There is a Love among siblings, one where their parents have departed from this world. The siblings begin to see one another slowly through the eyes of the love of their parents for their children. It is a subtle and beautifully almost invisible gift. Akin to seeing an empty chair in one moment and at the same time to sense a “presence,” a memory, a treasured word, a glance recalled.
Musa Askari
See also Prayer for my Parents ~ by Syed Hasan Askari
“For the Hereafter and for the Here and Now,” he said with a half formed tear in one eye residing at that threshold between the pupil and eyelid almost on the cusp of falling.
“For the Hereafter to honour my Imam. To cry for my Imam to remember the tragedy and the triumph of truth over injustice. To replenish my soul,” he continued.
“When my soul is called to account for my deeds, harsh words and intentions it may be able to bear witness there was something meaningful in my life. A golden thread of love in the mixture of all the weakness, pain, wanderings and failures.”
“And for the Here and Now also to honour my Imam,” he said.
“Anything else?” inquired his conscience.
He hesitated, took a deep breath and said in a whisper, “In the Here and Now to catch a glimpse of my Brother in majlis. To see him already at his place as I remove my shoes before entering the idara. To walk past him with a gesture of salam and be in his presence for an hour or two even in the midst of hundreds gathered for which I thank the Imam. A gift from The Unseen.”
The tear that was half formed now burst its banks and like a solitary river in the wilderness flowed down the plains of his cheek.
Conscience placed its hand upon his shoulder and spoke the words of Imam Hussain calling upon Allah on the tenth day of Muharram…
“O Allah, it is You in whom I trust amid all grief. You are my hope amid all violence. You are my trust and provision in everything that happens to me, no matter how much the heart may seem to weaken in it, trickery may seem to diminish my hope in it, and the enemy may seem to rejoice in it. It comes upon me through You and when I complain to You of it, it is because of my desire for You, You alone. You have comforted me in everything and have revealed its significance to me. You are the Master of all Grace, the Possessor of all goodness and the Ultimate Resort of all desire.” (The Book of Guidance, al-Mufid)
Water was forbidden at Karbala but tears were in abundance. A river of tears flows still. Each year replenished not by some glacier high in the mountains but my the simplicity of *faith. A mightier glacier.
* “While belief is a part of the cumulative tradition, faith is the personal immediate possession of each individual by which one relates to one’s life, to all those whom one encounters, faith being a vast world in which all can participate. Faith is thus an inner ability to relate and communicate without fear.” Professor Syed Hasan Askari
“I never understood why playing victim and at the same time emotionally oppressing other people was so attractive/addictive to humans,” said The Soul.
“I love it,” said The Nafs/Ego.
“Nafs is like a snail crawling upon concrete. Invisible from above but look closer it is making sure and steady progress all through one’s life. Train your eye to notice snails and slow moving “creatures” in oneself like nafs,” said The Soul.
By Musa Askari
“I never dream” he said to his Teacher
“You are living one now wide awake” she replied
“When I close my eyes and fall asleep, never” he said.
“You wish to see when asleep but not see when eyes are open?” replied the Teacher.
“If I have never seen a dream how can I know the difference between the two modes?” he pleaded.
“Tonight.” she answered.
As he drifted away and crossed the threshold of half consciousness to absence of self consciousness he saw something. He could reach out and touch it. An advancing Light signifying times to come enveloping him in ribbons of light. Colours as varied as Joseph’s Coat. The Master Dream Interpreter. Such calmness and peace. Soon he was swimming in waters warm and serene and tideless. Something was missing and he saw better due to its absence. Fear had abandoned him. Suddenly he realised this was the Form of Happiness itself. He had awakened within.
By Musa Askari
“The sphere of the sense, the Soul in its slumber; for all of the Soul that is in body is asleep and the true getting-up is not bodily but from body: in any movement that takes the body with it there is no more than a passage from sleep to sleep, from bed to bed; the veritable waking or rising is from corporeal things” Plotinus (The Impassivity of the Unembodied: The Enneads)
Something amazing happened this morning. Two incidents, decade apart. Two Grandmothers.
In all the trials of life and pain, doubt and heartache, love and forgiveness of each other how uplifting to ask for Gratitude to soar like an eagle above the earth. The earth where our troubles and joys are found but Gratitude takes one inner and higher. It is to the other world. Another world where equality and peace reign upon the earth or otherworldly, altogether spiritual, non-material.
Ask first that your Gratitude for all you have shines high like an eagle so that in comparison your troubles seem small and as such you are given great strength and confidence to face and inshallah overcome them by yourself or with the assistance of some anonymous solidarity.
Oh Allah, God of Abraham, Solomon, Moses, Mary, Jesus, Muhammad (peace be upon them All) improve my gratitude/shukar to You Alone. Not gratitude to my memories (good or ill) nor to my personal achievements, nor to wealth or poverty, nor to charity, nor to my sense of arrogant self-righteousness, even though I may feel justified. All Justice is Yours to dispense or otherwise.
Gratitude to You Alone oh Allah. All is from You.
Nothing is of my doing but by choosing of this or that thing, this or that emotion to dominate my mind and heart. Nothing is of my doing but what I choose and accountable for.
By Musa Askari
See also “O Light of Lights – A Prayer” and “A Strange Light” along with “Plotinus” on the site.
Introduction by Hasan Askari, published 1991
Poetry is still one of the dominant modes of reflection and self consciousness in the Orient. It has somehow survived amidst all the threats a growing industrial culture presents, particularly in its impersonalising effects. In spite of all the stark contrasts of poverty and wealth, power and powerlessness, poetry, whether it is traditional or modern, continues to impart to people’s minds and hearts a sense of idealism and warmth.
Ali Zahir (19th February 1947 – 16th March 2003) is from Hyderabad, one of the major cities in India, a meeting point of several streams of cultures, religions and languages. Formally ruled by a Muslim prince, and now a part of the Indian Republic, Hyderabad has gone through a series of political, economic and cultural transformations which have led to the breakdown of old values, both religious and humanitarian, giving way to imbalance between the personal and the collective dimensions of people’s lives. Though Hyderabad maintained for a considerable time a sense of communal harmony which was fast disappearing from the other parts of India, it has collapsed over the last two decades into periodic outbursts of inter-religious hatred and violence thus wrecking the eclectic foundations of its semi-feudal culture.
Writers have responded to the challenges of modern India in three distinct modes – traditionalist, marxist, and modernist. The traditionalist approach involves the continuation of the classical literary forms, nostalgia for the late mediaeval culture, and a formal adherence to the rules and forms of art and poetry. The Marxist or the progressive school which thrived from the middle forties to the late sixties rested on a confident ideological mood that art and literature should reflect the people’s struggle against capitalism and imperialism. The modernist approach came about as a reaction to both the traditionalist and the marxist perspectives and claims. It was a revolt against formalism, both of form and ideology. It reflected the cry of the lonely individual for identity, recognition and communication. All the three modes have been generally humanist an agnostic.
Ali Zahir’s poetry reflects the traditionalist respect for form and the modernists emphasis on subjectivity. Having experienced the changes his city has undergone over the recent decades and also having worked in Iran during the years preceding the revolution there, Ali Zahir could witness the extremes from spiritual vacuum to religious enthusiasm. He could see both outside and deep within himself an urgent need for a new religiosity or sensitivity to both the psychological and political challenges. His poetry is one of the modes in which he expresses this quest.
The search begins with perception and remembrance of the human situation, of that predicament that envelops all humanity. Ali Zahir takes notice of the tragedies of the communal riots right within his own city, and points to the irrelevance of all the instructions of philosophy and ideology.
At the edge of the death of each abstraction
There is the mother, sister, brother –
Such tangible realities
Noticing the failure of both secularism and religion to give to India any relief from poverty and exploitation, Ali Zahir says:
For the oppressed and poor and humble, philosophy is a mockery that drains their very life force.
In Tiananmen Square, he says:
O Lovers! O Philosophers!
Bear witness, witness the
Blood of Chinese youth.
However critical of all those abstractions which empty the nations of the resources of humanity, Ali Zahir is drawn to the metaphysical mystery at the heart of life’s expressions both in pain and creativity.
“What is all this, dream or reality?” he asks.
The mood of his beautiful poem, Seven Days, Seven Heavens, bears witness to his quest for harmony, for meaning, and for the unity of reality behind all number and image:
Seven days
Seven heavens unfurled
Seven colours
Seven sounds
Architects of harmony.
From chaos to order, from loss of meaning to recovery of purpose, there is both a lifelong striving and at times a sudden leap into the depths of one’s being.
Within the heart
A spring
And within the spring, a flame
And within this flame of elemental yearning
There is another flame
The one which we call life.
Life, that mysterious all-embracing joy overflowing every cup and even at times drowning in its ecstasy the cupbearers as well, is one unending call of love, both the caller and the called all at once. There is the hearth of all reality – there is the abode of meaning and purpose. Hence, Zahir so truthfully regards all life as continuous communication, and he wonders: “How many garments that one spark has changed?”
Drawn to the heart of his own mystery, rejoicing in the variety of colours that one colourless unity puts on, and waiting at sunrise to hear the call of the “white moments” inviting him to step inward and then look, Ali Zahir brings to us in his poetry a new sensitivity nurtured in pain, linked with loneliness – a new religiosity without forms and rituals but not without courage and responsibility for both our inner and outer transformation. Those who are looking for the unity of mind and heart will find in Zahir’s poetry one of its most moving examples from the Indian subcontinent.
Hasan Askari
See also Hasan Askari’s 1995 speech in Hyderabad on Spiritual Humanism at which Ali Zahir and Musa Askari were present…. Hasan Askari says… “On that morning I said to Ali Zahir well, still there is light in this country. And perhaps we should begin from here again. Because in Indian tradition no other culture today talks about the soul so clearly and so continuously as India does.”
Remembers God is One
Prays to only The One
Worships only The One
Knows “there are seven steps: Testimony(“tasdiq”)
Trust (“tawakkul”)
Patience (“sabr”)
Gratitude (“shukr”)
Remembrance (“zikr”)
Love (“hub”) and Gnosis (“irfan”)”
Reflects
Knows the difference between inner and outer
Free of collective identity hypnosis
Seeks knowledge
Loves wisdom
Knows it has a Soul, immaterial, immortal
Honours one another as Souls
Fears God Alone
Is in awe of beauty
Loves diversity
Speaks gently
Does not humiliate nor belittle
Forgives
Accepts forgiveness
Reconciles
Ready to offer comfort
Strives for justice
Longs for peace
Willing to make peace
Is at peace
Holds the lamp for others
Withdraws from the world daily
Emerges in to the world as peacemakers
Longs for silence to be Alone with The Alone
Acts without deliberation in the way of peace
Are conscious Beings
Are Soul Beings…
By Musa Askari
Few things are perhaps as dangerous for one’s mental and spiritual life and nor as devastatingly manipulative as a dysfunctional family.
Behind the facade of togetherness and respectability there can lie an ocean of challenges concerning mental health, power, control, money, status, gaslighting, hypocrisy, betrayal, anger, shame and sheer emptiness to name but a few.
There can be little room for self exploration, self-doubt, reflection, critique and questioning of established family narratives as tools for enhancing family harmony and in turn possibly *spiritual life.
The softer, intimate, delicate and vulnerable avenues to peace and understanding are at worst lost and at best never allowed to flourish in an un-spiritual family (sacred or secular). These ambiguous, seen falsely as non-traditional, approaches are perceived as threats to the orthodoxy of belonging to and promoting one’s superior “family, sect or clan”.
It is a cult-like mindset where introspection is heresy and seeking reconciliation with equality of being is blasphemous.
To this add possible unresolved, unspoken, ignored and suppressed psychological trauma and one can see we are on dangerous ground. Inner unholy ground where any inquisitive soul naively searching for truth, love and reconciliation through faltering spiritual vulnerability, finding none reciprocated, may innerly call upon the psalm, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
Furthermore, add also the desire for societal respectability, the golden ticket of high personal standing and one can conceive more clearly the horror of psychological “gods.”
A life of pious religious observance may become subservient to and disguise for domineering personas, to a biased discriminatory moral world view, and justification for attitudes about society and personal memories of suffering or triumph.
It is a reversal of universal transcending spiritual self-perception which should be subordinate to higher values of spiritual clarity, humility, universality, peace and secular common good.
Encase all of this in a deep desire within such un-spiritual families for controlling others, setting the narrative for others, laced with hardened divisive attitudes of superior victimhood status and it is clear to see the situation is treacherous.
It may go on for decades. One may be born into such families, marry into them and die having never escaped it because the protagonists can deploy self-righteous victimisation of self and others as a controlling mechanism with self-victimhood as a device to invoke sympathy from others, even their victims. Any resistance or requests for clarity can easily be manipulated to portray the victim as a villain or vice versa.
Personalities are deliberately and unconsciously moulded to manage, cope and ignore deep contradictions resulting from abusive behaviour under the worn out guise of “why don’t we all just get along?” Why not indeed? In practice this insincere question from the mouth of oppressors compensates as a token gesture for never truly having the desire to make positive changes, even minor changes that may enlarge the spectrum of empathy. Why not get along? Because not getting along is an addiction. It is power. Withholding reconciliation and all the peace it could bring is powerful and once tasted the allure is hypnotic. The mighty river of goodwill has been temporarily halted behind a dam built with stones of hatred and abuse.
As such, overtime, it becomes second nature, unconscious instinct, to deploy in public the conciliatory language of reasonableness and agreement while in private it is the language of reprimand and discord to silence others. Even the victims, for the sake of peace and acceptance, may play along with this double-life hypnosis hoping the olive branch of co-operation will be picked up.
What to speak of mental health, well-being and mindfulness for both the interchangeable roles of oppressors and victims? There is no mind, certainly none in the sense of higher spiritual clarity, rather mindlessness. There is no desire for a shared peaceful narrative and no wish for reconciliation in private life where it really matters. There in private the demons run riot. The true unmasked face of a manipulator finds expression with no onlookers. For even the “beast” must see the sunlight sometimes.
It is a show. The greatest show on earth, the un-spiritual family circus. The mental and emotional acrobatics are something to behold. It is as if the silence of not acknowledging oppression becomes comforting. In a twisted and deeply disturbing turn the quest for peace finds comfort in the silence of unacknowledged oppression and abuse. The oppressors of course know this and continue unopposed.
Therefore, life operates superficially at the level of practical, transactional, economic and formal, an arms length family who once embraced but now do not even speak or acknowledge one another for prolonged periods. Yet, they say they believe in God. The Merciful and Compassionate. However, show none to those whom they oppress.
Conversations with meaningful warmth become fewer and fewer. Where there happens to be conversation it is at times like two people standing on opposite sides of a railway crossing, waiting for the barrier to lift while a train hurtles past between them. Even lip reading is impossible let alone hearing the other. There is only the faint sound of one’s voice. It is in such interactions people say, “well I told you, why didn’t you listen?” How can anyone hear anything while a train of emotions, anger and pain passes between two people?
What is the seat of this division? From where does the power and conviction to leave things unresolved and unreconciled derive its efficacy in the mind of the oppressor?
To attempt an answer we add one more ingredient, finality.
The idea of “finality” is a source of power that sustains resistance to spiritual and humanist values of reconciliation, peace and harmony.
Finality in two expressions, lesser and higher.
The lesser finality may arise from a past wrong suffered by the oppressor and its interpretation forever remains a closed book and final in the mind of the oppressor. There can be no shadow of doubt they are incorrect in their opinions about the deep feeling of offence they carry within themselves. The aforementioned wrong may have happened years ago, but the intensity is as if it happened yesterday.
Therefore, situations are manipulated to create conditions where everyday people are portrayed negatively in the eyes of others. The purpose being to shame their victims, to weaken them, to humiliate them, to demean them in their own eyes. It is punishment. It is horrific and the perpetrator knows it and perversely takes comfort in it.
Any attempt to commence a reinterpretation of the wrong suffered or to forgive and reconcile is fiercely defended against. It cannot be permitted. Something that was lurking in the psyche of the oppressor has broken through finding its release over the threshold of the door of the wrong suffered. It will not retreat willingly. While previously, from behind the curtain, it controlled one personality, it’s host, it now controls several personalities. It’s children, it’s marriage life partner, in-laws, relatives and siblings.
To the wider world of work and neighbours they will be the most understanding, vulnerable, caring and innocent person. To the inner circle of personalities under its influence it will shower love and affection to one through excessive displays and simultaneously exclude another. It is capable of all the emotions and incapable of being happy with the simple things of life. Its pleasure is the control of others. Yet, this is only a caricature of the lower finality.
The higher finality is far more deeply lodged and rests on a strange sense of taking refuge in the argument of the “Final Judge”. Namely, God. For an un-spiritual family God is indeed everywhere but the idea is inverted where omnipresence of the Supreme is for their self justification.
This is the manipulative oppressor-victimhood persona’s ultimate self justification for not engaging in peaceful reconciliation of any kind in this mortal life. Even though they believe in a life after this life that is without body they act as if they have no soul. They have lost the idea that they are a soul and thus become soulless like.
Yet they remain confident in the self justification that God is on their side giving license to all kinds of destructive behaviours. It is an illness. A spiritual illness.
It is a way of thinking and being that is sheer escapism neglecting as it does so easily, without a hint of irony, that the “Final Judge”, in whom they seem to take refuge psychologically, is also Compassionate, Merciful, Loving and yet these attributes are passed over and only judgement is held tightly. This is perhaps because the whole edifice of an un-spiritual family rests on judgement and condemnation. They say “Final Judge” they mean “condemnation” for others. They fail to remember that the judgement may well be kind and merciful and loving.
The pull of self justification from this higher finality is so great it will usurp the very spiritual values one claims to admire. Religious texts and extracts are sought out to justify, along with seeking out religious scholars, their mode of being as being religiously valid, even otherworldly valid. It is a spiritual quest in the absence of light. It is the polar opposite of enlightened spiritual quest. It is maximum difference.
As the late Professor Syed Hasan Askari spoke in 1995, “according to Plotinus opposition is maximum difference. So it is in the creative power of the soul to create in the human mind maximum differences of opinion and belief. We are not dwarfed by opposition and conflict.”
By Musa Askari
* (A profound spiritual life can independently thrive despite the absence of harmony)
See also There Are Only Four Communities
Spiritual Human 