Rule 28: The Illusionary Power of Time

The past is an interpretation. The future is an illusion. The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through us and within us, in endless spirals. Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness. If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment. The present moment is all there is and all that there will ever be.   

Whatever we experience, we experience in this moment, in the now. The now is defined by this experience. It is nothing but the experience of what is right now. The past is that which we cannot experience any more because it is not in the now. The same is true for the future.

We like to take the past into the presence by remembering. Our remembrance creates an image of the past, which is coloured and photoshopped by all possible influences. Sometimes we even “remember” events, which have never happened. As an impressive example we can see reports from survivors of the bombing attack on Dresden in 1945, which has caused the death of some ten thousands of people. Many survivors describe hedgehopper attacks, which they say to have seen, including the type of aircraft. Yet the historical research has proven without doubt that such attacks have never happened around that event and that such airplanes appeared in Dresden.

So we always should keep in mind that the past is only accessible for us as construction. It is a product of our memory and does not have any reality apart from that. We need our past to ensure our identity and to be able to rely on our surroundings. We do not have to invent or discover everything in each moment anew. But we miss the magic of the moment when we hold on to the past.

The future has to bow to the primacy of the presence as well. We create our future out of our fantasy, which is fuelled by our expectations, hopes and fears. Without future we could neither plan nor organize. Yet our future is never subject to our control, at anytime an unexpected event can destroy all our plans.  So we need to keep up a good balance between the dreams of our future and the real experiences in the presence.

The time line itself is a construction or better, a principle of construction, a raster according to which we can structure our experience of time. Of course time does not have a spatial form. The time line allows us to plan efficiently like when building a house and every craftsman has a place in a plan so he knows exactly when his work is going to happen, or al least is meant to happen.

Being able to measure time gives us the illusion of governing it, of overpowering it. In reality, it is clear that we have no power over time, but that it has power over us. It is running on and on, whether we like it or not. Sometimes we would like to stop time (according to the aged Faust: “Stay, moment, you are so beautiful”), sometimes we want to push time so that an unpleasant experience is over quickly or a desired event comes sooner. But usually time plays a trick on us: When we want it to stay it moves the quicker, when we wait for Santa Claus it drags on endlessly slow. So we are often angry at time: it is too little of it or too much, but never right.

The only possibility to escape the control of time is by staying in the moment that is to be present moment by moment. This is a skill which only a few people have mastered, but we can come closer to it by meditating, e.g. by mindfully watching the inbreath and outbreath. By this, time loses its importance and we come to terms with it. We acknowledge a dimension which is not subjected to our grasp and hand ourselves over to its flow without the illusion of control.

When we imagine time as a spiral, we are in a spatial imagination as well. But it renders us an image, which is related to ourselves – as we move on as conscious beings, experiencing every moment consciously without linking it to anything in the past or in the future. We are not fixed between the old and the new to come but remain in what is real. The movement of time does us not lead away from us but closer to what we really are.

We acknowledge a dimension which is not subjected to our grasp and hand ourselves over to time without an illusion of being able to grasp and control it.

Eternity is this moment in which I can drop into.

And if I had more time, I could write even more about time ....

The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the autor's imagination. www.elifshafak.com

Rule 27: Everything is Connected to Everything

The universe is one being. Everything and everyone is interconnected through an invisible web of stories. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all in a silent conversation. Do no harm. Practise compassion. And do not gossip behind anyone’s back – not even a seemingly innocent remark! The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish, but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time. One man’s pain will hurt us all. One man’s joy will make everyone smile.

The connection of everything with everything was out of question for the early homines sapientes. This knowledge is part of the tribal consciousness. Due to the breaking out of man from the close interconnectedness with nature, this insight vanished and was replaced by the relationship of subject and object. The environment became an opponent, an object.  Hence it can be occupied and exploited. This is one of the main achievements of the materialistic consciousness.

The governance of the world works only when the respect of the governed disappears. This lack of respect is the other side of the coin of the world of consumption and welfare, which tends to spread out more and more. Sadly, it is not limited to the relationship to nature in its alive and not alive parts, but permeates also human relationships. We can read the development of history also in the way, that the reification of nature could only be installed as a consequence of the erection of hierarchical systems of power and exploitation, in which persons had been turned into things.

Whatsoever, the result is a relationship between man and human as well as non-human environment, which is based on power and subjugation. The consciousness of a universal connectedness got totally lost, so it is of no certainty today but a possibility we can solely experience in meditation. To a contemporarian who sticks to the prevailing concept of reality, such experiences might be nothing more that esoteric follies. 

As Rumi put it: “The Hand of Moses is a hand and a source of light. These things are so real as the infinity is real but for some they just seem to be religious fantasies, for those who just believe in the reality of the sexual organs and the intestinal tract.”  (The Essential Rumi. Translation by Coleman Barks. Harper Collins 2004)

We are only sure about separation: I am I and nothing else, all non-I is different and alien. This attitude we have been training for centuries and centuries to engrave it in our brains. It gives us certainty. But the other knowledge is fuelled by the millions of years, which were before our modern times. Seen in this perspective, the idea of relating to the outside as objects (me here, everything else there) has been around in human history for just a tiny moment.

So we cannot forget about this ancient knowledge despite all materialistic illusions. It turns up here and there silently and timidly, mainly when we are in nature. We notice it especially strong, when our lives encounter severe difficulties. Crisis are often signified by a strong feeling of separation – we have to cope with a loss or digest a misfortune or overcome an illness or confront a deep inner desperation. Such experiences contain a state of separation, which can be equaled with hell, as pointed out in rule 25. 

For separation reminds us of the idea of death. Death separates us from life, and any separation of an aspect of life is similar to the experience of death. A part in us, namely a part of our loving power dies in that experience. Love is the power of connection, which grows in a magical way by the exchange of energies between beings. Love knows about the connection of everything with everything. When it is interrupted, we react with fear.

As soon as we understand this all-permeating interdependency as a net of stories, the whole universe turns into a symphony of love stories. Every entanglement of one event with another is part of an endless tale from the book of life. Every particle, which is aware or itself in open connection with something different, adds to the great love. In it, there is exchange and exchange, on and on and up to the point, at which it has become meaningless who is giving and who is receiving.

The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the author's imagination. www.elifshafak.com

Rule 26: The Universe is a Web of Stories

 Das Universum ist ein Wesen. Alles und jedes ist durch ein unsichtbares Gewebe von Geschichten miteinander verbunden. Ob wir uns dessen bewusst sind oder nicht, wir befinden uns alle in einer stillen Konversation. Füge kein Leid zu. Übe das Mitgefühl. Und schwätze nicht hinterrücks über jemanden – nicht einmal eine scheinbar unschuldige Bemerkung! Die Worte, die aus unserem Mund kommen, verschwinden nicht, sondern sind dauerhaft im unendlichen Raum gespeichert, und sie werden in der richtigen Zeit zu uns zurück kommen. Der Schmerz eines Menschen wird uns allen weh tun. Die Freude eines Menschen wird alle zum Lächeln bringen.

The connection of everything with everything was out of question for the early homines sapientes. This knowledge is part of the tribal consciousness. Due to the breaking out of man from the close interconnectedness with nature, this insight vanished and was replaced by the relationship of subject and object. The environment became an opponent, an object.  Hence it can be occupied and exploited. This is one of the main achievements of the materialistic consciousness.

The governance of the world works only when the respect of the governed disappears. This lack of respect is the other side of the coin of the world of consumption and welfare, which tends to spread out more and more. Sadly, it is not limited to the relationship to nature in its alive and not alive parts, but permeates also human relationships. We can read the development of history also in the way, that the reification of nature could only be installed as a consequence of the erection of hierarchical systems of power and exploitation, in which persons had been turned into things.

Whatsoever, the result is a relationship between man and human as well as non-human environment, which is based on power and subjugation. The consciousness of a universal connectedness got totally lost, so it is of no certainty today but a possibility we can solely experience in meditation. To a contemporarian who sticks to the prevailing concept of reality, such experiences might be nothing more that esoteric follies.

As Rumi put it: “The Hand of Moses is a hand and a source of light. These things are so real as the infinity is real but for some they just seem to be religious fantasies, for those who just believe in the reality of the sexual organs and the intestinal tract.”  (The Essential Rumi. Translation by Coleman Barks. Harper Collins 2004)

We are only sure about separation: I am I and nothing else, all non-I is different and alien. This attitude we have been training for centuries and centuries to engrave it in our brains. It gives us certainty. But the other knowledge is fuelled by the millions of years, which were before our modern times. Seen in this perspective, the idea of relating to the outside as objects (me here, everything else there) has been around in human history for just a tiny moment.

So we cannot forget about this ancient knowledge despite all materialistic illusions. It turns up here and there silently and timidly, mainly when we are in nature. We notice it especially strong, when our lives encounter severe difficulties. Crisis are often signified by a strong feeling of separation – we have to cope with a loss or digest a misfortune or overcome an illness or confront a deep inner desperation. Such experiences contain a state of separation, which can be equaled with hell, as pointed out in rule 25.

For separation reminds us of the idea of death. Death separates us from life, and any separation of an aspect of life is similar to the experience of death. A part in us, namely a part of our loving power dies in that experience. Love is the power of connection, which grows in a magical way by the exchange of energies between beings. Love knows about the connection of everything with everything. When it is interrupted, we react with fear.

As soon as we understand this all-permeating interdependency as a net of stories, the whole universe turns into a symphony of love stories. Every entanglement of one event with another is part of an endless tale from the book of life. Every particle, which is aware or itself in open connection with something different, adds to the great love. In it, there is exchange and exchange, on and on and up to the point, at which it has become meaningless who is giving and who is receiving.

The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the author's imagination. www.elifshafak.com

Rule 25: Heaven and Hell

Hell is the here and now. So is heaven. Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven, as they are both present in this very moment. Every time we fall in Love, we ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy or fight someone, we tumble straight into the fires of hell. Is there a worse hell than the torment a man suffers when he knows deep down in his conscience that he has done something awfully wrong? Ask that man. He will tell you what hell is. Is there a better paradise than the bliss that descends upon a man at those rare moments in life, when the bolts of the universe fly open and he feels in possession of all the secrets of eternity and united with God? Ask that man. He will tell you what heaven is.

Whatever we experience is in the present moment. Heaven and hell are metaphors for the experience of opposite states in a given moment. Subjectively, the feeling gives us the measuring stick – do we feel well or not. We can name a state of severe suffering hell, and a great feeling of bliss heaven. Inbetween these states we know a lot of variations and graduations of our moods.

The quote mainly relates to the level of morality: “As in heaven” we are when we communicate in a loving way to others (e.g. when we sing together in a choir), and in hell, when we cut ourselves off from someone. An old story fits into that which says that there is no difference between heaven and hell. In both, people are sitting opposite to each other with a table in the middle full of delicious food. All just have chopsticks, which are too long to feed oneself. In hell, people desperately try to manoeuvre the nutrients to their mouth and fail over and over again, cursing and screaming in anger and frustration. In heaven, people serve the person opposite, and all are happy. Hell is self relating, heaven is being there with others in a loving way, this is what this parable says.

For a long time, humanity was kept in ban by the help of the belief about physical places for heaven and hell. Hell was meant to be somewhere in the blue of our atmosphere, and that is where we all want to go; hell is somewhere underneath, and this is what we have to avoid by any means. These directions serve as instruments for social control and hierarchical power administration and people are meant to subordinate. The fear of hellish punishment and the hope for heavenly pleasures was used for steering people’s behaviour. In the beginning, these images were indoctrinated by preaching and altar paintings. Later, the institutionalised religions cared about internalising the control of behaviour in the inside with the help of conscience. With each act, one should be aware whether it is booked to the heavenly or the hellish account.

The hierarchical installation of this order of society was safeguarding itself with the help of heaven and hell against the upper sphere and against the lower sphere – on the upper side there is glory which gave justification to the prevailing governance, on the low side the most terrible things were waiting for those who would not adjust to the rigid rules. So everyone had to stick to the narrow roles which had been prescribed, and the risk of downfall was lingering everywhere while the hopes for rise were postponed towards the end of life.

It was the materialistic consciousness, which turned its back on these mechanisms of social steering by subtly and cynically undermining it with its orientation towards winning happiness on earth by heaping up material goods. Take care of enjoying your mundane life up to a maximum and do not give a dime for the fate of others.

Then came the age of enlightenment and with it personalistic consciousness. It proclaimed the end of fairy tales about places of anguish somewhere below ground. The earth contains fiery lava but no devils, which enjoy living there. And the sky was scoured by the telescopes of astronomers without finding any paradisiacal realms there.

So the view was redirected into the experiencing subject, the person who takes world of her feelings and emotions and their dynamics seriously and importantly. Good phases change with bad ones, it is a restless life dependent of moods. The personalistic consciousness looks for the heaven inside, but all promises for happiness are just fruitless and temporary consolations. At first, all the depths and in-depths of the life of the soul have to be explored and encountered. This search easily arrives at places similar to hell. Then, at some place, it becomes clear that one’s own inside world well never grant ultimate certainty about the destination of human life.

The consciousness grows further and opens on the systemic level for the relationships with others. They become more meaningful than one’s own search of the truth. How can I be content, when the world is in jeopardy? How can I enjoy my steak when I know that the rain forests of the Amazon region were cut down for it? How can I buy a cheap T-shirt when I can be sure that it was sewed by children? A lot of questions, which disturb our self certainty and self relatedness.

When we approach holistic consciousness, we realize that we can find heaven inside of us but not in our personal inside but in an inner realm which does not belong to us but which is fuelled by a power of love which is far bigger than we are. Then it becomes easier for us to place all our actions into the service of this power of love and by this we enlarge the areas in our life in which heaven shines through.

The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the autor's imagination. www.elifshafak.com

Rule 24: We are Human and Divine

The human being has a unique place amongst God’s creation. “I breathed into him of My Spirit,” God says. Each and every one of us without exception is designed to be God’s delegate on earth. Ask yourself, just how often do you behave like a delegate, if you ever do so? Remember, it falls upon each of us to discover the divine spirit inside and live by it.   

We know the text from the bible where God inhales life to Adam. So the breath serves as transmitter of life force on the beginning of creation. Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Gen2) The mystery of life is the same as the mystery of breath. As every human being starts its own life just after birth with a breath, breathing stands in the beginning of the whole of human life.

The bible makes a difference between the beginning of humans and all other acts of creation, by this signifying the uniqueness of humans; he must be respired to be able to live, meaning that he has to take in what has been inhaled into him, must make it his own and let it out after that. This is how the process of human life starts as a process of exchange and metabolism, as communicative process.

In the tradition of the Islam it says even more that at the initial creation of man God had breathed of his spirit into man. This underlines an even more intimate connection between God and humans: God gives to man not just life but also spirit. So we are creation not only in the sense of a sentient being which tries to secure its survival and promotes reproduction, but is additionally impregnated by the spirit of God. Being human means equally being divine, as the divine spirit works inside of us as His breath. So we cannot other than being spiritual, even in the most primitive acts of survival.

Being spiritual means further that man represents divinity in physical form. He walks on earth as body-spirit-unity, as someone who has received the breath and lives by it as he lives by bread and wine. Furthermore, this implies that he did not receive this spirit to only use it for himself but also to pass it on to others, by respiring and inspiring his fellow men. Then he is a messenger of the inspiration of the divine, which is communication, exchange, love.

This is why teachers of wisdom are so sure that they speak to every human being when they proclaim the divinity of man. They want to call upon the memory of this intimate respiration, this initial inspiration. The rediscovery of respiration awakens immediately and inevitably the wish to pass on the power of breath which means the power of the divine spirit, to breath into others and by this to strengthen and increase their divinity.

The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the autor's imagination. www.elifshafak.com