Muzaffar Ali

We are continually being put to test — many times in our life, many times in the day. The world around brings us to the threshold of base instincts, to see how we respond — Anger, sex, jealousy, revenge, competition. We, of course, react as all humans normally would. We have begun to enjoy this phenomenon so much that it has become our second nature. Even when we are not personally in that situation, we choose to subject ourself to it through the written word, the language of moving images, through media and entertainment. This has become our popular culture, our way of living today, our means of enjoyment. While we live in a so-called free world, we are not masters of what we see, we do and feel. Our base instincts have become the essential human traits on which vast economic empires have been structured.
We are prone to excite our egos and all the base instincts that go with it. To rise above these petty instincts is difficult, more today than ever before. It is here that being spiritually cultured makes all the difference. There are fewer and fewer spiritually cultured people and pockets remaining in the world and the ones left are shrinking thanks to the bigoted fundamentalist.
And yet the soul yearns to be part of that rare culture to combat our lower self. These pockets and people prefer to remain hidden and, therefore, it is only a strong quest that can lead you to them. This is sadhna — Jihad ul Nafs — conquering the self. As Hazrat Ali says, the conquest of the self is the greatest of all conquests.
People who cannot do this, develop negative intelligence which may help them to reach the pinnacle of success in their occupation — creative, commercial or political — but keeps them away from sublime thoughts. They remain prone to the base instincts required in most competitive fields.
The world would have been a different place today if there was no marketing. There would have been no “hidden persuaders” no “subliminal seduction” and the message would have been the medium. There would have been no domination of cultures and no subjugation of the human mind. No one would have probed into human weaknesses and analysed the human psyche and behaviour in order to market goods.
Aesthetics in this age has acquired diametrically opposite interpretations. Aesthetics on one hand is the height of design in consumerism and on the other it is the inner light with which you perceive the world around. The latter enhances your ambience each moment because each moment is taking you closer to Him.
In the process, you are gently giving out more and more light to the world. A deep reverence to human life and feeling and a growing concern for nature comes from inner aesthetics and enhances the concept of aesthetics.
Competition makes us sub-human. Taking tests is not wrong but testing yourself against another does not seem right. You need to test yourself against yourself, which is only possible in spiritually evolved cultures. But, unfortunately, even spirituality is put to test, put in the market and therefore made to compete. In such a scenario how does one find the inner light, the true beauty of the human being inside the other and one’s own self. When we meditate we need to be aware of the higher purpose of
our being. We illumine our inner sense with the aesthetics of our realisation and divine guidance.

Muzaffar Ali is a filmmaker and painter. He can be contacted at www.rumifoundation.in