Himayat Inayati is past International Head of the Sufi Healing Order, founder of The Raphaelite Work, and currently Head of Universal Awakening. This article, including Parts I and II, was originally published in The Raphaelite Reader, the newsletter of The Raphaelite Work.

You must overcome your ego.
The true ego is the ego of God.
The false ego is only false until it is realized.
Then it is the true ego.
~ Pir Vilayat Khan, June 2004

In Part I of this exploration I sourced Henry Corbin’s book, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, particularly the chapter titled “The Seven Prophets of Your Being” by Alaoddawleh Semnani. In this chapter Semnani considered the sacred pilgrimage through the psychosomatic metaphor of the chakras, each in alignment with a prophet, moving through a purgative/transformative process, starting with the qalb and finding the ultimate expression as True Ego, “the Mohammadan pearl”. He suggests we use a prophet as a metaphor for each chakra and then reflect on what the Quran says about that prophet as a metaphor for issues that need to be resolved in this alchemical process. This intrigues me, as the student’s primary practice in the Raphaelite Work is oriented around presence to the chakras and to the energy zones. Although we do not put emphasis on a specific systematic approach I must admit that I often find myself starting with the qalb and advancing from there. Additionally, although we do not avail ourselves of the rich and evocative “stories” or “dramas” outlined in the Quran, we can find such stories or dramas already implicit within the subtle field of the chakra as we are present to it. Nevertheless, a time may come when I may make the effort to study the Quranic prophetic stories as a means of more fully addressing the potentiality of egoic alchemy implicit in the chakra system. In the meantime, in this article I want to use the chakra system as a source to begin a discussion on the relationship between the historical self, spiritual realization, and the True Ego.

At first blush it seems fairly easy to identify the “historical self”. When speaking of oneself one can say it is I, who was born on such and such a date, to the family of, and given the name of. Additionally, I have had these experiences during my time here on the planet—which have formed many aspects of my sense of self, of my “identity”. However, one cannot say that all of one’s identity was formed through one’s experiences. Certainly there are genetic (both biological and psychic) propensities that informed and shaped my sense of self. Additionally, there is the synthetic interaction between various qualities of soul (being) and outer life that have had some part in the shaping of my sense of self.

Thus far the Raphaelite Work has emphasized the synthetic, adaptive and reactive structures, created by unconscious egoic drives (nafs al ammara) in their interactions with the outer environment, as the aspects of historical self to be transformed through the practice of presence. This has been so for many obvious reasons. First, it is relatively easy to find these structures. They are places of non-allowance, of ever greater rigidity. They are highly reactive, defense-oriented, and very unconscious in their dynamics. They are painful to others and to us. Experience has shown us that through awareness, presence, allowance, and understanding these structures can soften and even open to more subtle, life-giving, and spacious structures which we experience as aspects of being, or qualities of soul. But all of our “historical self” is fair game for our work with presence because all of it is nothing more than physiological, emotional, mental, moral and spiritual synthesis and habituation. We can say that our historical self in its totality is nothing more than form held together by memory and its habituations.

The mystic would generally question the legitimacy of memory as an expression of truth. This is because, although memory can be quite informative, orienting, and enriching, one has to note that it can at times be highly creative, selective, and not really an expression of truth. At those moments it is essentially a fiction, albeit at times highly comforting and reassuring. There are aspects of memory that are obviously rooted in truth. These are the most poignantly precious. Nevertheless, even these memories need to be updated, to be rooted in an ever fresher status of reality. For example, the memory of the birth of our thirty-year-old child can be very rich and full of mysteriously loving texture but it certainly does not come anywhere close to the present reality of our child, and to try to force our child back into the earlier mold certainly would create a caricature of the truth. Our historical identity is in some ways like the memory of our child. If we try to keep the form it has developed over time, it becomes a caricature. In fact, Ibn al Arabi noted that we are constantly extinguished and then re-created afresh—placed in an ever clearer, ever richer ecology of being. This we do not realize, as he pointed out, because we are in the prison of time and space, in the prison of our historical identity, in its web of conceit and memory. Ibn al Arabi gives us a clue, a key to unlock the prison’s doors. He called it “the instant”. As he said, we are extinguished and recreated in each instant. When we are present to the instant we are neither caught in the ongoing process of affirming our memory nor in the equally alluring and in some ways laughable process of anticipating the future.

In our work with the chakras and energy zones we can get a glimpse of how the dynamics of this process operate. Generally people are not aware of their chakras. When we breathe on them and orient our consciousness toward them we can become aware of them. When we stay present to them and allow them to respond to our presence then they inform (illumine) us. And the information they transmit is always situated in the instant, in present time. It is neither a memory, nor is it anticipation of the future. It simply is what it is. Obviously, as we repeat our practices of presence to the chakras, or the energy zones, we do bring with us memories from earlier encounters. And, based on past experiences, we might even anticipate what might happen as we stay present. But the central practice is always to let go of our memory in relation to the chakra and not to anticipate, but rather simply to allow the present moment to inform us and allow the future to greet us shaped afresh in each succeeding instant. This can bring up traumatic memories, spontaneously unleashing reactive structures, which do need to be attended to through presence as well.

But presence to the chakras can also lead us into the inner development of space, somatic and boundless, as the structures implicit in the chakra release, soften, and open. And our experience at these moments has been that we might next encounter an essential state, a quality of our soul. We may (or may not) be ready to be aware, present to and allowing of this quality. I have seen times when it appears that the very structure which appears to be defending the psyche from outer forces is simultaneously defending it from inner forces as well. I have observed at times that although there can be a highly romantic concept of the process of transformation of the ego, or of spiritual realization (witnessing, allowing, understanding the manifestation(s) of one’s soul), this can be very hard work—filled with fear, non-allowance, and intense subconscious, or even conscious, negotiating. In my experience this work is so difficult that it almost always demands the assistance from someone with spiritual realization and experience with our process.

Spiritual realization is one of those big phrases we often use with the implicit assumption that everyone knows what it means. I imagine that it does mean different things to different esoteric schools and many different things to many different people. When I say “spiritual realization” I mean that a person has become aware of some quality or qualities of her or his soul and has consciously begun to support those qualities manifesting ever more fully throughout the various domains, and behaviors within those domains, of his or her everyday life—this leading to greater self understanding or “self realization”. For me, it is important that those from whom we seek help in our personal process work have spiritual realization. First, it is likely that such a person’s being will both activate and support the manifestation of soul qualities within the one seeking help. Generally the activation is done spontaneously and unconsciously. The more developed quality in one person evokes the quality in the other (“like speaks to like” - Hermes) through resonance. The realized person’s understanding of the quality and of its operative dynamics is useful in orienting and facilitating. However, not everyone with spiritual realization has experience in our process. Therein lies a rub! Equally true, not everyone with experience in our process has a depth of spiritual realization. So, given all the givens, we are looking for the optimal.

As we begin our work in spiritual realization it is good to consider developing our vocabulary for “soul qualities”. It is quite usual for people to consider the soul as so abstract that it is related to as essentially something other than self, the way we normally define self (i.e. the historical self). It is quite poignant to listen to people describe soul qualities almost in the third person, as an “it” being done to them, or being experienced by them but seldom described in the first person as a simple statement of being. This is particularly poignant when we see how easy and customary it is for those same people to talk about negative or reactive states in the first person. I suggest using the "language of being" in the creation of a vocabulary of the soul. Being is direct perception, in the first person. Being is always discovered in the instant. But once the quality is witnessed, one can observe it (in its presence or its absence) develop operatively (as aspects) throughout the domains of one’s life and behavior. Through such observation one gains an ever deeper realization of the quality and an ever clearer appreciation (i.e., understanding) of its operation and fulfillment within life. Equally, one can observe the interplay between the highly reactive, unconscious, and defense-oriented structures within the historical self and the purely active, ever more conscious, and creativity-oriented structures of our soul’s qualities. Over time we understand this interplay as fundamental to the integration of the soul with the historical self.

What is gained through the historical self? In Sufism there are two basic tendencies relating to this question. Generally, in the Arabic countries of North Africa and the Middle East the emphasis is on integration. In the Sufis influenced by India, there is more of a tendency toward transcendence. This can be observed in the two basic typologies of the teacher in Sufism. In North Africa and the Middle East the teacher is treated by the students with love and respect (adab) but he or she takes on the outer garb of the average citizen of the culture. The Sufi Pirs from India are also treated with love and respect, but there may at times also be a sense of awe, of otherworldliness, resembling in some ways the attitude that yogic or Buddhist students in India have toward the guru, who lives in a world more transcendent than the average citizen. In our work we are more oriented to the former tendency. We are looking for the soul to incarnate, manifest, and operate as fully as possible in everyday life. The historical ego is eventually matured into the true ego—as the active, subtle, and transparent qualities of the soul begin to spontaneously assume a more operative ego dynamic within the various domains of human life and behavior. Yet, we can also see the historical self as the shell, or the scaffolding, which foundationally (in)forms the soul in this operation.

[Return to Part I]