KO-HUM? SO-HUM

1.
Last night our master taught the lessons
of Love on cellular level.

We were given the silent heart meditation:
"KO-HUM?"
'Who am I?'

"SO-HUM"
'You are That'
'You are Ruhullah, the Divine Breath. '

At the break of the dawn
in our circle of poor hearted wanderers,
we prayed, we bowed, we prostrated in unison
and our master uttered these words:
"O You in Whose Dazzling Existence
is our wondrous subsistence!
In every cell of our being
pour us Your Light,
Your Life giving Breath.

O Lord of Majestic Grace
O Lord of Boundless Forgiveness
May we journey until
we reach to that place
where every cell of our being
be in love with the entire existence.

Tasting and Journeying,
Journeying and Tasting.

O Sole Guide of the Mystical Pah
Guide us to the Way Station, wholly free from divine amnesia
where we may ever witness the truth of our reality.

Sohum, Sohum, Sohum
We are That,
We are That,
We are the Oneness.

Indeed from Pre-Eternity to Post-Eternity
The Truth has declared thus:
La ilaha illallah
There is no other reality but You
illallah
illallah
who else is there but You
only You.

May every fiber, every cell of our being
become a shining witness
to You and only You
O Bearer of Infinite Grace."


- Sadiq Alam
Dhaka
28 January, 2010

[Sama | Listen to a Sufi discourse]  Love on a Cellular Level by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, recorded in London, January 2008. via The Golden Sufi Center Audio Archives Page

2.

The Truth declares: 'I Am you, more than you yourself are.'

- The Gita

The Divine - is closer to you than your jugular vein,

- is with you, wheresoever you may be.

Wheresoever you turn, behold, there is the Divine Countenance!

- The Quran

    O, friend! Nobody veils you, but yourself.
        In your path there is no thorn or weed, but yourself.
    You asked:  shall I reach the Beloved or not?
        Between you and the Beloved there is nobody, but yourself.
- Awhadoddin Kermani

3.

In the spiritual terminology of advaita vendata (non-dualistic school of hinduism), the central teaching is pivoted around four words:

dehum, nahum;
kohum?
sohum.

The 20th century great master and mysticsaint of this ancient lineage, Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), may God be pleased with him, taught in great details on this theme.

the word 'dehum' (also written as deham) means body,

'nahum' means 'not me', not the i.

ko-hum means 'who am I'? - the quintessential question of atma-vichara or self-investigation.

sohum - I am the Oneness.

The first sentence, ‘dehum nahum’ or ‘the body is not I’, denotes the initial process of self-analysis by which we gain the intellectual conviction that the body, mind and other adjuncts that we have superimposed upon ourself are not our essential self or ‘I’; the second sentence, ‘kohum?’ or ‘who am I?’, denotes the practice of atma-vichara or self-investigation, whereby we will actually experience what ‘I’ really is; and the third sentence, ‘sohum’ or ‘he is I’, denote the experience of true self-knowledge that we will gain by practicing atma-vichara (sufis call this muhasiban nafs or self-reckoning, which gives birth to suhud, witnessing).

In the first two lines of this verse Sri Ramana explains the first sentence, ‘dehum nahum’, saying that the body is not ‘I’ because it is jada (non-conscious) like a clay pot, because it does not have any ‘shining’ (or consciousness of itself) as ‘I’, and because our nature (or essential being) is experienced by us daily in sleep, in which this body does not exist.

In the last two lines he explains the last two sentences, ‘kohum? sohum’, saying that within the heart-cave of those who abide (as self), having known (by self-investigation) ‘who is this ego, the person who poses as I?’ (or) ‘where is he?’, the omnipresent God (arunagiri-siva-vibhu) will shine forth spontaneously as the sphurana (the clarity of pure self-consciousness) ‘he is I’. That is, when we investigate ‘who am I?’ we will experience the truth that ‘I’ is nothing other than the one omnipresent absolute reality, one without any second.

4.
"Who am I?" is the question only you can ask and only you can answer. Whatever you are, oneness, reality truth - the answer cannot be given readymade to you by the others, by teachers, by masters. Even if others have experienced this oneness, this truth, their words become a lie to you. Because the answer of this existential question: "Who am I?" is also existential, it is the experencing itself. Not the words of others about, but your own experiencing of the true answer. Unless you yourself have experienced who you really are, you will never know the truth, or better said, you will never be the truth.

5.
O my Lord, Sustainer of all that lives,
Your Real Face is covered by Your Dazzling Effulgence.
Kindly remove that covering and exhibit Yourself to Your pure devotee
- Isha Upanishad

# Reference and Further Readings:
. I Amness - Ken Wilber and Sufism
. Teachings of Sri Ramana
. Be as You are - Teachings of Ramana Maharishi (book download)
. Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham – an explanatory paraphrase
. Happiness of Being
. The Self
. Meditation on Bhagavad Gita | with Ram Das
. The phantom 'i' and Real 'I'
. So Hum: Contemplation Meditation
. Mantra Meditation on So Hum

Art on top: Hu (Divine Pronoun) by Shaykh Nooruddeen Durkee ash-Shadhili, Rahmatullah