We, the *‘Hollow Men,’ wait in line for the realisation that will unwind the complexity of our world, all the time failing to realise it is we who are this ‘complication.’
What would it mean to be free of this shadow-world that we both create and inhabit I wonder?
There is something lurking in the shadows, hiding from clear view, the deepest connection between the higher levels of correspondence that, I’m sure, is there – a kind of reversal of image somewhat like that of the direction of turning in the Zikhr’s of Hazrat Inayat Khan or Rumi’s Mevlevis – is it clockwise or is it anti-clockwise?
In reality, of course, it all depends on one’s perspective, however, that is the point!
To be turned inside-out (or outside-in) is difficult to contemplate in any kind of abstract fashion.# Like Krishnamurti’s ‘staying with what is’ or those ambiguous figures which suddenly shift whilst one is looking at them, from one to the other and back again, it is no good asking, ‘which is the real one?’ in any kind of abstract or objective fashion; one must live it [the shift] into being, and there’s the rub.
#Recall here that the barzakh or the Intermediate realm is the place where bodies are spiritualised and spirits made flesh/materialised).
*
I have been grappling with a process of reconciliation between these two realms (this world of form and the Intermediate or Imaginal realm) for some little while now and have not found any substantive evidence that could qualify this process satisfactorily for myself, far less something that could act as a bridge to any clear understanding that could be of help to others (metaphoric or otherwise).
Does this mean then that such an endeavour is doomed to failure, always perhaps to remain just out of reach in this shadow-world that we inhabit in our everyday lives? I hope not, for this is as important a stepping-stone to accessing ‘Truth’ as any other I’ve attempted to elucidate over the past 2 years, perhaps even more so.
What then?
In Truth there are not two things requiring to be brought together, to be brought into alignment, each with the other, but one. Like the late Buddhist teacher Rob Burbea’s, “there is knowing but it lacks any inherent existence, and … is not ultimately of time,” we are desirous of wanting, in some sense, to claim ownership of any such ‘knowing’ as if it were some sort of trophy or proof of achievement (or some such)! This it can never be for it misses the point entirely; we cannot pull-back to admire the view, for we are that. It may, however, become for us some kind of touchstone, that we may use to verify our own thinking around such things (perhaps contemplate is a better word in this context).
If, as Yahya informed Ibn Arabi on his Ascension, “all paths are unique [and] they come into being in the walking of them” holds true, then there is a correlate to his statement of that fact, and that is that, they must also go out of being as each new step is ‘added’ to the ongoing moment by moment cycle of ‘Creation.’ Therefore we can only truly comprehend such a situation if we are it. We cannot ‘stand back’ and ‘know’ at one and the same time! We ‘abide but for a moment,’ and then, our contribution made to this moment, in [another] moment we are gone, just like everything else in the this ‘creation.’ Only the shadow is left, (which we cling to tenaciously and call our ‘self’). The ‘world’ moves on.
Is it [to be] clockwise, or anti-clockwise? Only living it will tell us, but then that depends on our perspective.
*
Just to clarify this a little more then, these ‘perspective’ statements just made. A few weeks ago now I was writing about ‘Patterns of Order’ (Blogged recently) in which I began to expand a little on an earlier theme. In this ‘expansion’ I spoke in relation to the ‘manifestation of forms’ (think here about the ‘Names’ of God; DNA/RNA/Environment; etc) and referred to some of the early work of the Sufi’s in outlining such things as ‘Possibles’ (and their opposite), ‘probables,’ and so on, in relation to ‘Creation.’ Given the nature of this realm and the next, some things must be (God said “Be”[“Kun”] and it was), some things ‘may be,’ but other things, simply by virtue of the strong contradictions they imply, cannot be, and it was in regard to this final point that I used the example of Truth becoming lie. However, given a further example (Moses meeting with Khidr) one could foresee the possibility of a challenge to such a view. In the case just quoted, did Moses, the ‘Law Bringer,’ get it wrong? Was his moral and ethical stance, his spiritual ‘Way,’ a lie? This would seem inconceivable, given his whole nation upheld this ‘truth’ for thousands of years. Was it Khidr then that was wrong? Was he not acting according to the Law given by God to Moses? As ‘one closer to God’ than Moses himself, the very reason that the latter went in search of him, this too seems very unlikely!
So…which is it to be? How does one reconcile these two very different approaches to ‘action in this world’ such as to make both right and in accord with this deep Truth of God, the One? The answer I posited in the previous blog mentioned above (and will do so again here) is that both positions were ‘true,’ and continue on to add that this is perfectly in accord with a deeper understanding of their respective positions (read also as ‘their perspectives’). Only a perspective shift such as this represents can bring these two together. That this is difficult to achieve is made manifest in the retelling of this Quranic story. In reality Khidr himself failed to navigate his way through the choppy waters from where he saw and acted in each situation, and the place from which Moses observed him in action. This is why the permission given to Moses (by Khidr) to follow him was in the end terminated by Khidr. He was unable to manifest his own vision in such a way that Moses would be able to continue to move with him. This is exactly the dilemma we ourselves experience when we attempt to explicate from our ‘perspective’ that which we wish to share with others. Can it be done? Could it be otherwise? This is my dilemma, the one I am currently facing in attempting to share my personal perspectives on Truth, or contact (such as it is) with this ‘Other’ that lies behind all these ‘words.’
It must further be noted, however, that these ‘differences’ between Khidr and Moses just spoken of above, do not just ‘disappear’ altogether with such a resolution. They are still there lurking in the shadowlands, just not in the foreground as before. It all depends on the perspective one adopts (to the extent that this alteration to one’s view has/is facilitated in our ‘being’). To use Ibn Arabi’s conception of ‘fana’ – which most Sufis take to mean ‘annihilation of self’ – he substituted in his writing the term ‘occultation’ (something the Shi’a Moslems will be more familiar with in relation to the so-called hidden Imams). Occultation literally means ‘overshadowing’ where one thing is hidden through the larger presence of something else (think perhaps of the lunar phases). It (the moon) doesn’t ‘disappear’ in this interaction but is simply subject to the occluding of the sun’s light reaching part/all of it by the presence of another body (the earth) moving between it and its source of illumination, the sun. Such a disappearing act doesn’t of course mean the moon ceases to be entirely, as is shown by the fact that it simply reappears when the presence of the other (the earth) which had obtruded between it and the light source by which we are able to see it in the first instance, is removed. Likewise, Ibn Arabi held, is the case for the sincere seeker in the presence of an illumined Sheikh or teacher. The pupil is not annihilated as such through this contact but is, more correctly speaking, overshadowed such that their lesser beings are, as it were, in abeyance in the presence of the other. Whatever is changed in this exchange is still subject to the state of being of the seeker who may drop some of the sharper edges of self-assertion in the process, depending on their own and on the teachers respective ‘states of being.’ Like Moses in the presence of ‘one who is closer to God than [himself]’ something is lost but something far more precious is gained by enjoining in this process.
What that something is can only be known by one willing and able to traverse all the potential and actual dangers any such questing entails.
*The title is a borrowing from the poem “The Hollow Men” by TS Eliot.
Tracks in a Pathless Land 