Voices of Islam (266 page)

This
haqiqa
experience of mystical union, also called in classical Sufi
wahdat al-wujud
(the unity of existence) and
wahdat al-shuhud
(the experi- ence of oneness), provides an important correlation between Islamic and Interspiritual thinking. This perspective is an example of what Teasdale in his sixth point calls ‘‘one of the inner treasures of the worlds’ religions.’’
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Now we turn to assess four significant Sufi teachers who led movements in Europe and America and evaluate how they may have helped contribute to the Interspiritual Age.

Pir-O Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927)

One of the most significant presences in American Sufism has been Pir-O Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan. Inayat Khan was a harbinger of the attitudes, styles, and approaches of the Interspiritual Age whose influence extended to contact with thousands of people in at least eight countries in Europe and America, including composer Claude Debussy, the pianist Scriabin, psychologist Roberto Assagioli, and automaker Henry Ford. Inayat Khan was a master musician who had also trained in Sufism, Hinduism, and Zoro- astrianism. Fluent in English and highly charismatic, he has the distinction of being one of the earliest Islamic teachers in the United States (1910) as well as being the fi teacher of Sufi in Europe and America. In 16 years of public teaching, he initiated 200–300 people including four women whom he appointed as
murshidas
(spiritual guides). As he introduced a Universal Sufism in the context of what he called ‘‘spiritual liberty,’’ thousands of peo- ple encountered basic elements of Islamic teaching, culture, and spirituality.

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His collected works,
The Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty
comprise 14 volumes. To date his teachings have been published under at least 40 titles. Currently the fi four volumes of an ongoing reediting of his
Collected Works
have been published. His work has continued as a major presence in American Sufism and in the New Age Movement through his major succes- sors, his son Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (1916–2004) and Murshid Samuel Ahmad Murad ‘‘Sufi Sam’’ Chishti Lewis (1896–1971) as well as others we will mention.

Born in Baroda, India, his grandfather founded a music academy and his father was also a master musician and singer. In addition to attending a Hindu school, Inayat Khan witnessed and met musicians and other family friends and associates from diverse religious backgrounds. After close training with his grandfather, Inayat Khan toured India as a young boy and was honored by the Nizam of Hyderabad. Under the auspices of his virtuoso family of musicians Inayat Khan became a master of the
vina,
India’s oldest musical instrument.

His parents brought him to yogis, saints, and sages of Hindu, Muslim, and Parsi (Indian Zoroastrian) backgrounds. In Nepal he met an old Sufi master whose glance charged him with exaltation. After working as a music professor, Inayat Khan then traveled throughout India alone and saw in a dream a beautiful face, a vision he took as a sign to search for a spiritual guide (
murshid
). In Hyderabad, in 1903, he saw the man whose face he had seen in the dream: Sayyid Mohammed Abu Hashim Madani. Until his death in 1907 Madani served as both Inayat Khan’s initiatic and academic teacher in Sufism and issued Inayat Khan the following commission: ‘‘Go, my child, into the world, harmonize the East and the West with the harmony of thy music; spread the wisdom of Sufism, for thou art gifted by Allah, the most Merciful and Compassionate.’’ Later that year Inayat Khan met with the prominent Brahman guru Manik Prabhu who deepened his understanding of the link between Sufi doctrine of oneness of being (
wahdat al-wujud
) and Vedanta’s non-duality (
advaita
). Inayat Khan’s particular lineage the Chishtiyya provided him with an example of initiating non-Muslims into Sufism.
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At a musical presentation at the Hindu Temple in San Francisco in 1911, Inayat Khan met Ada Martin, whom he initiated with the name Rabia and whom he ultimately designated as his immediate successor. In 1915, after traveling in America, Russia, and England, Inayat Khan established the headquarters of the International Sufi Order in London. At this time, he composed an as-yet unpublished spiritual biography of the Prophet Muhammad. Within a few years though, some of the Muslim members of the Sufi Order asked Inayat Khan to require the non-Muslims to convert to Islam. Instead Inayat Khan upheld the right and value of each person to seek truth under the Murshid’s guidance without being required to label

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themselves, and without the requirement to accept, reject, or adopt a particu- lar faith or creed.
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Indeed Inayat Khan’s sense of the ‘‘Message’’ and his ‘‘mission’’ involved restraint with regard to religious doctrine. His first book, aptly titled,
A Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty,
opens: ‘‘Beloved ones of Allah, you may belong to any race, caste, creed, or nation, still you are all impartially loved of Allah.’’
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And Inayat Khan inventively expressed the integral relationship between Sufi and Islam: ‘‘The idea that Sufi sprang from Islam or from any other religion, is not necessarily true; yet it might be rightly called the spirit of Islam, as well as the pure essence of all religions and philosophies.’’
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Inayat Khan’s description of the Prophet Muhammad’s mission illustrates how he envisioned Islam beyond dogma:

At last he began to hear a word of inner guidance, ‘‘Cry out the sacred name of thy Lord’’; and as he began to follow this advice, he found the echo of the word which his heart repeated in the whole of nature
...
. When once he was in tune with the Infinite, realizing his soul to be one, within and without the call came, ‘‘Thou art the man; go forward into the world and carry out our Command; glorify the Name of God; unite those who are separated; waken those who are asleep, and harmonize one with the other, for in this lies the happiness of man.’’
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Inayat Khan emphasized that Islam was a revelation based on the theophany of nature. While most Muslims share this perspective, Inayat Khan’s special emphasis on nature as scripture heralds values that will emerge in the New Age Movement :

Islamic worship shows an improvement upon the older forms of worship in human evolution, for Islam prefers nature to art and sees in nature the immanence of God
.. .
. It is said, ‘‘Cry aloud the name of thy Lord, the most benefi who hath by his nature’s skilful pen taught man what he knew not,’’ which means: who has written this world like a manuscript with the pen of nature. If one desires to read the Holy Book, one should read it in nature.
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These references to the ‘‘tongue of nature’’ and the ‘‘pen of nature’’ reach succinct expression in Inayat Khan’s third of ‘‘Ten Sufi Thoughts’’: ‘‘There is one Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature, the only scripture which can enlighten the reader.’’

In his first book,
A Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty,
Inayat Khan described the ultimacy of the Prophet Muhammad’s mission and of Islam:

...
[T]he work was thus continued by all the prophets until Mohammed, the
Khatim al-Mursalin,
the last messenger of divine wisdom and the seal of the prophets, came on his mission, and in his turn gave the fi statement of

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divine wisdom, ‘‘None exists but Allah’’
.. .
. There was no necessity left for any more prophets after this divine message, which created the spirit of democracy in religion by recognizing God in every being. By this message man received the knowledge that he may attain the highest perfection under the guidance of a perfect
murshid
or spritual teacher.
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Inayat Khan’s position on the Prophet Muhammad differentiates him from New Age thinkers who more readily rank Christ or Buddha as exemplars of New Age values. Although Inayat Khan did not require his initiates to become Muslim, but instead stressed the primacy of mystical realization lying outside conventional doctrinal and institutional boundaries, he still affirmed the supremacy of Muhammad’s mission and revelation as fi and as an integrating context for all forms of religious and spiritual expression. Lewis later recounted: ‘‘In his fi sessions on Sufi Pir-O-Murshid placed Muhammad as the Perfect Man of All Times.’’
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Inayat Khan describes the four stages of Sufi
Shari‘a
(Law),
tariqa
(Way),
haqiqa
(Truth), and
ma‘rifat
(Knowledge) in a way that prefigures Interspiritual Age ideals of flexibility:

Although the religious authorities of Islam have limited this law to restrictions, yet in a thousand places in the Qur’an and Hadith one can trace how the law of Shariat is meant to be subject to change, in order to suit the time and place.
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After explaining
tariqa
as understanding the cause behind
Shari‘a,

he describes
haqiqa
and
ma‘rifat
as:

...
knowing the truth of our being and the inner laws of nature. This knowledge widens man’s heart
...
he has realized the one Being
...
. This is the grade in which religion ends and Sufism begins.
Marefat
means the actual realization of God, the one Being where there is no doubt any more.
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Sufi he concludes, arises from attaining all four levels, which are the ‘‘inner teachings of the knowledge of God’’ into which the Prophet Muhammad initiated Ali and Abu Bakr.
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Inayat Khan did not train his children to perform the
Salat
prayer and did not continue to practice
Salat
after he came to the West. He did, however, instruct his
murida
(disciple) Rabia Martin to learn and practice
Salat,
but not in order to become a Muslim.
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In India Inayat Khan had practiced
Salat
and other Islamic observances, but ceased after coming to America and Europe.

Instead of
Salat,
Inayat Khan instituted a new prayer regimen. The core prayer known as the Invocation reads:

Toward the One, the Perfection of Love, Harmony, and Beauty, the Only Being United with All the Illuminated Souls

who form the Embodiment of the Master, the Spirit of Guidance.

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Inayat Khan understood all the Prophets and Masters as part of one being. In this he had behind him the Sufi tradition of the
Nur Muhammad
,
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the idea that all the Prophets emanated from one primordial ‘‘Light of Muham- mad.’’ In Inayat Khan’s text of the afternoon prayer, devotees address the ‘‘Master, Messiah, and Savior of all Humanity’’:

Allow us to recognize Thee in all Thy holy names and forms: as Rama, as Krishna, as Shiva, as Buddha,

Let us know Thee as Abraham, as Solomon, as Zarathustra, as Moses, as Jesus, as Muhammad, and in many other names and forms known and unknown to the world
.. .

O Messenger! Christ! Nabi the Rasul of God.
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The Sufi Order’s five ‘‘concentrations’’ established by Inayat Khan embody Interspiritual Age ideals and practices: the Universal Worship, the Esoteric School, the Healing Order, Ziraat (Gardening), and the Kinship Concentration.

Originally intended as the Sufi Order’s public face, Universal Worship expresses the New Age ideal of honoring all religions. Its worship service features candles for each of the major traditions and one for all traditions unnamed or unknown ‘‘who have held aloft the light of truth.’’ Also named the Church of All and All Churches, its ministers (
Cherags,
‘‘lamps’’) perform marriages and other sacraments. When Inayat Khan offered Universal Worship in New York on May 7, 1921, 50 people attended. In 1926, 500 people attended.

The Esoteric School encompasses the framework of a relationship between
murids
(disciples) and
murshids
(guides) who have been empowered by the Pir. The current Pir is Hazrat Inayat Khan’s grandson, Pir Zia Inayat Khan (b. 1971) who continues to develop the curriculum of his father and grand- father.
Murshids
concentrate on guiding
murids
in their practices and aim to avoid the guru-like intercession of advising
murids’
on all areas of their lives. By doing these practices,
murids
are meant to develop their ‘‘inner guidance.’’ The Esoteric School also offers retreats ranging between one and forty days.

The Healing Order, begun in 1925, offers a group healing service that attends to healing at a distance through attunement, prayer, breath, and concentration. Since 1979, the Sufi Healing Order has organized 26 national conferences on science and spirituality. Led until recently by Himayati Inayati (John Johnson) the Healing Order also features a more comprehensive healing modality called the Raphaelite Work (named after the angel of heal- ing). As in many New Age healing movements, ‘‘healing’’ is distinguished from ‘‘curing’’ by focusing primarily on the transformation of consciousness, the healing of the heart and soul, or the improvement of quality of life of the person healed.

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The Ziraat Concentration uses farming as a metaphor and a spiritual practice for transformation, restoring harmony between the inner and outer: ‘‘We respond to the call to become mature gardeners of both our inner being and of our planet.’’ Ziraat cultivates the sacredness of life through meditation, horticulture, and environmentalism. Pir Vilayat linked Ziraat’s agricultural mystery rite to deep ecology.
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The Kinship Concentration (originally called Brotherhood) is rooted in the universal morality of caring for one another. This service includes work in schools, food banks, counseling, birthing and health clinics, prison book funds, to say nothing of the Hope Project in Delhi. The Hope Project ‘‘provides food, education, medical and social services for the destitute shanty dwellers surrounding the tomb of Hazrat Inayat Khan in Delhi.’’
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