Relative Perfection and the unseen Light

Adnan Al-Adnani
Luton Hoo, July 2009

With the rise of self awareness or self consciousness, human beings have sought to
discover the mystery of the human condition and the truth of there being, and expressed
there findings in multiple of worldviews throughout time. The east focused on the inner
realities, nature of the mind and the west the outer realities, nature of existence. In
essence both were the seeking the absolute truth.

Is there such a thing as absolute objective truth or is everything relative depending on

point of view. Is there such a thing as perfection and how do/can we know?

All the great civilizations have embraced and reflected the 'science', or level of
consciousness of their day. This is because one central motivating force behind any
perception is the attempt to form a coherent picture of the world and one's own place
within it.
The ancient Greeks, who were obsessed with the natural forces – winds, storms,
earthquakes, etc. and with human impotence in the face of them (fate), conceived of their
gods as superior human-like embodiments of these forces and of themselves as the
playthings of the gods. The challenge was to win them over or to outsmart them.
The 'science' of the east was a science of consciousness, a science of states of
awareness. They were concerned with how to see through their illusions, how to control
them. They thus conceived of the universe as something like the all-embracing ground
state of consciousness, a consciousness from which human consciousness had become
split off. The challenge was to return to the ground state, to achieve union with it and thus
to achieve timeless awareness.

It is not the statement of the outer object expressed, but the depth of the subject
expressing it, that defines the truth of a worldview.

For example anyone can claim that all life is one, but that differs according to what level of
consciousness he is speaking from – physical, mental/rational, and spiritual.
َ
ٍ ‫فطُو‬
‫ر‬ ُ ‫من‬ ْ ‫ه‬
ِ ‫ل تََرى‬ َ َ ‫ع الْب‬
َ ‫صَر‬ ِ ‫ج‬ َ ‫ت‬
ِ ‫فاْر‬ ٍ ‫و‬ َ َ ‫من ت‬
ُ ‫فا‬ ِ ‫ن‬
ِ ‫م‬
َ ‫ح‬ ِ ْ ‫خل‬
ْ ‫ق الَّر‬ َ ‫في‬ َّ ‫قا‬
ِ ‫ما تََرى‬ ً ‫ت طِبَا‬
ٍ ‫وا‬
َ ‫ما‬
َ ‫س‬
َ ‫ع‬
َ ْ ‫سب‬ َ َ ‫خل‬
َ ‫ق‬ ِ ّ ‫ال‬
َ ‫ذي‬

ً ِ ‫خا‬
‫سيٌر‬
ِ ‫ح‬
َ ‫و‬
َ ‫ه‬
ُ ‫و‬
َ ‫سأ‬ َ َ ‫ك الْب‬
َ ‫صُر‬ َ ْ ‫ب إِلَي‬ َ ‫ن يَن‬
ْ ِ ‫قل‬ َ َ ‫ع الْب‬
ِ ْ ‫صَر كََّرتَي‬ ِ ‫ج‬ َّ ُ ‫ث‬
ِ ‫م اْر‬

[67:3] Who created seven heavens one upon another.

Thou seest not in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection.
[67:4] Return thy gaze; seest thou any fissure? Then return thy gaze again, and
again, and thy gaze comes back to thee dazzled, aweary.

With which eye thou seest; Eye of the body, Eye of the mind, Eye of the Heart?

Eye of the Body: ego point of view – my desires, my beliefs, separate independent will, self
assertion, struggle to survive and win, life about having more and more. Truth is exclusive.

Eye of the mind: rational point view – begins with ability to take the role of the 'other',
mutual understanding of outer conditions and inner levels of consciousness, compromise,
fairness, balance, more is not necessarily better. Highest is considering all points of view,
perspectives of all living beings and the environment. Extreme rationality denies deeper
meanings, and that all life is merely relative points of view, and rational science is the only
way to know about reality, no absolute truth.

Eye of the Heart: soul consciousness – realisation that there is no 'otherness', all is
manifestations of divine attributes and actions on the mirror of relative existence. Service
for the part is serving the whole. All emerge from the glory of oneness, wherever you turn
there is the face of God. Perfection upon perfection transcending all limited points of view
without denying the lower levels of consciousness as vehicles to manifest the appropriate
actions according to time and space.

Yesterday at dawn,
my friend said, How long
will this unconsciousness go on?

You fill yourself with

the sharp pain of love,
rather than it’s fulfillment.

I said, “But I can’t get to you!

You are the whole dark night,
and I am a single candle.

My life is upside down

because of you!”

The friend replied, I am

your deepest being.

Quit talking about wanting me!

I said, “Then what is this
restlessness?”

The friend: Does a drop

stay still in the ocean?

Move with the entirety,

and with the tiniest particular.

Be the moisture in an oyster

that helps to form one pearl.

- Rumi

Kosmos

In this vast web of life it is necessary to have a map to navigate through the lower reality of
time and space, and also to ascend to the higher levels of consciousness to the source
beyond all temporal realities.
Framework, a map of the totality of the human experience in its being and becoming.
Individual inner and outer, and the collective inner and outer consciousnesses.

In the simplest understanding, this self anatomy is composed of three fundamental

dimensions — which can be defined as "gross, subtle, and essence", or body, mind and
soul/spirit.

The gross (or outer) dimension corresponds to the physical level of experience and the
waking state. The subtle (or inner) dimension includes everything to do with mind,
emotion, including the domain of dreaming and psychic experience, as well as the range
of supernormal experience that is commonly called "mystical".

The essence or soul dimension refers to the depth where the "I"-"other" sense originates,
thereby "creating", or generating, the worlds of subtle and gross experience that extend
from that root presumption of separate "identity". This essentially is not an experience but
the witness of all experiences that come and go but the sense of 'I am' is always the same.

Tools of conditioned consciousness – means of growth

Outer senses: energy fluctuation sensors

Vision: electromagnetic sensors in the optical region of the spetrum
Hearing: air molecules vibrations sensors
Smell: chemical molecule receptors
Touch: electric field strength sense
Taste: chemical molecule receptors

Inner Senses Dynamics

Common Sense: unifying outer senses into one unified whole, through dual operating
modes - time-space(size, direction, near/far, duration, location) and vibration frequency
(colour, tone, heat,smell) modes.
All our technological advances aim to extend the range of these to modes of sensing the
space-time ( telescope, microscope, communicate anytime anywhere), and vibration
(ultrasound, x-ray, MRI).
Memory: storage - gallery of past experiences.
Reflection: higher reasoning.
Imaginal (Khayal): creative imagination, conditioned objective structures,
differentiation/Integration
The act of imagination is the opening of the system so that it shows new connections.
Every act of imagination is the discovery of likenesses between two things which were
thought unlike. It is a unifying faculty that drove the evolution of science. All those who
imagine take parts of the universe which have not been connected hitherto and enlarge
the total connectivity of the universe by showing them to be connected.

Collective Khayal: social, ethnic, tribal, structures- objective reality, worldviews.

These worldviews present an array of the many ways that our experiences can be
organised and interpreted. All of our individual perceptions are, to some extent, embedded
in particular worldviews. Within those worldviews, we still possess abundant freedom of
choice; but worldviews generally constrain what we will even consider choosing.
Valuation (Wahm): literal arabic - illusiory, making a measurement/fix in context
Our sense of order is context related, reality is shaped by its implicit value system. We
usually perceive things selectively reflecting its values reinforcing the sense of identity by
eliminating perceptual elements that might threaten us (attraction/repulsion).
Collective wahm: culture, beliefs, habits, etc.
Inner senses/faculties are modes of conditioned consciousness. Prior to them is the
Adamic consciousness a state of un-manifested gatherdness without awareness of
separation. However there necessary for the descent or manifestation of the divine
attributes throughout all the levels of being, and also by there transformation is the path of
ascension to super-consciousness the return path to wholeness with full knowledge.

Differentiation and Integration

There cannot be wholeness, union or integration without separation or differentiation. The

Adamic consciousness had to descend, differentiate, levels of conditioned consciousness
in order to express/experience the divine attributes before integrating back to oneness,
soul consciousness with full discrimination, wisdom awareness.

The development of scientific knowledge in had to go through the process of

differentiation, reductionism, trying to find the root building blocks of life, before unifying
all the fields and forces into a single framework; although deficient by denying higher
levels of consciousness transcending the realm of time and space.

Our consciousnesses begin with the subtle division between the self and the outside
world. A process of analysis and synthesis that is making distinctions, which is a
separation of 'out there' from the 'in here'. Consciousness begins with the awareness of 'I
am'. That 'in here' experience is necessary before any real observation can take place.

The cosmology of being and becoming is a cycle Involution before evolution,

reduction before wholeness. This struggle often involves the confusion between
relative and absolute perfections. In our search for absolute perfection we give or
label ideas (wahm) that seem perfect for a certain time or place and try to fix them for
all time and all places thus elevating them to absolutes, which often results in getting
stuck in a regressive attitude that stifles the growth towards higher consciousness. At
the same time absolute divine qualities of truth and justice are regressed and
misused for selfish aims in the relative world.

Thus the breakthroughs of individuals or societies came with a quantum shift or

revolution against imagined absolutes and relegate them to there relative status, that
includes all forms of scientific or social worldviews. e.g. Newtonian to Einsteinian
worlds views or classic to quantum. Ethnocentric to soul-centric. Truth or Reality is a
matter of the absence of all contradictions, of every trace of conflict, opposition,
division, or desperate motivation within. In this State beyond all contradiction,
freedom and joy is realised, and is not dependent on any form, object, idea,
progress, or experience.

The subject yearns for and at the same time terrified of real transcendence,
because transcendence entails the 'death' of his isolated and separate self-
sense. The subject can find the prior Whole only be letting go of the boundary
 between subject and object, that is by dying to the exclusive subject. And
because he can't or won't let go of and die to his separate self, he cannot find
true and real transcendence, he cannot find the larger fulfilment as the Whole.
Holding on to himself, his subjectivity, he shuts out his soul, grasping only his
own ego, he denies the rest of the All – Ken Wilber

Identity

Identification with the body and mind creates a veil of concepts, images, words,
judgments, and definitions that block all true relationships. It comes between you and your
soul, between you and people, between you and nature. The veil of thoughts creates the
illusion of separation that leads to the loss of feeling oneness as self-evident reality. You
may believe it to be true, but no longer know it to be true. Only through direct experience it
becomes liberating.

What has traditionally been called "the ego" can be understood to be an activity. An
activity of self-contraction, a recoil in conscious awareness. From this ego-act stem
all our notions about reality.

We see an apparent world of separate beings and things from a point of awareness
that we call "I". This is the world we presume to live in, the world we think is real. But
it is real only from a limited "point of view". And it is not a "free" world. It is a world
fraught with the bondage of frenetic seeking — the never-ending search to overcome
the core ego-stress by endless accumulation of objects and experiences, that is our
fundamental (and self-created) suffering.

Self-understanding or realization is that direct seeing/witnessing of the fundamental

grasping activity that is the root suffering, ignorance, distraction, motivation, and
dilemma.

When that activity is most perfectly understood, then there is spontaneous and non-
conditional Realization of that which had previously been excluded from conscious
awareness, that which is always already present – the Soul.

There is no ownership in reality/truth. Ownership is a human convention, useful for

conducting basic functional affairs. The sense of self is strengthened by claiming
ownership of the body, thoughts, and states of mind.
Liberation is bringing this cycle of imagined ownership to an end. Then life can be
experienced directly without separation, fear, or lack. Each moment becomes an eternity.
The physical seen realm is a bounded island of energy made visible and distinct by the
selectivity and limitations of the outer senses and the conditioning of the inner senses. We
perceive the world as a collection of distinct material objects due to the way our senses
work. Once the illusory world is created, our consciousness gets trapped in it and this
limited world becomes our focus of interest. Most of our social, political and economic
institutions are built around control and manipulation of objects. Possession of objects is
our criterion of wealth. Fighting over control of the outer objective world is our criterion of
power.
Because the body/mind world is finite and relatively small, humans must compete fiercely
to acquire ownership of objects. This is primitive animal psychology operating in human
context.
A radical transformation is achieved when we begin to think in terms of relative realities
and learn to observe how energy ebbs and flows, outer and inner, how its imbalance
causes distress and dis-ease, how conflicts cause energy to be blocked, how harmony
causes it to flow freely. Then the body and mind, inner and outer senses/faculties become
the apparatus that enable us to evolve to higher levels of consciousness.
Spiritual practices aim at breaking the cycle if identification with the transient by invoking
the essential divine realities of the soul (dhikr) . Thus bringing the false identifications to
the foreground of awareness as objects to be witnessed until soul consciousness is
realised as our true identity, which was there all along energising and at the same time
veiled by the temporal manifested realities. The collective form is more powerful and
loosens the sense of separation and strengthens compassion of the original light and
oneness with all beings.
We can only know things by contrast, opposites; identification veils our essential authentic
self/soul from conditioned forms.

ِّ ُ ‫ه ع َلَى ك‬ َ َ ‫سهم حتَّى يتَبي َن لَهم أَن َّه ال ْحقُ أَول َم يك ْف برب‬ َ
41:53 ‫د‬ َ ٍ‫يء‬
ٌ ‫شهِي‬ َ ‫ل‬
ْ ‫ش‬ ُ َّ ‫ك أن‬ ِّ َ ِ ِ َ ْ َ ّ َ ُ ْ ُ َ َّ َ ِ ‫م آيَاتِنَا فِي اْلفَا‬
َ ْ ِ ِ ُ‫ق وَفِي أنف‬ ْ ِ‫سنُرِيه‬
َ
[41: 53] We shall show them Our signs on the horizons and in themselves, till it is
clear to them that He is the truth. Suffices it not as to thy Lord, that He is witness
over everything?

Witnessing: observing changing relative inner and outer forms – dis-identification from the
limited, conditioned – realisation of the source, light giving rise/energizing all forms.

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing

there is a field. I will meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

- Rumi