Towards the end of Sufism Reoriented’s blitzkreig to Meherabad last month, its leader Carol O’Connor gave a talk to explain the meaning of Sufism. I did not attend that because I considered her unqualified to talk on that subject, and I knew that the more of her distortions I listened to, the angrier I would get, so I deemed it better to ignore the event completely. But nevertheless, everyone in Meherabad, it seems, loves to talk and I couldn’t avoid second-hand regurgitations of her subjective phantasies about what she imagines Sufism to be.
Perhaps the most clean-cut of said phantasies was the notion that the Sufis have a collective path, while the people in the Meher Baba community each have their own individual path to God. The first thing that struck me about this notion is that it is the opposite of what my then Preceptor (Shaik) Lud Dimpfl said about this same difference, when Carol and her then-boyfriend Dr. James MacKie were systematically creating and defending said difference. Lud’s opinion was that it was the Meher Baba Community that was guilty of creating a collective religion, while it was Sufism Reoriented which was the proponent of a person’s right to an individual path to God.
Since we’re going to have a group reading in lower Meherabad of God Speaks, Meher Baba’s metaphysical masterpiece, that Lud was very familiar with because he worked on its charts under Baba’s direction, I got a fresh copy of it, and check what I found, written by Meher Baba no less, in the beginning of the Supplement (p. 193):
There is no general rule or method that is applicable to all who aspire to realize God. Every man must work out his own salvation, and must choose his own method, although his choice is mostly determined by the total effect of the mind impressions (sanskaras) acquired in previous lives. He should be guided by the creed of his conscience, and follow the method that best suits his spiritual tendency, his physical aptitude and his external circumstances. Truth is One, but the approach to it is essentially individual. The Sufis say, “There are as many ways to God as there are souls of men (At-turuqu ilallahi kanufusi bani adam).
Jamal-i fitrat ke lakh partao
Qubul partao ki lakh shakhin
Tariq-i ‘irfan main kiya bataun
Yah rah kiski wah rah kiski? –Akbar“Nature’s beauty has thousands of facets for which there are thousands of ways and means of acceptance (understanding), in the Path of Gnosis, who can determine which particular mode or mood is earmarked for a given individual?”
Both of these members of Sufism Reoriented (Carol and Lud) were wrong because both of them were attempting to create a difference between two spiritual paths on the basis of a structural priniciple which all spiritual paths have in common. There are no collective paths to God. None. The paths to God are individual because the only entity that can attain God-Realization is an individual.
Just for the record, Carol’s real spiritual status now is the same as Lud’s was then; for functional purposes she is a classical Sufi Shaik. Such disagreements between Shaiks should not be noticed by us because they are both meaningless and thoroughly beneath us.
अवतार मेहेर बाबा की जाई । Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!
Viveshwar
Viveshwar old chap,
The question might arise — how can you meaningfully (not to mention with such exquisite aloofness) seriously critique an alleged view on a profoundly nuanced spiritual topic, if you merely heard the statement paraphrased second-hand? Might you not wish to consider how, in such circumstances, quotation assuredly amounts to paraphrase, paraphrase inevitably involves an element of interpretation, and interpretation can easily amount to distortion. Whether you (at the end of the wire of this small “telephone” game) may have correctly discerned exactly what was said, and can have adequately perceived precisely what was intended — these could seem questions worth entertaining, shi bu shi? Are you so certain you know what Murshida Carol Weyland Conner said [considering how you inevitably misrepresent her name, your blogged entries don't always inspire supreme confidence] and what exactly she was driving at, on that particular occasion? I wasn’t there, so cannot comment. The words of Sufi Murshids (not a good deal less than the words of Avatars) are best appreciated and considered as original utterance. Paraphrase plays havoc.
All best Baba-wishes,
d.i. [your long-ago roommate]
Comment by David Raphael Israel — January 24, 2012 @ 13:42 |
Well, shucks, David, I sure hope you’re having a nice day.
Of the three people I quoted here, two of them, Meher Baba and Lud Dimpfl, were quoted from original sources. The validity of the other quote will be better judged by people who heard her, and I have listened to them, while you have not had that opportunity.
Jai Meher Baba
Viveshwar Bodhisattva
Comment by Viveshwar — January 24, 2012 @ 14:43 |
Viveshwar,
a curious thing about what you present as three differing views above, is this: I can easily see how all three descriptions can be perfectly true, each within its own frame of reference.
I don’t see any fundamental contradiction here. What you present as seemingly opposite views, are, it seems to me, in fact describing different things — or, they describe different aspects of related things. At any rate, all three views strike me as sound, each within its context.
Your mileage might vary. In such case, one can but wish a most bon voyage.
In Baba’s limitless love,
d.i.
Comment by David Raphael Israel — January 25, 2012 @ 07:58 |
Well, thanks, good buddy. Truth (Dharma) is One, and where the mind is devoted to Truth, that mind comes to God.
Jai Meher Baba
Viveshwar
Comment by Viveshwar — January 25, 2012 @ 11:33 |
Viveshwar,
While lacking much interest in argumentation over matters that are (perchance) ultimately best determined and clarified more through internal recognition than by means of “doctrinal” disputation [despite whatever admitted amusement or indeed value suchlike may have held in bygone eras], a sense of basic honor and fundamental decency in realms of public discourse seems, nonetheless, to beckon me back into this virtual square, if merely to offer a hyperlink pointer, by way of amending the (from the perspective of my experience) painfully misguided notion and picture of the life and work of the late Murshid James MacKie and his radiant successor suggested in your deliverances — these two notable figures in a spiritual lineage directly established by Meher Baba with (as might be recalled) the express promise of an unbroken chain of illumined teachers stretching into the far future.
The following obituary notice for Murshid MacKie (originally published in the Love Street Lamp Post) traces a thumbnail sketch that seems in line with my own happy recollections:
http://www.meherbabatravels.com/his-close-ones/men/murshid-james-mackie/
I append this annotative pointer chiefly for sake of a few of your (possible or imaginable) readers — particularly those who may not have encountered Jim MaKie in person — lest the (doubtless sincere, yet withal, if I may so say) jaundiced view you invoke be mistaken for conventional wisdom on this topic.
Hat-tips,
d.i.
p.s.: Not to worry: I hardly entertain quixotic notions of altering your view — a task exceeding my paltry intellectual skills (& beyond my sense of suitable terseness). Every view — even the most jaundiced — merits something of respect, to the degree that Meher Baba’s inscrutable play of hide-and-seek might transpire therein. Nonetheless, the LampPostian conventional wisdom is hereby noted in passing.
Comment by David Raphael Israel — January 25, 2012 @ 22:40 |
How is it that that account of James S. B. Doesn’t mention his advanced training in Ericksonian hypnosis, and that his cultists were trying to flaunt him as a Qutub when he died, leaving absolutely nothing characteristic of a Qutub behind, of which the most significant item would have another Qutub to follow in his footsteps?
When Carol arrived here, she was not acting like a Qutub either. She was acting like a nice charasmatic hypnotist as well, and she looked like she was dying of AIDS.
Jai Meher Baba
Viveshwar
Comment by Viveshwar — January 26, 2012 @ 05:30 |
Vivishwar,
I have only a very vague acquaintance with the work of the psychoanalyst Eric Ericson, who I believe was among Murshid MacKie’s professional mentors. The Wikipedia entry regarding this noted figure gives no suggestion regarding hypnosis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Erikson Your mention is the first I’ve heard of it. I dare say I experienced many interesting things in the company of Dr. MacKie, but hypnosis does not figure among them.
As you know, Meher Baba himself clearly stated (in the Charter for Sufism Reoriented, signed by him in 1952) that all future Murshids of this order of his would necessarily need to be consciously stationed on either the 6th or 7th plane of consciousness. (He made special exception in the case of Murshida Duce, while she grew into the job.) Whether the two figures here in question (Murshid MacKia and Murshida Connor) inhabit the 6th or the 7th plane, is a question perhaps best answered by another 6th or 7th planer. (I have attended many wonderful teaching sessions with both teachers, but I do not recall that either of them have ever addressed the topic of their own status vis-a-vis this particular distinction.)
Hat-tips,
d.i.
Comment by David Raphael Israel — January 26, 2012 @ 06:21 |
It was not Eric Erickson but Milton H. Erickson. Check this:
Wikipedia on Controversy about Milton H. Erickson
Milton Erickson was a real live MD, and he really did not have a problem with female nudity. If I remember correctly, he snapped this girl out of a really miserable neurosis with this one session cited above. My issue with this entire subject is the complete blindness, on the part of the Sufis, to the controversial nature of hypnosis in general. Milton H. Erickson was, IMO, one of the most brilliant hypnotists that has ever lived. He was quite capable of inducting whole theatres of people if he could only get the stage, and with exceedingly rare exceptions, none of the inductees ever saw the induction go by. This is what Dr. B. S. MacKie did with the Sufis, and what makes it unethical is that NO ONE in Sufism had signed up for this when they had become a Sufi. They ALL thought that this organization had something to do with Meher Baba.
In real time, Carol is operating with this same hidden agenda. These techniques of mass hypnotism are what allow her to peddle subjective gibberish with apparent immunity, and to routinely lie about the content of Meher Baba’s Sufi Charter. She doesn’t care about what’s in that Charter, or what Sufism is actually designed by God to be, whether in the Muslim case, or in the general case, or in her personal subjective case.
Jai Meher Baba
Viveshwar Bodhisattva
Comment by Viveshwar — January 26, 2012 @ 18:15 |
Further concerning Erik H. Erikson [evidently sometimes spelled Eric H. Erikson], interested readers might enjoy Dr. James Mackie’s review of Dr. Erikson’s key book, “Childhood and Society,” — a review downloadable [from the website of the academic journal Dr. Mackie edited for many years] here:
http://journals.lww.com/jonmd/Citation/1965/07000/Childhood_and_Society.24.aspx
I do not really know whether, or to what degree, Dr. Mackie may have directly studied with Erik Erikson; it may be that the latter was more of a senior colleague (rather than a teacher) of Mackie’s. I do recall some general sense (certainly evident in the above-linked review) of respect for this Dr. Erikson’s thought and work. I’ve no reason to suppose our late Murshid had ever had any association with your hypnotist Milton E. (though I recognize that you may construct, or might like to construe, reasons to imagine that).
As he notes at his review’s conclusion, Dr. Mackie (writing in 1965) admired in Erik Erikson “the warm glow of illuminating insight.” Many of us have admired the same in Murshid MacKie. That insight was (since the moment we came to know him) attentively trained on the work of Meher Baba.
d.i.
Comment by David Raphael Israel — January 26, 2012 @ 22:54
It is clear to me that the peripatetic Dr.(& attempted Hazrat) James B. S. MacKie must have been involved with both Ericksons. It happens. In my experience he was far more interested in hypnosis in general, and women in particular, than he was in human development.
Jai Meher Baba
Viveshwar
Comment by Viveshwar — January 27, 2012 @ 01:35
pps:
“The brain speaks through words; the heart in the glance of the eyes; and the soul through a radiance that charges the atmosphere, magnetizing all.”
– Hazrat Inayat Khan (Bowl of Saki)
This is not hypnotism, but doubtless it can be forceful at times.
Comment by David Raphael Israel — January 26, 2012 @ 08:24 |
Inayat Kahn brought the beautiful and glorious Chistia Sufi lineage to the West, and what he taught was classical Sufism as it has always been understood, and continues to this day to be understood, in the Muslim world.
Hypnotism is not Sufism; not Muslim Sufism, not Zoroastrian Sufism, not traditional Sufism of any origin or interpretation, not New Age Sufism, not wannabee weekend warrior California Sufism, and not the Sufism that Meher Baba laid out in the Charter that he gave to Murshida Ivy O. Duce.
Jai Meher Baba, and you have a nice day, good buddy.
Viveshwar Bodhisattva
Comment by Viveshwar — January 26, 2012 @ 19:09 |
Viveshwar,
((Mahesh ate the first five-eighths of this one too. Yum! -vshr))
… Turning to the question of the two Eriksons (or more precisely, to the case of Erikson v. Erickson, or yet more precisely — to spell it out — to the question of how it might transpire that a certain Dr. Eric [aka Erik] H. Erikson might be confounded with an altogether different and unrelated Dr. Milton H. Erickson), well here’s my theory. What we have here is what can typically occur in conditions of wildly imaginative rumor-mongering. Somebody unearths the fact that Suspect No. One was once-upon-a-time associated with a “Dr. X.” Somebody else discovers that a[nother, as it is] “Dr. X” was responsible with Crime Z. Hey presto! The rest is pseudo-history.
Your most cordial,
d.i.
Comment by David Raphael Israel — January 27, 2012 @ 05:42 |
I insist that there is more to this than words, i.e., a lot of actual observed behavior. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, we would be cognitively impaired if we did not conclude that what we are observing is most likely to be exactly a duck.
“Hypnotist” is the only thing that explains the wierdity of MacKie’s demeanor, the reasons for trance anchors like the “ambiance” to which he gave overwhelming importance, and like the very unIndian head-rotating which Carol was still aping when she recently visited Meherabad, and the confusion and extreme behavior alteration that he often caused. The ambiance was still there in the recent Sufi blitzkreig, but it had mutated into what I styled “Ashram clothes” (in the typical MacKie-esque white or pastels, and Carol’s uniform art-deco she-shell and turban in the same color scheme). There are still a few Sufi sympathizers running around here in that look.
Jai Meher Baba
Viveshwar
Comment by Viveshwar — January 27, 2012 @ 07:49 |
You know, Viveshwar, Avatar Meher Baba himself was accused (I think on a number of occasions) of being a skilled hypnotist (and/or mesmerist).
I cite, for instance, this passage from Lord Meher:
Vide: http://www.lordmeher.org/index.jsp?pageBase=page.jsp&nextPage=1527
The author of these observations was a certain K. J. Dastur (writing about Meher Baba in 1932).
Such an example of course does not in iteslf prove a point. But it might perchance give thoughtful pause (to some).
Hat-tips,
d.i.
Comment by David Raphael Israel — January 27, 2012 @ 08:04 |
Yes, that is a truly disgusting scenario, but it doesn’t follow that my attitude towards Dr. B. S. is the same as that Dastur’s towards Meher Baba. There are numerous dimensions and metrics by which Meher Baba’s behavior was unlike that of MacKie’s, but here are two that you might consider, together with other members of your cult who are most definitely reading this as we write:
I. A healthy Tolerance for Disagreement, and a Capacity to Actively Use Opposition
All 5,000+ pages of Lord Meher can be viewed as Bhau Kalchuri’s documetation of the fact that Meher Baba considered disagreement normal and often necessary. He often deliberately provoked it among those around him, for a variety of reasons, but most often to expose and resolve hidden conflicts in the personalities of those people. No disciple of Meher Baba was able to maintain continuous agreement with him. Every single one of them, including Murshida Duce, was deliberately driven beyond his or her capacity to do that. Meher Baba also said repeatedly that opposition was necessary for his work, and that all were free not only to disagree with him, but to actively oppose him. He did nothing whatsoever to stop or control any of that. To the contrary, he simply let it run its course. It becomes clear, if you read the whole document as I have done, that Meher Baba literally depended on opposition for his universal work. In the absence of it, he often deliberately created it, as in breaking his promise to break his silence in the Hollywood Bowl in the ’30′s.
Mackie, on the other hand, was absolutely brittle about disagreement and opposition. He couldn’t tolerate one dissenting sentence. Those who did that, like yours truly, were summarily dismissed from the Sufi Order. He trotted out his wierd trance anchors in Mandali Hall in Meherazad, and when Eruch very appropriately deemed him wierd, he then quite deliberately bad-mouthed Eruch and the Mandali in general to Murshida Duce, with the result that the Sufis were directed to take Meher Baba’s pictures down, not to go to India if you wanted to remain in the Order, etc., and then that absolutely healthy influence of Meher Baba’s Mandali was replaced by MacKie’s refined and so so expensive “ambiance,” and the deification of his wierdness in general. Of course, if you possessed great net worth, all of this suddenly did not apply to you. The man wasn’t stupid; he was hypocritical.
II. That Meher Baba Did. Not. Impose. His Personal Peculiarities on those around Him
Meher Baba’s personal lifestyle was so far beyond the functional capacities of ordinary people that few even tried to ape him, but when that occurred, he made it absolutely clear that it wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted people to be natural and honestly who and what they really were, and he wanted them to do what he said, not what he did, And all of this was out of his Divine Compassion. Aping this Avatar is literally an attempt that no human being could survive.
But when MacKie arrived in the Sufi Order? Hey, didn’t you get the memo, already? “Ambiance,” Benson and Hedges cigarettes, ashram garb, all-night parties by the cognoscenti, psycho-babble about such dimensions as “packaging sanskaras,” and presenting your carcase at his abode, correctly garbed mind you, and with gifts in hand, and begging to serve him personally, then all became de rigeur for Sufis. MacKie surrounded himself with people who aped him, and who were required to ape him to maintain their position in his circle, and who always agreed with him, no matter how outrageous he became. Nothing could be farther from what Meher Baba did in his own case, or wanted in any group dedicated to him.
Jai Meher Baba
Viveshwar
Comment by Viveshwar — January 27, 2012 @ 18:06 |
Viveshwar,
just now noticed the latest excision — what with a green comment in item #9 above ((Mahesh ate the first five-eighths of this one too. Yum! -vshr)) — obliterating my already paltry (and now quite indiscernible) claim to smart verbal panache. It is a case of the riposte that was . . . and then was not.
((Chomp! Again! Already! -vshr))
A (rather unentusiastic) hat-tip withal,
your cordial
d.i.
Comment by David Raphael Israel — January 27, 2012 @ 13:32 |
What is happening is that I am trying to maintain a thread-length that ordinary human beings will read. I am also about to go back through the entire thread and eliminate posts that I now consider superfluous, including a number of my own.
There IS something afoot here, David, and what is afoot is absolutely NOT the endless dibulation of your perfectly charming subjectivity.
Jai Meher Baba
Viveshwar
Comment by Viveshwar — January 27, 2012 @ 18:22 |
Perhaps then, for sake of harmony (and in interest of not having my prose habitually truncated — giving a distorted impression of the utterance), I’ll keep any possible future remarks more brief. When you make all manner of gleefully absolute statements (such as the Hazrat proscription) that fairly invite examination, and when such examination perchance brings to light possible errors in your absolutes or blindspots in your argument, you forthwith wield the blogmeister’s vito power, obliterating the other side of the tale. This could seem reminiscent of other facets of storylines you’ve been tracing. At any rate, I’ve oddly enjoyed reading your spirited diatribes, despite an underlying (and certainly troubling at that) impression of agony they convey. Anyway, conversation was invented by God to good purpose, I’d hazard.
Good wishes amid Meher Baba’s cosmic puzzle,
d.i.
Comment by David Raphael Israel — January 27, 2012 @ 20:37 |
The reason you enjoy it, David, is that you’re bored. And the reason you’re bored is that there’s no effective power for either fundamental change or real spiritual growth and attainment in the kind of hothouse culture that has been created out of Sufism Reoriented by MacKie and Carol’s transic games. You should come to Meherabad.
Jai Meher Baba
Viveshwar
Comment by Viveshwar — January 27, 2012 @ 21:22 |
Vivesh,
you appear to make a lot of assumptions about the lives of other people. Some might have some basis, others less. I have been to Meherabad fairly frequently in recent years — because I was living in India (and sometimes China) for about two and a half years, beginning at the start of 2007. I also went everywhere (via sleeper-class train) in India. After working for 14 years in one job (as word processor) in DC, I’d gotten restless to go study Indian classical music — which I did at a rare school in Bhopal (Murshida having kindly given me leave to explore these things, if I felt I must). After running short on lucre, I managed to land a job offer in Kolkata (teaching American English to call center workers), and was all set (I thought) to take up a longer period of India life. But it was not to be. The Indian government refused to grant me a work visa; I returned Stateside, and have in fact been in Los Angeles since July 2009. My dear mother passed away some 10 weeks after my arrival here (we spent wonderful time together; and she was dancing in classes several times a week until the end); all this put a different cast on India’s visa-stinginess. Anyway, I enjoy Sufi classes that Murshida shares (via weekly DVD sessions) with a small LA contingent, and lucked into discovering a good music teacher (on the instrument I’d taken up in Bhopal — sarangi) in LA (though he’s back in Kolkata now, but we do Skype lessons now). I also serve as weekend caretaker at the Los Angeles Baba Center (a lovely place). You might have seen one of the LA Persian families at Meherabad recently. A few folks (such as Erik Solibakke, in whose condo one might still see a few of my oil-paintings) around Meherabad are aware of my perigrinations. But it took me 2 years in LA before I managed to settle into a good, steady job. I’m now exceedingly grateful to have this, and the old wanderlust has diminished. Anyone interested can read poetry-record of some of my India (& China) wanderings, if digging down into the archive of my blog. I am now LA-domesticated.
cheers,
d.i.
Comment by David Raphael Israel — January 27, 2012 @ 21:41 |
Cheers, and Jai Meher Baba,
Viveshwar
Comment by Viveshwar — January 27, 2012 @ 22:56 |