!

BISMILLAH IR-RAHMAN IR-RAHIM

In the Name of God, Most Beneficent, Most Merciful
The Relevance of Retreat:

A Reflection on the Religious Imagination

I
Spiritual romantics like the idea of retreat. We like the idea of the interior voyage. After all, we
know there is something marvelous out there–and we keep hearing that it is somehow "in here" as well.
"All I might really have to do," we think, "if I were ever to get my act together, might be to cut myself off
from all this other stuff that surrounds me, and be quiet a little, and think high thoughts...and miraculous
vistas could open." Well, maybe.
Balancing that bubbly romantic, we generally find in us, or around us, a dour skeptic as well. At
least, I hope we do (although it is really annoying). "What, you?" it asks. "You can't even tie your
shoelaces. And anyway, as for this voyage stuff, you know perfectly well it is all self-delusion, or
dreaming, or" (if you have an educated skeptic) "metaphorical language or an obscure brain dysfunction!"
Now it is all too common for these two characters to deadlock, so that nothing happens and
everybody gives up in disgust, turning on Star Trek instead (...to "boldly go where no one has gone
before"). But sometimes two subtle little thoughts flutter over this argument, like a couple of Italian
Renaissance cherubs, which can serve as reconcilers. If noticed, one of them may be heard to beckon,
"Try it, and see!" while the other one whispers, "Find someone who knows."
There are more than a few people who have listened to these little guys. And they have reliably
established that if you listen to one of them, you will eventually need to listen to them both. For only your
own experience with knowledge will tell you when somebody knows more than you do; only your own
experience with being will tell you when somebody is more than you are. And only somebody who
transcends your limitations is going to be able to help you to transcend your limitations. A limitation, by
definition, is where you come to a dead halt, by yourself.
It is related that when the Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him,
underwent his Night Journey and Ascension–passing (body and soul) from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from
Jerusalem through the seven heavens and the unconditioned worlds into the very presence of Allah, and
then back again, in no more than the blink of an eye–when he reported this to the little community around
him, dissension broke out. Some people who had become Muslims then departed: it was just too much
for them to swallow. The Prophet's great enemy, Abu Jahl, came up to one of his greatest followers,
Hadrat Abu Bakr, and chortling, passed on the story. "You know what your wonderful nephew did last
night? He went from here to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem clear up to God–what do you think of that?"
Hadrat Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) asked sharply, "Who says so? Is that what you
say, or is that what he says?"
"Why, he's claiming it himself!"
"In that case," said Hadrat Abu Bakr deliberately, "I believe every word." And it was on account of
this response, we hear, that he was first called "the Truthful"–as-Siddiq.
Truthfulness, integrity, needs both its believer and its skeptic–for the crucial decision it makes is
when to trust. Trusting Abu Jahl, reasonable man though he was–if he were the source of the very same
report–would not have been a very good idea.
Many of us who gather here have been persuaded to trust Hadrat Ibn `Arabi (may Allah sanctify
his secret). But how far? And to what purpose? Are we willing to take his advice? He made an astonishing
spiritual journey very early in his career–but he knew himself to be unique. Suppose the interior voyage
did not require us all to be spiritual geniuses, as he was. Suppose we could just set out. Could we travel
out of the world?
A Friend of God went forth for the Pilgrimage, and on a road in the middle of the desert came
across a little black ant, struggling along. "Ant, where are you going?" he asked, in the way some people
have of speaking with creatures. ""Why, I'm going on Pilgrimage to Mecca, the same as you!" "But ant,"
the saint objected, "you will never make it! It's hundreds of miles, and besides, you have a broken leg!"
"What does it matter," the ant asked him, "as long as I am on the way?"
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Ah, but we would like to speed it along, sometimes.

"Retreat" is a provocative topic for me. As some of you know, I once had the honor of translating
Hadrat Ibn `Arabi's Risalat al-Anwar, published as Journey to the Lord of Power, which is a manual on the
technical practice of retreat drawn from the Shaykh's own experience. Some passages of that work have
remained with me ever since–as have certain questions. In addition, those masters who have taught me
pretty much everything I understand of the concrete mystical life have been Halveti shaykhs, and the
tradition they transmit is that of the Halveti Order–"Halveti" being the Turkish for Khalwati, and khalwa
being the Arabic for retreat. Yet this technical khalwa, or chille–rather to the disappointment of some of
us–is no longer prescribed. Well, why not?
There are retreats and retreats–which sometimes causes confusion. Some of these items remain
very much part of the common cultural and religious life.
About two centuries before the time of ash-Shaykh al-Akbar, in the Risalah of Imam Abdul-Karim
al-Qushayri {qs} that great Sufi encyclopedist, a differentiation was made between the advanced practice
termed khalwa and the beginner's version of withdrawal from the world, specified by the term `uzla. `Uzla
means disengagement from social life in search of God. This tactic is still widely available, and in the last
part of this paper, insha'Allah, we shall have reason to think about what `uzla signifies for us today. But let
us think about dramatic inner journeys, and the history of khalwa, first.
Khalwa is an accelerated practical implementation of the great advice of the Prophet, "Die before
you die." Khalwa is deconstruction of the self–a coming-apart that is the necessary prologue to the
gradual access of the divine light in a given human location. The sign of the access of that light is the
opening of inner vision, or basirah. Through khalwa, the Friends of Allah dive into the wake left by the
Prophet's Ascension. the Mi`raj. Those currents cannot be crossed by just anybody. Khalwa is extremely
dangerous.
Therefore khalwa proper has always been rigorous, but it was once more generally accessible:
perhaps rigor is more easily obtainable by some generations than it is by others. In the age of Hadrat
`Abdul-Qadir al-Jilani {qs}, who left this world the year after IA was born and who is his spiritual father
according to Sufi oral tradition, it appears that entering into khalwa was a matter of personal choice. In his
Secret of Secrets, Hadrat `Abdul-Qadir gave instruction to "whosoever has chosen to withdraw himself
from the world in order to come close to God." Such a person, he wrote, "must know the appropriate
prayers and recitations"–and he proceeded to specify them at great length. Let me summarize his
instruction here.
If you were making khalwa in the early twelfth century CE you were best instructed to go into
seclusion in or near a mosque, so that you could easily attend all five congregational prayers–an absolute
requirement of khalwa–in silence and with a minimum of extraneous distraction. You would commit
yourself to those prayers and all the most delicate of their conditions, punctiliously. You would be in a
state of ritual ablution at all times, and in a state of fasting as often as possible.
Your day would begin in the middle of the night, when you would break your sleep to offer the
tahajjud prayer of wakefulness–an extra, or nafila, practice recommended by the Holy Prophet. Hadrat
`Abdul-Qadir recommends for tahajjud specific petitions, invocations, and Qur'anic recitations, and twelve
cycles of formal prayer. So after about an hour's worth of devotions you would go back to sleep–but only
to wake up again later in the night to perform the three cycles of witr prayer, sealing the work of the
previous day. Then back to sleep until dawn, when you would come out to offer the first congregational
salat, followed by the special salat for guidance, followed by a short recitation–and back to seclusion. In
mid-morning you would offer six cycles of the nafila prayer called duha, plus two cycles of kaffara
expiation for any dirt with which you might have inadvertently come into contact. At noon you would come
out again for the second congregational prayer–and later you would undertake four long cycles of the
tasbih salat, during which, along with the standard Qur'anic passages, a prayer of praise must be recited
three hundred times.
There is no extra salat permitted after the third congregational prayer until the sun sets and the
fourth prayer arrives, but you would still be busy. In an early twelfth-century retreat, you would be
expected to read a minimum of two hundred Qur'anic verses a day, recite a hundred repetitions of Surat
al-Ikhlas, a hundred salawats invoking blessings upon the Holy Prophet, and a hundred prayers of
forgiveness. Time might well be short in the afternoons, and between sunset and the fifth, night, prayer,
with all of that to do! Plus, Hadrat `Abdul-Qadir says–the only place where he gives a hint of the inner
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dimension of all this effort–you are expected to remember Allah continuously and recite His Names
"...according to your ability. At every spiritual level the remembrance is different. It has another name; it
has another character, another way. Only the ones who are at each level know its proper remembrance."
So much for the prescribed course. "The time left after all of this is completed," the shaykh
comments, "is spent reading from the Qur'an and in further worship and prayer." Exhausting! It sounds to
us today like so much empty ritual. Where in the midst of all that activity would we find time to fit in our
treasured interior voyage?
Veils are raised and lowered for people as conditions change.
And so in Risalat al-Anwar, written a generation later, we find a little difference of approach.
Perhaps it is the time, and perhaps it is the place–the difference between the Islamic East and the Islamic
West–but About two centuries before the time of ash-Shaykh al-Akbar, in the Risalah of Imam Abdul-
Karim al-Qushayri {qs}, that great Sufi encyclopedist, a differentiation was made between the advanced
practice termed khalwa and the beginner's version of withdrawal from the world, specified by the term
`uzla. `Uzla means disengagement from social life in search of God. This tactic is still widely available,
and n the last part of this paper, insha'Allah, we shall have reason to think about what `uzla signifies for
us today. But let us think about dramatic inner journeys, and the history of khalwa, first.
Hadrat Ibn `Arabi recommends no elaborate regimen. He applies only the last of Hadrat `Abdul-
Qadir's spiritual tools: "Occupy yourself with dhikr, remembrance of God," he says, "with whatever sort of
dhikr you choose." "Aha!" pipes up our would-be interior voyager, much encouraged," "I'll bet I could
manage that!" Best try ten minutes of it before volunteering for eighteen or twenty hours at a time. The
prescription may be simpler, but it is emphatically not easier.
Ash-shaykh al-akbar is still writing for the private individual who independently decides to enter
khalwa. Like his great predecessor, he cites conditions which that individual must fulfill if he or she hopes
for any success, but he specifies them carefully. That person must be soundly religiously established in
the elements of ablution and prayer, fasting and reverence; must have cultivated his or her character out
of grossness and learned how to be patient and how to remain spiritually awake. That person must be
able to work; able to pay close moral attention to the quality of acts; able to avoid attachment; able to
place full trust in Allah. (You see we are rather narrowing the field here!) That person most definitely must
not publicize his or her retreat, or hold court during its term: instantaneous disaster. And to that select
person who meets these conditions the shaykh gives a very interesting final piece of advice: "Watch your
diet." "Keep your constitution in balance," he says, "for if dryness is excessive, it leads to corrupt
imaginings and long, delirious ravings." We shall be returning to this topic a bit later.
For imagination is the key to this business, involving as it does a necessary passage through that
Imaginal World which speaks to our romantic soul–and Hadrat Ibn `Arabi is quite worried about it. "For
God's sake," he writes, "do not enter retreat until you know what your station is"–how many of us actually
know, in any objective sense, where we stand?–"and until you know your strength in respect to the power
of imagination. For if your imagination rules you, then there is no road to retreat except by the hand of the
shaykh who is discriminating and aware. If your imagination is under control, then enter retreat without
fear." If your imagination is under control! Again, not an easy matter.
In the late twelfth century, it seems, it was still possible, as it had been earlier, for the right people
to make an effective khalwa simply by closing their doors and taking up some form of unbroken
remembrance of God. Perhaps those times supported a more straightforward self-evaluation of
readiness, and of the state of one's own imagination–at least in certain cases. But Hadrat Ibn `Arabi is
already becoming doubtful. And within another century or so, as the great river of tasawwuf began to flow
definitively into the channels of the tariqahs, self-evaluation was no longer deemed safe, or therefore,
acceptable. The Sufi community standardized its modes of training, and established a more formal
structure of peer review.
Under tariqah discipline, the ancient practice of khalwa (like many others) became closely
regulated and technically refined–and sometimes yielded remarkable results. To give you a sense of this,
let me share with you the methods used until very recent times by the Turkish Halvetis, as well as some
illustrations provided by the current grand shaykh of the Halveti-Jerrahi Order, Shaykh Safer Dal Efendi of
Istanbul.
A dervish who goes into seclusion is technically termed a halvetnishin. The place that the
halvetnishin retires to is called a halvet-hane. Although in Hadrat Ibn `Arabi 's time, one's home might still
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serve as a halvet-hane–"the door of your house is between you and your people," he wrote–the halvet-
hane rapidly thereafter became a much more daunting affair. The site of retreat came to be specified as a
windowless cell, more or less the size of a grave ("die before you die") that is neither high enough for
standing up nor long enough for lying down. As was directed also by Hadrat `Abdul-Qadir, it must be
adjacent to a mosque or other place where the five daily prayers are made in congregation, for the
halvetnishin may (sometimes must) pray in congregation, though with a veil-covered face and in complete
silence. He or she might come out for that purpose, to answer a call of nature, or to make ablution;
otherwise not at all. Sometimes a halvetnishin might be locked into the halvet-hane.
The halvetnishin kept a complete speech fast, and fasted from food between each night prayer
and the evening prayer of the following day: about twenty-two hours at a pass. The food assigned at fast-
break was some water, some olives and dates, and a few slices of barley bread. Within the halvet-hane
were exactly three objects: a prayer rug to sit on; a chillekolani–a belt which loosely tied the halvetnishin's
bent neck to his thighs (for leaning back against the walls was not permitted); and a mu`in–a short staff
with a crossbar on which to rest the forehead or the chin, to prevent the head from falling down. So
equipped, the halvetnishin remained in total darkness for the fixed period of forty days.
This exercise was by invitation only. It could be assigned only by the shaykh–whose decision
about the readiness and needs of a prospective halvetnishin might be influenced by the aspirant's
dreams. But considering the size of the staterooms on this voyage, are there any left among us who are
still anxious to volunteer?
It is freely recognized that the first period in halvet resembled the torture of hell–people regularly
longed to die. Later, however, events might take a very different turn: a halvetnishin might not ever want
to come out of the cell again. And particular masters didn't. Successful disengagement from the visible
world, we learn, bestows certain advantages. Romantics, cheer up! Let me tell you a story.
Somunju Baba {qs}, otherwise known as Shaykh Hamiduddin Aksarayi, was the teacher of Emir
Sultan, himself the shaykh and son-in-law of the Ottoman sultan Beyazit I, called the Thunderbolt. While
Emir Sultan was a great public dignitary, Somunju Baba was a great secret one. He kept nearly continual
halvet. Bursa was a lively imperial city during Beyazit's reign at the end of the fourteeth century, and if you
go to Bursa you may still see the halvet-hane where Somunju Baba secluded himself. It is about a meter
square.
Now Sultan Beyazit constructed a magnificent grand mosque in Bursa (which remains one of the
gems of the city), and when it was completed, he wanted Emir Sultan to dedicate it at a festive opening
ceremony. Emir Sultan, however, declined. Instead, he begged his hidden shaykh to perform this task.
Somunju Baba agreed to undertake it properly, and so he did. Now it is traditional and expected, in
Turkish culture, to greet elders and respected folk by kissing their hands: a warm salutation that people
look forward to bestowing on those of whom they are fond. The assembled citizens of Bursa, exiting the
new mosque, were delighted to have an opportunity to kiss Somunju Baba's hand at the door. But on
comparing notes afterward, they began to realize that the shaykh had been met with at all six doors of the
building, and at exactly the same time!
Meanwhile, at one of those doors, the sultan stopped to speak to the shaykh. "Is anything lacking
in the mosque?" he asked.
"Oh yes!" Somunju Baba told him. "You should have built a tavern outside each of these six
gates."
The Thunderbolt was very angry...but the shayhkh pointed his finger at the sultan's heart. "Why
are you upset?" he inquired. "This mosque of yours is just a building, made of stone and mortar. Yet you
see fit to turn that house of God, there, into a house of drink!"
The sultan wept...and stopped his secret binges.
On that same day, when the public realization of his miracle had all of Bursa astonished, Somunju
Baba disappeared. His student Emir Sultan founda brief message. It read,"It is time to leave: our thread
is being sold in the bazaar," meaning, "our secret is out!"
Somunju Baba was never again seen in Bursa. But reports came in that he had been sighted in
this city and that...generally all at the same time. He has several graves here and there, which may be
visited to this day. One of them is in Aksaray, where it is believed his worldly body lies.
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Do you find the irrestistible romance of this account shorted out by an equally unshakeable
skepticism? Shame on you! Just because nobody you know can do it! Hadrat Ibn `Arabi tells us that
multiple location, as well as being one of the prerogatives of the people of Paradise, is the identifying
sign, in this world, of those members of the invisible hierarchy known as abdal. And on return from a
completed khalwa, he tells us elsewhere, the graduate (so to speak) is "assigned...and the robes of honor
your degree requires are conferred upon you; and they are many." So perhaps this note from the Shaykh
gives us a clue to the degree Somunju Baba was assigned through his halvet, and the sort of robe of
honor he in consequence received.
In case this story is set too far in the mythic past to feel like real history, let me tell you another
story.
In the eighteenth century–which in some quarters was known as the Age of Enlightenment–an
Arab called Sayyid `Abdus-Salam ash-Shaybani appeared in Istanbul. Claiming to be a qutb from the
Sa`diyyah tariqah, he opened a lodge for dervishes–a dergah The other shaykhs of the city wanted to
verify the newcomer's claim, and insisted that he follow certain procedures in order to be accepted.
Summoning him to their gathering, they told him that if he wanted to wear a shaykh's turban in their town,
he had first to speak to them all and prove his wisdom. Hearing this, he took out a knife, opened his
mouth, and cut off his tongue at the root! Calmly handing the knife, and the tongue, to the shaykh seated
next to him, he proceeded to address the assembly at quite some length.
But the Istanbul Sufis–obviously a sophisticated bunch–were not overawed by this display. They
told him that it was all very well, but he could not take students unless he belonged to one of the tariqahs
currently existing in the city: that is, he had to offer his formal allegiance to one of the shaykhs already
present. (If you think about it, this was a test of humility.) Sayyid `Abdus-Salam looked around the room,
pointed to Muhammad Emin Efendi, the Jerrahi shaykh of the time, and said he would become his
dervish. But as soon as the two of them returned to the Jerrahi dergah, as a final test of his worth, Sayyid
`Abdus-Salam was closed into halvet. Before the door shut, he made a surprising request of his own: that
no food or water be given him for the forty days. The request was granted, and news of it spread all over
Istanbul.
On the fortieth day, when the term of the retreat expired, the shaykhs of the city gathered in the
Jerrahi dergah and Muhammad Emin Efendi knocked at the door of the cell, calling Sayyid `Abdus-Salam
to come out. No sound was heard from inside. He knocked again and called again: no answer. But at the
third knock, the door opened, and Sayyid `Abdus-Salam appeared. He was breathless, as if he had been
running. "Please forgive me," he said. "When your first knock came I was circling the Exalted Throne.
When the second came, I was conversing with the prophet Jesus, peace be upon him. I hurried to
respond to the third...."
What qualifies as the Age of Enlightenment, apparently, depends on where you sit.
The last person to enter halvet in the Jerrahi line was Fahreddin Efendi, master of the Order from
1914 until 1966 and teacher of the current grand shaykh. Interestingly, although there are halvet-hanes at
the Jerrahi dergah in Istanbul, Fahreddin Efendi did not make his own halvet there. Instead , sometime
before 1914 he was sent by his shaykh to the Halveti-Sha`bani dergah of Shaykh Ahmed Efendi in
Nevrekop, which is now in Bulgaria. It seems that this particular dergah had 250 cells of retreat–and from
all over the world, in the 19th century, every tariqah sent its qualified dervishes to enter khalwa at that
place. I wonder what has become of it today.
For that was the end of it. The intense closed-cell halvet that was regulated and maintained by
the tariqahs for some seven hundred years is now no longer allowed. When the current Jerrahi shaykh,
Safer Efendi, approached his teacher to request the practice–and no romantic is he!–Fahreddin Efendi
firmly refused. For the feasibility of halvet is dependent, not only on the spiritual capacities and needs of
particular seekers, but also on the capacities and needs of their age and world. "The time of halvet has
passed," Fahreddin Efendi told his aspiring pupil. "Now is the time of jalvet"–the time to get out of retreat,
go into the world, and keep company with people–though reserving our hearts for God.
The tantalizing question is: Why?
II
In the year 1954, a brilliant neurophysiological researcher named John Lilly, working at the
National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, decided to test a current hypothesis about the
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functioning of the brain. Several prominent scientists had suggested that the waking state might be
dependent upon continued external stimulation: that in the absence of sensory input the brain would
simply turn off consciousness and go to sleep. The logically obvious experiment was to isolate a human
being from as much outside stimulation as was physically possible, and then see what happened. Lilly
decided to perform the experiment on himself.
He reasoned that the most effective way to cut off sensory stimulation was to float suspended in a
carefully designed tank of water in a totally light-proof, soundproof room. After a certain amount of
technical fiddling, his experimental environment functioned as he wished, and he entered into scientific
khalwa. The results–which have faded curiously from public awareness–were at one time famous.
"Later such experiences and experiments were called 'sensory deprivation,'" Lilly wrote in his
extraordinary book, The Center of the Cyclone.
"At no time did I find any deprivation effect. In the absence of all stimulation it was found that one
quickly makes up for this by an extremely heightened awareness and increasing sensory experience in
the absence of known means of external stimulation. Within the first few hours it was found that I did not
tend to go to sleep at all. The original theory was wrong. One did not need external stimulation to stay
awake. After a few tens of hours of experiences, I found phenomena that had been previously described
in various literatures. I went through dreamlike states, trancelike states, mystical states. In all these
states, I was totally intact, centered, and there. At no time did I lose conscious awareness of the facts of
the experiment. Some part of me always knew that I was suspended in water in a tank in the dark and the
silence.
"I went through experiences in which other people apparently joined me in this dark silent
environment. I could actually see them, feel them, and hear them. ... It was only later in reading the
literature that I found that the states that I was getting into resembled those attained by other techniques.
"In 1958, I left the National Institutes of Health and moved to the Virgin Islands. It wasn't until
1964 that I was able to build another tank and to introduce LSD into the solitude, isolation, and
confinement experiment."
This move, as might be expected, greatly magnified the effects. Lilly continued his enhanced
experiments until 1966, when a national scare and its attendant prohibition laws required all researchers
to return their LSD to its manufacturer, the Sandoz Company. He complied.
But Lilly the scientist had by that time hatched out into a full-blown mystic. His explorations had
suggested an altogether different sort of theory than the one with which he had started–a theory that he
continued passionately to pursue. "After ten years of work in the isolation tank," he wrote, "I had made a
generalization from my experiences in the tank. Let me state this as simply as possible. What one
believes to be true," he says, " either is true or becomes true in one's mind, within limits to be
determined experimentally and experientially. These limits are beliefs to be transcended."
Lilly's striking statement should have an evocative ring for members of this Society. Compare the
following:
"Although the Real is One, beliefs present Him in various guises. They take Him
apart and put Him together, they give Him form and they fabricate Him." (from the
Futuhat)
or:
"Beware of becoming delimited by a specific belief and disbelieving in everything
else, lest great good escape you...." (from the Fusus)
Lilly would appear to be on to something. But compare his formulation also to this saying of a
widely-read modern spiritual teacher:
"Since there is no separateness, we are each Godlike, and God is in each of us.
We experience God and God experiences through us. We are literally made up of God
energy, therefore we can create whatever we want in life [my boldface] because we
are each co-creating with the energy of God."
The author of that statement is St. Shirley Maclaine. [Going Within, p. 85]
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Thirty years after Lilly's hands-on brain experiments–and those of quite a few unsung others–
survivors of that dangerous burst of creativity which led so many, so close to illumination and bliss, and
seemed the very threshhold of a new phase of human evolution, tend to sit around and wonder: What
happened? Where did we go wrong? How did the New Age get to be so dumb?
We, however, are in the fortunate position of being able to ask someone who knows.
*
Lilly and his generation neglected certain crucial variables. The first is preparedness: what Hadrat
Ibn `Arabi calls isti`dad. "If someone's design attaches to what is beyond worship without preparedness
for it," he comments, "nothing will be revealed to him and his design will not profit. On the contrary, such a
person resembles one who is diseased. His strengths and capacities are completely nullified, and with
him the wish, the design, and the ability to act become seriously damaged. How can he possibly reach
what he seeks?" And indeed, we have seen this happen, to much of a generation that flamed right out.
Isti`dad has two dimensions. One is appropriate training. Lilly undervalued the fact that his whole
professional life had served to prepare him to navigate states. He felt that everybody who wanted to,
ought to be able to do it. Yet he himself had passed through a medical education, a psychoanalytic
education, and an extensive apprenticeship in exotic research. He was already competent to evaluate
and assign order to much of what he met. And he was a highly practiced, thoroughly centered observer
before he ever went into the tank. That is an advantage one cannot safely travel without...but it is scarcely
a universal possession.
Lilly was aware of this when he recommended that people who underwent LSD sessions should
have a guide to stand in for their "fair witness." "The ''fair witness,' he wrote, applying his somewhat
eccentric terminology, "is a mode of functioning of the biocomputer in which the selfmetaprogrammer
remains uninvolved and objective, recording whatever happens without editing or censoring; later, the
recording is reproduced on demand exactly, unedited and uncensored. Everyone has a fair witness," he
noted; "some persons must unbury him." Yet when Lilly came to feel that his private experience was
generally applicable, he seems to have forgotten the necessity of unburying the witness.
(Some contemporary thinkers have cast doubt upon the very existence of a fair witness, arguing
that the brain simply constructs and maintains whatever story best suits it. Yet the actual situation is more
complex. Consider the evidence of one of the most ingenious neuroscientists working today, Vilayanur
Ramachandran of UC San Diego. His field of study is amnosognosia, a condition affecting about five
percent of people who suffer right-brain stroke. The left sides of their bodies are completely paralyzed–
and yet they vehemently deny that this is the case, self-convinced of a patent falsehood to a degree that
is truly bizarre. When certain nerves of the inner ear are stimulated, Dr. Ramachandran has found, such
people will correctly report not only that they are paralyzed, but that they have been paralyzed for days.
When the stimulation subsides, not only do they deny their current paralysis, but they are positive they
have never been paralyzed at all! "Do not enter retreat," pleaded the Shaykh, "until you know your
strength in respect to the power of imagination." It is no trivial power. The witness surely exists, but it can
be buried very deep.)
The second dimension of isti`dad is natural endowment, what Hadrat Ibn `Arabi calls "the
strength or weakness of one's spiritual nature," ruhaniyyah. This sort of preparedness varies a great deal:
for some people the veil of the unseen is ordinarily filmy, for others it normally resembles a brick wall. As
we shall see later, John Lilly turns out to have been a born visionary, which is not the case for most of us.
Lilly and his fellows believed that these differences did not matter, or else were easily overcome. But they
do, and they aren't.
When the young spiritual romantics of that generation got wind of Lilly's experiences, they
dreamed, naturally enough, of reproducing them. And children of instant gratification that we were, we
wanted to reproduce them now. Yet those who climbed into isolation tanks in hopes of spectacular
phenomena were generally disappointed by the show, since they rarely had a natural talent for vision, nor
had they previously cultivated the faculty. Meanwhile those who dropped acid in hopes of enlightenment
were routinely blown from one end of Creation to the other, with little opportunity to analyze or profit from
what they saw.
And increasingly, people who took psychedelics had little inclination to profit. The pursuit of
"altered states" rapidly became a style of popular entertainment rather than a modality for the acquisition
of knowledge–and so the likelihood of acquiring useful knowledge through that route faded to the
 !8

vanishing point. Because as the Shaykh says, "it is not possible for the door of the invisible world and its
secrets to be opened while the heart craves for them." If its charms attract you, in other words, the world
of states closes its gates of horn–through which true dreams come, in the old Greek image–and leaves
open, if anything, only the flashy ivory gates of dead-end fantasy. "Corrupt imaginings and long, delirious
ravings." Catch-22...until such time as, insha'Allah, we come to terms as a culture with our cravings for
power and thrills.
And freedom. For another variable the Sixties explorers neglected to take into account was the
seduction inherent in the notion of transcending oneself.
What one believes to be true either is true or becomes true in one's mind, within limits to be
determined experimentally and experientially. These limits are beliefs to be transcended." But precisely
how are they to be transcended? They are your limits because you can't get past them! Lilly held,
nonetheless, in the grand American tradition of self-reliance, that you could do it yourself...if you
configured your belief structure in such a way that you were permitted to do it yourself. He actually used
the expression "lift oneself up with one's own bootstraps" [p. 39]–which should have served as a warning
sign that a major cultural assumption was in play.
He was quite acute about the beliefs that the spiritual undertaking requires. There are two
necessary principles. Here is how he put it: "Hidden from oneself is a covert set of beliefs that control
one's thinking, one's actions, and one's feelings./The covert set of hidden beliefs is the limiting set of
beliefs to be transcended./To transcend one's limiting set, one establishes an open-ended set of beliefs
about the unknown." [p. 128] That is the first principle. This is the second: "Let us imagine what it would
be like to have the kind of help that one would like to have in order to move to higher levels of
functioning.... In other words, one has help in order to transcend one's current limiting beliefs. This belief
is of help in the transcendence." [p. 39]
Now, Lilly is certainly not wrong–beliefs in the invisible side of daily reality and in divine guidance
are so fundamental, and were once taken so much for granted, that the older masters had no need to
advocate establishing them. And as the Shaykh said, "the god of each believer is constricted by his
proofs," so we have a major reason to try and open up our belief structure, our system of proofs.
However there is a regrettably short step between Lilly's concise formulas for spiritual self-
direction and Boopsie in Doonesbury channelling Hunk-Ra. After all, that's the sort of help that she would
like to have in transcending what she thinks are her limitations! Imagination, which we are activating when
we start to manipulate belief structure, is intimately bound to aesthetics. And while Lilly might have
favored a nice clean cold scientific aesthetic, much of our interior decoration is done in atrocious kitsch.
Taste will tell.
Plus there is the little matter of the Fair Witness. When we start enthusiastically transcending
ourselves, are we going to listen to the quiet little voice reporting that we are in fact paralyzed, and have
been paralyzed for days? Or are we going to listen to the big very positive happy voice insisting that
everything is fine, the arm works, and in fact I am pointing at your nose with it this very minute, don't you
see?
To educate taste, one needs an aesthetic tradition. And to educate inner attention, one needs an
outside observer one can trust.
Lilly was not unaware of the necessity of tradition and teacher. But the tradition to which he
attached himself, and which determined his most critical valuations and decisions, was research science–
which as both myth and procedure accurately measures only part of human life... and which in any case
makes for far too severe an aesthetic for the majority of people to adopt. While when it came to teachers,
he had a notable blind spot–a blind spot which had conditioned his choice of aesthetic in the first place.
And here we shall move from a personal case into a major historical trend.
At the end of Center of the Cyclone, Lilly offers what he calls his "general principle of living and
being" in seven brief rules. The first six offer an elegant procedure for dealing with states. Learn whatever
you can about the new state and the beliefs that construct it; take on those beliefs as if true; enter the
state consciously and resolve to remember everything that happens in it; drop those beliefs, take on your
best objective consensus beliefs, and evaluate your experience; test your current models of consensus
reality; construct a revised model that will include both your new experience and consensus reality in, as
he puts it, "a more inclusive succinct way." This is all well and good; it is even courageous and admirable.
 !9

But Rule Number Seven is, and I quote, "Do not worship, revere, or be afraid of any person, group,
space, or reality. An investigator, an explorer, has no room for such baggage."
Now, wait a minute. There is something in the language here that should put us on yellow alert.
An investigator has no room for such baggage? This little aside bears a certain fateful resemblance to
Freud's celebrated insistence that psychoanalysis needed to be protected from "the black tide of the mud
of occultism." Too much affect: ladies and gentlemen, there is a story here! Why should the intrepid
explorer, who climbs every mountain, forges every stream, follows every rainbow, etc, abruptly dictate that
worship and reverence spaces are taboo? Can it be that we are in the presence of an untranscended
belief?
Lilly is quite clear about what the story is, because he is holding onto that untranscended belief
for dear life. He writes, "In my own case I had not trusted a human master, a guru, or any human guides.
Early in my childhood I was doublecrossed, as it were, by priests, nuns, and others who pretended to
have all of the knowledge and the direct contact with God. I became skeptical while quite young. I found
more honest truth within myself than I ever did from the representatives of the church. This skepticism led
me away from the mystical aspects of the church into science and medical research in the search for new
knowledge.
"I am sure that if I came across an authentic person who definitely could demonstrate that he had
the powers he claimed, I would remain skeptical until it was definitely shown that I could learn what he
knew and reach the same places, the same spaces. Meanwhile I pursue my own path in my own inner
spaces, skeptical of any help that is not of the above variety. I have seen too much of sham pretension
and showmanship in myself and in others to believe in instant enlightenment through contact with a
master or guru." [p. 40]
Lilly, then, is a victim of classic Western ecclesiophobic reaction–a very widespread syndrome
over the past three hundred years. And as the Turkish proverb puts it, "He who has been burnt by the
soup, blows on the yogurt." There is also a pithy American proverb about babies and bathwater that
would not be out of place.
For Lilly, like many a victim of the same syndrome, sacrificed a lot of priceless psychic equipment
to his early disenchantment with religion. Having been betrayed once, he refused to be suckered again–
and therefore denied himself the possibility of educating his capacity for trust...without which spiritual
discrimination is impossible. And without that trained capacity for trust, he could not afford to accept the
guidance–even the existence–of any human being who might inherently know more than he did on
account of isti`dad. Such people were defined right out of reality by Protestantism and the post-
Enlightenment scientific world view...and even our twentieth-century confrontation with the irreducible
interdependence of observer and observed has not shaken the conviction that they may not exist. This
foundational dogmatic insistence on the total replicability of every experiment by every experimenter at
every time is poignantly ironic in an investigator like Lilly, whose isti`dad was so unusual that almost none
of those who pursued his methods after him, even with substantial pharmacological assistance, were able
to reproduce his results.
And it is doubly ironic that when Lilly set out looking for a new method of jump-starting his states,
he had inevitably to find himself a teacher. His search led him to the self-proclaimed Sufi from Chile,
Oscar Ichazo, whose Arica Institute was so hot for awhile, and through whom the enneagram system for
analyzing practically anything–now a staple of weekend do-it-yourself spiritual seminars–was originally
introduced into the California scene.
Ichazo validated Lilly's prior experience. Lilly wrote of the original encounter, "In that week with
Oscar I had found, for the first time on this planet, someone who apparently had been to the same spaces
that I had been to, someone who could discuss these spaces intelligently and objectively and who at the
same time could encourage me to accept my own experience as real. Our contacts were almost
immediately Essence to Essence." [p. 138] In other words, Lilly was tired of being lonely. He jumped at
the chance of coming in from the cold.
So it was love at first sight...but of course the connection had to be dogmatically justified: "Since
Oscar did not ask me to believe things I had not experienced myself, I was intrigued.... I could start with
any set of beliefs that I wished and I would probably have to get rid of some of them, if not all of them, as I
progressed, but this would be up to me. Oscar said he was not trying to convince anybody except by
 !10

direct personal experience of the phenomena. I found Oscar's program to be in line with what I wanted to
do." But the kicker was, "In addition, I was impressed with him personally." [p.144]
After all this science and objectivity stuff, then, we are led inevitably back to those damn fuzzy
issues of love and trust. But now we are carrying...a different kind of baggage, but baggage nonetheless:
the baggage of the presumption of intellectual independence. And because Lilly both presumed this
independence existed, and dogmatically assigned it a supreme value, he was thoroughly unprepared to
analyze the covert belief structure that his association with Ichazo inculcated in him. For although Oscar
validated his states (which must have been a great comfort), and helped him to assign them a
taxonomical structure and order (which must have been pragmatically very useful), he also stroked him
relentlessly with the notion that his ego had pretty much ceased to exist–which is a snare and a delusion
and has been a first-class source of radical misguidance practically since Day One. No traditionally-
trained Sufi teacher in 1400 years would have countenanced such a thing–but Lilly was too skeptical for
tradition.
So blind was Lilly to his own seduction that he reprinted as important data verbatim transcriptions
of taped conversations with Ichazo that are, to the outsider, truly formidable in their perilous sappiness.
Just to give you a taste of it, here's something right from the center of one conversational cyclone:
O: ...Not to be in the higher state and to be and to see the higher state is to be in disappointment.
J: I became very impatient to get back there. But why I'm impatient (and this may be my own
deviation), I'm impatient because others won't come up with me–won't move from the lower levels–won't
come with me. I'm impatient because my dyadic partner won't move–won't get in where she belongs–
won't get into 24 and stay there. She keeps dropping to 48 and sometimes 96. I get so impatient and I
don't like that in me. That's ego, you know.
O: No, it's not, because I don't agree with you on that point. On the contrary, it is your incredible
love of the state that causes you to want everybody there.
J: Yes.
O: The state is like that. Not selfish. On the contrary, it is forgiving. You want everyone to share it.
[p. 182]
So, Shazam! What among ordinary mortals would be a termed a relationship problem becomes a
regrettable instance of inertial drag on the blamelessly enlightened superior partner, in the freshly-minted
state-based New Rationalism that is being tacitly advocated here. No wonder the poor woman kept
dropping to 96. And no wonder poor Lilly kept eating it up. After all, he was being told exactly what he
wanted to hear. And since his private terms for authenticity had been scrupulously fulfilled, he didn't think
twice about that.
There is a Sufi teaching story about Hadrat `Abdul-Qadir al-Jilani, Hadrat Ibn `Arabi's spiritual
father, whose detailed conditions for khalwa we have already cited. It seems that the Shaykh and a group
of his followers were walking through the desert one day during the fast of Ramadan. Naturally enough,
they were hot, tired, hungry, and very thirsty. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a great shading cloud appears in
the sky and a majestic voice addresses them from behind it. "O my beloved servants! Your labors are
accepted! Your work is accomplished! Now accept in return my mercies and rewards! Eat..."–Poof! a
banquet table appears under spreading palm trees–"and drink!"–Poof! A sparkling spring bursts up from
the ground–"in gratitude for my good pleasure and in remembrance of me."
The dervishes' eyes pop. It's the perfect fulfillment of their desires–and just exactly the kind of
amazing event they knew a real miracle must be. They rush forward eagerly to take advantage of this
signal grace. But "Stop!" thunders the shaykh. "Don't touch any of it! A`udhu billahi min ash-shaytan ir-
rajim...I take refuge in Allah from Satan the Accursed!"
And with the Shaykh's invocation...Poof! The Evil One appears. "Rats!" he says. "I thought that
was pretty good. How did you know it was me?"
"In three ways," says the Shaykh. "First, I knew by kalam, by theology, that Allah is not restricted
to a location, and would therefore not be hiding behind a cloud. Second, I knew by tariqah, by mystical
tradition, that the voice of Allah does not issue from any one direction, but comes from the midst of
oneself and everything, and is not heard in ordinary sounds. And third, I knew by the shari`ah, by sacred
law, that when Allah issues a commandment it is universally binding, not applicable only to certain people
 !11

and only part of the time. We were fasting; fasts may not be needlessly broken; we could not be
exceptions to the rule. It was not God that spoke."
"O Shaykh!" says the Devil. "This is profound! This is magnificent! I have fooled hundreds of
thousands of saints, I have fooled prophets with this trick! But you–you saw right through it. Why do you
limit yourself to this miserable handful of poor-souled, weak-minded followers? You should have armies of
splendid disciples, your wisdom should be broadcast everywhere...."
"A`UDHU BILLAHI MIN ASH-SHAYTAN IR-RAJIM!" the Shaykh hollers again. And the whole
scenario collapses.
It is unfortunate to forget the activity of Satan the Accursed. There really is a Deceiver, a Betrayer
of Trust. He really does not mean us well, and he really cannot be confined to a single easily avoidable
location–like, say, the frustrating and confusing world of exoteric religion. It is also unfortunate to believe
that access to elevated states makes one proof against that Deceiver's assaults. On the contrary, it
makes a person subject to ever sneakier attack. The most dangerous state you can occupy is feeling that
you have risen above the crowd.
Yet even among the saints (as the Bad Guy himself comments in this story) an opinion has
circulated that the temptations of the Misleader are limited to the material world–a point of view that has
led in some circles to a fair amount of disdain toward the body, and the passions, and the messy business
of living: what Lilly refers to as "the planetside trip." But Hadrat Ibn `Arabi affirms that this opinion is
mistaken. "Let us explain to you the truth in that," he writes.
Some of the Sufis hold the view that all delusion in what is seen will be eliminated, because the
travelers ascend into places where the satans cannot enter, places that are holy and pure, as described
by God. This is correct. The situation is as they suppose. However, this is so only when the mi`raj takes
place in both body and spirit, as was the mi`raj of the Messenger of God. Another person will ascend
through his mind, or spiritual reality... In this case, there must be delusion if this person does not possess
the divine mark between him and God. Through that mark he stands "upon a clear sign from his
Lord" [11:17] in what he sees and witnesses and in everything that is addressed to him. Hence, if he has
a mark, he will stand upon a clear sign from his Lord. Otherwise, delusion will occur for him, and there will
be a lack of certain knowledge in that, if he is just. [II 622.22, Chittick Worlds, 87]
It's not enough to "transcend" the world of sweaty desert walks and nagging relationship
problems and hypocritical clerics and tiresome concrete ritual obligations...attractive as that might be.
Delusion and betrayal will still lie in wait for us: in this life, there is no safe place. There is only (as the
Qur'an puts it) "the rope of Allah, which never breaks." What one most needs in order to align oneself with
living and transforming truth is not a bigger, stronger, higher high. One needs a constant signal that
threads through all conceivable states. One needs a touchstone. One needs the mark.
Without that mark, with only one's own bootstraps to hold onto, anything can happen. One breaks
the ordained fast and eats illusory Satanic food, happy to be doing the will of God. One becomes
convinced, as Lilly did in the Eighties, that one is, and is ideally, a sort of balky vehicle for extraterrestrial
forces...which used to be the definition of crazy: possessed by the jinn, or majnun. One fancies oneself
the prophet of a New Age–like the magician Aleister Crowley, and many others of greater and lesser
dignity, before and since. One sits around in teepees, like a certain famous master of our time, allowing
others the spiritual grace of contemplating one's sublime genitalia.
It does not require "sham pretension and showmanship," as Lilly bitterly put it, to accomplish all
this. All it takes is a taste of visionary experience, an untranscended belief in intellectual independence,
and an ego that has been declared not to exist. The Deceiver is happy to do the rest.
Whatever the privately established "divine mark" of authenticity may be–and Hadrat Ibn `Arabi
isn't telling–the publicly established "divine mark" to which the Shaykh absolutely adhered was the
revealed guidance of the Qur'anic text and the Prophetic example. And we know from his discourse on
scriptural interpretation that a private divine mark and a public divine mark cannot conflict. It is only when
we begin from this principle of coherence that we are in a position to build a workable bullshit detector for
the spiritual realm–because only then will sufficient checks and balances fall into place to keep us from
going astray. The public mark must verify the private mark. The private mark must verify the public mark.
Ecclesiophobia, it turns out, is just not skeptical enough. It is true that received doctrinal
interpretation cries out for the critique of experience: that fact can never safely be forgotten. But the ego is
 !12

just as badly in need of critique. If we as experiencing subjects are to keep tabs on our own propensities
for deception, we need the full weight of an external spiritual tradition to assist us. Otherwise we proceed
wholly at our own risk–and the risks are extremely high. As a Turkish dervish hymn puts it, "You can't
travel without a guide: the roads are full of bandits." Or as the great early Sufi Abu Sulayman ad-Darani
commented, "Sometimes a subtle observation stays in my mind for days, but I never accept anything
unless I find it verified by two trustworthy witnesses: the Qur'an and sunnah." This is not a species of
moral cowardice. It is the most rigorous and prudent form of experimental control.
In the absence of any such control, it is probably just as well that most of us do not try very hard
to pursue our visionary capacity–especially since the dream of it is often all we need to help us along the
way. And if the romance of esoteric knowledge beckons to us unbearably, if we yearn to be mysterious
and special–then we can cheerfully and straighforwardly fake it, like St. Shirley and her legion of weekend
inner warriors. What one believes to be true either is true or becomes true in one's mind, within limits to
be determined experimentally and experientially. These limits are beliefs to be transcended." Every day in
every way, I am getting better and better.
Maybe we're lucky the New Age is so dumb.
III
The religion of Islam prohibits the drinking of wine. Yet wine, we read the Qur'an, forms one of the
four great rivers of Paradise: everybody who gets there can drink it. What makes the difference?
Location, location, location.
Here is here, and there is there, and the object of religion is to get us safely from here to there, a
course that is called as-sirat al-mustaqim, the straight path. And those who drink, we know, have a great
deal of trouble walking a straight path. They wobble a lot, wander off course, fall down in ditches. Once
one has made it back home, a little unsteadiness scarcely matters–since in the home we are speaking of,
one can never get hurt or lost again. Or–rather more importantly–injure or misguide another.
Even in the world of imagination that buffers bodies and spirits and this world and the next, it is
necessary to be careful. Hadrat Ibn `Arabi tells us straight out, in R. al-Anwar, that wine means the
knowledge of states. If in the course of retreat it is offered to us in images, symbolically, we still must
carefully consider. His advice is, never drink unmixed wine. Even if it is mixed with the water of rivers and
springs, with water that has come through channels in the earth, we should not drink it. Only if it is mixed
with rainwater, with life that has come directly from heaven, ought we to accept this gift.
For khalwa, you will remember, is meant to be an exercise in mi`raj, in ascent. And rainwater, like
revelation, comes from above.
Contemporary intellectuals find it very hard to accept that there is an "above," that there could be
anything on the other side of the mind, the side away from the world. Revelation, we believe, is a product
of "the religious imagination." It never occurs to us that "the religious imagination" might be a product of
revelation. Yet Hadrat Ibn `Arabi repeatedly cites the Qur'anic warning that we ought not to make
metaphors for God; that God makes His own metaphors for Himself.
The distinction is crucial. When human beings take revealed images up, unravel them, develop
them, embroider them, the roots of their functionality remain in the Divine Name "The Guide." When we
invent metaphors ourselves, their roots are in us: we cannot travel through them any further than their
origin. If they are private inventions, they can lead us to meet our own qualities. If they are social
inventions, they can lead us to meet the qualities of our culture. But only if they are divine inventions can
they lead us to meet the qualities of God.
It is said that after the Mi`raj had occurred, Abu Jahl went to visit the Holy Prophet. "Well,
Muhammad," he said, (salla Allahu `alayhi was-sallam), "I hear you toured the whole universe in an
instant last night and ended up in the presence of Allah!"
"Yes," the Prophet replied.
"Very well then," Abu Jahl said. "Get up!
He got up.
"Now raise one foot." The Prophet, always the soul of courtesy, raised one foot.
 !13

"Now raise the other foot."

"Uncle," said the Prophet, "you know I cannot raise the other foot! If I try, I will fall over."
"You!" exclaimed Abu Jahl. "You who cannot this morning even raise your feet an inch off of the
ground, you expect me to believe that last night you climbed through the heavens and went all the way to
God?"
"I didn't say I went," the Holy Prophet told him gently. "I said I was taken."
When he was taken, he was taken as he was, and the mind that he had helped him systematize
what he saw. Because he was taken, that mind's vocabulary of images was consecrated. It became a
great map of the great road–a map that millions of others could follow...to the extent of their isti`dad. Not
to everyone is such a function given, that the organizing symbols of their own experience should become
the imaginal forms of objective knowledge. Perhaps it is the inner side of that transmission of shari`ah
which is unique to prophethood, and whose like we shall never see again. Perhaps it is the bond by which
the spiritual experience of every community is tied to its prophet, so that there can be no reception of
divine inspiration except through the being of a Messenger of God.
"And know,' Hadrat Ibn `Arabi advises us in R. al-Anwar, "that all the friends of God Most High
receive what they receive through the spiritual mediation of the prophet whose sacred Way they follow,
and it is from that station that they contemplate. There are those who know that, and there are those who
do not know it, but declare, 'God said to me'; yet this is nothing other than the spiritual nature [of their
prophet]. And there are secrets here for which these pages, intended only as an introduction, are too
narrow." [Journey, p. 56]
One need not be a prophet to be "taken." Though no human being will ever be taken further, or
more completely, than the prophets were, many quite ordinary people are "taken," nonetheless...if only for
an instant. Often we push such phenomena out of consciousness, for lack of an adequate vocabulary to
contain them. But when they are retained, they may decide our course. Such experiences, especially
when they come early, shape the inclinations of spiritual romantics, and predispose certain of us to the
full-scale mystical life. Hadrat Ibn `Arabi was one of these. Interestingly enough, so was John Lilly.
"I was able to go back through memory," he tells us, "and get to the period of my childhood when
I believed in the Catholic church. Suddenly I began to remember that I had had visions very similar to the
experience under LSD when I was a little boy preparing for confession in a darkened church. I was
kneeling facing the altar; there was a single candle lighted on the altar and the rest of the church was
darkened, with very little light coming in from the outside since the windows were high up. Suddenly the
church disappeared, the pillars were shadowy and I saw angels, God on His throne, and the saints
moving through the church in another set of dimensions. Since I was only seven years old and had seen
paintings of artistic concepts of God, this is what I saw in the visions. I also saw His love, His caring, and
His creation of us." [p. 18]
Lilly was able to retain this experience because his religious education had given him a usable
imaginal vocabulary for it. When he grew disillusioned with that education, he abandoned its vocabulary–
and with it even the record of his experience, for a good many years. When the memory of the experience
returned to him, he no longer spoke the language in which it had been configured. Instead, he recollected
a moment in which he had spoken it. Now he longed for the same experience...in different terms.
And here he ran into trouble. For it is the specificity of a language that mediates the subtlety of its
meanings, as the whole of Hadrat Ibn `Arabi 's exegesis demonstrates. To strip away the form of
something in order to reveal its essence is the great rational project, but that project has no
comprehension of immanence. As the Shaykh hammers into us again and again, the imaginal project is
superior to the rational, for no essence ever manifests without a form. To reject form is only to assert
formlessness...which is itself a form, and a less comprehensive one at that!
In just this way, when Lilly rejected the religious vocabulary of his youthful experience, he
exchanged it for an artificially neutral form of technical description that was far less meaningful–and far
less trustworthy–than the original images had been. For by choosing to radically rationalize his states, he
abandoned historical continuity with spiritual elders from whom he might have learned; lateral continuity
with a community of belief through whom he might have balanced himself; and vertical continuity with the
source of creativity, that endlessly re-spoken divine language which is constantly heard afresh. Having no
taste or patience for the archaic resonances of the scripture that imaginalizes that language, he ended up
 !14

with a reality constructed out of...science fiction. And although, as a young woman, I too very much liked
Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, "grokking in fullness: waiting is"–quoted in full seriousness
in Cyclone as a piece of spiritual guidance–after only twenty-five years is showing its age. Unlike a
citation from the "archaic" Bible or the Qur'an, it's downright embarrassing to read.
But Lilly associated contamination with the taste of rainwater in the original cocktail. Not realizing
that something else altogether had fallen into the glass, he emptied it out and asked for his liquor neat.
*
Much of the contemporary world suffers from the same confusion of tastes. Sometimes it
manifests in the outright rejection of interior states, imaginal language, and qualitative forms of knowledge
that governs mainstream scientific reductionism. Sometimes it manifests in the neo-magical attempt to
independently invoke, rationalize, and configure states which many others besides Lilly have pursued.
Sometimes it manifests in a trendy academic relativization of knowledge according to which "truth" can
only exist in ironic quotation marks. Sometimes it manifests in a reification of perceived truth into self-
justifying ideology, joined with a desperate attack on the validity of contrary experience. Sometimes it
manifests in a wistful game of "let's pretend" which stands in the place of what used to be our faith.
If we are to have a hope of resolving this mess, we need to be much clearer about knowledge
and imagination. We need to have some idea of what it means "to see." It won't hurt us to think about
basirah.
(We should mention first that the words "eye" and "vision" are meant as shorthand for the full
range of the faculties of perception.)
Basirah, the faculty of inner vision, is often referred to as the "eye of the heart"–and so it is, when
it reaches its full maturity and perfection. But in the beginning, before it becomes clarified, basirah is
merely the eye of the mind. It is a perfectly everyday human capacity that we all make use of on a regular
basis, when we dream. Raw basirah is a routine and necessary process of a functioning brain.
Hadrat Ibn `Arabi explains to us that the process of inner vision and the process of ordinary vision
are the same: only their objects of perception differ. Our current intellectual climate encourages us to refer
that statement directly to the realm of neuropsychology, which indeed testifies that the dreaming self
makes use of the same perceptual hard-wiring that the waking self employs. But while ordinary vision
uses the sensory vocabulary to look at bodies, extraordinary vision uses the imaginal vocabulary to look
at meanings. And what is not generally understood is that looking, in either realm, is not automatically
identical with seeing.
Anyone can look. Only a few can see. In the world of visible reality, many look with their eyes:
only a few look through them. Those few can see. Whether they are artists or scientists, poets or
moralists, they have taken the eye itself seriously: trained it, challenged it, disciplined it, until it is able to
engage vibrantly with the world that is there to be seen.
In the realm of invisible reality, too, many look with the forms of their beliefs: only a few look
through them. Those few can see. They are the contemplatives, the ones for whom sleeping basirah
awakens and comes into its own. In them the imaginal vocabulary and its understructure have been
refined, cultivated, and seasoned until they serve as a bridge between the Namer and the Named,
allowing the invisible to be known. These people never look at images. Through images, they look on
Something Else. They never experience states. Through states, too, they experience Something Else.
And it is meeting this Something Else, with whatever eye, which is the whole point of the exercise of
vision: everything else is merely...calibration.
Scientific halvetnishin John Lilly was the originator of the picture of the brain as a computer, a
metaphor that has now colonized large territories in contemporary thought. Yet this dimension is
conceivably what is least interesting about the way we are made. For in addition to being an executor of
programs and a generator of simulations, the brain is a tuner for which our whole sensorium serves as
the antenna. That picture remains an outlaw conception in mainstream science. And while Lilly the outlaw
intuited it, he refused to follow the long-standing, crucial instructions for how the instrument might actually
be tuned. From the point of view of human happiness, the universe contains a lot of static. All frequencies
carry information, but not all information is of equal significance. Some of it links us to eternity, and some
of it doesn't. Garbage in, garbage out.
 !15

Somunju Baba never intended that taverns should be built at the six gateways of the mosque. If
he had been a frequenter of taverns, he might have imagined himself standing at all those doors at once–
but he could never have actually been there. Perfectly balanced and tuned to what mattered, he didn't try
to go himself. Body and soul, like the Holy Prophet, he was taken.
Safer Efendi of Istanbul has commented that in the old days, khalwa might be prescribed for
many reasons, but chief among them was as a final step in the opening of basirah. Khalwa could activate
cascades of states and full-time imaginal vision. We now have some idea of what that activation might
involve. We should also have some idea of why it is very dangerous...far more so now than before.
These days, for purposes of basirah, the world presents a serious tuning problem. Following the
coinage of a recent book, we might call this problem "data smog." There are too many coruscating bits of
information, too many riveting images, too many claims, too many changes for us to incorporate, to
embody, to tune to...and they go by too fast. The rush and the flow and the intimation of power intoxicate
through their simple force, but they articulate nothing but themselves. At least, so far. Whether this
imaginal storm will bring us fertilizing rain or devastating destruction remains to be seen. But a storm it is–
and it is because the clouds have grown thick enough to obscure, rather than adorn, the heavens that so
many have now decided that the heavens do not exist. Many others of us, of course, remember perfectly
well that they do. But perhaps this is not weather in which sane people should attempt to venture out.
Perhaps we must now attend, instead, to what the current generation of cyber-utopians refer to
as "meatspace": the long-scorned "planetside trip."
The masters have closed the halvet-hane, but `uzla is still available. We can, if we wish, decide
not to embrace the storm. Imam Qushayri warns us that if we make up our minds to withdraw, it cannot be
because we think we are better than other people. It must be because we recognize that we are not fit to
interact with them. How can we become so? Let us proceed to find out.
Even Hadrat Ibn `Arabi says that "the object of departure from people is not leaving their physical
company, but that neither your heart nor your ear should be a receptacle for the superfluous words they
bring." [ra 31] A modern way of following this advice against distraction is to turn off the TV. Looking is not
seeing. A few deep images are vastly more useful to us than many shallow ones. We will not learn from
staring at an agitated little screen–whether electronic or pharmaceutical–what the Creator of the Universe
has brought us here to do. We will only find it in our own hearts, and in the long, slow message that has
already arrived.
Times change. Sometimes khalwa has one protocol and sometimes it has another. Sometimes it
works and sometimes it doesn't. Khalwa is technology, not revelation. It is only revelation that reliably
sustains passage, through time, in the imaginal world. Perhaps we should consider anew the full range of
implications of the Prophet's statement that the mi`raj of the faithful is in the ritual prayer.
We are lame ants on the road in the midst of a breaking storm...but fortunately this road is not
about state, or about vision either. Attractive and desirable though those things may be, the Divine
Presence does not depend on them in any way. It is not our business to seek ecstasy and secret
knowledge. It is our business to seek servanthood, what Hadrat Ibn `Arabi calls "the station of no station."
And to such a quest, time and circumstance neither present any impediment nor bestow any advantage.
Wherever it is we find ourselves, it is to that place that we have been "taken," and in that place our
responsibility may be found. When they discover the joy of that, spiritual romantics grow up. Then all
vistas reveal themselves as miraculous. And then retreats and advances alike cease to be of very great
concern.
October 18, 1997