Isra And Miraj

The Angel Gabriel cleansing Mohammed's heart of impurities in preparation for his ascent to heaven, while the other angels watch. From the 16th-century manuscript The Progress of the Prophet, from Turkey

High beyond Intelligence is the Great Self,beyond the Great Self is the Unmanifest,beyond the Unmanifest is the Conscious Being.There is nothing beyond the Being-that is the extreme ultimate,that the Supreme Goal-KATHA UPANISHAD

Nirvana-Liberating,annihilation,extinction,not necessarily of all the being,but of being as we know it,extinction of ego,desire and egoistic action and mentality

The Central Being. The Universal Person
"Thou art He" – such is the eternal truth. Tat tvam asi, thou art That. This is the Truth the ancient Mysteries taught and the later religions forgot. Having lost the central secret, they fell prey to all the aberrant dualisms, substituting obscure mysteries for the great, simply Mystery. "I and my Father are one," Jesus Christ said (John 10,30); "I am He," – so'ham – the sages of India say; indeed, this is the truth all liberated men discover, whether they be from the East or the West, from the past or the present. This is the eternal Fact we must all discover. This "I," the self who asserts its identity with God, is not that of a privileged individual

"A year and a half later, he was invited to the Presence of Allah, Almighty and Exalted. From Makkah to Jerusalem (Quds) he travelled accompanied by Archangel Gabriel (Jibril) . From Jerusalem he ascended to the heavens by means of Buraq, a heavenly mount who carried him up. All the prophets in the different levels of heaven came to greet him. He ascended higher and higher, until he heard the scratching of the Pen(Kalam Of Allah or The Self Of Allah), writing out God's Decree. He approached the Divine Presence, closer and closer, until Jibril said to him, "Ya Rasul Allah (O Prophet of God), I cannot continue further, or I will be extinguished." The Prophet said, "O Jibril, accompany me!" He said, "I cannot, or I will be burned in Allah's Light." So Muhammad , the most Perfect of the Perfect, continued alone. Driven by his love for Allah's Divine Presence he approached closer and closer, achieving the State of Complete Annihilation in five different stages


From one stage to another the Prophet moved into Allah's Divine Secrets. Between each stage was five hundred thousand years. He passed through these vast Divine Oceans of Knowledge, which Allah Almighty and Exalted has created, until he was completely dissolved in Allah's Existence, seeing nothing except Him. Then Allah called him to return to existence after he had reached the State of Annihilation. He returned and Allah told him, "O Muhammad, Approach closer." From this it is understood that the Prophet , having reached the State of Complete Annihilation, was called by Allah by his name, indicating that he was appearing anew with Allah's Appearance. He reached so near to the Divine Light, that he was "two bow-lengths or nearer" [53:9]. Allah asked him, "Who are you, O Muhammad?" At that time the Prophet was not conscious of himself and he replied: "You, O my Lord." This is the perfection of the state of not associating anyone with Allah. It is the perfect sign of Tawhid (Oneness), when nothing exists except His Glory, His Essence, Himself."

http://www.naqshbandi.org/chain/1main.htm

The Lord Is Everywhere And In Everything

[Yusufali 2:115] To Allah belong the east and the West: Whithersoever ye turn, there is the presence of Allah. For Allah is all-Pervading, all-Knowing.

[Yusufali 4:40] Now I do call to witness the Lord of all points in the East and the West that We can certainly-

Indeed God is not outside His world, He did not "create" the world – He became the world, as the Upanishad says: "He became knowledge and ignorance, He became the truth and the falsehood.... He became all this whatsoever that is." (Taittiriya Upanishad II.6) "This whole world is filled with beings who are His members," says the Swetaswatara Upanishad (IV.10). All to the eye that sees is One, to a divine experience all is one block of the Divine.¹³⁴

"I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva* who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell, but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna* whom I saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana¹³¹ who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover.... I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused bodies."
SRI AUROBINDO

But who has realized cosmic consciousness? Not the yogi; the yogi goes on drinking, eating, sleeping, being ill at times like all human animals, and dying. It is not he, but a tiny point of his being that is experiencing cosmic consciousness, the very one on which he so earnestly concentrated to break through his carapace. The rest of his being, all the human and earthly nature that he has excluded from the experience, which he has repressed or mortified in order to better concentrate on that single point of escape, does not share in his cosmic consciousness, except through indirect radiation. Sri Aurobindo was therefore making this first important observation, that a linear realization, in one point, is not enough, but that a global realization, in all points – one that embraces the individual's entire being – is necessary. If you want to transform your nature and your being, and participate in the creation of a new world, the Mother says, that aspiration, that one-pointed and linear push is no longer enough; you must embrace everything and contain everything in your consciousness. Hence the integral yoga or "full yoga," purna yoga.

Towards The Home Of Total Reality

[Yusufali 6:5] And hearkens to (the Command of) its Lord,- and it must needs (do so);- (then will come Home the full reality).
[Yusufali 6:62] That is because Allah - He is the Reality; and those besides Him whom they invoke,- they are but vain Falsehood: verily Allah is He, Most High, Most Great.

[Yusufali 26:193] With it came down the spirit of Faith and Truth-

[Yusufali 17:80] Say: "O my Lord! Let my entry be by the Gate of Truth and Honour, and likewise my exit by the Gate of Truth and Honour; and grant me from Thy Presence an authority to aid (me)."
Here is what Sri Aurobindo reported:

I lived in that Nirvana day and night before it began to admit other things into itself or modify itself at all... in the end it began to disappear into a greater Super-consciousness from above.... The aspect of an illusionary world gave place to one in which illusion is only a small surface phenomenon with an immense Divine Reality behind it and a supreme Divine Reality above it and an intense Divine Reality in the heart of everything that had seemed at first only a cinematic shape or shadow. And this was no reimprisonment in the senses, no diminution or fall from supreme experience, it came rather as a constant heightening and widening of the Truth.... Nirvana in my liberated consciousness turned out to be the beginning of my realization, a first step towards the complete thing, not the sole true attainment possible or even a culminating finale.¹¹⁹

Nirvana cannot be at once the ending of the Path with nothing beyond to explore... it is the end of the lower Path through the lower Nature and the beginning of the Higher Evolution.

The Triple Ignorance

7. Shunahshepa too was bound to the thousandfold post of sacrifice, him didst thou release and he attained to calm;¹ so do thou take thy seat here in us, O conscious knower, O Priest of the call, and loose from us the cords of our bondage.

(Sri Aurobindo. Hyms to the Mystic Fire, Mandala 5, Sukta 2, Verse 7)

Ignorance, this matrix of sin, has in its substantial effect the appearance of a triple cord of limited mind, inefficient life, obscure physical animality, the three ropes with which the Rishi Shunahshepa in the parable was bound as a victim to the sacrificial post. The whole result is a struggling or inert poverty of being; it is the meagreness of a mortal undelight and the insufficiency of a being that collapses at every moment towards death. When Varuna the Mighty comes and sunders this threefold restraint, we are freed towards riches and immortality. Uplifted, the real man arises to his true kingship in the undivided being. The upper cord flies upward releasing the wings of the Soul into superconscient heights; the middle cord parts both ways and all ways, the constrained life breaking out into a happy breadth of existence; the lower cord collapses downward taking with it the alloy of our physical being to disappear and be dissolved in the stuff of the Inconscient. This liberation is the purport of the parable of Shunahshepa and his two great hymns to Varuna.

[Sri Aurobindo. Secret of the Vedas, The Guardians of the Light]

The triple cord in the Upanishads

He, verily, who knows that Supreme Brahman becomes himself Brahman; in his lineage none is born who knows not the Brahman. He crosses beyond sorrow, he crosses beyond sin, he is delivered from the knotted cord of the secret heart and becomes immortal.

[Mundaka Upanishad Chapter III, 2.9]

Yea, when all the strings of the heart are rent asunder, even here, in this human birth, then the mortal becomes immortal. This is the whole teaching of the Scriptures.

[Katha Upanishad, 2.3.15]

Mother Mirra Alfassa

The cords symbolise the limitations of the mind; and there are three of them because there is a physical mind, a vital mind and a mental mind.

(Some Answers From The Mother Volume-16, Series Eleven, 9 November 1968)