Class 1 Quotes Zoom I.pdf

Self Assessment.pdf

Selbst-Einschaetzung.pdf

HIK Planes of Manifestation-1.pdf

Excerpt The Degrees of the Soul-1.pdf

Quotes and literature-1.pdf

Sura al Asr-1.pdf

Class 2 Resources:

 The Sufi Path of Love and Understanding: Contains description of the 7 stages of the nafs and also of Rumi’s stages of ‘I was a mineral’.

 The Journey of the Soul
(For German readers: Many of the quotes used in this River of Guidance can be found in the German version of these two books)

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
The Message Volume
Gathas, Suluk (Morals)
 Nirtan (Gamekas)

Quotes from Jalaluddin Rumi

(Mathnavi VI, 723 – 726): You have suffered much agony, but you are still veiled, because you didn’t fulfill the​ main thing: to die in yourself. Your agony will not end until you die. How can you reach the roof without completing the ladder? How can you climb when two rungs out of a hundred are missing? How can you get water from the well if your rope is too short?

(M II: 1850 -1861.): Inner insight is the happiness of Jesus, not of his donkey . You listen to the donkey's groans and pity the animal, without realizing that the donkey is in reality commanding you! Let this donkey-like soul moan and cry. For years you have been the donkey's slave. Stop it, because in this way you are even lower than a donkey! Because Jesus understood this, he was able to tame his donkey : the donkey became lean because of the strong rider. So beware, because if you don't understand, your donkey will become a dragon!

 (Fihi ma Fihi): Pain guides you in every endeavor. Without pain in you, without passion and desire for something arising in you, you will never strive to achieve it as well. Without pain you will not succeed, whether it is success in this world or redemption in the next, whether you want to become a businessman or a king, a scientist or an astronomer. Through the pain of childbirth, Mary gave birth to Jesus . . . . The body is Mary. Each one of us has Jesus within us, but until the barren contractions manifest in us, our Jesus is not born.

Mathnavi III, 3901 – 3904:

Friends, slaughter this cow in you, that animal soul
if you want to raise your spirit to the level of insight.
I died as a mineral and learned how to grow.
I died to my vegetable state and attained to animal.
My animal self died and I became human.
Why then should I fear death?
​When did I ever become less by dying?
So let me also die as a human being,
that I may soar and raise myself to the angels.
Even then I need to die again,
for everything is perishing except his Face,
to wake up in a state that is beyond imagination.
Non-existent I’ll become, for verily unto Him we shall return.
The Water of Life is hidden in the Land of Darkness.[1]

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
 (Morals)   Three Stages through which the Ego develops
      There are three different stages through which the ego develops and reaches the ideal state.

1. The first stage is​ called Ammara by Sufis, and in this the ego is satisfied by the satisfaction of the passions and the appetites.  (1st in   classical Sufism)

2. From this animal stage the ego may rise to a higher stage, which is man's ego, and that stage is the gratification of vanity. This ego is termed by the Sufi Lauwama, (2nd in classical Sufism) and this stage, in the beginning causes a person to act in every way that is likely to cause harm and to be hurtful and unjust to others.

3.This continues until s/he learns to understand the true nature of vanity, since all good as well as all evil is born of vanity. When vanity ceases to cause one to do evil that one has reached the human stage, Mutmaina (4th)

But when vanity causes one to do good, the ego becomes humane, using this word in the oriental sense, in which it means more than human, as it is derived from the two words, Hu, divine, and Manas, mind. The first lesson that the ego must learn in order to develop into the humane state is that of pride in the form of self-respect. As one has the inclination to have good clothes and good ornaments in order to appear in the eyes of others as what is considered beautiful, so one must feel the same inclination towards the building of personality by the ornamentation of every action and manner in the way that s/he considers good and beautiful.

(I, 196): [T]he continual longing of the soul is for freedom from this imprisonment. Rumi begins his book, the Masnavi, with this lamentation of the soul, to free itself. But is it to free the soul by actual death, by a suicide? No! No mystics have done it; it is not meant. It is by playing death that one arrives at the knowledge of life and death, and it is the secret of life which will make the soul free. The different planes of existence, which are hidden behind the cover of this physical body, then begin to manifest to the person who plays death. All different ways of concentration, of meditation, which are prescribed by the teacher to the pupil, are all that process of playing. In themselves they are nothing; they are a play.

What is important, is what one funds out as an outcome of that play; what one discovers in the end. Of course, the play begins with self-negation. People who like to say twenty times in the day, 'I', does not like to say, 'I am not, Thou art'. But they do not know that this claim of 'I' is the root of all trouble. It is this claim that makes them feel hurt by every little insult, by every little disturbance. The amount of pain that this illusion gives is so great that it is just as well they got rid of it. But that is the last thing they would do. They would give up their last penny, but not the thought of 'I'. They would hold it; it is the dearest thing. That is the whole difficulty and the only hindrance on the spiritual path.

(Bowl of Saki Feb. 11): He who attains the state of indifference without showing interest in life is incomplete and prone to be seduced by interest at any time; but he who attains the state of indifference by undergoing interest truly attains the blessed state.

Nirtan (Gamekas):
You are my life, it is in you that I live
From you I borrow life and you do I give
O my soul and spirit, you I adore
I live in you, so do I live ever more
You are in me and in you do I live
Still you are my King and my sins you forgive
You are the present and future and past
I lost myself but I have found you at last

 Dr. Nurbakhsh tells us that this nafs is obsessive, arrogant, capricious, deceitful, bewitching and degrading.

He gives ten characteristics: ignorance, anger, rancor, tyranny, arrogance, resentment, envy, avarice, disloyalty and hypocrisy.
 Autobiography in five short chapters

Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost . . . I am helpless.
It's not my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend not to see it .
I fall into it again.
I can't believe I'm in the same place.
But it's not my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see that it is there.
I still fall into it . . . it's a habit.
My eyes are open. I know where I am.
It's my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter 5
I walk down another street.

·      Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the calmness to accept
what I cannot change,
the courage to change what I can change,
and the wisdom to distinguish between the two.

To accept hard times as the path to peace.
To accept this world full of difficulties as it is,
not as I would like it to be.
To trust that You will make all things right
If I surrender to Your will.
So that I will be happy enough in this life
And forever perfectly happy with You in the next life.
Amen.

Shabistari:
If you really want to pray, the stakes are high.
Your ‘self’ is at stake and you must be prepared to lose.
Do it and gamble your ‘self’ away,  so only pure being is left behind.
Your prayer is a twinkle in the eyes.
Knower and known are one.
____________________________

[1] ‘Everything is perishing’ (Q 28: 88) and ‘Verily, unto Him’ (Q 2: 156) are quotes from the Quran. ‘Water of life’ is revelation (see M III 4317); ‘land of darkness’ symbolizes all who dare to go into the unknown, i.e. the land of the Prophets and the friends of God, Ibn ‘Arabi’s imaginal world

Sources:

Rumi: Mathnavi (transl. Nicholson)
Fihi Ma Fihi (transl. Arberry)
Prof. Nurbakhsh: The Psychology of Sufism
Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch: Rumi and Sufism (see attachment of  the picture used)

Shaykh Abd al-Khaliq al-Shabrawi: The Degrees of the Soul (see attachment for the quotes used)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: The Little Prince
Attar (This too shall pass) in: Mojdeh Bayat & Mohammad Ali Jamnia: Tales from the Land of the Sufis

Sa’di: Bustan  (Story of the Fox)
Shabistari (transl. Darr): The Garden of Truth
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan: Quran Commentary. Understanding the spiritual Meaning of the Quran (Goodword Books, India)