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Progressive Development - Part 2
3/4/2007 Progressive Development which is a modern term to describe our development platform for the whole reality of Sufism. And the platform, just like Sufism, rests upon a certain and single Truth. Without this, the rest of it can't exist. What is that Truth? [Love and spiritual unity] Spiritual unity. [God alone is.] God alone is. [God sustains us.] God sustains us is all part of it. [We are all connected.] We are all connected. That's part of it. [That our purpose is to realize God.] Our purpose is to realize God. But these are a lot of ideas and they're conceptual. The platform itself rests on one single Truth. What is it? [God is One.] God is One. God is One. One God. What does that mean? [There are no others.] There's no others. There's nothing else. There are no others. God is One. There is no other. Okay, how come you don't believe that? I'm going to want to later on get into discussing this but the question is provocative enough itself. In sacred Judaism, they have a prayer, a verse, that's called the Shema. It's kind of like our Surah al-Ikhlas. It says "Shema Israel, alanoy alajaynu adanoy ahud". Recognize that word, ahud? Ahad. Okay, hear, O Israel, your Lord, your God is One. Alright, so conceptually the Jewish faith says God is One. Then we have Surah al-Ikhlas. Qul huwa llahu Ahad, Allahu sSamad. We also say La ilaha illa llahu wahdahu la sharikalah. There is no god but God, which is a way of saying God is One and there's no partner. And the Buddhists talk about the One Eternal Truth. And the yogis talk about the One Divine Reality. And the Christians talk about overarching in all the different denominations, the Father, who may take the form of the Holy Spirit or the Son or whatever. But there's only One God. Everybody's saying there's only one God. How come people don't believe it? No, they say they believe it. They'll argue that they believe it. Matter of fact, we're arguing our conceptual belief right now. God's One. One God. But what does it mean that there's One? What does One mean? One means there's not two. What does that mean? As long as there's more, then it's not one. It's two or more. As long as there is more than one, there's not one. As soon as there's more than one, it's not one. If there's only one, what does that mean? Why is it, why conceptually can we even say there's not One? Check it out. I mean I have the ability to go, let's see, Isis, Brahmin, Jehovah, Yahweh, Allah, Parama Purusha, the Great Spirit. I mean, I'm conceiving of all kinds of things. Why do we say there's only One? How? Maybe it's just arrogant that we should say there's One. I forgot the name It. So how do you know that those different names that I said are actually just different names for It? [Because there's only One.] How do you know that? [Personal experience] What's your personal experience that tells you? Alright, well, this is actually a satisfactory part of the conversation, to get stalled out because as long as we're talking about it, there's two. [You can't get outside of It.] Oh, that might be true, that's also conceptual, but how do we know that? [Sometimes it's something that you feel, that you can't put words to it but it's an overwhelming feeling of that you can't express that points to the evidence that there is one God.] Alright. Ali? [You've got two things going on up there. You've got God which I do not understand and you've got One which I do not understand and you're trying to tell me they're the same thing so I'm lost.] Right, that's the conceptual problem. And yet we bank a whole spiritual path on it, we bank a whole philosophical premise on it and the greatest masters of all times have said the same thing and who knows what is God and who knows what One is because all of us are two. There's the two, you and me. There's the two, left and right, or is it right and left, like I've done this a million times when I go is this my right arm or my left arm and the audience goes it's your right arm and I go, why do you see it on the left side? Here's the two, day and night, wrong and right, up and down, in and out, male and female. Two is arguing the concept that there's one. As long as we're arguing the concept that there's one, it's hard to argue that we know there's one when we're arguing it from the standpoint of two. But I'm saying we're lost. We've got a platform that says One, Unity, Spiritual Unity. That's where we started out. And yet we're lost every day and arguing for that it's not. We don't live like it is. We have philosophical discussions and ideas about how the world should be united but we have a hard time living from unity, right? And people go, well, I really believe this because they can have a discussion about it but then when push comes to shove, I'm not sure people really believe it because of like how in Ali's khutbah, he broke down the stages of yaqin, you know, that stages of certainty. Well, I have some degree of certainty because I've received the information and I can conceptualize. Conceptualization is a type of certainty. I have reason to believe I can think this thing through, whoa, it's cosmic. It's almost like being religiously stoned. Whoa, there's One, everything comes from the One, whoa, everything goes back to the One, whoa, there's no separation from it, whoa check this out, you can't have one without the other. This is kind of like being religiously stoned or something. Wow. Okay, but you know what, there's a certain rationalization that takes place and we have reason to believe that as we use the faculty of our minds. We have higher thinking. So we don't just discount it completely but we call this type of certainty about a subject the certainty of its information or the certainty of its knowledge because why? We've been exposed to it and then we use our mind to consider, analyze and think about it and therefore with some degree of certainty, just to be able to think about these things, it kind of makes sense to us, even in big subjects. Yeah, in smaller subjects too. What was it like in your last trip to Bangladesh? I tell the story about going to Bangladesh. If you're a good storyteller, you can ignite the rational consideration of the audience. Rational meaning the workings of their mind and they can each actually have a little slideshow inside. So they can have a certain degree of certainty, just a certain degree of certainty based on the information that you provided of what Bangladesh might look like, what it might smell like, what it felt like and what the people are there. They're running the slideshow. This is a certain degree of certainty. But of course it's a little different than when some people come along, and some of you have been with me to Bangladesh, and so you actually get to, Kenny comes along and you go like, whoa, I've heard these stories before but now I see it for myself. And so the Sufis and Ali's khutbah referred to this type of certainty as the certainty, it's a nickname, the certainty of the eye - that I've seen that myself. Well, conceptually we have degree of certainty that we say God is One because we can come up through all these ideas, these conceptual ideas, and we can exhaust ourselves by a subject that can no longer be thought about. You can't get there from here. It becomes too great. You can't conceive of it in your mind. When your mind stops being able to conceive of how it works, then there's something else that intuitively you think there but if feels like there must be more, so there's this oneness. But when it comes to `ayn al-yaqin, the certainty of seeing it ourselves, how many people have actually seen this One? Oh, great, then you can lead the rest of the workshop. How do we see the One? [If I could explain it, I probably wouldn't be here.] Are you seeing it now? [No.] When you saw it, what did you see? [up until the moment… ] No, I'm just asking when you saw the One, tell us. [there's no observer, there's no observed. It's just oneness.] How did you know that there was no observer and no observed? Who was observing the oneness? [up until the moment that it happened, there was an observer, then at the moment it happened, there's nothing.] And so then how do you know that you saw it? [It's an indelible experience. You tell me, you're the Murshid.] No, I'm belaboring the discussion in order to actually forward the problem. I'm not just putting you on trial. Although I think you deserve it. But therein lies the problem. Spiritual unity, we profess it, we profess it. We built a whole developmental platform on it. We have a whole path based upon it. Tawheed is the hallmark of the path. And it's something that even the only guy in the room who admits to having seen it can't explain it and doesn't know that he saw it when he saw it. Except he says that afterwards I saw it. This is a problem, in a way. I mean, it's also going to be the fun part of the journey to discover, but this idea that God is One, the premise of all the world's religions, the foundation of our path, the platform that our whole developmental process rests on and it's something that we can't see. It's something that we can't describe. It's something that we can't define. It's something that we can't rationalize through logic or in our minds and we're claiming it's real. What, why would we continue to claim it's real when we can't define it, see it or explain it? Are we nuts? Maybe we're crazy. So here our whole life is staked on this thing. The life of all the Prophets were staked on this. The life of the Rasul was staked on this. The life of all of the guiding Masters of the Tariqat of all the spiritual orders that we follow, their life was staked on this. The Buddha's life was staked on this. Jesus' life was staked on this. [It seems like their lives as well as ours are staked on the reality of that, not so much the declaration of it. The declaration of it is in itself conceptual. It requires explanation. That's why we're taking so long trying to get to that.] Thank you, thank you very much. It's like having a shill in the audience. Now, the people of the Book and those other people that we hold love, respect and affection for, who say that they believe in One God, who conceptually proffer forward the developmental idea that God is One, all this type of thinking is called what? Monotheism. What's monotheism mean? The belief in one God. And all of the monotheists are polytheists, all of them. Monotheism is a polytheistic conceptual idea. Why? Because it relies on the argument to have two try to define one which has to have its investment in the two being alive to being present to define the one. So at best monotheists are dualists. It's me and God and me going to heaven and me and what I feel and what I need and what I want and the other thing. That's two. That's not one. That's two. Are you following me? I know this is a little abstract. I'll bring it down to earth a little later please. Just bear with me. So real Sufism "ism", just an "ism", that's polytheism too. Okay. But the best we can try to just move our realization towards it, what the Sufi is endeavoring to practice is not monotheism. What progressive development is attempting to forward is not monotheism. And the great Masters were not attempting to teach by their demonstration the reality of monotheism. Monotheism is a philosophy. A philosophy requires belief. A belief requires stages of certainty, like I heard about it, I saw it or I think I saw it, but we didn't cover the third stage of certainty which is what? Haqqul yaqin or Qalbul yaqin, which is knowing. So even sitting here and at face value somebody raised their hand and goes well, I've seen the One. Great. Do you know the One? That's another stage of certainty. Having seen, like I saw Bangladesh, but I don't live in Bangladesh and I'm not in Bangladesh in this particular moment. So I'm fulfilled the knowing of Bangladesh in that way. Alright. Progressive development is not monotheism, even though it proffers the idea of unity, spiritual unity, and it's based upon this idea. It's based upon the knowing of this idea as a reality, not as a philosophy. Now how can we say it's a reality? How, conceptually, let's just discuss it for a minute because this will maybe help our minds to go there, but how can we describe for ourselves that unity is a reality, it's not a philosophy. What are some of the signs that it's reality? So one of the signs here is we can observe and through many faculties and experience something as in common. This is very important. Common. What else? [the urge to merge] What's that? [we want to be together. We want to come together. There's a longing. Yeah, that we want to be together.] The urge to merge. What does that mean? [we want to love each other. We want to come together. We don't want to be alone. We're social.] Oh, yeah. I can feel it when you say it and I can feel it based upon this thing that we're in common but there's a lot of people, they don't want to be together and they don't want to love each other and they don't want to be together. Like, people are blowing up cars over in the middle east not because they want to be together. Don't let go of that urge to merge. Get deeper. Describe it. What are we talking about? Urge to merge-it's just a slogan, but what is that? [Longing.] Longing, okay, there we go, there we go. Longing, longing for what? [Peace, love, happiness.] People want more. So this is part of what we have in common. People want more. They want more and they give names to the more that they want. What are some of the names to the more that they want? [Love, transcendence, peace.] That's too conceptual. Get like a little…okay, love. What else do people want more of? Everything, somebody said. Which is really key, because whether it comes in the form of power, love, money, attention, peace, there's nobody until they have finished that doesn't want more. More what? More of something that's everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. Well, we were just talking about everything, right? Everything. Everything is, here's another symptom. Infinite, so our desires are infinite. Everything. We want more of everything. What are some of the other signs that there's a reality to unity and it's not just a philosophy? Hmm, there's a connection. We see connection. And is there anything that is not connected? And what's the law of connection? Cause and effect. What's another thing that gives us? [one direction. The cause goes to the effect, not the other way.] Cause creates effect. Cause which creates effect which becomes the cause which creates effect, like that? [a river flows in one direction, not in other] [unfortunately, it's not necessarily true.] Oh, it's absolutely true. [continuity, would that be the word? There's continuity. [like, we're all moving toward that, that's one direction.] Exactly. Here's the other sign. Death. [that's a sign?] Oh, it's absolutely a sign of unity. Everybody's going to die. Everything's going to die. Everything's going to change. And this is the motion and the direction that everything is moving towards. Everything is moving towards the direction of change, no matter if you call it up, down, in, out, left, right, if you call it the material level, the astral level, everything's moving in the direction of change. It's an interdimensional direction. Everything's moving in that direction, right? [That's a sign too, change] Change, which is also death. Alright. so we start adding all these things up somewhere in the bottom of our gut. And we begin to arrive at a more certain belief that unity is reality. So what are some of the things we say about that reality? We said them earlier. Things like everything comes from God and everything returns to God. Right? That's a poetic way of talking about that reality. What else did we say? We even have the audacity to say not only is God is One, we are one. Human beings are one race. We have the audacity to say that. We have one Creator, one Sustainer, one Reconciler, one Destroyer, one Reviver. One Dominator, one Force, Luke, we have one Force. This is all the language that we adapt to this One. So if we put everything that we had here together before, like this, one blowing nose. Okay, so we're all born. Where on this circle are we born? What's that? [any point] Pick a point. Which point would you like me to pick? What's your favorite point? What's that? [the left top corner] Right here? Okay, Dani was born here, now we know. So Dani moves through this, this, Dani moves through this common thing that we're calling life, this common process that all leads in the same direction which is change and death. This common need that everybody has for more. Right? And at least in terms of this life, where does Dani end up? She ends up dying. Where is that on the circle? [Where you started it at] Where you started it at. Okay so then either way, either way, if the minute you start, okay let's just pretend, let's just pretend how Shiva said it, let's pretend how Shiva said it, that in this hemisphere, actually Shiva didn't say it like that, but let's pretend we're in south of the equator and Shiva said it south of the equator. It's moving in a clockwise direction south of the equator. There's another problem with duality right there. Alright, so, how do you, Shiva backwards is Avihs said south of the equator that this circle's moving in a direction this way. Alright? So this thing's moving. So for the literalists, for the flat-liners, for the flat-landers, if she, this process here is her life, right? And when she gets to the end of her life, here it is again which was the same point, at least on the circle …at birth. For other people who are much more illumined who say they don't know that, which is actually the truth, and for the other people that kicked in yeah, she's right, every moment you die, fine, well then the next moment is right here and then the next moment's right here and the next moment's right here and then the next moment's right here and the next moment's right here and the consequence is the same. What's that? [except when Dani was born, she departed from the circle entirely.] I imagine if you're not careful, you'll be departing soon also. Alright. so the thing about a circle as far as a visual demonstration and why a circle has become an archetypal symbol for all indigenous people is there is no start or finish point on the circle and at any point on the circle could be the start. Any point on the circle could be the finish and any point on the circle could be the process. So the start, the process and the finish simultaneously is any point on the circle and the circle can be entered into any point. You got this? That's like a sign of unity, isn't it? Is that the sign of something almost like a Chinese puzzle or something but takes you and has you realize something One is present. Are you kind of following me abstractly? Alright. but the circle just doesn't seem to be one big cosmic circle. That everything is in the realization of it. So what has happened that one no longer recognizes itself as one and one thinks it's two so that the other can think about the One. What has happened so that one no longer recognizes itself as one but one actually thinks it's two so that the other, the partner, can think about the One. [Consciousness? Insanity?] Well, this is insanity at a very grand level would be God's insanity. But creation. Okay, now let's make creation real for us. How do we know that there's creation? [we're here. There's two cuz we're conscious.] Because we're here. I like that answer. Cuz we're here. So here we go. I, there you go. Can't have an experience without having an "I". Can't talk about the One. The mushrik in us can't talk about the unity of God without there being an "I". No I, no two. There's an "I", you got two. No "I", there's one. As soon as there's an "I", it immediately means there's something other. Right? And some metaphysicians would argue with me because there's another level of this "I" that I don't want to talk about. I want to talk about our practical experience. So everybody here's got an "I". Okay, also everybody here has got a "me" and everybody here has got a "my". All through the day, I, me, mine, I me, mine, I me, mine. Alright, George Harrison. I, me, mine. I, me, mine holds us as the second, trying to observe the One but we're trying to observe the One as the other. Did you hear that? Our I, our individual I has us be the second who's trying to observe the One but we fall down because we're observing the One as the other. And as long as we are observing it as the other, there's always going to be two. Why do we observe it as the other? [we think it's outside of ourselves.] Why do we think that? [conditioning] Conditioning's a very big subject. Conditioning is the subject of how material reality's connected. Material reality is connected in cause and effect. And cause and effect creates the conditioning. Right? So we have a conditioned way of thinking, a conditioned way of responding, even a conditioned way of experiencing. I'm not even talking on the personality level. It's conditioned. So what I want to find out is that as long as we're locked into not knowing that we're one, what are the things that condition us that have us not know that we are one? [ego] Ego, this is ego right here. This is the ego. Ego. Let's talk about the container of, let's talk about the container of duality for a minute. We have established we're living in it. Let's talk about its aspects so we can see how much conditioning there really is in the way of actually knowing this. Well, the first thing is, this develops a sense of itself. Right. Cuz I told you before, first it starts out as "I am". And "Me do" and "Mine have done". Right? I am, I do and I have done. Which opens up the next level of conditioning to this ego has the experience. This is not a concept. It's an experience now. That this self-reflective ego has the experience of the past, the present and the future. Which corresponds to I, I do and I have done. Well, I don't know if infinity knows about the past, present or future. I don't think anything informed infinity that there was a past, present or future. It's infinity. But we think there's a past, present or future because we have this. And because we're constantly relating from this what we do and what we have done. And there's a past, present and future. [The "I am" relates to the past?] No, none of these things relate directly. I am is more of the present, but. You see this is like, whoa, well that's a heavy set of conditioning that we have right now. And what is processing this, these modes of I am, I do and I have done? What are we, how are we processing that? We're processing it through what the religious traditions call free will and self-reflection. In other words, as a result of doing and have done, with the sense that there's a future and a past, we have the idea that we have an "I". Alright. With the sense that because I experience the doership and because I experience what I have done, what do we end up having a reflection on? The "I". Got that? As soon as we have a reflection on the "I", here comes the conviction that I have a free will because obviously I do and obviously I am the subject of the fruits of my actions, I have done. All of this context is a conditioning for being able to see this, otherwise you can't see it. It's kind of like the invisible man. You know? The old book of the invisible man and the movie The Invisible Man. But if you take all the bandages off, there ain't no invisible man. So how you gonna see the invisible man? You have to wrap him up in bandages or you throw powder on him and then by putting something, covering onto it, now the form takes shape. So this is, this form, the conditioning is what's being thrown onto this. Alright? So the past, the present and the future is how this is in a container starting to take shape and it, as a result of the experience of doing and have done, which is cause and effect, it has a sense of looking at itself. This is really extraordinary that we actually somehow get to look at ourselves. Then we get to practice the presence exercise. That we could even have the experience of detaching from ourselves to look at our own self. Who is looking and who are we looking at when we do that? And that by doing it, that we call that a free will. Wow, this is, conditioning is now in effect. Alright. so we go the past, the present and the future. This I, me and mine also attempts to express itself, after it's been reflected, in these three things. Thought, word, action. We got the past, the present and the future. We have thought, word and action, that's all covering, causing how we have the perspective to reflect on this "I". Right? Isn't this the mode of how we express ourselves, thought, word and action? Alright, but we, this thing here ends up taking a form. The bandages are on the invisible man and the form is what? Another three things: body, mind, spirit. Now I've got a corporal form. See how these threes start to work together? Past, present and future, thought, word and action, body, mind, spirit, all becoming the cloak or the cover for the "I" that exists as a unit, the "I" that exists as a doer, and the "I" that exists as have done. This conditioning is pretty complicated, isn't it? Or maybe it's not complicated. I mean, it's just complex. Alright, there are a lot of reasons why we don't know. Now this corporal form has a mode of experiencing things and those experiences that we take in the information to reflect in here, the self-reflection, is primarily for most people most of the time through what? The five senses. Oh, my God, talk about more conditioning. Five senses are to see, to hear, to touch, to smell and to taste. Now we have reason to believe that there's unity, even cutting through all this conditioning because we see that there's something in common. But does everybody see the same, hear the same, touch the same, smell the same and taste the same? [No] Ooh, there's another evidence of conditioning but that's problematic. Not anybody at any one time will taste something the same, feel it the same, see it the same. Why is that? Because there is another conditioning that affects this, and it's the law of relativity. Time, place, person and a fourth one, circumstance. So according to time, place, person and circumstance, what you see, hear, touch, smell and taste is different. Right? And you are seeing it through something that has a body, mind and spirit. Right? That's expressing itself through thought, word and action, that has an ego that perceives of the past, the present and the future, but what's happening to all of this at the same time? [Motion?] It's in motion. And what's it in motion towards? [Death] Death. So none of this is reliable information. As ultimately one thing. Right. Because this is in the process of change. All the time. All the conditioning is in the process of change. So long as there's two, everything is in the process of change, from the moment there is a two, whenever that moment was, I have no idea. But as long as there's you and me, these things are going to get, these conditioned things will cause us to be having an experience that differs, that's different from each other. And all those experiences are flux, they're in flux, they're in motion and they're changing and all of them are dying. Dying into what? [Dying into the next moment] Into the next moment. What is all of this contained in? Like, where is all of this going on? This is a lot of action because I've just described very crudely and for the sake of being thought-starters for future conversations and certainly one night isn't a systematic treatise on this, and you know, insha'llah, one day the Katib committee will have curriculum of a systematic treatise. But like, I've just described basically one guy. I didn't describe all the people that have ever lived that have already died, them going through this and possibly being reincarnated, according to whatever your outlook might be on it. I didn't describe all the people that are on the planet right now. I didn't describe all the people that are here, that are yet to come. And I didn't describe all the alien life on all the possible other planets that I don't know anything about. I'm just basically talking about, here's the conditioning experience of one guy. And everybody's going through this, everybody's subject to this. So there's a lot of action. Talk about conditioning and cause and effect. There's a whole lot of action going on. Well, I know in order to have this meeting, we have to have this room to hold us in this meeting and this room has certain qualities to it. Light and dark and cold and hot and okay. And if you want to go see a concert, you go to the SIU arena and then you might be able to see, you know, the reunion of Jethro Tull, which I just heard about-he's out again with a reunion tour. Okay, but the concert's held inside the arena. And if you want to go see a football game, you go to the football stadium. And if you live in the state of Illinois, you're living in the state of Illinois defined as a container of certain. So just where's this happening? Where is this one guy, let alone six billion guys? Where is this one guy having this experience? [In his mind] Well, definitely, to be able to think he's having the experience, it's happening in his mind. But where is his mind? [consciousness] In the universe and where's the universe? [it's all in God. Everywhere. In the One.] Well, I don't know the answers to these questions. And neither do you. But the thing is that what we can say is different things to try to attempt to answer it because back here we are feeling these things in common. Right? So we go like, well it's in God and everybody goes yeah. That's cuz we don't have any other way to describe it. We go in the universe. Okay. Right? We're all in the universe. And it's how big is your universe? You know, some people think that there's more than one universe. So if there's like ten universes, where are they? What's holding onto ten universes? Whatever that is. With no words to describe, no definitions to define. Unaffected by how I am approaching it, through thought, word and action, free will, predetermination, past, present and future, my five senses, time, place and person and circumstances, body, mind, spirit, whatever that is that holds the whole thing and all of us together, that must be a reality and why must it be a reality? Because we're here. And the other sign that it's a reality is we observe us not being here. We observe ourselves being here and then we watch ourself leave here. Death. This is unavoidable. Nobody's avoided it. Nothing's avoided it. Not even a moment in time avoids it because it's the next moment and the previous one died. It's not here anymore. Wow. We have to get, we're getting down to something very fundamental, that unity is a reality. Unity isn't a philosophy, even though we used philosophy, philosophical concepts to try to internalize the reality of it. [I'm struggling with the philosophy versus reality. Can you help me with, how is a philosophy limited?] A philosophy is limited like this. Is that, what is, well, it's a description that a, philosophy is a description that has less value if you don't know it than if you study it, for instance, what is the temperature of combustion? [of what?] Combustion. [of anything?] [it depends on what is combusting.] Alright, so but however, philosophically, philosophically I just, I mean, this is something that we can study. I offered a concept. Philosophically there is a point of combustion. It's a certain amount of degrees. Now is that in Celsius or is that in Fahrenheit? Well, it can be either, it depends on how you're measuring it. Well, what's the combustion of water? What's the combustion of paper? What's the combustion of wood? What's the combustion of metal? All these things have different qualities. Oh, man, now my philosophy is starting to get complicated, based on a single premise that combustion can take place by enough heat. Okay. So you could study this and you could come back next week and give us the report. We'd be philosophically well-versed. But you know what? We don't need that in this case, cuz we know what hot is. Now there might be a philosophical application, just like there's a philosophical application for certain conditions that I need to apply but do you know what hot is? [by experiencing it] Do you know what hot is? It's not a trick question. [yes, well, it's relative, but under certain circumstances I know what it is.] Do you know what hot enough to burn is? [to burn what?] To burn you, Jack! Yeah, you ever been burned before? Was it hot? Okay, it wasn't a trick question. Like, but you getting burned and knowing what hot is, is a different rank of certainty of the medium of which somebody who's never been burned, never experienced hot. Okay, you got your two-year-old. I use this example all the time. You know, whatever, they're nine months and they're mobile, six months and they're mobile. And they go to touch the hot thing and every parent says hot, hot. Now if you were able to explain to that little kid and they had all of this in place already and you could go, let me explain to you, hot means the degree of combustibility. That's what hot is. And they, and they, the little kid was a genius and said, you know, 237 degrees for this and 423 degrees for that and it's in Celsius it's this, and in Fahrenheit, it's this. They still don't know what the hell hot is. Because they haven't realized it. The problem with religious philosophy is, is trying to describe something that it has oftentimes had a hard time realizing. The problem with the realization of it, it has a hard time communicating what it realizes. Because as soon as you communicate what you realize, you ain't it anymore. You don't get to be the raindrop that fell into the ocean and simultaneously still be the drop and the ocean at the same time. But the fact that there are raindrops is evidence that there is ocean. The fact that we're here as this, in this individual nature, with all of these conditionings, is the key, it's the evidence that there is a unity. And that unity is a reality. Otherwise, why are we here? The evidence that there's an ocean is that there is raindrops. The evidence that we are one is that we're here to observe it. The evidence that there is one is because how we perceive based upon this requires that there is a container. We can't perceive through our sense of something that doesn't require a container. Here is one right here: ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, two ears, one nose. Here's our boom box. We can't, because of this, we can't perceive of something without a container. What is the container of everything? [you just know it exists] If you want to call it God, I'm okay with that. But if there's a container of everything, can there be two containers at the same time of everything? Why not? [then it's not everything] Then it's not everything. It's fifty percent of everything. Is it possible to have fifty percent of everything? It's not possible even by physics. Half of infinity, I'll take half, just half of it. I don't even need half of infinity. Whoa, why am I being so greedy? I'll just take one particle of infinity. It's infinity. It's impossible. The spiritual unity is a reality and later on the philosophy or the development platform you have to see is based upon a reality of a physics. When we say La ilaha illa Llahu, there exists no God, there only is God. La Sharikalah, without partner. The physics of this means there can't be a partner because if there, a partner means the second. If there's two, there's not one. So when you're dealing in terms that is beyond time, beyond space, beyond person, beyond circumstance, beyond body, beyond mind, beyond spirit, beyond the dichotomy of freewill or predetermination, beyond own individual self-reflection, beyond thought, beyond words, beyond action, beyond the past or before the before, the alpha, beyond the present which is always, beyond the future, that supersedes anything that anybody can see, hear, touch, smell and taste, whatever I just described has no partner. There's not another of that. And if there was another, it would have to be exactly the same, exactly the same as the first one. Can infinity exist together as two exactly the same? [they'd just be the same] They'd be the same. So what are they? They're one. Alright. Can all of time in every dimension, for all of you who are in the outer limits club, all of time in any dimension. All of time in any dimension. Can there be two of that? No. As soon as there were two of it, if it was actually, if they were exactly the same, if God could go, I feel like creating God. Then God would be creating God's own self because there can't be two of that. Okay, so all of time, all of space, all of the past. That's something. Let's take the past of everything. Can you tell me how far that goes back? [Forever] How about the future of everything? Can you tell me when the future stops? [No] Can you tell me when there was a moment ever that wasn't or isn't going to be the present? We're back to the circle, aren't we? So to forward a developmental platform that says spiritual unity is not a philosophy. Now why is this important that it's not a philosophy? Why don't I come back and go this isn't monotheism. This isn't a belief system. [Monotheism is a philosophy] It's a belief system. And you go how many people believe it? Well, what does it mean to believe something absolutely? It means to know it. And the world's run out of terms so they call the great religions of unity, they call them monotheistic. But we're making a point here. So it's based upon reality. Reality as spiritual physics. There, it's safe to say Allah is One and not two and there's no others because the degree of our longing is so infinite that it has already reflected that there's something that is beyond the beyond, that is already reflected that there's more and it wants more. And the more that we want is how much more? It never ends. We have that experience in ourself. Why is this important for putting together a set of developmental principles? For community development or political development or economic development or environmental development or community building. Why would it be important to start here with all of this gobbledy gook that hopefully you'll discuss more. Why would it be important to understand this before two guys sit across from each other, staring at each other's face, arguing over words to put together a set of developmental principles that would be called Progressive Development, based upon what we talked about being progress, why does this have to be taken into account and why do we have to have such an abstract conversation about the One? [because it's the only thing that satisfies the individual] Well, there we're definitely still pushing for satisfaction but I want to even make it more pragmatic than that. That's for sure in this process. [there's more than just a container] Well, yeah. We'll end up having the understanding that there's more than just our human bodies and you know, people who are black and people who are white and people who are yellow and people who are red and people who are northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere and people whose languages are based in this roots and that roots and people who like spicy food and people who like bland food and people who have colorful costumes and people who have none. Yeah, we're going to get beyond that but why do we have to start with this? [because then you line all of your decisions up along with what serves that, what makes that, what lines up with that instead of like my preference versus your preference. Otherwise it's the standard always becomes who is the loudest, who is the most powerful, who is the, there is the duality ends up becoming the focus instead of lining up with the One] Isn't that great? She understands that. What this does is this lays down the inarguable premise, because that premise to our limited ability with language and concepts is based upon reality and this changes your whole outlook. You don't look at anything the same way anymore if you understand that this is going on for everything always and people have made their best attempt to describe their experience of it but this is the process that's going on for everything always. It totally changes your outlook. You know, I gave a lecture not too long ago after 9/11 to five Catholic dieses down in Kentucky about Islam. I had a guy from a Christian news agency who's a reporter from a radio station come up with me on microphone and wanted to talk to me about my God Allah, like, okay? And it totally flew past the presentation that I had made, because I don't know, were some of you there? Okay, so I walked in and the first thing I did was greet everybody with Asalaamu Aleikum and explained that it meant peace and then I pulled out of a brown paper bag a loaf of bread and I held it up in the air. The church was basically packed to the rafters. You know, you had five priests there and all their congregants. All the way to the back, standing room only, in the aisles, I'm holding up a piece of bread and after saying Asalaamu Aleikum, I say does anybody know what this is? So they kind of look at me, how is this? No, really, let's play show and tell, you know. And I'm pretty comfortable in front of people so there's five hundred people. Does anybody know what this is? And somebody yells bread. How do you know it's bread? How do you know it's bread? Does everybody here agree it's bread? And finally they're loosening up and yeah, okay. Does anybody know any other names for this in other language? So then, one by one, Spanish, you heard Spanish, you heard Italian, there was Arabic, there was German, French, right? Pretty soon we started hearing different names for this thing I'm holding up. So then I asked, I said, which one of those names is not bread? Everybody said they're all names for bread. None of them are not bread because they're just names for bread, the same bread and at different language. Oh, okay. So all those are legitimate names for this? Yes, was the consensus. So then I took the bread, in front of everybody, standing up there on the-what do you call the thing in a Catholic church, is it an altar? Pulpit? Altar pulpit? Okay, whatever. It doesn't matter what you call it, it's the same thing. I stood up in front of everybody on the stairs, and I took that thing and in my hand I started to twist it until I broke it into two pieces and I put them like this and I had one half of the bread in this hand, the other half in the other hand. Then I asked the question, which one of these are not bread? After they just got describing the unity of bread in all the different languages. Which one of these now are not bread? The cry comes from the audience, they're still both bread. So what if I started ripping this into thousands of pieces. Which one of those pieces would not be bread? Tell me which one is not bread. Not even asking them to, which one is the bread, which one would not be the bread. They all argued, but it's all bread. Okay, then we could start the little groundwork of saying that the word that you have come to fear, Allah, is simply a translation that means the God. What God are we talking about? The bread God. What do you call the bread God? Which one is not God? But you could feel a palpable shift in the room a little bit during the conversation, and oftentimes it's like you said, you could see something but not be able to hold onto it. But while I was there presenting and the transmission was coming through, the room you could feel palpably start to shift and change and people soften and respond and there was more of a common social outlook, a common experience in the room. I don't know how long they held it because as soon as this was over, the Christian radio station interviewer guy wanted to talk to me about my God Allah. May God bless him. But can you feel in your own realm of experience that by having greater realization of the whole, you have a different outlook on all other things. So actually somehow through intuition, you didn't have to think about this. You could take this paper, crumple it up and throw it away because you know what hot is and see, you study things until you can get it. And there's different ways of studying. But let's say you could take this thing and throw this away. But if you could account for all these relative principles and be aware of them, that they were in effect through cause and effect all the time, you were that present that wherever you went, you realized that things are changing according to how I see and taste and hear and smell and touch them and that the past and the present and the future provides conditioning and that I have a limited perspective based on upon time, place and circumstance. If you were just completely on, like a switch that's on and you were aware of all this, would this change the way that you would be interacting in life? And what, you guys can tell me, what more might that interaction be? That interaction would probably be a little closer sense of the real nature of things. So if you were in that state of mind that I just described, that would be, somebody said, transcendent earlier. Transcendent from what we're used to. Would you have a different outlook on the treatment, the sharing and the use of water on this planet? Would you have a different outlook on the treatment, the use of soil on this planet? About the air in this world? About the basic necessities like the kids were talking about? If you were coming from that whole standpoint, would it be hard for you to understand that human beings who are all going through this need things like food, cloth, shelter, healthcare, education, security? Would that be hard to understand from this viewpoint? Would anybody not deserve that from this viewpoint? Would anybody not be entitled from this viewpoint? Matter of fact, would anything on this earth that ever has come into be, would it be unentitled to be what it's supposed to be? So whoa, this viewpoint would offer you the insight, the living insight that doesn't leave your eyes, that everything that comes into this creation is entitled to be what it's supposed to be. Like water has entitlements. Did you know that? Water has rights. I don't care about human use of it. I'm just saying water. Water has an entitlement. Air has an entitlement. Matter of fact, you could say there's five other things that condition us and those are what might be called the fundamental elements, which is-this is a really cheap-ass-what do I do here? It lost its what? Well, that's from your perspective. Alright, so what about things like some things appear as solid. Some things appear as liquid. Some things appear as light. Some things appear as air. And some things are so ephemeral that they still appear but we have a hard time measuring them. Right? You talk about, there's a lot of conditioning going on. But what that comes into creation what isn't entitled to be what it was intended to be? Cuz this is the din. Now we're talking about, you know when somebody says God's will, or the din al-Islam. Is there anything that God creates that isn't entitled to be what God creates? No, it's an absurd question. So if we were the servants of Allah, the unconditional servants of Allah that had been able to submit the whole of ourself, what would our service be? To try to facilitate or support things being what they're entitled to be, which means dealing with the things that are interfering or inhibiting or prohibiting that process. So service means to support by helping to free up the things that interfere with the entitlement process. Now what are you entitled to be? [spirit] Well, you're already spirit. What are you entitled to be? [awake] You're entitled to know it. I was a hidden treasure. I wanted to be known, so therefore I created you. Because this already is. Everybody's operating this. You talk about spirit. Well, you're already that. You're entitled to that. You're it. You're also body, mind and emotions. You're also a physical, corporal being. You're also made of these elements right here. You're subject to your perception through. You're already these things. But what is it you're entitled to? [to know God] To know. I was a hidden treasure. I wanted to be known. Therefore I created you. So what is ultimately the service that we have to each other? [to create an environment where] Our service is to support each other to do this. That's why this whole thing that rolls out, that talks about cause and effect, that talks about education, politics, economics, environment, etc. It has to start with the single thing and this single thing is a reality. That was quite a long, abstract talk. There's plenty for you to go on this. But you'll find as you enter into the abstractions that all I've done is a good job of accounting for the abstractions. But all these abstractions are going to lead you to the same single place. How would you know? Sit down in your meditation and undo all this conditioning. Find out where you're at. What happens if you go in here from the me, from the mine to the me to the I? And you start peeling back. Like the only reason you think in English is because you were taught English. What if you started peeling back all your thoughts and all your experiences and everything and you got deeper and deeper and deeper and you were able to, bear with me, the metaphor of emptying all the conditioning out, then where would you be back to? Where's my circle? You'd be back to the point that you started with, being conditioned. You'd be back to this because it wouldn't be anymore. It's the conditioning that has created the sense of two. God being One-physics. God being One-romance. God being One-religion. God being One-a philosophy. Whatever avenue when you get to it, you can describe it from all different venues but there can't be two of this ultimate desire. There cannot be two of this ultimate desire. [how come then the unity is so extreme, such extreme diversity?] This makes diversity. All of these things is the conditioning that has you believe it's diverse. Right? Without these things, is it diverse? I'm not saying diversity's a bad thing. I mean, it's something that we can celebrate once you get past the shock. Then you can go, Oh, my God, meaning the One. Oh, my God, look at how the One has appeared in all of these forms that I see, sounds that I hear, things that touch me, smells that I smell, and taste that I have. And then you can live as the Buddhists say, along the road, and when the Buddha appears in front of you, you can kill it because you will be watching from a different perspective that everything that appears before you in time-here's time, in relativity-here's relativity. Everything is also come from that One so that it is you. Everything is sustained by that One so it is also you. Everything is reconciled and measured and judged by that One so it's also you. That it takes all of these forms. And you can celebrate how God is Great, Allahu Akbar, because of the diversity and the Sufis call that diversity the unlimited signs. For the Sufi the diversity are actually the ayat of the One. Diversity is a sign that there is One because the Sufi naturally asks the question what is the Generator of diversity? There has to be a factory somewhere, figuratively speaking. So Baba Anandamurti used to make a little joke with the acronym using G-O-D, God in English as an acronym and he said consider G stands for Generator, O stands for Operator and D stands for Destroyer. So for the Sufi the diversity is the sign that there's a One. The Qur'an poetically calls diversity ayat, sign. So rehearse the signs where you can. For some of you, you'll see the bird in the sky. For some of you, you'll see the changing of the season. For some of you, you'll see the passing of the weather. For some of you, you see the moving of the boat across the water. For some of you, you see the waxing and the waning of the moon or the rising and falling of the sun. Diversity. Hu. Hu Allah Hu is the originator of that diversity. Where did it come from? You can't say it but that's the question. And all of Progressive Development, as well as the Sufi approach is based upon this platform that the Sufis call tawheed, that Progressive Development calls spiritual unity. Now last but not least, what is the human experience that you have that tells you that this is true? Love. That's why the words of unity in the principles are also addressed as love. Because love is the only human experience that lets you know that this is true. I saw a billboard, not a billboard, a church, in front of a church, marquee today. I didn't even know I was going to be using it tonight. Isn't that, that's kind of nice. Okay, so the marquee says Nothing and nobody is perfect until you love it. Sweet, right? Nothing and nobody's perfect until you love it. Human love is, being the reflection of Divine Love, brings this whole thing into a whole. With human love, you'll do anything. With human love, you'll cross any distance. With human love, you'll be willing to go through any type of change. With human love, you'll be willing to examine and reexamine the perspective of which you come from. With human love, by tasting it, it's the only thing that tells you that it's possible to have more of it. So all of us have a personal experience of unity and all of us experience that in common, even though our approach to it is diverse. But the experience of it is in common. Love. It's not a philosophy. We used a lot of words. We're inept with our words. We're inept. We ask Allah to forgive us for being so inept or for daring even to talk about this perhaps. Now I'm talking like the old romantic Sufis. Allah, forgive me for even trying to ascribe your unlimited, indescribable nature. I just tried to describe it so Allah, Astaghfirullah. But what we're describing is not a philosophy. It's a feeble attempt as a description and a description is different than a hypothesis. For those who know. The Sufis say if you know, you know. If you don't, you don't, and for those of you that don't know if you don't or not, you don't. Those who know, know; those who don't, don't, and if you're confused whether you know or not, you don't. Alright? Next time we'll get a little deeper into some of this stuff. And you guys are going to have time without me in your own words to explore and go about it. But this is not pie in the sky crap. I know it sounds really abstract but you have to start somewhere. This is not pie in the sky. This is going to give you down-to-earth cause of why we share our money, why we're concerned about food security and the distribution of the resources that are both measurable and immeasurable on this planet. Do you know that there's enough food on this planet for every kid and every person and that the thing that's preventing the fair distribution of that food is that since this outlook isn't present, that the others have made the judgment that there is not an entitlement? This is down-to-earth. You have to start with a - Baba Anandamurti said you have to start with a subjective approach and when you have that subjective approach, then you adjust. But what I mean by pushing this point that it's not abstract is that this is what is operating in effect when we get up in the morning, go to the Long Branch, see Will standing behind the counter, we're getting our coffee before we go down to the Schoolhouse or out to the farm and then we signed up for our seva and we have the farm going with the food that we're distributing and we're coming up with a network of trying to bring that into town and bring people to workshop out at the farm so that they can learn the basic skills of living on this earth and that we have the kids and their sessions and we have a band, kind of. And we come for Satsang. This is the architecture that's behind everything. So if we're, you know, we started a revolving loan fund so we could share money with each other who needed money in the Community. Well, why the hell do you need money? This explains why you need money. Ultimately. What's the use of money? The money is to provide for your entitlement. What are your entitlement? Well, you're entitled to have food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education, security. And why are you entitled to have those things? Because you're here on a mission. And what has detracted from your view, from your understanding, from your realization of what your mission is? All of this separate conditioning. But everybody's on that mission. So your community development strategy is now based upon something that's a spiritual unity, not based upon how we're going to cut up the pie. We're not, this isn't, this idea later on as you talk about the Progressive Development principles is not based upon a material argument of how to cut up the pie. It's already based upon the premise that the pie is and the pie belongs to everybody. So this is really important. Later on when we talk about decentralization of political authority and the idea of having committees or local representation based upon time, place, person and circumstance which is reflected through cultural movements. This is really important because you have to start here. Or if you want to talk about the utility of money and its value, first you have to have a subjective view of why we're here. This changes politics. It changes community development. Or if you want to talk about what is healthy for a planet inside of its ecosystem. Because this doesn't allow you to commoditize any of the resources. This doesn't allow you to say all those commodities are for my personal interest or for my profit. It doesn't allow you to do that. It changes your whole outlook on the developmental process, which, if you can understand this greater, you will really get it in your bones and in your gut and in your tummy and in the back of your knees and the back of your head. You really get what an ummah is. The Prophet Muhammad said, "I don't even pray for myself. I don't even pray for my own family in the form of Hasan and Husayn. I pray for my community." This is the community outlook. Asalaamu Aleikum. |