The Nature of the Self

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

i hope you have been enjoying these lectures, which are to increase our

collective faith in the Divine Within - to realise in a greater measure " the

Self " , which is what a deepening of Self-realisation is. As Christ said: 'I am

that I am'! That my friends, speaks about the fact that we are all a part and

parcel of the Divine, but we just have to realise that. With the connection to

the Self (Self-realisation) that the Holy Spirit/Comforter brings, we can all

rediscover our connection to the Divine and each other, so that there is no more

a conscience of duality, but of unity!

 

Here is a shortened version of an article originally published in the quarterly

magazine Self-Knowledge in April 1952.

 

Enjoy!

 

violet

 

 

The Nature of the Self In the Mysticism of Jalal-Uddin Rumi

 

IN THE VEDANTA, the doctrine of the identity of the real Self with God has the

authority of the most ancient teachings. In the Vedas themselves occur the four

great dicta which announce unequivocally that man's inmost essence is one with

the essence of the universe. Moreover this Truth is the corner-stone of the

systematised philosophy which was developed by the sages of the Upanishads, by

the Vedanta Sutras and Yoga Vasishtha, and which culminated in Shri

Shankaracharya's original works and commentaries.

 

In Islam and Christianity, however, the doctrine was never openly taught and it

was only the mystical schools which kept it alive and handed on these

traditional spiritual methods of meditation and discipline by which it could be

personally verified in the enlightened mind. Although the Sufis founded their

teaching on an interpretation of certain obscure and difficult verses of the

Koran, the doctrine was never orthodox in Islam, and one of the greatest of the

early Sufis, Mansur Hallaj, was arrested and executed in AD 921 for boldly

proclaiming 'Ana'Ihaqq' ('I am Truth'). He danced in ecstasy on the way to his

execution, and prayed for his executioners on the scaffold.

 

Rumi speaks of Mansur with the greatest love and reverence, both in the odes of

the Divan and the Mathnavi itself. He also mentions Bayazid. It is clear that he

regards them as real knowers of Truth, and he maintains with them the divinity

of the real Self of man. This is the spiritual Truth, the central core of all

religions, even where it has not been openly acknowledged.

 

The teaching of the identity of man's real self with God is not to be easily

understood, nor is it free from the possibility of gross misinterpretation. To

say 'I am God' can be the expression of the megalomania of a Hitler or an

Alexander, but equally it can express the experience born of love-knowledge in

the highest spiritual enlightenment of the mystics. What makes the difference

between these two is the meaning of the expression, the state of consciousness

which they represent. In the former case it is the mad worship and exaltation of

the selfish individual ego, power-mad and lusting for sole dominion over all

other creatures; in the latter case it is the recognition of the nothingness and

insignificance of the separate individual personality, and of the underlying

unity with the spiritual principle in which all things exist.

 

Rumi continually stresses this contrast, illustrating it by the case of Mansur

and Pharaoh. 'I am God' on the lips of Mansur was the light of Truth; 'I am

Allah' on the lips of Pharaoh was a lie (Mathnavi, II. 305). The significance of

the testimony of Hallaj can only be fully understood by one who has shared the

experience upon which it was based. Rumi was such a saint of God, and had

experienced for himself that state in which the Truth is known.

 

There is another state of consciousness, which is

rare: do not thou disbelieve, for God is very mighty.

Do not judge from the normal state of man, do not

abide in wrong-doing and in well-doing.

Wrong-doing and well-doing...come into existence:

those who come into existence die: God is their heir.

(I. 1804-6)

 

God is above both 'I' and 'thou'; in His adoration and contemplation the

worshipper and the devotee is lost, and only He remains:

 

....O Thou who art the dais, and I the threshold at

Thy door!

Where are threshold and dais in reality? In the

quarter where our Beloved is, where are 'we' and

'I'?

O Thou whose soul is free from 'we' and 'I', O

Thou who art the subtle essence of the spirit in man

and woman,

When man and woman become one, Thou art

that One; when the units are wiped out, lo, Thou

art that Unity.

Thou didst contrive this 'I' and 'we' in order

that Thou mightst play the game of worship with

Thyself,

That all 'I's' and 'thou's' should become one

soul and at last should be submerged in the

Beloved. (I. 1783-8)

 

When the soul approaches God by way of the spiritual disciplines and

purification of the mind, all the impurities dissolve away like shadows in the

light of the sun. It is like iron entering the fire:

 

The baptism of Allah is the dyeing-vat of Hu

(the Absolute): therein all piebald things become

one colour.

When the mystic falls into the vat, and you say

unto him, 'Arise', he says in rapture, 'I am the

vat; do not blame me.'

That 'I am the vat' is the same as saying 'I am

God': he has the colour of fire, albeit he is iron.

The colour of the iron is naughted in the colour

of the fire: the iron boasts of its fieriness, though

actually it is like one who keeps silence.

When it has become like gold of the mine in

redness, then without tongue its boast is 'I am the

fire'...

What fire? What iron? Close your lips: do not

laugh at the beard of the assimilator's smile.

Do not set foot in the Sea, speak not of It: on

the shore of the Sea keep silence, biting your lips in

amazement. (II. 1345-56)

 

Returning once more in another passage of the Mathnavi to the case of Mansur and

Pharaoh, Rumi likens the enlightened soul to a lover who through overpowering

love of his beloved has completely naughted any sense of his narrow

individuality which he may have possessed. To him, self-love and love of his

beloved are one and the same. Rumi uses another simile, that of the stone, which

on being transmuted into a jewel, reflects the light of the sun:

 

Whether the pure ruby loves itself or whether it

loves the sun,

There is really no difference in these two loves;

both aspects are naught but the radiance of the

sunrise.

Until the stone has become a ruby, it is an enemy

to itself, because it is not a single 'I': two 'I's'

are there;

For the stone is dark and blind to the daylight:

the dark is essentially opposed to light.

If it love itself, it is an infidel, because it offers

intense resistance to the supreme Sun.

Therefore 'tis not fitting that the stone should

say 'I', for it is wholly darkness and in the state of

death.

A Pharoah said 'I am God' and was laid low; a

Mansur Hallaj said 'I am God' and was saved.

The former 'I' is followed by God's curse and

the latter 'I' by God's mercy, O loving man;

For Pharaoh was a black stone, Hallaj a

cornelian; that one was an enemy to the Light, and

this one passionately enamoured of it.

This 'I', O presumptuous meddler, was 'He' (God)

in the inmost consciousness, through oneness with

the Light, not through belief in the doctrine of

incarnation.

Strive that thy stony nature may be diminished,

so that thy stone may become resplendent with the

qualities of the ruby.

Show fortitude in enduring self-mortification

and affliction; continually behold everlasting life

in dying to self.

Then thy stoniness will become less every moment,

the nature of the ruby will be strengthened in thee.

(V. 2029-41)

 

These two selves of man, symbolised by Pharaoh and Mansur, of which Rumi

speaks, are very similar to the 'real' and 'false' selves of the Vedanta

philosophy. The real Self of man (Atman) can only be known when the unreal ego

(jiva or ahankara) - the puny, copyrighting self, as Swami Rama Tirtha calls it

- has been negated. This is the spiritual mystery of dying to self to be born

again of the spirit. Without crucifixion there can be no resurrection. This is

the law of life.

 

The false ego is a misreading of an ultimate spiritual truth. The desire for

complete freedom, limitless power and all-embracing knowledge can never be

satisfied in the objective world. It is only in inner mastery of the forces

within the personality that the real satisfaction can be attained. So long as

this problem of the Self is unsolved, no worldly domination will confer mastery

on the soul. Alexander and Napoleon failed to see the truth that in extending

their dominions and enslaving whole continents they were merely increasing their

own bondage, and becoming powerful pawns in the grip of the forces which they

themselves had helped to unleash. What can the worldling know of real mastery?

He neither knows what he himself is, nor what mastery is, says Rumi:

 

Thou sayest to the vulgar, 'I am a Lord', being

unaware of the essential natures of both these names.

How should a Lord be trembling with hope or fear

for that which is lorded over? How should one who

knows 'I' be in bondage to body and soul?

Lo, we are the real 'I', having been freed from the

unreal 'I' that is full of tribulation and trouble.

(V. 4128-30)

 

The gallows on which the false self is killed is the steed on which the soul

mounts to heaven, it is life concealed in the form of death, while the abode of

narrow individuality which the ego builds round it, is death concealed in the

husk of life. When the heart catches sight of the eternal Self, the real

'I'-hood, the unreal 'I'-hood of the ego-consciousness becomes insipid. So long

as you seek enhancement of selfhood, the real Self will elude you; but when you

die to the unreal self, the real Self becomes your seeker. (V. 4134 -42)

 

The mystery of the self is not one that can be solved intellectually; all the

mystics are unanimous on this point. The divinity of the real self is explicable

neither in terms of the doctrine of incarnation nor that of pantheism. Rumi

expresses this most beautifully in the passage already quoted in which he refers

to the celebrated Mohammedan theologian and philosopher Fakhr ud-Din of Rayy who

had died in AD 1209, only two years after Jalal was born, and whose fame was

still current:

 

If the intellect could discern the true way in this

question, Fakr-i-Razi would be an adept in religious

mysteries;

But since he was an example of the saying that whoso

has not tasted does not know, his intelligence and

imaginations only increased his perplexity.

How should this 'I' be revealed by thinking?

That 'I' is only revealed after passing away from

self (fana). (V. 4144-6)

 

Walt Whitman in his 'Song of Myself' wrote: 'Nothing, not God, is greater than

one's self is.' It seems an echo of the passage in the Upanishads in which it is

taught that all objects are dear, not indeed for their own sake, but because

they enhance or satisfy the self. Everyone feels this to be so in his inmost

consciousness. It is the profound but partial grasp, at a deep level of the

mental consciousness, of the divine stature of the real Self of man. It is when

this Self is fully realised that a man can be called happy, and regain the

unalloyed bliss of his own nature. Then, indeed, the Self is known to be one

with God.

 

But until this state is reached, the innermost conviction is liable to be

misread. Indeed, it is necessarily misread, and the result is suffering and

disappointment. The soul still clings to duality, pitting the psychological

complex called personality against the rest of the world, dividing its universe

into an ego and an other-than-ego. The man who says 'I am God' in this state,

from the standpoint of the all-too-human ego, is the untimely cock that crowed

too soon, says Rumi. It is a false prophet because its tarnished gold has not

yet passed through the fire and been purified of the dross of meum and tuum. Its

statement is an idle boast, mere 'wind in the moustache' as the Sufis say, for

it is not backed up by an inner realisation of the Truth:

 

He that is without pain is a brigand, because to be without pain is to say 'I

am God'.

To say that 'I' out of the proper time is a curse to the speaker; to say that

'I' at the proper time is a mercy from God.

The 'I' of Mansur Hallaj certainly became a mercy; the 'I' of Pharaoh became a

curse. Mark this!

Consequently, it is incumbent on us to behead every cock that crows too soon,

in order to give warning.

What is 'beheading'? Killing the fleshly soul in the spiritual war, and

renouncing self,

Just as you would extract the scorpion's sting in order that it

might be saved from being killed,

Or pull out the venomous fang of a snake, in order that the snake might escape

from the calamity of being stoned to death.

Nothing will slay the fleshly soul except the shadow of the Pir (the spiritual

Teacher): grasp tightly the skirt of that slayer of the flesh. (II. 2521-8)

 

To truly say 'I am God' with Mansur, one must have evidence of the truth of this

statement, and that evidence only comes when a man has died to his narrow

individuality. It is only when one can die like a Jesus, a Socrates or a Mansur,

that one can serve Truth:

 

When the Shaykh Hallaj said 'I am God' and carried it

through to the end, he vanquished all the blind sceptics.

When a man's 'I' is negated and eliminated from existence,

then what remains? Consider, O denier. (VI. 2095-6)

 

In the Mathnavi, Rumi is essentially the Teacher, instructing, exhorting,

cajoling, even amusing his disciples; but in the odes of the

Divan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz, we seem to get a more personal note, a more direct

expression of the saint's own experience. And so it is perhaps these beautiful

odes which crystallise Rumi's philosophy of the Self. Indeed in some of them he

speaks in the authentic tones of the Avadhut. Here is such a song of ecstasy and

triumph:

 

What is to be done, O Moslems, for I do not

recognise myself?

I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor

Moslem.

I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of

the land, nor of the sea;

I am not of Nature's mint, nor of the circling

heavens.

I am not of the earth, nor of water, nor of air,

nor of fire;

I am not of the empyrean, nor of the dust, nor of

existence, nor of entity.

I am not of India, nor of China, nor of Bulgaria,

nor of Saqsin;

I am not of the kingdom of Iraqain, nor of the

country of Khorasan.

I am not of this world, not of the next, nor of

Paradise, nor of Hell;

I am not of Adam, nor of Eve, nor of Eden and

Rizwan.

My place is the Placeless, my trace is

the Traceless;

'Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul

of the Beloved.

I have put duality away, I have seen that

the two worlds are one;

One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I

call.

He is the first, He is the last, He is the

outward, He is the inward;

I know none other except 'Ya Hu'* and

'Ya man Hu'*.

I am intoxicated with Love's cup, the two worlds

have passed out of my ken;

I have no business save carouse and revelry.

If once in my life I spent a moment without Thee,

From that time, and from that hour, I repent of my

life.

If once in the world I win a moment with Thee,

I will trample on both worlds, I will dance

in triumph for ever.

O Shamsi Tabriz, I am so drunken in this world,

That except of drunkenness and revelry I have no

tale to tell.

 

*Ya Hu and Ya man Hu: 'O He' and 'O He who is', one of

the most familiar dervish cries.

 

 

Freedom through Self-Realisation

A.M. Halliday

A Shanti Sadan Publication - London

ISBN 0-85424-040-3

Pgs. 163-172