page 2 - climate change - Pir Zia Inayat-Khan

The other week we were talking about the sufi philosophy and art and when art goes to far from nature art can become degraded, really profane and degraded. Similarly science. When science is uprooted from nature, when science serves mechanistic ends that are devoid of the true understanding of the systemic thinking, the organicity of systems, than a more over devoid of spirit, when science is dispirit, desacralized, science goes in alarming directions. And all of this is the human psyche. Projecting its power without consciousness, without conscience. The sciences themselves, we learn from the tradition, are the legacies of the prophets, the ones who tapped in to the divine consciousness and brought a dispensation of spirit into the world, those are the ones who brought the sciences into the world. Sciences like meteorology or agriculture or masonry. These are all human activities that have their roots in revelation and sacred tradition. But when we try to separate science from the inner encounter with the holy mystery of life and moreover pursue a scientific paradigm that’s oblivious to the way the nature itself works on earth, the results are naturally going to be catastrophic. And that’s what we witness. And so that reckoning is on the way and that reflects at the social level, at the collective level. The nafs ul-lawwaamah , this ability to reflect on the consequences of our actions and way of life and to learn from that and to grow in a new direction. And at last this can lead to the nafs ul-mutmainnah , which is the self, which is at peace. And then that peace comes from knowing and living reciprocity, to be fine, ones self in the balance of everything. That means accepting death as well as birth. Accepting inhalation and exhalation. Breathing out everything. Giving as much as one takes. Be in reciprocal accord with the transaction of life throughout the earth, rather than taking and taking and taking. This is what breath teaches us. We practice conscious breathing. Breath all the way out, empty yourself, become totally void and than another breath comes in, that ebb and flow, that give and take. This is the systole and the asystole of the heart. Going to sleep at night and waking in the morning. These are all cycles of activity and repose, receiving and expressing, but one-sidedness of taking and not giving back, extracting more than can regenerate, these are all signs of the absence of that spiritual balance which ultimately is to be realized in the psyche it self and realized through an accord with the natural rhythms, with the music of the cosmos. Learn that music.

So trees can be our guides. The ancients of many lands saw the tree as a symbol of the world soul, the cosmic tree. Sayyid Muhammad Husayni Gisudaraz saw the tree as as a symbol of wujud , a pure being. We can see in the tree a clear illustration of our own spiritual anatomy. At the time when forests are being torn down, that enormous raid… to identify with trees, to enter into reciprocity with them through the breath, realizing that the trees breath out the oxygen that we breathe in and in turn imbibe carbon dioxide we are made aware of something that we are aware of more intrinsically if in the moment awakens we step out into the forest: that here are our terrestrial companions whose very anatomy illustrates our own spiritual physiology and can help reorient us to the cosmos. The cosmos from which we have become estranged. That reorientation comes from witnessing the roots of the trees sinking down into the earth and the branches of the trees reaching up toward the sky and between the straight line of the trunk. This symbolism is a perfect aide-memoire for activating the soshuna , the central channel of the settled body and the nadis , that spring from it.

In closing one's eyes, as I invite you to do now, you can feel the earth beneath you as a solid fact, the foundation of your life, always there underfoot, opaque and dense, fertile, deep down within which is that reality that a medeses call the central sun, the core of the earth from which earth's magnetism splays out. Root your feet in the ground, root your tailbone in the ground. And in this way entering the forest you are brought into accord with the forest flora. Beneath ground the roots of the trees spread out, overlap and surround themselves with fungi, mycelium. These fungal strands that weave webs starching out from the roots of the trees through which webs the trees communicates with one another, send food to one another, extract neutrals from the soil and feed the fungi with sugars. This web of interconnectedness beneath the forest floor, in the ancient forest and in all forests. Ancient forests which are falling at a spectacular rate, as these webs, underground webs are ripped up. Their endurance is symbiosis where it is preserved, where it is maintained, there is genetic diversity symbiosis, a community, a community of life. And in one´s own tailbone, there is the latifa qalbiya , there is the root center which corresponds to one’s physical nature, connected with other physical beings, embedded in the earth, made of clay, water, air. Thus, there is a symmetry between the sensation at the root of the spine, this rooted sense and the interconnected roots of the trees in the forest, merge deep in the earth, linked to one another.

If you rise higher you come to the belly, latifa nafsia , the belly center, just beneath the navel, which is associated with the nafs, the self, which can be the nafs ul-ammaarah, can be the aggressive selfish self or it can be a self that has ripened, that has mellowed, that is opened up. In the forest, from the roots trunks rise up. Here is a self. Each tree linked to the other trees but an entity unto itself, having its own central shaft, it’s own particular life, that only it can live, as each of us has. A life only we can live.

Then if you rise higher, you come to the chest. The center of the chest is the latifa siriya. One still hasn’t ascended all the way, below is the dark chthonic earth, above is the light of the sky. Here in the chest we have reached the understory of the forest, the dappled light in which saplings flourish. Animals leap from branch to branch in this middling zone between the density of the earth and the transparency of space, between the bright light and the moist dark fertile earth, this dappled world of contrasts. And all the meanings that this contrast reveal an unfolding narrative, the story of the forest.

But rise higher still, and you rise with the tallest trees of the forest. And rise up in to the canopy where the soaring trees reach their crests. These magnificent crescendos of vegetal life, reaching right up into the sky. Every leaf a vessel for sunlight, biding in the sunlight, rising up out of the forest toward the sky. And the branches and the leafs come near each other, but there is what is called crest shyness, they don’t quite merge, there is alway a little gap. Rather than merging into one another, they all simultaneously turn toward the same descending light, leaving just the necessary space between themselves. Here in the latifa khafiya , in the third eye, here is the canopy, that high green zone at the top of the forest, with monkeys and butterflies.

But if you would go even further you would reach the crown of the head, the fontanelle, the top of the body, evoking the emergent layer of the forest, above the canopy. Those are deciduous trees, that reach right up into the sky, as high as possible and hazard the elements. They are immersed into the most intense sunlight and swung this way and that way by the wind. The rain beats on them, but they have reached in to the intensest farthest dimension of life (interjection navi: arrived) They’ve arrived. It’s there that eagles roost. But those high crests remain rooted in the earth below, through the movement of sustenance through xylem and phloem of the trunk nutrients facilitated by the fungi are absorbed into the tree, nutrients from the soil and uplifted into the leafs and the light of the sky, the sunlight is drawn down in sugars that nourish the roots. This entire process illustrates, symbolizes the inner condition of our being. Rooted in the physical manifestation of matter, rooted in this tangible earth and at the same time in the upper most echelons of our being, drawing perpetual sustenance from the celestial light, from the emanation of the divine being.

Those who will repair the forests, those who will protect the lands, those who will green the earth will always be those whose roots go deep into the ground and whose crowns reach high into the sky. Those who know the material to be the manifestation of the spiritual and know our task, our mandate to be in service of God’s creation, the furtherance of this creation. And so the infants, the children and their children, so this might be their legacy that this may be what we practice, what we transmit, earth’s own wisdom known to the human being, walking in humility, seeing from the far past into the far future, guided by the revelation that the prophets have brought, faithful always to God. With this intention shall we close now with the prayer nayaz : Beloved lord, almighty God, through the rays of the sun, through the waves of the air, through the all-pervading life in space, purify and revivify me and I pray, heal my body heart and soul. Amin.

(transcription by Lejla Tasnim Rechsteiner)