In the last couple of weeks in his life with us, Pir Vilayat mostly slept or was quietly awake. He would respond to simple direct questions with a word or two at the most. However, eight days prior to his great transition Pir did utter three teaching sentences and I would like to share them with you. He said:

“You must overcome the ego.”
“The True Ego is the ego of God.”
“The false ego is only false until it is realized; then it is True.”

This parting gift from Pir Vilayat is an outline of a pivotal aspect of the Raphaelite Work. In the Raphaelite Work we have reframed this discussion by naming the “false ego” the “historical self” and the “True Ego” as “that identity which is rooted in a vaster ground of being”. Additionally we have reframed Pir Vilayat’s masterful dynamic of “overcome” as “mature”, a dynamic more consistent with the Raphaelite Work. Both overcoming and maturation are ways of working with ego offered by Hazrat Inayat Khan. The metaphor of maturation is offered by Murshid in his comparison of the false ego to a green grape and the transit into True Ego to the ripened grape that softens, falls from the vine, and eventually becomes wine and then aroma (The Sufi Message of Inayat Khan).

The Raphaelite Work defines the historical self as that adaptive identity which is developed through the process of human individuation as it is usually understood. This identity (ego) is created by psychic structures that are oriented around defense and compensation for felt insufficiency. Further, these structures are developed and maintained through the psychological process of splitting. As you know, the Raphaelite Work operatively defines this process of splitting as “not allowing.”

I mention above “human individuation as it is usually understood”, because I understand the normal definition of individuation of the human—which is: to become fully operationally vested as a singular entity capable of mature awareness, reflection and behavior—to be a truncated version of a natural process of human development. In its later stages, this natural process also supports the activation of being, and reaches its epiphany when the human experience touches upon the heart/mind of God and Divine Consciousness manifests within the context of human culture.

I have stated that the Raphaelite Work is in an embryonic condition, awaiting further refinement and expansion. Because our approach to ego maturation has been effective in beginning to clarify some of the more obvious areas of psycho-spiritual development to which the student needs to attend, we are now gaining a more comprehensive awareness and understanding of some of the more subtle operational pieces involved. For example, we now understand that we can have a very clear, very definite experience of our historical self/adaptive ego within the physical, mental, emotional and moral bodies. This experience is developed as we become aware of non-allowing, or rigidity, within any or all of these bodies. Furthermore we now understand that these reactive and compensatory structures not only defend us against perceived threats from the outer world but also against perceived threats from the inner world. These include defending us against outer structures which have been internalized (i.e. values, superego, etc.) and, perhaps even more surprising to us, defending us from our haqq (i.e., the truth of our being in any given moment) and its manifold manifestations of essential qualities. We have observed that it is not always easy to allow manifestations of our haqq a true place in our life. We have observed individuals struggling against allowing qualities of being an accommodation within the general structure of self identification. I have called this the Noah Principle: refusal of the Divine Gift.

Another area where our understanding has become more clarified addresses how we have understood the True Ego. On the one hand we have understood that as more space is developed within an aspect of the ego, the ego becomes suppler, more subtle, more transparent, more capable of allowing, and more understanding of essential qualities of being. On the other hand we have consistently oriented the student to become aware of that identity which can be discovered in the domain of the heart: that identity which, contrary to the historical identity, has no sense of either birth or death, that identity which is rooted in a vaster ground of being. And we have practiced operating within the world of time-space with eyes open, from the perspective of this identity. We have understood this experience of being in the boundless place of the heart and fully operating within the context of time-space continuum to be as Rumi noted “in the world but not of it.” Nevertheless, we have yet to clearly identify this sense of self as the True Ego. Nor have we carefully considered how this True Ego operates in either the outer or inner world.

In a chapter in his book The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism (pp. 121-144), Henry Corbin discusses in brief the teaching of a remarkable man, Alaodawleh Semnani (1336). There are many fascinating esoteric subjects lightly touched upon in this chapter, entitled “The Seven Prophets of Your Being”. The one that attends to the discussion in the Raphaelite Work about the transference from the historical ego to the True Ego is the "rare Mohammadan Pearl". Shaykh Semnani notes that the embryo of the True Ego is conceived in the qalb (left breast latifa), which he calls the Abraham of your being. This embryo then circulates through the solar plexus (Moses), the right breast (David), the third eye (Jesus), and then manifests with full maturation in the heart center behind the sternum as the rare Mohammadan Pearl, or the True Ego. Shaykh Semnani goes on to give us keys to interpreting the esoteric meaning of the Quran, particularly as it addresses this issue of ego development. For example, he connects the various lataif/prophetic aspects of being with the Quranic Suras that discuss specific prophets. Therefore, when Moses (solar plexus) is having a discussion with Pharoah (who represents the nafs al ammara) we are discussing a story around purification of will.

In Part II of this exploration, I will examine the relationship between the historical self, the True Ego, and spiritual realization.