[Rock music playing] Man: I realize more than ever that the music I play is about sharing and spreading the light... the light that some call perfect perfection or G-o-d--God.

Welcome to "Global Spirit."

I'm Carlos Santana.

And I'm Cindy Blackman Santana.

I think you'll find something very, very powerful and something that moves us all to find out who we are.

So, let's sit back and join our guide and host for a journey into another dimension-- "Global Spirit: The First Internal Travel Series."

Narrator: Throughout human history, the search for God or the divine has been at the heart of spiritual life.

And while the path may vary for each individual, the human need is the same-- the yearning or desire to experience what is often called the ultimate reality.

In the Abrahamic faiths, God is located separate from and certainly above man.

Churches, synagogues, and mosques are all designed to elevate the eyes towards the sky or the heavenly abode, where we humans have come to believe that God truly rests.

Our conversation today brings together two teachers from different faiths who share a lifelong devotion to exploring the concept and the reality of God.

Pir Zia Inayat-Khan is a scholar and teacher of Sufism in the lineage of his grandfather, Hazrat Inayat Khan.

Dr. Jacob Needleman is a Professor of Philosophy, a spiritual seeker, and the author of many books, including a recent one entitled "What Is God?"

In today's program, we are delighted to bring together these two engaging teachers for the first time to explore what is perhaps the most timeless of all spiritual quests.

Welcome to "Global Spirits: The Search for God."

Man: Jacob Needleman, Pir Zia Anayat-Khan, welcome to "Global Spirit."

Glad to be here with you.

Man: Jacob, for a long time, I've wanted to ask you, with all the names that we use to describe the ineffable, what are we really talking about when we're talking about God?

Well, there's a reason there are 99 names.

And there is a point where, as it's said in the Upanishads, words turn back.

The come toward God, but they have-- they can't go past a certain point.

And, in some sense... it's interesting because in the beginning, God created through the word, but that's a word that comes from God.

But the words that come from man are often just from the mind alone, and the mind alone cannot really understand.

It can only point to certain things.

And then it requires much more of oneself, something of which is beyond the mind or the intellect and the labels.

So, what we mean by God is something much higher, much deeper, and... not understandable in the usual way we understand.

Cousineau: Pir Zia, I enjoyed reading in your writings a phrase you used to describe this approach to the divine, where you said, "It's important to hold the question."

What did you mean by that?

Hold onto what?

Yes, um, well, questions are very important, oftentimes more important than answers because a question is a horizon, a direction toward which to unfold.

And if one feels that one has the answer, then one isn't moving forward.

But if one is approaching a question, one is attentive, alert, seeking, opening oneself, and waiting for what is to be shown.

So, God is, in a sense, the ultimate question, the greatest, uh, mystery that stands before us.

Jacob, I'm tantalized by the title of your recent book: "What is God?"

You say that asking the question itself is one of the most enlivening things that a human being can do.

Why enlivening?

What is coming to life by merely asking the question?

It's just as Pir Zia said.

Uh... A real question opens the heart, opens the mind.

The attention comes alive.

Uh, one feels one's presence.

One feels a mystery that... draws one forward and downward and inward.

So, uh, I think it's quite exactly what you said.

that the question is more important than the answer.

Or should we say, the answer to a great question is an experience before it is anything else, I would say.

Would you agree?

Yes.

Yes, it's a-- it's a process, rather than a--a location.

And that's why the Suf-- the practice that I, um, follow, the tradition that I practice, Sufism, has been translate-- translated as Sufism, which ends with the word "-ism," which suggests a belief, a, um... an institution, a community.

But in Arabic, "tasawwuf" means a process, the process of becoming a Sufi.

And you never really fully become a Sufi.

You're always en route, so to speak.

You're always moving toward some ineffable, uh, potentiality that's revealing itself in ever new and unexpected ways.

Needleman: Yes, that-- that movement is more descriptive of the soul than to call it something or other.

Inayat-Khan: Yes.

Exactly... that movement of the heart, of the mind altogether, I think.

Well, there are pauses along the way.

If one were constantly, uh, moving and changing, then one would have no fixity, no ground under one's feet.

One--one could become very easily lost, and, um, and bewildered.

But if one has no movement, um, then one is just stuck in place and sclerosed and unable to--to see further.

So what we need is this continuous alteration between advancement and waiting.

Um, standing one's ground, feeling the earth under one's feet and then being urged forward again.

Yes.

One-- It's like when you go on a path and come to a tavern.

You stay overnight, but you don't build your house there.

Yes, yes.

The old saying goes, uh... "Do not build your house in the road."

And that's what so many of us are trying so hard to do-- build our house in the road.

Needleman: Yes.

Cousineau: Pir Zia, I enjoyed the sheer vastness in which you describe the concept of God this way: "It knows that it is not a being, "but being itself-- I am that I am.

"Nothing came before it.

Nothing lives outside of it.

It is alone."

This image of the solitary but inclusive God... is there a particular hadith or sacred saying that expresses that for us?

Yes, it's--it's, um, shown all throughout Revelation, again and again, that God is-- Al-Ahad As-Samad, the one, the eternal, zahir and batin, the outer, the inner, l-awalu, akhiru, the first, the last, absolutely without limit-- outer and inner, before and after, having no partner, no associate, including all, subsuming all within an essential unity that has no end.

And a hadith that, um... most powerfully shows how this unity was also a source of a kind of loneliness is the hadith-- hadith qudsi, in which the divine voice speaks through the prophet Muhammad and says, "I was a hidden treasure, "and I long to be known.

And so I created the world that I might be known."

But one imagines, one conceives a being who is entirely self-contained and, um... is in communication with no one because--alone.

And in that, there must be some, uh, sense of a potential that's not yet realized without multiplicity.

So the world must be born so that that unity can reveal itself to itself in all of its innumerable possible permutations.

And we here right now, sitting here, are taking part in that showing forth of that one being revealing all of its potentialities.

And we are the witnesses, we are the divine being, showing itself to itself through us.

Needleman: Beautiful.

What a statement.

And yet, we were not aware of that.

We're not--we're not in touch with that.

And that is suffering.

Yeah.

That--that is meaninglessness.

Because when the Buddhist says the-- "the human existence is dukkha," is suffering, it's not pain, physical pain.

It's meaninglessness.

So, here, this... godness is yearning to be coming to us, in a way.

And it's there, but we are-- we're distracted.

We're not aware of it.

Interesting.

Absolutely.

And-- and the contrast, um, elucidates, uh, the significance of the experience of God.

In other words, if all were subsumed within God, God could not have no self-enjoyment, such as possible when the divine being is dispersed and then rediscovers its unity.

If there's no forgetting, there can be no remembering.

And in remembering, there's ecstasy and glory.

Explains a great mystery by an even greater mystery.

Ha ha!

Cousineau: Thank you for that terrific exchange.

Let's bring some younger voices in now.

We'll turn to a video that was shot recently of you, Jacob, meeting in a San Francisco cafe with your philosophy students.

Right.

Woman: The word "God" describes... nothing I can relate to in my life at all.

Um, it describes in, you know, in the Abrahamic tradition, some old guy who's gonna give me a carrot or a stick depending on how I behave or, um-- There's something else there, and--and I want to know-- I want to know it.

I want to know what it is.

And the only time that I really experience it for myself is in nature, and I feel that the awe that I experience is the very start.

It's just like the teeniest, tiniest grain of sand in the possibility of experiences.

But it's... it's just the beginning.

Yeah.

That's very good.

At--at some level, it's all God, that it's all vibration and that it's this differentiation between God and this and this and that that gets us into this whole muddle of problems that we've found ourselves in with the Abrahamic traditions with some of--so... Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe at some level... we ought to ask "What is it not?"

It's encouraging to see young university students thinking about these large questions.

At the same time, I have in mind some recent research from the PEW Foundation that approximately 1 in 4 what they call "young millennials" are not affiliated with any traditional religious organization, and the trend is increasing-- about 3 times as much each year.

So that begs the question: "Do we need to be affiliated with a tradition "in order to search for God, answer these questions about the divine?"

What do you think, Pir Zia?

Yes.

Well, I have friends in both camps.

I have friends who are very serious and sincere, spiritual seekers who have not committed themself to a particular tradition.

And, indeed, amongst them, there are very eloquent, um, advocates for a new spirituality that-- that intentionally resists, um, the confinement of a particular identification because they want to avail themselves of the full legacy of the human search for the divine in all of its forms and want to avoid becoming enmeshed in institutions which are limiting and which create boundaries of-- resulting in an inside group and an outside group.

For myself, I will say that I have found great benefit in tradition, in lineage, the continuity down the generations of a stream of practice.

It encompasses various aspects of life, and it isn't the creation of one individual who wants to, um, break out individualistically and do something new.

It's the conversation amongst beings for whom this has been a central question-- the question of discerning the meaning of human life, a conversation not only of these beings in a single time and space, but down the generations.

For me, this is tradition, and it's very powerful.

Great.

Pir Zia, I'd like to ask you about the retreat that you've been leading.

We're going to see some footage here.

Can you tell us what we're about to see, the practices that we will encounter in this footage?

Inayat-Khan: Yes.

Well, in different places at different times, I gather with seekers.

Sometimes these are gatherings just among those initiates who are committed to our Sufi path, and other times, they are more diverse, more open gatherings.

So it becomes ever clearer when we reflect his... that... we are not self-created.

We haven't made ourselves, but, rather, our life is a gift.

Now, if we had created ourselves, we could, perhaps, justifiably claim to belong to ourselves.

We would be our own property.

And--and yet, we know this isn't true.

We haven't created ourselves, and therefore we must conclude we don't actually belong to ourselves.

We belong to the one who has made us.

And that really changes everything.

It's a fundamental shift in our whole attitude toward life.

We do not belong to ourselves.

We belong to the one who made us and who sustains us.

And we know that the right response to a gift is "Thanks."

And when we open our eyes and see how abundantly we have been blessed, which means that we cease to recite the litany of our woes and grievances and complaints and grudges, then the world lights up anew, and everywhere we look we see blessing upon blessing.

We're overwhelmed by the magnitude of providence.

All this is given to us, none of which we have somehow deserved.

It's all grace, a cascade of grace, endlessly flowing from the source of all.

And if we had that sense, if we could cultivate the sense that even if the one to whom I belong is a mystery, and I cannot ever fully comprehend this mystery, but at least to know in my heart of hearts I'm not merely here for myself.

I'm not an accident.

I have been brought forth out of nothingness in the service to the great one to whom I belong.

That orientation then becomes the basis for life, which becomes a meaningful life, and it informs all of one's choices and decisions.

Is part of the modern confusion, then, an inability to believe that there is something outside of us now?

With all of the emphasis on humanistic thinking, has it become more difficult for modern people to believe that there is a divine voice streaming in through us?

Yes, well, clearly, um, the last 300 years have seen increasing skepticism toward religious claims.

And this has been a very remarkable period of human history, a period of tremendous social transformation-- political, economic, commercial.

but amidst all of this, a hunger, which none of the technologies, none of the, um, cultural novelties can--can fill.

And that is the, um, the need to fulfill the purpose for which we were born, our--our reason for being.

And, um, religion points to that vocation, that sense of belonging and, um... All too often, however, the religions too narrowly focusing on matters which become conflictual and are, um... approached through a mentality which is filtered through political institutions and personal agendas.

Uh, they lose the whole gist of--of Revelation.

So, what's so wonderful now is there's a chance for the religions to renew themselves by recognizing one another, recognizing that they're all parts of one global lineage of remembrance.

Your--your phrase, the "global lineage of remembrance" really strikes a chord in me.

How about you, Jacob?

Needleman: Well, yes, that's, um, the heart of the spiritual path in many--in certain ways is the recognition that I don't know what I am, really.

I don't know what is inside this thing I call myself.

It sounds like a paradox, but I am I, and I don't know what I am.

And a great spiritual path leads one to, first of all, to see that I don't know what I am.

And that causes a yearning that kind-- an accentuation of this inborn yearning Plato called eros-- this love of, this wish to be-- participate in something greater and in myself as well as above myself.

Jacob, I would like to turn back to the footage of your discussion with your philosophy group at school to help us get some more perspective on this enormous topic.

[Woman speaking] Needleman: Atheistic?

Woman: Atheistic, yeah.

Woman: The school... Any idea or thought of God would be humored, would be dismissed, and you are, like, not even up-to-date so, "What are you talking about?

It's so last century."

So you have to take life into your hands and be in control of everything and that's how you live your life.

And so you plan ahead, you plan well, you do good, and everything will be fine.

And it wasn't.

I planned, I did, and it wasn't.

Um, and there was time that, um... that you get-- you need the trail.

You think that you cannot do it alone.

You cannot rely on people sometimes in life and that happens that um, time when you-- I don't know whether you want to feel it.

Maybe it's already been there and you kind of reach out to that, but there's something greater that I can hope I can be related to.

And that was time when I think would come to God.

God is everywhere, but it's time that you come to God.

And it's your step that you think, "I am--I'm that little, I'm that powerless, I'm--I need help.

I need you."

And I think that was-- ahem-- It's very emotional...

I think that was time that first my encounter with God was.

That, um...that gave that experience of God that, again, nobody can take away.

that, you know, it's very personal, it's very intimate, and it's not something like you've experienced ever before.

And that recognition of your, um... of your nothingness... and that humbleness... that unite that, um... confirmation that gives hope that there could be more.

Every day could be, you know, me bringing myself to--to God... 'cause it's there.

This woman's honesty and humility I found quite moving.

What about you, Pir Zia?

This notion of needing God to help us... Is this rooted in the kind of favor-based relationship with God?

Does it echo how many levels there are for us to communicate, not just one, but many levels?

Yeah.

Yeah, there are many levels of, um, increasing intimacy, sincerity, and communion.

And the Sufi philosopher Imam Al-Ghazali described this in 3 stages: The first stage is looking upon God as a--as an advocate, someone who one turns to to get things done.

Things that you want for yourself, you turn to the one who can help you, watch over you, protect your interests, and so forth.

That's the first stage, but then there's a second stage, which is that God isn't the advocate anymore, but is like one's mother.

And so, one turns the mother for nurturance, for intimacy.

One comes close to the mother.

There's a deepening trust.

One isn't hiring someone to do a job for you, but you're coming close to someone in love.

And there's a third stage, which um, may strike many as, well, morbid at first glance.

That is that God is the corpse-washer, which is to say at the end of one's life, when one dies the body goes limp, and as the last rite before burial, the body has to be washed.

And I did this with my brother to the body of our father.

We removed the garments and lifted his arms and legs and gently we washed his body.

And this body that he had cared for that he had protected that he had fed throughout his long life that had traveled all across the world was now supple in our hands.

It was a very poignant, heartful moment of communion.

And that's the third level of intimacy with God that one surrenders oneself up with that trust that one offers one's entire being entirely over to the divine touch.

Needleman: That divine element, that higher energy, whatever we call it inside, when one touches that, one also knows it's above me as well as in me.

There's no-- there's no thing-- Humanism doesn't touch that kind of thing.

Humanism, in one sense, vastly underestimates mankind.

And sometimes religion, when it goes astray, vastly under--underestimates the inner world in a--in a way, in a way I don't see when the inner to-- Most of the great traditions, they have an inner path as well as an outer doctrine, and those two are meant to converge at some point.

And they differ only in details and various strategies.

Don't you think?

Yeah.

So...

It appears we've exhibited this depth of yearning and longing for at least 60,000 years, if we include the quests of aborigine people in Australia.

And yet, in the modern world, we have to confront this skepticism that was brought in by Freud and others before him that religion and mythology are a kind of infantile urge that should be passed on.

This has really fed what you might call the new atheism, which is suggesting that all that must be left behind if we're going to go into the modern world.

And yet so many people are going into the modern world and feeling this deep ache of meaninglessness that cannot be fed by science and technology alone.

How do we go forward?

Needleman: On the contrary-- On the contrary, it's amplified by technology sometimes.

Ah!

How so?

Well, I mean the egoism, the greed, the fear, the anxiety, the nervousness, the--gosh--I wish to have to have to win to solve problems that cannot be solved by the ordinary mind alone.

It becomes a kind of false hope that we'll solve all problems of mankind through inventions that are only made by the ord-- the ordinary mind.

So I think there's a great discussion to be had with the new atheism, because some of these people who are ath-- are strong atheists have a deep wish.

It is really a sacred movement in themselves, and they have no idea about the kind of religion that we're speaking of here.

Yeah, there was a young man who came before my grandfather.

And, taking him to be a priest, he, um...he challenged him, and he said, "I don't-- I don't believe in God."

And, um, my grandfather listened and said, um, "Well, tell me about the God that you don't believe in."

And then he told him all of the things he didn't believe about God.

And afterward, my grandfather said, "I don't believe in that God either."

[Laughter] That's--yes.

Which God did he believe in, then?

Inayat-Khan: Well, um, belief is, um... is a--is an instrument, like a ladder that has its rungs.

One is meant to advance, um, through beliefs which become progressively refined, clarified, made real.

And then you have to put them behind you and move on to a higher understanding.

There are levels of understanding.

So belief is just a perspective, and it can serve you for a time, but if you're really moving forward, you're going to advance through that perspective and a new vista will open up.

So, belief--it's... holding a single belief indefinitely is like clasping onto a rung of the ladder and staying there.

The ladder is meant to be climbed.

Needleman: We need help.

The traditions, maybe some of them can't help anymore in certain places.

When you say "We need help," is that the moment of the spiritual teacher?

It can be.

Cutting to the chase, you need people to help other people who have God in them to help other people find their own God in them, the God themselves.

Uh, you can't do it all-- just out of nowhere.

Help comes not just from below.

That's the modern reductionism.

Or even out of books?

Out of books?

Not out of books.

Books are important-- Cousineau: Do we need a person?

Do we need a spiritual teacher, Pir Zia?

Yes.

Yes, I would like to come back to the idea that sometimes the traditions become desiccated.

So, there's a tremendous need for a tradition to renew itself by returning to the source.

It can't just repeat what has been said in the past and carry out the rituals and so forth.

It has to be ground-- it's taproot, has to be deep down in the primal ground.

And then it exists-- the tradition isn't a thing.

What it is is a series of relationships.

It's the contact between someone who's soul has been kindled and the one who, seeing that kindled soul, rediscovers the light in his own soul.

And it lights up, and that person can reach another, and so it continues down the ages.

And that is the most powerful means of rendering awakening.

Books are a poor substitute.

But it can be very difficult in an age where there is rampant cynicism about leadership on all levels.

So it's possible that so many younger people, like the people in the footage with you at the cafe, Jacob, are more and more isolated, thinking that they're alone in this search for God, which is a terrible situation.

It's gotta be chaos in the soul.

How do you suggest the very idea of a spiritual teacher to a generation coming up that is cynical or even wounded about the possibility of a leader?

Needleman: Well, a professor of philosophy in an academic institution has a mission sometimes-- not much, it's not always-- just to open and honor the question, to honor that questions of the heart, which are not answerable by science and never will be.

But they are res-- there are responsive-- there are responses possible on the way to real self-knowledge.

Uh, as I understand, our mission for some of us is to open the heart, to open the questions, not try to produce any belief systems, but to ask what-- It's one thing to ask, "How do you find a real teacher?"

and the next thing to ask is, "How do you search for a real teacher?"

'Cause most people-- maybe their search needs help as well as anything else that it doesn't go very far.

Cousineau: What about honoring what they say they have found in their own way, such as the young woman who says the traditional notion of God does not speak to her, but finding God or the divine in nature does.

I think of John Muir, seeing God in the redwood forest or Mary Oliver, the wonderful poet, seeing God picking seashells walking along a shore.

Are there other ways to find God?

Music?

Certainly.

Yes.

Um, the quest for God has its passive and active dimensions.

So, the active dimension means reaching out toward God.

Prayer is an example of this, calling upon the names of God.

lifting up one's hands in prayer.

At intervals throughout the day, bowing down.

It means that one is interrupting one's routine.

One is turning one's attention, and one is trying to strain the boundaries of one's mind and one's heart to reach to something that is vaster than one's little self.

That is an effort, and it's a worthy effort.

But there's another part of the path to God, which is the passive part, which is watching, waiting, feeling what stirs you.

You might be walking out in nature and the slant of the light through the clouds evokes something in you and you feel a response.

And yet, if one relies exclusively upon passive access to grace, then perhaps one hasn't fully committed oneself to the relationship with God, which, like any relationship, requires give and take.

Well, there's a kind of constant dialectic, as it were, between grace and effort.

Yeah.

And every spiritual tradition is--is a balance of those two.

And when you begin to go too far in effort, it becomes a kind of doing, a kind of egoistic, muscular doing.

And go too far toward the grace, it becomes a kind of passive, dreamy kind of thing.

Though bringing those two together, is the work of a master, a work of someone who understands.

The person who goes into-- It's one thing to get a touch of God in nature, but one...one then sometimes will see, it disappears.

I don't live it.

It--where did it go?

When that question comes in, then we're talking about method in a sacred sense.

But the famous saying-- I think it's-- they say it's all just--it may have been Ramakrishna-- that "God provides the wind.

Man must raise the sail."

It's a beautiful thing 'cause grace doesn't come just... Who are we to say how grace acts?

But you can be sure there needs to be some preparation for grace.

Roast chickens won't-- don't fly into your mouth.

You have to--you have to yearn, you have to need something.

Why, this imagery that God is suffering more than-- about our distance from him than we are suffering from our distance from God.

And that is what-- what you think.

Something hints to me something of a new conception of God, to say something about God's need for us.

Yeah.

Because in the academic forms of the scholastic things, God can't have any needs-- he's perfect.

That is--something's been lost in that way.

Well, there's a, um, story of, uh... it was Shams Tabrizi.

It was in his "Makalat."

Um, he... he wonders what does God need, the one who has everything, the one who is perfect and complete?

What could God need?

And, um, the only thing that God lacks is lack, and that's what we have to bring.

[Laughter] That sounds too good to be true, but I think it's-- it's good.

But that is true.

It's like the image of the deer, who... whose baby--pregnant deer who's babies have been killed by the wolves and yet she now suckles the wolf.

I have to give.

I have to give.

When the other deer say, "Why do you suckle this en-- our enemy?"

And she says, "I have this milk.

I have to give."

Yeah, yeah.

And in Islam, the two, um...premier names are rahman, rahim, the merciful and compassionate.

And if there was no creature of limitation, if there was no erring creature, if we did not make mistakes, how could compassion show itself?

Compassion exists only in relation to suffering and confusion and woundedness and so forth.

So these qualities, which are so, uh, beneficent, so, um, exquisite in their deep quality of love, are only possible dialectically vis-a-vis humanity and in--in the context of our-- of our imperfection finding its way toward perfection.

The opposition is necessary for the real creation to take place in man.

You--God didn't create man as a being who would automatically come, but who would choose and struggle-- Yeah.

and the forces of all of nature and the-- would--would be included in him.

So, we need the opposition, but we also need the help to work with it and understand it and see it in ourselves and struggle with it.

Without struggle, we just would be auto-- automatons, maybe beautiful, but... Jacob, you speak with such poetic conviction.

It suggests that you may have had some of these very experiences.

Can you describe one of the encounters you've had with what native people call "the great mystery," some kind of encounter with God?

Yeah, of course.

The night sky with my father sitting on the steps next to me.

And suddenly-- I don't know why because my father was a very strong and poetic man-- but looking up suddenly at the night sky, and suddenly billions of stars appear.

I was suddenly seeing-- I never saw anything like that.

It was like every-- there was hardly any blackness.

It was like suddenly a vision.

And my father, without any kind of... prompting, he said to me, "That's God."

And I'll never forget that moment.

It just was--of course, I may have seen something, projecting something, but he must have felt something.

So I can give you 1,000, and I'm sure you can give me 10,000 moments.

Some of them are too intimate to speak about, even.

And--but, um, I-- I can tell you that there are experiences of something which is timeless and infinitely benevolent in ourselves and above.

That--is no question in my-- and I grew up as an atheist, rabid existentialist, and yet I loved science, I loved nature.

But I--it took me a long time before I actually tasted this other level.

So, I think--I think a great path would help people taste God, not just think about him, not just-- don't you think?

Yes.

The taste of something.

You know, music--you were asked about that.

But we'll say a word about music, because, for example, am I right?

In certain branches of Islam, music has been...suspect because of its pleasures and things, but that there's a kind of music that is respected, that gives one a sense of distant-- that awareness-- awareness of the distance from God and to a kind of feeling it gives you with a sense of I'm-- I'm--I'm cut off.

So, there's a music that produces a yearning-- Yeah.

A special yearning.

And I think that is beautiful.

Inayat-Khan: Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, I think the--the, um, delicacy about music in Islam has to do with the sacredness of music.

Music is so sacred that care needs to be taken with it.

Cousineau: This is a wonderful moment, then, to turn to a video sequence that we have of you in which you describe the importance of music in your work.

[Man chanting in Arabic] Inayat-Khan: The Islamic Revelation presents us with a challenge.

It challenges us to renounce visual representations of God since no visual representation could ever encapsulate the vastness, the sheer magnitude of the infinite eternal being.

And the danger is that any image would become an idol.

At the same time, the Islamic Revelation compels us to do, seemingly, the impossible, namely, to pray to God as if you see God.

Here is where music comes in.

[Woodwind instrument playing] Music, in a very real sense, is the highest of the arts because it is the most abstract.

And therefore, it is able to communicate the divine presence in a way that respects the sanctity of the divine ineffability... [Singing in Arabic] which is to say, an image of God would always be static, would always be immutable.

But music flows.

Its cadences, its rhythms, its tones are ever renewing.

There is in it spontaneity.

One must listen moment by moment for the next notes, and it may strike anywhere on the scale.

"Kulla yawmin huwa fi shanin."

"Every day a new splendor."

Music offers this-- the spontaneity of epiphany.

And so, for the mystics, music is the picture of the beloved.

My grandfather used these words.

"Music is the picture of the beloved, "the beloved who cannot be pictured "in line, in form, color and shadow.

"He's pictured in the celestial harmonies of music, the music that uplifts the soul in remembrance."

So, Pir Zia, I found the footage very moving, especially your grandfather's notion that music was his vehicle to get closest to God.

What did he mean by that?

Yeah.

Music, for him, was--was sacred.

It was breath, it was sound, it was presence.

It was openness to what was to be revealed.

A state of being, a ... taste, which is among those tastes which lead back to the experience of the ineffable.

Here because of this notion of something being stirred or troubled in the heart, I'm thinking of the infamous quote by John Lennon, the great singer, who said that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."

That's disturbing on some levels.

For a long time, I thought this was very autobiographical, that he was talking about his own pain and suffering.

But after dwelling on it, I'm thinking it could be an echo of this contemporary concern of being separated from the divine, separated from some sense of the sublime in life.

And when he says it's a measure of our pain, maybe he's really saying God is a kind of mirror that reflects back onto us, the wide separation we sometimes feel from the divine.

Yeah.

Yes, I don't think it's purely a contemporary problem.

This sense of separation from the source is a, um, an age-old human experience, um, symbolized in the fall from the garden, um, the sense of having been included in something out of which one has fallen into the woundedness of the human soul in its separation from God but also the glory in rediscovering God, a glory which would be impossible if it had never undergone that separation.

It goes even farther, in a way, that we're-- we're not aware of that separation sometimes, and we take many kinds of substitutes for that kind of unity and meaning.

And those substitutes, those, um, diversions, those, sort of, imitation gods, which are called idols in the Abrahamic tradition, an idol which is something which substitutes for God, which is an imitation God and is supposed to bring you meaning.

And when you see that it doesn't, that--that pain is very sacred, because that allows you to start searching and seeking and yearning, yes?

Yes, yes.

Well, absolutely.

Um, I think you've really touched the crux of it there.

That, um, we inure ourselves to the absence of the beloved through all kinds of distractions, which numb the heart and, um, temporarily, perhaps, afford some--some relief by way of entertainment but which have the result of transforming our pain into suffering.

What was a--what was a sheer simple experience of the soul in its desire to, um, rediscover its place within the totality now, um, gives rise to all kinds of symptoms and, um, distorted perceptions, which are the result of denying that--that pain.

So the pain is--is crucial on the path of return.

Exactly so, and that spiritual path, it's important for some methods of--of teaching, of showing, to let the pupils experience pain, so that they know that the refuge that they're seeking is false.

It's called pleasure sometimes, but that gives a very misunderstand-- big misunderstanding.

Real spiritual tradition is not against pleasure.

It's the pleasure that substitutes for the higher, that is the thing one has to overcome and see, that one is giving oneself to something that can only be given by God or by contact or a glimpse of this higher reality.

Don't you think this is-- Yes, yes.

And I think your reference to idolatry is apt because the--the heart is a...a shrine for the divine presence.

The heart is that place within us which is providentially ordained to be the receptacle of the divine life within us and yet which has become so cluttered with fetishes and idols that there simply isn't the space, the emptiness, the simplicity within for that divine life to--to show itself.

So it's a matter of dismantling these idols, which involve opinions, judgments, fears-- fears, certainly, yeah, to open that spaciousness within the heart.

Cousineau: This is a wonderful moment, then, to turn once more to some video of your community.

Can you tell us what we're about to see, the practices that we will encounter in this footage?

Inayat-Khan: We practice observing the breath and entering into the full multi-dimensionality of the breath.

And, um, further, Muraqaba, which is contemplation, which involves self-reflection and examination of the sensation that we experience at multiple levels of being through our senses but also through innocence as through all of the organs of perception, reaching through the planes of being um, right up to those domains where our sense of separate selfhood dissolves away.

So let's pause here for a moment... to affirm how we belong to the one, the one we name by so many names and whom we now name Elahi or El ayam.

The living... the everstanding... [Chanting in Arabic] [Repeating in Arabic] Thank you, Pir Zia.

You made me think of something I've forgotten for a long time.

But when I studied religion at the University of Detroit, I remember our professor saying, "If you ever doubt the existence of God, contemplate your breath, go back to your breath."

That's the greatest of divine gifts.

Certainly.

And--and one of the, um... understandings of the--the name, the central name for God in the Islamic tradition, Allh, is that it, um, it is made up of these letters-- alif, laam, laam, ha-- A-l-l-h. And in Arabic, "Al" means "the," the definite article "the."

And when the--"laam," when the "l" is doubled, it's intensified, so it means "the only," "the very."

So, Allh... the "h"... the--you know, it's not-- it's not-- God is not a word, but God is the living breath through which all words may be pronounced.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

Jacob, do you have final thoughts on this, that there may be the possibility of a god beyond any form, a god beyond naming?

Closest thing that I can say about that question is that there is such a thing as formless energy, and it's a consciousness.

It's a quality of consciousness.

And... how to really understand that the highest energy is always "I" "I."

It's an "I"ness, I would call it.

The ultimate reality is "I"ness, and that's what I understand.

When the Lord says to Moses-- when Moses says, "Who shall I say sent me?"

God says--the Christian translation is-- "I am that I am."

And the more strictly Hebraic translation is "I will be where I am needed."

And it's an energy.

An energy is not just any old material force.

It's consciousness.

Consciousness is an energy.

That's what I would say.

Pir Zia, final thoughts on this?

Yes.

Well, one feels that for the one being, the truest affirmation that the one being could make is "Only I exist."

So, there is this great reverberation of the sense of "Only I exist, only I exist" and that it re-echoes all throughout the cosmos.

And each one of us has a little ego saying, "Only I exist, only I exist."

But our little "I" is just a fragment of that one "I."

And until it's reunited with that one primal "I," um, its claim lacks the compelling power of the truth.

And so our great task is to reunite that "I" up, offer it up to the service of the one for whom we live.

Cousineau: Wonderful, wonderful.

I'm reminded of the anecdote of Gurdjieff meeting with his students in Paris in the late 1920s, and they're speaking all evening, all night, right till dawn.

One of the students gets up to leave, and Gurdjieff raises his hand and says, "No, no, no.

Can't leave yet "because we haven't figured out if God exists or not."

And the openness of that anecdote, um...

I think is something close to what we've created in this conversation between us together.

So, thank you for encouraging the deep questioning.

Pir Zia Anayat-Khan, thank you.

Dr. Jacob Needleman, it's been a real privilege and an honor to have this long conversation.

Thank you very much.

It's been a pleasure and an honor.

Hi.

I'm Cindy Blackman Santana, and thank you for joining us.

And we hope you return to "Global Spirit: The First Internal Travel Series."