This discussion started
with a question that a good soul, N, asked:
"I always have asked this
question and i will ask again and i will keep on asking till I get it. We need
to know about the 5 Houdoud, lots of people are confused about them, some doubt
that they are humans and some believe they are humans. We always talk about The
Mind, and we don't give much importance to the rest of the Houdoud, while the
Hikmeh was written by The Mind, The Soul and Al Tali. We need to talk about
them more to know them more. We can't keep on ignoring this subject, the 5
Houdoud are the beginning, we need to know them for us to understand the
Hikmet, so we can't skip this important initial step which is knowledge of the
Houdoud. The first question that people are confused about, is how is such
power that each of the Houdoud that is present inside each person, and yet they
“are human like us?
This is one of the subjects that causes a lot of confusion. In the Hikmet it is
written that the Mind created the planets and the stars and the entire cosmos,
including all Life, so if the Mind created and yet He / She is a human being then
how can One human have the power to create everything in existence. And when I
ask these questions to the Mashayekh, they say don't ask these questions, since
if you ask these questions it means that you have doubt, and if you have doubt
then this is the thoughts of the devil. Why should I accept something blindly,
why not to explain it, and understand it so that it no longer is blind faith,
but becomes a real truth.”
To start I guess we
should ask the question about ourselves, N,
How can we be born to humans in flesh a blood,
to grow up and age and eventually die, when we are eternal beings and have
lived many thousands of lives, and have an existence which goes beyond and
before our physical existence?
And how can our past lives exist, and our
future ones, without us being aware of them?
And if we have such hidden powers and
knowledge, why can’t we bring it out and use it and make our lives easier?
But does this mean that we are not human?
Of course not. We are human. And in the same
way the Hudood must be. The Books say: they walk the markets and eat food.
And being Hudood does not give them an
advantage over others except in the knowledge that they can “recall” and relay
to others.
And the Mind:
How can the Mind create and manage this world
while He is in a physical body, totally unaware of what is going on in every
rock, every tree, every river and ocean, every living being ….. ??
If your remember the metaphor of the engineer,
in the Book of Platon,
The engineer designs his designs by his
knowledge, in his mind, then he gets the workers with the appropriate skills …
to construct his design,
Once erected, the structure stands up and does
what it is supposed to do: carrying people and their furniture and
paraphernalia … accommodating them and protecting them from the elements …
All this happens without the engineer’s
intervention or input,
And that is because the design is done
according to laws and rules, which cause things to happen a certain way,
All this happens spontaneously.
Take a bit of time to think about this, and
let’s see where we’ll progress in this interesting discussion
My dear N, my questions were rhetorical, they are meant for us to think about
answers, because by thinking we discover, and by discovering ... the questions
might become meaningless and irrelevant to true knowledge.
The engineer is not god, it is the mind. The
doer is everyone who acts but has not attained knowledge. Like the brick layer
or the carpenter who do their work without knowing the laws of physics and
mathematics which are behind the design that they are trying to build,
according to the engineers’ designs.
The Book of Platon touches on a very important
issue, and that is the confusion between Mind and God, if you want to use this
word,
The god that every believer believes and
accepts as their creator is only a fragment of the Mind,
And God can only be known in Union (tawheed),
And Union can be achieved by different
"approaches", which are afforded by the Hudood,
In the previous post I said that Hudood have
knowledge which is bestowed on them and they are able to pass on to others,
The Hudood also are the various
modes/colours/perspectives of the consciousness which leads to Union,
The Hudood are hence simultaneously existent
by the Mind, He is their light and He is the Summing of them : al-3ilm
al-khaamis: which means the Fifth Knowledge, and in the Arabic language the
word khaamis also means: summing,
He is the Quintessence as Aristotle put it.
The Hudood deliver us to the Mind, their
Quintessence, and Union is possible only there.
And you asked in a message why do I use
capital letters (He, His ...) for the Mind, and you said that this should be
kept only for God
There is no rule which says that ha ha ha. We
can use whichever letter in whichever format as we see fit. Sometimes I use
small letters, if I'm talking about his manifestations on earth as a human,
like Pythagoras or Hamzah and so on ... but when I'm talking about His Station,
as His Lord's Will, then I use capital letters ... but don't take this one as a
rule either ... it does not really matter, what matters is how we perceive ...
I hope it helps,
I believe that acknowledging the Hudood is
the Theme of this cycle of human existence,
I'm basing this on a passage in the Quran, surah 2
The Cow, (al-baqarah),
When the Lord manifested the "summa"
(plural of summum, meaning the peak or the sky of things), and He asked the
angels to tell Him their names, but they could not, so He called Adam to tell
them. So they must've recognised Adam but not his Brothers ...
Every sacred discourse has some reference to the
Hudood, the Qur'an is full of them, the Hindu and the Buddhist mythology also
hints to them, and of course the Hikmeh is very open about them,
So what is more important than identifying who was
who exactly is recognising them, as Hudood,
John the Baptist, who I prefer to call by his real
name: John the Christ, never answered precisely who he was, when people asked
him,
He gave vague answers, and said that the Messiah
baptised the people by Fire while he baptised them by Water,
All that was just hinting to his Hudoodship, the
past lives and the names of previous incarnations is a secondary issue.
I think that in previous posts we've agreed that
they are human, they eat food and walk the markets, as the Qur'an says, and as
the Hikmeh asserts,
But it is the knowledge that they can reach and
spread to the world that makes them "special", as the Hikmeh says:
"they conceal the secret of their privilege in the manifestation of the
human in clay" (al-munfarid),
So in a way, as all the Books say, one way or
another, when they reach their full enlightenment, they become God on earth,
And we have to be very careful when we say that,
because they are indeed His Servants and the Abiders in Him, He sustains them,
and they are incapable of anything, it is all from Him, in Him, to Him and by
Him that they are what they are, and do what they do and speak what they speak,
"And God witnessed that there is no god but
Him", said the Qur'an,
And many similar instances can be found in the Ghita
and the Gospels and in every discourse pretty much,
So if they were fully
enlightened in a previous life, how come they are reborn as ordinary humans and
have to journey that journey all over again?
The answer is simple, every journey is
different. And the fact that they were able to conquer huge difficulties in the
past means that they will conquer new ones ... because they have established in
themselves certitude, faith, intuition ... so they can go ahead and face higher
mountains, deeper holes in the ground, bigger waves of mightier oceans ... with
full trust in their minds, and nothing else but their trust in their minds.
Hence it is said that their moons eclipse, and
when the shadow of the earth moves away, they regain their light,
And as they do that, they become guides to the
people who want to be guided, because they have tread that road, and left their
footprints and milestones along the way,
And the people can only become free if they
become free,
Thanks M, and
speaking of the colours, I believe that the colours of the rainbow are the
colours of all the Hudood, not just five of them. And I remember seeing a
symbol used by the Sikh consisting of 8 colours ...
Hence I believe that the Druze got the colours
of the Self and the Saabeq swapped around. The reasoning I use is that green is
a colour consisting of blue and yellow, if you've done some watercolours when
you were young you'd know that, or if you did basic physics these days ...
You see, natural stuff
has to be reflective of Higher things. So the way I see it, from green blue and
yellow emerge, symbolising the self and the word. And red becomes the colour of
the Saabeq.
And the sky and the ocean are blue, and both
are mentioned in the Books as symbolic of the Creation, that is the Self,
because the Self is the bringer out, so to speak, of the creation.
As for the numbers: 3, 5, 8 ... I believe
those will be used as a basis for a new kind of mathematics in the future,
which will "prove" the 8 hudood. And I put prove in quotes because
the Hudood have to be recognised in our minds, and mathematics is only an
expression of what's in our minds ...
The Hudood cannot be conceived intellectually,
and any such attempt is doomed to be a theological theory,
I attempted to express how they were visioned in
a post in the past on FS, I believe I have failed miserably. I tried to break
the limitations of the words, but by doing so I probably did not make any
sense.
Hence when I see some people so keen on
talking about the hudood and how they were created and in which order, I can't
help being disappointed,
They say for example: god created this, then
he created that, because so and so ...
For a god to do that, he would've had to
created those concepts first, and before that he would've had to create choice
and will and many other things ...
So such stories are the stories of the god of
the Intelligent Design theory, which argues that god sat down and designed
everything intelligently ...
With a bit of insight, they should've asked
themselves: so did god create sitting down, design, intelligence and stupidity
... first? or was there something else that did that for him, or did he have
all these things built-in??
Thus they make of god a thing that needs other
things, or who has a predisposition to certain things, while shunning other
things ...
People who entertain such beliefs cannot be in
Union with God, and so long as their creator is mingled with his creation, they
are dealing with illusions.
In the next post I'll talk about the hudood
being our Direction to Union with God, and the opposites and what they do, if I
can ...
I'm glad you've expressed that.
I've hinted a few times on FS and on FD that
the word hudood does not translate to limits, and I've tried to kick off the
word Dimensions as a translation, but it did not receive much acceptance,
I hope the word Directions will be the word,
and it does serve the purpose,
In Arabic there was no word at that time to
express that "concept", and the concept itself did not exist in
people's minds,
Maths today has made everyone familiar with
"dimensions",
So for example, a sheet of paper is a two
dimensional existence: with length and width,
If you take one of its corners as a reference,
which in maths is called origin, then you can reference any point on the sheet
relative to its coordinates (distances from length and width to the origin),
You can move the point freely on the paper, or
you can move it towards the origin,
Let's imagine that this point is a conscious
thing, and it wants to go back to its origin. The dimensions/directions will be
its guides for that.
So the Hudood are not limits.
Limits are obstacles, they confine you to a
certain space and disallow you from trespassing,
So, if that point in our example is a
bewildered soul, not knowing what it wants in its world, then perhaps it does
need "limits" so it does not drift too far,
But if it is aware of its origin and wants to
be in union with it, then limits will be obstacles in its way, because it is
capable of beaming back to its origin, quickly, guided by the directions ...
All the teaching of the hudood in all places
and times is guidance to Union,
But in the minds of those who do not
understand a thing, the teaching translated to a confinement/limits in place
and time, every time, without an exception.
That's so true R, 7add means edge, let's not forget: wa ssayfu asdaqu inbaa2an mina
l-kutubi, fy 7addihi l-7addu bayna jjadi wa lla3ibi (the sword is a more honest
announcer than the word, by its edge: the divider/edge between seriousness and
play),
But let's not drift too far, in our metaphor,
every point of that sheet of paper has coordinates on the paper,
However, some points are confined within some
limits/borders which they cannot, or do not want to, override,
Their confinement is their world. Within it
they see everything they want to see, because their minds have been reduced to
that space,
Their mind works within those borders, and
proves itself therein,
This is the miracle of this creation,
And what's more miraculous, is that some can
actually make their way out of that confinement, miraculously.
There are many of these confinements, which
can be very far apart, with their coordinates being incongruous, so when those
inside them talk to one another, although it may be the same language, their
talk is completely incomprehensible to one another, and they cannot agree on
anything at all ...
Or perhaps they can: if they all realise that
they actually agree on a whole lot of things: maths, logic, human values of
compassion and cooperation which all have in some shape or form ...
If they can realise that, they can start
looking outside their borders, and notice the Directions of their existence:
The Origin by which they are all referenced ...
But there are always those people, who are
driven by passion and worldly aims, and who are nearsighted ... and who are
willing to do everything in their capability to keep their people in their
confinements, because of their fear,
So now you can see that
the limits/borders/confinement are a barrier from reaching the Directions,
A barrier that is meant to keep us in a
certain spot, by making us believe that there is no world outside that spot,
and everything we want is within this spot ... and so on ...
Thus, two opposing forces are at play: the
attraction of the Directions towards the Origin, and the limits which keep us
away ...
I hope that this perspective sheds some light
on this issue.
In the next post I'll try to talk a bit about
the Hudood and their missions, in my very limited understanding of this
Reality, which humanity is still no where near understanding ...
Mind, Self and Word or
Creator, Maintainer and Destroyer?
The Hikmeh and the Veda of India, thousands of
years apart, have expressed the same essences.
In today’s world, rightly or wrongly, every
word has to be defined before it can be used, so that it points to the same
“thing” in people’s minds,
There are “things” in our minds, however,
which cannot be defined, and words can only point to them in our minds, and it
remains our task to look at them and examine them inside us …
Virtue, Justice, Good, Beauty, to say a few …
But the question is: is this the case with
such essences only, which some might argue that they are completely subjective
and hence different in every person’s mind, or does this apply to everything
else, tangible things included?
For example, if I define the word pen as being
an instrument for writing, a whole lot of different types and sizes of pens
that I’ve known are conjured up in my mind, which my mind puts all in one
compartment holus bolus, the “pen compartment”,
That compartment, in essence, is the essence
of “pen”,
So although a pen is a physical object, easily
definable … there is more to its essence than the definition can express, and
there is still an element of subjectivity.
This can be said about abstract mathematical
objects as well, although in this case the definition is precise and does not
make room for nuances or subjectivity,
For example, you define a square as being a
plane figure, with four equal sides and four right angles,
If you’ve never seen one before, you’d draw
one, then your mind would “recognise” it as that thing,
If you have seen one before, your mind would
bring its image in your mind, not as a vision, but as … an essence, without an
image …
And although in this case subjectivity is
eliminated by the simplicity of the object, the essence still remains in the
mind independent of a physical object,
Does this make sense?
Of course, in both examples, the knowledge of
other things is involved, so in the case of a pen, writing and language would
have to be known, and in the case of a square, equality and right angles …
And those things we’ve just mentioned require
the knowledge of other things … the chain does not seem to end …
But let’s not go too far in the details of
things, our minds are full of essences, and essences of essences …
And it is really immaterial how
neuroscientists see them: as wiring in the brains or chemicals or whatever …
Such knowledge may help them diagnose
illnesses and prescribe medication, but for the rest of us, we’ve been thinking
for millennia, and we won’t stop.
So is it if fair to say that essences are the
building blocks of our minds?
And what other things are there in our minds?
Because we can say that there are also
memories in our minds, and imagination …
We can also say that there are “routes” and
“organisation” …
But those can be viewed as essences as well …
Again, let’s not attempt going into the
details of things, because this is indeed too vast a world to get into and to
try to summarise in a few words … it is perhaps easier to describe the physical
world in words than it is to attempt to describe our minds, in any number of
words …
Please feel free to interject and tell me if
I’m being illogical or selective in my perspective …
I don’t want to launch
another attack on modern thinkers and scientists who would like us to believe
that it is by perception that our brains have created this illusion of essences
and whatever,
The thing is, they have no proof whatsoever to
their theories,
Their theories are true within certain
frameworks, and on the basis of some assumptions,
So I would like you to go back a few pages up,
to where we were talking about the “limits” and the “confinements” in which
people get trapped,
There is only so much that can be said or done
to help people look outside their confinements,
It seems that the laws of nature do not allow
it. It takes a miracle in one’s own mind to make that quantum leap. It is the
miracle that the Buddha expressed by saying that he had to make a floating
object on running water go against the current, without touching it physically
…
All that we can do is to hint and allude, by
various methods: logic, art, philosophy, poetry, religion …
So let’s not stay in those confinements for
too long. I believe all of us in this group have some kind of realisation of
the existence of essence,
And this is not a supernatural power or
spirit,
This is real existence, which expresses itself
in the physical world, as imagery and activity and inertia …
If you are slightly convinced with this, you
are seeing a glimpse of Hudood (Directions):
So now you can see that Directions are not
just their manifestations in physical bodies, known by certain names, having
lived certain lives and delivered certain Books to humanity …
Hudood are indeed everything that exists,
They are the “coordinates” of existence, as in
our metaphor.
So if Mind, Self and Word were used in the
Hikmeh to point to the three primary Hudood, you must not associate the Hudood
by the meanings of those words with which you are familiar,
This causes confusion and raises more
questions than answers …
So to break out of the limits of language,
think of the essences that we’ve just talked about,
Essences need to materialise to become perceivable
by the senses,
Hence they need to take an image and to become
animate,
And by animation I do not mean motion only,
A still image is animate too, look at a still
image now, and look at it a few minutes after … it has changed in your mind,
So essence, image and animation … or perhaps
creation, preservation and disintegration after fulfilment … or if you want :
Mind, Self and Word
My Dear N, the fact that people have used words to
argue and fight does not mean that words are a bad thing,
Well, can you say: soldiers eat a lot before going
to the battle, therefore food is bad??
If in their ignorance people use the creation for
their egoistic and selfish aims it does not mean that the creation is bad,
I guess the point that you have raised highlights an
important issue:
What makes your action good or bad is not the action
itself, but indeed the motive of your action,
Hence the Qur'an said: deeds are [judged by] the
intent.
Hence you see people who give charity and appear to
be the most compassionate people, but in fact they are hiding selfish aims, and
their charity does not wash off the evil of their deeds.
And perhaps this is a window to look at the nature
of "evil",
In all religions without exception, there is a
battle between good and evil which has its roots in the havens,
And that the devil is the opposite of Adam,
Well, yes, but the opposite of Adam The Mind, is in
The Mind, there is nothing that exists that is not in The Mind, darkness
included,
This does not mean that a part of Adam is bad,
But in the distance in duality a
"backside" is existent by necessity,
Or, in light which takes images due to its
incompleteness, there is shade, the shade can get dark, also by necessity,
So when people take selfish choices and dwell in
ignorance, whatever they do in this good creation, it delivers evil to them and
to others, and this is their choice.
But the advice that I and M have given are so good,
Indeed we should not get bogged down by semantics
and details.
But I know exactly how easier said than done this
can be, and a nagging question sometimes needs a decisive answer,
I want to move on to the quotes that you provided
...
I was pleasantly
surprised to see that M raised the
issue of intent, and gave the weight of an action to the intent, rather than
the action itself, This is the core of the issue, and the fact
that both him and I see it this way reaffirms to me that it is correct.
The idea is not new, as I mentioned, it is
mentioned in the Qur'an, and I see that the ghita dedicated many pages to it,
It has been misinterpreted though, and perhaps
forgotten, despite its major importance.
As for what C said, I liked the part which
said that Word is not just language, but all expression by imagery, sound and
animation ...
And this one also is not new, and I've written
about this quite a bit in COB a long time ago, but can't remember where ...
But what both M and C quoted from the Gospels:
in the beginning was the Word,
If I may make a correction: In the original
texts which were in Greek, the word which was translated to "word"
was logos, the Greek word for The Law,
The Logos is a word which has puzzled
interpreters, so they settled on "word",
So to say that The Mind is God's word does not
convey much truth ...
The Reality of The Logos / The Mind ... cannot
be expressed in words, but can be reached in one's own mind,
And the same can be said about the rest of the
Hudood,
As for what C said about Socrates, well, it
can be said about all the Hudood,
The power of the Word is in all the
discourses, the sermon on the Mount is perhaps the simplest discourse ever
delivered, but it's as powerful as the dialogues of Socrates ...
And here I differ with the Druze about which
Hudood were those personalities, but this is unimportant.
What is most important is to be able to
recognise them wherever whenever they come,
"There is no difference between
them", as both the Qur'an and the Hikmeh put it.
N, this dream that you have is a very noble
cause, I hope that one day you will be able to realise it,
"I have a dream, that one day" all schools
will be like you described, and teaching job skills will be just one subject in
their curriculum, and their main teaching will be about teaching kids the
"skills of life": how to realise themselves and develop their minds
and bodies and be happy and good citizens,
The problem is, if you talk like this nowadays,
people will say you are "totalitarian",
But something like this will not be teaching people
an ideology, or a religion or political views or anything like that ...
And Western countries today which pride themselves
in being "free", and non-totalitarian, those countries have left it
up to the private sector to tell people what is good for them and what is bad
and how to live their lives and so on ...
The big problem with this, is that the private
sector has only one interest: making money,
Hence people are misguided and told wrong stuff, and
their priorities are wrong and their interests are temporary and consumerism is
the religion of western countries, which they are trying to export to the whole
world,
Even the Democratic system is nothing but a child of
"consumerism", and when you watch the advertising campaigns of the
candidates to the prime ministership or the presidency, you will see exactly
what i mean ...
"Wisdom" does
not have to be taught by books only. People who want to study philosophy and
religion and so on can do so at their own pace ...
But ordinary people can be taught good mental
habits: cooperation, patience, forgiveness, perseverance, kindness, humility,
abidance by rules ... and of course trying to recognise one's own strengths and
weaknesses and attempting to manage them ...
No one can be forced to learn what they cannot
learn. But habits can be sowed in people's minds at childhood, not by preaching
and teaching and reward and punishment ....
Unfortunately, most of the mental habits that
people are taught at childhood at school, home ... are bad and aimed at selfish
and temporary aims, and a complete disregard to others, except if it is to
one's own advantage ...
I know that the process of
"installing" good habits in people's minds is not an easy task, but
some self-help school for adults have started developing such techniques
nowadays,
It is teaching by experiencing things, so that
the pupil comes to certain conclusions by him/herself, with a bit of hep from
the coach ...
Everyone can be taught such skills which I
call "life skills", and of course everyone is ultimately guided by
his/her nature, but by providing such guidance you give everyone the chance to
bring out the good in them: there is good in everyone, everyone ... without
exception.
To continue on the
subject of Hudood, what are Saabiq (forerunner) and Taaly (Follower)?
If you can now somehow see that Hudood are the
Dimensions of human mind and consciousness,
And if you can see that the three primary
Hudood are Mind, Self/Image and Word/Expression/Motion ...
Ponder this one:
Saabiq is Faith, and Taaly is Reason.
And by Faith I do not mean faith as in
religion,
Although this one is faith, it is not the only
faith there is,
Faith is trust. We all trust something,
without much questioning, and if we didn't trust anything we would ... stop,
The atheists have faith in the laws of nature,
although they might have some scepticism, and everyone has some degree of faith
in something,
And of course, faith in perishable things
leads to frustration and disappointment, and faith in Reality is Faith.
And Reason builds on Faith, to take us back to
where everything begins,
Hence it is said in the Hikmeh that Saabiq
calls to Existence (Wujood) and Taaly calls to Sublimeness (Tanzeeh),
I hope it makes sense ...
The more you
contemplate these essences, the more you become certain that Hudood are the
Directions/Dimensions of your mind,
And Mind stops being a thinking machine,
capable of conceiving abstract concepts,
Mind is the Essence of all the essences, and
the thinking intellect is just one instrument of Mind,
Mind is limitless, boundless, and above
everything,
I like the metaphor that N quoted from the Hikmeh: Mind is the pen, Self
is the writing board,
So the essences of Essence, Image and
Expression become conceivable again in this imagery.
And when mind is trapped in limits and borders
of mind, it sees only illusions, within which it can have faith and reason:
However, it is faith in something not real,
and reason that works only within those boundaries.
But when the Directions are known, the
boundaries disappear, and the Directions point to the Mind,
Hence it is said in the Meethaaq (oath) that
when one adopts non-tawheedic beliefs, such as religions and atheism and all
the ideologies derived therefrom, then one become "deprived from
Hudood",
And deprivation from Hudood is a
self-inflicted punishment, and the Hudood keep calling everyone in everyone's
mind,
But when the borders are high walls, the task
of looking outside them becomes more and more difficult in time ...
This is a bad destiny.
Next post will be about: Fateh (the action of
Opening), Jadd (Perseverance) and Khayaal (Imagination),
Those Eight Essences are the Dimensions of the
Human Mind ...
So here are some
alternative words for Fateh:
Enlightenment, Quantum Leap, Nirvana, Death,
Life, Martyrdom, Awakening, Zen, Revelation ....
Unfortunately, all those words have some
religious beliefs associated with them, which have given them a status of
impossibility in people's minds,
Well, that kind of status of Mind does verge
on impossibility,
So here are some milder ones, which everyone
has experienced:
Euphoria, elation, joy, zest for life, tarab
in Arabic which pretty much means euphoria ....
And what is it that triggers this kind of
awareness/consciousness?
It can be anything: an image, a sound, an
idea, a feeling, and of course: words, as in Holy Books or good poetry ...
The Qur'an and the al-Munfarid are full of
this stuff,
The Ghita in Sanskrit is entirely made of this
stuff, just one line has enough sounds and essence to through your senses away
and make you fly, and you do get dizzy on those heights ...
That's Opening: Fateh.
"Blessed are those hungry for the
Spirit".
But when one's focus is on worldly things,
those moments fade too quickly, and are often confused with sensual pleasure,
and their real power and their real purpose are ignored completely,
And if ignored time after time and over many
lives, they stop being experienced. They are a privilege of the human
consciousness, and if human consciousness does not want them ... well, what can
I say ...
And sensual pleasure is none but a cheap and
base version of Fateh.
Sensual pleasures are easy to get on demand,
and all you need is a good working body to experience them,
But Fateh moments are a blessing that comes
without a warning, to take your mind by a storm.
I know what you might be asking now: so if you
experience this thing, does it mean that now you are enlightened, and that's
it?
The answer is no. Enlightenment is not a
degree or a diploma that you get. It is an on going process. There is no
sealing.
But such moments are a prelude to Union ...
And even Union is not an end and that's it, to
the contrary, Union is Beginnig, where no end can be seen ...
And next post is on: Jadd: Perseverance ...
No you haven't I. They are the ... building blocks ... but I am hesitant about using this
metaphor, because building blocks are separate, glued together by some external
agent,
Hudood together are the Mind , and only humans
are endowed with the capability to be conscious of It/Them in such a way.
Nature exhibits everything by it laws which
are a bottom end projection of The Law,
Yet nature does not experience the awareness
that humans do, and very few animals exhibit signs of awareness of Existence,
but again it lacks the comprehensiveness and breadth and width of human
consciousness, and most importantly, they can't express it to others.
The thing is, neither theological nor
scientific theories are remotely aware of this reality, the reality of the
Hudood,
That's why it is not an easy task to change
our perspective completely, to look inward instead of outward,
And although all religious teaching say that
you should look inward, people across the spectrum have been looking outside
themselves,
Even looking outward can point us inward, if
we are honest with ourselves and willing to look where our minds tells us to
look, rather than where religious authorities and scientific authorities tell
us to look.
So, seeing the Hudood as Messengers only is a
narrow perspective,
This is a subject I feel we'll have to discuss
further, but let's now stick to this line of "Reasoning" of
"Faith", using "Essences" expressed in "Words"
and "Images", hoping this will lead to a "Euphoria" of
consciousness, if we "Persevere",
Mind you, all this happens with the help of a
lot of "Imagination".
... so here are some
alternative words for Jadd:
Worship, perseverance, discipline, yoga,
system,
Humans develop this sort of things for the
purpose of arriving at some purpose,
Unfortunately again, worship is now synonymous
with ritual ...
People have developed all kinds of systems to
perfect some skill or process,
The purpose of the system is to become one or
in union with the phenomenon that you are exhibiting,
So athletes train to perfect their bodily
coordination in order to achieve perfect performance ...
Same thing can be said about a musician or a
craftsman ...
If you watch those guys doing what they do
you'd notice that they make things materialise miraculously, as if it is nature
that is making them.
Martial arts are another example,
And scientists will tell you that the brain
does all the work of perfecting the bodily movements by training and trial and
error ...
I accept that. But the reality behind this is
that your body becomes in harmony with physical laws which make all this
happen, it is this oneness that is of great significance, but completely
ignored by science and philosophy for that matter ...
Same can be said about mental skills that you
learn for achieving certain things, such as literacy and numeracy, engineering,
programming ... and the list can go on about every skill that we learn.
Jadd for achieving Enlightenment is the most
noble of all the jadds that we learn,
Hence, messengers across the ages have taught humanity
many different disciplines of jadd: meditation, mental and bodily discipline,
many different systems of yoga ... all of which aim at union with one's mind,
to pave the way for Union.
Animals do what they do perfectly,
instinctively and naturally, blissfully unaware of what they are doing, and we
look at them with admiration and awe of the power and beauty of nature,
The birds fly perfectly, the cats run
perfectly, they even scratch their ears with their back legs, perfectly,
And some do get some training from their
mothers when they are young, but soon and quickly they perfect all the
movements they need for their survival and success in the world ...
In human's case, it is much more complicated.
Humans discover laws and create physical phenomena by these laws, to better
their lives or just to get some joy out of it ...
When you think of this ... it is amazing, but
we take it for granted because it is happening all the time ...
Jadd of any kind can direct us to Union only
when our vision is not blurred,
When vision is blurred, Jadd becomes just a
skill that serves itself and consumes itself,
For example: if we go back to the metaphor of
the confinement in a two dimensional plane,
Let's imagine that I am a dot which has bound
itself to some confinement. So I look now around me, I see that the contours of
the world are the borders of my confinement,
So I read a Book which tells me that I should
get out of my confinement and be free, in order to be happy and to join the
cosmic consciousness,
So I become interested in this, and I go to a
teacher who is supposedly knowledgeable,
This guys tells me: well, the contours around
you are an illusion of your mind, the Book said that. I can teach you a method
for erasing that illusion,
So I take some meditation lessons from him,
which teach me how to "unimagin" this illusion. And I do that,
successfully,
So where am I now?
I am still in the middle of my confinement,
believing I have achieved freedom, because when I look at the walls around me I
can erase them from my vision at my will!
It's good to see you
back R, your writings are inspiring and raise good questions. And BTW, I do
believe in "signs", but I didn't want to talk about it. I feel that
if we talk about that a lot, some have a tendency to become superstitious, and
you wouldn't want to encourage that ha ha..
If people in da3was (Calls) of the past failed
to recognise Hudood and failed to be in Union with their Lord, it is their own
failing, and it is not because the Calls were incomplete or misleading ...
If they were incomplete or misleading, then
they are not Calls from God, and this is not true,
All the Calls are from God, and the fact that
people misinterpreted them and framed them in their limited understanding does
not mean the Calls were lacking of anything.
The Calls were delivered in place and time,
hence they had to address the human mind at that place and time, but the
ultimate aim of every Call is to free us from the limits of place and time, to
take us where knowledge is true knowledge: in the heart and mind, above words
and symbols and any expression in that place and time.
So if we say today that we know Hudood, where
does this "knowledge" point to? or if we say we know our Lord, where
does this "knowledge" point to?
As you said, Knowledge manifests itself in
righteousness and virtuous life and conduct,
As humans, we have no capability to judge
people, but their character and behaviour are indicators of where their minds
are,
I'm sure you've known some people who
supposedly know their God and the Hudood, but are as far from righteousness and
virtue as can be,
Their knowledge has not benefited them in
anyway,
This reaffirms that knowledge is not a
"formula" or an acceptance of some concepts ... knowledge is what is
written in our hearts and minds, it is the thing that can be carried across to
other lives.
Moreover, Hudood are always mushakhkhasoon
(manifest as humans), and the fact that they are not "known" by
humanity in each and every one of their manifestations does not mean that all
humanity, the druze included, are non-believers. It is not as simplistic as
that.
I do not want to make this comment too long,
but on the issue of Nasoot and Lahoot, this is a very important philosophical
issue to which I will dedicate a post after I finish giving my perspective of
what Hudood are, but I'm happy to continue this discussion if you wish so ...
It's so true K, those words in all the Books were words of
Hudood, all the Books were delivered to humanity by Hudood,
Opposites took them and turned them upside-down, and
used their interpretations of them as the basis of their calls (da3awaat
duddyyeh),
But tawheed was the essence of all the calls, hidden
as an esoterikos, for those who were capable of tawheed.
And if we cannot read the Qur'an, the Gospel and the
Ghita as books of tawheed, then we cannot read the Hikmeh either as tawheed,
and the essence of the Hikmeh will be lost in the same way that the essence of
the Qur'an and the Ghita and the Gospel was lost. And I hope that it does not
get to this point.
And believers were never required to follow rituals
and abide blindly by laws (sharaa2i3). People who did that were reading wrong.
And I invite everyone who has doubt in what I'm saying to read the Qur'an in
English on COB, to see that in fact there are no sharaa2i3 and rituals
whatsoever in the Qur'an,
So to say that the believers and the muwahhedeen had
to follow the calls of the opposites in the past, but now they are exempt from
them: is not a true statement,
Believers never had to follow the calls of the
opposites in the past, and do not have to now and will never have to in the
future.
So Khayaal: Imagination
is the eighth Dimension,
Imagination is this faculty of visioning
something that is not physically existent,
When you think of that you can't be but in awe
of the might of the Mind and Its Capabilities,
How does the brain do that? Science has no
answer, and probably will never have, so long as they see that our mind is just
a blob of organic matter so called brain.
Whatever you're thinking, your imaginations
plays the most important part of it: it helps you vision abstract concept,
logical routes, similarities and differences, it helps you clarify old
memories, it helps you plan future things,
A thinking process of whatever kind cannot
happen without imagination, and as I'm typing this up, I imagine it in my mind
first,
So I do not need to write much about
imagination, because I can imagine you being able to learn more about it by
your own imagination.
And this sheds light on the issue of
"inward or outward" N,
Because, as I said before, the Hodood are not
just their manifestations in human bodies, but indeed in our minds,
And in order to know who or what the Hudood
are, we should start by examining our own selves: what are our minds and hearts
made of? how do we think, learn, know, ignore, remember, ...
How do we love, fear, hate, desire, experience
compassion, sympathy, ...
The answers to those questions do not lie in
books. Books can only give us some guidance and direction, but the real
Directions are inside us. Words are only pointers to them.
And when we think of the hudood only as persons
in their manifestations, we limit our knowledge of them. The Hodood are inside
us. They thought the world, so the world materialised. Humanity is only rays of
them.
Nasoot (The Human):
“The weak-minded believe that my Reality is realised
in me, they know not, that my Truth transcends the physical world, eternally”
(Krishna),
“Whoever looks at me looks at The Truth” (Gospel),
“Take my shirt (image/body), lay it on my Father’s
Countenance, He comes looking” (Joseph, quote from the Qur’an),
“I am God and God is I” (al-hallaaj).
And Lahoot (The Divine):
“Say: He is God, The Oneness (a7ad), never conceived
anything, never conceived by anything (lam yalid wa lam yoolad)” (Qur’an),
“My and your Father in the Heaven …” (Gospel),
“Brahman, The Knower, The Ancient, The Sovereign,
smaller than the mote … cannot be described by any description …” (Ghita),
“So in the Truth, the Essence which is Existent of
Inevitability in its Identity, not of anything else, is the Mind, to which the
earlier wise men pointed.
“I say this in Sublimeness of The Creator, Glorious
is His Capability, of those two essences:
“I mean also what is below happiness, which is the
Mind,
“It is reaching the Divine Knowledge, for it is the
existence of inevitability by predicability to the Mind.” (Hikmeh, Book of
Platon).
The verses of transcendence verge on illogicality,
And if taken as intellectual concepts: they deliver
nothingness.
And if someone thinks they can explain it in words,
rest assured they understand nothing and know nothing.
I have read a number of writings on the Net,
attempting to explain The Human and The Divine (Nasoot and Lahoot), with all
due respect to their authors, they have failed miserably,
The first time I’ve read something that points in
the right direction was K’s comment, a few posts above, and I was so happy to
read it.
So those who were unable to be in Union with Him
have been divided into two groups, ever since the beginning of time:
One group says: since god is mightier than all and
sublime above all, he cannot be in a physical thing.
And they were able to provide quotes from the Books
to backup their argument.
Their failure is in that: their god is just a
concept of intellect, which can neither be proven nor disproven, thus the
sublimeness which they have conceived is about non-existence,
But our mind is Existence, and can only “deal with”
existence; hence their god is non-existent.
The other group says: god came to humanity in an
image, in a human body of his choosing, to be close to humanity, and to express
his love to humanity, and to salvage those who recognise him.
And those too were able to provide quotes from the
Books to backup their argument.
Their failure is in that: they see god in a specific
place and time, and “it is inadmissible that His created and begun things
tarnish him, and they are eclipsed, not suiting His Glory and Might” (Book of
Platon).
The first argument is corrected by the knowledge of
His Hudood, for, His Hudood are mortal humans born to mortal humans, and
moreover:
“And He [the Mind], by reference to the Truth, is a
Servant belonging [to His Lord], acknowledging His incapability of obedience of
our Lord The Sovereign along the ages and times,
“And He manifests Him [the Mind], Existent to the
onlookers, and predicates Him by the Knowledge of religion” (Book of Platon);
“What you see of a human is the One” (Qur’an, The
Lord addressing Mary the mother of the Messiah).
And the second argument is corrected by that:
Duality is Vision. How He began it is His Secret.
Hence, we, as created humans, can be in Union with Him in Vision. And like He
is Capable of visioning Duality, He is Capable of reaching human vision in
Union, the looker and the looker are one,
And moreover:
“God has grand-shown, God has grand-shone (allah
akbara)” (Qur’an, and the muslims’ call to prayer).
“And when your Lord manifested to the Mount, you
were oblivious to His Scene” (al-Munfarid);
“Transcends He, … Who was The Truth Visible in
Garden Dominion (7adeeqat al-qaahirah)” (al-munfarid).
But do not be disheartened and say: no human is
capable of this. Remember that His Compassion encompasses all, and Union will
be the reward of all those who believed all along, and were not diverted by
falsehood,
For, He manifests to humanity by The Human (Nasoot)
and The Divine (Lahoot).
