Expanding Consciousness
For most people, what they consider as themselves is really their ego. When they are annoyed it is because their ego is attacked. When they are pleased it is because their ego is satisfied, either through their base instincts (what Sufis call the ‘nafs’), or because it is ‘stroked’ in the form of praise or flattery.
Mysticism is about expanding the consciousness so that as a human being you operate on a level that is much deeper then merely the ego. There is a thread that at one end has the ego. It leads down through what psychologists call the subconscious, then through what Jung called the ‘collective subconscious’, the collective experiences of human beings, through a universal subconscious, which is shared by the animal kingdom, through a level that is shared by all things including so-called ‘inanimate’ objects, and into levels that most people are unable even to comprehend.
On his night journey, which was really and out-of-body experience, the prophet
Mohammed traveled from Mecca to Medina and then ascended on the winged horse
Buraq through the heavens. He was accompanied by the angel Gabriel until he
reached the lote tree. At that point Gabriel told Mohammed that he could not
proceed and Mohammed had to go on alone. The lote tree marked the end of the
world of forms. Beyond it is the world of forces where there is energy without
form. This is the reality behind what we call reality.
The possibility of this journey is within all of us. To do it we have to expand our consciousness so we can travel down this thread. A common technique used by spiritual teachers is to distance the individual from the nafs by depriving the student of basic human desires – food and sometimes water and sleep. The Islamic fast carried out in the month of Ramadan is designed to achieve this. Many people get grumpy when deprived of food and sleep. This is the ego being deprived, and by starving the ego it opens the possibility of the individual achieving a level of detachment. Many spiritual teachers deliberately do things to annoy, antagonise or otherwise upset the student. This is often done by putting the student in a situation where their worst traits come out. By bringing out their worst traits, the teacher allows the student the opportunity to see what they are really like, rather than how they see themselves, sometimes referred to as holding a mirror up to the student. Most students run away at that point and blame the teacher.
The so-called spiritual teachers who have a large following invariably tell their students what they want to hear. The real teachers tell the students what they need.
