THE SUFI WAY OF SELF-UNFOLDMENT
(Excerpts Only)

By: Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri

Chapter 8
The Outer World and the Self

The most difficult problem that faces any human being in this life is himself. Self-knowledge is the most difficult and the most essential of sciences for any human being. The start is the recognition that one is in this world and that one wants to know the cause of one's existence. This science, doctrine, or discipline of self-knowledge, which has been expounded by all the numerous prophets and messengers, culminating in the Prophet Muhammad, is to do with the discovery of the entity, the 'I' and its relationship to the world it finds itself in.

Self-knowledge is not so much descriptive as transmitted. It is learning by example, learning through companionship, learning from those we love and try to follow and imitate in essence and in meaning. It can only come from people who know themselves. However, the claim of self-knowledge cannot be made by anyone, for the 'I' is changing all the time and in reality it has no existence.

To understand the self, we must also understand the outer world. The outer world cannot be isolated from the 'me'. One of the first things a person learns in this world is his separateness. A child begins to observe that he is separate from mother or parents. When a child distinguishes that there is an entity, the 'I', and that it is separate from others, he begins to 'feel' the boundary of this 'I' as being outer skin. The grosser the individual, the more you find this attitude of separate individuality and isolation. The more this happens, the more you find the individual is driven towards self-perpetuating isolation, a vicious circle. There have been, in recent times, cases of very well-known individuals who have ended up completely paranoid, afraid of their own shadow. This kind of individualism can only lead to destructive ends.

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We are not separate from the cosmos, the individual does not end at the boundary of his or her skin: one does not end here and somebody else begin there. Everything is interrelated, everything is interlocked and there is an integrated totality. Occasionally, when we take individualism to an extreme end, the system reacts from within to readjust, such as the reaction we have in the west towards preserving 'ecology'. Science too is moving more and more towards integration and overlapping between the various disciplines.

Cause and effect

So the individual finds himself in this world and he begins to observe what is around him. The first thing that is noticeable is the chain of cause and effect. An event is caused by something else, so it is the effect of that cause. If I've eaten a bad meal, I get a stomach-ache. Every cause has an effect. And every effect, in its turn, becomes the cause of yet another effect. There are no clear boundaries, only a continuous chain of reactions superimposed on other chain reactions.

What is the nature of the world? How did it come about? It didn't simply come about as a result of the decisions of the houses of parliament or presidents in the various countries. It did not happen due to some entity called God sitting somewhere and manipulating various strings and pushing buttons. How did the world which we are in at the moment come about? If we are intelligent, if we are concerned, if we are serious, if we are alive, we are bound to want the complete answer to this question.

At the moment we are considering the overall effect, the various events that have caused this current state of affairs in its total global sense. If you reflect deeply upon your personal world, your current environment, which is smaller, more manageable, easier to define than the global scene, you will be able to follow it clearly in its chain of cause and effect. You will find that your world is the result of your own actions and thoughts. And there is very little separation between action and thought. You start by thought – I think I am thirsty, so I pour some water. Instantaneously, as I thought this particular thought, my action began. One hand got a glass, the other reached for the jug.

Where does thought end and action begin? We cannot define a boundary. Actions and thoughts are continuous. Action is the grossification of thought. Thought is the subtle cause and action is the effect. So, in my own small world, I find that I am in this particular house, in this particular environment. I have this particular job, this particular wife, or these various relationships. If I contemplate further, I would find that the overall situation is the overall result of all my past thoughts and actions.

My thoughts and actions are not isolated from the thoughts and actions of others around me and the environment. Let us, for a moment, try artificially to isolate my private world, which is the result of my own creation. Why did I create my world in this way and not in that way? Let us say that this is because of my personality. Now, one personality may prefer an apartment with many small rooms. I may prefer fewer slightly larger rooms. In other words, someone else's world may be different from mine, but the cause of it, or the source of it, is not different. He tries to create, as best as he can, the world he finds agreeable and so do I. So my small world is the result of my actions and thoughts interacting and superimposed upon the actions and thoughts of the world around me.

If we dwell upon this observation and deeply contemplate it, break it up, look at it from all the different facets, we must reach the conclusion that the total global scene is the sum total or 'resultant' of all actions and thoughts combined together.

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The world is the sum total of all our combined actions and thoughts and the future will be determined by our combined actions and thoughts from now on. If we had the capability of building a vast enough computer model and of discerning and measuring all the various laws that govern life on earth, we would reach that conclusion. In this model, we must include every influence, including such things as sunspots, on our decision-making. Some days we find ourselves much more energetic than other days; some days we find ourselves much more generous. The weather, the effect of food in our bodies, and millions of other influences, will govern the outcome, We are at the mercy of all of these interlinked causes.

Now let us turn to the individual, to the 'I'. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and this world is perfect from a scientific point of view. If I abuse my neighbor one day, he will pay me back directly or otherwise. If I have abused the worker, the employer, my friends, or whatever, it is bound to come back to me. The deeper we look into that, the more we reach the absolute conclusion given to us clearly in the Qur`an, which is that if you do as much as a mustard seed of good, it will come back to you, and it is instantaneous. In reality, actions are as good as the intention behind them.

Actions and reactions, and thought and action, are not separate. They are directly interrelated. You cannot say, 'I fooled them'. You have only fooled yourself. There is nothing other than yourself. Thousands of people throughout the ages, people of self-knowledge, have reached the same conclusion. And until one reaches that conclusion, one is baffled by the world outside.

Everything has a cause. And every event that takes place will, in turn, be the cause of another event. Man and woman get together and they think that their life is not fulfilled unless they have a child. The child is the effect of this union. He, in turn, is going to be the cause of other offspring. It is a chain reaction. There is no break in all of this.

There is no clear boundary between 'I' and the neighbor in the town, and the city, and the country, and the globe. This is the beginning of knowledge.

Duality

As we said before, when the observer begins to go deeper into himself, and into his surroundings, he finds most phenomena exist in duality. We begin to see twos. If we look in the middle, it may be confusing, but if we look at the whole spectrum we see twos clearly. We see black and white. If we look in the middle, we see grays. If you go to the extremes of anything, you will always find two aspects: day and night, illness and health, peace and war, good and bad, etc. Look at the extreme poles and see the shades in between. Often there is no clear-cut boundary.

Look at life and death. The flower that is wilting, that begins to smell bad, that begins to decay, heralds the beginning of a new flower because it will be compost or fertilizer for the next one. Man begins his life journeying towards death. The minute he is born, he is closer to the end of his journey, closer to his death. Yet man nowadays avoids the question of death.

The most logical subjective statement man can make is that he is dying. It is a universal statement. And yet nobody wants to know what the meaning of death is. What is the end of this journey to death? Is that the end of the story? When you tell me that my work location is transferred to a new town, before you finish the sentence, I ask you for a map of the town. What does it look like? What is the population? What is the weather? We don't want jolts in this life. We want harmony. Jolts dissipate energy and we want to preserve energy. And yet, death is the most certain thing and we do not ask the meaning of it.

What happens when we die, and what is the experience of death? The Sufis say, 'Die before you die.' Here they refer to the death of meaning. This death implies being absolutely still, implies having no thought in your mind. Every attempt we make in this world is to reduce the quality of thoughts in our mind. Catch yourself at whatever you are doing and you will find that you are doing it in the expectation that your mind will become quietened by it.

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The material world

When man begins to question what he sees around him, he observes, then reflects, then goes deeper into contemplation, which is also more disciplined, and then into more profound meditation. To meditate means cutting out anything other than what is being meditated upon. Usually, we are exercising our discernible faculties, our intellect, our mind, our quantitative faculties, measuring all the time. Am I getting the right deal? Quantitatively, most of the time, qualitatively sometimes. That is why we are so rich outwardly in this world and so poor inwardly. We have accumulated the greatest riches in terms of material well-being. Everyone of us is cluttered with belongings, houses, cars, boats, relationships, and whatever. Yet, in terms of real quality, we are poor. That is why we have the television or radio on all the time, to fill the empty space. This is the state of affairs we are in, and we are not only a description of the reality, but we are this reality.

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Fragmentations of the self

What is surprising is that we talk about 'I' very flippantly, as though it were a concrete thing. It is very seldom that we stop and reflect upon who the speaker is, The reason that we often do not reflect is that in the particular context in which we say 'I' there is an image or role behind it. It is usually a definable image – the father, the friend, the leader, etc. – an image that you have built around yourself and which has somehow taken on a shape. What is this illusive 'I' which finds itself in this world with which we tried to establish a relationship?

There are usually multitudes of 'I'. There is 'I' the family man, there is 'I' the angry man, the good man, the traveler, the businessman, the father, etc. There is the 'I' who is secure, happy, concerned, irresponsible, guilty, ill, etc. These are all fragments, and this fragmentation is the result of our inner fragmentation.

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The Path

We will not understand the world unless we understand the individual. We will not make headway unless we understand the self, which manifests as the 'I'. Thus, we want to reach the cause of 'me', this 'I'. All of us, one way or another, are trying to reach that point. Unless that attempt is a disciplined one, unless it has its doctrine, unless it has its own boundaries, it is a haphazard journey. As with any other area of study, we need to have the methodology clear, the hypothesis defined, other tools at hand and some idea as to the ultimate end we seek.

The difficulty arises when we have identified with the gross world and are living in distracting environments, when we have become so materialistic and neglect everything else. It is difficult to pursue self-knowledge outside a fairly defined discernible arena. And this is the meaning of the Path. Path implies constraints. A path is contained between boundaries and has disciplines. Every path has its codes of conduct. We cannot just meander around on a path because there are others on the path. Path takes us from one point to another. It is made to ease a journey – from the point of ignorance to the point of knowledge, from the point of misery to the point of inner happiness and self-fulfillment. The science of self-knowledge is about that. And if the path does not lead to that, it is not the true course. It is meaningless, another dogma. Basically, there is a discipline, needed because the chances of reaching that ultimate point of certitude and knowledge are very slim.

As we said in Part I, we have a body and a mind, the seat of emotion, and we have the intellect. The more we allow the intellect to develop, the more we know what is basically right or wrong, and the more we see the common denominator for basic behavior of people.

What we are doing in this world, every one of us, in every instant, is trying to balance the individual world, body, mind, and intellect, this so-called 'I' with the larger world of objects, emotions, and thoughts.

The ultimate objective of our quest in this life, while alive, while functioning, with a sane mind is not to have the memory of the past and the expectation of the future filling us to the brim. In other words, to get rid of the 'I'. The man on the raft in the river may be intellectually aware, but yet he has not done anything to change his condition in reality, inwardly.

Self-knowledge is the science of inward freedom with outward constraints. Inwardly joyful, outwardly sober. Man is the seeker of this course. This is what motivates us.