Discussions on Sunni Forum concerning perennialism

[www.sunniforum.com]

“Many seem to become Sufis and even convert to Islam, not because of primary commitment to Islam, but in order to derive an ‘initiation’ that meets Traditionalist criteria for authenticity—using Islam and Sufism as a means to an end.

.” Being Muslim and Guénonian potentially gives rise to the same difficulties as does being Muslim and, say, Marxist: to what extent can a Muslim legitimately defer to an authority which derives its bases from outside Islam?

Being Muslim because one is Guénonian is even more difficult: who comes first, the Prophet Muhammad or Guénon? That Pallavicini, for example, parted with Schuon because Schuon disagreed with Guénon – not with the Prophet or with Islam – would make most Muslims uncomfortable, as would Pallavicini’s habit of taking Guénon (rather than God or the Prophet) as his standard authority in his speeches and articles. This question of motivation may be the final irreducible difference between Guénonian Sufis and all others.”

[www.traditionalists.org]

And this is a tragic question for young westerners who trustfully sought Sufi initiation after reading Traditionalist books that implanted biases that could expose them to danger or heartbreak later on.

[books.google.com]

and what happened after Rawlinson had mailed some Schuonian photographs to Sedgwick.

[books.google.com]

One painful difficulty when among devout Muslims and those Muslims sincerely practicing Tassawuf is that parties to discussions follow a precise and mannerly pattern of debate--adab--what is often translated as 'courtesy' but what could be called verbal knightliness in the very finest sense of that word.

But this dignity can put discussants in great anguish and difficulty if there is a pattern of disconduct on the part of a trusted teacher and the problem of adab becomes yet greater when evidence is presented that a trusted and honored teacher behaved in ways so very much in violation of good manners and sunnat that even to think about such matters induces shame and to discuss it is considered potentially sinful.

That means that the worse the pattern of misconduct the greater the sense of shame in those who retain a sense of holy honor---and the greater the chance that they may stay silent, increasing the risk that a pattern of misconduct will go unspoken, uncorrected and that sincere students may, in this zone of silence, walk into a harmful situation being perpetrated by someone whose misbehavior triggers shame in onlookers.

When Irwin and others were searching, they lacked information. At least when we drive our automobiles on the highway, the state transit workers will put out orange cones and stand with signal flags to warn of potholes and upcoming road work by which one must slow down and drive with caution.

On the highway to God, if there are deep potholes and full of carrion, we need knights of Allah, to emulate Antar and, willing to stand with banners to guide travellers away from lethal road traps.

Those who ignore the warnings and fall in--that becomes their woe. But at least the knights of Allah did offer the warning and make a final choice possible.

We know not how long each of us is to live.

It is only kindness and truth to warn of road traps, for all of us are travellers.

Another way to put it.

There is a difference between privacy and secrecy that plays favorites.

It is very difficult, even for a seasoned practitioner, to settle the mind when in group or dharma center that has put itself in a situation of discord or that is diverting a lot of energy into keeping secrets that would rightly bring it into severe public disrepute.

Access to a teacher should not be at whim of the teachers wife, or some favorite gate keeper who is volatile. There are many stories of just kings whose reigns ended in misery because the king did not know that he had an unjust vizier who concealed patterns of injustice and failed to allow the oppressed to appear before the king.

Schuon and 'Indian Days"

[books.google.com]


[www.google.com]

Comments on Perennialist Philosophy by KD Shepherd

[www.google.com]

[www.naturesrights.com]

Quote

the following essays were written to concentrate on an aspect of ecumenical and transcendentalist ideology which seeks to impose itself on other cultures or to use other cultures to glorify itself. I began calling this imposition of an ideology of diverse religions “spiritual colonialism” back in 1992. The first of these essays is called “Black Elk, Joseph Epes Brown and the Schuon Cult” and the second is called “Spiritual Colonialism". The term "spiritual colonialism" is somewhat ambiguous. The term intellectual colonialism is more accurate, since the traditionalists basically tried to exploit the world religions as part of a colonizing intellectual procedure akin to capitalist globalization

Schuon became fascinated with American Indians as a source of primordial religion.


[www.google.com]
He was projecting his own concerns onto a group of people who lacked the media acuity and resources to articulate a defense.

Funnily enough, there appears to have been a fad in Central Europe to ideals the American Indians. My father, born in 1906, and who grew up in Eastern Europe told me that when he was a tiny boy, he and other kids were convinced that in America, the Indians were honored, venerated and that everone bowed to them.

And in his memoir, The Ochre Robe, Austrian born Agehananda Bharati, born in 1925 tells how when he was a small boy, his wealthy parents commissioned a tailor to make a custom done Indian chief costume for their son, complete with a full length feather war-bonnet.

Fritjof Schuon was probably projecting very much more of his own modern cultural biases than he realized, when tagging the Sioux as being sources of primordial religion.

The European idealisation of the American Indian spawned another intriguing fraud 'Grey Owl' who made a relative mint from his books by masquerading as an Objibwe for the bored European audiences eager for the exotic.

[en.wikipedia.org]

He has had a bit of a make-over since being exposed as an imposter as his books and appearances seemed to have merit themselves, despite his deceptions and cultural appropriations.

I am reposting the link to Shepherd's excellent article as the one above is not working and it is not to be missed by those interested:

[www.integralworld.net]

Shepherd finishes his article with a sharp observation:

'The degraded “perennial philosophy” is currently in the category of “affluent leisure interests.” For there to be any relevant perspective on that aborted subject, it would have to be divested of contemporary colourings and distortions. Judging by current standards, that might take a long time, and by then the crucial oil reserves maintaining the American consumerist way of life could be seriously depleted or extremely expensive. '

For persons who want to search the bona fides of shamans and medicine folk, this is one place to begin.


[www.newagefraud.org]

[azhartomorrow.al-fath.net]

and

[books.google.com]

More research needs to be done on Thomas Yellowtail, the person who contacted Schuon in Paris, on encouragement from Joseph Epes Brown.

In 1959, Schuon and his wife were reportedly allowed to witness a Sun Dance.

But recently, due to pressure from greedy and impolite persons leaders of First Nation tribes have put restrictions on witnessing this ceremony.

"The Sun Dance (or Sundance) is a religious ceremony practiced by a number of Native American and First Nations peoples, primarily those of the Plains Nations. Each tribe has its own distinct practices and ceremonial protocols. Many of the ceremonies have features in common, such as specific dances and songs passed down through many generations, the use of traditional drums, the sacred pipe, tobacco offerings, praying, fasting and, in some cases, the piercing of skin on the chest or back for the men and arms for the women.

In 1997, responding to increased desecration of the ceremony, Arvol Looking Horse, 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe asked non-Native people to stop attending the Sun Dance, or Wi-wanyang-wa-c'i-pi in Lakota. On March 8 and 9, 2003, bundle keepers and traditional spiritual leaders from Arapaho, Cheyenne, Cree, Dakotah, Lakota, and Nakota Nations met and issued a proclamation that non-Natives would be banned from sacred altars and the Seven Sacred Rites, including and especially the Sun Dance, effective March 9, 2003 onward.[1]
"

[www.digparty.com]



Thomas Yellowtail and Schuon

[www.google.com]

Thomas Yellowtail

[www.google.com]

In Europe, Schuon began feeing a need to go about unclothed in private.

What later lead to trouble was his reportedly incorporating this into rituals to which only favored devotees were invited and which where kept secret.

Secrecy consumes energy and in such conditions, that energy is no longer available for practice. Excluded persons who are sensitive to non verbal events may sense something is wrong and fear they are at fault, rather than imagine that the tension is arising from patterns of in group behavior triggered by favoritism on the part of their beloved and trusted leader.

[www.google.com]

Contrary to Romantic fantasy many tribal peoples are very strict in matters of boundary and propriety. Even those who appear to dress nude or close to nudity will still have quite have strict boundary customs, though an agitated observer may be too obtuse or thrilled to notice.

The closer one lives to survival level the less margin for error and the more strictly a group will govern its behaviors.

DK: Who is the most dubious guru you have ever encountered?

RI: I think an honest answer here might be libelous.

Those who are really curious can find a fictional version of the man in Richard Bulliet’s thriller The Tomb of the Twelfth Imam, in which he comes to a bad end. In reality he is still alive.


Have re-read Memoirs of a Dervish and find it better than ever.

Some reviewers have given the book bad reviews because it is not devotional in tone.

They forgot that in the preface, Mr Irwin did not promise to offer a devotional or inspirational book. He made clear that he wrote Memoirs in order to settle accounts with his own life before he dies. And he repeatedly stated how he had to struggle to recall events and do them justice.

In each page, I felt pain seep through. Mr Irwin had a very hard time in his twenties, capable of depression and ecstacies. He lived through a risky and hazarous time--and at the same time, lived through a now lost world where one could safetly hitchhike in North Africa.

He humbly described how he could be difficult company for girlfriends.

His depression is such that it is an achievement that he survived to become married, a father, a scholar and an artist, author of two well received novels.

To deepen his descriptions of the French and FLN in Algeria, get and read Ted Morgan's splendid memoir My Battle of Algiers.

Here is an interview with Mr Irwin that supplements his book.

The dabbling dervish: an interview with Robert IrwinBy Daniel Kalder
Monday July 25, 2011

Robert Irwin is an English writer who has written six novels and numerous studies of different aspects of Islamic culture. He is also the Middle Eastern editor of the Times Literary Supplement and has been instrumental in shaping the list of the hyper literary and thoroughly esoteric publisher Dedalus. While still a student at Oxford in the 1960s he travelled to Algeria with the intention of becoming a Sufi saint, an experience he describes in his latest extraordinary book, Memoirs of a Dervish.
The Dabbler’s Daniel Kalder was fortunate enough to be able to quiz this remarkable man. You can also win a free copy of Memoirs – we have ten to give away (details at the end).
Daniel Kalder: The experiences you describe in Dervish seem to have inspired several books in your career- an Englishman immersed in his dreams in North Africa is the protagonist of The Arabian Nightmare; while you described the occult, weird side of the late 60s in Satan Wants Me. In some ways Dervish feels like a key of sorts to those books, a missing chapter in the Irwin oeuvre I didn’t even know was missing. Why did you wait so long to tackle this aspect- perhaps the central aspect- of your 60s experience?

Robert Irwin: ‘Poetry . . . takes it origin from emotion recollected in tranquility’ (Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads). I needed to put a lot of space between myself and sixties before writing about that time. (The book started out as a history of the sixties before changing direction.) More important, I wrote the Memoir as a provisional settling of accounts before death and judgment. Finally, the gap of several decades meant that two people worked on the book, for there was a dialogue between present self and my youthful self. We found the collaboration satisfying.

DK: In Dervish you describe your efforts to become a Sufi saint. Given that in the UK religion is a very private affair, and celebrity atheists such as Richard Dawkins receive regular tongue baths from a (generally) fawning media, were you at all nervous about the reaction you would receive to your ‘coming out’ as a religious person?

RI: Not bothered at all. I intended to write a personal credo, but not a religious polemic. I did not write my book in order to steer people to Sufism. (There may be ecstasy, but there is also a lot of suffering in Sufism.) Since I am not posing as a spokesman for Islam or religion more generally, I have no intention of debating with Richard Dawkins or anyone else on these matters. Dawkins can argue away as much as he likes, but I know what I have seen and experienced.

DK: The idea of a youthful ‘freak’ heading off to Algeria these days to study religion is inconceivable- unless perhaps he has a great desire to learn about bombs & killing. The Islamic, and in particular Arab world has changed so much in the last four decades. Have you been shocked by the spread of Islamism, given that secularism was all the rage (at least among the ruling elites) when you visited?

RI: Though there are still dangerous areas, Algeria has calmed down quite a bit in recent years and for example the ‘Alawi fuqara now hold annual reunions in Mostaganem which thousands attend. I have been appalled by the spread of Islamism. I think that it is a political heresy with no real precedent in Islamic history. In its most extreme form it is nothing more than a satanic death cult. As you may be aware, Sufis in Pakistan have been targeted by the Taleban and murdered.

DK: Your description of Sufi life contrasts with the popular Western image of Sufis as bearded pantheistic mystics, the ‘nice’ Muslims. For example, the Shaikh under whose rule you lived insisted on observing all the regular rules of Islam, and on engaging with the world. Is the popular image of Sufi Islam then entirely wrong?

RI: The popular image of Sufis is not entirely wrong. There are Sufis and there are Sufis . . . and then there are Sufis. Some are strict, some are disorderly and some are merely playing lateral-thinking-style mind games. Some, but not all, of the Indian Sufi groups seem to be less orthodox in their practices than the mainstream North African orders. Some Sufi murshids are awe-inspiring holy men, but there are certainly others who are merely charlatans.

DK: I enjoyed your list of ghastly sixties iconic personages in the book, and agree that Yoko Ono belongs at the head of the list, which could probably be greatly expanded (you missed out Germaine Greer, for instance). Too many of these wearisome people still command far too much respect in today’s culture. Which iconic figures from the 60s do you think is still worth our time, or have been unfairly neglected?

RI: Good question and hard to answer. Obviously from the Memoir I rate Donovan more highly than would most aficionados of folk and rock. Philip K. Dick, Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov, Flann O’Brien, John Updike and John Fowles were all excellent novelists publishing in the sixties. (Yet only Dick engaged with the hippy, druggy aspects of the decade. Angus Wilson and later Anthony Powell and A.S. Byatt wrote hostile fictions about the hippy sixties.) Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings was published in 1965. My political heroes were pre-sixties figures like Kropotkin and Durutti.

DK: It is striking to read a memoir in which the author freely admits on multiple occasions that he doesn’t remember or doesn’t understand the things he is describing. You don’t even remember why you decided to become a Muslim saint, and at the end of the book apologize for failing to convey the holiness of many of the people you knew. Is there a reason for these lacunae, do you think, or is it just the inevitable effect of distance? Are you grateful for these gaps or do you regret them?

RI: I became so disconcerted by the gaps in my memory, as well as things that my diaries told me that I found hard to believe, that at one stage I considered getting myself hypnotized in order to travel back to the sixties, but I lost my nerve. Who knows what frightful things I have concealed from myself? I experienced so much anguish as a young man that I should be grateful that the passage of time has dulled it all. But anyway, as I note in my book, memory is not a lumber room where past experiences are merely stored. Memory is an active agent which works and reworks with past experiences in order to give their owner a sense of identity.

DK: Although your experiences as a ‘dervish’ form the core of your book, it also serves as a great introduction to many occult figures and spiritual charlatans who have now been forgotten. And yet the late 60s/early 70s was a time in which many people were ‘searching’… Robert Fripp, guitarist of King Crimson, became a follower of JG Bennett for instance, while Richard Thompson became a Sufi Muslim. Do you think this was widespread in British culture, or restricted to the elites? What lay behind it?

RI: I don’t have anything like a complete answer. But increased affluence made it easier to travel out to ashrams and zawiyas. Also more swamis and other gurus started arriving in Britain. Moreover, as more people traveled abroad, more drugs came to be smuggled into Britain and drug experiences made their consumers question the nature of conventional reality. There was a reaction against the values of wartime and post-war austerity. Jobs were fairly plentiful. So those who dropped out did so in the knowledge that it would be easy to drop in again. It was evident that the Church of England was losing its way. (If I remember rightly, Honest to God was published in this decade.) The writings of American Beats had a certain influence, as did translations of the novels of Herman Hesse.

DK: You have written novels and multiple types of non-fiction related to Islamic culture, but never (until now) a memoir. Did it pose any peculiar challenges?

RI: Battles with my memory apart, no challenge at all. It was exhilarating. It was like writing a novel, only more so – a novel squared. Or, to put it another way, it was like being dictated to in a séance.

DK: Satan Wants Me reads like a parallel fictional memoir to Dervish based on your “other” sets of interests- Dr. Strange, the occult, esoteric European/decadent fiction (much of which you have promoted in your behind-the-scenes role at Dedalus books). Was it necessary to divide your interests like this in order to deal with them? Did you feel a terminal contradiction in your life at the time?

RI: With each book, I like to tackle a totally new subject. Back then in the sixties I did feel a bit shifty, dabbling in all those daft or sinister (or both) esoteric cults, but yet an acute sense of boredom drove me on. It still does.

DK: Who is the most dubious guru you have ever encountered?

RI: I think an honest answer here might be libelous. Those who are really curious can find a fictional version of the man in Richard Bulliet’s thriller The Tomb of the Twelfth Imam, in which he comes to a bad end. In reality he is still alive.

DK: Having published your memoir, is there anything you now realize or remember about the tale you have told that was obscure to you while you were writing it?

RI: It is a hard thing to say, but it has since come to me how little love I received from my parents. I did not want to come to this realization.

DK: You set out to become a Muslim saint and failed. Do you ever wish you had succeeded, or do you think it was better that you ‘fell to earth’?

RI: To have spent my life muttering over my rosary in a monastery seems pointless. God does not need that and neither do I. The Memoir was a provisional settling of accounts and my failure has been provisional. I shall not necessarily be earthbound forever. I refer you to the discussion in the Memoir of Hesse’s Siddartha, in which the protagonist has to leave the path of asceticism and immerse himself thoroughly in the world (sex, money, etc.) in order to become fully realized.

DK: Your novels are unlike anything written in English, they are widely acclaimed, and yet it’s been over ten years since Satan Wants Me was published. Will you ever write another one?

RI: I have two half-finished novels, which I have had to set aside because of non-fiction commitments, but I think it most likely that I will find time to complete my novel about mathematics next year and then one about old films the following year. Then maybe a novel about the Wars of the Roses.

[thedabbler.co.uk]