2008: Let us Make it a Better Year!
Once more the year reaches to its conclusion and we look back on a year which, when it began, had all the promise of an empty page on which we could compose sublime thoughts and find for ourselves new opportunity, with renewed hope for a better things; for a more prosperous peaceful and harmonious society. Instead we see continued violence, prejudice and rancour; we see selfishness and lack of understanding for others; we see mutual distrust and we see that with all his technical achievements man barely rises above his animal nature - indeed such achievements may often have been abused to increase man's narrow selfish habits. There is discord within the family of man as there too frequently is within individual families. Extreme and narrow minded and misguided interpretations of religion assist in furthering discord between different groups. Man continues it seems with great recklessness and invention to pursue his own path to self destruction. Sometimes the impassioned cry can be heard 'if there is a God full of compassion how can He let this happen?' Even the planet itself seems to be crying out at its treatment at the hands of man.
In the Qur'anic account of the flood of Noah, Noah's son, not accepting the offer to board the ark his father had built, swims towards what seems to him a more secure option, a mountain. He is drowned with all the others who mocked at Noah's inspired vision of a vessel of safety. He relied instead on his own intelligence and reason to save him. Just so in these days man, in his pride at his own abilities, insists on striking out towards imagined safety and finds himself lashed by increasingly high waves and on the point of drowning in his own pride, and it is only then that he cries out 'how can a merciful God allow this to happen?'
Now the issue is as to what constitutes the Ark of real safety in the modern world. Where can we find real shelter from the storms that threaten to engulf us? The customs and traditions of religious belief is the answer given by many but frequently this amounts to little more than superstition and customary inherited beliefs and practises dressed up as religion, that may have little more value than grasping a piece of driftwood. What I want to propose as the Ark of safety derives from what Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi called 'the roots of the roots of the roots of religion'.
I also want to go further and say that individually we must, so to speak, be our own Noah. To build within ourself the Ark of security - as I have tried to suggest below.
The Sufis often say that in some sense the whole universe is in fact within us. This means that in one way all the Prophets, known and unknown, all the truly wise and inspired ones, exist within us as well as existing as historical personages. In that sense too 'the roots of the roots of the roots of religion' exist within each of us. Therefore let us look at how to build the Ark we need within ourselves because ultimately we too can aspire to be that Ark and that will not be without its effect on the world around us. Indeed just as many find security in the holy Qur'an , the Bible, The Baghvad Gita, and works of wisdom and enlightenment such as the Masnevi of Mevlana Rumi, we too may be to a degree, a source of security for others in our daily lives by integrating divine inspiration into the very structure of our personality.
As a way of building our ark I propose to explore a little the soci-economic stages described by the great Delhi divine Shah Wali Ullah. This may seem a strange jump at first but bear with me and I hope you will see what I mean by doing this, and God willing our ark will reach its mountain resting place at last.
Shah Saheb perceived a relationship between four different stages of social development and the layers of our inner development. The first or, so to speak, 'core' relates to our basic human needs for shelter, food, and our sexual needs. At a social level this does not require anything but the most primitive level of organisation. Inwardly this implies that the needs of our essentially animal nature are met satisfactorily. If these are met then a second social layer in which the need to rely on others for differentiation of tasks arises - (i.e. for individuals to develop skills in hunting, farming, cooking etc). Socially specialisation relies on mutual cooperation, trading of benefits etc. Inwardly this implies that the different elements of our human nature, our intellect our, heart, our imagination, our perception, sense of morality, conscience etc fulfill there own tasks and develop mutual cooperation. Just as in a society that encourages the different professions to develop, we also, in some sense become our own internalised doctor, nurse, teacher, organiser, soldier, policeman, driver etc. At the next level of development (the city state) we begin to get social structures and hierarchy required to maintain order. Within us this implies ensuring the intellect functions as ruler receiving suitable inspiration from a higher spiritual source and percolating it down to faculties such as the heart which provides the necessary energy. Our thoughts need to be trained, our impulses restrained etc through a process known as 'perpetual service' (perhaps I will return to this in another article).
All this is a gross simplification of Shah Saheb's sublime wisdom, and there is a fourth level of development he describes, but it is enough for the purposes of this article to convey a general impression that the various inner forces need to be brought into order, just as social development requires structure and order. Individuals will be functioning at different levels of development and within ourselves we may make some progressions to an ordered state within, and at times fall back to a more primitive level. The more advanced levels incorporate and refine the more basic levels rather than supersede them entirely. Self discipline, balanced with rewards, is required as the levels progress. The need for a source of guidance and inspiration in advising the ruler becomes more and more evident. It is in the context of an integrated personality too that the religion of Truth becomes most effective, and the wisdom of divine law and the actions it advises and proscribes become more meaningful. The individuals outward actions become sincere and beneficial and they become best prepared for the life hereafter. In Islamic terms it is when the believer becomes Mumin.
This then is so to speak an indication of what we need to build the Ark of an integrated and developed personality. It aims to ensure that the ever present divine inspiration is given the optimum conditions to reach each level and part of us with its blessings and abundance, which actually never cease, from its source. The spiritual guide acts inwardly as the advisor (the medium for divine inspiration) and will at times outwardly reinforce his guidance when he perceives this to be useful. It is one of the reasons the spiritual guides tend to ensure that the disciple meets his core needs first i.e. they will generally emphasise getting suitable employment, a modest home and marriage to ensure the first level of development is satisfied. Circumstances however vary.
And what of Love, you may ask - you have not even mentioned Love? I am grateful for your thought because that brings us to my recent visit to Konya for the Seb-i-Urus of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi. As regular readers of the web site will know, by the Grace of God, I have visited this occasion for the last eleven years. On this occasion I wanted to describe some facets of my visit precisely to illustrate that an actual entire city can become illumined by that divine inspiration. You see I actually did mention love above but hid it under the cloak of the words 'divine inspiration'.
This year was full of variety yet also overflowed with that recognisable but never adequately describable sense of heightened illumination and well being. People who were there or have attended occasions like this will know what I mean through the prism of their own experience - others will have to settle for limited description of outward events. Like a wedding there is a gradual build up of expectation and during that time there are various, so to speak, sideshows. Of course my visit commenced with ziyarat first to Shems then Mevlana and then the other saints of the city.
As it was the 700th year of Mevlana's birth, the occasion was marked by Unesco and there was a symposium which brought together 'Rumi scholars' from around the globe. Some parts were held at the Seljuk University several miles out of central Konya. This mainly consisted of Turkish Scholars but also scholars from India and Caucasus. However for two days there was a gathering of English speaking 'Rumi Scholars' held in one of the rooms used for slide shows just facing the entrance to the Shrine. I was unaware of its location but had previously met a young man who had recognised me from Ajmer Sharif. As I left the main shrine complex he walked out of the door opposite as if it had been a planned meeting and reminding me I had said I would like to meet Carl Ernst, he escorted me in to the narrow room. It was laid out rather like the inside of an aeroplane with just two or three seats on each side of a long aisle. In that sense the other 'passengers' were indeed an august body of scholars, aside from Carl Ernst there was Leonard Lewisohn, Franklin Lewis, James Morris, and William Chittick and many another Rumi scholar of repute. We were treated to talks on a miniature painting of the tree of life as an illustration to the famous story of the Greeks and the Chinese artists, with enlargements of minute details: and on various other aspects of the Masnevi. It did indeed feel as if we had taken off on plane. It was strange to come out from the room to find oneself not emerging from a lecture hall as one normally thinks of it but to be facing the entrance to the shrine itself. I attended twice but other matters also intervened and pulled me away but it was nice to be able to express face to face one's appreciation of these labourers in the field of scholarship and academia.
I spent quite a lot of time this year with Ali Baba, Nuri Baba's successor, and at his behest described the occasion of meeting Nuri Baba to be recorded for historical reasons on computer. There were of course many hours of Zikr and Turkish music.I found the usual but neverthless remarkable charm of the Konya folk was again evident in abundance. I also passed Bayram (Eid) with Ali Baba going with him to his house for breakfast following the morning Eid prayers. There were many meetings with people of many nationalities as always. Essin Chelibi (Mevlana's descendent, and her mother and other family members were as ever the epitome manners and kindness with invitations etc. Farouk Chelibi arrived in time to conduct the Dua Torreni (the central event of the festival.
This year I chanced to attend the main Sema on the night of the 17th. I had gone to Ali Baba's Dergah and there met friends who were going.to the main Sema hall - I mentioned I was had not got a ticket (the term 'like gold dust' springs to mind). I had intended to spend the evening in Zikr with Ali Baba but the Dergah was too full even to get into the room and I decided to return to my hotel - I must confess wondering what Mevlana had planned for me. On arriving I sat with someone I had recently met in the foyer. We were just discussing how completely impossible it was to get tickets this year when into the room somebody walked, waving tickets. One does not let such opportunities pass easily so half an hour later I found myself walking into the grand main hall with fireworks going off in the background, whilst from another hall the president and prime minister of Turkey and entourage entered by another door. They gave speeches that drew loud applause from the crowd but as they were in Turkish I will be able to excuse myself from passing on their contents.
From a rich collection of small and large events I must pick out one other for you. That was the occasion when, sitting in Tahir's small shop with my good friend Abdullah when three Iranian people came in after some discussion they were invited to take tea. A young man in the party asked me if I knew the Masnevi - I replied of course I was very fond of it. At that he burst into a highly artistic rendition in the distinctly Persian manner, of the first 18 lines. Some dutch friends who had been departing returned to listen enraptured by the powerful voice and verse. It became immediately obvious he was a trained and professional singer of the highest calibre.
One could give many another example of the outward manifestation of Mevlana's blessings and, were one permitted to speak of such things, of his abundant inward gifts. The point of mentioning all this in relation to the festival is that it presents us with an outward model of our inner integrated personality. When we have prepared and developed our inner city state then it can accept readily the blessings that Divine Love bestows and we ourselves can become a 'city of Love' as Konya is known. The intensity of this is sometimes greater as during the festival and at other times more differentiated. Just so in our inner city state during the normal working week, so to speak, the glow of inward divine love manifests itself in a distinct and so to speak separate way within each of our inner faculties or 'departments', leading to an inner sobriety. At festival time however these tend to fuse together manifesting in spiritual intoxication, illumination and unity.
So now it is the time to wish for you that the new year brings both steady progress in the labour of self integration, and periods of festival from time to time. May your own 'city' flourish.
A very happy, prosperous, and benign New Year to you all.
Once more the year reaches to its conclusion and we look back on a year which, when it began, had all the promise of an empty page on which we could compose sublime thoughts and find for ourselves new opportunity, with renewed hope for a better things; for a more prosperous peaceful and harmonious society. Instead we see continued violence, prejudice and rancour; we see selfishness and lack of understanding for others; we see mutual distrust and we see that with all his technical achievements man barely rises above his animal nature - indeed such achievements may often have been abused to increase man's narrow selfish habits. There is discord within the family of man as there too frequently is within individual families. Extreme and narrow minded and misguided interpretations of religion assist in furthering discord between different groups. Man continues it seems with great recklessness and invention to pursue his own path to self destruction. Sometimes the impassioned cry can be heard 'if there is a God full of compassion how can He let this happen?' Even the planet itself seems to be crying out at its treatment at the hands of man.
In the Qur'anic account of the flood of Noah, Noah's son, not accepting the offer to board the ark his father had built, swims towards what seems to him a more secure option, a mountain. He is drowned with all the others who mocked at Noah's inspired vision of a vessel of safety. He relied instead on his own intelligence and reason to save him. Just so in these days man, in his pride at his own abilities, insists on striking out towards imagined safety and finds himself lashed by increasingly high waves and on the point of drowning in his own pride, and it is only then that he cries out 'how can a merciful God allow this to happen?'
Now the issue is as to what constitutes the Ark of real safety in the modern world. Where can we find real shelter from the storms that threaten to engulf us? The customs and traditions of religious belief is the answer given by many but frequently this amounts to little more than superstition and customary inherited beliefs and practises dressed up as religion, that may have little more value than grasping a piece of driftwood. What I want to propose as the Ark of safety derives from what Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi called 'the roots of the roots of the roots of religion'.
I also want to go further and say that individually we must, so to speak, be our own Noah. To build within ourself the Ark of security - as I have tried to suggest below.
The Sufis often say that in some sense the whole universe is in fact within us. This means that in one way all the Prophets, known and unknown, all the truly wise and inspired ones, exist within us as well as existing as historical personages. In that sense too 'the roots of the roots of the roots of religion' exist within each of us. Therefore let us look at how to build the Ark we need within ourselves because ultimately we too can aspire to be that Ark and that will not be without its effect on the world around us. Indeed just as many find security in the holy Qur'an , the Bible, The Baghvad Gita, and works of wisdom and enlightenment such as the Masnevi of Mevlana Rumi, we too may be to a degree, a source of security for others in our daily lives by integrating divine inspiration into the very structure of our personality.
As a way of building our ark I propose to explore a little the soci-economic stages described by the great Delhi divine Shah Wali Ullah. This may seem a strange jump at first but bear with me and I hope you will see what I mean by doing this, and God willing our ark will reach its mountain resting place at last.
Shah Saheb perceived a relationship between four different stages of social development and the layers of our inner development. The first or, so to speak, 'core' relates to our basic human needs for shelter, food, and our sexual needs. At a social level this does not require anything but the most primitive level of organisation. Inwardly this implies that the needs of our essentially animal nature are met satisfactorily. If these are met then a second social layer in which the need to rely on others for differentiation of tasks arises - (i.e. for individuals to develop skills in hunting, farming, cooking etc). Socially specialisation relies on mutual cooperation, trading of benefits etc. Inwardly this implies that the different elements of our human nature, our intellect our, heart, our imagination, our perception, sense of morality, conscience etc fulfill there own tasks and develop mutual cooperation. Just as in a society that encourages the different professions to develop, we also, in some sense become our own internalised doctor, nurse, teacher, organiser, soldier, policeman, driver etc. At the next level of development (the city state) we begin to get social structures and hierarchy required to maintain order. Within us this implies ensuring the intellect functions as ruler receiving suitable inspiration from a higher spiritual source and percolating it down to faculties such as the heart which provides the necessary energy. Our thoughts need to be trained, our impulses restrained etc through a process known as 'perpetual service' (perhaps I will return to this in another article).
All this is a gross simplification of Shah Saheb's sublime wisdom, and there is a fourth level of development he describes, but it is enough for the purposes of this article to convey a general impression that the various inner forces need to be brought into order, just as social development requires structure and order. Individuals will be functioning at different levels of development and within ourselves we may make some progressions to an ordered state within, and at times fall back to a more primitive level. The more advanced levels incorporate and refine the more basic levels rather than supersede them entirely. Self discipline, balanced with rewards, is required as the levels progress. The need for a source of guidance and inspiration in advising the ruler becomes more and more evident. It is in the context of an integrated personality too that the religion of Truth becomes most effective, and the wisdom of divine law and the actions it advises and proscribes become more meaningful. The individuals outward actions become sincere and beneficial and they become best prepared for the life hereafter. In Islamic terms it is when the believer becomes Mumin.
This then is so to speak an indication of what we need to build the Ark of an integrated and developed personality. It aims to ensure that the ever present divine inspiration is given the optimum conditions to reach each level and part of us with its blessings and abundance, which actually never cease, from its source. The spiritual guide acts inwardly as the advisor (the medium for divine inspiration) and will at times outwardly reinforce his guidance when he perceives this to be useful. It is one of the reasons the spiritual guides tend to ensure that the disciple meets his core needs first i.e. they will generally emphasise getting suitable employment, a modest home and marriage to ensure the first level of development is satisfied. Circumstances however vary.
And what of Love, you may ask - you have not even mentioned Love? I am grateful for your thought because that brings us to my recent visit to Konya for the Seb-i-Urus of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi. As regular readers of the web site will know, by the Grace of God, I have visited this occasion for the last eleven years. On this occasion I wanted to describe some facets of my visit precisely to illustrate that an actual entire city can become illumined by that divine inspiration. You see I actually did mention love above but hid it under the cloak of the words 'divine inspiration'.
This year was full of variety yet also overflowed with that recognisable but never adequately describable sense of heightened illumination and well being. People who were there or have attended occasions like this will know what I mean through the prism of their own experience - others will have to settle for limited description of outward events. Like a wedding there is a gradual build up of expectation and during that time there are various, so to speak, sideshows. Of course my visit commenced with ziyarat first to Shems then Mevlana and then the other saints of the city.
As it was the 700th year of Mevlana's birth, the occasion was marked by Unesco and there was a symposium which brought together 'Rumi scholars' from around the globe. Some parts were held at the Seljuk University several miles out of central Konya. This mainly consisted of Turkish Scholars but also scholars from India and Caucasus. However for two days there was a gathering of English speaking 'Rumi Scholars' held in one of the rooms used for slide shows just facing the entrance to the Shrine. I was unaware of its location but had previously met a young man who had recognised me from Ajmer Sharif. As I left the main shrine complex he walked out of the door opposite as if it had been a planned meeting and reminding me I had said I would like to meet Carl Ernst, he escorted me in to the narrow room. It was laid out rather like the inside of an aeroplane with just two or three seats on each side of a long aisle. In that sense the other 'passengers' were indeed an august body of scholars, aside from Carl Ernst there was Leonard Lewisohn, Franklin Lewis, James Morris, and William Chittick and many another Rumi scholar of repute. We were treated to talks on a miniature painting of the tree of life as an illustration to the famous story of the Greeks and the Chinese artists, with enlargements of minute details: and on various other aspects of the Masnevi. It did indeed feel as if we had taken off on plane. It was strange to come out from the room to find oneself not emerging from a lecture hall as one normally thinks of it but to be facing the entrance to the shrine itself. I attended twice but other matters also intervened and pulled me away but it was nice to be able to express face to face one's appreciation of these labourers in the field of scholarship and academia.
I spent quite a lot of time this year with Ali Baba, Nuri Baba's successor, and at his behest described the occasion of meeting Nuri Baba to be recorded for historical reasons on computer. There were of course many hours of Zikr and Turkish music.I found the usual but neverthless remarkable charm of the Konya folk was again evident in abundance. I also passed Bayram (Eid) with Ali Baba going with him to his house for breakfast following the morning Eid prayers. There were many meetings with people of many nationalities as always. Essin Chelibi (Mevlana's descendent, and her mother and other family members were as ever the epitome manners and kindness with invitations etc. Farouk Chelibi arrived in time to conduct the Dua Torreni (the central event of the festival.
This year I chanced to attend the main Sema on the night of the 17th. I had gone to Ali Baba's Dergah and there met friends who were going.to the main Sema hall - I mentioned I was had not got a ticket (the term 'like gold dust' springs to mind). I had intended to spend the evening in Zikr with Ali Baba but the Dergah was too full even to get into the room and I decided to return to my hotel - I must confess wondering what Mevlana had planned for me. On arriving I sat with someone I had recently met in the foyer. We were just discussing how completely impossible it was to get tickets this year when into the room somebody walked, waving tickets. One does not let such opportunities pass easily so half an hour later I found myself walking into the grand main hall with fireworks going off in the background, whilst from another hall the president and prime minister of Turkey and entourage entered by another door. They gave speeches that drew loud applause from the crowd but as they were in Turkish I will be able to excuse myself from passing on their contents.
From a rich collection of small and large events I must pick out one other for you. That was the occasion when, sitting in Tahir's small shop with my good friend Abdullah when three Iranian people came in after some discussion they were invited to take tea. A young man in the party asked me if I knew the Masnevi - I replied of course I was very fond of it. At that he burst into a highly artistic rendition in the distinctly Persian manner, of the first 18 lines. Some dutch friends who had been departing returned to listen enraptured by the powerful voice and verse. It became immediately obvious he was a trained and professional singer of the highest calibre.
One could give many another example of the outward manifestation of Mevlana's blessings and, were one permitted to speak of such things, of his abundant inward gifts. The point of mentioning all this in relation to the festival is that it presents us with an outward model of our inner integrated personality. When we have prepared and developed our inner city state then it can accept readily the blessings that Divine Love bestows and we ourselves can become a 'city of Love' as Konya is known. The intensity of this is sometimes greater as during the festival and at other times more differentiated. Just so in our inner city state during the normal working week, so to speak, the glow of inward divine love manifests itself in a distinct and so to speak separate way within each of our inner faculties or 'departments', leading to an inner sobriety. At festival time however these tend to fuse together manifesting in spiritual intoxication, illumination and unity.
So now it is the time to wish for you that the new year brings both steady progress in the labour of self integration, and periods of festival from time to time. May your own 'city' flourish.
A very happy, prosperous, and benign New Year to you all.
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