The Fractal Holos of The Real

The Haqq and the Metamorphosis of Consciousness

2010-11-12T10:32:00.000-08:00

In the course of this essay I will make frequent references to Truth and Reality. In Arabic these two ideas come together in one word which is also a divine name or attribute: al-Haqq.

We created not the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them, save in truth (haqq). Surely the Hour is coming; so pardon thou, with a gracious pardon. (Quran 15:85)

Here the ‘truth’ is far more than the simple verification of a fact—it is the very ground of all worlds of being and the means through which they arise into existence, are disclosed and experienced. The Haqq encompasses the laws of physics and mathematical structure which are expressions of Itself indelibly stamped upon the nuts and bolts of creation. The Haqq also sustains the vast unseen mystery of consciousness, thought and mind, and its unique signature is to be found in each ‘cell’ of the inner worlds. Between ‘the heavens and the earth’ the Haqq is the ‘tissue’ which, like a central nervous system, connects the physical dimensions with the realm of Will, the pathways along which fire the explosions of ‘realization’ that drive the cosmic machine. All the way along it’s Haqq through Haqq to Haqq.

In our choice of language a preference will be made for al-Haqq—the True, the Real—over a more traditional discussion oriented around the word ‘God.’ The reason for this is the amount of excess baggage that has accumulated through the generations around this notion of ‘God.’ In English, ‘God’ is not a proper name but rather a concept, and conceptualization is not the way to approach the Real. By reaching out to the Quranic (and especially Sufi) understanding of al-Haqq, we engage one of the ‘names of God’ by which the truth is known for real. The names of God are not mere conventions or inventions of the human mind but are crystallizations of consciousness, resonance chambers wherein the vibrations of divine and cosmic intent sound out in all their harmonic complexity and fullness.

Specifically, our aim is to cast off the male gender-specific characterization of ‘God’ usually associated with the monotheistic narrative. The Haqq, true reality, is One—by definition it is a metaphysical unity bringing together all forms of opposition including, but not at all limited to, the male and the female genders. The hermeneutics here in effect will justly balance the relative truths of ‘dividuation’ and duality with the Haqq which is their source and ultimate end. There is no need to negate the more gender-specific views but simply to assign them their proper place in the encompassing holos of the Real. This approach of non-negation and holistic integration will be applied to every expression of the dividuated pairs of opposites which as a set represent the final threshold in our encounter with al-Haqq.

I would like to offer here one version of a story which could be titled ‘The Metamorphosis of Consciousness’ or ‘How We Got Here Now.’ Consciousness is defined as consciousness of something—that ‘something’ being something other than the one who is conscious of it. What I mean to illuminate is the presupposition of some ‘primordial’ duality allowing for the situation of ‘otherness’ to manifest which is the ground of possibility for all consciousness. This primordial duality is inherent in the originating creative act itself and so is a ‘permanent’ feature of any and all possible experienced worlds. Now a remnant of that duality has become the fundamental challenge for human life and consciousness to overcome in order to survive and proceed along the axis of cosmic ‘evolution.’ The image of metamorphosis perfectly expresses the storyline of reality’s coming-to-consciousness of itself. The ‘worm’ in this analogy is the pre-conscious quality of being which, according to its own inscrutable ways, spins this ‘cocoon’ we recognize as the world of spatio-temporal extension. It commits itself to a process of becoming, plunging its symbolic, physical essence into a phase of time and space which the Quran refers to as ‘a stated term,’ where and when the transformation between pre-consciousness and Real-consciousness takes place. Now, we must appreciate the extreme difficulty facing the nascent life-form as it contemplates an attempt to break free from the all-it-has-known cocoon as well as the inexorable push towards metamorphosic completion written into the ‘genetic code’ of the organism in question. The tension and anxiety presently surrounding human life on earth are an expression of this liminal moment in the metamorphosis of consciousness. We the people, as individual cells of the whole, participate in this process by engaging Reality and Truth through our understanding or lack thereof. The message is clear: either we ascend to the new creation as a new creature fashioned after a new pattern, or the chrysalis becomes our tomb and all the most-cherished hopes, dreams and desires of humanity are stillborn. The odds for success are in our favor when we consider the original impetus of the journey, and that is the seeds of Real-consciousness sown by an intention of the whole in the inner recesses of its True Being. For us, then, the actual boundaries of the spatio-temporal cocoon will be rent in the act of bringing forth the new life and consciousness. We should like to be knowing, willing, and loving participants in this transformational event.

We are talking about the metamorphosis from an earth-bound creature, stamped with the mark of humility and lowliness (‘animal nature’), to a heavenly being graced with the signature of beauty (‘angelic nature’) flying in the air of cosmic freedom. Human beings are the cells undergoing this transformation one-by-one, and our efforts can assist or impair the project of the whole. How, exactly, can we help this process along? Remember, we make up the interconnected tissue of an organ of perception and consciousness which is in the process of transfiguration-through-realization into a new life-form. Our task in this context is to be engaged in Reality knowing Itself through Truth. In each instance where a cell of the metamorphosing being of divine humanity is confronted with al-Haqq and a certain crystalization of consciousness occurs we shall observe a ‘moment of truth’ which is laid up like a stone in the temple of wholeness and realization. A critical number of cells attaining that Haqq-consciousness establishes the visibility and recognizability of this structure, the Temple, the new body of humanity. I assert here that we have indeed passed a threshold—that the new creature and the new creation are in our sights, and that the work-at-hand now involves a rush to completion amid the pure necessity of emergence.

There is a day and an hour encoded in the genetic warp and woof of this being, an appointed time which can be neither pushed back nor hurried. When the moment of eclosion arrives for the new life to appear it will burst forth in a matter of seconds leaving the torn shell that was the scene of its transmutation to return to ashes and dust. In our analogy, the cocoon which we shall leave to its decomposition is the entirety of the spatio-temporal world-system which for many cellular observers represents all-there-is. However, even as the individual cells within an organism undergoing metamorphosis can have no real perception of the ‘outside’ world, they—we—may have the awareness of being inextricably enmeshed in a much larger process of full-scale transformation. At the most basic level we have been entrusted to this great endeavor of being and consciousness: our survival and our salvation are contingent upon its success. What then, as this little story draws to a close, are we looking at? We began with al-Haqq, the Truly Real, hidden deep within the solitary essence of its own Being. An investment was made in a metamorphosic process: the Real determined a space and fixed a time wherein the creation would take place. As this cocoon which forms the housing for the stages of becoming begins to split apart we can start to see the lineaments of the emergent life-form. What we are looking at here is the Resurrection Body of the Divine Humanity, a wholeness of realization made possible and even inevitable by the investment of Truth in it and by the individual Haqq-ization of its constituent cellular members.

An important thing to recognize in this story is that the beginning and the end of it are outside the world-system of the larval enclosure that is space and time as we have hitherto experienced them. As a result, the awareness of origin and destination is severely limited for us as individual molecular entities. Only by identifying ourselves completely with the organismic whole can we begin to come into the real consciousness it has of Itself, which includes the motivation behind the undertaking, its end and meaning. Before moving on, let’s survey the ground we’ve covered so far. There are three salient points: First, the project is ultimately the work of al-Haqq. The purpose of this (old) creation is to provide the place and time for al-Haqq to encounter al-Haqq. Second, we the people are willing or unwilling agents in this divine drama, humanity being the locus of Truth’s realization. Third, the ‘universe’ of spatio-temporal extension, which we would naively believe to be all-there-is, is nothing but a very temporary shell wherein a metamorphosis occurs, and it will be molted like a snake’s old skin at the hour of new creation.

God created not the heavens and the earth, and what between them is save with al-Haqq and a stated term; yet most disbelieve in the encounter... (Quran 30:8)

Sufi Wine

2009-08-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

wine of course wants to flow
without a bound. and a glass?
that's only there for polite sipping.
we made attempts, playing nice;

but being inundated by such
an intoxicating torrent

as this--the Blood of Reality--

it's time to smash the glass

& get drunk for Real!

CEH: Creative Eschatological Hermeneutics

2009-08-29T15:10:00.000-07:00

Joyce's geometric depiction of ALP is found on p. 293 of Finnegans Wake.

The mode of this work is creative eschatological hermeneutics. Our project is creative in several senses. Perhaps the one which immediately comes to mind is the sense of ‘imaginative.’ Here, of course, ‘imaginative’ will take on the connotation of ‘unreal,’ and many no doubt will look upon this attempt as a philosophy of make-believe concocted by a zany pipe-dreamer: ‘He has, shall we say, a very ‘creative’ interpretation of history.’ Taking in this sense of the word for what it’s worth, let’s move a little deeper into the meaning here intended. This endeavor is creative and imaginative in a greater sense. It partakes not of the merely unreal but seeks rather, as any successful poem or work of art, to distill some kernel of truth from the raw material of its composition. In other words, by bringing together a diversity of ideas in a coherent and satisfying assemblage, my desire is to give life to a thought, sending it like a seed into the field of Mind with the prayer that it ‘be fruitful and multiply.’ Here, finally, we get to the fundamental tone I would like to sound in using the word ‘creative.’ It is an invocation of the Creative Spirit, the Creator. As will become clear, I do not conceive of this Creator as a being which, after an initial ‘Fiat,’ is entirely removed and separate from its creation. It is expressed in the Quran:

We indeed created man; and We know

what his soul whispers within him,

and We are nearer to him than the jugular vein. (50:15)

Our understanding here is that the Creator is the Most High, absolutely before and beyond all worlds yet embedded and encoded deep within space and time, matter and energy, and that the creative spirit in humanity partakes in this divine aspect. Ultimately there is a non-dual Reality which unifies every pair of opposites, and this is the true field of all ‘creativity.’ A passage from Finnegans Wake will illuminate the fullness of our semantic intention:

Creator he has created for his creatured ones a creation. White monothoid? Red theatrocrat? And all the pinkprophets cohalething? Very much so. (029:14)

Traditionally, eschatology is that brach of theology which deals with the so-called ‘last’ things (Greek eskhatos=last, furthest, remote). These are death, judgment, heaven and hell. Our eschatology will be distinguished from more traditional doctrines by two qualifications. First, having as our ground and our target the non-dual Reality we see that these ‘four last things’ share a quintessence. One of the ninety-nine names of God in Islam is al-Akhir, the Last. In the deepest sense then, there is only One Last Thing, and the last thing, simply by virtue of being ‘last,’ could not be other than one. The second and more radical shift in this formulation of eschatology, which is also a reflection of the essentially non-dual nature of the phenomena in question, is a consideration of both ‘ends’ of our life and time, namely birth and death, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Here we will see that, as with all the pairs of opposites, these two ‘ends’ become one as the Uroboric serpent of Time takes its tail in its mouth:

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. . . (Rev. 1:8)

The word hermeneutics comes from the Greek hermeneuein, ‘to interpret,’ and is ultimately derived from Hermes, the tutelary divinity of speech, writing and eloquence. The ancient ‘Hermetic Tradition’ is a fine example of the sort of esoteric philosophical lineage which constitutes the fertile ground wherein the present work finds its roots. Broadly speaking, hermeneutics is any coherent schema of interpretation, traditionally of scripture, although in postmodern thought it has also come to be applied to any text or even to experience itself. Here we will develop an encompassing interpretive framework admitting multiple layers of meaning and ‘truth’ into a manifold system of harmonic resonances which, when collapsed or ‘octave reduced,’ reveals its simplest form, the key to understanding the whole. The whole, in this case, is the cosmic sea of the universe-as-text. We will see plainly that this, the immediate felt experience of human life, demands an esoteric interpretation.

For the reader who is not musically literate, octave reduction is the process whereby all tones may be ‘reduced’ to the space of a single octave. The perfect analogy for our hermeneutics is the overtone series, that set of ‘partials’ or ‘harmonics’ which together constitute any sound. Without getting into the musical or mathematical details, we simply note that sound, particularly resonant sound, is heard as the combination of a ‘fundamental’ tone and the fractions or partials of that tone vibrating within it. In our metaphor, the harmonics that determine the qualities of a sound are like the hidden layers of signification and meaning, whereas the fundamental represents the literal, the exoteric and superficial 'given.' When we consider only the outer, fundamental note of any phenomenon, idea, or ‘text,’ we rob it of its truth, its essence. At the same time, if these 'partials' are amplified or separated from the whole, they produce a senseless dissonance. Only through a balance within the complete spectrum is a just harmony attained. In the same way, in a world of competing schemes of interpretation and understanding, we seek an encompassing view which brings together the multiplicity of phenomenon and ideas in a single holistic pattern of resonance.

This exercise in creative eschatological hermeneutics will necessarily invoke the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Ghost, one of Whose gifts is the interpretation of tongues. In this case the ‘tongues’ will be the Words of Creation, the utterance of which gives rise to the whole plenum of worlds, lives, and experiences. The Spirit is the animating force which binds the whole together, breathing its purpose through all, guiding the process of creation towards the realization of Oneness.

‘The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.’ (2 Cor. 3:6)

Welcome, Ramadan Karim!

2009-08-27T16:32:00.000-07:00

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

Ha Mim

By the Clear Book.
We have sent it down in a blessed night. . .

Nay, but they are in doubt, playing.
So be on the watch for a day when heaven shall bring

a manifest smoke. . .

(Quran, Surah 44: Smoke, Ayat 1-3, 10)

"Ramadan Karim"

The traditional Ramadan greeting translates as 'generous Ramadan.' I celebrate Ramadan and observe the fast as an expression of thanks to God for the Revelation of the Book. What is this Book (Arabic=kitab)? It is the Book of Life, the Text of Reality, 'a book written within and on the backside' (Apocalypse of John 5:1), 'a polyhedron of scripture' (Finnegans Wake, 107.08). In other words, the kitabullah (Book of God) encompasses the Quran, but is not limited to it. The Quran itself makes this clear in the opening verses (Arabic=ayat) of Surah 43, Ornaments:

By the Clear Book,
behold, We have made it an Arabic Quran;
haply you will understand;
and behold, it is in the Essence of the Book, with Us;
sublime indeed, wise.

The Arabic phrase Umm al-Kitab, translated above as 'Essence of the Book,' may be more literally rendered 'Mother of the Book.' The meaning is clear: the Arabic Quran is IN the Mother of the Book. That is the encompassing cosmic text: the All-Mother, the Womb of the Word. She has been chosen to receive the seed of Truth (al-Haqq), and to bring forth the fruits of Creation: an ever-unfolding fractal revelation. She is the Clear Book, the All-Encompassing Pre-Text; She is earthly and heavenly Nature, the field of Being; She is the spiritual body, the celestial earth, the 'blessed night,' and

in Her we read the writing on the wall of our womb-tomb.

The month of Ramadan, wherein the Quran
was sent down to be a guidance
to the people, and as clear signs
of the Guidance and the Salvation.
So let those of you, who are present at the month, fast it;

(Quran, Surah 2: The Cow, Ayah 185)

So Ramadan is like the womb of the Quran, and as a witness to its 'sending down' (Arabic=tanzil), I fast.

Harmonization of Scripture

2009-08-27T11:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a harmonization of scriptures from the Quran, the Gospel, and the Psalms. It is centered around the image of a seed, as in, ‘A sower went out to sow. . .’ (Luke 8:5) The Hebrew letter yod is in the middle of the page—it is the first letter in the ancient name of the Lord, YHWH, and represents the ‘seed’ of the sacred alphabet. Around it are the words, from the Quran 6:95: ‘It is God who splits the grain. . .’ (inna-llaha faaliqu-l-habb) The Arabic word for grain, habb, is from the same root as hubb, the word for love. God Most High has sown the seeds of A Love Supreme—His essence—in the field of creation, that is—in our hearts. God alone waters them all and brings them forth in due season, to the glory of God. As we learn from St. John Coltrane the Sound Baptist, ‘Love’ has its ‘Consequences.’ Jesus, with love in his heart for us, bore in his spiritual flesh the full consequences of God’s love, and ‘greater love hath no man.’ It was not Jesus’ idea, but: ‘It is God who splits the grain.’ God has shown us a great mystery: He it is who went into hiding, sowing the seeds of His essence in the dark matter of creation, in the hidden places of the earth, in the human heart. He it is who fell into the ground and died (John 12:24), in order to bring forth much fruit for us—through us, and in us—to the glory of God. ‘He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.’ (Psalms 126:6) Beloved, the Most High is coming—that is the only God—Who has already promised and warned the whole creation of that day. Finally, at the top and bottom of the page are the phrases ‘God loves,’ and ‘God loves not,’ (allahu yuhibb, allahu laa yuhibb) taken from many verses in the Quran. ‘God loves’ is at the top, while ‘God loves not’ is upside-down and underneath: to show that His love is prevalent over His anger. This is like the grain—the seed of Love—planted in the soil of our hearts and split by God. We are dealing with the consequences! (Psalms 51:17) Just as Jesus represents the ‘first fruit’ of the Resurrection—we must also come into a full awareness of the love of God. We find great joy in that God has been revealed to us as the gracious and merciful, all-compassionate Lord personified in Jesus Christ. St. John Coltrane said, ‘No road is an easy one, but they all go back to God.’ ALL PRAISE BE TO GOD!