SOI : Teachings : The Copper Rules

Each Copper Rule begins with the reader addressing himself or herself, because the Rule is not coming from an outside authority figure. It is coming from your own conscience, speaking to itself and recommitting itself to the principles that you know to be your own purpose.

So we say, “My conscientious self, consider your responsibility sacred.” There are two key words here: responsibility and sacred. Responsibility comes from a root in Latin which means to promise again. Re is again and spondere is to promise. So responsibility comes from respond, and to respond is to promise again. When we think about promising again, it is a reminder of an esoteric teaching which is found in the Qur’an Sharif, which indicates that there was a Primordial Day, before the advent of our earthly lives, when the soul of every human being was summoned into the Divine Presence, called forth, it says, from the loins of Adam, even before existentiation. And a question was posed. And that question was alastu bi rabbikum, “Am I not your rabb?”

The way we most often translate rabb is “Lord,” and there is something to that. However, most often when we think of Lord we think of a feudal dictator, whereas rabb has many other connotations. It is connected with tarbiya, which is to say cultivation of herbs, fruits, and vegetables; also education and care-giving of children. So it means bringing up, protecting, caring for, and enabling someone or something to reach its fullest potential. That is the meaning of tarbiya. So rabb is the one who, we can say, using the verse from the prayer Saum, is “the Creator, Sustainer, Judge and Forgiver.”

At the very moment that we were created or our creation was envisioned, the source of creation summoned us and posed this challenging question: “Am I not your rabb?” Rabb here means protector and teacher, but also has one other meaning, equally important: rabb also means archetype.

The relationship between an exemplar and an archetype is a relationship to a rabb. So, for example, Shah al-Din Suhrawardi speaks of certain types of angels as rabb an-nau‘, and that means “lord of the species” or “archetype of the species.” In other words, for the species of horse, there is an angel that is the summation of the whole species. There is one being that is “horsehood,” you might say, the cosmic horse, that is the archetype of all horses, and all horses live and move within that being. There is also an archetype for humanity. But the ultimate archetype, the archetype of archetypes, for humanity and for all species, is the Divine Being. This is the eternal being whom our temporal existence exemplifies.

So we are asked at the very moment that we have any autonomous, individual being whatsoever, at the moment when selfhood becomes a possibility, “For whom do you exist? As part of whom? Who is your matrix?” And the souls are overcome by the power of that question. It’s a shattering question. It’s a primordial moment of intense power: the raw, naked confrontation between Creator and creature, and the determination of the relationship between the two. Nothing could be more basic or simple than that.

It’s a simple question put forward, and the answer is equally simple. The answer is bala, “yes.” And that “yes” is the motive force, the power that catapults the creature, the soul into manifestation. Until now the soul was a possibility. And by affirming that “yes,” the soul is thrust forth through the kingdoms of nature: the mineral, vegetable, animal, the human condition, and venturing through the vicissitudes of history, ultimately the soul’s life culminates in this present incarnation.

This is what has brought us here, and the challenge now is to remember and reaffirm this “yes,” the original guiding motive behind all of our acts. Everything is determined by this determinative “yes.” Every step forward is to be taken in the awareness of this primal “yes.”

Responsibility, then, re spondere, re-pledging, re-committing, is remembrance and reaffirmation of this primal “yes.” So when we say to ourselves, “Consider your responsibility sacred,” first and foremost, it means, consider this reaffirmation of the original ”yes” as your ultimate purpose, your sacred and most necessary task.

And then, there’s a second consideration to be mentioned about responsibility. And that is that responsibility, in Latin, is to promise again. In Sanskrit, responsibility is dharma. Dharma is responsibility and dharma is our niche. For example, if you consider the human body, each cell contains the DNA of the whole body, but the DNA is translated, via the RNA, into action in a manner that is specific to the function of that particular cell. Every cell’s action is differentiated according to its specific purpose. You can say that the affirmation of the Divine Being as our archetype has to do with recognizing the totality of our genetic composition in each cell.

But the other side of it is recognizing that we have one part to play in a web of life, and that because of our situation, by virtue of our specific place in that web of life, we have a particular responsibility that no one else can uphold. It’s different from that of everyone else, and it means that we do not have to be all things to all people. We have one very particular duty. And it’s in doing that particular duty, faithfully and with sincerity, that our fulfillment lies. Yet all too often we feel that someone else’s duty is more prestigious or apparently more meaningful, and so we are distracted from the work that is given into our own hands, because it seems to us unimportant.

But the principle that is taught by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita is that one’s own duty is sacred, not someone else’s duty. And in fact, Lord Krishna says that to do one’s own duty imperfectly is better than to do the duty of another perfectly. What is called for, then, is responsibility, knowing for what is one accountable: what are one’s duties in life, what demand does life make upon one? It’s going to be different than the demand that life makes on anyone else. Understand that sphere of responsibility, and within that sphere, recognize that nothing is more sacred than responding sincerely, authentically, and in the spirit of accountability to that sphere, however small the sphere might be, however seemingly menial the task. That is where your response to the divine question resides.

Commentaries on the “Copper Rules”