explained when we imagine ten dimensions. And although the mathematicians are very clear about this, they are also clear that only up to three, three and a half, four can we have any experience of these dimensions. There's an enfolded quality to these dimensions that's folded out of our ability to perceive. But it doesn't mean they're not here. So the three levels of senses, first three are when you have a homogenized experience through the senses. Then you work with each separate sense.

[01:02]

Then you learn to orchestrate them so that you could bring just two senses together. The third, fourth is the edge, to begin to recognize that our senses have limits. For example, what is in this room that we all know is in this room, but none of us are perceiving? For example, what is in this room, of which we all know that it is there, but none of us can perceive it? Thousands of phone calls. A hundred television stations if you had a dish mounted on your hand.

[02:07]

Now, what if a hundred years ago somebody had said, this room is full of telephone conversations and television images? They would have set the house of Bedlam for you. That was a famous mental hospital in London. Where the word Bedlam comes from. So what, maybe a hundred years from now, will we know about that we can't imagine at this present time? We just don't have the sensory apparatus to pick up on these phone calls. So right now we are living in a complex world, which we know is more complex than our senses are presenting to us.

[03:19]

Buddhist practice is to sensitize yourself to this mystery. You begin to be aware that the information you're getting in the five categories of the senses or six is the thing going on in between and beyond. Einfach dafür empfänglich zu werden, dass es so viele Dinge gibt, die außerhalb dieser fünf Kategorien der Sinne sich abspielen, und dass man sich das einfach bewusst macht. Aber es ist nicht greifbar. Aber das ist auch wir. Und so müsst ihr euch einfach öffnen dafür, ohne dass ihr euch da einmischt. Dung Shan, I told you a story about Dung Shan the other day.

[04:21]

One of his burning questions was, it is said that you can hear the teaching of insentient beings. Insentient. And he said to his teacher, I cannot hear the incentive. And his teacher said, although you do not hear it, do not hinder that which hears it. So this is what we call great function. When you're able to function with knowing that this world is in enfolded dimensions of mystery.

[05:32]

Wenn du anfängst zu handeln mit diesem tiefen Wissen, dass diese Welt eine Welt ist, wo viele Dinge tief eingefaltet sind in ein Mysterium hinein. Okay. Now, what is a word for this world? Was ist ein Wort für diese Welt? A practice word for this world. Ein Praxiswort für diese Welt. So, at this point, I will use a technical term. Und an dieser Stelle werde ich jetzt einen technischen Begriff verwenden. Tathagatagarbha. And Tathagata itself is the largest word for Buddha. Now one way we practice with the idea of a Buddha is quite similar to what Atum said yesterday. Is that we imagine We go deep into ourselves and we say, what kind of person do we wish exists on this planet?

[06:49]

When we were a child, what would we really have hoped our parents could have been like? Or do we hope someone out there, somewhere, is this kind of person we really hope exists on the planet? If you can imagine in the fullest sense what you would like a person to be, And not being realistic about it, oh, I know this isn't possible. But really opening yourself up to the kind of person you wish exists. Sometimes we can break down in tears because how deeply and unnoticed it has been that we wish such a person existed.

[07:53]

And unconsciously we measure people by this ideal. Ganz unbewusst vergleichen wir Menschen, die wir treffen, immer mit dieser Idee. Aber je tiefer ihr euch das bewusst macht und den Wunsch akzeptiert, dass das wahr sein möge, dass solch ein Mensch existiert, the recognition is not far away that this person has to be you. You expect and wish somebody would do this. Why not you? This is the interactive image of a Buddha. Now another way to understand Buddha, back to the Tathagata Garbha.

[09:01]

Tathagata means coming and going. The thusness of coming and going. And Garbha means both womb and embryo. This is conceptually quite similar to a practice teaching Atum gave us. The world is simultaneously seed and womb. So if you imagine If you have to have an image of this world, oh, it's a bunch of stuff stuck out there in three-dimensional space. That's an image we know already is wrong. So if that's an image that's wrong, Let's at least find an image that's a little more workable or transformative.

[10:53]

So instead we have the fecundity of a womb embryo, simultaneously womb embryo container. Fecundity? I mean fertility. In which there's movement. Because change means movement. So there's always this change. Now what is this movement? The basic movement is, like Atum said, the energy. the, how do you put it, the named God yearning to be the unnamed. So there's the outward movement. There's lots of movement, but we're not talking about a pulse. It also parallels the breath. It's an outward movement to this field of mind.

[12:10]

And the more you act in that, this is called compassion or the activity of the bodhisattva of compassion. The more purely you can go out into that movement as into this realm of fecundity, This is compassionate activity. But there's also this yearning for emptiness or the unnamed. And that's called wisdom or emptiness. So this field of mind is drawn back into a point and absorbed.

[13:14]

And it's like the feeling of, say, when you take a walk and you hope you don't run into anybody, you just want to walk and be absorbed within the activity of walking in yourself. Now if you could carry that so it really you just wanted to be totally absorbed almost to the extent that everything disappeared. That's the movement toward wisdom or emptiness. This is called in the koans, it's a traditional teaching, the granting way and the gathering way. The granting way is your Buddha, your Buddha. The gathering way is you gather in to it so that everything is nameless, no Buddha, no world, etc.

[14:41]

Now it's understood in Buddhism that we actually are all in this pulse, but we just don't develop it. So Tathagatagarbha means when you begin to see that change is movement. And this change, this movement is an interactive, fertile process. And you now more and more have the feeling of thusness. When I'm looking at you, I'm seeing mind.

[15:48]

Then I start moving into that mind or drawing that mind in to the unnamed. This movement, the purification, clarification of this movement, Which parallels our breath. Is the activity of the Bodhisattva of compassion and the Bodhisattva of wisdom. And begins to generate a Buddha body. So a teacher, for example, who is practicing or living this, might at one moment say to you, of course, exactly what you say is right. And then say you carry, oh, you say, oh, what I say is right, and actually ego is crept in.

[16:53]

The teacher says, no, you fool, walks off. One is the granting way and the other is the gathering way. The teacher is showing you how to work with the energy when it starts going into ego, how you can pull that, the other direction, into wisdom. That's as much as I can do in 45 minutes. But I hope I've given you a sense of practicing with this mind which is always unfolding in front of it.

[18:07]

And how you breathe the diaphanous bridge into it. Every now and then I test her. Diaphanous is like some of those clothes you wear. No. Diaphanous means a very thin, almost invisible fabric like an angel might wear. You build a bridge that's so transparent and thin you can't see it. So you breathe into a state of mind that bridges you into the non-graspable. And you can begin to unfold that and draw it in.

[19:09]

It's rooted in this practice or awareness of thusness. This moment by moment coming and going. of the pulse of mind and appearance. And doing this, you begin to generate a Buddha body. You begin to be more and more present in your activity and modes of mind. der mehr und mehr spürbar ist in eurer Aktivität und in euren Geisteszuständen. So please remember to bring your attention to your breath. So erinnert euch bitte daran, eure Aufmerksamkeit auf euren Atem zu richten. And develop the habit of seeing mind.

[20:10]

Und gewöhnt es euch an, den Mind zu sehen. And the next time I see you, you'll all be Buddhas. Und wenn ich euch dann wiedersehe, seid ihr alle Buddhas. I will be very grateful and become your disciple. So we're supposed to take a break in a minute or so, but let's sit for just a moment. Thank you for coming. Each person is an embodiment of the truth.

[21:35]

A uniqueness of the truth. And then we can shift our focus to each person's personality and so forth. But our fundamental mind rests in this emergence of truth. Each thing we see and hear in all that we see and hear and feel. Thank you very much for your kindness in letting me try to present this.

[23:50]

And if we take a 25-minute break, we'll be back in time for Atum's presentation. Last night when we finished the sharing period, and as you may remember one of the questions was about death, As I was walking back to my room, I felt a strong inclination to take the lower road. And as I crossed the stream and made my way into that field, there was a farmer there. And he had been reaping with a sickle And he was stopping for a few moments and he had the sickle in his hand and he was sharpening it with the knife.

[25:18]

And we looked at each other and he gave me this huge, full, wide smile. And I was struck. A lot of the people you pass on the path here don't necessarily give you that huge smile. And then I walked on. And then all of a sudden it occurred to me, because I had been very aware of his carrying this sickle, that one of the images of death has been the grim reaper. And here was the reaper. Only he wasn't grim at all. In fact, he was filled with a kind of joy, light, love. And it reminded me of what I think has been one of the substantial things that has occurred in our time around death.

[26:41]

Which is the changing of our imagery around death. And that it has changed, at least for many people, from the encounter with the grim reaper Or the sense of the confrontation with a judgmental God. That somehow in our time we're beginning to have different images around death. And what I'm just offering from that is it was a reminder to me that as different images emerge, it also opens different possibilities for our experience of death. It's also in part an example of what I meant by Ibn Arabi's creative imagination.

[27:46]

The synchronicity when two worlds come together. Having just been present in the theme of death. Meeting the farmer who is a farmer holding a sickle. And also at that moment, at least for me, holding some archetypal meaning, the archetype speaking to me, revealing something to me through that encounter with the farmer. And the other thing is I found Richard's presentation this morning so complete. That it seemed almost ridiculous to have a second half of the morning. And also, as he drew parallels to the presentation I offered, for example, in Ibn Arbi's teachings, It was like having the acupuncture points of your soul touched.

[29:21]

So I was also feeling responses to other things that he said. So through the grace of God and the mind, through the grace of God and the mind, the spirit, We have a week together to continue this dialogue in Canada in another two weeks. But it's a little hard not to grasp onto the beauty of that. Hmm. And before I go into the actual theme, I'd like to offer one other piece, which is to help make more tangible, I hope, this language of the lover and the loved.

[30:26]

And one of the ways it can express itself. I was working in a program in the United States. And in the process of our coming together, there was a deep connection created. And so at the end of the seminar I had asked if there was anyone who wanted the opportunity to have something that was unfolding in them witnessed and affirmed by the group. And this man came forward, a very beautiful human being.

[31:28]

And he said, I want to acknowledge that I'm claiming the dancer in me. that inwardly, as long as I can remember, I have longed to be a dancer. And that's not where my outer life has led me, and I'm now 50 years old. But what I have done is I live in Bali now and I am studying Balinese dance. And he said, what I'd like to do is to dance for all of you. And it's my birthing of the beloved. An expression of the beloved.

[32:45]

And then he just asked if I would stand there while the rest of us created a circle around him. And that he would dance, always maintaining eye contact with me. And it was both, for me, an exquisite and deeply powerful experience. One is that he took out of the womb of his human heart the Lord of Dance and gave birth to it. And through my witnessing it, was able to see it mirrored back. And at the end, someone said to him, Well, how did you, we all have these kinds of dreams, but how did you take the risk to at 50 study dance and the risk to expose it here?

[34:13]

And he said, my longing was so great And my love for the dancer in me, the beloved as the dancer, was so overwhelming that if I didn't do it, it would feel like death. So I offer it because it's an illustration of how the lover becomes the beloved. And the beloved is born out of the lover. What I'd like to do today is to look at the theme of alchemy. And alchemy is a very vast mystery. Alchemy is a very wide mystery.

[35:28]

I do not present myself as a teacher of alchemy. But I have found some things that are valuable in alchemy, particularly since Sufism has been described as the alchemy of the heart. And I offer them because for me they help to clarify the path of love. And what I'll be looking at is what are called the seven operations in alchemy. And then attempting to convey at least a little bit of practice that would offer us an experiential aspect of this operation. And then also some poetry from Rumi that illustrates the operation.

[36:30]

Now, in alchemy, there is a search. And the search is for what is sometimes called the philosopher's stone. It's sometimes called the fountain of youth. Or the waters of life. Or the gold. Or the lapis. There are different names for what's being sought. And different images. But alchemy is a process of transformation. And in Sufism, we would speak of the heart as being the alchemical stone. So the alchemy is on the heart. One is to find the gold within the heart, which is the divine. And when one has, shall we say, found, that's the language, the philosopher's stone, then the gold in life is revealed.

[37:53]

So that's a very minuscule sense of the kind of journey of alchemy. And these operations are operations that occur in the process of that journey of transformation. And the first one I'd like to introduce is the operation of solutio. And it means to dissolve. So here we have the water element. And each of these operations is a continual process of purification. So solutio is the purification of water. Sosolutio, das ist die Reinigung mit Wasser.

[39:15]

Through the experience of dissolving. Durch das Erlebnis des Auflösens. And what dissolves is a fixed state of consciousness or a fixed ego identity. Und was sich löst, das ist eine fixierte Egoidentität oder ein fixierter Bewusstseinszustand. That stands in the way of the unfoldment of what we would say in Sufism of the unfoldment of the soul. So that kind of ego structure has to dissolve. And in alchemy that's often rendered in the image of the old king. Drowning. swimming in a sea and drowning. So the image of the old king gives us an image of an ego structure that has an order around it, an ordering principle, but it is old.

[40:29]

It is not filled with life. It has become rigid. And it must be dissolved. Now, if the process goes right, there is another image, which is the bath. And what emerges out of the dissolving in the bath is the experience to be born again. Or, for example, if we use the terminology to draw a parallel that David did the other day about return to the home of one's soul and to be born again, one emerges out of the bath, out of the dissolving, with a new identity.

[41:31]

Or a new state of consciousness. That is more developed, more encompassing, more integrated. And what one has dissolved into is a greater reality or a greater consciousness. Does that much make sense so far? Now, This is where I find it a helpful piece particularly to bring to Sufism because there has to be something to dissolve. So Carl Jung makes the observation that be weary, be concerned for the person who's always seeking to dissolve.

[42:45]

Because often it's a sign of a regressive step. Where a kind of personal center of consciousness hasn't been anchored sufficiently. And the person is always looking to dissolve into other people, into other groups, into other things. And he speaks of, if there is a healthy foundation, there is resistance to dissolving. Because it has taken a lot to build that personal self, that personal structure. Now, what takes place is that personal structure, if it finds the right container, which is a larger container, state of consciousness in which to dissolve, and that it can be contained so that it can dissolve and then re-emerge, the spiritual journey is facilitated in its growth.

[44:10]

And one of the ways that we have a sense if we're in this operation or other operations is through the imagery in our dreams, the imagery in our meditation, the symbols that speak to us in life, And our own inner experience. So now I'd like to offer some lines from Rumi that give expression to this state of dissolving. Solutio. And there's about three or four selections for this operation. Solutio. The best days are when I melt. Love streams from me. Warm, timeless honey.

[45:32]

From your invisible comb. Von deinem unsichtbaren Stein? Kamm? Honeycomb. Aha, ja. The lovers who die well-informed die before the beloved like sugar. Sterben vor dem Geliebten wie Zucker. melting away in the eternal sweetness of God. And just read that one again. The lovers who die well-informed, and this, by the way, just doesn't mean physical death.

[46:37]

It means also the experience of meditation. It can mean that. The lovers who die well-informed died before the beloved like sugar, melting away in the eternal sweetness of God. Let my house be drowned in the wave that rose last night out of the courtyard hidden in the center of my chest. Verborgen im Zentrum meiner Brust. Let my house be drowned in the wave that rose last night out of the courtyard hidden in the center of my chest.

[47:47]

Lass mein Haus ertränkt sein in der Mitte des Innenhofs, welcher aufsteigt im Zentrum meiner Brust. that what emerges out of the heart dissolves one. I am lost in that other reality. It's sweet not to look at two worlds. To melt in meaning as sugar melts in water. And the last one. Weary of form. Tired of form. I came into qualities. Each quality says, I am a blue-green sea. dive into me.

[48:53]

Okay. So I'd like to just offer a practice that carries something of that dissolving. Okay. It's a practice that we did the other night in the summer. It's the practice of Ishq Allah Mabudlillah. It's the practice of Ishq Allah Mabudlillah. And actually the movement itself, one time I led a retreat in Bali and found that it was like the ocean was saying zikr all the time. All the time. In the sound and in the movement. So when we say the word Ishq, we come down into the ocean.

[49:58]

And then as we say the Allah, the ocean rises up as a certain wave, as a configuration, which is me or you. But of course the wave, you can't take it out of the ocean. It's a configuration of the ocean. And then the Mabud, as you come down, is to the wave to melt back into the ocean. To dissolve. And then out of that dissolving, when we lift our head and we say the LELA, the wave then re-emerges or a new configuration of a wave re-emerges.

[51:12]

We re-emerge and we carry something to the shore of life. Like the wave that goes toward the beach and breaks. So it's just an image to work with and a sound but the important piece is the dissolving into love and the re-emerging the love re-emerging out as you. Iskallah.

[52:21]

Magulalah. Iskallah. Magulalah. Iskallah. Mm. Mm. Ease.

[53:29]

Ease. Lillah. Be calm for a few moments.

[54:49]

Be in the essence of the practice. Or in the present of the practice. If you want to sigh, you are welcome to sigh. For me it's hard to leave that operation and move on, but there are seven operations. I like that one. The second operation is called Calcinatio.

[55:54]

Calcinatio. And it's purification with fire. And it depends upon which level So we say the operation is taking place. On the ego level, it's confronting my wanting. And my grasping. And my sense of desire in that kind of personal grasping. And it's the frustration of not getting what you want. And the frustration itself is an expression of the fire element. And the anger that may arise out of not getting what you want. Or what you like or what you feel entitled to from the ego's perspective.

[57:11]

In an alchemy, this is often symbolized as the lion. The devouring lion. It's not enough to just have some. One wants to devour what you want. Or the sense of the devouring appetites. So when you sit in the fire, and fire is the element, Casanadio is the element that Rumi most works with, he uses the term being cooked. Well, that's Casanatio, to be cooked. And it's to be cooked, to have the ego cooked by confronting not getting what you want.

[58:14]

And having all of the ego affect arise that comes with not getting what you want. And sitting through that fire. So that you're cooked. And it has a lot of heat to it. So it's also when you read Rumi, he speaks of it's burning, burning that I want. So it's a purification of our attachments. Now there is another octave to the practice. To the operation. And this has to do with what you find a great deal in Rumi also, is the burning for the beloved.

[59:21]

This is a different kind of burning. And that's why in Ibn Arabi's teaching there is what he refers to as a passionate relationship between oneself and the Lord of one's being or the lover and beloved. And passion, at least in the Sufi tradition, is an expression of the fire quality. So it's, let us say, on this level, the longing is a fire, it is a passion that consumes the lover so that there's only the beloved. And it's the willingness to, that's why one of the central practices of the Sufis is you keep the beloved before you all the time.

[60:45]

And it's why the Sufi I quoted the other day said he would rather have the sigh of a lover than the entrance into the eight heavenly spheres. It's that kind of burning. Now, the first year Richard and I worked together, he made a very beautiful insight that was helpful for me. He said, Buddhism is purified detachment, and as he understood it, Sufism is purified attachment. And what I understand that to mean or why it's meaningful to me is that fire is to burn everything else except the beloved.

[62:00]

Okay. So I'd like to read some Rumi. And this is really his terrain, this operation. Suddenly, the face of the world grows dim. The beloved appears from behind the veil. My heart shivers and burns for him. The fire I crackle in is you. I burn for you, burning away myself.

[63:01]

In the next piece, there's a reference to the tombstone hat. And if you've The tombstone hat is the hat of the dervish. It's a tall hat and actually something that's very beautifully done is you can there is an image of the tombstone hat that's made out of the calligraphy of Jalal ad-Din Rumi's name. The fire has risen above my tombstone hat. I don't want learning or dignity. Or respectability. I want this music and this dawn. And the warmth of your cheek

[64:01]

And the last quote. I am scrap wood thrown into your fire. And quickly reduced to smoke. Now, The practice that most contains this, at least for me in Sufism, this burning, this fire, is the zikr la ilaha illa lahu. And by its very nature, one of the purposes of the practice is to warm the heart. And one of the purposes of the practice is to warm the heart. So it's a practice that the dervishes do because the desire is always to keep the heart aflame.

[65:26]

And not to have a cold or numb heart. As I mentioned the other day, last time I visited the place of Shams Tabriz, My inner experience of him, which is my experience, is that his heart was a perpetual zikr, all in flame. So it's that state of perpetual burning, a perpetual divine passion. And one of the definitions of a Sufi is a Sufi is one with no affect. And what I interpret that to mean is that the fire has burned away in both of its stations, has burned away the affect that we bring, the pretense, the artificiality.

[66:47]

The self-consciousness. So that there is, that's what's burned in the fire. Okay. So this evening there will be a zikr, and you'll be doing some of this version of the zikr this evening, but I'd like to introduce just the feeling of it now, so you get the sense of the fire. It's quite different than dissolving. So those of you who are familiar with it, if you'll just join in with me after I start it. If you're not familiar with it, there isn't really the time to teach the particularities at the moment. Just enter into the atmosphere of the practice.

[67:48]

La ilaha illallah Now just a moment. Sometimes Sufism speaks of the heart as being two chakras. what we normally call the solar plexus.

[69:01]

In a sense, the lower heart. And then, shall we say, the upper heart, the heart chakra. And so when we work with the fire breath in a breathing practice, in the solar plexus, we concentrate on a fire. And we actually breathe in like fanning that fire in the solar plexus. So in the zikr when we do the illa, it's to strike the fire. So when we say the illa in the zikr, it's to strike the fire. You know, and sometimes if you've built a fire and you have lots of wood and paper there and then you strike the match and it's like the illa, the fire explodes.

[70:08]

And then as you lift up into the law, the flames rise. And what you have in the heart is the radiance of the fire that has, the wood has been transformed into light. And into warmth. So as we do it again, that's another image to work with. One is the scrap wood that becomes the fire. La ilaha illallah. La ilaha illallah. In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

[71:25]

La ilaha illallah [...] La ilaha illallah.

[72:51]

La ilaha illallah. And now finally the hu, which is the smoke from the fire. It's the incense. It's the presence. is in Sufism the archetype of the dervish.

[73:57]

And one could say that the dervish is the embodiment of the zikr. And it's why Around the poetic images of the dervish, one always has to be careful to approach the dervish, because you may be burned. But you may also be set aflame. So it depends, as Richard was saying, about how you approach the dervish. Whether you're burned or whether you're set on fire. The third operation is sublimatio. Sublimatio. And it is the air element.

[75:10]

And it's in Sufism, it's like the Sufism's version of mindfulness, I suppose. And I would say Pirvelayat is a par excellence teacher of sublimatio. He deeply identifies with the symbol of the eagle, which is a symbol of that state. And it's associated direction-wise. I don't mean it is there, but direction-wise it has to do with height. So often in the alchemical image it has to do with the bird at the top of the mountain. So often it's described as a lifting of consciousness. When our consciousness has become imprisoned, which is a word that Rumi uses, imprisoned, let us say, in our habits,

[76:17]

And we're unconsciously imprisoned. When Rumi has this very beautiful image, he says the prison door is always open. which represents that capacity of sublimatio to move out of the prison by shifting consciousness. And you hear this over and over again from Purevalaya. It is always a question of perspective. Shift your perspective to a more encompassing perspective. To a broader sense of consciousness. Then what that enables you to do is to see the patterns of the habits. To understand their gestalt.

[77:48]

And through the healthy sense of disidentifying not be pulled into them. So it gives the sense potentially of choice. Okay. Now, there is also, as far as my own interpretation, there is a shadow side. Which actually there is with each of these, in a certain way. The shadow side of calcinatio is when people attempt to shatter themselves with their own ego. I want to be illuminated. I want to be one with the Beloved. That's why in Sufism it speaks of you can't attain the Beloved, you can't grasp the Beloved and make it yours. And that would be a distortion or a kind of shadow side of Casanatio that one would have to be aware of.

[79:14]

One has to be consumed in the fire. And in the solutio, the person who's seeking to dissolve before having been created, shall we say. And for me, the kind of shadow side of sublimatio is what we call spiritual bypassing. I can explain to you all of my psychological stuff. and think that that means I've dealt with it, that I conceptually understand my patterns, and therefore I feel a sense of disidentification with it, but in an unhealthy way that bypasses So I'd like to offer some quotes from Rumi.

[80:40]

Love is the reality and poetry the drum. that calls us to that. Don't keep complaining of loneliness. Let the fear language of that theme crack open and float away. Let the fear language of that theme crack open and float away. And this is from the poem that I read the first day. Notice how everyone has just arrived here from a journey. Notice how each wants a different food.

[82:00]

Look at the chefs preparing special plates for everyone according to what they need. Now, another place that we find this is in The image of the winged heart. Which is the symbol of the Sufi order. And it's the capacity of the heart to fly. So on one hand, the heart as a symbol represents deep involvement, engagement, entering into. It's why it's red like the rubedo in alchemy, the final stage. But the heart has wings. It can fly. And one of the ways that Hazar Danai Khan describes those wings is as independence and detachment.

[83:03]

And he speaks that that's what enables the heart to enter the realm of the soul. Okay. So I'd like to... I'd like to finish at least one more operation. So the practice I would have led for this is a practice of Ya Azim, Ya Alim. So the Azim has a sense of uplifting us. The heart with wings. And Alim has that sense, or Kabir, that sense of perspective from a broader place of consciousness.

[84:24]

Okay. And now, the next operation is called... It has to do with the earth element. And it's to coagulate. So in a sense it is the opposite of the air. It is to incarnate, to embody, to bring into the personality. And this would be the whole orientation in the Sufi teachings about our purpose in life is to make God a reality.

[85:26]

Or the line that I've quoted a number of times, out of the womb of the human heart, God is born. Or in Rumi, how in our face the face of the beloved may be revealed. It's to bring it into this human reality. So, for example, one could contemplate the quality of compassion But the bringing of compassion into a situation, the action that proceeds from compassion, the compassionate presence with another, would be what the Sufis would mean when they say to make God a reality, to make the compassionate God here.

[86:27]

Or in the work of Ibn Arabi, to make the Lord of your being realized. And the... Let us say that's the spiritual practice in Sufism. And the opposite of that would be when one would be in a very fixed, caught, heavy place of consciousness. That is very leaden. And when we're in that place, at least my experience is, our body feels leaden, our mind feels leaden, our emotions feel leaden, there is a heaviness to it.

[87:33]

So alchemy in its metaphors was concerned with changing lead into gold. So it also means to change that state in us where we are leadened, we are over-earthed, shall we say, over-coagulatio in a very fixed, non-alive way. And to turn it into the gold, which is the embodiment of the divine. And in the teachings of Hasraddin Ayat Khan, yellow, a kind of yellow, is associated with the earth. It's the color for the earth quality. So these are some passages from Rumi.

[88:57]

Only you know how you hollow me out. Only you know how you hollow me out. Only you know how you hollow me out and dance in the hollow. This mystery, I walk toward you. You well up shining in me. Du tauchst auf und scheinst in mir. This mystery, dieses Mysterium, I walk toward you.

[90:01]

Ich gehe auf dich zu. You well up shining in me. Du kommst auf mich zu und scheinst in mir. I have shrunk below the smallest atom. Ich bin kleiner geworden als das kleinste Atom. Expanded further than the last star. Ich wurde weiter ausgedehnt als der weitest entfernte Stern. All that is left of Rumi is only this garden laughing with fruit. Dieser Garten, der lacht mit Früchten. So it ends with an earth image, an embodiment, the garden and the fruit, and the laughter. I have shrunk beyond the smallest atom, expanded further than the last star,

[91:03]

All that is left of Rumi is only the garden laughing with fruit. So Hazrat Inayat Khan offers the image that we carry the divine seed in us. But the fulfillment is when we become a garden and the fruit, the seed has become ripe fruit. There's a fulfillment there. And I'll just very briefly... Mention the other three operations. One is mortificatio, which means death. And it's the experience of dying. And not just Sufism, but other mystics speak of the mystical path is learning to die before death.

[92:41]

And it's why the tradition also speaks of ultimately the lover is a dead thing. So it is the sense that we are continually dying as we become more and more the beloved. And particularly a certain, shall we say, identity in us is dying. Now the other two are Operations are the kind of crown of the seven operations. And they, to me, they perfectly describe the metaphors of Sufism.

[93:49]

It is the movement back and forth between Konunzio coming together and union and separation. And this is, in all the great Sufi poetry, this is the journey that's always referred to. The lover feels called toward the beloved, goes toward the beloved, is absorbed in the Beloved, disappears in the Beloved. It's the alchemical marriage.

[94:33]

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