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Protecting Oneself from Undesirable Impressions

March 24, 2022
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by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan:You wish to call a halt to the stress and disarray of the rat race in which you are inevitably embroiled. You feel over stressed by vying with the Jones and wish to protect yourself from the ego trips of would-be friends. You seek a peaceful break from continuous activity, solace from pent-up emotions, freedom from the prison you may have built for yourself. You sit in as quiet a place as you can find. You sit down to meditate, seeking tranquility and composure.

Normally our thoughts are monitored by the need to take action. No sooner we suspend activity, our mind has difficulty organizing itself. This is precisely what we learn in meditation.

Notwithstanding, your mind is idling, apparently randomly, even turbulently, agitated by undisclosed emotions that evade scrutiny.

Practice

Notice that your thinking meanders in subliminal, imponderable and unsounded recesses called the unconscious only to surface sometimes by erupting into assessments of your problems that in the end prove unreliable. Observe that the, albeit unwieldy, outreach of our unconscious is awkwardly squeezed into the narrow purview of our personal bias.

Is it not surprising that Yoga devalidates that mode of thinking as misleading (maya)? These constructs of our commonplace mind cannot make sense of the wide context of what is implied behind what we try to explain. If we watch them carefully, we will realize that they are ambiguous, do not fit into a coherent pattern. Consequently our mind toggles between one way of looking at the problem then another, then perhaps still another. Hence the aimless erring of our thoughts when we try to make them orderly.

Practice

Notice how impressions (including the good news and lovely impressions) are imprinted on your mind. They take root in your psyche, become part of your being, sometimes leave a mark in your consciousness and might even die hard in your unconscious.

Observe how the thoughts of people sneak into your own thinking without your noticing the difference. As a first step, spot people’s thoughts confused with yours.

They can no longer distinguish between their own thoughts and feelings and those of someone else. But as soon as a man begins to say, “I think like this, but I do not know why,” or “I feel like this, but I do not want to feel so,” then he has gone down one step below the normal state of mind.

Now distinguish those impressions that are disturbing from those that are enriching.

How Can We Protect Ourselves from Undesirable Impressions?

Let us distinguish two steps:

1) Dismissing Undesirable Impressions as Alien by Affirming “Who I Am.”

Practice

In a first step as you turn within, notice whether what you had experienced when turned outside continues to live inside in your memory, inset in your psyche.

Instead of finding it within he always wants to find it without.

Observe that those impressions are not you, but ascertain that they exercise an impact on your personality. They are always there although they are mostly unnoticed. Therefore, in some manner, they are part of this ‘me’—lintermeshed with this ‘me’—although we ordinarily think that they are the object of our consciousness, the perceiving and conceiving subject. In meditation you can spot them.

We carry impressions with us, maybe throughout our lives, unless by the insight gained in meditation we are able to find them and correct them if they are flawed.

Each atom of this universe, conscious of its sickness, procures for itself from within or without a means for its restoration.

The criterion delineating how desirable impressions are selected is based upon whether they resonate with ‘who you are.’

Practice

You can mark the keynote of ‘who you are’ by asking yourself what are the values that you stand by which you preempt before other values.

It depends upon your discrimination whether to renounce things momentarily precious for everlasting things or everlasting things for things momentarily precious.

When man has to choose between his spiritual and his material profit, then he shows whether his treasure is on earth or in heaven.

The criterion defining the metaphoric sentinel in you is your sense of ‘me or not me’ (as the immune system in our body rejects a transplant that does not conform to our DNA). It is a strong sense of your identity, your values, your motivations that will help you reject any thought, impression or emotion that is incompatible or obstructive. Otherwise we suffer from an indigestion of impressions which we cannot deal with.

Practice

To get a better sense of who you are, observe when perceiving impressions from the physical or psychological environment whether you feel in resonance with them or whether they are not in keeping with what you value.

Completion by Discovering Affinity

There is a totally other dimension of who we are, of our identity, in addition to the personal, peri-personal (or cosmic), subliminal and transcendental dimensions of our identity. Actually, who we think we are is only half of our total being. Whether we know it or not (generally not) our complete person includes that elusive ‘other half.’ Our complete person is called a syzygy – two in one: animus, anima. Even the stars and the electrons exist as interdependent pairs.

Two is a part of one, growing out of one.

The other half is what is commonly called our twin soul; he or she may be known to the half we normally think we are, or we may never have met in this world, or he or she may not be incarnated. The encounter on earth (ever so rare as in the cases of Romeo and Juliet or Leila and Majnun or Abelard and Eloise) is of course dramatic and ecstatic for one’s soul and heart. Even body functions aroused are sublimated. Consequently, the search for the twin soul on earth or in the higher spheres.

Unfortunately in these and most cases the relationship with the twin soul does not fit into conventional boundaries and is condemned by conservatives and conformists.

Every channel it takes must necessarily be but a limited expression of it.

When shall the mocking world withhold its blame,
When shall men cease to darken thus my name,
Calling the love which is my pride, my shame?
The joy of love no heart can feel alone,
The fire of love at first unseen, unknown,
In flames of love from either side is blown.
O, Asif, tread thy pathway carefully
Across this difficult world; for canst thou see,
A further journey is awaiting thee. —Asif, Mir Mahbud Ali Khan

We may distinguish two prototypes of relationships: (i) where our characteristics differ and, ideally, complete each other; (ii) where we find ourselves in sync with a person similar to ourselves – this is affinity. Discovering oneself in ‘another oneself’ helps one to know oneself. That is why one is continually in search of oneself in a person who is better able to actualize who one is potentially than oneself. On the other hand, one is enriched by finding in a person different from oneself characteristics that one does not have, or has insufficiently. These are the forces that draw people together. There are, of course, degrees of affinity or completion, but this attractive force reaches its optimum point in the unique case of the twin soul.

In most cases people settle for a relationship (for convenience – or not so convenient) that satisfies perfunctory needs. But the more sensitive and idealistic a person becomes, the more crucial the need for affinity or completion through complementarity. It becomes desperate.

Completion Through ‘Other’

Practice

Notice that as you become more open to people, more tolerant, you will be able to ascribe some value to beings or things that at first seemed out of sync with your being. Normally to protect yourself you would try to reject those impressions that are not in harmony with your being precisely as one would reject as food the shell of a walnut or something too bitter to eat. However the more you are able to integrate impressions that are alien to your being, in an all-encompassing purview, the more cosmic you will become. These will enrich one’s being. Hazrat Inayat Khan distinguishes self-sufficiency from completion.

There are two aspects of fullness: completion and perfection. Every new experience, thought, imagination, principle, ideal, adds to one’s knowledge that makes man complete. At the same time, by trying to be self-sufficient within oneself, void of all things outside, perfection is attained.

That which is gathered from outside is a concretization of an inherent (proto-critic) knowledge that lies virtually in the subliminal depths of our psyche. For example, how do you know that a round table is round or an orange is spherical? Because roundness is implicit regardless of tables and a sphere is an innate notion irrespective of oranges or planets. By arousing these inherent notions, one discovers a bountiful underpinning of what we call reality.

Hazrat Inayat Khan points out that the actualization of the divine archetypes in the exemplars adds something to the state prior to existence.

The divine mind becomes completed after manifestation. The creator’s mind is made of His own creation. The experience of every soul becomes the experience of the divine mind.

However he points out that grasping the sense of archetypal principles accedes to a higher sense of meaningfulness.

At the same time, by trying to be self-sufficient within oneself, void of all things outside, perfection is attained.

The psychological function that fosters completion parallels the second physical immune system. For example one imbibes food that does not conform to one’s DNA. To do this, one needs to transmute the amino-acid chains to conform to one’s DNA.

2) How Does One Deal with the Disturbing Impressions?

An example is found in that our DNA genes evolve further to adapt to new infections. A storm or a psychological confrontation may clear a blocked situation. While at first disturbing, these impressions prove enriching if one practices mastery.

The entire system of the yogis is based upon making themselves acquainted with something their nature revolts against. The will can be strengthened by practicing it, by exerting it to overcome obstacles without and within, by acting contrary to our inclination, by holding impulses in check, not allowing them to go to the full length of their swing, by refraining from any action or expression to which we may be inclined, by not allowing ourselves to be overcome by a fit of anger, of laughter, of tears, by extreme joy or sorrow or whatever mood, and either changing the emotion to its opposite, anger to mildness, laughter to sorrow, tears to joy; by checking the emotion and effacing it, or by, while letting it have its course, yet holding it in our control.

The T-cells of our body destroy the anti-genes by absorbing them, then disintegrating them. How can undesirable thoughts be destroyed? Must this always be done by the person who created them?

Yes, it is the creator of the thought who must destroy it, and it is not in every person’s power to do it. Yet the mind which has reached mastery, which can create as it wishes, this same mind can destroy.

A man who is helpless before his own mind is helpless before everything in the world.

Those whose minds are working mechanically like a machine are just reflecting the activity of those around them.

The disturbing thoughts which crowd into the mind during concentration can only be dispersed by the power of the will; otherwise the mind will become occupied with agreeable or disagreeable impressions from the external world against our desire.

The purpose of life is to attain to mastery; this is the motive of the spirit, and it is through this motive at the back of it that the whole universe is created.

Practice

You will find that to control your thoughts you need to configure them in a meaningful, coherent, congruent way. This is similar to how one can train a horse or an elephant to obey better if they perceive a sense of orderliness. Keep training your will to control your thoughts to organize themselves in an orderly way. If your thoughts stray, bring them back just like you would restrain a horse from grazing grass on the side of the road.

One must develop that mental strength, that will-power which will keep all thoughts away which come into one’s mind during concentration and take one’s mind away from the object on which one focuses it.

And therefore the great mastery is to stand before one’s own mind and make it think what one wishes it to think, and make it feel what one wishes it to feel.

Observe that your motivation about being creative of your personality will confer a definite orientation to your thoughts thereby strengthening your concentration. Concentrate on a thought that is meaningful to your unfoldment; you will notice that this will dismiss thoughts that detract one from one’s objective.

Hazrat Inayat Khan draws our attention to the fact that we are endowed with the divine power. It is buried in our free will and can be aroused by discovering our divine inheritance.

Realize that you have a power which is greater than any other and that power is your will.

It is this spark which may be called the divine heritage of man, in which he sees the divine power of God, the soul of man.

The soul has in it a potentiality, a creative power as its divine heritage.

The immense power that the soul-magnetism gives shows that it is divine magnetism.

On coming to earth, man, who is the instrument of God, loses connection with that divine power whose instrument he is, thus keeping not only himself but even God from helping His will to be done.

Delegating the Divine Will

Hazrat Inayat Khan is saying that divine will is delegated by discovering in our identity our divine inheritance. One may ask: how does this tally with his statement:

The soul is God but man has a mind and body of his own.

Hazrat Inayat Khan sees how the divine will and human will are connected.

Now coming to the question of the will of man as opposed to the will of God: which is which? We understand the difference when we perceive that the nature of willpower differs only according to whether it exists in its fullness, or whether it is limited. The willpower in its fullness is divine power; the will power in its limited state is the individual will.

It is not a human power, it is a divine power in man.

We each have our free will; and that free will gives us the power to work to some extent within the activity of the whole.

What stands in our way is our identifying with our commonplace self-image that is incomplete and falls short of who we are.

Free will is the mighty power, the God power hidden in man, and it is ignorance which keeps man from his divine heritage. The spirit of limitation is always a hindrance to realizing the spirit of mastery and practicing it. Man is powerless in spite of the power which is hidden in him. The powerlessness, the experience of being powerless, is his ignorance of the power within him. One asks, can a limited man be conscious of perfection? The answer is that the limited man has limited himself; he is limited because he is conscious of his limitation. It is not his true self which is limited; what is limited is what he holds, not himself.

That a soul is born on earth helpless, and out of this helplessness it grows and then learns to help itself.

Practice

Accounting for your awareness of your divine inheritance funneled into your individual uniqueness, while representing the divine will as over arching your individual will, can you figure out what it would mean in your life to, as Hazrat Inayat Khan said, ‘work to some extent within the activity of the whole’?

Our ego obstructs us from delegating the divine will.

Now the question is, “How can one get in touch with that Almighty Power?” As long as one’s little personality stands before one, as long as one cannot get rid of it, as long as one’s own person and all that is connected with it interests one, one will always find limitations.

The sages in the East have, therefore, mastered concentration, that by its help they might be able to wipe off all that is undesirable, since it is human to err. But one arrives at this power by collecting all the good one can in the mind, so that evil may be naturally repulsed. By constantly doing so one acquires mastery.

All the things that are accomplished in this world are accomplished by the power of mind. It is not till a person has gained mastery over his mind, till he is above this activity, that he is a ruling power, a true person.

In order to stand firm against the disharmony that comes from without, one must first practice to stand firm against all that comes from within, from one’s own self.

By the gratification of the ego man falls from kingship into slavery, and in the end his own life becomes a burden to himself. And in order to gain his own kingdom he must destroy the illusion that in satisfying his ego he shows his power.

Man is inferior in his selfishness; when he rises above self, he is superior. Therefore the right to develop will power is the right of the superior man.

The Outcome

The divine manner becomes manifest through man. Where does this power come from? I would answer, “The Divine Spirit is hidden in the heart of man, and the more the heart is disclosed, the more the Divine Spirit finds the chance of rising to its fullness.”

When man arrives at this conviction that he himself and God are not two, and if God is the sun that his soul is the ray, and if God is the root that he is the fruit.

If he knew to what little extent he is free he would be frightened. But then there is one consolation, and that is that in man there is a spark somewhere hidden in his heart which alone can be called a source of free will. If this spark is tended a person has greater vitality, greater energy, greater power. All he thinks will come true, all he says will make an impression, all he does will have effect. What does a mystic do? He blows this spark in order to bring it to a flame till it comes to a blaze. This gives him the inspiration, the power which enables him to live in this world the life of free will.