The Paradox of Awakening

In his commentaries on the spiritual and esoteric teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, Maurice Nicoll describes what it is like to rise above "the waking sleep" of our ordinary egoic consciousness to the higher consciousness of our essence. "What you took as your self," he observes, "begins to look like a prison house far away in the valley beneath you."

"These flashes of greater consciousness," says polymath spiritual teacher, Theodore Nottingham, "are the unexpected result of strenuous efforts made in order not to lose ourselves in the rush of outer circumstances and to be cleansed of the poisons of negativity, as well as to maintain a heightened awareness grounded in the present moment. "

"The student is to reach a point," says Nottingham, "where he or she can make the choice not to react automatically to external stimuli. This requires going against the grain, against long established habits and self-indulgences."

"The question," he notes, "is as basic as: Can you choose not to be angry in the face of something that makes you angry? Rather than being wasted in such an outburst, the energy accumulated through this effort can be made available for a moment of intensified consciousness. Such a moment can flood you with peace or quiet joy, or a sense of profound liberation."

"Interestingly enough," Nottingham points out, "such moments often occur in very paradoxical events."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Another spiritual teacher, William Samuel, describes the paradox of how just such a moment of spiritual enlightenment - a profound sense of peace, unity and expansive being - occurred for him amidst a hellish defensive stand in the Korean War.

(Samuel was attached to, trained and fought with the Chinese army for several years in World War II. Through that period, and for several years thereafter, Samuel studied the Tao. Called back into service during the Korean War and leading a company of American troops, Samuel was destined to face his former comrades who were now fighting on the other side.)

"Let me write a Glimpse or two from those days," Samuel recalls in his memoir ("The Child Within Us Lives!"):

First, harking back to China, Mr. Shieh and I, with five American teammates, were being pursued by a Japanese combat patrol. We were "retrograding," bringing up the rear of our little patrol, trying to get back to the safety of friendly lines. We were close to being captured. In those days, neither the Japanese nor Chinese "gave quarter." That is we took no prisoners. I knew that if I were taken by the pursuing Japanese, it meant certain death. On the other hand, Mr. Shieh might successfully pass himself off as a Chinese peasant.

Oh, I cannot write this story! At this minute it is enough to remember Mr. Shieh seeing and pointing out the beauty of those purple blooms on the distant mountain we had yet to climb. I marveled at a man who could see beauty under such oppressive circumstances. I marvel more that he helped me learn to do it.

During the Korean War, an artillery round burst among my men on the left flank. Several bodies were hurled about and I ran to see the extent of the damage and whether the platoon leader was still effective. Sick to my stomach at the sight, I sat down among three of the bodies sprawled along the slope. I became aware of a visual "Presence" hovering beside them. A misty, blue-white light of sorts. A different kind of light, primal, persuasive and powerful. I could not explain what I saw then, nor can I now, but with the sight, and because of the sight, I was absolutely certain within myself I was being shown evidence of the deathlessness of Life--the survival of the Child, the Soul of men.

I felt a marvelous sense of relief, almost gratitude, concerning those men and everything happening that day. Within a few minutes of that incident, my regiment, and my part of the line in particular, was hit by an enormous wave of shell fire and oncoming Chinese troops. Hell erupted in a manner that no one can sufficiently describe or picture for another. One simply must experience something like that to fully understand.

But, to the ongoing Glimpse I'd like to write here if I can. In the early moments of that terrible onslaught wherein everything that moved was slaughtered ten times over--advancing troops, men, women, children, dogs and chickens, and every moving creature caught at that place at that time--I was suddenly unable to hear. My world went silent and I was enveloped in an immeasurable calm. In the midst of that horrendous din of exploding bodies and shells, I could hear nothing but my own voice.

In some marvelous way, I was caught up in a quiet, tranquil dimension, separate, but attached to the carnage at hand. I had not been wounded. I felt as well as one could be expected to feel under such circumstances. I could hear my own voice and even my breathing quite clearly. I went from gun position to gun position and heard myself giving calm encouragement to my troops. I could see their mouths move in reply and gratitude--and terror--but I couldn't hear them. I heard myself but couldn't hear the shells bursting in my face. I was beset with a wonderful enwrapping calm that let me move fearlessly to do whatever the moment asked me to do, as hideous as those moments were.

Perhaps a man can so detest a situation that his body produces the chemicals which, in turn, erect a barricade between himself and the galling situation. But as this was happening for me on the long day in Korea, there was a clear perception that a superlative Reality stood just behind the events; that there is another Scene just above this one, surrounding it; that Reality was bursting through that corridor of chaos into my own conscious recognition. I walked with a detached courage, as if the mortal body couldn't and wouldn't be hurt.

I ran from soldier to soldier, gun to gun. I was knocked down, spun around and stung with rocks and earth, feeling nothing but a calm, clear sense of Life's dominion over the sights and sounds of the world; as though, with the Presence I had sensed and seen moments earlier among the first bodies felled, I was SEEING and FEELING Life's eternal Nature, even in the face of death. Perhaps this was the beneficent calm Mr. Shieh had felt those years earlier when he saw the blossoms on the distant mountain.

That particular hellfire and damnation in Korea lasted four nights and three days, without sleep for my troops and me. I have never forgotten the different time frame and the enwrapping inner peace nor how I was held and supported during that time--or non-time.

More significant, that Peace has not forsaken me since those days, at least not when I was mindful of It nor when the chips were down and I called for It. . . . .

Now, with absolute assurance, I can tell people, old and young, their lessons can be learned under the most difficult and trying circumstances. Better that we leave our nets after we've learned their lessons. Better that we call on the Child because the Child knows what to do. The Child and the Presence are the same one Presence and It is right here where we are, transcending this world's time and space.

The final tone in this Overtone: The day I moved King Company onto line in Korea, I was given the Order of Battle of the "enemy" opposing me just across the valley on the next mountain. Facing my regiment, and me in particular, was the Chinese 60th Army, the same troops I had lived with and trained for two years in China. We met again, eight years later, in a terrible and senseless slaughter.

In the apparent world, our friends and enemies are the same--and, sometimes, needlessly, insanely, we try to destroy one another, thence to find that Life is eternal. Like Arjuna, in awful combat, I was instructed in certain of the Mysteries and learned the sense of senselessness.

Memorial Day 1985

Huston Smith: On Sufism

"The Sufis claim that a certain kind of mental and other activity can produce, under special conditions and with particular efforts, what is termed a higher working of the mind, leading to special perceptions whose apparatus is latent in the ordinary man. Sufism is therefore the transcending of ordinary limitations."

-- Idries Shah --
("The Way of the Sufi")

Who Am I?

"Abba Poeman said to Abba Joseph: Tell me how can I become a monk. And he replied: If you want to find rest here or hereafter, say in every occasion, who am I? and do not judge anyone."

-- Greggory Mayers --
("Listen to the Desert," p. 9.)

One of the most insightful observations in the Bible is found in the Book of James, where it is plainly stated (at James 1:8) that, "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways."  

In one pithy sentence, this profound observation diagnoses the basic human dilemma - the duality of the ego and 'who' we actually are - as well as the symptoms of our dilemma, i.e., the instability of our egoically-inspired thoughts, words and actions. A person identified with the ego is, of course, apt to think, say or do just about anything in any circumstance. Thus, Abba Joseph's sage advice is to ask oneself repeatedly, and in whatever circumstances one may find him or herself in, the question, "Who am I?" Are our thoughts, words and actions driven by the all-too-human separate "self" of the ego, or do they emanate from the authentic "Self," i.e., in strictly Christian terms, from "the Kingdom of God within" us? (See Luke 17:21.)

Almost as an afterthought, Abba Joseph also adds the advice: "and do not judge anyone," for he must have known that each of us is liable to find him or herself at any time within the throes and under the dictates of of our smaller "self." This is the heart of Jesus' admonishment: "Judge not, lest ye be judged." And, of course, it is the ego, itself, that renders the harshest judgment, and is metaphorically willing to serve as prosecutor, judge, jailer and executioner. Our greatest challenge is, thus, quite literally, to get over our "selves."

"Only he who has renounced the impassioned thoughts of his inner self, which is the intellect" observed St. Hesychios, "is a true monk. It is easy to be a monk in one's outer self if one wants to be," notes the father of' centering prayer, "but no struggle is required to be a monk in one's inner self."

[Palmer, et. al, "The Philokalia," Vol. 1, pp. 174-175.]

Tolerance, Love and the Essence of All Religions

In his study of the Sanatan Dharma - the wide and multi-branched body of teachings known as Hinduism in the West - Radhanath Swami (born Richard Slavin) "discovered the basic truths of all religions in a way that the oneness of God and religion is comprehensively understood." "The essence of Hinduism," Radhanath writes on The Huffington Post, "is the same essence of all true religions: Bhakti or pure love for God and genuine compassion for all beings."

"Why," he asks, "should we fight over which religion is better? It is pointless. True love for God devoid of selfishness or egoism is the best religion. Wherever true love, broad mindedness, integrity and compassion are present, there one will find real religion through whichever path it is realized."

"God reveals different visions of Himself according to the needs of time and place," Radhanath observes. "Throughout history, declaring one vision all in all has been a convenient pretext for aggression, as it is relatively simple to manipulate uneducated or insecure people with propaganda. It is unfortunate to see that God, whom all faiths exalt as great, is so often depicted as small, petty and partial to one group."

"My childhood conviction that the inherent beauty of God must lie at the essence of all true spiritual paths has only grown over the years," Radhanath notes. " Of course," he observes, "the accounts of tragedy in the name of God have endured as well."

"Whenever I hear such unfortunate news," he writes, "I can't help but think that perhaps a prudent addition to the premise of God's greatness would be that God is greater than our comprehension of Him -- greater even than the religions we dedicate in His honor. God is independent and not restricted by our expectations or demands. This is the premise of the Bhakti tradition and the starting point of the journey to reawakening our love of God: God is so much bigger than we imagine."

In the attached video lecture on "the essence of all religions," Radhanath notes that intolerance and indoctrination may be found amongst the adherents of all religions, but that at the heart of all such wisdom traditions there is a message of selflessness and unity.

"The supreme dharma or religion, is to love God," he observes. "That love must be to the degree it is unmotivated by any selfish egoism, and uninterrupted by any circumstances that may come upon us." Such a religion, he says, "actually satisfies the heart."

"We are all looking for happiness," Radhanath points out, "and that happiness is within us. To connect to that, and to be an instrument to share that with others, is true religion."

Double-Mindedness: Disciplining the Ego

"A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways"

-- James 1:8 --

Double, triple or multiple-mindedness is the ordinary state of the vast, vast majority of people. Yet, only a relatively few people - although perhaps that number is growing - even question the state of their consciousness and being in the first place.

In his great book, "How To Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali," (written with Christopher Isherwood), the Vedantist monk, Swami Prabhavananda observes that if you were to look into the mind of most men or women it would look something like this: "Ink-bottle. That time I saw Roosevelt. In love with the night mysterious. Reds veto Pact. Jimmy's trying to get my job. Mary says I'm fat. big toe hurts. Soup good. . . . etc., etc."

If an individual were to vocalize this barrage of thinking which is the ordinary state of our human, egoic consciousness, we would call him or her mad. Yet this is the ordinary way that most people think. Caught up in the inner dialogue of the ego, they may be compelled to say or do virtually anything; although fear, or perhaps their conscience, usually prevents them from doing so. They are, quite literally, "double-minded" and, hence, "unstable in all their ways," because they are more or less unaware that beneath the raucous thought stream of the ego there is only the clear being of higher consciousness and awareness.

"The truth," says Prabhavananda, "is that we are all inclined to flatter ourselves - despite our daily experience to the contrary - that we spend our time thinking logical, consecutive thoughts. In fact, most of us do no such thing. Consecutive thought about any one problem occupies a very small portion of our waking hours. More usually we are in a state of reverie - a mental fog of disconnected sense-impressions, irrelevant memories, nonsensical scraps of sentences from books and newspapers, little darting fears and resentments, physical sensations of discomfort, excitement or ease."

[Isherwood and Prabhavananda, "How To Know God," pp. 58-59.]

The practice of yoga, like all esoteric religious or spiritual paths, is directed towards stilling the thought-waves of the egoic mind, and, by doing so, realizing the essence of one's being that lies beneath the ego's thought stream. "Who," asked Jesus, "ever added one cubit to his stature by taking thought?" (Matthew 6:27).

Prabhavananda and Isherwood, like other commentators on Patanjali's yoga aphorisms, use the metaphor of a lake to describe the effect of our egoic thinking. The lake is our mind, and when waves of thought muddy that lake, we can no longer see to the lake bottom which is the true essence of our Being. The job of the spiritual aspirant, then, is to still the thought waves in the mind so that he or she can realize their essence. For, at heart, we are all inseparable from the Ground of Being that permeates and sustains the universe, and we are only separate from that Ground of Being to the extent that we allow the reverie of thought to stir the waters.

When we discipline the mind through meditation, prayer and the frequent recurrence to the contemplation of our Being (or the Ground of Being) we become stable. When we don't, we again become "unstable in all our ways."

Kabir Helminski: Rumi and the Alchemy of Love

Writing in a recent Huffington Post blog, Sufi teacher and author, Kabir Helminski, a noted translator of the inimitable 13th century Persian poet, Jallaludin Rumi, extols the transformative teachings on love provided by this "Shakespeare of mystics." "For Rumi," Helminski notes, "the Divine purpose behind all of creation is to reveal the true dimensions of Divine Love."

Helminski writes how "(a) well-known saying in Islamic tradition which (Rumi) often referred to is: "(The Divine says) I was a Hidden Treasure and I loved to be known, so I created the worlds visible and invisible so My treasure of generosity and loving-kindness would be known."

Rumi's take on Sufism, the mystic heart of Islam, says Helminski (in a related video from the Garrison Institute, below) unveils "a dimension of existence which is the ultimate unity and which has it's own qualities . . . (which) include nurturance, love, infinite intelligence, (and) magnanimous generosity."

"(Q)ualities like these," says Helminski, "are the nature of reality itself. And, when we take our attention from being exclusively focused on the multiplicity - in other words, on the facts of everyday life - and we reorient ourselves towards a perception of this divine reality which is not separate from or other than the multiplicity, but which encompasses the multiplicity, with that shift of attention, with that heart perception, we open to that reality and ultimately are transformed by it."

Quoting Rumi by heart, Helminski observes:

"Deep in the bowels of the Earth
dense, opaque stone - granite -
receiving the emanations of an invisible radiant spiritual sun,
dense stone is being transformed into jewels.
Granite is being transformed into rubies."

"The process of contemplation," says Helminski, "that continual conscious relationship with the Divine Reality transforms our 'stoniness' into 'rubiness.' If a stone says 'I am' it is in a sense an enemy of the light, it blocks the light; but if a ruby says 'I am' it is a transmitter of the light through its transparency. So Rumi says:  "If the ruby loves the sun, it is loving itself. And, if it loves itself, it is loving the sun, because the ruby became a ruby through this relationship to that invisible, spiritual sun.""

Sufis, it should be noted, were the inspiration for the misguided attempts by later Christian alchemists to turn base metals into gold. For Rumi, Attar and the long lineage of other Sufi poets and teachers, the essence of Sufism - of life itself - is the alchemy of love.

On Yoga, Religion and the Ground of Being

The word for religion in the East is "yoga." It refers not just to the outward form of hatha yoga that we are all familiar with from the proliferation of yoga studios here in the West - which is just one of the "six limbs" of yoga - but, more fundamentally, it refers to the inner, esoteric path of religion. Derived from the same Sanskrit word as the English "yoke," it means to "tie" or "unite." In this instance, to unite one's being (the atman) with the Ground of Being (Brahman, or God).

Similarly, the word "religion" has an inner, esoteric aspect as well as an outer, exoteric one; albeit, when we talk of religion in the West, we refer almost exclusively to this latter meaning, denoting the various creeds, rites, rituals and observances that characterize the Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In practice, and common usage, the word "religion" has lost the "inner" aspect of its meaning.

The word "religion" - like "yoga" - also means to "tie" or "unite" (or, more accurately, to "retie" or reunite"). It is derived from the Latin root ligare, which means to tie, just as a 'ligature' is a stitch that ties up a wound, or 'ligament' is the tissue that ties the muscle to a bone. Thus, the inner meaning of "religion" is also to "retie" or "reunite" one's inner being (the soul, or spirit) with the Ground of Being (God). Unfortunately, the concept of "religion" no longer seems to refer to this inner, esoteric process of reunification, and is almost exclusively used to denote outer, exoteric forms.

In the West, at least, as Aldous Huxley points out in his classic work "The Perennial Philosophy," this loss of meaning demeans religious practice and obscures the inner path to spiritual awakening.

"Nobody," writes Huxley, "has yet invented a Spiritual Calculus in terms of which we may talk coherently about the Divine Ground and of the world conceived of its manifestation. For the present, therefore, we must be patient with the linguistic eccentricities of those who are compelled to describe one order of experience in therms of a symbol-system, who relevance is to the facts of another and quite different order."

[Huxley, "The Perennial Philosophy," Perennial Classics: 2004, p. 35.]

One of the most respected modern theologians, Paul Tillich, in his memorable sermon "The Depths of Existence," notes that a true spiritual seeker may be prejudiced by what he knows of "God" and may, in fact, have to forget all that he knows about that term in order to find the Ground of Being within him or herself.

"The wisdom of all ages and of all continents speaks about the road to our depth," Tillich notes.  "It has been described in innumerably different ways. But all those who have been concerned - mystics and priests, poets and philosophers, simple people and educated - with that road through confession, lonely self-scrutiny, internal or external catastrophes, prayer, contemplation, have witnessed to the same experience. They have found they are not what what they  believed themselves to be, even after a deeper level had appeared to them below the vanishing surface. That deeper level itself became surface, when a still deeper level was discovered, this happening again and again, as long as their lives, as long as they kept on the road to their depth." 

"The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being," he continues, "is God. That depth is what the word God means. . . . For if you know that God means depth, you know much about him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or an unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth knows about God."

[Paul Tillich, "Shaking The Foundations," Scribners, New York: 1948, pp. 56-57.]

 This misunderstanding of what the words "religion" and "yoga" originally referred to is illustrated by the misunderstanding I initially had about one of the most famous passages in the New Testament. (Although I am not Christian, per se, the only fully enlightened man I have ever met, once urged me to study all religions until I could see "the sameness" in them all.)

In Matthew 11:28-30, we read:

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest upon your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."

 Originally, this passage invoked in me an image of Jesus shouldering the cross, much like Atlas struggling with the whole world upon his shoulders. I assumed that the burden Jesus was talking about was in actuality, a literal burden. When I re-examined this passage, however, having learned that the "yoke" he talks about is his esoteric, inner religious teachings (i.e., his "yoga"), I got a wholly new meaning.

Here he first says he is "meek" meaning he is free of the small, egoic "self" which is the common burden of duality that virtually all men and women labour under. Then he notes that he is "lowly in heart," also signifying he is free of the ego and exists wholly within the Ground of Being alone.

Next, he notes that his "yoke" is easy, meaning that the process of his religion (his yoga) is simple and consists of the prayer and meditation that will free one from the bondage of the egoic "self" and its duality. Then, he describes what the fruit of his esoteric religious practice is - i.e. what the essence of his teaching consists of - and that is "light." And, of course, light - the clear light of Being - is what all inner religious practices refer to, in one form or another, as the source of our Being.

Indeed, perhaps one of the most famous passage from the Holy Quran, is the "Light Sura" Chapter 24, Verse 35 which reads:

"Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The Parable of His Light is as if there were a Niche and within it a Lamp: the Lamp enclosed in Glass: the glass as it were a brilliant star: Lit from a blessed Tree, an Olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it: Light upon Light! Allah doth guide whom He will to His Light: Allah doth set forth Parables for men: and Allah doth know all things."

Thus, when one begins to look to the inner, esoteric core of all Eastern and Western religions - to the yoking of one's depth of being with the the ultimate depth which is the Ground of Being - one begins to find the lightness of being free from the ego and the small sense of "self." This realization, it seems, is at the heart of all yogas and all religions.

Describing the Ineffable: What is God?

"We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meanwhile within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson --
("The Over-Soul")       

How we ceaselessly struggle, and inevitably fail, to describe in words the ineffable! Rumi tells the story of how the small fish came to the big fish inquiring about something called "the ocean." "How," the big fish thinks to itself, "can you describe the ocean to someone who is already in the ocean?"

In the attached videos, masters from the world's great wisdom traditions try and describe the Whole. In essence each of these great practitioners try to describe the same unitive reality they experience, and which others have blindly fought over since time immemorial.

"The fight in the world is not between good and evil," observes Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. "Even today the wars in the world (are) not between good and evil, it is always between one man's belief and another man's belief. The moment you believe something that is not a living experience for you, you are already in conflict with somebody else who believes something else."

"God is beyond even our idea of the beyond," observes Sufi author, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. "We all come from God," he has written elsewhere, "but when we are born into this world we forget. We forget from where we have come and that we are children of light. We take on the clothing of this world, leaving behind the "clouds of glory" of our true Home."

[Vaughan-Lee, "Love is a Fire," p. 21.]

Rumi, Sufism and the Light of Islam

"Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth,
The parable of His Light is as if there were a niche,
And within it a Lamp: The Lamp enclosed in Glass;
The glass as it were a brilliant star;
Lit from a blessed Tree,
An Olive, neither of the East nor of the West,
Whose oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it;
Light upon Light!"

["The Holy Koran" Surah 24:35 ('The Light')]

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Jalalludin Rumi (1207-1273)

As a 'heretic' from, yet a student of, all the world's great wisdom and religious traditions, I have long been interested in Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. Indeed, my first spiritual teacher advised me to "study all religions until you can see the 'sameness' in them all. Another, told me that if I was serious about my spiritual quest I should read Patanjali and "The Incredible Rumi" - Coleman Barks' translation of the poetry of the renowned 13th-century Sufi poet Jalalludin Rumi. I have found both to be essential.

"Throughout Islamic history, th(e) realm of ihsan [worshiping God as if we could see the Divine] was most emphatically pursued by the mystics of Islam, the Sufis," writes Omad Safi on the Huffington Post. "Historically," he notes, "this mystical realm of Islam formed a powerful companion to the legal dimension of Islam (sharia). Indeed, many of the mystics of Islam were also masters of legal and theological realms. The cultivation of inward beauty and outward righteous action were linked in many of important Islamic institutions. In comparing Islam with Judaism, the mystical dimension of Islam was much more prominently widespread than Kabbalah. And unlike the Christian tradition, the mysticism of Islam was not cloistered in monasteries. Sufis were -- and remain -- social and political agents who went about seeking the Divine in the very midst of humanity."

Indeed, the great Rumi's father, Bahuaddin Valad, was a renowned Islamic jurist known as the "sultan of scholars," and a teacher at a school specially built for him in Konya, in what is now Anatolia, Turkey. Rumi, himself, succeeded his father as the head teacher at this school upon his father's death.

The question of why Sufism is little known or publicized in the West, and why it seems to be frowned on, or at least viewed skeptically, within manistream Islam has always perplexed me. Anyone, who reads Rumi, it seemed to me, could not help but be transfixed by the high spiritual plane from which the master poet writes (Rumi is known as Mevlana, or "master," in Arabic). And, yet, Rumi's teachings along with Sufism are discounted and largely absent (at least in the West) in most discussions of Islam.

In his Huffington Post article, Safi attributes the downplaying of Sufic teaching in Islam to three sources: (a) its early embrace by European Orientalists in the 19th century, who were enthralled with the Sufi poets like Rumi and Omar Kayyham; (b) the rejection of the 'mystical branch' of Islam by conservative/modernist Moslems in the past and current century who are concerned with carving out a separate functioning Islamic sphere which would hark back to the expansive, Koranic times of Muhammad; and, (c) the embrace of Rumi and other Sufi poets and teachers by so-called "New Agers" who are "spiritual, but not religious."

"So what we have had for the last few decades ," Safi observes, "is a situation of Orientalists and Salafi Muslims seeking to construct a "real Islam" that is untainted by Sufi dimensions, and many new agers seek(ing) to extract a mysticism that stands above and disconnected from wider, broader and deeper aspects of Islam."

These are not the only paradigms, however. Just as many Christians, Jews and others are looking at the more esoteric teachings of their respective religions to provide greater meaning to their largely material lives, so too many Muslims are looking to Sufic teachings to embue their lives and religious practice with greater meaning. (A largely unmentioned fact in the hotly contested "mosque at Ground Zero debate" is that it is a planned Sufi Center headed by Sufi scholar Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf that is in question, not a more 'conservative' mosque that has raised the hackles of prejudice in NYC.)

An example of how many modern Muslims are looking to the ancient teachings of Sufism is demonstrated in a wonderful talk on TED.com by Imam Rauf. In it, Rauf combines the teachings of the Qur’an, the stories of Rumi, and the examples of Muhammad and Jesus, to demonstrate that only one obstacle stands between each of us and absolute compassion -- ourselves," or the human ego.



"Judge a moth by the greatness of its candle," Rumi urges.

Esoteric Spirituality: The "Inner Teaching" of Christianity

In his masterwork, “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” the pioneering American psychologist, William James made a fundamental distinction between what he termed ‘outer religion,’ the dogmas, doctrines, steeples, altars and incense of religious worship, and the ‘inner religion’ of spiritual experience and psychological transformation, a distinguishment which seems fundamental to the seeker of spiritual awakening or enlightenment in this modern Information Age.

In another spiritual masterpiece, “Discover the Power Within You,” the great Unity Church minister and theologian, Eric Butterworth sets out to find the religion of Jesus, rather than the religion about Jesus, noting that there has always been a paradox in the way humanity has reacted to the spiritual truths they have found on the spiritual quest, elevating the teacher while ignoring the teachings of universal spiritual truths:

“The history of man on the eternal quest,” he writes, “has been a strange odyssey. In his search for the ‘holy grail' man has looked everywhere and in vain, but he has failed to look within himself. Occasionally, a prophet came, telling of the world within. But instead of following him into the deeper experience, men invariably made a god of the prophet – worshiped and built monuments to him. They then trapped themselves in a religious practice that had no within.”

“How many times has this happened?,” Butterworth asks rhetorically. “How many religions are there in the world ?”

In a trio of videos from the prodigious author, broadcaster and ordained minister, the Reverend Theodore (Ted) Nottingham goes "within" and examines the "esoteric teachings" of Christianity, the "inner teachings" of Jesus, and the process of "theosis," or "God-realization," the experiential process which lies at the heart of the Christian's spiritual quest, but which is little known or used in the West today.

In this subjective selection from Nottingham's wide body of work, it is hoped that the spiritual aspirant's eyes may be opened to the inner potential not only of Christianity, but of all the world's great wisdom traditions, and that any "scales of prejudice" may be removed to make his or her "inner" sight all the clearer.

As Jesus made clear in his ministry, it is not the outer form that is of consequence; quite the opposite. To the Pharisees who were persecuting him for what they saw as his outer practice, he plainly said, "The Kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:21).


"Esotericism and Christianity"





"The Inner Teaching"





"Theosis: The Path of God-Realization"




Author and translator of a dozen books, Ted Nottingham is an ordained minister and currently the pastor of Northwood Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. As a student and teacher of practical spiritual development for over thirty years, his books reflect aspects of the spiritual journey for readers of all traditions.

His Youtube videos and PodOmatic podcasts are available here and here.