The Path, the Duties & Techniques (IV)

excerpts from "The Path and the Duties and Techniques"

by Idries Shah

 As we continue with our consideration of Sufi theoretical and
practical approaches to inner knowledge, we will be able to note
two things which are of present-day interest. The first is that the
setting up of a group of concepts, to enable the mind to approach
something, can easily become, in insensitive hands, stabilized as a
cult. Second, that, in approaching the cultivation of deeper
awareness, the Sufis have postulated and employed sequences of
experiences based on the ever-deeper and successively superseded
ranges of understanding. In most more familiar systems we have,
on the contrary, only one form of `higher consciousness': for the
Sufis there are at least five.

          THE FIVE SUBTLETIES

 This brings us to the conceptual framework of the Five
Subtleties. The human being is stated, in Sufi presentation, to
contain five elements of the `relative' and five of the `absolute'.
Five, that is, which belong to secondary things, referred to as The
World, and five which are beyond limitation or dimensions, and
which refer to the different manifestations of the various levels of
consciousness beyond ordinarily recognizable physics.

 There are said to be five centres of spiritual perception,
corresponding to these ranges of experience. They are conceived of
as having physical locations in the human body.

 These Five Subtleties (Lataif-i-Khamsa) do not exist literally.
They are located in the body because the postures of extending
attention to these areas are held to orientate the mind towards
higher understanding and illumination.

 The secondary, or `Commanding' self - which rules the person-
ality most of the time and which provides the barrier against
extra-dimensional perception - is not one of these Subtle organs,
but it has a `location', in the area of the navel. Concentration on this
spot may be said to be connected with the attempt to transform this
Self.
 

But we are dealing with the higher faculties. They are named as
follows:

MIND, on the left side, whose `field' is approximately where the
 heart is. Called QALB = the Heart centre;

SPIRIT, on the right side, opposite MIND. This is known as
 ROUH, sometimes translated as the Soul centre;

SECRET, the first stage of higher consciousness, located between
 the first two, in the solar plexus. The original term is SIRR,
 which has been called `inner consciousness';

MYSTERIOUS, in the forehead between the eyes but just above
 them. Its name is KHAFI, which carries the connotation of deep
 secrecy;

and finally comes
THE DEEPLY HIDDEN, which is resident in the brain and
 whose `field' of operation may move between the brain and the
 centre of the chest. Its technical name is AKHFA, which stands
 for `most hidden'.
 

The organ of stimulation of the Five Centres is the transformed
consciousness, the personality originally found in the form of the
Commanding Self, when it has been through its refining process.

 The concentration upon certain colours helps to awaken them:
MIND is equated with yellow, SPIRIT with red; SECRET
(consciousness) with white; MYSTERIOUS with black and
DEEPLY HIDDEN with green.
 

We must always remember that this is descriptive, and that the
student has to go through with the experience of it. It is not enough
to memorize, as many people do, this kind of material, and imagine
that one knows something. It is harmful to experiment with these
centres.

 This imagining that one has knowledge because one has a
description of an instrument is common in all cultures. It is well
known in the teaching of Western-type knowledge in the East,
where people may take your word for things you want them to
work through.

      WHAT THE TEACHER KNOWS

 In a story about this, one Eastern student said to another:
 `I don't think that our new American geometry teacher knows
much.'
 `How come?' asks his friend.
 `Well, he said "The square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled
triangle is equal to the sum of the squares an the other two sides",
and I said "Yes". But he couldn't have been very sure of his facts, 
for he then said: "Now YOU prove it!" '

 Just as there are several forms of consciousness, which have to be 
awakened and experienced, to avoid distortions or failure, in a
certain manner, carefully researched, there are four types of
so-called miraculous happenings. Again, the Sufis - unlike other
extant schools - do not merely seek wonders or label them all as
significant. They work with them in accordance with certain scales
of value...

*************

            A FLOWERLESS GARDEN

These schemata, as I have said, part of an ongoing and complete
tradition, are of little value simply on the printed page, and even
less when merely adopted without the technical knowledge and
total situation necessary. But to record them and display some part
of the pattern is just about worthwhile. It certainly shows how
other systems look like partial derivations from these very
schemata. But looked at without activity one can say of them
something like that man said when he was shown a certain garden:

`Take away the flowers and design, and what have you got, after
all?' 

When there is a Sufi school, it has its own pace of travelling, and
its carefully-balanced character must be preserved. People always
want more for less, always seek stimulation from materials and
hardly ever think of the enormous amount of work which lies
behind many a successful human (and every single spiritual)
operation.

       GOING FASTER ...

I often think about a certain story, when I remember that the
Sufi activity must remain coherent in the sense of being one whole,
which you cannot desert, or simplify, without dismantling it. This   
is why, however much you might like an easier ride with this

subject, I can't give it to you. This story is about the man in a slow

train which had stopped, for the hundredth time, at a wayside

 station. He jumped out of his carriage and ran to the driver.

`Can't you go any faster?' he roared at him.

'Yes, Sir, I can certainly go faster - but I am not allowed to leave the train!' 

from A Perfumed Scorpion by Idries Shah (1978)