100 Years of Universal Sufism: Between Holy Mist and Mythological Jungle
From the Jubilee Edition of the Dutch Journal titled Soefi Gedachte
An Interview with Shaikh-ul-Mashaikh Mahmood Khan about the context of Message and Messenger.
Kariem Maas
Is it a matter of the Message or of the Messenger? Hazrat Inayat Khan completely emphasized on the first. He effaced himself and he also adjusted the words he chose in order to convey the Message to his audience. But this attunement to the circumstances and audience is problematic for us, the readers who nowadays read the lectures which were once improvised lectures. We can’t take the words literally just like that, but in fact we must always pay attention to the circumstances in which they have been spoken. And that concerns also the practices, forms and rituals – in order to understand their purposes we must know the context in which they have been used. And that leads us from the Message to the Messenger. Although Inayat Khan tried to highlight the Message as hard as he could and to ‘vanish’ behind it, we must know his person, life and manner to be able to probe the meaning of his Message. A paradox that is right down Mahmood Khan’s alley, a nephew of Inayat Khan. Cause to enter into conversation with him about this.
Shaik al-Mashaik Mahmood Khan is the son of Inayat Khan’s brother Maheboob. After the death of Inayat in 1927, Maheboob Khan was his successor until his own death in 1948. So Mahmood has grown up within what one could call the epicenter of the Universal Sufism. He was born in the year Inayat Khan died and his title ‘Shaik al-Mashaik’ – which means ‘Patriarch of the Seniors’- signifies that he has won his spurs within the Sufi Movement. Among other things Mahmood has partaken in the ‘joined leadership’ from 1982 until 1993 and since 1948 he is a member of the ‘executive committee’. He wrote a ‘biographic perspective’ for the standard book ‘A pearl in wine – essays on the life, music and Sufism of Hazrat Inayat Khan’ (Omega Publications, 2001). In it he states the above mentioned ‘delightful paradox’. He emphasizes that Inayat Khan as a musician was only used to improvise and attune to his audience. ‘Stay close to what the central theme is about. Improvise on it, constructively, competently, artistically, with a sense of tact…’, thus Mahmood cites instructions Inayat Khan gave. In his lectures Mahmood always emphasizes also that the manner of Inayat Khan is in its nature very much a product of his time. With certain touchiness he responds to every suggestion that it is an ‘established teaching’ – it is music and poetry!
His slightly ironical putting into perspective of what others consider as eternal ordinances or expressions of which nothing is allowed to be altered, are not always being thanked for. Understandable, for how do we keep the nucleus of the Message living, what do we have to hold, of what can we let go or what do we have to adjust? How do we know when we are throwing away the baby with the bathwater? Down to earthly Mahmood records, ‘That is a quest’. And he thinks there is a real danger that we get lost with it.
When we look at the past we can get lost in ‘a mist of holiness’. Looking ahead Mahmood sees the danger arising of a ‘jungle of mythologizing’. A metaphor he used during a recent lecture on ‘100 years of Sufism’ at the Sufi Contact at Haarlem. He showed his concern for all kinds of mythologizing, which only make it needlessly complicated to penetrate to the nucleus of Hazrat’s Sufism.
So in order to not get lost we have to go deeply into the Message ánd the Messenger. This means, speaking with the words of Mahmood, ‘Mysticism, philosophy of the world and of life on one side, history and biography on the other side.’ Concerning texts, Mahmood considers the edition on which the Nekbakth foundation is working as the fundament. This follows as conscientious as possible how, where, by whom and with what corrections Inayat Khan’s lectures and oral lessons have been put into writing. This original text enables one to form an opinion in detail about what has been said, put in the context of the whole. Including all contradictions which are in it. According to Mahmood those show that Inayat Khan – deliberately – seldom acted systematically. One has to know all his sayings on a theme in order to approach his vision. Concerning the Messenger Mahmood tells that in India Hazrat Inayat Khan was a modern Indian for that period in time (1897 – 1910), dressed in European style. He saw the western culture approaching India, not as a threat but as a positive power which could bring progress. Inayat Khan focused on the promises of the western development. Mahmood, ‘For Inayat Khan the secular character of that western culture was the great challenge. For the West was lacking the obvious mystical dimension of spirituality, which in his time still characterized India. With Sufi methods – a combination of contemplative philosophy and an esoteric system of practical and theoretical practices, such as are also known in yoga – Inayat Khan wanted to assure a renewed mysticism in the world dominated by the West, and thus by it make the West acceptable.’
THE OBVIOUS UNITY OF RELIGIOUS IDEALS
Mahmood, ‘India has always been able to integrate all kinds of new movements. Since thousand years India has known the merging of the monotheistic Islam and the polytheistic Hinduism. Only in the past century an irreconcilable difference has grown between the two by political and ideological developments.’ Mahmood considers Indian mysticism as the common spiritual legacy of the Ganges and the Mediterranean: of Hinduism and Islamic Sufism. And for its part the latter was open to, for example, hermetic Egyptian sources, neo Platonism, Manichaeism, and to other more ancient traditions. That such different religions could live together for centuries is also owing to the Indian mysticism. In this mysticism there was a sense that in the ‘superstructure’ there was talk of a unity in spiritual, mystical experience, despite all differences ‘on the ground.’ Mahmood, ‘In religions there is talk of (mostly) a revelation of the Divine Source, an enlightened person, a doctrine, crystallized in forms that give shape to the religious experience in life, in moral and a certain popularization. That is the horizontal movement that eventually always has a ‘diagonal’ dimension, a fulfillment after death. The religiously reasoned out goal thereby is lying outside of the world. In mysticism the central question is if the human being can experience some of that eventual reality in this life. The answer is yes, provided the human being is able to work up a certain discipline and attitude.’
From this background the unity of religious ideals was obvious for Inayat Khan. But to the western human being this was something that was unknown. Except for some small groups, those were searching for new spirituality, such as the theosophists. They have played a valuable ‘mediating’ role. They were receptive to the ideas of Inayat Khan. On the other side, Mahmood records, they have also had a great influence on his manner. Therefore on how his Sufism took shape and was interpreted. To be able to interpret that first he goes more deeply into Inayat’s mysticism. That mysticism was in a way – even though that sounds like a difference – a ‘secular mysticism.’
BEAUTY AS GATEWAY TO ‘SECULAR MYSTICISM’
The nucleus of much mysticism is immanence – the awareness that despite all limitations of this life in the depths of it there is a divine impulse to be found. Religion is just immanent to a limited degree, it is rather transcendent – the divine is outside the outer reality, and in as far as religions also seek social dominance they have the tendency to grow fixed into ideologies. Mahmood explains that there were two ways of old to attain to the depth, the immanence of the mysticism, that impulse or sparkle. The way of practices, for example yoga, and the way of knowledge, contemplation. Hazrat Inayat Khan’s original contribution is that he added a third way to it: experiencing beauty. ‘Thát has been one of his greatest contributions,’ Mahmood thinks. ‘It was a secular way to mysticism. A way that helped to attain to a purity of religious forms fixed into ideologies.’ With it Inayat Khan gave a new twist to Persian Sufism, in which the beauty of the poetry was an important way. He united this way with the most abstract of all forms of art, music. In India music of old had been counted a holy art and had been connected with the mystic side of religion. And Inayat considered music and beauty as the most attractive doorways to concentration; as a first step to contemplation and meditation in which the awareness of unity can be attained. A pragmatic approach, Mahmood decides. ‘After all one can concentrate much easier on something that fascinates, that absorbs the mind.’ ‘But beauty is not something which is sentimental. It is a form of mastery to be able to continue to see beauty in this world even though it is often so miserable and limited. Likewise to be able to continue to see harmony and love. Thereupon it is a matter of deepening this experience of beauty. One can attain to internalization by forgetting oneself in the beauty of sound, which withdraws from all forms. Then one lives in a different dimension of one’s being. Just like prayer which can deepen as contemplation on God, beyond the question of fulfillment of some need. Art – in that experience – leaves the nufs, the empirical ego, behind: there only the presence of God is.’
ATTUNEMENT TO A THEOSOPHIC CONTEXT
A hundred years ago when Inayat Khan came to the West with his music, he was faced with a problem. Not many people could understand that exotic music yet. According to Mahmood, there was some interest in America, France and Russia, but in England, where he had to stay during WOI, his music was experienced at the most as a curious museum piece. Inayat had to find other ways to convey his mysticism. Because it was mainly theosophists who were receptive to him, he attuned his performance to them. That could be more or less spontaneous, because theosophists worked with Indian imaginations. Mahmood states emphatically that he doesn’t want to be bantering about it. It has been very important that English theosophists have enabled Inayat Khan to do his work. At the same time one has to recognize that it was in some respects an unequal trade: Inayat Khan and his three brothers had given up their allowances of Baroda, he had to support his wife and four children and the theosophists were immensely rich – which sometimes casted a cloud upon the relationships. According to Mahmood clearly there has been a exchange. From time to time the theosophists came out with ideas and rituals, to which Inayat Khan gave further meaning. In that way he maintained his connection with things that were going on amongst his devotees. Mahmood cites the Universal Worship as the best known example of this, the Universal Worship which is now one of the five official ‘activities’ for the spreading of the Sufi Message. Mahmood protests grumbling against the wording in itself, ‘That expression in itself – ‘Message’ – in fact that is an irresponsible religious accent! Superfluous sacralization. At the time co-workers shaped those activities. But we certainly do not have to interpret them as limiting, as if only these five, and in this way, can express Inayat Khan’s Sufism. They are a guideline. We have to think open mindedly about clearing them up or adjusting them if necessary’.
MISUNDERSTANDINGS AROUND THE SEVENTH CANDLE
Mahmood, ‘Many of the theosophists were old Victorians, Christians who did not wait anymore for the promised return of the Messiah, but found in the incarnations of avatars a kind of periodical return of the world teacher by the Hindus. Think of Krishnamurti. That world teacher stood by a new religion. The seventh candle in the Universal Worship also got the same connotation, whether or not interpreted. Even though Inayat Khan was after mysticism, that seventh candle got a predominant religious connotation. But Inayat Khan did not care for a new religion, as the theosophists wanted to, but he cared for mysticism for the modern human being. The Universal Worship is a lesson in divine immanence – in every religion there is a divine impulse. The theosophists too knew this partly, but never so consequently worked out. Therefore the Universal Worship was an important but often wrongly interpreted step.’ Mahmood tells about its origin, ‘During the week Inayat Khan gave practices and lectures and on Sunday there was a ‘prayer meeting’ for the mureeds at London. A short lecture of fifteen to twenty minutes alternated with hymns and short excerpts read by mureeds. Ordinary people of the audience who told what they had chosen. With little pretensions. At a certain moment devotees have transformed these ‘prayer meetings’ into Universal Worship without Inayat Khan’s knowledge. Being confronted with it, Inayat Khan has sanctioned this form.’ ‘It is a beautiful kind of service and it has played an important role in the notice of a turning point of Sufism. I am glad that there is still a great interest for it in the Netherlands; in other countries that is somewhat different. There people have for example exuberant catholic or orthodox messes they do not want to set aside for it. For them is has stayed as it was meant: an occasional order ceremony, a suggestive performance of mystical thought spiritual legacy in religious design. It is a significant and beautiful ritual. Extremely evocative. But at the seventh scripture it would be better if one should announce that there will be read from the world literature of the mysticism, thus that one does not have the pretension of a new religion – as the theosophists wanted – but that it concerns the mystical schooling as such. Then there are more pure proportions. Then the silence between the first six candles and the seventh candle is the difference between the religions and the mysticism. But alas: one is afraid to fumble at it. One thinks he is interfering in forms that have been wanted and installed by Hazrat Inayat Khan himself. But then that is based on a misunderstanding.’
THE ESSENCE OF INITIATION AND PRAYERS
In such a way Mahmood signals more misunderstandings, which could arise because one was blind for the relation between the real intention and the development in the historical context. He mentions the initiations and the prayers. ‘Sufism has three sides: the Sufi Order (the so called inner school), the Universal Worship and a few smaller external activities. The initiation at the inner school is sometimes considered a kind of sacred sacrament. But it isn’t. One has to see it in the Indian tradition that it is an agreement between a teacher and a student, rather feudal, a handshake. The hierarchy in initiations has been added later on and has been worked out rather solemnly by co-workers in the 20’s of the last century. It was much more simple. Gawery Voûte, who has been at the basis of Sufi Contact was right that there was only óne initiation and grade: that is it a question of ‘stepping into the circle’. Thus was the initiation in the London time.’ ‘Besides, with this kind of criticism on solemnity we must not fault the theosophists. Their interventions are justified when they give satisfaction and inspiration, if only óne person gets satisfaction out of it. It is also understandable that it could come about in a period when there were hardly any publications of Inayat Khan’s lectures. But one must not say that hereby Hazrat Inayat Khan himself has given shape to his teaching. That is an unjustified limitation. And it runs the risk of ritualisation. Through the publications of the original texts we now know more and we can interpret better what was essential to Inayat Khan.’ ‘The same applies to the prayers. Saum has been based on verses of an old Indian song. Salat has been borrowed from the Islamic tradition of reciting names of a number of prophets. Inayat Khan has added Hindu names. These two prayers were the first practices for initiates, together with simple breath practices. These two prayers bridge to the mystical experience in the perspective of God’s immanence. Much more mystical than the first verses of Saum – Omni-present, All-pervading, the only Being – one cannot become! After that follows up to three times a reference to the experience of beauty, and then the experience of unity. The prayer is thus also a practice to learn to see love, harmony and beauty in our limited world.’ ‘Salat comes from the classic Islamic Sufism. In it the ‘Nur-e Mohammadi’ plays an important role, as ‘light of guidance.’ That became ‘spirit of guidance’, maybe to suggest a relation with the Christian trinity. In ‘Nur-e Mohammadi’ the immanence reveals itself, as in the expression ‘illuminated souls’, with which not only the light of the great prophets but the personal light of smaller mystics and the spark of soul in all human beings is suggested. This light mainly reveals itself where the human being means something for someone else in a love that goes beyond his self, as in the love, kindness, innocence, help, inspiration mentioned in the prayer. An unselfish manner as the beginning of the ‘light of guidance’, loving transference of unselfish assistance or responsiveness.’ These prayers are embedded in a tradition that forms the essence of Inayat Khan’s mysticism. The remainder of the prayers Mahmood calls ‘custom-made goods’, because they have been drawn up on request for certain occasions.
THE WAY TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Hazrat Inayat Khan wanted to show the way to a personal spiritual experience. The shaping of the human being is the central point. Mahmood tells the characteristic of it is the division in three parts of body, mind and soul instead of the division in two of body and mind which was common in the West. The empirical ‘I’ consists of the body plus the surface (thoughts, emotions) of what Inayat Khan calls ‘mind’, spirit and heart. This ego is formed in exchange with the outside world. It is crucial to undergo this forming very consciously as enrichment, instead of opposing it, being hardened without the slightest consideration. The ego is not an empty cover, but it grows. A plane deeper there is the spirit, the heart, with the typical feature of the capacity to love, beauty and intuition. The third plane is the soul, the life of the soul. Mahmood, ‘For us it is normal that we know a shifting between body and mind. Sometimes we are for the most part occupied with the one, then again with the other. For example, when we are reading a book, we don’t hear what is going on around us. Our perception of the outside world is dimmed at that moment. Where it comes down to is to notice that consciously. If one is occupied physically, concentrate to it to the fullest. With a deeper sense of love or of beauty the physical body and the mental mind withdraw; then it is the heart which is speaking, the depth of the mind is predominant. See it!
In their daily groove people pass over their souls. Thus in the absence of attention and food the awareness of it shrinks. Unless one develops the life of the soul by ‘esoteric’ practices. That is the central practice on the mystical path: to be conscious of that life of the soul, intensively, of the joy and peace which together form serenity. The attachment to the limitations withdraws. It is intense without being something.’
THE BOOKS HELP US TO PREPARE THE WAY
‘The books are forming the nucleus of what Hazrat Inayat Khan wanted to teach us. All texts were lectures and in order to make them readable maybe editorial transcription is needed. The ‘Nekbakht’ books with all the exact sources next to them are for the lovers and investigators who want to know the original wording. But in fact all of the complete work is contemplation and poetry. The first phase is that one reads it as poetry. The second phase is reflection on that poetry, on the basic ideas of it. For that knowledge of the context is necessary.’ ‘One should put the texts also in Inayat Khan’s real association with his mureeds, their spirituals needs. That puts the texts into perspective, changes the conclusions, between that time and the present time. In the answers Hazrat Inayat Khan gave to questions from his audience he appears as an inspired enthusiastic personality and not as a saint who is dangling intangibly somewhere in the sky, as Elisabeth Keesing records disapprovingly in her book “Golven vanwaar komt de wind”. Therefore we must, if we look at the past, guard against a mist of holiness. Looking at the future, we must realize that our knowledge of the life of Hazrat Inayat Khan is limited and that thereby a next generation, which will be still further away from the knowledge at first hand, can arrive at a jungle of mythologizing. At the moment we are exactly in the middle of ‘mist’ and ‘jungle.’ It is our task to prepare a passable way. In order to be able to do that we have to go back to what Hazrat Inayat Khan has said and has had in mind and to the knowledge of the context of his life and performance.’
NOT BACK TO SQUARE ONE
When asked about the role of the Sufi Movement and the Universal Sufism concerning the preparation of the way, Mahmood responds very critically.
Mahmood, ‘In fact the term Universal Sufism is double, because according to Hazrat Inayat Khan real mysticism of itself is universal, without regard to a possible confessional principle. The designation is propagated as opposed to Muslim orders which make Islamizing the condition to being admitted. Yet, leading Indian Sufi Orders no longer do that anymore. So our ‘paindeluxe-roll’ is a little bit stale. I myself prefer ‘Indian’ or ‘secular’ Sufism; in the English language people have been experimenting with ‘Inayatian Sufism.’
‘After the war the Dutch Calvinistic way of thinking has marked the course of events within the Sufi Movement in an outspoken dogmatic way. Also concerning hierarchy; the practically exclusion of Boards, co-workers and devotees is definitely sad. Previous generations could cope playfully with the hierarchy introduced by them, because for them it was nothing special and a romantic reminder of the catholic Middle Ages.
But after the 50’s of the last century the understanding of devotion has been petrified into a mental bureaucracy; a restraint on all spontaneous expression or personal forming of thoughts. With increasing risk of mental metal fatigue. A group of which the members have to keep silent unless to say how beautiful or good everything is, has no future.’ Do all critical comments about the adjustments which have been made in order to make Sufism fit for the West mean that these are ‘distortions’ of the original? That the best we can do is to return to the original?
Mahmood, ‘No, back to square one would be utterly wrong. Murshid’s lifework is both an independent mental work, a height originated from the total Indian philosophical and practical mysticism (including the Hindu dimension) and a completely updating culmination of the whole Sufi mysticism throughout the centuries. Hazrat Inayat Khan did not want to do religion and so did not want to be a prophet. He was a mystical re-creator of an ancient, all-embracing Indian tradition.’