Good stuff, Corboy. However, one should note that Sufism's past is not all roses and glory. For example, many of the "great" sufis had nearly identical views on jihad, dhimmitude, and other questionable aspects of Islam to those of the modern-day Jihadists. Many of the modern-day Sufi orders also have no problem with jihad and terror, including the Naqshbandi's who include Mullah Omar among their number, despite his also being a deobandist.

For example, Al—Ghazali (1058—1111) had this to say about jihad, and the dhimmi poll tax. For those unfamiliar, dhimmis are non-muslims who are not forced to convert, but must accept a second-class citizenship within an Islamic society and pay a tax to their Islamic overlords:

"O]ne must go on jihad (i.e., warlike razzias or raids) at least once a year...one may use a catapult against them [non—Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them...If a person of the Ahl� al—Kitab [People of The Book — primarily Jews and Christians] is enslaved, his marriage is [automatically] revoked...One may cut down their trees...One must destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide...they may steal as much food as they need...

[T]he dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle...Jews, Christians, and Majians must pay the jizya [poll tax on non—Muslims]...on offering up the jizya, the dhimmi must hang his head while the official takes hold of his beard and hits [the dhimmi] on the protruberant bone beneath his ear [i.e., the mandible]... They are not permitted to ostentatiously display their wine or church bells...their houses may not be higher than the Muslim's, no matter how low that is. The dhimmi may not ride an elegant horse or mule; he may ride a donkey only if the saddle [—work] is of wood. He may not walk on the good part of the road. They [the dhimmis] have to wear [an identifying] patch [on their clothing], even women, and even in the [public] baths...[dhimmis] must hold their tongue...."

[www.hurriyetdailynews.com]

Friday,September 13 2013, Your time is 8:44:25 AM
Presence of pregnant women in public is ‘disgraceful,’ says Turkish lawyer

ISTANBUL

Turkish lawyer and Sufi thinker Ömer Tuğrul İnançer has sparked a public outcry after telling state television station TRT 1 that it was immoral for pregnant women with huge bellies to reveal themselves in public.

“Announcing pregnancy with a flourish of trumpets is against our civility. [They] should not wander on the streets with such bellies. First of all, it is not aesthetic,” İnançer said. “After seven or eight months of pregnancy, future mothers go out their husbands by car to get some fresh air. And they go out in the evening hours. But now, they are all on television. It’s disgraceful. It is not realism, it is immorality.”

After İnançer’s remarks, the program’s host said, “May God be pleased with you” in response.
Meanwhile, TRT officials said the comments expressed belonged only to İnançer and did not reflect the official view of the channel.

Lawyer stands by remarks

İnançer defended his remarks today, insisting that the appearance of pregnant women was not aesthetic, according to Anadolu Agency.

“You get married and get pregnant. Okay, you did well. [However], this can not be singled out as the reason you are swinging your belly. The image is not aesthetic. I am still saying the same thing. Why don’t you understand?” These are venerable things. And venerable things are kept in a respectful way,” he said.

“Pregnancy is not made that apparent. Moreover, that’s why young girls are scared of giving birth,” İnançer said.

İnançer also said companies gave maternity leave not so that women could “wander” the streets, but to stay in their homes.

No isolation against women: Religious Affairs Directorate

There is not isolation against women in Islam, and being a mother is a gift, Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate said in a statement following the reactions.

“There is nothing like isolation against women in the religion. There is no isolation for pregnant women, either. On the contrary, being mother is a gift,” the statement said, while still calling on pregnant women to dress modestly. “However, pregnant women should be more careful about their dressing – every woman should. [They] should not wear clothes showing their bellies or backs.”
It also emphasized that “we learn religion from the Quran and the life of the Prophet Muhammad.”

Reactions from lawmakers

Lawmakers from the opposition and ruling parties strongly condemned İnançer and his remarks. Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy and former minister Nimet Baş said no one could limit women according to men’s aesthetic understanding.

Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Aylin Nazlıaka said any understanding that dictated what women could say, how many children they could have and how to give birth was unacceptable.

“They should stop taking on women in this country. They would intervene in the air that women breath [if they could],” Nazlıaka said.

Mehmet Oktay, a Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) deputy, also slammed İnançer’s words, recalling Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s suggestions about how many children families were supposed to have.

“[İnançer says] pregnant women on streets are disgraceful. Isn’t it disgraceful when Prime Minister Erdoğan tells [people] to have at least three children or five children?” Oktay said. “Isn’t it disgraceful when the prime minister bargains with the bride and groom for children?”

Oktay also criticized TRT1 for becoming a one-sided propaganda establishment.

İnançer’s words also attracted a flurry of criticism on social media, with the hashtag #Ömer Tuğrul İnançer trending on Twitter, while others called on Facebook users to lodge a complaint against TRT1 and İnançer at the media watchdog RTÜK.

Activists have also called for people to march on Taksim’s İstiklal Avenue at 7 p.m. with pillows under the shirts to show support for pregnant women.

Shakti is right.

In the past, many Sufis waged jihad. The Malakand battle described by a young Winston Churchill was stirred up by a local Sufi leader.

[www.google.com]

And so was the Sudanese Mahdist uprising which the British deal with in a series of battles including on in which Churchill also participated - Omdurman.

[www.google.com]

I did quote the material from the past, only to emphasize that older Islamic Sufi lodges were known and socially accessible places.

This could be used for hospitality, support of caravans, and...warfare against outsiders.

One classic form of hospitality was providing food in dining halls (langars) at a Sufi center. [www.google.com]

By contrast, some years ago, I noticed an interesting pendant worn by someone at the health club. I asked if it was Sufi. The lady looked spooked and said yes, but acted as though I was some sort of Peeping Tom. Apparently the pendant was meant to be recognized only by those who knew exactly what order it was, and she wasnt prepared for someone who could ID it as being Sufi, yet not an 'insider'.

Sheesh.

Many Westernized Sufi orders, are more like clubs for would be aristocrats of the spirit.

Some are inspired by very right wing fascist and protofascist ideologues such as Rene Guenon and Frithjof Schuon.

Robert Irwin, in Memoirs of a Dervish had some interesting observations.

Memoirs of a Dervish: Sufis, Mystics and the Sixties

'Hitler? He is Guénon with Panzer divisions' was one of Evola's halfserious jokes.
Still, it is surprising that the left-wing Surrealist André Breton took Guénon ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=1861979916

Memoirs of a Dervish: Sufis, Mystics and the SixtiesSufis, Mystics and the Sixties Robert Irwin ...

As for Schuon, he deplored the
Allied victory in 1945 as the victory of the profane over something more ancient.
books.google.com/books?isbn=1861979916

Some adherants are quite influential in academia and not at all forthcoming about their ideology, and this can have consequences--such as converts who cannot read primary sources, and rely on books by these persons.

One characteristic that may help one identify a group with a Traditionalist agenda is find out whether it has some model of time that is based on recurring cycles and where a lot of emphasis is placed on our being in a dire time such as the Kali Yuga, where spiritual progress is supposedly not possible unless one makes contact with an uncorrupted elite who will confer a genuine initiation. These folks are obsessed with initiations.

Self appointed elites who buy into these models of vast looping time cycles can used them to take a grand, condescending view in relation to the needs and pain of the unenlighted worms of who have not accepted their version of the Truth.

(Ha, worms are useful and help us in a multitude of ways. And unless we get cremated, all of us, even the most snobbish Traditionalist will eventually be din din for the worms. And we just learned that Richard III had roundworm infestation, due to poor medieval sanitation conditions. That means most of the monarchs adored by the Traditionalists had worms in their guts. Democracy, baby. Or is it vermo-cracy?)

[www.google.com]

Note: In addition to Robert Irwin's Memoirs of a Dervish (Highly recommended!)
there are two more specific sources on right wing Traditionalism.

Against the Modern World by Mark A Segwick.

[www.google.com]

Professor Sedgwick also maintains a blog that is regularly updated.

[traditionalistblog.blogspot.com]

Professor Sedgwick encountered Traditionalism by accident when he learned some very upsetting information about Frithjof Schuon and was cruelly rejected by a friend who venerated Schuon. Sedgwick's book was the first in English to identify Traditionalism as an ideology, traced its history and movements influenced or led by Traditionalists.

On Amazon.com reviewers tend to praise the book in glowing terms or hate it.

Professor Sedgwick did not classify Guenon as being fascist, deciding to classify Julius Evola as fascist, yet influenced by Guenon. Guenon didnt have a program for changing society, he put his hopes in creating study groups with elites who could be custodians of knowledge needed to survive catastrophe, while Evola did believe in changing society through action--violent, if necessary.

Mark Koslow, who was in Schuon's group and met many important persons first hand, suffered a great deal for his commmitments. He has done his own research and disagrees with Professor Sedgwick, providing many citations and quotations to make a case that Rene Guenon was fascist and very possibly paranoid, projecting his malaise outward onto the world.

Mr Koslow's material can be read here and will be of special interest for those who want to learn more about Schuon, Guenon, Coomaraswamy, Martin Lings, And Joseph Espe Brown.

Koslow is determined to bring across to the the reader that Traditionalism is not something dotty or quaint, but is an ideology with political consequences.

[www.google.com]

Schuon Case News File - William H. KennedyMiller said that other than the testimony of one individual, Mark Koslow, now
living in an undisclosed location in the West, ``there is not one shred of evidence''
...
www.williamhkennedy.com/schuon_case_news_file.html - 39k - Cached - Similar pages

Nature's Religion Versus Mankind's Spiritual Frauds!The elitist Hindus use Kali Yuga spirituality to keep people feeling hopeless and
lost. The previous Kali phase was just a training period. The new Satya begins ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0595282083



Note: Some allegedly Buddhist sects will scare their adherants into trusting in mere magic such as chanting, because in the age of Kali Yuga, only such simple practices will suffice.

Quote

A Simpler Way for a Simpler Age | The Goddess of WillendorfAug 8, 2010 ... As you note, such simpler way is suitable for this latter day, the Kali Yuga — or as
the Nichiren Buddhists would refer to the Last Age of the Law.
willendorf.org/a-simpler-way-for-a-simpler-age - 20k - Cached - Similar pages


nichirenshubuddhism : Message: Dzogchen and Nichiren...Apr 6, 2001 ... nichirenshubuddhism: Nichiren Shu Buddhism - A place to discuss about
Nichiren ... period of Kali-Yuga in Hindu-Buddhist science of 'cosmic
groups.yahoo.com/group/nichirenshubuddhism/message/78 - 85k - Cached - Similar pages


Favorite videos - YouTubeExample of Nichiren Buddhism Gongyo recited slowly by Robert E Lee. ... making
of this educational/non-profit meditation tool video in these Kali Yuga times.
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=FLTAnw5qW-fmFtheo_J9UVdw - 75k - Cached - Similar pages


Kalpa (aeon) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaAnd finally in Kali-yuga (the yuga we have now been experiencing over the past
5,000 years) there is an abundance of strife, ignorance, irreligion and vice, true ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalpa_(aeon) - 85k - Cached - Similar pages


Asian Prophecy - 1Currently we are in the last, the Kali Yuga, in which dharma (correct ..... The
Buddhist sage Nichiren (1222-1282) left these specific notes of the signs of our
times ...
www.bibliotecapleyades.net/profecias/esp_profecia01f1.htm - 42k - Cached - Similar pages

[www.google.com]

One doesnt get this Kali Yuga stuff in the earliest sutras.

So, getting back to warning signs.

Anyone or any group that makes a big deal out of our being in some degenerate time where one only has hope by surrendering to an authority figure--watch out.

There is a scene in Monty Python: The Meaning of Life, where technicians from an organ transplant company try to persuade a man to give up his own liver.

He hesitates.

So the technicians sing this wonderful, awe inspiring song about the Meaning of Life.

So the guy says, mind blown, OK

..and then shrieks in agony as the technicians tear out his liver, and take it away to the for profit company that sells transplant organs.

Concepts like Kali Yuga (or whatever you call it) huge, baziilllion year time cycles are like that song.

Dont lose your adult discerning mind. Its a hard thing to build and maintain.

And we dont want to go back to the filthy times of the middle ages that the Traditionalists love so such.

Back then most had worms in their guts and persons who could only afford a subsistance died lived lethargically, painfully and barely had the energy to keep going, let alone think and enjoy.

Research resource

Sufism in the West / edited by Jamal Malik and John Hinnells

PDF version here: A good overview. Use the search function and see if any group you are interested in is mentioned here.

[sufibooks.info]

[webcache.googleusercontent.com]

Corboy: Dont let the price scare you. You can order this by interlibrary loan.

If nothing else this review may supply interested readers with search terms that they can use for Google searches.

And $150 is about the price of a very top quality set of tasbih (prayer beads) if you find you want some. If that is your desire, thats fine. (keep current with your zakat and that means care for people outside the tariqua. A 'sufi' group that demands all of your money, service and time, leaving nothing left over for the larger community (Ummah) outside the tariqua is off base.

Watch out if you get social pressure from a murshid, pir, or sheikh and the followers to become an Expensive Sufi. That pressure doesnt start all at once. It creeps in, ever so gradually, like wisps of fog.

Sufis in Western Society:Global Networking and LocalityEdited by Ron Geaves, Markus Dressler, and Gritt Klinkhammer. London and New York: Routledge Sufi Series, 2009. 224 pp. $150

Reviewed by Stephen Schwartz

Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2011, pp. 89-90

Quote

"New Age" Islam

These volumes epitomize two related, similar, but finally marginal trends that have penetrated the West in recent decades, and which were inflated in the aftermath of the Islamist atrocities of 2001 and other developments: New Age Sufism and "literary" meditations on the clash of civilizations.

In the instance of New Age Sufism, faddish imitations of esoteric Islamic traditions are adopted by Western spiritual seekers. The second trend involves "high concept" meanderings in revisionist Islamic, European, and American history. Both represent attempts to respond to the Islamist challenge without recourse to politics or the military. With the broadening and frequent weakening of Western anaylsis about Islam, both styles of discourse are increasingly offered to the global reading audience.

The editors—Geaves, a comparative religion professor at Liverpool Hope University, U.K., Dressler of religious and Islamic studies at Hofstra University, and Klinkhammer, a religion professor at Bremen University, Germany—have assembled a volume striking in its attempt to accommodate academic standards of analysis to Western popular mysticism. Sufis in Western Society emerged from a 2003 panel held by the American Academy of Religions. Its title is misleading in that the collection deals minimally with indigenous Sufism in Eastern European Muslim polities such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, or Albania, and the vigorous Sufi presence in such major diaspora communities as that of Germans of Turkish and Kurdish origin (with one exception, discussing Bosnian Muslims in Sweden). Rather, it treats with high seriousness and full credibility the attraction of certain Westerners to religious posturing in Sufi costume.

Most of the Geaves-Dressler-Klinkhammer tome describes prominent new age Sufis, some of whom become Muslims but recruit disciples who do not; some who adopt extravagant Islamist positions while projecting themselves as masters of Sufi wisdom; and some who disseminate self-improvement advice with little or no Islamic ornamentation. The volume gives notable attention to such dubious figures as Feisal Abdul Rauf, best-known for his association with the scheme for the "Ground Zero" mosque in New York, and Nuh Keller, the American fundamentalist Muslim convert who published The Reliance of the Traveller,[1] a classic, though backwards-looking, volume of Islamic law.

The chapter "Home, Nation, and Global Islam: Sufi-oriented activities and community building among Bosnian Muslims in Southern Sweden," by Catharina Raudvere, a professor of religions at Copenhagen University, and Ashk Gashi (Ašk Gaši in original text), a Bosnian emigrant to Sweden, includes errors but presents a useful profile of a Muslim community in which Sufi influence has diffused into a general Islamic identity. Perhaps the most immediately relevant chapter is "Globalizing the Soundworld" by Michael Frishkopf, a professor of music at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Frishkopf recounts how, as a proselyte to Islam, he attempted to organize a presentation on his campus by a noted Egyptian Sufi performer of religious songs, Sheikh Mohamed el-Helbawy, with the participation of the University of Alberta Muslim Student Association (MSA). The MSA, a pillar of the Wahhabi lobby, rejected this initiative by declaring that the Egyptian figure represented "innovations in religion, and other matters that are highly doubtful and debatable."

This ominous but typical episode presents, in microcosm, the ideological orientation and activities of MSA branches throughout North American academic life.

"Global Sufism," a chapter by Marcia Hermansen of Loyola University, includes a brief but similar description of the inability of Barelvi Muslims, a traditional yet moderate trend in South Asian Sunnism, to establish an organization in the United States. She states that "its failure may have occurred as a result of factors specific to the Muslim subculture in the United States, for example, the fact that most community organizations were already controlled by anti-Sufi Islamists."

Stephen Schwartz is a principal investigator at the Center for Islamic Pluralism and the author of The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism (Anchor, 2003).

[1] Evanston: Sunna Books, 1993; revised ed., Beltsville, Md.: Amana Publications, 1997

Certain Books a Recruitment and Testing for Potential Recruits?

A speculation. And what follows is strictly my opinion. I celebrate my status as an unevolved untranformed person.

One way to do it is for someone in a group led by an dictatorial guru to test a friend or acquaintance.

For example: A person in the group may be advised by his or her handler to and be told, "Hmm. You're friends with C? See if C likes this particular book.

The book would be a story of a student who submits to unpredictable behavior/abuse from a guru or sufi leader.

If the members friend likes the book, that friend may be ID'd by the guru or
senior advisor as someone to cultivate further.

The probationer member may be led to discuss friendships with his or her higher ranking preceptor in the group.


So in such cases, recruitment may done through existing social networks.

I recall being given a book by someone. Chasm of Fire, an abridged spiritual autobiography by Irina Tweedie. (the unabridged version is Daughter of Fire)

I read it a quarter to halfway through and hated it. Tweedie described and mental cruetly from an elderly bully who called himself Sufi and went by the title of Guru.

She and he justified this as needed to tame or kill Tweedie's ego.

To my unenlightened perspective, all I could see was cruelty. A battering male/battered woman relationship rationalized as spirituality. Alice Miller had described this rationlization in her book, For Your Own Good: Roots of Violence in Childrearing.

What I also detested about Chasm of Fire Tweedie's lack of curiosity about anything outside the relationship with her guru. Despite this being in India, Tweedie said nothing to give any background on her guru, such as how he legitimized his authority to be a Sufi Master and shit on his students.

Its as though the guy had come out of nothing, no roots, had always been a guru.

Tweedie also showed little interest in her surroundings. Her lack of curiosity about India put me off.

And, later I read a biography by Irina Tweedies chief disciple, Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee who followed Tweedies instructions and created the Golden Sufi Center . In his memoir, Your Face Before You Were Born, he decribed being a student of Tweedies. He learned a lot. But Tweedie could be tough. She actually moved out of a house Lee had rented, saying flatly she could not live in a place permeated with money worries.

Reasonable, but extreme.

But in the end, (my unenlightened opionion) Tweedie went from tough to being vicious and abusive to him despite his loyalty. She reacted in an extreme manner when Lee, very overworked, temporarly forgot to renew the copyright or next edition for Daughter of Fire. He remedied the problem as quickly as possible (back then FAX was the fastest means of transport) yet Tweedie reacted to this as a betrayal, rather than a human mistake.

Then she cut him loose and excoriated him to her students.

Lee desperately rationalizes this as a necessary spiritual test.

In my unenlightened opinion, Tweedie turned as abusive as her preceptor had.

That perhaps Tweedie had turned senile and was being
paranoid, with no one to advise her as a peer, never entered her disciples mind, at least not on the pages of the book.

The Golden Sufi Center is in Marin County, California. Not Moslem, either.

So, to get back to cases, I was sickened by the book by friend lent me. Hated it. I refused to accept Tweedie's premise that this was for her own spiritual good.

A persons response to the Tweedie book might be a very effective way to test someone for potential compatibility to a group led by an infallible guru.

If you dislike the cruelty of the book, you automatically filter yourself out.

Anyone who is dismayed and worse yet, confidently detests what the guru did to Tweedie will not be good cult fodder for this group.

If someone is fascinated, and accepts the Tweedies premise that being abused is not abuse but 'teaching' if done by a guru, then this person enters the queue as potentially worhtwhile recruit.

And this may be done without even the lender of the book being aware of it, if the lender is a probationer and not yet molded and made malleable enough to swallow the more extreme doctrines kept secret and given only gradually.

Some nominally Sufi groups depart from the social inclusiveness of Tasswuf, where feeding and hospitality for the poor is a traditional feature.

These other nominal groups take care of themselves. They may tilt toward wealthy and or with valuable social connections. They and dont want needy or ailing people who will strain their resources, or the rosy fantasy world they live by.

And they most certainly do not want skeptics.

Gated communities of like minded souls. Country clubs for the 'spiritual' one percenters.

These are like Disneyland for adults who are socially sophisticated with lots of earning power and social clout. But perhaps want a break from the pressure of the outside world and have found surcease in the shared fantasy world constructed within and maintained by the group.

And dont want their fantasies disrupted, especially those who have had heavy pain their lives, and need the group and shared Beautiful World to keep that pain, though unintegrated, manageable and at bay.

The role of the leader is to maintain that fantasy and give a living human focus, like the Wizard of OZ.

These types of groups may be quite discreet in their recruitment methods. Some members low in rank may not even know this is what they are doing when they sincerely recommend certain books or music to their friends.

A group that claims not to to proslytize has to have some way to trickle word out to potentially compatible members.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2018 09:57AM by corboy.

I want to make clear the above incident is not the direct responsibility of Tweedie or Vaughn Lee.

But...its to make a point that some books can pay a quite important role in selecting a certain type of person who fits the profile for an authoritarian group, fits the profile enough for recruiters to 'cultivate' that person.

Its a bit like managers of investments, studying fundamentals of a specific stock, bond or mutual fund to see whether it meets their criteria for inclusion in a portfolio of long term investments.

Cults treat humans as investments. They have mere techniques that cause you to feel good, feel like person and a beloved person.

But...the dirtiest most esoteric secret is...you're an investment.

Back to books.

There are two authors who have played important roles in recruitment into some forms of Sufism

Rene Guenon (especially his Reign of Quantity)

And Frithjof Schuon, The Transcendant Unity of Religions and Understanding Islam

Mircea Eliade

Huston Smith (reveres Shuon)

Hossain Nasr, a disciple of Schuon, a Traditionalist. Sedgwick wrote this in his survey of Traditionalism:

Joseph Campbell had some liking for the Traditionalist notion of perennialism.

Sedgwick notes that authors who create a soft, user friendly variety of Traditionalist presentation often appeal to the larger public.

The hard nosed grim Traditionalists who openly despise the modern world (Guenon) have less appeal. But they may influence those who teach the 'soft traditionalist' approach. Because of the unpleasant elitism of Traditonalism and its anti historical stance, many who do espouse Traditionalism are discreet about it, especially if they are academics and wish to remain respectable and not be written off.

All three authors share a Traditionalist perspective, consider the modern world a reverse, not as a good thing, and both have biases that are a-historical.

A very good tip off on how to evaluate any group is whether history from primary and non ideological sources is respected or written off as 'discursive thought' and considered an obstacle to spirtual development.

You will stay involved in such groups at your own risk.

Other books which have been mightily in

In Against the Modern World, Professor Mark A Sedgwick describes his own first encounter with Guenon's Reign of Quantity

[books.google.com]


On this same page, Segwick describes how another faculty member introduced him to the works of Schuon.

[books.google.com]

(Against the Modern World, page 7)

One man who ran an Islamic bookstore said that reading Guenon and marrying a Muslim were, in his observation the two most frequent causes of converstion to Islam.
(Against the Modern World, page 8)

[books.google.com]

Then, through a scholar named Rawlinson, author of a survey entitled Western Masters in Eastern Traditions, Segwick received some documentary information and pictures about Schuon that were matters kept quite secret by Schuon's close disciples.

[books.google.com]

When Sedgwick's friend saw his horrified expression, he brutally ended the friendship on the spot.

[books.google.com]

Sedgwick was clearly unprepared to rationalize this stuff as an exercise in primordial wisdom or piety. Without knowing it, Sedgwick, by reacting in shock, had in this man;s eyes, demonstrated he was unworthy material for friendship with One Who Knew the Truth -- and to be rejected as such.

[books.google.com]

This, readers, is one of the collateral costs of these secretive, dysfunctional organizations.

Later, Sedgwick recorded this exchange with a scientist from one of the Scandinavian countries who had converted to Islam and was later dismayed to learn she'd been greatly influenced by material written by Traditionalists, whose viewpoints biased their presentation of what they called Islam.

[books.google.com]


The problem with Traditionalists is they see Islam merely as a source of what matters most: valid initiation. Used by Traditionalists conversion to Islam is merely acquisition of a tool, a means to a larger goal of accessing a primoridal wisdom seen by Traditionalists as transcending Islam .

To Muslims this is shirk-- heresy.

Sociologically, one could consider this a variety of intellectual colonialism--appropriating a belief system to suit the needs of privileged Westerners operating on an ideology created by several urbanized Westerners Guenon and Schuon - and a British uppler class Ceylonese, Ananda Coomaraswamy, whose students were dismayed that he cared little for history or archeological evidence and kept diverting thier tutorials to metaphysics.

Finally

And, a lot of people are influenced by the books of Ken Wilber, who has a drive to create a Theory of Everything, an intellectual elitist who delights in rank ordering ideas societies and human beings into color coded heirarchies of development.

Yet Wilber's system and his classification tables have a vast appeal.

Persons trying to make sense of the terrifying quantity of information introduced to them at university level; persons trying to straddle two even three different cultures, these persons feel as in a swamp under triple canopy jungle, bewildered.

And they want a framework which can give them an overview, a wider perpective, which can hold and contain their confusion until they can sort it into a manageable and satisfying pattern allowing them a stance from which they can continue.

Sadly many do not know the search terms needed to learn that Wilber's own evaluative framework is called into question by his persistently endorsing spiritual teachers who are documented as abusing their students.

What I can offer (so far) is

To finish my thought:

For those trying to get some sense of the modern world and reason, and through a man whose live spanned World War I, the impact of Albert Einsteins theories, World War II and the innovations being made in scientific theory, physics and mathematics, I heartily recommend Karl Popper's Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography.

And another book by a man who was born Viennese, gained a humanistic education, acculturated as an Indian pandit and Swami, while remaining a liberal humanist and going on to become both a sanyassi sadhu, professor of philosophy, and an anthropologist--

Get and read The Ochre Robe by Agehananda Bharati. He was born Leonard Fischer, survived the Nazi occupation, and spent the war years as a soldier in the Nazi army's Indian Legion--assigned their upon request. The Legion was full of Indians who had been captured as British soldiers in North Africa. Fortunately for Fischer, the Legion was not used for any atrocious purposes, mostly sitting out the war in peace. He perfected his knowlege of Indian languages and mannerisms.

And he emerged hating authoritarianism in all forms and in India soon got into trouble when he caught his monastic preceptors making textual errors and then rationalizing this as evidence that Bharati was too unenlightened to dare critique them--an attitude he refused to respect.

Bharati was frank about how he disliked certain features of Hinduism and discovered that nondual experiences and other forms of ecstacy do not prove anything or equip a person to function as a king or technocrat or politician.

He regarded them as aesthetic experiences, and firmly refuted all arguments that nondual realization prove or validates any theology or belief system.

Bharti and Popper both require the reader to make an effort. But they cared about people's welfare and wanted to pass on the most reliable material that they could.

Popper comes across as rather shy, regretting it when discord erupted. Bharati did not mind if he ruffled feathers.

Both felt that people mattered. And they loved and cared about their friends and associates, because, unlike Tweedie, they go to the trouble of describing their friends and their surroundings with the reader.

They loved this life. And...both Popper and Bharati loved music, going to great lengths to scrape up money and stand in line, sometimes for hours in wintertime, to get seats at the Opera House.