Personality and Perfection

I once entertained the notion that those who are spiritually advanced must display a calm and pleasant personality. My early interest in Buddhism sustained this because Siddhartha Gautama, once He attained enlightenment, was in my understanding imperturbably calm in the face of all adversities and frustrations.

It was thanks to Meher Baba that I was disabused of this notion. As Baba explained:

In the evening some of the other mandali asked Baba whether the nature of a person changes after the divine experience of Realization. A long discussion ensued, and in the end the Master clarified the matter in relation to the personality of Hafiz:

Even after Realization, a man's nature is the same but in a different way. In the normal human state, his anger, his curses, his strong language and his mannerisms express themselves because of his ego. Where there is ego, there is no God; and where there is God, there is no ego. For this reason, the words and deeds of a Perfect One are egoless.

But his special nature and personality remain the same, even after Realization, and when expressed due to some mood, they are of the greatest benefit to others.

This is the meaning of Hafiz's couplet:

At one time I craved to see various things; 

But since I saw you, I no longer desire to see anything else!

This means that the nature to see is still there. Before, Hafiz craved to see a variety of different subjects; after the divine sight, he longed only to see God. It means: The desire of seeing remains the same but undergoes a change after becoming egoless.

Suppose a man is in the habit of getting angry and beating other people. His nature will remain the same even if he turns into a saint, but the change is beyond imagination. Behind his anger there is now no self-interest. It is simply an impulse with divinity behind it. It comes from the divine flow, and anyone who comes in contact with it is greatly benefited.

For us mere mortals however, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to bring the more ugly features of our personality under control. When we act out our anger, we disturb those around us and create more sanskaras for ourselves. At the same time, Baba is quick to point out that we shouldn't suppress or repress our anger but instead be quick to catch it before we act on it. If we can do this, we will see that the anger or other negative emotion is purely ego-driven and it will quickly dissipate.

If we try to repress our negative emotions and push them into our subconscious mind, they only gain more influence over us and strengthen what Jung called "The Shadow". Baba regarded hypocrisy as the worst of failings and emphasised that we must not pretend to be what we are not. This prohibition extends to the way we see ourselves. If we are troubled by anger, lust or jealousy, then we must acknowledge this and not pretend to be free of these negative emotions. The psychological tendency to suppression is encouraged if we have an idealised notion of what a spiritual person should be feeling. Suppression can lead to repression in which an individual genuinely believes that he or she is free of troubling emotions. This is no longer hypocrisy but delusion and this brings disaster in one form or another.

So neither suppression or repression is to be encouraged. Instead we should strive as far as possible not to act on our feelings of anger, lust, jealousy etc. Firstly the thought arises and then almost instantly an accompanying desire to give it expression arises. If we are quick enough, we can catch the thought, observe it and allow its energy to dissipate. Often we will not be quick enough and in that case the impulse to act can be suppressed while still holding the thought and its accompanying emotion in our consciousness. 

Baba would constantly goad his mandali into feeling angry or jealous by praising those who were undeserving of praise and criticising those who thought themselves deserving of praise. This served to grind down their egos. Situations in our own lives that arouse similar emotions can serve the same purpose. If someone insults us, our ego is quick to rise to our defence because that is its nature. When this happens, we simply need to observe this and recognise that the ego is simply doing its job. Human consciousness is capable of this objectivity whereas animal consciousness is not.

The following explanation by Baba in January of 1939 is instructive concerning the difference between a Perfect Master and a person of normal consciousness:

Dr. Deshmukh arrived from Nagpur to see Baba in Jabalpur. His mind was quite troubled and he told Baba that people were asking him why Baba was calling himself “God.” They were saying, “Isn’t this the expression of his ego? Isn’t he a supreme egotist?” Deshmukh did not know how to answer them. To pacify Deshmukh, Baba gave this explanation:

In all that a God-Realized soul or an ordinary man says or does, the “I” in him asserts itself. The difference between the two is that the “I” in the ordinary man is limited, whereas in the God-Realized being it is unlimited. If Deshmukh says, “I have written the book,” it is the limited “I” in Deshmukh asserting a certain job he has done. But when I say, “I am God,” it is the unlimited “I” asserting its universal aspect.

The limited “I” must go for the unlimited “I” to take its place. The limited “I” is like a seven-headed demon. The seven heads of lust, anger, greed, attachment, pride, jealousy and hatred must be killed so thoroughly that not even the slightest trace remains. When the false “I” is completely destroyed, another “I,” which is Real and Unlimited, takes its place.

Seeding the Future

In reference to the abundance of so-called saints and false gurus in the East, Baba once stopped the singing and commented: 

“They are like seashells scattered on the beach, their superfluous glitter attracting the loiterers on the beach, who pick them up and think they have gained the treasure of the sea. But it is a far cry from the ‘Pearl’ ensconced in the depths of the Ocean. And so it is that Hafiz says: 

“How foolish people are who compare pearls with seashells. 

The real pearl is here. Do not run after shells.” 

When Baba quoted Hafiz’s “the real pearl is here,” he pointed to himself.

A few times he explained a line or two from a ghazal of the poet Jigar: 

“When I dive into the ocean of love,

the waves of suffering embrace me.

That embrace is like the embrace of my mother.

They are chicken-hearted [coward] who seek the safety of the shores!”

Baba conveyed these observations in June of 1963 and it is reported in Lord Meher, American ed., Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 18, p. 6189.

In seeking the pearl in the depths of the Ocean however, many seekers (those who are not "chicken-hearted" and who have chosen not to "seek the safety of the shores") still become distracted by the sights they encounter. These seekers are the "masts" or God-intoxicated persons whose spiritual progress is arrested on one of the higher planes. As Meher Baba says (Lord Meher p. 2031):

How does it happen that some men and women become masts? 

There are those who have become masts whose minds have become unbalanced through unceasing dwelling upon thoughts of God, so that they neglect all normal human requirements. 

There are those whose minds have become unbalanced by sudden contact with a highly advanced spiritual being. 

There are those who have sought spiritual experience and have met a crisis from which they do not recover. 

What characterises all masts is their concentration upon the love of God.

What caught my attention recently was something Don Stevens said in a YouTube video that I was watching:

Baba told him that his work with masts was partly to prepare them for their next life in which their minds would not be unbalanced as they were in their current life. Instead, they would return and retain their spiritual status while being able to function in the world. This would provide a spiritual push to the world's inhabitants. In this way, Baba was seeding the future and ensuring the continued release of the spiritual energy after he was gone.

Figure 1

The major focus of the Don Steven's video was on "God Speaks", the book that Baba dictated and for which Don provided the introduction. Baba told him that this book had great spiritual energy and that anybody reading the book, whether they understand it fully or not, would benefit. Thus in another way, Baba was "seeding the future", not with returned masts but with the latent spiritual energy contained in the words of the book. These are words that Baba himself painstakingly selected to convey his explanation of the creation process. 

The book is freely available for download from the Internet and I'm sure that over the coming decades more and more people will download it or purchase a physical copy. I'm lucky to have a 1955 edition that came into my possession fortuitously in around 1981. The latent energy of the words in the book remained latent until their explosion in my consciousness in 1993. Figure 1 shows the book and the box that I now keep it in. Although I'm an enthusiastic reader of ebooks, I must say that I'm happy that I have a physical copy of "God Speaks". The book is the reason that I came to Baba in the first place. It was the seed that took twelve years to germinate in the stony ground of my arid consciousness.

Maybe a Year Without Hafiz

Well, I posted (link) recently about Ladinsky's book, A Year with Hafiz, and even posted (link) about his entry for November 20th. Reading further I came across this little bit of Islamophobia on his December 10th entry:

He was walking unnoticed past a mosque, and the shouts of God’s admirers happened to fill the air, saying, “Allah, Allah! Where are You? Reveal Thyself, Beautiful, Precious One.” 

 And the child in the womb of the Master could not remain silent, and sang back, in an astounding voice, 

“I Am Here! I Am Here—dear life!” 

The crowd in the mosque became frantic, and they picked up shoes, clubs and stones. You know what then happened—the story becomes grim. For most cannot bear the truth.

Reading on, it was this entry for December 14th that finally did me in:

Anyone you have made love with, it is because you were really looking for God.

If you have known hundreds of partners, God may not say this publicly, but I think He is proud of all your efforts. 

Don’t let the freedom in this truth get you in trouble. 

There are men out there who get lonely up in the hills and then take it out on their camels, sheep and goats. 

I think about the best I can do today along the lines of moral advice, in such a universe as we live, is to say, 

try to not hurt any living thing, ’cause your odds will then, probably, increase for happiness—and who doesn’t want some of that? 

I tend to side now with the critics who say that Ladinsky's poetry bears little semantic connection with Hafiz. I can't imagine a Perfect Master lauding promiscuity and tolerating bestiality. These imaginings have sprung from Ladinsky's mind and have little to do with spirituality. I'm afraid Ladinsky's poetry will not form part of my spiritual reading.

Figure 1

Ladinsky's father was Jewish and his mother Catholic but religion did not play an important role in his upbringing. Nonetheless, he was both circumcised and baptised. However, he seems to have inherited something of the "Jewish Revolutionary Spirit" from his father and has decided to "revolutionise" Hafiz to the dismay of many, myself included. I wonder what Meher Baba would have thought of Ladinsky's writings? I wonder what Baba Lovers think? I wonder what Francis Brabazon would have thought? Well, I know that I think he's too crass and crude.

I might be criticised for being too old and not open to new poetic approaches but Landinsky is a year older than me so it's just one old guy's reaction to another. My disappointment shouldn't put me off Hafiz. There are many other translations and interpretations of his work available. I should explore some of them. After all, Hafiz was Baba's favourite poet.

I have Hafez: Collected Poetical Works by Delphi Classics in my library so I should perhaps start with that, although I'm sure that there are many Internet sites that are suitable as well. Any Internet searches are bound to contain a lot of Ladinsky links so that's the only off-putting thing.

A Year with Hafiz: November 20th

Seeing that I discovered Ladinsky's A Year with Hafiz (read my previous post) on November 20th, I'll start with his entry for that day (I've preserved the original spacing):

NOVEMBER 20

ALL THE HEMISPHERES

Leave the familiar for a while. Let your senses and bodies stretch out

like a welcomed season onto meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the roof. Make a new watermark on your excitement and love.

Like a blooming night flower, bestow your vital fragrance of happiness and giving upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day. All the hemispheres in existence lie beside an equator in your soul.

Greet yourself in your thousand other forms as you mount the hidden tide and travel back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven are sitting around a campfire chatting, while

stitching themselves together into the great circle inside of you.

I'm reminded of Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road" as I read this. The pivotal phrase for me is "equator in your soul' which is echoed in the last line as "the great circle inside of you", with "great circle" being place in italics for emphasis. A great circle is a circle on the surface of sphere which lies in a plane passing through the sphere's centre. An equator typically refers to a great circle whose plane is perpendicular to the axis of rotation of a spinning sphere. This is illustrated nicely in Figure 1 that shows an equator and meridian as special types of great circles and where the hemispheres that are created are emphasised a well.

Figure 1

For a spinning sphere, it only the two hemispheres created by an equator that have centres of gravity that lie on the rotational axis. If sliced as shown, the two hemispheres created by the equator would continue to spin as before whereas those created by a meridian or any other great circle would fly off on opposite trajectories. The only poise or balance is to found on the equator where the hemispheres still exist but they are perfectly balanced.

It is a great metaphor for a Perfect Master, especially in light of the fact that a Sufi term for such a God-realised being is a Qutub, meaning literally an axis. To quote from Wikipedia:

Qutb, Qutub, Kutb, Kutub or Kotb (Arabic: قطب‎), means 'axis', 'pivot' or 'pole'. Qutb can refer to celestial movements and used as an astronomical term or a spiritual symbol. In Sufism, a Qutub is the perfect human being, al-Insān al-Kāmil (The Universal Man), who leads the saintly hierarchy. The Qutub is the Sufi spiritual leader that has a divine connection with God and passes knowledge on which makes him central to, or the axis of, Sufism, but he is unknown to the world. There are five Qutubs per era and they are infallible and trusted spiritual leaders. They are only revealed to a select group of mystics because there is a "human need for direct knowledge of God".

On the other hand, the hemispheres created by great circles other than an equator typify our lives before Realisation: 

All the hemispheres in existence lie beside an equator in your soul. 

In all these lives (the thousand other forms) the opposites are not in balance. It seems to me that Hafiz is exhorting us to step off the current great circle we are on (leave the familiar for a while) and for a while at least be bigger than we imagine ourselves to be:

Let your senses and bodies stretch out like a welcomed season onto meadows and shores and hills. Open up to the roof. Make a new watermark on your excitement and love ... change rooms in your mind for a day

All that has happened, all that is happening and all that will ever happened exist in a configuration beyond time. We move on our great circles and that movement we interpret as time passing. Our attention is constantly shifting from one point on the circle to the next and that shift in attention registers as time passing. All the hemispheres that we have created as we travel along our great circles, life after life, exist simultaneously.

All the hemispheres in heaven are sitting around a campfire chatting, while stitching themselves together into the great circle inside of you.

These are just some of the thoughts that arose from the November 20th entry and it is in no way an exhaustive analysis but it has served its purpose of focusing my attention on spiritual matters. It is spiritual exercise to borrow a phrase used by Saint Ignatius Loyola.

Image taken from here