Episode -2

Be

“In the beginning is The Law, and The Law is God and God is The Law”.

So what is this Law, which interpreters have interpreted as “Word”, but the Greek texts had it as The Logos?

The Logos is now a forgotten “thing”. Modern philosophers do not make much sense of it. Its “problem” is that it cannot be defined, and empirical sciences have got us so accustomed to definitions, that if something cannot be defined, they do not want to know it.

So let me give you this verse from the Qur’an, which I see as the “last” attempt to introduce the Logos to the human mind in the Book, it is from the 2nd Surah which is the longest: The Cow (al-baqarah):

“God shies not to draw a certain model of a mosquito, what is above it? As for those who believe, they know it is The Law from their Lord; as for those who darkened, they say: ‘what model did God want by this?’, He bewilders many by it, and guides many by it, and no one bewilders except the aberrant ones”

And exactly as the verse predicted, Qur’anic interpreters have wondered and wandered to make sense of this, and here is an example of how it is commonly read: (excerpt is from : Qur’an Arabic Text with English Meanings by Saheeh International,  SA):

“Indeed, Allah is not timid to present an example – that of a mosquito or what is smaller (a footnote to this word says: Literally ‘above it’, i.e. greater in smallness) than it. And those who have believed know that it is the truth from their Lord. As for those who disbelieve, they say: “what did Allah intend by this as an example?” He misleads many thereby and guides many thereby. And He mislead not except the defiantly disobedient”

Notice how the interrogative mode is turned to an affirmative mode, and most importantly notice the shyness from the mosquito, and the changing of “above it” to “smaller”, all showing exactly what the verse predicted: complete bewilderment.

Some interpretations that I have seen have omitted the word “mosquito” altogether and replaced it by “a small thing”, and better still: “a big thing”, missing the whole point, and exactly as the verse predicted.

As for the word which I translated to “The Law”, it is the Arabic word of: al-7aqq, which in today’s Arabic means: truth, justice, verity …

I know this is not an easy intellectual trial that I’ve put you through, but that’s OK, bear with me. Go through it slowly, and maybe after a few times the startling difference between my reading and the commonly accepted one will start to crystallise in your mind, then you will experience a moment of knowledge and enlightenment. But for the moment you can continue reading and can make sense of the rest of this post, without having to understand the subtleties of those quotes.

So here you have two examples, one from the Gospel of John, and one from the Qur’an, but why am I making such a big deal about them?

 Because, my friends, The Law is now a forgotten thing. It is by The Law that God created the worlds, the Qur’an says, and in the beginning is The Law, the Gospel says.

The Law is the Logos, it is Tao, it is Ishwarah (Hindu mythology), it is al-haqq,  

This is the same thing in all the teachings of the Messiah, wherever he came,

And I chose the word Law in English just to approach it to our modern minds, which are familiar with the Law and its projections in nature and in the cosmic manifestation.

There is no Intelligent Designer who sits down and designs. These are intellectual concepts, based on our linear understanding of physical phenomena,

And our intellectual concepts themselves are bi-products of the cosmic manifestation, think about it,

So how can those concepts, which are so many levels below the Law, how can they themselves be any law for that matter?

Does this make sense?

The Knowledge of the Law is an existential, cognitive and spiritual rank,

Learning and reading and prayers and spiritual exercise and austerity …. can pave the way to it in your mind, but you have to do the work yourself of witnessing it: The Law: in you,

 Now do this exercise, you can do it in your mind:

Imagine that you have never seen yourself. You have lived all your life in a place where there is no still water or any polished surface that reflects light.

Imagine that you want to look at yourself. So you think that the best way to do it is to polish up some surface and look in it.

So you do that, and now you are holding a mirror in your hands, and you look at yourself. And you exchange looks of recognition and love with your image.

Imagine that this is a world of magic. If you have seen the movie Marry Poppins it helps a bit.

So look at your image, and it sort of feels that your image is you, but it is its own. It wants freedom from you, so you can admire each other more:

Because think about it, if your image is just you, blow by blow, it does not really know you. Because it is you who are putting the ideas about you in it. So its knowledge of you is immediate and predictable.

So imagine, and this is a great moment, imagine that you say to your image: “go”, and it goes, free from you,

But not quite free from you, because that world in the mirror is yours, and that image is yours, it is you in your world,

Has your mind been blown yet by this non-sense?

So the next thing you want to do now, on either side, is to jump into the other side, so you have a close encounter with you.

But remember, that while you are with you, there is That, which has made all this possible. That One is not mirrored, that You is not a wanderer, and I’ll come back to That later.

Hence it is said that the number 2 is an illusion, and the Chinese count: 1,3,4,5…. In philosophical terms.

So those Episodes can be put only in “small things”, because no size will fit them. And mockery (al-hazl) is a way to parade truth, because seriousness cannot, seriousness is human stuff, and mockery is of human stuff,

On this enigma we come to the world and we go,  

In the next parts of this episode, we’ll take a peek at blackholes, skeletons, pigs, mummies, graves… newborn ones, hatching eggs, black towers,

The Dark Ones

I thought I’d tell you about those guys first. I’ll be as impartial as can be. Not because I’m on their side to any degree. But because I cannot hate them.  Although, at times I do find myself so frustrated with their short-sightedness, and anger of them does boil in me. Then the call of reason comes in,

And I remind myself, that it is The Law that allows them to do what they do, so we as humans on earth do not have a say in the universal eventuality, except in as much we contribute to it, in our thoughts and emotions and actions.

We are all in our own way contributors to this. This is our challenge/job/duty/choice/destiny, or whichever word you prefer or you’d like to add to this list.

And remember that this is but one short dream of our existence, so who cares if the stock market crashes tomorrow and causes chaos in the world and brings the entire planet’s economy to a standstill…

Well of course we do, and we can’t help caring, and we can’t help being moved and brought to tears by the suffering of billions in the world, of famine, natural disasters, injustice, disease, overpopulation, irrationality….. and the list can go on for kilometres,

But there is balance that we can establish in our minds, and it is this balance the secret of wisdom, which is not easy to attain,

Some have it naturally, well done O good people; some need to be reminded, and upon working hard they can reclaim it, well done O good people; and some: they are as stubborn as rocks, their destiny is in the Just Hands of The Law.

So Adam knows his Lord, and His Lord knows him, and they love one another, and Adam has a dark point, I’ll tell you later how it came about,

But at this ‘stage’, things are not physical, and what exists has an Eye, it is the Eye of the One.

So the mutual admiration draws their attention to a tunnel which determines the low direction, in that directionless ocean,

Adam and his Father look down the tunnel, and there they see the miserable, unhappy, jealous, angry, resentful, pale face … Satan.

They know him and he knows them, but he wants to justify his existence, of self-love, that is in him, by his existence,

He goes away, and he knows that they love him, he makes noises, he fires thunderbolts,

He tries to look for models which were not witnessed yet. For, the circle, the dot and the line were perhaps the only models seen as yet,

As for the countenances, they could not be anything else: the iris of the eye, the luminous white  around, the eyebrows were barely visible, the mouth is a gate of communication, in the shape and colour of  what became later a heart in our consciousness, if you can vision that…

The eyelashes, the hair and other details…. those became visible later upon infatuation.

So he goes and he conjures curved lines which are not circular, such as elliptical and parabolic lines, for those who know their high school maths.

Adam bows to his Lord of Love, he is his Lord’s Will. Satan bows to his Lord of need, he wants His Lord’s Sustenance.

So The Lord parades the creation to the creation, this was His First Call to His creation. Although all the creation was still in a potential existence, but its self-awareness was real.

The creation succumbs to the Beauty and the Majesty and the Might of the Lord’s, the creation sings its music which it pays as homage to The Lord, and submits to his Sovereignty,

The Cosmii, the Deity, radiant and potentially dark, the laws of everything animate or still…. they all bowed down to the Glory and the Grandeur of Him,

The Lord declares to the creation that it is Adam their lord and their mediator to Him, and that they should all bow to him, and Adam shows his image which is his Lord’s Image, for: all the images are The Lord’s, but no image is He, transcends He,

The closest image we know today of Adam’s is that of Vishnu with his four arms, or that of Buddha seated in meditation,

The creation succumbs to the Beauty, Majesty and Might of Vishnu, and they appreciate his closeness to them, they feel comfortable that the Lord is close to them by him,

There was one deity, who started his own show upon witnessing this: he exhibited everything that Vishnu did not exhibit: ugly noises, ugly facial expressions, and ugliness of all kinds ….

And as his show went on, his face started to pale,

If you have watched the eclipse of a full moon, this is how it happened: the moon turned pale and brownish gradually, then dimmed altogether,

His eyes started to look like a pig’s eyes, if you have seen them: they are similar to human eyes, yet there is no life in them, they are like a dead person’s eyes.

The creation had different reactions to Iblis’s show: some were frightened, some were entertained and they laughed and thought that he was very clever, some were saddened ….

The good people wept of sadness to their brother’s darkening, to them this is the First Tragedy, its memories still saddens them,

Those who were entertained darkened along with him, they felt lost and confused.

There was one particular soul, I call her Zam Zam, although ‘she’ was not a female yet. This miserable soul was frightened and shocked, and thought that the Lord could have stopped this from happening and did not, and felt sorry for Iblis’s death, she wanted to adopt him and to take care of him.

All this is not happening in physical bodies, this is the world of the alphas. The human art that comes closest to this kind of world is the art of the opera, where communication is musical, and the magnitude is grand, and there is little action, yet the emotions are intense, and they go on for a very long time.

Zam Zam isolated herself, she spread around herself walls, to hide herself form the world: this became the first grave,

Outside, a sunset was seen. Although glorious and beautiful, it was daunting and a prelude to darkness. The creation was frightened, this was the first sunset.

I remember going to Zam Zam in her grave, in an attempt to help her. She was shivering, in tears, and frightened,

I said to her “look around”. Around was a sky of horror reflecting her state of mind: images of pain, suffering, sadness … in ugly brown colours,

Those were the images which still inspire a lot of religious art which revolve around man’s sinfulness and his suffering in the world.

So she looked around and she saw all that. Then with a push of my mind I made all that sky collapse like walls of cardboard,

I said to her: come out, there is still joy out here,

And there was a bright circular moon/sun in the sky breaking the darkness, and  all the good people rejoiced, they knew that this was their father Adam who came to light up their sky,

And out of the egg he hatched, and showed his beautiful figure once again, to the jubilation of all, and with him came his four Brothers, his arms, the Five of them are the Dimensions (hudood) of the Lord’s.

But Zam Zam was scarred by her agony, her face looked “sick” and “old”, so she required to have a new face, which she could not exhibit by herself,

As for Iblis, he too was now confused to the state of his image, which looked like a dead body,

So he demanded of his Lord to be given a new figure for him and Zam Zam and all those who were in the same predicament, and this was the first incarnation after death,

So the Lord said to them that this was going to be their ongoing cycle, now that they wanted to take their lives in their own hands, and this was a prelude to the cycle of life and death and rebirth, under the tyranny of change and impermanence, along the linear track of time,

They were cast down to a lower heaven, Iblis erected in it his headquarters: a black crooked ugly tower, where he and his followers had a meeting to decide their future plans.

 The first tragedy in existence, and the coming of Adam and his Brothers to our rescue, has an echo which still reverberates today deep in our consciousness. All of what makes us up was drafted there: our belief, our outlook of the world, our emotions, and even our actions…

Hence it is said in the Ghita: “He said to them: this is your duty”.

So the human question will remain forever nagging: is it our choice or is it our destiny?

Perhaps the best way to answer it is to get to the point where you can stop asking it. For, to every intellectual argument, in favour of one theory or against it, there is, by the laws of nature, a counter-argument.

The reality is not in the intellectual arguments, but indeed in The Law which is above them and which generates them.

But to comfort yourself, and in order to stop feeling helpless and wronged in the world, the best attitude you can adopt for yourself is to believe that you have the choice,

From your perspective as a freed soul, this is true, and only true.

And if you are passing through difficult times in your life, and everything is going contrary to your plans and wishes, you will say, of frustration and anger: it does not make sense.

Again, remember, this is but a short dream of your existence, and remember that you are not completely aware of your previous “existences” or your future ones. And remember that there is a Law for the flow of events of anything, you are only a small part of it. So play your part happily, in any case, and every time you are tried by a rough road, and you come out of it with only physical scars on you, while your mind and heart have remained unscathed … trust me, this adds luster to them, they will glow even better,

Rare jewels and metals are tested by heavy hammering and hot flames… so that if any impurities are in them, they quit, and rests only the good stuff.

 So the dark ones keep complaining about their destinies, and it was them who set foot on those tracks right at the beginning of things. Although they were warned by their brethren. They say: “so if those possibilities are there, why not try them?” And all of us who have this curiosity do. But if you cannot trace your steps back, you are in big trouble, and you are stuck in hell.

I remember standing at a point with one guy, overlooking the beautiful seen of what I call Lake Placid, where you saw calm water, the big Aswatha tree from a distance, and all the sensual pleasures that were encoded in that seen: of beautiful scenery, the soothing sound of running water, the dizziness in the head, the beautiful creatures around you, the aromas and the food ….

And this guy expressed his desire to be in such a place forever, and a kind of argument went on between us, as I was trying to tell him that this was ‘accidental’, therefore would not last very long and is ever changing,

But he was adamant. And glimpses of far future times came to me, of him promoting this kind of a world that is destined to run out of everything eventually, and him trying desperately to keep it together, while his followers are all around him, waiting for him to wave his magic wand to make things happen…

The games of consciousness are dangerous, many souls opted to stay out of those games altogether, they rest in The Peace, as  "wandering eyes" (7oor 3een, as said the Qur’an), free from Karma and attachment, The Eye of The One suffices them, it is the I from which all the I’s have come.

And Abram took it on himself to invite the people to his world, thinking that the people were left alone, so he displayed a bearded feminine face with a winking eye. It was ugly too, but he has been tainted by Iblis’s display of ugliness.

As for Serpent, the first time he faced his Lord he twitched and turned away. His gesture was the basis of fear of a draconian god who rewards and punishes arbitrarily.

As for Blackhole, he said: “but we have always been here, no one can say I’m the Creator”. So he said to his Lord: “make me go”. So his light dimmed and dimmed, until he became a hole of darkness, invisible to the onlookers.

And many others turned to skeletons and mummies upon being attracted to the darkness of those souls, then they resented their Lord for their horrifying figures and demanded to be reincarnated,

And the ideology of the soul living in the grave until resurrection day originated there. And today, and despite the Books and all the clarification, this old pagan ideology has persisted. And although people do not mummify their dead anymore, the belief that those dead bodies will be physically resurrected at the end of days has persisted.

So let me quote for you this quote from the Qur’an in its correct reading, it is from Surah 22 of “al-Hajj” (which I read as “The Proof”, not the pilgrimage, for, the real purpose of any pilgrimage is to prove. Hence ‘proof’ and ‘pilgrimage’ are of the same root in Arabic.)

It is verse 5:

“O people, if you are in doubt of reincarnation, We have created you of Substance, then of a drop, then from sticky clay, then from fleshy tissue, characterised but not humanised to distance you; and We settle in the wombs whatever We will to an allotted term, then We bring you out as a child to attain your strongest; and some of you are redeemed and some are returned to the worst of age, so that he may not know anything after knowledge; and you see the earth still, and if We drop water on it, it throbs and rises and sprouts of every brilliant pair”.

I’ll leave it to the astute reader to read in this Declaration the different stages of the human downfall, rather than a crude, and perhaps useless, lesson in the development and the anatomy of the fetus,

And to see that al-ba3th is not just resurrection at the end of days, but as the verse concludes, it is the ever going cycle of life and death,

 And to see that “some are redeemed”, those are the rare ones who have passed their tests and do not have to come back to the world of misery,      

And to see that the “worst of age” is when people are reborn as children who need to be taught everything all over again. And by the way, not all people who reach old age become demented, so their reading is false outright,

And to see that this present figure that we have, which is made of sticky clay, although it looks human, yet what’s inside it is not necessarily so.  This is our distance from our reality, and in this miraculous genesis we can go either way, we can either precipitate in the beast or come out human.