We have to have an understanding of where we came from and who we are. We’re plopped into the middle of this world, we’re raised, and depending on the information that we get we either do, or do not, have an understanding of our origins.
We know we are created beings. We are told by the teachers that there was a time before the beginning, when Allah was in still silence and meditating on himself. And then there came a time when from him came emanations, and these emanations were what became souls. And these souls existed, for a time, before they were brought into this world.
The first soul to come into the world was Adam. Adam came into this world, and before he was a manifest being he was a soul, and likewise for all of us. Before we were manifest beings we were souls. We were light beings. Light beings created by God, and then we came into the world. When we came into the world we were given clothing for the soul, and this clothing for the soul is our body, and our body is made up of the elements: earth, air, fire, water and ether. And in addition we have a mind, which is desire, and we have lower and higher qualities within ourselves.
This covering for the body, Rumi described it as a shirt and he described his passing, or when he was going to pass, as the changing of his shirt. So we need to understand that we were created as a light body, a soul, and that soul got a covering; a shirt, clothes.
As time progressed, man became more and more in tune with his covering than with his reality. So the temporary manifestation, which is our manifest body – that which we can see, hear, touch, feel, see, smell became what we thought we are. And through this body, through the use of this body, we began to see differences. Different bodies came in different colors, different bodies came in different hues, and we thought because of these differences that we were somehow different than each other. But that denied, or was unaware of, the truth that within the covering there is a light body which is the truth, which is who we are.
So we wear this costume on top of our light body, and the costume has become the reality for most of the world. And it is through the costume that all of the world’s cultures, and most of the world’s ideas, have come into being. Religions came through the body: Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all manifestations of the body, of the form. The light body, the body inside the form is beyond religion, it’s beyond race, it’s beyond color, it’s beyond language; it’s beyond any of the differences that the world puts on things. And until we become conscious, and aware, and integrated into our light body, as opposed to being integrated into our physical body, we will continue to have the problems that people have in the world.
So we are constantly trying to cleanse the acts of the flesh. But if we can detach ourselves from the flesh, if we can stop identifying with the flesh, then we will become different. And it is only when this identification stops that we can begin to know the truth about ourselves…
