Chapter Four

See how the hand is invisible while the pen is writing;

the horse careening, yet the rider unseen;

the arrow flying, but the bow out of sight;

individual souls existing,

while the Soul of souls is hidden.

                                      Rumi, Mathnawi II: 1303-04

The conventional world view is one of fragmentation rather than wholeness, of separateness rather than unity. Many modern human beings take this fragmentation and meaninglessness as reality. This is the "world," dunya.

The idea that reality is a whole and we are integral to it--not merely a piece of it--we view with some skepticism, or at best, mere intellectual agreement. We fail to experience this unity except in exceptional moments, the significance of which cannot be integrated into everyday life because these moments happen in a very different state of consciousness.

How we perceive the world depends on how we understand it. Our ideas shape our experience of reality, and it is with our ideas of reality that we should begin if we are going to be at home in the world of unity. Ideas alone may not bring us into that unified reality, but those rooted in meaninglessness, disunity, and separation need to be weeded out. Furthermore, ideas that support the experience of unity and presence need to be learned so thoroughly that their significance is transferred to the deepest levels of our subconscious mind.

At some point in the history of the modern world, human minds could no longer support the traditional spiritual ideas of a meaningful order and the whole structure supporting Western spiritual belief came crashing down. Perhaps the structure itself did not accord with nature, or perhaps it had deviated too far from reality to be supported any longer. Human beings stand in the rubble of former beliefs. We finger through the shards of meaning, trying to imagine what the whole might have been like. But mostly we try to take care of ourselves as best we can in the belief that we are insignificant microbes in an indifferent universe. Being to varying degrees participants inthis culture, we recognize and understand this point of view, but it is not our own.

Traditional wisdom conceives of the Whole in terms of a single Creative Power acting on different levels through different means, or reflectors, to produce an infinite variety of creative results. In other words, everything that exists is the manifestation of a single source of Life and Being. My teachers were stubbornly and untiringly insistent on this point and I cannot be less so. Everything they had to say pointed back to this essential truth, just as every point on a circumference finds its meaning in the center.

One creative power acting on different fields produces different effects, and life is one of these effects. The creative energy is reflected in different ways depending on what embodies it, what reflects it. There is only one God, one cosmic energy, but as this one energy meets various reflectors it is transformed into different capacities or qualities--just as different electrical appliances reflect a single electrical energy in the form of motion, sound, heat, and light.

This creative energy stimulates all the processes of life in general and the whole range of human activity in particular. Everything reflects this one creative intelligence and power.

We do not experience this Creative Power directly, but know it only as it is reflected in our world and in us. Minerals, vegetative life, and animal life all reflect this same creative energy in different ways. Human life contains all the levels and qualities of the natural world, as well as manifestations of this energy that are distinctly human.

Because this energy is creative it produces effects that are beautiful, subtle, unexpected, filled with life. Because it is one and of one source, it connects all things, from the galaxies to subatomic particles, within its greater purpose and meaning. Every grain of sand is numbered; nothing is isolated from the whole.

Energy is defined in physics as a capacity for doing work or overcoming resistance. We see the effects of energy in the flowering of plants as in the process of human reason, in the formation of minerals as in the evolution of culture, in the passing of a quarterback as in the flash of insight that brings a new understanding into focus. But the qualities of energy are different and can be arranged in a natural hierarchy that is self-evident once explained.

This energy reflected in the world of solids, or the mineral world, has the capacity and function of giving form, of holding things together. We can see its work in the formation of rocks and crystals. It has a kind of life and takes part in various molecular transformations. The world of solid forms, however, compared to higher levels of energy, possesses a very limited capacity for interaction.

On the level of vegetative or vital life this capacity for interaction increases. Vital life allows matter to take part in a much greater and more spontaneous interchange: sun, water, and minerals combine to form a rose in bloom. Vegetable and animal life come into existence and are maintained by vital energies.

As life gains greater complexity, an even greater freedom and capacity for response comes into play. A capacity in animal life allows new behavior to be learned and become a conditioned response. Certain behavior patterns arise through this learning capacity. If a certain behavior helps an animal to acquire the food it needs, that behavior will be learned, imprinted, becoming more of an automatic response. An animal that has an unpleasant experience through certain circumstances may try to avoid those circumstances. The human being, too, is programmed with a range of learned, conditioned responses that lie just beneath the threshold of awareness. This can be called the conditioning or automatic energy or capacity.

Beyond this lies the capacity of awareness, or sensitivity. This capacity, functioning in animals as well as humans, allows noticing and adaptation. With this quality of energy, life acquires an even greater possibility of responding to new situations. Whenever we do something with awareness, as if for the first time, rather than out of habit, we are using this capacity.

Awareness is characterized by attention being drawn to one of our functions--whether it be thought, emotion, physical sensation, or behavior. We notice something through having our attention drawn to it. Our attention is consumed by that which we notice: a fly on our nose, a beautiful person, a memory, a strong emotion. The attention is monopolized for a period of time, until something else attracts the attention.

This sensitivity brings attention to a single focus, but it does not yet allow for all our functions to be held within a wider field of awareness. Attention is monopolized by the content of awareness rather than widening to include the context that awareness can provide. On the level of sensitive energy we may still be fragmented, identified with a momentary experience, unaware of more than one part of ourselves at a time. For instance, a person may be so identified with a daydream that his or her immediate environment is for all purposes nonexistent. In the next moment something in the environment may grab the person's attention and the daydream may vanish from memory.

It is not until we come to true consciousness that we find a capacity that allows a wide field of awareness and thus a comprehensiveness to our perception and state of being. True consciousness opens us to wholeness, allowing a total experience of bodiliness, thought, and emotion. Everything is revealed in the more general light of conscious energy. Above all, there is a different sense of "I"--it is no longer the I that identifies with each passing impulse of sensation, thought, or emotion, but a transcending awareness, a witness that stands apart. With consciousness it is possible to direct one's attention and even to be conscious of where one's attention moves, to see moment by moment what attracts it.

Every higher level of energy allows more interaction and more freedom. If human beings are to reclaim their own latent capacities, this higher attention is needed.

With true consciousness, in contrast to passive awareness, the present moment is a wide space. Daydreams, nagging memories, the beckoning of an imaginary future have less of a hold on us, because the present is perceived as it is, in the perfection of its many dimensions. Consciousness is knowing that you are.

Presence is to have this quality of energy, this attention activated. In the present state of culture and conditioning, the state of presence is normally unavailable to people except as occasional flashes. It is possible, however, to cultivate consciousness, to sustain it, and to make our home in it.

As human beings we can know that a single creative energy connects everything and that we are integral to it. We are one with the Whole. This is the Truth on the highest level. We can also know that we have within us different capacities for reflecting this one energy. Our physical form is one type of reflection; our ability to learn new kinds of behavior and physical skills is another. Our ability to notice and become aware of something is yet another capacity we are endowed with. But a critical distinction can be made between awareness and consciousness. A conscious presence is the perception from wholeness; it is the light of soul behind the fragmentation and unresolved conflicts of the personality. It can therefore unify and harmonize all other fragments and capacities, because it transcends them.

Consciousness is the highest capacity a human being can experience at will, and its importance is that it opens us up to what is beyond the individual will: the creative and enlivening powers of the Divine Unknown.

When a conscious presence has been awakened, when we have the ability to direct a refined attention, we are more able to open to the knowledge of the heart. The heart, as Sufis and others call it, is the totality of the mind's faculties, both sub- and supraconscious.

These faculties work beyond the curtain of our conscious awareness. They function erratically, partially, and unconsciously in most of us, because the human heart is fragmented and in conflict.

If, however, the subconscious mind can function in harmony with the Divine Unknown, the Creative Power, life becomes filled with new meaning that flows into conscious awareness. Whereas awareness was occupied with more superficial layers of mind activity, particularly our ego's thoughts and desires, now it is possible to listen within more constantly. Through this listening, mind and heart, ego and subconscious can be integrated. Cosmic energy is being reflected by the subconscious faculties of the mind, which are able to reflect the new, the creative, the unexpected, and the unique.

To purify and harmonize our conscious and subconscious faculties, to make the heart pure around a single center, or master desire, and to patiently awaken those faculties that have gone to sleep or atrophied--this is the work of presence.

One day the heart may reach such contact with its own source through merging directly with the Creative Power and knowing the One behind multiplicity, that it may make a home in unity. Human beings are destined to realize this possibility more and more. The result is the complete human being, the drop that becomes the Sea. It is not difficult to achieve this end, because we are made for it.