(If you haven’t already read the previous post: Sufism, Time & The Mayan Calendar, you might want to read it first)
In all these years, we have never indulged in or even mentioned any doomsday scenarios, the coming of the “Mahdi,” or any speculation of the so-called end times. It has always seemed to us that these eschatological images and narrations were more spiritual and metaphoric than something to concern ourselves with in a literal way.
In the last few years, however, I have discovered from very interesting and significant areas of knowledge that complement our own tradition and illuminate our current situation. Seek ye knowledge even as far as (the Yucatan)…
One of these areas, for instance, is the fractal nature of time. This has nothing to do with predicting the future, but much to do with recognizing and understanding our experience of time. A fractal is a self-replicating pattern phenomenon that can be identified in many if not all levels of existence. The Mendlebrot series is one example, as is the golden mean proportion in nature. What if time also expresses itself in fractals. This is the basis of the so-called nine-underworlds (perhaps misleading term since it has little to do with ‘underworld” as commonly understood), which are eras of time that occur in a diminishing ratio of 1/20ths, each successive era being 1/20th the duration of the previous one, but all of them overlapping and concluding at the same time (2011-2012). Each era brings with it new forms and qualities and each has as much “information” as the previous era to add to the whole. The current era (“underworld”) began in January 1999 and seems to correspond to the most significant developments of our “technosphere” with all its effects upon our lives and awareness.
Another area is the monumental work of Jean Gebser, and his book, The Ever-Present Origin, which covers a vast panorama of time. He describes the twentieth century as the beginnings of a new understanding of time. Just as in the Renaissance people woke up to the possibility of individual perspective, and art reflected this with the introduction of perspective into what had been until that time a flat, two-dimensional world, in a similar way, humanity is waking up to a new relationship to time. He calls it “aperspectival.” Time now become more like an object we can circle around and less like a railway track we’re traveling on. This has been reflected in literature and the cinema for quite some time, and we generally have no problem understanding a story in which the elements are presented in other than the usual time sequence. We can begin with the end of a person’s life and then examine earlier parts of the story. Gebser describes various ages of human perception: the magical, the mythic, the egoic, and now something new in which dimensionalty is added to time. Mystics have been aware of this kind of time, but the general public has not. During our years of study of Rumi’s Mathnawi, we have learned to “unpack” the linear story by “putting on the table” all the themes of a particular section and reflecting on them in a “synoptic” way, i.e. viewing them from a more transcendent, timeless dimension. Gradually this has the effect of freeing the mind from strict linear thinking, and learning to hold more elements in one’s awareness. This synoptic, or aspersectival consciousness all seems to bring with it a kind of spiritual transparency in which the events of the story, i.e. the details of our everyday lives, are seen through and recognized as manifestations of a spiritual reality.
Sufism has always taught that the manifest world is the theater of manifestation of Divine Qualities and that the Divine is in some sense the Origin of all. This new state of consciousness allows the numinous, spiritual reality to illuminate, suffuse, and transform the meaning of everyday life. One of the central messages of the Qur’an is to recognize the Face of God everywhere, through signs, qualities, and above all through the ever-present workings of Rahmah, the awesomely Generous Mercy.
What is startling about the Mayan view of time is the way it describes the intensification of time/consciousness. This has less to do with some prophetic end time, and more to do with the actual intensification of human experience that we can observe. The implications of all of this are so big that it almost seems foolish to try to address them here, but I do not have time to write a whole book at the moment. Please forgive, therefore the necessarily sketchy presentation of certain ideas that deserve a more complete explanation.
First of all, we have to revise our notions that we live in an historical world where everything real is the result of specific choices and actions, where creatures evolve through random mutations, where everything is built up from the choices and actions of discrete beings acting in their own self-interest (or nor, as the case may be). Quantum science has changed all that. We are not the cause of ourselves, even if we have been granted a certain degree of free-will. We seem to be fulfilling a program of consciousness-development. We witness and recognize a degree of purposefulness in the unfolding of life and consciousness. We were not created as idle play.
Reality is an entangled, non-local, a-causal oneness that is more mind than stuff. Our subjective perception is part of a field of consciousness, not just an electro-chemical epiphenomenon of a body, and within this field of awareness we are bonded in a beautifully intricate Unity of Being.
The whole history of the universe seems to follow an unfolding pattern of the actualization of consciousness. Early in this story, despite the immensity of the physical processes, not much was happening in time. Not much change over billions of years—the slow formation of the elements within stars and the spreading out of physical matter, then slowly, simple celled organisms, the primates, then very quickly human beings, then over the last hundred thousand years in an ever increasing tempo: spoken language, written language, industrialization, the technosphere, and in just the last few years a degree of interconnectivity that could hardly be imagined even a few years ago. And we are dealing with the psyho-spiritual consequences of all this. Our souls are shaking, we are clutching for sanity, trying to keep abreast of a reality that is changing as never before.
A second aspect of the times we are living in is the 26,000 year cycle known as the precession of the equinoxes, which describes an alignment between our solar system and the center of the galaxy. Science has confirmed what has been long known in esoteric science, namely that everything in the galaxy is “synchronized” with the galactic center, from which issues emanations that affect everything from (possibly) the design of dna to the (verified) creation of stars.
About 25 years ago I was instructed (with Suleyman Dede’s permission and encouragement) for five years in a tradition from the Caucasus which greatly clarified and deepened my understanding of Islamic Sufism, even though it was not an explicitly Islamic teaching. My teacher would say that the oral transmission of this tradition was 26,000 years old, although he never explained the significance of the date.
Eventually, I discovered through my own researches that the first appearance of realistic human portraits appeared about 26,000 years ago. It could be concluded that humanity reached a certain level of self-awareness at that time and this self-awareness was expressed through the first realistic human image.
Some cosmological scientists assert that our solar system is also receiving a greater degree of these galactic emanations due to our passing through the thick disc (gravitational center) of the galaxy and because of the unprecedented weakening of earth’s magnetic field which would normally shield us from “cosmic rays” (actually protons), etc. In other words, this is a time of significant change for the solar system, as well.
Now whether or not the above information is totally agreed upon, verified, and expressed in the most exact scientific terminology, we can still observe what we see around us everyday.
Our immediate task is to keep our balance, or lose it and find some kind of meta-balance within the flux. The solution must be spiritual—a quality of being, presence, relationship to the Infinite. This Living Tradition that we participate in is capable of meeting the needs of this Time, because it is not merely an historical artifact. It is a tradition born of timelessness, spacelessness, non-dimensionality, non-existence. It is from that generous Source and guides us in what really matters. It’s time is and always has been now.
We will work with its principles in understanding ourselves, our relationship to time, our need for recognizing our interdependence, the cultivation of our inner capacities, and our possibilities of communion with Divine Being. In the next year we will be exploring: time as spiritual practice, interdependence, coherence both individual and collective, quantum reality, and more esoteric significances of our traditional practices.
There is an underlying rationale for my concern about Time and the times. I apologize if I have bewildered or overloaded you, but that is an experience that seems to be becoming more and more common these days.
Do not curse Time for God is Time. ~Hadith
In faith and under the Light of our Tradition, Salam,
Kabir
For further reading:
The Ever-Present Origin, Jean Gebser. A challenging, difficult, rewarding work that integrates philosophy, literature, aesthetics, and social science.
The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness. Carl Johan Calleman. A comprehensive view of the Mayan system and its possible implications and applications.
Time and The Technosphere, Jose Arguelles. The relationship of the Mayan matrix of time to the expanding technosphere.
Filed under: Spirit
Dear friends,
From time to time, we offer some reflections in the form of
this “Eye of the Heart.” Following the Prophetic dictum, “Lord, do not
make the dunya (world) my primary concern,” we have focused on the
timeless wisdom of our tradition, and yet, especially since early 2007
events in our outer world have impacted everyone’s lives, spiritually,
emotionally, and materially. If I choose to talk about the events and
conditions of our outer life I hope it is always from a perspective that
connects us with a wider, spiritual reality, and so, here goes . . .
I would like to share with you some reflections from my own research and
observations about the times we are passing through–times that are
energetically complex, exciting, and sometimes bewildering. Please take
these reflections in the spirit in which they’re offered: that of
inquiry, sharing, and trust in the ultimate Divine Order and Perfection
of All. The tradition of Sufism provides a matrix to hold different
visions . . . As the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, “Seek knowledge
even as far as China.”
In recent years there has been a growing awareness of the year 2012,
thought by some to be the end-date of the Mayan calendar, though Carl
Johan Calleman, who will be referred to below, believes the end date is
actually October 27th, 2011. 2012 has been sensationalized and
trivialized, misunderstood and/or cynically dismissed. I believe,
however, that the Mayan calendar, as it has been understood by Calleman
and Jose Arguelles, among others, describes an amazing phenomenon of
universal consciousness, an unfolding of increasingly more intense and
accelerated periods in which consciousness within the universe undergoes
something like quantum shifts. Let me try to briefly explain.
Picture all of time from the beginning of the physical universe until
October, 2011 as one span of time. The first period initiated by the big
bang was 16.4 billion years ago; the next period is 1/20th of that, 820
million years (the first signs of life), then another 1/20th, 41 million
years (the first primates), then 2 million years (the first humans),
then 102,000 years (spoken language), 5,125 (written language), 256
(industrialization), 12.8 (January 1999, the technosphere-internet,
email, etc.), 260 days (?). All of these reach their completion on
October 28th, 2011.
If Calleman’s understanding of the Mayan system is correct, each of
these time periods stack up on top of each other creating periods of
greater and greater psycho-spiritual intensity. Each of the nine
underworlds introduces a new quality or intensity of consciousness;
each, in some sense, has as much content (information) as each previous
period, though concentrated into a much shorter time span, and added to
the larger period. Does this ring true in your own experience?
We moved from Vermont to California exactly at the beginning of the
eighth underworld, January 1999, which was like jumping from the 19th
century into the 21st. Yet, even if we had stayed in Vermont we would
not have escaped the intensification of information, communication, and
psycho-spiritual transformation of the last 10 years. With or without
the Mayan calendar, it is obvious that time is not qualititatively the
same in each of these periods, even though a digital clock would say
that one hour today is quantitatively equal to one hour 16 billion years
ago. Consciousness in the universe is different than it was even just 10
years ago, and the shifts seem to occur more and more quickly. A day
today, in most people’s experience is not the same as a day, for
instance, twenty years ago. People say things like, “There are not
enough hours in the day.” Human knowledge and communication globally has
been increasing exponentially.
The time-spans described by the Mayans are divided into 13 parts each,
comprised of seven days and six nights in each period. Each Mayan day
and night has its own quality whether it lasts for hundreds of thousands
of years or a mere 20 solar days (as in the case of the final time-span
of 260 days). The night we are entering on November 8th 2009, the sixth
night of the penultimate period (1999-2011), which lasts until November
3rd, 2010-may be an especially complex and challenging period of time if
Calleman is correct. We shall see.
What we might expect in this next “Mayan night” is a further economic
downturn, the letting go of the idea that our economy will return to
“business as usual,” the collapse of many forms of dominance, the
collapse of illusory forms of money, and, hopefully, a new awareness of
human equality, solidarity, interdependence, and focus on real values.
Expect this next year to be very intense, requiring ever greater
remembrance, courage, trust, and inner tranquility-qualities which must
be sourced in our deepest connection to the Divine. This is where Sufism
comes in. All of our spiritual wisdom, discipline, and love must come
into play. Even if everything we have described so far is pure fantasy,
the qualities mentioned in the previous sentence are just as important.
If Calleman, Arguelles, and the Mayan Calendar actually do describe
something real, the need for exercising our spiritual capacities will be
even more dramatically and urgently called for.
It’s all good. And we are nothing if not Divine, Eternal Spirit. What is
most real is Love. Our tradition and its teaching are more than adequate
for whatever is coming to us-if we can awaken and sustain our dhikr
(remembrance), our iman (faith), our taqwa (conscience).
This next year may be marked by an interesting event around July 17-18,
2010, the “Cosmic Convergence”, which may signify an important breeze of
spiritual refreshment during these intense times. By chance, the second
Baraka Institute retreat has been scheduled at La Casa de Maria in Santa
Barbara for exactly that time (more information to come).
Here’s how Calleman describes it: Energetically speaking this time
period, July 17, 2010 to November 3, 2010, is created through the
overlap of the pre-Universal Underworld and the Galactic Underworld.**
What this revolutionary time period most likely is going to amount to is
a corresponding decrease of governmental and national authority (not
that of any particular government, but governmental authority as such,
something which humanity has inherited from the National Underworld). It
will seriously come into question what we need governments and national
borders for “when no soul shall have power (to do) aught for another.”
(Quran 82:17-19) My vision for the time period from the Cosmic
Convergence until the beginning of the seventh day of the Galactic
Underworld is thus a total overhaul of human civilization. This then
would also be a time to make choices of path individually.
One thing that is critically important is that we maintain the sacred
matrix of our spiritual practice, having a clear intention to be
faithful to our practice. We do see many people, especially outside our
community, being overwhelmed by time, by distractions, by confusion. We
need to be islands of calm and sanity at this time.
Looking beyond 2011 and the end of the Mayan calendar what kind of world
reality do we see? Let’s not imagine a cosmic catastrophe, or the end of
the world. Calleman describes a period when the dualities and polarities
that have characterized existence during the day and night fluctuations
will cease. Both Calleman and Arguelles (who has, in some sense,
embraced Islam and the Qur’an, while being focused on this Mayan
cosmology) refer to the Qur’anic description of the Day of Judgment, a
New Earth, a Resurrection (Qiyama). Other wise mentors have suggested to
us that we will enter a time when the relationship between thought and
manifestation will be virtually immediate, placing an even greater
responsibility upon each of us to be fastidious with every aspect of our
inner and outer lives. In terms of Quantum Physics, human consciousness
will have greater access to the non-dual, non-local oneness, a visible
marriage between heaven and earth, or, as our mentor Mawlana Asad Ali
has hinted over the years, it is time to establish The Civilization of
Paradise.
Within our own Threshold community it seems we have been witnessing an
intensification of our spiritual experience. It is fair to say, from the
feedback we get, that every event of the last few years, from the small,
intimate retreats we have had here at Casa Paloma, to the larger events
at Garrison, in London, and recently in association with the Baraka
Institute, each event has surpassed the one before it, shifts are being
experienced–new depths and realization, deeper affection and
friendship, an increasing, widening sense of community.
So. . . are we in a unique moment of human consciousness, or are we in
the same situation we have always been in, with the same need to
remember and trust in the Divine, with the same possibilities of
realizing the Truth within ourselves? I heard a beautiful old English
ballad this morning that talked about the bees gathering nectar, and I
just wanted to be in that timeless meadow where nature is in order,
where the human soul can take refuge. But, as we know, even the bees are
challenged these days; even grand nature cannot be taken for granted or
assumed as a constant. La illaha il Allah. There is really nothing to
absolutely hold on to but “the rope of God,” that we might assist more
and more fully in manifesting Paradise here, now.
Suppose October 2011, or December 2012 comes and goes without incident,
the economy recovers, and life seems to return to “business as usual.” I
propose that we are not off the hook. The mysterious journey of life
still requires that we live more and more fully in this Infinite Mystery
of Love, fulfilling all the possibilities for which the human heart and
soul were created.
We are grateful for all that our tradition provides us with as ways in
which to deepen our remembrance and guidance. Blessings upon our Pir
Mevlana, our Master Muhammad, and all the Messengers and Saints, and
thanks be to the Source of All, Infinitely Compassionate and Merciful.
In friendship,
Kabir
For more information on the 6th Night from Calleman:
http://www.calleman.com/content/articles/nov8_sixth_night.htm
