Neither of the East nor of the West

A Transmission of Love

The essence of any Sufi order, or tariqa, is the energy of succession, the spiritual energy or divine substance that is transmitted from teacher to teacher, back in an unbroken lineage to the Prophet Mohammad. Without this transmission the tariqa is form without substance, lacking the spiritual energy that is necessary for the real transformation of the heart. The true history of any Sufi order is the history of this transmission, which is the central core of the path, around which its practices and etiquette develop over time. The outer form of the path can change according to the time and the place and the people, but the inner essence must remain the same living substance of divine love.

In 1961 a Western woman, Irina Tweedie, arrived in the northern Indian town of Kanpur, where she met a Sufi master, Radha Mohan Lal¹. He was a member of a family of Sufis. His uncle, father, and elder brother had all been Sufi sheikhs in the lineage of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya, an Indian branch of the Naqshbandi order, named after the fourteenth-century master, Baha’uddin Naqshband. The Naqshbandis, known as the Silent Sufis, practice a silent rather than vocal dhikr, and they do not engage in sama, sacred music, or dance; nor do they dress in any special way to distinguish themselves from ordinary people. A central aspect of the Naqshbandi path is suhba, the close relationship of master and disciple. The order was very successful in Central Asia, and spread throughout India through the work of Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624), who was known as the Mujaddid (Renewer).

What was unusual about this Sufi family is that they were Hindu, not Muslim. Traditionally the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya are the most orthodox of all the Sufi orders, stressing the importance of the Sharia (Islamic law); but at the end of the nineteenth century a transition took place. Fazl Ahmad Khan, the sheikh of Radha Mohan’s uncle, was Muslim, as were all of the predecessors on this path. But when the uncle, Lalaji², said to his sheikh, “I am yours. If you permit me, I may adopt Islam,” Fazl Ahmad Khan rejected the idea: “You should not think of such an idea. Spirituality does not need following of any particular religion. Spirituality is seeking the Truth and self-realization, which are matters of the soul…. It is the duty of everyone to follow the customs and rituals of the country and religion in which one is born.”³

Irina Tweedie was the first Western woman to be trained in this ancient Sufi lineage, and after the death of her sheikh in 1966, she returned to England where she started a meditation group. She was present at his death, and it was upon her that he bestowed his final glance: “Without lifting his head he gave me a deep, unsmiling look… lowered his eyes for a brief second and then looked again. It was the look of a divine lover.… My heart stood still as though pierced by a sword.”⁴ Returning to England, she carried with her this transmission from her sheikh, the energy of divine love that is needed to awaken the heart and take the wayfarer Home—thus bringing the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi path to the West.

My first meeting with Irina Tweedie came in 1973 when I was invited to a lecture and found myself sitting behind an old lady with her white hair tied up in a bun. After the talk I was introduced to her by a friend. She gave me one look with her piercing blue eyes, and in that instant I had the physical experience of becoming just a speck of dust on the ground. Then she turned and walked away and I was left utterly bewildered.

There is a Sufi saying that the disciple has to become “less than the dust at the feet of the teacher.” We have to be ground down until there is nothing left, just a speck of dust to be blown hither and thither by the wind of the spirit. Only when we have lost our sense of self, the values of the ego, can we carry the sweet fragrance of the divine, as described in the words of a Persian song:

At the time I had no understanding of this experience. I had no framework within which to assimilate it. It simply happened, and I mentioned it to no one. Only later did I realize that it was a foretaste of the path. For this is how it works on the Sufi path: when we meet the teacher, when we first step onto the path, we are given a glimpse of where this will take us. In visions, dreams, or inner experiences the wayfarer is shown what this journey will mean.  The Naqshbandis say that “the end is present at the beginning”: the Sufi path is a closed circle of love; everything is present in the first moment.

Often wayfarers are given glimpses of bliss or unconditional love. I was thrown into fana, the state of annihilation. I was shown that I would lose everything, all sense of myself. This was not so much a warning as a statement. I did not even consciously know that I had seen my spiritual future. I had looked into the eyes of a white-haired old woman whom I had never seen before and become a piece of dust on the floor. I did not understand or even question the experience. I did not know that my spiritual training had begun.

Meditation

I attended her small meditation group in a tiny room beside the train tracks in North London. The heart meditation that we practiced was developed in India, where it is also known as dhyana meditation:

The state of dhyana is a complete abstraction of the senses in which the mind is stilled by the energy of love within the heart, and the individual mind is absorbed into the universal mind. The actual experience of dhyana rarely happens during the first practice of meditation. It may take months, even a few years, to reach this stage. And once we do begin to experience dhyana, we may not realize it. The initial experiences of dhyana usually last for just a split second—for an instant the mind dips into the infinite and just for a moment we are not present. There may be little or no consciousness that this has happened; the mind may not even be aware that it was absent. But gradually, the mind disappears for longer and longer periods; we become aware that our mind has shut down. The experience can for some time seem like sleep, since sleep is the nearest equivalent we have ever known to this mindless state.

The experience of dhyana deepens as the lover is immersed deeper and deeper into a reality beyond the mind. More and more one tastes the peace, stillness, and profound sense of well-being of a far vaster reality where the problems that surround us so much of the time do not exist—a reality beyond the difficulties of duality and the limitations of the world of the mind and senses, into which, for a little while each day, meditation allows us to merge.

Dhyana is the first stage in the meditation of the heart. It is, as Irina Tweedie described it, “the first stage after transcending the thinking faculty of the mind, and from the point of view of the intellect it must be considered as an unconscious state. It is the first step beyond consciousness as we know it.”⁶ In dhyana, the heart is activated and the energy of love slows down the mind. The mind loses its power of control and individual consciousness is lost, at first for an instant and then gradually for longer periods of time. The lover becomes absorbed, drowned in the ocean of love.

Then in this state of unconsciousness a higher level of consciousness, or samadhi, begins to awaken. The evolution of dhyana into samadhi happens “by easy degrees,” as “the highest stages of dhyana are gradually transformed into the lower stage of samadhi, which is still not completely conscious,” and this less-conscious state leads in turn to the higher state of samadhi, which “represents a full awakening of one’s own divinity.”⁷

The experiences of samadhi cannot easily be described. They belong to a level of reality beyond the mind, to a dimension of unity in which everything is merged, where the mind, operating as it does by making distinctions, cannot get a foothold. In samadhi we begin to experience our true nature which is a state of oneness: we are what we experience. Gradually we glimpse, are infused with, the all-encompassing unity and energy of love that belong to the Self and underlie all life. And this oneness is not a static state, but a highly dynamic state of being that is constantly changing. Also our experience of it changes: no two meditations are the same and our experience becomes deeper and richer, more and more complete. On this plane of unity everything has its own place and fulfills its real purpose. In the outer world we experience only a fragmented sense of our self and our life. Here everything is complete and the true nature of everything that is created is present as an expression of divine oneness and divine glory.⁸

Polishing the Heart

In my teacher’s room we meditated, had tea and cookies, listened and talked. My teacher would speak about her sheikh, about his limitless love and unquestionable authority, about the power and beauty of his presence, and about the desire for Truth that lies hidden within the heart. She shared with us the passion with which she lived this primal desire, and pushed us to live what was deepest within us. There was little form or structure to these weekly meetings; we meditated in silence and then just sat together, sometimes in silence, often in discussion. Later I came to realize that our way of meeting—just being together, in silence and also in discussion, talking about the path—is an essential feature of the Naqshbandi tradition. In the words of Baha’uddin Naqshband, “Our way is that of group discussion. In solitude there is renown and in renown there is danger. Welfare is to be found in a group. Those who follow this way find great benefit and blessings in group meetings.”

Our group discussion often included the traditional Naqshbandi attention to psychology. On the Naqshbandi path many of the inner struggles and difficulties have a psychological dimension. This tradition goes back even beyond Baha’uddin to al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi (d. c. 907), one of the early Sufi masters, whom Baha’uddin recognized as one of his teachers; al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi was known for some of the earliest Sufi writings on mystical psychology. During the time Irina Tweedie was with Radha Mohan Lal, she was amazed to discover that although he knew nothing of Western psychology, his process of spiritual training had similarities to the process of individuation described by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Coming to her Sufi Master, she had hoped for spiritual teachings, but instead he forced her to face the darkness within herself, her rejected “shadow,” as Jung describes it. Many other elements of Jungian psychology, such as the danger of inflation, were present in his training. When she returned to London and started her group, she integrated a Jungian approach into Sufi teachings. We would discuss the transformation of the shadow as well as the more traditional approach to working on the nafs, or lower nature.

The heart meditation may appear very simple, but it works like a catalyst, accelerating the process of inner transformation, bringing one’s darkness to the surface, where it has to be confronted and accepted. The rejected and unacknowledged parts of one’s psyche have to be acknowledged, “given a place in the sun.” This is the traditional Sufi work of “polishing the mirror of the heart,” through which we come to glimpse our true nature. When this inner mirror is covered, with what in the West we would call projections and ego-conditioning, we see everything in a distorted way; we see the confused reflections of our own light and darkness. But as we polish the mirror, the distortions are removed and we begin to see with a new clarity and simplicity. From the seeming chaos of multiplicity we become aware of an underlying unity. The divine is born into consciousness and its quality of wholeness begins to permeate our inner and outer life. Looking within, we see beyond the ego, or nafs, to what is more essential and more enduring: “Although you were completely changed you see yourselves as you were before.”⁹

Connected with the psychological processes of the path is the practice of dreamwork. Baha’uddin was renowned as an interpreter of dreams, and dreams have always been considered as guidance on the path. In our meditation group we discuss dreams, particularly dreams with a spiritual dimension. Over the years we have developed a way of working with dreams that integrates the traditional Sufi approach to dreams with the insights of modern psychology, providing a container to help the wayfarer understand the inner processes of the path.¹⁰ Although most of the innermost processes will always remain hidden from ordinary consciousness, it is helpful for wayfarers to have some context for what is happening within them, on the level of the soul. Dreams work as messengers from within, and if we listen to them we can attune ourselves much better to our inner transformation. We can recognize the guidance they may offer.

When the path came to the West, psychological work and dream interpretation were developed according to the needs of Western practitioners, as traditional Sufi approaches did not adequately reflect the particular ways in which the Western psyche has developed. In the West, for example, the individuality of the ego tends to be very highly developed, while in India, where the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Order has its roots, people tend to be more identified with to the collective—often the family is more important. To help Westerners on the path, the work of Carl Jung was integrated into Sufi spiritual psychology: Jung’s work, which is based on the Western tradition of alchemy, offers the most complete understanding of the processes of spiritual transformation of our psyche, as the “lead,” or “prima materia,” of our instinctual self is turned into the “gold” of our true nature.

Dhikr and Remembrance

Along with meditation, psychological inner work, dreamwork, and being together with other wayfarers, the other central practice of this Naqshbandi path is a silent dhikr. The dhikr is the repetition of a sacred word or phrase. It can be the shahada, “La ilaha illa ‘llah” (There is no God but God), but it is often one of the names or attributes of God. The dhikr we were given is Allah. It is said in Islam that God has ninety-nine names, but foremost among these is Allah, for Allah is His greatest name and contains all the divine attributes.

But for the Sufi, the name Allah also points beyond all divine attributes. According to an esoteric Sufi tradition, the word Allah is composed of the article al, and lah, one of the interpretations of which is “nothing.” Thus the word Allah can be understood to mean “the Nothing.” The fact that His greatest name contains the meaning “the Nothing” has great significance, because for the mystic the experience of Truth, or God, is beyond all forms and attributes, is an experience of Nothingness. Shortly before his death, Radha Mohan told Irina Tweedie, “There is nothing but Nothingness.” He repeated it twice. The words point to the very essence of the Sufi path, as Irina Tweedie explains:

Thus, the name Allah contains the essence of all Sufi teaching: to become nothing, to become annihilated in the Beloved, so that all that remains is Infinite Emptiness. One of the mysteries of the path is that this Emptiness, this Nothingness, loves you. It loves you with an intimacy and tenderness and infinite understanding beyond imagining; it loves you from the very inside of your heart, from the core of your own being. It is not separate from you. Sufis are lovers and the Nothingness is the Greatest Beloved in whose embrace the lover completely disappears. This is the path of love; it is the annihilating cup of wine which lovers gladly drink, as in the words of Rumi:

In saying the dhikr, repeating our Beloved’s name silently on the breath—“Al” on the out-breath, “lah” on the in-breath—we remember our Beloved. With each cycle of the breath we return to the inner essence within the heart and live the remembrance of our love for our Beloved. Practicing the dhikr as constantly as we can, we bring this mystery into our daily lives. Repeating the Beloved’s name as we engage in the simple activities of our day—walking, driving, cooking, cleaning—we infuse our Beloved’s presence into all we do: cooking with the dhikr we put remembrance into the food, for example; cleaning with the dhikr we clean with our Beloved’s name. Lying awake at night we can silently repeat the name. It is more difficult to do when we are talking or engaged in mental activities, but when our mind is free enough to remember our Beloved again, we rejoice once more in repeating the name of the One we love.

We may find it difficult at first to remember as much as we would like to. But with practice the dhikr becomes a natural, almost automatic part of our breath, and then no moment is wasted; every breath aligns our attention with our Beloved. And over time our whole being comes to participate in this attention. Through repeating our Beloved’s name, we remember not just in the mind but in the heart; finally there comes the time when every cell of the body repeats the name.

It is said, “First you do the dhikr and then the dhikr does you.” The name of God becomes a part of our unconscious and sings in our bloodstream. This is beautifully illustrated in an old Sufi story:

The way the name of God permeates the wayfarer is not metaphoric but a literal happening. The dhikr is magnetized by the teacher so that it inwardly aligns the wayfarer with the path and the goal. (It is for this reason that the dhikr needs to be given by a teacher, though in some instances it can also be given by the Higher Self or, traditionally, by Khidr.¹⁴) Working in the unconscious, the dhikr alters our mental, psychological, and physical bodies. On the mental level this is easily seen. Normally, in our everyday life, the mind follows its automatic thinking process, over which we often have very little control. The mind thinks us, rather than the other way around. Just catch your mind for a moment and observe its thoughts—every thought creates a new thought, every answer a new question. And because energy follows thought, our mental and psychological energy is scattered in many directions. To engage seriously in spiritual life means learning to become one-pointed, to focus all our energy in one direction, towards God. Through repeating our Beloved’s name, we alter the deeply worn grooves of our mental conditioning that play the same tune over and over again, repeat the same patterns which bind us in our mental habits. The dhikr gradually replaces these old imprints with the single imprint of our Beloved’s name. The automatic thinking process is redirected towards God. You could say that the practice of the dhikr reprograms us for God.

The lover experiences a deep joy in repeating the name of her invisible Beloved who is so near and yet so far away. When our Beloved is near, saying the name becomes the expression of our gratitude for the bliss of divine presence, for the sweetness of the heart’s companionship. When our Beloved is absent, it becomes our cry to our Beloved and helps us to bear the longing and the pain. In times of trouble our Beloved’s name brings reassurance and help. It gives us strength, and it can help to dissolve the blocks that separate us from our Beloved. When we say His name, our Beloved is with us, even when we feel all alone with our burdens.

Through repeating the name, we begin to lose our identification with our isolated, burdened self and become identified with our Beloved who has been hidden within our own heart. Gradually the veils that have kept our Beloved hidden fall away and the lover comes to know divine presence in her heart. And as our Beloved removes the inner veils, so are also the outer veils lifted. Then the lover finds the Beloved not only within the inner dimensions of her heart, but also in the outer world; she comes to experience that “whithersoever you turn, there is the Face of God.”¹⁵

Then the One whom we love and whose name we repeat becomes our constant companion. And the lover also becomes the companion of God, for the “eyes which regard God are also the eyes through which He regards the world.”¹⁶ This relationship of companionship belongs to the beyond and yet it is lived in this world. The Beloved is our true friend, and this is the deepest friendship; it demands our total participation. Practicing the dhikr, repeating the name, we are with our Beloved in every breath.

Traveling to America

When Irina Tweedie returned to England from India she created the outer form in the West for the work of this tariqa in our group meetings. Consisting of meditation, dreamwork, and discussion, the meetings also allowed us just to be together in the Sufi way, sharing a cup of tea and the companionship of the path. The group had no religious orientation; it was open to all, and people came from a variety of different social and cultural and religious backgrounds—all that was needed was the desire for Truth and the willingness to work on oneself, to do the inner work of purification and transformation.

But the core of the path lies in the relationship with the teacher, suhba; it is through this relationship that the transmission of the lineage and the grace are given, and without it there can be no inner transformation and no journey. Irina Tweedie brought to the West not just an outer form, but an inner living connection with her sheikh, one that transcends time and place, life and death. Through the training he had subjected her to, her sheikh was able to reach her after he died, no longer as a human being but as a center of energy that came to her when she was in meditation. This living connection is the real foundation and heart of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya path as it came to the West. Later I came to know that it was his presence that I felt in her. It was his fragrance that made me sit at her feet.

For many years I attended the meditation group, listening to dreams, seeing the way the soul’s journey unfolded within myself and for all those who came. One day when I was about thirty and had been with my teacher for over ten years, she said in passing that my life would change when I was thirty-six. At the time I was a young father and a high-school English teacher, and I could not imagine what she meant. But six years later I found myself lecturing in America about Sufism and Psychology. In 1991 I was told to move with my family to California and start a spiritual center for our Naqshbandi path in the U.S., and in 1992 The Golden Sufi Center was founded as a vehicle for the teachings of this order. That year Irina Tweedie retired and I was named as her successor. I was asked to continue her work in the West.

In many ways the work of the path in America continued in the form it had developed in England. We created a small meditation center for regular weekly meditation meetings. Once a year we meet together for a week’s retreat, which combine teachings with tawajjuh (the transmission of spiritual energy); otherwise the path continues with little outer structure apart from group meetings, which consist of meditation, dreamwork, discussion, and tea. Some further subtle changes were made, reflecting the particularities of American culture and the needs of American seekers. For example, oral Sufi teaching and guidance are traditionally given through hints. Rarely will the teacher speak directly to a disciple; rather he will tell stories, or even say to one person what is meant for another. But I soon discovered that American students could not appreciate hints or indirect teaching: in this culture subtlety and suggestion often do not get through to people. Because of the need, I was allowed to be more direct in my teaching.

But the essential nature of the path remains unchanged. Under the surface of the outer forms, the traditional work of the path takes place as it always has: each wayfarer is given the guidance and support he or she needs, through a transmission of love that is given from heart to heart, from soul to soul. Once a connection or bond (rabita) between teacher and disciple is made, even the physical presence of the teacher is not always necessary for this transmission; it happens silently on the plane of the soul where duality and the limitations of time and space do not exist, and where the guidance, teaching, and energy of the path are given and received effortlessly, often without the conscious knowledge of the wayfarer. This is how it has always been. And no two wayfarers are treated the same, as every heart, every soul, is unique. Some seekers need to learn to love, while others need to learn to be loved. The path pushes some to become detached, while others are immersed more deeply in family and worldly affairs. The transmission of love is always given one to one, reflecting the real nature and need of each disciple.

In many ways the extremely extroverted nature of the American culture appears to make it hard for many Americans to follow this path’s hidden nature. This is the most introverted of all Sufi paths. The intense inwardness of the Naqshbandi path can be traced back to a group of Persian dervishes from Nishapur in the very early days of Sufism who focused their efforts keeping their nafs, or ego, from claiming any spiritual identity for itself. Not only did they forswear the traditional patchwork cloak of the Sufi dervish in favor of ordinary clothes; more profoundly, they concealed even their spiritual states from themselves, introverting them so that the ego could not access them and become inflated.

Adopting those principles, the Naqshbandi Order developed a way of teaching in which the disciple’s spiritual development is mainly hidden from his ordinary consciousness. It can often seem as if very little is happening; on this path, we do not engage in ritual or other outer activities like dancing, singing, or chanting. Nor do we seek spiritual intoxication—this is a path of sobriety. Instead of focusing on spiritual states, we live our ordinary, everyday life, engaged with our family and our job, while keeping our inner attention always turned toward our Beloved. Although the Naqshbandi practice of “solitude in the crowd,” khalwat dar anjuman, (“outwardly to be with the people and inwardly to be with God”) makes this path adaptable to everyday Western life, it can be difficult for Westerners to value a spiritual process that takes place beyond the mind, in the inner worlds to which they have at first little conscious access. It takes a real commitment to persist in the face of what can seem like very little outward reinforcement. In the West, we tend to look for results.

And we expect results to come through effort. American culture especially, driven by the Puritan work ethic, conditions us to believe that our success or failure in all aspects of our lives comes as a result of our own efforts. This creates another difficulty on the Sufi path—the belief in self-determination is so pervasive that within the American collective consciousness there is almost no awareness of the power of grace.

But grace is the cornerstone of every Sufi lineage, of any company of the lovers of God. Stepping onto the path, we step into the grace of a spiritual tradition, the power of love that is given for the work that needs to be done. Without it nothing real can happen on the path. As Rumi tells us, through our own effort we cannot even reach the first way-station. It is through grace that the miracle of transformation happens; it is grace that opens human beings to the infinite preciousness of God’s limitless love, which is so easily hidden even though it is always present.  And grace by its very nature is a gift. It flows from heart to heart in a transmission of love, and no effort is required. It can be very difficult to stop striving and acknowledge dependence upon something beyond the reach of effort or will or even understanding. Our sheikh, Radha Mohan Lal, told Irina Tweedie to stress that this is an effortless path. Everything is given through the grace of the tradition, through the grace of the teacher.

The essence of the Sufi path is not limited by outer conditions. East or West, the love at the core of any Sufi path is the same. Once the connection has been made between the sheikh and the disciple, the transformation of the heart can begin.

The Relationship With the Teacher

Traditionally the Sufi sheikh is the “keeper of the gates of grace.” Love and grace are the cornerstones of the relationship with the teacher, which is the most important relationship for the disciple. Without this relationship there is no path and no journey. Through the grace of the teacher the disciple is given the love and guidance that are needed for the journey. The disciple progresses through love, and if the disciple does not herself possess enough love, the teacher will create love in her heart.

But the relationship with the teacher is probably the most paradoxical and confusing element of all on the Sufi path. It is the most intimate and yet the most impersonal relationship we will ever have. It is most intimate because it happens within the heart and is a relationship of pure love. And yet this relationship is completely impersonal because it belongs to the soul; it has nothing to do with our ego or personality, or with the person we perceive the teacher to be. For the teacher, while still functioning as a human being, has through the grace of his teacher been made empty, has become “featureless and formless”; in the Sufi tradition the teacher is said to be “without a face, without a name,” stressing the impersonal nature of the teacher.

But in the West we have been conditioned to understand love and nearness solely within the sphere of personal relationships; we have no concept of a deeper, impersonal love that belongs to the soul. Our hunger for personal acceptance, our unmet emotional and even physical needs come to the surface and are easily “spiritualized” and projected into the relationship with the teacher. We lack the traditional container, the respect, adab, that separates this relationship from the personal sphere. In many Eastern traditions, for example, the disciple cannot address the teacher directly; he or she must first wait to be spoken to. In the West we have no such etiquette.

Furthermore, especially in America, relationships of all kinds are marked by a certain informality—even strangers address each other by their first names. So while no one would have thought of addressing Radha Mohan Lal or Mrs. Tweedie (as she liked to be called) by their first name, it seemed appropriate for people in America to address me as Llewellyn. And yet I gradually noticed the confusion this created and the desire it fed to personalize the relationship with the teacher. And this difficulty is further compounded for the Western seeker by the absence in our culture of any tradition of the relationship with a spiritual teacher. In India the relationship with a guru has always been a part of the culture, while in the Middle East the Sufi sheikh has been a recognized (if sometimes persecuted) figure of spiritual authority. But in the West the relationship of master and disciple, although imaged in the life of Christ, has never been part of our spiritual landscape, and we have no experience within our own culture to turn to for an understanding of its real nature or for guidance as to how to conduct ourselves within it.

The love that comes from the sheikh is pure and unconditional, uncontaminated by any of the patterns or problems that define our normal understanding of relationships. This love does not belong to duality and the normal dynamics we associate with a relationship. It belongs to divine oneness, and is present within the heart of the sheikh from the beginning. As her Sufi Master described it to Irina Tweedie,

Stepping into the presence of the sheikh, the wayfarer enters this dimension of love’s oneness. Yet she does not know this; she has not yet developed the faculty to recognize or to consciously appreciate what is being given. Instead she remains within the prison of her projections, mental conditioning, and psychological problems, which of necessity become projected into the relationship with the teacher.

Love also evokes both positive and negative psychological projections. And as anyone who has experienced a human love affair knows, the greater the love, the more powerful the projections—the more the unlived parts of our psyche clamor for attention, want to be drawn into the sunlight of our loving. The unconditional love that is given by the sheikh will of necessity evoke many projections, many of them unexpected and unwanted, along with many unmet needs. Once the initial “honeymoon period” of intoxication has passed, this is what the disciple is forced to confront. And because the sheikh is also a figure of authority, the disciple’s unresolved authority issues will also surface, adding to the cloud of confusion that obscures the real nature of the relationship with the teacher—the love that is the essence of the Sufi path.

For the sheikh this love is the prima materia of the path, both the beginning and the end of the work. Through love the disciple is swept clean of impurities and remade, so that she can live her deepest nature, her inborn closeness to God. While the disciple confronts the obstacles her mind and psyche place in the path, the sheikh does the real work of transformation, softening the heart and preparing the disciple for the awakening of the consciousness of the heart, the divine consciousness that is present in the innermost chamber of the heart, what the Sufis call the “heart of hearts.” Much of the work of the path is a process of preparation, an inner purification to enable the heart of the disciple to contain this consciousness without contamination by the ego or lower nature, the nafs.

We are taken by love back to love, on a journey that draws us deeper and deeper within our spiritual heart. Only the teacher can give us what we need, this most precious gift, and yet what is given cannot be grasped by our mind or ego. Through the grace of the sheikh the disciple eventually awakens to the consciousness of divine oneness that is the knowing of love. But for many years on the path this consciousness is hidden from the disciple, who is faced with the limitations of the ego and the confusions of the psyche. The disciple cannot help but see the teacher through the veils of duality and the distortions of her own projections; she cannot help but try to bring this relationship that belongs to the impersonal level of the soul into the personal landscape of her ego-self. This is what makes this link of love so difficult to follow, this thread so seemingly tenuous. But if we follow it with sincerity, devotion, perseverance, and a sense of humor, we will awaken to the real nature of this most bewildering, most potent of relationships; we will come to know how the heart of the sheikh reflects the oneness of love’s hidden face.

The Path of the Masters

Behind each teacher stands a succession of spiritual elders, each supported and guided by those who have gone before. To be responsible for the soul of a wayfarer is one of the greatest responsibilities one can be asked to carry, and without the inner presence of my sheikh I could not have guided anyone. This hidden dimension of the path is hardly known in the West, where only what is visible is recognized, but it is an essential aspect of Sufism.

The origins of the Naqshbandi path lie in the mystical tradition of the Khwajagan (Masters of Wisdom). These early spiritual masters, initially centered around Bukhara, were visible in the Central Asia from the eleventh to fifteenth century.¹⁸  They had access to inner spiritual powers, seldom took any part in the affairs of state, but they had a great influence with both the rulers and the people. ¹⁹ This outer engagement reflects one of the core Naqshbandi principles, solitude in the crowd ( Khalwat dar Anjuman), “outwardly to be with the people, inwardly to be with God.” Their influence was due to their piety and the love they inspired in all who met them. By the sixteenth century their outer influence had become less visible, even as they spread beyond Bukhara. However the work and authority of this succession of Naqshbandi masters continued in the inner worlds, where it can be linked with the Sufi tradition of the awiliya.

The awiliya are the Friends of God, a spiritual hierarchy consisting of a fixed number of evolved incarnated beings who watch over the world. At the top of the hierarchy stands the pole ( qutb), “the Master of the Friends of God,” who is the axis around whom the exterior and interior universe turns. Under the pole come seven pegs, below which come the forty successors ( al-abdal).²⁰ If one of these Friends of God dies, another is waiting to take his place, so that the number of Friends is always maintained. Without the awiliya the existence and well-being of the world could not be sustained. ²¹

Over the last centuries the awiliya have been hidden; their spiritual work has gone on undisturbed. But the existence of a spiritual hierarchy working to maintain the well-being of the whole world has remained part of spiritual consciousness in the East. In the West, however, we have identified the spiritual path almost exclusively with the process of individual transformation and have little understanding of this larger, global dimension.

Sadly, in the West much of our understanding of spiritual life has been subverted by the values of the ego. Only too often we see spiritual life solely in terms of self-development, the desire for progress, self-empowerment, or the achievement of spiritual states. We completely miss the basic principle that the path is never about us, about our individual or spiritual well-being. To be spiritually mature is to recognize that we work upon ourselves not for our own benefit but for the sake of service: service to our Beloved and to the whole of life—in the oneness of divine love there is no difference.

This path of love and service responds to the need of the time. For example, in the thirteenth century the followers of this path helped in the rebuilding of the Middle East devastated by the Mongol invasions. At this time our most pressing concern is the climate and ecological crisis. Spiritual Ecology, which seeks to understand the spiritual roots of this crisis, has in recent years become part of our response to this accelerating disaster. It offers a way to help articulate the spiritual dimension of the ecological crisis, the root causes behind it, and the role of an engaged spirituality as a response. I imagine that it will continue to develop as a central act of service in the coming decades.

The Naqshbandi path of the masters is like a river, sometimes visible, sometimes hidden underground. It appears where it is needed, where there is spiritual work to be done. Although the outer form may change, its inner essence remains unchanged. It is a spiritual system designed to transform a human being, to awaken us to our divine nature and teach us how to live this in service to our Beloved, according to the need of the time.

On the path there are different forms of spiritual work. Inner purification is an important preliminary work, involving changing the patterns of our behavior and freeing ourselves from attitudes and responses that interfere with our aspirations. Psychological inner work is part of this process—confronting the “shadow,” the repressed, rejected and unacknowledged parts of our psyche; accepting our wounds; and transforming psychological dynamics and patterns of conditioning. Through spiritual inner work we also develop the qualities we need for the path, for example self-discipline, compassion, patience, perseverance. In particular we learn to value the qualities of receptivity, listening, and inner attention. Through working on our spiritual practices such as meditation and remembrance, we learn to still the mind and be attentive to the needs of the Divine in our inner and outer life. We also learn to master our negative qualities—such as anger, greed, desires, jealousy, and judgment—the nafs of our lower nature. Through this work we are better able to align ourselves with our higher nature and live its qualities in our daily life. We bring our selflessness, awareness, loving-kindness, discrimination, and other qualities into our family and workplace, transforming both ourselves and our environment. To live according to our higher principles in the midst of the outer world with its distractions and demands is a full-time work.

The spiritual wayfarer gives herself to her inner work and outer service. The Sufis are known as “slaves of the One and servants of the many.” We make our contributions to outer life in whatever way we are called, whether through simple acts of loving-kindness or more defined service helping where there is need. We help those in our spiritual community and daily life. We learn to be always attentive to the needs of our Beloved in the inner and outer worlds. And always we are held in the presence of our sheikh and the transmission of love passed from teacher to disciple: the grace that is given effortlessly, the love, light, and protection that come from the succession of those who are merged in God.