Voices of Islam (265 page)

8
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S
UFISM IN THE
W
EST
: I
SLAM IN AN

I
NTERSPIRITUAL
A
GE

•

Hugh Talat Halman

He who knows himself knows his Lord.

—Hadith attributed to the Prophet Muhammad
1
There are as many ways to reach God as there are created souls.

—Hadith attributed to the Prophet Muhammad
2

Lo, for to myself I am unknown, now in God’s Name what must I do? I adore not the Cross, nor the Crescent, I am not a Giaour or a Jew.

—Jalaluddin Rumi
3

INTRODUCTION

Some might interpret these lines from the Prophet Muhammad and Jalaluddin Rumi as describing a ‘‘spirituality’’ beyond the conventional boun- daries of religious affiliation. This kind of worldview has often been associated with a ‘‘New Age Movement,’’ or what some observers have now begun to call the ‘‘Interspiritual Age’’
4
and a ‘‘second Axial age.’’
5
Under whatever name, participants, advocates, and enthusiasts of this view envision personal, social, and ecological transformation rooted in universal peace and unity among religious traditions. This chapter explores how Islam might be related to this ‘‘Interspirituality’’ and if so, how. Is there a bridge between the Religion of the Final Prophet and the Age of Aquarius?

To explore this question, this chapter describes four universalist Sufi teachers and their movements: (1) Hazrat Inayat Khan, (2) Samuel Lewis,

(3) Meher Baba, and (4) Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. These teachers and their

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lineages had a major presence as New Religious Movements before and during the 1960s and 1970s when the New Age Movement emerged. Each teacher had an Islamic background and taught at least some elements of Islam. Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) came to the United States from India in 1910 and became the fi Sufi teacher in The United States and Europe. His son and successor Pir Vilayat Khan (1916–2004) presented Sufi with inspiration and vigor for 40 years during the New Age Movement’s development. Samuel Lewis, a disciple of Hazrat Inayat Khan and ‘‘teacher to the hippies,’’ introduced the popular ‘‘Sufi Dancing’’ in San Francisco in the late 1960s. Avatar Meher Baba (1894–1969) began coming to Europe and America in 1931, attracted ‘‘Baba lovers,’’ established centers worldwide, and chartered a Sufi organization. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1884–1986) came from Sri Lanka to Philadelphia in 1971 and developed the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship. He also encouraged Coleman Barks to translate the poetry of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (1207–1273
CE
) a process that resulted in Rumi becoming popularly described as ‘‘America’s best-selling poet.’’ All of these teachers have been recorded in film and audio formats.

In the 1970s New Age participants—both practitioners and consumers— pursued psychotherapies, social movements, and cosmologies connected by an alternative ‘‘holistic’’ framework.
6
This movement was summarized in Marilyn Ferguson’s
The Aquarian Conspiracy
as a ‘‘Paradigm Shift,’’ or a transformation of ‘‘worldview’’ and ‘‘practices.’’ Ferguson’s holistic paradigm emphasized humankind’s shared interconnectedness and the individual and collective power to create change.

The social activism of the 1960s and the ‘‘consciousness revolution’’ of the early 1970s seemed to be moving toward a historic synthesis: social transformation resulting from personal transformation—change from the inside out.
7

This description suggests that the movement emerged with the baby- boomer and post baby-boomer generations. Once the 1965 Immigration Act lifted quotas for Asians, numerous spiritual teachers came to the United States, especially from India and Japan. Additionally global mass media, the civil rights movement, the counter culture, the Peace Movement, feminism, world music, and Internet technology all further contributed to developing conditions setting the stage for the Interspiritual Age.

Sociologist Steve Bruce
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presents a four-part model to describe the

New Age Movement:

New Science/New Paradigm.
People who identify themselves, or are labeled as proponents of a New Age culture typically borrow, embrace, and apply new philosophies of science as a teaching about spirituality. They apply holistic methods based on the interconnection of matter and energy, especially in pursuit of healing—personal, social, and planetary.

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171

New Ecology.
The New Age vision sees the earth as a holistic organism and its proponents are devoted to developing new ways to take care of the earth and ways of living in communities which nurture that goal, especially through ‘‘intentional communities’’ such as Findhorn in Scotland and Auroville in south India. This perspective is at the root of such early New Age classics as Schumacher’s
Small is Beautiful
and James Lovelock’s
Gaia.

New Psychology.
The New Age Movement embraces psychological models such as Transpersonal and Depth Psychology that envision mental health as reaching beyond normal functioning to release a human being’s fullest potential.

New Spirituality.
Some examples we would list include:

• Yoga (Swami Satcidananda, Swami Muktananda)
  

• Organic Gardening and Whole Foods
  

• Environmentalism and Ecology (Stewart Brand, James Lovelock)
  

• Green Peace
  

• Transpersonal Psychology (Baba Ram Das, Ken Wilbur)
  

• Mother Goddess Worship (Starhawk)
  

• Quantum Physics and the New Physics (David Bohm, Fritjof Capra)
  

• Alternative and Complementary Medicine (Deepak Chopra, Larry Dossey)
  

• Creation Spirituality (Matthew Fox)
  

• Quantum Healing (Deepak Chopra)
  

• Interspirituality (Wayne Teasdale)
  

• Integral Philosophy (Ken Wilbur)
  

• Biology (Rupert Sheldrake)
  

• Pagan Spirituality (Starhawk)
  

Brother Wayne Teasdale identified this new paradigm as the ‘‘Interspiritual Age,’’ which he described as a ‘‘dawn of a new consciousness’’ marked by seven shifts in our understanding: (1) ecological awareness; (2) sensing the rights of other species; (3) recognizing our interdependence; (4) abandoning ‘‘militant nationalism’’ and embracing ‘‘essential interdependence’’;

(5) experiencing community between and among religions; (6) opening to the inner treasures of the world’s religions through their individual members; and (7) opening to the cosmos and the ‘‘larger community of the universe.’’
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One important difference in Teasdales’ concept of an Interspritual Age relates to the question of relativism. Teasdale, who practiced both Christian and Buddhist monasticism, ultimately advocated standing in one tradition as one’s root. His own teacher the Benedictine monk Bede Griffi

(d. 1993) who was one of the twentieth century’s most outstanding

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practitioners of the dialogue between Christian and Hindu ideas and experi- ence remained a Christian even though he had also taken Hindu renunciant (
sannyasi
) vows. Many who have belonged to the ‘‘New Age Movement’’ have rejected such exclusive identifi ation as a limitation on spiritual unfolding.

Karen Armstrong calls our period a ‘‘second Axial Age,’’ tracing its roots to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when colonialism and later, globalization triggered significant social, political, economic and intellectual revolutions. In response to these revolutions, as Armstrong describes it, people have begun seeking ‘‘new ways of being religious’’ by ‘‘building on the insights of the past.’’ Armstrong notes the similarity of these approaches to the first Axial Age (800–500
BCE
) when many of the world’s religions came into being. She points to a similar combination of ‘‘
...
a recoil from violence with looking into the heart’’
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joined with the search for ‘‘an absolute reality in the depths of [one’s own] being.’’
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Unlike Teasdale, Armstrong (a for- mer nun) no longer belongs to a formal religion.

SYNCRETISM IN ISLAM; SYNCRETISM IN THE INTERSPIRITUAL AGE

The Interspiritual Age is partly characterized by trends toward synthesis and syncretism. Have Muslims engaged in similar tendencies? Throughout Islamic history we find Muslims who have creatively combined religious ideas and practices. Especially in Africa, Iran, Turkey, Central Asia, India, China, and Indonesia, we fi that this syncretism contributed to the spread of Islam, For example in Indonesia, some of the nine saints (
Wali Songo
) who spread Islam in Java adapted the Javanese Hindu versions of the heroic Hindu epics, the
Mahabharata
and the
Ramayana
to teach and spread Islam. What differentiates Islamic syncretism from New Age syncretism is that many in the New Age Movement have not considered one religion to be the fi and supreme revelation and overarching metanarrative.

THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM

Many Muslims describe Islam in two aspects and four dimensions. Because the four teachers discussed here use these models, they are essential for our comparison. Here we will look at some examples from Indonesia and Turkey. Muslims speak of two parts of Islam: the outer or exoteric (
zahir
) and the inner or esoteric (
batin
) (Qur’an 57:2). From this pair the four dimensions unfold. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz
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reports how an Indonesian Muslim explained them: (1)
Shari‘a,
involves ‘‘the carrying out of the usual duties of Islam.’’
Shari‘a
describes normative doctrines, rituals, and mainstream community organization(s); (2)
Tariqa,

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includes ‘‘the special mystical techniques.’’
Tariqa
(‘‘the path’’) encompasses the fellowship, spiritual practices, and relationship to spiritual teachers and guides, that is, Sufi (3)
Haqiqa
means truth, reality, and realization of mystical union; (4)
Ma‘rifat
translates as
gnosis,
meaning inner discernment.It is these three dimensions beyond
Shari‘a
which provide a useful way to compare Islam with the New Age Movement.

In Turkey, John Birge received this explanation following the analogy of sugar:

One can go to the dictionary and find out what sugar is and how it is used. That is the
Shari‘a
Gateway to knowledge. One feels the inadequacy of that when one is introduced directly to the practical seeing and handling of sugar. That repre- sents the
Tariqa
Gateway to knowledge. To actually taste sugar and have it enter into oneself is to go one step deeper into an appreciation of its nature, and that is what is meant by
ma‘rifat
˙
If one could go still further and become one with sugar so that he could say, ‘‘I am sugar,’’ that and that alone would be to know what sugar is, and that is what is involved in the
Haqiqa
Gateway. (Birge, p. 102)