The Glow of Love's Ecstasy

The Glow of Love’s Ecstasy

The Glow of Love’s Ecstasy

By Laurence Galian

When I was a little boy, I was fascinated with all things scientific. Anything that
had to do with energy drew my interest. Magnetism and electricity especially
interested me. So, one day, at about the age of eight, I placed a very powerful
magnet against one of the outlets in our house. The next thing I knew, I was
waking up with my parents fussing over me and asking desperately if I was all
right. The next thing after that I noticed was that there were no lights on in
the house. But wait, something still was strange because everything seemed
out of place . . . then I noticed it . . . I was on the other side of the room! The
force of the blast blew me clear across the room. The outlet upon which I had
placed the magnet was blackened as was the wall around it.

Since grounding concerns itself with anchoring something, onto the physical
plane or sending energy into the earth, it would not be inappropriate to
mention here an example from the world of natural science. Specifically I am
referring to electrical grounding.

Consider a lightning bolt. As you look at the sky and see storm clouds
approaching, they are bouncing against one another and building up a large
negative charge. This charge wants to go somewhere and until it does, it just
continues to build up. At some point it has enough energy to make a jump! It
“seeks” a place with a large positive charge and then picks the easiest path
to travel to this place. This jump is what you see as lightning when the energy
leaps from the negative cloud to the positive ground.

Lightning is essentially giant static electricity. Now when the energy in the
cloud has built up to a point of eruption, it seeks the nearest point that will
conduct the electricity to the ground. That’s why you don’t want to be in an
open field during a thunderstorm. You would be the nearest point to the
cloud.

Electricity will always flow towards the closest ground. That’s what happens
when you short circuit an appliance. The electricity finds a quicker way to
ground itself rather than flow through the appliance.”

When we make salat we first stand before our Lord. We are standing erect. A
lightning rod is used so that lightning will strike the rod rather than the
building. It works because it is the highest point in the vicinity. Recall that
lightning always seeks the quickest and easiest path to the ground; if you
have a tall piece of metal (i.e., a conductor) going from the building to high in
the air, then this is a path where the lightning would be most likely to go.

In other words, lightning will strike the rod and the energy will travel down
the wire connected to the rod and end up in the earth.

Gradually, during salat, we move from the highest position a human being can
achieve physically, to the very lowest (sajda) when we fall from our place of
being erect and literally place the forehead on the ground. We are touching
our “Third Eye” to the ground. During the time spent in sajda our brains are
literally bathed and washed in life-giving nutrients. Especially, the all-
important Pineal Gland is signaled to awaken. The Pineal Gland is associated
with the “Third eye” or (latifa khafiya). The blood circulation to the brain is
improved in sajda, the sluggish cells are rejuvenated and the brain being the
seat of intelligence is stimulated. It also stimulates the pituitary and pineal
glands on which the growth, health and vital strength of a person depends.

The earth usually has a “neutral charge”, in other words, it has a low
concentration of charged particles. This process of touching the body to the
earth before or during spiritual practice is literally known as “grounding”.
What are some traditional ways of grounding? Putting one’s body into running
water is an age-old way of “grounding” that goes back deep into human
antiquity. Also, the aforesaid touching of the body to the earth, by sitting, or
touching the ground or a tree, is another method of grounding. It’s amazing
that in Islam, before we pray, we must “ground” ourselves through what we
call ablution. We wash the water of energy-light (cosmic waves) over our
bodies, or if water is not available, we are permitted, as mentioned above, to
rub clean sand on our bodies or rub against a clean building.

We, inshallah, want baraka to flow through us. We want to be spiritual
lightning rods, drawing energy from the “heavens” to the “earth”. The poet
Iqbal wrote, “Even our mortal clay, touched by Love’s ecstasy, glows.” As the
Whirling Dervishes raise their right hands to accept the flow of baraka from
Allah and then channel that baraka through their bodies, down their arm,
through their hearts, and down their left arm and through their down turned
left hands, the whirling dervish distributes the baraka to the planet.

When we make salat, we are in a sense doing the same process, we draw
down the “Lights of Divine Manifestation,” Allah’s Nur as a vertical beam of
light descending down into our heads, while we are standing (as spiritual
lightning rods), and then we gracefully “deliver” that energy to the earth as
we prostrate in sajda.

“First it is demanded of the worshipper that he raise himself unto his full
height and lift his hands before the Manifestation of Truth upon him,” states
Sheikh Ahmad Al-Alawi (May Allah Sanctify His Soul). Allah Subhanahu wa ta’Ala
reveals in His Holy Qur’an, “Stand up as ones who are morally obligated to
God.” (2:238)

Todd Michael, in his book, The Twelve Conditions of a Miracle: The Miracle
Workers Handbook, writes, “Jesus fed large numbers of people by expanding
small amounts of food on two occasions. What’s interesting is that on both
occasions he told everyone present to “sit down on the grass” just before
the proliferation occurred. There was a reason for this. The miracle worker
knew that the requisite degree of energy could only flow out of him and
through the hungry people if they were properly grounded.

Throughout nature, flow goes to the lowest point. Water flows to the lowest
point in a watershed or a system of pipes. Air masses flow from areas of high
pressure to areas of low pressure – a process that produces the winds in our
atmosphere. Heat flows from areas of high temperature to areas of low
temperature.”

In my book, The Sun at Midnight: The Revealed Mysteries of the Ahlul Bayt Sufis,
I define awareness as “unbiased looking”, while I define conscious
(etymologically: to look through knowledge), as bias, distortion, seeing
through certain filters.

Theophanic vision is mediated by himma, the power of the heart. An individual
with theophanic vision doesn’t just process sensory data. Instead he sees
through things, gaining an intimation of what the thing symbolizes on a
spiritual level. It’s as if the each object of theophanic vision were a window
into paradise. Viewed in this way, material things are spiritualized. This is
often referred to in Sufi literature as ascent or return.

Todd Michael, again in his book, The Twelve Conditions of a Miracle: The
Miracle Workers Handbook, writes, “As a result, a child is wholly in the present
moment without the burden of self-consciousness, judgment, and self-doubt.
She is free to experience things just as they are. She does not judge. She
feels no shame or “nakedness.” Being just as she is in the garden of the
present, a child is perfectly grounded to receive the flow. As a result, she
experiences no lack and has everything she needs in great abundance.”

There is a tale of an Amerindian woman who went through her entire life
without wearing shoes. When asked why, she replied, “I don’t want to
blindfold my feet.” You cannot escape the One Living Personality’s Presence
manifesting as the natural world and the human body. The angels worship
around the Divine Throne in certain bodily positions. Muslims must assume
certain postures as they pray five times a day; Yoga is an advanced spiritual
process involving numerous sacred bodily movements and postures;
Gurdjieff taught a system of intricate kinesthetic movements; Sufis and
Hasidic Jewish people perform sacred postures and movements.

When you assume these sacred bodily postures, you enter a sacred
relationship with the Spirit World. Spirit flows from the body, and the spirit
surrounds us, being manifest in each plant, tree, insect, and bird.

We stand and prostrate, stand and prostrate, and so forth and so on,
throughout our entire lives. It is limiting to think of the afterlife as a kind of
resurrection after death. To try to fit consciousness and Essence into linear
time and spatial image is to confine and limit your multidimensional, time and
space Reality. Open your mind to conclude the possibility that you are
simultaneously experiencing life as pure Essence at this moment. The
hereafter is here now!

The people who know have noted that during salat, the body forms three
Arabic letters: Alif, Dal and Mim. These three letters form the name ADAM.
Adam (a.s.) is the primordial human being. Sheikh Shems Friedlander al-
Jerrahi, author of the play, “The Calligrapher’s daughter: A Voyage Into
Green” has one of his characters utter, “From a Sufi sheikh he learned that
the alif, which represents the Creator, attaches itself to no letter but all
letters can attach themselves to the alif. The alif, dal, mim, the name of Adam,
represents man in the position of salat (prayer). From these experiences he
learned the hidden meaning of the written word, was taught to appreciate the
secrets and beauty of letter form, and taught this to me.”

As this article is focused on the transfer of energy which occurs when one is
properly grounded, it should be noted that the Arabic letter Mim has great
esoteric significance. Using a kind of hermeneutical interpretation, the word
“Mother” shares many of the profound meanings that we are attempting to
articulate in this article. Rudolf Steiner writes, “It is important to see that
when a sound is part of a word, it has already entered the external world . . . if
you return to the soul element living in the word, you will find your way back
to the true nature of the so-called sound.” Steiner taught that the sound of
the letter “m” was an “earth” sound. Scott Elliot Hicks writes, “God and the
mother care for their progeny.” Mother’s milk awakens the articulation organs.

Prostration represents that humanity can be the channel of life, after we
bodily testify to the “Alif”. After the prostration, we send this life energy to the
earth. The prostration represent the “Mim” of Muhammad, in other words,
Light Upon Light. This is the Haqq of Humanity, in other words, servanthood.
The Mim can be likened to Muhammad-Adam. Allah gives the life, while
mothers bring forth the life, serve this life and protect this life, and this is
another kind of prostration.

R. O. Winstedt, M.A., D.Litt. writes in Shaman, Saiva and Sufi the following,
“The archangels are four; the first Caliphs were four; the elements out of
which the human body is composed are four; the limbs of the body are four.
Therefore man and the archangels are one! Adam, Muhammad, and Allah can
each be spelt in Arabic with four letters. Still the ever recurring number four!
Therefore God and man are identical!” M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen understood,
“True man, Muhammad, Nur, and Allah: these four, together with the ninety-six
powers, represent the one hundred names of God.”

Many people see the process of enlightenment as a path to a destination.
When we make salat we move, in spirit, from heaven (qiyam) to earth (sajda). If
enlightenment is a path, then it is a path that leads back to where you are at
this moment.

~ Ramadan, Monday August 24, 2009.

© 2009 Laurence Galian. All rights reserved.