Evolutionary Transformation: A Sufi Perspective

"We have forgotten that the world belongs to God. That is the most basic fundamental reality that exists - that the world belongs to God. Not only have we forgotten that the world belongs to God, we have forgotten that we have forgotten."

-- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee --

In the attached video, Sufi teacher and author, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee ("Love Is a Fire: The Sufi's Mystical Journey Home") deftly answers a slew of the most fundamental questions that we all have, such as: What happens to a person when they die? Why is there suffering and poverty? Where can God be found? etc. His answers to these existential questions reveal an enlightening depth both to the Sufi tradition and teachings, as well as to the basic nature of humanity itself.

Asked to describe the circumstances under which the world as we know it will come to an end, Vaughan-Lee makes the prescient observation that "the world as we know it has already come to an end."

"As a mystic," he observes, "you see how things change first in the 'inner.' There is a law that everything that happens in life first constellates on the inner planes. If you do mystical practices, you will begin to see how things come into being.  And the world as we know it inwardly has already ended. It is already over. . . . Somebody once said, "It is like the last dance on the Titanic."" 

"There is," he notes, "a whole other level of evolution which I call evolution of 'Oneness' or 'global awareness.' . . . It is already setting the scenes for the next level of human evolution. . . .The Internet," he points out, "is a direct example of how 'Oneness' works, and how it is incredibly efficient and it is everywhere at the same time, and anybody (or anybody who has a computer) can have access to it. And it was just given to humanity, and it works. So the world as we know it has somewhere already ended."

"But it is our work," Vaughan-Lee cautions, "to bring this next evolution into being, because it needs human beings who can see beyond the debris of the civilization that is around us."

"If you look around with open eyes," he points out, "you see the debris of a dying or dead civilization. Why? Because there is no meaning. What is it that gives life to any culture? It is meaning. And without meaning - and 'meaning' does not mean to have a bigger car or bigger house, because human beings are made in the image of God, we are divine, we are spinning organisms of light and love - and it is the spiritual, always if you look back throughout all the cultures, it is the spiritual that always gives meaning to people. 

 "It is our work," Vaughan-Lee stresses, "to bring this next level of evolution into form."

Vaughan-Lee points out that the major transformational shift which we are going through is not the end of a thousand year cycle, but rather the end of a one hundred thousand year cycle - a cycle as old as the evolution of humanity as a species.  It is, he notes, a major evolutionary transformation that will play itself out not over thousands of years, but over the next twenty to thirty years - i.e, a transformation that will occur during our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of our children.

This, of course, begs the question: Are we aware that this transformation is already occurring around us? Do we know that the world as we have known it has already ended?