Taking a Stand Against Oppression

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”

~ Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident

In my opinion, for what it is worth, at Jimmy Carter's memorial service, and with President Donald Trump in attendance, Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of Washington DC, gently and fairly, but firmly spoke truth to power; promoting unity in the face of a regime hell bent on fostering division, and promoting compassion, empathy and mercy in the face of a regime hell bent on cruelty. In doing so, she distinguished her more genuine form of Christianity from the deranged brand of Christian Nationalism / worship of Mammon that is behind Project 2025 and Felonious Trump's vile and unholy regime.

The Divine Emanations

For as long as he could remember, a man had been convinced that he was privy to divine emanations, but he could never quite pin down what they were or where they came from. They just seemed to arise as if from nowhere or arrive on the wind. And so obsessed did this man become, that he left his family and his job and set out one day to find the source of the emanations, travelling far into the mystical East.

He went from one wise man or woman to another and sat in their presence and enjoyed their rich hospitality for countless hours and from time to time he'd sense the divine emanations as they arose and say: “There you are! Did you, such a wise man, not notice that? That's what I was trying to explain to you: the Divine Emanations! That is what I seek.” But time and time again, the wise men and women would merely shrug their shoulders and shake their heads, apologizing that they could not be of assistance to the man in this matter, and he would leave their company to carry on his noble quest.

And then one day, this man came to the door of a Sufi – indeed the door of the Teacher of the Age. And no sooner had he finished the particularly rich and spicy meal that his host offered him and had begun to explain to him his great desire to sit in the presence of the source of the Divine Emanations, than he let out a whoop of joy. “There! That is what I mean! That is what I have dedicated my whole life to seeking. The Source of the Divine Emanations! Surely, you must sense it too? Could it be that after all these years of selfless devotion to my quest I have finally been rewarded by being allowed into the presence of the Source?”

The Teacher of the Age looked the man straight in the eye and shook his head. “Divine Emanations, my friend? Yes, there are indeed divine emanations, emanations so potent that merely spending time in the presence of the elect is sufficient to transform a man or woman.”

“But, listen carefully to me ...”

The Esoteric Meaning of Noah, the Ark, and the Flood: Maurice Nicoll

“There is the literal level of understanding sacred writings and there is also the psychological level of understanding them.” ... “The esoteric or inner—that is, the psychological—meaning is quite different. Esoteric teaching is always about [Humanity's] inner evolution. It is about Man's higher development and his relation to what is higher than he is.” ...

Sufis Say “Put Your Hands on Your Head”

It strikes me that there’s a game that Idries Shah used to play, and encourage us to play. It’s called “Sufis say ...” which has been handed down since time immemorial from murshid to murid (master to disciple). A contemporary form still exists in elite circles, where it is called “Shah says ...”

We may know it in a lesser, degenerate form, so we are told, by the name “Simon says ...”, a game now played by small children and fools.

Be Still My Beating Heart: Cultivating Sakina

Well, what do I know, but it seems to me that what the writer, thinker and Sufi mystical exponent Idries Shah was doing was conducting an innovative (or should I say relatively unknown?) experiment in long-distance learning, knowing that most would have no physical contact with a Teacher, knowing that most would not convert to Islam. To re-hash what I've written about in the past, I think that working with the materials (both didactic materials and the teaching stories, which some ignore) works on the commanding self and delinquent or depraved nafs, and the self-accusatory nafs. And I sense that there is then sporadic, but increasingly reliable, activation of the inspired nafs.

However, there comes a point when looking back on the depraved nafs and self-accusatory nafs becomes counter-productive. Even at the stage of the inspired nafs, there is an element of pride involved in what one sees as ones own accomplishments, when in reality these are things which one is gifted. There needs to be a turn around.

The question is (and I think this is a gamble that Shah took) is whether working with the materials, and on ones self is sufficient to induce a self-sustaining reaction and open up the heart, the heart and other lataif, (latent organs of subtle perception), and allow one to come in contact with, and work with, something outside ones limited self; an inner guide, if you like, with whom one may engage in inner dialogue (and here there is common ground with Western esoterica, contemporary depth psychology (eg active imagination), and illuminationism (eg imaginal world, 'al am al-mithal)).

Nile Green’s “Fantastical” Hatchet Job About Ikbal and Idries Shah: Book Review

★☆☆☆☆ Nile Green's “fantastical” book, Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah, about Ikbal Ali Shah and his son, the writer and thinker Idries Shah who helped establish the Sufi mystical tradition in the West, comes in the same ignoble tradition as James Moore and L.P. Elwell-Sutton's hatchet jobs, and they will hardly get a footnote in history. Had the author taken a less adversarial and scornful stance and been able to gain the confidence and cooperation of members of the Shah family that he evidently desired and sought, the work, and its sources, might have been greatly improved.

According to a recent and uninspiring review in the New York Times by Robyn Creswell, “Ikbal and Idries are tricky subjects for biography. They kept no diaries and left only scattered correspondence”. And yet Tahir Shah managed to collect and publish an 8-volume set of information to coincide with the centenary of his father, Idries Shah's birth, on 16 June 2024. So a great deal of interesting and useful material has been left out of this work.

The evidence appears very damning. However, with the sparse use of citations, it's difficult to tell where Nile Green's imaginative re-enactment and speculation delivered as statements of fact leave off and where hard evidence begins. This gives the illusion of intimate acquaintance.

Suhrawardī’s Illuminationist Rescue Plan

Plato's Allegory of the Cave

In Plato's allegory of the cave, a number of prisoners have been imprisoned since childhood in a cave, chained so they cannot move, nor turn their heads, so that all they can see before them are shadows on a wall, and all they can hear are echoes around the cave's walls, that they take to be coming from the shadows. These shadows and echoes they take to be real, for they have known only these.

Let us say that one prisoner manages to break free from his shackles and looks around. He sees now that behind the prisoners is a raised walkway with a low wall, and that behind that is a bright fire. He notices that people walk behind the wall so that they do not cast shadows from the light of the fire, and that they hold aloft objects or puppets of men and other living things. It is these that cast shadows against the cave wall in front of the prisoners, and which the prisoners have taken to be real, just as they have mistaken the echoing voices of the puppeteers to be emanating from the shadow puppets.

ishraqi institute: Modus Operandi and Raison D’Etre

“I think I'm quite ready for another adventure.” ~ Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings.

In this era of global communications and instant connectivity, we're saturated, even inundated, round the clock by sensationalist news and tempting “fast foods” of consumerism, as well as egotistical, even narcissistic, self-promotion and “media influence”, and drowning in shedload after shedload of information. As a consequence, we are suffering cognitive and emotional overload. I trust that a little hopefully quality “time out” will alleviate that, rather than exacerbate matters, and point you in the direction of others who can offer greater help in what is, as Henry Corbin stated, an ongoing Battle for the Soul of the World. Rather than a course following a logical progression from A to Z, this is a deliberately open-ended exploration, and exercise in mental fluidity, learning as we go along.

The Golden Chain

“The philosophers who influenced Suhrawardi came from pre-Islamic Persia, ancient Greece and Egypt. Together their ideas formed a potent blend of Zoroastrianism, Plato and the wisdom traditions of Alexandria, what Suhrawardi called a ‘philosophy of light’, a tradition of esoteric metaphysics that was handed down from sage to sage, Suhrawardi believed, through the ages. In 1186 Suhrawardi tried to capture its essence in Hikmat al-Ishraq, translated, as mentioned, as Oriental Philosophy and also as The Philosophy of Illumination, the book that set [Henry] Corbin on his hermeneutical quest. Suhrawardi wrote of an initiatic chain, a school of adepts reaching back into the dim past, and which included the fabled Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus and others. All were informed by the same primal revelation, the prisca theologia or ‘primal theology’, which it was his task to resurrect.”

~ Gary Lachman, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36086531 

The Imaginal Veil, by H. M. Forester

 

The first draft of The Imaginal Veil by H. M. Forester is now available for free download.

You can preview or download it at The Internet Archive

or download it at the Sher Point Publications, UK web site (just scroll down the page).

There's also an entry at Goodreads.

First draft edition, 12 February 2023, 268 pages.

Enjoy!

Resistance and Submission to Necessary Change

 “Once one is on this mystical path – not merely talking the talk, but actually walking the walk – self-change can become at length dire necessity, because as synchronicity becomes more and more evident in one's life, as well as presenting welcome facets it also takes on dangerous aspects, resonating with one's inner state, thoughts, and actions. Or inactions.

Philip K. Dick's Lateral Worlds: A Glimpse of Track C

In “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others”, an essay delivered as a speech at the second Festival International de la Science-Fiction de Metz, France, in September 1977, science faction author Philip K. Dick talks of his experiences in alternate realities, which resulted from the sodium pentothal (colloquially known as a “truth drug”) administered to him before dental surgery; experiences which gradually began to unfold over a period of weeks.

Dick asks “what if there exists a plurality of universes arranged along a sort of lateral axis, which is to say at right angles to the flow of linear time?” That is to say, in branches of alternative history that are imminent, penetrating our own, yet not discernible, nor experienced, by all, since most are largely confined to the everyday consensus reality of the masses. That is, the predominant worldview which is generally agreed to be reality, based on a consensus view, but not the only possible reality, and quite probably a rather lowly conception of reality, due to the low levels or crudity of consciousness of we beleaguered citizens of dear Mother Earth.

Knowledge of the End Creates the Means

A Framework for New Knowledge 

“The desire for an 'awakening', often used as a technical term, may or may not be accompanied by the information and experience essential to precede this stage. The Teaching, for its part, is carried out — and is able to cross ideological boundaries — because of a knowledge of the objective: an objective which is at worst postulated as an assumption that it exists; at best glimpsed: and thenceforward is the subject of repeated attempts to devise a means to recover this glimpse.

“The working hypothesis or traditional framework provides the structure by which the would-be illuminate attempts to approach this goal. In the case of the School, knowledge alone provides the basis upon which the structure can be devised.

“‘Once you know the end, you can devise the means.’ The end does not justify the means - it provides it. The means, employed in this sense, is the structure referred to in some literature as ‘The Work’.”

~ Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way.

[Book at Goodreads]

Image: Cycle of mystical development / Esowteric /

Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Click to enlarge image.

The Scent of Reality and other short stories, by H. M. Forester

 “A number of people find themselves at a strange and unexpected meeting in the back room of an English pub with an elderly lady, Gladys Merrywether, and tell their stories about why they are there and what led them there.

“The shrewd lady opens their eyes to all manner of possibilities – some of which are welcome, and some decidedly not.”

The Matter with Things: Book Review

★★★★★ I've just finished reading the first two parts of The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, by Dr Iain McGilchrist, and begun part 3 in the second volume. This book follows on from his earlier epic work, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

Rather than attempt to summarise the voluminous, varied and rich content of the book (and fall far short of doing it justice), let me simply say that this work does not simply talk about science, reason, intuition and imagination (among so many others), but is masterfully crafted by an author who has much life experience and insight to offer and clearly embodies the best of such paths and qualities.

“If we want others to understand the beauty of a landscape with which they may be unfamiliar, an argument is pointless: instead we must take them there and explore it with them, walking on the hills and mountains, pausing as new vantage points continually open around us, allowing our companions to experience it for themselves.

“Such, at any rate, is my intention in this book.” ...

“What I hope for my readers is that, if they are willing to accompany me on this adventure, they will never see the world the same way again; that they will have a Gestalt shift ...” 

God 4.0: Book Review

★★★★★ Psychologist Robert Ornstein and Sally M. Ornstein published God 4.0: On the Nature of Higher Consciousness and the Experience Called “God” on 15 October 2021 and you can find it worldwide in affordable paperback, ebook, and audio editions, and at Goodreads.

According to the publisher's blurb, the work is “A stunning unification of science and tradition for a revolutionary new concept of spirituality to address the challenges of the modern world.” It follows on from Robert Ornstein's pioneering research laid out in The Psychology of Consciousness, and The Evolution of Consciousness, among many other works, and draws on modern research "from neuropsychology and religion, to evolutionary psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and genetics".

Followers of the Sufi thinker and author Idries Shah, and fans of Robert Ornstein, Sally Ornstein and the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK) will lap this book up, as will those with an interest in spirituality, those hesitant to dip their toes into spiritual waters, and like-minded heretics (ie "free thinkers").

God 4.0 is quite sharply focussed, whereas Iain McGilchrist's magna opera The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, and The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, which explore similar and other topics, are panoramic in scope.

The critical path here is the gap between the theory (“know what”) and praxis (“know how”) of nurturing and developing higher consciousness. Things like immersion in Sufi teaching stories and in poetry (among other arts, crafts, and creative and imaginative endeavours) that stimulate the right hemisphere of the brain (and promote holistic experience – though with the left brain a faithful servant of the right) can hopefully bridge that gap and provide a new pathway that is available to the many, rather than how it has been in the past only open to a select or elite few largely under the direct physical guidance of teachers.

In this age of ever-increasing escalations in our societal and global woes and crises, there is a desperate need for change before it's too late to act – change that must come first and foremost from within each of us. And this is where this work can make a useful and timely contribution.

On this basis, I unhesitatingly give the book 5 stars.

The Winds of Change in the Twilit Hours: A Poem

The winds of change
are blowing a gale,
rattling my old sash window frame,
and a draft is sneaking past
the sleepy door snake
guarding my humble parlour.  

A wayward leaf,
its short life spent,
flutters against the window pane —
a timely reminder that
like most things in this life,
this sojourn, too, shall pass.

.  

A Subtle Reminder: A Poem

I'm burning sandalwood today,
and its fragrance reminds me
of the subtle realm
ever-present behind – and beyond
the cheap plastic façade
and gossamer-thin veils
we foolishly think of
as civilisation
and “the Real World”.

 

Okay, So. But Listen: A Poem

Okay, so ...

The politician
Is a nasti piece of work,
And the oligarch
Really is a callous jerk.

All the world's oceans
Are a filthy toilet bowl,
And the floods and fires
Are raging out of control.

I down two cans of beer
Oh – go on! – let's make it three,
To wash away all
My blues and anxiety.

Lines Drawn in the Sand: A Poem

Oh, subtle intimations of the hidden world
That grace our dreams by night and inspire thoughts by day,
Every which way I turn I glimpse some deeper truth
And yet – what use to me, if here unmoved I stay?
  
There's an incoming message I must deliver,
A note to myself and “To whom it may concern”,
Things are coming to a head, more storms are brewing;
No time for delay – nor yet to the bar adjourn.
  
In film, book, poetry, art, and common street talk
Blessèd, subversive, kindred souls of secrets hint,
Stirring the dying embers of some age-old fire
Or striking new sparks in kindling with their sharp flint.