Many of you might be wondering about the title of my talk. I will have to ask you to be patient, since the choice of title will only get clear a little later in today’s talk. I will start off by acknowledging one of two authors who have influenced my paper of today. This author is M. Scott Peck, whose best known book is called “The Road Less Traveled”.  

This author is M. Scott Peck, whose best known book is called “The Road Less Traveled”. Scott Peck’s own life story is quite interesting. Born into a Christian family, he was rebellious in his younger years, and was an agnostic. While practicing as a psychiatrist, he got interested in Sufism and Zen Buddhism. Sometimes in his 40’s, he got himself baptized as a Christian. So, in his books, we see many references to Islam. I am going to talk about what Scott Peck calls the stages of spiritual growth.  

He believes, and I agree with him, that as there are stages of physical growth, there are also stages of spiritual growth. While we all become physically mature, all of us may not become spiritually mature.

Like many others, Scotty - as Scott Peck is known among his friends - believes that psychological growth and spiritual growth tend to go together. Scotty found an interesting pattern among his psychiatric clients. If people who were religious came to him in pain and trouble, and became engaged in deep therapy, they frequently left therapy as atheists, agnostics, or skeptics. On the other hand, if atheists, agnostics, or skeptics came in pain or difficulty and became fully engaged in therapy, they frequently left therapy as deeply spiritual people. It was the same therapy, the same therapist, the therapy was successful, but the outcomes were totally different from a religious point of view.

(Masud sahib’s approach to the subject is from a new and unconventional angle. He has clearly laid down the types in which human beings may be categorized and segmented. A remarkably  simple way of approaching such a complex subject and, if I may say so, a rather modernistic way. This growth phenomena is explainable in other ways too e.g. ‘Evolution’ as explained by the ‘Holonic’ theory. I have delved upon it in my essay of  ‘Evolution the inevitable phenomena’, read out at the other FOTH seminar. ( A copy is available at my web site www.tidylink.net.) )  

 

Based on his experiences, and accepting that while no classification is ever exactly correct, Scotty divides the stages of spiritual growth into four¹. The first stage is called Chaotic or Antisocial. People in this stage may pretend to loving and pious, covering up their lack of principles. Their relationships with their fellow humans are essentially manipulative and self-serving. These people are unprincipled, and often end up in jails or find themselves in another form of social difficulty. Some, however, may be quite disciplined in service of expediency and their own ambition and may rise to positions of considerable prestige and power, even to become presidents or influential preachers. Most children and perhaps 20% of adults fall in Stage I.   

The second stage is Formal, Institutional or Fundamental. Beginning the work of submitting themselves to the letter of the law, these people do not yet accept the spirit of the law, and are consequently legalistic, parochial, and dogmatic. They are threatened by anyone who thinks differently from them, as they have the "truth," and regard it as their responsibility to convert or save the other 90 or 99 percent of humanity who are not "true believers." They have clear cut religious answers, and try to escape their fear of living in the mystery of life and the mystery of uncertainty.  

I think we can all see many people who come into this category. This category includes many Muslim Mullahs, as well as people like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the Jewish religious zealots who form the core of the Israeli settler community, or people like the Hindu zealot who assassinated Mahatama Gandhi.  

The large majority of people are already in Stage II by the time they move to adulthood. For adults who are still in Stage I, the move to Stage II is traumatic. They get broken. In fact, the move from one stage of spirituality to another often tends to be through a wounding. That is why I have titled my talk “being blessed by being broken”. At each stage, the breaking and the wounding makes people submit to a power which they accept as higher than themselves. 

( Broken people are somehow, jolted by the fear of the ‘unknown’ and submit to the power of the ‘unseen’ or a ‘Super Power’. The entity, which in this case, has always to be revered and feared for otherwise It will retaliate or reprimand.)

In stage II, people submit to some sort of a formal institution. For some, this may be a formal prison, where they have landed as a result of their behaviour. For others, the institution may be the military. For still others it might be a corporation or another structured organization. But for many, the institution to which they submit themselves for governance is organized religion. In recent years, an alternative to religion has been nationalism. We see a combination of religion and nationalism as the organizing force in U.S.A. today  

( Religion may be a voluntarily attractive choice, but Nationalism, it seems, is a politically motivated solution to keep the humans on track and on selected lines.)     

To take a well-known example, I think that the current president of U.S. was a Stage I person until he became a born-again Christian.  He avoided his duty in the Vietnam War, was fond of drinking – and was arrested for driving while drunk. I searched Google and found an interesting article from a newspaper report dated November 6, 2000, which I believe was a couple of days before the 2000 presidential election. The article is about Bush’s lies before he became president. I am quoting a couple of snippets here: 

SNIPPET I: In a 1998 interview, a Dallas Morning News reporter asked Bush point-blank if he had ever been arrested other than for a 1968 fraternity prank and Bush said flatly: "No."  

SNIPPET II: The drunken driving arrest is not the only character evidence from Bush's past that has been suppressed or glossed over. On October 2, the Center for Public Integrity in Washington … in Talk magazine revealed that Bush not once but repeatedly missed the legal deadlines for reporting his insider stock trades when he was a director and member of the audit committee of a ropey Texas oil company, Harken Energy. In 1991, three years before he ran for governor, the Wall Street Journal headlined one instance when Bush sold near the top of the market before the stock plunged, pocketing nearly $850,000.  

So I think the president of the only super-power in the world today is now in the Stage II of spiritual growth, where his combination of nationalism and religion sustains him.  

Once people are in Stage II, they may stay there all their lives, move to Stage III, or keep moving back and forth between Stage I and Stage II. This moving back and forth can also happen between other Stages, for instance Stage II and III. 

Some Stage II people simply move to another Stage II, where there is no growth but only change in loyalty from one institution to another. This can happen when people change jobs, or the country in which they live. When this happens, the individual tends to have no compassion for the institution to which they earlier owed loyalty. So for instance, these days I find it interesting that some people who were earlier staunch Muslims, and have moved to America are now more anti-Muslim than many redneck Americans. Earlier, these people may have owed their loyalty to Islam, now America has replaced Islam, and not much else has changed.

( This, in my opinion, is more due to the fact that America is able to provide them with better material benefits of life; and they obviously do not want to lose these perks and just wish to continue to  exist in their material comfort zones.)  

Let us now talk of Stage III people, who tend to be skeptic individuals and questioners. This category includes atheists, agnostics and the scientific minded who demand measurable, well researched and logical explanations. Although frequently "nonbelievers," people in Stage III are generally more spiritually developed than many content to remain in Stage II. They make up their own minds about things and are no more likely to believe what they read in the papers than believe it is necessary for someone to acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior - as opposed to Buddha or Mao or Socrates - in order to be saved.  

They make loving and dedicated parents. As skeptics they are often scientists, and as such they are again highly submitted to principle. Advanced Stage III men and women are active truth seekers. 

How people move from Stage II to Stage III varies. My own move from Stage II to Stage III was somewhat difficult. Let me now tell you about it. I have had only one full-time job in my life, which was with IBM for 27 years. My family was not religious, and I joined IBM immediately after completing studies. IBM, of course is a huge corporation, in which I worked during some of its best years. The corporation became the institution to which I owed loyalty. The first change in perception came when I went on assignment to Kuwait. Particularly for a bachelor, social life is difficult in Kuwait. I found the environment too different from what I had got used to in my office in Pakistan, where there tended to be paternalism, which I quite happily accepted. Living in a world of individualists was traumatic for me. Since temperamentally I have never been attracted to simply money or material benefits, the much better salary was not enough of a reward for social difficulties. The net result was that I terminated my assignment after one year, when the normal term was three years. That started my move from Stage II to Stage III.    

The last group that Scott Peck talks about is Stage IV people, who are the mystics of this world. Out of love and commitment to the whole, they transcend their backgrounds and cultural limitations, and reach toward the notion of a world community or a planetary culture. They are religious, but not looking for clear cut, proto type answers, but desire to enter into the mystery of uncertainty, living in the unknown. These people, whether they are Sufis or Buddhists, Jews or from any other birth religion, recognize the connectedness of all humanity with God, never separating oneself from others with doctrine and scripture. They realize that the essence of truth is subject to linguistic interpretation and constrained by words that belonged to the era of time they were written, and are further compromised when interpreted by us, fallible men and women who read them.  

Let me briefly summarize what we have covered until now. First, the stages

1.      The first one is the Chaotic

2.      The second one is where the person submits to an institution, or an authority, and tends to take literal interpretations of scriptures.

3.      The third one is where the person submits to logic and perhaps a scientific method. They will do the right thing not because of fear, but because they are convinced that it is the rational thing to do.

4.      The fourth stage is that of mystics, who may have reached to that stage either through exploration or contemplation, or because they have truly found The Beloved. Here, by Beloved, I do not mean another human being, although the path may well be through love of another human. But by Beloved I mean God.

Moving from one stage to another can be traumatic, and also an opportunity for psycho-spiritual growth. Many people choose not to undergo this pain, and stay where they are, rather than change. While the majority of people – perhaps 80% - are in Stage II by the time they reach adulthood, for the other 20%, the move from Stage I to Stage II is highly traumatic. These people are the “born-again true believers” of whatever institution has saved them, and this institution is often organized religion.          

As one moves through the stages, one increases in awareness, starting with self-awareness. One increases in compassion, and one starts accepting that no matter how much we know, there is a lot that we still do not know. As one increases in compassion, one becomes more inclusive and accepts the diverse nature of humanity, and the world.      

These stage IV people can include some scientists – I believe that Einstein was one of them. Of course there are plenty of Stage III people who will not move Stage IV. Unless they see proof and empirical data, they will not accept that there might be things that their human mind cannot grasp.  

Here are some snippets about Einstein, which will indicate why I think he was in Stage IV: "I believe in mystery," Einstein told friend and biographer Peter Bucky. "I sometimes face this mystery with great fear. I think there are many things in the universe that we cannot perceive or penetrate and that we experience some of the most beautiful things in life in only a very primitive form."  

Here is another: Human Being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. 

Now let me talk about another great human, whose move to Stage IV was through being broken. I am talking of Jelal-ud-Din Rumi. For many of you, what I am going to say might be a repetition, but please bear with me. Most of what I am written below I have picked up from a book named “Search for the Beloved” by Jean Houston², who is the second author that I wish to acknowledge.   

Rumi was born in Balkh in Afghanistan, which was a main centre of Islamic learning, and had earlier been a centre of Buddhism, so it probably served as a place of mediation between Buddhist and Islamic thought. When Rumi was a small child, the ruler of Balkh turned against Sufis, and particularly against Rumi’s father. The family was forced to leave, and for sixteen years wandered through Mecca, Damascus, Armenia & Turkey. In mid 1220s CE, Rumi’s family reached Anatolia, meaning the place of the Romans, hence the name Rumi. In time, Rumi succeeded his father and became a well-known teacher, as a somewhat orthodox professor of religious science.  

Suddenly, when he was between 39 and 43 years old, his world blew apart. A wild looking dervish, who was Shamsuddin Tabriz, climbed over the wall to where he was teaching. There is more than one version of what happened next. According to the one I like, Shams pointed to a stack of books that was with Rumi, and asked “What is this?” Rumi, a little annoyed, said “You do not know!”. A short while later, as Shams started to leave, the books caught fire, and Rumi asked Shams “what is this?” and Shams replied “you do not know” and left. Rumi left his class and followed Shams. Rumi saw God is Shams, and said “The God that I have worshipped all my life appeared to me today in human form”.  

Shams & Rumi were ecstatic, and for a hundred and one consecutive days the two God-intoxicated men were lost in each other. One day Shams suddenly departed, leaving Rumi heartbroken. The extreme pain of separation turned the pedantic scholar into a passionate poet and singer, who took to music and mystical dance, whirling in his search for Shams. Several years later, word came Shams was in Damascus. Rumi sent his son to bring back Shams to Konya. Rumi saw his beloved of the soul in Shams, and Shams found in Rumi the Friend of God that he had been searching. Rumi writes of this: 

            Not only the thirsty seeks the water

            But the water seeks the thirsty as well 

( If this idea is extrapolated it can cover to mean the relationship of man to God and vice versa; meaning that Man is as much in need of God as perhaps God is in need of him -- Each being the source of recognition of the other. The whole scenario of ‘creation’ starts to make sense if we look at it this way. Once again I refer you to my essay ‘Nature of Nature’ for more elaboration.)

Rumi and Shams lived in the world of Muslim mysticism when there was a high tradition of finding in the other the reflection of God. After Shams returned to Konya, once again months passed in ecstatic conversation between the two. The disciples of Rumi became increasingly jealous, and finally these disciples murdered Shams. 

Forty days after the murder, Rumi ordered mourning robes. At this time, it is said that Rumi formalized the dance of the whirling dervishes. Rumi would turn and turn until he reached the place of disassociation of body and thought, and his heart opened in ecstasy. Here is a piece of his poetry in Persian which gives an indication of his yearning: 

            Bahar amad, bahar amad, bahar-e-mushkbar amad;

            Negar amad negar amad, negar-e-burdnar amad.

Translated into English, it means:

The spring has come, the spring has come, the spring with loads of musk has come. The Friend has come, the Friend has come, the burden-bearing Friend has come.

( Just reflect on the definition of a friend I picked up somewhere, it says:

A friend is ‘oneself’ in ‘another’.

Is not this ‘oneself’ we search in everything around us, and when we find it we seem to have achieved life’s most cherished objective.)

 

In the years following Shams’s death, Rumi discovered the surrogate of the Divine Beloved in several other people. After Shams, it was Salahuddin, an illiterate goldsmith of saint like bearing in whom he found the mirror of God. After the death of Salahuddin, Rumi found a special Friend in his student Hosamuddin, who inspired Rumi to put to paper his thoughts, ideas and parables. This Rumi started doing, and Hosamuddin assisted Rumi as a scribe, and so was born Rumi’s Masnavi.  

From the life of Rumi we see how the path of suffering and pain becomes the path of spiritual growth. To use Scott Peck’s terminology, I would say Rumi was in Stage III of spiritual growth when Shams came into his life, when he moved to Stage IV. I suppose we can safely say that there are stages beyond Stage IV for exceptional people – the prophets, the mystics and Sufis of our world.  

In the case of Rumi, we see that even after the entry of Shams into his life, he continued to have heartbreaks, each of which served as a further impetus to spiritual growth. He wrote the Masnavi only after two of his special Beloved Friends had died – Shams Tabriz and Salahuddin, and he had transcended the pain of their physical death, realizing that they had joined the true Beloved, i.e. God. When Rumi himself was dying, he started singing with joy, and was re-united with the Eternal Beloved in December 1273.  

(Is not each heart-break a stepping stone on the  path of ‘true love’ or ‘Nirvana’)

I wish you all good luck in your spiritual journeys. Thank you for your time. 

References:

1.      M. Scott Peck: The Different Drum © 1987. Material mostly taken from an internet site hosted by Richard Schwartz    

2.      Jean Houston: The Search for the Beloved © 1987