t able to perceive the Inner Light, because the mind-mesh acts as an ‘eclipse’, hiding the Inner Light, and also because the direction of the Awareness is turned outwards through the senses towards the body and the outer world. So it forgets its fundamental connection to its Source, and it forgets that is a Divine Ray, and it forgets the Inner Light. Instead it sees the reflection of itself within the structure of the mind-mesh, like standing in front of a mirror, and it makes an understandable but mistaken assumption, that the reflection of itself is itself. And feeling itself to be alone and not connected to anything else it identifies that separate, disconnected reflection as self and calls it ‘I’. ‘I’ am that reflection, ‘I’ am separate, ‘I’ feel some sort of loss, but ‘I’ can’t remember what it is that ‘I’ have lost.
And so, that ‘I’ spends its human life searching for connection, for satisfaction, for happiness, for love, for an end to its feelings of separation, by going out through the senses to the outer world, away from its Center, and its Real channel of Connection with its Real Nature. And while the variety, distinctions, and differences of the outer world are interesting and captivating and engaging, they are also all transitory, they constantly change. Birth, growth, decline, death. Over and over, time after time. And the joys, happinesses, and satisfactions that are found are all temporary because the seeking is in the wrong direction, towards the outside, the surface, rather than towards the inside and the depths.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave tells a similar story. A person standing in a darkened cave with the light of a fire behind them sees its shadow on the wall of the cave moving and making shapes. Because the person doesn’t notice anything else, they assume the shadow and the shapes are itself, and they try to interact with the shadow and shapes. But no interaction with shadows can be satisfactory, so the person suffers. What is necessary is for the person to turn around in order to see the Light, to see Reality. One could say that the nafs of the person is eclipsing the light of the fire, and so casting its shadow on the wall of the cave. So the solution is reversing the direction of the awareness, reversing the direction of the interactions; turning away from the shadow pictures on the wall, turning towards the Light. ]
There is an innate desire in every human being for knowledge. … this desire is never satisfied. We always want to know more. There is ever a restless craving within us for knowledge. This is because we do not look for the cause in the right way. We only see the external causes, and not the cause underlying the cause, and below that, the primal cause. For example, people who have become estranged from their friend only see perhaps the superficial cause, and call their friend unkind; or they may even admit that they themselves are at fault, or they may go still deeper and say that owing to a certain planetary influence they cannot be friendly. Yet they have not probed the cause of this cause.
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For this reason the religions taught the God-Ideal, that the primal cause might be sought through the pursuit of God. It is when we have lost the idea of duality and feel ourselves at One with all Creation, that our eyes are opened and we sees the cause of everything.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad) Samuel L. Lewis
This is the union of feeling and knowledge. As Krishna has so beautifully expressed it, “To those ever attached to Me, worshiping Me in love, I give that union to knowledge by which they come to Me.” Such universal expression alone is valuable. Separating self from self, we place boundary marks upon knowledge and so make omniscience impossible. People speak about higher mind and completeness of mind. There can be no such completeness without love. Even if love takes that cool form called interest it is something, for without that interest there would be no knowledge. And what is interest? It is a turning and a tuning — a turning and a tuning often quite similar to the process by which one attains to any or every goal sought.