Commentary on
The Iron Rules

by Pir Zia Inayat Khan

Iron Rule 3

Previously we were working with the Rule: Speak not against others in their absence. And now we come to the next, which is: My conscientious self, do not take advantage of a person’s ignorance. Now, let’s just remind ourselves that each rule begins with the phrase “My conscientious self.” So it is you speaking to yourself. It is not anyone imposing anything upon you. It’s very important to remember that because, insofar as you do take up a thought of this kind and apply it to your life, you can only do so if it resonates with your conscience, if it is truly what you deeply believe you must do. There are cases where a code of conduct is in our heart of hearts and without question we know it is the right thing to do, but we just forget or for some reason we become distracted, and therefore we do not uphold that principle. So it’s extremely useful to remind ourselves again and again and recommit ourselves to that principle. But there might be another principle for which we cannot say truthfully that we are necessarily committed to it in our heart of hearts. In that case, just for the sake of adherence to a program, to force oneself to accommodate to that principle could lead to a feeling of inner tension and alienation and a sense of hypocrisy. These rules are given to you to take very seriously, that is to say, to take up in your deep thought and decide for yourself if it does accord with your ideal. If it does accord with your ideal, then with great diligence apply it to every interaction each moment of your life. And if it does not, when you survey your heart of hearts, and you find there is some dissonance, then, rather than following through with enforcement merely for the sake of obedience, that is a moment to pause, because obedience to whom? obedience to what? Ultimately you are responsible for obedience to the truth as you deeply know it. And you cannot rely upon any authority figure in this world. If you do acknowledge the authority, the wisdom, the example of a teaching and a teacher, there’s only one reason - because it resonates with, because it exemplifies what you know deeply in your heart of hearts but which you have allowed yourself to forget. So that’s your ultimate criterion for truth. It can’t come from outside; it comes from within. So you always must return to that touchstone. And so, when you feel that it is a principle that you must apply, then applying it becomes an exercise in joy rather than suffering.

And if you feel that in your case it does not apply, well then that’s an opportunity to unfold a field of inquiry, to understand why in one’s particular case one cannot feel comfortable with that modality of being in the world. One may find that that inquiry brings out important guidance, because one may see that in a particular habit, which manifests as a vice, there is a healthy instinct that sought manifestation. By simply suppressing the vice, one may be squelching an instinct which has kept in check a worse vice. In every behavior there is some divine impulse that desires its fulfillment. But its fulfillment ultimately requires a process of clarification in which the pure divine yearning which is present in a certain impulse is brought out and purified of the distortions and misalignment that cause suffering to oneself and others. That’s a wonderful process of introspection, to look at every bad habit in terms of what one was, in essence, trying to achieve through that habit, even though the habit itself developed in a destructive way and ultimately in a manner undermining the impulse underlying it.

Today the Iron Rule is: Do not take advantage of a person’s ignorance. Of course the extreme form of taking advantage of a person’s ignorance is like hucksterism, contrivance, conniving, preying upon the gullibility of people and misleading them in order to gain a quick buck. Here again the example of the extreme might be helpful as a clear case but it probably is not so evident in our own day-to-day lives. But if one looks more closely one may see subtler forms of that same tendency.

This is described in the readings that we’ve been doing together in “Creating the Person” in what Murshid calls the persuasive tendency. Let me share this passage. “There is a tendency hidden behind human impulse, which may be called the persuasive tendency. It may manifest in a crude form, and it may be expressed in a fine form. In the former aspect it is a fault, and in the latter aspect, it is a mistake. When crudely expressed, one urges another to agree with him or her, or listen to him or her, or to do as he or she wishes be done, by fighting, by quarreling, by being disagreeable. Often such a person, by the strength of his or her will power, or by virtue of his of her better position in life, gets his or her wishes done. This encourages the person to continue further in the same method, until one finds a disappointing outcome of this method. The other way of persuading is a gentler way, by putting pressure upon someone’s kindness, goodness and politeness, exhausting thereby the person’s patience, and testing his or her sympathy to the last. By this, people achieve for the moment what they wish to achieve. But in the end, the effect is the annoyance of all those who are tried by this persuasive tendency. Does it not show that to get something done is not so hard as to be considerate of the feelings of others? It is so rare that one finds a person in the world who is considerate of another person’s feeling, even at the sacrifice of getting his or her own desires done. Everyone seeks freedom, but for himself or herself. If one sought the same for another, one would be a much greater person. The persuasive tendency, no doubt, shows a great will power. And it plays upon the weakness of others, who yield and give in to it, owing to love, sympathy, goodness, kindness and politeness. But there is a limit to everything. There comes a time when the thread breaks. A thread is a thread, it is not steel wire. Even a wire breaks if it is pulled too hard. The delicacy of the human heart is not comprehended by everyone. Human feeling is too fine for common perception. A soul who develops his or her personality, what is he or she like? She is not like the root or the stem of the plant, nor like the branches or leaves. He is like the flower, the flower with its color, fragrance and delicacy.”

Murshid describes here the argumentative tendency, the tendency to try to change people’s mind, to convince people to be more like we think they should be, or to help us to get something done that is for our own personal benefit. And it relates to the Iron Rule for the day, which is Do not take advantage of a person’s ignorance, because the argumentative tendency is always pursued by promoting some evidence and withholding other evidence. One argues a case, the way that a lawyer, or even a philosopher argues a case. If you’re in the debate club, you’re randomly given an argument that you have to make, and how do you succeed? You downplay some facts and you highlight other facts. You emphasize what is most persuasive, what is most congenial to your argument, and the rest you quietly ignore, sideline, marginalize and try to keep from the attention of the opponent. We all have this tendency, more or less. It’s just part of the rhetoric of speech, it’s almost unavoidable. We always want to give the best reason for our decisions, our thoughts and so on. But when it takes an extreme form it becomes abusive. When one actually withholds critical information in the discussion, then one is no longer contributing toward a full discussion that will arrive at a resolution that is integrative and assimilates the best of all points of view, but rather one is just trying to assert one aspect of the truth over other aspects of the truth, and in that way the full truth can never really be revealed. It’s divisive. There is in it an element of secrecy, of exercise of power by virtue of superior knowledge and choosing to dispense certain information while maintaining the confidentiality of other information.

As Michel Foucault, the French philosopher, recognized very clearly, in some sense all power is knowledge; knowledge is power. We see this more and more in the social, political, economic world, that power is no longer defined as control of the mode of production as with Marx, but power is information. Why is it that the privileged societies of the West enjoy affluence and political leverage while being a small minority of the human population? It’s all purely the power of technological knowledge. It’s not that the more affluent societies work harder, toil more, or are endowed in some way by greater divine right. It’s just a function of the distribution of technical knowledge in contemporary society.

In the same way, in our interpersonal relationships the withholding of knowledge, withholding of information, is a stratagem of exercising domination. But again, we have to come back to the principle that every destructive habit has its impulse in something healthy and good, and this is true here as well. That secrecy is not in and of itself a destructive or negative force. In fact, secrecy is very necessary and helpful and healthy in life. All of nature is a revelation of the mystery of the divine secret in successive stages of disclosure. And if the fullness of nature would ever be disclosed to anyone, that person’s mind would melt, the body would liquify, the soul would evaporate. The person could not withstand that disclosure. So it is as a mercy to the individual that God raises up the 70,000 veils of light and darkness. It is as a protection of our autonomy, of our separate existence. And it is only then as the human being grows in capacity, in scope of heart and insight of intelligence that one by one the veils can be lifted. Not every occasion, not every opportunity is the right moment to blurt out a finer perception, a realization of the soul. The soul’s deeper dimensions subsist by virtue of the shelter of the fertile darkness in which they reside. In our secrecy there is beauty and there is necessity, and there is the possibility of empowerment, not only empowerment of ourselves but empowerment of others. The master, saint or prophet who holds the divine secret does so for the sake of intelligent compassionate resonance with all beings, supporting the unfoldment of each being in its proper rhythm, which is just the opposite of the secrecy of the tyrant, who uses information to oppress and dominate others. Both use power. Power and knowledge are concomitant and cannot be separated and we are not asked in undertaking these rules to weaken ourselves, to become merely subject to the larger forces that surround us and to be helpless in their midst. Power is essential to the fulfillment of our fluorescence. However, there’s a difference between power over and power with and for, and it all has to do with the nature of one’s relationship with other people. If one’s relationship is dualistic and adversarial and based always on regressing to preoccupation with one’s own narrowly circumscribed personal interests, then one’s use of knowledge and power is always with that end. And if one is united in presence, in compassionate engagement, then secrecy remains and power remains, but its use is very different.