Question
When these men spoke to me, they sometimes used verses from the Quran, reciting them first in Arabic before translating them for me. I do not speak Arabic, but I heard very pure, noble sounds, and I told them, “You speak very pure Arabic.” They replied, “Do you speak Arabic?” I answered, “No, only a few words, but I sometimes understand many languages without having learned them.” They said, “You are a very awakened person to be able to discern that we use very ancient Arabic. Why do you question a human being (you)? In the Quran, Allah defines himself thus: There is no God but God. You must question God directly, and only God, and God will give you the answer.” I replied that it seemed healthy to question myself and submit my questions to you so as not to believe I had understood, so as not to make mistakes, but that indeed, God being within me, the answer would come from my practice. They answered, “There is always someone with greater understanding than oneself, even for a master, so you must question God directly and he will bring you the answer.” I replied that often the answer to my question came like this: through the mouth of a child or someone I passed. They said, “Or simply by observing… an ant.” I said, “Of course!” I noticed that these men could not have been over forty, yet both their faces were at once young and very, very old; they reminded me of men from ancient times. They said, “Why do you question yourself, why do you doubt?” I told them, “There is no nondoubt without doubt, and no nonquestion before asking oneself the right questions and submitting one’s own answers to someone who has already traveled the path.” They said, “There is danger in deifying a man, danger for a man in deifying himself.” I said, “I do not deify this master.” They said, “There is danger in thinking a human being is God. He is God’s servant, but if he thinks he is the creator, that is only his ego’s creation.” I said, “Isn’t man the creator of his ego?” They said, “Man created his ego, and his ego makes him believe he created the whole world. But there is no God but God, and even if he has the free will not to consider him the Great Creator, that is his only freedom. During his brief human life, for everything else, ultimately Allah decides.” Everything had stopped in the internet café: the people around us had turned away from their computer screens and were listening silently. Something within me told me to stop the discussion, the words, the explanations, and besides, I had to go to work. I told them this, and also that in my view we should not try to grasp, not want to explain everything, not understand only with the intellect. Then they were silent for quite a while and said, “In any case, this meeting with you this morning is not happening by chance. It is guidance. We are guided, you and we. It is no coincidence, and the words we have spoken come from beyond us.”
I offered gassho to greet them, and they left, responding to my greeting by bowing respectfully. A few minutes later one returned and said, “Parakalaofik, thank you. This meeting did not happen by chance.” I replied, “Thank you; the message of this encounter will surely become clear soon.” That is it. Sabine. Thank you, thank you, Master Kosen, for your attention and for telling me how you feel about what I experienced this morning.
Sabine
Answer from Master Kosen
“Why do you question a human being (you)? In the Quran, Allah defines himself thus: There is no God but God.”
Answer: Were the prophets not questioned?
I completely agree that there is no God but God, so why should people not question me? It is God questioning God. What does “Allah is great” mean? It certainly is not a human, comparative scale of values; surely the translation is wrong. For Allah, the greatest thing we can imagine is paltry. Allah is limitless in both the great and the small.
How can we imagine there are several religions, since there is no God but God? But human beings interpret through their limitations.
”There is danger in deifying a man, danger for a man in deifying himself. There is danger in thinking a human being is God. He is God’s servant, but if he thinks he is the creator, that is only his ego’s creation.”
Answer: I think, on the contrary, that there is danger in letting man continue to behave like a slave or an animal, and an urgent need for him to rediscover the divine root within himself. He believes he is not God; that is the problem. That is why he does not take responsibility. Either he is an atheist or he expects everything from God, but nothing changes because he, the human being, does not change himself. How could man not be God, since God is all things?
When man ceases to identify with his limited, illusory ego, he becomes divine, and that is very good. For example, if I look at my hand, I say it is my hand, it is part of me, but obviously I am not a hand. Yet my hand can say it is part of me. And if I burn my hand, I suffer throughout my body and mind, so it is not separate from me. It is the same in my relationship with God: I am only a part of him, but I am entirely him and he is entirely me.
In that sense, if I trace my consciousness back to the root of what created me, we become one. God gave us free will; that is why we are creators. But look at the world we create, how bad and imperfect it is, and we cowardly say it is not our responsibility. God expects us to create a beautiful, just, harmonious world, and we are capable of it, thanks to God.
”I said, ‘Isn’t man the creator of his ego?’ They said, ‘Man created his ego, and his ego makes him believe he created the whole world. But there is no God but God, and even if he has the free will not to consider him the Great Creator, that is his only freedom. During his brief human life, for everything else, ultimately Allah decides.’”
Answer: Precisely—even if he believes otherwise, man is not the creator of his ego. Rather, the whole world made him believe in that ego: his parents’ heredity, his family’s upbringing, religion, school, his country, society, and information forged a personality he believes to be his own. Unfortunately, he is incapable of creating anything outside what he already knows and calls the whole world. Let go of this ego and the world that goes with it, and then, at last, Allah decides through us. There is no need to die for that. Allah’s paradise exists here, now, everywhere, and always.
Kosen