Irina Tweedie
The lane of love is narrow, as narrow as the edge of a sword; two can not walk on it. —Bhai Sahib
Irina Tweedie was born in Russia and studied in Vienna and Paris. After the Second World War she married a British naval officer, whose death in 1954 led her on a spiritual quest. Little did she know that her trip to India in 1959, at the age of fifty-two, would mysteriously lead her to a Sufi Master from the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiya Sufi Order, whom she called Bhai Sahib (Elder Brother). This meeting set her upon a journey to the "heart of hearts," the Sufi path of self-realization.
Her teacher¹s first request of her was to keep a diary of her spiritual training which became the book Daughter of Fire, the Diary of a Training with a Sufi Master. This diary spans five years, making up an amazing record of spiritual transformation ... the agonies, the resistance, the long and frightening bouts with the purifying forces of Kundalini, the perseverance, the movements towards surrender, the longing, and finally the all-consuming love. From a psychological viewpoint, the diary maps the process of ego dissolution, gradually unveiling the openness and love that reside beneath the surface of the personality. Irina Tweedie was the first Western woman to be trained in this ancient Sufi lineage.
After her teacher's death in 1966, she returned to England where she started a Sufi meditation group in North London. Gradually groups spread throughout Europe and North America. Irina Tweedie retired in 1992 after having named Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee as her successor to continue her work and the work of this Sufi Lineage. She passed away in 1999.