Sooner or later, there comes a point on the spiritual path at which we see, beyond any shadow of doubt, that our inmost consciousness, the light and the Divine are ‘not two’. This beautiful awakening is by no means final, however, but the beginning of what the Sufis call the ‘journey in God’.
With this great expansion of consciousness comes an increase in power. In fact, the powers and revelations that will awaken in you and be given to you by the Divine are so vast and astounding that they will derange you and destroy you if you do not remember at every moment what their Source is and if you do not continue to cultivate an ever-more-radical humility.
Where does your treasure lie?
A wonderful Sufi story helps to make us aware of what is now at stake.
There was an emperor who had a slave he loved passionately and who, he believed, loved him with his whole self. But the emperor wanted to be certain. So he filled ten rooms with heaps of every kind of treasure imaginable – rubies and emeralds, strands of large black pearls, chests full of the richest cloths and rarest, most marvellously illuminated manuscripts, large leather wallets with deeds in them to houses and country estates. When the rooms were full of this treasure, and the walls of the rooms seemed to glow and radiate in the radiance of so much glory, the emperor summoned everyone in his court and all his servants and slaves and said, ‘Today I am releasing you all from my service. You are at perfect liberty to take anything you want from any of the rooms before you.’ Even the chief vizier, normally a rather austere kind of man, started to dance a jig and to cram as many jewels and house deeds under his arms as he could.
The slave whom the emperor loved, however, did not move. He stayed standing where he was, silently, his face gazing at the emperor until all the treasure was gone and only he and the emperor were left in a desert of empty rooms. The emperor said quietly, ‘And you who have stayed and not sought for anything for yourself, what is it you want? You can have anything you want.’ The slave said nothing, and then the emperor almost shouted, ‘What is it you want? I order you to tell me!’ At last the slave said slowly, ‘I want you.’
The emperor embraced his slave passionately and held him to his breast a long time. Then he said, ‘Everything I am and have is now yours always.’
This wonderful and poignant story reveals that if you want the emperor’s ‘rubies and emeralds and strands of large black pearls’ – the wonder and dazzle of various mystical states and powers constantly infusing you – you cannot progress further on your spiritual journey. To do that, you have to stay by the emperor’s side ‘not seeking anything for yourself’ and to want the Divine above and beyond anything it can give you or do for you or in you.
Temptation
What happens then, at the end of this stage, is a temptation or series of temptations, followed by a long ordeal. Just as Jesus was tempted by the ‘devil’ in the desert to use all the immense, even miraculous, powers that illumination gave him in the service of fame or glory or the exploitation and domination of others, so every seeker who has attained this stage will also be tempted, and tempted finally and deeply, within the terms of his or her own temperament and gifts, to see if in the end what they want is not the truth of the Divine but their own flamboyant advancement in the eyes of the world.
The ferocity, danger, and extent [and often the subtlety] of this temptation is known in all the secret traditions. They know that the extraordinary power endowed by awareness of Divine union may, for instance, tempt you to mimic the Divine before others and to perform what others in lesser states of evolution will call ‘miracles’ but which are really displays of natural spiritual force. These occult powers are well known to include clairvoyance, telepathy, the ability to read others’ minds and transmit thoughts and inner messages and appear in others’ dreams.
If you choose to exercise these powers in any way for your own advantage, the traditions warn, you will join the ranks of the demonic, and through your perversion of the gifts of God will forfeit not only your spiritual development but also your soul.
It is fashionable in the New Age to dismiss altogether or greatly water down the power or reality of evil. This is a fatal mistake and one of the major reasons that so little authentic and transformatory spiritual progress is being made. In ultimate awareness and in the being of God, evil does not exist; in the dimension of earth life and in all but the final stages of the developing consciousness, the power of evil is horribly real and can wreak extreme and even fatal damage. Not to know this and keep it unwaveringly in mind as you go forward on the Path is to make yourself vulnerable to catastrophic forms of failure.
The higher you go on the Path, in fact, the farther and worse you can fall. Your only authentic safety as your inner powers and gnosis grow is to remain as self-aware, as humble, as awe-struck before the indescribable and boundless glory of God as possible, and as unimpressed as possible by all the new insights and revelations that are given you. As Rumi says:
Since intelligence only incites you to pride and vanity, become a fool, so your heart stays pure. Not a fool who wastes his life in playing the idiot, but a fool who is lost and astounded in Him.
Humility is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the Path. You can never be humble enough. Only God is humble enough. The more humble you become, the greater the divine transforming power that can be given to you. The more humbly you are willing to do whatever is asked of you, without asking for certainty or reward, the more can be done through you and by you by God.
Only increasingly divinized humble servants of love can be of any real use in the world now. Aspiring with all your heart and mind and body and soul to be one of them is the one authentic desire and the one true success.
Whatever happens to us and our world, love has already won in a dimension evil cannot understand or reach or defeat. To live in the joy of giving birth to divine truth and justice is to live on earth in that deathless reality. As Sheikh Ansari said:
O Lord, give me a heart I can pour out in thanksgiving. Give me a life so I can spend it working for the salvation of the world.
From The Direct Path, © Andrew Harvey 2000, published in the UK by Rider.
Photographs © Cygnus Books 25-May-2007
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