Commentary on
The Iron Rules

by Pir Zia Inayat Khan

Iron Rule 5

The next iron rule is My conscientious self, do not claim that which belongs to another. As you may know, I have two small children and so I take great delight in observing children playing together, growing, changing all the time. And in children one can see the simplest elements of the human personality before it has been socially conditioned so that the most basic impulses are to some degree masked or disguised. In the child it’s so clear. Those impulses are quite often impressive of the beauty of simplicity and naiveté and innocence. But also in those impulses one can see the origins of character qualities that in an adult, who has attained power in the world, can be dangerous and threaten the harmony of a community. One tendency that one notices in children very clearly is that if children are playing together and there’s an assortment of toys available, some toys may be ignored but if one child takes up a certain toy, that toy which had been previously ignored by another child will become, suddenly, an object of great interest for that other child. As long as it just lay on the floor, there was no special attraction, but as soon as it is taken up by another child, then the child wants it. So this is something that we can see with such charming simplicity in children.

Actually the same is true in adults, but it’s not so obvious. We might see that same tendency in ourselves with something that, if we considered it generically, would not hold much appeal, but because someone that we know possesses it, we become keenly interested and perhaps envious. Probably most of the time it ends at that. There’s a passing feeling of jealousy, of envy, and that’s the end of it. But in more extreme cases one takes what one wants, and that is the root of all economic oppression and genocide and war, the tendency to take what does not belong to you because it’s so attractive in the hands of someone else. A great deal of human life is concerned with acquisition, with trying to get things, comparing and contrasting things, and hunting after and trying to secure possession of the things that seem superior. The whole economy is structured in such a way that it is supported by this drive for acquisition and if we did not act in such a way the economy would have to transform. It would probably first collapse and then reconfigure itself. But it depends at present upon high sales at various times of the year. We’ve just gone through a period of intense advertising and hype and acquisitive impulses, and for many people this is the overriding imperative in life.

But in everyone, ultimately every drive, even this competitive drive to possess, is grounded in the divine desire, and ultimately it is seeking a resolution. It’s just a matter of time, as one acquires objects, before one learns to transcend each object in turn. If one were not to strive to obtain that which one desires, if one were to prematurely renounce an object while inwardly still hankering for it, one’s renunciation would be hollow and hypocritical and liable to be broken at any moment. Whereas the one who has attained the object and risen above it, that one can be said to be free of the object. Ultimately, even the path of commercialism and consumerism must have its end, as all things have their end, in realization. And that was perceived by William Blake, who said that the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

On an individual level one can see cases, probably people that you know, who have followed an arc of excess of development in one particular line in life, which has ultimately culminated in transcending that particular interest. Individually, it is certainly true that all roads ultimately lead to the realm of realization. However, collectively for humanity to pursue such a path, a path of collective excess, is untenable because every acquisition is at the expense of an impoverishment and every gain has its loss.

Mahatma Gandhi was once asked, at a time that he was struggling for India’s independence, do you anticipate that after independence India will gain a standard of living that is commensurate to the one that is enjoyed by the English? He said, “England is a small island and it has taken the riches of half the world to produce the standard of living which this small island enjoys. India is a very large continent. How many worlds would be required for the Indians to attain the same standard of living?” Mahatma Gandhi had this wonderful wit, this way of turning each question around. In another case he was asked, “What do you think of Western civilization?” He answered, “I think it would be a very good idea!”

So, collectively, the course of realization through excessive consumption is not tenable. But then, one does realize at a certain point that all of us go through a stage in life of preoccupation with objects and as one becomes a connoisseur, one’s tastes develop and there is no limit to what one wants. When one has obtained this thing, something else seems more desirable, and it goes on and on. But then one realizes after some time that this is all dunya and that the thing itself is not what provided the satisfaction. The thing was just a kind of a trigger for an inner experience, and that was the source of the pleasure. It wasn’t the thing because what does possession really mean after all? What is possession in reality? In truth it seems that possession is nothing more than the proximity between two objects. Is there any kind of invisible force that means that one object belongs to the other object or person? There is no such force; it’s just in the mind. When one realizes this one sees that this idea of satisfaction through possession is just a game of the mind, and that it’s in the mind that satisfaction exists, not in things.

I don’t know if we’ve done this experiment together but, if not, you could do it on your own, which is to visualize, very clearly, a lemon. With your mind imagine the texture of the skin and all the parts of it — you have to be very specific in doing so — and then, imagine that you cut the lemon and pour the juice into your mouth. If you do that, you’ll find that you begin to salivate. That means that the tangy sensation of the lemon is not in the lemon, it’s in your consciousness, and you’re able to evoke it in the meditation. In the same way, the thing was just a cue for the consciousness to actualize its capacity for pleasure.

So when one realizes that then one moves to the next echelon, beyond worldliness, beyond dunya to akhira. Instead of seeking possession of objects one seeks possession of beautiful, happy, joyful states of being; one’s satisfaction is not in physical things but in psychic things. One follows the path of spiritual attainment and perhaps one attends seminars and workshops and takes retreats and reads a lot of books and so one discovers a marketplace, similar to the marketplace of worldly things, a marketplace of beautiful spiritual ideas. In some ways, the same tendencies that one pursued in the marketplace of things drive one through the marketplace of spiritual ideas. It’s the same desire to acquire, to gain satisfaction through possession of something that is expected to be stable and to be a bastion of contentment. Similarly, just as in the world of material acquisition, to get what one wants, one is often driven to seize that which belongs to another because what belongs to another always has more attraction than what one possesses for oneself.

So, in the spiritual world, as one pursues this path, one sees that there are other people who are apparently endowed with a certain realization that is very compelling and attractive. So one is constantly looking for the next spiritual thrill, wishing that one had what the other person had, wanting to test out every new methodology or discipline of practice in order to latch onto that spiritual possession that will be the source of one’s happiness. One again craves to possess that which belongs to another, the apparently perfect spiritual state of those who surround one, and one feels oneself to be trapped in a lesser state, limited and incapable of the kind of spiritual perfection that one sees in others. So one becomes, on the one hand, idolatrous of the others and most unkind to oneself and self-judgmental and feeling profoundly one’s unworthiness and incapacity. It is the same spirit of materialism, the same spirit of acquisition that makes us jealous of those wealthier than ourselves, the same in the spiritual sphere. Ironically it is most likely that the one upon whom we project our ideal of perfect spiritual accomplishment likewise in himself or herself is feeling his or her limitation and wishing for the state of another, a more perfectly realized being, and so on ad infinitum, everyone turning and looking at another, until we return to the principle of this Iron Rule, which applies as directly, as forcefully in the world of material acquisition as it does in the path of spiritual maturation. And that is Do not claim that which belongs to another.

To claim is not only to boast of possessing, to claim is to aspire to possessing, to fixating upon. Do not claim it as your own. Only claim as your own experience that which belongs to you. That is what you can claim, accept, and be content with. Understand its changeableness. Understand that your state is not the essence, but it is a quality of essence that is shifting. Yet from the acceptance of one’s state, one becomes no longer subject to the vagaries of the passing conditions to which one is subjected, but rather one approaches the essence which is beyond the particular state. So take the truth of your experience as that which belongs to you, that special vantage point which has been disclosed to God, to the One Being, through you and which no other being can fulfill. Your pathway is necessarily unique to you, and something is thereby attained in reality itself that could not be attained through any other pathway.

The particularity of your glance enriches the divine being in a way that no other single glance can do. As Shaykh al-Akbar Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-‘Arabi has said, “God has provided us with a mode of being, and we provide God with a mode of knowing.” And so the surrendered, accepting act of presence to one’s state, with the absence of fixation upon another state, is the essence of the knowledge that God obtains through your glance. God’s self-knowledge through another being is achieved through that being, not through your knowledge of another being. God’s knowledge of God through you is achieved purely through your presence to yourself, to that which belongs to you, which belongs to your experience. And all of the vagaries, all the personal particularities which at first convinced one of one’s unfortunate deficiency, one realizes then to be the exquisite details of a composition which must contain these elements. Nothing is superfluous. Everything is experienced and given for experience for a definite purpose. Thereby our critical judgments of good or bad, negative or positive experience, joyous or painful ultimately are very relative. There simply is the experience that we have been given for the enrichment of the divine self-disclosure. It is in embracing and fulfilling that experience that we provide the fulfillment that is our birthright. So this is the Iron Rule once more: My conscientous self, do not claim that which belongs to another.