Iblis Hero or Villain

[Kareana Kee]

Partly it was the last musings on fear that got me to thinking on the 'problem' of 'evil'. If everything is God/The One/Allah; where does shaytan/the devil fit into the scheme of things? It is an interesting experience coming to Sufism from a western background and even though I have in the past tried to seperate myself out from a Christian or more specifically a Christian religious identity, the reality still remains there is no escaping the indoctrination inherent in growing up in a Christian culture. One needent have gone to church to experience "protestant guilt" or the "protestant work ethic" or other such values many of us from the west would have grown up with. Although of course these experiences are not necessarily exclusively Christian.
One of the things that had been bothering me was the idea of complete submission too God and by that I mean a surrender or an acceptance to what life throws up at you. But then the internal argument begins. Perhaps there are things that should not be accepted. I mean would women or people of differnet ethnicity's have got equal treatment if they had just passively accepted their conditions imposed by other human beings. When is saying no to a condition that is being opposed from the outside pride and when is it valuing yourself? I think this issue is particular pertinant in personal relationships. When do we 'turn the other cheek' and when do we walk away. It seems to me there is a lot of confusion between values. Or put another way, when is it pride or arrogance to turn your back and when is it the act of a healthy ego?

On my internet travels I found an interesting posting by a guy called Randy Hoyt.

His first article "God and Man: Two Western Themes identifies two different themes apparant in Western culture as identified through Western myths.

The first theme:

1. Man must submit to God as the absolute authority. God is good, and his actions are beyond human scrutiny
2. Man should judge whether God's actions are good or wicked. If man determines that God is wicked, he should rebel against him

Hoyt references the story of Job as told in the bible to demonstrate the first theme and also a story from the Qur'an of Moses encountering a servant of God with whom he accompanies on a journed, so long as he does not question his actions.

To demonstrate the second theme he tells the Greek myth of Prometheus, where Prometheus claims the right to rebel against Zeus as he is violent and unjust.

For the full articel http://journeytothesea.com/two-themes-west/

There is a second article along the same idea and then the third which I found of particular interest. "The Disobedience of Iblis in Sufism." The Qur'an similiar to the Bible tells the story of an Angel who disobeys God's command to submit to Adam (mankind), but he refuses on the grounds Adam is made of clay and he is made of fire. "Why would God want the angels to worship something other than God himself...." But God sends Iblis to hell for his disobedience. Traditional Islamic interpretation's read this as meaning. God's action's are beyond scrutiny.

Hoyt then goes onto explain: "Some of the great masters of Sufism (a mystical tradition within Islam) agreed with this traditional interpretation of the story of Iblis’s disobedience, though not all did. Others puzzled over God’s command and concluded that God could not have truly wanted Iblis to worship Adam. To illustrate this point, they told stories depicting conversations with Iblis; the following story comes from Ahmad Ghazali, a Sufi master from the late-eleventh and early-twelfth centuries:

Encountering Eblis on the slopes of Sinai, Moses hailed him and asked, “O Eblis, why did you not prostrate before Adam?” Eblis replied, “Heaven forbid that anyone worship anything but the One. […] This command was a test.” (Nurbakhsh 13)

What could Iblis believe God was testing? Clearly, Iblis did not envision God testing his obedience — for he then would have failed that test. Instead, he saw God testing his love. This test reflects a concern that many Western theologians have raised: if God gives good things to those who obey him, someone might obey God only to get those good things and not out of any love for God. Farid ad-Din Attar, writing in the late-twelfth or early-thirteenth century, described this concern with an analogy:

If you distinguish between a gem and a stone received from the King, you are not a man of the path! If you’re pleased with the gem and disappointed by a stone, you have no interest, then, in the King. (Nurbakhsh 39)

Farid ad-Din Attar used this analogy to depict God’s test of Iblis’s love: Iblis had to choose between remaining true to God (the King) while suffering the curse of disobedience (the stone) and rejecting God by worshiping Adam while receiving the rewards of obedience (the gem). Another twelfth-century master, Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani, expressed the same idea by ascribing these words to Iblis:

O Lord, I do not worship you for the sake of mercy; I maintain no condition for my devotion. I am content with whatever you will and whatever you do. (Nurbakhsh 7)"

http://journeytothesea.com/disobedience-iblis-sufism/

It is interesting what is being suggested here. The relationship of Iblis to God is according to this interpretation one of great Love and indeed not arrogance at all. Iblis takes on huge sufferring in order that he may honor God....yet here again is the paradox, that it is only in his sufferring and seperation that he can show his Love?

[Michael Larkin]

Hi Kareana,

I agree with a lot of what you say. You are one “blind man”, and I am another, each feeling different parts of the same elephant. The elephant, after all, is all there is. So there’s nothing else we can talk about. Even when we are feeling the same part of the elephant, we may describe it slightly differently.

You make an interesting point that although the end result of someone’s action may be useful for someone else, s/he may have been acting improperly and retains the responsibility for the intention. I agree with that, though notice that I am avoiding speaking in terms of good and evil. People do things for all sorts of motives, but it is clear that the outcomes aren’t determined by those motives. That’s because people don’t fully understand cause and effect. They may intend one thing to happen, but, because the universe is the way it is, something else happens, something that can be deemed good, bad, or neutral according to one’s particular viewpoint.

It’s plain that even an action intended to harm can unwittingly benefit. The guy who hates your guts and wants to hurt you, so gives you a piece of his mind, might want to destroy you. However, he may say something that helps you. His motive wasn’t charitable, and he is responsible for that; it probably won’t help him evolve himself.

And so, as Emerson indicated in his famous essay “On compensation” (you’ll find it on the Web), there isn’t any subsequent comeback for his action, any compensatory punishment. Inherent in the action itself is the consequence. By wanting to attack you, he immediately suffers the consequences. The fraudster who rips you off for his own benefit gets the money, but instantly loses his current chance to evolve. As for you, the defrauded, you have your own story, your own responsibility. You may let the incident destroy you, or use it to grow. There is opportunity to grow in anything and everything: it’s up to you whether you seize it.

When you think about it, because there is the possibility of growth, that could be the source of the conception of good and evil. If growth is possible rather than certain, and the index of evaluation is based on growth, then growth is good, and lack of growth, or, perish the thought, shrinkage, is evil. God didn’t create us as finalised beings, but as evolving ones, so there has to be movement from A to B to C to get where He wants us to go, and at some level, I think we all know and feel the impulse of that.

[Rajan Arulganesan]

I identify with what you are saying here about good and evil and the significance of words and thoughts for the human experience. I also think that while we give these things their due in the scheme of things, we have to be aware that there will come a time in our journey when these intellectual arguments may become redundant, otherwise there is the danger of becoming attached to these intellectual exercises.

[Kareana Kee]

Im not sure how to connect this passage to this discussion apart from maybe suggesting that the idea of the word being the creation of things has a resonance with a biblical story also which I thought very interesting.

The Gospel according to Saint John opens as follows:

'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness: and the darkness comprehended it not'

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begooten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.'

Narration: The incarnation of the Word in the world - and of Light in Darkeness - is the asounding event whereby we are delivered from the woe of being alive. and this event, in being the centre of the whole of Christianity, is the focus of that Christian love which in Scriptures is called agape.

The Authour de Rougemont is using this passage to demonstrate the difference between Christian Love and every other religion that existed before it.

He say's "Every known religion tends to sublimate man, and culmulates in condemming his'finite' life. Our desires are intensified and sublimated by the god Eros through being embraced in a single Desire whereby they are abolished. The final goal of the process is to attain what is not life - the death of the body. Night and Day being incompatible, and men being deemed creatures of the Night, can only achieve salvation by ceasing to be, by being 'lost' in the bosom of the divine. But in Christianity, thanks to its dogma of the incarnation fo the Christ in Jesus, this process is completely inverted. Death, from being the last term, is beginning the first condition. What the Gospel calls dying to self is the beginning of a new life already here below - not the soul's flight out of the world, but it's return in force into the midst of the world.

[Kareana Kee]

Dear Michael,

So sorry about the collapsing into each other argument. Actaully it was me collapsing many things into the one argument! I had a vague idea after I wrote it I had confused something. A combination of thinking about the idea of collapsing two different realities ie the Divine Reality and the Reality of Seperation or mankind, reading books on Orientalism and Feminism, arguments about Islamic and non Islamic Sufism and being with some kind of chest, head, throat flu thing all week!!! My humblist apologies. Im trying to make 'good' and logical arguments, not always easy :)))

[Kareana Kee]

Hi Michael and Rajan,

I think what for me is missing in the argument is what I consider the nature of the human condition which largely determines the nature of the situation human beings find themselves in. I think what that we have to acknowledge that we exist before we can have knowledge of our non existence, and whilst we arose from an underlying reality, we are nevertheless both of this higher reality and also separate from it. This is the nature of how we were created. This is the central paradox with which we have to contend. In this reality of our material existence we have to contend with attachment issues and our fears of separation (which was the original inspiration for this posting as it came up in musings on fear). I’m thinking of the “rage” in the nursery. And how a baby will scream and scream in hysterical rage upon separation from the mother. Is this Love? Hmm well one variety of it. I read in the newspaper here the other day a man in a blind rage stabbed his girlfriend 200 and something odd times! Is this man the instrument of a higher purpose? Perhaps we should be congratulating him? It would seem that right from the outset we humans are born with a discontentment to which we respond with either ragefullnes or selfishness to life.

My argument is that this is all beside the point. Hiroshima happened, it meant whatever it meant, and had the causes and outcomes that it had. Trying to evaluate it from the viewpoint of good or evil is a futile exercise.

Yes Hiroshima happened. There is no taking it back. But Hiroshima could happen again and I do see merit in discussing the viewpoint of good and evil. Every day in this world bombs are still being dropped on people and all manner of atrocities are being committed.
I’m reminded of the story of the ‘naked girl’ famously photographed fleeing from a napalm bomb in Vietnam. One of the very powerful things that came out of this story from the fellow who actually dropped the bomb, was how removed he was (disconnected) from the reality of what he was doing. If he had ever been able to imagine the destruction and pain he was inflicting on other human beings, he would never have been able to drop that bomb. He had lost contact with his humanity with the Truth of who he really was and he did a terrible thing!

Ibn Arabi writes: “This world is not bad; on the contrary, it is the field of eternity. What you plant here you will reap there. This world is the way to eternal bliss and good, worthy to be cherished and worthy to be praised. What is bad is what you do with the world when you become blind to the truth and totally consumed by your desires, lust and ambition for it.”

It seems to me we have to in this existence and especially to advance spiritually to differentiate between what is worth following/cherishing and what is not. What is the truth of existence and what is false. The dilemma of the opposites is an unavoidable negotiation on the journey. When we are making a positive choice we are unavoidable also rejecting or negating every other possiblility. Eg: I prefer not to smoke. I am making a choice that being smoke free is a positive = good thing and smoking is not a good thing = bad. You could argue that cigarettes exist and are also part of the One, but when considering the Truth we have to differentiate whether cigarettes only represent a false idol. or a death wish to ourselves..or at least in our use and intention towards them. There may be a time when smoking could be for a conscious Divine intention...

I think we have to be careful in our reading of the story of Moses and the Divinely inspired traveller. I don’t think the story is suggesting that us as the human representatives of God are beyond reproach for our actions...that there can be not moral judgment. What it does suggest though is we can use those situations to find or see a higher purpose. Eg. I don’t get into the course I want because some ‘selfish’ person at university would prefer to go out with his mates drinking then process my application on time. I’m annoyed, but then later I am offered a job which is far superior and of which maybe wouldn’t have happened if I had got into my course. So yes I mange to find the ‘good’ out of a disappointing situation. But does this make the ‘selfish’ person any less ‘selfish’, even though his selfishness may have turned in my favour in the bigger picture? I for myself may be even happy to forgive him, because if it wasn’t for his selfishness I wouldn’t be earning all this terrific money right know lol (this is not a true story). My point is his selfish still remains. His intention was to get drunk with his mates and not to care about the effects on somebody else and his responsibility. Can we call him a Divinely inspired traveller? Do I make a complaint about this man to his bosses? Perhaps this might help him to become more Divinely inspired in the longer picture? :)

Human beings interpret suffering in the context of the way they anthropomorphise the universe. They see suffering, and experience it themselves, and create an entity like Satan or Iblis who is its agent. This agent is actually just a projection of a part of their own nature. Likewise, God as they understand Him is a projection of another part of that nature, which is responsible for the episodes of non-suffering in their lives.

I was thinking on the idea of projection and our own nature. I mean aren’t they One and the same thing? Again here we see the opposites appear. Is God inside us or outside of us, or just plain everywhere? Is our ego inside us or outside us? Or is it everywhere? Satan and God are they one and the same? Again I come back to my core hypothesis and that is Yes and No! Lol They are inexplicable of the same but also fundamentally and necessarily opposite. Perhaps If they were not, then there would be no such thing as a spiritual journey. Everything would be Good or perhaps everything would be bad or maybe we would all be enlightened or we wouldnt actually exist. It is perhaps through understanding our projection that we can come to understand our ego? Projection seems to be very much a part of the human condition. It is the condition and natural defence mechanism of children. “He made me do it!” Negotiating projection is a necessary and unavoidable part of the journey. I think my point is that we have to accept and surrender to our human condition in order to move forward spiritually.

I want to go back to a statement i have made previously. I think the important thing that shouldn’t be left out of intellectual discussions of the nature of things. I s humanity! I like this following quote because it frames satan evil as anything that corrupts our humanness.

“The satanic is not anti-god as much as it is anti-human. The satanic impulse is no threat to God except insofar as it threatens humanness. A sin is not a transgression against God but against humanness. To become a true human being, the divine representative and inheritor, each person faces a struggle with whatever distorts or corrupts this humanness.” (The Knowing Heart)

“Speech is the mother, not the daughter, of thought”

This could be a chicken and egg kind of argument? Where do thoughts come from? I would tend to think the source is ego mostly, but occasionally Divinely Inspired :) But of course I acknowledge the influence of words on thinking. There seems to be a dialectic process taking place here?
Does God have the qualities of a human being or do human beings have the qualities of God?

As I see it, the ego or nafs isn’t evil, isn’t the Satan with horns and a tail; it’s just the manifestation of our current being, and with its imperfect understandings makes frequent mistakes.

When I discussed earlier the story of Iblis, I mentioned how profound I found it, especially as the Sufi interpretation showed Satan in a different light, another aspect of Satan. Actually he really loved God and was suffering for his separation. I was trying to demonstrate how Satan as an archetypal character has many dimensions. And that I had seen a new way to view the stories of Satan. He represents feelings we have about ourselves. Those feelings of rejection and fear that will cause us to lash out and behave in prideful and sometimes devastating ways to others(some would consider this evil) as well as the picture of the hurt and rejected long suffering Satan. I don’t think it is an either or situation. I think the nafs and ego can cause us to behave like we have horns and tails and I also think it is unconsciousness - fear and separation from our source(our humanity) that provides cause for that behaviour. I dont think one thing negates the other in this situation.

I must make a disclaimer at this point..I am not at all claiming I have any ultimate truth. I just exploring a viewpoint :)

[Rajan Arulganesan]

These are truly clear responses Michael, I am thankful for these, I hope one day I may well be able to integrate this as real knowledge in to my being.

[Michael Larkin]

Hi Kareana,

Hamadani, he who you quote as saying: O Lord, I do not worship you for the sake of mercy; I maintain no condition for my devotion. I am content with whatever you will and whatever you do was speaking in a similar vein to the famous saying of Rabia around four centuries earlier: O Lord, if I worship you through fear of hell, send me to hell. If I worship you in hope of paradise, deny me paradise. But if I worship you for your own sake, do not deny me your everlasting beauty. Rabia’s prayer is one that is very dear to me, one that is constantly in my heart and that has guided me for many years.

It uses conventional religious words like heaven and hell, but transcends their usual meanings. The central idea of Islam and the Abrahamic religions in general is that God is the big man in the sky who keeps constant watch on you, racks up the points for and against, and then rewards or punishes you once the test, which is what life is supposed to be, is over. But here is Rabia saying it’s nothing to do with reward and punishment. It’s about coming to know God and worshipping Him for His own sake; accepting, like Hamadani, that what God does, however we perceive it, is inherently right. For me, she isn’t really thinking of “heaven” and “hell” as what they are usually understood to mean; she is highlighting that they are just a means of controlling people.

Having an idea of God who sets life as a test and will punish or reward can improve one’s spiritual state. Especially, if before one embraced that concept, one thought that anything one chose to do was right. But it’s not the most sophisticated idea of God, and raises its own problems. Namely, that we do “good” and avoid “evil” not because we think they are right or wrong, but because we want to be rewarded or to avoid punishment.

But Rabia seems to challenge whether that is enough. Shouldn’t we get past focussing what’s in it for us? Easily said, ferociously difficult to do. I think that trying and failing is what evokes the accusing self that beats us up so badly. Hell suddenly becomes that state, and heaven, the respite when we get past it. So now, the same words, heaven and hell, come to mean different things. But you can still say something like “I want to go to heaven” and have it make perfect sense.

When scriptures use a certain language, they can make sense at different levels, according to our state. At some stage, I think meanings may go beyond any possible association with a specific religious formulation. And just now and then, something like what Rabia says has the power to catalyse a quantum leap. Contemplating it for years, keeping it constantly close, can, I think, effect real change.

I think words are more than thought made manifest: they actually create the world that we live in. “Speech is the mother, not the daughter, of thought” as I once read.

As I see it, the ego or nafs isn’t evil, isn’t the Satan with horns and a tail; it’s just the manifestation of our current being, and with its imperfect understandings makes frequent mistakes. It isn’t the elephant referred to in the famous tale – that’s reality, and the blind men represent egos with different, and partial, understandings of it.

It’s not quite, as I see it, that anything that causes suffering is a vehicle for growth. I think suffering is the consequence of making mistakes, and prompts us to find ways of identifying and overcoming them. In fact, I think the overcoming automatically follows the identification.

“Stuff happens” doesn’t mean that it’s all random and undirected. It means that we don’t see cause and effect clearly, and have no obvious way of influencing events.

I wouldn’t say I was trying to collapse all the different paths into one. There are as many paths as there are human beings. However, they all lead to the same reality. Whichever path you take, whatever language you use to describe it, the destination is the same, and, maybe, one can see the same landmarks along the way.

I think you’re right that you can’t bypass the ego. You’ve got to live with it, but you don’t have to be completely ruled by it. At the final destination, the ego is still there, but it does what essence tells it rather than the other way about. We tame the devil, and it becomes a pussycat.

[Michael Larkin]

Hi Rajan,

seen from this perspective, would you then say the only undesirable things are those that are opposed to where divinity or the higher power desires for the evolution of humankind/ all creation?

In truth, I don’t know. Not so long ago, I would have said that real evil is anything that consciously opposes the evolution of creation. But for something to do that, it would have to understand what the plan for evolution was. If you take someone who is universally regarded as evil, such as Adolph Hitler, did he actually seek to oppose this evolution, or did he rather try, in his own way, to advance it? It’s a way that most people, myself included, find repulsive, but by his own lights, Hitler doubtless saw himself as a benefactor. I daresay very few people regard themselves as evil, and that those who do, merely by seeing themselves as such, aren’t necessarily able thereby to achieve evil. This is especially the case if evil doesn’t actually exist as a real force.

God created a world in which, now and then, Adolph and people like him periodically rise to power. Whatever the Adolphs and the non-Adolphs think about that, there may be an inevitability about occasional Adolph-hood. There may even be a necessity for it, just as some might say that if there is a divine plan for evolution, there was a necessity for the great extinction events in biological history.

If there is a plan, then it can’t be resisted; inexorably, step after step, things will evolve. If, as Sufism seems to indicate, the universe is God in manifestation, then God is in everything and experiences through creation everything. Whatever happens to us, happens to God, and so He isn’t asking us to experience anything He doesn’t experience Himself. The plan is the definition of good, and nothing is, in an absolute sense, evil. This doesn’t mean that creation doesn’t suffer; of course it does. But it does mean that suffering has a purpose, however inscrutable we find it, and that ultimately, that is constructive.

Human beings interpret suffering in the context of the way they anthropomorphise the universe. They see suffering, and experience it themselves, and create an entity like Satan or Iblis who is its agent. This agent is actually just a projection of a part of their own nature. Likewise, God as they understand Him is a projection of another part of that nature, which is responsible for the episodes of non-suffering in their lives. If there was no suffering at all, people wouldn’t have a concept of good or evil. They find it very hard, at least in the theist traditions, to conceive of a creator who is the origin of all that humanity experiences - whether or not that is perceived as suffering - and experiences it too.

They are trapped in the words, the concepts, the duality that they have created. Once you have a “Good” being and “Bad” being, then you can start to have weird and wonderful theological arguments and strange paradoxes. For example, if God is the creator of all, then He must have created Iblis – so in some way, God seems to be the source of both Good and Evil. For some, this seems like an unconscionable assertion, so they have to use sophistry to magic away Iblis, or invent the concept of free will as that is generally understood: i.e. the notion that creations have the choice about whether to ally themselves with one or the other power. They are responsible for that choice, and there is therefore blame for choosing evil, and, consequently, punishment is due; or, if they choose good, reward is merited. See how anthropomorphic this all is? We think we are arguing about God and Satan, but we are actually arguing about projections of ourselves, that, like us, think in terms of blame or merit and punishment or reward.

A more useful idea, perhaps, is to think in terms of there being an intended arc of evolution, and of creations either being in tune with that, or not. If they are not, then they are making a mistake. When they make mistakes, that is what causes the perception of suffering. I say “perception” because, in the end, suffering is illusory because it has a constructive purpose. Without the sensation of suffering, we wouldn’t have any incentive to try to correct our mistakes, to get back in tune with the evolutionary arc. When in tune, even if we experience things that people would label as suffering, we don’t perceive them as suffering. Truly spiritual people can experience the most appalling circumstances, the most painful diseases, and yet that doesn’t disturb them; they don’t “suffer” in the conventional sense. As far as they’re concerned, these circumstances can’t have the least effect on what they truly are. It’s the image of a Christ going about his Father’s business and accepting his fate in crucifixion, or a Hallaj being dismembered, with equanimity.

We make mistakes. We misperceive things. When we realise that, when we see things as they are, then that is what I think “forgiveness” is. But look at the baggage that is associated with that word “forgiveness”. Instead of just being the realisation of mistake, which leads automatically to its correction, it becomes something else, something that we can elect to apply at will to others or ourselves. I can’t “forgive” you for your mistake. It’s pure arrogance to think I can. Forgiveness doesn’t lie in my gift for you. Forgiveness is something you experience when you see and accept your own mistake. Maybe you will do some “repentance”, and even better, try to make some “restitution”, but the forgiveness precedes, and is independent of, that.

See the colourations, the baggage that all these words like “forgiveness”, “repentance” and “restitution” carry? See how they are soaked in holy incense, and can you hear the heavenly choirs in the background? As I see it, a major part of the battle is getting beyond the words that have conditioned us from childhood, that we and others, often unconsciously, use to manipulate. They can all have different meanings, and this relates to what I said originally about Parmenides’ encounter with Persephone. First, she robs us of the meaning of all the names we have for things. But then, when we return from the underworld, we continue to use the words, but they mean different things.

Incidentally, I think the classical Sufis attempted to construct a new vocabulary, a very precise and technical one, to avoid this problem (take a look at “A dervish textbook” by Suhrawardi, published by Octagon press). People try to use it today, but inevitably, it was a product of its time, and had a distinctly Islamic colouration, with inbuilt reference to the Qur’an and the culture of the time. We can never get to a perfect and unchanging vocabulary; but we can get to a better inner understanding of what lies behind words in any age.

[Rajan Arulganesan]

Michael, I understand where you are coming from now, seen from this perspective, would you then say the only undesirable things are those that are opposed to where divinity or the higher power desires for the evolution of humankind/ all creation? I can also remember the sufi argument about possessing real objectivity regarding happenings.
Kareana, I do agree with you that we can't rationalise away unjust behaviour / actions of ours or others and sometimes we do have to challenge them. suppose the key thing about challenging these 'evils' is to have an awareness of our own ego so that we are going about it in the right way?

[Kareana Kee]

Hi Michael and Rajan,

On trying to understand your point, (and I havnt addressed them all here) it seems one of your main premise is that words are the cause of our ‘problems’. And that stuff just happens. I can only partly agree with this premise. Actually it seems to me it is the human predicament that gives rise to the need to understand and find some meaning in this existence. Words are just one of the ways we give expression to this. In thinking about the problem of concepts I’m reminded of the Hindu tale of the men who go into a dark room where each person feels a part of the elephant and each comes up with a different explanation for what they are experiencing, yet we know if they turn the light on they will find it is an elephant. But of course you could take this another step like Rajan suggested (and I’m not sure I have understood the meaning correctly here?), the sum total of any event is zero, and say well is it really an elephant? If we deconstruct the elephant in a quantum way we may find it is something entirely different and it was all just an illusion the elephant didn’t really exist = Zero? And for that matter neither do we! At least as we know ourselves.  The thing is because of our human predicament we still have to negotiate the elephant. (In this instance I’m using elephant as a metaphor for ego (or aspects of the ego)). Clearly many different paths have emerged in an attempt to seek this Union with the One. Including some rooted in Islam, some in Christianity and some that take a bit of this and that from wherever. I would be wary of trying to collapse all the different paths into one. I don’t think diversity is something we should be afraid of and perhaps when we can acknowledge we are not all the same, and then there may be grounds for a Loving relationship to emerge. I’m thinking of the alchemy between men and women here as a parallel. In the west it seems we have a very strong need to make everything the same. I come across this a lot particular when looking at feminism issues between the east and west. Western feminist’s still largely do not understand that Eastern feminist don’t all share their worldview on what it means for a women to be liberated. For each group liberation looks very different. It is a cause of much misunderstanding. Women also have tried to do this with men in the west. Yes, men and women are all the same in that we all share in a common humanity, but there are also fundamental differences that need to be honoured from both sides. It seems to me Oneness and Separateness cannot be divorced from each other.

As for stuff just happening. I think most of what happens that is a source of pain and suffering is stuff inflicted from one ego to another or to our own selves. In the past I have dismissed out of hand the notions of Satan as depicted by many traditional religions, but I am starting to see the benefits in reading these stories in a different way. For one the story of Iblis being cast out of ‘heaven’ has deep resonance for me and corresponds well to that of the human condition, that of ego, symbiotic withdrawal, rejection and separation. The Sufi’s equate Iblis with the ego, particularly the prideful aspect of it and we all have an ego!

The fascination for me in the different approaches to the story is that they could be seen as signpost or different ways of approaching the ego. In the story of Iblis I was rather affected by the idea that actually it was great Love that had bought Iblis to his position in hell (suffering). This story aroused in me a sudden surge of compassion and in that moment I was aware that this contrasted considerably with my own response’s to myself around my own feelings of rejection and not belonging. I suspect my usual response to myself is one of punishment and self flagulation, perhaps influenced by Christian mythology that see's mankind as inherently bad and needing to be saved. To be made good! Of course if we accept our human condition we dont need to feel bad or puff up the false self to be "good"....but find compassion and mercy for ourselves.

I am also remembering an argument I have had with a friend in the past about rationalising away 'evil'. This person behaved in a not acceptable way to somebody, but then tried to present a case that they were actually doing this person a favor of kind. Like hey i did this thing that caused you pain and was me acting out my prideful ego, but in the bigger picture I am helping you to deal with your ego, so I feel no remorse. Actually it's not a bad thing ive done, ive really helped you! Hmmmmmmmm im sure you can see the problem with that line of thinking?

I’m not sure that one can bypass the ego/Iblis entirely when approaching the subject of Oneness. It seems to me that even in trying to have direct experience of the One, through meditation, it is not possible to escape the ego/iblis/nafs. If anything it seems it intensifies coming to the fore to be observed and understood and accepted-surrendered.