A Unitive, Inclusive View of God and Man

God, Allah, Ahura Mazda - the Ground of Being, whatever its name - knows no differences. It is only those who profess their singular and exclusive view of religion that separate themselves off from the eternal. Those who are consciously possessed of this Divine Ground within and without themselves make no such distinctions and place no restrictions on their vision of God, as they know it is distinction itself that separates them from Wholeness.

Thus, "the Shakespeare of Mystics," Rumi can say:

"Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the oceans or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam and Ever or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

"The biographies of the saints," writes Aldous Huxley, "testify unequivocally to the fact that spiritual training leads to a transcendence of personality, not merely in the special circumstances of battle, but in all circumstances and in relation to all creatures, so that the saint "loves his enemies' or, if he is a Buddhist, does not even recognized the existence of enemies, but treats all sentient beings, sub-human as well as human, with the same compassion and disinterested good."

"Those who win through to the unitive knowledge of God set out upon their course from the most diverse starting points," Huxley notes. "One is a man, another a woman; one a born active, another a born comtemplative. No two of them inherit the same temperament and physical constitution, and their lives are passed in material, moral and intellectual environments that are profoundly dissimilar."

"Nevertheless," he observes, "as far as they are saints, insofar as they possess the unitive knowledge that makes them "perfect as their Father which is in heaven is perfect," they are all astonishingly alike. Their actions are uniformly selfless and they are constantly recollected, so that at every moment they know who they are and what is their true relation to the universe and its spiritual ground."

Saints, mystics and sages, it seems, regardless of their formal path (or lack of a path), have an acceptive, unitive and inclusive view of God and man, for they have realized in the very essence of their Being that they are inseparably a part of the Ground of Being that encompasses all. It is the unsaintly, non-mystical, unsagacious common man who makes distinctions based on his or her God. And, in doing so, he or she falls short of realizing the essence of their Being.

"The Battle of the Self . . . of the Ego"

"In the Name of Allah,
the Compassionate, the Merciful"

"In every religious tradition there is what you call the outer path and the inner path, or the exoteric path and the esoteric path," says Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, in delivering an ecumenical address on Islam and Sufism for Ted.com's "Charter of Compassion" campaign. "The esoteric path of Islam is more popularly known as Sufism, or tasawwuf in Arabic," he explains, "and these doctors or these masters, these spiritual masters of the Sufi tradition, refer to teachings and examples of our prophet, that teach us where the source of our problems lie."

Combining the teachings of the Qur’an, the stories of Rumi, and the examples of Muhammad and Jesus, to demonstrate that only one obstacle stands between each of us and absolute compassion -- ourselves, Abdul Rauf takes his audience through the realities of every person's life, the esoteric battle between the "ego" and the "divine."

"In one of the battles that the prophet waged," explains Abdul Rauf,  "he told his followers, 'We are returning from the lesser war to the greater war, to the greater battle.' And they said, "Messenger of God, we are battle-weary. How can we go to a greater battle? He said, 'That is the battle of the self, the battle of the ego.'"

"The sources of human problems have to do with egotism," explains Abdul Rauf simply. "with I."

'And, therefore, for us to be human," he continues, "in the greatest sense of what it means to be human, in the most joyful sense of what it means to be human, it means that we too have to be proper stewards of the breath of divinity within us, and to seek to perfect within ourselves the attribute of being, of being alive, of beingness, the attribute of wisdom, of consciousness, of awareness, and the attribute of being compassionate and loving beings."

"This is what I understand from my faith tradition," he says, "and this is what I understand from my studies of other faith traditions, and this is the common platform on which we must all stand; and when we stand on this platform as such, I am convinced that we can make a wonderful world. And I believe, personally, that we're on the verge, and that with the presence and help of people like you here, we can bring about the prophecy of Isiah. For he foretold of a period when people shall transform their swords into plowshares and will not learn war and make war anymore.

"We have reached a stage in human history," Abdul Rauf concludes, "that we have no option. We must, we must lower our egos, control our egos, whether it is individual ego, personal ego, family ego, national ego, and let all be for the glorification of the One."

Rumi: "Today . . . We Wake Up Empty"

When I was first shown the "inner path" that eventually we all must take, the wizened old seeker told me that, "if I was serious," I needed to read Patanjali's "Yoga Sutras" and the poetry of the great Sufi mystic, Jalalludin Rumi.

I ordered one of the many translations of Patanjali that were then available - there were over one hundred different translations and commentaries at the time - and purchased Coleman Barks' "The Essential Rumi." (In the interim, while I was waiting for the copy of Patanjali I had randomly picked out, an enlightened man loaned me a copy of his self-described "Book of Soul-Realization." It turned out to be the exact translation of Patanjali, by Christopher Isherwood and Swami Prabhavananda, that I had randomly ordered.)

While you are waiting for a copy of your "Book of Soul-Realization" to land in your lap, or you want to set your reading of Rumi aside for a moment and listen to his transcendental verses from as close to the lips of the poet as we can now get, you may want to watch and listen to one of Coleman Barks'  readings of Rumi (below).

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty. . . . "

"Someone may be clairvoyant,
able to see the future, and yet have very little wisdom
. . . like the man who dreamed of water,
and began leading everyone toward the mirage. . . ."




"One night a man was crying, Allah! Allah!"




"Inside water, a water-wheel turns . . . . "




"What was said to the rose that made it open
was said to me, here in my chest. . . ."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Listen to the moan of a dog for its  master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs
no one knows the name of.

Give you life
to be one of them."

Coleman Barks, "Love Dogs," excerpt from, "The Incredible Rumi," page 156.